Intersubjectivity, the Public Sphere, and the Cinema
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2009 Imagined Cinemas: Europe, Identity, the Transnational and Postnational in European Cinema John Arrington Woodward Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES IMAGINED CINEMAS: EUROPE, IDENTITY, THE TRANSNATIONAL AND POSTNATIONAL IN EUROPEAN CINEMA By JOHN ARRINGTON WOODWARD A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009 The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of John Arrington Woodward defended on April 3, 2009. ________________________________ William Cloonan Professor Co-Directing Dissertation ________________________________ Mark Garrett Cooper Professor Co-Directing Dissertation ________________________________ Stanley Gontarski University Representative ________________________________ Birgit Maier-Katkin, Committee Member Approved: ______________________________ Nancy Bradley Warren, Chair, Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities ______________________________ Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii Pour Virginie L’oiseau que fut mon Premier Amour Et qui chante encore comme au premier jour… --Verlaine et Eléa Viens, ô toi que j’adore, Ton pas est plus joyeux Que les vents des cieux ; Viens, les yeux d’aurore Sont divins, mais tes yeux Me regardent mieux. --Hugo et Tess On dit que ce brillant soleil N’est qu’un jouet de ta puissance ; Que sous tes pieds il se balance Comme une lampe de vermeil. --Lamartine iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No work is created from a vacuum; and this one is no exception. I would like to thank Mark Cooper for his unending patience, assistance, support, and willingness to put up with what I am sure were my many wild ramblings, asides, digressions, and so forth. I would also like to thank him for sparking my interest in Film Studies and allowing me to explore many of its intricate facets under his guidance and forbearance. There are also many others involved in such a collaborative undertaking, colleagues and fellow students especially. Of these I would like to mention Susan Ingram for her encouragement, interest, and for reading early versions of each of the chapters; Bill Cloonan for his unending support and friendship in the most trying of times (may your garden grow for all eternity!); and my many current colleagues in the Modern Languages and Linguistics department, as well as the many who have moved on to different, if not greener, pastures. Finally, this would not have been possible were it not for the help, encouragement and love of my one true love, Virginie: “All the promises we make, from the cradle to the grave, and all I want is you…” iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................... vii 1. Introduction: What is Europe?........................................................................ 1 Europeans and Others: Various Forms of Colonization ............................. 4 Christianity, Revolution, Europe: the Borders of Europe........................... 9 European Cinema: A Methodological Overview........................................ 16 2. Chapter 1: The History of European Cinema and the Public Sphere ............. 22 A Brief History of (Trans)National Cinema Production in Europe............ 22 The Bourgeois Public Sphere, Nationalism, and the Early European Cinema........................................................................................ 29 The Public Spheres of Production............................................................... 38 Conclusion: Postnational Europe and Etienne Balibar ............................... 44 3. Chapter 2: Towards a Theory of the Cinematic Borders of Europe: Intersubjectivity, the Public Sphere, and the Cinema................................. 53 Towards a Theory of Borders ..................................................................... 55 European Cinema and the Borders of Europe............................................. 63 Fictive Ethnicities in European Cinema ..................................................... 74 “Hors Texte”: Unity, Homogeneity, Continuity and Haneke’s Cinema ................................................................................................ 81 4. Chapter 3: Gaps between the Present and the Past: The Interstitial History of Europe ...................................................................... 91 Case Study 1: The American Friend: The Political Modern Subject and History..................................................................................... 93 Case Study 2: Run Lola Run: Performative or Instrumental History? ................................................................................................ 107 Case Study 3: Caché: Problematic on Film ................................................ 114 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 119 5. Chapter 4: Family—Individualization, the Past, and Transnational Class ................................................................................................ 122 v Political Modernism and the Tensions of Individualism, Family and the State ................................................................................................ 122 New Representations of the Family in the Age of Individualization and Globalization........................................................................................ 130 Case Study 1 ......................................................................................... 130 Case Study 2 ......................................................................................... 134 Case Study 3 ......................................................................................... 138 A Critical Mode of the Family in Crisis (a Problematic) rather than as Crisis............................................................................................... 140 Case Study 1 ......................................................................................... 141 Case Study 2 ......................................................................................... 145 Urbanization, Globalization, Transnational Reach and the (Bourgeois) Family of Ideality.................................................................... 147 6. Chapter 5: (Dis)Integrating Space: Urbanity, Speed, Alienation and Immigration ......................................................................................... 153 Urbanity and Speed .................................................................................... 154 I. Chronotopes....................................................................................... 154 II. Integral Cityscapes, Disintegrated Cityscapes, and the Marginalized......................................................................................... 160 III. Speed, Urbanity and Second Modern Society ................................ 165 Alienation, Immigration, Hybridity, Ethics—Fatih Akin and Michael Haneke ......................................................................................... 169 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 178 NOTES ................................................................................................ 181 REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 199 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .............................................................................. 204 vi ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the concurrent development of the European Cinema and the European public sphere. This dissertation focuses on delineating a mainstream European Cinema as addressing a specific ‘European subjectivity’ rather than a purely ‘national subject.’ I track this mode of address through the linking of ‘old Europe’ and an aesthetic mode of filmmaking in early narrative cinema, tying this to the legitimating functions of the bourgeois public sphere that were subsumed into the public spheres of production. This connection allowed cinema to legitimate itself as an art form, and also established a certain subject position for the art house film. I then examine films from Fatih Akin and other directors to show the points of interface between the specifically ‘European’ public sphere and the mainstream European cinema. This allows me to outline the formation of borders for Europe that are, in many ways, the reflection of internal, social, political and cultural borders to the periphery. At the same time I identify particular cinematic strategies in the films of Laurent Cantet, Michael Haneke and other European filmmakers that go against a mainstream representation by both questioning the concept of an idealized European subjectivity and opening gaps in the supposed historical and cultural continuity of Europe. vii INTRODUCTION WHAT IS EUROPE? Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong, [it is] a geographical concept. Bismark Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe that will decide the fate of the world. de Gaulle General divisions and deep tensions between