Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema
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Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema A Dissertation Submitted to the Committee of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Trent University Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Troy Michael Bordun 2015 Cultural Studies Ph.D. Graduate Program September 2015 Abstract Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema Troy Michael Bordun This dissertation re-evaluates theories of genre and spectatorship in light of a critic- defined tendency in recent art cinema, coined extreme cinema. It argues that the films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and French director Catherine Breillat expand our generic classifications and, through the re-organization of the visual presentation of genre-specific clichés and devices, their films transform sense experience and thought. My approach loosely follows Stanley Cavell’s various assertions of film as a medium of thought or, simply, that films think. Reygadas and Breillat allow spectators to reflect on the genre-film experience; I contend that their films make it apparent that genre is not established prior to the viewing of a work but is recollected and assembled by spectators in ways that matter for them. In fostering this experience of collection, these two directors propose a kind of ethics of curatorship: spectators are tasked with collecting and recollecting their film experience to generate particular social, cultural, and political critiques. To further accomplish and foster film as thought, the directors appeal to spectators’ sense experiences. I therefore deploy contemporary film theories on the senses, both phenomenological and affect theory, and partake in close readings of the films’ forms and narratives. The Introduction outlines my intervention in genre theory, discusses the key theoretical texts, develops the phenomenological framework I employ for the chapters to follow, develops my methodology through a description of Cavell’s style, and presents the stakes of my argument. Chapter one considers the place of ii experimental narrative cinema in Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux (2012). I argue that through his realist style, this film aims at an experience for spectators “as if” in a dream and through this film experience I posit the critique I find internal to the film. The second chapter turns to Catherine Breillat’s oeuvre and the confrontation her work poses to conceptions of pornography. I bring her 2001 feature Fat Girl (À ma soeur!) to bear on what I claim to be a new style of pornographic work and its challenge to patriarchy. The final chapter brings together Reygadas’s Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005) and Breillat’s Sex is Comedy (2002) to accomplish an analysis of sexual performances in otherwise dramatic films. Key words: extreme cinema, art cinema, phenomenology, genre studies, sensation, affect, pornography studies, film theory, spectatorship. iii You are advised to consult yourself as to whether a thing you have taken into your mind, have consented for that time to bear upon your life, gives you pleasure, or perhaps otherwise disturbs you, and if not, to demand of yourself the cause, whether the thing that solicits you is not remarkable or whether you are coarsened in what you can remark, allow to matter to you. Why do we put things together as we do? Why do we put ourselves together with just these things to make a world? What choices have we said farewell to? To put things together differently, so that they quicken the heart, would demand their recollecting. – Stanley Cavell, “The World as Things: Collecting Thoughts on Collecting,” 1998 iv Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my supervisor and committee members: Davide Panagia, Veronica Hollinger, and Ian McLachlan. Their comments, patience, and administrative support made the dissertation work flow smoothly and steadily. Special thanks to Ger Zielinski, Ihor Junyk, Alan O’Connor, and Jonathan Bordo for helping in various capacities with the program requirements. Erin Stewart Eves at the Academic Skills Center was invaluable at the beginning of my dissertation. I would also like to thank the reviewers and editors at Cine-Excess, Studies in European Cinema, and CineAction!. Selections from this dissertation appear therein. My peers in Cultural Studies (PhD and BA) and Theory, Culture, and Politics MA made my four years at Trent University enjoyable. For sharing conversation and comments on my work, and on life, I extend my gratitude to all of you. It is also important to recognize the support of those closest to me. My supervisor consistently reminded me that graduate studies takes its toll on the best of us, so I thank my friends and partners for their inspiration and having confidence in me throughout the years. My parents also deserve my appreciation; they never lost hope and were infinitely supportive. I recognize the support of Trent University and their efforts to fund my research: Cultural Studies graduate student funding, bursaries from Graduate Studies, professional development funding from CUPE 3908, conference funding from the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, and conference funding from the Graduate Student Association. v Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..v List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction: Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema…………………………………...1 Body Genres and Extreme Cinema………………………………………………………8 Film Theory after Maurice Merleau-Ponty……………………………………………..14 Trajectory and Research Questions…………………………………………………….27 Chapter 1: Carlos Reygadas, the Avant-Garde, and the Senses……………………..32 The Difficult Film………………………………………………………………………36 “[A]ll the Levels of Perception”………………………………………………………..41 Narrative Shock…………………………………………………………………..42 Cinematography and Levels……………………………………………………..54 A Slow Dream, “As If” it were Real……………………………………………..65 Documentary, the Profilmic Event, and CGI…………………………………………..72 Performative Documentary………………………………………………………72 Human Animals, Non-Human Animals…………………………………………..86 Fictional Death: “Come play with us cos Dad has died already”………………92 Chapter 2: Catherine Breillat’s Horrible Pornography…………………………….105 Erotic and/or Pornographic……………………………………………………………111 Looking-At Breillat’s Films…………………………………………………………...120 vi Sexual Numbers……………………………………………………………………….132 Fat Girl, Synopsis and Sexual Numbers………………………………………………134 Pornography “Too Late!”……………………………………………………………..138 Pornography Underage………………………………………………………………..147 Problems with the Pornographic………………………………………………………151 Horror “On Time!”……………………………………………………………………155 Breillat’s Horrible Fat Girl……………………………………………………………166 Chapter 3: Onscreen and Off-screen Flesh and Blood: Performance, Pornography, Spectatorship…………………………………………………………………………..177 Blow Job (2005)……………………………………………………………………….184 Mesquida’s Tears……………………………………………………………………...194 The Extradiegetic and Profilmic Event in Breillat’s Brief Crossing………………….204 The Ethics of Breillat’s Method……………………………………………………….207 Affective and Possessive Spectatorship……………………………………………….211 Pornography and Psychoanalytic Film Theory………………………………………..214 The Confrontation with the Real of the Film………………………………………….221 The Remembered Film………………………………………………………………..227 Post-Script……………………………………………………………………………..233 Conclusion: Know Genre, No Trouble……………………………………………….235 A Courageous Supplement……………………………………………………………242 Filmography……………………………………………………………………………251 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...254 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………….272 vii List of Figures 1.1-1.2 Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) 45 1.3-1.4 Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) 58 1.5-1.8 Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) 75-6 1.9-1.10 Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) 91 1.11-1.12 Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) 97 2.1 Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999) 116 2.2 Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001) 116 2.3 Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001) 125 2.4 Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999) 125 2.5-2.6 Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001) 137 2.7-2.8 Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001) 158 3.1 Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, 2005) 187 3.2-3.3 Sex is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002) 197 C.1 Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat, 2013) 248 viii 1 Introduction: Genre Trouble and Extreme Films … [M]ost genre critics prefer to deal with films that are clearly and ineluctably tied to the genre in question. No romantic mixed genres, no crossbreeds, no anomalies. - Rick Altman, Film/Genre, 1999 Although disparate in their aesthetics and influences, [extreme films] share an aggressive desire to confront their audiences, to render the spectator’s experience problematic. - Richard Falcon, “Reality is Too Shocking,” Sight and Sound, 1999 A critic-defined tendency in recent art cinema, initially coined New Extremism by James Quandt ([2004] 2011) and now known generally as extreme cinema by scholars working in the Anglo-Saxon context,1 offers a set of films to be investigated in light of their formal affects as well as their effects on spectators. Indeed, much of the scholarly and critical attention to this production trend has centered upon particular films’ or directors’ capacity to shock or effect spectators. Less attention has been given to the number of genres invoked by so-called extreme filmmakers. While the trend is not limited to close readings from the theories and histories of the following genres, with varying degrees of emphasis I will argue that the avant-garde, melodrama,