Subversion of the dominant narrative structure of mainstream American cinema in Aronofsky's Requiem/or a Dream (2001) Adrian Konik Philosophy, Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, -mail: [email protected] In Requiem for a Dream (2001), Aronofsky uses certain techniques of critical cinema to make the audience aware of the "constructed-ness" of the represented material. In doing so he goes against the "norms" of mainstream American cinema that aim to "mesmerize" the audience and "draw" them into the narrative. There are distinct parallels between the techniques used by Aronofsky and those employed by Eisenstein in his critical cinema, namely the use of non-stable footage, to make the camera conspicuous, the use of montage of rhythm, to disrupt the continuity of the narrative, the use of "word play" in relation to the captions and the representation of footage in "reverse", which force an audience to engage critically with the material, and the use of "Brechtian" theatre techniques to alienate the audience from the text. However, Aronofsky does not merely mirror Eisenstein's use of these techniques but rather develops them in his own way. Also, Aronofsky does not attack capitalism and bourgeois axiology in the same way as Eisenstein, but rather aims his criticism at the way in which subjectivity is constituted through the hegemony of the postmodem mass media. Through his critical cinema he subverts this constitution at both an overt level, involving the more blatant and jarring techniques of critical cinema discussed above, and at a subtle level, involving the valorization of a different narrative structure to that of mainstream cinema, namely one that does not edge its way towards some amiable form of Apollonian resolution. I conclude with a brief discussion of how Aronofksy's film constitutes a criticism of image-saturated postmodem culture. Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream CInema. Mainstream film "language" (2001) traces the developments in the involves "comfortingly familiar" lives of four people over the course of structures that not only construct three-quarters of a year, namely summer, subjectivity in postmodemity, as a result fall and winter, as they all become of the dominance of Hollywood increasingly dependant on different drugs. productions, but are also represented as However, the film does not only deal with constructing the subjectivity of the the horrors of addiction but also attempts characters within Requiem for a Dream. to say of the un-sayable that it cannot be In Lewis Jacob's The Rise of the said, that is, it "tries to listen to and make American Film, written in 1939, the heard the secret affection, the one that author points out that says nothing" (Lyotard 1988:34). It does this through its "non" -articulation of the Hollywood, in its fear of losing profits by pain and alienation that prevail in an making enemies, in its mad desire to image-saturated postmodem environment. appease the prejudices of every group, has submitted to an ever-tightening censorship However, the film not only represents the under which it becomes impossible to deal manner in which this social "dis"-ease [honestly] with reality. [For example, f]or impels the respective characters into the almost two full years after the stock-market quagmire of substance-abuse, but also crash, Hollywood maintained a 'hands-off engages with the image-infatuation of policy regarding discussion of the deepening depression. Films continued to contemporary culture through the use of emphasize sex, sophistication, and techniques that mirror Eisenstein's early spectacle ... the public as a whole hated to critical film style. acknowledge the reality of the economic Aronofsky's development of these debacle (Jacobs 1939:508). critical cinematographic techniques in Requiem for a Dream (2001) results in a Hollywood has not ceased to very effective subversion of the film perform this role of a buffer between its "language" of mainstream American audience and their social reality. Even 54 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services when it appears to deal with controversial films, Eisenstein made use of a host of issues or delve into the realm of social "alienating" or "distancing" techniques to criticism, Hollywood's primary endeavour break the continuity of his cinematic always involves entertainment. Thus, if a narratives in order to force the audience social issue is "featured", it is usually as into a critical appraisal of the represented the backdrop against which the struggles material. Aronofsky's film contains many of some hero, heroine and/or villain are similar critical features and is underpinned played out, after which the narrative, by a similar endeavour.2 invariably, edges its way towards some The illusion of the classic realist text form of amiable resolution that tactfully is predicated on the inconspicuous avoids "making enemies" by offering no stability of the camera and on editing that real criticism of the axiology of the status creates a sense of continuity through the quo. This, in effect, has become the use of "smooth" transitions, such as fades "dream" of mainstream cinema, and it is and dissolves or, alternatively, the barely grounded in a habit of thought that has perceptible straight-cut (as long as the become instantiated as the film juxtaposed scenes contribute to the "language" of Hollywood. "uninterrupted" unfolding of the narrative Ostensibly, Requiem for a Dream and are not experienced by the audience (200 1) involves the "death" of (and hence as jarring). requiem for) the dreams of four different With regard to the stability of the individuals. Yet, in addition to this, camera, an early instance of the because of the conceptual angle of the subversion of this principle by Eisenstein film, and via the distancing techniques is found in Battleship Potemkin (1925), employed throughout the film, an where he makes the camera conspicuous approximation of a more critical through its "non-stability" during the perspective of the mass media and scene involving the massacre of the postmodern "image"-culture is also population on the Odessa steps. As the facilitated, such that the "integrity" of masses retreat down the stairs before the mediated reality and the "truth" of the marching troops of the Czar, the camera Apollonian resolutions of mainstream "stumbles" along with them as it follows cinematic narratives are revealed to be their descent from the right flank. illusory. Pudovkin, Eisenstein's much acclaimed The opening scene of Requiem for a contemporary, maintained that Dream involves a T.V. game show, hosted by Tappy Tibbons (Christopher The real material of film-art proved to be McDonald), which contains all the not those actual scenes on which the lens of the camera is directed ... [Rather, if] we quintessential features of the postmodern consider the work of the film director, then mediated spectacle. This show constitutes it appears that the active raw material is Sara Goldfarb's (Ellen Burstyn) dream none other than those pieces of celluloid on that acts as a buffer between her and her which, from various viewpoints, the painful reality of growing old, bein alone separate movements of the action have been r shot. From nothing but these pieces is and remaining unacknowledged. This created those appearances upon the screen dream is interrupted; broken into; by the that form the filmic representation of the jarring dissolution of the game show when action shot. (Pudovkin 1929:55-56). Harry (Jared Leto), quite simply, unplugs the T.V. The result, which involves a Pudovkin, like Eisenstein, valorized straight-cut and jarring "paradigm"-shift editing as the "real" art of filmmaking. that breaks the continuity of the narrative, Thus, although there may have been many alienates the audience from the text and is technical reasons for the non-stability of the first "reference" to Eisenstein's critical the above-mentioned footage of the cinematographic techniques. In his early retreating crowds on the Odessa steps, it is 55 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services highly unlikely that anything In Mayakovsky's post-revolutionary literary Eisenstein's film is there purely by "protests against the bourgeois, sugary art accident, and more likely that its inclusion of his time" (Leyda 1960:129).5 One such within the text contains critical director was Lev Kuleshov and possibilities. On two occasions in Requiem for a the artistic legacy that he handed over to Pudovkin and Eisenstein for further Dream, Aronofsky uses similar non-stable investment, was the discovery that there footage to make the presence of the were, inherent in a single piece of unedited camera conspicuous. Directly after the film, two strengths: its own, and the strength appearance of the title caption, Harry and of its relation to other pieces of Tyrone (Marlan Wayans) push Sara's film ... Kuleshov maintained that the. material of film-work consists of pieces of T. V. down the road towards the film ...join[ ed] together iIi a particular pawnbroker, while a retreating hand-held creatively conceived order ... [and that] film camera takes a middle-shot of them from art begins from the moment when the the front through a fish-eye lens. Again, director begins to combine and join [them] just before the caption "F ALL" denotes together (Leyda 1960: 175). the end of the period of summer prosperity, the shot of Tyrone fleeing These historical considerations hold from a drug-related shooting is captured crucial implications for Aronofsky's with a "snorrie-cam" that focuses on his Requiem for a Dream insofar as his use of terrified face while blurring the similar techniques to those found in the background. 3 In both cases the work of Kuleshov, Eisenstein and "constructed-ness" of the represented Pudovkin imbricates his film with the material becomes apparent through the underlying "critical attitude" of Soviet non-stability of the footage.