Promoting and Producing Evil
At the Interface
Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Nancy Billias
Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Professor Margaret Chatterjee Dr Wayne Cristaudo Dr Mira Crouch Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Dr Jones Irwin Professor Asa Kasher
Owen Kelly Dr Martin McGoldrick Revd Stephen Morris Professor John Parry Professor Peter L. Twohig Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
Volume 63 A volume in the At the Interface series ‘Perspectives on Evil’
Probing the Boundaries
Promoting and Producing Evil
Edited by
Nancy Billias
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2939-2 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2940-8 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in the Netherlands
Table of Contents Preface Nancy Billias PART I
Linguistic Frameworks for Evil Little White Lies: 9/11 and the Recasting of Evil Through Metaphor Phil Fitzsimmons The Phenomenology of Domestic Violence: An Insider’s Look Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz and Eli Buchbinder Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio
PART II
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Literary Frameworks for Evil Falling Under an Evil Influence Jeffrey Wallen The Banality of Violence: From Kafka’s The Castle to Auster’s The Music of Chance Ilana Shiloh Deconstructing Masculine Evil in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Stories Aytül Özüm Sacred and (Sub)human Pain: Witnessing Bodies in Early Modern Hagiography and Contemporary Spectatorship of Atrocity Sophie Oliver
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Overturning Adorno: Poetry as a Rational Response to Evil Nancy Billias PART III
Evil in a Cinematic Framework Twelve Pages of Madness: Developments in Cinema’s Narration of Insanity Peter Remington ‘Based on the True Story’: Cinema’s Mythologised Vision of the Rwandan Genocide Ann-Marie Cook ‘We Have No Trouble Here’: Considering Nazi Motifs in The Sound of Music and Cabaret David E. Isaacs Sympathy for the Devil: The Hero is a Terrorist in V for Vendetta Margarita Carretero-González ‘Be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good’: The Theology of Evil in Man on Fire Paul Davies Remediation, Analogue Corruption, and the Signification of Evil in Digital Games Ewan Kirkland
PART IV
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Evil in Historical/Political Frameworks Akhenaten, ‘the Damned One’: Monotheism as the Root of All Evil Robert W. Butler
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Are Witches Good - and Devils Evil? Some Remarks on the Conception of Evil in the Works of Paracelsus Peter Mario Kreuter Can I Play with Madness? The Psychopathy of Evil, Leadership, and Political Mis-management Frank J. Faulkner
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The Rhetoric of Evil: How Failure is Turned to One’s Own Advantage Joshua Mills-Knutsen
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Notes on Contributors
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Preface Nancy Billias The eighth gathering of Global Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, which took place in Salzburg in March 2007, was similar, in many respects, to the gatherings that preceded it and, one must imagine, to the gatherings that will follow it: a look at evil past, present, and future, from a broad spectrum of disciplinary perspectives. Papers were presented on the Holocaust, genocide, violence, sadism, pædophilia, weapons of mass destruction physical, verbal, and visual, and on the effects of a variety of media on our apperception and responses to evil. One of the overarching themes that emerged was the ethical role of the observer or witness to evil, the sense that all of our writings are, in an echo of Thomas Merton’s salient phrase, the conjectures of guilty bystanders. The notion of complicity was examined from a number of angles, and imbued the gathering with a sense of urgency: that our common goal was to engender change by raising awareness of the countless and ubiquitous ways in which evil can be actively or passively carried on and promoted. The papers selected for this volume provide a representative sample of the lively, provocative, and often disturbing discussions that took place over the course of that conference. This volume also contains a few papers from a sister conference, Cultures of Violence, which was held in Oxford in 2004. These papers have been included here because of their striking relevance to the themes that emerged in the Evil conference of 2007. The first set of essays deals with the question of how evil is framed linguistically. Our language about evil - evil events, those involved (whether perpetrators or victims), our proximity to it - shapes and orders our attitudes towards it. The way we speak about evil does more than reveal our feelings towards evil: it builds the bridges from our inner understanding of evil to our shared experience. Phil Fitzsimmons begins this line of enquiry by looking at language through the lens of auto-ethnography. Utilising the tools of conceptual metaphor, Fitzsimmons discusses several key elements of language use in the media following the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 in New York and 7/7/05 in London, as well as subsequent riots in Sydney. A careful study of vocabulary makes clear a series of nested metaphors that construct Islam as inherently evil, negating the humanity of Muslims and justifying their destruction. Fitzsimmons argues that we must look beyond the linguistic destruction of the other (as great an evil as that is) to see the parallel evil that is simultaneously revealed: the justification of a skewed and irrational worldview as an excuse for violent aggression against a vaguely perceived but clearly delineated enemy. As a case in point, Fitzsimmons analyses the
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___________________________________________________ speeches of major political figures in each country (the US, the UK, and Australia) shortly after the events in question, as well as the media coverage of both the events and the speeches. In the course of a careful and thorough analysis, he reveals a great deal about the tightly constructed national myths to be unearthed in these speeches, as language draws the battle lines between good and evil. We must take much greater care, Fitzsimmons says, of our language: of what is said, of what is implied, of what we are asked to believe. We must call into question the notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that are presented to us in the media, and investigate each metaphor to root out the evils that may lurk therein. A similar dynamic is visible (and audible) as we move from the macro-level of public discourse to the micro-level of intimate relationships, in an examination of the language surrounding domestic violence. Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz and Eli Buchbinder, two Israeli psychotherapists, provide a fascinating glimpse into the linguistic worlds of battered and battering spouses. As their transcripts and analyses illustrate, the terms and constructions chosen by battering and battered spouses reveal a shared world of expectations and actions, which both parties couch in the language of warfare. The linguistic choices of victims and perpetrators disclose the bonds of intimacy and violence that unite and constrict their lives. The language they use is both descriptive – of their internal and external experiences – and prescriptive - of the meanings and explanations of those experiences. Their self-definitions are markedly similar: metaphors of war, weaponry, and battle are used by both, as are reports of reduced agency, power, and hope. The authors employ a methodology that is both phenomenological and sociological, and which should contribute significantly to our understanding of this most intimate form of evil. Their paper also introduces a premise that recurs in several of the papers: the twin lenses of phenomenological and sociological insights, which together can provide a much clearer understanding of events than either can separately. This premise is reflective of one of the guiding principles behind Inter-Disciplinary.net: the richness of the cross-fertilisation provided by interdisciplinary dialogue. Encarnación Tenorio’s equally compelling paper stays with the theme of the linguistic framing of evil while broadening the scope out again to include both the micro- and the macro- levels. Her paper is an examination of how we speak about the wickedness of others and thereby construct natures, identities and ideologies. She employs two test-cases taken from media portrayal: the ‘modern Hitler’ of Saddam Hussein, and the profile of homosexual individuals and couples in the period just prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain in 2005. In both cases, Tenorio argues, the media attempts to paint a stark portrayal of the binary opposition between natural good and hideously perverse evil. She contends that both
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______________________________________________________________ what is stated and what is omitted, as well as the manner in which both statement and omission are undertaken, say less about their subject matter than about the evil of the participants in the discourse: both the media and its audience. In this way, she obliquely introduces a motif that forms a sort of undercurrent to many of the papers presented here: our own implication in the evil, which both fascinates and terrifies us. Operating from the principles of critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis, she seeks ‘to assess how our beliefs shape our linguistic reformulation and construal of events; ‘that is to say, how beliefs shape how we understand the world around us and the way we prefer to depict it.’ The next section moves to the world of literature to expand and deepen exploration of this same dynamic. As Jeffrey Wallen expounds, the end of the nineteenth-century was a watershed in terms of the understanding of subjectivity, agency, and intentionality, with the introduction into the discussion of the notion of the unconscious. Innovations in biology, medicine, and psychology texts offered new challenges to the conception of what it means to be good or evil, or to act in a good or evil manner. The theories of Darwin called into question the boundaries separating human and animal, and the authorship of life. The theories of Charcot and Freud gave rise anew to questions of internally- and externally-stimulated altered states of consciousness, which in their turn threw into question the notion of personal responsibility and moral agency. The rise of social science as a science joined forces with historical events, challenging traditional understandings of judgments about evil. In ‘Falling Under an Evil Influence,’ Wallen traces the impact of such innovations in a number of works of latenineteenth-century literature. In an examination of Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Le Horla, Wallen examines the radical blurring which occurred during this period of the boundaries between the traditional and normative distinctions of human and animal, moral and natural, and education and instinct. Each of these is relevant to the understanding which formed the foundation for the belief structures of both the 20th century and our own. Ilana Shiloh’s contribution presents a thoughtful analysis of the parallels to be found between our notions of evil and violence, and points out how much these misanthropic siblings have to do with how we perceive and present what is foreign to us. As Shiloh sees it, they represent for us what intrudes on our self-conception, what is out of the ordinary and thus to be feared, in ourselves and in the world around us. At the same time, as Shiloh notes, works of art and literature continually reinforce what we think we already know about our world and ourselves. Shiloh examines two case studies from 20th century literature that on the surface have little to do with one another, and unfolds a number of remarkable parallels between Franz
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___________________________________________________ Kafka’s The Castle, written in 1926, and Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance, which appeared more than six decades later, in 1990. Shiloh maintains that these two novels can be viewed instructively through the lens of Michel Foucault’s essay on the modern prison system, Discipline and Punish. Both novels present the reader with the figure of an impersonal system designed to crush the protagonist, and with a set of rather ordinary persons working within a set of seemingly ordinary and reasonable rules, which nonetheless conspire to the 20th century’s source of great evil and violence: dehumanisation through indifference. As Shiloh articulates, it is not only evil that can be analysed, in Arendt’s trenchant term, but also violence. Her essay provides food for thought not only on the novels, but also on the evil inherent in all of us who stand passively by and watch (or read) violence. Aytül Özüm takes us into the often-undervalued realm of fairytales. Özüm argues that such stories, and their modern re-telling, serve to articulate what cannot otherwise be said about evil. Fairytales are subversive by their very nature; because of this, they can be used to subvert traditional ideas, paradigms, and representations - casting a new light on evil. Özüm explores the stories of Angela Carter as deconstructive and illuminative essays on gender, objectification, perversion, and victimisation. In the next selection, our complicity in evil raises its ugly head again as Sophie Oliver forces us to confront the question of the prurient and vicarious pleasures to be found in narratives of de-subjectification and dehumanisation. She links the vivid (even lurid) accounts of the deaths of early saints and martyrs in the Catholic tradition with accounts of modern or contemporary accounts of torture of victims of political violence or genocide. These two very different types of narrative ostensibly have very different aims: on the one hand, to promote the notion of the denial of the body for the glorification of the soul and the attainment of a sort of sacral super-humanity; on the other, the desecration of the body for the purpose of reducing the victim to a sub-human or non-human level. In both cases, Oliver notes, our status as spectator serves to distance us from the victim, to thoroughly annihilate the identity of the abjected figure. How, Oliver asks, are we to understand our role in giving voice to such de-subjectified figures? What is our ethical responsibility, and what should be our ethical response? The final essay in this section is my own, and it deals with another way of thinking about language, literature, and ethics as we move from the modern to the post-modern age. The paper inquires into the nature of poetic language as a possible ethical response to evil. Drawing on the work of Agamben and Levi, I ask if Adorno’s dictum still holds true. Is poetry after Auschwitz possible? If it is still possible to use poetry to witness to horror, how can this be affected without enacting further de-subjectification of the
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______________________________________________________________ victims of evil? I begin with the question of whether or not it is even possible to make, or have, a rational response to evil, and/or an ethical response. I do not ask whether or not one can overcome evil with good. Rather I ask if testimony, in the form of poetry, can be a form of solidarity, of standing-with the victim and giving back a voice to those who have been silenced. In so doing, I inquire into the distinctive nature of poetic language (whether this exists and in what it might consist) and poetry’s relationship to the development of subjectivity and moral agency. This leads me into a discussion of the nature of the post-modern subject and the shape of postmodern ethics. I argue that in a world where ‘objective’ absolutes seem to be ever more popular as excuses for aggression, a more flexible and porous understanding of the subject might not be more conducive both to the faithful narration of the past and to ethical possibilities for the future. The third section expands the traditional boundaries of literature to include cinematic texts. First, Peter Remington provides a fascinating look at the way the evil of mental illness is portrayed in several films. He argues that the historical shift in mental health treatment from a largely psychodynamic paradigm to a pharmacological one can be traced through film. A series of American movies illustrate the history of modern psychiatry in America, as the Freudian myth lost strength and ‘better living through chemistry’ began to seem a faster and more efficient course of action. Yet Remington’s essay operates on another level as well. As he explains, the shift from a narrative form of therapy, in which the patient is an active partner in uncovering and healing trauma, to a pharmacological one, wherein the patient plays a much more passive role, may reflect a larger, more significant shift in attitudes towards social and moral responsibility and efficacy. The films that Remington analyses also play with our notions of how identity - and narrative - are formed, and how that formation changes over time. The linear narrative of the modern subject is gradually replaced in these films by a fragmented post-modern approach to both story and character. Remington’s contribution opens our eyes to the notion of reading films and discovering ourselves therein: our evil, our madness. Ann-Marie Cook’s essay on cinematic representations of the Rwandan genocide explores these same issues from a very different perspective. Cook trenchantly points out each of the four mainstream films on this subject that have been produced to date provide a mythologized version of the events. In so doing, the filmmakers (and by association, the film-going audience) are complicit in the perpetration of evil on a number of levels, including the demonisation of certain ethnic groups, the promulgation of propaganda, and an uncritical refusal to question the role of the UN and Western governments in the conflict.
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___________________________________________________ Cook begins with brief synopses of the four films (The 100 Days, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, and Sometimes in April), accompanied by an analysis of their narrative aims. Her main area of interest, however, lies in a critical examination of the disjunction between these cinematic representations, contemporary media coverage, and the events themselves. While most of the films are at pains to tout their research and educational value, at every turn, historical accuracy appears to have compromised - either in the interest of plot development, box office popularity, or, in some cases, for more sinister reasons. Cook urges us towards a more critical understanding than merely taking cinema verité for an objective accounting of events, and exhorts us, as filmgoers, to bear in mind the ideological biases and implications that may – almost certainly must – always be at work. All historical narratives, she reminds us, are constructed, and cinematic ones contain several layers of construction. Cook continues by outlining the ‘mythology’ of genocide elaborated in the films: the simplistic delineation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys in the ready iconography of tribal rivalry, Western power mongering, and the legacy of colonialism. By reducing complex issues to easily rendered tropes, the filmmakers draw us into the action while at the same time ensuring that we never develop a truly reflective stance. Thus, Cook argues, we have a responsibility to assess what is not said and portrayed as deeply as what is: to enact an analysis of the gaps, as it were. Anything less is complicity of the worst, because most mindless, sort. David Isaacs takes on a different sort of cinematic narrative in his paper: the movie musical. Isaacs focuses on two iconic films, The Sound of Music and Cabaret, and their respective portrayals of the evils in/of Nazism. Continuing Cook’s critique of cinematic simplification, Isaacs interrogates ethical issues regarding the placement of the Nazi in the context of what is generally regarded as a frothy entertainment medium, raising concerns about the domestication and trivialization of evil. Like Oliver and Cook before him, Isaacs worries about the distancing effects of such portrayals, which may relegate the viewer to an ethically neutral stance. Yet, he points out, many of Oscar Hammerstein’s works sought to convey serious social messages about tolerance, diversity, and social change (including Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, and Flower Drum Song). Although certain characters portray something of the complex and ambivalent attitudes of apathy, opportunism, and patriotism faced by many ‘ordinary’ people, ultimately, Isaacs concludes, The Sound of Music fails to address the evils of Nazism, sacrificing real social criticism on the altar of sentimentality - and perhaps thereby ensuring the film’s enduring popularity. Isaacs points out incisively that neither of the films under scrutiny focuses on the main characters in the drama of the Holocaust: the six million
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______________________________________________________________ Jewish victims. While The Sound of Music focuses almost entirely on the attitudes and fates of Austrian Catholics, Cabaret’s main focus is on the bohemian demimondaine of pre-war Berlin. In both films, the main characters are noteworthy largely for the ability to ignore the wider implications of the small evils they see around them – mirroring in a way the film-going audience, which becomes engaged in the small story on the big screen while managing to block out the real horror of the events portrayed. In this way, Isaacs argues, Cabaret is more successful as a work of thoughtprovoking art: at the end of the film, we are confronted with our own willingness to those insidious forms of evil, passivity and complicity with the status quo. In ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ Margarita Carretero-González points out another rather subtle ethical danger: the emotional identification of the audience with an evil protagonist. In an analysis of the film V for Vendetta, Carretero-González explores the questions raised by the filmmakers regarding the problematic of a character whose evil lies not in his motives, but in their consequences alone. The title character has honourable motives, but uses brutal terrorist tactics to achieve them. As filmgoers, we are placed directly in the ethical firing line: do we condone V’s actions, or do we deplore them? Whose side are we on? The dilemma is slightly complicated by two factors. First, the society in which V lives is a dystopian horror, a state of comfortable unfreedom, where personal liberty has been exchanged for a pleasant state of conformism. Second, V’s motives, whilst largely directed at the ‘good’ of social transformation, are not unmixed with personal and less unambiguous motive of revenge. These mitigating factors provide some space for critical reflection on the part of the viewer. And reflection, as Carretero-González points out, is a central feature of this film: the mirror is so important as to be almost a character in itself, a point which is no less important to the critic as to the audience. The central theme of Carretero-González’ essay is the blurring of boundaries between self and other that occurs throughout the movie, and the impact and import of this event. Implicitly harking back to Karl Jaspers’ philosophy of communication, Carretero-González states that one of the main lessons learned by the characters in V for Vendetta is that ‘ [i]n order to reach the truth, it is important to establish a dialogue with the other.’ Any redemption promised in the movie lies in the notion that such dialogue is possible, and that a dialogical exchange can lead to an exchange of perspectives that may result in mutual understanding and forgiveness, which is one way, the author suggests, that evil may be overcome. The idea of overcoming evil is also the theme of the last of the papers focussing on cinematic treatments of evil. Paul Davies offers a reflection on the theological background of the film Man on Fire (2004),
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___________________________________________________ taking as his text St. Paul’s injunction from Romans 12:21 to ‘be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.’ In this film, Davies explains, the evil in question is the evil of despair, the so-called ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ which does not permit hope to survive, and thus seems to make the sinner more powerful than God. As Davies points out throughout the article, it is difficult under the best of circumstances not to be overcome by evil. Overcoming evil by good is even more difficult, especially when God’s existence, will, and purposes are so dimly perceptible. The central problem, for Davies, is that we never achieve a divine perspective: we are never privy to what God might consider good or evil, ‘we cannot access whatever God’s notion of good and evil might be.’ Thus, humans are caught in a sort of ethical fog, unable to judge the ethical value of our own actions, whose ‘ultimate value as evil or good lies in God’s unknowable judgment.’ Ultimately, Davies argues, not being able to judge is no excuse for not acting: the exhortation of St. Paul is to act on the side of good, and leave the judgment to God. The film Man on Fire provides ample scope for these reflections. It showcases a variety of evils: in addition to despair, the film portrays betrayal of friends; betrayal of a child by its parents (the father orders the kidnapping of his own child for financial gain); double- and triple crossing; torture; and murder. Davies explains the protagonist as an Everyman figure who embodies both our fragility and the fractured nature of our current society, one who has from the very beginning very little hope of redemption, and whose fate is ambiguous. Davies explores two possible theological responses, which he characterises as post-modern: negative theology and process theology. While apophatic theology has a long history, at least in the Catholic tradition, process theology has been around for less than a century. Davies outlines some ways in which each may illumine the challenges to faith and ethics faced in Man on Fire. In the final essay in this section, the boundaries of cinematic text are themselves expanded, to include the use of the cinematic technology in the digital medium of video games, specifically those in the horror genre. In a curious way, this medium attacks its predecessor, film, by demonising it. Much in the same way as the paradigm shifts in biology and psychology changed the way in which we view and judge evil at the threshold between the 19th and the 20th centuries, at the threshold between the 20th century and the 21st, new paradigm shifts are presented and referenced, with a demonic twist. Here, reflection, ‘reality,’ and subjectivity are themselves interrogated through the use of tropes familiar to us through 20th century technologies. As Ewan Kirkland outlines, in horror videogames, ‘old’ media (radio, television, film) are portrayed by ‘new’ as uncanny, supernatural, and threatening. The
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______________________________________________________________ metaphor of corruption so often linked with evil is concretised through the symbolic signification of analogue corruption. Non-digital media is referenced and drawn upon, but always in such a way as to heighten negative affect: fear of chaos, the unknown and the undecipherable, the superimposition of an alternate reality by authority. ‘Horror videogames specifically employ non-diegetic remediation of audiovisual effects resembling analogue distortion - radio white noise, television static, scratched celluloid - to signify evil. Games in which players tune into zombie monsters like channels on a TV set, alert players to approaching creatures through bursts of radio static, or signify attacks on the avatar’s body through flashes to photographic negative…’ bring us new depictions of evil based on familiar constructs. Thus in the new millennium, the past is seen as having many of the characteristics of evil: as mysterious, ‘polluting, all-engulfing, as beyond representation and language.’ Fittingly, then, the final section of the book begins by taking a step backwards chronologically, offering a detailed exploration of an historical encounter with and representation of evil which may contribute significantly to our present conception of that notion. Robert Butler’s essay looks back to the 14th century BC and the reign and demise of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. Butler contends that this ruler’s revolutionary move towards monotheism was an early attempt to fuse sovereign and divine power in the person of the pharaoh. This contained, Butler maintains, an early attempt at theodicy, which had disastrous consequences for the pharaoh’s legacy. Seeking absolute power, Akhenaten defined opposition to himself as opposition to the supreme god – and codified such opposition as evil against both god and the state. Butler argues that Akhenaten’s ‘experiment’ represented the first time that evil was universally linked to the idea of one god. As such, Akhenaten radically redefined both good and evil for his people, reducing these to terms of submission and adherence (or opposition) to the will of god. He did this by linking civil and religious precepts under a single metaphysical concept: ma’at, order or balance. To act against this principle was to threaten the stability of society, of creation, of the universe itself. In attempting to provide an ethico-religious framework for his people, Akhenaten constructed a bulwark of religious absolutism, which actually choked off individual ethical agency. Thus, Butler contends, it might be argued that monotheism is the root of all evil. The second essay in this section leaps forward several centuries to explore the concept of evil as understood by another historical figure, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known under his pseudonym, Paracelsus. As a scientist and a radical reformer of the Catholic Church, Paracelsus was at the forefront of rethinking the relationship between god and evil for the Early Modern sensibility. For Paracelsus, evil spirits were not matters of conjecture, but matters of fact, the evidence for which was only
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___________________________________________________ too readily apparent in their effects on the suffering of humans all around us. The question for Paracelsus was not whether these beings existed, but rather their relationship to God and humanity. Do they represent an error on the part of an omnipotent God, and thus a flaw in God’s perfection? How are evil spirits linked to humanity? And is evil part of the natural order of things – and if so, how are humans to understand and respond to it? Peter Mario Kreuter inquires into Paracelsus’ conception of these matters by exploring his attitude towards two very contemporary ethical issues: war and the death penalty. How we act in each case, Kreuter argues, clarifies our resistance to or complicity in evil. The last two essays keep the focus of exploration firmly in the present day in an exploration of contemporary forms of historical/political evil. These essays form a parenthetical closure to the opening essays of the volume, as they explore again (this time in explicitly political contexts) the interplay between language and evil in contemporary public discourse. First, in examining contemporary rhetoric about political leadership, Frank Faulkner takes a diagnostic approach to the subject of evil in our language about evil, asking whether and how the language that is used to describe and define evil actions serves to pathologise some actions and normalise others, depending on who is attempting to manipulate whose responses. He examines not only word choice, but even topic choice, showing how, as several other contributors have intuited, what is shown and narrated is chosen for the unsuspecting but nevertheless complicit audience, who thus has no choice but to respond to the given stimuli. Since our personal experience of extraordinary evil is (thankfully) usually limited, our understanding relies on the good will of those who make it their aim to make us aware of it - and we would do well always to enquire into their motives. Even the best meaning of commentators is drawn into a sort of collusive madness in relaying the actions ‘perpetrated by supposed rational human beings, delivered in a planned and clinical fashion, against innocent or defenceless human beings.’ Even the reporting of such events can be seen as a step towards nihilism – if and how one chooses to present such material locates the reporter - and the viewer - on one side or the other, and serves to spread the madness of evil. The metaphor of psychopathology is difficult to argue against, when the choices made by today’s world leaders seem to be so clearly aimed at destruction, delusion, and concealment. The central question, as Faulkner sees it, is how action so obviously mad can in any way be accepted as sane and rational - and yet it is accepted as such on a daily basis, with only few and faintly heard voices of dissent. The madness of our leaders, Faulkner suggests, has infected us all, such that phrases of unspeakable horror have now passed into common parlance: mega-death, weapons of mass
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______________________________________________________________ destruction, collateral damage, acceptable harm. Language such as this no longer bears significant hope for the future. Faulkner urges us to diagnose our thinking about language as one means of addressing our imminent peril. Finally, Joshua Mills-Knutsen suggests a diagnosis for another of our current crisis-points. Through an analysis of the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror,’ Mills-Knutsen explains how the ascription of evil signals an inability to intelligibly confront an event. As we have seen throughout this volume, it appears that what we cannot understand, we label evil, in a vain attempt to contain, subdue, or disarm it, which is ultimately a denial of its potency and the reality of its danger. Even more importantly, Mills-Knutsen says, the label serves as a signal of defeat: our abdication of agency in the face of evil, and resignation to our powerlessness. This is a deadly combination, he argues, and a truly evil perversion of language - a form of doublespeak that Orwell would find most chilling. For in fact this ‘acknowledgement’ of our powerlessness against evil opens a new and terrifying discourse. What we call evil is relegated to an entirely new category: that which can no longer be combated by human agency, but which, rather, can only be conquered by divine justice. It is only the smallest step from this statement to the unassailable ‘logic’ of religious discourse: that God is on our side, that the moral high ground is therefore unmistakably ours, and that, Heaven help us, no further moral reflection is necessary. From that logic, everything and anything is justified and justifiable, from water boarding to extraordinary rendition to secret prisons. Human law is subsumed under divine law. Those in power are the instruments of God, working out God’s justice on a fallen earth. MillsKnutsen’s analysis of this linguistic perversion in the context of the rhetoric concerning the present war on terror is terrifyingly convincing. The essays in this volume provide rich fodder for reflection on topics that are of urgent interest to all thinking people. Each one suggests new ways to contemplate our own role(s) in the production and promotion of evil. The authors encourage you, the reader, to be challenged, outraged, disturbed by what you read here. On their behalf, I urge you not to ignore the ominous import of our study of the science of evil, before it is too late for us all.
PART I Linguistic Frameworks for Evil
Little White Lies: 9/11 and the Recasting of Evil Through Metaphor Phil Fitzsimmons Abstract: Utilizing the tools of conceptual metaphor,1 this paper discusses critical elements of language use in the media that encased 9/11, the London bombings and the ensuing riots in Sydney, Australia. The results of this study found that the language use of key stakeholders, and the media itself, in America, England and Australia has been characterized by a series of nested ‘sociomotor metaphors’2 that subtly framed Islam as being evil in nature. By linguistically deforming elements of the corporeal Islamic body, there has been the attempted creation of a first-world cultural trope, albeit within a vocal minority, that negates all Muslims as human as we know it and denies the Islamic cosmological viewpoint as being valid. While having an immediate effect of racism and vilification, this paper argues that the naming of evil at a national world-view level, however subtle, only serves to create or perpetuate a similar or parallel expression of perceived evil within the dominant naming body. Key Words: Conceptual metaphor; evil; Islam; language use ***** 1.
Collective knowing: An Introductory Framework While many horrific events in human history have become entrenched in the collective consciousness at an international level, no other single catastrophe in human history has become as universally entombed in the global awareness or associated mythology as that morning now known through the numerical acronym of ‘9/11.’ Swept around the world in real time via CNN, and then through constant replays at the speed of sight via the web in tandem with print media, 9/11 became ‘a dividing line between good and evil.’3 For both sides of this divide, 9/11 has become a powerful conceptual metaphor in its own right, a framework of perception that lies at the core of collective values, beliefs and understanding. While initially an autoethnography seeking to make sense of 9/11, this process methodologically cascaded into using various media forms as a data source. The time frame in undertaking this reflective course took several years and crossed over into other scenes of similar carnage, terror and perceived evil. However, without realizing it at the time, this chapter began as I sat in front of the television, transfixed. I had sat down after twelve hours in front of the computer and all the channels were showing CNN. What? The
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______________________________________________________________ Pentagon was on fire; it seemed a small fire but the commentary had the tenor of panic, of the unknown. There was speculation and disbelief. Then the cameras turned to the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre. I was supposed to be working close by in a matter of weeks. More disbelief. I saw the first plane, the second plane. I heard the commentators ask the impossible, ‘was that another plane?’ I saw the fall, and the fallen. It was the next day that I heard that one-word interrogative that normally I love to hear: ‘Why?’ As a researcher in the field of language who uses autoethnography and conceptual metaphor as primary methodological tools, as soon as I hear that one-word utterance I immediately assume that someone is trying to make sense of the world around them, and I follow. This was different. I knew what they were saying, as I was saying the same thing. In this case the question ‘why’ was not said with the usual tenor of reflection, but with a numbed, completely lost voice. I wanted to understand. Like millions around the world I turned to the only sources I had, which were the print media and the web. I began to transform this experience into narrative. The author of an autobiography gives himself the job of narrating his own history; what he sets out to do is reassemble the scattered elements of his individual life and regroup them into a comprehensive sketch.4 Acknowledging the inherent subjectivity, this project was underpinned by three nested psycholinguistic frameworks of emergent analysis. These included: A. Transtextual Framework This framework is based on the notion that a large proportion of our language and thought is grounded in ‘conceptual metaphors’. These are not poetic devices, rather psycholinguistic frames that enable us to conceptualise, reason and visualize the world around us. Sensorimotor in nature, they provide insight into ‘how we make sense of our experience’5 and the schema or truth-values an individual or group may hold. We accept the validity or trustworthiness of a ‘language in use’ framework only if it resonates with our individual ‘within a collective’ framework. Conversely, in times of crisis, if any group or individual is labelled as not fitting the accepted framework of thinking, and they deny this charge, this denial reinforces their alterity. B. National Storying Framework These elements are inferential structures that subtly add meaning and schema to particular interpretative communities. Typically grounded in particular historical socio-cultural facets or national narratives, they are often so pervasive that members of a group are unaware of their existence or their metaphoric power. Acting as collective reservoirs of memory and identity, they often have their genesis in times of crisis and re-appear at times of collective uncertainty. While having an overarching embedded nationalistic
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______________________________________________________________ character, they may also serve several cultural groups. Often succinct and stand-alone lexical items, they act as a psycholinguistic tip of the iceberg, revealing generic perceptions or collective points of identification. Language is therefore an ongoing carrier of the collective consciousness, ‘the reinforcer and establishing agent of social and cultural beliefs and attitudes.’ 6 C. ‘Context of Situation’ Framework These language frames are peculiar to certain cultural groups and tend to be historically located but lack the depth of the previous form. When encountered, these metaphoric forms produce either resonant visualization or trigger off a set of archetypical or stereotypical perceptions. In essence, these metaphoric elements are conceptual mappings or literary cartographies that create individual or collective schema. Understanding these metaphors and associated maps provide insight into how readers or viewers react to changes in places and people. They also reveal perceptions of ‘the interior schematic landscapes they adjusted to, what was really there and what took place there.’7 Thus in order to understand what happened on that September morning and what continued afterwards, we need to explore the intersection of the past with the very new; a mind map of intertextuality revealing where we have been and where we are now. This intersection is most clearly seen in the narratives we are told in the public arena of the media in all its forms. At the beginning of this new millennium there appeared a skewed narrative of trans-cultural evil that reached its ultimate telling when the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre collapsed. 2.
Collective Seeing: Media, Metaphors and Manipulation Space limitations make it impossible to fully describe and discuss all of the media coverage that formed the base platform of analysis for this paper. Neither is it possible to show all of the coding and thematising elements that were involved in the analysis. Hence, salient examples have been provided that reveal the means by which a worldwide schema of ‘otherness in the first world’ was developed immediately after 9/11 and then sent on an ever-increasing spiral of subtle definition. While this process initially had all the hallmarks of moral panic, an ‘episode, condition, person or group of persons’ who appear in the media and are continually ‘defined as a threat to societal values and interests,’8 the power of the media and language use tipped this process into a moral pandemic. Typically at times of moral panic, politicians, or those in positions of power, jump on the moral bandwagon and ‘and try to mobilize the population for the same cause.’ 9 In this instance, the media across the Western world took up the call of the crusade.
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______________________________________________________________ A. The Underpinning Framework and the Pivotal Metaphors Given the catastrophic events of 9/11, it could be expected that immediately after the event a language of division would also surface within a framework of moral panic. However, as can be seen in the table below, beginning with the President Bush’s speeches, which were immediately posted on the web, underneath the surface reference to the attacks on the buildings, planes, there was a specific reference to evil and an underpinning allusion to its forms. This acted as a sliding signifier defining all those connected to the bombers by virtue of religion as evil. Table 1- Statement by President Bush in his Address to the Nation 11/11/0110 Speech THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbours. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong.
Metaphoric Framework Containment as Moral Decay Metaphor - Collective framing; form and chaos - the victim narrative (God as Father, Edenic motif, Pearl harbour (Gulf War second story) - Sense of vision from above, the handing down of truth from above, the truth of Christianity - Pearl Harbour motif Readjustment of metaphor; the attackers are non- human, morally impure Containment as Violation Metaphor - Penetration, immorality, social rape - Being controlled by another is down - Being in control is up, the divine is up - the monstrous reflects the radical permeability, fragility and artificiality of the physical boundaries
The President’s speeches were the initial verbal rock cast into an already murky pool of mistrust. This enacted a ripple effect in all forms of media and print, a reoccurring pattern that at face value appeared to be a measured and appropriate response to the atrocity. However, this speech became an international subtext of metaphoric projection through
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______________________________________________________________ prototypical metaphors based on the notion of ‘containment,’ reference to ‘the state as enclosure,’ and ‘moral relationships;’ the inference was created that this was a fight of ‘right versus moral decay.’ This focus on division into ‘us and them’ was revisited more explicitly in a later presidential speech. Firstly, there were the ‘others’ that helped, saved, and paid the ultimate sacrifice. ‘We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground - passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer.’ 11 In the same set of speeches, the opposite end of the other scale was mentioned. ‘This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.’ 12 The ‘evil others’ were mentioned three times in this speech, reference to an unholy trinity that in a few short days was starkly contrasted with the national media focus on Christian prayer and spiritual introspection. ‘We have a national identity but most of us also have a spiritual identity. It will be a time when we all will be searching for what are our deeper roots.’13 As well as the underpinning conceptual metaphors, George W. Bush’s speeches immediately post-9/11 had numerous nationalistic and transtextual overtones. As Susan Willis has pointed out, a key facet of subtext that Bush provided in all of his speeches and media forms arose from past national narratives of the cowboy motif and the circling of the wagons as a safeguard from attack. While this may have originated from within his own cowboy Texan roots, it has also been touted as being a deliberate ploy in this instance. Whatever the origin, the collective mythology, dream image and current cultural world view in all media forms were grounded in what Engelhardt has termed the ‘history of the Wild West.’14 Just as in the days of the Wild West, in the years surrounding the turn of the new millennium, at a time when the United States was a nation in turmoil and in need of cultural cohesion and identity amongst ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, a new national narrative was required. So too, 9/11 required a similar discourse. Once again an old metaphor was resurrected, one that reflected the need for a cohesive national account and the naming of ‘otherness.’ Characterized by a sense of rugged individualism, this national myth was also an underpinning embodiment of the earliest Australian and English colonial narratives as it encapsulated the ideal of taming the wild, destroying unchristian indigenous inhabitants and the pacifying the uncivilized landscape itself. Commenting on the language use in all forms of public discourse just prior to 9/11, Doty believes that the characteristics of this narrative ‘had been continuing for generations and set up dichotomous boundaries that have had massive impacts upon attitudes towards history, the material world, the life of the mind, emotions and feelings, and spheres of mental construction such as science, philosophy, literature, and religion.’ 15 Similarly, Kilgour believes this overarching narrative was being continually spelt out and reinforced
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______________________________________________________________ prior to 9/11 in the myriad of popular culture genres, in that movies and books continually treat national challenges that are dealt with powerfully, swiftly and effectively. ‘The smell of gun smoke and the death of the immoral, sinister, scheming and shady abject’16 had never really disappeared from the transcultural ‘first world’ imagination. More importantly, the concept of what constitutes true morality had constantly been portrayed as being on the side of the Christian victor, retelling and reinforcing the need to marginalize and destroy the primitive evil enemy. This notion of the evil and the non-Christian enemy in itself had even deeper transtextual roots than the facets discussed in the previous paragraphs. In his discussion on the power of the media in America in general and post-9/11 in particular, Baghdokian believes that both the Arabic-speaking nations and Christian countries still harbour deep resentment over the Crusades. The historian Christopher Tyerman has cogently demonstrated that not only is this the case but also that the blood spilt over Jerusalem a thousand years ago has resulted in the cultural tolerance of acceptable violence and the belief that their ‘God is on their side’ - for both sides of this religious divide. ‘Violence, approved by society, and approved by religion, has proved commonplace in civilized communities.’ 17 This deep-seated metaphoric belief that the Christian world was on the side of ‘right’ became focused when Ignatieff wrote that in this time of terror ‘preemptive war was the lesser evil.’18 However, many academics, such as Noam Chomsky, believe that the greater evil that needs to be destroyed is of course that Western invention of the dark-skinned and darkhaired malevolence, which is among the ‘deepest and most reoccurring images of the ‘other’.’19 The awful destruction of 9/11 now once again reinforced the concept of an ‘acceptable other’ and the need to define the abject: an entity that inhabits a place of meaninglessness, ambiguity, and the border that has encroached upon everything. With the advent of 9/11, Islam once again became ‘the monstrous other, the opposite of the truth.’ 20 The naming of an enemy in conjunction with the repeated pattern of conceptual metaphor and the entrenched subconscious concept of the Middle East as being the seat of evil, had a follow-on effect, of projection of similar characteristics onto all of Islamic believers. As Lakoff suggests is often the case, the use of one or two words became a metaphoric prototype of vilification and marginalization. On September 20, the San Diego Tribune stated that Jersey City was ‘a hot-bed of radical Islam.’21 In the same week, an article in the Boston Tribune told the story of a Muslim fearing for her life because of retribution. The same writer made mention of the parallels between 9/11 and Pearl Harbour, as well as the treatment of JapaneseAmericans in the days after the Hawaiian attacks. 9/11 had well and truly become a war of symbols. The national internal narrative had been reborn
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______________________________________________________________ afresh, in which only those living inside the bounds of accepted visual truth were evidence of cultural appropriateness and propriety. As Lakoff has remarked, ‘denial in the face of such overwhelming frames only serves to reinforce their guilt.’22 However there would appear to be more worrying issues at stake. Butler believes that the reporting of the events surrounding 9/11 allowed the subtle seepage of another naming or ‘othering’ process. Firstly the reportage and media articles at this time provided the opportunity ‘to isolate individuals so as to absolve ourselves of the necessity of coming up with an explanation of the events.’ 23 Embedded in this single quote is the hint that perhaps there was deliberate editorial intervention by the authorities of the time. And while it has only ever remained a hint by researches and commentators, Dreyfus is a little more forthright, believing that both Presidents Bush (George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George Walker Bush) had imperial aims as well as imagining that a domino effect could occur in the Middle East. Based on the same metaphor that launched the Vietnam war, Dreyfus further believes that 9/11 was seen as the means by which the right-wing Christian political coalition founded in the Reagan era could further consolidate the link between church and state. ‘A unity that can not tolerate dissent.’24 Through the labelling of Islam as evil, the groundwork for labelling differences of opinion was now also being laid. Dissent could now be seen not as the usual means of political debate but rather in evangelical Christian terms of good and evil. In a somewhat prophetic statement, ten years before the events of 9/11, in discussing the cultural diversity of American and the religio-political view of this state of being, Berlin wrote that there was a prevailing view that ‘the deeper the sincerity of Muslims and Jews, the more dangerous they are, as they lead souls to perdition, and the more relentlessly they should be eliminated.’ 25 Linked to this concept, the process of eliminating dissent, and the media’s role, Butler also comments ‘since 9/11 there has been a rise of antiintellectualism and acceptance of censorship in the media.’26 Perhaps the tentacles of 9/11 have a far greater depth than the general public realizes, as can be seen in the metaphoric elements compacted into the editorial comment from the New York Post. While the surface language of the Times is understandable, the underpinning metaphors only serve to reinforce compliance and the relationship between beliefs, conformity and anger. These emotionally laden metaphors served only to create blind followers, rather than rational guidance and guides.
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______________________________________________________________ Table 2 – New York Times 12/7 /0127 New York Times Pearl Harbour, like the 9/11 attacks, caught the nation with its guard down and took thousands of lives. Both events sparked tremendous outpourings of patriotism - and anger. Sixty years ago, those emotions faded into implacable resolve - and the result was the enemy's utter destruction. So far, that parallel seems to be holding though the way to victory winds through perilous terrain. Will America stay the course?
Metaphoric Framework Beliefs are Location Metaphor Past is Confinement Metaphor Strong Emotion is Blinding Metaphor Anger is Heat Metaphor Past is Confinement Metaphor Compliance is Following Metaphor Compliance is Following Metaphor Love is a Journey Metaphor Beliefs are Location Metaphor
B. The Initial Frame Reworked: The Attack on the London Underground As seen in the previous paragraphs Butler, Dreyfus and Willis have all argued that the reinvention of the national American myth in particular and the transnational narrative in general reached a peak in the months and years post- 9/11, once the monsters who had perpetrated the attacks had been revealed. The ‘Western hero’ in all forms of popular culture and the media was further projected into all national iconic elements such as the flag, the postal service, police and fire brigades and the army. All things in the American and conjoined international story became imbued with the macho image of fighting darkness and the idea that ‘God is on our side’. However, with the War on Terror now reaching across several nations, the transnational myth of ‘light’ became further entrenched with what Ubel has called ‘the thousand years of vilification of Islam.’ 28 While there was an obvious threat from elements of radical Islam, innocent Muslims worldwide also became the target of attack with an ever-increasing and unfounded media prejudice in both England and the United States. With the monster identified and named 13,013 times in the English-speaking press worldwide in the five days after 9/11, perhaps signifying a type of branding, the round-up, both real and psychical, was underway. The same pattern of defining cultural otherness through the actions of a few occurred in the days and weeks after the London bombing of July 2005. In the London newspapers alone over sixty articles and short pieces were headed with the word ‘evil’ and followed by editorial comments such as ‘Today's acts were designed to cause harm and spread fear - not just among Londoners, but among people in every city around the world.’29 The global ‘evil’ metaphor was being continually reinforced. The retraction that the
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______________________________________________________________ Times were forced to publish on July 19 after falsely branding a young Muslim as a terrorist, publishing his photograph, and purporting that he was one of the earlier bombers, did little to stem the tide. While again the bombers were Muslim-involved, in this instance they were ‘insider others.’ However, the language of division again had a religious manifestation. On July 14, the London Sun had a banner line that read, ‘The Beast,’30 a reference to the ‘Mr. Big’ of Al Quaeda who had allegedly escaped and fled to Egypt. This was later denied, but the ‘Beast’ reference was a clear antichrist reference for both sides of this geo-political divide. In the days immediately following the London attack, Muslims in England were attacked and killed. Similar to the attitudinal shift that had occurred in America, the characteristics of the other perpetrators had now been projected onto the Muslim world at large. C. The Initial Frame Revisited: The Beach Attacks in Sydney The ease with which metaphors can so easily slip across cultural divides and infect and affect national identities was exemplified more recently in Australia. In commenting on the race riots in Sydney in 2006, Ken Moroney, the New South Wales police commissioner, stated on national television that ‘the beast had been unleashed.’31 Although he tried to retract and recant, the journalists present realized that some form of connection had been made. However, it would appear that only one journalist pursed and come to understand this metaphor. Describing in journalistic parlance the process that lngebretsen has described as ‘nationalistic negotiation and normalizing,’32 Mungo McCallum laid the blame of those young people involved in the race riots in Sydney during the summer of 2006 squarely at the feet of Prime Minister John Howard, believing that the adolescent schema ‘consolidated under the leadership of John Winston Howard.’ 33 Evil had found another home, albeit unwittingly. Without excusing the behaviour on the sunny afternoon, or negating the obvious localized contexts of the situation, McCallum was obviously arguing that the groundwork for this serious fracas had been laid in the Howard government’s overall right-wing political agenda. Embedded in this policy were a series of incidents that, again on the surface, appeared to be a normal reaction to atrocious events. The first of these was the Bali bombing in October 2002. While not wishing in anyway to downplay the nature of this atrocity or deal another painful blow to the family members involved, it seems to me that the comments made by John Howard in the immediate wake of this bombing were more political than genuinely sympathetic. While he may have intended the latter, his political radar has become his primary nature. In a staged media event of a private meeting where he met a victim’s father, he whispered in
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______________________________________________________________ the ear of this grieving parent, ‘We’ll get the bastards who did this.’ 34As has been pointed out by Brian Cambourne, the Australian vernacular has several key words that epitomize the Australian way of life and psyche.35 The word ‘mate’ is a word used frequently by Howard and his ministers and is a metaphor for the Australian ideal of comradeship born out of wartime, equity, and a ‘fair go for all’. While the word ‘bastard’ is a binary opposite and can also be a metaphor of friendship, in this context it means precisely the contrary. It has a definite meaning that extends far beyond the denigration of one’s birth and is instead a metaphor for those who stand completely outside the Australian understanding of ‘mateship’ born of adversity. In this one instance of reporting, this comment was immediately followed up by references to Australia’s alliance with America, the war on terror and a reference to ‘our backyard.’ It has been argued that it was Howard’s policy of joining in on the war on terror that gave impetus to this atrocity in the first place.36 The Bali bombings followed closely on the heels of an incident that was driven by a direct, racially motivated and government-orchestrated falsification of media reportage. It is recognized that the Howard government’s falsification of photographs and distorted reporting surrounding what has become known as the ‘people overboard incident’ government was the reason it was re-elected in 2004. Again, the general Australian populace had fallen victim to a carefully cropped photographic account, as refugees were cast as throwing their children overboard as they were about to be apprehended by Australian authorities. In actuality, the boat the refugees were on was sinking. The government carefully played a racist card with the underlying metaphor of the refugees as uncaring monsters. Had all photos been shown with captions early in October, it would have undermined the claims of children being thrown overboard because it was clear the asylum-seekers were trying to escape a sinking vessel. Opposition Leader Simon Crean said the photos, obtained from an undisclosed source, had also been available to the Government. But the Government had used the photos selectively, he said.37 Australians are by nature generally not racist. However, such is the all pervasive power of metaphors, especially when embedded in a moral pandemic, that the frames of understanding developed and created by these elements of language use is that frames or metaphors ‘not only define issues, causes and solutions; they also hide relevant issues and causes.’ 38
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Implications This paper reflects not only the nature of the stories that lie just beneath our psyche and are easily activated via the media, but also the ease with which a cultural group can be labelled as evil. While this is a ‘common sense’ process in times of national and international crises, what sounds like communal linguistic substance and sentiments of national pride and a need to be speak with one voice can in fact be become ‘deformed discourse.’ At times of crises, politicians, and perhaps ordinary citizens, look for the abject, those who appear to embody or ‘highlight the fragility of the law, and that exist on the other side of the border, which separates out the living subject from that which threatens its extinction.’ 39 Evil can easily become a socially and politically constructed entity. As we take our daily dose of the mass media, we have to be careful there is no spillage effect, that is, where the acts of a few don’t provide an opportunity for a larger group to become caught up in the web of past metaphoric narratives. It would appear that our language use is infiltrated with metaphors that can so easily and discursively infect us with a worldview that is distorted and out of kilter. ‘The hijacking of language is fundamental to war.’ 40
Notes 1
G Lakoff and M Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York, 1999, p. 12. 2 Loc. cit. 3 M Sonser Breen, ‘Heroes and Monsters: The Politics of Survival in Spider Man and a Long Line of Vendidas’ in M S Breen (ed), Truth, Reconciliation, and Evil, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2005, p. 181. 4 G Gusdorf, ‘Conditions and Limits of Autobiography’ in J Olney (ed), Autobiography: Essays theoretical and critical, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006, p. 35. 5 Lakoff and Johnson, op. cit., p. 12. 6 C Feldman, ‘The Construction of Mind and Self in an Interpretative Community’ in J Brockmeier, M Wang and D Olsen (eds), Literacy, Narrative and Culture, Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 2002, p. 58. 7 R van Noy, Surveying the Interior: Literary Cartography and the Sense of Place, University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 2003, p. 4. 8 S Cohen, The Moral Panic, McGibbon and Kee, London, 1972, p. 9. 9 N Chomsky, September 11, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, Australia, 2001, p. 21. 10 G W Bush 2001, ‘Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation’ 14 September 2001, 18 September 2001. 11 Ibid.
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Ibid. Ibid 14 T Englehardt, The End of Victory Culture, Basic Books, New York, 1995, p. 61. 15 W Doty, Mythography: The Study of Myth and Ritual, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2000, p. 90. 16 J Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Penguin, New York, 1982, p. 4. 17 C Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2006, p. xiii. 18 M Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in and Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004, p. 166. 19 E Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1978, p. 1. 20 M Ubel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twentieth Century Response to Saracen Alterity’, in J Cohen (ed), Monster Theory: Reading Cultures, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, p. 264. 21 T Eckert, ‘Experts Say Jersey City is a Breeding Ground for Terrorist Cells’, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 September, 2001, A2, p. 6 22 Lakoff and Johnson, op.cit., p. 112. 23 J Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Verso, New York, 2006, p. 5. 24 R Dreyfus, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Owl Books, New York, 2005, p. 3. 25 I Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990, p. 208. 26 Butler, op.cit., p. 1. 27 New York Post Editorial, 7 Dec and 11September, 2001, p. 42. 28 Ubel, op.cit., p. 264. 29 Unknown, Home News, ‘No Panic as Capital Stays Cool: Londoners Stand Up to Evil,’ The Sun 22 July 2005, p. 3. 30 M Sullivan, ‘Find the Chemist:7/7’ – ‘Detectives Hunt the Beasts Behind the Bombs,’ July 14, 2005, 2. 31 T Bowden, ‘Police powers will restore Sydney order: Moroney’, in Lateline, viewed on 13 December 2005. 32 E Ingebretson, At Stake: Monster and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001, p. 43. 33 M MacCallum, ‘As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap’, Political Corrections, Northern Rivers, 25 February 2007, p. 6. 34 T Allen and M Baker, ‘PM’s Vow: We’ll Get the Bastards’, in Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October, 2005, p. 23 35 B Cambourne, ‘Dorothy Dix meets Slim Dusty: Politics and the Framing of Literacy Education in Australia’, in B Doecke, M Howie & W Sawyer (eds.), 13
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______________________________________________________________ Only Connect: English teaching, schooling and community, AATE/Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2006, p. 128. 36 D Shannon, ‘Deaths will not sway PM on Iraq stand - Terror Hits Home Sifting the Ashes’, in The Australian, 14 October 2002, p. 14. 37 Unknown, Gold Coast Bulletin, ‘A Picture's Worth a Thousand Questions: PM Treads Water Over Leaky Boat’, February 2001, p. 5. 38 G Lakoff, Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2006, p. 35. 39 B Creed, ‘Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An imaginary abjection’, in B Grant (ed), The Dread of Difference, University of Austin Press, Austin, Texas, 1996, p. 4. 40 C Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Anchor Books, New York, 2005, p. 34.
Bibliography Allen, T. and Baker, M., ‘PM’s Vow: We’ll Get the Bastards’, in Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October, 2005. Berlin, I., The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990. Breen, M. S., ‘Heroes and Monsters: The Politics of Survival in Spider-man and A Long Line of Vendidas’, in M. S. Breen (ed), Truth, Reconciliation, and Evil. Rudopi ,New York, 2005, pp. 181-196. Bush, G. W. ‘Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People’, 11 September 2001, (September 14 2001). < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/> Bush, G. W. 2001, ‘Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation’ Address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, National Day of Prayer and Remembrance 14 September 2001, 14 September 2001, (18 September 2001). < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/> Butler, J., Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Verso, New York, 2006. Cambourne, B., ‘Dorothy Dix meets Slim Dusty: Politics and the framing of literacy education in Australia’, in B. Doecke, M. Howie & W. Sawyer (eds.), Only Connect: English teaching, schooling and community,
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______________________________________________________________ AATE/Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2006, pp. 120-135. Chomsky, N., September 11. Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, Australia, 2001. Cohen, S., The Moral Panic, McGibbon and Kee, London, 1972. Creed, B., ‘Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’, in B. Grant (ed), The Dread of Difference. University of Austin Press, Austin, Texas, 1996, pp. 1-12. Doty, W., Mythography: The Study of Myth and Ritual. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2000. Dreyfus, R., Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Owl Books, New York, 2005. Englehardt, T., The End of Victory Culture, Basic Books, New York, 1995. Feldman, C., ‘The Construction of Mind and Self in an Interpretative Community’, in J. Brockmeier, M. Wang and D. Olsen (eds), Literacy, Narrative and Culture, Richmond, Surrey, Curzon, 2002, pp. 52-66. Gusdorf, G., ‘Conditions and Limits of Autobiography’, in J. Olney (ed), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, pp. 28-48. Hedges, C., War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Anchor Books, New York, 2005. Ignatieff, M., The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in and Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004. Kristeva, J.. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Penguin, New York, 1982. Lakoff, G., Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2006. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books, New York, 1999. Said, E., Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1978.
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______________________________________________________________ Shannon, D., Deaths will not sway PM on Iraq stand - Terror Hits HomeSifting the Ashes, in The Australian, 14 October 2002. Tyerman, C., God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2006. Ubel, M., ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twentieth Century Response to Saracen Alterity’, in J. Cohen (ed), Monster Theory. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, 264-291. Unknown, Gold Coast Bulletin, ‘A Picture's Worth a Thousand Questions: PM Treads Water Over Leaky Boat,’ February 2001. van Noy, R., Surveying the Interior: Literary Cartography and the Sense of Place. University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 2003.
The Phenomenology of Domestic Violence: An Insider’s Look Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz and Eli Buchbinder Abstract: In the course of our research and therapy we often seek to gain an understanding of violence from the ‘inside,’ that is to say, how those involved articulate the violence and explain it to themselves. This chapter proposes to introduce two key concepts designed to aid understanding the experience of violence as perceived by those who experience it, namely battering men and battered women. The concepts are based primarily on the phenomenological approach. The concepts are language and intentionality. The chapter leans on research conducted by the authors and others in accordance with the phenomenological tradition. Since the phenomenological approach is descriptive rather than argumentative, it provides an opportunity to understand complex situations that require a both/and approach and not only an either/or approach. The citations presented here were taken and adapted from various studies (some of which were conducted in Israel, and others by a variety of researchers throughout the world) in order to illuminate and illustrate all that has been stated theoretically in a more personal and realistic manner. Key Words: Battered women; batterers: domestic violence; intentionality; language; phenomenology ***** 1.
Introduction The present paper aims to integrate two key concepts designed to aid field workers and researchers in understanding the multiple layers of intimate violence as perceived by those who experience it, namely battering men and battered women. The concepts are based primarily on the phenomenological approach, which maintains that understanding the experience of those involved in intimate violence is solely conditional on the assumption that the world is perceived subjectively and in a variety of forms, and that there is no single correct and predetermined way of understanding and experiencing violence in intimate relationships.1 The paper leans on research conducted by the authors and other researchers in accordance with the phenomenological tradition, which places emphasis on a person’s lived experience and the significance of this experience to him or her. The correctness of the phenomenological statement is independent of other statements or facts, but rather seeks to provide as accurate a description as possible of the
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______________________________________________________________ phenomenon it seeks to describe.2 In the course of our research and therapy we seek to gain an understanding of violence from the ‘inside’, that is to say, how those involved articulate the violence and explain it to themselves. How do they experience their state in a violent setting - do they perceive themselves as victim or aggressor, or do they perhaps experience themselves in both states? What characterizes their emotional world and their perception of self? And in general terms, what is ‘their story’? The authors of the present paper identified a need to employ concepts that would preserve the raw quality of the interviewee’s experience, on the one hand, and afford depth and meaning to what was being articulated, on the other hand. This method can provide an opportunity for workers and researchers to understand complex situations on both/and level, and not only an either/or approach. 3 In recent years, qualitative studies in the field of domestic violence have accumulated to form a broad and comprehensive corpus of knowledge that would be impossible to cover in the present paper. This is indicative of the need and interest expressed by numerous researchers and clinicians to understand the subjective world of battering men and battered women. The citations presented here were taken and adapted from various studies in order to illuminate and illustrate all that has been stated theoretically in a more personal and realistic manner. The citations are not necessarily ‘representative,’ since phenomenological research is always grounded in specific contexts. Through citations and examples the authors seek to explain and demonstrate the dialogue that can be created between the theoretical concept and the citation, thus enabling a more profound understanding of violence. Employing two principal concepts from the phenomenological tradition, the present paper presents descriptions of the world of those involved in violent relationships. The first concept is that of language, which is recognized as the principal means by which experiences and inner meanings are revealed and actualised, as well as relations with the ‘outside world’, namely the other.4 The second concept is intentionality. Thought, willpower, and emotions are all directed towards one object or another, either real or imagined. Intentionality is one of the principal concepts employed in the efforts to understand how the inner language of emotions is directed towards one object or another outside the self, and is actively manifested in language and behavior.5 2.
Language Use Language constitutes the key to creating meanings. Through its symbolic qualities, language makes it possible for people to organize, describe, and give meaning to their experiences, behaviours, and the totality of their existence.6 Language is not only a means of communication; it also creates a reality that exists both internally in a person’s world and self-
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______________________________________________________________ perception, and externally in his or her verbal interactions with others. Language label and frame experiences and thus direct our experiences time after time.7, 8 Employing language to understand the phenomenon of intimate violence is particularly significant since the structure of language allows us to focus on two discrete aspects. The first is in the structural tradition that focuses on sociocultural constructs as a basis for conceptualising and understanding the world, for instance by employing cultural references as a means to accord social justification to violence. A good example is the following statement by a battering man: With us oriental Jews there’s a lot of respect for tradition. It is written that ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son,’ which means that first of all you have to educate the ones you love most. That’s why I’ll say again that it [the violence aimed at his wife] comes from love, from caring. 9 The speaker uses the words of the bible as a cultural reference that is used to bridging between two seemingly contradicting phenomena: His violence towards his wife and his love for her.10 The second aspect examines the subjective experience as a basis for inquiry in the various human sciences. For example, the following statement by a battered woman: Dina: …saw him as someone who could teach me what I didn’t know. I believed in him. Interviewer: And what did you see in him as a man? Dina: I wasn’t thinking about a man. My values were about security… I knew I needed something, and I’d just say and then he’d run and get it for me. So I felt protected, I felt that I was being given. Interviewer: And you perceived that as being part of the role of men? Dina: I wasn’t looking at roles. I was looking at what I needed. I wasn’t living in an ideology of roles; I wasn’t living with the luxury of roles. You’re talking to me about things that are considered a luxury. For a person who has nothing to eat, if he doesn’t work and doesn’t have the rent to pay for the family, then he won’t have anywhere to sleep! And he’ll sleep on the street. You’re talking to me about ideology, is there any room here for ideology?11 This exchange, like language in general, comprises various levels. On one level, by means of language, the battered woman clarifies to the
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______________________________________________________________ interviewer her subjective experience, which she perceives as being incompatible with the world of language inhabited by the interviewer. On this level, she describes her marriage to her husband at a time when her family ostracized her and her existential needs were in jeopardy. She describes her relationship with her husband as very personal, a relationship in which she has apparently renounced everything she has ‘learned’ about the detrimental aspects of man-woman relations, i.e., violence and sexual exploitation (which she describes in another part of the interview). She seemingly denies gender distinctions in the relationship and channels everything into her desire to be loved and protected. There is no ideology here, the interviewee declares. However, on another level, the language also expresses a search for external protection from the man, which is paradoxical since he constitutes the primary danger in her life. The exchange clarifies how, by means of language, we can understand the subjective dimension of an experience that is essentially gender-social, which under certain circumstances becomes personal-existential, and the social dimension is experienced as something outside the experience. In this manner the various levels of language provide a basis for subjective understanding of various situations and statements. Language incorporates various existential orientations. Analysis of the language employed by batterers reveals three main categories of metaphors: A. War metaphors are employed to describe structured conflict and violence: ‘She knows where my weaknesses are… but believes me I also know her weaknesses.’12 Or a further example: ‘There was no equality between us. It was either ‘I win and you lose, or you lose and I win’.’13 Intimacy is portrayed as a battlefield on which each side tries to identify and target the other’s weaknesses. The experience of war transforms the relationship into one that has only one possible course - victory or defeat. B. Self-as-battle-zone metaphors are employed to portray the self and the inner world as a ‘dangerous place’ and a zone of conflicts. It is described thus by a battering man: ‘I felt like I was exploding in that instant when I hit her. (Interviewer: What do you mean by exploding? What did you feel?) It’s something inside you that you can’t stop, I can’t control myself in that instant, can’t control myself…’14 The man uses the metaphor of explosives to describe the inner world that forms prior to the violent incident. Emotions are processed into a metaphorical perception of explosives: a mass of tremendous, dangerous, and uncontrollable strength. The man describes his inability to contain his emotions; his inner space seemingly disengages from the self, and is transformed into a threat,
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______________________________________________________________ a powerful enemy of itself. His inner self cannot control the outer violent self. C. Weapon metaphors are used to describe halting the escalation and a return to equilibrium. For example, the account of a violent man in reference to the conclusion of a violent incident: ‘…I told her, do you want us to stop fighting and go back to being OK? I’ll watch my hands and you watch your mouth.’15 The man relates to violence through limbs and organs that metaphorically become weapons. Just as the violence is dependent on limbs and organs, consequently, reducing the violence and danger is also dependent upon them. The man assumes that the violence has created an imbalanced situation in which the previous structure of the relationship has been undermined, and he draws a parallel between physical and verbal force. He therefore maintains that the situation will only return to normal when the woman recognizes her verbal strength as being on a par with his striking hands. In this manner, he believes, the metaphorical balance can be restored to the relationship, and since both sides are to blame, both are responsible for restoring the balance. Various studies show that men employ heroic language to describe violent incidents with other men, and their descriptions are detailed even when they are the losers in the struggle. In contrast, when they describe outbursts of violence towards their partners they ‘shed’ the heroic words and details, and descriptions of injuries and blood, and the language becomes sparse, shrouded in silences, and characterized by difficulty in expression and minimizing the severity of injury.16 An additional role played by language is to describe and frame expectations. Explanations are a linguistic ploy used to bridge between aberrant behaviours and normative expectations. The literature describes two types of explanations: excuses and justifications, which are employed when a person is accused of acting improperly or immorally. Justifications are explanations in which a person accepts responsibility for the act but considers it justified. 17 For example: I always hated myself for being violent; I swore I’d never be like that. My excuse was always that she made me do it… I knew deep down that it wasn’t true but it granted me the permission to do it [= be violent].18 The man recognizes that he has been violent but denies that the act is immoral and justifies it by saying that the victim deserved what she got.
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______________________________________________________________ Excuses are explanations in which the person recognizes that his act was improper, but denies full responsibility for it. For example: ‘I pushed her unintentionally. She hit her head on the wall, fell down and lost consciousness. Don’t think I did it on purpose, it just turned out that way…’ Or a similar excuse by a battered woman: ‘Sometimes he pushes me because he’s freaking out… but he doesn’t really mean to hit me.’19 3.
Intentionality Phenomenology speaks extensively of the concept of ‘intentionality’ as a central component of understanding human action. Intentionality means that statements describing the essence of human experience and behaviour can only be made about actions performed with intention.20 The word ‘intentionality’ does not refer to directing intention towards an object, but is rather an adjective attributed to an intentional act, and simply stated could be said to mean ‘done intentionally’. Four questions should be posed regarding intentional acts: (1) Who performed the intentional act (i.e., who has acted)? (2) What is the act (i.e., the action or a description of the action)? (3) Who or what is the action directed at (i.e., the object of the action)? (4) In what conditions or situations is the particular act performed towards the particular object (i.e., the conditions or contexts of the act)? Acts of intentionality are distinctive in that they describe an act that is performed intentionally and consciously. The question of whether a particular description is correct or not is not examined according to any ‘objective’ truth, but according to the account provided by the person who has performed the act and the nature of the act. For example: ‘I felt that I was always hitting her after she nagged and irritated me.’ It is impossible to judge or evaluate the correctness of this statement according to ‘external’ knowledge or facts (a contradictory statement by the woman, for example), since it is the inner intentionality (in this instance, the feeling of the subject) pertaining to the circumstances of the act (violence towards his wife when he felt she was nagging or irritating him) that is relevant to and true of this statement. Consequently, the correctness or incorrectness of a statement that describes intentionality cannot be empirically proved.21 This is apparently what Sartre meant when he claimed that science is concerned with facts, whereas phenomenology deals with the knowledge of essences.22 Violence is regarded an intentional act insofar as it constitutes a means through which people choose to react to meanings of their inner world, and equally to react to their own interpretation of the actions of others. The concept of intentionality enables us to understand how the woman or the man frame the interaction between them and their being in the world.23 Thus, we can understand, for example, the man’s interpretation of his violence as resulting from his experiencing himself in the world as the woman’s victim. In the words of a violent man:
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______________________________________________________________ Women can be verbally violent against you, they can skin you alive without laying even a finger on you, the way women know how to speak, to talk. But men don’t know this. Well, they haven’t been brought up to talk as much as women have, to talk like women have learned to do. So I’d escape into violence when I couldn’t reach her with words, I felt lost, weak…24 The subject perceives himself as being a victim (‘I felt lost, weak…’), as being skinned and not having the tools to cope with the injury (‘Men don’t know this’), and therefore being exposed (it is no coincidence that he uses the metaphor of ‘being skinned’). He presents the fact of being violent against his partner as an ‘escape into violence’, a result of being a ‘lost’ and ‘weak’ victim. The subject in this instance, who is a violent man, presents the performer of the act (himself) as a weak and lost victim, his violence as an act of escaping from attack, the object (his wife) towards whom the violence is directed as belonging to a powerful and dangerous group (‘they can skin you alive without laying even a finger on you’), and his situation one of inferiority (‘Men don’t know this… they haven’t been brought up to talk’) and emotional weakness (‘…when I couldn’t reach her with words, I felt lost, weak’). Violence can also be presented as an automatic reaction that the attacker cannot control. In the words of another battering man: When I lose it it’s like it isn’t me, do you understand? When I’m not in that state, when I’m not irritated, I’m completely different, I’m a really good person… That night when I hit her I was so out of control that I don’t even remember hitting her… Many times when I get angry I black out and I don’t know what’s happened until someone tells me…25 In this instance, the subject presents the act as unintentional and does not accept responsibility for it. He does this both by renouncing the performer of the act (‘It’s like it isn’t me’) and by blaming the situation he is in (‘When I lose it’ and ‘I black out’). For the battered woman, intentionality can be constructed by means of the way in which she perceives the incidents as constituting an element of the gender roles and her perception of her obligations as a woman. For instance, her beliefs vis-à-vis her fidelity and feelings towards the attacker and the integrity of the family are liable to keep her in the violent relationship and serve as her explanation for doing so. In the words of one woman:
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______________________________________________________________ It’s not that I, God forbid, rejected him [in the marital bed the researcher]. This man, even now, after everything he’s done to me, I still love him… He’s deep down inside me and I can’t just come and cross him out in one day. It’ll take some time.26 Or in the words of another battered woman: I think there’s a lot of connection between love and violence: I mean violence, it brings a couple closer because if he beats her then he obviously cares, loves the woman, he wants everything to be all right with her… I don’t accept beatings with love, that’s for sure, but I think it happens because of love.27 Both women describe their love for the battering man and the fact that they remain with him as the result of choice. With the first woman, this stems from love originating in a profound sense of belonging (‘He’s deep down inside me’). With the second, violence is perceived as a sign and evidence of her partner caring for her (‘Because if he beats her then he obviously cares’). In both instances, the intentional act (i.e., remaining with the battering partner) is presented as a matter of being bound to an emotional state (love) that is constructed as part of her understanding of the relationship and herself within it. Research into the perceptions of battering men with regard to the women calling the police shows that the intentionality of the men towards police intervention changes from the first incident to the second.28 In their first encounter, the men’s intentionality towards police intervention may be framed as routine and marginal, and thus trivialized. The following quote is a case in point: I can’t remember too many details, I think someone made a stupid mistake calling the police, and the police made the stupid mistake of playing along… All in all, I expected this whole thing to go nowhere… Question: Did you talk to your wife and ask her why she called the police? Answer: I did, but there was no answer. And to tell you the truth I didn’t really look into it any further. We made up in a funny way. I never really understood this scene with the police and I left it alone…29
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______________________________________________________________ Police involvement is perceived as part of a sequence of mistakes perpetuated in the form of a ‘game’ with a preset and well-known ritual that is technical, routine, meaningless, and which leads nowhere. The man perceives the incident as being alien to his life stream and can therefore dismiss it. The second encounter with the police, however, is perceived differently and constitutes an entirely different experience with different consequences. As one man said: The first time they listened to me and understood me. I wasn’t offended and I was satisfied. The second time they were unwilling to listen, they only heard my wife... They weren’t interested in helping me. I didn’t like it, and felt helpless. I felt like there was a powerful system which was working against me… I felt they did me an injustice... I felt that the police were looking for ways to get people. The minute she went to the police they believed her. The case is closed: she’s telling the truth and I am a liar.30 Throughout the first encounter the man’s intentionality towards police intervention was that ‘they were making a stupid mistake’ and ‘playing along’, hence he was able to ‘leave it alone.’ His tone is somewhat amused. In the second encounter, he reframes the police as being hostile toward him, ignoring his version of the events, and acting as ‘a powerful system’ that makes him feel ‘helpless.’ Consequently, he feels that he is standing alone against large and hostile forces, and experiences himself as an innocent victim who must protect himself. As can be seen from these accounts, the events are ‘objective’ events in the world (i.e., police intervention in domestic violence), but the man’s reactions are the results of the world as he experiences it through his concerns, values, and emotions. 4.
Summary The present paper seeks to present the inner, subjective world of individuals involved in intimate violence. Domestic violence occurs within the day-to-day routine of raising children, relations with the extended family and friends, work, and financial decisions. It does not constitute an isolated event (or a chain of events). Understanding the day-to-day lives of these couples necessitates examination of the descriptive aspect and the meanings ascribed to the life they share. We have endeavoured to illustrate how use of language constructs meanings and explanations that bridge the gap between expectations and reality. Examination of the emotional world of those involved in violence, as well as their attitude to and definitions of their self are all likely to aid us in gaining a better understanding of life experience in a violent climate. It is important to remember that although it is the aggressor
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______________________________________________________________ who bears full responsibility for the violence, there are two partners involved in intimate violence against women: the aggressors and the victims, and while they seemingly represent opposing interests, they are bound to one another by a seemingly unbreakable bond. Consequently, each constructs a whole inner world. We have endeavoured to introduce the reader to the inner circle of life in intimate violence. The dialogue with the inner world of battering men and battered women reveals the complexity of the human soul, which is not only ‘the head behind the striking hand’ or ‘the emotion behind the suffering body.’ Recognition of the phenomenon of violence in couples has given rise to extensive research that seeks to encompass the breadth of the problem and discover its scope, severity, and effects, and how to address it. This approach - which is of great importance in itself - frequently loses sight of the personal, intimate dimension of the experience. Descriptions of the scope of the problem are frequently so overwhelming that it is difficult to imagine what the individual couple trapped in a violent reality undergoes. The struggle to present the politics behind violence against women, despite its importance and great influence on legislation and the intervention of social institutions, is frequently compelled to present the phenomenon as clear, measured, and occasionally even dichotomous. Our objective in the present paper is to present the issue from a different perspective, not to detract from the responsibility of the aggressor by presenting him as someone who suffers and frequently feels himself a victim, or to present the ‘part’ played by the battered woman in the violence directed towards her. Our purpose is to present a deeper and more complete view of the inner context that shapes life in a violent ecology.
Notes 1
See E Buchbinder, & Z. Eisikovits, ‘Between normality and deviance: The breakdown of batterers’ identity following police intervention’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19, 2004, pp. 443-467. 2 See C Becker, Living and Relating: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1992. 3 See V Goldner, ‘Making room for both/and’, The Family Networker, March/April 1992, pp. 55-61. 4 See J W Yolton, Perception and Reality: A History from Descartes to Kant, Cornell University Press, Ithaca,1996. 5 See P B Poorman, J Levin, M Benowitz, & J Feigel, ‘Lesbian violence: A feminist perspective and treatment model’, Day-long, pre-conference workshop presentation at Association of Women in Psychology and
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______________________________________________________________ American Psychological Association Division 35 National Conference, 1986, San Francisco, CA. 6 See P Berger & H Kellner, ‘Marriage and the construction of reality,’ in Life as Theater, edited by D Brisset & C Edgley, Aldine Press, Chicago, 1975, pp. 219-233 7 See E Akillas & J Effran, ‘Internal conflict, language and metaphor: Implications for psychotherapy’, Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 19, (1989), pp. 149-159. 8 See J Effran, ‘Mystery, abstraction and narrative psychotherapy’, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 7, 1994, pp. 219-227. 9 D Yassour, Love & Violence – Can They Co-Exist? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Haifa, Israel, 1994, p. 56. [In Hebrew.] 10 See D. Yassour-Borochowitz & Z. Eisikovits, ‘To love violently’, Violence against Women, 8:4, 2002, pp. 476-494. 11 See E Buchbinder, The past in the present: The Impact of the Family of Origin on Battered Women's Life Experiences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Haifa, Israel, 2001, p. 103. 12 See E Buchbinder & Z Eisikovits, ‘Talking Violent’, Violence against Women, vol. 3:5, 1997, p. 488. 13 R Reitz, ‘Batterers' experiences of being violent’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 23, 1999, p. 151. 14 E Buchbinder, Talking violent: Metaphors violent men use. Unpublished Thesis, University of Haifa, Israel, 1993, p. 67. 15 Z Eisikovits & E Buchbinder, ‘Talking Violent’, Violence against Women, vol. 3, no. 5, 1997, p. 491. 16 D Yassour-Borochowitz, Intimate Violence - the Emotional World of Batterers. Resling, Tel Aviv, 2003. 17 M B Scott & S Lyman, ‘Accounts’, American Sociological Review, 33, 1968, 46-62. 18 E Gondolf & J Hanneken, ‘The gender warrior: Reformed batterers on abuse, treatment and change,’ Journal of Family Violence, vol 2, no. 2, 1987, p. 182. 19 Z Eisikovits, H Goldblatt & Z Winstock, ‘Partner accounts of intimate violence: Towards a theoretical model,’ Families in Society, vol. 80, no. 6, 1999, p. 610. 20 See Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1996, vol.5-6, s.v. ‘Phenomenology.’ 21 Ibid. 22 J-P Sartre, In Search for a Method. Knopf, New York, 1963. 23 E Spinelli, The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology. Sage Publications, London, 1989.
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______________________________________________________________ 24
J Ptacek, ‘Why do men batter their wives?’, In Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, edited by K. Yllo & N. Bogart, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1988, p. 145. 25 R Reitz, op, cit., p. 158. 26 L Kacen, ‘ ‘The extended Self’ in the life stories of battered women and violent men’, Society & Welfare, vol. 20, 2000, p. 149. 27 D Yassour, Love & Violence - Can They Co-Exist? Unpublished dissertation . Israel, Haifa University, 1994, p. 104. 28 Buchbinder & Eisikovits, op. cit. 29 Ibid, p. 449. 30 Ibid, pp. 452-453.
Bibliography Akillas, E. & Effran, J., ‘Internal conflict, language and metaphor: Implications for psychotherapy’. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, vol. 19, 1989, pp. 149-159. Becker, C., Living and Relating: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1992. Berger, P. & Kellner, H., ‘Marriage and the construction of reality.’ In Life as Theater, edited by D Brisset & C Edgley, Aldine Press, . Chicago, 1975, pp. 219-233 Buchbinder, E., Talking violent: Metaphors violent men use. Unpublished Thesis, University of Haifa, Israel, 1993. ______
, The past in the present: The Impact of the Family of Origin on Battered Women's Life Experiences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Haifa, Israel, 2001. Buchbinder, E., & Eisikovits, Z., ‘Between normality and deviance: The breakdown of batterers’ identity following police intervention.’ Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 19, 2004, pp. 19, 443-467. Effran, J. ‘Mystery, abstraction and narrative psychotherapy’. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, vol. 7, 1994, pp. 219-227. Eisikovits, Z.C. & Buchbinder, E., ‘Toward a phenomenological intervention with violence in intimate relationships’. In Future Intervention with Battered
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______________________________________________________________ Women and their Families, edited by J.L. Edelson & Z.C. Eisikovits, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1996, pp. 186-200. Eisikovits, Z. & Buchbinder, E., ‘Talking Violent.’ Violence against Women, vol. 3, no. 5, 1997, pp. 482-497. Eisikovits, Z., Golsblatt, H. & Winstok, Z., ‘Partner accounts of intimate violence: Towards a theoretical model,’ Families in Society, vol. 80, no. 6, 1999, pp. 606-619. Goldner, V., ‘Making room for both/and,’ The Family Networker, March/April 1992, pp. 55-61. Gondolf, E.W. & Hanneken, J., ‘The gender warrior: Reformed batterers on abuse, treatment and change,’ Journal of Family Violence, vol 2, no. 2, 1987, pp. 177-191. Kacen, L., ‘’The extended Self’ in the life stories of battered women and violent men,’ Society & Welfare, vol. 20, 2000, pp. 129-157. [In Hebrew.] Ptacek, J. ‘Why do men batter their wives?’ In Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, edited by K. Yllo & N. Bogart, 133- 154. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1988. Reitz, R.R. ‘Batterers' experiences of being violent’. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 23, 1999, 143-165. Sartre, J.P. Search for a Method. Knopf, New York, 1963. Scott, M.B. & Lyman, S., Accounts. American Sociological Review, 33, 1968: 46-62. Spinelli, E., The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology. Sage Publications, London, 1989. Yassour, D., Love & Violence - Can They Co-Exist? dissertation . Israel, Haifa university, 1994. [In Hebrew.]
An unpublished
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______________________________________________________________ Yassour-Borochowitz, D. & Eisikovits, Z., ‘To love violently,’ Violence against Women,vol. 8, no. 4, 2002, pp. 476-494. ______
, D., Intimate Violence - the Emotional World of Batterers. Resling, Tel Aviv, 2003. [In Hebrew.]
Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio Abstract: The analysis of how people speak or write about others’ wicked condition is a very exciting topic in itself for two main reasons: first of all, because by describing the various salient devices (syntactic, lexical, rhetorical, etc.) used in the verbal construction of those offenders or criminals, we can discover recurrent patterns in the discourse of those who in one way or another portray wrongdoing (either bad behaviour or transgression); secondly, because through the observation of their own words, we can also decipher who these individuals are themselves, their ideology, their prejudices, and perhaps even their own evil nature, if by any chance that might be the case. 1 To illustrate this point, I will look at two different phenomena: I will examine some examples of the media’s textual representation of a blatant evil-doer such as Saddam Hussein; and I will consider what happened in the Spanish Parliament before the legalisation of same-sex marriage, when some seemed to try to paint the issue as a struggle between natural good and hideous perversity. It is my contention that what is said (and what has presumably been omitted or ignored), as well as the way in which this is said, are instrumental in discovering more about the participants of discourse and their degree of wickedness. I will take into account the principles of critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis, combined with tools of corpus linguistics, to assess how our sets of beliefs shape our linguistic reformulation and construal of all events; that is to say, how beliefs shape how we understand the world around us and the way we prefer to depict it. Key Words: Corpus linguistics; critical discourse analysis; critical linguistics; gays; lexical selection; linguistic representation; reference; Saddam Hussein; transitivity ***** 1.
Introduction It would be nice to think there exists something like an identifiable language of evil ready for the researcher to study in detail, and not precisely because I find it something especially pleasant to analyse. Nevertheless, the truth is that evil, pervasive as it is, trespasses language and rhetoric. We may hold the illusion that it can be built through language, but it is socio-political action alone that generates the existence of rhetoric of good or evil, of
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______________________________________________________________ victims and victimisation, of the saviour and the saved, of the baddies and the goodies. In short, evil exists before and after language; and it is not evil, in the abstract, but evildoers who bring it into existence. They employ language aiming at the construction of their own image of reality (which may be distorted and fragmentary), and it is here where the usefulness of a construct such as a ‘language of evil’ lies.2 In addition, it would be very convenient for the mass audience to have the critical ability to detect the various sources of evil, and become aware of, and keep away from, their manipulative power. This would be easier for anyone who could pinpoint the verbal traces left behind by evil. As a linguist, in theory I can say more about language than about evil. That is another reason why I would like this language of evil to be real. If we claim that this is the case, it must be because we are clear about what evil is first. In this paper, I will attempt to produce a simple taxonomy of this cultural, moral and ethical category, in order to facilitate understanding of the scope of my research. Scholars in the area of philosophy of religion distinguish between two types: moral evil and natural evil. The former covers deliberate acts carried out by humans; the latter refers to natural disasters. Within these main classes, two other subclasses are included: physical and metaphysical evil, which have to do with the harm done to the body and the mind, and with ‘imperfection and chance’.3 Specialists in the topic have already written abundantly about these matters. To this catalogue of potentially evil phenomena, I would add a simpler one that fits my goals here. In the strictest sense of the word, evil can be both objective and subjective; that is, either something everybody would agree to consider as such because it involves, for instance, harm, trouble, destruction, tyranny, human rights breaches; or something that only some people would regard as evil as this is contrary to their values, which are taken as point of departure or pattern of comparison.4 Evil, then, is a subjective reality, because each individual defines it depending on their own (moral) beliefs. Nonetheless, it is also objective, because evil as an abstraction must always be manifested in some (evil) practice: when evil is realised, its tangible consequences are experienced by some (affected) objects, and observed (even measured) by some subjects whose own principles must allow them to grasp (or not) the degree of wickedness of certain damage, injury, punishment, affliction, attack or suffering inflicted upon something or especially somebody. My interest in this categorisation comes from the type of corpus I have chosen. On the one hand, I want to study the representation of Saddam Hussein in the British press; it is very likely that everybody except for himself believes Saddam was evil and even devilish.5 My other object of research is the depiction of homosexuals in current Spanish political discourse; no doubt, there are politicians and professionals from whose perspective these citizens are also evil or something similar. Clearly, the first
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______________________________________________________________ is a case of so-called objective evil; the second is an example of what I understand to be subject to people’s impressionistic views, one model of subjective evil. To think that evil has its own language may sound as attractive and intelligent as it is vague. To identify some systematic usage of the same features in the language of evil people and in the way they represent the world may seem possible and useful. Nonetheless, since good and evil are relative notions based upon individual experience, what seems to exist is the rhetoric of those who are theoretically good opposed to the rhetoric of those who are supposedly evil; and one rhetoric used to refer to evil things, people and events, and its counterpart, employed to deal with things, people and events that are regarded as good. At first glance, good and evil people may look the same in that they speak of each other in the same terms; that is, they use the same language. Thus, we should examine what they speak about and whether some distinctive features stand out in the way they speak about these matters. It is plausible to state that a rhetoric of evil and a rhetoric of good are real, a language about or for what is described as good, and a language about or for what is not regarded as such. Therefore, when something is understood as harmful for certain community of values, the speaker will probably employ similar figures and imagery. It is a question of a language of sameness and inclusion vs. that of difference, a language of self-protection or self-defence vs. that of attack, a language of peace and reconciliation vs. a language of war, a language of justice vs. a language of inequality, a language of reason vs. that of self-justification, of possibility vs. the ‘buts,’ ‘ifs,’ and ‘nots’. In other words, we would be discussing the nature of two languages that convey contrasts and conflicts. What differentiates them is only perspective. The language of evil is both the language used to speak about evil doings and the language used by evildoers. One of its most interesting side effects is that, when employed to describe others as evil, it may show at the same time the evil nature of those who believe they have the right to despise them. Here I will limit myself to trying to decipher the language used to depict other people as wicked and depraved, and the consequences of this reconstruction of others’ wickedness. 2.
Aims and Method For my purposes, I will take into account two types of data that come from two different contexts: coverage in the British press of the capture of Saddam Hussein; and analysis of how so-called exemplary citizens discuss the sort of evil nature of other less (from their point of view) exemplary citizens: homosexuals. In both cases, speakers deal with what they regard as evil. This aspect is as interesting as the observation of the potential effect of their verbal choice, an index of their identity, which seems to have the same
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Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness
______________________________________________________________ evil ‘flavour.’ The focus of this research is to see how evil is spoken about and how it is represented linguistically, and to describe subsequently what is filtered through their specific linguistic selections about the speaker’s positioning. By studying the language of the journalists who depicted Saddam Hussein as an evil agent, we will learn much about the tyrant, but also about them, probably as much as about Hussein himself and his cruelty. Their ideology will certainly be exposed. It is challenging to examine the linguistic reconstruction of a brutal dictator. It is motivating to analyse the way people tend to internalise some images of those they hate, of those they are scared of, of those they ‘perceive as alien,’6 and through them to visualise their own conception of the world, and their biased attitudes. Likewise, if we study some of the speeches delivered by primarily good-natured citizens (that is the case of several politicians and professionals aiming at deciding one key law on adoption and same-sex marriage in Spain), we will discover, through what remains implicit to the audience and the sets of presuppositions conveyed in their statements, more than what they might like a critical analyst to find out. To check this hypothesis, I have applied some of the basics of critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis, and have as well benefited from the tools and techniques developed by corpus linguistics. Critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis mean description and explanation, which may result in denaturalising what is opaque in social practice.7 These are so enthralling because they are two complementary approaches to the analysis of language concerned with a type of discourse (i.e. public discourse) that is socially relevant. Political discourse is one type of construction created openly to manipulate a large group of people who will finally decide their vote on the basis that the politician’s ideas and their way of presenting them look beneficial, efficient and convincing. The language of newspapers is similarly important because, again, the social forces behind one newspaper (lobbies, companies and governments) are willing to control people’s perceptions of various facts and events. Corpus linguistics is evolving in a very dynamic fashion and becoming very influential due to the benefits it can provide to other (even initially unrelated) areas, demonstrated by the high degree of applicability of its methodology to various fields. Thanks to the employment of an increasing number of software programmes and original conceptions originated within this framework, we already know more about linguistic phenomena that cannot be explained by trusting the researcher’s intuition, and more than anybody could be aware of, just because of the human incapability to analyse manually huge corpora of texts in a limited period of time. The resources, materials, and procedures which corpus linguists have developed during the last twenty years have come to be functional in many contexts; that is the case of notions such as collocation,8 semantic prosody and delexicalisation,9
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______________________________________________________________ or the identification of key words in context.10 The set of features most often analysed in the terrain of critical linguistics (and by extension critical discourse analysis) are those having something to do with the ideational and the interpersonal functions of language,11 whose usage finally shows the relationship of the author of the text to their audience (e.g. involvement, detachment) and their ideological position (seen through the expression of their text’s propositional content). A short list should include at least terms of address and pronominal usage, discourse markers, modality, transitivity and lexical selection. Because of space constraints, I will only focus on some of them, and will start by looking at the lexical selection. 3. ‘Those Evil Gays’ 3.1. Background The texts we will look at have been taken from the minutes of the sessions from 20 June 2005, devoted officially to the bill whereby Spanish Civil Law is modified with respect to the right to marriage, and particularly about the effects on an adopted child’s upbringing of living together with homosexual couples. Unofficially, in this 75,042-word text, other related topics (that speakers may have been avoiding and that society was concurrently calling into question) had to be highlighted. Underlying this discussion, the seventeen speakers, ranging from psychologists, lawyers, politicians, fostering specialists, to university professors of the psychology of evolution, were dealing with the pros and cons of adoption by gay couples. However, some of them were (while insisting to the contrary) judging what the institution of marriage meant to them, what the concept of family stood for and, by implication, what homosexuality was. Some ten days later, a controversial law would be passed in which the words ‘wife’ and ‘husband,’ and ‘father’ and mother’ would be replaced by ‘spouses’ and ‘parents.’ This was the linguistic anecdote, a result of the PC movement with many social implications, which was employed by those who were against changing the previous law. The key issue here was that the Spanish Parliament voted in favour of same-sex marriage. The Senate, nonetheless, had rejected it immediately when the session scrutinised in this paper finished. A majority of conservative politicians did not support it on apparently scientific grounds. The phrase ‘(pure) science’ was repeated very often and opposed to ‘ideology,’ possibly with the aim of defending themselves from being accused of bias or of homophobia, claiming then that it was only ‘data,’ ‘studies’ and ‘research’ that supported their final resolution.
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Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness
______________________________________________________________ Table 1. Key content words in the word-frequency list of the Parliament corpus (total words 75,042) WORD (occurrences)
%
Study/s (335)
0.47
Child/ren (316)
0.45
Couple/s (297) Homosexual/s (289) Family/s (273) Person/s (180) Right/s (173) Adoption (144)
0.20
Data (134) Parents (128) Mother/s (123) Minor/s (113)
0.19 0.18 0.18 0.16
%
WORD (occurrences)
%
0.09
Stability (26)
0.04
0.08
Conduct (22)
0.03
0.42
Girl/s (61) Difference/s (60) Reality (60)
0.08
Education (21)
0.03
0.41
Situation (58)
0.08
Upbringing (21)
0.03
0.38 0.26 0.24
Important (57) Lesbian/s (59) Opinion/s (59) Examplar/s (58) Gay/s (52) Identity (52) Father (51) Life (51) Chicos/as (51) (boys/girls) Homoparental (51)
0.08 0.08 0.08
Acceptance (34) Behaviour (31) Disorder/s (31)
0.05 0.04 0.04
0.08
Normal (22)
0.03
0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07
Regulation/s (21) Pathology (20) Information (19) Natural (19)
0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03
0.07
Environment (18)
0.02
0.07
Instability (17)
0.02
Development (112) 0.16 Years (104) Relationship/s (102) Law/s (101) Homosexuality (100) Scientific (100)
0.15
WORD (occurrences)
0.07
Married couples (17) Setting (16)
0.02
Adult/s (45)
0.06
Ideology (16)
0.02
Model/s (43)
0.06
0.02
0.06 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05
Monoparental (15) Psychopathological (14) Self-esteem (13) Prejudices (9) Evil (9) Pathologies (8) Perverse (1)
0.04
Deviation (1)
0.04
Anti-natural (1)
0.14
Science (50)
0.07
0.14
Report/s (46)
0.14 0.14
Heterosexual/s (97) 0.14 Experience (42) 0.06 Woman/en (97) Offspring (96) Orientation (93) Problem/s (82) Man/en (72) Marriage (69) Research (64)
0.14 Society (41) 0.14 Childhood (40) 0.13 Gays (37) 0.12 Doubt/s (35) 0.10 Protection (35) Discrimination 0.10 (29) 0.09 Risk/s (27)
0.02
0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01
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______________________________________________________________ In an interview (22 June 2005),12 psychiatrist Aquilino Polaino, whose speech in the Senate was the most controversial - and contested on that same day and later - plays with these two notions. In his criticism of his more liberal opponents, he maintains that ideology has been substituted for scientific ignorance. His adversaries will consider this psychiatrist’s intervention as a consequence of his own ideological prejudices, which he tried to vest with the rigour inferred from his data. That must be the reason why this professional refers to what he is going to speak about as the ‘obvious truth,’ ‘a proven incontestable fact,’ the result of numerous ‘attested research studies,’ ‘the scientific community,’ ‘empirical evidence,’ ‘reality,’ ‘experience,’ ‘authority,’ ‘data.’ Curiously, data can incidentally be said to be ‘benevolent’ if used to defend something opposed to the speaker’s convictions, and ‘verified’ if just the opposite. Something apparently objective as this is also susceptible to ideologisation. 3.2. Lexical selection In the frequency word list of this text (see Table 1 above) the following content words stand out, which clearly show its essence: its main topics (gays, family, children, couples, parents, development, orientation, law, marriage and identity), and the attitudes and prejudices of the speakers involved (studies, data, rights, problems, protection, acceptance, disorders, models, instability, normality, evil, perverseness, deviation and antinaturalness). Both specialists and politicians would like to appear to be speaking objectively, but the choice of words and structures in which these appear are indicative of what can be read between the lines. As Chilton has observed, ‘speakers have a degree of choice in the wording and phrasing that prompts hearers to experience particular meanings.’13 We choose one syntactic arrangement and vocabulary, and avoid others, merely in order not to focus on some features (e.g. racial identity, political ideology, the direction of an individual’s sexuality, etc.), or to stress them. I will consider mainly the lexicon in this case (taking into account basically the concepts of entailment, presupposition and presumption), and pay closer attention to structures in my second corpus of texts. The word ‘problem’ and its plural form are not infrequent (0.12%). According to some speakers in these data, children adopted by homosexual couples are said to have psychological (personality) problems. Theoretically, the Senate is interested in the emotional and sexual development of such children, but what one infers from reading some explanations is that homosexuality is a problem in itself, one that also causes others to lead problematical lives. What is understood from the session is that the problem must be studied calmly, and from a humane and compassionate viewpoint. This is the way the conservative speakers prefer to depict it. If they opt for
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Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness
______________________________________________________________ such terminology (calmness, understanding and humanity), what should we as an audience be aware of? Firstly, this is a controversial, yet conflictual issue; the social agents discussing it do not want to be perceived as the ones creating conflict (ironically because it is themselves who have been originating the conflict on the grounds of their morals). Secondly, ethical principles such as sympathy and mercy have to be resorted to. This compels me to note the peculiarities of the framework here: there are those who traditionally stand for these two (Christian) standards, those who are thought to deserve them because someone understands that they are in that condition, those who may not defend them in an explicit way because of their ideological background, and obviously a context that demands this. If someone feels sympathy for someone else, this person shows sorrow or has the capacity to feel sorrow for another’s suffering or misfortune,14 which indirectly means that they believe the other is tormented, has got ill luck, and in a way is morally inferior to them. Here I might add a comment concerning those who are helped this way. Dr. Polaino claimed that he had been working as a psychiatrist for over 30 years, treating more than 200 cases of people with homosexual behaviour who suffered immensely. He describes those who looked for his help as people who did it because they had wanted to, had been able to, had known how to, had the desire to, and the ability to understand. He may mean that there are others who didn’t want to change that situation, did not have the capacity to do so or, what is worse, were lacking in the intellectual or cognitive abilities that allow the individual to recognise the best ways to do it. Similarly, if such a person has compassion or consideration for other human beings or even animals, his/her humaneness makes him/her faultless in the eyes of society, and the object of his/her human kindness becomes thus less so. In other words, what happens is that some people (an extended ‘we,’ the so-called ‘normal citizens,’ statistically the majority, the centre) feel pity for a minority, homosexuals (an exclusive ‘they’ who turn out to be ‘not normal’ or abnormal people, who belong to the margins or can be subject to marginalisation). Yet, these speakers apparently do not want to make their audience believe that homosexuality is the problem, but that the problem is people’s search for identity in general, whatever this may be (in national, racial, sexual, or political terms). However, their words and their silences imply homosexuality can be problematised, especially if looked at from the perspective of disease, or if taken as the condition of that ‘Other’ feared by ‘our’ normalcy because of its different (unconventional) behavioural traces. In this sense, we must consider that the speakers in this text use the term ‘disorder’ both in order to refer to the homosexual condition (depicted as a pathology) and to the effects provoked on the children adopted by homosexuals (who are said to suffer from some psychopathological illness), that is, to the repercussions of their behaviour on these children’s
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______________________________________________________________ development. It is worth remembering that someone’s utterances are sometimes the ‘inducement of fear by making truth claims in the form of predictions, about causal effects.’15 Although the speakers claim that this session was not aimed at establishing whether homosexuality was good or was bad, was or was not pathology, in the end the implicit idea is that when something of the like is not apparently under discussion, it is because it may well be. Curiously, one of the most conservative psychiatrists, Professor Polaino, insists that he is not suggesting homosexuals may be labelled as ‘sexual perverts’ as they were a century ago, when this expression was current. However, this seems to be the case when later on he refers to the fact that there are some 10,000 therapists who, from his point of view, are not living on thin air, but are treating these people of their ‘pathology’ or ‘psychopathology.’ This, he feels, is not primarily because that is their job, but because they are humanitarian and proponents of solidarity, and they have the knowledge to relieve people from human suffering or discomfort. We again see the idea that someone is unhappy and someone else can soothe them, and others cannot, don’t know about it, or are not prepared to. This assumption is related to another that moves this discussion on from the field of medicine through psychological or medical treatment to the field of biology and nature, which is presented as equivalent with what is objective, with data, that is, with what cannot be any other way because it is not imposed socially, culturally or ideologically. What is a ‘natural’ fact is that children are conceived by men and women; what is a natural fact is that these children live together with their fathers and mothers; and what is an ‘objective’ datum is that this type of family has always existed, and is prepolitical. Subsequently, the audience can only understand (although this has not been made explicit) that, therefore, it is not natural that children live with same-sex couples; and, then, that all this is not in accord with physical nature, deviates from the natural order, and is at variance with moral standards, hideous, bestial, immoral, below the dignity of a human, and even a perversion.16 Same-sex marriage, therefore, must be described in the same terms, and so must the homoparental family (if the words ‘homoparental’ and ‘family’ might happen to coexist making up a phrase that might stand for a socially acceptable notion). This implies that adoption by homosexuals is not natural either, is wrong as well. In the view of Cardinal Antonio María Rouco, Archbishop of Madrid, speaking one year before the Spanish Parliament had passed the law, marriage was an institution that contributes to the growth and stability of society, something gay partnership can never generate.17 Therefore, Rouco opted to keep the name ‘marriage’ for what it has always referred to, and to use other names for other things. In a statement issued by the Spanish Bishops’ Conference in November 2003, we can read that these ‘other things’ are contrary to an appropriate anthropology, against
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______________________________________________________________ natural moral law, cannot produce life, and do not spring up from mutual affection.18 The speakers also make reference to what they label ‘conducta homosexual’ (translated for the purposes of this paper as ‘homosexual/gay conduct/behaviour’). By looking at the Corpus of Contemporary Spanish (CREA),19 sponsored by the Royal Academy of Spanish Languages, and the British National Corpus (BNC),20 we get a better picture of these specialists’ possible intentions. Table 2. Heterosexual and homosexual/gay conduct/behaviour (in Spanish)
CREA
Conducta homosexual 19
Comportamiento Conducta homosexual gay 7 0
Comportamiento gay 0
TOTAL
Google
40,200
19,500
79
59,840
TOTAL
40,219
19,507
59,862
Comportamiento heterosexual 0
TOTAL
CREA
Conducta heterosexual 5
Google
309
303
612
TOTAL
314
303
617
61
26
5
Table 3. Heterosexual and homosexual/gay conduct/behaviour (in English) Homosexual conduct 12
Homosexual behaviour 23
Google
198,000
TOTAL
Gay conduct
Gay behaviour
TOTAL
0
0
35
586,000
1,970
39,180
825,150
198,012
596,023
1,970
39,180
825,185
Heterosexual conduct 1
Heterosexual behaviour 1
Google
866
TOTAL
867
BNC
BNC
Straight Conduct
Straight behaviour
TOTAL
0
0
2
62,300
116
537
63,819
62,301
116
537
63,821
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______________________________________________________________ In the CREA, there are 19 occurrences of the expression ‘conducta homosexual’ (plus 7 occurrences of ‘comportamiento homosexual’), which is present in texts on politics, economics, commerce and finances, social sciences, beliefs and thoughts, and health. There are no occurrences of the phrase ‘conducta gay,’ whereas there are only five examples of ‘conducta heterosexual.’ Interestingly, in this corpus I found no occurrences of its nearsynonym ‘comportamiento heterosexual.’ Examples of both expressions can be found in documents about social sciences, beliefs and thoughts, and health. Moreover, the former is likely to be used in oral texts; in fiction texts, the latter is employed more frequently. In the BNC, I found one example for ‘heterosexual conduct’ and another for ‘heterosexual behaviour,’ and 12 for ‘homosexual conduct’ and 23 for ‘homosexual behaviour’ (no occurrences of ‘gay conduct’ or ‘gay behaviour’ were attested in this corpus). Finally, in Google, I searched for both expressions in Spanish and English (not forgetting to take into account the spelling differences in US English and British English), and others semantically close. Although in this case figures fluctuate daily, at the time of writing this paper I retrieved 303/62,300 (Sp/Eng) for ‘heterosexual behaviour’ (plus 309/866 occurrences for ‘heterosexual conduct’ and 0/116 for ‘straight conduct’) and 19,500,600/586,000 for ‘homosexual behaviour’ and 40,200/198,000 for ‘homosexual conduct’ (plus 61/1,970 occurrences for ‘gay conduct’ and 79/39,180 of ‘gay behaviour’). This makes us realise that this behaviour must be the marked term of the pair statistically and (more than probably) sociologically. But what is more interesting is the dissimilarity of the contexts of usage. Whether it is something contested or confirmed, in these texts, ‘gay conduct’ (and all its synonyms) are associated with what is morally reprehensible, unlawful, abnormal, or unhealthy. In some examples, we read that children, especially boys, are said to be induced by means of gifts or money to provide sexual pleasure to old men. The negative judgement is more than clear; as a consequence, this conduct is often considered to be a great social evil. Meanwhile, heterosexual behaviour is treated more neutrally. To be more specific, this phrase is employed when speaking about sexual development and maturation, normative models of social behaviour, and physiological functions that are judged neither a deviation nor a trace of instability. In my data, ‘conducta homosexual’ appears in contexts with negative overtones: mother’s overprotection is understood as one of its possible causes; and heterophobia is said to be one of its potential effects. Suffering and promiscuity are both associated with it, as is a tendency to drug-consumption, anxiety crisis and depression. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is also alleged to be frequent in people engaged in some kind of gay conduct. These are supposed to have a psychopathological profile. One
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Side Effects of the Linguistic Construction of Others’ Wickedness
______________________________________________________________ notion that on paper is positive (e.g. the acceptance of homosexuality by children who are adopted by same-sex couples) is here also targeted as prompting sexual identity disorder. At this stage, I find it necessary to compare the usage of the expressions ‘homosexual behaviour’ and ‘homosexuality,’ and to try to explain why, although both are endowed with negative connotations, one is even more negative than the other. In the minutes of the sessions, I found 12 occurrences of the former and 100 of the latter. As mentioned earlier, the idea of pathology is the most recurrent one in both cases. Nonetheless, a deeper reading of the texts shows something else; it is not only that homosexuals are ill,21 but that they are so because of a deficit of the function of alterity; in other words, a deficit of their ability to recognise the other, a function which is fundamental in order to love. After a dictionary consultation, lots of questions come up naturally concerning gays’ affectivity:22 Can’t they love others besides themselves? Are they egotistical? Can’t they be kind? Can’t they show tenderness, benevolence, admiration, and unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another? And especially, and what is key here, can’t they show any affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties, like maternal love? If this were the case, it would be understandable that they cannot be eligible for adopting children, and that is indeed what underlies the conservative discourse in the Spanish Senate. On 26 June 2005, psychiatrist Polaino was interviewed in the radio programme Más se Perdió en Cuba. In a summary of his views published later,23 we can observe how, after having been much criticised for his speech on homosexuality and adoption, he still repeats the same ideas, but no longer implicitly. In one section, he lists the four ingredients essential in ‘a couple’ (i.e. sex, will or control, intelligence and affection), and says that gays are lacking in all these. If he were right, especially if they were deprived of the last three components (i.e. they cannot control themselves, are not clever enough to make decisions, and are not able to care for others), nobody could doubt that they are not prepared to adopt. That is one of the messages Spaniards were imbued with and forced to interpret. I mentioned above that it looked interesting to pinpoint the possible differences in meaning between ‘homosexual behaviour’ and ‘homosexuality.’ It is time to mention some of these. The Spanish bishops referred to one and the other in 1994, when the European Parliament passed a resolution defending equal rights for gays and lesbians. Whereas, according to these religious representatives, homosexuality (and, therefore, homosexuals) is neither sinful nor ethically reprehensible in itself (in contradiction to the Bible’s description of it as a sin to God and humankind), according to the Spanish bishops, homosexual behaviour is said to be always so.24 The same might be said of Polaino’s words. One guesses that homosexuality is a condition (something inside the individual, something
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______________________________________________________________ others can even pity), while homosexual behaviour is evident (something public and susceptible to criticism). Polaino goes further and associates homosexual behaviour with ignorance, lack of maturity and information. All these examples show how speakers can give themselves away. Something similar can be inferred from other examples which, albeit less frequent, also deserve attention. I have already referred to the idea of ‘normalcy.’ It is interesting to see how this word may have different meanings in the same context and used by the same person. One conservative politician mocks the explanation given by another representative who had expressed earlier that, since homosexuality was not a disorder, nobody should stop adoption by people who (in the opinion of the more liberal senators) were as normal as anyone else. Later on, when he refers to homosexuals and other types of ‘non-normal’ situations, he adds that, by the word ‘normal,’ he only means frequent; in other words, that he is not making any value judgement. Among the synonyms of the word ‘normal,’ we find: common, rational, agreed, accurate, orthodox, real, true or healthy.25 Accordingly, something normal conforms with, adheres to, or constitutes a norm, standard, pattern, level or type. It functions or occurs in a natural way, and lacks observable abnormalities or deficiencies. Meanwhile, someone normal is characterised by average intelligence or development, and is said to be free from mental illness.26 It is curious, to say the least, how this person notices the possible ideological implications of the use of this word in his speech. He also notes that he can be misunderstood and logically criticised, because this particular way of presenting information can lead listeners to think he does not consider homosexuals normal. His words may make anybody understand these are not average in their behaviour, in the intellectual capability, in their mental health, or in all these senses altogether. Other examples are useful to delimit the ideology underlying the exposition by the most conservative speakers in my corpus. One of them deals with the differences in children’s development when growing up with homosexual couples, heterosexual couples or families. She may not know much about (syntactic or lexical) collocations; she clearly, nonetheless, knows what she prefers, and has decided to use one particular structure that may imply information about her own worldview. A quick search in the web alerts us to the reality: 75,200 occurrences of the expression ‘heterosexual family/s’ and 35,700 occurrences of the expression ‘homosexual family/s.’ Interestingly, the word ‘family’ here appeared very often between inverted commas. As for the 797,000 occurrences of ‘gay family/s,’ the whole phrase as in the previous case could be taken as an impossibility or a provocation (if the viewpoint from which it is discussed is opposed to this new institution). However, it seems that this is used more frequently in contexts favourable to it. In Spanish, the expression ‘familia/s heterosexual/es’ was less frequent than ‘familia/s homosexual/es’ (1,300 occurrences vs. 1,434 occurrences). In
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______________________________________________________________ the latter case, the use of inverted commas around the word ‘familia’ was also pervasive. The association of homosexuality and family was being called into question. Many believe that a family is the basic unit in society consisting of two parents (each of one sex) rearing their own or adopted children. They are still against other subtypes of families, especially those in which the parents are homosexuals. Ironically, this has become an everyday occurrence nowadays when women (some men too) bring their children up on their own because they are single or because they have separated from their partners. The speakers seem to endorse the traditional pattern, and when they refer to the other one it is only to state that that is not the appropriate context for adopted children to grow up healthy, mentally and sexually fit. This psychiatrist is playing the role of another exemplary citizen and professional who is interested in children’s well being. She believes she stands for good because she defends the sacred right of children to have a family and education, something that is apparently not provided by same-sex couples. Therefore she cannot think of the existence of families other than heterosexual ones. From her point of view, those who do not fit the (then legal) standards, the morally imposed norms, the socially accepted models, seem to be unable to comply with the main function of a family. If gays cannot make up a model family, someone might think that they cannot give those children what they need, everything that social institution is supposed to supply (i.e. love, affection, understanding). As a result, the audience could infer that they are not the same as heterosexuals, are not as good as them, and may not deserve what the others do. Thus, should society accept a law that permits something apparently bad (or unnatural) to become real? This is one of the questions her linguistic choice might make her addressee consider. Only one simple phrase; a great many implications involved. Another pair of words that caught my attention was ‘risk’ and ‘innocuous.’ Both are employed by the politician who speaks on behalf of the most conservative values. His political party is not for same-sex marriage, and consequently cannot be for adoption by homosexuals either. As mentioned earlier, they accept as truth that this practice is not natural or good. Although their real reasons are religious or ethical, on this occasion they act as if they only trust data and scientific rigour, so that (supposedly) ideological prejudice is avoided. Nonetheless, the traces of their beliefs are seen through language usage. The speaker here talks about the fact that some specialists and politicians (mainly the socialists) are very sure adoption by same-sex couples does not entail any risk, whereas his own political party needs to be convinced that this new institution is innocuous. If we do not know the degree of innocuousness of anything, it is because we are not sure whether it can produce any injury, harm or loss, which means that there exists the possibility that it will cause some. After being tested, various substances, radiations, bacteria or infections can be said to be endowed with
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______________________________________________________________ this quality: they are harmless, inoffensive, with no capacity or intent to injure or damage. Almost in 1 out of 3 cases in the CREA, this word is employed in texts dealing with health; scientific and political texts make up another 30% of the sum total. Although its meaning is initially positive, it is noticeable that the context of usage is not always so. We see that ‘innocuous’ is followed by a (probably unexpected) ‘but’ in many of the examples (e.g. ‘imaging is an innocuous diagnosis test which is innocuous although there are absolute contraindications’). It also implies negative connotations when describing something with no effect on the real world, or relevance for the future, and less value (e.g. innocuous explanation). On many occasions, what is considered to be innocuous is only apparently, probably or practically so; that is, the observer is not sure that it is clearly harmless (e.g. it is a technique innocuous enough). In fact, on others it is used in negative statements instead of affirmative ones (e.g. ‘appendectomy is not innocuous in immunodepressed patients’). The speaker may like this word because all this is implicit: in their view, the legal change put forward by the socialist government and its partners is not undamaging. From their perspective, it can destroy children’s sexual identity. It is dangerous, a peril, a risk, and can cause harm, pain, loss, injury and damage. 4. ‘Saddam is Evil’ 4.1. Introduction December 15, 2003 was one of those days when a researcher interested in analysing how ideology shapes our language usage could find a great deal of rich material to look into. Some 24 hours before, Saddam Hussein was captured by American troops near the village where he had been born. Raw television images of this moment could be watched all over the globe. Audiences from everywhere had the chance to observe how soldiers and medics treated the dictator. On the following day, readers saw how now the press treated this man, his seizure and the world’s reactions, not only visually (or pictorially) but especially in linguistic terms (or verbally). The various articles dealing with the same event offered a case in point of language use as social action, and critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis are an apt instrument to disentangle the ideology responsible for the particular verbal representations. While these may be called into question as a practice prone to mixing up analysis and interpretation, argument and persuasion,27 I will show their explanatory power, when analysing the press’s textual representations of Saddam’s capture, as well as the side effects of the verbal construction of a dictator, in as much as ‘making news is a heavily interpretative and constructive process, not simply a report of ‘the facts’.’28 I have followed Fowler in the analysis of how four British newspapers (e.g. The Guardian, The Independent, the Daily Mirror and the
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______________________________________________________________ Daily Mail) covered this significant historical event.29 To this end, I have observed what has been said (and what has presumably been omitted and/or ignored) by paying attention to the terms chosen by the journalists when referring to Hussein, his captors, and the coalition leaders; and the transitivity patterns most frequently employed in these articles. Initially I was simply interested in examining how some newspapers had presented the information concerning Saddam Hussein’s capture. My expectations were fulfilled to a certain extent: for most of them he was a dictator (whether ‘old,’ ‘captured,’ ‘fallen,’ ‘brutal,’ ‘once-feared’). For many, ‘a(n) (evil) monster.’ For others, ‘the former leader of the Arab Iraqi Republic’ (even brave), ‘the deposed Iraqi president.’ For a very few, ‘a patriot’, ‘a warrior.’ There was very little space for an objective rendering of the facts of 14 December. Statements evaluating this figure were more frequent than those referring merely to the status, position or role played by Saddam Hussein during the years he ruled his country. This was encouraged by the fact that we can hear a varied range of voices that have been incorporated through direct (e.g. the West) or reported speech (e.g. the East and the problematic West, including Amnesty International and a British MP expelled from the Labour Party). Some of them are transcribed directly, so that their words cannot be misinterpreted at all; others, however, are assimilated into the journalist’s perception of the event being remembered. I agree with Fairclough as to the effects of this strategy: ‘direct reporting … claims some faithfulness to what was originally said or written, and indirect reporting … does not.’30 This was my initial aim. The data, however, suggested widening the scope of research, since the representation of Saddam Hussein implied the self-presentation of the journalist, obviously enough, and of the newspaper they wrote the article for. Although Saddam is the main subject, and especially object of the processes found, there were other many participants involved. I therefore felt it was necessary to acknowledge their textual existence as well. Given that I wanted to pay attention to the construction of opinion through obvious and not so obvious procedures, I looked at aspects such as reference and transitivity. My corpus consisted of a total number of 56 articles read both in paper and in electronic format (see Table 4). I must stress that I had no intention to compare the four newspapers.
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______________________________________________________________ Table 4. British press corpus Daily Daily Mirror Mail Authored articles
10
Un-authored articles Editorials
8
The Independent 13
8
7 1
1
Speeches
1
Extracts of speeches 16
39
1
4
2
2
2
11
TOTAL
7
Comments
TOTAL
The Guardian
16
2 2
2
13
56
4.2. Reference As I stated at the beginning of this paper, in this section I comment mainly on the most interesting transitivity patterns in my data. Nonetheless, I shall devote some space to some particular cases as regards reference. I expected the journalists to write about the same participants in their articles: on the one hand, Saddam Hussein; on the other, the East (e.g. Iraqis, Arabs) and the West (e.g. Americans, the British), and so they did. It was no surprise either that they employed very similar terms. All in all, these texts depict one rather homogeneous ‘he’ (cruel in the past and defeated in the present) vs. one more complex ‘they’ (an ambiguously victorious American army, both sides’ allies, the divided people of Iraq, various Western leaders with dissimilar perceptions on the issue) within which the reader can sometimes feel there is a controversial unified ‘we.’ It is essentially the West that is represented in these newspapers, whereas the East is under- or nonrepresented at all. When this ‘they’ is the group of nations that waged the war against Iraq, the labels found in the corpus are as diverse as the following: The Independent calls them ‘foreign invaders,’ The Guardian ‘occupying forces.’ They also refer to what they have done as ‘(US/American/US-led/foreign) occupation,’ ‘(US-led/Allied) invasion.’ This will make the reader think about what these newspapers understand the role of the West in Iraq has been. It is remarkable, however, that the same countries are also referred to as the well-known ‘coalition’ (which may entail, amongst other things, shared responsibility and cooperation to achieve a common aim), ‘the Allies’ (perhaps the capital letter to remind the reader of WWII, and implying that they had the same target, and the same moral authority, power and rights to
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______________________________________________________________ act as then). The Independent uses the expression ‘would-be ‘liberators’’ as well. The coalition is described as the collective aiming at liberating the Iraqis. However, the journalist has added inverted commas, a strategy to convey that the writer or speaker calls into question the fact that what this coalition really wants to do, or has actually done, is to set these people free from a dictatorial system. As for the other ‘they’ involved, the Iraqi population, I will mention only one example. The controversial expression ‘freedom fighter,’ present in The Independent and The Guardian, describes and evaluates in a very different light what these people were doing and, especially, why. It shows the newspaper’s attitude towards the situation occurring in Iraq and the participants concerned after the coalition’s decision. These Iraqis were fighting against an allegedly unfair government or army, in the hope of improving conditions, for the purpose of establishing freedom. Their targets were tyrants; the source of dishonesty on this occasion was problematic. Having mentioned this, let’s now look at some examples to present one facet of Saddam Hussein’s depiction. There is a clear difference between the usage of full name and first name. The idea of familiarity vs. distance is what comes to mind initially. The most frequent label in these articles was ‘Saddam,’ which seemed to be an interesting choice. If other politicians I have heard about (including several dictators) are generally referred to by their surname, one must wonder why this is preferred in the present case. One answer may be that this first name can imply the opposite: lack of respect because it is used when there is no degree of acquaintance between writer, readership, and the subject referred to, which may make the referent weaker, inferior and subject to open criticism. Since some newspapers gave space to all the participants’ opinion, I found some positive lexical items that depicted him (especially the past Saddam Hussein) as extremely important, experienced, admired for his courage, great in ability, ready for sacrifice (e.g. ‘hero,’ ‘martyr,’ ‘brave man,’ ‘colossus’). Unsurprisingly, nonetheless, most words making reference to the dictator imply negative value judgements of him. In fact, some pejorative terms are used occasionally when the journalist cannot help giving vent to their anger (e.g. ‘bastard,’ ‘pond scum,’ ‘scumbag,’ ‘scum of scum,’ ‘(evil) wretch’). These expressions can be the most effective offensive terms one can employ in order to express dislike for someone. Furthermore, Saddam is said to be a ‘butcher,’ a ‘mass murderer,’ and a ‘killer of fathers, brothers, etc.’ The gradience is noteworthy. Lexical items such as ‘butcher’ and ‘(mass) murderer’ are semantically loaded. It is not that he allegedly killed someone deliberately and unlawfully, but that in fact he killed a lot of people in a very cruel way as if these were animals, and the journalist wants to express his horror and disgust at these actions. The most neutral term in this scale is ‘killer,’ a hypernym of the two mentioned above. Saddam
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______________________________________________________________ Hussein caused (directly and indirectly) the death of a great many people. The addition of the objects of suffering (‘fathers, brothers, etc.’) makes it less than neutral, however. The picture now is complete: the reader can perceive those who have died because of him, as well as those who have to endure that loss. However, there may be other strategies with the same force and, probably, identical effect. In line with Bush’s style of speaking at the White House (i.e. ‘The capture of this man was crucial to the rise of a free Iraq’),31 The Independent refers to Saddam Hussein by using a determinative such as ‘this’ plus the common noun ‘man.’ This way of naming him may eventually convey the idea of his lack of power, since Saddam Hussein is identified just with the obvious: he is a man [+ adult] [+ male] [+human]. Furthermore, the deictic, which specifies near location from the perspective of addresser and addressee, conveys a notion of proximity that is unexpected when dealing with political figures, unless the writer can aim at diminishing them. This lack of deference can derive from showing someone like Saddam Hussein as an object of pity or an object of contempt (both at the same time). In the example, ‘this man was not leading the Iraqi insurgency,’ the reader might retrieve some omitted, inferable information as follows: ‘this [poor] [insignificant] man [here] [who had been so powerful] was not [in control] leading the Iraqi insurgency.’ The Guardian makes use of a similar strategy, but with a more informal and directly disrespectful tone, in their reporting someone’s reaction to the capture: ‘this guy did not put a bullet to his head.’ The implicature is stronger. We might read it as follows: ‘this [fucking] [cowardly] guy did not [have guts enough to] put a bullet to his head.’ Saddam Hussein was said to have been captured in a ‘hole.’ The Daily Mirror preferred the lexical item ‘lair’ on their front-page article. The Daily Mail was more specific and, besides this, they employed other expressions. Indirectly, these are a way of referring to him in pejorative terms (e.g. ‘hut,’ ‘dugout,’ ‘bolt-hole,’ ‘hideout,’ ‘underground chamber little bigger than a coffin,’ ‘spider hole,’ ‘dirt hole’, ‘rat hole’). All these phrases describe the dirty spot where he was found and had been living for some time, after paradoxically having owned palaces and ordered the building of luxurious mansions. But this is more than factual information. The figure of Saddam Hussein becomes smaller and smaller in importance. Portraying him in that little space could entail at least pity, irony, cynicism and underestimation. If it is a house or a shelter in someone’s garden, it is too insignificant for someone who has been so powerful; if it is a temporary building like those used by repair workers, it may be even worse, because he is identified with people whose economic as well as social status and conditions had nothing to do with his; if it was a place smaller than a coffin where he went secretly to get away from people trying to find him, the image involved is more crude, since Saddam Hussein can be perceived then as a
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______________________________________________________________ pusillanimous person who is dead or almost dead (at least metaphorically), there being left no trace of the strong man he was in the past. In most cases, the reader will always know that this room was inappropriate for someone who had ruled a country. Other implications may be the following. The first might be recovered mainly by Americans and those familiar with two wars: WWII and Vietnam. A ‘spider hole’ is not just a small place. The origin of this military term seems to have to do with an arachnid that makes a hole with a removable lid of silk and earth covered with soil to disguise the entrance. The Japanese fighting in the Pacific were said to be hiding in spider holes. The Viet Cong snipers also popped up out of these holes, terrifying American soldiers.32 In both cases, the US army was defeated, which made these two countries the target of American hatred. Choosing this term now might have been purely coincidental, and can be justified on the grounds that the words being reported were uttered by a military man, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq. Nonetheless, it is not unlikely that the public would make some mental association between the deposed dictator and those soldiers, who threatened the US system (just like Saddam Hussein did), which would result in hatred towards him as well. This reminds me of other historical referents with whom Saddam Hussein is compared directly: Hitler, the Nazis, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Fidel Castro. I understand that three of them are evidently similar (two dictators, and one party that became brutal); nonetheless, the other two are, from my perspective, not as wicked. Clearly enough, The Independent aimed at relating Saddam Hussein’s physical appearance to that of Marx and Che Guevara’s (his face and his eyes). One might assume, however, that the reader would unconsciously feel that it was not only a superficial similarity in terms of physical traits that they share, forcing them to dislike the three of them altogether because of the transferral of properties from the person described to the subjects used to describe him. This peculiarity shows the newspaper’s ideological preferences (and their ‘wickedness’) clearly. A further observation is related precisely to the phenomenon of property transferral, by means of which features pertaining to certain entities can be applied to others originally unrelated. That is the case of ‘rat hole,’ a noun phrase that refers to something other than a small place. Rats are said to be aggressive, omnivorous rodents with keen senses, and which reproduce very rapidly, have the ability to hide in inaccessible places and which prefer areas inhabited by humans so that they can find food easily.33 Plagues, infections and unsanitary conditions are some of the reasons why these animals are disgusting to most people. If a person comes to be identified with a rat, they will be disliked because of their having behavioural patterns associated to the features described above. Literally, Saddam Hussein hid in a hole in which there would be room only for animals such as rats.
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______________________________________________________________ Metaphorically, he is depicted as infectious and harmful. In this fashion he is animalised, but it will not be the only occasion when this happens. He was reported to have been caught in a lair, the place where a wild animal hides and sleeps, usually underground. His hair, his scraggy beard and his overall physical appearance illustrate the main ingredients of an untamed, savage beast (‘the old beast of Baghdad’). His reaction at that time (as opposed to previous ones), nonetheless, was far from ferocious or rebellious. Saddam Hussein al-Majid al Tikriti, the ‘Lion of Iraq’ and the ‘Lion of Babylon,’ was said to be a ‘big fish,’ and also a ‘mouse’ and a ‘snake.’ Apart from the description of ‘lion,’ the others are useful to ascribe him suitable features. Now he is timid and small, a prey. Before, he was venomous, unreliable, cold-blooded and very dangerous. 4.3. Transitivity Transitivity here refers to Halliday’s semantic concept.34 Sentences encapsulate meanings by metaphorically becoming scenarios in which participants are involved in processes that happen to take place in certain circumstances. There is some tendency for clause constituents to be expected to have a specific semantic role: subjects are generally agents; direct objects, patients; indirect objects can be recipient or beneficiary; subject complements, attributes, and so on. Processes of doing are those concerned with the physical world. The world of abstract relations is represented through processes of being or becoming. As for the world of consciousness, this has to do with processes of experiencing and sensing. Transitivity is a very powerful tool for the analysis of the meanings embodied in clauses. By paying attention to how participants are depicted in our corpus and the types of linguistic processes they are involved in, the reader will understand the point I make here. The West acts, does generally positive things, and has the chance to speak about them. Saddam Hussein is treated linguistically as he treated other people in the twenty previous years of dictatorship (i.e. he is dehumanised, humiliated and reified, when fragmented verbally and pictorially). However, there are other participants. Within the category of the ‘others’ of the West, Iraqis are also included, and they appear shouting and jumping. They are scared or dead. They are victims that are victimised in the newspapers too. Very few can be heard speaking, or are said to be actors. In fact, most of them are reported to be unemployed too. Unsurprisingly, the only exception is the case of one Iraqi who is said to have fought very bravely against Saddam Hussein. This picture may lead some to think that this other needs some teaching from those who are the active agents. In truth, that is one of the implications derived from Bush’s speech: And this afternoon I have a message for the Iraqi people. You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever
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______________________________________________________________ again […] Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people.35 Tony Blair sounds a very similar note. Let’s read one excerpt from the speech he delivered on 15 December 2003: And in Iraq today we work hard, the Coalition forces from thirty different nations and Iraqis who love their country and who work hard with us to rebuild Iraq […] In the timetable we have established, power will be handed over to Iraqis to run Iraq.36 The data concerning the processes depicted were not very surprising. They (basically, the coalition) are in the main involved in material (action) processes and verbal (saying) processes. Naturally, since they are identified with many of the values and beliefs supported by the privileged voice behind these newspapers, they are ‘sayers’ (or simply speakers) whose voice is heard profusely in several ways. They are also represented as agents who carry out generally neutral or more positive actions than their ‘High Value Target,’ who is described as perverse: ‘the coalition wanted to return power to Iraqis as soon as possible,’ ‘Coalition authorities have suspended death penalty,’ ‘Blair made a statesman-like call for reconciliation,’ ‘… removing a monster,’ ‘justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done,’ ‘from the people they [the coalition] had liberated.’ There is an interesting exception though: The Guardian’s journalists, who do not hesitate to view the coalition from all angles, even the less favourable ones: ‘they pointed their guns at us [Iraqis] and shouted,’ ‘presidents … who have embarked on ill conceived foreign adventures,’ ‘a country that British troops first invaded,’ ‘the US backed him and supplied him with chemical weapons.’ Since they are supposed to be in control of the situation, we find few examples in which the coalition acts as goal. They are rarely affected by others, which means that very seldom do the others act as responsible for the development of any action. Saddam Hussein (or rather ‘Saddam’s capture,’ ‘Saddam’s seizure’ or ‘the capture of Saddam’) is the main topic of many of the articles under analysis. That is the case especially of one of the tabloids. In the others, there are more examples about ‘them’ or where ‘their’ presence was more conspicuous. It may look curious that, although everyone knows who he is and what he has done, on this occasion the journalists seem to need to repeat it. The number of relational processes (either attribution or identification) he is syntactically involved in is very significant. He is identified, for example,
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______________________________________________________________ as ‘the target,’ ‘HVT number one,’ ‘a militant,’ ‘a spectre,’ ‘the Monster.’ He is portrayed as someone who believes in something very strongly and whose extreme ways to achieve his aims are unacceptable to people. It is also interesting to note that he is seen as the spirit of a dead person, as a large imaginary creature that looks very ugly and frightening, or someone who is cruel, terrifying or evil. He is said to be ‘a master at propaganda,’ ‘absolutely ruthless,’ ‘responsible for the death of thousands,’ who looked ‘a tired man … unrepentant and defiant,’ ‘either too dazed or too cowardly,’ ‘dishevelled, resigned and defeated,’ ‘paranoid about betrayal’, and who ‘didn’t seem apologetic.’ Nonetheless, he is also ‘a novelist,’ ‘the man who was the honour guest of the city of Paris’ or ‘a host of European statesmen.’37 It is evident that the actions he is said to have done are also mainly negative: ‘he bestrode this cowering country,’ ‘he denied [justice] to millions,’ ‘he held their country in such a ruthless grip’, ‘he robbed all the money from the Iraqi people,’ ‘he enslaved [people],’ ‘he butchered and tortured to build his empire,’ ‘he forced deportations,’ ‘he launched an 8-year war on Iraq,’ ‘he threatened to attack your neighbours.’ And he is accused, amongst other things, of ‘the killing of 8,000,’ ‘the slaughter [and] gassing of the Kurds,’ ‘the murder of 300,000,’ ‘the … imprisonment of thousands.’ Nonetheless, the plural voices we find recorded in these articles allow the inclusion of other material processes which are either by themselves positive (e.g. ‘from one of those palaces he built,’ ‘kissing children,’ ‘sometimes he was generous,’ ‘he loved his daughters,’ ‘he was intelligent’), or which, depending on the context, might be interpreted as positive (e.g. ‘he would cooperate,’ ‘was a symbol of defiance to the US plans in the region,’ ‘represented the hopes of the all Arabs’). I will comment on some of these examples. When someone builds a house, an organisation, or someone’s confidence or trust, the hearer knows that all these activities and their results are positive. Nonetheless, in this case, the dictator built palaces and mosques, and lived in luxury while the Iraqi people were living in poverty; that is why the journalists add the words ‘great’ or ‘vulgar’ to modify the type of building Hussein spent the country’s money on. The entailments of both are negative, either implicitly (something that is ‘great’ in comparison with the country’s poverty is not considered to be morally good) or explicitly (something ‘vulgar’ is from one’s perspective in bad taste or of poor artistic quality). He also built an empire ‘of murderous corruption.’ Again, the negative side of a theoretically positive action. ‘To kiss’ is one of those cases classified into the category of behavioural processes. I would describe it as material action. What I find interesting is that this process, whatever its type, is also very positive, especially if the people who are kissed are children. Nevertheless, the information from the context helps us recall that Saddam Hussein (like most
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______________________________________________________________ politicians) used children (even handicapped children), when he needed some visually perceptible support from the streets of Baghdad. A ‘generous’ person gives more of something, especially money, than is usual or expected. A ‘generous’ person is also helpful and willing to see the good qualities in someone or something. Saddam Hussein is reported to have been so. Nonetheless, the context gives more information, which may surprise: ten years after having killed a man in 1958, he gave the man’s family a gift of money and a pistol. The fact that Saddam Hussein was ‘a symbol of defiance to the US plans in the region’ may sound both positive and negative. Not to be willing to obey someone is negative if the person who should be obeyed wants something good to be done, which is not going to happen if this defiant attitude remains. However, what are the plans of the US in the area? Or, at least, what does the person who uses this expression (Azzam Hneidi, an Islamist member of the Jordanian Parliament) think these plans are? Clearly, something against the speaker’s own interests. Bearing in mind that this is a region rich in oil and so distant from the US, it should try to achieve something similar. Subsequently, this example shows the obvious: what is positive for some is not so for others. In the video shot by US soldiers, which went out to many TV stations, and in the description of the video visioning by most journalists, Saddam Hussein is reduced to parts of a body. Finally, he is visually fragmented; the effect is very peculiar: Against a white-tiled wall 66-year-old Saddam’s straggly hair, encrusted with dust, could just be seen ... The overgrown grey-white beard and finally his eyes came into view […] Saddam’s matted hair was checked for lice. A tongue depressor was pushed into his mouth.38 The journalist in this case is employing something similar to the rhetorical figure known as synecdoche. By means of this, the text gradually provides a partial picture of one individual who is analysed like an atom. We see his hair first, his eyes then, his mouth. The composite image of the dictator is deferred with the possible intention of depriving him of his humanity, by transforming him into a pseudo-object lacking in, amongst other things, any feelings anybody might feel sympathy for. A further effect on me as a reader was not disgust. The fragmentation of the dictator, and the reification involved, made me feel pity on him, because, instead of his impressive whole body, I could only see parts of someone who had been a murderous human being and now looked just like an old man. This might prevent him from having (human) emotions. However, this might also detach him from his evil condition, which had always been the result of the actions undertaken by the
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______________________________________________________________ complete ‘man with the moustache.’ So far, none of this was shocking. The position of newspapers was clear, reflected by their mainly humiliating depiction of the dictator, and the marginalisation and silencing of all voices other than the so-called nonproblematic West. The ideology of the media (and also how ‘evil’ they can be) is transparent in my final set of examples. I will point out one type of material process the dictator’s sons are involved in, which is concerned with their death. The Guardian employs nominalisation (a powerful means of abstraction) to disguise agency and responsibility.39 It speaks about ‘the death of Uday and Qusay’ (the end of their lives with no explicit indication of its cause) and ‘the killing in July of Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay’ (in this case, someone or something that is not mentioned caused them to stop living). In its editorial, we read an interesting statement: ‘… unlike Uday and Qusay, who resisted to the death, perishing in a murderous blizzard of bullets.’ Here the obvious inanimate ‘agent’ of their death is made explicit (i.e. the large amount of something as annoying and unpleasant as these bullets), but we still cannot see any trace of the animate agent pulling the trigger. The Daily Mirror says something about his elder sons being ‘killed in a battle,’ and adds that ‘Uday and Qusay … died in July, guns blazing, after waging a four-hour battle with American forces.’ In these examples, readers can see that there has been a change of state in the patient arguments (i.e. these two men), something natural and unavoidable. Although we get more information about how this took place, there is still no explicit mention of the agent. The journalists explain it in terms of the circumstances that surrounded this event. In a way, these circumstances seem to justify what happened: there was a long fight between opposing groups, one of which is vaguely present; it was in July; bullets were fired quickly and continuously, which would make a lot of noise; and the two of them perished. In the last mental scenario we can construct there is something else: Uday and Qusay were dead because they started this battle and continued it over a period of time. The American forces are only the goals of their actions. As for the Daily Mail, it published that his sons were ‘killed after opening fire on an overwhelming U.S. force which surrounded them in July,’ ‘in a fire-fight with U.S. forces,’ and that the two brothers ‘died in a shootout with U.S. troops.’ In the first case, the journalist chose to depict the episode as if Saddam Hussein’s sons had to be affected necessarily by a supposedly agentless action, which eventually caused them to stop living, because it was they themselves who started shooting at a US force. The adjective ‘overwhelming’ is the only clue that might indicate that the journalist perceives the situation as one in which the side mentioned explicitly is competing in inferiority of conditions. In the second case, we
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______________________________________________________________ only get to know that someone or something caused their death in a battle that involved the use of guns rather than bombs or any other sort of weapon. US forces are again merely a circumstance in the whole event. As for the third case, although the supposed agents of the demise of Saddam Hussein’s sons are still mentioned indirectly as minor participants, the fact that the journalist prefers the word ‘shoot-out’ helps the reader imagine a fight in which several people shot at each other. In other words, there was reciprocity, an idea not presented in the previous examples. Furthermore, a word such as ‘troops’ makes the reader see that there were other people involved in this ‘event,’ that the US force was not an abstraction without human beings responsible for actions, and that there was some human agency behind it. As shown above, the point I have been considering has to do with avoidance of agency. ‘To die’ is a material (event) process. It happens to people and other animate entities endowed with life, and it happens accidentally or not. If we use this lexical item, it is probably because we want to focus on the participant affected by it, and avoid being more specific about or making explicit the cause (e.g. an illness, misadventure), the agent (e.g. animate entity acting deliberately or not, which can be more or less cruel), the instrument (e.g. gun, knife, rope) or the circumstance (e.g. in water, in action) concurring to provoke it. If we prefer ‘to kill,’ we refer to a material (action) process that involves a patient or affected goal, and an actor that causes this event to happen (the death of the object). As for ‘to perish,’ it means that they died as a result of very harsh conditions or an accident; these very hard conditions were the bullets shot by the US troops, against which they fought to the death, an idea that is celebrated by the newspaper if compared with Saddam Hussein’s apparent passivity. The images resulting from the newspapers’ construction of the scene are the following. First of all, we know that this happened (to the two brothers). We also know the time when this event took place (July). We get some information about the context where and how this happened (in a battle; in a fire-fight; guns were blazing). Finally, we are provided with some possible reasons why this may have happened (they waged a battle with American forces; they opened fire on a US force). Sometimes the possible actor or cause of their deaths is referred to indirectly as another circumstantial element (waging a four-hour battle with American forces; in a fire-fight with US forces) or as the affected object of their actions (opening fire on a US force). These journalists represent Uday and Qusay’s loss of life as the result of their own previous actions. They are depicted as responsible for their deaths, since it was they and not the Americans who started the attack. Linguistically speaking, the US force is the patient suffering the actions of Saddam Hussein’s sons or a merely circumstantial component, but never the direct agent of that killing. This may have been an unconscious
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______________________________________________________________ choice. Nevertheless, in one article the writer adds more information that helps us understand the context of this event: the US force was overwhelming. The journalist emphasises that an amount or quantity is much greater than other amounts or quantities. The demise of these two cruel people is seen now from a different perspective. The affected goal has changed as well as the notion of who has been the patient/sufferer of someone else’s actions. 5.
Conclusions This paper develops some of the main tenets of critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis: aim, type of data and method of approach. In this practical exercise, I have looked at two different examples in order to observe the same phenomena: the linguistic representation of evil and language manipulation in reality construction. Methodologically speaking, I have studied some aspects analysts consider relevant to understand people’s positioning: lexical selection, reference and transitivity patterns. This is one way to get to know who you are, how you see the world, how you perceive other participants. The application of this perspective is useful because it deals with ideologically loaded material in a systematic manner. On this occasion, this has been viable thanks to a complementary tool such as corpus linguistics, which has allowed me to scrutinise frequency patterns, and has made it easier to discover the traces of what is and is not present, in order to comprehend better the intention of speakers and writers. If they avoid some words in particular, for instance, this may be an indication of their fears and their taboo areas. If, on the contrary, they prefer some others, this will mean they are worried about or obsessed with those problems around which their discourse revolves. Despite the systematicity of this type of approach, I agree ‘critical linguistics is [not] a mechanical procedure which automatically yields ‘objective’ interpretation.’40 Furthermore, I cannot forget that Chilton is right when he says that ‘labelling stretches of language as serving strategic functions is an interpretative act.’41 All in all, as explicitly stated earlier, I believe that certain devices lead an audience to analogous conclusions. I am sure that certain linguistic patterns have certain implications other scholars can also examine when replicating similar experiments. The microanalysis of a text helps to support this point; its macro-analysis, on the other hand, is often used to avoid misjudgements. Everything is meaningful in language. The selection of one item implies at the same time the exclusion of some others.42 In Fowler’s words, ‘[d]ifferences in expression carry ideological distinctions (and thus differences in representation).’43 The critical linguist and the discourse analyst must consider this quite seriously. Categories such as ideology and power are present in the analysis of discourse practice.44 That is something I find revealing, because representation has to do with power. It is the powerful that can represent
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______________________________________________________________ others (and themselves) in the light they may find more appropriate, more hurting, more encouraging. Those who are powerful give or do not give voice to those represented in their own discourse practices. Their control of the media allows them to arrange the ordering of events, to obscure or give more prominence to the role of certain participants. It is interesting to observe conceptual similarities in other studies. Chilton, for instance, analyses the topic of the ‘others,’ the ‘outsiders,’ in relation to the question of immigration in the UK.45 He concludes that these are the counterpart of a community’s own sense of identity. This basic idea is applicable to my terrain here. In my case, the ‘others’ are those whose values are criticised by, or simply different from, those who speak or write about them. The ‘others’ are those who jeopardise the centre, those who are regarded as marginal, in other words, a minority. The speakers and writers under scrutiny express attitudes towards what they have created as a category: gays. They judge the individual through the generic concept. These try to look ‘right’ in a cognitive and a moral sense. That is why their strategy is to show that their ‘other’ is not cognitively or morally right. They use a legitimising strategy of moral authority and common moral ground, which ‘leaves available the inference that [the other is] not moral.’46 By asserting their own superior rationality, they leave open the inference that opponents are irrational. They presume ‘certain moral axioms [such as] rationality, protection of the weak and the rights of the in-group.’47 Categorising ‘others’ implies building up conceptual oppositions and polarities, embodied by pairs of terms that define one’s group in contrast with another and that project people’s prejudices and values. Justifying a decision, like the refusal of adoption by same-sex couples, constructs a potential world of fear and danger, in which there are examples of opposites: us and them, inside and outside, centre and periphery, just and unjust, right and wrong, useful and harmful, morally good and morally reprehensible. Representing Saddam’s evil behaviour leads to evil as well. To dehumanise him makes the writer less human. Showing his sons’ death in a scenario with no agents but themselves is, to say the least, an (evil) way of hiding the truth. To a certain extent, there exists something like a ‘language of evil’ that is both the language of those who are evil, and language about evil things and evil people. Therefore, the good and the wicked do not speak differently. The target of each is to point out how wrong the other is, so that they become better in the eyes of their audience. What we see in my data is that this is true, but there is something more: trying to become good in your audience’s eyes by speaking ill of your ‘antagonists’ may show your own evil nature too.
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Notes 1
I am greatly indebted to Dr Graeme Porte for his many helpful comments on the draft version of this paper. 2 See E Hidalgo Tenorio, ‘The Discourse of Good and Evil in Twentiethcentury Speeches’, in Truth, Reconciliation, and Evil, M. Breen (ed), Rodopi, Amsterdam & New York, 2004, pp. 45-65. 3 G Southwell, ‘The Problem of Evil’, PhilosophyOnline, viewed on 25 January 2006,
. 4 ‘Evil,’ Cerebrals, viewed on 25 January 2006, . 5 G Brough, D Mackay and J Hardy, ‘The Devil is Caught. Iraqis Take to the Streets to Rejoice over Seizure’, Daily Mirror, 15 December 2003, 7. 6 P Chilton, Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice, Routledge, London & New York, 2004, p. xi. 7 N Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: the Critical Study of Language, Longman, Harlow, London, 1995, p. 36. 8 See J Sinclair, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991. 9 See B Louw, ‘Some Implications of Progressive Delexicalisation and Semantic Prosodies for Hallidayan Metaphorical Modes of Expression and Lakoffian ‘Metaphors We Live By,’’ Functions of Language, vol. 4, 2000, pp. 1-35. 10 See M Scott, Wordsmith Tools 3.0. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. 11 See M A K Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Edward Arnold, London, 1985. 12 A Basallo, ‘La Ignorancia Científica es Substituida por la Ideología. Entrevista con Aquilino Polaino’, Fluvium, 22 June 2005, viewed on 21 January 2006, . 13 Chilton, op. cit., p. 61. 14 ‘Sympathy,’ Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus, (30 December 2005). 15 Chilton, op. cit., p.118. 16 To confirm this point, see the etymological definition of ‘unnatural’ at . 17 M Bayón and E de Benito, ‘Rouco y el Nuncio Admiten que se Regulen las Parejas Gays, pero no que Sean Familias’, El País, 4 May 2004, p. 29. 18 Conferencia Episcopal Española, ‘La pastoral del matrimonio y la familia’, 21 November 2003, viewed on 1 January 2005, . 19 REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA: Banco de datos (CREA) [en línea]. Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual, .
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British National Corpus, . For some, they are not perverts, terminologically speaking, but psychologically they are close, because they believe homosexuality is a defect. It is no surprise that, when trying to compare it with heterosexuality, one speaker uses the pair ‘intelligence’ vs. ‘sub-average intellectual functioning.’ 22 ‘Love,’ Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, viewed on 21 February 2006, . 23 J M Ballester Esquivias, ‘No Tengo Nada contra los Homosexuales’, Periodistadigital.com, 1 July 2005, viewed on 25 January 2006, . 24 Conferencia Episcopal Española, ‘Matrimonio, familia y ‘uniones homosexuales’’, 24 June 1994, viewed on 17 January 2006, . 25 ‘Normal,’ Thesaurus.com, viewed on 17 January 2006, . 26 ‘Normal,’ Dictionary.com, viewed on 17 January 2006, . 27 See H G Widdowson, Text, Context, Pretext. Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004. 28 N Fairclough, Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research, Routledge, London & New York, 2003, p. 85. 29 R Fowler, Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press, Routledge, London & New York, 1991. 30 Fairclough, op. cit., p. 61. 31 George Bush, ‘President Bush Addresses Nation on the Capture of Saddam Hussein’, 15 December 2003, viewed on 17 December 2003, . 32 A Bowers, ‘What’s a Spider Hole? And since when do Spiders Dig Holes, Anyway?’, Slate Magazine, 15 December 2003, viewed on 25 January 2005, . 33 ‘Rat,’ Britannica Online, viewed on 22 December 2005, 34 See Halliday, op. cit., ch. 5. 35 Bush, op. cit., 2003. 36 Tony Blair, ‘Prime Minister: Shadow of Saddam Lifted off Iraq’, 15 December 2003, viewed on 17 December 2003, . 37 Note that this expression, instead of giving Saddam great credit, belittles those who are identified as his old colleagues because of the type of 21
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______________________________________________________________ relationship they may have held with him in the past. In the reader’s eyes, they lose their prestige. 38 S White and J Hardy, ‘‘We Got Him.’ America Shows the World Sensational Video of the Fallen Dictator in Custody’, Daily Mirror, 15 December 2003, p. 2. 39 Fairclough, op. cit., p. 144. 40 Fowler, op. cit., p. 68. 41 Chilton, op. cit., p. 111. 42 Fairclough, op. cit., p. 210. 43 Fowler, op. cit., p. 4. 44 Fairclough, op. cit, p. 11. 45 Chilton, op. cit., ch. 7. 46 Ibid., p. 117. 47 Ibid., p. 127.
PART II Literary Frameworks for Evil
Falling Under an Evil Influence Jeffrey Wallen Abstract: Several late nineteenth-century literary texts offer new challenges to the possibility of knowing whether actions are good or evil. In these works the invocation of evil is connected with the unconscious mind and altered states of consciousness, with the fear of falling under the influence of some other person or unknown force, and with the post-Darwinian challenge of distinguishing the human from the animal. What these anxieties all have in common is that they call into question the stable boundaries that give us the confidence to make judgments about evil. At the end of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of new understandings of biological ‘life,’ there is a crisis concerning the definition of the human. Explorations and reevaluations of evil become a primary means for reconceiving essential human traits such as consciousness, suffering, and autonomy. Key Words: Biology, Bram Stoker, evil, Guy de Maupassant, H. G. Wells, hypnosis, influence, Robert Louis Stevenson ***** At the end of the nineteenth century, a series of literary works offer new challenges to earlier understandings of evil, and especially to the conceptions - such as free will - upon which ideas about evil have often rested. Such well-known stories as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Guy de Maupassant’s Le Horla, and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau strikingly question an earlier confidence that we have the ability to choose between good and evil. In this essay, I want to emphasize and elaborate just a few main points. I will begin by laying out some of the ways in which the depiction of evil at the end of the nineteenth century represents a shift from earlier explanations of evil. I will argue that in the works mentioned above the invocation of evil is now connected with the unconscious mind and altered states of consciousness, with the fear of falling under the influence of some other person or unknown force, and with the post-Darwinian challenge of distinguishing the human from the animal. Whereas earlier explorations of evil often focused on the gap between what one knows (is right) and what one does, and on attributes of the mind such as ‘intention’ and ‘will’, in these works the supremacy of consciousness is itself in doubt. Concerns about the unconscious, about influence, and about the difficulty of defining the boundary between human and animal all arise from the new tendency in the nineteenth century to look at man as a biological
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______________________________________________________________ being. The unconscious becomes a necessary object of study once the mind is viewed not as in some measure separable from the body, but as itself the result of physiological processes. Automatic and reflex actions are now seen as part of a continuum with conscious actions, all involving the nervous system and the brain. In addition, the unusual phenomena of mesmerism, somnambulism, and later hypnotism (all of which received substantial scientific attention throughout the nineteenth century), in which one person is able to gain a measure of control over the mind of another, offer a further challenge to the autonomy and independence of the individual, and raise the possibility of a powerful force that can control our minds. At the end of the nineteenth century, with Darwin’s ideas having been absorbed along with the recent scientific thinking in biology and physiology, there is a new crisis concerning the definition of the human. Evil has always been a primary category for exploring the boundaries and definitions of the human, and the revaluation of evil in such popular writers as Stevenson, Wells, Maupassant, and even Stoker works to reconceive essential human traits such as consciousness, suffering, and autonomy. I will also argue that the value of thinking about these works, which imagine monstrous and fantastic figures such as Dracula, Mr. Hyde, or Dr. Moreau, is not primarily historical. That is, these writers do not provide merely an instance of the transition between Enlightenment investigations of evil and twentieth-century, post-Auschwitz attempts to deal with the incomprehensibility of the extreme violations of reasonable norms of human behaviour by large numbers of people. In these works, imagining evil is necessary in order to think beyond conventional categories of understanding. The invocation of a monster, of a quasi-human figure such as the vampire, Mr. Hyde, the ‘horla’ or the beast-man, opens up a moment of not yet knowing, and forces an epistemological crisis: the characters must confront directly challenges to the grounds of their knowledge. At the extreme, a scientist (Dr. Lanyon in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) dies from this shock to his system of knowledge. These works also compel us to reconsider the (unwarranted) belief that our current categories of knowledge are now sufficient to comprehend all human actions or behaviour, and disturb the complacency of many contemporary discussions in which the category of evil is treated as merely a relic of a religious past and a hindrance to explaining how individuals and groups of people act. 1.
Moral Evil Susan Neiman, in her recent book Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, offers a very helpful account of the fundamental role of evil in modern thought during the last three centuries. She argues that ‘modern consciousness’ is marked by the development of a ‘sharp distinction between natural and moral evil’, between suffering caused,
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______________________________________________________________ for instance, by a natural disaster such as an earthquake, and suffering caused by acts of human cruelty.1 She asserts that the responses to the devastating earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 worked to develop and clarify this separation, and that ‘[m]odern conceptions of evil were developed in an attempt to stop blaming God for the state of the world.’2 At play in attempts to formulate this distinction is the idea that ‘moral’ in contrast to ‘natural’ evil is potentially preventable, and with the normalization of the distinction between natural and moral evil, suffering caused by acts of nature is soon no longer considered to be ‘evil’ at all. That is, moral evil occurs because of decisions that people make, and that could be made differently. The exploration of the category of moral evil is intimately intertwined with ideas of human freedom, and also has as one of its presuppositions the idea that greater knowledge will help people to overcome evil. Philosophical discussions of evil in the latter half of the eighteenth century highlight the moral nature of the human being. Kant, in his late book Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, situates the human between the animal and the diabolical (or the angelical, if the context were not a discussion of evil): Sensuous nature therefore contains too little to provide a ground of moral evil in the human being, for, to the extent that it eliminates the incentives originating in freedom, it makes of the human a purely animal being; a reason exonerated from the moral law, an evil reason as it were, (an absolutely evil will), would on the contrary contain too much, because resistance to the law would itself be thereby elevated to incentive (for without any incentive the power of choice cannot be determined), and so the subject would be made a diabolical being. - Neither of these two is however applicable to the human being.3 The category of ‘the human being’ emphasizes a freedom that entails neither absolute submission nor resistance to the law (and to determination). Examinations of evil, in such very different writers as Kant and Rousseau and others in the eighteenth century, probe the reasons for the choices we make. Of primary concern in these discourses are the topics of responsibility, knowability, and weakness. There is the insistence that we are responsible for our evil actions and that the sources of evil should not be ascribed to a foreign, non-human agent (such as the devil) or to the impersonal, preordained powers of fate. The question of knowability addresses the problems of knowing whether an action, and especially an intention, is evil - the difficulty, for example, of seeing into someone’s heart or soul so as to properly judge what to think of a human being. And discussions of human
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______________________________________________________________ weakness examine which aspects of human nature make us susceptible to evil, and explore which circumstances or forces draw us away from the good.4 In all three cases what is central is the exploration of whatever hinders, in Kant’s words, the ‘establishment in us of a genuine moral disposition’, despite the free power of human thought and will. In all these discussions, these hindrances to moral responsibility, knowledge, and strength are never seen as absolute challenges to human reason or to our ability to make moral decisions; they are not fatal flaws, limitations that are so extreme as to propel us into the category of either an animal or diabolical being, of a being for whom moral choice and overcoming evil are not possible. Kant, even in his formulation of the category of ‘the radical evil of human nature which . . . constitutes the foul stain of our species’, and which ‘hinders the germ of the good from developing as it otherwise would’, still insists that we might some day ‘remove it.’5 Joan Copjec, in her introduction to a volume of essays on Kant’s notion of ‘radical evil’, states that Kant raises the question of whether free will survives the notion of radical evil: ‘Does evil consume will entirely or does it leave behind something that might positively strive toward good?’6 She acknowledges that the answer for Kant is clearly no - evil does not entirely consume will - but even ‘if we take Kant’s thinking where it refuses to go’ (as she suggests many contemporary critics do), and were to argue for ‘a corruption of the will itself’, it would still not be possible, within the framework of Kant’s thought or within the larger framework of eighteenthcentury thinking, to turn away from a set of categories and faculties (understanding, reason, moral disposition, etc.) that are grounded in human consciousness and in the properties of the mind, not in the analysis of the brain. Any challenge to ‘will’ or intention based on ‘Kant’s thinking’ will have nothing to with physiology, or bear any relation to the contemporary research which has suggested that in some instances an intention is actually formed milliseconds after, rather than before, an action commences.7 The late nineteenth-century texts by Maupassant, Stevenson, Stoker, and Wells, taking off from developments in psychology, physiology, and evolutionary biology, highlight instead unusual mental states that threaten or undermine consciousness itself. Somnambulism, an uncanny condition where one moves about and acts, but is also asleep and unaware of one’s actions, is in Dracula the state where one is particularly susceptible to the forces of evil. Lucy Westenra, when she is sleepwalking, welcomes Dracula to England and provides him a beachhead after his journey across the sea, yet is totally unconscious of what she is doing. Her transformation into a lustful, predatory, and potentially murderous creature depends on her tendency to fall back into this state that undermines her powers of decision, will, or understanding. Mina, the other woman who will fall prey to Dracula, if only temporarily, is in a drugged state (having taken chloral) when Dracula attacks
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______________________________________________________________ her - what one might think of as an artificial form of achieving this uncanny middle ground that is neither natural sleep nor wakefulness. Perhaps she recovers from Dracula’s bite because this state of susceptibility was not her innate tendency (as with Lucy) but resulted from an external, artificial substance entering into her system. Hypnotism, sometimes referred to as ‘artificial somnambulism’, is a central feature of Dracula, Le Horla, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Hypnotism and its precursor mesmerism describe a process of falling under the influence of an unknown person or force and losing any autonomy of will.8 Jean-Martin Charcot gave immense scientific respect to the practice of hypnotism in the 1880s, and Maupassant frequently attended Charcot’s leçons du mardi at Salpêtrière (as did Freud during his year in Paris studying with Charcot). Although there is no mention of hypnotism in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the book centres on Mr. Hyde’s mysterious power to exercise an ‘evil influence’ on Dr. Jekyll.9 The possibility that someone may have the hidden power to influence others to perform evil acts is common in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature (Dr. Mabuse, a gifted hypnotist and psychotherapist, is one of the most extreme incarnations of this threat), and undermines any determinations about moral evil. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, hypnotism is the pathway for education (as it is in other of Wells’s works such as When the Sleeper Wakes), and it is essential for Dr. Moreau’s method of transforming ‘beasts’ into humans: In our growing science of hypnotism, we find the promise of a possibility of replacing old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct.10 Similar thoughts can be found in the writings of Wells’s mentor, T. H. Huxley (most remembered today as the defender and popularise of Darwin’s ideas. Mesmerism (also called ‘animal magnetism’ as it posits a force akin to gravity that acts on the mind and human body just as gravity acts on and is transmitted between celestial bodies), somnambulism, and hypnotism were of widespread interest to physiologists in the nineteenth century because these phenomena seem to reveal pathways in which the mind is subject to external, unknown forces, while also reinserting the mind into the field of living organisms and physiological processes. These phenomena are at the limit of the natural and the supernatural, and are a far cry from the earlier terrain of ‘human nature’ as the object of study for investigations of the mind and human behaviour.
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______________________________________________________________ A common feature of all four of these texts is a radical blurring of the boundary between such habitual distinctions as human and animal, moral and natural, and education and instinct. Dr. Moreau’s creation of the Beast Folk, in which various animals are transformed into men (though the narrator Prendick first believes that men are being transformed back into animals), provides the strongest enactment of the porosity of the line between ‘human’ and ‘animal’. In his essay ‘The Limits of Individual Plasticity’, published a couple of years before the novel, Wells argues that ‘a living being may also be regarded as raw material, as something plastic, something that may be shaped and altered’, and in describing these means of alteration he speaks of grafting, ‘the transfusion of blood’ (a new development in medicine, central to the plot of Dracula), and hypnotism, which he describes in language almost identical to that quoted above.11 Processes of mixing and transformation that we might think of as belonging respectively to the plant, the animal, and the mind are here all intermingled as examples of the plasticity of the living being. The plasticity of life destabilizes any foundation for consciousness in the category of the human. In Dracula no less than in The Island of Dr. Moreau, there is the imminent possibility that we can slip into some other state in which our animality - heightened sexuality, predatory characteristics such as longer and sharper teeth, sucking the blood of others - will return and take over. Dr. Jekyll experiences most dramatically this transformation of himself into a creature ‘not only hellish but inorganic.’12 In these texts, what the anxieties about consciousness, will, and autonomy all share is that they call into question the very boundaries that give us the confidence to make judgments about evil. Such judgments require the capacity to distinguish between self and other, conscious and unconscious, internal and external, animal and human, voluntary and automatic action, autonomous and heteronymous. Each of these stories intently challenges several of these oppositions. Evil destabilizes boundaries and clouds distinctions. The danger of disorientation, of no longer being able to distinguish clearly between good and evil, is itself often taken to be one of the worst effects of the spread of evil, while conversely the fascination with evil is intertwined with a desire to explore and go beyond limits. Enlightenment thinkers certainly do not have simplistic views of evil, and they also focus on its disorienting and obscuring effects. Kant introduces the term ‘radical evil’ to describe that which threatens the ‘knowability’ of evil: something which throws dust in our eyes, and ‘puts out of tune the moral ability to judge what to think of a human being and renders any accountability uncertain.’13 Evil threatens transparency. Jean Starobinski, in his brilliant study of Rousseau, states that for Rousseau the ‘fall of man’ is a fall into ‘a vicious climate of mistrust and opacity’, and he argues that Rousseau aims to ‘remake or unmake history in
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______________________________________________________________ order to regain the transparency we have lost.’14 Rousseau, in his continual quest to restore transparency, insistently explores the hidden causes of our actions. In seeking to explain the source of his own ‘evil’ actions - or of actions that may have been described as evil by others - Rousseau writes of an ‘irresistible instinctive reaction . . . independent of my will’ and of words that ‘neither my judgement nor my will dictated’ but that were ‘the automatic effect of my embarrassment.’15 He states that there ‘are very few of our automatic reactions [movements machinals] whose cause we cannot discover in our hearts, if we are really capable of looking for it,’ and like Kant he is at pains to differentiate between evil (lies, in this passage) caused by ‘weakness’ as opposed to ‘deceitfulness.’16 Both when writing about himself and when diagnosing the ills of society, Rousseau forces us to reconsider how we are to distinguish between intended and unintended consequences, a distinction that is also necessary for the understanding of ‘moral evil.’ Yet there is a stark shift in the approaches taken toward explaining this obscuring power of evil, ‘by which we throw dust in our own eyes’ in Kant’s wonderful phrase, between Kant and Rousseau on the one hand, and Stevenson, Maupassant, Wells, and so forth on the other.17 Whereas Kant, in explaining ‘the natural propensity to evil,’ offers a metaphysical and philosophic questioning of ‘human nature,’ and distinguishes between three different degrees of defects in human nature - frailty, impurity, and depravity - these later writers turn to contemporary physical and scientific knowledge, to current theories about the workings of the nervous system and reflex actions, to debates about hypnotism, and to other research into human physiology and pathology. The investigation of evil moves on to a new terrain when earlier categories of will, autonomy, and ‘a free power of choice’18 are now seen as shaped by the nervous system and (biological) heredity, or as Walter Bagehot puts it in his 1872 book Physics and Politics, ‘transmitted nerve elements . . . act upon and incline the will of man from age to age.’19 For these writers at the end of the nineteenth century, the challenge of the ‘knowability’ of evil has shifted from questions of judgment, responsibility, and intention to the much starker problem of whether one any longer even has the ability to know whether one is in fact acting autonomously, or whether one’s actions can really be said to be one’s own at all. In these stories, the fundamental struggle is less a question of the conventional battles of strength and cunning between hero and villain, than a question of whether one can withstand or will succumb to some non-human force that threatens to make one’s mind and body an agent of its will. Whereas Rousseau and Kant can look inward into the human heart for answers to their questions, the narrator in Maupassant’s story is radically uncertain whether even such a simple action as drinking from a bottle of water is performed by himself or by another (when he goes to sleep, the flask
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______________________________________________________________ of water by his bed is full; when he awakes, it is empty). He responds to his doubts by carrying out a ‘scientific’ experiment: he seals the bottle with a piece of white muslin, and rubs black pencil lead over his mouth. If he were to drink from the bottle unconsciously, there should be black marks left on the white cloth. Not surprisingly, the experiment does not yield a definitive answer: the boundary between internal and external remains in doubt. Not only is it no longer possible to decide whether an effect can be traced back to a cause that resides in this person or is instead located outside him, but any clear separation of internal and external, or of what is inside or outside the body, becomes problematic. The container itself seems subject to strange laws, as it no longer functions to distinctly separate an interior space from an exterior one. These most memorable portraits of monstrosity are not textbook cases of contemporary scientific inquiry. Rather, they present clashes between perspectives: between an ethic of moral evil and a new form of ‘natural’ evil in which man is merely one biological being among others and in which nature treats man as just another animal; between the realistic and the fantastic; and between the traditional and the new. The level of scientific knowledge and curiosity varies greatly between these writers, with Wells at one end of the spectrum and Stoker at the other. I am not trying to trace the degree of direct scientific influence on any of these writers, but rather suggesting that they all are caught up in new modes of thinking. François Jacob, the Nobel-prize-winning geneticist, describes in his book The Logic of Life the emergence of the category of ‘life’ in the nineteenth century: ‘Throughout the seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth century, that particular quality of organization called ‘life’ by the nineteenth century was unrecognized.’20 Jacob, in this book published four years after Foucault’s The Order of Things (with which it has a lot in common), writes that ‘once they are accepted, scientific theories contribute more than anything else to reorganizing the domain of the possible, modifying ways of looking at things, bringing to light new relationships or objects; in short, changing the existing order.’21 For the biologist in the nineteenth century (and the word ‘biology’ only came into use at the beginning of the nineteenth century), it makes sense to speak of a new episteme, and of ‘a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge.’22 There is a fundamentally different understanding of what questions need to be addressed and of how they are to be answered for the scientist at the end of the nineteenth century than there was 150 years earlier. The Oxford English Dictionary uses Foucault to supply its definition for episteme (‘Foucault’s term for the body of ideas which shape the perception of knowledge at a particular period’). By the end of the nineteenth century new developments in biology greatly shaped the perception of knowledge, and of the world more generally.
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______________________________________________________________ For the literary writer, however, the old order and earlier arrangements do not so quickly recede, and the new epistemological field is less all encompassing. These works about vampires, mad scientists, and unidentifiable creatures all stage a battle between different views of ‘man’ (and of woman), in which the question of the sovereignty, autonomy, and the entelechy of the human are at stake. Earlier conceptions of morality are not left behind, and modern ideas about the significance of evolution and the discoveries of physical science are not wholeheartedly embraced. The fascination with evil is precisely a refusal to separate and choose between man as a moral and a biological being. There is no easy way to align competing views with a clear-cut moral opposition. Rather than simply dramatizing a clash between good and evil, the central issue in each of these works is whether one still has the ability to choose between good and evil. The monster in each case is an incarnation of some new force that radically disturbs our ability to control our choices, whether by gaining control of our mind or by undermining altogether any belief in the independence, individuality, and sanity of our thoughts. There are three possible trajectories in response to the threat posed by the monster, and it is this matrix, which structures the plots of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and Le Horla. Together these stories play out the different variants. Either the threat will be vanquished and the power to choose between good and evil will be reaffirmed, or the ability to control one’s choices will be lost, or it will not even be possible for us to decide whether freedom of choice survives, and the outcome itself remains indeterminate. The first path is the most conventional, and is the option embraced in Dracula, the most popular and enduring (especially through its film adaptations) of these works. The book concludes with life and with the birth of a new generation once the monster is killed: doubt, along with the vampire, has been vanquished and freedom of will has seemingly been restored (Jonathan Harker, the father of the new offspring, has suffered from brain fever early on arising from his extreme doubts about his own sanity, but he too appears to have made a full recovery). In Stevenson’s story, Jekyll and Hyde die when any remnants of choice come to end. The drug that promised an enhanced ability to choose between good and evil cannot be replicated, and there is no natural means to control the transformations that the drug has set loose. Madness appears to be the outcome in Le Horla, though any judgment about the sanity or insanity of the narrator is immensely problematic, since the confusions about who or what is master, and about whether one can act freely or is instead the plaything of another remain radically irresolvable.23
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______________________________________________________________ 2.
The Spread of Evil The real threat to the world, if not to the lives of the characters, can never be reduced to the figure of the monster. Monstrosity and exaggeration in these stories do not function so as to localise evil onto the figure of an imaginary, supernatural, and unrealistic being whose defeat will put an end to whatever irruption of evil has taken place. In all of these stories the threat is not confined to a particularly susceptible victim, but is general. Hatred, violence, and barbarous behaviour are contagious, which we see for instance whenever Mr. Hyde is viewed by others: ‘I never saw such a circle of hateful faces’ is the effect produced by his first appearance.24 When the monster is defeated, the threat that was uncovered always remains, for it was never essentially connected to the supernatural or hyperbolic qualities of the monster. Questions about our own animality, or the value to be placed on reducing suffering, or about the shock of recognizing evil do not depend finally on the extreme features of Mr. Hyde or the incredible vivisectionist skills of Dr. Moreau. The concluding thoughts of Prendick in Wells’s story haunt all of these encounters: Then I look about me at my fellow men. And I go in fear. I see faces keen and bright, others dull and dangerous, others unsteady, insincere; none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up through them . . . I know this is an illusion . . . Yet I shrink from them.25 The intrusion of the monstrous and the fantastic do, however, impel us to address questions about evil that we would otherwise prefer to evade or ignore. These books explore the effects of evil on others more than they elaborate the genealogy of evil within a particularly evil being. If the power of the monstrous figure were confined simply to that of life and death over another, to determining whether someone lives or dies, there would be no threat to the fabric of civilization, or to the reader. Evil is always contagious, and a central question that these works both pose and address is: How does one come to treat another as in-human, as a ‘thing’ rather than a person? This question, in others words, is not relevant solely to the monster (to Dracula or Mr. Hyde), but to everyone who comes into any contact with the monster or those it has affected. Treating a person as a thing provides one general definition of evil. Mr. Hyde explains killing someone he encounters on the street: ‘I struck in no more reasonable a spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything.’26 Even if he seems to be beyond the bounds of verisimilitude, and therefore truly a monster, there is still a continuity in his behaviour with what
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______________________________________________________________ is deeply rooted in all of us. We have all been and behaved like sick children at one time or another, and are capable of regressing to that stage under certain pressures. What is so hideous about Hyde is that he does not appear to differentiate between a person and any other sort of object that might get in his way or upset him. The very first description of Hyde is the most horrifying: Well, sir, the two [Hyde and a little girl] ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut.27 The scenario is an ordinary one: two people each unaware of the other are walking toward the same city street corner and, reaching it at the exact same time, collide. But Edward Hyde, rather than acting as an ordinary Londoner, moves as if he were some unstoppable vehicle, a chariot impelled by the power of some foreign god that crushes people beneath its wheels. The entrance of Hyde into public view opens up a space of evil: the possibility of contagion, of mob violence, of uncontrollable and unbounded desires to kill. In this opening scene of the book we are told that there is ‘one curious circumstance’: every person, merely upon seeing Hyde, takes a loathing to him and turns ‘sick and white with the desire to kill him.’ Hyde treats the child like a dead object, and all who see this ‘ugly’ person who ‘gives a strong feeling of deformity’ become in turn ‘wild as harpies’ and ‘a circle of . . . hateful faces.’ So not only do we have a spectacle of evil - Hyde treating a human as non-human - but more threateningly, a cognitive panic: how are we now to tell the human from the non-human? The difficulty of describing Hyde is a symptom of the impossibility of deciding whether he is man or devil, human or non-human: There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point . . . and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him.28 The anxiety caused by this inability to know any longer what one is seeing produces loathing and a desire to kill.
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______________________________________________________________ Before discussing further Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it will help to look at Dracula, which seems to offer the most straightforward responses to the question of how one comes to treat a person as a thing, and to the problem of drawing the line between human and a non-human or animal other. In Dracula, what started out as an external threat - some unknown agency that seems able to determine whether Lucy Westenra will live or die - becomes internalised, as Lucy too becomes a vampire. One comes under the influence of Dracula, and through this process of being treated like an animal - a body to be used merely as the source of nutrition for another, as a host for a parasite - one begins to treat others as non-human as well. Lucy begins to prey on children, to suck their blood for her daily (actually, nightly) nutriment. Here perhaps rather than ‘vampire’ it would be best to use one of the many other names for this odd species - ‘the Un-Dead’ - since what infests and drains Lucy is this most improper disturbance of the laws of nature: the refusal to die at the appropriate moment, the refusal to pass from organic to inorganic. The Un-Dead live on in a state that is neither dead nor alive, neither body nor soul. They belong always also to some other, earlier moment, and refuse to take their proper place in the passage of time; that is, to fade away and to live on solely through their children or their works, or as one might say today, through their genes or their memes. The confusion between person and thing is a symptom of this greater disturbance between the living and the dead. A parallel disturbance is occurring in the scientific world as well at this time. With the reunification of organic and inorganic chemistry during the second half of the nineteenth century, there was no longer any need to invoke a ‘vital force’ or ‘spontaneous generation’ to account for the mechanisms and the building blocks of life: ‘All distinctions between reactions in the living world and in the laboratory were finally to disappear.’29 What distinguishes the living from the non-living was in some ways becoming more rather than less of a mystery. The most graphically violent scene in Dracula, the group activity of driving a stake through the heart of Lucy and then cutting off her head, seeks to affirm that the group still has the power to distinguish between human and non-human (and at a simpler level, to put the wandering Lucy back in her place). The claim is that they have the right to kill, since they (and only they) can maintain and patrol the boundary between human and unnatural other, man and vampire, living and undead. The participatory violence celebrates their ability to maintain a definition and an understanding of the human that for others is radically in doubt: the newspapers are filled with the mystery of the ‘boofer lady,’ who mysteriously draws young children away from the safety of their familiar and familial domain.30 If Lucy were not something other than human, the band would be guilty of an extreme violation of the laws regarding the treatment of the living and the dead, but for these men the scene functions as an initiation ceremony. They too now have the right to
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______________________________________________________________ treat the apparently human as a thing, as a body to be violated and dismembered, since only the initiated can tell the difference between human and other. The violent ritual is necessary to undo the evil that has already taken place: the growing of the inhuman, foreign animal within that most precious and fragile vessel of domestic generativity, Lucy Westenra. The scene is highly performative, and bears similarities to an exorcism. The evil force must be driven out, here by repeatedly pounding a stake into her heart. Like the captain or mate of a whaleboat driving the lance into the heart of the whale to finish it off, Lord Arthur Godalming drives the stake into Lucy’s heart, and the blood spouts freely: He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it.31 Rather than being a crucial step in transforming a living animal into fuel, into oil and candles, here the act of violence returns Lucy to her ‘natural’ state, to an earlier, original condition of perfect innocence: There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.32 The Un-Dead can no longer haunt her, but she is still (or finally) dead, and not returned to life. She too has been successfully rendered into a pure thing. The de-vampirisation of Lucy - an apparent restabilising of the boundaries between living and dead, and human and other - testifies nevertheless to the radical doubt that now haunts every effort to explain exactly how the human is distinct from the animal. Dracula has a tremendous sympathy with certain animals, especially with the wild forebear of the domesticated dog, the wolf, and he has the capacity to transform himself into an animal, usually a bat, but if convenient a dog as well. The noble being who was born several centuries ago in Transylvania defies any attempt to maintain a border that would separate him (or us) from the animal world. Van Helsing and Seward play at detective (‘‘Great Scott! Is this a game?’ ‘It is.’’),33 looking for clues and setting traps in order to prove that Lucy no longer belongs to the realm of the human, but all the evidence gathered by these two scientists fades into the background when they are confronted directly by Lucy. Seward’s only ground for judgment at this moment is his
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______________________________________________________________ gut instinct that he is face to face with a loathsome creature (‘I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?’). 34 The vampire hunters do away, at least temporarily, with the evil creatures, but their ‘knowledge’ is finally not shareable with those who have not undergone their experience. Dracula plays off the anxiety that the human is not sacred, and that man is merely an animal, and subject to all the laws of the natural order. At the end of the nineteenth century, nature no longer makes a distinction at all between man and any other living creature. The first parts of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde follow Dracula in presenting evil as an external corrosive power that works its way into the self. The mystery of the book revolves around Jekyll’s association with Hyde, and especially around the question of why the superior person (in wealth, education, social standing) apparently succumbs to the inferior one. Dr. Jekyll is depicted as falling prey to an evil influence, which corrodes and corrupts his being and reduces any distance between him and evil itself. Mr. Hyde is explicitly referred to as an ‘evil influence’ and a ‘dark influence,’ and his power is similar to that of magnetism, or gravity: if you come too close, it will act on you and draw you in its direction, and overpower your will. In contrast with Dracula, however, where evil can be driven out (even if some of its victims do die) and where the boundaries between outside and inside, self and other, human and animal can still be known and upheld, there is no solution in this case to the problem of falling under the influence of evil. In this work as in many others, the only way not to be moved by another is to cease to move at all, and the final choice - if it can even be said that the power of choice still exists - is to kill oneself, or ‘to release himself’ as it is described in the last paragraph of the book. To avoid any further complicity in evil, one turns oneself back into dead matter, into an insensate thing. There is a particular irony in Jekyll’s presenting this ‘release’ as a last courageous choice (‘will he find the courage to release himself at the last moment?’), since the original act that gives birth to the evil Mr. Hyde is described twice, in some of the most carefully chosen words of the book - as ‘a solution of the bonds of obligation.’35 To ‘release himself’ is to repeat again his original crime. That act (carried through by drinking a carefully concocted potion) dissolves both the bonds that connect oneself to others, and the bonds within the self that keep evil (and also ‘freedom of the soul’) under the restraint of opposing forces. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde presents another mechanism by which evil takes root inside the self: the experience of shock. Shock became a widely studied medical phenomenon towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the advent of the railway and the mechanization of war, and in the story Dr. Lanyon exemplifies this pathway. ‘‘I have had a shock,’’ he says, ‘‘and I shall never recover.’’36 The strange tale he hears of Jekyll and Hyde (and
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______________________________________________________________ which the reader, and also his interlocutor in this passage, Mr. Utterson, will only come to know much later) permanently disrupts his internal equilibrium, and produces ‘some deep-seated terror of the mind.’ The terror proceeds from the shattering of the protective shell that had insulated him from the horrors the outside world might contain. Specifically, he learns that evil is not extraordinary and largely outside his familiar world, and more disruptively, that his familiar world is not at all constituted on the stable ground that he thought it was: science has the power to dissolve the bonds and the boundaries that he believed nature had permanently and unalterably put in place. Shock produces a form of discontinuity. One modern definition of evil would be as shock, as the horrible, unassimilable experience that irremediably divides things into a before and after, and in which the later moment - the world one now finds oneself in - no longer seems habitable. Adorno’s question about the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz testifies to the discontinuity and to the seeming uninhabitability of the world one finds oneself in after gaining a knowledge that shatters one’s earlier view of life. A pressing question in the modern world is why evil now has the power of discontinuity, of irremediably transforming one’s relation to the world. The last part of the book, however, presents a picture that is incompatible with the earlier sections. Mr. Hyde, the figure of evil, is revealed to be inseparable from Dr. Jekyll. What makes the story troubling is that it does not allow us to hold on to the premise that it is only under the influence of some external non-human force, some monstrous power that Hyde embodies and exercises on others, that one comes to treat a person as a thing. The story impels us to take seriously the question of what distinguishes the human from the non-human thing or animal. We learn that Hyde not only lives next door to Jekyll (though at first their two dwelling are described as belonging to two very different neighbourhoods) but discover later that he shares the same quarters with him, and finally even the same body. That which appears to be outside the self cannot here be separated from what is inside, and the figure who at one moment is dismissed as ‘apelike,’ as bearing ‘an imprint of deformity and decay,’ as some form of pre-human that is imaginatively conceived as proceeding directly from the most distant origins of life, ‘the slime of the pit’ and even ‘the amorphous dust,’ is not only described as ‘the animal within me’ and ‘the brute that slept within me,’ but as ‘natural and human.’37 Evil is now conceived as primarily and originally an interior force, an innate quality within the self, and as animalistic and regressive. Jekyll describes Hyde as ‘something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices . . . that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.’38 The struggle described here is always being contested in two directions. There is
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______________________________________________________________ the return of the past, the dead, the inorganic, and the shapeless, which not only refuse to stay in their proper place, but seek to ‘usurp the offices of life.’ That which has apparently been superseded or repressed still seeks to dominate, and whatever we may think of as ‘the offices of life’ are irretrievably compromised, contaminated, and destabilised, as they now are known to be composed of both the organic and inorganic, the living and the dead, the present and the past, the shaped and the shapeless. But the struggle in the other direction is at least equally disturbing: the concomitant attempt to put this ‘slime of the pit’ back into its place, to enforce yet again the habitual boundaries, to kill that which is already dead (as in Dracula), and inescapably to turn some form of the ‘human’ back into a ‘thing.’ The awareness of the duality of this struggle - which here occurs within one person, although it becomes increasingly difficult to define the boundaries of a ‘person’ - makes it impossible to put this tendency to treat a person as a thing on only one side of the ledger, as belonging properly to the uncivilised, unrestrained, pre-moral past. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begins with the narration of a somewhat direct encounter with evil (when passing by the door of the house that Mr. Hyde lives in, Mr. Enfield, the companion of the central narrative figure Mr. Utterson, describes to him the scene of Hyde running over the young girl, and the ways in which he and others react to Hyde) but ends with a failed encounter. Mr. Utterson and Poole (Dr. Jekyll’s butler) break down the door to Jekyll’s private chamber, his ‘cabinet,’ hoping to find Jekyll or at least to confront Hyde, whom they suspect has murdered Jekyll, but when they enter all they find is the dead body of Hyde, and not a trace of Jekyll.39 There is no opportunity to interrogate, much less to vanquish, the apparently malevolent figure, and instead we are presented with a pile of documents. The last parts of the book, which form more than a third of the novel, consist of letters written by Lanyon and Jekyll to be read when they are dead. The words of the dead displace any confrontation with what has the power to shake life to its roots and produce ‘the deadliest terror [that] sits by me at all hours of the day and night.’40 Whereas Dracula at least offered the possibility of putting things back in their place and of patrolling the boundaries between domestic and foreign, inside and outside, same and other, the three other stories do not. A climactic encounter with Hyde fails because the ‘other’ cannot be kept separate from the ‘same,’ the monster Hyde from the familiar Jekyll, the monster without from the monster within. The last two texts I will consider, Le Horla and The Island of Dr. Moreau, push these problems of differentiation to the extreme, though in different directions. In Le Horla, the central disturbance is the feeling that one is being dominated by some other force, but with a complete inability to determine its nature, or especially to determine whether it comes from inside one’s own mind and body, or from
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______________________________________________________________ outside. The confusion of pronouns, which occurs as well in Jekyll and Hyde (‘him, or it, or whatever it is that lives in that cabinet’),41 becomes extreme, and what drives the story is the question, Is there some ‘other’ that haunts and perhaps can’t be distinguished from the self? Maupassant departs from Rimbaud’s ‘Je est un autre’ [I is an other], and the moral question of choosing between good and evil collapses back onto the question of can I will my own choice; can I choose at all, or does another choose for me? The attempt to encounter this ‘other,’ or even more problematically, this ‘horla,’ is perpetually frustrated, even as it pushes the story to a methodical series of investigations and speculations and to a fiery and perhaps suicidal conclusion.42 In Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, there is no doubt that some new creation, some ‘other,’ exists, so the question posed is instead: is the other human? Here several encounters are very dramatically staged in order to highlight the moral dilemma of what choices should be made. The problems raised in this work, though perhaps less epistemologically troubling than in Le Horla, are no less complex, since they compel us not only to question the limits of the human, but to ask whether some definition of the ‘human’ should serve at all as the ethical boundary for the treatment of other beings: for killing, for inflicting pain and suffering, and so forth. Both of these stories, in different ways, put into question all that has been erected around a differentiation between natural and moral evil. I will focus mainly on the fascinating and troubling encounters with mysterious creatures in The Island of Dr. Moreau rather than on the problems of ever being sure that one is confronting ‘an alien being’ [‘un être étranger’] in Le Horla, but I do want to bring out a few points about it. In contrast to Stevenson’s story, there is no reliance here on a magic (or scientific) potion to externalise a dual self, and Le Horla is perhaps the best nineteenth-century text for studying the effects, dynamics, and problems of being under the influence of something or someone. Passages such as the following describe a split within the self, and the presence of something inaccessible, unconscious, primitive, and powerful that operates internally and is not subject to the will or available to consciousness: My hands were trembling. Had someone drunk the water? Who? I? It must have been me. Who could it have been but me? So I was a somnambulist, all unaware I was living the mysterious double life that raises the doubt whether there be not two selves in us, or whether, in moments when the spirit lies unconscious, an alien being, unknowable and unseen, inhabits the captive body that obeys this other as it obeys us, more readily than it obeys us.43
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______________________________________________________________ The interrogation of this ‘alien being’ leads to the end of a certain definition of man - grounded in consciousness and divorced from the animal body. One could fruitfully pursue the exploration and deconstruction of the will in this story (and read Maupassant alongside or against Nietzsche), which leads to an inability to choose at all: ‘I have no strength, no courage, no control over myself, no power even to summon my will. I can no longer will; but someone wills for me - and I obey.’44 Here, however, I want to discuss briefly only the last part of the story, where the narrator declares ‘The reign of man is at an end,’ suggesting the futility of choice altogether.45 At issue then is not simply the destruction of an individual mind; a threat to the human race itself is envisioned. It is only towards the end of the story that the idea of killing the ‘horla’ arises. Only when the narrator begins to imagine that what disturbs and oppresses him is an ‘unknowable creature,’ and more shockingly a ‘wanderer from a supernatural race,’ and most horrifying of all something that dominates him just as man dominates domestic animals, does he conceive of this ‘strange being’ as an evil threat that he should attempt to kill: ‘but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and the cow: his thing, his servant, and his food, by the mere force of his will. Woe to us! But sometimes the beast rebels and kills his tamer.’46 The evil figure is that which would impose ‘a mysterious will on the enslaved soul of man.’47 What lies behind this fear is the recognition that the earlier idea of the free soul of man is indeed under threat in this postDarwinian age, and is in fact no longer tenable as such. What had assured ‘man’ of his right to mastery and dominion over all the animals was his exceptionality; he did not belong to the animal realm. When this belief is no longer sustainable, a metaphysical basis for dominion is no longer tenable.48 Maupassant writes: ‘A new being! Why not? He must assuredly come! Why should we be the last? . . [Our nature is] the mere rough sketch of a being who might become intelligent and noble [superbe].’49 The imagination of some new being that would supersede man and would take ‘our’ place is common at the end of the nineteenth century, whether in the form of Wells’ Martians (in The War of the Worlds) who have evolved beyond man, or of Samuel Butler’s machines, which can evolve far more rapidly than biological beings.50 These texts suggest that any definitions of the human set apart from the biological, the animal, and evolution can no longer be maintained. The wars that are imagined are signs of an intellectual siege, of processes of thinking that threaten and will vanquish earlier conceptions. Le Horla ends with the narrator’s attempt to separate himself from this creature, to trap it in his room, and then to burn down the house. That which, in contrast to oneself, would be hors, (outside, beyond) and là (there), will now be contained inside, here, in his house and in his place, and eliminated by disbanding its elements through the application of an intense
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______________________________________________________________ amount of heat. This attempt, of course, is soon seen as a failure, but it does succeed in killing his two servants who have been trapped in the building (bringing out his role as the master of other people, and ironically echoing the line quoted above, ‘the Horla will make of man . . . his thing, his servant’). The story concludes: Dead? Perhaps . . . His body? Perhaps that body through which light fell could not be destroyed by the methods that kill our bodies? Suppose he is not dead? . . . No - no - without a doubt, without a doubt - he is not dead - so - so - I must kill - myself.51 The logic of the confrontation still reigns at the end: the other is not dead, therefore it is necessary to kill myself. But it is this traditional logic of exclusion that has been everywhere and in almost every manner put into question throughout the story. Or in Michel Serres’s words, ‘A tragic conclusion? No, a luminous synthesis . . . there is no life nor thought without the dancing relations in accordance with those flames there?’52 Anxiety at the level of the plot is matched with exhilaration at the imagining of a new topology of the self and a new relation to the other - one that is no longer governed or limited by earlier conceptions of inside or outside, here or there, master or servant. 3.
The Beast Folk The monster, in all of these works, is evil not merely because it is a semblance of the human - something that thereby calls into question the definition, boundary, stability, and sanctity of human life - but also because it threatens to transform those it encounters into a version of itself (such as a vampire, or in the encounter with Mr. Hyde, a harpy, an enraged being desiring to kill) and into something that is no longer human. Evil is not simply that which threatens to kill a person, but rather that which threatens to destroy a conception of what it is to be human. In The Island of Dr. Moreau there is again a confrontation with monsters - the beast people that Moreau has created by vivisecting and transforming animals into quasi-human creatures - but here the monsters possess no special powers. They are not masters or carriers of some force that threatens the will, consciousness, or ability to think and choose of the people they meet. Yet the encounter with the monstrous in this book nevertheless poses at least as strong a threat as in any of the other stories. It is no longer possible to sustain the oppositions distinguishing man from animal after meeting and being among the beast people. Prendick, the narrator of the book, repeatedly fails in attempting to
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______________________________________________________________ uphold and incarnate an idea of human identity that would securely distinguish himself from the beast folk. Some form of opposition between man and animal is essential for any notion of the human. This of course does not entail denying that man is also an animal, but the category of the human requires some other, alternative categories of what is not human. One of the most memorable scenes in the book is the ‘Saying of the Law,’ in which the beast people, with Prendick among them, chant the law: ‘‘Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’’ ‘‘Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’’ and so forth.53 The law is the prohibition of animal instinct. These creatures separate themselves from their past as beasts to the extent they refuse to follow their instinctive tendencies to chase, kill, and eat other creatures, to walk on four legs, to suck up drink, etc. For Prendick, this ritual is a hideous parody (‘deep down within me laughter and disgust struggled together’);54 for him it is inane to think that ‘saying the law’ could actually make these creatures into men. Yet human law works the same way: it bestows commonality, identity, and distinctiveness on those who are within the law, and casts out those who are not. One could helpfully append ‘Are we not Men?’ to each law to highlight and bring out the law’s formative power: Thou shalt not kill; are we not men? The question is never merely a rhetorical one. The boundaries created by the law are essential for establishing the boundaries required for the category of the human. Moreau’s experiments never quite succeed - over time these creatures becomes less and less capable of following the law and of avoiding what had been instinctual for them - but the tension, confusion, and indeterminateness between law and instinct, acquired (learned) and natural behaviour, human and animal nevertheless fully enmesh Prendick. Each effort of his to reaffirm a clear and distinct opposition between human and animal turns into a paradox. He decries, for instance, ‘the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island’ and yearns for the earlier time when ‘they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surrounding, and happy as living things may be.’55 Aim and purposefulness are here associated with the natural and the animal, yet it is precisely purposefulness that defines man as distinguishable from nature. Purposefulness is turned inside out in his attempt to explain his abhorrence of these new creations, or conversely, in his inability to see any purpose at all in the (attempted) creation of human beings and in Moreau’s quest to mimic and perhaps supersede evolution. On this island, where Moreau has usurped the creative and governing powers of nature, Prendick now finds that a ‘blind fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence.’56 From his first day on the island, Prendick cannot bear hearing the cries of the animals that Moreau is vivisecting: ‘It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. . . . It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our
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______________________________________________________________ nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.’57 There is a long philosophical tradition in which pity, and empathy with the suffering of others, defines an essential aspect of the human and serves as a basis for a morality that demands relieving the suffering of others, or at least not causing others to suffer. Prendick’s belief that his pity for others is a testament to his humanity is undermined from every side. Dr. Moreau derides him, ‘so long as your own pains drive you, so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin . . . you are an animal,’ and adds, ‘This store men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast from which they came.’58 For Moreau, pain is a ‘useless thing’ which will be ‘ground out of existence sooner or later’ by evolution, since the more intelligent people become, the less need there will be to rely on pain as a signal of danger. From this perspective, Prendick’s sensitivity to pain and to the sufferings of others is a sign of animality, and is something that ‘drives’ him rather than being a confirmation of his humanity. Moreau’s view is bolstered by his experiments. He does not use anaesthesia, and inflicting pain is essential for his creation of human-like beings: ‘‘Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: this time I will burn out all the animal, this time I will make a rational creature of my own.’’59 That which transforms the animal into human is pain. Moreau’s thinking is close to Nietzsche’s: ‘‘If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory’ - this is a main clause of the oldest . . . psychology on earth . . . and it was indeed with the aid of this kind of memory that one at last came ‘to reason.’’60 Prendick dismisses Moreau’s remarks as ‘sophistry,’ but his own direct encounter with a monster - his shooting of the Leopard Man vertiginously problematises any claims for his own humanity grounded on pity: It may seem a strange contradiction in me - I cannot explain the fact - but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes, and its imperfectly human face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of its humanity. In another moment other of its pursuers would see it, and it would be overpowered and captured, to experience once more the horrible tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped out my revolver, aimed between his terror-struck eyes and fired.61 Does Moreau kill out of recognition of the humanity of the other? But one is not supposed to shoot someone else who is suffering or about to be tortured;
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______________________________________________________________ the humane gesture, at most, is to help that person take his or her own life.62 Later Montgomery chides Prendick, ‘‘We can’t massacre the lot, - can we? I suppose that’s what your humanity would suggest?’’63 Or does he shoot out of pity for an animal that is terrorized - putting the Leopard Man out of his misery, much as one would shoot a badly injured animal? Recognizing the monstrous other as human or as animal seems to make no difference here, and is undecidable. Peter Singer challenges what he terms ‘the sanctity of human life’; the belief ‘that human life has some very special value’ and ‘the idea that there is a radical difference between the value of a human life and the value of the life of some other animal - a difference not merely of degree, but of quality or kind.’64 Singer invokes ‘basic moral principles’ to propose a consideration of the ‘balance of pleasure or happiness over pain and suffering,’ and rejects ‘an arbitrary discrimination on the basis of species.’ Wells also forcefully challenges ‘the sanctity of human life,’ but he goes much further in disturbing our grounds for judgment.65 It is equally plausible to suggest that Prendick shoots the Leopard Man out of revenge (in an earlier chapter the Leopard Man stalked Prendick and seemed about to attack him, and Prendick says he ‘completely lost my head with fear’); or that he acts out of impulse (as he states to Moreau, who wanted to capture the Leopard Man alive); or instinctively; or that he was acting as part of the mob and as one of the Beast Folk (‘I, too, was swung round by the magnetism of the moment. In another second I was running, one of a tumultuous shouting crowd’).66 In this encounter with a monster it becomes impossible to disentangle the ‘animal’ and the ‘human’ elements, both in Prendick’s apprehension of the other and within himself. Prendick may not be transformed into a monster, but he is no longer ‘human’ either. And without this clear determination, there is no basis with which to call on basic moral principles. The plot of the last third of the book dramatically plays out this logic - and this is what constitutes ‘the terror of that island’ - through which the opposition between human and animal paradoxically and repeatedly collapses in on itself. All earlier ideas about human pity, violence, suffering, and purposefulness need to be re-examined and redrawn in light of the upheavals triggering this collapse. 4.
Eliminating Evil Throughout, I have been arguing that evil is a threat to conceptions of the ‘human’ itself, and not just to individual humans or groups of humans. My aim here has not been to explore evil in order thereby to figure out ways to minimize the occurrence of evil, but rather to examine how it provides a means for investigating, questioning, and challenging the limits and boundaries of the human, and of related categories such as self, consciousness, will, and choice. The contemporary humanistic desire to eliminate the category of evil - to argue that it is a throwback to pre-
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______________________________________________________________ enlightened, religious thought and itself a prime means for generating hatred and violence (such as through political talk about the need to wipe out evildoers or to vanquish the evil empire) - is allied with the attempt to reduce incidents of evil action. Talk of ‘evil’ is thought of as getting in the way of the proper understanding of social behaviour that would lead to reducing cruelty and human suffering. I am suggesting instead that the refusal to think about evil confines us within the bounds of consensus and constituted knowledge, and amounts to a denial of thought as such, placing us in the condition of being (to borrow Maupassant’s words) ‘ordered about like a human herd by certain invisible but tangible beings, vampires of some kind.’67
Notes 1
S Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2002, p. 3. 2 Ibid., p. 4. 3 I Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 58. 4 Kant explains the origins of an ‘evil heart’ as ‘not being strong enough to comply with its adopted principles, coupled with its dishonesty in not screening incentives (even those of well-intentioned actions) in accordance with the moral guide.’ Ibid., p. 60. 5 Ibid., p. 61. 6 J Copjec, ‘Introduction: Evil in the Time of the Finite World,’ in Radical Evil, ed. Joan Copjec, Verso, London, 1996, p. ix. 7 S S Obhi and P Haggard, ‘Free Will and Free Won’t,’ American Scientist vol. 2, 2004, pp. 358-365. 8 Mesmerism or ‘animal magnetism’ was originally a therapeutic method developed by Anton Mesmer in the last third of the eighteenth century, and which over the next fifty years gained widespread popularity throughout Europe and the U.S. In the 1840s, the Scottish physician James Braid began by attempting to debunk the theories of mesmerism and then developed his ideas of ‘neuro-hypnotism.’ See Braid’s Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep, Churchill, London, 1843, and for a general overview of mesmerism and hypnotism, see Alan Gauld, A History of Hypnotism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1992. 9 R L Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Performance Adaptations, Criticism, ed. K Linehan, Norton, New York, 2003, p. 28.
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H G Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Bantam Books, New York, 1984, p. 82. This edition is based largely on the first English edition of the book, from 1896, but it also incorporates some of the changes from the 1924 Atlantic Edition. There are two excellent critical editions of the work, a Variorum text edited by Robert Philmus and a highly annotated critical text edited by Leon Stover. 11 H G Wells, ‘The Limits of Human Plasticity,’ in The Island of Dr. Moreau: A Critical Text of the 1896 London First Edition, ed. L Stover, McFarland, Jefferson, N.C., 1996, p. 221. 12 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 60. Fears of regression to an apish past and of degeneration, popularised by writers such as Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau, were very common towards the end of the nineteenth century. I’ll say more about this passage later on. 13 Kant, op. cit., p. 60. 14 J Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obsession, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1971, p. 12. 15 J-J Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. P France, Penguin, London, 1979, p. 74, 75. 16 Ibid., p. 93, 80. See P de Man’s chapter ‘Excuses (Confessions)’ in Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979, pp. 278-301, for a stimulating analysis of lies, excuses, and movements machinals in Rousseau. 17 Kant, op.cit., p. 60. 18 Ibid., p. 53. 19 W Bagehot, Physics and Politics. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1999, p. 12. 20 F Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity, trans. B E Spillmann, Pantheon Books, New York, 1973, p. 34. 21 Ibid., p. 12. 22 M Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Vintage Books, New York, 1973, p. 387. 23 In the first version of the story, the narrator was a resident of an asylum, and clearly considered insane. In the final version, there is no such framing of the story, and there is little of the usual heightening of language and signaling of a departure from reality that typically characterize stories of madness, and which would affirm our difference and distance from the narrator. 24 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 10. 25 Wells, op. cit., p. 155. 26 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 56. 27 Ibid., p. 9. 28 Ibid., p. 12. 29 Jacob, op. cit., p. 231. 30 Bram Stoker, Dracula, Penguin, , New York, 2003, p.189.
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Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 231. 33 Ibid., p. 224. 34 Ibid., p. 215. See also p. 225, ‘At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing’ and p. 228, ‘But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape.’ 35 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 50, 58. 36 Ibid., p. 29. 37 Ibid., p. 61, 51, 60, 58, 60, 51. 38 Ibid., p. 60. 39 Before entering Mr. Utterson remarks: ‘Evil, I fear . . . I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, god alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’s room.’ Ibid., p. 37. 40 Ibid., p. 47. 41 Ibid., p. 35. 42 Only towards the very end of the story does the narrator give this ‘other’ a name: ‘He is here. . .the . . .the . . .what is his name?. . .the. . .it seems as if he were shouting his name in my ear, and I cannot hear it. . .the. . .yes. . .he is shouting it. . .I am listening. . .I can’t hear. . .again, tell me again. . .the Horla I heard . . . the Horla . . . it is he . . . the Horla . . . he is here! G de Maupassant, The Horla in The Portable Maupassant, ed. L Galantière, Viking Press, New York, 1966, p. 370. All ellipses are in the original. 43 Ibid., p. 353. 44 Ibid., p. 365. 45 Ibid., p. 369. 46 Ibid., p. 366, 370. 47 Ibid., p. 370. 48 Today, ‘consciousness’ sometimes functions as the magical notion by which we attempt to hold on to our exceptionalism. 49 Maupassant, op. cit., p. 371. 50 See the three chapters of ‘The Book of the Machines’ (chapters 23-25) in Erewhon, as well as Butler’s earlier essay ‘Darwin Among the Machines.’ 51 Maupassant, op. cit., p. 376, translation modified. 52 M Serres, Atlas, Paris, Flammarion, 1996, pp. 84-85, my translation. Serres provides a wonderfully detailed and speculative reading of the story in the chapter ‘Être hors là’ of Atlas. 53 Wells, op. cit, p. 65. 54 Ibid., pp. 65-66. 55 Ibid., p. 109. 56 Ibid., p. 110. 57 Ibid., p. 40. 32
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Ibid., p. 83, 85. Prendick himself earlier uses the same phrase, expressing his disdain for animality: ‘Each of these creatures, despite its human form . . . had woven into it . . . the unmistakable mark of the beast,’ p. 45. 59 Ibid., p. 89. 60 F Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo, trans. W Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1989, p. 61, 62. 61 Wells, op. cit., 107-08. 62 A wonderful example is in Jean-Pierre Melville’s film about the French Resistance, The Shadow Army, in which one member of the Resistance gets himself imprisoned in order to smuggle in a cyanide pill to give to his comrade who is being tortured, and this is not done out of fear that the tortured man will confess or reveal something. 63 Ibid., p. 124. 64 P Singer, ‘Unsanctifying Human Life,’ in Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics, Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2002, p. 217. 65 Ibid., p. 224. 66 Wells, op. cit., p. 105. The pronoun ‘we’ is then used several times in the passages that follow. 67 Maupassant, op. cit., p. 369.
Bibliography Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1999. Braid, J., Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep. Churchill, London, 1843. Copjec, J., ‘Introduction: Evil in the Time of the Finite World,’ in Radical Evil, edited by Joan Copjec. Verso, London, 1996. pp. vii-xxviii. De Man, P., Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979. Foucault, M., The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Vintage Books, New York, 1973. Gauld, A., A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. Jacob, F., The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity. Trans. Betty E. Spillmann. Pantheon Books, New York, 1973.
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______________________________________________________________ Kant, I., Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings. Trans. and edited by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. Maupassant, G de., The Horla. In The Portable Maupassant, edited by Lewis Galantière. Viking Press, New York, 1966, pp. 345-376 Neiman, S., Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2002. Nietzsche, F., On the Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Vintage Books, New York, 1989. Obhi, S. S. and Haggard, P., ‘Free Will and Free Won’t.’ American Scientist vol. 92, 2004, pp. 358-365. Rousseau, J-J., Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Trans. Peter France. Penguin, London, 1979. Serres, M., Atlas. Flammarion, Paris, 1996. Singer, P., Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics. Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2002. Starobinski, J., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obsession. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971. Stevenson, R. L. ,Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Performance Adaptations, Criticism. Ed. Katherine Linehan. Norton, New York, 2003. Stoker, B., Dracula. Penguin, New York,2003. Wells, H. G., The Island of Dr. Moreau. Bantam Books, New York, 1984. Wells, H. G. ‘The Limits of Human Plasticity,’ in The Island of Dr. Moreau: A Critical Text of the 1896 London First Edition, edited by Leon Stover, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 1996, pp. 221-224.
The Banality of Violence: From Kafka’s The Castle to Auster’s The Music of Chance Ilana Shiloh Abstract: This paper discusses the imaginative exploration of violence in two apparently different novels: Franz Kafka’s The Castle (1926) and Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance (1990). We habitually conceive of violence as the infliction of a visible physical injury, condemn it as a deviation from the norm of civilized human conduct, or associate it with the invasion of chaos or the unnatural into the routine of everyday life. But Kafka and Auster have a different insight and their vision is more accurate and terrifying, for history has taught us that violence originates amidst the most banal normalcy and thrives upon organisation and order. Sometimes visibility itself is the violence inflicted; or worse, invisibility. Sometimes the most banal of bureaucratic processes conceals the evil and violence of dehumanising indifference. Several parallels are explored in the two novels, including the mirroring of protagonist and antagonist, the perversion of the human search for meaning, and the violence inherent in an evil revaluation of traditional values by ordinary persons for ordinary reasons. Key Words: Auster, banality, dehumanisation, Kafka, structural violence ***** 1.
Evil and Violence Violence may be defined as an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power. This definition has several aspects, both explicit and implicit. First, violence is associated with injustice and the infliction of harm. From this perspective, it may be re-defined as doing harm to others in the pursuit of one’s own preferences.1 Second, violence is perceived in terms of excess: it is seen as the use of disproportionate force, unwarranted by need or circumstance. This cluster of properties entails cognitive and emotional implications. We associate violent behaviour with brutality and aggression, which arouse our fear and evoke our moral condemnation. Brutality and aggression constitute deviations from the norm of civilized human conduct; as such, they are conspicuous and highly visible. Finally, violence is habitually thought of as a specific event, with an identifiable victim and a definite perpetrator. Is violence synonymous with evil? Not necessarily. Violence is part of human nature, observes Adam Morton. Sometimes more violent behaviour
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______________________________________________________________ will win over less violent, so that a person who did not have violence among his options would be at a significant disadvantage. But a society in which individuals exercised this option too readily would not thrive, in comparison with one in which the stakes for inflicting physical damage would be too high.2 The presumed complicity between wickedness and aggression is questioned by Mary Midgley from a different angle.3 Not all wickedness is aggression, she argues, and not all aggression is wicked. Aggression is only one of many negative motives that can account for evil-doing; other motives, such as sloth, fear or greed are potentially more common and dangerous. Conversely, violence is not always wicked: it can sometimes be the only way of resisting injustice and oppression. When that happens, concludes Midgley, the use of violence is justified by necessity.4 In spite of these distinctions, we seem to intuitively equate violence with evil. This may be accounted for by the fact that both perceptual paradigms share certain salient characteristics. For one, they are both associated with deviation from the norm. In religion, myth or folklore, symbolic embodiments of evil are situated outside the realm of the mundane, exercising their powers above or below the fictional topography - Satan overreaching to heaven, Hades ruling the underworld, and vampires residing in underground cellars. Evil is habitually perceived and portrayed not only as extraordinary, but also as larger than life. The aggrandisement of evil is common to popular culture, folklore, and to most Western religions and mythologies. The archetype of this mode of representation is the figure of Satan, who rebelled against God in an effort to usurp His power, and whose cardinal sin is the sin of pride, the aspiration to be a law unto himself. Second, both evil and violence entail exclusion, and exclusion may potentially lead to dehumanisation. People are social beings who tend to associate with others on the basis of perceived affinity. Once a social group is formed, its members are inclined to see themselves and their own as ‘good’ and to label their opponents as ‘evil.’ Evil is thus traditionally attributed to the other - and the ultimate other is one who does not even share our human nature. This perception is reciprocal - the evildoer regards his target as less than human, which allows him to inflict harm without pangs of conscience, while the victim sees the one who has harmed him as monstrous, unworthy of belonging to the human race. Finally, both evil and violence are associated with chaos. Activities or events interpreted as manifestations of evil have usually been regarded as eruptions of disorder and havoc in the peaceful routine of normal life. Thus natural disasters, such as earthquakes, were seen in the past as the actions of malevolent spirits, because they coincided with the customary perception of evil as a tremendous force, destroying the harmony of nature and inflicting indescribable harm. From a different perspective, in classical detective fiction the criminal is depicted as the symbolic representative of violence and
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______________________________________________________________ disorder, aiming to unravel the fabric of society; the detective is the figure who quells the eruption of violence and brings about the restoration of order. Like all representation, the representation of evil in art both reflects and creates perception. This perception does not necessarily conform to reality. The anchoring of evil in the realm of the extraordinary may be accounted for by our need to cast it in opposition to ourselves. If evil is inherently different from the normal, it is inherently different from me, and this assumption precludes the possibility of understanding, identification or potential affinity. Yet, as Hannah Arendt argues in her report on one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century, ‘the trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.’5 Arendt’s vision of the banality of evil is also an insight into the banality of violence. The case of Eichmann may teach us that violence is not confined to the realm of the extraordinary. It need not be an isolated incident perpetrated by a deviant individual bent on destroying the fabric of civilization and social order. Some forms of violence are embedded in the social order. These forms, infinitely more pernicious, have been described as structural violence. Structural violence, a term first used in the 1970s and commonly ascribed to Johan Galtung, denotes a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution prevents individuals from achieving their full potential.6 This form of violence may be political, economic or cultural. Political violence is based on repression: it occurs when people are deprived of their freedom and of their basic human rights. Economic violence is embedded in exploitative social and economic systems: it operates whenever people are denied access to society’s resources. Cultural violence, rooted in exclusion and alienation, consists of the debasement of the meaning, value and quality of life. It can take place, for instance, when a group in power devises an ideology according to which certain classes of people are less worthy and, consequently, less entitled.7 Direct violence, involving physical injury to the body, is perceived as deviation from the norm, and is therefore highly noticeable. But structural violence is not. Because it is so deeply embedded in most human societies, structural violence has become normalised and naturalised. Thus, it has also become acceptable. The infliction of bodily harm is usually condemned: aversion to brutality seems to be genetically and culturally ingrained in the human race. But the deprivation of non-material goods, such as freedom, dignity, or equal access to resources, is usually accompanied by explanatory ideologies and comes to be accepted as an inevitable part of life. Yet any form of ideologically substantiated deprivation is grounded in exclusion and
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______________________________________________________________ in the dehumanisation of the excluded other, which is all the more pernicious for being unacknowledged and tacitly accepted. 2.
Evil in The Castle While Kafka’s work epitomises the inhumanity of the political and administrative apparatus, Auster’s book projects the tragic consequences of the brutality inherent in the capitalist ethos. Each author thus imaginatively examines a different form of structural inequity, but the causes, manifestations and consequences of these different forms are strikingly similar. Kafka was perhaps the first to etch violence into our consciousness as normal and banal. His last novel, The Castle, tells the story of K., who arrives at a small village following his appointment there as a Land Surveyor, and who attempts in vain to elicit from the lords of the Castle a recognition of his status. The novel’s narrative consists of K.’s incessant attempts to reach the Castle or to meet its deputy, Klamm. K. never gets to his destination, nor does he win the acknowledgement that he craves. All he manages to accomplish is a peephole view of a dozing Klamm, the clumsy beginnings of an affair with Klamm’s ex-lover, Frieda, and interviews with various deputies of Klamm’s deputies The apparent obstacle to K.’s progress is the Castle. The figure of the Castle obviously draws on the physical topography of Prague, Kafka’s hometown. A castle is also a set element of fairy tale and folklore: it conveys power, inaccessibility, and exclusion. Exclusion and inaccessibility are indeed the key motifs of Kafka’s narrative. Yet the Castle’s chief symbolic attribute - power - is diluted by other, more subversive characteristics shabbiness, infantilism and madness. When K. spots the Castle from a distance, he is initially impressed, but a closer look proves deeply disappointing: ‘it was after all only a wretched-looking town, a huddle of village houses, whose … plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away.’ The windows of the church tower glitter in the sun, but theirs is a ‘somewhat maniacal glitter,’ and the outline of the attic looks ‘irregular, broken, fumbling, as if designed by the trembling or careless hands of a child.’ On the whole ‘it was as if a melancholy-mad tenant who ought to have been locked in the topmost chamber of his house had burst through the roof and lifted himself up to the gaze of the world.’8 Like most of Kafka’s oeuvre, The Castle is structured around one arresting image and situation, at once supremely disturbing and disquietingly possible. The allegoric dimension and thematic concerns of Kafka’s last novel are focalised through the figure of the Castle, whose unsettling combination of mastery and banality is refracted on all levels of narrative. Thus, the properties of the physical edifice are also the defining
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______________________________________________________________ characteristics of its inhabitants and of their administrative apparatus, which is at once omnipotent and ludicrously ineffectual. If the edifice of the Castle is both awe-inspiring and pitiful, so are its tenants. Their deputy, Klamm, was once compared to an eagle; and when K. considers Klamm’s ‘remoteness’ and his ‘wheeling, which could never be disturbed by anything that K. did down below,’ he concludes that ‘all these things Klamm and the eagle had in common.’9 But this sublime vision plummets when K. notices the shabby outfit and the beer-stained protocol of Klamm’s deputy, Momus; the protagonist cannot reconcile Klamm’s exalted position with his clerk’s pitiful state. In spite of its shabby aspect, the Castle’s dominance over the village is absolute and unquestioned. Like believers striving to fathom and follow God’s commands (the novel was indeed presented by Max Brod as a parable of divine grace), the village dwellers conduct their lives according to what they see as the implicit wishes of the lords of the Castle. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the story of Amalia, the only commoner who dares defy the Castle authorities. She refuses the obscene advances of the official Sortini, and as a result, becomes ostracized, together with her family, by the entire village population. Her relatives desperately attempt to obtain a pardon from the authorities, but their pleas, proofs of submission and selfhumiliation - her sister Olga sleeps with the officials’ servants in the stables are to no avail. Amalia’s retribution is the more terrible for being unacknowledged. There is nothing to forgive, claim the authorities, since ‘no charge had actually been made,’ and ‘no department had therefore taken up the affair.’10 So, as far as can be ascertained, no case has been brought. The fate of the unfortunate rebel demonstrates the inextricability of brutality and stupidity, the use of circular logic as an instrument of entrapment. This is also the kind of reasoning that K. repeatedly comes up against in his quest for recognition as Land Surveyor. His appointment, the Superintendent informs him, was an administrative error; but the authority in charge of rectifying errors does not admit the possibility of an error. Like Amalia, K. is entrapped in an existential loop. When he indignantly protests about making his long journey in vain, the Superintendent elaborates: ‘In such a large governmental office as the Count’s, it may occasionally happen that one department ordains this, another that; neither knows of the other, and though the supreme control is absolutely efficient, it comes by its nature too late, and so every now and then a trifling miscalculation arises.’11 The pronouncement that the Castle’s supreme control is absolutely efficient is supremely ironic in the context of the novel, which has come to epitomise the absurdity of bureaucracy. The Superintendent is keen on proving the orderliness of the system, because order is a positive value, perceived as the foundation of civilized society. But as with all things in
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______________________________________________________________ Kafka’s novel, everything is pronounced to be what it is not - and the system’s presumed method is nothing but madness. The circular, arbitrary apparatus of the Castle furiously labours at doing nothing. The clerks, barricaded behind closed doors, incessantly push away files containing the villagers’ petitions. When one makes a call from the village to the Castle, all its telephones start ringing, or they would have done so if they hadn’t been disconnected. It is an inhuman, self-enclosed and self-serving system. When the upset K. tells Momus ‘you only think of yourselves,’ the clerk replies indifferently: ‘of whom, then, should we think? Who else is there here?’12 The administrative apparatus is effectual in one respect only - the systematic oppression of those it is presumed to serve. This oppression results in a resigned existence of utter deprivation. The Castle villagers live in all-encompassing deprivation, at once political, economic and emotional. They have no rights, except the right of satisfying their rulers’ whims. They have no access to food, except the meagre subsistence they manage to extract from their barren land. And they are not even aware of the options of joy, happiness or meaning. But the villagers’ abject destitution does not give rise to revolt. They see their lot as unavoidable and justified. As correctly observed by Michael Löwy, the Castle’s seamless dominance over the village population is accompanied by the villagers’ voluntary acceptance of their servitude. Thus, the village women never resist the officials’ crude, obscene advances. They cherish the memories of these advances as the high points of their lives and are always tremulously willing to obey their ex-lovers’ next summons. The authorities’ decrees are never contested; they are anticipated and carried out even when not officially formulated. This is the case with the collective ban on Amalia and her family; this is also the underlying reason for the villagers’ attitude towards K. Taking their cue from the officials’ continuous refusal to acknowledge K.’s position, the commoners treat him as a man of no consequence, a foreigner and an intruder. If in the Penal Colony the punishment is inscribed on the convict’s body, in Kafka’s last novel, the Castle’s system of enslavement is etched in its subjects’ souls. This voluntary submission can be accounted for by the normalisation of violence. The novel’s a-temporality, suggested through K.’s disorientation about the time of year and the sequence of events, also conveys the villagers’ feeling that things have always been like that, that the village’s power structure, resulting in their destitution and servitude, is part of the natural order. Treated as sub-human from times immemorial, the village dwellers no longer feel entitled to basic human rights, either material physical security, food, cleanliness - or immaterial, such as freedom or the preservation of dignity. Thus, the most devastating aspect of the Castle’s administrative system is dehumanisation, accompanied by the subversion of the hierarchy
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______________________________________________________________ between the human and the non-human. When the Superintendent explains to K. the particulars of the Castle’s system, he boasts that the system has liberated itself from the need of human intervention. It has become autonomous and self-sufficient. And he elaborates: When an affair has been weighed for a very long time…it may happen…that suddenly in a flash the decision comes in some unforeseen place…It’s as if the administrative apparatus were unable to bear the tension…and had hit upon the decision by itself, without the assistance of the officials.13 The image conveys the quintessence of bureaucracy, a double-take consisting of the personification of a set of rules and regulations and a simultaneous dehumanisation of the people for whom they were created. The interpretation of The Castle as an ironic parable of the absurdity of bureaucratic systems is only one possible reading. Like all of Kafka’s fiction, his last novel has an allegorical dimension that lends itself to multiple critical interpretations. One of the most widely accepted readings, cited on the cover of the novel’s English edition, was eloquently formulated by Bertold Brecht. Brecht sees The Castle as a nightmarish vision of ‘the future concentration camps, the future instability of the law [and] the future absolutism of the state Apparat.’ As Kafka’s life and writing pre-dated the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the mass persecutions in communist U.S.S.R., Brecht interprets Kafka’s novel as an accurate and terrifying prophesy of the violence inherent in a totalitarian regime. But are totalitarian regimes inherently different from other forms of government? The answer is suggested in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, his historical and philosophical survey of the birth of the modern prison. The prison form, argues Foucault, antedates its systematic use in the penal system. As a matter of fact, he explains, It had already been constituted outside the legal apparatus when, throughout the social body, procedures were being elaborated for…extracting from [individuals] the maximum in time and forces…maintaining them in perfect visibility, forming around them an apparatus of observation…The general form of an apparatus intended to render individuals docile and useful…indicated the prison institution before the law ever defined it as the penalty par excellence.14 In the passage above, Foucault contends that the defining characteristics of penal institutions are basically the same as those of
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______________________________________________________________ legitimate political systems. Prison is the emblem of a certain type of a political apparatus; it is certainly the emblem of the political apparatus imaginatively projected in The Castle. This apparatus draws its power from the unqualified control it exercises over the lives, thoughts and even wishes, of its subjects. The authorities can exercise this kind of control as long as they maintain their subjects in perfect visibility - Kafka’s chilling premonition of the age of centralised information. And the play of visibility and invisibility is indeed a major leitmotif in Kafka’s novel. Whereas the lords of the Castle are privy to the most intimate details of the villagers’ lives (especially the lives of their female subjects), the villagers dwell in perpetual darkness and their masters remain outside their range of vision. Thus Klamm knows everything about the private lives of his ex-lovers, whom he keeps at his beck and call, but he himself can only be glimpsed at through a keyhole, whereas his deputy Sordini has never been seen at all. This remoteness and inaccessibility is part of the tactics of power. In line with Foucault’s argument, The Castle has long been considered not only as a radical critique of bureaucracy but also as an ironic indictment of all forms of political power. But I would like to suggest that the novel’s thematic concerns are not confined to the social or political spheres. They are ultimately metaphysical. The most acute deprivation in the novel’s fictional world is not affected by agencies of human power, by the office or the state: it is built into the human condition. And it consists of the dull and endless thwarting of human desire. The narrativisation of this desire is K.’s journey to the Castle. A journey narrative is often the symbolic rendition of a spiritual quest. It traces the subject’s pursuit of his object of desire. While the centrality of desire is suggested by the novel’s narrative line, the object of desire is implied by K.’s chosen profession. K. seeks recognition as a Land Surveyor, and a Land Surveyor is a person who traces boundaries. Boundaries determine inclusion and exclusion, and while seeking the former, all K. gets is the latter. From the moment he arrives in the village, K. craves to belong there, but is rejected, time and again, by the villagers as well as by the Castle officials. K.’s vocation points to the novel’s theme in still another way. A Land Surveyor’s work consists of measuring the land, and the act of measuring pre-supposes the existence of stable, objective and absolute units. But in the novel’s fictional world nothing is stable, objective or absolute. The administrative apparatus is capricious and arbitrary; the characters interpret and re-interpret each event in endless and contradictory ways. Identity itself becomes fluid: K. does not recognise his assistants from one meeting to the next, and the Castle’s deputies also look different in every encounter. This indeterminacy extends to the most fundamental dimensions of the fictional world, and K. loses the senses of place and time. The blurring of boundaries
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______________________________________________________________ and values is refracted from the fictional to the textual level, and sentences are often constructed in oppositional pairs, so that a sentence often makes two contradictory claims The fluidity of the fictional world is also manifest in the blurring of distinctions between good and evil. The lords of the Castle are brutal, obtuse and inhuman; but K. is no better. He simply lacks their power. It is not accidental that the protagonist of The Castle is designated by the same letter as the antagonist. Like the detective and the criminal, Dupin and Minister D., in Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter,’ so do K. and Klamm reflect each other; they are mirror images. Thus all human contacts that K. initiates are instrumental, and he starts a relationship with Frieda only because he sees her as a means of approaching Klamm. The nature of the metaphysical longing implicitly conveyed in The Castle can be clarified through a comparison with a work that Kafka’s novel apparently adumbrates: Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. In his philosophical essay Camus suggests that the fundamental property of the human mind is the quest for meaning. This quest is thwarted by external reality, and the gap between the human desire for meaning and the world’s meaninglessness is the absurd. Camus describes the human condition in terms of thwarted desire. This view equally underpins the fictional world of Kafka, but here the object of desire is slightly different. K. does not strive to understand; he craves to belong. His quest is emotional rather than intellectual, and it can never be fulfilled. The basic deprivation is thus metaphysical, for phenomenal reality cannot satisfy the deepest yearning of the human mind. This deprivation is refracted on all levels of human existence. 3.
Evil in The Music of Chance Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance (1990) conspicuously corresponds with Kafka’s The Castle. Its protagonist, Nashe, a fire fighter from Boston, leaves his home upon receiving a mind-blowing inheritance, buys a red Saab and takes to the road, where he wastes most of his money. One day he picks up Pozzi, a young and badly wounded hitchhiker. Pozzi is a professional poker player. He promises to make money for Nashe in a game against a pair of inane millionaires, Flower and Stone. The two arrive at the millionaires’ mansion and the anticipated poker game takes place, but things do not go according to plan; Pozzi loses everything. Stone then suggests that Pozzi and Nashe pay their gambling losses by erecting a wall on the millionaires’ premises. Nashe accepts the offer. The form of payment exacted by the millionaires turns into brutal and inhuman labour, at the end of which Pozzi is killed and Nashe apparently commits suicide. The mansion and its tenants are depicted in a manner that echoes the description of the Castle in Kafka’s novel and conveys the same combination of brutal violence and banality. The premonition of violence is already
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______________________________________________________________ suggested at the entry to the millionaires’ abode, where an assemblage of broken statues exhibit a mounting succession of senseless cruelty: ‘a naked wood nymph missing her right arm, a headless hunter, a horse with no legs that floated above a stone plinth with an iron shaft connected to its belly.’15 Like Kafka, Auster grounds brutality in the realm of the mundane. Thus the sinister aspect of the house is initially belied by the seeming benevolence of its inhabitants. Flower and Stone are neither grand nor heroic - they seem childish and rather ridiculous little men. When Pozzi first mentions the two millionaires, who lost a game of poker against him in the past, he describes them to Nashe as a pair of harmless buffoons, in the vein of Laurel and Hardy. The meal which Flower and Stone share with their two guests looks like ‘a kiddie banquet, a dinner fit for six-year-olds’16; the stones that Nashe and Pozzi use for building the wall are strewn in the field like children’s Lego blocks and the two use a toy wagon to transport them. The millionaires’ occupations are also terrifyingly normal. Before they won the lottery, they used to be ‘real ordinary middle class guys’- Stone worked as an optometrist and Flower as an accountant.17 But this drab mediocrity does not diminish their power. Since winning twenty million dollars, they have continued making money, and it is money that has given them the arrogance of omnipotence. ‘No matter what we do,’ boasts Flower, ‘everything seems to turn out right…It’s as though God has singled us out from other men.’18 Besides this combination of banality and brutality, the millionaires share with the officials of Kafka’s Castle two other distinctive characteristics: inaccessibility and capriciousness. Once their two captives start slaving on the wall, Flower and Stone disappear from sight, and any contact with them is established through an emissary, remindful of Kafka’s Barnabas. Similarly, they keep changing the terms of the agreement, subverting the illusion of its moral validity. The agreement that the two millionaires have made with their debtors cannot possibly have any moral validity, even though Nashe (along with the reader) may initially think that it does. Stone’s suggestion that their guests repay their poker debt in brutal and senseless labour is grounded in the logic of capitalism, which confounds money with moral values that have nothing to do with money: justice and freedom. In poker, as in baseball, explains Nashe to the inconsolable Pozzi, justice belongs with the winners. You do your best, and if you lose, you must face the consequences, even if these consequences take the form of a pound of flesh.19 Poker, argues Eyal Dotan, may be seen as an apt metaphor for fictitious capital, which has characterized the economy of the late twentieth century: capital dissociated from labour or production, existing only nominally, in the sphere of speculation. Nashe’s loss in poker is a symbolic loss in the capitalist game, whose rules he does not contest. He has always believed that money signifies freedom; by the same token, lack of money
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______________________________________________________________ signifies slavery. These are the rules of the game, the underlying assumptions of capitalist ideology taken to the extreme. Nashe’s tragic error resides in his tacit acceptance of his tormentors’ logic. Like K., Kafka’s protagonist who reflects the antagonist Klamm, Nashe’s set of values mirrors that of Flower and Stone. Though initially perceived as childishly inoffensive, Flower and Stone eventually display the brutal power of the incommensurably rich. They are conspicuously depicted in metaphoric terms that cast them as omnipotent, malevolent and unpredictable deities. The millionaires act as gods and see themselves as gods. ‘Bill has the Midas touch,’ explains Stone to his guests, and Flower modestly admits: ‘at times I feel that we’ve become immortal.’20 This association with divinity is substantiated by Stone’s hobby - a miniature model city which he has labelled ‘The City of the World,’ as befits a man who deems himself the Creator of Worlds. Flower proudly displays Stone’s creation to their guests: Willie’s city is more than just a toy,’ Flower said, ‘it’s an artistic vision of mankind…If you look at the Prison, you’ll see that all the prisoners are working happily at various tasks, that they all have smiles on their faces. That’s because they’re glad they’ve been punished for their crimes, and now they’re learning to recover the goodness within them through hard work. That’s what I find so inspiring about Willie’s city. It’s an imaginary place, but it’s also realistic.21 Flower’s presentation parodically conflates several ideological systems that rationalise the brutal exercise of power. It evokes Kafka’s heartless bureaucracy, Foucault’s view of the prison as an emblem of the state and Orwell’s sinister dystopia, in which hard labour is promulgated as morally beneficial, exploitation is masked as liberation, and the state controls and regulates all aspects of human life. Stone’s ‘artistic vision of mankind’ also exposes the link between the twin foundations of American ideology, Puritanism and capitalism. As Woods correctly observes, the ideological rationalisation of venture capitalism is rooted in the Puritan ethos, which preaches freedom, self-determination and independence.22 This is the ideology that informs Nashe’s life on the road, in the first section of the novel; the same ideology motivates the toy prisoners in Stone’s mockutopian model, who work happily with smiles on their faces, apparently sharing the belief harboured by Nashe when he comes to erect the wall, namely, that work sets you free. While Stone makes things, Flower likes to collect them. He has a five-room collection of historical memorabilia, such as Churchill’s cigar,
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______________________________________________________________ Hawthorne’s cane, or Babe Ruth’s sweatshirt. Nashe finds this vast accumulation of trivia profoundly depressing: he accurately perceives it as ‘a demented shrine to the spirit of nothingness.’23 The millionaire’s hobby suggests his obsession with the world of objects, his reduction of all reality to a world of objects. The collection is an accurate representation of his mental world, in which money is deified, numbers are personified, and human beings are reified. Like the lords of the Castle, Flower and Stone invert the hierarchy between the human and the non-human. As an accountant, Flower has dealt with numbers all his life and he nurtures warm feelings towards them. ‘Numbers have souls,’ he expounds solemnly, ‘and you can’t help but get involved with them in a personal way.’24 Ironically, once Pozzi and Nashe become his debtors, he cannot help but get involved with them in an impersonal way. He perceives them as mere ciphers, opportunities in the shape of human beings. The inversion of ethically laden terms, such as the human and the non-human, is accompanied by the millionaires’ subversion of the hierarchy of signification. In the economic arena, money is a signifier. It has no intrinsic value, acquiring its worth from the labour, services or commodities that it represents. For Nashe, who believes that money can buy freedom and that the protection of one’s fortune is morally justified, money has come to signify ethical, rather than material, values. Flower has taken Nashe’s reasoning one step further. His collection exhibits the talent he is most proud of - his ability to make money out of money, that is, to create a system of empty, proliferating signifiers. For him, as well as for Stone, money has been elevated to the status of the signified, the thing itself. It is not a means but the end, and human lives, the lives of Pozzi and Nashe, are instrumental in achieving that end. Violence has traditionally been portrayed in terms of the extraordinary. It was perceived as a deviation from the norm of civilised human conduct and associated with the invasion of chaos into the routine of everyday life. But Kafka and Auster have a different insight and their vision is more accurate and terrifying, for history has taught us that violence originates amidst the most banal normalcy and thrives upon organisation and order.
Notes 1
G Kent, ‘Structural Violence Against Children,’ Transcend, 26 May 1999 (30 July 2006). http://www.transcend.org/t_database/pdfarticles/466.pdf. 2 A Morton, On Evil, Routledge, New York, 2004, p. 35.
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I am using the term ‘aggression’ here as roughly synonymous with ‘violence.’ 4 M Midgley, Wickedness, Routledge, London, 2001, p. 76. It should be noted here that Midgley objects to the notion of ‘structural violence,’ claiming that it is a misleading use of the term. 5 H Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , Faber and Faber, London, 1963, p. 253. 6 J Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research,’ Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6, 1969, pp. 167-191. 7 Kent, op. cit. p. 4. 8 F Kafka, The Castle, in The Complete Novels, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, Vintage Books, London, 1999, p. 281. 9 Ibid., p. 341. 10 Ibid., p. 398. 11 Ibid., p. 309. 12 Ibid., p. 411. 13 Ibid., p. 314. 14 M Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, New York, 1995, p. 231. 15 P Auster, The Music of Chance, Penguin, New York, 1991, p. 68. 16 Ibid., p. 88. 17 Ibid., p. 32. 18 Ibid., p. 75. 19 Ibid., p. 137 20 Ibid., p. 75. 21 Ibid., p. 79-80. 22 T Woods, ‘The Music of Chance: Aleatorical (Dis)harmonies Within ‘The City of the World,’ in Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, ed. D Barone, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1995, p. 150. 23 Auster, op. cit., p. 84. 24 Ibid., p. 37.
Bibliography Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Faber and Faber, London, 1963. Auster, P., The Music of Chance. Penguin, . New York, 1991. Bucher, S., ‘Globalisation and Structural Violence.’http://www.interdisciplinary.net/ati/violence/v5/cov04cfp/htm1312
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______________________________________________________________ Camus, A., The Myth of Sisyphus, translated by Justin O’Brien. Penguin, London, 1975. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986. Dotan, E., ‘The Game of Late Capitalism: Gambling and Ideology in The Music of Chance.’ Mosaic vol. 33, 2000, pp. 161-176. Du Nann Winter, D., and Leighton, D., ‘Structural Violence: Introduction.’ http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~dleighton/svintro.html Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan. Vintage Books, New York, 1995. Galtung, J., ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research.’ Journal of Peace Research vol. 6, n. 3, pp. 167-191. Kafka, F., The Castle. In The Complete Novels, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Vintage, London, 1999. Kent, G., ‘Structural Violence Against Children.’ Transcend, 26 May, 1999. http://www.transcend.org/t_database/pdfarticles/466.pdf Löwy, M., ‘Paper Chains: Bureaucratic Despotism and Voluntary Servitude in Franz Kafka’s The Castle,’ translated by Jean Burrell. Diogenes vol. 204, pp. 49-58. Morton, A., On Evil. Routledge, New York, 2004. Midgley, M., Wickedness. Routledge, London, 2001. Shiloh, I., Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest. Peter Lang, New York, 2002. Woods, T., ‘The Music of Chance: Aleatorical (Dis)harmonies Within The City of the World.’ In Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, edited by Dennis Barone. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1995, pp.149-162.
Deconstructed Masculine Evil in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Stories Aytül Özüm Abstract Fairy-tales are thought to form the major segment of the literature of consolation, but what if these stories resist re-presenting the consoling demarcation of the fairy-tale and fabricate a subverted form of the monstrous and the evil? In some of the stories of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter is concerned not only with the shortcomings of conventional representations of gender, but also with different models of deconstructed masculine evil which take various shapes in evil and wicked female format. It is impossible to evaluate these stories in The Bloody Chamber independently from Carter’s The Sadeian Woman, which was published in the same year, 1979. However, what Carter depicts in The Sadeian Woman is not the mere objectification of the female to the pervert male world, but she reinforces the idea of separation of women’s sexuality from their reproductive function. She also asserts that Sade ‘put pornography in the service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical to women [...]’1 In the stories selected from The Bloody Chamber, Carter not only deconstructs but also discloses the fixity of the frame that encloses the motif of the masculine evil to one single referent by playing with the slippery ground where content and form of the fairy tales are fabricated. Hence, the representation of the female evil in the reappropriation of the fairy tales saves the woman subject from being victimized in the traditionally acknowledged frameworks. Key Words: Angela Carter, deconstruction, fairy-tales, female evil, Marquis de Sade, masculine evil, sexuality, The Bloody Chamber, The Sadeian Woman. ***** Angela Carter reappropriates the consolatory mechanisms of the traditional fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber stories and reconstructs the conventions governing a certain social behaviour for women. Carter’s tales fabricate new cultural and literary realities in which sexuality and free will in women replace the patriarchal traits of innocence and morality in traditional fairy tales. In some of the stories of The Bloody Chamber, Carter is concerned not only with the shortcomings of conventional representations of gender, but also with different models of deconstructed masculine evil which take various shapes in wicked female format. The image of the young female which is mostly associated with the good, decent, innocent and naive is
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______________________________________________________________ rendered either to have inclinations towards perverted sexual practices or to be violently harmful for the opposite sex. In the stories entitled ‘The Bloody Chamber,’ ‘Puss-in-Boots,’ ‘The Snow Child’ and ‘The Lady of the House of Love,’ Carter claims to have used ‘the latent context of those traditional stories,’ and ‘that latent context is violently sexual.’2 The aim of this paper is to show that the stories, in effect, deconstruct and demystify evil which is closely linked with masculinity and patriarchal values and norms, and that the stories intentionally display a potential harshness of the female evil simultaneously existing with the masculine evil. This attachment of the evil to feminine attributions in fact foregrounds the female body and voice which can at times be as lustful, self-conscious, vulgar, reckless, harsh, and independent as the body and voice of a male. It is not possible to separate Carter’s The Sadeian Woman (1979), which is in fact her own reading of Marquis de Sade, from The Bloody Chamber (1979), in reading and interpreting the stories. The way Carter represents female sexuality, the arousal of which is triggered by cunning, evil, sly and sometimes perverse revelations, plays with the earlier misogynistic versions of the fairy-tale genre. In The Sadeian Woman, what Carter depicts is not the mere objectification of the female to the pervert male world, but she reinforces the idea of separation of women’s sexuality from their reproductive function. In the selected stories, the evil females are allowed to take as much pleasure from sex as the evil males who have always already been accepted as such. The link which combines the subverted version of the fairy-tales and The Sadeian Woman is embedded in the way Carter reimagines the young heroines as active in their own sexual development and experience. In The Sadeian Woman, Carter reads Sade in such a way that she believes he claimed the ‘rights of free sexuality for women’ and created ‘women as beings of power in his imaginary worlds.’3 She also acknowledges Marquis de Sade’s belief that ‘it would only be through the medium of sexual violence that women might heal themselves of their socially inflicted scars, in a praxis of destruction and sacrilege.’4 Carter concludes the ‘Polemical Preface’ of The Sadeian Woman by asserting that Sade ‘put pornography in the service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical to women.’5 Thus, as a parallel to this ideology, Carter’s texts not only deconstruct but also loosen the fixed frame that encloses the motif of the evil to one single referent by problematising the slippery ground which lets the reappropriation of the fairy tales save the woman subject from being victimized in the traditionally acknowledged frameworks. ‘The Bloody Chamber’ is the retelling of the ‘Bluebeard’ story and is filled with quite a lot of hints making the reader question whether the young maiden bride is really purely naive or not. In the original story, the Charles Perrault version, Bluebeard is a wealthy aristocrat who has married
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______________________________________________________________ several times, but no one know exactly what has happened to his wives. None of the families in the neighbourhood consents to marry their daughters to Bluebeard except for one family. After the marriage he takes his young bride to his château and when he is away for a while, she discovers the secret of his ex-wives. When she is about to pay the cost of this discovery, she is saved by her brothers who kill the wicked husband, and finally she inherits Bluebeard’s wealth. Carter does not hesitate to play with the gaps in the original fairy-tale to subvert the balance between the Marquis and the bride in terms of gender, intention and free will. The first person narrator does not deny that she accepted marriage for a well-off future and a comfortable life. When her mother asks, ‘[a]re you sure you love him?’ she replies, ‘I’m sure I want to marry him.’ What is emphasised boldly by the narrator is also the hope of bearing an heir to ‘that legendary habitation.’ More emphatic than this is the hope that this will be, as she clarifies, ‘my destiny.’6 From the very beginning of the story, the narrator does not portray herself as an intimidated, shy and ignorant maiden. Within her voice, one can feel that an alternative evil is offered to compete with the latent evil of Marquis: ‘His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinary precious slit throat.’7 She catches the sight of herself in the mirror and sees the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.8 The language Carter employs does exclude the use of vocabulary which is convenient for traditionally accepted and naturally developing norms of a heterosexual relationship. Instead, she paves the way with an appropriate wording of sensuality and violence for the maiden’s psychological involvement in the pornographic and pervert world of the Marquis. The reader continues to doubt about her innocence and ignorance: ‘He is in his London tailoring; she, bore as a lamp chop. Most pornographic of all confrontations […] I was aghast to feel myself stirring.’9 Later, she discovers the pornographic books belonging to the Marquis’s collection and before the pictures she admits that ‘I knew enough for what I saw in that book to make me gasp.’10 The problematical issue in the story is not focused on the young woman’s sexual arousal, but it is on the fact that women can be as inclined for evil as men. Carter’s means to affiliate this woman with sexuality or pornography is through the creation of potential for evil and corruption. However, in The Sadeian Woman, her pretext for the presence of women in pornography is rather social than sexual. She explains it as: ‘A
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______________________________________________________________ moral pornographer […] would not be the enemy of women, perhaps he might begin to penetrate to the heart of the contempt for women that distorts our culture.’11 So pornography in fact deconstructs the plight of woman for Carter and when this attitude is accompanied with the creation of female characters with evil and cunning intentions, it becomes quite possible to observe a potential female evil. Susanne Kappeler, a critic of pornography, accuses Carter of valuing the pornographic in the name of equal rights and opportunities by employing it within the literary. Carter’s concern is rather metaphoric in her stories. In fact, Kappeler acknowledges this intention of Carter, while teasingly stating that ‘[s]ince it all happens in the realm of the literary, it cannot possibly be ‘inimical’ to women in the real world.’12 Carter however does not ‘lapse into the fallacy of equal opportunities […] to cause suffering, ‘just as men do.’’13 She employs literary devices to impose the idea that evil and wickedness cannot be attributed to the male solely, and she deconstructs the solid link between evil and masculinity in most of the fairy-tales. Another hint Carter creates and poses in the story about the problematic innocence of the female in fairy-tales lays bare once again the female potentiality for being bad. In fact, this innocence is the gap that Carter makes use of. The young woman confesses that I was not afraid of him, but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. I hardly recognised myself from his descriptions of me and yet […] I blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.14 When the keys of the chambers are given to her by the Marquis, a ‘dark newborn curiosity’15 leads her to the forbidden room where she sees the tortured dead bodies of the Marquis’s ex-wives. To the reader’s surprise, the young chatelaine becomes the blind piano-tuner’s beloved immediately after realising what will happen to her when the Marquis arrives. In the end she is saved by her mother who enters the castle through the door left open by the piano-tuner. In the Perrault version, those who save her are her brothers. The ending of Carter’s story is quite suggestive. The Marquis leaves a mark on her forehead with the key of the bloody chamber. She is glad that her lover ‘cannot see it […] - not for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart - but, because it spares my shame.’16 What is the thing that she is ashamed of? Adultery, curiosity or tendency for corruption? ‘Puss-in-Boots’ is the other story where the imprisoned young married woman and the lecherous bachelor who is the master of the cat find a common evil ground to perform their intentions. Just after they see each
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______________________________________________________________ other, the master falls in love with the woman and, with the help of the cat, goes into the woman’s house and sleeps with her. The next step is to put the real plan into practice, which is to kill the woman’s old husband. Carter, while using Perrault’s story, makes quite a number of thematic and stylistic changes. The cat narrating the story employs a highly sarcastic tone with abundant obscenity. He is as clever, wicked, and tricky as the one in Perrault’s story but the foregrounded evil is not the cat’s but the master’s. Along with many references to Perrault, as ‘[t]hen faithful Puss curls up on his chest to keep him warm at nights,’ Carter does not avoid making half erotic and half pornographic depictions about these two males: I’ve sat inscrutably by and washed my face and sparkling dickey with my clever paw while he made the beast with two backs with every harlot in the city, besides a number of good wives […] But never the word ‘love’ has fallen from his lips, nor in nor out of any of these transports, until my master saw the wife of Signor Panteleone […]17 The cat does believe that if he persuades her into having an affair, she will be his, however the way he expresses himself is quite vulgar: ‘All good women have a missionary streak, sir; convince her her orifice will be your salvation and she’s yours.’18 The puss-in-boots and his master make a plan to go into the house. The master poses as a rat-catcher and the narrator guesses that ‘[…] though milady exhibits a most praiseworthy and collected presence of mind, being, […] a young woman of no small grasp, perhaps, she has a sniff of the plot already.’19 So the plan goes successfully and the male evil sleeps with the female evil. When the governess asks her why the bedclothes are so disordered, the young woman answers, ‘Puss had a mighty battle with the biggest beast you ever saw upon this very bed; can’t you see the bloodstains on the sheets?’20 But this satisfaction does not satisfy the master who has much in common with the puss for ‘he’s proud as the devil, touchy as tintacks, lecherous as liquorice […]’21 Since this lechery is hand in hand with greed, the last plan is based on murdering the rich old man whose wealth is ‘[e]nough to keep two loving couples.’22 The old man, early in the morning, places ‘his foot upon the suffuse yet volatile fur of a shadow-camouflaged young tabby cat.’23 Thus, he breaks his neck. The young woman pretends to be sorry while ‘dutifully’ and ‘correctly’ drying her eyes. In the end of the story, the so-far silent young wife suddenly becomes a patronising woman while talking to the old hag: ‘Now, no more of your nonsense […] I am a rich widow and here […] is the young man who’ll be my second husband.’24 Carter, in ‘Puss-in-Boots’ combines evil with lechery and proposes the idea that women have this potential and it is not less strong than the evil in men.
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______________________________________________________________ For Sally Keenan, although Carter reimagines the heroines in the fairy-tales as having equal share in their own sexual experience, ‘[…] the route she takes towards that revision constitutes what could be called a scandalous liaison with the book on Sade.’25 However, Carter puts forward an elucidation of equality through attaching evil qualities to women and believes that the archetypes of both the pornographic and fairy-tale worlds confuse the ‘historical fact of economic dependence of women upon men.’26 Through symbolic means in her reappropriation and problematisation of the tales, Carter demonstrates that women, in putting their free will into practice in this way or the other, can attain autonomy. The third story is the ‘Snow Child,’ a rewriting of Grimms’s ‘Snow White.’ Angela Carter introduces rather abruptly the Count riding on a grey mare and the Countess on a black one. Carter describes the physical appearance of the Countess in greater detail than the Count’s. The colour black is dominant in this depiction: ‘[…] she wrapped in the glittering pelts of black foxes; and she wore high, black, shining […]’27 She does not do the needle work while staring outside her window like the queen does in Grimm’s story. She is more active and wicked. In Carter’s version the Count is the one who wants a girl as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as raven’s feathers. He mentions neither her skin, nor her lips and hair. His is not a fatherly wish. After she appears all of a sudden before them, the Countess hates her, because she feels that she was the child of the Count’s desire. He lifts her up and sits her in front of him on his saddle. The evil which has already been attributed to the Countess is aroused in her. She searches for the ways of getting rid of her and orders the girl to bring her diamond brooch back from the ice of a frozen pond. The Count prevents the girl from diving into the pond. But when she orders her to pick a rose for her, the girl’s finger bleeds and she dies. He gets off his horse and rapes the dead girl while his wife watches him, so Carter creates a female aristocratic voyeur. In the end, she refuses the rose her husband offers her, saying that ‘it bites.’ In this story the evil Countess acknowledges the Count’s authority. However, she participates in the evil action and evil will. The child who is created to be consumed is a means through which the potential evil in the Countess becomes overt. Furthermore, Elaine Jordan suggests that the death of the virgin girl is the symbol of ‘killing of masculine representations,’ not ‘a killing of women.’28 The presence of the female evil in the story is not offered as a challenge against the male evil, they are not involved in a power struggle. They are hand in hand to destroy the innocence through the pervert practice of necrophilia. The last story to be dealt with is ‘The Lady of the House of Love,’ which is a rather loose adaptation of Perrault’s ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ The story can also be seen as the ironic parody of Stoker’s Dracula. As in the early three stories, Carter challenges representation altogether. None of the ladies
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______________________________________________________________ including the one in this story is proper. The lady vampire suffers from immortality which feeds on humanity. When she is transformed into a mortal woman, she becomes a dying human subject. The representation of unworldly female evil in the story explores the sphere of an absent fantastic male hero. Carter eventually adds a male sadist into the narration. So, the lady vampire is not the only evil. Her counterpart, though his existence does not pervade the whole story, is a masculine figure. The soldier’s colonel who appears only in his memory, not in the actual action of the story, is called ‘an old goat with jaded appetites.’29 He gives the soldier the visiting card of a brothel where ‘the customer [takes] his necrophiliac pleasure of a pretended corpse.’30 Good-natured virgin soldier refuses this by thinking that this would be ‘taking criminal advantage of the disordered girl.’31 The lady leads the soldier to her bedroom to conduct her fatal ceremony. To take off her dress, she has to take off her glasses first. They slip from her fingers and are broken into pieces. The noise of the broken glass breaks the ‘wicked spell’ in the room. She cuts her thumb; he kisses the wound and causes her death. This is her doom, which takes place at the edge of an unconsummated sexual experience. Most of the rewritten female characters of Carter cannot be good. For Carter, ‘[t]he end of exile is the end of being.’32 Once they become good, loyal and submissive, they are threatened to disappear. Throughout the stories chosen from the collection, Carter’s poststructural reading in the reappropriation of the fairy tales is quite evident. As she herself pointed out, she believed that all fiction was about other fiction. And accordingly, the ‘Ur-book’ is the real world.33 In this paradoxical paradigm, she attributes unusual and pervert sexuality to the female and poses this situation as a possibility for female awakening. Hence, the juxtaposition of the female and male evil, within the framework of violent sexuality, lays bare the female body and voice and becomes the symbol of Carter’s weird but down-to-earth feminism.
Notes 1
A Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, Penguin, New York, 2001, p.37. 2 R A Sheets, ‘Pornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’’ in Critical Essays on Angela Carter, L Tucker (ed), G K Hall & Co, New York, 1998, pp. 96-118. 3 Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, p. 36. 4 ibid., p. 26. 5 ibid., p. 37. 6 A Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Penguin, London, 1981, p.8.
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ibid., p. 11. ibid., p. 11. 9 ibid., p. 15. 10 ibid., p. 17. 11 Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, p. 20. 12 S Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation, U of Minnesota P, Minneapolis, 1986, p. 135. 13 ibid., p. 134. 14 Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, p. 20. 15 ibid., p. 22. 16 ibid., p. 41. 17 ibid., pp. 71-72. 18 ibid., p. 74. 19 ibid., p. 77. 20 ibid., p. 79. 21 ibid., p. 70. 22 ibid., p. 81. 23 ibid., p. 81. 24 ibid., p. 83. 25 S Keenan, ‘Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman: Feminism as Treason’ in New Casebooks: Angela Carter, A Easton (ed), St Martin, New York, 2000, p. 41. 26 Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, pp. 6-7. 27 Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, p. 91. 28 E Jordan, ‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’ in Critical Essays on Angela Carter, L Tucker (ed), G K Hall & Co, New York, 1998, p. 41. 29 Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, p. 105. 30 ibid., p. 105. 31 ibid., p. 105. 32 ibid., p. 106. 33 A Day, Angela Carter: The Rational Glass, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998, pp. 11-12. 8
Bibliography Carter, A., The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Penguin, London, 1981. –––, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography. Penguin, New York, 2001.
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______________________________________________________________ Day, A., Angela Carter: The Rational Glass. Manchester UP, Manchester, 1998. Jordan, E., ‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’ in New Feminist Discourse: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts. I. Armstrong (ed.). Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 119-31. Kappeler, S., The Pornography of Representation. U. of Minnesota P., Minneapolis, 1986. Keenan, S., ‘Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman: Feminism as Treason’ in New Casebooks: Angela Carter. A. Easton (ed.). St. Martin, New York, 2000, pp. 37-56. Sheets, R. A., ‘Pornography, Fairy Tales and Feminism: Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’’ in Critical Essays on Angela Carter. L. Tucker (ed.). G. K. Hall, New York, 1998, 96-116.
Sacred and (Sub)human Pain: Witnessing Bodies in Early Modern Hagiography and Contemporary Spectatorship of Atrocity Sophie Oliver Abstract: As is etymologically inferred, the ‘martyr’ is always also the ‘witness.’ Testifying in the death and defamation of her body, through her body, to a faith that survives and surpasses the limits of human pain and suffering, the martyr attains a sacred or surhumanity. More modern narratives of atrocity recount a similar pattern of corporeal degradation working in the opposite direction: for the perpetrator, victim and - very often - the bystander(s) of atrocity, narratives of torture and the intense physical and psychological suffering it inflicts are read and heard as narratives of subjective destitution leading not to sanctification but to de- or subhumanisation. The monstrosity of the abject suffering body of the victim is rejected as witness precisely because of its perceived non-humanity, its destabilising immediacy: the unspeakable has no voice. This paper explores (un) ethical reactions to witnessing suffering bodies in 20th and 21st century representations of dehumanising atrocity, in the light of and drawing on a literary analysis of Early Modern hagiographic narratives of sanctifying torture. Key Words: Atrocity, body, saints’ lives, spectatorship, suffering, witness ***** 1.
Introduction I’m not human anymore. I have no name and even less soul. I’m a thing, not even a dog that gets stroked or a goat that gets protected and then eaten with gusto. I’m a vagina. I’m a hole [...] I’m a body that’s decomposing, an ugly thing I don’t want you to see. 1
On my first encounter with this passage from Gil Courtemanche’s novel, A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali, I was struck, as I am now, by the character’s desperate attempt at self-effacement and absolute contempt for her own suffering body as the essence and symbol of her perceived nonhumanity. For Gentille - victim and survivor of the Rwandan genocide - the inhuman is wholly, painfully, and grotesquely embodied. This perspective is repeated in a number of other texts within the genre of what we might call
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______________________________________________________________ modern ‘literature of atrocity,’ whether in the form of fictional representations or real-life testimonials. Such texts frequently represent a psychological and philosophical encounter with the limits of humanity, in which victims are reduced, through acts of physical and symbolic violence, to the status of objectified and abject bodies emptied of ‘human’ subjectivity. The suffering body emerges here as a site of dehumanisation, the perceived otherness of the victim, constructed in and upon the flesh, providing the subhuman yardstick against which the rational, disembodied human subject is defined. Early Modern accounts of the lives of saints (hereafter: Saints’ Lives) present an entirely different image of abjection and violent death, while still constructing and deconstructing the limits of humanity upon the figure of the suffering body: for the saint, physical suffering is a sanctifying experience, elevating the individual to the level of divine. As is already suggested by the etymology of the term ‘martyr,’ which is derived from the Greek (martys), meaning ‘witness,’ the saint’s suffering is to be interpreted not as penitence nor, paradoxically, as a denial of the body, but as the proclamation and attestation, through the body, of God’s word. The martyr’s position as witness in these Early Modern texts is entirely dependent upon her embodied performance: divine truth and knowledge are enacted upon the spectacular suffering body of the saint. In both literal and figurative senses, then, the body is present, precisely, as witness. The visible or invisible suffering of the flesh adds the credence of divine providence not only to the saint’s dialogue, but to the discourse of the church as a whole and, as Judith Perkins notes, contributes to the creation in the early Roman Empire of ‘a new subjectivity - the self as sufferer.’2 Both the Saints’ Lives and modern representations of atrocity witness or attest to something that appears to exceed the human - the body emerges in both as the site upon which humanity may be defined, either against the surhuman/divine, or against the subhuman/mere flesh. By examining these two literary genres side by side I do not seek to make straight forward comparisons - to do so would be both ethically and methodologically weak - nor do I seek to propose spiritual redemption as a model for undermining modern secular suffering. I would however contend that it may useful to consider Early Modern representations of sacred abjection in relation to the witnessing of embodied suffering today - the interrelated themes of suffering, embodiment, witnessing, truth and spectacle, so important for understanding Early Modern hagiography, also provide a challenging and useful platform from which to consider representations of modern atrocity, in particular our role as audience to these texts. Our reception of representations of human suffering - whether in the media, or through fiction, poetry, testimony, art, film or photography - is of essential
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______________________________________________________________ significance to any ethical or moral position we adopt in relation to that suffering. After an initial elucidatory analysis of the Saints’ Lives and Martyr Passions (accounts of the deaths of martyrs), this paper will go on to discuss embodied processes of dehumanisation as they are frequently represented in modern narratives of atrocity, ending, in the last two sections of the paper, with a series of reflections upon the specific role and ethical responsibility of the spectator of suffering bodies. Could an acknowledgement of the witnessing role of the body in the Saint’s Lives, particularly the Martyr Passions, force us to question our reception or rejection of the embodied knowledge of the modern-day sufferer, and at the same time therefore call upon us to challenge our conception of a humanity with limits? Or are these texts equally problematic in their representation of inhuman pain? 2.
Pearls of Flesh: the Sufferer as Sacred The Saint’s Lives and Martyr Passions, which first appeared in Greek and Latin during the early Roman Empire, and then in the vernacular during the Middle Ages, can mostly be categorised according to repeated tropes or plot structures, corresponding to the role of sanctity performed by the saints and their bodies. The Martyr Passions, for instance, follow the general structure whereby a Christian (usually a virgin) is required by the Pagan authority to sacrifice to the gods and/or to marry a Pagan spouse. Refusing to comply, (s) he is subsequently subjected to a series of tortures, which miraculously cause little or no discomfort. Finally the martyr is killed and the corpse’s scattered remains become a site of miracles and veneration. Other categories that have been identified incorporate patterns of asceticism, hermitage, penitence and even cross-dressing.3 A common topos of the genre that spans Early Modern hagiography’s various categories, however, is that of empowerment through suffering and social or physical abjection. The martyr becomes a saint by virtue of her tortured, gruesome, bleeding body: the descriptions are such so as to conceal none of the horror of the ordeal, quite the opposite, the more persecuted and defiled the body, the more popular the tale and the more venerated the martyr. The most popular Saints’ Lives, too, were often stories of the sanctification of the most spectacularly socially excluded. Saint Alexis, for example, is the son of a nobleman who twice relinquishes fame, fortune and respect in order to live like a beggar under the stairs. His most cherished moment is when his former servants, failing to recognise him, throw him their spare change. Alexis’ spiritual transition is enacted in a material transformation, which constitutes a direct encounter with his (suffering) other, as the narrator succinctly indicates in the following opposition: ‘Il fut lur sire, or est lur almosners.’ (He was their master, now he begs their charity). 4
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______________________________________________________________ Mary the Egyptian’s process of sanctification is more obviously a material one. A reformed prostitute, she attains her saintly status by withdrawing to the desert and enacting the slow deterioration of her physical beauty through penitent starvation and self-mutilation.5 Mary begins as a social outcast (where Alexis seeks to end up) and becomes a heroine by embracing physical abjection to the point where she too is recognisable only as her abject other. Chancing upon her naked figure in the desert, the priest Zosimas fails to recognise her as the beautiful woman she once was, seeing instead what she has become: ‘a strange creature, with a body black and burnt from the sun.’6 It is precisely this abject transformation, however, that inspires the priest to fall to his knees in reverence and beg for her blessing. In a reversal of ‘normal’ social hierarchies, the lowly sufferers or socially excluded are seen as divine, while health, beauty, power and wealth are seen as signs of moral inferiority. The treatment of the suffering body in the martyrdom texts poses an equally striking challenge to conventional understandings of the relationship between pain, violence and power.7 In the Martyr Passions, the logic whereby violence and the infliction of pain are intended as a statement of the power of the oppressor over the oppressed is reversed and the authority of the torturer undermined. The pagan who orders or inflicts the torture is in fact deprived of power, since the martyr submits only to the power of God, who frequently intervenes on the saint’s behalf, drawing back flames and shattering spikes. St Catherine’s (of Siena) lustful persecutor Maximus is thwarted again and again in his attempts to injure and defile Catherine’s body, which he desires. After twelve days without food she emerges from her prison tauntingly unscathed and ‘resplendissante de vie,’ having been nourished by the same angels who, later, destroy the elaborate torture wheel especially constructed to tear her limbs apart. 8 In narratives such as Catherine’s, the witnessing body of the martyr is the body that miraculously avoids or endures the pain of torture with little or no noticeable suffering - the saint remains calm and sometimes even appears to enjoy the torment. The presence or, in many cases, miraculous absence of lasting scars or physical signs of suffering on the body serves as evidence of the power of God and the divinity of the saint under His protection. As Stavroula Constantinou has noted: The martyr’s bodily tortures elevate the body’s physicality into a means of access to the divine […] the indestructible or sublime bodies of the martyrs mirror their undestroyed souls.9 For some saints, pain and suffering is felt but peacefully endured, while for others, it is simply not felt at all. In each case, however, the narrators in the
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______________________________________________________________ martyr passions - frequently labelled the ‘pious pornography’ of the Middle Ages - delight in gruesome accounts of the often very sexual violence inflicted upon the bodies of their protagonists: flesh and limbs are torn apart, breasts are sliced off, and nubile young girls are set to boil in vats of hot oil. No detail is spared, and it is clear that it is not only the authors but also their audiences whose voyeuristic enjoyment is satisfied by these stories, of which the most gruesome appear and reappear in manuscripts and vernacular translations throughout the Early Modern period. Despite their clearly voyeuristic function, the stories retain an air of reverence not only for the saints but also - and importantly - for their (mutilated and dismembered) bodies. In certain narratives, it is precisely the visibility of suffering on the body of the saint that seals his or her saintliness. Indeed, the role-played by the bleeding, suffering body is deemed in some narratives to be equal in importance to baptism for securing one’s place with God. Thus Catherine reassures the pagan converts sentenced to death for their newfound faith in Christianity that they need not fear, for the spilling of their blood will serve in place of baptism and bear witness before God to their devotion: ‘soyez sans crainte, car l’effusion de votre sang vous tiendra lieu de baptême.’10 For female saints in particular, the body emerges as crucial to the sanctification process. As medieval scholar Brigitte Gazelles, author of The Lady as Saint, points out, in stories of female sanctity, ‘corporeality is the single referent on the basis of which the heroines gain salvation for the soul.’11 Besides serving to ensure the spiritual salvation of the saint, the martyred body is perceived by audiences as valuable in its own (material) right, even after death. Catherine’s body is finally breached by the torturer’s decapitating blade and, in a scene of divine abjection, leaks milk instead of blood. Her remains, gathered by angels and taken to Mount Sinai, are said to release miraculous healing oil. These are no longer merely signs of the saint’s spiritual strength; they are evidence of the miraculous nature of her suffering flesh. Catherine’s dead body, like that of other saints, is represented as a sacred body, as a source of miracles, as a vessel for God’s Truth. In the reversed rhetoric of Christian narrative the abject, fragmented body is revered as a divine relic. Thus the ‘stinking worm’ that falls from the rotting ‘stinking flesh’ of Saint Simeon the Elder is transformed into a priceless pearl,12 and as Judith Perkins writes, ‘suffering in all its horror is transformed into treasure and sufferers are honoured.’13 3.
From Sacred to Sub-Humanity: The Modern Body in Pain Let us return now to narratives of modern atrocities, in which pain and abjection function as destructive forces depriving victims of their autonomy and identity within the human community. The focus will be upon literary and photographic representations, since these are the forms of testimony to which most people are most frequently exposed. Primo Levi is
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______________________________________________________________ perhaps one of the most well known Holocaust survivor writers to directly address the question of dehumanisation in the Nazi concentration camps. His stories of suffering, death and survival in his testimony If This is a Man interrogate the very limits of the human, and ask what it takes for the world to consider that these limits have been crossed, for the world to declare that a man is no longer a man. The episodes that Levi chooses to describe in the book demonstrate what he perceives as the devastating, dehumanising force that the camps exert upon their victims from the very first moment of entering. On arrival in Auschwitz, Levi tells us, he and his fellow prisoners having been taken from their homes, separated from their families and deprived of their possessions - were ordered to strip, before their heads were shaved and their bodies ‘disinfected.’ This violation of the prisoners’ intimate, physical being instils in them the first knowledge that they have reached ‘the bottom’ of human experience: It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us anymore; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand.14 Female Holocaust survivor Livia Bitton Jackson echoes Levi’s comments, but, speaking from the specifically (and historically embodied) female perspective, places a greater emphasis on the role of the body in the processes of dehumanisation at work in the camps. For Bitton Jackson, the loss of identity and autonomy felt by the victims was enacted and symbolised first and foremost upon their bodies: the absence of hair has transformed individual women into like bodies…Facial expressions disappear. Instead, a blank, senseless stare emerges on a thousand faces of one naked, unappealing body…we become a monolithic mass. Inconsequential.15 Bitton Jackson goes on to explain how changes in the women’s bodies, brought on by starvation, came also to rob them of their sexual identity. No longer menstruating, their bodies were so emaciated that they ‘were all like men.’ Bitton Jackson’s narrative describes the specific experience of women in the camps, yet it is through such acts as the shaving of hair and medical experiments, and through the effects of starvation and disease, that the reification of both female and male victims was physically encoded upon their fragile and homogenised bodies. Levi’s account by no means forgets the
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______________________________________________________________ corporeal suffering of victims, acknowledging also its significant symbolic effect. In the following passage, Levi describes how the prisoners’ loss of identity was literally inscribed - in the form of a number tattooed onto the skin, as if herding cattle - upon the body. He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called by anything except that, Zero Eighteen; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man.16 Another episode, which describes a nurse in the camp laughing and pointing at Levi’s body as though it were an exhibit in a freak show, provides a stark demonstration of how the starved, suffering human body is deprived of its integrity and reduced to a collection of disparate (in) human body parts, reminiscent of Gentille’s fragmented self: The nurse points to my ribs to show the other [man], as if I were a corpse in an anatomy class: he alludes to my eyelids and swollen cheeks and my thin neck, he stoops to press on my tibia with his thumb, and shows the other the deep impression that his finger leaves in the pale flesh, as if it was wax.17 For Elaine Scarry, this destruction of the victim’s physical integrity is accompanied not only by a loss of identity and autonomy but also by a very fundamental alienation of the victim from his or her own sentient experience. The numb, wax-like flesh of Levi’s body provides a haunting image of this state of corporeal dislocation from the world and from the self. In the now well-known The Body in Pain, Scarry goes on to explain how torture can lead the victim to perceive his or her own body as ‘an active agent, an actual cause of his pain,’ thus concretising the sense of alienation from that body, while at the same time reducing all experience to its painful sentience. For Scarry: As the body breaks down, it becomes increasingly the object of attention, usurping the place of all other objects, so that finally, as in very old and very sick people, the exclusive content of perception and speech may become what was eaten, the problems of excreting, the progress of pains, the comfort or discomfort of a particular chair or bed.18 The victim of torture, cut off from humanity, from the speech community and finally, from his or her own body - which at the same time constitutes the
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______________________________________________________________ entire universe - is, in Scarry’s eyes, experiencing in sentient presence the same negation that accompanies the absent sentience of death. In both cases, the annihilation of the subject is fully embodied: Pain is the equivalent in felt experience of what is unfeelable in death. Each happens only because of the body. In each, the contents of consciousness are destroyed. The two are the most intense forms of negation, the purest expressions of the anti-human, of annihilation, of total aversiveness, though one is absence and the other a felt presence, one occurring in the cessation of sentience, the other expressing itself in grotesque overload.19 Scarry’s account of the dehumanising potential of torture and intense physical pain places particular emphasis on the victim’s exclusion from the human community, both through a sense of dislocation from objects, places and relationships and also, crucially, through the alienation of the victim from the speech community. That the ability to communicate with, and be acknowledged by others emerges as crucial to our perception of our own humanity is confirmed in the testimony of survivors from around the globe. Levi relates associates this need to communicate with the victim/survivor’s need to testify, to tell the story of suffering. For Levi, it is a primal, physical need: The need to tell the our story to the ‘rest,’ to make the ‘rest’ participate in it, had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with our other elementary needs.20 The ‘rest’ have, in Levi’s eyes, a crucial and active role to play in providing psychological and emotional restitution for victims of atrocity that of hearing and participating in their stories. In a poem which also bears the name If this is a Man, Levi directly and unforgivingly addresses his readers with a reproachful yet entreating reminder: ‘You who live safe/In your warm houses/You who find, returning home in the evening/Hot food and friendly faces/Consider if this is a man...’ We are reminded of and obliged to confront our role as absent interlocutors to those victims who perceive themselves, or are perceived by others as less than human, as outside the human community. The poem beautifully and forcefully places upon the bystander or spectator of atrocity, as well as the receiver of testimony, a unique ethical responsibility and function within processes of dehumanisation described above. The next section of this paper will consider
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______________________________________________________________ further the responsibility and function of spectators of suffering, both in the contexts of Early Modern hagiography and modern atrocity. 4.
Seeing the Spectacle of Pain On this very stage, the martyr’s body, scraped with claws, pierced with knives, roasted, whipped and mauled by beasts, is the centre and the means of a performance affecting the audience.21
The element of performance and spectacle that pervades hagiographic texts is crucial to Early Modern Christianity’s perception of the martyr’s body as sacred witness. The narratives are littered with theatrical references, from the amphitheatre in which the torture and interrogation takes place, to the crowds, sometimes thousands large, summoned by the pagan ruler to watch the show.22 The true subversive potential of the Saints’ Lives lies not in the martyrs’ miraculous endurance or avoidance of pain, but in their audience’s reception of the narrative. The witnessing body of the martyr is in all senses a site of performance and spectacle - of the pagan torturer’s power (which is undermined), of the faith and endurance of the saint, of the miraculous blessing and protection of God, and of the sublime nature of suffering and abjection. As with every spectacle, the audience is crucial to the success of the act. Without the belief of the audience, both within the narrative - the pagan spectators who convert to Christianity, the God who observes and intervenes - and without - the medieval layperson who reveres relics and images of exotic martyred flesh - the saint would quite simply not be a saint. Modern bystanders carry a similar burden of interpretative responsibility in relation to the spectacle of the embodied suffering of victims of atrocity. In his study of the Argentine ‘Dirty War,’ Frank Graziano describes the role of abstract bystanders of modern political violence in a way that recalls the function played out by (external) medieval audiences in the martyr texts. The apparently passive observer is always also an actor, performing - consciously or unconsciously - a specific symbolic function within the logic of the spectacle of violence and oppression enacted by the perpetrator: The public is ‘audience’ because it ‘witnesses’ the abstract spectacle of the detention centres and is ‘actor’ because its status as audience - however passive it may appear - is a function integral to the efficacy of the spectacle by which power is being generated.23
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______________________________________________________________ In this light, our response to images and narratives of the torture and physical abjection of victims of atrocity must be seen as a crucial ethical concern. If medieval audiences interpreted the saint’s physical abjection as a sign of sacred or superior humanity, as an indication of access to a divine truth, how do we perceive the embodied suffering of victims of atrocity today? In order to reflect for a moment upon our role as (un) ethical spectators - present or abstract - of modern atrocity, I would like to briefly describe my own reaction to a photograph taken by Gilles Peress after the genocide in Rwanda. The following passage was written in immediate and compelled response to one of the more disturbing images in his collection of photographs entitled Le Silence: Before me, a black and white photograph of a woman’s body lying in blood, filth and decay; the legs spread under a raised skirt. The skin and clothes covered in dark, wet stains, the eyes hollow and the face collapsed; the mouth open in what must once have been a scream or a final, desperate gasp for air. At the left foot lies a large dead pig. The sight is nauseating. Incomprehensible. Unimaginable. I am forced to turn the page. To spare myself this nightmare, this image of what I know in my mind to be a woman, with a life and a family, reduced to what my eyes now trick me into seeing: the body of a monster, terrifying, alien, no more a human being than the decaying corpse of the hog lying prostrate in its own excrement beside her.24 What Peress’ photograph confronts us, confronts me with is the already existing potential for dehumanisation in our, in my own perception and imagination of the other.25 Abject embodied sufferers, I would contend, almost always fall into the perceived category of (subhuman) other in the minds of even the most humanitarian long-distance spectators of atrocity. The tortured body in this image challenges the limits of that which we consider human both through its own horrifying and humiliating abjection, and as a symbol of the inhumanity of the act of cruelty perpetrated against it. The desire to look away, the wish never to have seen is encouraged, of course, by Peress’ visual framing of the scene, but it is, nonetheless, the body which becomes other in our mind. A long-enduring méprise of the body and privileging of disembodied reason in modern Western philosophy have almost certainly contributed to this perspective. As Sidonie Smith states, the prevailing modern philosophical and ontological position ‘encourages the process whereby others whose bodies are characterised as culturally ‘grotesque’ become more fully body,’ and thus more fully other. 26 Almost
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______________________________________________________________ entirely body, the woman in Peress’ photograph, like Courtemanche’s Gentille, is marginalized by Western, Cartesian ontology as less than rational, less than autonomous, less than worthy of recognition - in short, as less than human. As a result, her role as witness and as subject rather than object of knowledge is overlooked. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag addresses (along with the many other moral problems that arise in the spectatorship of suffering) the problem of orientalism and the perceived otherness of the sufferer. The ‘wide-eyed victim,’ is, she writes, ‘regarded only as someone to be seen, not someone (like us) who also sees.’27 The universal, exotic, suffering other - if we can bear to look on her - is an object to be pitied and contemplated, not a subject in whom the potential to witness is acknowledged. Thus, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, camp survivors disappeared in a painful vacuum of communication, not only because they struggled to speak of their experience, but also because ‘we’ could not listen. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained: ‘On ne voulait pas nous écouter. Parcequ’on faisait honte à l’humanité.’28 A number of survivor writers and atrocity scholars have described the near impossibility of ‘rationally’ witnessing, in the sense of communicating, the experience of intense physical pain and suffering. Argentinian torture survivor Jacobo Timerman explains the pain of torture as something fundamentally unrepresentable; it is ‘a pain without points of reference, revelatory symbols, or clues to serve as indicators.’29 That certain atrocities, certain sufferings are ‘unspeakable’ is a well-versed concept. Yet the failure to communicate can also be understood as a symptom of a perceived dislocation from language and human community. In this sense it reflects as much the community’s failure to hear as it does the victim’s failure to speak. If for Early Modern audiences the link between the body and truth was easily made, this is not the case for modern spectators of suffering. Dominant Western doctrine of the post-enlightenment era, it has been suggested, construes knowledge ‘exclusively in terms of the mind’ and as ‘essentially disembodied’ in character.30 The notion of rational, reasoned, empirical truth is privileged over that of affective, sensual, and corporeal truth, which is seen as unstable and unreliable and therefore not useful. This approach may be appropriate to the very specific nature of the historical or juridical task, yet as the constantly growing body of testimony theory and literature emerging since the Holocaust makes clear, it is a far from adequate response to testimony of atrocity not only with relation to the witness/victim/survivor’s psychological well being, but also often for the process of reconciliation and rehabilitation in the wider affected society. Nancy Hartsock has voiced the view that for the oppressed to achieve real freedom, we must learn to dispel our traditional, exclusive notions human subjectivity and knowledge as disembodied rationality. She
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______________________________________________________________ envisages the knowledge of the suffering human to be different from, but no less vital for understanding the human condition than the abstract, reasoned truth of philosophers. The oppressed have experienced the murderous effects of the exclusive universalities promulgated by the West, which are predicated on the disembodied status of reason. The situated knowledge of the oppressed makes no claims to the disembodied universality of reason. An important ethical task lies in adjusting our epistemological perspective so as to include the embodied, situated knowledge of the oppressed. The problem, then, is one of the ethics of listening as much as of the aesthetics of representation, and begs the question as to whether we, as listeners or receivers of testimony, have a responsibility to ‘listen’ to the corporeal testimony - if such a thing exists - of victims of atrocity. 5.
Hearing the Body Talk There is a class of people in this world who have fallen into the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, and who are deprived not only of all social consideration but also, in everybody’s opinion, of the specific human dignity, reason itself - and these are the only people who, in fact, are able to tell the truth. All others lie.31
The martyr’s body, unlike that of the victim of atrocity, is revered not merely as a sacred object but also as a knowing subject, a witness. The saint’s body speaks to medieval audiences, communicating and attesting to the word of God. It is both the proof and source of miracles. And it will not be silenced, as the pagan emperor Julien discovers when he attempts to put an end to the speech of Christina by cutting off her tongue in the Life of St Christina. Despite her disfigurement, the saint continues to speak, throwing a piece of her tongue in his face, which in turn renders her oppressor blind.32 By refusing to hear the embodied testimony of victims of atrocity modern spectators both refuse them the possibility to (figuratively) incapacitate their oppressors as Christina does and repeat the very logic by which the perceived dehumanisation of the victim was enacted. As Klaus Günther points out: The violation of human rights does not begin with their explicit negation…but with their implicit neutralisation…with perceiving a human being as
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______________________________________________________________ somebody who does not in all respects belong to the community of human beings.33 Yet how are we to begin to listen to the suffering body in a way that might allow us to fulfil our ethical obligation towards victims of atrocity and avoid the trap that Günther describes? It is not clear that the model of reading suggested by the Saints’ Lives is fully appropriate to the task. Any reading of the Saints’ Lives must be qualified by an acknowledgement of their function within the power discourses of the church. For Judith Perkins, the emergence of Christian hagiography and its representation of the human self as sufferer was a key basis around which ‘Christianity as a social and political unity would form and ultimately achieve its institutional power.’34 As they were made visible - that is, made subjects of knowledge - the poor also became subject to control.35 What is more, many - although by no means all - of the Saint’s Lives are characterised not only by the attention that they pay to the body’s role in the sanctification of the saint, but also by the reverence they pay to certain saints’ uncanny erudition and intellectual agility. This in no way supports the cause of those voiceless victims on whose behalf Levi and others might hope to speak, and to whom we should seek to listen. In her study of female discourse in Old French literature, Jane E. Burns returns the focus upon the audience when she uses the term ‘Bodytalk’ to refer to a mode of, in her case, feminist reading which listens to the bodies of otherwise muted and muffled medieval heroines. These medieval female bodies, she writes, ‘speak both within and against the social and rhetorical conventions used to construct them,’ but only if we choose to listen to them. Bodytalk, then, is a process of inter-active reading, by which the bioculturally constructed body is listened to in such a way as to expose and subvert the exclusive and oppressive conventions within which narratives of femininity or, in our case, (non)humanity, are framed. The emphasis falls upon the reader or spectator of these bodies to seek out ways of reading and acknowledging them as part of the collective memories of human experience. Less a new method than an altered perspective, the notion of ‘Bodytalk’ could serve as a starting point for reading the testimony of the suffering bodies of modern victims of atrocity, since it implies, in the first instance, an awareness and therefore an undermining of the very logic and rhetoric of dehumanisation. The Saints’ Lives demonstrate that the suffering body need not be represented and interpreted as subhuman; they also challenge modern notions of knowledge as rational and disembodied, and thus solicit us to read in a new way the loud abjections of the body in pain. What the stories fail to acknowledge, however, is the specificity of suffering, for the saint’s life is always also a mimesis of the Christ narrative, a repetition of the sacred image of the same. This dynamic of repetition is also present in Enlightenment
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______________________________________________________________ figures of the rational, disembodied Western subject - the universal human of human rights - which constructs itself, at least in part, in relation to modern representations and interpretations of the monstrous body of the suffering other. The Christian narrative of sacred (non)humanity, like the universalising gaze of the Western, humanitarian spectator of suffering, fails, precisely, to witness, depriving suffering subjects of their individual, specific experiences of pain, and the knowledge that these imply. By choosing instead to see and hear the radical specificities of the embodied sufferer, we have the chance to refigure what Donna Haraway calls ‘a nongeneric, nonoriginal humanity after the break-up of the discourses of Eurocentric humanism.’36 For Haraway, the figure of ‘a broken and suffering humanity’ is hopeful precisely in its disruption of the stable subject, in its ‘ambiguity, contradiction, stolen symbolism, and unending chains of nontranslation.’37 Hearing the suffering body talk/Bodytalk implies, therefore, an acknowledgement of these bodies not as monstrous or inhuman, but as witnesses to the inadequacy of the very limits they transgress. Pain, suffering and vulnerability are neither sacred nor subhuman experiences; on the contrary, they are all too human. By bearing witness to their specific, embodied experiences, victims of atrocity and their bodies call upon us, the ‘rest,’ to participate as active observers, recollectors, and interpreters of the collective memories upon which the foundations of an unstable, unbounded humanity may be built 6.
Conclusion The pain and suffering endured by victims of atrocity is both unimaginable and terrifyingly real. No attempt at detached analysis should or could seek to undermine or belittle such lived horrors. That such suffering should be interpreted as an experience of exclusion from the human community, however, is something that deserves to be examined and questioned. As Giorgio Agamben notes: No ethics can claim to exclude a part of humanity, no matter how unpleasant or difficult that humanity is to see.38 When spectators of modern representations of atrocity read embodied, abject suffering as an inhuman experience, an experience of voiceless otherness that alienates the ‘inalienable’ self from the human community, they run the risk of symbolically repeating the dehumanising violence enacted upon the body of the victim by the perpetrator. The Saints’ Lives offer an alternative perspective, promoting a Christian ‘community of sufferers’ in which bodily abjection is a key step on the path to divinity. The martyr’s truth and witnessing potential is acknowledged in these stories not in spite of but because of her abject, embodied suffering. Both perspectives are problematic,
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______________________________________________________________ however, in their potential voyeurism and in their construction of a ‘human’ community based upon simple universals, which obscure the specific knowledge of embodied experience. The attempt to incorporate stories of suffering into one homogenised narrative of humanity can only ever fail. As Sontag notes: ‘No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.’39 An ethical reading of embodied witnessing of modern atrocity must not demand the same reverence of the tortured body as is portrayed in the Martyr Passions, nor must it impose a responsibility to display and observe images of physical abjection as though their horror were merely part of the rhetoric of empowerment. What an ethical reception of embodied witnessing implies is, in the first instance, a self-conscious acknowledgement of the potential for dehumanisation in our own perception, so as to understand and thereby undermine the unconscious structures of this perception. Moreover, an embodied witnessing of atrocity would demand an acknowledgement of the particularity of real experiences of suffering, and of the precise knowledge of the body in pain, which bears witness, in its very instability, its very voicelessness, to a humanity that resists exclusive definitions along binary distinctions of mind and body, self and other - a humanity that is universal only in its terrifying, multiple specificity.
Notes 1
G Courtemanche, trans. P Claxton, A Sunday by the pool in Kigali, Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2003, p. 244, 257. 2 J Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era, Routledge, London and New York, 1995, p. 7. 3 S Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and the Lives of Saints, Acta Universalitatis Uppsaliensis, Uppsala, 2005. 4 C Storey (Ed.), La Vie de St Alexis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1946, p. 25, 124, my translation. 5 Versions of all the Lives mentioned here can be found in Jacques de Voraigne, La Légende Dorée, trans. Teodor de Wyezewa, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1998. The original text was written in Latin in the thirteenth century, I use the modern French translation in all citations from La Légende Dorée, and the Old French when referring to versions which exist also in the vernacular (see supra note 3). 6 J de Voraigne, trans. T de Wyezewa, La Légende Dorée, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1998, p. 212, my translation.
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As Keith Hopkins has stated, ‘torture, although experienced as pain, is always intended to be interpreted as power.’ K Hopkins, Death and Renewal, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 14. 8 De Voraigne, op. cit., p. 660. See also the vernacular version of the Life in W Macbain (ed) The Life of Saint Catherine, by Clemence of Barking Blackwell, Oxford, 1964. 9 Constantinou, p. 43. See also E Cohen, Pain in the Middle Ages. Cohen describes two typical responses to pain in the martyrdom texts, the first, impassibility, indicates an immunity to or shutting out of physical suffering, and the second, impassivity reflects the stoic tradition of endurance. 10 De Voraigne, op. cit., p. 659. 11 B Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century, Penn Press, Pennsylvania ,1991, Introduction. 12 The anecdote of the worm and the pearl features in the Greek Vita by Antonius, chapter 18, which has been edited in H. Lietzmann, ‘Das Leben des Heilegen Symeon Stylites’ TU 32.4, Leipzig, 1908, pp. 19-78. For a translation of the Syrian version see F. Lent, ‘Life of Saint Simeon Stylites’ Journal of American Oriental Study 35, 1915, pp. 103 - 198. St Simeon Stylites the Elder was the first of the stylitoe or ‘pillar hermits.’ 13 Perkins, op. cit., p. 206. 14 P Levi, If This is a Man, trans. S. Woolf, Abacus, London, 1987, p. 33. 15 L Bittson Jackson, Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust, cited in Carol Rittner and John K Roth (eds), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, Paragon House, Minnesota, 1993, pp. 78-9. 16 Levi, op. cit., p. 48. 17 Ibid, p. 55. 18 E Scarry, The Body in Pain: the making and unmaking of the world, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1981, p. 33. 19 Ibid, p. 31. 20 Levi, op. cit., p. 15. 21 Constantinou, op. cit., p. 20. 22 Ibid, pp. 20 – 31. 23 F Graziano, Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality and Radical Christianity in the Argentine ‘Dirty War’, Boulder/San Francisco/Oxford, Westview Press, 1992, p. 76. 24 The image described here has been exhibited as one of a series of photographs depicting the genocide in Rwanda. The collection – produced by photographer Gilles Peress and entitled The Silence - has also been published in book form: G Peress, The Silence, Scalo Publishers, 1995. The image can be viewed at www.artsmia.org.
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K Günther ‘The Legacies of Injustice and Fear: A European Approach to Human Rights and their Effects on Political Culture’ in P Alston (ed.) The EU and Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, p. 118. 26 S Smith, Subjectivity, identity and the body: women’s autobiographical practices in the 20th century, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1993, p. 7. 27 S Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin, London, 2004, p. 65. 28 E Wiesel, cited in M Crowley, ‘Frightful, yes, frightful!’ French Studies, vol. LIX, no. 1, 2005, pp. 17 – 24. 29 J Timerman, trans T. Talbot, Prisoner without a name, cell without a number, University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1981, p. 32. 30 M Sorri and J H Gill, A Post-Modern Epistemology: Language, Truth and Body, The Eldwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1989, p. 2. 31 An extract from a letter by Simone Weil to her parents, two weeks before her death in 1943, in Siân Miles (ed.) Simone Weil: An Anthology, Virago, London, 1986, p. 1. 32 De Voraigne, op. cit., p. 352. 33 Günther, op. cit., p. 118. 34 Perkins, op. cit., p. 3. 35 Ibid, p. 10. 36 D Haraway, ‘Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape’ in J. Butler and J. Scott (eds) Feminists Theorize the Political, Routledge, New York/London, 1992, p. 96. 37 Ibid, p. 87. 38 G Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: the witness and the archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Zone Books, New York, 1999, p. 64. 39 Sontag, op. cit, p. 6.
Bibliography Agamben, G., Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Zone Books, New York, 1999. Cazelles, B., The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century, Penn Press, Pennsylvania, 1991. Constantinou, S., Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and the Lives of Saints. Acta Universalitatis Uppsaliensis, Uppsala, 2005.
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______________________________________________________________ Courtemanche, G., A Sunday by the pool in Kigali, trans. P. Claxton, Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2003. Crowley, M., ‘Frightful, yes, frightful!’ French Studies, vol. LIX, no. 1, 2005. Günther, K., ‘The Legacies of Injustice and Fear: A European Approach to Human Rights and their Effects on Political Culture’ in Alston, P. (ed.) The EU and Human Rights. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. Haraway, D., ‘Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape.’ in Butler J. and Scott J. (eds), Feminists Theorize the Political. Routledge, New York/London, 1992. Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983. Kay, S., ‘The Sublime Body of the Martyr: Violence in Early Romance Saint’s Lives’ in Kaeuper R. W. (ed.), Violence in Medieval Society. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2000. Lent, F., ‘Life of Saint Simeon Stylites.’ Journal of American Oriental Study, 35, 1915. Levi, P., If This is a Man, trans. S. Woolf, Abacus, London, 1987. Lietzmann, H., ‘Das Leben des Heilegen Symeon Stylites.’ TU 32.4, Leipzig, 1908. Macbain, W. (ed), The Life of Saint Catherine, by Clemence of Barking. Blackwell, Oxford, 1964. Miles, S., (ed.) Simone Weil: An Anthology. Virago, London, 1986. Peress, G., The Silence. Scalo Publishers, New York, 1995. Perkins, J., The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. Routledge, London and New York, 1995.
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______________________________________________________________ Smith, S., Subjectivity, identity and the body: women’s autobiographical practices in the 20th century. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1993. Sontag, S., Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin, London,2004. Sorri M and Gill J H, A Post-Modern Epistemology: Language, Truth and Body, The Eldwin Mellen Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1989. Storey, C., (ed), La Vie de St Alexis. Blackwell, Oxford, 1946. Voraigne, J de, La Légende Dorée, trans. T Wyezewa, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1998.
Overturning Adorno: Poetry as a Rational Response to Evil Nancy Billias ‘ Abstract Is it possible to have, or make, a rational response to evil? Responses to evil are generally emotional: fear, rage, denial, despair, disgust, and sublimation. As philosophers, we pretend to explore the limits of what can be thought, not only what can be felt. Kant spoke of evil as ‘…a product of human reason under the natural conditions of its full development, which are found in the social condition.’ If evil is a product of reason, is a rational response to evil also possible? If so, what shape might it take? Articulating a rational response to evil may demand a new understanding of agency, subjectivity, and rationality itself - at the very least, a new understanding of language. Giorgio Agamben (among others) has advocated for an ‘ethics of testimony’ in response to the atrocities of moral evil. ‘Auschwitz represents a historical crime aiming to destroy the duality of enunciation...[one] . . . that transforms and disarticulates the subject to a limit point in which the link between subjectification and desubjectification seems to break apart.’ Testimony, in this sense, is an ethical act of survival that testifies to the impossibility of the total destruction of the human. Yet, it is a survival in a double sense: if the human survives the nonhuman, the drowned, whose bare life persists beyond the death of the human, survives the human.’ My paper explores the notion that, pace Adorno, poetry is in fact an appropriate, rational, and ethical response to the problem of evil; how, and why, the nature of poetic language may make this possible. Key Words: Adorno, subjectivity, testimony
desubjectification,
poetic
language,
poetry;
***** 1.
Setting the Question Is it possible to have, or make, a rational response to evil? Responses to evil are generally emotional: fear, rage, denial, despair, disgust, and sublimation. As philosophers, we pretend to explore the limits of what can be thought, not only what can be felt. Kant spoke of evil as ‘...a product of human reason under the natural conditions of its full development, which are found in the social condition.’1 If evil is a product of reason, is a rational response to evil also possible? If so, what shape might it take? Articulating a rational response to evil may demand a new understanding of agency, subjectivity, and rationality itself - at the very least, a new understanding of
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______________________________________________________________ language. If after the evils of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and 9/11, we can still speak of moral agency - and I want to insist that we both can and must do so, if we are to have any hope of a future at all - then we must also think about what it means to be rational in the face of such evil. One word here about rationality: I do not mean to suggest a cool, detached intellectualisation of events. Rather, I mean to suggest that the act of rationality includes the reflection of the cognising subject on its surroundings, as part of the formation of judgment. I would like to discuss the notion that, pace Adorno, poetry is in fact an appropriate, rational, and ethical response to the problem of evil; this involves articulating how, and why, poetic language possesses some quality that may facilitate such a response. I want to suggest that poetry be taken more seriously - not as a merely literary or intellectual endeavour, but as a means of urgent and important moral praxis. For some years now, I have been wrestling with the problem of how to interpret - or enact - ethics in a post-modern context. (Not that I am myself a post-modern philosopher; if I had to accept a label at all, the one with which I would be most comfortable would be ‘phenomenological Christian existentialist,’ by which I mean that I feel equally at home in the world-views of those rather radically different streams of thought.) But as a philosopher, I feel it is necessary to carry on a dialogue with that set of ideas called postmodernism, some of which make help me to make sense of some of the evils of contemporary history: fragmentation, terrorism, genocide - perhaps for the reason that our current ways of categorizing ethical action do not seem to me adequate to contain or address the evil of desubjectification. I find Levinas helpful in providing an understanding of evil that does not demand a rational narrative, thus sidestepping the question of theodicy. Rather than spinning theories fruitlessly in a vain attempt to find meaning in suffering, Levinas proposes that philosophers change focus. ‘Instead of regarding evil as the cause of suffering...Levinas...suggests that suffering, especially the suffering of the other, is itself evil and calls for a response.’2 The lack of a meta-narrative of meaning does not block me from examining and interrogating theory; rather it means that I can put most of my energy into the more urgent task of exploring ethical responses. Shifting the focus seems to me more potentially hopeful - it implies that that there is still some potential for agency: something can be done, and I can, and should, see what that is. The shift moves me beyond the perils of nihilism, relativism and fundamentalism. Levinas has offered an ‘ethics of responsibility’ that implies that the mere fact of encountering an other entails a response, and thus a responsibility, to some sort of mutuality. At the very least, it points out the phenomenological fact of the matter: the other confronts me, and I must reflect on how to respond. While Levinas’ ethics of responsibility may not be
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______________________________________________________________ viable, and may not go far enough, it may open a new way into reflection. Of course one cannot assume that a response will always be benign or beneficent. Reflecting on an evil done by that other may well lead some one to wish or aim harm in return. The key here, I think, is to hold on to the hope of reflective action, rather than the blind reflexivity of a retaliatory response to evil. Thomas Cushman has written movingly and convincingly on evil as ‘a form of social reflective action, aiming to inflict extreme harm on others.’3 If Cushman’s analysis is valid, and evil can be construed as in any way reflective, that may mean that a response to evil could also be rational. Why, then, poetry? Jacques Taminiaux has argued for a reevaluation of the traditional Western philosophical understanding of poetry as not only poeisis - the new articulation by the individual of a universal Idea - but also as phronesis - a means of guiding praxis by the process of contemplation and speculation, seeing beyond mere appearance into and through the Ideas, and thus overcoming the world of appearance. Taminiaux reminds us that ‘the poet is concerned not with the factual, but with the possible.’4 Poetic mimesis, he maintains, is a special kind of search for the universal, whereby the individual moves into intersubjectivity. He suggests that poetry can be a way of mirroring oneself both to oneself and to (and through) the other, a way of seeing, thinking, and speaking according to the senses communis in which we know that all are alike and all are different. In Hegel’s critique of Kant’s aesthetic theory, Taminiaux uncovers the notion that ‘the true point of reference in [aesthetic] matters is the philosopher himself, mirroring the totality of beings.’5 Taminiaux frames the aesthetic (specifically, poetry) as a rational response in a Hegelian or even Heideggerian sense: True beauty is not to be found in the historical creations of the artists; these creations are not the true works of art. The true work of art is reality itself, both natural and historical, as it is understood by the speculative thinker, and by him alone.6 Through the creation of a poem, the speculative thinker finds something is disclosed about reality, about the thinker’s place in being, an event is measured and reckoned up, and it’s meaning pondered and communicated, if not clarified. Perhaps my meaning, too. What can be said of the ‘praxis’ of poetry? In the title article of The End of the Poem, Giorgio Agamben posits the notion that the decisive feature of poetry, in an existential sense, is the caesura. That, he suggests, is what distinguishes poetry from prose, one from other: the space between, the hesitation, as Valéry put it, between sound and sense. Verse, Agamben contends, ‘defines itself only at the point at which it ends,’ while prose
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______________________________________________________________ follows a stricter logic of stating its meaning within a defined trajectory The end of the poem is the point of departure from the writer to the reader, the poem lives in the gap (abyss?) between the two. The sound and sense of prose, he argues, leads directly and without hesitation from writer to reader, with no interpretative gap or opportunities for the reader’s own subjectivity to be inserted. And then Agamben goes one lovely step further, to play with the notion of verse as ‘versure, from the Latin term indicating the point at which the plough turns around at the end of the furrow...’7 Thus, verse is linked to turning, to transformation. This, Agamben, suggests is the ‘final’ cause of poetry. Both Hegel and Freud, in their very different ways, intuited that the subject is born from the recognition of difference. The focus is not on the beginning of the poem (or of the subject), but rather the end: the irruption into twoness, the undecidability and un-givenness of the gap between oneself and the other, the awful freedom in the swing from one to two. The loss of identity becomes the finding of identity (of self and other, identity and difference, fragment and whole). In a close reading of a passage from Dante, Agamben brings us to this point: The passage is to be found in Book II, where the poet treats the organization of rhymes in the canzone (XIII, 7-8). After defining the unrelated rhyme (which someone suggests should be called clavis), the text states: ‘The endings of the last verses are most beautiful if they fall into silence together with the rhymes.’ What is this falling into silence of the poem? What is beauty that falls? And what is left of the poem after its ruin?8 And what is left of the self after desubjectification? Is the only rational response to evil to fall into silence? Most writing on the topic of evil alludes to its senselessness. I would like to suggest that Agamben shows us how poetry can form a path out of the ruin, by articulating a silence that is not defeated and annihilated, but full and pregnant. Perhaps poetry can show us how evil can be survived, if not comprehended, through language: The double intensity [of sound and sense] animating language does not die away in a final comprehension; instead it collapses into silence, so to speak in an endless falling. The poem thus reveals the goal of its proud strategy: to let language finally communicate itself, without remaining unsaid in what is said.9
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______________________________________________________________ Denise Levertov speaks of poetry as a way of re-seeing the quotidiana of the world as moments of potential transformation – for ourselves and the world. Rather than look for ‘an ultimate arrival’ at some pre-determined destination, Levertov embraces the mystery of not-knowing, of living in the indeterminate process of transformation. She does not make a hard and fast distinction between poetry and philosophy, or art and life. Rather, she argues for understanding poetry as a synthesis of judgment and imagination. In her 1967 essay ‘The Poet in the World’ she writes: the understanding of a result is incomplete if there is ignorance of its process. The literary critic or the teacher is merely scratching a section of surface if he does not live out in his own life some experience of the multitudinous interactions in time, space, memory, dream, and instinct that at every word tremble into synthesis in the work of a poet, or if he keeps his reading separate from his actions in a box labelled ‘aesthetic experience.’ The interaction of life on art and of art on life is continuous. Poetry is necessary to a whole man, and that poetry be not divided from the rest of life is necessary to it. Both life and poetry fade, wilt, shrink, when they are divorced.10 The mystery of poetry, and of intersubjectivity, is to be ‘in dialogue with a world that is being continually remade.’11 Perhaps poetry makes possible the re-cognition of the new by the new - of the new state of reality by the new self – in and from the ruins of evil. Much has begun to be written about the moral power and duty of witness.12 Giorgio Agamben has claimed ‘the ethics that remains after Auschwitz is an ethics of testimony, and the fundamental task of such an ethics is to bear witness to the drowned, to the horror of the inhuman surviving the human.’13 As Agamben makes clear, the survivor is not a true witness - the complete witness is the...one who cannot speak...Testimony takes place where the speechless one makes the speaking one speak and where the one who speaks bears the impossibility of speaking in his own speech’ (120).14 The act of witnessing has the aporetic quality of poetic language: it too lives only in the caesura. Agamben draws a parallel between the movement of subjectification and Desubjectification and the act of speaking. ‘Suspended between
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______________________________________________________________ subjectification and desubjectification, such a subject of enunciation abolishes itself as an individual in order to become a subject of language.’15 Perhaps this moment of suspension which ‘trembles’ between language and event is the moment in which a rational and ethical response to evil becomes possible. Agamben16 has advocated for an ‘ethics of testimony’ in response to the atrocities of Auschwitz. Auschwitz represents a historical crime aiming to destroy the duality of enunciation...[one] ‘that transforms and disarticulates the subject to a limit point in which the link between subjectification and desubjectification seems to break apart.’17 Testimony, in this sense, is an ethical act of survival that testifies to the impossibility of the total destruction of the human. Yet, it is a survival in a double sense: if the human survives the nonhuman, the drowned, whose bare life persists beyond the death of the human, survives the human.18 Pedro Gonzalez has woven together all these disparate strands in a recent essay entitled ‘Pillars of Remembrance: The Plight of Aesthetic Vision and Moral Courage in the Modern World.’ As Heidegger said, death is our ‘own most’ expression. Gonzalez reminds us that ‘human mortality can never be experienced as a collective reality...no two human deaths are alike precisely because no two human lives are interchangeable.’19 And yet, people continue to write about death (taking death here as one form of both evil and desubjectification) as though it could be communicated. ‘Philosophers...have taken apart this subject with surgical precision. But, regardless, to say something constructive about this reality is always tantamount to speaking in the first person, as anything short of this recoils into abstraction and selfindulgent intellectualising.’20 At the end of Socrates’ life, we are told, his daemon told him that he should have spent less time philosophising, and more on writing poetry. Perhaps this is because, as Gonzalez suggests, poetry goes more quickly to the heart of the matter of our subjective experience and understanding of ourselves in relation to death. As Gonzalez says, The prerogative of subjectivity is that of fashioning or discovering a logos that is flexible enough to embrace the role of the subject-I in what is often an unbending and objectifying realm that suffocates genuine subjectivity.21 Gonzalez goes on to claim that moral courage and aesthetic vision
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______________________________________________________________ coalesce in the freedom to bear witness to an experience of ourselves as transcendent. ‘Moral courage...is a vehement response to the everobjectifying and dehumanising process that is raw nature in its vilest form.’22 At the same time, aesthetic vision is the action of striving to give objective form to subjective experience. Trapped as we are on the one- way corridor towards death, we must ‘see the world through a negation. But this mental act is nothing other than a perpetual act of reflection. Stated in clear terms, this vehement act of imagination upholds the dignity of human existence.’ Perhaps one hopeful way forward can be forged by combining the thought of Gonzalez, Levinas, and Agamben. Responding to the call of the desubjectified other may pull me out of my subjective, ego-driven experience, and make both aesthetic vision and moral courage possible. This act of imagination must take place in language, and, I think, poetic language, for the reasons adumbrated here. Poetic language enables the drowned to survive and speak, because its reflective nature is flexible enough to be the enunciation of an utterly desubjectified subject, ‘not to overcome the utter desubjectification of the drowned one but to bear witness to it within the act of speaking.’23 And as Agamben, Levertov, Gonzalez, et al have shown us, this is both an act of judgment, of phronesis (practical wisdom), and an ethical action, and as such, a rational response to evil.
Notes 1
A Wood, ‘Religion, Ethical Community and the Struggle Against Evil’, Stanford University. http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/papers/EthicalCommunity.doc. 2 E Ziarek, ‘Evil and Testimony: Ethics ‘after’ Postmodernism,’ Hypatia vol. 18, no. 2, Spring 2003, p. 198. 3 T Cushman, ‘The Reflexivity of Evil: Modernity and Moral Transgression in the War of Bosnia,’ in Geddes, Jennifer, Evil after Postmodernism, Routledge, London, 2001. 4 J Taminiaux, ‘Speculation and Judgment,’ in Poetics, Speculation and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, trans. Michael Gendre, SUNY Press, Albany, 1993, p. 7. 5 Ibid, p. 18. 6 Ibid, p. 19. 7 G Agamben, The End of the Poem, Meridian, Stanford, CA, 1999, p. 111. 8 Ibid, p. 113ff. 9 Ibid, p. 115.
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D Levertov, New and Selected Essays, New Directions, New York, 1992, p. 134, quoted in B C Rogers, ‘Denise Levertov’s Poetics of Process,’ in God, Literature, and Process Thought, D Middleton, ed., Ashgate, London, 2002, p. 222. 11 Ibid, p. 223. 12 See, for example, S Feldman and D Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992); D LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (1994), and Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (2001), as well as Primo Levi’s memoirs of his Holocaust experiences, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening (1986), and The Drowned and the Saved (1989) and Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (1980). 13 Ziarek, op.cit., 200. 14 Ibid., 202. 15 Loc.cit. 16 Among others. 17 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, Zone Books, New York,2002, p. 148. 18 Ziarek, op.cit., 203. Emphasis mine. 19 Pedro Blas Gonzalez, Essays in Subjectivity, Individuality, and Autonomy, Algora Publishing, New York, 2002, p. 36. 20 Ibid., p. 39. 21 Ibid., p. 40. 22 Ibid., p. 50. 23 Ziarek, op.cit., p. 203.
Bibliography Agamben, G., The End of the Poem. Meridian, Stanford, CA, 1999. ______
, Remnants of Auschwitz. Zone Books, New York, 2002.
Blanchot, M., The Writing of the Disaster. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1992. Geddes, J., Evil after Postmodernism. Routledge, London, 2001. Gonzalez, P. B., Essays in Subjectivity, Individuality, and Autonomy. Algora Publishing, New York, 2002 Levi, P., Survival in Auschwitz. Touchstone, New York, 1996.
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, The Drowned and the Saved. Vintage, London, 1989.
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,The Reawakening. Touchstone, New York, 1995. Middleton, D. (ed.) God, Literature, and Process Thought. Ashgate, London, 2002 Taminiaux, J., ‘Speculation and Judgment,’ in Poetics, Speculation and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, trans. Michael Gendre, SUNY Press, Albany, 1993. Wood, A., ‘Religion, Ethical Community and the Struggle Against Evil’, Stanford University. http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/papers/ EthicalCommunity.doc. Ziarek, E., ‘Evil and Testimony: Ethics ‘after’ Postmodernism,’ Hypatia vol. 18, no. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 198 – 204.
PART III Evil in a Cinematic Framework
Twelve Pages of Madness: Developments in Cinema’s Narration of Insanity Peter Remington Abstract: This paper investigates the evidence from three films of efforts to displace psychoanalysis from its prime position in both structuring cinema narrative and explaining disturbed mental states. This parallels the decline in status of psychoanalysis in American psychiatry. Films starting from a neurobiological given must needs subvert an entire history of psychodynamically-oriented film narrative. Key Words: Cinema, critique, hermeneutic, mental, narrative, neurobiology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, representation ***** 1.
Introduction This paper will outline some of the principal characteristics of the representation of madness in film in order to suggest that there is some evidence of a recent shift of emphasis. I examine this evidence in the light of the persistence - despite changes in the dominant clinical approaches to mental illness - of narrative forms based on a psychodynamic model for explaining mental states. The quantity of moving pictures featuring a depiction of mental illness (especially if one includes made-for-TV productions) has shown a dramatic increase over the last twenty or so years.1 Consequently I do not intend to cover the entire field. I deal only with English-language narrative films theatrically released since World War II principally American, but with one or two references to British films.2 Quite apart from the question of America’s enormous global cultural influence in the sphere of popular entertainment during this period, this limitation is to some extent determined by the international ascendancy of the American DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), with its accompanying neuro-pharmacological approaches to treatment. My argument depends on the mutual interdependency of popular narrative forms and professional psychiatric discourse - at least as it is mediated to non-specialist audiences. Local differences do, however, persist. Caution should therefore be exercised in applying my arguments to different cultural contexts. I further focus on the extent to which the films I deal with incorporate an attempt to understand the mental condition of the protagonist, either as a major component of the diegesis or through their explicit address to the spectator in the elaboration of the diegetic material. Implicit in such a mode of address lies an invitation to the spectator to participate in, or at least
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______________________________________________________________ envision the possibility of a cure. Hence, while my argument touches at points on the mobilisation of spectator fear, I do not discuss at length those films (usually designated ‘slasher’ movies) in which this component forms the chief organising principle. We can observe in such films a trend away from attempting to understand and explain the protagonist - evident, for example in two notable progenitors of the subgenre, Psycho and Peeping Tom (both released in 1960) - towards an ever-more baroque elaboration of threatening and fearsome behaviour. By the time of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), motivation has become entirely secondary to the manipulation of genre conventions. My emphasis is on films which foreground behaviour and mental states with no obvious and immediate material causation, at least at the start of the film. I therefore also exclude films in which mental disturbance is attributable to either alcohol or substance abuse (from The Lost Weekend (1945) to Trainspotting (1996)), the entire class of war films such as The Deer Hunter (1978), and also films such as The Exorcist (1973) in which the stressors are not social but supernatural or extraterrestrial. It has been noted that such films commonly suggest the limitations of rationalist methods in approaching the uncanny by presenting failed attempts to interpret the film’s disturbing phenomena by psychiatric means.3 Taken together with the gradual abandonment of motivation in ‘slasher’ movies,4 this narrative trope seems to indicate, when compared to films of the late 40s and 50s, the growth of disenchantment with overt explication through rationalist master narratives. In a small number of more recent films focusing more directly on mental illness, this seems to be modulating into an interrogation of the process of interpretation itself. The historically dominant vehicle of interpretation within film narrative, psychoanalysis, would seem to have suffered a reversal, which parallels the diminution of its influence within American psychiatry. However, I will go on to suggest that even those recent films which pose a critique either of psychoanalysis itself or of a hermeneutics derived from its historic influence on cinematic narrative nevertheless reproduce the terms of that influence within their own construction. 2.
Background Films directly treating of madness have historically been the exception rather than the rule. Most have tended to incorporate two strands, which I have termed the ‘mental’ and the ‘social’, with the ‘social’ traditionally occupying the dominant place. Films which intend serious consideration of mental illness have to struggle against its common employment to evoke fear and tension. Alternatively, mental illness frequently forms a bridge to other social-political issues, or the ‘power politics’ of diagnosis, enforced hospitalisation, and treatment.5 Even films
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______________________________________________________________ generally accepted as milestones in the depiction of madness exhibit these tendencies. For example, The Snake Pit (1948) has frequently been classed as a social problem film, a genre which ‘revolves around the interaction of the individual with social institutions,’ viewing society ‘as a series of social agencies that from time to time experience ‘problems’ which must be corrected.’6 The film concentrates as much on the sad state of publicly funded mental hospitals as it does on the treatment of its central character’s mental problems. Cinema seems overwhelmingly to have favoured modes of treatment and explication based on a psychodynamic model whilst simultaneously representing this, and indeed most other forms of therapeutic intervention, less than accurately. ECT (electroshock therapy), for example, has been frequently represented as punishment, with surgery as the final sanction. For example, punitive ECT occurs in Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963), while One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest demonstrates the punitive use of both ECT and lobotomy.7 Pharmacotherapy has continually been underrepresented in theatrically-released films, despite the so-called ‘drugs revolution’ in treatment since the 1970s. Gabbard and Gabbard describe As Good as it Gets (1997) as ‘perhaps the only example of a theatrically released American film that shows psychotropic medication as having therapeutic value for the patient.’8 We can now perhaps add A Beautiful Mind (2001) to this list. Hypnosis has been strikingly over-represented.9 Cinema’s version of ‘the talking cure’ itself has often resembled mere social counselling.10 Indeed, few films outside the corpus of ‘docu-drama’ oriented examples (e.g. Family Life, 1971) have even attempted to represent the tedium of the day-today therapeutic interview or group session. 3.
The Freudian Detective Cinema’s underlying narrative patterning has nevertheless historically been dominated by depictions prioritising the discovery of discrete early life-events structurally implicated in the genesis of the mental disturbance being portrayed. The effects of such tendencies on the psychodynamic film narrative are fully expressed in what Gabbard and Gabbard refer to as the ‘cathartic cure’ - the reduction of causality and treatment to the uncovering and de-repression of a single traumatic event.11 Therapeutic relationships in such films may hence be described as characterised by - to misapply a couple of Freudian terms - condensation and displacement. Indeed Huston’s biopic Freud (1962) condenses its hero’s development of the entire basic structure of psychoanalysis into therapeutic encounters with just two patients (one of each sex) and his own self-analysis. Here, as in other films featuring therapeutic exchange, the analysand’s contributions to his/ her own enlightenment are displaced on to the wisdom and insight of the analyst.
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______________________________________________________________ Some observers have also noted the persistence of the psychodynamic model in realms beyond that of film narrative. Indeed, Jonathan Michel Metzl traces the influence of this model into the very heart of contemporary pharmacological psychiatry. Arguing that contemporary psychiatric prescription is frequently understood/ articulated in ways that reinstate gender positioning attributable to the Freudian Oedipal configuration, Metzl notes how Freudian narrative expectations also influence the recent proto-genre of the Prozac narrative.12 Dwight Fee has taken up a similar question in relation to Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation: Wurtzel’s reflexive ‘meta-depression’ as she puts it herself … seemed to have its own emotional and behavioural climax. Furthermore, [her] overdose as later related in Prozac Nation - placed within an exhilarating conclusion became her literary climax; and now, here it has unwittingly become the focus of my own analytic climax. Within or ostensibly outside the experience, depression’s story, its narrative life, seems virtually inescapable. [Italics in original.]13 What is striking here is Fee’s admission of the extent to which traditional narrative expectations creep into his own attempts to delineate a post-modern ecology of the experience of depression. It seems to me that this is to a large extent attributable to the imbrications of popular narrative forms with a common utilisation of Freudian concepts as one of the great modernist master narratives.14 Metzl traces the influence of his Freudian paradigms back to popular culture between the mid-1950s and early 1960s, an era that has also been characterised as a ‘golden age’ for psychoanalytic influence on American cinema.15. Eli Zaretsky has suggested that: U.S. analysis was at the centre of both the growing rationalisation of personal life unfolding in the 1950s and the looming critique of rationalisation, the charismatic rejection of the mundane that came to the fore in the 1960s.16 One can see this bifurcation at work within cinema’s tendency, inherited from classic Hollywood cinema, to concretise issues into the form of specific dramatic relationships between individual characters.17 Thus, although the psychiatrists in both The Snake Pit and Psycho each offer a psychodynamic encapsulation of their respective patient’s condition, only the former film presents a cure that is simultaneously liberating to the patient and
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______________________________________________________________ socially integrative. Psycho’s Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) remains impervious to treatment and determined to avoid entrapment by the police as a consequence of verbal or behavioural clues revealed during psychiatric observation. The two films illustrate a much larger trend: the transmutation of cinema’s dominant mode of address towards embodying the fragmentation of the relationship between individual and social affiliation that has characterised late twentieth century culture.18 It nevertheless remains that individual instantiation is the primary means by which such issues are addressed, not only in cinema (witness the films I deal with in part 4) but, for example, also (arguably) in popular song lyrics and (certainly) in the more ‘confessional’ of the television talk shows. It may hence be adduced that around the notion of the single determining traumatic event there have developed a number of rhetorical figures which serve to negotiate the terms of an interface between personal understanding of pain or conflict and its social conceptualisation. Such figures call forth different forms of self-identification, both cognitive and affective, which shift according to the contextualising discursive framework. Thus it is that Paul Lerner and Mark S. Micale suggest that in the progression from its exclusively physical nineteenth century meaning towards its current employment, via discourses of railway injury, industrial accident, scientism, insurance, pension and social security issues, and the impact of war: ‘the trauma concept was simultaneously responsive to, and constitutive of ‘modernity’.’19 Hence the discovery of the traumatic event routinely stands at the climax of a narrative mode multiply traversed by discourses of a widely varying nature. That cinema’s simplified version of the process leading to such discovery bears a strong resemblance to detective work and usually involves sexually-related material has aided the application of the model to the detective thriller, and also to the romantic narrative that has been a feature of all conventional cinema genres since the classic Hollywood era20 - two facts made abundant use of by Alfred Hitchcock (Spellbound, 1945; Psycho, 1960; Marnie, 1964, etc.) Traditionally, resolution of the central personal conflict proceeds through de-repression of the original trauma and leads to the restitution of social stability. We have noted that one strand in cinema, the so-called ‘slasher’ movie, has from its earliest beginnings exhibited a tendency to pull back from this type of resolution. We have further suggested that this tendency represents a shift towards the mere motivation of fear and away from enlisting the spectator in a project of understanding, leading to the prospect of cure. Nevertheless films operating within this latter dynamic have continued to be produced. It is therefore striking to ourselves discover in some of them the beginnings of an interrogation of both the legitimacy of the link between cure and social stability, and also of the very activity of explanation itself.
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A Retreat from Explanation Films that contest the very frameworks brought to bear on the interpretation of the mental states they depict are hardly a novelty. Indeed Fleming and Manvell identify one particular thematic in popular cinema as ‘sanity as madness, madness as sanity.’21 However, it may be argued that the major issues in such films involve either rival approaches to diagnosis (for example One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) or rival therapeutic strategies (Cuckoo’s Nest again, The Snake Pit.) The first of the films to which I now turn, A Beautiful Mind (2001), operates chiefly within the latter tendency, but somewhat shifts its frame of reference in that it serves up a heady brew composed of pharmacology and the healing power of love. One highly traditional component of this film is that it equates restitution of a conservative gender economy with restoration of mental health.22 Whilst it does not entirely gloss over the extreme stress undergone by the family of a schizophrenia patient, comparison between the film’s treatment of, amongst other things, John and Alicia Nash’s marriage, and the depiction of it in Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nash, indicates the extent to which the screenplay has been shaped to maximise its depiction of devoted marital support within conventional film paradigms.23 We may also note its silence in the matter of the shift in the treatment of the historical John Nash from psychodynamic methods to neuropharmacological ones:24 a singular omission when one considers that the period being depicted, the 1950s, marks a high point of the influence of psychoanalysis on American psychiatry. In the film’s version of events, psychoanalysis hardly gets a look-in. However, the film’s narrative exposition itself relies on a psychodynamic aetiology that works against its neurobiological model to implicate the stresses of Nash’s struggle for recognition in the causation of his mental illness. There is even a link between Nash’s rivalry with the fictional Hansen (Josh Lucas) and the character Parcher - a creation of Nash’s highly organised delusions - in that both are seen to publicly humiliate John with the words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the great John Nash!’ Nevertheless, the very intention to treat Nash’s schizophrenia, as a central topic of the film is itself unusual, however imperfectly realised this aim may be. The film is moreover unusually positive in its references to drug treatment. It also assumes in the spectator sufficient awareness of psychiatry to allow the omission of any specific statement concerning the current lack of support either for insulin coma therapy, or for Dr. Rosen’s (Christopher Plummer’s) views on the inevitable degenerative nature of schizophrenia. In presupposing such awareness, the film may be somewhat in advance of its public,25 but the overwhelmingly physical references to Nash’s condition do seem to indicate the filmmakers’ assumption that the layperson no longer anticipates a primarily psychodynamic model from the overt discourse of psychiatry.
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______________________________________________________________ Most interesting, however, are the strategies by which the film places the spectator ‘inside’ Nash’s delusional world before revealing that it is delusional. No perceptible shift of narrative gears is necessary to this end, in that its ecology is consistent both with generic cinema forms - the spy movie - and the spectator’s intra/extra diegetic ‘knowledge’ - by which I intend current dominant popular readings of the ‘paranoid’ (in its nonspecialist sense) Cold War mindset. In other words, depiction of the earlier stages of Nash’s schizophrenia is predicated on a continuity of perception and societal experience between spectator and diegetic space, a seeming attempt to evoke Nash’s experience without, at least in the first instance, objectifying either it or him. This, however, contains its own problems, inasmuch as it undermines the social consensus of an earlier epoch from a ‘positivist’ standpoint which tacitly ascribes greater enlightenment to contemporary social readings [‘It’s not surprising Nash’s delusions took such a turn given the prevailing atmosphere in American society at that time. We now know better.’] Particularly troubling is the extent to which this reinforcement of spectator security bleeds over into the somewhat cavalier supposition that current approaches to schizophrenia are also in themselves somehow more ‘enlightened.’ (Late in the film the ‘recovered’ Nash speaks of taking ‘all the latest medications.’) The film demonstrates a shift of assumptions towards accepting the primacy of a neurobiological explanation for Nash’s condition as a given. This would seem to be linked to the similar shift towards such explanations in American psychiatry for the entire range of ‘disorders’ from schizophrenia to depression. However, this leaves us with something of a problem on the level of the screenplay. At a cognitive meta-structural level neurobiology is a perfectly adequate explanation of mental dysfunction. It is somewhat less satisfactory in representing the personal history of affect with which it is indissolubly and reciprocally linked. As Andrew Solomon puts it: Internal and external reality exists in a continuum. What happens and how you understand it to have happened and how you respond to its happening are usually linked, but no one is predictive of the other.26 It is precisely this history of affect that is customarily addressed by narrative. Popular cinema’s historic reliance on a psychodynamic model around which such a narrative may be organised thus places it in something of a double-bind. How to embody the primacy of the neurobiological assumption within a form of exposition, which at every turn leads one back towards the rejected model? This set of contradictions lies at the heart of A
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______________________________________________________________ Beautiful Mind and to a large extent accounts for the formulaic hollowness of its ‘love conquers all’ conclusion. The same set of contradictions are approached differently elsewhere through strategies, which undermine the act of interpretation. What is novel in the two films I now address is that, whilst each of them questions a different aspect of dominant hermeneutics, no alternative reading, in the form of a rival diagnosis or therapeutic regime, is offered. In many ways David Cronenberg’s (2002) adaptation of the Patrick McGrath novel Spider, with screenplay by the novelist, can be seen as an update on The Snake Pit. The film presents a twin focus on the mind of the protagonist and the conditions of care provided for him - in this case the wasteland of ‘care in the community.’27 It does not so much resist the drive towards explanation as present us with a tautology. We discover that the reason for Spider’s (Ralph Fiennes’s) ‘insane’ status is that as a young boy he killed his mother, and that the reason for his killing his mother is that he was insane. The chief detective in this instance is not a therapist but Spider himself, who we see revisiting scenes of childhood memory in both his child and adult personas. The conclusion of the film, in which both adult and child Spider ‘witness’ the ‘truth’ that it was he, rather than his father, who murdered his mother, allows us to put some order into the narrative, but explains very little. The obvious Oedipal explanation, which the film to some extent encourages, only amounts to fitting one pattern into another.28 Balked of a ‘cathartic cure’ and narrowly prevented from repeating the primary murder by bashing in the skull of his hostel manageress, Spider is whisked back into the relative safety of hospital, and perhaps, as the last shot of him suggests, into the security of his childhood personality as well. The edifice of assumptions supporting the Oedipal reading is not as straightforward as it at first seems. Much rests on the relationship between the narrative line detailing the investigation and reconstruction of the murder, and the frame narrative of the adult Spider’s life in the hostel. The chief elements of continuity are the figure of the adult Spider and the view of the camera, which is to say, our position as spectators of the entire narrative that composes the film. The introduction of the subjective space in which the investigation occurs is achieved through the conventional use of the adult Spider’s point-of-view of a scene between the younger Spider and his mother. The presence of the adult Spider within the continuation of this scene is thus coded as his self-projection into the investigative process, while the point-of-view shots within this and successive investigation scenes can be read as the subjectivity of the adult Spider temporarily occupying the space of each sequence’s protagonists in his attempts to figure things out. As the investigation proceeds, we notice slippage in the organisation of this subjective layering. It is often not immediately clear whether the shots establishing the space of the investigation narrative are coded as the adult
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______________________________________________________________ Spider’s point-of-view. For example, the interior of the tart’s flat during Spider’s father’s visit is not established through the look of the investigating Spider, and the scene is well under way before Spider walks into a frame established as his father’s point of view. Increasingly, Spider’s point-of-view both into the investigation sequences from the hostel-narrative space, and within the investigation narrative itself, is established retrospectively. Typically, what seems at first to be a standard establishing shot is subsequently revealed to be from Spider’s position by the reverse field revealing Spider’s presence; but it is not always the investigating Spider we encounter in this way. Occasionally his younger self is substituted. Spider is entirely absent from the scene detailing his father’s first deliberate assignation with the tart in the pub. He only appears as the couple pass him on the towpath, followed by his substitution for his father after the couple’s sexual encounter. In addition, the investigating Spider does not appear in the sequence detailing the supposed murder of his mother at the allotment until everything is over. To some extent these absences are mitigated by the bracketing of the investigation sequences with shots of Spider maintaining his journal of the investigation, implying that it is the continuity of this written narrative which motivates the action; but it remains, particularly during sections which swing between the two main narrative lines, that we often arrive within a space initially coded as Spider’s subjectivity before the figure of the investigating Spider himself. Even some of the links between action sequences and the journal are established retrospectively. This leaves us with the question: whose expectations are paramount in driving the narrative towards its increasingly Oedipal resolution: those of the investigating Spider or our own, conditioned both by the historic link between cinema and psychoanalysis and the prevalence of vulgar Freudian tropes within our entire culture? In the sense that the complete narrative of the film comes together in tandem with spectator subjectivity, the expectations are, of course, always already ours; but the final shot of the junior Spider in the hospital director’s car makes the question explicit. This character, around which the entire Oedipal configuration hinges, is transferred from the ‘interior’ space of the investigation to that of the frame narrative without any preamble or point-of-view coding. How, then, can we assess the extent to which our own expectations have not produced the junior Spider in this function? In a sense, this question mirrors the public reservations that have been expressed concerning regression therapy: how can we trust that the data produced is not evidence of a demand characteristic latent in the entire investigative framework? A similar question forms the basis for the frontal assault on the hermeneutic enterprise contained in the somewhat neglected film Clean, Shaven (1993), which encourages us, by its use of disturbing imagery, sometimes in deliberate reference to films such as Psycho (a shot of blood
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______________________________________________________________ spiralling into a drain), to construct the following narrative: Peter Winter (Peter Greene) escapes from a mental institution, steals a car and immediately murders a small girl. He later ties up her body in a plastic sack, dumps it in the car boot (in which he also discovers a shotgun), and sets off to his mother’s home in search of his adopted daughter. At a motel on the way, he beats to death another small girl, which results in his being pursued by the investigating detective. Winter’s mother withholds her assistance and, as the detective closes in, Winter continues his search alone, becoming ever more mentally disturbed in the process. He finally manages to kidnap his daughter. The detective tracks them to an isolated beach and, in full view of the girl, shoots Winter dead. When the detective opens the car boot and discovers the ‘body’ hidden there to be a bundle of clothing and other rubbish, this whole narrative, already rendered shaky by some ambiguous exposition, collapses. Almost the entire fabric of supposed event and motivation has been constructed by our audience expectations, habituated by familiar ‘slasher movie’ structures and news media scare stories,29 rushing in to fill the gaps created by the film’s fragmentary exposition. We cannot even be sure if the man is an escapee. One strategy among others leading to this position is the ambiguous nature of the menacing ‘radio scan’ soundtrack comprised of fragmented sentences. There are no obvious markers within the film to indicate this element’s precise significance. Is it the subjective experience of the ‘insane’ person; or is it (amongst other possibilities) a contextualising, commentary device laid on at the level of narration? Similarly, both A Beautiful Mind and Spider destabilise our access to the ‘empirical reality’ of the situation by our sometimes ambiguous placing ‘within’ the film narrative’s evocation of the personal narrative of the protagonist’s experience. 5.
Conclusion These films, then, all to some extent contain an element of attempting: ‘to expose the fictional nature of what is presented by both ordinary language [or in this case by film narrative] and ordinary psychology in their explanatory mode as ‘the truth.’’30 These words form part of an argument forwarding the claims of post-modern narrative therapy to challenge modernist epistemology, with its reliance on ‘discovery and its gradual positivist transformation into a criterion for existence’ which, it is further argued, has led to ‘the creation of imaginary things for the purpose of discovering them.’31 Inasmuch as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders arguably functions as a depository of such imaginary things, its diagnostic categories and the logic associated with them can only function to betray the experience of the mental patient.32 There is a clear analogy between this argument and the tendency I have observed in cinema.
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______________________________________________________________ Clean, Shaven puts the matter most bluntly. The construction of a narrative on the basis of empirical deduction results in the murder of Winter. We are left with a sense of our complicity in a senseless but all too readily comprehensible defeat of human values. This defeat also, of course, underlines the immensity of the task of completely overthrowing existing paradigms of narrative cinema’s representation of mental illness. Released almost fifteen years ago to limited success, Clean Shaven may simply have been too thorough in undermining the expectations of its potential audience. The film has nevertheless continued to maintain a small cult status, and may arguably even have influenced one scene in A Beautiful Mind.33 The latter film ultimately reincorporates its temporary destabilisation of narrative expectations into a resolution stressing individual achievement and the triumph of a conventionalised love interest. It went on to become a multiple Academy Award winner. Nevertheless, its tidy representation of schizophrenia received some adverse reviews from movie critics and mental health interests, indicating a possible shift of expectations towards a more problematised depiction in at least one section of its audience.34 Despite some highly favourable reviews and a good showing at festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, 35 the low-budget, independently-produced Clean, Shaven did not secure major international theatrical distribution, winding up instead with one of America’s leading independent distributors, Strand Releasing. 36 This mixed reception is surely in some part due to the fact that, in conventional terms, its narrative climax falls flat, indeed is constructed so to do. And here lies a somewhat familiar rub. In order to motivate a shift in the dominant terms of reference of any discursive practice one has to clearly identify them for one’s audience, and hence to some extent reproduce them in one’s argument. As a result, all three of the films I have outlined in detail lead to unsatisfactory conclusions. If A Beautiful Mind abandons critique in favour of a vapid generic closure, the two more thoroughgoing films disappoint through their inconclusiveness within the dominant terms they attempt to displace. I have briefly suggested that the seeds of this problem may lie in the incompatibility of a neurobiological explanation of mental states with the mobilisation of spectator affect through narrative elaboration. This assertion carries obvious implications outside of cinema for the interface between drugs-led and other forms of therapy. How future productions address its implications for cinema itself remains to be seen.
Notes 1
O F Wahl, Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1995, p.xiii, see also pp. 169-188.
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These criteria also sadly rule out the film that inspired the title of this paper: the silent Japanese A Page of Madness (1926, re-released with soundtrack 1973). 3 M Fleming and R Manvell, Images of Madness: The Portrayal of Insanity in the Feature Film, Farleigh Dickinson University Press/ Associated University Presses, London and Toronto, 1985, pp. 67-68. 4 Wahl, op. cit., p. 112, argues that this represents (particularly in the case of television drama) a form of narrative economy. So common and selfexplanatory is the stereotype of the ‘psycho killer’ that it removes the need for any detailed exposition of motive or background. 5 Ibid., p. 111; G O Gabbard and K Gabbard, Psychiatry and the Cinema, 2nd edition, American Psychiatric Press, Washington and London, 1999, p. 26. 6 P Roffman and J Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1981, p. viii. 7 Gabbard, & Gabbard, op. cit., p. 27. Fleming & Manvell, op. cit., p. 273. 8 Gabbard & Gabbard, op. cit., p. 143. 9 Ibid., p. 29. 10 Ibid., p. xxiii. 11 Ibid., p. 27. 12 J M Metzl, Prozac On The Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder DrugsDuke University Press, Durham and London, 2003, p. 11. 13 D Fee, ‘The Project of Pathology: Reflexivity and Depression in Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation,’ in Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience, ed. D Fee, Sage Publications, London, 2000, p. 93. 14 I express myself thus due to my reservations about the entire concept of the master narrative - a point too complex to enter into here. Nevertheless Freud has been undeniably so used by both psychiatric professionals and cultural commentators. 15 Metzl, op. cit., p. 12; Gabbard & Gabbard, op. cit., p. 75. 16 E Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004, p. 277. 17 D Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, Routledge, London,1985, reprinted 1995, p. 157. 18 Zaretsky, op. cit., pp. 332-344, provides an interesting sketch of this fragmentation within the discipline of psychoanalysis. 19 P Lerner and M S Micale, ‘Trauma, Psychiatry and History: A Conceptual and Historiographical Introduction’ in Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930, ed. P Lerner and M S Micale, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 9-10.
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Bordwell, op. cit., pp. 157- 8. Fleming & Manvell, op. cit., p. 159. 22 Gabbard & Gabbard, op. cit., pp. 147-169. 23 Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, Touchstone/ Simon and Schuster, New York and London, 2001, p. 302, pp. 340-342, p.389. 24 Ibid., p. 259, 305. 25 Certainly, if we accept the central arguments of Otto Wahl’s Media Madness detailing the inaccurate media coverage of such topics. Wahl, op. cit. 26 A Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression, Vintage Paperbacks, London, 2002, p. 22. 27 Internal evidence from the film suggests a date for the ‘present’ action in the 1980s - possibly during the craze for the so-called ‘normalisation’ of mental patients. For a critique of this approach, see K Jones, Asylums and After: A Revised History of the Mental Health Services: From the Early 18th Century to the 1990s, Athlone Press, London and Atlantic Highlands, 1993, pp. 214-216. 28 A film of Asylum, another McGrath novel which demonstrates an interest in the limitations of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic tool, is scheduled for restricted US release in October 2004. At the time of writing I am aware of no other release plans. Internet Movie Database: http://register.imdb.com/title/tt0348505/releaseinfo (26/ 10/ 04.) 29 Wahl, op. cit., pp. 56-86. 30 F Newman, ‘Does a Story Need A Theory? Understanding the Methodology of Narrative Therapy,’ in Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience, ed. D Fee, Sage Publications, London, 2000, p. 259. 31 Ibid., pp. 255-256. 32 Ibid., p. 257. 33 The scene in which Nash attempts to remove his delusional body implant bears a passing resemblance to the two most commented-upon sequences in Clean, Shaven. Nasar’s biography of Nash indicates no corresponding delusion on which it might be based. 34 A limited bibliography of such reviews is appended to my ‘From Shock Corridor to A Beautiful Mind: Full of Sound and Pictures,’ in Shadows That Stalk: Representations of Fear in American Culture and Literature (Proceedings of the 20th Anniversary Conference, Hacettepe University Department of American Culture and Literature, Ankara Oct. 25-5, 2002), The Journal of American Culture and Literature, 2002 issue, pp. 101-117. 21
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Sundance Festival: http://institute.sundance.org/jsps/site.jsp?resource=pag_ex_programs_festival _pastfestivals_1994&sk=DiDvf5rZgwxTN5bS 36 In 1995 the film won two awards at the Fantasporto film festival in Portugal. Internet Movie Database:
Bibliography American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. American Psychiatric Association, Washington, D.C., 1994. Bordwell, D., Narration in the Fiction Film. Routledge, London, 1985, rep. 1995. Fee, D., ‘The Project of Pathology: Reflexivity and Depression in Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation.’ In Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience, edited by D. Fee, Sage Publications, London, 2000, pp. 74-99. Fleming, M. and Manvell, R., Images of Madness: The Portrayal of Insanity in the Feature Film. Farleigh Dickinson University Press/ Associated University Presses, London and Toronto, 1985. Gabbard, G. O. and Gabbard, K., Psychiatry and the Cinema, 2nd edition. American Psychiatric Press, Washington and London, 1999. Goldsman, A., A Beautiful Mind: The Shooting Script. Newmarket Press, New York, 2002. Jones, K., Asylums and After: A Revised History of the Mental Health Services: From the Early 18th Century to the 1990s. Athlone Press, London and Atlantic Highlands, 1993. Keefe, R. S. E. and Harvey, P. D. ,Understanding Schizophrenia: A Guide to the New Research on Causes and Treatment. The Free Press/ Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994.
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______________________________________________________________ Lerner, P. and Micale, M. S., ‘Trauma, Psychiatry and History: A Conceptual and Historiographical Introduction.’ In Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930, edited by P. Lerner and M. S. Micale, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001.pp. 1-27. McGrath, P., Spider. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 2002. ______
, Asylum. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1997.
Metzl, J. M., Prozac On The Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2003. Nasar, S., A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, New York and London, 2001. Newman, F., ‘Does a Story Need A Theory? Understanding the Methodology of Narrative Therapy:’ In Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience, op. cit., pp. 248-261. Remington, P., ‘From Shock Corridor to A Beautiful Mind: Full of Sound and Pictures.’ In Shadows That Stalk: Representations of Fear in American Culture and Literature (Proceedings of the 20th Anniversary Conference, Hacettepe University Department of American Culture and Literature, Ankara Oct. 25-5, 2002), The Journal of American Culture and Literature, 2002 issue, pp. 101-117. Roffman, P. and Purdy, J., The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1981. Solomon, A., The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression Vintage Paperbacks, London, 2002. Wahl, O. F., Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1995. Wurtzel, E., Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir. Riverhead Books, New York, 1997. Zaretsky, E., Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004.
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Websites ‘Clean Shaven/ awards.’ The Internet Movie Database. (21/11/03.) ‘Clean Shaven/ user comments.’ The Internet Movie Database. (21/11/03.) Rottentomatoes.com. (20/11/03.) Sundance Institute. (20/11/03.) Variety. (20/11/03.)
Filmography Boyle, D., Trainspotting. UK: Channel Four Films/ Figment Films/ The Noel Gay Motion Picture Company/ PolyGram, 1996. Cimino, M., The Deer Hunter. USA: EMI Films Ltd./ Universal Pictures, 1978. Craven, W., Scream. USA: Dimension Films/ Miramax, 1996. Cronenberg, D., Spider. Canada/ UK: Artists Independent Network/ Capitol Films/ Catherine Bailey/ Davis Films/ Grosvenor Park Productions/ Metropolitan Films, 2002. Eastwood, C., Play Misty for Me. USA: The Malpaso Company/ Universal Pictures, 1971. Forman, M., One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. USA: Fantasy Films/ Warner Brothers, 1975. Friedkin, W., The Exorcist. USA: Hoya Productions/ Warner Bros., 1973. Fuller, S., Shock Corridor. USA: Allied Artists Pictures/ F & F Productions Inc., 1963.
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______________________________________________________________ Gilliam, T., 12 Monkeys. USA: Atlas Entertainment/ Classico/ Universal Pictures, 1995. Hitchcock, A., Marnie. USA: Geoffrey-Stanley Productions/ Universal Pictures, 1964. ______
, Psycho. USA: Shamley Productions/ Paramount Pictures, 1960.
______
, Spellbound. USA: Selznick International Pictures/ Vanguard Films Inc./ United Artists, 1945.
Howard, R., A Beautiful Mind. USA: Universal Pictures/ Dreamworks Pictures/ Imagine Entertainment, 2002. Huston, J., Freud (a.k.a. Freud: The Secret Passion). USA: Universal International Pictures, 1962. Kerrigan, L., Clean, Shaven. USA: DSM-III Films, 1993. Kinugasa, T., A Page of Madness. Japan: Ha Eiga Renmei/ Shin Kanaku, 1926 (re-released with soundtrack, 1973.) Litvak, A., The Snake Pit. USA: 20th Century Fox, 1948. Loach, K., Family Life. UK: Kestrel Films/ EMI Films Ltd., 1971. Lyne, A., Fatal Attraction. USA: Jaffe-Lansing Productions/ Paramount Pictures, 1987. Medak, P., The Krays. UK: Fugitive Features/ Parkfield Entertainment/ Rank Film Organisation, 1990. Powell, M., Peeping Tom. UK: Michael Powell Theatre/ AngloAmalgamated Films, 1960. Robson, M., Home of the Brave. USA: Screen Plays/ United Artists, 1949. Roeg, N., Bad Timing. UK: Rank Film Distributors/ Recorded Picture Co., 1980. Wellman, W. A., The Public Enemy. USA: Warner Brothers, 1931.
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______________________________________________________________ Wilder, B., The Lost Weekend. USA: Paramount Pictures, 1945
‘Based on the True Story’: Cinema’s Mythologised Vision of the Rwandan Genocide Ann-Marie Cook Abstract: This paper considers the iconographic and ideological implications of representations of the Rwandan genocide in the docudramas 100 Days, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, and Sometimes in April. Collectively, these films have won acclaim for bringing the story of the Rwandan genocide to audiences who knew little about the 1994 massacre. But it is my contention that, despite trading on claims of authenticity and historical accuracy, the films construct ideologically driven, and deeply mythologized depictions of the genocide that elide the matrix of complex factors at the root of the violence. I de-mythologize these representations by identifying how the iconography of genocide operates in tandem with the selective use of historical facts to sustain reductionism, Manichean narratives that demonise Hutus, sanctify Tutsis and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and condemn the UN and other Western governments for failing to intervene to stop the genocide. I argue that by refusing to acknowledge details such as the RPF’s participation in acts of genocide, the US government’s behind-thescenes involvement in the conflict and the role of political, economic and historical factors in facilitating the violence, the films mislead audiences by cloaking what is little more than mythologized propaganda in the guise of historical fact. Key Words: 100 Days, genocide, historical films, Hotel Rwanda, Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, Sometimes in April ***** 1.
Four Films, Four Mythologies Although the ethnic cleansing precipitated by the civil war in Rwanda between April and June 1994 received minimal attention from the international media at the time it was taking place, this humanitarian catastrophe has emerged as a compelling subject for filmmakers, inspiring four docudramas since 2001. The films 100 Days (Nick Hughes, 2001), Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004), Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005) and Sometimes in April (Raoul Peck, 2005) enjoyed varying degrees of publicity and commercial success, though all four were motivated by their respective creators’ self-confessed desire to reveal the untold story of the victims and survivors.1 There is no question that these films have done a valuable service by raising awareness of the tragic massacre that claimed the lives of roughly one million people over the course of just three months. But
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______________________________________________________________ it is my contention that, far from offering an accurate depiction of events, the four films actually promote a mythologized vision of the genocide that oversimplifies the causes of violence and the international community’s involvement in Rwanda’s domestic affairs and reduces the complex relationship between Hutus and Tutsis to Manichean terms wherein evil Hutu extremists are shown to be intent on wiping out ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who opposed the Hutu Power movement simply because of their ethnic identity.2 Of course, there is no question that ethnically motivated acts of violence took place on a massive scale, and that use of the term ‘genocide’ to describe the outcome of the violence is by no means inappropriate. The problem, however, is that the films rely on an exclusively ethnic frame of reference to account for events that were triggered by a complex matrix of historical, political and economic factors which suggest that ethnicity was one of several factors that determined who was targeted for extermination. This paper seeks to demythologise cinematic representations of the Rwandan genocide by examining the visual and narrative conventions that operate to demonise Hutus, sanctify Tutsis and condemn Western institutions for their non-interventionist policies. I shall also trace out some of the historical details that have been excluded from these narratives, despite the filmmakers’ claims of accuracy, and assess the ideological implications of those omissions. Finally, I will identify some ways in which cinema might engage with the subject of the genocide in a more sophisticated and productive way in the future. Since many readers may be unfamiliar with the films under analysis, a brief plot synopsis for each production provides a useful context for subsequent discussions of imagery, theme and ideological implications. Nick Hughes’ 2001 production, 100 Days, initiated narrative cinema’s engagement with the Rwandan genocide with a story based on incidents he observed and experienced while working in Rwanda as a CNN cameraman. The film revolves around Josette (Cleophas Kabasita), a young Tutsi girl whose dreams of starting a family with her boyfriend, Baptiste (Eric Bridges Twahirwa), are shattered when officials in her village agree to implement the government’s plan to eliminate ethnic Tutsis. Josette and her family seek refuge in a church, but after the UN troops stationed there are withdrawn, a the Hutu priest forces her and several other young girls to become his sex slaves whilst allowing Hutus to execute the mass of refugees in his care. When RPF soldiers liberate the church, Josette is reunited with Baptiste, but she is so traumatised that she is barely able to speak to him. Josette gives birth to the priest’s child and abandons it by a waterfall in the forest. Though the film ends with the image of an RPF soldier rescuing the baby, it leaves open the question of what becomes of Josette herself. The least commercially successful of the four films under consideration, 100 Days was viewed primarily at international film festivals, academic institutions and the home
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______________________________________________________________ video market. Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April moves between 1994 and 2004 to investigate the genocide as well as its consequences for two brothers who are united by blood, but separated by politics. In 2004, Augustin Muganza (Idris Elba) receives a letter from his brother, Honore (Oris Erhuero), inviting him come to the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania where Honore is on trial for inciting ethnic hatred in his radio broadcasts prior to the genocide. The prospect of a reunion triggers Augustin’s memories of 1994 and the friends and family he lost in the violence. In addition to integrating a narrative strand that deals with the efforts of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Prudence Bushnell (Debra Winger), to persuade her superiors to intervene in Rwanda, the film also juxtaposes Augustin’s story with that of Martine (Pamela Nomvete), a teacher at the Catholic school where Augustin’s daughter is a student. When the priest in charge of the school orders Martine to turn over Tutsi students to the Rwandan military, she refuses and stands alongside her pupils as soldiers shoot them. After trying unsuccessfully to rescue Augustin’s daughter, Martine hides in a swamp with other refugees until the RPF liberate them. United by grief and loss, Augustin and Martine begin a new life and family together, though neither can escape the trauma of the past. The film premiered at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival one month before it aired on the American cable network, HBO, on 19 March 2005, where an estimated thirty five million viewers watched it.3 Terry George and Kier Pearson’s screenplay for Hotel Rwanda offers the ‘Hollywood take’ on the genocide by distilling the facts through the formulaic conventions of the romantic political thriller. Filmed in South Africa, and distributed by United Artists, Hotel Rwanda chronicles the struggle endured by Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) to protect his family as well as the 1,268 refugees who had taken shelter at the Hotel des Milles Collines in Kigali following the withdrawal of UN troops. Rusesabagina served as a consultant on this hagiographic portrayal of an ordinary family man whose instinct for self-preservation and drive to protect his loved ones gradually evolves into a commitment to save complete strangers. The film enjoyed reasonable box office success and garnered nominations for twenty-six international awards, including Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards. In sharp contrast to the happy ending on offer in Hotel Rwanda, Michael Caton-Jones’ Shooting Dogs tells the story of tragic story of several thousand refugees who were massacred at the École Technique Officielle in the Kigali suburb of Kichukiro after the Belgian UN forces abandoned them. Filmed in Rwanda at the actual locations where the atrocities depicted took place, and based on the experiences of former BBC correspondent David Belton, the film maintains a decidedly Western point of view by distilling events through the perspectives of Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a naïve
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______________________________________________________________ volunteer teacher, and Father Christopher, (John Hurt) the seasoned priest in charge of the school. While Joe gives in to his fears and ultimately allows himself to be evacuated to safety with the other whites, Father Christopher refuses to leave his people and courageously sacrifices his own life in order to save a single truck load of children from certain death. Filmed on location in Rwanda with production support from the UK Film Council, BBC Films and six other companies, Shooting Dogs made its rounds on the international film festival circuit before enjoying a full UK release in March 2006, followed by an American release a year later in March 2007 under the alternate title, Beyond the Gates. 2. Cinema as Document: The Importance of Historical Accuracy in Promotional Discourses It is now widely recognised that the media failed to report accurately the scale of the atrocities, thus contributing to a climate in which Western institutions could maintain a non-interventionist policy without encountering opposition from a morally outraged public. While some journalists did manage to obtain footage of the atrocities, organisations like the BBC refused to air graphic images for fear of offending their audiences.4 Breaking news pertaining to the South African elections and the ongoing conflict in the Balkans monopolised the media’s attention and by the time it finally turned its attention to Rwanda, it was ‘too little, too late.’ As Michael Barnett writes, journalists had to stand at a distance because the security situation precluded any immediate reporting. The result was that the genocide was a private affair, occurring behind closed doors. The cameras had to wait until the consequences of the genocide came to them. So when refugees spilled over the border and into the camera lens, the media swarmed on the awful spectacle and gave sustained coverage to the plight of the refugees.5 Ironically, most of the occupants in the refugee camps that garnered media attention and international sympathy were primarily the Hutus who had perpetrated acts of genocide before being driven out of Rwanda by the RPF.6 Because the world had limited access to visual evidence of acts of genocide at the time they were taking place, cinematic re-enactments acquire particular significance as a repudiation of the silence that originally surrounded the killing. Moreover, the films can be seen to function as simulacra in which the simulation of genocide on screen becomes the primary frame of reference for viewers simply because it is the means by which many of them will frame their understanding of what happened in Rwanda.
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______________________________________________________________ The promotional rhetoric surrounding the films encouraged audiences to perceive them as historically accurate texts with substantial educational value. While 100 Days never received the same degree of media publicity as the other three films, it is possible to draw some conclusions about how it was promoted by examining programme notes for screenings. The website for Harvard University’s Centre for International Development Film Series described the film as Nick Hughes’ account of ‘what he witnessed as the Genocide unfolded.’7 Not only does the reference to the film’s status as an eyewitness account indicate an effort to highlight its authenticity, but its presence in a film series sponsored by a prestigious academic institution signifies its educational merits as well. Thanks to the wider availability of press kits and websites for Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, and Sometimes in April we have ample evidence of how filmmakers’ attempted to frame the reception of the films in terms of their historical authority and instructional value. Pressbooks for all three films note the extensive research that went into the productions. Interviews with cast members typically reveal that the actor had no previous knowledge of Rwanda and relied on research to develop their character studies. Equally interesting is the way the descriptions of the film make use of terminology such as ‘real life’ and ‘authentic’ as they either explicitly or implicitly encourage audiences to engage critically with the films. Hotel Rwanda’s pressbook locates the film as ‘the inspiring story of real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Rwanda who used his courage and cunning to shelter over a thousand refugees from certain death.’8 The pressbook for Shooting Dogs declared: ‘Based on real events and filmed at the actual location where this story took place, Shooting Dogs is…an emotionally gripping, authentic and powerful recreation of a tragic real life story.’9 The pressbook for Sometimes in April featured a statement from Raoul Peck in which the director acknowledged that his goal was to ‘tell the story of the people of Rwanda as well as the drama of a particular family’ without making ‘an easily digestible summary on genocide, but rather something that would push the audience further, make them think and discuss.’10 As if to further substantiate the historical and educational value of the films, each of the pressbooks include summaries or timelines that outline key events surrounding the genocide and, in some cases, the larger trajectory of Rwanda’s turbulent (post)colonial past. While these press kits were intended to shape the critical reception of the films, websites aimed directly at audiences shared much of the same tone and content. Although the site for Hotel Rwanda is no longer viewable and a search of a website for 100 Days links to a general website about the Rwandan genocide, the sites for the other two films are still accessible. Sometimes in April’s homepage on the HBO website juxtaposes images from the film with a real life photo of Rwandan soldiers standing over a pile of human skulls and links to a historical timeline, information about the
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______________________________________________________________ production, interviews with the director and leading cast members and a ‘making of’ the documentary.11 The official website for Shooting Dogs offers an interactive space in which a blog about the film is positioned alongside links to human rights organisations and information about how to use the film as an educational resource.12 By juxtaposing references to the authenticity of the films with plot synopses and timelines that explain the chronology of the genocide in relation to decades of ethnic unrest, these promotional materials operate to give the films the patina of historical and authority. Because promotional discourses operated in this way, it is appropriate to scrutinise exactly how accurate the films really are. Robert Rosenstone has rejected the view that films should be expected to ‘get the facts right, or to present several sides of an issue, or to give a fair hearing to all the evidence on a topic, or to all the characters or groups represented in a particular situation, or to provide a broad and detailed historical context for events.’13 Although there is merit in this argument, it is hard not to hold films to a standard of accuracy when they are promoted precisely in those terms. Of course the whole concept of historical accuracy is a problematic one, as readers familiar with historiography debates will be aware. So it is important to clarify the criteria for evaluating the accuracy of the films. My basis for measuring accuracy is whether the films have presented accounts of the genocide that are consistent with the existing body of credible information that has developed on the subject. Since much was made of the extensive research that went into these films, this seems to be a fair basis for judgment. In order to be consistent with the existing body of credible information, a film need not give equal time to every last detail or account, but it should in some way acknowledge the existence of oppositional perspectives where they exist, even if this only comes in the form of a historical postscript. The consideration of accuracy should not be taken to the point of denying the creative freedoms of the filmmaker. In many cases departures from the historical record are made for aesthetic, dramatic, structural and commercial reasons that facilitate the creation of a story that is compelling to watch and, in many cases, generally consistent with the historical record. But in assessing a film’s accuracy, it is also important to keep in mind that the simple act of formulating a narrative about historical events and figures imposes upon them particular meanings that inevitably cohere with particular ideological biases that should not be mistaken for objective accounts of the past. In their work on historiography and narrative, Rosenstone and Hayden White draw attention to the role stories play in constructing the terms by which we understand the past. The distillation of history through a narrative model entails selecting certain moments and individuals for inclusion, inscribing them with meaning, framing figures as protagonists and
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______________________________________________________________ antagonists, suggesting causality among events and presenting all of this information through a familiar story arc organised in terms of exposition, climax and denouement. But as Rosenstone reminds us, ‘neither people nor nations live historical ‘stories;’ narratives, that is, coherent stories with beginnings, middles, and endings, are constructed by historians as part of their attempts to make sense of the past.’14 For White, the ‘notion that sequences of real events possess the formal attributes of the stories we tell about imaginary events could only have its origin in wishes, day-dreams, reveries.’15 By pointing to the constructed nature of historical narratives, both scholars direct us to consider the ideological implications of stories. In particular, it is crucial to examine how stories mobilise the annals of history selectively in order to moralise events and project an idealised vision that says more about how society wishes to perceive the past than it says about the past itself. While this is not to suggest that the issue of historical accuracy is completely meaningless, it seems rather more productive to shift the focus away from the question of whether a film is historically accurate in order to interrogate what I see as the more important issue of what interests and ideologies are served by representing the past in particular ways that may or may not correspond to the ‘official’ historical record. 3.
Constructing a Mythology of Genocide Despite variations at the level of visual style, plot, and character development, the four films construct an iconography of genocide through their repetition of images of the machete, the radio, identity cards and spectacles of bodies. Moreover, the films mobilise these images in ways that imply a particular causal relationship among them: radio broadcasts, especially those by the station Radio des Milles Collines (RTLM), incited ethnic hatred and directed the Hutu Interahamwe militias (whose name literally means those who work together) to ‘go to work’ killing Tutsi inyenzi, the Rwandan term for cockroaches.16 Identity cards, which had been introduced by the country’s Belgian colonisers, arbitrarily designated individuals as either Hutu or Tutsi based on physical characteristics, and determined who would be targeted in home inspections and at roadblocks that had been created to prevent Tutsis from escaping to safety.17 Although guns and other weapons were used during the conflict, the machete stands out as one of the most potent signifiers of the Rwandan genocide because of the particularly brutal butchery it evokes. Depictions of the machete highlight its status as the weapon of choice among members of the Interahamwe. Typically, we see the machete in close-ups on bloodstained blades, in long shots of militia members hacking their victims and in extreme long shots of masses of militia members taunting their prey by brandishing their weapons. Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April also feature sequences that depict crates of stockpiled machetes awaiting distribution. When Augustin
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______________________________________________________________ Muganze, the protagonist of Sometimes in April, expresses concern about the contents of the crate, an army general tells him that the machetes are for work. The dual purpose of the machete as both tool and weapon is significant on two levels: it accounts for the government’s ability to arm practically every Hutu without triggering efforts to block their preparations18 and it eloquently symbolises the correlation between work and killing that developed in Hutu Power rhetoric. Interahamwe literally means ‘those who work together’ and when a radio announcer in Sometimes in April incites Hutu listeners to kill their Tutsi neighbours, he declares that, ‘It is time to go to work. It is time to cut the tall grass.’ As the films make clear, the wide availability of machetes enabled ordinary Rwandans, and not just a designated military force, to participate in attacks that killed 800,000 people in just one hundred days while the constant reminders that killing Tutsis was equivalent to cutting grass or eliminating cockroaches discouraged the perpetrators from seeing their victims as human beings. Shots of seas of mutilated bodies and extended sequences that graphically depict Hutus attacking victims who’ve been targeted because they are Tutsi trigger a palpable emotional response on the part of the viewer whilst framing the conflict in purely ethnic terms. While several media sources have been credited with inciting ethnic hatred and violence, the films single out what many survivors and experts on Rwanda believe to be the driving force behind the genocide: broadcasts by the government controlled Radio des Milles Collines (RTLM). For Christine L. Kellow and H. Leslie Steeves, the widespread reception of RTLM broadcasts triggered collective reaction effects that resulted in panic and mob violence. They observe that RTLM became the government voice in demanding genocide. … The station encouraged Hutu hatred and slaughter of the Tutsis by talking about Tutsi hate of the Hutus. The frequent use of popular culture, biblical references, and familiar historical context strengthened the power of the broadcasts. Additionally, although alternative voices had been largely silenced, RTLM repeatedly told listeners to ignore any oppositional information that might somehow reach them.19 Although 100 Days only relies on character dialogue to acknowledge that radio broadcasts encouraged Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbours, there are significant aural and visual references to the pervasive influence exerted by the radio. Radio broadcasts of anti-Tutsi propaganda intermixed with popular music occupies a prominent place on the soundtracks. Hotel Rwanda gestures toward the power of RTLM by opening on a black screen over the non-
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______________________________________________________________ diagetic sound of a radio tuning through static to pause on President Bill Clinton delivering a speech about the conflict in the Balkans before finally tuning to an RTLM broadcast. The announcer reminds listeners of Belgian collaboration with Tutsis, the theft of Hutu land, the threat posed by Tutsi rebels and issues the warning: ‘Rwanda is a Hutu land. Stay alert, watch your neighbours.’ In all of the films, we see repeated sequences of individuals and groups, both Tutsis and Hutus, tuning into the radio. We also observe the different reactions that are triggered by the broadcasts as the films shift from the militia members who have been energised by the dissemination of Hutu Power rhetoric to the terror of Tutsi refugees who hear their names and whereabouts publicised by the announcers. Perhaps the most damning indictment of RTLM can be found in Sometimes in April where Honore Muganza, the Hutu Power radio presenter, ultimately confesses his moral culpability in the killings when he is put on trial for war crimes. This ethnic framing is advanced further through narrative structures that return consistently to the same core group of events to generate a grand narrative that reduces complex historical figures to the status of clear-cut heroes and villains. While all four films are guilty of such reductionism, Sometimes in April at least attempts to articulate a critique of audience expectations for such simplified treatments of complex political events by including a press conference sequence featuring Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Prudence Bushnell and members of the press. As Bushnell attempts to explain the situation in Rwanda to baffled journalists whose sole concern is the safety of Americans, she fields a question from an aging journalist whose query conveys a perspective undoubtedly shared by many audiences members. Journalist: These rebel forces, are they Tutus or Hutsis? Bushnell: Hutu and Tutsi. Journalist: Which ones are the good guys? Equally simplistic are the historical prologues and character dialogue designed to explain and contextualise the genocide as the result of decades of Tutsi oppression at the hands of their compatriots. Shooting Dogs opens with an historical overview that exemplifies the way in which all four films oversimplify Rwanda’s violent past and the causes of the 1994 genocide: Rwanda 1994. For thirty years the majority Hutu government has persecuted the minority Tutsi people. Under pressure from the West, the Hutu president has reluctantly agreed a deal to share power with the Tutsis. The UN has deployed a small force around Kigali, the capital, to monitor the fragile peace.
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______________________________________________________________ Framing the historical background in this way enables the films to situate the Tutsis as the ‘good guys’ ennobled by their suffering and oppression and the Hutus as the evil architects of genocide. Additionally, each of the films feature sequences that reveal what characters’ lives were like before the killing ensued, thereby equipping audiences to identify with the Tutsi and moderate Hutu protagonists whose struggles to survive underpin the narrative progression of the films. Sequences that showcase the ominous calm before the storm are generally presented as the preparation phase of the genocide, during which time the Hutu government built its arsenal, trained Interahamwe militias and compiled lists of names of Tutsi targets. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, which sparked the mass violence, is attributed to Hutu extremists who opposed the government’s agreement to share power with the RPF. The inclusion of extended sequences in which people are raped, shot, tortured, burned alive and hacked to death reveal the particularly brutal nature of the violence in Rwanda, but what is significant is that the violence is always portrayed as something that is perpetrated by Hutus against Tutsis in the name of establishing their own ethnic superiority. Thus, the spectacle of violence on offer in these films leaves no doubt as to who the bad guys really are. The narratives also condemn the complicity of Western institutions, though they reserve particular criticism for the United Nations and the United States for failing to intervene to stop the killing. Common to all four films is the iconic image of the mass exodus of refugees seeking the protection of UN peacekeeping forces. Such sequences speak to the absurdity of a United Nations mandate that permitted the use of force only in cases of self-defence, and placed soldiers in a position of having to literally stand by as Interahamwe militias slaughtered scores of civilians. The inclusion of scenes in which Rwandan refugees are barred from rescue vehicles while whites are ushered aboard conveys a sense of moral outrage over the racist implications of the West’s response to the violence. To further illustrate the American government’s abrogation of its moral duty, the films feature actual footage from a press conference in which State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelley struggles to answer journalists’ questions about the genocide. In Hotel Rwanda, the radio provides a link between the besieged hotel and the outside world, enabling the main characters to listen in disgust and disbelief as Shelley equivocates over the legitimacy of classifying the first wave of ethnic cleaning in Rwanda as ‘genocide’. In response to Shelley’s insistence on using the phrase ‘acts of genocide’ a journalist challenges her to explain ‘how many ‘acts of genocide’ it takes to make ‘genocide’’? When she concedes, ‘that’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer,’ the journalist presses her further: ‘Is it true that you have specific guidance not to use the word ‘genocide’ in isolation, but always to preface it with the words ‘acts of’?’ Clearly uncomfortable, Shelley stutters:
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______________________________________________________________ I have guidance, which I try to use as best as I can. I don't have an absolute categorical prescription against something, but I have the definitions. I have phraseology which has been carefully examined and arrived at as best as we can. Because the Clinton Administration did not want to risk another military intervention after the disastrous consequences of the mission in Somalia, where warlords kidnapped American troops and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets, the official government line was to deny that events in Rwanda constituted genocide. Under the terms of the United Nations Genocide Convention, such a concession would have created an obligation to initiate military intervention.20 There is no evidence that this press conference was actually heard on Rwandan radio, but the real power of the sequence lays in its eloquent critique of the American government as a dithering, bureaucratic entity that wilfully ignored the plight of the Rwandan people. By contrast, those lucky enough to survive along with the RPF are presented unapologetically as heroic figures. The rebel army emerges as a heroic liberating force that rescued survivors and drove out the Hutu oppressors when the rest of the world turned its back. The final sequence of 100 Days, for example, situates the RPF as the saviours of Rwanda by depicting a young soldier’s rescue of an abandoned baby whose mother was raped by a Hutu priest. As the product of a legacy of conflict between Hutu and Tutsi, evoked by blood-red water cascading down an otherwise scenic mountain waterfall, the baby can be seen to represent Rwanda itself. Thus, the rescue of the child symbolises the rebel army’s role as a new generation of leaders who will save Rwanda by becoming the surrogate parents, and indeed, the benign protectors, of a new nation in which ethnic violence has no place. While this is clearly the most poetic treatment of the RPF, each of the films offer decidedly optimistic endings that soften the horror of the atrocities by allowing individual protagonists to either survive against the odds (Josette in 100 Days, all of the refugees in Hotel Rwanda, the children who escape in Shooting Dogs and Augustin and Martine in Sometimes in April) or achieve a greater goal by sacrificing themselves (Father Christopher in Shooting Dogs). Such endings are problematic because they impose a reassuring sense of closure and finality upon conflicts that, in actuality, did not end with the arrival of the RPF and, in many cases, remain unresolved to this day. 4.
A Narrative of Gaps: Assessing the Missing Pieces of the Story Even if allowances are made for creative license on the part of the filmmakers, the educational value of the four films is undermined by the fact
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______________________________________________________________ that they offer a skewed perception of what took place. In every respect, they buy into a mythologized vision of the genocide that, according to Robin Philpot, encourages the perception that: Rwanda is a beautiful little country perched on a plateau in the heart of dark Africa where horrible Hutu génocidaires massacred a million defenceless Tutsis after a plane crash killed an African dictator on April 6, 1994. The UN and the international community hopelessly failed to respond in time despite the clear warning in a fax sent on January 11, 1994, by the valorous Canadian general Romeo Dallaire and the numerous warnings issued by devoted and neutral human rights workers. In a predictable return to its iniquitous and colonialist past, France flew to the rescue of génocidaires and dictators by deploying its army in the Opération Turquoise. The Rwandan Patriotic Front led by the brilliant military political strategist Paul Kagame, now President of Rwanda, put an end to the genocide when he marched into Kigali on July 4, 1994, and then took power 21 on July 19, 1994. The most glaring flaw in these accounts is that they refuse to acknowledge that, historically, both Hutus and Tutsis were involved in the killings and that ethnicity was one of several factors behind the violence. Hutu power gained popularity because Tutsis brutally subjugated the Hutu population during their time in power, yet the films gloss over this detail in their historical overviews. Moreover the films’ hagiographic treatment of the RPF is problematised by the research of Keith Harmon Snow, who has found evidence that the rebel army ‘slaughtered, bombed, massacred, assassinated, [and] tortured hundreds of thousands of people - including Hutu and Tutsi soldiers, politicians and government officials and innocent civilians.’22 The moral legitimacy with which the films credit the RPF is further undermined by the testimony of RPF operatives who have implicated rebel army leader, Paul Kagame, as the mastermind behind the Presidential assassination.23 Since the jury is literally still out on the question of who was responsible for shooting down the plane, it is difficult to read the films’ unequivocal implication of a Hutu radical as anything but another example of the filmmakers’ sympathetic stance toward Kagame and the RPF. The portrayal of the violence as a ‘final solution’ perpetrated by Hutus intent on wiping out the Tutsi population purely because they were Tutsi is also problematic because it fails to consider non-ethnic factors that contributed to the violence. Evidence indicates that the government
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______________________________________________________________ maintained strong, mutually beneficial relationships with Tutsi businessmen who were actively supportive of the regime. Perhaps even more shocking is the revelation that Tutsis belonged to, and occupied leadership roles in, the Interahamwe militias. Indeed, the research of Christian Davenport and Allan Stam challenges the interpretation of genocide advanced in the films by demonstrating that many of the victims, possibly even a majority, were Hutus there weren’t enough Tutsis in Rwanda at the time to account for all the reported deaths…When you add it all up it looks a lot more like politically motivated mass killing than genocide. A wide diversity of individuals, both Hutu and Tutsi, systematically used the mass killing to settle political, economic and personal scores.24 Howard French, the former East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, concurs, noting that invasions by RPF insurgents and presidential assassination are key pieces of evidence that ‘lead one in the direction of civil war, as a descriptor, as opposed to the one-sided tale that we have been given.’25 Further investigation and discussion is clearly needed to assess the veracity of these claims, but to the extent that they offer compelling evidence that violence did not always fall along ethnic lines and that the killing was situated within a context of civil war, I think there are good reasons to question the agenda behind the rather one-sided accounts on offer in the films. Perhaps the greatest irony is that, by implying that the extent of America’s involvement was its refusal to acknowledge the genocide and intervene to stop the killings, the films obfuscate the role America played in actively facilitating the violence. In his testimony before a Congressional forum, African affairs specialist Wayne Madsen argued that there was a clear economic incentive for America to maintain a foothold in the central African Great Lakes region because politically unstable countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, Eritrea, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo offered ripe business opportunities for private military contractors (such as the infamous Haliburton) with close links to the US government.26 While Rwanda may have lacked resources in its own right, its geographic proximity to other resource-rich nations invested it with strategic importance in the context of US-African relations. Madsen, along with Robin Philpot, Keith Harmon Snow and Michel Chossudovsky, has advanced the claim that the Rwandan conflict was actually ‘an undeclared war between France and America’ in which the US trained Paul Kagame and other members of the RPF and provided them with weapons and intelligence support in what Chossudoksy describes as an attempt to ‘displace France, discredit the French
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______________________________________________________________ government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under…Kagame.’27 In response to the RPF’s concern that intervention by UN forces would deny them a full victory over the Hutu government, and thereby endanger their plans to assume control of the country, Chossudovsky asserts that, ‘Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres’.28 Robin Philpot takes the argument even further, contending that the US government actively used its power on the UN Security Council to thwart efforts by France and other nations to resolve the crisis.29 Thus, the greatest outrage is not that the United States failed to intervene, but rather, that the US government did intervene in a manner that pursued economic and geopolitical interests at the expense of human life. While it is hardly surprising that a mainstream production like Hotel Rwanda avoided these controversial allegations, it is disappointing that the Caton-Jones, Peck and Hughes did not take their selfprofessed critical stance far enough to truly interrogate the mythology that has developed around popular discourses pertaining to the Rwandan genocide. 5.
Conclusion Cinematic representations of the Rwandan genocide have perpetuated a mythology in which there are clearly identifiable victims, heroes and villains and simple ethnic causes for the atrocities. By decontextualising and simplifying the causes of violence in this way, the films participate in the established conventions that govern the representation of African culture in Western literature. Citing the literary scholarship of Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, Robin Philpot observes that, unlike the tales about bloody wars in Europe, nobody in the literature on Africa finds, or attempts to find, social, economic, political, international or institutional reasons for the wars. Based on the literature, people just seem to like killing each other in Africa.30 By relying on an exclusively ethnic framework to account for the violence, the films obscure the historical, political and economic factors that played a contributing role in bringing about the conditions that resulted in genocide. There is no inherent reason why the films could not have acknowledged that the complexities of Rwanda’s history and political situation defy easy judgments about heroes and villains, and it would have been nothing short of refreshing if they had taken a page from Michael Moore’s playbook and exposed the greed and geopolitical wrangling that underpinned the massacres. But by sanctifying the RPF, ignoring the persecution of Hutus and concealing the extent of America’s involvement in Rwanda, the four
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______________________________________________________________ docudramas advance a mythologized view of the conflict that endorses an ideological tradition that persistently erases the hand of the West in creating and perpetuating the conditions of instability, violence and exploitation in African nations. The non-fiction literature on Rwanda reveals that the nation’s history is still being contested by journalists, scholars and other interested parties intent on evaluating the causes and effects of the violence. Some of these voices endorse the position that genocide was purely about ethnicity and that the RPF-instigated violence was a legitimate and proportional response to the circumstances. But there are also credible voices that challenge these assessments, and it is entirely appropriate that we have a mature conversation about what has become the accepted truth about the genocide. Cinema has the potential to play an important role this discussion. But in order to engage with the genocide in a productive and meaningful way, films need to present Rwanda’s history and politics as discourses still under contention, and abandon the practice of passing off mythologized versions of the genocide as the ‘true story’.
Notes I am indebted to Saffron Prescott for introducing me to Sometimes in April and sharing her expertise on the Rwandan genocide. I would also like to thank Nancy Billias for her patience and generous editorial assistance. 1
100 Days (Broadcast Feature Facilities, Ltd. and Vivid Pictures, 2001), dir. and screenplay by N Hughes; Sometimes in April (Cinefacto and HBO Films, 2005), dir. and screenplay by R Peck; Hotel Rwanda (Kigali Releasing Ltd., 2004), dir. T George, screenplay by T George and K Pearson; Shooting Dogs (Cross Day Productions Ltd., 2005), dir. M Caton-Jones, story by R Alwyn, screenplay by D Wolstencroft. 2 I have relied upon the press kits and clippings contained in the British Film Institute’s microfiche collection. No microfiche was available for 100 Days. 3 G Macnab, ‘Back to Hell,’ The Guardian, 15 March 2005, Arts, 14. 4 T Giles, ‘Media failure over Rwanda’s genocide,’ BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3599423.stm, 4 July 2004, 3 March 2007. 5 M Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2002, p. 150. 6 See the discussion of the Hutu exodus is P Gourevitch, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Picador, New York, 2000, chapter 11.
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Centre for International Development at Harvard University, ‘CID Film Series’, 2006, 4 October 2007, http://www.cid.harvard.edu/events/events_pages/020101-2event.html 8 Hotel Rwanda, Press Book, United Artists, 1, BFI microfiche. 9 Shooting Dogs, Press Book, Metrodome, 3, BFI microfiche. 10 Sometimes in April, Press Book, HBO Films, 5, BFI microfiche. 11 Sometimes in April Official Website, 2007, 4 October 2007, http://www.hbo.com/films/sometimesinapril/. 12 Shooting Dogs Official Website, 2007, 4 October 2007, http://www.shootingdogsfilm.blogspot.com/. 13 R A Rosenstone, History on Film, Film on History, Pearson Longman, Harlow, England, 2006, p. 37. 14 R A Rosenstone, Visions of the Past, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 35. 15 Hayden White, The Content of the Form, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1987, 24. 16 See C L Kellow and H L Steeves, ‘The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Genocide,’ Journal of Communication Studies, vol. 48, Summer 1998, pp. 107-128. 17 L Malvern, Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide, Verso, London and New York, 2004, pp. 196-7. 18 See L Malvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide, London, Zed Books, 2000, pp. 64-5. Government records show that in addition to amassing a stockpile of machine guns, grenades and landmines, half a million machetes and other agricultural tools that could be used as weapons were purchased and distributed to the Hutu population. 19 Kellow and Steeves, op. cit., p. 117, 119. 20 Gourevitch, op. cit., 153. 21 R Philpot, ‘‘Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard’, The Taylor Report, 2004, viewed on 4 March 2007, < http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_ 1994/>. 22 K H Snow, ‘Hotel Rwanda: Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa,’ in Global Research, 16 October 2005, viewed on 3 March 2007,. 23 See M Chossudovsky, ‘The Geopolitics Behind the Rwandan Genocide: Paul Kagame Accused of War Crimes’, in Global Research, 23 November 2006, viewed on 4 March 2007, . Paul Mugabe, a former member of the RPF High
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______________________________________________________________ Command Unit, testified in a French enquiry into the assassination that Paul Kagame ordered the President’s plane to be shot down. 24 C Davenport and A Stam, quoted in Snow, op. cit. 25 French, quoted in Snow, op.cit. 26 W Madsen, ‘What a Difference an Election Makes: Or Does It?’ in From the Wilderness Publications: Blood Money Out of Africa, 6 April 2001, viewed on 4 March 2007, . 27 Ibid. See also M Chossudovsky, ‘Rwanda: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa’, in Global Research, 23 November 2006, viewed on 4 March 2007, and Robin Philpot, ‘Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard’, in The Taylor Report, 2004, viewed on 4 March 2007,< http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/>. 28 Chossudovsky, ‘The Geopolitics Behind the Rwandan Genocide’. 29 Philpot, op.cit. 30 Ibid.
Bibliography Chossudovsky, M., ‘The Geopolitics Behind the Rwandan Genocide: Paul Kagame Accused of War Crimes’. Global Research, 23 November 2006, viewed on 4 March 2007, . ______
, ‘Rwanda: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa’. Global Research, 23 November 2006, viewed on 4 March 2007, . Kellow, C. L. and Steeves, H. L., ‘The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Genocide’. Journal of Communication Studies, vol. 48, Summer 1998, pp. 107-128. Madsen, Wayne. ‘What a Difference an Election Makes: Or Does It?’ From the Wilderness Publications: Blood Money Out of Africa, 6 April 2001, viewed on 4 March 2007, .
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______________________________________________________________ Malvern, L., A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide. Zed Books, London, 2000. ______
, Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. Verso, London and New York, 2004. Philpot, R., ‘Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard’. The Taylor Report, 2004, viewed on 4 March 2007, < http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/>. Rosenstone, R., Visions of the Past. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1995. ______
, History on Film, Film on History. Pearson Longman, Harlow, England, 2006. Snow, K. H., ‘Hotel Rwanda: Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa.’ Global Research, 16 October 2005, 3 March 2007, . White, H., The Content of the Form. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1987.
‘We Have No Trouble Here:’ Considering Nazi Motifs in The Sound of Music and Cabaret David E. Isaacs Abstract: The films The Sound of Music and Cabaret use Nazi motifs as vital story elements. However, The Sound of Music has become one of the most popular films of all time even though it waters down the Nazi menace. Cabaret, by weaving Nazism into its story more closely, does not command the popularity of The Sound of Music, raising questions as to the veracity of using the evils of the Third Reich as an element in a popular musical film. 1 Key Words: Cabaret, evil, film, Fosse, musical, Nazi, Robert Wise, The Sound of Music ***** 1.
Introduction The Holocaust and other events of World War II have not only produced a great deal of commentary from scholars, they have been used frequently to tell stories. Since the 1930s, films have attempted to show the effects of Hitler’s regime. As Harwood argues, in the years following World War II, ‘there have been countless plays and films that have dealt, in one way or another, with the industrial slaughter of the Jews.’2 In fact, most school children today probably know about the Holocaust more through artistic endeavours such as The Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful, and Pan’s Labyrinth. Indeed, few could argue that Hitler’s regime does not provide a dramatic landscape for a movie. Even popular films such as the X-Men and the Indiana Jones series have included the Third Reich as a thematic element. However, when we primarily know an event through the artistic messages about the event, we risk distorting the reality. Sara Horowitz argues that the more that popular culture uses the Shoah as a topic, the more it ironically creates a distancing from the real events. Says Horowitz, ‘The commingling of fact with fiction, reality with artifice, memory with imagination, seemingly undermines the pursuit of truth. . . . Between verisimilitude and veracity yawns a wide gulf.’3 If, as Horowitz argues, overexposure through imaginative works risks diluting the horrors of the reality, then how are we to respond to musical films that use Nazi motifs? Is the Holocaust too important to use in a light musical setting? If not, do we risk sending the wrong message about the Shoah if the message is too diluted? Can a musical which tries to grapple with the horrors of the Third Reich succeed in a time when most musicals are
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______________________________________________________________ either parodies or light-hearted fluff? This essay attempts to explore some of the uses of Nazi motifs as a thematic element in two American movie musicals and possible ramifications. While each incorporates Third Reich motifs, The Sound of Music and Cabaret do not directly discuss many specifics of that regime such as the Holocaust or names of major figures involved such as Hitler. Indeed, both assume some prior knowledge of the events and people. Both succeeded financially, but The Sound of Music engaged audiences in a more popular way, becoming one of the most popular and enduring movies in the United States. It has produced frequent revivals, yearly showings on television, and public sing-alongs, while Cabaret, generally more appreciated by critics, has not had the same staying power, although it was also financially successful. One reason may be because the first film, intending to be more familyfriendly, deals less with the Nazi motifs while the second makes it a more crucial element, raising the question of whether evil as represented in Nazi motifs could be an appropriate topic in the American movie musical and still enjoy wide popularity.4 It may seem strange for a musical to focus on dark topics related to World War II, for as Leo Stern states, ‘The movie musical is escapism at its best,’5 and most agree that the musical is perceived primarily as escapist fare. Most musicals, especially those before 1970, follow basic romantic comedy formulae such as boy meet girl, boy loses girl, and finally boy gets girl.6 However, these perceptions ignore the fact that from its start the musical has stood at the forefront of social commentary, especially regarding race relations, intolerance, and bigotry - for example, early musicals regularly confronted racism well before other sound films, as seen in Show Boat (1929), Hallelujah (1929), and Whoopee (1930). Other films, especially those connected to Oscar Hammerstein II, such as Carmen Jones (1954), The King and I (1956), and South Pacific (1958), continued to address race and tolerance issues as the genre progressed. However, even as the formula has adapted with the culture,7 once musicals lost the expected romantic comedy ingredients, they seemed to flounder at the box office, with only the occasional success such as 2002’s Chicago and 2006’s Dream Girls. By examining The Sound of Music and Cabaret, we can explore whether evil as epitomized by the Nazis can be used successfully as a thematic element. 2.
The Sound of Music The last musical on which Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein collaborated, The Sound of Music continued a trend they had started with Oklahoma! in 1943. With works such as Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, and Flower Drum Song, Rodgers and Hammerstein helped transform musical theatre by embedding challenges to the social milieu within the musical-romantic comedy mode. This stems largely from Hammerstein’s
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______________________________________________________________ beliefs in tolerance and in the power of art to affect an audience’s beliefs. A highly visible member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, Hammerstein used his work to advocate the values of diversity.8 He had come to ‘believe in the power of musicals to preach his creed of hope, love, tolerance and the eradication of racial, ethnic, and class prejudices,’ and in composer ‘Richard Rodgers . . . he found the perfect partner for creating musicals which carried a significant message as well as gaining huge success at the box office.’9 In their best efforts, they blended compelling stories with thought-provoking ideas to challenge audiences to rethink their beliefs even as they hum the duo’s infectious tunes. Indeed, according to John Bush Jones, ‘Rodgers and Hammerstein demonstrated that musicals could be ‘idea-bearing,’ socially conscious, and socially respectable, yet still entertain audiences and make money.’10 While critics have often found the stories too sentimental (indeed, sentimental is probably the word most frequently used of Rodgers and Hammerstein), Hammerstein especially seemed to know what an audience would accept, so he continued to encode stories and lyrics with ‘his own values and principles that he thought audiences found important and believable.’11 The Sound of Music, both as play and film, continues that tradition but with mixed artistic success. While it showcases one of their best scores, it also stands as their most cheerful endeavour. With a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the story revolves around Maria (Julie Andrews) who brings life and love to the von Trapp family, mostly through music; she eventually falls in love with and marries Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Once the love story plays out, the plot shifts to the family’s dramatic escape from the Nazis after the takeover of Austria. The contrast between such upbeat numbers as ‘Do, Re, Mi’ and ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ with the ominous Nazi presence seems simplistic, with the Nazis providing more of a plot necessity than a real commentary. For Leo Stern, ‘The Sound of Music . . . is that rarity, a really good family picture’12 although it is also ‘[p]onderous and stickily sentimental at times.’13 Mordden calls it an ‘uncomfortably sweet show’14 and notes that other shows at the time were much more daring and contemporary. It is thus the family-friendly nature of the film that keeps it from fully exploring the nature of evil, represented by the encroaching Nazi regime. While not a bad thing, many have criticized the film for being too ‘stickily sentimental’ in part because it emphasizes the von Trapp children so endearingly while treating the Anschluss superficially. In fact, Richard Rodgers even seemed to feel the need to defend the story’s approach: Had such a story come out in any other way than sentimental it would have been false. . . . No one is comfortable with an excess of hearts and flowers, but there
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______________________________________________________________ is no valid reason for hiding honest emotion. This has always been a major element in the theatre, and it’s my conviction that anyone who can’t, on occasion, be sentimental about children, home or nature is sadly maladjusted.15 Our first real glimpse of the Nazi presence takes place about half way through the film, at the engagement party of Georg and the Baroness Schraeder (Eleanor Parker). Herr Zeller (Ben Wright) enters; he is stiff, precise, and glowering. The Captain watches him closely, as if Herr Zeller needs to be watched closely. An upset Zeller seeks out a fellow guest to complain about the Austrian flag hanging prominently from a balcony, a seemingly ‘obvious display’ meant to be provocative. A short time later, one of the guests, complimenting Georg on the children’s goodnight song (‘So Long, Farewell’), says, ‘Is there a more beautiful expression of what is good in this country of ours than the innocent voices of our children?’ This leads to the following dialogue: Zeller: ‘Oh, come now, Baron. Would you have us believe that Austria alone holds the monopoly on virtue?’ Georg: ‘Um, Herr Zeller, some of us prefer Austrian voices raised in song to ugly German threats.’ Zeller: ‘The ostrich buries his head in the sand, and sometimes in the flag. Perhaps those who would warn you that the Anschluss is coming - and it is coming, Captain perhaps they would get further with you by setting their words to music.’ Georg: ‘If the Nazis take over Austria, I have no doubt, Herr Zeller, that you will be the entire trumpet section.’ Zeller: ‘You flatter me, Captain.’ Georg: ‘Oh, how clumsy of me - I meant to accuse you.’ This exchange defines the parameters of the conflict: Georg will stand up for his homeland, no matter how leering and unpleasant the Nazis may be. However, it amounts to no more than verbal swordsmanship, and ultimately the Captain has little power to do anything beyond raising his eyebrows and tossing out jibes. Later, a similar confrontation arises as the family tries to sneak away, only to find the Nazis waiting in the shadows. Herr Zeller is again smugly menacing as he reminds the Captain of his new duties. ‘You will accept your commission,’ he avows, although he will also allow the family to sing at the Festival: ‘You will sing - you will all sing, but only because that is the way I want it to be. It would demonstrate that nothing in Austria has
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______________________________________________________________ changed.’ The threat now propels the plot. Clever wordplay and subtle vocal inflections are no longer enough to preserve the status quo; instead, Georg must lead his family over the mountains and leave his homeland forever. The confrontations between von Trapp and Zeller lend some tension to the story and help to advance the plot. They also help develop Georg into a more sympathetic character. The precision and control the Captain has shown earlier towards his children, softened by Maria, is now directed at everything Zeller represents. Thus, his almost unbelievably quick change into a loving father is ameliorated by his anger at the Nazis; his better self is emerging. Beyond story requirements, though, the confrontations between Zeller and von Trapp miss an opportunity to address what the Nazis really stood for. In fact, it is difficult not only to tell what motivates Zeller but to know that he is German - we know nothing of where his power comes from or what his position in the Third Reich is. The men banter about ‘the real Austria,’ yet the menace cannot be fully realized within the confines of the formula. Audiences at the time may have been able to glean this, but a film aimed in large part at children inherently has trouble developing this tension and saying something more meaningful. Much more effective than Herr Zeller’s scowls is the heartbreaking transformation of young telegraph delivery boy Rolfe Gruber (Daniel Truhitte). When we first meet him, secretly courting Liesl (Charmain Carr), he is young, vibrant, and full of promise. Indeed, in many ways, his romance with Liesl acts as a counter-point to the adults Maria and Georg.16 While he also seems warm and genuinely interested in Liesl, there are a few hints he is sympathetic with the changes in the country. For example, when we first see him, he asks the servant Franz if everything is ‘under control,’ and Franz implies he welcomes the Nazi takeover. When Liesl and Rolfe meet at the gazebo, Rolfe reveals his sympathies. He suggests how he might be able to see her again by ‘accidentally’ bringing a telegram for Colonel Schneider. When he mentions the colonel, though, he gets flustered and explains, ‘He’s here from Berlin. He’s staying with the Gauleiter but I . . . No one’s supposed to know he’s here. Don’t tell your father, now.’ Liesl, sensing Rolfe is upset, wonders why her father cannot know since he is a decorated naval hero. Rolfe explains that while her father is patriotic, some Austrians want ‘to be German. They’re very mad at those who don’t think so. They’re getting ready to - well, let’s hope your father doesn’t get into trouble.’ Rolfe reveals that he has secrets about the coming Anschluss, and while concerned with the captain’s daughter, he also seems to welcome the coming changes. Even so, his youthful nature asserts itself as he sings ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen,’ one of the film’s most romantic moments. Ironically, in the song, Rolfe’s warnings to Liesl become words he should heed himself. He states she is an ‘empty page/ That men will want to write
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______________________________________________________________ on.’ Thus, because she is still young and naïve, ‘it’s time to think./ Better beware,/ Be canny and careful’ as she is ‘totally unprepared . . ./to face a world of men.’ The words warn her of the unscrupulous men who will want to take advantage of her, but since he is ‘older and wiser,’ he will take care of her. While the song, in its upbeat waltz rhythm and playful rhymes, is at first blush a romantic ditty, it also serves to foreshadow Rolfe’s choices. Just as he warns Liesl of how men may deceive her, the same is happening to him in just as sinister a way. His eyes are not open in spite of his claim to be ‘wiser.’ Indeed, the real menace is that people like Rolfe will be duped. Rolfe’s descent into Nazism adds some of the most disturbing moments in the film. When we next see Rolfe, he is trying to contact Liesl while delivering a telegram to her father. The Captain spots him, and, flustered, Rolfe gives him the Nazi salute and flees. This salute, coming on the heels of the energetic ‘Do Re Mi,’ is auspicious, given his earlier promise to look out for Liesl. How can she continue a romance with him when her father is ‘pretty Austrian’? We in the audience are especially chilled to see this promising young Austrian man saluting the German Führer. Rolfe next appears on the streets of Salzburg where he gives Liesl a telegram for her father. When she suggests he uses it as an excuse to come to the house again, he becomes abrupt and orders her to deliver the telegram instead of asking her to do so. When explaining how he knows the Captain is on his honeymoon, he tells Liesl, ‘We make it our business to know everything about everyone.’ When Liesl asks, ‘Who’s we?’, he does not respond, but we know what it portends. Especially chilling is the framing of Rolfe during this scene. We first see him coming from an arched gate embedded in the city wall; a Nazi flag hangs above the opening. In each shot of Rolfe, both the flag and the gate are seen, connecting him with them. The imagery is telling - Rolfe is now an agent of the Third Reich, doing its business. As he tells Liesl, he is ‘now occupied with more important things’ than courting her and warns her ‘your father better be too, if he knows what’s good for him.’ In other words, childish things like love cannot compare to the important ‘adult’ things he now pursues. Furthermore, the couple is now shot in a stark contrast to their previous ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ scene. In that earlier scene, they keep close, constantly holding hands or hugging. With continuous shots, they are framed as a couple in a romantic setting, not as individuals (in a parallel way to the ‘Something Good’ number between Maria and Georg). They are presented as equals, each getting roughly equal time to sing, and their height difference is negligible since Liesl frequently sits or stands on benches, and Rolfe even kneels in front of her. However, in the later street scene they are kept apart, with a noticeable gap between them. Also, he is constantly looking down on her - their height difference more pronounced as they are no
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______________________________________________________________ longer ‘equals.’ The shots cut quickly back and forth between them, exaggerating their emotional distance. Moreover, the barred gate and the wall behind him imply that Rolfe is as imprisoned by the new regime as all Austrians are, even as he ironically believes himself free. The gate may also suggest another image here - the concentration camps had similar entrances. By joining with the Nazis, Rolfe is inadvertently dooming himself. He thus stands for those who blindly accepted the changes and even embraced them. In spite of such powerful, and subtle, imagery, the script does not allow Liesl to explore these changes and the impending dangers. Rolfe’s ambivalence prompts her to have a brief conversation with Maria, now her new mother. However, the script places her focuses on the changes in emotions, not on the realities that have prompted the change in Rolfe. When Liesl says, ‘Sometimes I feel the world is coming to an end,’ it is more tied to her romantic feelings than to the cataclysmic events happening outside. Instead of explaining what has happened in the Anschluss, Maria instead tries to comfort Liesl with a reprise of ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen,’ suggesting that Liesl will find someone else to marry if she just waits ‘a year or two.’ Thus, the loss of Rolfe is never really explained as symptomatic of a greater evil - the audience must intuit this, even though the characters do not. Our last glimpse of Rolfe comes during the family’s escape. While they hide in the abbey’s graveyard, Rolfe is part of the Nazi search team. Liesl gasps when she sees him, for he is now wearing an SS uniform and carries a gun. Her gasp alerts him so that he discovers the family. The Captain talks Rolfe into letting the family go, but Rolfe holds his gun on Georg. The Captain invites Rolfe to come with them, stating, ‘You’re only a boy. You don’t really belong to them.’ Georg disarms Rolfe, but then affirms, ‘You’ll never be one of them.’ At this, Rolfe sounds the alarm and runs off. Thus, the change in Rolfe is complete. While we at first have hope for him - he lets the family escape - this quickly turns to sadness when he alerts the other soldiers. The imagery of the Nazi regime in a church graveyard underscores the gravity of the situation: the Third Reich has irredeemably penetrated the country and subverted its most sacred things - its youth, its past, and its religion. Rolfe, who held the promise of a bright future full of music and love, is last seen running back to his Nazi comrades. Rolfe and Liesl will not sing and dance together again. While the changes in Rolfe are dramatic, the film misses the opportunity to explore fully why some supported the Nazis. The servant Franz is a Nazi supporter, but we do not see much of him or his motivations. We only get glimpses of Rolfe’s transformation, but we do not know why he joins the Nazis, beyond the plot requirements. A more prominent character, Max Detweiler (Richard Haydn), the lovable freeloader who acts as the children’s manager, shows the role of the
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______________________________________________________________ opportunist and thus serves as the foil to Georg. After Maria’s wedding, we get ‘The Anschluss’ scene, with swastikas flying and soldiers marching in formation through Salzburg. Herr Zeller gives Max a message to relay to Georg. When Max does not give the Nazi salute, Zeller insists he does, although Max then rubs his nose with the hand he had saluted with. When one of the children wonders why everyone is so tense, and suggests, ‘Maybe the flag with the black spider on it makes people nervous,’ Max replies, ‘The thing to do these days is to get along with everybody.’ After the newlyweds return, Max upsets Georg by stating, ‘The Anschluss happened peacefully - let us at least be grateful for that.’ After the Captain storms out, Max tells Maria that Georg ‘has got to at least pretend to work with these people.’ Max then weakly repeats Zeller’s argument that the children singing at the festival would be seen as for ‘the good of Austria.’ By pitting Max’s apathy, even opportunism, against Georg’s patriotism, we see glimmers of important questions being raised about how to deal with the encroaching evil. However, the arguments get repetitive and stay superficial, and the plot requires the story to move ahead. Max never changes his views, and once his usefulness to the plot wears out, he is left behind. Thus, opportunities to explore the truly horrific effects when people do not resist the evils posed by oppressive regimes become the superficial means to set the family on their famous journey. John Bush Jones argues this is not necessarily a flaw: The Sound of Music makes no mention of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities, focusing entirely on the fear and hatred of the Nazis among characters who are all Austrian Catholics. And yet, an audience in the . . . early ‘60s could not escape being reminded of the larger human tragedy brought on by World War II and the Holocaust.17 In fact, since Oklahoma!, Hammerstein in particular had expressed . . . his liberal and humanitarian interest in the eradication of prejudice and the need for tolerance, however obliquely . . . [a theme which] remained a virtual constant in the rest of his collaborations with Rodgers, until in their final show together Hammerstein confronted Nazism. . . . the revelation of Nazi atrocities may have brought to the surface Hammerstein’s need to respond to intolerance and bigotry in the pubic forum of the musical theatre, a need that finally, . . . directly brought the Nazis in as villains in one of his most successful shows.18
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______________________________________________________________ While addressing Nazism is admirable, it is not entirely successful in this film, in spite of Jones’ statement. The von Trapp family, it could be argued, symbolizes the country as a whole - if they work (and sing) together, they can resist the coming changes - but such symbolism seems weak. This is, at heart, a love story. By using the traditional musical formula, we get a lot of sweetness, beautiful scenery, and pleasant songs, but little sense of the looming horror which was also very real. Georg and Herr Zeller banter about ‘the real Austria,’ yet the menace cannot be fully realized within the confines of the formula. Even the chase at the end, an opportunity for real tension, is turned comic when the nuns who have sabotaged the Nazis’ cars ask the Reverend Mother for forgiveness of their ‘sins.’ Granted, it is difficult to make a film about singing children overly dramatic, but the superficial confrontations with evil only relegates them to thin plot points. While Mordden argues ‘the Nazis have real menace,’ which keeps the film from being too ‘sicky-sweet,’19 in effect the menace is only that - Herr Zeller’s grimaces and salutes make him more of a sneering bureaucrat than a real threat (he never even wears Nazi insignia), and young Rolfe’s changes are sad just as much because he no longer courts Liesl as because of his political views. This leads Mordden to ponder the story as ‘strange, suddenly neither light nor accommodating. Should this story even be a musical?’20 The Nazis, by becoming caricatures rather than fully-realized characters, only exist to further the plot and to provide minimal character development, and so fail to give little real reason why the Anschluss was worth fleeing. Unless one already has a familiarity with these things (a safe assumption in 1964, but no longer), one only gets a flimsy understanding of the evil the von Trapps were escaping. Maria, who has solved all problems up to the end, is unable to offer much help to her new family except to take them to the convent to hide. The Reverend Mother’s only advice is for them to flee over the mountains. By showing some conflict between the von Trapps and the Nazis, Lindsay and Crouse were able to create some tension and embellish the story’s romance; however, by not fully engaging the evils of that regime, they may have shown viewers that it is better to run away from evil than to resist it. In fact, the worst evil seems to be that the Captain will be forced back into his career just as he is getting to know his family again. As Mordden laments, the sugary feel of The Sound of Music makes us forget the earlier bite of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s earlier works that had dealt with such heavy issues as spousal abuse, adultery, racism, and interracial sexuality; here, the ‘Nazis aren’t real by the time the ‘bright copper kettles’ effect sets in.’21 The Sound of Music thus fails to address the evils of Nazism in any significant way. Perhaps it is asking too much of a family musical, especially one based on a real family’s story, but then that could lead to the conclusion
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______________________________________________________________ that the musical has inherent difficulty in addressing such complex issues in anything but a superficial way. Evil is most convincingly portrayed in musicals when it is personalized - when it destroys families, love, and people we have come to care about (as we see in South Pacific, Fiddler on the Roof and Rent, e.g.), but then it is inherently difficult to do this within the constraints of the traditional musical formula. Cabaret Similar to Robert Wise, in Cabaret Bob Fosse shows the subtle rise of Nazism albeit in pre-war Berlin; we see how sexual license and decadence led to a gradual acceptance of the Third Reich’s ideals. Unlike Wise’s film, though, lack of engagement is the point, and the failure to confront evil is, in a sense, seen as a form of evil itself and gives the film a stronger dramatic punch. By borrowing stylistically more from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and building on the real styles of Berlin cabarets, Fosse breaks out of the traditional American musical formula, and his use of Nazi motifs sends a provocative message, leading Stern to effuse: ‘Fosse . . . dared to make a brilliant musical about anti-Semitism, decadence, and mingled sexuality in pre-Hitler Germany, the genuinely unforgettable Cabaret.’22 In Cabaret, we see ‘unsettled men and women in a spiritually bankrupt society’ in which the ‘central idea reflects one of the traditional problems of moral philosophy, carpe diem, living for the day in a world too complicated to be truly endurable.’23 While Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and her friends indulge their passions, their world changes almost without notice. Fosse shows the subtleties of the shift by the characters’ wilful ignorance and self-absorption; in this way, we see that evil truly does triumph as long as the average person ignores it. The changes occur slowly. Our first look is a distorted reflection of the audience in a mirror above the stage of the Kit Kat Klub. We then see the eerie emcee (Joel Grey) as he begins the evening and welcomes us in. The emcee first looks fairly normal, but then puts on a creepy fake grin, turns to us as if glad to see us, and begins his song, ‘Wilkommen,’ during which he tells us: ‘Leave your troubles outside! . . . In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful!’ The camera crosscuts to Brian (Michael York) arriving in Berlin. As the emcee describes each element of the club, we see them in quick cuts, but we notice that things are not as ‘beautiful’ as he claims. The audience members are so still they seem like statues or paintings - they are observers, non-participants, even though the show would not be put on were it not for them. When the emcee says, ‘The girls are beautiful,’ we see one putting her wig on - it is an act, an illusion. The girls are posed oddly, dance oddly, and are not really seductive except in the most seamy way. This is gaudy, seedy, cheap amusement designed to pass the time and make empty people feel alive. It creates an unsettling
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______________________________________________________________ feeling: we should be careful of appearances. The act is meant to both entertain and deceive us. In this way, the cabaret becomes the metaphor for the country (and the wider world) and its attitudes towards the Third Reich, and one of the most dominant motifs of the film is not seeing reality. Characters either choose to be blind to things around them, or they dismiss them as inconsequential. When they do acknowledge the growing Nazi threat, it either causes them injury or causes them to leave for safer places. Brian becomes the lens through which we see the rising threat of Nazism. He meets the quirky Sally, who introduces him to the decadent life of Berlin. While Sally and Brian negotiate their love affairs, we get glimpses of the changes in Berlin, mostly peripherally. Through it all, we view various numbers at the Kit Kat Klub with its strange, even grotesque, emcee. The numbers usually underscore or ironically subvert the events outside the club. Our initial glimpse of Nazis comes when Brian first visits the club and meets playboy Fritz (Fritz Wepper) who explains that ‘business is terrible’ because of ‘the inflation, the Communists, the Nazis.’ He nods at another table where we see a few men in Nazi uniform. The Nazis are just one more thing to deal with, and the least. A waiter throws out a young Nazi who has been passing a cup to raise money. The youth is not a threat, just an annoyance, and the cabaret is safe from people like him. In the next scene, Brian and Sally walk by posters graffitied over with communist and Nazi symbols that they barely notice - it is part of the political backdrop they ignore. As outsiders - an American and a Brit - they do not feel the local politics should concern them. However, the background soon starts to move to the foreground. A few scenes later, the emcee leads a traditional-sounding German song, with traditional garb and during which he ‘drums’ on the girls. Crosscuts show us the waiter being beaten up by the Nazi who had been kicked out and his friends. The emcee slaps the girls in a slapstick, humorous way, creating an ironic tension to the Nazis beating the real German gentleman outside. The Nazis are shown as thugs, a gang, and more of a threat than before. It may be safe in the cabaret, but not outside it. We then go some time without seeing any Nazi imagery. During this period, Sally meets and beds Max, an aristocrat. Max’s seduction of Sally underscores how easy she is to buy off - he plies her with minks, wine, fine food, and even includes Brian - and Sally finds nothing wrong with giving herself in exchange. The trio drives by the aftermath of a demonstration in which a man has been killed. We hear Brian and Max’s conversation as we see the scenes outside the car: Max: ‘The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans, but they do serve a purpose. Let them get rid of the Communists. Later we’ll be able to control them.’
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‘But who exactly is ‘we’?’ ‘Germany, of course.’
As they drive by the dead body, Sally changes the subject: ‘Hey, Max, can we go to the Bristol Bar?’ She ignores the violence in front of her; the reality of the times cannot be allowed to enter her fantasy world. Soon after, the emcee introduces a song by saying, ‘Berlin makes strange bedfellows these days.’ While the trio goes away for a weekend at Max’s estate, he sings ‘Two Ladies’: ‘We switch partners daily/ To play as we please.’ The sex games are just another way to fill their empty lives, and these subterfuges allow Sally and Brian to ignore the coming evil. They are seduced by Max’s money and physical pleasures just as the Germans were seduced by the Third Reich, playing as they pleased. After their weekend away, Max regales his new lovers about his trip to Mombasa; he implies he will take them. As they drive through the countryside, children playing war in a field pretend to shoot at them; those in the car go by without seeing them, an ominous foreshadowing. Perhaps the most dramatic example of changes in Germany comes in the only song performed outside the Kit Kat Klub. We see the shift from an ordinary, traditional beer garden to the infusive presence of the Third Reich. A young man starts to sing the uplifting ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me.’ At first, it seems a pleasant song: ‘The sun on the meadow is summery warm/ The stag in the forest runs free/ But gathered together to greet the storm/ Tomorrow belongs to me.’ However, as the singer performs, the camera pans down so we can see his Hitler Youth uniform, and the words take on a chilling irony, especially when the young man is joined by most of the audience members singing, ‘Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign/ Your children have waited to see/ The morning will come/ When the world is mine/ Tomorrow belongs to me/ Tomorrow belongs to me,’ and they all stand in a Nazi salute. As an audience, we, like Brian and Max, have initially failed to see the truth of this young man, as John Kobal describes: In a beautiful landscape, a beautiful young boy sings a beautiful song. And then we realize what he is singing, as all the other people in the beer garden, with the exception of one old man, join in the song and finish with the fistclenched Nazi salute. It is not at all usual in American musicals . . . to find that what you are seeing and what you are hearing is [sic] beautiful but in which the meaning is awful. It sounds good; it looks good, but the meaning is terrible. That is new. That is powerful. That is the artist, through his art, pulling the blinkers off our eyes. Usually in
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______________________________________________________________ musicals, the ugly people (from a moral point of view) are cast to look ugly . . . and they sing ugly, downbeat songs.24 The infectious number shows us how easy it is to succumb to propaganda; the melody is so contagious we find ourselves singing along in spite of its context. In the same way, propaganda takes over our minds; it can affect us even when we are aware of it. Thus, the message and the medium work together for a powerful effect: Fosse has us experience the very thing we would condemn. Brian and Max, hearing this song, leave the restaurant as Brian asks, ‘Do you still think you can control them?’ to which Max merely shrugs, and they return to their daily lives. Thus, when confronted directly and dramatically with the ‘group think’ occurring around them, they choose to ignore rather than confront it. Later, Max uses his wealth to escape before things get too dangerous for him. While at first ignorant of the impending Nazi threat, Brian grows increasingly aware and even willing to speak out against them. In a conversation with his fellow lodgers, especially Herr Ludwig, he challenges them. Herr Ludwig tells the others, ‘They’re [the Jews] all in it together. . . . If they can’t destroy us one way, they try the other.’ One of the other lodgers affirms, ‘You read it everyday in the Volkischer Beobachter.’ This leads Brian to denounce, ‘That ridiculous Nazi tripe!’ We then get this exchange: Ludwig: ‘It is an established fact, Herr Roberts, that there exists a well-organized international conspiracy of Jewish bankers and Communists.’ Brian: ‘It’s also an established fact, Herr Ludwig, that there exists another well-organized group, of which you’re obviously a member. The International Conspiracy of Horses’ Asses.’ As Brian leaves, Fraulein Schneider murmurs, ‘I wish the Kaiser was back. In those days we had order.’ During the exchange, Herr Ludwig eats rather sloppily while speaking, an interesting symbolic gesture. While complaining about the Jews and their alleged power, his culture is metaphorically devouring them. They will have order again, and soon, but it will not be the ‘good old days’ of the Kaiser. Brian is finally speaking out, reminiscent of Captain von Trapp and Herr Zeller, but it is too late to be persuasive. Brian’s anger resurfaces after Max deserts Sally and him. While walking down the street, Brian is handed a leaflet by a Nazi. Brian responds, ‘I think your paper and your party are pure crap, sir!’ He rips the papers up while the Nazis laugh at him, but after kicking their swastika flag over, he gets beaten up. Just as life is beating him, so are the Nazis; Max leaves for
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______________________________________________________________ Argentina without Sally and Brian, causing a deep hurt. While nursing Brian, Sally notices, ‘You’re blind, aren’t you?’ However, Brian is finally seeing things clearly. He and Sally will not be able to make it as a couple for a number of reasons, and he cannot stay in Germany as the Nazis gain power. His feelings for Max have caused doubts about his relationship with Sally can he, like her, live a lie, given his homosexual feelings? He finally must leave, for he is powerless to change things. As with The Sound of Music, a romantic subplot highlights the blindness in Brian and Sally’s relationship. Fritz has fallen in love with Natalia, a wealthy Jewess who comes to Brian for English lessons. They fall in love after Natalia learns Fritz is not just a gold-digger (although he had started that way). However, Natalia breaks with Fritz after her house is vandalized (with the word ‘Juden’ being painted on it) and her dog is butchered on her porch. She criticizes Fritz for his blindness: ‘Don’t you see what is happening in Germany today? I’m a Jew. You are not.’ She drives off, the only one really clear on the dangers around them. However, we learn that Fritz is not what he claimed to be - he is a Jew who writes ‘Protestant’ on his papers. By doing this, ‘The friends come. The parties come. Parties.’ If he reveals he is a Jew, he is afraid of being exposed and then ‘comes a big Nazi with a club and bangs me on the head.’ Like Natalia, we have been deceived by him, for we believe what we see. When Fritz tells Brian he cannot reveal the truth by saying, ‘What a coward am I,’ we jump to perhaps the most uncomfortable song in the film, ‘If You Could See Her Through My Eyes (She Wouldn’t Be Jewish at All).’ Here, the emcee croons, ‘What good’s a first impression?/ If you knew her like I do/ It would change your point of view.’ When the female reveals herself, she turns out to be a gorilla. Played ‘in a soft-shoe rhythm not unlike ‘Tea for Two’ . . . [and] modelled on a classic vaudeville turn,’25 the song ends with a devastating line. The Emcee, after declaring his love for this ridiculous gorilla, and taking others to task for being narrow-minded in judging her based on her looks, sings: ‘Why can’t the world live und let live?’ At the end, he leans in and whispers, ‘If you could see her as I see her, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all!’ He then laughs, and the music goes into a burlesque theme as we realize the punchline. Composer John Kander said the gorilla line was designed ‘to end that way, to have you laughing and then catch your breath, to make you, the audience, realize how easily you could fall into a trap of prejudice.’26 We have laughed with the gag, until we realize all along the song has been about the Nazi propaganda. As with ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me,’ we have been blindly complicit in the racism. This number parallels the romance with Natalia: her Jewishness should not matter, but reality says otherwise. However, Fritz is able to overcome his fears and marry Natalia in a traditional Jewish wedding. We do not see them again.
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______________________________________________________________ The person who most refuses to see reality is Sally, a cabaret singer who hopes to become a film star; among Sally’s first words are ‘divine decadence,’ and to her three months is ‘forever.’ She was hoping Brian would see her as ‘an international woman of mystery.’ Instead of wisdom, she works by ‘instinct . . . ancient instinct.’ While quirky, we are not sure how seriously she takes herself or the world until it starts falling apart. Is she really shallow, or is it an act? Is her decadence ‘divine’ or disguised hopelessness? Her quirkiness is endearing, but we quickly see that by living in a dream world, she lets the real world fall apart. She not only falls for the act, she perpetuates it. Even when Brian tells her ‘You’re about as ‘fatale’ as an after-dinner mint!’ she only lets reality in long enough to break up with him, then she returns to the cabaret. As in The Sound of Music, Cabaret uses the concept of family symbolically. However, unlike Fritz and Natalia, Brian and Sally form a ‘family’ based on lies and illusion. They may sleep together even while denying Brian’s true sexuality. They may sleep with others for money and gifts which only feed the illusion. Brian even proposes marriage after Sally becomes pregnant and promises to take her to live in Cambridge. However, the thought of being tied down eventually drives Sally away emotionally; life has become too real, and she would have to abandon her dreams. In their dream world, the baby will solve all their problems, but Sally realizes it is just another fantasy. As we hear more burlesque music and watch vignettes in the cabaret, she has an abortion. She finally realizes she is ‘self-cantered, inconsiderate, [with] this infantile fantasy that one day’ she will become a successful film actress. Brian’s life in Cambridge would stifle them both, and she is not convinced either of them can be sexually faithful. Sally’s pregnancy and ensuing abortion symbolize the futility of her relationships and her dreams. Like many around her, she would rather pretend nothing has changed. We see her at the end, as we saw her at the beginning, on stage - she is putting on an act to keep from confronting the evil around, and even within her: ‘To her the point is to laugh and sing and live forever in the moment; to refuse to take things seriously - even Nazism . . . She is capable of warmth and emotion, but a lot of it is theatrical.’27 The musical numbers underscore this: The introductory song and the final number welcome the audience . . . to the transitory entertainments of a grotesquely unreal world. The presentation offers its own moral justification that life must be regarded as a cabaret (that is, an opportunity for entertainment).28 At the end, we see more clearly. The emcee reprises the opening: ‘Where are your troubles now? Forgotten? I told you so. We have no trouble,
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______________________________________________________________ here. Here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful.’ Crosscuts show the same audience, as in the first scene. However, this time we hear discordant notes over a montage of earlier clips, then the emcee sings, ‘Auf wiedersein’ and bows. We now recognize, if we did not before, the façade and artifice, and it all seems much less attractive. We hear a drum roll, and a spotlight leads us back to the distorted reflection in the mirror above the stage. Now we can make out Nazi uniforms mixed in the crowd. The drum roll ends with cymbals - the joke is on us: We are the punch line. We have been a part of the audience, and we have not done anything to prevent the evil. Instead, we want to be entertained and let others deal with such things: The particular and recurring image in this . . . grotesque cabaret was one of immobile German faces, the faces of burghers vacantly observing contortionists, transvestites, even whippings, as if they were entertainment. In fact, the stage show of the cabaret was not evil; the evil lay in the audience’s unresponsive, insensitive, soulless, impassive faces.29 By accommodating evil, one allows it to proliferate. At the end of Cabaret, for her blindness, Sally will be left with nothing. The lyrics of the final song ‘Cabaret’ ask, ‘What good’s permitting some prophet of doom/ To wipe every smile away?’ and then tell us to leave our cares behind: ‘It’s time for a holiday/ . . . Come taste the wine, come hear the band/ Come blow your horn, start celebrating/ Right this way, your table’s waiting.’ As Roger Ebert notes, ironically the final song ‘isn’t a song of happiness, but of desperation.’30 By closing with a festive song against such a stark reality, we see that by not confronting the evil before it spreads, the characters let it propagate; after all, ‘Life’s just a cabaret, old chum.’ The final image, of the emcee leering out at an audience wearing Nazi insignia, is a dire warning: The old innocent decadence has given way to a far more insidious evil, though one that retains the Master of Ceremonies within the symbolic framework of the old style. His cynicism may prove a mode of survival, but the value of survival in such an era is itself doubtful.31 Is the old decadence really innocent, though? Is it not one of the reasons Nazism spread? Fosse suggests this, and the warning is clear: If we wish to prevent similar evils, we must be more vigilant in confronting them before they overtake us. Unlike The Sound of Music, Cabaret becomes a dark morality tale. Perhaps this is why it has not resonated with audiences in the
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______________________________________________________________ same way as Wise’s film - it is too stark and disturbing, not light enough for a sing-along, yet at the same time it succeeds in using the Nazi motifs effectively. ‘Part of its success,’ Ebert asserts, ‘comes because it doesn’t fall for the old cliché that musicals have to make you happy,’ and setting the film in ‘the context of Germany on the eve of the Nazi ascent to power makes the entire musical into an unforgettable cry of despair.’32 Cabaret understands how the Nazis used propaganda and makes that part of its fabric, while The Sound of Music only uses the Nazis as a backdrop for a family story. 4.
Some Conclusions Both The Sound of Music and Cabaret deserve their accolades and success but also point out the difficulty of using the musical genre to address Nazi-related themes, much less other social evils. The highly successful film version of Fiddler on the Roof in 1971 rooted much of its discussion of evil in the racism and bigotry similar to the Hammerstein musicals, so little new territory was explored. Granted, musicals of the traditional Broadway variety can never achieve the same dramatic effect as, say, an opera, for they do not try to do as much; even so, the ‘less sophisticated’ musicals may actually hold an audience better than second-rate operas that try to do too much and fail. Swain points out that with such endeavours, ‘The achievements are simpler and the expectations are smaller.’33 The biggest distinction between the golden age musicals and more recent ones is that ‘the traditional musicals are always love stories of one sort or another.’34 In musicals after Fiddler on the Roof, ‘the romantically involved couple . . . is gone,’ and ‘the loss of romance has required plays to dramatize other values’ such as revenge, power, and mundane life struggles.35 A happy ending, even a marriage, is expected as is a show stopping finale,36 yet it seems difficult to pull this off convincingly if characters sing and dance about the darker social and historical realities without traipsing into parody (as in Chicago which uses dark themes such as murder and adultery but clearly satirizes society in the process). Perhaps we are in a postmodern phase in the musical’s development, and the primary purpose is either to create satire or nostalgia. Cabaret shows it is possible to include Nazi themes successfully, but only if the right talents and the public’s interests will come together at the right time. Perhaps it is enough for the musical form to do what it does best, and to stick primarily within the confines of musical romantic comedy. Granted, the big-screen musical’s popularity may mostly be over. Even so, one always hopes another Fossesque talent will be able to explore successfully the dark side of human nature in a satisfying, and tuneful, way, and to hold up the mirror to the evils in our history in a compelling way. If so, perhaps the distancing effect argued by Horowitz will not cause us to forget the very real evils of the Third Reich.
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Notes 1
This paper is based on an earlier version delivered at the Conference on Evil and Human Wickedness in Salzburg, 2007; I appreciate the feedback from the participants, and those of my CBU colleague Jennifer Tronti. 2 R Harwood, ‘Truth and Fiction: The Holocaust on Stage and Screen’, European Judaism, vol. 38, Autumn 2005, p. 6. 3 S Horowitz, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1997, p. 19. 4 I consider a film ‘successful’ if it makes a profit in its initial wide-screen release and receives favorable critical and film industry responses. I also focus more on the success in the United States. For these reasons, as well as space limits, The Producers (2005) is not discussed. 5 L E Stern, The Movie Musical, Pyramid, New York, 1974, p. 12. 6 J Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1993, p. 82. 7 Ibid., pp. 87-122. 8 I Bradley, You’ve Got to Have a Dream: The Message of the Musical. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2004, p. 81. 9 Ibid, p. 73. Many of the sources used speak about the stage versions rather than the films, but where the commentary is also relevant to the film version, I use them without clarification. 10 J B Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater, Brandeis University Press, Hanover, 2003, p. 141. 11 A Sears, ‘The coming of the musical play: Rodgers and Hammerstein,’The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, W. A. Everett and P. R. Laird (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002, p. 135. 12 Stern, op. cit., 138. 13 Ibid, 141. 14 E Mordden, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1992, p. 204. 15 R Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography. Random House, New York, 1975, p. 300. 16 In musicals, the sub-plot or secondary romance acts as either a model for the primary couple to follow, or as a foil in which the secondary relationship falls apart as the primary one comes together. 17 Jones, op. cit., p. 159. 18 Ibid, p. 160. 19 E Mordden, The Hollywood Musical, St. Martin’s, New York, 1981, p. 203. 20 E Mordden, Rodgers & Hammerstein, op. cit., p. 208, italics in original.
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Ibid, p. 213. Stern, op. cit., p. 141. 23 S J Solomon, Beyond Formula: American Film Genres. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, 1976, p. 106. 24 J Kobal, Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance: A History of Movie Musicals, Spring Books, London, 1988, pp. 282-83; see also Stern, op. cit., p. 141. 25 M Gottfried, All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse, Bantam Books, New York, 1990, p. 217. 26 O L Guernsey (ed.), Broadway Song & Story, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1985, p. 142. 27 R Ebert, Review of Cabaret, Sun Times, 2007, viewed on 20 Feb. 2007, . 28 Solomon, op. cit., p. 107. 29 M Gottfried, op. cit., p. 215. 30 R Ebert, op. cit. 31 Solomon, op. cit., p. 110. 32 Ebert, op. cit. 33 Swain, op. cit., p. 12. 34 Ibid., p. 153. 35 Ibid., p. 359. 36 See Feuer, op. cit., pp. 81-82. 22
Bibliography Bradley, I., You’ve Got to Have a Dream: The Message of the Musical. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2004. Cabaret (Warner Brothers, 1972), Bob Fosse (dir.). Ebert, R., ‘Review of Cabaret’. Sun Times, 2007, viewed on 20 Feb. 2007, . Feuer, J., The Hollywood Musical. Second Ed., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1993. Gottfried, M., All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse. Bantam Books, New York, 1990.
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______________________________________________________________ Guernsey, O. L. (ed.), Broadway Song & Story, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1985. Harwood, R., ‘Truth and Fiction: The Holocaust on Stage and Screen’. European Judaism, vol. 38, Autumn 2005, pp. 4-16. Kobal, J., Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A History of Movie Musicals. Spring Books, London, 1988. Mordden, E., The Hollywood Musical. St. Martin’s, New York, 1981. Mordden, E., Rodgers & Hammerstein. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1992. Rodgers, R., Musical Stages: An Autobiography. Random House, New York, 1975. Sears, A., ‘The coming of the musical play: Rodgers and Hammerstein’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Musical. W. A. Everett and P. R. Laird (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 120-136. Solomon, S. J., Beyond Formula: American Film Genres. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, 1976. Stern, L. E., The Movie Musical. Pyramid, New York, 1974. Swain, J. P. The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey. Oxford University Press, New York, 1990. The Sound of Music. 20th Century Fox, 2002, Robert Wise (dir.).
Sympathy for the Devil: The Hero is a Terrorist in V for Vendetta Margarita Carretero-González Abstract: Based on the comic book series published in the eighties, coauthored by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta did not go unnoticed when it was released on spring 2006. Whether we take the view that the film constitutes an apology for terrorism or that it offers a warning about the shape of things to come, this political thriller cannot leave the post9/11, 3/11, 7/7 viewer indifferent, even if the central theme of the story revolves around the old tale of coldly served revenge. In this paper I will be looking at the way V for Vendetta problematises such a sensitive issue as terrorism in a dystopian setting that, however exaggerated, bears striking similarities with our world at the beginning of the 21st century, where fear of terror is impelling governments to take drastic measures to increase safety, while jeopardizing freedom and, on some occasions, even trespassing basic human rights. The story is not new: Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell are among those who warned us about the dangers of totalitarian regimes; their heroes, however, were only victims of the system, not terrorists who actively fought against it. V’s intentions are honourable, directed to give the power back to the people, but he is moved by a personal vendetta that prevents us from agreeing with some of his methods, especially when they involve the deaths of people who, like him, are just victims. The paper will deal with the way the film’s structure invites the characters - and the viewer - to establish a dialogical relationship with the other, while launching a series of questions, which are left for the spectator to answer. Key Words: Dialogism, dystopian films, intertextuality, revenge, terrorism, V for Vendetta ***** 1.
Introduction In his introduction to the 1990 DC Comics compilation of the series V for Vendetta, co-author David Lloyd shares with the reader a personal experience that had happened at a pub a few evenings before. While he was enjoying his stout at the bar, the TV was murmuring in the distance, above the chattering people. After Eastenders, a re-run of the sitcom Porridge was screened, followed by A Question of Sport, a panel quiz game in which sports celebrities answered questions about other sports celebrities. Just when The Nine o’Clock News started, the television was switched off and its sound
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______________________________________________________________ substituted by pop music. The barman excused himself when Lloyd asked him about the news being turned off: ‘‘Don’t ask me - that was the wife,’ he replied, in a cheeky, cheery manner, as the subject of his playful targeting bustled in a corner of the bar.’1 The two adjectives Lloyd uses to describe the barman’s manner are recurrent throughout the introduction: the soap opera, the sitcom and the panel quiz are all ‘cheeky, cheery’, as are the celebrities participating in it. On leaving the bar, Lloyd adds, he was certain the TV would be silent for the rest of the evening, since he knew the news was followed by The Boys from Brazil, ‘a film with few cheeky, cheery characters in it, which is all about a bunch of Nazis creating 94 clones of Adolf Hitler.’2 These reminiscences allow him to establish a similarity between the film and the comic book series he created with Alan Moore: ‘There aren’t many cheeky, cheery characters in V FOR VENDETTA either; and it’s for people who don’t switch off the news.’3 David Lloyd’s introduction is followed by Alan Moore’s own foreword to the original DC Comics run of V for Vendetta in which he depicts the political situation in Britain in 1988. According to Moore, the country had become terribly similar to the world he envisaged in 1981, the year he started writing the graphic novel: Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality; even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it anymore.4 Lloyd’s and Moore’s statements anticipate the political content of the graphic novel: V for Vendetta is not mere entertainment; it raises important questions concerning the shape Britain was taking in the eighties, issues that are no less pertinent to our world in the noughties. No one familiar with the Wachowski brothers’ work could be surprised by the fact that they were eager to make a film out of this graphic novel. They are themselves authors of comic books, and started writing a draft of the script in the nineties, before embarking on The Matrix. The first
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______________________________________________________________ script turned out to be too dense and not very filmic, so the project stood idle for a decade, until they offered John McTeigue - assistant director of The Matrix trilogy - to direct the film, which they would produce. While The Matrix told the story of a group of people who decided to fight against the ‘cheeky, cheery’ simulated reality in which they lived, choosing instead a life of exile and battle for the real thing, V for Vendetta depicts the opposite: a world in which spin-doctoring and empty entertainment has left people leading anodyne, comfortable lives which they have traded for their freedom. Every time I am confronted with a story - historical of fictional dealing with the drastic measures some people take in desperate times, I cannot help but wonder what my choices would be, should I ever have to live in similar circumstances. Being a politically concerned person in peacetime, what would I do if my country were suddenly invaded by a foreign army? What would I have done if I had been a French citizen during the Nazi invasion? Would I have kept a low profile in order to save my life or would I have become a member of the résistance? What if the government of my country suddenly became a dictatorship? As a pacifist and a believer in the power of words and education if the world is ever really to be changed, I fail to see myself using violence to impose my view. And yet, sometimes, as in the world of V for Vendetta ‘there is no middle ground.’5 In the dystopian future presented in the film, there is no room for ambiguity. This paper is not aimed at establishing a comparison between the graphic novel and the film; instead, it will concentrate on an analysis of the way the movie deals with issues of terrorism - individual and state - and the breach of boundaries between the self and the other, in a dialogue that cannot leave the viewer indifferent. As said above, Moore and Lloyd’s graphic novel was particularly addressed to readers concerned with issues affecting life in Thatcherite Britain, whereas McTeigue’s film has a wider audience in mind. In both texts, a war has put an end to the supremacy of the USA as world power, transforming England into a prevailing nation where any challenge to political, heterosexual and religious homogeneity is eradicated or kept under cover. A masked man who calls himself V poses a threat to this hegemony and tries to open the nation’s eyes to the oppression they have chosen to live in with a series of acts of terrorism directed to blowing up key, symbolic buildings in London. The film’s political content stirred a lot of controversy from many different voices, some of which directly labelled it as anti-Bush, antiChristian and pro-terrorist. For Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, V for Vendetta is just ‘a vile pro-terrorist piece of neo-Marxist, left-wing propaganda filled with radical sexual politics and nasty attacks on religion and Christianity.’6 Moreover, the fact that at the centre of the film lies a story of homosexual love - V’s ‘muse’ is a lesbian
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______________________________________________________________ actress who was a victim, like V himself, of a series of experiments carried out on ethnic, sexual and political minorities - has earned the film strong attacks from other conservative Christian groups who condemn its sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality and Islam, in contrast to the negative depiction of some of the Christian leaders of the country: a power-driven dictator, a narcissistic, drug addict TV pundit, or a paedophilic bishop. But criticism has also come from the ranks of anarchists. Alan Moore accused the Wachowski brothers’ script of watering down the original anarchist ideology present in the graphic novel. The result, according to Moore, has transformed his original work (intended to place two political extremes against each other, namely anarchism and fascism) into a story of ‘current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism.’7 It is not difficult to see the film attacking current international politics and the war in Iraq in the references it makes to ‘America’s war’ reaching England. Not only does the movie include footage of demonstrations against the war; more subtle commentaries can be found in Gordon Deitrich’s cellar, where this closeted homosexual with a prominent job on television hides a collection of forbidden artworks. Among homoerotic photographs, a 14th century copy of the Qur’an, valuable paintings and sculptures, the viewer can catch a glimpse of a flag, made up of the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, and the Nazi swastika, with the motto ‘THE COALITION OF THE WILLING TO POWER’. According to director James McTeigue, the flag ‘speaks to the present and the regime in the film, in a fairly blunt fashion,’8 but the fact that the camera does not dwell on it for long transforms it into a rather elegant treat for the keen-eyed. When Deitrich is later on arrested for having transposed the ‘cheery, cheeky’ entertainment program he hosts into a piece of political mockery of High Chancellor Adam Sutler, it will be the copy of the Qur’an, which, according to V, leads to his execution. And yet it would be most unfair to reduce the film to a commentary on our present times and the war on terror. V for Vendetta is far more than an attack on the Bush administration; it is the story of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast, Nineteen EightyFour, and of Frankenstein’s creature turned political. Our current times offer just one of the many texts with which the film establishes a dialogical relationship, in an attempt to reflect any period in which individual freedom has been completely abolished in the name of - allegedly - public good. Through a series of intertextual relationships with narratives of the Iraqi war, of Nazi Germany, of Stalin’s Russia, with literary and plastic artworks, cinema and music, the film tries to break the boundaries between the self and the other, challenging the authoritarian discourse of the one-party society with a polyphony of voices coming from many different grounds. By the end of the film, the three central characters - V, Evey and Inspector Finch - have
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______________________________________________________________ confronted their own identities and, enabled to step out of their limited selves, can see the world from the other’s perspective. To reinforce this idea, the film plays with the recurrent motifs of the mask and the mirror, useful tropes to deal with issues of identity and duality, together with a series of parallel narratives, which echo this dialogue. Although V is the only character that displays a visible, tangible mask, everybody else in the film wears a metaphorical one. Behind the deep religiousness and moral concerns of the members of Norsefire - the political party ruling England - lies a tremendous terrorist attack which, although blamed on Islamist extremists, turns out to have been carried out by the leaders of the Party, an attack which enabled them to win the elections by a landslide, while making them incredibly rich thanks to the inoculation against the virus they had created. As said above, a paedophilic bishop and a drugaddict TV pundit, preserver of morality in his daily tirades against homosexuals and ethnic minorities, are among the gems of the Party, some of the villains hidden beneath the mask that advocates for ‘Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith.’ V’s first attempt to break up this hegemony, to tear off the mask covering the government’s hideous face, is to blow up the Old Bailey to music - not by accident, the music chosen is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture dedicated, as he explains to Evey, ‘to Madame Justice... in honour of the holiday she seems to have taken from these parts and in recognition of the impostor [sic] that stands in her stead.’9 The following day, knowing that the government will falsify the news, V takes over the TV station and addresses the nation with an inflammatory discourse that forces spectators to confront themselves and see the part they have played in bringing about their own oppression: The truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who is to blame? Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others and they will be held accountable, but again, truth be told, if you are looking for the guilty, you need only to look into a mirror.10 While V addresses the nation, the camera moves from the TV set to the attentive viewers, enthralled by V’s speech which, rather than being a mere accusation, intends to awaken the citizens from their long passivity:
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______________________________________________________________ I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. Food and water shortages. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic you turned to now High Chancellor Adam Sutler, with his gleaming boots and polished leather and his garrison of goons. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient, consent. Last night, I sought to end the silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten.11 The price to pay for peace and order has proved to be too high. V’s wake-up call to remove the mask, look at the reflection in the mirror and accept a certain share of responsibility in the shape the world has taken is offered as the only solution to change it. Like the mask, the mirror is a recurrent motif all through the film, present almost from the very beginning, when a travelling of the camera connects V’s mirror in his Shadow Gallery with that of Evey in another part of London. At that time, both characters are getting ready to go out: V adjusting his wig and mask, Evey putting some make up on, the camera creating the illusion that there is only one wall separating them, perhaps suggesting that the distance between them is not that big. Later on in the movie, just before V kills him, Lewis Prothero takes a shower surrounded by mirrors and a TV monitor, which constantly projects his own image. The scene offers a kaleidoscopic reflection of the aggressive man known as ‘The Voice of London’, as if revealing the many facets of his personality, those hidden beneath the mask of fierce religiousness and morality Prothero uses to address TV viewers every evening. As in this case, a series of mirrors strategically placed allows us to look at an object or a person from very different perspectives. On other occasions, it can help us to look at what’s behind us without the need for us to turn ourselves. One such mirror is used in the scene where V accepts Evey’s offer to help him in his crusade. While she is polishing the mirror in question, we hear V addressing her, but we cannot see him, until a wider shot allows both Evey - turned to the camera - and V to be within the mirror, which thus reflects Evey’s back and V’s face, so that, as viewers, we share V’s position. Does he also stand for us? Evey’s offer to help V is just a trick to get away from her imprisonment but at that moment, neither V nor the spectator knows about that, thus sharing both the same limited viewpoint. The mirror, however, is not an easy trope to read. While it helps to look at ourselves and at reality from different angles, eventually opening up
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______________________________________________________________ our view, it is no less true that the vision a mirror offers is distorted. What we see is just a reflection; yet, cleverly used - as Perseus could tell - that reflection can be tremendously useful. Two paintings in V’s Shadow Gallery, Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Marriage’ and John William Waterhouse’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ are used to reinforce these two contrasting ideas. Van Eyck’s painting displays a mirror in its centre, between Arnolfini and his wife, allowing the viewer to perceive what they are seeing, including the beholder and the beheld in the painting, as happened with V and Evey in the aforementioned scene. In Waterhouse’s painting, the mirror is absent but, as anyone familiar with Tennyson’s poem knows, is central to the story of the Lady of Shalott, cursed to look at the world through a mirror. On this occasion (Waterhouse painted different versions of the same topic), the artist chose to paint the moment when the Lady faces her death, sitting in the boat which eventually takes her to Camelot, after having dared to turn her eyes away from the mirror the moment Lancelot entered her angle of vision, choosing instead to look straight at him. As in V’s world, the price to pay for wanting to look directly at reality is death; the Lady dies, but not before having seen ‘the water lily bloom, [...] the helmet and the plume,’12 preferable to the shadows offered by the mirror. Although dead, she reaches the forbidden Camelot. Still, unveiling the mask and looking at the mirror is just part of the process. In order to reach the truth, it is important to establish a dialogue with the other. This is what Inspector Finch learns to do while he investigates V and tries to prevent the announced bombing of the Houses of Parliament. His investigations on the terrorist lead him to unveil a different type of terrorism, hidden beneath the mask worn precisely by the government he serves. Like the Lady of Shalott, Finch has confronted reality and is not only afraid to pay the same price, but also to admit that he is part of the system that has allowed such an atrocity to happen. In the following scene, Finch does the unthinkable; he dares question the government’s version of events: Finch: I want to ask a question, Dominic. I don’t care if you answer me or not. I just want to say this aloud but I need to know that this question will not leave this office. [...] The question I want to ask is about St. Mary’s. And Three Waters. The question that’s kept me up for the last twenty-four hours, the question I have to ask is what if the worst, most horrifying biological attack in this country’s history was not the work of religious extremists? Dominic: What? I don’t understand. We know it was. They were caught. They confessed. Finch: And they were executed. I know and that may be what really happened but I see this chain of events, these
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______________________________________________________________ coincidences, and I have to ask what if that isn’t what happened. What if someone else unleashed that virus, what if someone else killed all those people, would you want to know who it was? Dominic: Sure. Finch: Even if it was someone working for this government? That’s my question. If our own government was responsible for what happened at St. Mary’s and Three Waters, if our own government was responsible for the death of 80,000 people, would you really want to know? Dominic: Honestly? [...] I don’t know.13 Dominic’s last intervention in the above passage has been quoted from the script but was removed from the film, leaving Finch’s question in the air, addressed not only to Dominic but also to the viewer. As long as an evil action is ascribed to another, differentiated from the self, knowledge is demanded, punishment sought. The self feels comfortable in its disassociation from the evil other. To know the truth becomes less palatable when the possibility exists that such differentiation is non-existent. Dominic expresses doubts about wanting to know the truth, but Finch’s actions show that his own answer is affirmative. Investigating the evil other has led the police inspector to unmask the extended self of which he is a part. The terrorist is, in fact, reacting to an act of state terrorism. Why should one be more legitimate than the other? After seeing the self as perceived by the other, an exchange of viewpoints is the only path to mutual, complete recognition and understanding. This need for dialogue is reinforced in the movie by a series of parallel narratives, both oral and visual. In his Shadow Gallery, V collects pieces of art taken from an Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Objectionable Material. Similarly, Gordon Deitrich keeps in his cellar an assortment of banned artworks, hidden from the public view, like his homosexuality. This is one of the many instances in which correspondences are found between these two characters: they both offer shelter to Evey, cook the same breakfast for her, make similar comments about the political situation in their country and they are given a very similar conversation with the female protagonist. Thus, to Evey’s ‘God, if they ever find this place,’ referring to the Shadow Gallery, V replies: ‘I suspect that if they do find this place a few bits of art will be the least of my worries.’14 Later, to Evey’s concern about causing Gordon any trouble by hiding in his house, he retorts: ‘If the government ever searched my house, you would be the least of my problems.’15 The masks they wear - factual in the case of V, metaphorical for Gordon - have somehow made both men forget about their real selves. Years before, Doctor Delia Surridge had
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______________________________________________________________ written in her diary that, after the series of experiments carried out on V ‘the subject said he could no longer remember who he was or where he was from.’16 In a similar way, Gordon admits to Evey that ‘after so many years you begin to lose more than just your appetite. You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.’17 Towards the end of the film, Evey attempts to take V’s mask, as if seeing his face would give her a complete knowledge of the person who has freed her from constant fear. V gently stops her hands, adding that ‘[t]here is a face beneath this mask, but it is not me. I am no longer that face that I am the muscles beneath it or the bones beneath that.’18 After all, any mask reveals just another one, made of the skin, the bones, the muscles, and all the fibres that give physicality to our intangible self. Together with parallel characters and remarks, the movie also makes use of purely filmic techniques to insist on the need to establish constant dialogue between the self and the other. In a flashback to Evey’s childhood, for instance, the film shows her mother closing the bedroom door behind her and urging her daughter to hide. From her position under the bed, a young Evey can see her mother fall to the ground, beaten and black-bagged by the secret police. Virtually the same scene takes place years later, at Gordon Deitrich’s house. Like Evey’s mother did, Gordon urges Evey to hide under the bed and she, in the same fashion, sees Gordon’s beaten face and body fall to the ground before being dragged mercilessly out of the room. From my point of view, however, the most interesting of these parallel narratives is offered by the sequence in which Evey’s present and Valerie’s past are placed in contact, with V as a mediator. The initial dialogue between the two women ends up being an exchange between three characters connected by the same letter: Evey, Valerie and V. At one point in the film, Evey is also arrested and black-bagged while trying to escape from the secret police who have taken Gordon Deitrich. Both Evey and the viewers believe that it is this same secret force that is torturing her in order to get information about V. However, her incarceration and torture turn out to be a rite of passage perpetrated by V as a necessary suffering for her complete liberation. While in her cell, she accesses a letter hidden in a hole, apparently addressed to her. In that letter, both Evey and the film-viewer learn the story of Valerie, a beautiful lesbian actress, arrested by the Party and transformed into a guinea pig for their scientific experimentation. A series of flashbacks accompany Valerie’s narrative, showing her head being shaved in the same way as we have previously seen Evey lose her hair, hiding the letter in a toilet, the piece of paper which Evey recovers from the same source, or writing in the same position as Evey is reading, both wearing the same red clothing, imprisoned in a similar cell. Valerie’s letter becomes Evey’s only source of comfort, and is the item which connects the three lives. The sequencing of the images
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______________________________________________________________ creates the illusion that the action is taking place simultaneously, that Evey and Valerie take turns in the same cell and in writing and reading the letter. In fact, the two women are separated by many years; Valerie was in fact the prisoner staying in the cell next to V’s and it was to him that the letter was originally addressed. V has used it on Evey so that it could have on her the same effect it once caused in him. Following Evey’s initial explosion of anger towards V once she learns that he has been her torturer, she truly experiences a rebirth. After an asthma attack, V takes her up to the terrace. It’s raining but Evey, disregarding V’s offer of his coat to protect her, steps out of the shelter and into the rain, which she welcomes as a blessing while raising her arms in a victorious V. The camera then transports the viewer again to V’s past, holding his arms in a similar V position, while emerging from the flames. The two images quickly and repeatedly follow each other, joining the two characters together. Three viewpoints become interchanged at the end of the story: those of Evey, V and Inspector Finch. Evey has truly stepped out of her self and is capable of looking at life from V’s perspective. That at the beginning she is centred in herself is clear from the way she responds to V’s favourite film, The Count of Monte Cristo. Despite its happy ending, Evey feels ‘sorry for Mercedes [...] Because he cared more about revenge then [sic] he did about her.’19 Later, Evey’s reconsideration of the film, voiced shortly before V’s final act, reveals that she is now able to see the world from his perspective: ‘You know,’ she says to V, ‘I found a copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’ I think of you every time I watch it. It’s funny though, I never feel as sad for Mercedes as I do for the Count.’20 Nevertheless, Evey is not the only character who has undertaken this successful journeying towards an understanding of the other. So has V, as it emerges from the reasons he gives to make Evey his heir: This is my gift to you, Evey. Everything that I have, my home, my books, the gallery, this train I am leaving to you to do what you will. [...] The truth is that you made me understand that I was wrong. That the choice to pull this lever is not mine to make. [...] Because this world, the world I am a part of and that I helped shape will end tonight. Tomorrow a different world will begin, that different people will shape and this choice belongs to them.21 Like Evey, V has been capable of abandoning his own self and, once his personal vendetta is almost over, understands that it is only fair to leave to other people - represented then and there by Evey - to make the choices about
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______________________________________________________________ their future. As she explains to Finch, she chooses to pull the lever, because ‘he was right [about] that this country needs more than a building right now. It needs hope.’22 At this point in the film, Finch, who has become an external observer, not emotionally involved with either V or Evey, also reaches the end of his journey towards an appreciation of the other, a journey which he started with the intention of preventing the terrorist from destroying the Houses of Parliament but which he ends by lowering his gun and allowing Evey to pull the lever that activates the train which blows up the emblematic building. We, the film viewers, have made the same journey as Finch, possibly reaching the same conclusion. We find our rational mind questioning the protagonist’s methods, but feel the urge to see him triumph and mentally encourage Evey to pull the lever. This should not, however, convince us that the film condones terrorism. As I hope to have explained in this paper, it rather invites us to understand the reasons why, on some occasions, some people may resort to abhorrent violence before easily labelling them and making every effort to distance our selves from theirs. It is not a case of sympathising with the devil, but of carefully looking for where he really hides and not take the simple answer for the correct one.
Notes 1
A Moore and D Lloyd, V for Vendetta, D.C. Comics, New York, 1990, p. 5. Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 6. 5 V for Vendetta, Director: J McTeigue: Producers: J Silver, G Hill, A Wachowski & L Wachowski, Warner Bros, 2007. 6 T Baehr, ‘Time Warner promotes terrorism and anti-Christian bigotry in new leftist movie, V for Vendetta’’, in WorldNetDaily, 17 March 2006, viewed on 26 November 2006, 7 H MacDonald, ‘A for Alan, Pt. 1: The Alan Moore Interview’, in Giant Magazine, 15 March 2006, viewed on 26 November 2006, 8 A Wachowski, L Wachowski, and J McTeigue, V for Vendetta. From Script to Film, Rizzoli, New York, 2006), p. 241. 9 Ibid., p. 21. 10 Ibid., pp. 38-39. 11 Ibid., pp. 39-41. 2
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Lord Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott’, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition, vol. 2, M.H. Abrams & S. Greenblatt (eds), W.W. Norton & Company, New York & London, 2000, p. 1206. 13 Wachowski, Wachowski and McTeigue, op.cit., pp. 100-101. 14 Ibid., p. 50. 15 Ibid., p. 84. 16 Ibid., p. 95. 17 Ibid., p. 86. 18 Ibid., pp. 151-152. 19 Ibid., p. 65. 20 Ibid., p. 152. 21 Ibid., pp. 153-154. 22 Ibid., p. 166.
Bibliography Abrams, M. and Greenblatt, S., (eds). The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition, vol. 2. W.W. Norton C & Company, New York & London, 2000. Baehr, T., ‘Time Warner promotes terrorism and anti-Christian bigotry in new leftist movie, V for Vendetta’’, in WorldNetDaily, 17 March 2006, viewed on 26 November 2006, http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49317 MacDonald, H., ‘A for Alan, Pt. 1: The Alan Moore Interview’, in Giant Magazine, 15 March 2006, viewed on 26 November 2006, http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/03/a_foralan_pt_1_the_alan_moore.html Moore, A and Lloyd, D., V for Vendetta, D.C. Comics, New York, 2000. V for Vendetta. Directed by J McTeigue, produced by J Silver, G Hill, A Wachowski & L Wachowski, Warner Bros., 2007. Wachowski, A., Wachowski, L., and McTeigue, J. V for Vendetta: From Script to Film. Rizzoli, New York, 2006.
‘Be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good’: The Theology of Evil in Man on Fire Paul Davies Abstract: This chapter demonstrates how Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (2004) meditates on St Paul’s injunction from Romans 12:21 to ‘be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.’ 1 Ex-killer John Creasy is spiritually ‘dead’ and living in a condition of despair because of remorse at his past deeds. Pita, the girl whose bodyguard he is, teaches him that ‘it is ok to live again’ and forgive yourself, but then her kidnappers steal his chance of salvation/redemption, leading Creasy into a despair beyond remorse. Creasy then chooses to kill everyone involved in the affair, and to overcome evil with evil, thereby succumbing to and being overcome by it. Creasy’s rampage paradoxically becomes a sacrifice, though. While it means abandoning his chance of salvation/redemption, his death for Pita’s release does exchange ‘a life for a life.’ The final sequence is appropriately ambiguous because Creasy is rewarded for his descent into evil by Pita’s miraculous return and because his comment that he’s ‘going home’ could mean either entering heaven/forgiveness or damnation in the kidnappers’ evil realm of violence. Yet if avoiding being overcome by evil is difficult enough, then overcoming it with good is extremely difficult in the fractured world of Man on Fire where we can’t see God ‘face to face.’ And in a world where God’s will is opaque and unknowable, the question of evil acquires a new dimension, as by definition we cannot access whatever God’s notion of evil might be. While we are responsible for actions, which may be evil in terms of human perceptions, their ultimate value as evil or good lies in God’s unknowable judgment. What we do is therefore more important than what we think or how we feel, and whether we have successfully combated evil is a matter for God to decide. Key Words: Film, fragmentation, God, Man on Fire, post-modern theology; redemption, salvation, Tony Scott ***** 1.
Introduction ‘It’s a movie about extremes, about touching very different edges, very extreme edges, emotional edges more than anything.’ Tony Scott on Man on Fire
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______________________________________________________________ After a brief synopsis of the plot, this chapter will discuss the genesis of Man on Fire and its critical reception before investigating the film’s theological elements. The chapter will conclude with some observations on God in a post-modern world within the context of the theology of Man on Fire. 2.
Plot Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, released in 2004, is set in present-day Mexico City and deals with one of the numerous kidnappings which plague the city (as we are told by an intertitle at the start). John W. Creasy is a washed-up ex-CIA operative. Marked if not branded by his military past (his hands look as if cigarettes have been put out on them), the experienced Marine seeks solace in the bottom of a glass and sees no more point in living. Yet when his close friend and South America expert Paul Rayburn finds him a job in Mexico City, it seems that the habitual drinker can start again on being assigned to act as bodyguard to Pita, the daughter of the well-off Ramos industrial family. Creasy doesn’t only have to get rid of his bad habits and become a human being again; he also has to confront the demons from his past as well. A loving friendship then unexpectedly develops between Creasy and Pita, which, however, is shattered when she is abducted and then apparently killed in a bungled handover of ransom money. Swearing revenge and intending as he puts it ‘to kill everyone who had a hand in it, everyone who profited: EVERYONE!’ Creasy eventually gets through to Daniel Sanchez, the head of the secret organisation responsible. To protect himself, Sanchez offers to return Pita alive in return for Creasy’s death. Creasy agrees, and in the final sequence of the film we see him slowly dying in the kidnappers’ car from the wounds he sustained during a shoot-out. By this time it has been revealed that along with his lawyer Jordan Kalfus, Pita’s own father, Samuel, was behind the whole plan to kidnap her, in an attempt to pay off the debts because as he puts it ‘I didn’t inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but my father’s debts and his lawyer.’ When Creasy offers him a gun with one bullet in it, Samuel takes his own life. 3.
Genesis of Man on Fire Man on Fire is a 2004 remake of the 1987 film of the same name originally based on a series of books by A. J. Quinnell, the pseudonym for Philip Nicholson, an author of thrillers. Man on Fire was published in 1980 as the first in the series. The novel deals with the fortunes of an Americanborn former member of the Marines and French Foreign Legionnaire turned mercenary called Marcus Creasy ‘based on a mixture of characters that I knew in the sixties and seventies in Africa and Vietnam.’ The other novels featuring Creasy are The Perfect Kill (1992), The Blue Ring (1993), Black Horn (1994) and Message from Hell (1996). At the time of his death,
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______________________________________________________________ Quinnell was working on a sixth, tentatively titled Priests of a Dead God, as well as on a prequel to Man on Fire to ‘involve Creasy in Korea and the Vietnam War with the French when he was a young man.’2 Two real life incidents caught Quinnell’s attention in particular and then found their way into Man on Fire. First, there was an incident from the sixties in which the eldest son of a rich Singaporean businessman was kidnapped by a triad gang. The man had eleven children. He refused to pay the ransom and so his son was murdered, yet this very refusal meant that his other children would never be targets: ‘The will to make that sacrifice fascinated me.’ Secondly, there was the kidnapping of John Paul Getty's son by the Mafia in Rome involving the boy’s ear being cut off and sent to his father: ‘To me the kidnapping of an innocent third party is totally abhorrent. I guess the writing of Man on Fire expressed those feelings.’ However, the most interesting detail in view of the theme of redemption in Scott’s film version concerns the popularity of the Creasy novels in Japan: ‘The Japanese connect to Creasy. They see him as a ‘Ronin’ - a disgraced Samurai warrior who spends his time trying to redeem himself by doing good deeds.’3 Tony Scott tried unsuccessfully to realise the project of making a film version of Quinnell’s Man on Fire in 1983 when, like the novel, it was to be set in Italy, the kidnapping capital of the world at that time. However, it would only have been Scott’s second film after 1983’s vampire film The Hunger, so it might have been felt that he was too inexperienced. According to Scott himself, Arnon Milchan (the original producer of the Italian version released in 1987 and directed by Elie Chouraqui) still owned the rights to the original when in 2002 he asked Scott if he was still interested. Twentieth Century Fox wanted to shoot Scott’s version in Italy, too, but Scott felt it would then have to be a period piece because by 2004 there were hardly any kidnappings in Italy, in stark contrast to Latin American today. So for that reason among others it was decided to relocate to Mexico City.4 For the screenplay, Scott was lucky enough to be able to call on the services of Brian Helgeland, the Oscar-winning writer of L.A. Confidential. Helgeland had already developed Man on Fire-type themes of abduction, abuse and retribution in the 2003 release Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood. Helgeland also wrote and directed The Order about an arcane order of priests in Rome known as the Carolingians whose head dies in mysterious circumstances with strange marks on his chest. The Order also features a so-called Sin Eater, a renegade who offers absolution, last rites and thereby a path to heaven outside Church control. By the time he came to write the screenplay for Scott, Helgeland was obviously no stranger to theological topics and motifs.
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Critical Reception: Revenge Film or Theological Film? The critical reception of Scott’s Man on Fire in the US was somewhat less than kind. Representative of the overall feeling was the review that referred to ‘the jolly sadism of its revenge story’5 while another described Creasy as ‘the latest in a recent line of Bushian vigilantes’.6 Yet what most critics missed is that Creasy by no means takes sadistic pleasure in his deeds as his actions are all about getting information to take him to the next person involved in Pita’s kidnapping. For instance, he ensures everyone leaves the nightclub where Pita had been held prisoner, before burning it down. In addition, while most critics have had no trouble identifying Man on Fire as what they regard as a classic revenge film, at the same time they have nevertheless been singularly reluctant to see the exact nature of the film’s religious implications. One of the few who have, albeit in a somewhat overly simplistic manner, is Guy Westwell. In his review for Sight and Sound, he writes that the blood and fire he believes dominate Creasy’s rampage ‘are offered as purifying forces, cleansing and redemptive, culminating in Creasy’s bleeding to death in the back of the kidnappers’ car, having achieved a state of grace by sacrificing his own life for Pita’s.’7 Nevertheless, while Westwell does at least manage to refer to key concepts such as redemption and grace, the theology of Man on Fire is a lot more complex. For example, take the motifs of blood and cleansing. After the first two interrogations and murders, namely the cutting off of Jorge’s fingers in the car and the rave in the night club (the latter a descent into the bowels of hell if ever there was one) Creasy goes swimming. Each time there’s more of his blood in the water as his body continues to degenerate, and like his soul, the water becomes increasingly darker. Does Creasy go swimming to cleanse himself body and soul like in a form of whole body baptism, and if so, does his continual bleeding indicate the impossibility of simply washing away his new sins?8 5.
St Paul and Romans: The Theological Context Let us take as our starting point for an examination of the theological complexities of Man on Fire the sequence in which Creasy drops Pita off at Catholic school. Sister Anna, the headmistress, tells Creasy she regrets that his profession as a bodyguard needs to exist and he agrees. She then asks him if he ever sees the hand of God in what he does: Creasy: ‘No, not for a long time.’ Sister Anna: ‘Be not overcome by evil . . .’ Creasy: ‘. . . but overcome evil with good. I’m the sheep that got lost.’
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______________________________________________________________ What is the exact context of this in the Letter to the Romans? The Apostle Paul’s primary theme in Romans is the basic gospel, namely God’s plan of salvation and righteousness for all people Jews and Gentiles alike: ‘The gospel . . . is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last’ (Romans 1: 16-17). Chapters 12 through 15 are the main parenetical section of the letter. God’s forgiveness and love spur us on to live up to our new calling - to reshape our whole way of thinking and living. God’s ‘good news’ is not merely an end in itself, though, and is intended to transform human relationships (enabling Jews and Gentiles to treat each other as equals in the church) and to permeate every aspect of daily life. Chapter 12 opens the third part of Romans with its famous discussion of us having ‘many members in one body’ and ‘one body in Christ’ (12: 4-5). Our title quotation is immediately preceded by the section on love, the Christian love for fellow Christians and also for our fellow women and men. Paul encourages us to ‘Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love’ (12: 10). Furthermore we are told not to ‘repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody’ (12: 17). Doing good to our enemies instead of trying to take revenge (12:19-20) can bring about their repentance: ‘Be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.’ This by no means implies that we should passively put up with evil. It is the way in which evil is overcome that is at issue. Here we can see the real reason for extending kindness to enemies. If we retaliated in kind for all acts of enmity against ourselves, we would shortly find ourselves engaging in all kinds of equally wicked conduct. To prevent such a development, we must launch a counter-attack, returning good for evil and deploying good actions against the evil actions of the enemy. In other words: while on the one hand we find ourselves living and operating in a world where one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, on the other we can proceed on the premise that one good apple might make a barrel of rotten apples good.9 6.
Forgiveness in Man on Fire Tony Scott’s Man on Fire is ultimately a meditation on St. Paul’s injunction to battle evil with good instead of with evil and its implications. The starting point is the answer that ex-killer and most probably also extorturer/assassin John Creasy gives to the question posed by his ex-CIA friend Paul Rayburn about whether God will forgive them for what they have done: It’s a clear and unambiguous ‘No.’ But Rayburn can live with this because as he says, he’s forgiven himself (though it must be added that Rayburn has only managed to ‘save’ himself by getting out of the killing business, whereas Creasy hasn’t done that yet). However, when about to
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______________________________________________________________ embark on another act of revenge Creasy is asked later on whether forgiveness isn’t with God, he agrees and says he’s there ‘to arrange the meeting,’ i.e. between those involved in Pita’s death and God. In other words, in diametrical opposition to St. Paul, Creasy tries to overcome evil with evil.10 7.
Creasy as Spiritually ‘Dead’ and Then ‘Born Again’ Creasy is spiritually ‘dead’ and living in a condition of despair right at the beginning of the film, because of his remorse at his past deeds. We see him in a car driving into Mexico, and then there is a flash-forward to a shot of him staring out at a volcano, which is repeated at the end of the film, by which time we know he is dying. The sequence in which - weeping - he tries to commit suicide is a prime example of him living in remorse and despair. Immediately beforehand, when Creasy is still drinking and feeling angry with himself for taking the job as Pita’s bodyguard, her mother comes in and tries to persuade Creasy that he’s doing the right thing. Then comes the failed suicide attempt, a sequence rendered as a series of distorted shots and jump cuts suggestive of a dream sequence, with the continual, haunting voice-over of ‘Will God forgive us for what we have done?’ Musically, the sequence is accompanied and underlined: with bitter sweetness by Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Blue Bayou’ (Creasy also quotes a line from the song at the end of the film); with toughness by Nine Inch Nails’ appropriately named ‘Self Destruction - Part Two’ to articulate Creasy’s pain; and with temporary, calm closure by Claude Debussy’s ‘Claire de Lune’ coming in at the end. In a one-in-a-million chance, the bullet in the gun doesn’t fire, which Creasy may very well interpret as a lesson to re-evaluate his life, since he spontaneously kisses the bullet before putting it away in a matchbox to keep. He then goes down to the garden to talk to Rayburn on his cell phone. Soaking wet in the pouring rain, the first person he sets eyes on after the failed suicide incident, after the nadir of desperation when he tried to take his own life, is Pita, standing at her bedroom window looking at him, briefly illuminated by lightning. Their loving friendship starts here. 8.
‘Blue Bayou’ and St Jude The underpinning of their relationship is marked by two signifiers: the ballad ‘Blue Bayou’ and the St Jude medal. After Pita and Creasy have been having a conversation each on their own terrace, Pita leaves hers and jumps on her bed in slow motion to the accompaniment of ‘Blue Bayou,’ the second time we hear the song, a yearning for the good-old simple days: Savin’ nickels, savin’ dimes Workin’ till the sun don’t shine Looking forward to happier times
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______________________________________________________________ On Blue Bayou I’m going back some day, come what may To Blue Bayou Where the folks are fine And the world is mine On Blue Bayou11 It’s a very mournful, very evocative ballad yet also sad because it’s not even a real place, only a place in the singer’s mind that they can’t really go to, and this fits Creasy’s character perfectly: there’s some place he’s trying to get (back?) to that doesn’t really exist, and the song expresses where Creasy is trying to go. But the contrast between the undoubtedly saccharine song, out of its place and time, and Scott’s Mexico City makes us think that these people are really desperate to make meaning, to make things just. What is absent here, though, is a vision of the whole, a God’s-eye view. The Creator has a master plan, but as we will see later, is keeping it very much to itself. This loss of connectedness with the master plan is what troubles Creasy, the Blue Bayou he simplistically but powerfully yearns to return to. Having rediscovered a purpose in life through Pita, Creasy’s first physical contact with Pita is when she puts her arms around him after she wins the swim meet, the high point of their relationship. The dinner afterwards is when she gives him the medallion which he wears for the rest of the movie (it’s the first thing Creasy fingers when he comes out of his coma after being shot - three times - during Pita’s kidnapping): ‘St Jude, patron saint of lost causes,’ she says, and Rayburn adds ‘Obviously.’ The sequence that follows doesn’t show Creasy taking a drink but flicking through the Bible instead. 9.
Back in the Pit and Going Home As Rayburn puts it, Pita has taught Creasy that ‘it is ok to live again,’ ‘live’ in this context meaning to forgive yourself. But then her kidnappers steal Creasy’s chance of salvation/redemption, leading him into despair beyond remorse. After the kidnapping, Creasy makes a conscious choice to kill everyone involved in it, a choice to overcome evil with evil and thereby succumbing to and being overcome by evil. Creasy’s ensuing rampage paradoxically becomes a sacrifice, though (see Creasy’s soul map in the appendix). While it means giving up his chance of salvation/redemption and becoming the same man he was before, his death for the release of Pita does exchange ‘a life for a life.’ The film’s final sequence - the rendezvous point under the volcano - is appropriately ambiguous, because Creasy is rewarded for his descent into evil by the miraculous return of the girl, and because his comment that he’s ‘going home - to ‘Blue Bayou’’ - could mean either one of two things: (a) entering
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______________________________________________________________ heaven/forgiveness or (b) entering damnation in the kidnappers’ evil realm of violence and greed. This ambiguity is underlined by two visual conceits. First of all, there is the St Jude medal for ‘lost causes’ Pita appropriately gave him earlier in the film. Creasy either (a) dies in a state of acceptance/grace, having let the medal slip from his fingers as he slips from life; (b) ‘loses’ / ‘tosses’ it along the lines of ‘all earthly things pass for us.’ Secondly, we ‘re-see’ the flash forward from the start of the film - Creasy being driven across the Mexican border - to Creasy looking out of the car window at the volcano. The circle of the film’s ring structure is thereby closed, which leaves us with two interpretive options: (a) Creasy is given a chance not to end where he began but to enter heaven/forgiveness, which of course might indicate he’s already dead!; (b) Creasy ends up where he began, i.e. in despair, and maybe beyond redemption. 10.
Creasy’s Name There is an interesting ambiguity in his name, because a crease, or fold - think of the crease running down the length of well-pressed trouser legs - describes a rise as well as a dip, a mountain as well as a valley. And indeed the mountain which has a dip in it is the volcano. The volcano is therefore an apt cipher for Creasy because it is a hollow mountain, a hole in the ground masquerading as a mound, always potentially on fire, and it also refers to Mexico City, which lies in a valley, a dip, which makes it vulnerable to violent earthquakes or earth creases.12 We could, then, reformulate the question: does Creasy ever get out of the crease and if so, on which side? In fact, the whole fallen world depicted in Scott’s film is On Fire, and those who live in this fallen world are all, if you like, of the crease, i.e. we are Creasy. Our Everyman could have been called John Fallen, but ‘Creasy’ more openly contextualises the fallen condition as being between the Edenic beginnings and our hoped-for redemption. And he is an everyman, for this is a world of cracks and shards, as befits what we will now see is the fractured texture and grammar of the film, and all of this world's inhabitants suffer the consequent moral disjointedness. 11.
Through a (Fractured) Glass Darkly Ultimately, what emerges by the end of the film is the following. If avoiding being overcome by evil is difficult enough, then overcoming it with good is extremely difficult in the world of Man on Fire, where we don’t/can’t see God ‘face to face’ but at best through a glass darkly, in a multi-layered and fractured world. This fracturedness applies to both the filmic text and the socio-political and relational world. Man on Fire’s filmic texture and grammar are fractured with a jerky, hyperkinetic visual technique involving flash-forwards, flashbacks, freeze
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______________________________________________________________ frames, jump-cuts, and whip-pans along with slow and fast motion, fuzzy images, constant cutting and rapid cuts, over-saturation of images, blurry images, shaky jump cuts, dizzying aerial pans, wipe-and-fade subtitles - even when English is spoken - as an additional character in the film, and a deliberately disorienting soundtrack, plus narrative gaps and shifts in the time continuum all of which distort our accepted perception of reality. Above all, hand-crank camera is used a great deal, along with crossprocessed reversal film stock. This produces grainy images with colour faults like in old holiday films, flashes and flutters. It brings out the colours and makes the grain pop out, with the result that everything looks more vivid, for instance, the blacks get darker, the colours a little more vibrant: it’s all a heightened reality. In addition, in several sequences Creasy is detached from the backgrounds, with his head in one place and the backgrounds in the other as the camera whirls around him like a merry go round: an image of how he, like us, is separated from God? The world of Man on Fire is also fractured politically, socially and in regard to family and personal relationships, which is why it can be called structurally evil. There are political implications here of a post-9/11 world and the situation in Mexico City; Casey is after all a US-trained killerassassin, which points to the contemporary debate on torture in the US. Two evil regimes are shown in the film: US politics and Mexican crime and politics. The former is the post-9/11 politics of ‘the ends justify the means,’ while in Mexico, corruption and greed lead to the seduction and corruption of individuals, which in turn leads to suffering, the cost of which is more suffering and remorse, a consciencelessness which ultimately kills the soul. Evil in the film is the tyranny of evil political, economic and social structures. There are no spokespersons against this evil, living there is a form of martyrdom, and because the Mexican police and their corrupt officials are fully integrated into the abduction economic cycle Creasy really doesn’t have many options other than to take the law into his own hands, thereby getting ‘more justice than all your courts,’ as Rayburn puts it. All the same, at his side he does have one of the few ‘honest’ characters in the film, the journalist Mariana, who initiates Creasy into the service-in-return philosophy of ‘I get information, you get the inside story.’ So in a world where God’s will is opaque and cannot be discerned, the question of evil acquires a new dimension in that the film posits the human being as someone who by definition does not have access to whatever God’s notion of evil might be. That is: the characters are responsible for actions which may be evil in terms of human perceptions but whose ultimate value as evil or good lies in God’s unknowable judgment (so much for Paul’s explicit advice in Romans 4:8 against doing evil so that a greater good may come of it!). Creasy’s rampage does after all lead to the return of Pita; but more than that, while we would judge the kidnappers’ motives to be
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______________________________________________________________ obviously ‘wrong,’ their actions set in motion a chain of events which eventually end in Pita’s safe return and in Creasy coming to some form of what is called in German Erkenntnis: knowledge, insight, realization. And from the opposite angle, while no-one would claim that Pita’s mother is evil, her failure to be there for her husband to find a way out of their financial difficulties in turn sets in motion a chain of events which leads to her husband coming up with the kidnapping idea in the first place. It might even be argued that since love in this world is also creased and cracked, loving family men are bad guys, and Pita's father must be counted among the bad men and ‘everyone who profited.’ Samuel agreed to the kidnapping plan as a conscious choice not to sacrifice their lifestyle, so he did the wrong thing for all the right reasons, i.e. trying to rescue his family from the debts he inherited from his father and keep them in the material conditions to which they had become accustomed. His ability as a provider is important to the ‘love’ of his wife, yet family relations are also fractured, and we don't get a sense that this family truly loves each other until the kidnapping. Creasy gives Samuel the bullet that didn’t work for him but which ‘might work for you,’ in the sense of allowing Samuel to recapture a certain dignity by then taking the right course of action (talk about the hand of God - or the hand of Creasy!). He shoots himself in their candle-lit chapelcum-altar home. The bullet doesn’t misfire this time and allows Samuel a dignified exit, whereas when it failed to fire with Creasy, but rather allowed him to re-enter life and live again.13 In such a fractured world we simply can’t know what is good and what is evil, and neither can we, at the moment we act, predict the outcome of our actions in terms of whether they will turn out to be good or evil in future. With our limited abilities we cannot comprehend the overall time frame (this is again reflected in the way time is fractured in the film); only God has the overview. This means that as laudable as St. Paul’s injunction to overcome evil with good is, it is an illusionary, untenable position to hold in the world of Man on Fire. 12.
God in the Post-modern World Man on Fire can be positioned against the background of contemporary post-modern theological debates, two examples of which will have to suffice here. On the one hand there is Negative Theology, which tries to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may not be said about God in an attempt to gain and express knowledge of God by describing what God is not instead of describing what God is. Negative Theology accepts that we cannot describe the essence of God, which is why all descriptions, if attempted, will be false, and conceptualisation should be avoided. One example is that neither existence nor non-existence as we understand it applies to God, i.e. God is beyond existing or not existing. We
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______________________________________________________________ cannot say that God exists in the usual meaning of the word, nor can we say that God does not exist. Likewise, God is not evil, and to say that God can be described by the word ‘good’ limits God to what good means to human beings. On the other hand there is the post-modern theology of philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and David Ray Griffin, founder of The Centre for a Post-modern World in California. In the fourth chapter of his God and Religion in the Post-modern World entitled ‘God in the Post-modern World,’ Griffin talks in terms of ‘the recovery of belief in God on the basis of experience and reason,’ a recovery not hindered by but on the contrary made possible by a post-modern view of the world. Such a view enables us ‘to see the world . . . as manifesting an underlying purpose . . . an essentially spiritual matrix, so that our religious urge to be in harmony with the really real pulls us away from materialism.’ This also has implications for the fight against evil, for if ‘the supreme power of the universe acts persuasively’ this in turn would encourage us ‘to want to imitate this mode of acting,’ which self-evidently would lead to a rejection of various forms of evil, such as militarism. Griffin concludes as follows: Finally, this worldview strengthens our sense of kinship with each other, portraying us all as having a common divine source, as living in the midst of a common divine reality, and as having a common divine goal. The divine reality of the universe dwells in us, and we in it, and our lives have immortal significance in it. We cannot violate the lives of our fellow creatures without thereby violating the divine origin and goal of our own existence.14 13.
Man on Fire: Last Rites The world of Man on Fire is certainly not an atheistic one; for instance, both Creasy and Rayburn doubtless believe in God, not to mention at least the trappings of Catholic religiosity glimpsed everywhere, even in the homes of the gangsters. The problem is that there is no access to God, let alone God’s notion of good and evil, and this is where we can see similarities to Negative Theology. All these notions are necessarily human; while this doesn’t mean that good and evil don’t exist, it does mean that they are constructs. God knows and it’s not telling (see the ‘gift’ of Pita), and there’s a parallel here to anguished Christian belief, which needs ‘evidence’ of a risen Christ. The major predicament lies in having to battle on without any feedback, like a (Christian) foot soldier with the commander-in-chief missing in battle. God’s presence in the world may well be but it is unknowable, and so evil is beyond human power of understanding.
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______________________________________________________________ So yes, the world in Man on Fire is shown to be evil in the sense of structurally evil, i.e. its structures and the effects they have on us, making us do evil things and so on, but if, as mentioned earlier, avoiding being overcome by evil and overcoming it with good is virtually impossible in a world and universe where we don’t/can’t see God’s face directly - if at all ,through fractured glass - how can we possibly overcome evil? Nevertheless, if, as appears likely, the answer to this question is ‘we probably cannot,’ we must still be responsible for our actions, and there is certainly no indication in Man on Fire that we should just give up - we combat them like Marianna the journalist, who profits from Creasy running amok, though whether we can ever overcome these overall structural evils is debatable (the film is not utopian in this respect). What we do is therefore ultimately more important than what we think, how we feel or even why we do things, and we have in Man on Fire a theology geared towards action in sympathy with Griffin’s ‘modes of acting,’ but without the concomitant belief that our world demonstrates an underlying purpose. Results, the effect, the outcome: in the end, this is all that counts. However, to suggest that this condones a vigilante mind frame or a Bushian ‘the ends justify the means’ mentality would be to ignore the spiritual and mental torment and anguish Creasy goes through. At the end of the day, whether we have successfully combated evil is a matter for God to decide. And while God may very well have a master plan, it is keeping it very much to itself. In fact: it ain’t telling!
Appendix Final Sequence Going Home and Creasy’s Soul Map: Salvation/Redemption or Damnation? (a) ‘Going home—to ‘Blue Bayou’’ salvation/redemption > > entering heaven/forgiveness damnation > > entering the kidnappers’ evil realm (b) St Jude medal salvation/redemption > > lets medal slip through fingers damnation > > ‘tosses’ medal (c) Flash forward of Creasy looking out of car window
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______________________________________________________________ salvation/redemption > > given chance NOT to end up where he began [= already dead?] damnation >> Creasy DOES end up where he began—in despair and beyond redemption
Notes 1
Dedicated to Kumar Rajindra Saywack, without whose insights into cracks and creases this chapter would have been a lot less smooth(ed out). 2 Biography for A J Quinnell, Personal Quotes, https://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0704031/bio 3 Ibid. 4 T Scott, director’s commentary, Man on Fire, DVD, Paramount Pictures 2004. The main difference between the 1987 and the 2004 version is that in the former the Mafia are responsible for the kidnappings. It is also a much more linear story with the father just trying to get to the man he knows has been responsible all along, the godfather. Other interesting differences to the earlier version include the subplot with the Rosana and Manzano characters, Pita as a swimmer and not a runner, and the night club as a safe house instead of just an ordinary house. Man on Fire was last adapted for film in 2005, a Hindi version called Ek Ajnabee concerning a Bangkok-based Indian businessman, his family and daughter, which broadly follows the plot of the first two films. 5 M LaSalle, ‘Get Out of His Way - He Has People to Kill,’ San Francisco Chronicle && https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article 6 D Ng, ‘He Got God: Denzel Gets Even in a Blitz of Christian Retribution,’ The Village Voice https://www.villagevoice.com/film 7 G Westwell, review of Man on Fire, Sight & Sound, volume 14, November 2004, , p. 59. 8 In stark contrast are those moments in the film when Pita is in the pool with the tranquillity of increasingly disciplined, repetitive motion towards a clear, limited and localized goal. The pool has the utopian balance between the freedom of a fluid medium and the security of being concretely bounded. One sequence is a particularly ideal moment, shot in rich green and blue colours, in which the household, the maid in the background, the Creasy-Pita friendship, and the school all work together harmoniously. 9 The core of Jesus’ life and teaching with respect to loving non-violence and non-violent resistance is the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount:
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______________________________________________________________ I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council . . . Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.... Love your enemies . . . and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5: 21-22, 39, 44). 10 Man on Fire works with three notions of forgiveness: (1) God’s: Rayburn and Creasy don’t believe this, which is a symptom of their despair; (2) Forgiving yourself: for private happiness and the human love moment; (3) Forgiving others: there’s precious little of this in the film, and it is rejected by Creasy. 11 ‘Blue Bayou’ was written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson and was also used in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), starring David Bowie, Dreamcatcher (2003), and Last Orders (2001). 12 Mexico City was built on an unstable lake bed and is set in a high valley under two volcanoes located in the Valley of Mexico, also known as the Valley of Anáhuac, a large valley in the high plateaus at the centre of Mexico. One of the reasons for the title Man on Fire was no doubt because it suggests a volcano, a volcanic eruption. 13 The film establishes a dialectical opposition between love as a phenomenon of the closeness of bodies and abduction as a phenomenon of the distance of bodies. Creasy manages to close the distance and re-establish the closeness with the help of the media. The camera constantly focuses on newspapers, ‘stages’ telephone conversations, shows faxes, radio communication, and most crucially TV images. These real-time media mark Creasy’s path and act as navigational lights to the kidnappers by means of which he is already ‘medially’ with them before he has reached them in reality. This closeness is then able to set in motion the ‘your life for her life’ balance system. 14 D R Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern World, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
Bibliography and Filmography Biography for A. J. Quinnell. Personal Quotes, https://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0704031/bio Griffin, D. R., God and Religion in the Postmodern World. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
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______________________________________________________________ LaSalle, M., ‘Get Out of His way - He Has People to Kill’, San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article Ng, D., ‘He Got God: Denzel Gets Even in a Blitz of Christian Retribution,’ The Village Voice. https://www.villagevoice.com/film Scott, T., Audio Commentary, Man on Fire (DVD). Paramount Pictures, 2004. Westwell, G., Review of Man on Fire, Sight & Sound, vol. 14, November 2004, 59. Man on Fire. USA/UK 2004. Man on Fire France/Italy 1987 Tony Scott: Director Brian Helgeland: Screenplay Writer Déjà vu (2006) Domino (2005) Agent Orange (2005) Man on Fire (2004) The Order (2003; also directed) Mystic River (2003) Blood Work (2002) Beat the Devil (2002) A Knight’s Tale (2001; also directed) Spy Game (2001) Payback (1998; also directed) Enemy of the State (1998) The Postman (1997) The Fan (1996) Conspiracy Theory (1997) Crimson Tide (1995) L.A. Confidential (1997) True Romance (1993) Assassins (1995) The Last Boy Scout (1991) Highway to Hell (1992) Days of Thunder (1990)
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______________________________________________________________ 976-EVIL (1989) Revenge (1990) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1998) Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) Top Gun (1987) The Hunger (1987)
Remediation, Analogue Corruption, And the Signification of Evil in Digital Games Ewan Kirkland Abstract: This paper explores the ways horror videogames signify evil through the emulation of analogue corruption. I draw upon Bolter and Grusin’s ‘remediation’, describing the process by which new media deploys, refashions and reflects upon older media texts and technologies. Videogames frequently reproduce signs of non-digital media to evoke the realism, authority and emotional affect associated with traditional forms. However, horror videogames specifically employ non-diegetic remediation of audiovisual effects resembling analogue distortion - radio white noise, television static, scratched celluloid - to signify evil. Games in which players tune into zombie monsters like channels on a TV set, alert players to approaching creatures through bursts of radio static, or signify attacks on the avatar’s body through flashes to photographic negative, associate ‘old’ media with the uncanny, supernatural, and threatening. Such moments draw upon and construct notions of analogue media as archaic, chaotic, ethereal, unknowable, corruptible and corrupting. While operating in videogame cyberspace, these remediations constitute digital media’s depiction of evil according to familiar constructs, as arcane, polluting, all engulfing, as beyond representation and language. Videogames considered include Fatal Frame, Forbidden Siren and Silent Hill. Key Words: Analogue, digital, horror, media, photography, radio, remediation, technology, television, videogames ***** 1.
Studying Videogames Analysing videogames as media texts is a problematic endeavour, methodologically, culturally, and theoretically speaking. While scholars of literature, film and television have a comparatively discrete object of study, limited to a specific number of pages, words, frames, and episodes, the videogame text is much less quantifiable. As Paul Ward notes, the audiovisual experience of the videogame ‘comes into existence only at the point of playing the game,’1 an aspect which makes videogames particularly illusive as texts. Many narrative-based videogames take hours to play from beginning to end, more given the propensity for even the most experienced player to ‘get stuck,’ whereupon the entire process stalls, something readers of more traditional texts do not encounter. Most contemporary games constitute detailed and complex rhizomic experiences,2 and include mini-
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______________________________________________________________ games, side-quests, Easter eggs, hidden rooms, objects and information which are positively designed to elude the player. Whereas the viewer of Psycho (1960), having watched all 109 minutes, can be certain that they have experienced all the film, the videogame player is denied such certainty. As Espen J. Aarseth says of the sprawling hypertext narrative: ‘Instead of asking, What have I read? the critic might become preoccupied with the question, Have I read all?’3 Determining the videogame text - if such a term is even appropriate to the medium - represents the videogame analyst’s first challenge. A further issue encountered by the academic studying videogames is the rather lowly cultural status of the form, regarded by many within academia as unworthy or unsustainable of critical attention. If film studies is the poor relation of literary studies, and media studies the embarrassing inlaw of film studies, then videogames studies is the delinquent stepchild of them all. Creator of the celebrated Atari 2600 arcade game Adventure (1978, Atari), Warren Robinett speculatively compares videogames’ ranking on the ‘artistic food chain’ to that of comic books, sitcoms and X-rated films.4 Undoubtedly, this lowly status is in part a consequence of videogames’ comparative youth. In the playfully titled Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson hypothesises an alternative universe in which playing videogames is a centuries-old activity, while reading books a comparatively recent craze. Parents and teachers, he suggest satirically, would unite in dismissing the passivity, lack of sensory and neurological stimulation, linearity and isolation of the reading experience.5 The age of a form undeniably impacts upon its position on the cultural hierarchy, its entrenchment in academic institutions, and the development of recognised critical frameworks through which examples of the medium can be assessed. Videogame theory is also in its infancy, and this poses a third and more substantial problem for the videogame critic. It is only six years since Aarseth declared 2001 ‘year one’ in videogame studies in the first peerreviewed journal dedicated to the subject,6 and despite a steady stream of publications on digital games, the discipline has not yet had time to consolidate into a comprehensive body of coherent theoretical approaches distinct to the medium. Many recent studies in videogame textual analysis appropriate theoretical models derived from other disciplines. For example, Barry Atkins’ More than a Game explores the medium in terms of narrative, drawing on literary theory.7 Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska’s collection Screenplay: cinema/videogames/interfaces contains essays applying film studies to videogames.8 More recently, Ian Bogost’s Unit Operations approach to videogame criticism combines computer sciences, philosophy, systems theory and mathematics.9 Yet despite these and other publications, collections, and articles containing well-researched and insightful arguments and observations about the videogame medium, many are necessarily
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______________________________________________________________ tentative, speculative, and limited to broad observations, or all-too-brief case studies of particular game titles. Pages are spent laying the groundwork, qualifying methodologies, justifying the application of adapted theoretical approaches, and defending the study of videogames as a discipline.10 Videogame studies is a long way from a situation where critics can confidently apply dedicated videogame theories of narrative, or genre, or ‘avatar theory’ to their chosen texts. This paper explores videogames - particularly horror videogame as media texts, focussing on the ways different media technologies photography, film, radio, television - function to communicate a sense of evil. Methodologically, the game texts discussed in this paper have been quantified through thorough play, usually to completion, some to completion numerous times in order to experience the multiple endings many videogames feature. Games websites, walkthroughs and strategy guides have also been used in pinning down the illusive game text. Analyses are therefore based on comprehensive understanding of game content through both primary and secondary sources. Culturally, many of the games discussed might be considered part of the horror videogame canon, usual suspects in internet lists of favourites and recommendations, while featured as the subject of academic discussions of the genre and of videogames in general. Beyond game studies, these texts also contain many aspects prized within high culture: complex narratives, compelling ambiguous characterisations, challenging aesthetics, and moments of surrealism and expressionism. Theoretical this paper is informed by various ongoing debates within videogame studies, but draws extensively on Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation11 as a means of interrogating the relationship between new and old media. A debt is also owed to Anne Everett’s ‘digitextuality’,12 a portmanteau combining digital and intertextuality, appropriate for this paper’s exploration of the function of media forms within digital games. An alternative formulation of the word ‘digitextuality’ is a fusion of digital and textuality, indicating a sense of the aesthetic form, feel and function of digital media texts. Academia is in the early stages of understanding the nature of videogames, and this paper aims to aid such processes in exploring this aspect of horror videogame ‘digitextuality’. 2. Videogames and their Media One of the most pertinent issues, both theoretical and methodological, posed by videogames concerns the nature of ‘new media’. Do videogames - and for that matter, digital television, mobile phone technologies, email, and the internet - represent a break from previous media texts and technologies, or do they merely re-configure previous and existing systems of communication, entertainment, information storage and retrieval? Clearly new media are not produced within a historical and cultural vacuum, their nature and content
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______________________________________________________________ being shaped by previous media. At the same time, new media have their own specific characteristics which cannot be reduced to those of preceding forms, just as cinema differs from literature, and television differs from cinema in terms of technological, artistic and industrial contexts, formal qualities, genres and conventions of expression. One of the most persistent debates within videogame studies presumes a conflict between ludology and narratology. The former position, represented by the work of Espen Aarseth, Jesper Juul13 and Markku Eskelinen,14 broadly characterised, argues that videogames should be explored foremost as games, rather than employing methodologies drawn from film, literature, theatre and media studies. This appropriative approach, termed the narratological, characterises that of Barry Atkins, King and Krzywinska, and authors contained in their edited collection. Many writers engage with this debate in one way or another. Amid attempts to define computer games as rule-based systems or structured play spaces, David Buckingham insists on the significance of storytelling, characters, spectacle and humour - aspects traditionally underplayed or ignored by ludological critics - in attracting and motivating players. 15 Julian Kucklich observes that ‘we can say that regarding games as literature has many advantages, but we cannot overlook the disadvantages deriving from the transposition of static theoretical models from literary studies to the dynamic field of computer games.’16 Although acknowledging the usefulness of psychoanalytic frameworks in videogames studies, Diane Carr argues the relationship between player and avatar - the humanoid figure players navigate around the gameworld - cannot satisfactorily be understood through the application of theories of spectatorship drawn from film studies;17 while Arseth puts it particularly bluntly when he attacks ‘the slanted and crude misapplication of ‘narrative’ theory to games.’18 One point of debate concerns the emphasis placed on videogames’ representational and cinematic dimensions. For example, cut-scenes - the short digital film sequences most console or PC videogames contain - either interrupt or give meaning to game play depending upon a critic’s perspective. Such scenes clearly mobilise the grammar and style of cinema, including photo-realistic representations of perspectival space, continuity editing and close-ups drawn from Hollywood cinema, while entailing a non-participatory viewing process similar to film and television which contrasts with the participatory nature of videogame play. At the same time, cut-scenes are dissimilar from cinema in many significant respects: they are extremely brief digitally-produced audiovisual sequences, notably different in terms of narrative, characterisation, dialogue, visual and audio quality. Moreover, situated as part of the interactive videogame experience, they serve particular functions, presume distinct viewing strategies and employ communicative techniques specific to the cut-scene form. The cinematic extent of such
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______________________________________________________________ moments, and their aesthetic, grammatical and narrative impact on videogames’ participatory sequences typify debates concerning the application of film theory to videogames. While the degree to which cut-scenes mobilise cinema (or television, for that matter), comic book, or videogame codes and conventions is debatable, there are unambiguous instances where videogames draw on the cinematic or the filmic. These are points where the technology of cinema actually appears within a game’s diagesis. For example, in Haunting Ground, the player/protagonist discovers a reel of film which can be played on a projector. Resident Evil: Code Veronica X features a screening room playing a creepy film of twin children torturing a dragonfly. Players of The Suffering encounter the sadistic Dr Killjoy, a moustachioed villain constructed entirely from projected light. Such instances constitute prime examples of what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin term ‘remediation.’19 This describes the process by which new media - websites, desktop interfaces, videogames - deploy, refashion and reflect upon older media texts and technologies. Bolter and Grusin’s study emphasises the ways digital media’s appropriation of traditional media technologies constitutes a discursive process which recontextualises, mobilises and critiques traditional media texts and technologies in a manner reflective upon both old and new. This acknowledges the debt ‘new’ media technologies owe to ‘old’ media formations. But instead of regarding one as an extension of the other, or as an immature medium inevitably striving for the sophistication of the established art form, Bolter and Grusin underline the dynamic, dual relationship between the two, the inevitable process of transformation which occurs when one medium remediates another, and the paradoxical configurations produced through this dialectical relationship. Realism – a problematic and highly relative term in film and media studies - is a central aspect of remediation, as described by Bolter and Grusin. Digital media often draws upon traditional media forms to create an impression of ‘immediacy,’ in which viewers experience the world as though untouched by media technologies. An example of this might be the simulation of lens flare or re-focussing in science fiction special effects sequences, implying the presence of a real camera in scenes which are entirely computer generated.20 Alternative strategies, involving what Bolter and Grusin term ‘hypermediacy,’ seeks rather to emphasise the profusion of media forms combined in a text’s construction, such as news broadcasts which employ split screens, scrolling words, and dramatic computer-generated graphics. Paradoxically, digital texts mobilising either approach frequently reproduce the techniques of traditional media in order to communicate a sense of realism, yet implicitly draw attention to the media forms being mobilised in this process and consequently their own constructed, artificial, mediated nature.
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______________________________________________________________ While Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation is largely applied to non-diagetic appropriations of previous technologies, such as cut-scenes’ reproduction of cinematic codes and conventions, it seems eminently appropriate to self-conscious - almost self-reflexive - instances where analogue media appear within the videogame world itself. Such moments, in which the meanings surrounding different media forms are explicitly mobilised for ludic, thematic or narrative means, serve to highlight the cultural nature of media technologies, the social practices implicated in their historical usage, and the discourses which circulate them. What is interesting to note is that when other media appear in digital horror videogame texts they frequently serve to signify the presence of evil. 3.
Remediation and Horror Videogames The horror videogame - or to more specifically designate the subject of this paper, the survival horror genre - is a fascinating site for exploring videogame remediation. Survival horror is defined by Nic Kelman as ‘games in which the player usually takes the role of a normal human being in an environment overrun by demons, zombies, ghosts, etc.’21 Matt Fox describes the genre in media terms, as involving ‘cinematic camera angles (as if someone’s voyeuristically watching the action from cameras secreted in nooks and crannies), minimalist sound effects… 3D items and characters set against hand-drawn 2D backgrounds, and zombies, lots and lots of zombies.’22 As significant as a game’s horror content and visual iconography, in this second definition, is the mode in which the gameworld is depicted, implying the presence of hidden cameras secretly viewing the player/protagonist. Similarly, Bernard Perron contends that horror series like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Clock Tower are most readily compared to cinema, arguing that horror films themselves contain ludic or game-like elements.23 Many horror videogames’ terms of reference are borrowed from cinema. The zombies of Resident Evil are lifted from Romero’s …of the Dead (1968-) series, including shuffling gait, moaning and susceptibility to headshots. Weapons staples, including shotgun, chainsaw and flamethrower, are drawn from film horror: Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Thing (1982). The everyman/woman avatar of survival horror recalls the tormented hero of The Evil Dead films (1981-92), or the slasher movie’s hapless final girl.24 Horror games set in haunted houses, derelict institutions and deserted townships contain explicit references to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Nicholas Roeg. Conversely, the speedy zombies of 28 Days Later (2002) coincide with the increasingly animated adversaries of Resident Evil 4 while the comedy Sean of the Dead (2004) acknowledges its debt to horror games as well as horror cinema.
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______________________________________________________________ The ways cinematic genres and modes of representation impact on videogame aesthetics have been the subject of much debate. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the presence of media technologies, cinematic or otherwise, within the game world. Survival horror typically contains a wide range of media forms for both player and avatar to interact with. Paintings on walls, documents in drawers, drawings on desks, inscriptions on statues, books, manuscripts, newspaper articles and graffiti, all contribute to game narrative and themes, contain clues concerning puzzles players must solve, and intensify a game’s atmosphere. Non-cinematic examples include the paintings on the church walls in Silent Hill 3, the photograph carried by the protagonist of The Suffering, or the smudged storybooks given to Jennifer in Rule of Rose. In the Resident Evil series archaic typewriters function as save points where players record their progress, in Silent Hill players must photograph paintings to reveal a secret code, while The Thing features CCTV cameras which can be employed by the player to avoid and dispatch patrolling monsters. In many cases these traditional forms are used to communicate something sinister, threatening or evil. Such instances are fascinating examples of remediation, revealing the meanings surrounding these media technologies and objects, or more particularly, the meanings they are made to bear when transposed into this digital medium. For example, the celluloid film discovered by Fiona in Haunting Ground, showing the heroine at various stages and locations previously visited in the game, draws upon specific associations between cinema, voyeurism, and the objectification of the female form,25 implying that a controlling off-screen presence has been watching and filming the player/protagonist throughout her progress. As Jeffrey Sconce observes, ‘the politics of seeing and not being seen’ are an explicit component of horror cinema,26 and no less in horror videogames, as evident in Haunting Ground’s cut-scenes’ frequent oscillations between protagonist and antagonist perspectives, and game play which involves finding hiding places to escape from undefeatable adversaries. Such themes consolidate in Fiona’s discovery of the celluloid film, indicating herself as the subject of a gaze which is implicitly male and sexually threatening. Cinema’s association with a particularly sadistic male voyeurism are mobilised here in the construction of a distinctly masculine evil presence. As Fox’s definition of survival horror suggests, the use of voyeuristic cinematic cameras in constructing the gameworld is a significant component of the genre. This element within Haunting Ground constitutes an unsettling convergence as the objective nondiagetic manner of depicting gamespace - to a degree controlled by the player’s movement of the avatar - and a less benign uncontrollable presence within the game world, surreptitiously orchestrating and determining the movement of player and protagonist, are disturbingly brought together.
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______________________________________________________________ Audio media can be made to serve a similarly disquieting function. In Silent Hill 4 the ‘Skinned Mike’ cassette appears in a level set in a deserted apartment block. Here the lives of the building’s absent tenants are evident in the objects distinguishing their respective rooms, often represented through media: paintings in the room of an artist, photographs on the walls of a stalker, videogame consoles, stereo systems, wall murals. The rooms also feature various clues about the resident’s relationships, and of a cruel act committed within the apartment block involving a number of its inhabitants. This mystery resembles a text book example of Murray’s labyrinthine ‘violent hub’ format of interactive thriller narrative, in which a tragic event is situated within a web of reports presenting the occurrence from different perspectives.27 The ‘Skinned Mike’ audio cassette is the centre of this hub, an audio witness to the event, involving the humiliating stripping of one resident and the distribution of his clothes amongst the onlookers, further evidence of which can be found in their various apartments.28 Providing a documentarystyle authenticity to the event, the cassette creates a ghostly presence for these people who are absent from the game either as non-playable characters or virtual actors in cut-scenes. Moreover, the protagonist can only hear the tape by exiting the apartment gameworld, represented as a kind of dream, awaking in his own room and using the stereo system in his living room. Hearing the cassette entails the conjoining of two gamespaces, the nightmarish and the ‘real’ in a manner which intensifies the discomfort of listening to its ghoulish content. 4.
The Media Uncanny in Horror Videogames Communicating a sense of the real is a recurring function of remediation in horror videogames, featuring aspects of both ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’ in their construction of authentic-seeming environments, events and objectives. The panning, tilting, dollying cameras through which horror game worlds are viewed contribute significantly to the impression of navigating physical three-dimensional environments, even when these camera movements are at their most intrusive and spatially disruptive. The profusion of media texts and technologies present within these environments can be similarly jarring, entailing a shift in modality as paintings are scrutinised, audio recordings played and written text is scrolled through in separate screens and windows. Nevertheless their presence enhances game verisimilitude and gives authority to the information contained within these remediated media, be they CCTV camera, doctor’s report or religious portrait. This is entirely consistent with Bolter and Grusin’s arguments concerning the interconnectedness of these two strategies, which both aim in different ways to present viewers/readers/players with a direct encounter with reality. It also betrays a certain anxiety within digital media about its relationship with ‘the real’. While traditional media are seen to have a
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______________________________________________________________ physical connection with the world they represent - light bouncing off a subject and falling onto photographic paper, sound waves vibrating a needle scratching across wax-coated cylinder, the personality of the subject being interpreted by the artist through paint touching canvas - virtual digital videogames appear to have no such relationship. A sense of the real world is therefore drawn, vampire-like, from these reproductions of traditional media. But a sense of realism is not the only mythology of traditional media being mobilised here. Many horror videogames, in constructing old media as agents of the supernatural, evoke alternative aspects of the technological imaginary29 discussed in Maria Warner’s Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century30 and Jeffrey Sconce’s Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television.31 These studies provide a fascinating alternative history of media technologies which challenges their dominant association with scientific rationality. Warner’s study explores the ways in which ideas of the soul and the spirit have become translated into metaphors of the modern media. Technologies of recording – waxworks, photography, cinema - or of imaging the world - telescopes, microscopes, camera obscura - have, with remarkable consistency, served in the expression of themes associated with theology, spiritualism and the paranormal. Instead of deposing superstitious and religious beliefs, Warner suggests, media technologies present new ways of imagining these traditional understandings of the universe. Containing many striking parallels, Sconce’s study focuses on broadcasting technologies, where similar cultural mythologies ascribe telegraphy, radio, television and associated developments in electrical sciences with occulted mystical forces. In the discursive formations, narratives and practices these authors chronicle, media technologies are regarded as uncanny, eerie, spiritual, allowing communication with the dead, revealing evidence of the spirit world, facilitating telepathy, mind control and physical disembodiment. Historical instances of uncanny media include automatic writing, the use of film projection in magic shows, the photographing of fairies, ghosts and human spirits. Dead relatives who communicate through knocking, reproducing the language of Morse code, aliens with antenna on their heads used for telepathic communication with others of their race, television penetrating the mind and turning ordinary individuals into crazed killers, such narratives and images illustrate the ways media technology formations have informed depictions of the fantastic. Such themes frequently feature in popular cinema. In Poltergeist (1984) a young girl is abducted by the spirit world through the television screen. In Static (1986) a man claims to have invented a television set which can show images of heaven. Frequency (2000) features a son communicating with his dead father through a radio. In Back to the Future (1985), Marty’s temporal existence is measured by a photographic image. A notable recent expression of media uncanny is Ringu
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______________________________________________________________ (1998) The Ring (2002), in which a vengeful spirit interacts with the living through the telephone, the television and the videotape. Horror videogames express similar discourses. In Fatal Frame, the player explores a haunted house armed only with a camera. This non-digital media technology is capable of dissipating malevolent spirits, combining early endeavours to photograph ghosts, with myths surrounding the camera’s ability to capture the subject’s soul. As Warner chronicles, photography metaphors were often employed in conceptions of spirits as insubstantial light. According to nineteenth-century beliefs, inspired by laboratory efforts to photograph phenomena too microscopic or distant for human perception, phantoms were perceivable only through the photographic apparatus. The camera in Fatal Frame destroys these spirits by capturing their image, reproducing European mythologies, which were projected onto colonised peoples, about photographic technologies stealing the soul,. The idea that photography captured some essence of its subject, Warner attributes to the enthusiasm of Western cameramen who were often disappointed by their ‘primitive’ subjects’ comparative lack of interest in the process. This combined with a possible awareness that their photographs would soon be all that survived of these indigenous populations. In Forbidden Siren, players ‘sight jack’ into the optical perspective of zombies patrolling a deserted village, a technique which is central to navigating these treacherous landscapes. This process of telepathic tuning appropriates the imagery and mechanics of the television set, as players scan a screen of static looking for zombie ‘channels.’ Once an image is found, it can be stored and assigned a button on the joy pad, like television channels on a remote control. In using this structure of media technology, Forbidden Siren reproduces historical associations between telepathy and broadcasting discussed by Sconce. The psychic space between zombie consciousness is depicted as static, associating the absence of human broadcasts with an absence of (in)human intelligence. It also represents a visual equivalent to the unfathomable ‘etheric ocean,’ a structuring metaphor used to understand the mysterious universe made accessible through wireless technologies in early broadcasting discourses. While visually resembling the technology of the handheld camera, the multiple channels and optical positions represented by the zombies, together with their unfaltering mechanical patrolling, more closely approximate CCTV systems’ automatic routines of visual surveillance. In contrast to the benign function of Fatal Frame’s ghostbusting camera, remediation of oppressive surveillance technologies functions to construct the zombies’ evil presence. The Silent Hill series also evokes the idea that media - television, radio, telephony - can detect otherwise imperceptible supernatural presences. Throughout the first game, Harry’s missing daughter communicates with her adoptive father via a disconnected telephone, a broken radio, and television
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______________________________________________________________ sets in a derelict shopping centre, suggesting her physical dissipation and abduction by supernatural forces aligned with dysfunctional media technologies. Players of the first three games carry a transistor radio which crackles with interference whenever a monstrous threat is nearby. This provides an unnerving audio index of the player’s proximity to danger which functions like a Geiger counter, spluttering in response to the contaminating evil of nearby creatures. Early in Silent Hill 2, the radio communicates a disjointed message from the protagonist’s dead wife, reproducing narratives of supernatural communication between the living and distant or dead relatives. In-game media objects, like the ‘Skinned Mike’ cassette, feature prominently across the series, often depicting sinister past events. In Silent Hill the player finds a videocassette containing only an audio account from a nurse, encountered throughout the game, expressing sympathy for the disfigured patient she is forced to care for. In Silent Hill 3 this soundtrack is accompanied by a crackling still image encountered by the player/protagonist, which appears like a sudden hallucination on the screen. Suggestions of media technologies’ associations with telepathy, cinematic metaphors used to describe memories of the past, and the media as objective record of previous events, are evoked in this brief moment. Silent Hill 2 features a videocassette as repressed memory, the centre of a ‘violent hub’ but one directly involving the main character, suggesting an even more intimate analogy between media and the human mind. Such examples suggest the associations between media technologies and the supernatural chronicled by Warner and Sconce persist in contemporary digital media. 5.
Media Corruption as Signifier of Evil A recurring feature of uncanny remediations within horror videogames is the use of digital effects resembling analogue media corruption, failure or imperfections as signifiers of evil. Fatal Frame flashes to negative as the player is attacked. Forbidden Siren uses television static to signify the ethereal ocean players scan to find zombie optical perspectives, which themselves appear grainy and muffled like undercover filming. The audio interference of Silent Hill’s ubiquitous radio assumes a visual form in Silent Hill 4 where the screen becomes marked and blotchy like scratches on celluloid film whenever a ghost approaches. The digital emulation of analogue corruption - radio interference, television static, celluloid scratches - becomes a signifier of evil; monstrous, demonic or ghostly presences being heralded by audiovisual effects suggesting the collapsing or disintegration of analogue media. Notions of supernatural entities being signified by specific failures in modern media have some resonance in the accounts of Warner and Sconce. Warner points out that Western visual conceptions of ghosts as hazy,
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______________________________________________________________ indistinct and transparent can be traced to imperfections or accidents in early photographic processes, resulting in blurred figures, streaks of white and other unsettling effects.32 Concerning broadcast technologies, Sconce points to the way disruption in normal services invariably signals catastrophe, while in horror and science fiction narratives dead airwaves invariably indicate the end of human civilisation, ‘the collapse of the media’ being ‘by definition a collapse of the social.’33 The artistic use of visual distortion in this manner is described by Jessica Helfand as the ‘cult of the scratchy,’ an aesthetic in which words and images bleed into one another, most famously evident in the opening credits of David Fincher’s Seven (and visible in many survival horror box covers and instruction booklets, as well as in-game text like Silent Hill’s flickering ‘Game Over’ title, or Rule of Rose’s scribbled chalk menu system. Such techniques have been discussed by Peter Woolen, and Will Straw; who consider the deliberate scratching of film as avant-garde art practice,34 and the function of celluloid deterioration in bestowing a sense of enchantment onto old films in an art installation.35 But the more malevolent connotations these effects communicate remain largely unexplored, despite their prominence across the horror genre. This emulation of analogue distortion as a signifier of evil in horror digital gaming mobilises some very particular context-specific meanings. Firstly, as already discussed, analogue media connotes a sense of the real within an entirely digitally constructed environment. Analogue media suggests a relationship between sound and image and the real world, perceived as lacking in digital media texts, yet crucial to the fear these games seek to generate. It is through signs of analogue corruption that the presence and physicality of these simulated media become perceivable: without the sound of static the radio is silent, without celluloid scratches the digital image suggests nothing of cinema. The sudden eruption of signs of analogue technologies also communicates a failure within the medium, registered both in its physical and audio deterioration and in the intrusion of the analogue upon the digital. This suggests the collapsing of boundaries discussed by Juliet Kristeva as a recurring theme within horror;36 as one medium bleeds into another, cinema, radio and photography contaminate the digital world, and are themselves subject to contamination and corruption. Such effects often indicate an equivalent loss of control for the player/protagonist. Issues of control, its structuring and withdrawal are of central importance within videogame studies. Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska write of 'regimes of agency and restriction' within videogames,37 Henry Jenkins discusses the dialectic between control and freedom,38 while Sheila C. Murphy writes of a similar tension between control and surrender.39 Specifically considering horror videogames, Krzywinska argues the sense of ‘being acted on by [a] game’s infrastructure’ provides specific pleasures within the genre.40 Moments when static engulfs the screen and soundtrack, or the videogame
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______________________________________________________________ world is plunged into blurred negative imagery communicate just such a withdrawal of control, in which even the videogame world cannot maintain the technologies of its own mode of representation. Returning to Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation, such moments in digital gaming indicate the dialectical relationship between the digital and the analogue as constructed by digital texts, digital culture, the digital media industry. Given the frequent demonisation of videogames within the press, and digital games’ low position in the artistic hierarchy, the construction of traditional media as evil constitutes an understandable inversion of dominant cultural discourses. In such formations, digital media are crisp and clean and precise. The digital world is composed of unambiguous binary distinctions: 1s and 0s. Digital media does not dirty or corrupt or fall apart. Digital media represents the knowable, the permanent, the pristine. Analogue media conversely functions to signify what the digital text cannot. ‘Old’ media - as defined within these new-media texts constitutes the uncanny, the supernatural, the threatening: archaic, chaotic, ethereal, unknowable, corruptible and corrupting. These remediations constitute digital media’s depiction of evil according to familiar constructs: as arcane, polluting, all engulfing, as beyond representation and language. Old media is arcane in terms of being historically superseded by digital media, and in being subject to distortion by the passage of time. Old media is polluting through its contamination of the digital frame which erupts in unfamiliar static, or the audio field which bursts into discordant noise. Old media is all engulfing insofar as it touches every aspect of the digital world. The evil of old media is beyond representation and language. New digital media - with its technological certainties, calculated skins and polygons, predictability and lack of ambiguity - cannot depict corruption, contamination and random chaos. Instead it must employ media forms from previous eras in order to communicate such things.
Notes 1
P Ward, ‘Videogames as Remediated Animation’, in G King & T Krzywinska (eds), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, Wallflower Press, London, 2002, p. 124. 2 Janet H Murray in Hamlet on the Holodeck distinguishes between the ‘solvable maze’ and ‘tangled rhizome’ as models of interactive narrative. While the former is linear and has a single solution, the latter is characterised by lack of closure, solution or determination. While different game genres and titles occupy different points between these polarised models, most games are to varying degrees rhizomic.
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E J Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997, p. 87. 4 W Robinett, ‘Foreword’ in M. J. P. Wolf and B Perron (eds), The Video Game Theory Reader, Routledge, London, 2003, p. vii. 5 S Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter,Penguin Books, London, 2005, pp. 19-20. 6 E Arseth, ‘Computer Game Studies, Year One’, Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, July 2001. 7 B Atkins, More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003. 8 G King and T Krzywinska (eds), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, Wallflower Press, London, 2002. 9 I Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, MIT Press, London, 2006. 10 This study is by no means excluded from such criticisms. 11 J D Bolter and R Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2001. 12 A Everett, ‘Digitextuality and Click Theory: Theses on Convergence Media in the Digital Age’ in A Everett and J T Caldwell (eds), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, Routledge, London, 2003. 13 J Juul, Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2005. 14 M Eskelinen, ‘The Gaming Situation’, Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, July 2001. 15 D Buckingham, ‘Studying Computer Games’, in D Carr, D Buckingham, A Burn and G Schott Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 9-10. 16 J Kucklich, ‘Perspectives of Computer Game Philology’, in Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol 3, issue 1, May 2003. 17 D Carr, ‘Space, Navigation and Affect’, in D Carr, D Buckingham, A Burn and G Schott, Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006, p. 68. 18 E Aarseth, ‘Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation’, in N Wardrip-Fruin and P Harrigan (eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, MIT Press, London, 2004, p. 54. 19 J D Bolter and R Grusin, op. cit. 20 The use of this technique is discussed in L Anders, ‘The Natural and the Unnatural: Verisimilitude in Battlestar Galactica’, in R Hatch (ed), So Say
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______________________________________________________________ We All: An Unauthorised Collection of Thoughts and Opinions on Battlestar Galactica, BenBella Books, Dallas, 2006, pp. 85-6. 21 N Kelman, ‘Yes, But is it a Game’, in S Compton (ed). Gamers: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels, Soft Skull Press, New York, 2004, p. 231. 22 M Fox, The Video Games Guide: From Pong to Playstation 3, Over Forty Years of Computer and Video Games, Boxtree, Oxford, 2006, p. 10. 23 B Perron, ‘Coming to Play at Frightening Yourself: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games’, Aesthetics of Play Online Proceedings, viewed 5 May 2007, 24 C J Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, British Film Institute, London, 1993. 25 L Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, vol. 16, issue 3, 1975. 26 J Sconce, ‘Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror’, in J Collins, H Radner and A P Collins (eds), Film Theory Goes to the Movies, Routledge, London, 1993, p. 110. 27 J H Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2000, pp. 135-6. 28 The event is quite ambivalently represented, and this is only one interpretation. Another involves Mike being literally skinned, tortured to death by a collection of apartment block residents. 29 M Lister, J Dovey, S Giddings, I Grant, K Kelly, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London, 2003, p. 60. 30 M Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006. 31 J Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, Duke University Press, London, 2000. 32 M Warner, op. cit., p. 230. 33 J Sconce, op. cit., p. 117. 34 P Woolen, ‘Godard and Counter-Cinema’, in P Rosen (ed), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, Columbia University Press, New York, 1986, p. 123. 35 W Straw, ‘Proliferating screens’, Screen, vol. 41, issue 1, 2000, p. 118. 36 J Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982. 37 G King and T Krzywinska, Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts, IB Tauris, London, 2006, p. 214. 38 H Jenkins, ‘Games, the New Lively Art’, in J Raessens and J Goldstein (eds), Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, London, 2005, p. 182.
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S C Murphy, ‘Live in Your World, Play in Ours’: The Spaces of Video Game Identities’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 3, issue 2, 2004, p. 233. 40 T Krzywinska, ‘Playing Buffy: Remediation, Occulted Meta-game-physics and the Dynamics of Agency in the Videogame Version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, in Slayage: the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, vol. 2, issue 4, March 2003.
Bibliography Aarseth, E., ‘Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation’, in N Wardrip-Fruin and P Harrigan (eds), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. MIT Press, London, 2004. ______
, ‘Computer Game Studies, Year One’, Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, July 2001. ______
, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. John Hopkins University Press, London, 1997. Anders, L., ‘The Natural and the Unnatural: Verisimilitude in Battlestar Galactica’, in R Hatch (ed), So Say We All: An Unauthorised Collection of Thoughts and Opinions on Battlestar Galactica. BenBella Books, Dallas, 2006. Atkins, B., More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003. Bogost, I., Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. MIT Press, London, 2006. Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R., Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2001. Buckingham, D., ‘Studying Computer Games’, in D Carr, D Buckingham, A Burn and G Schott Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006. Carr, D., ‘Space, Navigation and Affect’, in D Carr, D Buckingham, op. cit. Clover, C. J., Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. British Film Institute, London, 1993.
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______________________________________________________________ Eskelinen, M., ‘The Gaming Situation’. Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, July 2001. Everett, A., ‘Digitextuality and Click Theory: Theses on Convergence Media in the Digital Age’, in A Everett and J T Caldwell (eds), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. Routledge, London, 2003. Fox, M., The Video Games Guide: From Pong to Playstation 3, Over Forty Years of Computer and Video Games. Boxtree, Oxford, 2006. Helfand, J., Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture. Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001. Jenkins, H., ‘Games, the New Lively Art’, in J Raessens and J Goldstein (eds) Handbook of Computer Game Studies. MIT Press, London, 2005. Johnson, S., Everything Bad is Good For You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter. Penguin Books, London, 2005. Juul, J., Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2005. Kelman, N., ‘Yes, But is it a Game’.in S Compton (ed), Gamers: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels. Soft Skull Press, New York, 2004. King, G. and Krzywinska, T. (eds), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces. Wallflower Press, London, 2002. King, G., and Krzywinska, T., Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts. IB Tauris, London, 2006. Kristeva, J., Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press, New York, 1982. Krzywinska, T., ‘Playing Buffy: Remediation, Occulted Meta-game-physics and the Dynamics of Agency in the Videogame Version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. Slayage: the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, vol. 2, issue 4, March 2003.
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______________________________________________________________ Kucklich, J., ‘Perspectives of Computer Game Philology’. Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Studies, vol. 3, issue 1, May 2003. Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., Kelly, K., New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, London, 2003. Mulvey, L., ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen, 16:3, 1975. Murphy, S.C., ‘Live in Your World, Play in Ours’: The Spaces of Video Game Identities. Journal of Visual Culture, vol 3, issue 2, 2004. Murray, J., M., Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2000. Perron, B., ‘Coming to Play at Frightening Yourself: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games’, Aesthetics of Play Online Proceedings, retrieved 5 May, 2007, from http://www.aestheticsofplay.org/papers/perron2.htm. Robinett, W., ‘Foreword’, in M J P Wolf and B Perron (eds), The Video Game Theory Reader. Routledge, London, 2003. Sconce, J., ‘Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror’, in J Collins, H Radner, and A P Collins (eds.), Film Theory Goes to the Movies. Routledge, London, 1993. ______
, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Duke University Press, London, 2000. Straw, W., ‘Proliferating screens’. Screen, vol. 41, issue 1, Spring 2000. Ward, P., ‘Videogames as Remediated Animation’, in G King & T Krzywinska (eds), ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces. Wallflower Press, London, 2002. Warner, M., Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006. Woolen,. P., ‘Godard and Counter-Cinema’ in P Rosen (ed), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Columbia University Press, New York, 1986.
PART IV Evil in Historical/Political Frameworks
Akhenaten, ‘the Damned One’: Monotheism as the Root of All Evil Robert W. Butler Abstract: Akhenaten has been variously portrayed as enlightened prophet or calculating politician, but has never been examined in terms of theodicy. The pharaoh defined opposition to him as opposition to the god, and by definition all such opposition was evil. The story of Akhenaten is an occasion of a ruler inflicting a uniform religious policy (perceived as evil) on his subjects, and offers an early example of totalitarian thinking. Key Words: Akhenaten, Aten, Egypt, Great Hymn, pharaoh, theodicy ***** 1.
The Mystery of the Nameless Early in the reign of Ramesses II, about 1300 B.C., a tax claim was filed in the Egyptian courts in the city of Thebes. The case itself was routine and uninteresting; but the timing of the claim, preserved accidentally in a court transcript, revolves around a man who is never named - he is referred to only as ‘the damned one’ and ‘the rebel.’1 This unnamed individual was not the subject of the lawsuit; he was Akhenaten, the former pharaoh of Egypt, a man now so hated that his name could not even be uttered in public. How did the one-time ruler of the greatest empire of the ancient world become a nonperson in his own land? The story of Akhenaten fascinates the modern world. No ancient ruler - not even his successor, Tutankhamen, known to millions as ‘King Tut’ - captures the modern imagination like this young pharaoh. Akhenaten and his age have been the subject of endless scholarly articles, popular biographies, and blockbuster museum exhibits. There is even an opera, composed in 1983, and featuring lyrics in English, German, biblical Hebrew, and ancient Akkadian. Few other figures from the ancient world can boast such recognition; none can equal the efficiency, which Akhenaten was consciously erased from history for more than 3,000 years in his own land. Why such interest in a ruler who died before his 40th year, the details of whose reign are even now still in dispute?2 The obvious reason, of course, is the religious revolution he imposed on Egypt: the acknowledgement and worship of a single deity represented by the sun’s disk, the Aten. Created by the pharaoh’s insights, upheld by his armies, and overthrown by his successors, the worship of the Aten has variously been interpreted as a precursor of modern religious truth, as the feverish dream of an unbalanced philosopher, or as the coldly
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______________________________________________________________ calculated plot of a paranoid dictator.3 Similarly, most analyses of this era focus on Akhenaten’s theology, or worship services, or even the architecture of his temples. But few have examined what the new religion of the Aten meant in terms of theodicy, of the explanation of evil.4 This paper will examine Akhenaten’s religious reforms, with an eye toward examining what they meant in terms of explaining evil - and in terms of representing evil to the people of his land. It is my contention that Akhenaten’s experiment marked a watershed in the history of evil: it was the first time that consciously imposed and perceived evil was applicable to all humans instead of only a randomly selected few. In this era, good and evil were radically redefined and simplified as adherence to the will of Aten - or opposition to it. 2.
Background Ancient Egypt, more than most civilizations, was defined by the natural phenomena of its environment: the sun, the sand, and the river Nile. The red sands of the desert came to signify all that was harmful or destructive to the universe; scholars suggest that this is where later figures of evil, such as the medieval world’s devils, picked up their traditional crimson colour. At the same time, however, the sands helped isolate and protect Egypt; invasions were possible, but not common. Behind the walls of the Sahara and Sinai deserts, Egypt was enabled to develop its culture in relative security. The Nile River made Egypt’s cultural life - indeed, all life - possible. The regular, gentle floods, which began every year in late June, renewed the land and provided water for crops. Thanks to the Nile, harvests were bountiful. The sun, by turns benevolent and devastating, completed the Egyptian setting. There was no escape from the sun in Egypt. For the people of Egypt, the sun was a god, the chief and most visible of the deities who inhabited the universe. The world of Egypt was unmatched in its age, endurance, and stability. Throughout the turmoil of rulers and rebellions over three thousand years, its daily life and local culture changed with glacial slowness. Alan Gardiner wrote that ‘the extraordinary attachment to the traditional’ formed ‘a conservatism of expression without parallel elsewhere in the world.’5 The distant past was ‘the time of the god,’ and its heritage as not to be tampered with - not even by pharaoh, who was a god in his own right. The religion of ancient Egyptian was a complicated phenomenon, reflecting millennia of hopes and fears, belief, revision, and resistance. Creation emerged from single divine impulse, but this was quickly followed by a proliferation of gods and goddesses. At the original, deepest level, then, existed unity - but diversity rapidly emerged, with divine forms emerging everywhere. Some were large, like the sun god, worshipped in different names in Upper or Lower Egypt. Others were small, local village gods, providing aid for everyone in a small community. But in this swirling mass of divinities, two important elements stood out. The first was a concept called
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______________________________________________________________ ma’at. Ma’at was not ‘truth’ but ‘order:’ a system, not a definition. Everything existed, but everything also had its proper place in a systematic and active repudiation of chaos and misfortune. In addition, religion in Egypt was a method and not an accomplished end. Religion expressed the feeling that creation was a process in which gods and their worshipers cooperated in keeping chaos and terror at bay. It was the act of participating in an ongoing, divine process of keeping creation stable and orderly. Each depended on the other; worship and assistance were two sides of the same divine coin. Without gods, human worshippers were lost; without human worshippers, gods would withdraw from the earth. If either happened, believers were convinced that the universe would literally unravel. Religion in pharaohnic Egypt, as elsewhere in the ancient world, often functioned on two different levels. There were of course the large gods and goddesses, reflections of the creation and the adhesive that bonded humanity and heaven in an ordered unity: Ra, Horus, Anubis, Osiris, Isis. These deities kept elemental chaos at bay and provided a hierarchical chain that supported the pharaoh, god on earth, the god (as Aldred says) by whom all Egyptians lived.6 But additionally, there was a localized sense of religion that functioned as a domestic cult; the attempt to evade daily perils and sustain personal safety and health. In terms of the history of religions, modern scholars now propose not a triumphalist vision of one god or another establishing his rule, but a more nuanced approach that sees a ‘little tradition’ in dialectic consensus with a ‘great tradition.’7 Religious change, then, had to occur on two levels if it was to succeed: on the great level of the universal deities, and on the local level of the small cults, where the collective society of the local village was extremely tenacious of its beliefs. This was especially true of Egypt, where temples were ‘the axes of Egyptian religion,’ and where the functions of Horus, for example, were eventually passed on to St. George: protection of the household and ‘victory over chaos and misfortune.’8 The local deity was part of the larger change of a great belief. The divine impulse remained, though the form had shifted. A religious evolution, in short, had to function on both levels if it was to succeed; simple declarations from the top would be unavailing otherwise. The era of the Hyksos (‘shepherd kings,’ in the 17th-16th centuries B.C.) separated the Middle and New Kingdoms. The Hyksos were so called by Egyptians because of their ‘Asiatic’ origin; they were descended from Semitic nomads of the region around Palestine. It seems not in fact to have been a mass invasion, as later stories portrayed it. A small ruling class appropriated much of Egyptian culture, but despite that were universally despised as foreigners. The Hyksos period contributed much to Egypt. Numerous items, especially military, first appear in this period: chariots and a compound bow, among other warlike instruments, made pharaoh’s armies that much more effective. In addition, new ideas entered Egypt’s mental
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______________________________________________________________ horizon. Foreign forms and ideas, as well as peoples, entered into Egypt, and the resulting mix accomplished two ends. The first was a set of crossfertilized ideas about the new, enlarged universe; the second was a passionate desire to be rid of foreign rule. By 1539 B.C. a new dynasty from the south of Egypt had ‘expelled’ the Hyksos. The ‘vile Asians’ were replaced by native rulers once again. The 18th dynasty, sometimes called the Thutmosids after its most famous members, inaugurated not just a new kingdom but a new style as well. Their chief god, Amun, a solar deity from Thebes, became a dominant god in the Egyptian pantheon, and the dynasty endowed his priests with substantial lands and temples. Fearful of a return of the foreign menace, New Kingdom Egypt pursued a more imperialistic course than before. A series of conquering pharaohs sent expeditions up the Mediterranean coast and into the heartland of peoples as far away as the Mitanni, at the upper reaches of the Mesopotamian valley. Eventually the military activity took on a life of its own, creating both the desire to control others, and the means to do so: an enlarged army and an hereditary noble officer corps to lead it. Under rulers like Thutmosis I and Thutmosis III, Egypt acquired an empire not just in Nubia but in Syria and Mesopotamia as well. Between these two rulers came a remarkable episode that served to foreshadow much of the crisis of Akhaenaten’s reign. Hatshepsut (1479-1458 B.C.) was the half-sister and chief wife of Thutmosis II. This royal couple had one child, a daughter. At his death, she became the regent for Thutmosis III, a son by another, lesser wife. She quickly established herself as more; in little over a year, Hatshepsut had herself proclaimed ‘king’ of Egypt by the explicit wish of Amun, a chief god now not just of the dynasty but also of Egypt. In the eyes of many scholars, a deal had been reached: Hatshepsut would rise to the throne with Amun’s help, and in return she would bestow royal favour on Amun - more precisely, upon his priesthood. Other gods would not be denied, of course, and ma’at would be upheld in the traditional way. But the announcement was made that the new ruler was the daughter of Amun, and a detailed pictorial story of her divine birth was carved onto a wall of her chief temple at Deir el-Bahri. Power of this magnitude was unheard of for a woman. Hatshepsut used her forceful personality as well as a series of well chosen male assistants to accomplish the feat. Her son, Thutmosis III, although co-ruler, was too young to protest, though as he aged he became increasingly bitter over the usurpation, and determined to end it - and the priesthood, which supported it. The chief priest of Amun, Hapuseneb, and especially the chief steward, Senenmut, became indispensable allies in Hatshepsut’s decades-long rule. With Senenmut’s aid, she solidified her throne by relying on a set of favourites from the political bureaucracy (new men from the conquered
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______________________________________________________________ provinces) and the religious establishment (Amun and his priests became more powerful than ever.)9 Hatshepsut’s reign provided the background for the actions of her descendant, Akhenaten, as well as foreshadowing many of the themes found there. She seized control of the royal political machine by invoking the aid of the religious establishment, in large part to legitimise her irregular rule. Never before had a divine birth been declared in such detail, or proclaimed so loudly. By royal command, a new festival - the ‘beautiful feast of Opet’ - was established to honour Amun and to reinforce the lesson of pharaoh’s divine descent from the dynasty’s favoured god. The price of the support was high, however. The religious establishment seemed close to co-opting the political administration and pharaoh herself. There were rumours that Senenmut was more than an adviser that he was Hatshepsut’s lover - and even an explicit carved illustration of the two on a grotto wall above her temple at el-Bahri. Eventually even the pharaoh herself seems to have recognized the danger; at any event, Senemut disappeared toward the end of her reign, and his name was removed from temples and monuments - a new and sinister touch, designed to destroy his soul for all eternity.10 By the time Hatshepsut died, her stepson and successor, Thutmosis III, was determined to erase her memory and rule as an independent pharaoh once more. Thutmosis III quickly launched a series of campaigns into the northern provinces, and acted to reduce the influence of Amun’s priests. Henceforth Amun would be only one of the deities associated with pharaoh, and would bask in the pharaoh’s reflected glory - not the other way round. All talk of the ‘divine birth’ of Hatshepsut was stilled, and after the passage of several years, Thutmosis felt powerful enough to attack even the memory of his wicked stepmother. He desecrated her temples, erased her cartouche or royal name, and chipped off her image from temple walls and obelisks. Her memory was wiped out and her reign was omitted from the official king list of Egypt. Hatshepsut had pioneered this immortal revenge, but its use at this high level and on such a massive scale was unprecedented. All these problems and responses would be repeated, on a larger and more desperate scale, a century later in the reign of her descendant Akhenaten. Yet missing from the story of Hatshepsut is any sense of national anger or despair. The royal family hated her as a usurper, and Thutmosis III took care to see that females in his household were never allowed any part of the independent status she had claimed. But Egypt as a whole was wellgoverned in her time, prosperous and at peace, and the populace was content with their gender-irregular but culturally traditional, religiously orthodox, and politically shrewd ‘king.’ The religious and political struggle was a lesson that later pharaohs were well advised to study, and there is every reason to think that they did so. Certainly the career of Thutmosis III and later rulers witnessed an attempt to
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______________________________________________________________ reign in the powers of Amun’s priests. Unfortunately for Akhenaten, if he studied this episode at all, he seems to have drawn the wrong lessons, concluding that Hatshepsut’s real failing was that she did not go fast or far enough in seizing absolute power. 3.
The Reign of Akhenaten Akhenaten’s reign (1358 - 1340 B.C.) came at the beginning of the New Kingdom, a watershed moment for Egypt.11 The rule of the hated foreign conquerors, the Hyksos, had been overthrown; a powerful dynasty from the south, under the protection of its chief god Amun, had created an empire. New Kingdom Egypt was a period dominated by a strong pharaoh, but it also witnessed the creation of powerful priesthoods, especially that of Amun. The father of Akhenaten, Amenophis III, was a warrior king, who kept the priesthoods under control and groomed his eldest son to follow in his footsteps. But the elder son died unexpectedly and the younger son became the new ruler, Amenophis IV - later called Akhenaten. At the same time that the nation’s political life was in transition, traditional Egyptian religion was changing as well. Egyptians believed in numerous gods, goddesses, and godlets; but, as previously mentioned, they also believed in the notion of humans cooperating with the gods to keep the universe running smoothly. Human participation in divine rituals, and attention to moral and ethical guidelines, drew the gods close and maintained order in place of elemental chaos. Religion was closely linked to the daily life of the people; in addition to divine help in the face of life’s many choices and dangers, the economies of local cities and temples were interrelated since offerings returned to the community in the form of sacrifices, festivals and employment. Of course some gods were more important than others, and historians suggest that among the elite, there was an emerging trend toward religious syncretism or a monotheistic impulse centred around the sun god. In addition, in New Kingdom Egypt the divinity of pharaoh was reemphasized as a way of maintaining order and keeping the priesthoods under control. The rise of the 18th dynasty meant that the sun god, Amun, was now far richer and more significant - as were his priests, to the point that they were becoming a potential threat to the pharaoh. Religion and politics were making an explosive mix. At the local level, however, there is no doubt that diverse gods and devout worshippers linked in time-honoured rituals maintained the order of the universe, as they had always done. Akhenaten’s position at his accession, then, mandated a rather delicate balancing act. It was necessary to act as a god, to maintain ma’at, to dominate the ruling elite and lead the army. It was also necessary to safeguard the empire and to keep an eye on powerful priesthoods, especially that of Amun. Above all it was important to continue the dynasty’s grip on power. To that end the new pharaoh and his wife, Nefertiti, were already creating a
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______________________________________________________________ sizeable family. But to guide and guard Egypt was a huge responsibility; his father’s successful footsteps demanded very big shoes big to fill them. Beyond all this, there was his own set of religious convictions, quickly hardening into an obsession: that the sun god should be worshipped under a new guise, one that eliminated other divinities and spoke clearly to all Almost at once, Akhenaten began to introduce the worship of a new image for deity, the Aten, or sun disk.12 In a boundary stele which dates from the first months of his reign, the new pharaoh announces his devotion to the sun god, specified as ‘Re-Harakhte who rejoices on the horizon in his aspect of the sunlight which is in the Disk [Aten.]’13 The text goes on to mandate a corvee of forced labour throughout the nation, in order to build temples to the Aten; in the next several years, many such structures, using simple, massproduced, and architecturally crude blocks were erected in the major towns and cities of Egypt. By the third year, the deity’s name was altered to eliminate references to other solar deities; he became known simply as the Aten, or Disk, the name was encircled in a cartouche, and the pharaoh changed his own name to reflect his devotion (from Amenophis IV to Akhenaten.) In this year as well, a new, more naturalistic - some say ‘mannerist’ - artistic style was introduced, as well as portrayals of the royal family in intimate scenes. By the fifth year, Akhenaten announced that a new capital was to be built, called Akhetaten, dedicated to the Aten and his chief prophet and son, the pharaoh. At the same time other religious foundations were closed down, their wealth seized, and devoted to the building of his new city. In the eighth year came an acceleration of the pace of this religious reformation. The names of other deities began to be chiselled off existing monuments. Official documents were written phonetically instead of with hieroglyphs, in order to avoid using any other deity’s name (for example, the Egyptian concept of ma’at had once been written with the image for the goddess Maet; but no longer). In the twelfth year of the reign, as the streets of Egypt teemed with ‘foreign’ troops (Syrians and Nubians) guarding the pharaoh and restraining his subjects, Akhenaten decided to hold a magnificent celebration at his new capital. Its 730 individual altars (two for each day of the year) were filled via confiscated temple holdings, tax revenues from the poor, and forced contributions from the rich. Domestic notables and foreign dignitaries lined up to watch Akhenaten, pharaoh of Egypt and living son of the god Aten, drive his famous chariot down the whitewashed boulevards of his capital.14 It must have been an inspiring spectacle, designed to - what? Divert a weary nation? Silence rumblings of discontent? Overawe foreign ambassadors? Perhaps all of these… If so, the attempt was a failure. Two years later Akhenaten’s house of cards began to collapse. A plague swept in from the east, devastating the
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______________________________________________________________ country and killing many of the royal family. Rebellion in Nubia was eventually subdued, but rebellion in Syria was not; the empire’s possessions in the north were lost.15 Meanwhile, resistance to the new order could be found even in the capital; forbidden magic amulets continued to surface, and prayers to banned deities could be found scribbled in obscure corners of tombs.16 Akhenaten’s reactions to all these disasters are unknown. Indeed, he may have been in shock, incapable of responding as his life’s work - his obsession - vanished. The country was drifting. Pharaoh did not lead the army; no response came to distant pleas for help; no plans were made for a successor. Perhaps most significantly, the evolution of the Aten’s theology had come to a halt; the prophet seemed incapable any longer of hearing his god. In the chaos of these years, we do not even know how or when Akhenaten died; but no references exist beyond his 17th year on the throne. Akhenaten simply vanishes, like the sun obscured by clouds. In the aftermath of its founder’s death, the religion of the Aten quickly vanished. Within three years his son, Tutankhaten, had reopened the old temples and was frantically re-supplying them with the statues and ritual instruments his father had confiscated or destroyed. In ironic counterpoise to the father’s name change, the son altered his name to one that honoured the old gods, and would become famous centuries later when his undisturbed tomb was opened - Tutankhamen. As for Akhenaten himself, the judgment of Egypt on his Aten cult becomes clear when one reads the text of Tutankhamen’s ‘Restoration Stele:’ When His Majesty came to the throne, the temples and the towns of the gods and goddesses from Elephantine [Aswan, at the First Cataract] to the marshes of the Delta coast were fallen into decay, their shrines ruined, reduced to mounds overgrown with thorns. Their sanctuaries were like something that never existed, and their precincts were a footpath, for the earth was derelict. The gods had turned their back on this land. If an army was sent to Syria to widen the boundaries of Egypt, there was no victory. If one prayed to a god to entreat something from him, he would not come, and if one petitioned any goddess similarly, she would not come. Their hearts were weary within them, and they annihilated what had been made.17 The Restoration Stele seems a suitable moment to consider Akhenaten and his reign in the light (or should one say dark?) of evil. From this perspective, three points emerge:
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______________________________________________________________ 1. the imposition and enforcement of Atenism, and persecution of other deities; 2. the resistance of the populace to Akhenaten’s new cult; 3. the explanation for evil in Aten worship, or its theodicy. 4.
Imposition and Enforcement The religion of Aten sprang from the pharaoh alone. Despite earlier references to the Aten as another name for a solar deity, only Akhenaten could have declared that this new god would be worshipped in splendid isolation. All dogmas, all decisions were his; for better or (usually) for worse, Akhenaten is the key to Atenism. A gigantic seed festival, three years into the reign, introduced the exclusive creed with a new hyper-realistic style of art.18 A few years later, that art constantly showed Akhenaten in the presence of soldiers. Armed force was in fact a significant factor in the establishment of Aten’s religion. Soldiers quarried stone and built new temples, closed and desecrated old ones, chipped divine names off religious inscriptions and artefacts, and collected tithes and taxes for the pharaoh’s new worship. Increasingly, as the reign went on, they also surrounded and safeguarded the royal family. As one of the three chief props of Akhenaten’s regime (the other two were a cynical bureaucratic corps of ‘new men,’ and the wealth available from now-closed temples), only the army could provide sufficient manpower for obliteration of divine names on a nationwide scale. The bureaucrats, too, assisted in the enforcement of Atenism, though here it seems to have been out of pragmatic self-interest. ‘Offer praises to the living Disk [Aten] and you shall have a prosperous life,’ wrote the king’s vizier, Ay; the phrase carries a cynical air and seems to have been meant literally.19 Ma’at had been redefined: obedience brought reward, opposition brought death. ‘Go along to get along’ could have been the Aten’s shorter catechism. Similarly, moral behaviour changed as well; no longer did religion encourage ethical acts, now it only encouraged obedience to Akhenaten. Thanks to Akhenaten’s religious/political link, ‘evil’ in this instance becomes defined, not just as opposition to the divine father Aten, but opposition to his servant Akhenaten as well. Such church/state repression seems to have been unknown on such a scale before this point. Akhenaten’s insistence on uniform worship led to uniform repression, and eventually uniform hatred. Acceptance of Atenism was achieved, then, via force, bribery, and corruption on a national scale.20 Akhenaten clearly intended the imposition of his new creed to be complete and inescapable. It seems unlikely that such heavy-handed, omnipresent military activity, accompanied as it was by corrupt bureaucratic officials, could have been viewed as anything other than evil by Egypt’s long-suffering populace. Almost certainly it helped inflame
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______________________________________________________________ the resistance movement, which it failed to suppress and which, in the end, outlived the god - and the king - it so hated. 5.
Resistance Religiously speaking, Akhenaten’s new cult contradicted two millennia of tradition. Although the religious ‘tithe’ or tax was still collected, none of it was now redistributed back to the people as had once happened via local temples. There was no aid for life’s traditional problems, no promise of an afterlife - only obedience and uniformity was left. Egyptian religion, despite its monotheistic impulses (all creation stories emphasized a single divine principle, which later elaborated itself into a pantheon), was not only polytheistic, it was processional or process-based - human beings played an important role, by cooperating with the gods in set rituals, thus keeping chaos and its accompanying evils at bay.21Atenism denied this belief and ignored the all-important cooperation with the divine; the result was furious anger. When invasions and plague struck late in the reign, they could only be seen as confirmation of the traditional vision of the universe, and as punishment for abandonment of the gods. But even earlier, there was significant evidence of resistance. In the country at large, ‘bad things’ contrary to the Aten’s wishes were acknowledged as the new capital arose: ‘it was worse than those things I heard’ claimed an official speech on the founding of the city.22 A few years later, when the temples of other gods were closed, ‘the motor of Egypt’s economy’ shut down and desperation set in.23At the pharaoh’s death, popular fury was at last unleashed. Buildings and monuments at the capital were vandalized, to the height of an average man’s reach - suggesting a spontaneous reaction that did not stop to grab a ladder.24 Shortly thereafter, Akhenaten’s tomb was desecrated; his coffin’s face-mask and namecartouches were violently ripped away, in an effort to destroy the king’s soul for all eternity. His body has never been conclusively identified.25 When the city was demolished, some two decades later, pharaoh Horemheb (who had once been one of Akhenaten’s administrators) took great care to break the surplus bricks and even to smash abandoned crockery. The remaining walls and buildings were destroyed by fire in order to complete the destruction of the city. Such violent response betokens an anger that was unlike anything before or after; never again in Egypt was a royal palace, let alone an entire city, so completely, so relentlessly, destroyed. Even at the centre of Atenism, in the king’s own ruling circle, there had been opposition: discreet, erudite, hidden. Akhenaten berated some of his entourage for listening to ‘evil’ rumours.26 Nefertity’s ambitious character (she appeared on more reliefs than her husband) may have reminded courtiers all too uncomfortably of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh of the previous century.27 The old gods maintained some worshippers; statues of hearth gods
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______________________________________________________________ and a lament to Amun have been found among elite burials at the capital. There is even a set of small monkey figures in recognizably Akhenaten-esque poses (one drives a chariot), and a fragment has been found which recounts an old story about the assassination of an earlier pharaoh.28 Perhaps Akhenaten did well to keep soldiers round him at all times; outside the closest circle of his friends and advisers, he may not have been able to rely on anyone’s loyalty. 6.
Theodicy Little enough survives of the Aten’s theology, and almost no theodicy, or explanation for the existence of evil. Most accounts of the religion simply omit the subject. The portrayal of light as the essence of Aten, and the limited mention of suffering in its creeds, have led many scholars to conclude that Atenism did not include any awareness of evil. This conclusion is misguided, since in fact a theodicy can be discerned in two ways: first, by discerning the opposite of what Aten considered good; and second, by an appreciation of Atenism’s division of the universe into right and wrong, or good and evil, made obligatory on all. Aten did work to shield his worshippers from evil, but only in the vaguest way. General promises of support were all that he provided; the god was short on specifics. Aten did not offer protection against illness, injustice, or death; he offered no guarantee of an afterlife, the focus of so much of Egyptian culture. If we ask what Aten considered good, and muse on its opposite, we seem hard pressed to come up with anything more specific. Aten is light and life; he creates the world in all its glory. He lives in the heart of the worshipper, and in the mind of Akhenaten, his son. As creedal statements go, this is fairly short and unsatisfactory, and offers little insight into evil. In the Great Hymn to the Aten (believed to have been written by Akhenaten himself), discussion of evil is restricted to a single stanza. Without the Aten, that is, at night, theft, violence and blindness rule humanity. When the Aten sets, the world dies: ‘darkness is a shroud, and the earth is in stillness, / For he who made them rests in his horizon.’29 On the other hand, there were many things the Aten mandated or forbade. The pharaoh was angered at his followers listening to ‘evil stories’ about burial practices; and opposition to Aten, inscribed on a boundary marker at the capital, served as part of the reason for establishing a new city in an isolated, undefiled location.30 Even the nature of the Aten - light - could be construed as evil to some, for light can be harsh, even pitiless. At least one foreign ruler wrote to Akhenaten in anger, protesting at the way his ambassadors were expected to stand waiting in the hot Egyptian sunlight for the pharaoh to appear.31 And if the light of the Aten was so benign, why was it necessary to impose and support it by force, and to persecute its opponents?
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______________________________________________________________ Even if its exact shape remains unclear, evil plainly lurked in the universe that Aten had created. This last point is perhaps the most important. Aten’s theology and its understated theodicy, and particularly the pharaoh’s actions enforcing it, demonstrate a universe divided for the first time into absolute and mutually exclusive concepts of good and evil.32 What pleased the Aten was mandatory; what the Aten frowned upon was forbidden. This knowledge was delivered to humanity by the Aten’s son, the pharaoh - Akhenaten. Religion and politics were united into a single, all-embracing vision of the universe that had to be accepted on peril of death. Theodicy, in this case, was not an idle philosophical exercise; it was a direct order from the ruler of the nation. Believe, worship - or die. Akhenaten’s new theology did indeed create a new theodicy, one that was to be repeated endlessly for the next three millennia. By uniting politics and religion in such a fashion - by acknowledging responsibility for Aten - Akhenaten created a universe in which religious resistance meant political punishment. Instead of a traditional diversity of gods and rites, the pharaoh allowed only one deity, only one definition of good. All dissent by definition was now evil. And evil was no longer attributable to bad luck or malevolent spirits, but to opposition to the good god; and so, as we have become all too familiar with in the modern world, it had to be eliminated. Consciously directed imposition of evil, whether as opposition to Aten, or from punishment of the pharaoh, now arose from a single source. In the coming millennia, this scenario was to be repeated endlessly. But Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt, was the first, the original architect, of monotheistic evil. 7.
Conclusion Perhaps the past is a foreign country, but its inhabitants share much of humanity with us. The Bronze Age is closer to the Post-Modern Age than we commonly recognize. Our earliest literature dates from this era. Gilgamesh and Enkidu were Bronze Age heroes whose adventures still move us. Achilles and Hector fought on the field of a Bronze Age Troy. Above all, the myths of our culture, the controlling explanations at the heart of western religions, emerge from the shadows of the Bronze Age to guide and support us still. The men, women and children of four thousand years ago experienced many of the same hopes and fears, questions and demands, that we do - why otherwise would we still thrill to the stories of Abraham or the Trojan Horse? In the end, perhaps traditional Egyptian religion may have been right after all. Perhaps without an ethical framework on which to build, humanity tends to drift toward moral chaos and despair. That is a subject for another paper, another time; but certainly, a ‘black hole’ of ethical vacuum offers little to attract anyone. In the end, too, the story of Akhenaten may not so
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______________________________________________________________ much be a rejection of monotheism, as the rejection of religious absolutism. Absolute truth, pursued too far, becomes absolute tyranny. If ancient man reacted as we do, that may be the ultimate lesson from the whole affair: humanity may seek the Truth, but should be wary of claims that it has, at last, been found.
Notes 1
D B Redford, Akhenaten: The Heretic King, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984, p. 231. See also the short notice by A H Gardiner, ‘A Later Allusion to Akhenaten,’ Journal of Egyptian Archaeology vol. 24, 1938, p. 124. 2 For a brief introduction to the vague nature of the evidence surrounding Akhenaten, see the relevant entry in T Wilkinson, Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, Thames and Hudson, London, 2005. Numerous sources exist to follow Akhenaten’s era, but they often disagree with each other regarding specifics. The Cambridge Ancient History (3rd ed.) is a good starting point. Others include works by C A Akhenaten: King of Egypt, Thames and Hudson, London, 1988; D B Redford, Akhenaten: The Heretic King, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984; N Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet, Thames and Hudson, London,2001. An older work that is broader in its contextual coverage than most new studies is Sir A Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford University Press, London,1961. 3 See for example D Nardo, ed., Rulers of Ancient Egypt, Thomson Gale, Detroit, 2005. 4 Some scholars insist that it is not possible to talk of theodicy in ancient Egypt, since gods did not cause evil; they only prevented it from happening. This still suggests a responsibility for events which I believe should be called by the name of theodicy. See for example E Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, translated by J BainesCornell University Press, Ithaca, 1982. 5 Gardiner, op.cit., p. 56. 6 Aldred, op.cit., p. 304. 7 D E Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998, p. 6. The concept, according to Frankfurter, is derived from the work of Robert Redfield. 8 Frankfurter, op. cit., p. 9, §3. 9 E Hornung, History of Ancient Egypt: An Introduction, trans. by D Lorton of 1978 original, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1999, pp. 82-88. 10 N Reeves, op. cit., pp. 32-39; carved graffito portrayed on p. 35. 11 Precisely when Akhenaten reigned is still in question; leaving aside the thorny question of a co-regency with his aging father, beginning dates from
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______________________________________________________________ 1377 B.C. to 1353 B.C. have been suggested, though all agree on his position in the 18th dynasty and the length of his reign - seventeen years. 12 It is interesting to note, as Assmann puts it, that here is the only example we have of a prophet whose message was not reinterpreted by later commentators. Nevertheless, it is clear that some of the Aten concepts did evolve during the reign. 13 Cambridge Ancient History, II pt. 2, 53. 14 Redford, op. cit., p. 186; Reeves, op. cit., p. 154; Aldred, op. cit., pp. 27981. 15 Redford, op. cit., p. 187; Aldred, op. cit., pp. 282-83. 16 E Hornung, Ahkenaten and the Religion of Light, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, pp. 110-11. 17 J Ray, Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, p. 60. 18 Hornung, op. cit., p. 39. 19 Redford, op. cit., 180. 20 Ray, op. cit., pp. 72-75. 21 J Assmann, The Mind of Egypt, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2002, pp. 205-06. 22 Reeves, op. cit., p. 110. Precisely what occurred is unknown but Reeves suggests the monument records Akhenaten’s actual words, responding to serious unrest. 23 Reeves, op. cit., p. 155. Ray, op. cit., pp. 64-65, has an excellent portrayal of the importance of temples to Egypt’s economy and society, and of the decay that would have set in when they were closed. The ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’ in Tudor England pales in comparison. 24 Redford, op. cit., p. 228. 25 Reeves, op. cit., p. 81. No one is sure when the damage occurred, but mere grave robbers would not have bothered. Since Akhenaten began to be written out of history less than twenty years after his death, the desecration is likely to have occurred sooner rather than later, when his name was still recognized and the populace furious enough to vent its hatred. 26 Aldred, op. cit., p. 245. 27 For Nefertiti’s appearance and presumed ambition, see Redford, op. cit., pp. 78-79. 28 Hornung, op. cit., pp. 110-11; Reeves, op. cit., p. 106. 29 J B Pritchard, The Ancient Near East vol. 1 - An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1958, pp. 227-30; accessed at http;//touregypt.net/hymntoaten.htm. 30 Hornung, op. cit., p. 49. 31 Reeves, op. cit., p.122 - from the Amarna Letters.
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Only Assmann makes this a central point of his analysis. But Assmann also insists that Akhenaten was philosophically motivated to recognize the true source of all life - the light of the sun - and, like Einstein and Heisenberg, intended his reflections to be a universal revelation for all mankind. These positions are generally rejected by other scholars.
Bibliography Aldred, C., Akhenaten: King of Egypt. Thames and Hudson, London, 1988. Assmann, J., The Mind of Egypt. Metropolitan Books, New York, 2002. Edwards, I. E. S. et al. The Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1975. 3rd ed. Frankfurter, D. E., Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998. Gardiner, A, H., ‘A Later Allusion to Akhenaten.’ Journal of Egyptian Archaeology vol. 24 ,1938, p. 124. Gardiner, A. H., Egypt of the Pharaohs. Oxford University Press, London, 1961. Hornung, E., Akhenaten and the Religion of Light. Translated by David LortonCornell University Press, Ithaca, 1999. Hornung, E., Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Translated by John Baines. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1982. Hornung, E. History of Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1999. Jay, J., Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Nardo, D., ed. Rulers of Ancient Egypt. Thomson Gale, Detroit, 2005. Pritchard, J. B., The Ancient Near East, vol. 1 - An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1958; reprinted, Princeton University Press, 2002.
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______________________________________________________________ Redford, D. B., Akhenaten: The Heretic King. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984. Reeves, N., Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001. Wilkinson, T., Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson, London, 2005.
Are Witches Good - and Devils Evil? Some Remarks on the Conception of Evil In the Works of Paracelsus Peter Mario Kreuter Abstract: The physician, lay theologian and social reformer Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known under his pseudonym Paracelsus, was one of the most radical reformers in the church history of the 16th century. His rejection of any kind of institutional church was as harsh as his critical commentaries on witch persecutions or his thoughts about the relationship between men and women. Still today, great parts of his œuvre are unknown or even not edited, and therefore it is possible to make some discoveries in his texts even in our day. One of the main foci of both the medical and the theological thoughts of Paracelsus was the question of the state and the place of evil in the world of mankind. For him, men and women were living in a world where they are surrounded by all kinds of nymphs, dwarfs, demons, and even witches. But why are they here? Who created them? Do they have a relationship with mankind, and if so, of what kind? One question is especially important: are they evil? Necessarily? Is there an evolution in their relationship to mankind? This paper will try to answer these questions by giving a glimpse into a current project about Paracelsus that is situated at the University of Bonn. Key Words: Ascendant, demons, Malleus maleficarum, nymph, Paracelsus, witch ***** 1.
Introduction Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, born at the end of 1493 or the very beginning of 1494 near Einsiedeln in Switzerland, died on 24th September 1541 in Salzburg, was a quite quarrelsome and disturbing man. Rejecting all kind of Mauerkirche (‘brick church’), fighting with every kind of authority, whether still living or already dead, he remains one of the most distinguished personalities of 16th century Europe. He is a kind of hinge between medieval times and the Renaissance, and one would not be wrong to label him a ‘Renaissancemagus,’1 putting together popular old magical beliefs with neoplatonic ideas and highly theological implements. One of the major interests of both his medical and the theological thinking was the question of the state and the place of evil in the world of mankind. For him, men and women were living in a world where they are
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______________________________________________________________ surrounded by all kinds of nymphs, dwarfs, demons, and even witches. Not to mention the devil, illness, war, and the death penalty. Being a nonconformist thinker and a permanent challenger of common definitions and authorities, he had to discover his own definitions of evil and its place in the world. Following his thoughts, one will be confronted very quickly with two major problems of Paracelsus’ scientific preoccupation. Firstly, it must be noted that Paracelsus used the word ‘evil’ itself quite often. It appears in his medical texts, in his philosophical texts the frequency of its use is higher, and in his theological texts the word ‘evil’ plays a prominent role. Its persistent presence marks clearly that the fact that for Paracelsus evil was part of the formation of humanity right from the beginning, from the creation by God. Secondly, Paracelsus was a concise thinker. He was more chaotic than other scientists of his time, but there was nothing in his works that would constitute a disqualification from deep scientific insight. The problem is that he often contradicts himself in different books. Moreover, he never created a clear and consequently used paradigm of technical terms, neither for his medical theories nor for his philosophical or theological ones. He knew Latin, but he preferred to write in German, which led him to create a whole roster of new words or at least new meanings for existing German words. But he left no blueprint for that creation anywhere, leaving his readers alone with the inconsistent vocabulary work he had done. Already in the 16th century, two supporters of his theories wrote Paracelsian dictionaries in order to explain what the master meant by using his very specific terminology. We know these dictionaries as Michael Toxites’ Onomasticon Theophrasti Paracelsi (sine loco 1574) and as Gerhard Dorn’s Dictionarium Paracelsi (Frankfurt 1583). The problem of the Paracelsian terminology remains unresolved up to our time. In 1993, Oskar Reichmann made his own plan of a contemporary Paracelsus dictionary in an article, in which he states, however, that he himself has no plan to carry out a comprehensive attempt.2 In every single case, we have to look closely at the use of a word on a case-by-case basis, and we should never define the meaning of a word too quickly. As a consequence, one has to note the absence of a single Book on Evil. As for many other subjects of the Paracelsian œuvre, a systematic discussion of this term is lacking. The word ‘evil’ shines out in a lot of his theological texts, especially when discussing the Ten Commandments. In most cases, Paracelsus uses the dichotomy ‘good-evil’ in a very stereotypic way. Therefore, it is more interesting to follow the interesting fact that he clearly rejects the definition of evil for two subjects: popular magic and witches.
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Paracelsus’ Main Sources Paracelsus himself is notoriously silent about his sources. Of course, one of these main sources is the Bible, and among his medical and theological works we find more than one book in which he poses all manner of theological problems. From the very beginning, Paracelsus enjoyed both interests, and often one cannot make a clear distinction between medical and theological argumentation.3 Therefore, one has always been ready to be confronted with an argument based on the Bible. Another source for Paracelsus seems to be gnosticism and neoplatonism. Gnosticism brought dualism and the tendency towards thinking in dichotomies into Paracelsus’ philosophical concepts. For example, for Paracelsus, man is a microcosm because in him the body is united with the soul, and the soul is interpreted as a kind of invisible divine fire. Lucifer and the fallen angels no longer have this soul, this divine fire, in their bodies. So while those who have lost their souls will never return to God, those with souls are attracted towards God as by a magnetic force. Here too, in gnosticism, lies the foundation for Paracelsus’ dichotomy of good and evil.4 Arguably, his main approach to neoplatonism was Marsilio Ficino, but in the discussion we find other famous names like Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim or Johannes Trithemius. Especially in the case of Trithemius, an authority on demonology, witchcraft and cryptography, we can decipher some influences on one of Paracelsus’ best-known medical works, the Große Wundartzney of 1536. Like Nettesheim and Trithemius before him, Paracelsus has no fear of coming into close contact with all kinds of popular magic. Quite the reverse: all kinds of popular belief, including magical traditions, became a robust source for his medical and philosophical theories. No wonder, then, that he was called a magician, a sorcerer or, even worse, a Lutherus medicorum.5 3.
Popular Magic and Natural Spirits With regard to popular magic, Paracelsus did not accept the official paradigm from the Malleus maleficarum, which judged all forms of magic as evil and satanic. Paracelsus upholds the division between good, useful, and evil, unusable magic (the black arts). What helps to cure is acceptable. What is harmful is forbidden. That’s a very pragmatic view, and once more, the term ‘evil’ is not discussed, but is linked to his personal view on this topic. Paracelsus did not think of himself as a magician and scorned those who did. But his belief in God and his clear Christian basis did not preclude in any way a belief in magic. For him, magic reveals the unseen influences to which all men and things are subjected. Magic offers the control over hidden forces that are made evident by medicine, philosophy and astronomy. The ‘magica’6 of Paracelsus is not a theory explaining how to reveal or create
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______________________________________________________________ these hidden forces, but how to bring specific celestial forces down to earth and to guide them to the objects on which they may exert their power.7 And if these forces can be used for man’s health, then they shall be used. No discussion about good and evil, just the acceptance of something which was natural to him, a kind of natural magic.8 The natural spirits attracted his very special interest. For Paracelsus, these are natural beings, with the same right of existence as man. Furthermore, they are not as different from man as one might believe. ‘They are witty, rich, clever, poor, dumb - like we who are from Adam.’9 They seem to be human, although different in every aspect of their existence, because God made them in the image of man just as man is made in God's image. Paracelsus ascribes to these spirits the same characteristics as man possesses. They have health, disease, similar customs, behaviour, and even speech. Similar virtues, which vary from better and subtler to coarser or rougher. Only in figure do they differ from men. Like humans, they eat of the fruits of their labour. And the spirits have wisdom to govern, justice to protect and preserve. So Paracelsus tends to describe them and their influence, and he is absolutely convinced that he does a good work by doing so. In his little essay Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris (first published 1566), he points this out. It is more blessed to describe the nature of the nymphs than [military or monastic] orders; it is more blessed to describe the nature of giants than courtly manners; it is more blessed to speak about Mélusine than about artillery and canons; more blessed to describe the little people living underground than to fight with swords or to serve the ladies.10 As one can see, Paracelsus had no problem believing in the existence of nymphs, and in his eyes it is more worthwhile to engage in the study of magical sciences than in any other matter. In Liber de nymphis, Paracelsus clearly underlines that in principle, nymphs are soulless beings. Indeed, marriage has such salutary effects that even a soulless being could win a soul and bear children with souls - if lawfully married to a mortal man. But to have a soul also means to have the celestial fire inside one, which can lead to God. How could it be that such a creature could be evil from its very beginning? 4.
Witches ‘There are more superstitions in the Roman Church than in all these women and witches.’11 Paracelus’ unique perspective on good and evil is
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______________________________________________________________ evident when turning our interest to his own witchcraft theory. Witches are, according to Paracelsus, women who are possessed by what he calls Ascendant, an evil spirit sent by the Devil to take over control of the person’s body and soul after puberty. A male person can also be possessed by an Ascendant, but in this case the man will become an ordinary criminal. This evil spirit will first plant hate and envy in the heart of the woman. When the soul is damaged by these negative feelings, the spirit will drive the woman to do ‘Black Art;’ the spirit will even guide her by controlling her dreams. As a result, he did not consider witches guilty for the Black Arts they performed. The Ascendant infected them, and as in his purely medical treatises, Paracelsus recommends a kind of ‘artzney’ (medicine) in order to save them: praying and fasting. Sorcery is a kind of illness, and Paracelsus knew the medicine to remedy it. Therefore, he argued, there was no need for witch trials and stakes. But there is another interesting point about the Paracelsian witch. As he clearly points out, he cannot see any reason to judge the witch. It is not her who is doing Black Art, but rather the Ascendant. So how could the witch be an evil person? Once again, we have to notice the crossing over of medical and theological, nearly magical elements. The distinctions of his time have no effect on Paracelsus; he is capable of curing a magical problem with theological, even purely Catholic methods, which he called medicine 5.
The Death Penalty and War Due to the limitations of space, I would like to briefly discuss Paracelus’ rejection of the death penalty and of war, which are linked together in his Auslegung über die zehn gebott gottes from 1530/31.12 In the discussion of the Fifth Commandment, he points out that ‘we Christians know that we may not punish any evil nor should we, only in God is the punishment.’13 What follows is no definition of evil. Rather, Paracelsus directly comes a clear conclusion: punishment may be necessary, but it is based on God, and if God says ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ then any kind of punishment or even behaviour, which could lead to killing, is strictly forbidden. ‘Because God commands ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ may it come from your malice or mischief, so no one shall kill by law.’14 Even harsher: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Even Jesus has said this in the New Testament, and he added more loudly (beware of that, you jurists!): I do not want the death of the sinner. Does this remark not refer to the law? And you hang the sinner, break him on the wheel, and drown him. If he really is a sinner, why do you judge him and sentence him? In the end that person killing him must be a sinner himself.15
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______________________________________________________________ But Paracelsus not only had clear ideas about the death penalty. He also plainly rejected war. Just one example from De sanguine ultra mortem: ‘So will cry out for revenge those slaughtered, murdered and killed innocent in wartimes. Because God has commanded: Thou shalt not kill.’16 The death penalty and war - both are evil. Paracelsus often tends to argue in this fashion. He does not fill a word with a new sense proper to himself; rather, he relevates the paradigm in which this word could work. Therefore, the idea of evil is not discussed explicitly, rather it is destroyed, at least in its traditional understanding.17 6.
Concluding Thoughts Having finished my presentation, one may inquire into its key points. What do other specialists on Paracelsus think about these matters? And how might the Paracelsian concept of evil finally be defined? With regard to the first question, the answer is not very enlightening. Despite of the persistent presence of the word in his texts and despite the fact that Paracelsus tried several times to create a concept of evil, none of the great names of Paracelsian science wrote about this problem. There is no book and no article on this subject in any of the works about Paracelsus. Let me be very direct: the inconcise way of thinking and writing and the vast extent of Paracelsus’ written production opened the doors for wind-bags and all kind of academic privateers. Their works lie now like a layer of mould on any attempt to come closer to the philosophical world of Paracelsus by infecting the public discussion with their useless contents and by pretending to have already made strenuous efforts in research on him. Therefore, the question about the meaning and the place of evil in Paracelsus is still not answered. Coming to the second question, at least I want to attempt an answer. As for many other elements in his works, evil could not be seen outside a dichotomy, here the dichotomy good-evil. Thinking in dichotomies is central for Paracelsus. Instead of discussing the meaning of evil, Paracelsus thinks in relative terms: is what we have called evil really evil? So Paracelsus is not entering a new concept of evil into the history of philosophy, but he tries to discuss the things, which are called evil. Especially in the case of the witch, we can state that a person does not have to be labelled as evil even if she does evil things. And in the case of the death penalty and war, he overturns the traditional way of understanding by qualifying any kind of putting a man to death as killing and evil. So evil becomes something, which is linked to mankind in a natural way. One and the same thing could be good or evil, depending on its use of see the case of magic. An evil-doing person could be not guilty and not evil in her - see the case of the witch. And the so-called natural behaviour, not discussed for a long time, could be evil, being an improper use of God’s word
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______________________________________________________________ - see the case of the Fifth Commandment. And herein lies the idea of evil for Paracelsus. In its relativity, it is unstable - like all mankind.
Notes 1
M Neugebauer-Wölk, ‘Wege aus dem Dschungel. Betrachtungen zur Hexenforschung’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 29, 2003, p. 328. 2 O Reichmann, ‘Möglichkeiten der lexikographischen Erschließung der Texte des Paracelsus’, in Resultate und Desiderate der ParacelsusForschung, P Dilg & H Rudolph (eds.), Steiner, Stuttgart, 1993, p. 183, n. 2. 3 H Rudolph, ‘Paracelsus’ Laientheologie in traditionsgeschichtlicher Sicht und in ihrer Zuordnung zu Reformation und katholischer Reform’, in Resultate und Desiderate der Paracelsus-Forschung, P Dilg & H Rudolph (eds.), Steiner, Stuttgart, 1993, pp. 86-89. 4 W Pagel, Paracelsus. An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, S Karger, Basel & New York, 1958, pp. 209-211. 5 A general survey on the topos of the ‘Luther of the Medicine’ gives the article of H Schott, ‘Lutherus medicorum: Wege und Irrwege der ParacelsusRezeption’, in Medizin und Sozialwesen in Mitteldeutschland zur Reformationszeit, S. Oehmig (ed), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2007, pp. 273-288. 6 This latinized term is the one Paracelsus always used for his concept of magic. It appears very often in his writings and is even in the title of some of his texts. 7 Pagel, Paracelsus, p. 62. 8 P Ball, The Devil’s Doctor. Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, Heinemann, London, 2006, pp. 5-10. 9 Theophrast von Hohenheim, gen. Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke. I. Abteilung: Medizinische, naturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, K Sudhoff (ed), R. Oldenbourg, München & Berlin, 1933, vol. 14, p. 122. 10 Ibid, pp. 116-117. 11 Ibid., p. 142. 12 Theophrast von Hohenheim, genannt Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke. II. Abteilung: Theologische und religionsphilosophische Schriften, K. Goldammer (ed), Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1961, vol. 7, pp. 117227. 13 Ibid., p. 158. 14 Ibid., p. 157. 15 Ibid., pp. 157-158. 16 Theophrast von Hohenheim, Sämtliche Werke. I. Abteilung, vol. 14, p. 104.
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A general discussion of the social ethics of Paracelsus is provided by the article of R Bernoulli, ‘Über die Sozialethik des Arztes Paracelsus’, in Paracelsus. Das Werk - die Rezeption, V. Zimmermann (ed), Steiner, Stuttgart, 1995, pp. 137-146
Bibliography Ball, P., The Devil’s Doctor. Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science. Heinemann, London, 2006. Bernoulli, R., ‘Über die Sozialethik des Arztes Paracelsus’. In V. Zimmermann (ed), Paracelsus. Das Werk - die Rezeption, Steiner, Stuttgart, 1995, pp. 137-146. Neugebauer-Wölk, M., ‘Wege aus dem Dschungel. Betrachtungen zur Hexenforschung’. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 29, 2003, pp. 316-347. Pagel, W., Paracelsus. An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance. S. Karger, Basel & New York, 1958. Reichmann, O., ‘Möglichkeiten der lexikographischen Erschließung der Texte des Paracelsus’. In P. Dilg & H. Rudolph (eds), Resultate und Desiderate der Paracelsus-Forschung, Steiner, Stuttgart, 1993, pp. 183-198. Rudolph, H., ‘Paracelsus’ Laientheologie in traditionsgeschichtlicher Sicht und in ihrer Zuordnung zu Reformation und katholischer Reform’. In P. Dilg & H. Rudolph (eds), Resultate und Desiderate der Paracelsus-Forschung, Steiner, Stuttgart, 1993, pp. 79-97. Schott, H., ‘Lutherus medicorum: Wege und Irrwege der ParacelsusRezeption’. In S. Oehmig (ed), Medizin und Sozialwesen in Mitteldeutschland zur Reformationszeit, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2007, pp. 273-288. Theophrast von Hohenheim, gen. Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke. I. Abteilung: Medizinische, naturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Schriften, K. Sudhoff (ed), volumes 1-14, R. Oldenbourg, München & Berlin, 1922-1933. Theophrast von Hohenheim, genannt Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke. II. Abteilung: Theologische und religionsphilosophische Schriften, K. Goldammer (ed), volumes 2-7, Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1955-1986.
Can I Play with Madness? The Psychopathy of Evil, Leadership, and Political Mis-Management Frank J. Faulkner Abstract: Psychopathic behaviour runs the gamut from the individual to the global, from empty delusions and threats of evil to all-too-real methods of mass destruction. Popular media is rife with depictions and descriptions of fictional and non-fictional tyrants, political leaders with the will and resources to wreak havoc. The boundaries between the real and the imagined are not always clearly delineated; many times, for many reasons, the nature of evil is at best, normalised, at worst, glorified. Given all this, how can evil be confronted, challenged, and overcome? How can we begin to understand the nature of evil, and distinguish between good and evil ideologies, good and evil leaders, normalcy and psychopathy? Language is used by media and public figures to encourage selective demonisation of persons, groups, or events, and our own understanding of good and evil is thus informed and coloured. Media coverage of acts of violence or evil ineluctably adds to either the normalisation or glorification of evil. If not made the subject of reflection and analysis, reporting of evil can become a tool for spreading the madness of evil. Key Words: ‘First strike’, groupthink, ponerology, psychopathology, responsible journalism, rhetoric ***** 1.
Introduction ‘All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ Edmund Burke
It was there [in The Prince] that Machiavelli first presented with matchless clarity and force his basic assumption that rulers must always be prepared to do evil if good must come of it.1 Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements as well as the accompanying ideologies … and turned them into caricatures of themselves. 2
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______________________________________________________________ Perhaps the most evocative and lasting image of a ‘psychopath’ is Dr Hannibal Lecter, the urbane omnivore in the film The Silence of the Lambs. However - and Hollywood iconography apart - reality tends to display psychopathic rage in the manner of, say, Peter Sutcliffe, the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ who terrorised the North of England in the 1970s and 1980s, or Dr. Harold Shipman, the English GP whose victim tally runs, literally, into the hundreds. Psychopathic behaviour moves beyond the merely mundane, however, and projects itself into our conscious and unconscious selves to represent a terror lurking in the darkest recesses of the mind, and writ large when the stereotypical monster emerges from the cupboard to perpetrate his - or her - grisly deeds. It has doubtless been written elsewhere that a fair percentage of world leaders display distinct psychopathic tendencies, thus lending a tentative legitimacy to the old adage that ‘you don’t have to be mad here (in government of whatever type), but it helps.’ That old chestnut notwithstanding, it nonetheless seems, in an age of coolly directed, almost casual carnage and wholesale destruction, that gratuitous violence in Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Darfur as examples have to compete with celebrity Big Brother, the Beckhams, and the ongoing and apparently tiresome investigation in to whether Diana, Princess of Wales was really murdered by MI6 at the request of the British Royals, for airspace sicked up by apparently salivating anchormen and women feeding the voracious appetites of global media. Meeting the insatiable demands of a celebrity-obsessed public is one thing, but justifying wholesale ‘collateral damage’ is quite another. This was recently epitomised by the psittacine pronouncements by Tony Blair, MP, the erstwhile British Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and relayer-inchief of our national war plans emanating from inside the Washington beltway. Whilst Blair (and his successor) may, for public consumption, replay the mantra about the ‘nobility’3 of a costly war on two distant, Asian fronts, there is now little doubt that this military adventure has been a disaster almost entirely of our own making, and for which, largely, ordinary Iraqis and Afghans are paying the price. Similarly, one may even imagine Stalin’s purges having a somewhat altruistic motivation (from his perspective anyway), albeit at the cost of millions of Russian lives. These contentious matters notwithstanding, it may nonetheless be conjectured that the military adventurism of Messrs Blair and Bush is more to do with naked aggression, and the evils that underpin it, than anything derived from a ‘do-good’ vision of freeing ordinary Iraqis from the pernicious yoke of Saddamism. Ever since the ingrained, and now permanent infamy of 9/11, there seems to have arisen a catalyst for normalised evil that camouflages itself under the banner of righteous wrath and the noble proliferation of democracy, seemingly at any price. This may be borne out by the rising body count of
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______________________________________________________________ ordinary Iraqis,4 as just one example among many, that introducing the abiding principles of the so-called ‘freedom’ ideology is not without cost, and that ‘sacrifices’ have to be made in order for this presumed state to emerge. However we, in the largely hermetically secure West, note that the banality of evil5 is such that the reports of now-commonplace massacres in Baghdad markets find themselves competing for front-rank coverage alongside the obviously compelling narratives that were Shilpa Shetty’s travails in Celebrity Big Brother and Robbie Williams’ retreat to rehab, alongside the ‘new’ media pre-occupation with Amy Winehouse’s drug problems.6 Also fairly recently, we are treated to the spectacle of David Beckham moving from the lofty pinnacle of Real Madrid Football Club, to what may be kindly referred to as the ‘backwaters’ of the global game in California. From this perspective alone, we see that concepts like ‘evil’ and ‘good’ have to compete with post-post-modern phenomena like the cult of falsely glittering personality, vacuous intellectual contrivance, and the tortured wailings of personalities with an axe to grind with someone or other. 2.
A Ponerological Psychopathy of Evil Living in the so-called ‘real’ world of The Simpsons, Microsoft Vista, McDonald’s, electricity bills, inflation and interest rates, and where the next bottle of Jacob’s Creek or E and J Gallo Shiraz is coming from, we may be forgiven for taking a somewhat detached view of the excesses perpetrated in Iraq, Somalia, or other places ‘of which we know nothing.’ So, our direct, subjective experiences of what may be termed ‘extraordinary evil’ are mostly limited to books, films, and other branches of the global media. As James Waller would have it, It is easy to detach ourselves from the perpetrators of extraordinary human evil and their victims. Most of us know nothing - in an experiential sense - about the perpetration of extraordinary evil. We have not been through anything in our personal lives that remotely compares to the atrocities inflicted on millions of victims of extraordinary evil across the globe. Each of us is, though, the surviving heir of catastrophes and destruction that we never experienced. As such, we are called to find meaning where there appears to be none.7 Luckily, most of us in the so-called ‘civilised’ world never have, and hopefully never will, experience the horror of attempted genocide, mass rape as a political weapon, wholesale butchery, or the insidious terror of suicide bombings. We are, relative to certain combat zones, reasonably secure. From the vantage point of security, then, we observe the unfolding
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______________________________________________________________ evils that are visited on our fellow human beings in an almost detached manner, safe yet horrified all at the same time. By and large, we rely heavily on media commentators, scholars, politicians, religious leaders, non-governmental organisations like Oxfam and Human Rights Watch to act as our consciences, attempting to make sense out of what, on the face of it, appears to be mindless, irrational insanity. In the final analysis, we are nonetheless left, after all the prose, the rhetoric, the theoretical and applied research, the hand-wringing, with one question: why? Part of the problem, as regular attendees at ‘Evil and Human Wickedness’ conferences know very well, is getting one’s head round what this thing, evil, is. Perhaps it is that, in an increasingly secularised world, we tend not to deal in matters of this nature, and that the triumphs of technology eschew any serious considerations of moral (or, indeed immoral) absolutes. For the most part, scholars have tended to leave these matters to academics dealing with religion and philosophy in the earnest belief that they were, or are, intellectually and temperamentally best equipped to delve into the mysteries. These matters notwithstanding, the paper must inevitably return to its central argument - that of evil perpetrated by supposed rational human beings, delivered in a planned and clinical fashion, against innocent or defenceless human beings rather than the battlefield scenario of one standing army arraigned against another. The logical outcome of this proposition is that evil, as perpetrated by human beings, suggests a somewhat nihilistic streak in human personality, one that lends itself all too readily to the planned and coldly executed destruction of one’s less powerful fellows. It is accepted that these deviations from codes of ‘civilised’ behaviour incur a sense of distaste and outright disgust, but how relevant is the element of psychological dysfunction in the offenders? Staub appears to be in no doubt that ‘madness’ is not the principal culprit: But the people who participated in this mass murder were normal by conventional standards of mental health. Interviews and psychological testing found no evidence of mental illness or psychological dysfunction in the Nuremberg defendants and SS criminals. Large-scale murder and mistreatment are commonplace in human history. Understanding the sources is our task; labelling it madness does not provide such understanding.8 When we return to the total lunacy of the Holocaust as the most shocking and visceral example of planned mass murder of modern (or maybe any) times, we see the innate capability of people to transcend mere everyday evil and take it down to the abyssal depths of depravity.9 To be sure, we have
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______________________________________________________________ discovered historical accounts of mass murder as entertainment, for example the Romanesque ‘bread and circuses’ used as a political instrument to feed the appetites of the masses, thus ensuring some form of social order. A strong self- and mutually-destructive streak notwithstanding, humans nonetheless display a marked inclination to indulge in wrongdoing. It is, therefore, incumbent upon this chapter to take a brief look at the nature of evil itself. As Waller, again, informs us, almost every culture has a word, or a concept of, ‘evil.’10 This may go part way towards explaining, semantically, why the practise of it is such a global phenomenon. Certainly, the idea of evil has had more or less universal religious connotations, a necessary prerequisite of one is to accept the existence of a supreme, benevolent deity; that is, where the light exists, then so must the dark. However, it is noted, certainly by sociologists like Kurt Wolff, that the word had largely disappeared from the lexicon of academe, due in part, no doubt, to the spread of secularism and rigorously scientific methods of enquiry that demand how everything works, but perhaps not why in all cases. Cave! Hic Dragones!11 The notion of evil, and its oft-hidden outrider psychopathy, are all too apparent in this predictably endless War on Terror as War on Evil. The endless ‘demonisation’ of Islam which is sometimes viewed as a creeping enemy (as some would have it) is an oft-regurgitated mantra that assumes, as is often the case, that if one repeats something often enough (even a blatant lie) then the target audience will start to believe it. In this arena of propagandising and alleged deception, the people we have elevated to govern us, and in whom we have invested a considerable amount of trust, have great latitude to take whatever steps they deem fit to guarantee our security and way of life. Moreover, I am sure that there are legions of psychologists that would attest to the manifest, labyrinthine neural pathways of the mind, and the propensity for evil or hatred that may be found there. In terms of political leadership, this is often a pathology that starts at the top and trickles down to infect entire societies, as in, for example, psychologically preparing a nation to accept war, examples of which are replete throughout history.12 These incidences of a transition from peace to war are always carefully planned (inviting charges of malice aforethought) and equally forensically executed, but also bearing in mind the mistakes that are often perpetrated during the socalled ‘fog of war.’ It is anticipated that the decision to go to war, and the almost inevitable haemorrhaging of civilian blood that accompanies it, has to be taken coolly, calculatingly, and with a firmly achievable military objective in mind. As sundry peaceniks and their fellow travellers remind us, these decisions indicate a form of collective madness that eschews morality, 3.
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______________________________________________________________ dialogue, and civilised restraint. Instead, it embraces what former British Labour Party leader Michael Foot referred to as the ‘hysterical bloodlust’ of war fever during the start of the Falklands War in 1982. In terms of where the current Iraqi conflagration finds us, the waste of human and material capital on the basis of a patently false prospectus presents us with a staggering cost both to ourselves here in the western industrialised world, the so-called ‘Coalition of the willing,’ allied to the rather casual, cold-blooded utterance of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the loss of American lives and treasure alone is ‘worth the investment.’13 But, it is noted, neither she nor her Commander-in-Chief will be footing the bill personally and neither, one presumes, will any of their progeny. However, the Machiavellian dark arts of statesmanship preclude an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation by the prime movers; it is, usually, the foot soldiers and so-called ‘cannon fodder’ that have to absorb the harsh realities of high-tech warfare and the enhanced, ‘more bangs per buck’ of modern weaponry. However, it is noted that going to war, and presumed careful consideration of what should be done in a post-conflictual scenario, requires careful planning. It is evident, though, that the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq suggests anything but careful planning, given the country’s rapid descent into chaos and sectarian internecine butchery on an unimaginable scale by most comparable standards.14 Quite how we got to this stage, with an almost total absence of control by the victorious forces, is a moot point. That the war created a vacuum into which poured sundry malcontents, criminals, jihadists, religious factions and ambitions political types is beyond question. What this puts forward is a view that the victorious parties were not really bothered about the fate of ordinary Iraqis; indeed, it may even be postulated that Blair, Bush and their ilk have treated these innocent human beings with callous, even psychopathic, disregard. Perhaps this is what is meant by misplaced trust; Blair emerged from the post-Thatcher-Majorite era and after eighteen years of successive Tory governments, with the catchy tune ‘Things can only get better,’ in an atmosphere of ‘Cool Britannia.’ Similarly, Bush ascended to the purple of the US Presidency following Clinton, Lewinskygate, Whitewater, and the vexed question of gays in the military. However, it is further noted that these people might not have succeeded without money, certainly, but also with some arresting personality traits seemingly amenable to the public’s taste for larger-than-life characters, someone who ‘looks good’ and can convince the electorate of their suitability to run their countries. This is all very well, but, as Bluemel notes, history shows us that many of the great personages down the ages have been in fact conquerors and dictators (Genghis Khan, Stalin, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, etc.) and that, rather than choose our leaders for their more endearing
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______________________________________________________________ characteristics, we have allowed ourselves to meekly succumb to people with aggressive and compulsive natures.15 For those politicians in question, it rather boils down to a question raised by Canon Paul Oestreicher albeit in a slightly different context, but which nonetheless conveys a sense of almost quiet desperation at the follies of our supposed political masters: How is it that a nation like Britain can come to support instruments of mass slaughter [nuclear weapons] as a means of defending its values, its freedom, its independence, its heritage?16 This mentality of avoiding the awkward questions about civilian fatalities, nuclear ‘megadeaths’ and the juxtaposition of means and ends as it applies to Iraqi civilian casualties in the ‘liberation’ of their country is brought into stark relief when one considers the impact of high death counts on a community, and especially in the euphemistic consideration of ‘liberation.’ Whilst some may argue that, in the context of the Machiavelli quote at the start of this chapter, evil may have to be exacted in order to eventually maximise good, it is not consistent with the analytical outcome of replacing one form of autocracy (Saddam Hussein) with another (the Coalition) as justification for an horrendous attritional decrease in the Iraqi population.17 This is further underlined by figures presented by, for example, The Lancet, that postulates over 600,000-plus casualties amongst the Iraqi population, and the authoritative website iraqbodycount alluded to earlier in endnote form that lists between 57-63,000 civilians dead as a result of military action. In any event, it is clear that, whether one considers these widely fluctuating statistics to be accurate or not, nonetheless it is a damning indictment on the perpetrators, who purport to come in peace and with the prize of democracy and ‘freedom’ in close attendance. As morally repugnant as the Iraqi conflagration undoubtedly is, one must nonetheless contemplate the fact that the concept of evil at the global (system) level of analysis offers even gloomier prognoses as this millennium progresses. It is not so much the commission of atrocities that already exist, but the potential for wholesale slaughter on a scale previously unimaginable by any known criteria. That there are leaders out there who have undertaken policy reversals to ‘think the unthinkable’ is a testament to rationalising ‘evil’ in the name of ‘security.’, or, more contentiously, extending hegemony. When the truly ‘unthinkable’ becomes ‘thinkable,’ then the issue of morality, evil, and simple right and wrong takes on a whole new dimension because of the implications that arise, as this text will now go on to open up.
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Nuclear Armageddon: Evil Writ Large, or Only Testing? The concept of evil invested itself with a whole new dimension on the 16th of July, 1945. The Trinity test at Alamagordo, New Mexico, gave the world its first sight of the awesome destructive power of the atom. Opponheimer’s famous pronouncement from the Hindu Baghavad Gita is well-documented elsewhere, but the sentiment remains the same: the testing of a nuclear weapon at the close of World War Two changed the world, irrevocably, forever. Now, it is how we deal with the terrible legacy of Trinity that pre-occupies politicians, academics, and scientists alike. As we are aware, the world almost came to the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the misunderstandings and incompetencies that accompanied it in the early 1960s, a fact not lost on nuclear warfare planners and their political masters. Admittedly, both the US and the then-USSR took steps to safeguard against any repetition of what may be termed a near miss, yet still busily occupied themselves with building bigger warheads and steadily increasing their nuclear inventories, thus ensuring the absurd equation of ‘overkill’. Perhaps the terminology of the time is instructive: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), megadeaths, nuclear winter, counter-value targeting, counter-city stratagems, as examples. That, as we are now aware, is only one aspect of the ongoing nightmare that nuclear weapons promise. Vertical proliferation (that is, quantitative increases in existing nuclear arsenals) is to be set against the potentially far greater dilemma of horizontal proliferation (increases in declared, and indeed undeclared, nuclear capable states). We need not be reminded of the current impasse that the Iranian nuclear expansion presents, as well as the arguably greater problem of a de facto nuclearised North Korea. It is with the current scenario in mind that that this chapter progresses, as it offers some insight into the kind of world we may have to contemplate as this century makes its way forward. What should be abundantly clear is that probably now more than ever, the international community is in want of clear heads, wise counsel, and decisive and constructive leadership. As matters currently stand, it is difficult to see where this may come from. Trends emerging from the millennium suggest that a more aggressive, bellicose form of polity is shaping the world, one that does not balk at the use of military force as an adjunct to Realpolitik, rather than ‘soft’18 power, to underline the ‘new world order’ declared by the elder Bush at the start of the US’ tenure as sole hyperpower. At that time, there was a feeling amongst some observers that the world would be entering a period of calm - a ‘peace dividend’ if you will - that followed the demise of the Reaganesque ‘Evil Empire.’ Such wishful altruism could not possibly last, rather like the late MP Robin Cook’s desire for New Labour to adopt an ‘ethical’ foreign policy when the party assumed power in May 1997. Whilst such naivety may seem
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______________________________________________________________ to be quaintly endearing, there was never much hope of it existing long after the words were first uttered. As advocates of Realpolitik remind us from time to time, it is preferable to see the world as it really is, and not as we all know it should be. Into this environment must be factored the nuclear equation, and the fact that many people see these weapons as a ‘necessary’ evil. This point is underscored by the doctrinal thinking of ‘no first use.’ That is the notion that nuclear weapons are to be used only in a retaliatory capacity if a perceived enemy elected to deploy them first. This had been the cornerstone of many of the major powers’ nuclear policies for decades. For most, it still appears to be. That may, arguably, have remained the case for all the nuclear powers, but, and also considering the tragic events of mid-September 2001, there seems to have been a seismic shift that suggests that some are thinking the unthinkable - that is, re-aligning nuclear policy to factor in a ‘first use’ stratagem in certain circumstances. As a report from the US Congressional Research Service has pointed out, the US has never ruled out ‘first use’, thus: ‘The United States has never ruled out the possible first use of nuclear weapons. Although it has pledged that it would not attack non-nuclear weapons states under most circumstances, it has maintained a policy of ‘studied ambiguity’ about the circumstances under which it would consider nuclear retaliation and the type of response it might use if a nation attacked the United States with WMD.’19 (Emphases added.) It should be transparent to the reader that an ‘open-ended’ approach to nuclear weapons deployment policy encourages more than mere ‘studied ambiguity.’ There is, it would appear, an implicit threat from this kind of posture that leaves any potential adversary (whether real or imagined) unsure as to how it adapts to bi-lateral relations with the US, especially if relations become somewhat strained. This is all the more vexing if a state becomes pressured by a US seeking to gain a political advantage with the threat of a nuclear casus belli somewhere in the background. As the above document goes on to explain, contemporaneously, ‘In its nuclear posture review (NRP), the Bush administration did not alter the U.S. policy on the first use of nuclear weapons. However, with its emphasis on the emerging threats posed by nations with weapons of mass destruction, the administration did appear to shift towards a more explicit approach when acknowledging that the
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______________________________________________________________ United States might use nuclear weapons in response to attacks by nations armed with chemical, biological, and conventional weapons. The Bush administration has stated that the United States would develop and deploy those nuclear capabilities that it would need to defeat the capabilities of any potential adversary whether or not it possessed nuclear weapons.’20 (Emphases added) Moreover, the evil dimension that the chapter invests itself with concerns the belief that nuclear weapons are not inherently evil in themselves, but are the instruments of a policy that is so configured. So, if the Bush administration is a naturally pernicious manifestation of a bellicose, expansionist political system then the instruments that they wield are mere extensions of evil for these nefarious purposes. Really, the ‘evil’ dimension of nuclear weapons arises from a clear and obvious acceptance that all WMD are, by their properties and methods of use, highly indiscriminate. That is, they are as likely to affect noncombatants as the military targets they are ostensibly used to neutralise. This point has frequently been used by anti-nuclear campaigners whose avowed raison d’ être is to eradicate these weapons from the face of the earth. Not surprisingly, contemplating ‘first use’ raises the stakes, as well as the threshold, in terms of deployment and also horizontal and vertical proliferation. This is, of course, highly problematic from a global viewpoint and becomes even more so in a notoriously volatile region like the Middle East. Disturbingly, the issue of ‘first use’ now apparently extends to the use of so-called ‘bunker busting’ bombs that can penetrate deep into the earth to ostensibly reach ‘terrorist’ hideouts and caches of weapons and support materials. On the face of it, this seems to be an overtly operational stance that converges neatly with the ‘War on Terror’ and the avowed doctrine of dealing with ‘terrorists’ wherever they may be found. As the US 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reveals, the American position on use of nuclear weapons has shifted somewhat, to incorporate a new deployment scenario in which use of small, tactical nuclear weapons for use as described above is now feasible, and shows a ‘renewed willingness’ to regard nuclear weapons as useful, and indeed ‘usable’, instruments of wholesale destruction to ‘defeat’ hardened targets.21 The 2001 NPR also suggests that there are ‘contingencies’ for which nuclear weapons use may be considered when considering the efficacy of nuclear strikes. These include: an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbours (now, obviously moribund); a North Korean attack on South Korea; a military confrontation involving the status of Taiwan, which obviously would target the mainland Chinese Peoples’ Republic. The Report also lists Iran,
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______________________________________________________________ Syria, and Libya (now back in the fold of ‘civilised’ nations) as countries that could be included in such ‘contingencies,’ as examples of states that actively sponsor or harbour ‘terrorists’ and/or may have active plans to research and develop WMD and the means to deliver them to a pre-determined target or targets. What should be abundantly clear at this point is that the US, and presumably other nuclear weapons states (including the UK) are prepared to breach existing treaties (such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) in furtherance of research and subsequent new designs of relatively low-yield nuclear warheads. However, what this strategy clearly signals is a failure of diplomacy, a failure of leadership, and a signal failure of morality should any state consider the production and possible deployment of such horrific weapons. In the last analysis, it also signifies an abrogation of any notion of being the ‘good guys’ set against the perceived ‘evil’ that terrorism now represents in the popular Western imagination. 5.
Conclusions During the Vietnam War, Lt. William Calley of the US Army presided over an atrocity that has reverberated down the years as the My Lai massacre. Calley’s defence was that he ‘was only obeying orders.’ There is no doubt that, and certainly in the context of Nazi outrages during and indeed before World War Two, this type of ‘excuse,’ if that is the word, is common currency amongst those seeking to evade someone else’s justice. However, as many studies have shown, the dividing line between resistance and acquiescence is a fine one, and that sustained psychological pressure to ‘conform’ are indeed, or appear to be, compelling. In the 21st century, it appears that very little has changed, apart from an apparent diminishing of accountability. Apart from a few, low-level token prosecutions, the Coalition leadership has escaped any charges of crimes against humanity, murder, or human rights abuses at the time of writing. It is also anticipated that none will follow either. What is not now in doubt is the unassailable fact that the Iraqi experiment/adventure is seemingly teetering on the brink of implosion; the country is currently convulsed by a de facto civil war characterised by internecine strife, wholesale human rights abuses, and the creation of a ‘failed state,’ by any known criteria. This despite Iraq’s vast energy resources and potential for economic growth. The easy outcome is to lay the blame for these disasters squarely at the doors of Bush, Blair, and their supporters and colleagues in government. That they should accept some measure of culpability, both moral and judicial, is beyond doubt. That they will be called to account is highly unlikely. Quite what this says about the so-called ‘New World Order’ is open to question; however, and given the ongoing advances in military technology - the ‘more
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______________________________________________________________ bangs per buck’ scenario - this new century/millennium promises to be at least as violent and lawless as anything that preceded it. This is probably no more exemplified than with the current impasse between a seemingly, and increasingly, belligerent Iran on the one side and principally the US (alongside its allies) on the other. Given the ongoing dilemma about what Iran’s nuclear ambitions may or may not be, President Bush’s speech to American Veterans in Reno, Nevada, on Tuesday 28th August 2007 will probably be remembered for the thinly-veiled threat to ‘do something’ about Iran’s growing influence in the wider Middle East, and the possible imputations of what Bush intends to do, militarily, to neutralise a perceived challenge. What many analysts believe is that a nuclearised Iran raises the bar in terms of proliferation issues, and the measures that an increasingly isolated Bush may take in the declining days of his under-fire, lame-duck presidency. Within the context of this chapter and its aims, there remains a strong possibility that the general consensus on Iran may be compromised by some Western nations’ decision to seek a military option, thus negating any chance to return at least a modicum of stability to a much-beleaguered region. Given the morass that is currently Iraq and environs, and in which the principal protagonists are increasingly entangled, the prospects of a ‘winwin’ scenario are slim as matters currently stand. Taking the chapter as a whole, a likely outcome of reading the text is that the world is in something of a mess; it requires force to settle disputes, ‘extraordinary rendition’ to euphemise torture as a ‘reliable’ method of gaining intelligence, and the possible deployment of WMD as a ‘decisive’ factor in the apparently interminable War on Terror. Given the technological propensity for even more destructive weapons and the increasingly more accurate means to deliver them, the future looks decidedly dystopian for the majority of people living on this planet.
Notes 1
Q Skinner and R Price (eds.) Machiavelli: The Prince, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, xxiv. 2 Described as ‘The science of evil,’ Shorter Oxford Dictionary, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003. 3 G Wheatcroft, ‘Blair is Dishonoured by Iraq - But Not as Much as Brown and Hain,’ The Guardian, London, 07 February, 2007, 29. 4 See, for example, iraqbodycount.com for a reasonably accurate indicator of the death toll amongst Iraqi civilians since the start of the ‘war of liberation’ in March, 2003. 5 As discussed by Hannah Arendt, among others.
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All of these stories have received more than adequate coverage in the tabloid press and on television during late 2006 and up to the middle of 2007. 7 J Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, , p. 9. 8 E Staub, The Roots of Evil: the Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, p. 91. 9 See, for example, Arendt’s work, and also E Staub, op.cit., esp. pp. 91-98. 10 Waller, op. cit., p. 10. 11 Literally, ‘Beware! Here be dragons!’(Also the title of a paper by the late Professor Susan George). 12 Take, for example, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and more recently the conditioning that preceded the invasion of Iraq. 13 Associated Press, interview with Secretary Rice, 21 December, 2005. 14 For a lucid discussion about this area see, for example, P Rogers, A War Too Far: Iran, Iraq and the New American Century, Pluto, London, 2005. esp. pp. 26-27; pp. 30-56. 15 C S Bluemel, War, Politics and Insanity, World Press, Denver, 1948. 16 P Oestreicher, ‘Holocaust Day Memorial Underlines the Madness of Maintaining Britain’s Murderous Capability,’ The Guardian, Saturday, January 27, 2007. 17 P Rogers, A War Too Far: Iran, Iraq and the New American Century, Pluto Press, London, 2006, p. 46. See also, N Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, Penguin, London, 2003; P Rogers, Into the Long War, Pluto Press, London, 2007; M Shaw, The New Western Way of War, Polity, Cambridge, 2005; J Baylis et al. Strategy in the Contemporary World, 2nd. ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007 18 As described by Joseph Nye. 19 A Woolf, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure. Washington: Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress, 23 February, 2004, p. 11. 20 Ibid., p. 11. 21 H Beach, ‘Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Europe’s Redundant WMD,’ Disarmament Diplomacy, vol. 77, May/June, 2004.
Bibliography Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, London, 1994. Baylis, J., et al, Strategy in the Contemporary World. 2nd. ed. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007.
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______________________________________________________________ Beach, Sir H., ‘Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Europe’s Redundant WMD.’ Disarmament Diplomacy, vol. 77, May/June, 2004. Bluemel, C., Politics and Insanity. World Press, Denver, 1948. Chomsky, N., Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Penguin, London, 2003. Grey, S., Ghost Plane: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Rendition Programme. Hurst, London, 2006. Oestreicher, Canon P., ‘Holocaust Day Memorial Underlines the Madness of Maintaining Britain’s Murderous Capability.’ The Guardian, January 27, 2007. Rogers, P., A War Too Far: Iran, Iraq and the New American Century. London, Pluto, 2006. ______
. Into the Long War Pluto, London, 2007.
Shaw, M., The New Western Way of War. Polity, Cambridge, 2005. Skinner, Q. and Price, R., eds., Machiavelli: The Prince. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. Staub, E., The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Waller, J., Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Wheatcroft, G., ‘Blair is Dishonoured by Iraq - But Not as Much as Brown and Hain.’ The Guardian, February 7, 2007. Woolf, A. F., U.S. Nuclear Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure. Washington: Congressional Research Service - Report for Congress, February 23, 2004.
The Rhetoric of Evil: How Failure is Turned to One’s Own Advantage Joshua Mills-Knutsen Abstract: As is well known, President George Bush adopted the concept of evil to define both those engaged in terrorism and the activities they undertake. Through the analysis of the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ my paper explains both how the ascription of evil signals an inability to intelligibly confront an event, and, more importantly, how it indicates that those affected by evil have abandoned human efficacy in favour of faith in divine justice. Ultimately, if the rhetoric of the evil Other is successful, it fosters support for extreme measures in pursuit of evil’s eradication; yet since part of the rhetoric relies on the general picture of the earth as fallen, it is understood that evil can never be eradicated. Thus, a power hierarchy is both generated and perpetuated, conveniently unmoored from success or failure of the endeavour to win the war. Instead, those in power gain applause by demonstrating their faith in the existence of ‘evil.’ In this way, we can conclude that the more ‘evil’ appears as a problem, the more solidified the power base of those fighting ‘evil.’ Such an examination will enlighten not only the rhetoric of the present war on terror, but also provide a framework for understanding the presidential election of 2004. Key Words: George Bush, Nietzsche, terror, terrorism, war ***** My approach to the topic of evil is not to ask, ‘What do we say about something or someone when we call it evil?’ Instead, I am interested in asking, ‘What are we saying about ourselves when we ascribe the word ‘evil’ to something or someone?’ This is not to say that evil as such does not exist. Of course it exists; as the papers [in this volume] have readily demonstrated, there are a lot of evil acts and people in the world. Yet I am not interested in this as an ontological phenomenon. Instead, I am interested in it as a linguistic phenomenon for the purposes of self-understanding. To this end I will look at the rhetoric of the war on terror in order to hopefully demonstrate two things: first, that the ascription of evil comes about in response to an event or individual that engenders a feeling of powerlessness in the face of a world we cannot change or control; second, and as a consequent of the first point, to say something is evil is to say that human efficacy is of no account and that what is needed is faith.
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______________________________________________________________ To begin, let me first just recount how it was that this rhetoric progressed in the week following September 11th. At 9:30 am on September 11th, President Bush delivered the following address: Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Centre in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.1 The reserved nature of these remarks gave way less than eleven hours later to the first instance of the rhetoric of evil. On the night of the 11th Bush explained, ‘Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature.’2 Throughout this brief speech of five minutes, President Bush employed ‘evil’ a total of four times to describe the events of the day. This rhetoric was escalated on September 13, as the President proclaimed a day of remembrance. In his proclamation is the following: Civilized people around the world denounce the evildoers who devised and executed these terrible attacks. Justice demands that those who helped or harboured the terrorists be punished - and punished severely. The enormity of their evil demands it. We will use all the resources of the United States and our cooperating friends and allies to pursue those responsible for this evil, until justice is done.3 At the National Cathedral on the 14th, President Bush defined America’s purpose. He said, ‘Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.’4 This sentiment was echoed two days later, but comes as a statement not as the nation’s purpose, but his purpose. ‘My administration has a job to do and we're going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers.’5 In fact, during this 13-minute press conference on the 16th of September, President Bush used the word ‘evil’ nine times, including five references to ‘evil-doers.’ (By comparison those individuals are called terrorists only three times). In five days, the initial charge to find and bring to justice those responsible for September 11th had become a historical mission to rid the world of ‘evil’ and ‘evil-doers.’ The rhetoric of evil was off and running.
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______________________________________________________________ It is worth noticing that despite whatever else might be said about the employment of such rhetoric, one thing that happens as a result is the increasing complexity of the mission the President set out for himself. On face at least, it is a far easier and more reasonable goal to capture and bring to justice those few individuals responsible for the attacks on September 11th than it is to rid the world of evil. The President did not fail to recognize that the call of history to eradicate evil took his obligations far outside the realm of those directly (or even indirectly) linked with the September 11th attacks. As an indication of this expansion of both mission and rhetoric, in the ‘State of the Union’ address on January 29th, 2002, President Bush famously referred to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an ‘axis of evil.’6 What happened here? In rereading these transcripts it became clear that the President, as well as the rest of the nation, had been overwhelmed by the event of 9-11 and in very real ways is still held hostage to it. As I will explain below, it’s not that the rhetoric got away from President Bush, but rather that the rhetoric was all that we, and he, possessed to respond to the situation. Before I do, it is necessary to provide a little primer on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, which is indispensable to this paper. The first essay of the Genealogy claims to recount the etymological and historical development of the contemporary concept of ‘good.’ What Nietzsche uncovers through his philological investigations is that in the ancient world, the word ‘good’ was first and foremost applied to the noble class and was synonymous with such traits as courage and strength. Nietzsche explains, ‘What was the real etymological significance of the designations for ‘good’ coined in the various languages? I found they all led back to the same conceptual transformation that everywhere ‘noble,’ ‘aristocratic’ in the social sense, is the basic concept from which ‘good’… necessarily developed.’7 He bolsters this argument with etymologies of the Greek ‘ethos’ and the Latin ‘bonum,’ both of which, he demonstrates, find their roots as applying to evaluations of the noble warrior class. Likewise, his etymological investigations reveal that designations for ‘bad,’ most notably the German ‘schlecht,’ and the Greek ‘kakos’ and ‘deilos,’ carry the concomitant denotations of baseness, commonness and being ill-born.8 For Nietzsche, the good/bad distinction of master morality is based in the master class first positively evaluating itself and its characteristics as ‘good’ and only as an afterthought assigning ‘bad’ to that which exhibits other traits, namely the slave class. It is not the content of Master morality that matters, but rather it is the way in which the Master approaches the world that makes a Master. Certainly Nietzsche believed content and approach went hand in hand, but for me, it is the assertion of active selfdefinition and interpretation that matters in the Master way of being. In counter-distinction to this movement in the good/bad dichotomy, the Slave, filled with resentment at the master’s power and lacking the active power to
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______________________________________________________________ self-define, first declares the other evil, and only comes to the conclusion of its own goodness as the result of a kind of deduction. ‘He [the slave] has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’ - himself!’9 Nietzsche, of course, proceeds to use his genealogical discovery in order to indict Judeo-Christian morality for its weakening of the human spirit. I will not follow down his path here. Instead, at this point the salient aspect of Nietzsche’s distinction between bad and evil is the way in which, for Nietzsche, the ascription of ‘evil’ belies a reactive mindset that abandons any positive self-definition. The concept of evil is the pre-eminent concept in the good/evil distinction such that only after evil has been identified does the good appear as an opposing concept. In other words, the slave’s way of being in the world is to be held hostage to the ‘Evil Other’ as a dependent, and therefore is a signal to Nietzsche of a fundamental helplessness in the face of the world. While Nietzsche often employs language to indicate that he believes in master and slave natures, as I have already indicated, I will use his differentiation to discuss ways of being in the world. Thus I will employ Nietzsche’s terminology in such away as to discuss the dichotomy between being master of, or slave to, a situation or event. By employing Nietzsche’s language in this way, I hope to make the categories more fluid, so that any particular individual or group can vacillate between being master and slave. This way of conceiving the war on terror will bring to light how the ascription of evil - and I believe this would be cross-applicable to any ascription of evil - is concomitant with an abdication of self-definition. As stated above, Nietzsche’s slave is powerless to assert him or herself into the world of action. In other words, Nietzsche’s slave feels that he or she can neither prevent nor alter the factical conditions of the world, and thus is forced to rely upon the master’s categorizations, even as the slave assigns value. This is why the slave must evaluate the master first, as evil, and only secondarily assigns the value good to him or herself. The master creates the world in action, the slave responds in rhetoric. Thus the slave way of being is merely reactive, and if I am right about the fluidity of these categories, any previous master-like tendencies to self-define fall by the wayside in the face of the ‘evil’ other. It should come as no surprise then, that in the war on terror, the rhetoric of evil masks just such an abdication of self-definition in favour of the reactive logic of the slave. For the sake of brevity I will rely on the example of the recently exposed program of warrantless wiretapping employed by the Bush administration, but one could easily make the same case with the Patriot Act, the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib or the legal, if not physical abuses taking place at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
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______________________________________________________________ To see the transition from master to slave wrought by the events of September 11th, it is important first of all to look at the United States Constitution as that society’s sacred act of self-definition. This constitution, like all constitutions, expresses not merely another set of laws that inform other sets of laws, but is the best expression of that society’s attempt to say not only who it is, but also who it wants to be. Thus, the constitution determines the scope of future possible laws and is a standard to which the nation sees fit to hold itself. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.’10 This typically has been juridically defined as a protection against unwarranted search and seizure. Yet, to make the application of the Fourth Amendment clearer, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978 as a result of abuses by the FBI under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, as well as by operatives of President Richard Nixon. The act itself is very generous in the power it gives to the executive. In accord with the act, the president can effectively spy on any non-U.S. resident without warrant for the purposes of national security. United States residents are immune from such warrantless information gathering. Instead, the act provides for a special court that will hear the government’s cause for information gathering on a U.S. resident. The procedure is not adversarial, and there is no provision for making public its proceedings or decisions. This means that the FISA court approves warrants for the surveillance of U.S. residents privately and in absence of any disputation of the claims made by the government.11 Still, FISA is important because it, in conjunction with the Fourth Amendment, upholds the general principle that warrants are required for search of U.S. residents, and that activities of the executive be overseen by members of the judiciary. In short, FISA reaffirmed that the United States is not, nor does it wish to be, a country that spies on its residents without reason or warrant, even when the broad justification of ‘national security’ is invoked. This attempt at self-definition, however, falls by the wayside in the current political discourse, which is slave to the event of September 11th. President Bush, of course, has unabashedly admitted to abandoning the need for a warrant to spy on U.S. residents. His argument is a straightforward example of the reactive logic of the slave. Bush explains, ‘I did so because the enemy still wants to hurt us. And it seems like to me if somebody is talking to al Qaeda, we want to know why.’12 Again he explained, ‘They attacked us before; they will attack us again if they can, and we're going to do
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______________________________________________________________ everything we can to stop them.’13 In short we can construct the reactive syllogism. The terrorists are evil; warrantless wiretaps are opposed to terrorism; therefore, warrantless wiretaps are good. Instead of looking at who we are or who we want to be, the Bush administration looks at who the terrorists are and devises who we must be in response. Take the president’s following analysis: What we quickly learned was that al Qaeda was not a conventional enemy. Some lived in our cities and communities and communicated from here in America to plot and plan with bin Laden's lieutenants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Then they boarded our airplanes and launched the worst attack on our country in our nation's history. This new threat required us to think and act differently.14 This is all commensurate with Nietzsche’s description of the slavish way of being in the world. Yet, one would expect that if we in the west, especially in the U.S., are to abandon some of our most cherished presuppositions and values, we should at least expect some measure of success in this war to eradicate ‘evil.’ While it is difficult to say that the war on terror has been a complete failure, it lacks the success one would expect given the cost in terms of loss of self. I now turn to the second part of my paper, on how the rhetoric of evil replaces human efficacy with faith. In the presidential election of 2004, Bush squeaked out a narrow victory over his rival John Kerry. For my purposes, what matters is not that Bush won, but the mindset of those that voted for Bush. Like many on the left I was surprised and saddened that so many of my fellow citizens voted to re-elect the president, especially in the face of his apparent failure to achieve any of the objective September 11th seemed to set before us. My vote was not based upon the war on terror, but surely, if one thought terrorism the most pressing issue, the utter failure of the Bush strategy to capture Osama Bin Laden or his top lieutenants, the utter abandonment of the investigation into the Anthrax letters, and the success of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq (more than 1000 U.S. troops had died with no end in sight) all point to a President who lacked any clear plan for victory in this war. And so what if John Kerry couldn’t clarify a plan of his own or often merely aped the president’s own plan? He certainly could do no worse. According to the exit polls from the election, however, of those who listed terrorism as the most important issue in deciding their vote, 86% voted to re-elect president Bush, the most lopsided of the issue-based splits. Of those who saw Iraq as part of the war on terror, 81% voted to re-elect Bush, despite no clear sign that things were improving. To explain this we need to
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______________________________________________________________ look at the overall picture of the Bush voter. Where Bush scores highest (and for those who voted on these lines Bush garnered about 80% or higher) are the following categories. On issues, in addition to terrorism, moral values were a big Bush winner. On the question of what personal quality was most important, Bush succeeds in his religious faith, strong leadership, and his clear stand on an issue.15 We can start to see a pattern emerge. What matters for Bush is not that he is successful in the war on terror, but rather that he first believes in evil, clearly divides the world between good and evil, and is unwavering in that belief. Thus we can say that not only is Bush’s relative lack of success in the war on terror not a detriment to his political success, it is actually to his advantage. Like so many who have invoked the fear of the ‘evil’ other for political gain - the Catholic Church during the Inquisition, Robbespierre, Senator Joseph McCarthy - the more evil appears omnipresent, the more political power Bush is able to accrue. Success in the war would mean that we no longer needed a leader whose faith is his greatest asset. Here I want to demonstrate this by examining the criticisms of John Kerry in the run up to the election. Where Kerry faltered was not his lack of a plan to conduct the war on terror (whether he had one or not), but rather his lack of faith in evil relative to President Bush. Shortly before the election, Kerry made the following comment in an interview with the New York Times, ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they're a nuisance.’ Kerry went on to say: As a former law enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you can continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.16 Here Kerry seems to be speaking on the limits of human efficacy. He has traded the rhetoric of evil for the approach of criminal law enforcement and thus outlined what can be done and what cannot with an eye toward overcoming the reactive slavishness of the country to the event of 9-11. Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign, Marc Racicot said in response, ‘Quite frankly, I just don’t think he has the right view of the world. It's a pre-9/11 view of the world.’17 Republican party chairman Ed Gillespie responded by saying, Terrorism is not a law enforcement matter, as John Kerry repeatedly says. Terrorist activities are not like gambling.
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______________________________________________________________ Terrorist activities are not like prostitution. And this demonstrates a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset that will not make our country safer.18 In one sense we have already discussed what it means to have a preSeptember 11th mindset, but in another, to clarify these comments, we need to look to a more open and perhaps less politically minded commenter. Fred Hutchison, writing on the ultra-right website renewAmerica.com, explains in reaction to Kerry’s comment: The war on terror is clearly a fight between good and evil…[but] Liberal ideology denies the objective existence of evil and the power of evil… Such wishful thinking and self-deception enables us to view terrorism as a ‘crime’ problem or as ‘nuisance’ as John Kerry seems to view it in his pensive moments when he is at ease with his liberal friends…19 Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal made the division even more clearly: The events that are coinciding with this election may be forcing a referendum on the nature of radical Islam similar to an earlier one on Soviet Communism. Is radical Islam a political problem to manage with our allies and the U.N. or an implacable enemy, a radical evil, that is simply trying to kill us?20 This latter assessment of the situation drives the point home. For Henninger, the choice is not between efficacy and inefficacy, but between belief in human capacities to manage and alter the world and the adoption of the radical dichotomy of good vs. evil. In short we might say that the choice is between affirming what we can actively do in accord with who we want to be, or slavishly accepting the world as it has been presented to us by others over whom we have no control, and cannot possibly understand. The last election shows that we are still slaves to the event of September 11th and that there are those who profit from perpetuating that mindset. Does evil exist in the world? Of course it does. But I contend that it exists as a linguistic phenomenon that indicates our abdication to a world beyond our control. It exists when we say it does, and we say it does when we feel helpless in the face of some overwhelming event or Other. That there are those that would seize upon our sense of helplessness and abdication of self for political advantage is unquestioned throughout human history. The
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______________________________________________________________ real question is whether we hang onto the description of some overwhelming event or Other as evil, whether such an ascription is beneficial in terms of human efficacy in the face of the world. In other words, are we to play the role of slavish victims, or become masters of our world and ourselves?
Notes 1
G W Bush, ‘Remarks by the President After Two Planes Crash into World Trade Center,’ September 11, 2001. (1 April 2008) . 2 G W Bush , ‘Statement by the President in his Address to the Nation.’ September 11, 2001. (1 April 2008) . 3 G W Bush, ‘Proclamation for a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance,’ September 13, 2001. (1 April 2008) . 4 G W Bush, ‘Remarks at Prayer Service on National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.’ September 14, 2001. (1 April 2008) 5 G W Bush. ‘Press Conference: White House South Lawn.’ September 16, 2001. (1 April 2008) . 6 G W Bush. ‘The President’s State of the Union Address.’ January 29, 2002. (1 April 2008) . 7 F Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Modern Library, New York, 1992, I, 4. In place of page numbers, this citation refers to the first essay, section four. All following Nietzsche citations follow this format. 8 Ibid., I, 4-5. 9 Ibid., I, 10. 10 For a complete text of the Constitution of the United States see. (Last accessed 1 April 2008.) 11 For the complete text of the FISA statutes see and for a brief over view see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act. (Last accessed 1 April 2008.) 12 G W Bush, Speech in Louisville, KY, cited in ‘Bush would Welcome Wiretap Inquiry.’ The San Diego Union Tribune. January 12, 2006. (1 April 2008)
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______________________________________________________________ . 13 G W Bush, ‘Question and Answers with Troops at Brook Army Medical Center.’ January 11, 2006. (11 January 2006) . 14 G W Bush, ‘Year End News Conference.’ December 19, 2005. (1 April 2008)http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/19/bush.transcript/index. html 15 A break -down of exit polls from the 2004 presidential election can be found at . 16 John Kerry cited in M Bai, ‘Kerry’s Undeclared War.’ The New York Times Magazine. October 10, 2004. (1 April 2008) . 17 Mark Racicot appearing on CNN’s Late Edition, October 10, 2004. Cited from . (Last accessed 1 April 2008.) 18 Ed Gillespie from an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation October 10, 2004. (1 April 2008) http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_101004. pdf. 19 F Hutchison, ‘Terror: Kerry’s Grand Illusion?’ October 13, 2004. (1 April 2008) . 20 D Henninger, ‘Not Just a Political Problem: Does Kerry Think It’s Evil to Behead Innocent Men?’ The Opinion Journal. June 25, 2004. (1 April 2008) .
Bibliography Bai, M. , ‘Kerry’s Undeclared War.’ The New York Times Magazine. October 10, 2004. (1 April 2008) . Bush, G. W., ‘Remarks by the President After Two Planes Crash into World Trade Center.’ September 11, 2001. (1 April 2008) .
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______________________________________________________________ ______
, ‘Statement by the President in his Address to the Nation.’ September 11, 2001. (1 April 2008) . _______
, ‘Proclamation for a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance .’ September 13, 2001. (1 April 2008) .
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, ‘Remarks at Prayer Service on National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.’ September 14, 2001. (1 April 2008) .
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, ‘Press Conference: White House South Lawn.’ September 16, 2001. (1 April 2008) .
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, ‘The President’s State of the Union Address.’ January 29, 2002. (1 April 2008) .
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‘Speech in Louisville, KY.’ Cited in ‘Bush would Welcome Wiretap Inquiry.’ The San Diego Union Tribune. January 12, 2006. (1 April 2008) . _______
, ‘Question and Answers with Troops at Brook Army Medical Center.’ January 11, 2006. (1 April 2008) .
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, ‘Year End News Conference.’ December 19, 2005. (1 April 2008) . Henninger, D., ‘Not Just a Political Problem: Does Kerry Think It’s Evil to Behead Innocent Men?’ The Opinion Journal, June 25, 2004. (1 April 2008) . Hutchison, F., ‘Terror: Kerry’s Grand Illusion?’ October 13, 2004. (1 April 2008) .
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______________________________________________________________ Nietzsche, F., Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. In The Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Modern Library, New York, 1992.
Notes on Contributors Nancy Billias is Assistant Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut, where she is also the Coordinator of Leadership Studies. She writes on the intersections between ethics, psychoanalytic theory and Continental philosophy, and is the Head of Publications for Inter-Disciplinary.net. She can be reached at [email protected]. Eli Buchbinder is a social worker and a lecturer at the School of Social Work in Haifa University, Israel. He specializes in qualitative research on domestic violence. He published articles on domestic violence in various journals and he is the co-author (with Zvi Eisikovits) of Locked in a Violent Embrace – Understanding and Intervening in Domestic Violence (Sage, 2000). Formerly, he worked in The Unit for Research, Intervention, and Prevention of Domestic Violence, Haifa, Israel, the first unit of its kind in Israel. Robert W. Butler is Professor of History and Donald W. & Betty J. Buik Chair at Elmhurst College. In addition to the comments from colleagues of the 8th Global Conference: Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, he is grateful to Phyllis Soybel, PhD, and Sarah Siegel for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. He can be reached at: History Department, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois, or [email protected] Ann-Marie Cook holds a B.A. in Film Studies and Political Science from the University of the Pacific, an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University, and a Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of East Anglia, England. She is currently pursuing postgraduate research at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, London. Paul Davies is an English language instructor at the University of Passau, where he teaches courses on essay writing and area studies as well as seminars on British cinema. He has presented several conference papers on film on topics from buildings and bodies in Peter Greenaway’s Belly of an Architect to punk in British film and Ken Russell’s contribution to 70s British cinema. His email address is: [email protected] Frank J. Faulkner is a former member of the British Army. He is a Senior Lecturer in alternative conflict resolution at the School of Law at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom. His research interests include global and European politics; international security; the arms trade; child
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______________________________________________________________ soldiers; landmines and cluster bombs the legality of war. His email address is: [email protected]. Phil Fitzsimmons lectures in language, learning and literacy at the University of Wollongong, Southern Australia. His current research interests include pre-school literacy, humour in the classroom and critical literacy. He is the Project Leader for Creative Engagement: Thinking with Children, a project of Inter-Disciplinary.net. Email: [email protected]. Margarita Carretero González is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the English and German Department of the University of Granada (Spain), where she teaches literature from the Romantic period to Modernism. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. She is interested in children’s literature, women’s literature, and ecocriticism, a school in literary studies that allows her to combine two passions: literature and environmentalism. Her email address is: [email protected] David E. Isaacs holds an M.A. in Faith and Culture from Trinity Graduate School, an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from Simon Greenleaf University, and a certificate in Advanced Bioethics from The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. He has taught at California Baptist University for ten years, where he is Assistant Professor of English. His email address is: [email protected]. Ewan Kirkland lectures in Media Studies at Buckinghamshire New University,. His doctoral thesis, on The Politics of Children’s Cinema, was completed at the University of Sussex. Dr. Kirkland’s research interests include children’s film and television, representation and identity in popular culture, and videogames. His email address is: [email protected]. Peter Mario Kreuter graduated from University of Bonn (Magister Artium 1997, Dr. phil. 2001) and has working experience both as a scholar and researcher in history, linguistics and ethnography, and as the scientific backbone of radio and TV documentaries about history and popular folk beliefs in South-Eastern Europe, especially about the popular belief in vampires. Since 2005, he has been a member of the Institute for the History of Medicine (University of Bonn) and follows the influence of popular witchcraft belief and popular medicine on Paracelsus and his works. Joshua Mills-Knutsen is a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky. He hopes to work out a critique/advancement on ethical theories coming out of the phenomenological tradition (Sartre, Levinas, Derrida) by confronting
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______________________________________________________________ their ethics via a recognition of power asymmetries of the parties involved in an ethical dilemma. His email address is: [email protected]. Sophie Oliver holds an MPhil from and is a PhD candidate at the Schools of Law and English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. The working title of her doctoral thesis is Ethical Witnessing and the Body Abject: (Re) locating the Human in a cultural memory of Human Rights. Aytül Özüm is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Department of English Language and Literature, at the Beytepe campus of the Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. His research focuses on the British Novel, Literary Theory and Criticism, and British Cultural Studies Peter Remington is an Assistant Professor in the Radio Television and Film Department of Eastern Mediterranean University, Northern Cyprus, teaching mainly in the areas of Cultural Studies, Film and Television Studies, and Visual and Media Literacy. He has formerly lectured in British and American Culture and Literature, worked in independent film and video production, and also as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. His main area of research concerns the representation of mental health issues. Ilana Shiloh received her Ph.D. in American literature from Tel Aviv University, where she taught in the Department of English. She is currently Head of English Studies at the College of Management in Rishon Lezion. She is the author of Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), and has published a range of articles on contemporary fiction and film. Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio is senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Granada, Spain, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on English language and linguistics. Her doctoral thesis was concerned with Irish theatre (the Abbey Theatre phenomenon) seen under the lenses of mainly discourse analysis. Her current main areas of research include gender studies, critical linguistics and corpus linguistics. Her email address is: [email protected] Jeffrey Wallen is professor of Comparative Literature at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts (USA). He is the author of Closed Encounters: Literary Politics and Public Culture (1998), and is completing a book on modes of influence in nineteenth-century culture.
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______________________________________________________________ Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz is a lecturer and the head of Women and Gender studies in Emek Yezreel College, Israel. A social worker in her profession she is a qualitative researcher of domestic violence and the writer of the book “Intimate Violence – the emotional world of batterers” (in Hebrew), and numerous articles on domestic violence in various journals.
