Tarja LAINE
Shame and Desire Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema
Rethinking Cinema" No.3
The publication of this book was financially supported by the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam.
Cover Illustration: Drifting Clouds. Courtesy of Sputnik Oy.
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Table of Contents Intersubjectivity in Film Studies Emotions and Intentionality Intersubjectivity in the Cinematic Experience The Course of the Argument
9 14 18 23
1. "You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!" What Is Intersubjectivity? The Returned Look Masochistic Intimacy 4 Violent Confrontation Voyeuristic Shame Reciprocal Intersubjectivity
29 29 33 36 45 49 54
2. Intersubjectivity and Otherness Dialectical Spectatorship Sense of Communality Triadic Communality Idiotic Communities Intersubjectivity and Solidarity
61 61 65 70 73 76
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
3. An Appetite for Alterity Otherness Within Images of Abjection Love and Abjection
85 85 93 101
CHAPTER
4. Intersubjectivity and Embodied Affect The Bodily Subject Carnal Perception Inside/Outside Intersubjectivity, Sexuality and Gender
109 109 114 118 126
Conclusion
139
References
143
Index
151
CHAPTER
7
INTRODUCTION
Intersubjectivity in Film Studies The Other is indispensable for my own existence, as well as to my knowledge about myself. This being so, in discovering my inner being I discover the other person at the same time, like a freedom placed in front of me which thinks and wills only for or against me. Hence, let us at once announce the discovery of a world which we shall call intersubjectivity. (Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism & Humanism)
The lack of 'identity construction' seems to lie at the heart of contemporary cinema. As a result, a new perception of cinema is coming into sight, a perception that is no longer related to visual pleasure or narrative, ego-strengthening, two-way identification, but to the concepts of affect, emotion and intersubjectivity. An example of this kind of'new perception' can be found for instance in a crucial and much-discussed scene in Matthieu Kassovitz s acclaimed Hate {La haine, 1995), which examines the lives of three teenage friends from a housing project outside Paris: Vinz (Vincent Cassel) who is Jewish, Hubert (Hubert Kound6) who is Afro-Caribbean and Said (Said Taghmaoui), who is an Arab. In this important scene, Hubert and Said are being assaulted in a Parisian police station upon being arrested. The scene opens with a medium shot of two police officers performing the act of violence directly towards the camera. In the next shot the camera has moved exactly 180 degrees, and we see a close-up of a younger officer. Later, when Hubert directs his face (that now has lost all the traces of human dignity) to the camera, the shot is followed by another close-up of the young officer, looking down in shame. The spectator comes to share the officer's shame through a very complex, triadic system of identification. On the one hand, the spectator identifies with the officer as seen by Hubert, on the other hand the spectator identifies with Hubert as the one who looks, and, finally, the spectator identifies with the 'panoptic' look of the larger social structures ('the French nation'), the discursive construction of vision that defines the subjectivity of both Hubert and 9
Shame and Desire
the young officer (and supposedly 'justifies' the police violence against migrants in France). The way in which the editing is organised in this scene epitomises Sartre's quotation cited above, which suggests that the concept of intersubjectivity deals with that dimension of the self that links the subject immediately with the relational, interpersonal world, where the 'outside' of the collective experience becomes the 'inside' of the subject's psychic life. This means that in order to fully understand subjectivity, one has to take the subject's relationship with the Other into consideration. This relationship is not merely an external one; it contributes to the core of subjectivity itself. Since subjectivity exists in the signification of others, the subject's being in the world can have meaning only through self-awareness of his or her presence in front of the others. During my research, I have come to the conclusion that this intersubjective dimension of subjectivity could be extended to the cinematic experience as well. The 'cinematic' emerges from an intersubjective 'in-between' space, since the cinematic experience is much more immediate, much more dependent on the existence of others, and much more socially conditioned than assumed in theories that operate within the ocular-specular paradigm only (such as psychoanalysis). Generally speaking, one might claim that cinema is the art of shared space, bringing before the spectators the intersubjective 'life-spaces' of the characters in the film. Cinema is not some kind of objectified external universe cut off from the spectator by an impassable barrier that separates the corporeal from the intellectual, or the private self from the public space. Rather, I have come to see cinema as a matter of affects that emerge from between the inside of the self and the outside of the world, and also from between different temporalities and spatialities, that are holding the intersubjective world together. The intersubjective perspective in film theory, then, maintains that in contemporary cinema the traditional, dialectical poles of inside and outside, subject and object, seeing and being seen no longer seem to be valid. The status of the object and the subject of the look are interchangeable: we are surrounded by images that look back at us, aggressively, seductively, provocatively, indifferently. Like the look of Hubert in the film Hate discussed above, images look back at us, simultaneously constituting and transforming the discourses (the mediations of 'reality') that define the ontological distinction between 'the self and 'the Other', engaging us in new kinds of intersubjective relationships across social communities. This is the debate around which my arguments regarding contemporary cinema revolve. But how can we theorise this new way of looking that we find not only in movies, but also in
10
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
installation art, photography, reality television, the city, the street, in chance encounters, and in our more private, intimate relationships? Psychoanalytic film theory, for instance, heavily epitomises the concept of look, and in particular the way in which the look and the phenomenon of cinema relates to the psyche of the individual spectator. Cinema is seen as a Kleinian 'good object', granting the spectators what they unconsciously desire and disavowing that there is any lack. For Melanie Klein, the mother's breast is the metaphor for both the 'good' (when it produces satisfaction) and the 'bad' (when it denies satisfaction) object for the infant in the pre-Oedipal stage. According to Klein, this process is replayed throughout adulthood by the unconscious defence mechanism against the lack. These mechanisms include projection (projecting the 'good' and the 'bad' aspects of the inner self onto something or someone in the 'external' world), introjection (taking the 'good' and the 'bad' from the 'external' world into the self), and projective identification (recognising the 'external' parts of the self in the other, but not as originating within the self). Similarly, cinema produces satisfaction by allowing the spectators to identify with their own vision as 'omniscient', and by inviting the spectators to project their ego ideal onto the film characters. In this way, cinema offers the spectators the illusion of pre-Oedipal (the stage in which the infant's sense of self is not yet wholly individuated), Imaginary wholeness; and cinema as Imaginary is identified as the ideological function of cinema. However, as has been argued in the context of psychoanalytic reasoning, since cinema is always already Symbolic (the order of language and the societal imperatives of 'the law of the Father'), it also introduces a rupture in these Imaginary processes and re-establishes the lack by producing the good object as lost.1 Psychoanalytic film theory, then, strives to show how cinema has the power to take advantage of the subject's basic desire to look and his or her drive for wholeness through situating the spectator at the 'omniscient' position, at the centre of vision. This idea of the so-called 'interpellation' was reframed in film theory by Jean-Pierre Oudart and JeanLouis Baudry, and it was borrowed from Louis Althusser's political reading of Jacques Lacan: just like language in Althusserian thinking, cinematic experience (the way in which the spectators experience the tension between the narrative content and cinematic texture of the film) is ideological in nature, because the spectators are blind to the fact that Klein, 1979. On cinema as a good/bad object, see especially Metz, 1982. On (earlier) psychoanalytic film theory see also Oudart, 1977/78; Dayan, 1985; Baudry, 1986; Mulvey, 1985. On criticism of this earlier psychoanalytic film theory, see, for instance, MacCabe, 1975; Heath, 1977/78; Andrew, 1984. 11
Shame and Desire
their knowledge (and their way of looking) has already been produced in a certain (ideological) discourse beforehand.2 The quest in psychoanalytic film theory is to find out how cinema works on the spectator as a subject of desire, what is the ideological function of cinema, and what might be the alternatives (e.g. a Brechtian 'deconstructionist' cinema a la Jean-Luc Godard). In this way, psychoanalysis epitomises the desire to look and the illusion of the transcendental gaze, but it does not allow the returned look that would allow one to see oneself in the Other's eyes.3 In other words, it is all about 'the subject'. Kaja Silverman has posed answers to this problem by positing a different kind of being-in-the-world as spectators. By confronting psychoanalysis with the ideas of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, Silverman inquires into a more adequate theory of intersubjectivity in cinema: The concept of [being-in-the-world] makes visible something which psychoanalysis has functioned to make invisible: what it means for the world that each of us is in it. [...] Since Lacan, those of us working within that discourse have begun to understand that subjectivity pivots around a void: that each of us is in a sense no-thing. However, we have not learned to hear the call to Being which echoes out of this void. We have not yet understood that the "no-thing9 links us inextricably to the world we inhabit, and makes its affairs ours as well.4 According to Silverman, we are world spectators insofar as we can only see from a certain position in the world: "The 'there' from which each of us looks is finally semiotic; it represents the unique language of desire through which it is given to the subject to symbolise the world."5 Furthermore, we can only appear in the world insofar as we are seen by others in it: "We can appear, and so to Be, only if others 'light' us up. To be lit up means to be seen from a vantage point from which we can never see ourselves."6 Silverman does not, however, challenge the basic Lacanian premise of the look that subscribes to the fundamental lack. The world spectator remains to be a subject divided in language, not as a subject concretely and bodily present in the world. Furthermore, in this new way of looking we are not merely spectators: we participate, we are challenged, we have to respond. This look is reflective and self-
2
4 5 6
Althusser, 1971; Oudart, 1977/78; Baudry, 1986. Except in the Lacanian gaze of the Big Other (the gaze imagined by the subject in the Symbolic field) and in Laura Mulvey's erroneous analysis of 'returning the gaze'. Silverman, 2000, p. 28. /£/
12
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
conscious, and has a strong bodily and social dimension, and thus the concept of the look in psychoanalytic film theory needs to be re-thought. The most thorough critique of psychoanalytic theories of spectatorship has come from cognitive theorists, such as NoSl Carroll and Murray Smith.7 In this critique, the emotional context seems to be especially relevant, as an answer to the demand of a film theory that would not rely only on "one main function; unconscious sexual desire."8 Cognitive theorists of cinematic emotions concentrate on the ways in which emotional response is mediated through film narrative: as Ed S. Tan has put it, cinema is an 'emotion machine9. The cognitivists explore the way in which film narrative is structured in order to activate the spectator's understanding of the cinematic event as emotionally relevant, after which their evaluation of the event becomes emotionally charged. The process of evaluation is related to the spectator's understanding of how the film character appraises the event emotionally, and how this appraisal is intelligible in the situation in question. The situational meaning in turn forms the basis for the emotional response in the spectator that is then felt as a concern for the sympathetic film character and as a change in action readiness (the urge to do something for the character). According to Torben Grodal, for instance, the situational meaning in the film experience renders emotions to motivational forces for potential actions: [The emotions] guide the simulation of action tendencies, vividness and salience which focus attention, and feelings of familiarity and unfamiliarity that influence our response to characters and scenes. It follows that the filmviewing experience must be described as a process, a mental flow, with bodily reactions as sounding boards.9 Furthermore, the film narrative 'addresses' the concerned spectators in their imaginary role as physical witnesses to the events of the fictional world, and triggers emotional responses in the spectators by guiding their attention to the significance of an event that is related to a certain emotion. According to Tan, [T]he situation addresses viewers in their imaginary role as witnesses to the events of the fictional world. And it is to this situational meaning structure that the [emotional] components are related. Thus urgency signifies that in the eyes of the viewer it is high time that something is done by or on behalf of the protagonists with whom the viewer sympathises, regardless of
8 9
On cognitive approaches to film, see, for instance, Carroll, 1990 and 1997; Smith, 1995; Tan, 1996; Grodal, 1997. Furthermore, Plantinga and Smith, 1999, is a valuable collection of essays on film and emotion from a cognitive perspective. Grodal, 1997, p. 228. Ibid, pp. 127-8. 13
Shame and Desire whether the protagonist himself or herself shares that urge. But the compo nent controllability is always minimal: the viewer can do nothing. It is this condition that guarantees safe involvement.10 The spectator as a 'physical witness' is then a 'product' of narration that addresses the spectator as a witness to the film events. In the struc ture of film narration, the spectators are a kind of narratees or confi dants, who are never under the illusion that they are omnipotent and able to 'control' the image, as is the 'voyeur' in psychoanalytic film theory. In the process of narration, films cue emotional responses (action ten dencies) in the spectator that direct the spectator's (bodily and mental) attention toward a character, an object, or an event in film, and provoke (blocked) action toward that character, object or event. Emotions are functional action tendencies - shaped by situational expectations - that in the cinematic experience motivate the spectator toward understanding the characters' actions and goals, or the significance of an object or event. The cognitive approach thus tends to see emotion as functional and rational cognitive ability to cope with a situation that is developed through evolution as a tool that has survival-value - emotions orient us in our environment, help us to evaluate our world and react to it more quickly - and the spectator's ability to simulate emotions in allegiance with the film characters is based on the same ability. From the cognitivist perspective, then, it is important to study the ways in which films cue emotional responses, in terms of goals, judgements, beliefs, and motiva tions (to name a few), because it gives a clearer understanding of the emotional process of watching a film, and of how cognitions guide that process. Emotions and Intentionality The cognitive approach may, however, be criticised for drawing too artificial a parallel between emotion and cognition. Cognition is, indeed, linked with emotional processes and they do interact in the narrative flow. Yet cognition is not necessarily the most crucial component of emotion, and neither can emotions be reduced to such a component: emotion is not identical with cognition. As Michael Stocker claims, by reducing emotions to cognition we disregard affect - the element that puts the 'motion' in emotion - and define emotions, of all things, as lacking emotionality: "Affectivity cannot be explained away, accounted for, or described just in terms of nonaffective worlds and nonaffective judgements."11 Whilst it is true that cognitions (evaluations, beliefs, ,u 11
Tan, 1996, p. 55. Stocker, 1996, p. 43. 14
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
concerns, assessments and attention) are important constituents of emotions, and that those constituents typically account for having an emotion, they do not cause or guarantee the emotion. The cognitive approach may also be criticised for holding too static and rationalistic a perspective on emotions. Whilst it is generally acknowledged that social and cultural features may shape the emotions in various ways - theorists like Carroll and Susan Feagin, for instance, emphasise that in the cinematic experience, emotions are aroused when the cinematic text mobilises the spectators' 'pre-existing dispositions9 or 'affective sensitivities' to certain cultural values.12 Little sense is given of how emotions arise within the social field. Instead, as Deborah Lupton has put it, the emotions are treated as "somewhat sterile entities" that are "the outcomes of a logical sequence of information processing such as is performed by computers." Many theorists cannot imagine emotions without an adequate 'reason'; yet, as Silvan Tomkins notes: "feeling and thinking are two independent mechanisms [...] affective judgments may precede cognitive judgments in time, being often the very first and most important judgments."14 Emotions cannot always be rationalised (even whilst they motivate human action); they can be multiple, contradictory, irrational, and inexplicable. It would seem that several cognitive scholars studying emotions would agree with this criticism. For instance, Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith write how Cognitive scholars tend to discuss emotion states in terms of goals, objects, characteristics, behaviours, judgements, and motivations. Necessarily this means that these scholars tend to break down emotions into component process, and this process of dissection is central to a cognitive perspective on emotion. [...] [B]ut these feelings cannot be dissected without doing violence to the emotional experience.1 This suggests that the emotional experience cannot be so direct and unmediated as the cognitive film theory of emotions tends to assume in its emphasis on the spectator's emotional response, felt as a concern for a particular character and as a change in action readiness. This approach, however, allows the cognitivists to gain insight into the specific emotional processes and subprocesses in the cinematic experience that are cognitive, rationalistic and instrumental, as well as into the ways in which films cue the emotional responses through genre conventions, narrative and stylistic elements (such as music and facial expression). 12 13 14 15
Carroll, 1997; Feagin, 1999. Lupton, 1998, p. 14. Tomkins, 1995, p. 44. Plantinga and Smith, 1999, p. 3. 15
Shame and Desire
What is needed, then, is a theory of subjectivity that avoids these difficulties associated with the subject of psychoanalysis and cognitivism, and that provides some sense of the intersubjective and socio-historical processes that unifies the subject and the world, and of how the relation of the subject to the world is affected by emotions. Therefore, the most relevant thinker for the intersubjective cinema seems to be Jean-Paul Sartre, who, in his philosophy, aims at discovering the structure of subjectivity within the world through the concept of intentionality. For Sartre (as for Edmund Husserl before him), human consciousness, including emotions, is always consciousness o/the world, and it is directed toward the world. There is no consciousness on the one hand and a world on the other as two closed entities "for which we must subsequently seek some explanation as to how they communicate."16 This means that the core of human subjectivity is not to be found behind consciously lived experience (for instance, in unconscious urges), but rather within that very experience of the world. In Freudian psychoanalysis, there is no intentionality to be found. Instead, the explanation of human motivation lies in unconscious desire. Sartre objects to this kind of determinism by arguing that desire as a lack of fullness is not to be discovered in libidinal drives, but in the relationship with the subject and the world. As Betty Cannon puts it, Sartrean consciousness is an openness toward Being, a desire or lack of a future fullness rather than a self-contained, intrapsychic system. [...] The human being is not a bundle of drives but rather the assumption of a position on Being. Consciousness implies its partner, the world.1 Another crucial difference between Sartre and psychoanalysis is that in the latter the ultimate goal for the subject is the pursuit of pleasure (the pleasure principle), whilst for Sartre it is the attempt to create value for one's life and get a sense of self through connecting with the world; through 'sculpturing' one's figure in the world. The subject's sense of self in the world and his or her connection with the world are identical: without the world these is no subject; without the subject, there is no world. Consciousness, for Sartre, is then a desire for fullness, but it manifests itself in the subject's intersubjective relationship with the world, not in the intrapsychic lack upon which the subject is founded. This desire is not sexual in nature (although it can manifest itself as
10 17
Sartre, 1956, p. 405. Cannon, 1991, p. 38. 16
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
sexuality), but a socialised need (since it gains its significance in the intersubjective world).18 For Sartre, it is through the experience of shame that the subject is revealed to him- or herself as existing for others. In shame, there exists a (pre-reflective) consciousness of self as existing for oneself and for others. Through an experience, which Sartre calls the look of the Other, the (pre-reflective) consciousness makes the self present as an object in the world, as an object for the Other; not directly, and not as an object for consciousness, but "in so far as the person is an object for the Other."19 It is in my being as an object for the Other that I am able to experience the Other as a subject; not simply as an object in the world, but as a conscious subject like the subject him- or herself. This aspect of my being is revealed to me through the look of the Other. As the look reveals another subject, it also reveals the subject's own status as an object under the look of that other subject. Whilst in psychoanalysis other people are not important as subjects, but only as ego-constituting and need-gratifying (or frustrating) objects for the narcissistic subject, for Sartre the relationship with the Other defines subjectivity insofar as the look of the Other reveals that the subject has his or her foundation outside him- or herself, outside his or her own consciousness, in the Other. Furthermore, the subject's relation with the Other is not simply external, but the Other affects the subject's being in such a way that the relationship becomes a reciprocal internal relationship of being to being. I am what I am for the Other and never for myself. But although the Other's look determines my being and gives it a nature, an 'outside', "that very nature escapes me and is unknowable as such."20 This means that subjectivity is shaped in and through an intersubjective relation between the self and the Other, as the version of the subject's identity that he or she can observe is an 'objectified' version, a representation of the self that is shaped in anticipation of how the subject would be viewed from the Other's point of view. In the cinematic experience, the look of the Other could then surprise the spectators by confronting them with their own look, thereby disrupting the 'illusion of imaginary unity' assumed in psychoanalytic film theory. This is a situation that the spectators anticipate, as it suggests
This desire is motivated by the need of being in the world as a free consciousness, a need to be one's own source of being, a 'God' (the creator of one's own foundation). This desire is, of course, impossible to fulfil, because it presupposes an impossible proximity with the world, a consciousness without intentional ity. Therefore, Sartre concludes: "man is a useless passion." Sartre, 1956, p. 784. Sartre, 1956, p. 349. Ibid., p. 352. 17
Shame and Desire
that their position is always and already inscribed within the film, that the spectators' 'desire to look' is being observed by the Other. The look prevents the spectators from looking from an omnipotent position and disturbs their relation to the film. At that precise moment, the spectators have to think of themselves as in an unsatisfactory relation to the others (or the consciousness of the others), exposed to the eyes of the others within their own field of vision. As a result, the spectators are able to experience the Other not as an object of the look, but as a conscious subject that is able to reduce the spectators to objects. The spectators become aware that they exist for others just like the others exist for them. By pointing at the relationship between the subject and the Other, Sartre's discussion of the look allows one to abandon the model of spectatorship that is based on the opposing positions of subject and object, active and passive, seer and seen. Even though Sartre posits his analysis of subjectivity as ontological, it is by no means essentialist or ahistorical. Subjectivity exists in the signification of others, is informed by the encounters with others. 'Self is not an inner essence to be realised, but a possibility as discovered in the relationship with the social world. This is the reason, to emulate Robert Harvey, why the Sartrean spectator is never one.2] But how can we limit the field of inquiry to intersubjectivity within the social field? The most appropriate way seems to be to look at how emotions pinpoint prevalent modes of looking or ways of seeing and being seen, since emotions promote the continuous exchange between the 'outside' (the position from which the subject is seen) and the 'inside' (the position from which the subject looks). As Sartre has shown, emotion is an orientation towards the world and an embodiment of the world and it cannot be reduced to the one or the other. This is why emotional proc esses resonate with cultural meanings, even though they are individually embodied, and the same could be claimed for emotional processes in the cinematic experience. Intersubjectivity in the Cinematic Experience As argued, the relation of the subject to the world is affected by emo tions and, in this connection, one can make a distinction between more or less introspective emotions. There are emotions that are sustained through a process of taking the standpoint of others on oneself in the context of the social. The (anticipated) encounters with others are from the start more intrinsic to emotions like guilt, shame, embarrassment or pride than to emotions like fear, joy, disgust, surprise, anger, or sadness. Harvey, 1991. 18
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
Among the emotions this book deals with are repulsion, fear and anger (strong bodily reaction), guilt and pride (strong social dimension), as well as love and desire (strong relation to the object). But of all emotions, shame most directly reveals the intersubjective foundations of individual existence, as shame is simultaneously an interpretive process, a way of seeing oneself from the standpoint of others, and a sensed inability to take control of one's identity and organise a response. In Sandra Lee Bartky's words, "shame is manifest in a pervasive sense of personal inadequacy that, like the shame of embodiment, is profoundly disempowering."22 This suggests that shame implies more than being seen by others, and the concept of the look is too abstract to represent interpersonal relations in general (if that was the case, then the central issue would simply be to avoid discovery). Towards the end of Lars von Trier's controversial film Dogville (2002), for instance, Tom (Paul Bettany), faced with the moral dilemma of choosing between the town and Grace (Nicole Kidman), is ashamed of his actions even before he has done anything shameful (betrayed her confidence), since he is forced to view himself as if he already had done so. In this way, shame operates motivationally; with the imagined look of the Other in mind, Tom has internalised the notion of right and wrong, the prerequisite for "the very idea of there being a shame culture, a coherent system for the regulation of conduct."23 What is revealed to Tom is his own inferiority with regard to this system, whilst he nevertheless does not fully understand his situation. In shame, then, there is a sense of being before the community without being part of the community unlike in embarrassment and pride, or even guilt (in which the focus lies on the action one has committed instead of on the self). Shame, therefore, seems a type of emotion best suited to open up cinema spectatorship to the new kind of theorisation this book hopes to offer. But shame differs also from other introspective emotions, even though it can be associated with them. Michael Lewis has provided a useful four-feature phenomenological definition that distinguishes shame from emotions like pride, shyness, empathy, guilt, or embarrassment. First, the desire to hide or to disappear is a very important feature in the phenomenology of shame which distinguishes it from pride. Shame means that a drastic restructuring of one's field of vision has taken place. The second feature of shame is intense pain and discomfort which distinguishes it from embarrassment and shyness (which can be partially pleasurable feelings). The third feature is the feeling that one is inadeBartky, 1990, p. 85. Williams, 1993, p. 82. 19
Shame and Desire
quate and unworthy. Shame is an evaluative statement by the self in relation to the self, and this distinguishes it from guilt, which is an evaluative statement by the self in relation to an action one has committed. And four, in shame we become the object as well as the subject of shame which imprisons the subject in the complete closure of the selfobject circle. In guilt, by comparison, the self is the subject, but the object is external to the self, since the focus of guilt is upon the action that does not meet certain cultural standards.24 The fact that shame is a painful emotion that revolves around the status of self in the field of the social enables the subject to understand his or her own conditions of existence and possibly re-negotiate his or her relationship with the social anew. In Dogville, again, Grace (around whom the narrative evolves) aims to win the friendship of the townspeople in order to be safe from the gangsters. But in order to gain community acceptance, she must volunteer her labour as Dogville's unpaid (and humiliated) housekeeper, gardener, baby sitter, all-purpose farmhand, and, finally, prostitute. But Grace also has an effect on others; by not breaking down, Grace makes the townspeople see themselves as they really are. Or better, she makes them see themselves as seen. This is the ontological structure of shame. The townspeople may say that they are falsely accused (as Tom puts it), but they feel that the charges are true. This is the ethical dimension of Dogville: Grace confronts the townspeople in a way that contests the established values of the community. She presents Dogville with its own image, and calls upon the townspeople to recognise the shame of it and to change it, or to agree to it and to deny the shame. At a moment like this, when the subject (the townspeople) experiences the Other (Grace), he or she is publicly most exposed. This is closely connected to shame, and this is why in shame the Other has the power to literally shape the world that the self lives in. But if shame is denied, as happens in Dogville, it can convert into blind anger, contempt and hatred against someone that offers even fewer defences than that available to the shamed;25 in this case, Grace herself, is the one who 'shames'. For the same reason, the people of Dogville resent the 'gift' of Grace (in the film, she is seen as a kind of gift to the townspeople); they resent her generosity because they experience it (paradoxically) as a limitation to their own freedom (because they feel indebted to her). In an effort to gain back their freedom, the townspeople subject Grace to a series of economic transactions in order to free themselves of the sense of shame her arrival in Dogville creates. Simone de Beauvoir has written that Lewis, 1995, p. 34. Woodward, 2000, p. 226. 20
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
generosity permits the mutual recognition of free individuals and is thereby a mark of an authentically moral attitude.26 By rendering her body as a voluntary gift, Grace attempts to extend her own existence through others, but without an accompanied sense of entrapment or shame.27 In De Beauvoir's terms, this is generosity born of flesh, in which the subject forms an ever-shifting and ecstatic unity with the Other without possessing him or her: "What is required for such harmony is [...] on the foundation of the moment's erotic charm, a mutual generosity of mind and body."28 This kind of generosity belongs to those who open themselves to others without considering the possible negative consequences. This is why the 'generosity of flesh' is always about the 'body at risk', and the ambiguity of gift-giving resides in the fact that it can create an obligation for giving in return (there's no such thing as a 'free' gift).29 In Dogville, the notion of shame is significant since it shows how the attempt to possess the (freedom of the) Other inevitably gives rise to conflict. What happens to Grace can be extended to the town that she has come to represent. Grace offers us an image of the larger disasters at play in the film. At first, Grace uses her own body in order to bridge the distance between herself and the townspeople. In the end, however, she ends up as an unpaid prostitute whom most men of the town visit to fulfil their sexual needs. At this point, Grace dwells in a trance-like state in which her body reacts mechanically, almost without any pain or reflection. Ultimately, Grace's (sexually violated) body serves as the motivation for her vengeance, which turns into a destructive orgy. Grace's suffering body, therefore, marks out an appropriate space for exploring the moral and social breakdown of Dogville. The luminousness of design and the (partly improvised) camerawork in Dogville lends itself to this 'drama of the flesh' that focuses the spectators' attention on the intersubjective relations between the people they are seeing.30 By zo 27
28 29 30
DeBeauvoir, 1997, p. 158. Needless to say, I am not suggesting that women should give themselves to others at the cost of sexual violence, or at any other cost. Instead, I am referring to a kind of generosity that involves an ethical relationship with the Other without selfpossession, as understood in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida (see, for instance, Derrida, 1994). De Beauvoir, 1997, p. 402. Bergoffen, 1997, 158; Bergoffen, 2002,414. According to Peter Scheperlein, this is the difference between framing and pointing in cinematography. The filmmaker can either carefully plan and control the shots within the precisely calculated frame of the camera. Or the filmmaker can spontaneously point the camera at an event that seems exciting and relevant. "The framing method, with its complete control, fosters formalism, while the pointing method, with its loss of control, fosters realism - the polished versus the raw" (Scheperlein, 2005,
21
Shame and Desire
replacing the setting with the outlines of houses on the floor, von Trier invites the spectators not only to invent the town for themselves, but also to zoom in on the characters.31 The setting is not there to distract vision, and the camera moves freely through the imaginary walls. Precisely for this reason, one of the most unsettling scenes in Dogville is the one in which Grace is raped by Chuck (Stellan SkarsgSrd). In this scene, the way in which the camera zooms out from long shot to extreme long shot (three times in total) is most peculiar; the camera moves so far away from the centre of action that the spectator is forced to focus his or her attention on the details of the disturbing event. In this way, the spectator's attention is drawn into the scene by the camera's restraining force, rendering the spectator unable to stop watching what he or she no longer wants to see. By zooming out on the centre of action, other townspeople are brought into the frame; ultimately making Grace's rape a social act. In other words, the rape that is born out of Chuck's internal needs is also about something much larger; namely a system of power in which Grace has absolutely none, except the 'power' to disappear into it. In this way, the conflicts and emotions between characters in Dogville are set in motion, drawing the spectator into the cinematic space. It is through this intersubjective relationship that the spectator is affected by the film (considering affects as primarily social).32 Von Trier's Manderlay (2005)33 takes off where Dogville left off and its cinematography and the setting is very similar to Dogville, since this film too was shot in an isolated, bare studio (an old machine hall in Northern Sweden), where there were no walls and no natural light at all. But in contrast to the situation in Dogville, in Manderlay Grace (Bruce Dallas Howard) has no need to show generosity of the flesh, because this time, as she tells her father (Willem Dafoe) in the beginning of the film, she "has guns". In Manderlay plantation, slavery is still in place. Against her father's advice, Grace frees the slaves with the help of her father's gangsters. Mam (Lauren Bacall), the mistress of the house, dies shortly after, and Grace decides to stay in order to teach the slaves American ideals of freedom and democracy, but unintentionally creates an even greater hell for them. Eventually, it is Grace who grabs the p. 11). According to Scheperlein, Von Trier's first films are characterised by the framing method, while in his later films (from Breaking the Waves onwards) the pointing method becomes dominant. From an interview with Lars von Trier in http://www.dogville.dk, accessed 31 October 2006. 32
For an extended analysis on Dogville, see Laine, 2006b. The second film of Von Trier's USA - Land of Opportunities trilogy of which Dogville is the first. At the time of the writing, the production of the third film titled Wasington (not a typo) has been postponed.
22
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
whip. Timothy (Isaach de Bankole) is not the proud rebel Grace saw/ wanted to see in him: he has stolen and gambled the harvest money of 'The Freed Enterprise of Manderlay' and deserved to be punished by the 'Mam's law'. But, in fact, Grace punishes Timothy because he confronts her with her own hypocrisy, which manifests itself visibly in this action. In this self-referential action (Grace's action is self-referential because it leads to conscious self-perception, it brings her outside of herself), her 'proper' image emerges, which she can no longer escape. As a result, she realises that she is not the 'freedom fighter' she took herself to be but a self-righteous 'social worker' filled with liberal guilt. This is the mirror Von Trier holds in front of his target audience (liberal American and European intellectuals), presenting them with their own image which is, like Grace's, not what they took it to be. In this way, Manderlay creates intersubjective connections not only between individuals in the film, or between the film and its spectators, but also between the spectators and their socio-historical context. In his discussion of the film, Jayson Harsin writes tellingly: Von Trier's other major indictment of American analyses and solutions to the race problem involves American social welfare practices. The film dramatically attacks the social welfare solution that took hold in the post-World War II period, which is based on the individualisation and pathologisation of African-Americans in poverty. Instead of extending New Deal visions of economic and social rights as prerequisites for liberty to African-Americans, poverty became medicalised and culture became racialised in 1960s studies of African-American poverty. The solution was to send in stereotypically white, do-gooder social workers to rehabilitate poor African-Americans. Even in the wake of hurricane Katrina this paradigmatic solution remains dominant.34
The Course of the Argument This book investigates what I consider the most interesting and least theorised aspects of contemporary cinema; namely the strategies it uses to epitomise and re-articulate emotions and intersubjectivity. In this context, the 'traditional' modes of seeing and experiencing are no longer appropriate, the argument that will be developed in chapter one. Films that employ the tactics of intersubjectivity do not simply 'appear' before us; instead, we are surrounded by them, exposed to them, and confronted by them. Films of this kind can look back at us, surprise us, and throw us into an objective apprehension of ourselves. But since the power to catch and return the spectator's look was already a subject of fascination for many modernist filmmakers, contemporary cinema has 34
Harsin, 2006. 23
Shame and Desire
needed to create new ways of confronting the spectator's look. Chapter one examines the way in which films such as Sin - A Documentary on Daily Offences (Synti - Dokumentti jokapdivdisistd rikoksista, Susanna Helke and Virpi Suutari, 1996), Man Bites Dog (C'est arrive pres de chez vous9 Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde, 1992), Something Happened (Nagonting har hdnt9 Roy Andersson, 1987), World of Glory (Hdrligt drjorden, Roy Andersson, 1991) and Hidden (Cache, Michael Haneke, 2005) force the spectators to leave their position of 'safe voyeurism' and make them conscious of their relation to the screen. Emotions play an important role here, since the confrontation becomes a question of negative emotions, such as repulsion, shame, and guilt for being unable to stop watching. These emotions are then the core of the 'ethical pursuit' of these films. Both emotions and cinematic experience are socially conditioned. Even though it cannot be said that, say, a 'Finnish reading' of a Finnish film is the only accurate one (since it would mean that for instance an African or a Latin-American spectator could not understand the 'message' of the film), sometimes the spectator's emotional reaction depends on specific cultural knowledge. There are emotional signs and clues that say something only to people who share the same cultural memory. The concept of intersubjectivity pays attention to these 'macro-phenomena' that are related to specific cultural institutions, languages, and collective structures. Chapter two examines the extent to which the film The Idiots (Dogme #2 - Idioterne, Lars von Trier, 1998) lends itself to the socalled dialectical logic of intersubjectivity, in which the question of social identity is dependent on the subject's identification with the Other as well as with the third Other outside the group that the subject and the Other have formed. The subject internalises the praxis - the purposeful activity - of the group and actualises this praxis as his social being. This dialectical logic can be useful in analyzing how national cinema addresses its spectator as a historical subject. It is a question of cinematic identification, but not as the Lacanian mirror, but an intersubjective triad, a progressive interaction, where the subject constitutes him- or herself as a part of the group in a social context. In this connection, shame is a very special cultural emotion and mode of intersubjectivity, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Finland, as will be shown through a close reading of Aki Kaurismaki's Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat, 1996). Shame is shared by everyone who has the concept of the Other, because the intersubjective relationship between the subject and the Other can be disturbed in a moment of shame. For precisely the same reason, shame can be a critical resource to rearticulate the terms of self-obsessed societal norms and ideals. Especially art practices could mediate shame 24
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
as positive moments of societal disruption. Every one of us identifies with certain societal norms and ideals, and occasionally every one of us relapses into incompleteness before those ideals. Chapter three shows how the images of the Finnish photographer Pekka Turunen can elicit a crisis of identification by inviting the spectator to identify with subjects who are denied recognition in the socially conditioned field of vision and to find the Other within themselves. This could open up new subject positions where the viewer must re-negotiate his or her identity and accept the disturbance in the societal norms with which the viewer normally strives to identify. But since shame lies at the heart of human relations, it could serve to understand social relations of another culture as well. I shall explore the question of how shame and 'abjective otherness' figure in the film Head-On (Gegen die Wand, Fatih Akin, 2004), and how these concepts aid us in understanding intersubjective relations in the context of the transnational. Needless to say, this approach is not without its problems as it suggests that through emotions (shame) one gains 'immediate' access to otherwise unfamiliar cultural practices. In the end, I shall argue that in this kind of encounter with the unfamiliar there are always discrepancies that do not translate and thereby do not produce 'all-owning' spectatorship (that aims to make the unfamiliar familiar). Instead, it could produce spectatorship that de-familiarises the self, that respects the externality of the other, and accepts the fact that intercultural knowledge can never be wholly established in terms of one culture or the other. Shame is an emotion that mediates one's intersubjective interaction with the world; interaction that is fundamentally a bodily one. It is the subject's body that interacts with the world and that experience teaches the subject what he or she is. In the cinematic experience, the relationship between the film and the spectator is based on the mutual capacity for and possession of experience through common structures of embodied vision. Whilst this is true for cinematic experience in general, certain films, such as Gaspar Noe's Irreversible (Irreversible, 2002) hold time, space and the spectator's body together in such a way that they become intelligible through carnal rather than visual knowledge. Furthermore, in the intersubjective space of carnal knowledge, emotions play a crucial role. Emotions promote the continuous exchange between the 'outside' and the 'inside': it is through emotions that the subject embodies the social world. Emotional processes, then, resonate with cultural meanings, even though they are individually embodied and created from within, and the same could be claimed for emotional processes in the cinematic experience. Through an analysis of Eija-Liisa Ahtila's video installation If 6 Was 9 (Jos 6 olis 9, 1996), chapter four demonstrates how emotions can invite the spectators to challenge the intersubjective 25
Shame and Desire
limitations of a given culture, revealing the images that culture tries to hide from itself. Reflective shame, for instance, enables the spectators to shift their attention from their presence before the image to the shame itself. As a result, an immediate and embodied intersubjective framework becomes visible. This framework is at the same time 'transparent' and re-orienting towards the world: it presents a possibility to rearticulate the terms of the social network after which something new may emerge. The critical discourse developed in this book draws on the points of view (and points of enunciation) I have inhabited, both as a 'transcultural subject' (I lived in Finland until I moved to the Netherlands at the age of 27), as a film spectator, and as a film scholar. Sartre writes that understanding is not a quality coming to human reality from the outside, but connected to experience and emotions, moving out from within: Understanding [...] is a characteristic way of existing. Thus, the human reality which is / assumes its own being by understanding it. I am, therefore, first a being who more or less obscurely understands his reality as a man, which signifies that I make myself man in understanding myself as such. I may therefore interrogate myself and on the basis of this interrogation lead an analysis of the "human reality' to a successful conclusion which can be used as a foundation for an anthropology.35 Similarly, as Annette Kuhn in her book Family Secrets has shown, by turning attention to the deconstruction of images closer to home (in her case, photographs from her own childhood and images from her shared ethnographic past) one can move from personal emotions and private experience to the public, collective realm: "Emotion and memory bring into play a category with which film theory - and cultural theory more generally - are ill equipped to deal: experience."36 Vivian Sobchack also writes of the unwillingness of film theory to deal with the concept of (affective and embodied) experience that is merely seen as "a hangover from a sloppy liberal humanism."37 Yet without taking the concept of (personal) experience into consideration, little sense can be given either to the important cultural and historical dispositions and sensitivities that the spectator brings to the cinema (since no experience is purely subjective) or to the ways in which the spectators actively react to these dispositions in order to bring about change (since no experience is purely discursive either).
35 36 37
Sartre, 1993, p. 13, italics added. Kuhn, 1995, p. 28. Sobchack, 1992, p. xiv. 26
Introduction. Intersubjectivity in Film Studies
Therefore, what this book aims to show, is that when personal as well as emotional experience and understanding is set in motion, it can become an intersubjective position between 'home' and 'the world' that could be shared with human subjects across cultures and that could lead one "back into the presence of one's history on a composite screen of cultural memory."38 It is my conviction that it is possible to speak across differences, as this book itself attempts to show, and that the personal experiences and emotional responses addressed here are to a certain extent shared in different contexts. Emotions are not just particular occurrences, but inherent in our ways of being-in-the-world. By taking the cue from my own experience, therefore, I aim to offer the reader insights into the configuration of self and Other especially within the new Europe, and its new cinemas, coming out of the experience of transculturalism. In each case, I shall show how key areas of Sartre's theory apply to the work in question and reveal the intersubjective dynamics and affective bonds within the film (or work of art) and between the film and its spectator. By focusing on the issues of spectatorship and emotions in terms of the intersubjective, this book proposes an insight into the ways in which our social world is constituted, the ways in which we are engaged with visual display, with visual objects, or people-as-objects, and the look with which they respond to our looking. The origins of the present book lie in my PhD-dissertation at the department of Media and Culture, University of Amsterdam. I am much indebted to Thomas Elsaesser and his always-insightful comments and relentless encouragement. Among the many other colleagues and friends who have contributed to the development of this book and to whom I would like to extend my gratitude are Richard Allen, Laura Copier, Remus Thei Dame, Jos6 van Dijck, Charles Forceville, Jaap Kooijman, Jobien Kuiper, Saskia Lourens, Susanna Paasonen, Patricia Pisters, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, Ed Tan, Ginette Verstraete, Frank van Vree and Michael Wedel. Finally, Dominique Nasta, my editor at P.I.E. Peter Lang, is to be warmly thanked for her invaluable suggestions and support during the writing of this book.
Bruno, 2002, p. 418. 27
CHAPTER 1
"You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!" What Is Intersubjectivity? The notion of intersubjectivity is concerned with the way in which subjectivity exists in the signification of others, the way in which sub jectivity is clued up by one's engagement with the Other. This mode of engagement is often conceived in visual terms; in his major philosophi cal work, Being and Nothingness (L 'Etre et le Neant\ Jean-Paul Sartre describes how the look of the Other reveals that the subject has his or her foundation outside of him- or herself; how the subject's identity is imposed on him or her from the outside. This relationship with the Other is not only external, but also internal: one defines his or her subjectivity according to how he or she is being seen by the Other. The intersubjective dimension of the self binds the subject with the Other in such a way that it becomes part of the self. In contemporary cinema, too, the status of the object and the subject of the look seems to be exchangeable; cinematic images look back at us and address us to re-think the ways in which our intersubjective relationships are constituted. Cinema could also engage its spectator in a kind of relationship that dissolves the classic opposition between the subject and object of the look through the concept of the returned look. Since the subject depends on the Other for his or her being in the visual field, the look of the Other can throw the subject into an objective apprehension of him- or herself. The look of the Other has a constitutive function for the subject's sense of self, and this could be seen as the nature of cinematic experience as well. Admittedly, this dyadic account of self and Other seems rather abstract and ahistorical, and is in itself inadequate for the explanation of sociohistorical dimensions of (intersubjectivity. Yet it serves here as a theoretical basis for proceeding to triadic and embodied modes of intersubjective constitution that allows one to think of the subject/ spectator as a social being in a historical context. The theme of otherness and intersubjectivity is one of Sartre's main concerns in Being and Nothingness, in which he discusses the look of the Other through the emotion of shame in order to examine the exis29
Shame and Desire
tence of others for the self; for Sartre, there is an immediate intersubjective field to be found in shame. Sartre places his emphasis on shame before somebody in his famous description of a voyeur, who, undisturbed, has been looking at a captivating sight through a keyhole. First the voyeur is aware only of the keyhole and of what is to be seen through it. The voyeur's consciousness is conscious of itself as consciousness of the keyhole only. Then the sudden sound of footsteps in the corridor makes the voyeur realise that 'he' is being observed (according to Kaja Silverman, this figure of the voyeur is "so hyperbolically masculine" that she, as well as shall I, consistently deploys the male pronoun when referring to this voyeur).1 With the presence of the Other, the voyeur's unreflective consciousness makes his self present as an object in the world, as an object for the Other: I have just glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole. I am alone. [...] But all of a sudden I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking at me! What does this mean? [...] The unreflective consciousness does not apprehend the person directly or as its object; the person is presented to consciousness in so far as the person is an object for the Other."2 This realisation allows the voyeur to look at what he is doing as if it were through the observer's eyes. The voyeur is no longer just observing a forbidden scene; the voyeur is abruptly made conscious of himself observing the forbidden scene, as an object for the Other. The voyeur realises that he possesses a self which the Other knows and which he can never know. It is in the voyeur's being as an object for the Other than he is able to experience the Other as subject, "for how could I be an object if not for a subject?"3 This aspect of his new being is revealed to the voyeur through the look of the Other. Furthermore, the voyeur experiences that he has a foundation outside of him, in the Other. The voyeur is what he is for the Other and never for himself. This self-consciousness on the level of being-for-others involves for Sartre consciousness of the self as an object in the world, in the world of the Other: "I have my foundation outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other."4 But although the Other's look fixes the voyeur's transcendence and gives it a nature, an 'outside', "that very nature escapes me and is unknowable as such."5 This realisation degrades the voyeur in his own 1 2 3 4 5
Silverman, 1996, p. 245, fh. 1. Sartre, 1956, p. 349. /6&/., p. 361. Ibid, p. 349. Ibid,p. 352. 30
"You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
eyes and reduces him to shame: "... I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other [...] Shame is shame of oneself before the Other; these two structures are inseparable."6 Experiencing, through the look of the Other, his revelation as an object in the Other's world, the voyeur cannot apprehend the object he is for the Other. The self that is made present to the voyeur through his experience of the Other's look is a self that escapes him and exists for the Other as an object of values that comes to judge the voyeur without him being able to act on this judgment or even to know it. Sartre understands shame metaphysically, as an indication of our basic relatedness to others. The intersubjective existence of two selfconscious subjects is discovered in the emotion of shame. Because of shame, because of my concern with how I appear to the Other, I become aware that others exist together with me in an intersubjective field. In this intersubjective field, the concept of the look plays an important role. It is the look of the Other that surprises the subject through revealing that his or her foundation lies outside of him- or herself. In shame, the subject is no longer "the master of the situation," but an object for the consciousness of the Other.7 The subject now has acquired an identity which he or she has not given him- or herself. For Sartre, then, one of the most essential points in shame is that by apprehending him- or herself through the look of the Other the subject recognises the nature of his or her lost status as an 'omnipotent' subject. In Seminar /, Jacques Lacan discusses Sartre's treatise of the look (which in psychoanalytical language is very often referred to as the gaze) as follows: The gaze in question must on no account be confused with the fact, for example, of seeing his [the Other's] eyes, I [the voyeur] can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not even see, not even discern. All that
7
Ibid, p. 303. For many theorists, like for Sartre, the emotion of shame is connected to being seen and exposed inappropriately by others. However, no actual observer is necessary in order to feel shame, nor is it necessary that one believe that one is being observed by the other. One may feel shame being alone and knowing this to be so. Instead, in shame, the subject shifts his or her viewpoint from that of the actor to that of the critical, detached observer, but so that the subject fulfils both of these functions. The subject both identifies with the observer and constitutes the observer. It is part of the complexity of shame that the exposure it implies refers to the Other, but that Other is in the first instance oneself. To speak about the observer is thus to speak metaphorically, and "being seen exposed9 is a sign of being at a disadvantage and suffering a loss of power; and that recognition of disadvantage and suffering is what is central to shame. For a discussion, see also Taylor, 1985; Williams, 1993; Lewis, 1995; Katz, 1999. Sartre, 1956, p. 355.
31
Shame and Desire is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there.8
What Lacan outlines here actually articulates exactly what is also at stake when shame is experienced; namely the discovery of the intersubjective existence of self and Other. In shame the subject sees him- or herself being seen, and because of the subject's concern for how he or she appears to the Other (exposed to the look of the Other in a disadvantageous relation), the subject becomes aware that others exist together with him or her in an intersubjective field. Yet the way in which the concept of the look/gaze has been applied in psychoanalytic film theory (the so-called apparatus theory in particular) does not deal adequately with this idea of intersubjectivity. As a result, psychoanalytic film theory assumes an isolated spectator - and so social questions of spectatorship are masked. It is therefore necessary to return to Sartre's original discussion of intersubjectivity that can be discovered in the returned look to see that the visual field of cinema is a much more complex realm of intersubjective relations than what psychoanalytic film theory has argued it to be. In other words, I employ the concept of intersubjectivity to emphasise the point that cinema spectatorship is an intrinsically reciprocal practice that is constitutive of subjectivity, and to move outside of the intrapsychic model of earlier moments in film theory where the concept of spectatorship is often structured by the diametrically opposed but complementary positions of subject and object, active and passive, seer and seen. No longer is there is a strict separation between subject and object via the technological mediation provided by the camera; instead cinematic images can look back at us, surprise us (much like the Sartrean voyeur is being surprised), and throw us into an objective apprehension of ourselves, for example through the emotion of shame, as shown in the beginning example of Hate. (One could even say that to a certain extent cinema as a money-making institution always 'looks back' at the audience in order to be able to address it and to gain from its existence: "no audience comes to a film ignorant of cinema, or of their role in realising it. The task of cinema is to deliver audiences to films, and the task of audiences is to constitute films as objects of consumption."9) Furthermore, even though for Sartre the structure of shame 8
Lacan, 1998, p. 215. Cubitt, 2005, p. 333. Murray Smith makes a similar argument with regard to the institution of fiction in general. According to him, all films implicitly call our attention to their artificial status and in that sense look back9, but not all films invite us explicitly to concentrate on the conventions that direct our attention to the relation between spectatorship and the institution of fiction. Smith, 1995b, p. 121. 32
'You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
epitomises the structures by which we are related to others ontologically, this model could operate as a basis for understanding the social dimensions of intersubjectivity, as it is based on the subject being seen in a certain sociohistorical context. Sartre's model of intersubjectivity could therefore serve as a model for understanding the various, still unexplored ways in which we are engaged with cinema (and visual culture much more generally). The Returned Look Many psychoanalytic film theorists, the most notable ones being Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, have argued that cinema is inherently voyeuristic. I agree that voyeurism can occur when the spectators' emotional reaction to the scene is predicated upon their act of seeing the events portrayed in the film, and when identification with the camera as one's own look is privileged over character identification. As Richard Allen has shown in his Projecting Illusion, a film that privileges a disembodied, a-central (as opposed to central) point of view upon the characters and events often gives rise to voyeurism; a superior, sadistic, objectifying, and distant viewing position in relation to the subject of representation.10 The voyeuristic look is sadistic, according to Sartre, because it is structurally empowering: the voyeur 'creates' the object of his look with his eyes as it were. It is precisely this kind of look that can embarrass, humiliate, and shame the Other. A voyeuristic look is an attempt by the subject to create a world of his or her own without boundaries - characterised by psychoanalysis as desire - through reduc ing the Other to an object in it. At the same time the voyeuristic look is a fascinated look, a pure mode of losing oneself in the world in the act of looking. On the one hand, my voyeurism organises the situation (there is a spectacle to be seen behind the door only because I am looking through the keyhole), but on the other hand the spectacle exists as the object of my 'unreflective consciousness' (my consciousness is the object and there is no way I can define myself as being in the situation). A voyeuristic look is a fascinated but superior (objectifying) look that demands both proximity with and distance from its object. But as in Sartre's example, in the cinematic experience the (voyeur istic) spectators could be surprised in the act of looking by confronting them with their own look and thereby disrupting their illusion of imagi nary unity and sense of 'control' over the image. This is a situation that the spectators anticipate, as it suggests that their position is always and already inscribed within the film; that their presence is being paid Allen, 1995. 33
Shame and Desire
attention to and their desire to look is being observed by the Other. The power of cinema to catch and return the spectator's gaze has been a subject of fascination for many modernist filmmakers such as Luis Bufiuel, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, and many others. By allowing the film character to look directly at the camera for several moments, these filmmakers aim to disrupt the spectator's imaginary illusion of omnipotence towards the image. One of the most famous examples of this modernist aesthetics of the provocative look include Harriet Andersson's direct gaze at the camera towards the end of Bergman's Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika, 1953). At this point of the film, her life as a suburban housewife has made young Monica malcontent, cruel, and finally unfaithful towards her husband, leaving him alone with their newly born baby. Her gaze directed at the camera eye seems to challenge the spectator, saying "Judge me if you dare." Another famous example is Jean-Paul Belmondo's direct addressing of the camera/spectator in the beginning of Godard's Breathless (A bout de souffle, 1960) with the words: "Si vous n'aimez pas la mer, si vous n'aimez pas la montagne, si vous n'aimez pas la ville... allez vous faire foutre!" These scenes are deliberately meant to be awkward moments for the spectator, not only because they are threatening to the spectator's personal space, but also because they suggest that the spectators are constituted for the film and not vice versa. The spectators are now forced to think of themselves in an unsatisfying and unpleasant relation to the Other by being exposed to the look of the Other. However, it would be a mistake to assume that the provocative look only belongs to the aesthetics of modernism. The so-called 'primitive cinema' plays similar tricks with the spectator. As Tom Gunning has shown, early cinema intends to elicit a primal response from the spectator by directly soliciting spectator attention through strategies of threat or intimacy. As a result, the desired response is not always pleasurable. Gunning calls this an exhibitionist cinema, since it constructs an awkward relationship with its spectator that spoils the voyeuristic pleasure of cinema through the recurring look at the camera by actors, like in the film The Bride Retires (1902): A woman undresses for bed while her new husband peers at her from behind a screen. However, it is to the camera and the audience that the bride addresses her erotic striptease, winking at us as she faces us, smiling in erotic display.11 But similar tactics can be found later in film history as well. In low budget film noir pictures Killer's Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955) and The 11
Gunning, 1990. p. 57. 34
" You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller, 1964) direct addressing of the camera eye is used not as a conscious modern technique (like in the films of Bergman or Godard; although Godard was very much influenced by Fuller as well) but as a more general practice to increase the violent effect. In Killer's Kiss, the gangster boss Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera) has just found out that his mistress is running away with another man. In frenzy he approaches the camera with a glass in his hand. The following shot is a POV from his perspective on a framed picture of two comic figures who hereby occupy the place of the amused observer, laughing at Rapallo' s anguish. In the next shot Rapallo throws the glass aggressively at the picture/camera causing a cracking effect followed by a swinging movement of the camera. In an interestingly similar fashion, The Naked Kiss opens with a burst of violence as the prostitute protagonist Kelly (Constance Towers) beats her drunken procurer unconscious with her stiletto. The opening sequence consists of a series of rapidly alternating POV/reaction shots (seventeen shots in total that are only 'interrupted' four times by a long shot from a low camera angle of the room where the fight takes place) of Kelly's raged face on her defenceless procurer until he is lying on the ground. The sequence is shot with a shaky handheld camera which increases the violent effect. The opening sequence ends with Kelly again gazing directly at the camera eye, which now, supposedly, is a mirror. She puts on and combs the wig that she had lost during thefight,corrects her make up, and quickly collects herself while the opening credits roll. In the context of the postmodern cinema, the 'threatening' effect of direct addressing of the audience seems to have partly lost its power (at least as a purely stylistic device, even though as a narrative function it can still be effective) after being employed in numerous films of different kind such as Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977), Ferris Bueller's Day Q^(John Hughes, 1986) or Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). The technique that was designed to be shocking in the context of modernism, is not so shocking anymore for the contemporary audience. This is why filmmakers have had to invent new ways of confronting the spectator's gaze. The film still can function as the look of the Other by forcing the spectators to leave their position of 'safe voyeurism'. In many ways, films still can reveal the spectators their dependency on the Other for their being in the visual field. This revelation consists of the fact that the foundation of their look lies elsewhere, in their engagement with the Other. In this way, cinematic images do and can look back at us and throw us into objectivity in our own field of vision.
35
Shame and Desire
Masochistic Intimacy It has already been established that cinema can be a source of dis pleasure as well as pleasure, being able to take advantage of the specta tors' desire to look. This is the tactic used in the Finnish documentary Sin - A Documentary on Daily Offences {Synti - Dokumentti jokapdivaisistd rikoksista, Susanna Helke and Virpi Suutari, 1996). By epitomising the structures of look and shame, the documentary Sin redetermines the nature of cinematic experience in the scopic field, and re defines the politics of looking involved in it. In his book Representing Reality, Bill Nichols has convincingly shown how the unacknowledged presence of the documentary filmmaker (especially in the observational mode of documentary) often clears the way for the dynamics of voyeur istic pleasure.12 But a documentary could also - without necessarily being the self-reflexive mode of documentary - take advantage of this voyeuristic structure and turn the spectators into objects of the look themselves. In the documentary Sin, ordinary Finnish people found via newspa per ads confess their misdemeanours through the camera to the others watching them. The confessions are based on the seven deadly sins: gluttony, envy, sloth, boredom, pride, lust and wrath. The persons are filmed in their everyday environment - mostly at home or at work - but consistently standing full length and facing the camera, as in a police line-up. The spectators are invited to witness intimate personal stories in authentic settings, but these settings nevertheless give an impression of being highly staged, even though the documentary does not explicitly acknowledge the presence of the filmmakers or call the process of filmmaking itself into question. Furthermore, the way in which the persons tell the most intimate things about their lives is downright masochistic, demanding recognition from the spectators even if it were contemptuous. This is a kind of masochism that Sartre defined as the consequence of the self that causes it to be absorbed by the other, an attempt to lose oneself in the subjectivity of the Other in order to get rid of one's own. A masochist relies on the Other to make him- or herself exist; maso chism is an "act by which the Other would found me in my being."13 Masochism, then, has a strong intersubjective dimension, since a maso12 13
Nichols, 1992. Sartre, 1956, p. 491. This kind of masochism is thus essentially different from the 4 pre-Oedipal masochism9 theorised by Gaylyn Studlar. For Studlar, the cinematic experience re-creates the experience of pre-Oedipal infancy by placing the spectators in a passive position at the mercy of some entity ('the mother') for what they desire, which, according to Studlar, is the ultimate fantasy of the masochist. Studlar, 2000.
36
'You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
chist insists on being defined by the Other. According to Sartre, the subject experiences this being-as-object as shame, and will love his or her shame as the profound sign of his or her objectivity But masochism as foundation of subjectivity is a failure. According to Sartre, masochism is not an attempt to fascinate the Other, but an effort to cause oneself to be fascinated by one's own objectivity. In order to do this one needs to be able to realise the intuitive apprehension of oneself as object for the Other. It is for the Other that the masochist ''will be obscene or simply passive, for the Other that he will undergo these postures [...] The more he tries to taste his objectivity, the more he will be submerged by the consciousness of his subjectivity."14 Thus the masochist ultimately posits him- or herself in transcendence in relation to the Other, treating the Other as an object and transcending the Other toward his or her own objectivity: "Thus in every way the masochist's objectivity escapes him [...] in seeking to apprehend his own objectivity he finds the Other's objectivity, which in spite of himself frees his own subjectivity."15 It is this paradox of masochistic attitude that underlies the experience of the documentary Sin. At first the strong masochistic aspect in the documentary discourages the spectators' identification with its persons, giving rise to a voyeuristic viewing position in relation to the subject of representation. Since identification with the persons' beliefs and emotions in the documentary Sin is discouraged, the spectators are tempted to adopt an objectifying, superior and contemptuous viewing position, encouraged by the fact that the persons in the documentary make the confessions addressing the camera, as if the presence of the camera (and thereby the spectators) was a justification for their confessions. Yet an objectifying viewing position is being discouraged as well, if we assume Sartre's theory on masochism to be correct. Through their confessions and the aspect of masochism in them, the persons have already moved beyond the spectators' objectifying definitions, because the masochist inescapably always abuses the Other, demanding of the Other (in this case, the spectator) that he or she be taken at the value he or she would want to be taken at. As a result, the spectators cannot adopt the field of the camera as their own and thereby 'control the image'. Instead, the field of the camera becomes the field through which the spectators experience that they are being seen by the Other. By returning the spectators' look, the persons of the documentary occupy the position of observer towards the spectators. Reflecting the spectators' look back onto themselves, the documentary makes an object of spectacle out of 14 15
Sartre, 1956, p. 493. Ibid, p. 493. 37
Shame and Desire
the (voyeuristic) spectators, which they experience as shame. The documentary Sin catches out the spectators by their own looking, inviting the spectators to see themselves seeing, saying 'Tow want to peek at other people's lives? Well here's intimacy for your This, according to both Lacan and Sartre, is the function of (visual) art. Art must lead to reflection, catch the spectators looking, invite the spectators' eyes to see themselves seeing, and thereby invite society seeing itself as seen. As Lacan puts it: The function of the picture - in relation to the person to whom the painter, literally, offers his picture to be seen - has a relation with the gaze. This relation is not, as it might at first seem, that of being a trap for the gaze. [...] The painter gives something to the person who must stand in front of his painting which, in part, at least, might be summed up thus - You want to see? Well, take a look at this! He gives something for the eye to feed on, but he invites the person to whom this picture is presented to lay down his gaze there as one lays down one's weapons.16 According to Lacan, art combines the lure of the eye and the 'taming' of it. Art tames because "it encourages renunciation";17 the spectators are simultaneously given the confirmation of their desire through a visual fantasy and denied it, by making the spectators aware of their lack: there is a simultaneous awareness of desire and lack. In the documentary Sin, the spectators are given the confirmation for their 'visual fantasy' by leading them to believe that the confessions in the documentary are being made to satisfy their desire to look. At the same time, however, the spectators are denied all the pleasure of looking: through the returned look the spectators sense that their reactions toward the person's confessions are being observed by that very person. The spectators feel that the confessions are being made so that their reactions to them could be observed. The tales told in the documentary feel all too intimate, and the spectators experience embarrassment, even shame, and think that they are invading the privacy of the persons in the documentary. The spectators become objects for the Other, and experience shame through the return of their look in the documentary; and this is the basic structure of shame that in Sartre's thinking epitomises the way in which we are related to others, and the way in which we all seek to make objects of each other. The function of the Other is threat, because the look of the Other has the power of reducing me to an object in the world of another and degrading me to shame. My only strategy is to
16 17
Lacan, 1994, p. 101. See also Sartre, 1978a, p.75. Lacan, 1994,p. 111. 38
"You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at Thisl"
look back and re-establish my subjectivity by reducing the Other to objectivity. Thus, the emotion of shame signifies that in addition to confronting the spectators in the act of looking, the documentary also confronts the spectators with the Other - who refuses to be an object for the spectators' look. The documentary Sin on the one hand fascinates the spectators through intimacy, but on the other hand painfully emphasises its own representational nature. In Shame and its Sisters, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank in their discussion of shame and the taboo on looking (specifically looking directly into the eyes of another person) claim that the shame resulting from the act of looking/being looked at is deeply ambivalent. The source of the taboo on reciprocal looking is intimacy, because it at the same time expresses a desire to look and to be looked at simultaneously "with interest or enjoyment in a relationship of mutuality."18 This means that in shame one may wish not to look or to be looked at, but also to continue to do so (think of children who cover their face in shame but also peek through their fingers so that they may look). This is why the spectators are fascinated by the documentary Sin, and why they wish to continue watching it despite the awkward feeling it produces in them. Another reason for this ambiguity of fascination/ awkwardness could be that the spectators are caught between the shame of looking and the shame of being ashamed to do so: as a defence against looking too intimately at the Other the spectator continues watching; not to continue would be too obvious an escape. The documentary Sin catches the spectators in between intimacy and shame by fascinating them with intimacy but simultaneously not giving the spectators the opportunity to 'control the image9. The spectators cannot assume an omniscient position in relation to the film, or to get satisfaction from their desire to look, because the spectators feel that their presence is being taken into consideration in advance. For instance, the persons in the documentary take long pauses while they are speaking. They pose in an unnaturally immobilised manner and talk with an expressionless, monotonous voice as if they were repeating something they had learned by heart. The immobility both inside and outside of the image is essential in the documentary. It is clear that the confessions are being made for the sake of filming. As the spectators are not given the opportunity to 'control' the image, they feel threatened by the subjectivity of the Other. The intimacy that in the beginning fascinates the spectators becomes painful and disturbing, because the spectators are confronted with it as it were against their will. Standing next to his identically dressed twin brother, a 18
Sedgwick and Frank, 1996, p. 138. 39
Shame and Deske little boy confesses thai he cannot remember his brother when they have been apart for more than two hours. An elderly lady talks about her loneliness in the hallway of her house, surrounded by other elderly ladies (her fellow sufferers?) (figure I). Sitting at a conference table, in an environment that traditionally does not tolerate revealing one's personal weaknesses, a civil servant confesses his sense of insecurity and fear. A young man reveals his total lack of interest towards the world (and the spectators) before the camera. Fascinated by his own indiffer ence, he is portrayed staring directly at the camera, in a close-up. while the deep focus of the frame reveals the small room in which he lives, apparently without much need to reach out to the world (figure 2). Even though the young man is addressing the spectator, paradoxically at the same time he is ignoring the spectator, and when he finally lowers his eyes it does not seem that he is concerned about the spectator's judg ment, but that be is not even interested whether he is being judged or not
Figmre 1: Sim — A Documentary on Daily Offences. Screen capture The influence of painful intimacy both inside and outside of the frame makes it intolerable for the spectators to confront the look of the confessors that suddenly seems to have extended to the whole frame. The whole frame looks back at the spectator, embodying the encounter with the raw subjectivity of the Other, reducing the spectators to shame. But why? Because a look cannot be looked at. As Sartre writes:
40
"/OH Want to See? Well. Take a Lookal Tlii I direct my look upon the Other who is looking at me. But a look, canoot be looked at As soon as I look in the direction of the look it disappears, and I
Figure 2: Sin - A Documentary on Dairy Offences, Screen capture It is clear that emotional identification, empathy or substitute shame (shame by proxy) toward the Other are not at stake here. What makes the spectators feel ashamed is not so much what the Other does, but rather the fact that the Other is not ashamed of what he or she does, of publicly confessing the most intimate details of his or her lire. The spectator cannot possess the Other, because the Other does not cease looking back at the spectator. This confrontation with the Other's inti macy is, according to Slavoj ZLzek, where we encounter the function of shame at its purest: "it opens up with the prospect of the total 'transpar ency' of the human being."20 According to Sedgwick and Frank, another source for the taboo of mutual Looking is the constraint on the direct expression of certain affects, since intimacy necessarily involves the sharing of affect: "Since the face is the site of the affect* mutual looking becomes tabooed insofar as it might violate whatever cultural constraints there may be on the
'* Sartre. 1956, MM. Zizefc, 2001, p. 73.
w
41
Shame and Desire expression and communication of affect."31 Furthermore, the free ex pression of emotion on the face, which the Other can see, also enables the Other to achieve control over and contempt for the subject who wears his or her emotions on his or her face. In the documentary Sin, the persons do not express emotions on their faces; they keep their poker faces despite the intimacy of the life stories they tell. This places the spectators in a position of combined intimacy and distance> which blocks the emotion of contempt on their part, resulting in awkwardness and a feeling of shame instead. For instance* the 'sloth' part of the documentary shows a civil servant standing nwtionlessly, staring straight into the camera (figure 3). He is being shown in the dusty hall of an office building and he tells us with irony in his voice about his work as a draftsman of future scenarios: My work is to draft future scenarios. Earlier we formulated visk«is and strategies, now it's scenarios, In the reports we write things like sustainable development, decentralisation of government integration. I can write a re port on a global theme any time. [ can also write proposals that I know will never be accepted.
Figure 3: Sin - A Documeatary on Dally Offences. Screen capture The self-irony emphasises the persons' awareness of the spectators, especially when combined with the 'staged' setting. In this scene the static camera is situated in the hallway so that to therightwe can see a meeting mom in which people are sitting motionlessly by a table on 21
Sedgwick and frank. 1#*>, p. 1*4. 42
■you Woni to &e? Well, Take a Look a! This!1'
which we can see apparently important papers. Further back in the hallway stands a man, equally motionless. The general atmosphere in the image is grey, joyless, cold and immobile. In the next scene we are being taken into a recreation room for nurses in a hospital (figure 4). The nurses in the background are situated in stiff positions, at a distance from each other, so that a sense of depth is created in the image. To the left a long hallway opens mat is lit from its other end. The cold, bluish lighting, combined with the depth of image, emphasises the contrast between the light and the shadow, and creates a kind of Kafkaesque atmosphere of bureaucracy. This atmos phere is further emphasised throughout the documentary by the poignant, non-tonal music, which is played by a string orchestra. The person who is speaking in the scene is situated in the middle of the image. She is also staring straight at the camera and says in an urmaturalty serious voice: "An (sic) patient could ask to be taken to the bathroom and be told: 'You did a poo-poo only yesterday, you'll have to wait till tomor row*.**
Figure 4: Sin-A Documentary on Daily Offences* Screen capture The ' lust* part of the documentary is perhaps the most confronting one. It introduces us to a married couple with a number of children living in a bungalow. They tell us about their dissatisfying relationship in a series of oppressive images - the setting is filled with props from the daily life of the couple while there is little sense of space in the images. In the first alternating series of images the man and the woman ii
Shame and Desire
are standing alone in front of the camera, but later they appear together in the setting. The first communal image is situated in the bedroom. The woman is talking, looking straight at the camera. Her husband is standing next to her, in a diagonal line in relation to the camera (figure 5). She says: ' i f my husband doesn't show enough sexual interest in me, I punish him. Either I don't cook for him or I eat his goodies or I take money from him." In the following image the man is standing in the middle of the dining room. His wife is further left in the kitchen, holding their children, but within hearing distance (figure 6). The man says: "I'm afraid my wife will find a man who can talk and who isn't as cruel towards the kids as I am." Again, the couple in the documentary share the most intimate things of their lives with the camera, demanding recognition from the spectators, and discouraging the spectator's identification. The spectators are again tempted to adopt an objectifying viewing position, as the practice of filmmaking creates a space where observing the intimate confessions is justified. But the fact that the couple are staring directly at the camera renders the intimate encounter painful, and paves the way to the emotion of shame. The spectator is again made object for the Other in his or her field of vision. Yet despite the fact that the couple are staring directly at the camera whilst directing their words to the spectators, seeking to make objects of spectators, they really seem to address each other, which adds to the situation an intention of empathetically understanding this unhappy Finnish couple, without necessarily approving their actions ("... I punish him..." "... who isn't as cruel towards the kids as I am..."). As a result of all this, the topic of the documentary, the seven deadly sins, is not very obvious to a casual observer, since they are dealt with in isolation from their context. The moral codes, the seven deadly sins, stay floating in the air. It is clear that they exist, but they cannot easily be defined. The spectators cannot assume a superior, omniscient position in relation to the persons in the documentary, because they have to try hard to understand what the documentary is all about, and how the topics dealt with in it are related to each other. The documentary does not strive to tell a truth; instead it is openly subjective, absurd, and even contradictory in its content. It plays with the paradoxes of intimacy and distance, with the artificiality of the form and the genuineness of the content and of irony and seriousness. As one title card in the documentary declares: "I started to study at the age of forty. My husband started harassing me in all sorts of ways. He hid my alarm clock. Often he unscrewed the bathroom light bulb so that everybody had to go there in the dark." The documentary does not give straightforward answers to how the seven deadly sins are related to, and exist in, our everyday lives. Who is the victim of the sin, who is a sinner, or are we all sinners? 44
"You Want to See? Well, Tata a look at This!"
.iim, or I eat o/i lake mcnevfronv Figure 5: Sin - A Documentary on Daily Offnces, Screen capture
Figure 6: Sla - A Documentary oi Dally OffencesScreen capture Violent Confrontations Whereas the documentary Sin makes use of the aesthetics of the provocative look in order to distance the spectator, the ntockumentary (or, to be more precise, the film is a mock making-of documentary) Man 4-5
Shame and Desire
Bites Dog (C'est arrive pres de chez vous, Rimy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde, 1992) seeks to draw the spectator closer using the same technique. This has to do with the difference in the diegetic status of the films, which determines the variation in the function of the provocative look. But despite the different aims these films hope to achieve, there is one thing they have in common: both films are confronting to the spectator. A low-budget horror film with a strong cult status, the Belgian film Man Bites Dog (the literal English translation of the original title is "it happened in your neighbourhood") revolves around a film crew shooting a documentary of Benoit the serial killer (the crew appearing on the screen is supposed to be the same one that made the faked making-of). The film crew follow Ben when he visits his parents, attends a bar, and recites his poetry. They also follow him when he rapes and murders his victims; men, women, young and old. Despite of its comic aspects, Man Bites Dog is disturbing, not only because Ben commits his violent acts so cold-bloodedly, but also because the film crew who witness the brutality are by no means bothered by it. In fact, as the narrative unfolds, the crew become more and more involved in the various murders. Not only do they finance the documentary with the money Ben has stolen from his victims, they also help him dispose the bodies of his victims and finally participate in the rape of a female victim in front of her husband. The film ends when both Ben and the film crew are gunned down by another serial killer; the camera continues rolling until the film runs out. It is not surprising that the critics often define Man Bites Dog as a mockumentary, a film that is made to look like a documentary, despite its fictional status. The look of the documentary is achieved through the use of handheld camera and in-camera editing that gives the impression that the entire film is being shot with one camera only and without any intrusion by the filmmaker (except for the occasional fast paced flashback sequences of the murders Ben has committed). This heightens the illusion of immediacy and creates a false sense of authenticity in the film, even though the spectator is aware of its fictional content. The film was also shot in a grainy black-and-white 16 mm stock which is similar in appearance to many cinema verite documentaries (the filmmaking movement that began in France in the 1950s). The grainy quality is heightened by the use of natural lighting which is understood to be part of the 'authentic' look of the verite style. Most of the film is shot in long takes, which implies an exact temporal correspondence between the duration of the event and the duration of the image. Furthermore, the film was shot on location with non-professional actors, the sound was recorded live as well, and the film makes almost no use of non-diegetic sound, which all creates a stronger illusion of reality. All of the actors, 46
'You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
but especially Ben, gaze directly into the camera. This direct addressing of the camera eye is not only a convention of documentary realism, but it also places the spectator in the position of direct witnessing (the spectator takes the position of the cameraman as Ben addresses him). Some of the aesthetic choices described above were due to the low budget at the disposal of thefilmmakers(using the documentary form is of course less expensive and thus more accessible to low budget filmmakers than adopting the classical Hollywood style). Yet the fact that Man Bites Dog consciously plays with elements of documentary encourages the spectators to 'believe' that they are witnessing actual events. This enhances the extreme voyeuristic dimension of the film. What ultimately disturbs the spectator in thefilmis not Ben's casualness and emotional detachment towards his murderous activities (in the film, no other explanation is given to his actions except that it is a way of making a living) which makes violence and murder appear totally meaningless. The film is confronting, because it questions the boundary between the observant and the participant in violence and, in so doing, potentially invites the spectators to redefine their own relationship with violence in the media. Like Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) or Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), Man Bites Dog raises the issue of media attention and fascination with serial killers. Rimy, the director of the documentary within the film keeps on shooting his picture even though two of his soundmen have already died in the process. After the death of Franco, the second soundman, R6my justifies his decision with the following significant lines, directly addressing the camera: "Right before he died, I told him, come on, we've got enough footage, we've got enough sound. And he said, we'll never have enough." The filming does not end as long as there is an audience willing to keep on watching. The gang rape sequence is by any standards the most disturbing event of the film, because it takes away the 'entertainment value' of violence, reminding the spectators of their relation to the on-screen horrors that they find disgusting and repulsive off-screen. At this point, the intersubjective dimension of the film is intensified. Emotions play an important role here, since the confrontation of the spectators with their own look becomes a question of negative emotions, such as repulsion, shame, and guilt for being unable to stop watching. The scene is shot, like most of the film, from the point of view of the supposedly diegetic cameraman Andr6 as the crew breaks and enters into an apartment of a married couple making love. The scene is edited in-camera as each member of the film crew, including Ben, brutally rapes the woman in turn, whilst the recording mike records her screams. Here, four different types of returned looks can be identified. First, there is R6my's desper47
Shame and Desire
ate look at the camera. Unlike anyone else in the film crew, he actually appears to be disgusted with himself. Then there is Andre's frantic, primitive look, and the subdued look of the rape victim's husband whom Ben forces to look at the camera. And finally there is Ben's casual, proud look ("See that? She's moaning!") The only person who is denied the look is the rape victim herself. In the close up of the woman there is no returned look, only the face already beyond pain. Her suffering cannot be communicated via vision, it can only be heard; in this sense the scene is a textbook example of Michel Chion's notion of female voice as the 'point of the cry'.22 In this way, Man Bites Dog goes a step further from Godard's use of prostitution as a metaphor for the position of the filmmaker under capitalism, such as in his My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie, 1962) and Every Man for Himself (Sauve quipeut (la vie), 1980). In Man Bites Dog the position of the filmmaker is that of the rapist, and the fact that the film forces the spectator to become a participant of the rape, is utterly beyond disgust. Frank Lafond makes a similar point when he writes that "[t]he film crew clearly stand in for the audience, first sitting off-screen in the dark of the theatre and then progressively involving itself in the criminal's murderous activities."23 This scene, seen in a viciously graphic form, forces the spectators to leave their position of safe voyeurism, as the violence becomes painful and disturbing because the spectators are confronted with it as it were against their will. Lafond continues: "[Man Bites Dog] does not provide freedom from responsibility insofar as the viewer/voyeur enjoys the sight of pain inflicted on other people because he has expressed a desire for it."24 The scene ends with a lingering tracking shot of the victims that have been tortured to death, nondiegetic flute music playing in the score, and the crew sleeping halfnaked on the kitchen floor where the rape took place. This shot, unlike almost every other shot in the film, does not imply being filmed from the point-of-view of a diegetic cameraman. Furthermore, this scene changes the whole film, as Man Bites Dog can no longer be seen merely as a 'snuff satire' after the appearance of the gang rape scene. And whilst the film crew get even more deeply involved with Ben's monstrous acts, Ben gains increasing control in the process of shooting the documentary itself. Toward the end of the film, Ben attempts to attack a postman who is able to escape, an event which is stretched several times in slow motion and reverse motion in the film. In the following shot, it appears that Ben is sitting behind the editing table, accusing the film" 23 24
Chion, 1982. Lafond, 2003, p. 100. Ibid.p. 100. 48
"You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
makers that they did not come to his aid but continued filming. This would suggest a collision between the representation and what is being represented, and this is the core of the film's 'ethical pursuit'. The violence is representation, representation is violence, and it is from this in-between space in Man Bites Dog that not only the terror, but also the moment of intersubjectivity is rendered discernible. Voyeuristic Shame By positioning the spectator in between shame and intimacy with the Other, film could take advantage of the seemingly sadistic and structur ally empowering voyeuristic look of the spectators (that 'creates' the Other with the eyes) and turn it back onto the spectators themselves. Films like Man Bites Dog and the documentaiy Sin could thereby question the dichotomy of subject vs. object of the look in psychoana lytical film theory, as theorised by Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey. In his book The Imaginary Signifier (Le Signifiant imaginaire) one of the cornerstones of the apparatus theory, Metz states that the process of film viewing is based on scopophilia, the desire to see more, and this notion leads him to analyze the film experience more closely as voyeurism (as well as fetishism and exhibitionism), where he finds the unconscious roots of the 'scopic regime' of cinema. For Metz too, voyeurism is a form of mastery, which is derived from the subject's attempt to gain control over the Other on the level of perceptions; the subject imagines that his look determines the Other.25 According to Metz, there exist two types of voyeurism: private (un authorised) and public (authorised), of which the first type is dominant in film experience. Public voyeurism is discursive interaction based on a mutual agreement as, for example, in the peep show. This is also the nature of the film institution in itself. Films are made to be watched, and the spectator knows this when buying the ticket. The cinematic experi ence, however, is closer to private voyeurism. The darkness of the film theatre, the apparent privacy of the situation and the shape of the cinema screen together create 'a keyhole effect' that is complemented by the film characters' unawareness of the spectators. The film characters allow themselves to be seen, but they act as if they were unaware of this, and unauthorised voyeurism is one of the means by which the (classical) cinema disguises its discursive nature. For Metz (and for Mulvey) spectatorship thus functions on two levels: on the one hand as egoconstitutive identification, and on the other hand as sadistic (erotic) voyeurism, where the spectators subjugate the film character as the Metz, 1982. 49
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object of their look.26 The spectators as subjects of lack feel that the field of camera really is their 'transcendental' field of vision, and are thereby able to subjugate film characters as (i.e. erotic) objects of their look. The basic condition of voyeuristic look is a distance between the spectator and the object of the look. According to Metz, "[P]erceiving drive concretely represents the absence of its object in the distance at which it maintains it and which is part of its very definition: distance of the look, distance of listening."27 By contrast, for Sartre a voyeuristic look creates intimacy between the seer and the seen: the voyeur forgets himself and 'fuses' with the object of his look: No transcending view comes to confer upon my acts the character of a given on which a judgment can be brought to bear. My consciousness sticks to my acts, it is my acts; and my acts are commanded only by the ends to be attained and by the instruments to be employed. My attitude, for example, has no 'outside9; it is a pure process of relating the instrument (the keyhole) to the end to be attained (the spectacle to be seen), a pure mode of losing myself in the world.28 It is only after the voyeur experiences the look of the Other that distance is created between the voyeur and the object of his look. Through the look of the Other, the unreflective consciousness makes the self present as an object for the Other: "First of all, I now exist as myself for my unreflective consciousness [...] I see myself because somebody sees me."29 In this process, the voyeur's subjectivity becomes threatened, the voyeur becomes conscious of himself as an object for the Other: "All of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself [...] in that I have my foundation outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure Like Metz, Laura Mulvey proposes views about the importance of scopophilia in film experience in her classic article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema9, but unlike Metz she takes gender difference as her starting point. According to Mulvey, the classic cinema defines the male subject by the capacity to see, as the source of the look (voyeurism), whereas the female subject is defined by the capacity to attract the look (exhibitionism). This reflects the attempt in the patriarchal system to subjugate women. For Mulvey, the psychic mechanisms invoked by cinema are gender-bound rather than gender-neutral. See Mulvey, 1985. Later psychoanalytic theory, however, has questioned the separation of the female spectator from the basic structure of cinematic pleasure, by claiming that the psychosexual organisations of human beings cannot be reduced to simple oppositions between the active, sadistic, male psyche and a passive, masochistic female psyche. Sexual identification is more dynamic, and gender difference does not determine the way of looking. For a discussion, see, for instance, Williams, 1982 and Rodowick, 1991. 27 28
29
Metz, 1982, p. 46. Sartre, 1956, p. 348.
/&tf.,p.349. 50
"You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
reference to Other."30 This means that the object presented to consciousness is out of the voyeur's reach: "it is separated from me by nothingness which I cannot fill since I apprehend it as not being for me and since on principle it exists for the Other"31 The voyeur's subjectivity flees from him, and will never belong to him, but he nevertheless is that object for the Other. The new consciousness is embellished by the feeling of shame. Shame, then, is "the recognition of the fact that I am indeed that object which the Other is looking at and judging. I can be ashamed only as my freedom escapes me in order to become a given object."32 Yet this self, which the voyeur is in the world of the Other, is made alien to him, for the Other's look fixes his transcendence: all the instrumental-things in the midst of which he is (including the keyhole and the spectacle that is to be seen through it) now turn toward the Other and escape the voyeur: the voyeur is the object in the midst of a world (the voyeur is one with the world as a passive object among other objects) which flows toward the Other. It is in the voyeur's being as an object for the Other than he is able to experience the Other as subject. Voyeurism, and the shame that follows, is for Sartre an indication for the whole human condition. A voyeuristic look is an attempt by the subject to create a world of his own without boundaries by reducing the Other to an object in it. Yet in this process the subject is being caught in action: the subject realises that others exist with him in the same intersubjective field, seeking to render the subject into an object. This leads to shame: My original fall is the existence of the Other. Shame [...] is the apprehension of myself as a nature although that very nature escapes me and is unknowable as such. Strictly speaking, it is not that I perceive myself losing myfreedomin order to become a thing, but my nature is - over there, outside my livedfreedom- as a given attribute of this being which I am for the Other/3 The content of shame is then that the subject is in fact an object and constituted as such by the Other. The subject, who so far has conceived his or her own origin by projecting to be his or her own foundation (the 'creator' of his or her own being) now, as an object, realises that he or she is dependent upon a consciousness other than his or her own. The result of this is the loss of freedom - the subject's foundation now lies in Ibid, p. 349. Ibid,p. 350. IbuL,p. 350. Ibid,p. 352. 51
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the freedom of another - and it is the loss of freedom that degrades the subject to shame. The sense of loss of freedom is an essential feature in shame: in shame my self is not only seen as an object in the world of another and experienced as objectified, it is also sensed as taken by forces beyond my subjective control, since the Other can take a point of view on me that I cannot. Even though there is an objective dimension of my being, that dimension of myself essentially escapes me. Shame, for Sartre, is thus more than a moral sentiment (even though morality is a part of it, at least if the 'sale voyeur' has internalised the cultural conventions of privacy that he is violating). Since shame reproduces the conditions of basic humanness, shame is a metaphysical rather than a moral feeling. Through the emotion of shame, then, the subject/object dichotomy of apparatus theory could be turned upside down. In his two short films, Something Happened (Ndgonting har hdnt9 1987) and World of Glory (Harligt drjorden, 1991), Roy Andersson uses shame in order to reveal the spectators to themselves as existing for others. Something Happened is a public service announcement film about AIDS that was commissioned by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. However, the project was cancelled before the film was finished as it was considered too dark and controversial. In his film, Andersson argues against the medical establishment's official explanation for the virus's origins. The film is composed of 25 tableaux, shot in a sterile visual style with deep space, immobile camera, direct addressing of the spectator, and laconic articulation (should this sound familiar: Andersson's style was in fact very much a source of inspiration for Helke and Suutari in their documentary Sin). First the spectator is fascinated by the richness of the frame but also by its intimacy: we are invited to follow people in everyday situations and intimate moments that we are not intended to see in social situations of another kind. But with the look of the Other in the film, the eyes directed to the camera that haunt the spectators in the act of looking, the spectators are presented in this visual field as objects for the Other's look. The sixth tableau of the film, for instance, consists of a group of doctors in white coats playing pool and having a following dialogue while addressing the camera in an arrogant tone of voice: "You know, just about anything could suddenly turn up down there, in the warmth and damp. [...] Sure! There are all sorts of viruses and bacteria in Africa. And all those monkeys running around as they please." This is the discourse of'us' versus 'them' where AIDS is used as a justification for social exclusion and public control. With the direct address, the spectators are confronted to define their position within this discourse. This is followed by a series of static shots of men and women in different 52
'You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
everyday situations at home and at work, again gazing directly at the camera, while the voice over identifies them as high-risk groups: homosexual men, drug abusers, prostitutes, the 'others'. But the returned look disturbs the othering and makes it impossible for the spectator to adopt a position of supremacy and indifference, suggested in the sixth tableau. All of the sudden the spectators are conscious of themselves not only in the act of looking, but as objects for the Other, in the world of another. The object of my look has suddenly taken a point of view on me that I cannot apprehend. As a result, the spectator is able to experience the Other as subject, as the Other refuses to be an object for the spectator's look. This theme is developed even further with World of Glory\ where Andersson explores humanity by telling a story of a broker in modern day Sweden, haunted by feelings of guilt and shame. Like Something Happened, World of Glory unfolds in 15 tableaux, in a series of static, immobile shots with deep space and grey, washed out atmosphere. The opening of the film is downright unsettling: a crowd of civil servants in an open lot observe how a group of naked women, men and children are forced to enter a closed van. A tube from the van's exhaust pipe is connected to the compartment where the people are, and the van drives off slowly in circles around the lot, while distant screams can be heard in the background. The protagonist of the film stands among the crowd passively; towards the middle of the scene he turns slowly around and looks directly into the camera. Andersson himself has described this scene as a reconstruction of the ethnic cleansings of the Second World War: The camera is nothing other than time and history watching. It is, quite simply, memory and knowledge. Therefore the main character looks into the camera: he looks toward history, toward memory, toward time and toward us.34 Why is this returned look so powerful? According to Philip Hal lie, one cannot understand evil unless one empathises with those who are being victimised.35 This is why, faced with such a horrific scene, the spectators tend to automatically identify with the victims. But by making his protagonist look directly at the camera Andersson denies the spectator this kind of easy solution: with one look the spectators realise that they, too, are the observers, not the victims. This realisation is accompanied by the emotion of shame. The 'world of glory' is the world of coldness and insensitivity, where material things have replaced 34 35
http://www.royandersson.com, accessed 31 October 2006. Hallie, 1985, p. 90. 53
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human emotion, and this is what is ultimately shameful in human condi tion. In this way, Andersson's films first lure the eye and then catch the spectators in the act of looking, making the spectators objects for the Other's look, the Other that now appears as another subject. At this point, shame emerges, as an intersubjective moment when the subject recognises the foundation for his or her existence. Shame, or guilt, then is a metaphor for the denial of truth, of history and its influence on the self. The Other, here, is the presence of history that always haunts us, that always looks at us and defines us, even though we are not always aware of its look. The visual style of Something Happened and World of Glory catches the spectators in the act of looking, confronting them with images they would rather have kept their eyes averted from, such as images of human experiments in Nazi Germany. This creates a harsh contrast of indifference and recognition, disturbance and acceptance in both films. Reciprocal Intersubjectivity As stated above, for Sartre shame is a threatening situation. For him, all the relations with others are characterised by the subject's attempt to make objects of others and vice versa. Shame, therefore, echoes a possibility of 'filling in the void' between the self and the Other. Sartre shows clearly that the look of the Other has a constitutive function for the subject, but that function is not necessarily limited to being a threat. This means that the Other can be a threat to the subject (the Other can objectify and shame the subject) but the Other also can be beneficial to the subject (the Other can support and care for the subject). The rela tionship between the subject and the Other can be productive instead of threatening; we are not separately bound, but interdependent, pro foundly connected beings. But how? Towards the end of Sartre's play No Exit, one of the three characters trapped in the room of hell voices what must be Sartre's most famous phrase: Hell is other people. Hell is 'other people' in the respect that each of these characters are trapped eternally in a relation with each other, in which they either objectify each other, or perceive each other as threatening to their own subjectivity. In his discussion of No Exit Arthur C. Danto describes how in the play Each demands of the others that he or she be taken at the value he or she would want to be taken at, that others perceive him as they would want to perceive themselves, because there is a mutual refusal, indeed incapacity to
54
'You Want to See? Weil, Take a Look at This!" do this, each is forced to see himself through the eyes of the others, and none can escape an identity imposed from without.36
Hell is thus a hopeless situation in which the subjectivity of each is both exposed to others and hostage to others, and from which it is impossible to escape. Understanding this possibility of 'being seen by the Other' is experienced as shame. Consequently, shame reveals the human condition in which we are related to others, the condition from which there is no exit. Relations with others always involve conflict; yet Hazel Barnes in her book on Sartre notes that there is also hope for reciprocity in intersubjective relations.37 This reciprocity means respecting the Other as another subject, without attempting to use the Other to one's own ends. This does not mean that the Other does not have an effect on the subject or vice versa, but that, despite that effect, the subject remains open to the Other. The subject accepts that he or she is "a factual limit to the Other's freedom" and that the Other is a factual limit to the subject's freedom, but tolerates this limitation and removes from the Other "those free possibilities of courageous resistance, of perseverance, of self-assertion which he would have had the opportunity to develop in the world of intolerance."38 According to Barnes, in order to acknowledge the reciprocity, one needs to recognise the positive potential of the look. The first possibility for reciprocal subjectivity is two people looking into the world together, in a common project. The second is the experience of 'look-asexchange'. This kind of look is not "a union of subjects but a mutual affirmation of respect for the Other as subject" that resembles Sartre's concept of 'love' outlined in Being and Nothingness but that lacks the "attempt to assimilate the Other's freedom."39 The look-as-exchange "involves the usual subject/object alternation, but with the added intention of [...] understanding the Other's world and using this understanding to enhance both self and Other."40 Through the look-as-exchange I recognise the Other as a subject fundamentally like myself in his or her basic 'humanness', but it is not marked by threat but by an ethical attitude of reciprocal respect, which Sartre in Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique) referred to as "a free ex-
i0 37 38 39 40
Danto, 1985, p. 90. Barnes, 1974. Sartre, 1956, p. 494. Barnes, 1974, p. 64. Ibid, pp. 333-4, italics added. 55
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change between two men who recognise each other [in a positive or negative way] in their freedom."41 The phenomenon of reciprocity could occur in the cinematic experience as well, as it is not a closed system of subject and object, but a potentially dialogical space of two (or more) subjects. Michael Haneke's Hidden {Cache, 2005), for instance, creates reciprocity by establishing a subject/object alteration between the film and the spectator. In this film, it is not a gaze directed at the camera but the vision of camera itself that returns the spectator's look. The film opens with what resembles a classical establishing shot of a Parisian residence with minimal movement within the frame that lasts about three minutes to the point when we hear a piece of diegetic off-screen dialogue that somehow appears to originate behind our backs. The image pauses and then fast-forwards, revealing that what we saw was not a regular establishing shot but a television screen showing a surveillance tape left anonymously on the doorstep of Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche). Similar static establishing shots of the house as well as of other locations occur throughout the film, which makes the spectators doubt their own perception. It is unclear what the diegetic status of these images is. This is one hidden layer of this multi-layered film between which the spectator is invited to negotiate. The theme of the film is what happens when a personal and/or national disgrace that is safely hidden suddenly surfaces, and this is achieved through the juxtaposition of (mostly static) camera shots and surveillance images, as well as diegetic and non-diegetic shots. These elements interact throughout the entire film, thereby bringing about the effect of doubt. The film is shot on digital video, which further disturbs the act of viewing, as the quality of the surveillance images is exactly the same as the regular shots. The narrative evolves around the mysterious tapes and the question of their dispatcher, whose identity nevertheless remains hidden. The function of the tapes is unambiguous: it is a manner of demanding recognition for the French national shame that has long been hidden in plain sight; namely the police massacre of 200 Algerians during a demonstration against a discriminatory curfew in Paris on October 17, 1961.42 This is the political reason for being of the film. The tapes 41 42
Sartre, 1982, p. 110. This violent attack against the peaceful demonstrators was ordered by Maurice Papon, a former Nazi collaborator and then the chief of the Paris police. The French authority was not only reluctant to investigate the event, but it also remained silent about what happened. Furthermore, despite the extent of the massacre, the press coverage of it was scarce and downplayed due to the censorship of the media by several levels of the French authority. It is telling that upon viewing the film for the first time I personally felt ashamed for my ignorance of the Paris massacre, but in retrospective
56
"You Want to See? Well Take a Look at This!"
feature what appears to be footage of a hidden camera; the camera has access to both the most open and the most private places, but neither the camera nor the filmmaker are visible to the protagonists or the spectator. Furthermore, an important issue with regard to the tapes is the fact that they are made available to those under surveillance. Georges is meant to know that he is being watched, and, in this knowledge, to recognize and accept the responsibility of his actions. In a crucial scene in the film Georges visits Majid (Maurice Benichou) for the first time to accuse him of terrorising his family. George's visit has been filmed without him or Majid knowing it. Later, the mysterious tape is sent to Anne to whom Georges did not tell the truth about his confrontation with Majid. On this tape, we witness Georges accusing and threatening Majid; after Georges's departure Majid starts to cry inconsolably in his low-rent apartment. This intimate encounter with the raw subjectivity of the Other is painful to watch for both the spectator and Georges, and it paves the way to voyeuristic shame, since the footage looks like something that has been secretly filmed. But there is more to it than that. Namely, the question who filmed the conversation and the emotional outburst that followed it? Why did neither Georges nor Majid notice the presence of the camera? It would be an easy solution to decide that the camera is simply out of sight just like in candid camera or reality television shows (the fact that the film never reveals who is surveilling the family would seem to support this idea). But the camera could also be seen situated in the in-between space of the diegesis and the non-diegesis, and it is from this position that the reciprocal intersubjectivity emerges. (This in-between space is present in other films of Haneke as well, such as in Funny Games where two killers have total power over their victims because they can move between the diegesis and the non-diegesis whilst the tortured family cannot.43) In Georges and Anne's house, we also twice witness a young Arab boy that seems to be bleeding from his mouth (the tapes are wrapped in childish drawings of a figure whose mouth is similarly smeared with blood). Later we find out that this boy is Georges's repressed memory of Majid when Georges was six years old. This further blurs the distinction between diegesis and non-diegesis, reality and representation, vision and dream, memory and imagination. This technique also distances the spectators from the protagonists so that they remain aware of their own viewing process. Any identification with the protagonists is discouraged, and, as a result, the spectators are invited to
43
my lack of knowledge should not have been surprising at all. See, for instance, http://www.washington-repoitorg/backissues/0397/9703036.htm, accessed 1 July 2006. Sorfa, 2006, p. 100. 57
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grasp all the different viewpoints at once - because they are uttered right through them. The protagonists in Hidden talk through the spectators in order to reach each other, but in vain. Although their paths cross, Georges and Majid never 'meet', except in the reciprocity of spectatorship. Miscommunications and misunderstandings are the narrative forces of the film, residues in the self/Other alteration that enable moments of added intention of understanding the complex interactions between the protagonists that the tapes have set in motion. In this enigmatic network, Georges stands out as the central figure. Majid's parents worked for Georges's family, and, when they died during the October 17 demonstration, Georges's parents took in Majid. In the film, Georges has guilty dreams about deceiving Majid into killing a rooster, which results in Majid being hastily sent off to an orphanage. The dream scene starts abruptly with a close-up of an axe cutting the head off the rooster; the young Georges watches the event frightened. An exchange of looks is established between Georges and Majid through a series of shot-reverse shots which develop into the dream-Majid approaching the camera with his axe raised to an extreme close-up so that in the end he 'swallows' the image. This scene is a forceful demand of recognition of guilt. It is also a forewarning of shocking events yet to come. Towards the end of film, Majid asks Georges to come to his apartment. As soon as Georges is there, Majid says: "I asked you to come because I wanted you to be present." In an abrupt gesture, Majid then slits his throat, bleeding all over the place. Majid's suicide is an extreme demand of recognition, but Georges refuses to acknowledge this demand or admit his quilt to himself or to his mother, Anne, Majid, or Majid's son. Georges's attitude is an analogy for the French national imaginary and its undercurrent of guilt and shame for the treatment of Algerians in France. Georges (the nation of France) seems to refuse to take responsibility for something that happened far behind in the past, since he (France) is not the same person (nation) any longer. By placing the spectator at the point of junction of human interactions in the film, Haneke attempts to establish an exchange of recognition of this guilt between the spectator and the film. In an interview about the film, Haneke himself has stated that Georges's guilt is traumatic, because he refuses to accept that his selfishness has destroyed one human life. Instead, he prefers to keep the secrets as they are, buried deep under the fa$ade of his 'stable' bourgeois family. The exchange of recognition that Haneke sets up is then not only positive. I do not need to approve of Georges's decision of living in denial to be able to recognise it as behaviour of another person fundamentally like myself in his basic humanness. George's past wrongdoing is, in fact, quite normal selfishness for a 58
'You Want to See? Well, Take a Look at This!"
six-year old child. The things become complicated only when he refuses to acknowledge his guilt. Here, the spectator can empathise with Georges without identifying with him. Within the framework of film theory, Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis explain the difference between (conscious) empathy and (visual) identification as follows: Consciously experienced empathy has very little to do with identification [...] The difference might be put in the following way: Empathy = I know how you feel; knowledge and perception are its structuring categories. Identification = I see as you see, from your position: vision and psychic placement define its terms.44 This aspect - empathy without identification - is crucial to reciprocal intersubjectivity in a political sense, since it renders it an activity that recognises the Other's impact on the self for participation in the reality of two (or more) separate subjects, but also acknowledges the externality of that Other. This simultaneous distance and proximity allows the emergence of multiple positions beyond the self/Other dichotomy. The meaning of the film for the spectator originates therefore from the intersubjective field of mutual recognition, instead of from a position of cheap middle-class morality. The spectator of Hidden is invited to act as an intermediate for the multiple positions that shape both the self and the Other as they participate in each others' realities: Georges and Majid, Georges and Anne, Anne and Pierre, and finally the sons of both Majid and Georges who are brought together in the brilliant final shot of the film (this shot is a static establishing shot of the school Georges's son attends that relates it to the secretly filmed footage constantly recurring in the film but especially to the opening shot). Here lies the possibility of the circulation of shame as a cinematic experience. It is these interactions that are the coming-of-being of ethnic conflicts, instead of some local of global structures. By directing our attention to these interactions, Hidden enables the spectators to grasp the larger, more complex framework of the unresolved racial issues still at hand (appropriately enough, Haneke won the best director prize for his film at Cannes just few months before the 2005 riots in France in October and November) even those spectators that do not have first-hand knowledge about the ethnic conflicts that Haneke addresses in his film. In this way, Hidden creates an emotional space where shame could be understood as a failure of French nation in living up to its ethical standards (Hiberte, egalite, fraternitei\ or at least what should be its ethical standards. 44
Stam et al., 1992: pp. 150-1. See also Laine, 2001. 59
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Reciprocal intersubjectivity could then be politically constitutive, and in Sartre's thinking it is the look of the Other (and the basic structure of shame) that characterises the manner in which we are intersubjectively connected to each other, and the manner in which we attempt to make objects of each other. To live in the social world means that we are compelled to see ourselves through the eyes of the others, and that we cannot flee an identity that is being enforced upon us from without ourselves. Comprehending this risk of being seen by the Other is experienced as shame. Consequently, shame reveals the human situation in which we are connected to others, the situation that we cannot escape. However, Sartre's notion of the look of the Other that compels the subject into an objective apprehension of him- or herself is often criticised as being ontological-individual rather than socio-historical. The Sartrean subject has been declared as being solid, essentialist, and selfsufficient "prisoner of the cogito."45 Sartre's concept of consciousness has been seen as a Cartesian construct, "with all the attributes of absolute autonomy" but little need in acting to improve the social circumstances in which one lives.46 According to Nik Farrell Fox: In this respect, Sartre's social theory in Being and Nothingness remains abstract and incomplete since he does not go beyond a dyadic account of self and Other, which [...] is insufficient for the explanation of 'macrophenomena', such as institutions, languages, and collective structures.47 Yet underneath the 'Cartesian surface' of Being and Nothingness there were important undercurrents which indicated a more contingent notion of the subject that Sartre later outlined in his Critique of Dialectical Reason.49 In this account, Sartre attempts to understand subjectivity through a dialectical plane; for Sartre 'dialectical reason' is a way of understanding the objective dimension of history at the same time with the subjective, individual experience. Where Being and Nothingness provides an abstract and in itself incomplete or partly deficient matrix for the subject's self-realisation as a social subject, in Critique of Dialectical Reason subjectivity is imposed not by some ontological structures, but by its socially and historically conditioned frameworks. This theoretical mode of intersubjective constitution could also serve in thinking about the film and its spectator as social beings in a historical context. 45 46 47
See, for instance, L6vi-Strauss, 1966, p. 249. Marcuse, 1983, p. 174. Fox, 2003, p. 56. And, as Fredrick Jameson points out, this new book changed the old, and Being and Nothingness can no longer be read in the same way after the appearance of Critique of Dialectical Reason. See Jameson, 1971, p. 209.
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CHAPTER 2
Intersubjectivity and Otherness Dialectical Spectatorship As we have already seen, in order for shame to occur, there must be a relationship between the self and the Other. Shame is 'shared' by everyone who has the concept of the Other, and therefore reveals that the structure of self-consciousness is necessarily intersubjective. This structure of intersubjectivity, however, could be criticised for being essentialist and asocial: especially (post)structuralist thinkers such as Claude Levi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan condemn Sartre's existentialism in favour of the decentred subject that is mastered by, rather than the master of, language and thought structures.1 For instance, in his treatise on the development of an intersubjective world for the subject, Lacan extends Sartre's discussion of shame and the look of the Other in the following way: Sartre [...] brings [the gaze] into function in the dimension of the existence of others. Others would remain suspended in the same, partially de-realising conditions that are, in Sartre's definition, those of objectivity, were it not for the gaze. The gaze, as conceived by Sartre, is the gaze by which I am sur prised - surprised in so far as it changes all the perspectives, the lines of force, of my world, orders it,fromthe point of nothingness where I am, in a sort of radiated reticulation of the organisms.2 The problem with Sartre's formulation, according to Lacan, is that it defines the subject as the unique centre of reference, and does not take into account the symbolic nature of subjectivity, the way in which the individual is subjected to the order of language and the societal impera tives of his or her environment. In this process, the look (or 'the gaze' as Lacanian scholars usually translate the term le regard, whilst in connec tion with Sartre one usually talks about the look) is of fundamental importance. The look/gaze does not originate from one's human coun terpart, as in Sartre's thinking, but from the realm of the linguistic unconscious. 2
See, for instance, Howells, 1992a and 1992b. Lacan, 1994, p. 84. 61
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Lacan is thus not wholly in agreement with Sartre's view of the look/gaze and its role in the development of intersubjectivity. Sartre's analysis of the gaze is not a correct phenomenological analysis, Lacan argues, because Sartre defines the gaze as a presence of other persons. For Lacan the gaze pre-exists the subject (in the same way as it might be said of language) and is, in this respect, the manifestation of the Symbolic within the field of vision. In Sartre's example of the voyeur he speaks of being seen peeking, but according to Lacan, it is not merely a gaze that the voyeur apprehends, but "a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other," a gaze that reveals that the voyeur is a "subject sustaining himself in a function of desire."3 Lacan provides a different account of intersubjectivity by introducing two notions of otherness. There is the Other(A) with the capital letter (le grand Autre), the one who sees without being seen (not a person), and before which all others are merely others with lower case letters (the other persons, the Sartrean Other).4 Lacan illustrates this with a story of himself in his early twenties, on a boat with a group of Breton fishermen, when one of them points out a sardine can to him: It was a small can, a sardine can. It floated there in the sun [...] it glittered in the sun. And Petit-Jean said to me - You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it doesn't see you! [...] [I]f what Petit-Jean said to me [...] had any meaning, it was because in a sense, it was looking at me, all the same. [...] I, at that moment - as I appeared to these fellows who were earning their livings with great difficulty, in the struggle with what for them was a pitiless nature - looked like nothing on earth. In short, I was rather out of place in the picture.5 The sardine can looks back at Lacan, because it is situated at the level of 'the point of light', the point at which everything looks back at the subject. The sardine can looks back, because it is situated at the point at which the subject cannot have a point of view, the gaze in the field of the Other(A). By this example, Lacan establishes shame ("I looked like nothing on earth") as the operation of the gaze in the field of the Other(A), on the field of the Symbolic, which, for Lacan, is the foundation of intersubjectivity. The Lacanian notion of the Other(A) thereby assigns considerable importance to the Symbolic: our visibility is not merely a brute condition but a consequence of our possession of a symbolic system. Our original relations with others come into existence at the time of the subject's entry into the Symbolic order, the order of 3
5
Ibid., p. 85, italics added. To distinguish Lacanian Other from the Sartrean Other I shall from now on follow Betty Cannon's style and refer to the former as the Other(A). Lacan, 1994, pp. 95-6.
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language and culture. This occurs simultaneously with the birth of the unconscious, and this is the reason why (to quote Lacan's famous phrase) "the unconscious is structured like a language."6 However, the entry into the Symbolic splits the subject from the 'primal object', the infant's original experience of wholeness (Sartre would say that the subject loses his or her 'original spontaneity'), leading to the emergence of a desire for fullness (in this sense, Lacan's concept of desire is very close to that of Sartre, since it is associated with lack of being) or the desire for the Other(A). As already said, the Other(A) is not a person but the linguistic unconscious, "the locus of the signifier"7 that can be equated with discourse and the Symbolic Order. The subject's desire for the Other(A) is frustrated since there is a fundamental absence at the centre of language. Since every sign indicates the absence of the object it stands for, this intensifies the frustration of the infant, since the infant now has to accept his or her essential lack: we never acquire what we so passionately desire. Hence, we are compelled to seek substitute objects for our desire. For Lacan, the origin of the gaze itself is non-human, but the gaze is nevertheless socially codified through what Lacan calls the 'cultural screen'. The gaze assists the subject's psychic processes of introjective and projective identification, through which the subject assimilates what is desirable about him- or herself to the self, and exteriorises what the subject cannot accept about him- or herself outside the self. Therefore, the gaze functions also in ego-constitutive activities. As Kaja Silverman explains it: [T]he gaze also comes into play in a range of other activities whereby the conventional subject fortifies him- or herself against lack, activities which are also constitutive of 'difference'. Most classically, the subject procures for him- or herself a fantasmatic identity, whereby he or she attempts to fill the void out of which desire proceeds. The mirror stage [the stage at which the subject (mis)recognises his or her self in his or her mirror image] gives us, of course, our primary model for conceptualising this particular visual misrecognition, which denies the alterity and exteriority of the constituting image.8 Yet despite Lacan's insistence on the significance of intersubjectivity, he has lost the Other as another subject. The Other as another subject does not appear anywhere here, merely as an object with an egoconstitutive function. Furthermore, Lacan has not only lost the Other, he has lost the subject as well. As Lacanian ego is purely and simply an 6 7 8
Ibid., p. 149. Lacan, 1977, p. 310. Silverman, 1996, p. 169. 63
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imaginary mirage (a subjectivity based on identification with a 'mirror' image that gives the subject an illusion of a bodily integrity which he or she in fact does not possess), there is an adoption of the image of the Other in the place where there should be the self. Since the subject literally takes (misrecognises) the mirror image for him- or herself, the Lacanian mirror refers not to the discovery of the other person as a subject, but to the alienation of subjectivity in the Other. This means that Lacan regards both the self and the Other as objects, not conscious subjects like Sartre. This is why, in Lacanian thinking, there can be no subject-object alteration (the self is always the 'subject' that uses the Other as an object) and no connection with the world. Everything in human subjectivity is reduced to unconscious linguistic structure without intentionality. Even the subject's entrance into the Symbolic order does not provide him or her with a connection to the world. For Lacan language 'speaks' the person, and the subject is merely a "plaything of linguistic structure,"9 whilst for Sartre language arises with the subject's need to express him- or herself in a world where there are others.10 Whilst in Sartre's account of intersubjectivity there is an eternal conflict, a separation between the subject and the Other, in Lacan there is an obliteration of boundaries, a confusion of identities between the subject and the Other. Both Sartre and Lacan's view of intersubjectivity is quite pessimistic: either the subject cannibalistically consumes the Other in an attempt to overcome his or her fundamental lack (as in Lacanian thinking) or the subject aims to possess the freedom of the Other who has the power of making the subject into an object (as in Sartrean thinking). Thus whilst Lacan finally maintains an integral transcendental subjectivity, escaped into a merger with a self-same Other, Sartre's subject is doomed to unbearable loneliness.11 Is there no solution from this conflict of self with the Other? Is there no way to dissolve this classic opposition of subject and object, and to formulate a model of intersubjectivity that would respect the externality of the Other and at the same time connect with the Other? Even though in Sartre's account the constitutive function of the Other to the self is to 9
Cannon, 1991, p. 256. In Search for a Method (Questions de methode) however, Sartre comes closer to the Lacanian conception of language, defining it as the "objedification of a class, the reflection of conflicts, latent or declared, and the particular manifestation of alienation." Sartre, 1957, p. 113. And, either way, there is no way out of shame, as shame always carries a sense of naked isolation from community, a sense of being before community without being part of it. The subject is either caught between the state of freedom with anxiety and shame, or bondage with shame but no anxiety. See Lewis, 1995, pp. 231-2.
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some extent limited to a threat, Roland Aronson has noted that there are two opposing impulses in Sartre's philosophy formulated in Being and Nothingness, "one leading towards the world and the other away from it."12 Whilst in popular conceptions of Sartre's philosophy the latter impulse is emphasised, Sartre elsewhere (especially in his Critique of Dialectical Reason) moves away from it and replaces the idea of selfsufficient consciousness with the idea of the subject in a socio-material field that influences the subject's sense of self through a dialectical, collective-based logic. As Nik Farrell Fox puts it, in Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre [...] moves towards a more dialectical understanding on subject and object in which the subject is engaged, immersed, and permeable to the world, both transcendent and material.13 To what extent, then, could we get new insight into cinema spectatorship through the dialectical logic? In what ways could cinema epito mise the intersubjective, dialectical relationship between the self and the Other in a socio-material field? In what ways does the film spectator participate in this process? And to what degree is it possible to recognise and respect the subjectivity of the Other in one's field of vision in the dialectical process? Sartre's notion of communality is an answer to these questions insofar as it shows how the process of identification in the cinematic experience could be dialectical instead of a two-way mirror, a 'common project' that recognises and respects both the freedom of the self and of the Other, and that allows for authentic relations with the Other. Sense of Communality In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claims that even though the subject can experience a feeling of 'we', it is an individual feeling rather than "an intersubjective consciousness and a new being which surpasses and encircles its parts as a synthetic whole."14 This means that one does not encounter the other subject in the we-experience, but that the two sub jects are united in a purely external way (for instance in interest or a shared action toward a common goal). Yet in his book Critique of Dialectical Reason Sartre extends his analysis of intersubjectivity from dyadic self/Other relationships to triadic social and community relation ships. In this book, Sartre writes that the community, like subjectivity, is dependent on the look of the Other. If I am walking with a person in the 12 13 14
Aronson, 1980, p. 89. Fox, 2003, p. 17. Sartre, 1956, p. 536. 65
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street, and we are looked at by another, we become a community in a sense of community-as-object. This means that a community is constituted as such by the subjective awareness of a third party, be it a "master, [...] a feudal lord, [...] a bourgeois or a capitalist."15 This means that whilst dyadic relations are the necessary ground for subjectivity (as described in Being and Nothingness), "the real relation between men is necessarily triadic."16 This is so because it is the third party that "makes reciprocity visible to itself,"17 providing the social context and perspective which allows for authentic relations with others. Consider, in this light, the following case of shame. In November 2001, the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) showed a Finnish documentary The Idle Ones (Joutilaat, 2001) by Susanna Helke and Virpi Suutari. The documentary deals with youth unemployment in Kainuu, the underprivileged area at Finland's eastern border, at the turn of the millennium, when the economy was thriving in the rest of Finland. The documentary concentrates on the experiences of three young men, Hapa, LStko and Bodi, who fill their days with shooting rats at the refuse dump, cruising around the town centre, drinking, playing video games, and fishing. The documentary starts with the portrayal of Hapa, who is still sleeping at noon when his mother comes to visit. She is now on vacation, so she dusts, cleans the windows, and changes the curtains, while Hapa is getting up. In the next sequence, L6tk5 is waking up, and without even getting out of the bed he lights a cigarette, turns on the television and calls his buddy on the telephone: "Morning! Are you still sleeping? How long will it take? Come get the car keys and get me a pizza. I'm starving. Get me a pizza. I'm starving, and there's no food here." As the documentary from the very beginning took a rather unvarnished dive into the daily lives of these three young men, I, in the audience, was sinking down in my seat, ashamed that my countrymen were confirming all the negative cultural stereotypes Finns have to deal with everywhere. Furthermore, I was ashamed to be associated - through my nationality - with these negative stereotypes. This is not merely a question of identification with the characters either in a positive (introjective) or negative (projective) sense. On the one hand there is too much of my own self involved in these boys for me to project them outside of myself as others. On the other hand there is too much distance between me and these boys for me to 'use' them as the construction material for my identity. Rather, this is a question of identification with oneself as a 15 16 17
Sartre, 1982, p. 421. Ibid.p. 109. Ibid, p. 116. 66
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member of a community (Finns) as seen by the 'Third Other' (other Europeans). But my moment of shame can also be traced back to the national-romantic cultural discourse (discussed below) that constructed the Finnish shame and sense of inferiority before other ('more civilised') Europeans. My identification with Hapa, L6tk6, and Bodi confirms that I too am a lazy child of nature that is living day by day and has a tendency towards drinking, and justifies the cultural discourse according to which Finland is incompatible with the rest of Europe. My moment of shame is an example of the way in which the sense of self and identity are rooted in emotions, and of how they can emerge in intersubjective relationships. But it is also an example of the way in which cultural identities are profoundly embedded in emotions, and of how emotions work to engage individuals with cultural practices, mediating the relationship between the individual and the collective.18 According to Norman K. Denzin, "many of the feelings people feel and the reasons they give for their feelings are social, structural, cultural, and relational in origin".19 Furthermore, cultures favour certain emotions, which may lead to the exaggeration and intensification of the valued emotion within a culture. Cultural identities are emotionalised identities, as emotions involve an interweaving of the individual and the social. As Carolyn Vogler states, cultural identities and discourses are rooted not only in political, economic, and geopolitical processes in the external social world, but also in basically psychological processes and strong feelings.20 Ruth Benedict talks about 'shame cultures' and 'guilt cultures'; Japan, for instance, has historically placed a great deal upon the feeling of shame, whilst most European cultures regulate socially the activities of their members through guilt.21 Like guilt, shame is an emotion most inevitably embedded in a socio-cultural matrix. Shame has a strong cultural salience with an obvious social function as it motivates norm-conforming behaviour. In complex ways, shame frames discourses about social relations and events. Furthermore, both shame and its obverse, pride, are related to the evaluation of the individuals' actions, feelings, or behaviour.22 The difference is in the feeling: in pride we feel 'puffed up' whilst in shame we feel that we are no good, inadequate, unworthy. Shame is a fear of disgrace, but also an attitude of awe or respect about the values central to culture. Shame arises out of the tension between how the individual Ahmed, 2004, p. 42. Denzin, 1984, p. 54. Vogler, 2000. Benedict, 1984. Lewis, 1995, p. 34. 67
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wants to be seen and how she or he is.23 Shame, then is very much a cultural emotion that as a mode of social engagement and intersubjective 'bonding' has a long history, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Finland. Finnish national identity has in rather specific ways been shaped in the 19th century around notions of shame, which are wellunderstood by the Finns themselves but not always by outsiders. This is not merely a question of identification, but concerns the status of shame as a 'frame' in the web of Finnish psychosocial existence as a whole. At least when compared to other European nationalities, the Finnish national self-image has been exceptionally belittling, to the point of 'self-racism', at least when compared to other European nationalities.24 In the value-laden comparisons between Finland and other European nations, made at the mythical and stereotypical level, the Finnish 'backwoods culture' has been represented as uncultured, uncommunicative, impolite, culturally and biologically pathological, too straightforward, and far too serious compared to the civilised and well-behaved urban cultures of other European nations. As a result, the Finns are often discontent with their nationality, ashamed of themselves and their fellow countrymen. There seems to be a tradition of self-stigmatisation in Finland, resulting form the fact that 'Finnishness' has long been defined as being inferior to the rest of Europe. Ever since the Finnish NationalRomantic movement in the late 19th century and the civilisation process of the common people, the Finns have been regarded by the 'European elite' as separate, mentally colonialised 'others'.25 Or better, the Finns often feel like they are being regarded through stigmatising, negative stereotypes supposedly attributed to them by other Europeans. After all, as Fredric Jameson has noted, what else is cultural identity but "the ensemble of stigmata one group bears in the eyes of other group (and vice versa)"26 The Finnish shame discourse, then, is closely related to the fact that the 'construction' of Finnishness took place from above to below; Finnishness was seen by the national elite as an opposite of European" 24
Wurmser, 1981, p. 76. Apo, 1998. In his comprehensive research of Finnish psychohistory, Juha Siltala traces Finnish cultural discourse back to two turning points - religious and political - as moments in the history of cultural development that rooted shame, shaming, anxiety, humiliation, and jealousy in Finnish mentality. The religious turning point is situated in the first half of the 19th century, in the Finnish revivalist movements and in the changes in the conditions of subjective self-esteem within them. The political turning point is situated in the late 19th century, in the awakening of national consciousness and the changes in subjective ideals and needs. Siltala, 1992; 1994; 1999. Jameson, 1993, p. 33.
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ness (particularly Swedishness), Finnish language was seen as undeveloped, and the Finns themselves were seen as slow and ridiculous, always a few steps behind other Europeans who have enjoyed a long tradition of urban culture. As a result, Finns had to be 'tamed'; their positive attitude of life, their own forms of sociality, sensuality and sexuality had to be rejected. On the other hand, the Finns were eventually granted positive traits too, but given the lack of admirable ancestors and other national heroes, the place of the Finnish 'ego ideal' was defined by the features of a sports hero and a courageous soldier. As Satu Apo argues, the characteristics that the Finns themselves attach to Finnishness are not radically different from the characteristics from Finland's neighbouring countries. Instead, what is typically Finnish is the negative evaluation of these national characteristics - whether they are imagined or actual. For instance, what the others regard as Finnish honesty, the Finns themselves regard as Finnish stupidity compared to craftiness that can be found among southern Europeans. If the others appreciate Finnish industriousness and conscientiousness, the Finns themselves call it workalcoholism. Modesty and unassuming behaviour among the Finns is by the Finns generally considered a lack of civilised manners (but not necessarily by the others). As is the case in Finnish culture, then, the subject is humiliated and oppressed by a sense of inferiority because the subject experiences not being regarded in terms of how he or she wishes to be seen by the others. Finnish shame, then, is not first and foremost a result of violating the social norms, but a result of a denial of social respect. Yet as a result of having his or her 'identity claims' disregarded, the subject may come to realise that his or her sense of self is constitutively dependent on the acknowledgements of others. This realisation may become a political motive for a struggle for approval.27 This was (and is) the cultural discourse within the Finnish community that both described and prescribed how its members should engage with it, and what roles they should envisage for themselves. These kinds of subject positions deliberately obscure the diversity of the people, as well as their actual experiences, in favour of constructing an idealised model of a 'citizen'. It is therefore interesting to investigate how this culture, with its strong reliance on shame in order to police and disciEve Kosofsky Sedgwick, for instance, argues that shame can have this kind of transformational political power. Sedgwick, 2003. Yet, as Kathleen Woodward argues, it is not the shame by itself that may carry that power, although it may serve as a catalyst for change. Furthermore, she argues that not all shame can be transformational, for instance the modes of enclosed, traumatic shame that loops back upon itself as depicted in Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye (1970). Woodward, 2000, p. 227.
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pline, but also to subjectify its communal life has developed a special kind of intersubjectivity, and how its artists and filmmakers have re sponded to the new ways of looking and seeing in order to produce more permissive modes of subjectivity, as will be done in the following chapters. Triadic Communality But the 'Finnish shame' that I am describing also reveals the dialec tical nature of human relations: the subject identifies with the commu nity as well as with the Third Other outside of the community. This means that even though the community is dialectically opposed to the Other, it is nevertheless dependent upon that Other. Furthermore, this Third Other provides the basis for the structure of interiority for the community: in the dialectical process whereby the community modifies its bonds in response to the Other: "the bond of exteriority [...] is itself interiorised by practical multiplicities."28 This means that the communal individual internalises the "adopted inertia, function, power, rights and duties, structure, violence and fraternity" of the group and actualises these new reciprocal relations as "his new being, his sociality."29 Our subjectivity is then defined by our historical situation, and our relations with others are socially conditioned; indeed, as Fredric Jameson notes, all action takes place against a background of society, and "human life is, in its very structure, collective rather than individualistic."30 Further more, these internalised social relations are often understood in visual terms; we define our subjectivity according to how we are being seen by the Other in a certain social situation. As Hazel Barnes puts it: Our only genuine sense of community comes in the form of an Us-object when we perceive ourselves along with other forming the object of the gaze of an Other. Our attempt to feel ourselves one with all of the mankind ne cessitates the presence of a Third who looks at us collectively but upon which no outside gaze may be directed.31 According to Thomas Elsaesser, the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in particular are centred on intersubjective relationships and the question of social identity through a heavy investment in visuality,
Sartre, 1982, p. 57. Sartre's term for this kind of community is the 'fused group'. The fused group is based on the positive forms of reciprocity and collectivity unlike the 'institutional group' that is based on conflict and 'vertical otherness'. Sartre, 1956, p. 632. Jameson, 1971, p. 207. Barnes in Sartre, 1956, p. xxxviii.
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especially in the exchange of looks and the problem of voyeurism/exhibitionism: One is tempted to say that in Fassbinder's films all human relations, all bodily contact, all power structures and social hierarchies, all forms of communication and action manifest themselves and ultimately regulate themselves along the single axis of seeing and being seen.32 In his analysis of Fassbinder's AH - Fear Eats the Soul {Angst essen Seele auf, 1974), Elsaesser suggests that the behaviour of the protagonists, AH and Emmi, is defined by how they wish to appear in the eyes of others: They play the roles with such deadly seriousness because it is the only way they know to impose an identity on aimless, impermanent lives. [...] They discover that they cannot exist without being seen by others, for when they are alone, their own mutually sustaining gaze is not enough to confer or confirm a sense of identity.33 This means that the field of vision presents itself to the Arab-German couple as a contradiction. On the one hand they cannot be seen together, because there exists no social space in which they would not be objects of aggressive, hostile, disapproving looks. On the other hand they cannot exist without being seen by others - the social eye - because being seen by others means possessing an identity in the field of vision, the social world to which they want to belong. Any act of being seen is thus communal and - since it requires recognition by another - necessary in order to 'belong' and to have a subjectivity. It is precisely being seen breaking the rules that makes somebody a rebel, but this is first and foremost so to the rebel him- or herself. This is why the disapproving looks discounted by Ali and Emmi confirm "what they already know: that they are 'different' and not ashamed of it. Their sense of identity is supported by a 'negative' look."34 This means that in order to exist, one has to be perceived, and in order to be perceived, one has to be an image, a recognisable representation in the socially conditioned field of vision. According to Elsaesser, most of Fassbinder's films can be seen illustrating the way in which subjectivity is formed by specific social rela" 33 34
Elsaesser, 1986, pp. 539-40. Ibid,p. 542. Ibid, p. 65. In the biography of Jean Genet, Sartre describes in a similar manner the way in which Genet achieved identity, after being seen in the act of stealing. After hearing his whole home village chanting the words "You're a thief," Genet decided to be the thief they said he was, to be what crime made of him. By storing the Look (and the voice) of the Other in his consciousness Genet becomes what he is being seen as. This makes Sartre conclude that "I is another." Sartre, 1952, p. 138. 71
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tions in the field of vision that is organised by the gaze. Fassbinder's protagonists are characterised by their desire to attract someone to play the spectator who would confirm them as subjects. In fact, Elsaesser goes so far as to claim that, in the films of Fassbinder, the spectators are inscribed as voyeurs, since the characters "are so manifestly exhibitionist."35 The spectators, then, are invited to enter into the film as the bearers of the gaze, through primary identification (the infant's feeling of oneness with the mother before he or she has discovered the otherness of objects) with the camera. Fassbinder's cinema, then, is a cinema in which all possible subject matter seems to suffer the movement between fascination and exhibitionism, of who controls, contains, places whom through the gaze or the willingness to become the object of the gaze. It is as if all secondary identifications were collapsed into primary identification, and the act of seeing itself the centre of the narrative.6 I agree with Elsaesser insofar as subjectivity and belonging are dependent on the social look, but I have a problem with his claim that the manner in which the spectator experiences the characters' interaction within a social reality would be conditioned by primary identification with the camera, thereby adopting the role of the gaze as a social eye (either in its approving or disapproving mode). By comparison, what Sartre shows us is that the question of social identity in an intersubjective, visual field is dependent on the subject's identification with the Other as well as with the Third Other outside the social community that the subject and the Other have formed. In this structure, both the spectator and the film character are conditioned by an intersubjective triad, and the process of identification is three-dimensional. Furthermore, this kind of communal identification should not be regarded in ontologicalindividual terms, as it is produced by a dialectical relation between an (oppressive) Third Other (be it the 'European presence' or the systematic nature of contemporary global capitalism) and the progressive integration of subjects into a totality which comes to be the (oppressed) group (Arabs, Finns, the unemployed). In this relation, the Other is no longer a threat; no longer the only foundation for social existence, but a 'mediating' Other who potentially provides an affirmation for the subject's existence without becoming an objectifying, transcendent Other. This model is intriguingly similar to psychoanalytic criticisms of Metz's theory of primary identification: it is not that the subject first has to identify with some transcendent, all-seeing eye in order to be able to 35 36
Elsaesser, 1986, p. 542. /£/
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and Otherness
recognise him- or herself as an image within a symbolic field. Rather, the subject first has to identify with him- or herself in order to become conscious of him- or herself as seen by the Other.37 As Kaja Silverman writes in her The Threshold of the Visible World: "[T]he subject can only successfully misrecognise him- or herself within that image or cluster of images through which he or she is culturally apprehended."38 What is determinative for the social subject is thus not how the subject sees or would like to see him- or herself, but how the subject apprehends the operation of the gaze of the Other(A) upon him- or herself in the field of vision. This structure is epitomised in the ending of the first, highly praised Dogma 95 film Celebration {Dogme #1 -Festen, 1998), directed by Thomas Vinterberg, where the paedophile father (Henning Moritzen) asks forgiveness from his family and friends, knowing he will never see any of them again. The self (the spectator) identifies here with the Other (the father), negatively exposed before the Third Other (the family), and can thereby relate to his shame (and sorrow) even when he or she condemns the father's actions. If identification were a two-way, instead of a three-way process, an emotional response to a character this unpleasant would be impossible indeed. Idiotic Communities The triadic structure of identification described above is the driving force in the second (less acclaimed than the first) Dogma 95 film as well, namely in Lars von Trier's The Idiots {Dogme #2 - Idioterne, 1998). In this film, a group of middle-class people attempt to find their 'inner idiot' in order to set themselves against materialistic society. In other words, the film deals with a concept of identity that is dependent on identification with the Other as well as with the Third Other outside the group that the subject and the Other have formed. By 'othering themselves' (marginalising themselves in the society by identifying with its others) 'the idiots' strive to form an alternative 'symbolic home' or
38
In fact, Metz's thesis of primary cinematic identification has already been rejected on the grounds that Lacan's theory of the mirror stage does not support it. In Lacan's thinking, primary identification means in particular the child's identification with the image in the mirror stage. The child first has to identify with his or her own (mirror) image; and from this first identification the child becomes conscious of him- or herself as being seen by the others, and this is the precondition for all the following identifications through which subjectivity is being constituted in the symbolic order. It is only through an identification with its own image from the outside point of view that the subject recognises and 'identifies with' the gaze, after which the symbolic starts to function as a signifying practice in the subject's psychic life. See, for instance, Cowie, 1991 and Wright, 1999. Silverman, 1996, p. 18.
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indeed an 'imagined community' in the sense of Benedict Anderson. The triadic relation between the self, the Other, and the Third Other is established from the very beginning. The story evolves around a woman, Karen (Bodil Jorgensen), who is on the run after the tragic death of her little son. Instead of attending the funeral, she has lunch in an expensive restaurant where she is insulted by the waiter: "Can we afford a mineral water? Or shall we use the tap?" Elsewhere in the restaurant sits a group of seemingly mentally disabled people that call themselves 'the idiots'. A connection between Karen, 'the idiots' and the waiter/other patrons in the restaurant is made visible through successive, triangular shot-reverse-shots which throughout the film imply a triadic structure of the self, the Other, and the Third Other. 'The idiots' cause a commotion and become objects of disapproving looks by the other customers (the social eye). Karen, whose identity in the social field is disturbed by the death of her son, is drawn to the otherness that 'the idiots' represent. As a result, she joins their mental game of idiotism which soon becomes for her a question of negotiating identity within this intersubjective triad. The narrative unfolds within the negotiations and conflicts between the self, the Other, and the Third Other in different social situations. It is no accident that 'the idiots' fake mental disability very much in public (and not, for instance, only privately): in restaurants, public swimming pools, and neighbouring businesses. They need to be seen by the social community outside of which they have placed themselves in order to be able to withdraw themselves from it. In the film, two types of triadic relations can be found: ones that occur within the group and others that occur in the interactions between the group and the society. Most often (especially in the beginning of the film), Karen represents here the self that simultaneously identifies both with the Other ('the idiots') and the Third Other (the 'normal' people). She has trouble identifying fully with either position as she feels that she is not accepted in the socially conditioned field of vision (she has abandoned her family at a moment of crisis), but she cannot live without its support either. She is drawn to 'the idiots' but suffers from guilt because she feels that they are poking fun at people that are truly mentally handicapped. Another central figure in the film is Stoffer (Jens Albinus), the self-proclaimed leader of the group. He is the one that negotiates both the inner and the outer conflicts of the group. These conflicts manifest themselves as the exchange of looks within the intersubjective triad, for instance in the scene where Stoffer's uncle Svend (Erik Wedersoe) visits the community. The scene is composed of a series of shots where a hand-held camera moves between Stoffer, Svend and 'the idiots' "doing the garden" with a vacuum cleaner and walking around naked. The camera moves triangu74
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larly, like a pendulum that organises the conflict of seeing and being seen within the intersubjective triad. In this conflict, Stoffer now has to occupy the position of the self that seeks affirmation for his existence from the Other (he is one of 'the idiots'), but that needs to be supported by the look of the Third Other as well (he is financially dependent on his uncle). In the film The Idiots, the confirmation of subjectivity through intersubjective triad is doomed to fail. The conflict between their selfacquired otherness and the expectations of the social field becomes too hard to bear for most members of the group. The meeting of 'the idiots9 with a group of really mentally handicapped people is the first moment of subjective crisis in the film. This turns the triadic relations upside down: the group cannot identify with themselves as 'idiots' (the Others) anymore. Instead, they are now forced to occupy the position of the Third Other and, as a result, lose their sense of community that had been defined against it. After having been denied the identification with the Other, the members of the group now see themselves being seen from an unfavourable point of view. This is the cultural apprehension of the self that brings them closer to the image they so desperately want to escape from. But more importantly, this 'intrusion' of an actual group of mentally disabled people is a confronting moment for the spectators as well, as it forces them to re-evaluate their own engagement with the film. (It is also not surprising that several critics have expressed disapproval of Von Trier 'exploitative' usage of really mentally disabled people in the cast.) Paradoxically, for Karen, this instant becomes the moment of finding an inner idiot within herself. She becomes the Other through which the group can now find a temporary reaffirmation for its existence outside of the established order: the members of the group can now identify with her instead of with the social eye outside the group. But at the same time the triadic conflicts become more violent and extreme, as the Third Other threatens to swallow the self completely. The more 'the idiots' seek to escape the Third Other, the more desperate and extreme forms their identification with the Other take. The challenge now becomes to be 'an idiot' in another context where the Third Other really matters on a personal level. This is a challenge only Karen is capable of facing. The others cannot continue possessing an alternative identity outside the social world where they belong, and, as a result, the group falls apart. The film ends with Karen and Susanne (Anne Louise Hassing) visiting Karen's family for the first time after her disappearance before her son's funeral. She puts on a performance of idiotism in action in front of her family and Susanne, only to receive a sharp blow to the face by her husband. Susanne, here, is the observer, the self that is negotiating 75
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between the Other and the Third Other. She sees Karen as she would like to see herself, but is unable as she cannot escape the operation of the social eye upon herself in the field of vision. This, again, manifests itself visually in the organisation of the POV shots, close-ups and the reaction shots into a triangular space. Also the pendulum-like movement of the camera establishes an intersubjective triad between Karen, her family, and Susanne. Only Susanne can observe the drama of seeing and being seen that Karen's husband violently disrupts, since only she can apprehend Karen's idiotism simultaneously from the position of the self, the Other, and the Third Other. Her character, therefore, epitomises the way in which the film spectator too could be conditioned by the inter subjective triad, and how the process of identification often is a threeway instead of a two-way process. Furthermore, it is a process where the intersubjective tensions between the self, the Other, and the Third Other can become visible. The abrupt ending seems to propose that as soon as one loses one's sense of belonging within a visual field, there is no point of return, but the film provides no answers to the question of what happens to the subject when this occurs. Intersubjectivity and Solidarity As stated above, the film could invite the spectator into a dialectical process, where the spectator identifies with the Other (as seen by the Third Other) as well as with the Third Other (as the carrier of the social look). In this model, it is both the spectator and the character that are under the regime of the social eye, in an intersubjective relationship with each other. So instead of identifying with some transcendental camera as the privileged subject of the look in the film The Idiots, the spectator identifies with 'the idiots' (the Other as being seen) as well as with the disapproving patrons in the restaurant, visitors at the swimming pool and the potential buyers of the house where the community resides (the look of the Third Other). In the context of national cinema, the film also needs to invite the spectator into this kind of dialectical process in order to address the spectator as a historical subject. This is an important aspect in the concept of intersubjectivity which becomes visible in the emotion of shame: the capacity of the subject to shift his or her view point 'outside' him- or herself in a specific cultural context. In this light, let us consider Aki KaurismSki's Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat, 1996). Drifting Clouds tells about Ilona (Kati Uotinen) and Lauri (Kari VMnanen), a happily married Finnish couple, whose life and happiness take a turn as they both lose their jobs in the dark years of recession in the Finland of the 1990s. The narrative struc ture of Drifting Clouds resembles an Elizabethan tragedy a la Christo pher Marlowe, where a courageous and ambitious subject is forced to 76
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struggle against greater forces, and where the narrative structure is not completely unilinear and causally determined, but which follows the principle of a chronicle. Relatively separate sequences follow each other in a chronological order: Ilona and Lauri are living happily together Lauri loses his job - Lauri searches for work - Ilona loses her job Ilona searches for work - Lauri gets work - Lauri loses his job - the idle life - Ilona gets work - Ilona loses her job - Lauri is assaulted and disappears for a week - Ilona decides to set up her own restaurant Ilona does not get a bank loan - Lauri gambles all the money that is left - Ilona and Lauri receive an eviction notice - Ilona meets Mrs. Sjdholm - Ilona sets up the restaurant. The hope and despair alternate, evoking compassion and also pity in the spectator. And it is through this emotion of pity that the moment of triadic intersubjectivity sets in. Unlike compassion, which signifies feeling with the Other in a manner of "emotional telepathy" as Milan Kundera has described it,39 pity not only signifies feeling sad about the Other's bad luck, but may involve looking down upon the pitied. Pity, then, is a sign of lack of social value and of being vulnerable to shame, and both the person who pities and the person pitied know this - nobody wants to be pitied. In pity the subject identifies both with the Other and with the Third Other, who refuses to respond to the Other's identity claims. This is followed by the emotion of shame, which, again, is the result of seeing oneself being seen by the Other but now through the process of identification with the Other. The subject imagines the shame that he or she would feel in a situation where he or she is being looked down upon. However, the spectator's emotional reaction demands certain cultural knowledge about the importance of work for the Finnish subject. This does not mean that, say, an African or a Latin-American spectator could not understand the 'message' of the film. Neither does this mean that my (Finnish) reading of the film is the only accurate one. For instance, Drifting Clouds could be seen as 'cinema of irony'; a definition that Elsaesser has used to characterise the modernist European cinema of the 1960s and the 1970s, but that could also be seen characterising the films of postmodern European directors like Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke, and Lars von Trier. According to Elsaesser, the cinema of irony is cinema that uses self-reflective attitude and emotional detachment as techniques to comment on and parody itself.40 Postmodern cinema of irony takes a step further insofar as the films of this kind often use modernist techniques of detachment and self-reflection, while they simultaneously have strong emotional undercurrents. The 'Brechtian 39 40
Kundera, 1984, p. 20. Elsaesser, 1973. 77
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paradox' in Haneke's Funny Games is a textbook example of this: through empathy, the spectators occupy the same emotional level as the tortured family in the film, while at the meta-narrative level (through Brechtian techniques) they are invited to share the point of view of the psychopathic killers. By combining elements of Brechtian distanciation with elements that encourage identification with and empathy towards the protagonists, Funny Games appears to be more efficient both in its emotional impact and in its ethical pursuit than what it would have been had it stuck to only one of the tactics.41 Drifting Clouds is even more complicated than this. It has ironic sensibility insofar as it is emotionally detaching in its avoidance of psychological realism. Both the tragicomic and the melodramatic elements in the film are portrayed with the same self-reflective and laconic neutrality that reminds the spectator of the artificial nature of the film. Kaurismaki's protagonists often articulate with an over-restrained and formal manner, which adds to the general atmosphere of the film an absurd trait, and the cinematography is close to immobile, except for a few, nearly invisible pans and zooms. The emphasis lies in the carefully chosen camera angles, lighting and setting which results in stylised and in its simplicity often breathtakingly beautiful mise-en-scene. All this draws the spectator's attention to the composition of the film, and it would seem that the film appeals to the spectator at the level of aesthetics rather than on the level of identification. Nevertheless, despite of the ironic elements in the film, the misfortunes of Kaurismaki's protagonists are treated with empathy and authenticity. Furthermore, a large part of the spectator's emotional reaction to the film depends on specific cultural knowledge. There are emotional signs and clues in the film that say something only to people who share the same cultural memory. Particular cultural symbols appeal to particular individuals not because people's psyches resonate with some cultural meanings but because they can personally employ these symbols with their own psychobiographically particularised cultural meanings. Cultural symbols operate on the intersubjective level, simultaneously on the collective and the individual plane; neither can be reduced to the other. The concept of intersubjectivity pays attention to these 'macrophenomena' that are related to specific cultural institutions, languages, and collective structures that often become visible in the emotion of shame. This is why the way in which Kaurism&ki deals with Finnish shame cannot be discussed in isolation from the Finnish culture especially if we accept the assumption that shame arises through an intersubjective encounter in a specific social context. The way in which Drifting For an extended argument on this point, see Laine, 2004. 78
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Clouds deals with shame is closely connected to a Finnish understanding of shame caused by unemployment. The reason for this is that Finnish identity is primarily based on work. Given the lack of admirable ancestors and other national heroes, the place of the 'ego ideal' has been defined by the features of an honest, hard-working subject. Whilst Sigmund Freud defined a normal individual as one who is able to love and to work, in Finnish culture normalcy is only defined through one's ability to work. And indeed, in Drifting Clouds the basis for one's subjectivity is one's work; it is not one's 'independent' features, but work through which the subject is accepted as a member of the collective. For a Finn, work signifies not only bare necessity but also acceptance by one's environment. If a Finn fails to create an acceptable interaction with his or her environment, he or she feels - deeply ashamed - that for him or her there is no place in the world. According to the Finnish sociologist Pekka Ylostalo and the psycho-historian Juha Siltala, it is through work that the Finnish subject escapes shame, gains control of his or her own life, and claims the right to existence. Furthermore, through work the Finnish subject takes under his or her control not only the hostile outside world, but also his or her personal emotions that he or she finds hard to deal with.42 This is why losing their work becomes a catastrophe for Lauri and Ilona in the film, a catastrophe that they are so ashamed of that they cannot admit it even to themselves. The denial of shame is so extreme that Lauri, for instance, becomes voluntarily marginalised by cutting all ties with society. He refuses to apply for unemployment benefit ("I won't live with unemployment benefits, I am 7") and as he loses all hope of finding a new job, he shuts himself up completely in their apartment and starts spending his days playing solitaire and solving crossword puzzles. Other characters in the film deal with shame by developing a 'false pride' in their marginality. This is why, in Finnish style, they take their marginality to the extreme, and many of them end up as alcoholics - according to Siltala, a solution to a crisis for a Finn is to escape either into work or into alcohol.43
42
Ylostalo, 1986; Siltala, 1994. The reasons for why this should be so are several. In Finnish culture, alcohol is, for instance, an instrument of (momentary) equalisation of the disparities in social and communal life. Being intoxicated is a sign of being a man who could handle his own affairs. Alcohol is also an expression of a male-bonding type of solidarity (the prestige and social value of alcohol is very much tied to masculine honour). Or the reason can be a simple counter reaction to the traditional alcohol culture in Finland that is very much in harmony with the social structure (the social right to consume alcohol is earned through labour). See, for instance, Apo, 2002. 79
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The emotion of shame is almost intolerable for Ilona and Lauri, even though they become unemployed through no fault of their own. It is the social life that has thrown them into a new situation which they interpret and are forced to act upon. Restaurant Dubrovnik, in which Ilona works as a maitre d\ is driven to bankruptcy by the bank; and Lauri, a tram driver, is forced to leave his job as tramlines are being closed. It seems as if fate itself is putting them to shame and dragging them into despair as they also lack the confidence to believe that their circumstances eventually will change. The scene in which Lauri loses his job illustrates their sense of helplessness before their fate. Lauri hears that some of the tram drivers have to leave their job, but the decision is being made by choosing a card. Thus, it does not matter how well or badly Lauri has done his job, he becomes unemployed because he picks up a low card from the pack, because he has bad luck, because it is his fate. The spectator sees a close up of his hand as he turns the bad card into view, followed by a close up of his seemingly expressionless face. But a kind of 'Kuleshov effect' (it is not a real one as there is an establishing shot present, but the impact is similar) of the shots makes the spectator share Lauri's awareness of the meaning of his new situation. In one second, everything has changed; he has become an unemployed person. Furthermore, the spectator comes to understand Lauri's awareness and shame of how he is being seen from now on: a marginalised figure, a loser, the one with the bad cards - even though he has had no control over his fate. It seems like the whole world is against him and his selfrespect. From the moment Ilona and Lauri lose their jobs their life becomes a struggle for winning back their subjectivity, their identity as a working person. As they have lost their subjectivity they have become just a name and a number in the wheels of bureaucracy, at the mercy of the unemployment office and the bank. Furthermore, their struggle is the desire to take part in the community again, and to be seen as members of the community, without having to feel shame. In this desire Lauri suffers the most serious setback as he gets beaten up by Ilona's dubious employer and his sinister friends. After this incident Lauri feels that he has lost face so completely that he has to avoid being seen by disappearing 'out of the picture' for a week. Finally Ilona and Lauri are left with only two options: to abandon all hope or to become self-employed. As the owner of the former Dubrovnik is willing to finance their dreams, Ilona and Lauri decide to set up their own restaurant: 'Restaurant Work'. They bring back all the old employees from Dubrovnik - some of whom first have to come via the sanatorium for the alcoholics - and start the business. The opening day becomes the turning point of their lives, the moment which determines 80
Inter subjectivity and Otherness
which direction their lives will take. The silent, immobile shots of the staff as they are waiting for the first customers render the emotions of anticipation and fear for failure and shame almost palpable for the spectator. When the restaurant in the end is full of customers, it is a big moment of relief that in one stroke restores Ilona and Lauri's sense of self-esteem and subjectivity. Yet something has changed in comparison to the past. Whilst their subjectivity previously was conditioned by the demands of society - which let them down - and the style of living which expects everybody to contribute to economic growth, they have now themselves created the conditions for their subjectivity, through solidarity between the marginalised. The spectator participates in Ilona and Lauri's attempt to win back their sense of self-esteem through a process of identification that is based on an intersubjective triad. The spectator identifies both with Ilona and Lauri (the Other as seen by the Third Other) and the social eye (the Third Other as the bearer of the look). This triadic model constantly recurs at the visual level of the film: in the beginning of the film the approving look zooms into the close up of Ilona's pleased face. The look is approving, as it is clear that Ilona in her work is a responsible person who with the same efficiency takes care both of the customers and the emergency situations in the kitchen. A same kind of zoom into a close up of the face takes place when Lauri picks up a three of clubs from the pack of cards offered him by the director of the tram line, but in this case the social look is disapproving. A disapproving look is implied also after the elliptical montage sequence that shows Ilona looking for a job in different restaurants and coffee bars: the sequence ends with a close up of Ilona in the rainy street, Tchaikovsky's Pathetique on the soundtrack, camera zooming out. In the final image, Ilona and Lauri are looking together at the sky in a medium close-up, now independent from the approving or disapproving look of the Third Other (there is no zoom that would imply the presence of such look). It would be tempting to claim that the use of zoom would invite the spectator to a primary identification with the camera, the function of the camera being to act as a look of the Third Other. Yet the spectator does not identify with the camera as the look of the Third Other, but the fixed point of identification both with the Other as the Third Other is in the faces of the protagonists. The face is the site of shame, and the face is also the 'space' in which the subject can identify with the Other as well as the Third Other.44 44
See, for instance, Nathanson, 1987, p. 30: "Shame operates at the locus of the zone of perceptual-expressive interaction, which is defined in terms of the face and facial interaction." Michael Lewis takes a similar stance: "Because the face is the seat of 81
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In this example it can clearly be seen how the subject constitutes him- or herself as a part of the community through identifying with the Other (other unemployed) under the determining look of the Third Other (the social eye). Ilona and Lauri see themselves as losers, because they know how the unemployed are seen in the Finnish society; they identify both with the community of the unemployed and with the Other outside the community. Yet this process is not limited to the characters within the film: the spectator participates in it also by identifying with Ilona and Lauri as well as with the Third Other: the spectator's emotional response (shame and pity) is based on imagining being looked upon by the Other in a social situation. This process of identification is not cannibalistic, but triadic, and it presumes the separateness of the Other. Here, shame reveals the intersubjective structure of social existence, and especially the Other's impact on the self within a community. The shame revolves around the question of how the subject would like to be and appear (the so-called ego ideal in psychoanalytic language), of how the subject actually is being seen by the Other, and of what effect the Other has on the subject's sense of self. Consequently it could be said that shame reveals that all subjects exist in a world with other subjects, within a community with established values and norms of behaviour, thinking, and feeling. According to Sartre, shame demonstrates that human life is intersubjective - without a relationship to the Other there would be no shame - but this relationship between the subject and the Other does not have to be based on a struggle over the control of the look, but it can be based on communality where the subject and the Other look together in the same direction. Drifting Clouds thus evokes an emotional response in its spectators by inviting them to identify both with the Other and the Third Other, at the same time as the object and the subject of the look: the spectators and the protagonists in their shame (caused by unemployment and the loss of human dignity) are the same in the eyes of the 'onlooker'. Yet this ontological solidarity does not remain bound to the look of the Third Other (although in the beginning it comes to being against this Third Other). Eventually the members of the newly formed community will all become 'thirds', serving as unifiers and supporters of each other. Now the community carries its own source of being within itself as its members become both observers and participants at the same time.45 This kind of community also protects the subject (from shame) by one's identity, and one wishes to conceal [one's face] during shame, the face becomes the locus of the shame." Lewis, 1995, p. 23. See also Jameson, 1971, p. 253: "We both feel the group as something larger than ourselves which we are able to observe in the others from without and at the same time [...] we feel ourselves so observed as making up the group in question." 82
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joining him or her with others similarly committed, thereby moving the subject from the unbearable loneliness of the self absorbed with itself to the freedom of a community of shared values. In Drifting Clouds - as in Sartre's thinking - communality thus manifests itself also in a positive way, in a solidarity that aims at social change, and the viewing position it invites its spectators is supporting, not objectifying. In this model of communality no subject has to give up his or her self-determination for the group, since his or her individual desire coincides with the desire of the group, and since the subject finds an affirmation for his or her action in the actions of others: "everyone continued to see himself in the Other, but saw himself there as himself."46
46
Sartre, 1982, p. 354. 83
CHAPTER 3
An Appetite for Alterity Otherness Within We have already seen that in order to exist, one has to be perceived, and in order to be perceived, one has to be an image, a recognisable representation (positive or negative, 'similar' or 'different') in the socially conditioned field of vision. But what about the subjects who are denied recognition in a community, who do not possess an identity in the visual field in the sense that they should, according to the prevailing conventions, not be seen at all, not even as 'different'? As Kathleen Woodward has shown in her analysis of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970), not being seen, not being acknowledged as a member of the community, produces shame just as does Sartrean voyeur's being seen discussed in chapter one. But whereas in Sartre's example this is merely a matter of losing one's status as a subject, in Morrison's novel it be comes a matter of what a black subject cannot become in white Amer ica.1 The work of the Finnish photographer Pekka Turunen evokes this question by creating an asymmetry and instability of identification in his viewers. Turunen's images elicit a crisis of identification in the viewers by addressing them with images of themselves as non-idealised subjects. This non-idealised subjectivity, however, extends beyond the concept of Other, because it is a denied and forgotten subjectivity; an otherness within the self. Turunen's collection Against the Wall (1995) portrays people from Northern Karelia in Eastern Finland, close to the Russian border. Northern Karelia is one of the poorest regions in Finland and the unemployment levels are high. Houses there - half of which are derelict - are scattered at long intervals beside empty roads, in the shadow of a tamed and subdued nature: We live in an unplanned area, which is like a fallen-down multi-storey block. In one village there is about the same number of inhabitants as in a normal-sized suburban multi-storey block, but the houses are spread out
Woodward, 2000, p. 222. 85
Shame and Desire higgledy-piggledy throughout the forest. Our farm was spread out between a rocky outcrop and a bend in the river.2 The Northern Karelian people in Turunen's photographs are portrayed 'against the wall' of a radical change of lifestyle - of a shift from traditional local culture to being part of an international market. Homemade furniture and wooden houses built by one's own hands are gradually being replaced by brick houses and industrial products. But aside from showing this transformation, the photographs bespeak a contradiction between the lifestyle mediated by television, cinema, or periodicals, and the lifestyle of the portrayed people. This contradiction can be traced back to the same cultural-historical discourse of Finnish nationalromanticism from the 19th century onwards discussed above, where the ideal image of a 'Finn' was presented by the cultural elite from the outside, with the other European people as model. Everything about Finnish culture that was not seen in an idealising light by the elite was seen as a threat to the 'new' Finnish subjectivity, and was therefore placed outside as the Other. Unfortunately enough, it was often everything 'typically Finnish' that had to be excluded, which led to the sense of national inferiority and apologetic shame: All the features unsuitable for a world citizen have been projected onto the image of a yokel [= a typical Finn]: asociality, the tendency to withdraw, boasting, violence, self-destruction, rough materialism and nonsensuousness, inability to indulge in small talk and to express and to recognise deeper emotions. In this enlightened discussion about [a Finn] one can trace back the concern of the national revivalists in the 19th century that the Finno-Ugrians would not after all be able to combine an organised social life and individual liberty in a way proper to a civilised European nation.3 The non-idealised others that become such a threat to the Finnish subjectivity were thus the Finns themselves. The Finns learned to see themselves as the Other, but they also learned to deny their sense of otherness, to project it outside of the self - and this is why the Finnish shame is restrained at the level of subjectivity and excluded from public discourse. Since for a Finn the cultural imaginary is imbued with the desire not to be Finnish, images that question the cultural ideal are not framed in the field of vision. It is this negative identification with the community that Pekka Turunen's Against the Wall is playing with. Take for instance the photograph of two newlyweds (figure 7). The married couple is portrayed having their wedding picture taken. When the photograph is 2 3
Turunen, 1995, p. 10. Siltala, 1994, p. 462, quote translated by TL.
86
An Appetitefor Atterity
'snapped' the couple is just on a break from the 'official' shooting session or they are just preparing themselves for it- In the picture all the usual props can be seen: the white cloth on the studio floor, the flashlight on the left of the image. The bride is inhaling the smoke from her cigarette - which makes the viewer (hink about everything else but the sweetness of the bride - the expressions are informal and even tfte studio seems to be just an old factory hall, And who is the man in the picture next to the wedding couple in his casual working clothes? A friend of the couple perhaps — but surely in those clothes he is not going to participate in the wedding reception!? Or is he the man who is taking the wedding picture?
Figure?: Vckc Aalto, Jaan* Aalto ja Esa lmmonea, Tinuils Tohmajarvi 199Z. Courtesy of Pekk* Toruneu 87
Shame and Desire
This obvious discrepancy between the newlyweds - clearly indicated by their clothes - and the context in which they are portrayed makes the viewer imagine the actual wedding picture and its difference from this image. Usually wedding pictures are conventional, and their function is to confirm the new social status of the wedding couple in the cultural network in which they live. However, the discrepancy between this image and the 'official' wedding picture - which thus exists only in the viewer's imagination, evoked by this image - questions the conventional ftinction of the 'actual' wedding picture, which frames the couple in the field of vision. The image does not live up to any traditional, romantic expectations of weddings (as the famous Sinatra line goes, "the faint aroma of performing seals") and furthermore it clearly shows that the photo shoot is staged, 'false,'4 which indicates that the couple does not really belong to the field of vision. The couple is trying to be something else than what they 'really' are, something they might have seen in the media, but they do not seem to realise that 'there is something wrong with the picture'. But still they demand to be recognised, acknowledged, framed and seen: both of them are looking at the camera smiling, not ashamed of the lack of sense of expectations that are usually associated with weddings, ignorant of the fact that they are not framed in the field of vision. Instead it is the viewer who feels confused, uncomfortable, ashamed. The picture of a body builder presents the same kind of discrepancy between expectations and what is being portrayed (figure 8). The viewer looks at the image with the background knowledge of fashionable fitness clubs and gyms. Yet in this image he is confronted with a fitness culture of another kind: instead of a fashionable gym outfit the man who is lifting the weights is wearing an old-fashioned sweatsuit, knit cap, leather mittens and rubber shoes. He is following the trend, although he does not go to the gym; instead he is doing his training in a wood shed with a soiled floor. This is a hilarious picture, because it is a very sad picture that bespeaks otherness in the context of a European high tech lifestyle. Sad, painful, and hideous things are indeed often also the funniest ones, and joy is often inseparable from the threat of shame it evokes. Therefore, watching this picture for the first time, shame was what I felt. But why? According to Silvan Tomkins: [S]hame operates only after interest or enjoyment has been activated; it inhabits one, or the other, or both. The innate activator of shame is the incomplete reduction of interest or joy. Such a barrier might arise because one is Of course one could say that all wedding pictures are false and staged, but not in all of them do we see the context of the photo shoot. Yet usually the artificial nature of the wedding picture is accepted if it meets the viewers9 expectations. 88
An Appetitefor Atterlty suddenly boked at by another who is strange; or because ooe wishes to look at, or commune with, another person but suddenly cannot because s/he is strange; or one expected him to be familiar but be suddenly appears unfa miliar; or one started to smile butfoundooe was smiling at a stranger.*
Figure 8: Eero Kurviaen, Niarva Nimjuisl 1987. Courtesy of Pekfc* Turnnefl This means that my moment of shame was not related to some viola tion of social norms. Furthermore, 1 was not ashamed of myself even though it was J who fell the emotion. It would be more precise to say I * Tomkins, 1995, p. 399. 89
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was ashamed for the unfamiliar other, or perhaps I was ashamed for the estranged self that was lost in the ecstasy of economic growth and europeanisation of Finland. As the quotation above suggests, shame is located at the moment when recognition is disturbed, when the familiar Other fails or reftises to be recognisable to, or recognising of, the individual who exists in the signification of that Other. In this moment, emotions are privately negotiated and acknowledged before one can look again. Turunen's photograph interrupted my pleasurable flow of looking as if it had first encouraged me to look and then treated me as a gatecrasher at a party where everyone else is invited.6 According to Tomkins, shame represents the failure of contact with the other, epitomising social isolation and indicating the need for release from that isolation. Shame enters into being as a disruption in the circuit of identity-constituting moments of seeing and being seen, and at the same time it expresses desire to reconstitute that circuit. This picture of the weightlifter subjects its viewer to unwilling, painful and shameful identification that combines sensed inability to take control of one's self with seeing oneself from the standpoint of others. By doing this, the picture shows how shame and identity stand in a dynamic relation to one another. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has noted, one of the strangest features of shame is the way in which someone else's humiliation that seemingly has nothing to do with another individual, can so easily enter him or her. Shame is simultaneously contagious and isolating, a double movement 'toward painful individuation, toward uncontrollable relationality."7 This is how shame can aid us to define who we are and who we wish to be; in shame identity both derives from and aims toward the social. When shame occurs there is not only a sudden withdrawal of the individual's incorporation from his or her cultural environment, but also a raising self-consciousness to his or her identity. In another photograph, the two boys on mopeds have certainly studied all the films portraying motorbikers: their expressions in the picture are directly from Easy Rider-, but they have a different landscape in their background: petrol pumps covered with thick drifts of snow (figure 9). This lifestyle does look different than the one that is portrayed in glossy magazines. These people are trying to live according to the ideals circulating in the field of vision, but in the process something is always going wrong. They do not have a place in the field of vision, they should not be in the picture, because the people in these photographs too loudly
7
On photography, shame, and looking practices, see David Benin and Lisa Cartwright's interesting discussion on Diane Arbus's Masked Woman in a Wheelchair (1970). Benin and Cartwright, 2006. Sedgwick, 2003, p. 37. 90
An .Appetite for AUenty question the * positive image* of die European high tech lifestyle (which is very much the result of the worldwide success of Nokia from the end of the 1980s forward) through which the Finns want to see themselves. Tney should not be seen, because they should not be identified with. Yet it is not truly in the viewer's power not to identify with these images. A s the object-relational theorist Jessica Benjamin puts it: Merely by living in this world, we are exposed to others and subjected to unconscious, unwilling identification with others (on television, if no* beg ging on the streets). Whether we will or not, the world exposes us to the dif ferent others who, not only in their mere separate existence as separate be ings reflect our lack of control, but who aiso threaten to evoke in us what ite have repudiatedin order ioprotect the self: weakness, vulnerability, decay, ot perhaps sexual otherness, transgression, instability - the excluded abject in either Kristeva's and Butler's sense*
Fignre 9: Marko ja Pertti Sutiucn, Hattuvaara, Itomaatsi 1986. Courtesy of Pekka Turnneo
8
Benjamin, I99S, p. 95, italics added. 91
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The images of Pekka Turunen expose the viewers to the otherness within themselves, thereby operating though a similar but reverse logic of what Kaja Silverman calls the 'productive look' - a look that alienates the subject from his or her own subjectivity. Silverman argues that through the productive look the subject can engage in 'identification-ata-distance'. This kind of identification does not incorporate the Other into the self but goes beyond one's self and one's cultural identity in order to align oneself, through displacement, with the Other. This Silverman calls 'heteropathic identification'. The productive look of heteropathic identification goes beyond 'the given to be seen' and displaces the incorporative look of self-sameness it sees in favour of "an appetite for alterity."9 The heteropathic identification disallows an overappropriative, cannibalistic identification that makes the differences disappear, creating too available, too easy an access to a particular subjectivity. As examples of artworks that produce the productive look Silverman studies, for instance, Cindy Sherman's photographic art and Hanon Farocki's and Chris Marker's films. Turunen's photographs, by contrast, evoke similarity between the non-idealised Other and the idealised self by presenting the Finnish viewers' non-idealised doppelgdnger in the image in an idealising light. By doing this, they question the politics of communal identification in Finnish culture: since (for the Finnish subject) there is no Third Other, no social eye whatsoever that would return the identity demands of the people in these photographs and recognise them (not even as 'different' or 'unwanted') in the field of vision, the viewers need to invent that Third Other for themselves. As a result, the viewers cannot use these images as negative construction material for their own subjectivity, but are invited to sense the richness of different subjectivities that live next, not opposed to each other. The images generate a productive look that allows the viewers to travel beyond the borderlines of opposing subjectivities, because in the world of these images the oppositions have lost their significance. The distortion of triadic identification in Turunen's photographs first results in the emotion of awkwardness and shame (what reflects the viewers' difficulty to identify without the support of the Third Other), but this nevertheless opens up a new subject position for the viewers that takes place beyond the self/Other opposition and that invites the viewers to find the Other within themselves. This kind of 'distorted identification' resembles the psychoanalytic concept of abjection which resists the points of ego ideal in the symbolic order.
Silverman, 19%, p. 181. 92
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Images of Abjection In his analysis of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931), Michel Chion has pointed out the fundamental discrepancy of the figure of the tramp. At the end of film, the blind flower girl, the tramp's love interest, her physical sight restored, can now see her Prince Charming as he really is. Through the flower girl's fantasy formation, the tramp has accidentally occupied an ideal place in the symbolic network (the rich man), and now becomes the object of the look aimed at somebody else; he is positioned between the look and its 'proper' object. But as the flower girl "can see now" that she has made a mistake, the tramp turns into a 'disturbing stain', an abjection whose presence in the point of her ego ideal cannot be accepted anymore.10 According to Slavoj Zizek, Chion's analysis illustrates one of the elementary insights of psychoanalysis that every one of us is identified with a certain fantasy place (the ego ideal) in the symbolic structure of the Other(A). When we cease to act out the place of the ego ideal in the symbolic structure of the Other(A), a gap opens up between the point of ego ideal and our presence 'outside' the sym bolic structure, converting us into a leftover, an abjection in the sym bolic order.11 This analysis indicates an overlap between Chionian/ Zizekian psychoanalysis and Sartre's theory of communality: in both there is a triadic structure of identification, and in both there is an as sumption that the Other has an impact on the subject's sense of self. Consequently, they presume an intersubjective relationship between the subject and the Other, which nevertheless can be disturbed in a moment of abjection. Abjection is a theoretical notion that has an ambiguous relationship with the psychoanalytic concept of the Symbolic, and touches on the concept of intersubjectivity.12 The notion of abjection originates from Julia Kristeva, who has defined it as "violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable."13 Through the concept of abjection, Kristeva challenges Lacan's theory of subjectivity, where in order to become a subject, one needs to separate from the 'mother' with the help of the 'father', after which the symbolisation begins. It is after one has been placed in the 'law of the father' that one can become a desiring subject that can be in 10 11 12
13
Chion, 1989. Zizek, 1992. And it certainly resembles a Sartrean concept of slime, introduced in Being and Nothingness, insofar as it is discovered in between the world and the psyche, representing a point of conjunction between the subject's psyche and the world. Kristeva, 1982, p. 1. 93
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possession of objects. In order to challenge the idea of normative subjectivity, Kristeva argues that in the moment of abjection the subject can move back and forth between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, and thus has access to the period before symbolisation and the dominance of the law of the father. The moment of abjection - which can occur because of a disturbance in the law of the father - bursts through the symbols and the discourse, interrupting the subject's history bound to the symbolic order, and substitutes the discourse "for maternal care."14 This means that in the moment of abjection there is a simultaneous fascination and fear, pleasure and pain.15 Since the 'maternal care' in the moment of abjection contains redemptive qualities, abjection captivates the subject (pleasure). But the moment of abjection also reminds the subject of the period where one was not yet the subject that one must become, and that must again find a way to separate from the devouring mother (pain). Abjection is then "a jouissance in which the subject is swallowed up but in which the Other, in return, leaps the subject from foundering by making it repugnant."16 Abjection is situated in between the Imaginary and the Symbolic, pleasure and pain, fascination and disgust, attraction and repulsion, and the attraction of the maternal in abjection is always inseparable from the threat it poses: The fantasy of incorporation by means of which I attempt to escape fear (I incorporate a portion of my mother's body, her breast, and thus I hold on to her) threatens me none the less, for a symbolic, paternal prohibition already dwells in me on account of my learning to speak at the same time.17 [...] [D]evotees of the abject, she as well as he, do not cease looking, within that flows the other's 'innermost being', for the desirable and terrifying, nourishing and murderous, fascinating and abject inside of the maternal body.18 For the same reason, Judith Butler considers abjection "not as a permanent contestation of social norms condemned to the pathos of perpetual failure, but rather as a critical resource in the struggle to rearticulate the very terms of symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility."19 This means that the concept of abjection offers a tool of analysis that is able to 14
16
17 18 19
Ibid, p. 45. The Lacanian name for similar kind of "pleasure in pain9 is enjoymenl/jouissance, and it is introduced by objet petit a: "[T]he objet a prevents the circle of pleasure from closing, it introduces an irreducible displeasure, but the psychic apparatus finds a sort of perverse pleasure in this displacement itself, in the never-ending, repeated circulation around the unattainable, always missed object." Zizek, 1992, p. 48. Kristeva, 1982, p. 9.
Ibid,p.39. Ibid, p. 54. Butler, 1993, p. 3, italics added.
94
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negotiate the series of dichotomies that structure subjectivity. In her analysis of Neil Jordan's film The Crying Game (1992), Tina Chanter has shown that - in its ambiguous relationship to the symbolic - abjection can be used productively in (feminist) film analysis. According to Chanter, The ambiguity of abjection neither situates the subject as entirely in thrall to the image, as if cinema spectators passively and uncritically consume the idealised and ideologically loaded versions that confront them, unwittingly colluding in their victimisation, as upholders of the status quo. Nor does it entirely negate the powerful fascination of the image, its capacity to seduce, its ability to fascinate.20 The scene of abjection in The Crying Game, according to Chanter, is the scene where Dil (Jaye Davidson) reveals his sexual identity to Fergus (Stephen Rea); where Fergus comes to realise that the person he has fallen in love with is anatomically a man and not a woman. This encounter with the unacceptable Other renders unstable the boundaries that structure Fergus's self-understanding. The heterosexual norms Fergus had assumed were his own collapse with his violent, threatened, and sickened outburst at Dil, whom he still loves ("Even when you were throwing up I could tell you cared," comments Dil to Fergus, ironically). According to Chanter, Fergus vomits because he finds intolerable not Dil's sexual identity, but his own unconscious "transgression of the gender boundaries he was assuming were fixed in place according to the societal boundaries to which he adheres."21 After the moment of abjection, as his prior assumptions have come tumbling down, Fergus now must re-negotiate his identity and accept who he loves and what he will become. Like abjection, shame is a moment of subjective crisis that assumes a subject already identified with the societal norms and ideals, but relapses into his or her incompleteness before those ideals. And like abjection, shame could be a critical resource to rearticulate the terms of self-obsessed societal norms and ideals. The photographs of Pekka Turunen, for instance, can be seen as producing the kind of structure of abjection that Kristeva, Butler, and Chanter are suggesting, but then through the emotion of shame. At first sight, the subjects of the photographs seem to be 'disruptions', 'stains' in the viewers' field of vision. The absurdity of some of the images hits the viewers in the face, evoking discomfort and shame. The viewers are tempted to project outside themselves for instance the young, happy couple whose living room is so colourful and rich in ornament that it would be avant-garde were it M 21
Chanter, 2000. Ibid 95
Shame and Desire not accidentally so (figure 10). Prom the image of a boy pulling an udder of a (dead?) cow that lies on the ground whileridingon H the viewers are drawn to find 'the Other*ratherthan 'the self (figure 11). For the Finnish viewers, in an ecstasy of economic growth and europeanisation of Finland, identification with these images would mean a symbolic suicide.
Figure 10: Leena MaksJmainen Ja Mauri Pesonea, Hattavaara, ILoroantsi 198$. Courtesy of Pekka Turn lien Yet through demanding recognition and identification from the viewers with the people in the photographs, the viewers are challenged to abandon the position of identification with normative ideals, and to find the Other within themselves. The viewers are positioned beyond the self/Other opposition, beyond ihe look of the Third Other, the social %
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eye. The viewers cannot project Ihe people in Timinen's photographs completely outside of themselves: there is too much 'self in these photographs but there is also a threat, to which the viewers respond with shame. This shame, then, expresses a disturbance in the interiorised norms and ideals of the community with which the historicaJ subject strives to identify in the same manner as abjection expresses a negative symptom of discursivity that cannot be placed within the Symbolic. Works of art like the photographs of Pekka Tunmen can activate and mediate shame as the moment of disruption in the viewers* relationship with the community by distorting the viewers' identification with the interiorised communal norms and values. This disruption may invite the viewers to question the communal act of identification and idealisation, allowing the viewers to identify with the Other within themselves. This kind of disruptive identification resembles the 'double-outskieuess' theorised by Paul Willemen and based on Bakhttn*s dialectical mode: in double-outsideness the spectator "relates both to her or his situation and to the group 'elsewhere' as an other *n
Figure 11: Marko Mustoaeo, KoU 1993. Courtesy of Pekka T*nme*
"
Willemen, t994, p. 217. 97
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In the same way as the concept of abjection, shame could negotiate the politics of communal identification; shame, for me, is what the abject is for feminist theorists inspired by Lacan. Like abjection, shame is a negative emotion that is attributed to oneself and that could lead to a critical revaluation of the self. In other words, shame is a critical resource that allows the subject to re-negotiate his or her identity and the societal norms he or she has adhered to, producing in the subject an understanding of his or her own conditions of existence. By interpositioning the viewers in-between distance and proximity, otherness and sameness, or pleasure and displeasure through shame, the photographs of Pekka Turunen are playing with the concepts of identity and belonging, reminding the viewers of their long forgotten roots of subjectivity. On the one hand, the photographs maintain their distance from the viewers by confronting them with something that is being unrecognised, denied, and considered shameful. But on the other hand, the photographs activate the forgotten traits of subjectivity in the viewers, allowing the Finnish viewers to remember their own struggle for recognition (and the sense of inferiority) within the field of vision. The photographs therefore invite the viewers to identify with these images of otherness, yet not through idealisation but through mechanisms of shame as an interruption of the interiorised communal values that exists beyond the specular, since it is felt through senses like abjection. The images represent the forgotten otherness that both fascinates and is threatening, and that the viewers are supposed to find within themselves. In Turunen's photographs, the forgotten, threatening Other becomes the mirror at which the viewers look and with which they identify, thereby transforming themselves into an Other, a loved and hated double of themselves; and this transformation manifests itself in the negative forms of displeasure and shame. On the other hand, some of the images form a contradiction to other images in the collection. Next to the portraits of families living in brand new brick houses decorated with loud kitsch, we see portraits of men on their way to collect fish from their traps, riding in a sleigh pulled by a horse, standing in front of the Midsummer bonfire in their best Sunday clothes, sitting on a snowplough on a bright winter morning (figure 12). In one picture, there is a naked, steaming man with his young son coming out of a sauna to the yard, on a dark and wintry December evening (figure 13). The man holds his laughing son up, their white bodies glow against the dark background, giving the viewers an impression of two angels fallen from heaven. The steam rising from their bodies bespeaks that short moment of refreshment after a hot sauna, when your body is still warm enough to resist the coldness of the weather; the father and the son are 'frozen' in the state of pleasure of 98
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being in-between two extremes, in the background there is a Christmas tree to be seen, which gives the picture a narrative dimension. We can imagine that after the sauna they go indoors and have their Christmas dinner, we can hear the laughter and feel the warmth. The peacerulness that radiates from these images bespeaks innate dignify and comfort with one's subjectivity, even though it is not 'framed' in the field of vision. By not struggling for recognition in the field of vision, the people in these images do achieve it - even though it might be unde fined - and this suggests that despite the Finnish sense of inferiority and shame, Nokia, Linux, Finnish design. The Rasmus, and the people "against the wall' could and should live in the same field of vision.
Figure 12: Artturi Vnahanen, NBrsikkflLl, Kitee 1992. Courtesy of Pekka Turunem These images can be seen as comments on Finnish communal iden tity on two levels. On the one hand, they question the societal norm of the sense of unity between different social classes in Finland, in which all the members of Finnish culture are required to believe even though many of them have never actually experienced it- On the other hand they question the way in which the Finns project their sense of inferiority to others in an attempt to get rid of their * fundamental shame1. Often it is 99
Shame and Desire indeed possible to get rid of shame by projecting and destroying one's own 'forbidden* and shameful features on and in others through projective identification. However, the images under discussion torn the mechanism of this kind of negative protective identification upside down by projecting the forbidden features from the image to the view ers. This reverse projective identification produces a projective look that allows the viewers to find the Other within themselves; or rather, the photographs address the Other within the viewing subject and thereby satisfy his or her appetite for alterity.
Figure 13: Aleksis ja Jonna Laakso. Joensuu 1987. Courtesy of Pekka Tinnnm Identification plays a crucial part in the formation of subjectivity and communal identity. As Sartre shows us, the subject creates a bond with the community and mteriorise its values through triadic identification; the subject identifies simultaneously with the community and with the approving or disapproving Third Other outside of the community. What the subject does not accept in him- or herself, what the subject feels that does not affirm his or her sense of subjectivity, he or she normally projects outside him- or herself as the Other By inviting the viewers to 100
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identify with the Other within themselves, Turunen's photographs invite the viewers to question the conventional frames of their subjectivity, and to see themselves in the picture differently beyond the communal values and the accustomed field of vision. Our subjectivity, and our relations with others are socially condi tioned, and the structure of our existence is intersubjective rather than intrapsychic. The emotion of shame can momentarily reveal this struc ture, as it at the same time binds us to the community and detaches us from it: if the subject had never interiorised the communal norms, shame would not occur in the first place, but simultaneously the disap proving look of the Third Other causes the subject's identification with the community to dissolve. The origins of shame, therefore, lie in the intersubjective structure of human life, in between the subject's internal and external existence. But precisely because of this, shame may also function as a disruptive element, a critical moment that could invite the subject to re-define his or her relationship with the community. Shame momentarily breaks up the subject's bonds to the community, but in the recovery of this break-up there is a possibility for a new kind of com munal relationship to emerge that questions the self-obsessed values of the community and endorses alterity rather than uniformity. Pekka Turunen's Against the Wall is a series of alternative images that resists communal uniformity through the emotion of shame. This shame renders visible the subjective crisis that the Finnish identity is based on, but that also invites the viewers to abandon the space of identity fixed on social ideals. The shame in Turunen's photographs functions as a kind of intersubjective space that allows the viewers to use identification to encounter otherness, to inhabit alternative subjectpositions, to tolerate difference rather than to deny either the status of the self or the status of the Other. Turunen's photographs show that shame could have a liberating function that could encourage the 'iden tity-fixated Finns' to abandon the communally given position of identi fication and allow for a 'new' kind of subjectivity with an appetite for alterity to emerge. Love and Abjection As stated above, works of art could elicit a crisis of identification by inviting the spectator to identify with and emote towards subjects who are denied recognition in the socially conditioned field of vision and to find the Other within themselves. This could open up new subject positions where the viewer must re-negotiate his or her identity and accept the disturbance in the societal norms with which the viewer normally strives to identify. Emotions could also aid us in understanding 101
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intersubjectivity in the context of transnational, as my following reading of Fatih Akin's award-winning film Head-On (Gegen die Wand, 2004) aims to show. Needless to say, my approach to the film is not without its problems as it suggests that through emotions (love and shame) one gains 'immediate' access to the cultural identity of the Other. My objective, however, is not to produce 'all-owning' spectatorship (that aims to make the unfamiliar familiar), but spectatorship that de-familiarises the self. Emotions may work as embodied human affects with ontological structures, but they are always translated through culture. Like the people in Turunen's photographs discussed above, in HeadOn the experience of being 'against the wall' (the literal translation of Gegen die Wand) is resonant of how the protagonists feel. In the film, a Turkish-German couple, Cahit (Birol Unell) and Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) meet at a mental institution after they have both attempted to commit suicide. They are both self-destructive but for different reasons. Cahit is too rootless in the free-thinking culture that is Germany, while Sibel is too free-thinking in the conservative society that is her conformist Muslim family. Sibel convinces Cahit to marry her so that she can get a legitimate reason to move out of her childhood home. As a Turkish couple in Germany, Cahit and Sibel exist on the edge of society, inbetween two social and cultural contexts where they both do not fully belong. Both protagonists find themselves in an unstable cultural matrix that they have yet to learn to negotiate. The film is driven by a highly self-conscious exploration of the politics of ethnic and gendered identity in the context of the transnational. In this sense, both protagonists are abject figures whose feelings of being out-of-place can be read in the light of shame. The film opens with a bright, colourful still shot of a Turkish orchestra playing a traditional folk tune filmed before an image of Bosphorous in Istanbul. This scene is interrupted violently by a cut to the turning on the spotlights in a sleazy, dark punk club in Hamburg after the closing time. We witness Cahit getting drunk, picking a fight, and finally driving his car straight into a concrete wall, with a Depeche Mode song playing loudly in the background. This is a body in anguish. The cultural boundaries to which Cahit adhered seem to have been collapsed, and, as a result, he reverts to drugs, alcohol and aggression in order to numb his pain. The moment of abjection is the moment where Cahit is faced with his abyss; two things that Kristeva suggests are inseparable from one another. Sibel, on the other hand, feels being imprisoned by her cultural boundaries where she cannot find her way out, so she creates her own abyss by attempting suicide. This, however, does not bring her any redemption, only shame. "The shame you have brought upon us is unforgiv102
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able," asserts her father, and her brother continues: "Can't you see what you are doing to him? It's killing him. If anything happens to the old man you are dead meat." This scene shows how shame is a powerful and potentially violent way to control the borders of normality, discipline and punish. Furthermore, it shows how shame can secure a 'normative' form of family by assigning to Cahit who fails to measure up to its ideals the origin of shame ("the shame you have brought upon us"). In this way, Cahit's identity becomes stigmatised within the familial order of her culture.23 The marriage with Cahit becomes an escape from this situation as well as a compromise: simultaneously a flight from and an embrace of a traditional female role. In other words, Sibel has to assume the role of a housewife (the traditional role of a woman both in Germany and in Turkey) in order to escape that role into sexual promiscuity (a role that is not accepted for a married woman either in Germany or in Turkey). But even though Sibel finds her ethnic background suffocating, she nevertheless does have some affinity with it - this becomes evident for instance in the way in which she lovingly prepares a traditional Turkish dish for Cahit. In fact, as the film progresses she even feels the urge to return to her Turkish 'roots'; as one of her lovers tries to pursue her in the street she cries at him: "I'm a married Turkish woman. Try anything and my husband will kill you." In the film, right after their wedding, Cahit throws Sibel out of his messy apartment, after which she goes to a bar in her wedding gown and ends up having sex with the bartender (and supposedly losing her virginity). The discrepancy in this scene is reminiscent of the wedding picture of Pekka Turunen discussed above, and its function is to rearticulate the terms of heterosexual love. It is a moment of social disruption that challenges the limitations of a given culture. By now, we also have learned that Cahit is a widower. This, rather than his cultural inbetweenness, is offered as an explanation for his agony. It would seem that Cahit renders himself abject not only due to the lack of belonging but also due to the loss of love. In this context, it might be useful to turn to Elspeth Probyn's notion about the connection between shame and love. Probyn bases her reasoning on Silvan Tomkins's idea introduced above where shame can appear only when the subject has felt interest and when that interest has been stolen from him or her. Interest involves a desire for connection which is love reciprocated. Therefore, love always involves the fear of love not being mutual, and this contains the possibility of shame. The catastrophe in losing one's love is not necesOn shame as a result of departing from the normative family forms, see, for instance, Ahmed, 2004, p. 107. 103
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sarily the loss itself but the deeply shaming experience of the interruption of interest, the state of 'what-would-have-been'. According to Probyn: "Being shamed is not unlike being in love. The blush resonates with the first flush of desire. It carries the uncertainly about oneself and about the object of love; the world is revealed anew and the skin feels raw. Shame makes us quiver."24 Even though Cahit has lost his loved one by death and not by abandonment or by a falling-out, he still feels as if he were abandoned, the shameful and painful 'what-would-havebeen' to which he reacts by rendering himself abject. And, as we know, according to Kristeva the dead body is "the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life."25 Cahit's love for his deceased wife Katharina was for him a sense of intersubjective presence that defined his sense of self to himself. According to Robert Solomon's definition: We define ourselves not just in our own terms but in terms of each other. Love determines selfhood. Love is just this determining of selfhood. When we talk about 'the real self or 'being true to ourselves' what we often mean is being true to the image of ourselves that we share with those we love most.26 Derailed from his love for Katharina that is his determining of selfhood, Cahit is confronted with the unacceptable Other in Sibel. Sibel is the Other because she is not the woman Cahit took her to be: not quite Turkish, not quite German, not easy to sort out and certainly not someone Cahit wishes to fall in love with, because this would require a redetermination of his self. This conflict is translated in terms of music: Sibel and Cahit get high listening to a Sisters of Mercy song (Temple of Love), sung by Ofra Haza. But it would be wrong to assume that these genre elements (gothic punk and Yemenite) assimilate each other in a kind of hybrid form of world music. Instead, both elements preserve their unity after which an encounter between East and West, modern and traditional, masculine and feminine becomes possible in a mutually enriching way. But moments like this can make people 'vulnerable' to falling in love. The song forms a sound bridge to the next scene where Sibel is shown dancing in a punk club. The way in which camerawork and editing is organised in this scene is very suggestive. First we see a long shot of Sibel from Cahit's point of view. The reaction shot that follows zooms into a close up of Cahit's face seen from the right angle. The next POV is a medium shot of Sibel, followed by a reaction shot in 24 25 26
Probyn, 2005, p. 2. Kristeva, 1982, p. 4. Solomon, 1991, p. 512. 104
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which the camera makes a circular tracking movement of about 90 degrees. The last POV shows Sibel in a close up, followed by a close up of Cahit seenfromthe left angle. This insinuates a transformation in Cahit, an experience of falling in love. But Sibel leaves Cahit standing on the dance floor in order to "get laid" by another man, after which Cahit smashes the apartment Sibel has cleaned up and redecorated with all her savings ('it's like a chick-bomb exploded in here" commented Cahit earlier on) only to clean up the mess immediately afterwards. Cahit is now faced not only with the fear of his love not being reciprocated. He is also torn between his desire for connection (with Sibel) and his dread for the loss of autonomy and independent agency. "She has bewitched me!" cries Cahit at his friend Seref, smashing his hands in the broken glass. Sibel continues to see other men until she, too, realises that she loves Cahit. Again, circular camera movement signifies Sibel falling in love, this time in a Turkish club. The scene ends up in violence after Cahit attacks someone who is insulting Sibel. After they return home, they almost make love, but Sibel withdraws at the last moment since the consummation of their marriage would really make them husband and wife. "If we do it then I'm your wife and you are my husband," says Sibel. The circular movement by the camera is here significant, since it calls attention to the growing affective affiliation between Cahit and Sibel. "Love is a merry-goround," says Cahit's friend Seref, "Put your money in and it starts to spin. But it only goes in circles." (Appropriately enough, it is in a merry-go-round that Sibel finally realises that she loves Cahit.) This would seem to suggest that to a certain extent love is a question of choice that enables the individuals to be 'caught up' in the game of love, after which it is inherently beyond any individual control. Sibel, therefore, is now torn between her desire for unity and her fear of losing her newly found independency. And before she gets to make up her mind, Cahit's explosion of jealousy in a bar ends in the violent death of Sibel's lover. Cahit is sent to jail and, after another suicide attempt and after her family has denied her, Sibel flees to Istanbul, fearing for her life. She is now definitively 'cut off from her family; she cannot cross the bridges that she has burnt. This is depicted quite literally in the film through intercutting between the close-up shots of stitches in Sibel's wrists and the shots of burning family photos that her father is throwing in thefire,with traditional Turkish music tying up the shots. In Istanbul, the narrative repeats itself, but now Sibel is Cahit, in shame and self-destruction due to her loss of love (and the loss of her family), looking for drugs that would numb her pain. She accepts a job in a shady punk club that resembles the German one Cahit used to work 105
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in before going to jail. Soon afterwards, we witness her getting drunk on the dance floor to the same Depeche Mode song as Cahit did in the beginning of the film. While in the beginning of the film Sibel was in command of herself, her movements and her gestures, she is now spinning around recklessly. The handheld camera and rapid editing underscore her confiision. This is an abject body out of control. Her state of abjection takes the form of violence turned inwards when she deliberately provokes three men in a dark alley to beat her up and to almost kill her. The dance floor that in the middle of the film was the place to fall in love has now become the scene of abjection that represents the disruption of the conventional matrix of love and desire. What Sibel finds unbearable is the involuntary collapse of her identity boundaries that she assumed were controllable and unchanging, and that allowed her to express unconventional femininity that is now denied her. This has thrown her into a crisis of love, crisis of identity. Towards the end of the film, Cahit is released from the prison. He flies to Istanbul in search of Sibel. Even though she now lives with another man and has a daughter by him, Sibel agrees to meet Cahit in his hotel where they spend two passionate days. They can now make love since their affection for each other is no longer tied to some social norms of attainment, but a way of exposing themselves to one another intersubjectively. Their love is now free from the fear of dependency and the fear of shame. This is a form of authentic, intersubjective love that avoids the desire for 'mutual identity' and possession in favour of open totality and reciprocal enrichment. But, perhaps precisely for this reason, their love cannot last. This kind of love predicts its own destruction, because its constancy can only be found in inconstancy, or it changes form and becomes something 'familiar'. Waiting is the condition of inconstancy of love; in the film Cahit and Sibel constantly and in anxiety wait for each other to arrive, but the arrival offers them only a momentary release from that anxiety since it soon transforms into the anticipation of loss. As Ronald Barthes has defined it, this loss is the origin of love: Similarly, it seems, for the lover's anxiety: it is the fear of a mourning which has already occurred, at the very origin of love, from the moment when I was first 'ravished'. Someone would have to be able to tell me: "Don't be anxious anymore - you've already lost him/her."27 Cahit and Sibel's love marks an impossible constancy, because the instant they arrive in the same place together is merely a moment of singular belonging, after which they both need to re-negotiate their 27
Barthes, 2001, p. 30. 106
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identities, come to terms with who they are, what they have done, whom they love, and what they will become. But the film does not resolve the issue of how successfully they do so. In this way, the emotions of love, shame and abjection could create a kind of 'third space' for intersubjective understanding, and making visible the contradictory system of cultural values within the context of transnational cinema. This does not mean, however, that the spectator would have a direct access to these values. The scenes of abjection described above do not confront the spectators with the clashing of some intercultural values in itself, but rather with their own desire for belonging and love, and their own fear of shame. The scenes of abjection emerge as disruptions in the moments of identity constitution, while they express a desire to reconstitute identity. This is due to the ontological structure of shame and desire; shame epitomises our intense desire to be connected with others and the fear of failing in our attempts to make those connections.28 In other words, when desire is denied, shame is activated, and this is why shame and desire go hand in hand. The self that emerges through this kind of representational practice is a defamiliarised, a moving concept in the context of the transnational.
Probyn, 2005, p. 14. 107
CHAPTER 4
Intersubjectivity and Embodied Affect
The Bodily Subject As has been stated throughout this book, intersubjectivity is a con nection of the subject with the world; a commitment in which the world is not 'projected' or 'created' as being, but in which it is encountered as being. The manner in which film epitomises this intersubjective bond ing, and the manner in which the film spectator relates to the film in an intersubjective relationship, could serve as a basis for gaining insight into the modes of engagement of the cinema spectator and also its sociohistorical dimensions. In this model, emotions are viewed as an inter mediary of one's relationship with the world as illuminated by intersub jective interaction. Yet in order to understand how the subject can engage with others in the world, one needs a concept that goes beyond the concept of consciousness (since the world is not a Cartesian projec tion) and that concept is the body. It is the subject's body that expresses and reacts to the world through emotions: "the experience of the emo tions is an experience of being intertwined within the body enmeshed in the world."1 This is why, in order to describe the cinematic experience too, it is necessary to acknowledge that the spectators access and emote towards cinema in and through their bodies. As Mark Hansen puts it: Affectivity [...] is more than simply a supplement to perception [...] and it is more than a correlate to perception [...]. Not only is it a modality of ex perience in its ownright,but it is that modality - in contrast to perception through which we open ourselves to the experience of the new. In short, af fectivity is the privileged modality for confronting technologies that are fundamentally heterogeneous to our already constituted embodiment, our contracted habits and rhythms.2 But how does the interaction between the body and the world take place? In Sartre's thinking, the body is not simply a physical object, but an intentional subject that can see as well as be seen, and touch as well as be touched. Needless to say, these two modes of embodiment are not 1 2
Mazis, 1993, p. 38. Hansen, 2004, p. 133. 109
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opposed but intertwined: we are simultaneously our physical bodies and our lived, experiental, phenomenological bodies (even though we might not be able to be aware of both of these modes simultaneously; our reflective consciousness can only 'flip-flop', sequentially, between the two modes of embodiment). Furthermore, the body is a means of understanding the human order: the actions of the body can be interpreted by others and that experience teaches the subject who he or she is. The awareness of self is inseparable from the awareness of others, and, in part, our sense of embodiment (the ontological state of being and having a body) assists us in understanding the self or the Other. In the cinematic experience, too, the relationship between the film and the spectator is based on the mutual capacity for and possession of experience through common structures of embodied vision. In order to understand the socio-corporeal logic of intersubjective spectatorship, then, we need another kind of subjectivity apart from the concept of a conscious subject: a bodily subject. According to Sartre, it is the body that is the subject of consciousness, a point of view in the world and a centre of all action and encounter with the world. To be a point of view in the world, to be a conscious being, one must be in the world as a bodily subject. Furthermore, the body is the locus of both objective (social) and subjective (personal) space through which the subject experiences and acts in the world. This involves the subject's awareness of him- or herself as an embodied actor in the social world. There can be no consciousness of the world without consciousness of oneself as embodied in the social world. It is within this objective and subjective space that the self and the Other appear subjectively and objectively to each other: "My body as a thing in the world and the Other's body are the necessary intermediaries between the Other's consciousness and mine."3 Our existence as subjects and objects, as lived bodies and bodies touched and looked at, is intertwined in the world where we are located; and the body is the fundamental connection with the Other that is constitutive of each consciousness. At first sight, the Sartrean 'bodily subject' seems to resemble the Freudian/Lacanian 'bodily ego'. In The Ego and the Id, Freud argues that the ego is "first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface."4 The bodily ego is derived from bodily sensations that are projected onto the surface of the body, and integrated into the bodily life. This means that, as in Sartrean thinking, our subjective experience always originates from and is mediated by the body. This bodily ego, according to Lacan, comes into 3 4
Sartre, 1956, p. 303. Freud, 1961, p. 27. 110
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existence in the mirror stage, where the infant makes an imaginary identification with his or her bodily reflection in the mirror. This identification with one's mirror image is the first of many ego-structuring identifications through which the subject acquires his or her identity with respect to others, either through similarity (the principle of the selfsame body) or difference. It is here that we can see the difference between Sartre, Freud and Lacan: whilst in psychoanalytic thinking the bodily ego is most importantly a focal point for the subject's visual identity within a Symbolic order, which makes the concept of body constituted by and constitutive of cultural hierarchies, the Sartrean body is an intentionally lived body that rules the subject's relations with the world and that signifies his or her engagement with the world. In psychoanalytic film studies the question of bodily ego is worked out in terms of visibility and representation, identification and performance, where the emphasis lies for instance on studying body images in films,5 on calling the culturally accepted notions of ideal bodes into question,6 or on the way in which the body is constructed in society through certain technologies (i.e. the way in which we internalise the bodily images in the cinematic experience and act upon them).7 In other words, it is all about the body as site of representation. Scholars, such as Linda Williams and Christine Noll Brinkmann, speak of 'visecral' or 'affective mimicry' (providing a contrast to identification, or 'imaginary mimicry') in which a sort of 'feedback loop' is created between the viewing and the viewed body, but, as Anne Rutherford points out (and as will be shown below), embodied cinema spectatorship does not necessarily require a body on the screen.8 The so-called somatic film theory, as developed by Steven Shaviro, argues that film images 'catch' the spectators directly, in a state of prereflective, bodily affect, rather than through a reflective cognitive processing (I shall return to the notions of prereflective and reflective shortly). Cinema addresses the spectator through overwhelment and fascination, and, for Shaviro, cinematic perception is radically passive: Images literally assault the spectator, leaving him or her no space for reflection [...] When I watch a film, images excite my retina, 24 times a second, at a speed that is slow enough to allow for the impact and recording of stimuli, but too fast for me to keep up with them consciously. Perception has be6 7 8
See, for instance, Doane, 1991. See, for instance, Silverman, 1996. See de Lauretis, 1989 and Butler, 1993. This discussion about the so-called 'body genres' starts with the assumption that the way in which certain film genres (melodrama, pornography, horror) represent the body is closely connected to a decidedly corporeal address of the spectator. See Williams, 1991; Noll Brinkmann, 1999; Rutherford, 2003.
HI
Shame and Desire come unconscious. It is neither spontaneously active nor freely receptive, but radically passive, the suffering of a violence perpetrated against the eye.9 By comparison, the film scholars that have adopted the phenomenological model strive to find the intentional bonds between the spectator and the film, the same bonds that connect the subject with the situational world.10 In this model, the body cannot be explained through (inner or outer) causal relations. This means that the body is not seen separately from the world, but as a phenomenon that reaches out to the world including the other bodies in it that reach back. In cinema, too, ... our perception is shaped by more than our physical bodies: it is also influenced by cinematic technology and by the position and attitude of the filmic body in relation to the narrative it is perceiving and articulating.11 In her ground-breaking book The Address of the Eye Vivian Sobchack has convincingly taken on the phenomenological concept of bodily subjectivity (which is, however, based on Maurice MerleauPonty and not on Sartre) in her theory of cinema spectatorship. According to Sobchack, a film is an expression of experience by experience. The film makes itself emotionally and intellectually manifest by making itself seen, heard, reflectively felt and understood. This means that the relationship between the spectator and the film unfolds on two levels: on the conscious level (where the spectator perceives the cinematic expression knowing that it is 'only fiction') and on the bodily level (where the body of the film and the body of the spectator meet in the cinematic experience; the spectator comes to embody the cinematic expression): The film presents an analogue of my own existence as embodied and significant. It is perceptive, expressive, and always in the process of becoming that being which is the conscious and reflected experience of its own expressed history.12 For Sobchack, the relationship between the film and the spectator is based on the mutual capacity for and possession of experience through common structures of embodied existence, through similar modes of being-in-the-world that provide the intersubjective basis of objective cinematic communication:
10 11 12
Shaviro, 1993, pp. 49-50. In Shaviro's reasoning, however, traces of Cartesianism can be found inasmuch as Descartes too considers affect as involuntary, suffered in a passive mode (contrasted with actions of the mind such as reasoning); he writes about passions "by which the will has [...] allowed itself to be conquered or led astray." Descartes, 1985, p. 347. See, for instance, Casebier, 1991; Sobchack, 1992 and 2004; Marks, 2000 and 2002. Stadler,2002,p.241. Sobchack, 1992, p. 143. 112
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The film experience, therefore, rests on the mutual presupposition of its intersubjective nature and function, based on the intelligibility of embodied vision. Its significance emerges from a shared belief and from shared evidence that the substance and structure of cinematic perception and expression (however historically and culturally qualified) are inherently able to reflect the universality of specific scopes of experience.13 Sobchack thus considers film thus to be more than merely a viewed object, namely a viewing subject. Even though film has been objectively constituted as a technology (the cinematic viewing subject does not mean the same as a human subject), it also has been subjectively incorporated, enabling a perceptual mode of embodied 'presence' and/or 'agency'. In its existential function, film shares a privileged equivalence with its human counterparts in the film experience. The film manifests a competence equivalent in structure and function to that same competence performed by human subjects. Furthermore, the film is able to make visible the invisible intersubjective structure and foundation of the encounter of the spectator and the film, in a specific cultural framework by which the spectator's vision is informed and charged, and through which the film appears intelligible. The idea of the film as a viewing subject allows or invites us to recognise the cinematic look (film as a subject of its own vision) on us, as a look of the Other that is present as 'visibly absent'. Although the film spectators cannot see film as a viewing subject, they can see its presence. The cinematic look does not visibly appear as 'the other side of vision' but as a vision lived through intentionally; emotionally and visually embodied. The intersubjective relationship between the film and the spectator is thus twofold: even though the cinematic Other is not 'me' (in the sense that it does not live my body nor occupy my situation), it is not entirely Other either (like other seeing persons) since its vision (and significance) is given uniquely to me from within, from the 'inside out'. This means that the spectators are able to experience the cinematic look as their own, even though it is not performed by them (nor do they believe that it is): [T]he film is engaged by our vision directly, as the intersubjective and intentional experience lived by an other. Thus, the film is never contained in our vision as merely the significant object of our sight, but is always also significant and signifying as the intentional subject of its own sight. It is necessary for the spectators to embody the cinematic vision in order to experience it from within, but this does not mean that the 13 14
Ibid,p.5. Sobchack, 1991, p. 140. 113
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spectators mistake the cinematic vision for their own (as it was assumed in apparatus theory). Instead, the purpose of cinematic communication is to share - to share the sight, to share the emotions - but there is always a distance between the spectator and the film that necessitates communication in the first place and subsequently sets up the dialogue between the two types of vision. The spectator is inserted into a shared operation of visions of which neither the film itself nor the spectator is the creator. Laura Rascaroli calls this sharing an 'intersubjective layering' of embodied vision, wherein the visual agencies of a number of viewing subjects are intertwined: the body of film, the bodies of characters and the body of the spectator.15 In this operation, the spectator, the characters and the film co-exist through a common world, just like the subjects exist in the world always and already together with other subjects. In the economy of spectatorship, affective embodiment unites the perceiving subject and the perceived object.
Carnal Perception The interest in the body and the interaction of the senses was already present in the early cinema and historical avant-garde practices, such as the cinema of attractions and the early films of Sergei Eisenstein. But the issues of embodiment, sensation, experience, and (the transgression of) sensory perception could also be seen characteristic to post-classical cinema that often aims at a totalising or synthesizing effect of image and sound, such as Gaspar Noe's controversial film Irreversible (Irreversible, 2002). The film is spectacular, fierce and sensational; it very much aims to effect immersion in the spectator's experience and, as a result, becomes intelligible through carnal rather than visual perception. Critics have often defined the film as offensive, provocative, shocking; in other words, affective in a very primal way. The film features a number of scenes that employ tactics of aural and visual, spatial and temporal displacement and disruption in order to elicit an emotional response. This film is also about bodily immediacy and the loss of equilibrium. The film itself is a succession of sequences in reverse chronology. This narrative structure places the violent climax at the beginning of the film and the idyllic equilibrium at the end. It is disturbing to watch these last scenes of happiness with the images of horror from the beginning of the film still in memory. This feeling of uneasiness, however, comes not only from the violent content of the film, but also, and more importantly, from the way in which the film disturbs and displaces the spatial and temporal bodily coordinates of the spectator.
15
Rascaroli, 1997, p. 234. 114
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The film opens with an eerie aerial long take where the camera makes constant circular, upside down movements in space, moving from one narrative realm to another as if there were no boundaries.16 Spatial specificity is torn apart. The narrative starts unfolding from any spatial point, and no place is just one any more. This is a scene of haptic displacement that is designed to bring the spectator into a state of spatial disequilibrium. The scene is disequilibrating, since here the so-called proprioceptive bodily system outweighs the exteroceptive (the sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and balance).17 This kind of cinematic immediacy requires that the spectators acquire new ways of engaging with the film through their own body living in the cinematic space instead of through narrative identification. While the camera continues to make the same movement, a constant pulsing, hypnotic score starts to emerge which intensifies the haptic immediacy of the film. This brings along a new transition that is not only spatial but also temporal as we now move back in time to a location that seems to be some kind of sadomasochistic gay club. The gyrating camera moves from one tortured body to another accompanied by the pulsating sound and the flashing red light. We have landed in a Dante-esque world of sex, pain and horror. We witness the two male protagonists, Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel) enter the club, looking for someone called Le T6nia ('tapeworm') and apparently seeking revenge. In the previous sequence we saw them being taken away respectively by the ambulance and the police, so now we know for sure that we have moved back in time. Marcus gets into a fight and gets his arm broken, after which Pierre attacks Marcus's assailant (who is not Le T6nia but his friend) and bashes his head in with a fire extinguisher. The sound of this incident is excessively amplified and made more disturbing by the rotating camera that nevertheless draws the spectator's attention closer to this act of extreme violence. This is truly an immediate, visceral and nauseating experience, not only because of the brutal nature of the scene, but also because it catches the spectator in the vulnerable moment of bodily disorientation which increases the emotional impact of the scene. The pulsating score that accompanies the rotating cinematography dominates the first 45 minutes of the film, until the notorious and much16 17
These scenes are composed of several separate shots tied together digitally. The proprioceptive system can be defined as a link between 'body space' and 'exterior space' that provides feedback on the status of the body internally - the referencing of the body to itself. Proprioception is the sensitivity to the body that envelops the subject's sensuous contact with the external world into the body. See, for instance, Gibson, 1979, p. 183; Massumi, 2002, p. 58. 115
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discussed rape/assault scene of Marcus's pregnant girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci). We witness (in this order) a raging Marcus and Pierre looking for their way to The Rectum (the gay club), driving a cab, harassing a taxi driver and stealing his cab, tracking down Le Tenia's whereabouts, being investigated by the police and seeing badly injured, passed out Alex being taken to a hospital by ambulance. In contrast to the previous scenes, the rape/assault scene that follows is being shot in one take with a static camera, filmed in medium close-up from a low height with a straight-on angle and a sense of deep space (although not all the planes in the frame are entirely in focus). No nondiegetic sound is added to the scene. However, it would be wrong to assume that this tactic would render the scene less immediate, especially given that the spectator already is in a vulnerable state of embodied mind. In an interview about the film, Gaspar Nog himself has stated that the static camera forces the spectators to stay with Alex who is being victimised, instead of granting them the 'luxury' of occupying the position of a distant observer.18 This is a representation of horror that gets under one's skin so that it literally hurts. Towards the middle of the scene we witness a distant figure entering the underpass, observing the scene for a few seconds and then sneaking out, without attempting to help Alex. This moment intensifies our experience of being embodied to the level of apperception. Helen Donlon has made a similar observation in her analysis of the scene: This act of supreme cowardice is such a real-life situation, and inserting this moment made the scene all the more effective, moving it even further away from the necessary parameters of scopophilia. This one moment of cowardice was so hopeless it became almost as ghastly as the rape itself. The spectator has now felt that cowardice and is still there, alone again with Alex and the rapist, but, unlike the guy who slipped away, we have to stay, and we are suddenly made very aware of this entrapment.19 Towards the end of the film, Alex is lying in Marcus's arms; they are both happy, but as their future is already written and therefore irreversible, the spectators watch this scene with involuntary terror in their heart, knowing what is yet to come. The scene ends with Alex taking the pregnancy test which turns out to be positive. The camera starts spinning again (accompanied by Beethoven's 7th Symphony), scanning the poster of Stanley Kubrick's 2007 - The Space Odyssey (1968) on Alex and Marcus's bedroom wall, moving to a close-up of Alex lying on the bed with her hands on her belly and then again tilting to the foetus in the 2007 poster. This is a direct reference to the ending of 2007 and its
19
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A939666, accessed 5 May 2006. Donlon, 2004. 116
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underlying Nietzschean concept of eternal return and the notion of time as being not linear but cyclical. This is also suggested in the book Alex is reading in the film. The book is J.W. Dunne's An Experiment in Time, in which he suggests that the past and future are constantly there in the present even though in the experience of time they are felt as existing separately. Therefore, when Alex wakes up in the afternoon before the horrible events, she recalls having a dream about being trapped inside a red tunnel that then broke around her (the rape takes place in such a tunnel). Marcus, similarly, is unable to feel his arm when he wakes up, which also turns out to be a kind of premonition of his arm being violently broken in The Rectum nightclub. An important part of the significance of (the structure of) Irreversible, then, has to do with the nature of time: it invites us to remember the future. But even more importantly, the film is about intersubjectivity and embodiment. The film ends with a scene of Alex reading Dunne's book in the park surrounded by children. At this point, the camera flies into an overhead shot and then into a thrilling gyroscopic spin while the lawn sprinkler in the middle of the frame spins to another direction. This gives way to a strobe effect of black and white frames alternating in a split-second speed and a roaring sound that is reminiscent of the film running out of the projector gate. A final title card reads: "Le temps detruit tout" (Time destroys everything).20 This scene is designed to have a hypnotic, disorienting and dizzying effect in the spectators and bring them to the state of disequilibrium until they almost literally hit the ground. This forces the spectators to acknowledge the way in which their perception is always enveloped in the body tending toward equilibrium. Furthermore, it forces the spectators to acknowledge that the cinematic experience takes place not outside on the screen or inside in the spectator but somewhere in between, in the texture of the whole intersubjective operation between the inside and the outside. (This notion might find support also from Michel Serres's thinking. In his Les Cinq sens, for instance, he writes that we really exist 'beside' ourselves on the side of the world, but this is not some kind of 'addition' to our experience but an essential part of the human condition, including cinema spectatorship).21
0
21
Especially in the context of avant-garde and experimental cinema, this technique of rapid alteration on the screen of light and dark is referred to as 'flicker film'. The term of the technique originates from Tony Conrad's 'structural' film The Flicker (1965) and it is often deliberately used to explore visual perception and cognition, sometimes leading to bodily disorientation, fear, or even epilectical seizures it the viewer is susceptible to epilectic tendency. Anderson and Small, 1976. Serres, 1985.
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In her discussion on 2001, Annette Michelson has argued that the film spectator has a longing for bodily immediacy.22 By constantly disrupting the experience of outer space of the cinema in the inner space of the body, Irreversible confronts the spectators with this longing. With the techniques of disorientation, the films brings the spectators to a state of disequilibrium, forcing them to make constant bodily adjustments in order to re-establish their balance.23 This cinematic challenge makes the spectators conscious of their intersubjective bodily engagement with the film, but at the same time it renders them incapable of distancing themselves from it. The film addresses the spectator as an appropriator of 'carnal knowledge', since the horrors it depicts are too incomprehensible for visual perception to take in. The spectators discover, with a thrill of disgust, that they are the meeting place of the eternal return of violence in the film. In this way, the cinematic technologies that Irreversible employs deconstruct the binary opposition of perceiving subject and perceived object, rendering them in active and embodied participants in their mutual construction.
Inside/Outside As stated above, in the cinematic experience, the relationship between the film and the spectator is based on the mutual capacity for and possession of experience through common structures of embodied vision. This realm of bodily intersubjectivity is also the origin of (cinematic) emotions as it is of perception and sensation, displaced from the perceiving subject and the perceived object. In other words, the spectator's emotional response to cinema is an (active) form of bodily consciousness, grounded in "the capacity of the body to experience itself as 'more than itself.'"24 The 'intersubjective space' from which the spectator's emotional response emerges is both external and internal to the spectator's lived body, and therefore emotion as a mode of bodily consciousness oscillates between the self and the other, the inside and the outside, the private and the public. As Michelle Rosaldo writes: Emotions are thoughts somehow 'felt9 in flushes, pulses, 'movements' of our livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin. They are embodied thoughts, thoughts seeped with the apprehension that 'I am involved9.25
Michelson, 1969. And, in fact, in his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget has argued that the understanding of reality consists of continual mechanisms of disequilibrium that require constant readjustments. Hansen, 2004, p. 7. Rosaldo 1984, p. 143. 118
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In his book Emotions, Sartre teaches us that it is through an emotion that the bodily subject encounters the world. Emotion is not entirely subjective but an all-embracing phenomenon: through emotion the bodily subject reaches out to the world in its entirety: "[W]ith our body [...] we live and undergo [the] signification [of an emotion], and it is with our flesh that we establish it. But at the same time it obtrudes itself; it denies the distance and enters into us."26 But emotions are not given from without - even though they might be experienced as 'external force' - since they arise from within the self: the subject is filled with emotion by its individual, psychological force. The emotional experience is therefore not to be found in the external world or in the 'essence' of the subject, but in the texture of the whole intersubjective operation. This means that self, emotion and meaning are always and already both external and internal phenomenon: it is through emotion in and through which the subject and the social world intertwine: "The behaviour which gives emotion its meaning is no longer ours. [...] Simply, the first magic and the signification of the emotion come from the world, not from ourselves."27 Yet in most readings of Sartre's theory, emotion is considered a form of consciousness. Or better, emotion is seen as a transformation of the world, a 'magical act' that originates from the subject's inability to tolerate a certain (changed) situation in the world. For instance, the emotion of joy is a magical behaviour, which tends by 'incantation' to realise the possession of the desired object: The joyous subject behaves rather like a man in a state of impatience. [...] It is because his joy has been aroused by the appearance of the object of his desire. He is informed that he has acquired a considerable sum of money or that he is going to see someone he loves and whom he has not seen for a long time. But although the object is 'imminent', it is not yet there, and it is not yet his. [...] [W]e shall never get to the point of holding [the object of our desire] there before us as our absolute property. [...] [Through joy] the object of or desire appears near and easy to possess.28 According to some scholars, the problem of this theory is the role of consciousness in it.29 The centre of emotion is the transformation of the world, which is fundamentally a change of consciousness. Sartre indeed Sartre, 1993, p. 86. Ibid. Maurice Merleau-Ponty shares this view when he writes that "If I try to study love or hate pure from inner observation, I will find very little to describe: a few pangs, a few heart-throbs, in short, trite agitation's which do not reveal the essence of love or hate." Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 52. Sartre, 1993, pp. 68-9. See, for instance, Fell, 1965 and Wollheim, 1999.
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sometimes makes it sound as if consciousness was something disembodied, but he is not a solipsist. In Sartre's philosophy, there is no thinking of 'the subject' in the sense of the final closure in itself of a for-itself. Consciousness, for Sartre, is essentially relative and it refers to the world from the start: "all our personal determinations suppose the world and arise as relations of the world."30 But how? Through the human body that is the subject of consciousness. Without the body consciousness could have no relation at all with the world. Consciousness is always directed toward the world; in fact, human consciousness is always consciousness of the world as perceived through the senses. But consciousness does not have senses. Consciousness is present in the world through the senses, and the world has meaning for the consciousness with the body as a centre of reference: "Thus to say that I have entered into the world, come to the world, or that there is a world, or that I have a body is one and the same thing."31 Emotion, then, is indeed a form of consciousness, but one must note that it is a bodily form of consciousness. The body is not merely an 'aspect' of consciousness in Sartre's theory of emotions; it is through emotion that consciousness is being embodied. This means that consciousness is rooted in the body, yet consciousness cannot be reduced to the body or vice versa; instead consciousness and body are fully embedded in each other. Through his or her emotions the subject reaches out to the embodied foundations of his or her self: emotion is a form of bodily consciousness of the world.32 The subject that undergoes an emotion is bound to the affective object in the world in an inherent symbiosis; the bodily subject unreflectively knows or anticipates what kinds of emotional responses and bodily actions are now expected from him or her, and therefore emotion is a certain way of apprehending the world. Furthermore, emotions gain their significance in the context of social life, being a synthesis of personal psychodynamics on the one hand and a socio-historical framework on the other.33 Sartre, 1956, p. 415.
Ibid.,pA\9. Here Sartre criticises psychologists who assume that, after the emotion has been set up by cognition, it is fed by the same cognition, and is absorbed into itself and withdrawn from the object towards which it is directed. For Sartre, on the contrary, the emotion returns to the object at every moment and is fed there. Throughout this book, I have been following common practice in employing 'affect' and 'emotion' interchangeably. In this chapter, I focus on 'emotion' in Sartre's sense. On the difference between affect and emotion, see, for instance, Tomkins, 1995. According to Tomkins, affect is the bodily mechanism that underlies all emotion, and that gives meaning to information that derives from our bodily system - our senses. However, when affect is combined with the subject's memory of previous experience of that affect, it becomes an emotion through which he or she experiences the world
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The psychic interiority of the bodily subject, then, is necessarily dependent on the subject's bodily exteriority (the subject's 'social being'). There is no strict separation between mind and body, self and Other, as the body is the limit for both the subject's perceptual (social) outside as well as his or her most intimate (psychic) inside. This means that the subject and the social world must exist and appear for each other: the relation between the subject and the world is intersubjective and reciprocal, and not determined by either one of them. The bodily subject is, on the one hand, an object in the world, but on the other hand something directly lived by consciousness, in a dialogical relationship with the world. Through his or her lived body, the subject has a position in and relation to the world, and emotion is a way to 'bind' the bodily subject to the world in an "indissoluble synthesis."34 The 'magical act' in the state of emotion is then the act of the bodily subject who, in a new situation, adjusts his or her relation with the social world. In emotion, the subject 'sets up the magical world' using the body as a means of 'incantation'. And since the body has a twofold ontology - on the one hand it is an object in the world, on the other hand it is something directly lived - an emotion is not merely a projected affective signification onto the world, but an intentional phenomenon through which the subject assumes his or her subjectivity and forms a relationship with the world. For Sartre, experiencing an emotion is thus to apprehend and to live the world in bodily action; in emotion the world becomes part of the bodily subject at the most inward level. Through emotion the subject thus exists in the world 'internally outside and externally inside'. This means that, through emotion, the subject assumes for him- or herself a subjectivity separate from the outside world at the same time as the subject embodies the outside, social world from the inside, as a bodily subject. In a state of emotion, the subject experiences a bodily sensation, but the significance of emotion arises from without the subject, in the context of social life. This texture of bodily subjectivity unfolds in the cinematic experience as well. EijaLiisa Ahtila's films and video installations, for instance, shape this bodily interaction between the inside and outside. They exemplify how cinema could be seen as a means of relating to the world, and how cinematic emotions arise from the intersubjective conditions of human existence. Eija-Liisa Ahtila is an acclaimed Finnish artist who describes her video installations as 'human dramas', fictional narratives (even though
34
as particularly, historically, and culturally relevant. Or, as Brian Massumi puts it, "Emotion is contextual. Affect is situational." Massumi, 2002, p. 217. Sartre, 1993, p. 52. 121
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her work often adopts the techniques of documentary film) about human relationships and the powerful emotions that underlie them. The relation between the 'self and the 'Other' is often investigated in her work as the spectator is invited to engage with the mind of a subject caught in a moment of psychological and emotional vulnerability. For instance, her three audio-visual narratives Me/We, Okay and Gray (1993) re-define the borders of subjectivity through collision of visual and aural information. These three short films - each approximately 90 seconds long have been presented both as independent works at galleries, as trailers in cinemas, and on various television channels between advertisements and programs. The first of the narratives, Me/We, studies the balance of attachment and detachment of the individual identity in society: in this case a father in a four-person nuclear family. The story is told through a monologue, a stream of consciousness narrated by the father that is partly voiceover, partly diegetic voice. The stream of consciousness extends to the visual level as well: a lot of point of view shots are used, which are then interrupted by sudden changes of viewpoint. The father mirrors himself through his family members. When he tries to see them, he sees himself instead, and allows their voices to speak in and through him, embodying his family. But at the same time he sees himself from the outside point of view, as a separate subject from his family members, uttering the words from Maurice Blanchot's short story Who: "Somebody looking over my shoulder (me perhaps) says: 'You will return to that faraway time when you took your high school exams.' - 'Yes, but this time, I will fail.'" As he is addressing his words to the viewers, and simultaneously allows them to see from his point of view, the film is playing with the borders of subjectivity and identity both inside and outside of the film. The spectators are invited to engage with the father's point of view, to experience the film from the inside, but they are also detached from the film into the role of the outside observers. As in Me/We, in Okay the protagonist speaks in the voice of the opposite sex. A woman walks back and forth in her room, telling a story about her sexual relationship, which involves both physical and psychological violence. The story is told in the first person, but as the story progresses, the voice changes, and the female protagonist is suddenly made to speak in a male voice. The desires and frustrations in the sexual relationship are uttered with various voices through a single person in order to dissolve both the subjectivity and the gender of the protagonists. According to Kari Yli-Annala, this is a characteristic feature in the world of Ahtila's imagery: "[T]he relationship between the self and the Other is not one of fixed differentiation, but one that is caught up in a process of spillage and mutual exchange. Someone else's words and 122
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thoughts seem to be put in the character's mouth, portraying the manner in which power is wielded in human relationships."35 At the same time the characters in Me/We and Okay address the camera directly, acknowledging the process of narration in the film and thereby transcending the cinematic screen. This results in the dissolution of the boundaries of subjectivity both within and beyond the frame: the borderline that separates the spectator outside the world of fiction is crossed and the spectator is invited to interact with the film beyond the inside/outside dichotomy. Today (Tdnddn, 1997) deals with the relationship of a father and a daughter after a dramatic event: the father has accidentally run over and killed his own father by car. The narration consists of three episodes titled Today, Vera, and Dad, divided into three screens on three sections of a rectangle in a dark space, and they run in a continuous loop (but not simultaneously) on each of the screens. First we see the film on screen one. The daughter is throwing a ball in the yard, the father is crying in the bedroom. The daughter's monologue - which is alternatively simultaneous on-screen sound and non-simultaneous, off-screen voice over tells about her father, her grandfather, and their relationship. In the second episode, on screen two, an elderly woman expresses her views of contemporary society. And in the third episode, on screen three, the father is conducting a dialogue with the camera, re-living his relationship with his father and his daughter, recognising that he is both a child and a parent at the same time. Ahtila herself has described this work as exploring the concept of self and Other through time: seeing one's own movements in the gestures of other family members dissolves the borders between the self and the Other. The first episode ends with the daughter asking whose father it actually is that is crying in the bedroom: Maybe it's not my dad who's crying - but somebody else's dad. Sanna's dad, Mia's dad, Marko's dad, Pasi's dad - or Vera's dad. I'm in an armchair. I have a boyfriend. I have something on my lap. I am 66 years old. The next episode, Vera, begins with a medium close-up of an elderly woman sitting in an armchair, smoking, with an ashtray on her lap, talking to the camera. Her monologue ends with the sentence, "A rattling tram pronounces my dad's name," which brings us to the last episode, Dad. According to Taru ElfVing, this jump means that the daughter embodies the self that is in constant flux, always already gone or about to come, embodying the future (Vera), the past (Dad) and the present (Today): "The girl situates herself as older, creates a bridge - or maybe she creates the future, as if it were another simultaneous layer of 35
Yli-Annala,2002,p.221. 123
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her being."36 But the girl is 'becoming' in the figure of the father as well, thereby inhabiting the border space between the self and the Other, the inside and the outside. As the father proclaims in the last episode of the film: "I have a daughter. She throws a ball and asks me to watch. And these throws look like the anger I had swallowed. And I don't know whether to run towards her or away - or whether to teach her what's good and what's bad. When I ask her, 'how do I look?' - she says, 'you look like a dad.'" As in Me/We and Okay, in Today the spectators are drawn into the world of fiction beyond the screen that separates them from the film; in fact, in the gallery space the spectators are expected to occupy the 'fourth wall' of the installation. This contributes to the function of the spectators in bringing closure to Ahtila's words and images. It is the spectators who have to act as a bridge between the 'speaking selves' in Today: it is the spectators' embodiment of the cinematic expression and their emotional reactions to it that makes the encounter of the 'girl', 'Vera' and 'dad' possible. As a result, the physical time and space occupied by the spectator is fused with the fictive time and space of the installation. Like Me/We, Okay, and Today, the film installation Consolation Service (Lohdutnsseremonia, 1999) mirrors the twofold nature of bodily subjectivity as a site where the self and the Other, the inside and the outside interact, but through experiencing and expressing emotions. The installation is a two-screen projection. The story unfolds through two adjacent images: the screen on the right takes the story forward while the screen on the left concentrates on showing the emotions (through reaction shots), scenery, and other details relevant for the story. Since the adjoining images are non-linear, and since the spectators are refused one privileged point of view, they are invited to take the position of an active observer towards the film, making choices from the audio-visual material. As a result, the spectators' reaction to the film are multidimensional, more complex than in a 'conventional' narrative film: on the one hand they are encouraged to recognise the 'cinematic Other' as visibly absent, beyond the level of perception, but on the other hand they are invited to embody the cinematic expression through their emotional reactions: the spectators reach out to the cinematic world by reacting to it emotionally, incorporating the cinematic expression to their own bodily presence. And at the same time the spectators also remain aware of the gallery space and the people walking in and out of the room.
Elfving,2002,p.210. 124
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Consolation Service is a story about the divorce proceedings of a young couple, Anni and J.P., told in three parts. The story is told from Anni's point of view, but it is narrated by their 'neighbour' who exists within the diegetic world of the film, but who nevertheless 'creates' events in the process of narration. As J.P. explains the narrator's function to the therapist: "Our neighbour is the babysitter - the one who is writing this story." The first part of the film takes the spectator to a counselling session, where the couple tells their therapist that they have decided to break up. Their relationship has reached the point where they cannot have emotional intimacy with each other anymore. They cannot encounter each other, but are both absorbed in their own emotions. As Anni explains to the therapist: "I feel like some enormous breast that has to take care of everything." When the therapist encourages the couple to express their feelings toward each other, they are only able to quarrel or to bark at each other like dogs, until Anni collapses. We hear her voice as a non-simultaneous distant cry; as a kind of internal diegetic sound that invites the people from the waiting room to come to her aid. Neither the couple, nor the therapist can 'see' these people; they are 'transparent' - only the narrator is able to comment on their presence: "The therapist, Anni, and J.P. cannot see them. The people are transparent." This blurs the boundary between the diegetic (the world within the film) and the non-diegetic (the world beyond the film), inviting the spectator to inhabit that inbetween space. In the second part the couple is at a birthday party. Later they leave for a restaurant across frozen water, but while they are walking the ice breaks, they fall into the water and drown. In this part, Ahtila deliberately confuses the inner psychic life of Anni's character ('fantasy') with the material outside world ('reality'), since the drowning in the icy seawater takes place only in Anni's imagination. Only her inner monologue - uttered in a voice over while in the image we see either her drowning or an underwater shot from 'her' point of view - suggests that the drowning illustrates the way in which the couple has turned numb to each other like in death: For the last time we show each other how we lost contact. I don't care. And you pretend not to notice. [...] There is nothing, time does not pass. Can we still say that this won't do? Can we still put a stop to it, quit, leave? What kind of fingers undress us here? In the last part, Anni's husband J.P. appears to her as a hallucination. J.P.'s materialisation and his bowing gesture to which Anni responds enables her to finally give up the relationship - hence the consolation service. Here the woman's fantasy has the fiinction of preventing the 125
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metaphorical death of the couple in the second part of the film, as YliAnnala has argued. Yet the fantastic and hallucinatory elements in Consolation Service seem to suggest that intimacy with the Other as another subject is not possible; it is not accomplishable to encounter the Other as another subject, but only as a hallucinatory projection. It would seem to me that Ahtila's later work examines the question of what happens to the subject when his or her relationship to the world and the others in it is permanently disturbed, but that is a topic I have explored elsewhere.37 In this kind of displacement of the self/Other and the inside/outside in Ahtila's work, then, it is the structuring function of the spectator that keeps the multidimensional structure together. In Ahtila's later work, especially in her installation Anne, Aki, and God (1998) and her film Love is a Treasure (Rakkaus on aarre, 2002) the multiplicity of the cinematic 'flows' starts to live its own autonomous life, which the spectator cannot absorb in a linear fashion, but is forced to experience as a delusion. According to Daniel Birnbaum, in Anne, Akit and God there is "clearly a question of a severe breakdown of the mental apparatus as a whole. This is madness." The installation "pushes things further and clearly represents a kind of mental disintegration," producing "a multilayered and mazelike narrative, or rather a maze of narratives, that transgresses the mental capacities not only of so-called normality but more radically [...] of finite subjectivity."38 The co-existence and the intimacy of the self with the Other has become impossible and madness is a consequence of this and, in a sense, Anne, Aki, and God as well as Love is a Treasure could be seen as a logical development of the theme in Ahtila's work. Intersubjectivity, Sexuality and Gender As we have already seen, shame is an emotion that is profoundly embedded in the social. Shame promotes continuous, dynamic exchange between the 'outside' (the social) and the 'inside' (the personal) of the subject's world, shame is a mode of embodying the social world. But precisely for this reason, shame is also a possibility for re-negotiating one's relation with the social world. This, however, necessitates special motivation, for instance films that challenge the intersubjective limita tions of a given culture. According to Sartre, art that leads to reflection reveal the images which society tries to hide from itself: "If society sees itself and, in particular, sees itself as seen, there is, by virtue of this very fact, a contesting of the established values of the regime. [The artist] 37 38
Laine, 2006a. Birnbaum, 2002, p. 202. 126
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presents [the society] with its image; he calls upon it to assume it or to change itself." Shame could serve as means for the spectators to reflec tively direct their attention from thefilmto the conditions of apprehend ing the film. This reflection is essentially bodily in its nature. IF 6 WAS 9 / PROJECTION SPACE view froTi abov* - not in tcaie
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Figure 14: If 6 Was 9 projection space. Courtesy of Crystal Eye As mentioned above, the intimacy between the self and the Other is in many ways disturbed and disturbing in Ahtila's work. In her If 6 Was 9 (Jos 6 olis 9, 1996) this is the case because the self/Other relationship is epitomised through the emotion of shame as a reaction to the estab lished and internalised cultural values of female sexuality. In this film installation she deals with sexual fantasies, habits, activities and wishes of five teenage girls during their 'metamorphosis' into adult women as sexual beings. Remarkably direct in its approach, If 6 Was 9 is based on interviews and empirical research: as a result the touch of documentary and direct cinema is apparent in the film, but the realisation and the stories told by the girls are nevertheless fictional. Like Today, If 6 Was 9 is structured as a triptych: three aurally and visually non-linear, adjacent images create an audio-visual flow on three enormous screens (fig ure 14). The non-chronological, non-linear narrative fabric unfolds in both parallel and contrasting movement across the screens. The three screens may show a different perspective on the setting, or they may converge in order to form a single screen. The sound is projected from where it appears to emerge, and the soundtrack follows the horizontal, simultaneous movement between the three screens of the triptych. In the 127
Shame and Desiw gallery screening, the screens together with a comfortable sofa, are organised so (hat the three screens and (he spectators, sitting on the sofa, form a four-cornered space (figure 15). Since the audio-visual flow on the three screens is often non-simultaneous, the spectators are again refused one privileged point of view. But through the size and the organisation of the screens the spectators are compelled to absorb the audiovisual flow not only aurally or visually, but also with their whole body.
Figure IS: Tke gallery screening. Coartesy of Crystal Eye The film begins with an empty, black screen; only lines that refer to sexual acts and that are spoken by immature voices of young girls can be heard. On the screen, nothing can be seen, not even the owners of the voices, which penetrate into the consciousness of the spectator, thereby breaking the battler of distance between the spectator and the film. The spectator is invited to share the subjective experiences of the narrator from the inside. But in a split second, the intimacy between the spectator and the film is disrupted as images of everyday Life occupy the screen, combined with voices that articulate a seemingly meaningless stream of consciousness in the following fashion: When f was not yet at school age 1 used to play a game. 1 went under ibe cover and played doctor. Alone. 1 was a patient, and the doctor examined my bottom. I had to open my anus while they stood around... the doctor nurse, and maybe some other people. The doctor cured me by sticking me in 128
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F^nre 16: if 6 Was 9. Conrtesy of Crystal Eye The following passage makes use of a documentary/interview style, inviting the spectator into yet another relationship with the film. On one screen. a young girl is sharing her masturbation fantasy/memoty with the spectator in a close-up, sitting on a cosy chair and looking directly at the camera, in the mode of a confession. Yet this familiar convention of documentary - 'safe intimacyfroma distance* - is in contradiction with the fact that it is a young girl who is sharing 'her' sexual, almost pornographic fantasy - and it is here that the emotion of shame sets in, re minding the spectators of their own sense of shame about their sexual ity. Indeed, as Leon Wurmser has noted, "shame about exposing one's sexual organs, activities, and feelings [...] is of such cardinal import that in most Western languages shame is practically synonymous with sexual exposure and the sexual organs themselves.**3 In ff6 Was P, during the 'sexual confession' two other screens 'open up1; screens that are divided into a point of view shot of the young girl» and an establishing shot of the whole setting (figure 16). The spectators occupy ait these three perspectives at once, not only on the visual level but also on the subjec tive level, through the emotion of shame. As many theorists of shame, including Sartre, have shown, in the emotion of shame there exists a consciousness of self as existing for oneself and for others: shame makes the self present as an object in the world, as an object for the
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Tlie psychoanalytic explanation of why this should be so \s thai lite development of objective self-awareness predisposes the child to integrate the parental criticism of sexual censure Through the sense of shame. Wurmser, I9J}|, p. 32. But Imking sexu ality and shame is in no way an invention of psychoanalysis: it appears in recorded i Oteckyjudaeo-Oiristian) history at least as early as Genesis in the Old Testament. la Plato and in classical G*eek {physical) sexual desire was considered shameful and degrading {in contrast to platooic love). The 17th' and I3**ceatury English Puritan ism made moral abstinence a core virtue. See Tomkhfc. 1987. And in Finland, con trolled sexuality was a direct continuation of the naye^at-roniflotic movement Siltttla, J999,p.438. 129
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Other.40 Shame involves consciousness of the self that has been exposed for others to see as an object in the world from an outside, objective viewpoint which the subject can recognise as him- or herself (even though that objective dimension of oneself, the being-for-others, essentially escapes the subject). But at the same time shame is a shameful apprehension of something and this something is the subject self: "I am ashamed of what I am."41 Shame, therefore, realises an intimate relation of oneself both to oneself and to others; an exposure of oneself to others. This means that shame is not originally a phenomenon of selfreflection, but the subject's original apprehension of the two modes of his or her being (existing for oneself and for others) occurs prereflectively: It is certain that my shame is not reflective, for the presence of another in my consciousness, even as a catalyst, is incompatible with the reflective attitude; in the field of my reflection I can never meet with anything but the consciousness which is mine. But the Other is indispensable mediator between myself and me. I am ashamed as I appear to the Other.42 But a reflective consciousness can always direct itself upon emotion, upon shame. In this case, shame appears as a structure of consciousness. So whilst shame as pre-reflective consciousness is directed toward something other than itself (shame of what one is and of what one is for the Other), shame as reflective consciousness shifts its attention to itself and becomes consciousness of an act of consciousness (consciousness of shame of what one is and of what one is for the Other). Sartre has shown us that emotion (i.e. shame) is a state of consciousness of the world in a state of emotion, the subject is immediately and spontaneously connected with the social world, and it is precisely this unreflective condition that constitutes the possibility for the reflective consciousness the subject has of him- or herself. This reflection, however, is rare and necessitates special motivation, because reflective consciousness involves both a unity and a duality at the level of reflection. According to Sartre, on the one hand there must be an absolute unity of reflective consciousness with the consciousness on which it reflects, but on the other hand "the reflected-on must necessarily be the object for the reflective; and this implies a separation of being."43 In shame I am conscious of myself as an object of values for the Other, but there is a separation between me and that object, since I 40 41 42 43
See Sartre, 1956; Taylor, 1985; Lewis, 1995; Katz, 1999. Sartre, 1956. p. 301. Ibid., p. 302. /*>/
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cannot take the Other's point of view on that object (duality). In reflection, my consciousness of consciousness is separated from the consciousness reflected on by a nothing that is itself (duality within unity). This is a complicated matter (if there is no 'self at the pre-reflective level to be found, how is that self-consciousness? If consciousness is always of something and implies a separation of being, how can the reflective be that which is reflected on?), and, according to Kathleen Wider it cannot be thought without taking the level of bodily intentionality into consideration.44 According to Sartre, all consciousness is self-consciousness, we all have a deep-rooted intuition of whatever we do both at the level of prereflective and reflective consciousness. Even at the level of prereflective consciousness (awareness of, say, a glass on the table) I am conscious of my state, but this consciousness does not occur reflectively (I am not 'positionally' conscious of my state, my attention is not directed towards my state). Consciousness of an object is consciousness of being conscious of an object. Thus, ontologically all consciousness is self-consciousness. According to Wider, this is a question of processing bodily data. At pre-reflective level, my self-consciousness is present in processing bodily data, blending the 'input'fromboth self and the social world. At reflective level, my self-consciousness shifts its focus from processing bodily data onto the self-input only (the bodily feelings and sensations). According to Wider, this interpretation preserves Sartre's belief that all consciousness is self-consciousness, and that in reflection there is a unity within a duality: reflective consciousness is and is not separatedfromits object since it simply involves a shift in focus: "nothing would divide consciousness from what it reflects on, because as Sartre says, consciousness is the body, and reflective self-consciousness is the body's reflective awareness of itself."45 This does not mean trying to attempt the bodily input from a third-person point of view (the socalled 'impure reflection'), but attending the bodily input as lived, not objectified. Furthermore, since all consciousness is bodily consciousness of something in its both prereflective and reflective mode, it is impossible to be simply conscious of the act of being conscious, as Steven Connor points out.46 The cinematic experience is primarily pre-reflective: in my engagement with afilmI, as a subject for-myself, am conscious o/it, I perceive it as external to my body whilst all my attention is directed towards it. 44 45 46
Wider, 1997. Ibid, p. 155. "One can never be simply aware of the act or fact of being aware, one can only be aware indirectly, through being aware of something." Connor, 2006, p. 2. 131
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My emotional response H a result of apprehending the film, a mode of consciousness of the film at the pre-reflective level. Or better, in the prereflective mode, my consciousness is cinema inasmuch as 1 am not posirionaily conscious of the film. Similarly, by experiencing shame as a result of thereturnedlook of the Other in the fitm, I become conscious of myself as the object for that Other at the pre-reflective level: I am not conscious of my shame, my consciousness is shame. Here, my bodily consciousness is a subject and an object for-itself- pre-reflectively. At the reflective level, in my engagement with the film 1 am still conscious of it, and my emotional response is still a result of apprehending the film, but the focus of my attention is on my emotional response (I am positionally conscious o/my shame), In If6 Was 9 it is intriguing to notice how the film invites the specta tors to reflect their emotional experience through allowing the spectator to direct their attention to understanding the conditions of apprehending the film. This is done by addressing the spectator and inviting them to experience the film from within at the pre-reflective level (at the level of bodily intentionalityx and simultaneously encouraging them to observe thai lived experience from without (duality within unity), hi one scene in If 6 Was 9 one of the girls is telling her memory of a children's toy called the view master and the Piper fairytale she used to watch with it. In this scene, die triangular space of three screens consists of a close-up, point of view, and the establishing shot In the scene, the girl addresses the spectators widi the following lines: "1 heard that the Piper led children inside a mountain, which then closed. 1 run the pictures back and forth. First there was an opening, then there was no more. It was amazing. It was equally amazing to see in a porn magazine that men had no hole behind the testicles."
figure 17:1/6 Was 9. Courtesy of Crystal Eye The three screens — where the images are projected in an alternating order - and the sound of the changing images in the background resem ble the childhood experience of changing the images of one's view 132
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master (figure 17). Suddenly this cosy memory, which the spectators have been able to 'experience from the inside,' is disrupted by a pornographic image portraying male sexual organs. The shock of the sudden encounter with the pornographic image is equivalent to the sudden appearance of the Other's look which the subject experiences as the revelation of the existence of his or her body as an object for the Other, and is experienced as shame. But why? As pornography usually is defined in terms of visibility (and not of vision) and the spectator's implicit desire for (visual) mastery, why is it that the spectator here lacks the mastery and becomes an object of the look?47 Because the sudden encounter with the pornographic image is humiliation, an attack aimed at the way in which notions of male and female sexuality are ordered and defined. Robert Stoller has investigated the role of shame and humiliation in sexual fantasy. His point of departure is unambiguous although provocative: at the centre of the dynamics of pornographic sexual excitement is humiliation: For the men, the game is: "I humiliate in order to undo my humiliation." Women, more subtle in their pornography, think: "I let myself be humiliated in order to humiliate" or, to use gentler phrasing, "in order to humiliate, disarm. At first glance, Stoller's point of view about humiliation as a force in all pornography seems to be somewhat 'totalitarian', but it is by no means essentialist or ahistorical. Pornography can be seen as humiliating because it touches on one's uncertainties about one's gender and sexuality that are culturally too strictly defined through opposing positions (woman as a projection of man).49 The pornographic image in If 6 Was 9 is humiliation, because it is an attack on gender-bound intersubjective relations whose meanings male and female bodies carry, and whose meanings mark the limits of male/female relations: women are not allowed to be openly curious about male sexuality or even about their own.50 Furthermore, it echoes what Kathleen Woodward calls a 'double standard of shame':
On pornography as a form of visual mastery see, for instance, Williams, 1999. Stoller, 1987, p. 301. Simone de Beauvoir had a similar starting point in her famous work, The Second Sex (Le Deuxieme sexe), in which she worked with the idea that women are the Other for men and that woman is not born, but made. See De Beauvoir, 1997. It is precisely against the wish for expression of sexual impulses that Sigmund Freud viewed shame as a reaction formation; according to Freud shame is socially useful as it directs sexual energy away from the self and toward tasks necessary for the evolution of the mankind. Freud, 1953.
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Shame and Desire [I]n the emotional economy of patriarchy men are not expected to feel shame when they do something for which they should be ashamed [...] while women are unfairly denounced as "shameless9 for behaviour that is routinely accepted in men.51 In this way, the pornographic image functions as the look of the Other, returning the spectators' look and giving their lived experience an outside. The pornographic image disturbs the spectators' relation with the film, the shame sets in at the pre-reflective level, and the spectators apprehend their presence in the social world (my consciousness is shame of my presence in the social world). The shock of sudden disruption with a pornographic image throws the spectators out of balance, out of their taken-for-granted sense of being in the world, and enables the spectators to shift their attention from their presence before the image to the shame itself (I become conscious of my shame). The reflective shame crystallises the dialectical elements of human subjectivity that the subject normally experiences as aligned. Reflective shame, then, is a moment of clarity that separates the inner and outer dimension in human subjectivity that ordinarily appear as unified, but that in reflective shame can for a moment be perceived separately. As Sartre has taught us, shame stands between the self and the others, but neither simply inside, nor simply outside, since the reference to other people in shame arises from within. In If 6 Was 9, reflective shame simultaneously engages and distances the spectators from the viewing experience allowing them through contrasting images - to experience from the inside and to perceive from the outside, and vice versa. In this revelation, the subject's body is not merely lived, but this lived experience becomes "extended outside in a dimension of flight which escapes me. My body's depth of being is for me this perceptual 'outside' of my most intimate 'inside'."52 The experience of one's body as an object for the Other is made in and through shame. Shame means that the subject is intensely and constantly conscious of his or her body for the Other, seeing his or her body as it is through the Other's eyes, learning his or her social being through his or her relation with others. The body, then, has two ontological dimensions: I exist for myself as my body, and I exist for myself as a body known by the Other. The world has meaning to me with my body as a centre of reference, but my body can be ordered from a radically different point of view, the point of view of the Other, in the context of the social world. Women, for instance, often experience their bodies not existing in their own right as desiring bodies, but ordered from a social (male) point of view. In this 51 52
Woodward, 2000, p. 216. Sartre, 1956, p. 461.
134
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social order, female sexuality is split into two opposing complementarities: a sexually promiscuous 'slut' and a decent, sexually inactive 'virgin' that limit women's possibilities to fulfil their sexuality as active, desiring subjects. This phenomenon is deeply rooted in the values and the basic structures of systems of gender, economics, and society in the Western world. In Finnish culture, the historical background of slut/virgin polarisation lies in the ideology of family and the nation: in Finland, sexually 'pure' women have traditionally been acknowledged as unifiers of the nation. According to Arja-Liisa R&s&ien, all the social questions of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century were in one way or another tied to the question of gender relations. A woman could achieve subjectivity by subjugating her sensuousness into a sense of duty towards the common good (either at home or at work), or by surrendering to it. By conceiving of their body, Finnish women conceive the whole nation. This polarisation is characteristic of Christian thinking, in which women's agency and active sexuality is seen threatening to the cultural order and that has to be controlled through collective shaming and labelling. As a 'virgin' a woman has to sacrifice her own sexuality, as a 'slut' she loses her social face. This polarisation based on Christianheterosexual ideology has not ceased to exist in Finnish culture. There is no culturally accepted model of woman as sexually active that would exist outside of a man/woman relationship (woman as a projection of man). The project of sexual liberation in the 1960s and 1970s seems from the 1990s onwards to have become an attempt to deregulate commercial sex and pornography. However, this trend seems to advance the slut/virgin polarisation in the Finnish culture, since one now defines what kind of (female) sexuality is culturally acceptable against the background of commercial sex and pornography. In any case, women's bodily relation to the social world (inside) is still defined from a male point of view (outside).54
54
R&sanen, 1995, pp. 67-73. There are, of course, countless examples of how notions of the female body are influenced by the nation. Often a literary metaphor (like Helen of Troy), the woman is a symbol of nation: when she is strong, the nation is strong; when she is weak, the nation is weak; when she is raped, the nation, too, has been invaded and violated. In colonialist discourse, 'virginity' underlines the 'availability' of the land, calling for an inseminating 'penetration'. Against the background of these male-produced paradigms, women have conceived their gender and sexuality, either happily fulfilling their communal duties, or feeling exploited by the nation, but never existing in their own right as desiring subjects. See, for instance, Pettman, 1996; Shohat and Stam, 1994, pp. 137-70. Canaan, 1986; Nare, 1995; Saarikoski, 1998.
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It is this interaction of the inside and outside in female subjectivity and sexuality that the split images in If 6 Was 9 mirror, the interaction that manifests itself in the emotion of shame and that are epitomised through sexuality and sexual norms. In If 6 Was 9 the girls' curiosity about sexuality is in conflict with societal, (masculine) sexual norms, and this conflict between inside and outside, private and public, is apparent in the emotion of shame. Indeed, everything about the film is about that conflict, thereby telling the story of the inside of a woman's body. By embodying the installation, the spectator embodies the female gender 'from the inside'.55 The film ends with a series of close ups showing girls' hands holding scissors, cutting images from pornographic magazines and fashion journals, making a collage. In one screen, a girl addresses the spectator, saying: A couple of years ago I read an article about Helsinki. It showed 24 places around the city where people make love outdoors. In every picture a couple showed how to do it in public places. By making the pornographic images their own and by giving the images a female face, the girls forcibly re-define the concept of female sexuality and bring this newly defined concept into a public sphere from where it has been excluded (this is also suggested in the film through contrasting shots of the girls that mostly take place in an indoor setting with a series of establishing shots of the city of Helsinki). In this way, If 6 Was 9 moves from the realm of 'sexual visions' to that of spatiality, cultural anatomy of the space, and the way in which gender shapes one's spatial imaging. Ultimately, the film demonstrates Giuliana Bruno's argument of film as a practice of representation written on the body map, a corporeal process that produces space negotiated over a woman's body.56 Reflective shame in If 6 Was 9 is the subjective element in film that invites the spectators in between themes of distance and proximity, inside and outside, allowing them to realise the intersubjective texture of subjectivity. Reflective shame is created through a tension between the content and the form: familiar environments like cosy living rooms or impersonal shopping malls are contrasted with a detailed and objective pornographic dialogue coming from the mouths of the young girls, who are at the same time playing a piano, eating, or casually varnishing their toenails. Private sexual fantasies are being brought into a public sphere,
56
A viewing position which, ultimately, is not reserved to the female viewers only. As Tania Modleski has convincingly shown in her reading of Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) male identification with a female position is possible, because of the male infant's original identification with the mother. Modleski, 1988. Bruno, 2002, pp. 62-4. 136
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and the spectators are placed at the crossroads of these spheres. On the one hand, the spectators are invited to share the girls' intimate sexual fantasies. On the other hand, Ahtila's experimentation with images and sounds - confusing the author, the narrator and the characters by putting stories where adult women (including the artist herself) recall their sexual awakening into the mouth of teenage girls; multiplying the voices and separating them from the images; interrupting the linear representation - renders the concept of stable spectatorship incoherent. The spectators are compelled to remain outside of the representation at the same time as they are invited to experience it from within. The spectators are made conscious of the contradiction between the private nature of the fantasy and the public context in which it is told. The spectators9 shock about entering into a relationship with the film in which they are invited to experience a private sexual fantasy and to observe it at the same time enables reflective shame to emerge, in which one's body is lived perceptively, as well as engaged intentionally with the world. With this technique, Ahtila examines the texture of selfhood in relation to others, which is then given a socio-political dimension as well: the critique on the cultural taboo of female body and sexuality. As one of the girls, sitting on a banister with her legs apart and shot from a low angle declares: Here I sit with my legs apart like a small girl who has not learned anything about sex. Who has no idea of the fact that a woman must hide her private parts and lust. The straightforward manner in which the girls talk about sexuality is a way to re-interpret female sexuality from a third position which exists outside the negations of masculinity - lacking, passive - through which femininity has traditionally been described. For ElfVing, the third position is 'the Girl' that resists the systems of representation based on negation: The girls actively look, think and speak this imagery of thresholds, constantly reinterpreting them, and themselves. The signification of female sexuality and the subjectivity of the Girl as lack(ing) is spatialised, repeated [...] until it is loaded with meanings and dynamics of its own. [...] [This] allows for endless associations and wild leaps that create ground for difference and for the new to emerge.57 In the same way, reflective shame in If 6 Was 9 can be seen as a third position that is able to bridge the dialectical poles of subject and object, self and Other, active and passive, seer and seen, inside and outside in the cinematic experience. Reflective shame can be seen as constituting a 57
ElfVing, 2002, p. 211. 137
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new kind of intermediate position between the spectator and the film, a position that maintains the tension between the self and the Other, the inside and the outside, rather than attempts to incorporate the Other (woman) within the self (man). In this way, If 6 Was 9 invites the spectator to a creative process where the spectator's body becomes a transitional space through which the representation emerges intersubjectively. This means that it is the bodily self of the spectator that encounters the film in a dialogical interaction, as an active subject, through establishing an emotional relationship with it whilst remaining aware of the tension between the inner and the outer. By confronting the spectator with sexuality and reflective shame, If 6 Was 9 creates a subject position for the spectator to enter into that reproduces the original moment when shame arises: the moment when the social network of the subject has disappeared. But as shame is based on the subject's bodily capacity for and possession of experience through cultural structures of intersubjective existence, in shame the subject nevertheless remains embedded in the social network. In shame the subject is at the same time 'transparent' and (re)orienting his or her body towards the world; in the case of If 6 Was 9 towards 'new' female sexuality beyond the negations of masculinity: an active, energetic, and self-determining sexuality that is not being carried out through the Other (male, nation). According to Sartre, this kind of reflective consciousness can be properly called a moral consciousness, since it cannot arise without at the same time revealing social values: "It is obvious that I remain free in my reflective consciousness to direct my attention on these values or to neglect them."58 Shame is a possibility for reflective reorientation to the social world precisely because of its ambiguous relationship to the societal values: on the one hand shame interrupts the subject's bond with the community; in shame the subject experiences alienation from the community. On the other hand, it is through shame that the communal norms and values make their return, offering the subject a chance to re-articulate them. As a result, the unbearable transparency in shame paradoxically becomes a way of recognising one's indebtedness to other subjects in the world and re-negotiating one's position in the social network.
Sartre, 1956, p. 146. 138
Conclusion In this book, I have examined contemporary cinema against the sell? Other relationship that manifests itself both in the way in which films epitomise this relationship and in the way in which the spectator relates to the film intellectually and emotionally. The initial starting point was the question of where we could turn in the field of film studies to discuss spectatorship in the context of understandings and misunderstandings, fascinations and rejections, involvements and indifferences that exist throughout the locus of seeing and being seen. The most important theories on film spectatorship, be they psychoanalytical or cognitive, often do not take the social dimension of spectatorship adequately into account. Instead, they often assume an ideal spectator, and cultural and historical questions of spectators' (emotional) responses are thus neglected. On the other hand, within the Cultural Studies approach 'culture' is offered as a kind of explanatory category into which all individual meanings can be fitted.1 In order to explain the ever-changing 'oddities' in contemporary cinema, then, the most relevant approach seems to be to focus on the relationship between the self and the Other through the Sartrean concept of intersubjectivity, a concept that deals with both the individual and the sociohistorical dimensions of subjectivity. Intersubjectivity means that there is a continuous exchange between the subject and the social world through which the 'outside' of the collective experience becomes the 'inside' of the subject's psychic life. The subject exists in the social world in an embodied, active, dynamic manner, anticipating how his or her actions will be seen by others. The subject's presence in the social world requires that the subject be both aware of the world and aware of his or her presence in the world; the subject always depends on others in order to know him- or herself. We see, hear, feel, and express ourselves through actions that in part always remain beyond ourselves, always beyond the reach of my self-awareness, in the Other. We must look to others to see ourselves and to know ourselves. We can see by ourselves, but only in the presence of others can we become aware of our look, be On this problem, see, for instance, Massumi, 2002, p. 253: "Cultural Studies [...] takes the collectivity as already constituted, as a determinate set of actually existing persons. [...] [I]t restricts its movement to the manifestation of a content considered to be generally applicable to a collection of particular persons, to an established category or class of human. [...] It generally-particularly misses change." 139
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it a returned look (Sin, Man Bites Dog, World of Glory, Hidden) or an imagined look by the Third Other (The Idiots, Drifting Clouds). Our self-consciousness emerges and is sustained by taking an external viewpoint on ourselves. This is why, according to Jack Katz, "the identities of others, as anticipated or encountered, are from the start intrinsic to the shaping of one's own frames of action and of the self that is inscribed in them."2 These frames of action are socially and culturally constructed, but they reside 'in the flesh' - in the affective operations of the body and the senses.3 In order to understand spectatorship, then, one has to understand subjectivity; and in order to understand subjectivity, one has to take the subject's reciprocal relationship with the Other into account, since this relationship is not simply an external one, but contributes to the foundation of subjectivity itself. By focusing on the issues of intersubjectivity, it is possible to abandon the models of spectatorship based on the opposing positions of subject and object, internal and external, active and passive, seer and seen. This also means that the role of cultural specificity as a component of visual analysis lies in the way in which contemporary films, documentaries, photographs, and video installations reproduce the intersubjective modes of social engagement, modes that could be discovered in the emotional experience. Focusing on emotions in the cinematic experience, this book has offered an insight into the ways of looking and being looked at within the terms of the social and the intersubjective. The primary argument was that, in contemporary cinema, the traditional juxtapositions of self and Other, subject and object, seer and seen, active and passive, observer and participant, knower and known are no longer sufficient grounds for theorising spectatorship in terms of the intersubjective. In order to conceptualise this new way of looking, it is necessary to create a 'third position' that is able both to break up the traditional juxtapositions of subject and object of the look and to maintain the tension that underlies them. Because shame can be seen as a realm of intersubjectivity, I have drawn particular attention to shame and the way in which it is founded on the relationship between the self and the Other. This is subjectivity invested in the existence of others, the social (rather than ontological) dimension of intersubjectivity, simultaneously within and beyond one's own socially conditioned field of (embodied) vision, in the context of 2 3
Katz, 1999, pp. 314-6. See, for instance, Mazis, 1993, p. 319: "To be embodied, to be located in time and space, to be with other people, to have the world matter, and to be able to direct one's focus towards what is important to one only come to be as felt, as a result of finding the how of letting the world move one e-motionally." 140
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the transnational {Against the Wall If 6 Was 9, Head-On). To make my case, I have brought in the issues of the relationship between the self and the Other, communal identification, affect, and the bodily nature of intersubjectivity in order to show how cinema both engages us in new kinds of relationships with and distances us from its world in order to understand its conditions of existence. Emotions, such as shame, are not 'only' emotions; they are also concepts. To understand a concept is to place it in a theoretical framework of interlinked concepts. For me, making sense of the relationship between the film and the spectator through emotions is to make sense of hitherto non-explored aspects of cinematic subjectivity that shed light on the intersubjective nature of cinematic experience. It is the contention of the book that the concepts here highlighted, and the recourse to Sartre's theories could actually redirect and invigorate the study of cinema and the new forms of spectatorship much more generally, as emotions are found within the intersubjective, linked across differences through shared ways of being-in-the-world. Jacques Derrida once wrote that the heart is the organ of thinking and not only the organ of feeling, love and desire.4 So although the "transnational F who speaks in this book has specific reasons of the heart, it hopes to have made a contribution to understanding why and how we are 'interpellated' and fascinated by, but also so much involved with contemporary cinema. It will hopefully also have explained why traditional theories of disembodied, asocial or agendered theories of spectatorship are insufficient for understanding the changes taking place in our visual culture, but also how this culture is shaping our intimate relationships. Contemporary thinkers will most certainly have to take into account this refiguring of public and private, self and other, subject and object, individual and community, local and global.
4
Derrida, 2005, p. 289. 141
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References Laine, Tarja. 2006b. "Lars von Trier, Dogville, and the Hodological Space of Cinema." Studies in European Cinema, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2006). Lewis, Michael. 1995. Shame: The Exposed Self New York: Free Press. Lupton, Deborah. 1998. The Emotional Self London: Sage. MacCabe, Colin, 1975. "Introduction to Christian Metz's The Imaginary Signifier'." Screen, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1975). Marcuse, Herbert. 1983. From Luther to Popper. Trans. Joris de Bres. London, Verso. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. Marks, Laura U. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press. Mazis, Glen A. 1993. Emotion and Embodiment: Fragile Ontology. New York: Peter Lang. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Primacy of Perception. Trans. C.W. Cogg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Metz, Christian. 1982. Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier. Trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti. London: Macmillan Press. Michelson, Annette. 1969. "Cinema as Carnal Knowledge." Artforum, Vol. 7, No. 6 (1969), pp. 54-63. Modleski, Tania. 1988. The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. London: Routledge. Mulvey, Laura. 1985. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Movies and Methods. Volume II. Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nathanson, Donald L. 1987. "A Timetable for Shame." The Many Faces of Shame. Ed. Donald L. Nathanson. New York: Guilford Press. Nichols, Bill. 1992. Representing Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Noll-Brinkman, Christine. 1999. "Somatische Empathie bei Hitchcock: Eine Skizze." Der Korper im Bild: Schauspielen - Darstellen - Erscheinen. Ed. Heinz-B. Heller, Karl PrUmm and Birgit Peulings. Marburg: Schttren, pp. 111-120. N3re, Sari. 1995. Etnopsykoanalyyttisid nakokulmia sukupuolikulttuuriin. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston sosiologian laitoksen tutkimusraportteja 229. Oudart, Jean-Paul. 1977/78. "Cinema and Suture." Trans. Kari Hanet. Screen 18:4,1977/78. Pettman, Jan Jindy. 1996. Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics. London: Routledge. Plantinga Carl, and Greg M. Smith, 1999. "Introduction." Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 147
Shame and Desire Probyn. Elspeth. 2005. Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rascaroli, Laura. 1997. "Steel in the Gaze: On POV and the Discourse of Vision in Kathryn Bigelow's Cinema." Screen, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1997), pp.2136. Rehm, Rush. 2002. The Flay of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rodowick, David. 1991. The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference and Film Theory. New York: Routledge. Rosaldo, Michelle. 1984. "Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling." Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Ed. Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. LeVine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 137-58. Rutherford, Anne. 2003. "Cinema and Embodied Affect." Senses of Cinema 25 (2003), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/25/embodied_affect. html, accessed 14 November 2006. R&isdnen, Arja-Liisa. 1995. Onnellisen avioliiton ehdot: Sukupuolijdrjestelmdn muodostumisprosessi suomalaisissa avioliitto- ja seksuaalivalistusoppaissa 1865-1920. Vammala: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Saarikoski, Helena. 1998. "TytOn maineen kasite ja huoraksi leimaamisen kansantapa." Kurtisaaneista kunnian naisiin. Ed. Taava Koskinen Helsinki: Yliopistopaino. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1993. The Emotions: Outline of a Theory. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1952. Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness: An essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1957. Search for a Method. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Vintage. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1978a. What is Literature? London: Methuen, 1978. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1978b. Existentialism & Humanism. New York: Haskell House, 1978. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1982. Critique of Dialectical Reason Volume I: Theory of Practical Ensembles. Trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. London: Verso. Schepelern, Peter. 2005. "The King of Dogme." Film (Danish Film Institute), Special Issue/Dogme. Spring 2005, pp. 8-12. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky and Adam Frank. 1996. Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader. Durham: Duke University Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press. Serres, Michel. 1985. Les Cinq sens. Paris: Grasset en Fasquelle. Shaviro, Steven. 1993. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnessota Press. Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge. 148
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Index
2001 - The Space Odyssey, 116, 118 Ahmed, Sara, 67, 103 Ahtila, Eija-Liisa, 25, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 137 Akin, Fatih, 25, 102 Ali - Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf), 71 Allen, Richard, 33 Allen, Woody, 35 Almodovar, Pedro, 77 Althusser, Louis, 11, 12 Anderson, Benedict, 74 Anderson, Joseph, 117 Andersson, Roy, 24, 52, 53, 54 Andrew, Dudley, 11 Anne, AkiandGod, 126 Annie Hall, 35 Apo, Satu, 68,69, 79 Arbus, Diane, 90 Arendt, Hannah, 12 Aronson, Roland, 65 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 97 Barnes, Hazel, 55, 70 Barthes, Roland, 106 Bartky, Sandra Lee, 19 Baudry, Jean-Louis, 11, 12 Beauvoir, Simone de, 20,21, 133 Belvaux, Remy, 24,46 Benedict, Ruth, 67 Benin, David, 90 Benjamin, Jessica, 91 Bergman, Ingmar, 34, 35 Bergoffen, Debra, 21
Birnbaum, Daniel, 126 Blanchot, Maurice, 122 Bluest Eye, The, 69, 85 Bonzel, Andr6,24,46 Breaking the Waves, 22 Breathless (A bout de souffle), 34 Bride Retires, The, 34 Bruno, Giuliana, 27, 136 Buftuel, Luis, 34 Burgoyne, Robert, 59 Butler, Judith, 91, 94,95, 111 Canaan, Joyce, 135 Cannon, Betty, 16,62, 64 Carroll, Noel, 13,15 Cartwright, Lisa, 90 Casebier, Allan, 112 Celebration (Dogme #7 Festen), 73 Chanter, Tina, 95 Chaplin, Charlie, 93 Chion, Michel, 48,93 City Lights, 93 Connor, Steven, 131 Conrad, Tony, 117 Consolation Service (Lohdutusseremonia), 124, 125, 126 Cowie, Elizabeth, 73 Crying Game, The, 95 Cubitt, Sean, 32 Danto, Arthur C, 54, 55 Dayan, Daniel, 11 Denzin, Norman K., 67 Derrida, Jacques, 21, 141
Shame and Desire
Descartes, Ren£, 112 Doane, Mary Ann, 111 Dogville, 19,20,21,22 Donlon, Helen, 116 Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat), 24, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 140 Dunne, J.W., 117 Easy Rider, 90 Eisenstein, Sergei, 114 Elfving, Taru, 123, 124,137 Elsaesser, Thomas, 27, 70, 71, 72,77 Every Man for Himself (Sauve quipeut (la vie)), 48 Farocki, Hanon, 92 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 70, 71,72 Feagin, Susan, 15 Fell, J.P., 119 Ferris Bueller 's Day Off, 35 Fight Club, 35 Fincher, David, 35 Flicker, The, Ml Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy, 59 Fox, Nik Farrell, 60, 65 Frank, Adam, 39,41,42 Freud, Sigmund, 79, 110, 111, 133 Fuller, Samuel, 35 Funny Games, 47, 57, 78 Genet, Jean, 71 Gibson, James J., 115 Godard, Jean-Luc, 12, 34, 35,48 Gray, 122 Grodal, Torben, 13 Gunning, Tom, 34 Hallie, Philip, 53 Haneke, Michael, 24,47, 56, 57, 58, 59, 77, 78 Hansen,Mark, 109, 118
Harsin, Jayson, 23 Harvey, Robert, 18 Hate (La haine), 9, 10, 32 Head-On (Gegen die Wand), 25, 102, 141 Heath, Stephen, 11 Heidegger, Martin, 12 Helke, Susanna, 24, 36, 52, 66 Hidden (Cache), 24, 56, 58, 59, 140 Hitchcock, Alfred, 136 Howells, Christina, 61 Hughes, John, 35 Husserl, Edmund, 16 Idiots, The (Dogme #2 Idioterne), 24, 73, 75, 76, 140 Idle Ones, The (Joutilaat), 66 If 6 Was 9 (Jos 6 olis 9), 25, 127, 129, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138 Irreversible (Irreversible), 25, 114,117,118 Jameson, Fredric, 60,68, 70, 82 Jordan, Neil, 95 Kassovitz, Matthieu, 9 Katz, Jack, 31, 130, 140 Kaurismaki, Aki, 24, 76, 78 Killer's Kiss, 34, 35 Klein, Melanie, 11 Kristeva, Julia, 91, 93,94,95, 102,104 Kubrick, Stanley, 34, 116 Kuhn, Annette, 26 Kundera, Milan, 77 Lacan, Jacques, 11, 12, 31, 32, 38,61,62,63,64,73,93,98, 110,111 Lafond, Frank, 48 Lauretis, Teresa de, 111 Levinas, Emmanuel, 21 LSvi-Strauss, Claude, 60,61
Lewis, Michael, 19,20, 31, 64, 67,81,82,130 Love is a Treasure (Rakkaus on aarre), 126 Lupton, Deborah, 15 MacCabe, Colin, 11 Man Bites Dog (C'est arrive pres de chez vous), 24,46,47,48, 49, 140 Manderlqy, 22,23 Marcuse, Herbert, 60 Marker, Chris, 92 Marks, Laura, 112 Marlowe, Christopher, 76 Masked Woman in a Wheelchair, 90 Massumi, Brian, 115, 121, 139 Mazis, Glen A., 109, 140 Me/We, 122, 123, 124 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 112, 119 Metz, Christian, 11,33,49, 50, 72,73 Michelson, Annette, 118 Modleski, Tania, 136 Morrison, Toni, 69, 85 Mulvey, Laura, 11, 12, 33,49, 50 My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie), 48 Naked Kiss, The, 35 NSre, Sari, 135 Nathanson, Donald L., 81 Natural Born Killers, 47 Nichols, Bill, 36 No£, Gaspar, 25, 114, 116 Noll Brinkmann, Christine, 111 Okay, 122, 123, 124 Oudart, Jean-Pierre, 11, 12 Pettman, Jan Jindy, 135 Piaget, Jean, 118 Plantinga, Carl, 13, 15 Poelvoorde, Benoit, 24,46
Probyn, Elspeth, 103, 104,107 Raisanen, Arja-Liisa, 135 Rascaroli, Laura, 114 Rebecca, 136 Rodowick, David, 50 Rutherford, Anne, 111 Saarikoski, Helena, 135 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 9,10,16,17, 18,26,27,29,30,31,32,33, 36,37,38,40,41,50,51,52, 54,55,56,60,61,62,63,64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 82, 83, 85, 93,100,109,110,111,112, 119,120,121,126,129,130, 131, 134, 138, 141 Scheperlein, Peter, 21,22 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 39,41, 42, 69, 90 Serres, Michel, 117 Shaviro, Steven, 111, 112 Sherman, Cindy, 92 Shohat, Ella, 135 Siltala, Juha, 68, 79, 86, 129 Silverman, Kaja, 12, 30, 63, 73, 92,111 Sin - A Documentary on Daily Offences (Synti - Dokumentti jokapaivaisista rikoksista), 24, 36, 37, 38, 39,42,45,49, 52, 140 Small, Edward S., 117 Smith, Greg M., 13, 15 Smith, Murray, 13, 32 Sobchack, Vivian, 26, 112, 113 Solomon, Robert, 104 Something Happened (Nagonting har hant), 24, 52, 53, 54 Sorfa, David, 57 Stadler, Jane, 112 Stam, Robert, 59, 135 Stocker, Michael, 14
Shame and Desire
Stoller, Robert, 133 Stone, Oliver, 47 Studlar, Gaylyn, 36 Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), 34 Suutari, Virpi, 24, 36, 52, 66 Tan, Ed S., 13,14 Taylor, Gabrielle, 31, 130 Today (Tanddn), 123, 124, 127 Tomkins, Silvan, 15, 88, 89,90, 103, 120, 129 Trier, Lars von, 19,22,23,24, 73, 75, 77 Turunen, Pekka, 25, 85, 86,90, 92,95,97,98,101,102,103 Vinterberg, Thomas, 73
Vogler, Carolyn, 67 Wasington, 22 Wider, Kathleen, 131 Willemen, Paul, 97 Williams, Bernard, 19, 31 Williams, Linda, 50, 111, 133 Wollheim, Richard, 119 Woodward, Kathleen, 20, 69,85, 133, 134 World of Glory (Hdrligt dr jorden)9 24, 52, 53, 54, 140 Wright, Elizabeth, 73 Wurmser, Leon, 68, 129 Yli-Annala, Kari, 122, 123, 126 Ylflstalo, Pekka, 79 Zizek, Slavoj,41,93,94
154
Rethinking Cinema The main purpose of the "Rethinking Cinema" series is to provide film scholars as well as professionals from the audiovisual field with innovative research material in the field of film aesthetics, theory and history. Many areas of last century's main attraction are still there to be rediscovered or have seldom been approached in the past. Consequently, priority is given to film concepts, genres, oeuvres or authors which have not been frequently dealt with. Conference proceedings, collections of essays, revised doctoral theses or monographs are published and have to distinguish themselves by a considerable degree of originality, audacity and scientific rigour, without neglecting the transdisciplinary and crosscultural aspects related to different branches from the Humanities such as Art History, Philosophy or Linguis tics. The series welcomes manuscripts written in French and/or in English as well as translations of noteworthy texts from other foreign languages. Series Editor: Dominique NASTA, University Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
Series' Titles No.l - Dominique NASTA & Didier HUVELLE (eds.), Le son en perspective : nouvelles recherches / New Perspectives in Sound Studies, 2004, ISBN 978-90-5201-208-7 N° 2 - Muriel ANDRIN, Malefiques. Le Melodrame filmique americain et ses heroines (1940-1953), 2005 (2nd printing 2007), ISBN 978-90-5201210-0 No.3 - Tarja LAINE, Shame and Desire. Emotion, Intersubjectivityy Cinema, 2007, ISBN 978-90-5201-062-5
