tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68731461349974121372024-02-08T01:34:40.604+00:00thinkingfilm | film as philosophy | thinkingfilm | filmosophy | thinking film collectivewe are the thinkingfilm collective. we host the thinkingfilm festival of introduced screenings & discussions. we here publish thoughts on film by us - emma bell, vincent m gaine, phil hutchinson & rupert read - with selected material by invited contributors.
you can email us at thinkingfilmcollective@gmail.com & follow us on twitter: @_thinkingfilm_theviewfromthehutchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09037446509773839859noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-14625384841932943282016-03-23T17:16:00.000+00:002016-04-08T04:46:25.237+01:00Blade Runner short thought <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>By Vincent M. Gaine</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Blade_Runner_poster.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Blade Runner</i>, dir. Ridley Scott (1982)</td></tr>
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The films we discuss on this blog are often an individual
view of the philosophy in [insert title here]. But we also have public
discussions - Philosophers at the Cinema is a regular season of screenings at
Norwich's delightful Cinema City. Recently, collective members Vincent M. Gaine
and Rupert Read went on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03kk9l0">Radio Norfolk</a> to discuss this programme and our latest
showing, <i>Blade Runner</i>. The screening was followed by a discussion around the
philosophical points of the film, which included such points as the environmental damage depicted in the film, and the importance of animals in relation to empathy and the loss thereof.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Blade Runner</i> is a film that prompts a plethora of
interpretations and debates, the least interesting of which is "Deckard -
replicant or not?" Of particular interest to me is the film's future world
(now only three years away), in which technology, capitalism, consumerism and advertising
has completely taken over. It is testament to the film that its Los Angeles
expresses so much through suggestion and implication, not explicating why large
buildings are deserted, why it rains so much, what happened to all the animals.
Omnipresent advertising bombards the inhabitants of this city at every turn,
promoting "A better life" that seems perpetually out of reach. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Blade Runner</i>, dir. Scott (1982)</td></tr>
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It is unsurprising that replicants - artificial people -
have become indistinguishable from humans in a world where artifice is so predominant.
A key philosophical question, as discussed by Locke and Dennet, is what
constitutes a person. While one can ask these questions about the replicants,
it seems appropriate to ask them of the (presumably) human characters as well,
not only Deckard but also Bryant, Sebastian, Tyrell and Gaff. If a key element
of being a human/person is empathy, Bryant and Gaff at least are largely
impersonal. Bryant refers to replicants as "skin jobs," while Gaff
regards Deckard's work of licensed executioner as "a man's job."
Tyrell is far from empathetic, indeed his intellect seems to have divorced him
from emotion. His creation and then rejection of Rachael is irredeemably cruel
- he created an entity that can think and feel, then discards her when she
becomes inconvenient. Roy fares no better - his brief lifetime little more than
an academic discussion for Tyrell. Tyrell's death is therefore fitting, his
head crushed by Roy while (in the Director's Cut) the viewer sees the impassive
and unconcerned owl. Much as Tyrell has no concern for the replicants, this
artificial bird has no concern for him. By implication, nor does the film or
its world. Personhood is deemed insignificant by the omnipresence of consumer
technology, the agony of Tyrell evincing as much sympathy as the swift
retirement of Leon. <i>Blade Runner</i> therefore performs philosophy through its
prioritisation of commerce over humanity, as salient a message today as when
the film was first released. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Blade Runner</i>, dir. Scott (1982)</td></tr>
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Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-77993593063568013752016-01-31T13:00:00.000+00:002016-03-24T13:45:28.570+00:00The 3-D Experience and Hero’s Journey of Avatar<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>By Peter Krämer</b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
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<b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Great Expectations</span></b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In April 2009, an
article in the <i>New York Times</i> entitled ‘Fan Fever is Rising for Debut of
<i>Avatar</i>’ opened with the following statement: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In an old airplane
hangar …, James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that
may<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">a) Change filmmaking
forever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">b) Alter your brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">c) Cure cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The writer was
obviously having fun with these exaggerations, which were inspired by the
larger-than-life persona of the filmmaker and by his many public statements
about his latest project, ever since it had been announced to the press in
January 2007: ‘Mr. Cameron has done his share to feed the hype with his
repeated assurances that a coming wave of 3-D cinema … would have the power to
penetrate the brain in a way that movies never have.’ The writer’s choice of
words here is interesting, perhaps designed to evoke the colloquial term
‘mind-fuck’, while also mocking Cameron’s machismo (only a very special kind of
man would want to ‘penetrate’ people’s brains). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Yet, beyond its
humorous hyperbole, the article also appeared to register a widespread and
sincere belief in the possibility of radical change. Referencing both the
religiosity of American society and the recent election of the country’s first
African-American president, the article stated that <i>Avatar</i> was ‘stirring
up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the
Rapture’, and that the film’s ‘technological wizardry is presumed by more than
a few to promise an experiential leap for audiences comparable to that of <i>The
Jazz Singer</i>, the arrival of Technicolor or an Obama campaign rally.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">When <i>Avatar</i>,
which had originally been scheduled for a May 2009 release, belatedly appeared
in cinemas around the world in December that year, it certainly told a story <i>about</i>
dramatic change: parts of a distant moon’s ecosystem are severely damaged by
the operations of a mining company; a humanoid alien tribe has to deal with the
destruction of its ancestral home; for the first time in many generations the
moon’s scattered tribes unite so as to be able to confront the threat; the
neural network of trees, which constitutes a kind of brain for the planet’s
ecosystem and is revered as a Goddess by the natives, gives up its usual
practice of non-interference and helps to eject the operatives of the mining
company. All of this is explored through the central storyline of one of the
employees of the mining company who uses a specially grown body as his avatar
in the world of the natives, then takes their side in the conflict before he
finally abandons his human form for good so as to be reborn in the alien
body. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In addition to telling
this complex story about dramatic change, <i>Avatar </i>also initially lived up
to the expectation that it might in fact change cinema. In the run-up to its
release, there had already been a marked increase in cinemas with 3-D
projection capabilities around the world; some of this expansion had clearly
been fuelled by the announcement of a live action 3-D release (almost all 3-D
releases in recent years had been animated) by one of the world’s most successful
filmmakers. When <i>Avatar</i> then went on to break all existing box office
records, both in the United States and in the rest of the world, with a
particularly strong performance in 3-D cinemas, there was a perception that the
popular habit of cinemagoing, recently under a particularly strong threat from
alternative leisure time activities, had been given a new lease of life, and,
furthermore, that it had been transformed forever, insofar as 3-D could now be
expected to become a new standard, rather than the exceptional attraction it
had been heretofore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Now, if one were to
claim that cinema was reborn through the 3-D technology of <i>Avatar</i>, which
allowed audiences to inhabit cinematic space in a compelling new fashion, such
a claim would constitute a curious echo of the very story the film tells about
its protagonist being reborn through the avatar technology which allows him to
inhabit a new body and through it a new world. Such echoing can also be
observed when the circumstances of the film’s release are considered. Its
original May release date derived from Hollywood’s practice to set up its major
releases for a high impact before the summer holidays which will hopefully
translate into a long run during these holidays. Once it became clear that <i>Avatar</i>
would not be ready for this early date, the only obvious alternative was a
release in December which would allow the film to profit from increased
cinemagoing during the Christmas holidays and also set it up for consideration
by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other organisations
handing out awards in the first few months of the new year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINRxOBbv5D3hZaq7vQpFNgGAsC82j-KihCUMPyJTWZV5nHL6nLYdJ7EwBIYig1SzbV9xavIS-4tp29DW6vTW_1qyZsPC7PzxjSryi3A1JsGPn9qv_14dCUPvSaPQWuWp3ur7mDQjG_mo/s1600/cop1500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINRxOBbv5D3hZaq7vQpFNgGAsC82j-KihCUMPyJTWZV5nHL6nLYdJ7EwBIYig1SzbV9xavIS-4tp29DW6vTW_1qyZsPC7PzxjSryi3A1JsGPn9qv_14dCUPvSaPQWuWp3ur7mDQjG_mo/s400/cop1500.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Logo for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009</td></tr>
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In the end, the
precise release date chosen for <i>Avatar</i> coincided with the final stage of
the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which was widely regarded as a
catastrophic failure. Thus, as a film about environmental issues, <i>Avatar</i>
could, in very general terms, be said to have profited from the public interest
in, and intense media reporting on, climate change across 2009 which culminated
on the very weekend that the film was first shown around the world. More
specifically, the film’s story echoed real-life developments in at least two
striking ways, first by imagining a future humanity which has destroyed the
ecosystem of its home planet and now sets out to do the same on another
planetary body; secondly by imagining an alternative way of life. Here,
human-like beings are shown to live in harmony with nature and to achieve a
kind of global unity in their attempt to defend themselves and the ecosystem
they are part of against destructive forces. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The most high profile
attempt yet to achieve global unity so as to take action against global warming
fails at the very moment that <i>Avatar</i> begins to draw audiences all over
the world into its story. One might go as far as saying that, whereas politics
fails to achieve global unity and bring about necessary change, this film does
not only offer a vision of such unity and change, but through its impact on
individual viewers and its international success also laid the groundwork for
potential real-life personal change and unified global action. At the very
least, a substantial proportion of the world’s population now shares the story
that <i>Avatar</i> tells. It is conceivable that such sharing will contribute
to an awareness of the shared fate of humanity and indeed of the Earth’s
ecosystem, and perhaps even to the willingness to take action on its
behalf. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Audiences and Their
Avatars</span></b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The title of James
Cameron’s science fiction epic resonates with ancient myth and with
contemporary cultural practice: an avatar is the shape an Indian God takes when
walking among humans, and it is a player’s audiovisual representative in the
electronic world of a computer game. In the film’s story, Jake Sully, a
paraplegic ex-marine, is employed by a mining company to enter the dangerous
jungle outside the fortified human compound on the distant moon Pandora. This
is achieved by projecting his consciousness into an artificially grown body,
which mixes human DNA with that of Pandora’s intelligent humanoid species, the
Na’vi. In this way, Jake, who has come down from Pandora’s heaven as one of the
‘sky people’ - the Na’vi designation for humans - can walk among the Na’vi, and
he can temporarily lose himself in the adventures he experiences in their
world. In the course of the story, Jake learns a lot about the capabilities of
his new body and about the Na’vi and the other life forms he interacts with,
and this provides him with an increasingly critical perspective on the human
world he comes from. In the end, he is willing and able to leave his human body
behind so as to live permanently as a Na’vi on Pandora. The player thus
exchanges what he took to be his reality for his game world; the one who came
down from the sky joins the web of life on this new Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7u651GqW3rDdBAO4DqSo1fFYaMxIcr9gm6EZMOniuM0FnfYZ_ueWH6V5Jkw4vFNTJxEvFND8R_N3D9Mzp5Zv2RHYUEX_-WOkMjT_EdkZkmVdztl3AonC-o035JhN6Z9fCKC8V1OC_4GE/s1600/avatar-movie-still-20th-century-fox-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7u651GqW3rDdBAO4DqSo1fFYaMxIcr9gm6EZMOniuM0FnfYZ_ueWH6V5Jkw4vFNTJxEvFND8R_N3D9Mzp5Zv2RHYUEX_-WOkMjT_EdkZkmVdztl3AonC-o035JhN6Z9fCKC8V1OC_4GE/s400/avatar-movie-still-20th-century-fox-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
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Through its mythical
and gaming associations, the film’s title also comments on the very nature of
the cinematic experience. As viewers and listeners, members of the audience
descend from their own reality into the fictional world of the film, using its
protagonist as their avatar. Like gamers, they may concentrate on learning
about this world and confronting numerous challenges within it, which in turn
allows them to engage with it ever more intensively. While they have no actual
control over the actions of their avatar, like divine beings audience members
may feel that this whole world is at their service, and that everything is
ultimately organised for their avatar’s convenience. So what are the
implications of Jake’s decision to switch permanently into his avatar’s body
and thus stay in his gaming world? Where does this leave the audience for whom
Jake is an avatar?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Similar questions are
raised by the film’s opening sequence. The film begins with the camera flying
over a dense forest, and a voiceover explaining that this was a recurring dream
the protagonist (Jake Sully) had when he was in a veterans’ administration
hospital. Given that this is a 3-D movie and that initially it was shown on the
largest available screens (including many IMAX screens), the opening emphasises
one of the main attractions of widescreen and 3-D technologies, namely the
possibility to create a heightened sense of movement through space. Jake’s
dream has been the dream such technologies have pursued ever since they were
widely introduced in the 1950s. Right from the get-go, <i>Avatar</i> confirmed
to viewers that this dream has now become a reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">At the same time, the
opening scene offers references to a particular tradition in Hollywood
filmmaking. In recent decades, thoughts of war veterans and jungles are most
likely to evoke the Vietnam war and in particular Hollywood’s numerous
representations of that conflict in films primarily of the 1970s and 1980s. If
one makes this connection, then the dream flight over the jungle landscape
represents more than simply the age-old human dream of flying, or the specific
desire of an injured soldier to compensate for his restricted mobility in a
hospital with the heightened mobility of flight; it also entails a potential
threat, because American soldiers might just start firing into the jungle,
dropping bombs and setting fire to it (which of course they do later in the
film).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Finally, the opening
scene is presented as arising from within the protagonist’s consciousness, and
it does so in two ways: first it is said to be a dream of the soldier lying in
a hospital, secondly the voice-over narrator explains that it is a dream he
used to have in the past; even the dream is now only available as a memory.
Hence the flying scenes are twice removed from narrator’s present reality: they
are memories of past dreams. Yet, for the viewers (especially those in a 3-D
IMAX cinema) they take place very much in the present and may well have the
power to affect them physically. There is a gap, then, between the narrator’s
highly mediated connection to the flying scene and the viewers’ immediate
experience of it. One might expect that this gap will be closed in the course
of the film (as indeed it is). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">This expectation is
also raised by the conventions of Hollywood storytelling: We can assume that,
if a dream is so clearly stated at the beginning, the protagonist who has this
dream will strive to make it a reality, and that eventually he will achieve
this. We can also expect the distantiation created by the voice-over to fade in
the course of the film, so that the sense of present tense overrides the fact
that everything presented in the film is in fact a memory. In this way, then,
Jake’s experience of his own dream will catch up with that of the audience.
(Indeed, the voiceover of the protagonist looking back into his own past can in
places be mistaken for, and is eventually dissolved into, the present-tense
commentary that Jake records for his video log.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>A Hero’s Journey in
3-D</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Let’s take a closer
look at the kind of change the story of <i>Avatar</i> focuses on. Hollywood
cinema is centred on the transformation - the personal growth, psychological
maturation etc. - of the stories’ protagonists. According to script guru
Christopher Vogler, filmic protagonists go on a journey (a hero’s journey) into
a ‘special world’ which mirrors, in a highly exaggerated and fantastic manner,
the everyday concerns of their ‘ordinary world’, and which allows them to
resolve internal and external tensions and conflicts, so as to emerge from this
adventure as more rounded, more socially integrated individuals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Films such as <i>Avatar</i>
first establish an ordinary world for the protagonist - a world of family,
community, work, which is comparable to our own world. This world is full of
problems. In <i>Avatar</i>’s case, it is characterised by Jake Sully’s low
social status, his inability to carry out his previous job due to partial
paralysis and his lack of qualification for the new job he is given, his loss
of the cameraderie with fellow soldiers and the initial hostility of his new
boss, the death of his brother, and the absence, or active destruction, of
natural surroundings. Once this ordinary world is established, the film
transfers Jake to, and immerses him - and us - in, the special world of the
jungle of Pandora. Cutting-edge film technology is used to make the ‘special
world’ as extraordinary as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">How does 3-D
technology function with regards to the hero’s journey? And how does the film
itself reflect on that technology and that journey? It is certainly the case
that 3-D effects allow viewers to immerse themselves deeply in the natural
world of Pandora, and motion capture (or ‘performance capture’) and computer
generated images bring its alien beings to life. However, a word of caution
about the importance of 3-D for the film’s impact is in order: Both in cinemas
and on DVD and television, the vast majority of the film’s viewers worldwide
saw the 2-D version. And although <i>Avatar</i> was by far the most successful
3D-Film in history, the expectation that its success might make 3-D a new
standard for Hollywood releases has not been fulfilled. Nevertheless, I want to
concentrate on the particular contribution that 3-D makes to the experience of
the film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Before entering the
cinema auditorium, we are given 3-D glasses, which we have to use to cover our
eyes so as to be able to enter into the world of the film which is going to be
projected onto the screen. If we were to refuse to wear them, watching the film
would be an exceedingly unpleasant experience. Putting on the glasses reminds
us of how utterly dependent our cinematic experience is on technology. It also
constitutes another threshold we are crossing in the transition from our
everyday world into the world of the film adventure (other such thresholds are
the departure from our homes, the purchase of the ticket, entering the
auditorium, the lights going out). Each threshold serves to emphasise how
different our cinematic experience is going to be from everyday life. At the
same time, the donning of glasses brings us closer to the people who are going
to share this experience with us. Not only are we all converging on this
particular cinema auditorium at this particular moment in time, but we also
cement our connection by all donning these glasses, creating a uniformity of
appearance. But the glasses also serve to distance us from each other, insofar
as looking at each other rather than at the screen is discouraged by wearing
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzP5bz-Hnrx80rDG11aytLIWmrZNm02syqdcWNsHHRRqUFh5z3fe44OGAs16yyVNcY1Kx_-1d8JikezIO2KTwJ1MQ8_0TN6KQ_15VKIjZK19njaFgdpPLtgjK8io4-nlrXRCbFRUi4EKs/s1600/3d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzP5bz-Hnrx80rDG11aytLIWmrZNm02syqdcWNsHHRRqUFh5z3fe44OGAs16yyVNcY1Kx_-1d8JikezIO2KTwJ1MQ8_0TN6KQ_15VKIjZK19njaFgdpPLtgjK8io4-nlrXRCbFRUi4EKs/s400/3d.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3-D IMAX cinema audience</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, in the story of
the film, after a long journey across space, a group of people arrive on a
planet with a poisonous atmosphere. Before they set foot on this planet they
are told that they have to wear a mask on their face which will enable them to
breath. The mask is a reminder that their presence on this planet is heavily
dependent on technology, and that they have moved far away from their previous
existence. It also serves to emphasise their shared humanity in contrast to the
natives who require no such technological support to breath. Of course, they
are not required to wear the mask all the time because they can move within the
man-made environments constructed on the planet; in other words, instead of
wearing a mask, they can inhabit a technological construct that is like living
inside a giant mask. Still, whenever they cross the threshold between their
built environment (buildings as well as vehicles) and the outside world, they
all have to wear the mask, which makes them look alike and also creates a
distance between them, a physical barrier between one face and the next. The
necessity for human characters to wear a mask thus echoes in quite a profound
way the necessity for viewers of the 3-D version to wear glasses. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">At the same time, the
wearing of the mask expresses the tension at the very heart of the film’s
narrative: in it humans confront an environment that is dangerous to them,
developing a range of strategies for how to deal with that danger. Broadly
speaking, there are two strategies: first, the mask and the built environment;
second, the avatar programme. Both are heavily dependent on human technology. In a
surprising twist, towards the end of the film, a third strategy arises which is
no longer dependent on human technology: the permanent transfer of a human mind
into the avatar, brought about by the planet’s neural network. The avatar
programme thus constitutes a transitional stage - inbetween the initial stage
of a fundamental physical separation between humans and environment, and the
final stage of full human immersion in that environment. One might even say
that the avatar programme marks that moment when a cinema audience, awkwardly
conscious of the glasses in front of their eyes and thus of a physical barrier
between themselves and their surroundings and also of their dependence on cinematic
technology, loses itself in the 3-D cinematic space their glasses allow them to
see and in the story unfolding in that space, with the film’s protagonist
acting as their own avatar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">While the transition
from an awareness of one’s own body, of a technological process, of the real
space of the auditorium and the people in it, to an immersion in fictional
space and story is typical of all cinema experiences, the 3-D technology
enhances the transformative nature of this transition. The use of the word
‘avatar’ in the film’s title, and the way it is literalised in the story, marks
this heightened sense of transformation by suggesting that viewers can
physically enter into a different world (as gods walking among mortals, as
players in a computer game). Yet, the term also is a reminder of the fact that
this entering into a different world is only a partial and temporary experience
(the gods will eventually return to the heavens, the players never actually
leave the physical world around them and they can not play on forever). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzu6K60rt8-02Crq8jCNYUrWggNXtjbV0u3w1qG61LsYoQ__vBFZyndinYhL7kJDmMZbxHmOEuVsOtrVu70ZIqCTAOh8f8SKjBXtJqN76B7ObFqTs53ZIqVYuCVhRMqcfXwbHiPrU2wM/s1600/eyes+avatar+jake+sully+faces_www.wallpaperno.com_65.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzu6K60rt8-02Crq8jCNYUrWggNXtjbV0u3w1qG61LsYoQ__vBFZyndinYhL7kJDmMZbxHmOEuVsOtrVu70ZIqCTAOh8f8SKjBXtJqN76B7ObFqTs53ZIqVYuCVhRMqcfXwbHiPrU2wM/s400/eyes+avatar+jake+sully+faces_www.wallpaperno.com_65.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of this is
mirrored in the story of the film. On the one hand, the story emphasises how
physically liberating and stimulating it is for the protagonist to inhabit the
avatar body (here his disability serves to heighten the difference between his
everyday existence - which is, of course, characterised by a restriction on
mobility similar to that of the people in the cinema auditorium - and the
technologically facilitated experience of the avatar’s world - once again
mirroring the viewer’s technologically facilitated experience of the cinematic
world). On the other hand, this experience is constantly disrupted (initially
in a planned fashion, later through violent outside interventions), and the
reminders of the needs and vulnerability of the human body left behind become
an increasingly important issue. The story comes to focus ever more on the
nuisance and danger of having a human body, and it culminates in its
abandonment. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">If the protagonist’s
journey echoes that of the viewer, what are we to make of that final
transformation? One might say that it simply takes the logic underpinning the
cinematic adventure (the transition from the everyday world into an alternative
reality) too far so that instead of heightening the vicarious experience the
viewer has through the protagonist (and through the 3-D glasses), it actually
serves as a painful reminder that such total transcendence of the everyday is
simply not available in the cinema. Our connection with the protagonist does
not go as far as physically and permanently being able to leave our regular
lives and bodies behind. Of course, the film’s action ends precisely at the
moment when the protagonist has achieved what is impossible for us to do: The
last shot of the film is of his eyes opening and staring at us (and Neytiri -
but that is another story); then the story ends (although as soon as the
credits begin there is more material from the story world projected on the
screen; once again this needs to be considered separately). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">When the protagonist
has finally done what is impossible for us to do (to abandon the old body and
permanently inhabit a new one), our connection with him has to be severed.
After all we are only viewers - and the fact that he stares at us, mirroring
our own staring at the screen, tells us that this is all we are, and the
contrast between his uncovered eyes and our own eyes, covered by 3-D glasses,
confirms our essential difference. At the same time, the protagonist’s face
points forward to the moment when we remove the glasses and thus enter into a
much more unmediated relationship with our surroundings again. In other words:
when Jake awakens in his new body, he prefigures our imminent awakening into
the reality of our own body and our actual surroundings. If Jake’s story ends
with leaving behind what he has come to regard as a lesser existence, we also
ultimately have to recognise that watching a film is a lesser reality than our
actual bodies and social connections.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR1EhfO9_Zs9szaUuTiTp0phFDGoUQvOzICRh7PNVBUYU5x1bWK-Q9MOkTIn4rVh1Vs7E011GUStQXXFcaDrWOXCZtMbdtkU418xQODAPv1ksuIMZkbK-U3EqatTXJUop0gDeS02eAfos/s1600/avatar_by_shreas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR1EhfO9_Zs9szaUuTiTp0phFDGoUQvOzICRh7PNVBUYU5x1bWK-Q9MOkTIn4rVh1Vs7E011GUStQXXFcaDrWOXCZtMbdtkU418xQODAPv1ksuIMZkbK-U3EqatTXJUop0gDeS02eAfos/s640/avatar_by_shreas.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. Cameron (2009</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
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Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-74476337330049114012016-01-28T17:48:00.000+00:002016-03-24T13:47:31.731+00:00Sympathy for the (Red-Eyed)-Devil in 2001: A Space Odyssey<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US">By Vincent
M. Gaine</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkrsDbssjQ-2BSvNuQgwMoywZzHXjMD500TeGTRTQH6SaplaNSMTc6wArwujTnAuIaI7Jx6m1YKT3ATdPS_QFgsILlk9PH5nq0eWujwJp5v6A8oXukwQNpwnG-e14uOb2dem5TPL3YGg/s1600/HAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkrsDbssjQ-2BSvNuQgwMoywZzHXjMD500TeGTRTQH6SaplaNSMTc6wArwujTnAuIaI7Jx6m1YKT3ATdPS_QFgsILlk9PH5nq0eWujwJp5v6A8oXukwQNpwnG-e14uOb2dem5TPL3YGg/s640/HAL.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some time ago, <span style="background-color: #e9edec; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, sans-serif; font-size: 15.456px; line-height: 23.184px;">Peter Krämer</span> posted some
initial thoughts on <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/an-introduction-to-2001-space-odyssey.html"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i></a>, a film ripe
for philosophical discussion. As something of a continuation of Kramer’s piece,
I offer some thoughts inspired by discussions about the film, especially in
relation to other viewers’ negative responses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">2001:
A Space Odyssey</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> regularly appears on greatest films
of all time lists, including my own (nascent) list, as I (arbitrarily) believe
it is the <a href="https://vincentmgaine.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/to-infinity-and-beyond-science-fiction-countdown-1/">greatest
piece of cinema ever made</a>. This is a nonsense position of course, because
the number of films I have not seen vastly outnumbers those that I have, but I
do regard Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction opus as a truly breathtaking piece
of specifically cinematic art. By specifically cinematic, I mean that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> expresses its themes and transports
the viewer through the features of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mise-en-scene</i>,
editing, cinematography and an exquisite balance between these visual features
and its use of music and sound effects (including silence during the space
sequences). These features are far more detailed than the more “literary”
features of plot and character, and herein lies a major issue for the film’s
detractors. The plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> is
simplicity itself – dawn of humanity to the birth of a new species – so those
looking for complex narratives had best look elsewhere. The other issue is
character, that eternal element that for some is of paramount importance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I have written here previously about my
general lack of concern over character and my bafflement over the criticism “<a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/despicable-me-wolf-of-wall-street.html">I
didn’t care about the characters</a>”. In the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>, I do understand the criticism even though I would not make it
myself. The principal characters of the film are Dr Heywood Floyd, Dr David
Bowman, Dr Frank Poole and the computer HAL. If you insist, we can include
Moon-Watcher in the opening sequence, but both he and Floyd disappear fairly
quickly, leaving us with Bowman, Poole and HAL. The criticism I have come
across time and time again is that Poole and Bowman provide no character to
engage with, leaving HAL as the most sympathetic character by default. This is
apparently a problem because HAL is a computer and has an unfortunate tendency
to kill people, so the film has no sympathetic characters and therefore viewers
feel disengaged. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I suggest that this character arrangement
is not only a narrative strength but also key to the philosophy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>. The famous opening scene features
hominids learning to use bones as weapons as well as using them to kill prey
and rivals, a sequence that ends with a bone being thrown into the air before
the longest temporal match-cut in cinema history replaces the bone with a
nuclear bomb orbiting the Earth. This concern with weapons runs through the
whole film, and what is HAL if not the culmination of humans’ obsession with
violence and killing? The later film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark
Star</i> (1974) may have actually featured a sentient bomb, but HAL’s homicidal
actions are consistent with the dangers of technology. Therefore, it seems
entirely significant that HAL is the most sympathetic, identifiable and memorable
character of the film. He undergoes development and demonstrates at least the
facsimile of emotions such as ambition, ego, fear and regret. Small wonder he
is more engaging than the unwavering and unchanging astronauts who accompany
him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But what is the effect of the film engaging
our sympathy with this machine? If the viewer feels sympathy for HAL, despite
his ostensible status as the film’s villain, then the danger he poses is even
greater than his ability to kill. He replaces the astronauts from their mission
– the most important mission in human history, now supplanted by humanity’s
creation rather than humanity itself – and he also replaces the humans from
their role within the film. In doing so, HAL becomes the ultimate nightmare,
making humans redundant both as narrative devices and as objects of audience
engagement. Much as the T-1000 in <a href="http://www.techandreligion.com/Resources/Gaine%20JTTR.pdf"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Terminator 2: Judgment Day</i></a> (1991) supplants
humanity by imitating both our form and fluidity, HAL replaces us in narrative
and dramatic function. </span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbSwCw5zWNYOE3rABJQyZP8OQLNFig0mbYHegXDZNrFQnOv-1yW9PS26n0yvK2Y6SG_J8DGlHAbvEkiu6wtZkoPf2WLHgptfFNP6wrIyKPzxDx2ZT6oejuFGY37nqYgDXuRnZYgK8V9s/s1600/T-1000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbSwCw5zWNYOE3rABJQyZP8OQLNFig0mbYHegXDZNrFQnOv-1yW9PS26n0yvK2Y6SG_J8DGlHAbvEkiu6wtZkoPf2WLHgptfFNP6wrIyKPzxDx2ZT6oejuFGY37nqYgDXuRnZYgK8V9s/s320/T-1000.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Terminator 2: Judgment Day</i>, dir. James Cameron (1991)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus <i>2001</i> is
not only a space odyssey but a human odyssey, because en route to the birth of
the Star Child, the film treats us to humanity’s replacement by our own
creation. This is not only the Frankenstein notion of creations rising against
us, but the supplanting of humanity within the relationship between text and reader.
Therefore, the peculiar arrangement of sympathetic characters is integral to
the film’s philosophy as it plays upon audience expectations and manipulates us
to care about that which makes us unnecessary. What purpose do humans have in
the advance of humanity when we do not even care about those who do it? None,
the tools we construct for our purposes have purposed us out of the purpose
itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">2001</span></i><span lang="EN-US">’s lack of engaging characters is therefore a vital element of its
philosophy, as humanity triumphs over its creation. Significantly, this is by literal
deconstruction, as Bowman takes HAL apart piece by piece, HAL attempting to prompt
empathy by singing “Daisy, Daisy.” If the viewer weeps for HAL at this point,
HAL has won – we now feel for our dying nemesis. Only once HAL is removed from
the picture can Bowman encounter the extra-terrestrial intelligence of the
monolith, and evolve into the new life form of the Star Child. For humanity to
evolve, the film suggests, we must move away from our creations, and that
includes being cautious of how we feel about them. </span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1RxNBGR81R7WR0qyfUxvoBxMsKtPSQktuGJLCoH0E4mameZQwGcm-E6SP_kAQO5uPkQRT4NkjtcUZL_9H_eyh1-t719Uee6kGNa48ylMUcdzSp8iYoefVzXT9SWmtVn6UetpW5fTintE/s1600/Starchild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1RxNBGR81R7WR0qyfUxvoBxMsKtPSQktuGJLCoH0E4mameZQwGcm-E6SP_kAQO5uPkQRT4NkjtcUZL_9H_eyh1-t719Uee6kGNa48ylMUcdzSp8iYoefVzXT9SWmtVn6UetpW5fTintE/s640/Starchild.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, dir. Kubrick (1968)</td></tr>
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Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-87968122221169805932014-11-17T21:12:00.001+00:002015-01-11T17:20:33.537+00:00An Initial Response to Interstellar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 19px;">By </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Peter Krämer</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpQxWzpwRyYtoIK5hq4dCPxsgljArj4X07Uz0Jcl9mzYsxZrIzzmd8NvhVk679OBD2fMmLoZ8I83wF1BuGTr9b4yO0awvEv8yahk4RYHPC409XQp8H7FIj4sSQTnmAuDgKxBefi1NzIFI/s1600/Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpQxWzpwRyYtoIK5hq4dCPxsgljArj4X07Uz0Jcl9mzYsxZrIzzmd8NvhVk679OBD2fMmLoZ8I83wF1BuGTr9b4yO0awvEv8yahk4RYHPC409XQp8H7FIj4sSQTnmAuDgKxBefi1NzIFI/s1600/Poster.jpg" height="352" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is a report on my experiences with, and initial thoughts about,
Christopher Nolan’s <i>Interstellar</i>. As
I am writing this on 10 November, I have seen the film twice. The second time
was yesterday, in the context of one of the regular ‘Philosophers at the
Cinema’ events at <a href="http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Cinema_City/">Cinema
City</a> in Norwich, which included a panel discussion chaired by Vincent M. Gaine
and featuring Rupert Read, Elena Nardi and myself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At my first viewing of <i>Interstellar</i>
– it was the first screening on the first day of its UK release (7 November),
on a huge, curved IMAX screen - I was at times deeply moved by the film, at
other times simply stunned and at yet other times more intellectually engaged –
and occasionally rather troubled.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before seeing the film, I had managed to avoid almost all publicity and
advertising, except for short and rather cryptic trailers, thus knowing as
little as possible about its story. While watching the film, I was not just
following its story and giving in to its audiovisual spectacle, but also
mobilising various frames of reference within which I thought one might
productively place the film. As someone who has spent several years researching
and writing about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001: A Space Odyssey</i>
(<a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/an-introduction-to-2001-space-odyssey.html">See, for example, my Introduction to <i>2001 </i>here on <i>thinkingfilm</i></a>),
while also having spent a lot of time last year with the films of Terrence
Malick, I was bound to consider Kubrick’s film as well as Malick’s work as
important reference points.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIU0KdduzMaZePw2ZE6OBu96gjCGUQl9wr29IwrJ_Xf7lTUWExnWPUxvVzo8vxJMh3rdz8KQwwYnCbOUMhngmz_IFaEWsc3fZaEacDalIKSOKHImbP5GlQPwqhal8C7Q_U1eHQkjf2Q18/s1600/The-Tree-Of-Life-Jessica-Chastain-Side-Face-In-Brown-Dress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIU0KdduzMaZePw2ZE6OBu96gjCGUQl9wr29IwrJ_Xf7lTUWExnWPUxvVzo8vxJMh3rdz8KQwwYnCbOUMhngmz_IFaEWsc3fZaEacDalIKSOKHImbP5GlQPwqhal8C7Q_U1eHQkjf2Q18/s1600/The-Tree-Of-Life-Jessica-Chastain-Side-Face-In-Brown-Dress.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Tree of Life,</i> dir. Terrence Malick (2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it was the appearance of Jessica Chastain halfway through <i>Interstellar</i> which cemented the link to
Malick’s films, especially <i>The Tree of
Life</i>, which is the first film in which I had ever encountered the actress.
In <i>The Tree of Life</i> an intimate
family drama is puzzlingly connected to a spectacular presentation of cosmic
history, especially the history of life on our planet. <i>Interstellar</i> uses a Science Fiction story to make a similar
connection between the most intense human connections and the vastness of the
universe. Furthermore, the drama unfolding in the Midwestern scenes of <i>Interstellar</i> increasingly reminded me of
Malick’s <i>Days of Heaven</i> – especially
the image of endless fields, and the spectacle of a cataclysmic fire.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuRXkKMDQo1I01FXxYgGCtP_Znwu96vsTR2YBSoCJ2eOYmJ2ZMBFgknx5sRhxNsWADVKDhT7m8StEBARs8vI2tQfI32SRVYV2L3bID39TNXxiTO5R2OMjz4Xq1zAfwbN_KIaw3ZnRVVHU/s1600/days-of-heaven-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuRXkKMDQo1I01FXxYgGCtP_Znwu96vsTR2YBSoCJ2eOYmJ2ZMBFgknx5sRhxNsWADVKDhT7m8StEBARs8vI2tQfI32SRVYV2L3bID39TNXxiTO5R2OMjz4Xq1zAfwbN_KIaw3ZnRVVHU/s1600/days-of-heaven-4.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Days of Heaven</i>, dir. Terrence Malick (1978)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">There is much to be said about how <i>Interstellar</i>
relates to the key characteristics of Malick’s work as a whole, such as the
following:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">1) The prominence of voiceovers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">2) The use of pre-recorded classical music on the soundtrack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">3) An emphasis on extreme long shots displaying landscapes, often with
tiny human figures or comparatively small buildings visible within these
landscapes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">4) The foregrounding of the human transformation and/or destruction of
natural environments (through agriculture, buildings, fire, war and chemical
pollution),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">5) A primary focus on American characters and/or American geography
(across Malick’s work, these are increasingly put into an international
context),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">6) The exploration of incomplete or dysfunctional families,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">7) The presence of young children and/or teenagers, often at the very
centre of the story (in three of Malick’s films a voiceover associated with a
teenage girl dominates),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">8) The centrality of male violence,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">9) References to spiritual and religious matters (these become ever
more explicit and dominant across Malick’s work).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For the time being, I have to leave it to the reader to consider the
many parallels to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> (points
3-8) and also the glaring differences (points 1-2 and 9). I do want to note,
however, that what is perhaps most strikingly missing from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> is (this would be my tenth point) Malick’s detailed
attention to, and celebration of, the complexity, beauty and diversity of the
Earth’s living environment (exemplified by his close-ups of streams of water,
low angle shots of trees etc.).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">2</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFCwuUpkUQsZav50kw1Z0jBNl9ro3yja9Xk-aKoc180umkQQi7LaJxLSrCDVOo8Z2baPNKnmOpHYW4rWJaGPion1racTAw-250va-CI3yMqdisaB8dwXEFun1jaIU_wd6FHmOO3nvR9Y/s1600/2001_space_station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFCwuUpkUQsZav50kw1Z0jBNl9ro3yja9Xk-aKoc180umkQQi7LaJxLSrCDVOo8Z2baPNKnmOpHYW4rWJaGPion1racTAw-250va-CI3yMqdisaB8dwXEFun1jaIU_wd6FHmOO3nvR9Y/s1600/2001_space_station.jpg" height="236" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Interstellar</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">’s links to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> are manifold. Some of them would
appear to be unavoidable, given <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>’s
central place in the Science Fiction genre: spacecraft moving towards each
other and docking, panoramic views of planets, trips through punctures in the
space-time-continuum, the interaction between astronauts and human-like
computers/robots – all of these inevitably evoke the iconic images of Kubrick’s
film. There is also the overall structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>, which is so similar to that of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> (although, there are also, of course, important differences):
the protagonist leaves home to go on a space adventure during which most of his
travel companions die; with little hope ever to be able to make it back to
Earth, he then goes on an utterly mysterious journey through space and time
which does eventually, and rather magically, return him home. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> this journey is facilitated by the
technology of an unknown alien civilisation, whereas in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> it is revealed to be masterminded by humans of the
distant future.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Throughout the early parts of the protagonist’s adventure in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>, video messages from Earth
serve to remind us (and him) both of his human connections back on Earth and of
his separation from the people he loves. Much of this could be said, with some
modifications, about the journeys of Heywood Floyd, David Bowman and Frank
Poole in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>. For example, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i> features one videophone
conversation between Floyd and his daughter on Earth, and one video message
Poole receives from his parents. In both cases, the subject is a birthday (the
little girl’s, the astronaut’s). The video messages featured in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> also involve parents and
their children, and one of the most memorable of these messages concerns a
birthday (that of the protagonist’s daughter, who is reaching the same age his
father was when he left her). Indeed, it eventually turns out that the
‘poltergeist’ whose messages set the film’s story about family separation and
space adventure in motion, and also provide the daughter with all the
information she needs to achieve a momentous scientific breakthrough, is in
fact a future version of the very father who goes on the adventure.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: medium; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Interstellar</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> has multiple
endings – in one the father has a final encounter, and reconciliation, with his
dying daughter; in another he is on his way to the woman he has grown to love
during his space adventure, the implication being that the two of them will
begin to populate an alien planet. The emphasis in both endings is, more or
less explicitly, on human fertility: the daughter is surrounded by all her
descendants (who are now living in giant space stations), and the woman the
adventurer loves is storing hundreds of embryos. The ending of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2001</i>, by comparison, features a foetus
returning to the vicinity of Mother Earth – but this foetus is not the result
of human reproduction, and its future trajectory is left completely open.
(Indeed, the film links this trajectory to that of the audience insofar as the
film’s action ends with the foetus turning towards, and staring into, the
camera.)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: medium; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBu2tFQKzrmeOsUgnnuKAXJcYRn6-mBDv_Ex-Uuy9dvbQke9SbPleuAYGvCgkbpZMi0BC6niKPwL04PF2i2X-KcUVcFRVRQGz6v6nTqK40bB0eRoQlWrnXjRMAkuqPFDIksBpY9ostm8Y/s1600/47_starchild2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBu2tFQKzrmeOsUgnnuKAXJcYRn6-mBDv_Ex-Uuy9dvbQke9SbPleuAYGvCgkbpZMi0BC6niKPwL04PF2i2X-KcUVcFRVRQGz6v6nTqK40bB0eRoQlWrnXjRMAkuqPFDIksBpY9ostm8Y/s1600/47_starchild2.jpg" height="185" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, dir. Kubrick (1968)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">Thus, the link between father and daughter is running through all of <i>Interstellar</i>, and the hole in their
lives created by the death of the adventurer’s wife, which is mentioned towards
the beginning of the film, is about to be filled (at least as far as the father
is concerned) at the end. Throughout the film, the emphasis is on the need to
keep the cycle of human biological reproduction going. At the same time, the
whole story is shaped by the interaction between father and daughter (with a
little help from humans of the distant future). By contrast, <i>2001</i> has different protagonists for its
different parts, never shows the people who are separated being reunited,
focuses on processes of transformation (from pre-human hominid to human, from
astronaut to Star-Child) rather than biological reproduction, and shows humans (as
well as pre-human hominids) to be subjected to higher forces in the universe,
rather than presenting them as being perfectly able to shape their own destiny.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_4OdUof5i5paGEidojQwoLIK0X1aszdSdQ-1Mo-hf6QszBWyHz_O3UsvrMhgaTJeLIs9yoKuP5DbjDU4S1MPuZPsYOZgkFdcdpQLiPh0Ro23BNh7IXSRwgUGw8AY6fxhYOGrb0aE4vc/s1600/contact-movie-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_4OdUof5i5paGEidojQwoLIK0X1aszdSdQ-1Mo-hf6QszBWyHz_O3UsvrMhgaTJeLIs9yoKuP5DbjDU4S1MPuZPsYOZgkFdcdpQLiPh0Ro23BNh7IXSRwgUGw8AY6fxhYOGrb0aE4vc/s1600/contact-movie-poster.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Contact</i>, dir. Robert Zemeckis (1997)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Interstellar</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> also evokes more
recent Science Fiction films which were in turn heavily influenced by <i>2001</i>, notably <i>Contact</i> in which a mysterious message from the stars allows one
woman to travel across the cosmos (in a spectacular wormhole sequence); she
then encounters an alien intelligence taking the shape of her dead father. <i>Gravity</i> also comes to mind: a woman who
has lost her young daughter tries to escape from her grief-stricken life on
Earth into space, yet returns to the surface with what appears to be a renewed
sense of purpose and a keen appreciation of the beauty of nature and life (cp. <u><span style="color: blue;">http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/gravitys-pull.html</span></u>).
Last but not least, there is <i>Avatar</i>,
which features humans leaving Earth to colonise another world, the inhabitants
of which, it is suggested, they will destroy in the process of exploiting its
natural resources, just like they killed the non-human natural world on their
home planet. These three examples begin to hint at what is, at first sight, a
rather old-fashioned, even retrograde thematic and narrative emphasis in <i>Interstellar</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The main protagonist is a male adventurer, who is forced by
circumstances to work the land as a farmer – which he hates (as the film
repeatedly makes clear, from the very beginning to the very end). Then, a
sudden shift in circumstances (NASA scientists reveal to him that life on Earth
will soon become impossible and he is needed to prepare a future for humankind
in space), allows him, even pushes him, to embark on the grandest of
adventures, leaving behind his farming work and also his family. Despite all
the communicative and emotional connections he maintains with his family, and
despite a temporary return to that family, he ultimately leaves family and
Earth behind. (Upon his return, he appears to have no interest in connecting
with his grandchildren, and he never asks what the situation on Earth is like,
now that many humans have moved into space.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">This contrasts sharply with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contact</i>‘s
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity</i>’s focus on female
protagonists, the processing of the loss of family members, the enduring link with
those who have been lost, and the space adventure’s ultimate purpose to enhance
the protagonist’s (and indeed, potentially, everyone else’s) life on Earth.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Matthew McConaughey, who appears as the female
adventurer’s love interest in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contact</i>
and is excluded from the space adventure there, takes centre stage in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>. Relatedly, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity</i> George Clooney plays a character
that one would expect to be at the centre of a space adventure – and who then
becomes a ghostly presence in the adventure of a female protagonist. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> puts the male adventurer
firmly back at the centre.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcUfvtTPFxzCrJVipOOVXhNgpUAIoraEyWyu95F7ZjYStiJJ31pkAzlx6kx7dFZXrzuITOvpUeReb1bIUmAiVTiviH1y_fiCec5_VEvcN-7awFoSzX2UKc1wUl9OhI-b6gcs5vq3XSgY/s1600/gravity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcUfvtTPFxzCrJVipOOVXhNgpUAIoraEyWyu95F7ZjYStiJJ31pkAzlx6kx7dFZXrzuITOvpUeReb1bIUmAiVTiviH1y_fiCec5_VEvcN-7awFoSzX2UKc1wUl9OhI-b6gcs5vq3XSgY/s1600/gravity.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Gravity</i>, dir. Alfonso Cuarón (2013)</span><!--EndFragment--></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another curiously retrograde element of <i>Interstellar</i> is its exclusive focus on the United States and
Americans. Both on Earth and in space, we only ever encounter Americans
(Michael Caine’s performance as Professor Brand suggests that he might be a
former Brit who has lived in the US for a long time). Indeed the scenes on
Earth are presented in such a way that one might think that only Americans have
survived the catastrophe (which appears to be a combination of war, naturally
occurring – as well as perhaps weaponised - plant diseases and general
environmental degradation, mainly to do with soil erosion) that has befallen
life on Earth. This contrasts sharply with the global effort made in <i>Contact</i> to build the alien machine
(although here as well Americans are absolutely central to this effort), and
with the emphasis in <i>Gravity</i> on the
international nature of space exploration (the film features the International
Space Station and also a Chinese space station).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">When comparing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Avatar</i> in this respect, we find
that in James Cameron’s film the human characters also appear to be Americans –
yet they are contrasted, and largely found wanting in comparison, with an alien
humanoid species. Where <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Avatar</i>
associates Americans (and an American-identified military-industrial complex)
first of all with the destruction of natural habitats and ways of life, even of
Mother Earth itself, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>
emphasises that Americans are the only ones who can even try to save the day –
through science, technology, ‘bravery’ and exploration. What is more, the
mysterious force that drives the narrative in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> is, as already mentioned, ultimately claimed to be a
future version of humanity, or rather: the American people – whereas the story
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Avatar</i> is largely controlled by a
kind of planetary consciousness in the form of Eywa who is worshipped as a
goddess by the natives (<a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html">See collective member Rupert Read's discussion of <i>Avatar </i>on thinkingfim here</a>).</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSxABdxkvuhf5Fr3pZc0pdS0ffVWoWUZrf1ciGSEqSY1cFaI0QyiKa2ZaPIVzv232VaoFVRBxU-kmzt5JxxxZKKIxubnfoWYylXPtKn-tyjDwbiKFpQLCiTycrQBqIHF8hox-2i-GTLf4/s1600/avatar-navi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSxABdxkvuhf5Fr3pZc0pdS0ffVWoWUZrf1ciGSEqSY1cFaI0QyiKa2ZaPIVzv232VaoFVRBxU-kmzt5JxxxZKKIxubnfoWYylXPtKn-tyjDwbiKFpQLCiTycrQBqIHF8hox-2i-GTLf4/s1600/avatar-navi.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">Going against important trends in recent Science Fiction cinema, then, <i>Interstellar</i> would appear to put the
heroic and expansionist American male back at the centre, telling a story about
the need to abandon efforts to take care of the Earth (because it is too late
for these), and about the possibilities of finding alternative living arrangements
beyond the Earth (in the form of huge space stations and other planets). The
time travel element of the story allows for a fantastic (and deeply
paradoxical) kind of self-reliance and self-help: The future version of the
adventurer travels back in time to make himself go on the big adventure, and to
provide his daughter with all the necessary information for her to be able,
much later on, to unravel the mysteries of the universe which in turn allows
NASA to launch its space stations.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The above three sections were written before I saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> for the second time. Seeing it again on a much smaller
screen and knowing exactly what to expect, I was quite detached for much of the
film. During my first viewing, I was initially quite moved by Matthew
McConaughey’s performance as Coop, a reluctant, yet apparently quite competent
farmer, who is obviously very close to his daughter but also gets along well
with his son and his father-in-law, is easy-going and patient when dealing with
the challenges of everyday life (bad dreams, a daughter who talks about a
ghost, a flat tire), and also has experienced great loss (an accident in the
skies appears to have cut short his career as a space pilot, his wife is dead).
The second time, I knew from the outset that the film was setting him up as an
outward (and upward) looking, expansionist American hero, and setting him
against all those who think that directly taking care of life on Earth is
people’s primary responsibility. As a consequence, I felt little empathy with,
and even less sympathy for, him. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLeDyj0KeHIXTMIV-czQ9u48Ved3d_GJBBEMCGHScrGsiQgXb9lE2_FCwvAX1tSJ0Wf30T_S9AkTYzqOonQNk_1m1hQO4uLZhj6oJz_WT0f-x6oNWKlqsXSKoeQfqUqweymzApyJ7ubOY/s1600/-ef118340-ea83-469a-bf9e-58800b56e569.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLeDyj0KeHIXTMIV-czQ9u48Ved3d_GJBBEMCGHScrGsiQgXb9lE2_FCwvAX1tSJ0Wf30T_S9AkTYzqOonQNk_1m1hQO4uLZhj6oJz_WT0f-x6oNWKlqsXSKoeQfqUqweymzApyJ7ubOY/s1600/-ef118340-ea83-469a-bf9e-58800b56e569.jpeg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Interstellar</i>, dir. Christopher Nolan (2014)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">The strange early scene, in which an Indian drone, left over from what
may have been a global war, crosses his path, and he chases after it in his
truck, recklessly ploughing through the fields, now came across less as a
nostalgic evocation of a by-gone high-tech era and also perhaps an ominous
reminder of his former life as a pilot (which foreshadowed his return to that
life); instead I just saw his careless destruction of parts of the harvest
which it is his responsibility as a farmer to bring in. Similarly, I no longer
found his discussion with a teacher and a school administrator about the
problems his daughter Murph is having at school at all humorous, because it was
so obvious to me now that the purpose of this scene was to characterise those
who made farming an absolute priority so as to feed the remnant of humanity
that has survived, in an extremely negative manner. They deny his son what he
regards as a proper university education (because what is most needed are
farmers); persecute his daughter because she knows and speaks the truth whereas
the new school textbooks revise history in an Orwellian fashion (claiming that
the moon landings were just a hoax); and are so ignorant or deluded that (once
again in an Orwellian fashion) they believe their own lies. Indeed, because of
their obvious bias against science and technology (unless it is in the service
of food production), he holds them – and people like them – responsible for the
death of his wife, whose medical condition could have been diagnosed with an
MRI scanner, if such scanners had still been around.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This negative characterisation of farmers and those who support them
continues in the rest of the film. Along the way, as an audience we are invited
to agree with Coop when he states that ‘we’ (human beings? men? Americans?)
were meant to be explorers and adventurers, not ‘caretakers’ (this last word
uttered very dismissively). There is also, from the outset, a big question mark
around his son, who is – as everyone acknowledges – very good at being a farmer
(although Coop thinks that he could and should aim higher). It turns out that,
as an adult, he becomes so wedded to the farming way of life that he ignores
the welfare of his wife and children. Even after his first child has died, he
is unwilling to grant his second child and his wife, both of whom are dying
from the dust in their lungs, any medical care. He is last seen in an embrace
with his sister, apparently accepting her revelation that somehow their
father’s bold adventure in space – rather than the work of farmers on Earth -
has saved them and the rest of humanity. Afterwards he appears to be forgotten
– by his sister, his father, the film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">Following various conversations after my second viewing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>, I also began to wonder
about the father-daughter dynamics in the film (and about the absent mothers).
When Coop says goodbye to ten-year old Murph, who is devastated by his imminent
departure, he mentions, rather thoughtlessly, that due to the time-distorting
effects of relativity, upon his return he might be the same age as she – in
other words, he admits that he might be gone from her life for as long as
whatever their age difference is (presumably about thirty years). Afterwards she
refuses to look at him again, and she also refuses to send him video messages
once he has embarked on his journey into space – until the day at which she
reaches the age her father was when he left her. She does not want to reconnect
with him, but merely to remind him of the fact that he cruelly abandoned her.
When Coop receives the message, he is still close to the age he was when he
left (due to the enormous stretching of time he experienced while landing on a
planet near a black hole) – as a consequence, they no longer look like father
and daughter but more like potential romantic partners. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_WhC8618cfGyNXXlxBUBXfK-XfkImXk7SaVSoq9PuhVZoGwGkjI7XBkH2_TBLpxgs1lvMuTzzT_RHrLL3kxs2DAAyMp6pnlENcqyNT5o0G8fL-ljpL9aF2y0vartgpfT9ECXdjGOyGWA/s1600/Interstellar+-+Mackenzie+Foy+Wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_WhC8618cfGyNXXlxBUBXfK-XfkImXk7SaVSoq9PuhVZoGwGkjI7XBkH2_TBLpxgs1lvMuTzzT_RHrLL3kxs2DAAyMp6pnlENcqyNT5o0G8fL-ljpL9aF2y0vartgpfT9ECXdjGOyGWA/s1600/Interstellar+-+Mackenzie+Foy+Wallpaper.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Young Murph (Mackenzie Foy)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRcnzlG507Uv7BGNn1M5_oF538m8fIuxRMkxfO3rsrwv5YGn2QkqFzsJhvXkpWaTAkgtXOx6pvYNdPw-SoqTxuz-2BHDhZZ4Y2_yRNLZkzctILcGyoNJK0TzpMsmGdrbixL26LUTc86UE/s1600/Jessica-Chastain-i-Interstellar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRcnzlG507Uv7BGNn1M5_oF538m8fIuxRMkxfO3rsrwv5YGn2QkqFzsJhvXkpWaTAkgtXOx6pvYNdPw-SoqTxuz-2BHDhZZ4Y2_yRNLZkzctILcGyoNJK0TzpMsmGdrbixL26LUTc86UE/s1600/Jessica-Chastain-i-Interstellar.jpeg" height="160" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adult Murph (Jessica Chastain)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_WhC8618cfGyNXXlxBUBXfK-XfkImXk7SaVSoq9PuhVZoGwGkjI7XBkH2_TBLpxgs1lvMuTzzT_RHrLL3kxs2DAAyMp6pnlENcqyNT5o0G8fL-ljpL9aF2y0vartgpfT9ECXdjGOyGWA/s1600/Interstellar+-+Mackenzie+Foy+Wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">In an inspired piece of casting, an impressive match is established
between the facial features of the young Murph (played by Mackenzie Foy) and
those of the older version (Chastain) – but, it was pointed out to me by other
viewers of the film, this match also extends to an uncomfortable degree to
Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), the woman accompanying Coop on his journey,
indeed the woman he will fall in love with. At the end of the film, the dying
Murph (Ellen Burstyn) tells Coop, who still has not aged very much, not to stay
at her deathbed (because no parent should see a child of theirs die) but
instead to return to Amelia; the way she says this strongly implies that she
expects the two of them to form a romantic couple and, presumably, to have
children together. So what we have here is the story of a man who loses his
wife, forms a perhaps unusually intense emotional bond with his daughter (who,
for a while, is the same age he is) and then gets her advice to ‘marry’ a kind
of lookalike.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisLBLsrLMZ-6hs7Z5eE5ywr0wIRLkaJ7IjPza79AgM-ox7ISsJ9_4Wg4UwDCeqjfOqrSUQS6VbDRuRizP0Uh1OJw4kgczJWUYNYdnxOThtt9R2cHN-pb2srxAEQTaWf3OV1spsaGyYiRM/s1600/interstellar-anne-hathaway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisLBLsrLMZ-6hs7Z5eE5ywr0wIRLkaJ7IjPza79AgM-ox7ISsJ9_4Wg4UwDCeqjfOqrSUQS6VbDRuRizP0Uh1OJw4kgczJWUYNYdnxOThtt9R2cHN-pb2srxAEQTaWf3OV1spsaGyYiRM/s1600/interstellar-anne-hathaway.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">Amelia Brand’s relationship with <i>her</i>
father also is rather peculiar. Presumably, he was instrumental in getting her
a scientific education (which, the film tells us, is hard to come by). This is
the foundation for her inclusion in the mission to find another planet for
humans to live on. The elder Brand talks about his two plans for saving the
species (Plan A: to work out how gravity can be suspended so that huge space
ships can be moved off the surface of the Earth and then towards an inhabitable
planet; Plan B: to establish a human colony on another planet with the help of
hundreds of frozen embryos). But he is convinced that only the second plan has
any chance. He thus envisions his daughter being the only adult female on
another planet, growing human embryos in a vat, but also, at some point, having
to raise them as if they were her own children. Of course, she is also likely
to form a romantic relationship with one of her fellow explorers, most likely
Dr. Edmunds, the man she loves, who is stranded on one of the planets that
might be suitable for human colonisation, or, failing that, perhaps Coop, who
Professor Brand knows, and clearly admires, from his days as NASA’s most gifted
pilot. In other words, there is a sense that Brand gives his daughter to Coop,
potentially so as to fill, one might say, the void created by his separation
from Murph (and the death of his wife).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At the same time, Murph has been raised by Coop to become a scientist.
After Coop, having worked out that the ‘ghost’ communicating with his daughter
has left behind geographical coordinates, has stumbled on a base where NASA
continues to operate in secret, Murph meets both Amelia Brand (who immediately
adopts a quite maternal attitude towards her) and her father. Once Coop has
left the Earth, Murph is visited by Professor Brand who eventually takes her
under his wings, making it possible for her to get a scientific education and
becoming his closest collaborator, indeed the person who appears to be closer
to him than anyone else, so that it is she who sits at his deathbed (on which
he reveals that he never believed in Plan A, thus having fully intended to send his
own daughter and Murph’s father away forever). In a sense, then, Professor
Brand takes over Murph from Coop so that Brand can fill the void that Coop’s
departure has left in her life and she can fill the void that Amelia’s
departure (and the curious absence of her mother) has left in his. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Thus, while the absence of Murph’s and Amelia’s mothers is never
properly dealt with, the film shows daughters slipping into the position of
their mothers and then being exchanged between their fathers, destined to
become mothers themselves (at the end Murph is shown in the midst of many
descendants and Amelia is closely associated with the embryos she will use to
populate a whole planet, with a little help from Coop). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">6 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is so much more to be said about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>. One might wonder, for example, about the symbolism of
‘wormholes’ and ‘black holes’. These are ultimately used to facilitate a kind
of birthing process: they allow humans to travel across the universe so as to
relaunch the species on another planet; more particularly, they eventually
enable Coop to return to the past so as to facilitate both his own rebirth as
an adventurer and the rebirth of humankind off the Earth. Is there some
symbolic connection, then, between these ‘holes’ (which are pictured as
tunnels) and the female reproductive system? This would put an interesting
slant on the fact that the plans of the predominantly male scientists and
adventurers revolve around penetrating these holes - which requires them to be,
temporarily, fully immersed in them: cosmic intercourse thus also appears to be
a return to the womb; the path to rebirth would seem to be a backwards journey
through a giant birth canal. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-iOsW7WzMsssIAwtLbcVLJqjBoc-XpcJosbEWtzDK1m7kA_DSXDHNPaq98PJTLV5SQOvogENqWgkksqdw-13iOxyo8EQm96xnUFQHbqY1jnTMtWdFFFaPBaQ_PapfCH-19CIaq4lq-s0/s1600/dnews-files-2014-08-interstellar-670x440-140803-jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-iOsW7WzMsssIAwtLbcVLJqjBoc-XpcJosbEWtzDK1m7kA_DSXDHNPaq98PJTLV5SQOvogENqWgkksqdw-13iOxyo8EQm96xnUFQHbqY1jnTMtWdFFFaPBaQ_PapfCH-19CIaq4lq-s0/s1600/dnews-files-2014-08-interstellar-670x440-140803-jpg.jpg" height="262" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Interstellar</i>, dir. Nolan (2014)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">There are other elements in this film which could be seen as a
counterweight to its emphasis on male, and masculine, agency. To begin with,
there is the opening narration: an old woman (who later is identified as old
Murph) starts talking about her father, directly addressing the camera. This
initially suggests that what we are about to see arises from her memories and narration.
Of course, she is soon displaced from centre stage by images of her father’s
aerial accident and by other people remembering the old days, and it is
eventually revealed that the recording we saw is on display in the
reconstruction of her (and her father’s) home on a space station – yet she is
first established as the storyteller behind the story we will see.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Similarly, despite the fact that the ‘ghost’ that young Murph is so
curious about at the beginning of the film is later revealed to be (a future
version of) her father giving her vital information, on first viewing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>, we see that she is indeed
the one who gets the story going. Her openness to what appears to be a
supernatural phenomenon, her willingness (after getting some advice from her
father) to approach this phenomenon scientifically and thus to determine that
it may contain crucial information (an idea her father then picks up on when
decoding piles of dust so as to get the coordinates for the secret NASA base) –
these are crucial for the male adventure to come, and also for her own
intellectual adventure. By returning home, as an adult, to reexamine the traces
the ghostly presence has left in the room, she eventually is able to make an
unprecedented scientific breakthrough which saves the lives of many thousands
of people. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">There is also the rather awkward moment in which Amelia responds to
Coop’s accusation that her judgment about which of two remaining planets to
approach is clouded by the fact that she is in love with Dr. Edmunds, who
landed on the planet she suggests they go to. Instead of just claiming that she
can retain her scientific objectivity despite her emotional involvement, she
argues that ‘love’ itself is a powerful reality that transcends space and time
and higher dimensions, and may reveal important truths about the physical
universe. Although Coop decides that they should spend their remaining fuel to
go to the other planet, later developments would seem to confirm Amelia’s
claim. The planet they go to has no life, because Dr. Mann (!), who initiated
the original project of searching for inhabitable planets, has been faking data
so as to be rescued. What is more, he eventually tries to kill his rescuers in
the hope of being able to relaunch humanity all on his own (with the help of
nine hundred frozen embryos). This does put the masculinist, expansionist,
high-tech vision underpinning the film’s main adventure in a very negative
light indeed. By contrast, after Dr. Mann dies in an accident he himself is
responsible for, Amelia makes it to Dr. Edmunds’ planet which does indeed have
breathable air and plant life. What is more, when Coop enters the black hole
(so as to give Amelia a chance to make it to Dr. Edmunds’ planet and also to
explore the black hole’s inner workings), he is drawn back – presumably by his
intense love - to the childhood of his daughter, which then enables him to
close the temporal loop and give her the information she receives at the
beginning of the film. It would appear then that love does indeed conquer all,
a curiously feminine twist in what is otherwise such a macho tale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">7<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Many more issues remain to be discussed with regards to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">- the paradoxes of time travel, the idea of a completely predetermined
universe and the alternative (but equally troubling) vision of an infinity of
parallel universes; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">- the significance of Murph’s name (Murphy’s Law being referenced on
several occasions, in two variants: everything that can go wrong, will go
wrong; everthing that can happen, will happen); <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">- the importance of faith (Professor Brand has long lost faith in
making the scientific breakthrough necessary for Plan A, Amelia keeps her faith
in the possibility of this breakthrough and does achieve it); <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">- the ability of human beings to make sacrifices for others (for their
own children, for all of humankind on Earth right now, for future generations,
for the human ‘species’ – there is considerable disagreement between characters
in the film about who and what humans are willing to make sacrifices for).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But I will have to leave the discussion of these issues to other
writers.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivf_Mm4AqbehEA6_hGcpzX6Zew2Qtxusioi5TQyLQoPC_rfjYpttvalk68Vvv3MJ6LnMVQS5lykKJsqcvoANImnp0Bmk00iJZmUvz1ZB5ktCB3hHbcU0D_-RfaORxK8wrnOgoilbtDFeE/s1600/interstellar-sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivf_Mm4AqbehEA6_hGcpzX6Zew2Qtxusioi5TQyLQoPC_rfjYpttvalk68Vvv3MJ6LnMVQS5lykKJsqcvoANImnp0Bmk00iJZmUvz1ZB5ktCB3hHbcU0D_-RfaORxK8wrnOgoilbtDFeE/s1600/interstellar-sky.jpg" height="265" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Interstellar, </i>dir. Nolan (2014)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-72086781131467010192014-08-19T14:35:00.002+01:002014-08-19T14:36:41.166+01:00Communion with Nature in The Grey and Godzilla<span style="font-size: large;">By Vincent M. Gaine</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“The
arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way
around. Let them fight.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ishiro
Serizawa</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">[SPOILERS]</span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Grey</a></span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> (Joe Carnahan, 2011) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Godzilla</a></i> (Gareth Edwards, 2014) are both
stories of conflict between human and the Other, and the Other takes the form
of dangerous animals, wolves in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i>
and prehistoric monsters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godzilla</i>.
Throughout both films, humans are in danger and both films maintain a consistent
mood of dread and menace. However, closer inspection reveals an underlying
interest in communion between humanity and nature, although it takes different
forms in the two films. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQiqFCJlcOtDn0aTb9Bq1Bobdl0W6qOFIAUut46PGdzHn1hxrzbeueWAfyBFqBrWVMWz8eV59xBkxYqmmUpX3JdNBsoUABtZYS6CYrzDPTGVBVqnxbkMRjHUQZIbXZpDCs8SpDq-wh39U/s1600/75472.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQiqFCJlcOtDn0aTb9Bq1Bobdl0W6qOFIAUut46PGdzHn1hxrzbeueWAfyBFqBrWVMWz8eV59xBkxYqmmUpX3JdNBsoUABtZYS6CYrzDPTGVBVqnxbkMRjHUQZIbXZpDCs8SpDq-wh39U/s1600/75472.jpg" height="400" width="280" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqm93C5MR0K6M-YLk3XcUynQJjeZOJ7J9qzlhDlF21nvEd4zma2tFGmLAB5tRY9naUXJz3wg4cyXC1Czh7vG5MpA1pQgth1DshT_9_rQJDGYVRl5GlSMPJZ2NVDtOZow0tBqkhVob2W94/s1600/Godzilla_(2014)_poster.jpg" height="400" width="268" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">The Grey</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">, based on a short story <i>Ghost Walker</i> by Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, is explicitly philosophical.
It concerns a group of plane crash survivors who are marooned in the Arctic
wilderness and must contend with killer wolves. The protagonist, John Ottway,
was hired by the oil company that employs all the men to protect oil workers
against wolf attack, so he understands the animals as well as how to survive in
the wilderness. Zoologically, the film is pure fiction, as the wolves that
appear are far larger than any actual wolf and their behaviour as described by
Ottway does not correspond with any actual research into wolves – specifically,
wolves tend to avoid humans and attacks are extremely rare. This inaccuracy led
to criticisms against the film for a </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/reviews">misleading</a> and
therefore <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201201/the-grey-has-it-all-wrong-about-wolves">damaging</a> depiction of wolves, an interesting view but not one I agree with.
Wolves have been persecuted and exterminated for centuries, mainly because of
competition for food, to protect livestock and for “sport”. One more fictional
representation is not likely to change that. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the
wolves in <i>The Grey</i> do not really
represent wolves – they represent untamed, unmitigated nature, a manifestation
of nature’s savagery and indifference that is more killable (and therefore
useful for narratives) than an avalanche or a snowstorm. Faced with the power
of nature, the men are far removed from civilisation and must become as savage
as their surroundings in order to survive.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godzilla</i>, nature invades civilisation as
monsters stomp through cities as if they were tall grass, demonstrating
humanity’s insignificance. Military firepower is of little consequence,
including nuclear weapons - both Godzilla and the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified
Terrestrial Organisms) barely notice bullets and explosive shells. Their regard
for humans is similar to that of our own regard for ants – they barely notice
us. Whereas previous Godzilla films featured monsters destroying cities (usually
Tokyo) because they were there, or because the monsters were controlled by
aliens bent on conquest, in Edwards’ film the destruction is incidental. While
the monsters are clearly dangerous and destructive, they are not vicious or
malevolent – they are simply doing what they do. There is a mating ritual
between the two MUTOs that recalls a scene in Edwards’ debut, the low budget
romance/science fiction/road movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsters</i>,
which features an eerily beautiful sequence between two alien creatures. Despite
the gulf between their production contexts, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godzilla</i>
echoes the director’s earlier effort in its dwarfing of humanity within
landscapes, much as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> takes
place almost entirely in external locations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
cinematography of both films includes multiple wide shots of natural
landscapes, often placing humans and animals within them. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godzilla</i> begins and ends with images of water – the title sequence
features imitation stock footage of 1950s nuclear tests in the South Pacific,
with huge reptilian scales breaking the surface of the sea. In the final shot,
Godzilla plunges back into the ocean, returning to his habitat having restored
the balance of nature. While the viewer could be left with a sense of triumph
and awe at Godzilla’s besting of the MUTOs, this final image is remarkably
tranquil, suggesting that ferocity and serenity are part of the same balance.
In much the same way, humanity is a part of nature, as evidenced by the
continued <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mise-en-scene</i> that
incorporates Godzilla and the humans in the same wide shots. The MUTO are not
included in these shots, ensuring that they remain Other and threatening.
Similarly, the wolves of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> are
hardly ever seen clearly, mostly appearing as dark shapes or glowing eyes. But
the men of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> cannot escape this
creeping presence, and over the course of the film are gradually integrated
into their environment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyVq4wz4pG_HJYz7usEcLVm_bJV3b1brxOYokH-pawJZ3U2Yi9DE0adV2KQyQSTIA-vK92uhGv2rR-Vc5A6G57aj0qPI6ubhrk9Mgk2VWAuqX8aYLQs52w50DGOeIdZmGMPfMLwA5oj-I/s1600/Grey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyVq4wz4pG_HJYz7usEcLVm_bJV3b1brxOYokH-pawJZ3U2Yi9DE0adV2KQyQSTIA-vK92uhGv2rR-Vc5A6G57aj0qPI6ubhrk9Mgk2VWAuqX8aYLQs52w50DGOeIdZmGMPfMLwA5oj-I/s1600/Grey.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">The Grey</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">, dir. Joe Carnahan (2011)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This
integration is violent and enforced in <i>The
Grey</i>, as the group of survivors are steadily picked off. Ottway does what
he can to keep them alive: making fire, seeking out water and defensible
positions as well as improvising weapons, but it proves futile as he is unable
to keep any of his companions alive. <i>The
Grey</i> presents nature as irresistible and all consuming, and death is a
constant presence that must be acknowledged. This is the film’s existential
conceit, as the survivors of the crash each encounter death in their own way.
For most of the film, this involves a desperate fight to stay alive, but at the
beginning and towards the end, death is embraced as the natural conclusion of
life. In an early scene, before the plane crash, Ottway almost kills himself
with his own rifle but is interrupted. His motivation is essentially grief – he
lost his wife and would rather die than continue living without her. Later, when
only Ottway and two other survivors, Diaz and Henrick, are left, Diaz opts to
die rather than push on. He decides that his life has been meaningless and he
would rather die in the wilderness than go back to his worthless life. Diaz
finds meaning in death, crucially because he is in a natural environment. He
tells Ottway and Henrick that he will never live so well, never taste his own
existence so acutely, as he has after fighting for their lives so hard, and he
will never be anywhere better than the Alaskan mountains. The film shows us
nature at its most beautiful and terrible, and Diaz communes with it for
literally the rest of his life. As Diaz is left alone, the sound of wolves
approaching offscreen is heard, but the viewer does not see them because it
would be unnecessary. Whereas the other men died fighting nature, Diaz simply
accepts nature, and we see his communion in a single shot in which we share his
view of the mountains.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Shortly
after this, Henrick drowns and Ottway is left alone. Furious at the unfairness
and indifference of the world, he bellows at God:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 56.7pt; margin-right: 47.3pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do
something. Do something. You phony prick fraudulent motherfucker. Do something!
Come on! Prove it! Fuck faith! Earn it! Show me something real! I need it now.
Not later. Now! Show me and I'll believe in you until the day I die. I swear.
I'm calling on you. I'm calling on you! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 56.7pt; margin-right: 47.3pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">[receives
no response]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fuck
it. I'll do it myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">That is
the view of the world in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> –
do it yourself or something else will do it to you. In the final scene, Ottway
faces the wolf pack alpha and readies himself for a final battle. Much as a
wolf is armed with teeth and claws, Ottway tapes a knife and broken bottles to
his hands, making himself into as savage a beast as that which confronts him.
His communion with nature is a savage one, all pretence of civilisation or
humanity stripped away. Significantly, before the fight he abandons the wallets
of the men who have died, that he carried in the vain hope that he could tell
the victims’ families what happened. Hope is lost, all that remains is the
Wild, a wild that Ottway willingly embraces. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">This
embrace is the film’s communion with nature – from nature we come and to it we
must return. The final responses of Ottway and Diaz are quite literally poetic,
encapsulated by Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”.
Diaz does exactly what Thomas urged against, going gentle into the good night,
while Ottway rages against the dying of the light. Of course, poetry runs
through the film as well, Ottway repeating a poem that his father wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 56.7pt; margin-right: 47.3pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once
more into the fray<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Into
the last good fight I'll ever know<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Live
and die on this day<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Live
and die on this day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is it a
good fight? It is at best a fight to stay alive, and to fight for life is to
live and die, experience everything, feel life in the moments of death.
Ultimately it does not matter – nature will consume all within it whatever we
do. There is purity in Ottway’s final declaration of existence. He is nothing
but a desire to survive, and whether he survives or not (the film is ambiguous
in this respect), he embraces the savagery of the world without hesitation.
Communion with nature can be a savage business, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> presents it in a way that is honest in its brutality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhD2JD5pnVC0tcFkkgx4ooLT3HLVwFvIQzGWStdToleCw8cySqv86y7bL8_s33Dg3qdWkacycNp63XvGabh_rVCbzq1N70PKfY4oprpSH_AOIUcZmVps23R_aZc9bS8wchwxZ32Ge4lo/s1600/Godzilla.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhD2JD5pnVC0tcFkkgx4ooLT3HLVwFvIQzGWStdToleCw8cySqv86y7bL8_s33Dg3qdWkacycNp63XvGabh_rVCbzq1N70PKfY4oprpSH_AOIUcZmVps23R_aZc9bS8wchwxZ32Ge4lo/s1600/Godzilla.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">Godzilla</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">, dir. Gareth Edwards (2014)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">Godzilla</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> is far gentler in its communion with nature,
and cynically this can be credited to the film’s status as a major commercial
product by its studio. It is available to a wider cinema audience than <i>The Grey</i> and remains open for a sequel
(which has been </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/godzilla-2-sequel-warner-bros-legendary-gareth-edwards/">green lit</a>). But despite commercial concerns, <i>Godzilla</i>’s
interest in communion with nature is consistent. Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (a direct
homage to a character in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047034/?ref_=nv_sr_1">original</a>) warns Admiral William Stenz: “The
arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way
around” and that, rather than trying to intervene in the course of natural
events by attacking Godzilla and the MUTO, the best thing for the humans to do
is “Let them fight”. <i>Godzilla</i>
demonstrates that nature is beyond humans, and the best we can do is try to
survive it, much like the men in <i>The Grey</i>
and, indeed, any animal. Godzilla himself is closely associated with elemental
forces, such as a great sea swell that surges through Honolulu and heralds his
arrival. He seems of the earth, or more precisely of the ocean – great, mysterious
and powerful. Very little is seen of Godzilla in the first hour, until he
confronts the male MUTO at Honolulu Airport, after his arrival flooded most of
the city. This further associates him with the forces of nature, which largely
remain invisible except to sophisticated equipment. We see the results of
nature, such as rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, tremors in the
earth and volcanic ash and lava, but the forces which cause these changes are
generally hidden, such as increased CO2 in the atmosphere, changes in ocean
salinity, and a giant monster that normally lives on the sea bed.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
contrast between human insignificance and nature’s power reaches its climax in
San Francisco, where the MUTO attempt to breed. Their spawn will doom for
humanity and so must be stopped, but initially the military effort is
misguided. Serizawa urges against the use of nuclear weapons, and the audience
are allied with him because it has been made clear that the monsters feed off
radiation so assurances that the blast itself will kill them are unconvincing.
The film quickly proves the scientists correct as the female MUTO uses the bomb
to fertilise herself while it ticks down towards detonation, which will kill
thousands. But before her eggs can hatch, both the US military and Godzilla
intervene. The joint effort is incidental – Godzilla attacks the MUTO because
they are competition for him while a bomb disposal unit attempts to disarm the
warhead. But the incidental nature of this joint effort is crucial. Godzilla
and the MUTOs fight because that it is what nature intends for them, and the
humans’ contribution is to remove the intrusion of the nuke. Furthermore, while
Godzilla fights the MUTO, the lead human character, Lieutenant Ford Brody,
destroys the eggs with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fire</i>. The
technology of the nuclear warhead is out of place in Nature’s Battle of the
Titans, but fire is primal and basic, Ford completing the film’s movement back to
nature. Across the film, there is a steady reduction of technology – the MUTO
can release an electromagnetic pulse as a weapon that renders all electronics
useless. To protect the nuke against this pulse, a mechanical timer is used,
which also proves to be a mistake as Ford’s disposal team cannot disarm it in
time. But with the bomb being carried away from a populated area, Ford resorts
to the elemental force of fire to protect his species and fight his enemy,
which proves effective as the eggs are engulfed in flame. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Godzilla</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">’s most important moment of communion comes
shortly after the destruction of the eggs, as Godzilla defeats and kills the
male MUTO. Exhausted by the battle, the giant monster collapses into the rubble
and is swallowed by billowing clouds of dust. Ford witnesses this collapse in
awe, much like the audience. But before Godzilla disappears, he appears to see
Ford and the two share a look and have a moment. It is brief but significant,
Ford and Godzilla seeming to recognise their kindred spirits, their shared
involvement in the current situation. There is communion between man and
monster, not because Ford has tried to get closer but because nature has
brought them together. Nature’s power and might is emphasised throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godzilla</i>, but this moment highlights
that humans are not separate from nature, but as much a part of it as these
great creatures. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
communion reappears (again incidentally) at the film’s climax, as Ford is
trying to get the nuke away from San Francisco by boat. The female MUTO seems
to attack him as if in revenge for the destruction of her offspring, but
Godzilla saves Ford by attacking and finally killing the female. Godzilla
collapses and appears to have died, but then rises and departs, TV reports
describing him as “Savior of Our City?” As he leaves San Francisco, he causes
no further destruction, wide shots capturing him as well as the people he has
saved, albeit incidentally, before he plunges back into the sea as mentioned
earlier. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Godzilla</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> demonstrates that nature is beyond human
control, and the best we can do is try to survive it. In this regard, the film
illustrates communion <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_GoBack"></a>and, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i>, a journey to a place outside of normal human experience.
Stenz explains to his troops that no one is prepared for the situation they
face, before Ford and his team perform a halo jump from high above the city.
The jump sequence is both terrible and beautiful, and uses the musical piece
Gyorgy </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Ligeti's
<i>Requiem</i>, a piece also used in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">key sequences of </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/an-introduction-to-2001-space-odyssey.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">2001:
A Space Odyssey</span></i></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. Much as
Stanley Kubrick’s film presented travelling “beyond the infinite”, so Edwards’ film
presents travelling outside of human experience. Rather than travelling forward
to a further stage of human evolution, Ford and his team are travelling
backwards, literally away from human technology as they jump out of a plane
into a battleground between forces of nature. Similarly, technology in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Grey</i> fails to protect its characters
as a plane crashes, forcing the men to rejoin nature however hard they fight it.
Both films demand reconnection with nature and, while it may not be pretty, it
is inevitable and a powerful reminder that, indeed, nature is never in our
control. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIgdoJox-2Jzu39p1deUYsd_8ulWHTQRwpECOCsq9sT5m_wMuLZmegL27EM3TQJzcB691QLstLEbgQQk6qdGTIX2NXpkuSkiOVTGz1KMTsk1xWTqmWyPtVJQ35CIJsh8KN_0RovD4nf30/s1600/Halo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIgdoJox-2Jzu39p1deUYsd_8ulWHTQRwpECOCsq9sT5m_wMuLZmegL27EM3TQJzcB691QLstLEbgQQk6qdGTIX2NXpkuSkiOVTGz1KMTsk1xWTqmWyPtVJQ35CIJsh8KN_0RovD4nf30/s1600/Halo.jpg" height="241" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">Godzilla</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">, dir. Gareth Edwards (2014)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-20488377534421156272014-07-21T11:04:00.002+01:002014-07-21T11:13:25.000+01:00Solaris, Or, Do We Really Want To Make Contact?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">By Paul Johnston</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-04-91mH4jy4/U6rmPe1CghI/AAAAAAAAAds/31NKnd4TOxo/s1600/SOLARIS_300dpi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-04-91mH4jy4/U6rmPe1CghI/AAAAAAAAAds/31NKnd4TOxo/s1600/SOLARIS_300dpi.jpg" height="640" width="448" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">On Earth</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">As with many of his films, the opening section of
Tarkovsky’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Solaris</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"> sets the scene for what is to come. Almost inevitably it
starts with water. The camera lingers on a leaf floating down a stream, then on
the weeds and reeds, pulled into movement by the flowing water. Slowly,
insistently, the camera explores the peace and mystery of a world without humans -
until we chance on part of a human figure and the camera pulls up to reveal the
film’s protagonist, Kris Kelvin. This solitary individual may be vaguely aware
of the beauty that surrounds him, but he is unable to draw any sustenance from
it. It’s there, but it can’t help or really touch him. He is trapped in a world
where there are always things to be done, but not much to be gained from doing
them. A black horse trots by, magnificently at home in the world. Kelvin notices
it and moves wearily on. In the distance a car draws up at the house and his
father calls out to him, but Kelvin would rather be alone. And if the rain
pours down on him until he is soaked, what difference does it make? He stands
resolute, brooding emptily on his pain but determined to go on. After all, what
else can he do?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zgs9WXt073E/U8zntOkE9UI/AAAAAAAAAfg/k8FpBaYo7i0/s1600/solaris-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zgs9WXt073E/U8zntOkE9UI/AAAAAAAAAfg/k8FpBaYo7i0/s1600/solaris-1.jpg" height="304" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kelvin is staying with his father and his aunt and, despite
the civilised atmosphere, it’s tense. He will soon leave on a mission that
probably means he will never see his father again, but it is more than that.
There is a sense of conflict and misunderstandings. Kelvin’s mother is dead and
the house seems haunted by an absence that both father and son must have
struggled with, but which hasn’t brought them together. It’s a large house with
three people who are constantly getting in each other’s way. Everyone seems too
full of his or her own emotions to have time for anyone else’s.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The arrival of
Berton, a friend of the father’s who wants to talk to Kelvin about his mission,
is another unwelcome intrusion. There were already too many people before he
arrived. He brings his young son, who we see shyly and silently meeting the
aunt’s young daughter - at least in this human contact, there is still
something innocent and hopeful. The boy is alarmed when he sees the horse, now
in its stable, but the aunt takes him by the hand and helps him to see that the
horse is a beautiful creature and nothing to be frightened of. Meanwhile Berton
insists on having a one-to-one conversation with Kelvin, but the discussion
quickly goes wrong and Berton storms off, telling the father that, since their
20-year friendship had to end sometime, it might as well end now. The father in
turn lambasts the son, saying that he shouldn’t be allowed into space because things
out there are too fragile. The earth has adapted to people like him at a price,
but they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. The tentative efforts of father
and son to reach out to each other collapse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Berton’s Unnerving Experience.<i> </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kelvin’s mission is to the
planet Solaris and Berton visits him because he had an experience on that
planet that he has never recovered from. Solaris is a paradox and an irritation
- it is possible the planet may harbour some form of super-intelligence, but
years of research have not been able to get beyond the initial promising but
confusing signs. Has humanity finally come into contact with another intelligent
form of life or is Solaris just another nondescript planet among countless
others? Berton worked on the research station as a pilot and when an aircraft
containing two scientists went missing, he was part of the search and rescue
mission. His craft got separated from the others and he was sucked into a
strange, swirling fog above the planet’s ocean. When he returned, he was in a
state of shock and ran to his cabin, frightened at the idea of going outside
the space station and terrified even to look out of a porthole.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some time later
when he had partially recovered, he insisted on making a formal statement about
a discovery that he believes will change the future of the whole Solaris
research project. Dressed in his military uniform and just about holding it
together, he describes how, when he was sucked down into the fog, the surface
of the ocean began to change and then formed itself into something that looked
like a garden. The assembled scientists are shocked - it’s a big claim, but a
weirdly senseless one: what would a garden be doing on the surface of a planet
millions of miles from Earth? Berton appeals to the evidence of his video
camera, which recorded everything he saw - except it didn’t; the film just
shows clouds. Now it is Berton who is confused - did he really experience what
he thought he experienced? To a sceptical audience and increasingly agitated,
he continues his account. The garden was only the start. Shortly, after he saw
a human figure, moving and being moved on the ever-changing ocean. But there
was something horrible about the figure. It had no helmet or space suit - in
fact, it was a child, a baby and huge, gigantic - something like four metres
tall. And naked, absolutely naked, but with a horrible, sticky liquid,
glistening all over its body. It was an image of human vulnerability turned
into something horribly alien, which wasn’t dead but which also wasn’t fully
alive.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GfMrZ5vB0Zg/U8zg3eM_B_I/AAAAAAAAAeQ/MLaFBGkmk_4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.42.58.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GfMrZ5vB0Zg/U8zg3eM_B_I/AAAAAAAAAeQ/MLaFBGkmk_4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.42.58.png" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Berton can’t cope with his experience, but neither can his
audience. The majority conclusion is that, despite all his years of service and
his professional discipline, Berton had a hallucination. His experience had no
(or virtually no) relation to reality and so has no implications for research
into the nature of the planet. Berton’s pathetic protests that he saw it all
with his own eyes cut no ice - after all, haven’t we all mistaken a bush for an
animal when it is dark and we are tired? Berton should just put everything
behind him and move on - nothing or virtually nothing happened and it is
certainly not worth thinking or worrying about. Ironically (or perhaps
predictably) Berton’s discussion with Kelvin follows the same pattern - Berton
feels he has something very important to say, his attempt to explain gets
interrupted and the conclusion is that probably nothing happened, and even if it did, it does not have any significance and
won’t affect the plans of the people who count. The reality of Berton’s
experience - the moment that shattered a lifetime of disciplined
professionalism - is denied, derided and discounted. What a ridiculous man!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Actually, he is a generous man. Humiliated (again), and confused and full of
doubt, he doesn’t abandon his mission and, after storming off, makes a video
call to pass on the information he hadn’t succeeded in sharing. After he left
Solaris, he made contact with the family of one of the missing scientists whom he
had been searching for when he got pulled into the fog. The scientist had
separated from his wife shortly before or after the birth of their son, a child
whose features were those of the baby Berton had seen bobbing on the ocean on
Solaris. More Berton nonsense? Perhaps, but Kelvin should bear it in mind when
he gets to the planet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what should we, the viewer, make of Berton’s
experience? Later we learnt that the Ocean can project ideas from an
individual’s unconscious, so perhaps the garden and the baby reflect what the
missing scientists were longing for or were worried they would never see again.
But why is this experience so destabilising for Berton? Later, he himself has a
son and, although he is a rather preoccupied father, the boy offers him love
and comfort, which he appreciates. (Interestingly, the mother is again very
absent). In fact, babies and children are wildly out of place in the world of
Solaris research and exploration, and in Berton’s world of technical
proficiency and professional duty. What place in these worlds for vulnerability,
growth and uncertainty? Really there should be no baby, but there is - only
it’s a monster. It hasn’t developed, it has just grown; but growth without
development is a horrible distortion. This is not a baby that warms the heart -
it’s a baby that makes you wish you had never been born. (And why, one might
ask, is that?)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">More Unwanted Guests<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sKaddaribuU/U8zg5l19_bI/AAAAAAAAAec/5Hr1_wl9d-8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.43.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sKaddaribuU/U8zg5l19_bI/AAAAAAAAAec/5Hr1_wl9d-8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.43.08.png" height="280" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">When Kelvin gets to the Solaris space station, there are
only two men on it - the loveable Snaut and the ruthless Sartorius. There was a
third man - Giberian, a sensitive, philosophical type who was the first person
to be sent Ocean-created “guests” and who committed suicide. Why? Sartorius’s
verdict is clear - he was a coward. When the team’s research started to
generate difficult-to-deal-with effects, he lost his scientific discipline,
wallowed in his emotions and then gave up. An alternative explanation is
loneliness and fear of madness. Giberian was the first person to be affected,
so maybe he thought it was just something to do with him or that there was something
wrong with him. There is an element of truth in this, but from a video message
he left for his friend Kelvin it is clear that he recognised that others were
also likely to get visitors. So perhaps it was the nature of his visitor? But
we see her - a young girl in a blue negligee. Hardly a frightening apparition
and she seems devoted to Giberian - in the video we see her bringing him a
glass of milk. But he pushes her away and doesn’t want to have anything to do
with her. Is this a guilty conscience? Is she someone he was involved with or
wanted to be involved with in a way he now condemns? Or is it just that her
innocence and submissiveness is painfully out of kilter with where he is and
whom he feels he is? Whatever the detailed explanation, Giberian's conclusion
is that he does not deserve to be alive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1MqYbxE4E1I/U8zhmPERgWI/AAAAAAAAAeg/rc_NwZnaMWo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.45.42.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1MqYbxE4E1I/U8zhmPERgWI/AAAAAAAAAeg/rc_NwZnaMWo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.45.42.png" height="358" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Giberian’s response to his visitor is one extreme - he
accepts the visitation as a judgement, tries to live with it but is unable to
do so. Sartorius goes to the other extreme - he denies the visitors any
significance. They are an irritation, a nuisance, and a trial or rather, since
those words are already too emotional a description, they are a phenomenon that
we must seek to understand and then learn to control. In the face of this
crisis, Sartorius jettisons his humanity and clings to his role as a scientist.
It is not hard to see whose response Tarkovsky has most sympathy with. At
least, Giberian was brave enough and human enough to acknowledge that the
appearance of his visitor raised questions about who he was; and if he could
not unravel those questions in a positive way, at least he confronted them and
make a choice that was real and his, even if despairing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Snaut handles things
differently from both of his colleagues. He is a man of compromise. He does not
deny his humanity or seek to block out the reality and the meaning of the
visitors; he just tries to find ways to get by. In part, he does this by not
taking things too seriously. He pretends that his visitor’s being there is not
that unusual, and he keeps himself constantly busy in a manic attempt to
distract himself. When he can, he tries to laugh about the situation or see the
irony in it. But his struggle is as desperate as Sartorius’s (or for that
matter, Gibarian’s); and, while the violence of Sartorius’ denial is repulsive,
the pathos of Snaut’s attempt to cope is deeply moving. The man is a wreck and,
although his intelligence and his resilience are impressive, it really doesn’t
look as if he is going to hold out much longer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fNu6G_Hg_NQ/U8zhnURDoBI/AAAAAAAAAes/-5-1frOz-Fs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.45.54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fNu6G_Hg_NQ/U8zhnURDoBI/AAAAAAAAAes/-5-1frOz-Fs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.45.54.png" height="346" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kelvin, of course, is the one who finds a way through. His
first response to the appearance of his dead wife Hari is Sartorius-like - he
locks her in a rocket and, despite her screams, blasts her into space. But he
is fortunate in who his visitor is - or perhaps the Ocean has finally worked
out how to choose the right visitor. Kelvin is a well-defended man, but he has
one weak spot (or possibly two) - his love for his wife meant something to him
and he can’t quite reconcile himself to throwing it away (just as he can’t
quite draw the line under his love for his lost mother). Kelvin makes a
serious attempt to come to terms with his visitor. That involves taking them both seriously, being open to the pain of experiencing and thinking
about things. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ironically (and in a way that creates some difficulties for the
viewer), Kelvin is not a very sympathetic character - he is arrogant,
narcissistic and a bit superficial. He is the hero of the film, but he is also
the hardest character to admire. He does work hard on his relationship with
Hari, but it is a struggle for him to admit his feelings for her, and even by
the end of the film he still doesn’t seem to have taken on board the idea that
a relationship involves two people and that you should at least try to see
things from two perspectives rather than just one. So Kelvin and Hari never
make it to a happy relationship - in fact, towards the end they are arguing
just as much ever. But they do have a relationship and Kelvin does acknowledge
both his need for contact and his difficulty in sustaining it. He is a wiser
man at the end of the film - still sad, but able to experience his sadness and
to try to make sense of it, so there is hope and an openness to the possibility
of growth. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Problem of Hari. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kelvin’s dead wife Hari (or the Ocean’s
recreation of her) is at the emotional heart of the film. Philosophically, one
might think the big question she raises is: “What makes a living entity a human
being?” or “When should we treat a living entity as human?”, but Tarkovsky is
not very interested in that sort of question. In fact, Hari is the most human
person in the whole film - she certainly serves as a role model for the men as
to what being human does (or could) involve. Sartorius, of course, tells her
that she is nothing - a matrix, a mechanical reproduction of the past. It is a
brutal assault on her vulnerability, and she staggers under the blow; but she
doesn’t take refuge in denial and she stays committed to thinking and feeling -
unlike Sartorius, who smashes his glasses in pain and frustration and wanders
off, muttering unconvincingly about others taking the easy route. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are we
nothing? And if we are something, can we accept the something we are? The
Ocean’s actions pose these questions to everyone on the space station, and the
person who grapples with them most directly and most honestly is Hari. As a
result, she learns and grows through the film, so that eventually she is much
more than the Hari that was. Her first incarnation is child-like - unfazed by
the strange situation she finds herself in, she accepts the good things it has
to offer and seems to have little sense that anything could go wrong. She
cannot explain her need to be in visual contact with Kelvin at all times, but
she loves him and she trusts him - until he shuts the rocket door and
blasts her screaming into space. Her second incarnation is more knowing and
more painfully aware of her need for Kelvin - when he accidentally shuts
another door on her, she is torn to pieces by her desperate need
for him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hari’s search to understand who (or what) she is has a terrible
pathos, which is itself hard to endure. At times - for example, when she
suggests to Kelvin that she may have epilepsy - we risk slipping into
Sartorius-like complacency and forgetting that her situation of not knowing is
not so different from our own. Generally, however, what we experience is
sympathy with her pain and admiration for her willingness to face up to the
truth. At one point Hari finds a picture of herself and only by looking in the
mirror does she recognise who the photo depicts - it’s a heart-rending moment.
We may like to think that “finding ourselves” is an exciting voyage of
discovery, but as Hari’s experience demonstrates, recognising that you don’t know
who you are is a terrifying experience. Instinctively, she turns to Kelvin for
companionship - “Do you know yourself?” she asks, to which his defensive and
not very convincing answer is: “As much as any Man does”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-93aCdiLHwKU/U8zhpFR48DI/AAAAAAAAAe0/aMQ2_i3rlEA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.46.03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-93aCdiLHwKU/U8zhpFR48DI/AAAAAAAAAe0/aMQ2_i3rlEA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.46.03.png" height="382" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hari’s search for
truth may make her seem like Sartorius, but Sartorius does not want to
understand, he wants to control. In fact, the response of Sartorius (and the
other scientists) to the Ocean shows that it is not knowledge itself that they
want; rather what they cannot cope with is not knowing, not understanding. If
the Ocean is a mystery, an Other that cannot be subsumed into the reassuring
conformity of the known, then it would be better it was destroyed. The Ocean is
not seen as something that we might enter into dialogue with; rather it is a
threat to the idea that Man knows (or one day will know) everything. Science is
supposed to be about going beyond our own limitations and seeing the world
objectively, but in <i>Solaris</i> that search for knowledge does not look very
open-minded; on the contrary, as exemplified in the character of Sartorius, it
looks like a blind and desperate insistence that the only right way to see the
world is the way we humans see it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">By contrast, Hari is open to difference. While the men argue
over which of them is right, she highlights the different way each of them
reacts and sees this as something to accept and to welcome. While Kelvin
strives to live in an impossible (and potentially rather bland) harmony with
her, Hari wants to face up to their differences in the past and their
difficulties in the present. She is also prepared to recognise the wider
context of her relationship with Kelvin and the fact that this can generate
conflict. After seeing a video in which Kelvin’s mother appears, she says, hurt
and confused: “That woman hated me”. Kelvin, of course, wants to sweep
everything under the carpet: “But you never met her”. To which Hari replies:
“Why are you trying to confuse me? I remember perfectly well how we had tea
together. And how she told me to go away”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Ocean’s visitors confront Kelvin
and his colleagues with aspects of themselves that they are reluctant to
recognise or have anything to do with. Ironically, Hari faces a similar sort of
issue in relation to her past. As Sartorius’s laboratory tests confirm, she is
not Hari - if you prick her finger to take a “blood” sample, there is no need
(and no point) in giving her cotton wool to staunch the bleeding. So how can
“Hari” relate to Hari? At some points in the film, she relates with hate and
envy - the only way she could be herself would be if she could kill the other
Hari and destroy all trace of her. Later, she seems to come to terms with
her own identity (and her difference), but is haunted by the fear that
Kelvin won't be able to deal with her 'otherness': “I disgust myself. You must
find me disgusting too. You do find me disgusting”, she screams. Part of the
difficulty of real contact with others is that it puts you in contact with
yourself. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2rbqGSGphXI/U8ziP6KyaMI/AAAAAAAAAe4/VFtd5ESJ_WQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.48.57.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2rbqGSGphXI/U8ziP6KyaMI/AAAAAAAAAe4/VFtd5ESJ_WQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-21+at+10.48.57.png" height="274" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972 </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hari has one other problem - she cannot die. Snaut, of course, jokes
about this and talks about Satorius working on the Faustian problem of how to
find a remedy for immortality; but when he is confronted with Hari coming back
to life, he runs away - he cannot stand to watch these pseudo- resurrections.
They make a joke of death and even for Snaut that is a joke too far. Towards
the end of the film, Hari tries to choose suicide, but all she achieves is a
painful death and an even more painful revival. Unlike Giberian’s suicide,
Hari’s suicide attempt seems abrupt - an impulsive suicide of despair. She has
reached a point where she no longer has the strength to go any further. But she
has no choice but to go on. Her suicide would have been less meaningful than
Giberian’s, but her inability to die made the attempt transparently
meaningless. By the end of the film, she does achieve death, and this time it
is a chosen death based on an understanding of who she is and what she wants.
Eventually, Hari dies but she dies with dignity, and it is a better death than
all her previous deaths including the death on Earth of the real Hari.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Coming Home</span><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the end of the film, as they reflect on all that has
happened, Snaut tells Kelvin that it is time for him to return to Earth. The
question is raised of whether Snaut still has a connection to earth (and so
whether it will ever be time for him to return), but the focus is Kelvin, and
it is clear that he will go back and go back a different man. The theme of
homecoming is highlighted in the meditation on Brueghel’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Return of the Hunters</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">
painting. Interestingly (and appropriately), Hari is first draws our
attention to it. What can a scene of medieval hunters returning to the
warmth of their homes in the depth of winter mean to her? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mOgbt_yNLe0/U8zi3cCr6SI/AAAAAAAAAfI/HXFwJt8HAaI/s1600/6531413399_4036594feb_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mOgbt_yNLe0/U8zi3cCr6SI/AAAAAAAAAfI/HXFwJt8HAaI/s1600/6531413399_4036594feb_z.jpg" height="442" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.545454025268555px; text-align: left;">Pieter Bruegel (the Elder)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.545454025268555px; text-align: left;"> 'The Return of the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.545454025268555px; text-align: left;">Hunters/Hunters </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16.545454025268555px; text-align: left;">in the Snow', 1565</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the beginning of
the film, Kelvin has no thoughts for his home - insofar as he seems capable of
thinking of anything, it is of his mission and its challenges. Sartorius too
has no time to think of home. He thinks only of expanding the certainties of
human knowledge until the whole universe is swallowed up. He is typically
contemptuous of Giberian’s wish to be buried on Earth - what sense does that
make? Is he missing the worms? But from Tarkovsky’s perspective, it is vital to
have a sense of where you come from. As Hari looks at the picture, she clearly
understands what it is like to come home, although perhaps she feels sad at the
thought that there is nowhere for her to come home to or that her sense of what
it might be like to come home is something she has stolen from someone else
(the “real” Hari).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kelvin’s sense of where he comes from grows during the film.
He (and the other scientists on Solaris) learn many painful lessons, but being
so far from the Earth also teaches them to love it and to accept their need for
it. Giberian comes up with the idea of tying bits of paper around the
ventilation ducts to create a noise that sounds like the rustling of leaves,
and, while Snaut and Kelvin embrace this simple innovation openly even
Sartorius makes use of it on the quiet. It is a noble thing to go where no Man
has gone before, but it looks more like a flight than a sacrifice if you refuse
to accept the loss this means for you. How can you know whom you are or what
you are doing if you have lost any sense of connection to where you came from?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">More positively, Kelvin’s experience of Solaris allows him
to see the Earth and humanity as something that can be loved precisely because
it is something that could be lost. We like to think that in a sense the world
did not exist before we humans became conscious of it; and similarly, it suits
our narcissism to see the Ocean as passive and to focus on our efforts to make
contact with it. But this is a one-sided and defensive perspective. The
unfathomable mystery of Solaris confronts us with a world that does not need
us. Sartorius thinks we must understand the Ocean because it is Man’s destiny
to understand Nature - as if our not understanding Solaris is Solaris’ or the
universe’s problem rather than our own. Kelvin comes to understand that we ourselves
are just a small part of Nature, but that still makes us something precious and
worthy of love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sartre said that hell is other people, but he was wrong. Hell
is our difficulty in dealing with our need for other people. This is the slow
and painful journey Kelvin takes. He starts the film an intensely lonely
figure, but his experiences on Solaris force him to confront the reality of his
relationship with Hari. They also bring him back to earlier relationships and
earlier losses. It is hard to know quite what to make of Kelvin’s mother and of
his relationship to her - she is loving and beautiful, but she also seems
slightly cold and distant. Kelvin clearly loved his mother, but while she was
alive, he seems to have resented his need for her and when she died, he seems
to have felt desperately abandoned. After a radiogram of his thoughts have been
transmitted to the Ocean, he falls into a fever and in a strange dream is at
last able to have contact with his mother that goes beyond his anger and
recognises his need, but in a realistic way that his loving and not-too-bad
mother can actually meet.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then there’s the father. If Kelvin’s relationship
to his mother is troubled, what hope is there for his relationship to his
father? As with his mother, Kelvin has great difficulty acknowledging what his
father means to him or the pain he feels at the distance between them. But,
unlike his colleagues, Kelvin has a chance to go home; and the film ends with
an image of him accepting his father and his father accepting him. So perhaps
life is not just about focussing on your mission and forgetting everything
else, maybe it is about feeling things and growing. Maybe contact with the
Other is possible and bearable after all.</span><br />
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QNNkdzmHgC8/U8zj_AeY-7I/AAAAAAAAAfU/YB6AnoWGBqg/s1600/960__solaris_blu-ray_4_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QNNkdzmHgC8/U8zj_AeY-7I/AAAAAAAAAfU/YB6AnoWGBqg/s1600/960__solaris_blu-ray_4_.jpg" height="276" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Solaris</i>, dir, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-70348565421656412442014-04-16T19:49:00.000+01:002014-04-17T23:42:45.463+01:00Faces of Dignity: On Béla Tarr’s 'Prologue'<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">by Kristóf Bodnár</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘It passes, but it does not pass away...’</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">László Krasznahorkai: <i style="color: black;">The Melancholy of Resistance</i><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title="">[i]</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"I
would like to make a film about the end of the world, then quit making
films", Béla Tarr declared in a 2008 <a href="http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/7/kovacs.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">interview</span></a> about his future
creative plans</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc;">[i]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: large;">
This aspiration eventually emerged in his 2011<i> magnum opus,</i> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1316540/"><i><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The
Turin Horse</span></i></a><span class="MsoHyperlink">,
</span> which
some critics do indeed consider his ‘last’ film.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #3d85c6;">[ii]</span></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> Although this thinkingfilm post is concerned with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425624/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_3"><i><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Prologue</span></i></a>, a rather unknown Tarr
short-film, this quotation is a good point of departure as it draws attention
to the idea of apocalypse at play in Tarr’s work. I want to draw out the
theme of apocalypse in his work and explain why Tarr’s films generally - and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Prologue</i> particularly –
are 'doing' philosophy: ‘film as philosophy’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That
Tarr chose the end of the world as the theme of his ‘last film’ is no surprise
to those familiar with his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oeuvre</i>: he
has never made a film on any other theme. But what sort of apocalypse is Tarr
showing us? And, more importantly, why is apocalypse so central to his film-thinking?
For Pólik, Tarr’s apocalypse starts with the decomposition of the social realm,
continues in the moral and metaphysical decline of the individuals’ world(s),
and culminates in total ontological and theological catastrophe.
This progression is most obviously seen in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The
Turin Horse</i>. As Pólik points out, the diversity of meanings of apocalypse
in Tarr’s movies is crucial to understanding this theme:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Apocalypse
can mean, and this is particularly important in the case of Tarr, contemplation
(<i style="color: black;">hazon</i>) and inspiration through
seeing (<i style="color: black;">nebua</i>). Since Tarr […] uses
the medium of film as the means of contemplation – he does not use it to
copy or mirror things, neither does he want to represent anything with it,
but to apprehend: to apprehend something that can only be apprehended in and
through pictures.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This, in my opinion, is true
of all important filmmakers. Indeed, some filmmakers seem driven by the urge to
provide us with the ‘therapy’ only art can give</span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref6"></a></span><span style="font-size: large;">. ‘Film
as philosophy’ in this sense means not simply depicting or showing (which would
be ‘film illustrating philosophy’) but thinking with, and through, film. As Polik puts it: ‘Tarr argues in a similar manner to
Nietzsche: if nothing else, art still can save us. Since art is a
reservoir of values and ideals confronting nihilism, so is film-art. [And] this
art should be like one which undertakes – in its subjective way, even on behalf
of philosophy – the task of telling the truth’.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Tarr's films also philosophise by simplifying
things – by creating cinematic and aesthetic approaches to seemingly abstract
issues that are revealed, on repeated viewings, to be crucially 'practical'. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Prologue</span></span></i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> encapsulates Tarr’s art
and way of seeing<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref10"></a> like an ocean in a drop. Despite
its seemingly mundane appearance, <i>Prologue</i> is an
apocalyptic-movie – although of a very ordinary sort: the film presents, in a
tacit, modest manner, the daily apocalypse of individuals and crowds. <i>Prologue</i> was
a part of an omnibus-movie entitled <i>Visions
of Europe</i>, released in 2004. A short black-and-white <i>étude</i>, <i>Prologue</i> shows a simple and all too familiar story: homeless
people queue in front of a soup-kitchen of a charity organisation to
get bread rolls and a cup of hot tea. In the first half of the film the camera
slowly tracks towards the front of the unmoving queue, showing faces in
medium close-up, until it reaches the window of the soup-kitchen. Then the
camera halts, a window opens, and the crowd quietly begins to move. A
young girl starts serving them food, smiling down on each of them. ‘There is
not much to see here’, as the well-worn phrase suggests. One might wonder
whether, precisely because it is so emphasised, the film’s simplicity and ‘surface’
are deceptive. Passing beyond the veil of mere appearances one might
discover the film’s underlying philosophical <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref15"></a>depth. If you have not seen <i>Prologue</i>, it is well worth watching it now:</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like
Tarr's other films, <i>Prologue</i> is showing us symptoms that
demand therapy, but it does not offer quick and easy cures: the cure is to
be found outside the film-world. What is shown is inscribed in another meaning
of the word apocalypse: the epiphany and revelation of things in the End Times.
But the director only directs attention, refraining from judging or even signifying
the perspective from which it should be viewed. This is similar to
Wittgenstein’s technique of offering new aspects and objects of comparison,
while simultaneously emphasising the impossibility of determining that one is
‘correct’. Cures are (and can only be) found by the spectators. Or, to put it
in another way, it depends on whether we recognise ourselves as suffering the
'sicknesses' on the screen, or as those who must discover new 'cures'.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like
Wittgenstein, Tarr simply ‘re-arranges’ things that have been ‘in front of our
noses’ all the time. Of course, this simplicity sometimes masks itself in
various ways, such as over-stylisation, over-written symbolism,
allegories and (sometimes literally) end-less, unclosed plot lines. This is
especially true of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Werckmeister Harmonies</i> and <i>The Turin Horse, </i>However, these
techniques mirror the difficulty and opacity of the world. They
ironically unveil the artificiality and deceptiveness of self-propagated
difficulty, and serve to mask the underlying simplicity and banality: the
banality of evil, selfishness, betrayal and perpetual decay; the banality of
humanity, humanism and dignity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tarr’s
dialectical, self-questioning mode of representation is a central concern of my
reading of <i>Prologue</i>. ‘Self-questioning’ and ‘self-reflection’
gather another meaning in <i>Prologue</i>. At first, one might expect
something graspable (a ‘conclusion’ or solution), from this seeming documentary
of a group of downtrodden homeless people. But as the short run time comes to an
end, one might wonder whether this ‘story’ is much more about oneself and one’s
relation to what is on screen, as opposed to any content or
‘message’. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another
reason that <i>Prologue</i> is film as philosophy is its minimalist form:
the almost total absence of a storyline or 'plot', the lack of
monologue or dialogue, and the seeming hiatus of any drama. Are we
presented with a story without action, or actions that do make for a coherent
‘story’? In a sense, all we are presented with is time, the most ordinary world:
life itself. When asked why he makes films, Tarr answered: “One desperately
hangs on to the camera, as the only depository of the supposed truth. But what
should I shoot when everything is mendacious? Because I hate stories, since
stories make people believe that something has happened. However, nothing
happens; we are only fleeing from one state into another. As today only states
exist – all stories are out-dated, have become inferior common-places, ceased
to exist or are dissolved. Thus nothing is left but time. Probably that’s the
only true thing – real time: years, days, minutes and seconds. We die either of
making films or of not making them. But we cannot get away with it. For our
fate can only be corroborated by the films we make.”</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">***<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To
understand how this sparse film can indeed do (dialectic, therapeutic or
otherwise) philosophy, I shall first turn to the title. At first
glimpse it seems – just as the whole film – rather simple. ‘<i>Prologue</i>’
derives from the ancient Greek πρoλογος, which means foreword. It is important
to note that the second particle – ‘logos’ – is understood and used
in different senses, most commonly (but not exclusively) as
words, speech, reason, ground, essence and truth. This analysis relies on some
of these meanings, but focuses mainly on its use as word and truth, essence. It
is also worthwhile considering the semantic richness of the ‘pro’-particle
in <i>Prologue</i>. We can understand it as the word ‘before other or
more important words’ (as in literary or academic texts),
or in the broader sense of words that anticipate other words, before any
word can – or should – be articulated. Both are present in this movie,
and play an inherently functional role.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">To begin with, the film is a
prologue in a much straightforward sense: it was the opening movie of the New
York Film Festival in 2004. This date is also important from
another perspective: in 2004, its release date, Hungary became a member
state of the European Union, so the film’s ‘foreword-ness’ can be
understood as: before we ‘enter’ Europe, we have to talk about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> first<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref16"></a> - we
have to talk about what should be left behind before we enter the ‘land of
freedom, equality and fraternity’. </span>Thus
understood, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prologue</i> can be seen as
exposing a common fear shared by opponents of ‘poor’ Eastern European
countries lining up to become members of the EU. In this sense, it
is an allegory of ‘poor nations’ awaiting the ‘free-meal’ granted by richer member-states.<span style="color: black;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;">In a
more abstract sense, the title, as the mirror of the whole film, alludes to the
primacy of pictures over words, of showing over saying. Showing tacitly, not propagandising
by ‘shouting’ – for in a trivial, yet important sense, we only see what Tarr is
‘talking about’ (we only see the girl in the soup kitchen saying: ‘Bon
appetite!’).</span> <span style="color: black; font-size: large;">On a structural level this afore-ness
is reflected in the camera-movement. One might think at first
that when the camera halts one can leave behind this sad waiting
mass. The slow lateral camera movement yields a feeling of an eternal,
teleological precession<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref17"></a> or development that might
raise one’s expectations of a possible salvation or solution: </span><span style="font-size: large;">‘a
cyclical process returning to itself while having to create the illusion of moving forward’</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">[vi]</span></a><span style="font-size: large;">.</span></span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="font-size: x-large;" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;">This is juxtaposed to the extreme slowness of the
tracking, the casual close-ups on the faces, and Mihály Víg’s hopeless, ever loudening
waltz-like soundtrack. But when the camera stops, what seemed to be the
fore-word becomes the word – the logos – itself. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Logos – now understood as
truth –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is something that is,
philosophically speaking, always on the move, ‘captured’ only in its dynamicity<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref18"></a>. The ‘fore-ness’ in this sense, is a
mirror of the expectations shared by these downtrodden
people hoping to bread and tea. There is a small, but important joke
here: the girl starts dispensing the food before she is ‘supposed’ to, the
clock shows that it is only nearly twelve o’clock. This is the crucial point:
after this ‘fore-word’ the ‘climax’ (the ‘word’) unfolds in its absence. It is a
foreword to nothing, to a nothingness – yet, to a nothingness that, means
everything for those standing in line<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref19"></a>. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">As Bíró notes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prologue</i>’s crowd scene has its parallel, and predecessor, in the famous crowd scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Werckmeister; </i>while we are initially unaware what these people
are doing, there is an uncanny, even doomed aura to the scene. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Werckmeister</i> ends in a scene of the
destruction of a hospital, yet in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prologue</i>
the 'end' is a failure to produce any similar conclusion. The crowd’s </span>silent and patient waiting for something always just to come is the ‘real thing’, the
‘real’ logos. It is, metaphorically, time itself. It is not a pro-logos, not a
fore-word in the sense that there would be something better to come. This
eternal movement<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_ednref20"></a> (the movement of the queue,
the caring movements of the girl) is the only logos, the only truth<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>per se</i>. Yet, this chain of
movement can be interpreted as the lack of any movement, too, since the
movement of the camera and the movement of the mass – given their opposing
directions – cancel each other out. History cannot be divided into proto-states
and end-states. There is no eschatology,
no messianic, teleological direction of history in Tarr’s films. There
is no end of history to write a prologue to, no (r)evolution. All we are left with
is time itself, the eternal present, the eternal presence of the
need and demand for care.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">***<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now to
the other sense of prologue, i.e. ‘fore-ness’ now understood as ‘before any
word can or should be spoken’. The deed of the homeless people
is waiting itself. This is a real action, and not merely the
absence of an action. We have here the ability, in the form of
a silent and modest action, to wait until one
becomes strong enough, human-enough, to perform an act. Care just for
the sake of caring, care just for the sake of the Other. But the demand for
care cannot (and should not) be said – it is manifest. To rephrase this in a Levinasian
manner: the transcendence, the imperative of care, should not be
sought in the heavens or in ethical and philosophical handbooks,
but on the face of each and every individual. This silent demand is shown through the slow, modest, and at the same time inexorable
depiction of faces. It simultaneously presents individuality and universality,
unity and diversity, particularity and generality. This differentiates<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Prologue</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>from either propaganda or mere
illustration. And another of Levinas’ ideas – ethics as
optics – is also present in this film, through cinematographic means and
approaches. This film speaks - about ethics, about dignity, about
ourselves and the others – in as much as it ‘simply shows’, questioning our
responsibility and ethical stances.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black;">Prologue</span></i><span style="color: black;">’s
silent dialectic</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span>can also be understood in
light of Wittgenstein’s imperative: “Don’t think, look!” Firstly, one can
take it at face value: don’t think about humanity or dignity, just look at
it - recognise it without reflection. But then we can turn the table, and
reverse the imperative: “Don’t just look, think about it - for the superficial
interpretation can be deceptive and shallow. Watching it over and
over again, and thinking with it, one might return to the ‘first’
interpretation: to be able to think about dignity and humanity one need
only open our eyes and recognise for the first time what has always
been staring us in the face on the faces of the others. As Péter Balassa puts
it in his analysis of the <i style="color: black;">Werckmeister
Harmonies</i>: ‘Tarr, again as a disciple of the old great masters, chose the
hard way both in professional and technical respects, since the crowd in his
works (is) never fully faceless, not a mere mass. Béla Tarr’s camera always succeeds
to highlight a portrait. His art of face and crowd, trained on Rembrandt and
Eisenstein, is impersonally personal … the mere act of the slow and detailed
presentation of the face preserves, without an exception, the memory of
dignity, fallibility’.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn7" name="_ednref7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
real ‘therapeutic’ potential of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prologue</i>
lies in the recognition that we must question our attitude toward what we see
on the screen and when leaving the movie-theatre, heading back out into the
street. The closing credits of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prologue</i>
disallow our seeing the crowd as a nameless mass: it is made up of individuals,
each one of them logos, truth<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>per
se</i>. This question of identity, and the problem of individuality and its
relation to community is the film’s central concern. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Auguste Comte famously
claimed that the individual is always a mere abstraction abstracted from the
only positive, actually existing reality: the reality of community. When
we catch sight of the crowd, we could, in a sense, perceive them as a
‘mass’ and ourselves as detached passers-by. One might be inclined to think about
‘them’ in political, sociological problems, in terms of ‘social theory’ or
‘social science’. Then, when we stop - when the camera halts – they
become individuals. Yet again, Tarr’s greatness lies in his ability to show
this duality. We do not see the faces when we occupy a ‘fixed viewpoint’. We only see the movement of individuality. Cinematography can capture this duality: Immobility in movement, and movement in immobility. Either we are moving or the world is 'moving'; the face and the Epiphany of the demand for care is showing itself on the faces of the community. The face of the Other (ourselves) is always speaking to us. All we have to do is to see and listen care-fully. "Don't think: look!"</span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">***<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
final word should go to Tarr himself, talking about this film at the opening
ceremony of a documentary film festival dedicated to human rights: </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Given that
I am a filmmaker, I have brought you a movie instead of words. Faces. Looks
that are talking about human dignity. That is what we are to show: the dignity
of existence. I would kindly like to ask you to love those people who these
movies are about, it is not enough to feel solidarity. We demand more, people
demand more. We have only one life, it does make a difference, how it is like.
We have to live it with dignity...</span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Edited by Emma Bell</i></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span>
<!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><a href="http://ud-mhsc.academia.edu/KristofBodnar" target="_blank"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Kristóf Bodnár</span></a> </span>is part-time lecturer at the University of Debrecen Medical and Health Science Centre, Behavioural Sciences. </span><br />
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[i]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Tarr, <span style="color: black;">cit. </span>Kovács, A. B. (2011) ‘Az utolsó
Tarr-film', <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Filmvilág </i>54:3,
p.4<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[ii]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See: Kovács (2011), and Pólik,
J. (2012) ‘A végpont igézete', <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alföld</i> 63:11,
pp.95-108<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[iii]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Pólik (2012), p.97 (my
italics)<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[iv]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid, p.98<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[v]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="color: black;">Tarr, cit. Kovács </span><span style="color: black;">A. B. (2008) ‘</span><span style="color: black;">The</span><span style="color: black;">
</span><span style="color: black;">World</span><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;">According</span><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;">to</span><span style="color: black;">
</span><span style="color: black;">Tarr</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">,</span><span style="color: black;"> </span><i><span style="color: black;">Kinokultura</span></i><span style="color: black;"> </span><a href="http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/7/kovacs.shtml"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">www.kinokultura.com/specials/7/kovacs.shtml</span></a><span style="color: black;"> </span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[vi]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Kovács (2008) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="color: #6fa8dc;">[vii]</span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="color: black;">Balassa, P. (2001) ‘Zöngétlen tombolás', <i>Filmvilág</i> 44:2, pp.8-15</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-31302836963042273642014-04-14T13:22:00.003+01:002014-04-15T12:31:38.070+01:00Rupert Read on Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia'<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">thinkingfilm co-founder Rupert Read has written a fabulous article on Lars von Trier's philosophical sci-fi masterpiece, <i><a href="http://www.melancholiathemovie.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Melancholia</span></a></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dBIKQffofV8/U00MdhbatHI/AAAAAAAAAdA/rRCGrc5LAVM/s1600/melancholia-pic-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dBIKQffofV8/U00MdhbatHI/AAAAAAAAAdA/rRCGrc5LAVM/s1600/melancholia-pic-4.jpg" height="296" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Melancholia</i>, dir. Lars von Trier, 2011</td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">'An allegory of the 'therapeutic' reading of a film: on <i>Melancholia</i>' in Sequence 1:2 is a response to Steven Shaviro's <a href="http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence1/1-1-melancholia-or-the-romantic-anti-sublime/#section9" target="_blank">'<span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Melancholia: or the Romantic Anti-Sublime</span>'</a> which appeared in the inaugural issue of <a href="http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Sequence</span></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In his response, Read draws on both Wittgenstein and Heidegger to offer a moving personal and philosophical account of melancholia, emphasising the ways in which von Trier's film raises important questions about the experience of depression and the end of our planet. He argues that <i>Melancholia</i> 'functions as philosophy as therapy in the best sense of that word, in forcing upon its viewer the responsibility to grow its truth beyond the point that it itself manifests. It offers us some conditions of possibility for what we might risk calling a 'political sublime': through offering us a vision of communion.' </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The full article - which is well worth reading, along with Shaviro's - can be found <a href="http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/sequence1/1-2-an-allegory-of-a-therapeutic-reading/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">here</span></a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-49091747753196819442014-03-15T12:50:00.001+00:002014-05-05T18:52:16.398+01:00Specious Evolution: The Horror of Darwin in Alien & Prometheus<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt;">By Emma Bell</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes
then </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">shows </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">them to us </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in rough disguise: </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the monster and the </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">rocket” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">- attr. W.H. Auden,
cit. <i>Alien</i> <i>Script, </i>1978</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">“You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you?
Perfect organism. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Its structural perfection is matched only by its
hostility. I admire its purity. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A survivor </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">unclouded by conscience, </span>remorse, or delusions of morality” - 'Ash', <i>Alien</i></span><br />
<i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M71SBVgW5eg/Uo0fQwRx6uI/AAAAAAAAARA/SsyJqyDonb0/s1600/Alien-1979.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M71SBVgW5eg/Uo0fQwRx6uI/AAAAAAAAARA/SsyJqyDonb0/s640/Alien-1979.jpeg" height="480" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Alien</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
Auden-attributed quote above was an epithet to the shooting script to <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=nv_sr_2" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Alien</span></a></i>,
written by Walter Hill and David Giler, based on a story by Dan O'Bannon and
Ronald Shusett, and directed by Ridley Scott. The quote
invites us to question the intentionality of the creators of this masterpiece
of sci-fi horror: which of our deep ‘fears and hopes’ does the film extract
from and 'show' us? Is it, as Auden suggested, our fear of the Other - monsters,
predators, alien invasions - and our hopes for technology and exploration? I’d like to suggest that it
is something even deeper - the fear of life itself, and the hope that humanity
can overcome any threat to our ‘species supremacy’.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>On Film</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Stephen Mulhall set out his
reservations about film studies approaches to philosophical ideas in films,
asserting that films can not only reflect or engage with pre-existing
philosophical ideas but can ‘do’ philosophy. That is, that some films should be
seen as 'philosophy in action - film as philosophizing' (Mullhall, <i>On Film</i>, London: Routledge, 2008, p.2). Mulhall used
the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>series to exemplify his thesis,
drawing out the ways in which the series<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>engages
the viewer<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in philosophic
reflection<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>about the nature of
identity, personhood, and sexuality. Mullhall also commented on how the films engage with Darwinism in terms of competition
between mutually ‘alien’ species. I want to expand on this and look
at the ways in which <i>Alien </i>portrays a lived reality of evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If we accept
three premises: 1) species evolution is the consequence of survival, 2) there
is probably extra-terrestrial life in the universe, and 3) variation and
entropy are conditions of the universe, then we can accept that species
evolution and extinction are inexorable. This would mean that all life forms
across the entire universe are both conditional and transitory. To be
superseded by a bluntly existing creature, not a ‘perfected’ human, runs
counter to what might be thought of as human ‘evolution’. It may be
horrific to think of oneself - a human - not as a grand being to be
transcended by something even ‘greater’, some Nietzschean <i>Übermensch</i>, but as a comestible
adaptation of the circumstances of life. This – not the horrible behaviour
of the aliens – is the power of the sci-fi classic <i style="color: black;">Alien</i> and its prequel, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Prometheus</span></a></i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">A brief
summation of the theory of evolution is useful here to emphasise that evolution
does not equate to either ‘survival’ or ‘perfection’. Regardless of one’s
superstitious or spiritual beliefs, organisms change over time and new species
of organisms develop. This happens as adaptive selection in relation to factors such as environment, predators, disease,
and competition for resources. Evolution – often parsed as ‘survival of the
fittest’ - is defined as genetic changes in a population of like organisms over
a discernable period, which afford selective advantages for reproductive
success and propagation. Natural selection – the reproduction of those
specimens best adapted to reproduce in a given time and place - is not the only force driving evolution,
nor is evolution a teleological process of species perfection or environmental</span> <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homeostasis" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">homeostasis</span></a><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">.</span><span style="color: black;">Other mechanisms of evolution include genetic mutation, migration,
environmental changes, and genetic drift. </span>While evolutionary change is not an innate ‘force’ and has no ‘aim’, it nonetheless functions to encourage survival - a paradox I will address later. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is crucial to grasp that an
evolutionary change does not make an organism “better” in the sense of the
surviving generation necessarily being faster, stronger, larger, or more
intelligent. Species that evolve to flourish in a cool climate, for example,
will perish if that climate warms, or they are forced to migrate to a warmer
environment; as larger and faster animals need more food, they are more
vulnerable when resources are scarce or when they have to rest. Evolutionary
changes are neither linear nor purposive: animals probably first evolved feathers, for
example, to regulate body temperature - feathers only later became an advantage
predisposing creatures for the adaptive advantage of flight (‘Archaeopteryx’ -
the famous ‘feathered dinosaur’ fossil first discovered in 1861, just after
Darwin published his provocative theory of evolution - demonstrates this point,
being a creature in a stage of evolutionary transformation between lizard and
bird). In summation, evolution is neither perfect nor progressive – it is a
mindless process of gradual transformation of temporarily preferential variants unguided by romantic notions of benign forces or organic homeostasis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VooPLbMtzws/UqMwtISDQHI/AAAAAAAAAS8/5uTxw5ZaLEc/s1600/archaeopteryx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VooPLbMtzws/UqMwtISDQHI/AAAAAAAAAS8/5uTxw5ZaLEc/s1600/archaeopteryx.jpg" height="640" width="546" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="st" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Fossilised <em>Archaeopteryx</em></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
immediate horror of <i>Alien</i> is, of course, humans encountering
an unknown creature that has not evolved on Earth, and that preys on humans for its reproductive and resource
needs. That humans are at risk from being wiped out by predators is not in
itself the horror of <i>Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– after all, we are prey for creatures on Earth. The horror is that, taken out of its
terrestrial context, the human species is shown to be insignificant and
non-superior. Any speciesist ideas we may have of the markers of species
supremacy – intelligence, ethics, adaptableness, and technology – are not only
contingent but dangerously speciesist and possibly even specious. The film, then, struggles to reassert human species superiority by addressing the existential reality of evolution. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">'Speciesism'
is a concept in ethics that asserts that human animals assume supremacy over
other species and thus privilege themselves with more moral rights than non-human animals. In <i>Animal
Liberation</i>, Peter Singer defined it as ‘a prejudice or bias in favour of
the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of
other species’ (Singer,<i> Animal Liberation: 2nd Ed</i>, New York: Ecco, 2001, p.6.) Speciesism
– or 'homocentricity' - describes not only the behaviour of humans towards
non-human animals (that would run the risk of claiming bigotry when dealing
aggressively with predators) but also the ideology that humans are ‘superior’
in terms of intelligence, technology, adaptability, culture, biology etc.
Darwinism has, in some ways, contributed to speciesism in that his
'common ancestor' theory can be used by some to reinforce a homocentric
organisation of species superiority such as the Aristotelian or Christian
'Great Chain of Being' hierarchies (<i>scala naturae</i>) as well as Social
Darwinism. Instead of God at the apex of creation it is homo-sapiens -
specifically white, western, male, socially elevated ones. The existence in
sci-fi of beings or animals not of the Earth adds a new element to the debates
on humanity’s moral obligation to non-human animals.</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TMEKjK3s3-U/UyRuYjd-EmI/AAAAAAAAAcU/vu6mrogVMO4/s1600/chainofbeing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TMEKjK3s3-U/UyRuYjd-EmI/AAAAAAAAAcU/vu6mrogVMO4/s1600/chainofbeing.jpg" height="640" width="617" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #3e2626; line-height: 14.559999465942383px; text-align: start;">T</span><span style="color: #3e2626; line-height: 14.559999465942383px; text-align: start;">he Chain of Being, from Charles Bonnet's </span><span style="color: #3e2626; line-height: 14.559999465942383px; text-align: start;"><i>Œuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie</i>,</span><span style="color: #3e2626; line-height: 14.559999465942383px; text-align: start;">1779-83</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The very notion of an ‘alien’ is homocentric in that it implies that, even off-world, humans exclude themselves from notions of Otherness. How different might our way of being 'emplaneted beings' be if we understood ourselves as 'alien'? The idea that it is morally right to favour
humans over animals when making ethical choices breaks down when brought to the
level of pure survival or of the threat to the planet by, for example, human caused climate
change. To include beings or animals not of the Earth adds another community of
interest to the potential sphere of moral obligation. For example, are aliens
‘animals’ in that they are non-human life forms? If so, do they have 'rights'? In the human imagination aliens
have been constructed as having intelligence, culture, technology, and will, as
well as having none of those attributes at all. They can be vaguely 'humanoid' as well as/at the same time as being 'creatures'. Including an alien in the
sphere of any moral category seems depend on its potential threat to human existence, rather
than its capacity for rational thought (contemporary sci-fi films such as<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">District 9</span></a></i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>and<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Monsters</span></a></i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>play with screen stereotypes by
portraying non-predatory, animal-aliens that threaten only when
attacked).</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet, it is not
animal rights debates around speciesism that are most interesting in<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i style="color: black;">Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>(although that could be explored and,
perhaps, brought to dialogue with <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/with-power-to-frame-world-comes-great.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Phil Hutchinson’s thinkingfilm piece on </span></a><i><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/with-power-to-frame-world-comes-great.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Monsters</span></a> </i>and
<a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Rupert Read's<span class="apple-converted-space"> on </span></span></a><i><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Avatar</span></a>)</i>.
Rather it is the desperate and tenuous speciesist ideology of human supremacy
that drives it. In other words, the ideas explored in<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i style="color: black;">Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>that human evolution might involve not
a ‘perfected’ humanoid creature, but a human/alien hybrid, or possibly extinction, suggests that a) evolution operates across the universe in diverse environments that
demand different ‘superior’ adaptations, and b) human survival ultimately
plays out not on Earth, but in space. This is an recurring issue in sci-fi, as
inferred in <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/an-introduction-to-2001-space-odyssey.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Peter Krämer's thinkingfilm piece on <i>2001: a Space Odyssey</i></span></a>. The work of resolving fears of evolutionary change and extinction
in<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i style="color: black;">Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>is of finding some means of reasserting
human species superiority.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is
fruitless to insist upon philosophical or ‘scientific’ continuity in the
discourse on evolution across the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Alien</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> franchise, as there
are a few anomalies in the description and behaviour of the Alien species.
Rather, one can look at the ways in which the original film provokes anxieties about the force and trajectory of evolution by emphasising the life cycle of the creature and destabilising assumptions of humanity’s species supremacy. One can then
consider the ways in which those fears are explicated in the film’s ‘prequel’,</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Prometheus</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. It is also
significant that Ridley Scott directed both films because other</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">film directors modified the species
described in the original film.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Alien</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LyAfnUAHihg/UyRu57fo_4I/AAAAAAAAAcc/DVBY6Z6Mn2U/s1600/Alien-1979-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LyAfnUAHihg/UyRu57fo_4I/AAAAAAAAAcc/DVBY6Z6Mn2U/s1600/Alien-1979-007.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Man touched by Other, in <i>Alien</i> dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The two main threats to human survival in<span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><i>Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>are the alien itself and the actions of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that seeks to sacrifice its crew and exploit it. The specific, visceral horror is the creature’s symbiotic relationship to its prey – it hunts prey not only for its own sustenance but its existence. The creature is a manifestation of the fearful reality of life mutely exerting itself regardless of any need for ‘human’ qualities such as intelligence, self-awareness, language, or culture. As such, it embodies a fear of the supersession of humanity by a seemingly non-superior species. The other epithet to the <i>Alien</i> screenplay is 'We live as we dream: alone', a famous quote from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2021/2021-h/2021-h.htm" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Nostromo</span></i></a>, Joseph Conrad’s existentialist novel about capitalism and exploitation. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s mining spaceship in the film is named after Conrad’s book, foregrounding the Corporation’s appalling exploitation of workers as well as Conradian fears of colonialism and voyaging to a ‘dark’ continent. These anxieties are surely manifest throughout the film’s franchise, yet <i>Alien</i> speaks more directly to Auden’s fear of monsters in that its narrative is dictated by the consequences of an 'alien' process of inception, gestation, parturition, survival and, ultimately, of evolution.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">A synopsis is warranted to briefly underscore that the alien process of the 'creature's' lifecycle is central to the narrative. In 2122,
the Weyland-Yutani commercial spaceship Nostromo is returning to
Earth with its load of mineral ore and 7 crew members held in stasis for the
duration of the voyage home. When the ship intercepts an alien transmission,
the pilot computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Being obligated to investigate
any systematized transmission indicating possible intelligent extra terrestrial life, a party
descends to the origin of the transmission on moon LV-426, where they discover
the wreckage of a vast alien spacecraft. Inside they find the fossilised
remains of an alien crewmember ('spacejockey') and a large cluster of eggs, or
pods. One bursts open and an organism ('facehugger') attaches
itself to Kane, paralysing him.</span></div>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4mmUhX-ToE/UyRs6rg27MI/AAAAAAAAAcA/RLTq7q9iJg4/s1600/egg-room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4mmUhX-ToE/UyRs6rg27MI/AAAAAAAAAcA/RLTq7q9iJg4/s1600/egg-room.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finding the eggs in <i>Alien</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dFgckzJKeH0/UyRJZO28KKI/AAAAAAAAAag/BhUFghe2-pQ/s1600/alien-face-hugger.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dFgckzJKeH0/UyRJZO28KKI/AAAAAAAAAag/BhUFghe2-pQ/s1600/alien-face-hugger.png" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Face Hugger' in <i>Alien</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ripley refuses to let the infected crewmembers back on board, insisting they follow the Science Division's quarantine law, but Science Officer Ash defies her orders. He wants to extract the creature, dissect it and study it for scientific advancement. Eventually the 'facehugger releases Kane and dies. The ship continues its journey but Kane goes into convulsions and an alien bursts from his chest, killing him. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cekjgFKJ3-c/UyRtP97HZnI/AAAAAAAAAcI/O9BA-9x-1xo/s1600/Alien-chest-burster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cekjgFKJ3-c/UyRtP97HZnI/AAAAAAAAAcI/O9BA-9x-1xo/s1600/Alien-chest-burster.jpg" height="640" width="620" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Chest-burster' in <i>Alien</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">When the 'chest-burster' escapes, the crew must find and kill it. It rapidly grows into a huge, ferocious adult 'Xenomorph' (lit. 'alien-form') </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">When Ash tries to kill Ripley for
interfering with his 'specimin' she destroys him - revealing him to be an android.
The Weyland-Yutani corporation deployed Ash to intentionally
infect the crew of the Nostromo, thus capturing an alien sample and
bringing it home to develop and possibly weaponise. The crew was expendable in his mission. One
by one the alien picks off crewmembers, storing some in cocoons, until
only Ripley is left. She initiates the ship’s self-destruct sequence and
escapes in a tiny shuttle. The alien follows her into the shuttle where she
forces it out of the hatch, blasting it into space. She sets course
to Earth putting herself and Jones, the ship’s cat, into stasis.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JGdIn27W9V0/UyRJnrFb2JI/AAAAAAAAAao/X-cCuG9HPjc/s1600/alien-xenomorph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JGdIn27W9V0/UyRJnrFb2JI/AAAAAAAAAao/X-cCuG9HPjc/s1600/alien-xenomorph.jpg" height="428" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Xenomorph vs. Human in <i>Alien</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Themes of extinction, parasitism, and metamorphosis are integral to the narrative and the focus for generating horror. Metamorphosis is a necessity of the alien species survival, and an advantage for species dispersal. It maximises the possibility of propagation by ensuring diversity of hosts, temporary as opposed to fixed habitats, opportunity to maximise food supply, and widespread dispersal of animals – in short: it ensures the advantage of adaptation and flexibility. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The <span style="color: black;">alien</span> Xenomorph also has the advantage of being parasitic and
something approaching <span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holometabolous" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">holometabolous</span></a></span>. It has a similar
lifecycle to some </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Endoparasitoid" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">endoparasitoid</span></a> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">insects, including some species of flies, cockroaches, and
wasps. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">The Xenomorph lifecycle can be compared to that of <a href="http://eol.org/pages/1046634/overview" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><i>Ampulex Compressa</i> </span></a>- an
<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entomophagous" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">entomophageous</span></a> tropical wasp that stings and zombifies a cockroach host with
neurotoxins, then lays an egg on its leg and buries it alive. The larva that
emerges from the egg then devours the cockroach host, ultimately killing it. In <i>Alien</i>, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">the
creature's life cycle is similar yet it consists of four distinct phases
involving two separate obligate parasitic ‘creatures’, the metamorphoses
of which are dependent up on a dispensable host.</span></div>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yf0ZF5WmHrs/UyRJHN0ryFI/AAAAAAAAAaY/OGp8AeQyQkc/s1600/Ampulex.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yf0ZF5WmHrs/UyRJHN0ryFI/AAAAAAAAAaY/OGp8AeQyQkc/s1600/Ampulex.jpeg" height="460" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ampulex Compressa</i> approaching its prey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As android science
officer Ash admires, the alien is a ‘perfect organism. Its structural
perfection is matched only by its hostility’. The initial phase consists of egg
fertilisation and laying by a Queen Alien. The eggs are <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diapause" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">diapause</span></a> and, when
disturbed, release a <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sessile" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">sessile</span></a> larval parasite (‘face hugger’) that attacks
a host and deposit a pupa (embryonic Xenomorph) in the host's internal organs,
rendering the host docile. Facehuggers have a hard protective
coating, acid blood, and genetic material that reforms in response to atmospheric
conditions. The facehugger supplies the embryo rather like a placenta, and
the pupa feeds on the host. It destroys its host when it emerges as an infant
(‘chest-burster’) before growing into an imago (adult Xenomorph) within days.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Xenomorph is capable of instantaneous 'evolution' – its form varies depending
on its host as it has the ability to appropriate genetic material from its
host and it is physiologically capable of rapidly adapting to the atmosphere it finds itself born into. It uses host DNA to ‘evolve’ during gestation, becoming comparable with
its prey and adapting to its environment. The human phenotype is a
bipedal, insectoid vertebrate with acidic blood, a hard exoskeleton of 'protein
polysaccharides', and both external mandibles and a retractable inner <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pharyngeal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">pharyngeal</span></a> jaw of venomous teeth. As well as using them as hosts, <span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">Xenomorph capture creatures, storing them in
cocoons for feeding or impregnation at a later point. In later <i>Alien</i> films,
we learn that the alien species function as hives - super organisms generated
by a formidable Queen.</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> This is nonetheless </span>inferred in <i style="color: black;">Alien</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span>by showing the field of eggs as well
as the practice of nest building and encasing live victims as food storage.
Queens, which are much larger, more developed and more intelligent than ‘drone’
Xenomorph, control the actions of the lower creatures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">T</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">he admiration the android Ash has for the un-self-aware alien is
based on a shared lack of empathy or ‘purpose’; ‘I can't lie to you about your
chances’ he tells the crew, ‘but you have my sympathies’. The alien has no
discernible purpose other than its own existence and no moral compunction. A
more sentient life form would be a more purposeful predator, but Ash venerates as 'perfect' precisely it because it has so few ‘human’ characteristics, being ‘a survivor, unclouded by
conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality'. Unlike humans, the alien has no
‘reason’, and its practices of colonization and exploitation are
extramoral.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a
Darwinian nightmare, <i style="color: black;">Alien</i> is deeply problematic and yet it
reaffirms the idea of a 'monstrous' space at the very fount of existence, showing the subtle or dramatic changes inherent in the non-inear, non-progressive evolutionary process. In the documentary <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297720/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Alien Evolution</span></a></i> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">writer Dan O’Bannon was very clear about ‘sexual’ procreative contact and the alien’s evolutionary power being central to the film's horror: "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape, that's it. That's scary. That's scary because it pushes all our buttons, all of our unresolved feelings about sexuality". He went on to clarify that </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">the symbolism of "oral rape" by the impregnating facehugger was an intentional means of discomforting male viewers</span>. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">In this nightmarish primordial wrestle males can
play host to the next generation of life, but in so doing they are destroyed.
This is procreation without man - a Darwinian psychohorror of
reproduction (and not in that sense is it in any way a 'feminist' film in that
it points horrifically to the literal place of evolutionary change as the 'feminized', parastitized body). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.6666666865348816px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.6666666865348816px;">Critics might define Ripley by her moral stance towards her female biological capacity as a vessel for evolving creatures: she can make ‘people’, hence she can make 'creatures' - an act of biological warfare. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet the 'creature' that threatens to supersede humanity is in fact
amorphous - there is no 'Alien' and, horrifically, no individual entity to will
its own survival (the self-aware Queen Alien in the later films being an attempt to continue the franchise beyond its natural demise). To survive, the Alien
species, like some insects, separates its developmental stages into discrete
beings the purpose of each being to secure the next, more evolved stage in
its genesis. These discrete creatures nonetheless exert their roles and are
prepared - unlike humans - to die in order to complete their purpose and ensure
the perpetuation of the species.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The fears
being played out here are that we are not the <i>sine qua non</i> of
the universe's evolutionary exertion and that, like the Alien, we exist only to
exist: this exerting life in one biological form as opposed to another
demonstrates a paradox of Darwinism being in that a creature exists, adapts or
dies in futile and self-defeating defence of its NOT changing and to PREVENT
its supersession. Human beings are particularly guilty of this in our
fantasies of both a distinct human essence that transcends our brutish past, as
well as some distinction - biological, cultural, or cognitive - between our
ancestors and ourselves.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">What we see, then, is a reassertion of human
species superiority over a parasitoid predator defeated, in the end, like any
other animal, by human intelligence and technology. It took only one alien to wipe out Ripley's entire crew, so what if Earth were to be invaded by that species? Scott intended the
ending to be the Alien biting Ripley's head off and answering the distress call response from Earth in 'her' voice. That ending would have more clearly spoken to
the film's Darwinian anxieties and it is a great disappointment that he was not
able to end the film like that. That ending would have made the film a much more powerful existential horror
about evolution with no reassuring ideology about human species superiority. Had Scott done that, however, there could have been no sequels
and, possibly, no prequel... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Prometheus</i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KAH8ZlaQmGg/Uo0eDbk65kI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/qCqeIdq1eUw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-20+at+20.38.55.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KAH8ZlaQmGg/Uo0eDbk65kI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/qCqeIdq1eUw/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-20+at+20.38.55.png" height="478" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Prometheus</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">In </span><i style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">Prometheus</i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">, Scott was able to more directly focus the film’s theme of evolution, and in that film we see human species superiority more shakily defended, and the question of the origin of the species - human and Xenomorph - uncompromisingly addressed. </span>In <i>Prometheus</i> the
evolutionary horrors of the original <i>Alien</i> concept are brought
to the fore of a narrative that also speaks loudly to contemporary
debates around creationism, intelligent design, and evolution.The
premise of <i>Prometheus</i> is that the Weyland Corporation’s search
for extra terrestrial life has been on going for decades. Before the Nostromo
ever set on its voyage, Peter Weyland commissioned a search for not just aliens
but the origins of life itself, believing that non-supernatural intelligent designers
(the ‘Engineers’, or ‘Mala'kak’) created the human race. An alien is not so
much ‘humanoid’ as humans are ‘alienoid’.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></i></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black;">Prometheus</span></i> opens with an alien being sacrificing itself on an ancient Earth. The being drinks a black toxin whereupon its body disintegrates,
falling onto the water where its DNA becomes corrupted and reconstituted,
seeding Earth with alien life. <span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">Human life, then, is directly shown to be the result of a conscious process of </span><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exogenesis" style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">exogenesis</span></a><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4uoBq7FkHw/UyRKKsN6TvI/AAAAAAAAAbM/Nht9QSgX_mw/s1600/weta_engineer_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4uoBq7FkHw/UyRKKsN6TvI/AAAAAAAAAbM/Nht9QSgX_mw/s1600/weta_engineer_large.jpg" height="320" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Seeding Earth in <i>Prometheus</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">On Earth, two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, </span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">find evidence in ancient wall murals of beings who came to Earth and seeded it with humans. F</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.6666666865348816px;">unded by the Weyland Corporation</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.6666666865348816px;"> t</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">hey travel to </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">LV-223, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">a distant planet, where they find evidence of a </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.6666666865348816px;">civilisation</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"> as well as the severed head of an alien creature they take to be one of the 'engineers'. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Back on the ship, the head is analysed and the Engineer’s DNA is
discovered to be identical to that of the human race. The android David intentionally
infects Holloway with the black substance to see if it will change him and/or
cause him to impregnate Shaw with an alien.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On LV-223 abandoned crewmembers are attacked by serpent-like creatures and infected with
the black fluid. When the rescue crew arrives, David discovers a live Engineer
in stasis and a star map highlighting Earth. Holloway's infection is causing
him to violently change and when Weyland Corporation supervisor Vickers
refuses to let him aboard, he bids her kill him. Shaw is indeed ‘pregnant’
with an alien creature and, rather than return to Earth in stasis, as David
wants, she escapes into a surgery machine and ‘aborts’ the creature. Peter
Weyland is found in stasis on the ship, having contrived the mission solely to beg the Engineers
for more life. The crew theorize that LV-223 was a military base for
Engineers who were using the black DNA toxin as a biological weapon.
When David awakens the dormant Engineer and tries to communicate with it, it decapitates him and kills Weyland. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v9N6005agQI/UyRK6Ub9cUI/AAAAAAAAAbg/mM3VOs6TWKw/s1600/engineer_speaks_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v9N6005agQI/UyRK6Ub9cUI/AAAAAAAAAbg/mM3VOs6TWKw/s1600/engineer_speaks_2.jpg" height="266" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Speaking to the 'Engineer' in <i>Prometheus</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">David’s severed android head is able to tell the horrified crew that the
ampoules of black toxin are destined for Earth: our creators have for some reason decided to destroy their creation. When the Engineer tries to take
off for Earth, Shaw convinces the remaining crew to crash Prometheus into its ship, but
the Engineer survives. Shaw’s aborted alien foetus has also survived and grown
to gigantic size. When the Engineer attacks Shaw in the escape pod, she
releases ‘her’ offspring upon him. Shaw and what is left of David take off in
an alien ship to the Engineers' home planet to discover why they created, then
tried to destroy, humanity. An alien bursts out the dying Engineer's
chest (cue: </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Prometheus 2</i>). </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black;">
Prometheus</span></i> modifies the Darwinian premise of the first <i style="color: black;">Alien</i> film,
as well as acting as a rebuff to the metaphysical yearnings and ‘species supremacism’ of
creationist or intelligent design theorists. The search for the origins of the
species has shifted in <i style="color: black;">Prometheus</i> from the evolutionary
development of life involuntarily exerting itself as varied forms, to
fixed-point intentional interventions in the development of life in the
universe. <span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">There have been scientific
theories of extra-terrestrial processes of evolution, such as <a href="http://www.panspermia-theory.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><i>Panspermia</i></span></a></span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -0.5pt;">–
the theory that life exists throughout the universe, and that planet Earth was
inseminated by genetic material (usually bacteria) on space debris such as
meteoroids and asteroids. The theory does not yet explain how life initially
began in the universe, only how might have been propagated.</span></span><br />
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></i>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Prometheus</i> explores
the idea that what some see as premeditated features of life on Earth are indeed the
result of intelligent design, but adds a twist to the God/science debate by
positing that the ‘designers’ are neither supernatural nor benevolent. What is
more, their design (us) is not at the axis of their existence. Their
‘superiority’ is their creation of humans as a kind of technology; what
little the voyagers learn about their creators leaves them as baffled about reasons
for life on Earth as they were before.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The alien that hunted down Ripley
through the universe is shown to be only one species in a much larger narrative in which
human life is actually a synthetic supplement to a larger process of evolution
taking place across galaxies. It is added that metamorphosis is a designed
feature of the alien species - the alien genus is released via a vector - an
organism that spreads pathogens between hosts. The black virus is used to
intentionally re-engineer genetic material. When a DNA helix comes into contact
with the black fluid it is corrupted, broken down, and reformed. Thus
life - human life - was seeded on Earth by a superior intelligence that has
designed other worlds and other creatures, and it has no benign intentions for us.
In fact, they seem to have decided to shut down the human 'experiment'. Were we
a rogue mutation? A crop to be harvested? Or - most chillingly - a biological
weapon that has now evolved to the stage that it is a significant threat to the
supremacy of other life forms in the universe - perhaps even to the Engineers?</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c8ZmKcpDwD0/UyRKGU6c9qI/AAAAAAAAAbE/OQsUjemXNKY/s1600/Prometheus_pathogen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c8ZmKcpDwD0/UyRKGU6c9qI/AAAAAAAAAbE/OQsUjemXNKY/s1600/Prometheus_pathogen.jpg" height="554" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alien vector in <i>Prometheus</i>, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The idea of the Xenomorph as also being created in this obscure programme of
interventionist evolution is exploited in the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Aliens
vs. Predator</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>franchise of
films and videogames in which it is posited that Xenomorph are also used as
‘game’ bred on Earth and other planets by Yautja (Predators) for use in hunts.
It is also suggested that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is again in some way
aware of this activity. The darker side of evolution and creation in the universe
is aligned with anti-humanist corporate exploitation, by which the ability to
monetise and weaponise extra-terrestrial life forms supersedes any claim to
scientific knowledge or human advancement. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is
integral to the narrative in that they – like the Engineers – are using Xenomorph for their own advancement but also, as their corporate mission
states, Weyland are ‘BUILDING BETTER WORLDS’ - in other words, Weyland is a corporation intent on colonising planets by
building artificial environments that support human life -
‘terraforming’ (this <a href="http://www.weylandindustries.com/tedtalk" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">spoof 2023 Ted Talk</span></a> explains Weyland's paradigm shift in cybernetics and world building) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h8shLaDY3Oo/UyRsVNNPolI/AAAAAAAAAb4/fkgYkC6yLyc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-15+at+15.05.28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h8shLaDY3Oo/UyRsVNNPolI/AAAAAAAAAb4/fkgYkC6yLyc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-15+at+15.05.28.png" height="408" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://www.weylandindustries.com/</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is
there to cling to after exploration and science so radically alter our understanding of
ourselves? We can see in <i>Alien </i>and<i> Prometheus</i> the
fundamental insignificance of our own evolutionary existence. We can see
ourselves as merely one among many evolving things - evolving without moral
restraint, adapting or dying in an ultimately indifferent universe. This is a
horror of Nietzschean amoral and extra human striving for life with no
afterworld and no supremacy in a universe of parallel evolutions. The 'horror' of the films is that we are merely life exerting itself and that, in order to survive, we must change. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">[Thanks to Phil
Hutchinson, Rupert Read, Vincent Gaine, and Peter Krämer for the discussions
that helped shape this piece.]</span></span><!--EndFragment-->
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-4717013687083801792014-02-22T15:38:00.003+00:002022-01-05T22:01:48.244+00:00Despicable, Me? The Wolf of Wall Street<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">by Vincent M. Gaine</span><br />
<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BWAryrG-4awdOHlynwnqono7-fPg25ZGL1HeQnnfQk7t7xIWjVNP2A8oLeDJmecuX-9PBYe_PTAzOKVOvIhR1s2Ec8Ror6Ur_XFZ9nLs93ppvNaF2_Qxe05wLWCOEc8kNQPFfZpDwqc/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2831" data-original-width="3792" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BWAryrG-4awdOHlynwnqono7-fPg25ZGL1HeQnnfQk7t7xIWjVNP2A8oLeDJmecuX-9PBYe_PTAzOKVOvIhR1s2Ec8Ror6Ur_XFZ9nLs93ppvNaF2_Qxe05wLWCOEc8kNQPFfZpDwqc/w493-h368/TWOWS.jpeg" width="493" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>
<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">One frequent criticism launched against films is “I didn’t care about the
characters”. To me this always seems to be missing a lot – there is far more to
any film than character, such as plot, direction, cinematography, production
design, editing, music, sound and visual effects. But conventional wisdom, in
terms of publicity, audience and critical reception, keeps coming back to
character, whether it is the average viewer, the critic or the filmmaker. Sometimes
the expectations and strangely undefined standards of “character” relate to
writing – the characters are “underwritten”, “flat”, “thin”, “one-dimensional”,
but there is another form of characterisation that creates its own
interpretation: when the characters are “well-written”, “detailed” and
“rounded”, but unsympathetic and even downright despicable. </span><br />
<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br />Films with unpleasant
protagonists include <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/" target="_blank">The Social Network</a></i>, whose central character Mark Zuckerberg is both described as “an asshole” and as someone trying very hard to
be “an asshole”, as well as <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0954947/?ref_=nv_sr_4" target="_blank">The Killer Inside Me</a></i> whose protagonist Lou Ford is violent, psychopathic and misogynistic, which led to the film and
its director being <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/06/hollywood-women-vince-cable-rooney">criticised</a>. Martin Scorsese's <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">The Wolf of Wall Street</a></i> has also been attacked for its <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10547777/Martin-Scorsese-faces-mounting-criticism-over-The-Wolf-of-Wall-Street.html">uncritical portrayal</a> of the ruthless stockbroker Jordan Belfort as well as its potential <a href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/10767-the-wolf-of-wall-street-is-the-years-most-misogynist-blockbuster">misogyny</a>. I disagree with these criticisms because they are too easy, a
superficial reaction to the film that suggests an assumed moral superiority on
the part of the critic. What <i>The Wolf of
Wall Street</i> does do, however, is perform an interesting engagement with
moral superiority precisely by eschewing such superiority on its own part. By
refusing to offer a simplistic condemnation of the people, events and ideology
it portrays, the film invites self-reflexivity on the part of the viewer in
relation to their own reactions.</span><br />
<span face="'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">As a piece of
cinema, <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i> is
more sedate than might be expected of Martin Scorsese, a director often associated with a plethora of stylistic techniques – see <i>Raging Bull</i>, <i>Goodfellas</i>, <i>The Departed</i> and <i>Hugo</i> for use of slow motion, whip pans, crash-zooms, pin holes, etc. By
contrast, <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>
uses little or no inflection in its presentation of the narrative, while the
dialogue scenes are remarkably long, the actors given time and space to develop
their performances. As a result, the traits and flaws of the characters are
depicted in exquisite detail, especially the protagonist, Jordan Belfort.
Jordan powerhouses his way through money, drugs, prostitutes, clients, friends,
wives, and authorities with scant or no regard for consequences. While Jordan is
utterly loathsome, he is never less than compelling, a hugely charismatic and
enthralling presence so utterly committed to excessive consumption that he is
practically a personification of unmitigated capitalism.</span><br />
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">The film’s
attitude towards the excess it depicts is neither condemnatory nor celebratory,
and in its most interesting moments invites self-reflective responses from the
audience, which are worth considering in detail. An early scene features Jordan
demonstrating his sales technique to his employees on a customer he has
cold-called. As he progresses through his sales spiel, with his disciples
watching in delight, Jordan simulates unbuttoning his trousers and making a
sexual conquest of his customer/victim, effectively a sexual assault. The parallel
between sexual and financial success is obvious, as is the glee of Jordan’s
followers, but the cinematography places the audience in a peculiar position.
The camera is placed in a position approximate to the speaker phone that Jordan
talks to, so the viewer is looking up at the stockbrokers who appear large and
looming, especially the super-potent Jordan. While the sequence does not
feature Jordan directly addressing the camera, as occurs at other points during
the movie, the shot effectively positions the viewer in the position of the
customer that Jordan is effectively raping. The shot therefore places the
viewer in the position of the victim of Jordan’s ruthless capitalism. In the
current climate of financial hardship and massive resentment towards financial
institutions, <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>
presents the violation of customers like ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Not only is the viewer potentially positioned
as the victim, but also invited to feel distinct from the protagonist precisely
because Jordan is so unpleasant and non-relatable. The viewer might therefore
feel superior, better than Jordan by virtue of not being so avaricious or
ruthless. This encourages a sense of moral superiority in the viewer, as the
hateful Jordan and his cackling cronies laugh themselves sick over the
misfortune of others. This sense of superiority continues while Jordan continues
to plough through everything and steadily get richer and more horrible. But the
film problematizes this superiority by inviting the viewer to be horrible as
well. A turning point of the film is a prolonged sequence in which Jordan
overdoses on a drug and is unable to walk, but must get home. He manages to
crawl/roll from the lobby of his country club back to his car, and his
almost-paralysis is hysterically funny. When I saw the film, I along with multiple
other patrons laughed at the spectacle of a grown man effectively moving like a
baby and, eventually, pushing his car door open by extending his leg because
that is the extent of his physical articulation. Simultaneously, he is trying
to talk into his car phone, but his speech is so slurred as to be
incomprehensible.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcgCIF8ZkxPhiGo907kCCbvx9Vct6y9F1kXQsZGHrlBJjG7gMtpfBn0bX0HE9krXbJDwyPuUav8kzAbnLmrRHHg-OB3rkjyLkQzCsvTl6fj5QUY4vwGOFaR7Qr_O38JhgL_tMKG74BgY/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcgCIF8ZkxPhiGo907kCCbvx9Vct6y9F1kXQsZGHrlBJjG7gMtpfBn0bX0HE9krXbJDwyPuUav8kzAbnLmrRHHg-OB3rkjyLkQzCsvTl6fj5QUY4vwGOFaR7Qr_O38JhgL_tMKG74BgY/w542-h305/lamborghini-countach-wolf-of-wall-street.jpeg" width="542" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">One of the reasons
this sequence is so funny is precisely that Jordan is horrible, hateful,
selfish and greedy, and it is amusing to see that the mighty have fallen. It is
similar to scenes in </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">The Simpsons</i><span style="font-size: x-large;">
based around Mr Burns being (literally) weaker than a baby. Burns is the
wealthiest and most powerful man in Springfield, but cannot pull a teddy bear
from the grip of Maggie Simpson. Similarly, Jordan has more money and success
than the average cinema-goer could ever conceive of, but cannot even walk. The
scene is funny as a piece of slapstick comedy, Jordan’s roll down the country
club stairs tantamount to a pratfall, but there is also a darker element to this
comedy – ha ha, this super-rich scumbag looks stupid.</span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">The sequence progresses as
Jordan drives home, his voiceover informing us that somehow he didn’t crash his
car (further laughs come later when it turns out he did, repeatedly). His
closest friend and business partner, Donnie Azoff, is on the phone
to their Swiss banker Jean Jacques Saurel, and Jordan needs to
get home because he knows his phones are tapped so Donnie is exposing illegal activities
to the FBI. Donnie is as high as Jordan, suffering the same slurred speech, and
the two engage in a hilarious slapstick struggle over the telephone, Jordan
desperate to get Donnie off the phone while Donnie is as desperate to stay on
it, but both are almost paralytic.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgObapqkaT-0EMkncr6BOMuqOTmIRN4jWn74T5Xu8-0fqIkC3xr1n3LyOGutww3aNkQ8f0DnOOK1LOapQsprlzh7G3DxadCygfL-nYsV2oDcmTNTKoVscQCWgJvYaPhMk7xMzYVDqKVRD0/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="800" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgObapqkaT-0EMkncr6BOMuqOTmIRN4jWn74T5Xu8-0fqIkC3xr1n3LyOGutww3aNkQ8f0DnOOK1LOapQsprlzh7G3DxadCygfL-nYsV2oDcmTNTKoVscQCWgJvYaPhMk7xMzYVDqKVRD0/w514-h342/Drugs.jpeg" width="514" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Things become simultaneously
funnier and more sinister when Donnie tries to eat and starts choking, and I
genuinely thought he was going to die – but I was still laughing (and I wasn’t
the only one). It was funny to see this greedy, selfish and fairly stupid man
getting himself into a situation where his own excess might kill him, but on
reflection, this is a rather disturbing reaction to have. As a moral being, I
feel sympathy and empathy for someone in dire straights, or at least I like to
believe I do. But when the person in dire straights is contemptible, their distress might become a source of amusement.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Of course, comedy
deaths are a common feature in films, one of the most famous being in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Pulp Fiction</a></i>: “You shot Marvin in the
face!” Others include the increasingly ludicrous moments in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116367/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">From Dusk Till Dawn</a></i>, the wackiness of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910936/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Pineapple Express</a></i> and the repeated
(futile) attempts at suicide in <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M628DuIEZ_o">Groundhog Day</a></i>. These deaths are mostly for the purposes of spectacle, comedic in
their surprise appearances or repetition. Donnie’s choking, combined with
Jordan’s own difficulties, is something else. The prolonged nature of the
sequence is significant, the distress of Jordan and Donnie protracted for
maximum effect. But pause for self-reflection here: if the viewer sees these
people as despicable because of their disregard for anyone else, this is because
the viewer thinks themselves “better”, more sympathetic, not so callous. But surely
a “better” person should have sympathy for someone in trouble. Jordan,
ironically, <i>does</i> have sympathy, as he
saves his friend’s life by expelling the blockage (once he takes the cocaine
necessary to overcome his paralysis), but the audience laughed at it. This mirth
creates a critique of the viewer’s own self-satisfaction in being better than
these loathsome characters, suggesting that the viewer is not so much better
than the characters after all. Very subtly, <i>The
Wolf of Wall Street</i> uses its non-judgemental treatment of its subject
matter to prompt self-reflection of the audience’s reactions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">The final scene of
the film also prompts self-reflection, in an interesting reversal of the
earlier speakerphone scene. This final scene features Jordan released from
prison and delivering a sales technique seminar in New Zealand. Justice has
certainly not prevailed, as although Jordan was incarcerated it seems rich
people go to a better style of prison, so we see him playing tennis as though
at a country club. If that’s not enough to make you angry, we see him earning yet
more money at these seminars. He demonstrates a technique that the viewer will
recognise from earlier in the film, but the seminar attendees of course do not.
Their faces are eager and expectant, as they anticipate the wisdom of Jordan Belfort.
Jordan demonstrates a simple sales premise: he hands
a pen to an audience member and asks them to sell it to him. In a much earlier
scene one of Jordan’s friends, Brad had mocked the stock market by demonstrating the same very simple technique:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">[Handing Brad a pen]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Sell me this pen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">BRAD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">JORDAN<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I don’t have a pen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">BRAD<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Let me sell you this one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">The seminar
attendees try crude and obvious ways to sell the pen, such as saying how nice
it is and that it writes, and as each one fumbles Jordan moves onto the next.
As he does so, the film cuts to a reverse shot of the seminar audience, and
this final shot of the film pans up to capture the faces of the rest of the
seminar audience, who look remarkably like a cinema audience.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Kl9wPiBuPauOEQnhnhXFydE3G8LA03RkAmHFmvfVOiNdPlxL9HAryZenXK_jT0HhhY8hIJLMQzPfwcPHXrXoSqE9UTk-5-fypIzxpu3v_B43mhMHrluTzaIpTNrzvbycZiv2XdZbdEk/s1600/Audience.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Kl9wPiBuPauOEQnhnhXFydE3G8LA03RkAmHFmvfVOiNdPlxL9HAryZenXK_jT0HhhY8hIJLMQzPfwcPHXrXoSqE9UTk-5-fypIzxpu3v_B43mhMHrluTzaIpTNrzvbycZiv2XdZbdEk/s1600/Audience.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>, dir. Martin Scorsese (2013)</td></tr>
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">This final moment is the film’s strongest invitation for the viewer to engage in self-critique. The cinema audience have the sales knowledge of Jordan Belfort and could use it – doubtless many of the film’s viewers (myself included) work in sales, stocks and finance. Through the shot of the seminar audience, effectively a reflection of the cinema audience, the film asks the viewer how they would use this knowledge. Belfort’s life was certainly successful both in a monetary sense and in terms of personal satisfaction. The film does not condemn its protagonist, but the viewer certainly can out of a sense of righteous indignation. The film’s unbalanced presentation helps us to do this, because we do not see the people who lost money as a result of Jordan and his company. The film directs the viewer’s attention on Jordan because we have no one else to engage with, and the movie’s portrayal of his excess, selfishness and potential Otherness invites judgement, condemnation and mirth, but at the same time, offers the viewer a reflection of themselves. </span><br />
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<span face="Trebuchet MS, sans-serif" style="font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i> therefore invites the viewer to see a parallel between themselves and these despicable men who profit from and take pride and amusement in swindling their clients. Furthermore, I have only identified one possible response to the film – there may well be other viewers who envy Jordan and would seek to emulate him, even if it means becoming as unpleasant as him. But whatever the viewer’s response, the cinema audience sit in eager anticipation, mirroring the seminar audience. The blame for the current financial climate is largely placed upon bankers and financial wheeler dealers like Jordan Belfort, but <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i> invites the viewer to take a look at themselves, suggesting that the credit crunch and the recession cannot simply be blamed on individuals whose excess is far beyond the dreams of avarice. The final sequence draws the viewer closer, reducing the protagonist’s aura of Otherness and asking if the “poor-but-proud” attitude is quite so genuine. Unpleasant protagonists can be a barrier to engaging with a text, but in this case, a hateful central character is a route to finding the film’s self-reflective quality.</span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-39447527999080712152014-01-22T10:32:00.000+00:002014-02-18T15:25:55.584+00:00Gravity’s Pull<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">by Peter
Krämer and Rupert Read</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U_ZNkCUZOcM/UuKJhJYYgcI/AAAAAAAAAYI/yMetsoBKZ60/s1600/gravity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U_ZNkCUZOcM/UuKJhJYYgcI/AAAAAAAAAYI/yMetsoBKZ60/s1600/gravity.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Gravity</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The
true miracle is not walking on water or walking on air, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>but simply walking on
this earth </i>- <a href="http://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Tich Nhat Hanh</span></a></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Let’s
begin by acknowledging that <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Gravity</span></a></i>
is a very unusual Hollywood blockbuster (here's the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTiKOy59o4" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">trailer</span></a>). Basically it is a story about a single
character, cut off from the rest of humanity for most of the duration of the
film. And this character is a woman (unlike Robinson Crusoe and his Hollywood
descendants, including the character played by Tom Hanks in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Cast Away</span></a>,</i>
and the Robert Redford character in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">All is Lost</span></a></i>). The film itself
acknowledges that its focus on a female character is unusual. The character is
called Ryan Stone because, she explains to mission commander Matthew Kowalski,
her parents wanted a boy. In other words: the woman at the centre of this movie
is taking up a place usually reserved for men. She may have been ‘unwanted’ -
but there she is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The
fact that Ryan Stone is female is crucial for the story because it makes it
possible for her once to have given birth to a child. She is (was) a mother.
This allows the film to focus on the primary and most primal bond between two
human beings - that between mother and child - and on the sense of loss that
comes with the severance of that bond. At the same time, <i>Gravity</i>’s
dialogue refers to our planet as ‘Mother Earth’, so that Stone, cut off from
other people, appears as that Mother’s daughter who is herself about to be
lost. We can go even further: Earth is a giant rock in space, and the woman at
the centre of this story is a ‘stone’ circling around it (and if she were to
die up there, she would, after a while, be as inert and cold as stone). This
intimate character study and the spectacular space adventure are thus presented
in close parallel with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Let’s
take a look at the character study first. Ryan Stone’s daughter Sarah died in
an accident when she was four years old, and Stone has never been able to
process that loss. In some ways her life has been suspended ever since (could
we say that she has almost turned to stone?) She says that since Sarah’s death
her life has consisted of nothing but work (as a doctor in a hospital) and
driving from and to work (while listening to music - never talk - which fills
the void surrounding her).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On
two occasions during the film (in conversation with Kowalski at the beginning
and in a monologue towards the end) Stone states explicitly that she does not
have any intimate bonds with anyone. There appears to be no boyfriend, nor does
she seem to be close to the father of her child. She does not mention her
parents or any siblings - presumably because the former are dead and there
aren’t any of the latter (or, if there are, she isn’t close to them). Nor does
she appear to have any friends. Perhaps she intentionally keeps her distance from
people because she does not want to experience another devastating loss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now,
what better way could there be to keep one’s distance from other people than to
go into space? Indeed, Stone hints at this motivation when she responds to
Kowalski’s question what she likes most about space with ‘silence’ - that is,
one presumes, the absence of the noises made by human beings (rather than the
absence of the sounds of the natural world, although, as we will see, on some
level she might long for the absolute silence of death). Of course, at this
point, there is no silence, because she is talking to Kowalski, and even when
he is silent, the tinny music he listens to can be heard. There is a tension,
then, between Stone’s desire for silence (she isn’t keen, early in the film, on
Kowalski’s constant verbal burbling) and her need nevertheless for verbal
communication (and perhaps music). The need for verbal communication – for
connection with others – is something that becomes clearer as the action of the
film proceeds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Intriguingly,
there might be a parallel to this in Kowalski’s entire story: he is a raconteur
in space, relaying tales about life on Earth, which revolve around failed human
connections (an ex-wife who cheated on him, a Mardi Gras date that is over
before it even begins). His ambition in life is to go on the longest space walk
in history, floating around the Earth all on his own. And he gets to realise
this ambition. The circumstances are tragic, but also slightly ambiguous: He
has saved Stone after a terrible accident in space, and she ends up holding on
to a tether that prevents him from spinning off into space - and death. He
argues that she won’t be able to pull him in because her own ties to the space
shuttle are too tenuous; instead he will pull her with him into space - unless
he severs their bond, which he does very quickly, indeed possibly almost
eagerly. Is this just a noble sacrifice, or does it also have a tacit
semi-suicidal dimension?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bLe1SnmrUGE/UuKJAR05EaI/AAAAAAAAAYA/i0XA_ebIQpU/s1600/gravity-movie-review-george-clooney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bLe1SnmrUGE/UuKJAR05EaI/AAAAAAAAAYA/i0XA_ebIQpU/s1600/gravity-movie-review-george-clooney.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Gravity</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
any case, it is a crucial moment. Ryan Stone may have gone to space to keep her
distance from people and to find silence; if that is the case, she gets more
than she bargained for. The accident in space cuts off all communication with
Earth and kills all crewmembers of the space shuttle except for her and Kowalski
- who now leaves her behind (although he will be able to speak with her for a
little while longer). At the same time, Kowalski’s almost-eager noble sacrifice
points to his willingness to cut his links with humanity for good - and to die
all alone. Importantly, Stone refuses for a while to accept his apparently inevitable
loss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
film does not fill in all the psychological details, but it does suggest that
space - and eventually death - is a void that some people, especially those who
have lost loved ones, may want to escape into so as to prevent further
suffering arising from their bonds to others. Stone herself suggests this when
she later imagines Kowalski’s magical return which, in a powerfully-filmed
scene that one experiences largely from Stone’s point of view, is not initially
signalled as her fantasy but is eventually revealed to be just that. In this
fantasy, Kowalski gently accuses her of wanting an easy way out of life’s
struggles by giving up the fight to survive, instead peacefully going to sleep
until she is poisoned by carbon monoxide. This is indeed what Stone is trying
to do - but it is also, one might say, what Kowalski has already done.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stone’s
will to live is revived by her fantasy of Kowalski’s return. On some level,
perhaps, this fantasy establishes the kind of link to another person, which,
she says, she no longer has on Earth. She feels connected to Kowalski who (in
her fantasy) knows her well enough to identify her wish to die and who cares
about her enough to confront her about it so as to change her mind. At the same
time, of course, this very fantasy ensures that, at least in her mind, in her
soul, Kowalski is still alive; death is not the end. (We will return to this
point.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UUUWV24j0QM/UuKGgL1hkoI/AAAAAAAAAXo/7-Wr3ZABaHA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-23+at+18.30.35.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UUUWV24j0QM/UuKGgL1hkoI/AAAAAAAAAXo/7-Wr3ZABaHA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-23+at+18.30.35.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Gravity</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Not
coincidentally, we think, her last words to him (to the person she remembers)
concern her daughter; she asks him to look out for her in the afterlife.
Earlier on she seemed to believe that only death could re-unite her with Sarah,
but perhaps now she knows that her daughter is with her, just like Kowalski, as
long as she can imagine her. Some of the dialogue in this sequence (which is in
fact the monologue of a woman who secretly wants to talk herself out of
committing suicide) might be claimed to be all too clichéd - but the central
idea seems valid, and indeed deep: We can accept the loss of loved ones better
if we think that, because we have shared so much with them, they do live on in
us, which in turn gives us a reason to go on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Later
on, Stone is reminded of such bonds when she establishes radio contact with a
man on Earth - not someone from the space centre in Houston, as she had hoped,
but a radio amateur who speaks in a language unknown to her, but manages to
communicate something important anyway by bringing a dog’s voice to the
microphone and then (closer still) a baby. Stone is (ambiguously, tenuously)
delighted when she hears him singing to the baby, perhaps because it reminds
her of her singing to Sarah and also her having been sung to by her own
parents. This temporarily renews her sense of human interconnectedness and
perhaps undergirds her decision, after an internal struggle, to struggle on.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gravity</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, then, deals with grief. And
here our argument is supported by the wonderful fact that the Latin root of our
word grief is the same as that for our word gravity. ‘Gravis’ is the common
root of gravity, heaviness, and grief. Grief and gravity, in our historical
subconscious, are the same thing: the grave, the heavy, that pulls us down and
grounds us. Grief, we would argue, centrally concerns a refusal to allow that
the world no longer includes the dead person.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
Both phenomenologically (i.e. in terms of our lived experience) and logically
(i.e. conceptually), grief is the pain of a ruptured life-world. Grief is the
lived refusal to accept that someone important has been taken from us. For when
that person was a constitutive element of our world, an over-hasty acceptance
of their exit would mean that we were not really denizens of that world, but
merely observers of it, merely passing through rather than living, inhabiting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grief
is rational, for it is rational to have a world, and to care about those in it.
Indeed, we would suggest that grief is essential to our humanity. One would
have to be some kind of inhuman monster, and/or disabled in a profound way, not
to feel grief under appropriate circumstances. However, grief can be
pathological if it becomes permanent, turning into depression. Stone is letting
go of that depression, at last, when she overcomes her desire for death and
realises that, due to their shared experiences, their influence, their values,
her daughter (and also Kowalski) lives on in her. Thus, grief - and <i>Gravity</i>
- is a forceful reminder of the ‘fact’ (that is deeper than any mere fact) that
we are not separate from another, but always connected, even beyond death. (In
this sense, to vary William Faulkner: The dead aren’t dead. They’re not even
past.) The film is thus about accepting
(inter)dependency, rather than striving for independence (this striving being
so closely associated with American culture). Interdependence - and none more
so than the relationship between mother and child - makes us vulnerable but it
also ensures that we live on in each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UU9xaIK6Oro/UuKKeHdl5gI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/6qL5no4nxsU/s1600/gravity-trailer-3-635.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UU9xaIK6Oro/UuKKeHdl5gI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/6qL5no4nxsU/s1600/gravity-trailer-3-635.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Gravity</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gravity</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> adds another dimension to
its renunciation of depression and its plea for life, which is to emphasise and
make palpable the sheer excitement life can generate. Right from the beginning
of the film, we find ourselves moving around in space high above the Earth,
enjoying breathtaking vistas but also soon experiencing extreme danger and
utterly disorienting movement. Initially, the film’s largely computer generated
imagery creates the illusion of a camera’s continuous movement around
spacecraft and bodies, and also into the very positions from which characters
view the world around them (such subjective point of views being signalled by
the clouding of space helmets which partially obstructs our vision). The
deployment of director </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0190859/?ref_=tt_ov_dr" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Alfonso Cuaron</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s trademark ultra-long tracking- and
panning-shots in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gravity</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is a technical tour de force, which may draw
attention to its own virtuosity, but also adds to the film’s thematic concern
with the connectedness of inside and outside, character study and space
adventure. (Later on, conventional - and less noticeable - editing, moving from
objective to subjective shots, achieves the same effect.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
any case, spectacular views of Earth and space, and rapid camera movement
provide us viewers with (the illusion of) a visceral experience, especially
when watching the film in 3D. As first Kowalski and then much later Stone says:
‘It’s a hell of a ride!’ ‘Ride’ here initially refers to space travel, but,
more generally, to human life - and also to the film we are watching. In other
words, the film takes us on a ride, which is meant to remind us of the thrill
of being alive. This continues for most of the story, which moves from exterior
space to the interiors of various spacecraft until, finally, Stone plunges back
to Earth in a small capsule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Before we get to this point, the film examines the ambiguities of space exploration. Stone is in space because a device she developed for use in hospitals can also be used in the Hubble space telescope that, we are told, is designed to reach out to, and gather information from, ‘the edge of the universe’. Thus, exploring and healing the human body is connected to the exploration of the whole universe; looking inward and looking outward are two sides of the same coin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The film never mentions the physical exploration of outer space - manned and unmanned spacecraft escaping Earth’s gravity altogether so as to go to the Moon and beyond. This is part of its much-greater realism than most of its predecessors as to the nature of life in space – which is likely to be virtually impossible for healthy human beings for periods longer than a few months, or at most years. Instead, in this film, people and their craft remain in Earth’s orbit, which provides them with spectacular views of the planet’s surface. Indeed, Kowalski’s last words - while drifting off to his death in space - concern the beauty of Earth and thus, it is implied, of life, and they are spoken precisely so as to give Stone a reason to go on. He speaks of the beauty of the sun shining on the Ganges in the hope that this great, glorious, grave beauty, together with Earth’s gravity, will pull Stone home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, the view from space has another dimension. Where there is night on Earth, the artificial light resulting from human habitation looks like a slow burning fire destroying everything in its way (like lava flowing off a volcano). In a tradition going back to the first widely disseminated pictures of the Earth in space (notably the ones known as ‘Earthrise’ and ‘Blue Marble’ from the late 1960s and early 1970s), seeing the globe reveals both its beauty and its vulnerability.</span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"The vast loneliness
is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on
Earth" - Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, Apollo 8. 'Earthrise', 1968, NASA</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYPqWb8vwCg/Ut69IODY8jI/AAAAAAAAAWo/PeiF5MVdboI/s1600/Gravity-Brickyard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYPqWb8vwCg/Ut69IODY8jI/AAAAAAAAAWo/PeiF5MVdboI/s1600/Gravity-Brickyard.jpg" height="360" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i style="background-color: white; text-align: start;">Gravity</i><span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z9QVHffH0yo/Ut7BaFvD1GI/AAAAAAAAAXE/-rOrpecXwC8/s1600/blue-marble-Apollo-17-pho-001+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z9QVHffH0yo/Ut7BaFvD1GI/AAAAAAAAAXE/-rOrpecXwC8/s1600/blue-marble-Apollo-17-pho-001+(1).jpg" height="494" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 15.006420135498047px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">'Blue Marble', Apollo 17, 1972. Harrison Schmitt/Nasa</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At
the same time, near-Earth space is shown to be a new habitat for humans, who
fill it up with various spacecraft. Two permanent space stations (an
international one and a Chinese one) are pioneering outposts of humanity, with,
possibly, significant waves of human migration to follow so that we might
imagine that, like all the continents of Earth before, space as well may be
colonised. Yet, this, and more generally the human use, the ‘development’, of
space, is by no means unproblematic, because with human habitation comes
environmental destruction (through new forms of pollution) - even in space.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When
a Russian rocket destroys one of the Russians’ own satellites (a spy satellite
with sensitive technology it would seem), a chain reaction is triggered,
whereby debris from the first satellite slams into other spacecraft creating
more debris etc. This (a realistic potential scenario) is the cause of the
accident that kills all members of the space mission Stone belongs to - and
also leads to the abandonment of the two space stations she flies to in search
of an escape capsule. With accumulating space debris forever circling the
Earth, humanity’s colonisation of near-Earth space has already begun to cancel
itself out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In
this context, the film’s title takes on a range of meanings. Most banally, one
might say, the story concerns a serious, ‘grave’ situation - Stone finding
herself stranded in space as the lone survivor of an accident. The ‘gravity’ of
this situation is intensified precisely by the fact that any outside help would
now have to overcome the pull of Earth’s gravity so as to join her in orbit -
and by the fact that space debris is held in the very same orbit by Earth’s
gravity. Even if it was not extremely difficult to send a rocket to her rescue,
such a rescue mission would be almost impossible due to the dangerous debris
circling the Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We
can also note that Stone herself is circling the planet at great speed, so that
the centrifugal force created by her movement balances the pull of Earth’s
gravity, creating the experience of weightlessness. Complementing the pervasive
imagery of tethers - tenuous, yet vital links between people or between people
and spacecraft -, Stone’s floating in space is the result precisely of being tethered
to Earth by the planet’s gravity. Rather than drifting off into empty space,
she continues to be connected to Mother Earth by a kind of ethereal umbilical
cord.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When
she finally manages to find a spacecraft with which to return from her orbit to
the planet’s surface, gravity is a potentially deadly force. Gravity
accelerates the plunging capsule so much that it almost burns in the atmosphere
- and yet it is only the pull of gravity that can bring her home. And here we
are reminded of the trauma Stone has been trying to escape from: Her daughter
played at school and fell down, gravity (together with her own momentum)
pulling her to the ground with such force that she broke her neck. At the end
of the film, then, we are reminded of the deadliness of gravity - and also of
the fact that it is the basis of our lives. This reiterates, on another, global
level, the central point we have made before: The film’s focus on grief serves
to emphasise the fact that humans are dependent on each other, which makes them
both profoundly vulnerable and indestructible. Similarly, the film’s focus on
gravity expresses our dependency on the Earth - it ties us, sometimes pulls us,
down, and also gives us life as well as a kind of material afterlife, because
eventually our bodies become earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now,
Stone’s return to Earth is presented in archetypal imagery. She confronts the
four basic elements of old: the air of the atmosphere, the fire that almost
burns her capsule, the water of the sea into which the capsule falls, and the
earth she crawls on to afterwards. There is also the eerie vision of what
appears to be virgin land, untouched by human habitation, a kind of paradise
which Stone is allowed to (re)enter – while the radio messages on the
soundtrack have assured us that she is not in fact alone, that human company is
on the way. <i>Gravity</i> thus depicts both the continuity of human
connections and the promise of a new beginning, not just for Stone but also,
perhaps, for humankind.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The film emphasises the fact that she has to come very close to death before
she can step on the Earth again; to be born again, first one has to die. As
soon as she opens the capsule, it fills with water and sinks, and when she
escapes from it, her space suit fills with water as well, dragging her down
(Stone is indeed sinking like a stone). The technological devices that have
protected her in space (capsule and suit) have to be abandoned for survival and
a new beginning to become possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It
is only after she has come very close to death for the second time that Stone
can finally make her way back to the surface and to land. In retrospect, the
capsule filling with water and the sea appear both as death traps and as wombs
from which she is born again, her movement echoing the development of life on Earth
- from water to land, and, on land, from crawling to walking. Indeed, the film
includes a reminder of this development by briefly focusing on a frog swimming
upwards, like its amphibian ancestors that were the first to make the
transition from water to land (and whose descendants are proving the most
vulnerable of all to anthropogenic extinction). Another reminder of broader
developments is Stone’s passionate embrace of mud, the mud that provided living
space for the first creatures to emerge from the sea. She says ‘Thank you’,
looking down into the mud. Perhaps she is addressing a divine entity she
believes in, or, possibly, the people who helped her get to this point
(especially Kowalski, also the nameless radio amateur), or even the gravity
that pulled her down, or, most likely, the Earth itself, producing this
gravity, and its fertile soil (earth) that is here represented by this mud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finally,
there is Stone’s struggle to get back on her feet (once again echoing untold
millions of years of evolution). At the very end of the film, it takes every
effort for her to stand up, finally towering majestically above the camera
(which stays on the ground, looking up to her). It is hard to stand up and
walk, as hard as it has been for Stone to overcome depression and return to
life, return to the Earth. It is hard to accept and to cope with the pull. And
it is wonderful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Importantly,
this final shot contains a reminder of the presence of the camera - similar to
the breath clouding helmets in earlier point-of-view-shots and to reflections
and refractions of light on the camera’s lens in numerous other shots. Here it
is mud and water which has been splashed onto the lens by Stone’s movements. As
the camera is positioned on the ground, we can say that the dirt on the lens
reminds us of its - and our - immersion in and reliance on mud, the same mud
that Stone clawed into and cherished after having extracted herself from the
water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EWrC-phBoAw/UuKH3ld4ULI/AAAAAAAAAXw/wJb5UEzcW_U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-24+at+15.31.35.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EWrC-phBoAw/UuKH3ld4ULI/AAAAAAAAAXw/wJb5UEzcW_U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-24+at+15.31.35.png" height="396" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Gravity</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It
also reminds us of course of the very existence of the camera and the fact that
we are watching a movie. Thus, it is equivalent to the direct looks at the
camera in the last frames of the action in both <i><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/2001%20a%20Space%20Odyssey" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">2001: A Space Odyssey</span></a></i>
and <i><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Avatar" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Avatar</span></a></i> (two films we have previously written about for the
ThinkingFilmCollective). Both films revolve centrally, like <i>Gravity</i>,
around the idea of re-birth (an astronaut being reborn as a Star Child, a human
being reborn as a Na'vi) and around the need, and the possibility, to gain a new
perspective on the world we live in (on): The Star Child gazes at the Earth
before it turns towards the camera, and Jake Sully abandons his human body so
as to be able to live permanently in the (for humans so hostile) environment of
Pandora. When they both stare at the camera and, through it, at us, the films
remind us that what is at stake in these stories is <i>our</i> perspective as
well. Are we willing to see the world anew? And what might we be willing to do
as a consequence of our new perspective? Might we, for instance. decide <i>not</i> to <span lang="EN-US">give up on the challenges we face today?
We are talking now about us as individuals, us as part perhaps of a movement –
and us as a species. <i>Gravity</i> ‘s ending addresses us in the same way,
serving like that of <i>2001</i> and <i>Avatar</i> as a call to action.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JA8Fsg_VIGM/UuKIClqBZXI/AAAAAAAAAX4/xDAK1wBrgkg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-24+at+15.31.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JA8Fsg_VIGM/UuKIClqBZXI/AAAAAAAAAX4/xDAK1wBrgkg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-24+at+15.31.08.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Gravity</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">, dir. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;">Alfonso Cuarón</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: start;"> (2013)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The ‘alienation
effect’ of the mud hitting the camera is, we would suggest, the film’s final
invitation to its viewers to heed its call, to think about what is offered in
the experience of the film, to be <i>reminded</i>, in Wittgenstein’s sense, of
what one utterly knows but can be persuaded by ideology to forget: in this
case, that life on Earth is so worth saving, and that (for the foreseeable
future) life for us is <i>only</i> possible on or near Earth. Thus the film
seeks to transform us by returning us to life, to the awareness of the wonder
of this life, and to the ‘fact’ (that is once again greater than any mere fact)
that being alive is a gift not to be discarded. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gravity</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s space adventure ends with a
renewed appreciation of many of the fundamentals of life on Earth - breathable
air, fertile soil which is also the ground we can walk on, as well as great
bodies of water that first nurtured life on this planet, and just as
importantly, the human interconnectedness which sustains us. The space
adventure in the film here stands in for the film itself, Stone’s journey
representing that of every viewer: We let ourselves be taken into space by the
film so as to return from this journey, just like Stone, with a renewed
appreciation of our everyday surroundings, knowing them, and knowing our way
about in them, perhaps, for the first time. In other words: The film is not a
means of escape from our world; even when we appear to float in (its) space, we
are tethered to our regular lives, not least by the pull of gravity we
experience in our seats in the auditorium (and by the proximity of other people
sharing our experience). Gravity is a constant reminder of our
utterly-essential connection to the Earth (and to each other) - as is </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Gravity</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>All of this is somewhat reminiscent of the harrowing
Ray Bradbury story <a href="http://greenhumanities.edublogs.org/files/2012/09/Bradbury-Illustrated-Man-1wytglb.pdf" target="_blank">'<span style="color: blue;">No Particular Night or Morning' from <i>The Illustrated Man</i>.</span></a>
Here a man suffers terrible loss on Earth and goes into space to disconnect
himself from everything that could produce further pain, eventually denying the
very existence of the past and of ever more aspects of the present, including
his own body, which he experienced as extremely vulnerable when a meteor hit
the spaceship; in the end he drifts into empty space in his space suit,
accepting only the existence of his own mind. The difference is that Bradbury’s
story is very much a meditation on scepticism as to other minds (or solipsism)
as a disastrous philosophical challenge, whereas <i>Gravity</i> is interested
in solipsism only as an (un-)ethical, self-protective temptation. The
difference between 'No particular Night or Morning' and <i>Gravity</i> then is
the difference between something that can be lived only at the cost of
psychosis and something that can be lived more easily – at the cost of
neurosis. It is the difference that Stanley Cavell famously describes as the
difference between madness and tragedy. <i>Gravity</i> is interested in the
latter, in depression, separateness, and the temptation to retreat from life,
from the vulnerability that comes with one’s inevitable attachment to others. At
the same time, <i>Gravity</i> replays many aspects of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">2001: A Space Odyssey</span></a></i>:
the dead astronaut Frank Poole’s body drifting away into space; the tenacity
with which the lone survivor of the Jupiter mission, David Bowman, clings to
life and eventually is able to return home, after he is reborn, from his death
bed, as a Star Child; and much else. In particular it is worth noting that the
curve of the astronauts’ helmets in <i>Gravity</i> echoes the curve of the Star
Child’s protective cocoon, and that in some shots Stone adopts a foetal
position and slowly spins around like the foetal Star Child in <i>2001</i>.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>See Read’s examination of ‘The logic of grief’,
forthcoming.<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>Once more, echoes of <i>2001</i> here.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-9612293292169191492014-01-11T13:22:00.000+00:002014-04-15T12:32:33.843+01:00Liberal Guilt in Dogville and Manderlay<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">by Emma Bell</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Yb3pJ8vLPE/Us_YX4vLEZI/AAAAAAAAATU/YaQJ1t11_r8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+11.23.33.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Yb3pJ8vLPE/Us_YX4vLEZI/AAAAAAAAATU/YaQJ1t11_r8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+11.23.33.png" height="452" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Dogville</i> (2003) and <i>Manderlay</i> (2005), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Lars
von Trier’s <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276919/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dogville</span></a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342735/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Manderlay</span></a></i> formed the first two segments
of a planned trilogy of ‘USA Films’, the third of which (<i>Washington</i>) has not yet been realised. The films tell the story of
Grace - a fiercely moral gangster’s daughter who tries to radically
reorganise the wretched conditions of the poor people she comes into contact
with, yet with tragic consequences. In <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7L2-R4XhyE" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dogville</span></a></i> she willingly becomes an
indentured labourer for a deeply impoverished town that initially protects her from gangsters, and in <span style="color: blue;"><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFk2Vy1bWHQ" target="_blank">Manderlay</a></i> </span>she tries to liberate plantation workers still bonded into
slavery. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We can think about <i>Dogville</i>
and <i>Manderlay</i> as working through
political and moral problems that face the left in the West; and it is very
probable that they are not, as so many have claimed, ‘anti-American’. This thinkingfilmcollective
piece hopefully makes a good case for interpreting the films as critiques of European
- particularly leftist and liberal - moral ideals, and for a therapeutic reading of the film as exposing the paradoxical pains of <i>ressentiment</i> - or liberal guilt. The piece is based on interviews I did with von Trier and Danish photographer <a href="http://www.american-pictures.com/english/jacob/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Jacob Holdt</span></a>, with whom von
Trier collaborated on the photomontages that end the USA films. The interviews went
into much depth about von Trier’s work on America as a ‘metaphor’ and on Holdt’s
ideas about ‘liberal guilt’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ogfbIyP8qY/Us_sUT4IrQI/AAAAAAAAAVI/QkTMkLLRoL0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+12.48.25.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ogfbIyP8qY/Us_sUT4IrQI/AAAAAAAAAVI/QkTMkLLRoL0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+12.48.25.png" height="408" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lars von Trier and Jacob Holdt</td></tr>
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<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> can
be analysed separately, as critiques of liberal guilt and the aftermath of slavery respectively.
But as a moral critique they are contingent. This is because together the films
explore the development of an individual’s moral ideal as effected by her socio-political
circumstances – in this instance, ostensibly ‘democratic’ systems of power.
Moreover, it is a moral idea that has profound political resonance in that
Grace’s moral struggle is at the nexus of the individual and the collective. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think the films deeply problematize liberal
morality, and this is evident through two basic concepts that explicate the
moral paradoxes von Trier’s USA films.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The first is Nietzsche’s ideas of the slave-morality of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, and
the second is on the dangers of liberal guilt. What follows is divided into two
parts – the first is on </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and focuses mainly on </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, the second is on Liberal guilt and focuses on </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and Jacob Holdt's anti-racism photowork, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.american-pictures.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">American Pictures</span></a></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. Helpfully, von Trier’s
quasi-autobiographical film was a self-satirising</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> comedy entitled </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482358/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><i>Erik Nietzsche: the Early Years</i> </span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">- ‘Erik
Nietzsche’ being a pseudonym von Trier has used since film school. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think that von Trier’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">USA</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
films </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">are</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> peppered with images of
Nietzsche’s </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Genealogy</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">of Morality</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, and that they </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">unflatteringly
reflect liberal politics. The films can be seen as a painful interrogation of
liberal humanism and as a gradual working through of what Nietzsche identified
as a morality of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
underpinning liberal guilt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Firstly, though, there arises the issue of to what extent, if
at all, are the films political? <i>Manderlay</i> was controversial long before its release. A Lars von
Trier film about slavery was bound to provoke nervous anticipation, and
political groups started to protest about it even as it was in production. Originally,
the film featured a deeply upsetting scene showing the slaughter of a live
donkey – presumably the ex-slaves slaughtered the animal as famine set in. <o:p></o:p>This scene
prompted actor Phillip C Reilly to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/apr/29/news.xanbrooks" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">quit</span></a> and animal rights groups to campaign to have the scene <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4314579.stm" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">withdrawn</span></a>. Von Trier conceded because he didn’t want the politics of animal rights issues to obscure the film’s
political message. So what is this message?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When I interviewed von Trier
about </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, I told him that I
wanted to talk about the political themes in his recent films. He looked
distraught: "Oh shit! That sounds dangerous…!" he said. I was confused because the publicity campaign for </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> allowed no such qualms and broadcast that the film is an
allegorical critique of the Bush administration and the conflict in Iraq. This
declaration prompted angry reactions against the ‘anti-American’ attitude of
his recent films - from the tough-justice meted out to the immigrant Selma in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168629/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dancer in the Dark</span></a></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and the rise and fall
of Grace in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, his films scandalised morally
righteous American critics while provoking countless valuable column inches. The
USA trilogy informed by Holdt’s work is unmistakably critical of America’s
aggressive foreign policies, specifically its enforcement in Iraq and
Afghanistan – strongly supported by British government as well as the
governments of other countries - of what is apparently democracy. And
conspicuous scare quotes in the film's </span><a href="http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/010166.pdf" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">publicity material</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> suggested that </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is a critical allegory of
enforced regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet von Trier told me that that
there are other very important factors that problematize this anti-American
interpretation. I asked him whether this is really what the film is about - whether anti-American intervention in the middle-east is the film’s
political message that he was so keen to make known. He said, “you can see [</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">]
like that, but it was written before Iraq. So, no, it can’t be. But I believe
that’s the way [my producer] Peter [Aalbaek-Jensen] thinks it should be sold.
No, I do not object to the fact that you can see that in it, but why make a
film that would do just that? I would never make a film like that. And it was
written before we shot </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">,
actually." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As
a rule, <i>Dogville</i> and <i>Manderlay</i> <span class="text1">are labelled as straightforwardly ‘anti-American’ political screeds - a
liberal European’s resentment of American capitalism and American
imperialism. This political reading is not so problematic: the films are set in
America and feature typically Yankee characters such as gangsters, molls, hicks, and plantation owners; in vertiginous overhead shots, characters scurry
across a vast map of the USA, neatly tessellated into states referred to as
‘hunting grounds’; and the </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrkjbmUPF0" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">finale credits</span></a> of photo-montages are set, rather heavy-handedly, to David Bowie’s ‘Young
Americans’. In the montages, <span class="text1">Danish
photographer Jacob Holdt’s pictures from the 1970s are juxtaposed to <a href="http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3373" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dorothea Lange</span></a>’s iconoclastic images of depression-era America – the same period in
which the USA films are set. </span>These
are scandalising photographs of young America’s urban poor sinking wide-eyed
into squalid demise without a liberal welfare state. These photographs make
powerfully apparent that economic inequality is the rational exploitation of
need. The photographs seem more like images from war-torn and developing
countries, and shatter America’s public image of equality, prosperity, and
self-sufficiency. <span class="text1">Overall,
the image of America is of the cruelty of the American Dream's victim-blaming myths of
opportunity, equality, and community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Elsewhere, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">von Trier has said that </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
is not an allegory of the occupation of Iraq as economic colonialism and
self-interested nation-building: “I think that might be true” he said “that
there is a parallel [between </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
and Iraq] but I don't consider [nation-building] an originally American
problem, it's originally a European problem” </span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background-color: white; color: blue;">[i]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And he </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">also related the USA films to his earlier
work on European history: "about the political side of [the films]: I
don’t think that there is such a big difference in the films now from what I’ve
done earlier" - </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">referring to the ‘Europe Trilogy’ films of 1980’s
films, namely </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087280/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Element of Crime</span></a>,
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092972/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><span style="color: blue;">Epidemic</span></a>, </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101829/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Europa/Zentropa</span></a></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. These films disinter Europe’s unhappy memories and
challenge the idea that post-war Europe is a straightforward situation of
freedom</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. In
this sense, one might see </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the diegetic
space of the films as the work of a forensic pathologist – the sets marked out
rather as the absent body and the weapons are described in chalk by police at a
crime scene. The films, then, might be unsolved crimes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At this point, it’s important
to bear in mind that the content of the USA films is in many ways a product of
their neo-Brechtian form. Von Trier told
me emphatically that his idiosyncratic use of such stylistics are not intended to enhance the content of
the films. Rather it is the other way around. “The style of the film” he said,
“is something much more than just the servant of the content, or a character,
or some theme the film might contain… the content that could be the moral or
political whatever … [but for me] the form comes before the content … It is
difficult to divide, of course, form and content. But I am just objecting to
this idea that you have some content then you make a form that pleases the
content. That is the wrong way.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So, how is a film like <i>Manderlay</i> a product of a desire to make
a quasi-Brechtian film? Brecht’s depression era and gangster ridden America of
impoverished workers, corrupt officials and ruthless gangsters is comparable to
the milieu of <i>Dogville</i> and <i>Manderlay </i>such that that one can safely
assume that von Trier’s form has dictated similar alienation effects and
similar politically critical ideas. In an age where self-consciously political
films are increasingly seen as dangerously unmarketable, von Trier’s USA films
are a brave unification of form and content. Some of Brecht’s most famous plays
are set in a similar sort of figurative and noir-esque America. But when Brecht
set plays like <i><a href="http://socialiststories.net/liberate/The%20Resistible%20Rise%20of%20Arturo%20Ui%20-%20Brecht.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui</span></a></i> in 1930s America, he was targeting European political problems. Von
Trier’s films have never been popular in the USA. In part his desire to solicit
American stars like Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Willem Defoe, and
Ben Gazara were a bid to break the American art-house market. But the main and
faithful audience of von Trier films is predominantly European. In a
quasi-Brechtian von Trier film, then, the European art house filmgoer could very
well be faced with an unpleasant demoralisation of a sense of moral superiority
over the USA. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Brechtian theatre is, of course, designed to encourage audiences
to see reflected on stage their own political condition and beliefs through techniques of epic theatre, alienation, and other <i>verfremdungseffekts</i> [distanciation effects]. But von
Trier did not want the form of the films to alienate us in the sense that we do
not identify with the characters, or have any emotional response to them: “compared to Bertolt Brecht” he said, “I am
very decadent! [Brecht] had all these theories about why theatre should look
this way, and I don’t. He somehow wanted people not to be emotional about
things, right? And that’s why he took out all the natural elements. At least
that’s how I understand it. But I <i>want</i> to be emotional. That’s maybe not
the right word, but I want things [in my films] to be alive, even though they
are in this stark surrounding. I take it more as an obstacle, and as a way to
make emotional things even stronger. Maybe that’s what [Brecht] also wanted to do.
But he also wanted to take away all sentimentality, and that is not my scope.” It
is von Trier’s scope, then, to provoke in the audience very strong and often uncomfortable
feelings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3H5Xvtf2MkQ/Us_aJOB9faI/AAAAAAAAATg/Ak_wqxES-Gk/s1600/dogville2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3H5Xvtf2MkQ/Us_aJOB9faI/AAAAAAAAATg/Ak_wqxES-Gk/s1600/dogville2.jpg" height="280" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brechtian staging in <i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Von Trier agreed that this
idea of questioning European liberal values is significant in the USA films: “</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the deeper conflicts in the films are not
something that is especially American. It is something that is from right where
you are yourself.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ll in all, though, he told me, his films are political in
the sense that they challenge his own left wing political ideals: “</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">All I can say is that my
technique is to go where it hurts, somehow. And of course that goes for
memories and history. The way I see people and things is through my upbringing
as left-wing cultural radical humanist. But no matter where you are, there are
a number of questions that can be raised that hurt. That is the only
explanation. But on the other hand, what I have actually tried in all my films,
also the old ones, is to challenge myself and my beliefs. That’s the
technique.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So <i>Dogville</i> and <i>Manderlay</i> are
not straightforwardly 'anti-American'. The tagline for <i>Dogville</i>, after all, is ‘a little town not far from here…’ If the
films are political, I think it is by showing how democracy and ideals of
freedom fail in an economically and racially unequal society predicated on
myths of democracy, freedom, equality, and self-preservation. <i>Dogville</i>
and <i>Manderlay</i>, then, can be said to
explore the ways in which moral liberalism and enforced democracy might, in
pious forms, lead to exploitation and dictatorial vengeance. </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> explores the idea that power and cruelty are
mutually reinforcing and the interdependence of charity and exploitation,
credit and debt, cruelty and revenge. With Tom’s encouragement, Grace makes a
social and personal experiment out of her desperate situation. She tests out
her political ideals such that, rather than </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">,
it is her own compassion, her stoicism, left-wing clemency, and faith in moral
integrity, that are on trial.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These are not, it seems to
me, films about democracy in the sense of the individualistic capitalist idea
of democracy. Rather, the democratic processes attempted in <i>Dogville</i> and <i>Manderlay</i> are
collectives. Certainly, In <i>Dogville</i> the people are in individual business enterprises – in
glassmaking, apple trading, and merchandising. However, it seems that the
democratic freedom of individualistic economic struggle is partly to blame for
the people’s poverty, and their need for what the philosopher Tom Edison calls
‘moral re-armament’. In fact, in <i>Dogville</i>,
the townsfolk actually <i>can’t</i> vote,
and their dubious commercial practices – one might say immoral business ethics
– and economics are, it is inferred, a result of their poverty and their political
powerlessness. Tom tells us that the Hensons grind cheap glasses to try to<i> </i>make them look expensive so they can
sell them for more than they are worth. Ma Ginger has cornered the market in
goods: she overprices her goods to make a profit by exploiting the fact that people
are too poor to leave. In <i>Dogville</i>,
people can’t afford to be democratic, as Tom tells us, they "used to leave to go vote, but since [the
state imposed] the registration fee [to vote]
about a day’s wage for these people, they don’t feel the democratic need
anymore."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T1ILzUceVSs/Us_ytZz_3lI/AAAAAAAAAV4/cWdPdP7zNsw/s1600/968full-dogville-screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T1ILzUceVSs/Us_ytZz_3lI/AAAAAAAAAV4/cWdPdP7zNsw/s1600/968full-dogville-screenshot.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The novel practice of 'voting' to see if Grace can stay in <i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So, the moral political law
in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is dictated by economics
and the unfreedom of the capitalistic democratic process: people’s moral
behaviour is compromised by powerlessness and poverty. The potentiality for
ruthless competition and even lawlessness are, in a deeply impoverished and
desperate society. This is why Grace’s moralistic sacrifice is</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">- as a needy and desperate refugee she is –
in Nietzschean terms – a debtor whose moral obligation to her creditors is the
basis of her moral behaviour. Tom, for example, critiques </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> for not being a community – for suffering as individuals
and not pulling together for the common good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The moral laws of <i>Dogville</i>, then, are those intended to
keep poverty and at bay. The laws take the form of a collective moral political
process tested out in experiments with labour, welfare, and collective rule. At
first, elections seem a good way of ensuring moral social agency through
democratic collective action. Her labour is exploited as she is forced to earn
her keep. She can stay only if she ‘offers’ to work far too hard and for free. Her self-sacrificing kindness and
vulnerability make her a scapegoat for good folks’ moral shortcomings. She believes the more she sacrifices herself
and the harder she works, the more she will be accepted and valued. But her immigrant zeal is commandeered by the foot
soldiers of the democratic capitalist ideal. The harder she works, the more
contempt <i>Dogville</i> has for her, and the harder she is made to work. She
does not strike back because she pities her abusers; the poor can’t help being
opportunistic and cruel, she decides, because poverty leaves them morally
bankrupt. Her goodness will be the moral rearmament Tom promised.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3JeCMdtjd4w/Us_tC5p4mGI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/IssLASTYVtE/s1600/dogville-pulling-full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3JeCMdtjd4w/Us_tC5p4mGI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/IssLASTYVtE/s1600/dogville-pulling-full.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grace 'pulling her weight' as obligated slave labour in <i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Economic outsiders and immigrants are
a recurrent theme in von Trier’s work: the minor character ‘Miguel’ in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154421/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Idiots</span></a></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is seeking asylum in Denmark
when he falls in with the politically satirical radical commune of idiots. In </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dancer in the Dark</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, Björk played an
immigrant caught in the poverty trap and forcibly criminalised for her
desperation. Grace is herself a kind of refugee dependent on the kindness of
strangers. I asked von Trier if </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s
abuse of Grace can be fairly through of as is an allegory of the refugee’s need
for protection as causing vulnerability to exploitation? </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"It’s true" he said: “I agree…being an
immigrant or being a refugee was very important in my family since my father
and my mother both escaped to Sweden during the Second World War in a life or
death situation. So, the whole thing about what you do with people who come to
you fleeing from somewhere bad has always been very important in my family.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The film can also be seen as
a sharp attack on the moral panic surrounding multiculturalism and race
relations in Europe. Recent right-wing and neo-conservative politics have been
on the rise in Europe for some time. In the UK, for example, the far-right part
the BNP has been gaining power and popularity for the last few years. And, like
many Danes, many other Europeans are reacted very strongly to the asylum
seekers and immigrants, and to the inclusion of Eastern European countries into
the EU. Denmark has set very strict restrictions on
<a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/new-justice-minister-to-continue-tough-immigration-line.8113.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">immigration</span></a>, much to von Trier’s disgust: “It’s a very bad sign to send to the world” he said “Denmark is still
this comparatively rich country where people do not normally starve to death.
In a way, it’s very spoilt to have this attitude towards strangers. But it’s
one thing towards strangers; it’s another thing towards refugees. You must
always be very hospitable. That was very important to my father. He saw that,
in the way country treated refugees, you can see what their moral standards
are. Not towards its own vulnerable people, but towards people in need coming
from outside …foreigners are not necessary. Maybe you could say that they are
necessary for the moral life of the country. But they are not necessary for the
state. They are not necessary.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Around the
time of the film’s European release in February 2006, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4361260.stm" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">controversy</span></a> and backlash
about allegedly Islamaphobic cartoons of the prophet Mohammed printed in the Danish newspaper <i><a href="http://jyllands-posten.dk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Jyllands Posten</span></a></i></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. This scandal </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">reframed the film as yet another example
of unhelpfully provocative Danish arrogance about the rights of Europeans to
exert unrestrained freedom of speech. In an interview in the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay Pressbook</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> , von Trier said: “Racism
has reared its ugly face in Denmark [so the film] is also about things in
Denmark, perhaps”</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title="">[ii]</a>.</span> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Migrants to Europe can be feared and abused like Grace, and they have been treated with suspicion and
contempt, because of, and not in spite of their perceived willingness and need
to work. Their use value as a cheap and exploitable labour force is tolerated,
even encouraged, and sometimes used to justify to the public their presence in
‘our’ country. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In contemporary Europe,
asylum seekers and immigrants habitually provoke the same kind of moral panic
that Grace’s arrival triggers in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">; they are used and abused in
ways similar fashion to the ruthless treatment of Grace, being coerced and
often forced into multiple and menial low paid jobs as well as sex work in
order to justify their presence as an economic burden. While immigrant zeal is
a threat to the aspirations of nationals, the perceived willingness to
undertake low-wage, menial labour is tolerated, encouraged even, when it
validates the immigrant’s unsolicited shelter in ‘our town’, encouraging people
to work harder for the accolades of prosperity, equality, and freedom that
compose the classless liberal ideals of freedom, respectability and social
welfare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is critical of
American ideology, then it is by showing how economic compensates for a lack of
stands in for democracy in economically unequal society. In fact, his films
increasingly seem to express simultaneous melancholy and resentment about
liberal morality and leftist hopes. Grace’s abuse at the hands of
poverty-stricken people and their aggressive need to preserve themselves only
serve to confirm the predator ideology of her gangster fathers. When her belief
in the essential goodness of the virtuous poor is destroyed, it shatters an
important aspect of her humanist liberal ideals in that she decides to use her
power and to change society by force.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grace’s vulnerability makes her a scapegoat for the good folk of <i>Dogville</i>’s moral shortcomings and an
exploitable slave for their deep-rooted political powerlessness, bitterness and
ambition. This can be well explored by turning to Nietzsche’s ideas of <i>ressentiment</i> and the liberal moral
ideal. What is <i>ressentiment</i>? Firstly,
it’s a very strongly held moral ideal that finds its social expression in moral
suffering. The difference between Nietzschean <i>ressentiment</i> and mere resentment is that ressentiment has an
ambivalent heart. <i>Ressentiment </i>describes
a reaction to unequal relationships of power. The word is derived from <i>resentir</i> and <i>ressentement</i>, both meaning a strongly held sense of woundedness
and injustice that have no means of outward expression – it is an anger
intensified by a sense of powerlessness. But the feeling-strongly of <i>resentir</i> also means actually expending
such overwhelming feelings, often in reactionary internalized aggression and
compensatory moral suffering. Nietzsche’s concept of <i>ressentiment</i> also has two meanings. He used the ambiguous French ‘<i>ressentiment</i>’, rather than German words
like <i>Verstimmung</i> (irritation) or <i>groll</i> (rancour/pain/spite) to describe a double movement of
reactive violence and the psychological internalization of such violence in
excessive guilt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Ressentiment</i>,
for Nietzsche, describes a moral idea that reacts to inequality by enslaving
itself to the value of suffering. When Nietzsche’s <i>resentir</i> compares those who
suffer to those who do not appear to suffer, a relationship of cause and effect
is assumed. This gives suffering a meaning as well as a target for its
feeling-strongly. <i>Ressentiment</i> goes
beyond mere jealously and becomes desperate conviction that inequality will end
only when those who do not suffer are shamed into capitulation. Freedom, power,
and cheerfulness, then, seem immoral; those who do not suffer become needful
objects of confrontation. The <i>resentir</i>
thinks something like: “those who suffer are powerless; those who do not suffer
are powerful and cause suffering; so the powerful are bad and the powerless are
good; I want to be good so I freely choose to be powerless; In this way, I
shall put an end to suffering.” For Nietzsche, this is the ‘slave’ or ‘ascetic’
morality that ‘only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless,
the lowly’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title="">[iii]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
A ‘slave morality’ is deliberated self-negation in
reactionary suffering. It’s opposite – the noble morality is not necessarily
the will to have power over others; but the slave morality invariable is the
will to have power, not only over others, but over oneself. It is the
perversion of a will to change society and those who rule over it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We can see this most
obviously in the way in which Grace causes herself to suffer in <i>Dogville</i>, by the way that she condemns
herself for both having power and for reacting to desperation by stealing a
bone. The town philosopher, Tom Edison, immediately sees Grace’s vulnerability
and need as an opportunity for moral-re-armament. He thinks to himself: “She
could have kept her vulnerability to herself, but she had elected to give
herself up to him at random. As….Yes….a gift. Generous, very generous”<i>. </i>He offers her some of his bread so
that she doesn’t have to steal the bone. The bone was anyway mistakenly given
to Moses the watchdog who was supposed to be kept hungry so he would stay
vicious. This already is an allegory of the anger of destitution. As a morality
of <i>ressentiment</i>, Grace thinks that those who suffer are – and should be -
morally virtuous. So she refuses Tom’s bread: "I can't, I don't deserve that bread!
I stole that bone, I haven't stolen anything before. So now, now I have to
punish myself. I was raised to be arrogant, so I had to teach myself these
things." As in <i>ressentiment</i>, she condemns herself for being immoral. She thinks
that she can rid herself of guilt by choosing to suffer. As though suffering
itself were a moralistic act of atonement. Her downfall
comes when she refuses to extend these moral ideals to others by condemning the
poor of <i>Dogville</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-klFWAddIwqc/Us_d-bT_FoI/AAAAAAAAAT8/yRrfyQQIP-A/s1600/09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-klFWAddIwqc/Us_d-bT_FoI/AAAAAAAAAT8/yRrfyQQIP-A/s1600/09.jpg" height="282" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graces chats with apple farmer Chuck in <i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In terms of contemporary
politics, Grace's moral dilemma take the form of the refugee’s debt to her
sanctuary, illustrated in a dialectic of indigent suffering, need, and
exploitation. Grace is a political fugitive, an economic migrant whose
vulnerability and illegality is easily exploited by the destitute citizens of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. Migrants to Europe are feared
and abused like Grace, and they have been treated with suspicion and contempt,
because of, and not in spite of their perceived willingness and need to work.
Their use value as a cheap and exploitable labour force is tolerated, even
encouraged, and sometimes used to justify their presence, encouraged even.
Social inequality forces people to work harder for the accolades of prosperity,
equality, and freedom that compose the classless democratic dream of freedom,
respectability and social mobility through capitalistic endeavour.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The logic of <i>ressentiment</i> is a strategy of revenge
against whatever or whoever is assumed to cause suffering. For Grace, her
revenge is against her father’s and his gangster morality that takes no pity on
the poor and exploits anyone for not fighting back. But <i>ressentiment</i> is only imaginary revenge in that the only person who
suffers is the moralist himself or herself. Grace’s weakness is her generosity
and her compulsion to moral instruction, they know she will not protest because
she pities them. They see in her the possibility of financial embetterment, as
well as a scapegoat for their sense of powerlessness – a have-nots vengeance
against a trapped have. She is enslaved in a dialectic of charity and
exploitation, debt and credit that intuits <i>ressentiment</i> in the high Nietzschean style. As
with <i>ressentiment</i>, Grace wilfully
enslaves herself the illusory consolation of ‘goodness’ in compensation for
powerlessness and anger because of it. But when her gangster father appears,
she is confronted with her unwitting complicity in her fate. Paraphrasing
Nietzsche, perhaps, Grace argues that "dogs cannot be punished for doing what
it is in their nature to do" and, accordingly, she cannot punish the impotent,
ignorant townsfolk for exploiting her. Grace changes her mind when her father
reminds her that dogs must be trained to be good by discipline and punishment and - implicitly - that she was 'trained' to be a gangster but rebelled by her own free will. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nietzsche understood that
the excessively moral conscience is produced not through self-sacrifice but
through the will to power. Grace has ensnared her own instinct for freedom, and
the moral ideal of freedom she lives by, in the idealist trap of <i>ressentiment</i>. She is torn between her
father’s gangstertorial diktat and her liberal humanist compassion. Empowered
by a sort of Faustian pact with father, Grace sees the supercilious,
self-refuting and arrogant righteousness at the heart of her moral stoicism.
She forgave <i>Dogville</i> its cruelty only
because she thought them too poor and ignorant to be answerable to her own
moral standards. In doing so, she became enslaved as a selfless gift of ‘moral rearmament’. Romanticizing
suffering was a futile means of trying to effect social change; such <i>ressentiment</i> perverts the moral piety it
cherished. Grace is not an escape from <i>ressentiment</i>,
but a coming-to-awareness of it without martyring oneself to force others to be
good. <i>Ressentiment</i> is always vengeful, but it takes itself as the object of
violence. When she relinquishes her moral suffering, Grace uncovers an abscess
of vengeful violence that she releases on the people she tried to help. She
does not escape <i>ressentiment</i>, as
Nietzsche said one could not. But she understands it. Then she changes her
mind. She comes to awareness of <i>ressentiment</i>’s vengeful benevolence and then
takes literal revenge. She does not move entirely beyond <i>ressentiment</i> but she does stop despising herself and sacrificing
herself for it. While one wants to cheer her on for overcoming the martyr’s <i>ressentiment</i>, it is not unequivocal that
vengeful fury is the only alternative. Graces’ revolting conscience is an image
of the morally frustrated liberal turning against themselves before becoming
tyrants of the even less fortunate. What should have happened is that they
actively turn against the political system that ultimately causes suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In <i>Dogville</i>, Grace’s moral ideal of equality and of not taking power
over others leads her to run away from her father’s powerful gangsters. He is
trying to force her to take power over others and she chooses not to. But more
than that, she chooses to be powerless. She runs from power, and protests the
very idea of power over others. Yet her supremely moral act is to relinquish
power entirely – when at the mercy of other powerless people she acts by not
acting, by not protesting. Her moral law, then, does not apply to the
powerless. She believes that the lowly are not to blame for immoral acts and
that, as a powerful and privileged woman, she can help them by the gift of
passivity and benevolence. Bu<u>t</u> her morality of passive charity fails
utterly exactly because she chooses to be powerless, such that people in fact
do take power over her. Unlike her gangster father, she initially forgives
them. This is perhaps because the power inflicted on her by the people of <i>Dogville</i> is a grotesque amplification of
their own state of powerlessness - a kind of displaced vengeance is caused by
her own choice to be powerless as a moral act. vengeance for their
powerlessness. So Grace’s vengeance is borne of her moral ideal of suffering
and of the virues of non-intervention. Really, her morality is a will to
violence that has already condemned violence as immoral. Moreover, <i>ressentiment</i> is entirely rational; its
‘perversion of morality’ can be found 'in the very effects and affect that gives
rise to and fuel <i>ressentiment</i>' -
i.e.: social inequality<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title="">[iv]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Ressentiment</i>,
Nietzsche tells us, is self-defeating in that it actively obscures social and
political critique in its over-determination of moral suffering. <i>Dogville</i>’s
key scene comes when, arguing the philosophy of liberalism with her gangster
father, Grace’s morality is transformed from suffering martyr to vengeful
angel. Her father, ‘The Big Man’, dismisses as ‘arrogant’ both Grace’s sympathetic
conscience and her magnanimous belief in social accountability. Grace argues
that dogs cannot be punished for their natures, and so she cannot punish the
impoverished townsfolk of <i>Dogville</i>
for exploiting her like a slave:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 72.0pt; margin-right: 27.95pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>The Big Man:</b> You don’t
pass judgement, because you sympathise with them. A deprived childhood and a
homicide really isn’t necessarily a homicide, right? The only thing you can
blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be victims, according to you.
I call them dogs, and if they’re lapping up their own vomit the only way to
stop them is with the lash…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TGyHtGro1q0/Us_ea3vmrcI/AAAAAAAAAUE/XMv7e-Dg6hE/s1600/42069465_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TGyHtGro1q0/Us_ea3vmrcI/AAAAAAAAAUE/XMv7e-Dg6hE/s1600/42069465_640.jpg" height="362" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graces argues politics with 'The Big Man' in <i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Big Man goes on to discredit Grace's refusal to bestow upon the people of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> the same ethic of personal
responsibility with which she constantly berates herself; Grace exonerates
their wickedness because of her ‘arrogant’ notion that nobody can possibly
attain her high ethical principles. Dogs, muses Grace, "only obey their own
nature. So why shouldn’t we forgive them?" Her father retorts that "dogs can be
taught many useful things, but not if we forgive them every time they obey
their own nature." Grace can be merciful, but morally she owes </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> the right to be treated
equally; she should maintain her own standards and treat the townsfolk as she
would treat herself, giving them the right and responsibility of accountability
for their actions. Grace prevaricates before reasoning that, by taking the
mantle of power that underlies Nietzsche slave-morality. She uses her newly
righteous power to "make this world at little better" and ensure that what
happened to her cannot happen again; she yanks the leash hard, delivering </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> a sound and unforgettable
beating: she murders her tormentors and razes it to the ground.</span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fsgpdUbkuX0/Us_t19aq2dI/AAAAAAAAAVg/NxSAhzj5jAk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+12.55.28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fsgpdUbkuX0/Us_t19aq2dI/AAAAAAAAAVg/NxSAhzj5jAk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-10+at+12.55.28.png" height="306" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Dogville</i> (2003), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grace’s
morality switches not to self-sacrifice but to a queasy equality of judgement – to the idea that
her moral laws are not just applicable to those who </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">have</i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> power but who </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">choose
not to use</i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> it by choosing to suffer. I trying to understand why the poor abused her, and with the aim of making sure it does not happen again, she changes her mind and decides that personal responsibility is <i>not</i> a privilege of economic security and class position. Through a coming to awareness of the
inequality of her moral ideals, she comes to awareness of a profound and
righteous resentment. This resentment brings her to a new moral agency – she
comes to see that destroying </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dogville</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
could be in itself a moral act. In order to do this, she accepts the lawless
form of power. To be moral, she has to be immoral. She has to relinquish her
own moral ideals. Yet, in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, her
moral disillusionment will lead her not to passivity and self-sacrifice but to
intervention – ‘liberation, whether they want it or not’. As Nietzsche had it, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s underlying anger forges
irresolvable internal struggle and self-sacrifice that changes nothing. Were
freedom really desired, that power ought to be outwardly directed. It is
plausible, then, that </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
explains the moral preconditions of the interrogation of liberal humanism that
we see in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Manderlay</i> is in many ways a inferior film to <i>Dogville</i> - the cast seem too self-conscious, the script is clanging and histrionic, and Bryce Dallas Howard simply could not bring the voiceless intensity to the role of Grace that Nicole Kidman did. Nonetheless, the ideas expressed by the film are equally as devastating as in <i>Dogville</i>, and the film deserves critical recognition for its skewering of the dialectical destruction of unfettered liberal guilt. In
<i>Manderlay</i>, Grace’s experience in <i>Dogville</i>
incite her to use her power to do good. She decides to forcibly intervene in
slavery. <i>Manderlay's</i> Grace is a
spirited idealist with whom one sympathizes as her genuinely benevolent
imposition of liberal democracy end up in dictatorial ferocity because, as von
Trier has said, "it’s impossible to impose democracy by force. Every other
system of government is easier to enforce [than democracy]"<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title="">[v]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
Idealists, von Trier has it, are unwittingly bondsmen in that they feel morally
compelled to force their way of thinking on other people – especially people
who live in undemocratic or perhaps even dictatorial regimes. In doing so,
political idealists run the risk of trapping people into new moral laws which
are, for Nietzsche –as I hope to convey - another kind of un-freedom. If people
do not free themselves, they are – by definition unfree, and therefore
vulnerable to being forced into political and social systems they may not want,
or which – as in <i>Manderlay</i> – do not
protect them from oppression, inequality, or danger. These films are, for the
most part about is a spirited moral idealist who cannot understand why her
compassionate imposition of democracy fails. Again, the people she is trying to
help should be grateful – as the people of <i>Dogville</i>
were desperate, as she herself was, the people of <i>Manderlay</i> are slaves, as she was. She feels guilty and she thinks
she has the power to compensate black for what photographer Jacob Holdt has called
‘internalised racism’. In <i>Manderlay</i>,
Grace believes it her duty as a middle-class white woman to compensate black people for the brutality of slavery: “We
brought them here and we abused them and made them what they are.” This sense of liberal responsibility is touches on deep political concerns in Jacob Holdt’s work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Manderlay</i> is a reworking of Jacob Holdt’s <i><a href="http://www.american-pictures.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">American Pictures</span></a></i> photo diaries. In the 1970s, Holdt was a middle-class
Danish drop-out who chose to become a vagabond in the most deprived areas of
America. Holdt responds to the poverty surrounding him with an urge to document
it – to make the world see what was happening in prosperous democracies. Holdt’s
involvement with the development of <i>Manderlay</i>
was more extensive than is widely known; he was not only involved in creating
the photo montages that close the <i>USA</i>
films, but was very much involved in the progression of the narrative. Lars was
very inspired by Holdt’s theories of ‘mental slavery’ and ‘internalized
racism’. He was especially drawn to Holdt’s photographs of black workers in
peonage in the deep South – the first offered to the and which still goes on
today all over the world. When he returned to Denmark, he began giving lecture
tours and showing the pictures all over the world. He wanted to raise awareness
about the lasting effects of slavery and about ongoing racism in the west. In <i>American Pictures</i>, Holdt writes much
about ‘internalised racism’ in which oppressed people begin to despise
themselves because they resort to desperate, sometimes criminal measures to
survive. And because they live in a country where they are allegedly free and
where there are opportunities for all. They blame themselves for their
oppression. Holdt told me about his work on <i>Manderlay</i>
and why it was an important film for him<i>:</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Jacob Holdt:</b> [Lars
von] Trier asked me to photograph some pictures for him for [the film] <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342272/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dear Wendy</span></a></i> from a ghetto in America
after which I helped him doing research on a good location for the movie. They
wanted my photos so they could build up an exact American town up in Film city.
Therefore we had a meeting in [his studios at] Zentropa at which he told me
that his wife, Bente, was a great admirer of me, since she is a child care
worker. Pedagogues use my shown all the time in their schools. Bente therefore
suggested Lars that he should see <i>American
Pictures</i> and we agreed to do a private showing for him and other Zentropa
employees. <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Afterwards
Lars got the idea to use my pictures in the end of <i>Dogville</i> which he was just then finishing. But over the summer he
was thinking a lot about two themes in my show – “the continuing mental slavery
of blacks” and “internalized racism”. So when I later that year was sitting in
Zentropa cutting my pictures into <i>Dogville</i>
he kept running into the cutting room saying: “Jacob, Jacob, I have to talk to
you. I want to make <i>American Pictures</i> as a comedy”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After
three meetings with me about “internalized racism” he said: “Ok, Jacob, now I
go home to write the manuscript.” Only 3 days later he sent me an email with
the finished manuscript to <i>Manderlay</i>
in which I felt he expressed all my ideas better than I had myself been able to
express them through 25 years of workshops.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t3Bg8yM4R-k/Us_fOkY08dI/AAAAAAAAAUU/3Hc25eiOb8I/s1600/am2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t3Bg8yM4R-k/Us_fOkY08dI/AAAAAAAAAUU/3Hc25eiOb8I/s1600/am2.png" height="448" width="640" /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SYhhuJYJ5H8/Us_fZRJrRNI/AAAAAAAAAUc/_emh4oNmFJc/s1600/jacob-holdt-american-pictures-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SYhhuJYJ5H8/Us_fZRJrRNI/AAAAAAAAAUc/_emh4oNmFJc/s1600/jacob-holdt-american-pictures-08.jpg" height="448" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jacob Holdt, <i>American Pictures </i>(1985)</td></tr>
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<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> overtly tackles race politics, civil rights, and
political reform. It was considered so inflammatory in the USA that few black
actors would go near it. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Danny Glover
initially turned down his part, objecting to the film’s overpoweringly white
point of view, but eventually signed on because so few films tackle the subject
at all. Far from being saintly or heroic, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the black
characters in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">solicit
their own oppression, preferring the certainties of enslavement to the dubious
freedom of a morally destitute and undeniably racist America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Glover wanted to show the
horrendous oppression that faced newly freed slaves in America, as well as the
hypocrisies of the American constitution, founded over the issue of slavery
following the civil war and in anticipation of the burgeoning industrial
capitalist state. Liberated slaves found free America to be hostile and
antagonistic. And anti-discrimination legislations were exploited more by newly
founded corporations than by black workers. The
film’s denouement points to the economic and political reality of
post-Civil war era America as starkly contradiction of the more generally
accepted ideal of emancipation. It’s about the reality of reconstruction in
which life actually did become a lot worse for many blacks after abolition and
liberation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Holdt initially conceived of
his book as an attack on Denmark and as a warning to European liberals about
what happens when you try to create an ideal of economic freedom in a racially
segregated society. Holdt responded to racism and the on-going slavery of black
people with a strong sense of liberal-guilt. He felt guilty for poverty but
also because he felt compelled to document poverty. Holdt despised the
aesthetics of pity that uses the suffering of others to embolden political
indignation and moral righteousness. Sanctimoniously political art is radical.
Liberals, he says, can be "the buffer troops of capitalism who absorb any
critique of the system and distort and avert it by constantly raising it to the
level of art [and] saccharine sentimentality"<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title="">[vi]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span> </span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xK3rR2UR_1E/Us_wD5k3w8I/AAAAAAAAAVs/QKaV6yTzqqM/s1600/holdtamericancomp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xK3rR2UR_1E/Us_wD5k3w8I/AAAAAAAAAVs/QKaV6yTzqqM/s1600/holdtamericancomp.jpg" height="156" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jacob Holdt, <i>American Pictures</i> (1985)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Can we see von Trier as a similarly leftist, 'anti-art' artist? Well, his well stated liberal
politics express a great faith in anti-realism as well as in solidarity, collective power and
ownership. This is reflected in projects such as <span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_10/section_1/artc1A.html" target="_blank">Dogma’95</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370237/" target="_blank">100Cameras</a>, <a href="http://www.glasgowfilm.com/redroad/advance_party.html" target="_blank">The Advance Party</a>, <a href="http://www.kulturarv.dk/1001fortaellinger/en_GB/filmbyen-avedoere-studios" target="_blank">Filmbyen</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354575/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i>The Five Obstructions</i></a></span>, and other collaborative ventures and in the - albeit heavily scrutinised - spirit de corps of his films, such as satirical leftist-critique <i>The Idiots</i>. He seems to
enthusiastically advocate collaboration, yet the ideal of collective power and
egalitarianism is, he says, a thing of the past. And that, for him, is a sad
state of affairs. While he works in collaborative venture, he is also a very
purposeful auteur whose collective projects are an important defining facet of
his oeuvre. And, as in the case of Dogma ‘95, his distinctive signature form is
what actually defines the form that the collective project will take. "[It] is the same problem as the problem of
democracy" he bemoaned “80% of Danes are too stupid for democracy, right?
Because they think something else, or because they don’t agree with me! I would
love to work in a community but I haven’t found others that would be stupid
enough to do what I think is right! The will for this collective idea, nobody
really seems to have it these days.” Von Trier explained the basic
political premise of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> thus:
"it’s impossible to impose democracy by force. Every other system of government
is easier to enforce than democracy. You can say a lot of nasty things about
Bush, but don’t you think his heart is in it and he believes in what he is
doing?" What on earth does this say about democracy? Similar tensions between
the law of democracy and the individuals who enforce it are, of course, the
dominant theme of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This seems to me be more of
a liberal, one might say a left-wing model of democracy, rather than the more
individualistic and economic self-sufficiency model offered by western
countries. In <i>Manderlay</i>, the model of
democracy is perhaps more obviously socialist : the plantation will be run
without salaried workers – it will be a collective with communal ownership,
shared labour, and equality of
provisions. In <i>Manderlay</i>, the will of
individual is subject to the will of the equal majority: rule by the people for
the people. This results in a different kind of unfreedom in that the
individual is still subject to laws. Should the individual’s will disagree with
the majority, they will be forcibly curtailed. This is the kind of freedom
offered to <i>Manderlay</i>’s ex-slaves to
combat deep racial and economic problems. Democracy – or, rather the kind of
democracy we are offered in <i>Dogville</i>
and <i>Manderlay</i>, is, it is strongly
inferred, logically and inevitably immoral.
Democracy, one might think, is benevolent laws to ensure the moral
quietude of all member s of society for the good of all. The social, then, is
the consequence of failed moral ideals. In <i>Manderlay</i>,
the social machine Grace wants to manufacture is borne of the disappointment of
her moral ideal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Ressentiment</i>
is not just a morality, it is a politics. <i>Ressentiment</i>
is political when it becomes the basis for an enforced collective such as that imposed upon <i>Manderlay</i>. Indeed, it needs to be
collective to have any kind of social expression. The moral and democratic
collectives that Grace tries to set up in <i>Manderlay</i>
seems to me to be redolent of the concept of liberal guilt. Holdt’s diaries, on
which the film is based, often express this idea of liberal-guilt and what
might be called leftist self-loathing. Holdt notes that any attempt to
represent the suffering of others is neutralized by its being ‘art’ or, worse,
as ‘outsider art.’ In the USA Trilogy, von Trier reproduces such these themes as well as shocking episodes from Holdt’s
book of starving and destitute black people still, in the 1970’s, picking
cotton, bonded as debt slaves in peonage. The modern system of indentured
labour replicates the democracy in <i>Manderlay</i>
that renders black shareholders dependent on white Grace. Criticizing the
liberals’ approbation of genuine suffering is not to devalue a desire for
social change, it is to question Grace’s assumption that suffering could be the
basis of an ethic.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Like Grace’s willingness to
suffer, liberal guilt can be understood in terms of a morality of <i>ressentiment</i>. The instinct for freedom
is felt to be immoral in that those considered free are not ‘all instincts
which are not discharged outwardly <i>turn
inwards</i>’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title="">[viii]</a>.</span></span> This is the unhappy consciousness of leftist guilt. Nietzsche’s central idea of
the ‘will to power’ is not compromised by the idea of moral guilt In fact, <i>ressentiment</i> is will to power and even
subjection is will. Liberal guilt is contingent on a sense of moral wrongness
and injustice, yet it becomes a kind of cruelty that embattles its own ideas of
freedom. If those who are free cause suffering, then being free is immoral. The
political dynamic she places her faith in, then is collective democracy in the
form of a co-op. What <i>Manderlay</i>
grapples with is the idea that moral law and enforcing moral law are necessary
preconditions of a democratic collective. In Nietzschean terms, enforcing
equality through punitive laws is driven by a slave-morality of <i>ressentiment</i>. According to Nietzsche,
the formation of a community of masks liberal guilt in that ‘the individual’s
dissatisfaction with himself is overridden by his delight at the prosperity of
the community’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title="">[ix]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grace is profoundly guilt
about the situation of the slaves at <i>Manderlay</i>.
believes it her moral duty to compensate and liberate violently displaced
slaves: “We brought them here and we abused them and made them what they are.”
She turns <i>Manderlay</i> into a democratic
co-op where reluctant ex-slaves are taught to organise themselves and vote on important issues. She forces them to be free and take control of the financial
security of <i>Manderlay</i>. But no-one is
really in control and Grace increasingly bullies them into voting on what she
thinks is important. They are soon starving and mutinous – they blame Grace for
their terrible situation. She turns to ‘Mam’s Law’ because it is what the
people understand and because it worked in the past. It worked because Wilhelm
wrote it to keep the blacks safe. The rules ensured that they always had a roof
over their head and food in their bellies without having to suffer the
insurmountable difficulties of finding work outside the plantation gates. They
had already been liberated and faced the terrors of unfreedom in an impoverished
and unequal land where they will never really be free. They chose slavery over
poverty. They do not want to vote on their own future as they have already
taken control of their own fate. They want benign dictatorship. They vote <i>not</i> to be democratic. So Grace is
enslaved in the role of un-free dictator. Her slave-morality led her to be the
new Mam, forced to take control in a role in which she has not control
whatsoever. Grace’s will outlaw domination by forcing people to be free -
rehearses the slave-morality of <i>ressentiment</i>. In her liberal guilt and her pity, Grace
allows herself to become a slave to the suffering of people who cannot survive
in the kind of democracy that thrives on inequality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ydZBMX6mbkA/Us_ge9n9s4I/AAAAAAAAAUo/JNI09H0Ytt8/s1600/manderlay372.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ydZBMX6mbkA/Us_ge9n9s4I/AAAAAAAAAUo/JNI09H0Ytt8/s1600/manderlay372.jpg" height="330" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slavery in <i>Manderlay</i> (2005)<i>,</i> dir. Lars von Trier </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Wendy Brown’s contemporary
reading of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> is that it
finds its expression exactly in liberal guilt. Brown reconfigures leftist </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> by showing how it operates
on the moral pain of failure underlying what Walter Benjamin called
‘left-melancholy’ – a stubborn attachment to a failed ideal as well as to
mourning its loss. The celebration of those who suffer might
keep the fires of hope alive. Liberal guilt is imagines freedom to be dependent
on social democracy: ‘Left melancholy’, according to Benjamin, is the
bitter onetime radical’s sadness at the failed hope of a political ideal.
According to Brown, this enacts a politics of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> that is always doomed to failure. Like </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, left-melancholy is
sustained by compensatory suffering, self-limitation, and self-reproach of the
kind that drives Grace in </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manderlay</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
- Vengeance and violence only ever crouch beneath Grace’s political morals –
what Brown might call ‘a politics of recrimination and rancour … a tendency to
reproach power rather than aspire to it, to disdain freedom rather than to
practice it’</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title="">[x]</a>.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> Left-melancholy
is ‘attached more to a particular political analysis or ideal—even to the
failure of that ideal—than to seizing possibilities for radical change in the
present’</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title="">[xi]</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Grace seems, on the surface,
to transcend vulgar self-interest by feeling guilty and taking responsibility
for the suffering and the moral failings of others. Liberal guilt is
politically injurious in that it glorifies suffering and inculcates guilt that
does not reach those who actually do have political power. Liberal guilt seems
to covet power – as Grace takes the power she has to try to do good.
Self-induced guilt is depends on social change to release it from suffering. It
is passive. The liberal guilt that seems to drive Grace’s moral impulse is, as
Brown tells us, forged in vengeful anger that hides in <i>Manderlay</i> seems to be a coming to awareness of the destructiveness
of paternalistic guilt and of the violence of moralistic piety. It is to realise <i>ressentiment</i>’s self-imposed
insistence on the moral superiority of the powerlessness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the slave-morality,
liberals actually aspire to outsiderness, but cannot transcend the guilt of
being bohemian, white, and middle-class. Their rage against the immorality of
the powerful is, as it is for Grace, self-loathing. AS Nietzsche put it: ‘the
‘idealists’ and ‘beautiful souls,’ are all decadents’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn12" name="_ednref12" title="">[xii]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn12" name="_ednref12" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span> For brown, leftist guilt is ‘blind to any way of changing society in a meaningful way’
because it chooses guilt and accountability instead of solidarity: ‘the language of recognition becomes the language of unfreedom’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn13" name="_ednref13" title="">[xiii]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn13" name="_ednref13" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
Guilt is a substitute for equality in that, as Holdt emphasised to me, it is
paternalistic and does nothing to equalise the balance of power between
marginalised people and the dominant social force, and it does nothing to bring
people together. As Brown puts it, leftist guilt ‘re-inscribes incapacity,
powerlessness, and rejection’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn14" name="_ednref14" title="">[xiv]</a>.</span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn14" name="_ednref14" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span>
Does contemporary liberal politics really seem resentful to von Trier? After
all, his films often explore political and ethical problems in a left-ish
stance. “Well”, he told me, “I felt
like an idiot!” The political part of the work is a desire, not to destroy, but
to challenge and rejuvenate leftist ideals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The democratic ideal that is
demoralised in <i>Manderlay</i> is a struggle
to unforget the pain that drives Grace’s caricature of leftist morality. In my
opinion, von Trier’s USA films, and especially Grace, reflect the leftist and
the liberal European who (rightly) condemn American conservatism, but who do so
in an attitude of moral superiority and political self-certainty. Grace is
partly a cynical image of leftist guilt - the privileged daughter of a powerful
family who refuses to rule over the seemingly powerless by exerting immoral
social control. Her family signifies that power is taken through immoral acts.
Grace is radicalised by liberal guilt at her station in life. Her leftist
rebellion is her refusal to use her social privilege and financial muscle and
instead makes herself indigent. She takes on a consolatory and excessively
subordinate role in excess of her actions. She seeks to help others with her
power and places her faith in the moral promises of liberal democracy. Grace’s
morality is social and political. She places her trust in democracy, clemency,
and moral integrity. von Trier’s targets are racists as well as supercilious or
resentfully disillusioned leftists. Expecting, perhaps, a dark satire on
American conservatism, the leftist cinema goer of the ‘USA films’ is hit smartly
in the face by their own cartoon. As an allegory of moral conceit, von Trier’s
<i>The Idiots</i> and USA Trilogy expose the self-defeating strategy of <i>ressentiment</i>. <i>Ressentiment</i>’s self-defeating nature, its moral over-investment in
suffering, yields only irresolvable discontent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6fnBtQgoPrg/Us_hbs7fQJI/AAAAAAAAAUw/876eA7RWJDY/s1600/003408.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6fnBtQgoPrg/Us_hbs7fQJI/AAAAAAAAAUw/876eA7RWJDY/s1600/003408.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grace imposes the law of freedom in <i>Manderlay</i> (2005), dir. Lars von Trier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Left-melancholy stagnates
into terminal irony, caustic nostalgia, and imagined losses. An aesthetics of <i>ressentiment</i> is pseudo-catharsis;
protest folded back onto its own piteous shame, fuelled by revenge fantasies of
the intractably impotent. Backed into a corner, the liberal moviegoer might be
tempted to throw away ‘the fragment to which he had attached his hopes’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn15" name="_ednref15" title="">[xv]</a>.</span></span>
For A.O. Scott, the leftist guilt that
pervaded contemporary leftist art-house films such as <i>The Idiots</i>, <i>Dogville</i>, <i>Manderlay</i>, Moodysson's <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203166/" target="_blank">Together</a></i>, Bertolucci's <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309987/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">The Dreamers</a></i>, or Haneke's </span><i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Caché</a></span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">,
might have an unhelpfully consolatory purpose and ‘a salutary effect, since the
discomfort they provoke, even when it takes the form of defensive anger, is an
antidote to the soothing reassurance that we find elsewhere. Any masochistic
embrace of art that tries to hit us where we found strength can provide its own
perverse form of comfort. Feeling bad about oneself, feeling guilty, can be a
way of affirming one’s goodness, a sign of moral virtue and political concern
that costs nothing more than the price of a ticket’</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title="">[xvi]</a>.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
To be consoled in this way by art, to capitulate to leftist self-loathing and
throw up one’s hands in defeat, would be to fall back again into the mire of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ressentiment</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> - to take oneself and one’s
hopes as objects of hatred and ridicule. Thereby, one fails to effect any
change at all except in one’s sense of political rightness and will to
participate in political life – a sort of embarrassment of the will. Leftist
art is reduced to attacking leftism and leftist audiences </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">per se</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. Again, Nietzsche already warned us of this: ‘he who
despises himself nonetheless esteems himself thereby as a despiser’</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" title="">[xvii]</a>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In condemning America, the
liberal movie goer of <i>Dogville</i> and <i>Manderlay</i> has already entered the game
of <i>ressentiment</i>, have already failed to be political and has decided that it is
futile to try to affect change. What, then, is the
way out of <i>ressentiment</i> that does not
depend on paternalistic moral excess? The remedial work of the <i>USA</i> films is to confront the
disappointment of an incontrovertible moral ideal, and the angry sadness that
fuels it, and understand the misdirected violence of powerlessness that ought
to be directed at the political system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Von Trier’s USA films are in
many ways a means of somewhat reconciling leftist self-loathing by facing up to
the anger and violence that are dispersed in liberal guilt and in undemocratic moral
force. We see Grace’s liberal morality change as she faces and tries to change
different social systems of democracy and freedom. Grace’s
targets are first her aristocratic gangster class, then herself, then the
working classes, then the meddling philosopher, then slave owners, then willing
slaves, then, finally, politicians (the title of the unrealised third film, <i>Washington</i>, strongly implied that Grace
would eventually exert her resentments on the so-called democratic political
system that affects the social real she struggled to make good. The film was likely not made due to <i>Manderlay's </i>failings both artistically and financially). Despite its flaws, <i>Manderlay</i>'s philosophical critique remains valid in the context of <i>Dogville</i>. Grace's moral ideal
is disillusioned, yet her desire to change society is not. Marx himself
wrote that disillusionment is the happy end to the state of unproductive
labouring under falsified beliefs. Relinquishing the consolations of ressentiment
ought not to lead to nihilism or resignation. Disillusionment is a good thing:
disillusionment liberates one to ‘think, act, and fashion his reality as a man
who has lost his illusions and regained his reason’<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn18" name="_ednref18" title="">[xviii]</a>.</span></span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn18" name="_ednref18" title=""><!--[endif]--></a></span> Perhaps, as von
Trier has joked, his greatest work will be called <i>‘The
Happy Ending</i>…’ </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[i]</span></span></a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">www.indiewire.com/article/lars_von_trier_chats_with_new_york_audiences_virtually_speaking<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><i><span lang="EN"><a href="http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/010166.pdf" target="_blank">Manderlay Pressbook</a></span></i><span lang="EN"><a href="http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/010166.pdf">,</a> 2005</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Nietzsche (1887 rpt. 1994) <i>On the Genealogy of Morality</i>, Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
I:§8, p.19<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Morelli, Elizabeth (1998) <i>Rationality and Ressentiment</i>, 20<sup>th</sup>
World Congress of Philosophy, University of Boston: <a href="http://www.bu.edu/wcp/MainAnth.htm" target="_blank">Paideia Archive</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><i><span lang="EN"><a href="http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/010166.pdf" target="_blank">Manderlay Pressbook</a></span></i><span lang="EN">, p.74</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Holdt, Jacob, 1985, <i>American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass</i>,
Denmark: American Pictures Foundation, p.165-7<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref7" name="_edn7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Ibid<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN">Nietzsche, op.cit., II:§16, p.61</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[ix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN">Ibid, III:§18, p.</span><span lang="EN-US">106; I: §19, p.7</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn10">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref10" name="_edn10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[x]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Brown, Wendy (1995) <i>States of Injury:
Power and Freedom in late Modernity</i>, Princeton: Princeton UP, p.55<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn11">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref11" name="_edn11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Brown, Wendy (1999) “Resisting
Left-Melancholy”, in: <i>Boundary</i>, v.2:26.3, Fall 1999, p.20<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn12">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref12" name="_edn12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Nietzsche, “
Nietzsche contra Wagner” in (1887 rpt.
1974) <i>The Gay Science</i>, New York:
Vintage, IV:§370, p.328, n.120<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn13">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref13" name="_edn13" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Brown, 1995,
p.65-6<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn14">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref14" name="_edn14" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Ibid, p.69<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn15">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref15" name="_edn15" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Bürger, Peter (1974) <i>Theory of the
Avant-Garde</i>, Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, p.xlix, n2<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn16">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref16" name="_edn16" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Scott, A.O.
(2005) “Discreet Masochism of the Bourgeoise”, in: <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/movies/09scot.html?_r=0" target="_blank">The New York Times</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn17">
<div align="left" class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref17" name="_edn17" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">[xvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> Nietzsche (1886 rpt. 1973) <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, IV: §78<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn18">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref18" name="_edn18" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xviii]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Marx,
Karl (1843-4) “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, cit. Bürger, op cit. p.9</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-87960668427532762452013-12-03T20:50:00.000+00:002014-01-10T13:38:30.067+00:00Ender’s Game: military heroics/heroic military? <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">By Vincent M. Gaine</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vWbJ7IYHAnA/Upzec0AsU4I/AAAAAAAAASI/ivXm7dA0vTo/s1600/enders-game-quad-prize.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vWbJ7IYHAnA/Upzec0AsU4I/AAAAAAAAASI/ivXm7dA0vTo/s1600/enders-game-quad-prize.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><style>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Ender’s Game</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">, dir. Gavin Hood (2013)</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">[SPOILERS]</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: small;">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Is
it bad to turn children into killing machines? Of course, what sort of question
is that? Is it bad to defend ourselves against annihilation? Of course <i>not</i>, what sort of question is that? <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Ender’s Game</a></i> (Gavin Hood, 2013) plays these questions against each other in an
interesting moral conundrum. In doing so, the film forms an interesting
contrast to other science fiction adventures, especially <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Star Wars</a></i> (George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, Richard Marquand,
1977-2005), <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Independence Day</a></i> (Roland
Emmerich, 1996) and the rebooted <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Star Trek</a></i> (J. J. Abrams, 2009) and its
sequel, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Star Trek Into Darkness</a></i>
(Abrams, 2013). <i>Ender’s Game</i> </span><span class="uficommentbody">takes place decades after Earth defeated an invading
alien force, the Formics. The International Fleet, Earth’s defence force, fears
another attack, and trains children as fleet officers because their brains
react faster and can process more information than adults. The children command
remote fighters through computer control and virtual reality, rather than being
actually on the front line. The film focuses on </span>Ender Wiggin
(Asa Butterfield), a trainee in combat school under the command of Colonel
Graff (Harrison Ford). Ender steadily gains in skill and confidence, but also
experiences difficulties and even trauma en route to winning a decisive battle
against the Formics.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">On
the surface, <i>Ender’s Game</i> appears a fairly gung-ho sci-fi action film,
with an establishment scene informing the viewer that the human race was only
saved by the noble sacrifice of a great leader. So far, so <i>Independence Day</i>,
even down to a fighter aircraft flying into the belly of an alien ship. Yet a
more sinister ideology swiftly creeps into the film, as Colonel Graff and Major
Gwen Anderson (Viola Davis) watch the movements of Ender, literally through his
eyes thanks to an implant that he willingly had fitted. Here is dystopia in
subtle terms, rather than the devastated environments of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Blade Runner</a></i> or
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Avatar</a></i> or the Orwellian oppression of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/?ref_=nv_sr_3">The Hunger Games</a></i>. Instead we see a public drip-fed a steady diet of
militaristic propaganda. Ender’s home life and indeed existence is contingent
upon this militarism, as his family discuss the war and humanity’s future over
dinner, and children play at fighting Formics. The violence of Ender and his
brother Peter (Jimmy Pinchak) as they play is disturbing, especially since we
learn that Peter was expelled from the same training as Ender for being too
savage. Furthermore, Ender was only conceived as a possible future trainee,
which means that when Graff comes to take him away, the parents have no say in
the matter. Children are being bred and raised for their military potential,
and subsequently indoctrinated and deceived. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Despite
this, <i>Ender’s Game</i> is not explicitly dystopian or overtly grim. Many of
the training sequences of Ender and his fellow cadets are enjoyable, reminiscent
of teaching and Quidditch sequences in the <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0241527/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Harry Potter</a></i> series.
Parallels are drawn between growing up and advancing in training, and the
relationships between Ender and his friends are warm and engaging. The
zero-gravity war games look like fun, and I found myself drawn into the
training of Ender, seeing it as something positive.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;">Nonetheless, darker
elements remain, as Graff arranges for Ender to be isolated as part of officer
training, and rivalries develop between the cadets. Ender is cornered by
bullies and proves as savage as his brother, as he beats the lead bully badly
so that ‘he can never hurt me again’, a justification Graff uses in relation to
the war against the Formics. Things take an even darker turn when Ender fights
another bully, Bonzo Madrid (Moises Arias), in officer training. Bonzo is badly
injured and Ender is shocked and appalled at what he has done, but nevertheless
does not shirk from combat. Bonzo confronts Ender in the shower room, and Ender
prepares by coating his body in soap to make him hard to grip, and turns up the
temperature to provide the cover of steam. Ender may be conscientious, but his
combat readiness never wavers. </span><span class="uficommentbody" style="font-size: large;">Therefore, the </span><span style="font-size: large;">training is effective
in turning Ender into a dangerous combatant, and our enjoyment of the training
sequences becomes problematic and uncomfortable. Zero-G games look like fun,
but perhaps a more apt comparison than <i>Harry Potter</i> would be <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Full Metal Jacket</a></i> (Stanley Kubrick, 1987), in which the boot camp training
dehumanises the recruits, reducing one to murderous insanity.</span> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-29kSwtW6HtE/UpzfkkLk5zI/AAAAAAAAASY/cYQgzjqEgTw/s1600/large_full_metal_jacket_blu-ray4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-29kSwtW6HtE/UpzfkkLk5zI/AAAAAAAAASY/cYQgzjqEgTw/s1600/large_full_metal_jacket_blu-ray4.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Full Metal Jacket</i>, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1987)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Full Metal Jacket</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> has an easy job of being
critical of warfare, because the Vietnam War is incredibly controversial and
largely seen as senseless opposition to the spread of communism. Furthermore,
Kubrick uses horrific images of victims to underscore his critique, something
that a film like <i>Ender’s Game</i>, aimed
at a family audience, cannot do. Yet here the film interrogates our
expectations, as we expect a straightforward tale of good VS evil in a
family-oriented, blockbuster adventure like this. Instead, we encounter a disturbing
vision of militarism that turns children into killers and where the lines of
right and wrong are far greyer than in <i>Star
Wars</i> or <i>Harry Potter</i>. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ender’s subsequent training is undertaken by Commander Mazar Rackham (Ben
Kingsley), the hero of the opening sequence who supposedly sacrificed himself
to win the first war against the Formics. His heroic death is another piece of
propaganda, the man made into a legend because legends are more inspirational
than leaders. The most disturbing piece of propaganda comes at the film’s
climax, as Ender and his team succeed in their final exam: the apparently simulated
destruction of the Formics’ homeworld. This scene is, on the one hand, a
dazzling visual feast. Ender’s team of squadron commanders engage the enemy
forces, utilise ingenious strategy, and finally deploy their weapon of mass
destruction to spectacular effect. Much as in <i>Star Trek</i> or <i>Star Wars</i>,
the viewer is treated to the visual pleasure of spaceships blasting away at
each other. I imagine that aficionados of video games might gain particular
pleasure from the battle sequences, as the vessels are controlled through
joysticks and control pads, as well as direct physical manipulation. </span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VJjhHuR9TgU/UpzgPhMxdRI/AAAAAAAAASg/-igN2uD2aHc/s1600/enders-game-tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VJjhHuR9TgU/UpzgPhMxdRI/AAAAAAAAASg/-igN2uD2aHc/s1600/enders-game-tv.jpg" height="334" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ender's Game</i>, dir. Gavin Hood (2013)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even
without a background in videogaming, I still found the film’s combat
simulations thrilling and enjoyable. However, as the exam approached its
climax, I sensed that something was wrong, because why was the film spending so
much narrative time and visual spectacle (which is, let us not forget, a
significant portion of the film’s budget) on this sequence if it were not the
climax of the film? My sense of misgiving was confirmed after the test was
completed and the squadron celebrated with jubilation. Once again, this was
reminiscent of similar triumphant moments like the destruction of the Death
Star in <i>Star Wars</i>, the
intertextuality made stronger by the presence of Harrison Ford.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3U6ZUzz1DzhzmF2ev3exzpRKOqv1-2oE3vnq9zRI7QgcMCzeFejb35X_GwebN7yaUKTPSjhWQ-J6YcLnbOi69z3swDgY6kFOBftnTnuf6yvwQj8xKrjeiyeeqPxRvgmwB19y4HcW_wOI/s1600/2940573-deathstar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3U6ZUzz1DzhzmF2ev3exzpRKOqv1-2oE3vnq9zRI7QgcMCzeFejb35X_GwebN7yaUKTPSjhWQ-J6YcLnbOi69z3swDgY6kFOBftnTnuf6yvwQj8xKrjeiyeeqPxRvgmwB19y4HcW_wOI/s640/2940573-deathstar.jpg" height="353" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope</i>, dir. George Lucas (1977)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Graff’s
congratulations to Ender, however, are very different from Han Solo’s ‘Great
shot, kid, that was one in a million!’, as the reaction of the senior officers is
far more sober than the cadets or, indeed, the audience. Graff reveals that
this ‘simulation’ was an actual assault on the Formic homeworld, and is
immensely grateful to Ender for ending the war and (according to him) saving
mankind. Ender, however, is horrified at destroying an entire species. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ender is not the
only one horrified by his actions: so are we, in shocking contrast to our
earlier reactions. <span class="uficommentbody">As viewers of a sci-fi spectacular, we expect grand set pieces, space
battles and explosions</span>. <span class="uficommentbody">The film rewards our expectations but with a caveat of ambiguity: we
enjoy the spectacle but simultaneously feel uncomfortable. The discomfort is
caused by, firstly, children being used as weapons, which plays on our
discomfort around the corruption of innocence and exposing children to the
horrors of the world. Secondly, the cause is not at straightforwardly
righteousness as it could be. I</span>t is completely understandable that we defend ourselves and many a film
would treat this unproblematically. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ender’s
Game</i>, however, asks us to consider whether survival of the human race is
justified when the price is so high. Quite apart from the eradication of an
entire species, compassion and humaneness are what make us human: the pilots
and commanders of the International Fleet sacrifice their humanity for the
cause of victory. Much as Rupert Read has argued that humans are made ‘alien’
and ‘other’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html">Avatar</a></i>, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ender’s Game</i> humans make themselves
monstrous, even as they try to overcome what they perceive as monsters. Here be
monsters indeed, but rather than looking like giant ants, they look like Han
Solo and Mahatma Gandhi!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
film asks what is justifiable to expect from a sci-fi blockbuster. Ender’s maturation
is similar to the journeys of young heroes Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and
James Kirk (in the new version of this character played by Chris Pine). These
young heroes have an unambiguous heroism about them – Obi Wan Kenobi informs
Luke that he must ‘become a Jedi’, while Captain Pike informs Kirk that he sees
the ‘greatness’ in him. Kirk, as presented in J. J. Abrams’ version of <i>Star Trek</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">, is unproblematically destined
for greatness, mostly down to blind luck and occasional flashes of insight.
Similarly, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter must confront, respectively, the
Dark Side and the Dark Lord that they are associated with, but there is never
any doubt that Luke and Harry themselves are ultimately good. Ender displays
conscience to balance his military skill, but he has a very dubious form of
‘greatness’ thrust upon him that gives him nothing but guilt. The heroes of
such blockbusters regularly travel into darkness, but Kirk, Luke and Harry
remain largely untouched by it, whereas Ender is indelibly stained. As a
viewer, we are also stained, because we enjoy the spectacle and action which is
bound up with Ender’s development that, surely, we knew was leading towards the
attack. We were looking forward to the devastation we see, because that is what
the genre offers. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Ender's Game</i> therefore performs philosophy by challenging generic expectations and our own
enjoyment of violence. </span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-8099178818026530342013-11-18T12:29:00.000+00:002014-01-10T13:33:08.270+00:00The New Total Recall, the Old Wicker Man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjLYfVpVzYw/Uot_lcLtRhI/AAAAAAAAAQM/3Kn3TWcWMLw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-19+at+15.10.36.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">By Rupert Read</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zfcs-opjxJA/UopwmA0sI_I/AAAAAAAAAOc/g8jNe3kuFak/s1600/Total-Recall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zfcs-opjxJA/UopwmA0sI_I/AAAAAAAAAOc/g8jNe3kuFak/s640/Total-Recall.jpg" height="314" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Total Recall</i>, dir. Len Wiseman (2012)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The new <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/"><i>Total Recall</i></a> is quite a ride. I saw it a couple of years back when it came
out, on an IMAX screen, with my thinkingfilmcollective colleague, Emma Bell. It
was shown quite a lot on IMAX — possibly a clue to its genre: an action movie;
a thrills, spills and effects vehicle. To those of us who found the original 1990 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2"><i>Total Recall</i></a>, which was based of course
on a Phillip K. Dick <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft10t">story</a> entitled <i>We Can Remember It For You Wholesale</i> (and Dick is the unpleasant conceptual genius of
modern sci-fi), a profoundly philosophical work, the remake is inevitably
disappointing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And indeed: at all the points where the first film showed
its deepest philosophical illumination, this one fell short.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> Examples:</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hauser’s video-recordings for Quaid are less
philosophical in content, less interesting personal-identity-wise, than in the
original. Furthermore, we see Hauser speaking to Quaid, but what is missing is
the beautiful symmetry of these video-recordings present in the first
version of the film. We miss seeing Hauser telling the Hauser/Quaid who is
about to be turned back into the original Hauser about this re-turning: the
laughing Arnie at this point in the original film is replaced in the new
version by a boring one-dimensional Cohagan. </span></span></li>
</ul>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mANR6CNs7XA/UotrGbI_BwI/AAAAAAAAAPk/dWy08LRz6GA/s1600/001.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mANR6CNs7XA/UotrGbI_BwI/AAAAAAAAAPk/dWy08LRz6GA/s640/001.jpeg" height="346" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">One of many moments in
which the original <i>Total Recall</i> (1990) facilitates the audience's reflecting on
the nature of identity. This one was 'copied' in the remake; others were,
unfortunately, abandoned or bungled.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
The original film’s multiple investigation of
the philosophy of personal identity — beautifully via Kuato [see the images
below], also via the endless interest in mirroring, and via the
robot-taxi-driver, and so on and on — is mostly missing. There is some nice
new inclusion of doubles, but this is mostly put to poor use — as in Kate
Beckinsale’s final appearance ‘as’ Jessica Biel at the end, which amounts to
little more than an arbitrary Glenn-Close-still-coming-out-of-the-bathtub,
still-not-dead attempt at a breathtaking twist at the end</span></span>. </li>
</ul>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjLYfVpVzYw/Uot_lcLtRhI/AAAAAAAAAQM/3Kn3TWcWMLw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-19+at+15.10.36.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjLYfVpVzYw/Uot_lcLtRhI/AAAAAAAAAQM/3Kn3TWcWMLw/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-19+at+15.10.36.png" height="198" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pictured: a moment when the rebel leader Kuato is revealed to be a hidden, feotus like, in the body of one of the [in this case, male] rebels.<i> Total Recall</i>, dir. Paul Verhoeven (1990)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<ul>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; text-indent: -18pt;">The
new version has much less of the paranoid 'P.K.Dick' feel about it. It doesn’t do an
effective job of leaving one with nagging quasi-Cartesian doubts about whether
one actually <i>has</i> come out of Rekall. The original did; for instance, in
having the same actress be the ‘sleazy’ secret agent image that Quaid chooses
at Rekall as the one who plays his secret agent lover. One film worth comparing
(the original) <i>Total Recall</i> to is then of course <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><i>The Matrix</i></a>. My
interest in and admiration for (the original) <i>Total Recall</i> over the
years has kept growing; I think that if you are looking for a great paranoid
work that takes scepticism (and also of course questions of personal identity)
seriously, then <i>Total Recall</i> is your best bet. The crucial difference
between <i>Total Recall</i> and <i>The Matrix</i> is this: that <i>The Matrix</i>
settles the question of which is the dream and which is the real world. Which
makes the second half of it less interesting than the first half. Whereas <i>Total
Recall</i> keeps the question alive... In the scene in <i>Total Recall </i>where
the protagonist is offered a pill which would 'return him
to reality', the question of which <i>is</i> reality is of course not
quite settled (For, if one stares hard and paranoidly/schizoidly at the
forehead of someone in one's dream, one could surely/probably
strain enough to see a drop of sweat there...). Doubts keep returning
in <i>Total Recall</i>, unlike in <i>The Matrix</i>, just as they ought to do
for anyone inclined to (try to) take Descartes seriously...</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: large; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; text-indent: -18pt;">Perhaps
most crucially in this connection, the scene where someone comes in to ‘talk
Quaid/Hauser down’ is a real failure, compared to the original. The
psychiatrist with that little bead of sweat on his forehead was so, so, much
subtler (and yet of course: hardly decisive of one not being in a
dream) than what happens in the new version, where his workmate goes in to talk
with Quaid and his lover.</span></li>
</ul>
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
new version, like the original, argues that, while being deprived of one’s past
is a terrible, terrible, thing, what is even worse is to be unwilling to be who
one is in the present. To become who you are, as Nietzsche put it. <i>Total Recall</i> is about not
being over-attached to the past; the choice that Hauser-Quaid makes, of
not allowing himself to become his former self again, is profoundly the right
one. Implicit in the bullet-points above (especially the first bullet-point) is
that the original, on balance, provides a better setting for this philosophy of
action-in-the-world (as opposed to: of action-flicks), of <i>Total Recall.<o:p></o:p></i> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Moreover,
what is completely missing in the new version (it is subjugated by a
worshipping of machines) is the profound sense, incarnated in Kuato (the new
version’s rebel leader, Matthias, is by contrast nothing more than a cipher),
of how it might matter in this (future-directed) quest, to get everything one
can from the accumulation of experience that is one’s past, without being
subjugated by that past. In other words: to achieve a meditative presence.
And thus, if necessary, to achieve total recall. To remember what needs to
be remembered.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This
is the new version’s greatest failing of all. In the crucial scene where
Quaid/Hauser is to achieve recall of the vital (to the rebellion) experiences
that he can’t remember, the new version offers us nothing. It turns out that
there is nothing of this nature in Quaid/Hauser’s mind to recall; he
was, in this sense, only a trick. A booby-trap, in which to trap Matthias and
the resistance.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In the
original, the marvellous scene in which Kuato, together
with Quaid/Hauser (an experience of meditative communion; like the joining
of viewer and film), enable Quaid/Hauser to achieve total recall justifies the
film’s title. In the new version, nothing does. The film itself is in this
sense a trick, an empty vessel.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In
other words: There is no good reason why this film has the title ‘Total
Recall’. The only reason it has this title is that it is a remake of
the earlier film.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">That
isn’t a good enough reason.<o:p></o:p> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And
now we can safely say: it is an inferior remake. It is nothing more than a — flawed —copy
of the original.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Consider
now, by comparison, the original (and best) version of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Wicker Man</a></i> from 1973 rather than the 2006 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450345/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">remake</a>. The original <i>Wicker Man</i> is a film that, like the new <i>Total Recall</i>, centres upon a trick.
There is an empty space, where one was expecting to find something. But in this
case, the way in which the trick is practised upon the central character and
upon the viewer alike is a triumph.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--yiXnV5uqss/Uotrhdy7mjI/AAAAAAAAAPs/ZiWowU50eQ8/s1600/wicker_man_poster_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--yiXnV5uqss/Uotrhdy7mjI/AAAAAAAAAPs/ZiWowU50eQ8/s640/wicker_man_poster_01.jpg" height="640" width="454" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wicker Man</i>, dir. Robin Hardy (1973)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I love
films as clever as <i>The Wicker Man</i>.
For the first hour of the film, I was greatly enjoying it, but saw it very much
as a slightly-hokey period-piece. I watched with pleasure, especially enjoying the
‘musical’ scenes, but I watched nevertheless with some detachment: I kept being
surprised by the over-the-top cheese, by the plot-failures, by apparently
having to subscribe to a belief in transmutation of bodies in order to be able
to follow along with the film’s plot, and above all by the silly, weird and
rather naïve way the island’s inhabitants were behaving. I was shocked and
gripped when, with fifteen minutes of the film to go, I suddenly realised how I
had been fooled. I had thought that the actors playing the villagers had been
slightly over-acting / acting badly; and then I suddenly realised that it was
the villagers who had been (so) acting, not the actors.</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1e_fBTnzys/Uopygw8OMdI/AAAAAAAAAOo/KQVw9O6BGBQ/s1600/TheWickerMan1973B.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1e_fBTnzys/Uopygw8OMdI/AAAAAAAAAOo/KQVw9O6BGBQ/s640/TheWickerMan1973B.png" height="358" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wicker Man</i>, dir. Robin Hardy (1973)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
way I had been fooled (and I assume that this is the experience of the vast
majority of film-goers to this film — those who have read/heard spoilers before
seeing the film will unfortunately be drastically deprived of this effect) of
course mirrors the experience of the protagonist, the police-officer. Thus one
is subtly placed in his position, even while one might think one is resisting
or superior to his position. For example: to his moralism and his Christian
dogmatism. It doesn't matter that one feels distant from him: one is <i>still</i>
forced to identify with him at the moment of revelation and thereafter. In
fact, the film’s therapy could even work <i>better</i> if one is at a distance
from him for most of it! This makes the experience of the closing portion of
the film very sinister and disturbing (as of course befits a truly great horror
film). For, even without consciously identifying with him, one is necessarily sucked
into his point of view and his peril, by the sudden switch in what one understands
to be happening, in the film, near the end. This alone is enough to make the
film a potentially transformative / therapeutic experience. I found myself, for
example, feeling surprisingly viscerally the pain of the character who is then
about to be sacrificed.</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJgQW0JQPLs/UopzMB8e45I/AAAAAAAAAOw/Lf2C-X57zhc/s1600/the-wicker-man-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJgQW0JQPLs/UopzMB8e45I/AAAAAAAAAOw/Lf2C-X57zhc/s640/the-wicker-man-1.jpg" height="466" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wicker Man</i>, dir. Robin Hardy (1973)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
one who is to be sacrificed goes rapidly and persuasively (but of course
completely unpersuasively, to the rest of those present) through the whole
gamut of arguments as to why they should not be sacrificed. Almost like a
philosopher or a politician. The failure of these arguments to make any impact
whatsoever (except to elicit a marvellous speech from Lord Summerhill
(Christopher Lee, in a charismatic performance as one would expect from him in
this role: going suddenly from seeming-naïf to chilling-invoker<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><sup><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></sup></a>)
about the glory of being martyred<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>) feels like a kind of slap
in the face of the viewer who sat complacently through the first hour of the
film feeling “This is lovely/interesting, but has nothing to do with me.”<o:p></o:p> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Not to
put too fine a point on it: I felt that the film was speaking to and of me, suddenly;
that I was placed in it. (Exactly the feeling that is missing, from the new <i>Total
Recall</i>, no matter what thrills, spills and special effects it shoves at
one.) This is a profoundly uncomfortable
feeling, especially given where one then is getting placed. In this way, the shocking reorientation of
the viewer, when they learn suddenly the true nature of the sacrifice — and
learn therefore that virtually all their criticisms of the first hour of the
film were simply mistaken —, and the true nature of the plot (using the word
now in its double-meaning, as both story and plot (as in, ‘conspiracy’), reminds me powerfully of the
shock of recognition one experiences in the final three minutes of <i>Apocalypto</i>,
as discussed by me <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/popular-films-as-philosophy_19.html">here</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Wicker Man: Finally, you are
literally placed within it. What a great conceit. What a fine, fine, film, that
in this way closes by commenting upon its own spine-chilling effectiveness...</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And
thus <i>justifies</i> its otherwise
somewhat-strange title. After all, the giant ‘man’ made of wicker only actually
appears to the plot and to our eyes in the final several minutes of the film.
But what I am saying is: The wicker man symbolises the very device that the
film is, the very trick that is played on the protagonist and the viewer alike.
The wicker man is empty. One is placed inside it. And: destroyed, nihilated.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This
is just what the film <i>The Wicker Man</i> does
to one (at least, in visceral imagination), via the deep trick that it plays.</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9qcBbb5i6xI/Uopzp5E2rXI/AAAAAAAAAO4/29YO4XnKIqw/s1600/tumblr_mv5qatk5x61qmemvwo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9qcBbb5i6xI/Uopzp5E2rXI/AAAAAAAAAO4/29YO4XnKIqw/s640/tumblr_mv5qatk5x61qmemvwo1_1280.jpg" height="344" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Wicker Man</i>, dir. Robin Hardy (1973)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
original version of <i>Total Recall</i> was,
in a similar fashion, a marvellous meditation on what it is to watch a film.
It counterposes the reality of going on a physical journey that is also a
journey of quest, of self-discovery, with the banality of tourism, and the
uber-banality of implanting false memories into oneself of a ‘trip’ ‘better’
than tourism or than real life. It implicitly questions the very industry,
Hollywood, that it instantiates. (Recall the scene in the original <i>Total Recall</i> that, via adverts, juxtaposes
going to Mars with going to Rekall, and that implicitly compares the ‘escapism’
of the latter with the escapism of the movies, compared and contrasted with the
reality of real life, even as a ‘tourist’, and contrasted with the reality of
what gets faked for us in the movies.) Like <i>Avatar</i>,<a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
like any good philosophically ‘therapeutic’ film, it thus ‘forces’ the
attentive viewer to question their own potential complicity in escapism. You
fail to rise to the challenge of a good deep film, if you fail to see that it
calls for you to act (for instance: to rebel, against colonialism).<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
new version of <i>Total Recall</i> loses the
sense of a physical journey, and loses some of the sense of quest. It misses
completely the comparison with tourism. This ill-fits it for being a
therapeutic work that ‘forces’ the viewer to achieve an autonomy beyond their
own manipulation at the hands of film-makers. It tends, rather, to encourage
complete immersion (e.g. the Imax, again), and to function, therefore, as pure
escapism. True, it delves slightly more deeply than the original into
colonialism, and the invention of ‘The fall’ is clever. But cleverness is not
enough: the depth of the original is missing. Moreover, in being a
Schwarzenegger vehicle, the original <i>Total Recall</i> signalled to
its audience that they should rise above the escapism portrayed in,
but not recommended by, the film. The new version doesn’t.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I
have argued that, in this new version of <i>Total
Recall</i>, there is no total recall. Worse: there is nothing <i>to</i> so
recall. <i>But</i>: that very — devastatingly critical — point is the axis
about which one might conceivably construct what I think would then be the only
charitable way in which to see this as a philosophy-as-therapy film.<o:p></o:p> For
there is I believe one devious possible way to read the new <i>Total Recall</i>, on which it might come up trumps.</span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Is
there a way after all to achieve the sought-after engagement with this film,
for one as viewer to be more than merely escapist spectator? Does the lack of
there being anything there to (totally) recall, in the new version, offer the
requisite blank slate for the viewer to start to write what needs to be there?
Does the film thus empower the engaged-viewer to see beyond it and its ilk, and
into one’s own presence, and non-vacuity?<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If you
watch this film clued in to its almost-complete emptiness, willing to
accept its failure even to justify its own title, then I think ‘therapy’
becomes possible again...</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">There
is one way then in which the new <i>Total
Recall</i> can be understood as, if you like at the meta-level, not a
disappointment. For, <i>in</i> its
very disappointingness, in its being nothing more than a copy (of a
copy?), in its being empty of meaning, in its not
justifying its own great lineage and title, we might, ironically, find
salvation. When we recall the original <i>Total Recall</i> (as, in a charming and funny series of homages,
the new version explicitly and repeatedly invites us to do), when we see
it more clearly in the light of its nihilistic and philosophy-lite
successor, when we see that successor in all its barrenness, then
again we are freed up, perhaps better than ever, from being captured by the
attractions of our own Rekall-lite industry: Hollywood. Perhaps the great
achievement of the new <i>Total Recall</i> is
in taking the critique of escapism manifest in the original version to a new
level. Perhaps the proper way to understand the new <i>Total Recall</i> is: as an antidote to itself and to all films in
the genre. As a device engaging the audience, involving one and all of us,
therapeutically after all, in the complete — the total — unmasking of
the manipulation that special-effects-vehicles, action-flicks, sci-fi
spectaculars, thrillers, love-stories, etc. routinely practise upon us.<o:p></o:p> </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dodcDdV_QiM/Uop0m836PLI/AAAAAAAAAPA/5WhMgbxTPok/s1600/13557700031.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dodcDdV_QiM/Uop0m836PLI/AAAAAAAAAPA/5WhMgbxTPok/s640/13557700031.jpg" height="640" width="458" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Total Recall</i>, dir. Paul Verhoeven (1990)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So:
two films. One a wonderful original, one a pointless remake — unless re-read in
the devious hyper-charitable fashion I’ve just proposed. Both having profoundly
in common a void at the heart of them, a deep trick played on the movie’s protagonist,
and by extension played on you, the viewer. This deep commonality making <i>The
Wicker Man</i> a work of genius, and the new <i>Total Recall</i> a failure
whose only possible deep virtue lies ultimately in the point that one can see
as being made by that (virtually total) failure.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Thanks to Phil Hutchinson, Jessica Woolley, Alan
Finlayson, Ruth Makoff and Emma Bell for conversations that have helped shape
this piece.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> Here one might think of the
following quote, from Wittgenstein’s <i>Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’</i>:
“If I see such a practice, or hear of it, it is like seeing a man speaking
sternly to another because of something quite trivial, and noticing in the tone
of his voice and in his face that on occasion this man can be frightening. The
impression I get from this may be a very deep and extremely serious one.”
Wittgenstein is of course discussing practices precisely similar to those shown
in <i>The Wicker Man</i>. He might almost be discussing Lord Summerhill, as
portrayed by Christopher Lee…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">A speech that, in this regard
especially, reminded me of the finely-balanced – often sympathetic - attitude
of the pagan protagonists of <i>The Mists of Avalon</i> toward the religion of
their Christian usurpers.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Rupert/My%20Documents/guardian%20c%20i%20f%20etc.%20pieces/filmthinkingfilmthinking/The%20new%20Total%20Recall,%20The%20old%20Wicker%20Man.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Cf. my
</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html">http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html</a></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> </span></span>
</div>
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</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-46429878674727754562013-11-05T14:02:00.002+00:002014-01-10T13:37:35.817+00:00An Introduction to 2001: A Space Odyssey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">By Peter Krämer</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=nv_sr_1">2001: A Space Odyssey</a></span> </i>was the result of a collaboration between the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and the Science Fiction author <a href="http://www.arthurcclarke.net/">Arthur C. Clarke</a>. This collaboration started when Kubrick wrote to Clarke in March 1964 to suggest that they work on a Science Fiction film together. Soon thereafter they decided that they would first write a novelistic treatment which would then serve as the basis both of a script and of a novel to be published under Clarke’s name. The novel was published by New American Library a few months after the film’s release in April 1968, and it offers explanations for much of what remains unexplained in the film.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TsLQIoBtesM/Unjvyy1LpkI/AAAAAAAAAG0/ylyPPe8Vre8/s1600/2001-novel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TsLQIoBtesM/Unjvyy1LpkI/AAAAAAAAAG0/ylyPPe8Vre8/s400/2001-novel.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>For most of its long production history, the film itself was meant to contain explanatory material, including a prologue consisting of interviews with scientists, extensive voice-over narration throughout the story as well as a lot more dialogue. Only a few weeks before the release of <span class="s1">2001</span>, Kubrick decided to remove all of these so that the film became very mysterious indeed – much like the alien monoliths in the film. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Kubrick had embarked on his collaboration with Clarke with a view of offering an <span class="s1">optimistic</span> alternative to the pessimism of his previous film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/"><span class="s1"><i>Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</i></span> (1964)</a>, which ends with the explosion of a nuclear “doomsday” device that will destroy all life on the surface of the Earth. One might say that, having produced a black comedy about how humanity will destroy itself on Earth, Kubrick was now looking into the heavens for a non-human force that could save humankind. Other people might call this force “God”, but for Kubrick it was extra-terrestrial intelligence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>In <span class="s1"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i></span> the extra-terrestrials act upon humankind through <a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/monolith">monoliths</a>, which means that, by turning the film itself into a kind of monolith – a perfectly designed and beautiful, yet utterly opaque object -, Kubrick suggested that the film might have transformative powers with regards to its audience. Amazingly, many viewers did indeed experience the film precisely in this way (as is evidenced by the letters people wrote to Kubrick after the film’s release). </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YFr__YNhFTk/UnjxQEH2aVI/AAAAAAAAAHA/N0Rhigs8gSk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-05+at+13.22.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YFr__YNhFTk/UnjxQEH2aVI/AAAAAAAAAHA/N0Rhigs8gSk/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-05+at+13.22.46.png" height="364" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'The Monolith' in <i>2001: a Space Odyssey,</i> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Let’s take a closer look at the unique qualities of this monolithic film. Except for the absence of a huge curved <a href="http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingcr1.htm">Cinerama</a> screen, today’s DVD versions of the film present it in the same way as it was presented during its initial, so-called “roadshow” release in spring 1968. There is a three minute musical overture, an intermission (once again with some music), and additional music (for about four minutes) after the conclusion of the end credits. This was typical for the initial release of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters until the late 1960s; they were staged as special events, modelled on a night out at the opera or musical theatre. While this presentation was typical, the film itself was not. It departs from the conventions of Hollywood storytelling in many ways. Instead of following the actions of a main character or group of characters, pursuing a well-defined set of goals, the film tells three different stories, each with their own protagonists whose goals are not always obvious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">First, there are ape-like creatures – or <a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hominid?q=hominid">hominids</a> – who can be difficult to tell apart from each other and whose behaviour can therefore be puzzling. Then there is a scientist travelling to the moon, whose motives for doing so are revealed only towards the end of his journey. Finally, there are two astronauts on a spaceship to Jupiter, one of whom goes on a further, utterly mysterious journey after reaching the planet. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccmhHLtXoC0/Unj1vd5TRfI/AAAAAAAAAHY/QFPlXoCCEzA/s1600/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccmhHLtXoC0/Unj1vd5TRfI/AAAAAAAAAHY/QFPlXoCCEzA/s640/3.png" height="140" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">3 'stories' in </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Instead of outlining clearly how one thing leads to another, <span class="s1"><i>2001</i></span> breaks down the cause-and-effect chain of events. It does so at the level of the film as a whole; it is, for example, difficult – but not impossible - to determine how its three stories are connected to each other. And also at the level of individual scenes. It is often unclear how the events of one scene arise from those shown in earlier scenes. This applies especially to the final sequences of the film. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>What is more, instead of selecting only those parts of an action that might be deemed relevant for the on-going story, much of the film consists of shots leisurely and meticulously depicting earthly landscapes or celestial formations as well as the often very slow movement of people and spacecraft through these with little or no concern for moving the story along. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ0SBLzRxs0/Unj4XwIKdLI/AAAAAAAAAHw/xZ1c5OJTHQI/s1600/2001-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ0SBLzRxs0/Unj4XwIKdLI/AAAAAAAAAHw/xZ1c5OJTHQI/s640/2001-5.jpg" height="346" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Landscape in </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what is the best way to relate to this unusual film? Of course, after seeing it, one can go to Clarke’s novel so as to get some explanations. But while one is watching it, one might want to pay attention to the implications of its title – “<i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>” – and of the title shown at the beginning of the pre-historic sequence: “The Dawn of Man”. One might want to ask: what is a 'space odyssey', and who is going on an odyssey through space in this film? What is the <span class="s1">dawn</span> of man, and when does the <span class="s1">rise</span> of man begin? When is it completed?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">With regards to these last questions, we could say that the pre-historic sequence shows hominids being transformed into proto-humans, while the bulk of the film concerns modern humans, and the final sequence shows the transformation of one of these humans into something else, something post-human. Or we could say – as Kubrick himself has indeed suggested – that the humanity that “dawns” in the opening sequence is only fully achieved at the end; what we call “humanity” is merely a transitional stage between animal and the rise (in the shape of the Star Child) of that which is truly human.</span><br />
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What are the characteristics of the “human” in both readings? The first reading suggests that, in contrast to their herbivorous, non-violent and rather ineffectual predecessors, humans can be defined as highly effective carnivorous and murderous tool-users. Since their first weapon in the film is a phallic bone, we can also say that humans are strongly associated with maleness here. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mpX2x1Kvbik/Unj44UwaiVI/AAAAAAAAAH4/kQd1Q7Lk_3g/s1600/20110925-114643.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mpX2x1Kvbik/Unj44UwaiVI/AAAAAAAAAH4/kQd1Q7Lk_3g/s640/20110925-114643.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Murderous tool-users', the hominids turn in </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps the project of human civilisation can, in this reading, be defined as sublimating (male) violence: The film’s space sequences would appear to suggest that in the 21<sup>st</sup> century such pacification has been achieved. The encounter with the Russians on the space station is perfectly peaceful (despite underlying political divisions and tensions), and space food is merely meat-flavoured, most likely without animals having been killed to produce it. </span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A09PZ9eAi74/Unj2mTl-b8I/AAAAAAAAAHg/NfVz6e9cvC0/s1600/Smyslov-and-Floyd-on-the-station-in-Stanley-Kubricks-2001-A-Space-Odyssey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A09PZ9eAi74/Unj2mTl-b8I/AAAAAAAAAHg/NfVz6e9cvC0/s640/Smyslov-and-Floyd-on-the-station-in-Stanley-Kubricks-2001-A-Space-Odyssey.jpg" height="292" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The 'Hilton' Space Station in </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>At the same time, humanity’s most advanced technology – the supercomputer Hal – turns out to be a murderer, and women are still marginal in this world (although the presence of female Russian scientists hints at potential equality). It is only after David Bowman’s transformation into the post-human Star Child that gender is finally left behind, as is, for all we know, the use of technology. However, we can’t know what the Star Child’s intentions are; could they be murderous?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let’s go back now to the idea that what we call humankind is merely a transitional stage between animal and genuine humanity. In this reading we might say that what we know as “human” history is fundamentally flawed due to our killing of animals for meat, the murder of members of our own kind, and our dependence on technology. We might go further by noting that, both in the space sequences and in the few scenes set on Earth, 21<sup>st</sup> century “humanity” is completely divorced from nature as it was experienced by its hominid predecessors.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
And the life of 21<sup>st</sup> century individuals is characterised by increasing separation from each other. In contrast to the band of hominids forever huddling together and cuddling and grooming each other, “human” families are dispersed and there is hardly any physical contact between people at all. Indeed, the film shows how Bowman’s journey finds him ever more isolated – millions of miles from Earth, his fellow astronauts being killed, his only companion – a computer – being switched off. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZwTsdRs1sEE/Unj5j9kCLFI/AAAAAAAAAIA/0tIPUKwfbwA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-05+at+13.28.09.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZwTsdRs1sEE/Unj5j9kCLFI/AAAAAAAAAIA/0tIPUKwfbwA/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-05+at+13.28.09.png" height="362" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Isolation, </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is important,
in this reading, that at the very end of the film the Star Child returns to
Earth (thus Bowman completes his odyssey). As far as we can see, it is no
longer gendered, no longer dependent on killing animals or on technology.
Should we understand the final images as saying that true humanity is in fact
spiritual? Without need for food or sex or a real body, without physical
companionship or interaction with natural surroundings? Or should we concentrate on the similarity between the bubble containing the Star Child and the Earth floating in space next to it, and on the fact that the Star Child at the very end turns to the camera to look at us? Does this imply that the Star Child recognises itself in the life-filled planet Earth and therefore that full human consciousness encompasses the planet as a whole? At the same time, is the Star Child not looking for companionship in the auditorium?</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5o9eOZ5yjio/Unj_foL9U6I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/YAcCzsl_AP8/s1600/Star-Child-2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5o9eOZ5yjio/Unj_foL9U6I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/YAcCzsl_AP8/s640/Star-Child-2001.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Starchild' in <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2001: a Space Odyssey,</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">While
asking ourselves such questions, we must not forget the very last words spoken
in <i>2001: a Space Odyssey</i>, which state that “the origin and purpose” of the monoliths
“remain a total mystery”. Rather than trying to solve the film’s mysteries, we
should perhaps accept that its mysteriousness is among its greatest qualities.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>You can hear more of Peter's thoughts on 2001 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKttBYasZB4" target="_blank">here</a> or read his <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/2001-Space-Odyssey-Film-Classics/dp/1844572862">'BFI Film Classics' </a>book on the film </i></span></span></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-27802770969750826882013-10-19T15:30:00.003+01:002014-01-10T13:31:51.226+00:00 (Popular) Films as Philosophy: A ‘Wittgensteinian’ View(er)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">By Rupert Read.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There has been a great deal of interest in recent years in the question of whether films can function as philosophical works, in other words, can films ‘do’ philosophy? This interest, however, seems to sooner or later inevitably founder on the following dilemma: Either the philosophical work done by films is paraphrasable, in which case ultimately the films in question are merely pretty or striking vehicles for philosophising which precedes them; or the philosophical work done by films is not paraphrasable, in which case it seems mysterious/dubious/systemically-obscure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, this dilemma, while in its own terms quite correct, rests, I submit, on an unjustified presumption. The presumption is that philosophical ‘work’ has to be understood (if it is to be worthwhile) as issuing in theses/theories/opinions. But there is another possibility, a possibility explored at greatest length in Wittgenstein’s philosophy: that philosophical work at its best is ‘therapeutic’, in very roughly the psychological sense of that word. Namely: that philosophy need not – and in fact should not – issue in any controversial theses or opinions, any theories, at all. Rather, it should work with a person's own presumptions, exposing them to awareness, and thus empowering them to autonomously acknowledge, justify, overcome, or transform them. It is this possibility, that the members of the thinkingfilm collective aim to explore together over the coming months and years.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My own co-edited collection <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Film_as_Philosophy.html?id=Mox9QgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell</a></i> (Palgrave, 2005, with Jerry Goodenough), and especially Phil Hutchinson’s and my essay in that collection, endeavoured in a preliminary way to develop the idea sketched above. In the present piece, I want to enter a little further into it, and into the following associated question: Is there a way to understand how some of the greatest popular films work in ways that transcend any heresies of paraphrase, transcend film theories that would subject films to their diktat, and empower the viewer to understand how the films in question can enact 'therapeutic' work upon and with the viewer? A difficulty facing the efforts to understand films as philosophical works has been their (in most cases) consistently ‘dialogical’ nature, the way that they offer different voices, and not just (as most philosophical prose works do) one voice: but this is a strength of these film-as-philosophy works - once they are understood as 'therapeutic' works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Take films such as Mel Gibson's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto">Apocalypto</a></i>, Peter Jackson's the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)"><i>Lord of the Rings </i>trilogy</a><i>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men">Children of Men</a>, </i>Ingma Bergman's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(film)">Persona</a>, </i>or Terrence<i> </i>Malick’s<i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Red_Line_(1998_film)">The Thin Red Line</a> </i>and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_World_(2005_film)">The New World</a></i>. Are these films simply disguised pieces of didacticism? Do they have a simple ‘message’, which they wrap in an emotive, elaborate, striking and pretty coating, to sugar the pill? (How could a film be a major philosophical/ethical/political work, unless it basically did this? But/or equally: how could a film be such a work if it did basically only this?)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I say not. I say that there are not only these alternatives: Instead, you (and I am speaking here primarily of film-makers; though also of film-critics) can offer up your thinking on film as an exploratory intervention designed to facilitate a 'therapeutic' process of thinking and feeling on the part of the viewer. The work - the philosophical work - is work that viewers have to do for themselves. Whatever the viewer can do for themselves, one should leave them to do for themselves…</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I submit, as the reader will have noted, that what I am suggesting is true of some of the most popular films of our time. These, and the reader's resistance to the outline case I wish to make for them here, will be my primary focus, in the present piece.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So: <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> film trilogy can if you wish (see below) be said to make a new philosophical ‘argument’, cutting across and beyond Descartes. But it doesn’t make this ‘argument’ in the abstract. It encourages you to experience it. In general terms: the film challenges you; you go into ‘dialogue’ with it. You go into therapy with it, much as this is the process of reading the <i>Tractatus</i> or the <i>Philosophical Investigations</i> with understanding.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let me illustrate this point by setting out briefly how I ‘read’ the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> film trilogy:</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FgK4xa6oypU/Unpz0CONw7I/AAAAAAAAAME/2aco7zd3OwM/s1600/lotr-56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FgK4xa6oypU/Unpz0CONw7I/AAAAAAAAAME/2aco7zd3OwM/s640/lotr-56.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><i>The Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy dir. Peter Jackson (2001-2003)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Peter Jackson’s <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, we see on the screen – we experience viscerally the point-of-view manifest in a pathological search for safety, for surety (most notably, we see this vividly in scenes in which one reaches for the Ring, for invisibility, for escape to a private realm that is one’s own, a realm where one can be lord and master). This desperate search for safety – for something that one can hold onto confidently – of Frodo <i>et al</i> results in one being ‘overpowered’ by an overwhelming dread at an ‘overwhelming’ watching, judging, heartless and destructive external agency. The search for safety results in one seemingly being confronted by absolute nemesis, with no expectation of being saved by a benevolent force – there is none as strong, or none that is willing, one is quickly convinced. That ‘God’ is onto me, and that ‘God’ is a malevolent demon; just that super-Cartesian possibility is, I am urging, lived out at the deep, dark heart of <i>Lord of the Rings</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, building on suggestions in my and Goodenough’s <i>Film as Philosophy</i>, and in my essay on <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> in my book <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Philosophy_for_life.html?id=iFXXAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Philosophy for Life</a></i> (Contimuum, 2007), I would argue that Jackson’s analysis, building on and going beyond Tolkien’s, is far subtler and more psychologically-real than Descartes’s emotionless academic rendition of the mind ‘meditating’ upon the terrors of possible cosmic aloneness and the company one might surprisingly and regrettably find oneself keeping in that aloneness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For Jackson, the God-awful malign demon is not a self-standing ontic thing. Rather, to be God-powerful, it needs something to complete it. It needs you, or more specifically, your fear and addictive desire and weakness. It needs your desire for power, that corrupts, that takes you from others; it needs your self-fulfilling fear of ‘it’; it needs your weakness, that would hand the power over to ‘it’ in a doomed bid to lessen the grip upon you of dread. The malicious demon (in Jackson/Tolkien) depends on you. He is not all-powerful, without the One Ring that is in your power. You are not nothing beside Him; you are just pitifully small and vulnerable in comparison, as you toss on the sea of fate. He will only become all-powerful if you try to become him, or alternatively simply give him the power he seeks.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sauron and The Ring, The <i>Lord of the Rings</i> Trilogy, dir. Peter Jackson (2001-2003)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The rationale here, and it is a profound one, is this: If God/Satan/Sauron quite simply is all-powerful, then – paradoxically – your worries are significantly tempered. For there is then no quest, no chance of escape, nowhere to hide. One can give up worrying. The mind in search of absolute safety-certainty, the mind unused to not-worrying and unwilling to risk such a state, must then restlessly pass on from the assumption of one’s absolute abjection before God. If one is infinitely less than God, then one is to some extent relieved, even if God is malign: because at least there is then nothing more one can do. One can simply sit back, and wait to be annihilated or tortured etc., safe in the knowledge that there is no way out. Belief in an omnipotent God, even if the God has an Old Testament temper or much worse, is a means to the psychological security of not actually having to go on actively worrying and acting. The mind in search of absolute safety, the mind in search of any possible threats to it will quickly, restlessly, move on: the more worrying thought that comes to one next (a thought that is common in schizophreniform mental ‘disorder’, but that is never arrived at in Decartes’s meditations) is that perhaps one does still have a part to play, that one’s actions will be consequential, that what one does or thinks next could make things even worse. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Paradoxically, there is something even worse than abjection before an all-powerful malevolent demon: namely, the threat of a less than all-powerful malevolent demon whose power and action depends on you, on what you do and think. The ceaseless, hungry, terrified motion of schizoid thought is right here: Jackson correctly identifies and powerfully depicts a potentially-self-fulfilling threat to thought and to one’s very sense of identity more profound than – and a logical extension of – that which Descartes set out for us. This then is literature/film as philosophy, with a vengeance: Jackson’s Tolkien has taken us somewhere philosophically new, somewhere undreamt of in Cartesian philosophy.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This then is the case for seeing <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> as a subtler and nastier moral threat than Descartes’s demon, and thus for seeing Jackson/Tolkien as offering a philosophical corrective to Descartes, filling in the gaps in his presentation of what it would actually mean to imagine a malign demon of infinite or (better) of great power. The really disturbing, the more deeply psychologically-challenging notion, the clear and distinct idea that can unworld one, is that ‘malignity’ is quite incomplete without us, without our existentially ongoing participation. The desire for the Ring is the desire to be the Lord of the Rings (and this explains the otherwise inexplicable title of the work: because Sauron is not even a real character in the story), to become invulnerable through being all-powerful; the desire to be shot of the Ring is the desire to already be abject before such an all-powerful Lord of the Rings; both are (pathological) efforts to escape from the ordinary lived human condition of ‘limited’ always-already-embodied existence, the worst fear of which is being confronted, not with a malign omnipotent demon, but with a malign demon who can only be completed by you.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And all this, I am saying, has to be experienced to be believed. These are the kinds of thoughts that go on, even if through a glass darkly, in the intelligent viewer of these films. Only some account like this can, after all, explain their great success: because, in plot terms, <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is of course a pitiful failure. See, for example <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uUomnPTQ6Y">this excellent Volksvagen advert’s take</a> on the trilogy, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU">this</a> offering from howitshouldhaveended.com , which makes the point just as well. It only makes sense as an essentially psychical quest. One that the viewer must engage in, for themselves…</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And this, in essence, is how I would respond to a reader who said: “Haven’t you refuted yourself? How can you give ‘readings’ at all, and expect us to hear them as anything other than didactic dogmatism, if film-as-philosophy, after Wittgenstein, is essentially a matter of personal experience of the viewer?” My readings are invitations to a viewer to see the film in the kind of way I am laying out, or indeed to consider their having already seen it in such a way: i.e., in the latter case, suggestions as to why the film in question has the power that it has, if one has allowed it to have power (and has not resisted it, as people often resist popular films in particular, on prejudiced, weak grounds such as, ‘But this is mere entertainment, it can have no serious content’). The real work of the film is done on the viewer at the time, and afterward, and in successive viewings, and it is done dialectically and dialogically: the viewer is necessarily actively involved in the process and not merely lectured at (by me or by the director).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thinking through matters such as this has been the goal of my work in film as philosophy since 2005, when my co-edited book of that name first appeared. The most notable development during that time in my own work, has been a greater effort, already somewhat-signposted in my Introduction to the book, but now somewhat delivered on, to include a treatment as philosophy of some of the most popular films in cinematic history. I am referring to films such as <i>2001: a Space Odyssey</i>, <i>Apocalypto</i>, the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy of course (see above), and (most recently) <i>Avatar</i>. If it can be shown that even movies such as these function as philosophy, then the strength and importance of the ‘film as philosophy’ idea that my co-edited collection crystallised for the first time is/will be redoubled. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">(The reader will have already noticed that I combine thinking about such huge blockbusters as these willy-nilly with ‘art-house’ classics. This I regard as a central finding of looking at films as philosophy: that the films which can be thus viewed successfully are diverse, and undercut the ‘high’ vs. ‘low’ culture divide. I will return to this point.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let me now then venture this: When one really understands films such as <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> (see the relevant chapter of my <i>Philosophy for Life</i> and my paper on <i>Avatar</i> in <a href="http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/journal_04.pdf">Radical Anthropology</a> ), they don’t have generalised messages as such. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Take <i>Avatar</i>, as examined in my recent <i>ThinkingFilm</i> feature post, <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/avatar-transformed-cinema.html">here</a>. Its metaphors, I suggested there, are rich and open. They are not closed and simple. They involve the viewer in their development.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Avatar</i> is a call to us all to re-enchant and to replenish and to restore the ecosystems of our fragile world. In this way, it is a quintessentially philosophical film: for it aims to cultivate in us the love of true wisdom.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6X3DsCfeyrU/UnpmXW7nIoI/AAAAAAAAALA/TVvYh5NibOw/s1600/avatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6X3DsCfeyrU/UnpmXW7nIoI/AAAAAAAAALA/TVvYh5NibOw/s640/avatar.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So: these films that I am discussing are not mere disguised bits of propaganda. They essentially involve the viewer. They guide the viewer on a proposed ‘journey’ (a journey ‘mirroring’ the ‘hero’s journey’ of the protagonist(s)) – the journey is psychically individual, as well as partly collective. The specificities of each person’s journey will be different; and indeed, one may refuse altogether to take the journey (as many critics have done). Part of the way that I/we account for / give accounts of these films is inevitably autobiographical. I am allegorising my reading/viewing of these films. The ‘message’ that I speak of is thus the message for me; and everyone, each person, must in this way speak for themselves. This is not relativism; it is simply reality.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">These films do not then make arguments in the ordinary philosophical sense of that word: they don’t yield premises and conclusions, etc.. As I’ve said, they rather offer (what Wittgenstein sometimes calls) therapy. This is philosophy not as theory nor as quasi-factive impersonal claim, but as a process that one must work through for oneself. It is different from the idea of philosophy to which we are accustomed; it sits ill with the idolatry of science which lies at the heart of our civilisation. So much the worse for that idolatry. It is idolatry of science and the taking of technology as a ‘neutral’ tool that has got us as a civilisation and as a species into the mess we are in. <i>Avatar</i> (and <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472043/">Apocalypto</a></i>) dramatises and extends the logic of this. Thus we should expect that a non-scientistic vein of philosophy, such as Wittgenstein offers, is what is appropriate to help us understand how to extricate ourselves from that mess.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our expectation is not disappointed. These films are works, like Wittgenstein’s writing, designed to heal. But: healing, healing of one’s mind, one’s body-self, and of one’s world, is an art, not a science, and is through and through processual.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Take <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/">Children of Men</a>: A</i> new-born child presses a claim for care upon anyone and everyone, no matter what their filial relation or otherwise to it might be. This is the point made by this powerful film, about a dystopian future in which there are no children being born: the meaning of the film’s superficially odd title (based by the way on a line in the bible) is that any children born are children of all of us, of men as well as women.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1h6NwjNgD6A/UmKXeLe9mMI/AAAAAAAAAGc/SxWFfqkN5Kw/s1600/Untitled.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1h6NwjNgD6A/UmKXeLe9mMI/AAAAAAAAAGc/SxWFfqkN5Kw/s400/Untitled.png" height="339" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Children of Men</i>, dir. <span class="itemprop" itemprop="name" style="font-size: inherit;">Alfonso Cuarón (2006)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The film charts the journey of its central protagonist from a situation of cynicism to a situation of total care for a new-born child that is ‘not his’. The film is thus a vivid and rich metaphor for the care we all must have for the future of humankind. The newborn baby in the film directly symbolises of course the whole of future humankind, the human adventure, the human project. All who come after us are the children of all women, and all men. That is what I think the title really means...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thus: these films are not (unlike, say, video-games) escapist. They provide an illusion of escape. Actually, they return one: to oneself and to the world, to in fact our world-in-peril. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Ready to know it (as if) for the first time…</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7AraHHJ55w0/UnpnKMjQKfI/AAAAAAAAALM/TgSA4STOoWs/s1600/children-of-men.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7AraHHJ55w0/UnpnKMjQKfI/AAAAAAAAALM/TgSA4STOoWs/s640/children-of-men.jpg" height="330" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Children of Men</i>, dir. <span class="itemprop" itemprop="name" style="font-size: inherit;">Alfonso Cuarón (2006)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is what I see in these films. But again, I believe it is to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or unconsciously, what many millions of others see too. I believe that I am tapping here into the reason for the vast popular success of (most of) these films. For that success can otherwise be somewhat hard to understand: As already noted, <i>Lord of the Rings </i>has multiple fairly obvious flaws, including a quite basic and fundamental plot flaw; <i>Avatar</i> can easily be seen as a predictable and just very shiny exercise in cheese, or as a predictable ‘anti-American’ rant. Many critics have responded to <i>Avatar</i> either from ‘the Left’ (with cynicism and a knowing superiority to such alleged sentimentalism, romanticism and superficiality, or even with silly allegations that the film is itself tacitly racist against indigenous peoples, against the disabled, etc.) or from ‘the Right’ (with anger against the attack within the film on cultural norms, on (American) militarism, etc.). It is the critics from ‘the Right’, who are if anything slightly closer to the truth, I think, despite themselves. <i>Avatar</i> is shocking, in the extent to which, when one experiences it closely, (when one experiences for instance that arrow transfixing and killing one’s American/military/racist/speciesist self (Col. Quaritch), so that the world can be saved, and so that in due course Jake can be fully reborn as a Na’vi) the journey it proposes and offers takes one far indeed from one’s comfort-zone. I think that the reason why the film has been found by so many millions to be emotionally compelling – as emotionally compelling as the Na’vi themselves are, in their general emotional healthiness and expressiveness – is the kind of line of understanding of the film that I am alluding to here. People find it compelling, because of the ‘journey’ it takes them on, because of the assumptions it puts into question, because of the way that it speaks to our condition as alienated from our planetary home and from each other. And this is why Avatar was banned in China; this is why it has inspired colourful protests against the apartheid wall in Palestine; why it is inspiring the activist work of the <a href="http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/Home.html">Radical Anthropology Group</a> and so on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The exact same is true of <i>Lord of the Rings</i>; the drastic plot-flaws and unbelievable nature of the narrative end up being pluses, not minuses. They are gentle tacit ‘alienation effects’ in roughly Brecht’s sense of that word. They enhance the experience of questing that the viewer vicariously has; the psychological journey that one is taken on, into oneself, into one’s courage and resources and faith in oneself, in others and in what Aragorn calls “this good Earth.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Evaluating for character-development, plausibility, etc. in movies such as <i>Apocalypto, Lord of the Rings </i>and<i> Avatar</i> is a complete mistake. That is not the kinds of films they are. They don’t really have characters (in the sense that a classic novel does) at all. They are myths. They have heroes' journeys, etc., and, relatedly, they have transformative effects. They are revelatory, 'therapeutic' works. That is why I think them philosophical, in spite of their appearance. Or rather: Their appearance of being non-philosophical is the very thing that enables them to be truly philosophical...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">True, some of the narrative-pleasure of <i>Lord of the Rings</i> and (especially) <i>Avatar</i> comes from following what can reasonably be described as character-development in complex plot-settings. In fact, utterly crucial to these films is the audience taking a vicarious transformational journey with the heroes: Jake’s persona by the end of the film is profoundly different from what it was at the start. I am not of course denying any of this; I am suggesting that this ‘character-development’ is not the kind of thing one finds in the world of the classic novel: it is not defined by its quiddities and specificities. On the contrary: It is defined by its universal resonance. What are developed are not so much characters as great mythic ciphers – ciphers, ultimately, for the persona of the viewer themselves. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Some films then precisely don’t have 'characters', and are all the stronger for that. For instance, in <i>Lord of the Rings</i>, it is crucial to realise that Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf are all essentially the same 'character'. They are 3 versions of the same arc. That's not a criticism, it is an understanding.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf: <i>The Lord of the Rings Trilogy</i>, dir. Peter Jackson (2001-2003)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">These films’ appearance fools one into thinking that they cannot be deep. And so they creep up on you, with an ecological depth and a cultural critique that literally astonishes. I am referring for instance to the way in which <i>Apocalypto</i> shocks one to the core at the end: one suddenly realises that the film is not about a bunch of human-sacrificing savages running a barbarian empire: it is about us. We have been watching a culture that we looked down upon as oppressive imperial eco-destructors: only to find with a shock of recognition that Barbarians are us. A complete process of rethinking is then necessarily undergone, and the film watched the second time around is completely different from the fast time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Consider in this connection the following remark from John Gray’s perceptive new book, <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Silence_of_Animals.html?id=xRkQ5dMxeTIC&redir_esc=y">The Silence of Animals</a></i> (Penguin 2013, p.9): “[B]arbarism is not a primitive form of life, Conrad is intimating [in <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=conrad+heart+of+darkenss+google+books&oq=conrad+heart+of+darkenss+google+books&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.10356j0j4&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8">Heart of Darkness</a></i>; the point is famously riffed on by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now">Apocalypse Now</a>, whose title, I suggest, points forward to that of Mel Gibson’s movie], but a pathological development of civilisation.” Barbarism is not what precedes civilisation: it is what happens as a civilisation becomes decadent, and/or after it collapses. The point is also explored in Michel Henri’s book, <i>Barbarism</i>, and in Coetzee’s <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Waiting_for_the_Barbarians.html?id=1me6TSRNdb4C&redir_esc=y">Waiting for the Barbarians</a></i> (on which, if interested, see my 2011 review of Mulhall’s book on Coetzee, in <i>MIND</i>). But isn’t it wonderful to see it sprung on us in a novel and shocking way in a popular film?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Notice by the way the clear resemblance between these Mayan temples in <i>Apocalypto</i> and the border-wall (keeping out the ‘barbarian, monstrous’ south from the ‘home of the brave’) in the film <i>Monsters</i> - a wall that the protagonists see while standing amidst the overgrown ruins of an ancient Mayan temple. It’s not a coincidental one, in my view. Who are the monsters, who are the barbarians? This is the uncomfortable question thrust upon them by these films.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Apocalypto</i>, dir. Mel Gibson (2006)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some would nevertheless argue that popular Hollywood films with their action-sequences and loud soundtracks cannot be anything other than simplistic propagandistic ‘message’ films. I don't agree that an apparently-bombastic soundtrack is a sign of a film being a propagandistic film. I think those who say so have missed one of my central points about </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Lord of the Rings</i><span style="font-size: large;"> and </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Apocalypto</i><span style="font-size: large;"> (and </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Avatar</i><span style="font-size: large;">): I think that these films work by pursuing what Cora Diamond (in relation to Wittgenstein’s </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Tractatus</i><span style="font-size: large;">) calls 'an indirect method'. They precisely to appear to be crude, by virtue of having bombastic soundtracks etc. . That is how they then secretly work their magic. Their surface crudity is the vehicle for them to be able to do something deeper. Precisely in encouraging one to think that they aren't deep, they carve out a space for depth. In the case of </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Lord of the Rings</i><span style="font-size: large;">: a film about psychotic madness etc. precisely needs to appear to be a film that is about a real-life epic struggle. (See my piece on the film </span><a href="http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/LOTR2.htm" style="font-size: x-large;">here</a><span style="font-size: large;"> for more on this point). In the case of </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Apocalypto</i><span style="font-size: large;">: the ride of the long chase in the latter half of the film slows down the process in one of realising that the film is actually not about a high speed chase in the Amazon - it is about you (us), about our culture. We should note furthermore that </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Avatar</i><span style="font-size: large;"> was successful, whereas other 3-D films with more dramatic and 'bombastic' effects have failed. I am offering a reason(s) why.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In this article I have invoked broadly-Wittgensteinian themes to defend some major popular films against the criticisms usually crudely levelled at them. However, I hope that you the reader don't get from this the wrong impression: I am by no means arguing that only these films are any good! Nothing of the sort! I am a big fan for instance of Eisenstein. I think that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog">Herzog</a>'s <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Man">Grizzly Man</a></i> is a deep ecologically-interested work; I am a huge fan of Herzog. I teach on these people, and on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman">Bergman</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Resnais">Resnais</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_von_Trier">Von Trier</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000517/">Malick</a>, etc.. I accept that often it is more obvious that what I am saying in this article is true of those film-makers than it is of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson">Gibson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jackson">Jackson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron">Cameron</a>, etc. . ‘Art-films’ often/generally are more essentially open to ‘interpretation’, demanding of ‘reading’ (Though the scare-quotes are advised: the terrible danger of such words is that it can once again sucker us into the heresy of paraphrase.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I dispute is only the crude 'high' vs. 'low' culture dichotomy and the concomitant very silly reductivist 'logic of commerce' point ('If it makes big money then it can't be any good!') that I believe sadly makes it impossible for many students/people from being able to say "I see you" to <i>Avatar, The Lord of the Rings</i>, <i>Apocalypto</i>. These films too, I am suggesting, necessarily involve the viewer, are not merely ‘morals’ wrapped in a shiny package. They too co-perform something; they too philosophise… The difference between them and the ‘art-films’ one is encouraged to look down one’s nose from is only one of degree, not of kind, I am saying.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A final substantive point: <i>Avatar</i>, like a number of other major philosophical films, places centrally in itself the metaphor of awakening from sleep, from dream. Now: Neither in a dream (unless it be a shared dream - think <i>Inception!</i>) nor in spectatorship (which has been the traditional model of philosophy (See for instance John Dewey's critique of this in <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Quest_for_Certainty.html?id=Lcmpqg2b1rsC&redir_esc=y">The Quest for Certainty</a></i>, Minton Balch and Company, 1929) - and of film-viewing (is this partly why philosophy and film have been so well-suited to each other? That both have usually been thought of as an essentially armchair activities? If so, this I think reflects badly on both)) does one encounter real others. One doesn't encounter anything more than the kind of thing that the killer Dollarhyde dreams of, in Michael Mann’s superb 1986 movie <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunter_(film)">Manhunter</a></i>: oneself, glorious, reflected back at one, instead of the eyes of another. This postulation of the other only as a device to mirror the alleged glory of the self is a nightmare of egoism/solipsism:</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Manhunter</i>, dir. Michael Mann (1986)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How can it be avoided? Simple: by taking the risk, the leap of faith, necessary in actually encountering others. In meeting real, other people. This is how film can be therapeutic/transformative: by engaging one in a personal encounter which is also a shared encounter (This is one reason why, once more, it is important that we still generally see films in cinemas); by vicariously and then really throwing one into the world. This is the 'point'/task, I claim, of many of the films that I have here praised. And we can see it clearly also in <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner">Blade Runner</a></i> and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception">Inception</a></i> (and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Desire">Wings of Desire</a></i>) and more through a glass darkly in <i>Memento</i> (and <i>Manhunter</i>). Look for it clearly (though not without great difficulty) also in <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_mon_amour">Hiroshima Mon Amour</a></i>, and even in <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Year_at_Marienbad">Last Year at Marienbad</a></i>. Other films, besides those mentioned above, which in my view clearly have this engaging therapeutic intent include <i>Monsters</i> (on which see <a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/with-power-to-frame-world-comes-great.html">Phil Hutchinson’s masterful thinkingfilm piece</a>), <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9">District 9</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(2010_film)">Never Let Me Go</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)">Melancholia</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_(film)">Collateral</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)">2001</a></i>, and the films of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Malick">Terrence Malick</a>. Films of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">These films that I have mentioned here in this piece, indiscriminately popular and ‘art house’ works, are those that I think offer the best opportunity for broadly Wittgensteinian thinking on film. Some of them, I (along with thinkingfilmcollective colleagues) will be writing on more in the next few years. These are exciting times, for thinking film as philosophy…</span></span><br />
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[N.B. A longer version of this article will be appearing in a special issue of the Al-Mukhatabat philosophy journal. So comments to help improve it are especially welcome! Thanks to various colleagues for comments already, including especially Peter Kramer and Vincent Gaine, and to Ruth Makoff for editorial assistance.]</span><span id="goog_1497686430"></span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1497686431"></span><span id="goog_1497686432"></span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1497686433"></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-31243198870058213052013-10-14T11:10:00.000+01:002014-04-15T12:34:39.073+01:00Saved By the Kill: The Hunter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The Hunter</i>, dir. <span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: x-small; line-height: 14.545454025268555px; text-align: left;">Daniel Nettheim (2011)</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Daniel Nettheim's <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703148/">The Hunter</a></i> portrays an existential
awakening, an awakening that involves the main protagonist in the discovery of
a new sense of what it means to be a hunter. He begins as a contemporary bounty
hunter, hired by a pharmaceutical company, trying to track down a creature
thought long extinct, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine">Tasmanian Tiger</a>. They want DNA samples.
Significantly, the historical record tells us that the Tasmanian Tiger’s
extinction was brought about in part by bounties offered by companies such as
the Van Diemen’s Land Company and the Tasmanian government. By the end of the
film we are shown a man who has come to respect and love his quarry, and in the
process also come to a new understanding of his capacity to care for other
people. What is surprising and interesting about <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunter_(2011_Australian_film)">The Hunter</a></i> is that the
culmination of this awakening comes in the very act of killing the last tiger, and
thus bringing the species finally to complete extinction.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dE3kwWfVfwE/UnpafYUtEwI/AAAAAAAAAKM/trorpoDSLzY/s1600/willem-dafoe-as-martin-david-in-the-hunter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dE3kwWfVfwE/UnpafYUtEwI/AAAAAAAAAKM/trorpoDSLzY/s640/willem-dafoe-as-martin-david-in-the-hunter.jpg" height="272" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; text-align: left;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Willem Dafoe as 'Martin David' in <i>The Hunter</i>, dir.<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #444444; line-height: 14.545454025268555px;">Daniel Nettheim </span>(2011)</span></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">At first
this might seem like a familiar excuse for politically naïve macho posturing.
Hunters are those who really care for the wild, who really live in the wild,
who get to know wild creatures, ultimately in the very act of killing them. They
have a hard, adult, masculine understanding of the necessities of life and
death. Here we are shown a sequence of events superficially similar to that
kind of myth, which reveals very different possibilities.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There
at two crucial things that the film can show us that its source novel can at
best suggest.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The first is Tasmania and the second is the tiger. A brief opening sequence in
the confines of a Parisian airport hotel room sets up a stark contrast with
what follows in Tasmania, where the land and environment seep into every shot.
Not only in the form of breath-taking picturesque vistas, but more intimately,
in the form of single trees and sheltering spaces, changing weather and
habitats. The hunter finally ends up bivouacking in the tiger’s cave, next to
the pelts of wallabies he has killed, a scene echoing and contrasting with the
confines of that hotel room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Above
all the film shows us the tiger. It shows us the tiger in its haunting non-presence.
The success of the film hinges on the fact that it finds a way to show a
creature that is extinct, in the very way that it exists now in our
contemporary world as extinct. When I say the tiger haunts the film, I mean
that in the most literal sense. The tiger hardly appears in the film itself, it
is hardly glimpsed, just as would be the case if there still were still tigers
to be glimpsed. The two glimpses we are given bookend the film, two
overpowering visions of the tiger that bring it into the open, whilst at the
same time keeping it hidden, withdrawn and sheltered in its true way of being. The
first glimpse comes with the opening credits, in the form of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGN8FAk_fbU">black and white archive footage</a> of the last tiger to die in captivity, footage shot in
1932 in Hobart zoo by David Fleay. It paces its cage with its peculiar stiff
gait and opens its unusually wide gaping jaws. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kYKvM3HfAVE/UnpbgpROWII/AAAAAAAAAKU/nXvVbWg7tkU/s1600/ScreenShot278+(1).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kYKvM3HfAVE/UnpbgpROWII/AAAAAAAAAKU/nXvVbWg7tkU/s640/ScreenShot278+(1).png" height="358" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Archival footage of the Tasmanian Tiger (1932)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second and final glimpse
comes towards the end of the film, when the tiger discovers the hunter in its
cave, its form framed in the entrance. This face-to-face is followed by a short
chase, where the creature is almost lost in the distance and the snow, and then
with just a breath of hesitation, <a href="http://movieclips.com/B3Ga-the-hunter-movie-the-tasmanian-tiger/">the hunter shoots it</a>.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This
scene is perhaps the most judicious and sparing use of CGI every yet produced
in cinema. To say the image is life-like would not capture its real quality. That
quality gathers something of a living wild creature together with a dream-like
apparition and an archetypal totem for a species. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1Ad3griKAo/Unpdb5PSmiI/AAAAAAAAAKg/JgbajM12U5Q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+15.11.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1Ad3griKAo/Unpdb5PSmiI/AAAAAAAAAKg/JgbajM12U5Q/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+15.11.46.png" height="266" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tasmanian Tiger at the end of <i>The Hunter</i>, dir. Daniel Nettheim (2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
two glimpses taken together show us the presence of the tiger in today’s world.
It is an archival memory, not long gone, so close to us that it is still animated
in the filmed footage of 80 years ago. But the tiger’s trace marks out a trail
beyond that time. Tigers are widely believed to have survived in the wild for
some decades after that last captive creature died of exposure, having been locked
out of its sheltered sleeping area. No sightings were confirmed, but many were
reported, whilst calls were heard and traces were found on various expeditions.
The general consensus is that the tiger is now extinct, but many ‘believers’
still hunt for it in the wild. If, as seems likely, it died out some time in
the sixties or seventies, then the last tiger died unseen in the wild. We thus
have the archival memory of the tiger, but we also have lingering traces of the
wild tigers and the hope and/or belief in their continued existence. It is this
lingering trace, together with one possibility of its final extermination, that
we glimpse in the imaginatively generated images towards the end of the film.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There
are various ways that one might attempt to decipher the allusions and analogies
that come into view in these scenes between hunting and filming. The archive
film from the zoo has captured and trapped the living tiger, giving it a lingering
animation beyond real living, so that it is available for viewing, in this case
by the hunter viewing his quarry. The camera frames and attempts to ensnare its
quarry. And of course there are the direct visual and linguistic parallels
between both the equipment of filming and hunting and the camera shots and gunshots.
Such allusions can be more or less facile or illuminating. What keeps them
interesting in the <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703148/">The Hunter</a></i> is that
they are more or less pervasive and ubiquitous, so that the open sense of what
it means to be a hunter is at one and the same time the open sense of what it
means to be a filmmaker. Neither is played off against the other, nor does one
play the role of giving a substantial sense to the other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
tiger, as individual and as species, is saved by a solitary and unseen act of
killing, in which it is consigned to oblivion. The task that the film sets
itself is to show us that in some circumstances, perhaps all too frequently,
there is truth in what Lucy, the hunter’s host who is grieving and recovering
from debilitating depression, suggests: ‘It’s better off extinct. If it’s alive
people will always want to find it and hunt it down.’ The hunter of this film
is the one who saves the tiger from the fate of being unendingly hunted,
perhaps by those would bring it back through cloning, use it to develop very
helpful medicines, or to stare in wonder at its beauty and rarity from the
eco-tourist trail. If we have lost all sense that the members of a species are sent
to us as gifts, and may in certain circumstances embody the whole dignity of
the species in themselves, if there is no room in the world for the sheltered
and concealed places from which those individuals are sent to us, then it is
the hunter’s duty to release them from the unending ravages of the hunt.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alone and unaccompanied, the hunter cremates the tiger and scatters its ashes
from a cliff-top over the forest. This hidden gesture, aiming at nothing but
the recovery an animal’s dignity, might be fruitfully compared to the more
urbane secret dog cremations carried out by David Lurie in J.M.Coetzee’s<i> Disgrace</i>.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><br /></span></span></a></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6c6Bj2kUhA/Unpdxz5u7TI/AAAAAAAAAKo/ZSUXen4gQF8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+15.14.11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6c6Bj2kUhA/Unpdxz5u7TI/AAAAAAAAAKo/ZSUXen4gQF8/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+15.14.11.png" height="272" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Hunter</i>, dir. Daniel Nettheim (2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><br /></span></span></a></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
sceptic will ask from whose point of view the tiger is better off extinct. ‘Certainly
not from the tiger’s!’, it might be joked. Nor is it better for those who love
the tiger and desperately cling on to the ‘belief’ that it is still out there
to be rediscovered. Is it then somehow supposed to be ‘better off extinct’ from
some God’s eye view that takes into account neither the point of view of the
tiger nor of the people who hunt it, remember it and imagine it? The film
reminds us that these are not the only options and it recovers for us the point
of view that we all begin by participating in and helping to shape, the point
of view of ecological communities, as part of which human beings shared and
failed to share the world with tigers for thousands of years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is salutary
and disturbing to discover that before Europeans arrived in Australia tigers had
already been close to extinction on the mainland for a long time and their
disappearance there is likely to have been due at least in part to competition
with Aboriginal hunters. <a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4] </span></span></a>The greatest challenge of the film is to
ask us to imagine a case in which these events had not been imagined, in which
this hunt had not be shown to us, and in which the tiger remains nothing for us,
as itself a case in which the tiger’s life would be revered. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Again,
one might be concerned that the ‘secret’ saving power of the hunter’s kill could
only have its intended effect if it were somehow preserved and shown to a wider
audience, as in effect the film itself does for this imagined scenario. Once
the hunter returns to town he makes a single phone call to his employers,
telling them ‘What you want is gone forever.’ We get the sense that it will go
no further, at least, that the affair will be supressed once they finally
satisfy themselves that this is indeed the case. In the case of the tiger, only
if the end comes unnoticed is there a chance of what seems wholly impossible, a
catastrophic redemption in extinction.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span lang="EN-US">Julia Leigh, <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Hunter.html?id=NRGtFZ8H6pUC&redir_esc=y">The Hunter</a></i> (London: Faber and Faber, 2000)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
For an illuminating account of the way that many hunting societies conceive of
the species ‘Guardian’ as a person that can sometimes be embodied in
individuals, whilst most individuals do not have personhood in their own right
see, Timothy Ingold, ‘Hunting, sacrifice and the domestication of animals’, in <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Appropriation_of_Nature.html?id=tl_2lTabQtcC&redir_esc=y">The Appropriation of Nature</a> </i>(Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1986). The status of the Tasmanian Tiger in such a
scheme would have been highly ambiguous, since it is was not hunted for
sustenance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span lang="EN-US">J.M.Coetzee, <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Disgrace.html?id=fxTPklV0IvMC&redir_esc=y">Disgrace</a> </i>(London: Vintage, 1999)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Phil/Downloads/Saved%20by%20the%20Kill.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span><!--[endif]--></span></a> </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Robert Paddle, <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Last_Tasmanian_Tiger.html?id=wqIi6YTFPooC&redir_esc=y">The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine</a> </i>(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000)</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
theviewfromthehutchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09037446509773839859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-62973167733788389762013-10-11T13:26:00.000+01:002014-01-10T13:30:37.974+00:00Avatar: A transformed cinema; a transformation of self, (and then) a transformation of world.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">By
Rupert Read</span></h2>
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8jsrkYXNByk/Unp-G5xmI3I/AAAAAAAAAMU/LlzRiWgc9Vo/s1600/avatar-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8jsrkYXNByk/Unp-G5xmI3I/AAAAAAAAAMU/LlzRiWgc9Vo/s640/avatar-1.jpg" height="512" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></i></b></span>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/"><span style="color: blue;">Avatar</span></a></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is the most
successful film of all time, judging by the box office. Its sequels, now
scheduled to start appearing in 2016, will no doubt be the most eagerly-awaited
sequels of all time. How thrilling, that a contemporary film with such a
radical ‘message’ (see my paper, <a href="http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/journal_04.pdf"><span style="color: blue;">The Call of Avatar</span></a>, for this), should be so
fantastically successful. This alone would be enough to make the titular topic
of the present piece important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For this is an essay about <i><a href="http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?author=26"><span style="color: blue;">Avatar</span></a></i>,
cinema and ecology. Let us start – fittingly, given our ecologistic topic --
with the <i>world</i> of <i>Avatar</i>, and then proceed to its
connection what might be termed the ecology of the film itself. That is: its
medium and its conditions of possibility for being the extraordinary success it
has already been.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Introduction</span></u></b></h3>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pandora: a dreamed-up world of miraculous beauty
and wonder. <i>Avatar</i>: so well-suited for being the first great 3-D
film, because one needs to enter into this world as deeply as possible. The
point about the film being 3D, is that it is as if you are really there. This
is crucial for the success of the film’s meaning and ‘message’. One has, I
shall claim, to feel this world just as if it is real.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref1"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn1" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[i]</span></a> Because it kind-of <i>is</i>.
It is our world, through 3D glasses darkly. Or again: it is our world, through
a glass (through a screen) brightly. This film plays with one’s sense of
reality. <i>You have to come to feel it as real</i>. Not, as I shall
discuss below, as like a video-game. But as opening to us the reality of our
world. As opening us to our love for it, and for us. As enabling us to see it,
and one another, <i>face-to-face...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">There
were numerous <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/6977817/Avatar-fans-suicidal-because-planet-Pandora-is-not-real.html">reports</a> of people being depressed after seeing </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">,
because reality isn’t as beautiful as the world they had been (are) inhabiting.
But what is causing most of those people to be depressed? Is it the contrast
between reality per se and Pandora (which would suggest mere depressive
escapism), or is it the contrast between Earth </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">as we are living it</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> and
Pandora (which would be my suggestion)? In other words, whether they know it or
not, I submit that in all likelihood what is depressing these people is that we
have despoiled our Earth, and this despoliation we show no real sign as yet of
abating. The world we inhabit is often ugly, because we have made it so. In
other words: these people are being depressed by the very thing which </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> wants
to render focal, and to change. Depression is one possible – and natural -
reaction to what we have done to our world, and to ourselves; but a healthier
reaction is to turn that depression into anger and into the will to change
things. This can be achieved by the transformation of depression into an
ecological consciousness (cf. the </span><a href="http://www.mjrust.net/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: blue;">ecopsychological work of Mary-Jayne Rust</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">et
al).</i></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Compare for instance this account, due to a colleague of Rust’s,
Chris Johnstone: “Anna, a young woman who cried for an hour after watching [<i>Avatar</i>],
told me about her experience: “The feeling I had was one of mourning: mourning
our loss, as a species, of our connection to the basic sustenance of
life… <i>Avatar</i> has contributed to a growing ecological
consideration within me; I am finding it increasingly difficult to assume the
position of a lack of personal responsibility by the
‘burying-my-head-in-the-sand’ method.”” <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref2"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn2" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[ii]</span></a> This is the kind
of <i>life-affirming</i> response to <i>Avatar</i> that
especially appeals to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nSw4d4QCjdk/UnqCgWIzaUI/AAAAAAAAANM/IdHUv6Nkvr4/s1600/01.23.00_Under_the_Trees_of_Voices_redcyan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nSw4d4QCjdk/UnqCgWIzaUI/AAAAAAAAANM/IdHUv6Nkvr4/s640/01.23.00_Under_the_Trees_of_Voices_redcyan.png" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Beneath the Trees of Voices' in <i>Avatar</i>, dir James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Speaking of “our connection to the basic
sustenance of life”… what of the planet that is Eywa’s body, the Na’vi’s
mother? Why is it called ‘Pandora’? Because </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> offers
us </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">hope</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">. In the original myth of Pandora, its opening just seems
initially to release poison and awfulness;</span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn3" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[iii]</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> but there is this
gorgeous, vital silver-lining that then comes to light. Pandora’s discovery
brings with it a real hope. Pandora features a host of ‘natural evils’ as part
of its nature; and moreover it unleashes the worst in humanity in terms of
grabbing at its ‘natural resources’;</span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref4" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn4" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[iv]</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> and (as I will discuss
further below) on the level of military realism, crucially, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> promises
defeat in one’s efforts to stop the machine, the juggernaut of
industrial-growthist destruction; but hope too comes out, from the roots of the
planet. The hope is vested, ultimately, in the viewer. The hope is that, with
the wisdom of what we have learnt from this film, we can find a route to
stopping the juggernaut before it is too late, before this planet is wrecked.
We can prevent the opening plot-device of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> – that the
home of human civilisation is a deeply unjust place, that Earth is dying, that
its ecosystems have been terminally wrecked – from becoming true. </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> aims
in this sense to be a self-defeating prophecy. It is a warning, we might say,
from the future. From a possible future that we must work to ensure does not
become actual.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The hope unleashed by the opening of Pandora’s
box is vested in <i>you</i>. This is true of the original Greek tale, too,
of course – hope is personified, at the bottom of the box; but hope is only
actually real if it is individually and socially real. The hope offered by
Pandora, by <i>Avatar</i>, is that <i>you</i> can be part of
fighting, struggling, intelligently and non-violently, and successfully, to
save us from the future gestured at in <i>Avatar</i>. This hope is slim.
It rests on faith, faith beyond any realistic hope. Faith in ourselves and each
other and our place, hope in this good Earth, hope even when – in fact,
especially when <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref5"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn5" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[v]</span></a> – all <i>reasons</i> for
such hope have run out. The kind of faith that Nicolai Hartmann had in mind
when, writing on love of the future ones, of our descendants and of posterity,
he wrote: “The venture is great. Only a deep and mighty faith, permeating a
person’s whole being, is equal to it. It is a faith of a unique kind, different
from trust between man (sic.) and man, a faith which reaches out to the whole
of things and can do no other than stake all it has.” (P.308 of
“Love of the remote”, in Partridge (ed.)<i> Responsibilities to future
generations</i>.) (I return to this point in connection with the great
philosophers of faith and hope, in the concluding sections of this paper,
below.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0pmT-BGSjq8/Unp_AeG8KEI/AAAAAAAAAMc/gozdPdeGVzw/s1600/avatar_pandora.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0pmT-BGSjq8/Unp_AeG8KEI/AAAAAAAAAMc/gozdPdeGVzw/s640/avatar_pandora.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Landscape of 'Pandora' in <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">This film aims to overcome hopelessness, the
kind of giving-up on humanity found in so many of the criticisms that critics
have made of the film. So the film needs and (so) aims, first, to </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">understand</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> such
hopelessness (i.e. to understand why hopelessness and cynicism are so
attractive). It is not surprising then if a major reaction to the film is
incomprehension of and more-or-less politically-motivated (which, I have
suggested, is also psychologically-motivated, as a defence mechanism)
resistance to it. Films such as this one invite you </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">to dare to
hope, </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">and explore just why the invitation is so hard to accept – which
can be particularly intolerable to someone who is tacitly determined to resist
the invitation, out of a depressive certitude that they will not be able to
cope with the likelihood of failure, if they dare to hope.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the film’s <i>is</i> a very
challenging invitation to accept, especially when there is so little hope. But
it is <i>precisely</i> then that we need such daring invitations, in
order to start to make possible what to the cool rational mind seems absurd to
even contemplate. <i>Avatar</i> invites one to take the risk of
hoping, of not giving up all faith in us and in life. Such that most of the
resistance to it is in my view simply disguised hopelessness… <i>Those
scorning this film are those exactly most in need of its ‘therapy’.</i> The
resistance to <i>Avatar</i> is exactly what <i>Avatar</i> is <i>about</i>…
If the film hadn’t provoked the kind of negative reactions that it has, in
fact, one could be pretty confident that it wasn’t as great and as needful a
film as it is…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is exactly the kind of thing that Freud was
thinking of when he spoke of the resistance to psychoanalysis as an <i>inevitable</i> feature
of the rise of psychoanalysis, and exactly what Wittgenstein meant when he said
that philosophical problems are ultimately problems of the will, not of the
intellect. What we as a species need is not to become even cleverer; what we
need is to want enough to get well, to sort ourselves out. We need to want
enough – we need to will – the saving of our common future. We need to treat
our own inclinations to resist a film like this not as intuitions to build on
but as inclinations that themselves require philosophical/therapeutic
treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In what follows, I shall seek to fill out and
justify these claims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></u></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <u>as self-reflexive cinema, its ideal viewer as
self-reflexive, too</u></span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: The very title of the
film is a metaphor for experiential identification. It can be usefully heard as
alluding to playing video-games / computer-games, etc.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref6"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn6" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[vi]</span></a>, as well as to the
Hindu/Sanskrit sense of “avatar” as “god on Earth” or “God’ representative on
Earth” (Think of Eywa’s ‘choosing’ Jake, soon after Neytiri meets him). The key
point in <i>Avatar</i> (and again this is how the film being 3-D is
important) is of course that the Na’vi people are REAL, are people <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref7"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn7" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[vii]</span></a>… One’s avatar is engaged in
a real-life life-or-death struggle, with the ‘hostile’ planet of Pandora – and,
ultimately, with the American colonisers, etc. . <i>And</i> engaged
in a struggle for recognition, in the sense of recognising (really seeing) and
being recognised.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn8" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[viii]</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GC5uAUwA4kw/Unp_xTOzNTI/AAAAAAAAAMo/b5YOhVtP0og/s1600/Neytiri-and-Jake-avatar-10334849-1024-768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GC5uAUwA4kw/Unp_xTOzNTI/AAAAAAAAAMo/b5YOhVtP0og/s640/Neytiri-and-Jake-avatar-10334849-1024-768.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neytirir and Jake, <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Here is how my </span><a href="http://thinkingfilmcollective.blogspot.co.uk/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="color: blue;">thinkingfilm</span></i></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> colleague </span><a href="http://vincentmgaine.wordpress.com/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: blue;">Vincent
Gaine</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> puts the matter:</span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref9" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn9" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[ix]</span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“While the avatar body is a form of
augmentation, <i>Avatar</i> itself is riddled with these [with
prosthetics], particularly visual augmentation, as Parker Selfridge (Giovanni
Ribisii) and Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) primarily view Pandora on screens
and through visual filters and barriers. The film places Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington), in his avatar body, directly <i>within</i> the forest
of Pandora rather than in command of it. Many shots present Jake as dwarfed by
the jungle that both he and viewer can marvel at rather than control.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref10"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn10" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[x]</span></a> Visual augmentation is
also unreliable: when a remote controlled viewer has its camera destroyed, its
pilot proclaims in complete helplessness: “I’m blind”. The instruments of the
military personnel will not work in the Floating Mountains, and Jake comments
that the soldiers must “fire line of sight” – use their eyes rather than
devices.”</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course, nestled within this quote is the
paradox that it is only Jake’s ‘dropping’ into a body that makes all of this
possible. The crucial opposition in the film, in the end, is between ‘dropping’
into something, whether a mechanical prosthetic or an avatar, and <i>changing
one’s lived consciousness</i>. It is in the end only the latter that can
actually yield enlightenment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0HiHKnt6rww/UnqDYWxRdMI/AAAAAAAAANU/Ve0EjmbPFp8/s1600/Avatar-jake_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0HiHKnt6rww/UnqDYWxRdMI/AAAAAAAAANU/Ve0EjmbPFp8/s640/Avatar-jake_.jpg" height="310" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jake inhabiting his 'new body' in <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (209)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">As Joshua Clover sees, in calling the argument of
the film “that what we might call “vertical jacking” (as Jake into his
vat-grown avatar and, by extension, a terminal operator into a Predator drone
in Afghanistan, or you into </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Second Life</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">) is bad, as it takes the
fundamental form of domination: one extending its will into another.
Conversely, “horizontal jacking” (with its at least purported sharing of wills)
is just fine, indeed, it’s “natural”, even if conducted via technological means.
And it is in fact a necessity in the face of unnatural domination, providing an
alter-globalization.” </span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref11" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn11" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xi]</span></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-332kUhmW_TQ/UnqANAH-PqI/AAAAAAAAAMw/tT6fJV4qdRY/s1600/AVATAR_jake_sully_avatar_lg-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-332kUhmW_TQ/UnqANAH-PqI/AAAAAAAAAMw/tT6fJV4qdRY/s640/AVATAR_jake_sully_avatar_lg-11.jpg" height="378" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jake and his 'vat-grown avatar' in <i>Avatar</i>, dir James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">This is why the story has to end with Jake’s
enlightenment being completed not by remaining a drop-in, a dreamwalker, but
fully one of ‘them’ – and with his eyes looking out at us inviting us to take a
similar transformative journey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Really seeing, and really being seen, as a dance
of mutual acknowledgement and true vision. Arriving at the possibility of
sharing, collectivising of will. That is the challenge of the avatar – the
challenge is to recognise these ‘others’ as real, to come truly to acknowledge
them, as different and as the same.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref12"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn12" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xii]</span></a> But it is of course
your task too, as <i>the viewer.</i> For what is the process of
‘becoming’ one’s avatar like? Is it like playing an intense prolonged
character-based computer-game? Possibly; but isn’t it even more like <i>watching
a film?</i> E.g. a film such as <i>Avatar</i> (or <i>Bladerunner</i>)?
In a cinema, especially a 3-D cinema, one’s active involvement requires a kind
of bodily passivity reminiscent of what is involved in going into one of those
virtual-reality ‘coffins’ that the humans with avatars have, in <i>Avatar</i>.
Not so much the kind of frenetic physical activity involved in a Wii or a
computer-game. This is of course why our marine protagonist can have an avatar,
even though he is paraplegic. While he ‘is’ in is avatar body, his own body is
as immobile as ours is while we watch this film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One might then suggest, I think, that <i>Avatar</i> is
itself a metaphor for watching films, and especially for watching films
like <i>Avatar</i>… Unless you are <i>involved</i>, and that means being
a participant in the social practice of acknowledging or otherwise, then you
are radically missing the point. But you also need to acknowledge the limits on
what you can do ‘from the other side of the screen’. The ultimate implication
of this film (and of films like it) then surely is that your actual life must
be affected. Seeing is not enough. It is only a prequel to doing
different. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This film asks us to think about our own prone
position in the cinema. It invites us to become unprone. To complete the film,
and negate its hypothetical dystopian future in which the people of Earth have
“killed their mother”, by leaving a prone position decisively behind, and
becoming enlightened eco-warriors. With (y)our eyes truly open. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The trees are a global network, sustaining life and
consciousness <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We can link our consciousness with other language-using creatures
and with other non-language-using animals (with or without the internet!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eywa is Gaia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The atmosphere is potentially lethal for us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The real wealth of the world is not in its shiny minerals, but in
its life. (Recall Ruskin’s great words: “There is no wealth but life”.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: 0cm;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The nature of the world, in sum, is stunningly beautiful, and we
can attune ourselves to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
You have to change your life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
And: What does our jarhead hero <i>do</i>, what is one crucial activity
that he engages in as he makes his personal transformation, his gradual
staccato conversion to being on the side of the righteous, his going
native? <i>He makes a film…</i> his video diary. From a fairly early
stage in the film that we see, <i>Avatar</i>, the<i> </i>narrative<i> is </i>mostly
(from)<i> the film that he is himself making</i>. One might think of this
as a metonym for the (experience of making, or of really seeing the)
film, <i>Avatar</i>… A film that records his (one’s) reluctant and
surprising transformation into an eco-warrior… A film like <i>Avatar</i>…
This is what James Cameron has done. So now: what are <i>you</i> going
to do? This film about (making, and really seeing) films is a call for you to
do something of a similar order. To take the kinds of actions that really
seeing our world, really thinking and feeling and visualising our children to
the seventh generation, will require.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: X-NONE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
The film’s protagonist, the one ‘chosen’ by Eywa, has to be an American, one of
us, because unless <i>we</i> change (the world), then the future will
be grim. For we, and not the world’s indigenous peoples</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: X-NONE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> are
the ones who need to change our ways, to learn to see…</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (I am assuming that most <i>TF</i> readers are</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: X-NONE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> the members of Western </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘liberal </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: X-NONE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">capitalis</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">t’ societies</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: X-NONE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,
those of us with an ‘inner American’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><i><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar’s</span></u></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <u>invitation to you: to go beyond violence</u></span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> powerfully motivates
a (temporary) hatred of those American soldiers who continue to obey orders
that are ecocidal and genocidal.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref13"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn13" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xiii]</span></a> This will of course
have been one of the things that got the goat of the right-wing American
critics of the film. It is remarkable just how completely, in the massive final
battle, one is just desperately willing the Na’vi to succeed in
beating/killing/slaughtering their colonialist attackers: i.e. the ‘Western’
Earthlings: i.e. <i>us</i>. We are used to films in which we beat off
alien attacks on Earth; that paradigm is inverted in <i>Avatar</i>, as the
aliens try to beat off an attack from us; and Jake, one’s ‘avatar’ in the film,
gradually, painfully comes full-heartedly to adopt their point of view
rather than ‘ours’. Part of the therapeutic work of the film is to motivate and
enable this striking and surprising (to most of the film’s intended audience)
desire. And it connects with the point-of-view shot through which (in 3-D,
recall), one sees the hatred on Neytiri’s face as she unlooses upon one the
arrow that kills one’s Quaritch-self.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref14"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn14" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xiv]</span></a> <i>But</i>, this is
only a moment in the experience of the film; one does not end here. For when
one has seen the film, one knows that the violent rebellion of the Na’vi, just
and dignified though it was, and without alternative, <i>failed</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u8x3CPfPBlQ/UnqA9iCZwnI/AAAAAAAAAM4/beFe3CMTO9c/s1600/avatar_640_1-thumb-640xauto-10665.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u8x3CPfPBlQ/UnqA9iCZwnI/AAAAAAAAAM4/beFe3CMTO9c/s640/avatar_640_1-thumb-640xauto-10665.jpg" height="266" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neytiri's arrow in <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">The </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">deus ex machina</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> that secures success and a happy ending is
a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">deus ex Eywa</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">, or a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">deus ex gaia</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">; in short, a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">deus
ex deus</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">… But we know that a God is not going to save us. We have to do it
ourselves. We have to find a way that works. We are going to have to persuade a
helluva lot of people of this way; for the enemy, in consumer society, is us.
Again: </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">We</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> are the ones devastating this planet, devastating
the future. The call is to all of us, and a lot of us are going to have to
answer it and respond intelligently and organise accordingly and persuade
others to go with us on the journey to sustainability, if it is to succeed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is in the end <i>not</i> a
pro-violence film. It is not calling for violent ecological civil war. If you
take the military on ‘head on’, you will likely lose. You need to <i>use
your head</i>. You need in this sense to proceed head-first. Not only to rely
on your heart. This point undercuts the criticism of the film sometimes
made alleging that it is overly emotional or sentimental.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The therapeutic transformation that Avatar
midwifes</span></u></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">begins with
a closed set of eyes, those of <i>our</i> avatar in the film. It
suggests that our eyes are closed. It ends with those same eyes, transformed
into the eyes of a being who can now appreciate their embeddedness in the world
and among others, the eyes of eco-sight, opening. It suggests that our eyes are
now open. If we have really seen <i>Avatar</i> (“I see you”), it
opens our eyes. It has opened our eyes.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref15"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn15" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xv]</span></a> The film is one gigantic
movement of a pair of eyes opening, and seeing as if for the first time.
Your <i>eyes</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Through</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> the eyes of our hero
being gradually opened, we come to experience this. But one must emphasise the
word “gradually”. Just as in another important recent work of ‘therapeutic’,
‘transformative’ film-making, <i>District 9</i>, the process of
therapeutic healing, the curing of our hero’s insanity - his failure to
acknowledge, to understand - comes painfully slowly, reluctantly, surprisingly.
So slowly that it almost comes altogether too late. It certainly comes too late
to save Home Tree. And indeed the movie that our jarhead makes comes to be used
against the person he is gradually becoming, as evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This gradualness is important. It gives one as a
viewer time. Time to make the journey oneself, and to wish that he were making
it quicker, to manage sometimes to get ahead of him. As Wittgenstein held: in
philosophy, a slow cure is all-important. Therapeutic works of film need to
proceed in the same way. To really take your audience with you, they have to
become more than your <i>aud</i>-ience. They mustn’t merely hear what you
say: they have to really see. For themselves. They (we) too have to say, as
Jake does half-way through his slow transformation: “I don’t know who I am any
more”. They (we) have to go through, to <i>work</i> through, the
therapeutic transition that the film invites them (us) into. This great work
(on oneself) <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref16"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn16" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xvi]</span></a> cannot be
rushed. (And thus the long running-time of <i>Avatar</i> can I
think be justified. In film, in life, in philosophy, as Wittgenstein would have
it: a slow cure is sometimes all important…)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I suggested above why our hero is a kind of
everyman, exactly the kind of person who needs to take an avatarian journey, if
our world is to be healed, saved. Now to give some further specifics: he is a
middle-American. He has been betrayed by his country, by large corporations,
deprived of decent medical care. He is healed by (as Nietzsche would put it:
“Become who you are”) becoming himself, in love and care, in nature. Through
coming to live as his avatar does; ultimately, through coming to <i>be</i> his
avatar. Catching up with the being that walked ahead of him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This vision of
becoming is set against the closest counterparts to the avatars in the film,
their ‘other’: the giant robotic warrior suits that are used by humans without
avatars to range out onto the surface of Pandora in. In the final confrontation
between Colonel Quarritch on the one hand and Jake and Neytiri (and the animal
on which she is riding) on the other, avatar (and Na’vi) are ranged against one
of these industrial fighters. The contrast couldn’t be more striking. The
avatar brings one into closer-than-close contact with the planet, with nature.
One lives it. Whereas these suits seal oneself off from it and set one over
against it. This is the opposition: the possibility for transformation and a
possible finding of a harmony with an (unsentimentalised, red in tooth and claw<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref17"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn17" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xvii]</span></a>) nature, on the one hand,
and military-industrial othering from nature, on the other.
Avatars/people/animals - versus machines.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">This othering, this </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">distance</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> from
nature and from reality, contrasts strikingly with the achievements of
Grace’s (Sigourney Weaver’s) anthropologists. (This connects also
with the very clear echoes of </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Apocalypse Now</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> in this film:
Most notably, the way in which the military’s fleet of helicopters resemble
flying insects but also resemble the Wagnerian helicopters of that film, and in
the way in which the incendiaries remind one of what befell Vietnam, as
famously depicted by Coppola.</span><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref18" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn18" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xviii]</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> encourages
us, rightly, to want the American side to lose the war in Vietnam. That’s not
‘anti-American’; it’s anti-imperialist, and pro-human.) Particularly
striking about the robot-warrior-suits is that they don’t have any heads. The
head, the intelligence, needs to be supplied by a human. Sadly, such
intelligence is mostly lacking, in the colonisers that we meet on Pandora.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When the villain of the piece, the Marine
Colonel Quaritch, is finally killed, it is by our hero’s lover, Neytiri. She
transfixes him with two arrows. As the second hits him, we see it, in
3-D, <i>in a point-of-view shot from his point of view.</i> In other
words: we experience his dying with him. The kind of American that he
represents and that exists in most or all of us <i>has to die.</i> You
have to die and be reborn. The film’s ‘message’ at moments like this, the
therapeutic (healing) journey that it takes one on, is profound and
deeply-challenging: You have to die, and be born again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SvDx-mGQO8E/UnqBq9djEhI/AAAAAAAAANA/c4sCrsbCvx8/s1600/quaritch09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SvDx-mGQO8E/UnqBq9djEhI/AAAAAAAAANA/c4sCrsbCvx8/s640/quaritch09.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 32px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Marine Colonel Quaritch's death in <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">The film confirms this more than once. Take the
story at the start. Jake’s twin brother – a doppelganger for our hero and
protagonist himself – is senselessly killed, we learn, at the start, on an
Earth that has literally lost its sense(s). A powerful point of view shot
places us for a little while inside his coffin (The coffin stands proxy for the
body-chambers that will later transform humans such as Jake temporarily into
avatars). We hear Jake’s words: “One life ends. Another begins.” Indeed; to be
born again, first you have to (be willing to) die. (As Jake says, as he does
his final video-log, and goes off to become a Na’vi forever: “It’s my birthday,
after all”… Echoing his earlier remark (that of course echoes traditional
‘rites of passage’ ideas and practices that unfortunately we have become
somewhat remote from today) that “The Na’vi say that every person is born
twice. The second time, is when you earn your place among the people forever.”)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Even <i>Quarritch</i> confirms it, by offering an enlightenment
narrative – of progress and of waking up – that points in the opposite
direction. He asks Jake, in a powerful question emphasising how it is not easy
for the viewer to make the transformation that the film asks for, how it feels
“to betray your own race”, and goes on: “You think you’re one of them: Time to
wake up”; and then starts to smash up the building in which Jake’s human form
is almost prone, from which he is ‘dream-walking’, thus underlying once more
the perilousness of an incomplete transformation, the <i>danger</i> of
having (merely) an avatar, and so of not being fully (t)here. (Jake will only
become safe from such an assault when he becomes fully Na’vi, as he does at the
film’s end.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
The end of the film is happy. Because this is <i>your</i> birthday.
This is the chance, this is the moment for you to die (or to already have died)
and to be born again. Jake becomes his avatar. We can’t make such a
transition, ourselves, physically. But we can – mentally, spiritually, and in
terms of what we choose to <i>do</i>. This is the epochal transformation
that <i>Avatar</i> aims to midwife.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><i><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></u></i></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <u>as a work of therapeutic art: beyond propaganda and
‘message’</u></span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In my view, when one really understands films
like <i>Avatar</i>, they don’t <i>have</i> generalised messages
as such.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref19"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn19" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xix]</span></a> Films such as this are
not disguised bits of propaganda. They <i>essentially</i> involve the
viewer. They guide the viewer on a proposed ‘journey’ – but the journey is
psychically individual, as well as partly collective (I think it is important
that we see these films <i>in cinemas</i>). The specificities of each
person’s journey will be different; and indeed, one may refuse altogether to
take the journey (as many critics have done). Part of my account of such films
is inevitably autobiographical. I am allegorising <i>my</i> reading/viewing
of these films. The ‘message’ that I speak of is in this film thus the message<i> for
me</i>; and everyone, each person, must in this way speak for themselves. There
is a call to honesty here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These films do not make <i>arguments</i>.
They rather offer (what Wittgenstein calls) <i>therapy</i>. This is
philosophy not as theory nor as quasi-factive impersonal claim, but as a <i>process</i> that
one must work through for oneself. A process of thinking, and feeling (and then
acting). It is different from the idea of philosophy to which we are
accustomed; it sits ill with the idolatry of science which lies at the heart of
our civilisation.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref20"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn20" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xx]</span></a> So much the worse for
that idolatry. It is idolatry of science and the taking of technology as a
‘neutral’ tool that has got us into the mess we are in. <i>Avatar</i> dramatises
and extends the logic of this. Thus we should <i>expect</i> that a
non-scientistic vein of philosophy, such as Wittgenstein offers, is what is
appropriate to help us understand how to extricate ourselves from that mess.
Our expectation is not disappointed. These films are works, like Wittgenstein’s
writing, designed to <i>heal</i>. But healing, healing of one’s mind,
one’s body-self, and of one’s world, is an art, not a science, and is through
and through processual.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thus films such as <i>Avatar</i> <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref21"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn21" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxi]</span></a>are <i>not</i> (unlike
video-games) escapist. They provide an <i>illusion</i> of escape.
Actually, they return one to oneself and to the world. Ready to know it for the
first time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is what I see in these films. These <i>thinking</i>-films.
But I believe it is to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or
unconsciously, what many millions of others see too. I believe that I am
tapping here into the reasons for the vast popular success of these
films. <i>Avatar</i> can easily be seen as a predictable and just
very shiny exercise in cheese, or as a predictable ‘anti-American’ rant. Many
critics have responded to <i>Avatar</i> either from ‘the Left’ (with
cynicism and a knowing superiority to such alleged sentimentalism, romanticism
and superficiality, or even with allegations that the film is itself tacitly
racist against indigenous peoples, against the disabled, etc. as discussed
above) or from ‘the Right’ (with anger against the attack within the film on
cultural norms, on American militarism, etc.). It is the critics from ‘the
Right’ who are if anything closer to the truth, I think, despite themselves. As
I set out above, the film <i>is</i> shocking, in the extent to which,
when one experiences it closely, – when one experiences for instance that arrow
transfixing and killing one’s American / military / racist / speciesist self,
so that the world can be saved, and so that in due course Jake can be fully
reborn as a Na’vi – the journey it proposes and offers takes one far indeed
from one’s comfort-zone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vii90x-vKd0/UnqGeqKFtkI/AAAAAAAAANg/BvdvXoHM6Xs/s1600/Avatar,_2009,_Sam_Worthington_as_Jake_Sully.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vii90x-vKd0/UnqGeqKFtkI/AAAAAAAAANg/BvdvXoHM6Xs/s640/Avatar,_2009,_Sam_Worthington_as_Jake_Sully.jpg" height="400" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jake's transformation from human to Na'vi in <i>Avatar</i>, dir. James Cameron (2009)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">And all this is of course why </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">Avatar </i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">is
a film (or film-series) that might just save the world... The struggle to save
human civilisation from decisively rupturing and destroying its life-support is
a struggle to change the minds and the practices of millions - billions - of
people. How can one reach such numbers? Well, for starters: how about through
the most successful film(s) ever? Through a film(s) that issues a call, that
midwifes a change in conscience and in consciousness? A film that requires an
emotional, a thoughtful and a practical response, and that suggests that,
outside of a fairy tale, there is a route that needs to be found and (with
will) </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;">can</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 200%;"> be found to ensure that the future that it depicts
for Earth does not come to be?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
This is the philosophy we need for the 21<sup>st</sup> century. The
groundwork for it was created by Pascal and (better) by Kierkegaard and (best)
by William James (and, as already intimated, by Wittgenstein). If we look to
reason and to the facts to give us hope, then our hope will die. We need to
reason and we need science and we need to stay in touch with the facts; but
above and before and beyond all that we need to trust, to have faith, to
believe even when reason says that there is no reasonable hope, no reasonable
doubt about the fate that lies in store for us. In Pascal’s terms:<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref22"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn22" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxii]</span></a> if we do not wager, if
we do not try to act as if there is a chance that we can save ourselves, if we
refuse to take the risk of holding out hope that we may be able to save
ourselves, then certainly we will fail to save ourselves. In Kierkegaard’s
terms (from <i>Fear and Trembling</i>): faith, when there is little or no
hope, can work miracles. It can create what is otherwise humanly impossible. In
James’s terms: we have the right (the ‘will’) to believe some things – such as
to have confidence in our own goodness, in humanity having the capacity to
achieve balance and ecological sanity - even without evidence;<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref23"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn23" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxiii]</span></a> and, <i>without</i> the
will so to believe, we will in such cases lose our only chance to achieve the
fruits of such belief. In Wittgenstein’s terms: this philosophy is a therapy
for our individual and cultural illness, dis-ease: rather than some new theory,
we need to change our way of life, so that the problems which form this illness
that we are trying here to treat no longer arise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
We need then, despite everything, to have faith, to hold out hope, to care, to
cure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you find yourself resisting what I am saying
in this paper, it may be because what I am saying is wrong, or silly, or
whatever; <i>or</i> it may be because you are not <i>quite</i> <i>ready</i> to
embrace these teachings and make them your own. Those cynics who look down on
or dismiss <i>Avatar</i>, or indeed accuse it of being reactionary or
racist (and in doing so, simply mirror those foolish and dogmatic critics who
accuse it of being ‘anti-American’), are as I have said simply engaging
in <i>more of the same</i> of what is present and overcome in <i>Avatar</i>:
the attractions of the tendency to retreat. To give up hope. The very
temptations analysed by <i>Avatar</i> provide the main reason why so
many are unprepared to embrace them, and prefer instead to back away from them;
to stand aloof from - ‘above’ - them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Conclusion</span></u></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avatar</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> ‘literalises’ – it
shows - what is metaphorically true of our world:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Furthermore: The tree of souls is a metaphor for
and visualises for us that imagination, dreaming, needn’t be privatised. It can
be collective. This is why <i>Avatar</i> should if possible be
watched <i>in the cinema.</i> This is why too it can be inspiring for
instance to look at the huge trail of positivity that you can find on the
#Avatar hashtag on Twitter. I think that something unusual is happening
with <i>Avatar</i>. It has achieved already a level of inspiration that is
most unusual for a movie. It is actually, it would seem, inspiring a more
ecological consciousness among a large semi-collectivity of people.<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref24"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn24" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxiv]</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The call of the film is a call to re-enchant and
to replenish and to restore the ecosystems of our fragile world. The only world
we’ve got. What we have to do first is to say (and mean it) “I see you” to
others, and to the world. As Jay Michaelson puts it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“In the Na’Vi cosmology, what’s really happening
is the Eywa in me is connecting with the Eywa in you. This is echoed in their
greeting, “I see you”, a direct translation of the Sanskrit <i>Namaste</i>,
which means the same thing. (“Avatar” is also from the Sanskrit, though the
film plays on the word’s two meanings, of an image used in a role-playing game,
and a deity appearing on Earth). As the Na’Vi explain in the film, though, “I
see you” doesn’t mean ordinary seeing – it, like <i>Namaste</i>, really
means “the God in me sees the God in you.”” </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn25" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxv]</span></a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As Norm teaches Jake, of what the true meaning
of “I see you” is: “I see you, I see into you, I see who you really are.” The
story of the film is the story of Jake struggling with this,<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_ednref26"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_edn26" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxvi]</span></a> and eventually, after
terrible setbacks, learning to realise it. The story of the film as a
transformative therapeutic encounter is the story of <i>you</i> struggling
with this, and learning to realise it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How do we get to the point of being able to do
this, to truly say “I see you” to everything and everyone? Well, first-off, as
I’ve already implied: By really seeing this film. By as it were saying “I see
you” to <i>Avatar</i>…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Coda</span></u></i></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As pointed out above, Gaia is not going to ride
to the rescue. In our world, we have to do this ourselves. <i>We</i> have
to succeed on behalf of Gaia. We are unlikely to do so by taking up arms. We
need heroism, but even more we need the ordinary virtues of dignity, care,
steadfastness. We need to gird ourselves for a long struggle. All of this is
there, implicit, in <i>Avatar</i>. <i>Avatar</i> tells us that
if we attack the machine head on, we’ll lose. It wisely counsels a more
intelligent, less direct approach – though just as radical. Its ‘message’ for
us is implicitly one of non-violent revolution. It is a call to transformation
of self and of world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The argument that I have made in this essay, I
believe, requires some courage. It requires some courage for you to enter into
it and accept it, and make it your own, and not to condescend or even express
contempt, as many reviewers of <i>Avatar</i> have. Along the lines
laid out above (from Kierkegaard and James and Wittgenstein), I’m taking a risk
in saying this, and you are taking a risk if you believe it. It is ‘safer’ to
remain on the barren heights of cleverness and intellectual superiority, to
mock the pretensions of a massive and popular commercial enterprise such as the
making of a film like this. It is particularly tempting to look down on a
popular film, to ‘prove’ yourself superior to it – because then you are by
implication ‘superior’ to the tens or hundreds of millions who love it…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I think that the risk of opening yourself
to <i>Avatar</i> and to hope is well worth taking. The sterility and
(in the end) systematic <u>un</u>safety of the alternative – of trusting
to business as usual, hoping only for techno-fixes, staying in denial and
distancing oneself from nature - is something that we know, in our hearts, in
our souls, in our bones. We know it when we dare to feel the Earth beneath our
feet (just as we experience Jake doing when his avatar runs for the first time). <i>Avatar</i> teaches
and expresses a love of the physical, and of the biological. A willingness to
embrace our animal nature, and to love life. And a determination to enable
future people to do the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is relatively easy for academics and critics
to feel secure, at the moment, in the citadels of the mind. But it won’t stay
easy. It is time to come down into the green fields and forests and jungles of
physicality, of play, of imagination, of daring to dream. Of daring to <i>hope</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Daring to hope that we may yet have the courage to save ourselves. To share a
common will to prevent ecocide, and to achieve the glorious potential of life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<i><br />
[Thanks to numerous colleagues and friends, especially Vincent Gaine and Ruth
Makoff, for help with this piece.]</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn1"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref1" title=""><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: blue;">[i]</span></a></span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black;"> I mean the word “feel” emotionally/metaphorically,
here. 3-D isn’t yet virtual reality. But in <i>Avatar</i>, seeing
literally is believing, and you are asked to feel what you see and what you
believe. So the metaphor is not an empty one. </span><span style="color: black;">Seeing </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black;">is
believing within the film’s diegesis, and therefore the viewer’s vicarious
position </span><span style="color: black;">in relation </span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black;">to the characters is more pronounced than
is usual</span><span style="color: black;"> even in ‘realistic’ films</span><span lang="X-NONE" style="color: black;">.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn2"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref2" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[ii]</span></a> P.25 of “The Avatar
effect”, in <i>Permaculture</i> Magazine 64 (2010),
pp.25-6. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn3"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref3" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[iii]</span></a> Think once more of how
the atmosphere is apparently poison to humans; and how Pandora brings the worst
out of human nature at first – see below. (For the original myth, see
e.g. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box"><i><span style="color: blue;">Pandora’s box</span></i></a>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn4"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref4" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[iv]</span></a> The use of scare-quotes
is advised: the very concept of ‘natural resources’ is a piece of unspeak that
aims to make the exploitation of the world easier. As Heidegger has pointed
out, treating the world as a ‘standing-reserve’ for the use of humankind is a
deadly error. A ‘saving power’ needs to arise to counter this. Which is why Jay
Michaelson puts the pantheistic (or perhaps panentheistic) cosmology of the
Na’vi forth, as an alternative to such a way of thinking: “The sky god tells us
that we humans are masters of the Earth; thus, we, like the humans in <i>Avatar</i> treat
Earth as a resource to be exploited.” (See his “The meaning of <i>Avatar</i>:
everything is God”, in the <i>Huffington Post,</i> 22 Dec. 2009.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn5"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref5" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[v]</span></a> As Kierkegaard
makes very clear: Faith is necessary, and faith is most truly faith, <i>when</i> it
is absurd. As in the Warsaw ghetto uprising; or in the last moments at Helm’s
Deep. See also below.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref6"><span style="color: blue;">[vi]</span></a> Cameron has said that the choice of
title predates the widespread use of the term ‘avatar’ in the computer games
context. He has said that while the film was in the making so long, the title
was decided early on in that process. So at that time he certainly was not
aware of the computer-game use of the term. However, even if that's all true
(which it presumably is), then the choice to KEEP the title over the decade the
film has been in preparation, as this term 'avatar' has come into general
circulation with this meaning that I refer to above, is suggestive. Cameron
(and the distributors etc.) must have considered the question as to whether
this title would attract people, put them off, be misleading, etc. . So I think
it remains true to say that the film consciously messes with the computer-games
use of the term ‘avatar’. The point is that the two uses look very similar, but
that one is missing the whole point of the film, if one stops at that
(superficial) similarity. Avatar has a meaning for the real world that one is
required to work for and experience, in a way that is just not so in most
computer/video-games, which tend to be essentially escapist (Though there is no
inevitability that they must be so, and hopefully that will change, in the
future.).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn7"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref7" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[vii]</span></a> In this way, <i>Avatar</i> is
closely-connected with some of the other great philosophical films of the
modern day, such as <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner"><span style="color: blue;">BladeRunner</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club"><span style="color: blue;">FightClub</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film)"><span style="color: blue;">Memento</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9"><span style="color: blue;">District
9</span></a>.</i>(See on these my next piece for <i>TF</i>…)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn8"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref8" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[viii]</span></a> Think of unmanned drones
flying over Iraq, Afghanistan; how easy is it for the ‘pilots’ in Las Vegas or
wherever to acknowledge the humanity of those that they are ‘zapping’? Isn’t
this in fact one of the main points of modern warfare/genocides – to try to
distance the perpetrators from the reality of their actions? …<i>Avatar</i> is
interested in the cowardliness and alienating possibilities inherent in killing
at a distance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn9"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref9" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[ix]</span></a> In an impressive
forthcoming paper entitled “Look at the shiny shiny!: Narrative deficiencies
and visual pleasures in <i>Avatar</i>”. Compare also my discussion below
of the confrontation of machine vs. avatar/Na’vi.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn10"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref10" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[x]</span></a> Even the final
visual of the entire film, as the credits roll, is a point of view shot of
flying through the sky of Pandora, and descending<i> into the canopy of
the forest.</i> This is in so many powerful ways a biophilic and
deep-ecological film. It almost seems to suggest, with this final visual, that
we have to <i>become</i> the rainforest, to <i>identify</i> with
it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn11"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref11" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xi]</span></a> P.6 of his “The struggle
for space”, <i>op.cit.</i> .<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn12"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref12" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xii]</span></a> In this connection, the
task of the protagonist in <i>Avatar</i> is identical to Deckard’s,
in <i>BladeRunner</i> – see Mulhall’s writing thereon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn13"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref13" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xiii]</span></a> In this respect once
more it rhymes with the similarly ‘boom-boom’ climax of a similarly deep
transformative and therapeutic film, <i>District 9</i>. It is shocking to
find how much one wants the protagonist in that film to kill the South African
soldiers. But I think that the <i>deus ex aiwa</i> that alone gives
success, in <i>Avatar</i>, takes <i>Avatar</i> a stage further
than <i>District 9</i> into realising that there <i>is</i> no
military solution to problems such as these. We have, rather, truly to win
‘hearts and minds’. In part, through films such as these… Additionally, <i>District
9</i> differs crucially from<i> Avatar</i> in that the former
ends with our protagonist, Wikus, still desperately wanting to become human
again, while the latter ends, contrariwise, with our protagonist completing the
transformation away from being human. Both have opened to truly seeing the
other: thus by the end of <i>District 9</i> the ‘prawns’ have become
persons to us. But the transition away from human-centrism is far more complete
in <i>Avatar</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn14"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref14" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xiv]</span></a> This movement is
similar to the central, brilliant conceit of Justin Leiber’s novel, <i>Beyond
Rejection</i>: that the way to start to feel truly at home in a body not one’s
own is to learn to hate one’s current body and way of living and what it stood
for.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn15"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref15" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xv]</span></a> I'm reminded of
Wittgenstein's great remark about FALLING asleep being like doing philosophy.
You can't FORCE it. Going into one of the 'coffins' in <i>Avatar</i> is
(obviously) like falling asleep. So is watching the film (similarly to <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix"><span style="color: blue;">The
Matrix</span></a></i>) - you have to _live_ the dream... Actively, but without
forcing the experience in a way that destroys it. (Compare also the delicate
balance in lucid dreams between staying lucid and waking up.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn16"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref16" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xvi]</span></a> Here I am thinking of
Thomas Berry’s concept of ‘the great work’; and of Wittgenstein’s remark that
work in philosophy, like work in architecture, is really work on oneself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn17"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref17" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xvii]</span></a> There are no fluffy
bunnies on Pandora, and no Aslans (for Aslan is little more than a human (to be
precise: a Jesus) in lion’s clothing; whereas the animals in Avatar <i>remain</i> animals).
As Quarritch sees it: “If there is a Hell, you might wanna go there for some R
and R after a tour on Pandora. Out there beyond that fence, every living thing
that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you.” This is classic
nature-hatred; what it gets <i>right</i> is that, without a ‘social
model’ of how to live in and cope with a natural world, without a willingness
to listen to it and adapt to it, as the Na’vi have, it cannot but seem hostile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn18"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref18" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xviii]</span></a> There are also
explicit tip-offs in the film, most notably the large helicopter being
called <i>Valkyrie1b</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn19"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref19" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xix]</span></a> This is one reason why
organs like the <i>Daily Mail,</i> which unsurprisingly <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1236769/Avatar-Its-Dances-With-Smurfs.html"><span style="color: blue;">attacks and mocks Avatar</span></a>, cannot understand it, and
seeks to do so only though crude simplification.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn20"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref20" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xx]</span></a> Justification of this
claim that we have an idolatry of science and technology, and that seeing
technology as ‘neutral’ is dangerous, can be found in Heidegger’s <i>The
question concerning technology</i>, and in my own work on the philosophy of
science. This is of course <i>not</i> to rail pointlessly against all
technology: there remains a vast role for science and technology in making our
lives better, in preventing disaster (think of climate science), and indeed in
making films like <i>Avatar</i>… But a healthy, non-scientistic
relationship with science and technology, giving up the fantasy of inevitable
‘progress’, is some way from where we currently are. (For clues towards it, one
valuable text is Joel Kovel’s <i>The enemy of nature.)</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn21"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref21" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxi]</span></a> Another film(s) I would
mention in this connection is the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy –
see my account thereof in my <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Philosophy_for_life.html?id=iFXXAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y"><span style="color: blue;">Philosophy for life</span></a></i> (Continuum, 2007).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn22"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref22" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxii]</span></a> Especially as riffed
on by Chomsky: see e.g. p.355 of an interview, collected in D. Barsamian
(ed.) <u>Chronicles of Dissent,</u> Stirling, Scotland: AK Press (1992).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn23"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref23" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxiii]</span></a> This is not to say
that there is no such evidence (historical, neurological, evolutionary, etc.)
of fundamental human goodness – there is a huge amount of it! Rather, it is to
say that such evidence is always ‘imponderable’, never decisive, often
countered or undercut. Something more is needed, to undergird our collective
action and self-confidence. It is also to say that, even if there <i>were</i> no
such evidence, then such faith would still remain our only hope of salvation,
our only way not to ensure self-destruction through fatalism, inaction,
pessimism, and consequent self-destructive behaviour. Finally, it is to
reiterate that we can make things possible that seem impossible, that we can
create our own future. That the results of the miracles and ‘fairy-tales’
that <i>Avatar</i> depicts can be made real, given enough human willpower,
determination, love, and faith.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn24"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref24" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxiv]</span></a> In this connection, I
look forward to the results of the <a href="http://www.avatar-movie.org/thread/3939729/Avatar+Audience+Research"><span style="color: blue;">Avatar Audience Research project</span></a><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_Hlt368995797"></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn25"></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref25" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxv]</span></a> In “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-meaning-of-avatar-eve_b_400912.html"><span style="color: blue;">The meaning of</span><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span><i><span style="color: blue;">Avatar</span></i><span style="color: blue;">: Everything is God</span></a>”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137" name="_edn26"></a></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6873146134997412137#_ednref26" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[xxvi]</span></a> Compare for instance
his early remark, “I sure hope this tree-hugging stuff isn’t on the final.”</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-60438280827508034822013-10-08T17:51:00.000+01:002014-01-10T15:11:25.073+00:00"If I go with you now my soul will never be happy": Gothic Investigation as Therapy in The Awakening<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 150%;">By Vincent M. Gaine</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This essay discusses the Gothic themes of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687901/?ref_=sr_1">The Awakening</a></i>,
and the therapy undertaken in the film by balancing emotion and intellect.</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">[SPOILERS]</span></b></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqEQhD1CfbA1jWF3OTQe3PuNS7dCFxlNPLNUHRyL9ebdWfXY0G0gx39DaFtum9myyIbQ0KsL__y0W3nRMzoCzrU8N3-aBLQM-UyKD8ZOp172-ICYQD0lHSkgPsjzTzl1ujwiJ6eSzoEYs/s640/the-awakening-poster.jpg" height="480" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Awakening, dir. Nick Murphy (2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large; line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: blue;"><br /></span></i></b><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large; line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687901/">The Awakening</a></span></i> </b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 150%;">(Nick Murphy, 2011) is a Gothic ghost story </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">that
presents a therapeutic union of emotion and intellect. The heroine, Florence
Cathcart (Rebecca
Hall) represents both scientific rationality and the dangers of emotional
repression, and an initial assumption that rationality and intellect are
preferable to emotion and unsubstantiated belief. Across the narrative of the
film and through the development of Florence’s character, an emergence, the
titular ‘Awakening’, of emotion takes place, the film presenting Florence’s
encounter with the paranormal as therapeutic and challenging the initial
presumption. However, the film does not offer a valorisation of emotional
indulgence and a simple leap of faith, but rather a balance between the
intellectual and the emotional. The film therefore presents the attentive
viewer with a warning against excessive rationality but also against emotional
indulgence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Florence’s
therapy is, in part, a generic resolution for the Gothic narrative, which often
displays ‘the discovery and release of new patterns of feeling’ <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ywxNy14rJv8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+new+companion+to+the+gothic&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MeBPUrvuJsbA0QXjyICgDQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=a%20new%20companion%20to%20the%20gothic&f=false">(Ellis,
458)</a>, a release that is often tied to the Gothic heroine: ‘the release of
feelings as the preeminent domain of the Gothic explains the persistence of
women as vehicles for delivering its effects’ (Ellis,
458). This emotional release is the resolution of a central gendered
tension within the Gothic tradition between intellect (male) and emotion
(female): ‘From a feminist point of view, the coherence of gender conventions
keeps women oppressed’ (Ellis,
458). Whether this is the first Mrs Rochester in <i>Jane Eyre</i> or
the governess in <i>The Turn of the Screw</i>,
female emotion is contained (or at least <i>should</i>
be contained according to the societal institutions of the Gothic world) by
male intellect. Within the conventions of the horror film genre, the woman is
often presented as both victim and monstrous, a representation of castration
anxiety and the dangerous Other to masculinity. This dangerous Other needs to
be contained, repressed and denied expression, especially in terms of her
sexuality. <i>The Awakening</i> demonstrates
an understanding of these conventions and plays with them to create its therapy
for Florence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The film quickly
establishes Florence as a sceptic reliant upon scientific method and equipment,
reminiscent of Dana
Scully (Gillian
Anderson) in <i>The X-Files</i>
(1993-2002). After the first scene shows Florence debunking a false séance, she
is hired by a boarding school that has recently suffered a death, which some
attribute to a ghost. At the school, Florence investigates and establishes that
the victim died of an asthma attack, but cannot explain the mysterious sights
and sounds she encounters. Aided by history master and WWI veteran Robert
Mallory (Dominic West),
school matron Maud Hill (Imelda Staunton)
and a pupil who remains during the school vacation, Tom (Isaac Hempstead Wright),
Florence investigates further. Along the way, she nearly drowns in a possible
suicide attempt, develops a romance with Robert and is almost raped by the
school groundskeeper, Edward Judd (Joseph Mawle).
Eventually, she discovers that the ghosts are part of her own history, as she
lived at the house as a child before it became a school, and experienced
terrible trauma that she has repressed. Confronting this trauma both lays the
ghosts to rest and reunites Florence with her full memory. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The incomplete
resolution provided by Florence’s explanation of the boy’s death demonstrates a
recurring disjunction throughout the horror genre, that between the normal and
the supernatural: ‘The narrative quest of the horror film, then, is to find
that discourse capable of solving this disjunction, explaining events’ (Gledhill,
353). This is the quest of the ghost investigator, and indeed many a
detective who attempts to explain the seemingly impossible. In the mould of Sherlock Holmes,
investigators endeavour to debunk supernatural explanations, such as the
existence of a monstrous hound or the presence of ghosts. In this investigative
narrative, resolution comes with the revelation that everything has been the
act of tricksters, as demonstrated in the opening sequence of <i>The Awakening</i> when Florence exposes a
group of con artists. Yet the explanation may be incomplete, the ghost story
rife with ‘ambivalence or tension [that] is between certainty and doubt,
between the familiar and the feared, between rational occurrence and the inexplicable’
(Briggs,
176). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Ambivalence may result in a lack of certainty, but that does not
prevent a resolution for the characters/viewer. This resolution however, does
not come from a single source – Florence’s scientific investigation may expose
the séance as a scam, but there are clear gaps in her expertise and
righteousness. The victim of these con artists slaps her in anger, because the
séance gave her hope that her deceased child was in the afterlife, and Florence
has destroyed that hope. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The bereaved
mother clings to an irrational, inexplicable hope, an emotional lifeline
severed by the (limited) conception of scientific rationality that Florence
operates with. The scientific explanation gives the mother no comfort, whereas
believing in the scam could have. Knowledge, it seems, is not enough.
Rationality and the intellect seek to contain, control and neutralise emotions,
especially fear. We fear the unknown so try to understand more, know more and
therefore neutralise our fear. This is what Florence does throughout the film,
emphatically stating at one point that she will not live with fear. This
approach towards emotion is similar to patriarchy’s attitude to women –
contain, control and neutralise. Florence is unwilling to be contained, and
does so through male-coded acts of professionalism, trouser wearing and
scientific method. But arguably this masculinises her, and what <i>The Awakening</i> demonstrates are the
dangers and ultimate futility in attempting to suppress and deny part of one’s
own identity. The film’s therapy, therefore, repudiates and debunks patriarchal/rational
containment of femininity/emotion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> The bereaved
mother equates Florence’s heartlessness with her childlessness, this lack
signified as aberrant and unnatural. This is perhaps ironic considering
Florence’s reliance upon scientific, i.e. <i>natural</i>
phenomena in her work and the apparatus that she uses to measure these. </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM1euyPVQ6mobHc-BPHrEVmCMqCuY7sxzyANLDSu_S8LFUxPjI9mKOn1ItiF8bF4amxxZGVw8fSwYQuM191hyphenhyphenAAZhW_0Uy71kiA1kfVEHhyjGdogMTsTNfI9jYLkrAlpETvIkLWsdwOc/s640/Equipment.jpg" height="298" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florence, <i>The Awakening</i>, dir. Nick Murphy (2001)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM1euyPVQ6mobHc-BPHrEVmCMqCuY7sxzyANLDSu_S8LFUxPjI9mKOn1ItiF8bF4amxxZGVw8fSwYQuM191hyphenhyphenAAZhW_0Uy71kiA1kfVEHhyjGdogMTsTNfI9jYLkrAlpETvIkLWsdwOc/s1600/Equipment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Furthermore, it relates what she does
with the conceit of the Gothic genre, as ghost stories challenge the rational
order with ‘what is perceived as fearful, alien, excluded, or dangerously
marginal’ (Briggs, 176). These dangers may be the past, the dead, war, and
challenges to the social order of patriarchy. A further demonstration of
Florence’s ‘aberrance’ is the concern of Sergeant Evans (Steven Cree), who
fears suspicions of both personal and professional impropriety. To the first,
Florence attempts to assuage his concerns by reassuring him that his wife is
very lucky, but there remains a sense that her work is aberrant and unusual.
Professionally, Evans is concerned about taking instruction from a woman,
finding it a compromise of his masculinity. To this, Florence is largely
contemptuous, indicating her disregard for traditional gender roles.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><u1:p></u1:p>This disregard continues,
as Florence repudiates the role of a ‘lady’, a role challenged by the aftermath
of the Great War in which over 30% of Britain’s male population was killed.
Florence’s lover died in the trenches, and in the absence of male presence she
has made a new role for herself as a professional, emancipated woman. Evans’
concerns are over the traditional role and place of women, which Florence and
indeed the film has little interest in.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">By contrast, the more modern Robert Mallory
is comfortable with Florence’s professionalism. Robert is a casualty of war in
both body and mind and, like Florence, he lost people in the War, witnessing
these deaths first hand and suffering injuries himself. Furthermore, Robert
displays post-traumatic-stress-disorder and performs self-harm as a form of
penance. His reference to seeing ghosts himself could be literal or figurative,
but in contrast to Florence he is not dismissive. Within conventional terms, he
is more ‘feminine’ than she is, given to emotional indulgence through his
self-harming and uncontrollable panic attacks.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Florence’s lack of femininity is
characterised by her reliance on traditionally male concepts of rationality and
science, and a disbelief in concepts such as ghosts, Father Christmas, the
Tooth Fairy and, more controversially, God. Florence’s early description of
these concepts is derisive, suggesting a scornful attitude to beliefs in what
cannot be scientifically proven. To include God in this list emphasises
Florence’s reliance upon science, simplistically presented as the opposition to
faith and religion. Furthermore, Florence seems uninterested in significant
emotion as a whole, her general demeanour one of slight amusement. It would be
a mischaracterisation to describe her as cold, as she displays warmth and
compassion to the children of the boarding school and there is attraction
between her and Robert. Yet repression runs throughout the film, and has done
so in the protagonist’s history as well.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Repression, especially in relation to
women, is a Gothic trope: ‘The vast, imprisoning spaces that appear so
regularly in the Gothic as castles, monasteries, and actual prisons can be read
as metaphors for women’s lives under patriarchy’ (Ellis, 458). The school in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Awakening</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>serves a similar purpose; Florence’s
return to her former family home perhaps a re-entry into the oppressed position
of women that her self-determined role repudiates. Being the site of her
original trauma and false memories codes the house as the manifestation of the
prison in her mind, which must be returned to, questioned and investigated in
order to be understood. Thus it is through her investigation into the
paranormal events at the school that Florence undergoes therapy as to who she
is and where she came from, acquiring a more complete understanding.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Nor is repression confined to women, as
the boarding school represses its students, through its stone walls, stern
lines of the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>mise-en-scéne</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and its own institutionalised rules.
Such a trope appears in much horror cinema, including an early adaptation of
Robert Louis Stephenson’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (1932). In this film, the
‘dark, foggy, labyrinthine streets of London give an expressionist sense of the
confinement and hypocrisy of this society, with its outdated Victorian mores …
[and] the character of the young man hemmed in by conventionalities’ (Kaye,
244). The students and staff of the school are also trapped by particular,
outmoded versions of masculinity. One of the teachers, Malcolm McNair (Shaun
Dooley), keeps his students in a state of constant fear and canes them for the
slightest misdemeanour. Robert tells Florence that the boys are ‘scared to
death’, and this could be attributed to the school itself rather than any
supernatural occurrence. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">
Indeed, the goal of this discipline, the creation of sturdy young men, is
misguided. McNair found one of the boys, Walter Portman, up at night, and
placed the boy outside to get him to ‘man up’. The terrified Walter succumbed
to an asthma attack, essentially dying of fright because of an attempt to make
him tougher. The standard macho way of dealing with fear, the film suggests, is
a fallacy – a more caring and sympathetic approach can produce more capable
people.</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">
The stylistic tropes of the horror film are used to create this sequence of
terror, but it is significant that what is actually terrifying are completely
human acts. While there have been moments of supernatural horror in the film,
the revelation is that human acts of cruelty and murder are what scared and
scarred Florence. As these memories resurface, scaring her afresh, the viewer
shares her terror and comes to the same understanding, undergoing the same
therapy. The presumptions as to where Florence came from are shown to be
incorrect, as are her assertions about positive mental health as she confronts
her childhood trauma.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Violence and suffering are intrinsic to the
school, most obviously in the figure of Judd but also in the violent history
that Florence has repressed. It is significant that Judd avoided military
service but is himself violent and, interestingly, killed by a gun that
Florence strikes him with to escape his rape attempt. Violent death is, it
seems, not confined to the battlefield. This proves to be the case as
Florence’s memories return – her father murdered her mother with a shotgun
(much like Judd’s), then attempted to kill Florence herself but, accidentally,
shot her half-brother Tom and then himself. Florence’s ‘awakening’ is expressed
through discontinuous editing and unstable cinematography, the past and present
merging as the viewer sees both the adult (Hall) and child Florence (Molly
Lewis).</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This trauma is the monstrous element of <i>The
Awakening</i>. Within Gothic horror, the monstrous ‘can be seen as embodying
modern fears such as alienation, the horrors of war, and sexually transmitted
disease’ (Kaye, 240). World War I casts a long shadow over the events of <i>The
Awakening</i>’s narrative, but its 2011 release and the presence of a character
suffering from war-inflicted PTSD makes it very much a post-9/11, post-Iraq War
film. This is the modern fear that the film taps into, its confrontation with
fears that are both overt (Robert) and suppressed (Florence), offering the
therapy of balancing emotional release with rational understanding. In some
adaptations of <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i>, ‘the story of a man’s – and by way
of audience identification, a country’s – descent into bestial violence had a
clear metaphorical link to the conflagration just past’ (Skal, 140, cit.Kaye,
241). Similar descents appear in <i>The Awakening</i> – Judd is
bestially violent towards Florence while Robert is towards himself. The
violence of Florence’s father is linked to animality, through the portrait of a
lion attacking a horse visible behind him as he kills Tom and then himself.
From this image, Florence constructed a belief that an actual lion killed her
parents and scarred her, whereas she was actually scarred by the same shot that
killed Tom. Man collapses into animal as part of the repression of trauma. As
Florence’s memories awaken, she sees her father shooting himself, the painting
of the lion merely the background.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">The therapy of this revelation is that
Florence need not be terrified little girl nor (masculinised) overly rational
adult – she balances the emotional with the intellectual. Her experience at the
school reawakens her emotional responses, as she weeps unashamedly into Maud’s
arms. It could be argued that the awakening of her buried memories restores her
to proper, feminine emotionality, but this is not the film’s therapy. As well
as being able to cry, Florence has also achieved her goal of overcoming her fear
– now that she knows what happened to her, she no longer fears it. And there is
a danger of emotional over-indulgence still to come.</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3U8gaZGwZWqFiZ-2LU3zKLbFQ7mMBFyD4iXE9vB06UXS-YaNBhfL9Otiu5818RMoF-YsuQBHWSsWW5J3GG8CecQBzD_BaHyv6O_ZF8uxVgdcNfOlH_ITW2EodF0lu4sFWAfdGIKuCwU/s640/Maud.png" height="272" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maud, <i>The Awakening</i>, dir. Nick Murphy,(2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3U8gaZGwZWqFiZ-2LU3zKLbFQ7mMBFyD4iXE9vB06UXS-YaNBhfL9Otiu5818RMoF-YsuQBHWSsWW5J3GG8CecQBzD_BaHyv6O_ZF8uxVgdcNfOlH_ITW2EodF0lu4sFWAfdGIKuCwU/s1600/Maud.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></a></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3"
o:spid="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Maud.png" style='width:415pt;
height:176pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
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o:title="Maud.png"/>
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<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Another part of
the revelation is that Tom’s mother is Maud, who can see the ghost of her son
and stayed with the house when it became a school. She tries to create company
for Tom by poisoning herself and Florence. But while Maud dies, Florence urges
Robert to get her something that will make her sick, purging the poison from
her system, using her scientific knowledge to save her life. Robert is unable
to find anything, but Florence’s emotional plea spurs Tom to provide her with a
suitable agent. Scientific knowledge combined with a plea to a loved one
ultimately save Florence’s life, as her psychological life has also been saved
through an overcoming of fear through recognition and embrace of emotional
trauma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> As a British
horror film, <i>The Awakening</i> inevitably
echoes Hammer Films, which often ‘allow some release of tensions, [but]
ultimately they deny excesses of sensuality by punishing transgressors’ (Kaye,
246). Maud is punished for her excessive connection to her dead son, being
allowed to die while Florence lives, but rather than a return to repression,
Florence’s salvation is also the reason for the attempt on her life – Tom saves
her because Florence tells him: ‘If I go with you now my soul will never be
happy’. Rather than a return to the status quo of repression (of one form or
another), <i>The Awakening</i> depicts
therapy, the <i>balance</i> of emotion and
intellect rather than one overcoming the other. This balance helps to
neutralise ‘woman as threat’ and more as an equal partner, as demonstrated in
the final scene between Florence and Robert. Robert is not a paragon of
machismo, being troubled by both physical and psychic injuries, but as such, he
is the ideal partner for Florence, and the film ends with a clear sense of
equality and mutual recognition between them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> It could be
interpreted that Florence <i>does</i>
actually die from the poisoning, as the final scene only features her speaking
to Robert and apparently not seen by the school’s headmaster, Reverend Hugh
Purslow (John
Shrapnel). The film’s evidence is more supportive of her having survived,
however, because she leaves when Maud wanted to keep her there, and the ghost
of Tom is not seen again. What is striking in the final scene is that Florence
seems much warmer and less haughty than her earlier scenes. From her original
position of rational superiority, she has confronted her own ghosts, literal
and figurative, in a terrifying experience that leaves her deeply shaken. Yet
she is able to balance this trauma with an understanding that is rational <i>and</i> emotional, demonstrated by her final
line that closes the film ‘Not seeing them, it's not the same as forgetting, is
it?’ This line expresses the therapeutic philosophy of <i>The Awakening</i>: the importance of remembering and maintaining a
sense of the past and your experiences. Florence forgot, and then re-encountered
what she had forgotten. Now she need not see, but she does remember, embracing
her past and keeping it as part of her future. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a genre, ‘the Gothic itself
is locked “in the encapsulating social systems that engender repeated trauma’”
(Massé,
19, quoted by Ellis, 459), but <i>The
Awakening</i> unlocks these systems by allowing therapy for its protagonist,
confronting her trauma and integrating it into her consciousness. She does not
remain in the prison, the film denying an either/or opposition, and allows her
to leave, with the suggestion of a continuing romance with Robert. Although
Florence and Robert make plans to meet again, the film’s emphasis is not upon
this union – love is not Florence’s defining feature. Good mental health (shockingly!)
may be enough for this Gothic heroine.</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2"
o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Flo and Rob.jpg" style='width:415pt;
height:151pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file://localhost/Users/Balthasar/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image007.jpg"
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<v:textbox style='mso-rotate-with-shape:t'/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfdxs8qPObA2XtAUwrgqr2g_HBF7rYrtOFwzZt777hyphenhyphenqN__Zm08aTGo6FTYAFfkExQKaUwOHo9rd_ll92gGCE_fVZRL7dZRMXfFwEIMd_llgp3k-54jFZMWfrxFIrbSlr9Z2p4uW9PZtY/s640/Flo+and+Rob.jpg" height="232" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florence and Robert, <i>The Awakening</i>, dir. Nick Murphy (2011)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Awakening</i> uses the tropes of the horror and Gothic traditions,
such as the opposition between emotion and intellect and between masculine and
feminine, to show the fallacy of these oppositions, promoting instead the
philosophy of integration and balance. This is the film’s therapy, a reworking
of Gothic and horror tropes through an engagement with PTSD, tied both to
family trauma and the horrors of war, to provide a useful therapeutic lesson.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<h3>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Works cited:</span></h3>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 150%;">Briggs, Julia, ‘The Ghost Story’, in</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 150%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 150%;">A New Companion to the Gothic</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 150%;">,
edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell, 2012), pp. 176-187.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Ellis, Kate Ferguson, ‘Can You Forgive Her? The Gothic Heroine and
Her Critics’, in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>A New
Companion to the Gothic</i>, edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell,
2012), pp. 457-468.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Gledhill, Christine, ‘The horror film’, in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Cinema Book</i>, edited by Pam
Cook (London: BFI, 2007), pp. 347-366</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Kaye, Heidi, ‘Gothic Film’ in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>A
New Companion to the Gothic</i>, edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell,
2012), pp. 239-251.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";">Skal, David, ed.,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The
Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(London: Plexus, 1993).</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Vincent M. Gainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01581051143082418767noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6873146134997412137.post-67514780315410145272013-10-02T19:26:00.000+01:002014-04-15T12:32:59.999+01:00With The Power To Frame The World Comes Great Responsibility: Gareth Edwards' Monsters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<h2 style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5;"><i>Cynicism, Freedom, and the
(Neo-Liberal) Polis</i></span></span></h2>
<h2 style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">by
Phil Hutchinson</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bf2oq_qNMRU/UnpHsFK8T0I/AAAAAAAAAIg/8FsMFfRmhkY/s1600/Monsters-Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bf2oq_qNMRU/UnpHsFK8T0I/AAAAAAAAAIg/8FsMFfRmhkY/s640/Monsters-Poster.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For
a low-budget sci-fi film by an unknown director, Gareth Edwards’ 2010 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/"><i>Monsters</i></a> received
a considerable amount of pre-release publicity in the UK, publicity that mainly
focussed on the (relatively) small budget and Edwards’ impressive ability to
multitask. Edwards had previously worked as a digital visual effects designer
and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_(2010_film)">Monsters</a></i> was
his first feature as director and screenwriter. Seemingly undaunted by
embarking on his first stint in the director’s chair, Edwards also took on the
task of designing the digital visual effects on a consumer PC located in his
bedroom.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;">By current Hollywood standard, <i>Monsters</i> w</span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;">as produced on a
tiny budget, employing both standard guerrilla film-making techniques, such as
making use of members of the public to play roles in the film while on
location, and innovative techniques available to Edwards because of his CGI
skills and the advances in consumer PC processing power. This meant that while
on location Edwards could shoot scenes in the borrowed premises of his amateur
actors and then render those ‘sets’ very cost-effectively in post-production
back home in his bedroom on his own PC.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;">This would not have been a money-saving
strategy if Edwards had been obliged to employ digital video effects designers
to do this work in a post-production studio. His ability to carry-out this work
at home on his own consumer-class PC transformed a hitherto costly and
therefore luxury procedure into a contemporary addition to the guerrilla
film-maker’s lexicon of techniques. So, for example, in one pivotal scene in
the film, we see the central characters, Andrew and Sam, in a ‘ticket office’,
which was in reality a café. The ‘actor’ who in the film sells the ticket to
Sam and Andrew is the café proprietor, the ‘ticket office’ in which the scene
takes place is the café digitally transformed in post-production (the menu on
the wall is transformed in to a map of the “infected zone”).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">These
stories are interesting and serve to make Edwards’ achievement as a first-time
writer-director even more impressive; they might even ultimately serve to give
him a status and mystique comparable to that enjoyed by Werner Herzog, based on
the parallels between the story of Edwards making <i>Monsters</i> and that
of the young Werner Herzog travelling to Peru with a stolen camera to make </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God" style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><i>Aguirre: The
Wrath of God</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><i> </i>(on which, more later). However, I would like here to
shift the emphasis away from Edwards’ practical and innovative resourcefulness
and his standing as the person who has given us cause to reassess our ideas
about guerrilla film making. My argument in what follows is that <i>Monsters</i> stands
as an example of film as political philosophy. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">I
shall suggest ways in which Edwards’ film can be read as a philosophical
meditation on, and maybe even a therapeutic dialogue exploring, the extent to
which a certain conception of freedom, which is currently predominant, becomes,
via cynicism, a destructive un-freedom; where, in the name of freedom,
individuals and their societies imprison themselves, both psychologically and
practically. Furthermore, I want to suggest that we find expressed in the film
the thought that achieving liberation from such a destructive conception of
freedom-as-non-freedom is only genuinely possible politically, through
institutionalised, organised collective action.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The point I want to make is
that the film (rather brutally it transpires) offers the attentive viewer the
thought that individual realisation of, and attempted flight from, such a
destructive conception of un-freedom and politics is simply not secure without
societal and institutional transformation. The film implicitly contains an
argument against ‘voluntaryism’. Voluntaryism is the thought that it is enough
merely for individuals to change their behaviour to institute sustainable
political change and this thought, I will argue, is little more than a
politico-conceptual artefact of the descent into cynicism that the film helps
one work through. Moreover, it is, arguably, the somewhat brutal rejection of
voluntaryism that serves to frame the whole film.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Before
I commence, a word of caution: In what follows I bring out some of the threads
that make up the film by way of example. I believe the film has many such
threads, and there is more in it than it is possible for me to cover here in
this paper. Repeated viewings pay dividends.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Cynics and Cynicism</span></i></h3>
<div style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">The
Ancient Cynics—I’m thinking particularly of Diogenes of Synope here—can seem
to our eyes a somewhat eccentric bunch. For, concerned to roll-back the extent
to which social norms might serve as constraints on the freedom of individuals
to act in accordance with their true nature, and thus, for the Cynics, in their
own self-interest, they often engaged in some rather extreme—to both our eyes
and those of their contemporaries—public acts. Diogenes of Synope, was wont to
stand in the Athenian market place masturbating. Why he did so is the subject
of some disagreement, but that he did so as a statement seems, so far
as we can tell from such a historical distance, true.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Diogenes of Synope is
something of an Ancient ideologue, who in place of the written word engaged in
public acts, designed to both shock and unsettle his peers with a view to
dislodging them from their complacent acceptance of constraints upon their individual
freedom. When I write ‘unsettle’, I don’t mean simply that he set out to
emotionally unsettle them (though he does seem to have achieved that), I mean,
rather, that he meant to unsettle their latent assumptions about the extent or
degree of their own freedom. He wanted to show them that their shock, their
disgust and their condemnation of his actions were themselves expressive of the
extent to which they were unwitting captives of their culture’s norms (or
rules). We might say their disgust evidenced that aspect of their self that is
the encultured self (what in Aristotelian terms we might call their second
nature).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kdouq2a_pBU/UnpIoxWPNwI/AAAAAAAAAIo/iIXkQMi2AOk/s1600/Diogenes+o+ca%CC%83o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kdouq2a_pBU/UnpIoxWPNwI/AAAAAAAAAIo/iIXkQMi2AOk/s320/Diogenes+o+ca%CC%83o.jpg" height="320" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diogenes of Synope</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Diogenes wanted to bring about their realisation that their disgust
was not correctly identified as originating in his behaviour (his public
masturbation) but rather in the cultural norms that they had internalised, and
which thereby acted as constraints. It is these social norms, these
culturally-given rules, that led Diogenes’ peers to be afflicted by disgust on
being confronted by his behaviour. Such social norms, such culturally-bestowed,
internalised rules, it is proposed, are to be seen as constraints just as are
more obvious and more widely discussed practical constraints, both physical
(walls, railings) and juridical (laws enforced by the state apparatus, such as
the police, penal system, immigration authorities and courts).</span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">For
the Cynics, any human being will need to overcome the fetters bestowed by these
enculturated social norms if they are to achieve genuine liberty. For, even when
one’s polis is structured according to liberal principles,
institutionally-enshrining individual liberty, individuals can still suffer
under the liberty-constraining tyranny of the (extra-political)
culturally-bestowed rules of behaviour, that lead one to both reign-in one’s
own desire to pursue self-interest (Diogenes of Synope had overcome this), and
to react negatively to others pursuing theirs (the citizens of Athens had
failed to overcome this, hence their reaction to Diogenes’ public masturbation).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">The contemporary use of the word
‘cynic’ and ‘cynical’ might be thought to have departed somewhat from what
knowledge of its etymology tells us. It has evolved, it seems. But let us think
for a moment about how the word is now used. A ‘cynic’ in contemporary parlance
is one who stands at distance from the norms of his own culture (and possibly
those of other cultures too), and treats with a degree of scepticism those
norms blindly followed his peers. Furthermore, he sees those social norms which
demand of him that he act in the service of things beyond self-interest as
illegitimate impositions. Because, for the cynic, it is self-interest that
motivates individuals, and therefore culturally-bestowed norms that demand
individuals to act in anything other than self-interest are no more than
illegitimate impositions.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">But
cynicism goes further than this, because the cynic is also committed to the
belief that others act in their own self-interest, irrespective of whether they
claim to do otherwise. The cynic assumes that appearances and claims
notwithstanding, the world is populated by self-interested individuals. The
cynic takes him- or herself to be a seer, seeing through the artifice of
altruism, of demands for and expectations of compassion and so on. Alternatively,
or in addition, the cynic might see themselves as having greater courage;
refusing to comfort themselves with self-serving myths of the virtuous person;
the cynic has the courage to see things as they really are: all is
self-interest.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">I want to emphasise the aspect of
cynicism which is related to ideas of freedom. My thought is that a politics in
which pure negative liberty—freedom conceived purely in terms of individuals
being free from constraints on their ability to do as they choose—is the primary
goal, axiom even, where the political community is structured in the service of
pure negative liberty only, is a context in which cynicism is likely to
flourish. Put another way, a society in which all talk of freedom is framed in
terms of the removal of constraints (pure negative freedom), and not as putting
into place enabling conditions (positive freedom), is a society where it is
possible to see such things as duty to another, which might flow from love, or
care, or compassion, as impositions, as trammels on one’s freedom. A
preoccupation with pure negative liberty militates against loving, caring and
being compassionate. It will militate against trusting that others might, in a
non-self-interested way, hold the wellbeing of their peers, both familiars and
strangers, as important; it has a corrosive effect on trust. Indeed, cynicism
which might flow from an obsession with negative liberty ultimately militates
against acknowledging the humanity of others.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*********************<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<h3>
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Monsters</span></i></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
film opens with on-screen text informing the viewer that six years ago a
returning NASA space probe, having collected samples of extra-terrestrial life,
broke-up on re-entry over Mexico. Since then, the extra-terrestrials have
become established in Northern Mexico: the Infected Zone. We later
learn more about these creatures: they appear like giant (five storeys high and
more) members of the cephalopod family, though unlike <a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Cephalopoda">cephalopods</a> we are
familiar with on Earth, these are not restricted to marine existence. These
extra-terrestrial cephalopods seem as much at home on land as in water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Following
the explanatory text providing the viewer with the backstory, the film
commences with a military-shot night-sight scene, involving some army vehicles
carrying US soldiers. As the scene begins we hear one of the soldiers whistling Ride
of the Valkyries, and remarking that it is his “theme tune”. This is one of a
few references to 'Apocalypse Now' in the film (the film contains
numerous references to classic river journey films: </span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now">Apocalypse Now</a> </i><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">&</span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068182/">Aguirre: The Wrath of God</a></i><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">being the most
obvious). As the night-sight scene unfolds chaos ensues: there is much
shouting, screaming, and gunfire; we briefly glimpse a large cephalopod-like
creature; the camera shakes and frightened soldiers and civilians are running in and out
of shot, as the camera person also seems to be running. We then cut abruptly to
an aerial shot, which we come to realize is a point-of-view shot from a fighter
jet, which targets and then launches missiles at the creature. The viewer is
left unclear as to what ultimately has taken place in all the chaos.</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vm5ZV20eUN8/UnpMv3KWZuI/AAAAAAAAAI8/EMGWsLNhhHM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+14.04.15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vm5ZV20eUN8/UnpMv3KWZuI/AAAAAAAAAI8/EMGWsLNhhHM/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+14.04.15.png" height="398" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Opening scene of <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">The film cuts immediately to a daylight scene of relative calm,
in which we are properly introduced to one of the two main protagonists: Andrew
Calder. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">As
the film introduces us to him, Andrew is making his way through a Mexican city
as a passenger on a motorcycle taxi; shortly thereafter he is climbing across a
bombsite, stills camera in-hand, asking those clearing the site for directions
to the hospital. We are provided glimpses of parts of a dead creature, which
serves to convey to the viewer the mundanity, the everydayness, of the sight
(and site) of both a bombsite and a dead extra-terrestrial for those present:
the partially visible carcass seems of no interest to any of those who populate
this scene. We later learn that Andrew has been tasked with escorting back to
the USA the daughter, Sam, of the owner of the magazine for which he works as
photographer. He undertakes the task under protest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Sam
is engaged to be married and has come to Mexico for reasons not specified,
though one is led to believe that she is there to ‘clear her head’. While she
explicitly professes to be ready for marriage, there are numerous clues that
testify to her having reservations. She is at the hospital as an out-patient,
having sprained her wrist, and it is for this reason that Andrew has been
tasked with escorting her back to the USA. The question as to why one man (her
father) feels the need to task another man (his employee) to escort her home
is, I suggest, relevant.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8p2WzhQTP4/UnpPDalT19I/AAAAAAAAAJI/505NpePp_-k/s1600/Monsters-andrew-sam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8p2WzhQTP4/UnpPDalT19I/AAAAAAAAAJI/505NpePp_-k/s640/Monsters-andrew-sam.jpg" height="274" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Sam and Andrew', <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">What we learn is that to travel from
where they are in Mexico back to the USA entails crossing or bypassing the
fenced-off Infected Zone, a zone which has been relinquished to the
extra-terrestrial cephalopods. We further learn that the creatures are
migratory, and every year, for certain months of the year, the creatures
migrate down the rivers and out to sea. The Mexicans seem to have grown
accustomed and to accept living alongside the creatures. Throughout the course
of the film we see graffiti depicting the creatures. It pays the viewer to pay
close attention to this graffiti. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lLHbSu07olA/UnpQ8pNGh0I/AAAAAAAAAJg/Mi_dA-TYl48/s1600/Monsters+-+graffiti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lLHbSu07olA/UnpQ8pNGh0I/AAAAAAAAAJg/Mi_dA-TYl48/s640/Monsters+-+graffiti.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graffiti in <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Andrew
and Sam travel to a ‘border’ town, located on the edge of the Infected
Zone, with a view to securing passage to the US. They reach the town the day
before the official start of the migratory season and at huge cost purchase a
ticket for Sam to take the last boat to the US, which leaves the following
morning. However, following a night together drinking Tequila, Sam retires to
her room alone, while Andrew, having failed in his attempt to persuade Sam to
sleep with him, continues to drink, gets drunk and takes a stranger back to his
hotel room. The next morning the stranger steals their passports and Sam’s
ticket. Sam misses the last boat.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Andrew
and Sam return to the travel agent and, using Sam’s engagement ring, pay to be
illegally ‘trafficked’ by river and land through the Infected Zone. In the
course of their journey we see overgrown, abandoned and in many cases burnt-
and bombed-out buildings (such as hotels). Where humans have fled the Infected
Zone, nature is reclaiming the environment. As noted above, there are strong
visual allusions and even direct references to classic river journey films. In
such films the journeys serve a number of intersecting purposes: they serve to
show us that in so much that rivers can be dangerous and unpredictable, people
are fragile and not in control of, but often subject to, their natural
environment.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8STJiA2edjE/UnpSP161M1I/AAAAAAAAAJ0/3ZnWhxHGPFU/s1600/monsters+-+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8STJiA2edjE/UnpSP161M1I/AAAAAAAAAJ0/3ZnWhxHGPFU/s640/monsters+-+map.jpg" height="424" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 'infected zone', <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Moreover, nature is at one and the same time beautiful and
brutally morally indifferent; if one expects it to be otherwise one has
confused or collapsed the aesthetic and the ethical. In a more figurative
sense, the river journey serves as a metaphor for a psychic, emotional or
existential journey: e.g. the encroachment of nature on the human world represents
the encroachment of the emotional on the rational, as emotions become excessive
emotions and take hold, ultimately consuming the rational capacities of those
who have descended into psychological pathology. The obvious allusions Edwards
furnishes us with are to Herzog’s magisterial and profound Aguirre: Wrath of
God and to Coppola’s now almost mythical </span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/" style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Apocalypse </a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/" style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Now</a></i><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">, and the documentary of its
filming: </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmaker's_Apocalypse" style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><i>Hearts
of Darkness</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">. (I’d be happy to be corrected, but I believe maybe
much less so to </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_African_Queen_(film)" style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><i>The African
Queen</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">…)
I want to suggest that it is important to appreciate the way in which Edwards
works in parallel with these two classic river journey films and the way in
which he subverts crucial elements of them (and that of their source of
inspiration in Joseph Conrad’s original novel, <i>Heart of Darkness</i>).</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yjL3TuALy78/UnpRzc3GEdI/AAAAAAAAAJs/PKvtfzKQDIE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+14.26.09.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yjL3TuALy78/UnpRzc3GEdI/AAAAAAAAAJs/PKvtfzKQDIE/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-06+at+14.26.09.png" height="308" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nature in <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">It
transpires then that the wall has failed, and as Sam and Andrew enter the US
and head North they pass through a recently-bombed and deserted US town, before
arriving at an abandoned gas station after nightfall. From here Andrew
telephones for rescue and they each then telephone loved ones—Andrew calls his
estranged 6 year old son, who, we learn earlier in the film, does not know that
Andrew is his father; Sam calls her fiancé. As they end their calls, their
transformation is almost complete: Andrew allows himself to be emotional and
slides to the ground, finally acknowledging the emotional significance of his
estrangement from a son who is not allowed to know that Andrew is his father.
Sam finally acknowledges to herself that she doesn’t want to marry.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">As
Andrew and Sam await the rescue, two creatures converge on the gas station and
seem to engage in some sort of greeting, maybe even copulation. Sam and Andrew
watch, awestruck, and then they kiss. The moment is shattered by the arrival of
their military ‘rescue’ team.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tpDUzXcoJQI/UnpPnS3GNyI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/TOxd3Y1dycY/s1600/gas+station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tpDUzXcoJQI/UnpPnS3GNyI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/TOxd3Y1dycY/s640/gas+station.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gas-station scene in <i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Ultimately, Sam and Andrew ‘complete’ their journey, in that they make it back
to the USA. But their journey has changed them both. By the time they arrive at
the US border, to be confronted by a huge newly-constructed border wall,
constructed in an attempt to keep out or stop the further encroachment of the
creatures, they are no longer sure they want to go home. To their eyes, home no
longer looks so appealing or welcoming.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">It is here then that one sees Edwards’
subversion of the standard river journey film conclusion/terminus: in Edwards’
hands the heart of darkness is not the heart of nature, where 'nature' is to be
understood as the contrast class of 'urban', nor is the heart of darkness the
heart of the jungle, where civilization is absent, as in both </span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Apocalypse
Now </i><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">and</span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"> Aguirre: The Wrath of God</i><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">. Rather, in Edwards’ hands, our
protagonists’ return to the ‘civilization’ they have been journeying toward
transpires to be an arrival at a new perspective on that ‘civilization’. From
the perspective afforded them by their experiences, by their existential growth
in the course of their journey, they now see the extent to which what they had
taken to be civilization has in fact negated itself in and through its
obsession with waging war on nature. Arriving home is to enter the heart of
darkness.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<h3>
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Andrew’s Journey</span></i></h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One
narrative thread that is central to the philosophy of <i>Monsters</i> is the
story of Andrew’s existential blossoming. Andrew, as the film unfolds,
transforms from one who cynically views others as objects and baggage, (albeit
possibly a strategy developed as a psychological defence mechanism, developed
so to allow him to carry-out his job as a ‘war’ photographer and so as to allow
him to distance himself emotionally from the enforced estrangement from his
son) to a person who allows himself to become emotionally engaged and
acknowledge the humanity of others and the claim they exercise on him in virtue
of the humanity they share with him.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">This blossoming, this existential journey
is evidenced through the stages flagged in the film: at the outset, Sam only
registers on Andrew’s radar as an imposition; he only agrees to escort her to
the border under protest and because he is instructed to do so by his employer,
who is also Sam’s father. At this stage it is clear that, for Andrew, Sam registers
as little more than extra baggage that he has not only been forced to carry but
also go out of his way to deliver. She serves as no more than a restriction on
his freedom. Andrew’s persona is one of the jovial cynic, the “slacker”, as
that term came to be used to refer to the “Generation Xers”. In the course of
the film, he makes a number of remarks in an attempt to justify this outlook,
remarks which appeal to the way the world really is. For example, in response
to Sam’s remark that as a 'war' photographer he is profiting from death, he
responds: “You mean like a Doctor?”</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">As
their journey progresses, Sam starts to figure as more than simply baggage and
becomes for him an object of sexual desire. This first becomes apparent at the
border town as they spend the evening together drinking and eating. Where
hitherto he had shown scant interest in Sam, he now employs his own brand of
‘slacker’ charm. Nevertheless, at this stage, though Sam has transformed for
Andrew from nothing more than an inconvenient imposition she still remains
simply an object, only now one of desire. At this point, there is for the
viewer, if not for Andrew, a deeper connection developing: their rapport.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
following morning marks the next stage in Andrew’s transformation. On seeing Sam’s
reaction to his sleeping with someone else, he finds himself wanting to
mitigate that reaction. This triggers his growing awareness of his emergent
non-instrumental attachment to her. Their brief conversation at the quayside is
multi-layered: Andrew: “what are YOU doing Sam?” “WHAT are YOU doing?” He
still can’t talk about his own feelings. His cynicism is so deeply-rooted that
when it, his cynicism, begins to whither he externalises his own
transformation.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">His transformation thus first appears through his probing
questions about her emotions, though crucially asked in a manner that
would enable him to disavow that aspect of their meaning and intent. He asks
Sam what she is doing in a manner that suggests to those viewing that he is
asking about the life choice she is making in leaving him there to return to
get married, while at the same time he does so in a manner that he can deny or
disavow, by saying he was simply asking her why she ran from his room or why
she is stood talking to him on the quayside rather than boarding the boat.
Asking the question in this way, leaving its point and therefore meaning
hovering, allows Andrew to deny to himself that he has grown emotionally
attached to Sam. It allows him plausible deniability. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">Andrew's question is, however,
one that can only be asked by someone interested in the thoughts of his
interlocutor. Sam has thus transformed in Andrew’s eyes from imposition on his
freedom to pursue his goals, through mere object of desire, to a person about
whose emotions he is concerned. But right now, he is in a state of denial about
this. This marks the point at which we might say of Andrew that he hands back
his membership of the Cynic movement, albeit of the contemporary slacker, Gen
X, variety. Andrew begins to care for Sam, and as a consequence grow, himself,
as a human being. This budding non-instrumental attachment slowly blossoms as
he (while retaining his distinctive persona) comes to care more and more,
through exhibiting the ordinary virtues of care, compassion and love. As the
story unfolds, so does Andrew’s new-found humanity, opening out to include
others too.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">Further
viewings of the film with this narrative thread in mind pay dividends. One sees
much further evidence for Andrew’s existential transformation away from his
cynicism. In one of the most significant scenes in this regard, we see Andrew
confronted by the body of a recently killed child. What is obvious to the
viewer is that he doesn’t photograph the child’s body, what is more important
is that he seeks to give her dignity in death by covering her corpse with his
coat and placing a flower on it. The decision to take time to provide dignity
for the dead is a mark of a non-instrumental humane attitude, an attitude that
sees dignity as both of importance and irreducible to the interests of the
living, those who survive the dead. Where we would have expected the Andrew to
whom we were introduced at the opening of the film to have photographed the
child, now Andrew not only chooses not to do so, but he unpacks his camera bag
to find something beyond the photographic equipment, a coat, with which to
cover the body and provide the child dignity in death. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">This scene, Andrew’s
actions here, partially echoes themes found in the writing of J.M. Coetzee; I’m
thinking in particular of <i>Disgrace</i>, and the protagonist’s partial
redemption through his volunteer work preparing unwanted euthanized dogs for
cremation. The point is that there is in such actions a recognition that virtue
transcends, reaches beyond, the interests of individuals. In such actions we
gesture toward our commitment to the tacit belief that norms of behavior that
emerge from virtuous action transcend and are irreducible to the interests of
individuals and/or to contractual requirements, whether tacit or explicit. To
paraphrase the Bengali hummanist poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, the
good life is not achieved through attachment and possessions but in giving-up
oneself to ideas that transcend one's interests and one's own individual life. (One
might contrast this here to the world as suggested by the Social Contract
tradition, whereby ethico-political concerns are justified in terms of
individuals having entered into a social contract).</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">The
final example of Andrew’s transformation that I will discuss is that of the way
in which he relates to his relationship with his son. As the viewer
learns about this in the film, Andrew’s discussion of it is detached and
sometimes flippant. In one scene, while he and Sam are on a river boat, he
tells her the story of how a year after a brief sexual encounter he received a
telephone call in which he was informed that he had a son, that he could know
his son, but that his son could not know that Andrew was his father. Andrew
tells the story in his now-familiar detached slacker style, and as he sees that
the story has darkened the mood (Sam looks moved to sadness by the story) he
immediately tries to lighten the mood by asking a deliberately trivial,
flippant question, which has obvious connotations: “so.., you got any pets?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">In
the gas station scenes at the end of the film we see that the way he relates to
his relationship with his son has changed. Rather than engaging in various
distancing strategies, Andrew now allows himself to react emotionally to the
telephone conversation with his son. He feels, in an emotionally engaged way,
his loss of fatherhood. He slides to the ground crying. This is the final
increment in the film’s depiction of Andrew’s existential blossoming. Now he
can stop viewing the creatures as objects for filmic
consumption—instrumentally. He can stop seeing the world through the distorting
lens of cynicism, whereby all demands, including emotional ones arising from
his own emotions, are seen as potential fetters on one’s freedom. Just as his
tying of his persona to the lens of his camera made him see that and
those—people, dead bodies, destruction and the creatures—on whom he gazed as
instruments in the service of his own self-interest, the lens provided by his
cynicism afforded him the justification for his instrumentalism.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IBd9FMPfy4w/UnpQRV_r2oI/AAAAAAAAAJY/hTxKooLJ_fo/s1600/monsters-camera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IBd9FMPfy4w/UnpQRV_r2oI/AAAAAAAAAJY/hTxKooLJ_fo/s640/monsters-camera.jpg" height="270" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Monsters</i>, dir. Gareth Edwards (2010)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<h3>
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The World Viewed, The World
Framed</span></i></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 1.5;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Andrew
then symbolises us, and his camera lens symbolises the lens through which we
view the world. Like the way in which Andrew’s question to Sam on the quayside,
discussed above, hovered between a literal and figurative interpretation,
Edwards’ film is interested in the distancing effect of lenses in both a
literal and figurative sense. In the literal sense, <i>Monsters</i> is about
the lens(es) directed by film makers like Edwards (and Coppola and Herzog,
though there is, I believe, reason to think Edwards had in mind Spielberg as
director of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film)"><i>War of the
Worlds</i></a> too), through which film viewers come to view so much of their
world, and maybe by extension the all-pervasive lens of the corporate media.
The world thus viewed is a world both framed for one and viewed at distance. We
all-too-often meet our world ready-framed and at distance. <i>Monsters</i> is
then a cautionary tale for film viewers and a morality tale for directors. For
film viewers, the suggestion is that we be cognisant of the distorting
influence of the framing of the world we view on film. For directors, <i>Monsters</i> is
about the responsibility that comes with directing the lens: with the power to
frame the world comes great responsibility.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">The
preoccupation with the lens that I am suggesting is evident in </span><i style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Monsters</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"> also
operates figuratively such that the film is also concerned to explore the way
in which our world is framed by our values: a commitment to cynicism frames the
world in a particular way. Seen through the lens of cynicism, others, one’s own
emotional attachments, and the virtues of care, compassion, honesty, integrity
and love, will inevitably be seen as impositions, as alien constraints
on one’s freedom to do as one desires.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Ironically, this is one of the insights
of the Ancient Cynics, the extent to which one’s second nature, one’s
encultured self, was so natural as to be not even noticed by most (non-cynics).
Here we are turning this claim of the Ancient Cynics on its head: cynicism is
not freedom from enculturation but just one among a number of ethics. For the
Ancient Cynics it was a self-consciously arrived at ethic, a philosophy for
life, like Stoicism that came later. For contemporary variants, I am
suggesting, it is often a spontaneously arrived at philosophy, or ethic,
arrived at owing to a distorted or partial conception of freedom. We might
therefore suggest that in contrast, seen through the lens of what we might call
the ethic of compassion (the ethical life that involves tutelage in and
establishment of an environment in which the ordinary virtues can flourish),
the world, one’s emotional being, and others will look very different.</span></span><br />
<i style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i>
<br />
<h3>
<i style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What Are You Doing?</span></i></h3>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There
is then a question for the viewer, who took themselves to see a sci-fi/monster
film. What are YOU doing? For, crucially, the film (Andrew) talks of the
lack of demand for, the market non-viability of, good news pics and the thirst
for bad news pics. Is this a comment on blockbuster culture, cinema audiences,
and their desire for drama, for shock and awe? The film is called '<i>Monsters'</i>,
but it is testing you: who/what are the monsters? Do you offer the same answer
to this question at the end of the film, as you would have done at the start,
and one third of the way through? Do you want a meditation on how we should try
to live alongside those we have left stranded in our home? Or did you want a CGI
prize fight? Did you come expecting <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/"><i>War of the Worlds</i></a>? Edwards’
lens frames things differently.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">Unlike
the framing of the mechanical, though in other respects not un-cephalopod-like,
alien invaders in Spielberg’s remake of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/">War of the Worlds</a></i>, the
extra-terrestrial cephalopods in Monstersare here because of our actions.
Spielberg (and Wells) makes things very straightforward: the extra-terrestrials
are hidden inside their machines of destruction, their Weapons of Mass
Destruction, and they are overtly aggressive and murderous. But even having
noted this, is there, as Wells and Spielberg implicitly suggest through their
framing of the story, simply no prospect of diplomacy: the
extra-terrestrials appear and fire on us, we engage them militarily. The
fight is to the death.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Edwards
frames things a little differently in his film: we’re (we have become, in the
militarised, neo-liberal west) monsters, such that it never occurs to us that
having kidnapped and stranded these creatures here, far away from the home from
which we snatched them, we should try to live alongside them, try to
accommodate them, welcome them, show them compassion. Instead, we would rather
wage war so that we can go on living our lives just the same as we did before.
We treat them like intruders; we see the ways in which they go about their
lives not as interesting, not as something we ought to try to understand and
respect, not as something we should maybe even support, but as something threatening
and disruptive of our existing and settled way of life, and as thus something
to be controlled with violence. Yes, they are very different to us, but should
we relate to them as Spielberg has humanity relating to the mechanised
cephalopod-like extra-terrestrials in his <i>War of the Worlds</i>?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 36pt;">After
their night out at the ‘border’ town drinking tequila, as Sam stands at the
doorway to her hotel room, a drunk Andrew says to her, “did you know that
Dolphins can hold their breath for 12 minutes? They’re mammals.” Sam responds,
“does that mean they have belly buttons”. That small section of dialogue
resonates throughout the remainder of the film: the creatures are different,
they are not humanoid, they are not even mammalian in appearance. Rather like
the extra-terrestrials in the film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9"><i>District 9</i></a>, the extent
to which the extra-terrestrials in <i>Monsters</i> are depicted as alien to
us is in their likeness to species with which we are familiar but which are, in
evolutionary terms, distant from us.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 36pt;">In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/"><i>District 9</i></a> the
extra-terrestrials are insect- or crustacean-like, derogatively referred to by
the human characters as the “the prawns”. In both films, therefore, the
alienating force of their appearance is achieved through their similarity to
species on different branches of the evolutionary tree. Our alienation from
them is not a fact of nature, but a result of our tendency to (mis-)read moral
and political significance into biological classifications. Having taken the
journey into the heart of darkness that <i>Monsters</i> invites us to take,
we come to realise that the responsibility for finding the creatures alien lies
with us. It fails to occur to us that they might be worthy of trying to
communicate with (the creatures in the film are capable of and attempt
communication), worthy of living alongside (the creatures live peacefully alongside
humans until they come under attack), worthy of being seen as more than baggage
to be shed (they are beings). This failure is our responsibility. The creatures
are different, yes, and maybe they don’t have bellybuttons, but that biological
difference does not amount to an observation that leads automatically to, that
entails, an assumption about their moral status: that assumption is
lens-dependent. That assumption results from a particular frame being in place. </span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: 36pt;">A
politics freed of the ordinary virtues, where cynicism leads us to see the
virtues as impediments to freedom, becomes a politics of fear, control and
aggression. All becomes alien.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">[SPOILER]</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>
The Beginning is the End </i></span></h3>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The film begins
with a military-shot night-sight scene, involving some army vehicles carrying
US soldiers. As the scene begins we hear one of the soldiers whistling 'Ride of
the Valkyries', and remarking that it is his “theme tune”. As the night-sight
scene unfolds chaos ensues: there is much shouting, screaming, and gunfire; we
briefly glimpse a large cephalopod-like creature; the camera shakes and frightened soldiers and civilians are running
in and out of shot, as the camera person also seems to be running. We then cut
abruptly to an aerial shot, which we come to realize is a point-of-view shot
from a fighter jet, that targets and then launches missiles at the creature.
The people, we now know having seen the film once already, include Andrew and
Sam. The soldiers are their ‘rescuers’. As the strike comes in on the creature
the military vehicle is hit, Sam appears to have been killed and Andrew is
carrying her body screaming for help. Their transformation counted for little.
This is the heart of darkness, and it is indifferent to the changes undergone
by two individuals. Just as nature is brutally morally indifferent in those
classic heart of darkness river journey films Monsters inherits, here it is our
culture that has become brutally morally indifferent and voluntarily freeing
ourselves as individuals of the (second) nature this culture has bestowed on us
through enculturation is not enough. We must work to transform the culture to
one that pursues harmony rather than war and dominion, to one that promotes the
incorporation of the ordinary virtues in to one’s character rather than
encourages one to see virtue as constraint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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