Mask vs. Bad Guys = Funny Bad vs. Serious Bad ?

Jacques Ranciere describes ethical turn as not a ″re-turn″ to the norm of morality but as a turn / change in which the morals are absolutized definitely by the suppression of the division morals used to imply. To examplify, saying lie is not moral, but if a woman who gained weight due to her pregnancy asks her husband if she looks fat, her husband’s answer ″no honey, of course you don’t″, which is a courtesy lie, can be considered ethical due to having another morality intrinsically, not to hurt his wife’s feelings. So in general, in this fact the formed consensus is that the act of man is not against morality. However, ethical interpretations should be made according to the facts, making a generalization, asserting such an idea that as long as it is for the sake of not hurting his wife’s feelings, man’s telling lie is ethical, may end up with a total liar and people around him not accusing him of being a liar because he is not hurting his wife’s feelings! So, defining what is ethical according to few experiences causes such a consensus that deciding what is good and what is bad becomes blurred.

We may find examples of what Ranciere desribes in the fantasy-crime-comedy The Mask (1994). In the film, the protagonist Stanley Ipkiss is an inoffensive bank clerk who remains unresponsive to the people who often bullies him such as his boss, his landlady, his car mechanics etc. One day he finds a mask which has the power to unleash one’s inner-self, repressed desires and give superhuman abilities in strength, invulnerability, speed etc. As Stanley uses this mask he reciprocates the ones whom once bullied him and serves them out: He deranges his landlady, attacks car mechanist’s store and answers people’s bully acts in harsh ways: street gangs annoy him, he mocks and opens fire to them; a man sounds the horn impolitely, he breaks the windows of his car by using loud noise etc. in order to enter the nightclub Coco Bongo where he has not let in before, he interrupts the robery of the bank, where he works, by ″bad guys″, but robs it himself. He runs away from police arrest by amusing them, through singing and dancing with the song Cuban Pete etc.

His actions throughout the time wearing mask are not morally correct but reciprocating to ″bad guys″, legitimizes morally incorrect behaviours of The Mask and makes them less evil.

Observing examples of the ethical turn in a fantasy-crime movie is funny, but in real world approaching facts losing the sense of just, injust, legitimizing every unmoral act by consensus with the supporting ideas of the ″only violence helps where violence reigns″, ″evil repays evil″, the only way to overcome the ones who acts unmoral is acting with unmorality in return and settling this idea appropriate in ethics causes the ethical turn that Ranciere describes where the perception of good and bad dissappears but only evil and less evil remains. In order to prevent such perception Ranciere offers: ″Breaking with today’s ethical configuration, ...entails rejecting the fantasy of their purity, giving back to these inventions their status as cuts that are always ambiguous, precarious, litigious.″ (p.132)

Lastly, it can be offered what if Mask did not throw the mask at last, would not he become one of these ″bad guys″ (although –being less bad than them) whom he was against?

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Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_%28film%29

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110475/

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41XRU9S4SSL.jpg

Indivisibility

Bergson as a pre-existential philosopher, most of his theories about being and life. First of all according to him life is something fluid. There is no possibility to divide it into pieces or chapters. Like a river it just goes and with each decision it constructs its own riverband and branches. However in Waltz with Bashir as Ari remembers the past its like divided moments. We see that he remembers each part with the help of different people. It was not like he remember a moment and then could link the moments with each other. Rather like chapters, every trace took him to different piece of his past. What I mean can be understood clearly in the film Click. In this film, Newman can divide his life into chapters can travel from moment to moment. He could skip to future and turn back to past again. However he lost the sense of the whole of his life by dividing his life into chapters. In this point what Bergson says about the fludity of life can be proved. The life is a whole and there is no division between states of life.

What Bergson says about memory and forgetting is quite logical according to me. He claims that we always store what we experience in our memories. What we think that we forget is actually not erasen from our memories. It’s just the function of brain filter. We filter our memories and remember them and of course this may varies from situation to situation. So in Waltz with Bashir Ari has the whole memory of what was happened. By the help of right people and right objects he accomplished to remember the memory belongs shared with other people. However after the film audience can remember the each scene. For example in Before Sunrise throughout the film we see the characters in some certain places and times. At the end of the film we see the scenes again but this time without characters. However we as audiences immediately remember that they slept together in the park, listened music in a street and so on. However the experiences do not belong to ourselves our memory can remember each of that experiences. This is because we exposure to the images during the film and what we remember is actually not the action itself but the self that percieving that scene.

Another point is about time. According to Bergson past is something that carries itself into present and the present turns into past and becomes a future. The present contains past and future in itself. We also cannot divide time into parts. As Deleuze mentions about Augustine, time is a problematic issue. Both Aristotle and Agustine deals with that problem and they conclude that there is neither present nor past nor future. We name them for the pragmatic reasons. As Ari remembers his past, all his memories become present. In this manner what he does is to make an illusionary division between moments and fill the spaces in his memory.

Representation of Trauma: The Fall

“Postmodernism as mourning work” by Thomas Elsaesser introduced me with illuminating concepts in the trauma theory. His approach to representation of memory and his way to connect it with psychoanalysis plays with the limits of a correlation between history and memory. His ideas impressively illustrated in or rather can be adapted to Tarsem’s spectacular film The Fall. For four years, Tarsem has been in 28 different countries to make this unique story blossom with/within another fictional history. The Fall is made of an interaction between Roy (a silent movie stunt man) and Alexandria (little girl), who met in the hospital that they have to stay in for a while. Roy, with a broken back and heart, tells a story to Alexandria, which is nourished by his personal wounds, traumas and history in general. But, this narration part is just one aspect of the story that proceeds throughout the film by getting mixed with actual time of the film. Apart from the verbal story, which is shaped by Roy, there is a visual story, which is filtered through Alexandria’s childish imagination. So, the limits of representing Roy’s memory are Alexandria’s memory.

Narration within The Fall addresses the concepts within the trauma theory as; integration (to tell one's story where the narrator is fully present to him in the act of telling) and assimilation (shift of perception and meaning). (p.196) In Roy’s story, his personal memories, experience of events, knowledge on historical tasks (the story involves Alexander the Great and Charles Darwin) and Alexandria’s family history, autobiography and perception of her environment, so in this respect the film fits into the work of Elsaesser. Further, Roy’s memories intersect with both linear and non-linear chronological time; in other words, at the present moment the story is linear with respect to the present time whereas, it is non-linear in terms of the past. Roy’s traumatic experience is interrelated with Freud’s term Nachträglichkeit; it is non-linear, deferred and belated also it proceeds depending on another place and another time (in Roy’s fantastic epic), or it is happening “neither inside nor outside, neither one place nor one time” (p.198). Trauma Theory points out the disparity between memory time and historical time and this incompatibility is highlighted in Roy’s story within the story of The Fall. Elsaesser claimed that the sense of memory time and historical time, as concepts, which he suspended, is related with the perceived sense of self, self-awareness and subjectivity of media experience. This idea can be adapted to the film by changing the term ‘media’ into the Roy’s and Alexandria’s ways of communicating with events around them and more importantly, how they really perceive and process their observations.

In addition to observation of those events, the visual and somatic impact of an event or the image on a person would also change the post-traumatic experience. In Roy’s condition, his love trauma, has a strong somatic aspect because he is bed-ridden and this worsen his sense of identity and the way he questioned his choices about his job, his relationship changes with respect to his actual physical condition. For what he lived he blames himself as in real time and reflects this sense of victimhood to the story he tells. He punishes himself by in the story and at the end, through this story, Roy relieves from this feeling of victimhood. Trauma Theory evaluated this concept under the name of politics of blame and The Fall is an example for the power of fantasy (l’imagination au pouvoir) and it’s impact on psychological relief. In The Fall ‘facts-fantasies-and-fictions’ are intertwined, that’s why we can say whole story refers to Elsaesser’s concept of trauma theory, which emphasizes memory and history. Moreover, Trauma Theory questions the separation of body and voice within the notion of trauma and The Fall gives this sense of separation in the transitions between the actual time and the story within the story. While Roy tries to finish story telling, her voice from the actual time composed with the fictional appearance in his fictional story, which may problematize the confluence of his character in the story and in the hospital. This case indicates that “he fantasized history in the form of his trauma” (p.198) His history recreated in a form of an “impossible history” which is full of irrationalities about narration, linearity of time or causal relationship and this history story can be called as a trauma.(p.200) Through the story within Roy’s history, he represents the non-representable trauma by filling the gaps in his memory and at the end he sooths his “anxiety about memory” (p.195). Roy and Alexandria build up an enchanted, imaginary world and with its beautiful sights The Fall makes turn this story into such a unique watching experience.

Sheets of past

Deleuze’s time description is the most solid one for me I guess. Although there are hundreds of theories about time, it is the only one that can be represented with a schema. Of course, I don’t count the linear-time. Time according to Deleuze actually Bergsons, is like a inverse cone. The outmost cycle of the cone is the “present”. Present that passes and pasts that preserved in it. Time preserves all the past in it. Deja vu can be an example. If we skip the scientific explanations about deja-vu, I can say that these are the moments that we sensed that all past stocked in time, it is preserved in time. At the exact moment of deja vu we say “I have experienced this moment before”. At that moment, we feel like present moment is actually the past. Present passes, it is temporary.

All past is already-there, it exists in time and when we recall it, it becomes present. All the past that preserved in time can be called as “pure collection”. When we try to remember something in the past, when we try to recall an event in the past, that particular time period that we remember or the specific image that we recall is already in past, and it is called “re-collection image”.

Past can be called as memory. When we recall something from the past, a re-

collection image, we actually select a memory from the collection of memories, from the memory pool, time. “ Memory is not in us; it is we who move in Being-memory, a world memory”. All memories are the “already-there” and we select among them when we want to remember something. We can jump among the memories in the past and select the one we wanted. I am not sure that it is a conscious choice, probably it is not. Our unconscious mind also has a role in the choice. There are different type of people who have a different type of memory. Some people can recall events visually, some of them can recall emotionally. Some would recall a red napkin on a dinner table and some one will remember a loud laugh from a woman who sat at the table.

However at the end we all recall from the “sheets of past”.

I guess, Waltz with Bashir, is the best example of this type of time description. It is the best example of the process of remembering, process of selecting a re-collection image from a pure collection. In the film, we see the process of remembering. Memories are becoming present. Although they are events from past, when we watch them on screen, it becomes preset for us. It also becomes present for the character. Past becomes present. “Present of the past”. We see that all past is preserved in time. However the character doesn’t know that is already there because of the effect of a trauma. He searches his memories in others memories, in the world memory. He collects images from past an he creates his own past.

I was thinking how this film could have been shot in Hollywood. Probably it would be a mind-game movie, character would have amnesia... But how remembering process would be? I guess, character would be trying to find some cues about his past in the back streets of Manhattan. He would meet people in order to find clues, and probably those people would be criminals or so. Of course some action would be held. Some chasing scenes, or maybe even shooting scenes... Probably there would be a mysteries girl too. He would fell in love with the girl, and probably girl would be the one who causes his trauma. Thing would get complicated... Then he would remember everything and so on. That’s the Hollywood spirit.

CinemaGrotesque and Everyday Body

One of the most unfortunate events in cinema history is that Gilles Deleuze never had the chance to see Lloyd Newson's recent projects, since the former passed away on 1995... The role of body in cinema and theatre has been the center of an important debate especially after the emergence of modern approaches towards acting and dance for a long time. Physical theatre constitutes a key turning point for these discussions. Although some scholars argue that this form of theatre was a product of the influence of Brecht theatre on traditional theatre, it has nevertheless, evolved in such a way that it is now possible to categorize it as a completely new genre. Starting with Constantin Stanislavsky , directors and actors like Antonin Artaud, Jacques Lecoq, Jerzy Grotowski and Pina Bausch, started to ask questions on human body and the use of it in a modern context that could break the chains of the old, traditional, mostly text-oriented, epic form of acting. The emergence of mime, the re-interpretation of movement and the mixing of theatre with sound and cinema are among many reasons why we can now talk about gracious and grotesque at the same time.

Lloyd Newson, the founder of an independent collective of dancers called DV8, managed to bring the above mentioned postmodern approaches of acting and choreography into cinema in a very successful way with his film Cost of Living (2005). Although this film was preceded by three other important films by Newson, ( Strange Fish, Enter Achilles and Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men), Cost of Living was the most successful project to bring in almost all vital elements of cinema and theatre together.

The very first characteristic of Cost of Living is that the whole concept relies on actors and their bodies. The actor's role is his presence as himself on the screen: performers do not have proper character names, their names are their real names. Therefore from the start, an actor is not pretending to be someone else. Costumes do not force them to be members of a specific social group or class; they seem to be regular people we see walking on the streets. Real people from real life... On one hand, the reason why they are being filmed is closely linked with their abilities to ways they make use of their bodies but on the other, they are everyday bodies. If they get tired when performing, they really get tired: The drops of sweat we see are real...

An important character in the film, David (David Toole) is handicapped and has no legs. It is not the perfect body that we're after, but the body itself. Choreography written by Newson for Cost of Living presents this perspective in very creative ways: There are some parts of the film where the choreography is based solely on possible movements of a handicapped body, or some parts of it , where the same handicapped body is impersonated with perfect dancers having flawless bodies. Newson questions our notions of aesthetics and norms by giving us alternative examples to how things would be, in a parallel universe.

Bringing in everyday body to cinema offers us a new understanding on acting and body. Although Cost of Living is mostly seen as an example for experimental cinema, 16 international awards clearly indicate that there is something more beyond simply experimenting. Other than transmitting important social messages, this film should be considered as a figure de proue for interdisciplinary arts where there are no longer solid boundaries between ways we expose ourselves...

Links:

http://www.dv8.co.uk/projects/costoflivingfilm

http://www.disthis.org/CostOfLiving.htm

http://www.body-pixel.com/2008/05/13/what-dance-could-be…-in-dv8-and-david-toole’s-vision…/

http://www.article19.co.uk/06/interview/lloyd_newson.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EayAmhSsBZI

Representation of The Body

Besides arguments about what type of physical/psychological activities are spectators get involved in while seeing "bodies" in screen, the artists' way of communicating with their own bodies and with the phenomena of representing body in art added to the role of body in experiencing life are challenging issues to consider. So, I'll try to find a few examples to see how body is used in different art mediums.

The Cinematic Body

I came across with a seminar series that focused on "The Cinematic Body" issue. It divided the topic into its elements in terms of their contents and gave examples for each. This kind of separation makes it possible to consider the use of body for different purposes and in different contexts. In other words, it serves to have a colorful approach to "history of representation of body in film and video art" with its contrasting classification. Almost all videos are available on YouTube.

• Early Cinema and the birth of the modern body
• Physical Cinema: the DADA body
• Acrobatics in Time: Samuel Beckett’s clowns on film
• From Dance to Film: the Art of Yvonne Rainer
• Film as Skin: Expanded Cinema, video art and the apparatus
• Territories: the documentary as other body
• Electronic Flesh: the techno body
• Bulimic Bodies

Within these categories and various examples, I was fascinated with James Williamson's short video The Big Swallow (1901). This video is known for the extreme close-up scene, although it is not the first one ( Grandma's Reading Glass and Spiders on a Web -both 1900- are first examples) that use extreme close-up technique, it is the first one that took this concept to a one step further by connecting the camera’s eye, the audience’s eye and the characters eye in a one scene ¹ .

Body as a Material Object

Bruce Nauman Pinch Neck (1968)

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary artist who is well-known with his neon art works. He uses different materials to articulate his perspective such as; photography, light/neon, video, drawing and performance. Although they use it in a different manner, his way of using his face and the emphasis of a “speech” organ reminds me the Williamson’s video. About Nauman’s works, it can be stated that because the major and the only content of his artworks is his activities or experiences, they are not considered as a film or a video art, instead it is a document of an activity ². Regarding to his use of face/body Nauman said he is using his body as a piece of material and manipulating it through his artworks.

“The idea of making faces had to do with thinking about the body as something you can manipulate. I had done some performance pieces - rigorous works dealing with standing, leaning, bending - and as they were performed, some of them seemed to carry a large emotional impact. I was very interested in that: if you perform a bunch of arbitrary operations, some people will make very strong connections with them and others won't” ³

The quotation above simply illustrates the Nauman’s perspective in making sense out of his artworks. Especially the last sentence, which points out “arbitrariness”, recalls the opposition between sensory motor reaction and critical thought. In Nauman’s work there is neither a dissociation or nor an association, instead there is a thing, which may refer to anything. I communicate with the video both through my sensory motor abilities and thinking patterns. It evokes a certain physical response, which irritates me a bit and on the other hand, it makes me think on how a simple survival activity, as to swallow, or distortion of body places in art. Nauman had various examples in this context; Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968) can be a good example for how "Nauman was able to alienate himself in a Beckettian manner from his arms and legs, so they seemed to have lives of their own, detached and objectified." ² Collection of his works can be found in here

Body as an object of Rebellion

Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985) was an avant-garde artist who experimented and used “body” as a main tool for creating her paintings, videos, installations, sculptures and performances. Despite her tragic and short life, she became a pioneer of environmental, feminist and autobiographical art. She criticized violence against the female body, sacrifice and crime and projected her ideas through connecting her body with nature. ⁴

Her famous Silueta series focused on the spiritual connection between her body (her presence, her silueta) and materials of earth, leaves, fire, blood and she performed them like they are religious or primitive rituals. Silueta is like her sign of presence and with these silhouettes, the message shifted from “Here I am or Ana was here” to “Someone has been by”, but still it is a record of a (somebody)woman’s presence. ⁵ In Body Tracks series (1979) she used blood as a medium of her video performance, however, it does not implies a certain sense of violence. Instead, her way of using blood refers to her words as “Through my earth/body sculptures I become one with the earth… I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body…” 6. Her brutality is “visceral, not violent” ⁷ and Mendieta’s tone to convey her political, feminist or humanist ideas provides a new understanding on the abstruse side of women’s silhouette. Some of her video works can be found here.

Body as an object for Catharsis

Marina Abramovic had a problematic childhood; and in Freudian respect her early performances were considered as a form of rebellion against her strict upbringing as well as against the repressive culture of post-war in Yugoslavia, where she was born. Like all her body art performance, they were ritualistic purifications designed to free her of her own past ¹². She had too many dangerous performances like Rhythm 0 which she put herself with 72 different objects (including a gun) in a museum like a doll and let visitors do anything they want to do her with those objects, she was about to die in this performance. This is just one of the extreme examples from her works; the detailed information is here: She said she looks at her body as a machine and she still uses the mind - the will - to control what she does. ⁸ She believed that performance is real , the knife is real, the blood is real and the emotions are real ⁸ and so, she can use any material she wants to use, fire, water and the body. ⁹ Her talk about the body as a medium gives an idea of the difference between different mediums to create art, like painting and performance. She is obsessed with identifying and defining limits, limits of her body, limits of the performance, limits of the time, limits of the relationship between public and performer, limits of control, limits of physical and mental potential. By defining those limits through art, she aimed to discover a method again with art to make people more free. She has also accepted her obsession through performing her body even risking her life in one of her interviews:

The underlying question in all of this is, of course: why? Why put yourself though such suffering in the name of art? Abramovic has no easy answers to that question. "I am obsessive always, even as a child," she says, suddenly serious, and, for the first time, pausing for thought. "On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure." 8

Here is one of the psychic performances of her that again plays with the limits of her presence, her body and her thoughts. According to Abramovic, body art represents -un-limits of physical and mental existence and she boldy uses her body as a subject, an object and a medium to declare sources of conflict and suffering.¹⁰ She claimed that she is not that much into politics, but what she has done is political and her short-video is an indication for her relation with politics. Her perspective on function of art is highly concortant with what she performs, she said “I am looking for an art that really asks questions, an art which is disturbing, an art which really makes connections with our disconnected selves as well as making a connection with nature.” ¹¹ For me, her most admiring performance is “The Artist is Present” at MOMA. Marina Abramovic herself, becomes the performance itself, she sit at MOMA for 3 months for 7 hours a day, and people. MOMA’s description about the performance

“In addition, a new, original work performed by Abramović will mark the longest duration of time that she has performed a single solo piece. All performances, one of which involves viewer participation, will take place throughout the entire duration of the exhibition, starting before the Museum opens each day and continuing until after it closes, to allow visitors to experience the timelessness of the works.”¹³

This performance can be seen in different perspectives, for me it is a performance of Gestalt approach that values the principle of “here-and-now”. Unsurpsingly, Abramovic also mentioned about this aspect of her works;

“If I’m in the here-and-now of the piece, the public can get affected” 14

“If you had seen my opening performance at the Pompidou Center, which consisted of lying on the bed against the wall, it could confront you with this idea that we always forget: there and now. You could not see me moving, starting or stopping. The idea was that I’m lying there with my mind and with my body, and that is what we almost never do. Whatever you did or thought, you had this image of me, being there.” ¹⁵

Her performance reminds me what we’ve talked about “Mundane Story” because she is also, creating works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life like lying, sitting, dreaming and thinking. ¹⁶ It seems that she is looking for simplicity and by looking her post-The Artist is Present works we can conclude that she had the power of simplicity. According to Gestalt approach, human existence is unique and everyone has a potential to reach their self-actualization level, which is placed at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In this respect, what Abramovic achieved through her art is a kind of therapy, which means to make people who sit in front of her, cry have them a catharsis. In other words, they experienced freedom of their existence; they valued their space of existence, or experienced themselves through Abramovic’s (her body’s) presence. What she thought about the therapeutic side of her performance is understood from her words as;

"-Was this art as therapy, or something much deeper? "Oh, it's plain to me that this is something incredible.

- I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally. I did almost nothing, but they take this religious experience from." ⁸

Another interesting thing about her performance is its duration, she has been in that chair for 3 months and for whole day and she was doing exactly the same thing for whole time; do simply nothing but gaze into the eye of her visitors. The reason for her choice to perform in this way can be her perspective on repetition. She said;

“All the objects used change meaning by repetition. In some cases, it is a long process. The artist and the public need time to enter a state of mind, which can be achieved through repetition and the long duration of the piece. Each element and material becomes something else. You open the door and close it. That’s just opening and closing a door. But over hours, it becomes something else. It can take on another meaning. Elements like blood, bones, knives, honey, milk, and wine all have spiritual meanings and not just in the performances.” ¹⁴

Here is the participants of ”The Artist is Present” and a random moment from the performance.

Extra Links:

Comparison for Nauman’s and Ana’s works

Criticism of Mendieta’s works in Deleuze’s and Butler’s terms

Marina Abramovic on her performances

Interview with Marina Abramovic after her “Artist is Present” performance

Film on Marina Abramovic:

Interview of Marina Abramovic in Tate Channel

References

1. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444628/

2. http://www.inputpattern.com/portfolio/text/nauman/paper.html

3. http://bit.ly/aEJTNk

4. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1358840

5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35164-2004Oct15.html

6. http://bit.ly/bBSkn1

7. http://www.brooklynrail.org/2004/09/art/ana-mendieta-earth-body-sculpture-and-pe

8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist

9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBTrVNxvfk&feature=channel

10. http://www.hotreview.org/articles/marinaabram.htm

11. http://thepandorian.com/2009/10/marina-abramovic/

12.http://www.lacan.com/abramovic.htm

13.http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965

14. http://www.museomagazine.com/10/abramovic%20

15. http://www.jca-online.com/abramovic.html

16. http://www.seveneasypieces.com/marinaabramovic.html