Writing Abjection
From Lars Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’
I got a tweet the other day, from Zander Vyne, asking if I’d seen the rape scene in ‘Irreversible.” I hadn’t, so I watched it. Before you rush out to watch the movie, let me warn you, it is about as disturbing as film ever gets and I am unconvinced of its value.
Yes, I understand the reverse narrative structure of the film is a discourse on the payoff of sex and violence in cinema. Yes, I understand that the studied and realistic way the scene was filmed could be seen as a challenge to films that portray rape as bearable, palatable, even titillating. I get all that. But at the end of the day, I had to ask myself what I knew or what questions I had after seeing the movie that I did not have before. The answer was: nothing.
I wanted to consider the fictionalization / dramatization of abjection and whether it has much value as a mode of communication. There is a quartet of four films that, taken in pairs, intrigues me as to this issue.
Like “Irreversible,” Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” is also spectacularly violent and sexually explicit (for non-porn). In “Irreversible” two men set out to take revenge for the rape and savage beating of a woman they both love. In “Antichrist” a husband and wife work through the tragedy of the death of their young son, for which they are, to some extent, to blame. They both contain, as their subject matter, excruciating human experiences. In both cases, the remedy adds phenomenally to the trauma. As a narrative journey, it’s no different from Romeo and Juliette or Hamlet or Oedipus. Tragedy piled on top of tragedy.
Both films set out to disturb their audiences, but to what purpose? The truth is that catastrophe often breeds more of itself. This sad, human truth is played out every night on the evening news. What purpose is served by dramatizing a disturbing but woefully common occurrence?
I’m not suggesting fictional narratives need to be parables. There are superficial parables to be taken from both films. Revenge is almost never as satisfying as you think it will be, it never restores what you’ve lost and almost always diminishes your own humanity. Toddlers require almost constant supervision. If you’re a mental health professional, never attempt to treat the people you love.
I found both films excruciating to watch, but for me, the difference in narrative value between “Irreversible” and “Antichrist” has to do with the more complex questions I’m left with. For me, just being left with the reflection that the world contains some awful people who do awful things isn’t enough. Nor is the recursive notion that telling a story in reverse gives it more redeeming value. It’s not enough. However, “Antichrist” left me pondering a few things: why do we find sex the ‘unforgivable’ distraction? Why is it that, on the order of excuses for inattention, it seems the most despicable? Why do we valorize and assume maternal love above all others? Why does maternal child abuse seem so much more horrific, unfathomable, indecipherable?
I’m not suggesting that ‘Antichrist’ is even close to perfect (or even justified in its excesses). It is a very peculiar film that reflects Von Trier’s own odd thinking on a literal embodied connection between sex, reproduction, motherhood, etc. And towards the end, it gets annoyingly mythological and hyperbolic. To my mind, Von Trier could have exercised significantly more critical self-editing. Nonetheless, I was left, after the disturbing experience of seeing the film, with some compelling ideas to think about and I’m not sure I would have thought about them quite as deeply had the film been less disturbing.
Similarly, I have recently seen “Twelve Years A Slave” and have been pondering my reaction to it in relation to “Beloved.” I don’t want to debate production values. “Twelve Years” is an incredibly well shot, impeccably acted film. The violence in the film, although not on the order of either of the two films discussed earlier, is profoundly disturbing to anyone with any an iota of morality. I can’t make a call on whether it is excessive, but the person I was viewing the movie with decided he couldn’t watch any more of it about halfway through. The violence is graphic and realistic, as is the unrelenting barbarism.
“Beloved” didn’t have the same budget and was not as well made. It’s now showing its age and some people have, I think unfairly, disparaged Oprah Winfrey’s performance and suggested that her enthusiasm to champion the visual retelling of Toni Morrison’s book of the same name, blinded her to some critical considerations. The film is reasonably faithful to the story structure of the novel, although it lacks the poetics of the language Morrison was writing in, and does attempt to iron out the lack of linearity in the storytelling.
Both “Twelve Years” and “Beloved” take an unflinching look at the realities of slavery. They both set out, like many of the best stories dramatizing historical fact, to inform through the experience of an individual. There is a certain justifiable pressure on any potential audience member to suffer through the relentlessly disturbing scenes in both films in order to honour the truth of that history. And yet, to what end?
Perhaps I overestimate people’s imaginative capacities. But I once had occasion to visit the sub-basement of a recently closed old prison. It was more than 100 years old, and they had these stone isolation cells in the basement with nothing but a rusting link set into the floor and a bucket in a corner. I knew, without a doubt, that every possible violent, degrading, dehumanizing act that could be done, had been done to the people held in those cells. I didn’t need a movie or even a story to tell me this. I just knew. Unbridled power always results in barbarity. Always. It is a fact of human nature that some of us will, given no limits, indulge in whatever level of cruelty we can get away with.
For all its incredible cinematography, its brilliant acting, and its scenes of violence and degradation, “Twelve Years” did not tell me anything I did not already know. It served me up almost two hours of dreadful tragedy, but informed me of nothing. It left me with no lingering and complex questions.
“Beloved” on the other hand, not only did the job of serving history, but it also left me pondering universal questions that were broader than that particular piece of history. How do individuals with horrendous pasts tell themselves their own story? What happens to love or familial bonds when they are so completely out of your control? Who are you when you do not own yourself? What constitutes a violation of the spirit?
These questions, like the questions I was left with after “Antichrist” go far beyond the telling of a single, tragic event. Even beyond the experience of one group of people in one time, in one place. It is not that those histories don’t deserve to be honoured in accurate storytelling. But their relevance as more than historic artifacts or contemporary revisitation gives them a lasting and universal value. I think they serve to force a personalization, an ownership of those issues, which transcends the brittle idea of an individual or a group having the ownership of certain tragedies.
I believe in the value of disturbing narratives. I don’t require happy endings or some gratifying redemption in every story. But there is a profound difference between a story that says ‘this is my pain, witness it’ and one that says ‘this is our pain, understand it.’
