Okay, so I’m going to riff inadequately on a stray revelation Gio noted in her last Da Vinci post–and I’m not sure where/if I can go with it–but I just watched Sang-soo Im’s The President’s Last Bang, and it’s the most effective piece of political filmmaking I’ve seen in a while.
That accolade is double-sided, in relation to Gio’s post. First, its politics: Bang is a farce about the assassination of Park Chun-hee in 1979. I had picked up from reviews that the event was still socially & politically taboo, and an interview with the filmmaker confirms the provocative nature of the movie in South Korea. (He notes how the film was met with laughs and general appreciation everywhere but South Korea, where along with some sober affirmation of his skills he got death threats.) However, it is not just giggling at the taboo but instead, as he notes in that interview, levelling a broadside against fascism, and how political cultures breed hierarchy, violence, and exploitation. And farce sets up interesting echoes and parallels for these political concerns, for farces are about power-laden relationships, the inability to see past one’s own nose (or needs), the breakdown of a community into poorly-maintained secrets and futile conspiracies and general silliness. The President-dictator is a monstrously isolated and detached nincompoop, surrounded by bullying yes-men; the conspirators are equally bullying, equally detached from reality, drawn to the coup attempt by perceived slights and bad livers. It is a brutal attack on political failure (or politics as a systemic failure) and historical amnesia–and its depictions of stupidity at the top of the government bears uncanny familiarity to a certain American situation.
Its tone, then, might recall Chaplin’s Great Dictator, or–in aesthetics as well as tone–the great Winter Kills.
And that sneaks me toward point two: I think the film’s politics succeed in large part because of its aesthetics–the text subtends the political force of the film. Again, why farce? Many U.S. critics seemed displeased with the seemingly slapstick nature of the political comedy, and found the ’70s-cinema compositions (deep black shadows and huge elaborately-composed sets and shots which minimize the human) jarringly detached from the bathroom humor, the pratfalls. But I think the choice to film it as farce is determinedly political. Farce exposes how authority is endlessly silly–soldiers lack bullets, generals strut about without pants, secret police agents act like so many Moes slapping their Curly and Larry comrades around the head and face–but the sumptuous allusions to the films of Pakula and Coppola signify the pervasiveness of that authority despite its silliness. The comedy, rather than hijacking with hijinks the serious political message, underscores the ironic disempowerment of everyone in the picture. They endlessly scuffle for an authority that ultimately governs them, rather than being attained or maintained by them. It’s a powerful indictment of power.
I thought this was great. And while I appreciate the gist of Gio’s comment, as we do tend to veer off into concern with these flicks as flicks, I’m hesitant to draw a neat line and accept the charges that talking about flicks (ever, or even just the way we do here) is apolitical, or not concerned with politics, or… maybe (?) even perhaps open to political gestures.
I suppose I should go back and post under/about the Code, again, as our lack of debate there is what prompted her revelation. But I fear that the relative disinterest in DVC, and/or my own more keen interest in how it connects to textual hermeneutics and faith, will not ever lead us into politics. So I’ll push back here.
I’m only speaking for myself but I don’t even know what it would mean to talk about “flicks as flicks”–do “we” really talk like that? in what specific ways does it differ from talking about flicks as something else?
as for the farce, you bring up a lot of interesting ideas, Mike (may I subscribe to your newsletter?) but I’m reminded of the critique that Adorno made against Brecht who portrayed fascists as gangsters in a highly stylized manner–portraying domination so naturalistically allows it to pass for common sense and hence, to be annexed to everyday life in a manner that actually supports the aims of domination. I’m not sure how I feel about that analysis, but I wonder how it might apply to farce/satire of a political nature. Does Chaplin’s The Great Dictator undercut fascism through slapstick or does it tend to make the mechanisms of fascism disappear to analysis by positing that everyone, including and especially dictators, is equally ridiculous? (Aside from the point that Chaplin undercuts his own aims at times by giving some great moments to the dictator character, making him more compelling than the barber (?) character).
I think Chaplin goes astray a bit when he tries to confront politics head-on, as in Monsieur Verdoux which flattens politics by characterizing it so baldly. I tend to think that one moment in the Lubitsch film To Be or Not to Be more forcefully undercuts fascism than Chaplin’s entire film–the moment when one of the Jewish actors, who is portraying Hitler in a stage play about Nazism, says “Heil, myself!” All of fascist ideology is designed to exclude that one bit of shtick. But why should that bit be more effective than Chaplin’s?
well, I don’t know. maybe it’s a matter of specificity–the film Mike discusses works against totalitarianism because the kind of politics it depicts requires direct confrontation, as provided by slapstick farce, while those of us who live in the “diffuse spectacle” of the western democracy might require a different sort of comedy in order to undercut power? to put things in a conspiratorial whisper, the multiple forces of domination would be only too happy to see a single figure like Bush mocked by, say, a pantomime in which he literally kisses Cheney’s ass or rants about imperialism.
Hell–you’re right about Lubitsch’s To Be; that is in many ways a better example. Chaplin, in Dictator, leaves farce every now and then to let pathos and sincerity enter in.
And you may be right, as well, about the specificity of context. Bang was received here with some laurels, some confusion. And Bush has certainly benefited from being played as a buffoon for many years.
But I’m hesitant to give up on farce or comedy of any stripe. I’m thinking of how Colbert’s performance at the press club was (gasp) Brechtian in some ways. (And effective ways — a vigorous WELCOME to you, Mr. Adorno.) Colbert was not comfortably distant from the target of the barbs, and not comfortably chuckling with the collusions of the mainstream press, and not exactly playing a neat superior comic hero with whom an audience can comfortably identify. That seemed to me a moment where everyone becomes ridiculous, but in a manner corrosive and challenging rather than merely spectacular (and consume-able).
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this film, in particular, Michael. And others?
I know I’m throwing things off, but I want to try a defense of pathos.
I was, long ago, taken to task for dismissing Chaplin’s pathos all-too-swiftly. I said Chaplin wasn’t a great comic becuase he’s too sentimental, or something like that. I think I was just repeating what I thought was the general line about Chaplin. The Great Dictator is said to be a failed film because Chaplin, when he isn’t proving himself to be as meglomaniacal as Hinkel (as in the final speech), falls back on pathos and sincerity (e.g. the Merchant of Venice scene). This, as we discussed elsewhere on this blog, is the critcism leveled at Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried.
I was never able to explain why Chaplin’s sentiment canceled out his talent as a comic. Why is sincerity dismissed as schmaltz? Does sentiment have any critical value? I may be taking this discussion in a different direction, but I’d like to throw in a few ideas. Sentiment is devalued because of its subject: victimhood. And we don’t change things by sympathizing with those who have suffered under oppression. Films that aspire to make images of abject poverty and desperation aesthetically pleasing, that fuse visual and emotional enjoyment, are dismissed as uncritical, apolitical, or at best misguided (Chaplin).
Because the subject of farce is, as Mike puts it, those in power–because it targets power, zeroes in on its source (rather than its effects)–it is critical. The problem with The Great Dictator is that the more it goes back and forth between targeting the oppressor and sympathizing with the oppressed, the sharper the distinction between criticism and mere enjoyment.
But there’s a lot of interesting stuff being done on sympathic identification, melodrama, pathos, and how we might be able to understand emotions as being suffused with intelligence and discernment. But those who do take an interest in exploring the critical value of identifying with victimhood are up against a centuries-old assumption: the further you descend into emotion, the further you get from reason–and the further you stray from masculinity, incidentally. Men have sense. Women have sensibility. Men think, Women feel. Men reason, women inuit. Hitchcock plays around with this assumption in Rear Window. But my example is The Silence of the Lambs. The book is as much about a master-mind seral killer named Hannibal as it is about instrumental reason. In a way, Hannibal is a great comic figure in that he eats the bad guys, and the bad guys are those who wield power, people like Jack Crawford. They represent a particular historical configuration of rationality. Clarice wants very much to serve the institution, but Hannibal nudges her towards a very different position, a very different type of knowledge. he keeps telling her to recall her most painful childhood memories–the strongest of which is the one in which she witnesses a lamb being slaughtered. She is still haunted by this memory, and Hannibal forces her to confront it. why? Because it is a source of strength and power. It gives her an advantage over those who use instrumental reason. The Behavioral Sciences Service unit of the FBI thinks like the killer. Clarice thinks like the victim, and in doing so, she trumps instrumental reason. In this way, Hannibal and Clarice are an interesting fusion of comedy and pathos–the two together are a potent weapon against institutionalized power.
Wow–I don’t think you throw the discussion off, at all. Great stuff.
And perhaps I’d add to that–the “scary” or “suspicious” part of farce is not just that, by making everyone “equally ridiculous” (to follow Michael’s clear-eyed critique), it makes even challenge to power ridiculous. The problem is that, in farce, we also identify with that ridiculousness. Ridiculous dictator Park Chun-hee loves Japanese pop music, fawns all over young women, mournfully–like a puppy dog–asks his assassin why he is doing this. Because the target is power (and not the particular instantiations of those with or without power), we also find sympathy … pathos even? … with everyone? Maybe it’s wrong to posit pathos as the opposite of farce; maybe sympathy and scorn are more closely aligned….
in the second remake, von trier, who, to use a sentence from fire, is nothing more (or less) than a pompous fool, pushes leth to aestheticize poverty by setting up a banquet in the middle of the poorest neighborhood in culcutta (i think — it may be another of those indian cities). leth finds this incredibly objectionable and puts up quite a lot of resistance. but von trier is too much of a manipulative sadist, and leth too much of a masochist, for things not to go von trier’s way. at the end, leth sort of cheats because he thematizes the poverty, instead simply of exploiting and teasing it, by making the screen behind the gourmet transparent, so one can see the faces of the poor children behind him. their presence makes of the gourmet’s performance a self-satirizing farce. it is the children, not the gourmet, who are real. the gourmet is a piece of western fluff, or, more simply, an idiot. von trier is, of course, displeased with leth’s cheating, even as leth is childishly pleased with his own great short.
i bring this up at this point in the history of this blog, i.e. at a point when we are talking about politics, film, and text, because this short is a good example of the ways in which text can dissociate itself from politics, or, instead, choose to address (do) politics. if he had agreed to film the scene with an opaque screen, leth would have allowed text to dispose of politics (context). the film would have been a commentary on indulgent, even callous, aestheticism, without confronting the actual, real conditions of its being filmed when it was filmed, in the location where it was filmed, in full day time and in full view of a lot of people who couldn’t have afforded the cheapest lightbulb on the set. it would have been text without context.
leth refused to accept von trier’s challenge in full (maybe because he lives in haiti instead of denmark), and allowed context to intrude on text. this seems to me political in a significant, active, even (mildly) militant way.
i’m not sure how this relates to the great dictator, which i saw only many, many years ago, or to the other films mike and michael mention, none of which i have seen. as for silence of the lambs, your discussion is extremely well taken, john. i’m going to have to think about it.
(cross posted in the five obstrucions thread)
I’ve been pondering the discussion of farce and question if farce is the right word (satire seems closer; satire combined with physical slapstick even closer). In theatre studies farce tends to expose the hypocrisies and pretentions of the middling or merchant classes. True power/authority is rarely on trial (think of Moliere’s Tartuffe and the dues ex machina at the end when one of the King’s men arrives to make everything ok). Aristophanes, Menander, commedia dell’arte, the Wakefield Master (2nd Shepherd’s Play), Shakespeare, Middleton, Aphra Behn, Moliere, Feydeau, Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton, Noel Coward, Nicolai Gogol, Neil Simon; these playwrights turn the world upside down and set loose a cornucopia of transgressions (bodily and verbal) but by the end of the evening, the norms have been upheld or at least the world has been turned right-side up (the women return to the domestic space in Lysistrata or get married in As You Like It and even Measure for Measure, etc., etc.). Now I can think of an example or two that do target monarchial and other forms of power (Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro being the most prominant; Dario Fo’s work is another). Do you think the way this thread is using the word farce is implicitly bound by the 20th century?
Well you may be right about a more recent vintage of farce. But I am not sure Moliere doesn’t have it in for all forms of authority, and I know Joe Orton does not return the norms to their right-side up–he tends to put everything ass over teakettle and enjoy the view, doesn’t he?
And I’m with Northrop Frye on Shakespeare’s endings: while everyone may marry off, things don’t seem to me settled or resolved. Similarly, Bang ends with all the conspirators imprisoned or completely disenfranchised and marginalized. Yet… there’s a fruitful, {farcical?} open question posed at the end: was the central motivation Quixotic and admirable or facile and foolish? That seems to me the intriguing balance that farce can strike–while you are given room to dismiss as airy or insignificant the events, and to return to domestic comforts and domesticated thought, the viral disruption of “significance” creeps into all those closed airless rooms, too.
But here’s a push: I’m using farce more to get at tone and certain generic elements of Last Bang, kind of like talking about Alan Pakula’s conspiracy films as horror — because they’re shot a little like horror, evoke a kind of tone, follow certain narrative conventions… perhaps framing in an apposite genre opens up some new ways for digging the politics of the “central” genre? I.e., I wasn’t so much using genre to say X is THIS, as much as to say how usefully we might reconsider X, given THIS way of seeing.
I think Moliere knew who buttered his bread. He was cast out into the provinces for something like 18 years before auditioning before the King (for a second time) and earning the King’s patronage (now Bulgakov is another story altogether and fits your argument well). And yes I agree farce rarely “settles” things (but I’m not too sure how much of an academic response that is; I might argue a majority of spectators embrace the happy endings in Shakespeare’s comedies). But when farce becomes one of many forces/genres shaping the way we receive a text, then I’m with you there.