Press Censorship in I r e l a n d. [Law & Order?]

Depending on one’s location and the judicial system that presides over it, the law can work to both support and hinder the operations of the press. Clear divisions can be made in the legislation governing press movements depending on where a particular news outlet is located. In the United States there are very particular constitutional entitlements that allow for the freedom of expression to be strongly enforced. This of course appears as the very first amendment in the U.S. constitution and reads; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This is what is generally known as the ‘Free Market’ model, this structure allows for the public the freely express their views within society as a sort of public debate and hence is seen to help strengthen democracy. This system is seen to be self regulating, and like free market economics allows for the best ideas to come to the top, while weaker more implausible ideas will fail. As a result this almost allows for a ‘no holds barred’ sort of journalism. Reporters and news outlets have much more room to manoeuvre legally around what may be factually inaccurate stories under the guise of the first amendment. This allows for publications such as the ‘Weekly World News’ and the ‘National Enquirer’ to print shocking, largely inaccurate news stories regarding celebrities and other less serious facets of journalism with quite a bit of ease.

The rival approach to this tradition is what is known as the ‘Democratic Model’, which is based around the informed opinion or voice of the media which is seen to help strengthen democracy rather than hinder it. This means that the inaccurate sort of reporting that can at times be found under the U.S. system is not allowed under the democratic model. In this case, as is the case in most common law societies, the emphasis is on protecting democracy, whereas in the U.S. system this emphasis on freedom of speech is seen as being entirely democratic and hence serving to preserve democracy. Of course under both systems there are a number of grey areas and inconsistencies that lead to problems regarding the interpretations of the law and systems of freedom of speech.

Under the U.S. system and the 1^st amendment there have been a large number of cases taken to the courts in regards to freedom of speech over the years. In the former half of the 20^th century a number of cases in regards to the ‘red fever’ that swept the nation and particular pamphlets or publications printed that may present what would be considered a communist or socialist viewpoint, or, in a more extreme interpretation, propaganda. In two similar cases, Abrams V U.S. & Gitlow V New York, the courts ruled against the defendant’s freedom of speech on the grounds that such publications may either cause a ‘clear and present danger’ through their utterance and that the 1^st Amendment did not support speech which may advocate unlawful behaviour. In the former case Justice Holmes stated; ‘The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market’, a quote which would ring true when considering the ‘free market’ style the U.S. imposed. The first major change in approach to the American interpretation of freedom of speech came in 1964 in the case of New York Times V Sullivan, in which a police commissioner took the New York Times to court over an advertisement printed by four African American members of the clergy who, in their advertisement, claimed a number of allegations of police brutality, some false, against Sullivan [although unnamed] and his force in Alabama. The initial ruling decided that there was to be no protection for mistakes of fact, especially in such damaging circumstances. However, on appeal to the Supreme Court Justice Brennan ruled that; ‘Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open’ even in a case that involved what could be considered ‘harsh’ commentary on a public figure, the Supreme court also ruled that there must be a margin of error afforded when the person in question being discussed is a public figure. In 1971 a case taken against a young man wearing an anti-Vietnam t-shirt [‘Fuck the Draft’] had his conviction overturned under the 1^st amendment with Justice Harlan stating; ‘One man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric’. A number of similar cases arose over the years, all the time leading to more and more freedoms in regards to expression and speech. A major case came in 2002 in the case of Ashcroft V Free Speech Coalition, where the Free Speech Coalition were challenged on a number of overbroad regulations in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 [CPPA] which;

…expands the federal prohibition on child pornography to include not only pornographic images made using actual children, 18 U.S.C. § 2256(8)(A), but also “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture” that “is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” §2256(8)(B), and any sexually explicit image that is “advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression” it depicts “a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” §2256(8)(D).

The Supreme Court further noted that; “Thus, §2256(8)(B) bans a range of sexually explicit images, sometimes called “virtual child pornography,” that appear to depict minors but were produced by means other than using real children, such as through the use of youthful-looking adults or computer-imaging technology.” The Court ruled that the CPPA was both overbroad and unconstitutional as it hindered the first amendment on the grounds that the likes of Romeo and Juliet could not be performed under such a broad act. This case has been cited by many as a great example for the U.S. Supreme Court’s support for freedom of speech. Although there has been some limits over the years under this system, i.e. the limitations of speech ‘interpreted’ by the courts of possessing ‘clear and present danger’ or ‘unlawfulness’, the ‘free market’ system under the 1^st amendment has allowed for a great amount of freedom of speech and expression which, as we will see, may not be allowed under the more rigorous democratic model of the largely common law Europe.

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights deals with the issue of free speech and is, in part, a double edged sword. Part 1 of the Article clearly states that; “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” At first glance this seems to be a very free, liberating approach to free speech, however, Article 10.2, which is worth quoting in its entirety, says;

The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Thus, under the second provision of Article 10, the regulations on this freedom of speech are far more limiting then first stated although, depending upon interpretation, can also work to serve the democratic union of the European states. These ‘formalities’ that Article 10.2 mentions have come up before the courts on a number of occasions. In the case of Otto Preminger Institut V Austria (1994), in which a film depicting offensive images of Jesus was banned under Austrian media laws, the case was taken to the European Court. The Court found that there must be a ‘margin of appreciation’ and the fact that the strong material would most likely cause people to react in an unfavourable manner the Austrian Court had done the right thing by banning the film. In the case of Unabhangige Initiative Informationsvielfalt v Austria [2002] concerning Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party and a pamphlet published which could be considered as incitement to racial hatred. An injunction was made by the Austrian courts but then subsequently overturned so long as the pamphlet was “…placed in the context of a political debate and that it contributed to a discussion on matters of public interest.” In a similar case, Cylan V Turkey [1999], concerning a newspaper Article criticising anti terrorist measures against Kurds, was ruled to be strong political incentive rather than hate speech. However, in Jersild V Denmark [1995] a reporter was ruled to be in breach of Article 10 after running an interview with a racist group called the ‘Green Jackets’, under which the journalist was convicted of incitement to racial hatred laws. Although the journalist claimed to be investigating the mind of a racist the ECtHR found an issue with the proportionality of response from the Article in question. Because the Article was less about debate of issues surrounding racial difference and more about the singular views of one group it was seen to be in breach of Article 10. This case is noteworthy in its ruling as it clearly demarcates the lines of enquiry and structure a journalist can take when dealing with sensitive topics in the media under Article 10, and would, I’m sure, be seen as reducing one’s freedom of speech more than increasing it, which is more democratic is decided by the ECtHR. There are a number of other cases outlining the influence of the ECHR & ECtHR on freedom of speech. The case Pedersen and Baadsgaard v Denmark (2) [2006] involved a defamation suit in relation to a series of TV documentaries that implied a detective in a murder case suppressed evidence necessary for conviction without leaving the audience open to draw another conclusion. In response the journalists claimed that the documentary was essential to the acquittal of the individual on trial, as a result the ECtHR found no breach of Article 10. More recently was the case of Lindon & Ors v France [2007], based on a novel called ‘Jean-Marie Le Pen On Trial’ which was taken to court on claims of criminal defamation as the narrative features members of the French political party Front National killing a North African male in a racist attack while also alleging that Le Pen and the Front National were murderous and violent. The ECtHR held that there had been no violation of the freedom of speech for either the writer of the novel or a newspaper which printed excerpts as; ‘The court felt that the statements were such as to stir up hatred against a political movement, notwithstanding the connection the movement itself may have to hatred.’ And although the book in particular was considered fictional, it’s mentioning of an actual political party and implications that such a party are both violent and murderous was enough to be considered defamatory as the statements made were unverifiable.

Our own constitution even offers more restrictions to the freedom of speech on offer to the public. Article 40.6.1 of the Irish Constitution clearly states that; “The State guarantees…the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions”. However it continues;

The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.

Marie McGonagle notes that;

The formulation of this Article is problematic on a number of fronts. To begin with, the right of the citizen is said to be to express “freely” their convictions and opinions, yet how can they be entitled to express them “freely” if the right is subject to public order and morality, as stated at the very beginning of the Article? Also, if public order and morality are the only overriding interests expressly mentioned, is it intended that the expression of convictions and opinions should be unrestricted except when they endanger public order or morality?

This aside, McGonagle notes that there is, at the core of the article was a freedom to comment and express “freely” their thoughts, opinions, beliefs and views. Although doubt rose over the freedom to express or impart factual information this right was eventually found in Article 40.3.2 and 40.6.1 under personal rights although the latter Article still says that, despite the freedom of the press, this liberty of expression cannot be used to undermine public order morality.

There have been a number of cases over the years both testing the extents of one’s ‘freedom of speech’ and the constitutionality of these freedoms. In 1999 a case was taken against the IRTC following a ban on an advertisement for a video discussing the life of Christ. Following the Radio and Television Act such types of advertisements were banned, in this case the plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of this ban. Although Justice Geoghgan believed that the right to fact and opinion was covered by the constitution, issues of something such as religion are incredibly divisive, and that, proportionally, the right falls to the wider population who wish to practice their religion privately thus over riding those who wish to advertise theirs. Thus the plaintiff’s absolute freedom of speech was limited by the constitution. A similar case came a year later when ‘Youth Defence’ wished to run an advertisement based around the ‘evils of abortion’, which was also denied by the courts. There are a number of other issues that also limited what can or cannot be said legally in Ireland. Section 31 of the Broadcast Act [1960] can ask RTE not to broadcast anything that may incite/promote crime or undermine the security of the state. The point of this act was to prevent the recruitment of paramilitaries and also to protect the families of those involved in the troubles. The main focus of the act was the Sinn Feinn party and often actors were used to overdub Gerry Adam’s and other party members, which was best seen in the case of The State V Cooney [1982] and O’Toole V RTE [1993]. Of course the act now is incredibly dated with the increase in television service providers and non-government run media agencies. Other limitations include Sections 6 & 7 Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act [1994] which states that; “It shall be an offence for any person in a public place to use or engage in any threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or being reckless as to whether a breach of the peace may be occasioned.”

Also the Incitement to Hatred Act [1989] bans the broadcasting, publication etc of messages that may be considered threatening, abusive or likely to cause racial hatred, something which Irish journalist Kevin Myers has recently found himself in trouble for in an article he wrote entitled ‘African is giving nothing to anyone except AIDS’. There are also a number of other censorships under both moral and blasphemous considerations that limit freedom of expression. The Censorship of Films Act [1923] saw the creation of a film censor and allowed him to bad a film if he is ‘…of opinion that such picture or some part thereof is unfit for general exhibition in public by reason of its being indecent, obscene or blasphemous or because the exhibition thereof in public would tend to inculcate principles contrary to public morality or would be otherwise subversive of public morality.’ Similarly the Radio and Television Act of 1988 states that ‘…anything which may reasonably be regarded as offending against good taste or decency, or as being likely to promote, or incite to, crime or as tending to undermine the authority of the State, is not broadcast by him [every sound broadcasting contractor]’ The Video Recordings Act [1989] from the following year also allows the refusal of a certificate if the material is deemed ‘unfit’. Also Article 40.6.1.i of the Constitution states in its final sentence that ‘The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.’ A famous case in the UK involving the publication Gay News and a poem which depicted Jesus as a homosexual caused prosecution under a similar Act, the charge being that Gay News had; ‘Unlawfully and wickedly published or caused to be published a blasphemous libel concerning the Christian religion, namely an obscene poem and illustration vilifying Christ in his life and crucifixion.’ However this part of the Constitution is rarely enacted as social progressions and diversity in religious beliefs have altered interpretations of what it means to be ‘blasphemous’. The only case since 1855 came in 1999 against Independent Newspapers over a cartoon published in which the pictures accompanying caption read; ‘Hello progress, bye bye Father’, in relation to divorce and what is deemed as social progress in a move away from what is considered a church governed state. In this case however the courts ruled in favour of Independent Newspapers because of a lack of legislation and real intent to offend.

As one can see, the freedom of speech and expression is not a given right, it is a closely regulated affair enforced by Government bodies in order to either limit or decrease democracy depending on one’s interpretation. In some cases it can be deemed that the U.S. Free Market model works better to secure freedoms of expression, on the other hand some may find that the Democratic European model, through its limitations, works to secure a more democratic, informed society that is not based around slanderous remarks and poor research. Certainly it is obvious as to which claims more press freedoms, but whether this actually benefits the forum of public debate is to be decided, legally and by the individual.

No Comments / Feb 16.09 / Uncategorized / by admin

News Media and The Domination of Advertising.

D O M I N A T I O N

Many newspapers claim to be driven by a high standard of journalism and a highly ethical functionality in bringing the most ‘fair and balanced’ news to the reader as possible. Some papers are more obvious than others, the realm of the tabloid ‘red tops’ are generally disregarded by academic circles of having any intellectual ‘weight’ while the broadsheets are generally considered to be more worthwhile as their intent to supply their readership with hard news is considered a given. However, there is evidence to suggest that although most broadsheets are generally considered more ‘newsworthy’ then their red top counterparts it may be impossible for any paper, regardless of its reputation and standing in society, to avoid the stranglehold of the advertising world.

Generally the public readership of a paper may not be concerned with the spheres of influence that are being imposed upon the particular news outlet; in fact, in most situations the public may actually be unaware that there may be anyone pulling the strings behind the scenes. But a closer look at the processes of ownership and structure of most media outlets soon casts a shadow of doubt upon how intent a particular paper may be in doing what’s best for the reader. John H. McManus, in his article Market Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware, looks closely at a model of commercial news production. McManus quite correctly points out in the opening of his articles that; ‘…the vast majority of news consumed by Americans of all latitudes, Europeans, and, since the fall of the Soviet Union, many Asians, is produced by profit-making businesses’[1] It is also important for the reader to be aware of the people involved in a newspaper or particular media outlet. The chain of command is not simply dictated by editors, sub-editors, copy writers, layout designers etc, instead there are a vast number of players dictating in various operations of a papers ultimate production, investors, sources of revenue, corporate executives and also consumers play a large role, and, for the primary three at least, the bottom line is more likely to be important then the news itself. McManus notes 5 particular players in this layout; the environment, investors, parent corporations, media firms and news departments. The environment refers to the cultural climate in which a media outlet operates, the laws and regulations dictating this climate and the available technology. The rest are self explanatory, but McManus draws attention to particular problems involved with each which should seem obvious. Investors are the owners of either the media firm or the parent corporation which resides over it, most of these are stockholders, McManus notes that; “Since a stockholders vote is weighted by the number of shares held, the greater proportion of a company owned by a stockholder, the more influence that person has over the board of directors”[2]. Clearly problematic this leads on to the parent corporation which is owned by the investors; “The Gannett Company, for example, owns USA Today, nearly ninety local daily newspapers, several broadcasting stations and a national billboard company.”[3] From here it becomes obvious that it is possible for one small group of shareholders to control a vast quantity of news papers and other sources of media. The following two categories McManus lists are obvious continuations down the media ‘chain’, if you will; the media firm [essentially a branch of the parent company] and the news department, which is governed by the media firm or publisher and is, notably, the bottom of the chain.

Although the consumer is the logical point of conclusion to a papers production, we must, for now at least, consider those dictating the decisions regarding what news is. A vast majority of newspapers are owned in a similar manner to as listed by McManus, with parent companies, investors and media firms. It is simply a reality of corporate processes of ownership in this modern age. Herman and Chomsky note that “many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for others, too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful”[4]. Some may think that it is journalists that decide the news as it is they who report on it and write the articles, sadly this is not entirely so. McManus goes on to note that; “About 70 per cent of the average newspaper is advertising and some of its editorial sections are explicitly designed to entertain. At most newspapers the proportion of the budget that goes into reporting is well below 20 per cent.”[5] Anthony Sampson, in his article, The Crisis at the Heart of Our Media, notes that up until May 1966 The Times, which was generally considered the ultimate ‘journal of record’ and shied away from sensationalist news stories, only had small ads on the cover, now Sampson notes things are quite different;

Today the broadsheets compete fiercely for advertising, which imposes its own conditions – still more in the present crisis of newspapers which have cut their prices while newsprint has become more expensive. The advertisers determine the allocation of space – the pages devoted to consumers, travel, entertainment – which look more and more alike. And they’re not interested in foreign news, books, or investigation.[6]

Herman and Chomsky further note the increase in advertisement-dominated media since advertising became a large source of income for news outlets, thus lowering the copy price below production costs and increasing readership.

With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival. The ad-based media receive an advertising subsidy that gives them a price-marketing-quality edge, which allows them to encroach on and further weaken their ad free (or ad-disadvantaged) rivals. Even if ad-based media cater to an affluent (‘upscale’) audience, they easily pick up a large part of the ‘down-scale’ audience, and their rivals lose market share and are eventually driven out or marginalized.[7]

So, between mass ownership and an emphasis on advertising revenues we are left with a problematic situation regarding what news is being processed and delivered to the consumer. Advertisers wish to advertise in papers that have large readership in order to increase product awareness, this is obvious, and the more people who see the ad the more likely they are to sell products. Shareholders in parent companies of media firms want ultimate revenue from advertisers; the larger the readership the more the company can demand for advertising space. In order to increase readership the parent company’s shareholders will aim to control what ‘news’ or stories are given coverage in their publications. The newspaper market, for example, could loosely be divided into two categories; the tabloid reader and the broadsheet reader. As we can see from Sampson’s quote the lines between the two are becoming blurred. And what better way to increase readership? Even when lines cannot [or are not] so easily blurred between tabloids and broadsheets, most parent companies own a vast range of papers, thus covering all demographics and readerships. Sampson further notes that; “The Sunday Times looked quite different from the News of the World, but could be surprisingly similar; and both were owned by Rupert Murdoch. Tabloids became more admired by the broadsheets, and constantly mentioned. They were competing for the same market, and sometimes for the same editors.”[8] Further to this, in his article The Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian points out the absolute control over the media that is present in the West;

Because each of the dominant firms has adopted a strategy of creating its own closed system of control over every step in the national media process, from creation of content to its delivery, no content – news, entertainment, or other public messages – will reach the public unless a handful of corporate decision makers decide that it will.[9]

Further problems arise in such situations when, on top of ownership domination in dictating and selecting news, advertisers try and influence what is being covered in the press. Bagdikian further notes;

A Marquette University poll of newspaper editors in 1992 found that 93 percent of them said advertisers tried to influence their news, a majority said their own management condoned the pressure, and 37 per cent of the editors polled admitted that they had succumbed. A recent Nielson survey showed that 80 per cent of television news directors said they had broadcast corporate public relations films as news ‘several times a month’. […][10]

Bagdikian further notes that even newer owners of media groups who haven’t before worked with news outlets are surprised that anyone would question them “…ordering their employee journalists to produce news coverage designed to promote their owner’s corporation”[11] and further mentions that “…there are more instances than ever of management contempt and cruelty towards their journalist”[12]. The problem is clear and simple, although news is at times hard to define, and many factors must be careful consider in its selection [location, reference to readership, scale, etc.], when major corporations begin to select news for the basis of increasing profit margins, we run into serious trouble. Even more worrying, as noted by Bagdikian above, is the fact that television news directors had run public relations films as actual news, which goes beyond the realm of advertising and into propaganda, subliminal advertising, which in most countries is illegal. Of course, in many situations involving the far larger corporate owners [E.g. Disney] the news outlet will be promoting advertisements for other non-media subsidiaries of the parent company. Mass media ownership by large conglomerates has become prime real estate on the stock market, notably for its power and influence not for its journalistic integrity. So hot is this property that rival firms battle it out over companies and their prospective audiences, threatening takeovers constantly. Herman and Chomsky note;

The greater profitability of the media in a deregulated environment has also led to an increase in takeovers and takeover threats, with even giants like CBS and Time, Inc., directly attacked or threatened. This has forced the managements of the media giants to incur greater debt and to focus ever more aggressively and unequivocally on profitability, in order to placate owners and reduce the attractiveness of their properties to outsiders.[13]

This leads us with a question in regards to what could be considered the final stop or point in the media ‘chain’, the consumer. With such mass ownership by conglomerate corporations today mainly concerned with advertising revenue we must consider who they are marketing themselves to and what that audience may want or desire. After all, advertising is [usually] very specifically aimed at target demographics and advertisers need assurance that these demographics are seeing the advertisements catered solely to them. This has been achieved through a number of methods; Herman and Chomsky mention the CBS ‘Client Audience Profile’ tool which will “…help advertisers optimize the effectiveness of their network television schedules by evaluating audience segments in proportion to usage levels of advertisers’ products and services.”[14] And more recently there has been development’s in online media by the likes of Google that matches its side bar advertisements to whatever you search for using a system of algorithms. This leads on to the next point that Herman and Chomsky make; “…the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se […]”[15] Hence this further aims to make the media/news/journalism that is ‘selected’ more relevant, not only to draw audiences in [increased non-news entertainment stories, etc], but also to draw in people with money, the poor need not apply. This ultimately means that the target audience or readership are the only ones that will be catered too, if the reader has no spending power or ‘disposable’ income they may find themselves alienated from the world of news media.

Sadly, it has become widely accepted, in academic and media-critical circles at least, that current media groups and news outlets are unavoidably being held ransom by big business interests who favour the bottom line over accurate and relevant reporting. The US struggles with such an inconvenient truth more than most other nations with their media being completely dominated by capitalistic interests which can also spill over into political propaganda as we have seen with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News Network, which is often criticized for its [obvious] right-leaning messages it produces. Beyond the US and into Europe and other large scale media markets we see the same advertising domination although it is possibly not at the scale of the American market. Still, newspapers, reputable and otherwise, are warned against covering stories that may act as criticism or be interpreted negatively by the advertisers who are funding their paper and paying their wages. This is a fact for pretty much all nations, few excluded, advertisers hold a firm grip on whether a news outlet lives or dies. The real crisis arises in what news is being selected and hence covered then packaged for public consummation. It raises the questions about what we are being told but also about what we are not being told. If certain news stories may hurt big businesses they may easily be excluded from the news and people can lose jobs. News can now be defined by a handful of directors who have nothing to do with public interest and everything to do with profit margins.

3 Comments / Jan 12.09 / Uncategorized / by admin

G O D A R D & Cahiers Du Cinema

For Godard Cahiers was a means to explore the world of cinema and explore criticism of the art form, and Cahiers was the perfect space for this exploration, which helped to develop his critical approach to cinema and in a sense helped to develop his style through this criticism, Craig Keller notes;
For Godard, the forums of Cahiers and Arts allowed the fleshing out of a conception of the cinema that was closer to an all-encompassing poetic rumination than the linear Cartesian logic and self-effaced objectivity that the majority of film criticism tends to require. If one acknowledges that cinema = life, then 1 + 2 + 3 = 4, therefore, is it not only natural that in speaking about the cinema, one might also acknowledge that the hodge-podge of ideas informing our own conceptions of the world must also apply to that most plastic of arts which, projected large, can at once both render and arrest? This was Godard’s line of inquiry—one which grants, certainly, the existence of a metaphysics specific to the cinema (e.g., the power of the film-image and the edit, the ritual of spectacle, the temporality/ephemerality of the movie-watching experience), but which also seeks to develop and pursue a higher Truth that is no more immediately apprehensible in our lives and histories than it is in an even-tempered recounting of cinema’s “highs and lows,” that is, an unscrutinized hierarchy of aesthetic mores and moments of supposed cinematic privilege.

2 Comments / Sep 29.08 / Uncategorized / by admin

I N T E R P R E T A T I O N S

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

“2001 is a nonverbal experience; one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness [...]. You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level — but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obliged to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.”

“On the deepest psychological level the film’s plot symbolizes the search for God, and it finally postulates what is little less than a scientific definition of God [...] The film revolves around this metaphysical conception and the realistic hardware and the documentary feelings about everything were necessary in order to undermine your built-in resistance to the poetical concept.”

“man is a bridge between the apes and the Supermen; a laughing stock”

“an emissary for an intelligence beyond ours. A shape of some kind for something that has no shape.”

“the alien Swiss Army Knife”

“Indeed, the choice of date strikes me as one of the most intriguing things about the movie. With its connotations of a new start (…0001) built on past millennia (2000…), it recalls many theories of the cyclical nature of universal history. For me, it has been illuminating in particular to consider this element of the film against the background of William Butler Yeats’ stress on 2,000 year cycles, at the end of which we have a birth and a take-over by a new god. Any student of Yeats, certainly, is not going to pass lightly over the crucial significance of the year 2001, of all possible dates. It seems especially enlightening to compare what Kubrick and Clarke are attempting in 2001 with what Yeats is attempting in such a poem as “Sailing to Byzantium.” ”

“The key to apprehending 2001 is the initial realization that — in this film about what is past, or passing, or to come — when Dave Bowman goes on his odyssey to outer (and inner) space, he is on precisely the same sort of journey that Yeats is making when he sails to Byzantium; only in Bowman’s case it cannot be called a conscious quest as such, since initially he is not aware of the full significance of his “mission.” But we are: we have been clued in by the appearance of the artifice of eternity — the monolith of the opening sections of the film. By the time we see Dave on his unwitting quest for it, we realize that it has awaited him, patiently, three or four million years, a monument of unaging intellect.”

“The ‘mega ritual’ that pierces the veil between human understanding and that which lies beyond. Extreme, advanced intelligence that beckons humans forward to evolve. Although this means the death of our familiar form…”

No Comments / Aug 16.08 / Directors / by admin

In Words . . .

G  O  D  A  R  D

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.

“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!”

I write essays in the form of novels, or novels in the form of essays. I’m still as much of a critic as I ever was during the time of ‘Cahiers du Cinema.’ The only difference is that instead of writing criticism, I now film it.

“This is not a just image, this is just an image.”

No Comments / Aug 12.08 / Directors / by admin

The Death of Reality. [Part One]

Reality’s Demise and The Mundane Rise in TV LAND.

P A R T  O N E

In recent years there has been a sharp rise in the popularity and sheer number of reality television programs, almost to the point of saturation. What started out as a new venture in television entertainment has grown and metamorphosed into a quite different beast. What was once a seasonal and serial instalment on our screens, an event even for some, has now become a regular and permanent fixture on most television channels. In the early days there were several programmes that dominated our screens under this guise of ‘reality’ television, The Real World series in the US was one of the first truly popular ones to emerge that targeted a younger audience of the MTV ilk. But this wouldn’t nearly enjoy the success of the still popular ‘Big Brother’, the series, which is based around the premise of locking a bunch of people in enclosed quarters while filming their every move was a new departure point in the realm of the perverse and voyeuristic. What made these show’s so lovingly embrace the term ‘reality’ is the fact that they propose the premise that they are providing uncut and unfiltered footage of their subjects. Of course before the rise in these ‘reality’ shows there were other programmes that were concerned with the real world. A plethora of documentaries, travelogues, news programmes, and other such programmes concerned with covering the lives of others, the state of the planet, the animal kingdom and whatnot were around long before the arrival of reality TV, but they were not concerned with embracing the term ‘reality’, it wasn’t until much later in the timeline of television that the term ‘reality’ would be lovingly embraced, although the adoption of such a title would be entirely fallacious.

Big Brother was essentially the first big name in the world of reality TV which came about in 1997 under a Dutch production company named John de Mol Produkties, and aired eventually two years later in 1999 on the TV Channel called Veronica TV in the Netherlands. It didn’t take long for the show to become a runaway success and it now airs in almost 70 different countries, each producing their own version of the same premise. The premise itself is simple, select a group of housemates, place them in a house isolated completely from the outside world, have complete camera coverage and press record, then the television executives would sit back and watch ratings and advertising money soar. Of course, Big Brother took its idea from its predecessor The Real World which claims to have taken its inspiration from a PBS series in 1973 called An American Family which covered the life of an American family going through a divorce. As I mentioned previously there were several programmes concerned with ‘real’ issues, but it was the likes of The Real World that gave rise to a series of very unreal television shows. The Real World, like Big Brother was based on placing a bunch of good looking young people in a house together, most of the time with different or clashing personalities, and seeing what would happen over the course of a few months as the house mates tried to learn to live together. Of course there would always be fights, drama and romance, which is exactly what made the show so popular. However, MTV didn’t quite have the imagination, or voyeuristic integrity that their European counterparts would delve into some years later. The main difference with The Real World was that the house mates could leave at any time, although they always stayed in incredibly expensive, fully furnished houses, were given as much food and drink as they wanted, and sometimes asked to work on projects together, it seems as though the participants could merely excommunicate themselves at any given time if they weren’t enjoying themselves. If the series somehow ended up with some drab characters by chance, it could make for a very boring few weeks and make for very low ratings. However, The Real World was incredibly popular worldwide and has ran from 1992, [although the show has only re-emerged on this side of the pond recently], bringing up a whole host of complaints, scandals and allegations in the mean time, for example in December of 2005 Aaron Gillego, a writer for The Advocate news magazine in the USA criticised the show for never casting an Asian male in the 13 years of its existing, while it moved towards casting female Asians as he felt they were considered both exotic and as sex objects by heterosexual men, while the Asian male was a relatively unpopular character in media. Although The Real World wouldn’t quite hit the heights in voyeurism, perversity and sadism that some of its predecessors would it still made a good stab at it and the show seemed to decline in moral standards as the series rolled on. MTV in the 90’s was quite well known for being politically and socially aware, often addressing issues such as racism, homophobia, AIDS, etc. But it was noted by many critics that latter episodes of The Real World merely aimed push peoples buttons on such issues in order to obtain good on screen drama, sacrificing what once was a somewhat open minded look into the lives of some twenty somethings on the cusp of their adult lives to a rather debased and sometimes coarse exposition of a bunch of twenty somethings who didn’t really care about life, or much else for that matter. The critic Benjamin Wallace-Wells noted that The Real World was;

No longer an outlet for twentysomethings to brood about their future careers, the show has become a cyclic three-month on-air party for young adults to mingle in hot tubs and obsess about the present. The locales have changed from creative meccas like New York and London to vacation spots like Las Vegas and Hawaii. MTV has rejiggered the show to require characters to engage in artificial, season-long contests or projects — like putting together a fashion show — which the characters embrace in the way most American teenagers experience spring break: as a big party. [c-ville.com; November 18, 2003]

And LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke noted that; “The show that once seriously delved into hot-button issues like homosexuality, AIDS, racism, religion and abortion was now purposely pushing someone’s buttons to have that person implode on air” [Finke, Nikki; "Savage TV: From freak shows to freak accidents to freakin’ mayhem. Reality goes wild"; laweekly.com; September 6, 2006] The Real Worlds current series is taking place in Key West in the Southern part of North America, however it doesn’t contain the audience draw it once had and rarely seems to get aired outside of the US, its ‘reality’ counterparts The Hills and its predecessor Laguna Beach seeming to pull a much larger crowd.

Part 2: ‘Big Brother is watching’ [coming soon]

No Comments / Aug 12.08 / Essays, Reviews / by admin

Jean Rouch on documentary and fiction.

Q U O T E S

For me, an anthropologist and a film-maker, there exists practically no boundaries between documentaries and films of fiction. The cinema, the art of the double, is already a transition from the real world towards the imaginary one and anthropology, the science of the systems of thought of the other is permanently at the crossroads of the conceptual universe of the other, a kind of acrobatic balancing where losing ones footing is not the least of risks.

- quoted by Sam Rhodie; Geography, photography, the cinema,a lecture given to the Royal Geographic Society (Hong Kong), 9th December, 1997

No Comments / Aug 12.08 / Directors / by admin

Postmodern Ramblings Pt.1

Cixous & Postmodernity [A brief interlude]

Postmodernism tends to draw into question everything involving the current status quo of the hierarchical Western World. Everything from writing to equality can and has become an issue when addressing the idea of a postmodern world. The postmodern argument relating to the ‘self’ or ‘identity’ must hence be a reaction to notions of the ‘self’ or ideas of ‘identity’ that came before it. They must transgress past notions of their former selves in order to subvert ideas that are already predetermined notions in society. The board must be wiped clean and the sum of an idea must be recalculated in order to reach a different definition, a definition which decides the new consequences of a term. Many theorists and writers have looked to address major issues in light of a postmodern world, and it seems that postmodern reconstructions of the ‘self’ and ‘identity’ are paramount to many of these theorists. Héléne Cixous looks closely at such issues, especially surrounding the constructions of gender in classical society and the problem of the passivity assigned to females from the age of old philosophical thought, in her article The Newly Born Woman from 1975.

Cixous talks about the age old oppositions in society; oppositions which force the entrapment of notions regarding everything from gender to the world of art. She notes the dominant male privilege in the hierarchical society we conform too which ‘…makes all conceptual organization subject to man’. Cixous points out women’s position in this structure and the question of sexual difference which is ‘…treated by coupling itself with the opposition activity/passivity’. This active/passive opposition can be reduced to man/woman, ‘…woman is always associated with passivity in philosophy…Either woman is passive or she does not exist’. Cixous also mentions Mallarmé’s dream of the marriage between father and son, death to the father’s mystery of paternity and hence the cancellation of the mother’s primary function, giving birth, not only is this natural function denied but also the threat of castration is eliminated. This is of course a massive problem in society; this reduces the woman’s function in the world as secondary or passive, and denies the birth rite as being a primary function of human kind. The problems with this are as unending as they are obvious. Men are assigned to active roles based on Stone Age presumptions, the idea that women are of a lesser or more passive kind is seemingly a ridiculous thesis, as the antithesis could simply be ‘birth’. ‘Philosophy is constructed on the premise of woman’s abasement. Subordination of the feminine to the masculine order, which gives the appearance of being the condition for the machinery’s functioning.’ [Cixous, 350] Hence the postmodern reader must consult this problem, and look at what may be necessary and what may happen at the fall of Phallocentrism; ‘What would happen to logocentrism, to the great philosophical systems, to the order of the world in general if the rock upon which they founded this church should crumble?’ [Cixous, 350] What would happen would seemingly be similar to what may happen if someone eventually proves that E≠MC², the whole basis on which early philosophical thought is constructed may be thrown into doubt and one may question as to the whereabouts of those female philosophers of the time? This problem is a large one, one we are constantly drawn into but find difficult to escape: ‘One can no more speak of “woman” than of “man” without being trapped within an ideological theatre where the proliferation of representations , images, reflections, myths, identifications, transform, deform, constantly change everyone’s Imaginary and invalidate in advance any conceptualization.’ [Cixous, 350]

So, where does this leave us? Well there seems to be a myriad of problems concerning the reconstruction of such deconstructive thought. Cixous though, proposes a method in which she wished to re-evaluate notions of the self and identity in order to reconfigure the balance of power within the hierarchy, and not so that the roles are merely switched and man becomes the passive one, but so that a certain equality is brought about instead. Cixous proposes this behemoth of a change to be brought about in the liberation of ones sexuality; ‘…imagine a real liberation of sexuality, that is to say, a transformation of each one’s relationship to his or her body (and to the other body), an approximation to the vast, material, organic, sensuous universe that we are. This cannot be accomplished, of course, without political transformations that are equally as radical. (Imagine!)’ [Cixous, 351] Cixous suggests that previous conceptions of what was once ‘feminine’ and once ‘masculine’ would no longer be the same thing. However Cixous proposes some rather radical methods in order to do this, in order to achieve such subversion of the status quo, Cixous proposes that one must contain a ‘certain homosexuality’; ‘…there is no invention possible, whether it be philosophical or poetic, without there being in the inventing subject an abundance of the other, of variety…what I propose here leads directly to a reconsideration of bisexuality’ [Cixous, 351] Cixous then points to the dual representations of the bisexual, the first being a bisexual that is more bi then asexual, one made up of ‘two halves…and not even two wholes’. The second is the one Cixous suggest can subvert properly the active/passive, man/woman binary. The second bisexual ‘…is woman who benefits from and opens up within this bisexuality beside itself, which does not annihilate differences but cheers them on, pursues them, adds more: in a certain way woman is bisexual. But then what is man? Is man afraid of his own femininity, or is he afraid of leaning towards ones own sex? The former would interpret this fear of castration Freud talked so much about, the latter suggests mans inversion, and denial of hierarchical structures. To become Cixous definition of bisexual, a bisexual of two wholes rather then two halves one almost eliminates a binary opposition and suggests that all human functions, regardless of gender are primary. However the problem lies in the males unwillingness to perform such sexual reconstructions, it is only fair though that the person on top of things rarely questions as to what they are doing wrong, but instead praises what they are doing right. While man centres itself around the might of the phallic, the woman, as Cixous suggests ‘…does not perform on herself this regionalization that profits the couple head-sex; that only inscribes itself within frontiers. Her libido is cosmic, just as her unconscious is world wide…she surprises herself at seeing, being, pleasuring in her gift of changeability’ [Cixous, 353-354] Sadly Cixous suggests that this changeability is nonexistent in the male realm.

In some cases one can look beyond simply the idea of man/woman as an exploration of identity, but can also move on to objects of human construction as a point of departure for considering the idea of ‘self’ and ‘identity’. One of the most obvious and most fundamental human constructions is of course language, and many theorists have delved into this topic. In Barbara Johnson’s article Writing she cites France in the 1960’s as a point of literary prominence, especially through the works of Derrida, Barthes and other writers of the time associated specifically with the journal Tel Quel. These authors investigated the paradoxical relationship that existed in the nineteenth century in France between the development of a concept of Literature and the growing sense of a breakdown in the representational capacities of language. Johnson notes Barthes observation and commentary on the works of Flaubert and Mallarmé where the notion of ‘work’ and ‘text’ are not two different objects but are two different ways of viewing the written word. Barthes finds the trouble between the ‘works’ of literature, and the textuality or ‘ruptive force of signification’ of ‘texts’. Johnson reverts back to Saussure’s science of linguistics based not on the diachronic (historic) development of families of language but on the synchronic (systems/structures) properties of language, frozen in time by a certain system. Thus relating back to Saussure’s description of the sign as the unit of the language system, the sign being composed of two parts, a mental image or concept, the ‘signified’ and a phonic or graphic vehicle (signifier). The existence of numerous language indicates that the relation between signifier and signified in any give sign is arbitrary (there is no natural resemblance between sound and idea). Language is neither history nor reality but instead a system of differential relations among signs, their value is generated by neighbouring elements in the system. Language then seems to work in a similar structure or system as Saussure seems to suggest that language is bound to certain systems/structures as are humans bound to the male/female (active/passive) binary. Language seems to be an extension of ourselves, and as Cixous suggests a merging of sexuality in order to transgress oppressive power structures, one must consider how to transgress language in order to free ourselves of the hideous ‘sign’ that seems to lock us to a corrupt structure. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their article A Thousand Plateaus would suggest a complete divorce from the oppressive structure of language that we have become encapsulated in, language, they would suggest, should not be bound to a particular structure, it should have no definite beginning or end, perhaps a truly postmodern language should be some sort of simulacra of images and sounds.

Derrida addressed issues surrounding language in relation to its Western form or construction. He notes closely the patriarchal binary oppositions that exists within the languages construction, for example, Good Vs Evil, Man Vs Woman, Mind Vs Body. In this instance the first word is always considered higher or better and the second word lower. Derrida felt that this too related to speech and writing. Speech was immediate, presence, life and identity where as writing is seen as deferment, absence, death and difference. This is similar the Cixous observations on writing and language in relation to the roles of man/woman. The former contains the higher value (primary) and the latter contains the lower (secondary), this then fits in with the idea of man/woman. In contemporary society it is clear that this binary is ingrained in our minds, as Saussure would point out with his notions of language as ingrained structures, as all sentences are constructed with the man as the former and the woman as the latter (EG The man and the woman). Rarely is this pattern reversed, and if so the sentence seems incorrect. So if one considers the construction of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ one could consider the woman as the ‘unsignified’ or ‘space’. As Johnson points out; ‘Just as Freud rendered dreams and slips of the tongue as readable rather then dismissing them as mere nonsense or error , so Derrida sees signifying force in the gap’s, margins, figures, echoes, digressions, discontinuities, contradictions, and ambiguities of a text. When one writes, one writes more then one thinks. The reader’s task is to read what is written, rather than simply attempt to intuit what might have been meant.’ [Johnson, 346] ‘Derrida felt that speech is primary, writing secondary. Derrida calls this privileging of speech as self-present meaning “logocentrism”’ [Johnson, 343] Towards the end of Johnson’s article she goes on to close with reference to the work of the likes of Alice Jardine, Héléne Cixous and Lucie Irigaray in relation to the correlation between the logocentrism and the vast similarities it bears to phallocentrism, thus suggesting that the female is the ‘space’ or unsignified. Alice Jardine in Gynesis (1985) points out that ‘…since logocentric logic has been coded as “male”, the “other” logics of spacing, ambiguity, figuration, and indirection are coded as “female” and that a critique of logocentrism can enable a critique of “phallocentrism” as well.’ [Johnson, 346] In fact, most feminist writers have become interested in the gender implications of the relations between writing and silence. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote one of the best known and arguably essential articles on women and/in writing in 1979’s Madwoman in the Attic, here Gilbert and Gubar; ‘…show how nineteenth-century women writers struggle for authorship against the silence that has already been prescribed for them by the patriarchal language they must both use and transform’ [Johnson, 347] Language has become extremely important to the postmodern reader when even considering the issues surrounding identity and the self, language, amongst everything else, must be reconsidered and restructured in order to move forward. It seems that everything bearing relevance to the human self or human identity warrants a revision of its structure and values in order to achieve some sort of progression in what, up till now, seems to have been a regression.

No Comments / Aug 11.08 / Essays / by admin

Japan & Violence pt. 2

Mysterious Stranger: Visitor Q and Miike’s Reconstruction of the Japanese Family Unit.

2001’s Visitor Q is by far one of Miike’s most disturbing, and at the same time, one of the most interesting films to date. Shot on DV for the tiny budget of roughly 70,000 US dollars Visitor Q is the story of the Yamazaki family who, in a change from Miike’s usual style, have already reached a point of disintegration by the start of the film and are acting in complete dysfunction. The daughter of the family, Miki has run away to be a prostitute in the big city, where, like the kogyaru, she sells herself to businessmen, including her father, as we see in the opening scene. The son, Takuya, is being badly bullied by fellow classmates at school who terrorize him day and night. As a result of this bullying Takuya takes out his aggression on his mother Keiko, whom he viciously beats and abuses on a regular basis as a reaction to the way he is treated by the bullies. In turn as a result of being bullied by her son Keiko turns to heroin to escape from her family situation. However, the family have little money so in order to pay for her heroin addiction Keiko sells herself as a prostitute. The father of the family, Kiyoshi, is useless and lacks control of the family. A struggling reporter, Kiyoshi recently lost his job after a group of drunken rowdy young men sodomized him with his own microphone in public. So as you can see, from the outset Miike places the viewer with a family in what seems to be a hopeless and incredibly bleak position. Although the situation seems so extreme and out of proportion the characters act normally within their expected household roles in the family, Mes notes that ‘they have conformed in extremis to the roles they are expected to fulfil, those of the provider (father) and the domestic caretaker (mother).’ Even though the family has become out rightly extreme and dysfunctional they still sit down to dinner every day. When Keiko is beaten by her son in front of her husband he doesn’t react, he merely plays the role of ‘provider’ and nothing else. And even after receiving these beatings Keiko still returns to the kitchen with a forced smile on her face to continue preparing food so as to fulfil her role as domestic caretaker. However, because of the father losing his job, he only presents himself as the provider for the family and isn’t actually earning anything. Instead, everyday he leaves to go to work, but in actuality he wanders around, thinking of a story or article he can cover to regain his job or make money on his own. Eventually he realizes that he can cover Takuya’s bullying and turns his camera on his own child in an effort to make money, ironically, to provide for his family. His devotion to work has driven him to new extremes in order to fulfil his role in domestic life. This is one of the only occasions that Kiyoshi interacts with his children and he does this through the excuse of work. Mes points out that this excuse for work creates a barrier ‘between himself and his feelings, the presence of his camera allowing him to keep ‘professional distance’. This way he can interact with his children without having to engage with them on an emotional level. However, it isn’t the first time Kiyoshi has turned his camera on his child when we see him filming his son Takuya being bullied. The start of the film contains an even more disturbing moment when we are positioned from the point of view of Kiyoshi’s camera in a darkened bedroom. As Kiyoshi is asking the young girl about what it’s like to be a prostitute it soon becomes obvious that the girl is in fact his teenage daughter, Miki. After only a few moments of talking between the two, Miki suggests that it might be easier to just show him what it’s like, and the pair end up having sex. Kiyoshi is presented to the audience as a figure of absolute incompetence and inability. He is unable to provide for his family, he is unable to defend himself from young men who sodomize him with his own microphone, he is unable to act as a father towards his own children, and is so emotionally unattached to them that he can film his son being bullied in order to make money and have sex with his daughter who has become a prostitute. Not only this, but he is accused of having a small penis by his own daughter and climaxes in seconds to which she calls him an ‘early bird’, then, in an even more shameful moment to top off the ones that went before, he is unable to pay his daughter the asking price for her services. Both these ‘relations’, of different sorts, with his own kids place Kiyoshi as a failure to his family, an emotionally void man who can only relate to his children from behind a lens, a point that Miike drives home by positioning us from the point of view of Kiyoshi’s camera in the opening of the film.

Kiyoshi aims to have the story of his sons bullying covered as a ‘real life’ news story and tries to suggest the idea to the presenter of the news channel, Asako, who obviously walks away in horror and disgust at such a suggestion. Kiyoshi tries to make the pitch more appealing by changing the story to one about ‘a bullied son and his father’, but of course this is ridiculous, as it implies that there is a relationship between him and his son to begin with, which we are well aware doesn’t exist by this stage in the film. Once again Kiyoshi is merely trying to find away to replace his relationship to his son with work. There is also a parallel between the characters of Kiyoshi and Takuya as both of them will not fight back or defend themselves when faced by bullies. Although Takuya does resort to violence against his mother it is suggested that this is because he does not have a camera to hide behind, like his father, and hence beats a helpless, defenceless middle-aged woman. Mes notes that Takuya is ‘allowed to do this because, as previously noted, his mother and father have lost touch with the emotional side of being parents and focus only on the duties they are expected to fulfil in those roles. Duty is stronger than the need for self-protection.’ This correlation between father and son is also present in the mother-daughter binary as well. Both are distinctly ‘absent’ from the household, one physically and one metaphorically, and of course both are prostitutes who escape the rigours of household life by selling themselves. The daughter sells herself to support her life outside of the family home and the mother sells herself in order to buy heroin which in turn supports her inside the family home.

The turning point in this film comes when Kiyoshi is hit on the head with a rock by the mysterious stranger, Q. Following his attack Q brings Kiyoshi home and ends up spending time around the house, apparently making sure that Kiyoshi will recover properly, although this seems questionable from the outset. It is through the arrival of the character of Q that the family begins to re-establish itself as a functioning unit, albeit a strange one. This point in the film marks an interesting development from the point of view of approaching the film as a social critique. As Miike is allowing the family to find their happiness and reconstruct the family unit through the presence of the mysterious Q he is not chastising them for their actions and hence not defining them to be guilty of anything. In some senses this eliminates the possibility of the text being understood as a social commentary because the element of condemnation is missing. The presence of the mysterious Q is central to the whole film as it is he, and the methods he employs, that is the catalyst to the family unit beginning its process of reconstruction. Q achieves this by making the characters ‘realise what they have repressed and to show them the ecstasy that lies within the acknowledgment and the rediscovery of their true emotions’. Mes draws parallels with Visitor Q and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Thoerem as he claims that the parallel of both characters lies in confronting the characters with ecstasy, and hence the Dyonisian nature of both interlopers. Q goes about helping to re-establish the family dynamic through a series of moments of intervention. Earlier in the film Keiko got the scent of her daughter off her husband when she went to engage in sexual intercourse. This moment acts as a trigger for Keiko’s maternal instinct to kick in, as the idea of her husband engaging in sexual acts with her daughter threatens her position as both a mother and wife and is distinctly damaging to the definition of the family unit. When Keiko returns home from buying her heroin in a near by playground she finds pieces of Miki’s puzzle’s on the ground, forming a trail down to where her bedroom used to be. In a very important moment in the film, Q, after making the trail, is sitting on the bed, as Mes notes;
In the foreground is the picture of Miki, with the visitor right behind it in the background. Sitting on the bed in front of the window, he is only silhouette, an outline instead of individual. The combination with Miki’s picture and the mother’s re-awakening maternal instincts makes his faceless shape a surrogate for the missing child.
What follows is one of the most startling, and at the same time important scenes of the film. When Keiko is ‘re-awakened’ as a mother following the incident with her husband this flicks her maternal switch, if you will. When she then gets home to be reminded even further of her estranged daughter she becomes even more maternal. The visitor then makes a move to completely reconstruct her maternal emotions by hugging her, as a child would, then by removing her top and holding her breasts. The scene is not sexual in the slightest, to be considered so would be to undermine the importance of the moment. At first Keiko is slightly taken back by the visitor’s actions, but soon she realises that the feelings are good, they are maternal, milk starts to come out of her nipples and squirt around the room announcing her return to motherhood. Finally Keiko’s milk shoots right across the room and falls on a picture of Miki which symbolises the mother’s rediscovery of her maternal instincts. If the arrival of the visitor can be seen as the first turning point in the film, then this can be distinctly seen as the second. Following her lactation the mother’s disposition towards the family at dinner that evening is quite different. We can see that she is not merely acting out of necessity, but is instead acting out of love. Even when Takuya throws a cup of boiling tea at her she merely returns the gesture by throwing a knife at his head, which narrowly misses. In a sense Keiko has stepped out of the sort of ‘zombie’ mother role she was leading.

Following this moment comes the beginning of the point of reconstruction for the father. Takuya’s bullying classmates attack the house by bombarding it with fireworks. Kiyoshi begins to film the attack. Importantly, as he narrates the bullying, he says ‘how should I feel’? This marks the first point of the father engaging with the idea that this should bother him, or that it should, at least, make him feel some way towards his son being bullied. The visitor then helps Kiyoshi by assisting him with his documentary about Takuya being bullied. Again it becomes obvious that slowly Kiyoshi is beginning to ask himself to question his emotions and how he should feel about his son. He again enlists the help of his ex colleague Asako, but again she becomes disgusted and walks away. However this time Kiyoshi follows her shouting ‘Is it because I come too early?!’. This marks a point for the father to try and resolve his previous inabilities as a man that he was pointed out by his daughter. Not only does this moment act as a point of the father trying to re-establish his manly hood, It is also the first time since the incident with his daughter that he engages with what she has said to him. What follows is the rape and murder of Asako as Kiyoshi tries to prove himself as both powerful and as a man. Kiyoshi brings Asako’s corpse home to his garden greenhouse and begins to figure out methods of disposing of the corpse, meanwhile, at the consent of Kiyoshi, the visitor films the whole thing. Then, while drawing lines where he will cut the corpse, Kiyoshi begins to become aroused by the sight of Asako’s naked corpse. Typically of Miike he drives to the extreme and the scenes that follow are as disturbing as they are important to the unfolding of the script. Mes notes that this is the moment that Kiyoshi realises he has been repressing the desire to have sex since his children were born. On many levels this can explain the disintegration of the family unit, which is never clearly stated in the film. If the father perhaps was repressing his desire to consummate his love for his wife for some time it could easily lead to all sorts of problems and hence the current state of the family. Mes further notes that;
The choice to make him rediscover a desire for (which he will then naturally act upon because realisation equals liberation) instead of a random other emotion is therefore anything but exploitative…It also delivers the motivation to for his decision earlier in the film to have sex with his daughter, which was acting on his own repressed desires without realising he had those desires. Now that he is in touch with his desire, he is freed of that guilt. As a result he strips off and with great enthusiasm has sex with Asako’s dead body.
Although this realisation aids in the fathers reformation, the subsequent scenes of his necrophilia is most certainly a case of after taking two steps forward he has taken about ten steps back. The fact that he rapes a corpse merely adds to his failure as a respectful human being. Not only this, but in typically over-the-top Miike fashion, the father things that Asako is becoming wet as a result of his penetration. This makes him feel proud in his male sexuality until he realises that Asako is not wet, but is excreting faeces involuntarily as a result of the body’s decomposition. Not only this, but rigor mortis begins to set in at great pace while Kiyoshi is inside her and he becomes stuck. Kiyoshi runs to the bath to sit in warm water hoping that he will loosen Asako’s corpse. In what is a truly low, and disgusting moment for Kiyoshi it is also the point of return, the pendulum has swung as far as it can and begins to turn back. Keiko discovers him in the bath, and in a moment of genius, she uses her remaining heroin to inject Kiyoshi’s member which instantly reduces to its original, small size. What follows in the final moments of the film is the reunification of the whole family unit. Both Kiyoshi and Keiko team together to attack Takuya’s bullies and work out a method of disposing all the bodies. This helps Takuya to return to ‘normality’ as he can now rely on his parents for the protection that they have neglected to give him over the past few years. Takuya remarks to the visitor that he thought he was coming to destroy the family, but now that he realises he wasn’t, he thanks him and promises to devote himself to his studies. At this the visitor leaves the house, on the street he bumps into Miki who offers him her services. The visitor knocks Miki over the head with a rock, although we don’t see it, and next thing we know she is walking, bruised, back into the household, much more subdued then before. As she walks to the back of the house she sees Kiyoshi in the greenhouse sucking on one of her mothers lactating breast. Slowly Miki approaches and joins in. Takuya, who was previously lying on the floor in a pool of his mother’s milk, is absent and we are unsure as to his location now.

In the final scene the mother is distinctly placed as the head of the household. Whereas before she was simply acting in the role of domestic servant, she has now become the head of the household as her milk both provides food for the family and establishes her as a mother. Mes notes that Kiyoshi realises that his ‘wife is stronger than him and he willingly reverts to the position of a child in her presence. He has recognised and accepted his failures and is able to live with them. Mes notes that the absence of the son in the final scene as interesting, as though he has reached a point in his life for departure, now that he has regained a sense of balance within his household life he can move on to bigger and better things. Mes notes that; ‘when the daughter leaves the house, she’s a runaway. When the son does the same thing, he’s a man – an odd, off balance conclusion given the films emphasis on failed masculinity.’ This however is not a definite conclusion to the location of Takuya. It is not necessarily so that he has left the house to be a ‘solitary man’ as Mes puts it. After all, Takuya did realise, and feed, on his mother’s lactation and hence knows the familial order is restored to the homestead. After promising visitor Q that he will now devote his time to his studies for university I find that a more likely conclusion as to where Takuya has disappeared to. I’m not suggesting that Mes’ idea surrounding his location is in any way wrong, but I do feel, like Miike, it is slightly extreme.
Visitor Q is by far the most disturbing of Miike’s work that I, and I’m sure most, have witnessed. It is not filled with over the top gory affects, or the sound of piano wire cutting through bone. Instead its low budget look and feel shocks in ways more disturbing then the somewhat illusionist nature of his other work. Many people who saw the film at festivals when it was released in 2001 walked out of the cinema in disgust, in fact, it has one of the highest walk out rates for any film. But to walk out, and turn your back on the film, does not allow for the important social and critical points that Miike has encoded into the text. To simply write off this film as sick and degenerate is to miss the point Miike is trying to make. Mes notes this, and that Miike, although constantly playing with the extreme, uses a series of styles to help limit the audience to merely spectators, and not ‘accomplices’. Mes notes that Miike achieves this through the use of digital video, framing (the graphic action may take place in the side of frame, just out of shot, or be obscured by something), Characters looking and speaking directly into the camera and finally by the use of title cards. Finally Mes notes that;
Miike does not try to dictate an opinion or emotion to the viewer. Despite the fact that the viewer is close, he remains objective and is given the freedom to form his or her own opinion. The voyeuristic nature of the camera placements doesn’t change this. It’s a paradox, but the subjective camera can be objectively employed. Visitor Q shows how.

Although Mes claims that Visitor Q cannot be seen as a social commentary, it must still be considered in some comparison to the state of the Japanese family in contemporary Japan. In a country that has come from being heavily based around the family unit and certain preconceived notions of how the family unit functions to the contemporary Japan where practices like Enjo Kasai [teenage prostitution that although is not legal is still put up with in Japan, middle aged men take teenage girls on 'dates' in exchange the girls are paid well so they can afford fashionable clothes etc] threaten the family unit merely in the aim of financial gain or to service a new economy. The Yamazaki’s are a family in the full swing of the new Japan based around the economy boom, or as Tomiko Yoda notes as; ‘the concept of maternal society beyond the 1960’s in relation to the reconfiguration of Japanese society into what some have called the ‘‘enterprise society’’ (kigyō shakai)’. The son struggles to be a good student, the daughter cannot live at home, the mother has been ripped from her place as ‘mother’ of the household, and the father cannot supply for his family because he is so driven to work that it leads to incompetence. In a reference I made from [Ishi] Yoda earlier;

The paternalists denounce postwar Japanese history as a process in which the presence of the father and his authority have diminished in family life. At the same time, they claim that the paternal principle—law, discipline, independence, objectivity, the privileging of public virtues over personal desire and so on—has been greatly eclipsed in society at large.

This quote fits well with the household in Visitor Q. Miike’s family are the vision of post-war Japan new economy dysfunction. They are unable to operate as a family and hence fall outside the boundaries of ‘functioning’ Japanese society. As a result the father and son cannot operate in their working environment as both reporter and student. And the mother and daughter, in turn, choose to bow down to the capitalist driven society and sell the only thing they truly possess, themselves. In terms of the films ending and the significant absence of Takuya we can perhaps consider a point made by Yoda;

Etō’s proposal for Japanese (men) is to ‘‘grow up’’: mature into a true individual by giving up the nostalgia for the mother and remember/recognize the lack of the father. Etō suggests that the destruction of the maternal in postwar Japan can be a catalyst for the son’s true maturation if it compels him to take the role of the father upon himself, ruling and protecting his own domain.

Although Takuya does not rise up and rule and ‘protect his own domain’, he does reach a point of maturation his attention and tension towards his mother is removed and he remembers/recognizes the presence of his father again, who, at one stage, was merely a man who happened to live in his house, and not the paternal authority figure he should be. Does this then explain the lack of Takuya in the final scene? The Yamazaki’s are a family who struggle to adapt to live in the new Japan, who struggle to live up to what society expects of them. It is with the arrival of a mysterious stranger that order is restored to the family unit and they become ‘functioning’ again as members of ‘normal’ society. Although the ending does not tell us much about the family afterwards, Miike asks us to presume that now that order has been restored to the unit they can move back into their social roles. The father will regain his job, the mother will step back into the role of household ruler, the daughter will return to her studies, and the absent Takuya will, perhaps, look to build a family of his own, or at least go to university where he can learn how to do so. Miike takes us from destruction to reconstruction within notions of what a contemporary Japanese family should be, however, he does not suggest that this is the correct way for a family to operate, he merely points out that this is what a post-war family is. As Yoda finally notes;

The spectre of infantile capitalism that has completely dispensed with the adult presence may have signalled the retreat of the familial and developmental metaphor (traditional forms of sociobiological reproduction) as a figure of capitalist organization of production and accumulation. The capitalist system today is increasingly characterized by its disassociation from enclosed territorial boundaries, disengaged from the socius as the source of labor power.

With their new found ‘normality’ brought on to them by the mysterious visitor Q, Miike allows the Yamazaki’s to return to the world that Yoda mentions, and that they have shed blood, sweat and tears to become. The final moment of suckling on the mother breasts suggests infantile bliss at the re-admittance to the nurturing arms of the capitalist beast.

No Comments / Aug 11.08 / Directors, Essays / by admin

Diasporic representations in British Social realist cinema.

Diasporic representations in British Social realist cinema.

The intention of realism is to reproduce the ‘real’ in the guise of ‘reality’. The aim of social realist cinema is to bring to the forefront social issues and problems that affect the common working household. Mainly situated in working class areas, social realist cinema emphasises the poverty and struggle of the lower classes through a number of different facets. British social realism came about for a number of reasons. Historically it came about following a wave of very successful British films such as; Gregory’s Girl, The knack, and Blow up to name a few. The government recognised this boom in the film industry, but felt concerned that the representations of Britain in these films were too retro and were concerned that Britain was becoming associated with images of the past. So new films were produced over the years including; Mansfield Park, Wings of the Dove, Monarch of the Glen: wish you were here etc. This was a different kind of representation of Britain on film, not wholly in context but also in style. However, this was also problematic as Andrew Higson pointed out in 1993:

“[the] key heritage films in the national cinema of the 1980’s are fascinated by the private property, the culture and values of a particular class. By reproducing these trappings outside of a materialist historical context, they transform the heritage of the upper classes into the national heritage…The national past emerges as not only aristocratic, but male-centred, while the nation itself is reduced to the soft pastoral landscape of southern England, untainted by the modernity of urbanisation or industrialisation…”
(Higson in Friedman 1993: 114)

This idealisation of the British landscape was (and is) obviously quite problematic, as it only reflects the private interests of a certain class of people, and therefore was not representative of the British people as a whole. Instead it took the views of a certain group’s idealised England, and exported it as a tour guide, ignoring the likes of the troubled industrial north of England, and not to mention the rest of Britain. This is not to say that this period of film was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak, instead I am merely highlighting the sort of idealised view of Britain that was lingering around, and placing a sort of scene to expose as to why a need for social realist film is so important. The 50’s and 60’s saw a type of ‘kitchen sink’ drama, which were created to address troubling social issues that plagued the general working class society, not merely the imaginary (or not) scene or town in which it was set. But as mentioned in Jonathan Wright’s article in relation to Samantha Lay’s book; ‘British social realism: from Documentary to Brit-grit’:
“…the problems overwhelm the text and become so tightly focused on them and their resolution that class fades into the background.”

However, the movement continued and the introduction (or at least heavier emphasis) on leftist politics in cinema challenged the likes of sexual conservatism, and post-Empire racism. These films and television programmes were distinctly revolutionary. They were intended to be gritty, raw, anti-government, and a long way from the idealised Britain that was enforced throughout the other media. However, this social realist cinema isn’t entirely bullet proof itself. It was and somewhat is deeply problematic in its construction. As Lay mentioned, the problems at time become to in focus, while the most important figures, the people, slip into the background and become blurred. Not only this but these representations are not entirely truthful as they are constructed, and the solutions to these social issues that are offered (if any) are sometimes questionable as one could wonder how appropriate and “proper” these solutions are. However, the important factor of a lot of these films and programmes it that they sometimes offer no solution what so ever, as If asking the government a question they want answered. Also, it has become problematic and a question of debate as to whether it is British social realism, or in fact English social realism, the centralisation of the topic “inherently problematises the ways in which producers, critics, and audiences use nationally centered narratives to define the cultural politics of film.”

These issues aside, British social realism is very important when acting as a platform for the problems that are plaguing British society. One major problem in Britain in the past has been the issue of racism and race wars that go on in the country, most notably in the midlands, the north, and London. Racism has become an absolutely huge issue and has been addressed in relation to British society on countless occasions. One very interesting film in relation to racism and Diasporic representation in Britain is “East is East”. Directed by an Irishman, Damien O’ Donnell, and set near Manchester in the mid-north of England, ‘East is East’ addresses the problems of a Pakistani family and their struggle to identify with their past, religion, culture and heritage while living in the West. ‘East is East’ was pitched as a comedy by the marketing people in order to boost sales. Sadly this understated the importance of the social commentary of this film, and a lot of people wrote the film off as a cheap laugh. This was not the case at all. ‘East is East’ painted a picture of a much divided British society. A post colonial society that was left wondering who it was and where its priorities should lie in relation to identity. This caused vast problems and called on an almost constant revaluation of what it is to be British, who could be British and why. Any ideas of Britishness now had to embody the idea of diverse races, classes, and sexualities. This was a new hybridized view of the British classes that were now a whole palette of different colours and preferences. It was exactly this that O’Donnell’s film focuses on; the setting is a lower class family living in the middle of industrial England. There is a distinct struggle between the family in terms of representation. The parents are very much involved in their culture and heritage, while the younger kids are rapped up in new, modernist views, and identify themselves with popular British culture, rather then their backwards considered heritage. Not only this, but the film represents the trials of young people living in a highly racialised society. The films intent is perfect clear. The family is constructed in order to show these huge differences in society and the problems they face. The father, George Khan, is married to an English woman. The film is set around the time of the movement in counter culture in England, and Khans character feels as though he is being scrutinized because of his marriage to a white woman, and will become an outcast from his Pakistani heritage. In order to make himself feel like a good Pakistani, George fervently tries to keep his mixed race children well in touch with their Pakistani background, however he merely drives them away and behind his back they do everything he tells them not to.

Khan’s children represent the attitudes of a new England around this period. They have no interest in their culture. One of his sons runs off to London after his father arranges for him to be married because he is gay and cant live with the idea of being wed to a woman he shares no desire for. Another one of his daughters passes herself off as English and prowls around the local discos under a false, anglicized name, his other daughter prefers soccer to sari’s and his younger son will never get out of his parka, a prominent symbol for mod culture. It is his children’s complete defiance of his wishes to remain good Muslim’s that acts as a social commentary on England at the time and attitudes towards Englishness and what it is to be English. Khan’s children are a crossing point of Diasporic representation. Instead of being concerned with their heritage, they are the post colonial nouveau British. A new breed of British youth, youth that can no longer be defined simply by skin texture, but by attitudes. Khan is the past, the kids are the future, and it is in Khan that we are presented with a sort of post colonial nausea, a somewhat doomed attempted recovery of culture.

No Comments / Aug 11.08 / Essays / by admin