Time After Time: Successorship from Modernity to Postmodernity to the Beyond
“A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair (1. Machiavelli),” wrote Niccolo Machiavelli. The same could be said about successorship of artistic modes or eras to the way artists relate to their predecessors and their works. Through memory (an understanding of place in time after established precedents) and gender relations (codes in which people are able to relate to each other) we are able to see the deterioration of artistic inheritance from modernism to postmodernism, and to the point of now; this is visible when looking from the films Open City (1945), to Videodrome (1983), to Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000).
As discussed in class, modernism is characterized by a great unevenness, and the modern film, Open City, certainly presents us with a world of the haves and have-nots. On one hand, we are given the foreign governing Fascists who wine and dine with music in a lavish parlor; and on the other hand we have the native Italian resistors who live by breadlines and walk amid bombed out infrastructures. Memory comes to play here, when Pina and Don Pietro walk by a ruined building and Pina reflects upon it saying, “Do Americans exist?” She imagines a premodern world, before the war, when life would have been better. And, her questioning of the current crisis presupposes that the outside world of the past still has inherent value and applicability to the modern world.
The memory of an independent Italy, free from the Germans, drives the resistance movement. They employ premodern techniques, such as passed handwritten notes and whistling as means of communication to undermine the Germans and their organized forms of radio and photographs. The Catholic Church even acts as a premodern headquarters, where messages filter through; with centuries of tradition and a still-intact infrastructure, the Church provides the freedom fighters an ideal way to communicate with one another and subvert the new status quo.
Furthermore, although luck cannot be learned, it is a mode by which the Italian resistance operates. It is also a premodern notion or means, equating to the ancient Greek dues-ex-machina, or even magic, where something outside and above with power will intervene. One example at the beginning of the movie comes when the resistance is able to feed their hungry after a bakery so happens to be mobbed; Pina provides them with bread she had illegally obtained. Later, a more prominent example of living by luck occurs when Francesco escapes the Gestapo because of the child that gives him a scarf; it delays him from turning a corner into the captors and allows him to flee.
However, memory and adherence to the premodern are not only what drive the way in which the resistance fights and the way they relate to the Germans; gender relations also dominate the picture. As Tasmin Spargo notes in Foucault and Queer Theory, “The traditional, mutually dependent but antagonistic, male/female opposition, for example has acquired its hierarchical structure through association with others: rational/emotional, strong/weak, active/passive and so on. Heterosexual/homosexual is similarly caught up in a network of supporting oppositions” (2. Spargo 46). Likewise, we are able to identify the oppositions of a masculine Italian resistance, where nearly everyone involved is male (with the exception of Pina, who is shot down midway through the film), and the feminized German oppressors that are composed of Ingrid, Marina, and the effeminate Major Bergmann. This juxtaposition indicates where power truly lies within the situation, with the male-driven resistance.
Sexuality, too, thickens the plot, where Fascists are depicted as queer entities, outside the resistance’s heterosexual norms. While Pina and Manfredi are due to marry (reenacting heteronormative standards), Ingrid and Marina behave in a lesbian fashion, touching and gifting, giving signals of queer overtones. Also, in sheer numbers, the Germans are far outnumbered by the Italians, which also adds to their othering here. “Declaring oneself to be out of the closet of concealed sexuality may be personally liberating, but it entails acknowledging the centrality of those who are still in the closet. It is impossible, in short, to move entirely outside heterosexuality,” Spargo writes (Spargo 47); and so, the story becomes not only one about warring over nationality, but sex and sexual identity. And, because the Germans are identified as queer/homosexual, we must note that they are not able to fully move outside of the physical space of Rome in this film; they must, in a way, play by the heteronormal/native rules that the resistance has in place, albeit unorganized and with guerilla tactics.
What’s more, Spargo writes, “As Foucault’s work and the experience of some affirmative homosexual politics has shown, demanding the recognition of a distinct homosexual identity inevitably reaffirms a binary and unequal opposition between homosexual and heterosexual,” (Spargo 47). Hence, even if the Germans seemingly overpower the resistance on a weaponry level, they are still weak when compared to the Italians on a moral level (as the Catholic Church and communists alike support the resistance). Thus, we are able to foretell the fall of the Fascists here, as there is a great inequality in power at play.
This failure of the Fascists is recognized at the end of the film, not only as Marina faints upon sight of her tortured former boyfriend, but as the oppressors are unable to obtain testimonies out of Don Pietro and Manfredi. Despite the fact that they destroy these men, the town’s children (all boys) witness Don Pietro’s execution; and so the children have a first-hand account of the experience. Though some of the lesson goes unspoken, much has been taught to the children; they had acted out of communication with their parents when they bombed the Germans, and then they witnessed the consequences by execution. Don Pietro and Manfredi then are martyred for their causes and suffer for the children, bequeathing an inheritance of code and creed unto them.
Therefore, by the end of Open City, we see that memory has driven the resistance and will continue to drive the next generation of resistance by their witnessing of it. Additionally, we see that this is performed in a patriarchal fashion, from Father (even as Priest) to sons. This modernity salvages premodern notions from the wreckage of an industrialized, war-torn world and supposedly believes the next generation of men will be able to reconstruct it.
Yet, when we enter postmodernity, such as in the film Videodrome, we find the unraveling of a post-war, Baby-Boomer generation, a generation going through midlife crisis as it were, where memory no longer serves as it once did, and identity is lost. We can recognize the lapse in memory through the main character, Max Ren, who from the beginning of the movie is already under the influence of hallucinations after watching “Videodrome.” Max’s love interest, Nicki Brand, reveals this to him near the film’s conclusion, saying that she has been a figment of his imagination and that she’s long been dead before he even watched the show. His visions of her are merely the beginning of a faulty memory (as understood in place and time within a space) though; Max’s world quickly takes on shorter and shorter memory spans.
His memory slips and time and space become irrelevant as Max continues to watch “Videodrome”. The television recording and Brian O’Blivion respond to him as he watches, something television shows are not programmed to do. O’Blivion speaks directly to Max, saying, “The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.” This realization, or surrealization, opens Max up to the point that his body, his stomach opens up and he loses his gun in it. After the loss of the gun, the film cuts in such a way that his stomach is closed again, and we are not sure whether or not what we had just witnessed actually transpired; time elapsed in such a way that we are not sure of the past.
Space, too, becomes questionable later when we (and Max) go from his watching “Videodrome” and Brian O’Blivion, to his visiting the back of Barry Convex’s eyeware store, to the hallucination of being in “Videodrome” and whipping TV Nicki, then TV Masha, and finally back to his apartment with a murdered Masha in his bed, who then is not in his bed when Harlan comes over. Time, space, and reality have completely collapsed at this point, and we the viewers no longer recognize what is real and what is not. While modernism and Open City performed in a realist/neo-realist manner, postmodernity and Videodrome have become surreal. O’Blivion’s monologue is realized, and reality is less real than fiction.
Once memory has escaped Max, paranoia takes over. Tasmin Spargo writes, “For many people, the experience of the AIDS epidemic shattered their understandings of knowledge and identity, revealing both to be inextricably bound up with the operations of power,” (Spargo 36). This postmodern notion ties directly in with Videodrome, as it was released in 1983 at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. And, as Max’s memory shortens in such a way that time and space have collapsed, he begins to get paranoid. He is a fragmented and shattered individual who is bound up with the operations of greater powers, like Barry Convex and his NATO conspirators. Max is convinced by Barry Convex to work for them and assassinate Bianca O’Blivion, Brian O’Blivion’s successor. However, Bianca is able to turn Max against Barry, and so max becomes an extension of both sides in this great battle between Convex’s international/corporate conspiracy of eradication and O’Blivion’s religious philosophy of “the new flesh.”
This paranoia and conspiracy helps to make sense of Max’s place in the situation of a postmodern world. It aids in soothing the trouble of blurred lines between reality and fantasy, when objects begin to act upon Max. It gives him a sort of power in a seemingly powerless situation, when videotapes can be inserted into him, and greater outside forces are controlling him. The belief or knowledge of “the new flesh” that the O’Blivions offer Max make him capable of fighting back against Convex. “The new flesh,” or “Videodrome,” serve as a memory that Brian O’Blivion extends via his daughter, and acts as a sort of legacy bequeathed to subvert the status quo.
Further, the codified genders of the movie help to deconstruct Max and his world. Spargo writes,
“A crucial feature of Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and of related poststructuralist and queer readings is that the individual is not viewed as an autonomous Cartesian subject (‘I think therefore I am’) who has an innate or essential identity that exists independently of language. What we commonly or casually think of as the ‘self’ is, instead regarded as a socially constructed fiction (albeit a serious one), as a product of language and of specific discourse linked to divisions of knowledge” (Spargo 50).
Likewise, the dissolving of an individual gender/sexual identity by outside social forces is represented in Videodrome through Max. Upon watching “Videodrome,” Max “grows” a hole in his stomach that is remarkably like a vagina; he fools around with it, even inserting his phallic gun. After what appears to be sexual pleasure and masturbation with his stomach-vagina, Brian O’Blivion remarks from the television, “Max, I’m so glad you came.” Hence, Max is re-gendered through “Videodrome” into something female, and experiences sexuality in a new way.
Barry Convex modifies this re-gendering though, and Max, as female, is acted upon by male intervention of inserted videotapes. This comes at a point when inanimate objects have become interactive subjects. The pulsating videotapes and throbbing TV are highly sexualized, confusing Max as to what may appropriately be considered a sexual object. Here, everything and anything may be interacted with sexually, guns, TVs, men, and women.
Moreover, Max’s gender and sexuality are muddied still when Bianca O’Blivion modifies him once more with another cassette inserted into his vaginal stomach. Spargo writes,
“In the same way that gender appears to be a founding component of my identity, so my sexual preferences and desires seem, and feel, crucial to my sense of who I am. In the late 20th century, I am likely to think of my sexuality in terms of a range of possible identities – straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual – which are themselves bound up with my gender classification,” (Spargo 51).
With this in mind, Max’s gender classification is non-existant, and so too is his sexual identity, particularly after Bianca empowers his vaginal stomach. We witness this empowerment the next time Harlan attempts at forcing his cassette into Max; Max is able to ward off Harlan with his vaginal stomach. He even acts violently upon Harlan’s arm, tearing it off in a manner that conjures up the concept of ‘vagina dentate.’ The vaginal stomach then provides Max with his gun again, reconstructed as a part of his phallic arm, and he then assassinates Barry Convex. Once a heterosexual male, by the end of the movie, Max has been transformed by culture and society into a hermaphroditic, omnisexual being. He is nearly non-gendered and all-gendered at the same time as he is asexual and capable of having sex with everything, defying even late 20th century classifications of gender and sexual orientation.
T.S. Eliot states in Reflections on Vers Libre, “as for vers libre, we conclude that it is not defined by absence of pattern or absence of rhyme, for other verse is without these; that it is not defined by non-existence of metre, since even the worst verse can be scanned; and we conclude that the division between Conservative Verse and vers libre does not exist, for there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos,” (3. Eliot). This was a reflection upon the modern art of Eliot’s time, but what could appropriately be tied to what has become of postmodernity and Max in Videodrome. Where modernity was capable of a central point of view and an authentic experience, such as the boys witnessing the death of their elders, postmodernity is incapable of originality and looses distinction.
Max does not have an authentic inheritance of any kind; rather, he inherits Brian O’Blivion’s “Videodrome” vicariously through an organization that wishes to corrupt him. Harlan admits near the end of the film, “North America's getting soft, Patron, and the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're going to have to be pure and direct and strong, if we're going to survive them. Now, you and this cesspool you call a television station and your people who wallow around in it, your viewers who watch you do it, they're rotting us away from the inside. We intend to stop that rot.” Even though Max thwarts Harlan and Convex’s plan, he is still stopped at the end of the film by O’Blivion’s faulty, self-destructive memory and legacy, “Videodrome.”
This destruction of the individual is seen at the end of Videodrome, when Max annihilates himself, as instructed through the lens of television. The television, as an entity more real than reality, reveals Max’s suicide to us at first. Repetitive sequencing of the film in this final scene confuses us, the audience; and once Max, as an individual, is gone, there is nobody left to succeed his legacy. It is perhaps that we, the audience, are to succeed him, but this would only add another degree to the vicarious, second-handed nature of living that is available in postmodernity. The unauthenticated individual and removal of formal memory, of gender and sexual lines altogether leaves us confused, and as Eliot alludes to in his Reflections on Vers Libre, in a state of chaos.
And so, out of the chaos, we have started to develop into a new era beyond postmodernism. As discussed in class, postmodernism is the point at which modernism is complete. Fredric Jameson characterized it by pastiche and schizophrenia/paranoia in Postmodernism and Consumer Society (4. Jameson 113-118). All this can be viewed in the 1983 film of Videodrome, but by the turn of the century we have a new generation that inherits a differing memory and contemporary way of relating through gender; such a shift in modes can be seen in the 1999 film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
The memory in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai can best be described as highly intertextualized and self-generating. Intertextualization plays into the film as soon as the opening credits have stopped rolling, when we are taken to Ghost Dog’s dilapidated/postmodern rooftop shack and he is reading Hagukare: The Book of the Samurai. Here, the postmodern and the premodern coexist; images of ancient relics are shown next to electric lamps and faucets. We even see these differing modes work into Ghost Dog’s means of communication, when he uses premodern carrier pigeons and futuristic (post-postmodern) gadgets to access gates and start cars. Additionally, forms of entertainment take on this intertextualization, as Louise Vargo, the mafia boss’s daughter, reads the ancient Japanese book, Rashomon, next to the mobster who is watching Betty Boop on TV.
Intertextualization is taken further when genres within the film hearken us back to other types of movies. Ghost Dog appears to live in an inner-city ghetto, reminding us of gangster-thug films; but because of his assimilation to the way of the samurai, we also have ancient samurai and ninja films functioning simultaneously. Moreover, the mafia that hunts Ghost Dog calls to mind mob films from the middle of the 20th Century. We even have individual scenes, such as the showdown between Ghost Dog and his maker, Louie, that are reminiscent of old westerns. The inclusion of cartoon clips adds to intertextuality of genres, where animated pictures exist in the same movie as “real-life” film. Hence, this movie reminds us of many other movies in its crossing of genres.
Despite the highly intertextualized nature of the movie however, where memory recalls all of these different genres and modes of communication, the memory present is self-generating. By combining the various objects, modes and genres, something new is created. Likewise, the story of Ghost Dog and Louie ends in their passing onto a new generation. Ghost Dog’s experiences and knowledge are lost, but the source by which they came, Hagukare: The Book of the Samurai, is given to the little girl.
Additionally, once Ghost Dog dies after nearly killing off all of the mafia, Louie presents Louise with her copy of Rashomon, and she is crowned as the new successor of the mafia. Her detachment from the mafia throughout the film, taking into account that they originally wanted to detach from her and have her shipped away, is implicit of her ignorance on how to organize or run the group; it is something that she will need to learn for herself, similar to how the little girl will need to learn the way of samurai on her own. Thus, memory is self-generating, as much as it is highly intertextualized in this period beyond postmodernity; and so we are in a constant flux of ebb and flow, remembering the past and recreating new memories, or living in the present. As the subtitle appears on screen from Hagukare, “A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there is nothing left to do, and nothing else to pursue.”
Gender relations also take on a new form in this era past postmodernism and influences the way in which we approach the world. For instance, the main character, Ghost Dog, is a being that is although seemingly heterosexual male, asexual in practice. He relates on the same level with male counterparts (his Haitian best-friend) as he does with his protégé, a little girl. There is a degree of separation between these friendships, as he and the Haitian do not speak the same language, and the little girl is a generation younger than he is; but their relationships are not any less authentic because of that. And, when Ghost Dog encounters Louise, a woman in full bloom, a woman whom he connects with on interest in ancient Japan, he distances himself from her; she becomes an irrelevance to him, someone whom he does not kill upon seizure of the mafia’s headquarters at the movie’s end, but whom he looks beyond after recognition. Clearly, Ghost Dog is not a sexually driven character.
Furthermore, the strongest relations he seems to have are with animals. These relationships are completely void of any sexual influence, but Ghost Dog best gets along with other species, such as his pigeons. He also encounters a dog in the park that is intensely interested in him and shows up again near the movie’s end. Additionally, Ghost Dog relates to the fallen bear in the countryside, saying “You know, in ancient cultures, bears were considered equal with men.” Ghost Dog relates time and time again with animals, considering them equals and making gender and sexuality irrelevant despite always being divided as different species.
The one place we do find sexuality in practice during the course of the film is when Louise and her lover partake in postcoital entertainment. She reads her book, and he watches cartoons on TV. The detachment between the two is visible not only in space, with each sitting across the room from each other, and not only in activity between her reading and his TV watching, but also in their ages. Her lover is a man old enough to be her father, and so there are multiple degrees of separation at work here. Though they were able to connect on a level of sexuality, they are still disconnected by age, space and interests.
Hence, gender and sexuality are made out to be minor differences between characters in the film. There are many more matters that supersede gender/sexuality and separate us, including language, age, space, interest, etc. Tasmin Spargo notes, “Butler returns to Foucault and discovers that within his overall argument is a recurrent metaphor or figure of the body as a surface on which history writes or imprints cultural values,” (Spargo 55). Thus, in this post-postmodern era, the cultural value of gender and sexuality have diminished so that it no longer matters if women inherit what was once traditionally valued as masculine. The historically male arena of ninjas and mobsters have become gender neutral by this film’s end, when the little girl receives the Hagukare and Louise becomes mob-boss.
In brief then, gender relations and sexuality have become immaterial ways of differentiating people, as varying degrees of separation already supersede them. Likewise, the present is always secondhand to us in this period beyond postmodernism. To quote the hybrid from the television show, Battlestar Galactica, “All [of] this has happened before, and [it] will happen again...again...again...again...again...again...” (5. Moore). While modernity began to breakdown from, but still followed a linear timeline of memory and gender relations, and postmodernity became chaotic and schizophrenic in these regards, the period we have now come to realize is lyrical, cyclical like a lens. We are only able to relate to the world and others, past and present, in a vicarious manner. It is the same way in which many people related to and described the global crisis of September 11, 2001, saying, “It was just like watching a movie.”
WORKS REFERENCED
1) Niccolo Machiavelli. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/niccolomac118311.html
2) Spargo, Tasmin. Foucault and Queer Theory. Totem Books. New York, NY. 1999.
3) Eliot, T.S. Reflections on Vers Libre. 1979. http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/essays/reflections_on_vers_libre.html
4) Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism and Consumer Society. Postmodern Film Packet/Whitney Museum Lecture. 1982.
5) Moore, Ronald. Battlestar Galactica. 2003. http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Hybrid_utterances
