Dear Listmembers,
I have decided to post to the list a copy of a paper I am delivering to a
Film History Conference here in Brisbane. It attempts to outline a
Bhaskarian approach to Film Studies taking the instance of Dennis'
O'Rourke's controversial Documentary fiction The good Woman of Bangkok.
I apologise for the length but someone may find it of interest.
regards
Gary
Begin the Dialectic: The Fruits of Diffraction
A paper to be delivered to
Film & History Conference
The Cultural centre
Brisbane
27-30 November 1998
1. Introduction
The principal intention of this paper is to demonstrate the advances that
can be made within the field of Cultural Studies if one adapts a
Dialectical Critical Realist (DCR) approach. Specifically I hope to show
that through a dialectical examination of aspects of a film by the
Australian documentary filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke new light can be shed on
old problems and some new insights can be achieved. It is also a hope of
this paper that through the selection of O'Rourke's documentary fiction The
Good Woman of Bangkok I might begin the process of opening up a dialogue
between DCR and Queer Theory as this film has been championed by some of
Australia's leading Queer theorists, (Berry et al, 1997) However before
doing so I consider in general terms the contribution of DCR to my research
field namely Documentary Film Studies.
2. Of Documentary Studies and Critical Realism
I would like to argue that Documentary Film Studies can be thought of as a
subsection of Film Studies which in turn can be regarded as a subsection of
Cultural Studies. Such an approach is of course controversial and would be
rejected by many theorists. Nevertheless I feel that recent developments in
the field of documentary film have meant that there is arguably a
convergence so that the wider themes and theoretical concerns of Cultural
Studies are increasingly relevant to a discussion of documentaries such as
Michael Moore's Roger and Me (1989) and Ross McElwee's Sherman's March
(1987).
So in terms of the old rhyme of
Fleas have smaller fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And smaller fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum.
Documentary Studies is a very lesser flea indeed. Moreover if you consider
that I happen to be a Critical Realist of the dialectical kind then we are
dealing, I think, with an insect of the nano variety. Nevertheless I
believe that DCR can make some very important contributions to Documentary
Film Studies and through that right up the food chain to Film and Cultural
Studies in general. I would argue for instance that Critical Realism has
solved the vexed problems of truth and objectivity that have plagued
disciplines such as documentary filmmaking and also in a related way
Journalism.
In this paper however I wish to concentrate on illustrating the specific
benefits for Cultural Studies of adapting a dialectical approach of the
kind outlined in Bhaskar (1993) and Archer et al (1998).
3. The dialectic and the development of Dialectical Critical Realism
Few concepts in philosophy have engendered as much controversy,
misunderstanding and, it must be said, opprobrium as that of the dialectic.
Indeed Bhaskar himself describes the dialectic as the 'most complex - and
hotly contested - concept.' (Bhaskar, 1993: 15) Here one of the most
influential sources of an anti-dialectical attitude has been the work of
Karl Popper. Throughout a long career the latter repeatedly attacked
historicism, the dialectic and Hegelian thought in general. (Popper, 1974)
Something of Popper's loathing (sic) of both Hegel and his dialectical
method can be gauged from this quotation
Hegel's fame was made by those who prefer a quick initiation into the
deeper secrets of this world to the laborious technicalities of a science,
which, after all, may only disappoint them by its lack of power to unveil
all mysteries. For they soon found out that nothing could be applied with
such ease to any problem what soever, and at the same time with such
impressive (though only apparent) difficulty, and with such quick and sure
but imposing success, nothing could be used as cheaply and with so little
scientific training and knowledge, and nothing would give such a
spectacular scientific air, as did Hegelian dialectics, the mystery method
that replaced 'barren formal logic'. (Popper, 1974: 27-8)
I shall return to the specific relations between the Hegelian and the
Bhaskarian dialectics and in so doing I shall attempt to form a judgement
as to what extent the strictures against Hegel's dialectic are a)
justifiable and more importantly b) applicable to the dialectic of DCR, but
first some history.
Bhaskar has pointed out the dialectic did not begin with Hegel. Indeed its
origins lie in the Eleatic and Ionian traditions of Greek Philosophy. The
Eleatic strand provided the impetus for the dialectic as the art of
conversation, discussion and reasoning. The archetype of this is Socrates.
Dialectic in this case meant above all a means of reaching truth through
reason. However within the Ionian tradition dialectic meant process. This
process typically meant the establishment of a higher reality, usually God
or the Forms, and then the manifestation of this higher reality at a lower
level in the world.
Hegel combined the Eleatic and Ionian strands to produce a dialectic which
began with Reason,- the Absolute, which is then alienated and becomes
something other than itself, only to have its original unity restored when
it recognises that the alienation is only the manifestation of itself.
(Bhaskar, 1993: 17-18)
Marx took over the dialectic from Hegel and attempted to rescue it from
Idealism by substituting matter for Reason or the Absolute. However the
Marxian dialectic still retained a preference for a dialectical process
which was built around internal contradictions and proceeded in an
autogenetic and linear manner.
Michael Forster in his defence of the Hegelian dialectic lists three
standard criticisms of Hegel's method. (Forster, 1993: 130-70) Firstly
there is the charge from Popper that Hegel 'affirms contradictions'. The
second accusation against the Hegelian dialectic is that it proceeds in a
linear and automatic fashion. The third objection is that the dialectic is
necessarily built around the alleged self-contradictoriness of our
fundamental categories.
I do not have the space to deal in detail with Forster's defence of Hegel
except to note that I believe it is weakened by his acceptance of the
fundamental premise of the attack, namely that being or reality is logical.
(Forster, 1993: 142) The underlying error in this case is the definition
of being in terms of thought or logic. Bhaskar advances a transcendental
argument here that things would not change unless there were contradictory
forces and processes at work. But we do in fact know that change exists.
(Bhaskar, 1993: 75)
Whatever the merit, however, of the objections, that Forster has listed,to
the Hegelian (and Marxist) dialectic they do not apply in Bhaskar's case.
The Bhaskarian dialectic differs from its Hegelian predecessor in several
very important ways. To begin with Bhaskar's dialectic is four-termed
unlike Hegel's triad. Thus where Hegel has identity, negativity and
totality, Bhaskar has non-identity, negativity, totality and transformative
agency. Moreover negativity and totality are given radically different
interpretations within the DCR model. (Bhaskar, 1993: xiii)
The first term of Bhaskar's dialectic, non-identity, implies a strong
rejection of Hegel's identification of subject and object in thought. Here
Bhaskar incorporates into his concept of non-identity most of the crucial
distinctions which have informed from the beginning the whole Critical
Realist project. Thus we have the notions of a structured, stratified and
differentiated reality, the separation of epistemology and ontology within
ontology, the transitive and intransitive dimensions, emergence, change and
openness. This first element in the dialectic constitutes the first moment
(1M) in the new model of Dialectical Critical Realism which has been
developed from Critical Realism. (Bhaskar, 1993: 8)
The second term of Bhaskar's dialectic, negativity, is the narrowly
dialectic moment. It has to be understood in terms of Bhaskar's expansion
of ontology to include non-existence or absence. Here Bhaskar rejects the
whole tradition of Western philosophy, which he traces back to Parminides,
of seeing reality in purely positive terms. Bhaskar labels this as the
error of 'ontological monovalence' and argues that the chief result of this
tradition has been
to erase the contingency of existential questions and to despatialize and
detemporalise (accounts of) being. (1993: 7)
The metaphor which Bhaskar employs to underscore the contrast between his
ontology and the positive ontology of the Parminidean tradition is that of
the
positive as a tiny, but important ripple on the surface of a sea of
negativity. (1993: 5)
This second term of the Bhaskarian dialectic, negativity, forms what
Bhaskar terms the second edge (2E) of his model.
I shall be dealing later, when I come to discuss the diffraction of the
dialectic, with some of the differences between the Hegelian and Bhaskarian
dialectical moments. But here I will note that in DCR there is no
automatic process of aufhebung or sublation from one term to another.
Bhaskar's dialectic accounts for dialectical connection as well as
contradiction, the latter being seen as a special case of the former.
Most importantly for Bhaskar only a sub-class of dialectical contradictions
involve logical contradictions and these may be described and potentially
explained without contradiction. Nor do the processes involved in the
dialectical moment automatically lead to progression to a higher level as
they do in the Hegelian system. Within the DCR dialectic development can
also mean relations of regression, retrogression and decay.
The third term of Bhaskar's dialectic, totality, marks another important
departure from the Hegelian and indeed some instances of the Marxist
versions of this notion. Within the Hegelian totality we have the
phenomenon of closure which gives us theses such as Fukuyama's the 'end of
history'. Bhaskar's totality by contrast is radically open and perhaps to
emphasise this point he talks most often of totalities. So the Bhaskarian
dialectic does not provide us with an automatic passage to the end of
history be that interpreted as the Absolute as in Hegel or as Communism as
say in Marx's Manifesto.
This third term of the Bhaskarian dialectic forms the third level (3L) of
the DCR model. Given the troubled history of the concept of totality it is
important to emphasise that the Bhaskarian totality is not an expression of
a single element as in the expressivist totality of vulgar Marxism, e.g.
Nikolai Bukharin, where the superstructure is seen as the straightforward
expression of the economic base. (Bukharin, 1925)
This very openness of the Bhaskarian totality necessitates a fourth element
in his dialectic, namely that of agency. It is agency which if allied to
projects that are grounded in rationality may produce the good society
where humanity as a species can flourish. (Bhaskar, 1993: 9) This element
of the dialectic, totality, is characterised as the fourth dimension (4D)
within the DCR model.
To sum up this section, the DCR dialectic is four termed rather than
triadic as in Hegel's system. The Bhaskarian dialectic is like the Marxian
dialectic in that it is grounded in an ontology rather than in ideas as
with Hegel. However Bhaskar gives us a unique account of ontology in that
it is built round the notion of absence. Moreover the Bhaskarian dialectic
differs from its Hegelian and some of its Marxist predecessors in that it
provides no guarantees. Whether we reach the eudemonistic society or not
depends on us rather than on some autogenetic linear process.
4. The fruits of diffraction
The diffraction of the dialectic is of course dealt with in considerable
detail in Bhaskar (1993). However an interestingly earlier step towards
this process is taken in Bhaskar (1989) where he discusses the
possibilities raised by Marx's critique of Hegel' philosophy of identity.
Here Bhaskar argues that
One possibility raised by Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy of
identity is that the dialectic in Marx (and Marxism) may not specify a
unitary phenomenon, but a number of different figures and topics. Thus it
may refer to patterns or process in philosophy, science or the world;
being, thought or their relation (ontological, epistemological and
relational dialectics); which are universal or particular, trans-historical
or transient and so on. (Bhaskar, 1989: 119, original emphasis)
Taking our cue from this we can say that the critical realist dialectic
cannot be contained within a simple triadic formula of the thesis -
antithesis - synthesis kind. We should note here that Hegel never used this
formulation to describe his dialectic. Nor does Bhaskar employ this
terminology.
Bhaskar takes his starting point for the diffraction of the dialectic from
Marx's materialist critique of the idealism of the Hegelian dialectic.
(Bhaskar, 1993:86-96) By contrast with the unity of the Hegelian Absolute,
Marx's critique emphasises that the world is differentiated. As a
consequence the dialectic if it is to accord with the 'complexities,
angularities, nuances of our pluriversal world' must itself be diffracted.
Diffraction allows us, Bhaskar argues, to call upon a host of 'topologies,
choreographies and genealogies'. (Bhaskar, 1993: 96)
Bhaskar gives two kinds of definition of dialectic. The first is tied
closely to his extension of the notion of ontology or reality to include
absence. Here dialectic is the process of
the absenting of absence, and in the human realm as the specifically
efficacious agentive...absenting of absence. (1993: 173)
Bhaskar also defines dialectic in the very wide sense as
merely any sort of relationship between differential elements, which can
obviously be put through a variety of hoops'. (1993: 174)
Following then this process of diffraction one can approach a text and
identify and analyse the variety of dialectics at work. However there is a
crucial moment in this analysis. The dialectic having been diffracted must
also be retotalised. For Bhaskar it is the dialectics of absence which
will perform this role. (1993: 98)
What then are the 'dialectics of absence'? This is the process by which
conflictual interaction becomes change which can be regarded as absenting.
The dialectic generally involves the absenting of absences. Most crucially
those constraints which are preventing the absenting of ills are themselves
absented. This leads to a general human flourishing and the development of
human flourishing in nature. (Bhaskar, 1993: 177, fig 2.32)
There have of course been objections to this widening of the dialectic.
Thus John Mingers said
His generalisation of 'dialectic' beyond the Hegelian...seems to me to
make it so general that it includes almost any form or dynamic relationship
between entities, events, or process. (Mingers,10.6.97)
Mingers went on to ask
Does he (Bhaskar mean it this widely? If so haven't we lost a useful
term?(10.6.97)
The answers to these question are I hope to show in the remainder of this
paper - yes and no. The 'yes' is qualified, though, by the definition of
dialectical connection as being
between entities or aspects of a totality such that they are in principle
distinct but inseparable. (Bhaskar, 1993: 58)
2. Relational dialectics in Dennis O'Rourke's The Good Woman of Bangkok
Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but there's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.'
'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.' (W. B. Yeates)
Dennis O'Rourke is one of the leading documentary filmmakers in not just
Australia, but in the world. His films have ranged from an expose of the
horrifying after effects of America's criminal nuclear tests on Marshall
Islanders in Half Life to a championing of the cause of indigenous
Australians. However in his 1992 film The Good Woman of Bangkok he achieved
a level of fame or notoriety which set him and his film apart from his
contemporaries. Indeed The Good Woman of Bangkok is one of the most
discussed and written about documentaries of recent time. Only Michael
Moore's Roger and Me has achieved anything like the same critical
attention. However while Moore's film is regarded as a classic in
documentary studies, The Good Woman of Bangkok is still something of a
scandal. This is not only because it deals with prostitution in the
so-called Third World but because it also records the filmmaker's own
involvement with the prostitute as her customer or john.
In his film O'Rourke creates a portrait of Aoi, a prostitute and an obscure
25 year peasant blind on one eye, with a child and an apparently evil
mother determined to exploit her daughter. This is indeed a tragic drama
but one which O'Rourke deserves some recognition for bringing to us. He
gives Aoi a voice and she speaks the truth of her life and the underlying
relationality with men and also the ambivalence of her relationship with
the filmmaker.
Fascinating as the debates around the film have been in this paper I wish
to concentrate only on a reading of number of dialectics within the text.
These are firstly the filmmaker's construction of himself as the abject
hero in dialectical opposition to the traditional heroic documentary
filmmaker, secondly the cluster of aesthetics dialectics initiated by the
use of the Mozart aria, Va Ma Dove?, and thirdly the core-periphery
dialectic at the heart of so much ethnographic filmmaking.
5. Dialectical counterparts or dialectical antagonists?
In this section of my paper I wish to place O'Rourke's performance in TGWOB
and some of the readings it has generated in a wider context. Specifically
I want to argue that O'Rourke's film must be interpreted as part of a much
wider movement within Cultural Studies which is premised on the
impossibility of fundamental social and political change or to put this in
Bhaskarian terms Cultural Studies at present is largely based on the
assumption of the impossibility of radical transformative negation of the
existing state of affairs. Accordingly what Bhaskar terms the dialectics of
absence or emancipation are ruled out from the beginning.
The despair about the possibility of fundamental change is I believe a
central prop of much postmodern thought. This in turn is closely connected,
I would argue, to what Bhaskar has termed the 'world historical problem of
agency'. Specifically this refers to the 'fragmentation, global dispersal
and apparent bourgeoisification of sections of the proletariat'. (Bhaskar,
1993: 369) The argument here is that the absence of a militant
working-class, willing to take on the task of producing a socialist
alternative to capitalism, has led or at least contributed to a despair of
the possibility of an emancipated world.
This sense of hopelessness represents the negative moment in contemporary
culture but we should also recognise that a range of solutions has been
essayed. The political and cultural dominant may not be overcome or
transcended but it may at least be resisted. In their account of the
philistine, Dave Beech and John Roberts list several "others" which also
perform this task. They are the non-European, the feminine, the abject,
the grotesque, primitive and anti-intellectual and the philistine. (Beech &
Roberts, 1998: 49) They could have added the "black outlaw", camp
aesthetics, Bakhtin's Carnivalism, and I believe, Homi Babha's 'mimic man'.
(Gates, 1994; Sontag, 1978; Fiske, 1987; Bhabha, 1994: 85-92)
In the absence of a truly emancipatory dialectics then the paradigm of the
abject etc might seem to be quite reasonable stop gap solutions. However
the matter is not so clear cut. The problem with figures such as the
abject is that although they may even set themselves out to actively resist
the political and cultural dominant, they share a common ground with their
dual opposite. Thus I would argue that in many cases the ground which they
both tacitly presuppose is that of TINA, Margaret Thatcher's infamous
slogan of 'There is no alternative'. So we have then what Bhaskar terms
'dialectical counterparts' rather than dialectical antagonists. Together
the oppositional pairs both accept the existing order of things and so this
is strengthened.
The significance of this claim for cultural studies can hardly be
underestimated. Throughout the 80s the dominant school of thought has drawn
upon somewhat bowdlerised version of Bakhtin to emphasise the radical and
subversive potential of popular television to resist cultural and political
domination. The high point of the resistance school is the work of John
Fiske (1987) and John Tulloch (1990). Their arguments are marked by what I
believe is an overly facile identification of the popular with the
progressive.
Typical is the following argument that style in the postmodern age is
carnivalesque and consequently liberatory.
The pleasure style affords is not of the same intensity as jouissance, nor
does it entail the loss of subjectivity. Rather it is a pleasure of
control and empowerment, a carnivalesque concentration on the materiality
of the signifiers and the consequent evasion of the subjectivity
constructed by the more ideological determined signifieds. This form of
pleasure also questions the unity and coherence of the world. It occurs in
isolated fragments of experience, with no history, with no cultural
pattern. Ideology insists on an overall controlling pattern of sense:
fragmenting sense into the senses reproduces the liberation of carnival.
In these terms, music video is arguably the contemporary carnival on
television.(Fiske, 1987: 250)
The argument here depends on a highly bowdlerised account of Bakhtin's
Carnival Theory and an extremely minimalist notion of what counts as
liberation or emancipation. The net effect is a strengthening rather than a
weakening of Das Bestehende - the existing state of affairs. Indeed much of
what might be termed the Resistance School's work falls into the category
of dialectical counterparts and is as a consequence guilty of tacit
complicity with the dominant. What the resistance theorists fail to
acknowledge is the necessity to reject simplistic celebrations of pleasure
and to prioritise instead the education of desire. (MacLennan, 1998)
As William Morris put it we must
...teach desire to desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above all
to desire in a different way. (Morris in Thompson, 1976: 791)
Such an education is the sine qua non for the utopian project of the
betterment of the human lot. Given the present state of Cultural Studies to
speak like this is to invite at best ridicule. Nevertheless only a
theoretical mind set which has abandoned the project of human emancipation
as either impossible, unnecessary or undesirable could be contented with
the artistic and human value of most offerings from current popular
culture. It is necessary to insist on this point despite the danger of
being caricatured as part of the 'knowledge class' bent on bolstering one's
own privileged status as a mandarin through the denunciation of popular
culture. (Hartley, 1998: 33-50)
There are signs though of a growing unease with the stance of critics such
as Fiske, Tulloch and Hartley. Thus Jane Shattuc in her discussion of the
contradictory nature of chat shows like that of Rikki Lake's says
Henry Louis Gates argues that representation of black outlaw culture is
even more complex. On one level, he suggests, much of the black
celebration of the O.J. Simpson acquittal stemmed from not only the
subversion of a white justice system which has failed blacks repeatedly,
but the display of black prowess during the trial. But on another level,
he warns about the tendency of '"outlaw cultures: which unites our
lumpenproles with postmodern ironists - to celebrate transgression for its
won sake'. On talk shows the guests and audience members have triumphed in
the rebellion against the social and sexual civility of the while middle
class that characterised 'advice' in America since the latter half of the
1800s. But Gates worries, if such displays of being bad have lost their
attachment to a social agenda and are now merely playful. (Shattuc, 1998: 223)
In performing the role of the abject O'Rourke has aligned himself with a
contemporary movement which is represented in the "Grunge Realism" fiction
of Andrew McGahan and others. (Muller, 1997) It is also now present within
documentary film. Indeed some critics have argued that within non-fiction
film we have moved to the "aesthetics of failure". Arthur claims that one
of the consequences of postmodernist aesthetics and poststructuralist
theory has been that
failure to adequately represent the person, event, or social situation
stated as the film's explicit task functions as an inverted guarantee of
authenticity. (Arthur, 1993: 127, original emphasis)
However it is not only authenticity that would appear to be guaranteed by
the aesthetics of failure. Linda Williams has argued that failure is also
a guarantee of that film's ethical status. (Williams, 1997)
5. The dialectic of the abject and the hero
Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells; Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time,
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n,
What matters where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
(Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I)
O'Rourke's choice of the role of the abject especially in The Good Woman of
Bangkok, sets him against dominant values. He will nominate for himself a
range of tasks and he will document his own failure to achieve these. His
failure and consequent abjectness will act as metaphors for the wider
failure which we all participate in. We should still note the performative
contradiction behind the artist as abject hero. The denial of agency
implicit in the abject can only be achieved through agency.
This moral imperative to document one's own humiliation, to admit guilt and
confess and repent is linked in all probability to O'Rourke's Catholicism
while the impulse towards abjectness is motivated in part by a moral
rejection of the alternative model of the documentary filmmaker as an
objective observer. Here O'Rourke's says with characteristic bluntness and
honesty that
There is a whole plethora of films that have been done in Bangkok and
places like that where the filmmakers say, "Isn't it dreadful," and when
it's all shot they go to their hotel and scrub up, before going back and
fucking all night in the brothels. That never appears in their films.
I was aware of such films, and decided that if I did make this film it
would start the other way round. (O'Rourke in Urban, 1997: 148)
Abjection is a concept developed by the French feminist Julia Kristeva. The
abject is the other of the 'clean and proper body.' To create the subject
the child must expel the improper, the unclean and the disorderly. However
what is excluded can, in Kristeva's schema never be completely annihilated.
It hovers threateningly on the edge and borders of our existence. It
represents a potential destabilisation of the subject and is a constant
reminder of the subject's fragility. (Grosz, 1989: 71-2)
O'Rourke, it seems to me, in his descent into the world of the Rose Hotel
and in his procurement of a prostitute embraces that which is unclean and
disorderly. This after all is a film made in a brothel. He defies the
clean and proper role of the concerned but remote filmmaker.
There is another element of O'Rourke's choice which needs to be commented
on. The alternative model to the objective observer is that of the
passionate committed documentary filmmaker. The contemporary exemplar here
is surely David Bradbury. O'Rourke rejects both the mantle of the objective
observer and of the hero/liberator. He writes himself into his own film,
but not as the hero come to express solidarity with the oppressed. This
time the great filmmaker has the much less glorious role of the john.
This choice to embrace the abject is based not only on despair of the
possibility of emancipation but also on an oft expressed hostility to the
notion of the documentary filmmaker as the hero who can bring about change
or who assumes a position of moral superiority. A typical statement here is
There is also the topicality of the subject and the whole conscience
factor, the ghastly theological pretensions of all these documentary
filmmakers - Don Quixote characters - tilting at windmills.
What happens is that the cultural role of the committed documentary is
essentially one where the filmmaker becomes the protagonist/hero of the
work, even though he or she is not necessarily in it. But of course the
filmmakers are: they are alluded to by their sense of their own goodness
and worth, by their theological position. I detest all that and I can
speak with some authority because I have discerned some of it in my earlier
work. (O'Rourke in Urban, 1997: 146)
As I have pointed out this rejection of the role of the hero takes the form
of the abject. It represents a less grand gesture which however is still an
oppositional one. In O'Rourke's case the role of "Don Quixote" is laid
aside and the film maker emerges as abject. One should note that Don
Quixote is actually the prototype of the failed hero and it is certainly
questionable whether O'Rourke escapes this fate. Whatever the case the
most important point is that the dialectics of absence or emancipation have
been abandoned or ruled out from the beginning as simply impossible or in
themselves compromised, then the turn to such oppositional moments as the
abject is almost inevitable.
6. The dialectics of aesthetic redemption
The moral redemption achieved by O'Rourke's self-abnegation is matched and
I feel surpassed by the redemption of the aesthetic. Aesthetic redemption
in this text takes the form of classical music. On the film's sound track
Janet Baker's voice soars above the cess-pit that is Bangkok and creates a
realm of pure unsullied beauty.
The use of Mozart has evoked a range of responses. For Michael Wilmington
it suggests Aoi's inner purity.
There's a world inside her that seems, perhaps sentimentally untouched.
O'Rourke tries to suggest that inner realm with a sweet wounding Mozart
aria, sung by Dame Janet Baker, that soars above as she roams the streets
or rides the shuttle to hotel dates. (Wilmington, 1997: 178)
However for Lawson the same music represents a 'problem'. She says
The problem is the music. A Mozart aria, gloriously sung by Janet Baker,
strays in and out, over a slow-motion passage in the red-light world and
later over images of Aoi in the city. It sentimentalises what on the
visual level, is kept rigorously at a distance; it imposes a Western
pathos, and Western sense of ineffable loss, and so mitigates the challenge
of a tragedy which is precisely not Western. It reduces the demands made
by Aoi's story, and by the images of our compatriots on holiday.
Because of the music, you could say there's a bit of split consciousness
in the narration, in the story-teller's position vis-a-vis ourselves.
(Lawson, 12997: 14, emphasis added)
There are two elements in Lawson's critique. Firstly and less clearly
stated is the aesthetic impact of the music. Secondly for Lawson, the music
is Western in some sense while Aoi's tragedy is not. I will deal with the
purely aesthetic aspects before considering the first objection.
For me the music does not sentimentalise what is presented in the visuals
nor pace Wilmington does it simply suggest Aoi's inner purity. Nor is the
music proof of 'split consciousness' as Lawson would have it. Rather the
music and the visuals are classically dialectical in that they "constitute
two moments of the same process" (Bhaskar, 1989: 76) But they do so in a
very complex way.
Before I identify what I feel this dialectic is I would like to attempt to
clear a path through what, in homage to Bhaskar's homage to Bachelard's
term 'scientific loans', I shall call 'aesthetic loans'. This process is
normally referred to in postmodern criticism as 'intertextuality' and is
nothing less than the
'bricolage of the past and outside ruthlessly and relentlessly exploited'.
(Bhaskar, 1993: 136)
To begin with the aria Baker is singing is 'Va ma Dove?' (I shall go but
whither?, K538) It was written for insertion into an opera by Martin Soler
(1754-1806) entitled 'Il Berbero di bon core'. (The surly man with a good
heart).
The translation From the original by Lorenzo Da Ponte goes
I shall go but whither, Oh Gods!
If heaven feels no pity
For his torments and my laments!
I shall go but whither, Oh Gods!
You who speak to my heart, love
Guide my steps.
Now take away this reticence
Which makes me waver.
The song is used twice in O'Rourke's film - at the beginning where he
arrives in Patpong and alights at the Rose Hotel, and at the end when Aoi
is going to meet a customer. There is a complicated series of resonances
here which I will attempt to work through. However I feel that the decision
to use opera music is in many ways a clue to the fiction component of this
'documentary fiction'. The resulting emplotment has a distinctly
libretto-like quality and can usefully be read in terms of classic operas
such as Puccini and Leoncavello's La Bohemes. (Harre, 1998)
The narrative of the Good Woman of Bangkok begins with the prostitute's
aunt telling us the tragic tale of her life. The following scroll then appears
The film maker was forty-three and his marriage had ended. He was trying
to understand how love could be so banal and also profound. He came to
Bangkok, the Mecca for Western men with fantasies of exotic sex and love
without pain. He would meet a Thai prostitute and make a film about that.
He seemed to be no different than the other 5,000 men who crowded the bars
every night. It was three in the morning when she finished dancing and sat
with him. She said her name was Aoi - that it meant sugar cane or sweet.
The pimp came over and said: "Only 500 baht or 20 dollars...keep her until
the afternoon...do anything you like...OK? He paid and was her customer,
she became the subject of his film. They stayed at a cheap hotel in the
red-light district. Filming and video recording took place there.
The scroll and the subsequent images and the song all resonate with the
desire for love. The filmmaker is going somewhere but where? He is also,
I believe, the 'berbero' with the 'bon core'.
This initial scroll is matched by one at the end which tells us
I bought a rice farm for Aoi and I left Thailand. One year later I came
back but she was not there. I found her working in Bangkok in a sleazy
massage parlour called "The Happy House". I asked her why and she said,
"It's my fate".
The scrolls represent according to Cohen the moment of 'autobiographical
fiction' in this film - 'the bookends to the filmic portrayal of Aoi's
life'. (Cohen, 1997: 68) There is though a subtle difference between these
'bookends'. Thus the filmmaker inserts himself into the frame initially in
the third person and finally in the first person. It is as if O'Rourke
sets out with a gesture towards artistic objectivity, which he will abandon
totally by the end of the film.
In the first use of the music the references are primarily to the
filmmaker. As I have said I believe he is 'il berbero di bon core'- the
rough man with a good heart. It is interesting to note also that the
visuals are slowed down to accompany the music. At one level this is due
to the necessity to stretch the film into the same time frame as the music.
However at another level it represents for me not so much the dominance of
the music over the world of Patpong, but the strength of the filmmaker's
own commitment to the 'banality and profundity' of love.
The second time the music is used Aoi is on her way to an assignation with
a customer. There is an irony to the dialectic here. The character in the
opera who sings the aria is Madame Lucilla and she is bewildered and
confused at the direction her love is taking. Nevertheless she seems to
remain committed to the possibility of love. Earlier however within
O'Rourke's text Aoi has said or been got to say
I don't know what's love. What I love, I don't know. I want love but I
know me. Me is no good. No people can love me. I don't have anything
good...only bad. Who can love me? No, say love me, I don't believe.
Because I think I know me...I cannot give.
So at this level the music sets up a dialectic between O'Rourke's film and
another text, Soler's opera Il Berbero di Bon Core. Moreover I would argue
that the music suggests ways in which we can use that text to interpret
what is happening before the camera.
There is another aspect to the bricolage. We have here an embedded
dialectic for in his use of operatic music in a documentary film O'Rourke
is paying homage to Werner Herzog, who used the song Ave Maria in his
remarkable film (Fata Morgana) about the Wodaabe people. However I feel
that Herzog's use of the Ave Maria is much less complex than O'Rourke's use
of Va Ma Dove. Herzog seems to me to be once more enunciating the theme of
his film, Fitz Caraldo, that the aesthetic is universal and can go anywhere.
The relationship between O'Rourke and his precursor, Herzog, could be read
in terms of Harold Bloom's visionary account of the 'Anxiety of
Influence'.(Bloom, 1973) In this theory Bloom attempts to outline the
stages by which the apprentice poet comes under the influence of a
predecessor , struggles with this influence and if he is a 'strong poet'
emerges as a true artist. Of the six stages that Bloom outlines in this
process, it seems to me that In TGWOB, O'Rourke has achieved 'apophrades',
where the mature poet deliberately holds his poem open to the return of the
predecessor. In this an uncanny effect is achieved that one gets the
feeling that the precursor has been influenced by the former apprentice
poet. (Bloom, 1973: 15-16) Thus watching Herzog's text one gets the feeling
that he has been too influenced by TGWOB.
This process of maturation can be seen if we take into account O'Rourke's
earlier use of classical music in his film Cannibal Tours (1988) about a
group of German tourists on the Sepik river in Papua New Guinea. There on
the opening sound track we have Mozart. The recording as in Herzog's Fata
Morgana is a pre-acoustic one meant to give the impression of coming from
the short wave radio. As in The Good Woman of Bangkok the record is used at
the beginning and the end of the film. In Cannibal Tours the initial
tranquillity established by the use of Mozart is interrupted by the
cacophony of a radio being flipped between channels. We hear something
about the 'American secretary of State, Henry Kissinger'. There is a gabble
of foreign languages and then something about the Mozambique government's
willingness to negotiate 'provided all foreign troops were withdrawn from
the country.'
The use of the radio is extremely subtle. It testifies not only to the
existence of the aesthetic but also to the existence of a world of power
and conflict but one from which only echoes can be caught. World
influencing decisions are being made but it would seem that the centre of
power is somewhere else. The radio thus establishes the peripheral status
of the space of the Sepik River where O'Rourke's film is set.
With the Mozart we have true beauty which constructs a dialectic which
serves partly to complement as in the instance of the natural scenes of the
blue waves and the green island but also to contrast as with the radio
sound. When the music is used for the last time it accompanies a party
that the tourists have on board their yacht. They have dressed themselves
up to look like natives. The bizarreness of this attempt at self-othering
almost overwhelms the music. However I feel that above all else within
Cannibal Tours the classical music is the space of refuge from this fallen
world. But this state is not fully realised because the dialectic between
Herzog and O'Rourke has not been fully worked out. The potential within
the use of Mozart is thus not fully realised.
However in The Good Woman of Bangkok O'Rourke is a mature artist in his own
right and can absorb Herzog's influence and exploit the full potential of
the music. The aria enters into a dialectic of opposition to what we see.
It both affirms the necessity of Art in this fallen world and also
represents the moment of the sublime- that which is truly beyond. In
Kristevan terms the music wrests us away from the abyss of abjection. Art
here functions as an attempt to sublimate the abject. (Grosz, 1989: 77)
But the music also points to another tension that of the performative
contradiction in the construction of the artist as the abject body. For
here O'Rourke is truly in Bloom's terms the 'strong poet'. Like the
archetype of the modern poet, Satan in Paradise Lost, O'Rourke seems to
contemplate the 'abject posture' of those who have been cast into Hell, and
calls out
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!
My essential objection to Lawson's position is based on a belief that she
has, in her criticism of the use of Mozart, succumbed to that "horror
pulchri", the loathing and fear of the beautiful which Ernst Bloch tells us
led Pope Marcellus to consider a ban on elaborate church music. Here we
have the impetus towards what Bloch terms the 'bare God who wishes to be
worshipped in moral belief in the word that is the truth.' This, according
to Bloch, was to find its expression in Protestantism. (Bloch, 1986: 213)
It is also the same impulse which had led Plato into his famous ban on
poets in the name of the defence of truth. This was to give us the figure
of the "Socratic Philistine" - the philosopher who would reject art in the
cause of truth and morality. (Bull, 1996: 35) The history of radical
criticism suggests, I believe, that all too often the Socratic Philistine
is the natural mode of many feminists and Marxists.
Yet the Mozart aria is not untrue to the reality of Patpong. It points
towards a different reality. In its beauty it contains within it the proof
that humankind is capable of perfection. It offers us, as Bloch put it,
the "feast of implemented possibilities." (Bloch, 1986: 216) This utopian
dimension was for Bloch pre-appearance as truth.
Lawson feels the attraction of the beauty created in the Mozart aria, hence
her use of the word 'gloriously'. But she wishes to resist the music
because she feels that its beauty detracts from the truth of the world
depicted in the visuals. What she does not understand is that the music
annihilates that world. Its beauty is a complete expression of hatred for
what has been shown. It is this capacity to 'explode' the given world which
Bloch argues is unique to music and gives it an eccentric quality compared
with the other arts. (Bloch, 1986: 216)
Having defended O'Rourke's use of the music on aesthetic grounds I would
like now to consider very briefly Lawson's objection to the music because
of its "Westerness". We must grant of course that the music is Western in
origin but I believe we can still claim that it is universal in effect.
Similarly the tragedy of Aoi is hardly exclusively non-Western. Poverty,
exploitation and the accompanying prostitution are all universal phenomena.
7. The Dialectic of the core and the periphery
Drawing upon psychoanalysis Chris Berry (1997) has mounted a very
sophisticated and complex defence of O'Rourke's film. There are three
aspects of Berry's argument. Firstly there is the use of psychoanalysis to
undermine those critics who see Aoi simply as a victim. Secondly, equally
important to his case is the attempt to read TGWOB in terms of postcolonial
theory. The argument in this section of his article is at times difficult
to follow. I also detect here a very definite though not very clearly
articulated advocacy of subject-object identity. Thirdly there is the
openly political dimension of Berry' position when he considers the
relationship of TGWOB to the collective project of 'Australia in Asia.' I
shall deal with these arguments in turn.
Berry begins with the fact of his and his friends' discomfort at the film.
This allows him to enter the territory of ambivalence. There is a
fascination and a repulsion towards the film. This then is read in terms
of Freud's theory of Fetishism which is a 'defensive response to the
recognition that one does not have total power.' (Berry, :38-9)
The argument proceeds via Kobena Mercer's work on Robert Mapplethorpe
photographs of Afro-American nudes to claim that there is a temptation for
the critic to recover power by the denial of the power of the photographed
or filmed object. Thus Mercer's first reaction to Mapplethorpe's nudes was
to read them as a black man and to condemn them for objectifying black men.
But for Mercer to read Mapplethorpe's black nudes as the powerless victims
of the white gaze was to deny the fact that they exercised homo-erotic
power over Mapplethorpe (and Mercer). Similarly according to Berry for
western feminists to read Aoi simply as a female victim of the male is to
bolster their own power by denying her power as a woman, and also to ignore
the ethnic status of both Aoi and the feminist critics. Specifically what
Berry wants western feminist critics to do is to
confront their pre-existing privilege as westerners if they want to stop
fetishising non-western women as total victims. (Berry, 1997: 54)
I have no problem in agreeing with Berry's wish to see Aoi as something
other than the total victim. I arrive at this position though not via
psychoanalysis but through a recognition of both the necessity and the
possibility of self-emancipation. I am less than happy however with what I
interpret as an implication that all western feminists by virtue of their
"westerness" are necessarily caught up in the exploitation of women like
Aoi. This point will resurface when we come to deal with the politics of
the core-periphery dialectic as Berry interprets it.
The second aspect of Berry' argument that I wish to discuss is his use of
post-colonial theory. Again the intention here is to undermine the notion
that Aoi is a total victim in the encounter with O'Rourke. Berry argues
that rather than being a victim, Aoi creates with O'Rourke the space of the
postcolonial which is the
... liminal space between the colonial national imaginary and some other
imaginary ...; a space or interstice where two cultures and two histories
not only collide but overlap and intermingle to form a third, hybrid,
syncretic formation... It is the space where both Aoi and O'Rourke are each
both subject and other at once and, for fleeting moments at least, are
aware of this schizoid state. (Berry, 1997: 53)
An alternative to the schizoid model Berry favours would be to follow
During in seeing TGWOB as an exercise in 'self-othering' by O'Rourke. This
is defined by During as
occasions and techniques for constructing an identity by appropriating
elements of another's identity. (1994:60)
O'Rourke then self-others in two ways. Firstly he is the Bohemian artist
who, like Gauguin, has gone native. Secondly as I have already claimed
O'Rourke constructs himself as the abject in opposition to the figure of
the Documentary filmmaker as hero. This process of self-othering can,
according to During, develop to such an extent that one 'becomes another'
that is one achieves a transformation of identity.(:60)
The argument here then is that O'Rourke and Aoi enter a post-colonial
space, a hybrid state, within which they both achieve a level of
reciprocity. This may be temporary and unstable as in Berry's argument or
we could appropriate During's notion of self-othering and claim that
O'Rourke has become the other.
The problem with such an analysis is that while it captures something of
the complexity of the relationship between the sex-tourist with a camera
and the 'good woman' of Bangkok, it tends to underplay the uneven
distribution of power between O'Rourke and Aoi.
Berry, I think, attempts to circumvent the disparity in power between
O'Rourke and Aoi by emphasising that there are two O'Rourke's - the film
maker at the editing table in Australia and the rather forlorn john in
Bangkok. It is good that attention is being drawn here to the
constructedness of the persona that O'Rourke adapts in Bangkok. A parallel
case is that of Michael Moore in Roger and Me. The bumbling clown that is
Moore on screen is the creation of a very powerful and shrewd mind.
However Roger Smith, the Head of General Motors, is a man of consequence
and an important target for a radical critique. Moore's strategy of
self-abasement and self-deprecation works brilliantly to expose Smith's
excess of power.
The same can hardly be said in the case of the 25 and something prostitute
in Bangkok. O'Rourke's abjectness and his 'failure' to find true love or
to rescue Aoi do little to augment Aoi's power. This remains unevenly
divided between O'Rourke and Aoi. He may have entered a postcolonial space
with her, but in his hip pocket was the return ticket to Canberra.
Ultimately there was always going to be only one O'Rourke. The
self-othering was eminently reversible and the hybrid state was always
going to fade away like the morning dew. In other words I believe that
while Berry is correct to attack the depiction of Aoi as total victim he
overestimates the possibility of reciprocity in the relationship between
Aoi and O'Rourke.
The third part of Berry's analysis of TGWOB is more narrowly political.
Central to his argument is the assertion that the scandal behind TGWOB is
that it represents an embarrassment for the national project of forging a
new collective identity for Australia based on our relationship with Asia.
Here, according to Berry, Australia's past as a colonial nation is
something of a difficulty. He argues
This colonialist past is a position that has no legitimacy any more. This
is a case of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea; either
we retain or reconstruct an illusion of innocence but stay on the outside
of the Asia-Pacific region, or we get on the inside as something we don't
want to be. (Berry, 1997: 49)
Berry is aware here of the dangers of implying guilt to those who have no
direct experience of colonialism. Still he insists that, although the
current generation of Australians may not have committed these "sins",
because they share in the fruits they must share in the blame. The problem
with this argument that "all Australians are to blame" is that it disguises
the role that class and power have played in the history of colonialism.
Bertel Ollman's article on the teaching of Marxism is especially relevant
in this context. He claims that his students were unable to think in terms
of class struggle as their thought moved between the categories of the
individual and that of everybody without passing through the mediation of
particular groups or classes. His students were exemplifying a very
widespread mode of thinking which, as in the case of the My Lai massacre
during the Vietnam War, either blames individuals such as Lt. Calley or
tries to argue for collective guilt as Billy Graham did when he urged
everybody to pray for forgiveness for the sin of My Lai.
To blame Lt. Calley for the My Lai massacre is a nonsense even though he
commanded the troops who perpetrated the atrocities. Likewise to say that
everyone is to blame is equally absurd. Hundreds of thousands of Americans
(not including Billy Graham) opposed the war at great personal cost. What
is missing here is the recognition of the role of groups or classes. The
real sinners at My Lai were of course the industrial-military complex that
launched the war against the Vietnamese. (Ollman, 1979: 127-8)
Similarly, although Australia has generally supported the colonial and
imperial endeavours of Britain and America, very few Australians own coffee
plantations in Papua New Guinea or brothels in Bangkok. Neither do they
have much input into their government's foreign policy. This is one aspect
of the state which is not subject to democratic control. As Eckard
Bolsinger has put it
That the state bureaucracies bargain with autonomous subjects and
organisations is obvious. But this is only true in areas such as
education, social and welfare programs, environmental problems, etc. where
the very core of the state is at stake, as in internal and external
security matters or guaranteeing "law and order, the picture is somewhat
different: the police and the army do not argue or bargain. (Bolsinger,
1996: 189)
The real villains in Patpong are the rich and the powerful who create both
the necessity for and benefit most from the sex industry. It is about this
aspect of the situation that The Good Woman of Bangkok has very little to
say. Berry and his fellow editors are consequently only partially correct
when they claim that O'Rourke's film has
forced us to focus again on exploitation along first world/third world,
city/country, upper class/working class and male/female axes and face the
fact that for all our self-proclaimed efforts it is as endemic as it ever
was. (Berry et al, 1997: 5)
There is no portrayal at all of the 'upper class'. They remain as always
'ex-nominated'. Their presence is marked only by the property, material
and human, that they control. It is equally important to avoid the kind of
thinking that posits an "our" and talks of its 'self-proclaimed efforts'.
This is once again an instance of the slippage from the individual to
everybody and reveals that despite mentioning the duality of upper
class/working class Berry et al are unable to think in class terms. There
is no "our" who has made an effort to get rid of class exploitation in
Bangkok or anywhere else. That effort has been made, for all its
weaknesses and faults, only by the Left.
8. Conclusions
I have attempted in this paper to advance the argument that Critical
Realism is uniquely placed to make an important contribution to Documentary
Film Studies in particular and Cultural Studies in general. I have claimed
that not only can Critical Realism help solve general problems such as
those of truth and objectivity, but also through its dialectic it can aid
in the process of textual criticism. It is also part of my case that
Critical Realism is sharply distinguished from postmodern approaches to
criticism such as deconstruction by its emphasis on the underlabouring for
an emancipatory practice.
Thus even though I believe that Cannibal Tours and The Good Woman of
Bangkok are great films I would argue that they, especially the latter, are
also a testament to the weakness of contemporary emancipatory politics. It
is true that the Manicheanism of The Good Woman of Bangkok separates
O'Rourke from contemporary aesthetic movements such as 'Blank Fiction'
which are based on a sense of 'indifference and indolence'.(Annesley, 1998:
1) Mancicheanism's hatred of the body was after all tempered by a firm
belief that despite the abject condition of the body one did not cease to
be united to the Light. The belief in damnation after all is predicated on
the possibility of salvation. It is O'Rourke's rage and his longing for
transcendence as expressed in his use of classical music that separates him
from the 'blank, atonal perspective and fragile glassy visions' of Blank
Fictions. (Annesley, 1998: 2)
Ultimately, however, the relational dialectics involved in the embracing of
the abject, the flight to aesthetic redemption and the betrayal of a
national project are poor substitutes for a filmic practice linked to an
emancipatory dialectic based on a concretely utopian consciousness. As
such I would argue that O'Rourke's later films are essentially post-Marxist
and stand as yet another legacy of the decay of the Australian Left.
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