Jacob Nustedt

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  • Societal Malaise in the Y2K Era

    Capital, Colonialism, and the Breakdown of the Social in demonlover (2002) and Caché (2005)

    The turn of the millennia saw the advent of an increasingly interconnected society. Through trends in globalisation that saw culture and commerce circulate across international networks at unprecedented rates. Moreover, where the prominence of communication technologies, epitomised by the growth of the internet, helped spur on this global exchange. Thus, in the age of mass interconnectivity, why do films from this period reflect the seemingly paradoxical anxiety of deteriorating social relations?

    Lost in Translation (2003)
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
    Children of Men (2006)

    This essay will attempt to answer this question by offering close analysis into two films from the early-2000s: Olivier Assayas’s demonlover (2002) and Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005). This analysis will be done through a reading of social deterioration, defined in my own terms as the failure between interpersonal relations – between the subject and the Other. In doing so, this essay will uncover the convergent and divergent sources of social deterioration by traversing the sites between technology, capitalism, and postcolonialism within both films.

    Before delving into the body of my analysis, I will briefly introduce the two texts. demonlover revolves around the corporate power struggle for hegemony over the international pornographic market, whereas Caché follows Georges, a bourgeois television presenter, as his life is continuously disrupted by the appearance of surveillance tapes that force him to confront both personal and national traumas.

    Olivier Assayas’ demonlover (2002)
    Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005)

    The most overt point of comparison between these films is how both narratives are driven by politics of the image, seemingly taking adage from Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle. Debord postulates how the ‘spectacle is both the result and goal of the dominant mode of production’, that all socioeconomic life dedicates itself to the image.1 Albeit Debord speaks prior to a time where mediatised technologies have the stronghold that they do within a post-internet society, nonetheless his statements can be viewed as remarkable precognition to the depiction of the present day posited by both films.

    As a result, demonlover reflects the control the image holds over contemporary society. This is reflected within the opening shots, as explosive footage plays on the airplane’s televisions that is met with indifference by the passengers. Similarly, the incessant depiction of pornographic footage sprawled on television sets and computer screens are viewed with subdued gazes.

    Airplane televisions.
    Subdued gazes.

    These examples not only showcase where the spectacle is being set as the dominant mode of production and consumption, but the apathy these images generate points towards a society that is so normalised to the proliferation of the spectacle that they find these images unremarkable. The result measures to Martine Beugnet’s reading that ‘transgression itself is but one facet of the trade strategies’ within the film, forced to satisfy an increasingly desensitised consumer base.2 This can be evidenced when audiences witness the Volf executives contemplate the marketability of computer-generated pornography that is predicated on extreme brutality. Elsewhere, the Hellfire Club promises an interactive torture experience on the internet which allows its consumers to enact violence whilst being removed from the vicinity of the victim. demonlover showcases a shift in consumer desires that directly showcases an erosion of the social sphere, whereby consuming and even partaking in acts of brutal violence is no longer taboo – empathy for the Other has withered away. At the same time, the pervasiveness of pornographic material leads Serge Kaganski to state ‘the more omnipresent sex is, […] the less these characters make love; their libidos have been drained.’3 Here, Kaganski suggests that the representations of sex are shown to be more gratifying to the protagonists than actual physical connection. This co-opting of mass violence and sexual imagery converge into the common effect of eroding intersubjective relations, either as a site where desire is displaced or where consumers become desensitised to the feeling of the Other.

    Simultaneously, the proliferation of images could also be understood in relation to a Baudrillardian hyperreality, where representations ‘masks the absence of a basic reality.’4 In this case, the distinctions between the realm of images and reality become blurred as the real world begins to match the artifice of the image. In demonlover, this manifests through the transitory sites of airports, hotels, and vehicle interiors. These settings deny the characters any rootedness or spatial anchorage, denying them space to exhibit meaningful connection. This is further compounded by the postmodern architecture that characterises the corporate office blocks, distinguished by their transparent and reflexive surfaces.

    Corporate Hyperreality.

    These features add to the immaterial aesthetic of the film, as the characters themselves navigate a hall of mirrors that only further alienates them from their landscape. This alienation is also seen in the characters themselves, who display no psychological depth beyond their corporate lives. Diane, the film’s focal subject, is depicted solely through external shots, the camera careful never to pierce into her subjectivity as she drifts through the corporate realm. In this manner, she is also estranged from the audience, since they too, are denied any points of connection into her character. This feature became a major gripe with critics upon the film’s release, offering Todd McCarthy’s example:

    As the film wears on, it becomes increasingly apparent — and increasingly detrimental to it — that Assayas never developed a sufficiently clear picture of this duplicitous and evil woman, what drives and obsesses her, and how she imagines she’s going to pull off the major subterfuge she undertakes.5

    What McCarthy and other critics overlook is that her lack of interiority corresponds to the film’s own hyperreal aesthetics – Diane appearing as almost a representation of humanity itself. This is continued within the other characters in demonlover, whereby the absence of any personality leaves them to resemble the digital avatars that are proliferated through cyberspace. Thus, the symbiosis between space and subject in their shared artificial quality has a compounding effect. This depiction of reality not only mirrors the lack of depth seen in the representations that dominate contemporary society, but it also denies the social sphere the tangibility required in both subject and space to harness positive intersubjective relations.

    However, Assayas’s stylised depiction of this vapid reality has invited critics to question his own ethical stance on the matter, offering the example of Kate Stables who writes:

    ‘The film seems half in love with the amoral jet-set criminals and ultra-transgressive internet eye-candy that it sets out to condemn, as if post-modern capitalism were just too damn shiny and pretty not to slaver over.’6

    Stables references a clear sense of aestheticization towards demonlover’s proliferation of transgressive images and immoral corporate practises. This is best reflected in the muted and cool tones of Denis Lenoir’s cinematography which pairs mesmerizingly with the ambience of the Sonic Youth soundtrack. This entrancing atmosphere remains at odds with the deviousness of the narrative action. Elsewhere, the insistence of the various screens and graphics that intrude onto the frame showcases a clear reverence for the digital aesthetic. This includes the full exposure of pornographic footage which at times takes over the entire mise-en-scène, suggesting a problematic lack of distance taken by an apparent critique of modern society. In this manner, Assayas can be seen as conforming to the ideal of the spectacle, himself as proliferating the same images and representations of reality which erode the social sphere.

    Haneke’s tempered and realist direction denies the hyperreal aesthetics that suit a Baudrillardian reading, yet the film still maintains an awareness of a society spellbound by the spectacle. This is evident through the incorporation of various television newsreels that proliferate images of conflict and violence from across the globe. However, these newsreels are often relegated to the backdrop of the mise-en-scène, often as distracting asides to the main action.

    Indifference to the image.

    Thus, these images not only fail to sustain the attention of the protagonists but also of the audience as they are forced to manage their focus between the different emphasises within the frame. The fact that images depicting the suffering of others fail to arouse the full interest from both protagonists and audience, reveals the role they maintain in eroding the subject’s ability to empathise with another. Moreover, Ann Doane compounds this effect with her reading of non-stop television cycles as contributing to ‘the annihilation of memory, and consequently of history, in its continual stress upon the “nowness” of its own discourse.’7 The proliferation of the image is shown to introduce both disaffection to the Other while also denying the space for collective retrospection in social relations. Both consequences are manifest within a narrative focused on guilt and responsibility.

    Unlike demonlover, Caché offers a mode of resistance to the proliferation of the spectacle. This is seen from the opening scene, as the initial establishing shot of a suburban neighbourhood extends to a three-minute run time that risks the audience’s disinvestment. The frame is absent of any narrative action and is only understood retrospectively in the following scenes as footage from a surveillance tape. As the narrative progresses, these tapes continue to punctuate the narrative, keeping with their distinct stillness and indifferent gaze.

    A chilling opening scene.

    These elements echo Debord’s own experimental cinema which sought to utilise anti-aesthetics to combat ‘the society of the spectacle’. In a society already established as complacent to the proliferation of the image, Haneke attempts to restore ethical viewing practises by reducing its aestheticized qualities. Hugh Manon describes this quality as ‘nonconfirmation’, that the absence of answers surrounding the tapes’ origin and purpose invites active interpretation from its spectators.8 For Georges, this quest of interpretation leads him to meet with the previously excluded Other, Majid, in the hopes of repairing previously fractured social bonds.

    Both films undoubtedly view the proliferation of images and spectacle as reducing the collective capacity for authentic connection in a world that is increasingly impacted by the rise of communication technologies. The erosion of empathy, the displacement of real-world connection, and the inability for retrospection are seen as some of the negative repercussions stemming from this situation. Yet, where demonlover seems immobilised and perhaps entranced by these developments, Caché offers a mode of resistance through the denial of aesthetics that serve to deconstruct the allure of the image.

    The rise of communication technologies was not the sole concern shared by both films regarding the decay of intersubjective relations. As aforementioned, the advent of the 2000s witnessed the intensification of global capitalism, reflected in the expansion of international trade networks and echoed in thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama. Concurrently, the 9/11 attacks not only acted in symbolic defiance of these systems of global capital but also reignited racialised divisions – most notably through the US-led War on Terror which was predicated on imperial logic and processes of racialised othering. Both Caché and demonlover engage with these contexts in differing ways to explore why the social sphere was under the process of deterioration. Demonlover posits its critique in the structures of late capitalism, whereas Caché focuses on the revival of postcolonial tensions. As Jennifer Burris argues, Caché treats Algeria as ‘a cipher through which to critique the manufacture of paranoia for political ends in post-9/11 neocolonialist ideology.’9 Despite their different emphases, both films showcase how social deterioration is dependent on systems of exclusion and domination. In this manner, the structures of postcolonialism and late-stage capitalism can be seen to mirror each other by producing realities where authentic relations with the Other become impossible.

    Caché explores postcolonial relations primarily through its evocation of France’s colonial past, particularly through its dark history with Algeria. As Mohit Chandna writes:

    [The film] displays how the bloodshed related to the Algerian war of independence, fought elsewhere and in another time, continues to rend everyday life right here and right now in the very heart of the French republic.10

    Chandna reflects on how historical colonial violence maintains influence within French contemporary society. However, reducing Caché to solely a nationalist allegory overlooks its broader postcolonial implications. Haneke affirms this claim, stating that: ‘This film was made in France, but I could have shot it with very few adjustments within an Austrian – or I’m sure an American – context.’11 Thus, what should be prioritised is not the nationalist arena of conflict, but rather how the film seeks to critique exclusionary and hegemonic forces of postcolonial violence. In line with this, the examples of Georges’ conflicts with Majid, Majid’s son, or even the cyclist, are imbued with the influence of postcolonial dynamics as they all showcase Georges’ inability to reconcile with the racialised Other. This can be seen with his continued deflection of responsibility within these scenes, or in his hostile and aggressive tone.

    Majid
    Majid’s son
    The Cyclist

    Chandna’s reading supplies backdrop to these conflicts as they exemplify the persistence of historical racialised violence. Conversely, the dinner party’s inclusion of the token black friend does not speak towards the vilification of racial difference but rather an exoticisation of it – another form of racialised othering. These scenes showcase where racialised divides are always exacerbated by the barriers of postcolonialism, where difference cannot be met with sincerity and are instead plagued with ulterior dynamics.

    This is further evidenced at the level of the film’s form, where subjectivity is privileged only to the white and bourgeois protagonist, Georges. This is enacted by aligning his character with the perspective of the audience, relegating the perspective of the racialised Other to the back of the audience’s mind. This touches upon the critiques Paul Gilroy had when reviewing the film, stating:

    When the Majids of this world are allowed to develop into deeper, rounded characters endowed with all the psychological gravity and complexity that is taken for granted in ciphers like Georges, we will know that substantive progress has been made towards breaking the white, bourgeois monopoly on dramatizing the stresses of lived experience in this modernity.12

    Gilroy is undoubtedly correct in lambasting the trend of the privileged white, upper-class perspective within cinema, albeit he perhaps misses Caché’s intentional usage of this technique. Majid’s denial of any subjectivity through the film’s formal techniques is a process that operates invisibly to its audience until the moment of his self-annihilation. This shocking scene forces confrontation with the audience’s collective ‘realisation to the extent to which [they] have underestimated and misunderstood his character.’13 By forcing audiences to reflect onto the narrative, audiences can understand where Caché’s alignment with Georges’s perspective has denied them access into Majid’s inner world. Thus, the film utilises formal techniques to replicate the exclusionary structures that castigates racialised difference.

    Caché also reveals the structures of racialised conflict to run deep, taking the example of when Georges and Majid were kids. Georges’ confession of lying to his parents about Majid’s condition to get him kicked out of their home resonates with the exclusionary politics of racism. Furthermore, Georges’ own foundational memories are saturated with the antagonistic reconstructions of a young Majid, depicting unnerving shots of his face bloodied or yielding an axe. When these images are later contextualised, they not only reveal Majid to be a victim of Georges’ cruelty but also reveal where the perception of the Other can be manipulated and vilified to serve a baseless antagonism.

    A young Majid.

    Thus, not only do the structures of postcolonial violence influence its subjects from a young age, but they persist in the subject’s own psyche – allowing its exclusionary logic to live on and serve as detrimental to intersubjective relations.

    The politics of exclusion and domination continues in demonlover, albeit they are influenced instead by the competitive logic of capitalism. This is established from the opening sequence as Diane is seen poisoning the drink of her fellow business associate. This is later revealed as a ploy to assume her victim’s senior role within the company, showcasing where the capitalist ideals of competition hang over this inaugural act of violence. Elsewhere, when Diane gets caught copying Elaine’s computer files, what ensues is a brawl that serves as microcosmic for the corporate battle between the two conglomerates that they represent. Its resolution can only be thought in the annihilation of the Other, much akin to the hegemonic market practises of monopolisation. These examples showcase where capitalism invites its subjects to turn on one another, where the games of domination fragment social ties.

    In the realm of character, Jonathan Romney labels demonlover’s protagonists as ‘blank interchangeable pawns’, referencing their capacity to assume differing roles and positions of power akin to the logic of the market.14 For example, audiences view the characters of Diane, Hervé, and Elise, all interchange seamlessly to occupy varying levels of power over another. From Elise, who turns from secretary to administrating the Hellfire project; Hervé who goes from Volf executive to espionage agent; or Diane who becomes corporate double-agent into hapless commodity.

    Elise
    Hervé
    Diane

    As previously mentioned, their lack of depth outside their corporate lives showcase that these characters are defined solely through their position within the capitalist power structure – a structure that enforces competition and erodes the sphere of the social. Furthermore, capitalism also serves to exacerbate the effects of preexisting inequalities – particularly of gender relations. For example, Hervé’s act of sexual violence not only evokes the disparities in gendered power but also reveals how this intersects with capitalism as he renders Diane as mere commodity. Her sole response in a system that emphasises her gendered subjugation is to meet violence with violence, as she shoots Hervé in the head. The penultimate sequence also showcases this intersection between gender relations and capitalism as it depicts Diane’s attempt of escape from the isolated site of the Hellfire Club. As she tries to escape her own commodification, she is forced into committing acts of violence with the various groups of men who imprison her. These examples showcase where capitalist structures impose over intersubjective relations by enforcing its ideals of competition and individualism in the face of the Other.

    This essay has shown that both demonlover and Caché exhibit an undeniable anxiety regarding the condition of social relations within a twenty-first century society. Across both films, a shared diagnosis of social deterioration emerges through the proliferation of images and spectacle. This has been reflected by depicting the displacement of real-world sites of connection or in the widespread erosion of empathy towards the Other. Where Caché and demonlover do diverge in their reasonings for social malaise, their critiques of either postcolonial relations or late-stage capitalism mirror another as both structures not only exist as sites of exclusion, hierarchy, and privilege, but they also arrive at the same conclusions of leading towards fragmenting interpersonal relations.

    Thus, as both films align in their depiction of a corroding social sphere, they offer differing sentiments towards this process which is best articulated through analysing their respective endings. Demonlover’s final scene depicts Diane relegated to pure digitalised commodity as her gaze fails to illicit response from her teenage consumer. The cynicism of this ending reflects demonlover’s own paralysis with the effects of social deterioration, failing to envision a reality outside of intersubjective breakdown. This is markedly different from Caché’s optimistic depiction of progress as the scene showcases both Georges’s and Majid’s sons engrossed in conversation.

    Diane relegated to digital commodity.
    Pierrot (Georges’ son) and Majid’s son in amiable dialogue.

    As such, the younger generation act as a symbol of hope in breaking down the historical structures that previously sought to divide them. In doing so, each film offers a contrasting picture for the future of social relations, one condemned to fracture and the other cautiously hopeful.

    1. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, (London: Rebel Press, 1994) p. 8 ↩︎
    2. Martine Beugnet, Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007) p. 165 ↩︎
    3. Serge Kaganski, ‘Corporate Vampires, Bloody Catfights, Global Cyber Spy-Games: Welcome to Olivier Assayas’s Desert of the Real’, Film Comment, 39.5 (2003), 22-23, p. 23 ↩︎
    4. Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (Semiotexte, 1983) p. 11 ↩︎
    5. Todd McCarthy, ‘Demonlover’, Variety, 2002 https://variety.com/2002/film/markets-festivals/demonlover-1200549570/ [accessed 27/04/2025] ↩︎
    6. Kate Stables, ‘Demonlover’, Sight and Sound, 14.5 (2004), 52-53, p. 53 ↩︎
    7. Ann Doane, ‘Information, Crisis, Catastrophe’ in Patricia Mellencamp (ed.), Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), 222-239 (p. 227) ↩︎
    8. Hugh S. Manon, ‘Comment ça, rien? Screening the Gaze in Caché’, in Brian Price and John David Rhodes, On Michael Haneke (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 105– 25. (p. 116) ↩︎
    9. Jennifer Burris ‘Surveillance and the indifferent gaze in Michael Haneke’s Caché’, Studies in French Cinema, 11.2, 2011, 151-163 (p. 160) ↩︎
    10. Mohit Chandna, ‘Caché, Colonial Psychosis and the Algerian War’ Interventions, 23.5 (2021), 772-89 (pp. 775-776) ↩︎
    11. Richard Porton, ‘Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke’, Cineaste, 31.1 (2005), 50-51 (p. 50) ↩︎
    12. Paul Gilroy, ‘Shooting Crabs in a Barrel’, Screen, 48.2 (2007), 233–235. (p. 234) ↩︎
    13. Maria Flood, ‘Brutal Visibility: Framing Majid’s Suicide in Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005)’, Nottingham French Studies, 56.1 (2017), 82–97 (p. 95) ↩︎
    14. Jonathan Romney, ‘Stop Making Sense’, Sight and Sound, 14.5 (2004), 28-31 (p. 30) ↩︎

  • The Road to Nowhere

    Class Tension, Disillusionment, and National Allegory in Y Tu Mamá También.

    Y Tu Máma Támbien (2001)

    Contrary to Michael Atkinson’s point of the ‘road movie’ as apolitical, Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) works as a film invested with Mexico’s socio-political sphere. This essay will explore the ways in which inequality becomes codified throughout the film’s language, noting primarily how Julio and Tenoch wrestle with the existence of their class differences and how motifs of unfulfilled promise can translate into a wider allegory about Mexico at the turn of the millennia.

    Yet, the bulk of the narrative gives the façade of agreeing with Atkinson’s argument. Both Julio and Tenoch are persistently ignorant to the condition of the Mexico that they inhabit, rather they speak mostly of sexual conquests and crude jokes. Cuarón instead involves the film in its contexts through usage of a wandering camera. This feature allows the focus to shift away from the main action and to instead incorporate glimpses into a country rife with disparity. For example, the wide-angle shot of women washing their clothes in the river. Elsewhere, where the camera seeks to centre upon stop-searches on the less fortunate. These events are ignored by the main characters, yet their inclusion suggest attention must be granted to these occurrences.

    Women washing their clothes in the river.
    Passing by a military stop-and-search.

    This depiction of Mexico is telling as contemporary critique, particularly within the domestic sphere, had blasted the film for its unglamorous images of Mexico. In an interview with Diego Luna (Tenoch), he defended the film’s national portrayals stating that its ambitions were not to dress up Mexico but rather to provide ‘a reflection of reality’.1 In another interview, Cuarón spoke on his portrayal of Mexico as ‘without filters of make-up’.2 These quotes evidence a commitment from the film’s crew to utilise its visual medium as a truthful representation of their country with all its complexities.

    In tandem with the camera, usage of the omniscient narrator provides further involvement with the socio-political. This is evident in the narrator’s elaboration on the teenagers’ ‘partial truths’ that they share with Luisa. He reveals Julio masking his smell after using Tenoch’s toilet and Tenoch using his foot to use Julio’s toilet. These actions not only signify an unspoken acknowledgement of their class differences, but also where recognition of difference is met with concealed conflict. This conflict also appears in Tenoch’s recognition of Tepelmeme, disclosed by the narrator as the birthplace of his nanny, Leo. The conflict emerges through Tenoch’s suppression of this fact and the narrator makes sure to point this out: ‘Tenoch didn’t share this with the others’. This concealment hints towards a shame harboured by Tenoch; that when relations across classes are of sentimental value, they are ‘guiltily repressed’.3

    However, class conflict does not always appear in the film’s subtext. Julio and Tenoch’s heated confrontation upon the discovery that they have been sleeping with each other’s girlfriends illustrates this, as both characters resort to using classist insults. Tenoch is quoted on using ‘pinche nacote’ which roughly translates to ‘lower-class trash’, whereas Julio’s ‘pirrurri de mierda’ insults Tenoch’s upper-class status. The scene demonstrates how fragile relations across class lines can be, that overt reference to their difference becomes the easiest avenue to scorn another.

    Classism rises to the surface.

    Fernanda Solórzano encapsulates how the film depicts class dynamics, where ‘strata coexist without touching’.4 She recognises how class becomes a fixed boundary that inhibits connection between the characters. That within a Mexico littered with inequality, it becomes unsurprising that hierarchy and dynamics is thus structured on the socioeconomic. Julio and Tenoch work as microcosms of this phenomenon as throughout the narrative, whether overtly or within the subtext, they clash due to their class difference. This is true even in the scenes that enact moments of promise in the idea that class differences can be alleviated: within the idyllic ‘Boca del Cielo’ and the teenagers’ kiss. Each instance shows the potential in transcending difference, but in turn also reveals the brittle nature of this possibility as both examples conclude with re-establishment of the status quo.

    Paradise at the Cielo del Boca.
    A fleeting moment of connection.

    In further detail, the scenes at ‘Boca del Cielo’ are described as the ‘one moment in the film’ where characters across class and national divides ‘all exist together and for each other’.5 The teenagers’ differences are put aside, and the protagonists achieve a state closest to an equilibrium than in any other point of the entire narrative. The characters of Chuy and his family, who are locals to the setting, arrive alongside them with an offer of food and a shared experience. However, where Luisa encapsulates hopes for eternity within this egalitarian utopia (‘You ever wish you could live forever?’), these hopes are quickly dismantled. The omniscient narrator reminds the audience of the mutability of this paradise. Chuy is doomed to be separated from his version of paradise at the Cielo del Boca as a result of influence from both foreign capitalists and the state. Elsewhere, knowledge of Luisa’s death and the deterioration of the boys’ friendship points towards the film failing to establish long-lasting class resolution.

    False promise thus becomes a motif which is carried into Y Tu Mamá También’s homoerotic climax. The teenagers have an opportunity to alleviate class difference through gratification of their homoerotic desires, yet their subsequent breakdown in relations point towards disparity and difference as being too much of an obstacle to overcome. This theme of unfulfilled potential perhaps points towards a Mexican state who left its citizens short-changed after the promise shown at the end of the seventy-year authoritarian PRI rule. Julio and Tenoch return to the traditionalist norms that was so often represented by the PRI: incessant conformity, the triumph of toxic masculinity (‘machismo’) and the absence of a solution to Mexico’s inequality. Y Tu Mamá También thus encapsulates the diametrical opposite to Atkinson’s generalisation of the ‘road movie’ genre. Through specific focus being dealt towards showcasing tensions between classes and the rifeness of inequality within Mexico, Cuarón constructs a careful portrait of a country at the verge of socio-political transition. Furthermore, granted with the hindsight of the stagnation and corruption that encompassed post-PRI governments, the film’s downbeat conclusions work as an incorporation of national allegory. In this, is the implication of a film deeply entrenched within its contexts.

    ‘They will never meet again.’
    1. Now, Kim Hendrickson (Criterion, 2014) [on DVD] ↩︎
    2. Maria Delgado, Alfonso Cuarón: A Life in Pictures, online video recording, BAFTA, 20 December 2011, < https://www.bafta.org/film/features/alfonso-cuaron-a-life-in-pictures> [accessed 21/03/2024] ↩︎
    3. Paul Julian Smith, Y tu mamá también (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) p. 42 ↩︎
    4. Fernanda Solórzano, Letras Libres, 2002 https://letraslibres.com/cine-tv/la-ultima-carcajada-de-cuaron/ [accessed 20/03/2024] ↩︎
    5. María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, ‘In the Shadow of NAFTA: “Y tu mamá también” Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty’, American Quartely, 57.3 (2005), pp. 751-777 (p. 771) ↩︎

  • (Post-)Modern Paranoia

    A comparative study of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau.

    From Céline et Julie vont en bateau

    Jacques Lacan argues that there are ‘paranoid affinities between all knowledge of objects as such’, suggesting that the subject’s means of acquiring knowledge is a paranoiac process.1 In this case, paranoia reflects the subject’s own desire to bridge their lack of knowledge. This is echoed by critics reading Lacan, citing Jon Mills as example, who states that paranoia is ‘the dialectic of being in relation to lack.’2 Here, Mills defines the aims of paranoia as a means to transcend one’s lack and attain ‘being’ or presence. In an epistemic framework, this translates to attaining knowledge, truth, or meaning. Thus, paranoia can be read as functioning as a hermeneutical mode. This notion was not unique to Lacan, as paranoia was understood as a process of interpreting and gaining understanding of reality as far back as Freud’s own analysis of Dr. Schreber. Here, Freud witnessed the paranoid view whereby everything is loaded with meaning, including linguistic ‘accidents, slips of the tongue, [and] lapses of the memory.’3

    Hence, when Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick reads paranoia as a hermeneutical project, this is ultimately an assured reading. Sedgwick defines some of paranoia’s features as ‘the aversion to surprise’ and dependent on the ‘efficacy of knowledge’ – features that reinforce paranoia’s relationship with epistemology.4 Ultimately, Sedgwick finds paranoia as structured by ‘negative affect’, a categorisation which in turn implies an inverse hermeneutical mode based upon ‘positive affect’.5 Positive affect is described as ‘reparative reading’, which is associated with multiplicity, creativity and love and can be understood to forego the interrogative nature of paranoia in exchange for a more aesthetic focus.6 This dichotomy echoes Brian McHale’s framework for understanding modernist and postmodernist texts through the former’s epistemic focus and the latter’s alleviation of these concerns.7 Instead, postmodernism prioritises ontological questions that interrogate the notion of multiple ‘worlds’ or realities and how they interact and coalesce within the text.8 Sedgwick’s reparative reading is echoed here through the shared focus on plurality and the aesthetic, but most definitively through relegating the paranoiac pursuit of knowledge and truth as an unworthy endeavour.

    The Crying of Lot 49
    Céline et Julie vont en bateau

    Thus, this essay will read paranoia as a lens which emphasises the distinctions between modernism and postmodernism. This will be done through the comparative close reading of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau. These texts appear either side of the boundary between literary movements, as Pynchon’s late modernism of epistemological angst and paranoia provides a counterpoint to Rivette’s postmodern employment of ontological play. Furthermore, this essay will draw on the aforementioned frameworks of paranoia developed by Lacan and Sedgwick, using them to enrich the comparative analysis between the two texts.

    However, before delving into the analysis it is worth considering the literary debate concerning the categorisation of Lot 49 as a late modernist text. This essay is aligned with McHale’s stance which states that the text ‘threatens to’ cross into postmodernist ontological foregrounding, ‘but does not quite do so.’9 This is due to the text failing to completely accept the reality of the countercultural world of the ‘Tristero’, preferring instead to focus on the epistemological quandaries generated by this act of non-resolution. Yet, other critics have disregarded McHale’s claims, providing Nicholas Frangipane’s declaration that postmodernism is defined through its awareness that ‘knowledge [is] socially constructed and is not connected to any sort of absolute truth.’10 Similarly, Bran Nicol also equates epistemological concern with postmodernism by stating that it remains ‘almost as epistemologically dominated as modernism.’11 These critics seemingly miss the fact that McHale’s framework does not deny that epistemological concerns cannot be generated within the postmodern text, rather what is important to the literary distinction is what questions are foregrounded. These critics do not deny that Lot 49 is loaded with epistemological anxiety yet they fail to see that it is the novel’s disavowal of ontological concerns which renders the text solely as late modernist.

    Paranoia is therefore explored within Lot 49 in a distinctly modernist mode as epistemological angst remains rife throughout the narrative. This is primarily shown through the novel’s protagonist, Oedipa, as she drifts through consumerist America in search for some form of transcendental meaning. Lot 49’s vision of America is seemingly primed for Oedipa’s sense of paranoia as its ‘proliferation of signs’ forces her into a constant process of interpretation.12 This is evidenced early on within the narrative as Oedipa muses that ‘there [is] revelation in progress all around her’, illustrating how she perceives the world as imbued with deeper meaning.13 An example of Oedipa encountering ‘revelation’ can be seen when she watches The Courier’s Tragedy, becoming aware of the intrigue generated by the word ‘Tristero’.

    Trystero. The word hung in the air as an act ended and all the lights were for a moment cut; hung in the dark to puzzle Oedipa Maas, but not yet to exert the power over her it was to. (p. 54)

    The importance Oedipa assigns to the word ‘Trystero’ is thematised metafictionally as it is contained within its own sentence, aligning readers with Oedipa’s paranoid processing. Furthermore, the moment of Tristero’s enunciation is written with an eerie suspense as a multitude of caesura prompts incessant pauses. The doubling of ‘hung’ mimics this tension, reinforcing the feeling of anticipation felt by both Oedipa and the reader. This constitutes as merely one example of Oedipa’s continual assignment of importance to seemingly innocuous signs. Elsewhere, she finds the likes of human bones, postage stamps, and the ever-present muted post horn, as brimming with surplus meaning.

    The ‘Tristero’ post horn.

    As the narrative portrays her mission to resolve the open-endedness of these signs through interpretation, it showcases Oedipa’s desire to bridge her own lack of understanding. Thus, paranoia acts as the mechanism that attempts to alleviate Oedipa’s lack. However, by drawing on Lacan’s concepts of the Symbolic Order – where signifiers themselves are without fixed meaning and can only deflect to other signifiers – Oedipa’s quest for truth is shown to be a futile endeavour.14 Her desire to transcend her own lack merely propels her to go through an endless chain of signification, where each sign only leads to another. For example, where the digging up of human bones leads Oedipa to encounter a 17th century play which in turn leads her to the sign of ‘Tristero’ and so forth. In this manner, Oedipa’s paranoiac ‘obsession with order’ can only replicate the signifying chain as her incessant attempts to connect disparate signs and clues always falls short of uncovering a stable or objective truth.15

    As the narrative progresses, Oedipa seemingly becomes aware of the futility surrounding her epistemic quest. For example, she deliberates over the various options surrounding the conspiracy of the Tristero, labelling these likelihoods as the ‘symmetrical four.’ (p. 132) These span from the Tristero being a genuine countercultural force to it solely being the product of Oedipa’s own paranoia. Similarly, she later ponders if ‘behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.’ (p. 140) The consistent evocation of her own impasse reveals that her paranoia has not gotten her any closer towards an objective truth – merely conflicting possibilities. Furthermore, Oedipa’s epistemic standstill manifests in her own physical deterioration, as ‘old fillings in her teeth began to bother her’ alongside ‘headaches, nightmares and menstrual pains.’ (p. 132) Paranoia’s ‘negative affect’ is showcased here in full swing, as Oedipa’s adherence to this hermeneutical mode leads her towards mental and physical collapse. Her inability to find solace in non-resolution – reflected in Oedipa’s dismissal of ‘excluded middles’ (‘they were bad shit’, p. 140) – condemns Oedipa to a perpetual state of paranoiac uncertainty.

    Lot 49’s expression of paranoia is also replicated at the level of the reader’s own consumption. This is through the novel’s various structural elements that forces the reader’s recognition of their own uncertainty. For example, as Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor suggest, the plot of Lot 49 closely follows the trajectory of a classic detective story.16 This is a genre which McHale labels as the ‘epistemological genre par excellence’ whereby mystery and uncertainty becomes the driving point of the narrative.17 This seems to be a conscious decision since the text continuously remains self-aware of this fact. For instance, a common interpretation surrounding Oedipa’s name is that it alludes to Oedipus of Oedipus Rex, serving as one of the earliest detectives in literature as he is pitted to solve the riddle of the sphinx. Elsewhere, Oedipa is even referred to as a ‘private eye’ as the text remarks that ‘sooner or later [she] has to get beat up on’ (p. 94) – a playful observation that references the familiar beats of the genre that the text imitates. However, as Mendelson states that the common objective of the detective narrative ‘is to reduce a complex and disordered situation to simplicity and clarity’, the reader finds this trope defiantly subverted.18 This is through the state of non-resolution administered by the narrative, leaving complex plot threads unresolved and subsequently denying the reader catharsis which stems from resolution. In this manner, the reader is condemned to be perpetually constrained by their lack of understanding. They are forced to remedy their lack through paranoid reading, incessantly reading the text for clues that administer a sense of closure to the text. Unfortunately, this process is further thwarted by the difficulty of the prose itself as Pynchon continuously ‘backtracks’ and ‘interrupts’ through the aid of his frequent usage of parenthesis and dashes.19 This denies the reader a coherent reading experience as they are forced to exert great efforts into drawing out understanding from the text. The difficulty of the prose functions as an enigmatic barrier whereby paranoid reading acts as seemingly the sole process that rewards comprehension. Thus, Lot 49’s epistemological unease pushes paranoia to embody central importance within the novel, a sentiment that is not only repeated within the contents of the narrative, but also in the structural mode which readers encounter the text. The ubiquity of paranoia within Lot 49 effectively renders it as a modernist text, as the novel is forced to concern itself with the epistemological uncertainties.

    Céline et Julie also evokes paranoia in a similar fashion. This is primarily carried out through the protagonists’ interaction with a ghastly mystery staged at a haunted mansion. The narrative depicts how each time one of the protagonists leaves the house, they do so within a state of confused amnesia. The only key Céline or Julie have in recalling the forgotten events is through sucking on a piece of candy that they leave with each time. The first of such scenes is when Julie, having just left the mansion, attends Céline’s cabaret show. Here, the scene is continuously interrupted with abrupt intercuts that depict the events from the house.

    Julie watches on at Céline’s cabaret…
    … as images from the house are quickly intercut.

    This technique breaks up the logical coherency of the film as it imposes a parallel reality alongside the main action, aligning the audience with Julie’s own uncertainty as to what is unravelling. This uncertainty is exemplified by Julie’s subsequent outburst of not being able to remember or understand what had occurred in the house. The protagonists’ epistemic lack prompts their paranoiac desire to return to the house in the hopes of uncovering a ‘truth’ or understanding. However, the result of this quest only reveals a subplot filled with deceit and subterfuge that culminates in the death of a young girl. In this manner, the protagonists’ initial basis for their paranoia is substituted for another premise as the question of who killed the young girl takes centre stage. This mirrors the continual deflection of signs explored within Lot 49, as Céline et Julie stages a similar signifying chain that seemingly skirts round an objective truth. As Dennis Lim describes, the narrative becomes characterised as a perpetual ‘search for meaning’ whereby the protagonists paranoically interpret enigmas to attain a modicum of ‘truth’.20

    However, the mystery surrounding the subplot remains the sole part of the film that foregrounds epistemic concern as the rest of the film adopts a laissez-faire attitude towards knowledge, understanding, and truth. This is established from the film’s outset as the opening title card states: ‘Le plus souvent, ça commençait comme ça.’21 The card effectively undermines the authenticity of the reality presented in the ensuing narrative, denying the possibility of extracting any stable form of truth from it. Moreover, by delivering this fact in a deadpan style, it suggests that this assertion does not even matter. Thus, the paranoiac objective of attaining truth is denied an empirical foundation to carry out this endeavour, relegating epistemic concerns to the backdrop of the film. This also implies that the subplot, endowed with the promise of epistemic catharsis, is deprived of significance regarding its resolution. Elsewhere, epistemological concerns are further undermined by the film’s direct disavowal of the processes of knowledge acquisition. For example, Julie faultlessly assumes Céline’s earlier lie that she related to her friends, stating that Julie was an American celebrity. However, the film discloses no moment which shows Céline relaying this information to Julie, thereby rejecting narrative continuity that is traditionally used to establish the characters’ knowledge and understanding. Elsewhere, when Julie asks Céline for the address of the mysterious house that Céline had previously mentioned, Julie ends up answering the question for her. This moment rejects causality, supplying further evidence to what Julie Levinson describes as the film’s continuous challenge of the laws of reality and fiction.22 Thus, Céline et Julie denies paranoia the space to operate as uncertainty is transformed into a desired quality within the film. This works in stark contrast to Lot 49’s incessant fervour in attaining truth or meaning since Céline et Julie almost entirely foregoes these concerns.

    Thus, as Céline et Julie positions itself as the antithesis to Lot 49’s paranoiac mode, the film aligns more closely with Sedgwick’s ‘reparative mode’. This is where Céline et Julie solidifies itself as a postmodern text as the film resists the ‘negative affect’ associated with paranoia’s hermeneutics. As opposed to being driven by epistemic lack, the film revels in the postmodern processes of ontological play. This is evidenced by McHale who states that the postmodern condition is the ‘anarchic landscape of worlds in the plural.’23 This plurality is undoubtedly present within Céline et Julie, where contemporary Paris and the haunted house coexist as distinct ontological realms. This is reflected through contrasting framing techniques as the kinetic and mobile lens used to capture Paris stands in contrast to the static shots that depict the mansion. The house’s mise-en-scéne further emphasises the self-sufficient nature of this world, as it almost entirely excludes the inclusion of windows that signify the existence of an external reality – confining its characters within the enclosed reality of the interiors. In contrast, Paris is often depicted through usage of wide shots that emphasise the vast liberatory expanse of the city.

    The expanse of Paris…
    … compared to the claustrophic interiors of the house.

    Nonetheless, the film resists privileging one reality over the other. As Jonathan Rosenbaum states: ‘each [reality] is as outrageous as the other’ suggesting a deliberate refusal to establish a dominant ontological realm.24 Instead, Céline et Julie consistently sustains ontological plurality, even depicting moments where these distinct realities converge and coalesce. This is exemplified when both protagonists enter the narrative of the haunted house, bringing a sense of joy and play into this macabre scene. Both protagonists frequently mess up their lines, clown about, and even perform anachronism as they dance tango within a 19th century setting. By introducing a sense of ‘play’ into the narrative, they are also able to actively reconstruct the initial ghastly narrative as Céline and Julie ultimately save the young girl – ironically through an open window, a portal between ontological realities.25 As Céline, Julie, and now Madlyn – the young girl rescued from the house – wake up in contemporary Paris, the film reaffirms its motif of layered realities. This culminates in the penultimate scene, which depicts the inhabitants of the haunted house drifting past the protagonists on a boat – a final assertion of ontological plurality and interplay within the film. Céline et Julie’s commitment to multiplicity exists in stark opposition to Lot 49’s lament against ‘excluded middles.’ In this manner, McHale’s conception of postmodern plurality is testified to, while the film’s playful tone also evokes Sedgwick’s reparative reading – the antithesis to the paranoiac mode. Thus, Lot 49’s paranoiac mode is substituted for Céline et Julie’s positive embrace of ontological play.

    In comparing Lot 49 and Céline et Julie, this essay has demonstrated how paranoia serves as a lens for distinguishing the shift from modernist to postmodernist modes of fiction. In Pynchon’s novel, paranoia is emblematic of a late-modernist anxiety surrounding the futility of the epistemological project, where cracks begin to form in the search for meaning in an increasingly fragmented world. Oedipa’s quest mirrors the reader’s desire for resolution, a desire ultimately denied through the open-endedness of the ending. By contrast, Rivette’s film takes the failure of the epistemological project as a starting point, allowing the film to ultimately reject paranoiac sentiments and therefore align itself to a multiplicity and positivity that recall both the postmodern and Sedgwick’s ‘reparative mode’.

    1. Jacques Lacan, ‘The Other and Psychoses’ in J. A. Miller (ed.), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 3: The Psychoses, 1955–1956 (New York: Norton, 1993) pp. 29–43 (p. 39) ↩︎
    2. Jon Mills, ‘Lacan on Paranoiac Knowledge’, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 20.1 (2003), 30-51 (p. 47) ↩︎
    3. Margaret Iversen, Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007) p. 53 ↩︎
    4. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press, 2003) p. 130-138 ↩︎
    5. Ibid. p. 136 ↩︎
    6. Heather Love, ‘Truth and Consequences: On Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading’, Criticism, 52.2 (2010) 235-241 (p. 237) ↩︎
    7. Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1987) pp. 9-10 ↩︎
    8. Ibid. p. 10 ↩︎
    9. Ibid. p. 22 ↩︎
    10. Nicholas Frangipane, ‘Freeways and Fog: The Shift in Attitude between Postmodernism and Post-Postmodernism from The Crying of Lot 49 to Inherent Vice’ Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 57.5 (2016), 521-532 (p. 522) ↩︎
    11. Bran Nicol, ‘Reading Paranoia: Paranoia, Epistemophilia and the Postmodern Crisis of Interpretation’, Literature and Psychology, 45.1 (1999), 44-62 (p. 52) ↩︎
    12. John Johnston, ‘Towards the Schizo-Text: Paranoia as Semiotic Regime in Lot 49’ in New Essays on The Crying of Lot 49, ed. by Patrick O’Donnell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 47-78 (p. 48) ↩︎
    13. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Dublin: Penguin Random House, 2022), p. 29 ↩︎
    14. Jacques Lacan, Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2006) pp. 418-419 ↩︎
    15. Charles Cullum, ‘Rebels, Conspirators, and Parrots, Oh My!: Lacanian Paranoia and Obsession in Three Postmodern Novels’, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 52.1, 1-16 (p. 5) ↩︎
    16. Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor, Thomas Pynchon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) p. 54 ↩︎
    17. Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1987) p. 9 ↩︎
    18. Edward Mendelson, Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1978) p. 123 ↩︎
    19. William Gleason, ‘The Postmodern Labyrinths of Lot 49’, Critique, 34.2 (1993) 83-99 (p. 87) ↩︎
    20. Dennis Lim, ‘A Winding Trip Reverberates in Cinema’, New York Times, 2012 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/movies/revisiting-jacques-rivettes-celine-and-julie-go-boating.html [accessed 04/05/2025] ↩︎
    21. Céline et Julie von ten bateau, dir. by. Jacques Rivette (Les Films du Losange, 1974) ↩︎
    22. Julie Levinson, ‘Céline and Julie Go Story Telling’, The French Review, 65.2 (1991), 236-46 (p. 240) ↩︎
    23. Brian McHale, Postmodern Fiction (p. 37) ↩︎
    24. Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘Work and Play in the House of Fiction’, Sight and Sound, 43.4 (1974) ↩︎
    25. Douglas Morrey and Alison Smith, Jacques Rivette (Manchester: Manchester University Press: 2009) p. 132 ↩︎