If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"Changeling," ethics and horror

Last night I watched "Changeling," the movie Angelina Jolie got an Oscar nomination for. Boy was that an unpleasant experience. The logic of the film is sadism filtered through liberal critique to make it "important." But I am not fooled: I like honest sadism, not righteous sadism. If someone wanted to defend this movie, and I doubt there is really anyone that invested in it, they might argue that it "unmasks" the patriarchal social technologies exercised by the Police. But it does so so bluntly--about fifteen minutes in John Malkovich thunders from a pulpit about the corruption and violence of the LAPD--that it can only really be considered as a horror film.

This brings me to my second point. There has been some discussion over at Critical Animal about historicism and becoming-vegetarian. One sub-argument, which I think CA correctly understands but can be misleading out of context, is this:

Me: "is there hypothetically a time or place in which humans eating animals is morally ok?"

Critical Animal: Yes, of course. I'm not too interested in figuring it out. It seems like the lifeboat situation you said you weren't too interested in, either.




The point of my question is a simple test for metaphysics: can you imagine this being otherwise? History always allows the otherwise. Metaphysics does not. It is not a test for seeking out and inhabiting those marginal moral cases or legitimizing a social order based on the exceptional example (insert Homo Sacer here). This is why, like CA, I am not particularly interested in articulating the conditions of the flesh-eating ship. I am interested in understanding the use of "the lifeboat" as a longstanding part of ethical discourse.

There are two genres that have this task: horror and Ethics (in an anglo/applied sense rather than a deconstructive 'ethics in general'). For both of these the margin or the counter-example is the paradigmatic social sphere. The lifeboat is a good example of the kind of constricted space these discourses prefer (like Sade), or any other architecture (the labyrinth/cave, the foreign place, the space ship, the cabin) that cuts the subject off from escape into social multiplicity.

Jason X, in space:


"Changeling" makes use of many such cramped conditions: police interrogation rooms, the many chambers of the asylum, a chicken coop in which boys are stored (alongside chickens) prior to slaughter (one could likewise expostulate on this). I can see two useful messages in its horror/ethics: 1) that rejecting lifeboat scenarios while apparently within them is necessary for right action, as Jolie's character does in forming alliances with other female internees, and her son does in helping another escape from the coop 2) that the existence of the lifeboat scenario is maintained as a formal possibility but as another world. That is, the reactionary character of horror is valuable precisely because it objectifies the reactionary Welt as one world among many.

4 comments:

  1. I like this post. I'll try to write a real response later on (who knows if I will).
    Some very random thoughts, though: Reza and Nick Land had some sort of discourse about horror a long time ago, back when Reza use to run cold-me. You might want to check it out.
    I, myself, can't stand watching horror movies. Most people think this weird, but it's still true about me. However, Joe Lesson-Shatz, who is finishing up his dissertation work on cyborgology and critical animal studies over here at Bing, told me that the texas chainsaw massacre movies (particularly the original) have some heavy handed connections between the eating and killing of human flesh with other animal flesh. Likewise, HG Wells makes the exact same argument in The Time Machine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. But is cannibalism metaphysically a "lifeboat" scenario?

    I've been reading quite a bit about cannibalism today. One reading I found fascinating, but not entirely surprising, was on the Wari' of the Amazon. At least precontact (if not today as well), the Wari' practiced endo- and exocannibalism. Their relationship with the "animals" they consumed were considered mutual and likewise cannibalistic since they possessed human spirits and were sometimes eaten by them.

    I'm not arguing that the Wari' were morally correct or that what they did (or continue to do) was morally acceptable. I'm just curious whether our objection to, horror, and denial of institutional / culturally sanctioned cannibalism is itself ethnocentric.

    Does killing "animals" continue to be morally unacceptable in the same way it does in a modern Western culture in which they are all but commodities and symbols to be consumed, though humans are not to be--not reciprocal agents, who like humans, are consumed regularly?

    Are cross-cultural studies of human-animal relations mostly irrelevant "historical" distractiones (i.e. lifeboat scenarios)? Can't they challenge us to reflect upon presuppositional values.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Scu--

    Thanks for those references. Horror is one of my interests, but only if it is kind of goofy. I love Romero's work or pretty much anything with zombies but shy away from "realist horror"--much anything with rape or the abuse of the powerless by the powerful. My general stance is that the violence of horror cinema directly correlates to a conscious outlet for guilt over violence to animals (which also makes me very uncomfortable).

    Adam--

    Thank you for your involved response. I would agree with some parts of the latter half of your post.

    "Does killing "animals" continue to be morally unacceptable in the same way it does in a modern Western culture [if animals are not categorically distinct from humans]?"

    This is pretty much exactly the liminal case I was describing and since I opened this can I'll answer for it. In short, the indistinction cuts (pun) two ways: if killing humans is ok, so is killing animals. But is that the case we want to live in and have direct our actions?

    That is the world of horror, where it is assumed that someone must be hurt. What Scu at Critical Animal in his formulation of becoming-veg and I are working toward is the inverse: not assuming and doling out harms, but assuming the possibility of growth between subjects (used loosely). So, I do agree with your hypothetical but again think it is not a productive question to ask. (Can I buy Nikes if I'm not in a capitalist country?)

    Now, the first part of your post on the facticity of cannibalism is a somewhat different problem. Willian Arens's The Man-Eating Myth gives a good sense of the problems at stake here. Basically, I would say that cannibalism is not intrinsically or ahistorically bad and so provides the best heuristic for flesh eating in general. However, one needs to be somewhat careful about "cannibalism" because it is so strongly filtered through pre-existent codes that it almost cannot exist for Western thought. Gananath Obeyesekere has good stuff on cannibalism as a discursive formation.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "What Scu at Critical Animal in his formulation of becoming-veg and I are working toward is the inverse: not assuming and doling out harms, but assuming the possibility of growth between subjects (used loosely). "

    I'm really tired (I have no clue how you blogged and moved, I am seriously impressed), so I didn't parse that.

    I'd love to see something longer on that point. If you get around to it, thanks.

    ReplyDelete