Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology 9781138235731, 9781138235748, 9781315304076

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
The end of history or a new beginning?
Neoliberalism and its consequences
Neoliberalism and cinema
Structure of the collection and chapter descriptions
Notes
Bibliography
Part 1 Political economy of neoliberalism and its discontents
1 Team Loach and Sixteen Films: Authorship, collaboration, leadership (and football)1
Theories of authorship
Team Loach
Teams in the films
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
2 US independent cinema and the capitalist mode of production
What is US independent cinema?
Neoliberalism, modes of production and modes of life
Freedom from commercial intentions?
US independent cinema, individualism and the neoliberal worldview
Notes
Bibliography
3 The lure of becoming cinema: The role of the internet in amateur and independent filmmaking
Attention seeking
The internet as gatekeeper to the fleshworld
Favouring those who are already successful
Taking the amateur’s money
Withoutachance? Film festival submission sites
‘YouTube is not legit’
The new hope?
References
4 Svetlana Baskova’s response to Russian national neoliberalism in For Marx …
Russian cinema and neoliberalism
The production of For Marx …
Non-cinema: darkness in For Marx …
Reception of For Marx …
Bibliography
Part 2 Neoliberal winners and losers
5 The rise of the entrepreneur in Jia Zhangke’s Words of a Journey
Historical context
Narratives of success
E-tales
Self-help and suzhi
References
6 Capitalist realism in European films about debt
Casino capitalism in Rogue Trader
Rushing to the West via Debt
Circularity of debt in Time Out
Conclusions
References
7 Bypass, obscure forces and ontological anxiety
Aesthetics and politics
References
8 Aggressive prosperity, violent austerity in Standing Aside, Watching
The austerity years and the 2015 referendum
‘The future fascists will be wearing slippers’
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
9 Multiplexing Marx in contemporary American cinema
Marxism and cinema
From fear to farce
Communism for dummies
Marxism for the ‘Google generation’
Conclusions
Bibliography
Part 3 Love and sexual identities under neoliberalism
10 Hedges of Manhattan: The disquieting charm of the haute bourgeoisie in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married
Connecticut liberalism
The contradictions of the suburban condition
Shiva the destroyer
Conclusion: the ultimate ruler
Notes
References
11 Corporations of feelings: Romantic comedy in the age of neoliberalism
Neoliberalism and romantic comedy: friends with benefits
How can you marry a woman and not lose your male friends?
‘Corporate sisterhood’
‘Everyone can love’ (and watch romantic comedies): generic adjustments and spectatorship
Conclusion
Bibliography
12 Why is everyone not falling in love?: Love, sex and neoliberalism in film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis’ works
Ellis and neoliberalism
Romantic love
Love as use of erotic capital
Sex as liberation
The death of love
Conclusion
Note
References
13 Cinema, sex tourism and globalisation in American and European cinema
Female sex tourism: a contested object
Globalisation and embodied affectivity
Romance, chick flicks and postfeminist subjects
Emotional labour and bounded authenticity
Commodified black bodies and the erasure of history
Conclusion
References
14 Polymorphous consumption: Eytan Fox’s The Bubble as gated community
Gay sexuality and privilege
Ethnic identity and social class
Life in the bubble – liberalism and neoliberalism
Aesthetic cosmopolitanism: gay Israel and the world
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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CONTEMPORARY CINEMA AND NEOLIBERAL IDEOLOGY

In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world.They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-​ free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films. Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Central Lancashire. She has published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music. Mazierska (with Kristensen) has also organised two conferences entitled ‘Marx at the Movies’, one in 2012 and again in 2015, which were devoted to the interface between the moving image and Marxism. Lars Kristensen is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts, Aesthetics and Narration at the University of Skövde, Sweden, where he teaches moving image theory to game developers. His research focuses on Russian and Eastern European filmmaking as well as bicycle cinema, post-​critique and theories of game and play. His publications have appeared in Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Games and Culture, Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and Thesis Eleven.

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CONTEMPORARY CINEMA AND NEOLIBERAL IDEOLOGY

Edited by Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen

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First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​23573-​1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​23574-​8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​315-​30407-​6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Out of House Publishing

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CONTENTS

List of figures Notes on contributors Introduction Ewa Mazierska

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PART 1

Political economy of neoliberalism and its discontents

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1 Team Loach and Sixteen Films: authorship, collaboration, leadership (and football) David Archibald

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2 US independent cinema and the capitalist mode of production: complicating discourses of independence and oppositionality Kevan Feshami

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3 The lure of becoming cinema: the role of the internet in amateur and independent filmmaking William Brown

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4 Svetlana Baskova’s response to Russian national neoliberalism in For Marx … Lars Kristensen

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PART 2

Neoliberal winners and losers

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5 The rise of the entrepreneur in Jia Zhangke’s Words of a Journey Corey Kai Nelson Schultz

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6 Capitalist realism in European films about debt Ewa Mazierska

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7 Bypass, obscure forces and ontological anxiety Paul Dave

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8 Aggressive prosperity, violent austerity in Standing Aside,Watching Rosa Barotsi

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9 Multiplexing Marx in contemporary American cinema Doru Pop

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PART 3

Love and sexual identities under neoliberalism

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10 Hedges of Manhattan: the disquieting charm of the haute bourgeoisie in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married Constantin Parvulescu

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11 Corporations of feelings: romantic comedy in the age of neoliberalism Elżbieta Ostrowska

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12 Why is everyone not falling in love? Love, sex and neoliberalism in film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis’ works Kamila Rymajdo

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13 Cinema, sex tourism and globalisation in American and European cinema Martin O’Shaughnessy

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14 Polymorphous consumption: Eytan Fox’s The Bubble as gated community Bruce Williams

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Index

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FIGURES

1.1 Loach and the lead actors in The Angels’ Share discuss the intricacies of a fight scene in a snooker hall. 1.2 Loach and the crew preparing to shoot the whisky-​tasting sequence in The Angels’ Share. 1.3 The whisky-​tasting sequence in The Angels’ Share. 4.1 Illuminated darkness. Baskova’s focus lies on darkness. 4.2 Pakhomov and Epifantsev in melodramatic rooftop battle. 4.3 Mute agitation. 6.1 The ‘young wolves’ of Polish business in Debt by Krzysztof Krauze. 6.2 Adam in Debt. 6.3 Vincent in Time Out. 6.4 Aurélien Recoing as Vincent. 7.1 Ben Dilloway as Greg. 7.2 Donald Sumpter as Granddad. 7.3 Tim and Lily in a kiss. 8.1 The villain of this Greek neo-​Western also bears an ancient Theban name. 8.2 A contemporary Theban Antigone wrecks the temple of consumer capitalism. 8.3 Condo-​fascists. According to Antigone, fascism stems from the lower middle-​class and nouveaux riches of post-​antiparohi Greece. 9.1 Kim Jong-​un smoking a cigar. 9.2 George Clooney as Caesar. 9.3 The Internship. 10.1 Nuptial multiculturalism. 11.1 Screenshot from Wedding Crashers.

26 35 36 82 84 85 112 113 116 118 125 126 135 144 148 149 158 159 163 174 189

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1 1.2 Mamma Mia! 11.3 Screenshot from About a Boy. 12.1 Bateman in his bathroom in American Psycho. 12.2 Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman. 12.3 Graham and Christie on the beach. 13.1 Stella’s self-​fashioning as an empowered postfeminist subject. 13.2 The comic, disconcerting symmetry of one of Seidl’s tableaux. 13.3 The tourist gaze and the black body. 14.1 Yoli in his trendy café. 14.2 Dressing Ashraf for success. 14.3 The rave against the occupation.

193 195 203 209 210 222 228 230 237 239 242

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CONTRIBUTORS

David Archibald is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University

of Glasgow. His publications include the monograph The War That Won’t Die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema (2012), and numerous essays on radical film, contested media events and various aspects of Scotland’s cultural and political landscape. An active participant in film culture, he is Chair of the Board of Document Film Festival and a Trustee of Glasgow Film Theatre, and was Coordinator of the 2016 Radical Film Network Festival and Unconference. David has worked on six short films, most recently Govan Young, a documentary about medieval Glasgow, and he also appears irregularly in the Glasgow Glam Rock Dialogues, which he founded with Carl Lavery in 2016. Rosa Barotsi is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the ICI Berlin. She holds

a PhD in European Cinema from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research explores how political meanings are created and reshaped in contemporary cinema. She has published on slow cinema; Greek cinema and the ‘crisis’; Italian cinema and impegno; and the politics of documentary filmmaking. William Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton,

London. He is the author of Non-​ Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking and the Multitude (2018), Supercinema: Film-​Philosophy for the Digital Age (2013) and Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe (with Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, 2010). He is also the co-​editor of Deleuze and Film (with David Martin-​Jones, 2012). He has published numerous essays in journals and edited collections, and has directed various films, including En attendant Godard (2009), Circle/​ Line (2016), Letters to Ariadne (2016) and The Benefit of Doubt (2017).

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Paul Dave is Reader in Film and Cultural Theory at the University of Teesside in

the School of Arts and Media. His research generally focuses on historical materialist approaches to culture. He is author of Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Cinema (2006) and has published work in a range of journals including New Left Review, Radical Philosophy, Film International, The Journal of British Cinema and Television and Soundings. He is currently writing a monograph for Pluto Press in the Marxism and Culture series, entitled British Cinema: Romanticism and Historical Materialism. He is a founding member of the Social Realism Seminar based in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Teesside. Kevan Feshami is a PhD Candidate in the Media Studies department at the

University of Colorado, Boulder. His dissertation examines the historical development and contemporary circulation of the white genocide conspiracy theory within the digital networks of white nationalist movements. He is also very interested in historical materialist and dialectical philosophy and methodology, especially as a revolutionary analysis of capitalist life. Lars Kristensen is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts, Aesthetics and Narration at the

University of Skövde, Sweden. His research focuses on Eastern European filmmaking, bicycle cinema and Marxist approaches to moving images. Current research topics include modern propaganda, Roger Caillois and theories of game and play. He is the editor of Art and Game Obstruction (2016) and Postcommunist Film –​Russia, Eastern Europe and World Culture (2012), as well as two collections co-​edited with Ewa Mazierska, Marx at the Movies (2014) and Marxism and Film Activism (2015). Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Central Lancashire.

She has published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music. They include Marxism and Film Activism (2015), with Lars Kristensen; Relocating Popular Music (2015), with Georgina Gregory; From Self-​ Fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest:Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present (2015); and European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (2011). Mazierska’s work has been translated into many languages, including French, Italian, German, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Estonian and Serbian. She is principal editor of a Routledge journal, Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Martin O’Shaughnessy is Professor of Film Studies at Nottingham Trent University.

He is particularly interested in cinema and politics, especially as it relates to French and francophone Belgian cinema. His recent research has focused on French film and globalisation; film, neoliberal subjects, work and the machinic; and cinema and the current crisis, especially but not only in relation to debt and gift economies. He is the author of Jean Renoir (2000), The New Face of Political Cinema (2007), La Grande Illusion (2009) and Laurent Cantet (2015).

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Elżbieta Ostrowska teaches film at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her pub-

lications include The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia, co-​edited with Ewa Mazierska and Matilda Mroz (2015); Women in Polish Cinema, co-​authored with Ewa Mazierska (2006); The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World, co-​edited with John Orr (2006); The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance, co-​edited with John Orr (2003); and Gender in Film and the Media: East–​ West Dialogues, co-​edited with Elżbieta Oleksy and Michael Stevenson (2000). Her articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Studies in European Cinema and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is a deputy editor of Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Constantin Parvulescu writes on the audiovisual representation of financial ser-

vices; the cinema of Eastern Europe; and film and history. He coordinates the research project Finance and the Moving Image, and is the editor of the forthcoming Global Finance on Screen: From Wall Street to Side Street. He is also the author of Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject (2015) and the co-​editor of A Companion to the Historical Film (2013). At present, he is a research fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra, Spain, and a guest lecturer at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. Doru Pop is currently a Mildred Miller Fort Foundation scholar at Columbus

State University, Georgia, USA, teaching European Cinema. He is also a full-​time professor at the Babeș-​Bolyai University (UBB) in Cluj, Romania. Doru Pop received his MA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his PhD in Visual Culture and Philosophy from UBB. He was previously a Fulbright junior scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York, a Ron Brown fellow and, more recently, a senior Fulbright scholar at Bard College, New York (2013), where he taught a course on Romanian New Wave cinema. He is editor in chief of the academic journal Ekphrasis and director of the Ekphrasis Research Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at UBB. His publications include Modern and Postmodern: Philosophies of Visual Culture (2005) and Romanian New Wave Cinema: An Introduction (McFarland, 2014). Kamila Rymajdo received a Creative Writing PhD from Kingston University.

Previously she studied English Language and Literature at the University of Manchester, where she also completed an MA. She publishes on music and popular culture in journals such as Popular Music History and magazines including Vice, Mixmag, The Fader and Dazed. Corey Kai Nelson Schultz is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University

of Southampton, UK. He earned his PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. His areas of research are contemporary Chinese visual culture and film

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phenomenology, and he has published in Asian Cinema, Film-​Philosophy, Screen and Visual Communication. Bruce Williams is Professor of Cultural Studies and graduate director in the

Department of Languages and Cultures and co-​coordinator of the programme in International Cinema at the William Paterson University of New Jersey. He has published extensively in the areas of cinema history, film theory, Latin American and European cinemas, and language and cinema. He is the author, with Keumsil Kim Yoon, of Two Lenses on the Korean Ethos: Key Cultural Concepts and Their Appearance in Cinema (2015). His current research focuses on Albanian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Kinostudio era, the transition to international co-​production, and women directors.Williams is working on a book-​length manuscript on Albanian cinema. His article ‘It’s a Wonderful Job:Women at Work in the Cinema of Communist Albania’, published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema in 2015, received the 2016 award for best essay in the Central, Eastern, and Southern European Media Special Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

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INTRODUCTION Ewa Mazierska

In The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992, Francis Fukuyama pronounced, true to his book’s title, that history had reached its end, because humankind had chosen liberal democracy as the dominant political and economic system: While they [dictatorships] have not given way in all cases to stable liberal democracies, liberal democracy remains the only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and cultures around the globe. In addition, liberal principles in economics –​the ‘free market’ –​have spread, and have succeeded in producing unprecedented levels of material prosperity, both in industrially developed countries and in countries that have been, at the close of World War II, part of the impoverished Third World. (Fukuyama 1992: xiii) Fukuyama concludes that, while both Hegel and Marx were correct in their understanding of history (or rather History) as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, Marx was wrong in predicting that communism will be the result of this process, while Hegel was correct in seeing the end as a victory for liberalism. In the same piece, Fukuyama also praises the development of technology, maintaining that it ‘makes possible the limitless accumulation of wealth, and thus the satisfaction of an ever-​expanding set of human desires’ (ibid.: xiv). Development of technology also leads to better communication between nations and countries, hence helping to overcome such dangerous ideologies as nationalism and religious fanaticism.

The end of history or a new beginning? Fukuyama’s optimistic assessment of the world and his positive attitude to capitalism and globalisation attracted much criticism. However, until recent years there has been the widespread perception that neoliberalism cannot be seriously challenged.

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Despite the economic crisis of 2008, which, as Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek claim, matured in a ‘full-​fledged political crisis which is de-​legitimizing political systems and distancing people from capitalist ideology’ (Douzinas and Žižek 2010: vii), neoliberalism failed to succumb. There was even a perception that such economic crises point to neoliberalism’s strength rather than weakness, because no other system would be able to withstand them. Equally important was a perception that neoliberalism delineates the intellectual horizons of contemporary people.This argument was eloquently presented by Mark Fisher, who used the term ‘capitalist realism’ to make the point that we are unable to imagine a different world from that in which we now live (Fisher 2009). However, recently neoliberalism’s seemingly unshakable position has been undermined by a new type of politics, often derided in the mainstream media as populist (Judis 2016). Martin Jacques, in a perceptive article written for the Guardian in August 2016, mentioned in this context the successes of Bernie Sanders (by this point fighting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination), Donald Trump (by this time chosen as the Presidential candidate of the Republican Party) and Jeremy Corbyn (leader of the Labour Party) and the unexpected outcome of the Brexit vote (Jacques 2016). Mentioning these different characters and events in close proximity points to the fact that neoliberalism can be criticised from different perspectives. Overall, we observe a growing resistance to the idea that private is better than public, that the global market should take precedence over decisions made at a local level and that morality should be taken out of economic decision making. These new political movements also point to the limits of the popular appeal of what is known as ‘identity politics’, which has been championed and exploited by, among others, Barack Obama, at the expense of class politics1 as well as ‘micro-​ politics’, which has been flourishing in the context of the death of ‘grand narratives’ announced by postmodern thinkers (Grant 2005: 15). This is because, when one’s livelihood is at stake, issues such as women’s rights, gay rights and abortion rights take a back seat. This rule explains to a large extent why Donald Trump, a brash man with no ‘green conscience’ who had been caught on tape expressing disrespect for women, disabled people, people of colour and war veterans, yet also one who promised to put American interests first, including the provision of well-​paid jobs for those Americans who had been deprived of them on the grounds that they had stopped being competitive in the global market, and to impose stringent control of immigration as a means to achieve this goal, won the 2016 American Presidential election. Moreover, he did so when competing with a supposedly socially progressive woman2 with extensive political experience, yet one in favour of free trade and free movement of people. These recent political developments, to which we shall add the success of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in the last Parliamentary election, bring to mind the discoveries of Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian-​American macro-​economist whose theory of ‘embeddedness’ emerged from his having witnessed the economic and political crises of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Polanyi’s central argument is that the global economy, organised through self-​regulating markets and

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Introduction  3

disembedded from local institutions and contexts, is a liberal utopia, which never worked in practice. On the contrary, it led to such tragic outcomes as the First and Second World Wars and the economic crisis of the 1930s. In the introduction to Polanyi’s magnum opus The Great Transformation, Fred Block writes as follows: Polanyi argues that the utopianism of market liberals led them to invent the gold standard as a mechanism that would bring a borderless world of growing prosperity. Instead, the relentless shocks of the gold standard forced nations to consolidate themselves around heightened national and then imperial boundaries.The gold standard continued to exert disciplinary pressure on nations, but its functioning was effectively undermined by the rise of various forms of protectionism, from tariff barriers to empires. And yet when this entire contradictory system came crashing down with the First World War, the gold standard was so taken for granted that statesmen mobilized to restore it. The whole drama was tragically played out again in the 1920s and 1930s, as nations were forced to choose between protecting the exchange rate and protecting their citizens. (Block 2001: xxii–​xxiii) In this context it is also worth mentioning Hannah Arendt’s assertion that the notion of human rights is meaningless if there are no institutions able to protect them.The nation state serves this purpose best, which is most visible in the situation of victims of civil wars: ‘Once they had left their homeland they became stateless, once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth’ (Arendt 1958: 267). It is thus not a surprise that globalisation developing according to neoliberal principles coincides with an increase of the number of stateless people, such as refugees, as well as a weakening of the rights of indigenous populations, especially their rights as workers. The economy, based on the principle of the primacy of the global market over national and local interests, is most damaging to the poor, as we will later argue.This explains the fact that in recent decades many traditional supporters of the mainstream left in Europe and North America have transferred their votes to so-​called far-​r ight or populist-​r ight parties and movements, because these parties promised them some defence against the free market by retaining the remnants of the welfare state, investing in infrastructure and securing the position of local workers by curtailing immigration. In this context it is worth mentioning that in the Brexit referendum of 2016 those in favour of taking the UK out of the European Union were predominantly working class and poor, often living outside big centres, in ‘edgelands’. Similarly, in the American Presidential Elections of the same year Trump’s strongest support was in the Rust Belt and among blue and white collar workers, whose economic situation has been affected particularly badly by outsourcing of jobs to poorer countries, such as Mexico, on the one hand and immigration (legal and illegal) on the other. For us this political turn is not a sign of growing xenophobia and bigotry among the masses, but rather a natural consequence of the wholesale embracing of a neoliberal mindset by the mainstream left, in the United

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States identified with the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and in the UK with the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The popularity of various anti-​neoliberal parties and movements points to the opinion that neoliberalism cannot be tackled effectively at an international level if it cannot first be overcome in the national arena, where it is easier to organise an opposition around a specific set of objectives, by people using (literally and metaphorically) the same language and electing a government working for the majority. A nation state is seen as the only buffer against the progression of an unfettered capitalism. Not surprisingly, at the same time as observing the move towards nationalism as a guarantee of some degree of socialism, we notice a withering away of anti-​capitalist globalisation movements, which pre-​2008 mounted major demonstrations against the World Bank, the IMF and other pan-​national institutions promoting and implementing neoliberal policies. This results from the widespread conviction that under current conditions capitalist globalisation cannot be stopped by a socialist globalisation. Such a situation brings to mind the period after the 1917 October Revolution, when Lenin gave up on his ambition to export communism to the rest of the world, or even Engels’ pronouncement that a ‘sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house’ (Engels 2008: 105). Our own position is that we have to fight neoliberalism by developing both strategies: national/​local and international/​global.

Neoliberalism and its consequences Given the current opposition against neoliberalism, it is worth asking how this system managed to conquer the world. For that, we need to explain what we have in mind when talking about neoliberalism. David Harvey, its leading analyst and critic, defines neoliberalism as a version of capitalism in which accumulation of capital is achieved by ruthless dispossession consisting of (1)  privatisation and commodification of public assets; (2) financialisation, so that any commodity can become an instrument of economic speculation; (3) management and manipulation of crises; and (4) state redistribution, by which wealth and income is distributed upwards, from lower to upper classes and from poorer to wealthier countries and regions (Harvey 2005: 160–​2). In a nutshell, neoliberalism is an extreme version of capitalism, marked by a high degree of what Karl Marx describes as ‘primitive accumulation’. Numerous statistics confirm Harvey’s assessment of how neoliberalism works. In particular, under this system the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the wages of the middle stratum stagnate or deteriorate. Michael Storper notes that In 1979, the ninety-​fifth percentile earner received as much as the fifth, but in 1995, the corresponding ratio was more than twenty-​five. As a result, the worth of the rich and superrich, both absolutely and proportionately, has grown considerably. The middle 60  percent or so had also enjoyed growth in real household income from the late 1970s through the 1980s, though

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at a rate much lower than that of the top 2 percent. In the 1990s, however, the results have been quite different; the median household actually lost 2 percent of its income in real terms … Some [economists] claim that what appears to be relative stability is attributable to the increasing presence of two-​earner households … But it is indisputable that the share of this group in total income has declined. (Storper 2001: 89–​90; see also Frank 2013: 28–​34) This trend has accelerated in the last two decades. In January 2017 the media published figures, compiled by Oxfam, a charity set up to combat global poverty, showing that the ‘world’s eight richest individuals have as much wealth as the 3.6 bn people who make up the poorest half of the world’ (Hope 2017). This exclusive club of billionaires possesses an amazing spending power. As Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk observe, Dynamic, ever-​g rowing social inequality … is the very engine of the contemporary economy, not just its inadvertent consequence.The classic ‘Fordist’ mass-​consumption economies of the 1950s and 1960s, regulated by collective bargaining and a stable division of productivity gains between capital and labour, have been replaced (at least in the Anglo-​Saxon countries) by what a team of Citigroup researchers call plutonomies: where the rich are the ‘dominant drivers of demand’, skimming the cream off productivity surges and technology monopolies, then spending their increasing share of national wealth as fast as possible on luxury goods and services. The champagne days of the Great Gatsby have returned with a vengeance. (Davis and Monk 2007: xi–​xii) They also have great political power, as demonstrated by the frequent semi-​legal and illegal connections between politicians and the multi-​millionaires, often leading to scandals which, nevertheless, rarely lead to prosecution of the ‘feral’ politicians or businessmen, as exemplified, for example, by the Lagarde–​Tapie affair (Willsher et al. 2016; on ‘neoliberal ferality’ see Harvey 2012: 155–​7). Increasingly, the power of the super-​r ich manifests itself in the impotence of politicians, who time and again admit that they cannot do anything to prevent factories being closed or moved to far-​away places, except lowering corporate tax to woo capital. At the same time, in contrast to old-​style capitalists, who operated in close proximity to the proletariat, the new billionaire class tends to sequester itself away from the rest of the population. Again, as Davis and Monk observe, Modern wealth and luxury consumption are more enwalled and socially enclaved than at any time since the 1890s … The spatial logic of neoliberalism (cum plutonomy) revives the most extreme colonial patterns of residential segregation and zoned consumption. Everywhere, the rich and near rich are retreating into sumptuary compounds, leisure cities, and gated replicas of imaginary California suburbs … The ‘Off Worlds’ advertised in the

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apocalyptic skies of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles are now open and ready for occupancy from Montana to China. (Davis and Monk 2007: xiii–​xiv) In a similar vein Comaroff and Comaroff argue that ‘the poor are no longer at the gates; bosses live in enclaved communities a world away, beyond political or legal reach’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001: 13). The number of poor people is steadily growing, despite the fact that much money is spent allegedly to alleviate poverty in the Global South. However, these funds benefit exclusively or disproportionately the economic and political elites in the poor countries. Moreover, this is not an unfortunate by-​product of the modernisation of the Third World, but a consequence of the neoliberal logic of accumulation by dispossession. As Ray Bush puts it, ‘people in the Global South are poor because of the ways in which economies in which they live have been incorporated into the world economy. Thus poverty is not about being left behind but about being actively excluded from an unjust and unequal system of wealth creation’ (Bush 2007: xiv). There are also more and more poor people in the rich countries, including in the UK, as testified by the growing use of food banks (Cooper 2016) and homelessness (Weaver 2017). We also observe rapid proletarianisation of the western middle classes, largely due to falling wages in real terms and precarious work, as well as the erosion of welfare provision in the name of austerity (Frank 2013). The plight of the so-​called JAM (just about managing) families in the UK, namely families where both parents work, but their combined wages are only just enough to ensure survival, illustrates this trend well (Butler and Syal 2016). On the whole, as Bush observes, under neoliberalism, ‘the winners are in the Northern economies, where there are also many losers; and the losers are in the Global South, where there are also many winners who benefit from an expulsion of the poor during primitive accumulation of capital’ (Bush 2007: xiv). In the light of the growing disparities of wealth, one would expect a sharpening of class conscience, but this does not happen. On the contrary, ‘class become[s]‌a less plausible basis for self-​recognition and action’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001: 11). The four features of neoliberalism, as listed by Harvey, reverse the principles on which many economies were built after the Second World War, most importantly state socialist in the eastern part of Europe and the Keynesian order (embedded liberalism) in the West. Privatisation is the reverse of nationalisation of industries, which was meant to ensure that the whole of society and especially workers, not the capitalists, own the means of production. Financialisation is the opposite of non-​ monetary distribution of welfare, such as communal apartments, subsidised culture and childcare and rationing of goods that are in short supply to ensure that everybody receives a share of them. Management and manipulation of crises is the reverse of the principle of planning, which was meant to prevent economic and social crises. State redistribution of income from the poor to the rich is the reverse of the policy of redistribution from the rich to the poor by progressive taxation, land reform, nationalisation of factories and capping of the salaries of managers in state firms.

7

Introduction  7

This raises the question of how neoliberalism won over the previous political and economic programmes and managed to hold a firm grip over global politics and economy for so long. We would list here several factors. One was the flaws of the systems which it replaced, chiefly embedded liberalism and state socialism. Leaders of the states where these systems had a hegemonic position were not able to reform them fast enough, leaving the political battleground to the neoliberal enemy. The second reason was the significant power the financial elites held at the time, measured in economic resources, military might and influence on the mainstream media. Another reason was its ability to re-​write the rules of the ideological debate, largely by skilfully using one word:  ‘freedom’, which replaced the buzzword of the previous era: ‘equality’. Think about its use by Margaret Thatcher in the UK or the leaders of Solidarity in Poland. This word has positive connotations, although, as Marx and Polanyi argued, it has different meanings for different groups. For the capitalist, ‘freedom’ means chiefly ‘free trade’, as described in The Communist Manifesto:  ‘The bourgeoisie … in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom –​Free Trade’ (Marx and Engels 2008: 37).This freedom, however, leads to the bondage to misery of those at the receiving end of free trade: the workers. But neoliberal ideologues, supported by a large section of the mainstream left, managed to convince the electorate that free trade is good for everybody, be it billionaire entrepreneurs, African farmers or small traders in Poland. Thinking otherwise is proof of being not only backward and uninformed, but also xenophobic, ‘nativist’ and racist.3 Moreover, neoliberal ideology managed to equate justice with a lack of (formal) obstacles to achieving success in a given area. ‘Justice’ in this context means that the best individual is allowed to win the race for a specific good, as opposed to the situation where the distance between winners and losers is minimised by making winners share their rewards with those less fortunate. Another reason for neoliberal success lies in the fact that, as Harvey’s definition of neoliberalism suggests (and as Marx observed earlier in relation to capitalism at large), this system is blind to many aspects of ideology, such as ethnicity, race and gender. To paraphrase a quote from the popular series Narcos, neoliberal capitalists, like the eponymous narcos, are interested only in our money, rather than our souls, unlike Stalinist communists or religious evangelists.This means that, as Harvey aptly demonstrates, neoliberalism can be combined with various types of politics and flourish as much in post-​Keynesian Sweden as in totalitarian and ostensibly still communist China (Harvey 2005). At the same time the frequent support of neoliberal ideologues, politicians and business people for various emancipatory causes and movements, such as women’s rights, gay rights or ethnic minority rights, which can be summarised under the umbrella of ‘social justice’, and their involvement in charity work, even fighting world poverty (Fisher 2009: 12–​15),4 give the impression that neoliberalism is a progressive order or even that it is on the left. To be sure, there is a kernel of truth in it, and it can be appreciated, when we look at the relationship between neoliberalism and feminism. If we agree that (any) paid employment is a means of empowering women, then neoliberalism does

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8  Ewa Mazierska

indeed help to fulfil this goal in its relentless search for the untapped resources of cheap labour, especially in non-​western countries. In her perceptive article on this subject, Hester Eisenstein refers to Aihwa Ong, who noticed that the village girls hired to work for Japanese electronic companies in 1970s Malaysia ‘might be exploited workers, fired as soon as their keen young eyesight began to require glasses. But they were also being modernized, abandoning the peasant sarong of their villages for blue jeans, and winning the right to choose their own husbands’ (Eisenstein 2005: 504). But the other side of the liberation of women through paid work, championed by both feminism and neoliberalism, was the abandonment of the single-​earner ‘family wage’ in industrialised countries, such as the UK and the USA (ibid.: 500–​1), an increase in the average hours worked per person, and a drastic reduction and de-​legitimising of the welfare state across the globe. This situation sentences millions of poor women to work for low wages with no prospects of escaping the cycle of poverty. For many it also means selling their bodies or those of their children, or leaving their children behind, to look after the children of more affluent women (ibid.: 502). Nancy Fraser presents the relation between neoliberalism and feminism sharply: ‘the cultural changes jump-​started by the second wave [of feminism], salutary in themselves, have served to legitimate a structural transformation of capitalist society that runs directly counter to a feminist vision of a just society’ (Fraser 2009: 99).5 To that we can add that a large part of contemporary feminism, which can be described as ‘liberal feminism’ and whose most famous spokespersons are celebrity women, such as Meryl Streep or Beyoncé, practically became the face of neoliberalism by embracing its individualistic ideology and focus on success. In more general terms, we are tempted to attribute the support of identity politics by neoliberal elites to the recognition of its usefulness to strengthen its main objective, namely consolidating the power of the super-​r ich by ‘divide and rule’. This is because the main effect of its flourishing is that different groups are encouraged to compete and enter into conflict with each other on gender, generational and racial lines, ignoring the fact that the most likely source of their problems is class. It is worth mentioning here that Alain Badiou, quoting Leon Trotsky, maintains that the twentieth century was marked by the ‘irruption of the masses onto the stage of History’, as epitomised by the taking of the Winter Palace (Badiou 2007: 41). For this reason Badiou regards theatre as the ultimate art of the twentieth century. We will argue that the twentieth century symbolically finished when neoliberalism won and these masses were fragmented into small groups following their political micro-​agendas and their consumer choices.6 Hence, we suggest that the ultimate medium of the times in which we live is computer games, in which individuals have an illusion of being active participants (players), although in reality follow the path prepared for them by the creators of the games. Along these lines Wendy Brown observes that, by saturating the content of democracy with market values, neoliberalism ‘assaults the principles, practices, cultures, subjects and institutions of democracy understood as rule by the people’ (Brown 2015:  9). To put it more bluntly, neoliberalism destroys democracy,

9

Introduction  9

changing it into plutocracy. One way of doing this is through integrating nation states into pan-​national systems. In theory these systems are meant to strengthen states and remove obstacles to closer integration, but in practice act as colonial powers, imposing the rule of the stronger on the weaker, often through indebting the weak. An example of this situation is the relationship of Greece towards the European Union (discussed in the chapter by Rosa Barotsi). As Maurizio Lazzarato observes, ‘neoliberalism has, since its emergence, been founded on a logic of debt’ (Lazzarato 2012: 25). Most of us are born literally indebted and debt has an immense power ‘to destroy/​create social relations and, in particular, modes of subjectivisation’ (ibid.: 35). Moreover, under neoliberalism ‘all conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not directly monetized’ (Brown 2015: 10) or, as Harvey put it, this system transformed ‘ways of life and thought, reproductive activities … and habits of the heart’ (Harvey 2005: 3). This monetisation of the private sphere has several dimensions. Firstly, finding a suitable partner for sex and life is seen as a matter of exercising individual consumer choice or entering into a business agreement. Obviously, the assumption is that those with larger capital, both monetary and erotic, will prevail in the competition for the best match. As Eva Illouz argues, such an approach also leads to de-​romanticisation and uniformisation of romantic behaviour, as exemplified by internet dating. As she puts it, Whereas romantic love has been characterized by an ideology of spontaneity, the Internet demands a rationalized mode of partner selection, which contradicts the idea of love as an unexpected epiphany, erupting in one’s life against one’s will and reason. Second, whereas traditional romantic love is intimately connected to sexual attraction –​usually provoked by the presence of two physical, material bodies –​the Internet is based on disembodied textual interaction. The result is that on the Internet, a rational search takes precedence, both in time and in approach, over traditional physical attraction. Third, romantic love presupposes disinterestedness, that is, a total separation between the sphere of instrumental action and the sphere of sentiment and emotion. Internet technology increases the instrumentalization of romantic interaction by placing a premium on the ‘value’ people attribute to themselves and to others in a structured market. (Illouz 2007: 90; see also Badiou 2012: 10–​11) Paradoxically, individualism and consumerism promoted by neoliberal ideology render marriage extra-​important, which in part explains the zeal with which gay men and lesbians demand their right to get married, leading Alain Badiou to decry them as a group which stopped being progressive. Michelle Marzullo explains the importance of marriage in the following terms: ‘If we consider it to be true that society will not (and under neoliberalism it should not) be there for us in our hour of need, then to whom do we turn in times of crisis? Rational choice might

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dictate that individuals should turn to marriage as a contractually regulated arena of protections’ (Marzullo 2011: 766). Our collection recognises the totalising effect of neoliberalism and, consequently, points to the need to oppose it in its various facets and dimensions.

Neoliberalism and cinema We decided to consider these various issues pertaining to neoliberalism through the lens of contemporary cinema, with an emphasis on films made in the last decade, which can be described as one of ‘crisis capitalism’. Apart from pragmatic reasons, namely the fact that the editors and contributors of this volume are film scholars, there are some essential ones. First, due to being transnational and very sensitive to changes in technology, cinema perfectly fits the idea of a neoliberal industry. Never has cinema been so diverse and yet so connected as now, with the rise of ‘supercinema’ productions (Brown 2013) and zero-​budget films (Brown 2016) competing for viewers’ attention and affection in the virtual space. Also cinema, to use Jacques Rancière’s terminology, has been an arena of politics even under the most oppressive regimes, opposing what the philosopher calls the ‘police’, and a site where it is possible to imagine alternatives to the dominant economic and political model (Rancière 2009: 97). Cinema is a dynamic medium that transforms according to changes in society, both aligning itself with and resisting the capitalist context in which it is produced. Thanks to cinema’s ability to use images and words, appealing simultaneously to our intellect and emotions, films take issue with the relationship between macro-​economy and the social reality of individuals, what Slavoj Žižek describes as the Real and the reality (Žižek 2000: 15), for example showing how neoliberalism shapes family, erotic and sexual relations. Indeed, in the last two decades cinema has frequently engaged with the many facets of neoliberalism, often taking upon itself the task of explaining this system in a way which ordinary people can understand. It is worth mentioning in this context a recent wave of Hollywood films devoted to Wall Street, such as Margin Call (2011), directed by J. C. Chandor, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Martin Scorsese (Burnham 2016;Wagner 2016) and The Big Short (2015), directed by Adam McKay. These films show not only that the financial crisis which befell the United States and practically the entire world could have been averted, but also that a capitalist crisis is a means to speed up capitalist accumulation. There are also numerous films about the effect of neoliberalism on human subjectivity, such as American Psycho (2000) (discussed by Kamila Rymajdo in this book) on the one hand and The Full Monty (1997) by Peter Cattaneo on the other. Despite the fact that neoliberalism affects us all, relatively few studies are devoted to its interface with cinema. Perversely, this scarcity can be attributed to neoliberalism’s ability to penetrate the minds of academics, making them believe that class and class conflict is of little importance to their professional and private lives or at least that other problems and aspects matter more, especially those pertaining to identity politics, as well as to the film’s form, considered as an issue in its own right.

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Introduction  11

Hence, while there are proportionally few studies tackling class, the numbers of books and articles dealing with gender, sexual orientation, race and disability are growing. Moreover, we observe a large number of studies devoted to film form which, although they recognise the ideological dimension of film style, tend to link it, again, to identity, rather than class politics. In contrast, many of the authors included in this collection have a long-​standing interest in class and what can be described as the social. Among book-​length studies about film and neoliberalism written in English, we identified only one which has the word ‘neoliberalism’ in the title –​the collection Neoliberalism and Global Cinema, edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith Wagner (2011a), hence it is worth mentioning how our book is different and similar to it. Kapur and Wagner’s volume is divided into parts offering investigations of different continents and major film industries, Hollywood, Latin America, Asia and Africa. True to its title, the contributions look globally at neoliberalism and the consequence of its implementations leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 (Kapur and Wagner 2011b: 3). Our volume takes a different approach. Rather than examining how neo­ liberalism affected cinemas in different regions of the world, we look first at the neoliberalisation of film industry and then at how neoliberal reality and ideology are reflected in film. Moreover, in contrast to Kapur and Wagner, as well as to our own previous work on Marxism and film (Mazierska and Kristensen 2014, 2015), we do not assume that the critique of neoliberalism has to be necessarily Marxist, even though we believe that ultimately the only way to overcome neoliberalism effectively is through introducing global communism. Indeed, what interests us in this volume are different positions from which neoliberalism can be critiqued, such as liberal, humanist and nationalist perspectives, and whether such criticism is localised and partial, namely condemns the extremes of neoliberalism or the whole system.

Structure of the collection and chapter descriptions The first part of this collection concerns the political economy of cinema under neoliberalism and an alternative means of production and consumption of films. It is worth emphasising that we are dealing here with political economy rather than merely the economics of film. Following the work of Golding and Murdock, Janet Wasko notes that political economy is ‘holistic, historical, centrally concerned with the balance between capitalist enterprise and public intervention, and goes beyond technical issues of efficiency to engage with basic moral questions of justice, equality and the public good’ (Wasko 2016:  63). In other words, political economists argue that every economic choice is also a political and moral choice. This also applies to the political economy of film. Decisions such as those concerning the size of the budget and the way it is used, and the composition of the crew, result from political and moral choices and have political and social implications, not only economic ones. Wasko identifies three main areas of the study of political economy of film:  media and labour; media and state relations; and media and democracy

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(ibid.:  66–​7). These areas are also examined by authors contributing to this part. They do so mindful, as Wasko argues, that ‘film must be placed within an entire social, economic, and political context and critiqued in terms of the contribution to maintaining and reproducing structures of power’ (ibid.: 67). In relation to these statements two questions arise. The first concerns the possibility of a co-​existence of different modes of film production and distribution under neoliberalism, without the neoliberal system losing its hegemonic status.The second concerns the relationship between anti-​capitalist modes of production and distribution of films and these films’ content. Do films produced in a ‘socialist way’ tend to convey socialist messages and vice versa? These questions are considered in the context of several types of film that are widely regarded as oppositional or alternative. The section begins with a chapter by David Archibald devoted to the working methods and films of Ken Loach, who is perhaps the best-​known socialist filmmaker in the world. As Archibald argues, the central question for Loach is that of leadership. His films and television productions often argue that the workers or the ‘people’ were betrayed by their leaders at a crucial juncture. But what about Loach himself as a leader? The author of this chapter tries to answer this question by examining the way the director works with his closest collaborators (cinematographers, producers and scriptwriters), drawing on participant observation of his production process. Archibald tries to interrogate the tension between Loach’s collaborative approach to filmmaking and his status as one of the most celebrated film auteurs in the world, and his leftist worldview as projected in his films and television programmes. In this way the author encourages comparison between Loach and another famous left-​wing filmmaker, Jean-​Luc Godard, especially his ‘militant’ period. The main difference between them seems to lie in Loach’s realisation that there is no effective filmmaking without effective leadership, while Godard believed that films can be made by leaderless cooperatives. Kevan Feshami discusses American independent, or rather, indie, cinema, which has been celebrated as an important alternative to Hollywood, as much in the United States as globally. Feshami questions the widely held view that indie films are independent from the major film companies dominating Hollywood. Instead, by looking at their history and their present-​day nature, he argues that they were always well integrated into the Hollywood system. Many indie films were produced or distributed by major Hollywood companies. Moreover, production of indie films helped American cinema to keep its dominant position during economic crises. Feshami also rejects the opinion that independent films subvert hegemonic norms, creating an oppositional space and practice in the process. While it is common for indie films to stand up to middle-​class hypocrisy and support the rights of women, homosexuals and ethnic minorities, it hardly ever happens that indie films oppose capitalist values. Most of them celebrate the individualistic ethos which underpins neoliberalism by promoting individualism and attacking state institutions. Ultimately, the indie films’ main claim to independence is based on their rejection of certain stylistic features of mainstream cinema, largely by drawing on European arthouse cinema. In a wider sense, Feshami, mirroring Marx and many post-​Marxist

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Introduction  13

thinkers, points to the difficulty of carving out an autonomous (socialist) space under the domination of capitalism. This is because capitalism, and especially its neoliberal version, has a totalising effect on individuals and firms –​they have to play according to its rules or risk perishing. William Brown examines how the changes in production, distribution and consumption of films broadly associated with the digital shift have affected amateur and low-​budget cinema. He recognises that some changes, thanks to digital platforms, such as YouTube and crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, have a democratising effect on cinema.This is because, in virtual space, amateur and professional, high-​and low-​budget films can co-​exist in close proximity to each other. Moreover, everybody can compete for funding from the general public, bypassing the usual gatekeepers such as bosses of film production companies. However, while the entry bar to the world of cinema is lowered, the bar of success remains as high as ever, if not higher. Brown also argues that various institutions, which in theory facilitate the entrance of amateurs into the professional world, in practice are instruments of upward redistribution of funds for cinema, hence neoliberalisation, with the amateur and low-​budget filmmakers subsidising professional ones. This is because the producers of high-​budget films and organisers of film festivals, which show predominantly professional films, take advantage of payments made by amateurs in the hope that their projects will be selected for production, festival screenings and theatrical distribution. By and large, Brown aptly demonstrates that moving from amateur to professional filmmaking is like winning the lottery, but even winning this ‘film lottery’, as the case of Four Eyed Monsters (2005) by Susan Buice and Arin Crumley demonstrates, does not guarantee a long-​term success. Ultimately, Brown’s chapter can be interpreted as a challenge to the amateurs to embrace their condition rather than trying to become professionals. This part finishes with the chapter by Lars Kristensen about For Marx … (2012) by the Russian filmmaker Svetlana Baskova, which is a homage to Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike (1925). She examines it in the context of the peculiar brand of neoliberalism adopted in a Russia ruled by Vladimir Putin and the type of cinema promoted by his regime. Kristensen argues that while ‘Putin’s cinema’ is expected to convey patriotic values in a way which makes them easy to understand and be embraced by the general public, in exchange for being supported by the state throughout the entire process of production and distribution, Baskova opted out of this system, by making a film which does not adhere either to the dominant ways of making films or to the dominant ideology. Kristensen maintains that For Marx … is a product of cinephilia since it was financially supported by Cine Fantom, a film club based in Moscow, and is an example of ‘non-​cinema’, understood as a type of film which ostensibly rejects the principles of cinema. Kristensen’s chapter raises an interesting question, namely whether films in the vein of For Marx … constitute a serious alternative to the dominant cinema, in contemporary Russia and elsewhere, or rather act as a smokescreen, behind which the servants of the authoritarian state perpetuate their ultimately undemocratic cultural practices.

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The remainder of our collection is devoted to the representation of neoliberal reality. The second part takes issue with the depiction of neoliberal success, crisis and class relations. The first chapter takes us to China, a country which aggressively peddles neoliberal ideology to its citizens, while on paper remaining a communist country. Its author, Corey Schultz, in a chapter which, meaningfully, has the words ‘the rise of the entrepreneur’ in its title asks how the neoliberal ethos can be squared with the tenets of the Chinese version of state socialism. He begins by sketching the changes in the ideology of the ruling party, arguing that the first sign of a shift towards neoliberalism happened in 1978, when the state initiated market reforms to the Chinese economy. By the 1980s, the population was still being warned about ‘bourgeoisie ideology’ by the media, which also tried to separate market practices into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with the good serving the people and the bad focused on merely making money. In 2001, however, the Party purified capitalists of their bad aura by declaring that they used to be members of the lauded working class and were now working under a state system that was against exploitation. Using an internet-​based series of advertisements titled Words of a Journey, produced by Jia Zhangke for the whisky manufacturer Johnnie Walker as a synecdoche of the changes that occurred in China during its march towards neoliberalism, Schultz draws attention to ideas which allowed the neoliberal entrepreneur to be presented as a model for society. The advantage of such a discursive shift is that it allows the state to reap the benefits of the entrepreneurial culture while absolving it from any responsibility for its failures. Reading Schultz’s chapter, one is struck by a similarity between the ideology of the Chinese Reform era and that of Thatcherism, when the entrepreneur was presented not only as somebody who betters him/​herself, but also as someone who works for the welfare of an entire society, according to the rule that wealth trickles down. Needless to say, such narratives of success gain currency during periods of boom. In times of crisis, when loss becomes an almost universal experience, it is more difficult to believe that everybody can be a winner. This ‘post-​heroic’ or crisis period is considered in the remaining chapters constituting this part. Ewa Mazierska examines the fate of people who bought into the neoliberal ideology that everybody can be a winner if he or she is prepared to take the risk –​and spectacularly failed. She does so by discussing films from three different European countries: the British Rogue Trader (1999), directed by James Dearden; the French Time Out (2001), directed by Laurent Cantet; and the Polish Debt (1999), directed by Krzysztof Krauze. These films are fictional, but are based on authentic characters and events, which furnishes them with an extra layer of realism. Mazierska observes that the path taken by their characters to achieve the goal of success was borrowing and investing money. Debt was meant to widen the character’s possibilities and allow him to better control his future, but led to diminished opportunities, oppression and, eventually, foreclosure of the future by some violent act on the part either of the character himself or of those to whom he owed money. Thus, in their lives, as in a scheme described by Maurizio Lazzarato, debt acted as a capture, predation

15

Introduction  15

and extraction machine. It also functioned as a mechanism for the production of individual subjectivities. While Schultz and Mazierska are concerned with the fate of characters who are either members of the middle class or aspire to this position, Paul Dave sets his sights on those who belong to the working class. He argues that in Bypass (2015) by Duane Hopkins the metaphor of ‘bypass’ is used to present the plight of those who have been abandoned to their fate under neoliberal regimes. For Tim, the young, working-​class protagonist of Hopkins’ film, what is ‘bypassed’ is lost, most importantly a habitus in which the individual can develop and flourish. The film also seeks to answer the question of why there is so little resistance to neoliberal reality by showing that those caught up in its everyday rhythms of subsistence are too busy to ponder their situation, let alone rebel against it, forced as they often are into endless shuttling between formal and informal economies. Dave also uses Bypass to enter into discussions about British social realism, thereby seeking to keep aesthetic developments such as the New Realism associated with directors like Hopkins more clearly connected to what are fast becoming seen as antiquated forms of social realist cultural politics of a Loachian complexion. In particular, Dave discusses the formal and stylistic innovations of Hopkins’ work in terms of the problem of ‘transcendence’ or change in an era when the spirit of reality itself appears to have been claimed by capitalism. Thus, for Dave, the film tackles some of the deep paradoxes and frustrations of working-​class lives caught up in the toils of ‘capitalist realism’. The next chapter locates class and class struggle in the context of recent Greek cinema and Greek politics. Its author, Rosa Barotsi, begins by sketching the economic and political situation of Greece in the last decade or so, when the country’s authorities admitted to the immense size of its national debt. Since then, its main debtors, the so-​called Troika, consisting of Eurozone countries, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, have imposed on Greece various austerity measures, which led to the dismantling of labour rights under the guise of competitiveness. This assault on labour led to a proletarianisation of a large chunk of the Greek middle class and a polarisation of Greek society, with the poorer being anti-​austerity and anti-​EU. Paradoxically, the crisis of the Greek economy did not negatively affect Greek cinema. On the contrary, the graver the economic problems of the country, the more celebrated are its films, which are often read as allegories of its political and economic situation. Barotsi focuses on one such successful film, Standing Aside, Watching (2013) by Giorgos Servetas. This film deals with the loss of status of the Greek middle class, which in the case of the main character leads to her moving from the centre to the provinces, which is normally viewed as a backward movement. Barotsi examines how such a move affects the economic situation and subjectivity of the protagonist and how the issue of class is entangled with questions of patriarchy, the value of education, and also urban enlightenment versus provincial parochialism. One important observation made in this chapter, which links it to that by Dave, is that the true ‘neoliberal masters’ remain invisible in the film, as they are in reality. It appears that they have managed to escape from the proletariat

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and rule the poor from a distance, even pretending that they have nothing to do with their misery. The last chapter in this part, by Doru Pop, discusses the ways in which American cinema represents Marxist ideas. Pop argues that the dominant approach is to ridicule Marxist ideology and its adherents. Equally, in the films dealing with the problems at the centre of the Marxist discourse, such as exploitation and alienation of workers, there is a tendency to play down these problems by suggesting that the opposite in fact takes places –​the workers are not exploited, but well looked after; and the new type of capitalism is even a form of communism. Pop argues that such a representation of Marxism, which he labels ‘communism for dummies’, contrasts with the earlier take on Marxism which had been dominant in American cinema, in which communism was depicted as frightening and menacing. This raises the question of whether the new type of representation testifies to the fact that under the hegemony of neoliberalism communism cannot be taken seriously or, rather, that it is easier to laugh off Marxist ideas than consider them with due attention. The last part of the book is devoted to the representation of personal relations and identity politics, following our observation that neoliberalism affects not only how we spend our money, but also whom we choose as lovers and spouses and how we define ourselves. The first chapter in this part, offering a close analysis of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, as the title of the film states, deals with one of the most intimate events in human life: a wedding. Its author, Constantin Parvulescu, argues that the film was conceived by Demme as a paean to the progressive values of the East Coast bourgeoisie. In Parvulescu’s reading, however, Rachel Getting Married is about economic and social privilege, which seeks its justification in performing rituals of multiculturalism and spirituality, and showing its intellectual and aesthetic sophistication; in other words, playing up identity politics at the expense of class politics. It is worth mentioning that such a strategy was associated with the last American Democratic president, Barack Obama, and the unsuccessful Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton. Utilising the concept of ‘hedging’, known best from economic theory, especially the infamous ‘hedge funds’, Parvulescu describes the behaviour of the characters in this film, and of Demme as their advocate, as that of ‘cultural hedging’. ‘Cultural hedging’ is both a wall erected between the poor and the rich, who hide themselves in their ‘gated communities’, and a means of justifying the existence of the wall. What Parvulescu proposes can be described as ‘de-​hedging’, namely revealing the impossibility of reconciling the contradictions between capitalism as a system built on a ruthless pursuit of profit and its façade of altruism and responsibility, as represented by a ‘businessman with a soul’, such as Rachel’s father, who believes in charity, understands art and supports multiculturalism. Drawing on the work of Wendy Brown, who, not unlike Eva Illouz, points to the fact that neoliberalism disseminates market values and metrics to every sphere of life, Elżbieta Ostrowska discusses a number of recent American and British romantic comedies, such as bromances, bromcoms and ‘wedding movies’, arguing that they adhere to neoliberalism in two ways. First, they try to maximise their profit

17

Introduction  17

by appealing to a large spectrum of potential viewers, such as heterosexual and homosexual couples and single people of different ages and especially older people, who in the past did not constitute a target audience of this genre. Second, the films in question offer different strategies allowing their characters to maximise their monetary and emotional capital, as well as to protect themselves against the uncertainty of neoliberalism, promising greater emotional and economic stability than is encountered in purely economic activities. The concept of ‘hedging’, which played a crucial role in Parvulescu’s analysis, is also used by Ostrowska, when she discusses characters who ‘diversify their portfolio’ and ‘hedge’ their bets in the sexual marketplace. However, rather than arguing that the films at hand go along with the neoliberal economy uncritically, the chapter suggests that they ultimately mediate between the sad truth about neoliberalism as seeking profit at all costs and an eternal human desire to find one’s true love. Kamila Rymajdo analyses film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis’ works, in a chapter whose title, ‘Why is everyone not falling in love?’, points to an opinion that neoliberalism is not conducive to love, at least in its romantic incarnation. This is also an idea that has been widely attributed to Ellis, a writer who gained fame in the 1980s and is widely regarded as one of the prophets of neoliberalism in western literature. Rymajdo is asking whether this is indeed the case and whether the same can be said about film adaptations of his books, given that films often change the messages carried by their principal hypotexts. She does so by assessing the books and films against three approaches to love and sex: romantic love, erotic capital and sex as liberation. She observes that Bret Easton Ellis’ characters embody the typical image of a ‘neoliberal wo(man)’: they are affluent and define themselves through what they possess and how they consume it. This, however, ultimately does not make them happy, as it leads to narcissism and an emotional void. Rymajdo argues that the works under consideration show that neoliberalism created a world where there is little or no space for love, but at the same time people suffer without it. Her discussion also highlights an important difference between books and films in relation to their description of love and sex, namely that films are able to glorify erotic and material wealth by virtue of casting super-​attractive actors in the main roles and using an opulent mise-​en-​scène, as is the case in the adaptations of Ellis’ books. By the same token, they can be accused of what is in the current jargon described as ‘virtue-​signalling’ (a criticism that is often directed towards the Hollywood super-​ rich): pretending to condemn neoliberalism, with its glorification of wealth, while in reality being happy to be part of this system. Ostrowska and Rymajdo acknowledge the transformation of the concept and experience of love caused by the hegemony of neoliberalism, but they ultimately refrain from claiming that neoliberalism kills love by reducing it to (however concealed) monetary exchange. Romantic love in the films they examine survives, if not as a reality, then at least as an ideal accepted by the characters. Martin O’Shaughnessy asks whether such love is possible in the restricted environment of exotic tourist sites, such as Kenya or the Caribbean, which promise to fulfil consumers’ romantic fantasies, albeit at a price. This price is literally paid by

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those taking advantage of the services such places offer and, on the other hand, by the employees who have to make themselves available to their customers. In contrast to the prostitutes of the previous age, these employees have to draw on their private, erotic and emotional life to provide what O’Shaughnessy, after Elizabeth Bernstein, calls ‘bounded authenticity’, namely a way of generating meaning and pleasure that is made possible by its commercial containment. The author discusses ‘erotic exchanges’ taking place between older western female tourists and younger, southern natives as represented in a mainstream American chick flick How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, and two European arthouse films, Heading South (2005) by Laurent Cantet and Paradise: Love (2012) by Ulrich Seidl. The reason why he examines female sex tourism is that, unlike female prostitution or sex trafficking, which have all the obvious markers of economic exploitation, this form of sexual exchange, at least according to some feminist authors, is less exploitative. He notices that, while How Stella Got Her Groove Back conceals the inequalities between an older western woman and a younger southern man, the two remaining films criticise neoliberalism as a system which preserves and normalises inequalities between citizens of the old empires and the inhabitants of their colonies and post(colonial) tourism as a promise of an ‘authentic experience’ of the exotic world, yet without the risks such experience brings outside the confines of the tourist resort. The last chapter in this part and the entire collection, by Bruce Williams, takes issue with the relationship between neoliberalism and identity politics, by looking at love between two men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, as presented in The Bubble (2006) by Israeli director Eytan Fox. While acknowledging that the struggle for gay rights has been recognised as progressive (not unlike the struggle for women’s rights), Williams also makes the point that it has been a factor in promoting and developing a neoliberal mindset by emphasising the joys of (excessive) consumption and individual freedom. Such a link is also presented in The Bubble, where happy gays are those who can afford to live in a trendy part of Tel Aviv. Its affluence and cosmopolitanism insulate them against the worst aspects of the Israeli–​Palestinian conflict. However, as Williams argues, ultimately the Tel Aviv ‘bubble’ has much in common with ‘gated communities’, in which economic elites live, and from whose safety they preach to the dispossessed about the advantages of globalisation, labelling those who protest against them as racists and bigots. Drawing on authors such as George Crowder, Motti Regev and Kwame Anthony Appiah, Williams also asks whether it is possible to combine cosmopolitanism with nationalism, which is also an issue of great importance for those who oppose neoliberalism. The vast majority of the films and filmmakers considered in this collection are critical of neoliberalism, regarding it as a system creating an unjust society and unhappy individuals.Yet, while they are strong in making criticisms, they are much weaker in offering solutions, which is often reflected in their lack of narrative closure and slow pace. In that, they demonstrate the difficulty of overthrowing neoliberalism and the risks such attempts might include, for example embracing ideas

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Introduction  19

which for many decades were regarded as backward and right-​wing, such as nationalism. However, in our view such risks are worth taking, if we want to change the world or even slow down its movement in a wrong direction.

Notes 1 Obviously, class position affects our identity, but ‘identity politics’ normally refers to all aspects of identity except class. 2 We put ‘supposedly’ in this context, because how progressive Hillary Clinton was is a moot point, given that she accepted financial support from countries with appalling records on human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, and that she remained loyal to a husband whose treatment of women left much to desire. Certainly, she was perceived as part of the political establishment, having supported military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which were categorized as neo-​conservative campaigns promoting neoliberal democracies. 3 This line of argument is frequently offered by The Guardian, following the Brexit referendum. 4 A model figure in this context is the leader of U2, Bono, who fights to alleviate world poverty, while being himself a tax evader (Gayle 2015). 5 A convincing argument about how neoliberalism hijacked leftist ideas for its own advantage is offered by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005). 6 A marker of the neoliberal opposition to the masses climbing the stage of History is the current hostility towards ‘populism’ and even labelling those voting for allegedly populist parties and politicians as ‘deplorable’.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah (1958). ‘The Decline of the Nation-​State and the End of the Rights of Man’, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: George Allen and Unwin), pp. 267–​302. Badiou, Alain (2007) [2005]. The Century, trans. Alberto Toscano (Cambridge: Polity). Badiou, Alain (2012). In Praise of Love (London: Serpent’s Tail). Block, Fred (2001). ‘Introduction’ to Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), pp. xviii–​xxxviii. Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello (2005) [1999]. The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. G. Elliott (London:Verso). Brown,Wendy (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books). Brown, William (2013). Supercinema: Film-​Philosophy for the Digital Age (Oxford: Berghahn). Brown, William (2016). ‘Non-​cinema: Digital, Ethics, Multitude’, Film-​Philosophy, 20(1), pp. 104–​30. Burnham, Clint (2016). Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street (London: Bloomsbury). Bush, Ray (2007). Poverty of Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South (London: Pluto). Butler, Patrick and Rayeev Syal (2016). ‘Just about managing’ families to be £2,500 a year worse off by 2020 –​study’, The Guardian, 21 November, www.theguardian.com/​politics/​ 2016/​nov/​20/​just-​about-​managing-​f amilies-​to-​be-​2500-​a-​year-​worse-​off-​by-​2020-​ study, accessed 14 December 2016. Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff (2001). ‘Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming’, in Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.), Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press), pp. 1–​56.

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Cooper, Charlie (2016).‘Food bank usage at record high –​and the true scale of hunger could be far greater’, The Independent, 14 April, www.independent.co.uk/​news/​uk/​home-​ news/​food-​bank-​usage-​at-​record-​high-​reveals-​trussell-​trust-​a6984921.html, accessed 28 November 2016. Davis, Mike and Daniel Bertrand Monk (2007). ‘Introduction’ to Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk (eds.), Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New York: The New Press), pp. ix–​xvi. Douzinas, Costas and Slavoj Žižek (2010).‘Introduction:The Idea of Communism’, in Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Žižek (eds.), The Idea of Communism (London:Verso), pp. vii–​x. Engels, Friedrich (2008) [1892]. ‘Preface to the 1892 Polish Edition of The Communist Manifesto’ (London: Pluto), pp. 104–​6. Eisenstein, Hester (2005). ‘Dangerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globalization’, Science & Society, 3, pp. 487–​518. Fisher, Mark (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester,WA: Zero Books). Frank, Robert H. (2013). Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press). Fraser, Nancy (2009). ‘Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History’, New Left Review, 56, pp. 97–​117. Fukuyama, Francis (1992). The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin). Gayle, Damien (2015). ‘Bono defends U2’s tax arrangements as “sensible” ’, The Guardian, 15  May, www.theguardian.com/​music/​2015/​may/​15/​bono-​defends-​u2-​corporation-​ tax-​arrangements, accessed 15 January 2017. Grant, Hamilton Iain (2005). ‘Postmodernism and Politics’, in Stuart Sim (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, second edition (London: Routledge), pp. 13–​23. Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Harvey, David (2012). Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso). Hope, Katie (2017). ‘Eight billionaires as rich as world’s poorest half ’, BBC website, www. bbc.co.uk/​news/​business-​38613488, accessed 17 January 2017. Illouz, Eva (2007). Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press). Jacques, Martin (2016). ‘The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics’, The Guardian, 21 August, www.theguardian.com/​commentisfree/​2016/​aug/​21/​death-​of-​ neoliberalism-​crisis-​in-​western-​politics, accessed 1 June 2017. Judis, John B. (2016). ‘Us vs. Them: The birth of populism’, The Guardian, 13 October, www. theguardian.com/​politics/​2016/​oct/​13/​birth-​of-​populism-​donald-​trump, accessed 29 November 2016. Kapur, Jyotsna and Keith B. Wagner (eds.) (2011a). Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique (London: Routledge). Kapur, Jyotsna and Keith B. Wagner (2011b). ‘Introduction: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics, and New Forms of Resistance’, in Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner (eds.), Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique (London: Routledge), pp. 1–​16. Lazzarato, Maurizio (2012). The Making of the Indebted Man, trans. Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotexte(e)). Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (2008). The Communist Manifesto (London: Pluto). Marzullo, Michelle (2011). ‘Through a Glass, Darkly: U.S. Marriage Discourse and Neoliberalism’, Journal of Homosexuality, 58, pp. 758–​74. Mazierska, Ewa and Lars Kristensen (eds.) (2014). Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History,Theory and Practice (New York: Palgrave).

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Mazierska, Ewa and Lars Kristensen (eds.) (2015). Marxism and Film Activism: Screening Alternative Worlds (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books). Monbiot, George (2016). ‘Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph’, The Guardian, 14 November, www.theguardian.com/​commentisfree/​2016/​ nov/​14/​neoliberalism-​donald-​trump-​george-​monbiot, accessed 15 November 2016. Rancière, Jacques (2009). The Emancipated Spectator (London:Verso). Storper, Michael (2001). ‘Livid Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society’, in Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.), Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press), pp. 88–​124. Wagner, Keith B. (2016). ‘Giving Form to Finance Culture: Neoliberal Denizens in Wall Street (1987), Boiler Room (2000) and Margin Call (2011)’, Journal of Film and Video, 2, pp. 46–​60. Wasko, Janet (2016). ‘Revisiting the political economy of film’, in Yannis Tzioumakis and Claire Molloy (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics (London: Routledge), pp. 62–​73. Weaver, Louise (2017). ‘Government urged to take strategic action as rough sleeping numbers continue to rise’, Homeless Link, 25 January, www.homeless.org.uk/​connect/​news/​ 2017/​jan/​25/​government-​urged-​to-​take-​strategic-​action-​as-​rough-​sleeping-​numbers, accessed 29 January 2017. Willsher, Kim, Larry Elliott and Dominic Rushe (2016). ‘Christine Lagarde avoids jail, keeps job after guilty verdict in negligence trial’, The Guardian, 19 December, www.theguardian.com/​world/​2016/​dec/​19/​christine-​lagarde-​avoids-​sentence-​despite-​guilty-​verdict-​ in-​negligence-​trial, accessed 5 January 2017. Žižek, Slavoj (2000). The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (London:Verso).

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PART 1

Political economy of neoliberalism and its discontents

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1 TEAM LOACH AND SIXTEEN FILMS Authorship, collaboration, leadership (and football)1 David Archibald

For over five decades, Ken Loach has directed film and television programmes that challenge the orthodoxies of contemporary capitalism and champion the struggles of oppressed groups. Working initially with the British Broadcasting Corporation, he negotiated the constraints of public sector broadcasting to direct ground-​breaking television films such as Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). Fifty years after the success of Cathy, Loach received the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival for I, Daniel Blake (2016), which was produced by Sixteen Films, the company Loach established with producer Rebecca O’Brien in 2002. Loach, then, has created work and achieved notable success (although not always consistently) both within the confines of a state broadcasting institution governed by a Keynesian model and with production companies working within the economic and ideological constraints of neoliberalism. This chapter sets out to explore the working practices of a socialist filmmaker who has, on the whole, successfully negotiated a pathway to produce films which contain an overt critique of capitalism whilst simultaneously operating within it. Reflecting on receiving the Palme d’Or for I, Daniel Blake, Loach comments ‘The first thought is for all the people who helped you make it. If you were a football team winning the championship, everybody would get a medal but in films, the director has to go up. Obviously, it is for the whole team’ (quoted in Macnab 2016). In foregrounding filmmaking’s collaborative nature and comparing its production to that of a working-​class sport, Loach’s observations contrast sharply with cinephilia’s rarified auteurist discourses.2 I explore this contrast below through analysis of four imbricated areas: debates on authorship in Film and Television Studies, the functioning of leadership and teams in the production of films directed by Loach, how this production context is represented publicly by Sixteen Films, and how leadership and teams feature in Loach’s work throughout his career. My analysis

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is informed by research conducted into the making of The Angels’ Share (Loach, 2012), which involved extensive participant observation of the production process. I spent approximately twenty days on set during the shoot, visited the cutting room during the editing process, attended a private screening of a rough cut, attended the Cannes premiere and press conference, and received access to Sixteen Films’ documentation pertaining to the film. Observations from this research are supplemented by interviews with Loach and key production staff, subsequent analysis of material from the Loach archive at the British Film Institute (BFI) and textual analysis of Loach’s film and television œuvre. Loach’s work has received considerable academic attention: most notably, the four-​part television series Days of Hope (BBC, 1975) provoked a discipline-​defining debate on the politics of form in Screen and subsequent years have witnessed book-​ length studies on Loach’s wider output; George McKnight’s edited collection Agent of Challenge and Defiance: Films of Ken Loach (McKnight 1997), Jacob Leigh’s The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People (Leigh 2002) and John Hill’s Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television (Hill 2011). In keeping with Film and Television Studies’ text-​based origins, these critical appraisals concentrate on formal qualities and thematic concerns, with detailed discussion of production notably absent. While popular commentaries on film production more widely do exist, for instance journalist Lillian Ross’ Picture, an account of the making of The Red Badge of Courage (Ford, 1952), and Wim Wenders’ My Time with Antonioni (1983), production studies of single films by Film Studies scholars are rare. Moreover, although there has been the development of Production Studies as a sub-​field of Film and Television Studies, research on the nature of creative teams in film

and the lead actors in The Angels’ Share discuss the intricacies of a fight scene in a snooker hall. Source: Author’s private collection. FIGURE  1.1:   Loach

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Team Loach and Sixteen Films  27

production remains extremely limited. In research conducted by Steve Presence and Andrew Spicer on RED Production Company and Warp Films, the authors note that ‘Production companies are not only invisible to the general public, they are also, it appears, invisible to media scholars who continue to be preoccupied with individual writers and directors such as Paul Abbott or Shane Meadows without an understanding of the importance of these companies’ production cultures to their creativity’ (Presence and Spicer 2016: 26). Dorota Ostrowska speculates on the reasons for the lack of research into production cultures more generally, positing that different methodologies are required to conduct this type of research, and noting that it requires a conceptual shift away from traditional screen analysis (Ostrowska 2010: 1). If we factor in the challenges of participant observation-​based studies, not least that access is difficult to secure, it is considerably time-​consuming, and writing about actually existing people requires more delicacy than writing about completed films, then it is not difficult to identify some of the reasons why research of this nature is scarce. I contend, nevertheless, that Film Studies would benefit from a broader and deeper engagement with Production Studies, which, as John Thornton Caldwell argues, ‘can provide rich insights that speculative theorizing misses’ (Thornton Caldwell 2013: 162). I seek here, then, to partially fill the lacuna in the critical literature surrounding Loach: that he has worked in both film and television in multifarious production contexts over a lengthy career makes his work a particularly rich case study. In so doing, I seek to illustrate how this type of research can benefit our understanding of the film production processes, but also feed into textual analysis, thereby impacting Film and Television Studies more broadly. My aim is not to elevate the study of practice above the practice of theory, but to illustrate how the latter might benefit from insights gleaned from the former. Of course, Loach is not the only socialist filmmaker making explicitly anti-​capitalist or anti-​neoliberal films; he is, however, perhaps the most successful, which makes the study of his production process of particular interest.

Theories of authorship Film Studies’ critical orthodoxy tended initially to conceptualise cinema as a vehicle for the personal expression of the director in a framework inherited from Enlightenment thought, a perspective outlined by Alexander Astruc in 1948: the cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the arts have been before it, and in particular painting and the novel. After having been successfully a fairground attraction, an amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or a means of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually becoming a language. By language, I mean a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the new contemporary essay or novel.That is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of caméra-​stylo. (quoted in Caughie 1981: 9)

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The inclusion of Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author’ in John Caughie’s influential edited collection Theories of Authorship (Caughie 1981) was indicative of Film Studies’ structuralist/​post-​structuralist impulse to consign the auteur to the grave. Returning to these debates in 2007, however, Caughie notes that, although auteurism was no longer a hotly contested topic in the discipline, the grave to which the auteur had been consigned was largely empty (Caughie 2007: 408). For Caughie, a recognition of the way in which specific groups championed seemingly representative auteurs was evident, alongside the emergence of a more tempered and nuanced director-​centred criticism, which had replaced those on offer in the pioneering days of auteurism. Other work has highlighted auteurism’s ongoing appeal; for instance, Steve Neale (1981), Tim Corrigan (1990) and Catherine Grant (2000, 2008)  have illustrated how auteurist discourses feature heavily in the marketing and consumption of cinema. One could add to the list the manner in which film scholars continue to conduct and publish auteurist-​based research, exemplified by the titles of a range of monographs on specific filmmakers, from Elizabeth Ezra’s Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur (Ezra 2000) to work on more contemporary filmmakers in Brian Michael Goss’ Global Auteurs: Politics in the Films of Almodóvar, von Trier, and Winterbottom (Goss 2009). It is not all one-​way traffic, however. In Authoring Hal Ashby: The Myth of the New Hollywood Auteur, Aaron Hunter points to Ashby’s collaborative working practices, arguing that this was more widespread in the New Hollywood Cinema than is generally understood and highlighting ongoing conflicting trends in Film Studies’ debates over authorship. John Hill highlights that films directed by Loach are exhibited and distributed in an auteurist context (Hill 2011: 5). On the international film festival circuit, which is governed predominantly on auteurist lines, Loach has had significant success, with, for instance, more films screened in competition at Cannes than any other filmmaker.3 ‘Ken Loach’ is also deployed as a brand in the distribution of his work, exemplified by the DVD box sets’ titles The Ken Loach Collection (Sixteen Films, 2007) and Ken Loach at the BBC (Sixteen Films/​BFI/​BBC, 2011). Loach rejects the auteur label, repeatedly highlighting cinema’s collaborative nature; but also stressing the centrality of the writer in both film and television.4 Although Loach has garnered significant success in cinema, it was his early television work with which he first achieved both critical acclaim and public recognition. Andy Willis notes that many of the major figures identified with British television drama’s so-​called ‘Golden Age’ were writers (Willis 2009, 300). Consequently, in contrast to auteurism’s focus on the director in cinema, the discourse around authorship in British television often centred on the writer.The subject of Willis’ article is Jim Allen, who met Loach in the late sixties. Prior to their encounter, Loach’s output was broadly leftist in content; however, Allen’s Trotskyist politics influenced Loach significantly. This emerges clearly in their first collaborative project, The Big Flame (BBC, 1969), in which a Liverpool dockers’ strike culminates in the declaration of a Soviet. An engagement with Trotskyism is more explicit in their second television play, The Rank and File (BBC, 1971), a dramatised account of the 1970 Pilkington glass factory strike. Towards the film’s conclusion, Eddie, a local union leader, reflects on

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the dispute: ‘Surely to God we’ve seen the futility of rank and fileism; that blind militancy will get us nowhere. The only question is one of political leadership and a foundation or the forming of a party that will lead the workers to power.’ Over a montage of monochrome photographs of young children, Eddie continues, ‘I go along with Trotsky. Life is beautiful. Let the future generation cleanse it of all the oppression, violence and evil and enjoy it to the full.’ I quote from Eddie’s speech at length here as it contains two connected threads which mark Loach’s future work, and the manner in which he discusses it: the influence of Trotskyism, and the importance of leadership.5 These threads are evident, albeit to varying degrees, in subsequent projects between Allen and Loach: Save the Children Fund Film, aka In Black and White (1971), Days of Hope, Hidden Agenda (1990), Raining Stones (1993), Tierra y libertad/​Land and Freedom (1995) and the controversial Holocaust play, Perdition (1987).6 Of this work, Days of Hope and Land and Freedom deal explicitly with what we could define as a ‘Lessons of Defeat’ trope; Days of Hope is fiercely critical of the Trades Union Congress leadership’s role in the defeated 1926 General Strike, and Land and Freedom critiques Stalinism’s contribution to the crushing of the Spanish revolution. This preoccupation with leadership in the workers’ movement continues in Loach’s output, even when he is not working directly with Allen, as evidenced in the television documentaries A Question of Leadership (ATV, 1981), which deals with a UK steelworkers’ strike, and Questions of Leadership (Channel 4, 1983), a four-​part series on contemporary British trades unions. Factoring the long-​ term impact of Allen’s contribution into Loach’s work significantly disrupts Film Studies’ auteurist discourses. John Caughie notes that, in traditional French film criticism, the term auteur was utilised to refer to the script writer or to the ‘artist who created the film’ (Caughie 1981: 9). Writing more recently, Richard Corliss contends that the writer should be credited with auteur status because, as he puts it, ‘Auteur criticism is essentially theme criticism; and themes –​as expressed through plot, characterization, and dialogue –​belong primarily to the writer’ (Corliss 2008: 143). It is possible to discern a noticeable difference in thematic concerns and formal qualities when analysing Loach’s work with different writers. For instance, although Fatherland (1986), scripted by Trevor Griffiths, is politically and thematically consistent with Loach’s output, its modernist, monochrome dreamscapes are strikingly dissimilar to the predominantly social-​ realist aesthetic of the other work. In more recent films with Paul Laverty, who has scripted every full fictional feature bar Navigators (2001) since Carla’s Song (1996), an overt, didactic commitment to revolutionary socialist politics is absent. There are times when socialist politics is evident, exemplified by the prominence given to the ideas of the Scottish Marxist James Connolly in The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006); however, the Lessons of Defeat trope evident in the Allen scripts is less prominent. Laverty’s scripts, moreover, contain more experimental features than one might expect from the pen of Allen, perhaps best exemplified by the fantasy sequences in Looking for Eric (2009), or the more caperish, playful tone of The Angels’ Share. A fuller examination of the involvement of the other writers with whom Loach has worked, including Barry Hines, Rona Munro and James

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O’Connor, would tease out further thematic and formal differences, highlighting the manner in which Loach’s output is shaped significantly by the influence of the writer he is collaborating with. In addition to the writers’ influence, one could also point to the long-​term influence of other early Loach collaborators. For instance, producer Tony Garnett played a central role in the majority of the early films, from Cathy Come Home to Black Jack (1979), which were often identified as Loach–​Garnett productions. Notably, in his book-​length study on Garnett, Stephen Lacey suggests that his work is characterised by an ‘authorial signature’, one which is ‘intimately connected to a realist politics and aesthetics’, thereby illustrating how film and television can be narrativised around producer-​as-​auteur discourses (Lacey 2007: 5). Indeed, in Hortense Powdermaker’s anthropological study of 1940s Hollywood she identifies executives and the producers as having, as she puts it, ‘the greatest power to stamp the movies with their personal daydreams and fantasies’ (Powdermaker 1951: 100).7 Further to this, in Thomas Schatz’s research on Hollywood, he highlights that directors such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock, who had, as he puts it, ‘an unusual degree of authority and a certain style’, were awarded this on the basis of their status as producers rather than directors (Schatz 1988: 5–​6). Schatz suggests, moreover, that commercial success was the basis for this authority.8 It is not the producer’s potential commercial power which accounts for Garnett’s influence, however; rather, it is a recognition of the creative role of the producer figure within the context of the production of British television drama of the period.9 Loach also cites the significant influence of cinematographer Chris Menges, who shot his debut feature, Poor Cow (1967), and with whom he worked on many subsequent films.10 Loach stresses that it was through Menges’ influence that his directorial approach in the shooting of Kes (1969) ‘became about observation rather than chasing’ and that it ‘set the pattern for later work’.11 The long-​term influence of Allen, Garnett and Menges problematises the notion of auteurist discourse and highlights that there are a number of ways in which to characterise the role of individuals in the production process. More recent scholarship on auteurism in television studies has focused on the figure of the producer, the writer and even the showrunner; the notion of negotiated, collective or multiple authorship has also been championed (Gaut 1997; Mayer et al. 2009; Hunter 2016; Sellors 2007, 2010; Thornton Caldwell 2008). Whilst this advances thinking about authorship across both film and television studies, one wonders whether it might not be time to dispense with the notion of auteurism completely. That Film Studies emerged in the Arts and Humanities helped foster an Enlightenment focus on individual creativity; however, it has been at the expense of other perspectives. Loach’s comments about football are worth factoring in here. Like cinema, football is a collaborative project with leading roles played by specific individuals: we could trade club owners, managers, trainers and players for producers, directors, writers and actors (or players). There is a recognition, however, that, at its heart, it is a team game. A cursory reading of the popular literature on football, including ex-​Manchester United Football Club manager Alex Ferguson’s Leading (Ferguson 2015) and ex-​A.C. Milan and

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Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti’s Quiet Leadership:Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches (Ancelotti 2016), illustrates that this discourse foregrounds football’s collaborative nature.12 Individuals are important, of course, but there is always a focus on teams, or, more precisely, on the dialectical relationship between individuals and teams, a discourse that is largely absent in the academic study of film and television. I contend that film and television scholars could learn from the manner in which football is discussed in the sport’s popular literature.

Team Loach In partially rectifying this trend, in this part of the chapter I explore how teams and leadership function in the production of, and the discourse surrounding, Loach’s more recent films. It is important first, however, to highlight some background to Sixteen Films. For over fifty years, Loach has created work in numerous production contexts, often negotiating the demands of corporations and institutions, as well as the demands of the marketplace. Pierre Bourdieu’s work on fields of cultural production highlights that ‘The literary or artistic field is a field of forces, but it is also a field of struggles tending to transform or conserve this field of forces’ (Bourdieu 1993: 30). It is with Bourdieu’s concept in mind that we can better understand the structural factors, or field of forces, influencing the work Loach and his collaborators have created whilst negotiating this field of struggles. Although Loach has achieved considerable success, it has not been an unproblematic process. In television, cuts have been required of work created for the BBC; ‘Save the Children Fund Film’ was consigned to a vault in the BFI archive for forty years; and documentaries have had delayed broadcasts, or, in the case of Questions of Leadership, never been broadcast. Loach’s cinematic output has also not been constant; rather, in keeping with the fragile nature of the British film industry, there have been fallow periods. Paradoxically, money from television, initially with the development of Channel 4 in the eighties, enabled Loach to move back into film production following a difficult period in television. It is notable, however, that production was never on a solid footing: for instance, files in the BFI Loach archive indicate the perilous state of the financing of Fatherland.13 Since the release of Hidden Agenda (1990), however, Loach’s output has been increasingly regular. Initially this was through the cooperative production company Parallax Pictures, which produced the films from Riff-​Raff (1991) to The Navigators. Sixteen Films was subsequently established by Loach and O’Brien, with Laverty involved as Associate Director, and covers the films from Sweet Sixteen (2002) to the present. It is with Sixteen Films that Loach has achieved his most consistent cinematic output, which includes nine full-​length fictional features and one documentary in a period spanning fifteen years, and significant success as signified by a host of international awards, not least two Palmes d’Or, for The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake.14 Another paradox emerges here. Neoliberalism was concomitant with a period of capitalist globalisation, which, while further attacking the living conditions of the working class and oppressed groups, also created new possibilities for Loach to

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operate on a transnational plane. Huw Jones (2016: 369) suggests that Loach’s prolific output since the nineties is connected to successful co-​productions. Jones notes, however, that earlier co-​productions, including Black Jack and Fatherland, involved significant interference from their co-​producing partners (Jones 2016: 374–​5). To add to Jones’ study, research at the BFI Loach archive reveals the extent to which Loach faced direct interventions from the German co-​producers of Fatherland, who attempted to force changes to the film’s final version.15 The archive also indicates the perilous state of the company’s finances during the production.16 Jones outlines that Loach had more successful experiences with Tornasol (Spain) and Road Movies (Germany), which were involved on a finance-​only basis on a number of films from the mid-​nineties to the mid-​noughties. It was during this period that Sixteen Films made a significant step forwards via collaborations with the French company Why Not Productions and European sales company Wild Bunch, which have both acted as co-​producers on all of Loach’s films since Looking for Eric. In turn, Sixteen Films has acted as co-​producer on Les Bien-​aimés/​The Beloved (Honoré, 2011), which was led by Why Not, thereby developing the connection between the companies. In short, with Sixteen Films operating on a transnational basis, Loach has developed a solid production base for his cinematic output, one which is unparalleled in his career. As the company has moved onto a more stable financial basis, this has prevented interference from co-​producers over content and acted as a positive factor in terms of exhibition.17 Presence and Spicer (2016: 6) note that in Edgar Schein’s Organisational Culture and Leadership he suggests that analysing organisations involves comprehending three fields, ‘artefacts, espoused beliefs and underlying assumptions’. For the purposes of this study, I take artefacts to be Sixteen Film’s website and promotional material, espoused beliefs to be the production narratives surrounding their work and underlying assumptions to be the manner (often unspoken) in which the company operates during the production process. In relation to artefacts, the importance of the team to the production process is evident in various aspects of Sixteen Films’ public profile. The company’s website lists eight individuals in a ‘Team Album’.18 In addition to Laverty, Loach and O’Brien, these are Camilla Bray, producer of two Sixteen Films productions not directed by Ken Loach, Summer (Glenann, 2008) and Oranges and Sunshine (Jim Loach, 2009), accountant Habib Rhaman, Jack Thomas-​O’Brien, whose credits include Assistant Producer on Spirit of ’45 (2013), Eimear McMahon, who has fulfilled various production roles since 2007, and Ann Cattrall, Loach’s PA. That the individuals are positioned in a non-​hierarchical formation is consistent with the espoused beliefs or the discourse of collaboration that the company promotes. For instance, when ‘Sixteen Films & Friends (AKA Team Loach)’ received the Special Jury Prize at the 2013 British Independent Film Awards, O’Brien furthered this discourse of collaboration: ‘There are so many people behind the camera on Ken’s films and so often they go unrecognised. And Ken would be the first person to acknowledge that.’19 She continues by stressing the importance of teams: ‘I think that there’s something to be said for the sort of films that we’ve been able to make because we’ve worked with a team.’20 O’Brien, who co-​produced Hidden

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Agenda and has produced all of Loach’s films since The Flickering Flame: A Story of Contemporary Morality (BBC, 1996), has been central in ensuring the run of films since the mid-​nineties, in terms of quantity of product, but also critical and commercial success. O’Brien suggests that ‘casting the crew is as crucial as casting the actors’.21 Notably, and mirroring the ‘Team Album’, the company works regularly with many of the same production crew. As indicated previously, an almost ever-​ present part of the ‘team’ has been Paul Laverty. Reflecting the central creative position the company places on the writer, in recent marketing materials equal billing is allocated to Laverty and Loach.22 In relation to cinematography, although since the late sixties Loach has worked primarily with Chris Menges and Barry Ackroyd, Robbie Ryan has shot The Angels’ Share, Jimmy’s Hall and I, Daniel Blake. George Fenton has provided the music for all feature-​length films since Ladybird, Ladybird (1994). Jonathan Morris has edited every feature-​length film since Fatherland. Ray Beckett, Sound Mixer/​Recordist, has worked on every film since Raining Stones. Martin Johnson, as Designer, worked on Days of Hope, then Black Jack and all major productions until Ae Fond Kiss. Following Johnson’s death in 2003, Fergus Clegg, who had previously worked as Art Director on the seven films between Raining Stones and Ae Fond Kiss, was tasked with Production Design and has worked in that capacity on seven features since, from The Wind That Shakes the Barley to I, Daniel Blake. This is not an exhaustive list, but is indicative of the fact that there is a team of regular staff involved in the production process behind the camera, as well as in the production office.23 Moreover, the existence of the team of individuals who regularly return to work together contributes to a shared, and often unarticulated, understanding of their creative practice, or, following Schein, the underlying assumptions about their working methodologies. During the course of my participant observation and interviews, it became apparent that there was a strong team ethos on set, one which is established from the top, that is, primarily from Loach and O’Brien. This set of underlying assumptions is characterised by respect for each other’s work, a sense that each of the individuals is working to create something which is greater than their own specific contribution, and a sense that the team combined is working on a project of considerable importance and value, aesthetically and politically. In addition, there was an expectation that it would have significant profile, and that it would have a healthy shelf-​life. Notably, not all of Loach’s collaborators voiced support for Loach’s politics; rather, it was support for the end product (the film) and the opportunity to be involved in the production process which were the dominant drivers. James Burns (1978: 19) suggests that successful leaders are able to build a relationship with their collaborators (he deploys the term followers) that is based on developing a shared sense of wants and needs. This emerged during interview as Loach’s collaborators expressed the view that, although they were working to create a shared project, their own specific contribution was considered to be of significant value. Therefore, the team as a whole expressed the view that there was a meeting of individual and collective needs. What also emerged from my observations is that, although there is a discourse of teamwork and collaboration,

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reflecting a togetherness, intercorporeality or even solidarity, Loach as an individual is intimately involved in a leadership role in all aspects of the creative process. Moreover, it also emerged through interview that Loach has a strong idea of what he wants from each of the individual team members. For instance, cinematographer Robbie Ryan rather modestly downplays his own role to suggest that the director almost always knows what set-​up to use when positioning the camera and so on. Ryan adds, ‘He’s very adept at knowing what is needed. He’s kind of got a cameraman’s mind. All I’m helping do is realise that vision.’24 Ryan’s comments are typical of the comments I received from the crew, who speak with a quite remarkable level of respect for Loach as a filmmaker, as an employer, but also as an individual. For instance, Johnathan Morris, states that ‘this is the plum job that we all want –​to work with Ken’.25 When asked to expand on why this is the case, he points to Loach’s personal qualities and states ‘first and foremost it’s him’.26 Interviewing Why Not’s Pascal Caucheteux on his desire to collaborate with Sixteen Films and Loach, he casts his response in auteurist terms, describing Loach as a ‘Master’, and points to their shared interest in cinema.27 As an example of what Mette Hjort might term ‘auteurist transnationalism’ (Hjort 2010), Caucheteux stresses that the motivating factor behind his desire to work with Loach –​whom he described as pro-​Palestinian –​and with Claude Lanzmann (director of Shoah, 1985) –​whom he described as pro-​Israeli –​was their status as ‘Masters’, not their politics. He also stresses, however, aspects of Loach’s character, notably humility and honesty, and their shared love of football, pointing to their involvement with Looking for Eric as the starting point for their relationship.28 John Thornton Caldwell notes that academics ‘fortunate enough to be embedded in a media company’ should carefully negotiate ‘managed top-​down explanations of production’ (Thornton Caldwell 2013: 162–​4). I approached this research fully aware of such concerns and I am fully cognisant of the pitfalls of uncritically replicating production narratives offered by interviewees who are, after all, talking about their employer or business partner; however, it is notable that there was a marked consistency in the responses that I encountered. Moreover, the extent of my participant observation and the ongoing informal discussions I had with the members of the production team enable me to present research findings which go beyond what one might learn in interview alone. To corroborate my own observations, commenting on the interviews he conducted with Loach’s collaborators, Anthony Hayward comments that they ‘talked of him [Loach] in such hallowed tones that I often wondered whether I was writing about a saint’ (Hayward 2004: 2). In his work on leadership Max Weber argues that there are three sources of personal authority –​traditional, legal-​rational and charismatic. Of the third one, Weber suggests that it relates to ‘an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed’ (Weber 1948: 295). Repeatedly in interview, Loach’s collaborators outlined that they regarded him as having extraordinary qualities as a filmmaker, but also as an individual. These qualities were critical in ensuring the interviewees’ continuing involvement with Sixteen Films. So, although I am arguing for a rejection of the term ‘auteur’, I am not arguing for the rejection of the

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contribution of individuals to the filmmaking process: Loach –​as an individual, as a filmmaker and as a leader –​is pivotal to the success of Team Loach. It is interesting to contrast my research findings with Powdermaker’s. She suggests that, while there is a general recognition in Hollywood, the home of capitalist cinema par excellence, that filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise, individuals and groups jostle constantly for domination. As she argues, ‘The overt verbal behavior in all these relationships is that of love and friendship. Warm words of endearment and great cordiality set the tone. But underneath is hostility amounting frequently to hatred, and, even more important, a lack of respect for each other’s work’ (Powdermaker 1951: 29). This position is also endorsed in Schatz’s study of Hollywood when he notes that ‘studio filmmaking was less a process of collaboration than of negotiation and struggle –​occasionally approaching armed conflict’ (Schatz 1988: 12). Powdermaker suggests that Hollywood is marked by, on the whole, ‘a striking and complete lack of mutual respect as well as trust. The esprit de corps of the industry is exceedingly low’ (Powdermaker 1951: 295–​6). Although I did witness the occasional minor conflict between individuals, which is perhaps inevitable in any workplace, the esprit de corps on the set of The Angels’ Share was high, even though there was recognition of the power dynamics on the set. For instance, in interview, one regular member of the production team described Loach, affectionately, as the leader of a ‘collective autocracy’.29 When I put this to

FIGURE  1.2:   Loach

and the crew preparing to shoot the whisky-​tasting sequence in The Angels’ Share. Source: Author’s private collection.

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whisky-​tasting sequence in The Angels’ Share. Source: Screen grab. FIGURE 1.3:  The

Loach he rejected the phrase, suggesting that it contains ‘the whiff of the jackboot’; but he also states ‘You can’t do it without leadership otherwise it would just disintegrate. The unit’s got to work with a common voice and that’s what the director has got to find. It’s got to be a voice that everybody feels is their own, but equally it’s got to be unified so that the trick really is to try and get both.’30 In casting leadership here not in terms of vision, but as a form of polyphonic unification, Loach’s response, and his directorial approach in general, brings to mind the words of Bill Shankly when discussing the success of Glasgow Celtic Football Club’s legendary manager Jock Stein: ‘If he’s got useful players, and he trains them the right way and he gets them all to do what they can do well, the little things that they can do, and he merges them all together, it’s a form of socialism you know, without the politics, of course.’31 In highlighting Stein’s leadership qualities, Shankly’s comments suggest that there can be a politics embedded in the mode of production, which finds expression in the concept of teams, but teams which are led. There is a parallel, then, between the mode of production of Loach’s work and the recurring theme of leadership in the films, as outlined above; however, this is also the case in relation to teams.

Teams in the films Given Sixteen Films’ ‘artefacts, espoused beliefs and underlying assumptions’, it is appropriate that football teams and supporters feature regularly in Loach’s output, including The Golden Vision (1968), Kes, My Name Is Joe (1998), Tickets (2005),

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Ae Fond Kiss, It’s a Free World … (2007) and Looking for Eric. This is indicative of a wider interest in teams: although a number of films in Loach’s œuvre centre on individual characters, as is indicated often by the titles –​Cathy Come Home, Carla’s Song and My Name Is Joe –​the importance of the collective is a constant. For instance, we have the criminal gang in A Tap on the Shoulder (BBC, 1965) and the drug-​dealing, pizza-​delivery gang in Sweet Sixteen. It is indicative of their increased marginalisation and effective emasculation that trade unions have featured significantly less in Loach’s work since the eighties; however, we still have groups of workers suffering the effects of weakened trade union organisation in Riff-​Raff (1991), Bread and Roses (2000), The Navigators and It’s a Free World …, with revolutionary militias featuring in Land and Freedom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Collectivism is not fetishised, however: in contrast to the groups of organised trade unionists who assemble to discuss their working conditions in The Big Flame and The Rank and File, Navigators reveals how discourses on teams have been co-​opted under neoliberal capitalism. In one scene, rail workers are called to a meeting, but not to discuss union organisation; rather, management have assembled them to watch a company promotional video during which the managing director states ‘There are no limits to what this team can achieve together.’ That Navigators concludes with the death of one of their number critiques both the privatisation of the railways that forms the film’s background and the neoliberal appropriation of discourses on collaboration and collectivism. Overall, however, teams are represented as forces for progressive change and spaces for social and political solidarity. In Looking for Eric, Eric the postal worker asks his namesake, Eric Cantona, what the ‘sweetest moment’ of his footballing career was, expecting it to be one of the Frenchman’s numerous celebrated goals for Manchester United. ‘It was a pass’, Cantona responds, before the film cuts to show an exquisite clipped pass from Cantona which sets up Denis Irwin to score against Spurs. ‘What if he had missed?’ asks the postal worker. When Cantona replies ‘You have to trust your teammates, always. If not we are lost’, it furthers this team discourse, but also highlights the dialectical interaction between talented individuals and teams.

Conclusion The term ‘Team Loach’ clearly flags that filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise whilst simultaneously reinforcing the centrality of Loach in the production process. Although auteurist discourses can be cognisant of the collaborative nature of filmmaking, clearly, one of the downsides of this approach has been a tendency to erase the labour and artistic input of other film production workers. What I have attempted to do here is illustrate the contribution of a number of creative individuals, but more importantly their status as part of a creative team in the production of Loach’s more recent output. Reflecting on Film Studies’ engagement with auteurism in 2007, John Caughie writes that ‘The work of theory is still contestatory, moving forward dialectically, rather like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, continually looking backwards to pick up any fragments which may have been lost in

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the rubble of earlier encounters. The questions of art and authorship, creativity and imagination, may still prove an irritant in our attempts to come to terms with our complex engagements with cinema’ (Caughie 2007: 421). In striving to come to terms with the work of Ken Loach and Sixteen Films, we can add leadership, collaboration and football to the mix. I realise that there may appear to be an apparent contradiction in arguing that the auteur figure is a hindrance rather than a help in understanding film and television, whilst, simultaneously, arguing for an engagement with the work of specific creative individuals and how they work with teams in the production process; nevertheless, if we are to have a fuller understanding of the processes by which film and television come into actual existence then it seems vital. Moreover, if we are to understand how an explicitly anti-​capitalist cinema can be forged in a neoliberal world, then Loach and Sixteen Films are exemplary.

Notes 1 This chapter is part of a larger study into Loach’s production practices. The research has been funded by the University of Glasgow’s John Robertson Bequest, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I am grateful to Ken Loach, Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty, all at Sixteen Films, and Pascal Caucheteux at Why Not for their assistance in facilitating this research. 2 I employ the term ‘filmmaking’ to refer to the production of both film and television outputs. 3 For a fuller account of Loach’s record at Cannes, see David Archibald, ‘The Angels’ Share at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’ (Archibald 2012). 4 Interview with the author. Partially published as ‘Reeling from Injustice’ in the Financial Times (Archibald 2011). 5 Loach had been a Labour Party member since the early sixties, although his membership lapsed in the mid-​nineties. The demand for a new left-​of-​centre political formation was raised once more in 2013, this time beyond the world of cinema, when he co-​founded Left Unity. Following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015, Loach directed In Conversation with Jeremy Corbyn (Loach, 2016), a sympathetic documentary account of Corbyn’s leadership. In more recent years Loach has refused the label ‘Marxist’, arguing that it gets in the way of the ideas, although at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival press conference of The Angels’ Share, Loach argued, in classical Marxist terms, that ‘workers are the agents of change’ but added ‘we need movements not leaders’. 6 Perdition was due to be performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987 but was pulled by the theatre’s Artistic Director, Max Stafford Clark, amidst accusations that the play was anti-​Semitic. Loach and Allen vigorously contest these accusations. 7 For further early work in this area, see also Leo Rosten, Hollywood, the Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (Rosten 1941). 8 In The Classical Hollywood Cinema, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson and Janet Staiger also downplay the director’s significance in the studio system (Bordwell et al. 1985). 9 See Stephen Lacey’s Tony Garnett, particularly ­chapter 1, ‘From Actor to Producer: Into the Driving Seat’ (Lacey 2007: 11–​33). 10 Interview with the author. Partially published as ‘Reeling from Injustice’ in the Financial Times (Archibald 2011). Menges had worked as assistant to the Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček on If …. (Lindsay Anderson, 1968). Loach cites the Czech New Wave as an important influence and Ostře sledované vlaky/​Closely Observed Trains (Menzel, 1966) as a favourite film. 11 For an account of the cinematographer as auteur, see Philip Cowan’s ‘Authorship and the Director of Photography: A Case Study of Gregg Toland and Citizen Kane’ (Cowan 2012).

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12 Ferguson suggests that in football leadership the task ‘was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible’ (Ferguson 2015: 239). In offering a ‘leader as visionary’ position it would be possible to contrast football’s leader/​manager dichotomy with cinema’s auteur/​metteur en scène division, with the latter, for André Bazin, a director lacking a ‘truly personal style’ (quoted in Caughie, 1981: 23). 13 BFI Loach Archive. File KCL-​19. 14 For a variety of reasons, Loach’s output from the late sixties to the late eighties was intermittent. See Hill (2011) for the most comprehensive account of his work until Route Irish (2010). 15 BFI Loach Archive. File KCL-​19. 16 Ibid. 17 In contrast to the censorship problems Loach encountered with his documentary work in the eighties, The Spirit of ’45 received widespread cinematic distribution, emblematic of Sixteen Films’ international success. 18 www.sixteenfilms.co.uk/​people/​ (last accessed 24 December 2016). 19 This interview is available to view at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=TZ3Q8gmhuH0 (last accessed 20 December 2016). 20 Ibid. 21 Interview with the author on the set of The Angels’ Share. 22 This is evident, for instance, on the publicity posters for Jimmy’s Hall. 23 Space precludes a study of the significance of actors to this process, although, with a few minor exceptions, Loach does not use the same actors on a regular basis. 24 Interview with the author on the set of The Angels’ Share. 25 Interview with the author during the editing of The Angels’ Share. 26 Ibid. 27 Interview with the author in Paris, August 2015. 28 Why Not do have an involvement in Sixteen Films’ production process. For instance, during my research they visited the set of The Angel’s Share in Glasgow and attended a screening of the rough cut in London. According to Caucheteux, however, their involvement is light-​touch: although they can comment on draft scripts and rough cuts, he states, ‘we are not going to give Ken Loach a lesson in filmmaking’ (interview with the author in Paris). 29 Interview with the author on the set of The Angels’ Share. 30 Interview with the author. Partially published as ‘Reeling From Injustice’ in the Financial Times (Archibald 2011). 31 Available to view at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=XnsQw5gG3Nk (last accessed 3 January 2017).

Bibliography Ancelotti, Carlo (2016). Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches (London: Penguin). Archibald, David (2011). ‘Reeling from Injustice’, Financial Times, 26 August. Archibald, David (2012). ‘The Angels’ Share at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, 1(2), pp. 299–​305. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press). Bourdieu, Pierre (1993). The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press). Brandt, George W. (1981). British Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burns, James M. (1978). Leadership (New York: Harper & Row). Caughie, John (ed.) (1981). Theories of Authorship (London: Routledge). Caughie, John (2007). ‘Authors and Auteurs: The Uses of Theory’, in J. Donald and M. Renov (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies (London: Sage), pp. 408–​23.

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Corliss, Richard (2008). ‘Notes on a Screenwriter’s Theory, 1973’, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 140–​7. Corrigan, Timothy (1990). ‘The Commerce of Auteurism: A Voice without Authority’, in New German Critique, issue 49, pp. 43–​57. Cowan, Philip (2012). ‘Authorship and the Director of Photography: A Case Study of Gregg Toland and Citizen Kane’, Networking Knowledge, 5(1), pp. 231–​45. Ezra, Elizabeth (2000). Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Ferguson, Alex (2015). Leading (London: Hodder & Stoughton). Fuller, George (1998). Loach on Loach (London: Faber and Faber). Garnett, Tony (2016). The Day the Music Died: A Memoir (London: Constable). Gaut, Berys (1997). ‘Film Authorship and Collaboration’, in R. Richard Allen and M. Smith, (eds.), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Goss, Brian Michael (2009). Global Auteurs: Politics in the Films of Almodóvar, von Trier, and Winterbottom (New York: Peter Lang). Grant, Catherine (2000). ‘www.auteur.com?’, Screen, 41(1), pp. 101–​8. Grant, Catherine (2008). ‘Auteur Machines? Auteurism and the DVD’, in James Bennett and Tom Brown (eds.), Film and Television after DVD (London: Routledge), pp. 101–​15. Hayward, Anthony (2004). Which Side Are You on? Ken Loach and His Films (London: Bloomsbury). Hill, John (2011). Ken Loach:The Politics of Film and Television (London: Palgrave/​BFI). Hjort, Mette (2010). ‘On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism’, in K. E. Newman and N. Durovicová (eds.), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 13–​33. Hunter, Aaron (2016). Authoring Hal Ashby: The Myth of the New Hollywood Auteur (London: Bloomsbury). Jones, Huw D. (2016). ‘UK/​European Co-​productions: The Case of Ken Loach’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 13(3), pp. 368–​89. Keith Grant, Barry (2008). Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell). Lacey, Stephen (2007). Tony Garnett (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Leigh, Jacob (2002). The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People (London: Wallflower). Mayer, Vicki, Miranda J. Banks and John Thornton Caldwell (2009). Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (New York and London: Routledge). Macnab, George (2016). ‘Ken Loach: Keeper of the Flame’, in Screen Daily, 13 June, www. screendaily.com/​features/​ken-​loach-​keeper-​of-​the-​flame/​5104790.article, accessed 3 June 2017. McKnight, George (1997). Agent of Challenge and Defiance:The Films of Ken Loach (Trowbridge: Flicks Books). Neale, Stephen (1981). ‘Art Cinema as Institution’, Screen, 22(1), pp. 11–​39. Ostrowska, Dorota (2010). ‘Magic, Emotions and Film Producers: Unlocking the “Black-​ Box” of Film Production’, Wide Screen, 2(2), pp. 1–​9. Powdermaker, Hortense (1951). Hollywood The Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movies (London: Secker and Warburg). Presence, Steve and Andrew H. Spicer (2016).‘Autonomy and Dependency in Two Successful Film and Television Companies: An Analysis of RED Production Company and Warp Films’, Film Studies, 14(1), pp. 5–​31. Rosten, Leo (1941). Hollywood, the Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt). Schatz, Thomas (1988). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon).

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Sellors, C. Paul (2007). ‘Collective Authorship in Film’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65(3), pp. 263–​71. Sellors, C. Paul (2010). Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths (London: Wallflower). Thornton Caldwell, John (2008). Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press). Thornton Caldwell, John (2013). ‘Para-​Industry: Researching Hollywood’s Blackwaters’, Cinema Journal, 52(3), pp. 157–​64. Weber, Max (1948). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology.Translated and edited by Hans Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (New York and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Willis, Andy (2009). ‘Jim Allen: Radical Drama Beyond Days of Hope’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 5(2), pp. 300–​17.

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2 US INDEPENDENT CINEMA AND THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION Complicating discourses of independence and oppositionality Kevan Feshami

US independent cinema1 is often understood in popular and scholarly discourses as maintaining an oppositional relationship to the larger ‘Hollywood mainstream’ represented by the major film studios. Discussing these assertions of opposition, Sherry Ortner notes that they operate ‘on two relatively distinct levels’, the first being a view that independent cinema is apart from ‘the commercial intention of the studios’, and the second entailing a notion that independent films issue a ‘challenge [to] the dominant culture’ (Ortner 2013: 30). In a similar sense, Emanuel Levy also highlights ‘two different conceptions of independent film … According to the first view, any film financed outside Hollywood is independent. But the second suggests that it is the fresh perspective, innovative spirit, and personal vision that are the determining factor’ (Levy 1999: 3). Moreover, this ‘fresh perspective’ and ‘personal vision’ independent filmmakers typify, according to Levy, is itself expressed through ‘alternative films that are different, challenging the status quo with visions that have been suppressed or ignored by the more conservative mainstream’ (Levy 1999: 21). Further examples of these two conceptions of independent cinema –​some form of autonomy from the commercial pressures which beset mainstream filmmaking and an opposition to the perceived conservative nature of that filmmaking and the broader culture it appeals to –​can be found in many other works on US independent cinema (King 2005, for example); however, upon closer examination, both the notion of autonomy and that of opposition are problematic. As regards the first, highlighting US independent cinema’s freedom, even in a relative sense, from the commercial intentions of the major studios overlooks the fact that the majority of films designated as independent are nevertheless commodities and, as such, are influenced by the commercial pressures of our capitalist mode of production. In addition, while many independent films endeavour to interrogate hierarchies of race, sexuality and gender –​the films of Spike Lee, or the New Queer Cinema, for ­example –​certain aspects of the discourses which help shape and define the

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contours of what we consider independent cinema serve to reinforce key narratives of the neoliberal worldview which has so prominently shaped the development of capitalism in recent decades, thereby complicating these transgressive aspirations. Yet, in the light of the ambiguity and debate over the terms independent cinema, neoliberalism and capitalist mode of production, it is important to briefly detail how each term is being used. Therefore, the chapter will first define key terms, before moving on to critically assess in turn issues both of autonomy and of oppositionality in US independent cinema.

What is US independent cinema? US independent cinema is a slippery concept. The editors of an anthology on American independent cinema, who between them ‘had published on the subject no fewer than nine monographs in total’, write that they experienced ‘some strong disagreements on how to understand … the fundamental questions of what exactly constitutes independence in American cinema’ (King et al. 2013: 6). Turning to the broader field of literature on the subject offers little help. For instance, rather ironically, much of this work maintains that industrial independence –​i.e. some combination of financing, production and distribution that is conducted apart from the major studios –​is insufficient to render a film independent (Holmlund 2005: 3; King 2005: 5; Staiger 2013: 22). While industrial independence is one of the seemingly clear-​cut means for establishing a film as independent, simply defining independence by industrial location, however, leaves us with a rather unwieldy category in which we might include such disparate examples as industrial filmmaking (i.e. workplace safety films, instructional videos, etc.), exercise videos, experimental or avant-​garde cinema and exploitation movies, examples which are often excluded from works on American independent cinema. Moreover, that films regularly identified as independent –​like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), distributed by Universal, or Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994), distributed by Miramax, a subsidiary of Disney at the time –​are nevertheless often distributed, and even produced, by the majors or one of their subsidiaries further complicates definitions grounded in industrial independence. Accordingly, Geoff King, one of the most prolific scholars writing about US independent cinema, remarks on his website that ‘the distinction between indie and Hollywood is sometimes quite clear-​cut, but not always’ (King no date). With industrial independence problematised, many writers attempting to define US independent cinema endeavour to establish some set of criteria by which we might identify independent films. Janet Staiger, for example, proposes viewing ‘indie’ cinema, differentiated from independent cinema, which she suggests might be used to designate industrial location alone, as a ‘mode of film practice’ identified by ‘1 A definite historical existence, including specific political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic contexts; 2 A set of conventions, including form of narrative, style of narration, and subject matter; and 3 Implicit viewing procedures’ (Staiger 2013: 22, emphasis original). King also outlines a set of attributes based on industrial position, narrative

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structure, formal qualities, relations (or lack thereof ) to established genres and socio-​ political content as some of the key components of independent cinema (King 2005). He also, like Staiger, adopts the term ‘indie’, noting that it ‘suggests a particular sensibility … a particular cultural realm, or range, a particular kind of film practice … not just a separation from the production of the major studios’ (King 2013: 2–​3). What specifically constitutes these distinct practices and conventions varies from writer to writer, and there is not space here to offer a survey of the different aspects highlighted by different writers –​although many focus on some notion of independent films being ‘innovative’, ‘offbeat’ or ‘quirky’ in a way that studio films supposedly are not. That said, efforts to define US independent cinema that are based on sets of qualities face a specific conceptual difficulty: namely, the same problem of circular logic which, as Andrew Tudor points out, befalls efforts to delineate genre: To take a genre … analyse it, and list its principal characteristics is to beg the question that we must first isolate the body of films [belonging to that genre]. But they can only be isolated on the basis of the ‘principal characteristics,’ which can only be discovered from the films themselves after they have been isolated. That is, we are caught in a circle that first requires that the films be isolated, for which purposes a criterion is necessary, but the criterion is, in turn, meant to emerge from the empirically established common characteristics of the films. (Tudor 2003: 5) Accordingly, it cannot be said that there is some existent realm of independent cinema which one can readily identify and base a definition on, once one has mapped its contours. To be sure, there are certainly common qualities of given sets of films and filmmaking practices (or anything else, for that matter) by which we might found definitions and draw boundaries; however, as dialectical philosopher Bertell Ollman points out, ‘it is ultimately we who draw the boundaries, and people coming from different cultures and from different philosophical traditions can and do draw them differently’ (Ollman 2003: 13–​14). In other words, there is no inherent, or non-​arbitrary, way to define US independent cinema. Some definitions may be better suited to certain tasks than others –​for instance, a definition which foregrounds a quirky and innovative spirit might be more useful in differentiating independent film from the works of the major studios than one based on industrial independence, given the problems associated with that concept –​but they are all nevertheless the products of a given writer’s selective emphasis. Thus, rather than identifying a specific set of films or filmmaking practices on which to found a definition of independent cinema, this chapter will take a slightly different approach to discussing the topic. In his engaging study American Independent Cinema, Yannis Tzioumakis, after detailing the various difficulties in advancing a definition of independent film, proposes treating it ‘as a discourse that expands and contracts when socially authorized institutions (filmmakers, industry practitioners, trade publications, academics, film critics, and so on) contribute towards

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its definition at different periods in the history of American cinema’ (Tzioumakis 2006: 11). This approach directs our attention away from endeavouring to establish some list of criteria and towards the efforts of scholars and critics themselves to create the concept ‘US independent cinema’. This is, of course, not to say that such definitional work is empty of content, or that it is little more than the whims of individual writers; rather, the ways in which we define the world matter very much, and can play a considerable role in the development of how what is being defined develops historically. Therefore, instead of producing yet another definition of US independent cinema, this chapter focuses on how others define the concept, namely via the above-​mentioned notions of autonomy and oppositionality, and, in particular, seeks to identify how these discourses both overlook important relationships between their subject matter and the capitalist mode of production and often serve to reinforce some of its key neoliberal outlooks. To that end, we now turn to the concepts of neoliberalism and modes of production.

Neoliberalism, modes of production and modes of life Neoliberalism is a term which has gained considerable currency in scholarly discourse over the past decade or so. Its contours and history have been well discussed elsewhere (Harvey 2005; Klein 2007; Brown 2015); however, as a brief description, neoliberalism can be said to entail a set of discourses, policy orientations and economic relations which favour free, deregulated markets liberated from state intervention, the commodification of most, if not all, aspects of life (from basic necessities like water to human creative potential) and an emphasis on individual choice, which gained currency in the United States and Europe following the economic turmoil of the 1970s.2 More will be said about neoliberalism below; yet, for now, it is important to note that, while the term is useful for describing marked changes in policy directions as well as elite and popular discourse, it should nevertheless be used carefully. As Christian Garland and Stephen Harper point out, because it is described as a change in rationality and policy, neoliberalism is often generally ‘understood as a regime of accumulation that is parasitical on, or extrinsic to the normal functioning of an otherwise unproblematic capitalism’ (Garland and Harper 2012: 422). However, neoliberalism is better grasped as one, albeit important, facet of a larger transformation and restructuring which, by taking advantage of key developments in communications technology as well as the disciplining of the labour force, especially through the breaking up of unions and other forms of collective organisation,3 has created a capitalism which is truly global in scope. In a detailed analysis of these developments, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012) describe this transformation, highlighting in particular, and in contradiction to neoliberalism’s anti-​statist rhetoric, the critical constitutive role specific states, and especially the United States, have played in building and maintaining a global capitalism. Thus, even as neoliberalism can serve as a useful lens through which to consider these changes, it must be understood in relation to the larger capitalist mode of production under which we live.

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But what is a mode of production? This is perhaps one of the most difficult and broadly interpreted (and misunderstood) concepts in Marxism, so let us be clear from the outset: our use here of the term has nothing to do with the base/​superstructure model that informed Stalinist and orthodox understandings of Marxism.4 Rather, as Marx and Engels point out in The German Ideology, for there to be human social life, or even ‘human existence’ in general, human beings ‘must be in a position to live’ in the first place, which in turn requires not only the production of all the things (food, shelter and so on) that make that life possible, but also the reproduction of human life itself (Marx and Engels 1970: 48–​49). How this is accomplished is a question of historical specificity, and must therefore ‘be treated and analysed according to the existing empirical data’ (Marx and Engels 1970: 49). Where these processes are relatively stable in time, we have a mode of production. Thus, if we consider how the majority of the world’s population works for wages which they exchange for the necessities of life, we can see our own capitalist mode of production. But Marx and Engels do not stop here. ‘The production of life’, they argue, is also ‘a social relationship. By social we understand the co-​operation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain mode of production … is always combined with a certain mode of co-​operation … and this mode of co-​operation is itself a “productive force” ’ (Marx and Engels 1970: 50). Thus, a mode of production is not only what Wood calls ‘the immediate processes of production’ (Wood 1995:  25); it is also all of the myriad ways people cooperate at different points in time to enable those immediate processes. Including the cooperation that makes the production and reproduction of life possible expands a mode of production far beyond what is traditionally contained in the base/​superstructure model. Gender and sexual relations, for example, must be included and understood in their historical specificity –​meaning we cannot talk about contemporary capitalism without talking about women’s struggles or queer families. Moreover, if we consider that the definition of cooperation does not mean only to work together, but also to comply, as in ‘to cooperate with the police’, we can understand cooperation to include coercion. Thus, a mode of production also includes all of the ways in which people are compelled to produce, from cultural valorisations of ‘hard work’ and the ‘individual’ which encourage people to participate in wage labour to the brutalities of slavery and imperialism. And, indeed, can we think of the history of capitalism as somehow separate from the barbarism of colonialism and the enslavement of Africans and others? But what about those parts of life not reducible to production and reproduction, particularly those activities which are routinely identified as culture? As we have already noted, aspects of what is commonly called culture –​i.e. the culture of hard work –​are already imbricated in a mode of production. Furthermore, even where they are not solely reducible to the immediate processes of production, no aspect of life is fully independent and free from relations to a mode of production. After all, the demands of work, money and market exchange ‘determine’, in

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the sense of ‘the setting of limits’ and ‘the exertion of pressures’ used by Williams (1977: 87), every aspect of our lives in a capitalist mode of production. This is not to say that those aspects of life are passive and inert, simply pushed around by the whims of capitalism. In fact, Marx himself asserts the importance of all other aspects of life in reciprocally determining how the immediate processes of production happen: ‘Man himself is the basis of his material production … All circumstances, therefore, which affect man … more or less modify all his functions and activities … In this respect it can in fact be shown that all human relations and functions, however and in whatever form they may appear, influence material production and have a more or less decisive influence on it’ (Marx 1956:  280, emphasis original). All aspects of life, then, are in constant relation with those immediate processes of production, through which each mutually shapes the other, as part of the same holistic process by which life is not only made, but lived. Thus, Marx and Engels remark, ‘this mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part’ (Marx and Engels 1970: 42, emphasis original).5 By considering capitalism as a mode of life in this sense, it becomes apparent how all facets of life, while not mechanistically determined by capitalism, are nonetheless influenced and shaped by it, even as they shape and influence capitalism’s historical development. The globalisation of this process described by Panitch and Gindin has only served to further deepen both its totality and its interconnectivity. With this notion of a capitalist mode of production in mind, this chapter now turns to critically assessing the widespread view of US independent cinema as being, in some form or other, autonomous from the commercial (or, rather more accurately, capitalist) pressures which beset the Hollywood majors.

Freedom from commercial intentions? As has already been noted above, a significant amount of the writing produced about US independent cinema has emphasised its supposed freedom from ‘the corporate, market-​driven thinking that has drained the art from Hollywood’ (Levy 1999: 24). Independent cinema, then, is able to be ‘art’ because it is not concerned with issues of financial returns. And yet, independent films are nevertheless commodities, produced for exchange and targeted at specific markets, and are free neither from the ‘commercial intentions’ which animate the majors, nor from the business operations of the majors themselves. Their ‘independence’, in other words, is almost entirely conceptual, both in terms of industrial independence and in terms of freedom from commercial influence. This point can be further explicated by presenting the history of what we call US independent cinema in a way that highlights its historical and developmental links both to the major studios and to the commercial pressures which animate them. This history begins in the 1950s amid the chaos of a film industry thrown out of balance by the collapse of the studio system at the end of the 1940s. This vertically

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integrated oligopoly had, at its peak, ‘accounted for well over 80  percent of the movies exhibited across America’ (Doherty 2002: 14). However, with many of its restrictive trade practices –​upon which it depended for its extensive market dominance  –​banned by the Supreme Court’s decision in United States vs. Paramount Pictures, Inc. and its economic survival threatened by a sharp decline in box-​office revenue beginning in 1949, the hegemony of the major studios proved increasingly untenable. As the majors were forced to cut production and, as a result of the Paramount decision, lost their grip on exhibition (if not distribution), new spaces opened up for filmmakers working outside the bounds of the studio system to produce, distribute and exhibit their work. In this newly opened space, an increasing number of imported art films from Europe also found expanded room for exhibition (Schatz 2013: 128). Indeed, ‘there was an exponential increase in theatres dedicated to non-​US fare (from fewer than 50 in the pre-​war era to more than 800 in 1958). Equally the number of films imported into the US had risen from 93 in 1948 to 532 in 1957’ (Tzioumakis 2006:  120). As the exhibition of such cinema proliferated, American audiences would gain increasing exposure to the art cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau and a host of other European directors, thus establishing ‘a distinct audience for art-​films’ (Tzioumakis 2006: 120). While these films found a growing audience within the United States as the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the large firms of the domestic film industry continued to struggle, lurching from one expensive box-​office failure to another. Where films did bring in sizeable revenues, their ‘success … was more often than not offset by the size of their budget and marketing costs and by the various profit participation schemes that shifted a significant percentage of the films’ rentals to the talent’ (Tzioumakis 2006: 177). As the major companies floundered, a younger generation of filmmakers who would become associated with independent cinema –​including Robert Altman, Dennis Hopper and Martin Scorsese –​offered some degree of relief. These young filmmakers, who had been heavily influenced by the artistic style of the European cinema mentioned above (King 2002: 36–​8), provided the studios with a means to access both the market for art films, which had become established the decade before, and the emergent baby-​boom, or ‘hippie’, demographic whose countercultural ambitions were generally not represented in the large firms’ productions. Such films –​including Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969), Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969) and Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970) –​were particularly appealing to the major companies, given that, while they certainly adopted many of the stylistic techniques of European directors, they nevertheless avoided ‘a wholesale abandonment of the “classical” style’ of filmmaking popular in the United States by ‘conform[ing] to familiar conventions such as those of continuity editing and narrative motivation’ (King 2002: 44). Moreover, the countercultural ambitions of these filmmakers were tempered by a general avoidance of ‘potentially radical issues’ in favour of ‘a focus on the dynamics of the relationships between individuals’ (King 2002: 46), further making their films palatable to major studios seeking to attract new audiences without necessarily ‘rocking the boat’.

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These films, which we might consider as the progenitors of contemporary US independent cinema, would prove quite successful, returning large grosses on comparatively small budgets (Tzioumakis 2006: 178). Such successes demonstrated that, at least for the moment, the ‘independent’ art-​film market could provide one solution to the struggling major companies. Nonetheless, they were ‘merely one tendency’ of filmmaking handled by the large film companies (King 2002: 46); as the 1970s wore on, the majors began focusing their efforts on spectacularly profitable ‘blockbusters’  –​i.e. high-​budget, spectacle-​driven films targeted at young, male, predominantly white audiences, like Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)  and Star Wars (Lucas, 1977). At the same time, the market for US independent cinema proved unable to sustain increased investment in production budgets by the large firms, exemplified in the calamitous failure of ‘Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate [(1980)], a $44 million (production and marketing costs) epic that … sank without a trace at the US box office, recording an unbelievably poor $12,032.61 gross in its first run’ (Tzioumakis 2006: 207).6 With their blockbusters reaping stupendous profits and independent cinema proving unable to match that pace, the major companies by and large ceased the production and distribution of the latter to concentrate on the former. This is, of course, not to say that the independent cinema market vanished, nor that films which targeted it disappeared. On the contrary, the 1980s saw the entry of many new filmmakers into this sector, including John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch and Victor Nuñez. The influence of European art cinema persisted among this new cohort, prompting one observer to note ‘these filmmakers treat inherently American concerns with a primarily European style’ (Insdorf 2005 [1981]: 29). Furthermore, the baby-​boom generation remained ‘a core target group’ for this kind of filmmaking (King 2005: 23) and at times could register significant box-​office successes for independent films. John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), for instance, itself a film about ageing baby-​boomers reuniting for a weekend and nostalgically revisiting the 1960s, ‘grossed $2 million on a $60,000 budget’ (Tzioumakis 2006: 209). Bolstered by new sources of financing, particularly from government grants and public television (Tzioumakis 2006:  208), production in the sector increased, as did the relative box-​office success of the films.7 Strong financial performances for independent films like Return of the Secaucus Seven, in terms of their gross in relation to their budgets, alongside new opportunities afforded by emerging ancillary markets like cable television and home video, encouraged several major film companies to create subsidiaries to handle both US independent cinema and imports from its European counterparts.8 Most of these subsidiaries would last only a few years; however, ‘they nevertheless influenced immensely the trajectory of American independent cinema’ by ‘establish[ing] a viable commercial distribution network that on many occasions allowed independent filmmakers to earn profits from the commercial exploitation of their films and therefore continue pursuing filmmaking as a full time occupation’ (Tzioumakis 2013: 32). As the 1980s progressed, the US independent cinema market demonstrated that it could provide relatively substantial success for films that targeted it. While the 1987 stock market crash temporarily disrupted the production and distribution of

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such films, the market had nevertheless recovered enough to provide ‘a breakout year in 1989’ for many companies and filmmakers working in the sector (Schatz 2013: 129–​30). Indeed, the crossover success of films like Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Soderbergh, 1989) and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) demonstrated that independent films could appeal to a broader market, even as its core demographic was increasingly defined by ‘an upscale, highly educated audience’ (Ortner 2013: 11). Thus, the independent film market began to once again show increasing appeal for the large film companies, resulting in, among others, the purchase of Miramax by Disney in 1993 and the purchase of New Line by Turner Broadcasting Systems (which itself was later acquired by Time Warner) in 1994 alongside the establishment into the 2000s of several new subsidiaries designed to handle the production and distribution of films targeted both at the US independent cinema market and at potentially larger crossover audiences.The revenue potential for US independent films also attracted investment from outside the film industry, as in 1997 when Bain Capital (a private equity firm co-​founded by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney) purchased home video distributor LIVE Entertainment, rebranding it as the production/​distribution company Artisan Entertainment, which was responsible for such independent films as Requiem for a Dream (2000) and The Way of the Gun (2000). The global recession which began in 2007 has led to some degree of retrenchment within the industry, resulting in the sale or closure of some of these subsidiaries; however, others, like Focus Features, Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics, continue to operate, and independent cinema remains a prominent part of the larger US film industry. What this narrative demonstrates is that the history of what we call independent cinema cannot be understood separately from its relationship both to the majors and to the larger filmic markets of the US and their respective commercial pressures. Independent films are targeted at markets ranging from the baby-​ boomers to ‘elite … young middle-​class cinéphile[s]‌’ (Staiger 2013: 16), and they are regularly distributed and even produced by the majors, whose involvement has, as the Tzioumakis quote above makes clear, ‘influenced immensely the trajectory of American independent cinema’. In short, independent films are commodities which depend on successful circulation in marketplaces, even if those marketplaces do not always have the scope of those in which the majors’ blockbusters circulate. The supposedly ‘artistic’ nature of the films enabled by their more-​perceived-​than-​ actual freedom from market pressures –​itself little more than a recapitulation of the ‘high-​culture’ and ‘low-​culture’ designations critiqued by cultural scholars like Williams (1989: 3–​18) –​is also a key marketing hook for film-​going demographics first established by the importation into the United States of European films, which were, in turn, themselves meant to fill a market niche. This contention is not to say that there is no value in the artistic practice of independent cinema, or that many of the films do not display a level of technical skill that surpasses at least some of the blockbuster fare released by the majors –​ although the growing presence of indie filmmakers like Christopher Nolan at the helm of big-​budget Hollywood movies may be altering this disparity. Rather, it

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is to suggest that the assumption that independent cinema is somehow free, or even relatively free, from or ‘above’ the petty commercial demands of capitalism’s markets is untenable. Just as with all other facets of life, independent cinema is not autonomous in relation to the determinations of capitalism. This is also not a petty distinction. The assumption that there are ‘outsides’ or ‘interstices’ to capitalism in which we might seek shelter mistakenly obviates, to one extent or another, the fact that it is only radical transformation that will transcend the impositions of global capitalism. Escape is not resistance, in other words, especially when that escape is far more imagined than actual. To pretend otherwise is to limit our capacities for actual, meaningful resistance to a capitalist mode of life which currently bestrides the globe, with deleterious effects ranging from declining wages and life chances to severe ecological destruction. Moreover, the assumption that independent cinema somehow transcends the commercial pressures of capitalism also overlooks how some of the most celebrated aspects of its discourse actually reinforce a key narrative of the neoliberal worldview.

US independent cinema, individualism and the neoliberal worldview Perhaps more commonly asserted than notions of freedom in the discourses of US independent cinema is its opposition to a perceived conservative culture. King hails independent films for transcending ‘the relatively narrow moral economy typically operative in Hollywood’ (King 2005: 199), while the Ortner and Levy quotes from the chapter’s introduction take this moral challenge beyond the scope of Hollywood to culture more generally. One of the core facets of this oppositionality, moreover, is the perception in the relevant discourses that independent cinema provides a space for the realisation of personal vision as opposed to a smothering ‘mainstream’ culture with no tolerance for individuality. Thus King argues that ‘[t]‌he indie sector is, clearly, a place where more scope generally exists than in Hollywood for the pursuit of auteurist individual freedom of expression; for filmmakers to express their own particular visions of the world through choices of form and content’ (King 2005: 10). This antagonistic relationship between the ‘individual freedom’ of the auteur and the Hollywood majors is further articulated by independent filmmaker Alexander Payne. In an essay titled ‘Declaration of Independents’ published by Variety online, Payne argues that ‘[c]inema is independent only to the degree that it reflects the voice of one person, the director’ (Payne 2004). The voices of these directors, Payne continues, have been overlooked by an industry focused on producing ‘films based on formula so they can be consumed as readily and predictably as McDonald’s hamburgers’. While individualism may at face value seem to be a noble sentiment, it has a long history as a crucial element in the development of capitalism and, especially, neoliberalism. For classical liberal thinkers like John Locke, ‘the individual (and not society, language, or tradition) is the master of meaning’ (Peters 1989: 389). From this philosophical vantage, liberalism articulates an ethos of ‘methodological individualism,

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the doctrine that social phenomena are the unintended consequences of individual actions’ (Callinicos 1999: 159). Lost in this equation are the interdependence and mutual constitution of human beings as they cooperate in the making and living of life. But this emergent individualism was not simply philosophical, nor was it, at the time at least, reactionary; indeed, for early liberals, the assertion of the individual as society’s primary unit was a radical, rebellious act. As Kramnick points out, The new theory of individuality had far-​reaching political implications. To be free, truly self-​defining, master of the self, the individual had to eliminate all barriers to that individuality. So war was declared against religious restraint on free thought and against economic restraint on a free market. What I am describing is, of course, the gradual liquidation of the aristocratic world and its replacement by the liberal capitalist order. (Kramnick 1990: 8) Accordingly, methodological individualism was intended as an attack on transcendental sources of arbitrary feudal authority like Divine Right.9 Yet, as the feudal order crumbled and capitalist social relations took its place, liberalism’s philosophy of individual rights became a means to justify capitalism’s inequalities (Kramnick 1990: 14–​15). Following the upheaval of the Great Depression and the Second World War and the ensuing emergence of the welfare state in most advanced capitalist countries, the methodological individualism of classical liberal thought declined in favour of a more socially oriented understanding of capitalism that could justify the state’s management of the economy. Liberal philosophy did not, however, wane entirely. In the immediate postwar period, for instance, a group of economists, many of whom would come to be identified with neoliberal philosophy, formed the Mont Pelerin Society, an organisation dedicated to articulating a counter-​philosophy to welfare and state intervention. As they gravely warn in their foundational declaration, ‘[t]‌he central values of civilization are in danger. Over large stretches of the earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power’ (quoted in Harvey 2005: 19). In the writings of many of the Mont Pelerin Society’s members we also find forceful re-​articulations of classical liberal values that would come to form the basis for neoliberal philosophy. For instance, Friedrich von Hayek, whom we might term the ‘godfather’ of neoliberalism, returns to liberalism’s doctrine of methodological individualism by positing a ‘view … which accounts for most of the order which we find in human affairs as the unforeseen result of individual actions’ (von Hayek 1948: 8). From such a position, Hayek develops a suspicion of any sort of collective authority, like the state, which might impede the free exercise of an individual’s agency, thereby asserting a ‘demand for a strict limitation of all coercive or exclusive power’ (von Hayek 1948: 16). Similar paeans to the individual can be found

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in the writings of Milton Friedman (1962), whose work has been influential on key figures of neoliberalism such as Ronald Reagan. These ideas gained increasing currency as the crises of the 1970s led to the restructuring of economies, labour markets and ways of life through the various policies and political–​economic initiatives which fostered the emergence of global capitalism and the ascendance of its attendant neoliberal worldview. In this sense, then, the strong emphasis on individualism in discourses about independent cinema echoes, and can potentially reinforce, this crucial facet of capitalism and neoliberalism. While such a resonance may not initially sound particularly troublesome, individualist-​oriented positions have been repeatedly used to undercut policies and movements aimed at social justice in the neoliberal era. In a general sense, as David Harvey points out,‘[v]‌alues of individual freedom and social justice are not … necessarily compatible. Pursuit of social justice presupposes social solidarities and a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs, and desires in the cause of some more general struggle’ (Harvey 2005: 41). More specifically, as an example, neoliberal narratives of individualism were used in the United States to advance a strong critique of the single-​earner family wage by positing women as individual actors deserving of access to the market through their own work. However, in the process, this critique contributed to the declining incomes wrought by the abolition of the family wage, while the emphasis on the importance of women working helped to legitimate welfare ‘reform’ efforts which denied government assistance to working-​ class and poor women, many of whom were single mothers, by forcing them to work in lieu of receiving benefits (Eisenstein 2005: 499–​502).10 Thus, a supposedly progressive or oppositional set of practices which turns on a currency of individuality opposed to collective authority –​be it the state, the major studios, or whatever else –​not only has the potential to run counter to pursuits of social justice, but can undercut social protections which vulnerable populations depend on. In our contemporary moment, where an imperial capitalism stewarded by the United States dominates much, even most, of the world (Panitch and Gindin 2012; Panitch and Konings 2008; Colás and Saull 2006), those of us interested in a critical opposition to this state of affairs require a solid understanding of what that opposition can and should look like. The discourses and related practices of independent cinema, with their more-​imagined-​than-​actual assertions of autonomy and oppositional narratives grounded in the very same outlooks as those which are used to justify and defend the capitalist mode of production in which we live, are not very well-​suited to such a task. The individualist ethos which devalues collective action and the necessary sacrifices this requires from individuals, as Harvey points out above, undercuts the capacities for mass mobilisation and movement necessary for confronting this increasingly dire global situation. This is, of course, not to say that there are no filmmakers designated as independent who do challenge capitalism by presenting alternatives to this abstract individualism. The works of John Sayles, for example, whose films often emphasise community as a means for addressing racism (Brother from Another Planet, 1994), imperialism (Men with Guns, 1997), labour struggles (Matewan, 1987) and other emancipatory endeavours, offer

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compelling visions of collective struggle that eschew the kind of individualism celebrated by (neo)liberalism. If that filmmaking we deem independent –​and which should probably go by a different name given its lack of autonomy –​is to realise an oppositional potential, then a rejection of this outlook in favour of an oppositional collectivity is a necessity.

Notes 1 The use of the term ‘US independent cinema’ in this chapter is synonymous with the term ‘American independent cinema’ used by scholars like, but not limited to, Geoff King (2005) and Yannis Tzioumakis (2006), who use it to describe a set of filmmaking practices which is considered to exist either outside the Hollywood studio system, as delineated by Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (1985), or in an oppositional relationship to it. ‘US’ is used here simply as a substitution for ‘American’ so as to avoid the problematic and exclusive use of the latter to refer to the United States and not the broader Americas as a whole. 2 In particular, this turmoil entails the runaway inflation which plagued the US dollar throughout the decade and the myriad crises and recessions which roiled markets around the capitalist world, leading to, among other things, Britain’s 1976 debt crisis, which occasioned an IMF bailout. 3 Manuel Castells (2010: 77–​302) thoroughly documents this process, paying particular attention to the role advances in communications and computer technology have played in fomenting it. 4 Readers may be uncomfortable with this abandonment of the base/​ superstructure model, long considered a core facet of Marxism. However, the concept appears in just a few limited instances in Marx’s own writing, and is largely contradicted by his own dialectical practice. Moreover, there is a long tradition in which Marxists such as Henri Lefebvre, Jean-​Paul Sartre, Raymond Williams and E.  P. Thompson have articulated a historical materialism which is in no way dependent on the concept. See Williams (1977: 75–​82, 1980: 3–​16) and Wood (1995: 49–​75) for refutations of the base/​superstructure model, as well as readings of Marx which propose alternatives that inform the understanding of modes of production outlined in this chapter. 5 Interestingly, the German term used by Marx and Engels which is translated into English as ‘mode of life’ is Lebensweise, which can also be translated as ‘way of life’, thereby, in a sense, prefiguring Raymond Williams’ holistic description of culture as ‘a whole way of life’ (Williams 1965: 63) by more than a century. 6 While Heaven’s Gate was re-​released to critical acclaim, it was nevertheless a particularly egregious example of a series of box-​office flops for independent cinema during this period, resulting in the majors’ temporary abandonment of the sector. 7 See Tzioumakis (2006: 209–​210) for a list of films from this period and their respective grosses. 8 See ­chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Tzioumakis (2012) for a detailed accounting of these companies. 9 In this sense, an emergent capitalism, with its liberal philosophical underpinnings, played a progressive, even revolutionary, role in challenging arbitrary authority grounded in metaphysics, something which even Marx acknowledges. 10 See also Fraser (2009) for a similar argument.

Bibliography Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge).

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Brown, Wendy (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn: Zone Books). Callinicos, Alex (1999). Social Theory: A Historical Introduction (New York: New York University Press). Castells, Manuel (2010). The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn (Chichester:Wiley-​Blackwell). Colás, Alejandro and Richard Saull (eds.) (2006). The War on Terrorism and the American ‘Empire’ after the Cold War (London: Routledge). Doherty, Thomas (2002). Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press). Eisenstein, Hester (2005). ‘A Dangerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globalization’, Science & Society 69(3), pp. 487–​518. Fraser, Nancy (2009). ‘Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History’, New Left Review, 56(March–​April), unpaginated. Friedman, Milton (1962). Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Garland, Christian and Stephen Harper (2012). ‘Did Somebody Say Neoliberalism? On the Uses and Limitations of a Critical Concept in Media and Communication Studies’, tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 10(2), unpaginated. Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Holmlund, Chris (2005). ‘Introduction: From the Margins to the Mainstream’, in Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream (London: Routledge). Insdorf, Annette (2005) [1981]. ‘Ordinary People, European Style: Or How to Spot an Independent Feature’, in Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream (London: Routledge). Israel, Jonathan (2010). A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). King, Geoff (no date). ‘Definition’, IndieFilm, www.gkindiefilm.com/​?page_​id=57. King, Geoff (2002). New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London: I. B. Tauris). King, Geoff (2005). American Independent Cinema (London: I. B. Tauris). King, Geoff (2013). Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film (London: I. B. Tauris). King, Geoff, Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (2013). ‘Introduction’, in Geoff King, Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood, and Beyond (London: Routledge). Klein, Naomi (2007). The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador). Kramnick, Isaac (1990). Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-​Century England and America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Levy, Emanuel (1999). Cinema of Outsiders:The Rise of American Independent Film (New York: New York University Press). Marx, Karl (1956). Theories of Surplus Value (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House). Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1970). The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers). Ollman, Bertell (2003). Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (Champaign: University of Illinois Press). Ollman, Bertell and Tony Smith (eds.) (2008). Dialectics for the New Century (New  York: Palgrave Macmillan). Ortner, Sherry B. (2013). Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).

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Panitch, Leo and Sam Gindin (2012). The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (London:Verso). Panitch, Leo and Martijn Konings (eds.) (2008). American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Payne, Alexander (2004). ‘Declaration of Independents’, Variety, 7 September, http://​variety. com/​2004/​scene/​markets-​festivals/​declaration-​of-​independents-​1117910104/​. Peters, John Durham (1989).‘John Locke, the Individual, and the Origin of Communication’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 75(4), pp. 387–​99. Schatz,Thomas (2013).‘Conglomerate Hollywood and American independent film’, in Geoff King, Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood, and Beyond (London: Routledge). Staiger, Janet (2013). ‘Independent of What? Sorting Out Differences from Hollywood’, in Geoff King, Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood, and Beyond (London: Routledge). Tudor, Andrew (2003). ‘Genre’, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III (Austin: University of Texas Press). Tzioumakis, Yannis (2006). American Independent Cinema: An Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Tzioumakis, Yannis (2012). Hollywood’s Indies: Classics Divisions, Specialty Labels and the American Film Market (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Tzioumakis, Yannis (2013). ‘  “Independent,” “Indie,” and “Indiewood”: Towards a Periodization of Contemporary (post-​1980) American Independent Cinema’, in Geoff King, Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.), Contemporary American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood, and Beyond (London: Routledge). von Hayek, Friedrich A. (1948). Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Williams, Raymond (1965). The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). Williams, Raymond (1977). Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Williams, Raymond (1980). Problems in Materialism and Culture (London:Verso). Williams, Raymond (1989). Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London:Verso). Wood, Ellen Meiksins (1995). Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (New York: Cambridge University Press).

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3 THE LURE OF BECOMING CINEMA The role of the internet in amateur and independent filmmaking William Brown

In this essay, I shall explore how the internet plays a key role at almost every stage of the life of a contemporary film, in particular examining how and why amateur and independent filmmakers use film festival submission websites in order to find audiences for their films. My argument will be that amateur and independent filmmakers are encouraged to buy into the naturalised logic of wanting to become increasingly visible, or cinematic, and that they thus pay various sums of money to give their work a chance of garnering attention, for example at film festivals. Nonetheless, I shall examine how this competition in some senses always already favours existing professionals. In other words, while amateur and independent filmmakers pursue recognition at film festivals, typically in pursuit of becoming a professional, the essay will critique the exploitative nature of film festival submission websites, and what we might call the professionalisation of amateur filmmaking. That is, amateur filmmakers are encouraged to pay ever-​ greater sums of money in order to find audiences for their work, thereby contributing to the creation of what Maurizio Lazzarato has termed the ‘indebted man’ (Lazzarato 2012). Before looking specifically at film festival submission websites, however, let us look at the typical role(s) played by the internet in the life of a film more generally.

Attention seeking There was a time when amateur filmmakers might simply make home movies that remained in the home, gaining audiences of only a handful of people, even if the movies were fiction films that reproduced in part or in whole the aesthetics of mainstream cinema. To a large extent, the domestic nature of amateur filmmaking surely remains true today. For example, short actualities recorded on the camera of one’s smartphone might be made only for a small audience. Nonetheless, as we are

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encouraged increasingly to show and share our movies on websites and applications like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Vine, it becomes clear that the amateur film is, like the professional film, under great pressure to win attention. Indeed, it would seem that the desire for the amateur film to attract attention such that the filmmaker can become professional is so regular now that it has been naturalised: who would not want to be a professional filmmaker? This transition –​whereby the amateur now seeks to gain large audiences, and perhaps even to become professional –​is surely linked to these technologies that, in the spirit of Jonathan Beller (2006), we might call technologies of attention.That is, these technologies encourage the naturalisation of a world where attention equates to monetisation, with money and attention in turn becoming the measure of existence, at least in western and other kinocentric societies. Rather than remaining visible only to a few people, the amateur film is now intended to become as visible as possible, thereby validating the creator of that film, especially if they can transition into professional filmmaking. In this way, vast numbers of people exhibit audiovisual works on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, with an increasing number of these people turning what starts out as an amateur project into a semi-​or fully professional occupation. In other words, not only can anyone (with access to the internet) make a film (with no need even for a camera in the case of animated films or films that rework existing material) –​but more importantly these filmmakers can also monetise those films provided they achieve a certain popularity. Capitalism, therefore, becomes the logic of even amateur filmmaking, as made clear by examples like Fede Alvarez, a Uruguayan director who went from making online ‘sensation’ ¡Ataque de pánico!/​Panic Attack! in Montevideo in 2009 to directing the Evil Dead remake in Hollywood in 2013 (Brown 2014a). Nonetheless, while theatrical films are regularly distributed online on sites like BFI Player, Curzon Online and MUBI at the same time as they are in theatres (as opposed to at a later point in time, as per Amazon Prime and Netflix), and while some theatre-​based, fleshworld festivals show films otherwise found online (for example, festivals that offer compilations of popular online cat videos; see Burgess 2015), achieving fleshworld/​theatrical distribution and exhibition remains the summum of success. Indeed, the prestige attached to fleshworld distribution, including at film festivals, raises the profile of a film in such a way that its chances of success improve across all media. In short, success in the fleshworld persists as a signifier of power/​success as a result of the increased levels of attention that it guarantees, and thus is desired by most filmmakers, including those who distribute otherwise amateur films online. Barely anyone remains untouched by the capitalist logic of wanting to receive more attention, of wanting to be or to become cinematic. While success in the fleshworld remains the perceived peak of filmmaking, however, the internet is nonetheless highly important at all stages of a film’s life and for practically all filmmakers who seek an audience/​attention, or to become cinematic, as I shall elaborate below.

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The internet as gatekeeper to the fleshworld No film needs a website, even if nearly every film today has a website and/​or a Facebook page that typically hosts supplementary materials, from games to making-​ of videos to explanatory texts and still images. Nor do films need trailers and other promotional materials that appear online, even if most films do have these things. Although they are not strictly necessary, the fact that nearly every film does have a website and/​or a trailer online means that in many respects the internet forms a key component in the existence of every film –​with the amateur and/​or semi-​ professional filmmaker now having to learn (or know people who can perform) a number of non-​filmmaking skills, and having to do ever-​g reater amounts of labour, in order to have a quasi-​de rigueur online presence, and thus to achieve greater visibility/​increase one’s chances of becoming cinematic. Indeed, beyond websites and trailers, films can exist online long before they have even been made. Even when a mere idea, a film might be logged in pitch form on sites like Virtual Pitch Fest, where positive responses can help to build audiences. Having converted the pitch into a full script, the writer might then upload it to sites like the Black List or Script Pipeline, where the script might be seen not only by agents and producers but also by would-​be viewers, who, if they read the script in great enough numbers, can help to attract those producers and agents. Furthermore, writers might also submit their scripts via online platforms like Withoutabox, Film Freeway and Film Festival Life (about which more shortly) to screenplay competitions, some of which are autonomous, but many of which are affiliated to ‘regular’ film festivals. Attention garnered online at pitch and script phase helps in the effort to build hype and by extension an audience for a film, which in turn maximises the chances of the fleshworld exhibition that then will increase a film’s audience across all media. After creating a popular pitch and a widely read screenplay, one is perhaps ready to go into production. In order to raise funds, independent filmmakers increasingly use crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and indiegogo. In addition to raising funds, these sites also raise awareness about the proposed project, not least because the crowdfunding campaign functions in and of itself as a news story, especially if successful: that people pay for a film that has not yet been made creates anticipation for that film. Online crowdfunding therefore attracts attention for a film, still unproduced, with the filmmakers using that attention as a story that in turn helps to generate more attention. While crowdfunding campaigns and ‘regular’ websites and/​or Facebook pages provide news, journals, paratextual information, mood boards, posters and perhaps even a script for a film, social media are a crucial component in terms of getting people actually to look at that content (which might surpass the film itself in terms of volume of material and man-​hours required to produce it). For example, projects like Snakes on a Plane (David R.  Ellis, USA, 2006)  and Avatar (James Cameron, USA, 2009) enjoyed large amounts of publicity before even going into production, the former mainly as a result of its on-​the-​nose title (Mueller 2006),

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the latter mainly as a result of the myth that Cameron’s ideas were so advanced that he was waiting for filmmaking technology to be developed before realising his vision (Brown and Ng 2012: 221–​2). Social media play a key role in spreading information (‘hype’) –​and, much as the creation of an audience becomes a story that further helps to create an audience, so does the success of hype help to generate more hype. After some excellent feedback at Virtual Pitch Fest, with high ratings from the Black List and then with a successful Kickstarter campaign completed, there is a good amount of online buzz for a film; a Google or Twitter search shows that people both know and are talking about it, with the film’s Facebook page having numerous ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ and the trailer on YouTube numerous hits (and ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’). The film has been produced and then post-​produced (perhaps via a second hype-​generating crowdfunding campaign). Of course, the filmmakers must now find venues in which to screen their film. To do this, they firstly will place their film online, most commonly on Vimeo (with password protection so that it remains exclusive).Then they will use websites like Withoutabox, Film Freeway and Film Festival Life in order to submit their work to festivals. These sites give festival organisers access to information about the production in question, including synopses, details of cast and crew, posters and still images, trailers, a director’s statement and, of course, an online version of the film itself (probably embedded from Vimeo). Finally the film has a chance of appearing at festivals in the traditional fleshworld, after having existed online for several years, with that fleshworld manifestation then feeding directly back into the film’s digital life –​in the form of DVD and BluRay sales (often conducted via websites such as Amazon) and, more particularly, via online streaming and download services. Sites like iTunes, Netflix and Amazon are clearly front-​runners in online delivery of films, so much so that they have even moved into production as well as distribution and exhibition. However, not only can one set up subscription channels on YouTube and Vimeo if one wants to be independent of (or is rejected by) sites like iTunes, Netflix or Amazon, but also there are numerous sites specialising in the online distribution of independent cinema, with VHX and MUBI being or becoming the best known.These sites can complement fleshworld exhibition; for example, Parabellum (Lukas Valenta Rinner, Argentina/​Austria/​Uruguay, 2015) streamed on MUBI in the UK at the same time as it was showing at the 2015 London Film Festival (with the film not otherwise receiving a theatrical release in the UK). Furthermore, these sites can also stream films that are exclusive to them, thereby rivalling and perhaps even replacing fleshworld theatres. Examples exclusive to MUBI include Paul Thomas Anderson’s Junun (USA, 2015), a documentary about Radiohead band member Johnny Greenwood working with other musicians in India, and Michael Nyman’s War Work:  8 Songs with Film (UK, 2015), which is made of archive footage of the Great War and which features a score written by the director himself. The internet is essential at many stages of a film’s life. Indeed, a film today is more than likely to attract most of its viewers/​make most of its revenue online (for

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more on the growth of the online film business, see Tryon 2013). However, while theatrical fleshworld exhibition finds itself surrounded by the internet, suggesting that the fleshworld is the gatekeeper for the internet, or that one does not want to become cinematic so much as cybernetic, I am suggesting the opposite, namely that the internet is the gatekeeper for the fleshworld; cinema remains the summum of attention, even if the internet is necessary –​at least until humans replace it with something else or run out of electricity. This is because the fleshworld life of a film, which relatively speaking is so much briefer than its online life, is what will help a given film to reach a far wider audience across all media as a result of the prestige accrued. For example, one can put festival ‘palms’ on all publicity materials; one gets much higher-​profile reviews in established media outlets as a result of festival screenings and more regular distribution. If fleshworld theatrical exhibition/​becoming cinematic remains the highest perceived honour for a film, or if the internet remains the fleshworld’s gatekeeper, then this highlights a lingering kinocentrism. This kinocentrism can also be perceived in how the online world is increasingly being taken over by the already cinematic (instead of emerging as a rival to it) –​as we shall see presently.

Favouring those who are already successful One need not have a distribution company to achieve fleshworld distribution. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, for example, self-​distributed their film Detropia (USA, 2012), even though self-​distribution is considered to be ‘the path of last resort for the poor director’ (Roston 2012). Notably, Ewing and Grady’s distribution of Detropia was enabled by a successful Kickstarter campaign, which raised money to cover venue hire –​while also of course providing a good publicity story. The makers of What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, New Zealand/​USA, 2014) also ran an online campaign to gain American theatrical distribution. However, while Ewing and Grady raised US$71,262 to screen Detropia in various major American cities, the promise that anyone can do this as a result of Kickstarter is a false one. Indeed, I wish to show in this section that online success is significantly easier for those who are already successful, thereby critiquing somewhat the idea that the internet can democratise the film industry. While Ewing and Grady stake an important claim for independence from distributors, especially since they retain greater rights over their work, their successful Kickstarter campaign came on the back of a good run in prominent festivals, winning awards at the Naples International Film Festival, Traverse City Film Festival, Indianapolis Film Festival, DocAviv Festival and the Independent Film Festival Boston in 2012. This is not to mention the solid reputation of the directors, with Ewing and Grady having previously made, for example, the Oscar-​nominated Jesus Camp (USA, 2006). I am not suggesting that the directors did not earn their reputation and thus the kind of clout that helps to raise US$71,262 on Kickstarter. However, I am suggesting that already having success helps in the quest for more success.

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This can be seen in various other recent Kickstarter campaigns. Filmmakers as established as Zach Braff, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Spike Lee and Rob Thomas have all successfully used the site to raise money for feature films, with Thomas, Braff and Lee respectively coming second, third and fifth in Kickstarter’s twenty most funded film and video projects (see Kickstarter 2016a). That the directors of Garden State (Braff, USA, 2004), El topo (Jodorowsky, Mexico, 1970), Do the Right Thing (Lee, USA, 1989) and Veronica Mars (Thomas, USA, 2004–​2007) cannot get traditional funding suggests that the barriers to entry to theatrical cinema are becoming ever more stringent. Nonetheless, their successful track record surely plays a large part in raising funds not from traditional sources but online –​meaning that they use their reputation to receive money that otherwise might have gone to less established, more independent filmmakers. Braff in particular received criticism, since, shortly after announcing his Kickstarter campaign for Wish I Was Here (USA, 2014), he received US$10 million from Worldview Entertainment, a traditional film financier (Child 2013). Although Braff insisted that the Kickstarter money allowed him greater independence (he raised US$3.1 million), the perception was that he did not need the Kickstarter money (Karpel 2014). In some senses, it is fair game for filmmakers like Braff to use Kickstarter; the site is, after all, open to anyone with an internet connection. Indeed, Hal Hartley justifies his use of Kickstarter to fund both Meanwhile (USA, 2011) and Ned Rifle (USA, 2014) by suggesting that ‘the current trend of financing through pre-​sales made by distributors or sales agents based on celebrity attachment is not likely for a project [Ned Rifle] both this commercially modest and this artistically ambitious’ (Bernstein 2013) –​even though Ned Rifle is a sequel to Hartley’s earlier cult success Henry Fool (USA, 1997), and features relatively well-​known actors/​celebrities like Aubrey Plaza, Parker Posey and Martin Donovan. It is possible that those who gave money to Braff, Lee,Thomas, Jodorowsky and Hartley might not have given money to anyone else  –​or at least not to a project without a proven director attached to it. Nonetheless, independent director Shane Carruth suggests in reference to the site that ‘[i]‌f you’ve got money available to you as equity, you can’t just take people’s money for free’ (Miller 2013).That is, the use of Kickstarter by high-​profile directors is perceived as detrimental to more independent filmmakers. Nonetheless, crowdfunding seems to favour the already-​successful. While Amazon and Netflix might be moving into film production and while directors increasingly are moving online to raise funds for their films, suggesting the rising power of the internet, both trends also reaffirm kinocentrism: the power of Amazon and Netflix is legitimated by cinema; cinema comes to take over fundraising that otherwise might be for independent, online filmmakers. Furthermore, successful crowdfunding campaigns can require large amounts of labour, suggesting that one must have money (or labour in kind) in order to make money. For example, Kung Fury (David Sandberg, Sweden, 2015) is a short martial arts science-​fiction comedy about a kung-​fu cop (Sandberg) who travels in time to defeat Adolf Hitler (Jorma Taccone). For his Kickstarter campaign, Sandberg produced a trailer, which at the time of writing had received 13.5 million hits. The

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trailer is basically the entire film in miniature, suggesting that Sandberg had already made significant sections of the finished film before even starting the Kickstarter campaign, which raised US$630,000, some of which no doubt paid for David Hasselhoff to contribute to the film’s soundtrack. In effect, then, it would appear that considerable money and labour (and considerable filmmaking) goes into making a crowdfunding campaign –​with the viral success of the trailer (13.5 million hits) clearly bringing visibility to the project, with the finished film so far enjoying a premier at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, which in turn probably fuelled the finished film’s 23.5 million hits on YouTube. That said, while Kung Fury is presently the thirteenth most funded film and video project on Kickstarter, it still did not meet the US$1  million target that Sandberg desired to turn the film into a full-​length feature (Stoneback 2014).While the online visibility of the film has helped Sandberg to make the 30-​minute version that premiered at Cannes, Sandberg is not as well-​known as Braff, Lee and Thomas, meaning that his ambitious Kickstarter project ended in partial failure. This further contributes to the idea that those who already are successful in the fleshworld are likely to be more successful online.

Taking the amateur’s money Although Carruth suggests that it is unfair to take people’s money if one already has equity, it is in some senses surprising that Hollywood and other producers do not regularly use crowdfunding sites; if audiences covered (much of) the production and other costs in advance, then risk would be reduced almost to zero, since one would rarely be left with a finished film that then fails to recoup its costs –​ especially because the money is simply returned to donors if a Kickstarter campaign does not meet its target (Brown 2014b: 223). But while crowdfunding sites seem to favour those who already are successful and who can afford a spectacular campaign, I would like conversely to consider how those without success not only stand a lower chance of achieving success, but also are likely to lose money in the process. At the time of writing, 100,629 projects have successfully been funded via Kickstarter. Conversely, 177,639 (nearly twice as many) have not been successfully funded –​with 15 per cent of these (40,669) never receiving a single pledge (Kickstarter 2016b). In principle, this is not a ‘problem’ since it costs nothing to create a Kickstarter project (aside from the outlay for computing hardware and software, an internet connection and so on –​things that we tend to assume cost nothing since we generally have already paid to have these things for other purposes). However, if it in fact costs a fair amount, à la Sandberg, in order to be visible and thus to increase one’s chances of success, then, if one outlays money on a campaign that is not successful, one has lost money. And if the number of unsuccessful campaigns is nearly double that of successful ones, then this means it is likely that a large number of filmmakers will lose money not in making their films but in trying to raise the money to make their films.

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Let us return to the script stage again. I submit a script to the Black List in the hope that it will receive positive feedback, garner attention, be seen by agents and other industry professionals, and thus go into production. While the Black List started out in 2005 as a website for unproduced scripts liked by industry professionals, in 2012 it began to allow amateur writers to subscribe and to submit their scripts. Information about scripts that get a high rating will be sent to subscribing agents and development executives –​and so the site is attractive to those wishing to break into the film industry as writers. However, it costs US$25 per month to have a script on the Black List –​with the site itself recommending that if a script is not ‘getting traction’ after two months, then the writer probably ought to take the script down (although the site then dangles a carrot by saying that some scripts take several months to gain attention). In addition, it costs US$50 to have a script read and evaluated by the site, with site users telling me via personal correspondence that one ought to have at least two evaluations with high scores (scores can vary) in order to climb one’s way up the list. Pragmatically speaking, then, the site realistically costs US$150 (two evaluations over two months) to give one’s script a decent chance of getting attention. The Black List has had many success stories; about 225 scripts have been produced, including Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, UK/​ USA, 2008), The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, UK/​USA/​Australia, 2010) and Argo (Ben Affleck, USA, 2012), with the promise of Oscar glory making the site even more enticing (Black List 2016). However, for the majority of writers, such success is unlikely (the scripts for all three of the above films were written by industry professionals of some standing –​respectively Simon Beaufoy, David Seidler and Chris Terrio). In other words, the amateur screenwriter is losing money for the purpose of trying to realise an ambition that is unlikely to be achieved without traditional representation, prior success and so on. Arguably, the feedback that one gets from a site like the Black List makes the fee worth it: it helps one to improve as a writer, even if one does not sell one’s script. But, on the whole, many writers are in effect paying not to get into the film industry but to keep the Black List and its employees afloat. This is not a bad thing. However, the Black List, more clearly than Kickstarter and equivalents, is making a large proportion of its money from amateurs who want to work in the film industry, as opposed to from professionals who already work in the film industry. Where a professional might use company funds to use the service, the amateur regularly uses their own money. In effect, the amateur gets poorer in a bid to break into the film industry, while the film industry itself gets richer –​with homilies regarding how cream always rises to the top keeping aspiring writers addicted to the possibility that it will happen to/​for them. What is true for writers is also true for makers of finished films, who often spend simply in order to have their work on sites like Vimeo, which charges a subscription to share high-​quality versions of films. Indeed, this outlay is necessary if a filmmaker wants to submit their work to film festivals, which typically use websites like Withoutabox, Film Freeway and Film Festival Life to manage submissions. In the

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use of these sites, the process of amateur and independent filmmakers parting with their money becomes even clearer –​as I shall explore below.

Withoutachance? Film festival submission sites Withoutabox has been criticised in the past for charging festivals too much to use their service. According to Murat Akser, [f]‌estivals with submission fees are charged US$500–​US$1,500 to be listed on Withoutabox and up to 18% of the filmmaker submission fees. In addition, WAB forces all festivals to reduce their standard submission fee by 5 currency points, i.e. US$5 in USA, £5 in UK, €5 in Europe, etc. This means a festival with a £25 standard submission fee would actually only receive £16.40. It’s worse for festivals which don’t use submission fees, as Without a box charges US$2,000 just to be listed. (Akser 2014: 117) However, while festivals have criticised Withoutabox for its fees, the costs incurred by filmmakers to use these services have not received so much critical attention. Indeed, it is only at the end of his essay on Withoutabox that Alex Fischer notes that the site and its rivals might be criticised for ‘propagating the idea that unsolicited film entries are a lucrative money-​making enterprise’ for amateur and independent filmmakers (Fischer 2012: 162). Data are not easily obtained, with all festivals that I have approached on the matter refusing to respond to enquiries about the number of films accepted through film submission websites. However, it is worth noting that an ‘unsolicited film entry’ is a film that has not specifically been invited to take part in the festival. Nearly all films by amateurs and independents, and above all by those without the backing of producers, agents and distributors who can lobby for a film to be included in a festival, are precisely such unsolicited films. In unofficial communications, film festival organisers have said that maybe 3 per cent of films screened (at a relatively high-​profile festival) might be unsolicited. So let us imagine that the festival in question is Sundance, which in 2015 screened 124 films. That year, 2,309 dramatic features and 1,796 documentary features were submitted to the festival (Bernstein 2015). If all films had an equal chance of being screened, then these 4,105 feature-​length submissions would have been competing for 124 places, meaning that one in 33 films was selected. However, if it holds true that only 3 per cent of places were reserved for unsolicited material, then 120 places had already been taken up/​solicited. This then leaves 3,985 films competing for four spots, which means that one in 996 unsolicited films was selected for the festival. Sundance is clearly a prominent festival, at which any hopeful filmmaker would want to have their work screened. However, the selection odds of roughly 1,000 to one are, to say the least, long. Assuming that the average feature film lasts 90 minutes, watching those submissions constitutes 90 × 3,985 = 358,650 minutes of film,

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which translates into 5,977.5 man-​hours of film viewing. With a tough 50-​hour working week, it would take a single person 119.55 weeks (i.e. over two years) to watch all of the unsolicited films submitted for one year of the festival. Clearly, more than one person does this job –​not least because submissions end roughly four months before the festival begins (a September deadline for a January festival). However, given that the festival is also a huge logistical event for organisers, it’s likely that the initial review of unsolicited material would be farmed out to junior employees, perhaps even interns working for free –​who have as their incentive the fact that they get to watch films and to work for Sundance. Without getting into issues of exploitation (unpaid Sundance volunteers get to see films at the festival itself, but only by going on a waiting list; they get snacks, although ‘these snacks are not meant to replace meals which volunteers are responsible for providing themselves’ –​see Sundance Institute 2016), one can see how the chances of selection become yet slimmer if (with all due respect to the people doing that work) one’s unsolicited film is seen only by interns without much influence. More than this, I  also have been told via unofficial correspondence that it is relatively common practice for those doing the donkey work of wading through unsolicited entries to watch only a couple of minutes of a feature film before making a decision about it (although I should make clear that I have not been told this specifically about Sundance). I have even heard –​again off the record –​that at some festivals the staff do not even watch the material submitted. Now, Sundance charges differing amounts of money depending on when one submits one’s film: US$60 for the early bird deadline, US$80 for the regular deadline, and US$110 for the late deadline. Let us generously assume that the average submission to Sundance costs US$70 (i.e. the majority of people make the early bird deadline). Let us also assume, for the sake of keeping figures as low as possible, that those 120 films that were solicited were granted waivers on their submission fee. This means that the remaining 3,985 generate for the festival US$70 × 3,985 = US$278,950. Even if Withoutabox takes 18 per cent of this total (US$50,211), the festival has still made US$228,739 from unsolicited submissions. This is a sizeable sum that will no doubt be useful for the organisers in bringing to the festival the stars and makers of those 120 films that were solicited to take part –​ as well as perhaps helping to cover various other costs like snacks for volunteers. If it is true that those viewing the films watch between zero and two minutes of one’s amateur/​independent feature film, then not only is one paying someone else, on average, US$35 per minute to watch a film that one in fact wants to be able to sell (i.e. one is losing money), but if in truth that someone else does watch zero minutes of one’s film, which only stands a one in 1,000 chance of selection anyway, then in reality one has basically just given a donation of US$57.40 to the Sundance Institute and US$12.60 to Withoutabox (their 18 per cent commission). It is kind of an amateur filmmaker to donate that money to the festival, the running costs of which are surely high. But it is in some senses also exploitative of the festival to allow filmmakers with practically zero chance of acceptance to pay to submit their film. Furthermore, given that Withoutabox is, like the Internet Movie Database

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(IMDb), owned by Amazon (the world’s largest retailer), one wonders how much the site needs this donation –​even if running the site does not cost nothing. Sundance is a relatively cheap festival that shows a lot of films. The London Independent Film Festival, by contrast, charges £85–​£95 (US$125–​US$145) per submission, and in 2015 it showed only twelve features. The festival has not offered statistics on how many features were submitted that year. However, since the festival is open to no-​budget (made for under US$15,000), micro-​budget (under US$150,000), low-​budget (under US$750,000) and ‘normal’ feature films, one would imagine that many no-​, micro-​and low-​budget filmmakers feel that this is a festival to which it might reasonably be worth submitting –​even if the submission price is the same for all of these budget categories. And given that most filmmakers will want to screen their work at festivals in order to win attention and to become cinematic (with festival submission sites acting as lures for this possibility), one can see that amateur/​independent filmmakers can spend a lot of money on submission sites, which otherwise function as cash cows to help festivals cover their (surely otherwise expensive) costs.

‘YouTube is not legit’ I have not addressed how the need to grab the attention of a festival selector within two minutes might affect the aesthetics of films, as filmmakers ‘front load’ their movies to include, for example, impressive action as early as possible. This potentially means that filmmakers in the mould of Pedro Costa, Lav Diaz and Wang Bing, who make slow-​burning and otherwise unwieldy films, are as good as hopeless. Furthermore, I have not explained how, when accepted into a festival, filmmakers are expected to outlay even more money for the purpose of getting people to come to their screening (renowned independent producer James Schamus writes of how –​ in 1998!  –​having a film at Cannes would cost his production company around US$150,000; see Schamus 1998: 96–​7). But, with the examples given, I hope I have demonstrated that even if in the contemporary age the barriers to filmmaking are low (‘anyone can make a film’), the barriers to finding audiences are in some respects tightly guarded and expensive.While the rich get richer, then, the poor get poorer as they pay (their own) money –​or get into debt –​in a bid to compete. In 2005, Susan Buice and Arin Crumley used credits cards and personal savings to make Four Eyed Monsters (USA, 2005) for a reported US$100,000 (Battista 2013: 241).The film premiered at Slamdance Film Festival before playing at around thirty others, including SXSW, where Buice and Crumley began to make a vlog (video blog) about their experiences. The latter reportedly helped to raise the film’s profile, such that it was included in Indiewire’s Screen Gems series, ‘a showcase for a package of films judged to be the best undistributed productions of the year … Each film in the series was screened for one month in a minimum of 11 [American] cities’ (King 2013: 82). Having also gathered information about/​requests from audiences interested in seeing the film in various major cities, Buice and Crumley then managed to persuade cinemas to screen the film once a week for a month in New York,

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Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Seattle. Reportedly 1,691 people attended these 4 × 6 = 30 screenings (a respectable average of about 55 people per screening).This made US$13,523 (roughly US$450 per screening, with tickets thus averaging at about US$8 per person). The film enjoyed a run in New York before being the first film to be screened within virtual environment Second Life (King 2013: 83). As a result of the film’s popularity in the Undiscovered Gems series (it won the Sundance Channel audience award), the filmmakers received US$100,000 and Four Eyed Monsters played at cinemas in thirty-​one cities and premiered on the Sundance Channel at around the same time. This might sound as though Buice and Crumley achieved great success with the film. However, the filmmakers won this money two years after the film’s making, having had to subsist in the interim, including by producing new material related to the film in order to help retain its visibility. As Geoff King reports, this sum was ‘only enough to cover the expenses of their operation and not sufficient to pay off the debt incurred in the making of the film’ (King 2013: 83). Four Eyed Monsters was then released for free on YouTube, with Buice and Crumley making a deal with Spout.com, a film review website, to receive US$1 for each viewer who registered on that site as a result of advertising attached to the film. This brought in a respectable US$47,000, before Buice and Crumley won another US$100,000 deal for broadcast television, retail DVD and overseas theatrical releases (King 2013: 84). But, as Jason Guerrasio reports, [a]ll Crumley and Buice had to show for their US$100,000 deal [with IFC] was Four Eyed Monsters airing on the IFC Channel, the video podcast briefly playing on the channel’s site (they are currently available on iTunes), and DVDs sitting in a warehouse. They made no money off their efforts. (Guerrasio 2015) Even though Four Eyed Monsters is heralded as something of a success story for independent filmmakers, then, especially via the way in which Buice and Crumley self-​distributed thanks to requests from audiences and via the way in which they released the film on YouTube, ‘audience enthusiasm has not necessarily translated into financial stability’ (Tryon 2009: 122). Guerrasio explains how neither Buice nor Crumley has made a feature film since, with Buice eventually saying (in reference to Crumley’s lack of interest in distributing via Netflix in 2015) ‘[h]‌aving our film streaming on Netflix makes our film seem legit. Being on YouTube is not legit’ (Guerrasio 2015). Not only does the example of Four Eyed Monsters affirm how many filmmakers spend their own money on making films in a bid to become professional, but it also suggests how  –​even with the large amount of visibility that Four Eyed Monsters achieved –​many films and their makers remain in an at-​best precarious financial position. Spending more, e.g. on festival submissions, seems like a way of achieving the holy grail of visibility and attention, and thus of making money and becoming cinematic. However, it more often than not results in the accrual of

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debt. Furthermore, while Buice in her comment compares YouTube with another website, Netflix, she nonetheless points to the way in which only certain platforms legitimise a film. Fleshworld festivals legitimise a film, as do professional streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon, especially because the latter have, as mentioned, moved into production.YouTube, meanwhile, remains tainted by a sense of technical and/​or aesthetic inferiority, especially for feature films.

The new hope? Becoming visible. Attracting attention. Monetising that attention/​ visibility. Becoming cinematic.These are all related concepts that suggest the kinocentrism of western societies, with the internet playing a perverse role in reinforcing this system (the lure of transferring from amateur to professional filmmaking). This role is perverse because at the time of writing Four Eyed Monsters has had 1.4 million hits on YouTube (although numerous of these might have involved viewers watching only fragments of the film). According to BoxOfficeMojo, a film like Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, Germany/​UK/​France/​Greece, 2013) grossed US$1,879,534 in the USA and US$5,729,653 in the rest of the world, giving it a worldwide box-​office gross of US$7,609,187. Assuming an average of US$8 per ticket, this amounts to around 951,148 viewers –​nearly 500,000 fewer than Four Eyed Monsters (BoxOfficeMojo 2016). These figures do not account for the larger audience that Only Lovers … is likely to have found outside of theatres, including online. But nor do they account for the audiences reached by Four Eyed Monsters via its theatrical screenings and limited DVD sales. A  budget-​to-​viewer ratio would suggest that Jarmusch’s film, which reportedly cost US$7 million to make, won one viewer for roughly every US$7.4 spent on the film. Buice and Crumley’s, meanwhile, would suggest one viewer for roughly every US$0.07 dollars spent on the film –​a nearly 100-​fold improvement. And yet, broadly speaking, Only Lovers … is considered a major cinematic achievement while Four Eyed Monsters, in the words of one of its own directors, is not even ‘legit’ because it circulates on YouTube. What is perverse, then, is that the internet has the potential for success if it is not measured against cinema –​but that its affirmation of kinocentrism maintains it in a position of perceived inferiority, even as it is a major tool for intensifying kinocentrism. It seems clear that, in order to enjoy the visibility and kudos of even a modest film like Jarmusch’s, festival screenings and theatrical releases are necessary –​regardless of whether more people watch that film in theatres or online. Just as humans generally need (or are supposed to have) a passport in order to cross borders, so, too, do films require something like a passport in order to be seen –​that passport being as strong an association with fleshworld theatrical cinema as possible. And yet, as passport photos must be a certain size and fit a certain aesthetic (no smiling, a plain background and so on), so might films need to be a certain size and to have a certain aesthetic (front-​loaded with action, for example) in order to be ‘cinematic’. However, just as those humans who do not have passports are still humans, so are those films that do not fit into festivals or receive theatrical distribution still

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films –​even if they are not ‘cinematic.’ As a passport is an expression of privilege, so is being cinematic an expression of privilege. Perhaps the capitalist pursuit of the cinematic has become naturalised, much as humans prefer generally to travel in aeroplanes as opposed to via clandestine routes. And yet both journeys and both types of film exist; why not recognise their equal legitimacy? Festival submission sites offer the lure of a passport into fleshworld production and distribution. However, more often than not they simply take money from hopeful filmmakers –​leaving them poorer and without an audience.The necessary step, then, is to critique (one’s own) kinocentrism and to realize that Four Eyed Monsters is legit, perhaps even more legit than Only Lovers … if we consider viewer-​to-​budget ratios instead of simply box-​office returns. As Franz Kafka insisted that writers should hold down another job beyond writing, maybe filmmakers should do likewise, not least because filmmaking is now genuinely possible with only minimal resources. We might lament a lack of genuine democracy in terms of the (re)distribution of wealth from the film industry: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, or become more indebted, as cinema retains its power as the summum to which all filmmakers (are encouraged) to aspire. However, I would propose that independent, amateur filmmakers would do better to think of their practice in non-​capitalist/​non-​ kinocentric terms. They can indeed make films, but they can free themselves from the capitalist desire/​perceived need to win attention, prestige and money. In this way, their films can bypass money-​seeking and thus risk-​averse/​conservative festivals and other distributors/​exhibitors, and thus transform cinema above and beyond being aesthetically personal, original and unusual. In other words, by not pursuing visibility/​attention/​monetisation/​becoming cinematic, such films might challenge society’s kinocentrism. In embracing as opposed to trying to hide everything about them that is not ‘legit’, these films (which we might term ‘non-​cinema’) may yet help to transform society and its capitalist economy-​turned-​ontology of attention as a whole. In this way, while the above political economy of contemporary amateur cinema might seem somewhat bleak, we can also find in it the seeds for new hope.

References Akser, Murat (2014). ‘New Media and Film Festivals in the Middle East’, CINEJ Cinema Journal, 4(1), pp. 111–​21. Battista, Paul (2013). Independent Film Producing:The Outsider’s Guide to Producing a First Low-​ Budget Feature Film (New York: Skyhorse Publishing). Beller, Jonathan (2006). The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press). Bernstein, Paula (2013). ‘Hal Hartley is Kickstarting His Latest Film. Here’s Why’, Indiewire, 7 November, www.indiewire.com/​article/​hal-​hartley-​is-​kickstarting-​his-​latest-​film-​heres-​ why, accessed 21 February 2016. Bernstein, Paula (2015). ‘Sundance 2015 Infographic: Most Festival Films Will Land Distribution Deals,’ Indiewire, 16 January, www.indiewire.com/​article/​sundance-​2015-​ infographic-​most-​festival-​films-​will-​land-​distribution-​deals-​20150116, accessed 22 February 2016.

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Black List, The (2016). ‘About the Black List’, The Black List, https://​blcklst.com/​about/​, accessed 12 February 2016. BoxOfficeMojo (2016).‘Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)’, Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo. com/​movies/​?id=onlyloversleftalive.htm, accessed 22 February 2016. Brown, William (2014a). ‘Amateur Digital Filmmaking and Capitalism’, in Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen (eds.), Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History, Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 198–​217. Brown, William (2014b). ‘2013: A Slow Year’, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, 4, pp. 217–​23. Also available at www.cjpmi.ifilnova.pt/​storage/​4/​4%20Brown.pdf, accessed 22 February 2016. Brown, William and Jenna Ng (2012). ‘Avatar: An Introduction’, animation: an interdisciplinary journal, 7(3), pp. 221–​5. Burgess, Diane (2015). ‘We Can Haz Film Fest!: Internet Cat Video Festival Goes Viral’, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Spring, www.necsus-​ejms.org/​we-​can-​haz-​ film-​fest-​internet-​cat-​video-​festival-​goes-​viral, accessed 12 February 2016. Child, Ben (2013). ‘Zach Braff Kickstarter Controversy Deepens after Financier Bolsters Budget’, The Guardian, 16 May, www.theguardian.com/​film/​2013/​may/​16/​zach-​braff-​ kickstarter-​controversy-​deepens, accessed 21 February 2016. Fischer, Alex (2012). ‘ “The Fully Clickable Submission”: How Withoutabox Captured the Hearts and Minds of Film Festivals Everywhere’, in Dina Iordanova and Stuart Cunningham (eds.), Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-​line (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies), pp. 153–​66. Guerrasio, Jason (2015). ‘Forgotten Mavericks: Ten Years Later, What Happened to “Four Eyed Monsters”?’, Indiewire, 21 January, www.indiewire.com/​article/​forgotten-​ mavericks-​ten-​years-​later-​what-​happened-​to-​four-​eyed-​monsters-​20150121, accessed 22 February 2016. Karpel, Ari (2014). ‘Zach Braff On His Giant Kickstarter Experiment, “Wish I Was Here” ’, Co.Create, 20 July, www.fastcocreate.com/​3033214/​zach-​braff-​on-​his-​giant-​kickstarter-​ experiment-​wish-​i-​was-​here, accessed 21 February 2016. Kickstarter (2016a). ‘Film & Video: Sorted by Most Funded’, Kickstarter, www.kickstarter. com/​discover/​categories/​film%20&%20video?sort=most_​funded, accessed 21 February 2016. Kickstarter (2016b). ‘Stats’, Kickstarter, www.kickstarter.com/​help/​stats, accessed 22 February 2016. King, Geoff (2013). Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film (London: I. B. Tauris). Lazzarato, Maurizio (2012). The Making of the Indebted Man: Essay on the Neoliberal Condition (trans. Joshua David Jordan) (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)). Miller, Ross (2013). ‘Filmmaker Shane Carruth Talks “Upstream Color” and Making Movies Like Albums’, The Verge, 10 April, www.theverge.com/​2013/​4/​10/​4208658/​interview-​ shane-​carruth-​upstream-​color-​primer, accessed 21 February 2016. Mueller, Andrew (2006). ‘The Tale of a Serpent’, The Guardian, 27 May, www.theguardian. com/​film/​2006/​may/​27/​culture.features, accessed 21 February 2016. Roston,Tom (2012).‘Why Ewing & Grady Are Choosing to Self-​Distribute “Detropia” ’, PBS, 30 May, www.pbs.org/​pov/​blog/​docsoup/​2012/​05/​ewing-​gradys-​diy-​distribution-​ plan-​for-​detropia-​crowdfund-​it-​and-​bring-​it-​to-​detroit/​, accessed 12 February 2016. Schamus, James (1998). ‘To the Rear of the Back End: The Economics of Independent Cinema’, in Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge), pp. 91–​105.

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Stoneback, Robert (2014). ‘Kung-​Fu Hitler, Renegade Cops and Vikings Star in Kickstarter Film Kung Fury’, The Escapist, 3 January, www.escapistmagazine.com/​news/​view/​ 131021- ​ Kung- ​ F u- ​ H itler- ​ R enegade- ​ C ops- ​ a nd- ​ V ikings- ​ S tar- ​ i n- ​ K ickstarter- ​ F ilm-​ Kung-​Fury, accessed 22 February 2016. Sundance Institute (2016). ‘Volunteer’, Sundance Institute, www.sundance.org/​festivals/​ sundance-​film-​festival/​volunteer, accessed 22 February 2016. Tryon, Chuck (2009). Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Tryon, Chuck (2013). On-​Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).

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4 SVETLANA BASKOVA’S RESPONSE TO RUSSIAN NATIONAL NEOLIBERALISM IN FOR MARX … Lars Kristensen

Svetlana Baskova’s film Za Marksa …/​For Marx … (2012) re-​tells Sergei Eisenstein’s famous strike story. It centres on a nameless trade unionist, played by Sergei Pakhomov, who attempts to set up an independent union together with his fellow workers to counter the union created by the factory owner. This leads to conflict between the independent workers and the factory management. Eventually, the union activists are killed one by one and Pakhomov’s character turns into an informer, betraying the cause of his friends. In a final confrontation, late at night on the rooftop of the office building, the boss and the unionist kill each other. In this rather simple narrative, new and old Russia are pitted against each other; old Soviet unionist ownership of production is contrasted with the new management of the nouveau riche, a post-​Soviet oligarchy, which has come to signify Russia’s economic transformation from socialist planned economy to neoliberal market economy. In this chapter, I  will examine Baskova’s filmmaking as an alternative to the mainstream cinema in Putin’s Russia and the world at large. In order to do this, the chapter will apply the concept of ‘non-​cinema’, as elaborated by William Brown (2016: 104–​30). Non-​cinema is a response to what Brown elsewhere has termed ‘supercinema’; a special-​effects cinema that relies heavily on digital technology (Brown 2013). Non-​cinema opposes not only such mainstream cinematic forms, but also the use of digital technology.‘Non-​cinema’ seeks out subversive elements in low-​budget digital filmmaking. These two concepts, supercinema and non-​cinema, are in this chapter applied to dissect the post-​Soviet Russian film industry, arguing that Baskova’s filmmaking belongs to the latter. In other words, it is the features of non-​cinema that make For Marx … so difficult to contextualise as a Russian film, but which equally help us to understand why For Marx … can be viewed as a (non-​)cinematic response to a particular nationalist neoliberal condition that has evolved in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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Russian cinema and neoliberalism When, in the mid-​1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced economic reforms, they were more forced than desired, which is evident from the fact that Perestroika came before Glasnost (Rutland 2013:  341; Holmes 1997:  105). The economic reform took place before political reforms, but it was ultimately the political situation of rising nationalism that transformed society from communist to capitalist. Nationalism was key to the fall of the Soviet empire, as the republics, particularly the Baltic states, were calling for independence. Nationalism can also be seen as key to the reforms that post-​Soviet Russian cinema went through during the 1990s and 2000s.This nationalistic development can be seen as coinciding with neoliberalism’s introduction into Russia. Rather than gradual liberalisation, shock therapy was introduced in Russia in 1992 as the best way to handle the transition from planned to market economy. Privatisation of state property and state industries was introduced a few years later, with the consequence that a new nomenklatura was established: the oligarchs. This new economic elite was able to keep Yeltsin in power throughout the 1990s, before Vladimir Putin was appointed as his successor. Some see the introduction of neoliberalism in Russia as the cause of all evils, while others argue that the ‘planning system had broken down by 1991, before the launch of real market reforms’ (Rutland 2013: 345). In other words, the Russian case gives fuel to both sides of the argument over neoliberalism, with supporters saying that too little was done and critics pointing out that the implementations went too far. The critique of Russian ‘marketisation’ in the early 1990s falls into several categories (Holmes 1997: 209), but one continues to be relevant to the contemporary climate, namely bending to the demands of the West and implementing that oppressor’s ideology. This has been a red thread running through the post-​Soviet period and something that accelerated alongside Putin’s ascent to power, which also had a bearing on film production. Russian neoliberalism is tightly connected to nationalism, which means that neoliberalism cannot be mentioned without reference to the building of the post-​Soviet nation. During the Cold War, the Soviet economy was the ‘arch-​enemy’ of neoliberalism (Hirt et al. 2013: 1247), but neoliberalism in post-​ Soviet Russia is best described as national neoliberalism. Peter Rutland concludes that ‘we can see a [Russian] variety of national neoliberalism emerging from the reforms of the 1990s’ (Rutland 2013: 358), which points to the paradox of a strong, authoritarian state guaranteeing individual freedom and private enterprise. The Russian economy is highly concentrated on the state and thus hardly competitive. It supports a powerful elite of wealthy tycoons as well as state-​run conglomerates like Gazprom, illustrating the neoliberal state as a ‘contradictory political form’ (Harvey 2005: 64). Neoliberalism hinges on the rule of law and the guarantee and protection of the market, but Russia has, since the transition, had a complicated relationship with the rule of law. Looking at the concept of justice in post-​Soviet Russian cinema, Helena Goscilo asserts that ‘Russia throughout its history has been inhospitable of both reason and liberalism’ (Goscilo 2010: 140). Emily Schuckman

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Matthews suggests too that in Russian cinema ‘entrepreneurship is associated with freedom, but not necessarily the political-​democratic freedom the West values so overtly’ (Matthews 2011:  218–​19). Freedom in Russian cinema is perceived through the prism of patriarchy and patriotism, even if produced independently from state support. Thus we can argue not only that the turn towards neoliberal economy was fully accomplished, but also that exceptions were implemented, such as a new elitism founded on the statists (bureaucrats) and oligarchs (wealthy elite) and an authoritative state built on patriotism and national unity. It is these exceptions to the theories of neoliberalism that can be mapped onto the development of post-​Soviet Russian cinema. State support of film production has a long history in both US (Willemen 2005: 102) and European (Forbes and Street 2000: 17; Eletheriotis 2001: 135) cinema production. What sets Russian film policies apart from other supporting schemes is their close proximity to the building of a Russian national identity. Russian national cinema reached rock bottom in the mid-​1990s, with film output resembling war-​ time production levels (Beumers 1999); by the turn of the millennium, Russian cinema had become associated with nation building and with ‘an explicit national agenda’ (van Gorp 2011: 254). State authorities sought to promote a film industry that serviced the continuation of state policies, and, to be eligible for support from the state, films had to meet certain ‘social’ criteria, one of which was the ability to enrich the spiritual life of Russian society (van Gorp 2011: 253). Furthermore, popular genre films were prioritised as a means of winning back audiences, and there were more specific calls for films about Russian history, especially Second World War films, which coincided with ‘Vladimir Putin’s concurrent uses of the war to build patriotism’ (Norris 2007: 164). The trend towards national neoliberalism in Russian film policy in the 2000s mirrors more general economic development and the country’s exemptions from pure neoliberalism, as noted above. Thus, Russian national cinema can be framed as nationalistic and neoliberal in that it accepts the premise of competition (quantitative bums-​on-​seats), but the content and narrative have to fit a certain national spirit (state elitism).While these two features should be mutually exclusive –​at least according to Andrew Higson’s (1989) classical definition of national cinema –​they do work together in the case of national-​neoliberal Russian cinema, as long as the majority of filmmakers toe the line. In the case of Russian cinema, popular national cinema is in need of protection from mainstream foreign film and from homemade art​house cinema, which is anti-​national and socially liberal. Consequently, Russian arthouse cinema has to seek alternative funding schemes to survive. The West German cinema of the 1970s was likewise considered an art​house cinema that was highly anti-​establishment and radically left wing, but it was nonetheless heavily supported economically by continuous centre-​right-​wing governments (Thomsen 2004: 56). Russian national neoliberalism reverses this pattern by placing emphasis on supporting the nation’s goals and a populist line, while also referring to evaluation schemes such as economical soundness and popularity in terms of bums-​on-​seats.

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If everything is financialised and given an exchange value in a neoliberal economy (Harvey 2005: 33), then in the nationalistic version of neoliberalism, as practiced in Russia, everything, including cinema, is measured on how well it contributes to the wellbeing of the state. Economic profit from filmmaking comes second to national concerns, but the idea is also that a national film must have national concerns in order to do well economically. National state neoliberalism adds national virtues into the equation, which means that filmmaking that is anti-​national cannot be supported through the system. My subsequent argument is that Baskova’s film is not anti-​national; rather, it is national but in a ‘non-​cinematic’ way. In the prism of supercinema versus non-​cinema, Russian state-​funded cinema is the supercinema that the aesthetics of non-​cinema seek to oppose.

The production of For Marx … In accounting for the production of For Marx …, the intention is to show how Baskova navigates the field of Russian national cinema. I  will here point to the way in which she breaks away from her previous film productions by playing down the urge to shock viewers, while at the same time playing up the aim of accommodating wider audiences. This break with her previous production methods can be seen as an attempt to incorporate her filmmaking into the national neoliberal system of filmmaking, as examined above. Key in this response to neoliberalism is the fact that the film received financial support from Cine Fantom, a film magazine that also functions as a film club in Moscow. Cine Fantom sprang out of a samizdat film magazine culture that promoted film history and theory during the latter years of the Soviet Union.The support meant that Baskova was able to shoot her film on location, with a bigger cast, and get higher production values in the final film. The production costs, stated as $3,000 on the KinoPoisk website, are still a fraction of mainstream production in Russia. What was the objective of Cine Fantom’s Film Production arm in supporting Baskova’s project? One of the producers, Andrei Silvestrov, states that they had for several years tried to combine free cinema with the production of ‘quality’ films for wider audiences, and For Marx … was the clearest example of this kind of filmmaking (Silvestrov 2012: 3). In this way, backing Baskova is an attempt to get away from the notion of a ‘parallel cinema’, which connotes a cinema that exists outside mainstream Russian filmmaking and where mainstream and ‘independent’ cinema have no influence on each other. For Cine Fantom, producing Baskova’s film offered them a chance to influence, or break into, the mainstream. In a special issue of the magazine published in connection with the release of the film, there are two interviews with Baskova, which happened two years apart. These interviews give a good indication of how the production of the film developed. In the first interview, which was conducted during the shooting of the film, the focus is on the reason for making the film and the subsequent research that she conducted.The film’s background story is the violation of the right of workers to form independent trade unions. This development is something that Baskova observes

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as increasing as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, where big factories in provincial Russian cities sought to push workers into unions formed by the state in agreement with the factory owners. The law making it permissible to form independent unions was implemented during the mid-​1990s by then-​president Boris Yeltsin. The intention of the filmmaker is thus to illuminate the changes that have taken place since the transition period. As Baskova says in the interview, ‘to talk about independent unions in the nineties –​during the anarchy –​was just laughable’ (Maizel’ 2012a: 4). The 2008 financial crisis accentuated the importance of the law in the new context of state neoliberalism, as several conflicts on the right to form independent trade unions appeared throughout Russia. Baskova researched the topic of labour relations together with Russian labour unionists and activists, a process that resulted in the documentary Odno reshenie –​ soprotivlenie/​One Solution  –​Resistance (2011), which in six parts tells the story of workers’ conditions and their activism in Russia. In the documentary film, the leading actors of the fiction film For Marx … appear in a scene where they meet the labour unionists to discuss organisational tactics. This demonstrates that Baskova’s production method is closely related to digitally filming actual events and using this footage for staging in her fiction film. The meeting of her leading actors with the individuals they are meant to represent is vital for the construction of the drama in the making of the feature film. Baskova explains how she thoroughly researched the way the unions organised their meetings in order to stage it in her film. However, in the second interview, conducted in 2012, just before the release of the film, Baskova makes some concessions to her dramatisation. Important scenes have been cut from the film, among them a fight scene between the leading characters of Pakhomov and Vladimir Epifantsev, who plays the factory owner, gangster style. The two actors are central to Baskova’s filmmaking. They appeared together in Pyat’ butylok vodki/​Five Bottles of Vodka (2001), but in For Marx … Baskova separates them –​‘this time the actors have different roles and tasks’ (Maizel’ 2012b: 5). Also, some dream scenes were cut from the film; in particular, one scene in which the hero is buried in snow, which was purported to indicate the historical development referring as far back as the Time of Troubles (smutnoe vremya) of the early seventeenth century, when Muscovite Russia was threatened by implosion during its occupation by the Polish–​Lithuanian Commonwealth. These poetic scenes did not work, according to Baskova, and she opted for a more ‘pure genre’ statement (Maizel’ 2012b: 5). In this we can see how For Marx … attempts to simplify the cinematic language in order to provoke a stronger response from the national cinema establishment. While the influence of Cine Fantom is obvious in this breakaway from acting horror, which was the central theme of Baskova’s earlier chamber dramas, it should also be noted that Baskova does not leave her base in contemporary art. Baskova’s husband, Anatoly Osmolovsky, is listed as a producer; he is a leading artist and theorist in the Russian situationist art movement, also called ‘actionism’ (Sasz 2003). In the production of For Marx …, this element of Russian actionism points to a global trend within video art where artists are increasingly looked upon

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as documentarists (Weeks 2010: 59). In this way, Baskova includes filmmaking in actionism. It means staging interventions into public spaces, which can be mundane or highly symbolic. This staging leaves a trace in the final film that can be interpreted as the nerve or pulse of the film. Casting unprofessional actors together with trained ones and improvising with them is an important part of this practice, which is influenced by video art. Here, the performance is meant to yield results directly linked to the cultural intervention. What is different from the rest of Baskova’s films is that the extras in For Marx … outnumber the professional actors. The filming took place where the extras were, which is Cherepovets, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, or Moscow. In Moscow, shooting took place at the factory ZiL, which made the famous Soviet limousine car, and in the building of the Fabrika art exhibition space. The production of the film shows this merger between workers and the creative class. As Vasilii Koretskii writes, The film crew went to Cherepovets, Lipetsk and Togliatti to meet with the union activists. They got a real lesson from ordinary workers and realised that between the proletariat and the ‘creative class’ there is a misunderstanding –​a misunderstanding that workers are inert, disappointed, but most of all, that they are a revolutionary class. (Koretskii 2013) It is obvious that Baskova seeks to connect these two classes within her film, but it is also clear that the intention is that the end product should not end up as an art project that is seen exclusively by the enlightened few. As she tells Evgenii Maizel’, I want to make a film about modern Russian people, with all their historical and cultural ties and traditions, with their bitterness and kindness. It is about an awareness of the people and their inter-​generational kinship. I do not like how [mainstream filmmakers] are depicting the provinces, people, ‘spirituality’, history, as if they are answering the question ‘What am I?’ (Evgenii Maizel’ 2012a: 4) Mainstream filmmaking is serving its own goals and interests and therefore is unable to capture ‘actual’ Russia, having previously portrayed only the ‘lumpen-​ proletariat’ (Plakhov 2012). However, Baskova, as an artist, has the ability to translate this spirituality of the people through her small-​scale production, but, in order to do this, she has to be knowledgeable in the ideas that she is translating.What should set Baskova’s production apart from other independent or underground filmmaking in Russia is precisely the fact that she claims to speak for and to the people of Russia. Regarding the term Russian ‘independent cinema’, even if films are produced independently, they are still in an abject relationship to national discourse (Wilmes 2014: 218). This is not the case with Baskova, as she manages to break through the wall of national neoliberalism. The film has to be taken ‘seriously’, since it concerns the very foundation on which the economic situation is built: the loyalty of the ordinary Russians to the national project.

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Baskova is a self-​taught filmmaker, as Gleb Aleinikov writes: she does not have a filmmaking education; instead, every film that she makes is an education, a discovery of self-​education (Aleinikov 2012: 3). In an interview posted on YouTube, she states that she is not going to sit around waiting for the money to arrive (Gagay 2015). She would rather shoot films, and if her scripts do not attract money from state financers, she will shoot them on the cheap instead. I would argue that Baskova shares this attitude towards cinema with non-​cinema filmmakers. She is asking ‘Who are the hard-​working ordinary Russians on whom the state depends?’ Following Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of the ‘faulty’ citizen, Nicolette Makovicky argues that the new postcommunist elite has often looked at the postcommunist man as damaged goods, or as the loser in the war of transition. She writes that postcommunist ‘faulty’ citizens ‘are presented as indelibly marked by socialist paternalism because [of] their age or lack of (re-​)education, a predicament evident in their inability to find employment in the economy, an attraction to political populism, and a penchant for clientelism, and corruption’ (Makovicky 2014:  9). It is these ‘faulty’ or ‘non-​cinematic’ people that Baskova highlights in her film. It is these people who are given light and space in the ecology of cinema through non-​ cinema (Brown 2016: 109).

Non-​cinema: darkness in For Marx … William Brown’s intention in drawing up the concept of non-​cinema is not to separate it from more mainstream cinema. Rather, he seeks to highlight a cinema that is often overlooked, disregarded, or misjudged, as in the case of For Marx …, because it does not adhere to the same rules as other cinemas. For Marx … asks of its audience that they see the film as they would see any other mainstream film, but also in the process discover how they have grown accustomed to overlooking certain groups of people and their struggles. Non-​cinema ‘deliberately embraces the non-​cinematic –​the overlooked of society’, thus calling attention to the economy of looking at films (Brown 2016: 121). While supercinema calls attention to its spectacle of special effects, which can be turned into capital, non-​cinema emphasises ‘lo-​fi images, location shooting, regularly amateur or amateur-​ish acting, an emphasis on darkness, and […] a simultaneously self-​conscious and realistic treatment of the role of work in cinema’ (Brown 2016: 110). Baskova’s filmmaking asks us to reflect not only on what we are watching, calling us to co-​perform the labour of ‘producing’ the film, but even more so on how we are watching cinema. Non-​cinema ‘makes its own labour clear –​through its use of shaky cameras, overt acting, a lack of continuity edits’ (Brown 2016: 125). Thus, it is a reflection on representation and reality through a particular rawness in the images, which ‘is a rawness that is precisely not indexical in nature, even if, paradoxically, it points to reality’ (Brown 2016: 115). Although the digital image has lost its indexicality, its rawness makes it more ‘real’ and thus more unsettling to watch. It urges us not to look away but to act on what we see. This is where Baskova’s film diverges from Russian independent films (Wilmes 2014) or the Russian ‘social horror film’

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(Condee 2012). Where her other films went ‘under the radar’ in terms of attention from audiences and critics (Koretskii 2013), For Marx … demands to be taken into account. The point is that national identity film is part of the mainstream supercinema that is promoted by the state, which leaves space for non-​cinema to revolt against and, since ‘class difference remains the Great Unspoken of contemporary Russian filmmaking’ (Condee 2012), there is no better territory to recover than the classic style of class conflicts, of factory workers against factory owners, all shot with grainy, handheld digital images and in a ‘non-​cinematic’ way in order to highlight that these workers are otherwise absent from screens.That is, they are left out of the discourse concerning national identity that permeates both the national blockbuster and the ‘independent’ film. Baskova’s previous films can be seen as working within the tradition of ‘necro-​ realist’ filmmaking, which has its origins in the later Soviet period. Her debut feature was the low-​budget film Zelyoniy slonik/​Green Elephant (1999), about two army soldiers who have been arrested and confined in a very small cell. The men play various power games with each other, including sodomy, which led to the banning of public screenings of this violent chamber drama. Baskova has attracted attention from fans of extreme horror films as a maker of underground art films, albeit one who places too much emphasis on symbolism and meaningless dialogue (Toledano 2015). According to Carmen Gray, the characteristics of the necro-​realist film are ‘black humour and grotesque slapstick, and absurdist surrealism in the form of the senseless repetition of random, savage attacks and suicidal acts’ (Gray 2017). More important, though, is the fact that these features were taboo for the socialist mindset. Green Elephant was made with the same radical art in mind –​as Nele Sasz writes, in Green Elephant, ‘there is no object other than shocking the viewer’ (Sasz 2003). For Marx …, however, does not break taboos, and this is where Baskova departs from her previous work in order to formulate a response to the particularities of national neoliberalism. Where the necro-​realist film could be rejected as unintelligible and intellectual, For Marx … cannot be discarded in that way. It is as ‘real’ as any other film produced under national neoliberalism. This is the effect of the non-​cinematic form, as we shall see shortly. Before engaging with the reception of the film, though, I wish simply to add that, faced with the nationalist populism of the post-​Soviet era, and in particular addressing the current Russian political climate of a macro-​economy dependent on oil and gas (Matthews 2011: 217; Etkind 2014: 166), Baskova argues that the best response can be found in the past, because early revolutionaries faced the same set of issues, and yet  also formed a coherent reaction to this form of capitalism (Yupilami 2013). In this way, as Condee asserts, ‘Baskova’s activism is a different kind of political engagement altogether, far removed from the middle-​class’ (Condee 2012). This in turn suggests urgency in her work to represent the unrepresented. According to Brown, the focus of non-​cinema is to reveal people and spaces that otherwise are missing from mainstream screens; this is achieved through a focus on darkness. Non-​cinema draws attention to its own image-​making, investigating the relationship between representation and perceived non-​existence (if something or

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someone is not visible, then what evidence is there that they exist?). As a result, it explores what we might call ‘death spaces’, or the blind/​black spots in our human vision machine. It thus asks us to consider not only what we see, but also what we do not see. Non-​cinema recognises the limits of cinema, thereby also inviting us to reflect on the ethics of cinema (what does cinema exclude and why?). It does this in particular not by excluding darkness (which is in some senses antithetical to cinema because in darkness one cannot see anything, i.e. there is no film as such), but precisely by including darkness within the frame and by asking us to look at it (Brown 2016: 127). But what does one get from looking at darkness? What kind of illumination do we get from discovering darkness? Looking at darkness makes sense if it is combined with discovery of how dependent we actually are on light for information. Cinema is light, but it is a selective light, one which allows certain people or representations to be visible while others remain in darkness, unseen by audiences. A key scene in For Marx … is the meeting of three labour unionists, where they perform their right to form an independent union. It is a scene that Baskova has researched in real life, as mentioned above, and it takes place on the day after the workers have seen Jean-​Luc Godard’s Vent d’est/​Wind from the East (1970) at their self-​organised film club. In this scene, the three characters are lit from above, which means that, while the trio is in light, the rest of the square room is in semi-​ darkness –​although we can make out an old poster for the film Kalina krasnaya/​ Red Guelderbush or The Red Snowball Tree (1974). This self-​conscious detail reminds us of how Baskova’s own filmic practice is influenced not only by political filmmakers such as Godard, but also by Soviet melodramas such as this one, which were hugely popular with audiences in their time. As David Gillespie writes about Red Guelderbush, it can be seen ‘as the tragedy of a lost soul, struggling to attain some meaning and substance to his life, but failing due to the inescapable forces of modern history’ (Gillespie 2007: 168), Indeed, in that Red Guelderbush is about a crook who is trying to go straight but whose past catches up with him, it veritably announces that one of the men in Baskova’s film will similarly be stabbed to death later on  –​just as life promises to become bearable. Beyond being an arch self-​conscious allusion, though, the poster being placed in semi-​obscurity not only links Baskova’s film to its cinematic precursors, but also asks us to think about the limits of cinema itself. This self-​conscious and aesthetic investigation into issues surrounding the representation of the unrepresented and unrepresentable is drawn out even more strikingly, however, when the scene cuts to a shot from outside the room. The three labour unionists are framed in a doorway facing the camera, with as much as a third of the screen not so much dark as totally black. The image is almost at a standstill, or frozen, as none of the characters move. As a result, it takes on a tableau quality, with the spectator invited to contemplate the image in a more conscientious fashion than they would a ‘normal’ shot inserted into the narrative. For Andrei Plakhov, the scene becomes ‘a kind of proletarian “Last Supper” before the decisive historical battles’ (Plakhov 2012), but this would emphasise the

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FIGURE 4.1:   Illuminated

darkness. Baskova’s focus lies on darkness.

Source: Screen grab.

light in the scene. The image is repeated on two further occasions as the narrative progresses –​each time with one labour unionist fewer in the frame. Finally only Sergei Pakhomov’s character is left in the room, having by now betrayed the strike as a result of pressure from the management. The repetition means that the image gains in weight, it becomes more meaningful as the darkness seems to grow. Indeed, by isolating the illuminated few, the image asks us to think about the absent many –​people upon whom cinema’s light does not fall, and who remain in darkness. Given the darkness of the image, absence comes to be recognised as lying at the heart of what cinema can represent.

Reception of For Marx … In his schema of non-​cinema, Brown focuses on production rather than reception. Non-​cinematic films can often be distributed for free online, which offers unlimited access to the product rather than creating exclusivity that can be turned into profit for the filmmaker. In this sense, non-​cinema exists outside the economy of mainstream or arthouse cinema. It is the making that is important. In a similar manner, nearly all Baskova’s films are available on her own website (http://​baskova. com). However, since the argument advanced here is that For Marx … challenges the national neoliberal system of cinema production, it is important to trace the reaction to the film by audiences and critics. Since For Marx … was produced by Cine Fantom, it received a limited release through the company’s own distribution channels, which means that the filmmakers travelled with the film and screened it in cinema clubs throughout Russia. With digital technologies, samizdat is the current form of film distribution for independent filmmakers not only in Russia, but

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around the world (Braester 2015). However, For Marx … was also released a year later on DVD by Cine Fantom, made available in a handful of retailers in Moscow and with thirty copies for rental (Koretskii 2013).Whether it is commercially viable or not, it is worth remembering that Cine Fantom is strictly a non-​profit organisation. As one of the organisers tells Vladimir Kozlov in an interview, ‘from the very outset, we stated it clearly that the club is not meant to make money but to spend it’ (Kozlov 2009). On the Russian movie site Kinopisk.ru, For Marx … has been seen by over 2,000 people, which would reflect the promotion of the film through Cine Fantom’s exhibition channels. In keeping with Cine Fantom’s principles of free circulation, it is available from several hundred online sites (although without subtitles). It is evident that Cine Fantom promoted For Marx …, with Baskova’s film playing at various festivals, most notably Berlin, at which Baskova gave various interviews (see Kuzma 2013; Yupilami 2013). Other festival screenings took place in several Russian provincial cities. In Vologda, for example, the film won the prize for best-​produced film, which surprised the critics (Trofimenko 2012). At these festivals, the screenings included a question and answer session with the director, a pattern that has continued at other special screenings in a dozen other cities in Russia. This is all documented on Baskova’s website, with transcripts of responses from audience members. At the festival in Sochi, the post-​screening discussion with critics led to a ‘dead end’, since the critics ‘could not get beyond their review format’ of their like or dislike of the film, their judgement of whether it was boring or not boring, and had good acting or bad (Koretskii 2013). This inability to approach the film is evident from the Russian TV programme Magiya Kino, which reviewed the film in a 15-​minute slot in 2013. On the show, Baskova and lead actor Pakhonov are present in the studio, with the presenters comparing the film to Italian neo-​realism, as well as Baskova to an ‘underground’ filmmaker. Clearly, the presenters struggle to grasp the film, describing the plot as thin. Highlighting the battle scene at the end of the film, one presenter even attacks the film as a mere art performance, pointing out that For Marx … is not cinema but rather an avant-​garde or ‘underground’ film. However, in this rejection of the film as cinema, the Magiya Kino presenter only furthers the usefulness of non-​cinema as a framework through which to understand the film. In the interview, Baskova is also asked what she would have done with a big budget and big stars. Even if Baskova has suggested in a subsequent interview that she would like to make industry films in order to reach wider audiences (Gagay 2015), she claimed in the Magiya Kino interview that she made the film that she wanted to make –​regardless of the budget. In other words, even if the interview on Magiya Kino descended into an argument about the authenticity of the film, Baskova clearly embraces and refuses to see as a deficiency the low-​ budget look and feel of the film. Furthermore, the presenters of Magiya Kino argued that Russian workers do not behave as they do in Baskova’s film, to which Baskova replied that her workers might seem unreal for the Moscow intelligentsia, but this is because the Moscow intelligentsia (Baskova included prior to

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the filming, I suspect) does not know any workers. In other words, the working class lies in an obscure realm beyond the purview of society’s upper echelons, whose only knowledge of that working class comes from nationalist neoliberal (super)cinematic  –​and unrealistic  –​productions. When faced with a different (non-​cinematic) vision of the working class, they deem it unrealistic. Cinema has become the measure of reality under nationalist neoliberalism, such that non-​ cinema becomes the realm in which we get to that nationalist neoliberalism’s hidden underbelly. The ‘realism’ of the film is often what gets criticised, as in ‘we know that workers do not speak that way’ (Plakhov 2012). The closing scene is imbued with an excessiveness that bears resemblance to melodramatic characters in Althusser’s analysis (1969:  136). Succumbing to a submissive device of the management, Sergei Pakhomov’s character is led to the owner of the factory, and the two fight it out on the rooftop of the corporate building at night. In an overly dramatised manner, they kill each other as they roll around on the rooftop in their own blood. The scene seems to confuse and elicit criticism since this ‘fratricide’ lies somewhere between Bollywood and Shakespeare (Trofimenko 2012). My assessment is that it is not a mere ‘symbolic’ gesture (Dondyrei 2012), but an Althusserian melodramatic consciousness that is played out on the existence of real workers’ conflict in the Russian economy of national neoliberalism. As the film closes on the rooftop and the two take their last breaths, the film cuts to Sergei Pakhomov’s character walking past broken windows in a building which has seen better days. With no sounds, as if played in mute mode, he reaches a tower window and leans out, looking directly at the viewer, and starts to gesture animatedly with his arms, as if urging the viewer to rise from the chair. The camera zooms out,

FIGURE 4.2:   Pakhomov

and Epifantsev in a melodramatic rooftop battle. Source: Press photo courtesy of the filmmaker.

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dwarfing his movements as well as the figure overall. Coming right after the blood-​ spilling fight-​to-​the-​death scene on the rooftop, this mute agitation of the leading character exposes our melodramatic consciousness, which cinema has taught us to exercise. It is meant to wake the spectator, who is in a catatonic state (Koretskii 2013). The juxtaposition argues that cinema’s realism is false, but that non-​cinema can reverse cinema’s myth of realism. It is non-​cinema that is conscious of the function of melodramatic consciousness. Giuliano Vivaldi, a blogger and critic, also queries the realism of For Marx … Is the film too intellectual for audiences to comprehend? Do the workers of the real Russia read Gogol or Berlinsky’s Salzburg letter? Do they watch Godard’s Vent d’Est, as the workers in Baskova’s film do? Rather than dismiss the depiction of an intellectually engaged working class as romanticism, Vivaldi instead concludes that while he was working in precarious jobs in England, the conversations would be about Czesław Miłosz, Daniil Kharms, or Dino Buzzati, ‘something inconceivable in an office job’ (Vivaldi 2012). If mainstream cinema has concerns over the form of Baskova’s film, accusing it of being too intellectual for its targeted audience (the working class), then maybe it is because mainstream cinema is unable to visualise this class. The critics from Magiya Kino have a distorted view of class because it is not represented in the cinema that they evaluate. The workers in Baskova’s film are intellectual, resourceful and interested in fair working conditions –​not unlike the people that Vivaldi has met in what might otherwise be considered unintellectual workplaces. The paradox may be that it is in those supposedly unintellectual workplaces that intellectual engagement is found, with the neoliberal ‘intelligentsia’ in fact being incapable of intellectual engagement, as the Magiya Kino presenters demonstrate in their struggle to contend with the film.

FIGURE 4.3:   Mute

Source: Screen grab.

agitation.

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Bibliography Aleinikov, Gleb (2012).‘Gleb Aleinikov o rezhissyore’, Cine Fantom, issue #03/​256, 5–​11 July, www.cinefantomclub.ru/​pdf/​2012-​06-​05/​CF-​05-​06.pdf. Althusser, Louis (1969). For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Allen Lane,The Penguin Press). Andreescu, Florentina C. (2015). ‘Doleo, ergo sum: The Masochistic Aesthetic of Sergei Loznitsa’s My Joy (2010)’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 9(3), pp. 200–​15. Barskova, Polina (2013). ‘Svetlana Baskova: For Marx (Za Marksa, 2012)’, KinoKultura, issue 39, www.kinokultura.com/​2013/​39r-​zamarksa.shtml. Beumers, Birgit (1999). ‘Cinemarket, or the Russian Film Industry in “Mission Impossible”’, Europe–​Asia Studies, 51(5), pp. 871–​97. Braester, Yomi (2015). ‘The Spectral Return of Cinema: Globalization and Cinephilia in Contemporary Chinese Film’, Cinema Journal, 55(1), pp. 29–​51. Brown, William (2013). Supercinema: Film-​Philosophy for the Digital Age (Oxford: Berghahn). Brown, William (2016). ‘Non-​ Cinema: Digital Ethics, Multitude’, Film-​Philosophy, 20, pp. 104–​30. Condee, Nancy (2012). ‘Fifteen Realities of Russian Cinema (Kinotavr 2012)’, KinoKultura, issue 38, www.kinokultura.com/​2012/​38-​condee.shtml. Dondyrei, Tamara (2012). ‘Sanitarnyi den’’, Expert Online, http://​expert.ru/​2012/​06/​9/​ sanitarnyij-​den/​. Etkind, Alexander (2014). ‘Post-​Soviet Russia: The Land of the Oil Curse, Pussy Riot, and Magical Historicism’, Boundary 2, 41(1), pp. 157–​74. Eletheriotis, Dimitris (2001). Popular Cinemas of Europe: Studies of Text, Contexts and Frameworks (New York and London: Continuum). Forbes, Jill and Sarah Street (2000). European Cinema: An Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Gagay, Kseniya (2015). Svetlana Baskova, kinorezhissyor, YouTube, 17 June, www.youtube. com/​watch?v=jl7M8iDIJSs. Gillespie, David (2007). ‘Kalina krasnaia/​Red Guelderbush: Vasilii Shukshin, USSR, 1973’, in Birgit Beumers (ed.), The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union (London: Wallflower Press), pp. 161–​9. Goscilo, Helena (2010). ‘Between the Sword and the Scales, or Celluloid Justice’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 4(2), pp. 137–​45. Gray, Carmen (2017). ‘Exquisite Corpse: Remembering the Underground Filmmaker Who Brought Zombies to the USSR’, The Calvert Journal, 19 January, http://​calvertjournal. com/​articles/​show/​7530/​yevgeny-​yufit-​necrorealism-​soviet-​underground-​film. Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Higson, Andrew (1989). ‘The Concept of National Cinema’, Screen 30(4), pp. 36–​47. Hirt, Sonia, Christian Sellar and Craig Young (2013). ‘Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-​Socialist Spaces’, Europe–​Asia Studies, 65(7), 1243–​54. Holmes, Leslie (1997). Post-​communism: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hughes, Angela Ungoed and Howard Riley (2007), ‘The Multimodal Matrix –​A Laboratory of Devices: Film and the Formalist legacy’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 1(2), pp. 191–​209. Koretskii, Vasilii (2013). ‘Sovrisk s kinoapparatom’, Seans, 18 February, http://​seance.ru/​ blog/​reviews/​za_​marksa_​review/​. Kozlov, Vladimir (2009). ‘The CINE FANTOM Club’, Passport Magazine, July, www. passportmagazine.ru/​article/​1595/​. Kuzma, Konstanty (2013). ‘Svetlana Baskova on For Marx …’, East European Film Bulletin, 1 March, https://​eefb.org/​archive/​march-​2013/​svetlana-​baskova-​on-​for-​marx/​.

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Maizel’, Evgenii (2012a). ‘Tchtoby vernut’ lyudyam dostoinstvo, nado napugat’ vlast’ ’, Cine Fantom, issue #03/​ 256, 5–​ 11 July, www.cinefantomclub.ru/​pdf/​2012-​06-​05/​ CF-​05-​06.pdf. Maizel’, Evgenii (2012b). ‘Sprabedlivost’, den’gi i dva hozha’, Cine Fantom, issue #03/​256, 5–​11 July, www.cinefantomclub.ru/​pdf/​2012-​06-​05/​CF-​05-​06.pdf. Makovicky, Nicolette (ed.) (2014). Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economics (London and New York: Routledge). Matthews, Emily Schuckman (2011).‘Reclaiming “The Spot”:The Prostitute as Entrepreneur in Tochka/​The Spot’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 5(2), pp. 205–​25. Norris, Stephen M. (2007). ‘Guiding Stars: The Comet-​like Rise of the War Film in Putin’s Russia: Recent World War II Films and Historical Memories’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 1(2), 163–​89. Plakhov, Andrei (2012). ‘Proletarii bez lyumpena. “Za Marksa …”, rezhissyor Svetlana Baskova’, Iskusstvo kino, no. 8, August, http://​kinoart.ru/​archive/​2012/​08/​proletarijbez-​lyumpena-​za-​marksa-​rezhisser-​svetlana-​baskova. Rosenbaum, Jonathan and Adrian Martin (2003). Movie Mutations:The Changing Face of World Cinephilia (London: BFI Publishing). Rutland, Peter (2013). ‘Neoliberalism and the Russian Transition,’ Review of International Political Economy, 20(2), pp. 332–​62. Sasz, Nele (2003).‘“Radical”Art in Russia, the 1990s and Beyond’, ARTMargins Online, 11 June, www.artmargins.com/​index.php/​film-​a-​screen-​media-​sp-​629836893/​271-​qradicalq-​ art-​in-​russia-​the-​1990s-​and-​beyond. Silvestrov, Andrei (2012). ‘Andrei Silvestrov o filme’, Cine Fantom, issue #03/​256, 12 July, www.cinefantomclub.ru/​pdf/​2012-​06-​05/​CF-​05-​06.pdf. Thomsen, Christian Braad (2004). ‘Når børnene fortærer faderen: Den vesttyske terrorisme og filmen/​When the Children Devour the Father:West German Terrorism and Cinema’, Kosmorama, no. 233, pp. 42–​72. Toledano, Zev (2015).‘Svetlana Baskova’, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre:An Encyclopedia and Film-​Diary of Extreme, Surreal and Bizarre Movies, http://​thelastexit.net/​cinema/​baskova. html. Trofimenko, Mikhail (2012). ‘Nepotreblenie zla nasiliem’, Kommersant, 13 August, http://​ kommersant.ru/​doc/​1979300. van Gorp, Jasmijn (2011). ‘Inverting Film Policy: Film as Nation Builder in Post-​Soviet Russia, 1991–​2005’, Media, Culture & Society, 33(2), pp. 243–​58. Vivaldi, Giuliano (2012). ‘Svetlana Baskova’s За Маркса (For Marx) –​A Landmark in New Russian Cinema’, Soviet and Post-​Soviet Visions, 5 July, http://​giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot. se/​search?q=baskova. Weeks, Harry (2010). ‘Re-​cognizing the Post-​Soviet Condition: The Documentary Turn in Contemporary Art in the Baltic States’, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 1(1), pp. 57–​70. Willemen, Paul (2005). ‘For a Comparative Film Studies’, Inter-​Asia Cultural Studies, 30(1), pp. 98–​112. Wilmes, Dusty (2014). ‘National Identity (De)construction in Recent Independent Cinema: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Yuri’s Day and Sergei Loznitsa’s My Joy’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 8(3), pp. 218–​32. Yupilami, Mars (2013). ‘Berlinale Interview: Svetlana Baskova’, Exberliner, 7 February, www. exberliner.com/​culture/​film/​berlinale-​interview-​svetlana-​baskova/​.

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PART 2

Neoliberal winners and losers

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5 THE RISE OF THE ENTREPRENEUR IN JIA ZHANGKE’S WORDS OF A JOURNEY Corey Kai Nelson Schultz

The belief in the instructive power of idealised class models has been found throughout Chinese history. Initially advanced by the Confucian gentry as a form of ‘self​cultivation’, the concept was later combined with the Soviet ideal of the ‘New Man’ and was absorbed into Mao Zedong Thought (Landsberger 1995: 26). During the Maoist period (1949–​1976), workers, peasants and soldiers became heroic and iconic figures.They not only symbolised idealised behaviour, but also were intended to invoke it by inspiring the viewer’s development into the lauded ‘New Man’; thus,‘to become a “New Man”, or a good communist, the cultivation of the self would follow the model of the words, deeds, work and qualities of the founders of Marxism and Leninism’ (ibid.). The socialist period has ended in China, however, and the worker-​peasant-​soldier has been dethroned. The neoliberal economic changes introduced in 1978 initiated a period known as the Reform era, and were promoted by Deng Xiaoping as offering ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ (Anon. 1996). During this time, a new figure has been advanced as a new model for the current post-​Socialist Reform era –​the entrepreneur. This figure alludes to the past socialist worker-​peasant-​soldier models, but evokes a neoliberal moralistic discourse for the Reform era that valorises China’s market economy, during an era that has expanded opportunities for some, but has also initiated an ever-​widening gap between the rich and the poor and increased social discord. For example, China’s Gini coefficient, a scale used to measure economic disparity between incomes in society in which 0 is perfect equality and 1 is complete inequality, had changed from a very egalitarian score of 0.22 in 1978 to a rating of 0.49 by 2012, a score that, according to the World Bank, indicates acute income inequality (Goodman and Zang 2008: 2;Wildau and Mitchell 2016). This chapter examines this figure as it is found in an internet-​ based series of advertisements titled Words of a Journey (语路, 2011), produced by the Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke for the whisky manufacturer Johnnie Walker. This series is part of the company’s larger marketing campaign designed to ‘speak to China’s

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aspirational consumers’, and is based on market research that indicated ‘A man was judged a success not by where he was, but where he was going’ (Brook 2008). In the series, the interviewees narrate stories of success through adversity, and stress their determination, independence and their steps to self-​improvement. These advertisements focus on the positive aspects of economic reform rather than its failures, which are examined at length in many of Jia’s other works, such as Still Life (2006) and A Touch of Sin (2013). Instead, Words of a Journey emphasises that economic liberalism has brought the freedom to follow one’s dreams and gain personal fulfilment through work, and thus promotes neoliberalism in order to solve the problems of neoliberalism. The entrepreneur figure is therefore championed as one who can alleviate the negative effects of economic reforms (such as the growing gap between the rich and the poor), but, unlike his or her worker-​peasant-​soldier predecessors who worked together to build the socialist state, the entrepreneur is not a socialist figure but a capitalist one, who uses neoliberal notions of independence and self-​sufficiency to solve these problems. Furthermore, this figure evokes the larger neoliberal discourses being promoted by the state, and is thus indicative of a discursive turn towards neoliberalism and supportive of the aforementioned ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. In this discursive shift, the responsibilities of the state have been lessened; instead, capitalism has been evoked to solve the problems of capitalism, which positions the individual as being responsible for solving social problems and contributing to the overall good. Using theories on entrepreneurship, self-​ development and governmentality, I examine the stories of success narrated by the interviewees and their representation as heroic and daring entrepreneurs who have ‘made it’ in the Reform era market economy. I argue that the entrepreneurs are being advanced as inspirational and moralistic class models, and that their platitudes emphasise success through independence, hard work and sacrifice, thus celebrating China’s neoliberalism. Such declarations confirm the morality of their actions, and also connect to the history of moral discourses surrounding the Chinese class figures, by producing a new neoliberal model class figure for the Reform era ‘with Chinese characteristics’. I argue that their narratives not only convey individual success stories, but also are part of larger discourses that are currently being promoted in China, including the concept of suzhi (quality/​self-​improvement) and ‘Harmonious Society’. Finally, I connect this to the ideal of the ‘Chinese Dream’ that has been advanced by the Chinese government, which advocates that everyone is benefiting from Reform; for example, as stated in 2013 by Cai Mingzhao, Minister of the State Council Information Office, ‘The Chinese Dream in essence means the dream of the people who live in our great country at this great time to have the opportunity to enjoy a successful life, the opportunity to realize one’s dream, and the opportunity to grow and progress together with the country’ (Anon. 2013a).

Historical context During the Maoist period, the state promoted the idealised classes of the workers, peasants and soldiers, and they were celebrated in politics and culture. These

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figures had specific functions:  the workers developed the nation’s industry; the peasants produced the nation’s food; and the soldiers defended the nation’s borders. They were viewed as the revolutionary driving force, and not only represented the exaltation of the communist state, but also were believed to evoke positive socialist behaviours in the populace, and thus were ‘designed as much to project a socialism of the future as to provide exemplars for the present’ (Evans and Donald 1999: 20). They were the labouring classes, who were the rightful inheritors of the Communist Revolution. Their dialectical opposite was the merchant/​trader, who was traditionally referred to as ‘the bottommost and least respected’ of the class figures (Brook 1998: 72), since business was historically seen as self-​serving, and economic capital as ‘a byproduct of random luck, rather than a virtue’ (Hsu 2007: 6). After the Communist Revolution in 1949, the capitalists, landlords and wealthy peasants were seen as the exploiting classes (Andreas 2009: 28), and the state created moral narratives in which status was based on contributions to ‘the collective good’, while government discourse denounced capitalists as being ‘exploitative, selfish, and immoral’ (Hsu 2007: 17). In 1978, the state initiated liberal market reforms in order to revitalise the Chinese economy, and thus reinvigorated capitalism in China. In 1980, the Chinese media debated the scale of economic reforms. Initially, they warned about the negative impact on society, but later they separated market reforms into ‘good’ and ‘bad’; the good ‘serve[d]‌the people by meeting their needs’, while the bad focused solely on making money (Hsu 2007: 128). Furthermore, state media narratives described private business in four different ways: ‘a) dangerous; b) evil; c) acceptable in some forms but not others; or d) useful for society, though only appropriate for marginalized people’ (ibid.). Although they were seen by the state as a way to solve urban unemployment and reinvigorate the economy, government regulations restricted small businesses by dictating that they could not employ more than seven (non-​ family) employees, and confining them to specific sectors (ibid.: 127). During the 1980s, small business owners were often viewed as being ‘criminals, illiterate, and uncultured’ (Carrillo 2008: 100), and the popular media often used them as negative characters, by representing them as having ‘low status, little education, and weak morals’ (Hsu 2007: 20). This changed in the late 1990s, however, when terms such as ‘businessperson’ (商人) and ‘entrepreneur’ (企业家) acquired positive connotations (ibid.: 124), and were described as ‘the key driver of growth’ (Yueh 2008: 15). During this time, small business owners began identifying as ‘entrepreneurs’. Their role models were others in business ‘who had made it big through their hard work and creativity’, which they emulated by wearing suits and designer clothes with logos (Hsu 2007: 72, 78–​9). Furthermore, when presented with the previous negative stereotypes of small business owners, they stressed their educational and cultural credentials, thus separating the dishonest and ‘vulgar’ small business owners from ‘respectable, trustworthy entrepreneurs’ (ibid.: 169–​70). In 2001, however, the Party declared that businesspeople were no longer the despised capitalists because they used to be members of the lauded working class and also worked under a state system that was against exploitation (Guo 2008: 42). In this discursive shift,

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the entrepreneur and businessperson became China’s new models for the new millennium.

Narratives of success The interviewees in Words of a Journey are all entrepreneurs, in the sense that they are independently following their own ambitions. They are composed of three groups: artists, humanitarians and businesspeople. The artists are Huang Doudou, a ballet dancer and choreographer; Wang Yiyang, the designer of the women’s fashion line Zuczug; Xu Bing, an internationally famous artist and Vice President of Beijing’s Central Academy of Art; Zhang Jun, a Kunqu opera performer; Luo Yonghao, a famous blogger and the founder of ‘Laoluo English School’, a popular English-​language training school; and Zhou Yunpeng, a folk singer and poet. The humanitarians are Wang Keqin, senior reporter for the China Economic Times, who is famous for his investigative reports and for fighting injustice; Zhang Ying, head of the Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association; and Zhao Zhong, founder of the environmentalist NGO ‘Green Camel Bell’. Finally, the entrepreneurs are Pan Shiyi (b. 1963), a famous billionaire in China, who, along with his wife, Zhang Xin, co-​founded the real-​estate empire SOHO (Small Office Home Office) China; Cao Fei, an e-​commerce entrepreneur, who, after graduating from university, co-​founded an online vegetable-​selling company called ‘Vegetable Life’; and Xiao Peng, the founder of a travel company. Words of a Journey is part of the global Johnnie Walker whisky marketing campaign ‘Keep Walking’. This series, composed of twelve episodic television and internet ads, was designed to appeal ‘to China’s aspirational consumers’, by ‘focusing on individuality and celebrating modern-​day pioneers in China’ (Sokolowski 2011). As stated in a market report, it was developed from market research that indicated ‘the most power [sic] demonstration of masculine success was not material wealth but a thirst for self-​improvement’, because, as mentioned previously, ‘A man was judged a success not by where he was, but where he was going’ (Brook 2008). The series is constructed of interviews with ‘outstanding persons from the fields of finance, culture and social community in Mainland China about the greatest difficulties they have confronted and their wisdom and courage in overcoming the barriers’ (Hong Kong International Film Society 2011). The filmmaker Jia Zhangke was the executive producer of the Chinese ad campaign, and directed two segments: one on the real-​estate developer Pan Shiyi and the second about the small business entrepreneur Cao Fei. As Jia stated, ‘Each film tells the unique story of one person, where they came from, how they got to where they are today and what it is that inspires them to do what it is they do. Our hope is that these stories will inspire people to reflect upon and tell their own stories’ (Ogilvy and Mather Group 2011). The campaign was launched on 5 January 2011 (ibid.), when the segment with Pan Shiyi was broadcast on Chinese national television, while the other eleven documentaries that made up the campaign were later aired online (Sokolowski 2011).

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In Words of a Journey, the interviewees often stress the ways they struggled to overcome adversity or initial failure in order to become successful, therefore communicating the neoliberal message that ambition, perseverance and hard work will ultimately lead to success. For example, Huang Doudou explains that he was too short to be allowed to study dance, so his father made him hang upside down by his ankles for several hours every day so that he would grow; Zhang Jun declares ‘I don’t need a stable or peaceful life. I just want to follow my heart, [and] play by my own rules’;Wang Yiyang stresses ‘you must dedicate all your energy and all your passion to live life to the fullest’; Zhao Zhong states ‘I firmly believe that anyone who is fiercely determined and resilient can achieve success’; Xu Bing declares ‘You must be conscientious. You must be creative in everything that you do. Creat[e]‌ things that [have] never been done before. Only then can you have all the raw passion and energy that will drive you’, and counsels people to be ambitious and ‘have desire and hunger for success’; finally, even though Cao Fei’s first company went bankrupt, the failure did not cause him to cease his efforts; rather, in accord with Johnnie Walker’s maxim ‘keep walking’ (永远向前, ‘always onwards’), he has begun a new e-​commerce venture, declaring ‘I still remain ever hungry, ever motivated’ and that ‘[I will] keep moving forward until I gain success’. This determination, however, does not come without risks:  as Wang Keqin counsels, ‘Change may not happen even after you’ve worked your hardest at it. But if you don’t even try, then change will never come.’ A further example is found in the segment of the entrepreneur Xiao Peng. He explains that it was too difficult to find a position with a job title that was prestigious enough, so he continued as an entrepreneur. In his interview, he states ‘I’m a risk taker’, and says that ‘the unknown is the most enjoyable part of entrepreneurship’. As he declares, ‘You will never know the view from a mountain top unless you climb to the summit. Perhaps you lose your way and happen to stumble upon a different path or a different destination. That can be pretty good too.’ Finally, the folk singer and poet Zhou Yunpeng remarks that, ‘At every crossroads of my life I would consciously choose the path less travelled. To abandon anything safe, anything secure and anything familiar, then you will get ultimate freedom in life and your horizons become limitless.’ As he explains, ‘Buddhism teaches that all of life’s afflictions come from having obstacles in the human mind. Life is about constantly overcoming these obstacles.’ The interviews highlight the struggles that they have faced, and emphasise their drive, hard work, ambition and willingness to take risks. Theirs is an individual journey, one that situates them as daring, solo, entrepreneurial adventurers who are dynamic models for an equally dynamic Reform era. This differs from the past Maoist period, where people would work as a group for the larger collective, and instead ‘reflect[s]‌an ever growing obvious trend in China social media advertising: focusing on self-​expression and individual wants/​needs rather than following the path charted by the well-​meaning collective’ (Rand 2010). In Governing the Soul, Nikolas Rose references Michel Foucault’s theories on governmentality, defined as ‘the regulation of the processes proper to the population, the laws that modulate its wealth, health, longevity, and its capacity to wage wars and to engage in labor’,

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and the steps governments take ‘to maximize the forces of the population and each individual within it … immunize their troubles … [and] organize them in the most efficacious manner’ in order to meet the demands of the state (Rose 1999: 5). Rose argues that modern governments regulate individuals through ‘techniques of the self ’, which are defined as ‘the ways in which we are enabled, by means of the languages, criteria, and techniques offered to us, to act upon our bodies, souls, thoughts, and conduct in order to achieve happiness, wisdom, health, and fulfilment’ (ibid.: 11). In this paradigm, people become self-​regulating because they are driven by psychological motivations, including ‘interesting work, feelings of achievement, feelings of personal growth, responsibility, and recognition’, which make them both happy and productive (ibid.:  111). He argues that the post-​industrial worker no longer works simply to provide for life; rather, the worker has discursively become ‘an individual in search of meaning, responsibility, a sense of personal achievement’, someone who ‘is not to be emancipated from work … but to be fulfilled in work, now construed as an activity through which we produce, discover, and experience our selves’ (ibid.: 103–​4). Not only are all the interviewees independent entrepreneurs, but also their independence and desires for personal fulfillment are expressed in the interviews. For instance, Cao stresses that he did not like being an employee, and left five or six jobs after graduating because he felt they were too restrictive and, as he states, ‘I like having freedom’, while Xiao Peng declares that he continued with individual entrepreneurial ventures because no group could pay him enough or give him a satisfactory title.Their work gives their lives meaning –​it fulfils them. Thus, in the Reform era, individuality is what is needed in order to succeed. But it is not an entirely selfish endeavour; although they are all individual success stories, this individualism can also be altruistic and directed to the greater good –​a moral entrepreneurship. For instance, the reporter Wang Keqin explains that he still continues his investigations to help the downtrodden, even after being threatened with physical harm and death; Zhang Ying, formerly a successful business person, is now head of the Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association; Zhao Zhong, the founder of the environmental conservation NGO ‘Green Camel Bell’ was Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ in 2009; and, during Luo Yonghao’s segment, characters appear on a black background, announcing that ‘Everyone has an obligation to bring positive change to the world he lives in’. In this scene, the word for ‘change’ (改变) is emphasised in red, whilst the other characters are in white. He finishes his interview by announcing ‘Be a good person, then you can make the world a better place’. Finally, although this is not mentioned in his interview, Pan Shiyi and his wife Zhang Xin are also co-​founders of the SOHO China Foundation, whose goal is to alleviate poverty through education. These humanitarian declarations emphasise their individual drive towards the betterment of society and their desire to improve social welfare. However, these initiatives are not recognised as being wider societal or governmental obligations; furthermore, the interviewees do not address the fact that these problems are the responsibility of the state, and do not question why governmental organs that regulate health, education,

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poverty and the environment have failed. Instead, the individual is positioned as a societal ‘saviour’ with an individual responsibility, as stated by Luo Yonghao, to ‘make the world a better place’.

E-​tales In their analysis of the autobiographical stories of American and British entrepreneurs, which they refer to as ‘e-​tales’ for ‘Entrepreneurial Tales’, Robert Smith and Alistair Anderson describe these stories as ‘hagiographic entrepreneurial narrative(s)’ that combine ‘ “Morality”, “Success” and the “Entrepreneurial Dream” ’ (Smith and Anderson 2004: 132). They argue that such stories emphasise ‘independence, perseverance and the value of success, especially in the face of adversity’, which ‘confirms and asserts the righteousness of entrepreneurship’ (ibid.:  125, 131). In these e-​tales, entrepreneurship is promoted as a righteous and moral endeavour, and stories of triumph over adversity are not only inspirational, but also have become ‘hagiographic’ and reverential. In this religio-​moralistic paradigm, they posit that entrepreneurship is presented as a positive development, due to its ‘overtones of independence, perseverance and success’, and that the ethics and values of entrepreneurship –​‘the right way’ –​which are promoted in the e-​tales create an optimistic discourse about the entrepreneur that ‘produces a friendly face of individualized capitalism’ (ibid.: 130–​2).They argue that e-​tales usually stress hard work, individual determination and perseverance through sacrifice, explaining as follows:  ‘In the e-​tale, “success” is often portrayed as the poor boy making good, but what differentiates this from simply achieving the archetypical “entrepreneurial dream” is the overcoming of difficulties, disadvantage and obstacles, usually by dint of effort and perseverance against adversity’ (ibid.: 132–​3). Such hagiographic narratives are prevalent in Words of a Journey, and most of the interviewees emphasise the difficulties they have overcome. For Huang, it was his height; for Wang, the threats against his life; for Cao, his bankruptcy; for Zhou, his blindness; and for Pan, his initial poverty. But they have succeeded and now urge the viewer to follow their examples. Thus, their e-​tales are not just narrations of success and encouragement for the viewers to follow their examples, but are also moral treatises that support both the concept of entrepreneurship and the moral justification behind it, including the valorisation of the neoliberal economy –​the ‘friendly face of capitalism’ as reified by the interviewees, operating as a synecdoche for the success of the Reform era. Thus, not only are they ‘moral’ because of their focus on bettering society, but also they are righteous due to their personal overcoming of disdvantages, becoming part of a larger hagiographic narrative that promotes ‘moral capitalism’. In this light, these e-​tales not only are vehicles for self-​valorisation and audience inspiration, but also constitute part of a larger neoliberal ‘marketing of dreams’. Words of a Journey is part of ‘Keep Walking’, an international ad campaign created for Johnnie Walker in 1999 by the firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), which

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was activated in more than 120 markets and, as of 2008, had been responsible for $2,210,000,000 in incremental sales (Brook 2008). The campaign in China was not a direct ad for the whisky, per se, but part of a larger social media campaign addressed to China’s consumption-​focused middle class, by ‘focusing on individuality and celebrating modern-​day pioneers in China’, which is ‘part of building a brand associated with following one’s dreams’ (Sokolowski 2011). In this ‘marketing of dreams’, individuality, an innovative spirit and ‘following one’s dreams’ are necessary elements, and the focus is placed on an individual, adventurous and creative ‘aspirational consumer’. To accomplish this, they ‘analysed the material, cultural, behavioural and ephemeral levels of Chinese culture … and the concept of Personal Progress which the Keep Walking campaign is based on’, which enabled them ‘to reimagine the endline as a toast, a pact between men to help each other’s future progress. This idea made Keep Walking relevant to the Chinese drinking occasion and the Chinese concept of progress’ (Wright 2009). Brands are not simply material items but have a metaphysical meaning that can be used by individuals to ‘construct their identities’ and social lives through consumerism (Gerth 2008:  42), as well as to produce ‘a source of meaning and “community” capable of replacing those supposedly lost in the modernization process’ (Arvidsson 2006: 5). Thus, they allow consumers to connect and identify with philosophies associated with brands through their purchase of branded products. According to Foo Siew Ting, Johnnie Walker’s Regional Brand Director, ‘What could be more appropriate to a brand that is all about progress than to talk about some of China’s most progressive individuals? We are excited about this campaign as it allows us to communicate with Chinese consumers in a heart to heart way and co-​opt them into our brand values’ (Ogilvy and Mather Group 2011). There are three things that I would like to stress: the first is the definition of success; the second is the desire to ‘interact’ with the consumer emotionally ‘in a heart to heart way’; and the third is personal progress –​individual progress for everyone. In these interviews, there are many different definitions of success:  taking risks; helping others; and following one’s passions and ambitions. They are not only models of success, but also reflect and communicate their ambitions to the viewers and offer advice to them, as if intimately and emotionally ‘coaching’ the viewers on how to achieve their own ‘personal progress’, and thus inviting the viewer to follow their counsel and progress with them. The viewer is invited to relate to the interviewee. In his examination of the ‘successful entrepreneur’, the ‘high achiever’ and ‘the peak performer in sport and art as much as in industry’, Rose writes ‘The entrepreneur, it seems, was actually quite like us: we could all be entrepreneurially successful, we could all learn to be self-​realizing, if we learned the skills of self-​presentation, self-​ direction and self-​management’ (Rose 1999:  117). The message is that everyone can become an entrepreneur if they work at it, and therefore can individually progress; thus, the connection of Johnnie Walker’s slogan of ‘keep walking’ (永远向前, ‘always onwards’) to self-​determination and self-​responsibility in the advertisements produces a philosophy structured around neoliberal notions of independence, self-​ reliance and personal development.

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Self-​help and suzhi Part of ‘personal progress’ is ‘bettering’ oneself. This onus on the self ’s responsibility to change is also found in the self-​help platitudes evoked in the interviews, which emphasise how individuals are responsible for improving themselves in order to succeed. All narrate their personal struggles and their tales of overcoming adversity, and, in addition to these stories of struggle and triumph, they urge the viewer to work hard, have ambition, be creative and take risks. For instance, Xu Bing admonishes the viewer to be ‘conscientious and creative’ and ‘to have desire and hunger for success’; Wang Yiyang proclaims ‘you must dedicate all your energy and all your passion to live life to the fullest’; Xiao Peng declares ‘you must know what you want as early as possible then use all your energy to pursue it and realise it’; Zhou Yunpeng states that it is necessary to ‘abandon anything safe, anything secure and anything familiar, then you will get ultimate freedom in life and your horizons become limitless’; and Zhao Zhong declares that ‘anyone who is fiercely determined and resilient can achieve success. Keep charging forward, you can be a hero too.’ In addition to these self-​help maxims stated in the interviews, the blog, available via their website www.johnniewalker.com.cn/​index.html, has an area for ‘Dream Discussions’ (梦想谈论), with the instructions ‘Express your journey; let’s change the world together’ (发表你的语路; 让我们一起改变世界), whereby the public can submit their personal ‘words of a journey’ to inspire others. Two of these submissions are as follows: ‘If you have a dream, you can believe. If you believe, you can do. If you do, do your best. Dream’ (有梦就会想. 想了就会做. 做了就会做好.《梦想》); and ‘Let yourself believe, step out into your own life’(让自己信起来, 踏出自己的人生). Similarly to the platitudes expressed in the interviews, these optimistic slogans also emphasise hard work, ambition, creativity and self-​determination; furthermore, they stress belief in finding one’s passions, hard work and self-​determination, thus stressing personal ability –​and personal responsibility –​to change. Thus, not only do these platitudes stress hyper-​ individualisation and self-​ improvement, but also the onus is put on the person to change, to become better. As Xiao Peng states in Words of a Journey, ‘The only thing I can do is wait patiently for a grand opportunity. But first, I need to be better myself in every aspect.’ Such a statement and this desire to better himself connect to the popular discourse surrounding the Chinese concept of suzhi (素质, ‘quality’), a belief that one can improve one’s ‘quality’ through education, hard work and determination, but only if one is also naturally ‘good enough’. It has its origin in the Confucian belief in improvement through self-​cultivation, but suzhi –​the belief in ‘bettering’ oneself through education and the cultivation of taste –​has become one of the new belief systems in the Reform era. Although it is difficult to define, suzhi includes corporeal ‘physical quality’ as well as cultural, psychological and consciousness-​related qualities (Yan 2003: 496), and, according to Gary Sigley, lies at the intersection of Marxism and neoliberal economic theory with the desire to ‘develop’ and ‘modernise’ people, thus combining ‘material and ethical substances that it is claimed can be known, calculated, and, in most cases, improved’ (Sigley 2009:  539, 555). It is ‘associated

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with educational credentials, high culture, science and technology, modernity, and progress’, and thus ‘offer[s]‌a conceptualization of hierarchy and status centered on human capital’ (Hsu 2007: 21). Furthermore, it is also part of a larger post-​Mao state-​led ‘developmentalism’, which Rachel Murphy argues supports and legitimates the Party’s reform and modernisation agenda, not as a top-​down effort, but as a responsibility of the individual, and thus ‘calls on people to take responsibility for their own welfare in a competitive world’ (Murphy 2004: 5). Although suzhi is supported by the state, it ultimately is an individual endeavour. As Sigley states, ‘one very important element within suzhi discourse is the capacity of individuals to act autonomously and to take upon themselves the task of self-​improvement’ (Sigley 2009: 544). Ann Anagnost argues that the term encompasses the ‘changing relationship between values and bodies’, particularly the way in which the body has become ‘a new frontier for capital accumulation’ during the transition to the neoliberal economy (Anagnost 2004: 189–​90). It has now become part of a general worldview; Hsu explains that suzhi has been part of a larger social discourse, writing that ‘[by] the end of the century, suzhi narratives had been co-​opted and adapted by the general population, becoming the ubiquitous language of distinction in Chinese society… [and suzhi] was used for everything from justifying educational reforms to selling nutritional supplements, from trumpeting real estate developments to denigrating litterbugs and short people…’ (Hsu 2007: 184). Finally, Sigley argues that it has ‘developed into a very large and complex discourse’, which ‘has been internalized to such a degree that it is now a part of a collective “common sense” ’ (Sigley 2009: 556). As Jia Zhangke remarks regarding Words of a Journey, ‘Each film tells the unique story of one person, where they came from, how they got to where they are today and what it is that inspires them to do what it is they do. Our hope is that these stories will inspire people to reflect upon and tell their own stories’ (Ogilvy and Mather Group 2011). Not only does this hearken back to the earlier inspirational Maoist class models, but also Words of a Journey reflects and emphasises the larger discourses surrounding suzhi. Furthermore, the interviewees not only declare the importance of self-​improvement and present themselves as successful models for personal emulation, but also provide in their interviews friendly advice on how to attain this success, thus the interviews become a kind of ‘self-​help’ that offers guidance on how to adapt to neoliberalism and seize opportunities. They advertise suzhi on a personal and an emotional level. In ‘Governing Citizens through Self-​Help Literature’, Heidi Marie Rimke uses Foucauldian theories on governmentality to argue that self-​help stresses the role of the individual and promotes a hyper-​individualism in which the individual is solely responsible for his or her condition, not the government or society, and that this belief in being able to ‘improve’ oneself through self-​modification reflects the belief that it is the self that needs changing, thus obligating the self to change. Regarding the first point, she argues that self-​help is ‘connected to the management and government of populations’, because it ‘shifts the necessity for social responsibilities to the domain of hyper-​ individual responsibility’ (Rimke 2000: 72). Rimke posits that self-​help discourse

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helps one to ‘invent’ and ‘script’ oneself, making one ‘governable, predictable, calculable, classifiable, self-​conscious, responsible, self-​regulatory and self-​determined’ (ibid.:  63). Thus, she states, ‘Constructed and acted upon as such, individuals are rendered entirely responsible for their failures as well as their successes, their despair as well as their happiness’ (ibid.). Furthermore, she argues that self-​help is an act ‘presumed to be voluntary and individualistic’, which ‘relies upon the principle of individuality and entails self-​modification and “improvement” ’ (ibid.:  62). People are therefore responsible for managing themselves, and thus ‘the self becomes an object of knowledge and a subject/​object of governance, not simply under the gaze of an expert acting at a distance but, most importantly, under the ever-​present gaze of one’s self ’ (ibid.: 68). Self-​help is not merely seen as an opportunity but is rather an obligation to help oneself, by ‘fetishiz[ing] the role played by liberty of choice in individual attempts to reshape the conduct of secular life’, instructing people that they ‘possess the ability to choose happiness over unhappiness, success over failure, and even health over illness’ (ibid.: 73). In Words of a Journey, the interviewees often state how they have changed or improved upon their flaws or situations in order to improve or become successful, usually through determination, ambition, or motivation –​or even, in Huang Doudou’s case, physically altering his body by stretching his limbs. They do not speak of these changes as being forced upon them, however; rather, they willingly suffered them in order to improve. Rimke argues that the socio-​political mandate of self-​help and its construction of a ‘hyper-​individual’ self therefore stipulates that ‘to be a responsible citizen means to be responsible for oneself, not others’ (ibid.: 67). In this light, the onus for change is not on the state (to fulfil its past socialist mandate to care for the people) but on individuals themselves to survive and flourish in the Reform economy. Yet, in Words of a Journey, it is a different type of self-​help –​a self-​help with ‘Chinese characteristics’, in that the hyper-​individuality is tempered to include responsibilities to society –​in Luo’s words, ‘make society a better place’. Such a mandate for both individual and social betterment connects to the concept of ‘Harmonious Society’ (和谐社会), which was invoked by the Party to ensure both its authority and the continuation of economic development by addressing the problems arising from China’s rapid economic changes. It was introduced by Hu Jintao when he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2002, and was later incorporated into the state’s eleventh five-​year plan (2006–​2010) and the country’s constitution (Chan 2008: 821). Hu defined it as a society that was ‘democratic and ruled by law, fair and just, trustworthy and fraternal, full of vitality, stable and orderly, and maintains harmony between man and nature’ (Hu 2005: 87–​9; cited in Chan 2008: 821). According to a white paper on the nation’s future development issued by the Information Office of the State Council on the 22 December 2005 (Dillon 2010: 417), the ambition of the programme was to mitigate social tensions arising from China’s high-​speed economic growth –​specifically the expanding gap between the rich and the poor and the declining social security system, which were believed to threaten the Party’s authority (Fan 2006) –​through developing goals of ‘common prosperity’ and creating a ‘well off society’ (Chan 2008: 821–​2).

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Like suzhi, the idea of Harmonious Society has also become a popular aspiration, one that is reflected in Words of a Journey. Many of the interviewees, as Luo Yonghao states, ‘make the world a better place’ via their work with orphans or the downtrodden, and through environmental initiatives. Furthermore, in his interview Pan advocates that material and spiritual wealth should be developed in tandem, stating that ‘material wealth is a kind of wealth, but it is certainly not everything. Material wealth and spiritual wealth are like the wings of a bird. If a bird has one wing it simply cannot fly.’ An even more direct connection with Harmonious Society is found on the SOHO website, which states that ‘The mission of SOHO China Foundation is to drive societal progress while promoting spiritual advancement. It is SOHO China’s belief that material and spiritual prosperity must develop in a balanced way’ (SOHO China n.d.). Finally, both suzhi and Harmonious Society connect to another state-​promoted narrative –​the ‘Chinese Dream’ (中国梦), which offers a new role for the individual in Chinese society. It was mentioned in November 2012 when Xi Jinping succeeded Hu Jintao as the Party’s leader (Stout 2013), in his speech ‘People’s Role Vital in Chinese Dream’ published in the China Daily on 25 March 2013. Xi explained that it emphasised resilience, the nation, the family, the individual and prosperity, declaring that ‘The Chinese people, resilient as they have been to hardships, have always valued the welfare of the family and the nation above everything else. The dream of making people happy and adding to their prosperity has been the dream of the nation as well as of every individual and family’ (Anon. 2013b). He stressed that people’s livelihoods have improved and that they will continue to do so due to ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ and the state’s ‘strategic reform’, and that, through individual and collective efforts, the people are working towards their ‘shared destiny’ (ibid.). He acknowledged that economic reforms have caused economic problems and a widening gap between the rich and the poor, but said that these problems would not be overcome until the nation had been ‘rejuvenated’ and that ‘[p]‌eople should consider themselves fortunate to be part of this country in these times of great change. And they have to fulfill their obligations to realize the Chinese Dream and become part of history’ (ibid.). Words of a Journey captures the realised and anticipated dreams of these entrepreneurs, and promotes them for both individual and group advancement –​the Chinese Dream made flesh in these entrepreneurial figures. To conclude, Words of a Journey not only markets a brand of liquor, but also captures and evokes the larger discourses of suzhi, Harmonious Society and the Chinese Dream that are currently operating in Chinese culture, society and politics. Similar to these discourses, the entrepreneurs’ e-​tales promote individual determination, independence and self-​improvement, valorise market liberalisation and the expansion of capitalism, and emphasise the benefits that economic reforms have brought. Furthermore, as a brand, that which is being marketed is aspirational; not only does it produce inspirational narratives, but also it promotes entrepreneurs as society’s new figures for emulation, who draw from the past Maoist class figures

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that inspired socialist viewers, but now in ways that are specifically capitalist and individualistic. The maxims voiced in Words of a Journey are the new slogans for the Reform era, created not by the former Maoist proletariat, but by the entrepreneurs, who incongruously look to neoliberalism to solve the problems of neoliberalism and not to the socialist state. This therefore mitigates the responsibility of the state to care for its citizens by instead transforming them into self-​sufficient members of society during a time in which the gap between rich and poor has disturbingly increased.

References Anagnost, Ann (2004). ‘The Corporeal Politics of Quality (suzhi)’, Public Culture, 16(2), 189–​208. Andreas, Joel (2009). Rise of the Red Engineers:The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Anon. (1996). ‘New Policies Bear Fruit’, South China Morning Post, 1 October, www. scmp.com/​article/​176195/​new-​policies-​bear-​fruit?spm=0.0.0.0.xiJ7gw, accessed 14 January 2017. Anon. (2013a). ‘Intl dialogue on Chinese Dream held in Shanghai’, China Daily, 7 December, http://​africa.chinadaily.com.cn/​china/​2013-​12/​07/​content_​17159570.htm, accessed 27 April 2014. Anon. (2013b). ‘People’s Role Vital in Chinese Dream’, China Daily, 25 March. www.chinadaily.com.cn/​opinion/​2013-​03/​25/​content_​16341585.htm, accessed 2 September 2013. Arvidsson, Adam (2006). Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture (London: Routledge). Brook, Stephen (2008). ‘Johnnie Walker Strolls Off with Three IPA Awards’, The Guardian, 4 November, www.theguardian.com/​media/​2008/​nov/​04/​advertising-​marketingandpr1, accessed 26 January 2013. Brook, Timothy (1998). The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press). Carrillo, Beatriz (2008). ‘From Coal Black to Hospital White: New Welfare Entrepreneurs and the Pursuit of a Cleaner Status’, in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China: Future Leaders, Present Lives (London: Routledge), pp. 99–​111. Chan, Kin-​man (2008). ‘Harmonious Society’, in Helmut K. Anheier and Stefan Toeper (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Civil Society (New York: Springer), pp. 821–​5. Dillon, Michael (2010). China: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris). Evans, Harriet and Stephanie Donald (1999). ‘Introduction’, in Harriet Evans and Stephanie Donald (eds.), Picturing Power in the People’s Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), pp. 1–​26. Fan, Maureen (2006). ‘China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority: “Harmonious Society” ’, Washington Post, 12 October, www.washingtonpost.com/​wp-​dyn/​content/​ article/​2006/​10/​11/​AR2006101101610.html, accessed 30 July 2013. Gerth, Karl (2008). ‘Consumption and Politics in Twentieth-​ Century China’, in Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Citizenship and Consumption (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 34–​50. Goodman, David S. G. and Xiaowei Zang (2008).‘The New Rich in China:The Dimensions of Social Change’, in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives (London: Routledge), pp. 1–​20.

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Guo,Yingjie (2008).‘Class, Stratum, and Group:The Politics of Description and Prescription’, in David S.  G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China: Future Leaders, Present Lives (London: Routledge), pp. 38–​52. Hong Kong International Film Society (2011). 35th Hong Kong International Film Festival Press Releases, 1 February, http://​35.hkiff.org.hk/​eng/​info/​press/​press_​release/​ 20110202.html, accessed 1 November 2016. Hsu, Carolyn L. (2007). Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status in China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Hu, Angang (2005). ‘Envisaging China’s Grand Strategy:The Ambitious Goal of a Prosperous People and a Powerful Nation’, Social Sciences in China, 26(4), 87–​9. Landsberger, Stefan (1995). Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Modernization (Amsterdam: Pepin Press). Murphy, Rachel (2004). ‘Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens: ‘Population Quality’ Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education’, The China Quarterly, 177, 1–​20. Ogilvy and Mather Group (2011). Johnnie Walker to Launch 12 Film Campaign, www. ogilvy.com/​News/​Press-​Releases/​January-​2011-​Johnnie-​Walker-​Keep-​Walking.aspx, accessed 20 November 2013. Rand (2010). Johnnie Walker + Han Han; ‘Sentiment Road’ China social media campaign, LittleRedBook.Cn, 15 December, no longer online. Rimke, Heidi Marie (2000). ‘Governing Citizens through Self-​help Literature’, Cultural Studies, 14(1), 61–​78. Rose, Nikolas (1999). Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edn. (London: Free Association Books). Sigley, Gary (2009). ‘Suzhi, the Body and the Fortunes of Technoscientific Reasoning in Contemporary China’, Positions, 17(3), 537–​66. Smith, Robert and Alistair R. Anderson (2004). ‘The Devil is in the E-​tale: Forms and Structures in the Entrepreneurial Narratives’, in Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert (eds.), Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), pp. 125–​43. SOHO China (n.d.). ‘Zhang Xin’, http://​eng.sohochina.com/​about/​en/​zhangxin.html, accessed 3 October 2013. Sokolowski, Jennifer (2011). ‘Johnnie Walker Celebrates Chinese Pioneers’, BrandChannel. Com, 3 February, http://​brandchannel.com/​2011/​02/​03/​johnnie-​walker-​celebrates-​ chinese-​pioneers/​, accessed 16 December 2016. Stout, Kristie Lu (2013). ‘Is Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” a Fantasy?’, CNN, 17 July, http://​edition.cnn.com/​2013/​05/​26/​world/​asia/​chinese-​dream-​xi-​jinping, accessed 2 September 2013. Wildau, Gabriel and Tom Mitchell (2016). ‘China Income Inequality among World’s Worst’, Financial Times, 14 January, www.ft.com/​content/​3c521faa-​baa6-​11e5-​a7cc-​ 280dfe875e28, accessed 17 December 2016. Wright, Jacob (2009). ‘APG Creative Strategy Awards –​Johnnie Walker “keep walking” by BBH Asia’, CampaignLive.Co.Uk, 18 August, www.campaignlive.co.uk/​features/​927734/​, accessed 6 January, 2013. Yan, Hairong (2003). ‘Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organizing suzhi/​ Value Flow through Labor Recruitment Networks’, Cultural Anthropology, 18(4), 493–​523. Yueh, Linda (2008). ‘China’s Entrepreneurs’, CentrePiece: The Magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance, 13(1), 15–​18.

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6 CAPITALIST REALISM IN EUROPEAN FILMS ABOUT DEBT Ewa Mazierska

This chapter will examine three European films about debt, all made around 2000: British Rogue Trader (1999), directed by James Dearden; French L’emploi du temps (Time Out, 2001), directed by Laurent Cantet; and Polish Dług (Debt, 1999), directed by Krzysztof Krauze. I will argue that in them debt is linked to neoliberalism, a political and economic system hegemonic in the period in which they are set. My definition of neoliberalism follows that of David Harvey and Melinda Cooper. Harvey defines neoliberalism as a political and economic system which came into being in the late 1970s to early 1980s in Western Europe, replacing embedded liberalism, and in the late 1980s to early 1990s in Eastern Europe, replacing state socialism. By the time these three films were made, neoliberalism had thus become a hegemonic system across the globe and achieved maturity. Its main characteristic is accumulation by dispossession. Such accumulation is achieved by (1)  privatisation and commodification of public assets; (2)  financialisation, in which any kind of good can be turned into an instrument of economic speculation; (3) the management and manipulation of crises; and (4) state redistribution, in which the state becomes an agent of the upward redistribution of wealth, including the poor countries subsidising the rich (Harvey 2005: 160–​2).The third point listed by Harvey, namely embracing crisis and chaos, rather than equilibrium, accounts for the main difference between neoliberalism and classical capitalism. As Melinda Cooper puts it, ‘What is neo about neoliberalism is its tendency to couple the idea of the self-​organizing economy with the necessity for continual crisis’ (Cooper 2008: 43–​4). The ideologues of neoliberalism, such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, agree with Marx that crisis is a structural feature of capitalism, but see it as a healthy phenomenon, as it allows for a regeneration of the economy. Under neoliberalism capital is ‘over-​accumulated’; the majority of the population has insufficient means to purchase goods placed in the market and there are few new markets to conquer. In such circumstances the only way to stimulate demand is

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through encouraging debt. At the same time, the neoliberal ideology promises rapid enrichment for those willing to take risks: the entrepreneurial individuals. A conservative attitude to the economy is regarded as a sign of weakness, as not living in tune with the times.The rapid development of technology (computers and mobile phones), which allows compression of space and time, adds to the expectation that under neoliberalism fortunes can be made very quickly. But, according to the logic of accumulation through dispossession, in order for these fortunes to be made by some, many have to lose. Consequently, neoliberal societies are deeply indebted. Apologists of neoliberalism (including politicians who introduce high fees for previously free services, such as university education and health), present debt as a normal or even a positive phenomenon, introducing a new dynamism into an economy and widening access to otherwise scarce goods. Unless there is a crisis, such as that affecting Greece for many years now, there is little public debate about the meaning of debt for individuals and whole societies and, especially, how enterprises and individuals can rid themselves of this burden and start afresh. At the same time, it is a well-​known fact that having debt limits one’s freedom and brings with it a plethora of problems. People who are in debt often cannot choose where they live and what job they perform and are under great strain to pay the interest. According to Maurizio Lazzarato, this constraining and commanding character is at the core of the neoliberal debt economy: ‘Debt acts as such a “capture”, “predation”, and “extraction” machine on the whole of society, as an instrument for macroeconomic prescription and management, and as a mechanism for income redistribution. It also functions as a mechanism for the production and “government” of collective and individual subjectivities’ (Lazzarato 2012: 30). ‘The debt economy is an economy of time and subjectivation in a specific sense … What matters is finance’s goal of reducing what will be to what is, that is, reducing the future and its possibilities to current power relations. From this perspective, all financial innovations have but one sole purpose: possessing the future in advance by objectivizing it. This objectivation is of a completely different order from that of labor time; objectivizing time, possessing it in advance, means subordinating all possibility of choice and decision which the future holds to the reproduction of capitalist power relations. In this way, debt appropriates not only the present labor time of wage-​earners and of the population in general, it also preempts non-​chronological time, each person’s future as well as the future of society as a whole.The principal explanation for the strange sensation of living in a society without time, without possibility, without foreseeable rupture, is debt’. (ibid.: 46–​7) In the three films the character typically borrows to widen his possibilities and ensure a prosperous future for his family and himself, but his debt leads to the opposite: diminished opportunities and oppression and eventually foreclosure of the future by some violent act either on the part of the character or by those to whom he owes money. Although each film is set in a different geographical setting and refers to a different type of debt, what I find remarkable is the fact that the characters have a similar mindset (they

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want to enrich themselves quickly) and behave in a similar way (escape), confirming Lazzarato’s point that debt shapes our future –​not by giving us extra power, but rather by disempowering us, by transferring control over our future to our creditors. The goal of this chapter is to show not only how debt and crises are presented in the respective films, but also how this representation reflects on (or fails to reflect) the dominant ideology in the countries and film industries where the films were made.

Casino capitalism in Rogue Trader Rogue Trader was directed by James Dearden, the son of a better-​known British director, Basil Dearden. Of the three directors considered here, Dearden can be described as the most mainstream/​closest to Hollywood. Before Rogue Trader his main source of fame was writing scripts for two American films, Fatal Attraction (1987) and A Kiss Before Dying (1991). In both movies sexual attraction collides with a more pragmatic consideration by a male character. Although there is a conflict in these films, they cannot be described as dramas, because of the low moral calibre of the characters. They do not suffer from moral anguish; they simply seek the best solution to their predicament. As I will argue, this is also the case with Rogue Trader. The films on which Dearden collaborated before, thanks to their camerawork and mise-​en-​scène, render wealth alluring. Even if the action condemns greed, the image in these films suggests that wealth is worth pursuing. Although these films do not engage overtly with politics, they are made from a perspective which, following Mark Fisher’s term, I will call ‘capitalist realist’. In them capitalism has become naturalised; there seems to be no alternative to it, not even in the human imagination (Fisher 2009: 2).This reflects the fact that, as Valerie Walkerdine and Peter Bansel argue, under neoliberalism, everything is subordinated to creating profit. Identity politics takes on a decidedly market formation and every decision, even of the most personal kind, is seen as economic and as a social determinant to success (Walkerdine and Bansel 2010; Wagner 2016: 46). Apart from Dearden, one co-​author of Rogue Trader was the ‘rogue trader’ himself, namely Nick Leeson, as the film was based on his autobiographical novel. Leeson was responsible for the collapse of Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in the UK, in 1995, with losses of £827,000,000. The executive producer was David Frost. In a perceptive review Tony Hyland described Frost in the following terms: ‘Frost was host and co-​producer of the satirical current affairs series in the 1960s, “That Was the Week that Was”. His career as a television interviewer was initially founded on asking searching questions of politicians and celebrities. Today, however, he is amongst the most servile and self-​satisfied of interviewers, reflecting his own contentment with a system that has made him very rich’ (Hyland 1999). Rogue Trader was made on a budget of £12,800,000, not breathtaking by Hollywood standards, but high for British cinema. In the main role was cast Ewan McGregor, an actor specialising in sympathetic characters, who are mischievous or even criminal, yet without losing the sympathy of the viewers. Typical from this perspective are two films of Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting

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(1996), where McGregor’s characters are selfish, greedy and accepting of the (capitalist) status quo, yet still very likeable. In these films, as in Rogue Trader, McGregor’s character is also the narrator of the film, which facilitates the viewer’s identification with his perspective and suppresses other voices in his story. Rogue Trader opens with Nick Leeson explaining how someone like him, a boy from Watford, rather than an Eton graduate, ended up working for the oldest merchant bank in the world: ‘Thanks to Maggie Thatcher’s deregulation of the City of London’. These words introduce Leeson as a type, which Keith Wagner, in the context of American cinema, describes as a ‘roughneck neoliberal’: a stockbroker coming from a working-​class background who tries to climb the social ladder no matter what the human cost may be (Wagner 2016: 47). Thatcherism is presented by Leeson as an egalitarian system, which dismantled class barriers, allowing everybody equal opportunities for social promotion, contrasting it with earlier versions of conservatism, which accepted and reinforced class inequalities, and with Labourism, which failed to dismantle the old system of inherited privileges. The first half of the film confirms this view, showing Leeson’s rapid promotion from the position of a clerk to that of the chief manager of Baring’s trade operations in Singapore, with a distinct chance of being ‘Baring’s vice-​king’ for the whole of Asia. Even if we agree that Thatcherism is presented by Dearden as a meritocracy, it shows that the route to success for members of the lower classes is through the old ‘colonies’, where opportunities to produce surplus value are higher than at home thanks to a higher level of exploitation. Leeson’s success, however, is ensured not by his deeper knowledge of the banking system and how the stock market operates, especially the futures in which he trades, but his assumption that there is no rationality in the market; the prices of shares go up and down randomly, in the same way certain numbers appear when one plays roulette. At some point he even compares the stock exchange to a casino, with him being the lucky player. To some extent Leeson is right, as the 1980s and 1990s often felt like that, with many fortunes made rapidly thanks to the internet boom and privatisation of the public assets. Comaroff and Comaroff in their discussion of ‘millennial capitalism’, which can be equated with late neoliberalism, following Susan Strange use the term ‘casino capitalism’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001: 7). It is worth mentioning that, in the films directed by Danny Boyle, McGregor played chancers who unexpectedly got hold of large sums of money and managed to invest them for their benefit. However, in a more stable market prices do not fluctuate to such an extent and, according to Marx, the prevailing tendency is of profit going down. Moreover, very high gains require extra scrutiny. In the case of Nick they are not linked to him making any real profit, but hiding his losses in a secret (error) account. This ‘profit’ is thus at the expense of plundering the bank’s assets. The rule that profit goes down should be known to Nick’s superiors, but they, all the way up to the chairman of Barings Bank, Peter Baring, disavow it, believing that Nick is operating in a special time (neoliberalism), in a special place (Asia, where capitalism accelerates), and is trading with a special good (futures) and with a special talent, all factors contributing to a higher profit. In Barings everybody is counting on his/​her bonus and it

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matters little how the bonus is achieved, as long as it is large and arrives on time. Leeson feels very strongly the pressure to fulfil such unrealistic expectations, which is exerted both by his superiors and by his wife. He feels more responsible for ensuring bonuses for his bosses than for creating profit for his bank. This pressure, however, leads to a crisis, both in the bank and in the protagonist’s life. He is increasingly stressed and unhappy, as reflected in his sweating, turning to alcohol, lying to people and even avoiding sex with his wife. Home, where in the previous epochs one could escape the toil and be ‘oneself ’ (Lefebvre 2002: 227–​9), for Leeson is not a place where he can escape work, but an extension of work, confirming Eva Illouz’s view that in capitalism ‘emotional life –​especially that of the middle classes –​follows the logic of economic relations and exchange’ (Illouz 2007: 5). For example, Leeson tells his wife the same stories he is telling his superiors because he is worried about being caught and ‘sacked’. She, on the other hand, while stating that she would always love him, loses no opportunity to praise him for his financial successes. She calls him a ‘hero’ (a term previously reserved for those who distinguished themselves on the battlefield) because he generates so much profit for his bank and the couple. From some point onwards Leeson is living on the edge of disaster. He even admits in his book, and one can sense it from the film, that, when he is eventually caught by the police, he feels relieved. The fact that he ends up in jail and his wife abandons him undermines the claim that Thatcherism rewarded meritocracy, because either Leeson was a meritocrat who was ultimately not rewarded, or he was a criminal, rather than a meritocrat. Whatever the interpretation, one can see a poignant contrast between the fate of Leeson and his superiors. Although they were as guilty as he of Baring’s bankruptcy, if not more, only he ended up in jail. Others only lost their jobs and were barred for some years from holding managerial positions or working in the banking system. As Tony Hyland writes in his review, ‘Even though Leeson’s fraud was practised in the London office of Barings and fell within the jurisdiction of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), it was decided not to bring him for trial in Britain. This cannot be explained as a purely legal decision, as the charges he would have faced were of a more serious nature in the UK. But the SFO determined that Singapore was more suitable. How much did saving the blushes of the establishment colour their decision? Barings was the “Queen’s own bank” and had very close ties to the then Conservative government’ (Hyland 1999). If we agree with this interpretation, then we can see Nick as a means through which the rich attempted to become super-​ rich, risking losing their money, but not their personal security.The history of Nick Leeson bears some similarity to that of Travis in O Lucky Man! (1973) by Lindsay Anderson, who worked for a British millionaire with complicated international operations, eventually being used as a scapegoat. However, unlike Anderson’s film, which condemns capitalism and colonialism, even while at the same time showing doubt that it can be replaced by socialism, Rogue Trader lacks a clear ideological position. On the one hand, it points to the great stress suffered by Nick as a result of his risky behaviour, and the heavy punishment for his misdemeanours. On the

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other hand, the film revels in the high life of its characters, suggesting that what Nick and Lisa could have achieved, given their low starting point, they managed to achieve; and the alternative of working in a low-​paid job in England, possibly as a plasterer in Watford, like Nick’s father, would be much worse. One might conjecture that the ‘adventurous’ life was ultimately superior. Such an impression is augmented by the visual style of the film, which emphasises the spectacle of affluent life: lounging next to the swimming pool, or driving fast in a red Porsche, bought by one of Leeson’s colleagues for a bonus which was in reality paid by money stolen by Nick from Barings. Although ultimately Nick lost because he could not go on stealing from Barings forever, the film multiplies the situations when he was about to be caught, but avoided it. For example, a female auditor came to Singapore from Baring’s headquarters to check on Nick’s operations, but she was called back to London before she had even started her work.The film thus emphasises the importance of luck among people dealing with money; the ‘casino’, irrational aspect of capitalist speculation. The authors of Rogue Trader appear oblivious to the social costs of the collapse of Barings Bank. We never learn who lost the £800,000,000 which Nick squandered by his reckless trading and, conversely, who gained it. Only our off-​screen knowledge about the way the neoliberal economy works suggests that the transfer took place according to the rule of ‘privatising the gains and socialising the losses’. The film accepts ‘capitalist realism’, which states that there is no alternative to capitalism, not even a milder capitalist alternative to such an extremely neoliberal ‘casino-​like’ version of capitalism, as we observe in the film. Those whose initial capital (real or human) is low, as was the case with Leeson, can progress only by gambling, sometimes with other people’s money and often with their own lives.

Rushing to the West via Debt Krzysztof Krauze (1953–​2014), the director of Debt, fits well the idea of a committed, politically minded director, of a type that was common in Eastern European cinema before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Had he been born fifteen or twenty years earlier, most likely he would have belonged to the paradigm known as the Cinema of Moral Concern, which put Poland on the cinematic map in the second half of the 1970s. Krauze’s cinema can be seen in the context of ‘social art cinema’, as discussed by David Forrest in relation to the British cinema of the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh: a cinema engaged with the social reality, yet revealing a distinct authorial stamp (Forrest 2013). As Forrest argues, drawing on Neale, such cinema is flourishing in countries where it is strongly subsidised by the state (ibid.: 7). Poland, as well as France, belongs to this category, unlike Britain, where social art cinema developed not because of but despite the state’s modest input into the production of films. It took Krauze some time to find his style. His first two full-​length fiction films, Nowy Jork, czwarta rano (New York, Four in the Morning, 1988) and Gry uliczne (Street Games, 1996), by his own accounts were failures. New York, Four in the Morning was

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a romantic comedy with a criminal element; Street Games referred to the mysterious death of a student and a member of the Polish anti-​communist opposition, Stanisław Pyjas, in 1977. In its use of cinematography and editing, complete with animated inserts, it draws attention away from the represented event, towards the issue of representation, and gives the impression of trying hard to woo a young audience brought up on MTV. Debt was meant to show that Krauze had learnt his lesson and opted for realism, in which what is represented is more important than its representation, as opposed to postmodernism, in which style overshadows substance. After Debt Krauze made several more films before his untimely death from cancer. One of them, Plac Zbawiciela (Saviour Square, 2006) also deals with the perils of the neoliberal economy, telling the story of a family which breaks into pieces after it has lost all its money investing in an apartment which is never built due to the bankruptcy of the developer. As with Rogue Trader, the roots of Debt are true events, concerning the accrual of a huge and somewhat abstract, intangible debt. However, before presenting the story in more detail, I shall consider the role of debt in Eastern European economics. Up to the 1970s debt, either personal or state, was a rare phenomenon in this part of Europe. This was because the system of state socialism was based on the principle of each country’s self-​sufficiency or at most one country being indebted to another within the socialist bloc, usually towards the Soviet Union. The socialist state was also hostile towards private enterprises for which credit is needed and discouraged private consumption, as an impediment to the growth of (especially) heavy and military industry, and the borrowing of money for such consumption. The approach promoted in official propaganda and through legislation was to make people accumulate their money and postpone gratification, to save for an apartment or a car, which in the West has been the main source of personal debt. This living forever with a savings book, as opposed to living in one’s apartment or driving one’s own car and paying for it for twenty years or more, led to deep frustration among those sentenced to such a life. There was a sense that ‘real life’ was forever being postponed and that living standards in the West were much higher than those in the East. The fall of state socialism changed that. Since then credit has been encouraged as a means to insert dynamism into the economy, increase the standard of living, catch up with the West and discipline the population by creating a ‘western-​style’ worker, who respects his or her job, knowing that losing it will not only worsen his or her economic position, but also endanger his or her most precious belongings, which have been purchased by borrowed money. The shift to neoliberalism in Eastern Europe, caused chiefly by the large-​scale privatisation of state assets, not unlike during the dot.com boom in the West, also created an impression that fortunes can be achieved very quickly. For some people, the old and the new power elites, who were the main beneficiaries of privatisation, and some entrepreneurial individuals, who took advantage of the many shortages inherited from the time when the ‘economy of shortages’ dominated in Poland before 1989, this was indeed the case. Many, however, not only failed to achieve prosperity but were dispossessed.

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Krauze’s film presents such an extreme case of dispossession. It is based on the true story of two budding businessmen, who in the 1990s set up a wholesale firm selling cosmetics, but lacked the capital to import the first consignment. As a result, they contacted an acquaintance, who promised to lend them the cash they lacked. He did not fulfil his promise, but demanded compensation for his effort and, when they were unable to pay it, increased their debt and, with his bodyguard, began a campaign of intimidation. At the end of their tether, the friends killed their oppressors, and cut off their heads so that the murder looked as if it had been committed by the Russian mafia. They were caught, and in 1997 received a sentence of 25  years in prison. Their story attracted the attention of some journalists, who argued that the punishment was too severe in proportion to the crime. Krauze shared this view and wanted his film to become a ‘socially engaged film’ (Lubelski 2007: 206–​14). As a social intervention Debt achieved success –​President Kwaśniewski pardoned one of the men in 2005 and his successor, President Kaczyński, granted a pardon to the other man in 2006, largely as a result of the outcry caused by the film. The style of Debt is ascetic, beginning like a ‘crime watch’ programme, with police arriving at the scene of the crime, trying to find out who had been killed and why. The main actors playing in Debt were at this point unknown, which helped audiences to see the characters as real people. The mise-​en-​scène is limited; there is no attempt to charm us with images of excessive consumption of the ‘young wolves’ of Polish business, which was a dominant way to represent the new, westernised Poland in the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As noted by

FIGURE 6.1:  The ‘young

Source: Screen grab.

wolves’ of Polish business in Debt by Krzysztof Krauze.

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Krzysztof Ociepa, the diegetic world on this occasion comes across as an extension of the real world (Ociepa 2003:  64). The soundtrack conveys melancholia, as if pointing to a loss which cannot be redeemed. The main characters are Adam and Stefan, two friends in their late twenties, whose main ambition is establishing a successful business, setting up a factory building scooters out of parts imported from Italy. The third partner is Tadeusz, nominally a student, but mostly a dealer in second-​hand cars. Adam and Stefan come across as amateurs, lured by the mirage of fast ‘postcommunist’ money.Yet, they are not into consumption for consumption’s sake. For them money is chiefly a means of being able to live an idealised bourgeois life. They want to have families and ensure their prosperity, and Adam wants to measure up to his father (whose position is not revealed in the film). Their ambitions render them easy prey for all sorts of unscrupulous people and institutions: ideal debtors.We meet them when a bank refuses them credit. Anxious that their plan may never materialise, they accept the offer of an acquaintance, Gerard, that he will contact, on their behalf, somebody who can guarantee their credit in exchange for paying this person a bribe. The transaction is not finalised, but Gerard asks the friends to pay his expenses of several thousand dollars.The story of Adam and Stefan finishes like the real story I already described. For sure, the film’s message is ‘don’t borrow money from debt sharks’. Debt also points to a failure of state institutions to help ordinary citizens to realise their potential and protect them against the violence of fellow citizens. We see this during the friends’ unsuccessful visit to the bank when an employee makes it clear to

FIGURE 6.2:   Adam

Source: Screen grab.

in Debt.

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them that in order to get credit one already has to have money. Poor people are thus automatically excluded from the opportunities of making money legally. This brings to mind the situation of Nick Leeson, who became a criminal to achieve success in banking. Another telling moment takes place when Adam and Stefan turn to the police, asking for protection against the extortionist, and the officer expresses his helplessness. However, the policemen prove very effective in finding Gerard’s killers, and the court punishes them harshly for what was ultimately a killing in self-​defence. Krauze also stresses the misdemeanours of Adam, Stefan and Tadeusz, and of the extortionist, as the cause of the final tragedy. The fault of Gerard comes across as greater than that of his killers, but they too are not free of guilt.The principal sins of the three aspiring businessmen are greed and impatience. Off-​screen the director described them as people who were anxious not to miss ‘the train to Europe’ (Chyb 1999: 105). Although the case depicted by Krauze is exceptional in its gruesome consequences, it represents well the logic of neoliberal capitalism, according to which those who do not use their credit (debt) wisely are reduced to slavery. This situation leads to violence, inflicted on those who cannot pay and, if they can muster enough courage and strength, on their oppressors. Krauze also shows that, paradoxically, although younger people have little knowledge of the Poland of the period of state socialism, they are less well adjusted to the circumstances of the market economy than their parents. This is because the older generation established itself during relatively stable times, meaning that they now own apartments and cars, and have steady jobs and good connections. Young people, on the other hand, must struggle to reach this level of prosperity and power. If Stefan and Adam had been prepared to wait longer to open their business, the father of one of them would have helped them by using his old connections, and instead of having a criminal debt they would have had legal credit. While pointing to the traps of postcommunist capitalism, at no point does the film advocate socialism in any form. Social ownership of the means of production is nowhere on the agenda; in the new, postcommunist economy everything is meant to be private. The speed of the ‘train to Europe’ even renders the old system of state socialism particularly backward and obsolete. Ultimately, the only barrier against the immorality of the excesses of capitalism is human decency, perhaps rooted in Catholic tradition. For Catholics the family has special importance. A model Catholic is more loyal to his family than to any other community. However, Krauze, not unlike Dearden in Rogue Trader, points to the role of family in inculcating capitalist values in young entrepreneurial people. Proving to their spouses and girlfriends that they are successful is an important factor causing all of the characters to sink deeper and deeper into crime and deception. In this sense the family environment is not unlike the work environment: neither here nor there can one afford to be a loser and tell the truth.

Circularity of debt in Time Out Laurent Cantet, in common with Krzysztof Krauze in Poland, belongs to the group of most respected filmmakers in his country –​France. He can also be described as

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a socially and politically committed director, largely thanks to this film, as well as Ressources humaines (Human Resources, 1999), which he shot before Time Out and Entre les murs (The Class, 2008), which he made afterwards. He also fits the idea of a creator of social art cinema, as described by Forrest, not unlike Krauze.Yet, in comparison with Debt, which conforms to the conventions of the thriller, Time Out has a looser structure. It is closest to road cinema, in which the route is more important than the destination and the action has no obvious progression (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2006: 119–​24). Time Out is based loosely on the story of Jean-​Claude Romand, a French man who for eighteen years deceived his family and friends that he was a successful medical professional and researcher in the World Health Organization (WHO). In reality, he spent his days wandering and used the free information services of the local WHO building, living off his wife’s salary and money borrowed from his relatives, who relied on his assurances that he was investing the money in foreign ventures. When the truth about his true status was about to be exposed, he killed his wife, their children and his parents. This happened in 1993. For his crime, he was sentenced to life imprisonment (O’Shaughnessy 2015: 59–​60). Cantet, in a way which reflects his status as an arthouse director, used less dramatic aspects of Romand’s life, leaving the murder out of his narrative (ibid.: 59–​60). Vincent in Time Out begins his cinematic life as a financial consultant: a job encapsulating neoliberal capitalism. His duty consists of telling customers how to invest their money or downsize to maximise their profit. A financial consultant has to balance the risks with the opportunities. He is not unlike the stock broker, although he does not operate on the stock exchange and works at a less frantic speed.This is reflected in the fact that Vincent spends much time travelling in his car, between meeting customers. He is significantly older than the characters in the two films discussed previously. While they are excited by the opportunities offered by neoliberalism, reflecting the fact that they are operating in new markets, where money changes hands particularly quickly, he comes across as not interested in excelling himself in his job or is already disillusioned about it. He knows that he will never become a millionaire and will have to work hard just to pay the mortgage. At work his face shows signs of fatigue. He thus can be described as an alienated worker in the Marxist sense, even if his tiredness is psychological rather than physical. This everyday tiredness is the most likely reason why he keeps missing appointments and spends more and more time driving his car. During these intervals he is partly excluded from the pressures of the neoliberal economy, but the price for such excursions is the loss of his job and a requirement to earn money in a different way. Vincent conceals from his family that he has been made redundant. From this perspective he is similar to the characters in the other films who also could not face their families in the situation of a financial crisis. O’Shaughnessy maintains, mirroring the observations made by Illouz about the penetration of capitalism into private lives, that ‘The home, the traditional place of privacy, is also somewhere where Vincent has to account for himself and seem convincing … L’emploi du temps shows that the family serves to evaluate behaviours and enforce conformism’

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FIGURE 6.3:  Vincent

in Time Out.

Source: Screen grab.

(O’Shaughnessy 2015: 80). When the truth about his job loss is revealed, he convinces his wife that he left his job to work in the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva, in a team advising developing countries. In reality he supports himself by persuading his relatives and friends to entrust him with their savings, which he embezzles. Meaningfully, he promises them that a high profit can be made by investing their money in some Eastern European schemes.The fact that they believe in such a narrative makes them similar to Nick Leeson’s employers and the young businessmen in Krauze’s film. The mindset of all these people is colonialist; they accept that at the margins of the neoliberal world the returns on investment are higher. By the same token, they accept that the level of exploitation can be higher there. Ultimately, Vincent’s victims turn out to be greedy and naïve in their trust that their capital will multiply forever. The embezzler then strikes a friendship with Jean-​Michel, a man smuggling counterfeited goods, who suggests that he join his business, thanks to which Vincent recoups his losses from his ‘investment schemes’. This man, played by Serge Livrozet, an ex-​convict, who collaborated with Michel Foucault to introduce prison reform, journalist and media personality (Vincendeau 2002: 30), is the most sympathetic character in Time Out. Unlike Vincent’s family and friends, Jean-​Michel understands Vincent’s situation and is able to help him. Also unlike the others, who strive for maximum profit, Jean-​Michel is an instinctive socialist, dividing the fruits of his and his collaborators’ labour evenly and even agreeing to give Vincent much more than he earned, as in the Marxist slogan ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’.

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There is a human touch to everything Jean-​Michel does. He knows the names of the people who work in the hotel, while for other customers they are anonymous, barely visible serving bodies. Owing to his trade in counterfeit goods and previous involvement in business and politics, which led to his imprisonment, Jean-​Michel better understands the nature of the whole neoliberal economic-​political complex. Presenting the counterfeiter as the most positive character in the film can be seen as Cantet’s criticism of the neoliberal enforcement of private property rights, especially in the form of the TRIPS agreement, which, as Melinda Cooper observes, ‘generalizes the exorbitant price demands of the United States’ most profitable and politically influential industry; Big Pharma’ (Cooper 2008: 55). Such stringent protection of ‘real products’ has tragic effects for the HIV sufferers in the Third World and practically for all the world’s poor. Ultimately, one conjectures, under capitalism, all production is fake because it is based on the concept of surplus value, hence the necessity of debt to sustain it. If Vincent got a job in the United Nations, it would also be within the neoliberal framework because helping developing countries amounts to forcing them to accept rules which lead to an increase in social inequalities and the destitution of already poor people by making them pay tribute to the countries which supposedly helped them by providing them with credit. The neoliberal order permeates not only the world of adults, but also that of children. Their education by teachers and parents follows the same pattern as the disciplining of their parents. This is shown in an episode in which Vincent observes his son’s judo training and gets excited during the tournament when the boy beats his opponent. Neither Vincent and his wife, nor their son, show any concern for the boy who lost the match. It transpires that the purpose of the culture in which they operate is the production of obedient, yet competitive bodies, who will be ashamed to be seen as losers. We also see Vincent telling his younger son never to sell anything for less than he can receive. The way Vincent’s children are educated, and everybody is talking about profit on their investments and career prospects, testifies to the dependence of capitalist development on people’s real and emotional investment in the neoliberal project, which blinds them to other possibilities and ultimately increases their debt. The film finishes with Vincent being interviewed and offered another job. In a way this is a happy ending, pointing to the fact that his ordeal of leading a double life is over. It feels even more like that in comparison with the end of Jean-​Claude Romand’s ‘career’. On the other hand, however, it suggests that there is no escape from the shackles of neoliberalism: one must forever pay one’s ‘debt’ towards this system. In his perceptive analysis of the film O’Shaughnessy pays particular attention to the last scene, noticing that, As he [Vincent] is scrutinised by the man opposite him, he is asked why he has taken such a long break from work. Erasing his escape attempt, he replies that he has been looking around for a job that would satisfy him fully. His interviewer accepts the reply. His company decided to invest heavily in a financial ‘adventure’ that Vincent may be asked to lead. It will expect him to

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FIGURE 6.4:   Aurélien

Recoing as Vincent.

Source: Screen grab.

invest fully in return. No longer merely selling his labour,Vincent is reconfigured as a self-​investment responding to an investment … The temporal reach of debt is able to extend the power of decentred, networked surveillance into the past and future. Tellingly, as Vincent feels the net closing on him, the camera slowly but inexorably tracks forward, making him more and more available for inspection, pinning him tightly in the frame. (O’Shaughnessy 2015: 82–​3) By and large, capitalism in this film is presented as a regime in which a worker pays for a certain standard of living with a loss of freedom and a fair amount of alienation and distress. There is no way to preserve this standard and feel relaxed and fulfilled, at least not if one wants to play the role of a responsible family man.

Conclusions The three films offer us a vision of reality in which capitalism is both dangerous, even deadly, and yet triumphant. It is deadly because those accepting its logic find themselves in a perilous situation, financially and psychologically. The majority of characters in these films, by accruing debt, end up dead or in jail, or avoid prison by only a small margin. The severity of the crime and the level of punishment reflect the class position of the characters. The less capital an aspiring entrepreneur possesses at the outset of his journey towards financial success, the greater his risk of

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accruing debt and the higher the price of repaying it.Yet, while the films point to the perils of debt and capitalism in a wider sense, they do not offer any alternative. Capitalism in them is the ‘only game in town’. Time Out also shows how this system is spreading to the less economically developed parts of the world under the pretence of offering them financial and logistical support. The omnipresence and hegemony of capitalism are reflected not only in the workplace but also in private lives. A home in these films is no longer a safe haven, but an extension of the neoliberal world. Often the characters feel most pressurised in their own homes to project an image of success, to impress one’s spouse, children, in-​laws or friends. As if to confirm this fact, the person who comes across as most liberated, Jean-​Michel in Time Out, is a single man. Although the author of none of these films is bold enough (or naïve enough) to offer us a future radically different from that described by the critics of neoliberalism, they differ in their approaches to this system. Dearden in Rogue Trader embraces it most enthusiastically, suggesting that ultimately it is a fair one, as it gives people from the lower classes opportunities which they otherwise would not have. Debt seems to advocate a more regulated capitalism, where wild, excessive accumulation and debt are curtailed and the state ensures capitalist fair play. Time Out seems to be most radical in rejecting the status quo and searching for alternatives, suggesting that some people can survive outside the system. These different approaches are reflected in the styles of these films, with Rogue Trader conforming most to the Hollywood model, Debt combining the characteristics of a thriller and a documentary, and Time Out eschewing genre cinema altogether.

References Chyb, Manana (1999). ‘Trzeba się pilnować’, Film, 11, pp. 104–​5. Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff (2001). ‘Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming’, in Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (eds.), Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press), pp. 1–​56. Cooper, Melinda (2008). Life as Surplus (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Fisher, Mark (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester,WA: Zero Books). Forrest, David (2013). Social Realism: Art, Nationhood, Politics (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hyland, Tony (1999). ‘Rogue Trader: A Film Deeply in Awe of the Market’, World Socialist Web Site, 27 July, www.wsws.org/​en/​articles/​1999/​07/​tra-​j27.html, accessed 15 February 2015. Illouz, Eva (2007). Cold Intimacies:The Making of Emotional Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity). Lazzarato, Maurizio (2012). The Making of the Indebted Man, trans. Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotexte(e)). Lefebvre, Henri (2002) [1958]. ‘Work and Leisure in Everyday Life’, in Ben Highmore (ed.), The Everyday Life Reader (London: Routledge), pp. 225–​36. Lubelski, Tadeusz (2007). ‘Krzysztof Krauze –​młodszy brat kina moralnego niepokoju’, in Grażyna Stachówna and Bogusław Zmudziński (eds.), Autorzy kina polskiego, Volume 3 (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego), pp. 195–​219.

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Mazierska, Ewa and Laura Rascaroli (2006). Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie (London: Wallflower). Ociepa, Krzysztof (2003). ‘Strategie autorskie Krzysztofa Krauzego (na przykładzie Gier ulicznych i Długu)’, in Konrad Klejsa and Tomasz Kłys (eds.), Film: fabryka emocji (Cracow: Rabid), pp. 47–​67. O’Shaughnessy, Martin (2015). Laurent Cantet (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Vincendeau, Ginette (2002). ‘White Collar Blues’, Sight and Sound, 4, pp. 30–​2. Wagner, Keith B. (2016). ‘Giving Form to Finance Culture: Neoliberal Denizens in Wall Street (1987), Boiler Room (2000) and Margin Call (2011)’, Journal of Film and Video, 2, pp. 46–​60. Walkerdine, Valerie and Peter Bansel (2010). ‘Neoliberalism, Work and Subjectivity: Towards  a  More Complex Account’, in Margaret Wetherell and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Identities (London: Sage), pp. 492–​507.

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7 BYPASS, OBSCURE FORCES AND ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY Paul Dave

This essay seeks to go beyond the positions adopted in academic debates concerning the aesthetics and politics of contemporary British social realist film. It seeks to do so with reference to a recent film which helps to focus these debates, Duane Hopkins’ Bypass (2015). A good place to start opening up this film is with David Forrest’s argument that Ken Loach’s instrumentalised use of style in the service of class politics can be contrasted with those recent social realist directors whose work is ‘thematically diverse, expressive, ambiguous and author driven’ (Forrest 2013: 31). Forrest is thinking of figures such as Lynne Ramsay, Shane Meadows, Paweł Pawlikowski, Andrea Arnold, Samantha Morton and Duane Hopkins. He views this contemporary ‘New Realism’ as a liberation from the confining narrowness of ‘socio-​political didacticism’ (Forrest 2013: 31). In this way, British social realism joins a global realist cinema of auteurs. Most commentators agree with Forrest that British social realism has changed, becoming more aesthetically self-​conscious and less engaged with what Forrest refers to as ‘leftist propaganda’ (Forrest 2013: 3). However, for some, these changes are far from positive ones. Clive Nwonka, for instance, sees this New Realism as decontextualised, de-​politicised, sentimentalised naturalism that reproduces character studies of the working class –​individualising and moralising its subjects and isolating the predicaments of their lives from causal, determining socio-​economic structures (Nwonka 2014). He has in mind critically feted recent films such as Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant (2013) and Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009). In particular, Nwonka takes these directors to task for focusing on intra-​class conflict as opposed to inter-​class struggle or the ‘antagonistic relationship of the social structure and the protagonists that determines their life choice and behaviour’ (Nwonka 2014: 215). Whilst I sympathise with Nwonka’s advocacy of a politically motivated social realist aesthetic focused on ‘the possibility of struggle and change’, there nevertheless may well be conjunctural reasons for what he sees as lamentable aesthetic

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departures from his preferred Lukácsian realism with its dramatisation of the contradictions based in social relations (Nwonka 2014: 216). Despite Nwonka’s scepticism, there may be other, more positive ways we might understand the cultural politics of New Realism. For instance, I have argued elsewhere that some of the filmmakers covered approvingly by Forrest are no less engaged than Loach with the political consequences of the determining socio-​economic forces of neoliberalism (Dave 2011). But at the same time it seems probable that my own interest in the representation of internal working-​class conflicts and the difficulty currently in re-​grounding a working-​class ‘common culture’, would for Nwonka concede too much to what he sees as a social realist cinema beset with depoliticising and decontextualising forces. Despite the differences between Forrest and Nwonka, both make assumptions about the ‘social’ in social realism that are insufficiently historicised and/​or politicised. For Forrest, the social is often reified as that which remains unchanging or constant (what he refers to as ‘traditional thematic concerns’) whilst it is aesthetic strategies that shift and are alive (responding to expressive techniques of art cinema) (Forrest 2013: 32). This forestalls the need to both consider the nature and the extent of the changes in social relationships under neoliberalism alongside the fine grain of the relationship of the aesthetic changes which Forrest describes to these socio-​economic developments. This is of a piece with Forrest’s undialectical oppositions between content and form, art and politics. Nwonka’s guiding assumption is that the social substance, as traditionally theorised in Marxism, with its antagonistic class relationships, remains largely unaffected and available for politicisation through traditional cultural strategies of realism. This is not to argue that the classic Marxist analysis of the nature of the social bond under capitalism is any less relevant. However, when Nwonka complains that new social realism ‘undermines’ the ‘class significance’ of its social representations by placing too much emphasis on ‘conflict within working-​class communities’ and too little on the wider origins of social inequality, he is ignoring the degree to which these conflicts within struggling working-​class communities have become critical under mature neoliberal post-​ industrial conditions (Nwonka 2014: 220). There are critical discussions of contemporary realism in world cinema that usefully supplement the debate I  have just outlined in British film studies. For instance,Thomas Elsaesser offers an account of aesthetic changes in the realist mode common to many world cinema auteurs –​including British ones. His list includes, among others, Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar-​ Wai, Carlos Reygadas, Michael Winterbottom, Werner Herzog, Guillermo del Toro, Jane Campion, Alejandro Amenábar, Catherine Breillat and Lynne Ramsay (Elsaesser 2009). There is support here for Forrest’s argument concerning the relationship of British New Realism to international art cinema. However, Elsaesser’s interest lies in the crucial issue of the relationship of realism’s established epistemological imperatives to a renewed interest in matters ontological in world cinema. This is interesting because in the British context detractors and admirers of social realism alike often link the aesthetic features of the films to a particular epistemological attitude. Thus a film that

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is ‘gritty’, ‘raw’, with ‘no frills’ –​or an aesthetically direct/​efficient style transparent to the intrinsically shocking power of the subject matter –​is often assumed to result from the cognitive drive of a crude, naïve English empiricism. We might sum up this particular straw target thus: traditional or vulgar social realism believes that to see is to know is to change. This imputed belief, however, is hard to imagine anyone holding in an era when the phenomenon of ‘poverty porn’ is widely commented on as an adjunct to such hegemonic realist forms as Reality TV. We might, in the light of shows like Channel 4’s Benefits Street, reformulate the imputed trap of such realist forms in this way: to see is to enjoy what we already know and what we don’t expect to change. But if naïve realism is not what it once was, the general suspicion of realism is no longer driven by the fearful warnings tirelessly repeated in postmodern constructivism –​that is to say, the philosophical position that insists that all representations are culturally coded and do not reflect external realities. This epistemological scepticism, which in film culture found its counterweight in the presumed naïvety of a Bazinian photographic ontological realism, is now clearly waning. As Elsaesser observes, a renewed, non-​positivist interest in the way filmic representations reference the world and an acceptance that not everything is culturally constructed is unmistakable (Elsaesser 2009: 7–​8). This pull towards what was once kept securely in the scare quotes of the inaccessible, unknowable natural domain is, however, not to be understood as a simple rejection of constructivism. For Elsaesser the New Realism of world cinema sees our shared illusions as necessary and negotiable, giving us a ‘post-​epistemological ontology’ of subjectivity and the social (Elsaesser 2009: 6). It is in this way that Elsaesser provides a convincing account of key textual features of contemporary realism in world cinema. For instance, he cites two characteristics that will be important in our analysis of Bypass: characters who endure a systematic disordering and extension of conventional sensory and mental capacities; and the utilisation of what he calls post-​mortem situations involving apparently impossible exchanges between the living and dead. The upshot of these frequently repeated character types and situations is to create a more expansive sense of consciousness, subjectivity and identity. Released from the confines of the solipsism that epistemological scepticism can trigger, the subject is relocated within a wider world of things and others. In this way, our apprehension of reality becomes much more complex than it could ever be under constructivist scepticism, but so too does our sense of our own essential nature. For instance, Elsaesser describes characters in New Realist world cinema acting ‘as if ’ post-​mortem situations that bring living and dead together are normal –​despite transgressing the laws of physics and/​or psychological verisimilitude. He adds that these enactments of trust and mutual confirmation between characters in such unusual circumstances, far from being evidence of solipsistic game playing, are in fact ‘the very condition of keeping the world “real” or “consistent” ’ (Elsaesser 2009: 10). This ontological turn in world cinema might be related to the political concerns and frustrations of Nwonka. That is to say, whilst Nwonka is dismayed by an epistemological deficit in British New Realism (often we are not being shown

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the wider picture, the structures of socio-​economic exploitation that impact on character choice and disposition –​a criticism which may well have validity in the examples he studies), he nevertheless fails to give enough attention to the degree to which these films’ lingering on ‘tabloid caricatures’ (Nwonka 2014: 213) or vividly isolated character sketches of the working class points to the ideological dilemma represented by ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009). This is Mark Fisher’s term for a capitalism that has become, precisely, an untranscendable, natural horizon. Insofar as New British Realism’s gallery of characters becomes one-​dimensional, associated with behaviourist reflexes, stuck in the profiles of what Imogen Tyler refers to as neoliberalism’s ‘dirty ontologies’ of class, such films foreground a dilemma for a form which traditionally seeks to invest in struggle and change but which is now gripped by the spectacle of its supposed impossibility (Tyler 2008). And furthermore, to the extent that this profound naturalisation of capitalism becomes hegemonic, intruding in this way into the social realist form, then any stirring of the spirit of transcendence may well announce itself by a degree of what Elsaesser refers to as ‘ontological unrest’ (Elsaesser 2009: 8). That is to say, questions about ontology become essential in an era in which the very possibility of imagining change is doubted. If not competitive individualism, and the drive to find solitary solutions to collective problems –​the ‘business ontology’ of capitalist realism –​what else is at the human subjective and social core (Fisher 2009: 17)? And how do we encounter within ourselves the resources for change, assuming it is within our power to activate them? Let us now turn to Bypass and see how it helps frame possible answers to these questions.

Aesthetics and politics Tim belongs to a working-​class family that has fallen apart: mother dead; father left home; elder brother Greg in prison and sister playing truant. It is Tim’s job to bring in the money and keep the bailiffs out, which he does through criminal means –​as a fence and, later, a drug courier. The criminal milieu Tim inherits from Greg is one in which working-​class communities are shown to often fall victim to the depredations of their own –​Greg is shown unwittingly robbing the house of someone related to the partner of his own criminal associate. In addition to these problems and dangers, Tim is suffering from a serious undiagnosed illness which he leaves untreated. His girlfriend, Lily, is pregnant, but, already forced by circumstances into the position of acting as a parent to his own younger sister,Tim is unwilling to become a father. He remains, in name, a son, grandson and brother. But the substance of these relationships is denied him by absence or death. Eventually, he succumbs to his illness and is rushed to hospital for life-​saving surgery. In a flashforward Lily is shown giving birth to his baby and he appears happy and reconciled to being a father. The issues that preoccupy the film are the following: how does the social bond survive amidst the accumulation of harms flourishing under neoliberal regimes; what are the dilemmas faced by contemporary working-​class youth in the face of

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FIGURE 7.1:   Ben

Dilloway as Greg. Source: Photo courtesy of the filmmaker.

this neoliberal problem of the social, and do these dilemmas cast doubt on the very possibility of a working-​class coming of age; and finally, outside older, dismantled sustaining social structures, how can working-​class communities, families and individuals access the means of resisting neoliberal regimes? As the title of the film suggests, this is a story about what is bypassed. And this master metaphor has, of course, many faces. But the structure of the idea is clear enough, and its general import can be understood in the distance the film takes from the principal road form of the metaphor. With the latter, bypassing suggests smooth convenience, a problem avoided, an elegant curving away from congestion, traffic, trouble, blockage, which is a neoliberal escape fantasy par excellence. It is precisely this idea that the film ironises by situating it within the framework of class experience. In Hopkins’ film, in other words, the bypass, in its function of offering advantageous avoidance, is unavailable. Or rather, Hopkins shows how bypassing is a class-​inflected experience. For working-​class youths, such as Tim, what is bypassed is lost: the stability of certain core social and familial relations through which the individual can develop. To turn the metaphor around, then –​there is the smooth road and there is the rough place. The bypassers and the bypassed. Being bypassed, or missing out, needs to be understood as an interruption inflicted on the working-​class life-​story. The film lays down that older pattern at the start. The generational transmission of skills and jobs (football and welding) celebrated by the circle of drinkers in the working men’s club recalls a lineage stretching from great grandfather to great grandson. Against the background of such continuities, bypassing captures a condition in which such men find themselves out of synch with the desired or expected sequencing of the story of their own life and in which a confidence about the future is impossible. These are life

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FIGURE 7.2:   Donald

Sumpter as Granddad. Source: Photo courtesy of the filmmaker.

trajectories which come to grief because necessary steps must be skipped. The way of the world no longer offers initiation or meaningful apprenticeship. Instead contemporary necessities have become so intrusive that young people can no longer go at their own pace, building themselves up, refining their desires, making themselves ready for their futures. The figure of the bypass, then, is Hopkins’ original, poetic trope summing up some obscure force, one operating according to an almost fairy-​ tale fatality that is imposed on individuals, families and communities, producing a sense of loss, disconnection, out-​of-​placeness, broken continuity and substitution. Indeed, in this film, bypassing is the radical disordering and disabling of an entire socio-​symbolic order. Siblings become parents; the dead return to guide the living; the sick seek no cure; what should be shared is borne alone; and what should be passed on in terms of tradition is passed over. The source of this mysterious agency is neoliberalism –​but it needs to be recognised that it is not political or even socio-​economic causes that Hopkins is interested in detailing and exploring. That is not to say that these structural causes are ignored. Indeed, they are acknowledged in the opening scenes between Greg and his grandfather, and in a later scene between Greg and Tim in which a rare panoramic shot of the city shot from Greg’s workplace is glossed in terms of the decline of the steel industry and its relationship to their family history. The contentious political economy of de-​industrialisation is, however, not just distant in time, but also remains un-​immediate in experience. We might imagine that as an immediate horizon it might have stopped resonating with Greg and Tim’s disappeared father. But if the ruptural moment of de-​industrialisation has passed, so too has a particular narrative of post-​industrial regeneration –​captured in the 1990s with the comic social realism of working-​class escape, the New Labourite Third Way films,

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all the leaping Billys and the crazy Montys, propaganda for Cool Britannia. Equally, the tragic social realism of the disillusionment following 1997 in the new millennium is not at the centre of the film (although this is one way of understanding the peculiar presence of the film’s parental ghosts, locked into such a tragedy –​but these ghosts are complex figures, as we shall see later). So, Forrest would be right in arguing that, here, a certain kind of politics, that of class struggle, is missing, relegated to the background, but he would be wrong in assuming that this is because of a principally aesthetic re-​focusing. Rather what Bypass seeks to understand is the enigma of the contemporary neoliberal real, which, it needs to be stressed, can be disorienting, especially if we try to confine it within available frameworks. For instance, neoliberal bypassing is far too subtle a process to be understood as simple post-​industrial abandonment of industrial labour. Nor can it be fully understood as social exclusion (Winlow and Hall 2013). Ideas of abandonment and exclusion or even venerable capitalist ideologies of idleness clearly do not capture the experiences represented in the film. The bypassed generation of Tim and Greg is not a ‘lost’ generation, it is one that has never been busier –​just as Greg is referred to as a ‘good worker’, so Tim is recognised to be a ‘grafter’. Indeed, as Tim’s crime boss puts it before sending him out to complete a task which ends with a beating, this is a world in which the ‘wheels of industry’ continue to turn relentlessly. Terminal visions of post-​industrialisation are then in some ways unhelpful when it comes to understanding the neoliberal present in which capitalist realism offers no respite, not even for the economically superfluous. Clearly in making this argument the film is resisting any absolute division between the formal and informal economies, and instead places crime and capitalism within the same frame. Tim is included in a social that represents little more than the chaotic flux of a Hobbesian competitive individualist nightmare. But, so we don’t assume that this is a distinct, pathological world of crime, separate from some functional, civilised world of capitalism, the film persistently transcodes signs of civility and criminality. Thus, just as crime bosses sagely refer to the ‘wheels of industry’ and worry about divisions between private time, public obligation and punctuality, so gang members refer to distinctions between professionals and part-​ timers to legitimise violent hierarchies and at the same time use the idiom of friendship and sociability –​‘take care, look after yourself ’ one of Tim’s criminal assailants advises him. Perhaps the best example of this process of transcoding is the representation of the bailiffs. Entrepreneurial thieves dressed in suits and ties, they knock politely and respectfully using formal titles and pushing formally worded letters through Tim’s letterbox. After they have finally gained access, the shots of emptied rooms present visual evidence indistinguishable from burglary. Such images help to sum up what Steve Hall calls ‘pseudo-​pacification’ (Hall 2012a: 84). Capitalist modernity is misrecognised as the historical product of the so-​called ‘civilising process’; instead for Hall it simply stimulates and institutionalises competitive accumulative desires, minimally insulating their anti-​social effects, which are then sheathed in flimsy structures of norms and laws that we call civilisation.The discussion of the debtor’s legal rights between Tim and his social worker is a comical exposé of this

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pseudo-​pacified culture.The bailiff needs an invitation to enter –​he is restrained by the forces of law and order that protect the debtor; however, that invitation can be bypassed if the door is left unlocked. The unlocked door invites the bailiff to turn burglar with the blessing of the law –​a privilege denied the vampire, that other figure of capitalism in action. The vampire’s need to be invited in seems quaint in the neoliberal era. What the film presents us with is paradoxical (exclusion as inclusion; an apparently functional dysfunctional archipelago of harm), and this signals its determination to get into focus precise contemporary dilemmas in working-​class existence. At the same time, much in it appears to be historically familiar –​as befits the peculiar retro-​temporality of neoliberalism itself. For instance, bypassing, especially as it impacts on the young, has a long class history. Think of the child-​workers of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that working-​class childhood, or adolescence, started to acquire some recognition. But we need to remember the historical exception this moment represents. In the cultural traditions of the nineteenth century, for instance, in the realist novel, adolescence was an experience that belonged purely to bourgeois life stories. What made the British social realist films of the late 1950s and early 1960s fascinating in this respect was their exploration of a working-​class coming of age made possible by the same postwar cultural, economic and demographic shift that produced the teenager (the baby-​boomers of social democracy). Of course, the young male protagonists of the New Wave often sought escape from working-​class socialisation –​according to the ideally integrative logic of the classic bourgeois Bildung, this was therefore no socialisation at all. But if working-​class individuals of the New Wave sought to escape from the working class, in our period escape is sought by the capitalist class. But it is escape not just from the working class –​a perennial dream of the capitalist –​but also from the social itself. I wish at this point to bring in Hollywood for the purposes of comparison and clarification of what I see as different inflections of these narratives of class and the social. At the same time, I would like to consider an aspect of film style which seems critical both to Hopkins’ work and to this issue of the class-​based experience of the social under neoliberalism. Recently Kristen Whissel has persuasively suggested a link between what she calls the ‘new verticality’ of the Hollywood blockbuster’s ‘digital special effects emblem’ and the experience of economic and political polarisation that we associate with neoliberalism (Whissel 2014: 28). Hollywood, in the last twenty years, has appeared to take on the task of registering, in non-​verisimilar, often mythic or epic forms, the struggle of such polarised forces. This dynamic is condensed emblematically into repeated special effects figures which, in the instance of the device she refers to as ‘new verticality’, locate characters and narrative events poised in landscapes stretching from the dizzying heights to the darkest deeps. The vertigo of this kind of exhilaration can be seen across a wide range of mainstream genres, and Whissel interprets this emblematic device in terms of a dramatisation of the individual’s relationship to ‘powerful historical forces’ (Whissel 2014: 26), or to struggles over ‘desired or thwarted’

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change in the ‘course of history’ itself (ibid.: 45). In this way, we might argue, for instance, that the delirious freedoms, the defiance of the laws of time and space, captured by ‘new verticality’ figure, in part, the escape velocities of the neoliberal capitalist class whose dominance has led to the stretching of the social structure, such that distant, cocooned elites float in all the magnificence of their material and symbolic power above a disregarded human mess whose abandonment is now seen as a given. Think, for instance, of Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) or District 9 (2009). If this is taken as the mediated context for all these sporting gravity-​defying plunges and ascents, then it might be necessary to qualify Whissel’s account of the representation of history through this figure of ‘new verticality’. This energetic, epic world of momentous, imminent change acquires its spectacular vividness in the context of a stalled history. The figurative re-​inscription of grand narratives of political class polarisation –​this would include the emblem Whissel refers to as the ‘digital multitude’, which features so prominently in science-​fiction and fantasy films with their grandiose apocalyptic battles –​feeds off a broken dialectic. After all, ‘new verticality’ also suggests the agon of modernity (class struggle or revolution for instance), whereas it is a frequently noted characteristic of the contemporary world that there is a fundamental lack of engagement between master and slave, rich and poor, and that this represents a broken or arrested dialectic (Winlow and Hall 2013). The wealthy elite of the neoliberal moment simply don’t perceive any need to engage politically with the impoverished masses. The once socially and politically charged space between the two poles has thinned and dissipated; Hollywood special effects re-​animate it. An intriguing extension, then, of Whissel’s work would be the exploration of these dynamics outside of the Hollywood mainstream. What evidence is there of a distinctive, contemporary social realist horizontality? Obviously, we are not talking about expensive special effects now, but more prosaic dimensions of cinematography such as the tracking shot. If new verticality often represents a postmodern kinetic, sublime bypassing of the social –​the ground on which history turns –​then horizontality has an important relationship to modernity. Indeed, Whissel offers a useful periodisation here, pointing out that, up to the late 1980s, early 1990s, ‘cinematic-​being-​in-​the world’ was anchored on the horizontal plane, and this helps us to fix quite precisely the relationship of new verticality to neoliberal polarisations (Whissel 2014: 28). But equally, it prompts us to think carefully about the horizontality of the contemporary tracking shot in social realism as a potential mediation of neoliberal dynamics. If generally the pre-​1980s tracking shot often expressed, in its delight in free-​flowing motion, certain utopian possibilities –​think of the French New Wave or the MGM musical of the Kelly–​Donen era – or if we link the shot, as Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan do in their study of 1970s liberal New Hollywood, to that aspect of realism that has been closely associated with metonymic modes of representation and, as they put it, ‘a certain sense of the world, a more egalitarian or horizontal and contextual phenomenal reality’, then we have to recognise the rarity of any such contemporary uses other, I think, than in music video, in which, along the lines established by, say, Massive Attack’s Unfinished

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Sympathy, the tracking shot remains a common way of suggesting a working-​class collective being-​in-​the-​world (Ryan and Kellner 1988: 94). Horizontality, then, as a figure, is closely related to the radical, even revolutionary twentieth-​century concept of the everyday –​‘the complex web of material, metonymic connections’ linking characters to one another and to their environments in such a way as to suggest commonalities, equality of being and mutual interests (Ryan and Kellner 1988: 94). It should immediately be apparent, when we turn to consider the social realist form, that the figure of horizontality resonates with normative aspects of the social which are at play in my argument. Later I will seek to make a defence of this normative order in which an authentic social requires a dependable sense of inclusion or belonging, a presumption of equality, and abiding guarantees of solidarity, trust and security. What I  am exploring, with the help of Hopkins’ film, this obscure force of bypassing, obviously works to undermine, disorder and empty out these defining social values. How then, does a consideration of that privileged aesthetic figure of horizontality, the tracking shot, assist us in this exploration of bypassing? Briefly, I would like to consider three instances, across both Bypass and Better Things (2008) –​Hopkins’ earlier feature film. Firstly, a group of shots which form a motif: Tim on his BMX; secondly, the early foot chase of Greg by the police; and thirdly, another group of tracking shots, taken from inside moving cars, which form a motif in Better Things. The tracking shots of Tim, particularly those of him at work as a fence, are characterised by tight framing. Every tracking shot, depending on how it is framed, has the potential to unfurl more or less of the pro-​filmic space before the camera. Travelling shots from moving vehicles, for instance, are often used to give us panoramic views. The shots of Tim on his bike, however, are closely framed, restricting our view of the space into which he is moving. Even when shot from behind, the view ahead is obscured (by using Tim’s own back to obstruct our vision).We might say then that here off-​screen space intrudes itself into our consciousness because it systematically remains off-​screen. Crucially, the combination of motion and a restricted view which is side-​on to the direction of that motion creates not just an uneasy sensation of being deprived access to off-​screen space, but also a feeling of vulnerability, naturally intensified in a narrative context of crime in which we are primed to expect danger –​or, even more prosaically, of the fear of collision. The repeated use of this shot suggests an uncomfortable sense of imminence –​the fact that nothing happens does not alleviate our sense that it may, at any moment. This then is not new verticality’s dramatic imminence of historical change, the peripeteia of epochal shifts, the dawns of new eras, but the imminence of an internally generated breakdown of the individual’s relationship to the everyday and the social. This pressure –​of uncertainty and danger –​is underlined in the key early scene of the foot chase (Greg pursued by police). Apart from the section in this chase shot with a telephoto lens where the compression of the planes of action leaves Greg and his policeman pursuer framed in a single shot, this sequence is remarkable for the moment when Greg stops on what appears from his reactions to be a panoramic summit. This wider view is also withheld from us by tight framing, which

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in turn intensifies our sense of the approaching off-​screen threat of the pursuer. We are then forced to witness a blow that Greg is unprepared for –​absorbed as he has become during the chase in the memory of his interrupted dream –​and whose timing is withheld from us by the framing. With the effect of the blow detached from its embedding in cause–​effect sequencing, the legitimacy of the social function of policing is problematised. As is often noted, policing in the British context has, in the past, been an established index of social unity. The disproportionality of the blow –​falling on the head of an unprepared man no longer in flight –​in the context of the systemic class injustices of neoliberalism, strongly suggests a social struggling for legitimacy. That Hopkins is setting out to systematically elicit similarly unsettling effects can be confirmed by the use of the tracking shot in Better Things. Here it is often used from inside moving vehicles, both head-​on to the direction of movement and side-​ on, and is at times accompanied by a manipulation of the sound track. Exaggerated revving engine noise alerts us to the anxiety of speed and the potential for collision. However, this is accompanied by moments when the ambient diegetic sound is removed totally –​a rare use of silence –​leaving us in a speeding car, travelling on unsighted, country lanes, but listening to the gentle, calming clarity of affectless voices and spare dialogue. This relief on the soundtrack disembodies and pacifies the sense of jeopardy conveyed visually. Nevertheless, the peculiarly affectless voices, suggestive of states of dissociation or irrealisation, also conjure up the romantic-​ melancholic, suicidal compulsions the film is exploring, thereby re-​introducing the abiding affect of anxiety. To sum up then, Hopkins’ adaptation of the tracking shot condenses an inhibiting sense of the imminence of the possibility of unwanted events, the untrustworthiness of space and the undermining of those necessary preconditions that sustain the substance of social experience. Here we might make a connection with what Steve Hall calls ‘objectless anxiety’ (Hall 2012a). In brief, this represents a sense of precarity and insecurity generated by cultures of capitalism which, seeking compliance with the principles of competitive individualism, exploit the widest cultural awareness of the abyss of possible poverty, insignificance and failure that shadows each one of us, without respite, within fully marketised societies. My argument is that the diffuse, unsettling experience of being bypassed is related to this. Hall argues that ‘objectless anxiety’ is radically de-​politicising precisely because it prevents the formation of a perception of bounded, clearly identified, rational fears, which might otherwise mobilise collective, coherent, determined resistance and struggles. It is a spasmodic state –​one that, hemmed in by a social space eliciting gnawing unease, is ideologically exploitable by simplistic, scapegoating solutions to the multiple dysfunctions and frustrations of neoliberal society. Winlow and Hall’s Žižekian/​ Lacanian-​ inspired reconstruction of the ‘transcendental materialist’ ontology of the subject in the context of their discipline of criminology can be used to better understand the dilemmas of contemporary neoliberalism that Bypass attempts to meet square on (Winlow and Hall 2013). They argue that it is in our nature to be plastic, adaptable –​as contemporary neuroscience

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indicates, we are ‘naturally unnatural’ or radically indeterminate as befits a creature that is both unique in its pre-​maturational helplessness and needs to adapt itself to a wide range of environments and conditions. At the same time, because of this radical human indeterminacy we desperately pursue and cling to stabilising socio-​symbolic orders to anchor our subjectivities, whether or not such orders offer individual or social flourishing. Thus, in periods of social disarray, such as we are experiencing under neoliberalism, the poor surrogate socio-​symbolic order transfixing our nature that we call ‘capitalist realism’ is difficult to dislodge. For Winlow and Hall this problem is only exacerbated by the hegemonic scepticism of postmodern subjectivities which, whilst incapable of fundamentally challenging capitalist realism, have helped to delegitimise all commitment to shared meanings, leading to a culture of cynicism that is entirely congenial for neoliberalism. This is what Žižek refers to as the decline of symbolic efficiency (Winlow and Hall 2013: 179). We can no longer mobilise ourselves to believe in universal values and truths. Only the severe dislocation in which ideological struggle is pursued doggedly into its complex affective and emotional roots has any chance of success in mounting a challenge to this state of affairs. The bad clichés of capitalist, realist, competitive individualism go deep. Simple epistemological demystification is insufficient to liberate us from them –​we know things are bad, but we carry on regardless, a robotic skill that apparently the English are proud of, and one which surely Žižek would recognise. As Winlow and Hall put it, Hollywood is useful here in pointing to the deep-​seatedness of the problem –​take the contemporary disaster movie. In these films, a conjoined crisis of the socio-​economic and socio-​symbolic (typically, the infrastructure crashes and those in charge flail around ineffectively) eventually produces a survivor’s consciousness, one fitted for progressive, rational, collective action, glimpsed on the other side of the disaster in the films’ cursory post-​apocalyptic codas. If we turn to social realist culture, this kind of scenario is rare for obvious reasons; however, it is exactly what Loach is gesturing to in his documentary The Spirit of ’45 (2013). Out of the experiences of war comes the desire for welfare. So how does this ontological dilemma –​a radically indeterminate creature, jammed in a version of itself and an accompanying social which clearly prevents its own flourishing –​leave signs of its presence in Bypass? I think it is important here to hang on to the peculiarity of the figures of the father and the mother if we want to understand Tim and his relationship to larger cultural and political developments. Crudely put, Tim and Greg are stranded between a phantom residual socio-​symbolic order (the social-​democratic compromise formation struggled for by their forebears out of the core nineteenth-​century social solidarity project) and an inefficient existing surrogate symbolic order which is presiding over the extreme demoralisation and economic immiseration of working-​class communities such as the one they belong to. Their father is an emblematic, contradictory figure who condenses these historic shifts. He is a relic of the older order, which despite its many, substantive advantages over the present, can no longer command general assent amongst those whose lives would be immeasurably improved

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by anything resembling its return. But this is a matter not just of symbolic inefficiency and the poisoning of the valuable legacies of the past, as the father’s peculiar presence cannot but help suggest the problems of patriarchy. Consider the key signifiers used: muscle, height and breadth (accentuated by shooting from below and in slow motion), stubble, chains, grim mouth. The figure is titanic, minatory, ‘massive’ as Greg calls him. He is a crag of a man. An implacable force, his gestures of parenting are highly ambivalent –​both protective and controlling. Our impression of the father, mediated by the childhood memory of Greg, is that of an anxiously observed enigma. Specifically, this polyvalent figure collapses not just the relative stability, security and coherence associated with social democracy, but also the peremptory and special freedoms of the radical individualism of the contemporary moment. How else are we to understand his disappearance before his wife’s death –​ the same woman who, bizarrely, he places in a position of competition with his delinquent son, Greg. That the character does not, in this respect, ‘ring true’, so to speak, is not, however, the result of some storytelling deficiency. It is precisely the father’s ability to provoke in Tim and Greg profound feelings of puzzlement that indicates his significance in the film for Tim’s coming-​of-​age predicament. His mother has a key role in resolving this problem, but, to explain how, we need to consider the ideological core of capitalist realism. To overcome the latter it is necessary to do what has become unthinkable in our era –​open ourselves to the need for others and a corresponding need for a renewed solidarity project –​and any attempt to do this produces a visceral reflex of rejection. Under neoliberalism, dependence is, of course, in any form, the sign of abjection. It is the place of the loser. It is this perception which is clearly adopted in the most significant contemporary realist films –​see for instance the Dardennes brothers Two Days, One Night (2014) –​and this surely helps us to understand Tim’s mother.This post-​mortem figure is a very public ghost –​her first appearance is shoeless at the doctor’s surgery; it is an appearance that demonstrates a shameless abjection. Note the odd constancy of her many subsequent appearances. Whether alive (in memory), or dead (hallucinated), there is a consistency in her expression and presence. Abject, vacant, she is also, tenaciously, paradoxically attentive in the seeking out of eye contact and in exchanging looks. Whereas the father is vital and moves energetically, always away from the onlooker, the mother is often motionless and devitalised, but turned to face Tim. Crucially, the father’s final appearance triggers an epistemologically sceptical reflex. (Variations in the cinematographic choices –​focus, lighting and angle –​ create a deliberate uncertainty regarding what we can know about the father, which is mimed in Tim’s response. Is he inside or outside Tim’s dream? Is he there at the hospital, or not?) Such concerns about access to the real are ultimately irrelevant in the mother’s case. The father is not, then, an absent presence in the same way as the post-​mortem mother is. She has a different function. That is to say, she enters into an exchange with the present which he does not. The scene around Tim on the operating table is critical here. He accepts her presence, disregarding any implied barriers between real/​illusory manifestation. Such distinctions are simply beside the

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point. It is ‘as if ’ she were available to him, and inasmuch as she is, a connection can be forged –​around the idea of helplessness/​dependence and its relation to reviving the social. This surely explains the point about the obscurity of Tim’s illness –​that he does not know the cause makes him more in need of the help he refuses. The body’s significance in the film  –​beaten, bloodied, demoralised, fitting, injured  –​ helps to register this fundamentally social aspect of our human nature. This concluding scene of the film is interesting in the light of Elsaesser’s argument that we have undergone, not just in film theory and new realist world cinema, but across the humanities generally, an ontological turn which has subjected to critique the epistemological scepticism of radical constructivism. Here in Bypass are characters with strange sensitivities, sustaining intersubjective exchanges and operating in worlds that defy known realities but which are untainted by any sense of solipsism. For Elsaesser the tendency of new realist protagonists to engage with others in these strange worlds opened up by their reshaped perceptive and subjective states demonstrates a spirit of trust (acting ‘as if ’ impossible exchanges were possible) and signals a sublation, not rejection, of constructivism, with its limiting, dogged sense of the ultimate unknowability or unreachability of the other. In this sense it is revealing that epistemological doubts shadow the presence of the father and his blocked narrative, in contrast to the sustaining exchanges set up with Tim by the post-​mortem mother. What Hall adds to this, in the context of the class over-​coding of British social realism, is a distinctive inflection of Elsaesser’s account of the ontological turn. Rather than ‘unrest’, ontological anxiety might better describe Hall’s view. His critique of constructivism, which he associates with liberal postmodernism, is connected to what he sees as a crisis in transcendence. That is to say, he views as disastrous liberal postmodernism’s over-​investment in change through the promotion of cultural flux and mobile identity and its phobic distancing from essences, as well as its political disinclination to engage with systemic action directed at the socio-​economic basement. His immediate political concern, which he shares with the work of many British social realist filmmakers, is the context provided by demoralised working-​class communities fully exposed to the social harms of neoliberalism, and it pushes him in the direction of a Lacanian ‘biosocial essentialism’ (Hall 2012b). This is a scary, exacting ontology, rather than the contemporary cheery ones –​Deleuzian and vitalist –​that Elsaesser also avoids. For Hall, the primordially distressed subject, at its deepest level characterised by flexibility, lack, tension and anxiety, is hard-​wired to crave and adapt to existing socio-​symbolic structures, regardless of their suitability for individual or collective flourishing. In this sense, working-​class conditions of everyday life under neoliberalism have made capitalist realism the horizon of our social and natural world –​and this is the source of the exhausting, paradoxical dead-​ends faced by the working-​class protagonists in Bypass. Hopkins’ film then has the virtue of posing, in its concluding scenes, the extremity of the current situation –​when just getting by, getting on itself, seem confounded, then only fundamental change answers needs. Lily’s belief in Tim’s future (as father), Tim’s impossible response to

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FIGURE 7.3:  Tim

and Lily in a kiss. Source: Photo courtesy of the filmmaker.

his dead mother’s solicitousness and his experience of the abjection of extreme sickness, and the birth of Tim and Lily’s baby, are all decisive moments pointing to change. Which of course is not to say that these emblematic moments resolve the inhibiting complexities and determining pressures of the socio-​economic context. The final paradox of the film lies here –​that its conclusion, in investing in a sense of necessary fundamental change, characterised by states of dependence and trust, at the same time risks appearing, in these sharply cynical times, as little more than naïve and unrealistic wish fulfilment.

References Dave, Paul (2011). ‘Tragedy, Ethics, History in Contemporary British Social Realist Film’, in David Tucker (ed.), British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Elsaesser, Thomas (2009). ‘World Cinema: Realism, Evidence, Presence’, in Lucia Nagib and Cecilia Mello (eds.), Realism and Audiovisual Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Fisher, Mark (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative (London: Zero Books). Forrest, David (2013). Social Realism: Art, Nationhood, Politics (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Hall, Steve (2012a). Theorising Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective (London: Sage). Hall, Steve (2012b). ‘The Solicitation of the Trap: On Transcendence and Transcendental Materialism in Advanced Consumer-​Capitalism’, Human Studies, 35(3), 365–​81. Nwonka, Clive James (2014). ‘ “You’re What’s Wrong with Me”: Fish Tank, The Selfish Giant and the Language of Contemporary British Social Realism’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 12(3), pp. 205–​23. Ryan, Michael and Douglas Kellner (1988). Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

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Tyler, Imogen (2008). ‘ “Chav Mum Chav Scum”: Class Disgust in Contemporary Britain’, Feminist Media Studies, 8(1), pp. 17–​34. Whissel, Kristen (2014). Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Winlow, Simon and Steve Hall (2013). Rethinking Social Exclusion: The End of the Social? (London: Sage).

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8 AGGRESSIVE PROSPERITY, VIOLENT AUSTERITY IN STANDING ASIDE, WATCHING Rosa Barotsi

As Greece enters its seventh year of austerity, Greek society continues to watch as its economy falls ever deeper into recession, its welfare and labour protections are progressively dismantled, and inequality continues to rise. Under such circumstances, and at a time when Greek cinema is garnering more attention than it has in decades –​not, of course, by coincidence, but because political turmoil makes for very exportable merchandise –​it is imperative to interpret the ideological map that recent films draw of Greek society. As Geli Mademli poignantly cautions, the single label of ‘weird’ that has often been conveniently assigned to recent Greek productions risks homogenising a genuinely diverse set of films; exoticising a country that belongs to the periphery of the EU; and flattening the complexities of representation of disenfranchisement into an umbrella response to the ‘crisis’ (Mademli 2016). Unsurprisingly, the differences amongst recent Greek film productions are in fact significant, in terms of their representation of class relations, as well as their ideological positioning. As I have argued elsewhere, the Weird Wave headliner, Kynodontas (Dogtooth, 2009), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, disregards issues of labour, and the relationship between labour and capital is discounted from its dystopic patriarchal allegory –​making any readings that wish to see the film as producing a metonymic image of Greek society particularly problematic (Barotsi 2016). In this chapter, I wish to counterpose a reading of another recent Greek film, Na kathesai kai na koitas (Standing Aside,Watching, 2013), directed by Yorgos Servetas, in which issues of financial and cultural status complicate class identity, when an Athenian university graduate will return to her parents’ town for financial reasons, but will encounter a nightmarish provincial mentality that will entangle the issue of class into a web of interrelated tensions between gender violence and labour exploitation, fascist bosses and complicit employees, urban enlightenment and phallocentric parochialism. As an example of the importance and complexity of class representation in recent Greek cinema, my analysis of Standing Aside, Watching provides a counterexample

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to more widely discussed ‘Weird Wave’ films through which to plot a wider range of cinematic responses to the contemporary moment. My argument will be that Standing Aside, Watching presents a narrative of unassailable and enterprising anger which butts heads with the melancholic and introspective messages of the more popular Weird films. The first part of this chapter will provide the socio-​political context of the recession years, hinging on the symbolically powerful moment of the 2015 referendum, after which I will move on to my analysis of Standing Aside,Watching.

The austerity years and the 2015 referendum In 2009, Greek PM George Papandreou announced on public television that the national debt stood at 120% of GDP while the deficit was a whopping 15.4%. It was the official end to a period of relative economic stability that had lasted since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. In May 2010, Greece received a first loan from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union in exchange for a number of austerity measures. This was the first in a series of Memoranda of Understanding that would bring an onslaught of neoliberal reforms and would throw the country even deeper into a recession which continues to this day. Under the pressure of endless rounds of attacks on labour rights, pensions, salaries and health services, it should have been no surprise that when the new government –​formed by a coalition of leftist Syriza and right-​wing nationalist ANEL –​announced that a referendum would be held to decide whether or not Greece should accept yet another round of austerity measures, people responded with a resounding ‘No’ (OXI). Yet much was made of the results of the referendum held on the 5 July 2015. The overwhelming ‘No’ vote constituted the second-​highest result ever recorded in EU-​related referendums (Mavris 2016: 1). The 61.3% for OXI was interpreted, depending on who was doing the interpreting, as voicing an anti-​memorandum, anti-​ establishment, anti-​ austerity, anti-​ Euro, anti-​ EU, or anti-​ capitalist sentiment. Many amongst the ‘Yes’ camp, including members of the establishment intelligentsia and the two-​party political class that had ruled Greece throughout the metapolitefsi (the transition to democracy after the fall of the junta in 1974), contested the mandate proceeding from the result of the referendum (Mavris 2016: 2). Some judged the referendum itself to be in violation of the constitution, while others criticised the form of the question itself –​whether or not the government should accept a particular bailout package offered to it by the EU, ECB and IMF, a package that had been taken off the table in the meantime –​for being so vague as to allow too wide a range of interpretation (Contiades and Fotiadou 2015). Invariably, those who lobbied against the ‘No’ vote, from the oligarch-​owned local private media to EU officials themselves, chose the interpretation that they hoped would function as the most effective fearmongering campaign –​that a ‘No’ vote would translate into willingness to leave the Eurozone, if not the EU –​and hoped that this would be perceived as a negative outcome by the majority of Greek voters. On the 29th of June, a

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few days before the referendum, the President of the European Commission, Jean-​ Claude Juncker, infamously pleaded with the Greek people not to ‘commit suicide because [they] are afraid of dying’, whereas private TV channels ALPHA, SKAI, MEGA, ANT1 and STAR would go so far in their ideological warfare against the ‘No’ vote as to provoke demonstrations outside their headquarters, as well as an official investigation into the legality of their pre-​referendum behaviour by the Syriza government (Choros 2015). Although the debates around the meaning of a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ vote centred on speculations about its effects on the future of the country, it is the decades leading up to the referendum we need to turn to in order to understand the nature of the polarity of the vote. As Yiannis Mavris explains, the true political reason behind the ‘hatred’ in the face of the referendum was none other than the elites’ long-​established reactionary ‘demophobia’, their ‘fear of the masses’. What really scared the ruling classes was the fact that the referendum provided the opportunity to expose the tremendous distance, the abyss, that separates the rulers and the ruled. (Mavris 2016: 2)1 In this sense, one particular of the referendum vote turned out to be indisputable: the ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ camps appeared to map out class divisions across the Greek state. Working-​class areas, such as districts of Piraeus and the west of Athens, overwhelmingly cast a ‘No’ ballot (Aspropyrgos 79.20%, Fyli 77.22%, Perama 76.64% and Acharnes 75.25%), whereas the traditional ‘old money’ neighbourhoods of the capital’s north had the highest percentage of ‘Yes’ votes in the country, especially considering that the ‘Yes’ vote lost in every single region overall. Athens’ richest suburb, Ekali, had a ‘Yes’ vote of a staggering 84.62% (Efsyn 2015). The importance of this fact was compounded by the complexity of attaching a political identity to the ‘No’ vote: it ranged from parts of the anarchist and communist left to the neo-​ Nazi Golden Dawn. It was therefore hard to pretend that the referendum results merely indicated a victory for one particular political sentiment over another. The undeniably class-​inflected referendum result brought to the fore a discourse much neglected during Greece’s Euro years: the difficulties and complexities of class relations in Greece, heightened by the financial crisis along with a galloping inequality.2 The referendum result was the culmination of an ongoing process of articulation of anti-​establishment anger that made its first remarkable appearance in December 2008. After the murder of 15-​year-​old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a policeman in the Exarcheia neighbourhood of Athens, a wave of protests, sit-​ins, demonstrations and occupations swept the country. A few years later, the demonstrations of the Aganaktismenoi in 2011 (the Greek version of the Spanish Indignados), in direct reaction to the new austerity measures imposed by the government, saw the gathering of a true hodgepodge of political and class identities, as the petty bourgeoisie and middle classes experienced an unprecedented attack on their lifestyles. As Marilena Simiti points out, ‘the heterogeneous social and political composition of the Square movement influenced the movement’s narrative to a certain extent [: for example,]

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class-​discourse remained marginal within the Greek movement, despite the sharp rise of class polarization in Greek society’ (Simiti 2014: 17). The political make-​ up of the protesters spanned a wide range of political identities: everything from anarchist slogans to the national anthem could be heard reverberating in Syntagma Square. The long years of revolts, national strikes and demonstrations had brought to the streets an ever-​increasing number of people who saw their livelihoods coming under attack to some degree or another, and who jumped at the opportunity of the referendum to voice their opposition to austerity neoliberalism. In one last spasmodic attempt to scare voters into a ‘Yes’ vote, the days before the referendum saw, as Boukalas and Müller sum it up, ‘(a) the withdrawal of liquidity to Greek banks by the European Central Bank (ECB), which led to cash rationing and capital controls, which in turn triggered scarcity in basic goods; (b) a paroxysm of domestic capital’s mouthpieces (the mainstream media) about the catastrophic consequences of a ‘no’ vote […]; and (c) employers ceasing to pay their workers and threatening to fire them if ‘no’ won […] Facing this unprecedented assault on workers, the National Union of Private Sector Workers (GSEE/​ΓΣΕΕ) aligned with capital, declaring the referendum invalid and pushing for a ‘yes’ vote. (Boukalas and Müller 2015: 390) And yet, the ‘No’ result affirmed the elites’ demophobia, exposing beyond doubt the ever-​widening rift in Greek society. According to perceived socio-​economic status, 85% of students, 73% of the unemployed and 71% of the salaried labour force voted ‘No’ (Mavris 2016: 9). As Mavris deduces, this pattern ‘confirms the social character of the pro-​/​anti-​Europe divide, and the conspicuously class-​based inflection of the “No” vote’ (Mavris 2016:11). The bailout agreements between the Syriza/​ANEL government and the Troika of creditors had meant five years of an increasing dismantling of labour rights and a generalised assault on labour, under the guise of competitiveness. The euphemistically named structural adjustments of the Memoranda were meant to increase productivity and attract investments, by unleashing a series of neoliberal reforms, such as the shrinking of the public sector; the devaluation of labour power through wage and pension cuts; privatisations which would result in the integration of even the ‘relatively decommodified forms of social reproduction into capitalist valorization’ (The Children of the Gallery (TPTG) 2011: 252); and the institutionalisation of precarity (Federici 2016) through such measures as unemployment benefit schemes and the Public Benefit Programme. As Boukalas and Müller point out, one of the most blatant markers of the ideological leaning of the Memoranda lies in the definition of competitiveness within the 2012 Memorandum, where competitiveness is described ‘exclusively as labour cost per unit’ (Boukalas and Müller 2015: 393). Implying a supply-​side conceptualisation of wages as cost of production rather than source of demand, this definition fully exposes the strategic neoliberal plan for Greece as a low-​cost economy

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(ibid.). To this effect, the Memoranda orchestrated a full-​on assault on labour rights such as collective bargaining and arbitration, effectively recasting ‘the legal framework of class struggle’ (Boukalas and Müller 2015: 394). The measures betray a punitive attitude that appears to proceed from the dogma that weak competitiveness is due to excessive protection of workers and labour market rigidity, despite there being no evidence that wage and standards reduction enhances competitiveness […] Indeed, as a combined effect of the above measures, it is estimated that Greek private sector workers have lost half their spending power without any strengthening of the country’s competitiveness as a result […] In other words, the ‘strengthening of competitiveness’ sounds suspiciously like a euphemism for the enhancement of capital profitability through expanded exploitation. (Boukalas and Müller 2015: 395) The politics of austerity in the aftermath of the ‘crisis’ has had an enormous impact on an already-​divided society. According to research by Spyros Sakellaropoulos, the class make-​up of Greek society in the crisis years (2009–​2014) has seen a diminishing of all sub-​categories of the middle classes and a significant expansion of the working class. Specifically, it has had a major impact on the new petty bourgeoisie, which Nicos Poulantzas defined as a sub-​collectivity of the middle class, but Milios and Economakis redefine as an intermediate class in its own right (Poulantzas 1976; Milios and Economakis 2011). The proportion of the population constituted by the new petty bourgeoisie, comprising wage-​labour which is productive (therefore exploited by capital) but which at the same time takes on the functions of capital by exercising power on its behalf (such as low-​level managers or waged labourers in the apparatus of a capitalist state), dipped by 4.2% between 2009 and 2014. According to the same research, the proportion constituted by the working class rose by 6.2% over the same time span (Sakellaropoulos 2014: 314). The problem, as we know, is that the aggravations brought about by the neoliberal reforms of the EU and successive Greek governments have failed to take on a cumulative class assignation in public and popular discourse. Outside of the pockets of progressive political collectivities, the interpretation given to the misfortunes of the Greek people by themselves and by mainstream, as well as less mainstream, culture has steered away from socio-​economic discourse in favour of nationalist patriotism, xenophobia and a typical Greek self-​Orientalism which attributes Greece’s economic turbulence to its inability to be European enough to assimilate progress. This has arguably been an issue since the beginning of the country’s existence, at least from the point of view of the capitalist class. Aliki Vaxevani quotes from a 1923 article by A. Varvagiannis, a member of the Confederation of Greek Industrialists, in which he pontificates on the worldwide exception that is the Greek state, for its nationalist, unifying pride precludes the possibility of class discordances: ‘Fortunately, Greek society is, still today, bereft of divisive social passions; the so-​called class struggle is not applicable here, because we have none of the big

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social and economic differences that plague other nations’ (quoted in Pothoulakis 2015: 66). While class discourse is evaded, quite naturally, by the capitalist and political classes (except during pre-​electoral pandering to the middle classes), it is weak and fragmented even within the petty bourgeoisie and the working classes. The fragmentation, forceful weakening and antagonisation of the social struggle in Greece has been the cumulative result of a number of processes, largely described above: the long and ever-​worsening track record of the big unions such as GSEE siding with the capitalist and political class, which has meant that loyalty to them has often been the result of an individual or family-​based clientelist attitude; what Silvia Federici calls the debilitating effects on communal solidarity that new forms of debt have brought on in the neoliberal era (Federici 2016); and the labour reforms imposed on Greek workers by the Troika and successive Greek governments, which include measures that pit parts of the waged population against others, most infamously private sector workers against the better organised public sector workers. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, national cinema has been responding to this turbulence in many different registers. By juxtaposing a reading of Dogtooth, which has received a stunning amount of attention, to the much less visible Standing Aside,Watching, I wish to show how drastic the differences between contemporary creators can be when it comes to the representation of Greek society, and how we might benefit from drawing a fuller picture of the cinematic response to the contemporary moment –​both by gaining a deeper understanding of the socio-​economic circumstance and by increasing our appreciation of different cinematic efforts in the Greek context.

‘The future fascists will be wearing slippers’ Yorgos Lanthimos’ second feature film, Dogtooth, widely seen as the flag-​bearer of the so-​called Weird Wave in recent Greek cinema, was the first Greek film in more than a decade to win a major award at a film festival. As Geli Mademli points out, the 23 April 2010 did not only see Lanthimos receive an Oscar nomination; it also witnessed the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou deliver a much-​ anticipated live announcement describing the true extent of the country’s debt and urgent need for EU support (Mademli 2016). As many have argued (Papadimitriou 2014; Mademli 2016; Barotsi 2016), this temporal coincidence between the international recognition of Dogtooth and the rendering ‘official’ of the financial crisis is precisely that.Yet the two have become inevitably linked. The story of a fucked-​up, closed-​off patriarchal family, Dogtooth’s storyline was inevitably interpreted by local and international critics as a symptom of a society that is bankrupt, financially and otherwise (Rose 2011; Kaufman 2012; Celik 2013; Lykidis 2015). The film concerns an affluent family who live in a suburban villa with a beautiful garden and swimming pool. The three young adults have been raised by the patriarch –​a factory owner –​and his complicit but equally oppressed wife to think that the world outside the big fence at the edge of their garden is a treacherous

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place. For all intents and purposes, in fact, their world ends at their front door. Their environment has been adapted to this artificial reality in such a way that all references to objects or notions that might imply an outside are redefined and neutralised. As I’ve argued elsewhere (Barotsi 2016), whilst it is tempting, as well as useful, to look at Dogtooth and see parallels with recent attacks on civil liberties by neoliberal politics, this type of analysis must inevitably run up against the impasse of matching up the film’s ostensible critique of neoliberalism with its representation of economic relations.The premise of Dogtooth relies heavily on the comfortable middle-​ class background of the family. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that, on the surface, the set-​up of the family successfully imitates the bourgeois dream: the beautiful, big house, the lavish garden, the swimming pool. All of the children’s material needs appear to be met –​and it has to be this way: the comfortable middle-​class background directs us to the real problem, the father’s power.This particular brand of insidious violence would simply not function without the pretext of material wellbeing. Equally, whilst the children are brutally exploited, their exploitation has very little to do with labour. Apart from a few house chores, the children do not work in any way that could be considered as contributing surplus value for the father. We might even say not merely that the issues of economy and labour are irrelevant to the structure of this tyrannical family (Papadimitriou 2014:  2), but that ‘economy and labour are amongst those areas of life that are rigidly kept outside of the remit and understanding of the children –​in the father’s factory –​ and therefore function as another necessary blind spot that allows for their hermetic and controlled existence’ (Barotsi 2016: 180). A limited number of shots of the father in his factory function to establish him as an authority figure, whilst accounting for the family’s economic prosperity. At the same time, however, they expose, perhaps inadvertently, the reality that it is the labour of others that permits the premise of the allegory (ibid.).3 The fact that Dogtooth relies on the premise of economic wellbeing must complicate any interpretation of the film that sees in it a political critique of a country in crisis. Put simply, is an upper-​middle-​class family really an adequate metonymy for a country struggling on the periphery of a neoliberal EU, as some critics have argued (Rose 2011; Kaufman 2012; Lykidis 2015)? Not only are labour relations and financial strain absent from the film, but their absence becomes the ground on which to build an ostensible political critique of the ‘crisis’. Released four years later, Standing Aside, Watching is the story of Antigone, a young woman from Athens who decides to move to her family’s home town of Thebes, after a life in the capital becomes financially unviable.The film nods heavily to the genre of the Western, so that the Greek countryside, like a frontier town, is immediately framed as a desolate place full of insidious tensions and an ambiguous rule of law. Antigone is not delighted to be here, but she’s determined to make it work. She starts by making the family home a little more homey: all it takes is a mattress on the floor and a stereo blasting a violin concerto. She applies for a job as an English tutor at the local evening school, reconnects with Eleni, an old friend,

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FIGURE 8.1:  The villain of this Greek neo-​Western also bears an ancient Theban name.

Source: ©Nikos Nikolopoulos.

and starts dating a very young crane operator, Nikos, whom she likes to tease for his ignorance and naïvety. Soon, we discover that Eleni has been having an affair with the owner of the scrapyard where Nikos works. Nondas, an abusive misogynist and manipulative boss with a criminal record, is set up as the arch-​nemesis of our hero in this Greek neo-​western. Eleni tries to manage her abusive relationship by drinking and shoplifting, and turns to Antigone whenever she’s in trouble. Nikos oscillates between his interest in Antigone and his loyalty to his boss, but Antigone will have none of it. There are no half measures here: she sees violence and injustice and she calls it out. Like her more famous counterpart, this Thebean Antigone is a symbol of feminist and counterhegemonic defiance. Towards the end, just as in the Sophoclean tragedy, a community made up of abusive men of power and complicit victims will appear to get the better of her. Nondas and Nikos will abduct Antigone to punish her in the way that seems most fit for them: punitive rape. But, unlike the ancient Greek Antigone, she will be saved, at the very last moment, by an old romance, a man who until that point had chosen to lead a quiet life by ignoring the injustices around him and just getting along. In the film’s final sequence, we hear Antigone in voiceover, contesting, with a final message of defiance, the establishment’s idea of ‘progress’. The film world of Standing Aside,Watching, like that of Dogtooth, is a dystopic one. The family unit has been substituted with a small community, but it is still patriarchal, power-​crazy men running the show. In both cases, they are violently misogynistic, and use sex to objectify or humiliate women. In Dogtooth, even though the

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three children are around the same age, it is exclusively the son’s sexual satisfaction that requires addressing as far as the father is concerned. He is even willing to risk the seclusion of his family by bringing in a woman to satisfy the son’s needs. When that turns out to be too perilous, the father’s solution is to have the son pick one of the sisters for the job. The women’s consent is never asked for, and the sexual abuse suffered by the elder sister will trigger her breakdown and her (compromised) revolt. She smashes her canine tooth with a dumbbell and hides in the trunk of her father’s car, leaving us wondering whether she makes it. In Standing Aside, Watching, Nondas is an unrepentant serial rapist who sees sexual violence as a way to assert his manliness, and is proud to pass that wisdom on to his protégé, Nikos. Contrarily to the elder daughter in Dogtooth, Antigone’s rebellion starts the second she gets off the train at the beginning of the film, and it is sexual violence that threatens to put an end to it. Just like in Lanthimos’ film, despite the last-​minute revenge, there is nothing resembling closure or catharsis in this act of retribution. The world is not a better place for it.Yet, unlike Dogtooth, which leaves us with an image of hopelessness, the final word lies with the female protagonist: it is a message of anger and defiance. In Standing Aside,Watching, the question of socio-​economic status is immediately on the table. In the opening voiceover, Antigone remembers the economic stability of her younger days.The times of what Servetas calls an ‘aggressive prosperity’, built on antiparohi and European packages, are over. Antiparohi describes the main housing production system between the 1960s and 1980s, in which small landowners and builders would collaborate to produce condominiums, subsequently splitting the apartments between them. A system encouraged by the state through tax relief in order to boost the economy, antiparohi produced an unprecedented number of housing units in urban areas, as well as an unprecedented number of homeowners  –​over 65% in Athens (Maloutas 2015). This development coincided with a galloping process of urbanisation, which saw heavy internal migration towards the larger urban centres. Greek cinema was instrumental in recording the misery and desolation of the Greek countryside as a result of poverty, emigration to the city and state indifference. Many films of the era deal with peasants giving up their land or small business owners abandoning their bankrupt ventures to join the urban working class: for example, Anaparastasi (1970), directed by Theo Angelopoulos; Lavete theseis (1973), directed by Thodoros Maragos; and To vary ... peponi (1977), directed by Pavlos Tasios. In the 1960s and 1970s, the golden studio era of Greek popular cinema, a large number of films featured affluent protagonists who employed maids, women who were forced to leave their villages to look for work in the city and who, as a rule, were portrayed as weak, uneducated and servile (Pothoulakis 2015: 326–​7). Standing Aside,Watching provides an interesting inversion of these staple themes: in post-​2008 Greece, it is the educated Athenian woman who is forced to go back to the countryside to secure her livelihood, and, even though she finds herself in the hands of people who want to exploit her, she fights them with the rage of one who knows that she is in the right. Servetas makes it clear that the weak and servile Eleni belongs to the past:

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December 2008 served as the spectacular finale of a culture of aggressive prosperity that spanned decades […] Eleni’s character was born in this context, in which if you didn’t partake of the feast of progress and affluence, your only option was to find a small alternative niche and occupy yourself with your own personal problems […] When Antigone’s character had gained the confidence needed to demand a world built to her own measure, Eleni became outdated. (Roussos 2014) With the riots of December 2008 as the watershed, Eleni and Antigone span the passage from a cinema of introspection to one of action, where there’s no time to waste on noncommittal condemnations of socio-​moral bankruptcy à la Dogtooth, but where one must propose answers. Servetas’ answer seems to be an uncompromising rejection of structural injustice: down with the patriarchy, down with bosses, down with unchecked disaster in the name of ‘progress’. Servetas has stated in interviews that the Greek countryside in Standing Aside, Watching functions as a dramaturgical device, and is not meant to serve as commentary on the reality of provincial Greece (Katsounaki 2014). Yet one cannot help but notice the structural socio-​cultural divide between the protagonist and her environment. Despite her familiarity with the town, Antigone is presented as a true outsider. In material terms, she is not particularly privileged. She leaves Athens an unemployed actress who cannot afford to pay the rent, and takes refuge in what we can assume is her only property. As noted earlier, home ownership in Greece does not necessarily make one affluent, but, whilst Antigone might not be well-​off, she is clearly not destitute. More importantly, she is educated. We know this because she tells us, but also because she makes a point of teasing her young lover for his lack of an education. She enjoys calling him naïve, admitting to him that she likes him for his youth and looks, and joking that he should ‘open a book’ sometime. Antigone also does not hide her disdain of waged labour. She looks down upon Nikos for being a slave to his boss, the tyrannical Nondas. I mentioned earlier that Nondas uses sexual violence to dominate women, but in fact that’s not the whole story. Strategically, the first time we are shown Nondas, he is suggestively ogling a topless Nikos in the scrapyard changing room. Towards the end of the film, when Nikos decides he has no choice but to go back to his mentor repentant, Nondas makes sure the boy knows his place in the relationship. He asks him ‘Do you want work?’, strips naked, and passes him the sponge as he steps into the shower. We can tell it’s not the first time this has happened. The film makes it clear from beginning to end that all these forms of subjugation are analogous. Both gender relations and places of employment are structured as violent hierarchies of power. Kathi Weeks says, regarding places of work, that as hierarchical organizations, they raise issues of consent and obedience […] Although impersonal forces may compel us into work, once we enter the workplace we inevitably find ourselves enmeshed in the direct and personal relations of rulers and ruled. Indeed, the work site is where we often

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experience the most immediate, unambiguous, and tangible relations of power that most of us will encounter on a daily basis. (Weeks 2011: 2) A firm believer in the fundamental inequality of the employment experience, her deep contempt for work makes Antigone a consciously terrible employee. In a particularly memorable scene, she recounts to her reclusive former lover why she left him seven years before: I remember a friend, an ex, getting ready in front of the mirror for his first day at a new job, and he turns around and asks me if he looks ok. And he was a nice-​looking guy, you know. But on that day he looked like a clown. Antigone’s disdain for waged labour is consistent with a tendency of Greek cinema to turn away from the focus on working-​class solidarity and organising which was prominent until the 1960s (Pothoulakis 2015: 247). According to Charalambos Pothoulakis, in his overview of the working class in Greek cinema from the 1960s until the end of the twentieth century (Pothoulakis 2015), already in the 1970s Greek films start gravitating away from a representation of the promises of unionising, striking and claim-​making. This drift is consistent more or less throughout Europe. As Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen point out in relation to post-​1968 cinema, despite its promises of intermingling cinema and activism, it became almost immediately obvious that that utopian moment was not to have a lasting effect: ‘the overall impression is that post-​’68 Marxist or even more broadly understood left-​wing cinematic activism is more on the periphery of cinema than ever before’ (Mazierska and Kristensen 2015: 10). In Greek cinema, the undermining of worker organising begins with the discrediting of union leaders, for their clientelist relationships with the political class and their inability to foresee, and adapt their struggles to, a developing neoliberalism (Pothoulakis 2015: 348). The means for betterment of one’s livelihood are gradually represented less by communal class struggles than by the upward social mobility afforded through education, ambition or a good marriage. From the 1980s onwards, the working class is hardly ever central in Greek cinema, except to record the lives of newly arrived immigrants, usually in a humanist key. Antigone looks down both upon the bosses and upon their willing victims, people like Nikos who belong to the precarious working class, and the sense is that she does so from the point of view of the educated urbanite middle class who have been socially demoted due to the crisis. Does this dull her otherwise incredibly powerful critique? Similarly, does the fact that Servetas constructs such an unassailable feminist character only to have her barely escape rape thanks to a male figure blunt her otherwise empowering message? Despite Servetas’ claims to the contrary, the danger of the film’s reception slipping inadvertently into a class-​inflected critique of a backwards parochialism is not absent (Danikas 2014). But it exposes an interesting cross-​contamination of the multiple layers of socio-​economic stratification in twenty-​first-​century Greece. Nondas; the head of the local police station; the

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FIGURE 8.2:   A

contemporary Theban Antigone wrecks the temple of consumer capitalism. Source: ©Nikos Nikolopoulos.

neighbour who is offended by Antigone’s care for a stray dog –​many of the people whom Antigone derides are financially better off than her. In economic terms, they are part of the petty bourgeoisie: they are small business owners with employees, or mid-​level public servants; their houses and cars are bigger and fancier than hers. But Antigone has cultural and social capital, defined as the combination of education and social origin. Should we see Antigone’s rebellion through the lens of her social status and her defeat? To do so is perhaps to resign ourselves to a critique similar to the conservative takeaway of December 2008: the anarchist Grigoropoulos was criticised post-​mortem for being a privileged private-​school boy, and the revolt was judged a self-​negating gesture. But perhaps it is the conspicuous absence of the capitalist class that is most striking about the film: while the blame for this dystopian world lies clearly with the political and capitalist class, their presence is more fantasmatic, almost akin to the natural disaster-​esque veil that hangs about the film and its nightmarish society. Antigone prophesies that ‘the future fascists will come from maisonettes built on burned-​down forests’, not from the big villas of the super rich. She looks down upon the bosses, but they are small-​town bosses, the owner of a junkyard and the manager of an evening school. We might even argue that she expresses little to no solidarity, as even her closest ally, Eleni, she eventually perceives as betraying her by being unable to escape her victim status. Perhaps it would not be a stretch, then, to see in Antigone an embodiment of some of the promises

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FIGURE  8.3:   Condo-​ fascists.

According to Antigone, fascism stems from the lower middle-​class and nouveaux riches of post-​antiparohi Greece. Source: Screen grab.

and shortcomings in anti-​establishment struggle: on the one hand, she embodies the power of an intersectional politics in which systems of power must be tackled together, without either drifting into identity politics or diminishing the centrality of economic relations; on the other hand, she personifies the erosion of class solidarity which stems from a double focus on the individual and the internal class differences in cultural and social status. Despite her shortcomings, Antigone stands out as a character whose justified anger drives her to give the world the shape she imagines: disappointment, as Rosa Luxemburg once said, is not an option for her, as her angry closing voiceover betrays (Michaelis 2011: 202). This sets Antigone miles away from the daughter in Dogtooth, and closer to the revolt brewing in the finale of Wasted Youth (2011), directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Jan Vogel, or the struggle for recognition of the brothers in Xenia (2014), directed by Panos Koutras. The Greek title of Standing Aside, Watching, Na kathesai kai na koitas, means literally to ‘sit there and watch’, a little tweak that speaks volumes of Servetas’ intention to draw his audiences into the main dilemma of the film. As we sit there watching, in the cinema or on our couch, we are meant to feel the burden of that choice.

Conclusions The role class plays or fails to play in these recent productions is an aspect that we cannot afford to disregard when looking at how films shape, reflect or contest the popular ideological discourses around the current socio-​political state. In Standing Aside, Watching, what we take away from the film depends heavily on how we interpret Antigone’s class position –​whether we see her as a working-​class woman standing up to people with power (men and bosses) or as an educated

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bourgeois battling backwards provincials.Whilst films such as Dogtooth and Attenberg (Tsangari, 2010), which have attracted most of the critical and academic attention so far, have undeniably deserved that attention, they are often also the films that are the most preoccupied with, as Maria Chalkou describes it, ‘the family and anxieties of identity’ (Chalkou 2012: 245). They are, to follow Servetas’ classification, the Elenis of introspection.The Antigones of Standing Aside,Watching and the many other Greek films that have been absent from criticism need to be mapped out alongside them, if the interest in recent Greek cinema in relation to the country’s present state is to be an honest one, and not merely a spasmodic reaction of the industry to a socio-​cultural spotlight. As I have shown in my analysis, Antigone’s message is one of pregnant anti-​establishment anger –​a very different register from that of the Weird Wave headliners. To be sure, it is a complicated one. For instance, the insidious Golden-​Dawn-​like aesthetic of mixing nationalism, Ancient Greek exceptionalism and misogyny in the film’s male working-​class and middle-​class characters, which could be construed as affirming a stereotypical popular perception of provincial Greece; or the absence of the capitalist class, except as an ecological, quasi-​metaphysical superpower lurking behind the windmills and desolation: these elements of Servetas’ narrative are indicative of how discourse around class in Greece has been further overdetermined due to the crisis in ways that are complex and problematic. Standing Aside,Watching betrays some of the richness of the response to austerity politics in recent Greek cinema. The hope is that research will continue to do this work of unpacking so that a more meaningful –​and less monolithic –​understanding of what a cinematic response to a ‘crisis’ is might emerge.

Notes 1 All translations are my own unless stated otherwise. I am grateful to Lydia Papadimitriou, James Burton, Geli Mademli, Eóin Phillips and Konstantinos Kontovrakis for their help. 2 Although there is room for discussion regarding the similarities between the Greek referendum of 2015 and the Brexit referendum in the UK, there is also a great deal that separates the two cases. Despite Stathis Kouvelakis’ case for the xenophobic agenda of the Brexit vote as, following Étienne Balibar, a ‘displaced form of class struggle’ (which leaves me personally unconvinced) (Kouvelakis 2016), it is largely the case that the Greek OXI was publicly supported by a strong left agenda, whereas the Leave vote was framed predominantly by the (extreme) right. By comparison, the UK Lexit campaign was minor in terms of access to public platforms. 3 This contrasts sharply with the situation of the women in Miss Violence (Avranas, 2011), which superficially mimics the family situation of Dogtooth, but in which the victimised female family members live essentially under conditions of slave labour (see also Barotsi 2016: 180 and Kazakopoulou 2016).

Bibliography Barotsi, Rosa (2016). ‘Whose Crisis? Dogtooth and the Invisible Middle Class’, Journal of Greek Media and Culture, 2(2), pp. 173–​86. Boukalas, Christos and Julian Müller (2015). ‘Un-​doing Labour in Greece: Memoranda, Workfare and Eurozone “Competitiveness”’, Global Labour Journal, 6(3), pp. 390–​405.

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Chalkou, Maria (2012). ‘A New Cinema of “Emancipation”: Tendencies of Independence in Greek Cinema of the 2000s’, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 3(2), pp. 243–​61. Celik, Ipek (2013). ‘Family as Internal Border in Dogtooth’, in Raita Merivirta, Kimmo Ahonen, Heta Mulari and Rami Mähkä (eds.), Frontiers of Screen History: Imagining European Borders in Cinema, 1945–​2010 (Bristol: Intellect), pp. 217–​33. Choros, Evgenia (2015). ‘The Greek Media’s Pre-​ referendum Propaganda and Why It Failed’, The Link, 18 July, https://​thelinknewspaper.ca/​blogs/​entry/​the-​greek-​medias-​ pre-​referendum-​propaganda-​and-​why-​it-​failed, accessed 8 December 2016. Contiades, Xenophon and Alkmene Fotiadou (2015). ‘The Greek Referendum: Unconstitutional and Undemocratic’, Constitutional Change through Euro Crisis Law: A Multi-​level Legal Analysis of Economic and Monetary Union, http://​eurocrisislaw.eui.eu/​news/​ the-​greek-​referendum-​unconstitutional-​and-​undemocratic-​by-​xenophon-​contiades-​and-​ alkmene-​fotiadou/​, accessed 8 December 2016. Danikas, Dimitris (2014). ‘64i Berlinale: Ebros tis Ellados Paidia …’, Protothema, 10 February, www.protothema.gr/​culture/​article/​352087/​64i-​berlinale-​ebros-​tis-​ellados-​paidia, accessed 10 January 2017. Efsyn (2015). ‘Entona taksiko to dimopsifisma’, Efimerida ton Syntakton, www.efsyn.gr/​ arthro/​entona-​taxiko-​dimopsifisma, accessed 8 December 2016. Federici, Silvia (2016). ‘From Commoning to Debt: Financialization, Micro-​ credit and the Changing Architecture of Capital Accumulation’, Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, www.cadtm.org/​spip.php?page=imprimer&id_​article=13599, accessed 8 December 2016. Katsounaki, Maria (2014). ‘Kostos ehei kai i siopi ohi mono i via’, Kathimerini, 26 April, www.kathimerini.gr/​764172/​article/​politismos/​kinhmatografos/​kostos-​exei-​kai-​h-​ siwph-​oxi-​mono-​h-​via, accessed 8 December 2016. Kaufman, Anthony (2012). ‘The New Greek Wave? “Dogtooth,” “Attenberg,” “Alps” Reflect National Unease’, IndieWire, http://​blogs.indiewire.com/​anthony/​the-​new-​greek-​wave-​ attenberg, accessed 8 December 2016. Kazakopoulou, Tonia (2016). ‘The Mother Accomplice: Questions of Representation in Dogtooth and Miss Violence’, Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 2(2), pp. 187–​200. Kouvelakis, Stathis (2016). ‘Open Letter to the British Left by a Greek Leftist’, in Verso Books (ed.), The Brexit Crisis: A Verso Report (London:Verso), pp. 153–​80. Lykidis, Alex (2015). ‘Crisis of Sovereignty in Recent Greek Cinema’, Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 1(1), pp. 9–​27. Mademli, Geli (2016). ‘From the Crisis of Cinema to the Cinema of Crisis: A  “Weird” Label for Contemporary Greek Cinema’, Frames, issue 9, http://​framescinemajournal. com/​ a rticle/​ f rom-​ t he-​ c risis-​ o f-​ c inema-​ t o-​ t he-​ c inema-​ o f-​ c risis-​ a -​ weird-​ l abel​for-​contemporary-​g reek-​cinema/​, accessed 8 December 2016. Maloutas, Thomas (2015). ‘Socio-​economic Segregation in Athens at the Beginning of the Twenty-​First Century’, in Tiit Tammaru, Maarten van Ham, Szymon Marcińczak and Sako Musterd (eds.), Socio-​Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities: East Meets West (London: Routledge), pp. 156–​85. Mavris,Yannis (2016).‘To elleniko dimopsifisma tou 2015:“demokratiki stigmi” (i) (kai) kykneio asma tis metapoliteftikis demokratias?’, www.mavris.gr/​4846/​greek-​referendum-​ 2015, accessed 8 December 2016. Mazierska, Ewa and Lars Kristensen (eds.) (2015). Marxism and Film Activism: Screening Alternative Worlds (Oxford: Berghahn). Michaelis, Loralea (2011). ‘Rosa Luxemburg on Disappointment and the Politics of Commitment’, European Journal of Political Theory, 10(2), pp. 202–​24.

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Milios, John and George Economakis (2011). ‘The Middle Classes, Class Places, and Class Positions: A Critical Approach to Nicos Poulantzas’s Theory’, Rethinking Marxism, 23(2), pp. 226–​45. Papadimitriou, Lydia (2014). ‘Locating Contemporary Greek Film Cultures: Past, Present, Future and the Crisis’, FILMICON: Journal of Greek Film Studies, 2, pp. 1–​19. Pothoulakis, Christophoros (2015). The Working Class in the Greek Cinema (1960–​2000): Comparisons and Contrasts to Foreign Cinematographies (Heraklion: University of Crete). Poulantzas, Nicos (1976). Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New Left Books). Rontos, Kosta, Grigoriadis Efstathios, Adele Sateriano, Maria Syrmali, Ioannis Vavouras and Luca Salvati (2016). ‘Lost in Protest, Found in Segregation: Divided Cities in the Light of the 2015 “Οχι” Referendum in Greece’, City, Culture and Society, 7, pp. 139–​48. Rose, Steve (2011). ‘Attenberg, Dogtooth and the Weird Wave of Greek Cinema’, The Guardian, 27 August, www.guardian.co.uk/​film/​2011/​aug/​27/​attenberg-​dogtooth-​ greece-​cinema, accessed 8 December 2016. Roussos, Giannis (2014). ‘Na giati den prepei apla… “Na kathesai kai na koitas”’, TVXS, 6 May, http://​tvxs.gr/​news/​sinema/​na-​g iati-​den-​prepei-​apla-​%C2%ABna-​kathesai-​kai-​ na-​koitas%C2%BB, accessed 8 December 2016. Sakellaropoulos, Spyros (2014). Krisi kai koinonike diastromatose stin Ellada tou 21ou aiona (Athens: Topos). Simiti, Marilena (2014). ‘Rage and Protest: The Case of the Greek Indignant Movement’, GreeSE Paper No. 82, Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe (London: LSE). The Children of the Gallery (TPTG) (2011). ‘Burdened with Debt: “Debt Crisis” and Class Struggles in Greece’, in Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou (eds.), Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come (London: AK Press and Occupied London). Weeks, Kathi (2011). The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press).

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9 MULTIPLEXING MARX IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA Doru Pop

This chapter provides a close reading of three recent Hollywood productions: The Internship (2013), directed by Shawn Levy; The Interview (2014), directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; and Hail, Caesar! (2016), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, overviewing how they reinterpret communist ideas. The premise is that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dismantling of the Soviet Union and its satellite socialist countries in Eastern Europe, communist ideas were turned into mocked-​up materials and –​as such –​included in the grotesque spectacle of neoliberal capitalism. The terrible ‘Red Scare’ of the 1940s and 1950s was turned into a ‘Red Laughter’, and this parodic reinterpretation of the ‘fearful’ communism was further enhanced by a renewed derisive use of communist ideas in contemporary cinematic discourses, targeting the very essence of Marxist thinking. Overviewing the recent transformations of mainstream cinema, this chapter analyses the modes in which communist ideology is truncated as a farcical object. The definition of communism, or ‘the Doctrine’, is largely that of a political and economic system founded on the philosophy of Karl Marx. A seminal reading of Marx by Jacques Lacan provides a main argument: communism is transformed into its own emptied farce, easily recognisable in most recent forms of Marxism, developed to entertain the audiences of multiplex movie theatres. I identify this revision of Marxist ideas as a ‘multiplexed Marx’. More precisely, I use Lacan’s suggestion that Marx describes the nature of exploitation from the vantage point of its profound farcical nature, considering the entire bourgeois mode of existence as an expression of the ‘laughter of capitalism’ (Lacan 2006: 333). This laughter is understood as a manifestation of the shallow nature of the mechanisms of exploitation. Although I do not agree with Jean-​Michel Rabaté’s description of Marx as ‘the comedian of the future’ (Rabaté 2016: 95), his suggestion that capitalism is derisive (using the original expression of Lacan: Rire le Capital) provides the basis for the following analysis. Today’s ‘Marxism for Dummies’ contains

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all the representations that impair any forceful use of Marx in a predominantly neoliberal society. As the farcical replaces the fearful, the original Marxist thinking is turned into empty ridicule. Communism is no longer feared, nor is it satirised; it is drained of its transformative power, ‘dumbed down’, used to justify the triumph of neoliberal ideologies.

Marxism and cinema Before discussing the particular manifestations of the ‘multiplexed Marxism’, as they appear in recent cinematic representations, we need to briefly discuss the relationship between communist ideas and cinema. Karl Marx himself died in March 1883, more than a decade before the Lumière brothers were even able to patent their new invention, called the cinématographe. Marx could not predict the impact of movies on his own theories about capitalism and communism. Nevertheless, many film critics have ‘taken Marx and Marxism to the movies’ (Mazierska and Kristensen 2014; Durand 2013), and his concepts have become a part and parcel of understanding movie content and the practices of the movie industry. In fact, all allegations about how Marx would have understood movies are extrapolations of thinkers such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Althusser or Jameson. They have created a multifaceted Marx, expanding the philosophical doctrines of the author of Das Kapital to cultural manifestations outside his reach. These re-​writings now require a more nuanced set of explanations, since contemporary cinema generates a new type of understanding of Marxism, not only multifarious, but also functioning like a ‘multiplexed’ ideology. It serves only the purpose of entertaining audiences and generating profits for the global producers thriving in neoliberal markets. The main contention here is based on the presupposition that the representations of Marxist ideas in contemporary American cinema are based on oversimplification, which creates a cultural and ideological effect of ‘dumbing down’ Marxism. I  use the term ‘multiplexed Marxism’ to circumscribe the cinematic expression of these particular transformations of the classical communist doctrines and their impact in our contemporary societies dominated by neoliberal discourses. Slavoj Žižek, in his famous interpretation of post-​9/​11 capitalism, inspired by an even more famous quote from Marx, who, in turn, was paraphrasing Hegel, claimed that ‘all great events and characters … of history occur twice … the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce’ (Žižek 2009: 1). While Žižek uses the idea of farcical transformation of a particular tragedy in order to explain contemporary neoliberal society, the farce is also implicit in the symbolic re-​elaboration of communism in popular culture. My argument is that the representations of communism in recent cinema illustrate a transformative process in which the ideas of Marx are altered, ceasing to represent a fearful enemy or a tragic fraud, becoming a burlesque caricature. Somewhat differently from the early aversion towards communism in the mainstream cinema, moviemakers today use Marxist ideas more open-​handedly. How is this process reshaping the relationship between cinema and ideology? At one level,

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we can talk about a doctrinal reboot, generated by a recurrent political question –​ what happens with Marxist theory after Marx? As it will be further developed, Marxist ideology has become a multiple-​purpose tool, just like software designed to optimise pre-​existing and somehow obsolete hardware. Another, more profound problem, is what is left of the substantial concepts proposed by communism in a neoliberal society that subverts the kernel of these ideas? One possible approach follows the answer elaborated by Althusser, who called for a necessary de-​cloaking of Marx’s ideas (Althusser 1969:  28). This perspective was borrowed by a plethora of authors, Marxists and anti-​Marxists alike. After decades of re-​evaluating the core of Marxist thinking, it is my supposition that the ‘Doctrine’ was radically altered. The ‘canonical’ ideas of Marx were gradually depleted of their tragic dimension, which allowed a translation into a farcical mode of interpretation. As Erich Fromm acknowledged, perhaps one of the most grievous examples of re-​reading Marx was its Stalinist version, with ample negative examples when it comes to communist political solutions. Nevertheless, Stalinism and the entire set of principles governing the Soviet dictatorships in the East, which claimed to be based on Marxist ideas, were forms of an upside-​down Marxism, and need to be denounced as ‘frauds’ (Fromm 2004: 51). In a strange way, this Marxism as tragic fraud leads to a more specific transformation of communist ideology. As pointed out by Mazierska and Kristensen (2014), the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe actually ‘freed’ Marxism from its calamitous praxis.Yet, instead of allowing a rediscovering of Marx, it permitted the spread of the neoliberal myth which suggested that we have witnessed the official ‘death of communism’. Many philosophers followed suit and claimed the need to abandon the ‘Doctrine’ altogether, and to review the core concepts of Marxism. Alain Badiou notoriously argued that the apparent political emptying of Marxist ideas allows a much-​needed separation between the ‘communist hypothesis’, that is the communist ideas and ideals, and the communist practices (Badiou 2008). This line of thought steered Badiou to suggest that there can be a communism without Marxism, which makes possible a re-​imagined version of the philosophical and practical dimensions of the classical doctrines elaborated by Marx himself. This breaking down of the internal logic of Marx’s thinking was taken one step further by François Laruelle, for whom the apparent failure of the ‘Doctrine’ meant its final transformation into an ‘ideological comedy’, visible in the tragicomical efforts to deconstruct its meanings (Laruelle 2015: 11). Laruelle’s ‘solution’ was to propose a ‘non-​Marxist Marxism’, a paradoxical and purposefully ‘impoverished’ version of the original communist ideology. I consider this non-​Marxist Marxism as the final manifestation of a dis-​membered ideology, which is thus turned into a fake (or clone) of its own identity. It is through the failure of both Marxism and its philosophical meaning, as argued by Laruelle (ibid.: 17), that such a transformation is made possible. Contemporary cinema representations provide relevant examples for similar transmutations of the classical Marxist ideas, radically transformed into farce or

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free-​wheeling signifiers. The result of this practice I label ‘multiplexed Marxism’, arguing that such representations are suggestive since they are no longer ostensibly against the ideas of communism. Two of the movies interpreted here, The Interview and Hail, Caesar!, were selected because they perfectly illustrate how the process of diminishing communism has developed in recent American cinema.

From fear to farce As John Gladchuk (2013) indicated in his study on the relationship between Hollywood and anti-​communist politics, there was a long build-​up of fear towards Marxist ideology in America, which can be traced to the early days of movie-​ making. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Marxism was a powerful motif in Western popular imagination, projected in fear and hatred. As the dynamics between the two superpowers changed, and after the Cold War collapse, fear was turned into fun. A relevant example of the superficial re-​integrating of communism in mainstream discourses can be found in the ninety-​sixth episode of the popular sitcom Seinfeld. When Elaine falls in love with a man who reads The Daily Worker, the official American communist newspaper, this opens the way to a series of playful ruminations on communism, in the typical Seinfeld comedic take on life. More importantly, we are exposed to the transformation of communist ideas into sheer buffoonery. Jerry’s best friend, George, suddenly discovers an attractive side of communism, the ‘comrade women’. So he places an ad in the communist newspaper, looking for ‘uninhibited women’ for whom ‘appearance is not important’. Here the stereotype about communism and communist citizens is blatant –​and this allows George to exclaim ‘finally, this is an ideology I can embrace’. The ‘commies’ are no longer a threat to society, menacing shady creatures, as they were depicted in movies like I Married a Communist (renamed The Woman on Pier 13, 1949), in which the ‘commie danger’ was a direct threat to the American way of life, with communist cells operating secretly in the United States. The early ‘Soviet bogeyman’ as an everyday arch-​evil is now merely a source of gratuitous mockery. While dating a communist becomes ‘pretty cool’, the re-​reading of Capital allows goofy ‘interpretations’. One of the most relevant ideas that Marx has put forward in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’) is now transformed into derision. ‘If you have means and ability, that’s a pretty good combination’, cries Kramer, turning upside down the entire meaning of the Marxist idea of wealth redistribution. Here the farcical version of communism erupts. Even the profound antagonisms of capitalism are trivialised and the essence of the class system is mockingly compared to meats in a deli: pastrami and corned beef are in the upper class, while salami and bologna belong to a lower rank of foods. At the end of the episode, everything is mashed up into a nonsensical hodgepodge, where Santa Claus is transformed into a communist activist who is inciting to strike, with Kramer dressed in the red suit, wearing a ridiculous white beard and instructing young children

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about exploitation. Not only is Marx himself turned into a source of laughter, as he had been when subjected to parody and ironic treatment in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (season 2, episode 12), where the author of Capital and other key communist leaders such as Lenin, Che Guevara and Mao were presented as incompetent participants in a television quiz show, unable to answer basic questions about pop music or sports, but also now the core Marxist ideas are emptied of their intrinsic value. An even more relevant example of this ‘dumbing down’ is provided by a comedy like The Interview (2014). Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg illustrate how the representation of communism in contemporary cinema takes a farcical turn. In a world dominated by victorious capitalism, represented by Dave Skylark, the superficial host of a television talk show, communist countries like Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea are imbecilic showcases for the failure of Marxist ideas. Marxist agents and communist autocrats are also no longer a source of fear, as they were in movies like Invasion USA!, the 1952 fictional attack on America by the Soviets, or the classical The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966), expressing the constant fear of an imminent military invasion. They are haphazardly transformed into ludicrous manifestations of capitalist profit-​making and world domination. The main plot is a fictionalised attempt by a television celebrity anchor to murder the all-​too-​real Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-​un. Unlike the classical representations of communist strongmen such as Stalin and Mao during the Cold War, now the ‘Eternal Leader’ is nothing but a childish character who enjoys karaoke and organises promiscuous drinking parties, surrounded by naked young women. Instead of being a monster, the dangerous ‘modern-​day Hitler’ is merely a foolish character, much to the dismay of the real dictator in Pyongyang. In this ‘multiplexed’ version of communist dictatorship, the tyrant plays basketball with his US interviewer, who makes fun of all other communist tyrants. As it is expressed jokingly by one of the characters in the movie, today ‘Stalin is pronounced Stallone’. This is where The Interview is exemplary –​it illustrates the appearance of the ‘cool dictator’ as a pop-​culture f­igure  –​similar to Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator (2012). Instead of being a scourge of humanity, the dictators are the laughing stock of capitalism. Kim Jong-​un, instead of amassing real weapons, collects expensive cars and listens to pop music hidden in his tank while drinking alcohol.The communist tyrants have become cartoonish figures. Once again, the return to Brumaire, the classical text of Marx, makes the process transparent. Satire, unlike the farcical mode, remains serious and has tragic reverberations, while farce, as in the case of Louis Bonaparte, is mere recurrence emptied of meaning. What once had a calamitous dimension is now only the expression of its own senseless existence (Marx 1972: 10). Marx explains that, in the dialectical dynamics between content and phrase, when the comic discourse is disconnected from reality and placed ‘beyond content’ (Marx 1972: 13), it becomes nonsensical. Just as Napoleon I was a tragic figure and his nephew, Napoleon III, turned out to be only an empty name without real content, historical tragedies become farcical when devoid of any relevance. In the same way, communism is now interwoven

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FIGURE 9.1:   Kim

Jong-​un smoking a cigar. Source: Screen grab.

in the fabric of gratuitous amusement of capitalism, exhibited ostentatiously in the triumphant displays of neoliberalism.

Communism for dummies The conversion of communism into its derisory and laughable version is explicit in the most recent production of the Coen brothers, Hail, Caesar! (2016). This is an intelligent comedy about the Hollywood film industry at the end of the 1950s, based on a caustic premise: what happens on putting together an actor who is a drunkard and a womaniser, playing in a historical production about Christ, an actress who does water ballet while she is pregnant, a cowboy who has a soft soul and a voice like Elvis and a bunch of communist writers? The two directors also add a Catholic production manager, a homosexual director and a Soviet agent, also homosexual, with everything packed as a classical farce. Hail, Caesar! is, evidently, a comedic foray into the depths of the film industry and the built-​in vaudeville-​like nature of the ‘factory of dreams’. In this sense, the film functions as a typical postmodern parody. This ironic narrative, in which Joel and Ethan Coen have inserted innumerable references, is replete with comic allusions, intertextual innuendos, jokes and puns that any respectable cinephile should be able to spot. Yet, at a deeper level, the film, which takes us into the life of Eddie Mannix, the manager of a grandiose production about Christ’s life, also called Hail, Caesar!, re-​ creates the era in which the fear of communism was deeply imbued in American culture. Mannix’s routine is gradually turning into a mess when his main actor is kidnapped by a group of communist conspirators. Baird Whitlock (played by George Clooney) is taken to a safe house where a group of communist writers resides and receives a crash course in Marxism. Beyond the funny way in which audiences are ‘taught’ a couple of lessons on Marx, the film also provides indirect evidence of how communism itself turns into its own farce.

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FIGURE 9.2:   George

Clooney as Caesar.

Source: Screen grab.

Farce, which is a dramaturgical genre specific to the nineteenth-​century theatre, is more than just simple mockery. It induces a radical transformation of actions, characters and even historical events, by emptying them of their true content. The term, which comes from the Latin ‘farcire’, means to insert, to stuff things into something else. This is the very nature of farce: it brings together elements that are not inherent to the object of its ridicule. By placing their story during the Red Scare, the Coens manage to describe the drama of the communist writers in a contemptuous manner. Some Hollywood ‘commie’ screenwriters decide to kidnap the movie star playing in a ‘Christ movie’. They find out that this much-​wanted actor is himself a simpleton and a buffoon, entirely unbefitting their ideas. As the story unfolds, the kidnapping turns from a violent act into a ludicrous event. Instead of being evil monsters or torturers, the ‘Malibu Commies’ live in an extravagant beach mansion, eat home-​made sandwiches, serve tea and employ a serving maid, exposing their hypocrisy and the empty nature of their entire conceptual background. The Malibu mansion is a most suitable environment where this version of ‘communism for dummies’ can be mocked. The key communist assumptions about the world are simplified, then emptied of their tragic meaning, and finally transformed into nonsensical representations. Hail, Caesar! illustrates the routine of ‘multiplexing Marx’, as exemplified by the clueless Hollywood star. After being kidnapped by the communist screenwriters, he is subjected to a couple of quick lessons in Marxist ideology. He is hastily converted to the values and principles of ‘the Doctrine’, and, when it is explained how exploitation works,Whitlock scoffs: ‘Of course I’m for the little guy’, then adds, disparagingly, ‘What is this guy, a comedian?’ A fundamental Marxist argument, that capitalism exploits those who are forced to sell their labour, is presented as a platitude, together with the philosophical support provided by

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communism for the working class, which is turned into a gratuitous statement, with no power or social force. Finally, the farce becomes fully-​fledged as the communist persuaders themselves undermine the validity of the most important value of the classical ‘Doctrine’: ‘For or against the little guy, it doesn’t matter’.The newly converted communist is presented with the idea that he is exploited, but the hapless actor forgets the lessons and argues that the studios are ‘taking pretty good care’ of him. More relevantly, Baird’s conversion to Marxism is mocked as gullible susceptibility to brainwashing. After he escapes from his captors, upon his return to the studio, Whitlock tries to convince Mannix about the force of the concepts of communism. Without even listening, his fixer boss slaps him and brings him back to his senses. It appears as if communist ideas are not even worth thinking about and can be removed as easily as they were received. The Marxist screenwriters persuading the credulous actor that communism is good actually feed him with oversimplified concepts, in a discussion that is less about Marxist ideology and more an expression of ‘boudoir communism’. For example, the notion of ‘historical necessity’ is quickly turned into its farcical version, when the apparent leader of the communist group states that ‘history will be what it will be and we already know what it will be’. These Malibu communists are a naïve gathering, incapable of harming anybody, but also essentially a manifestation of an impotent version of Marxism. They most often discuss in contradictions and their closing arguments are limited to yelling: ‘Shut up!’ –​as happens whenever Herschel, the radical Stalinist, intervenes. Their most dangerous contention is ‘We don’t believe in Santa Claus’, and their only form of struggle is the desire to take revenge on the studios for not sharing with them the profits of the movies they wrote. Although they demand a ransom, they also consider unethical Baird’s demand to get a share of the money, immediately after advocating that the greed of the studios in not sharing their profits with the workers is revolting and objectionable. Another farcical appearance is Professor Marcuse, who acts like the real Marxist of whom we know today that he was actually working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the CIA. In the movie, the Marxist critic represents a domesticated version of communism, one that undergoes a process of simplification. ‘Liberated’ from any dialectical tensions, such a comical appearance illustrates, beyond his caricatural nature, the emptying of ideological content. His role can be best understood when compared with a similar character, Dr Strangelove from Kubrick’s classic film, in which the action takes place during the same era. Here Marcuse is just a parodic figure who has lost his compelling dimension and is reduced to a burlesque presence. This laughable trait becomes more evident when Whitlock, still dressed as a Roman centurion, defends himself by saying that he is not really ‘a student of history’. Meanwhile, the communist captors try to persuade the actor dressed in a historical costume, who would later re-​enact a mythological scene, that ‘history is not make-​believe’. No longer posing a threat to capitalist societies, Marxist materialist dialectic can now be turned into its own frivolous contradiction, and communism becomes

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nothing more than a travestied frivolity, losing any ideological validity or philosophical credibility.

Marxism for the ‘Google generation’ Many supporters of revisiting Marx have claimed that one of the most important ideas of the author of Capital, explicitly the role of manual labourers in the possible transformation of society, is retrograde and must be abandoned nowadays. The argument fits the logic of ‘multiplexing Marx’ and suggests that, since the social contexts have changed, we need to update the idea of class struggle. Several contemporary political philosophers have claimed that a ‘rethinking’ of Marxism must accept that Marxist theory itself is ‘confused’ and no longer adapted to existing realities. Marxism is supposedly forced to cope with and integrate the apparent changes within class divisions that are specific to contemporary ‘civil society’ (Winfield 2016: 419). Post-​Marxist authors hastily accepted the neoliberal dogma that the capitalist mode of production has been radically transformed by the new media technologies. Social networks and internet-​based platforms entail the promised creation of newer forms of production, of a ‘networked society’, freeing its members from the slavery of capital and of factory labour. It would appear that the classical Marxist theory has become outmoded. The global domination of new media technologies was presented as finally escaping the Marxist logic of interpreting capitalism and its mechanisms. As Dyer-​ Whiteford has put it, capitalism is transforming the ‘communist potentialities into actualities’ (Dyer-​Whiteford 1999: 221).We are told that this is an era based on different labour relations between workers and capital. Although the examples are new, the theory itself is not –​during the 1950s and 1960s, an entire sociological field of study was developed to show how the working class is gradually disappearing, vanishing due to unavoidable ‘embourgeoisement’, which put an end to the appearance of the ‘affluent worker’ (Goldthorpe and Lockwood 1968:  1–​3). However optimistic this theory was, in practice, the global inequalities have deepened and the workers of the planet have become poorer. As Christian Fuchs has argued, Marxist theory must be reconsidered in a positive way (Fuchs 2016: 23–​4), since it has become even more relevant today, as contemporary capitalism is morphed by the internet technologies. Exploitation has not disappeared; it has only changed its tools and become even more ominous. As pointed out by Marx and Engels almost two centuries ago, the most profound abnormality of capitalism remains the inherent class conflict, which, in turn, generates a deep fear of the owners towards the potentially revolutionary nature of the working class. Disbanding class struggle simultaneously undermines the role of the working class. It was Georg Lukács who nuanced this paramount Marxist concept in this direction:  if class consciousness is generated by the mode of production, then the identity of the working class is historically determined by the transformations of capitalism itself (Lukács 1971). What happens to the consciousness of the

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working class once it has been totally alienated from labour? What is the result of the dissolution of the working class? Lukács believed that this disintegration also annuls any possible proletarian revolution, thus providing an absolute guarantee for the future survival of capitalism. The final argument is that contemporary cinema not only displays social changes, but also plays a major role in the process of this imaginary dissolution of the working class. As pointed out by Wayne, not only is the representation of class conflict constantly reconfigured by the media, but also the media themselves provide alternative spaces for displacement of the crucial antagonisms of capitalism (Wayne 2003: 148–​9). In his introduction to a volume of articles concerning research on Marxist concepts applied in cinematic interpretations, Kevin Durand contends that class struggle is not only a central notion of Marxism, but also a concept that provides some of the most relevant insights into contemporary society (Durand 2013: 16). There are many recent explanations following the idea that human labour is being radically transformed by the new media. This so-​called ‘Californian ideology’ (Barbrook and Cameron 1996) has brought together promiscuity, hippie ideals and yuppie work drives as the new forces of society. This unlikely amalgam has supposedly created a new social class that is based on virtual labour. Even more recently, Barbrook and Cameron (2015) have further developed their initial concept and elaborated an even more challenging idea  –​the development of cyber-​communism. The ‘old’ assumption, that the new information and communication technologies (ICT) have changed capitalism overall, and the working class in particular, has now acquired this added coda. In my opinion, the situation illustrates once more how the ‘multiplexing of Marxism’ works. Since all the users of ‘the Net’ set up a new ‘networked consciousness’, they will inevitably supersede capitalism. Others have followed these arguments to their extreme limits.The ‘Telekommunist manifesto’ by Dmytri Kleiner re-​writes The Communist Manifesto through the ‘copy and paste’ method. The author considers that he has produced new meanings by changing some of the original terms. Dealing with the original works of Marx and Engels as if they were wiki entries, Kleiner freely overwrites basic Marxist ideas, building, in fact, his own version of ‘wiki-​Marxism’. All these attempts are founded on the belief that the new media allow the creation of a ‘communism at a distance’, but also of a society based on ‘sharing and cooperation’ (Kleiner 2010:  9), one where free access to information, in accord with open-​source philosophies, would change capitalism. Is there any real foundation for such promises, of a Net-​generated cyber-​ideology? I would rather argue that digital technologies merely facilitate a wider process of ideological ‘googlement’, one that allows farcical reinterpretations of Marxist concepts. The much acclaimed transformation of labour into ‘digital labour’ and the development of free software such as Ubuntu and Open Office, together with the widespread use of Google, where the information is ‘free’, are hailed as the signs of the construction of a cyber-​communist society or ‘open source communism’ (Fuchs

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FIGURE 9.3:   The

Internship. Source: Screen grab.

2016: 42). Just as for Barbrook and Cameron cyber-​communism is an expression of the rise of a new class of people (like free-​software hackers), capitalism is proclaimed to be a ‘massive multi-​player participatory’ phenomenon. E-​commerce driven by online users creates a ‘communist form of marketplace’, where ‘peer-​ to-​peer’ collaboration acts as an altering force, which will profoundly change the traditional production forms, and overall will welcome a new ‘venture commune’ –​ that Kleiner so much praises. The following movie analysis provides an illustration of the incongruity of these conceptualisations and can shed some light on the creation of a ‘new’ working class ushered in by the digital revolution. The Internship (2013), directed by Shawn Levy, is a poignant example of the process identified as the ‘googlement of ideology’. Here the ‘googlement of Marx’ takes place almost as an illustration of the logic of what Evgeny Morozov described as the ‘Google Doctrine’. As the critic of internet technologies explained in his challenging book The Net Delusion, cyber-​utopianism is, in fact, based on a profoundly neoliberal myth –​connectivity, innovative technologies as tools of democracy and global prosperity (Morozov 2011). Reality contradicts the new mythologies of the internet-​based society and their promise that people will know more and humans will become more self-​aware. Rather, as Andrea Batista Schlesinger (2009) compellingly suggested, it induces the delusion of an informed society. We are not more conscious; we simply do not ask intellectual questions, everything is digested from already-​processed information.

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The Internship provides a description of this type of idealised and unquestionable version of neoliberal reality. The movie takes the viewers to an ideal workplace of the ‘Google generation’, the Googleplex. This is a real workspace created by Google, Inc. in Mountain View, California where, under the unifying Google colours (red, green, blue and yellow), thousands of ‘googled’ proletarians lead an apparently blissful life. In this pseudo-​communist dreamland, there is an idyllic comradeship between executives and employees, there is no need for money, property or greed, and every desire of the employees is catered for. ‘To each according to his desires’ becomes the ‘googled’ fulfilment of Marxist ideals. Corporate obedience replaces any possible freedom of labourers. And why would the workers need to be liberated, once they live in work environments that are ‘the fun way of work’? In the movie, the Googleplex is this magical ‘new working environment’ in which a newer class of labourers, the digital workers, never feel that they are exploited.They have access to free food, free entertainment, free bicycle rides and many other perks (like free haircuts and free massages) that make the ‘googlers’ happy, while keeping them at work forever. As Edwards (2001) remembers his working days at Google, the reality is actually the very opposite.The owners of this giant multinational company selected the most anxious employees, considering that these are more easily driven to toil efficiently for their ‘technologically advanced’ owners. Yet, in the movie, the Google interns, cheerfully called ‘Nooglers’, want to have a share of this dream. Only if we take a closer look do we realise that they are labourers who exist only in the fantasy of the ‘information factory’, dwellers in a capitalist Eden where the young and the old, the ethnically different and the sexually segregated co-​exist in an apparently classless society. Not only is feeling ‘googley’ substituted for real emotions, but also ‘googliness’ is substituted for exploitation. When competition and the fierce use of human beings as slaves are symbolically exchanged for happy-​go-​lucky collaboration, we witness a form of totally multiplexed Marxism. Class consciousness vanishes into the thin air of unrealistic amusement. The two main characters of The Internship, played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, add to this lack of credibility. They are two middle-​aged men who have lost their jobs (yet nobody calls them unemployed) and who decide to become interns at the Googleplex, pathetically trying to fit in with the operations of the global corporation. Gradually, these mature men, who have lost their ‘traditional’ salesman jobs, are assimilated into the new and ‘creative’ work environment. They are ‘googleised’ and finally embraced by the young generation. Even more improbably, in this idyllic environment, where the exploiters and the exploited share a casual friendship, as is the case with many neoliberalism-​infused depictions of workspace, one of the heads of Google Search becomes the supporter of the ill-​adjusted old ‘Nooglers’; not to mention the advertising stunt in which Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, makes a cameo appearance, casually greeting the new interns as if the barriers between the owners and the workers were nonexistent. All these scenes present corporate exploitation as a source of fun while hiding the real dimension of control exerted by the company over every aspect of the lives of the employees.

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The reality is that getting a job at Google is not a happy-​go-​lucky experience. There are over two million applications every year (Phelps 2014), and the mini-​ pools, bowling alleys and toilets with warm seats or the three free meals a day come at a high cost in terms of the time sacrificed at work. Other staggering facts point to an even darker dimension. According to Google Zeitgeist, each second on planet Earth there is a Google search, and every day there are 3.5 billion searches, which amount to 1.2 trillion searches every year. Beyond such mind-​boggling data, Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms that connect people to the internet have generated a web-​based culture in which the users share the illusion of free online services for all the world, that will bring a better future. ‘Planet Google’, as Randall Stross (2008) called it, is the new place we call reality. Following the suggestions advanced by Auletta (2009), the entire world has been ‘Googled’, and we must ask whether this ‘googleised’ world, where new forms of information organisation that are based on new strategies of collection and transmission of data are in place, has created a type of work culture. More importantly, the question is whether the ‘children of the internet era’, or the ‘Google Generation’, have been transformed by the media technologies they use, or simply subjected to new forms of exploitation. Google seems to be a non-​ideological tool, its corporate identity projects the image of a ‘simple’ search engine company, one that does not represent anything other than the desire to give people better access to information. Yet these technologies, which apparently are free of exploitation, are based on forced labour. Our ‘free’ access to smartphones and laptops, easily accessible cameras and other gratuitous gadgets is based on the brutal exploitation of slave labourers in Third World countries, contributing with their toil to the creation of our ‘free’ devices. That’s not to mention the fact that the mineral resources needed to fuel the multimedia culture today, such as the materials used in lithium batteries –​as indicated by Amnesty International –​are often collected by children working in the cobalt mines of Congo. More so, the millions of people who now constitute this new type of working class that operates with ‘digital media technologies’ are not free from the grip of capitalism. As pointed out by Fuchs (2016), digital labour fundamentally alienates and, in the world of online employment, ‘digital’ work does not elude class antagonism and exploitation; it actually exacerbates them. Although Gorz and many other optimistic social philosophers have predicted that the ‘proletariat’ will become obsolete in post-​industrial societies (Gorz 1982), which, in turn, will allow the formation of ‘post-​industrial communism’, in a society ruled by ‘Platonic Marxism’ (Wood 1998), the reality is that exploitation has not disappeared. The vanishing of class struggle in digital environments and the substitution of the working class with fictitious new categories such as ‘digital workers’ do not change the essence of capitalism. Just as in The Internship, our real existence is virtualised by the mythologies of contemporary capitalism. They can make exploitation look like an attractive social reality but they do not make its mechanisms any less malignant. It is this fake liberation from exploitation promised by the social media that turns out to be dangerous. Although the total number of hours worked

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in the United States decreased constantly throughout the last century, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, nowadays more people work more hours than their predecessors (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010). If the slavery of the workers in the manufacturing era was manifest, the cyber-​slavery of human beings who give up their time on online platforms is more insidious. The happy-​go-​lucky virtual workers, trapped in their class-​free glasshouses, are still part of capitalist profit-​making through the exploitation of the work of others. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx compellingly clarified how capitalism manipulates all workers: ‘The more they wish to earn, the more must they sacrifice their time and carry out slave-​labour, completely losing all their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their lives. This shortening of their life-​span is a favourable circumstance for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-​fresh supply of labour becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed’ (Marx 1988: 22). Clearly, the digital workers are an ever-​fresh resource for the new digital machines that consume their time and lives.

Conclusions This chapter analysed how, in neoliberal society, farce is used for the symbolic re-​ elaboration of communism. As is visible in many examples from recent American cinema, Marxism goes through a process of ‘multiplexing’, in which communism itself is transformed from a fearful enemy into burlesque. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Marxism was a forceful and feared representation in western popular culture, but gradually fear was turned into farce. As the main assumption of the chapter was that communist ideology is today truncated and presented as a farcical object, fully integrated as a grotesque piece in the spectacle of capitalism, this process was illustrated with cinema examples, showing how communist ‘monstrosity’ has been changed into empty amusement. An oversimplified use of Marxism, sometimes described by conservative thinkers as ‘kitsch Marxism’, or as ‘Communism for Dummies’ by this author, simplifies the profound philosophical and economic arguments presented by Marx. This particular usage also transforms the ideology into a multiple-​purpose instrument. Some profound questions are addressed: what is the effect of this use of substantial concepts proposed by communist ideology in our neoliberal society and how does it subvert the undeniable grains of truth that lie in those ideas? My final contention is that, while witnessing a transformation of communism into a frivolous manifestation, very serious social realities, such as exploitation and alienation of work, are silenced and hidden in plain sight.

Bibliography Althusser, Louis (1969). For Marx (London: Allen Lane). Auletta, Ken (2009). Googled:The End of the World As We Know It (New York: Penguin).

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Badiou, Alain (2008). L’hypothèse Communiste (Paris: La Fabrique). Barbrook, Richard and Andy Cameron (1996). ‘The Californian Ideology’, The Hypermedia Research Centre site, www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/​theory-​californianideology-​main.html, accessed 25 November 2016. Barbrook, Richard and Andy Cameron (2015). The Internet Revolution: From Dotcom Capitalism to Cybernetic Communism (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures). Durand, Kevin K. (2013). ‘Introduction: Marx, Critical Theory and the Cinema’, in Mary K. Leigh and Kevin K. Durand (eds.), Marxism and the Movies: Critical Essays on Class Struggle in the Cinema (Jefferson: McFarland), pp. 3–​17. Dyer-​Witheford, Nick (1999). Cyber-​Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-​Technology Capitalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press). Eagleton, Terry (2011). Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press). Edwards, Douglas (2011). I’m Feeling Lucky. The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Fromm, Erich (2004). Marx’s Concept of Man (New York: Continuum). Fuchs, Christian (2016). ‘Towards Marxian Internet Studies’, in Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco (eds.), Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (Leiden: Brill), pp. 22–​67. Gladchuk, John J. (2013). Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace, 1935–​1950 (New York: Routledge). Goldthorpe, John H. and David Lockwood (1968). The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gorz, André (1982). Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-​Industrial Socialism (London: Pluto Press). Jameson, Fredric (1991). ‘The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, in Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London:Verso), pp. 1–​54. Kleiner, Dmytri (2010). The Telekommunist Manifesto (Amsterdam: Network Notebooks). Lacan, Jacques (2006). Le Séminaire. Livre XVI. D’un Autre à l’autre (Paris: Seuil). Laruelle, François (2015). Introduction to Non-​Marxism (Minneapolis, MN: Univocal). Lukács, Georg (1971). History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Marx, Karl (1972). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: Progress Publishers). Marx, Karl (1973). Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin Books). Marx, Karl (1988).‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books). Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick (1988). ‘Communist Manifesto’, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 203–​43. Morozov, Evgeny (2011). The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New  York: Public Affairs). Mazierska, Ewa and Lars Kristensen (2014). Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History, Theory and Practice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Phelps, Stan (2014). ‘Cracking into Google: 15 Reasons Why More Than 2 Million People Apply Each Year’, forbes.com site, 5 August, www.forbes.com/​sites/​stanphelps/​2014/​08/​ 05/​cracking-​into-​google-​the-​15-​reasons-​why-​over-​2-​million-​people-​apply-​each-​year/​ #507d07ab6c63, accessed 25 November 2016. Rabaté, Jean-​Michel (2016). ‘Can You Spare a Laugh? Lacan, Freud, and Marx on the Economy of Jokes’, in Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler (eds.), Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Comedy (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 82–​103.

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Sabonis-​Chafee, Theresa (1999). ‘Communism as : Soviet Symbols in Post-​Soviet Russia’, in Adele Marie Barker (ed.), Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 363–​82. Schlesinger, Andrea Batista (2009). The Death of Why? The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy (San Francisco: Berrett-​Koehler Publishers). Stross, Randall (2008). Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know (New York: Free Press). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2010). ‘Issues in Labor Statistics, Summary’, 10 July, www.bls. gov/​opub/​ils/​pdf/​opbils84.pdf, accessed 24 June 2017. Wayne, Mike (2003). Marxism and Media Studies. Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press). Winfield, Richard Dien (2016). Rethinking Capital (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan). Wood, Ellen Meiksins (1998). The Retreat from Class. A New ‘True’ Socialism (London:Verso). Žižek, Slavoj (2009). First As Tragedy,Then As Farce (London:Verso).

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PART 3

Love and sexual identities under neoliberalism

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10 HEDGES OF MANHATTAN The disquieting charm of the haute bourgeoisie in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married Constantin Parvulescu

Jonathan Demme’s auteur film Rachel Getting Married did not encounter the viewership it sought. History swept it away and exposed the film to misunderstandings and readings against the grain from the very day of its release. The historical culprit was 15 September 2008, the day the Lehman Brothers bank filed for bankruptcy and triggered the public acknowledgement of the economic crisis. Rachel … opened in American theatres less than three weeks later, on 3 October, 2008, which was also a loaded day in the history of the United States and the global economy. It was the day the American Congress approved the TARP money.1 Interestingly, these dramatic historical developments plagued only the reception of the social activism of Rachel …, rendering its message first inaudible and then reactionary. They did not affect sales or the aesthetic valuation of the film, which, according to imdb.com, received ninety awards and nominations including one for an Oscar. In the immediate wake of its release, critics praised it as a landmark of lower-​budget cinema, standing out for its directorial genius, skilful storytelling, exquisite acting and high-​quality musical score. They saw it as a successful venture of an esteemed Hollywood director, Jonathan Demme, who had made the acclaimed films The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993), into the territory of European directors. What critics forgot, in times concerned with runs on banks, social turmoil, bailouts and the collapse of the global economic system, was that, by Hollywood standards, Demme qualified as a socially concerned filmmaker.2 They did not notice that Demme’s priority was to present a counterculture, a community engaged in enlightened transcultural interactions at odds both with the belligerent international mindset of the American administration of the time (Bush II) and with the increasingly greedy next-​door Wall Street practices that led to the 2008 economic crisis. Critics overlooked that Rachel …’s praise of sophisticated East Coast ‘bobos’3 aimed to present a social strategy to create pockets of resistance to a desertifying

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political and economic culture in an effort to advocate more meaningful forms of collective existence. But the story of Rachel …’s misunderstood message does not end here. One would normally assume that a revisitation of the film in times more favourable to reflection –​almost a decade after the crisis –​could do more justice to its director’s intellectual project. But, viewed from the present, as one of the last cinematic messages of the pre-​crisis era, Rachel … no longer reads as a song of praise, but more as a cautionary tale against bubble mindsets. Ten years after its release, perhaps because it was set in a rich Connecticut suburb where many finance millionaires reside, the film brings to the fore –​against its director’s will –​the existence of a problematic link between grand accumulations of capital –​especially those produced via financial speculation  –​and liberal middle-​class cultivation of good taste, civility and openness to human diversity.4 From a post-​crisis perspective, Rachel …’s presentation of what its director called ‘the most beautiful home movie ever’5 –​read ‘the most socially progressive’ –​also reveals the contradictions that mark well-​intended processes of cultural resacralisation of capitalism, that is, to use a term employed by Mark Fisher, of responding to the ‘desacralization of culture’ produced by capitalist work relations, exploitation and competition (Fisher 2009:  8).6 Thus, from a contemporary perspective, the film, in spite of its beauty and sophistication, seems ideologically reactionary. What it aims to present does not come through as a utopia but rather as an effort to hide or unconvincingly reconcile the aforementioned contradictions. In other words, the time that has passed since the film’s premiere makes more visible an important ideological operation performed in Rachel …, which I call cultural hedging. Hedging is the articulation of a simulacrum of a counterculture and of the false indication of the existence of a functional ethical checks and balances mechanism within the capitalist system. The main function of this articulation is not to better capitalism, but rather to better the cohabitation with it and consequently to protect capitalist practices from more radical forms of questioning. What makes the ideological analysis of Rachel … insightful is that Demme was not aware of his hedging. Interviews show that he and his team truly believed he was providing visions of a meaningful counterculture, and not ideological insurance for the political and economic culture he aimed to challenge.7 This predicament indicates the difficulty of articulating a critique of capitalism in the twenty-​first century, signalling what Fredric Jameson and other cultural theorists of the left have argued: that anti-​capitalist positions have become appropriated within the logic of the late post-​ideological capitalist condition (Jameson 1992: 48). Thus, just like charity events, cultural production, such as Demme’s film, does not truly undermine the Manhattan money-​making culture, but rather endows it with a ‘human face’ and an inner emotional life, resacralising the ‘regime of cold, abstract calculation [of capitalism] that undermines the organic connectedness and diversity of human life’ of Manhattan capitalism (Konings 2015: 1). Inspired by Konings’ critique of the dialectics of de-​and resacralisation (and dis-​and re-​embedding –​ see note 5, Konings 2015: 4, 10) and by Slavoj Žižek’s position against ‘liberal

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communism’ and multiculturalism,8 this chapter looks beyond these dialectics that inform the cinematic universe of Rachel … in order to reveal their humanising and hedging function.

Connecticut liberalism In order to better understand the political testimony of Rachel …, let us first outline how Demme designed his praise of American liberals for the pre-​crisis audience. As the title of the film indicates, he chose to portray them engaged in a ritual of social communion, a wedding; in a predicament of openness to otherness (integrating the other family), in which lofty emotions and good taste play an important role. In contrast to the competition-​structured Manhattan business culture and its emphasis on the pursuit of self-​interest, Demme’s representation of the middle class emphasises empathy and social bonding. Half of the screen time of the film depicts the preparations and the unfolding of the nuptial ceremony, presenting the middle class not as subjects of the rationalist and homogenising logic of economics, but rather as men and women guided by spontaneity and a quest for diversity and intellectual sophistication. Tapping into a long tradition that praises the resacralising function of art, they are presented as confronting the hegemony of instrumentalist reason by highlighting disinterested aesthetic consumption and lofty emotions.9 Not surprisingly, then, the ceremonial is prepared and rehearsed to feel subtle and participative, or, as one critic puts it, ‘tastefully eccentric, upscale and casually multicultural’ (O’Sullivan 2008).Works of art and artistic creativity adorn the backgrounds of many scenes.The wedding has a colourful Indian fusion theme, reflected in the costumes of the protagonists, the scenery, the floral decoration and the food. Among the guests are many musicians. A significant part of the film’s screen time shows their performances, as the entire musical score consists of their live and diegetic contributions (both off-​and on-​screen). The interracial and intercultural character of the festivity emphasises the progressive mindsets of the protagonists. While the bride, Rachel (Rosemary De Witt), is white, Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe) is African-​American, and hails, in contrast to his waspy big-​city wife-​to-​be, from a Southern conservative family.10 The wedding is populated with people belonging to a variety of races and ethnicities, all feeling comfortable with performing their individual cultural identity and interacting with difference. The best man is from Hawaii; the MC is Asian and dressed like a kung-​ fu master. Rachel’s stepmother is also African-​American, and, on the groom’s side, there stands, in uniform, Private Gonzalez, recently returned from service in Iraq. The musical score and the composition of the band add to the intercultural statement of the film. Musicians from all over the globe, from the Middle East to Brazil, from Africa to Britain, perform during the wedding. The mise-​en-​scène reaffirms the progressive mindset of the liberal suburb. The rehearsal dinner takes place in an environment that, according to the items on display, resembles an anthropological museum. The Indian décor of the wedding proper reinforces the idea of stylish open-​mindedness, providing an astutely chosen interface between cultures. There

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FIGURE 10.1:   Nuptial

multiculturalism.

Source: Screen grab.

are no Indian guests at the wedding. The abstract otherness of the theme is at variance with the cultural heritage of all of the guests, without favouring any. All of the participants adopt this otherness as their commons (their social glue). Everybody consumes it without experiencing it as constraining or prescriptive, or as hegemonising a specific cultural tradition. The cinematography and the montage also seek to highlight the diversity of the human factor.The ceremonial sequences record a large palette of faces, haircuts and bodily expressions, explored by an inquisitive hand-​held camera probing for the authentic. The scene in which the vows are pledged and rings exchanged is edited to outline cultural and racial diversity. A pan on the faces of the African-​American family sitting in the audience precedes the emergence of a preppy white maid of honour. A shot of the black groom is pasted to the entrance of two other maids of honour (one white and one black). As the bride approaches the altar, the Asian MC watches from the yard and a racially mixed pool of guests from inside. Colours are also posited against each other. The bride dressed in a white sari is followed by maids of honour in purple, looked at by the father in a dark-​g rey suit and an extra behind him in red. The party sequences use the same multi-​ culti montage. Racial diversity is marked by a long two-shot of the Asian MC and a white maid of honour pasted to a closer view of an African-​American jazz musician. The subsequent pan from the musician to the Southern conservatively dressed family of the groom, followed by a longer shot of the Jamaican musician Sister Carol East dancing in hot pink African attire, aims to emphasise cultural difference within the parameters of the same race –​liberal, conservative and non-​American blackness. The sequence continues by contrasting generations, with a focus on Rachel’s aristocratic mother (Debra

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Winger), an elderly female relative (the grandmother), a long take of the other daughter, Kym (Anne Hathaway), and then of a middle-​school boy. Angles and distance of framing also alternate during these crowd scenes, reaffirming diversity through point of view. The sequence described above unfolds to a pensive musical score, whose lyrics allude to the diversity that liberal America claims to shelter. But this unity in diversity is more strongly emphasised in the following scene. It presents the culminating moment of synergy of the party: the cutting of the cake. Just like the Indian theme, the cake stands for the mediating otherness whose consumption brings the community together. It is trendily coated in a blue-​g rey icing with an elephant on top, and it is to be sliced with a golden curved oriental knife. Rachel asks all her close relatives and friends to put their hands on the grip ‘and do this together’. Palms of various sizes, ages and shades of brown pile up, and the ritual cutting is completed. The commons is reasserted, predicated upon love and respect for the other and the valuation of difference. The cutting of the cake triggers the transition from ceremony to party proper. Conformity to nuptial ceremonials gives way to expressions of individual identity. The music changes to sweeping Caribbean rhythms. Dancing becomes the main medium of displaying comfort with one’s self and heritage. Each guest finds their own individual way to respond to the music and translate it into corporeal expression, and the audience is given plenty of time to contemplate it, reflect on what makes it possible and notice that, in the enlightened suburb, self-​expression is liberated but not unbridled, and each identity is performed in accordance with the tenet of avoiding ostentatiousness and discomforting others. Regardless of whether they sway on rock, hip hop or samba, participants make a point of not taking themselves too seriously. Dance thus serves not only as an expression of individual and cultural identity, but also as the protagonists’ commentary on their own performance. Self-​ expression and its pastiche intertwine. The dancing scenes define the emancipated emotional constellation of Demme’s suburb. On display is temperate hedonism, and the easily accepted belief that ironic distancing from passions can ‘blind ourselves to the structural power of ideological fantasy’ upon which emotions are predicated (Fisher 2009: 16). Just like Wall Street’s self-​presentation as a rational human endeavour, the suburb emphasises that it can contain its ‘animal spirits’ as well.11 No guest gets wasted, no drugs are consumed; nobody steps out of line –​as happens in many wedding films.12 The party remains a model of civility, both tolerant and un-​excessive, both vigilantly self-​conscious and aware that identity is the product of strategised performance. Even the central of the marriage in front of the judge unfold accordingly.There is no pomp, no long white lace, no priests, no stiff walking down the aisle to the altar. Demme’s presentation avoids all these staples of wedding ceremonies.They were ridiculed in one of the films he declared he took inspiration from, Robert Altman’s 1978 A Wedding (Puig 2008). Instead, Rachel … pastiches Mendelssohn’s Nuptial March in garage rock band style, and the ritual cuts quickly to the ‘Do you?’/​‘Yes, I do’ moment. Rachel’s vow is short and simple; the groom has no vows, but sings

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instead Neil Young’s hit Unknown Legend. The official who marries Rachel and Sidney is anything but the embodiment of stony-​faced state authority. He jokingly conducts the ritual, and proves to be as concerned about authenticity as the organisers of the event.

The contradictions of the suburban condition Of interest for this analysis is the ideological underpinning of Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet’s decision to place the enlightened wedding in an upper-​ middle-​class suburban community with Manhattan connections, and why Demme did not see any contradiction in shooting his film in Stamford, Connecticut, not only the home of one of the biggest hedge funds of the time, SAC Capital, but also a place that presents itself as ‘the largest financial district in New York Metro outside New York City itself and one of the largest concentrations of corporations in the nation’.13 By regarding the Manhattan suburb as an incubator of enlightened sensibility, the film seems to consider that the producers of global economic and symbolic inequality can also play the role of menders of these disparities. In other words, that the upper middle classes can articulate a discourse which will effectively undermine their own privileges. Slavoj Žižek views this assumption as central to the contradictory condition of post-​ideological capitalism. For him, the combination of ruthless economic practices (such as those of big investment banks or software giants) and the concern of their CEOs for bettering the world reflects the contradictions of the liberal suburban condition. Acts of charity are made not only from beyond the fence (or hedge!) of the gated community, but also for the fence, that is, with a hedging purposiveness. The suburban liberals, Žižek argues, pretend to worry about all the suffering in the world, from wars to epidemics, from the evil deeds of ‘populist fundamentalists [… to those of] irresponsible greedy capitalist corporations’ (Žižek 2008: 20). But their unacknowledged concern is in fact the survival of capitalism and the structural advantage it creates for them. The grand paradox of our times, Žižek argues, is that capitalism can no longer legitimate itself and sustain its cycle of social reproduction as the most efficient wealth-​producing system. It must also culturally hedge its practices, and rely on an ethical discourse which lies outside its logic in order ‘to postpone its crisis’ (Žižek 2009: 24–​5).14 With regard to the condition of the suburb, the contradiction translates into assuming that the values of a gated community, which are fundamentally based on exclusion, can articulate a discourse of authentic inclusion. This is even more controversial because the concept of the liberal suburb has been predicated upon individualism and is thus at odds with its feel-​good spectacle of communitarianism (Geismer 2014: 10). This contradiction draws on another one, which characterises suburban life from its incipient days in the post-​World War II era. Since then, the suburban mindset has internalised the scenario that a person can live two parallel lives predicated on opposing values. He or she can be a peaceful, generous and art-​ loving communitarian soul at home and at the same time a high-​octane competitor

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in the office. On withdrawing into the realm of the private, everyone from the corporation man of the Glass–​Steagall times to the downtown social Darwinists of the era of deregulation can become champions of human empathy and lead the process of global democratisation. Žižek gives a striking example as to why personal and family life details cannot teach us much about the public (economic and political) behaviour of a person, and certainly cannot redeem it. Even though the example is a bit of a cliché, Žižek invokes Reinhard Heydrich’s passion for Beethoven. Heydrich, a notorious Nazi criminal, ‘liked to play Beethoven’s late string quartets with friends during his evenings of leisure’ (Žižek 2009: 40–​1). Žižek’s example is insightful because it not only questions the effectiveness of individual or social practices of resacralisation (listening to Beethoven), but also gestures towards their true social purpose, which is one of hedging –​the Nazi criminal rendering his daytime activities honourable to others. Žižek concludes that such practices of moral and cultural regeneration are fundamentally deceiving.Their main raison d’être is to articulate a simulacrum, to constitute ‘a screen, a false distance, whose function is, as it were, to save my appearance, to render palpable (accessible to my imaginary narcissism) my [allegedly] true social-​symbolic identity’ (Žižek 2009: 40–​1). The screen Žižek refers to is what I call the hedge, and making it both more efficient and more inconspicuous is a major contribution to ensuring capitalism’s survival and to shielding it against political challenges and internal misanthropy. Hedging is the practice of protecting one’s assets against risk and of trying to achieve market invulnerability.This means that, in an ideal situation, the hedged economic actor occupies a sovereign situation above fluctuations in the market or other moments of turmoil such as wars, weather changes or political instability. Additionally, since hedging has traditionally been tantamount to the circulation of huge amounts of money among a few pockets, these practices have been regarded as the most restrictive, esoteric and finely tuned on Wall Street, reserved for those who spend ‘summer in the Hamptons and decorate their homes with Warhols; for patrons of the arts and charity dinners’, to create the perpetuum mobile of money-making (Lowenstein 2001: 25–​6). Traditional hedging has been economic –​by placing both short and long bets on economic developments; political –​by supporting representatives of both competing parties; social  –​by financing activities that would improve the investor’s image; and cultural –​by employing artistic education to ensure the hegemony of a class or elite. Žižek goes one step further and observes how the hedging strategy of economic actors such as Bill Gates has become structural; that is, its aim is to ensure the survival of capitalism itself. Also structural in purpose is the praise of the emancipated lifestyle of the liberal bourgeoisie in Rachel … Even if not with a critical intention, the film presents liberalism as a hedging venture, similar to Gates’, offering capitalism a cultural insurance that makes it too human and too socially embedded to fail. It presents it as inherently good and aesthetically and intellectually nurturing, and its desertifying practices as a necessary evil for the flourishing of a sophisticated and globally open culture in its surroundings. In addition, the multicultural fresco of the suburb hedges the human-​resources interests of global

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enterprises. It suggests that a racially and culturally blind meritocracy governs the network of worldwide offices of multinationals and that people of any race and culture have equal access to wealth and power within them.15 It should come as no surprise then that PR departments of global financial firms take into account these landmarks of humanising and de-​westernising global capitalism, and emphasise their companies’ affinity with the values promoted by liberal discourse. For example, a 2013 promotional video for Goldman Sachs, set up as a fireside interview and discussion with the company’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, is predictably sure to prioritise the beneficial social impact of the company’s activity.16 Thus, in utter denial both of the functioning of Goldman Sachs’ compensation system and of the way in which it makes a good part of its money (as hedge fund, arbitrageur, market maker, speculator and proprietary trader), Blankfein lets interns know that their work for Goldman Sachs is not about making oneself rich, but about changing the world and helping turn great ideas into reality. So far, the interview has not articulated anything extraordinary. Avoiding references to money and profit, and prioritising the social, are landmarks of the promotional materials of any financial institution. Blankfein’s interview stands out because it claims that the post-​crisis investment bank has become the home of humanised, read ‘resacralised’, traders, and that this humanisation follows liberal guidelines. Blankfein’s model banker is a banker with a soul, who believes in charity, understands art, and has a genuine respect for the world. Consequently, when asked to outline the way of thinking he finds ‘particularly important’ for a young trader, Blankfein reminds his recruits, all ostensibly hungry to make the world a better place, that in college he was a history major and that his predecessor, Henry Paulson, majored in English. His point is that their background in the humanities was essential to their success, because technical education in financial engineering and its rationalistic instrumentalising mindset are insufficient to define a successful banker.17 The post-​ crisis trader is neither the cowboy of the internet and housing bubbles nor the disciplined bureaucrat sticking to fiduciary ethics of the pre-​deregulation era. He or she is also no longer the academic quant who sees the world as a mathematical model, but an aesthetically educated and progressive ‘complete and interesting person’, who has ‘read a Shakespeare play’ and ‘has taken an art course’,18 has a sense of the human and diverse aspects of the world, and would perfectly fit in at Rachel’s party.19

Shiva the destroyer For Žižek, Blankfein’s hedge-​producing discourse is indicative of ‘the true evil of our societies’. It is not the selfish, exploitative and desertifying evil of capitalism which had already been singled out in the nineteenth century.That is the old evil.The new evil is our attempts to extricate ourselves from [the dynamics of capitalism] –​all the while profiting –​by carving out self-​enclosed communal spaces, from ‘gated communities’ to exclusive racial or religious groups […] The exemplary figures of evil today are not ordinary consumers who pollute the environment

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and live in a violent world of disintegrating social links, but those who, while fully engaged in creating conditions for such universal devastation and pollution, buy their way out of their own activity, living in gated communities, eating organic food, taking holidays in wildlife preserves, etc. (Žižek 2008: 27) In Rachel …, the character who brings to the fore the tension between old and new capitalist ‘evils’ and reveals the suburban double consciousness is Kym, Rachel’s kid sister. Representing the old evil, the selfish Kym returns home after two years of confinement in a correctional rehabilitation centre, where she has both undergone treatment for her substance addiction and served time for accidentally killing her kid brother in a car accident while high on drugs. She is ‘nine-​months clean’, as she confesses, and is given an allowance to attend the wedding. Yet she is still unstable and provocative, and her evil remains uncontrolled. Her family (the new evil) treats her as a cultural hazard as her rehabilitation towards the behavioural standards of the ‘complete person’ required by the PR machines of Manhattan capitalism is not over. Kym jokingly describes herself as ‘Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening’, as her character brings to mind the old ‘polluting’ and overly ‘violent’ capitalism Žižek refers to in the quote above, an old evil that the new and humanised capitalism of the suburb aims to repress. Kym is excessive, abusive, manipulative, ill-​spoken, destructive, self-​concerned, and, referring to the quote above, a disintegrator of social links and a desertifier (or pollutant) of human relations. In addition, in Hathaway’s interpretation, her Shiva persona of ‘toxic cloud of snark, cigarette smoke and wounded narcissism’, as one critic puts it, becomes even more visible (Scott 2008). In fact, too visible, as Demme admits in interviews.20 The effect of Hathaway’s acting is that it undermines Demme’s vision of the suburb as a useful resacralising apparatus. She too convincingly brings to the fore an incorrigibly negative persona and makes the evil she represents credible and legitimate, ‘a human nuclear device scattering bombs of rage as a flower girl strews rose petals’ (Rickey 2008). Coupled with the ambiguous ending of the film, her performance creates the impression that her character might not change, and that the efforts to heal Shiva –​and of capitalism to redeem itself –​ are either unsuccessful (rendering the resacralising model it proposes unsustainable) or self-​deceiving and hypocritical (thus reasserting the new evil).21 Not surprisingly, even at the time of the opening of the film, this situation made critics remember that, in one of its early stages, the film bore the working title ‘Dancing with Shiva’ (Rickey 2008). This is illustrative for Rachel … because critics sensed (even if they did not overtly articulate it) that they were watching not a pure psychological drama, but rather one with a disaster movie plot; one of them titled his review ‘Out of Rehab, Wreaking Havoc’ (Scott 2008). The reference to the disaster movie is important. On the one hand, this type of plot assumes that the havoc-​ causing agent does not change. On the other, it focuses attention on the community reacting to the intruding event, whose most visible change is that its social bonds become tighter after the encounter and its organisation more legitimate.

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Thus, the encounter between Kym and the suburb is not an act of healing; it is one of distancing. The emotional and cultural dynamics of the new capitalism redeem themselves not by bettering the old, but by either trying to repress it or distancing themselves from it. The presentation of Kym’s condition emphasises this hypothesis. An important ideological operation the film articulates in this sense –​ and in the logic of the disaster movie –​is the chemicalisation of Kym’s otherness.22 Chemicalisation suggests that her predicament is neither socially rooted nor a matter of free choice –​neither structural nor purely criminal. Kym’s aberrant behaviour is alien to the suburb. It indicates an exceptional and uncontrollable situation  –​ something similar to president George W. Bush’s qualification of the predicament of Wall Street on the eve of the crisis as ‘drunk’ with a ‘hangover’ and the need to ‘sober up’ (Doyle 2008). A  higher thing-​and catastrophe-​like power acts upon Kym, and the only thing the enlightened suburb can do is react, fight effects  –​ recover, resacralise, or rehabilitate whatever is too important to fail. Kym in crisis is kept under control by an apparently over-​concerned father at home. Just a bike-​r ide away from her family residence is a police-​supervised 12-​step meeting centre, where professional measures are put into practice. Kym attends these meetings, and her presence there emphasises the preparedness of the suburb to deal with crisis more disciplinarily. The two episodes presenting her participation in the meetings also serve to differentiate the values and the lifestyle of the liberal suburb from the more savage type of enlightened capitalism it aims to distance itself from. There is much parallelism between the 12-​step meetings and the wedding party scenes. Like the wedding, the 12-​step meetings bring together about thirty men and women from a variety of races and cultural backgrounds, and the performances of their identities are presented through similar stylistic means. But, whereas, in the wedding scenes, social relations are produced within an economy of the gift, those of the community of the addicted are organised around the Adam Smithian concept of self-​interest, which is central to the laissez-​faire worldview of crude capitalism.23 If a commons is built in the 12-​step meetings, it is in line with the myth of the invisible hand, which argues that the best economic benefit for a community can be achieved by egotistical drives and actions. Each participant attends the meeting driven by the wish to improve their condition. The meetings are joint ventures, nomadic in character. They are not designed to last, and, in contrast to the purposiveness of a wedding, they are not meant to build long-​term social bonds. They are ephemeral encounters of anonymous or counterfeit identities and of individuals converging or diverging according to their needs. Quality of life is another differentiating factor, that of the suburb being clearly superior. It is made visible by the contrast between the inexpensive community centre décor and the stylish scenery of the wedding. In comparison with the affluence and good taste of the wedding, one of the most unfortunate aspects of an addict’s condition is the drab, uncreative life they have to live. When they speak up, the participants at 12-​step meetings confess to guilt and loss of control over their lives, and create a pitiful spectacle of self-​discomfort and especially self-​absorption. In contrast, in the suburb, with the exception of the contribution made by Kym (who

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talks about herself), all of the speeches in the wedding rehearsal scenes are witty and sentimental tributes to the bride and groom’s wellbeing and to love in general. They are disinterested acts of giving and are at variance with the symbolic economy of the 12-​step environment, where the act of sharing one’s story serves, first of all, oneself and the healing of one’s troubled and self-​consumed identity. Power relations also reaffirm the class identity and the superiority of the liberal community. The dinner table where the guests sit after the wedding rehearsal is a place where, even if gazes focus mostly on the wedding couple, power seems equally distributed among the guests. The table is round, and everybody faces everybody else, democratically producing the commons. The addicted, however, have lost the privileges of the round table. Unlike the new capitalism, the old is less democratic.Those who cannot govern themselves need hierarchies, governors and police supervision. The participants at the 12-​step meetings face a podium, and, when standing up to confess to their addiction, they talk to it. Later they also receive advice and know-​how from it. The meeting coordinator leads them in prayer and in a recitation from what seems to be the decalogue of the addicted subject. One: We admitted that we are powerless over our addiction and that our lives have become unmanageable. Two: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves …

Conclusion: the ultimate ruler Seen from a different angle, this recitation also draws attention to the bubble mentality preceding the 2008 crisis, a mentality which was not significantly changed by the crisis. From this perspective, one can read the ‘power greater than ourselves’ as being the capitalist order. The response to the crisis of American society was thus similar to that of Kym’s family –​it was mainly concerned with distancing itself from the crisis and perhaps undertaking self-​healing.The crisis was imagined as an earthquake, as an exceptional event. In reaction to it, the liberal Obama administration adopted the practices of repairing the damage and strengthening the ties of the victimised community of Demme’s film (everything from supporting insolvent firms to creation of jobs). One can even observe social rituals similar to the 12-​step meetings in the hearings of the special congressional committees investigating the event, in which bankers were made to face a podium and expected to confess their guilt. Thus Kym’s melancholia and restlessness can be interpreted as reactions to that which the liberal discourse regards as the appropriate path to the re-​socialisation of the intoxicated. Since she is in transit between two representations of capitalism, she is more able to see that the differences between the two communities might not seem so radical, as she can notice addiction and intoxication at work in both. ‘Liberal’ might not be the antonym for ‘addicted’, and the more humane capitalism of the suburb is not so different from the savage one of the participants in the 12-​ step meetings. Her gaze might be the most qualified to notice that the act of contrasting the wedding and the 12-​step meetings, the acceptable and the deplorable,

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the emancipated and the self-​absorbed, the resacralised and the desertified, is first and foremost an expression of hedging and of differentiating ethically between two forms of capitalism that are in fact, according to Žižek, only two faces of the same coin (Žižek 2008: 27). This chapter aimed to show that affluent liberalism can articulate a true statement of class consciousness only by reflecting on its employment in the hedging of Manhattan capitalism, something that the plot of Rachel … does not offer –​at least not interpreted from a post-​2008 perspective. Rachel … rather develops contrasts between two ‘ways of life’ of capitalist society, but none of its characters goes as far as to antagonise the employer, the beneficiary of hedging, which in Rachel … is embodied by Rachel and Kym’s father, Paul Buchmann (aided by Sidney, who marries his daughter). Not even Kym, who antagonises everybody, truly challenges his status as the ultimate beneficiary of the wedding spectacle. In fact, most of the fighting between her (the desacraliser) and her sister Rachel (with a PhD in resacralising –​that is, psychology) is for their father’s attention. Behind the caring and almost motherly attitude of Paul Buchmann the father stands Paul Buchmann the owner of the property in which the wedding takes place and Paul Buchmann the successful Manhattan businessman. He and Sidney are music producers referred to as having made good money in the industry, and most of the wedding guests are not only their friends, but also their employees. Moreover, the father pays the bills of the party. His gaze organises the space of the suburb, and the success of the wedding, its resacralising mission, is work for him. Buchmann’s ideological camouflage is impressive. His wealth, his status as general employer and his location in a rich Manhattan suburb notwithstanding, nothing else in his presentation betrays his downtown persona. The Manhattan money-maker is inconspicuously disguised behind an effeminate, non-​corporate and non-​authoritarian appearance to the extent that reviews describe him as ‘anxiously all-​embracing’ (Scheib 2008), ‘weak’ (Hammond 2008) and a ‘pious twit’ (Schickel 2008). One can venture even further and argue that Buchmann is not only the most ‘humane’ presence in the film, but also one of the most humanising representations of Manhattan capitalism, and an indisputable achievement of Rachel …’s work of hedging.

Notes 1 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was the technocratic name for the $700 billion bailout the American government offered to its troubled financial institutions in order to keep them in business. 2 He had tackled controversial subjects –​AIDS, homophobia and the glass ceiling –​in his 1990s films. The films he made shortly before and after Rachel Getting Married included a thriller on the subject of presidential elections and a series of socially concerned documentaries that expressed the views of liberal America. 3 Bobos is an acronym for bourgeois bohemians used by David Brooks to describe the affluent and educated diversity-​minded American middle class that emerged in the 1990s (Brooks 2001: 11). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the first chapter of his book is an analysis of the wedding announcements section of the New York Times.

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4 Liberal and liberalism are used in this chapter in their twentieth-​and twenty-​first-​century meaning, as Modern American Liberalism, or New Deal Liberalism, opposed to conservatism and associated with the values of the left. For more information see https://​ en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Modern_​liberalism_​in_​the_​United_​States#Liberal_​coalition. 5 See www.postmagazine.com/​Publications/​Post-​Magazine/​2008/​October-​1-​2008/​ DIRECTORS-​CHAIR-​JONATHAN-​DEMME-​RACHEL-​GETTING-​MA.aspx. 6 The term was used first by Karl Marx. Similar terms are re-​embedding and reterritorialisation. Re-​embedding is central to Karl Polanyi’s classic The Great Transformation (1944) and reterritorialisation to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-​Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972). For Fisher, resacralisation is a response to that which ‘has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom’ (Fisher 2009: 8). 7 See, for example, ‘DP/​30 –​Demme & Lumet on Rachel Getting Married,’ an interview for the online project DP/​30: The Oral History of Hollywood. It was made after the Toronto festival on 6 September 2008, www.youtube.com/​watch?v=En7OtWmsEgM. 8 In books such as Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, First As Tragedy,Then As Farce and Violence. 9 In the modern era, an important landmark is Friedrich Schiller’s 1794 book On the Aesthetic Education of Man. This argument is furthered by Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. A  disenchanted modernity relies on art and artists to defend the middle-​class soul from capitalist reification (Bewes 2002: 154). This view is questioned by Fredric Jameson (1992: 48), who argues that the logic of capitalism has exploded the concept of the autonomy of art. 10 Demme cast a special group of actors from New Orleans to play Sidney’s family. Sidney is a loaded name as well. The actor Sidney Poitier played the lead role in the landmark film on interracial marriage Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which came out only three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 11 An important concept in economic thought that goes back to Keynes, arguing that capitalism is more irrational than it claims to be. 12 The well-​known wedding sequence of The Deer Hunter (M. Cimino, 1978), which includes the staple brawl, perhaps predictably, because its protagonists come from the industrial working class. 13 See https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Stamford,_​Connecticut#Income. 14 The economic crisis has thus shown that this hedging works, because the bailout and the implication of all Americans in its business have generated the concept of ‘too big to fail’. 15 American government equal-​opportunity surveys show the overwhelming predominance of white males in the industry, see www.eeoc.gov/​eeoc/​statistics/​reports/​investmentbanking/​index.html. 16 See www.youtube.com/​watch?v=-​hnusNyxu5Q. 17 Blankfein and Paulson had another thing in common; they took resacralisation literally, declaring that they and their company were doing the ‘work of God’ (Carney 2009). 18 The irony regarding the reference to Shakespeare is that he was among the first to use the verb ‘to hedge’ with the meaning it gained in financial services (Lowenstein 2001: 25). 19 The interview also fulfils the multicultural requirement. The person interviewing Blankfein is an African-​American woman. 20 He had chosen for the part Hathaway, a former face of Hollywood innocence (see www. telegraph.co.uk/​culture/​film/​film-​news/​8271341/​Anne-​Hathaways-​career-​from- ​ Princess-​Diaries-​to-​Catwoman.html) with the purpose of humanising her drug-​addict character. See the interview referred to in note 7. 21 Other reasons might have led to the audiences’ lack of empathy with Kym, such as the direct sound, which made the dialogue sometimes hard to understand and consequently obscured Kym’s motivations. Another is editing. Being too fond of the party scenes, Demme might not have allocated enough screen time to Kym’s character.

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22 The idea of chemicalisation as exonerating social alienation is developed by Fisher (2009: 41). 23 Advocated by Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

References Bewes, Timothy (2002). Reification, or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism (New York:Verso). Brooks, David (2001). Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster). Carney, John (2009). Lloyd Blankfein Says He Is Doing ‘God’s Work’, Business Insider, 9 November, www.businessinsider.com/​lloyd-​blankfein-​says-​he-​is-​doing-​gods-​work-​ 2009-​11, accessed 1 December 2016. Doyle, Leonard (2008). Bush: ‘Wall Street got drunk and now it’s got a hangover’, The Independent, 24 July, www.independent.co.uk/​news/​world/​americas/​bush-​wall-​street-​ got-​drunk-​and-​now-​its-​got-​a-​hangover-​875780.html, accessed 1 December 2016. Fisher, Mark (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (New York: Zero Books). Geismer, Lily (2014). Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Hammond, Pete (2008). Rachel Getting Married Review, Hollywood.com, 3 October, www.hollywood.com/​movies/​rachel-​getting-​married-​review-​57245136/​, accessed 1 December 2016. Jameson, Fredric (1992). Postmodernism, or,The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Konings, Martijn (2015). The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Lowenstein, Roger (2001). When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-​Term Capital Management (New York: Random House). O’Sullivan, Michael (2008). ‘Rachel Getting Married’ Is Only the Half of It, The Washington Post, 17 October, www.highbeam.com/​doc/​1P2-​19331886.html, accessed 2 December 2016. Puig, Claudia (2008). It’s Rachel’s Wedding, but It’s Hathaway’s Show, USA Today, 2 October, http://​usatoday30.usatoday.com/​life/​movies/​reviews/​2008-​10-​02-​rachel-​getting-​ married_​N.htm, accessed 2 December 2016. Rickey, Carrie (2008). Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 October, www. philly.com/​philly/​entertainment/​movies/​reviews/​20081017_​Trio_​of_​actresses_​powers_​Demme_​s_​family_​drama.html, accessed 1 December 2016. Scheib, Ronnie (2008). Review: ‘Rachel Getting Married’, Variety, 3 September, http://​variety. com/​2008/​film/​awards/​rachel-​getting-​married-​2-​1200471044/​, accessed 1 December 2016. Schickel, Richard (2008). Rachel Getting Married, Demme Getting Messy, Time, 2 October, http://​content.time.com/​time/​arts/​article/​0,8599,1846818,00.html, accessed 1 December 2016. Scott, A. O. (2008). Out of Rehab, Wreaking Havoc, The New York Times, 2 October, www. nytimes.com/​2008/​10/​03/​movies/​03rach.html?_​r=0, accessed 1 December 2016. Žižek, Slavoj (2008). Violence (London: Picador). Žižek, Slavoj (2009). First As Tragedy,Then As Farce (New York:Verso).

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11 CORPORATIONS OF FEELINGS Romantic comedy in the age of neoliberalism Elżbieta Ostrowska

‘I don’t think couples are the future.’ About a Boy (2003) Immediately after assisting in the birth of his first child, a young man leaves the hospital delivery room and proudly announces to his four male friends that he has just become the father of a beautiful little girl. One of his buddies responds to this with an enthusiastic declaration: ‘We have a daughter!’ Before this scene we are provided with a glimpse of these four men sitting in a waiting room looking like typical anxious expectant fathers. In this scene from Knocked Up (Judd Appatow, 2007), the birth of a first child is presented not as a couple’s intimate experience but rather as a joyous moment to be shared by the extended family and a close circle of friends. Arguably, in recent romantic comedies, friendship seems to invade the territory of romance to an unprecedented extent. These changes in emotional politics signal an evolution of the genre that may be attributed to various socio-​economic and cultural factors. In this chapter I will argue that neoliberalism, along with its attendant economic and social ideas, is of special significance in changing the romantic comedy’s politics of emotion and consequently its narrative and formal strategies. As neoliberal adjustments of romantic comedy occurred first in Hollywood films produced during the 1990s and only later within other national cinemas, I  will focus on Hollywood films, including some Hollywood–​British co-​productions, as these demonstrate the generic evolution in the most conspicuous fashion. First, I  will examine the newly emerged sub-​genre of ‘bromance’ in order to discuss the ways in which heterosexual romance accommodates homosocial bonds. In the subsequent section, I will analyse ‘female’ counterparts of the ‘bromance’, a group of films often identified as ‘female blockbusters’. On the one hand, they privilege female friendships over romantic relationships with men; on the other hand, they put emphasis on a theme of women’s self-​validation that occurs independently of

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the romance plot. Finally, I will discuss other generic adjustments within romantic comedy, including ‘old-​age-​romance’ themes and the employment of ‘family movie’ conventions, all of which serve the purpose of enlarging the target audience. The main objective of my close analyses of selected films is to demonstrate the ways in which contemporary cinema participates in the production of neoliberal subjectivities.

Neoliberalism and romantic comedy: friends with benefits In her book Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, Wendy Brown identifies neoliberalism as ‘a governing rationality that disseminates market values and metrics to every sphere of life and construes the human itself exclusively as homo economicus’.Therefore, as she further explains, ‘subjects … are configured by the market metrics of our time as self-​investing human capital’ which involves regulation of every sphere of life, including ‘dating, mating, creative, and leisure practices in value-​enhancing ways’ (Brown 2015: 177). By the same token, neoliberalism also regulates cultural production. Contemporary popular cinema’s entanglement in neoliberal logic is twofold. On the one hand, film production is regulated by the principles of neoliberal economy (Mortimer 2010: 1); on the other hand, the films’ narratives and visual rhetoric reproduce and reinforce (or occasionally contest) the very same principles. Romantic comedy contributes to the circulation of neoliberal rationales, whilst it also addresses fears and uncertainties experienced by its audiences who live in a free-​market world. Thus, as Claire Mortimer notes, contemporary romantic comedy responds to changing socio-​cultural realities and the consequent redefinition of familial relationship (Mortimer 2010: 18). Notwithstanding these recent ‘ideological adjustments’ of romantic comedy, it is still considered to be a conservative genre which respects ‘society’s structures and dominant ideologies, offering resolution that reinforces tradition and conformity’ (Mortimer 2010: 76). In her book Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism, Betty Kaklamanidou examines how the genre has responded to neoliberalism during the first decade of the new millennium. Specifically, she discusses how romantic comedies support and/​ or subvert dominant neoliberal ideologies of love relationships, marriage, friendship and all the attendant socio-​cultural institutions (Kaklamanidou 2013: 2). According to the author, these films, which she describes as ‘important ideological artefacts’, negotiate gender roles, express post-​9/​11 fears, and detect changes in the economic and political climate (Kaklamanidou 2013: 151). For instance, Kaklamanidou discusses how the narrative device of a ‘happy ending’ is concerned with both emotional and economic stability, or how successful independent women undergo a positive transformation through (late) motherhood, whether this occurs within or without the ideologically ‘safe’ framework of heterosexual romance (Kaklamanidou 2013:  152–​3). She concludes that ‘millennial romantic comedies are filled with contradictions in that there are texts which promote neo-​conservative messages

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regarding marriage, sexual relationships and gender roles, and others, which opt for a more liberal consideration of the above’ (Kaklamanidou 2013: 154). Therefore, these films testify to continuities within Hollywood cinema in that they support and/​or contest dominant ideologies belonging to a given time and as such reveal how spheres of private and public life are conditioned by political economy. While Kaklamanidou’s approach of ideological analysis proves useful in demonstrating how romantic comedy, specifically its representations of social rituals or institutions of love and romance, perpetuates and/​or contests the principles of neoliberalism, it does not address the problem of how neoliberalism affects an individual subject’s experiencing of its emotions. As examination of this issue is necessary to determine the ways in which contemporary romantic comedies negotiate the project of neoliberal subjectivity, in this chapter I will investigate how cultural production participates in the neoliberal politics of emotions. Following the general line of argument proffered by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith Wagner that ‘the production of cinema as an industry and commodity intersects with its production of subjectivities’ (Kapur and Wagner 2011:  3), I  will discuss how contemporary romantic comedies respond on both textual and extratextual levels to neoliberal shifts in economy and social life, specifically financialisation, transforming everything into both market asset and managed human capital. In my analysis I will draw inspiration from Rachel Greenwald Smith’s examination of affective aspects of American literature during the era of neoliberalism. In her book, she corroborates the widely shared understanding of neoliberalism as a general principle governing all spheres of individual and collective lives, including their emotional components. She claims that, according to neoliberal logic, emotions are properties of an individual that need management in order to secure a profit from investment. This management of emotion enables a neoliberal subject to create an ‘emotional portfolio’ (Smith 2015: 6) that facilitates an ‘emotional return’ (36) exceeding the framework of a beneficial individual ‘emotional contract’ (36). Smith explains that the neoliberal subject, unlike its liberal counterpart, is not independent but rooted within a ‘feeling of emotional connection’ (38), therefore ‘neoliberal self-​improvement is more often understood to necessitate strategic alliances with others’ (39). Smith explains that [i]‌ndividualism as a value does not disappear in the neoliberal novel, but its qualities are transformed. Rather than figuring the individual as pre-​existing her attachments and as a potential location of resistance from mass structures, these novels see the individual as something that is produced through affective vectors. (Smith 2015: 41) Hence, instead of a rebellious protagonist resisting the collective mould, the neoliberal novel features ‘pairs, families, and ensemble casts characterized by pronounced intimacy’ (Smith 2015: 41). A similar observation in regard to romantic comedy was made by Celestino Deleyto in 2003:

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It is as if the new climate of social and sexual equality between man and woman had rendered heterosexual desire less vital, as if the perfectly codified conventions that have been valid for so long had lost much of their meaning and become nothing more than picturesque museum pieces –​to be admired but not believed. Disenchanted by this state of affairs the genre has started to explore other types of relationship between people and to consider their incorporation into their plots … Friendships between men, between women, or between men and women have started to proliferate in the space of romantic comedy. (Deleyto 2003: 181–​2) Although Deleyto formulates a diagnosis similar to Smith’s observations concerning recent American literature, these two scholars base their claims on different assumptions. The former clearly links the new type of relationship between characters in romantic comedy with emancipatory movements concerned with gender and sexuality which subvert the hegemonic role of individual heterosexual romance (see also Babington and Evans 1989; Deleyto 2009; Neale 1992; Krutnik 1990, 2002), whereas Smith links retreat from individual ‘emotional contracts’ and instead investing into larger social constellations with the logic of neoliberalism. Arguably, romantic comedy responds to the ongoing process of negotiations of the notions of love, sexuality and marriage which legitimises Deleyto’s approach to the genre. However, I would argue that these categories need to be located within the context of neoliberal economy to see evolution of the genre in its whole complexity and socio-​political implications. On looking at contemporary romantic comedies such as About a Boy (Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, 2002), Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003), The Holiday (Nancy Meyers, 2006), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick, 2002), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden, 2011) and Mamma Mia! (Phillida Lloyd, 2008), it is easy to notice that they do indeed prominently feature various groups of people surrounding and supporting (or discouraging) individuals in their search for eternal love. Although contemporary romantic comedies continue to focus upon (white and heterosexual) couples, they also frequently feature their protagonists as participants in more developed networks of affective exchanges. As these narratives demonstrate, proper management of individual emotions is necessary in order to invest one’s human capital with a low risk. Hence, instead of a union of two people leading to the emergence of a nuclear family, neoliberal romance comes to fruition in a corporation-​like environment.Whether this involves an extended family or a circle of friends, the romantic couple invests emotionally in relationships as if thrusting their love into a mutual fund which does not necessarily promise a skyrocketing gain of capital, but does ensure a stable day-​to-​day return.

How can you marry a woman and not lose your male friends? ‘Bromance’, or ‘bromcom’, has emerged as a sub-​genre of romantic comedy and is perhaps the most evident example of recent negotiations within its generic

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conventions. Mortimer explains that it ‘centers on the relationship between male characters, following a similar trajectory to the heterosexual relationship’; the best known examples are Wedding Crashers (David Dobkin, 2005), Superbad (Gregg Mottola, 2007), I Love You Man (John Hamburg, 2009)  and The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009) (Mortimer 2010: 134; see also Pace 2015). As Mortimer argues, ‘heterosexual relationships are marginalised in these films’ (Mortimer 2010: 135), whereas male camaraderie is represented as something positive. Nicole Matthews aptly notes that this new type of male protagonist typical of bromances emerges only after accepting his fatherhood, like for instance the protagonist of Knocked Up. She argues that this new model of masculinity with responsibility being its most important characteristic has larger ideological implications in that it ‘establishes norms of conduct against which appropriate behaviour for neoliberal citizens should be measured’ (Matthews 2000: 121). Casey Kelly admits that the incorporation of this new type of male protagonist into contemporary romantic comedy contributes to a critical reinvention of the genre but notes that it is also an efficient marketing strategy: ‘Since 2000, the man-​boy has been sufficiently present in cinema for scholars to observe this character’s contribution to the species of the “neotraditional” romantic comedy, an ironic and self-​consciously styled satirization of the “chick flick” designed to reach male audiences’ (Kelly 2016: 56). The 40-​Year-​Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005) is one of the first ‘bromances’. Its protagonist, Andy, the eponymous 40-​year-​old virgin, is a ‘sensitive man’ who, persuaded, or perhaps rather forced, by his male friends, decides to give up his sexual abstinence. Focusing on male maturation, the film privileges male camaraderie over heterosexual romance. Arguably, the latter’s positive resolution is possible only because of the ongoing, even if somewhat unorthodox, support Andy gets from his buddies. However, his three friends are only seemingly more successful in their relations with women as, in fact, they all struggle with a variety of problems. For example, David suffers from depression after being dumped by his girlfriend, whereas

FIGURE 11.1:   Screenshot

Source: Screen grab.

from Wedding Crashers.

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Jay’s promiscuity is ruining his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend. Their inability to properly manage their own human capital in relationships compromises their efforts to help Andy lose his virginity. They constantly place him into difficult, awkward and sometimes humiliating situations (for instance when on a date a girl vomits directly into his face); however, they always help him to get over them. To use neoliberal vocabulary, they place Andy in high-​risk situations but then help him to manage and, ultimately, benefit from them. Gradually, they also prove capable of managing their own emotional problems. In the closing scene of the wedding ceremony of Andy and Trish, each of the groom’s buddies shows up accompanied by a potentially ‘lifelong’ romantic partner.Thus, the ending offers a positive resolution not just to one heterosexual romance but to four. As Kelly remarks, ‘in the end, the film resolves the male characters’ sexual maladjustments with a return to traditional coupling, monogamy, marriage, and family’ (Kelly 2016: 55). However, the wedding ceremony not only reinstates the hegemonic family order, but also reinforces homosocial bonds between buddies which seem as important as their actual or prospective marriages. Admittedly, whilst marriages may occur in ‘bromances’, clearly these rituals have lost some status in relation to friendship. For example, in I Love You Man the romance is already present and is ready to be legitimised by a wedding ceremony; however, the groom’s real problem is his lack of a best friend to act as his Best Man. It is not surprising then that the film concludes with the confession ‘I love you man.’ A  similar confession occurs at the ending of Superbad, in which two male protagonists, Seth and Evan, declare their love for each other. While discussing the ending of the film, John Alberti comments that the film ‘presents the bromance not just as a romcom for boys but as homophilic romantic comedy for women’ (Alberti 2013: 40). All of these generic modifications of contemporary romantic comedy confirm Peter Williams Evans and Celestino Deleyto’s claim that ‘Romantic love is not what it used to be and contemporary romantic comedy teaches us … that the texts themselves are being transformed by the experience, even though the genre itself remains alive and well’ (Evans and Deleyto 1998: 9). In a similar vein, Kelly comments on how The 40-​Year-​Old Virgin departs from traditional generic conventions of romantic comedy, displaying also a subversive potential. She emphasises that Cal, one of Andy’s buddies, approaches sexual relations with women as if they were investments of one’s capital: Perhaps most noteworthy is Cal’s insistence that he [Andy] ‘play the odds’ by ‘planting seeds’ with a variety of women. Cal’s economic metaphor suggests that dating success is achieved through entrepreneurialism and that like the gambler or investor, Andy needs to diversify his portfolio and hedge his bets in the sexual marketplace. (Kelly 2016: 70) Andy’s romance can be seen in terms of economic investment for many reasons. At the beginning of the narrative, he is endowed with the greatest, though frozen due to his virginity, sexual capital, which, when invested (in a proper heterosexual

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relationship), brings the richest return, as signified by the spectacular concluding wedding scene. As Kelly admits,‘In the end, Andy’s virginity is a valuable asset’ (Kelly 2016: 73). His collectibles are the material equivalent of his emotional and sexual capital as their value also accumulates over time; being of very little value thirty years earlier, now they are worth a fortune of more than 100,000 dollars merely due to their rarity and antiquity. Realising the value of his symbolic and material assets, ‘He uses the sale of his action ­figures –​his surrogate phallus –​to open up his own stereo store and become a self-​made businessman’ (Kelly 2016: 73). Eventually, he becomes the perfect example of a neoliberal entrepreneur. Arguably, the sale of Andy’s collection of toys, realising such a huge profit margin, exemplifies ‘financialisation’, which is listed by David Harvey as one of the key features of neoliberalism, relating to the fact that any commodity can become an instrument of economic speculation (Harvey 2005: 160–​2). Finally, Trish, Andy’s love interest, proves to be ‘the one’, inducing the release of his sexual, emotional and material capital into profitable market circulation. To conclude, the fictional reality of The 40-​Old-​Year Virgin is governed by principles of affective economy that require proper management of both material and emotional capital.

‘Corporate sisterhood’ In her monograph on romantic comedy, Mortimer notes that, although critics frequently identify Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008)  as a purveyor of capitalist ideology with consumerism as its linchpin, the film also perpetuates the powerful post-​feminist image of sisterhood … The women form a mutually supporting ‘family’ … The role of the best friend is magnified within the film, so that the centre of gravity for the narrative is moved away from the couple to the best friend. (Mortimer 2010: 39) Indeed, although the narrative is focused on Carrie and Mr. Big’s romantic vicissitudes, as a couple they are given very little screen time. Certainly, this deficit is motivated narratively in that the prospective groom withdraws unexpectedly from the wedding ceremony and the ensuing story largely concerns Carrie’s recovery from this break-up. Her ability to overcome this bitter disappointment is predicated on the fact that she gets constant support from her girlfriends. As in The 40-​Year-​ Old Virgin, in Sex and the City the friends support the protagonist, whilst simultaneously struggling with their own relational problems. Ultimately, they all benefit from this ‘friendly’ mutual emotional investment. In her analysis of Sex and the City and contemporary romantic comedies, Ashley York notes the importance of female friendship: ‘Although these women are involved in love stories, these serve as subplots rather than main storylines in their respective texts’ (York 2010: 11). The female characters develop strong female bonds, not only in private life, but also in their professional life. When Carrie at some point realises that she is unable to re-​organise her personal and professional life without regular support, she

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decides to employ an assistant. After interviewing a number of girls (of course!), she chooses Louise, who admits she came to New York to find love and also declares that she was raised as one of six children and this enables her to deal with ‘anything’. Apparently, she displays what Elaine Swan and Stephen Fox (2009) call self-​flexibility, described as ‘the ability to enact oneself as a malleable and adaptable person who willingly responds to the new demands in work life’ (quoted in Styhre 2014: 121). Indeed, Louise proves perfectly capable of managing both Carrie’s personal life and her professional life. Whilst engaged with the former task, Louise behaves like a professional, whereas when she performs the latter, she behaves like a friend. She is aware that Carrie’s intimate life requires management, whereas her professional matters need to be personalised. Carrie and Louise do not act as a traditional employer and employee but rather treat each other as dear friends. Their relationship reflects the neoliberal redefinition of private and public space as well as proving ‘a positive relation between employee friendliness of the acquirer and acquisition performance’ (Ertugrul 2013: 347). Tellingly, the narrative of Sex and the City revolves around various constellations and variants of female friendship, whereas the heterosexual plot is important only inasmuch as it serves the purpose of tightening these bonds of friendship.The decision to end the film not with the wedding ceremony but with a scene in which the four female friends get back together redefines the traditional ‘they-​lived-​happily-​ ever-​after’ ending. For there is no certainty about Carrie and Mr. Big’s marriage, whereas there is no doubt that she, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte will remain friends forever. Similarly, Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)  is only marginally concerned with a heterosexual romance, whereas the planned wedding is a plot device that triggers conflict between female characters. Annie and Helen are competing with each other in order to prove their friendship with the bride, Lillian. The protagonist, Annie, experiences the whole range of emotions which are typical of love relationships:  betrayal, rejection, jealousy and, ultimately, reconciliation. The last one indicates the significant accumulation of the initial emotional capital invested in her friendship with Lillian. Annie and Lillian have been best friends for years, whereas Helen’s relationship with the bride, although rather intense and generous, has endured for just one year. This ‘inequity’ of initial emotional capital causes much friction and turbulence between the three women, though ultimately each of them proves able to manage and communicate their emotions with the others, leading to reconciliation. At the end, each woman has not one, as was the case initially, but two friends who, as the narrative depicts, are ready and eager to do anything for one another. After all, it is Helen who arranges for Ron to pick up Annie from the wedding party which signifies that their romance will also achieve a ‘happy ending’. Mamma Mia! offers an even more radical variant of accumulation of female friendship multiplied over two generations as represented by a mother and her daughter. Donna, a single mother, invites two female friends from her youth to the wedding of her daughter, Sophie.The girl, whose father is unknown, conspires with her female friends to invite all three of her possible progenitors to the ceremony.

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She signs the invitation letters with her mother’s name. Thus, when all three of her may-​have-​been ​fathers arrive, they are initially unpleasantly surprised to find that they have two competitors in their bid for a possible ‘reunion’ with Donna. Despite this ancient rivalry they soon start to act as a team.The multiple romance(s) develop as a true piece of ‘team-​work’ which finally brings the assorted variants to a ‘happy ending’. Significantly, Sophie and Sky, her fiancé, suspend their planned wedding; instead Donna and one of her past suitors, Harry, decide to marry. They resolve their past romantic misunderstanding and agree that they are, in fact, made for each other. The decision to postpone one wedding and to proceed with another one, which has been postponed for twenty years, reveals a specific logic within romance economy. Sophie and Sky’s emotional investment in each other is a short-​time investment, whereas Donna and Harry’s emotional investments were made many years ago. Then the crisis occurred that made them think they had lost their investment, only for them to unexpectedly find it was still present and viable.Thus, Sophie and Sky’s decision to postpone their wedding can be seen as a long-​term investment rather than placing an emphasis on immediate return through participation in a sequence of social rituals: a wedding, honeymoon and parenting. The young couple are ready for risk-​taking and ‘aggressive investment’ of their emotional capital, instead of getting a return from the low-​interest joint account of an early marriage. Mamma Mia! is one of many contemporary romantic comedies that do not conclude with the ultimate positive resolution of heterosexual romance; although Donna and Harry’s impromptu marriage is potentially a ‘they-​ lived-​ happily​ever-​after’ ending, it is still in some sense a substitute for what was planned for Sophie and Sky. As for their future, there is still uncertainty as to whether their journey will convince them to stay together or to embark on another emotional trip. Despite lacking a conventional happy ending, Mamma Mia! was a box-​office hit. Arguably, its soundtrack offering renditions of famous ABBA hits significantly contributed to this financial success, yet it was certainly not because of high-​ quality vocal performances of these songs by the actors. Whilst Meryl Streep’s

FIGURE 11.2:   Mamma

Source: Screen grab.

Mia!

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‘musical numbers’ are flawless renditions, Pierce Brosnan’s singing is far from perfect. Paradoxically, this imperfection may be a reason for the film’s popularity, as it diminishes the distance between the characters and the viewers, delivering the populist message ‘everyone can sing’. As Kathy Hamilton and Beverly Wagner claim, ‘through the democratisation of music, it incites consumer participation and instills a sense of camaraderie amongst those watching the film together … Audiences participate in the sing-​along and in so doing make their own spectacle’ (Hamilton and Wagner 2011: 385–​6). Thus, Mamma Mia! promotes the idea of female and male camaraderie both on the narrative level and also on the extratextual level of spectatorship. In western cinema such an interactive mode of viewing is by no means a new phenomenon, as it has been long experienced by the audiences of cult films which, by definition, are not commonly exhibited in cineplexes or massively distributed on DVDs. The camaraderie among the viewers watching (and singing along to!) Mamma Mia! is on a mass scale due to the film’s inclusiveness in terms of its targeted audience. In her discussion of millennial romantic comedy’s modes of production and exhibition, York classifies Mamma Mia!, The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006) and Sex and the City as women’s blockbusters, claiming that one of the defining features of such films ‘is their millennial theme of validation’. All of their female protagonists redefine themselves as independent individuals, regardless of, or sometimes despite, what occurs within their romantic affairs (York 2010: 11). In all three films, the female protagonists readjust and verify their approach to romance in a way which ultimately allows them to develop into independent and strong subjects. At some point they realise that ‘love comes and goes. It is part of life, but only that much’ (York 2010: 11). Thus, for millennial romantic comedy it is imperative to conclude primarily with self-​validation of the female protagonist, since only then can a positive resolution of heterosexual romance follow, or not, as this may often be postponed. York concludes that millennial women’s films ‘situate new types of women protagonists in the process of living their lives in a complex yet hopeful twenty-​first-​century space’ (York 2010: 12). Apparently, she interprets the theme of validation as part of an empowering message delivered to a female audience, yet it also accedes to neoliberal ethics in its imperative to achieve success and take responsibility for one’s life. Therefore, neoliberal romantic comedy demonstrates that feminism (as well as other emancipatory movements), or some of its factions, abets neoliberalism along with its system of economic subjugation.

‘Everyone can love’ (and watch romantic comedies): generic adjustments and spectatorship In her discussion of millennial women’s films, York claims that this new model of popular cinema speaks to viewers outside the typical 18–​34-​year-​old heterosexual American women’s audience. Such storylines include characters of different ages, sexes,

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and sexual orientations, thus bringing new fans to both their texts and franchises … Thus, the potential fan base of millennial women’s blockbusters has widened to include a bigendered, worldwide audience of older and younger men and women, which is necessary to turn a chick flick into a successful global powerhouse. (York 2010: 12) The transformation of the genre of romantic comedy, in terms of its attempts to transcend its traditionally limited viewership, reflects the neoliberal principle of accumulation of capital. Unlike pre-​1990 romantic comedies that were aimed at a specific target audience (i.e. middle-​aged women), the neoliberal variant addresses a much larger group of potential viewers representing various age, gender and sexual-​orientation groups. To achieve this aim contemporary romantic comedy employs two strategies. On the one hand, it borrows from various popular genres and sub-​genres; as occurs, for example, in romantic comedies that are embedded within the larger generic pattern of the family film. On the other hand, it becomes more inclusive in terms of the age and sexual orientation of the protagonists as, for example, ‘old age’ romance films. Sometimes these two strategies are used simultaneously within one film. Nicole Matthews dates this shift within romantic comedy towards family film to the comedies of the 1980s, which were able to both ‘anticipate a “family” audience and take “the family” as a central theme’ (Matthews 2000: 6). However, it seems that this trend truly flourished in millennial productions. About a Boy and its box-​office success exemplify this trend. The film’s narrative develops a complex network of emotional bonds that are presented through a combination of generic conventions within coming-​of-​age stories and romantic comedy. It features two protagonists, a 12-​old-​year boy brought up by a single depressed mother and a 32-​year-​old bachelor, Will Freeman, who lives off the royalties from a Christmas song his father composed. Owing to the

FIGURE 11.3:   Screenshot

Source: Screen grab.

from About a Boy.

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latter, the film can also be seen as a holiday movie, as is manifest in its ending scene that gathers various characters together as they prepare Christmas dinner. Spending this ‘special’ day together in an extended family or a simple circle of friends constitutes a ‘happy ending’ for everyone. In addition, there are positive resolutions to a proliferation of transgenerational heterosexual romances. As the teenage protagonist declares in his voice-​over narration, ‘Every man is an island. But clearly, some men are part of island chains … I don’t think couples are the future.You need more than that. You need back up.’ The monologue seems to echo an opinion expressed by Anthony Giddens concerning the transformation of the notion of the cultural as well as social significance of the idea of romantic love. He claims that it has been replaced with a notion of ‘confluent love’ that is based on consensual agreement to be in a relationship that does not need to be ‘forever’ and monogamous (Giddens 1992: 61–​3). This change occurs both in social reality and in various texts of popular culture, and it cannot be determined which preceded the other. In its sceptical approach to the ideals of ‘eternal love’ as too fragile and unstable a ground on which to build one’s life, About a Boy recaps uncertainty on that matter expressed earlier in Four Weddings and A Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994), the first successful British romantic comedy in the 1990s, followed by such films as Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon MacGuire, 2001) and Love Actually. Love Actually exemplifies generic and textual inclusiveness which is mostly due to its narrative structure consisting of several intertwining plot lines that culminate around Christmas Day.The film features eight couples of various ages experiencing uncertainty and confusion regarding their emotional life. On one side of the age spectrum there is an adolescent boy who needs to overcome his shyness in order to express his affection for a schoolmate; on the other, an ageing rock-​and-​roll singer who eventually realises that his manager, whom he has been neglecting for years, is the true love of his life. Admittedly, Love Actually aims at what I would call ‘affectionate inclusiveness’ in that it depicts various emotional bonds and entanglements such as heterosexual romance, friendship, transnational romance, male camaraderie, adolescent romance and family bonds. All of the plots end up in a variety of places, yet all are evoked during the same Christmas time, recalling the myth of renewal in that all the characters discover their new ‘self ’. Both About a Boy and Love Actually combine generic conventions of romantic comedy, family film and holiday film that thereby constitute a specific type of spectatorship that implies repeated seasonal consumption, which, consequently, secures additional financial return. The Holiday is another successful film representing the ‘holiday romcom’ whose narrative resolution not only offers a positive resolution of heterosexual romance but also establishes an ‘affective network’ of two couples and two kids.Tellingly, both female protagonists discover their new ‘selves’ and establish satisfactory relationships with men only through participating in larger ‘affective communities’. Iris befriends an old screenwriter, whereas Amanda enters the family life of Graham, Iris’ widowed brother, and his two daughters. Their respective emotional connection with an old man and two little girls cures both women’s hurt emotions and renders them

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open to new ‘healthier’ romantic relations. In short, The Holiday teaches the viewers that investing in a larger ‘affective network’ guarantees a solid ‘emotional return’. The importance of participating in ‘emotional networks’ at the expense of romance is also demonstrated in the contemporary sub-​genre of ‘wedding films’. In Four Weddings and A Funeral the wedding ceremony simply does not occur; in Mamma Mia! it gets postponed; in My Best Friend’s Wedding (P. J. Hogan, 1997) the female protagonist loses her beloved forever, yet recognises the importance of her friendship with her gay friend, which may indeed last ‘forever’. Although My Big Fat Greek Wedding does end with a wedding ceremony (perhaps one of the most spectacular and joyful in contemporary romantic comedy), it signifies more than just the promise of eternal love between a man and a woman. For it marks a symbolic union between two families, the extended family of the American-​Greek bride and the nuclear family of the Anglo-​Saxon American groom, which represent two different ideologies of marriage and family.The ending of the film is a symbolic incorporation of the romance into a larger family network.The textual emphasis on the family issue impacted the film’s revenue. As Alisa Perren argues, unlike the biggest box-​office hits of 2002 such as Mr. Deeds, Minority Report, Lilo and Stitch, Scooby-​ Doo and The Bourne Identity that attracted specific demographic groups (children, young men, etc.), ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding appealed to multiple groups. It was truly a rare film, one to which grandmothers, mothers, and grand-​daughters could (and did) go together’ (Perren 2004: 29). The sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Kirk Jones, 2016), attempted to capitalise on this intergenerational appeal, developing three romantic plots which occurred for each generation (grandparents, parents and grandchildren), yet perhaps this multiplication of love stories dispersed the affective potential of the narrative material, lessening its appeal for the viewer. Although the narrative devices used are different from those of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel also addresses various segments of its audience.To this end, the film offers not just a single protagonist but a group of individuals struggling with different material and emotional problems. Sonny, the manager of the eponymous hotel located in Jaipur, India, hopes to transform it into a lively financial enterprise, yet he cannot get funding for it. In addition, his mother wants him to return home for an arranged marriage, but he is in love with a different girl. Seven British senior citizens come to the hotel in the hope of finding an affordable and pleasant place for retirement, yet things transpire otherwise. Like Sonny, they experience both emotional and economic turbulence.The film’s ending brings about a more or less positive resolution for both. The film not only appeals to different age groups, but also employs various generic conventions, such as romantic comedy, heritage film, adventure film, comedy of manners, situational comedy and social drama, which can be seen as an attempt to amplify spectatorial pleasure. By featuring old-​age pensioners as protagonists, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel exemplifies a notable trend in contemporary cinema represented by such films as Quartet (Dustin Hoffman, 2012), Last Orders (Fred Schepisi 2001), Last Chance Harvey (Joel Hopkins, 2008) and The Mother (Roger Michell, 2003). Josephine Dolan discusses

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economic factors behind this production trend, indicating that these films are targeted at the growing segment of British cinemagoers over the age of forty-​five, which has increased ‘from 14 per cent in 1997 to 30 per cent in 2008’ (Dolan 2016: 572). She also explains how economic issues of post-​crisis neoliberalism are reflected in the characters of the Marigold pensioners. All of them are negatively affected by post-​recession economic reality and excluded ‘from the golden retirement mythology’ (Dolan 2016: 574). They relocate to India hoping that low-​cost living there will revitalise this lost myth, which does indeed happen, due to the generosity of one of the pensioners, Muriel. However, as Dolan pertinently notices, one of the characters, Jean, who openly expresses her frustration with economic reality, is depicted as a stereotypical nagging wife rather than as a socio-​political subject protesting against neoliberal reality. She is also contrasted with the character of Evelyn, who, after realising that her funds might be insufficient to cover even the low costs of living in the Marigold Hotel, decides to take a part-​time job in a call centre. Not only does Jean complain about her financial situation, instead of acting ‘constructively’, as Evelyn does, but also she is a blatant racist full of contempt for Indian culture. In that she is similar to Muriel, yet Muriel is absolved of this ‘sin’ once she donates her money to the hotel’s revitalisation, thereby securing a place to stay for all her British fellows, except for Jean who leaves for Britain. Thus, the only character who expresses a critical opinion on the economic reality leaves the ‘affective network’ of the inhabitants of the Marigold Hotel. As Dolan summarises, ‘Marigold 1 evokes opposition to passive acceptance of the effects of the crash, only to pathologise its expression, and thus produces an ideological veil of closure’ (Dolan 2016: 576). The narrative closure is a modified variant of the myth of ‘they lived happily ever after’ in that it refers to a group of older people for whom romance is merely a constantly fluctuating potential. Instead, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel privileges friendship and an affective network encompassing old people who represent various social strata. By the same token, old-​age viewers are also invited to participate in a kind of camaraderie with the actors whom they have known for years. As Dolan notes regarding this cohort of actors, Because of their familiarity, often through the domestic medium of television, the cohort’s appeal is akin to the comfort of long-​standing friendships as ‘silvered’ audiences remember actors’ youthful appearances, even as they identify the signs of ageing inscribed on their wrinkled faces and/​or sagging flesh or perhaps scrutinise them for signs of rejuvenation procedures. (Dolan 2016: 577) However, the viewers participating in this nostalgic camaraderie with the senior actors are targets for a more specific ideological message. As Dolan explains, ‘those film and television actors who continue to work long past western retirement ages function to embody, exemplify and normalise the benefits of an extended working life. In this way, “old age” actors are fully embedded in the ideological management of deferred retirement’ (Dolan 2016: 578). The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel engages

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with neoliberalism on both textual and extratextual levels. The fictional characters represent neoliberal strategies of dealing with the situation of crisis through establishing an entrepreneurial network, whereas the casting strategies are promoting the idea of late retirement as a strategy enabling one to accumulate both cultural and financial capital.

Conclusion In his book on the neoliberal job market, Alexander Styhre writes that ‘The market man is a modern-​day industrial nomad wandering between short-​term employment contracts’ (Styhre 2014: 123). Analogously, the protagonist of contemporary romantic comedy is often an emotional nomad who is also wandering between short-​term romantic relationships. This shift from the idea of ‘eternal love’ to ‘confluent love’, as noticed by the aforecited Giddens, manifests itself in changes of generic ending. Although the motif of withdrawal from a relationship dates back to the ‘nervous comedy’ of Woody Allen (Krutnik 1990), the romantic comedy in the era of neoliberalism utilises this narrative device more frequently. It also modifies the canonical ending of ‘they lived happily ever after’ in that the wedding and marriage are simply no longer very important, and thus the ‘last-​minute’ withdrawal motivated by uncertainty or fear of commitment has lost its dramatic intensity. In its attempts to reflect upon changes of the notion and socio-​cultural significance of romantic love, neoliberal romantic comedy develops first and foremost within the logic of a free-​market economy. Privileging of homosocial relationships, female friendship and generational bonds including late-​age romance over heterosexual romance has significantly increased the potential spectatorship. Instead of typical earlier audiences consisting mostly of middle-​aged women, recent romantic comedy addresses viewers of all ages and genders. Perhaps the most significant development is the emergence of ‘bromance’, a male variant of romantic comedy, ‘family romantic comedy’ and, finally, ‘old-​age’ romantic comedies. As there is no comparable inclusiveness in terms of representing sexual and ethnic minorities, it is legitimate to say that all instances of more diversified representations of age and gender serve the purpose of solidifying the film capital to maximise financial return. Another important generic ‘adjustment’ of romantic comedy is experimentation with its traditional aesthetic conventions. This is especially evident in the incorporation of elements of ‘gross comedy’ in ‘bromances’, which is in my opinion a cinematic variant of the neoliberal ‘risk-​taking’ principle: ‘According to the neoliberal perspective, to prosper, one must engage with risk. All neoliberal social strategies revolve around this idea. Managing risk frames how neoliberal agents are oriented toward the future’ (Gershon 2011: 540). Filmmakers decide to include elements of disgust (for example, vomiting in The 40-​Year-​Old Virgin and I Love You Man) that are perhaps especially at odds with the polished and elegant worlds of romantic comedy, thus risking the films being rejected by significant segments of a more conservative film audience.Yet this strategy is proving effective, as has been demonstrated by the rapid development of bromance and its constantly increasing

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popularity. However, it changes the nature of the spectatorial engagement with fictional reality. The elements of gross humour belong to grotesque imagery which interferes with the conventional realism of the genre. As a result, ‘bromances’ simultaneously present a realistic world and its grotesque deformation. As Alberti notes, ‘the bromance as a narrative genre equally invokes parody and realism, both broad comic exaggeration and appeals to realism’ (Alberti 2013: 27). These aesthetic oppositions parallel narrative tensions and confusions between love and friendship, emotional and economic contracts, and, finally, sexual freedom and promiscuity. Although contemporary neoliberal romantic comedy is still increasing its longevity as it provides a useful aesthetic form within which to contain evolving attitudes to love, sex and marriage, it appears to have lost its erstwhile aesthetic consistency. The genre has become an aesthetic nomad wandering from one generic convention to another, hoping to accumulate ideological and aesthetic capital in order to secure a maximised financial return.

Bibliography Abbott, Stacey and Deborah Jermyn (2009). Falling in Love Again. Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (London and New York: I. B. Taurus). Alberti, John (2013). Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy. Gender as Genre (London and New York: Routledge). Babington, Bruce and Peter William Evans (1989). Affairs to Remember: Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Brown,Wendy (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books). Deleyto, Celestino (2003). ‘Between Friends: Love and Friendship in Contemporary Hollywood Romantic Comedy’, Screen, 44(2), pp. 167–​82. Deleyto, Celestino (2009). The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Dolan, Josephine (2016). ‘“Old Age” Films: Golden Retirement, Dispossession and Disturbance’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 13(4), pp. 571–​89. Ertugrul, Mine (2013). ‘Employee-​Friendly Acquirers and Acquisition Performance’, Journal of Financial Research, 36(3), pp. 347–​70. Evans, Peter Williams and Celestino Deleyto (1998). ‘Introduction: Surviving Love’, in Peter Williams Evans and Celestino Deleyto (eds.), Terms of Endearment. Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 1–​14. Gershon, Ilana (2011). ‘Neoliberal Agency’, Current Anthropology, 52(4), pp. 537–​47. Giddens, Anthony (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hamilton, Kathy and Beverly Wagner (2011). ‘An Exploration of Spectacular Consumption at the Movies: Mamma Mia!’, Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10(4), pp. 375–​90. Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kaklamanidou, Betty (2013). Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism.The New Millennium Hollywood Rom Com (London and New York: Routledge). Kapur, Jyotsna and Keith B.Wagner (2011). ‘Introduction: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics, and New Forms of Resistance’, in Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner (eds.), Neoliberalism and Global Cinema. Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 1–​16.

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Kelly, Casey R. (2016). Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Krutnik, Frank (1990). ‘The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals:The “Nervous” Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes’, The Velvet Light Trap, 26(Autumn), pp. 57–​72. Krutnik, Frank (2002). ‘Conforming Passions? Contemporary Romantic Comedy’, in Steve Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London: British Film Institute), pp. 130–​47. Matthews, Nicole (2000). Comic Politics. Gender in Hollywood Comedy after the New Right (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press). McDonald, Tamar Jeffers (2009). ‘Homme-​Com. Engendering Change in Contemporary Romantic Comedy’, in Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn (eds.), Falling in Love Again. Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (London and New York: I. B. Taurus), pp. 146–​59. Mortimer, Claire (2010). Romantic Comedy (London and New York: Routledge). Neale, Steven (1992). ‘The Big Romance or Something Wild? Romantic Comedy Today’, Screen, 33(3), pp. 284–​99. Pace, Tom (2015). ‘“Will I  Do Myself Proud or Only What’s Allowed?” Performing Masculinities and Generation X Men in Contemporary Hollywood Comedies’, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 6(3), pp. 343–​59. Perren, Alisa (2004). ‘Big Fat Indie Success Story? Press Discourses Surrounding the Making and Marketing of a “Hollywood” Movie’, Journal of Film and Video, 56(2), pp. 18–​31. Smith, Rachel Greenwald (2015). Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press). Styhre, Alexander (2014). Management and Neoliberalism: Connecting Policies and Practices Account (New York: Routledge). Swan, Elaine and Stephen Fox (2009).‘Becoming Flexible: Self-​flexibility and its Pedagogics’, British Journal of Management, 20, pp. 149–​59. York, Ashley Elaine (2010).‘From Chick Flicks to Millennial Blockbusters: Spinning Female-​ Driven Narratives into Franchises’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 43(1), pp. 3–​25.

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12 WHY IS EVERYONE NOT FALLING IN LOVE? Love, sex and neoliberalism in film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis’ works Kamila Rymajdo

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says to Romeo, ‘the more I give, the more I have’ (Žižek 1999). But under neoliberalism, Slavoj Žižek argues,‘the logic of balanced exchange is disturbed in favor of an excessive logic of “the more you give the more you owe,” or the “more you possess what you are longing for, the more you are missing and thus the greater your craving,” or the consumerist version, “the more you buy the more you must spend” ’ (Žižek 1999). It would seem then that love in its classical depiction is at odds with the way neoliberalism operates. Notions of love and sex are re-​written by every era, but this chapter concerns itself with the period of 1980s and 1990s neoliberalism, described by Ewa Mazierska as ‘heroic neoliberalism’, as opposed to the later, crisis years (Mazierska 2017: 265), as seen through the film adaptations of texts by Bret Easton Ellis, namely Marek Kanievska’s Less Than Zero (1987), Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000), Roger Avary’s The Rules of Attraction (2002) and Gregor Jordan’s The Informers (2008).

Ellis and neoliberalism Ellis is a writer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest prophets of neoliberalism, thanks to his presentation of the acceleration of its domination. He shows how neoliberalism and its insistence on amassing ever more material goods leads to boredom, unhappiness and eventually mental breakdown, the misery most apparent in American Psycho, with scenes such as ‘Patrick Bateman’s terrible, despairing cry in the video store –​“There are too many fucking movies to choose from” ’ (Young 1992: 29). It is in Patrick Bateman that we find the most accurate incarnation of the neoliberal man whose materialism seems to have been created with the medium of film in mind. Everything he owns, wants and consumes can be depicted through the mise-​en-​scène and his interactions with others, thus his character on screen is a

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paradox of being vapid and hollow in one sense, but very rich and real in another. Ellis explains that American Psycho is a book about becoming the man you feel you have to be, the man who is cool, slick, handsome, effortlessly moving through the world, modeling suits in Esquire, having babes on his arm. It’s about lifestyle being sold as life, a lifestyle that never seemed to include passion, creativity, curiosity, romance, pain. (Ellis interviewed by Goulian 2012) Although a self-​proclaimed non-​literary writer (Ellis interviewed by Goulian 2012), Ellis can also be said to follow in the great American tradition of writing about the American Dream. He is different from authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, who embraced materialism and ambition, in that many more of his characters are already rich rather than amassing wealth as the aim of their existence, and therefore there is nowhere for them to go in economic and social terms. ‘The characters’ affluence and lifestyle –​all Porsches, jacuzzis and cocaine –​places them in a context that is closer to that of the musician than of the usual pop consumer’ (Cavaney 1992: 124). This allows Ellis to explore the way neoliberalism affects other areas of life, including love and sexuality. One can argue that the novels’ unique portrayal of disaffected youth in the throes of trying to make sense of their lives and each other is the main reason why they immediately gained popularity in the 1980s. Indeed, Ellis is exceptional in showing how the effects of neoliberalism have ‘penetrated “into the sinews of our bodies and the machinations of our hearts” ’ (Kapur and Wagner 2011: 4) and this is perhaps why his books continue to attract readers to this day. Patrick Bateman might be the perfect depiction of a substance-​less yuppie, but in the books preceding American Psycho Ellis shows a world where there is still a possibility for characters to fall in love and for sex to be transgressive. Although

FIGURE 12.1:   Bateman

Source: Screen grab.

in his bathroom in American Psycho.

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people are ‘afraid to merge on freeways’, in his debut novel Less Than Zero they are still able to feel something, even if these feelings must be kickstarted by copious amounts of drugs and a degree of violence. In agreement with Georgina Colby’s 2011 Bret Easton Ellis: Underwriting the Contemporary I believe that, contrary to the argument of early critics who said that Ellis’ work was complicit with late capitalism, the writer, through the process of underwriting, critiques this political system. But in opposition to Colby, I suggest that his view of sex and love within this system is not as bankrupt as she would have her reader believe. Rather, in his early novels Ellis presents a world on the cusp of change, where anything can still happen. So while in Less Than Zero characters are in the main ‘afraid to merge on freeways’, as goes the motto of the novel, repetition is used artfully and Clay still has enough distinctiveness to keep the attention of the same girl, Blair, and vice versa. In The Rules of Attraction experimental narration is used to illustrate that there is still an escape to be found from neoliberalism. The campus of Camden is used as a metaphor for a utopia where transgressive sexual politics can exist outside the strict parameters of neoliberalism. Ellis uses his characters’ monologues to illustrate that through love and sex identity is formed, and as opposed to the later American Psycho, where it is difficult to distinguish between characters, here, through despair at lost lovers and contrast between sexual satisfaction and disappointment, there is still potential for love and sex to build relationships and create identities. Ellis’ belief in love’s creative potential is so strong that he even uses the love letter as the form of a whole short story in The Informers, ‘Letters from L.A.’. However, by American Psycho Ellis’ stylistic choices reveal how bankrupt the neoliberal project has become. ‘Nothing and no one in American Psycho connects; everything and everyone function in parallel, including the text and the reader’ (Namwali Serpell 2010: 55). Puns are used as a way to show the distance between characters, with people continually misunderstanding each other, as in the famous ‘murders and executions’ line being mistaken for ‘mergers and acquisitions’. The fact that American Psycho is such a unified text, with repetition running through every fibre of the novel, from the characters, to scene structure, to the phrases and leitmotifs which are repeated so relentlessly that the novel is almost unbearably annoying to read, is testament to the fact that there is no room for something as random as love to occur. To show how the adaptations of Ellis’ works are critical of the neoliberal world his characters inhabit and to illustrate how he offers ways to navigate it, I will utilise three distinct and opposing theories of love and sex, which I describe as romantic love, love as use of erotic capital and sex as liberation, found in Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love (2012), Catherine Hakim’s Honey Money (2012) and Wilhelm Reich’s The Sexual Revolution (1945). Drawing on theories of film adaptation such as Robert Stam’s ‘thespian baggage’ and François Jost’s theory of ‘comparative narratology’, that is, ‘deploying the cinema–​literature shuttle in order to forge more precise and productive concepts’ (Jost 2004: 71), I will assert that concepts of love and sex that are suggested by Ellis are made more apparent in the texts’ filmic adaptations. Films, by virtue of their modes of production, are usually more conservative

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and adherent to the dominant ideology, which makes analysis of the adaptations a perfect way to test the strength of Ellis’ inferences regarding neoliberalism. I will argue that, due to the films’ particular channels of communication and processes such as the conventions of Hollywood cinema, they strengthen the validity of love and sex as the means of resistance to neoliberalism that Ellis offers in his fiction. As André Bazin declares whilst discussing Robert Bresson’s Le Journal d’un curé de campagne, ‘It is hardly enough to say of [Bresson’s film] once removed, that it is in essence faithful to the original because, to begin with, it is the novel … the resulting work is not certainly better but “more” than the book’, for the film reminds us of ‘all that the novel has to offer plus, in addition, it’s in the cinema’ (Andrew 2007: 192). Moreover, due to the films’ mimetic quality, Ellis’ characters’ ways of using their erotic capital, or positive experiences of sexual promiscuity, become more convincing on screen, suggesting that what seems far-​fetched in fiction is actually very convincing and ‘real’ on screen.

Romantic love ‘There are not many public discussions of love in our culture right now’ (hooks 2000: xviii), wrote bell hooks in 2000 in All about Love: New Visions, arguing that there are more conversations about love’s irrelevance and meaninglessness than there are about its importance. She quotes Harold Kushner, who writes, in All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, ‘ “I am afraid that we may be raising a generation of young people who will grow up afraid to love, afraid to give themselves completely to another person, because they will have seen how much it hurts to take the risk of loving and have it not work out” ’ (hooks 2000: xviii). Over a decade later, not much has changed. In his 2012 book In Praise of Love Alain Badiou calls for a reconsideration of love in the neoliberal era and engages with the concept as if to ‘save it’ from the onslaught of neoliberalism. He believes that neoliberalism promises love without risk but also deems it to be of little importance. He therefore contends that ‘it is the task of philosophy, as well as other fields, to rally to its defence. And that probably means, as the poet Rimbaud said, that it also needs re-​inventing … Risk and adventure must be re-​invented against safety and comfort’ (Badiou 2012: 10–​ 11). But, in a society obsessed with the individual, is there any space for anyone else other than ourselves? If we live in a culture ‘which so emphatically promotes self-​love’, then ‘loving someone else has become increasingly difficult, even if one still hopes to be loved by others’ (Salecl 2010: 72). At the same time, love as God has been in ascent ‘since the end of the eighteenth century’ to ‘fill the vacuum left by the retreat of Christianity’ (May 2001: 1).Therefore, as a warring partner to neoliberalism, it makes for a strong opponent. Badiou, however, feels the time for the fight is nigh, as he fears love has been reduced to a commodity like everything else and argues that it should not be condensed to the buying and selling of sexual favours. Moreover, there should be an element of chance involved in any love relationship. In love ‘the risk factor can never be completely eliminated’ (Badiou 2012: 9). For him, ‘love involves a separation or disjuncture based on the simple difference

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between two people and their infinite subjectivities’ (Badiou 2012: 27). ‘Love isn’t simply about two people meeting and their inward-​looking relationship; it is a construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two’ (Badiou 2012: 29). By the same token, he opposes the neoliberal approach to love as epitomised by internet dating websites that sell their services on the promise of finding a perfect partner for their customers. Badiou believes that love is irrational and cannot be bought and sold. However, he also concedes that a union between two people is no longer the desired outcome for lovers in the neoliberal era. ‘Although fear of commitment may hardly be new, of late it seems to have been elevated to the level of an ideal. Plurality of possibility increases the belief in this ideal, and partnership is pushed back further and further into the future’ (Salecl 2010: 93). In the neoliberal era, ‘(w)eighed down by hopes, love seems to slip away because it is idolized by a society focused on the growth of the individual. And as it is laden with more hopes the quicker it seems to vanish into thin air, bereft of any social ties’ (Beck and Beck-​Gernsheim 1995: 2). But even if love is still possible under neoliberalism, it requires a certain attitude from its subjects. The psychoanalyst Jacques-​Alain Miller argues that ‘(t)o really love someone is to believe that by loving them you’ll get to a truth about yourself. We love the one that harbours the response, or a response, to our question “Who am I?” ’ (Miller 2014). What happens when subjects do not ask this question, though? What happens when there is no narrative, when events are stripped of meaning? For literary critic Georgina Colby, the chance for love for Ellis’ characters has long since passed precisely because there is no desire for such answers. She argues that melancholy in Ellis’ early novels is related to the loss of subjectivity as ‘a result of the systemic violence of neoliberalism’ (Colby 2011: 25) and that ‘(t)o read Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction is to enter this narrative of the dissolving subject in the final stages of its dissolution’ (Colby 2011: 26). Although I do not agree with Colby, I believe that, in their transition from novels to films, Ellis’ protagonists and their stories take on more defined identities and much of the repetition of the literary texts is lost, replaced by more opportunities for them to make connections with fellow human beings. In the adaptation of Less Than Zero we see love as a catalyst for empathy, which in turn is a rejection of the neoliberal notion of individualism –​of thinking only of oneself. But the acceleration of neoliberalism is still apparent precisely because some criticism of it is lost in the earlier adaptations. In the disjuncture between novel and film we see the tightening of its grip. Less Than Zero is in many ways a coming-​of-​age movie. Its slick veneer of lavish parties full of attractive young people detracts from Ellis’ critique of the vacuous way in which these characters live their lives. Even as Clay looks on with bewilderment, he, and we, through his point of view, are equally dazzled and sucked into the glamour of it all.The film’s opening sequence is the graduation ceremony of school friends Clay, Blair and Julian, and is shortly followed by a flashback where Blair tells Clay that she does not want to go to college with him, instead choosing to pursue a

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modelling career. A few months later Clay returns home to Los Angeles during the Christmas break to find his friends altered. Julian is now a drug addict and Blair has been romantically involved with him during Clay’s absence. Although there is some hesitation on Clay’s part, it soon becomes apparent that the bond between Blair and Clay has not diminished during the time of their separation. After Clay and Blair have rescued Julian from prostituting himself to pay back his debt to Rip, he goes cold turkey with them watching over him. Clay says to Blair, ‘I’ll do whatever I can, I’ll do whatever it takes’, and the milieu takes the shape of a family unit, with Clay and Blair playing surrogate parents to the problem child that is Julian. The romantic low lighting of the sex scene between Clay and Blair is contrasted with the harsh bright light that illuminates sex between Julian and one of Rip’s clients Julian is forced to prostitute himself out to, suggesting that, while neoliberalism aims to commodify everything, it is still possible to resist, to experience sex within the parameters of a love relationship, albeit without long-​term commitment. Moreover, Blair’s refusal to take cocaine at the final party she attends shows that through love one can escape one’s addictions; one can transcend one’s situation. But equally, Julian’s death, which takes place inside Clay’s car with Blair by his side, illustrates that love cannot save everyone, certainly not those who do not give themselves to it wholeheartedly like Clay and Blair did. However, the film’s focus on romance amidst a backdrop of the markers of neoliberalism which would come to be the focus of later Ellis adaptations shows that love still had potential as a tool of personal growth and a vehicle for social responsibility in the 1980s.

Love as use of erotic capital The term ‘erotic capital’ was first used by Catherine Hakim in Honey Money to describe the fourth type of personal asset, the other three being economic capital, cultural capital and social capital, terms first introduced ‘in 1983 by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’ (Hakim 2012: 18). Her seeing sex as a type of capital is no surprise, given the long commodification of sex in Western society. In One-​ Dimensional Man Herbert Marcuse states that ‘advanced industrial civilization operates with a greater degree of sexual freedom –​“operates” in the sense that the latter becomes a market value and a factor of social mores’ (Marcuse 2002: 77). Erotic capital, then, can be seen in the context of the dissolving boundary between the private and the public sphere, and is regarded as an important characteristic of neoliberalism. Hakim describes it as ‘a combination of aesthetic, visual, physical, social and sexual attractiveness to other members of your society, and especially to members of the opposite sex, in all social contexts’ (Hakim 2012: 17). She argues that erotic capital can be used like any other form of capital and therefore her theory is closely linked to neoliberalism, because, as David Harvey argues, under this system any kind of good can be turned into an instrument of economic speculation (Harvey 2005: 160–​2). In particular, under such circumstances erotic power might be as profitable an asset as monetary capital. This commercialisation of the erotic has profound consequences for all strata of society. The rich can multiply their

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monetary capital by using their erotic capital, for example by wooing their clients, while the poor are sometimes in so precarious a position that they have no other option than to engage in sex work, often risking their health or even their lives. Hakim is not the only writer to have noticed this shift. Quoting the French psychoanalyst Jean-​Pierre Lebrun, Renata Salecl writes that ‘sexuality is becoming more and more a matter of competitive rivalry and consummation, it does not concern anymore a choice of stable object. It is primarily a matter of seduction’ (Salecl 2010: 87). If long-​lasting love has been replaced by the art of seduction, erotic capital can arguably be defined as the most powerful type of capital. Indeed, capitalism thrives on our desire for sex, lots of it, and with different partners. Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips write in their book Intimacies that Michel Foucault recognises the importance of desire as constitutive of a modern subjectivity, but he defines the desire produced by specifically modern exercises of power as the subject’s desire to know his desire. The peculiarity of this extended moment in the history of power (our moment) would not have anything to do with the nature or content of the modern subject’s desires, but rather with the subject’s acquiescing to the view (promoted by power) that his desires (in particular, his sexual desires) are the key to his being. (Bersani and Phillips 2008: 64) In other words, capitalism makes us believe that we need sex to be valid human beings and to prosper in the world. Indeed, the plethora of books available on how to improve one’s sex life echoes this point: ‘(t)he idea is that if one works at improving one’s sexual performance, learns new tricks and then practices them relentlessly, there are no limits to the satisfaction a person can achieve’ (Salecl 2010: 89). Therefore, being good at sex, thus having erotic capital, is imperative to survive in today’s society. In films this value of erotic capital is especially high, because when we watch films we not only imagine sexy characters, but actually see them, as performed by actors. Robert Stam writes that actors bring a thespian baggage to the films in which they play, with audiences attaching characteristics from previous roles to their current ones (Stam 2000: 54–​76). It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the kind of actors who were chosen to be Ellis’ protagonists. It goes without saying that they are more or less all uniformly good looking, but the actors’ other roles confirm that they were chosen for their erotic capital as well as, if not as much as, for their acting credentials. Less Than Zero stars 1980s Brat Pack heart-​throbs Andrew McCarthy (playing Clay) and Robert Downey Jr. (playing Julian). McCarthy starred in 1980s romantic comedies Pretty in Pink (1986), directed by Howard Deutch, and Michael Gottlieb’s Mannequin (1987), while Downey Jr. starred in John Hughes’ Weird Science (1985) and The Pick-​up Artist (1987), directed by James Toback. The main role in The Rules of Attraction went to 1990s pin-​up James van der Beek of 1990s mega-​hit teen drama Dawson’s Creek; and the most recent adaptation, The Informers, has Amber

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FIGURE 12.2:   Christian

Bale as Patrick Bateman.

Source: Screen grab.

Heard playing the beautiful Christie at the heart of the story. What these films demonstrate is that Ellis’ work, whilst not always translating well to film, boasts characters who do, characters who are oozing sex appeal, and the actors who are chosen to play them mirror these qualities. Ellis illustrates the value of good looks, youthfulness and sex as a form of capital in almost every book he has written, and in The Informers it is especially apparent because of the plethora of loosely connected narratives, adapted from the short-​ story collection of the same name. Here, erotic capital is used as a bargaining tool, whether between lovers, co-​workers or children and their parents. Colby, quoting Harvey, claims that ‘the process of neoliberalization demanded the construction of neo-​liberal market-​based popular culture of differentiated consumerism and individual libertarianism’ (Colby 2011: 28) which programmed individuals to act alone and believe they are the managers of their own bodies. It is therefore no wonder that using erotic capital rather than intelligence or even money became Ellis’ characters’ first choice as they embraced the individualist culture that surrounded them. However, unlike Colby, who asserts that Ellis condemns the practices he describes, I believe he shows the deployment of erotic capital to be a powerful choice and asset for the characters to get what they want, and the focus on beauty and youth within Hollywood cinema gives credence to Hakim’s theories within the film adaptations. The power of erotic capital is confirmed when we see it being honed by older characters, such as Kim Basinger playing Laura Sloan and Winona Ryder as Cheryl Moore, who, by Hollywood standards at least, are past their prime. More than just possessing erotic capital, they are the most desired women in the film. Laura is having an affair with her son’s friend Martin and, although Cheryl was for a time romantically involved with Laura’s ex-​husband William, she is quickly seen with a younger man, spurring William to decide he wants her back. Furthermore, while stopping off at a diner to buy cigarettes, she is accosted by the lead singer from a young band, who not only asks Cheryl for her autograph, having recognised her

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FIGURE 12.3:   Graham

and Christie on the beach.

Source: Screen grab.

from the news programme she presents, but also proposes a date. The feeling of empowerment erotic capital provides is perhaps best illustrated when Laura ends the reunion with William after realising that he still has feelings for Cheryl. With her good looks still intact, accented by her glamorous dress, she seems to be making the decision on the basis of knowing that she, like Martin, will not be alone for long. Thus The Informers supports Hakim’s claim that anyone can deploy erotic capital. Indeed, especially used in conjunction with other forms of capital, it can be a powerful asset across class and age. This is because ‘links between erotic capital and other forms of capital are contingent; they are not predictable and reliable [and] this gives erotic capital its maverick, subversive, wild-​card character’ (Hakim 2012: 22). The redundancy of love in comparison to the power of erotic capital is most clearly illustrated in the last scene of the film, when Christie is lying on the beach, deteriorating from a mysterious illness. Nina Metro asks Graham Sloan, Christie’s boyfriend, ‘Aren’t you the one that loves her?’ He replies, ‘Well, what’s that going to fix? Is that going to help her?’ Love is presented as something that cannot enact any change, whereas erotic capital makes things happen.

Sex as liberation My third approach is taken from the works of Wilhelm Reich, the former pupil of Sigmund Freud and lifelong researcher into human sexuality, whose theory was particularly influential in the 1960s and 1970s, the time marked by the development of the welfare state and the hippie movement. Reich promoted free promiscuous love as a tool of personal and social liberation; ‘[i]f one represses one’s own sexuality one develops all kinds of moralistic and esthetic defenses’ (Reich 1972: 6). ‘Genital gratification [is] the decisive sex-​economic factor in the prevention of neuroses and establishment of social achievement’ (Reich 1972: 19). Reich, who was popular

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with such key figures of the 1940s and 1950s as Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Dwight Macdonald and William S. Burroughs (Turner 2011), ‘proclaimed that only free and unmitigated satisfaction of mature genital sexuality could be genuinely healthful and liberating for the individual. And only by liberating individual sexuality, Reich argued, could the authoritarian behavior structures of class society be eliminated’ (McBean 1972: 4). Like class, Reich believes that family is also a constraint to be overcome in the pursuit of sexual contentment. In The Sexual Revolution he argues that in general, people are incapable of sexual independence; they are bound to their partners by loveless, sticky ties and therefore incapable of separating from them; they are afraid that in case of losing a partner they might not find another. This fear is always based on infantile attachments to mother, father or older siblings. (Reich 1972: 233) He asserts that for a fully functional and happy sexual relationship the family has to be replaced by communal living. ‘If the family were replaced by the collective, the formation of such pathological attachments would not occur’ (Reich 1972: 233). In The Rules of Attraction, the neoliberal project is somewhat suspended inside the college commune of Camden.The film focuses on a love triangle between drug dealer Sean Bateman, Lauren Hynde, a virgin awaiting the return of her ex-​boyfriend Victor, who is travelling in Europe, and Paul, Lauren’s bisexual ex-​boyfriend. The narrative is a long series of parties where they continually misunderstand each other’s motives and feelings. The film’s plot is contrasted with the setting, a sexual utopia where anything goes, much like the commune Reich asserts is the perfect context for sexual freedom leading to political revolution. But, for the lead characters, sex is only hinted at or disappointingly presented through close-​ups and is almost always disappointing. In contrast to the novel, there is much more time devoted to the feelings of the characters rather than their carnality. Lauren’s pathological attachment to Victor is a perfect example. From the outset of her narrative, she is obsessing over a relationship that we see no evidence of. Similarly unreciprocated is Sean’s love for Lauren, and Paul’s for Sean, while the author of the love notes dedicated to Sean commits suicide. Significantly, through adaptation to the screen the ‘girl from the canteen’ receives an identity, and the colour of the love notes she leaves for Sean is used also for the captions and for the film’s title, imbuing her with an importance she lacks in the book. But this is almost a cruel joke, as despite these markers Sean still never learns about her love for him. What this precedence of the romantic feelings of the characters over their sexual escapades illustrates is that a sexual utopia is still somewhat a dream, believable only when it is out of focus, in the background. The sexually free Sean of the novel, imbued with the thespian baggage of teen heart-​throb Dawson Leery,1 is

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now just a lovesick puppy. In fact, the only moment in the film when Sean seems to experience an emotion other than romantic disappointment is when he punches Lauren’s roommate Lara in the face towards the end of the film. But the scene is short and fleeting, and is soon forgotten when Sean goes back to brooding over his lost love, Lauren. Only in Victor, who has been travelling through Europe, do we finally see an example of Reich’s ideas about sexuality fully endorsed. Victor, somewhat cruelly, does not mention Lauren in his speeded-​up narrative where he has sex with a plethora of women in different countries, and when he returns he not only has sex with her roommate, but does not remember who Lauren is. Thus in Victor we see Reich’s argument that through the correct nourishing of one’s sexual urges one can transcend the shackles of family, class and indeed romantic mourning following the breakdown of a relationship. However, the rather odd placement of Victor’s narrative towards the end of the film shows that to be sexually liberated is difficult and success is attainable only for a few. Most people, the film is asserting, will not manage it, forever doomed to be mourning love lost or unfulfilled, as do the trio at the centre of the plot, with the final scene a lonesome Lauren and Paul meditating on their romantic failures.

The death of love In American Psycho Ellis presents the implosion of neoliberalism, and also here the possibility for love and sex to act as tools of resistance is seemingly abandoned. Much like in the book, the film sees Patrick Bateman working as a Wall Street banker, but spending most of his time drinking, taking drugs, having sex and, most prolifically, killing people. The murders get more elaborate and brutal as the film goes on, as do the lists of things Bateman possesses, from CDs to clothes, grooming products and everything in between. Neoliberalism’s commodification teaches us that everything can be owned, that the goal is to have as much as possible. Opening ourselves up to another means we give up some of our property. This exchange, for Bateman at least, is an impossibility. ‘I have all the characteristics of a human being; flesh, blood, skin, hair, but not a single clear identifiable emotion except greed and disgust’, he tells the viewer. His inferences regarding his own psyche are accurate as he goes on to hire prostitutes whom he maims and kills, as if ensuring that they do not take anything away from him, from his money to some essence of himself. Once he has killed Paul Allen, he also moves his homicide operation to his victim’s apartment, as we see earlier during an exchange in a Chinese dry cleaner’s that even dirtying his sheets with blood causes him great distress. This violent protection of his capital is a progression from the preceding adaptations. Whilst in Less Than Zero violence plays a minor role in the narrative, in American Psycho it is presented as the only viable form of agency, and any sense of morality is long gone, compared with Less Than Zero, where Julian dies seemingly in penance for his sins.

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Bateman’s inability to connect, or even listen to anyone but himself, is evident in scenes such as a taxi ride he shares with his fiancée, Evelyn, when he listens to music through his headphones as she talks to him about her plans for their wedding, thus not taking in anything she is saying. Similarly, Evelyn seems not to hear Patrick as he tries to break up with her, with him having to repeat himself several times before she finally does. The only woman Bateman does take any real interest in is his long-​suffering secretary Jean, whom he invites out to dinner one evening. As they converse in his apartment Bateman selects the tools to kill her with, but changes his mind and Jean goes home, believing he does not want to hurt her by beginning an affair while he is still with Evelyn. Although she misunderstands the way in which he decides not to hurt her, the fact he does not want to do her harm remains true, and thus, this is an intimacy of sorts, or at least the closest Bateman comes to a genuine connection with a woman. His taste for romantic music, such as Chris de Burgh’s ‘The Lady in Red’, which he listens to in his office, acts as a reminder that love and romance do still exist in the neoliberal world, but they have been turned into commodities in the form of CDs one can buy. Similarly, marriage, traditionally a celebration of love, is now only a way for characters to either climb the social ladder, in the name of making more money, or flash their wealth, as Evelyn plans to do, declaring she wants to have thousands of roses and hire celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz to take pictures. On the other hand, the faithfulness of the film to the novel can be read as a sign of greater absorption of neoliberal values such as consumption and individualism, of how Ellis’ formerly controversial view of the neoliberal world came to more closely represent the reality.Thus, while in the book the long lists of consumer products are laborious for the reader, here, they simply act as advertorials for the brands which make them, and the potency of the criticism is lost. The criticism comes across in the duality of the viewer’s abhorrence for the characters and just how relatable they are. So, while the film is littered with the book’s most famous and somewhat outrageous phrases such as ‘I’m into, uh, well, murders and executions, mostly’ pertaining to the crimes Bateman commits, his familiar interactions with colleagues and his girlfriend take centre stage. These are always set in rather everyday contexts, such as restaurants, apartments, the office where he works, magnifying the ‘realness’ of these relations. Bateman, for all his designer clothes and cologne, is in many ways an everyman, a man with a job and a fiancée, which he declares he has because he wants to ‘fit in’. Thanks to these qualities, he is not only relatable but also believable, much more so than Clay and Blair of Less Than Zero, whose interactions are always imbued with an exaggerated romanticism that makes the film seem somewhat fairytale-​like. In American Psycho the emptiness of Bateman’s relations with people rings true, even if it is accompanied by the rather over-​the-​top and often comically depicted murdering of people. The focus on death in American Psycho can also be read as what Freud sees as the natural progression of a love relationship; that is, one that ends in destruction

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of the other. ‘Throughout the evolution of Freud’s thought, Eros always has an antagonist. In his earlier theory the antagonist is self-​preservation, or the ego-​ instinct; in his later theory the antagonist is the death or aggressive instinct’ (Brown 1985: 52). Freud argues that there are three types of death drive: homeostasis, the ‘getting rid of tensions and attaining inactivity’ (Brown 1985: 87) or Nirvana; repetition-​compulsion, ‘a general instinctual tendency to restore an earlier state of things, ultimately derived from a tendency in all organisms to return to the inorganic or dead level out of which life arose’ (Brown 1985: 88); and sado-​ masochism, ‘a primary masochism directed against the self ’, with sadism being ‘an extroversion of this primary masochism’ (Brown 1985: 88). Julia Kristeva continues this thread, arguing that ‘[a]ccording to classic psychoanalytic theory (Abraham, Freud, and Melanie Klein), depression, like mourning, conceals an aggressiveness toward the lost object’ (Kristeva 1989: 11), which leads to a hatred of oneself for one’s feelings for it. ‘The complaint against oneself would therefore be a complaint against another, and putting oneself to death but a tragic disguise for massacring another’ (Kristeva 1989: 11). All Bateman can do is keep on killing until he is caught or dies in the process. There is no possibility for anything revolutionary or unexpected to happen, and the behaviour keeps neoliberalism in place.

Conclusion Rather than joining one of the opposing camps of those who see Ellis either as a writer who praises neoliberalism or as one who critiques it, I propose that his body of work needs to be examined on a scale and in the context of the acceleration of neoliberalism’s domination of every aspect of life. In retrospect there is always less to be shocked at and more to appreciate in Ellis’ work, as has been the tendency of the critical appraisal of American Psycho, with much early negative commentary being followed by ongoing appreciation. While neoliberalism’s obliteration of people’s capacity to form relationships is apparent from the first page of his first novel, Ellis also weaves solutions to the problems he presents with each subsequent book, and the Hollywood film adaptations take these solutions and magnify them, thus showing us hope. Still, Ellis unblinkingly shows the human condition to be people who are more willing to destroy themselves and others than to fall in love, and neoliberalism makes this increasingly easy, to the point that Patrick Bateman gets away with all the murders he commits in American Psycho. Whether any of them are real is irrelevant, because the fact that committing them, either in actuality or in his imagination, takes up so much of Patrick Bateman’s time shows that this political system has created a world where there is finally no space for love. But, just as the red letters of the sign hanging above a door in Harry’s restaurant at the end of American Psycho say ‘this is not an exit’, so too, Ellis seems to be declaring throughout his œuvre, is love’s exit not really an exit. Rather, it is a chance for love to disappear in order to emerge anew.

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Note 1 Thespian baggage he acquired playing teen heart-throb Dawson Leery in the American teen drama television series Dawson’s Creek, created by Kevin Williamson, which ran from 1998–​2003.

References Andrew, Dudley (2007). ‘Adapting Cinema to History’, in Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (eds.), A Companion to Literature and Film (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell). Badiou, Alain (2012). In Praise of Love (London: Serpent’s Tail). Beck, Ulrich and Elisabeth Beck-​Gernsheim (1995). The Normal Chaos of Love (Cambridge: Polity Press). Bersani, Leo and Adam Phillips (2008). Intimacies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Brown, Norman O. (1985). Life against Death (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Caveney, Graham (1992). ‘Notes Degree Zero: Ellis Goes West’, in Elizabeth Young and Graham Caveney (eds.), Shopping in Space: Essays on American “Blank Generation” Fiction (London and New York: Serpent’s Tail). Colby, Georgina (2011). Bret Easton Ellis: Underwriting the Contemporary (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Goulian, Jon-​Jon, interview with Bret Easton Ellis (2012). ‘The Art of Fiction No. 216’, The Paris Review, Spring 2012, www.theparisreview.org/​interviews/​6127/​the-​art-​of-​fiction-​ no-​216-​bret-​easton-​ellis, accessed 9 January 2015. Hakim, Catherine (2012). Honey Money (London and New York: Penguin). Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press). hooks, bell (2000). All about Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow & Company). Jost, François (2004).‘The Look: From Film to Novel, An Essay in Comparative Narratology’, in Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (eds.), A Companion to Literature and Film (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell). Kapur, Jyotsna and Keith B.Wagner (2011). ‘Introduction: Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics and New Forms of Resistance’, in Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner (eds.), Neoliberalism and Global Cinema (London and New York: Routledge). Kristeva, Julia (1989). Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press). Marcuse, Herbert (2002). One-​Dimensional Man (London and New York: Routledge). May, Simon (2001). Love: A History (New Haven, CT and London:Yale University Press). Mazierska, Ewa (2017). Poland Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema (Oxford: Berghahn). McBean, James Roy (1972). ‘Sex and Politics: Wilhelm Reich, World Revolution, and Makavejev’s WR’, Film Quarterly, 25(3), pp. 2–​13. Miller, Jacques-​Alain in interview with Hanna Waar (2014). ‘Jacques-​Alain Miller: On Love’, www.lacan.com/​symptom/​?page_​id=263, accessed 18 February 2014. Namwali Serpell, Carla (1972).‘Repetition and the Ethics of Suspended Reading in American Psycho’, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 51(1), pp. 47–​71. Reich, Wilhelm (1972). The Sexual Revolution (London:Vision). Salecl, Renata (2010). The Tyranny of Choice (London: Profile Books). Stam, Robert (2000). ‘Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation’, in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation (London: Athlone Press).

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Turner, Christopher (2011). ‘Wilhelm Reich: The Man Who Invented Free Love’, The Guardian, www.guardian.co.uk/​books/​2011/​jul/​08/​wilhelm-​reich-​free-​love-​orgasmatron, accessed 15 June 2013. Young, Elizabeth (1992). ‘Vacant Possession: Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero’, in Elizabeth Young and Graham Caveney (eds.), Shopping in Space: Essays on American “Blank Generation” Fiction (London and New York: Serpent’s Tail). Žižek, Slavoj (1999). ‘The Superego and the Act: A Lecture by Žižek, Slavoj August 1999, at the European Graduate School’, http://​zizek.uk/​the-​superego-​and-​the-​act/​, accessed 24 June 2017.

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13 CINEMA, SEX TOURISM AND GLOBALISATION IN AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN CINEMA Martin O’Shaughnessy

In this chapter, I will be considering three films that centre on female sex/​romance tourism. They are, in order of production, How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Kevin Rodney Sullivan,Twentieth Century Fox, 1998), Heading South (Vers le sud) (Laurent Cantet, Haut et Court, 2005) and Paradise: Love (Paradies: Liebe) (Ulrich Seidl, Ulrich Seidl Film, 2012). Why should one look at these three films, given what might seem their rather disconcerting theme? There are at least three reasons that one can give and which will be developed as the chapter progresses. To begin with, cinematic sex/​romance tourism engineers a direct collision between northern consumer and southern producer or worker, short-​circuiting the usual bodily, spatial and temporal separations between consumption and production. It thus provides a particularly privileged filmic vantage point both on global inequalities and on evolutions in consumption, production and their interaction. Secondly, female sex tourism, a very contested object of study, is a particularly interesting cinematic topos, precisely because of its capacity to probe and unsettle categories and judgements. Thirdly, the films represent very different modes of filmmaking. Despite its refreshing and atypical focus on an older, black woman, Sullivan’s film is an otherwise standard Hollywood chick flick, a post-​feminist reworking of the romance. Despite their differences, Seidl’s and Cantet’s films are European arthouse works. Although they refuse neat generic categorisation, they do engage with the romance to the extent that they are abortive or grotesque versions of it. Contrasts between the films at the level of genre and style will be a necessary part of our analysis of their engagement with consumption, emotional labour and racialised North–​South interactions.

Female sex tourism: a contested object In stark contrast to its typically utopian and even paradisiacal image, an increasingly globalised tourist industry demands to be understood in broader economic and

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social contexts. Thus, when Sanchez Taylor analyses sex tourism in the Caribbean, she first places it in a much wider frame. She notes that ‘tourism has become central to economic development programmes designed to reverse crippling economic problems and poverty, repay international debts and improve rates of unemployment’. She also notes how agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and policy packages tied to different World Bank loans have undermined traditional subsistence economies and redirected subsidies away from social spending and basic commodities towards the servicing of debt. The poor have increasingly been ‘forced to scavenge a living in the informal economy’, sometimes by engaging in ‘sexual-​economic exchanges with tourists’ (Sanchez Taylor 2006: 43). We know that the conventional mise-​en-​scène of tourism in ‘exotic’ destinations typically includes the erotic promise of scantily clad bodies, sea, sun, alcohol and lithe, young ‘natives’. Stripping this veneer away, Sanchez Taylor reminds us that tourism is conditioned by constraints that work at the macro-​economic level of the economy and policy and at the micro-​level of working lives and bodily encounters. With respect to the gendering of sex tourism, Sanchez Taylor suggests that commentators often apply a double standard to the phenomenon, linking men to sex tourism and women to ‘romance’ tourism, refusing to acknowledge that women tourists can engage in exploitative relationships (Sanchez Taylor 2006: 43). Kempadoo takes a similar stance. She observes that the ‘racialised–​sexualised bodies of Caribbean women and men’ are made into ‘primary resources’ that the global tourist industry can ‘exploit and commodify’ to satisfy the tourist needs of western and North American men and women (Kempadoo 2001: 50). Acknowledging only a degree of asymmetry, she then suggests that male sex tourists use the Caribbean as a place where they can re-​assert their dominance over women, while women carry out ‘an experimentation with being able to control men, while retaining a sexualised femininity’.The Caribbean thus serves, she concludes, as a site for ‘the (re)construction of First World/​white/​Western masculinity and femininity’ (Kempadoo 2001:  51). Sanchez Taylor also concludes that ‘female tourists who travel … for “romance” or sex exploit Caribbean men in the sense that they wittingly or unwittingly take advantage of unequal global and local power structures in order to both pursue their own sexual pleasure, and to affirm themselves as raced, sexual and engendered beings’ (Sanchez Taylor 2006: 52). Writing from a radical feminist stance, Jeffreys takes a diametrically opposed position and retains the term ‘romance tourism’ to differentiate the behaviours of women from those of men. The sexuality of men in a context of male dominance, she suggests, is ‘constructed to confirm their masculinity through practices of objectification and aggression’.The clearest expression of this sexuality of dominance, she adds, ‘lies in the existence of the sex industry which both reflects and helps to shape it’ (Jeffreys 2003: 228). Dominance spills over into relations between ‘beach boys’ and tourist women, with the former remaining in control of the sexual interaction. While prostituted women service men without sexual pleasure on their part, local men derive pleasure and prestige from their interactions with female tourists

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(Jeffreys 2003: 229). Behind Jeffreys’ analysis of sex tourism lies a more fundamental equation of prostitution with male sexual violence ‘which is concealed, through the act of payment, as consensual sex’ (Jeffreys 2003: 232). If violence and the power asymmetries of patriarchy lie at the core of prostitution, it is wrong to suggest that women can ‘do it too’ (Jeffreys 2003: 232–​6). While Jeffreys rightly draws attention to the violence and profoundly oppressive patriarchal structures that characterise much sex tourism, her position in the end is a reductive one that underplays the importance of hierarchies other than gendered ones. Sanchez Taylor and Kempadoo’s insistence on the need to consider the complex interplay of a range of power differentials is ultimately more convincing. Seidl and Cantet are clearly drawn to female sex tourism not just by this complexity but precisely by the phenomenon’s capacity to refuse easy judgement and to oblige the spectator to think.

Globalisation and embodied affectivity If part of the ‘attraction’ of female sex tourism is this ability to challenge presuppositions, another part is its capacity to engage the shifting interplay of global forces and embodied affectivity. Bernstein’s important analysis of the evolution of sex commerce is instructive in this regard. She differentiates between three broad modes of the phenomenon, the pre-​modern, the modern-​industrial and the post-​industrial, while underlining that they may overlap rather than simply succeeding each other in an over-​neat periodisation. In the pre-​modern mode, the commerce of sex was typically self-​organised and small-​scale and involved occasional exchanges during periods of hardship. Large-​scale commercialisation of prostitution emerged with modern, industrial capitalism, urbanisation, wage labour and the decline of the extended family. Accentuated gender differences and the cult of bourgeois domesticity entrenched sexual double standards and dichotomised women along class lines. Spatially zoned and Taylorised, prostitution involved the emotionally contained exchange of cash for sexual release so that career prostitutes sold sex rather than selves and typically kept certain practices and bodily areas off limits. However, the global restructuring of capitalist production and investment occurring since the 1970s has resulted in a series of shifts that have expanded and diversified the international trade in sexual services: corporate-​fuelled consumption and the increase in business and tourist travel; the rise of services and temporary work; the increase in labour migrations; and the symbiotic relationship between information technologies and the privatisation of commercial consumption (Bernstein 2010: 149). The post-​industrial sex commerce that arises in this context typically involves a transition from a Taylorist model to a more personalised service in which the labour is more diffuse and less narrowly focused on the sex act. The sex worker is more likely to draw on his or her own private, erotic and emotional life to provide what Bernstein calls ‘bounded authenticity’, a way of generating meaning and pleasure that is made possible rather than ruled out by its commercial containment (Bernstein 2010: 151–​7).

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Some of the importance of Bernstein’s work is the way in which she enables the study of sexual commerce to connect to broader analyses of evolutions in labour and consumption. The transition she notes from emotional containment to affective implication is reminiscent of Arlie Hochschild’s classic study of the emotional labour of flight attendants and bill collectors in The Managed Heart (2003), a book first published in 1983 in response to the decline of manual labour and the rise of the service economy. Noting the commodification and disciplining of affect required of service workers, Hochschild suggests that such workers are as alienated from their feelings as had been the factory worker from their physical labour in the time of Marx (Hochschild 2003: 3–​9). She also notes how, faced with programmed interactions, customers increasingly value the personal touch, the search for this ‘authentic’ supplement being the inevitable corollary of the managed worker heart. Of course, the more ‘authenticity’ is sought, the more workers have to put their feelings to work, align their emotions with their work, or create a split within the self by absenting themselves from the emotions they project (Hochschild 2003: 192). Hochschild and Bernstein usefully remind us of the historically shifting nature of the boundaries and interactions between working and private selves, intimate and commercial activities. In their different ways, the three films also carry out their own mapping of the shifting boundaries between domains, Stella through a conservative re-​assertion of the stereotypical sanctity of the personal as the space of authentic interaction, the other two through a more interesting renegotiation and questioning of traditional borders and a probing of the alienations, power differentials and interpersonal encounters involved when emotional labour meets apparently empowered consumption.

Romance, chick flicks and postfeminist subjects Because all three films recount failed or successful North–​South romantic entanglements, it is useful to situate them in relation to the romance, or its contemporary reworking, the chick flick. It will be suggested that, apart from the blackness of its leads (of which more later), Stella is a very conformist example of the chick flick and thus a perfect illustration of the kind of post-​feminist subjectivity that the sub-​ genre requires. In contrast, the other two films are knowing deconstructions of the genre which, through the failure and negativity of their ‘romances’, seek to bring out, as we shall see, the problems of the post-​feminist consumer subject in terms of the heroines’ relation to themselves and others. How Stella Got Her Groove Back (henceforward Stella) tells the story of Stella (Angela Bassett), a high-​flying, single-​mother, black stockbroker, in her early forties, who is persuaded by her friend, Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg), to take a vacation in Jamaica. There, she has a relationship with Winston (Taye Diggs), a twenty-​year-​old Jamaican student and kitchen worker from a well-​to-​do family. The relationship overcomes a series of obstacles (Winston’s mother’s opposition, the couple’s different tastes, the age difference) and leads to mutual commitment. Cantet’s film seems similar in some ways. Set in the 1970s, it begins with the arrival in Haiti

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of Brenda, a middle-​aged American widow, in search of Legba (Ménothy Cesar), a young black man whom she seduced when he was a boy and with whom she enjoyed her first orgasm.The story is complicated by the introduction of two other older women tourists, Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) and Sue (Louise Portal), the first of whom also lays claim to Legba’s attentions. It is further complicated when we realise Legba is in danger from the Tonton Macoute, the Haitian dictator’s militia. The film ends when Legba’s dead body is found dumped on the beach along with that of a young Haitian woman: while the cynical Ellen decides to give up romance tourism for good, the previously more innocent Brenda departs in search of new lovers on other islands. The final film of the three, Seidl’s Love, recounts the story of Teresa (Margarete Tiesel), another single mother and a care-​worker, who travels to a coastal resort in Kenya in search of romance and seems to have found it with Munga (Peter Kazungu), a handsome young Kenyan, only to discover that he has a wife and child and has been using a story of sick relatives to extract money from her. A second attempted ‘romance’ is shorter but similar in outcome. Her holiday friends, women in Kenya for similar reasons to hers, hire a young black man to perform naked in her hotel room as a birthday present to her: he cannot get an erection and is dispatched from the room. Finally, she brings a barman to her room but fails to persuade him to perform oral sex on her. Stella can be categorised relatively unproblematically as both romance and chick flick. According to Pearce and Stacey, the classical romance typically involves displacement, perhaps to an exotic location, love at first sight, despite one or both parties’ denials, obstacles, often to do with some form of social distance, transformation of the heroine, who finds a new social place for herself, and the ultimate triumph of love (Pearce and Stacey 1995: 15–​20). Stella ticks all these boxes. It also aligns with familiar features of the chick flick or its literary sister, chick lit, perhaps unsurprisingly as the film was an adaptation of Terry McMillan’s eponymous 1996 chick-​lit hit novel. Gill and Herdieckerhoff see the sub-​genre, which rocketed to prominence in the mid-​1990s, as a modern retooling of the romance. The chick-​lit heroine is typically employed and committed to a career but also single and unhappy about it. She is no longer virginal but is in some way ‘revirginised’ by her encounter with her special man. In line with the times, her body needs constant disciplining and surveillance, unlike that of her effortlessly beautiful romantic forebears. In fact, the obsessional and narcissistic preoccupation with the unruly body suggests that it has become a key, if not the sole, source of feminine identity (Gill and Herdieckerhoff 2006). Again, a docile subject, Stella ticks all the boxes. Although she is a high-​flying career woman, its heroine clearly has something missing in her life, as her friend Delilah tells her. She is rendered girlishly shy by the courtship of Winston, not least when she attends a pyjama party with him. She is desirable, as the young man’s adoring gaze confirms, but her body is the product of work, as shots of her running powerfully in the park or on the beach confirm (­Figure 13.1). Her life is completed by Winston, but not before he has helped her reorient her activities away from a stereotypically male profession (stockbroking) to one with more domestic connotations (furniture design) that allows her to express her ‘real’ self (Papayanis 2012).

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The chick flick clearly demands to be situated within a broader post-​feminist sensibility as described by key figures such as McRobbie and Gill. For both scholars, postfeminism is, to a considerable extent, the outcome of the incorporation of feminist demands within neoliberal hegemony. What distinguishes neoliberalism from earlier liberalisms is the way in which the enterprise is not simply sanctified but held up as the model and measure of all things (the state, the public body and, crucially, the individual) (Foucault 2008). Reshaped from within neoliberalism, feminism loses its collective dimension and its radical challenge to structures of oppression and shrinks to an expression of individual identity, alleged empowerment and ambition within the capitalist, consumerist status quo (Gill 2007: 162–​4; McRobbie 2009: 24–​53). The feminist critique of the objectification of women is hollowed out by a focus on women as active, desiring subjects choosing to objectify themselves. Power is encountered not as an external judgement but as an internalised, self-​policing and narcissistic gaze (Gill 2007: 151; McRobbie 2009: 64). Older, larger, less attractive women are still stigmatised, but these judgements can no longer be connected back to patriarchal structures because women are considered empowered individuals who choose to be looked at (Gill 2007: 152–​3). If we accept this kind of explanation of postfeminism then we can see the tensions and contradictions that it must inevitably erase or mask to maintain its grasp. Neither structural limitations on individual empowerment nor ideological or socio-​economic constraints on women’s power to define themselves can be allowed to come to the surface. If we scratch the surface of Stella, potential cracks do nonetheless start to appear. People suggest that Stella should not be with Winston because of her age. She herself admits she could be his mother. But her undoubted

FIGURE 13.1:   Stella’s

Source: Screen grab.

self-​fashioning as an empowered post​feminist subject.

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attractiveness and honed physique, the young man’s approval and sexual interest, and the not negligible fact that she is just over forty, over-​r ide these views so that the tension between self-​definition, the ageing body and the judgements of others is successfully repressed. There are also hints at the limits to empowerment when we find that Stella’s employers have fired her after a merger. But this admission that work may be associated with radical disempowerment is quickly over-​r idden when the employers at her old company find they cannot do without her and she decides in any case to resurrect her real vocation as a furniture designer. She remains a successfully self-​defining subject and, besides, true satisfaction is to be found in the private sphere as the arena of authentic feeling and real happiness. Seidl’s Love and Cantet’s Heading South are far more willing to open cracks. Cantet opens the cracks slowly. His three heroines, Brenda, Ellen and Sue, are all older, less toned, and, in Sue’s case, fatter than Stella. All acknowledge the limits placed on their self-​definition and the expression of their desires back home in North America. Brenda’s family treat her as a minor rather than a responsible adult. Ellen, a university lecturer, finds that the only men interested in her are ‘losers’ or cuckolded married men looking for an affair. Sue is exposed to the surveillance of her male workmates when she engages in a relationship. However, when they are in Haiti, they can take lovers, give free rein to their desires, and live out a fantasy of empowerment and complete acceptance. Sue comments that she feels free and alive, ‘like a butterfly’. Brenda has come in search of that moment of lost plenitude and virginal innocence when, despite being in her forties, she experienced her first orgasm. Ellen compares the island to paradise.Yet things are not so straightforward. Brenda and Ellen find that they are rivals for Legba’s attention and must share him with others. They find themselves exposed to critical comments: Ellen mocks Sue behind her back for her weight. She calls Brenda ‘a bitch in heat’ to her face. Ellen herself cannot escape her own ageing, even though she is played by that icon of middle-​aged glamour Charlotte Rampling. This comes out most strongly when she is swimming with Legba, apparently without a care in the world. She ducks her head under the water and emerges with her normally elegant hair plastered to her head. Clearly unimpressed, Legba comments that she looks old. At another moment, Brenda allows herself to dance in an inappropriate way with a young lad when she finds that Legba is occupied with Ellen. When Legba protectively pulls the boy away, she is horrified at her own actions and asks what she was thinking. The dynamics here are very different from those of Stella, which closes down any contradiction it opens up. Cantet’s films typically give a central role to shame, which, as Sartre reminds us, is both deeply personal and profoundly social. It arises when the subject senses that they may have been caught by the other in a shameful act such as voyeurism, and the subject is forced to recognise the other’s status as an observing, separate subject rather than an observed object (Sartre 1969: 222 and 261–​3; O’Shaughnessy 2015: 16–​18). Simone de Beauvoir deploys a not dissimilar account of the unwelcome encounter with the look of the Other in her famous analysis of ageing. She notes that, while a woman may still feel young on the inside, she is forced to confront her age when she

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becomes aware of how she looks in the eyes of others (Beauvoir 1977: 315–​29). It is not that these forced confrontations with the looks and judgements of others are entirely absent in Stella, but they are overwritten by the heroine’s self-​policing fitness and her value in her lover’s eyes. In Cantet’s film, this compensatory overwriting does not occur. Characters are forced to confront both how other subjects judge them and their own ageing. If it seemed that they could float free from the limitations upon their freedom as self-​defining consumers in the island ‘paradise’ of Haiti, the film forces them to realise that this is not the case. Heading South drives contradictions slowly into view. Love obliges us to confront them frontally and uncomfortably. Like the women of Cantet’s film, its heroine, Teresa, is clearly frustrated. She works providing care for her handicapped charges but, when she comes home, she struggles to get her own daughter to tidy her room or even to communicate with her. Long, static shots of her in the house develop a sense of claustrophobia and isolation. In contrast to this, her vacation in Kenya promises freedom from domestic obligation, empowerment and the satisfaction of desire. To begin with, a shy newcomer to an exciting new location, she is ‘revirginised’ and thus made ready for a reopening of the self to romance and erotic satisfaction. Her first suitor is too brusque: ‘I can’t control myself ’, he explains. She refuses him. Her second, Munga, seems the real deal:  ‘love has no end’, he claims, later adding that he wants love not money. His gestures are too rough: Teresa teaches him to stroke, not grab, her bosom. She warns him that her breasts sag when she undresses: he reassures her about her attractiveness. ‘You have to look into my eyes, look into my heart’, she tells him, reminding him not to use too much tongue when he kisses.We seem to be in a classic romance plot with its negotiation between male and female scripts and its taming of the undomesticated male. We also seem to be on some of the territory of the chick flick with the woman being evaluated and self-​evaluating according to her body shape and size. Yet, we know from the start that the romance is a sham and that Munga wants money, even if it takes the second abortive relationship for Teresa herself to fully realise what is happening. Some key differences between the three films play out at the level of the ageing female body and reactions to it.With its determination to close down fissures, Stella evokes age only to deny any of its consequences. With its subtle exploration of tensions, Heading South only gradually pushes the recognition of the consequences of ageing to the surface, knowingly using glamorous but older actresses to explore the policing of the female body and the limits to its power of self-​definition. Love takes a different route.With its static long takes, and its distinctly large and obviously ageing female protagonists, it forces us to stare at the glaring mismatch between the desire to be desired and the limits of the body. Even the sustained emotional labour of those who service the global tourist economy cannot cover this up entirely.

Emotional labour and bounded authenticity The approach of the three films to labour in general and emotional labour more specifically can initially be considered through a comparison of the scenes showing

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the heroines’ arrivals in their respective resorts. In Stella, we see the heroine go to the hotel reception desk and ask about the whereabouts of her friend Delilah. Immediately, the latter announces her presence and the focus shifts to her and the heroine as they embrace and discuss their plans. The receptionist needs to be there for the scene to function but the film has no interest in her work. Heading South is different. We see Brenda go through the arch at the entrance to the hotel grounds with Albert (Lys Ambroise), the hotel manager, following behind her, carrying her luggage. There is no dialogue, so our focus is on the two bodies and the contrasts between them: the white woman in front is free to take in her surroundings and given over to leisure; the black man is behind her, not in her eye-​line but in ours, inviting us to see the dependence of her liberated leisure on others’ unacknowledged efforts. The pattern continues when Brenda goes down to the beach: Albert instructs other black workers to make sure she has everything she wants. A lounger is put out for her. Through its focus on moments and actions that have no real importance for the main plot, the film coaxes work into view. As we might expect, Seidl is less subtle. As his white women tourists arrive at their seafront hotel, we see a typically symmetrical Seidl long-​take tableau with the women arriving in the centre, a group of porters carrying their luggage on one side of the frame and a group of young women singing and smiling on the other. Seidl forces us to confront how the utopian tourist ‘experience’ relies on the manual labour of one group and the performance of joyful welcome by the other. These arrival scenes set the pattern for much of what follows. Stella is and is not interested in labour. It does take us into the eponymous heroine’s pressured workplace, but only to establish her as a successful career woman before it makes it clear that, despite her success and in line with what we know of the chick flick, true happiness is to be found in the private domain. Beyond that, and especially once it reaches Jamaica, its tourist paradise, it has no interest in work or in the anonymous workers who sometimes, of necessity, make it into shot. Stella’s young lover, Winston, works in a kitchen, but the film ignores his labour and role in the tourist economy. Because his parents are well-​heeled and he is destined for a career in medicine, his work has no social or economic consequences for him and serves to mark no real boundary between him and the prosperous Stella. This is part of the film’s more general erasure of class as a division worthy of attention. Cantet’s film subtly but inexorably forces labour to our attention and thus undercuts the apparently utopian freedom of the world of tourist consumption. Part of the way it does this is through the literal and metaphorical widening of the frame that we noted in the arrival sequence. Shots are held long enough or filmed from sufficient distance to allow tourists and workers to share screen space and time, images of white women lounging on chairs in the sun appearing less innocently utopian when we see the labour around them that makes their carefree leisure possible. At the same time, because the film’s story centres on sex/​romance tourism, it constantly plays on the tension between the intimate and the commercial. The young black men and the white women seem to share the beach

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in an egalitarian manner. Yet it is the women who buy food and drinks. There is no evidence of direct payment for sex or company, but the men receive gifts of clothes, jewellery or money from the women. In some ways, the men seem in control, in a way which might seem to chime with Jeffrey’s analysis of sex tourism (Jeffreys 2003). Ellen says that Legba chooses which woman he wants to be with and no woman owns him. Yet, a telling scene in Ellen’s beachside hut tells a different story: Legba plays at being a tiger and calls Ellen a gazelle. Unamused, she instructs him to lie face down so that she can photograph his bottom.The submissive pose is a visual expression of the unstated power dynamics. He is playing a role in someone else’s fantasy in a way that brings us closer to the vision of Sanchez Taylor (2006) and Kempadoo (2001). Part of the film’s deliberate questioning of our presuppositions lies in the uncertainty over quite what type of interaction we are watching. For Brenda, when she arrives in search of the emotional and erotic plenitude of her earlier relationship with Legba, it is clearly something deeply personal that seems to lie entirely outside the commercial sphere, following the traditional ‘hostile worlds’ division as described by Zelizer (2000). Ellen teaches Brenda a more pragmatic negotiation between the personal and the commercial. As she explains, she decided that, when she grew older, she would pay men to love her. While she expects sex, her interactions with Legba are also playful, social and affectionate. This is neither a purely romantic pairing nor a narrowly commercial transaction but clearly constitutes, in Bernstein’s terms, a form of bounded authenticity. However, its careful management by those involved does not mean that it is unoppressive. As we noted, Legba must satisfy his women partners on their terms and despite the ‘tigerish’ masculine self-​image he would like to maintain. He puts his sexuality and emotions to work while repressing his objections to the situation, very much in line with Hochschild’s analysis of the alienations of the ‘managed heart’. The film gives a strong sense that his position is becoming untenable even before he is murdered:  he can be himself neither in town, due to the brutal dictatorship, nor in the resort where he must please the women. His death serves to underline what we already know. His situation and that of the women are poles apart. Brenda finally acknowledges that, although she felt she loved Legba, she is sure that she loved the way he looked at her. Her departure to other islands in search of more young men is a recognition of the essential narcissism of her desires and the impossibility of really sharing Legba’s life. Similar dynamics are worked through rather more crudely by Love. Like Cantet’s Brenda, its heroine tries to live out a classical romance script with Munga.The latter works to provide an authentic ‘boyfriend experience’, buying her drinks, holding her hand, caressing her how she wishes, taking her to his home and making love to her. When she discovers that the ‘authenticity’ was manufactured and he wants money, she attacks him, pulling his dreadlocks, placing him in the subordinate position, reminding us that romance cannot efface power dynamics. Teresa’s response to this and the subsequent disillusionment is to become more crudely exploitative. When the Kenyan is brought into her birthday party, he is made to dance naked and to follow various demeaning instructions. A red ribbon is tied around his penis

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and removed by the heroine’s teeth. The women compete to make him hard and express their disappointment that he cannot oblige. Although we have now moved completely away from the bounded intimacy of the ‘boyfriend experience’, we are still witness to the emotional labour (and self-​division) of the Kenyan male who can raise a smile, but nothing else, his body divided against itself. The barman is unable to sustain even a smile in the last sexual encounter of the film. All he can do when told to perform cunnilingus on her is decline and say ‘I am sad.’ Cantet and Seidl stage the inequalities, oppressions and alienations of the globalised consumption–​production nexus over the terrain of individual bodies and affects. While the discourse of tourism typically emphasises fit and youthful bodies, positive emotions and gratified desires, the two directors focus on ageing or overweight bodies, negative affects and frustrated desires to challenge and disrupt any consumerist pleasure in the appropriation of the exotic. Cantet’s film gives a prominent place to shame or shame denied: the shame of Albert, the hotel manager, at the corruption of his country by the tourist dollar; Brenda’s shame at her inappropriately close dance with an adolescent boy; her refusal to acknowledge the shame of her earlier seduction of the under-​age Legba. Seidl is less a filmmaker of shame than of embarrassment and less that of the characters than that felt by the audience when forced to stare at things they would rather not see or finding themselves laughing uneasily at things like the incongruity generated by long-​shot tableaux of large Austrian women, in pairs or groups, on loungers and bar stools or in the swimming pool, facing or flanking slim, young, Kenyan men (Figure 13.2). Yet, embarrassment is not all there is in Seidl. Love and the Paradise trilogy of which it is part are about a desperate search by lonely, isolated modern individuals for some form of human or spiritual belonging. The sadness at the end of Love is not just that of the Kenyan barman unable to mask his real feelings enough to do the emotional and erotic labour expected of him, it is a conclusion to the film itself, a comment on the condition of the characters, a failure of desire and of connection. While we might be tempted to read the barman’s refusal as a form of resistance, the film’s mood serves to block this more positive interpretation.We are left with nothing positive to cling to unless it is the capacity of negative affect, both ours and of the characters, to disrupt pleasure and force us to think (Lübecker 2015). Love plays on the contrast between the standardised and the individual. The hotel where the heroine stays is the domain of the former as expressed notably by lines of loungers provisioned with identical towels laid out by the swimming pool or another line of loungers on the hotel side of the rope that divides the beach between the policed space reserved for guests and the unpoliced space where Kenyan men wait for customers. When Teresa steps over the rope to be surrounded by young men seeking to sell her things, including themselves, she also makes herself available for an apparently less manufactured experience, not just with the young men, but also with the beach as an apparently natural space. This movement towards apparent authenticity is continued when she is taken by Munga to his room, passing through his decidedly non-​scenic neighbourhood in the process. Coinciding with the movement to greater physical intimacy, this

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FIGURE 13.2:  The

comic, disconcerting symmetry of one of Seidl’s tableaux. Source: Screen grab.

penetration of Kenyan space seems to promise authentic, embodied engagement. Yet, as those who study tourism know full well, the industry relies upon both the ‘front stage’ of the formal sector and the ‘back stage’ of the informal economy, the latter providing a vital, rawer, apparently more real but still staged supplement to the more structured and predictable front stage (Urry and Larsen 2011: 10–​11). This is, of course, the lesson that Teresa will learn when she realises that all her intimate interactions with Munga were in fact staged. Something similar but also different occurs in Heading South when Brenda leaves the protected space of the resort and visits Port-​au-​Prince, the Haitian capital, with Legba. This is another managed encounter with a staged authenticity; that is, until it goes wrong and Legba’s life is threatened by the Tonton Macoute, a threat carried through when his body appears on the beach by the hotel, a foreign object in a sanitised space. Together, the two films suggest that the tourist’s experience is either the bounded authenticity of the managed interpersonal encounter, as described by Bernstein (2010), or the unbearable meeting with the underlying violence of deeply oppressive situations to which the tourist can only relate as something entirely foreign. Stella’s world has none of this unevenness. There is a scene early in the film when, watching a television advertisement for Jamaican holidays, the daydreaming heroine sees her own face on the screen instead of that of the actress in the commercial. This is clearly done for comic effect, but it underlines the functioning of the frictionless world of the film, the way in which the heroine’s romance and the tourist fantasy version of place can flow seamlessly into each other. There is no mismatch between Stella’s story and Jamaican reality as shown in the film: the island simply serves as a suitably exotic background for her life-​changing encounter. In any case, the film makes no attempt to take us outside the safe leisure space

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of the resort, except during the sequence when Stella visits Winston’s middle-​class Jamaican home.

Commodified black bodies and the erasure of history In her seminal work on representations of blackness, bell hooks analyses the contemporary commodification of cultural difference, noting how it is used to ‘spice up’ the pleasures of consumption for jaded western palates, including in the sexual arena (hooks 1992: 17, 21–​7). She comments that ‘encounters with otherness are clearly marked as more exciting, more intense and more threatening’ than other interactions (hooks 1992: 26). Within a primitivist imaginary with deep roots in colonialism, contact with the less ‘civilised’ promises the overcoming of the western subject’s alienation from the body and the restoration of a more natural harmony (hooks 1992:  27). Young black men are marked as potent yet fragile and associated with the tension between pleasure and danger, death and desire in a way that seems to promise access to vibrancy, intensity and joy in living (hooks 1992: 35). This consumption of blackness and the exotic feeds off classic colonialist tropes, although the naked domination of the past has given way to a (narcissistic) desire to be changed by the encounter with the Other. As hooks comments, ‘the desire to make contact with those bodies deemed Other, with no apparent will to dominate, assuages the guilt of the past, even takes the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection’. Within a context of desire and seduction, domination seems to fade away (hooks 1992: 25). Stella seems to match much of what hooks describes. Stella’s recovery of her ‘groove’ clearly relies on her sensual encounter with a young black man in an exotic context. Yet, because both leads are black and middle-​class, the film simultaneously refuses the predominant whiteness of the chick flick and negates potential tensions involving race and class. It thus turns its back on broader structural inequalities and any history of racialised oppression in Jamaica or in the United States. All that is really at stake in the relationship is the difference of age. The film is ultimately as post-​racial as it is post-​feminist. The other two films are very different. Neither engages explicitly with history, except for one brief scene in Heading South when Albert comments that the coloniser now uses dollars rather than guns to ruin Haiti. However, both are knowingly inhabited by traditions of colonial representation. In Cantet’s film, this is apparent from the first time Brenda walks on the beach and finds Legba lying motionless on the sand, clad only in a swimming costume, in a position which anticipates the later discovery of his corpse on the beach (Figure 13.3). Found in this way, the young man is stereotypically aligned with nature rather than culture and positioned as both erotically exciting and vulnerable, the latter quality being confirmed by his death. The beach seems to be a place outside of time, but the encounter between white and black people on the sand evokes a whole history of colonial encounter. More broadly, Brenda and her female companions seem to match precisely hooks’ description of jaded western consumers who feed on blackness to reconnect with

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their physical selves.The same could be said of Seidl’s Love except that its evocation of exotic and colonial imagery is predictably more crude. To begin with, zebra-​skin patterning seems omnipresent in the resort where the women stay: from the bus that takes them to the hotel, to the shirts of entertainers, to the bar stools they sit on and, finally, to the décor of the bar where they drink (see ­Figure 1.2). With the bus being labelled ‘Comfort Safari’ and Teresa’s room walls being adorned with pictures of giraffes, flamingos and leopards, the iconography of the big game hunt is everywhere, albeit in derisory, commodified form. The stereotypical association of Africa with wild animals continues when the women visit a crocodile farm to see the predators jumping out of the water for meat hung over their pool. But in the same way as the images of zebras and other animals are part of a staging of wildness, these crocodiles are being called upon to perform a safe version of their wild selves, under the tourist gaze.The women’s look upon the Kenyan men continues the same exoticist theme. Teresa’s more experienced holiday friend has bought a motorcycle for a young man: when he arrives upon it, the friend shows him off to Teresa, drawing attention to his muscled thighs, talking of him as an investment, while Teresa comments on his fine ears and his strong hands, as if he were one more piece of captured wild-​stock, or a slave. Later, when Teresa has slept with Munga, we see her naked on a bed under a mosquito net in his room, the image a classic exoticist fantasy, except that the large, ageing body of Teresa serves to block any voyeuristic pleasure that the spectator might take. While Stella cannot engage frontally with the history of exotic representation upon which it nonetheless draws, the other two films deliberately engage with and undermine it to strip their heroines’ fantasies of their consumerist innocence and bring their prolongation of colonial power relations to the surface.

FIGURE 13.3:  The

tourist gaze and the black body. Source: Screen grab.

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Conclusion The romance seems to offer us a glimpse of what a world might look like in which we could gain complete recognition as human beings, realise our deepest desires and achieve full and transparent reconciliation with another person, no matter how different from us they might initially appear to be. Set within the context of North–​ South encounters, the romance seems to offer a fantasy of oneness with the world and the difference it contains. What Seidl’s Love and Cantet’s Heading South do is to dismantle the romance, showing that its fantasy of globalised reconciliation relies on an ultimately narcissistic illusion of empowered consumption, a wilful blindness to the alienations of emotional and other labours, and a historically forgetful mobilisation of colonialist representations. Tourism, consumption and, of course, cinema itself all offer the world up to us for our ‘innocent’ pleasure and in a way that confirms our narcissistic sense of consumer empowerment. Through their focus on negative affects, frustrated desires and bodies that do not fit, Cantet and Seidl block those consumerist pleasures and invite us instead to ponder our own place in global circuits of consumption and production. Sullivan’s film, in contrast, seems to offer a purely negative counter-​example. By bracketing off the private sphere from the world of production, by restricting happiness and fulfilment to the former, and by evacuating questions of race, labour and history, it seems to suggest that we can indeed be reconciled with ourselves, others and the world and transcend our limits so long as we settle for purely private happiness and work, as good neoliberal subjects, to make ourselves desirable. Yet, we cannot leave things quite there in a way which might suggest that, in a rather predictable manner, the Hollywood film is overwhelmingly conformist, despite its progressive casting decisions, while the two European films, true to the best traditions of the art film, are able to challenge the spectator. Every film, no matter how critical, tends to have its blind spots. Those of Heading South and Love relate to the unquestioning linking of self-​indulgent consumerism and narcissism with women. As we know, there is a long-​standing and still continuing association of women and consumption with the unfortunate consequence that the stereotype of the gullible, irresponsible and hedonistic consumer often wears a female face. Something similar can be said of narcissism. Freud famously suggested that, while men achieve adulthood by learning to love an Other, women remain locked into infantile narcissism, choosing love objects on the basis of a love of self (Tyler 2007:  28–​9). Echoing this prejudice, Christopher Lasch’s famous work The Culture of Narcissism (1982) linked the rise of the narcissistic personality to the decline of more traditional American values such as rugged, outward-​looking, self-​restraining masculinity, and the rise of a hedonistic, self-​ obsessed individual, typically associated with groups (black and gay Americans, women) who had challenged traditional hierarchies and exclusions during the era of the counterculture, turning inwards, away from public duty, to a culture of self-​ realisation and personal identity in the process (Tyler 2007: 352–​9). By associating narcissistic consumption with their female characters, Cantet and Seidl tend to

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reinforce these stereotypes even as they demonstrate their capacity to disturb and challenge in others.

References Bernstein, Elizabeth (2010). ‘Bounded Authenticity and the Commerce of Sex’, in Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (eds.), Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), pp. 148–​65. de Beauvoir, Simone (1977). Old Age (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Foucault, Michel (2008). Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–​1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Gill, Rosalind (2007). ‘Post-​feminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), pp. 147–​66. Gill, Rosalind and Herdieckerhoff, Elena (2006).‘Rewriting the Romance: New Femininities in Chick Lit?’, Feminist Media Studies, 6(4), pp. 487–​504. Hochschild, Arlie (2003). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press). hooks, bell (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press). Jeffreys, Sheila (2003). ‘Sex Tourism: Do Women Do It Too?’, Leisure Studies, 22, 223–​38. Kempadoo, Kamala (2001). ‘Freelancers, Temporary Wives, and Beach-​Boys: Researching Sex Work in the Caribbean’, Feminist Review, 67, pp. 39–​62. Lübecker, Nikolaj (2015). The Feel-​Bad Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). McRobbie, Angela (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change (London: Sage). O’Shaughnessy, Martin (2015). Laurent Cantet (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Papayanis, Marilyn Adler (2012). ‘Sex on the Beach: The Yin Yang of Female Sex Tourism in Two Films’, Bright Lights Film Journal, http://​brightlightsfilm.com/​sex-​on-​the-​beach-​the-​ yin-​yang-​of-​female-​sex-​tourism-​in-​two-​films/​#.WGasU3ecZo4, accessed 30 December 2016. Pearce, Lynne and Jackie Stacey (1995). ‘The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance’, in Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey (eds.), Romance Revisited (London: Laurence and Wishart), pp. 11–​45. Sanchez Taylor, Jacqueline (2006). ‘Female Sex Tourism: A Contradiction in Terms’, Feminist Review, 83, 42–​59. Sartre, Jean-​ Paul (1969). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Routledge). Tyler, Imogen (2007). ‘From “the Me Decade” to “the Me Millennium”: The Cultural History of Narcissism’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(3), 343–​63. Urry, John and Jonas Larsen (2011). The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (London: Sage). Zelizer,Viviana (2000). ‘The Purchase of Intimacy’, Law and Social Inquiry, 25(3), 817–​48.

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14 POLYMORPHOUS CONSUMPTION Eytan Fox’s The Bubble as gated community Bruce Williams

In an early sequence of Eytan Fox’s The Bubble (Uchovsky Fox, 2006), a heterosexual encounter between two young Israelis is seamlessly cross-​ cut with oral sex between a male couple, and this act ultimately leads to the penetration of an Israeli soldier by a West Bank Palestinian. This sequence sets the tone for the forbidden love affair around which the narrative will pivot. Towards the end of the film, the roles are reversed, and the Israeli tops the Palestinian, levelling the playing field between two men of very different socio-​cultural backgrounds, allowing each to vie for divergent modes of sexual pleasure. The Bubble appears, at least on one level, to celebrate Bakhtinian polymorphous perversity, inasmuch as it explores an open and fluid sexuality in the inviting space of Tel Aviv. This gay relationship is the driving force behind Fox’s exploration of identity politics, not so much gay and straight, but rather Israeli and Palestinian, a dynamic that decidedly constitutes the film’s primary narrative tension. The unabashed fusion of gay sex and ethnic divides, in its own right, is well in sync with Fox’s socially progressive thrust as a filmmaker. Nonetheless, present in The Bubble is a disconnect between identity politics and class issues, which is actually brought to bear on the very bohemian scene in Tel Aviv that comprises the narrative space of a good deal of the film. Tel Aviv is depicted as a ‘bubble’, where a fashionable population enjoys a happy-​ go-​lucky life, well isolated from the conflicts that plague the rest of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The forbidden love affair unravels within the broader context of a young group of trendy urbanites who dress up in the latest fashion, dine out, attend theatre and musical events, and oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine. These progressive friends enjoy a life of social and sexual freedom that, at least within the context of Israel, is possible only inside the bubble of Tel Aviv. From a first viewing, it is immediately evident that Israel’s largest city functions as a privileged site where differences are downplayed and young people revel in their sexuality: gay, straight, or anything else. Present in The Bubble, moreover, are all of Bakhtin’s bodily

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spasms –​birth (through the still-​birth of a Palestinian child), orgasm and the death seizure; the last one appearing in the form of a jihad bomb explosion that ultimately kills the film’s gay couple. Nonetheless, if used as an exclusive mediation to the film, a Bakhtinian analysis is, in and of itself, misleading, for the film also defines itself through the blissful consumerism its protagonists enjoy. Indeed, the protagonists do not appear aware of any disjuncture between what they profess and how they live their daily lives. Their bohemian lifestyle and open-​mindedness, as will be demonstrated in this essay, actually serves to bolster the neoliberalist infrastructure that surrounds them. A careful viewing of The Bubble will reveal how the film brings to bear on the relationship between bohemia and the perpetuity of consumer capitalism. The narrative structure of The Bubble is straightforward, and, despite its tragic dénouement, it is replete with comedic moments.The film focuses on two gay men who share an apartment with a young straight woman in Tel Aviv’s trendy Shenkin Street district. While working as a soldier on a short-​term assignment on one of Israel’s many checkpoints, protagonist Noam meets and ultimately falls in love with Palestinian Ashraf who, within one day, moves in with the three friends. Having lived among Israelis as a child, Ashraf speaks excellent Hebrew, and the friends teach him the tricks of the trade necessary to working as a waiter in a popular restaurant in the hip neighbourhood. The love affair between the two men develops happily, and both participate in plans for a beachside rave against the occupation. Nonetheless, there is growing violence in Ashraf ’s home town on the West Bank, a fact that he cannot ignore. When the young man is outed at his jobsite, not as a gay male, which would be perfectly acceptable in Tel Aviv’s answer to Greenwich Village, but rather as a Palestinian, he flees back home. Although Ashraf returns briefly to Tel Aviv to attend the rave, plans for his sister’s wedding in Palestine force him to the West Bank for a more extended absence. Noam, in turn, falls into a deep depression without his lover by his side. Attempting to bring the partners back together, Noam’s roommate Lulu obtains fake press credentials, and the two infiltrate the West Bank posing as French journalists covering a typical Palestinian wedding. Briefly reunited, Noam and Ashraf are apprehended sneaking a kiss by the latter’s future brother-​in-​law, causing Ashraf to be caught between his love for Noam and family expectations for a conventional heterosexual lifestyle in Palestine. On the morning following her wedding, Ashraf ’s sister is accidentally gunned down by an Israeli soldier, and the young man opts to return to Tel Aviv as a jihadist to avenge her death. As Ashraf arrives in front of the restaurant where he had worked and where he plans to carry out his suicide mission, Noam rushes out to embrace him. The lovers die together. In a coda, we see Noam and Ashram as children playing in a park near Jerusalem, where the two populations once interacted, despite their overarching differences.

Gay sexuality and privilege Although gay identity is often deemed counterculture –​after all, Allen Ginsberg became ‘homosexual not out of erotic compulsion, but by an act of will and as

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another way of expressing his contempt for normal life’ (Podhoretz 1999: 36) –​we note that the openly gay identity that defines The Bubble can exist only within the trendy and stylish atmosphere of Tel Aviv’s Shenkin Street district. This neighbourhood is characterised by a high level of consumerism and instant gratification. Such an atmosphere lies in stark contrast to life in Palestine, which is very much the opposite both socially and economically.Thus, despite the bohemian lifestyle of the gay and gay-​friendly Israelis in Fox’s film, they are indeed tied to a life of privilege. In this respect, The Bubble, albeit by indirection, explores issues of social class, which lie at the margin of Fox’s play with sexuality and identity politics, but are nonetheless present. For Bakhtin, carnival implies a ‘ludic undermining of all norms’ (Stam 1989: 80). It celebrates an abolishment of hierarchies and freedom from convention and restriction.The carnivalesque recoups what is marginalised and excluded by society and seeks opposing and radical centralisations. Bakhtin celebrates what he terms ‘the materialized body’, and in this process the lower body stratum and, with it, copulation become ‘a positive corrosive force’ (Stam 1989: 80). To date, there have been relatively few gay Bakhtinian readings, this being due to the fact that homosexuality is largely confined to the margins of Bakhtin’s work. Nonetheless, it can be viewed as a peripheral discourse waiting to be brought to the centre. Such a process can illuminate the above-​referenced sequence in which a heterosexual act is cross-​cut with a homosexual one in a trompe-​l’œil process that serves to privilege gay sex. Lulu is seen in bed with her new boyfriend, an editor at Tel Aviv’s Time Out magazine. He is shown moving his lips downwards on her body, ultimately performing oral sex on her. At this point, the film cuts to Noam and Ashraf in bed, as the latter moves his head upwards, obviously following a similar act of oral sex.What started out as a heterosexual context has turned homosexual, and the fact that the film does not cut back to the straight couple emphasises the importance of gay love in the context of the film. Noam asks Ashraf whether that is how Arabs do it, and then suggests, dovetailing upon a similar comment made following their first kiss, that they should ‘go deeper’; Ashraf then fucks him. A lightbulb suspended from the ceiling illuminates a handwritten slogan on the wall, ‘I love love Tel Aviv’. This catchphrase, in which the ungrammatical repetition of the word ‘love’ emphasises the film’s celebration of the city, is well in line with The Bubble’s portrayal of the progressive world of Tel Aviv’s Shenkin Street district. Towards the end of the film, Noam fucks Ashraf in the film’s longest love scene. Here, the love affair has gone full circle, and, despite the homophobia that characterises Ashraf ’s life on the West Bank, he is, at least temporarily, able to celebrate his sexuality.1 These sexual dynamics are very much tied to issues of privilege and class. The first homosexual sex sequence is introduced by an encounter between Lulu and an up-​and-​coming editor. In this respect, they are juxtaposed with an image suggesting success and power. (Lulu has opted for a man whose career offers considerable social mobility and visibility, and one can wonder whether she is ultimately involved with him to further her aspirations in the field of fashion design.) When Noam ultimately tops Ashraf, what is at stake involves not only

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issues of identity  –​the act of being penetrated would be even more taboo in Palestinian culture than that of penetrating –​but, moreover, Ashraf ’s attempts to enter into the Israeli mainstream, and gain access to the privileges enjoyed by his Israeli lover and friends. One of the most powerful sequences of The Bubble is the inclusion of a concentration camp scene from a performance of Martin Sherman’s Bent that the gay lovers attend. Two men stand side by side in the Dachau concentration camp, one wearing a gold Star of David and the other a pink triangle. Both, however, are homosexual, and neither is Jewish. (One has lied to the guards, believing his chance of survival would be better as a Jew.) Thus, like The Bubble, Bent is a work about passing. So that they do not draw the attention of the guard –​also present on the stage –​the two men make love verbally.The dialogue is impassioned and erotic, and both avow to having attained orgasm at the end. Despite the unfathomable circumstances under which they have consummated their relationship, there is a touch of humour in the encounter; they refer to each other as ‘a good lay’. During the performance, Ashraf and Noam hold hands, and it is obvious that the play speaks in a roundabout way to their own situation.The two onstage characters will ultimately die, though not together, and their orgasm can be viewed not just as the consummation of a love relationship, but also as a foreshadowing of their death spasms. The performance of Bent is itself commercialised in a roundabout way. In a meeting with Lior Ashkenazy at the café, the editor of Time Out Tel Aviv describes his intention to capitalise on the success of the actor’s performance in the play by doing a spread of the celebrity with fifteen women. After all, a play about the Holocaust is one thing, while a spring special is another! Shall we say that, even on Shenkin Street, heterosexuality is still more marketable than gayness? In a similar manner, the suicide bombing is the fruit of foreshadowing, yet is also juxtaposed with a marker of commercialisation. Noam has taught Ashraf the expression ‘explosive’ to refer to their lovemaking, and, ultimately, their death will result from another sort of explosion.The greatest irony is that Noam and Ashraf die in front of one of Lulu’s posters featuring their nude bodies, which, as discussed below, actually serves to advertise an event more commercial than political.

Ethnic identity and social class The benefits reaped by the Israelis appear transient in nature inasmuch as these characters think very little about the future, living in a world of quick gratification. To earn a modest living, Lulu works as a salesperson in an upscale soap boutique, while flamboyant Yoli is the manager of a trendy café. Noam, in turn, works at a music store.Yoli, in particular is active in marketing and promotion. He is engaged in interviewing customers, both celebrities and ordinary citizens, gay and straight, as to why they love the café. On a more corporate level, we note the presence of Golan –​his very name evoking aggression and expansion –​a haughty entrepreneur, who flirts with Yoli, and stresses that this one-​of-​a-​kind café could easily be expanded to several franchises, including one in a fashionable mall! The bohemian

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lifestyle of the protagonists is thus driven by the market, and their mere existence relies upon the patronage of fashionable customers. Nir Cohen has stressed the importance of identity politics in The Bubble, noting that the Israeli characters are very Israeli indeed. ‘[They are gays who] serve in the army, usually in prestigious combat units […], feel a strong attachment to the land of Israel, [and] are the Ashkenazi-​white future of Israeli society’ (Cohen 2012: 94–​5). Fox himself has emphasised that, in Tel Aviv, gay people have come to the centre and are a part of mainstream society (Simmons 2007). By virtue of being a part of this mainstream, gayness becomes inevitably linked with commercialism, and such a link is evidenced by the lives of the three Israelis in Fox’s film. The differences between Shenkin Street and the West Bank are stark. Noam and Ashraf have a number of opportunities to share insights into their respective childhoods. The Palestinian’s family had Israeli permits, and his father had opted to construct a home for them in Israel, where they would enjoy better opportunities. The house, however, was ultimately burned down by Israeli soldiers. As an Israeli, Noam grew up with a more liberal perspective than most of his compatriots insofar as the Palestinian cause was concerned. Prior to her untimely death from cancer, his mother had tried to foster better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. Living in Jerusalem’s chic French Hill neighbourhood, which bordered on a Palestinian community, she had attempted to bring mothers and their children from the two groups together. Although her ideas were met with initial optimism –​ hence the touching coda with Noam and Ashraf playing together as children –​the plan ultimately failed. Nonetheless, it was her very economic privilege that allowed her to champion progressive causes, a fact that emphasises the very link between liberalism and neoliberalism that is inescapable in the film.2 Palestinian identity is diametrically opposed to Israeli, and this is evidenced in the film’s initial sequence, which emphasises the harsh dynamics of an Israeli

FIGURE 14.1:  Yoli

in his trendy café. Source: Screen grab.

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checkpoint. As the Palestinian riders on a bus entering Israel are lined up and verbally assaulted by both male and female Israeli soldiers, their lack of privilege is made clear. A pregnant Palestinian woman suddenly breaks out in a piercing scream, and we learn that her waters have broken. Noam and Ashraf tenderly loosen her clothing as they await the arrival of an ambulance.When a doctor appears on the site, the baby is delivered feet first, stillborn. Angry Palestinian men blame Noam and the other Israeli soldiers for the tragedy. Palestine and Israel are thus portrayed as diametrically opposed worlds. It is only gay sexuality that bridges the two worlds. As the Palestinian men are asked to lift their shirts so that the soldiers can be assured that they are not carrying explosives, Ashraf seductively exposes his nipples as he gazes intently at Noam. A subsequent sequence in the film suggests that Palestinians desire greater recognition by the West, yet are nevertheless unable to accept western liberalism. As Noam and Lulu arrive at Ashraf ’s family home in the guise of French journalists wishing to cover a typical Palestinian wedding, they are received with open arms by members of the family. One senses both a strong ethnic pride and a desire to convey to the western world a lifestyle and value system that have been widely misread.Yet meetings between East and West are not always so easy. When Ashraf attempts to explain to his sister that the male French journalist was actually his lover, she fails to understand even the mere concept, and blames his confusion on the western pop culture to which he is exposed. The Palestinian East remains a land of traditional gender roles, family ties and arranged marriages. The divide between the Jewish and Muslim worlds is most forcefully manifested in the sequences following the gunning down of Ashraf ’s sister. We witness a stereotypical jihadist video recording as the widower vows revenge.The only hope for a better future lies in the film’s final images of Noam and Ashraf playing together as children and in the recollection of the ideals of Noam’s mother. It is by virtue of their Jewishness and skin colour that the ‘Ashkenazi-​white’ gays of Fox’s film assume a centric position, and can circulate in positions of privilege, which is defined by living ‘the good life’, regardless of their own relative lack of monetary resources.The progressive gays and gay supporters in The Bubble embrace Ashraf, yet they nonetheless are well aware that the Palestinian must pass, not as straight, but as Israeli. As Dorit Naaman emphasises, ‘he assumes the body language, linguistic, and fashion markers of Israelis in order to hide his Palestinian identity’ (Naaman 2011:  257 (my emphasis)). Of special significance is a scene in which Noam and his roommates choose an appropriately trendy wardrobe for Ashraf as he begins work at a fashionable café. The process is carefully executed, and it involves a number of changes of clothing before the right combination is finally found. Naaman further argues that The passing device could be seen to highlight the tensions and demarcations between belonging and exclusion in the Israeli social fabric, and as such the film addresses some of the burning political issues Israel faces today. Ultimately, by the end of the film, Ashraf is marked as an external Other, who cannot belong in Israeli society. (Naaman 2011: 258–​9)

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For Naaman, such passing is embodied as well by the choice of ‘Yousef “Joe” Sweid, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship [who] has a light complexion, has almost no Arabic accent, and thus represents a possible bridge between the two nationalities or an antidote to the ethnic dichotomy that [the film] worked so hard to assert’ (Naaman 2011: 270). The problem, as Naaman stresses, is that such a process works well within the narrative of the film, but fails to engage with the ethnic segregation of Israeli culture and society (Naaman 2011: 270). In the case of Ashraf ’s passing, the link between identity politics and issues of class and privilege is most evident.While the Israeli protagonists could well move to an even more centric position in society should they choose to do so, this would be difficult or impossible for the Palestinian. By virtue of his ethnicity, he is perpetually at risk of an outing, and, were he to become upwardly mobile, such a danger might well be considerably greater by virtue of his increased prestige and exposure. Returning to Bakhtin’s notions of the carnivalesque and dialogism, it is clear that social class lies on the margins of these theories in the same way as homosexuality. To date, Bakhtin’s work has been employed more in the service of identity politics than of class struggle. Yet the carnivalesque, by nature, invites a dialogue with Marxism. Haim Bresheeth (2013) has partially tackled this issue by establishing a connection between Bakhtin’s relationship between language and social milieu and Marxist views on ideology, power and class, as articulated by Althusser, Eagleton and Raymond Williams. Nonetheless, the alignment between these discussions and the worldview that defines The Bubble is not immediately evident. If the discourse of class lies on the margins of Bakhtin, it does so even more in Fox’s film. Nonetheless, class issues come into play in the Tel Aviv sequences by virtue of who is or is not included. Although Ashraf makes a temporary success of being

FIGURE 14.2:   Dressing Ashraf

Source: Screen grab.

for success.

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a (well-​tipped!) waiter, we are well aware that his need to ‘pass’ would render true upward mobility difficult. One might argue that his Israeli friends appear to exist on the margins of class discourse in that they are artistic and bohemian.Yet, as mentioned above, although they function as social liberals, they are tied to neoliberalism in their dependence upon consumerism.

Life in the bubble –​liberalism and neoliberalism The relationship between social liberalism and neoliberalism is seemingly contradictory. Studies on the Beat Generation have explored this paradox at length. Earl Gammon has examined how the Beats’ moulding of new identities actually served to break down social conventions that hindered capital from establishing new markets (Earl Gammon 2013:  522). Along similar lines, Daniel Bell, in response to Irving Kristol’s discussions of the end to the taboo of credit, argues that 1950s America became hedonistic, seeking fun and pleasure in a compulsive way (Daniel Bell 1996: 70). Referring as well to the 1960s, Bell links counterculture to a consumer culture based on instant satisfaction. As he asserts, ‘It was an effort, largely the product of the youth movement, to transform a liberal lifestyle into a world of immediate gratification and exhibitionistic display’ (Bell 1996: 81). He explains that ‘Liberalisation in the habits of buying implied liberalisation in other forms of behaviour and social attitudes that produced “women’s libbers”, sexual noncomformists and cultural radicals’ (Bell 1996: 78). Bell further argues that bohemia with its experimentation is mirrored by ‘the spirit of perpetual innovation’ of capitalism and the market (Bell 1996: 78). Drawing upon Bell’s ideas, David Hancock concludes that ‘Capitalism is ambivalent about these issues, cultural shifts merely open up new markets. The social liberalism of the counter-​culture allows the development of the market liberalism of consumer capitalism and vice versa’ (Hancock 1996: 111). A recent study on gayness and capitalism reveals a similar link. In a discussion of the ‘It Gets Better’ anti-​gay bullying project, Doug Meyer focuses on the class narratives that define the films made for this initiative. In an analysis of 128 videos, Meyer explains that individuals participating begin by describing negative experiences they underwent during adolescence, and subsequently shift to a narrative of progress, discussing how their lives have improved since high school. The filmmakers thus draw on markers of social class, among these travelling, attending university and moving to a big city, in order to convince young gays that the future will be better. Meyer argues that, despite their condemnation of bullying, the videos actually reinforce neoliberalism (Meyer 2017: 113–​27). Albeit to a very different end, the ‘It Gets Better’ project puts forth the same link between homosexuality and capitalism as does Fox’s film. The film’s opening sequence can be read as a metaphor of this masked relationship. We look through the viewfinder of a television video camera at an Israeli checkpoint. A belligerent Israeli officer approaches a crew of Israeli television journalists and orders them not to shoot.The cameraman in turn questions his authority,

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and argues that there is no order which prohibits their coverage. The soldier’s hand then blocks the viewfinder, and we realise that we are confronted with something that dare not be shown or seen. The officer is subsequently called away from the journalists in the direction of a bus full of Palestinians, both men and women, who have proceeded to the checkpoint to enter Israeli territory. The officer barks an order at Noam, who is on short-​term duty at the checkpoint, insisting that he prevent the journalists from filming.We get the sense that, although the treatment both of the Palestinians and of the journalists is extremely harsh, the events we behold are a daily occurrence, something foreign to those who enjoy the carefree existence of the protective ‘bubble’ of Tel Aviv. Noam attempts once more to dissuade the crew from filming, but ultimately advises them (and by extension, the viewers), that he does not care whether they film (or we look on).We, as viewers, are now permitted to gaze at the forbidden, and, yes, on a superficial level, we presume it to be the horrific treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli army. Yet if we assume the viewfinder and the hand that no longer blocks its vista to open windows to the experience of The Bubble at large –​after all, these are the initial images of the film –​there is far more at stake. What we will now be allowed to contemplate is a selfie of sorts; it entails something that is equally veiled in Israeli society, the complex relationship between bohemian life and capitalism, gayness and the market. Living in an environment of trendy nightclubs, bistros and theatre stages, Noam and Ashraf can awaken after their lovemaking to Tel Aviv’s morning light and gaze at a mosaic of buildings, replete with satellite dishes and antennas, which characterise the upscale quality of their neighbourhood. In a like manner, the pet project of the friends, a rave against the occupation, mirrors such an environment. In an upscale office, the organisers discuss a poster designed by Lulu depicting four figures clad only in fig leaves, and question whether or not the leaves should foreground Israeli and Palestinian colours. Speaking from a vantage point of privilege, a woman comments that, although it would be nice to have Palestinians present, how could they get there? How would they obtain permits? The result of the corporate-​style meeting concerns the creation of the rave poster, which features the four protagonists in the buff. Lulu and Yoli are shown right side up, in testament to the gay-​friendliness that characterises Fox’s film. Her breasts and their genitals are covered by fig leaves. To their left are Noam and Ashram, also nude. Ashraf is depicted upside down. Again, fig leaves are placed so as to block their genitals. This image is ambivalent. From the perspective of equality, one might imagine that Ashraf and Noam are positioning themselves for an act of 69, in which the two characters will be on equal turf. However, when one considers the context of the four figures, it is the Palestinian who is in an inverted position, and this emphasises his difference.3 Despite the innovation and originality of the poster, it actually implies clever marketing rather than the promotion of a progressive cause. The rave does indeed take place, and Ashraf is able to come from the West Bank to attend it. Nonetheless, it fails to reap social benefits. It remains nothing more than a rave, where drinks and drugs become the consumer goods defining the ‘radical’ event.

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FIGURE 14.3:  The

rave against the occupation. Source: Screen grab.

In his café job, moreover, Ashraf is exposed to consumer culture in several ways. Not only does he earn great tips, particularly because of his sex appeal, but, moreover, he is privy to conversations which reveal the range of opinions in Israel’s largest city. On one occasion, a couple argue about the meaning of the expression ‘the bubble’ as it refers to Tel Aviv. The man forcefully asserts that here, nothing is authentic, the city’s residents having no connection to reality. His dining companion argues that life on a kibbutz in a West Bank settlement can also foster the same sort of bubble. Thus, one can view the Tel Aviv bubble and the settlements as fences of a sort. Like capitalism itself, they protect residents from reality, and create a barrier between privileged insiders and those exploited on the outside. It is not accidental that Ashraf ultimately chooses to detonate his bomb in front of the hip café where he had worked. His actions bring the Palestinian margins to the protected centre of the Shenkin Street district, and, with the explosion, the bubble has burst.This closing metaphor speaks not only to identity politics, but also to the very nature of capitalism, suggesting the boom and bust cycle that Marxists have identified in the market economy. The Bubble was released two years prior to the global crisis of 2008, and, although Israel itself was relatively unscathed in this recession, the image nonetheless can be read as a warning. After all, the cultural cosmopolitanism of Israel, which links it so closely to the West, impedes the safeguarding of any true bubble.

Aesthetic cosmopolitanism: gay Israel and the world Inasmuch as the discourses the protagonists of The Bubble negotiate draw heavily upon international fashion and pop culture, a useful critical framework is that of

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cosmopolitanism, and the analyses of George Crowder (2013) and Motti Regev (2013) are of particular consequence. Crowder has offered a general definition of the phenomenon, and has further broken it down into two major types, strong and partial, the latter also being referred to as ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism. Crowder explains as follows: Stronger versions [of cosmopolitanism] hold either that identification with humanity [at large] is the only morally relevant form of human identity, or that it always overrides local or particular identities, or perhaps that it embraces or subsumes all such identities.Weaker or more moderate forms of cosmopolitanism concede a greater role to sub-​universal identifications, in particular to certain especially prominent kinds of identity, such as nationality. (Crowder 2013: 93) For Crowder, Kant represents an initial proponent of strong cosmopolitanism. He clarifies as follows: […] a Kantian cosmopolitanism looks like asking us to separate ourselves from emotion-​laden allegiances, such as those to our nation and culture, to rise above them and endorse as our moral and political model a set of universal rules that are completely impersonal and consistent among different peoples and groups. On this model, the universal decisively trumps the particular. (Crowder 2013: 93) In a manner similar to Crowder, Jeremy Waldron considers that [strong] cosmopolitanism is exemplified by Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which ‘celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes out of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure’ (Rushdie cited in Waldron 1995: 93). One might consider that the dream of the protagonists of The Bubble for an end to the violence between Israel and Palestine allows them to put forth a strong humanitarian worldview and thus step away from their own frame. Nonetheless, this interpretation is problematised, as will be explored below. Crowder discusses at great length weaker forms of cultural cosmopolitanism. He draws upon the work of Kwame Anthony Appiah, who sees no conflict between being a citizen of the world and a Ghanaian patriot (Appiah 2005:  213–​14). As Appiah asserts, nationalities should look beyond their local identity and explore the larger world outside (Appiah 2006:  78). For the Ghanaian theoretician, ‘the principal task of cosmopolitanism is dialogue or “debate and conversation across nations” […] we must rely on the ability to listen and to talk to people whose commitments, beliefs, and projects may seem distant from our own’ (Appiah 2005: 246). The discussions of Crowder and Appiah tend to be more political than cultural. Nonetheless, they provide an interpretative framework for much of the ideological underpinnings of The Bubble. Despite identifying with Ashraf ’s plight, nowhere

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do the Israeli protagonists demonstrate anything but affection for Tel Aviv. To this effect, the dynamics of The Bubble clearly approach the weaker form of cosmopolitanism, but such a process needs to be further fleshed out. The work of Motti Regev, himself an Israeli academic, on pop-​rock music interprets cosmopolitanism in a way even more conducive to an analysis of Fox’s film. Regev employs as a theoretical framework for his 2013 study of pop rock the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Exploring the phenomenon of Malian pop, Regev asserts that […] cultural materials that originate in the West flow into non-​Western countries, where they are perceived as models of modernity. Eager to take part in modern culture, yet reluctant to fully embrace the Western variant of modernity, artists and consumers alike in these other countries selectively adapt elements and components from these materials and merge them with indigenous traditional materials. This allows them to preserve a sense of local uniqueness, while at the same time to feel participants in recent developments of modern culture. (Regev 2013: 5) Regev posits aesthetic cosmopolitanism as a condition in which ‘individuals, as members of one national or ethnic culture, have a taste for cultural products and art works that unequivocally “belong” to a nation or ethnicity other than their own’ (Regev 2013: 8). The trendy protagonists of The Bubble demonstrate aesthetic cosmopolitanism at the individual level inasmuch as they display a ‘cultural disposition involving an intellectual and aesthetic stance of “openness” towards peoples, places and experiences from different cultures, especially those from different “nations” ’ (Szerszynski and Urri 2002:  468). The stage play that so moves them, American playwright Martin Sherman’s Bent, is highly cosmopolitan in nature. It premiered in 1979 in London’s West End starring Ian McKellen, and on Broadway the following year with Richard Gere. Again, despite speaking to Tel Aviv’s Ashkenazy community, the work is Anglo-​American, and The Bubble’s characters thus move in the circle of international theatre. In a similar manner, Lulu’s passion for fashion design, although still limited to the creation of t-​shirts with the English wording ‘I Love Love Tel Aviv’, has led her to make vague plans for study in New York or Paris, and she realises that her hopes cannot be realised without an international education. Mirroring such cosmopolitan processes, the food the protagonists consume and sell is a fusion of East and West, with the speciality of the café where so much of the action takes place being sweet potato pancakes. We may be in the Middle East, but it is a Middle East in tandem with western trends. Tel Aviv as a haven where international culture is celebrated is most evident in the choice of the diegetic and extra-​diegetic music that comprises the soundtrack of The Bubble. When two young women visit the music shop where Noam works, they ask for a new compilation CD by Britney Spears; Noam suggests that they instead buy an album by the Rolling Stones. Such foreign pop rock, from different

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decades, is celebrated throughout the film.The Israeli friends lovingly mock Noam’s poster collection, and define it as a little ‘indy world’ of suffering pop figures, among them George Michael, River Phoenix and The Pet Shop Boys. As Noam drives home to Tel Aviv from the checkpoint where he has met Ashraf, we hear the song ‘This Is the First Day of My Life’ by Conor Oberst of the Omaha, Nebraska-​ based band Bright Eyes. In this case, the song’s lyrics reflect not only the way in which a tragic stillbirth he has witnessed at the checkpoint has affected his life, but also, and more importantly, the significance of his first meeting with Ashraf. Other international pop-​music references include ‘Tonight Is Forever’, by the Acid House Kings (Sweden), ‘Women’s Realm’ by Belle and Sebastian (Scotland), ‘Music in a Foreign Language’ by Lloyd Cole (England) and ‘Cada beijo’ by Bebel Gilberto (Brazil). One of the most significant salutes to international music is when the gang visits a cabaret where the film’s composer, Ivri Lider, performs Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’. In this case, an iconic work of American pop music is co-​opted and performed by an Israeli. What is at stake in such references to international trends and pop culture is that Eytan Fox’s Tel Aviv is imbued with a western quality that contrasts starkly with the dynamics of the West Bank, which geographically is ever so close. Hence, when Ashraf is forced to pass as an Israeli, the process is essentially two-​pronged. He must first pass as Israeli, and such would also be the case in Haifa, parts of Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights. But secondly, he must pass as a cultural cosmopolite, whose lifestyle is inimical to the restrictions he must confront in the West Bank, which ultimately trump his attempt at a western worldview. Nonetheless, Fox’s film effaces the divide between the national and the cosmopolitan, and hence provides an argument for weaker, or rooted, cosmopolitanism. When the lovers first stand on the balcony of the apartment and contemplate the night cityscape, Noam explains that Tel Aviv is particularly sultry since the ‘idiot Europeans’ who built it did not understand the Mediterranean, and hence blocked the natural sea breeze with their construction. He appears to articulate this point out of affection for the city, despite its flaws. The very words ‘I Love Love Tel Aviv’ on Lulu’s t-​shirts show that, despite her passion for the international, she holds a deep affection for her city. Such is the case for all of the protagonists as they seek out the dynamic night life that defines Tel Aviv. When Noam sings in English, the Hebrew accent of actor Ohad Knoller blends seamlessly with the lyrics, and no disjunction is evident. The Bubble clearly advocates a blended form of cosmopolitanism in which the local simply becomes part of a broader picture. The home-​ grown can indeed exist in tandem with the imported. The ‘nation’ –​to recoup a word that has taken on a less-​than-​favourable connotation –​is an integral part of the cosmopolitan. The play within the film, which has been analysed at length by David Gorshein (2013), is but one example of the celebration of gay sexuality in The Bubble, and its verbal sex is a metaphor for the true language of sexuality present in Ashraf and Noam’s relationship. Nonetheless, the film is more complex and problematical. Its examination of gay sexual passion cutting across an unbridgeable rift is couched in a discourse of neoliberalism and international sophistication. The protagonists

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live, love and cross political divides, and their progressive ideas –​albeit only partially realised –​do indeed set the tone for a better future.Yet The Bubble is itself trapped in another bubble, that of the cosmopolitanism, and, by extension, commercialism that engulfs Tel Aviv, and in which its characters are entrenched. Eytan Fox has written a love poem to Tel Aviv, and we as consumers, gay or straight, trendy or not so, have pasted it onto our own shopping lists.

Notes 1 In an interview with Rona Kuperboim, Yousef Sweid, in turn, describes the daring gay scenes in The Bubble, clarifying as follows: Both Ohad and I had quite a bit of trepidation before the filming, but I felt that the scenes were justified and that they were important from the point of view of expression, so I put my hesitation aside and I saw it through to the end.The erotic scenes were between an Israeli-​Jewish guy and a Palestinian, who get into each other both physically and emotionally. I think that the courage to show this is like the courage to make peace. Sweid replies to the question ‘Who’s screwing who?’ by stating that ‘everyone has the right to be on top’ (Kuperboim 2006). He further clarifies this in an interview with Nick Street of the Jewish Journal, by affirming that he eventually came to see that the two sex scenes were what brought the film together (Street 2007). 2 In an interview with Sylvie Simmons of San Francisco Gate, Fox describes the class dynamics of his childhood and life in divided Jerusalem. Speaking of his own mother, he explains as follows: She was an American Jewish lady who moved with her husband and three children to Israel in the mid ’60s, and after the initial shock –​Jerusalem was such a little provincial nothing of a town back then, and my mother came from Manhattan and really liked the life there –​she really decided to become Israeli and was very involved. She was a city planner, a member of the Jerusalem council and elected as part of the left-​wing liberal party Meritz [sic, Meretz]. Part of her job was to study the poor Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and help them build and deal with all the crazy laws of what they’re allowed and not allowed to build, including the village that was opposite the posh neighborhood where I grew up, which is prominent in the film. 3 The cover of the Strand Releasing DVD of the film is almost identical to Lulu’s poster, except that they are facing more to the side with Lulu’s arms covering her breasts. The film’s title covers their genitals. Once again, Ashraf is upside down.

Bibliography Althusser, Louis (1994). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (London: Ben Brewster). Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2005). The Ethics of Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: Norton). Bakhtin, Mikhail (1968). Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Bakhtin, Mikhail (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press). Bell, Daniel (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books).

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Bresheeth, Haim (2015). ‘Cultural Resistance through Film: The Case of Palestinian Cinema’, in Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen (eds.), Marxism and Film Activism: Screening Alternative Worlds (London: Berghahn). Cohen, Nir (2012). Soldiers, Rebels and Other Gay Representation in Israeli Culture (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press). Crowder, George (2013). Theories of Multiculturalism: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity). Eagleton, Terry (1991). Ideology: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gammon, Earl (2013). ‘The Psycho and Sociogenesis of Neoliberalism’, Critical Sociology, 39, pp. 511–​28. Gorshein, David (2013). ‘The Play within the Film: Tel Aviv, History, and the Queer Utopia’, in Angela Jones (ed.), A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias (New York: Palgrave), pp. 517–​36. Hancock, David (2016). ‘Neoconservatism, Bohemia and the Moral Economy of Neoliberalism’, Journal of Cultural Research, 20(2), pp. 101–​21. Haqshenas, Sarah (2013). ‘Bakhtin, Marxism, and Sociologic Method on Linguistics’, International Researchers, 2(2), pp. 25–​31. Kristol, Irving (1996). Neoconservatism:The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press). Kuperboim, Rona (2006). ‘A Genuine Ashkenazi’, YNET, 6 July, www.ynetnews. com/​articles/​0,7340,L-​3272023,00.html, accessed 8 September 2016. Meyer, Doug (2017). ‘ “One Day I’m Going to Be Really Successful”. The Social Class Politics of Videos Made for the “It Gets Better” Anti-​Gay Bullying Project’, Critical Sociology, 43(1), pp. 113–​27. Naaman, Dorit (2011). ‘A Rave against the Occupation: Speaking for the Self and Excluding the Other in Contemporary Israeli Political Cinema’, in Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg (eds.), Israeli Cinema: Identification in Motion (Austin: University of Texas Press), pp. 257–​75. Podhoretz, Norman (1999). Ex-​Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (New York: Free Press). Regev, Motti (2013). Pop-​Rock Music (Cambridge: Polity). Rushdie, Salman (1989). The Satanic Verses (New York:Viking Penguin). Simmons, Sylvie (2007). ‘Eytan Fox’s The Bubble: A Gay Love Story in Israel’, SFGATE, 30 August, www.sfgate.com/​entertainment/​article/​Eytan-​Fox-​s-​The-​Bubble-​a-​gay-​love-​ story-​in-​2506325.php, accessed 26 September 2016. Stam, Robert (1989). Subversive Pleasures (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Stam, Robert (1992). Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-​Luc Godard (New York: Columbia University Press). Stein, Rebecca (2010). ‘Explosive: Scenes from Israel’s Gay Occupation’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(4), pp. 517–​36. Street, Nick (2007). ‘Film: Bubble Star Crosses Many Borders in Role as Gay Palestinian’, Jewish Journal, 8 September, https://​jewishjournal.com/​culture/​arts/​15334/​, accessed 26 September 2016. Szerszynski, Bronislaw and John Urry (2002). ‘Cultures of Cosmopolitanism’, Sociological Review, 50, pp. 461–​81. Waldron, Jeremy (1995). ‘Minority Cultures and Cosmopolitan Alternatives’, in Will Kymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 93–​119. Williams, Raymond (1977). Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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INDEX

40-Year-Old Virgin,The (2005) 189–91, 199 A Wedding (1978) 175 About a Boy (2002) 188, 195–6 Ackroyd, Barry 33 Adebimpe, Tunde 173 Adorno, Theodor 154, 183n9 Ae Fond Kiss (2004) 33, 37 Alberti, John 190, 200 Allen, Jim 28–9, 38n6 Althusser, Louis 84, 154–5, 239 Altman, Robert 48, 175 American Psycho (2000) 10, 202, 212–14 Ancelotti, Carlo 31 Anderson, Lindsay, 109 Angels’ Share, The (2012) 26, 28–9, 33, 35, 38n3, 38n5, 39n21 Antonioni, Michelangelo 48 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 243 Archibald, David n3, n4 Arendt, Hannah, 3 Argo (2012) 64 Ashkenazy, Lior 236, 239 Astruc, Alexander 27 Avatar (2009) 59 Badiou, Alain 8–9, 19, 155, 204–6 Bakhtin, Mikhail 233–5, 239 Barthes, Roland 28 Baskova, Svetlana 13, 73–85 Bauman, Zygmunt 79 Bazin, André 39 n12, 205 Beaufoy, Simon 64 Beauvoir, Simone de 223–4

Beckett, Ray 33 Beethoven, Ludwig van 177 Bell, David 240 Beller, Jonathan 58 Bellow, Saul 211 Beloved, The (2011) 32 Benjamin, Walter 37 Bent 236, 244, 245–6 Bergman, Ingmar 48 Bernstein, Elizabeth (see also Bounded authenticity) 220–1, 226, 228 Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,The (2011) 188, 197–8 Beyoncé (Gisella Knowles-Carter) 8 Big Flame,The (1969) 28, 37 Big Short,The (2015) 10 Black Jack (1979) 30, 32 Blade Runner (1982) 6 Blair, Tony 4 Blankfein, Lloyd 178, 183 Bourdieu, Pierre 31, 207 Boyle, Danny 107–8 Braff, Zach 62–3 Bread and Roses (2000) 37 Bresheeth, Haim 239 Bridesmaids (2011) 192 Brother from Another Planet (1984) 53 Brosnan, Pierce 194 Brown, Gordon 4 Brown, Wendy 186 Brown, William 73, 79–81 Bubble,The 18, 233–47 Buice, Susan, 13 Burns, James 33

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Index  249

Burroughs, William S. 211 Bush, George W. 180 Buzzati, Dino 86 Bypass (2014) 15 Cantet, Laurent 14, 18, 105, 114–​19, 217, 219, 220, 223–​7, 229, 231–​2 Cantona, Eric 37 Carla’s Song (1996) 29, 37 Carruth, Shane 62–​3 Cathy Come Home (1966) 25, 30, 37 Cattaneo, Peter, 10 Cattrall, Ann 32 Caucheteux, Pascal 34, 38n1 Caughie, John 28–​9, 37 Chandor, J. C., 10 Cimino, Michael 49 Class,The (2008), 115 Clegg, Fergus 33 Clerks (1994) 43 Clinton, Bill, 4 Clinton, Hillary, 2, 16, 19 Cocteau, Jean 48 Corbyn, Jeremy, 2, 38n5 Corliss, Richard 29 Crowder, George 242–​3 Crumley, Arin, 13 Costa, Pedro 67 Days of Hope (1975) 26, 29 De Witt, Rosemary 173 Dearden, Basil 107, 114 Dearden, James 14, 105, 107, 119 Debt (1999) 14, 105, 110–​15, 119 Deer Hunter, The (1978) 183 Deleuze, Gilles 183n3 Deleyto, Celestino 187–​8, 190 Deng, Xiaoping 91 Demme, Jonathan 16, 171–​3, 175–​6, 179, 181, 183 Detropia (2012) 61 Diaz, Lav 67 Dictator,The (2012) 157 Do the Right Thing (1989) 43, 50, 62 Dogtooth (2009) 137, 142–​6, 149–​50 Dolan, Josephine 197–​8 Donovan, Martin, 62 Eagleton, Terry 239 Easy Rider (1969) 48 Eisenstein, Sergei, 13, 73 El topo (1970) 62 Ellis, Bret Easton 17, 202–​9, 212, 214 Engels, Friedrich 4, 46–​7, 54 n5, 161–​2 Epifantsev,Vladimir 77

Ertugrul, Mine 192 Evans, Peter Williams 190 Evil Dead (2013) 58 Fatal Attraction (1987) 107 Fatherland (1986) 29, 31, 32, 33 Federici, Silvia 142, 145 Fenton, George 33 Ferguson, Alex 30, 39n12 Fisher, Mark 2, 7, 107 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 203 Five Bottles of Vodka (2001), 77 Five Easy Pieces (1970) 48 Flickering Flame: A Story of Contemporary Morality, The (1996) 33 For Marx… (2012) 13, 73–​85 Foucault, Michel 95, 116, 208, 222 Fox, Eytan 233–​47 Freud, Sigmund 210, 213–​14, 231 Fromm, Erich 155 Four Eyed Monsters (2005) 13, 64, 68–​70 Fox, Eytan 18 Fox, Stephen 192 Friedman, Milton 53, 105 Frost, David 107 Fukuyama, Francis 1 Full Monty, The (1997) 10 Gammon, Earl 240 Garden State (2004) 62 Garnett, Tony 30 Gates, Bill 177 Gershon, Ilana 199 Giddens, Anthony 196, 199 Gill, Rosalind 221, 222 Gillespie, David 81 Ginsberg, Allen 211, 234–​5 Godard, Jean-​Luc 12, 81, 85 Golden Vision, The (1968) 36 Goodman, Paul 211 Gorbachev, Mikhail 74 Goscilo, Helena 74 Green Elephant (1999) 80 Griffiths, Trevor: 29 Guattari, Felix 183n3 Hail, Caesar! (2016) 153, 156, 158–​9 Hamilton, Kathy 194 Hancock, David 236 Hartley, Hal 62 Harvey, David 4–​7, 9, 45, 53, 74, 76, 105, 191, 207, 209 Hasselhoff, David 63 Hathaway, Anne 175, 179, 183n20 Hayek, Friedrich 52, 105

250

250 Index

Hayward, Anthony 34 Heading South (2005) 18, 217, 220–​1, 223–​9, 231–​2 Heaven’s Gate (1980) 49 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1, 154 Henry Fool (1997) 62 Hidden Agenda (1990) 29, 31, 33 Higson, Andrew 75 Hill, John 26, 28 Hines, Barry 29 Hjort, Mette 34 Hochschild, Arlie 220, 226 Holiday,The (2006) 188, 196–​7 hooks, bell 229 Hopkins, Duane 15 Hopper, Dennis 48 How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) 18, 217, 220–​5, 228–​9, 231 Human Resources (1999) 115 Hunter, Aaron 28 I Love You Man (2009) 190, 199 I, Daniel Blake (2016) 25, 31, 33 Illouz, Eva 9, 16, 109, 115 In Conversation with Jeremy Corbyn (2016) 38n5 Informers, The (2008) 202, 208, 209–​10 Internship,The (2013) 153, 163–​5 Interview,The (2014) 153, 156–​7 It’s a Free World… (2007) 37 Jameson, Fredric 154, 172, 183n9 Jarmusch, Jim 49, 69 Jaws (1975) 49 Jeffreys, Sheila 218–​9, 226 Jesus Camp (2006) 61 Jia, Zhangke 14, 91–​4, 100 Jimmy’s Hall (2014) 33, 39n22 Jodorowsky, Alejandro 62 Johnson, Martin 33 Jones, Huw 32 Junun (2015) 60 Kaklamanidou, Betty 186–​7 Kant, Immanuel 243 Kapur, Jyostna 11, 187, 203 Kelly, Casey R. 189, 190–​1 Kempadoo, Kamala 218–​9, 226 Kerouac, Jack 211 Kes (1969) 30, 36 Kharms, Daniil 85 King’s Speech,The (2010) 64 Kiss Before Dying, A 107 Knocked Up (2007) 185, 189

Knoller, Ohad 245 Krauze, Krzysztof 14, 105, 110–​16 Kristol, Irvine 240 Kung Fury (2015) 62–​3 Lacan, Jacques 153 Lacey, Stephen 30, 38n9 Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) 33 Land and Freedom (1995) 29, 37 Lanthimos,Yorgos 137, 142, 145 Lanzmann, Claude 34 Laruelle, François 155 Laverty, Paul 29, 31, 32, 33, 38n1 Lazzarato, Maurizio 9, 14, 57, 106 Lee, Spike 42, 43, 50, 62, 63 Leeson, Nick 107–​10, 114, 116 Leigh, Jacob 26 Leigh, Mike 110 Lenin,Vladimir 4 Less Than Zero (1987) 202, 206–​8, 212–​13 Livrozet, Serge 116 Loach, Ken 12, 15, 25–​39, 110, 121–​2, 132 Looking for Eric (2009) 29, 32, 34, 37 Love Actually (2003) 188, 196 Lukács, Georg 122, 161–​2 Lumet, Jenny 176 Macdonald, Dwight 211 Mailer, Norman 211 Mamma Mia! (2008) 188, 192–​4, 197 Mannequin (1987) 208 Mao Zedong 91 Marcuse, Herbert 207 Margin Call (2011) 10 Marx, Karl 1, 4, 7, 12, 16, 46–​7, 54 n4, 5 and 9, 105, 108, 153–​8, 161–​3, 166, 183 n6, 220 Matewan (1987) 53 Matthews, Nicole 189, 195 McGregor, Ewan 107–​8 McKay, Adam 10 McKnight, George 26 McMahon, Eimear 32 McRobbie, Angela 222 Meanwhile (2011) 62 Men with Guns (1997) 53 Menges, Chris 30, 33, 38n10 Midnight Cowboy (1969) 48 Miłosz, Czesław 85 Morris, Jonathan 33, 34 Mortimer, Claire 186, 189, 191 Munro, Rona 29 My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) 188, 197 My Name is Joe (1998) 36, 37

251

Index  251

Narcos (2015–​) 7 Navigators (2001) 29, 31, 37 Ned Rifle (2014) 62 New York, Four in the Morning (1988) 110 Nolan, Christopher 50 Nuñez,Victor 49 O Lucky Man! (1973) 109 O’Brien, Rebecca 25, 31–​3, 38n1 O’Connor, James 29 Obama, Barack 2, 4, 16 One Solution –​Resistance (2011), 77 Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) 69 Oranges and Sunshine (2010) 32 Osmolovsky, Anatoly 77 Ostrowska, Dorota 27 Pakhomov, Sergei 73, 82–​4 Panic Attack! (2009) 58 Parabellum (2015) 60 Paradise: Love (2012) 18, 217, 220–​1, 224–​8, 231–​2 Paulson, Henry 178, 183 Perdition (1987) 29, 38n6 Perren, Alisa 197 Philadelphia (1993) 171 Pick-​up Artist, The (1987) 208 Plakhov, Andrei 81 Plaza, Aubrey 62 Polanyi, Karl 2–​3, 7, 183n6 Poor Cow (1967) 30 Posey, Parker 62 Powdermaker, Hortense 30, 35 Presence, Steve 27, 32 Pretty in Pink (1986) 208 Putin,Vladimir 13, 74–​5 Question of Leadership, A (1981) 29 Questions of Leadership (1983) 29, 31 Rachel Getting Married (2008) 16, 171–​83 Raining Stones (1993) 29, 33 Rancière, Jacques 10 Rank and File,The (1971) 28, 37 Reagan, Ronald 53 Red Guelderbush (or The Red Snowball Tree) (1974), 81 Requiem for a Dream (2000) 50 Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) 49 Rhaman, Habib 32 Riff-​Raff (1991) 31, 37 Rogue Trader (1999) 14, 105, 107–​11, 114, 119 Romney, Mitt 50

Rosten, Leo 38n8 Route Irish (2010) 39n14 Rushdie, Salman 243 Rules of Attraction, The (2002) 202, 211–​12 Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!,The (1966) 157 Ryan, Robbie 33, 34 Salinger, J. D. 211 Sanchez Taylor, Jacqueline 218–​19, 226 Sanders, Bernie 2 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 54n4, 223 Save the Children Fund Film (aka In Black and White) (1971) 29, 31 Saviour Square (2006) 111 Sayles, John 49, 53 Schatz, Thomas 30, 35 Schein, Edgar 32, 33 Schiller, Friedrich 183 Scorsese, Martin 10, 48 Seidl, Ulrich 18, 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227–​8, 230–​1 Seidler, David 64 Servetas,Yorgos (Giorgos) 15, 137, 145–​7, 149–​50 Sex and the City (2008) 191–​2 Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) 50 Shakespeare, William 84, 178, 183n18 Shallow Grave (1994) 107 Shankly, Bill 36 Sherman, Michael 244 Shoah (1985) 34 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991) 171 Silvestrov, Andrei 76 Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 64 Smith, Adam 180, 184n23 Smith, Kevin 43 Smith, Rachel Greenwald 187–​8 Snakes on a Plane (2006) 59 Spicer, Andrew 27, 32 Spirit of ’45 (2013) 32, 39n17 Stafford Clark, Max 38n6 Stam, Robert 204, 208 Standing Aside,Watching (2013) 15, 137–​8, 142–​6, 149–​50 Star Wars (1977) 49 Stein, Jock 36 Streep, Meryl 8, 193 Street Games (1996) 110–​11 Strike (1925) 13 Styhre, Alexander 192, 199 Sullivan, Kevin Rodney 18, 217, 231 Summer (2008) 32 Superbad (2007) 190

252

252 Index

Swan, Elaine 192 Sweet Sixteen (2002) 37 Sweid,Yousef 246 Tap on the Shoulder, A (1965) 37 Thatcher, Margaret 7, 108 Thomas, Rob 62–​3 Thomas-​O’Brien, Jack 32 Thornton Caldwell, John 27, 30, 34 Terrio, Chris 64 Tickets (2005) 36 Time Out (2001) 14, 105, 115–​19 Trainspotting 107 Trotsky, Leon 8, 29 Trump, Donald 2–​3 Up the Junction (1965) 25 Veronica Mars (2014) 62 Wagner, Beverly 194 Wagner, Keith 11, 108, 187, 203 Waldron, Jeremy 243 Wang Bing 67 War Work: 8 Songs with Film (2014) 60

Wasted Youth 149 Way of the Gun, The (2000) 50 Weber, Max 34 Weird Science (1985) 208 Weeks, Kathi 146–​7 What We Do in the Shadows (2014) 61 Williams, Raymond 239 Willis, Andy 28 Wind from the East (1970), 81, 85 Wind That Shakes the Barley The (2006) 29, 31, 33, 37 Winger, Debra 175 Wish I Was Here (2014) 62 Wolf of Wall Street, The (2013) 10 Woman on Pier 13,The (1949) 156 Words of a Journey (2011) 14, 91–​103 Xenia (2004) 149 Yeltsin, Boris 74, 77 York, Ashley Elaine 191, 194–​5 Young, Neil 176 Žižek, Slavoj 2, 10, 131–​2, 154, 172–​3, 176–​9, 182, 202