Essay draft + another update

The current situation of the project 

Right now, I'm in the midst of working on the draft of the essay for the project. Since the last update, I've found most of my secondary sources that will be used in the final essay (the films can be considered primary sources). The essay is mostly written, but needs revisions and additional sections before it can really be considered finished, even as a draft. Below the update section of this post I'll have an excerpt of the section on postmodernism, but before I get to that I need to talk about my plan for the presentation.

I've also done work on the presentation portion of the project, which I have decided will consist of me showing sections from multiple films, most likely They Live, The Matrix and/or Total Recall. The time constraints of the presentation will be the determining factor in how many films I show and how long the clips will be. Basically, the presentation will consist of clips followed by commentary and excerpts from the essay. This will help make the subject matter more palpable for the audience, who would otherwise be disinterested in a recitation of the essay.

Essay excerpt

Note: all content contained within is subject to later change and does not necessarily imply the final version of the work. This is mostly intended to act as proof of progress on the project. Likely, a final version will be posted next week with periodic updates over the course of this week. 

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Postmodern approaches to ideology

The rejection of the sort of absolutist impulses found within more modernist perspectives on ideology results in ideology taking on a more fluid state. The search for truth and "authentic reality" is no longer centered around unraveling ideology as if it acts as a veil of ignorance, but rather takes on a topographical mindset. In the modern period, ideology could have been seen as a map that, like any good cartographer hopes, would accurately reflect the territory it depicts, but yet is a simplified or in some way imperfect representation of the physical world it conveys. However, this map no longer is a representation of reality, but has itself become the physical world. We now live on the map and what was once cartography becomes topography. This is essentially Baudrillard's perspective in Simulacra and Simulation, which he describes as:

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself. (1)

The social and political implications of this are clear. To escape ideology is incoherent, as ideology now unconsciously structures reality and determines the topography of thought. Ideology can have internal struggles and conflicts, yet this operates within a somewhat closed system. Ideologies (in particular) can exist as microcosmic bubbles in a cosmic ideological soup and interaction between them can often be violent, but to try and expand any sort of ideological sphere to a universalist position may not be tenable and equally ideological in its positioning.

We see this in film, especially in more contemporary works. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York has an underlying structure of droste (self-reference), creating a narrative that is simultaneously linear and cyclical, looping and repeating in a uniquely rhizomatic manner. Ideology in the film is truly postmodern; the physical world and the human bodies are insubstantial, temporal, while ideology remains the sole unifying element. It shapes and reconfigures reality while remaining relatively unchanged itself. As Žižek describes it, ideology is thus an unconscious fantasy that structures reality. It is a shared, communal unconscious that goes beyond individual minds. It shapes and forces individuals to conform to its own symbolic ordering and hierarchy. It takes on almost a living characteristic, but remains in the background. This nature of ideology as present (yet obfuscated) is a continuation from a more modernist epoch, yet Synecdoche, New York has a crucial narrative element that seeks to make its positioning clear.

In modernist films like They Live, characters have a capacity for overpowering or fighting back against ideology, but in order to do so there must be an initial recognition of ideology as extant in the first place. Characters in Synecdoche, New York are thus radically different from the cast of They Live as not only do they not struggle against ideology, but instead are unaware of its presence.

Does this mean that ideology is beyond a sort of "metaphysics of presence"? Quite the opposite; ideology, more than ever before, is bound to presence, not exempt from it. Ontologically, ideology is immaterial and possibly unknowable is a true sense, yet more than in previous eras it is dependent on its subjects. While before, ideology could have claimed some sort of ontological separation from its subjects because it is conceivable for someone to rebel against ideology and "fail," now a different paradigm has emerged. Ideology is in a symbiotic relationship, a dual nurturing, with the subject and it preserves it not through force, but with greater "doses" of ideological content. To see an example, we should turn to Lanthimos's 2009 film Dogtooth.

In this film, a husband and wife keep their three children isolated from the rest of society, allowing only minimal contact with the outside world. This allows for them to essentially have full control over their children's lives, creating a dominant power structure within the household that serves to discipline dissenting thought and actions. Even the children's rebellious streaks are themselves expressing discontent through the linguistic and epistemological constraints that have been imposed on them by the "upper class," i.e. the parents of the household.

This is the state of ideology today. We have "wizened up" to power in the sense that we are all skeptics of power, even the powerful themselves. There is no blind trust of government; everyone is a libertarian in some sense. However, states are still around and some are arguably more powerful than ever, yet where is revolution? Is it resigned to be carried out by Islamic militias or military coups? This is where film offers a partial solution.

Returning to Dogtooth, we see the exact nature of contemporary discontent and how to transgress in a postmodern society. Something interesting occurs over the course of the film as outside elements enter the compound. These can be viewed as "counter ideological" elements and other things that challenge the dominant social narrative, so in a more classical model, this would seem a positive development. It would open up the children's minds, encourage them to seek the outside world, yet instead the opposite happens: these foreign objects are integrated into the ideological framework and only further their oppression.

The proposed solution is not to bring in more outside forces, as they are made to fit within the current worldview imposed on them, but instead significant social change occurs when ideology is too rigidly adhered to. In a sense, petty individual ideologies are discarded for a slavish devotion to the broader ideological framework, but this what ends up exposing the internal contradictions and inconsistencies in the ideology itself. Problems and disruption are not the results of cynicism, but rather the opposite is the case.

This leaves some relative uncertainty about "liberation" as any sort of possibility within any ideological framework. Regardless, the characterization of ideology in these films may be of greater importance than their implications. Perhaps the more important question is whether the films are reflecting society or society is reflecting film. The blur between the two causes us to tentatively return to Baudrillard, but he does not propose any solutions either. The ultimate solution to the dilemma must remain obscured for the time being.

Shifting gears

So this post will be more of a status update than a movie analysis. I think at this point, the analysis portion is mostly complete and I should instead focus on the final product.

The final project will consist of two parts: an essay and the presentation. In terms of my schedule, the next month should be focused first and foremost on drafting, editing and finalizing my essay, and then March through April should be spent on the presentation. More work will probably go into the essay, but I'm giving myself plenty of time for both in order to remain flexible.

The essay will not just be a collection of my film analyses, but instead be more of a philosophical analysis of ideology in general, with references made to specific source materials and films. More detail will be revealed in a later blog post.

Anyway, this isn't an exceptionally substantial post, but necessary to establish my current status.

No Country for Old Men

Film poster

 No Country for Old Men is a 2007 adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. The plot centers around man who discovers a crime scene out in the desert and takes the $2 million that the people were fighting over, only to be pursued by a ruthless hitman. The film is a bleak and morbid modernization of classic western movies that comments on themes of death, fate and free will.

The setting of the film is almost a character in itself, as the desolate West Texas landscape seems to stretch out for eternity and creates the overwhelming sense of emptiness that pervades the entire film. The feeling of being lost, stranded in the desert and without hope is evoked by the setting alone and is continuously reinforced as the plot progresses. The characters travel and struggle, yet despite traveling large distances, remain largely where they began, as they as lost in both a physical desert and the desert of ideology. There is no beginning, no end, only the process of movement from one point to another. This is both an attempted commentary on the nature of life itself as well as how ideology creates a totalizing, singular plane of reality for its subjects.

In addition to the setting, the character of Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) serves an ideological role in the film. Initially, he is portrayed as a ruthless, efficient and psychopathic hitman, but over time his talents become less human and more supernatural. He becomes almost invulnerable: bullets only harm, yet never kill him and he remains alive even by the end of the film. His ability to track and pursue his targets is uncanny, making him seem omnipotent and all-knowing. In this sense, he is death incarnate, sent to kill sinner and innocent alike, governed more by chance and luck than a sense of justice. 

His role is thus that of an ideological regulator, a physical manifestation of the defense mechanisms put in place to maintain the ideological stratum. When a break in hegemony occurs, his response is similar to that of the white blood cell: he must seek out and destroy abnormal, counter-ideological actors and thoughts. There are casualties and collateral damage, but the robotic, methodical Chigurh has no time for sympathy. Ideology, even when given its most generous personification, cannot be seen as anything but an antihumanist structure that operates on its own internal logic, regardless of human transgression. 

The Holy Mountain

Film poster

The Holy Mountain is a 1973 movie by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Despite lackluster box office returns upon release, the film is now regarded as a long-lost cult classic that was revolutionary in its blend of surrealist imagery, creative cinematography, esoteric mysticism, unorthodox philosophy and social commentary. Plot wise, the film is structured into three informal acts: the first follows "the Thief" as he wanders aimlessly through a surreal and confusing society, the second follows an alchemist as he seeks to assemble a group of the most powerful people, and the third act sees the alchemist's cult seek out the titular holy mountain in a quest for immortality and enlightenment. 

Plot structure aside, the film comments on a very wide area of themes in society and religion, so this will narrow in on some more specific elements that are more relevant to ideological and sociological analysis. For example, one interesting part of the film is its commentary on contemporary capitalism and its method of production and reproduction of objects. 

One example of this is a scene in which the character of the Thief is tricked into drinking tequila until he blacks out so a shopkeeper can use his body as a mold for life-sized statues of Christ. This sounds like an extremely bizarre scene in a movie (it is), but it serves to underscore the universality of commodification under contemporary, industrial capitalism. Literally nothing is sacred, instead everything is reduced to an endlessly replicated and duplicated product. These images of Christ become, as Baudrillard put it, mere simulacra: images disjointed and removed from their original sources. Adrift without his own identity, the Thief wanders throughout a society of images and spectacles, but in doing so, is taken and repurposed for the further reproduction of this spectacle. 

This theme of replication and repetition is continued as the Alchemist tries to gather a group of the world's "greatest thieves." Many of these men and women exist to subvert the "authentic" experiences of reality and human social life in order to profit and control the masses. The ideological function of these scenes is twofold. On one hand, it sets up society as a layering and hierarchy of ideologies where, on one hand, the upper echelon of society constructs the ideological groupings for the lower classes, while simultaneously they are operating under their own ideological praxis. As the quest for enlightenment continues, the group breaks through certain ideological layers while only coming to realize that ideologies continue to structure their existence. Although they are led by the Alchemist and look to him for guidance, the Thief eventually realizes to accept some basic ideological aspects. Without ideology, there are only two options: the constant, futile search for an absolute truth or a regressing into nihilistic hedonism, embodied in the pantheon bar, a place of fakes and frauds that failed to climb the holy mountain. 

On the other hand, the group also posits ideology as a fundamentally human process, especially as being something that is wholly mediated as a social relation. Purging ideological "demons" through physical discipline and meditation, the group is therefore fundamentally rebelling against the society that they created. As the most powerful people in society, they are reaping what they have sown. They have created an immaterial world by their own over-materialism and have alienated themselves from the entire productive process by creating imitations instead of authentic productions. 

Interestingly, the solution taken is not the typically ideological one; instead of switching to a better product to produce, they reject the framing entirely, choosing to instead lead a hermetic existence in a quest for immortality. 

Various movies (catching up after a hiatus)

This blog post will be different from some of the pervious. Instead of focusing on a single film, I will focus on a single facet of ideology from various perspectives and examine how it can be seen in the thematic elements of various movies.

For example, a commonly reoccurring trope in cinema is the idea of the sub-reality, or the world beneath the surface of our perception. Either fantastical or mundane, the alternate world is important because its discovery or acceptance recognizes an alternative facet of reality that structures and maintains our perception of normalcy. Interacting with this world, therefore bridges the gap between the subject and ideology.

One interesting example of this is Coppala's The Godfather (1972). The mob's patriarch, Vito, tries to create some outward illusion of normalcy to his son Michael instead of having him involved in criminal activity. For Vito to be happy, he needs his son to be ignorant of what's going on in order to preserve his innocence and protect him from rival families or the police. However, Michael is not stupid and he is very much aware of what's going on, yet he puts on the outward appearance of ignorance in order to appease his family. As the viewer continues to watch the characters develop, it becomes clear that the illusion of Michael's ignorance is a shared social illusion in which everyone knows that Michael knows about the mob, yet also outwardly "knows" that he knows nothing. Michael himself projects this dual identity, as he proves a competent leader when he needs to take control of the operations, yet prior he was seen by everyone (including himself) as the "kid" without any real exposure to the criminal world.

The example set by the Corleones in The Godfather shows how ideology itself is constructed, often willingly and knowingly, by social groups in order to fulfill latent desires and create an outward appearance of harmony or certainty. Of course, this ideological structure is prone to collapse with the intrusion of outside forces that make everyone question the solidity of their own identity, which itself is another commonly repeated theme in film.

An example of this can be found in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a film by John Carpenter that has some thematic parallels with his later film They Live (1988). The outsider and loner, much like in They Live, is partially removed from the standard ideological structures of the world in which he enters, so his very presence ends up being disruptive and collapsing the substructures that exist underneath the surface of ordinary society. In both films, there is a deeper truth to be discovered that forces the protagonist to question his own ideological lens through which he views the world. In the case of Big Trouble in Little China, the truth is revealed that ancient Chinese legends are real and that monsters and magic are all around us, yet hidden by our own ideological preconceptions. While in many ways less radical than They Live, Big Trouble in Little China manages to address similar notes about how ideology works and functions in society.


One thing to keep in mind is that ideology is not necessarily a force or some sort of shaping entity, but is something that interacts dialectically with that which it influences. The subject is not some wholly disempowered, brainwashed zombie that is incapable of seeing outside ideology. In Birdman (2014), we see the power of the subconscious to create broad webs of ideology, but also the power of the ego to overcome and see through these webs. Although there are many more details of the movie that will be overlooked in this analysis, it is clear that the moments in which the protagonist struggles with his past "alter-ego" of Birdman, he is forced to confront his own fears and insecurities, as well as struggle with his own libidinal desires for power and control over himself, even though he has none.

The struggle for control over oneself (against what? One's subconscious? Is the subconscious an external force or a culmination of repressed desires?) brings up an interesting dilemma about the nature of ideology. Is the goal to create an authentic, positive and life-affirming ideology to structure our reality? Or is it necessary to reject ideology for an anarchic, chaotic web of signs without any preconception of unity between them? We see this struggle in Birdman as the protagonist struggles both with problems of the film's internal logical structures and the influences from outside (the "real" world), which often informs his perspective more than things even within the contained ideological ecology of his own world. This dialectical structure points to ideology as being a mediator, much like a Platonic demiurge, and although this is in interesting perspective, I am unsure about its universality as a concept. Regardless, the dialog is interesting in of itself and is something that more movies should explore.

The Babadook

Film poster

The Babadook (2014) - Jennifer Kent

Both the most modern and most authentically "horror" film examined so far, Kent's The Babadook is an excellent horror film based around a woman's struggles with motherhood, love and death. Atmospheric, highly stylized and psychologically penetrating, the film is deeply unnerving and manages to be scary with minimal gore, no jump scares, and a monster brought to life using intentionally low-budget methods. Much like Eraserhead, The Babadook manages to create a world with a universal sense of strangeness that pervades the entire film universe and further emphasizes the titular monster's inescapability and power over the characters. 

The monstrous ideology

Ideology gives structure to our deepest fears, our emotional insecurities, our latent desires. It sculpts the nebulous and formless into concrete entities. Ideology personifies and projects. It not only structures our reality, but structures the way see reality itself. 

Ideology therefore functions much like a metaphorical "monster under the bed." The parent knows that there is nothing actually under the bed, yet goes along with the child and "clears the area" so the child knows they are safe. This is the primary functioning of ideology today. We know that there is no monster, but it is more distressing to have to admit there isn't anything is under the bed, because then the monster really is just inside your head. Instead of being a comfort, this is angst inducing and absolutely terrifying. 

This is a thematic element frequently experimented with by the film. The physicality of the monster is de-emphasized and minimal compared to the mental havoc wreaked by the being's presence. The Babdook's power as antagonist lies primarily in its ability to manipulate its victims into destroying themselves instead of physically harming them. This is not a wholly unique concept for a horror movie, yet The Babdook makes the story of the family and the monster be extremely personal and specifically relate to the life experiences of the protagonist. 

The monster: real or symbolic?

The proper hermeneutic approach to examining this film rests primarily on what the monster itself is supposed to be. There are two primary perspectives: the monster is something just as real as the boy and his mother, while the other perspective is that the monster is a construction, a manifestation of the mother's own feelings of loss toward her dead husband. I think the second perspective has much more resonance and impact, as the former reduces evil to being necessarily physical, while the second creates a more coherent narrative in relation to the film as a whole. 

The monster can be viewed from a psychoanalytic perspective as the mother's latent id, especially in regards to her feelings toward her son. The feelings of anger about the death of her husband and the built up resentment that resulted from raising her son as a single mother causes the mother to be trapped, static and unable to cope with the issues related to her son's delinquency. She "let's in" the Babadook, which then contorts and twists her, amplifying her anger and making her into the monster she fears. Instead of the Babadook being the greatest threat to her safety, she becomes psychotic and impulsive, wholly driven by suppressed anger boiling over and reaching the surface. This is why it is clear that the Babadook is not just some monster, but something intricately tied to the woman's own life and psyche. Maybe it can be read as a dark, shadowy id gone unchecked or maybe a latent masculinism reacting against motherhood, but regardless the connection is clearly mental in nature. 

Killing the monster and the aftermath of an event

This film culminates with a confrontation between the mother and the Babadook, showing that she is finally being introspective instead of looking at problems as intrinsically intruding into her life. She realizes that reality is a reality on conflict and contradictions, and we carry the weight of contradiction as we struggle through life. The situation with her and her child was not made unstable, but was itself unstable and this instability was only revealed by the event of the Babadook. 

The Babadook is very much an event that creates its own chain of causality. Although it initially seems as if it is a directionless entity geared toward antagonism, it soon becomes clear that its identity is a reaction to the past, but this can only be realized after it came into existence as an event in itself. The Babadook thus cannot be truly slain, but controlled. It clearly has the potential for reemergence, yet for the time being, things are "under control," but never truly perfectly normal. Things really cannot be as they were before and this becomes even more clear, but this realization is one that provides comfort and an even greater sense of normalcy. This "normality emergent from strife" is actually even more normal than life prior to the event, making the Babadook's moral implications even more ambiguous. The labels of pure evilness, destructive neutrality or even obfuscated good fall apart when dealing with something that does not clearly exist in of itself, but exists primarily in relation to others. Therefore, possibly the best approach about whether or not the woman should have "let the Babadook in" may be to deny that it could've happened in any other way: the Babadook is almost a force of nature and to oppose it would be like opposing gravity.

The liberation of the psyche thus is not accidental nor is it subject to willpower, but is a honing, refining process. Like the forging of a sword, the Babadook torments and punishes until the authentic self is shaped out of the rough-hewn steel of trauma. 

Eraserhead

Film poster

Eraserhead (1977) - David Lynch

Returning to surrealist cinema, Eraserhead was the debut film of acclaimed director David Lynch. Depicting a world of desolate industrial landscapes, strange people and a constant motif of foreboding doom, the film manages to tell a much more personal and emotional story than surrealist films like Un Chien Andalou or Begotten. The basic plot is as follows: a man named Henry finds out that his girlfriend, Mary, has become pregnant and given birth to a monstrous, alien-like child that the two of them must care for. The film deals with the personal struggles of parenthood and isolation in a cold, uncaring world.

Dreams and reality

The world created in Eraserhead is unabashedly nightmarish, but very subtly created. Visually bleak and desolate because it was filmed in black-and-white, the film is set in decaying buildings and sparsely decorated apartment buildings that represent the alienation experienced by both the characters in the movie and the audience itself. Commenting on various social issues, the film manages to depict the terse, cold and uncaring experience of poverty while simultaneously utilizing bizarre and alien imagery. 

Like a dream, the protagonist seems to have little awareness or interest in the world around him, drifting through everything with little agency or control over what happens. Essentially, the film aims to tell a personal story of someone struggling with the affects of a premature birth, but also the angst and uncertainty the human condition. There is no positivity, but an overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere of powerlessness, as the events of the film are implied to have been controlled by an outside, godlike force. An existentialist reading of the film may extoll Henry's use of his radical freedom when he kills his monstrous child, yet I believe this misreads the inherent nature of Henry's condition. If this is the case, then his freedom can only be exerted in reaction to events instead of creating events. Henry is still thus condemned to a state of powerlessness, as he cannot create the causalities of his own events, instead struggling against a much more immaterial and simultaneously insurmountable force.

So where's the ideology?

Henry and Mary's "child"

The focus of the project is to examine ideology in cinema, so to create a thematic bridge between Eraserhead and the other films, I think an analysis of the film's cinematography and its relation to the plot may uncover an authentically ideological component. The more personal slant to the plot makes the ideological role more subdued and an examination of the surrealist elements would result in the repetition of the post about Un Chien Andalou, so the uniquely ideological element to Eraserhead can be found in the nature of action and consequence within the film. 

Ideology may not necessarily render someone powerlessness (see Battleship Potemkin or possibly Dogtooth as examples of the power of ideology to inspire action), but the overriding mentality of the film points toward the need for something to be in control. Whether or not this controlling entity is something benevolent or malevolent, the film never positions Henry's condition as something arbitrary or meaningless, but instead contrives a deeply personal connection between Henry and the universe. Desperate for connections in an otherwise meaningless world, the ideological structures manifest as an invisible hand looming over the entirety of the plot. Thus, ideology is the shaper and maker of all aspects of the world, but primarily serves a punitive, disciplinary function. As pointed out by Zygmunt Bauman, "the source of contemporary fear is that no one is in control." 

Thus a dilemma presents itself: is the ideology of the film constructed by its characters, an imposition of the director or a broader reflection and commentary of social conditions? Regardless of the reason, the end result is the same, as the very relationships between the characters and images within the film resonate with this ideological need for some greater control or purpose. There essentially is no escape from this need, as the framing itself of the events makes it so control can only be reacted against, not proactively eliminated by any conscious (or even unconscious) force.