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.
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