Political Theory and Film

From Adorno to Žižek

Ian Fraser

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781783481637
• eBook ISBN: 9781783481651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The actions, images and stories within films can impact upon the political consciousness of viewers, enabling their audience to imagine ways of resisting the status quo, politically, economically and culturally. But what does political theory have to say about film? Should we explore film theory through a political lens? Why might individuals respond to the political within films?

This book connects the work of eight radical political theorists to eight world-renowned films and shows how the political impact of film on the aesthetic self can lead to the possibility of political resistance. Each chapter considers the work of a core thinker on film, shows its relevance in terms of a specific case study film, then highlights how these films probe political issues in a way that invites viewers to think critically about them, both within the internal logic of the film and in how that might impact externally on the way they live their lives. Examining this dialogue enables Ian Fraser to demonstrate the possibility of a political impact of films on our own consciousness and identity, and that of others.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Political Theory and Film

Political theory has conventionally focused on the constitution and operation of the state, but it also seeks to identify the power relationships within civil society. This extension of the notion of political theory can provide valuable insights into the social significance of film.¹ In turn, films can often offer dramatic demonstrations of ideas developed in modern political theory. To illustrate this, I examine the political theory of film in the work of eight radical political theorists and apply them to enhance our political understanding of eight films that extend from the 1940s to the present and across multiple continents.² The theorists and films considered are: Theodor Adorno (Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux), Walter Benjamin (Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom), Ernst Bloch (Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris), Gilles Deleuze (Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighbouring Sounds), Alain Badiou (Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin), Jacques Rancière (Gavin Hood’s Rendition), Julia Kristeva (David Fincher’s Fight Club) and Slavoj Žižek (J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call ).

The choice of theorists is reflective of the development and vibrancy of a multiplicity of theoretical approaches to the political meaning and theoretical function of film. They all deem the social relations prevailing in capitalist societies to be oppressive, in many ways, and they are searching, in their radically different approaches, for expressions of resistance or opposition with the possibility for emancipation. The rationale for choosing these particular films is that, like the radical political theories used to examine them, they are offering a critical stance to the status quo in the various countries in which they are located. This raising of political issues grounded in theory can invite us to think critically, both within the internal logic of the film and how that might impact externally on the way we live our lives.

The relationship between political theory and film has attracted academic attention but not extensively. Most notably, Michael Shapiro’s Cinematic Political Thought started the trend in 1999 and this has been followed by the more recent work of Davide Panagia, Richard Rushton and John S. Nelson.³ All of these approaches in their various ways have interesting and illuminating perspectives on the relationship between political theory and film and draw on some of the theorists considered later in this book to inform their own perspectives. This first chapter provides an overview of their theories as useful representatives of the state of political theory and film today.

My contribution to political theory and film then follows in the subsequent chapters by the application of the eight theorists’ ideas and concepts to the selected films. Each of the chapters is independent in that they focus exclusively on the theorist concerned in the first part and assess the efficacy of their approach to the chosen film in the second part. This means that each of them can be considered critically on their own in relation to the chosen film, while also being used as frameworks to analyse other films. This should then further enhance the development of the approaches to political theory and film. I will now outline the main ideas of Shapiro, Panagia, Rushton and Nelson to indicate the many different and vibrant ways political theory relates to film in the current literature.

SHAPIRO’S POST-KANTIANISM

Shapiro’s sophisticated cinematic political theory fuses philosophy and politics in his examination of films to encourage ‘ethico-political thinking’.⁴ He proffers a ‘politics of critique’ based on the critical legacy developed from Immanuel Kant, not exegetically but in engagements with his ‘philosophical imaginary and his constructions of global space’ to ‘think the political’.⁵ Shapiro utilises Kant’s understanding of political subjects as cognising human citizens to make them ‘cosmopolitical’, a term he borrows from Étienne Balibar, and so create global citizens who transcend national borders and develop a ‘cosmopolitan hospitality’.⁶ Kant’s political ideas inspire perspectives, including Shapiro’s own, that reject the narrowness of national identity politics and ‘security-mindedness at the level of global political exchange’. Additionally, Shapiro endorses Kant’s affirmation of contingency that sees the political subject as ‘transcendental’ and attempts to achieve a ‘unity of experience’ between reason and imagination. This subject is still part of the universal ‘world of things-in-themselves’ but not in a fixed manner.

This aspect of Kant’s thinking has influenced Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard, all of whom Shapiro classifies as post-Kantians.⁷ The prefix ‘post’ indicates their resistance to the tendency to contain the radically open and contingent aspects of Kant’s critique ‘within homogenising conceptions of individual and collective subjects’, while accepting his emphasis on avoiding ‘empiricist and hermeneutic models of epistemic closure’. Shapiro particularly praises Deleuze for his cinematic thinking and Foucault’s genealogical approach to history as part of his own interventions into contemporary political issues and in his analysis of films.⁸ He explains that he analyses films to illustrate his arguments and that he structures his writings cinematically, now invoking Benjamin who also recognised this as a way to depict history pictorially, as in his arcades project. Shapiro interprets Benjamin’s use of cinematic language as being ‘epigrammatic’ rather than ‘programmatic’ with his use of literary montage as a form of exhibition and juxtaposition of various images to display the ‘time of the now’ from a critical, historical perspective.

Shapiro also commends Deleuze for his analysis of the movement and time-images of modern cinema, as he offers a more solid foundation for using cinematic style in his writing and makes the ‘present surprising and contingent’. Foucault is endorsed because he also emphasises historical political contingency against historical political chronology. Shapiro uses these approaches to offer critical interpretations and interventions based on genealogy and deconstruction that grasp the radical temporal nature of cinema’s compositions. He contends that this will then resist the viewpoints of characters or groups that the films depict. He can then engage in ‘writing-as-critical-thought’ via cuts, juxtapositions and time-images against those who adhere to the delimitation of individual and collective identities.⁹ Yet he is not concerned simply with disrupting these identities.¹⁰ He wants to use his post-Kantian critique as ‘ethical as well as political’ to promote openness towards flexible notions of what constitutes an identity and a community. He does so through examining areas of ‘political exclusion’ and ‘security politics’ that deny movement both substantively and symbolically, namely, immigration and ‘migrating sexualities’. Shapiro suggests that this can then extend recognition to the possibility of identity and interpersonal relations to those who go unrecognised, rather than to established identities that are already attached to certain people. He states that these are ‘aspects of the unthought or the virtual within the actual’ that he uses to analyse, in Benjamin’s terms, the ‘politics of now-time’.

Returning to Kant, Shapiro argues that, although he is a philosopher of common sense, he also creates the conditions for a critical, uncommon sense encounter with the present.¹¹ The enlargement of the enlightened subject that Kant hopes for arises from people hearing about important events and so sharing a global experience, achieving a ‘global harmony’ and a ‘moral sensus communis’ containing a ‘cosmopolitan tolerance’.¹² Kant’s notion of the sensus communis is cognitive and formal rather than social and cultural and cannot account for the complexity of our experiences and the different ways they are perceived.¹³ Even so, what Shapiro sees of value in Kant’s philosophy is his ‘critical attitude towards modernity’ and the way an event ‘can be located in a more critical horizon of contemporary values’.¹⁴ For Shapiro, it is Foucault and Deleuze who offer ‘thought vehicles’ to enhance this critique. Foucault does this through his genealogical approach to contemporary events, whereas Deleuze uses cinema to demonstrate the time and events that enlighten the present. Shapiro interprets Foucault and Deleuze as rejecting Kant’s universal, legislative...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Political Theory and Film
• 2 Theodor Adorno: Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux
• 3 Walter Benjamin: Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom
• 4 Ernst Bloch: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris
• 5 Gilles Deleuze: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighbouring Sounds
• 6 Alain Badiou: Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin
• 7 Jacques Rancière: Gavin Hood’s Rendition
• 8 Julia Kristeva: David Fincher’s Fight Club
• 9 Slavoj Žižek: J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Filmography
• Index
• About the Author