Last Tango in Paris: The Theatre of the Hysteric?

Last Tango in Paris (1973)

Direcor: Bernardo Bertolucci

Metro Golden Myre (MGM)

Marlon Barndo, Maria Schneider

After humanity entered the condition called post-modernity where there is no certainty in human relationships, what man experiences today is a pure psychological rupture. The present turmoil in the life-world mostly insists individuals to embrace death as a mode of escapism. The emotional collapse in the personal lives, detachments, disappointments and the resulted depression and anxiety inevitably force us to go to certain extremes since the solution is not within our reach.  On the other hand, if someone desires a radical death today, it can be chosen in many different ways ranging from a traditional method of hanging or poisoning to an ‘aesthetic’ postmodern method of chemical injection of an anesthetic drug or even ecstasy oriented overdose. In this inhuman commoditization where anything is globally available in the open market to be purchased, a man can even hire (purchase) a woman to drive him to a systematic, prolonged and programmed death while consuming her body in the meantime completing forgetting the arriving death. He can follow the ‘pleasure principle’ in discovering the ‘impossible’ in her body or move from her to another to taste different physical contours. If you need ‘hardcore pleasure’, you can go to an experienced and lethal prostitute, or if you need ‘tenderness’, you can fly to Thailand (or any other ‘unpolluted’ oriental country) and start a new life such as a living together.  For example, we can see some middle aged men in the advanced industrial nations come to countries such as Thailand or even Sri Lanka to spend the rest of their life in the above said manner.  Though the primary purpose of death is never communicated between the subjects , both partners know the unconscious desire that founds the tie. The best filmic example for this is Leaving Las Vegas where Ben knows that he is dying and there is no way back, while Anne gradually and unconsciously eases him from the burden of life on the pretence of saving him from alcoholism. She always asks Ben to stop drinking but does not do anything significant to decisively stop it. This can be called in Braudillardian way, ‘seduction’ where ‘the truth’ about why you relate to the other is permanently hidden. She subtly helps him to go through the remaining small span of life until his meeting of radical suicide. 

The controversial 1973 drama Last Tango in Paris takes a similar turn with regard to the subject’s encounter of the unapologetic radical death. Their union (the un-meeting) takes the form of an absurdist, postmodern tragedy since the relationship is devoid of romantic courtly love (or communication based ‘understanding’ of each other). Paul meets Jeanne in an apartment after his wife’s departure (a suicide) and proceeds to an anonymous sexual encounter. In the intense sexual act in the apartment, they do not share any personal information about each other’s past, or at least their names. One day, Paul leaves the apartment for an unknown reason but later he reveals to Jeanne that he wants to renew the affair. It seems that Paul has met the Real, his fundamental fantasy about woman (a strong woman with wild sexual desires) through Jeanne and loses his symbolic identification (that is why they start the ‘no name game’) with the external reality (hence, similar to Leaving Las Vegas, death is what he is also desiring). Their rejection of identification with history leads us to believe that they are hysterics (According to Zizek, hysteria is the subject’s way of resisting the prevailing, historically specified form of interpellation or symbolic identification- For They Know not What They Do, p. 100-1). However, the best movie to illustrate the mobility from anonymous love to symbolic identification is The Sleeping Dictionary or The Silent American. 

Then he meets her again on the street and reveals his past, and they eventually go to the Tango bar. Once the story (or the past) is revealed, Jeanne comes to know about the nature of the relationship and she is unable to continue the hysteric theatre with her anonymous ‘lover’ anymore. She shows symptoms of permanently unable to enter a symbolic relationship with somebody because such symbolic identification would threaten her ‘speculative identity’. Hence, she stresses that she does not want to see him anymore. But, by that time, Paul (by revealing his identity and past) has entered into a symbolic relationship (let’s say love) with her. May be, he too wanted to be anonymous during his traumatic stage of his wife’s death but through her body he has recovered from the shock and now needs to re-establish himself in the symbolic order. But this is not what Jeanne wants now. She wants to run away from him vehemently rejecting identification. So, a fundamental Zizekian mis-recognition can be evidenced here as in case between the Tramp and the flower girl in City Lights (she was expecting a handsome gentleman during her blindness but in reality it is the Tramp).  Paul cannot lose Jeanne now and tells that he loves her. He wants to know her name (symbolic universe). 

She reveals ‘her name’ (identity) and then shoots him conveying the viewers that she is deadly and poisonous in her real existence. The final scene is almost theatrical as she rehearses a kind of ‘dramatization’ for Police interrogations about this murder.  The message she delivers is her true identity is always mortal and brings only ‘death’ (femme fatale) to whoever ‘loves’ her. She is unable to enter an Oedipus universe and denies all ‘human’ attachments. She distances herself from ‘words’ and gives only ‘her body to his deadlock, to the kernel that he is unable to put in words, by means of a hysterical symptom’ (Zizek). She does not want human language since her weapon is ‘body language’ where impeded desire converts into a ‘desire not to know’ (p.144) rather than ‘don’t know what we really want’. She does not make your desire ‘unsatisfied’ but she, like a parasite, lives by your desire for ignorance. Through negation she invents not an empty nothingness but a positive existence. 

Cast Away: ‘Duty to Other’ as a Universal Obligation

What makes the movie Cast Away (2000) by Robert Zemeckis remained in our hearts for a long time is the fact that Chuck, the protagonist, after so many adventures and personal losses, returns the FedEx parcel to the right destination with a note ‘this parcel saved my life’. By this time, this parcel might not have been expected to be delivered to the doorstep by the owner after he or she would have heard about the plane crash, or even FedEx itself might not have expected that, after such crash, the above said parcel could be delivered to the due owner. Nobody can expect more than life survival in such an accident. Chuck does his level best to save his life as well as the packages supposed to be delivered by air by FedEx. What Chuck proves here is that existence is not just survival but ‘duty to the other’ can stand above our day to day survival game in glorifying our life. This is shown not only in his professional devotion to the FedEx agency but even in his sacrifice to love.  He shows so much endurance to ‘wait’ even without an obvious hope in what he is waiting for, and the entire movie displays how difficult it is to overcome terrible loneliness when man is caught in infinite nature.

His girl friend was driven by a simple survival instinct when she chooses to marry another with a loose conclusion that Chuck is dead after the crash, since a.) everybody believed so b.) no one can survive in such a crash. She did not choose to continue her life with the sweet memories of their love for the rest of her life. Such action could have made her love ( hence life) a universal one through her devotion to ‘courtly love’ (a kind of love that waits forever even though there is no much hope that the other will love you in return).  At a very practical level, such waiting could have made the situation less complicated once Chuck actually returned home (Zizek would argue that this is a kind of 'mis-recognition' since the real bad time would begin with their reunion and marriage  One can see that she runs a very ordinary and dull marriage life. Hence love remains sublimated without its bourgeoisie marriage). She fainted by the news that he has returned because the news was a shocking Real (the unexpected) for her.  This means that in her unconscious this ‘return’ was actually expected. She knew that Chuck really loved her and that love itself could have saved his life (not the parcel actually, parcel here is just an instrument of communication). When Chuck was lonely in the island what gave him hope to return and to survive in this God forsaken island was her image in the opposite side of the watch. He keeps on looking at it and that gives him hope to go back to 'civilization' rather than giving up (but by that time civilization has returned to primitiveness by simply choosing survival) . He had enough difficulties and hardships to demotivate his motive and to ‘give up’ (and die finally) but his love for her as well as motive to return the only remaining parcel made his hope constantly ignited. The only sad aspect of humanity is that there is no destination to return to after so much of sacrifice; there was no love and waiting from the other side and even the owner is not at home to receive the parcel. They have given up hope when they must actually be the ones who must be expecting such return.

After returning the parcel, Chuck seems lost as to what he should do next or where he may go afterwards (so far what kept his journey meaningful was the parcel, and once it is delivered he needs another hope to live). The girl who finally appears in the film mistakenly asks whether Chuck is lost and she volunteers to guide him showing  the directions.  It seems to me that Chuck needs no further guidance since so far he had been guided by some universal values of professionalism and love and for the rest of his life too they will be the guiding forces (not just another woman who may not wait until he returns. This again proves that she is not capable of such universal devotion for a final end). In the junction that Chuck is waiting in the last shot of the film, there are four directions to different destinations. Whither Chuck heads to will not therefore be a problem because wherever he chooses to go to, he will be guided by those values and he would be glorified by his deeds themselves even in a future unseen. For a person who is actually devoted to his duty, the time and space are immaterial. Apart from the apparent FedEx propagandist motive behind the movie, the lesson one can learn out of this is the obligation to Kantian value of ‘duty to other’ would make man glorified and can make him more than himself.  One should not give up hope and fight even if there is no immediate final end. This may  be the political lesson of this movie. 

Stuck at a crossroad

Rajiva Wijesinha and English Education in Sri Lanka

Rajiva Wijesinha: As a radical who strived to ‘revolutionize’ English education in Sri Lanka

Colombo Telegraph

English, in the present global context, has descended from its colonial prestigious position to a highly utilitarian level where it (English), according to Mr. Tony Reilly, the Country Director of the British Council, ‘has become the passport to wealth and opportunity’. Hence the role of English today should be understood not by means of its colonial terms but in terms of its modern   usefulness. The use of English expands from the global world of work to academic arenas, where new knowledge is produced. Today, rather than being understood as a demarcation of belongingness, English functions as a tool of social mobilization. In a context where English was a class signifier and was termed ‘kaduwa’, very few people in Sri Lanka understood this potential global metamorphosis at least two decades back. When Sri Lanka decided to broaden its horizons to the globalized economy, there was a burning need to change the conventional approach towards language learning policy. To materialize the country’s need to expand English language education, certain radical approaches were a terrible requirement at the time. Rajiva Wijesinha belonged to one of those who not only could foresee the need of English for the country’s younger generation to move forward in the global sphere of work and education but could also produce an implementable mechanism that would pragmatically enhance the English language literacy of especially those who emerge from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Prof. Wijesinha identified two significant steps to radicalize English education in the country. The first was to broaden English language learning from Colombo based elites (and some other middle class contexts) to non-English speaking environments, where thousands of students do not get an opportunity to learn the language. To facilitate this, the second step was to produce a sufficient number of teachers who could work in those areas. When Prof. Wijesinha undertook to co-ordinate English in the Affiliated University Colleges in the early 1990s, he found good ground to experiment his initial conceptualization. It must also be mentioned here that the Affiliated Universities were also an experimental remedy to give skill oriented education to A/L passed students who were not absorbed into higher education. On the other hand, even those who entered universities could not find satisfactory jobs for the education that they received there. There was always a mismatch in the kind of education offered in the post-colonial universities and the requirements in the employments. Prof. Wijesinha explored this valuable opportunity as the Co-ordinator in English in Affiliated Universities to prepare students for future demands of employability. After two revolutions in the post independent context, the country actually felt the need to address the controversial issue of the future place of its youth. Dr. Wijesinha as a radical intellectual himself at that time, used to write on the subjects of politics and youth and the nature of politics that excluded youth from mainstream politics. It is a historical demand that was bestowed upon Prof. Wijesinha who unhesitantly took up the challenge to modernize English language teaching in the existing university curriculum.

His approach was simple. His want was to change the prevalent literature-based curriculum in the English departments. Literature was considered (and still is) prestigious and contemporary English Departments did not take part in teaching general English, and it was mostly assigned to English Language Teaching Units (ELTUs). Under this circumstance, however, ELTUs were doing the most important job in catering to the basic English language requirement of the undergraduates. Numerically, when English Departments absorb even less than ten students annually, ELTUs taught an entire batch of thousands of students at a time.  Prof. Wijesinha did not separate these essential components in language learning but craftily amalgamated the two without harming their inherent essence. Very simply, he used literature as a tool of basic language learning, which challenged the ‘hegemonic approach’ to literature. Literature then was not taught for the sake of literature itself and many people who had a ‘puritan’ approach to literature in the conventional English Departments did not tolerate this.

In the universities, literature (as well as philosophy) has always been an isolated entity of non-reference. Everybody seemed to have an unwritten agreement about its unquestioning existence. No one wanted to find out what was actually going on these departments and their contribution to the country’s development.  Literature gained its prestigious position after 1920 when it was considered as a discipline of higher, literate and superior beings.  It was believed to have characteristics that could enlighten individuals and bring them to a higher level of enlightenment and being.  As a discipline which had the potential to increase individuals’ critical ability and humanistic thoughts, it evolved into a higher academic position from an evening reader over a cup of coffee.  This thinking about literature was the exact ideological foundation for many English Departments in post-independent Sri Lanka. Under this environment, the amalgamation that Prof. Wijesinha brought forth challenged the very ideological foundation of English teaching in the Universities and the symbol of this hybridist child is the present English Language Teaching Department (ELTD) in the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka.

His Affiliated University experiment was able to produce a considerable number of Diploma holders in English and later graduates who mostly received teaching opportunities in the school system island-wide. Their service is of tremendous significance to poor school children who struggle with lack of qualified teachers in the government schools in distant areas. Some of them are senior teachers with more than ten years of service.  Similarly, some those contemporary students were absorbed into university teaching, while there are also few leading journalists working in popular newspapers. These products exemplify the legacy that Prof. Wijesinha carries along with his university academic career.

Though originally from Colombo, Prof. Wijesinha never hesitated to come and join Sabaragamuwa University which was located 160 kilometers away from the capital city.  As the Co-ordinator for English during the Affiliated days, he went to all the Affiliated University Colleges around the country and sometimes undertook teaching other than co-ordinating and supervising. Rather than simply lecturing, he always insisted on careful reading for the accurate comprehension of a literary text. In the meanwhile, he used to teach grammar lessons which he thought useful within a literary text.  He, for the first time, introduced the ‘spot text method’ of evaluation to the classroom, where students had to write a brief account on something within a limited time.  For this kind of test, note reading or by-hearting never helped and everything depended on how you handle the task effectively and creatively with least amount of mistakes. This method was challenging to those who re-produced their own undergraduate notes to students. Though it was initially difficult for us, this helped immensely to improve our comprehension and self-study. In this regard, for us, he was novel and challenging in testing and evaluation too. One important thing to mention here is that he never took more than one week to mark an assignment however big the number was. While travelling too, as another example of his dedication as a teacher, I have experienced that he used to mark assignment scripts when he used to run the undergraduate course for the officer cadets in the Military Academy- Diyathalawa. This was exactly the same when he was the English Co-ordinator for the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, Oluvil. Since I here mentioned the South Eastern University, one must remember that during the heydays of ethnic tension in the Eastern Sri Lanka, Prof. Wijesinha used to visit both Addalachchena and Oluvil complexes of the South Eastern University located nearly 400 kilometers away from Colombo to assist the teaching and evaluation process there, where I started my university career.

Some of his students (today senior academics in prestigious local universities) pointed me out that, however, some of these experimental initiatives had begun even during his Sri Jayawardanapura University career right before he joined Sabaragamuwa. While he was attached to the Department of Language and Culture at Jayawardanapura and he used to encourage students who did not have English as an A/L qualification to do English at an undergraduate level. Apart from this, English medium education and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) were also his prime objectives at an early stage like 1990s. When he was the advisor to the Ministry of Education somewhere in the mid 2000s, when Dr. Tara de Mel was the Secretary to the Ministry of Education, he especially facilitated English medium education and, as a result, many government schools can now conduct classes in English medium. He was also brave to promote many undergraduate programmes to be conducted in English medium only.

I have never come across an academic who could travel like Prof. Wijesinha for academic purposes. For example, he starts his journey from Colombo with his beloved driver Kithsiri and would come direct to Sabaragamuwa University at Belihuloya, then moving to Diyathalawa and then to Oluvil in the same week catering to approximately both thousand literature and general English students island wide. To facilitate this massive venture, he printed few grammar and reading texts, which simplified the task of teaching English grammar for beginners, while it contributed massively to the development of the ‘Sri Lankan Writing in English’ genre.

Another wonderful life lesson that we learnt from him was simplicity (which many of us have forgotten in the fetish commodity market) as a university academics. Born to a wealthy middle class family in Colombo and having obtained a doctorate from Oxford, he never wanted a luxurious life. I could still remember the old yellow colored Fiat he used nearly ten years to go around the country during his university teaching career. He scarified the most energetic days of his life for students who came from rural backgrounds but never dreamt to catch the stars in the bourgeois world. All the time, he worked according to what he believed right and true to his conscience, and to me, ninety percent out of hundred they were accurate.

He is still governed by the universal signifiers of values inculcated in him during the best days of Oxford education. Though many people do not like him for not following in the cattle mentality of present politics, he still believes in principles and what is right. Universal values demarcate his political acts and many recent events bear witness to that. The word ‘radical’ is often associated with revolutionary politics in a Marxist context, but looking retrospectively at what we experienced from 1990s up to date in relation to English education, we can, without much argument, call Prof. Wijesinha a true rebel and a radical, who brought about significant changes to modern English education after 1978. These steps actually made free education much more meaningful for the under-privileged segments in Sri Lanka in translating their upward social mobility into a reality.   

Is 'The Bad Moon Rising' By CCR An Apocalyptic Prophecy?

Looking retroactively, the popular American swap rock song ‘The Bad Moon Rising’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) can be considered a prophetic song about the present apocalyptic time. In this great decadence rock song, the image of the rising bad moon indicates the bad time that was approaching before the end of the Cold-war within the evolution of rock at that time (we all were made to believe that the Cold-war could destroy everything that the man had made so far). ‘The earth-quakes’ and the ‘lightening’ in the first stanza seem to tell us about the natural disasters that man faces due to his own negligence towards nature. Therefore, the troubles and the bad time are unavoidable symptoms of the present time. Subsequently, the kind of gravity that these natural calamities can have was profoundly shown, if we take a more recent example, by the Fukushima disaster few years ago (forget Bopal and Chernobyl for a minute!) .The bad signs of unsustainable development are shown now in the Third World where leakages in the thermo-nuclear power plants devastate the lives of innocent people who even do not know that they are gradually killed every day (the fear involved in South Indian Nuke Power Plants over Sri Lankans is another development). However, the tension between North and South Korea will add yet another round of phobia to '21st Century Cold-war' scene that can erupt in recent time.

The song notices the voices of rage and ruin of humanity which paradoxically developed against the original post-enlightenment future better world. 'The end is coming soon' is again paradoxical because what we wanted was prosperity as the end point of modernity and its rational and scientific project.  In that sense, it can be considered as a song that vehemently questions the paradoxical negativity of the modern project. The world now is not what we wanted but the total opposite of what we imagined of.  

One can pragmatically question CCR’s passive advice to us, ‘shouldn't we go around tonight?’ Hiding behind the doors will not save us because not only the natural disasters but even poverty or unemployment (as CCR’s Lodi indicates), or even political injustice can force us step out of the door steps of our own imaginary world. It is true that it will take our lives under the bad moon, but there is no other way than fighting for what is right. One unfortunate thing is that there is no proper academic study conducted to evaluate the literary caliber of legendary CCR's songs.  They are amazingly wonderful in their songs such as 'Have you ever seen the rain', 'Lodi', 'Looking at my back door' and 'Proud Mary'. 

The song very successfully portrays the nature of disaster that is arriving and trying to take over our existence. The hurricanes and over-flowing river (CCR’s organic bay area images) as well as the voice of rage and ruin effectively show the deliberate involvements of man to destroy the other through limitless violence. There is no kindness or sympathy in him to love and protect the other. These sublime human qualities and values are completely forgotten in our postmodern civilization. Violence, hate and bloodshed are the only sloganic strategies of the survival game in the obscene civilization today and that is clearly illustrated in the line ‘one eye is taken for an eye’. The way the things develop in the present Capitalist system, it is going to be an inevitable death for all of us. Yes, we are prepared to die but not without a fight!

The Bad Moon Rising

I see the bad moon arising. 

I see trouble on the way. 

I see earthquakes and lightnin'. 

I see bad times today. 

Don't go around tonight, 

Well, it's bound to take your life, 

There's a bad moon on the rise. 

I hear hurricanes ablowing. 

I know the end is coming soon. 

I fear rivers over flowing. 

I hear the voice of rage and ruin. 

Don't go around tonight, 

Well, it's bound to take your life, 

There's a bad moon on the rise. 

All right! 

Hope you got your things together. 

Hope you are quite prepared to die. 

Looks like we're in for nasty weather. 

One eye is taken for an eye. 

Don't go around tonight, 

Well, it's bound to take your life, 

There's a bad moon on the rise. 

Don't go around tonight, 

Well, it's bound to take your life, 

There's a bad moon on the rise.

Songwriters: JOHN C. FOGERTY (C.C.R.)

Listen to the original version of C.C.R.'s 'Bad Moon Rising' through the following link (MP3 format).

Shrek: ‘The unexpected’ as the Real

Shrek (2001) 

Directed: Andrew Adamson/ Vicky Jenson

Mike Myers, Eddies Murphy, Cameron Diaz 

We always encounter the very opposite of what we expect. It is very natural that in the popular cartoon- animated movie Shrek (2001) ‘the unexpected’ becomes the Real (impossible to imagine). Princess Fiona was expecting her handsome ‘Lord’ to come and rescue her from the tallest tower, and Shrek was wanting a peaceful existence in his swamp which he supposed to materialize with the ‘deed’ from Lord Farquaad after rescuing Fiona. The price he had to pay for his freedom is based on a woman who is imprisoned in a dragon guarded tower and pre-programmed to be ‘free’ (once she is ‘free’, Shrek is destined to ‘fall’ or entrapped). But what happens to his pre-supposition? His presupposed peace was deeply disturbed by a donkey who is a real ‘chatterbox’ as introduced by his owner to the soldier at the time when he was sold to the fairy tale creatures’ cart. The donkey was supposed to talk at the exchange market but it did not. But unexpectedly he started talking after lantern fell on his head. The soldier did not expect the donkey to talk assuming that it was a trick on him. Then he realized that he not only flies but actually ‘talks’.

The donkey sings, chats and interrupts Shrek when he is in need of tranquility but only through that disturbance, he starts the catharsis about his disappointment about the world and his being as an ogre. He wanted everyone to be ‘away’ from his swamp but we find eventually all the fairy tale creatures trafficked into his territory uninvited. Though he wanted to be lonely, he happened to go to the public place several times to get his swamp back and later to rescue Fiona (and finally to become a Prince!). He finally undertook the task of rescuing Fiona as compensation of his peace but that act itself stole his peace in life. If you can remember the scene, when he brings a sunflower to offer her (just before he overheard Fiona’s chat with donkey), he says that ‘I am in trouble’. This means that he is no more than a ‘fallen victim’ of desire.  

Lord Farquaad was expecting a beautiful princess to give his kiss so that he can become the King but Fiona metamorphosed into an ugly fatty woman after sunset (the truth about Fiona was about to be revealed by the magic mirror but Farquaad was not ready to listen to the ‘truth’ at that time. The negligence is, in this case, pre-programmed (like the canned laughter in the audience) in us by making us blind in the venture of seeking our fantasy.  

  

Fiona was confronted with a bitter truth that her rescuer is an ogre in a helmet (the identity is hidden to be ‘revealed’ here). But the long journey from the tower to the palace is set in order to give them time to digest the hard truth about each other. Shriek says that she is different to what he thought her to be and she says that one should not judge ‘things’ by appearance.  We now come across a woman who changed from a princess to an ordinary woman who is even ready to live with an ogre. This is something that Shriek never expected. What makes this match possible is the hidden fact that Fiona too becomes ugly after sunset. This means that both beauty and ugliness are mutually existing in us and the meeting point in both beauty and ugliness is possibly pre-programmed in us to be discovered at the ‘right time’.

The entire movie deals with the possible meeting points of the very opposite of our desire to the other. The extremes ends are dissolved and evaporated in the relationships in the movie and each character (except Lord Farquaad whose motive is more than a human relationship) finds some union amidst chaos. Therefore, though we do not live in a fairy tale world, it is logical that the movie is structured as a fairy tale.