Dragon Tattoo violence: is it worth it?

There's a post up at What Tami Said about Straw Dogs and the violence therein. She read some reviews that ascribed "challenge" and "lessons learned" to what she saw as basically pointless violence (man I've thought the same so often when reading reviews). She asks, "What criteria are there that confirm whether a piece of art celebrates a negative bit of culture (violence, sexism or regional bias) or instead challenges or analyzes it?"

I haven't seen Straw Dogs but I did just see the American version of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (I saw the first Swedish film in the series a year or so ago). To answer Tami's question, I think a large grey area exists where the interpretation depends more upon the individual viewer than the intentions or skills of the filmmakers. What does the viewer bring to the table? What if the movie makes a real difference to some but most people just have their prejudices confirmed? I'm thinking of films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days; maybe possibly The Help; Juno. Is it worth it?

But sometimes it's obvious, at least to me. If the action were happening to a white able-bodied cis etc man would the plot be the same? The camera angles? The music? When something terrible happens to a woman and it's filmed from an imaginary man's point of view-- shot from slightly above, including parts of her body that are unnecessary to the shot, objectifying, etc, that's a tip-off for me. Such a point of view can make even distress that is in no way scintillating, at least tongue-cluckingly condescending rather than empathetic.

Or if a character's experiences are portrayed as part of a "both sides" debate where in real life the person doesn't think of themselves as up for debate, such as Muslim characters in Law & Order who immediately explain their way of life in the context of Western Christian morality to the presumed white Christian viewer for no apparent reason. That just seems too easy to really be "challenging."

Sadly the most challenging thing I can think of films doing in regards to women and minorities is depicting people as fully-formed characters who exist on their own, and to put the audience in their shoes. And it's so rarely done! A catcall filmed with real actual empathy for the victim (and not what the scene means to a presumed white male viewer) would have much more of an impact on me in this sense than a rape scene that objectifies the victim. Because of this I'm wary of films that use big theatrical incidents of -isms rather than banal realities.  I agree with What Tami Said commenter Sparky that such films allow people to say, "well I'm not as bad as that! I'm a good one!"

I thought the Swedish Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a gray area for me. The rape scene could have gone either way but the lingering scene afterward, when she's shaking and smoking alone, clothed, in her apartment was so devastating and and revealing of her experience that I felt a case could be made that the violence served a purpose. The happy sex between Lisbeth and Michael afterward was such a stark contrast I got the message that, "see, this is what sex is supposed to be. Isn't this what we all want for ourselves?" It's a message that needs to be said since rape is equated with sex so freaking often.

A scene from the American GWTDT-- not sure if this is the rape scene or not. But similar camera angle is used.

A scene from Swedish GWTDT. The office sexual assault scene. The camera angle creates empathy with her and objectifies the man for the viewer.

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. I thought she did a great job. But I wasn't thrilled with the director's decision to emphasize her delicateness with her constantly open lips, bleached eyebrows that make her eyes look more childish, and weight loss for the actress. I'm pretty sure a female audience doesn't need to be constantly reminded that women are still, even with weapons, skillz, genius and a motorcycle, so freaking vulnerable.

But in the American version I was unconvinced that the rape wasn't being glamorized as horror film/thriller smut. Still though, it was somewhat well-done. And then they breezed right though the scene of her alone afterward. Like they were saying the horror of the rape was ONLY the pain and humiliation experienced in the moment... and then it ended when the rape did. Then the happy sex later in the film was objectifying to her only! Besides being a waste of Daniel Craig's naked torso it was like they're talking to a male audience saying, "see, consensual sex can be sexy too." VERY different message. (I know lots of people have completely legitimate disagreements with this interpretation but that's how I see it.)

Some other things irritate me that should be minor but aren't. American Lisbeth has an elaborate new hairstyle for every scene but is never shown fooling with her hair. It's out of character; Swedish Lisbeth has a roll-out-of-bed-and-go cut. American Lisbeth's is slightly freakish; she's a freak on the outside, vulnerable on the inside. Swedish Lisbeth's isn't really that weird; she's passable on the outside, twisted and interesting on the inside. And at the end of the film Swedish Lisbeth lights the villain's car on fire with him inside. American Lisbeth intends to shoot him but-- whoopsie-- the car just bursts into flame on its own accord so... I guess US audiences don't have to grapple with their vulnerable pretty little freak committing baldfaced murder.

Swedish Michael and Lisbeth. Depicts driver and passenger.

American Michael and Lisbeth. Depicts owner and pet.

ETA: Oh and another thing. I HATE when Hollywood hires an actress who looks like a model and then "uglifies" her. What, they're unwilling even to give parts that specifically call for un-model-y women to un-model-y looking actresses? I guess it would be a bad investment; after all, Swedish Lisbeth, who is still quite pretty but not Hollywood-pretty, would never have made the cover of Vogue, and wouldn't be a good investment as far as star power, cause then she can't just dye her eyebrows brown again and go on to star in every other movie that calls for a model-y actress. American GWTDT just had to point out how Lisbeth is really totally pretty by showing her go, step-by-step, through a makeover to become a sexy blonde spy character. Like the audience has taken in a little street urchin into their hearts, and polished her up into a Patriarchy-approved little jewel. "I knew she could do it," we're supposed to think. Vomit.

Oh and another thing. What's this I hear about the costume designer for GWTDT launching a Lisbeth fashion line for H&M?! What's next, rape survivor Happy Meal toys? We'll be sucking down burgers till we collect them all: Gina Davis from Thelma & Louise, Lisbeth from GWTDT, Uma Thurman from Kill Bill, and a teensy little Dakota Fanning from Hounddog! Yeesh, America.

Liz Miller at REDUX: Picturesque Evacuation Ploy

You walk into REDUX to see Liz Miller's installation and you're hit with a shocking orange wall at the same time that a friendly front desk person greets you with brochures. Then you notice the title off to the side of the orange wall: "Picturesque Evacuation Ploy."

You walk timidly around the wall through the opening to the gallery and are hit with this:

The rhythmic part of the installation that greets the viewer when they walk in the door. This is the part that reminds me of the gym. Other people were reminded of dragons. [Image: A wall about ten feet long painted shocking tangerine orange. Seven or eight identical 3-D structures made of thin flat felt emerge from the wall, each about six or eight feet tall and reaching six or eight feet from the wall toward the viewer's walkway. The felt is black, robin's egg pale blue, tangerine orange and blood red. Each piece is cut into intricate decorative shapes made from silhouettes of pistols, rifles and other shapes I cannot make out assembled in a kaleidoscopic manner. The felt pieces are attached using brads with tiny orange heads. Together the structures give the effect of a giant 3-d crepe paper banner than has been made of folded cut paper. On the perpendicular wall the white under-paint is left visible in some spots. At the orange-white border little black shapes march like ants. They could be mice, birds or something else entirely.]

And you say, "Woooooowwwww!"

 You can see the scale of the sculpture in relation to this viewer and her stylin' blue-lined boots: probably fifteen feet tall, like the branches of a giant fir tree.

Then you wonder aloud how she did it, then you gingerly step in between some shapes and briefly fantasize about living in them.

My friend noticed the pistol and rifle shapes first, then I could see them everywhere. At that point I decided to read the Artist's Statement. Miller writes that her installations, "...recontextualize shapes, signs and symbols from disparate historical and contemporary imagery to create abstract fictions. Existing forms from a multitude of sources are co-opted, altered and spliced to create hybrid identities...." 

A small portion of one of Miller's felt shapes where you can see the revolver motif that is otherwise obscured through kaleidoscopic repetition (the revolver points to the left in the image). [Image: flat black revolver shape viewed from the side on a flat white wall]

Dear Readers, at this time I should also explain, as I see it, an art historical/theoretical concept involving deconstruction and post-structuralism generally called, "Death of the Author." The term comes from a 1967 essay of that title by Roland Barthes.

Let's say that Wile E. Coyote is about to fall off a cliff. He holds up a sign that reads, "HELP," drops the sign, and vanishes over the cliff. But a few minute later, along comes a hiker who sees the sign. What does it mean? Well, that depends on what the hiker and their culture brings to the table. "Help Wanted?" The Beatles' "Help?" An offer of help? A meaningless sign in a foreign language? A reminder of their job as a 911 dispatcher? Wile E. Coyote's intentions and psyche become irrelevant and the mesh of meanings and contexts to any given sign, symbol or word, along with the viewer's experience, provide legitimate sources of meaning and interpretation for the sign.

Culturally, for example, this is significant because this essay (and the work of Jacques Derrida, postmodern linguists and others) became popular in the academic world at a time when Western culture, previously seen generally though the lens of middle- and upper-class white male society, was experiencing movements for decolonization, civil rights, women's rights, and GL (later BTQ) rights, as well as foreign involvement in Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America, and massive immigration from Southeast Asia, all of which persistently revealed myriad points of view. I can think of many times when someone has made an offensive cultural joke or comment and tried, unsuccessfully, to follow up with, "...but that's not what I meant!" Death of the Author, in action.

Artistically, this idea was central to the transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism. Whereas objects of art had been viewed as distinct objects unaffected by a viewer, both physically and contextually, created by an artist whose psyche and intent is up for artistic interpretation, PoMo subverted this. Some artists, like the pristine minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, erased the expressive brushstrokes and fingerprints of the artist, so prized in Modernism, so that the object stood on its own in meditative coexistence with the viewer. Other artists took an interactive approach, such as Felix González-Torres, who made piles of candy in galleries that the viewers could take. Artists sought to make viewers aware of the act of interpretation. Other artists emphasized the power of the viewer in relation to the artistic intent by making themselves pawns in their own art: putting themselves through documented ordeals, for example, or using their own body as sculpture or artistic tool. Still others emphasized the shared physical space of a work of art and the viewer by making intrusive or interactive art or working with installation, which envelops rather than confronts a viewer, as a way of undermining the fixed fortress-like connotations of Modernist paintings and sculptures.

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So now you can see why, when reading Miller's Artist's Statement, I immediately thought of Death of the Author.   Miller has chosen to literally deconstruct symbols by physically obscuring them and actually bending them. She has stripped the gun symbol down to its physical components and used those components to create a pretty, softly tactile modern fairy-tale environment which suspends disbelieve through sheer craftsmanship and scale. She has also made flat shapes emerge from the wall into the third dimension. Merging painting/2-D with sculpture has been a hallmark of Post-Modernism but is particularly relevant to Miller's physical manipulation of symbols. The lacework of shadows on the walls from the felt recalls Dan Flavin's neon sculptures and their emphasis on the immaterial interaction of artwork and environment. Because the installation is so large and you can step between some of the shapes it is also somewhat interactive. The viewer's space is sufficiently invaded. At this point I interpreted the title, Picturesque Evacuation Ploy, as yet another symbol that had been stripped of its meaning and context, and recontextualised in an abstract fictive manner by putting disparate words together in a nonsensical way. What, now, does "picturesque evacuation ploy" even mean besides the title of this specific show?

But I think there are other conflicting messages in this show that make it much more than an homage to the Death of the Author. For instance I mentioned that my friends and I immediately wondered how she created the installation. Hand-cut or laser-cut? How was it assembled, etc. Because of the level of in-your-face craftsmanship the viewer's attention is immediately diverted to the artist creating the piece. What was her process, what were her intentions? Moreover, even as I appreciate how Miller has stripped the symbols of their meanings, I still wonder, why those symbols? I revert back to the generally acknowledged meaning of "gun" as a weapon while I wonder why she chose that symbol to deconstruct. The repetition also poses a problem for me: making a marking into a symbol is supposed to add meaning rather than remove it. And repeating an image ad nauseam a la Warhol's "Marilyn" can make an image into a symbol. But repetition can also, like Warhol's repeated $ sign, strip a symbol of its meaning. The title is beginning to recover some, if not much, of the words' former meanings and becomes, like the show, attention-grabbing and complicated, evocative of a beautiful emergency.

The gun is in some ways an apt metaphor for the show: it's a visual assault in bright colors that creates a "Bam!" effect when you walk in. The shapes seem machine-like and, along one wall, rhythmically echo a military drumbeat. Walking through the gallery feels a little like walking through the interior world of any given addled person with a gun who makes tragic headlines: sort of crazy, poundingly rhythmic in some places, culminating in a frenzied upward spiral of jumbled shapes.

The irony is clear: fuzzy soft pretty gun shapes in felt. Pretty guns dominating an environment created by someone who, because of her gender, is more likely to be a victim of gun violence, and because of her nationality (I assume she is American) willingly or unwillingly, benefits from massive military violence perpetrated by the US.

A portion of the less structured side of the installation, showing how the shapes continue fluidly from 2-D wall images to a 3-D structure. Also shows the full height (fifteen feet?).

Miller's Artist's Statement goes on to read, "...Forged relationships between benign and malignant forms confuse the original implications of each while revealing the precariousness of perception and how easily it can be tampered with. Recent projects pit Baroque and Gothic pattern and ornament against forms derived from armor and weaponry. Seemingly oppositional pairings create duplicitous environments where conflicting messages are conveyed." 

My mind was already heading down the rabbit hole of military actions and public perception: the Iran-Contra Affair, the CIA, proxy wars, police actions, the military-industrial complex, war-time bans on free press, censorship of images of dead soldiers, the complicit media. At this time the meaningfulness and meaninglessness of repetition began to sink in. How Miller, like the media, has numbed the symbol of the gun and created something vibrant and attractive in its place. The small symbols that march ant-like around the orange/white borders suddenly leap off the wall-- or out of the distant space of our television sets-- and clash in three dimensions, in a way that invades our physical space. How it all takes place in an installation that looks fun and contemporary, like an anime future-world or Tord Boontje for Target. I reconsidered the title: "picturesque," attractive, staged; "evacuation," escapism, vacuousness; "ploy," conspiracy, coy persuasion. A misleading invitation to escape into attractive fictions. 

A portion of the less structured side of the exhibit showing the orange paint on the floor and the play of light and shadow cast by the felt.

I stupidly missed the Artist Lecture, so this whole post could be way off base, but the show will remain up at REDUX through November 26, 2011. Go see it!!