Human and His Beast Chelsea Leigh Trescott

Thus the beast lives unhistoricallyit does not know how to play a part, hides nothing, and appears in each moment exactly and entirely what it is. Thus a beast can be nothing other than honest. By contrast, the human being resiststhe burden of the pastwhich he can for appearances' sake even deny Thus, it moves [man], as if he remembered a lost paradise, to see the grazing herd or, something more closely familiar, the child, which does not yet have a past to deny and plays in blissful blindness between the fences of the past and the future. Nietzsche

Watching Bennys Video from the back row, I must have said Oh no, no, no enough times to make a couple spy back as if to interrupt the successive orgasm as I was having, or admit my cleverness. Oh no, no, no. Make no mistake, I wasnt yapping; my wordiness was genuine. Only in hindsight can I tell; to have most appropriately encapsulated my critique, I should have attributed Yes, oh yes, yes, yes in reward of Michael Hanekes chilling film. Contemporary and conflated, the responsible in portrait elicit care in empty time. To put this otherwise, over the films course a son, and his father, and mother are (in their own right) burdened by a symbolic event. Additionally, this event denotes their purpose. Negotiating history, Bennys Video inhabits a multiple medium; installing cinema with a reversed logic of Hanekes own impress. As it is, action never bids reflexivity; like the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever, neither weary nor amid pains1. Among this audience, a doom then populates us; the ultimate event closing down, the narrative pinnacled on an inevitable omnipresence. Unsaid, it seems, the narrative arc strains for confrontation. Yet, Haneke administers no such compression. As a silence mounts, its profile becomes psychological, or postmodern, we should better declare. Therein hesitation does not result from an unsaid or silent gap in reportage; Bennys Video doesnt predicate upon such standards of controlled or lingering refusal to subject. As Haneke would have it, members of the audience are disturbed by Bennys Video, we are hooked.
1

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.

Inevitability, as I mentioned, embraces everything meaning everything else2. An indifference, I should add that implodes meaning, so for the subject, everything means nothing whatsoever. This subverts authorship, hence that underlying agitation to vanquish the unsaid. What disturbs me then and endangers the narrative is that very effort which is postmodern. Benny beholds the world blankly, with a knowingness that dissolves feeling and commitment into irony. The latter lacking here is especially imbued in Bennys expressionlessif not numbingface, and resonates pathetically in the I dont know that he commits any possible insight to. Yes, oh yes, the danger is Benny isnt glossing over any depth of consciousness or of rationale. He hasnt any, but is rather a composite of diegetic implication and meaninglessness. An exponent of

hyperconsciousness, Benny, the films postmodern lead, is jaded, detached, and surfeited. Such reductions, I postulate, are consequential to the burden of what was alreadytried, achieved. A postmodern circumstance, as well, that postulated in a symbiotic relationship with other works (video-as-film), to which it frequently alluded (pig slaughter) or openly quoted in order (playing back for a new context, ie, the parents conversation about disposing the victims body) to establish its own meaning (one possibly being the parents are committed/responsible, the son is free of the family burden and their reminder). Before moving ahead, let me exercise the reason Benny is characterized by hyperconsciousness. And more over, let me strive to confirm that this behaviour is modeled after a postmodernist appraisal. Benny films his murdering of the teenage girl. This killing is shown on the television screena result of Bennys video camera hooked up to the television. In effect, the audience is witness to the films first inevitability. But this witness exists in a third spacea space of spectatorship not submerged entirely within the lens of film or video. As the murder is revealed and simultaneously happens, we wonder than which medium the murder exists within and intends to satisfy. This is the space of Hanekes unique stylistic invention; this is the space for concept. Bennys act of murder is deliberate, mediated, but the subjectthe victimis not. She is anyone. Even more unsettling is a few hours later; when he rewinds the footage to watch his killing. However, this moment is again a split in spectatorship, but of another kind. The cinematic articulation is heighted here, as Bennys murder is replayed and instead of the cinematic lens becoming the video, the videographer becomes, for the first time, a spectator of his own project. The film does not expose this scene as if it was a streaming video, but rather from the distance that
2

Jean Baudillard, Simulacra and Simulations.

Human and His Beast Chelsea Leigh Trescott

Benny tolerates himself. This distance implies the characters failure to embody his own creation that which should (and I use that term loosely, even ironically) have proved him proud: the evidence and his action. Underlying this performance is a symbolic exchange, or more precisely, a concept that the director exchanges with his viewer, and the canon of cinema critique. The concept, I propose, is this: video acts as an intruder of self-consciousness. And this can very easily be attested by witnessing any person in front of a television. In the hands of the media and/or medium, a subject becomes a receptor of/for the other. But what is this other I refer to? Is it ideas for influence; or merely projections being passed along? The harm here is that is all it has to be; all it has to be is the becomed other. By definition projection is a forecast of a future situation; is the presentation of an image on a surface, especially a movie screen; is the ability to makea distance; is the promotion of someone or something in a particular way; is a mental image viewed as reality; is the unconscious transfer of ones own desires or emotions to another person; a projection is a method. Here we have learned that an intruder enters into a preexisting formation (ie. the video introduces itself into the discourse of film) and does so deliberately and harmfully. The harm, I can remind us, is the dislocation of agency. So while the intruder (video/media) is conscious and intentional, the receptor (received viewer) inflects his experience passively. Because a medium (such as video) is a form of storage (ie. stores the videographers involvement) it consequentially contains the essential nature of the message, as well as, transfers the authorial responsibility and primary desire unto itself. So what situates itself between Benny and the murder he is responsible is the product that shows their now secondary relationship. By filming the committed murder, Benny is able to provide himself a product that employs all responsibility and becomes an opportunity for passive consumption. This third party (if you will allow me to call it this once) is a choice, and this choice is an intruder. In addition to the mediums intrusion, Benny intrudes his own intrusion as he incorporates himself, again into the video, but through reversal. In replaying the footage, Benny does not interject himself but recasts his role. Bennys purpose here is mastery. To master the pig slaughter, would afford him the confidence to carry out a murder in his own hands. However, as he plays back the girls murder what then does he master if what he manifests is distance? Perhaps the answer can be located in the performance that strips him bare, that casts his body in another recording. The viewer witnesses Benny witnessing himself spreading his victims blood across his

own skin. This spectacle documents Bennys one and only reaction; or maybe rather, it is the spectacle that elicits the audiences first reaction: an uncanny relief that Benny is involving himself explicitly in the scenes implicit awareness. Perhaps this documentation aims at postmodernism on two accounts. The blood can be recognized as a layering of a new or other form. And secondly, because we never saw Benny witness this behaviour in the pig slaughtering, we can assume that this layering is self-inspired then. This second video installment is thereby in relation to the original medium (the pig slaughter) but transgressing it also on a set of new terms of manifestation. Bennys layering of the others blood onto himself is a response to the video he had previously viewed, as well as a response to his murder. Altogether, this second form narrates a response to the previous medium and its subject. Instead of repeating the video with mechanical indifference, or altogether changing his ways as a character, Benny enacts a postmodern progression. By exploring these distinctions between media formats (film, video, television, music, popart, in-the-flesh-reality), Hanekes postmodern film redefines the narrative action in order to redefine the nature of cinemaand more fully entertainmentin contemporary culture. So whereas, the modernists might question or think it impossible to critique entertainment through entertainment, or violence through violencein the postmodern realm it is not only conceivable or successful. By educating the audience to more complex ways of reading and rendering meaning, Haneke enables the image to perform its own determination. But here in postmodernitys hyperconsciousness lies the trick: the video-in-film, or medium-within-a medium, effectuates a manipulative power over the image is revealed as image by twisting this maxim into something more. Almost immediately after filming the nude video, Benny becomes entirely dispassionate. The noise has been smothered (or rather shot; remember Benny panicking after firing the first and second pellet shot? How he begged her to be quiet. How he shot her the third time in the head, this time knowing he would kill her and end the noise, an intrusion up to then beyond his control) and he has rinsed the bloody sheet and hung it to dry almost therapeutically. What becomes of our lead is more like a death of the subjectnow that he knows how it is to kill he is without desire, without a project, and retires into the background. It is here that his mother and father arrive, rounding out the family and the responsibility therein. However, before engaging this critical dynamic, let me probe Bennys detachment a bit further.

Human and His Beast Chelsea Leigh Trescott

Could Bennys impassiveness be at all a paranoia of crisis in excess? He doesnt boost, admit concern, or tell anyone about the teenager girls death. Even on the night of the murder, while Benny is unwinding from the disco and smoking a cigarette in his friends extra bed, he reveals nothing. Does he have no repentance or is he troubled by a more severe manipulation? This excess I am referring to is the victims body which remainstwo days laterfolded in his closet and veiled by the shirts left hanging. Benny has no compassion for his family, yet needs them to expel the crimes excess. In other words, Bennys parents become incorporated in the crime not because Benny considers it morally best to confess his sins, but because he trusts they will assume the remaining responsibility. The manipulation here is twofold. By witnessing one medium, a second narrative is estimated to happen. Benny plays the video for his parents, not by asking them, but by their instrusion in around the television. The father doesnt want to watch the video, he orders Benny to switch on the news. Not until the husband realizes his wifes emotions and that the television is projecting a murder, does he get itget that the intended video is replacing the news. Benny transfers the medium of responsibility here; and this postmodern delegation is a manipulative act. His parents are outsourcedare made aware of Bennys responsibilityin so far that they can participate in the death of primary authorship. The parents assume this responsibility (they will not turn him in but will dispose of the bodys excess) less because they want to protect the future of their son, and more for their own reputation that is at stake. And Benny knows this, because his familys main concern is for aesthetics and reputation that medium and form provides or disavows. Prior to the parents becoming spectators of their sons murder video, the father scolds Benny for his concentration camp haircut while the mother is silenced by her humiliation. What will teachers think? Together the family moves on, provided Benny is wearing a cap. Thats not all thoughin the dining room a single wall is lined in pop-art framings a stark contrast to the rest of their home and a far cry from the sterile personality in which they admit. This family dresses themselves in a contemporary mask, but cannot achieve to erase what is really there. Even when Benny arrives with his mother from abroad, and returning to his bedroom finds his father has stripped Bennys room of the blackout curtains and the victims body. Freedom has been implicated here, and the idea that the family will see beyond the crime. But this attempt through appearance is merely an impermanent resolve. It is impossible for the father and mother to return to their life, because theyhaving been brought into the murderare conscious of their interruptions. They are human beings

behaving against shamereacting; whereas, Bennythe beastis honest in his removal for he has been replaced. The familys hyperconsciousness is an effect of narration; the parents are not concerned with the subjects of the video (Benny and the girl) but with its reception if others were to know. This is a hyperawareness toward cultural status and how theirs will function in history (the future) if the story of Bennys video circulates. This here is a passive consciousness that entertains how the family will be consumed. At times, the viewer is witness to this conversation through sound alone. Installed in the dark room where Benny sleeps, we can hear the parents conversation coming in through the unhinged door. The light in the living room animates their presence in a frame their bodies are absent from. Before tucking in for the night, Benny asked his mother to leave the door cracked open. Naturally, she might have assumed this a sensitive request stemming from fear. But Benny isnt afraid, he responds to his father later; and this is evident even in the blank permanence of his face. It is at the end of the filmin the final scenethat we realize the manipulation the bedroom scene was involved in. Shot from Bennys bedroom, but never showing Benny himself, as spectators we should have knownthis scene was framed, this scene was shot in the medium of the video. Thus this scene was a moment of intrusion. A moment that intruded on the parents plan to save their reputation; a moment that intrudes upon the familys freedom. At the police station, Benny provides this clip within a sequence of others. Together it all plays out as reportage, as events that happened but were distanced from Benny and his own control. The manipulation here lies in the mediums recontextualization; a framing that buys Benny his own freedom from his family. For Hanekes this postmodern narrative provides cinema an alternative frame in which to be shown through; a cinema that not only shows history but is a response to it.