Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen

Danish director Lars von Trier has Lars von Trier’s “Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film is a master-
ful study of the full breadth of von Trier’s
Renewal of Film
produced more than 20 films since work. The book presents a chronicle of the
his first appearance with The Elements Bodil work, expertly situated in the history of the
of Crime in 1984. One of the most Marie medium of film, in its relation to video and
1984-2014
acknowledged – and most controversial Stavning digital media. More than that – and this is
– film directors of our time, Trier’s films what puts the book in a league of its own
Thomsen – Thomsen develops an original theory of
often escape the representational
the image unique enough to merit a new
production of meaning.
SIGNAL PIXEL DIAGRAM name: “signaletic materialism” might do.
Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film1984 -2014

But don’t be misled by the weightiness of
In Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film
the term. It signposts an approach uniquely
1984-2014. Signal, Pixel, Diagram
equipped to make felt immediacy of the
scholar Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen image, accounting for its embodied nature
offers a comprehensive discussion and affective force with both evocative power
of Lars von Trier’s collected works. and analytical precision. Thomsen’s in-depth,
Examining his experiments with narra- often scene-by-scene, analyses of von Trier’s
tive forms, genre, camera usage, light, compositional techniques go beyond formal
and colour tones, she shows how analysis to convey how the logic of the
Trier’s unique and ethically involving medium is one with an event of perception,
style activates the viewer’s entire ever renewed and endlessly varied.”
perception apparatus. In understanding Brian Massumi
this affective involvement, the author author of Semblance and Event:
frames the discussion around concepts Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts
from Gilles Deleuze, Alois Riegl, Brian

Massumi a.o. on the haptic image,
“An inspiring and insightful work of passion
the diagram, affect, and the signaletic
and scholarly dedication, Bodil Thomsen’s
material.
thorough analysis of Lars von Trier’s oeuvre
is an aesthetic revelation of haptic quality
and potentialities. While the Deleuze-
Guattarian inspired concept of the ‘affect
diagram’ is the guiding method to navigate
Trier’s audio-visual style across pixels,
colors and digital signals, one can almost
feel and touch the images on every page
AARHUS UNIVERSITY PRESS that disclose always new senses and
Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen sensations beyond the film’s stories and
representations.”
Patricia Pisters
University of Amsterdam
Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film
1984‑2014
This page is protected by copyright and may not be redistributed.

Lars von Trier’s
Renewal of Film
1984‑2014
signal, pixel, diagram
Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen
aarhus university press | a

To Andreas, Malthe and Thomas

It is common knowledge that photography depends on an atmos‑
pheric perspective, which means that the contrast between light
and shadow diminishes towards the background. Maybe an idea
for an interesting abstraction lies in a conscious elimination of
the atmospheric perspective – or, in other words, in relinquishing
the much‑coveted depth – and the effect of distance. Instead one
ought to work towards a wholly new construction of pictorial colour
surfaces, which all lie on the same plane, forming one large, collated,
multi‑coloured surface, so that the notion of the foreground, mid‑
dle ground and background fully disappears. One should, in other
words, relinquish the perspectival image and begin working with
pure surface effect. In this way it is possible that one will achieve very
distinctive aesthetic effects, maybe precisely suited to film.
Carl Th. Dreyer: Fantasi og Farve, 1955; in Om Filmen, 1959
One normally chooses a style for a film in order to highlight a story.

We’ve done exactly the opposite. We’ve chosen a style that works
against the story, which gives it the least opportunity to highlight
itself. […] What we’ve done is to take a style and put it over the story
like a filter. Like encoding a television signal, when you pay in order
to see a film: here we are encoding a signal for the film, which the
viewer will later ensure they decode. The raw, documentary style
which I’ve laid over the film and which completely annuls and con‑
tests it, means that we accept the story as it is. That is, at any rate,
my theory.
Lars von Trier on Breaking the Waves in Sight & Sound Magazine, 1996

Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film 1984-2014
© 2018 the author and Aarhus University Press
Cover illustration: Lars von Trier on the set of The Idiots.
Photo: RGR Collection/Alamy stock Photo.
Typesetting: Ryevad Grafisk
Translated by Philip Mullarkey from the Danish edition,
Lars von Triers fornyelse af filmen 1984-2014,
published by Museum Tusculanum Press, 2016
This book is typeset in Vulpa
E-book production: by Narayana Press, Denmark
ISBN 978 87 7184 637 9
Aarhus University Press

Finlandsgade 29
DK-8200 Aarhus N
Denmark
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International distributors:
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Oxford, OX4 1JE
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Published with the financial support of:

The Aarhus University Research Foundation
/ In accordance with requirements of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the certification
means that a PhD level peer has made a written assessment justifying this book’s scientific quality.

Contents
Preface 11
Introduction 18
CHAPTER 1
The theoretical landscape 29
The »signaletic material« of film 37
Haptic surfaces and affective effects 39
CHAPTER 2
Haptic surfaces and spatial effects in Trier’s
films of the 1980s 50
CHAPTER 3
A tiger in The Kingdom 64
The transformation from Gothic to grotesque
A ghost story 65
From Gothic eeriness to grotesque laughter on the surface
of the TV screen 68
The real‑time effect of electronic signals
– introduction to The Kingdom I 75
Breaching – the conclusion of The Kingdom I 79
The perforation from upper to underside in the narrative’s
Möbius strip 86
Grotesque real‑time interfaces: surveillance, scans and X‑ray 90
The technological and mythological credo of the video medium 94
The haptic level in The Kingdom I and II 98
»The body without organs« and the »becoming‑animal« 106

CHAPTER 4
Dogme 95 and The Idiots 112
A new form of realism
The »Dogme 95 Manifesto« and the »Vow of Chastity« 115
A diagrammatic production of factual reality in the form
of haptic »Figures« 120
The Dogme diagram – a generator of haptic compositions
and modes of perception 125
Deformation of the face and the fall of the body 134
CHAPTER 5
Golden Hearts 1 and 3 139
Affective outflow into the landscape and the music
The power of the rejected 146
Breaking the Waves and »faciality« 149
Any‑space‑whatever and colours in Breaking the Waves
and Dancer in the Dark 155
Dancer in the Dark and »the refrain« 163
CHAPTER 6
America films 175
Verfremdung and diagrammatic production
Planes of composition in Dogville 177
Capitalistic segmentarity and terroristic micropolitics
in Dogville 184
Microperceptual affect in Dogville 188
Compositional planes in Manderlay 194
Struggle in the binary segmentation 197
Dividual qualitative transformation and an ethics of affect 201
CHAPTER 7
The boss and the performative-biographical 209
The aesthetics of the fall
Heterotopy, diagram and divid 219
The one who falls: on Lars’ turning Jørgen
into a performative I 227

CHAPTER 8
Affective figures of depression, melancholia
and mania 235
Antichrist – in nature, chaos reigns 236
Nietzsche – The Dionysian and the Apollinian 241
Tarkovsky and the »eternal recurrence of the same« 255
Time as the »powers of the false«, creation and transformation 258
Melancholia – the world’s Dionysian underground 262
Iconoclasm 266
The rescue of melancholia from ›the world as will
and idea‹ 268
Tristan und Isolde – Wagner as intermediary 271
The end of the world – figures for interpretation 273
Affect and event 276
Schopenhauer’s melancholia, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,
and Arendt’s thinker 279
Affective diagrams: a haptic, signaletic material in Antichrist and
Melancholia 284
Nymphomaniac – mania’s (self)destructive force 291
Two kinds of diagram: material signs and signaletic material 294
The subversive potential of sexual desire in chapters 1‑4 304
The asexual, super sensual woman in chapter 5 322
The sadistic woman’s unfolding in chapters 6‑8 327
CHAPTER 9
Concluding remarks on Lars von Trier’s
filmic affect diagrams 347
Bibliography 353

Preface
Lars von Trier’s TV and film production has been vehemently

discussed ever since his cinema debut with The Element of Crime
(1984). From the outset, Trier has experimented with narrative
forms, conventions of genre, camera usage, light, and colour tones.
With films in foreign settings, international actors and English
language dialogue, he referred immediately to a larger audience
than in Denmark only, which was then unusual, and today Trier
is a highly esteemed, internationally acknowledged director, who
with each new project is, in fact, expected to set new standards for
film. Furthermore, throughout his career he has been involved in
setting up diverse interpretive frameworks for audience expecta‑
tions. With his public performances in the daily press and at the
Cannes Film Festival as well as published diary notes and films
behind the scenes, Lars von Trier was one of the first directors
who explicitly utilised cinematic material productively – both as a
performative mask and as a reinterpretation of the term ›realism‹.1
Trier is currently regarded by many people (himself included) as
being amongst the greatest living film directors.2
In the spring of 2005, as Visiting Fulbright Professor at the
Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Washington,
I personally experienced the extensive international interest in
1 To a large extent in connection with the film The Idiots (1998) where Trier created a broader para‑
textual, interpretive framework with the publication of Idioterne – manuskript og dagbog (Gyldendal 1998),
a manuscript and diary written during the making of the film. Jesper Jargil’s documentary film, The Humil-
iated, concerning the making of The Idiots, which amongst other things was shown on Danish TV station
DR2 (2 May 1999), also contributed to empahsising the new, realistic Dogme 95 movement as a happening
that extended beyond the median of purely film.
2 Among these is Gilles Jacob, president of the Cannes Film festival 2000‑2015 (Lamy 2005, 7).
preface 11

CONTENTS
Trier’s particular auteur style. Whilst there I lectured a group of
extremely interested students in »New Wave Danish and French
Cinemas: Image, Affect, Ethics«. These students, from vastly dif‑
fering origins and national affiliations outside Central Europe
(for example, USA, Canada, China, Japan and Iran), only had
a relatively limited insight into European and Danish culture
and thinking, but they were interested in film and participated
eagerly in diverse international film festivals. From this exposure
they knew Trier’s work, along with the Dogme manifesto and its
films, which had gained almost cult status. It was clearly the rich
composition of images that gave Trier’s films such an impact as
the students had no knowledge of the broader cultural and film‑
historical contexts. For a Dane interested in film, an interpretive
framework is formed from realistic, naturalistic and expression‑
istic impulses, which are so strongly represented in European
film classics as well as the avant‑garde (cf. Vertov, Eisenstein,
Wiene, Murnau, Lang, Buñuel, Artaud, etc.). But these were by no
means obvious references for the American students. The Dogme
manifesto’s actualisation of the French new wave understanding
of realism, and simultaneous critique of Hollywood’s new (digital)
possibilities for post‑production, meant that during the course it
was necessary to introduce the students to the (film) avant‑garde
and its diverse understanding of realism in Europe, as well as
involving the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Jean Luc Godard
especially, who had inspired Trier visually and thematically.
It is Trier’s production, in particular from the end of the 1980s
through to and including Nymphomaniac (2014), which consti‑
tutes the analytical framework in this book for a discussion of the
ethically inclusive and affect‑creating style. This implies a focused
look at Trier’s development of the creation of images and composi‑
tion, which in Dreyer’s words in this book’s introductory citation
involves experiments with »pure surface effect« (Dreyer 1959, 91).
The book’s starting point is in a description of the haptic style,3
as used in the films from the 1980s, namely The Element of Crime
(1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) as well as the made‑for‑
TV film Medea (1988), which is based on a previously unrealised
3 The term is defined further in the introduction.
12 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

CONTENTS
film manuscript by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Preben Thomsen.
This prelude is expanded in the analysis of The Kingdom I (1994)
and The Kingdom II (1997), whose aesthetic play with the elec‑
tronic TV signal is brought into the development of the Dogme
95 manifesto and is given a filmic expression in the Golden Heart
Trilogy.4 In addition, the use of unmasked Verfremdung realism is
discussed as a way in which the media of books, theatres and com‑
puter games become remediated in the America films.5 Here the
haptic affect‑involving images become clearly supplemented with
the technological rules of diagrams, which at the behest of Trier
are laid like a stylistic filter over the story (Trier, 1996). Trier thus
places himself internationally as one of the most important inno‑
vators of filmic realism over a ten‑year period (from the Dogme
95 manifesto to Manderlay) through his involvement of the elec‑
tronic image quality of TV and video media. From The Boss of it
All (2006) and onwards he works with digital modulations of the
image that develop into new forms of affectively involving the au‑
dience in Antichrist (2009), which borrows material from horror
films, and Melancholia (2011) which thematically paraphrases ca‑
tastrophe films. Both these films, however, work in contrast to their
genre model, with descriptions of inner, mental affective states.
Trier’s most recent film (at time of writing), Nymphomaniac, which
together with Antichrist and Melancholia belongs to the so‑called
Depression Trilogy, builds compositionally on literary material in
particular as well as reuniting with Trieresque image compositions
from The Kingdom and onwards. This book thus brings Trier’s
oeuvre (provisionally) full circle, describing the period (especially)
from Medea to Nymphomaniac.
Theoretically I draw on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical writ‑
ing and his works with Félix Guattari as well as current readings
of these. The central taxonomy of images of movement and time
in Deleuze’s film books, Cinema 1: Movement-image and Cinema
2: Time-image, has for many years inspired me analytically. It is
clear in these works that Dreyer’s films, which were successful
in France, had a decisive influence on Deleuze’s development of
4 That is, the films Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000).
5 Including the films Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005).
preface 13

CONTENTS
the affection image, in particular, and in his understanding of the
spiritual choice in expressionist film. Deleuze, like Trier, praises
the compositional ideas in Dreyer’s films, and both have formed
a crucial fulcrum in the understanding of what is affective and
ethically involving. Deleuze and Trier’s shared enthusiasm for
Dreyer’s style has been a significant starting point for the analyses
in this book, which represent the first attempts at giving a com‑
prehensive reading of Lars von Trier’s work in light of Deleuze’s
(film) philosophy. Along the way, references to Deleuze are woven
into the analysis of Trier’s work, just as the analyses also occasion
discussions of broader theoretical categories of the haptic, the af‑
fective, the signaletic material, and of diagrams and interfaces6 all
in the context of texts by Deleuze, Guattari, Alois Riegl, Walter
Benjamin, Brian Massumi, Anna Munster, and many others.
I had already worked on some of this project’s analytical and
theoretical approach as part of the research project on realism,
»Reality, Realism, and the Real in Visual Perspective« (1999‑2002),
on which I was project leader. Later I concentrated on the haptic
and the interface in relation to the video medium, as well as the
digital medium’s real-time control, in the research project »The
Aesthetics of Interface Culture« (2004‑07), which was led by
Søren Pold, Aarhus University. This provided, amongst other
things, a route to the article »The Haptic Interface« in Interface
Criticism. Aesthetics Beyond the Buttons (Thomsen 2011) and to a
concept‑developing article entitled »Signaletic, haptic and real‑
time material«, which initiated a collection of 13 articles, From
Sign to Signal, relating to the theses in my article as seen from
various types of art and media (Journal of Aesthetics and Culture,
vol. 4, 2012).7 In the editorial team we placed emphasis on having
many forms of art and media coming into play in the research
on how the signal’s haptic noise has an influence on current (also
digitally coded) expressions of art and culture.
Finally, I have worked with the relation between haptic compo‑
sitions, affect and event in connection with an intensive workshop,
6 The terms will be further defined in the introduction.

7 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v4i0.18819 (last viewed 13 March 2015). I have
edited the collection along with Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen and John Sundholm.

CONTENTS
»Generating the Impossible«, led by Erin Manning, in the context
of SenseLab (Montreal, July 2011). In extension of this I was co‑
editor on the theme of »Catastrophe and Affect« in the journal
Peripeti no. 17, 2012, to which Jonas Fritsch and I contributed
with an interview with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi: »Affec‑
tive Attunement in a Field of Catastrophe«.8 Together with Jonas
Fritsch and a number of other researchers and artists in Canada,
Australia and Europe, I am a participant in Erin Manning’s ongo‑
ing Canadian research project, »Immediations: Art, Media, Event«
(2013‑20). Here work is carried out with ›immediation‹ which is
conceived as the immediate, relational and affectively involved
creative moment found in all perceptive exchanges. This account
of where the subject‑object relation becomes indeterminable is
investigated theoretically and artistically in connection with the
terms of affect and event, which have been developed in Gilles
Deleuze og Félix Guattari, Alfred North Whitehead, and William
James, amongst others. The meeting between artists and research‑
ers in this project inspired me to advance the work with haptic
compositions and those aspects in Trier’s films which create affect
and events. Participation in the research project has also helped
me to specify how the haptically arranged signaletic material in
Trier’s film can contain affective moments which, in diagrammatic
compositions, can further extend the film medium’s field to also
accommodate interface events. This has recently resulted in a col‑
lective research project on Affects, Interfaces, Events, funded by
the Danish Council for Independent Research, and led by me.
Over a period of approximately ten years, I have had the op‑
portunity to work with some questions regarding how electronic
and digital interfaces are embedded in haptic compositions and
engender or call for special forms of involvement and affect. It
was, for example, in connection with the work on haptic aesthetics
and real‑time interfaces of the web camera that it became clear to
me to what extent Trier’s work has recurrently been able to partly
give artistic feedback on the prevalent media situation in the form
of a remediation of other media (Bolter and Grusin 1999), and
8 Fritsch & Thomsen 2012, and Massumi 2015. http://www.peripeti.dk/2012/06/06/affective‑attune‑

ment‑in‑a‑field‑of‑catastrophe/comment‑page‑1/ (last viewed 10 February 2015).
preface 15

CONTENTS
to partly develop still newer methods by which the audience can
be involved affectively.
On several occasions I have had the opportunity to test the
theoretical and analytical perspectives presented in this book.
Apart from my course as Fulbright Professor at the University
of Washington, I lectured on the films of Lars von Trier at a
candidate course at the Department of Scandinavian Studies,
Aarhus University, in 2009. In conjunction with the Brazilian
universities‹ film festival, Festival Brasileiro de Cinema Univer‑
sitário (FBCU), I taught a master class in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
in 2010. Here and in São Paulo I also held several well‑attended
lectures on Trier’s film and the Dogme 95 manifesto and its films.
In addition, at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus
University, I have on several occasions introduced haptic visuality
and affect theory to diverse candidate courses. The interest and
feedback of students as well as colleagues has had an invaluable
importance on the project being kept alive over the years.
Many colleagues have contributed with responsiveness and
meaningful discussions in the development of the book’s central
themes. The idea for the project occurred because of the enrich‑
ing and engaging discussions of new forms of realism which I
encountered in the research »Reality, Realism, and the Real in
Visual Perspective« with Rune Gade, Anne Jerslev, Britta Timm
Knudsen, Karin Petersen, Mette Sandbye and Ann Lumbye Sø‑
rensen. In the project »The Aesthetic of Interface Culture,« Søren
Pold, Morten Brejnbjerg, Lone Koefoed Hansen, Jacob Wam‑
berg, Lars Kiel Bertelsen, Henrik Kaare Nielsen and Christian
Ulrik Andersen were involved in giving shape to my perspective of
›the haptic‹ in relation to electronic and digital interfaces. Other
research colleagues who deserve a particular mention include An‑
drew Nestingen, C. Claire Thomson, Andrew Murphie, Lone Ber‑
telsen, Pia‑Ednie Brown and Anna Munster. Conversations, texts
and feedback have played an important role in the development of
the conceptual reasoning. I owe a special thank you to Lone Ber‑
telsen, Jonas Fritsch, C. Claire Thomson and Anna Birgit Rishede
who have been invaluable readers of the manuscript. In the Nordic
field in particular, Kristin Ørjasæter, Kjersti Bale, Christian Ref‑
sum, Sarah Paulson, Lill‑Ann Körber, Anita Seppä, John Sund‑

CONTENTS
holm and Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen should be thanked for inspira‑
tion in connection with the completion of the book Globalizing
Art: Negotiating Place, Identity and Nation in Contemporary Nordic
Art (2011). In more recent years, my (former) PhD students and
good colleagues Camilla Møhring Reestorff, Carsten Stage, Jo‑
nas Fritsch, Mathias Bonde Korsgaard and Tina Louise Sørensen
have been excellent discussion partners. At home, Thomas, Malthe
and Andreas Stavning Erslev, as well as Peter S. Meyer, have each
in their own way been inspiring during the writing process. Finally,
I would like to thank Aarhus University Press for its professional
collaboration on the English edition and also Aarhus University’s
Research Fund for its support in publishing the book.
The book is, as mentioned, written over a ten‑year period, dur‑
ing which I have also published other articles on Lars von Trier’s
film. These have primarily had the haptic as their pivotal point,
but conversely they represent analytical preparatory work for the
book. They are oriented more towards content and construction
in the films rather than the analyses presented in this book, which
have stylistic and philosophical intentions as their primary piv‑
otal points. The previously published articles on Trier can in this
sense be read as supplements, but they are not included in this
book. These are »On the Transmigration of Images: Flesh, Spirit
and Haptic Vision in Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc and Trier’s Golden
Heart Trilogy« in C. Claire Thomson (ed.): Northern Constel-
lations, 2006; »The Performative Acts in Medea and Dogville
and the Sense of ›Realism‹ in New Media« in Rune Gade and
Anne Jerslev (eds.): Performative Realism, 2005; »Realism of the
Senses: On Ethics, Space and Event in Lars von Trier’s 1990s
Trilogy« in V. Oittinen (ed.): Spinoza in Nordic Countries, 2004;
»Idiocy, Foolishness and Spastic Jesting« in p.o.v. A Danish Journal
of Film Studies, no. 10, 2000; »Spiritus Sanctus. Lidelse og pas‑
sion i Breaking the Waves« in Birgit Eriksen and Niels Lehmann
(eds.): Patos? Æstetikstudier 5, 1998. The analyses of Melancholia,
Antichrist and Nymphomaniac expand on some of the analytic
elements presented in »Antichrist – Chaos Reigns: the Event
of Violence and the Haptic Image in Lars von Trier’s Films« in
Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol. 1, 2009.
preface 17

CONTENTS
Introduction
The new filmic forms of realism, whose audience‑involving aes‑

thetic based itself on investigations of media in relation to both
electronic and digital technology can, in Denmark, be related to
Lars von Trier and his work with the TV film Medea (1988), the TV
series The Kingdom I and II (1994 and 97), together with the Dogme
95 manifesto and its ten‑year implementation (1995‑2005). 9 Tri‑
er’s work with the realistic intensity particular to this, which cre‑
ates intimacy and a more direct form of influence on more senses
than those that traditionally bind film to a classic audio‑visual
decoding, is made possible by, amongst other things, new, light‑
weight hand‑held DV cameras. In the 1960s and ’70s, where film
and video cameras also became considerably easier to handle, one
had a comparable experience of being able to get closer to the de‑
scription of reality, in the sense of sensation and experience.10 The
hand‑held camera and its reality‑producing effect is thus nothing
new,11 but in the 1990s the camera’s position became an acting in‑
9 The TV medium’s reality TV and new documentary formats in the ›90s and ›00s also rediscover the
possibilities for ›intimacy‹ and ›intensity’. Cf. Anne Jerslev in Vi ses på tv (2004).
10 Naturally, Italian neo‑realism should also be mentioned, which, because of the destruction of film
studio facilities during the war, turned the city streets into scenography, and in which untrained actors
acted in real surroundings. This was, in a compositional sense, part of modernising film language and
setting it free from the organisational plot structures of literature and theatre (cf. André Bazin: What is cin-
ema? Vol. 1 & 2 ([1958‑62] 1967‑71).
11 In Cinema 2: The Time-Image (p. 192 f.), Deleuze describes how the French and Canadian cinéma
vérité directors Jean Rouch and Pierre Perrault exploited, in various ways, the camera being capable of
serially connecting here and there, past and future. When time gains precedence over the action linked to
the space in this way, reality can be created and recreated, and notions of representative forms of truth can
be undermined. In utilising lightweight, hand‑held cameras, everyone had the possibility of being a cine‑
matographer, and classical distinctions between camera operator (subject) and character (object) could be
blurred. The cinéma vérité directors were not so much concerned with filming the poor and downtrodden;
rather, this new form of realism was concerned with turning the camera into a creative instrument in the

CONTENTS
terfacial account between a subject of vision and an object of vision
to an overall principle, gaining physical effects. The Dogme films
of the 1990s provoked faint and nauseous reactions, and people
exited cinema screenings in droves. The swinging, fuzzy, pixelated
images and the bad, unfiltered sound was a novum, and it took
audiences a while to become accustomed to it. In short, the ways in
which ›90s realism was created in film and video changed previous
understandings of the relation between reality and representation.
As the audience’s physical sense perceptions and emotions take
precedence over the reflexive decoding of a representational (and
indexical) level, a totally different understanding opens up of what
realism can be – namely an affective or performative realism.12 It
does interact with the experiments from the 1960s, but it also ap‑
pears – in relation to Trier, in any case – as an aesthetic reaction
to the new digital media and the interfaces13 that make interaction
and participation possible in an extended field. It is evident in the
Dogme 95 manifesto and the following films that, consciously or
not, a processing or remediation (Bolter and Grusin, 1999) takes
place in light of digital media. For though the declaration calls
to arms against digital possibilities, through post‑production, to
create (yet more) illusions backed up by rule number nine – that
the film format should be Academy 35mm – The Idiots (1998) was
hands of those who were carrying out the depictions. Depicting subjective and objective aspects of a per‑
son’s identity (fictive or real) is forsaken for creative simulations; a construction of identities, legends, and
folk, which in Québec led to new common narratives: »Thus the cinema can call itself cinema-vérité, all the
more because it will have destroyed every model of the true so as to become creator and producer of truth:
this will not be a cinema of truth but the truth of cinema« (Deleuze 1989, 151). Jean‑Luc Godard, amongst
others, was inspired by the free rein and reality‑creating style in cinéma vérité, and used a hand‑held cam‑
era in many of his film and video productions.
12 Cf. the results of the research project ›Reality, Realism, and the Real in Visual Perspective‹: Britta
Timm Knudsen and Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen (eds.): Virkelighedshunger (2003); Karin Petersen and
Mette Sandbye (eds.): Virkelighed, virkelighed! (2003); Rune Gade and Anne Jerslev (eds.); Performative Re-
alism (2005).
13 The word ›interface‹ is used throughout the book as a term with a triadic combination, which has
developed culturally from experiments with the possibility of feedback (in electronic music and video) in
the 1960s. The body becomes an integrated part of the human-computer interface in that the actions (with
tools such as, for example, camera, mouse, keyboard, microphones etc.) send electronic and/or digitally
coded signals to a media format (for example, a computer game), which more or less simultaneously medi‑
ates and represents, giving feedback to the corporeal sensations and actions (cf. Andersen and Pold 2015).
Forms of interfaces are a societal reality, which have meaning in the production of all culture and art, but
some artists reflect this more than others. As a supplement to the broad definition of the interface, Anne
Munster’s definition is used in relation to the artistic forms of interfaces which reflect the overlap between
»to be in the body and to represent the body from outside« as a recordable, inventive creation of difference
(Munster 2006, 142).
introduction 19

CONTENTS
(as the first of the Dogme films) shot completely on digital DV
cameras. The rule on film formatting was thereafter changed prag‑
matically, so that it merely insisted that the film be distributed on
Academy 35mm.
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin define remediation as the
way in which new media assimilates and reuses older media, and
the way in which older media assimilates the new, in order to an‑
swer the challenges of this media. With historical examples, Bolter
and Grusin describe how the representation of reality has been
the cornerstone for the development of genres and art types as
well as media. The representation reflects the medium either as
hypermediacy or immediacy, which involves a consciousness of the
medium’s setting of frameworks or taking aim at its eradication,
respectively (for example, in the form of a sense of depth in an
image). Both forms, so to speak, aim to heighten the degree of the
user’s affinity to the surrounding world; but where immediacy sets
its sights on increasing the experience of realism as authenticity
in the form of blurring the medium’s techniques and approach,
hypermediacy sets its sights on covering reality in the form of a
presentation of the same. Bolter and Grusin do not concern them‑
selves with the particular ›haptic‹ form of media reflection which
is the aim of this book. On the one hand, this is prioritised by the
surface of the canvas or screen rather than depth and can thus be
said to belong to hypermediacy, but on the other hand it invites the
audience to see as if with a gaze that is (all too) near‑sighted, which
rather borders on immediacy. The point, which will become clear
in the analysis of Trier’s production, is that electronic as well as
digital media often work with mixed forms between hypermediacy
and immediacy,14 which is why we need new analytical approaches.
The user’s sensory preparedness is, to a higher degree than pre‑
viously, involved in the visual process, by which it becomes more
difficult to differentiate between what is representation and what
is production. Consequently, the following analysis will include
haptic, affective and diagrammatic dimensions.
14 Though Bolter and Grusin are aware of this, they do not follow through the consequences of this
in the publication. Richard Grusin has later used the concept of affect in the book Premediation: Affect and
Mediality after 9/11 (2010).

CONTENTS
In my opinion, Trier works through the entirety of his pro‑
duction, but most clearly from the TV production Medea and
onwards, in an attempt to qualify the haptic field’s affective po‑
tentials in audio‑visual material, where classic film techniques
can be mixed with electronic and digital methods and techniques.
Medea and The Kingdom I and II in particular investigate how
electronic signal noise and the possibility to edit several recorded
tracks together in one image can give a special form of haptic
sensation. In The Idiots (1998), which as mentioned is shot with
digital video cameras, much work is done to underline the traces
of reality through the form of improvisation, continuous record‑
ing and the use of this on existing, real locations. But the filming
of, for example, sexual excitement and a random aeroplane pass‑
ing by, which we normally associate with indexical traces of real
phenomena,15 is here partly digitally recorded (with a possibility
for unseen post‑production) and thus the entire film is, in and
with the Dogme concept, framed like a staged experiment. In
Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), some
use is made of haptic close‑ups and the creation of extended or
virtual landscape spaces and musical spaces, which remediate
the digital real‑time control. In The Five Obstructions (2003)
with Jørgen Leth, experiments are carried out with classic forms
of filmic editing, sampling techniques and documentary forms
of reality traces. In Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005), the
new hypermediated forms of control, which are recognisable
from computer games, are clearly commented on, in that nar‑
rative forms of literature, film and the Verfremdung techniques
of the cinema are remediated, and substantiate the more or less
allegorical representations. Here classic haptic descriptions of
skin without make‑up are mixed with digitally overlaid images
(of Grace and apples in the frame of the truck), and the 3D effect
of the barking dog, Moses, gains a shock effect when it suddenly
materialises from its sketched 2D existence. In The Boss of it All
(2006), a hypermediated, digitalised image capture technique be‑
comes a very visible part of an otherwise absurdly mundane, eve‑
ryday representation. In Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011),
15 For a closer analysis of this cf. Jerslev 2002.
introduction 21

CONTENTS
digital forms of special effects are integrated in both an acoustic
as well as a figurative level in ways that renew, and in which the
compositional, as a symbolic layer, leads to a classic‑filmic form of
representation. In Nymphomaniac (2013) the digitally modulated
symbolic form is toned down. In addition, an obvious diagram‑
matical level in the narrative makes it possible for the viewer to
follow how Trier’s accentuation of common human conditions can
undermine classic, voyeuristic forms of desire. With this blending
of indexical, iconic and diagrammatical signs, which elegantly
overcome analogue and digital variations in perception, Trier
creates narratives that depict inner states affectively in a motivic
and stylistic manner, and in ways never before seen. Deleuze and
Guattari’s conditions of the non‑dichotomous exchanges between
rhizome and the tree structure, the smooth and the striated, the
refrain’s de‑ and re‑territorialization and the diagram’s modulat‑
ing interaction are thus important theoretical inspirations for the
book’s analyses.
Based on the inspiration Trier finds in Dreyer’s composi‑
tion of images, Alois Riegl’s description of »haptic« visuality and
Deleuze’s philosophical rethinking of the term will create the
backdrop for a close analysis of how haptic gestalts of colour and
spatiality noticeably break with the more traditional optic ways in
which filmic narratives are organised. It is the thesis that Trier’s
experiments with clarifying the haptic composition in diverse
audio‑visual media formats (the analogue film in dialogue with
electronic and digital forms) make it possible to describe non‑
representational forms of affect, in that filmic narratives are seen
as – or actualise – events. The book aims to give a space for re‑
flection to the sensorial forms of perception, which the films call
for, and also attempts to accommodate Trier’s own formulation
(in the introductory quotation) on what happens if the analysis
also takes account of the style being laid over the narrated story
as a filter. When the style is so convincingly carried through, the
aim of the analysis must primarily be shifted to the question of
what Trier’s film does, and not be content – as has often been
the case in analyses of Trier’s film – with discussing the political
standpoint or ethical assertions in the represented content, the
story.

CONTENTS
Although Trier subscribes to the traditions of filmic realism
and documentary, and in The Idiots positions himself close to
forms of documentary representation (so‑called indexical, docu‑
mentable ›reality‹), the production of affect in viewers, in this film
in particular, is contingent on the advanced projected position of
the hand‑held camera in creating forms of affect on the level of
perception. Consequently, it is a hypermediated practice which,
for example, intensifies the viewer’s experience of actual dizziness
or nausea. The hand‑held camera disturbs the viewer’s access to
fabula, but in contrast makes one aware of the screen as a haptic
surface that seemingly intensifies the actors‹ improvisation. The
camera does not merely cover an indexical, recordable reality,
but participates in the production of it. This propagates itself to
the viewer’s bodily, immediate affect experience of perceptive
intensity, which as a result includes mediation. Furthermore, the
digital film’s pixelated, haptic materiality is rendered visible in the
intermediate transfer from DV to the 35mm Academy screen‑
ing format, as discussed by C. Claire Thomson with reference
to Anthony Dod Mantle’s ›breaking down‹ of the normal high
resolution film image, which is capable of »intensifying the video
noise to an interesting aesthetic dimension« (Thomson 2013a,
119). According to Thomson, the grainy images (porridgy im‑
ages) of this media transfer, after and including Medea, become
to a large extent part of the viewer’s perception and affective
sense perception (Thomson, op.cit., 20). This merging of the
film’s haptic level and the viewer’s corporeal reality therefore,
evidently, cannot be ascribed to in analyses of the film’s themes
and style. This renewing term causes realism to ›happen‹ on the
level of intensity which belongs to the sense perception itself, in
that it emphasises that visual sense perception cannot be limited
merely to the sense perception of the eyes and the decoding of
the brain. This type of realism involves the entire body.
My analysis does not follow on immediately from Bolter and
Grusin’s general observation that »immediacy implies hyperme‑
diacy« (cf. Bolter og Grusin, 118‑19), as my interest goes beyond
the effect created by the context of the medium. In my opinion,
Trier uses the haptic image plane (cf. Riegl) as an invitation to the
viewer to ›feel with the eyes‹, in line with the practice of hyperme‑
introduction 23

CONTENTS
diation which he developed in the Europa trilogy. So although The
Idiots, for example, subscribes to aesthetics for the depiction of
immediacy established in the tradition of 20th century realism and
documentary, in Trier they clearly function as signs of hyperme‑
diacy. He emphasises the immediacy aspect, so it is clear that the
signs can function stylistically detached from their original func‑
tion (to disguise the medium). As a consequence, the haptic surface
of the TV or cinema screen becomes somewhat emphasised. The
medium’s materiality is rendered visible in this way. When the
surface becomes central to the perception, the viewer gains access
to the film’s self‑reflecting, hypermediated meta‑level, but at the
same time the screen image is so saturated with material informa‑
tion (unsteadiness, blurring, pixelation, graininess, noise, and so
on) that it creates physical‑affective repercussions of immediacy.
In Trier’s film the distinction between immediacy and hyperme‑
diacy becomes almost unusable, in that the haptic image and sound
spaces, which create direct consequences of affect, come to include
both in themselves. The haptic field extends even further in the
films from 2000 and onwards, in and with the digital possibilities
with which to create new types of fusions and combinations of im‑
ages and sound. With this extension, which affectively includes the
viewer in the production and interpretation of the haptic field, it
becomes possible to (re)think the filmic experience in the cinema
as an interface which implicates the audience collectively. In the
previous decade, Trier’s films can be described as allegorical or
philosophical test pieces, which only to a lesser degree accentuate
the confrontation with or remediation of classic film forms and
film genres, but which in turn establish a wealth of different, af‑
fectively involving types of interfaces, where classic subject‑object
relations are undermined.16
16 Trier’s stylistically experimental film in this way contested the validity of the classic interpretation
of film, which most often takes its starting point in the story’s representational level. For the analysis of the
creative potentials of the event for the exchange of actualisation, I could have chosen to use the term ›im‑
mediation‹ in my analysis, which is developed by Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Alanna Thain, Christoph
Brunner, Anna Munster, and others. The term indicates the moment in a perceptive event, for example,
where a relational exchange displaces the division between subject and object that benefits creative action.
It belongs to the definition of the term that all media takes part in the creation of events, but immediation
might as well occur unmediated. I have not made use of the term, however, as the majority of the book was
written before I participated in Erin Manning’s international research project »Immediations: Art, Media,
Event« (2013‑2020).

CONTENTS
When Trier, along with other artists in the 1990s, makes real‑
ism haptic in this perspective, there is no radical split from the
quotation‑minded hypermediation that the Europa Trilogy films,
in the first postmodernistic phase, abounded in.17 As a continua‑
tion of the mythologising of Trier in the 1980s as an ironic master
of concealment, one ought to understand the interplay with the
diary form as a backstage performance (following on from The
Idiots), and the ambiguous settings as deranged or works of genius
respectively (following on from Antichrist), or as fascist or not
(following on from Melancholia), or as more or less well‑executed
performative gestures in the public (media) space. It is not my
intention here to look closer at uncovering how the formal mix‑
ing of diverse traditions of immediacy and hypermediacy, as well
as the performative, so‑called »fictional‑biographic« gestures,
contribute to Trier’s constant renewal of the film medium.18
It is especially the relatively obscure haptic image composi‑
tion of the twentieth century, where materiality on the surface
of the screen makes it possible for the film medium to commu‑
nicate affectively with its audience, which will be the recurrent
element throughout the book. Though Walter Benjamin as early
as 1936 (Benjamin [1936] 2005) analysed the tactile qualities
of the film medium using Alois Riegl’s analysis of the tactile/
haptic as a background, and despite Carl Theodor Dreyer with
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) creating a sustained haptic film
for a large cinema audience (Thomsen 2006),19 haptic forms of
image composition were quite uncommon before the electronic
video experiments in the 1960s placed the focus on the signal as
a performative now (Thomsen 2012a). It is to Jean‑Luc Godard’s
credit, amongst others, that the video medium signal has been
introduced aesthetically in a qualitative interplay with the medium
of film. It is to Trier’s credit that he accentuates the haptic ele‑
17 To these belong The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991).
18 cf. Louise Brix Jacobsen, who uses the TV series Klovn (2005‑) and the film Klovn: The Movie
(2010) as examples (Jacobsen 2008). I will use the terms immediacy and hypermediacy where evident, but
my reading is, as mentioned, oriented on how Trier’s production transgresses the classic representational
level of the TV and cinema screen – and implicates the viewer.
19 On the contrary, a large amount of experiments with haptic art film and video are to be found. Here
Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage should be mentioned. In the longer film format, Jytte Rex was also an in‑
novator. Lars von Trier has himself named her films as an inspiration (Michelsen and Piil 2004).
introduction 25

CONTENTS
ment with the integration of video noise in the film medium,20
in which the experience of ›reality‹ increases. Furthermore, he
utilises the affective potential of the haptic level to its full in link‑
ing with digital compositions.21
In reality, Trier’s media‑reflective artistic practice lies in a clear
continuation of Walter Benjamin’s enumeration on the potentials
of the film medium in a culturally industrial era, where art is no
longer part of a cultic relation. In »The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction« Benjamin maintains that the medium
of film (in light of, amongst others, Dziga Vertov’s and Dadaism’s
avant‑gardist manifestations), with its direct tactile qualities, has
the possibility to create culturally up‑to‑date forms of reflec‑
tion for the new mass audience (Benjamin [1936] 2005). Trier’s
productions are avant‑gardist in Benjamin’s sense of the word,
in that he is the leading light of the shock effect of tactility in the
twenty‑first century. He is aware of the French avant‑garde of the
1960s and ›70s, which for its part remediated the film medium
in relation to the electronic TV medium and the new consumer
culture and pop culture. In continuation of this tradition, Trier
remediates film in relation to the real‑time interfaces and game‑
performances of digital media. He contributes, though, more with
a productive than an aesthetic perception, and ›reclamation‹ of
the field, in that he, as Benjamin, is interested in the tactile and
affective involvement of the viewer. As this book aims to explain
how haptic images and affective events are composed and work,
the analysis will primarily be concerned with Trier’s productions
The Kingdom I and II and onwards; although my readings of
these will take as their starting point an analytical exposé of the
Europa trilogy, The Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa, as
well as Medea.
My readings of Trier’s films will eventually conclude in some
definitions – as a supplement to Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of
filmic moving images and time images – of what one could call
20 Cf. introductory citation, where Trier discusses Breaking the Waves: video noise is integrated as an
important, stylistic element (Björkman 1999, 166). The citation also forms part of my analysis of the film.
21 Cf. as mentioned in Dogville, where the dog Moses, which only exists as a 2D outline, later becomes
a ›real‹ 3D dog creating affect, and barking with froth in its mouth.

CONTENTS
affect images.22 In Trier’s case these lead to the eye’s sensing in
the direction of non‑representational tracks, delineations and
diagrams in the filmic, signaletic material. It is in this connection
that Trier’s dialogical remediation of earlier haptic‑oriented film‑
makers such as Dreyer and Tarkovsky can provide an analytical
counter, in that the works, right down to the last detail, demon‑
strate an overall reflection of the status of the current film image.
In the following, I will argue that this signature, amongst others,
contains a critique of the current visual media, diverse joysticks,
controllers and 3D glasses, collectively called »haptic technology«,
in that they allow the viewer to obtain (renewed) immediate close
contact with the screen’s representations. Trier’s films are haptic
in the Deleuzian development of the term, referring to aesthetic
composition and perception. They do not, however, remain for‑
mally reflexive towards material and media, in that they – viewed
over a thirty‑year period – are capable of creating an aesthetic
breakthrough to affective, physical forms of sensation, which raise
awareness of the body being an important part of the interface.
Trier’s films, as with Dreyer’s, praise the newly diversifying
possibilities of abstraction in visual composition (cf. the book’s
introductory citation, Dreyer 1959, 91), and it is surely not with‑
out reason that one of the films he made in film school is entitled
Nocturne (1980), as Dreyer had on several occasions expressed
great admiration for the American painter James Whistler (1834‑
1903), who together with the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøj
(1864‑1916) had inspired Dreyer’s style of images in The President
(1919).23 Whistler was, amongst other things, known for his series
of nocturnal paintings of landscapes in mist and fog, which, not
dissimilar to J. M. W. Turner’s (1775‑1851) paintings, potentiated
22 It is furthermore interesting in Deleuze’s description of Robert Bresson’s films as haptic that the
diagrammatic level also almost unfolds as he uses examples of the work of the hands in Pickpocket where
the optic and audio sign underlines the hands‹ haptic connection to the space: »The hand doubles its pre‑
hensile function (of object) by a connective function (of space); but from that moment, it is the whole eye
which doubles its optical function by a specifically ›grabbing‹ [haptique] one, if we follow Riegl’s formula
for indicating a touching which is specific to the gaze« (Deleuze [1985] 1989, 13). See also Deleuze 2006,
315 together with the video from Deleuze’s lecture from 1987 on film and its creative action: http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=7DskjRer95s. (Last viewed 13 February 2015).
23 Cf. Jørgen Roos‹ documentary film Carl Th. Dreyer, 1966. cf. also Anne‑Birgitte Fonsmark (ed.):
Hammershøi > Dreyer: Billedmagi. Ordrupgaard Museum (2006), which contains several articles on the
influence of Hammershøi on Dreyer.
introduction 27

CONTENTS
the affective intensities in the surface of the canvas. However, one
should make no mistake: Trier uses the haptic image style in a
far more confrontational manner than Dreyer did. In this way, a
very detailed copy of the glass door with bordered window panes,
which had a central placement in Dreyer’s The President, is, in
Trier’s Nocturne, perforated and destroyed as early as the opening
scene, when a person (reportedly Trier himself)24 casts himself
through the pane from outside and directly into the audience’s
field of vision.
The book aims to research in describing how Trier’s work
with haptic images and their potential for affective involvement
is developed further to also include diagrammatical components,
whose effects reach beyond the iconic, indexical and symbolic
sign categories in which we usually think when concerned with
filmic representation. The book’s thesis is that Trier in this way
manages to stretch out the film medium’s field to enable it to also
reflect and include an interfacial folding between viewing and be‑
ing emotionally touched; consequently, the affective involvement
in Trier’s films also comes to include that seeing always implies
being seen.
24 According to Nils Thorsen’s interview with Peter Aalbæk Jensen (Thorsen 2010, 196).

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
The theoretical landscape
In the introductory chapter to The New Media Reader, Lev

Manovich cites relatively succinct real‑time network commu‑
nication and real‑time control as »qualitative new phenomena«
(Manovich 2003, 22). He continues: when »a computer interprets
or synthesizes human speech in real time, monitors sensors and
modifies programs based on their input in real‑time, or controls
other devices again in real‑time« (Manovich op. cit.), we are met
with more than a speedy calculator that remediates other media.
According to Manovich, it is on the basis of software’s real‑time
control on mobile phones, on the Internet and in global news
media, operative equipment and industrial technology – and not
the digital as such – that discussing of new global media makes
sense (Manovich 2013, 149). Though he concludes that »media
becomes software«, he does retain the term ›new media‹, as this
construction refers to software‑based media characterised by a
»permanent possibility of expansion« (Manovich 2013, 156).
Manovich maintains that the remediation of already existing
content, styles and practices, by electronic and digital technolo‑
gies, ought to be recognised as an important precondition for
terms such as ›the postmodern‹ and ›postmodernism‹ in the 1980s
(Manovich 2003, 23). It is the software engineer or the com‑
puter nerd who facilitates the recycling of the aesthetic of previ‑
ous cultures, art forms and media, as they are made part of the
computer’s archive. The computer and its possibilities are rightly
enough not included in descriptions of the postmodern, though
a number of Jean Baudrillard’s characteristics of the simulacral
and of the simulation of reality in media in fact contemplate an
the theoretical landscape 29

CONTENTS
aesthetic media reflection of this type.25 The cybernetic real‑time
control that first broke through globally with the Internet and
e‑mail in 199626 has not become related to the concept of the
postmodern, which in the meantime has almost slipped out of
use. In addition, throughout the 1990s there was a move away
from the fascination with simulacral figures of metafiction, the
labyrinth and the mirror, to new forms of realism demonstrating
a certain affinity to the new forms of real‑time communication.
In The Return of the Real (Foster 1996), Hal Foster registers
a shift in postmodernist art forms in the direction of traumatic
repetition. He writes that the postmodernists of the 1990s »want
to possess the real thing«, in contrast to the first celebration of the
liberated sign (Foster, 165). The Danish research project »Real‑
ity, Realism, the Real in Visual Perspective« (1999‑2002) was
also concerned with this turn towards »the Real« and found in
its analysis that it was the sensation rather than the representa‑
tion of something real that was indicative of 1990s realism in
art performances, documentary and reality formats in TV and
film, the snapshot aesthetic in photography, the short story in
literature and so on. In 2002, in the anthology Virkelighedshunger
– nyrealismen i visuel optik, this new form of realism was named
»performative realism« (Knudsen and Thomsen, 10). Thus it is a
»concept of ›reality‹ that is being worked on, which cannot stand
unproblematically in contrast to a concept of ›fiction‹ or a con‑
cept of ›simulation‹ (Knudsen and Thomsen, 7). In other words,
with the new real‑time media and tools there is a view that the
sense perception of »reality« now also includes the sensation of
the electronic and digital operation with which this reality can be
described or captured (Thomsen 2002, 121f.).
With current real‑time interfaces and Web 2.0, everyone must
acknowledge software as a prerequisite for both postmodernism
and, for example, the relational aesthetic (cf. Andersen and Pold,
25 Several classic theories of the postmodern, such as those of Linda Hutcheon, Fredric Jameson and
Jan Kjærstad, however, see computer network logic as the successor to the postmodern.
26 As early as the 1980s, the Internet was used in American research, which Denmark, amongst others,
became connected to in 1988; but it was with the commercialisation and development of the user interface
www in 1993 that the Internet made its breakthrough (Den Store Danske: Internet reference. Last viewed
2 March 2015).

CONTENTS
2015). Real‑time media in the global information society creates
new forms of immediacy, which sit somewhat removed from
the previous (one‑way communicative) understanding of media,
where information was facilitated by a medium. With the new
media we experience »the process of passing through a medium«
(Tomlinson, 154), in that the spatial extension of the human
senses now encompasses sight, hearing, movement and touch in
a real‑time interface, breaking with the representational surfaces
of earlier media in the form of canvas, paper and screen. This
does not mean that we have reached a state that is prior to or
beyond the sign; rather, the »signaletic material’s« noise,27 which
is also valid in the real‑time processes of the digital code, can be
heard and seen as an extra layer in the interface. The real‑time
interface’s signal noise is thus an integrated part of the commu‑
nication, which cannot be separated from its material form. The
sign is overlaid with a new, mediated or ›signaletic‹ meaning;
Norbert Wiener was already aware of this when he wrote that
»the signal, where the message is sent, plays an equally important
role as the signal, where the message is not sent« (cf. Paik 2003).
If one substitutes ›medium‹ with ›signal‹ in Marshall McLuhan’s
dictum »the medium is the message«, the statement becomes
immediately understandable (McLuhan 1964). With new forms
of software control and interfaces, a distinction between send‑
er and receiver becomes obsolete, because the intensity of the
events and immediacy come to the fore.28
In Matter and Memory ([1886] 2004), Henri Bergson had al‑
ready described the body as a »section of the universal becoming«,
as the »place of passage of the movements received and thrown
back, a hyphen, a connecting link between the things which act
27 The term »signaletic material« is advanced by Gilles Deleuze in cinema 2: The Time Image (19839),
and it has been applied in a number of current analyses in a specific cluster of articles, From Sign to Signal,
in Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol. 4, 2012.
28 Cf. Christopher Brunner and Troy Rhodes‹ introduction to Inflexions, no. 4, 2010, where it is stated
(as with Guattari 1995, 30) that transverse (transmodal) processes are more than merely communicative –
they have the character of expressive intensities. The writers continue: »Here we see a shift from the com‑
municative binary of signal/noise, sender/receiver or message/content towards a more existential assem‑
blage, that of expression. […] Content and expression are as consubstantial as signal and noise. When an
expression contracts into potential content, such content functions as shadow‑images for the field through
which a new experience emerges by dint of another expression. What happens in these content‑expres‑
sion‑contractions is the emergence of the transversal forces of a field of experience that becomes malleable«
(Brunner and Rhodes 2010).

CONTENTS
upon me and the things upon which I act, – the seat, in a word,
of the sensori‑motor phenomena« (Bergson 2004, 196; author’s
italics). Similarly, in the current culture we can regard both the
mediated and the non‑mediated corporeal sensation as an inter‑
face, where outer and inner cannot be distinguished, and where
the body, in extension of Bergson and later Gilles Deleuze, is
seen as itself an image and thus taking part in the images that are
perceived; »and this is why it is a chimerical enterprise to seek
to localize past or even present perceptions in the brain: they are
not in it: it is the brain that is in them« (Bergson ibid.).
In the global village realised through the Internet and real‑time
transmission, à la McLuhan, previous representations of time and
space, where time was measured in relation to the movement of
the body in a Euclidean space, must also see themselves partially
replaced by, for example, Bernhard Riemann’s descriptions of
space, in which work is done with localised differences in angles,
curves, surfaces and volumes. In Deleuze and Guattari’s inter‑
pretation of the Riemannian space, it is a matter of:
a continuous variation that exceeds any distribution of constants and

variables, the freeing of a line that does not pass between two points,
the formations of a plane that does not proceed by parallel and perpen‑
dicular lines. (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2013, 567‑568)
What we are concerned with here is a spatial method of ori‑

entation, which relates itself not to a constant, but to localised
differences and variations, and which takes one step at a time.
Each step, each connection, creates a new space, new possibilities,
which are consistent with the way in which an artist, a composer
or a writer has to work – on a level with the material’s unfold‑
ing at close range and with responsiveness to detail and short‑
term memory (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 572). Deleuze and
Guattari operate here in continuation of, amongst others, Henri
Bergson’s concept of qualitative time or variation (durée), which
is described thus:
The change is everywhere, but inward; we localize it here and there,

but outwardly; and thus we constitute bodies which are both stable as

CONTENTS
to their qualities and mobile as to their positions, a mere change of
place summing up in itself, to our eyes, the universal transformation.
(Bergson 2004, 277)
And just as the image formation of time’s pure form in the film
medium can render the categorisation in past, present and future
superfluous, the electronic signal and digital media can priori‑
tise variability and modulation over the perception of time and
space, which since the proliferation of the art of publishing has
been prevalent for narratives.29 While the linguistic sign and the
classical narrative support a linear thought process, where cause
and effect are developed in relation to the verb’s past, present
and future inflections and in relation to a represented space, the
electronic and digital signal can never take the form of an object.
Manovich wrote about this in 2001:
In retrospect, the shift from a material object to a signal accomplished

by electronic technologies represents a fundamental conceptual step
towards computer media. In contrast to a permanent imprint in some
material, a signal can be modified in real time by passing it through
a filter or filters. Moreover, in contrast to manual modifications of a
material object, an electronic filter can modify the signal all at once.
Finally, and most important, all machines for electronic media synthe‑
sis, recording, transmission, and reception include controls for signal
modification. As a result, an electronic signal does not have a singular
identity – a particular state qualitatively different from all other possible
states. (Manovich 2001, 132)
With the increasing dominance of electronic and digital signals

and the still greater functions with which it is possible to change
and adjust input, classic modes of the representation of time and
space in the fictions of literature, theatre and film are undergo‑
ing rapid change. Today one sees more and more of the classic
art forms resemble or remediate the operations of new media. An
29 Olafur Eliasson is a good example of a contemporary artist who, in keeping with Bergson’s philos‑
ophy, works with changeable markers of space and time in relation to the movement of the body. This is
studied in the article »The Body as ›The Place of a Passage‹: On the Spatial Construction of Time in Olafur
Eliasson’s Installations« (Jørgensen and Thomsen 2011).

CONTENTS
early example of a remediation of computer real‑time transmis‑
sion in TV and film formats was the four Dogme brothers‹ (Lars
von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh Jacobsen and Kris‑
tian Levring) so‑called ›Millennium Project‹, D-day, which took
place in Denmark on the first day of the year 2000. Here, four tel‑
evision channels simultaneously transmitted four films (one from
each of the four directors), which were filmed within the same
period of time and immediately before their broadcast. The four
directors edited each of their films simultaneously, each of which
followed one of four actors, and in this way it was possible for the
film viewer with his/her remote control to create an individual plot
by zapping/editing between the four films, as if they were part of
a computer game. The various broadcasts could be viewed on a
four‑way split screen.30
The D-day experiment, the Dogme 95 manifesto and the films
which were made following these inspired Lev Manovich in 2003
to the following comment:
Rather than treating live action as a raw material to be later re‑arranged

in post‑production, these filmmakers placed premier importance on
the authenticity of the actors‹ performances. DV equipment is small
enough to allow a filmmaker to literally be inside the action as it unfolds.
(Manovich 2003, 19)
The most important thing with this strategy, which as mentioned

has European forerunners in the new wave films and video ex‑
periments of the 1960s and ’70s, is, as Manovich also notes, the
preoccupation with creating images of reality as immediacy (op.
cit., 20). This endeavour includes the lightweight camera as an
30 Another version of the same principle is played out in the performance Super Night Shot by the
group Gob Squad, which has been produced since 2003, and has been shown 200 times, in four languages,
over six continents. In this piece all the raw material is filmed in the city in which the group is performing,
immediately before the audience arrives at the theatre. Arriving at the performance with their equipment,
the four who record and appear in the film are greeted by the audience, which is instructed to do so. This
greeting is filmed and makes up the closing sequence in the performance that is anchored in reality, where
the four different recordings of the local area are simultaneously edited and shown on four screens. It is this
real‑time editing and projection of the four film tracks that makes up the performance. The actors/camera‑
men/editors do not appear on stage in person until the finale, where they bow and produce a ›living‹ token
from the film in the form of a local participant, who has incidentally become involved in the documenting
of the place. https://www.gobsquad.com/projects/super‑night‑shot (last viewed 13 February 2015).

CONTENTS
important tool, in that it is not until the electronic signal that the
particular ›live‹ character can be sensed directly as the signal’s
»noise« or »snow« (cf. Thomsen 2010). The sensation of this vis‑
ible »signaletic material«, which TV and video film represents,
can, with regard to interaction, come extremely close to a real
face‑to‑face communication (cf. Tomlinson 1999). The signal
creates involvement and affective intensity. Later the effect of
immediacy, which photography and, in part, film previously stood
for, is replaced by the Internet user’s tactile possibilities to achieve
real‑time control through diverse interfaces as in, for example, a
community of MMORPG gamers. Today, the truth no longer re‑
sides (merely) in the medium’s indexical level in the form of a light
trace on the negative.31 The experience of truth instead appears
rather as an effect of intimacy or intensity, created in the user, in
and with the now of the real‑time signal, which simultaneously
connects separate spaces and places because the reproduction
time is minimised (Jerslev, 16). The challenge for contemporary
artists is to produce something that can both relate to the signal‑
etic material’s (electronic or digital) character of live-ness and at
the same time create works with a longer lifespan.
The intention of this book is to describe Lars von Trier’s aes‑
thetic remediation of film in view of the real‑time control and in‑
terfaces of electronic media and new software systems, to create an
affective and haptic extended sense which goes beyond what can
be understood by a representative horizon. Deleuze’s concept of
signaletic material makes it possible to wrench film and electronic
video forms free of narratology (Deleuze 1989), in order to philo‑
sophically explore the capacities of film’s aesthetic‑stylistic fea‑
tures. The following study will show how Trier manages to break
with classic filmic narratives by entering into an aesthetic dialogue
with electronic and digital forms of noise and affective interfaces.
Jan Simons has previously used the term »interfaces« when
discussing Trier’s film, and in the book Playing the Waves. Lars
von Trier’s Game Cinema he uses the term »virtual realism«
31 That the photographic (and filmic) medium’s indexical substance of truth has, however, been just as
much a myth as reality, is thoroughly analysed by Lars Kiel Bertelsen in Fotografiets grå mytologi (Bertelsen
2000).

CONTENTS
(Simons, 142) to describe Trier’s film style. Simons understands
Trier’s films as interfaces, because they do not give access to
representations of anything real or to reflections of the same. He
underlines how simulated situations and given conditions and
events are utilised, and a virtual space is consequently created:
Because this redefines actual reality as the contingent actualisation

of this virtuality, film, as the objective registration of profilmic events
(in this instance, the simulation of a situation), is ideally suited to this
portal and interface function. (Simons, 149)
This distribution between time and space, which the filmic rep‑
resentation traditionally carries out, changes accordingly through
the strategies of simulation and sampling that Simons enumerates
in Trier. Despite his clear description of the virtual as a dimen‑
sion that is inextricably linked to actual reality and, conversely,
as physical reality that actualises something virtual (op. cit., 147),
in Simons‹ description of Trier’s particular film style, I miss the
philosophical reflection on how the films create interfaces in rela‑
tion to aesthetics or events. I will endeavour to make amends for
this lack in the following film analyses of a philosophical‑stylistic
nature. I will especially draw on Gilles Deleuze’s development of
the concept with regard to the virtual in relation to the present,
and on his analyses together with Félix Guattari of affect in re‑
lation to the event. Furthermore, I will relate the haptic to the
time‑image and explore how the convention of creating compo‑
sitional »faciality« can be de‑territorialized,32 and how the refrain
can contribute to reterritorializations and deterritorializations
alike. Finally, I will address how filmic interfaces can create af‑
fective forms for encounters, by which spectators might notice
the actualisation of the virtual as qualitative events through for
example diagrammatic descriptions.
32 In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari use the term ›faciality‹ (visagéité) in relation to the
preference in Western and Christian image traditions for divisions of foreground and background, based
on facial structure, which are also expressed in landscape paintings.

CONTENTS
The »signaletic material« of film
Sensing transformation as movement and time respectively is,

according to Deleuze, produced in the film medium thus: 1) as
movement‑image, where the protagonist’s actions are followed
in represented time and space; and 2) as descriptions of pure or
qualitative time, neither needing to relate to chains of cause‑effect
(for example, situations that lead to actions) nor being anchored
in a represented space.
Where the action in the movement‑image is typically created
by the audience following the main protagonist’s aims and reac‑
tions in various situations and environments, the main character
in the time‑image is, so to speak, no longer in charge. The lead
characters are without aims and means, and the action leads no‑
where. David Lynch has specialised in depicting such aimless
existences, lost and unable to interpret the environments they
inhabit. The time‑image, which abandons the classic narrative’s
drive, in fact makes it possible for the viewer to see and speculate
on the film’s image and sound compositions. With the time‑image
the film’s action takes a back seat in order for the images and
compositions – which are remembered as for example crystal‑
lisations of mood or thought – to become prominent.
The first film type was described by Deleuze in Cinema 1: The
Movement-Image (Deleuze [1983] 1986) and the latter, which
manifested itself from the 1940s and onwards, in Cinema 2:
The Time-Image (Deleuze [1985] 1989). Though the automatic
movement‑image of film makes it possible for the medium to
escape the corporeal binding of what is understood as movement,
even the time‑image could not escape the film medium’s specific
characteristic: to be preserved (canned) information when first it
is recorded (Ryan, 21). This does not apply to the electronic and
digital variants, such as TV, video and information technology,
which are treated individually and positively in the final part of
Cinema 2: The Time-Image. But as early as chapter two of this
book, Deleuze proposes calling film’s basic material its »signaletic
material« [matière signalétique] (Deleuze 1989, 29). This term is
clearly created as an alternative description of the potentials of
film, in direct opposition to the narratology and linguistic para‑
digms of the sign, which the semiologist Christian Metz never

CONTENTS
succeeded in applying to the film medium. Inspired by Bergson’s
term on duration (durée), movement is qualified. Deleuze writes:
These components of the movement‑image, from the dual point of

view of specification and differentiation, constitute a signaletic material
which includes all kinds of modulation features, sensory (visual and
sound), kinetic, intensive, affective, rhythmic, tonal, and even verbal
(oral and written). […] But even with its verbal elements, this is neither a
language system nor a language. It is a plastic mass, an a‑signifying and
a‑syntaxic material, a material not formed linguistically even though it
is not amorphous and is formed semiotically, aesthetically and prag‑
matically. It is a condition, anterior by right to what it conditions. It
is not an enunciation, and these are not utterances. It is an utterable.
(Deleuze 1989, 29; author’s italics)
The compositional utterable of filmic signaletic material is not

like the linguistic utterance which is conditional on the language
system. It is created in and with the movement of images. In the
conclusion of Cinema 2: The Time-Image Deleuze takes up these
considerations in relation to the mechanical aspect of the film
medium, in Jean‑Louis Schefer’s words »spiritual automata«, and
he expresses them positively in reference to electronic and digital
media, since the film’s »automata of movement made way for a
new computer and cybernetic race, automata of computation and
thought, automata with controls and feedback« (Deleuze 1989,
264‑265). He notices that power is diluted in the new informa‑
tion network, though he is not oblivious to instrumental forms of
surveillance, which it also accommodates. Deleuze is aware that
the new types of electronic automata change both the content and
form in film, as well as other image types; but expectations about
narrative and representation are also altered. The description of
these electronic media develops to become almost a vision of how
film’s signaletic material manifests itself in the new types of image:
They are the object of a perpetual reorganization, in which a new image

can arise from any point whatever of the preceding image. The organi‑
zation of space here loses its privileged directions, and first of all the
privilege of the vertical which the position of the screen still displays, in

CONTENTS
favour of an omni‑directional space which constantly varies its angles
and co‑ordinates, to exchange the vertical and the horizontal. And the
screen itself, even if it keeps a vertical position by convention, no longer
seems to refer to the human posture, like a window or a painting, but
rather constitutes a table of information, an opaque surface on which
are inscribed ›data‹, information replacing nature and the brain‑city,
the third eye, replacing the eyes of nature. (op. cit., 265)
The image signal, just like the sound signal, affects the nervous
system directly, and the classic models of mimetic representa‑
tion in art are replaced by the conjugation »brain‑information,
brain‑city« (op. cit., 267). This clearly builds further on Walter
Benjamin’s positive evaluation of the mechanical and automatic
aspects of the film camera in the large cities of mass society (Ben‑
jamin [1936] 2005). In a similar manner, Deleuze describes the
electronic and digital image processes as a break, but also as an
understanding of the time‑image sign:
when the frame or the screen functions as instrument panel, printing

or computing table, the image is constantly being cut into another im‑
age, being printed through a visible mesh, sliding over other images
in an ›incessant stream of messages‹, and the shot itself is less like an
eye than an overloaded brain endlessly absorbing information […].
(Deleuze 1989, 267)
This description closely resembles Lev Manovich’s opinion of

screen media, whose »sequential scanning – circular in the case
of radar, horizontal in the medium of TV« never gives us a si‑
multaneous representation (an image) but only »lines [tracks] on
a surface«, and therefore, he concludes, the traditional image »no
longer exists« (Manovich 2001, 100).
Haptic surfaces and affective effects
Deleuze, in other words, replaces the image as a sign with the

»signaletic material« that is valid for film and electronic and digi‑
tal media, which in 1985, when Cinema 2: The Time-Image was
published in France, was still in its infancy. In continuation of

CONTENTS
this, the analyses in the book will consider the medium of film
as a signaletic material, which with regard to image autopoiesis,
of first movement and later time, makes it possible to release it
from both narratological and semiotic forms of representational
analysis. In electronic and digital media the noise of the signal
further becomes a visible and audible part of the utterance.
The signal is present in every screen surface as electronic
lines, points and pixels, which overall can be designated as »hap‑
tic« surfaces or spaces. With this description, based on Alois
Riegl’s Late Roman Art Industry (Riegl [1902] 1985), Deleuze
has, through his work, created an effective analytical differen‑
tiation between optical or striated space and haptic or smooth
space.33 In the second edition of his book (1902), Alois Riegl
substitutes ›tactile‹ with ›haptic‹, which in Greek means to grasp
and to touch, in order to illustrate the ability of visual perceptions
to sense a kind of ›contact‹ through visual perception, which
can be experienced, for example, when one looks at patterns,
carvings, reliefs or ornaments, and details in woven materials
such as rugs and fabric. Riegl analysed this sensation of ›touching
with the eyes‹ in relation to the well‑known designation ›optic‹.
Optical ability is active when visual decoding is more oriented
towards lines and depth perspectives, while the haptic quality is
found, as a rule, in surfaces which are registered close up. Riegl
relates the haptic view to near‑sightedness and the optical view
to long‑sightedness.
The smooth space of the haptic view makes it possible to »ex‑
tract sensation from representation« (Rajchman 2000, 130) and
to create an experimental spatiality, where the appropriation of
the seen or sensed gives way to a concentration on the purely
material. The distinction between subject and object is thus mini‑
mised to the benefit of the plane of intensity, which contains both.
Deleuze’s »time‑image« corresponds to this in its extraction of
time as ›aion‹ or ›pure‹ temporal intensity from chronological
time, which is organised as movement‑images within a body‑
33 Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraktion und Einfühlung (1908) and Henri Maldiney’s Regard, parole, espace
(1973) also form the background for Deleuze and Guattari’s differentiation between the haptic or smooth
(le lisse) and the optical or striated (le strié) in A Thousand Plateaus.

CONTENTS
space relation (Thomsen 2001).34 Both ›time‑image and ›haptic
space‹ characterise the plane of intensity. But while the time‑
image attaches itself to a virtual plane, and cannot be exemplified
with a particular image, the haptic space is related to micro‑
sensory planes in the image, which either find themselves in the
marginal zone or disturb the decoding of what is seen.
The sensation of the time‑image’s virtual horizon occurs as a
singular passage, an event, which makes its generalisation impos‑
sible. In the event’s passage, something virtual can become actual
beyond the described sensorimotor bodies, which represent time
through actions in space. A thought can materialise in the encoun‑
ter with a composition and change the mode of sensation and in‑
terpretation. The intensification of a time‑image can in various
ways amplify (for example, in a crystalline relation between some‑
one’s look in the mirror and the mirror image) the filmic composi‑
tion plane’s blocks of sensation, composed by affects and percepts,
so that they can expand towards a virtual horizon. Percepts and
affects belong to the field of art and exist, so to speak, outside that
which can be described phenomenologically (as perceptions and
affections/emotions). They belong to the composition and are in‑
dependent of a perceiving subject (the artist included):
By means of the material, the aim of art is to wrest the percept from
perceptions of objects and the states of a perceiving subject, to wrest
the affect from affections as the transition from one state to another:
to extract a bloc of sensations, a pure being of sensations. (Deleuze
and Guattari [1991] 1994, 167)35
The haptic field or space can also be found in the composition,

but in a different way. The haptic can be visible in the favouring of
marginal parts of the image or in the inclusion of the noise that is
found in the material, signals or pixels of the film, video or digi‑
tal image. Deleuze himself names Robert Bresson’s favouring of
34 Moreover, it is natural to understand the splitting of Deleuze’s work on film into two books (Cinema
1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image) as being related to the concept of time as chronos
and aion respectively.
35 Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? contains many examples of how to understand percepts,
affects and concepts.

CONTENTS
the hands and their ›grabbings‹ as a manual‑haptic kind of touch
rather than the gaze in Pickpocket (1959) (Deleuze 1989, 13), but
one could also name, for example, David Lynch’s cultivation of the
screen’s partly‑darkened marginal zones in Lost Highway (1987).
In more recent film it is not uncommon to see scenes described
purely haptically, such as car windows reflecting the bright lights
of Tokyo City in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), or
the flickering strobe light which represents the profoundly deaf
girl’s experience of the discotheque in Alejando González Iñár‑
ritu’s Babel (2006). As with the time‑image, the sensation of the
composition plane intensifies, but in this instance percepts and
affects are intensified with the images‹ decay or materialisation
as noise, materiality, signals and pixelated algorithms. Both the
thought activation in the time‑image and the affective intensifi‑
cation in the haptic image must, in accordance with Deleuze, be
combined with an opening towards the virtual. In the example of
the hands‹ haptic‑manual fragmentation of a classic sensorimotor
image construction in Robert Bresson, which Deleuze notices,
the visual sense perception of the thief’s hands creates an alter‑
native spatiality, in that other kinds of relation, choice and con‑
nections are visualised, more so than if the face had been central
in the image (Deleuze ibid.). The question of choice is expanded
later in the book (Deleuze, op. cit. 176‑178), where Dreyer’s spir‑
itual automata, Rohmer’s marionettes and Bresson’s automatised
movements are dealt with collectively, as they all create openings
towards something virtual outside the world of fiction. For though
the sensorimotor film holds the interpretation open in and with the
movement, the time‑image opens towards that which lies outside
fiction, in that it is not the relation between the individual images,
but rather the intervening space between them which is empha‑
sised. Dreyer, Rohmer and Bresson snap back the sensorimotor
reference to film as a whole in favour of an opening towards the
virtual outside the framework of the individual film. In Bresson’s
case it is the hands showing an »atonal« (Deleuze op. cit., 183) hap‑
tic spatiality that links vision and touch in a kinaesthetic manner,
which opens towards the virtual.36
36 Laura U. Marks builds on Deleuze’s use of the term ›haptic‹, and in the books The Skin of the Film

CONTENTS
With Deleuze’s theory of the signaletic material of film and
electronic digital media – the analytic divisions between both
movement‑images and time‑images, and optical and haptic space
– a new starting point is created for the analysis of film, video
and digital audio‑visual forms. Applied to Lars von Trier’s film
we gain the possibility to lay bare the way intensities and power
emanate from the often haptically organised surfaces and space,
which in the form of time‑images, remediation and diagram‑
matical composition reflect on and create forms of audio‑visual
connections that activate the virtual.
The electronic image operates fundamentally within the
haptic or smooth space of the screen surface, where the signal
transforms endlessly, independent of classic forms of representa‑
tion – that is, time expressed as movement or space expressed
as an optical or striped depth, foundation or background. In A
Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari describe an abstract
haptic line thus:
a line that delimits nothing, that describes no contour, that no longer goes
from one point to another but instead passes between points, that is
always declining from the horizontal and the vertical and deviating from
the diagonal, that is constantly changing direction, a mutant line of this
kind that is without outside or inside, form or background, beginning
or end and that is as alive as a continuous variation – such a line is truly
an abstract line, and describes a smooth space. It is not inexpressive.
Yet it is true that it does not constitute a stable and symmetrical form
of expression grounded in a resonance of points and a conjunction of
lines. It is nevertheless accompanied by material traits of expression,
the effects of which multiply step by step. (Deleuze and Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus [1980] 2013, 578; author’s italics)
The signaletic material, which Trier presents in his films, has the
same quality as the abstract or haptic line. The haptic surfaces
in the film images, the electronic noise signals in video and the
(2000) and Touch (2002) shows how haptic compositions in film and video can communicate intimate sen‑
sory experiences in close up. Brian Massumi rather emphasises how the haptic (and the affect) kinaestheti‑
cally and virtually creates contact between experiences of sense perception (Massumi 2011, 71).

CONTENTS
algorithm’s fluctuating changing of the pixelation together make
the signaletic material momentarily visible in/as the image.37
It is in this connection that the concept of affect, as it occurs
at present within the analysis of art and culture as well as the
social field,38 also gains particular relevance. The modern forms
of catastrophe created by humans, such as climatic conditions
and global economic crises, whose political effects are again
intensified by the global real‑time media, are today reflected
artistically to a large extent. Trier’s films have from the beginning
(for example, in the Europa trilogy’s interest in hypnosis) been
concerned with how intensities and affects can shift from one
environment to another. In the following study of his films, I will
relate the analysis of the haptic image and sound levels to the
concept of affect, as it is presented by Deleuze, based on Baruch
de Spinoza’s definition in part three of the Ethics (1677). Spinoza
attaches the Latin word ›affectus‹ (erroneously translated into
Danish as emotion, følelse)39 to good or bad encounters with the
external modi of others: »By affect I understand affections of the
body by which the power of acting of the body itself is increased,
diminished, helped, or hindered, together with the ideas of these
affections« (Spinoza [1677] 2001, 98). Deleuze advances this
argument and writes that some modi are »good« and can create
compositions with the body, while other encounters are »bad«
and disintegrate it. The examples are food, illness, accidents or
other forms of physical encounter. He continues:
The passage to a greater perfection, or the increase of the power of

acting, is called an affect, or feeling, of joy; the passage to a lesser per‑
fection or the diminution of the power of acting is called sadness. Thus
the power of acting varies according to external causes for the same
capacity for being affected. […] Even though our power of acting has
37 Cf. Anna Munster 2014.

38 Cf. Massumi (2002), Clough (2007), Gregg and Seigworth (2010) and Peripeti 17 (2012).
39 Spinoza differentiates between ›affectio‹ and ›affectus‹. In Danish the equivalent would be affection
(devotion or tenderness) and affect (influence). Where affectio is experienced in the encounter with other
bodies as devotion or the opposite, affectus characterises the variable influence itself, which increases or
reduces the ability to act. We have affect in common with animals, and in that relation affect is pre‑indi‑
vidual, but different cultures or groups can develop different reactions to affect. The term ›affect‹ captures
fundamentally the ability to live in variable surroundings and to react, so that life skills are strengthened (or
weakened), and this can neither be captured in concepts nor represented by objects in the world.

CONTENTS
increased materially, we will remain passive, separated from our power,
so long as we are not formally in control of it. That is why, from the
standpoint of affects, the basic distinctions between two sorts of passions,
sad passions and joyful passions, prepares for a very different distinc‑
tion, between passions and actions. (Deleuze 1988, 50; author’s italics)
This concept of affect is raised many times in Deleuze and Guat‑

tari’s A Thousand Plateaus, but Deleuze also employs the term af-
fection in a slightly different analytical way in his books on film. The
term ›affection‑image‹ should be understood as an image that can
occasion devotion or tenderness, in that here we are concerned
with »a pure quality or pure force, lying outside time and space. It
is not actualised or incarnated in concrete relations, situations or
persons« (Jørholt 1998, 105). The affection‑image is established
as an icon in Charles Sanders Peirce’s terminology, and Deleuze
mentions Carl Theodor Dreyer as its leading exponent.
It is important to emphasise that Deleuze’s philosophical
conception of affect aims to contain the forms of intensity or
potential that are not conscious and decided by will – and thus
pre‑individual – and which cannot be reflected in representa‑
tional thinking. However, the ›affect‹ term can convey approxi‑
mations to the forms of non‑conscious events of types such as
›infatuation‹ and ›catastrophe‹, whose range we have difficulty
in grasping. Brian Massumi emphasises the relation of affect
to the event’s virtual aspect, in that its point of intensity (as in
chaos theory’s bifurcation point), from a virtual level, takes part
in and almost »selects« an actual level, where the event plays out.
In this way relations that normally belong to various planes and
potentials interact. He names, amongst others, the relation and
distinction between the potentials in spirit and body, will and
cognition, joy and sadness, past and future, passivity and activity
(Massumi 2002a, 33). His definition of affect as an autonomic
»diagrammatical translation of the virtual dimension« (op. cit.,
33) is as follows:
What is being termed affect in this essay is precisely this two‑sidedness,

the simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual
in the virtual, as one arises from and returns to the other. Affect is this

CONTENTS
two‑sideness as seen from the side of the actual thing, as couched in its
perceptions and cognitions. Affect is the virtual as point of view, pro‑
vided the visual metaphor is used guardedly. For affect is synesthetic,
implying a participation of the senses in each other: the measure of
a living thing’s potential interactions is its ability to transform the ef‑
fects of one sensory mode into those of another. […] Affects are virtual
synesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally limited by) the actually
existing, particular things that embody them. The autonomy of affect
is its participation in the virtual. Its autonomy is its openness. Affect is
autonomous to the degree to which it escapes confinement in the par‑
ticular body whose vitality, or potential for interaction, it is. (Massumi
2002b, 35; author’s italics)
For Massumi it is crucial that affect relates analytically to the

event, which actualises and then – as a result thereof – can be
experienced in an emotional way. When affect is captured and
formed in situated perceptions and experiences, we are faced
with emotion that expresses that »something has always and again
escaped« (op. cit.). When we formulate an emotion such as love,
for example, we attempt to express the experience of standing
outside ourselves. That experience is simultaneously captured in
this description of an emotion, when we remove ourselves from
the corporeal experience of an affective intensification in vitality
(op. cit., 35). Several people have presented the definitions of the
terms in Deleuze as well as Massumi – including the difference
between affect and emotion. Steven Shaviro sums up the terms
and their differences in this way:
For Massumi, affect is primary, non‑conscious, asubjective or pre‑

subjective, asignifying, unqualified, and intensive; while emotion is
derivative, conscious, qualified, and meaningful, a »content« that can be
attributed to an already‑constituted subject. Emotion is affect captured
by a subject, or tamed and reduced to the extent that it becomes com‑
mensurate with that subject. Subjects are overwhelmed and traversed by
affect, but they have or possess their own emotions. (Shaviro 2010, 3)
Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie, for the sake of clarity, clas‑
sify the three types of affect: 1) the transitive, pre‑personal form

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of affect, which animals and humans have in common, and in
which affective relations are collective in relation to a threat such
as a natural catastrophe, for example; 2) the personal emotional
experience of affective intensities in the form of physical condi‑
tions that, for example, manifest themselves as a beating heart
or a trembling, which can generate (new) ideas, as »[f]eelings
are complex strings of ideas traversing emotions as they remap
them«; 3) the transitive form of affect which, so to speak, lies in
between the two. Here affect is in constant variation between the
»power to affect and be affected«, as the passage from one state
to another is concerned with manoeuvring in relation to others
in order to survive, protect, exchange, develop and so on. In this
affect register the exchange between micro and macro levels hap‑
pens, for example, in the form of politics or ethics. The first type
is described by Guattari, the second by Damasio and the third by
Spinoza (cf. Bertelsen and Murphie 2010, 140). In addition, they
summarise the complexity of the ›affect‹ term in Massumi thus:
»nothing happens if affective intensity has not already paid us a
visit« (op. cit., 147). It is difficult to define the affect qualitatively.
It always escapes (Massumi op. cit., 35) while we are working on
containing it. Differentiating between emotions such as a ›quali‑
fied‹ intensity and the intensity of affect, which is ›unqualified‹
(Bertelsen and Murphie, 148) is, however, an operative procedure.
The book’s contextual interlacing of the analysis of Trier’s
film and the sketched (primarily Deleuzian) tradition of theory
is chosen with a view to developing a film theory that can iden‑
tify the haptic, affective and diagrammatical modulations and
compositions which often remain unnoticed in film analyses.
Also contained in the diagrammatical level are the expressive
qualities of haptic compositions, colour, actions and the creation
of arbitrary space, whose commonality is that they cannot be
seen directly and immediately but they can be sensed perceptu‑
ally. The diagrammatical composition brings a virtual level in to
the composition plane, so another plane can be sensed. As with
Deleuze before him, Brian Massumi leans on Peirce’s definition:
»The greatest point of art consists in the introduction of suitable
abstractions. By this I mean such a transformation of our dia‑
grams that characters of one diagram may appear in another as

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things« (Massumi 2011, 99; Massumi quotes Peirce 1997, 226).
As an example, Massumi mentions the diagrammatical func‑
tion, where the activation of the famous madeleine cake plays on
fiction’s establishment of a kind of lived, virtual level in Marcel
Proust’s great novel In Search of Lost Time (Massumi 2011, 25).
But the list is, in principle, endless, as the artistic expression of
creation is an expression for a constant diagrammatisation of
relations which can be lived (Massumi 2011, 76). He continues:
Each setup, each situational framing, will orient what happens more
toward one end or the other of given polarities. It might, for example,
bring narrativity out more than the affective in‑whichness, or try to do
both equally, superimposing them on each other or oscillating between
them. Or it might favor instrumental interactivity more than making
the relationalities conditioning it appear. It may fuse vision with tactil‑
ity, or with kinesthesia, or spin one of them off from vision at vision’s
own immanent limit. Or it might be forcefully disruptive, and make
felt jolting disjunctions between sense modes, for example between
sound and sight. It might spatialize more than eventuate. It might tend
to root in the site‑specific, or fan out into a distributed network. The
possibilities are as infinite as existence. (Massumi op. cit., 76)
The analyses of Lars von Trier’s film works presented in the fol‑
lowing chapters will draw attention to the way in which Trier
diagrammatically‑stylistically overlays the film’s action (or fabula)
with haptic and affective intensities, making it possible to create
new forms of audience involvement or interfaces. In the analysis
of The Kingdom I and II together with The Idiots especially, the
focus is on the haptic, while the affective level is central in the
analysis of Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. The dia‑
grammatical level is unfolded in the analyses of Dogville, Man-
derlay and The Boss of it All in particular. In the analysis of Anti-
christ, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, the theoretical concept
is uniformly utilised. The concluding chapter summarises the
use of haptic, affective and diagrammatic compositions in some
definitions of the ongoing importance of signaletic material in
Lars von Trier’s film. It appears clear that the haptic, signaletic
overlaying of material, which creates affective involvement in The

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Kingdom and the Golden Heart trilogy, is expanded in the later
films from the compositional plane to also include interfaces,
where the viewer is involved through sense perceptions as well
as cognition. Through his ever‑renewing film work, Trier makes
the viewer’s body into a perceptible part of the filmic interface.
The compositional, haptic layer in the audio‑visual signaletic
material, which can both appear affectively involving and create
diagrammatic events, thus pointing to meanings other than the
narrative, will be further analysed in the following.

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CHAPTER 2
Haptic surfaces and spatial

effects in Trier’s films of the
1980s
Although I intend to continue with Deleuze’s method of starting

in ›the middle‹ (that is, in the 1990s, with The Kingdom I and II),
where the development of an aesthetic practice can be followed,
in this chapter I will briefly look back at the films of the Europa
trilogy, The Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa, together with
the TV production Medea.
I will, however, first address a scene from Epidemic. The scene,
which is centrally placed in the film, concerns the investigation of
a tube of toothpaste, and interestingly enough binds a number of
Tunnel scene from Epidemic.

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the film’s elements together around the word ›signal‹. The theme is
established by the manuscript writers for the film‑within‑the‑film,
Niels and Lars (alias Niels Vørsel and Lars von Trier), discussing
how the red stripe in Signal toothpaste is created. The two writers
are on a car journey to Cologne; writing on a typewriter and film‑
ing as they drive. While travelling through the Ruhr district, the car
windows reflect the passing industrial landscapes of the area as an
intertextual salute to how the rural landscape of France, discussed
by Jean‑Paul Belmondo, is laid in front of the car passenger’s gaze
in Jean‑Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). The two writers then drive
through a motorway tunnel and a long sequence is presented con‑
taining only strips of light on both sides of the tunnel, along with
their reflections in the windscreen of the car. The sequence is a
clear remake (with musical accompaniment) of the tunnel scene
in Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), which lasts more than four minutes;
the car passenger travelling through several tunnels there alludes
to space travel as well as to a strip of film. The sequence in Tarko‑
vsky’s film is likewise an acknowledgement of Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), whose long time travel sequence, the
»Stargate Corridor«, is described by Gene Youngblood as a blank
mould for the computer film, because the scene, constructed in
Douglas Trumbull’s so‑called slit-scan machine, »links together
basic filmic techniques with computer and video science« (Young‑
blood 1970, 156).40 Incidentally, the spaceship’s time travel se‑
quence alternates with the haptic sequences, which project the
shaking helmet and the astronaut’s unfocused eyes as a reaction to
the time travel.
In Epidemic one sees only the striped space of tunnel lamps
(in black and white) as the car passes by, and not the more spec‑
tacular journey through time. But in this sequence one also pays
extra attention to the film’s red logo or trademark, EPIDEMIC,
followed by a small e in a circle, which mimics the small c for
40 Youngblood’s description also contains a reference to night‑time car travel: »The exposure […] pro‑
duced on the single frame is a controlled blur, much the same as time exposures of freeways at night that
produce streaks of red taillights. The shifting panels of painted glass behind the slit alter the pattern of light
coming through the slit as the camera approaches, producing an uneven or streaked blur. When the process
is repeated for both sides of the frame, the effect is of an infinite corridor of lights and shapes advancing at
enormous velocity.« (Youngblood, 154).
haptic surfaces and spatial effects in trier’s films of the 1980s 51

CONTENTS
copyright. This logo, invented by Vørsel and Trier, continuously
holds part of the viewer’s attention fixed on the film’s surface,
whether it appears on scenes from the film‑within‑the‑film, shot
on 35mm film by Dreyer’s cinematographer Henning Berndtsen,
or from the overall film, shot on hand‑held camera with 16mm
Lars (Lars von Trier) dissects the tube of Signal toothpaste in Epidemic.

CONTENTS
film by Kristoffer Nyholm. The two types of recording give a very
different impression, but the film’s logo remains the same. The
tunnel sequence ends with an image (from the film‑within‑the‑
film) of a woman being buried alive.
In the following sequence, after having arrived in Cologne with
Niels, Lars carries out a minor surgical procedure on a tube of
Signal Plus toothpaste. This brand, which has not been available
to purchase in Denmark for a long time, is distinguishable by four
red stripes, which run like four »corners« in the paste when one
squeezes the tube. The purpose of Lars‹ dissection is to demon‑
strate »that there are no stripes inside« and that the red stripes in
the white paste appear because the paste passes through a nozzle.
Lars concludes his dissection performance with: »There’s a noz‑
zle in which the white stuff pulls the red stuff along with it out
through the opening. And that’s the story of ›Signal‹.« The point,
which could be easily overlooked, is clearly the word ›tube‹, as in
English this can mean ›tube‹, ›tunnel‹, ›channel‹, or ›underground
railway‹. So far, so good. But for the penny to drop fully the final
contextualising scene is essential. In the following sequence, in
which Lars and Niels privately visit the actor Udo Kier in Co‑
logne, Udo recounts a story about his mother, who saw people
jumping into the river and diving under the surface of the water
in order to protect themselves against the phosphorous bombs
dropped on the city during the war. The story ends with Kier’s
emotionally laden descriptions of how his mother saw a pair of
burned hands sticking out of the water; at which point he breaks
down in tears.
Viewed in context these sequences concern the material condi‑
tions of film media, finally summed up in Udo Kier’s story. Diverse
materials such as phosphorous and celluloid, which are used in
the production of both photographs and film, are important to the
interpretation of these scenes, which appear motivically disparate
if one tries to create a narrative connection between them. But as
phosphorous is also used in bombs and toothpaste, the recollec‑
tion of the bombing of Cologne and the German toothpaste Signal
becomes the deviation which in Epidemic motivates the excursion
to Germany. This mise‑en‑abîme, in other words, lays bare the
material production methods of the photographic and filmic sign

CONTENTS
in modernistic ways. To this disclosure is also added a figure of in‑
terpretation, in which the relationship between the striped and the
smooth comes to function as a kind of visual filter that the analysis
must pass through. This reading – that the film celluloid’s phos‑
phorous was an ingredient in the burning bomb material of the
Second World War and at the same time is present in something
as ordinary as toothpaste – passes through visual demarcations
which, just like the nozzle in the tube of Signal, stripe the material.
And thus this relation between the striped and the smooth, and
between the optic and the haptic, proliferates, from describing
something based on its form to becoming an acid bath which also
generates the film on a contextual level. When Doctor Mesmer
(Lars von Trier), the idealist doctor in the film‑within‑the‑film,
brings the epidemic with him, because he moves beyond the pro‑
tective walls of medical science, he functions as the nozzle which
stripes the space in that he occupies it. The smooth, haptic space
is striped/contained by the medical infection/vaccine. But in this
process medical science’s striping is also dissolved/disintegrated
with the help of the smooth space and the haptic images, which
gain an increasing hold in the film and undermine each attempt at
a traditional construction of a coherent fabula.
Gradually, as the epidemic spreads through the film‑within‑
the‑film, the haptic 16mm images take over, and in the final scene,
which shows an authentic hypnosis, the disease develops in the
shape of boils breaking out on the skin of both the female hypno‑
tist medium and Niels and his wife (Cæcilia Holbek Trier). This
haptically filmed final sequence with the centrally placed hypnotist
anticipates, to a large extent, Trier’s cinematographic style in
the 1990s, and creates a breakthrough to the fiction which, so
to speak, shows itself as a virtual possibility in the documentary
film framework, because the boils break out in the ›real‹ narra‑
tive framework. The film ends with everyone in the locale being
infected through the hypnotic transportation between the fictive
story and the ›real‹ framework.
This is also indicated at the beginning of the film, where Niels
and Lars paint the sequence of events for the film‑within‑the‑film
on a wall. Close‑up images of the makeshift sequence of events
reveal diffuse haptic dots, where the irregularities in the woodchip

CONTENTS
wallpaper break through the paint. A similar decomposition of
haptic art is characterised in the walls in the basement of the Roy‑
al Library of Denmark, which Niels and Lars learn is caused by
patches of saltpetre coming through the wallpaper. Lars and Niels
are based here while researching the plague epidemic, which is to
be part of the film‑within‑the‑film. Saltpetre is an old name for
potassium nitrate, which was the chief ingredient in the particu‑
larly flammable nitrate film. In the early days of film, when electric
light was not yet in common use, this nitrate film was produced
with the help of limelight, and was particularly flammable.41
Epidemic is the film in the Europa trilogy where Trier, to a spe‑
cial extent, links the filmic material’s components (phosphorous,
celluloid and nitrate) in a modernistic or avant‑garde aesthetic
display of the means of production. It is interesting that this is
achieved through drawing attention to a haptic image sensation,
which again paves the way for a new interpretation of an ex‑
pressionistic style. Expressionism, which in Lotte Eisner relates
to the gothic Romantic movement (Eisner 1952), can generally
be described as a style in which the non‑organic life of a thing
comes into view as a more or less monstrous figure, through a
play between light and shadow, where opaque light, the broken
line and phosphorescent or fluorescent light in particular attain
an intensifying effect.
It is interesting in this context that Deleuze explicitly names
Wilhelm Worringer as the first theoretician of expressionism, in
that he relates style to the haptic, broken line which, using Riegl as
a starting point, is associated with the so‑called »gothic or Nordic
decorative line«. Deleuze characterises this line in the following
way:
a broken line which forms no contour by which form and background

might be distinguished, but passes in a zigzag between things, some‑
41 The close‑up images of the walls of The Royal Library also function as an intertextual reference
to the walls in Carl Th. Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) and to the general aesthetic in The Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928), which both favour a haptic aesthetic (Thomsen 2006). Henning Bendtsen, Dreyer’s cinematogra‑
pher on The Word and Gertrud, shot Epidemic (and also Europa, 1991) on 35mm film, while the remainder
of the film was shot on 16mm by, amongst others, Trier himself (DVD Lars von Trier Collection, Europa
trilogy, disc 4, Added value: Interview with Lars von Trier by Bo Green Jensen, 2005).

CONTENTS
times drawing them into a bottomlessness in which it loses itself,
sometimes whirling them into a formlessness into which it veers in
a ›disorderly convulsion‹. Thus automata, robots and puppets are no
longer mechanisms which validate or ›major‹ [majorent] a quantity of
movement, but somnambulists, zombies or golems who express the
intensity of this non-organic life […].
(Deleuze 1986, 51)
In Deleuze the haptic and expressionistic broken line anticipates

filmic modernism. As early as silent film, expressionism made
it possible to create spatial extensions of ›any-space-whatever‹
(l’espace quelconque), which shift the movement free of its inter-
connectedness to the coordinates of geometry and homogenous
space. With the so-called ›gothic geometry‹ of expressionism it be-
comes possible to create the space rather than describe it, in that:
[…] it no longer proceeds by measuring out but by extension and ac-

cumulation. The lines are extended beyond all measure to their meet-
ing-points, while their breaking-points produce accumulations. The
accumulation may be of light or of shadow, just as the extensions may
be of shadow or of light.
(Deleuze 1986, 51)
The expressionist style is, for Deleuze, a precondition for the

description of a random modernistic space, as the opaque, dark
fields in the image being broken up by light create a form of depth
in which the perspective is distorted or filled with shadows assum-
ing contrasting and repellent forms. In this way, the contours of
things disappear along with the individuality of people, and this
benefits non-organic life forms in unbounded space (Deleuze
op. cit., 157).42
In Trier’s Europa trilogy, expressionism’s gothic line and
random space is effectuated in three ways. First, as mentioned,
42 In Philosophie de l’ornement. D’Orient en Occident (2008), Christine Buci-Glucksmann correspond-

ingly links Riegl’s concept of the haptic together with Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the smooth
space and the gothic line, together with an analysis of oriental style and its influence on French modernist
art. Laura U. Marks does something similar when she relates Islamic philosophy and art to current media
art in Enfoldment and Infinity. An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (2010).

CONTENTS
work is carried out both thematically and visually with haptic im‑
age surfaces and phosphorescent light, which together with the
yellowish‑brownish sepia tones are ongoing throughout the three
films. The Element of Crime, which takes place at night, is actu‑
ally even filmed in its entirety under the glare of sodium lamps,
giving a distinct orange or yellow light but also superseding all
other colours and, thus describing a haptic space. Secondly, in
The Element of Crime, the notion of whether the Europe which the
film describes can be expressed as a phenomenologically existing
place or not becomes rather insignificant. The individual milieux
remain unconnected, and there is no differentiation between
virtual and actual places, so that the film’s spatial dimension ap‑
pears endless. Thirdly, in Europa (1991) Trier makes use of a kind
of back projection (called bluescreen in film or chromakey in TV),
which is in fact an expressionistic technique that negates depth
in the background in favour of the foreground:
Depth is the location of the struggle, which sometimes draws space

into the bottomlessness of a black hole, and sometimes draws it toward
the light. And of course, a character may also become strangely and
terribly flat, against the background of a luminous circle, or his shadow
may lose all its thickness, by backlighting [contre‑jour], on a white
background; but it is by an ›inversion of the values of light and dark‹,
by an inversion of perspective which puts depth to the forefront. […]
The shadow extends to infinity. In this way it determines the virtual
conjunctions which do not coincide with the state of things or the
position of characters which produce it […]. (Deleuze 1986, 111‑112;
Deleuze here refers to Lotte Eisner 1952)
This style, which Deleuze calls neo‑gothic, makes it possible for

Trier to concern himself – in an ›impure‹ manner – partly with
the actors from the Second World War in a random space named
Germany, and partly in raising the haptic qualities of the expres‑
sionist aesthetic into the period of the electronic TV signal, in
that the signaletic material in the medium of film is emphasised
by way of back projection. The techniques used by Trier can be
summed up as: 1. phosphorescent light effects, sepia tones and the
play between light and shadow; 2. the construction of any‑space‑

CONTENTS
whatever and spatial expansion; 3. back projection. Together they
create a haptic aesthetic, which leads on to the TV productions
Medea and The Kingdom I and II.43
But aside from these stylistic markers, a breakthrough to the
viewer’s time and space is postulated, especially in Epidemic,
which by definition is closed country for the film medium. In
Epidemic, the haptic, hand‑held framed narrative is infiltrated
(an actual space) by the film‑within‑the‑film (a fictive space) and
vice versa, in that the disease proliferates to the body, as described
by Doctor Mesmer’s colleagues in their risk assessment of the
dangers that lurk in an infected area:
It may start with a small cough. But quickly and without mercy the
respiratory organs are disabled by the infected air. The bacteria in the
soil penetrate the skin and the flesh by the mere contact. And the water
you drink will destroy you from inside. (English dialogue on the DVD)
With the hypnotic element that characterises all the films in the
trilogy, the viewer gains direct access to its workings (through
the counting in and out of the hypnosis in Element of Crime
and Europa and, furthermore, in a visual manner in Epidemic).
This diagrammatic audience‑involving element recurs in The
Kingdom I and II as well as the Golden Heart trilogy. In the
latter, landscapes, faces and musical space are broken down in
haptic ways, as the affective effects intensify in correspondence
with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s filmic aesthetic. Here one can say
that the hypnosis (Gothic‑expressionistic) is created rather than
described.
Before presenting my interpretation of this I will briefly men‑
tion the TV film Medea (1988), which used Dreyer’s abandoned
manuscript as a source. This relation makes it interesting to ob‑
serve how Trier’s TV version in many ways fulfils Dreyer’s ideas
43 In Medea this is created by the film being copied over to video and back again, and in The Kingdom
I and II by hand‑held cameras (16 mm), poor lighting and sepia tones. The film editor Molly Stensgaard
describes how the ghosts’ haptic ghostliness was created by several layers of images edited together in The
Kingdom II. The organic element in the green eye, which overlays the TV image, was created by the use of
scannings of a beef steak (cf. Schepelern 2000 and the interview with Molly Stensgaard in the extra mate‑
rial on the DVD: The Kingdom II).

CONTENTS
Medea (Kirsten Olesen) lying in the sea’s waves in the TV film’s prelude.
for film in the future concerning the »pure surface effect«, de‑
scribed prospectively as »a wholly new image‑related construction
of surface colours, which all lay on the same plane, so they created
one large, collated multi‑coloured plane, and consequently the
concepts of foreground, middle ground and background disap‑
peared entirely« (Dreyer 1959, 91).
Medea demonstrates a sustained haptic aesthetic – from its
dramatic introduction showing Medea (Kirsten Olsen) lying at
the water’s edge like a body washed ashore, with waves lapping
over her and the camera lens, to its description of Jason’s (Udo
Kier) delirious search for his past, which is likened to the bil‑
lowing movements of the ears of corn, surging here and there in
the wind, engulfing first the horse’s body and then his own. It is
noticeable how the sand on the beach and the graininess of the
sea water, which washes over Medea’s body – clad in black – and
the entire screen surface, seems to give her renewed energy to
pursue her venture out in the world. She is bound to the element

CONTENTS
of water. Furthermore, we see her several times walking around
in the mist of the littoral meadow, where she collects berries.44
In contrast, Jason loses his strength when he is deprived of his
prospective purpose in life. He realises too late that his luminous,
striped and optic future as king, married to Creon’s (Henning
Jensen) daughter, Glauce (Lumilla Glinska),45 can only be real‑
ised if the past (Medea and their two young sons) is included.
Without children to continue his family line, he dies. Medea, on
the contrary, thrives in the haptic, nomadic field from which she
originates and returns to Aegeus‹ (Baard Owe) ship. Through
her knowledge of nature’s herbs, she has contact with forces that
Jason has no knowledge of.46 Her murderous plans, which reverse
Creon’s decision, unfold in several stages. She begins by making
poison and spreading it on her own bridal crown, which is in‑
tended to be brought to Glauce by the boys as a gift. Jason pays her
a visit, and as she asks him a question, whether he recalls their love
and the ensuing intercourse, the sky becomes a cyan blue colour
and the water turns green. He leaves her, lashes out at her, and
the blue tones take precedence. Then the deadly poison brings
about the death of a horse and later Glauce, which is poetically
depicted by the horse, galloping freely on the beach, disturbing
a swarm of seagulls.47 As the gulls scatter, flying upwards, the sky
is coloured magenta red. This colour tone also dominates the
sequence in which Medea pulls the children along across the flat
beach, and when Jason is encouraged by the people to enter the
grave together with the dead Glauce. The three colour tones –
red, blue and green – that make up the TV picture tube’s primary
colours clearly form part of various types of overlayering towards
the end;48 initially in the form of white dissolves of Jason to the
44 She thus remains in the same haptic register as the so‑called bleachers who, in the intro to The
Kingdom I and II, moisten their cloth in the mossy ground which is the foundation beneath Riget (i.e. the
Riget – or Kingdom – hospital).
45 It is curious that Jason says the name ›Glauce‹ and continues: »Your name means nymph, the woman
I love«, which is later mirrored in the long dwell on the word ›nymph‹ in Nymphomaniac.
46 The haptic description of how Medea cultivates seeds, plant stems and roots by allowing them to
come into contact with the water recurs later in Antichrist, where the camera zooms in on rotten plant
stems in a vase next to the woman’s hospital bed. As in Medea, this heralds a virtual index of powers.
47 The horse’s distressed gallop recurs later into a similar manner in Melancholia.
48 Strictly speaking, they have already appeared in mixed form, in that the primary TV colours of blue,
red and green are mixed in this way: red + green = yellow; red + blue = magenta; blue + green = cyan; and
red + green + blue = white. Cf. Den Store Danske. Net reference: colour, last viewed 30 January 2016.

CONTENTS
horse, galloping freely while chased by two dogs. The horse falls,
one of the dogs foaming at the mouth, as Jason is on the verge of
insanity, committing suicide with his own sword. His body then
becomes one with nature (as with Medea in the film’s intro): the
flowing movement in the grass blends into the water’s haptic
element,49 while the tide and wind help Aegeus‹ ship on its way,
with Medea aboard. As she removes the calotte that has covered
her head throughout the film, her hair’s red colour unfolds in
the wind. The magenta red accentuation also fills the sails, and
finally these red tones win out, so to speak, over Jason’s body and
its green elements. The film ends on the complementary colours
fused with the dark sea field.
The colour tones in Medea are clearly closer to TV media than
to film. One can relate Trier’s use of colour to Dreyer’s above
cited vision of an anti‑naturalistic use of colour in film. Dreyer
refers to Teinosuke Kinogasa’s film Gate of Hell (1953), which
with simple techniques (amongst others, semi‑transparent veils
and coloured fabrics) turns samurai battles into overwhelmingly
abstract painterly impressions, prioritising the film’s foreground.
But though Trier could certainly have been inspired by this film,
he amplifies the effect of the colour surface in that Medea is as‑
cribed the electronic granularity and ›innate‹ artificial colour tones
of the TV medium. Deleuze calls this colour scheme atmospheric,
as it impregnates all others, while the absorbing colour scheme,
which is characteristic of The Element of Crime, is defined from a
virtual, purely affective level (Deleuze 1986, 118). Eva Jørholt dif‑
ferentiates in a similar manner, but she includes only The Element
of Crime in her summation of how the absorbing colour, which is
linked to the depiction of pure affect and Charles Sanders Peirce’s
firstness, characterises postmodern film. She writes:
Though I do believe there is a certain connection between the post‑

apocalyptic universe, which Trier unfolds in The Element of Crime, and
his choice of the film’s toxic‑yellow base colour […], I would at the same
time maintain that Deleuze’s thoughts on colour and affect can provide
49 This sequence, a description of the haptic which is closer to Tarkovsky’s than Dreyer’s, also recurs
in the differentiation of mental conditions in Antichrist and Melancholia.

CONTENTS
some perspectives with regard to these films, which neither cognition
theory nor psychosemiotics discern. Irrespective of the fact that the
affect, which may be caused by the use of colour in these films, cannot
be characterised as pure firstness, it occurs to me that Deleuze’s notion
of the absorbing colour makes sense. A colour use that paves the way for
an affect – joy, fear, uneasiness, shock, or whatever it might be – which
is not dictated by, but rather ascribes the person’s emotions and/or
actions. They are simply impregnated in an overriding, chromatically
caused affect, somewhat similar to that which Peirce imagined as »a
psychic feeling of red without us which arouses a sympathetic feeling
of red in our senses«. (Jørholt 1998, 108; Jørholt quotes Peirce 1994;
in English the ref. would be to Buchler [1949] 2012, 84)
Bearing in mind the use of colour, one could certainly see that in
The Element of Crime and Medea respectively the affective pas‑
sion in the absorbing choice of yellowish colours in The Element
of Crime is virtually determined (and intensified by the framed
narrative of hypnosis), while the electronic‑haptic cooler col‑
our impregnation of selected affect scenes in Medea involves the
viewer in a different way.50 For as colour here is less determining,
it obtains a diagrammatical quality which will be more closely ac‑
counted for later, in relation to Nymphomaniac in particular. The
diagrammatic overlaying of narrative with colour patches which,
so to speak, belongs to the materiality of the TV screen, makes
it possible for the viewer to enter into a dialogical or interfacial
relation to what is viewed.
Briefly stated, in his work from the 1980s Trier was already
working with film as a signaletic material, whose haptic materiality
was able to spread itself swiftly and profusely like a virus, engulf‑
ing or absorbing narrative configurations. The optical striping
of space is found as narratives – though labyrinthine – in the
Europa trilogy, whereas Medea can be viewed as a departure from
a representational form of narrative and plot to instead focus on
experiments with the materiality of TV matter, which is ›born‹
50 This corresponds with McLuhan’s distinction in the first section of Understanding Media, where
film is described as a »hot« medium compared to the medium of TV, which is »cool«. Film images, as with
written fiction, can absorb the viewer or reader directly, while the TV medium, just like jazz and cartoons,
demands involvement and participation in order to create meaning (McLuhan 1964, 22).

CONTENTS
as haptic‑signaletic. The films from the 1990s and onwards work
creatively with the filmic, signaletic material in the form of rules,
matrices and diagrams characterised by their approach to the
viewer, rather than the absorbing neo‑noir narratives in the Eu‑
ropa trilogy. Striping and demarcations are necessary for Trier as
creative configurations in playing with the relationship of order/
chaos, and territorialization/deterritorialization.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 3
A tiger in The Kingdom

The transformation from Gothic
to grotesque
The television series The Kingdom – a ghost story I (1994) & II

(1997)51 was, according to Lars von Trier, greatly inspired by
David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks (1990‑1991), which
was aired on Danish TV in 1991. As stated by Trier himself, The
Kingdom was made »as if with the left hand« (DVD ed. 2004: disc
1), alluding to the apparent ease and insouciance of his approach.
Trier’s slightly haphazard left‑handed signature illustrates the
assertion: the grotesque form’s twisted, slightly uncontrollable
signature appears on the sheet of white paper serving as a back‑
drop, which is partially covered by Trier’s back. It is precisely these
chaotic touches, almost certainly provoked by the many restric‑
tions placed on the work by the entertainment division of DR
(Denmark’s national broadcasting company), which according to
Trier made the work creative, so the series could be »served up
with great delight« (ibid.). The grotesque signature also appears
at the end of each episode in the series as the demonically staged
Trier, replete with ironic tone and dressed in Carl Th. Dreyer’s
dinner jacket,52 extracts the moral from the story in a baroque,
overdriven manner.53
The following analysis has two main aims: firstly, to clarify how
the introduction of ghosts and spirits in The Kingdom I intensifies
51 In the analysis, I only reference the TV series, as released on DVD.

52 Dreyer gave his suit, which was made in Paris, to Henning Bendtsen, who then passed it on to Trier.
Cf. http://www.carlthdreyer.dk/omdreyer/biografi/historien‑om‑dreyers‑smoking.aspx (last viewed 15
March 2015).
53 The model for this posture is Hitchcock’s introductions to the various episodes of one of the first
series formats appearing on TV, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955‑1962).

CONTENTS
the haptic organisation of the scanning field, creating a stylistic
distance to the more obvious frameworks for the deconstruction
of narrative forms and plots which were so prominent in the
1980s; secondly, to shed light on how Trier’s stylistic new inter‑
pretation of the grotesque, monstrous body and the laughter it
occasions in The Kingdom II creates an uncontrollable ambiguity
in the narrative. The analysis of The Kingdom I draws on Gilles
Deleuze’s emphasis on the role of the Mummy in Dreyer and
Artaud, while the analysis of The Kingdom II draws on Mikhael
Bakhtin’s interpretation of François Rabelais‹ great Renaissance
work Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532), together with Deleuze and
Guattari’s notion of the body without organs. The chapter argues
that through his work on The Kingdom I and II, Trier paves the
way for later developments in the Dogme 95 manifesto’s ampu‑
tation of classic narrative constructions. In The Kingdom I, Trier
takes as a starting point the haptic, Dreyeresque composition (in,
amongst others, Vampyr, 1932), but in The Kingdom II he trans‑
poses the Gothic‑expressionistic form to a grotesque form which,
helped by the signal noise of the electronic medium, threatens
to dissolve the narrative framework. Stylistic experiments in this
visionary series inform, so to speak, the direction through which
Trier can later remediate the film, which is challenged by the
new digital interfaces. The interaction of hypertext, computer
games and interfaces with the user creates new forms of interfaces
and experiences of time and space, which are anticipated in The
Kingdom I and II.
A ghost story
In its title sequence, The Kingdom is referred to as a ghost story.

In the commentary Trier calls it a kind of »updating of the TV
series Matador with a little soap added«.54 Diverse »disruptions«,
such as »cracks« that are »starting to appear in the hospital« are
54 Matador was a popular Danish TV series, initially broadcast 1978‑1981.
a tiger in the kingdom 65

CONTENTS
the final ingredients (citations from the DVD extra material).55
The term ›ghost story‹ can, as a literary genre, be traced back to
the English ghost story, with one of the first examples being Hor‑
ace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). From the outset the
settings within the genre have expressed an exceedingly marked
interest in the Gothic architecture of the past (castles, manor
houses and monasteries in a state of decay) as an antithesis to
the ideals of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Anne Radcliffe turns the Gothic
villain into a hero of Byronesque dimensions.56
Gothic figures and settings are especially embedded in Ger‑
man expressionist film (Robert Wiene, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang,
among others), and have subsequently inspired horror and film
noir. The first expressionist films were full of shadows, dream‑
like visions and Gothic gestalts. One must not forget that the
cinematic representations stem from visual illusion machines,
and that the first film directors to a large extent applied Gothic
apparitions and vampires as a way for the aesthetic to take advan‑
tage of, and reflect on, the ability of the medium to »resurrect the
dead« in and with its mechanical reproduction. This characteristic
is also clear in the films Vampyr (1932) and Ordet (1955) by Carl
Th. Dreyer.
As early as the 1920s, the cinematic versions of the Gothic
extended the space – in principle – into a boundless size, in that
the play between light and shadow, the opaque depth and the
55 The Kingdom I and II thematise a simple conflict between science and the occult. The gallery of
characters and the demonic and ghost‑like transformations they undergo (from healthy to sick, from living
to dead, from scientific to non‑scientific, from human to bestial – and vice versa) is enormous. In short,
the hypochondriac patient Mrs Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes), playing the role of occult detective, is on the trail
of a ghost in the hospital called Mary, because she has been wrongfully killed for the purposes of science.
Mrs Drusse’s investigation, which places all forms of scientific enquiry on an equal footing, and especially
involves the weak, the sick and the marginalised, eventually encompasses the demonic sides of medicinal
science. Mary gets her burial, the demons are driven away, and the balance between good and evil forces is
eventually neutralised.
56 The poet Lord Byron (1788‑1824), who was one of the first literary bohemians, was a genius with
ardent passions and a disrespect for societal institutions. He participated in the development of the genre
himself and became the Romantic hero par excellence. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) is said to
have been written in his presence, just as John William Polidoras’ The Vampyre (1819) was inspired by him.
Lord Byron’s bipolar traits are supposed to have formed the background for the powerful descriptions of
demonic, supernatural, afflicted and deviant existences in Romantic art. The horror or ghost story was also
popular in Germany (among others E.T.A. Hoffmann) and France (among others the Marquis de Sade). In
a similar manner to Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan
Poe contributes to the reappearance of the gothic novel reinterpreted in a modern light.

CONTENTS
distorted lines and perspectives dominated the contours of objects
and people. The expressive extended space, where the length
of shadows sets the tone for the foreground, describes affect,
passions and states of mind (Deleuze 1986, 111). According to
Deleuze, expressionism’s Gothic horror also paved the way for
lyrical abstractions in von Sternberg, Dreyer and Bresson. Here
the affect of passion is crystallised on an ethical or spiritual level
when the main character has to choose between two alterna‑
tives. Deleuze involves Kierkegaard’s concept of the true choice,
where the choice itself entails an offering which paves the way
for a spiritual or lyrical abstraction.57 When Dreyer’s Joan in The
Passion of Joan of Arc or Johannes in Ordet thus choose to opt out
of the dimensions of the normal life in favour of the spiritual
interpretation, the representative, described physical space fades
away in favour of a spiritual one. According to Deleuze, it is the
white accent especially in Dreyer that opens up the – in principal,
infinite – space.
The Gothic‑expressionist tradition, which Trier utilises in The
Kingdom I and II, includes ghosts, demons and other shadow‑
like gestalts, creating paradoxical effects in the ordered hospital
world. Out of these encounters between the spiritual world of
shadows and the white hospital world, grotesque storylines and
carnal monstrosities are created. Throughout The Kingdom II
the laughter of the grotesque form gradually displaces the Gothic
form’s (slightly ironic) eeriness as the TV medium’s electronic
(haptic) ›snow‹ and the green eye almost dominate the screen
entirely. According to McLuhan, in the 1960s the TV medium’s
electronic coolness necessitated the engagement of viewers, in that
it differentiated itself appreciably from the mechanical film’s di‑
rect and one‑dimensional (hot) media form (McLuhan 1964, 22).
McLuhan understands the TV medium’s coolness as avant‑garde
(op. cit., 27), in that watching TV demands involvement (just like
listening to jazz). McLuhan’s categorisation is historically incon‑
stant, and he notes that earlier »hot« media can seem laughable in
57 In Kierkegaard, Abraham choosing to sacrifice his son despite his love for him is interpreted as a
true choice, which does not happen out of a sense of duty but out of his love of God, that love being greater
than the human world. In this way the lyrical abstraction belongs to Christianity to a larger degree than, for
example, to the Greek world of many gods (Deleuze 1986, 116).

CONTENTS
light of new, cool media. As a consequence, one could reason that
the computer medium’s new form of coolness in the beginning of
the 1990s created the background for the new interpretations for
both David Lynch (with Twin Peaks) and Trier (with The Kingdom
I and II) of the well‑known TV format, which previously gathered
the family together around the prime‑time slot week after week.
The imaginative and maniacal sense of humour together with the
endless, labyrinthine narrative threads, which cannot be gathered
together in a definitive ending – characteristic of both series – can
be seen in extension of the postmodernist films of the 1980s. But
today there is no doubt that both series‹ humorous germination,
accentuating the interval rather than the connection between the
individual episodes, was the basis for the open narratives of the
new TV series.58
From Gothic eeriness to grotesque laughter on the

surface of the TV screen
The Kingdom’s most uncanny element is thematised in the intro

as Denmark’s 70‑metre‑high Rigshospitalet, called Riget,59 which
while under construction in 1970 represented the dream of a
functionalist hospital with 1,181 beds arranged on 17 floors. When
Trier and Vørsel make this stronghold of medical research a place
haunted by all sorts of spirits, the classic expressionism of film is
turned inside out in an ironic way. The intro emphasises that it is
»the arrogance and the persistent denial of the spiritual« among
»the best brains in the nation« which begets the Gothic shadows
and ghosts. The antithesis to Riget is the ground itself on Bleg‑
damsvej, upon which the Rigshospital is built. Here previously
lay a large marshland, Blegedammene, which was used among
other things for the bleaching of cloth.60 Trier and manuscript
writer Niels Vørsel make use of this indication of reality in the
58 In discussion with Peter Bürger and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Joachim Grage also regards The
Kingdom I and II as an avant‑garde TV series, which in surprising ways transplants documentary and art
film formats into the popular format of the TV series (Grage 2012, 248).
59 Riget (literally ›The Kingdom‹) is the largest hospital in Denmark, and is situated in Copenhagen.
60 Across from Blegedammene, from 1879‑1975, lay Blegdams hospital, which admitted children
stricken by epidemics such as cholera, smallpox and the plague, but also more widespread diseases such as
scarlet fever, measles and polio. In the 1600s a so‑called pest‑house was situated in the same place.

CONTENTS
series’ recurring intro, which consists of two parts.61 The first part
is dominated by the – very characteristic for Trier – yellowed,
sepia-toned62 images in slow motion, accompanied by the fol-
lowing text, narrated as a voice-over:
The Kingdom hospital rests on an ancient marshland, where the

bleaching ponds once lay. Here the bleachers moistened their great
spans of cloth in the shallow water in order to lay them there to be
bleached. The steam evaporating from the wet cloth shrouded the place
in a permanent fog. Centuries later the hospital was built here and the
bleachers gave way to doctors and researchers, the best brains in the
nation and the most perfect technology. And to crown their work they
called the hospital The Kingdom. Now life was to be charted and igno-
rance and superstition were never to shake the bastions of science again.
Perhaps their arrogance and persistent denial of the spiritual be-
came too pronounced; for it is as if the cold and the damp have re-
turned. Tiny signs of fatigue are appearing in the solid, modern edifice.
No living person knows it yet, but the gateway to The Kingdom is
opening once again.
In the final part of the voice-over narrative the camera pans down
slowly to the underground, which first emerges as a black silhou-
ette on the screen and later opens downwards towards a grotto-
like cave, from which a pair of hands slowly emerges.63 From this
scene in slow motion there is an abrupt cut to a seemingly stable
61 Several real-life references can be found in the series: for example, a Masonic lodge is situated on
Blegdamsvej 23 (built 1924-1927), where, from 1943, the Danish auxiliary corps under German service,
Schalburgkorpset (the Schalburg corps), had their headquarters. The monumental Masonic lodge build-
ing is not shown in the TV series, but its rituals are portrayed in highly satirical form, as is its hierarchy
(that mimics the hospital’s), which leads Drusse on the trail of the underworld’s order of rank. Consultant
Moesgaard’s (Holger Juul Hansen) so-called »Operation Morgenluft«, whose aim is to improve commu-
nication between doctor and patient, also contains a possible hint at the German military’s appellation for
the invasion of Denmark in 1940, Operation Weserübung. Other traces of reality include peculiar, eerie
sounds in the upper levels of the hospital, which may be ascribed to the character of the building and which
in Drusse’s search for Riget’s soul are signified as »birds of passage« that inform of the spectral presence.
Finally, in Riget there was (as in all Danish hospitals up to the 1990s) a brain death criterion: a regular
practice of lying dead patients with a bell tied on a toe in the so-called 6-hours room. This has in fact saved
a number of apparently dead people from being buried alive and possibly explains the little bell that the
ghost Mary carries throughout the series. Thanks to Ingrid Egerod, Msc (Nursing), PhD.
62 The sepia toning that gives the images a dated character can be created in a chemical process in
which bleaching is an important part. Trier’s toning, however, is probably created with the help of filters.
63 This clearly refers to the scene in Epidemic in which Udo Kier tells of burned hands sticking up out
of the river after the aerial bombardment of Cologne.

CONTENTS
concrete wall in which the letters spelling RIGET (The Kingdom)
are stamped in relief. The wall cracks and under the cracking
letters gushes a red substance, which can be associated with both
bog water and blood. This sequence, where Riget’s Gothic history
is embedded in its grotesque ground, is kept in earthen colours.
After this there is an abrupt cut to the second part of the intro,
where the staff of doctors, secretaries, patients, nurses, medical
students, porters and kitchen personnel is introduced at a rapidly‑
edited tempo.64 Edited in between are fifteen close and distant
shots of an ambulance driving with lights flashing in sepia‑toned
negative images. This part, which ends with an establishing shot –
also in negative – of the hospital, is accompanied by a melody with
drums, sirens and an almost liturgical chant of a Latin‑sounding
litany, or counting‑out rhyme, similar to the Danish schoolchil‑
dren’s classic »lægtilæs kulitorum femihverum«.65 The phrases
are chanted by male voices, referencing the Gothic‑religious as
well as the cultic and lodge‑like.
The bipartite intro illustrates exemplarily how the Gothic style
in The Kingdom I is superseded by the grotesque in The Kingdom
II. The image of the cave and the wall cracking under the pressure
of the red liquid constitutes the sudden change from Gothic to
grotesque, when the association with the thin, brownish bog water
yields in favour of an association with the thicker, redder liquid
form of blood. Likewise, the bodies and faces of the bleachers are
seen as shadows on the screen, thus making them anonymous,
and must in the second part of the intro also give way to strong,
diverse portraits of people expressing passions such as pain, angst,
lust and abhorrence. It is already implied here that a vampire story
from the horror genre is contained within the ghost story.
There is an obvious association with Carl Th. Dreyer’s ghost
story Vampyr (1932), in which a corpse is reanimated as a vampire
with a lust for blood. In Dreyer the story is told as seen through a
veil of mist, created by mounting a filter of gauze in front of the
lens. It was this unintentional cinematic error in the first shots
64 This could be a pastiche of the American TV series St. Elsewhere (1982‑1988), which with black hu‑
mour described the conditions in a low‑ranked hospital in Boston.
65 This phrase mixes the rhythm of a monastic chant with a children’s play on words, and is intended
to mimic the perceived rigidity of Latin.

CONTENTS
which Dreyer exploited as a visual effect. The haptic grey tone
functioned as a reinforcement of the story of David Gray, who,
in a kind of hypnotic dream, duplicates himself as one of the
living dead and thus becomes capable of exorcising the vampire
back down into the earth. The scene where Gray, in a seemingly
lifeless state, is carried across the churchyard in a coffin with a
window, in order for the film to show us the impossible – namely
the perspective of the dead – comes close to tipping over into a
demonstrative grotesque form but does not.66 Through the im‑
possible viewpoint and haptic picture quality, Dreyer manages to
challenge thoughts within his viewers.
Trier gives his TV ghost story a similar reflective undercur‑
rent through his »bleached« haptic image quality, which was
established using transfers between various pixel formats.67 The
16mm film format (location shoot) and video format (studio
shoot) is transferred first to videotape, lightening the workload of
the many image layers necessitated by the creation of the ghosts.
This is blown up to the final version, a 35mm film format, which
is broadcast in an electronic TV format (cf. extra material on
DVD, The Kingdom I). The video medium allows the creation
of several layers in the image; likewise, its built‑in electronic
»interference« is intentionally magnified. The result is the hap‑
tic effects that maintain the viewer’s attention on the screen’s
modulated surface. The grainy veil functions like Dreyer’s gauze
filter as a kind of abstraction membrane to the plane of events,
underlining the Gothic ghost motif. Moreover, a predilection for
the grainy white noise of TV screens, scanners and surveillance
cameras is repeated in each episode. It is this electronic interfer‑
ence together with the use of hand‑held cameras and the forced
›jump‑cut‹ editing technique that opens the floodgates for the
grotesque form’s more direct appeal to the audience. The misty
66 According to Roland Barthes, there is a question of whether Dreyer, in the aforementioned scene,
crosses the boundary of representation, which follows the Renaissance perspective, the feudal absolute
monarchy and the theatre’s viewpoint paradigm (Barthes [1973] 1977). In my article »Trompe‑l’æil og ån‑
delige automater« (Trompe l’œil and spiritual automatons) I use Hitchcock’s Psycho and Dreyer’s Vampyr
respectively in order to clarify the difference between Lacan’s repesentational schemata, which relates to
the baroque, and Deleuze’s foldings and multiplicities, in relation to contemporary art and film (Thomsen
2000a).
67 Cf. also Laura U. Marks, »Loving a Disappearing Image« in Touch (2002).

CONTENTS
and veiled images of diverse scans and X‑rays (of sound and
brainwaves, fetuses, lungs, nocturnal ambulances, etc.), which
make the TV screen’s white ›snow‹ active in the narrative, also
contain the ›ghosts‹ that Trier, through detective patient Mrs
Drusse, invites the audience to bury.
The Gothic style’s dreamlike distance from the events, which
dominates in Dreyer’s Vampyr, consequently loses ground
quickly in The Kingdom I, and in The Kingdom II the grotesque
figures‹ stylistic influence on the experience of the onlooker
becomes decisive in the form of »the evil, green eye« and its
characterisation of the screen, together with the toilet seat and
its framing of the viewer position.68 The viewer is offered the
role of the »the evil eye’s« victim or of the TV apparatus as such,
which in a similar manner, with a double ironic twist, is pointed
out as a culturally radical, feministic or psychoanalytic concept
of the enemy.69 Alternatively, the viewer is degraded to an ab‑
ject (Kristeva [1980] 1982), sharing destiny with the floaters or
sinkers that Swedish consultant Helmer (Ernst Hugo Järegård)
flushes down the toilet. In this way Trier demonstratively brings
the viewer into dialogue with the camera’s »doings«, and at the
same time ironically addresses the diverse critical discourses on
the camera from the 1980s. Trier demonstrates that the camera
certainly can »look back« with a devastating gaze, so the viewer’s
68 The inspiration for the toilet seat could be Tómas Gislasson’s short documentary on the film crew’s
living conditions in Poland during the filming of Europa (extra material with the Europa trilogy).
69 Cf. Jacques Lacan on the split between eye and gaze (Lacan [1973] 1977). This analysis inscribes, so
to speak, everything visible in the pre‑structured field of desire, in that whatever is imagined but not (nec‑
essarily) seen becomes the object of desire’s ‘little a’. The point is, partly, that desire can never be satisfied,
and partly that the gaze’s (French le regard) materialising is like the kiss of death. In this way they become
momentary views of recognition which in both art and reality can reveal the gaze’s fatal affective power,
leading to a kind of experience of »the Real« which lies outside of both the imaginary and the symbolic reg‑
ister. This analysis, together with Lacan’s analysis of the little child’s so‑called mirror stage, inspired Chris‑
tian Metz, in Le Signifiant Imaginaire: Psychanalyse et cinéma (Metz [1977] 1982), to make the film camera
into the gaze’s imaginary sign, which releases the film viewer’s position. That the film camera constitutes a
pre‑structured, voyeuristic and invisible (male) viewer position, intensifying sadistic lust and mastery in re‑
lation to the (female) object of visual desire, with a basis in Freud, is further analysed even earlier by Laura
Mulvey in the article »Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema« (Mulvey [1975] 1989). These analyses often
led to expectations of the camera gaze as a mastering instance, which film theory (especially the feminist
approach) took up for the following decade. As many have pointed out, however, there was a marked re‑
sentment that the encounter with the gaze in Lacan can in fact bring about a traumatic encounter with the
Real and not a mastery of the same. Furthermore, criticism of these film theories aimed at object ‘little a’
in relation to the subject is based on a constituting lack, pleasure within someone else’s field, which cannot
be contained, and partly towards a voyeuristic (sadistic) aesthetic not unproblematically countered by the
masochistic (see, among others, Studlar 1993, Thomsen 1997, Cowie 1997 and McGowan 2003).

CONTENTS
position with the fail‑safe off (in the narrative) is weakened; but
when this is shown through a grotesque filter or peephole, it is
precisely this stylistic innovation that allows for the camera’s
gaze to become funny or ludicrous.
Trier thus continues Dreyer’s aforementioned dismantling
of the fail‑safe audience position in Vampyr. Dreyer reduces the
viewer to an object (in the form of a corpse), effectively under‑
mining the classic voyeuristic, narrative craving. The challenge
for Dreyer’s David Gray is to go beyond the limit of narrative
representation and thus evade the vampire’s power, and this is
done through a conspicuous splitting or doubling of the repre‑
sentation of his body through the film medium. In allowing the
audience a view from an impossible viewer position, outside that
which can be represented, so to speak, Dreyer creates a kind of
nothingness figure (cf. Maurice Blanchot 1994) and consequently
shows that film can transcend a classic model of representation.
The film medium is discussed positively by Deleuze as a »spir‑
itual automaton«, in continuation of Spinoza who uses this term
to describe the way in which we are affected. Deleuze’s use of the
term also calls to mind Walter Benjamin’s description of the film
medium’s potential. According to Benjamin, film in the 1930s (to
a greater extent than art) was able to shock audiences out of their
mental and psychological preparedness and stimulate thoughts
within them:
It is only when movement becomes automatic that the artistic essence

of the image is realized: producing a shock to thought, communicating
vibrations to the cortex, touching the nervous and cerebral system directly.
Because the cinematographic image itself »makes« movement, because
it makes what the other arts are restricted to demanding (or to saying),
it brings together what is essential in the other arts; it inherits it, it is as
it were the directions for use in the other arts; it converts into potential
what was only possibility. Automatic movement gives rise to a spiritual
automaton in us, which reacts in turn on movement. (Deleuze 1989,
156; author’s italics and quotation marks)
It is Dreyer’s ability to portray the spiritual automaton in the

mummy‑like faces of his figures that fascinates Gilles Deleuze. He

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sees Dreyer as a director who realises Artaud’s failed ambitions
with the film medium: »The spiritual automaton has become the
Mummy, this dismantled, paralysed, petrified, frozen instance
which testifies to ›the impossibility of thinking that is thought‹»
(Deleuze 1989, 166). Thus when Deleuze fosters »the spiritual
automaton« in Dreyer’s figures it is clear that by doing so he es‑
tablishes a distance from the recharging of hallucinations, dreams
and suppressed passions in expressionism and surrealism, as well
as Eisenstein’s montage technique, because they create unified
interpretations and appeal to action. For Deleuze it is an impor‑
tant point that Dreyer (as well as Artaud) consciously undermines
the representation, creating »a hole in appearances« (op. cit., 167)
and thus enables us to grasp that we are not yet thinking:
It might be said that Artaud turns round Eisenstein’s argument: if it is

true that thought depends on a shock which gives birth to it (the nerve,
the brain matter), it can only think one thing, the fact that we are not
yet thinking, the powerlessness to think the whole and to think oneself,
thought which is always fossilized, dislocated, collapsed. (Deleuze 1989,
167; author’s italics)
In extension of this one might note that Dreyer’s film appeals to

thought but not to grotesque transformation. Trier’s revival of
the ghost motif in Dreyer fills the spiritual automaton’s anaemic
mummy existence with the electronic TV medium’s signaletic
material, so to speak, and consequently grotesque laughter is
generated. When the TV viewers relate themselves to the TV
medium’s »coolness«, the »hot« message loses its power, and the
camera gaze (i.e. the gaze: cf. the evil, green eye; Mulvey [1975]
1989) can be treated as abject (i.e. faeces framed by the TV screen
as a toilet seat). Though the viewer perhaps senses the camera
gaze’s »demonising« or is affected by the notion that every critical
sense is »flushed« down the toilet, and that objects are constantly
reduced to abject, he/she must give in to the laughter, because
classic filmic conventions are exposed to various forms of deter‑
ritorialization in and with the TV medium. The laughter activates
the »fossilized, dislocated and collapsed« (Deleuze 1989, ibid.)
properties of thought as a surplus.

CONTENTS
While Dreyer’s artistic strategy in Vampyr is implemented in
David Gray’s transformation via the corpse’s reification to the
resurrected ghostly existence, which clarifies the voyeuristic fos‑
silisation in which the viewer is placed, with The Kingdom I and
II it is the opposite that occurs. Here life is embodied as power, in
that the interaction with the TV viewer first and foremost depicts
the »body« of the signaletic material in continuous transforma‑
tion. Mikhail Bakhtin’s »grotesque body« incisively describes the
polyvalent forces in The Kingdom II:
The grotesque body, as we have often stressed, is a body in the act

of becoming. It is never finished, never completed: it is continually
built, created, and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the
body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world (let us
recall the grotesque image in the episode of Gargantua’s birth on the
feast of the cattle‑slaughtering) […]. Eating, drinking, defecation and
other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing), as well as
copulation, pregnancy, dismemberment, swallowing up by another
body – all these acts are performed on the confines of the body and the
outer world, or on the confines of the old and new body. In all these
events, the beginning and end of life are closely linked and interwoven.
(Bakhtin 1984, 317)
Aside from Trier’s stylistically precise references to and framing

of the viewer, it is also, as mentioned above, the diffuse utilisation
of the electronic signal’s haptic aesthetic that forces the grotesque
deterritorialization of the Gothic figures.
The real-time effect of electronic signals

- introduction to The Kingdom I
The hastily speeding, phantom ambulance is presented in the in‑

tro like a Gothic element: the reoccuring images are either kept in
black/white positive or negative, and clearly mimic the often poor
quality of the surveillance camera image and perfunctory capture
of the motif. Along with the image style of Vampyr, they draw
on familiar Gothic elements such as the uncanny technology‑
made‑independent, exemplarily depicted in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s

CONTENTS
Surveillance image with clear visual grid in the introduction to The Kingdom I.
Der Sandmann (1817).70 The particularly grotesque thing about

the scanner and the surveillance camera technique, which Trier
makes into a still more manifest aesthetic means through the two
parts of the series, is that they transmit signals in »real time«.71
This is given special attention as early as the very first scene (just
after the intro), which introduces the segment »Den Hvide Flok«
(»the white flock«) – signifying doctors as well as ghosts.72 But
the visual preference for the haptic could also be contained in
this appellation, which constitutes the first close‑up in the first
episode: a flock of shining white pixels in negative. Parts of a car
roof, flashing alarms and screens can be seen in several settings,
where the individual pixels overshadow the motif. It is impossible
70 Hoffmann allows artificial extension of the domain of vision in the form of glasses, binoculars and
a telescope that intensify the delusion of the mind. Freud built his study »Das Unheimliche« (1919) on this
Gothic novel without, however, these visual apparatuses playing any greater role in the analysis.
71 Cf. Thomsen 2007, 2011 and 2012a.
72 The expression naturally relates intertextually to Brorson’s psalm »Den store hvide flok vi se« (1765),
where it refers to the resurrected souls in heaven (literally »The great white flock we see”).

CONTENTS
to determine precisely what one is seeing until the camera zooms
out and it becomes clear that the motif is an ambulance stopping
next to a pedestrian crossing, shown through the representation
of a surveillance camera. The dozing night porter, Hansen (Otto
Brandenburg), wakes up and notices the ambulance, and in The
Kingdom he acts throughout as a »normal person«, with whom
viewers can identify (in contrast to Dreyer’s David Gray). He is
drawn towards the mystical, while attempting to retain his com‑
mon sense. At first Hansen slowly registers the ambulance on the
screen, which he scrutinises before rubbing his eyes and leaving
the duty room in order to check out the vehicle in reality.
The transition from the black/white surveillance images to
the sight of the actual black and red ambulance happens slowly,
as the camera follows Hansen who, half asleep, moves guardedly
through two sliding doors while his shadow (as if he were a char‑
acter from Vampyr) is cast into relief on the wall of the modern
building. The sensor‑activated sliding doors demonstrates – as
does the surveillance camera – the new technology interfaces,
which do not require conscious activation by a person. Hansen
experiences (with the viewer) that all the windows of the vehicle
are opaque white, so it is impossible to look inside.
The nocturnal phantom ambulance, whose signals eerily ac‑
tivate diverse call and surveillance apparatuses in the hospital,
functions as an autonomous alien or remote‑controlled technol‑
ogy, existing in an intermediate field between unreal and real,
but nevertheless functioning as a virtual force in the narrative.73
In The Kingdom II Trier’s phantom ambulance gains a grotesque
dimension when the »ghost driver« phenomenon becomes the
subject of a duty room wager on which of the volunteer drivers
(all called Falcon) will survive the staged blindfold drive (in the
opposite direction against the traffic on Lyngby motorway). The
Gothic eeriness of the ambulance in The Kingdom I is made clear
73 Of other alien elements in film history that indicate a virtual layer in the film’s narrative exposition,
one could name the well‑known scene where Dracula’s closed coach – as a negative image in fast motion
– moves supernaturally through the landscape in F. W. Murnau’s expressionist film Nosferatu. Eine Sym-
phonie des Grauens (1922). Victor Sjöström’s Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage) from 1920 should also be
mentioned here as the carriage, which collects the dead in order to carry them to hell, has different drivers,
just like the phantom ambulance in The Kingdom I and II (thanks to C. Claire Thomson for this last refer‑
ence).

CONTENTS
by the fact that it is driving itself, reified and humanly incom‑
prehensible. Nevertheless, as with the unconscious in Freud, it
controls the storyline. In the grotesque version of the ambulance
in The Kingdom II the audience is invited inside, into the driver’s
seat, as »ghost drivers«, but without the potential steering. The
blind driving ends in actual bodily injury and death. The rela‑
tionship between finding oneself physically outside and inside
the self‑driving »machine« makes a big difference in the degree
of audience participation in the Gothic and grotesque narrative
respectively.
After the porter Hansen has identified the closed ambulance,
he shouts to the senior resident Jørgen Krogshøj74 (Søren Pilmark)
in the hallway »Hey! Has anyone come in from that ambulance?«
Krogshøj answers: »I’ve no idea«, and the camera moves in an arc
around the two, until the door can be seen again, while Hansen
replies »It’s weird…look at it.« But apart from the automatic doors
there is nothing to see – for Krogshøj, Hansen or the viewer. The
ambulance is not there, and Krogshøj looks at Hansen in a puz‑
zled way, as the characteristic sound effect of the series is heard for
the first time: a sequence played backwards, which ends abruptly.
The artificially generated extradiegetic sound indicates through‑
out the series that we have just been witness to a »portal« between
the spirit world and the living world. In continuation of Vampyr,
one could say that the sound illustrates »a hole in appearances«.
The sound creates a disturbing effect of Gothic eeriness whereby
confidence in the visible representation is undermined. After this
Hansen goes back to the duty room, and is kept company by a
large dog eating out of a bowl, called Bongo. Bongo then jumps
up and barks in a threatening manner at the monitor, which now
shows only an empty pedestrian crossing. Hansen is happy with
the dog’s spontaneity and the scene ends with him asking the dog:
»Do you think it’s weird, too?«
Bongo, whose teeth, tongue and whiskers are filmed in close‑
up, is presented as an integrated part of the clinical white hospital
environment. Hansen’s confidence in the dog stands in contrast
to the mistrust he has just exhibited towards the monitor and the
74 In the English DVD version his name is translated as »Hook«.

CONTENTS
ambulance. This mistrust towards the monitor and its recording
of matter and the faith towards the dog’s animalistic sense follows
the prevalent view of technology and (pet) animals respectively.
The grotesque touch, in the shape of the dog’s munching action
and whiskers in close up, also follows here as an extension of
the Gothic eeriness that was felt at the beginning of the episode.
But the real‑time monitoring is depicted as especially unreliable,
provoking a sense of uneasiness, and it is indicated that the ghosts
are created from the haptic flock of electronic pixels.
Bongo functions throughout the series as a kind of guard and
tracker dog for the porters Hansen and Bulder (Jens Okking),
when they are sent on increasingly grotesque tasks via the hos‑
pital’s basement passageways by the patient Mrs Sigrid Drusse,
who apart from having an interest in the occult, is also Bulder’s
mother. Bongo is revealed to be the dog belonging to the demon
Aage Krüger (Udo Kier), and therefore it can move about as he
does in both the actual and the virtual world. Bongo is in other
words a demon, and can materialise in a present version or dis‑
appear into the past or future, just like Krüger. Bongo, Krüger
and later Lillebror (Udo Kier) make up an antithesis to the ghosts
and the real‑time electronic transmissions and scans, which are
eternally caught in the present.
Breaching – the conclusion of The Kingdom I
As shown previously, the Gothic layer of the ghost story is com‑

bined with the grotesque from the outset. The ghosts that populate
first Drusse’s mind, and later most others, in The Kingdom I go
through a veritable transformation towards the end of episode 4,
»The living dead«,75 so the grotesquely monstrous is brought to
life with a vengeance. This happens first and foremost with the
attempt to terminate Judith’s (Birgitte Raaberg’s) pregnancy,76
75 From a literary point of view, the expression has been coined to represent both zombies and vam‑
pires, but here it is most likely demons.
76 Judith is a medical student and is an object for many kinds of transformation. She is Krogshøj’s girl‑
friend and becomes pregnant but the child, Lillebror, reveals itself as the result of her previous relationship
with the demon Aage Krüger. Judith’s love for Lillebror makes it possible for »good« to take over in the
hospital.

CONTENTS
resulting in the birth of Lillebror (Udo Kier). As a filmic repre‑
sentation of Rabelais’ figure Gargantua, Lillebror makes space
for both »good« spirits as well as »evil« demons.
The image of Lillebror’s grotesque man’s head, far from inno‑
cent‑looking and smeared in blood, appears between Judith’s legs
where one expects the head of a newborn. The scene sets an effec‑
tive full stop on a number of other scenes where various mediating
»operations« between otherwise absolute conditions make it pos‑
sible to imagine a blending of genres between the Gothic and the
grotesque. The countdown to this long conclusion begins with the
two dishwashers with Down’s syndrome (Vita Jensen and Morten
Rotne Leffers), who function like the chorus in ancient Greek thea‑
tre and foresee the course of events. According to them, this will be
»a spooky evening«, where »the wicked will laugh, the good will cry«,
but where it is added coyly »or so they say«, indicating an ironic,
citable twist in meaning and in the way the uneasiness is presented.
Next we follow six episodes in six rooms in the hospital, which are
cross‑cut with an ongoing story about a so‑called »unannounced«
visit to the labyrinthine basement passageways and the neurosur‑
gical department by the Health Minister (Lars Lunøe). The visit
causes the white coats to be contaminated to an increasing degree
with mucus, blood, amniotic fluid, semen and other of the body’s
grotesquely depicted deposits. The story ends with the minister
finding a head sawed off from its body (cf. below), prompting him to
expel a scream of terror, which in the final seconds of The Kingdom
I sparks a fearful reaction in all of the hospital’s residents. For the
sake of clarity I will refer to the following six episodes separately, as
if each sequence were rounded off.
1. First the medical student Mogge (Peter Mygind) is shown at‑

tempting to get rid of the head, which to add to the confusion
resembles himself, and which he has earlier sawed off a dead
body. He originally carried out this practical joke merely to get
the attention of the sombre pathology consultant Bondo (Baard
Owe). On numerous occasions throughout The Kingdom I
the severed head pops up like a prop in a number of macabre
and funny scenes, but Mogge has himself been followed by
misfortune. In one scene Mogge (again) steals the head from

CONTENTS
Krogshøj’s refrigerator, because he wants to get it out of the
way once and for all. Hidden in a rubbish bin, Mogge flings
the head through the selfsame hole that Bulder has just made
in the Kingdom’s basement wall. It returns, however, like re‑
pression in Freud, when a party of laughing spirits wearing
carnival costumes and riding in a ghost carriage, having ob‑
viously slipped into the hospital through the same hole, pass
right through the body of the Health Minister and toss away
the head as rubbish. It is the relationship between ghost and
copy or between the ghost’s reappearance and the machine’s
repetition that is blended here. From being part of the whole‑
ness of the body, the severed head becomes an independent
grotesque form, a metaphor for the becoming‑independence
of fear (or the unconscious) which the Gothic story feeds off.
In the final scene, however, it is reduced to tangible rubbish
and when the Health Minister identifies his own facial traits in
the dead facial features it becomes a concrete image of reality –
death – which is not something one can dispose of. Neverthe‑
less, the image of the Health Minister staring at his apparition
becomes ludicrous, because the viewer is privy to the whole
previous history and must surrender to the kind of liberating
insight that we all, as craniums, carry the same features.
2. While the Health Minister, the hospital’s Chief Executive
Manager (Henning Jensen) and Moesgaard make their way
through the passageways, the lights go out. Moesgaard ex‑
plains calmly that the emergency power is being tested. When
the lights come on again they are – like Drusse and Bulder
– witness to how the (senior) resident Krogshøj bricks up the
hole in the wall, from which the ghost of Mary has been »ex‑
orcised« and into which the dog Bongo has also disappeared
together with Mogge’s head. This sight is explained away with
a formulation on »undermining professional boundaries« from
Moesgaard’s pamphlet »Operation Morgenluft«.77 However,
the sight of the patient, Sigrid Drusse, who has ectoplasm
77 As mentioned previously, the name refers to the German occupying power’s »Operation We‑
serübung«, which was the German forces‹name for the occupation of Denmark during the Second World
War.

CONTENTS
in her hair as a result of the ghost’s expulsion,78 invokes the
interrogative interest of the hospital’s Chief Executive Man‑
ager. When Drusse’s tight grip on her »exorcism stick« – in
the form of a croquet mallet – stands in direct contrast to
the nurse’s diagnostic explanation of »paralysis in the right
arm«, the hospital Chief Executive Manager does not hesitate
to demand that she be discharged the following morning. In
Drusse’s later recollection of the sequence of events in the
spiritual seance, she hears the minister’s scream of terror (on
seeing Mogge’s decapitated head), to which she exclaims: »Oh,
no! Maybe the gateway was open too long, after all«. The story
of Mary’s »exorcism« from the hospital, so she can, accord‑
ing to Drusse, be reunited with her mother in Heaven, offers
several transformations from spiritual to physical existence.
Significantly, it is through Mary’s doll that Drusse finds the
place where she died in 1919. The doll, with the inscription
»Mary«, was left to Drusse by a deceased woman, Ellen Krüger
(Solveig Sundborg), who was the legitimate daughter of Aage
Krüger. Mary was murdered with chlorine gas by her biologi‑
cal father, Aage Krüger, who intentionally experimented on
her, though she was perfectly healthy. Mary’s ghostly hands
rip the doll out of the hands of Drusse through a grate in the
floor. As a result, Drusse is told the entire story by Mary’s
mother, who appears in spiritual form. Mary gets the doll,
while Drusse »sees« Mary die in a vision.79 The blood, which
streams from the nose of the ghost, manifests itself physically
and becomes a dried mark on the basement floor, even after
Drusse’s spiritual vision has disappeared. This »trace« of the
crime is found in elevator hall 5, which was a part of the old
hospital that Mary died in, and in this way it »documents« the
true content behind the ghost story. Bulder helps his mother
78 Ectoplasm or teleplasm is, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, a term in occultism for »a myste‑
rious, usually light‑coloured, viscous substance that is said to exude from the body of a spiritualist medium
in trance and may then take the shape of a face, a hand, or a complete body« (www.britannica.com; last
viewed 22 November 2018). It is interesting in this context that the Nobel Prize winner J. J. Thomson, who
discovered and identified electrons, making possible the development of radio tubes, transistors and picture
tubes for TV, was himself interested in the occult (cf. the series Menneskets historie, 2012, USA; broadcast
on Danish TV in spring 2015).
79 The image of the dying Mary resembles Edvard Munch’s The Sick Child (1886).

CONTENTS
in the expulsion scene primarily in order to bring an end to
her spiritual stories, which he does not have much faith in.
Krogshøj helps, on the other hand, because he recognises his
girlfriend Judith’s former lover (and father to her unborn child)
as being identical with the same Aage Krüger that is shown
in a newspaper photograph from the 1910s with Mary and
Bongo at his side. For this reason, Krogshøj has talked Judith
into having an abortion, as there is a likelihood that the fetus
is a »spirit which allows itself to be born«, as Drusse explains.
Consequently, Krogshøj participates in two »occult« opera‑
tions this evening: the Gothic expulsion of Mary’s ghost from
the hospital, in which Krüger’s crime is witnessed, and the
grotesque expulsion of Mary’s biological half‑brother from
Judith’s womb. The doll – which incidentally is an icon for
the Gothic doppelgänger in both the Romantic and surrealist
movements – takes Mary along to the portal. Bongo the dog,
which as mentioned belongs to Krüger, disappears voluntarily
through the hole.80 Mary’s doll, »Mary«, functions as a token
of spiritual resurrection, while the dog demonstrates life as a
cycle in contact with the dead. The doll’s general human like‑
ness can instil both desire and angst, while the dog’s senses
and instincts can be partly controlled by humans. If the sounds
and smells are strong enough, the dog does not obey human
norms and limits for alive and dead, accessible and offensive.
As with life itself, Bongo has the ability to resurrect, and in
The Kingdom I and II, it functions as a figure traversing both
a Gothic ghost world and a grotesque, vigorous world.81
3. After the »exorcism scene« in the basement, emphasis is si‑
multaneously put on what happens to Helmer, who has flown
to Haiti along with a Haitian native in order to learn voodoo.
While Helmer attempts to persuade his companion to bribe
the locals, the Haitians are depicted in an ecstatic dance with
80 The dog has apparently been brought to life again after porter Hansen – in episode 2 – found it
with a large laceration in its belly. As early as this second episode, Bongo is depicted with red, glowing eyes,
indicating demonic possession. It also becomes clear that Krüger killed the dog in order to impede Drusse’s
attempt to solve Mary’s murder.
81 Arthur Conan Doyle’s third novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1903), portrays a similarly super‑
natural dog, which perhaps could be a source for the Bongo figure (thanks to C. Claire Thomsen).

CONTENTS
painted faces, carrying animals bound together grotesquely.
Helmer succeeds in getting his companion to wrest some
poison from a witch doctor: a poison that according to his
rejected medical colleague (Ghita Nørby) transforms humans
into zombies, the so‑called »living dead«. Helmer has at the
same time hired a local Haitian to perform voodoo on a fabric
doll, representing Moesgaard, and Helmer cheerfully inter‑
rupts: »Come on then, you Danish bastard!« Here the purpose
of the doll is to represent the living Moesgaard, who will feel
pain telepathically where the needles pierce the body of the
doll. The doll replaces a living person, so to speak, and is in
this sense also the »living dead«, an expression for the belief
in telepathic connections, which today are realised in the form
of real‑time interfaces between two parties.
4. The inspection group in the hospital, led by Moesgaard, has
reached the highly irregular operation of Bondo, who is regis‑
tered as Bayer in the neurosurgical operations department. The
ongoing »fusion« of Gothic and grotesque here deals with the
relation between heart and brain, and is demonstrated during
the liver transplant that may save Bondo’s life, but which he
himself impedes in order to secure his reputation as a man of
science. The scene portrays modern medical science as gro‑
tesque cannibalism, when the diseased so‑called »hepatosar‑
coma«, which has grown to a large size in Bondo’s insides, is
wrongfully implanted without consent from his family. This is a
barely‑hidden critique of the doctors’ positive attitude towards
the brain death criterion (introduced in Denmark in 1990),
in that the idea of renown and collegial recognition turns life
and the curing of disease into a secondary consideration. He
would rather dream of »standing ovations« from his colleagues
than survive. Therefore, he asks the same doctors to call off the
operation that will free him from the diseased sarcoma and sub‑
sequently makes them oppose their own judgement and their
Hippocratic Oaths. In this way Bondo incarnates the opposite
of the dog Bongo, which follows its instincts. Bondo rejects life
in order to attain the absolute in death: fame. As a pathologist he
identifies with the corpse in a different way, which invokes the
worship of the Gothic; but in his striving for the pure, blood‑

CONTENTS
less Gothic form, Bondo becomes thoroughly infested by the
grotesque – becoming a grotesque figure himself.
5. In the next operating theatre, the hospital’s Chief Executive
Manager and the minister witness the preparations for Judith’s
induced abortion, which culminates in the birth of Lillebror.
This scene is shown as a grotesque condition of how, in the
1990s, it was possible to save a fetus down to approximately
1200 grams if it was born prematurely. Previously these fetuses
would have featured in the statistics as spontaneous abortions.
Judith’s 12‑week‑old fetus is born in this way despite the fact
that it has been given 3 lethal injections. While Judith is in la‑
bour, Krogshøj strongly urges the gynaecologist to give her yet
another injection, but it fails because the baby’s head breaches.
At the same moment the nurse interrupts: »In the womb it was
an abortion, outside it is murder!« The relationship between
inner and outer in this scenario is therefore absolute, and an
unfinished fetus, which cannot breathe of its own accord, is
kept alive artificially because of this.
6. Finally the relationship between sexual daydream and real
nocturnal sexuality is shown to the uninitiated and awestruck
inspection group in the sleep laboratory. Mogge, who has
been voluntarily subjected to medical experiments in his
sleeping state in order to be close to the sexually attractive
Camilla (Solbjørg Højfeldt), has finally succeeded with his
enterprise. He has driven away his recurring nightmare (of
old men who eat his flesh raw) by envisaging sexual scenes
with Camilla. Camilla, who is supervising his brain activity on
a monitor in real time, sees his arousal and is »turned on« by
his lust in this scanner‑transmitted state. In The Kingdom II
she shows herself to be a tool of the Devil, making Mogge’s
half‑sleeping, half‑medicated body into her sexual instru‑
ment – naturally to the great surprise and consternation of
the inspection group.
In these six episodes Gothic gestalts transform themselves into

grotesque bodies; spiritual existences become tangible or animal‑
istic; inner organs are shown on the outside; and daydreams are
realised at night. All the episodes are finally collated in the gro‑

CONTENTS
tesque image of Lillebror’s head between Judith’s legs. On a nar‑
rative level one can say that Drusse’s attempt to exorcise Mary’s
spiritual, ghostly existence from the hospital, through bearing
witness to Aage Krüger’s crime, opens a portal to what was in‑
troduced by Mrs. Drusse earlier as »the Swedenborg room«,82 a
kind of waiting room for death, where the dying are met by both
good and evil spirits.
The perforation from upper to underside in the

narrative’s Möbius strip
Though Mary actually escapes her Gothic ghostly existence in this

world, the hole in the basement wall simultaneously opens up for
Mary’s half‑brother, Lillebror, to »slip through« and be born as
a grotesque monster in the selfsame world. This, though he (as
a 12‑week‑old fetus, according to normal calculations) has just
been given a lethal injection, only to then be ›born‹ as an abortion.
This violent finale to The Kingdom I thus creates an inversion
between Gothic and grotesque that up until then has dominated
each side of the narrative Möbius strip, and separated the living
and the dead.83 The grotesque style takes over in The Kingdom II
where an active interface to the viewer is also created through the
screen’s green, staring eye. In The Kingdom II the inner becomes
the outer, by which the ghosts are driven out of the narrative of
grotesque, monstrous existences.
82 Trier and Vørsel have named the room after Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688‑1772), a Swedish scien‑
tist and mystic.
83 A Möbius strip, which has only one surface, can be made with a long, thin rectangular strip of paper
that is twisted through 180 degrees, after which its ends are stuck together. If one draws a line starting at
a point on the Möbius strip’s upper side, the line will meet this point again after having reached the point
that would normally make up the underside of the strip. The two points can meet, without crossing a bor‑
der or lifting one’s pen. This folding, which creates the mathematical sign for infinity, denotes the lack of a
border between upper and underside, inner and outer. If one pricks a hole through a Möbius strip the dif‑
ference between the strip’s upper and underside disappears totally; they can meld together or switch places,
as David Lynch demonstrated so precisely in the narrative structure in Lost Highway (1997). Here in the
prison scene the initial Gothic noir atmosphere (Fred’s universe) is transformed to a coloured 50s‑inspired
setting (Pete’s universe). Whereas Fred’s way of seeing the world leads to him murdering out of jealousy,
in Pete’s case it leads to the proliferation and doubling of the world. Both parts are registered by the digital
brain and the impersonal narrator, The Mystery Man, who functions like software in a computer – a kind
of reflective interface that recreates the world in its own image. David Lynch himself mentions the Möbius
strip as inspiration for the film (cf. Positif 431, Janvier 1997; thanks to Anne Jerslev, who has written on the
film in Kritik, vol. 152, 2001).

CONTENTS
It is the grotesque image of Judith giving birth to a child with a
grown man’s face that, through an intertextual reference, antici‑
pates both the dominance of the grotesque and the series‹ direct
involvement of the viewer. The blood‑smeared man’s head, which
appears between Judith’s legs and screams, is clearly a pastiche of
the renowned painting Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612), by the
Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (see following page).
In Gentileschi’s representation, the realistic depiction of the

strenuous act of carrying out a decapitation comes closer to
slaughter than to a mythological scene of heroism. An act such
as this demands strength, demonstrated especially in the exposed
arms of the women with their sleeves rolled‑up, together with
the concentration in their facial expressions. But by centring
Holofernes‹ head together with his muscular left shoulder and
upper arm, which is highly reminiscent of a thigh as seen from
the seated underside, it also gives the painting associations to an‑
other well‑known situation where a woman’s physical strength is
required: when giving birth or assisting in a birth. In this way real‑
ism is given a grotesque turn, as was surely the intention, in that
the composition is greatly influenced by known grotesque forms
from the Renaissance, where the connection between life and
death is portrayed as a body giving birth, which literally speaking
has a head at both ends. Mikhail Bakhtin has given an extremely
incisive description of this figure:
The last thing one can say of the real grotesque is that it is static; on
the contrary it seeks to grasp in its imagery the very act of becoming
and growth, the eternal incomplete unfinished nature of being. Its
images present simultaneously the two poles of becoming: that which
is receding and dying, and that which is being born; they show two
bodies in one, the budding and the division of the living cell. At the
summit of grotesque and folklore realism, as in the death of one‑cell
organisms, no dead body remains. (That is, when the single cell divides
into two other organisms, it dies in a sense but also reproduces; there
is no departure from life into death.)
(Bakhtin 1984, 52)

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The image represents the decapitation of Holofernes from the Old Testament
story of Judith, who together with her maid liberated her town, Bethulia, from
the despotic Assyrian general. She is often described as a female freedom fighter
who cunningly (using beauty, food and wine) pacified her opponent in order
for him to be overpowered. But Gentileschi, who painted the picture after she
herself had suffered both physical as well as psychological harm in a rape case,
chose, through realistic means, to emphasise the physical power and skill Judith
must have possessed in order to be able to carry out this decapitation at all.

CONTENTS
Judith giving birth to Lillebror in the closing scenes of The Kingdom I foreshad‑
ows the grotesque which unfolds in The Kingdom II.
It is hardly coincidental when Trier’s Judith, in labour, is pre‑

sented lying in a position resembling the one indicated by Gen‑
tileschi in the depiction of Judith’s decapitation of Holofernes.
The realistic grotesque form in the painting is transformed in
a particularly intelligent way by Trier, where Holofernes (or
Aage Krüger) is reborn in the monstrous form of Lillebror. This
›breaching‹ of the Möbius strip indicates both a motivic as well
as a stylistic liberating rebirth of the grotesque form at the end
of the first phase of postmodernism,84 where the joining of fetus
and geriatric, inner and outer condition, good and evil existence,
human beings and animals, creates laughter and celebration. In
The Kingdom II we are subsequently presented with a wealth of
inversions, where human‑becoming‑animal, adult‑becoming‑
84 Here I keep to Hal Foster’s outline of two phases in postmodernism, which are described in The Re-
turn of the Real (1996), where the insistence of 90s art on material, social and political elements marks itself
as different from the sign’s implosion in the 1980s. Foster related this to the historical European avant‑gar‑
de, but one might have more luck relating it to 90s art or to the new interface in digital media.

CONTENTS
child, dead‑becoming‑living, good‑becoming‑evil are illustrated
by carnivalism’s mantra of rebirth versus the chronological side of
progress. But first of all it leaves the viewer in no doubt that this
rebirth is a creative tribute to the material‑corporeal, as Bakhtin
points out. Trier follows the comical degradation of the bodily
nether regions with reference to the motif of rebirth, with which
carnivalism’s classic grotesque forms are replete. In this way The
Kingdom I and II are essentially different from David Lynch’s
TV series Twin Peaks, which clearly cultivated the Gothic hor‑
ror but not the grotesque laughter. The metamorphoses in The
Kingdom II seem liberating, as the idea of the Gothic‑sublime is
transformed into a grotesque encounter with the material. This
material level is reached in particular by using extreme haptic
close‑ups, which are found close to the level of sensations.85
Grotesque real-time interfaces: surveillance, scans

and X-ray
In discussions on The Kingdom I and II the majority of reviewers

and critics have noted the extensive use of hand‑held cameras.
This technique historically relates to the application of the video
camera, which was introduced by Jean‑Luc Godard and Harun
Farocki among others from 1968 and onwards. At that time the
hand‑held principle of the video medium was closely connected
with the possibility of creating direct interfaces between shoot‑
ing and screening, so the artist could interact with his or her
surroundings. In 1974, Paul Ryan (inspired by McLuhan) wrote
on the relation of videotape to the reel of film and the cybernetic
feedback operation respectively:
Film edits the experience of others for you. With videotape, on the
other hand, you can pre‑edit your own experience simply by setting
down your script on audiotape and following it in front of a camera.
85 As a side note, the transition from the Gothic‑expressionistic style in the Kingdom I to the grotesque
transformative style in The Kingdom II is equal to a similar historical‑theoretical development of the term
›the haptic‹ from Riegl through Worringer to Deleuze and Guattari. The diagrammatical pulsating which
›calls for‹ the virtual and the event, makes up the most important difference between the term’s function in
Riegl and Deleuze. This also applies to the difference between a Gothic haptic style in the Kingdom I and II.

CONTENTS
Film is the packaging of information in cans. Videotape is involved in
the feeding back of process. Film rips information away from a situa‑
tion for use elsewhere. Videotape can feed back into a given situation
and enrich experience. Film extends man as a spectator. Videotape
extends man as a cybernator. Film imports information. Videotape
implodes indigenous data. […] Portable videotape works with the raw,
the uncooked data, the static of the surround. In the cauldron of a
cabled culture, this kind of data could be more exciting than moon
rocks. […] We do not yet understand the information contours of cul‑
ture well enough to cybernate smoothly. In this condition, raw data is
Dada. (Ryan 1974, 21)
The real‑time interface of digital media in our time can actually

be found anticipated in this text, where the feedback function of
the video medium was new and employed as a kind of interface
that could undermine the difference between an inner and outer
side, just like a Möbius strip: »It offers us one continuous (sur)
face with nothing to hide« (Ryan, 30).
Both the technical and the aesthetic sides of video and TV
media are relevant for any analysis of The Kingdom I and II. The
video camera’s feedback possibility is exploited, in diverse forms
of surveillance, but an interest in the haptic surface of the image,
the ›white noise‹ of electronic signals, is also demonstrated to a
high degree. This also applies to the hand‑held sequences – for
example, the first morning conference in The Kingdom I, episode
1: »The white flock«, in which the surface becomes the foreground.
Here the cameras follow the verbal duel as if they were tracking
shots of real bodily movements. This is intensified by the fact
that the image is out of focus in those seconds where movement
occurs from side to side and around the table. The ›white noise‹
and its unfocused fields dominate the depiction of the morning
conference and add greatly to the aggressive tone in the verbal
duels. The amount of white – coats, coffee cups, curtains and light
streaming through the slats in the venetian blinds – naturally also
contributes to the scene’s emphasis on the surface of the image.
Trier exploits the same advantage that directors and artists have
valued highly since the 1960s: the relative ease of 16mm cameras
and video technology in making filming possible in very small

CONTENTS
spaces. But the effect when the unfocused white noise becomes the
most visible part of the image is particularly accentuated by Trier.
During the course of The Kingdom I this opaque form of white
noise is re‑established in the form of diverse screens, monitors
and sound reproduction devices. For example, after the morning
conference Helmer forces Krogshøj to participate in the X‑ray
conference, so he can confront his lower‑ranked colleague once
again with the cost of a CT scan. Scans of diverse »sections« of the
brain are here hung up vertically on a light box to give the doctors
an overview. The doctors‹ rationalistic universe is depicted in this
way with the help of white on white.
In episode 2, »Alliance Calling«,86 Mary appears as a white
ghost to a patient who is being operated on under hypnosis.
Helmer compares hypnotism – a running theme for Trier in the
Europa trilogy – to circus magic and occultism, which he himself
(along with the majority of doctors) performs secretively in The
Kingdom II. Drusse, on the other hand, mixes light and dark.
She communicates with a dying friend, who is supposed to make
contact with Mary in the Swedenborg room, and here it is a white,
luminous surface in the form of neon lighting in the ceiling that
communicates the spectre’s messages to Drusse. Subsequently,
while in a swimming pool, she is told the story of Mary by the
senile Ellen Krüger. The white reflections in the water again cre‑
ate a blurring of the image foreground. The following attempt in
the control room to record the radio calls made by the phantom
ambulance, with the help of a reel‑to‑reel tape recorder, moves
the focus of the camera to the tele‑radio transmitter. The camera
zooms in on the radio speaker phone, and simultaneously the
volume level increases, so the machine noise in the reproduced
version becomes the most important part of the scene. Trier thus
ensures that the media interfaces and their mutual effect on one
another and on the surroundings is made into something which
can be sensed in a haptic manner, where the sound and image sur‑
face or foreground is accentuated. In this way the viewer becomes
accustomed to seeking motifs and explanations in the screen’s
purposely indistinct foreground, where the ghosts reside, rather
86 In the English DVD version this episode title is translated as »Thy Kingdom Come«.

CONTENTS
than in the narrative’s depth or substance, which in The Kingdom
II becomes completely labyrinthine.
Slowly but surely in these first two episodes of The Kingdom I a
special attention is built up towards diverse objects in the hospital
environment. A surveillance camera, a dictaphone, a scanner, a
light box, a mirror, a neon light, a tape recorder, a radio answer
phone and even a thermometer are described in a particular way,
so their habitual meaning is given an extra dimension. These
objects are made »estranged«, not merely in the Freudian psy‑
choanalytic meaning of ›uncanny‹ in Das Unheimliche (Freud
1919), but rather in the sense of ostranenie, which for the Russian
formalist and realist Viktor Shklovsky (Shklovsky 1917) produces a
creative disturbance of the accustomed content of meaning. With
the help of zoom, panning, jump cuts and editing overlaps, Trier
(following Walter Benjamin [1936] 2005) creates a distinct »opti‑
cal unconscious« perception of the object, which adds something
to a conventional recognition. The making‑in‑dependent of these
things induces a somewhat sinister atmosphere, but it is especially
the aesthetic disconnected style in The Kingdom I that gives oc‑
casion to laughter. As shown, this strategy of alienation does not
relate to a realism à la Brecht’s Verfremdung, as Trier allows the
ghost story to be played out with the surface of the TV screen as
a partner. The muddy pixels and the scratchy sound recording
establishes a consistently more manifest attention on the medium,
whose electronic signals, however, become embedded positively
in the plot rather than being shown critically‑analytically. Trier
is clearly on the way to developing the particular form of Dogme
aesthetic with its affective involvement, which makes the TV me‑
dium’s »signaletic material« into a force (see the chapter on The
Idiots).
In episode 3, »A foreign body«, Drusse finds (during a hear‑
ing test) a very significant alien element by amplifying the record‑
ing of the sound in a soundproof room at the hospital. The scene
where the technician amplifies and filters the quiet signal until
the computer has isolated the sound is dominated by a long series
of increasingly magnified haptic images in the form of electronic
signals on a screen – alongside the ever stronger identification
of Mary’s cry: »Why must I be killed?« As with the coincidental

CONTENTS
circumstances in the filtering of the stillness in the soundproofed
room, the fetal scan of Judith’s child in the same episode also af‑
fords access to a space that is in principle inaccessible. The close‑
up of the scan is blown up so much that – as in the filtered zoom
of the sound recording – one only sees the image’s white flicker‑
ing noise. In the sleep laboratory the electrical activity in Mogge’s
brain is measured with the help of a corticographic apparatus and a
brain scanner, which registers oscillations while Mogge has night‑
mares. Finally, in the last scene, the viewer is presented with the
preserved body of the little girl, Mary, in a large glass cylinder;
the medical scientists of the time having reserved it for research‑
related »internal use«. The open mouth on Mrs Drusse’s terror‑
stricken face emulates the open mouth on the preserved girl’s face,
which is shown in ultra‑close‑up, before the camera zooms out
in a staccato motion with a sound component which mimics the
screeching violins in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Mary’s body has
become alien or estranged (ostranenie), isolated from its spirit or
soul, hunting diverse measuring instruments, and it becomes Mrs
Drusse’s task to reunite body and spirit. Elsewhere another foreign
body is transplanted – a diseased hepatosarcoma – into Bondo’s
body, and just like the nightmare in Mogge’s brain it is inserted as
a foreign entity without a thought for the psychological, moral or
ethical consequences. As mentioned, the series‹ »foreign body« can
also be found, from this episode and onwards, however, in Trier’s
utilisation of the video medium’s qualities, in that the viewer’s gaze
is held on the screen’s grainy and often opaque surface.
The technological and mythological credo of the video

medium
Lars von Trier, cameraman Eric Kress, editors Jacob Thuesen,

Tómas Gislason and Molly Stensgård, not least together with the
actors, all experienced great improvisatory freedom during the
production of The Kingdom I and II. The limited TV budget made
it necessary to limit the artificial lighting. On the other hand the
small 16mm film and video cameras made it possible to film in tight
spaces on location. With The Kingdom I and II Trier brings the
video artist’s interpretation of the medium into a successful appli‑

CONTENTS
cation within the TV medium. As he allows the video transfer to be
a common medium for film and video recordings, Trier gives the
electronic videotape a central role as the »foreign body« created by
white noise, which creates interfaces between ghosts and people,
as well as the series‹ Gothic and grotesque sections. Nowadays it
is only a few who remember the initial attraction of the video me‑
dium. It is described poetically in a passage from Bill Viola’s »The
Sound of One Line Scanning«, first published in 1986:87
The video image is a standing wave pattern of electrical energy, a vibrat‑

ing system composed of specific frequencies, as one would expect to
find in any resonating object. As has been described many times before,
the image we see on the surface of the cathode ray tube is the trace of a
single moving focused point of light from a stream of electrons hitting
the screen from behind, causing its phosphor‑coated surface to glow.
In video, a still image does not exist. The fabric of all video images,
moving or still, is the activated, constantly sweeping electron beam –
the steady stream of electrical impulses coming from the camera or
video recorder. The divisions into lines or frames are solely divisions
in time, the opening and closing of temporal windows that demarcate
periods of activity within the flowing stream of electrons. Thus, the
video image is a living dynamic energy field, a vibration appearing
solid only because it exceeds our ability to discern such fine slices of
time. (Viola 1998, 158)
Barbara Buckner compares this technological process with the

recording, developing and viewing of film, which gains the char‑
acter of an eternal, immutable product. Buckner notes that the
video medium is continuously »re‑lived« in that the encoded
magnetism is translated to the monitor. She therefore believes,
along with other artists of the time, that the medium possesses
an »immediacy«, which has since, to a large extent, become the
attribute of digital media. With his haptic close‑ups (of surveil‑
lance video, filtering and amplification of sound and images of
scans), Trier emphasises the pulsing and living materiality of the
87 Barbara Buckner’s extremely detailed article from 1978, »Light and Darkness in the Electronic
Landscape: Some Aspects of the Video Image«, describes the same in a more technical manner.

CONTENTS
electronic TV medium. Its inbuilt »resuscitation« amplifies – by
use of media, so to speak – the stylistic transformation from the
Gothic‑expressionist (filmic) form to the celebration of the ma‑
terial‑corporeal grotesque (electronic) form. Trier, to an even
greater extent than Lynch in Twin Peaks, utilises the medium’s
own material processes;88 as the TV screen’s own performative
›resuscitation‹ is exploited, the transformation from Gothic to
grotesque is made noticeable, and at the same time a form of re‑
flection on the medium is generated made accessible to the viewer.
Buckner also describes which image forms are especially suit‑
able for the video format in light of its technological basis. Video
is not the medium of detail but rather the medium of modulation
and insertion, as »up to eight or sixteen images« can be mixed
and parts of an image can be inserted in another image to create
an »image composite« of many image layers, where »the inside
of one image may become the outside of the other image, the
boundary of one appears as the inner body of the other. The
contour or boundary of an object is conjoined electronically with
another« (Buckner 1978). It is evident that the spectral entities
in The Kingdom I and II owe their credibility largely to this edit‑
ing process, in that the ghost’s luminous existence functions as
a remnant material that seems to be created and transmuted in
the present time of the viewer – of the now. Outlines are created
and disappear, just like the effects of light and shadow from the
various layers of blended images. Furthermore Trier uses parts
of the raw blank tape to create effects of chaos, and of eeriness.
This also corresponds to Buckner’s observation of videotape: »In
its unrecorded or raw state, the videotape is in a state of complete
chaos. This is what we see as noise or ›snow‹ or ›salt and pepper‹
patterns on the screen when no signal or intelligence is being
transmitted« (Buckner 1978). All of this taken into account, it
is natural to see The Kingdom I and II as a suggestion for a TV
series aesthetic, which takes a stand against what Paul Ryan calls
the static »information layering« of film (Ryan 21). Here it is made
clear (as also in the diverse experiments with the video medium
from 1968 and onwards) that electronic media breaks radically
88 In Inland Empire (2006) David Lynch experimented with the video format in a similar way.

CONTENTS
with the chronotope examples we know from novels and film
respectively.89
In Bakhtin’s ›chronotope‹ term we understand the notion of
immanence and the meaning of the transformative foldings in
the still new appearances of immanence, which Deleuze develops
philosophically. In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari
relate it explicitly to the novel’s experiments with and to the dif‑
ficulty of being able to »break through the wall of the signifier«
(Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 219). Without naming the chrono‑
tope it is also here an assumption that one goes from a creation of
meaning where the face’s European, organised, subjectified trait
can be deterritorialised in a rhizomatic structure, which forms »a
living block, a connecting of stems by which the traits of a face
enter a real multiplicity« and »are no longer merely something
reminiscent of something else« (op. cit., 222).
In his left‑hand play with the video medium, Trier creates a
grotesque turning‑inside‑out of the filmic aesthetic. The granu‑
lated, blown‑up and disturbed video image deterritorialises the
filmic chronotope type, in which a body or a face moves or re‑
lates itself to a landscape. In The Kingdom the relation of time to
space is amputated through the haptic video images and diverse
real‑time interfaces. The present space and its people combine
with past and future spaces and times, where inhuman or ani‑
malistic traits are made clear. Trier shows the way towards a new
aesthetic, which transcends the aesthetic of film and novel, where
the »prefacial inhumanity« (op. cit., 223) comes into being, at first
like a head (Udo Kier as the demon Aage Krüger) that belongs to
a body »that is already deterritorialized relatively and plugged into
89 The term ›chronotope‹ (time‑space), developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, signifies that the relationship
between time and space gestalts differently in each individual work of art, which in this way inevitably in‑
terprets the work’s historical origin. There are four types of chronotope found in any text: the writer’s, the
text’s, the reader’s and the reading’s chronotope. These are different but also blend in a discontinued and
heterogenous manner, in that each reading, as is known, is an aesthetic recreation of the text and of the
text’s chronotope as well as of the reader’s chronotope. When we make a distinction between various genres
and discourses it is also, according to Bakhtin, an expression for registering various ways of organising
chronotopes aesthetically. The classic epos is, for example, an expression of a culture of unity that is mono‑
logical in its legitimation of power. The incidents that the people in an epic are exposed to change neither
their character properties nor the space they inhabit. The modern novel, which emerged as a continuation
of the Renaissance, parodies and blends well‑known genres and creates dialogue. In the novel one can
speak of matter and consciousness forming new sign formations, new meanings or non‑meaning in indi‑
vidual chronotopes.

CONTENTS
becomings‑spiritual/animal« (op. cit.) (Udo Kier as Aage Krüger’s
positive incarnation Lillebror). The path to this point crosses
Dreyer’s specific filmic style and in the reinterpretation of the
haptic surface image, which is so exemplarily demonstrated in the
conclusion of Vampyr, where granules of flour take over the screen
(cf. Deleuze 1989, 170). One could also mention The Passion of
Joan of Arc, where Joan’s facial characteristics become layered by
the filter of the smoke, in order finally to become identical with
the haptic surface of the screen. This is similar to Deleuze and
Guattari’s description of the face as »a lunar landscape, with its
pores, planes, matts, bright colors, whiteness, and holes: there is
no need for a close‑up to make it inhuman; it is naturally a close‑
up, and naturally inhuman, a monstrous hood« (Deleuze and
Guattari 2013, 222). In The Kingdom I and II this haptic level, in
and with the remediation of the video medium’s electronic pulse,
opens for the Dogme 95 experiment. The signal noise spreads just
like the hypnosis in the Europa trilogy out over the descriptive
level and assumes a diagrammatic function in which the border
between the TV screen’s signaletic material and the TV viewer’s
decoding of meaning is eroded.90
The haptic level in The Kingdom I and II
I employ the term ›haptic‹ as a continuation of Alois Riegl. In

his book, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1901/02; English version:
Late Roman Art Industry, 1985), he differentiates between three
kinds of vision or artistically possible forms of perception: 1) a
tactile short‑sightedness (Nahsicht), which is related to the join‑
ing of surfaces and figures in classical Egyptian art, so they exist
on the same plane but are differentiated; 2) a tactile‑optic or
normal‑sightedness (Normalsicht) with an orientation in Greek
art, which indicates a beginning of the consequence of depth
and an orientation towards subjective perception; and 3) a long‑
90 As shown in my analysis of the Signal toothpaste’s diagrammatical function in Epidemic, it becomes

almost impossible to distinguish the relation between the electronic signal’s content and the expressive
qualities of its haptic noise. In Wiener’s »the signal is the message« and McLuhan’s »the media is the mes‑
sage«, a similar fusion takes place. In the following the signal noise – similar to the refrain in Deleuze and
Guattari (see later) – describes both a stratification and a de‑stratification.

CONTENTS
sightedness (Fernsicht) with its orchestration of individual figures
who, though projected on a surface, do not necessitate a tactile
sensation, as their outlines are differentiated with the help of
shadow and colour effects. In the latter category one finds the
sketch‑influenced style of late Roman art, where the figure has
not yet stepped into the infinite space, as is recognisable from
the Renaissance. Nevertheless the spatial orientation becomes
appreciable as a distinct dimension in the image that implies a
subjective mastery of the relation between surface and ground.
In Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (1993), Margaret Iversen
describes how optical vision, which gives a sense of space without
a tactile, sensory anchoring in the present space, for the first time
shows itself in art history as a foreground, creating the impression
of spatial distance from the background (Iversen 1993, 79‑80).
In this way subjective interaction with the works first becomes a
necessity from late Roman optical art onwards.
The word haptic (Greek hapto) relates to actions of the hand:
fastening, attaching, securing, grabbing, touching, seizing, catch‑
ing, attacking, and raising a hand to. In extended meanings it
also includes vilifying, affronting, taking on board, grabbing hold
of, comprehending, occupying oneself with, reaching, enjoying,
and igniting. With the word ›haptic‹, Riegl emphasises the eye’s
(and not the hand’s) ability to sense in relation to experiencing
the pattern in a carpet or the structure in a weave. The haptic
view thus resides in the surface textures and represents in Riegl
a different use of (or approach to) the visual sensation from the
optic, where orientation takes place through markers which create
structure in, for example, an image.91
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are occupied explicitly with
the notion of the haptic in the chapter »The Smooth and the Stri‑
ated« in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 2013). This
chapter functions in many ways as a clarification of the intro‑
ductory chapter »Rhizome«. Deleuze and Guattari build further
on Riegl’s notion of the haptic (the smooth) and the optical (the
91 In these structures, the background surface interacts with the form, allowing the image’s various
surfaces to communicate. Depth together with the volume of things relates to the horizontal and vertical
lines of the perspective, and light, shadow and colour effects add to this.

CONTENTS
striated), interpreted through Henri Maldiney’s introduction in
the chapter »L’art et le pouvoir du fond« in Regard, Parole, Espace
(Maldiney [1973] 1994), which also incorporates Heinrich Wölf‑
flin and Wilhelm Worringer’s various uses of Riegl. In Deleuze’s
detail studies of Francis Bacon’s paintings in Francis Bacon: The
Logic of Sensation ([1981; 2002] 2013), the word ›haptic‹ is used to
describe how the rhythmic intensity or modulation of the colours
emphasises the space, in contrast to the optical sense perception of
light (and time). Deleuze believes that in the haptic near‑sight, in
great colourists such as Turner, Monet, Cézanne and van Gogh,
one can sense tonal differences as if one were actually touch‑
ing them. Thus haptic vision allows us to sense the space as a
qualitative relation between colours rather than as a quantifiable
relation between foreground and background, which is often
subordinate to an infinite three‑dimensional scaling (cf. Daniel
W. Smith 2003, p. xxvi).
The haptic image formation and view does not constitute an
opposition to the optical in Deleuze and Guattari, either. Rather,
one might mention an alterning, where the surface’s modulation
of colour, movement and textural variations becomes more sig‑
nificant in the delineation of depth and figures. As optical beings
we use both parts and cannot easily operate with a differentia‑
tion. But if for example one sees one’s reflection in a mirror, the
optical view will correspond to one’s reading of bodily or facial
contours or outlines, while the haptic view corresponds to focus‑
ing on a part of the body (the surface of the skin, for example, or
the expression in the eyes). In the haptic dwelling on detail, the
contour of the body and the spatial background become diffuse.
But it is evident that since the Renaissance the art of painting has
demonstrated more examples of optical compositions than hap‑
tic, on the strength of the one‑point perspective and its mode of
organising in a mathematically infinite space. On the other hand,
the haptic granulation of the canvas and screen surfaces generally
comes to the foreground in modern painting (impressionism and
expressionism), as well as in photography and film, and later in
the visible grainy pixels of electronic and digital media.
As described above, it is especially in the artistic utilisation of
the electronic conditions of chaos that haptic qualities become

CONTENTS
evident. Deleuze does not consider chaos a condition in which all
differences are dissolved. On the contrary, it is in chaos that forms
of order emerge spontaneously like milieus which are variable and
often with limited time, where certain kinds of repetitive codes can
unfold themselves as life in relation to external factors (light, ener‑
gy and so on). A body consists of various cell milieus that revise and
maintain their structures again and again. These milieus (hearts,
lungs, brains, nerves, etc.) also function in solidarity and work
together in relation to a heart rhythm that creates a qualitative
relationship between respiration, blood pressure, brain impulses
and so on; which in turn relates to and produces diversity. If one
goes further with this description, these milieus and rhythms again
become submissive territories. Creating territories is an action
that stylistically and creatively organises the milieus and makes the
rhythms creative. The human being submits corporeally to territo‑
ries through rhythms (for example, vocal intonation and nasal and
guttural peculiarities in language), through embellishment and
movement (for example, dance, fashion and rituals), and through
territorial demarcation and marginalisation (cultural solidarity).
If one now relates this description to the haptic it becomes
clear the milieu takes shape as groupings or as a condensation
of colours and pixels, while rhythm takes shape as patterns and
the relations in and between these. A milieu of colours can, on a
video image for example, form a kind of dimension or demarcated
spatiality, but it is first in the expressive territorial action, which
in the artistic composition creates rhythm, that an impression of
fluctuating composition is created. It is not territorial space that
creates the function of territorial demarcation; it is in the instant
where for example the colour element is cultivated or repeated,
or stands out as a quality, as delineation, that an artistic terri‑
tory is realised. Chapter 10 of A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and
Guattari, 2013), »1730 – Becoming‑Intense, Becoming‑Animal,
Becoming‑Imperceptible…«, describes how Klee, Kandinsky and
Monet wrest the line away from the domination of the point and
liberate it from having to describe an outline:
The line has become the diagonal, which has broken free from the
vertical and the horizontal. But the diagonal has already become the

CONTENTS
transversal, the semidiagonal or free straight line, the broken or an‑
gular line, or the curve—always in the midst of themselves. Between
the white vertical and the black horizontal lie Klee’s gray, Kandinsky’s
red, Monet’s purple; each forms a block of color. This line is without
origin, since it always begins off the painting, which only holds it by
the middle; it is without coordinates, because it melds with a plane of
consistency upon which it floats and that it creates; it is without localiz‑
able connection, because it has lost not only its representative function
but any function of outlining a form of any kind—by this token, the
line has become abstract, truly abstract and mutant, a visual block; and
under these conditions the point assumes creative functions again, as
a color‑point or line‑point. The line is between points, in their midst,
and no longer goes from one point to another. It does not outline a
shape. (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 347)
The artist marks his/her territory in the composition signature

as well as the name signature, and it is the signature that sets
both the subject and the work as entities. The possessive subject
is therefore created by the territorial, artistic gesture – not the
other way around. If one looks further at an artist’s continued
work there will necessarily be mention of a continued work
of deterritorialising and reterritorialising. Territories are to be
continually created. They are variable, in the same way as an
animal’s territorial demarcations are conditional on the seasons
– decided by whether a possible mate is in proximity, whether
the correct conditions are found, and so on. The individual
territorial demarcations are found in a perpetual movement.
This flux is characterised by the fact that the virtual level, in the
form of previous and future demarcations, also plays a part in
the creation of rhizomatic interlacing. All elements – including
pauses, perforations, white noise, edits and omissions – play a
role in the rhizomatic structure, of which the haptic view is also
characteristic.
It is not difficult to see that the haptic and rhizomatic view and
way of thinking can, to a large extent, be made analytically valid
for an artistic practice, including new electronic and digital media
forms, whose characteristics of ›unfinished‑ness‹ and becoming
are striking. In chapter 14 of A Thousand Plateaus, »The Smooth

CONTENTS
and the Striated«, the smooth space becomes synonymous with
the nomadic space and the space in which the war machine is de‑
veloping, while the striped space signifies the space of the settled,
and the space which is instituted by the apparatus of the state.
Finally, the two heterogeneous modes of organising are summed
up as techniques for textile production (felt‑making as opposed
to weaving), musical techniques (rhythm as opposed to melody),
spatial organising (Riemannian space as opposed to Euclidian
space), and so on. According to this model, the haptic (the smooth
space’s) organisation becomes a model for a nomadic (art)form.
At the same time it should be underlined, however, that haptic
spaces or modes of organisation cannot be separated in practice
from the optical. Yet it could be summed up abstractedly that
haptic space includes short‑reaching sensations (visual, auditive,
as well as tactile), while striated space includes far‑reaching optical
sensations.
In Deleuze and Guattari the haptic space gains (as a continu‑
ation of Worringer) yet another qualification, in that the line is
described as »abstract« or »Gothic«,92 »nomadic« and »not recti‑
linear« (2013, 577), in contrast to the »concrete« or straight lines
in the optical space. In Deleuze and Guattari the abstract lines
make independent an artistic will that is not organic, and does not
create territories, imitate or represent. With the abstract, nomadic
line, art is seen – as a rule exemplified with expressionism – as an
»abstract machine«, although this does not exclude art from being
figurative. In his later book on Francis Bacon, who paints figures
– without being a figurative painter – Deleuze describes his special
haptic‑manual and abstract style as a »realism of deformation« (cf.
Thomsen 2001, 237). The same term could be used for Trier’s
style in The Kingdom I and II, where it is significant that the hap‑
tic composition does not exclude the creation of figures and plot.
The series cannot be described as either traditionally realistic or
traditionally modernistic in its style. Abstraction and material sen‑
sations interact, as in Bacon, in that it is the intensity of the space
92 Cf. Deleuze (1986, 51), where the Gothic line’s zig‑zag movement between things is characterised.
Instead of contours it creates intensity and forms of mixed‑up spasms in the image plane, for example in
horror films from the 1930s and onwards.

CONTENTS
rather than its extent which is described. It is the event as intensity
and affect that becomes the object of description, not the imitation
nor the representation of an existing world or genre.
The abstract or Gothic line, which describes a dynamic force
rather than organic harmony, does not seek territorial mastery,
marking or framing, and its artistic will does not result in figura‑
tive representation, even though it can describe a figure. Deleuze
and Guattari’s enthusiastic description of the abstract line’s prop‑
erties could in itself stand as a precise description of Trier’s aes‑
thetic practice in The Kingdom.
The abstract line orients itself neither towards delineating a
motif nor towards creating a difference between foreground and
background, as it is constantly in motion and changing direc‑
tion. It makes up an expressive description of a smooth or haptic
space without either beginning or end. Despite this instability, the
abstract line has a significant strength of expression that relates
itself to repetition, not the form. The effect of the abstract line’s
haptic style can to a large extent be rediscovered in the hand‑held
principle, intensified in the consciously rough and forced editing
techniques of post‑production. On the whole, the hand‑held cam‑
era and jump‑cut editing functions as an abstract line, subverting
the straight lines and concrete spaces in the modern buildings of
the Rigshospital. The grotesque means, including the magnifica‑
tion of electronic signals and the presentation of technology as an
estranged (ostranenie) but independent machinic power, add to
the impression of mutation and haptic short‑sightedness. At no
point does the TV viewer have an overview of the floors, elevators
and rooms, and how they relate to one another. The building,
which in the real world is functionalistic, appears labyrinthine
or meandering. The image of the hospital’s exterior from diverse
angles, such as the bird’s‑eye view, is in striking contrast to its
chaotic, twisted interior, misleading everyone apart from the all‑
seeing dishwashers who, though they remain in the same place,
are able to see everywhere. Most of the rooms are reorganised,
changing function or character when the controlling forces are
deflected. The morning conference room is transformed into a
break room; the duty room becomes something between a control
tower and a commentary box; the archive’s block of memories is

CONTENTS
transformed into a hypersensory space; and the sleep laboratory
is transformed into a backdrop for pornography. In the beginning
the basement is inhabited by Krogshøj (Hook), who in his own
ingenious way marks out the shady territory where knowledge,
services and »goods« are exchanged outside the control of the
hospital. In a cleaning supplies room also located in the basement
is the secret lodge, of which most of the doctors are members, in‑
cluding »Pigernes Ole«, who has discreetly established himself as a
therapist in the subterranean space. The medical projects – whose
purpose is order, reporting and control – fail, are diverted or
change direction. Even the doctors‹ monologues, which through
journals and dictaphones aim to control diverse territories, are
undermined eventually by contact with patients, nursing staff,
porters, the board of complaints, parking attendants, therapists
and upper ministerial management.
Very often these expansions of space, territories and properties
occur by isolating and enlarging the particular haptic elementary
forms of the video medium. These expansions transform the TV
screen itself into a surface of sense impressions, which the viewers
have in front of them. Continuing on from Deleuze and Guat‑
tari, one can say that the screen is comparable to the surface of
the skin, which functions as an interface to another non‑organic
body. The haptic skin‑like surface, especially in The Kingdom II,
is formed and shaped like a piece of clay or wax, whose most im‑
portant function is to assume any kind of form as long as the sense
impression is stronger than that which happens to be represented.
The TV viewer must of necessity be activated by this interface,
which in addition acts as an ironic commentary on the Lacanian
term ›the Real‹, appearing in the form of a green eye and a toilet
seat seen from below, and covering the entire screen. The green
eye, with its extremely lifelike ›retina‹, only gives a blurred access
to the motif, filling the entire screen in order for the viewer to
become a victim and bearer of its evil, so to speak. Through the
›lens‹ of this evil eye we see the world from a not particularly flat‑
tering position: from within the demon itself. The alternative is to
see the motif – Helmer’s face – filmed through a toilet’s surface
water level, so the viewer’s position identifies with the position
of the faeces. As stated earlier, Trier works here in continuation

CONTENTS
of Dreyer’s renowned camera perspective in Vampyr, but in ad‑
dition to the green eye and toilet seat as grotesque effects, atten‑
tion is drawn to the electronic medium’s haptic dimension. The
description of this haptic line’s »Gothic incarnation« is also apt
for the transformation from a Gothic mode in The Kingdom I to
a grotesque mode in The Kingdom II:
It is this nomadic line that he says is mechanical, but in free action

and swirling; it is inorganic, yet alive, and all the more alive for being
inorganic. It is distinguished both from the geometrical and the organic.
It raises »mechanical« relations to the level of intuition. Heads (even
a human being’s when it is not a face) unravel and coil into ribbons
in a continuous process; mouths curl in spirals. Hair, clothes... This
streaming, spiraling, zigzagging, snaking, feverish line of variation
liberates a power of life that human beings had rectified and organisms
had confined, and which matter now expresses as the trait, flow, or
impulse traversing it. If everything is alive, it is not because everything
is organic or organized but, on the contrary, because the organism is
a diversion of life. (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 579 authors’ italics)
When the body no longer exists on the level of the organism,

new territories can emerge in the artistic field. In this instance,
it is the form of a reinterpretation of the haptic as an artistic way
of making apparent the »vitalization« or »becomings«, which in
particular belong to the camera, starting with video and onwards.
The ›white noise‹ = haptic surface = the film medium’s artistic
transformation in an electronic and digital age.
»The body without organs« and the »becoming-

animal«
The bodies in The Kingdom I transform into bodies without

organs, which Deleuze and Guattari along with Antonin Artaud
define as the »field of immanence of desire« (Deleuze and Guattari
[1980] 2013, 179), where it is the thought of the organism rather
than the organs that is attacked. The notion of the organism
implies both a religious entity of body and soul and an organism
of medical science, which can be described, have its functions

CONTENTS
determined and be treated. The thought of an organism also
creates the image of the subject as an entity, who acts, has ill‑
nesses and endures psychological suffering. Deleuze and Guat‑
tari believe that Artaud’s endeavours and descriptions express a
body without organs (BwO), where the »multiplicity of fusion«
and the ability to »flow« can be privileged »as forces, essences,
substances, elements, remissions, productions; manners of be‑
ing or modalities as produced intensities, vibrations, breaths,
Numbers« (op. cit., 184). The term BwO is aimed especially
toward the psychoanalytic description of desire as something
that should be regulated, or as something that is analysed in
the context of a deficiency. In Deleuze and Guattari desire is
determined positively like a vital force (élan vital), the processual
creating immanence, which is hindered in its search for fields of
intensity through the functionalised understanding of the body,
constantly demanding that it be regulated – first in the priest’s
damnation and containment of sexuality and gender, and later
by the psychoanalyst’s »damnation« of desire: »the negative law
of lack, the external rule of pleasure, and the transcendent ideal
of phantasy« (op. cit., 180).
In The Kingdom II desire is also regarded as extremely posi‑
tive, and even the doctors‹ appointments reveal themselves in
rapid progression to be controlled by desire. In The Kingdom II
the gigantic body of Lillebror manifests itself both in a concrete
sense as an incalculable haptic level and as a Body without Organs
(BwO) of Artaudian dimensions. The skin on Lillebror’s gigantic
body denotes an extensive field of sense perception, which like a
seismograph registers even the tiniest emotional current in the
hospital’s inhabitants. Lillebror pleads for euthanasia, his up‑
per body filling the whole wall and having to be supported with
a stand, while his lower body rests on some beds. This is not an
expression for self‑destructive behaviour, but the only way he can
fight against the reach of evil. In spite of its size, this Body without
Organs is paradoxically enough nothing but sheer intensity. Lille‑
bror surrenders his future, in that he lives through it together with
his mother as a performance. Then he says goodbye to his body
as agency and as the I’s field of self‑realisation, accompanied by
Carl Nielsen’s »Solen er så rød, mor« (The sun is so red, mother).

CONTENTS
The invocation of death seems rather more life‑affirming than
melancholic in this context.
It is also in The Kingdom II that general becoming‑animals
with human identities are to be found. Even in The Kingdom I
Helmer is compared to a rat by Rigmor, who tries to shoot real
experimental rats in order to be better able to hit Helmer. She
compares herself to a badger, which can bite to the bone. The
hospital’s Chief Executive Manager compares the lodge brothers
to a herd of bellowing stags in rut, butting heads and fighting for
territory in the preserve. The porters and guards call Krogshøj
a fox, because he always seems to have several ways out. After
ingesting Helmer’s zombie poison he slips into an almost lifeless
condition, and being assumed dead is close to being cremated as
well, before he re‑establishes his territory, only now without the
cunning charm which is so characteristic of the fox‑made‑human.
His human face becomes transformed into an animal head whose
matter‑of‑fact stare has driven out the twinkle in his eyes, which
was his trademark previously. This indicates that the non‑human
and predatory instincts have taken over, and as with Lillebror’s
BwO, Krogshøj’s becoming‑animal is characterised as a force
with direct territorial and deterritorialising influence.
During the course of The Kingdom II the medical profession’s
›intelligent brains‹ are reduced to a state where the instincts of
the predator brain take over. In the episode »Gargantua« Mrs
Drusse evokes Riget’s ›soul‹ in a hypnosis scene. Her son, Bulder,
is the medium who finds the soul of the hospital in the form of a
tiger, an anagram of R‑I‑G‑E‑T. In order to escape the confined
predator, Bulder must metamorphosise into any animal he so
chooses. In his angst he begins to flap his arms in a mechanical
manner reminiscent of stiff wings, and thus he metamorphosises
into a penguin; whereupon the hypnosis must be cut short. This
visit to the hospital’s Gothic‑looking »innermost cellar«, which
in a mostly comical way re‑gestalts the mechanical imitation –
as mastered so brilliantly in the slapstick tradition of film – in
Bulder’s too fat and – because of the hypnosis – too sluggish
body, underlines how all values are inverted in the grotesque. In
The Kingdom II the laughable is generally achieved by stressing
the mechanical, repetitive functions of the body (for example,

CONTENTS
biological), which contrasts the doctors‹ moral characteristics with
their ethical responsibilities. This contrast creates inversions and
interference in the material of the characters and of the narrative,
as the grotesque laughter gradually ruins all attempts to create
order and a system in a complete organisation of meaning. The
shallow non‑meaning, the intensities and the individual events
take over the scene in a manner Deleuze summarises thus:
Nonsense and sense have done away with their relation of dynamic
opposition in order to enter into the co‑presence of a static genesis
– as the nonsense of the surface and the sense which hovers over it.
The tragic and the ironic give way to a new value, that of humor. For
if irony is the co‑extensiveness of being with the individual, or of the I
with representation, humor is the co‑extensiveness of sense with non‑
sense. Humor is the art of the surfaces and of the doubles, of nomad
singularities and of the always displaced aleatory point; it is the art of
the static genesis, the savoir faire of the pure event, and the »fourth per‑
son singular« – with every signification, denotation, and manifestation
suspended, all height and depth abolished. (Deleuze [1969] 1990, 141)
Deleuze bases his analysis of humour partly on Henri Bergson’s

analysis of laughter (Bergson [1900] 2017), which takes its start‑
ing point in the social nature of laughter, and which corresponds
to Deleuze’s »fourth person singular« – that is to say, the use of
»one« and »it« as in »one dies« and »it rains«. Here »Everything
is singular, and thus both collective and private, particular and
general, neither individual nor universal« (Deleuze op. cit., 152).
The grotesque laughter’s surface, which negates the distinc‑
tion between high and low, is supplemented in The Kingdom II,
as depicted in the vitalising of the haptic surface by the electronic
signal. The living electronic pixels in the screen’s luminous green
eye allow for the possibility of sensing the surface of the Now. In
this living, electronic surface the space, body and face assume
diverse grotesque forms; high becomes low, inner becomes outer
and vice versa. The same applies to time, which cannot be delim‑
ited: past, present and future are intertwined with one another
and determine one another. The virtual planes of past and pre‑
sent are just as real and effectual in the current schedule as the

CONTENTS
narrative’s development of a Now. Ghosts and demons meddle
and time unfolds like a becoming that cannot be contained, but
which can rise or fall in velocity. The Bakhtinian chronotope
defies aesthetic consistence, in that the play between time and
space is under constant displacement on a plane of immanence.
On the other hand, The Kingdom II materialises this textural
plane, which the electronic signal consists of, as an aesthetically
forming rhythm and modulation. It is through the contraction
and expansion of illuminating blocks in the electronic signals that
we sense the work. The meaning of the form is itself and does not
constitute part of a discourse of meaning; as Ronald Bogue writes
with reference to Maldiney (Bogue 2003a, 118), the rhythm is
the form:
Rhythm is not to be confused with cadence or meter, says Maldiney, for

the rhythm of form is not regulated by an external time measure. […]
The rhythm of systole and diastole that plays through the self‑shaping
activity of form in an artwork creates its own temporal framework,
and when we experience the artwork we also enter into the implicated
time of its form, a perpetual Now outside commonsense coordinates.
(Bogue, 120‑21)
Trier carries out an aesthetic transformation from the Gothic‑

expressive style through the haptic surface effect to the grotesque,
where the figures function more as blocks of sensation than as
characters with a purpose in a narrative. Their reciprocal encoun‑
ters and confrontations create electronic patterns and rhythms,
so the screen’s haptic surface blends with the signal’s revival of
the Now in the foreground. From The Kingdom I and II onwards,
Trier enables the film viewer to experience new ways of viewing
and sensing. Not only is the space yanked free of its embeddedness
in the one‑point perspective illusion of depth on the flat screen, as
occurs in the Europa trilogy. With the help of the video medium,
the space becomes a dimension on the screen’s surface, creating,
according to Maldiney, phenomenological encounters similar
to the rhythm of breathing, in which the viewer’s haptic senses
are an important part. In continuation of Deleuze and Guattari,
one can say that the space is yanked free of its spatio‑temporal

CONTENTS
coordinates and becomes intensities, where »smooth space is oc‑
cupied by intensities, wind and noise, forces, and sonorous and
tactile qualities, as in the desert, steppe, or ice. The creaking of
ice and the song of the sands« (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2013,
557). And thus in the Trieresque aesthetic there occurs not only
a transformation from a Gothic to a grotesque‑expressionistic
style, but also a transformation of the film medium via the video
medium, so it becomes possible in the following film to remediate
the digital media aesthetic too.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 4
Dogme 95 and The Idiots

A new form of realism
Taking its starting point in The Kingdom I and II, whose haptic
compositions, hand‑held filming and uneven editing techniques
also direct the viewer’s attention towards their own sense percep‑
tion, this chapter discusses the Dogme 95 manifesto and its rules
by examining The Idiots (1998). The other films in the Golden
Heart trilogy, Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark
(2000), are discussed in the following chapter (where The Idiots is
again referenced), with particular attention given to the creation
of a haptically orchestrated spatiality in the remediation of the
landscape painting and the musical respectively.
As has already been mentioned, Lev Manovich discussed the
Dogme 95 project’s remediation of the film medium as an ef‑
fect of real‑time networks and forms of control. The new, light‑
weight DV equipment, which »allows the filmmaker to literally
be inside the action as it unfolds« (Manovich 2003, 19), gives the
film medium new ways to create effects of reality (as immediacy).
Practically all filmic forms of realism in the 20th century have
praised the way in which the new media allows for new ways of
describing reality. From 1922 and onwards to the 30s, Dziga
Vertov made use of them in a series of documentary films called
Kino-Pravda (film‑truth). The group involved in the production
of Kino-Pravda93 considered the camera a revolutionary tool,
which was not only congruent with modern, industrial production
processes, but could also register hidden contexts and provoke
93 The group consisted of Vertov’s wife, the film director Elizaveta Svilova, and his brother, Mikhail
Kaufman.

CONTENTS
insights from the filmic montage of images. The Kino-Pravda
group documented movement and rhythm in the new, modern
city space, whose automatic processes were depicted as a utopian
model for human development. In The Language of New Media,
Lev Manovich regards the group’s filmic method – where data
is collected without a manuscript source, with a view to editing
later – as a kind of harbinger of the computer database.
In the 1950s, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker and several others
in France (together with Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx in
the French department of The National Film Board of Canada)
found new inspiration in the experiments of the Kino-Pravda
group. The anthropological documentary film style called ciné-
ma-verité94 used new lightweight apparatus with inbuilt sound,
which enabled hand‑held and simultaneous live recording of
sound. As in the Kino-Pravda group, the camera was viewed as
a catalyst whose presence was welcome to be felt in the finished
film. The two somewhat simultaneous experimental film move‑
ments in England (called Free Cinema with, amongst others,
Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza
Mazzetti) and in the USA (called Direct Cinema with, amongst
others, Robert Drew, Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker)
focused on documentary reportage, which did not disrupt the
filmed action, but instead observed everyday life and political
situations as they took place.
Jean‑Luc Godard was very much inspired by Rouch’s anthro‑
pological style in the 1960s; for example, he adopted the jump‑
cut style in his new wave film. In the period 1968‑1972, he made
a number of Marxist‑inspired films together with Jean‑Pierre
Gorin. The collaboration was called the Dziga Vertov group95
and was inspired by the Kino-Pravda group’s experiments, which
aimed to create a politically engaged audience. Godard and Gorin
94 It was the French sociologist Edgar Morin who, in an article in France-Observateur in 1960, literally
translated kino-pravda to cinema-vérité. Furthermore, the same Morin was Jean Rouch’s partner in the
production of Chronicle of a Summer (1961), where everyday French life was documented. The film became
an important inspiration for nouvelle vague directors at the time.
95 According to Gorin, the name was used half in jest, but was also intended as a political bearing so
that Vertov’s aesthetic could be seen as an alternative to the more well‑known Eisensteinian aesthetic. Cf.
also the interview: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC03folder/GorinIntThomson.html (last
viewed 31 March 2015).
dogme 95 and the idiots · a new form of realism 113

CONTENTS
exploited the video camera’s easier (than the film camera) access
in order to depict the student protestors on the streets of Paris,
the workers‹ strikes at the factories and relationship crises in
the home. The Brechtian Verfremdung (distancing/alienation/
estrangement) effect was added in editing with the help of the –
for Godard – already typical techniques, where questions, slogans
and commentary broke the visual continuity.
The common denominator for all these movements of filmic
realism was the more easily managed equipment, which doc‑
umented or functioned as a catalyst for the depiction of life’s
rhythms (everyday life, work life, the city’s pulse, demonstrations
and election meetings). Instead of following a manuscript, the
creative process lay in the recordings‹ documentation of reality
as close as possible to the lived and experienced life. The political
or anthropological adaption of the material lay more in the filmic
selection of material than in the scripted part. The great advantage
of using the electronic video medium was that one could film
what one saw, then watch it again while on location, as well as
delete and edit it. It was considerably less expensive and simul‑
taneously more ›live‹ than what one could achieve with heavier
filming equipment. The period from the 1960s to the 70s, when
both anthropological film and video art extensively experimented
with developing the techniques for the production of ›live‑ness‹,
was influenced by the fact that the electronic pulse in the signal
was capable of something which film was not.96 Common to the
forms of film and video realism was the desire to reach a higher
level in their documentation of reality – either because it was
perceived as being (too) familiar (imperceptible), not appreciated
(unseen) or not apprehended (ideological). The experiments of
the period were thus also driven by the question of what can be
called real at all, and with which means experience of reality can
be captured.
96 Cf., concerning the electronic signal, the above‑quoted article by Barbara Buckner (1978), as well as
Thomsen 2010, 2011 and 2012.

CONTENTS
The »Dogme 95 Manifesto« and the »Vow of Chastity«
The Dogme films of the 1990s were especially concerned with the
recordings being regarded as »raw material to be later re‑arranged
in post‑production«, which in this case is of a digital kind where
effects can be created and added (Manovich, op. cit.). The mani‑
festo for Dogme 95 was signed on 13 March 1995 by Lars von
Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and later by Søren Kragh‑Jacobsen
and Kristian Levring. On 22 March 1995 it was handed out in
the form of flyers on red paper at an international film forum
in Paris as the most important part of Trier’s performance at
the conference »Le cinéma vers son deuxième siècle«. He was
invited as a speaker to mark the occasion of 100 years since the
first public film premiere. In several places the manifesto recalls
the 1960s French new wave and the article written by François
Truffaut entitled »Une certaine tendance du cinéma français«,
which in January 1954 appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 31
(Truffaut 1954). Dogme 95 was, however, far less analytically
committed and much more politically charged film document
than Truffaut’s, which with its launching of the auteur theory has
since been criticised for stimulating the cult of the artist genius.
Dogme 95 very explicitly challenges a collective revolt against
all forms of reverence for a so‑called bourgeois aesthetic in film:
DOGMA 95
MANIFESTO
DOGMA MANIFESTO, DOGMA 9597
DOGMA 95 is a collection of film directors founded in Copenhagen

in spring 1995.
DOGMA 95 has the expressed goal of countering »certain tenden‑
cies« in the cinema today. DOGMA 95 is a rescue action!
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resur‑
rection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave
proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
97 This version of the Dogma 95 manifesto was dowloaded from the official Dogma 95 website, when it
still existed.

CONTENTS
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while,
but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors them‑
selves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti‑
bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations
upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of
art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start
and thereby… false!
To DOGMA 95 cinema is not individual!
Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the

ultimate democratization of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can
make movies. But the more accessible the medium becomes, the more
important the avant‑garde. It is no accident that the phrase »avant‑
garde« has military connotations. Discipline is the answer… we must
put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent
by definition!
DOGMA 95 counters the individual film by the principle of pre‑
senting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHAS‑
TITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticized to

death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded.
The »supreme« task of the decadent film‑makers is to fool the audi‑
ence. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the »100 years« have
brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated?…By
the individual artist’s free choice of trickery?
Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around
which we dance. Having the characters‹ inner lives justify the plot is
too complicated, and not »high art«. As never before, the superficial
action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise.
The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love.
To DOGMA 95 the movie is not illusion!

Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the
elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any
time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of
sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.

CONTENTS
DOGMA 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an
indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
The manifesto is a call to arms against filmic illusion‑making,

pathos and cosmetics, no matter whether this happens in artistic
decadence, in dramaturgic plots or in the name of blockbusters.
The manifesto’s ten dogmatic rules, called the Vow of Chastity,
are presented as a form of discipline, which aim to clear out of the
way the inclination to individual, bourgeois aesthetics and create
a path for collective, avant‑garde film production.
The Dogme 95 rules have been a much discussed pivotal point
for many analyses of The Idiots as well as the approximately 30
other Dogme films, which were produced in the space of the ten
years the Dogme initiative lasted. After 22 March 2005 it became
possible for anyone (without authorisation) to fill out the certificate
on the Internet and distribute one’s film as a Dogme film.98 The
Dogme rules‹ ten commandments – the vow of chastity – which
until then had been applied as criteria in order to be able to furnish
one’s film with a Dogme certificate, were formulated as follows:
THE VOW OF CHASTITY99

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed
by DOGMA 95:
1) Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be

brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location
must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2) The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice
versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being
shot.)
3) The camera must be hand‑held. Any movement or immobility at‑
tainable in the hand is permitted.
98 The official Dogme 95 website is now discontinued, but in January 2011, 254 films appeared on the
list of Dogme films. The accuracy of this number cannot be verified.
99 This version of The vow of Chastity was downloaded from the official Dogma 95 website, when it
still existed.

CONTENTS
4) The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If
there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single
lamp be attached to the camera.)
5) Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6) The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons,
etc. must not occur.)
7) Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to
say that the film takes place here and now.)
8) Genre movies are not acceptable.
9) The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10) The director must not be credited.
Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I

am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a »work«, as
I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme
goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to
do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and
any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.
Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995
On behalf of DOGMA 95
Lars von Trier Thomas Vinterberg
With regard to film recording, rule number nine was far from
always adhered to. The quality in the new digital video apparatus
made it possible to make quality film on low budgets, and there‑
fore one merely needed to transfer DV recordings to 35mm film.
In extension of the rules it is natural to study the analogue film
image’s indexical traces of reality, where truth connects itself to
what has actually been seen and has taken place (cf. Jerslev 2002).
One can also quite rightly maintain that Dogme 95 constituted a
»challenge to the fiction film« with the aim of achieving a »dialectic
between fiction and a quest for truth« (Schepelern 2000, 227). In
the following analysis of The Idiots the Dogme rules‹ demand for
immediacy, authenticity and the related effects of reality in the

CONTENTS
avant‑garde tradition will be co‑interpreted with the construction
of hypermediacy in a visual surface, which invites the viewer to
take part in the film, in a haptic way, as if it were an interface.
I will argue that Trier’s experiments with developing a haptic
visual composition and film composition in the Europa trilogy,
which in The Kingdom I and II remediated the electronic signal’s
possibilities of creating many layers and modulations on the sur‑
face of the images, continues with the Dogme 95 initiative, and
that this can be sensed in The Idiots. The Dogme 95 rules and
the hand‑held DV camera established a new form of haptically
organised interface, which in and with the modulations on the
screen surface involved the viewer in ways that were unseen up
until then. As mentioned previously, sensations are prioritised
over the subject and the material immanent qualities are priori‑
tised over the representation in the haptically organised surface
and in the eye’s haptic sense perception. And though the analogue
indexicality is recessive in the apprehension of the digital image,
the electronic and digital form is just as involved in a material
sense (Marks 2002, 174).
We are today, to a higher degree than previously, capable of
experiencing our own body as »one image among others«, as
Deleuze (following Henri Bergson) proposed (Deleuze 1986, 58).
In time we might also gain a greater understanding of the image’s
affective potential, as Luciana Parisi and Tiziana Terranova sug‑
gest:
When looking at digital images, we could ask not merely: Where is the
other? but What is their speed? Which parts of a body are they affecting?
Which circuits of a body are they opening up and which ones are they
closing down? What kind of connections are they establishing? (Parisi
and Terranova 2001, 125)
This description, which could also apply to the interface’s blur‑

ring of the classic subject‑object relationship, is also the basis for
taking a closer look at Gilles Deleuze’s book on Francis Bacon,
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation (1981),100 where the concept
100 The following quotations are from the English version, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (2013).

CONTENTS
of the haptic is developed in detail together with a description of
the diagrammatic method.
The following analyses further how the Dogme rules accentu‑
ate the filmic realism performatively, so immediacy and hyper‑
mediacy participate in endless orbits – a game. The analysis of
The Idiots reveals how the filmic assimilation of both electronic
and digital image forms allows for an interface where the screen’s
plane of composition manifests itself physically. In both analyses I
will draw on Deleuze’s concept of the diagram, which he develops
in light of Francis Bacon’s paintings.
A diagrammatic production of factual reality in the

form of haptic »Figures«
In Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze works specifi‑

cally on reclaiming Bacon’s manual‑haptic style, which modu‑
lates the surface in the tradition of Paul Cézanne, so instead of
figurative art, ›Figure‹ and ›Fact‹ are created with the help of a
diagrammatic method.101 Deleuze identifies this in Bacon as »the
operative set of asignifying and nonrepresentative lines and zones,
line‑strokes and color‑patches« (Deleuze 2013, 71), which break
with the figuration because on the one hand the possibility of
creating an optical organisation of the painting is ruined, and on
the other a kind of rhythm is established in the form of dynamic
Figures, drawing attention to the painting as a surface.
101 The capital letters in Figure and Fact are Deleuze’s and indicate the ability of the diagram to create
a distance from the figurative and what we normally understand as factual reality. Deleuze develops dia‑
grammatic thinking as an extension of Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of the diagrammatic sign, which is
described by Floyd Merrell (1998) as an icon, whose purpose is to extend itself in the direction of its object
with a view to comparability. But the diagrammatic sign operates schematically rather than substantially,
abstractly rather than analogously, concretely and through relations rather than merely through images.
Merrell aligns himself with Deleuze and Guattari’s short and emphatic determination: »A diagram has nei‑
ther substance nor form, neither content nor expression« (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 164), and proposes
that instead of thinking of the diagram as a sign one ought to understand it as a folding between sensation
and thinking, as an exchange between simple and complex systems (Merrell, 292). In addition, in Sem-
blance and Event (2011) Brian Massumi links the diagram to the relational and the event. With a starting
point in the Peirce citation: »The greatest point of art consists in the introduction of suitable abstractions.
By this I mean such a transformation of our diagrams that the characters of one diagram may appear in
another as things« (Peirce 1997, 226), Massumi understands (in accordance with Whitehead and Deleuze) a
diagram as a technique of existence, which through abstraction can extract a potentiality that can be deter‑
mined as being concrete (Massumi 2011, 100).

CONTENTS
Deleuze believes that the diagram is present as a necessity in
the art of modern painting, where the painter allows him/herself
to be confronted with the abyss or the chaos that shows itself when
the conscious breaks with classic visual coordinates and clichés. In
van Gogh, for example, he sees the diagram as »the set of straight
and curved hatch marks that raise and lower the ground, twist
the trees, make the sky palpitate, and which assume a particular
intensity from 1888 onward« (Deleuze 2013, 72). The coming to
prominence of the diagram in the production of specific painters
can, as it appears here, be dated, in that it at once brings »the col‑
lapse of visual coordinates« and unlocks new »areas of sensation«
(Bacon’s expression, op. cit.), because the image’s moulding of
›chaos‹ and ›catastrophe‹ makes up a simultaneous germ or a
shoot of a new order or rhythm (ibid.).
According to Deleuze, 20th‑century painting offers three dif‑
ferent versions of the diagram which all renew painting art. The
first is abstraction, which in the case of Piet Mondrian and, partly,
Vassily Kandinsky, replace the diagram with a ›code‹ which can be
compared with the binary code in the digital operation, where the
qualities of the colour are to a certain extent comparable to the
letters of an alphabet (op. cit., 73). The other is the direction of
abstract expressionism, which in the case of Jackson Pollock and
Morris Louis makes the whole image diagrammatic, in that the
manual line fills the entirety and fails to create contours, delimita‑
tions and distinctions of any kind. Deleuze historically relates this
tradition of painting the space ›between things‹ instead of things to
J. M. W. Turner, and he finds in Pollock the ultimate »decomposi‑
tion of matter, which abandons us to its lineaments and granula‑
tions« (op. cit., 74). It is precisely this rhythm of the catastrophe
diagram – a rhythm which emanates from the hand’s almost phys‑
ical‑material presence in the image in the form of »stick, brush,
broom, rag, and even pastry bag« ahead of the paintbrush, which
ascribes the hand’s movement to the eye’s impression (op. cit., 77).
Pollock quite literally moves the screen from the horizontal of the
wall (the optical) to the floor’s tactile ground (ibid.). The third is
Bacon’s elaboration of the diagram. This goes neither in the di‑
rection of abstraction’s optical (›without hands‹) or catastrophe’s
manual (›only hands‹) direction. In Bacon, the diagram is effective

CONTENTS
as a possibility for Figuration, in that instead of showing itself as
abstraction or dominating the entire painting, it makes it possible
to create precise and defined sensorial Figures under the patch,
so to speak, with »a power of vibration and nonlocalization (the
mouth that smiles or screams)« (op. cit., 77).
This direction, where the diagram consists of both the sensa‑
tion and the frame (op. cit., 78), relates historically to Cézanne’s
motif, which itself corresponded to the frame in a geometrical
sense and to colour in sensation. Henri Maldiney, whose various
studies of Cézanne are embedded in Deleuze’s readings, calls
this exchange the work’s rhythm or breathing, which creates a
phenomenological exchange between artist and world, world and
viewer. In a well‑known analysis of one of Cézanne’s paintings
of the Saint‑Victoire mountain, Maldiney writes:
A red purple at the left edge of the painting, the shiny red to the right
and more red furtive ones in the middle ensure the diffuse and precise
dispersion, thereby sustaining an expansion of the gaze. Departing from
each of these hotbeds the gaze is braced by more trajectories, which
is why equal forces would make it flicker were it not suspended by the
whole space. For this is one. Sky, earth and mountain are permeated
by the same breath which, simultaneously, is the expression of their
mutual exchange. (Maldiney [1993] 2003, 33)
Where Maldiney – with regard to Cézanne’s method – empha‑

sises the viewer’s sensation of the rhythm as breathing, which
re‑manifests the painter’s phenomenological encounter with the
open landscape, because the painter’s various sensory impres‑
sions are layered like heterogeneous, organised patches of colour,
Deleuze emphasises the motif as an analogue diagram, which can
modulate endlessly in the virtual field of sensations actualised
by the painting. The diagram also has the potential to create a
rhythm, which annuls the optical mastering of the surface as well
as the classic figuration.
Following on from C. S. Peirce’s thoughts on the icon that re‑
sembles its motif but also ›consists‹ of its diagram, and in that sense
produces relations which »mark out possibilities of fact, but do
not yet constitute a fact (the pictorial fact)« (Deleuze, op. cit., 72),

CONTENTS
Deleuze differentiates between analogue and digital diagrams.102 He
believes that the painting is »the analogical art par excellence«, which
becomes a language »by passing through a diagram« (op. cit., 82).
Both abstract painters (such as Mondrian) and manual (such
as Pollock) relate to the diagram’s analogue modulations as that
which ›makes‹ painting, when there is no longer talk of a figura‑
tive likeness. As already stated, they use the diagram’s modulation
differently. Mondrian develops his code through working with the
image, in that the analogy is made into the object which is worked
on, so analogy will »pass through a code rather than […] through
a diagram« (op. cit., 82). On the other hand, Pollock allows the
diagram to fill the whole canvas, in that he makes it into »the
analogical flux itself, rather than making the flux pass through
the diagram« (op. cit., 82). In this way Mondrian’s method al‑
lows the diagram to go beyond itself, in that it reveals itself in the
code, while Pollock’s »no longer goes beyond itself in a code, but
grounds itself in a scrambling« (ibid.).
Bacon’s diagrammatical method lies in between these, but it
is just as radical. He replaces the figurative painting’s perspec‑
tive with connections and collisions between planes (for example,
vertical and horizontal), replaces chiaroscuro values with modula‑
tions through colours, and finally he turns the body as »mass and
declination« into a size which »exceeds the organism and destroys
the form‑background relationship« (ibid.). It is in this operation
that Bacon’s diagrammatical method resembles Cézanne’s:
By substituting for relations of value a juxtaposition of tints brought

together in the order of the spectrum, modulation will define a double
movement of expansion and contraction – an expansion in which the
planes, and especially the horizontal and the vertical planes, are con‑
nected and even merged in depth; and at the same time, a contraction
through which everything is restored to the body, to the mass, as a func‑
tion of a point of imbalance or a fall. It is through such a system that
102 He illustrates with the example of analogue modular synthesizers as opposed to digital integral
synthesizers. It is possible for the senses to experience real moments with an analogue synthesizer, as the
various modules are regulated in relation to one another. This regulation of when and how the sound is ac‑
tualised is diagrammatic. In digital synthesizers the diagrammatic operation is translated to sound through
a binary data code.

CONTENTS
geometry becomes sensible, and sensations become clear and durable:
one has »realized« the sensation, says Cézanne. Or, following Bacon’s
formula, one has passed from the possibility of fact to the Fact, from
the diagram to the painting. (Op. cit., 83)
According to Deleuze, Bacon has analogical language in com‑

mon with Cézanne, in that with him the motif is also found as
a result of the geometry of the frame and the sensory qualities
of the colours, but in Bacon the colours have an intense value,
which further involves the contours of the bodily masses. For the
contours in Bacon have – as in many expressionists – independent
value. When they no longer function as a separation between form
and ground, they can enter into a relationship with the painting’s
structure as well as the body of the figure and function rather as a
›membrane‹ in a »relation of coexistence or proximity modulated
by color« (op. cit., 84). Making the contour independent creates
relations and convergences between the painting’s structure and
figure in a modulation which sets powers free in order for the
diagram to operate, meaning that »lines and colors are then able
to constitute the Figure or the Fact, that is, to produce the new
resemblance inside the visual whole, where the diagram must
operate and be realized« (ibid.).
It is not possible to physically sense the diagram, but neverthe‑
less it has real operative repercussions and can create physical,
sensory and also analogical ›similitude‹ expressions in the shape
of a Figure or a Fact, though these to a large extent hinder (in the
classic sense) figurative readings. It is in the creation of diagrams
that Bacon, working with contours, structures and colour effects
in his non‑figurative Figures, creates a variable form, where an‑
other form of flat spatiality than the three‑dimensional illusion
of depth can occur (become a Fact) on the canvas:
There is neither an inside nor an outside, but only a continuous crea‑

tion of space, the spatializing energy of color. By avoiding abstraction,
colorism avoids both figuration and narration, and moves infinitely
closer to the pure state of a pictorial »fact« which has nothing left to
narrate. This fact is the constitution or reconstitution of a haptic func‑
tion of sight. (Op. cit., 93)

CONTENTS
The diagram’s disruptive marks, modulations and colour ef‑
fects draw attention to the surface, demonstrating the optical
organisation in the depth and making possible haptic sensations
of warmth and cold, expansion and contraction (op. cit., 96), as
relations between various pure and broken colour tones are cre‑
ated or decomposed (op. cit., 99). In other words, the diagram’s
patches, strokes and non‑representing lines allow the viewer to
maintain part of the sensations in the middle ground, the shallow
depths, depicting »the foreground plane of the Figure and the
background plane of the field«, which in this way create a haptic
space (op. cit., 99).
In the following I will consider the manifesto for Dogme 95
and its ten rules as a diagrammatical method, which in The Idiots
stimulates the film’s detachment from dominant plot figurations,
constructions and conventions towards new Figures and types of
Fact. As with Bacon, Trier is not a pure expressionist, but seeks
to develop the language of the image from within the image itself.
The diagram of Dogme rules, similar to Bacon’s smeared zones,
brushstrokes, re‑painting and patches, gives the possibility of
performing a somewhat new orienting in the film image.
The Dogme diagram – a generator of haptic

compositions and modes of perception
The electronic and digital image is never stable, as it constantly re‑

generates through scanning and algorithmic codes. It is a »discon‑
tinued, fluctuating and pointillist image, both spatial and temporal
unity are unknown to it« (Rodowick, 138). Trier’s experiments in
The Kingdom I and II, creating haptic effects through the many
image layers of the video medium, encouraged him to take the ini‑
tiative with the Dogme manifesto and thus set in motion a reme‑
diation of its style for the film medium.103 Just as in The Kingdom,
103 One can read Deleuze’s analyses of Francis Bacon’s diagrammatic method as a remediating analysis
of Bacon’s way of assimilating and molesting the photograph in his work, with a view to strengthening the
painting. According to Deleuze, Bacon is critical of the photographic figuration, explaining through a state‑
ment attributable to Lawrence how this is not because it is too true or accurate, but because it is not faithful
enough (op. cit., 68.). It is because of this, Deleuze believes, that Bacon works on creating manual‑haptic
deformations of the photograph’s figuration, so the diagram’s Figure or Figures can dominate the composi‑
tion and create new types of sensations.

CONTENTS
where he molested those conventions which, until then, had been
valid for the production of series in the TV medium, he uses the
Dogme rules as a diagrammatic method, a crowbar, with which to
open the filmic conventions of dramaturgy and narrative.
The first five rules are concerned with the production process
of the Dogme films. Here it is decided that the chosen location
must not be equipped with props from outside, that the music
should be diegetic, that the camera should be hand‑held and follow
the film (not vice versa), that it should be filmed in colour without
lighting (though a single lamp can be mounted on the camera),
and finally that optical work and filters are forbidden. Interestingly
enough, these five rules in particular complement the qualities of
the DV equipment used for Vinterberg’s The Celebration (Festen)
in part and later The Idiots.104 This was not the intention when
the Dogme rules were formulated, but this is the very thing Lev
Manovich paid attention to as it »allows the filmmaker to literally
be inside the action as it unfolds« (Manovich 2003, 19).
The rules support everyone, in that the film‑maker and actors
are present in such a way that the impression of immediacy in
improvisation as well as in the camera’s capture of it is height‑
ened. When limitations are exposed as invariable Dogme rules,
the diagrammatic modulation of the image surface is also pos‑
sible, and this made some particular style elements recognisable
as Dogme traits no matter whether they were created by film or
video technology. The production of an intensive form of realism,
which for example is created in and with the hand‑held coverage
of the film’s more or less improvised scenes, should in the follow‑
ing be read in relation to the diagram effect, which is the result
of the collective Dogme rules. The diagrammatic method draws
attention to the medium and the film screen as a hypermediated
surface through which the classic distance between screen and
viewer, which privileges empathy in the film narrative’s depth, is
disturbed and potentially subverted. In addition, the haptic in‑
terface between the film screen and the viewer is activated. In the
attempt to follow the camera’s dizzying recordings, which distort
104 For a detailed development of this, see C. Claire Thomson’s analysis of The Celebration (Thomson
2013a).

CONTENTS
and disturb the capture of a motif that is also often in motion –
thus accentuating attention on the screen’s surface – the viewer is
influenced affectively. Dizziness, nausea and even vomiting were
frequent occurrences amongst audiences, as physical manifesta‑
tions of the first Dogme films.
Whereas Francis Bacon, according to Deleuze, constantly
transformed the tendency for figurative creation through the
diagram’s lines, patches and smearing, so that intensities could
be created (Figure and Fact) instead on the surface of the canvas,
in The Idiots Trier subverts the formation of classic motifs and
figures. The first five Dogme rules constitute the diagrammatic
method for this.
When the camera is hand‑held, and the light is natural, the
colours become indistinct and at times turbid. The image’s grainy
fuzziness, which accompanies the violent scenes the characters
(especially Stoffer – Jens Albinus) find themselves in when they
perform ›spastic jesting‹ in order to reach their ›inner idiot‹, in‑
tensifies the screen’s haptic surface level and causes the viewer
to feel dizzy. Just as in Bacon, there is a great emphasis on the
body and on how its boundaries can be attacked or modulated.
A large part of the additional episodic ›action‹ actually depicts
the body bordering on states of spasm or in attempted trans‑
gression. This is clear from the first scene, where the depressed
and inhibited Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) is pressured along in the
taxi because the group’s leader and ›Spaz‑in‑Chief‹, Stoffer, will
not let go of her. This also applies to the corporeal blending of
spontaneous play, impulse and molestation in the bathing scenes.
It is likewise applicable to Stoffer’s unbridled attack on the com‑
munity official and his car, which prompts the group to intervene
and forcibly immobilise Stoffer’s naked body. It happens to the
shy Jeppe (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) when he is involuntary dragged to
toilet by friendly bikers, who take him for a disabled and speech
hindered person. It applies also to the group’s experiments with
akward ways to stumble or fall. The uninhibited gorging on caviar
and the attempt to carry out a gang bang.105
105 For analyses of the action/narrative plane in The Idiots, see Thomsen 2000b, 2000c, 2002 and
2004.

CONTENTS
In all these scenes it is the bodies that breach the boundaries
– often in interplay with or in relation to the intervention of an
unsympathetic outside world. Vulnerability, exposure, openness,
spontaneity, joy and sorrow are emotions that are often present in
and with the constant physical transformations of the bodies. To
a large extent it is the body’s almost monstrous coordination of
incompatible elements (ski jump on grass, wheelchair in nature,
attack on car) that lead to spasms, submission, anger, orgasm,
grief and laughter, making it impossible to see past the film’s af‑
fective influence.106
This level is created through the diagrammatic clarification
of the composition plane: when the hand‑held camera ›sketches‹
diagrams in this way it assumes a kind of ›spasmodic physicalisa‑
tion‹, intensified by the first five Dogme rules. It is due to this that
the viewer cannot avoid having their attention directed towards
the medium’s continuous modulation of the screen’s surface,
which provokes the affective sensations of Figure and Fact – and
an encounter with a plane of intensity of a non‑figurative kind.
The hand‑held rule in particular, and the prohibition of lighting
and filters, become directly obvious and noticeable on the screen
as »asignifying and nonrepresentative lines and zones, line‑strokes
and color‑patches« (Deleuze 2013, 71). The lack of adequate light
in relation to the demand on the limitations of colour film likewise
increases the haptic modulation, in that the broken and granulated
colour tones are intensified and can be seen as belonging to the
surface of the screen. Here also Deleuze’s description of Bacon’s
use of colour and light can be inspiring. As an extension of the
colouristic tradition from van Gogh and onwards, he writes:
106 I here refer to Baruch de Spinoza’s concept of affect in his Ethics, book III: »By affect I understand
affections of the body, by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or constrained,
and at the same time the ideas of these affections« (Curley 1985, 493). It is important that affect is deter‑
mined through a direct influencing of the body. Examples might be poisoned food, which brings with it
nausea, vomiting or death – or encounters with other people, which can provoke sadness or joy. In What
is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari define the creation of art as a creation of ›sense blocks‹ of affects and
precepts. These can be preserved in the form of art – independent of time and space – just as the concepts
of philosophy also exist outside of time and the places which caused them. In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze
and Guattari likewise use the recurrent affect as a physical form of affect, a tactile type of sensation which
impacts on a non‑reflective plane. In an extension of this, Brian Massumi describes the autonomy of affect
in Parables of the Virtual (2002) as an embedded corporeal experience of intensity, which cannot be fully
expressed linguistically. Furthermore in Semblance and Event (2011) Massumi relates the concept of affect
to the event and to the Lange‑James theory, where affect leads to sensations – and not vice versa.

CONTENTS
Colorism (modulation) does consist not only of relations of warm and
cool, of expansion and contraction, which vary in accordance with the
colors considered. It also consists of regimes of colors, the relation
between these regimes, and the harmonies between pure tones and
broken tones. What is called haptic vision is precisely this sense of
colors. (Deleuze 2013, 113)
Though there is mention here of the painter’s active sense and

usage of colour, the argument is still relevant to the blurred colour
scheme that is the result of hand‑held unevenness, which is em‑
phasised in the editing, in jump‑cuts and the haptic accentuation
of close‑up images. The body’s monstrous nakedness is depicted
using the skin’s red and blue nuances and the greenish or yellow‑
ish mixing between them. In the following we will look closer at
colour preferences and haptic blending, especially in close‑ups.
As early as in the first scene, where the viewer is introduced to
Karen in Dyrehaven park, the ochre yellow colour of her knitted
sweater dominates the picture. This colour is supplemented by
the reddish and brownish earth colours of Stoffer and Henrik’s
(Troels Lyby) shirts in the taxi. In the following scene in the Rock‑
wool factory these expressions are intensified further by the deep
orange colour of the factory logo and the boiler suits, contrasted
with the strong blue of the factory guide’s work jacket and the
mobility car, which is replete with an orange disability sticker.
The car torpedoes the Rockwool packages and their orange logos
several times and here is the first indication of the aesthetic of
confrontational colours, which are scattered throughout the entire
film: blue‑orange‑red, corresponding to skin tones.107
In the film’s most harmonious sequences the images are domi‑
nated, to a considerable degree, by the mixing of red‑yellow‑
orange. A good example is when Karen’s ›initiation‹ as a spaz is
celebrated with a baptism of sorts in the swimming pool. Here,
107 Van Gogh was acquainted with and referenced the colour circle of the colour scale, where mixing
red and yellow produces orange; blue and yellow gives green; and red and blue gives purple. In opposition
to these harmonious blendings stands the contrast colours of blue and orange, red and green, yellow and
purple. Charles Blanc, who wrote on Delacroix in Les Artistes de mon Temps (1876), was van Gogh’s source
(cf. Bogue 2003a, p. 151). The expressionist Johannes Itten, who was the colour teacher in Bauhaus, for‑
malised this diagram in several books, including Kunst der Farbe (1961).

CONTENTS
Colour contrasts and mix during the Rockwool visit.
Susanne (Anne Louise Hassing), Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) and Jeppe (Nikolaj
Lie Kaas) in the swimming pool surrounded by green, yellow and red colours.

CONTENTS
The faces merge together in a red‑yellow composition of skin, hair and bones.
with her head tilted horizontally, Karen’s face is seen in an in‑

timate close‑up encircled by the faces of Jeppe and Susanne.
Afterwards as Karen allows her sorrow to be expressed in tears,
Susanne and Jeppe’s consoling faces come closer, and the result
is a blushing image, which slowly displaces the blue tinge caused
by the chlorinated water. The blushing image, linked to Karen,
repeats itself several times and most clearly in the final scene,
where she visits her overly full (childhood) home. The warm or‑
ange colour is continuously found in Karen’s cardigan and the
lamp by her side, but also at her side is the dark blue colour of
her sister’s (Regitze Estrup) clothing and the pale blue of Anders‹
(Hans Henrik Clemensen) shirt. As the slap in the face connects,
as a result of Karen’s abject spazzing behaviour with cake and cof‑
fee at the coffee table, the two colours collide in a chaotic jumble,
before finally – when the camera’s gothic zig‑zag movements have
calmed down – being neutralised by Susanne’s grey silk blouse.
In this diagrammatic approach to the film one can state that
the first five rules in the vow of chastity are related to produc‑

CONTENTS
tion, enabling the creation of diagrammatic effects, while the
last five are concerned with the film’s content and framework.
Herein it is decided that the film must not contain so‑called
»superficial action« (of the type which is contained in certain
film genres, such as horror films, thrillers or excessively violent
narratives), that the film must be set here and now (that is, it
must not be moved either in historical time or in geographic
space, thus hindering flashback and flash‑forward), that genre
films are not accepted, that the film should be in 35mm (as has
already been mentioned, this was dispensed with, but the films
were shown in cinemas in 35mm), and finally that the director
should not be named. The manifesto ends with an adjuration
wherein the director signs a promise to refrain from any form
of ›personal taste‹ as an artist in relation to ›works‹, in that the
filmic ›truth‹ in the characters and the staging of scenes must be
prioritised over ›good taste‹ and ›aesthetic considerations‹. The
last five rules determine (mostly negatively) content, genre and
framing, and concern the choices which are taken in the film’s
pre‑ and post‑production phases.
Together the ten rules create a diagram, making it possible
to create chaos in the conventions that traditionally shape ex‑
pectations for a cinema film. Thus Deleuze’s description of the
diagram’s effects in Bacon’s canvases can function succesfully in
rounding off the diagrammatic body and colour analysis of Trier’s
Dogme film The Idiots:
bodies are thrown off balance, they are in a state of perpetual fall; the
planes collide with each other; colors become confused and no longer
delimit an object. In order for the rupture with figurative resemblance
to avoid perpetuating the catastrophe, in order for it to succeed in
producing a more profound resemblance, the planes, starting with the
diagram, must maintain their junction; the body’s mass must integrate
the imbalance in a deformation (neither transformation nor decompo‑
sition, but the »place« of a force); and above all, modulation must find
its true meaning and technical formula as the law of Analogy. It must
act as a variable and continuous mold, which is not simply opposed to
relief in chiaroscuro, but invents a new type of relief through color.
(Deleuze 2013, 83)

CONTENTS
There is no doubt that Trier’s inelegant use of the hand‑held
camera, jump‑cuts, chaotic movement and the contrast of blue
and red means that the filmic image planes collide and together
support an aesthetic of the fall. Roland Bogue’s words, following
on from Deleuze’s analysis of one of Bacon’s paintings, could also
be applicable to the diagram’s modulating factor in The Idiots:
It’s [the diagram’s] modulation generates haptic color relations, but

these relations are themselves modulations, continuous and variable
movements – oscillations, perturbations, flows, twists, spasms, jolts –
that issue forth from interacting hues and result in the forms of the
completed canvas, not as objects to be represented, but as products of
a self‑forming process whereby color in its systole diastole unfolding
›spatializes space‹, spreads into monochrome fields, fills out figures,
communicates across contour membranes. (Bogue 2003a, 157)
The diagrammatic effects, which in Trier’s The Idiots follow on

from the Dogme rules, can thus be seen in an analytic extension
of Francis Bacon’s style of deformed realism. As becomes clear
in the above citation, they also have somewhat the same ambi‑
tion, namely to present a force of sense perception in a haptically
organised image plane with reference to engendering affect.
Trier renews the deformed realism style in The Idiots. Apart
from the Dogme rules binding this style to a European avant‑
garde tradition of realism (Vertov, cinema‑vérité, nouvelle vague),
Trier also frames the film in the tradition of performative realism,
which emerged in the 1990s;108 simultaneously with the film’s
release he published a manuscript and diary in a collected book
(Trier 1998). This documents the film’s production process with
intimate details on the director’s own emotional make‑up. As a
back-stage performance the diary weaves itself intertextually with
the middle-stage performances (Meyrowitz 1985), which repeat‑
edly break the filmic action in The Idiots in the form of Trier’s
interviews with the actors.
108 Cf. the books Virkelighedshunger, edited by Britta Timm Knudsen and Bodil Marie Thomsen
(2003), and Virkelighed, virkelighed!, edited by Karin Petersen and Mette Sandbye (2003), as well as Perfor-
mative Realism, edited by Rune Gade and Anne Jerslev (2005).

CONTENTS
These interviews, which mimic the presentation of ›direct
speech‹ and obvious statements in the TV media, clearly appear
to be constructed. The actors speak as private persons about their
understanding of what the film depicts, and about their feelings
towards their fellow actors, with the interviews taking place a long
time after the production is over. And though many of them have
changed their appearance and hair styles, it is the characters‹
names and not the actors‹ own names that are used, as if the char‑
acters were authentic people. In mimicking a documentary or TV
reportage’s illusion of direct speech, Trier attempts both to cast
doubt on the film’s fictive point of enunciation and to strengthen
the idea that it depicts an authentic experiment without a manu‑
script – while stretching the fictive field to also include new TV
formats such as reality shows, which represent the TV medium’s
simultaneous remediation of computer interactivity. The diary
and the constructed interviews thus lead to the Dogme rules, as
a further diagrammatic layer, but they modulate (in contrast to
the rules) the fictive film’s position of enunciation, both in the
expectations for and the reception of the film. Finally, linked to
this is Jesper Jargil’s documentary film The Humiliated (1998),
which followed the film’s creation closely, and which to a large
extent strengthened the impression that the aim of the Dogme
initiative was to find a new (realistic) form of authenticity.109
Deformation of the face and the fall of the body
Judged in accordance with the diagrammatic effects of the Dogme

rules, The Idiots is without doubt the most successful of the
Dogme films. The film amputates classic audience expectations
of entertainment, as it clearly derides and questions the classic
judgements of film aesthetics. The example with Karen shows a
deformation from an ordinary face to a crying, spazzing and dis‑
torted face, which is finally reduced to a grimacing abject function
of cake and coffee. It is in this scene that the viewer simultaneously
109 The film was followed in the year 2000 by The Exhibited (concerning Trier’s exhibition with accom‑
panying performance, Psychomobile #1: The World Clock, 1999) and in 2002 by The Purified (concerning
the Dogme intitiative and the Dogme brothers). These three films by Jesper Jargil together form the trilogy
»The Kingdom of Credibility«.

CONTENTS
realises a discord between on the one hand (finally) being able
to identify empathically with Karen (as a person who has been
traumatised), and on the other hand being hit by affective disgust
and idiosyncrasy (along with her family) at the sight of her abject
secretion. This tension between close proximity and distance is
carefully arranged, because the final scene, which makes it pos‑
sible to understand the eccentric Karen and thus (maybe for the
first time in the film) grasp the extent of the idiot position, is also
interrupted explosively by the stinging slap in the face.
That the viewer is ›hit‹, so to speak, mid‑way between two
feelings – the identification with Karen’s emotions ›from within‹
and the revulsion at Karen’s abject distastefulness seen ›from
without‹ – with the slap in the face, allows them to sense the
physical space that exists, like an interface, in between the cinema
seat and the screen, according to the definition proposed by the
Australian art and media theorist Anna Munster. She describes
the aesthetic potentials in the interface, defined as the duplicity of
»being in the body and representing/mapping the body from the
outside« (Munster 2006, 142; author’s italics). In the chapter »In‑
terfaciality« Munster describes how digital interfaces or foldings
between human ›matter‹ and machine ›code‹ can create affective
qualities (op. cit., 139), as the matter in the interface has become
»a substrate readable and accessible only in the third person, and
the third person is a perspective rendered by the machine« (op.
cit., 141). Following on from Benjamin’s positive reflection on
the film medium (Benjamin 1936) and in keeping with Deleuze’s
likewise positive description of the film as a ›spiritual automaton‹
(Deleuze 1986), the technologically enabled third perspective
in the interface is understood as a contribution to the creation
of new forms of affective effects – not necessarily equivalent to
filmic excess, but rather in the form of »expressive dearth« (op.
cit., 140).
This aesthetically reflective definition of the interface also
makes it possible to see how Trier’s diagrammatic method in
The Idiots succeeds in intervening in the textural material and
creates an affectively engaging interface, involving the audience
physically. The hand‑held camera aesthetic, the agitated edit‑
ing, the contrasting colours and colliding bodies together create

CONTENTS
diagrammatic effects which are eventually released by the slap
in the face. This brings the agitation (and, for some, revulsion
and nausea) to a halt, by which the identification with Karen as
well as the abject involvement in the situation seen from with‑
out can give access to the interface’s third position. The camera
movements in the final scene of The Idiots are characterised by
a third, diagrammatic modulating instance, which enables the
viewer’s experience of a folding between ›being in Karen’s body‹
and ›seeing it from without‹.110 This double perspective, which the
true idiot of course can never attain,111 is created in the diagram’s
modulating organisation, which through the inclusive gesture
of the slap in the face allows the viewer to experience a third,
haptic position – in between subject and object. The experience
of this affectively inclusive position occurs on the background of
›expressive dearth‹, in that the film up until then has given nei‑
ther aesthetic pleasure nor representational meaning. The slap
in the face short‑circuits and implodes both expectations, and it
becomes possible to experience (in the form of dearth) the classic
diagram for filmic identification and enjoyment.
With the realisation of the Dogme rules in The Idiots, filmed
with DV equipment,112 Lars von Trier creates a new diagram‑
matic field of modulation, which furthers the experiences of The
Kingdom I and II (16mm recordings and the reproduction in the
TV format). The result is more important than the rules being
followed in detail, which is why the method (DV recording that
Trier himself, to a comprehensive degree, is responsible for) at
hand is the best technological answer to realising the desired
aesthetic result.
110 This shared interface, made possible by the camera being involved as a third instance, is described
tellingly on the DVD cover of the English‑American version: »a film about idiots, made by idiots, for idi‑
ots«.
111 Cf. my reading of The Idiots (Thomsen 2000b). It should also be mentioned that Akira Kurosawa’s
The Idiot (1951), based on Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same name, can be seen as a kind of source for Trier’s
The Idiots, in that the idiot’s incomprehensible goodness, depicted in many close‑up images of faces, which
are reflected and doubled, here also becomes a kind of »anti‑aesthetic poison« (Chin 2005), which in the
implosion of social power structures and conventions, reveals the field of tragedy.
112 It was Jesper Jargil, utilising a DV camera in the production of the film The Exhibited (1996), con‑
cerning Trier’s performance work Psychomobile # 1: The World Clock, who together with Søren Kragh‑Ja‑
cobsen has gained the honour of being the reason why Dogme film was shot on DV (Thorsen 2010, 293).

CONTENTS
In The Idiots as well as the two other films in the Golden Heart
trilogy, the film medium is remediated, so realism is given an
affective accent. The experiments with remediating the film me‑
dium across various analogue and digital film formats is exposed
differently in Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark respec‑
tively, which precede and follow The Idiots. In Breaking the Waves,
shot on 35mm film, the hand‑held, often shaky and out‑of‑focus
close‑ups of faces and bodies in physical and psychological agi‑
tation or affect are contrasted by the lingering reproductions of
painterly landscapes in the chapter divisions, which, however, are
far from analogous with classic, romantic landscape painting. The
landscapes in the film each contain an added digital element (a
driving car, trickling water, drifting fog, etc.) on the background
of Per Kirkeby’s free interpretations of romantic landscapes. In
Dancer in the Dark, which is predominantly shot in DV format,
the reflection of remediation becomes clearest in the phasing
in and out between on the one hand the broken colour scheme,
which characterises everyday life, and on the other hand the song
and dance scenes saturated with colour and pixelation (recorded
with 100 cameras), where the digital overloading of sensory sound
and image material is likewise experienced as an intensifying,
added element.
In her article on how electronic signal modulation is also found
in the digital field, Anna Munster addresses the integration of
analogue and digital processes in the current art scene. She writes:
In cross‑signal processing audiovisual events, especially in live and

somewhat aleatory circumstances, digital synthesis loses its tendency
toward the synthetic a priori. Sensation that finds lines of expression
through cross‑signal processing is no longer causal nor is it a fixed
phenomenon. Rather it becomes visual signification, sonic visualiza‑
tion, diagramming a resonating, moving architecture. Not structural
but relational. Not synthesized but conjunctive. Something that builds
rather than is built. A digital syn‑aesthetics finding its compositionality
in analogue mode. (Munster 2010, 11)
This way of perceiving The Idiots as an aesthetic, diagrammatic

crowbar with which to open the other two films in the Golden

CONTENTS
Heart trilogy is in many ways different from readings which see
the film as realistic in a more or less classic sense.113 The validity
of these interpretations should not be contested, but the following
will argue further that the trilogy, viewed collectively, exercises
more than merely a recognisable avant‑garde aesthetic. The tril‑
ogy, in the way in which it is programmatically developed in The
Idiots, allows for diagrammatic modulations of haptic‑realistic
art. These create deformations, spasms and affective planes of
intensity in the form of non‑organic »bodies without organs«
(BwO), defined in the following:
Thus the BwO is never yours or mine. It is always a body. It is no more

projective than it is regressive. It is an involution, but always a contem‑
porary, creative involution. The organs distribute themselves on the
BwO, but they distribute themselves independently of the form of the
organism; forms become contingent, organs are no longer anything
more than intensities that are produced, flows, thresholds, and gradi‑
ents. »A« stomach, »an« eye, »a« mouth: the indefinite article does not
lack anything; it is not indeterminate or undifferentiated, but expresses
the pure determination of intensity, intensive difference. (Deleuze and
Guattari 2013, 191)114
One merely needs to consider the gang bang scene in The Idiots
to recall the BwO’s uniform plane of intensity unfolded in eating,
penetration, chasing, dance and not least an undifferentiated pile
of pure bodies. These singular BwO, which lay bare the plane of
intensity, are illustrated in Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the
Dark, which express the affective powers of painting and music
respectively.115
113 Jerslev provides a fine example of realism activating and revising analysis (Jerslev 2002).
114 Deleuze and Guattari’s definition is based on Spinoza’s ›attributes‹, which in the Ethics (1677) des‑
ignates those forces and intensities that a particular substance or matrice produces, as well as their own
summation of a plane of immanence of desire (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 191), and Antonin Artaud’s
writings on the Theatre of Cruelty in, amongst others, Heliogabale and Les Tarahumaras (Oevres Completes
1956‑1994), where the body’s singular intensities shake themselves free from the organism’s organisation in
›self‹ and ›other‹ (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 184).
115 In my articles (Thomsen 2002 and 2004) this perspective is pursued in thematic readings. The fol‑
lowing notes the stylistic‑philosophical analytic perspective of these.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 5
Golden Hearts 1 and 3

Affective outflow into the landscape
and the music
The abject deformation (and the encounter with a filmic interface)

in The Idiots definitively opens an affective field in Trier’s produc‑
tion. The film contains some of the grotesque elements that were
opened up by the gateway in The Kingdom II, but classic genre
readings are undermined from beginning to end. The viewers‹
doubt over what is being presented to them is vented in the clos‑
ing scene’s unfiltered affection image of Karen’s candid face. Her
abject spastic jesting results in a radical deformation (the slap in
the face), which, in part with the help of the hand‑held camera,
involves the viewer, asking the central question from the perspec‑
tive of the idiot: What is a human face?
The Idiots opens with this deformation, involving the viewer
in something that should be impossible, namely a filmic interface
– and this without calling upon hypnotism’s fusion of planes of
reality, as in the Europa trilogy. In the following analysis of Break-
ing the Waves, I will show116 how the character Bess also invites
116 In short, the film concerns the devout Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) and her marriage to the
non‑native Jan Nyman (Stellan Skarsgård), who works on an oil platform off the coast of Scotland. Bess is
fragile, and in missing her husband she prays that he may return home, which happens when Jan has an
accident in work, paralysing him from the neck down. During the course of his debilitation, which shows
no improvement, he wishes to set her free so she can experience physical love again. She is appalled but
he asks her to seek out erotic relationships for his sake, in order for him to stay alive. She obeys, despite
warnings from the strictly religious community, to which her mother (Sandra Voe), her sister‑in‑law Dodo
(Katrin Cartlidge) and the psychiatrist Dr Richardson (Adrian Rawlins) belong, and Bess slides further
and further into prostitution. She is rejected by the church and by her family, but she maintains her strong
faith, and despite the fact that she ends dying of the injuries that she has somewhat inflicted on herself by
way of a sadistic assault, she believes until the end that she can save Jan. He recovers miraculously, and with
this outcome even Dr Richardson believes that she should be described as ›good‹ rather than as suffering
from a psychiatric condition. Jan ensures that her body is snatched from the judgemental parish so that he,
together with his friends, can release it into the sea from a ship. This action is answered from above with
the ringing of church bells over the landscape.
golden hearts 1 and 3 · affective outflow 139

CONTENTS
the viewer to participate in an affectively determined interface,
where the third instance, which makes it possible to see ›oneself‹
from without, while one experiences ›oneself‹ from within, is
carried out by an animation of the Romantic landscape painting.
Where Caspar David Friedrich in Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
(1818) or Moonrise over the Sea (1822) allows the people in the
foreground of the pictures, with their backs turned, to stare long-
ingly towards a lost, often fog-covered nature – which although
sublimely depicted is controlled visually – Trier allows his main
character Bess to be engulfed in/by the landscape. As in Dreyer’s
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), the viewer is offered extreme
close-up images of a passionate face.117 But the immersion in
Bess’s facial expression rather invites the viewer to linger on the
micro movements in the affective expressions of the skin and
eyes. In Breaking the Waves these haptic descriptions of the face
also come to include the deterritorialised and porous landscape,
which in the wind and rain challenges existence.
Where Joan’s (Maria Falconetti) transfiguration from human
to saint goes through the rising smoke of the fire, Bess’ transfigu-
ration occurs through the element of water towards the seabed.
Joan’s body transcends its earthly existence through the purifica-
tion of fire and air; Bess’ unites with the elements of earth and
water. Her perils describe becoming one with the landscape’s
non-human molecular point zero. Bess remains linked to the bod-
ies without organs (BwO) of immanence, to expression’s blocks
of sensation, which remains true to the sensory encounter, while
opening for a virtual creation of events.
Transcendence towards the spiritual must be described here
rather as the virtual penetration into immanence, a confirmation
of eternal becoming (aion), which runs parallel with specified time
and space (chronos).118 This can be formulated thus:
117 Deleuze writes on Dreyer’s so-called »aesthetic method«: »[T]he more the image is spatially closed,
even reduced to two dimensions, the greater is its capacity to open itself on to a fourth dimension which
is time, and on to a fifth which is Spirit, the spiritual decision of Jeanne or Gertrud« (Deleuze 1986, 17;
Deleuze underlines). Joan of Arc is Jeanne d’Arc in French, as in Dreyer’s title in Danish: Jeanne d’Arcs
lidelse og død. Gertrud refers to another of Dreyer’s films, Gertrud (1964).
118 Cf. more on this in Thomsen 2001.

CONTENTS
Eternity is not an immortality which remains tied to a certain linear
temporality, simply put, a before‑and‑after. Rather eternity is here and
now. We might say that it parallels, or doubles, our own finitude. This
is the infinite as ground of the finite. (O’Sullivan 2012, 23)
Bess’ transfiguration, which evokes the landscape, can further be

described – with O’Sullivan – as an intensive, non‑conceptual
knowledge, which opposes the highest wisdom (in Spinoza) that
beauty »expresses all of God from God’s point of view […and]
thus assumes a perspective of eternity; or in other terms, the finite
understands and accesses the infinite of which it is a part« (op.cit.,
27).119 This happens, one might say – independent of whether one
interprets the ending religiously or ironically – when the body’s
disappearance in the sea’s abyss gives rise to the church bells‹
eternal perspective on the landscape.120
Similarly, Dancer in the Dark develops a relation between
an infinite (aion) and a finite (chronos) perspective.121 Selma’s
(Björk) haptic‑sensorial microperception of sounds and rhythm‑
sare transformed into the music’s haptic‑auditive field of inten‑
sity. The dream intermezzos of classic film musicals are here
re‑functionalised into virtual interventions, which actively revise
and speed up the current narrative. The colour‑saturated musi‑
cal sequences reinterpret, from the perspective of aion, Selma’s
demise, which unfolds in earthy colours on a social‑realistic level
according to chronos‹ coordinates of time and space. Selma finds
the infinite rhythms of music in everything: the noise of the fac‑
tory presses coming into contact with the metal, the clicking of
the peg as it hits the spokes on a bicycle wheel, the crackle of the
119 Cf. also Deleuze on eternity (Deleuze 1988, 65).

120 Cf. both Kyndrup (1998) and Thomsen (1998).
121 In short, the film is about the almost blind Selma Jezkova (the Icelandic singer Björk), who loves
musicals. She works hard in order to save up money for her son Eugene’s (Vladica Kostic) eye operation.
The money is stolen by her landlord, Bill Houston (David Morse), who intends to cover his and his wife
Linda’s (Cara Seymour) excessive spending. Bill’s murder is the price Selma pays to recover the money,
which she then takes to the doctor who is to carry out her son’s eye operation. During the court process,
her friends Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) and Jeff (Peter Stormare) find out about the existence of the money
and they want to use it to pay for a lawyer so that Selma may avoid the death penalty. Selma declines, is
hanged, and the money fulfils its original function: to save Eugene’s sight. The money and lack of it thus
makes up the undercurrent associated with secrets and hiding places, but which to a large extent deter‑
mines the film’s fabula, while Selma’s secret – her increasing blindness and, as a result of this, the rhythm
– occasions the virtual level of the musical sequences.

CONTENTS
gramophone needle as it touches the nylon LP, the clunking of
train wheels as they hit the tracks and the resonance of footsteps
on the metal of the prison staircase. With these non‑human, me‑
chanical rhythms, Selma connects herself to the here and now
of the infinite which, activated in this way, can repeat what hap‑
pens in her finite life. The joy Selma generates through creating
music links to the greater narrative frameworks of the virtual,
indicating an affective pre‑personal field, which transcends her
character. Selma’s body is the expressive exponent of the music,
just as Bess’ facial expressions reflect the landscape with which
she finally becomes one. Where the viewer in Breaking the Waves
is offered contact with the virtual infinite in the minutest twitches
of Bess’ face and in the landscape’s large‑scale level, in Dancer in
the Dark this is offered through Selma’s sensory responsiveness to
everyday rhythms, so the greatest musical affect occurs because
of the tiniest sound.
In Bess’ case, and Deleuze and Guattari’s reasoning, the Chris‑
tian faciality (visagéité) deterritorialises,122 in that the human face
proliferates out into the uncontrollable landscape. Classic film
interpretations are questioned and the viewer’s understanding is
cast into doubt. One cannot unequivocally affirm the interpreta‑
tion of the chiming church bells in the final scene, because it is
not clear whether one should believe in divine miracles or resign
oneself to irony. And it is precisely through this that it is possible
to realise the classic viewer position. Now free of the framework,
the viewer – as in the interface – is able to see themselves. In
Breaking the Waves, the changes in Bess’ haptically described
face, which in the course of the film deterritorialises Christian
faciality, become the diagrammatic trail which the viewer must
follow affectively in order for the outflow of passion in the infinite
to achieve interpretive validity at all. In Deleuze and Guattari’s
sense, Dancer in the Dark deals with a deterritorialization of the
122 In chapter 7 of A Thousand Plateaus, »Year Zero: Faciality«, Deleuze and Guattari maintain a link
between the Christian faith and the particular anthropomorphic stratification which creates a relation
between the face (and its holes) and the landscape (white wall). The relation creates a dynamic, dualistic
interpretive unity in the Western landscape painting’s relationship between the face’s foreground and the
landscape’s depth, in that the Western white man’s vision will always be prime (see Deleuze and Guattari
2013, 195). There is no doubt that the term ›faciality‹ was developed by Guattari in The Machinic Uncon-
scious (Guattari 2011).

CONTENTS
musical refrain.123 Here themes from the greatest romantic film
musical of all, The Sound of Music,124 are re‑figured together with
Björk’s own compositions, which are experienced in the film’s
music and dance sequences as existing based on the (digitally
recorded and remediated) rhythms and noise formations of real
sounds.125 The music score is built up over rhythmic real sounds
that affectively‑haptically make up the diagram the viewers must
follow in order to reach beyond the level of mere representation.
Through the experience of the music’s here‑and‑now in the musi‑
cal’s virtually interpreted ›dream sequences‹, the film gives access
to a parallel, infinite plane of experience.
If the viewer resists following the various asubjectifying dia‑
grams of the two films, he/she is merely witness to misogynistic
narratives concerning female victims. If one follows the diagrams
that are found in the haptic immersion into Bess’ passionate fa‑
cial expressions of wonder, joy, fear and loneliness, or in Selma’s
passionate conversion of haptic noise into rhythms with wholly
unexpected musical sensations, then contact with a virtual plane
of events is established. This occurs by direct sensing, through the
physical‑affective influencing of the viewer’s nervous system. It is
through these diagrammatical actualisations that the films allow
access to an affirmative register where life can be experienced as
a creation or constant transformation, like an eternal recurrence
(in line with Nietzsche) of the same, because intensities and affects
belonging to the BwO in an infinite register desire repetition. And
only in this way is an ethical level (beyond morality) linked to our
passionate existence, as it is only life as immanent creation which,
123 In chapter 11 of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari make »1837 – On the Refrain« into a
substantial instance of striving for territorialization or making homely in both humans and animals (birds),
through creating a refrain. It can also, however, appear to be deterritorialising when the refrain stops being
functional in order to – in and with the expression of rhythm – go beyond the territorial marking of func‑
tion, environment and action. The expressive, stylistic qualities of the refrain can establish new relations in
art and reality (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 361). There is no doubt that this term ›refrain‹ was developed
by Guattari in The Machinic Unconscious (Guattari 2011).
124 Trier also mentions TV broadcasts from his childhood of the many dance musicals with Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers, as well as Gene Kelly, which were choreographed to the minutest detail, as inspiration
for the film (DVD: Dancer in the Dark).
125 On the film’s audio commentary track, Lars von Trier and sound designer Per Streit recount how
they had wanted yet more real sounds than actually occur in the final film and how the ›hacking up‹ of the
music could have been mixed with Björk’s compositions. This was one of the disputed issues between di‑
rector and composer during the course of filming.

CONTENTS
according to Deleuze, can actually return (O’Sullivan, 33) – and
which can confirm existence in an ethos of life force (élan vital).
Following on from Spinoza’s Ethics, Deleuze develops the
description of consciousness as an awareness of what benefits our
coenaesthesia and our ability to cope, and what impedes our self‑
expression: »Consciousness is the passage, or rather the awareness
of the passage from these less potent totalities to more potent
ones, and vice versa. It is purely transitive« (Deleuze 1988, 21).
This view of consciousness and coping as linked to affective expe‑
riences of various kinds paves the way for the following reflection:
In this way, Ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of

existence, replaces Morality, which always refers existence to trans‑
cendent values. Morality is the judgment of God, the system of Judgment.
But Ethics overthrows the system of judgment. The opposition of values
(Good‑Evil) is supplanted by the qualitative difference of modes of
existence (good‑bad). (Deleuze 1988, 23)
As has been mentioned, it is the diagram’s direct establishing of

affective contact surfaces with the field of ethics, understood as
»a typology of immanent modes of existence« (op. cit), which in
Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark makes it possible for a
partial detachment to take place from binary codes of representa‑
tion, the organism’s reflection, the face and the stratified refrain.
This is summed up precisely in A Thousand Plateaus, almost as if
the authors had these two films in mind at time of writing:
There is no more face to be in redundancy with a landscape, painting,

or little phrase of music, each perpetually bringing the other to mind,
on the unified surface of the wall or the central swirl of the black hole.
Each freed faciality trait forms a rhizome with a freed trait of land‑
scapity, picturality, or musicality. This is not a collection of part‑objects
but a living block, a connecting of stems by which the traits of a face
enter a real multiplicity or diagram with a trait of an unknown land‑
scape, a trait of painting or music that is thereby effectively produced,
created, according to quanta of absolute, positive deterritorialization
– not evoked or recalled according to systems of reterritorialization.
(Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 222)

CONTENTS
The most essential thing in chapter 7, »Year Zero: Faciality«, is
that year zero (the birth of Christ) signifies the caesura which
in fine art as well as in architecture, and later in film, creates an
interpretive relation between face and landscape according to
the »white wall/black hole« system (Deleuze and Guattari op. cit.,
196), where faces call to mind landscapes, and where landscapes
evoke faces (ibid.).126 The white man’s Christian face thus creates
the strata (including racism) which we in the West orient ourselves
by. If one is to deterritorialise this model, one must follow passion,
love and life. One cannot, however, merely return to a condition
before faciality, to »the presignifying and presubjective semiotics
of primitive peoples« (op. cit., 220), but must annul interpreta‑
tion and meaning by actively submerging into »the black hole
of subjective consciousness and passion« (ibid.) in order to be
capable of establishing:
a nonsubjective, living love in which each party connects with unknown

tracts in the other without entering or conquering them, in which the
lines composed are broken lines. Only on your face and at the bot‑
tom of your black hole and upon your white wall will you be able to
set faciality traits free like birds, not in order to return to a primitive
head, but to invent the combinations by which those traits connect with
landscapity traits that have themselves been freed from the landscape
and with traits of picturality and musicality that have also been freed
from their respective codes. (Op. cit., 221)
These almost manifesto‑like formulations, published in French

in 1980, could also be valid in challenging melodrama’s genre
form and the description of ›goodness‹ which Trier unfolds in
the 1990s Golden Heart trilogy, when he tests the powers in the
voices of the physically ill, the idiot and the nomad respectively.
It is here worth citing Félix Guattari’s description of how leg‑
islative and psychological metalanguage to a large extent forms
control measures for the regulation of the individual person’s
126 In the film’s field this is created by the relationship between camera and screen; Deleuze and Guat‑
tari themselves name Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc as the film which shows this relation par excellence
(Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 206).

CONTENTS
lack of a ›normal‹ facial expression and refrain through the ques‑
tion: »does it pass or not, is it made of signification?« (Guattari
[1979] 2011, 95). Dr Richardson, the psychologist in Breaking the
Waves, is given this function as he, in the post‑mortem exami‑
nation after Bess’ death, has to answer the question of whether
she should be diagnosed as »psychotic«, »neurotic« or merely
»good«. In Dancer in the Dark it is the lawyer who, in legisla‑
tive metalanguage, links Selma’s lies about her familial origin
together with the true testimony (for example, that she is almost
blind), which problematises her claim to be in the country at all.
Both Bess and Selma are denied passage through the regulat‑
ing, significant discourse, and thus it is possible for them to be
figures of transformation.
The power of the rejected
While the character of Karen in The Idiots can be regarded as a

victim or, in an etymological sense, an idiot (Greek ›private per‑
son‹), who like Dostoyevsky’s idiot lacks the ability to be sociable
and precisely for that reason opens abysses in the lives of others,
then the characters of Bess and Selma are literally rejected and
sacrificed by the societies to which they belong. In both films,
however, we see how their active choices – to go down the route
of (self) sacrifice – determine the health of Bess’ husband and
Selma’s son respectively (cf. Thomsen 2002 and 2006). In other
words, a change takes place from depicting a victim in The Idiots –
who through an abject strategy (Karen’s spastic jesting) can form
a creative distance, but also a possible renewal of the oppressive
society – to depicting (self) sacrifice, where it is the person who is
abjected (Bess as a whore and Selma as a murderer). The sacrifice
can thus be sanctioned (by the church, the psychological system
of control and the law) and then take place outside the church
community and society, so to speak. It is, amongst other things,
the thematic difference between being a victim and being sacri‑
ficed which, as described above, creates another affective level for
filmic sensory perception in that it is less possible to identify with
Bess and Selma than it is with Karen. The first two are outside the
law, outside the narrative, outside the aesthetic register. They are

CONTENTS
described like Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex as belonging
to a register outside the narrative.127
Julia Kristeva works with the relation between abjection and the
figure of sacrifice in the religious constitution of society (Kristeva
[1980] 1982). She describes how new mothers are held outside the
Jewish religion128 because their bodily secretions mark the semi‑
otic division between being and not being, a subject who has the
(father’s) right to speak (Kristeva 1982, 94). In Christianity, on the
other hand, the abjections of the sacrificed Christ are integrated
with the incorporation of bread (body of Jesus) and wine (blood
of Jesus) in the Communion; but it is also made clear in Catholic
confessions and in absolution how the Old Testament’s exclusion
of the abject border phenomena are reinterpreted and become
part of the transformation from body to spirit. In secular socie‑
ties artistic transformations can, according to Kristeva, become
a kind of channel for abject impulses. These can metaphorically
or figuratively rewrite the indications of abjection in culture, or
the artist can make direct use of the abject material. Composi‑
tion and rhythm investigate the transformation from sacrifice to
making sacred, which has been lost, and which modern society
can only integrate with some difficulty.129 The abject semiotic
interface between language and non‑language is not processed
in art in order to transform the abject so that society’s religion,
judicial system, ethical and aesthetic judgements can endure. But
there will always be some kind of challenging of the boundaries
for cultural norms, which according to Kristeva are valid in lit‑
erature’s utilisation of, for example, vulgar expressions, and in
film’s searching for image types that transgress boundaries (for
example, in the horror genre).
127 Oedipus understands that he has both murdered his father and become guilty of an incestuous rela‑
tionship with his mother. The result is self‑sacrifice. He gouges out his own eyes, seeks exile and is buried
in an unmarked grave (cf. Thomsen 1998).
128 In the Old Testament, the writings of the third book of Moses, Leviticus, Chapter 12, it is described
how a new mother should be regarded as impure for seven days after a birth if she has given birth to a boy,
or 14 days after if she has given birth to a girl. She must likewise not enter the sanctuary for 33 days if she
has given birth to a son and for 66 days if she has given birth to a girl. In addition, the boy should be cir‑
cumcised eight days after birth, which Kristeva considers to be a significant ascription of importance on the
son in relation to the laws of the religion as opposed to the girl (Kristeva 1982, 94).
129 According to Sara Beardsworth’s reading of Kristeva it is the »impossible mourning«, which be‑
comes art’s pivotal point in modernity (Beardsworth 2004, 164).

CONTENTS
Lars von Trier’s aesthetic tour de force of the victim phenom‑
enon and sacrifice in connection with the Golden Heart trilogy’s
investigation of the good as a driving force130 can clearly be de‑
scribed as an investigation of the abject and its power rather than as
a misogynistic depiction of female victims and sacrificed women.
The films take their starting points in the discourses on abjection,
which lie in close proximity to the female or mother’s body, after
which they are twisted so the audience has opportunity to iden‑
tify with or take up the position of the victim – or alternatively
be repelled by the film’s passionate obstinacy.131 In extension of
the aesthetics in The Kingdom I and II Trier works with a direct
influence on the public’s senses, which punctures Romantic atone‑
ment and idealisation to the advantage of intensity and affect. It is
worth noting, however, that the access to this level is achieved in a
melodramatic way, as it is the description of the mother’s loss, the
resignation or rejection of one’s child, which in the films lead to
the affective endings. In accordance with the ›weepy‹ film’s recipe
of the mother renouncing her sovereign position to the advantage
of the patriarchal instance of upbringing, the films’ ›point of no re‑
turn‹ scenes are found in Karen lingering on the photograph of her
dead child, in Selma’s choice of Gene’s eyesight over motherhood
and in the mother’s front door remaining closed to Bess.132 But
the point is that the endings in no way support the lamentations of
maternal melodrama and thus the strengthening of the patriarchal
supremacy. Instead one can almost say that the abject leftovers and
130 Apart from the reference to Dreyer’s film Ordet, which contains a miracle, and Gertrud, which de‑
scribes the yearning and abandonment to love (Trier 1996, 4‑5), Lars von Trier states (in »Von Trier’s 100
eyes«, the extra material on the Dancer in the Dark DVD, as well as elsewhere) that the source of the trilogy
was the fairytale Guld Hjerte (Golden Heart), where the little girl gives everything (including, finally, her
heart) to the prince with the words »I’ll be fine anyway« (see also Schepelern 2000, 213). In the »Director’s
note – this film is about ›good‹“, Trier also explains the project in this way: »For a long time I have been
wanting to conceive a film in which all driving forces are ›good‹. In the film there should only be ›good‹, but
since the ›good‹ is misunderstood or confused with something else, because it is such a rare thing for us to
meet, tensions arise« (Trier 1996, 20).
131 There is no instance in Breaking the Waves to show that Trier was inspired by Nietzsche’s castigation
of the Christian good (and the linking of this with the woman’s goodness) in, for example, Beyond Good and
Evil (Nietzsche [1886] 1990). However, the connection is all the more obvious because Bess’ figure borrows
so much from the Christ figure’s suffering and death. The difference is that the ultimative abjection, the
body, which is also the ultimative proof of faith, with which Jesus assumes all sin (and becomes good), in
Bess’ case confirms the power of physical love. As in Kristeva, the abjection forms the basis for the Chris‑
tian incorporation of it, in Communion.
132 Cf. Linda Williams (1984), Mary Ann Doane (1987), E. Ann Kaplan (1987).

CONTENTS
bodies shape themselves into a kind of BwO, whose influence is a
more unpredictable force.
Breaking the Waves and »faciality«

The affective style that involves the viewer directly sets the tone in
the first scene of the trilogy, where Bess’ direct camera gaze punc‑
tures the ›white wall/black hole‹ relation, which Dreyer mastered.
Bess’ face mimics Joan’s, and the editing between their faces and
the priests/the scribes is remarkably similar. The same is true in
relation to the faces of Bess and Joan when they turn to their gods.
But there is one marked difference here. The direct camera gaze,
in which the viewer is captured in Breaking the Waves,133 can be
seen parallel with Bess’ private conversations with God, which per‑
haps becomes most obvious in the chapter »Bess’ Sacrifice«, where
the final conversation ends with her looking directly into the cam‑
era, at the audience. In other words, the viewer is assigned a God’s‑
eye view, following and thus sanctioning her decision. Before this
film, the direct look into the camera was an avant‑garde exception,
practised by, amongst others, Godard and Bergman. Because Trier
radicalises the look by giving the viewer a gaze that sanctions, the
stratification of the ›white wall/black hole‹ is perforated – as when
the representative illusion is broken to the advantage of an affective
result, which opens to direct, diagrammatic delineations in and of
physically operative landscapes: ›seeing‹ becomes an event, an act
of witnessing.
The result of this gaze‑like interface can be compared with the
image which Brian Massumi uses to explain how thoughts are real
and transformative – and not merely reflections of the real:
Thought strikes like lightning, with sheering ontogenetic force. It is felt.

The highest operation of thought is not to choose, but to harbour and
convey that felt force, repotentialized. The thinking is not contained
in the designations, manifestations, and significations of language, as
133 Some of Bess’ most explicit direct gazes into the camera are 1) by the church wall, 2) behind her veil
on the way to the altar, 3) when her husband, Jan, takes her virginity, 4) in bed after she has prayed to God
to send Jan home, 5) when Jan comes home from hospital, 6) when she thanks God just before her (self)
sacrifice on the ship.

CONTENTS
owned by a subject. These are only partial expressions of it: pale re‑
flections of its flash. The thinking is all along the line. It is the process:
its own event. To think along the line, conveying and magnifying its
creative momentum, does not involve a mastery of it. The tarantella
of thought is a mimickry of that event, not a mirroring or moulding of
expression to content. There is nothing, actually, in thought as such
with which to conform or correspond. It only has force to deform.
Thinking is of potential. (Massumi 2002a, xxxi‑xxxii; author’s italics)
The vison‑like interface, which confuses the ›white wall/black

hole‹ relation, involves the body in the thought.134 Bess’ expres‑
sive‑haptic face in close‑up makes the illusion of depth, as well
as the film’s story, into a backdrop for a diagrammatic field of
events which, although invisible, allow an affective access to the
film’s often pathos‑filled scenes.135 Lars von Trier himself says of
the static composition in Breaking the Waves:
One normally chooses a style for a film in order to highlight a story.

We’ve done exactly the opposite. We’ve chosen a style that works against
the story, which gives it the least opportunity to highlight itself. […]
What we’ve done is to take a style and put it over the story like a filter.
Like encoding a television signal, when you pay in order to see a film:
here we are encoding a signal for the film, which the viewer will later
ensure they decode. The raw, documentary style which I’ve laid over
the [Panavision] film and which completely annuls and contests it,
means that we accept the story as it is. That is, at any rate, my theory.
The whole thing is very theoretical. Later we manipulated the images
electronically. We transferred the film to video, and worked on the
colors there, before we transferred it back to film again. (Lars von Trier
in Sight & Sound Magazine, October 1996)136
134 Cf. the chapter »The Thinking‑Feeling of What Happens: Putting the Radical Back in Empiricism«
(Massumi 2011). One could also choose to see shock in relation to Kristin Thompson’s concept of the ›ex‑
cessive‹ surplus of meaning, which undermines the narrative from within, and which she further analyses
in Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (Thompson 1996). Meanwhile the theory of excess, like Roland Barthes
theory of »the third meaning« (Barthes 1977) on which Thompson bases her theory, is developed within a
semiotic frame of narration, which does not destroy the impression that filmic semiosis takes place within a
plot‑story relation.
135 Cf. Thomsen (1998).
136 The citation is a linguistically corrected version of Björkman’s interview (Björkman 1999, 166).
(http://www.industrycentral.net/director_interviews/LVT01.HTM) Last viewed 10 March 2017.

CONTENTS
The direct look into the camera and the haptic aesthetic enable
the viewer to take part in the expressive event in which the film’s
story is in this way stylistically embedded. For though the story
is clear and gripping, the haptic‑affective involvement in the vi‑
sion‑like event is, for the viewer, more forceful, and disturbs the
normal expression‑content parameters for encoding. Massumi
summarises this precisely:
If the expressive momentum hits the body with its full ontogenetic
force, it produces a compression shock. To convey the expressive poten‑
tial ›faithfully‹ (with sufficient, creative absurdity) the body must trans‑
mit the reality of the shock. It’s a torture, a multi‑level, interlocking,
self‑magnifying torture. The body is wracked. A tarantella of atypical
expression pours forth, deforming. Its outpouring relays the torture
to the conventional forms of content and expression with which or to
which the body is expected to speak and gesture. The body has become
an expressive event: a voluble singularity. (Massumi 2002a, xxxi)
The direct look into the camera in Breaking the Waves affec‑
tively discontinues the voyeuristic motor towards the narrative’s
›depth‹ or ›truth‹, just as the slap in the face did in The Idiots.
The gaze makes the camera perceptibly present and halts mo‑
mentarily the friction‑free exchange of meaning between ›white
wall‹ and ›black hole‹. Together with the spasm of unrest and
dizziness, which the hand‑held principle and the grainy signal
noise from the video transfer causes on the screen’s surface,
the direct look into the camera enables the ›third gaze‹ of the
interface to be created diagrammatically.137 When the viewer is
addressed directly in this way, as a witness with divine powers
(to forgive and condemn), it is made clear that the classic filmic
relation between screen and viewer (›white wall/black hole‹) has
137 Birger Langkjær also emphasises the parallel with the hand‑held camera in the »non‑fictional pres‑
ence« (p. 224) in the form of overloaded, loud or distorted sound in Breaking the Waves. This, he believes,
in agreement with Morten Kyndrup’s analysis of the film (1997), draws attention to the constructed, to the
»abstraction which paralyses the experience. And it is from this abstraction that the middle ground between
fiction and non‑fiction appears, the continuous transition in which the film unfolds« (p. 227). I agree that
this middle ground occurs (cf. Thomsen, 1997), but I choose to emphasise this hyper(im)mediacy as the
film’s condition of possibility in order to establish another, haptically involving interface, where the sensa‑
tion of abstraction (›thinking‑feeling‹) occurs together with the experience of physical, sensational effect.

CONTENTS
Bess’ (Emily Watson) first direct look into the camera in Breaking the Waves.
a religious mooring. By allowing the viewer to follow Bess’ ex‑

ploration of the field of faciality, in which any Christian as well
as any lover is suspended, Trier indicates another affective way,
just as Bacon does, ›out of‹ the play between story and plot or
the ›white wall/black hole‹ relation.
The look into the camera and the haptic‑realistic style involves
the viewer affectively, but also renders the camera visible, enabling
the activation of the interface’s third, diagrammatic position,
which can show how the medium of film in fact contains a relation
between the three – the face, the landscape and the camera – that
breaks the stratifying effect of faciality. This approach is explicitly
dramaturgic in the scene where Bess seeks refuge in the church
after the first assault. Here she hears one of the churchgoers say:
»Because there is only one thing for us, sinners that we are, to
achieve perfection in the eyes of God through unconditional love
for the word that is written… through unconditional love for the
law.« This linking of the words ›love‹, ›the word‹ and ›the law‹
has a violent impact on Bess, and she states: »I don’t understand
what you’re saying. How can you love a word? You cannot love
words. You cannot be in love with a word. You can love another
human being. That’s perfection.« This reasoning is interrupted

CONTENTS
abruptly by the priest who turns her away with the words: »No
woman speaks here! Bess McNeill, The Kirk session has decided
this day that henceforth you shall no longer have access to this
church. They who know you shall not know you. Be gone, Bess
McNeill, from the house of God!«
These words from a fallen woman, who insists on the physi‑
cal side of love being integrated in the Christian interpretation,
appear with the same abject force as the layer cake which falls
awkwardly out of Karen’s mouth in The Idiots. The obvious cor‑
poreality that is displaced, denied and prejudiced in Christian
religion finds expression in this parish in turning (fallen) women
into sinners on their way towards abject perdition, which is then
played out in the film. First Bess is confronted with the message
that she is to be committed to a mental hospital; then she meets
a closed door at her mother’s house, and finally she faints when
seeking out the church’s white wall on the hilltop. It is here, strug‑
gling with her motor scooter like Jesus with his cross, and with
the children of the village following along mocking her, that she
makes the abject power her own, and in light of the information
concerning her husband’s impending death decides to sacrifice
herself in the name of love. It is after being ostracised from the
united religious community that she becomes pure abjection, but
also that her body becomes (and can be attributed) pure will. Her
body becomes a BwO, a purely creative or (self)destructive power.
But it is also worth noting here that she – in the degradation from
an organic body which belongs to the God of the parish (›white
wall/black hole‹) to a body without organs, an abjection – with the
pure, affective power of sacrifice, can withdraw herself from the
religious transformation of abjection to meaning (or word). Only
in this way can she avoid confirming the judgement of the parish
which carries out the sacrifice/ostracism. The suffering of Jesus
and his abject function, as the one who through the crucifixion
(in the degradation from divine to human body) has taken the
world’s pain on himself, is here given an alternative (female) face.
Bess advocates love for the body of another as a condition of love
for God, and thus denounces (in a different, more secular way
than Joan in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc) the word of law,
which separates spirit from body.

CONTENTS
In Breaking the Waves the viewer witnesses the struggle for the
right to the body, which materialises both in facial micro move‑
ments of pure potentiality and in the corporeality of the landscape’s
haptic surfaces. As the viewer has become the divinely staged re‑
cipient of Bess’ direct gaze into the camera, and her speech, the
viewer must affectively witness Bess’ struggle against faciality.
Though the flesh is sacrificed in the battle between the word and
faith, as it is also in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Bess’ face
does not strive towards heaven. It disintegrates into the landscape
with the rest of her body, and it is precisely this immersion in im‑
manence that creates a physical, sensory affect in the viewer.
It is in the film’s epilogue with the divine applause from the
church bells that the abject transformation is stolen from the par‑
ish, and the covenant which the filmic interface has created by
involvement (belief in love or belief in religion) is confirmed and
made ironic respectively. No matter whether one chooses to inter‑
pret the ringing bells as an act of irony or on the contrary as a pa‑
thetic gesture, the film shakes the viewer free of the ethical demand
based on the moral values of the religious community. For as the
corpse is cast out over the ship’s railing without religious ritual, like
a lifeless abject body (cadaver = demise), and disappears without
marking or trace (like Oedipus in Oedipus Rex), conditions of new
potentials are created, different from events of faciality. In Deleuze
and Guattari these are described as »probe-heads (têtes chercheuses,
guidance devices)« (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 222).
The landscape in the closing scene is evoned vertically by the
sonorous clanging of the church bells, whose movement can be
seen as a gothic line which creates a:
streaming, spiraling, zigzagging, snaking, feverish line of variation

[which] liberates a power of life that human beings had rectified and
organisms had confined, and which matter now expresses as the trait,
flow, or impulse traversing it. (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 579)
This chaotic soundscape definitively erases the ›white wall/black

hole‹ relation of meaning. This is advantageous for a dominant,
powerful soundscape, which finally answers the demands of Jan’s
friend, Terry (Jean‑Marc Barr), after the wedding ceremony:

CONTENTS
»Ring the bells then«!138 It is the same Terry who, in an emer‑
gency exercise on the drilling platform, brings about Jan’s brain
injury when he jokingly pretends to fall, after which the pump
in the ›rescue‹ hits Jan’s head as if it were a bell. These images of
Terry’s horizontally placed, laughing face, which is covered by
Jan as it is next hit vertically by the pump – the greyish contents
of which transform his face into a head without human charac‑
teristics – have diagrammatic power. Jan’s face transforms in and
due to this haptic‑affective event into a figure which contains
two marginalised forms in one grotesque shape: the horizontal
mummified shape of a corpse and the inhuman head of an ani‑
mal (not unlike the figures in Bacon’s paintings). It is this figure’s
introduction into the small Scottish community which, as an al‑
ien element, comes to function as a »probe‑head«. With Bess as
a medium who, according to her friend and protector (Katrin
Cartlidge), »is not right in the head«, the »alien«, demonic Jan,
whose illness disturbs his mind, first of all corrupts and disturbs
the mainlanders‹ religious striation.139 In Dreyer’s The Passion of
Joan of Arc Joan’s shaved head is also revealed, but she remains
good – never animalistic and demonic. Her close‑shaven head
reveals a humane, soaring face, while Jan’s half‑shaven head is
best described as abject. He can neither eat nor drink unaided,
and must be fed like a small child; thus his paralysed, horizontal
body prepares the way for Bess’s mummified corpse, which causes
the narrative to diffuse and implode into the landscape.
Any-space-whatever and colours in Breaking the

Waves and Dancer in the Dark
While Breaking the Waves ends on a dominant acoustic image, both
the opening and ending of Dancer in the Dark are devoid of sound.
This makes sense, if one recognises that Breaking the Waves the‑
138 Throughout the film there are a number of bells or allusions to bells: hailstones from above replace
the wedding bells; Bess (and later Jan) hammers forcefully, hilariously on a large metal crane on the har‑
bour; Bess waves with a Christmas bell at Jan’s homecoming from hospital; the captain who brings prosti‑
tutes to his large ship in the harbour rings the ship’s bell.
139 Note that according to Trier’s first draft, the film was also meant to depict the demonic corruption
of Justine from the Marquis de Sade’s novel of the same name (Schepelern 2000, 205f).

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matises seeing and landscapes, while Dancer in the Dark thema‑
tises hearing and music. Therefore, in the next section I will leave
Trier’s break with faciality and focus on an analysis of his break
with the stratifying refrain. But if one takes the remediation of the
Romantic landscape in the chapter divisions in Breaking the Waves
and the musical dream sequences in Dancer in the Dark ad notam,
yet another question is raised: How do the »probe‑heads« arrange
themselves, if not in accordance with the ›white wall/black hole‹? In
the following I will briefly introduce some considerations on how
the term »any‑space‑whatever« in Deleuze enables the time‑image.
In the chapter on the affection‑image in Cinema 1: The Move-
ment-Image (Deleuze 1986), Deleuze describes how Dreyer fur‑
ther developed expressionism’s alternating between light, dark
and shadow to achieve a lyrical abstraction, making possible a
thorough affective contact with a spiritual choice, such as that de‑
scribed by Søren Kierkegaard. Deleuze thus writes about Dreyer’s
heroines (along with Joan, Anne in Day of Wrath, Inger in The
Word and Gertrud in Gertrud) and how they are aware that their
choices go via the physical body, but also beyond it:
It is definitely a question of the affect; for […] the character who makes
true choice raises the affect to its pure power or potentiality, as in
Lancelot’s courtly love, but also embodies it and carries it into effect
all the more as it liberates in him the part of that which does not let
itself be actualised, of that which goes beyond all execution (the eternal
rebirth). (Deleuze 1986, 115‑116)
It is in the interplay between light and dark that the relation be‑
tween the physical and the metaphysical unfolds in Dreyer’s black
and white images, and according to Deleuze it is initially in the
lyrical abstraction of both – in the shadows – that the physical
(or metaphysical) can be re‑manifested. In relation to Kristeva’s
argument concerning the engagement of modern artists in abjec‑
tion, one can say that Dreyer carefully follows Joan’s corporeal
transformation to abjection (the removal of individual markers
such as hair, clothes and jewellery), and he gives the shadows a
large presence in the scene where she is burned at the stake as a
witch. It is the thick smoke in particular, shown from all possi‑

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ble and impossible angles, which is ascribed (in accordance with
Deleuze) spiritual value:
Space is no longer determined, it has become the any-space-whatever which

is identical to the power of the spirit, to the perpetually renewed spiritual
decision: it is this decision which constitutes the affect, or the ›auto‑
affection‹, and which takes upon itself the linking of parts. (Deleuze
1986, 117; author’s italics)
It is clear that Dreyer’s filmic aesthetic imitates the sacrificial

religious figure in order to give the viewer an affective, passionate
identification with a humane and, of course, female face.140 This is
achieved by linking the face’s affection‑image, which depicts pas‑
sion and suffering, to the space’s non‑localised character through
the lyrical abstraction of lighting effects. Even though both the
interior space and the exterior walls and open spaces in The Pas-
sion of Joan of Arc are modelled on paintings and drawings from
the Middle Ages, in order to intensify the experience of the actual
city of Rouen, in which the trial took place, the consciously chosen
expressionistic style prioritises the faith‑related aspects of the
story of suffering over exterior accuracies.141 Deleuze places the
close‑up (the icon in Peirce) on an equal footing with the creation
of any‑space‑whatever (espace quelconque; qualisign in Peirce) (op.
cit., 109). Where the close‑up can collect the emotional power
and quality in, for example, a face, an any‑space‑whatever can,
without »its own co‑ordinates and its metric relations«, create
a »tactile space« (ibid.). For though the any‑space‑whatever is
singular, without its metric relations it has lost its homogeneity,
and it can thus be related to other virtual spaces in a number of
ways. An any‑space‑whatever contains a potentiality, which the
closing scene of The Passion of Joan of Arc qualifies spiritually.
140 The transformation in Dreyer is constantly spiritual and religious. Even though he accentuates how
religion creates abjections of people, his films from 1928 can also be regarded as a sanctioning of the Cath‑
olic church’s canonisation of Joan of Arc in 1920.
141 Models of the buildings and location were made. Britta Martensen‑Larsen describes how Dreyer,
the expressionist film architect Hermann Warm, the painter Jean Hugo and the costume designer Valentine
Hugo, on the basis of naive sketches from the 15th century, succeeded in creating the mix between the true
and the expressionistic which, in Dreyer’s words, could support »the drama which takes place within the
souls« ahead of the »objective drama« (Martensen‑Larsen 1993). Cf. also Edwin Kau on Dreyer’s camera
work, which qualifies the arbitrary, tactile space (Kau 1989).

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In Breaking the Waves the description of the any‑space‑what‑
ever is shifted away from the unequivocal religious interpretive
framework, though its visual potentiality comes through as church
bells. These cannot, however, be separated from the sonic inferno
they emit. Sound and image together mark a haptic, endlessly
combinable any‑space‑whatever. If one takes the film’s title ad
notam (and the allusion to sound waves and broadcast waves), it
is obvious to assume that the aim is to break with the »metric
co‑ordinates« (ibid.), which permeate everything (represented by
systems of echo sounding and radar). In addition there is space for
the potential (here miraculous) forces of »pure optical and sound
situations« (Deleuze 1986, 120). This, the signaletic material of
the film medium, shows itself most clearly in modern film, which
is qualified as such precisely by this.
Apart from the already described forms of affective influence,
the landscapes in the chapter images set the scene for the affective
power of the haptic any‑space‑whatever in a way which can be
both sensed and reflected upon. The source of these panoramic
hybrids of painterly texture, computer pixels and filmic frames
was the photographs and films of the Scottish landscape by the
photographer Robby Müller, which were considered as possible
locations for the film. In Per Kirkeby’s rendering they became
filtered through ›the typically romantic‹, to which movement and
colour is added digitally before the film is transferred (Sight &
Sound Magazine 1996). Per Kirkeby writes about the composition
and effect of the images:
They are not still, but moving sequences. They all have a pulse beat.
Several have dramatic shifts in normally far slower processes, and all
this in a time frame of under a minute. Yet most people remember
the pictures as motionless. I think this is a sign that they function as
they were intended to. They are insidious, so to speak; they leave their
symbol‑traces unremarked. Their effect lies primarily in the symbolic
power of changes in the light. It’s an ancient, banal, quite unverbalised
message. In a painting, of course, this takes place with infinite subtlety,
with the entire process fixed as if by magic on a timeless surface; but
precisely by not abhorring any form of banality the mechanical medium
was able to take on something of the same quality. (Trier 1996, 13f)

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The panoramic chapter divisions in Breaking the Waves clearly depict the land‑
scapes as Romantically constructed, allowing for the diagrammatic approach
to be rendered visible.
The visual power of these ›vitalizations‹ of kitsch remakes can be

compared with Dreyer’s modification of the expressionist style in
The Passion of Joan of Arc. But because the projection of the soul’s
struggle out in the landscape adds clearly manipulated movements
and digitally enhanced colours, this is contrasted by flat arbitrari‑
ness. In the remediation’s hybrid the images become visible as
signaletic material, so to speak, and the affectively influenced
viewer senses the diagrammatic composition. The chapter images
intensify the potential or virtual level, which is diagrammatically
attached to the story or fabula, and for this reason Peirce’s defi‑
nition of the diagram should be repeated briefly: »The greatest
point of art consist in the introduction of suitable abstractions. By
this I mean such transformation of our diagrams that characters
of one diagram may appear in another as things« (Peirce 1997,
226; author’s italics; here cited from Massumi 2011, 99). Thus
the diagram makes up a ›third‹ actively creative place for con‑
crete abstraction, which can activate forces that aim to transform.
Deleuze likewise writes of Foucault’s diagrammatic thinking as a
third outer instance, which abstracts and transforms:

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The diagram stems from the outside but the outside does not merge
with any diagram, and continues instead to ›draw‹ new ones. In this
way the outside is always an opening on to a future: nothing ends,
since nothing has begun, but everything is transformed. In this sense
force displays potentiality with respect to the diagram containing it,
or possesses a third power which presents itself as the possibility of
›resistance‹. In fact, alongside (or rather opposite) particular features of
power which correspond to its relations, a diagram of forces presents
particular features of resistance, such as ›points, knots or focuses‹ which
act in turn on the strata, but in such a way as to make change possible.
(Deleuze 1988, 89)
The diagram’s ›third‹, which activates an abstract relation between

the ›romantic painterly‹ and the ›manipulated digital‹, occurs
perhaps most clearly in the encounter between movement and
the static (for example, the car’s movements in the landscape
in chapter 6). The unnatural movement and colour chromatics
create diagrammatic ›points‹, ›knots‹ or ›focuses‹ (cf. the citation
above), drawing attention to this being an any‑space‑whatever,
which is not bound to time, place or filmic story.
Just as Trier consciously utilises the iconic and haptic qualities
of the close‑up in the film’s fabula in order to further the viewer’s
affective involvement, so the chapter sequences are able to focus
on parts of movements and unnatural colours that contain the
possibility of intensifying non‑linguistic, diagrammatic sensory
abstractions in the material.142 These are also found isolated as
affective blocks of sensation in the film’s fabula (most clearly
in Bess’s ultra‑white bridal gown and ultra‑red leather skirt),
but here they also have a symbolic meaning in the plot. On the
contrary, in the chapter sequences, movements and colours are
given an independent, iconic and affective value, presenting the
remediated landscapes as simulacra, which are only suited to the
›white wall/black hole‹ of faciality in a figurative sense. When the
142 With his painting In the Beginning Was the Image (1965), Asger Jorn, who criticised the logocentrism
of the Christian world, had a similar mission. He formulated it thus: »Words are blinding, words hinder one
from seeing…Every artistic field that is invaded by words suffocates. I fear that one might kill the last seed
leaf with the venom of words… » (Berlinske Tidende newspaper, 3 March 1969). A similar manifestation of
the image could apply to both Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc as well as Trier’s Breaking the Waves.

CONTENTS
digitally added car moves up over the hybrid landscape, the affects
run out in the changeable field of the event in a literal sense.
While the diagrammatic expedients are found in the panorama
images from the chapter divisions in Breaking the Waves, they
are found in the musical sequences in Dancer in the Dark, which
dismantle the fabula we have just been presented with. Here the
splintered perspectives of the 100 video cameras intensify the
haptic qualities of the virtual space. The upright bodies‹ rhythmic
leaps, twirls and falls, and body parts such as legs, arms, hands and
heads are extracted from the narrative storyline. Furthermore,
because the rhythm dominates, the de‑individualised bodies are
transformed into BwO. As in the chapter sequences in Breaking
the Waves, the glow and depth of the colours are intensified in the
musical sequences.
This is not surprising, as the three filmic forms of colour usage
that Deleuze mentions appear in the film musical’s creation of vir‑
tual dream spaces out of mundane, realistic space (Deleuze 1986,
118). The three forms are »the surface‑colour of the great uniform
tints [grand aplat], the atmospheric colour which pervades all the
others, movement‑colour which passes from one tone to anoth‑
er« (ibid.). Though the first two colour schemes are also found in
painting, and hence it is only the movement‑colour which is devel‑
oped in film, Deleuze occupies himself especially with a fourth ab‑
sorbent form, which is also recognised in, for example, van Gogh.
Here the colour appears as an affective force which is capable of
creating more than symbolic correspondence (green = hope), as
»[c]olour is […] the affect itself, that is, the virtual conjunction of
all the objects which it picks up« (Deleuze op. cit., 118). In this
connection Eva Jørholt notes that the absorbent form is particu‑
larly prevalent amongst postmodern directors, and she specifically
mentions Trier’s use of poisonous yellow colours in the films The
Element of Crime and Medea (Jørholt 1998, 108). She further char‑
acterises the absorbent, affective use of colour as:
A colour use that paves the way for an affect – joy, fear, uneasiness,
shock, or whatever it might be – which is not dictated by, but rather
ascribes the person’s emotions and/or actions. They are simply impreg‑
nated in an overriding, chromatically caused affect, somewhat similar to

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that which Peirce imagined as »a psychic feeling of red without us which
arouses a sympathetic feeling of red in our senses«. (Jørholt op. cit.)143
The important thing – making the affect independent, which

subjugates all other emotions, actions and expressions – is, in
accordance with the function of the diagram, that which from a
virtual ›exterior‹ shows the possibility of the transformation, in
that a sign in a diagram (as described above) can appear in another
as a thing (Peirce 1997, 226).
The intensification of colours during the musical sequences in
Dancer in the Dark as well as in the chapter sequences in Breaking
the Waves fully displaces the green‑yellow colour scheme144 that
dominates the films‹ narration. A kind of refuge is created, a pause
for reflection, which liberates the affects from their melodramati‑
cally involved story level. Viewed autonomously, isolated from their
relation to emotions and action, the rhythm’s outflow in the musi‑
cal sequences creates synaesthetic resistance to the stratification of
the melodramatic genre. In each of the digitally processed musical
pieces, with slightly hacking oscillations between hearing and vi‑
sion, movement and song – added in the editing – the seemingly
irreversible tracks of action are transformed and reversed. In the
chapter on the affection‑image, which also includes the aforemen‑
tioned reflections on colour, any‑space‑whatever and pure optical
and sound situations, Deleuze describes how Antonioni’s use of an
absorbent colour makes the space into a void any‑space‑whatever,
because the absorbed is effaced with the cessation of the events.
According to Deleuze, the affective isolation is also found in Berg‑
man in the form of a potentialising of the facial close‑up, which
meanwhile is confronted with the void space instead of dissolving
therein. On the basis of this, Deleuze notes two states in the ›quali‑
sign‹ of the any‑space‑whatever: the disconnected and the empty
qualisigns, which, though they bring about or imply one another,
143 Jørholt cites Peirce (cf. Buchler, 84). Peirce’s description is comparable with the empirical theory
of emotion that was put forward by both the Dane Carl Lange and the American William James, who pro‑
posed that we derive our emotions from the bodily sensations we receive. The theory is summed up thus by
James: »We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not … cry,
strike or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, afraid« (Koch 2000, 190).
144 I believe that one can characterise this colour scheme as ›atmospheric‹, where the ›absorbent‹ form
together with the ›movement‹ form in the following is reserved for the musical scenes.

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can be distinguished by the fact that the first sign type is ›before‹
and the other is ›after‹ (Deleuze 1986, 120). He continues:
The any‑space‑whatever retains one and the same nature: it no longer

has co‑ordinates, it is a pure potential, it shows only pure Powers and
Qualities, independently of the states of things or milieux which actu‑
alise them (have actualised them or will actualise them, or neither the
one nor the other – it hardly matters). (ibid.)
Taking Deleuze’s comparison of Bergman and Antonioni’s dif‑

ferent ways of potentialising the affective qualities of the any‑
space‑whatever as an outset, I will conclude that in the chapter
sequences in Breaking the Waves and the musical sequences in
Dancer in the Dark Trier creates a kind of void but potentialised
any‑space‑whatever, which is placed before or after the action
time, or the human and emotional time. They turn the affect into
pure optical and sound situations, detached from the story, and it
is precisely this which gives thoughts access to the line of flight’s
possibility for change. The obvious focusing on close‑ups of the
female protagonists’ faces in the trilogy, as already described in
the analyses of The Idiots and Breaking the Waves, allows for a
confrontational strategy against faciality. The musical theme in
Dancer in the Dark furthermore allows for a possible dialogical
confrontation with the meaning of the refrain.
Dancer in the Dark and »the refrain«

While Trier lets Bess disappear into the sensorial haptic surface of
the landscape and thus enables the viewer to establish a distance
to the stratification of faciality, in Dancer in the Dark he equates
Selma with music, song and the corporeal affective impacts they
bring about. The fact that Selma is extremely myopic and on
her way to becoming blind is emphasised repeatedly in the film’s
story, and that is, so to speak, the whole point, that she sacrifices
herself; she sacrifices herself in order that her son will not suffer
the same fate.145 When the death sentence is finally implemented,
145 Cf. his name, Eugene, which means ›well born‹.

CONTENTS
and Eugene’s spectacles land on the floor simultaneously as Selma
dies, the aural shock caused by the trapdoor panel opening and
the song dying down is rewarded – in a melodramatic way – with
the son maintaining his sight in the future. He is not present in
the room, however, so we cannot ›see‹ as if with his eyes, but the
final composition, which accompanies the film’s reprise image
and list of actors, bears the hopeful title »New World«.146
This composition also functions as the film’s overture. But
here the audience senses how the reduction in sight intensifies
the hearing. At the premiere in Cannes and in Danish cinemas,
the overture was heard while the screen was black/contained no
images. In other countries and in the video/DVD versions the
overture was accompanied by Per Kirkeby’s drawings, in which
shapes and patterns appeared and disappeared with the music’s
instrumental sounds.147 In both versions the audience is con‑
fronted affectively with a failing or lack of sight – in the cinema,
where the sensation of sight traditionally has precedence – as
the audio comes to the fore. The digitally processed overtones
from the one introductory image to the next do follow the afore‑
mentioned ›absorbent‹ colour scheme. In addition, they could be
ideal examples of filmic ›movement‑colour‹ which is precisely
defined by colour passing »from one tone to another« (Deleuze
1986, 118), as it must be emphasised that, in this instance, it is
the music’s tones which control the fade‑in‑ and fade‑out of the
images. In this way the overture already shows that the musical’s
song and dance sequences ought to be approached as blocks of
audio‑visual sensations.
The film’s first action sequence shows Selma and Kathy’s first
song and dance rehearsal of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s »My
Favourite Things« from the musical The Sound of Music. The
viewer immediately notices that Selma’s performance in no way
resembles the idealised aesthetic of the original, and backstage
the co‑director reckons that she sings »funny«, and doesn’t dance
146 The theme has certain similarities (though with sombre undertones) with the central horn theme in
Richard Strauss‹ Also sprach Zarathustra, which Stanley Kubrick used both as an intro as closing music in
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
147 Kirkeby was instructed to attempt to depict a progressive blindness (Trier on the DVD audio com‑
mentary).

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particularly well either. Already it is made clear that Selma has
problems with her eyesight and coordination but, on the other
hand, she adds tap dancing to the musical on the basis that: »It
really needs rhythm. Drums or something.« The rhythm is her
life force, and Selma mentions this when she confides in her land‑
lord, Bill, as they exchange secrets about their closely impending
fates: his bankruptcy and her blindness. Selma explains that, when
working at the factory, she sometimes daydreams to the rhythms
of the machines, so everything becomes music.
This fits well with Deleuze and Guattari’s introduction to
chapter 11 in A Thousand Plateaus, »1837: Of the Refrain«:
A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing

under his breath. He walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter,
or orients himself with his little song as best he can. The song is like a
rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in
the heart of chaos. Perhaps the child skips as he sings, hastens or slows
his pace. But the song itself is already a skip: it jumps from chaos to the
beginnings of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any
moment. There is always sonority in Ariadne’s thread. Or the song of
Orpheus. (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 362)
Selma, who as an immigrant in the USA is on foreign cultural

ground, speaks here of the territorialised forces of rhythm, song
and tap dance, but as Deleuze and Guattari show, three aspects
are found in the refrain [ritournelle] which are often found si‑
multaneously or mixed:
Sometimes chaos is an immense black hole in which one endeavors to

fix a fragile point as a center. Sometimes one organizes around that
point a calm and stable »pace« (rather than a form): the black hole has
become a home. Sometimes one grafts onto that pace a breakaway
from that hole. (Op. cit., 363)
This can also be stated more concisely: »The refrain moves in

the direction of the territorial assemblage and lodges itself there
or leaves« (op. cit., 376). Inasmuch as Deleuze and Guattari here
draw on a description of the three forms by Paul Klee and Henri

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Maldiney,148 which are combined with the territorial demarcation
of birdsong, as described in the Umwelt of biology,149 ›refrain‹
becomes a very broad term. According to Deleuze and Guattari,
its most crucial component, which is valid for all aspects of the
refrain, is the expression. In the first aspect a signature or demar‑
cation of a territory is created, not as in a march to the beat, but
by the rhythm which makes anything into a »matter of expression«
(op. cit., 369). This expressive signature, which is also art’s, turns
into style in the second aspect:
expressive qualities or matters of expression enter shifting relations with

one another that »express« the relation of the territory they draw to the
interior milieu of impulses and exterior milieu of circumstances. (op. cit.,
Style sets greater relations in motion between interior impulses and

exterior circumstances, and just as it is valid in the qualification of
the choice of colours, rhythm can create motifs and counterpoint
in its expressive variations (constancy, the increase or decrease of
sound, rising and falling variables, and so on).
The relation to joy and sadness, the sun, danger, perfection, is given in
the motif and counterpoint, even if the term of each of these relations
is not given. In the motif and the counterpoint, the sun, joy or sad‑
ness, danger, becomes sonorous, rhythmic, or melodic. (Op. cit., 371)
In this way the expressive rhythm’s motif attracts milieux and peo‑
ple, so one can determine that the motif stylistically »constitutes
a rhythmic character« or landscape (op. cit., 371), and with this
a »reorganization of functions and a regrouping of forces« (op. cit.,
373; author’s italics). It is also here, in the creation of consistency
between motifs and counterpoint relations, that as a third aspect
new assemblages and components can form which pave the way
for a perpetual exchange between de‑ and reterritorialising (op.
cit., 376 and 380). Deleuze and Guattari decisively incorporate a
148 Klee 1998 and Maldiney 1994.

149 Amongst others, Uexküll 1984.

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fourth aspect, which prepares the way for territory linked to the
ground that is to be finally abandoned in favour of the »Cosmos
as an immense deterritorialized refrain« (op. cit., 381). This is
first found in art in Romanticism and later in the philosophy of
Nietzsche; the »essential thing is no longer forms and matters,
or themes, but forces, densities, intensities« (op. cit., 399). This
applies to the artist in capturing matter rather than expressing
it, which in Deleuze and Guattari, for example, is redeemed with
the synthesiser’s machinic sound, which makes possible:
the sound process itself, the production of that process, and puts us in
contact with still other elements beyond sound matter. It unites dispa‑
rate elements in the material, and transposes the parameters from one
formula to another. The synthesizer, with its operation of consistency,
has taken the place of the ground in a priori synthetic judgement: its
synthesis is of the molecular and the cosmic, material and force, not
form and matter, Grund and territory. (Deleuze and Guattari op. cit.,
As in the analysis of The Idiots, Deleuze describes the modular

analogue synthesiser’s regulation of the actualisation of sound as
diagrammatic, in that the sound is made into sensations through
the regulation of the modules. He also states that the diagram’s
operation is incorporated in the binary code in digital synthesisers
(Deleuze 2013, 81‑82).
In Dancer in the Dark, it was Lars von Trier’s intention to
allow the musical sequences to occur on the basis of real sound
from the film’s fabula plane.150 In this way the diagrammatic
modulation between the film’s plane and that of Björk’s digitally
produced musical sequences (supplemented with the rhythm
hacked up into smaller units as montages from the 100 DV
cameras) would have been sensory on a micro level. However,
the film‑makers only received Björk’s approval to allow the sound
in the plane of reality to infiltrate the already recorded and
digitally mixed music soundtrack on certain occasions. One can
150 Cf. the audio commentary on the DVD with Lars von Trier and sound designer Per Streit. Cf. also
Björkman 1999, 230 and 239.

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Selma (Björk) in the musical sequence »I’ve seen it all«, recorded with 100
cameras, which both makes the scene haptic and draws attention to the dia‑
grammatic composition.
only speculate on the disagreement between the two artists, and

whether the diagrammatic operation ought to have been held
within the music field (supplemented by the recordings from the
100 cameras), or whether it should modulate the film’s fabula
plane with musical sequences. The vigilant auditor will realise
that the transition between the filmic ›real plane‹ and the ›virtual
plane‹ of the musical sequences is adjusted in the filmic technical
sound, and that the sound in the real plane is seldom found in
the music and never modulates it. Though Trier may have wished
for »a cleaner musical where they start to sing for no reason« he
writes that he was able »to keep this random effect or ›life‹ or
whatever by putting up a lot of fixed cameras instead of staging
a scene for a camera«.151 He also states that a rule for shooting
with the 100 cameras was that remote control must not be used,
and this gave positive surprises in the material. This uncontrolled
form creates an interesting remediation of the music video in
151 Interview with Lars von Trier, DVD extra material.

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the musical sequences152 because the hacking, arrhythmic plane
is preserved in editing, drawing attention to the diagrammatic
modulation. It was Trier’s intention, in Deleuze and Guattari’s
words, to »deterritorialize the refrain« and to create a new chro‑
maticism, which:
does not eliminate the bad or mediocre refrain, or the bad usage of the
refrain, but on the contrary carries it along, or uses it as a springboard.
[…] Childhood or bird refrain, folk song, drinking song, Viennese waltz,
cow bells: music uses anything and sweeps everything away. Not that a
folk song, bird song, or children’s song is reducible to the kind of closed
and associative formula we just mentioned. Instead, what needs to be
shown is that a musician requires a first type of refrain, a territorial or
assemblage refrain, in order to transform it from within, deterritorialize
it, producing a refrain of the second type as the final end of music: the
cosmic refrain of a sound machine. […] We go from assembled refrains
(territorial, popular, romantic, etc.) to the great cosmic machined re‑
frain. (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 406‑407; author’s italics)
It is Schumann’s symphonic studies based on amateur composi‑

tions, which he worked on from 1837,153 that form the background
for these reflections. But there is no doubt that with Dancer in
the Dark Trier aimed to deterritorialise the refrain by allowing
the Golden Heart’s child‑like, simple form of being to infiltrate
the musical’s grandiose, popular form, from which it explodes in
diagrammatic ways in the many perspectives of the 100 cameras
and the acoustic potential in Björk’s music and voice.154 What is
interesting is that Deleuze and Guattari also point to the draw‑
ings and rhymes of children as a field of transformation, which
– though this also has to be brought forward through composition
– can open the field to new intensities, and new forms of refrain.
152 This impression is also to a large extent due to Björk’s style of musical composition, which in its
own right remediates the classic material of the music video; cf. Korsgaard 2011.
153 Hence the title »1837: On the Refrain«.
154 Cf. Nicola Dibben, who describes how intimacy with Björk’s voice and a continuous disturbance of
this intimacy through interruptions and ›hacking‹ creates a visualisation of the creative interface of technol‑
ogy with reality (Dibben 2009, 79 and 145f.).

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Intense, child‑like experiences function throughout as fields of
transformation in both Breaking the Waves as well as Dancer in the
Dark. Child‑like joy is represented explicitly in the cinema scenes
where Bess, with Jan by her side, indulges in a reunion scene from
the film Lassie, and Selma hears the music and ›sees‹ in the palm
of her hand the steps to a musical which Kathy expresses with
her fingers. Jan and Kathy’s sympathetic insight thus invites the
viewer to embrace the affective potentials of the close‑up. Deleuze
writes that in the film’s affection‑image the close‑up has iconic
value and virtual potential. The affect can be modified through
very small changes in facial relations (turning away or towards),
and in prioritising whether a milder or sterner facial expression
is shown (Deleuze 1986, 105). He writes in this connection:
The expresssed entity is what the Middle Ages called the ›signifiable
complex‹ of a proposition, distinct from the state of things. The ex‑
pressed – that is the affect – is complex because it is made up of all
sorts of singularities that it sometimes connects and into which it some‑
times divides. This is why it constantly varies and changes qualitatively
according to the connections that it carries out or the divisions that
it undergoes. This is the Dividual, that which neither increases nor
decreases without changing qualitatively. What produces the unity
of the affect at each instant is the virtual conjunction assured by the
expression, face or proposition. (Deleuze op. cit., 105)
The close‑up (of the face, for example) can thus collect or dis‑
seminate and qualitatively change a whole situation, but as the
affection‑image it has a virtual quality or power – just as the colour
red is an icon (according to Peirce) – which stretches beyond the
milieu in which it functions. Deleuze mentions Dreyer’s The Pas-
sion of Joan of Arc as »the affective film par excellence« (Deleuze
op.cit., 106). Although the close‑up image of Falconetti’s frontal,
open face belongs in both the trial and the passion, and though
the reasons and effects are performed in the state of things, which
leads to judgements and death, the film as an affective event does
not absorb itself in the actualisation created by the narrative.
The anger becomes a quality, which in Dreyer links itself to the
sacrifice and the martyrdom:

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To extract the Passion from the trial, to extract from the event this
inexhaustible and brilliant part which goes beyond its own actualisa‑
tion, ›the completion which is never completed‹. The affect is like the
expressed of the state of things, but this expressed does not refer to the
state of things, it only refers to the faces which express it and, coming
together or separating, give it its proper moving context. Made up of
short close‑ups, the film took upon itself that part of the event which
does not allow itself to be actualised in a determinate milieu. (Deleuze
op.cit., 106)
The expressive, affective close‑up stretches out beyond the film’s

milieu as a cause and effect structure, because as a singular, iconic
power it can contain the event, which in Dreyer gains a spiritual
interpretation. In Trier the facial affection‑image is exploited to
include the viewer, as its potential is combined with shock and
thus has a part in the event of interpretation. In The Idiots it is the
unexpected slap in the face, which almost physically breaks the
viewer’s empathy with Karen’s abject spastic jesting. In Breaking
the Waves it is the clanging bells which unexpectedly and vertically
force the viewer to confront him/herself with two incongruous
figures of representation. In Dancer in the Dark it is likewise the
body’s unexpected vertical fall at the hanging which in a physical
sense stops the song and abruptly amputates the musical cre‑
scendo. In the closing scenes of the first two films, the viewer’s
sensorial shock is eased as the affective energy can be relayed to
the main character’s closest relations – to the faces of Susanne
and Jan respectively – immediately after the action is brought to
a conclusion. Consequently, in the most literal sense an interface
occurs between two faces, which the viewer, in a physically af‑
fective sense, is involved in via the hand‑held filming of the slap
in the face, including the whole image, and the inferno of sound
from the church bells, which in a haptic manner likewise overlays
the perception of image depth. These physical‑affective shocks,
which are found motivated within the action, are framed by the
affection‑image of Karen on the one side, and on the other side
the sympathetic faces of her closest relatives, which emotionally
interpret the viewer’s physical‑affective shock. Here – at the sight
of Susanne’s tearful face and Jan’s face radiant with joy – the

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The shot of Eugene’s spectacles forms an affect image.
viewer encounters an interpretation in the form of an emotional

reaction to the exterior events.155
But in Dancer in the Dark one finds the prison guard’s sym‑
pathetic face beside Selma’s suffering, and the interface between
affective influence and emotion is replaced by a zoom towards
(the absent) Gene’s spectacles as they fall out of Selma’s hands
and land on the concrete floor. But each close‑up (whatever it
is) is, according to Deleuze, an affection‑image (Deleuze 1986,
87). The effect is the same: the affective interface between the
exterior sensory influence, which here is haptic, and the interior
emotions in connection with the affection‑image (of the specta‑
cles) is so effectively emphasised that it affects the interpretation
long after one has exited the cinema. In all three endings, Lars
von Trier succeeds in involving the viewer by effectively utilising
the virtual potential in the affection‑image. The violent, affec‑
tive effect – which to a large degree is created by establishing a
haptic surface effect that is vast and without depth – is mitigated
155 This use of the face to express affect is also found in Medea, which as mentioned is based on Drey‑
er’s manuscript. Here the viewer must study Medea’s face while she hangs her sons.

CONTENTS
through fade‑out, where a sympathetic affection‑image creates
calm anew, so the viewer can leave the cinema with a certain
sense of serenity.
If one looks closer at the closing scene of Dancer in the Dark,
it is worth noting that this fade‑out is lacking. The close‑up of
the singing Selma is abruptly interrupted by the fall of the body
and spectacles. In addition, the sorrow in Selma’s face is repeated
in an ultra‑close shot, just as the angst in her voice breaking up
and, not least, the graininess, is captured as she sings:
Dear Gene, of course you are near. And now there’s nothing to fear.
I should have known, I was never alone.
It isn’t the last song, there’s no violin, the choir is so quiet, and no‑one
takes a spin.
This is the next to last song, and that’s all.
Remember what I have said: remember to wrap up the bread, do this,
do that, make your bed.
This isn’t the last song, there’s no violin, the choir is quiet and no‑one
takes a spin.
It’s the next to last song, and that’s all. (Dancer in the Dark, final scene
of the DVD)156
Her facial expression, hair and mouth are filmed in extreme close‑
up, so the haptic and affective almost slide together, as the voice
is silenced in a violent manner with the words »and that’s all«.
The doubt about whether or not she is finally pardoned is
brought to shame abruptly, in and with the musical sequence
without background music mixing with the real plane of the nar‑
rative. There is no doubt, no hope – apart from for her son, who
is not present in the scene and the melodramatic ending it paves
the way for. In a figurative sense he avoids the short‑sighted haptic
vision which leads to the dark of blindness, in that his mother
156 On the DVD audio commentary, Lars von Trier and Per Streit say that the friend Kathy’s line: »You
were right, Selma: Listen to your heart« on the soundtrack was meant to be a cue for the sound of Björk’s
heart – captured in real‑time by a microphone – to create the rhythm to her a capella song. Because of the
disagreements between Björk and Trier, this idea could not be realised. But the idea shows clearly that the
affective‑haptic level has been thought through by Trier.

CONTENTS
saves him into the light.157 The moral, which is projected on the
image at the end, »They say it’s the last song. They don’t know
us, you see. It’s only the last song if we let it be«, brings to mind
Selma confiding in her landlord, Bill. Here she tells him that she
always leaves the cinema when the musical’s »next to last song«
begins, so she can imagine that the song and dance never ends.
But hope arises in the hanging process, as Kathy tells how Gene’s
(and Selma’s own) degenerative vision can be cured, and thus the
next to last song gains a meaning: the family line can continue. But
because the eyesight endures, the voice is silenced. And immedi‑
ately after her life and voice are shockingly interrupted, the film’s
plane of reality and the audience’s reality ›meets‹: the curtains are
drawn, the camera rises up through the prison loft into the dark
and the audience, along with the witnesses to the hanging, must
leave the room. Instead of it never ending, everything ends – in‑
cluding the melodramatic pathos, which the endings in the first
two films in the trilogy rely on so much.158 It becomes clear that
»The next to last song« does not constitute a territorial song with
a final refrain. It is not the ground and the territory that is sung
about; it is the genetic‑cosmic continuation of sight and voice in
a nomadic BwO that is celebrated in the final part of the trilogy,
where the non‑integrated surplus of affect is heard as silence – a
silence of Spinozian dimensions.159
157 In this sense the film represents a mixture of a maternal melodrama and the most romantic melo‑
drama of them all, Dark Victory (1939), where the heroine (Bette Davis) becomes blind and dies of her
tumour, alone, because she sends away everyone who loved her.
158 Cf. Kyndrup (1998) and Thomsen (1998).
159 Cf. Trier’s description »About the film« (Björkman 1999, 238‑240), where he states: »She knows
what a body can do…when it does its best to attain perfection in dance, like in the big films, and she knows
how the joy and pain of everyday life can be expressed in movement. […] The dance has no façade…it faces
every direction…it has no boundaries…a fingertip touching a surface is dance!”

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 6
America films
Verfremdung and diagrammatic production
While the Golden Heart trilogy examined whether it is possible

to represent ›goodness‹ in a convincing way, it was the develop‑
ment of wickedness and the act of revenge that interested Lars
von Trier in the films Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005),
which were intended to comment on the land of opportunity,
America.160 As previously shown, the goodness in the trilogy is
noticeably present in the form of the affection‑image’s involve‑
ment of the viewer, whereas in the duology it is the eruption of
vengeance which creates a reflective interface, loosely based on
the Brechtian principles of Verfremdung.161 While the Golden
Heart trilogy, towards the end, affectively challenges the viewer
in an impossible choice between pathos and irony, the challenges
in Dogville and Manderlay lie in a more reflective play, but in an
equally difficult decision as to which of the two parties is acting
most maliciously. Here the viewer is challenged both affectively
and intellectually on ethical (both Christian and socialistic) ide‑
as of community and their transgression. It is the expectation
160 A third film in the same vein was planned; together they were to create a trilogy depicting a woman’s
process of maturing from idealism to realism. Therefore, in the following, the word duology is used.
161 Trier was inspired by Pirate Jenny’s revenge song in the Danish version of Brecht’s The Threepenny
Opera (Brecht 1965, 195), but in particular by the singer Sebastian’s version from 1979. Trier mentions his
interest in Brecht as secondary, in that it was filtered through his mother’s predilection for both Brecht and
Kurt Weill (Björkman, 243‑244). Brecht’s‹ concept of Verfremdung is aimed partly towards negating the
creation of illusion and narrative empathy towards the characters in Aristotelian theatre, and partly towards
displaying what is not immediately apparent, namely the structure and character of capitalist society. Char‑
acters were reduced and the theatre space’s fourth wall – the normally invisible place – was made obvious
with the help of author commentary, songs and posters challenging the audience to be reflective. In this
way, the theatre’s sensory involvement of the audience was also accentuated, as was the possibility of creat‑
ing distance from and reflecting on the events playing out on the stage (for more on Verfremdung in relation
to Dogville, see Penzendorfer 2010).
america films · verfremdung and diagrammatic production 175

CONTENTS
of good and evil in Western culture that Trier subjects to close
scrutiny. In the following I will attempt to sharpen these theses,
in considering the ethical implications of the term ›affect‹. The
analysis will include both Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s Ethics
as belonging to a plane of immanence,162 and Deleuze and Guat‑
tari’s differentiation between micropolitics and segmentarity in
A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 2013).
The parties in Dogville are the citizens of a small town in Colo‑
rado, Dogville,163 and the runaway Grace (Nicole Kidman) who
desires a life at peace within her surroundings. In Manderlay the
estate’s poor slaves are faced with the outsider Grace (Bryce Dallas
Howard), who aims to teach them how democratic freedom and
responsibility is practised. In Dogville, Grace is in hiding from her
gangster father, The Big Man, whom she joins, however, in the
final showdown with the inhabitants of the town. In the beginning
of Manderlay she leaves him again, in Alabama, as she wishes to
convince him that democracy can be created where tyranny now
rules. But in the film’s final scenes she must again flee when she
realises that, despite the abolition of slavery, the slaves themselves
have chosen to continue living in Manderlay. Both films depict
idealistic demands as a driving force – with Grace wanting to show
the possibility of better societal constructs than those exploited
by the mafia. But Grace’s idealism meets with resistance in the
form of the human proclivity to take advantage of others and the
situations they find themselves in. Though Grace’s father in the
final scenes of Dogville characterises this power and obstinate
desire as despicable, and compares it with the instincts of a dog,
he does not believe that Grace’s framework of explanations is any
better – she does not judge the inhabitants of Dogville according
to the same ethical criteria as she judges herself, and therefore he
calls her arrogant. Hidden structures and motifs are thus made
apparent, as with Brecht. Grace’s final act of revenge in Dogville,
162 This with particular reference to Deleuze 1988.

163 Trier conceived the name Dogville as well as the misspelling, which he blames on the fact that he
has never been to the USA: »I think that’s interesting – another blunder by a non‑American filmmaker. I
believe in these small faults. They humanize the project and put things in perspective« (Lumholdt 2003).
This and the criticism of the same in the reception of Dancer in the Dark in Cannes are cited by Trier as the
greatest inspirations for the America trilogy. For, as he says, the Americans knew nothing about Morocco
when they filmed Casablanca (op. cit. and Björkman, 245).

CONTENTS
as well as in Manderlay, involves the viewer in reflections on the
legitimacy of idealistic demands.164
Trier utilises Brecht’s technique of Verfremdung, so the viewer
gains insight into the relationship between idealisation and reality,
but he differentiates himself from Brecht in the way that – and in
light of the global sovereignty of capitalism (and the American film
industry) – he also subjects the notions of socialism and democracy
to a ›reality check‹. The contemporaneous ›war on terror‹ indi-
cated that the cold war’s fragile balance of power after the fall of
Nazism in 1945 was replaced by another kind of »micropolitical«
strategy (Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 250-251), where it is not so
easy to identify the villain from the hero. One of Brecht’s most fa-
mous plays is Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), which takes
place during the Thirty Years War, and was intended as a response
to the rise of fascism in Germany. The play sets out to illustrate that
the logic of war is essentially different from that of peace, causing
shortcomings in even the capitalist market and commercial trad-
ing. In this way Mother Courage, with her attempted black market
transactions in the shadow of the logic of war, sees her children
ruined. This insight in Brecht is developed by Trier, who allows a
whole town to be corrupted by money – most clearly exemplified
by Grace’s apparent protector, Tom – before finally coming to an
end in the violent action of the gangster discourse.
Planes of composition in Dogville
Dogville and Manderlay are somewhat like allegorical doctrines

of human behaviour since the Great Depression of the 1930s,165
which in addition to fascism in Europe gave rise to black mar-
ket transactions and gangster organisations in the USA, and
was reflected in the medium of film as the inspiration for film
164 Trier himself characterises these as »the shortcomings of humanism« (Björkman 2003, 251).
165 Cf. also Schepelern 2003.

CONTENTS
noir.166 Together with the Brechtian inspiration, this film type
constitutes the backdrop for Dogville,167 with its style favouring
chiaroscuro ahead of a clear differentiation between dark and
light forces. But at the launch in Cannes as well as in subse‑
quent interviews, Trier stressed that the then current political
motivation was the American (and Danish) so‑called ›war on
terror‹, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.168 Caroline Bainbridge
draws attention to how the films Dancer in the Dark, Dogville
and Manderlay are interpreted by the American public allegori‑
cally as didactic pieces of self‑reflection (Bainbridge 2007, 141).
Trier also mentions that they should be viewed as a comment
in relation to the then new regulations in Denmark concerning
immigrants (Lumholdt, 209).169
166 There is agreement in film theory that the film noir style is inspired by German semi‑obscurity
(chiaroscuro) and that the style makes the battleground between dark and light forces into an unclear field
because the detective himself is invariably attracted to and becomes infected by the shady side of sexual
desire and power. The question of how far film noir can be characterised as an independent genre or rather
should be seen as melodrama with specific stylistic traits (cars, hats, cigarettes, city backdrops etc.) is the
subject of an ongoing discussion.
167 In short, the film concerns the beautiful Grace Margaret Mulligan’s (Nicole Kidman) arrival and
residence in the small town of Dogville, in Colorado. She is both on the run from her gangster father, The
Big Man (James Caan), and on the lookout for a more harmonious existence, where people respect one
another. The budding writer Tom Edison Jr. (Paul Bettany), who lives in Dogville, is at the same time also
looking for something that can illustrate to the citizens of Dogville that there is space for improvement in
the little community’s unity and ethical requirements. When Grace steals a bone from Moses the dog, it
barks and she is discovered by Tom, who immediately sees her as an instrument – a gift – for the perfect
illustration. He suggests to the town’s inhabitants that they can help the fugitive Grace and give her shelter.
They agree to a two‑week trial period, and Grace offers her help to everyone. She speaks with the blind
Jack (Ben Gazzara), who pretends he can see; she takes care of Ma Ginger’s (Lauren Bacall) gooseberry
bushes; she looks after Vera (Patricia Clarkson) and Chuck’s (Stellan Skarsgaard) children and helps Chuck
in the apple orchard, and so on, and the good atmosphere grows. When the police return for a second time
with an inquiry (about a bank robbery she cannot have committed), and the citizens realise that Grace has
wealth behind her, they demand that she works twice as hard and have lower wages. In her haste, she makes
small mistakes, is humiliated by Vera, because her son Jason (Miles Purinton) claims that she has hit him,
and is raped by Chuck. An attempt to escape in Ben’s (Zeljko Ivanek) truck fails when Ben, after having
exploited her sexually, reveals her plan. She is accused of robbery, and she is quickly degraded to a slave,
attached to a millstone via a neck collar and iron chain. All assaults – including daily rapes – are allowed
by Tom, who is the only one who does not gain access to her, as Grace hopes for them to be together in a
loving relationship and freedom. The rejected Tom contacts The Big Man, who has previously given him
his calling card, and the town finally meets its match. The town’s inhabitants are rounded up like dogs, and
after a conversation with her father, Grace is reconciled with him and given absolute power to, amongst
other things, decide the fate of the town. Grace chooses to have the townsfolk shot – shooting Tom herself
– and orders the town to be burned down, but the dog Moses is spared, being the only inhabitant who has
ever given her something.
168 The invasion of Iraq in spring 2003 took place immediately before the film’s presentation in
Cannes. In the DVD Added value to Dogville, Trier states that his agenda is to supplement the Americans‹
»Free Iraq Campaign« with a »Free America Campaign«.
169 In 2002 the government implemented a considerable tightening of immigrant laws which, amongst
other things, meant heightened demands on the conditions for refugee status (such as risk of the death
penalty or torture in the displaced person’s homeland) and increased demands for family reunification (that

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Bainbridge shows that Dogville’s references to the master of
light, Thomas Edison170 – who apart from the electric light bulb
also invented the phonograph, patented the film camera and later
founded The Motion Picture Patents Company – functions as an
intertextual reference to his (and America’s) »formative role in
the shaping of the commercialisation of cinema« (op. cit., 147).
One could add that Trier, by giving the role of shop owner Ma
Ginger to Lauren Bacall, also implants the most unpredictable
element of film noir: the femme fatale. For though Grace rep‑
resents such a type, Lauren Bacall is a living embodiment of the
element of desire, which stretched between her and Humphrey
Bogart in the greatest film noir of them all, The Big Sleep (1946).
As with the name Edison, she represents the classic (now ageing)
American film tradition, seen through Trier’s Danish eyes. Bain‑
bridge notes how the commercialisation of the film industry then
and now in relation to geopolitical agendas, including from the
contemporary political scene, together with the Brechtian Ver-
fremdung is folded into the America films in altogether complex
ways (Bainbridge, 148). Her analysis is misleading, however, in
that she simultaneously describes postmodernism as inauthentic
and as not being capable of depicting something authentically. As
mentioned earlier, in his many remediations Trier does not dif‑
ferentiate between »authenticity and artifice«, which is the subtitle
of Caroline Bainbridge’s book. He creatively plays out authenticity
and fiction against one another (in the form of game rules, for
example) and creates new mixed forms in diverse remediation
and diagrammatically orchestrated interfaces. The same is valid
for Dogville and Manderlay – with the Brechtian Verfremdung as
a contribution, which is meant to stimulate reflection – where the
hegemonic, basic types of realism in classic Hollywood films are
challenged, and with this, in turn, their accentuating of narrative
continuity. As we shall see, Trier utilises a micropolitical strat‑
egy which, combined with the rendering visible of diagrammatic
both parents should be over 24 years of age, and that their connection to Denmark should be documented
as well as the ability to support themselves). Cf. also Reestorff 2017, who looks at this as well as political and
artistic practice during the period in light of globalisation.
170 This in the form of Tom and his father (Philip Baker Hall), who bear the names Thomas Edison
Junior and Senior respectively.

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codes, brings Brecht’s methods on a par with new media. The
filmic dialogue with the theatrical forms of Verfremdung dem‑
onstrates a filmic remediation of the computer’s user interface,
but the grid mounted with cameras above the stage also enables
a particularly diagrammatic interface, with a degree of camera
involvement, which will be described in more detail below. For
this entire grid covering which, so to speak, ascribes the filmic
possibility to create visual events in the material for all forms of
media is, in my opinion, created in order for the artificial staging
to be fleshed out affectively and haptically.
Trier sheds light on the current status of the film medium
in that (together with the book and the theatre) it is remediated
through the dramaturgy of the computer game – but what is
more, Brechtian hypermediated realism, which also reflects the
mass media of the age (Laak 2009, 302), can be perceived as
equal parts of immediacy. Trier himself calls Dogville a »fusion
film«, which could be further described thus:
[T]he real essence of the whole thing is that the elements that have
been taken from theatre and literature are not just mixed up with the
forms of expression offered by film. The whole thing has to function as
a cohesive fusion, thoroughly blended. (Björkman 2003, 242)
In the same interview Trier mentions that he was also inspired

by the Danish TV broadcast (in the 1980s) of Trevor Nunn’s
adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby (1838‑1839).
In this series, actors from The Royal Shakespeare Company ap‑
peared to improvise and there was no attempt to hide the fact
that the play took place on a theatre stage (op. cit., 245). Trier
likewise names Thornton Wilder’s American play Our Town
(1938), where the actors mime the action without scenography
and props, and where the stage manager appears as the narrator
of the piece. In this way the extradiegetic voice‑over narrator,
which is so essential in film noir, is remediated unproblemati‑
cally in both the theatre as well as the novel. The last element
detailed by Trier is that the entire town should be viewed »as
though laid out on a map« (op. cit., 245). He mentions this idea

CONTENTS
elsewhere171 as originating with the computer game Silent Hill,
where one also finds an Elm Street.172
Trier does not mention here that the film’s hypermediated
overview, which in the computer game is used to survey diverse
routes and obstacles, is due to a grid on which 13 DV cameras were
hung. The grid, which was moveable, made it possible to cover the
entire stage from 160 perspectives in total, seen from above. The
individual sequences were filmed from the grid on a green back‑
ground and were later compiled on a computer.173 The artificial
staging takes place partly through the overview perspective as a
transcendent, extradiegetic place, which is also ›inhabited‹ by the
omnipotent voice‑over narrator,174 and partly through the sceno‑
graphic elements, which are supposed to intensify the Brechtian
Verfremdung. The latter is found especially on the floor plan, where
the houses have neither walls nor doors but are made from chalk
outlines, as are the contours of the dog Moses and Ma Ginger’s
gooseberry bushes. Verfremdung is also created by the light from
the ›Sun‹ and ›Moon‹ clearly emanating from lamps. The film me‑
dium’s indexical elements, which support classic forms of film
realism, are in this way clearly toned down in order to intensify
theatrical and literary elements. Trier emphasises that the chalk
outlines can be just as real as tangible walls, and that the audi‑
ence can engage with this if the illusion is consistent and carried
through:
They’re real in the same way that a child’s drawing is real. If you give
a small child some crayons and ask him or her to draw a house, you’ll
get a house made of a few simple lines. That’s how our scenery works.
We’re establishing an agreement with the audience under which these
171 Interview in CinemaZone.dk with Jesper Vestergaard, 4 June 2003: http://www.cinemazone.dk/arti‑

cle.asp?id=560&area=3 (last viewed 23 April 2013). In The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944) Brecht also uses
chalk lines on the floor as an important part of the scenography.
172 Another reference is Wes Craven’s horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Both the computer
game and the film can, however, also refer to another event, namely the assassination of Kennedy, which
took place on Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, 22 November 1963.
173 Described by Peter Hjort in »Visual Effects Featurette« on disc 2 of the DVD.
174 Lothar van Laak stresses that the narrator’s »strong performative function« in Dogville and Mander-
lay, where the characters partly illustrate the words and bring them to life, but where there are also tensions
(of, for example, the ironic kind) between the two levels, makes Trier’s allegories more open to the epic
grand form than Brecht’s theatre plays (Laak 2009, 332‑335).

CONTENTS
circumstances are accepted. If that agreement is clear enough then I
don’t think there are any boundaries to what you can do. (Björkman,
246)
During the filming of Dogville it was crucial for Trier that all 16
actors (+ children) were present simultaneously for the six weeks
of shooting in the film’s scenery – even if they perhaps did not
have any lines. The six weeks correspond to the narrative span;
that is, the time in which Grace finds herself in Dogville. This
performative real‑time element and the Verfremdung elements
are the crucial rules of the game. As Trier explains in the citation
above, the Brechtian Verfremdung can, just like a child’s drawing
utilising only a few simple means (such as chalk outlines), create
a contract of reality. The viewer accepts that the chalk outlines
can denote real house walls, while simultaneously establishing
a reflexive distance from the events on the stage, since they are
clearly scenery. Trier also utilises the scenery to give more impor‑
tance to the actors‹ improvisation, which gains a kind of real‑time
effect because everyone is present and intimate witnesses to one
another’s performances. These approaches link well to the im‑
plementation of the Dogme rules in The Idiots, where the actors
also lived together, but here there were elements of Verfremdung
attached later in the form of Trier’s interviews with the actors
concerning their experiences of the project.175
These approaches are also made explicit in and with Dog-
ville (cf. Trier’s critique of the widespread use of digital post‑
production in mainstream film in the same interview; Björkman
ibid.). But he also mentions in the same place and several others
the lunar landings broadcast on TV in 1969 as a source for the
film.176 He is curious as to whether this real‑time broadcast from
NASA actually took place, or whether it, as certain conspiracy
175 In connection with the filming of Dogville, a room was also constructed for confessions where actors
could enter alone and comment on events, recording themselves on video.
176 In Sami Saif’s film Dogville Confessions, amongst others, a particular style of filming is utilised as a
recurrent framing (from above or from a remotely controlled camera on ground level), which is indicative
of the filming from the surface of the moon. In the beginning of this film, which is identical with the begin‑
ning of Dogville, Trier says: »This film is a lunar landing. As the film is now, we have landed on the moon.«
Later a soundbite with astronaut Neil Armstrong’s voice is added to Dogville’s chronicled stage environ‑
ment, where he announces: »One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind« (Added Value, disc 2 of
the DVD edition of Dogville).

CONTENTS
theories claim, was merely a studio recording.177 It is thus the field
between transparency and opacity which in this film inspires Trier
to develop the concept of Verfremdung, so it can also contain the
diagrammatic as a micropolitical prism. It is in this field of ten‑
sion that the film’s unresolved conflict plays out – and that the
interface between the territorialised overview perspective and the
deterritorialised Verfremdung perspective develops.
Consequently the camera grid in the ceiling of the film studio
becomes central. From here the hypermediacy perspective can be
partly established, and diagrammatic, haptic delineations in the
narrative as material can be partly created. Peter Hjort mentions
that the camera grid made it possible to create imperceptible transi‑
tions between night and day, to create a semi‑transparent layer of
haze over the town, to create a painterly form of transparency in the
surface of the truck’s tarpaulin covering and, not least, to create the
spiral motion imitating the shape of a corkscrew in the zoom from
the floor level and up, which brings Chuck’s rape of Grace up onto
the same level of reflection as the voice‑over (see below).178 The first
two examples change the scene so it is covered by semi‑transparent
haptic layers, which negate depth, thus enabling audiences to ab‑
stract themselves from the narrative. The last example, where the
camera turns on its own axis, spiralling from the ground level up,
enables the viewer to maintain a distance from the haptic‑affective
contact with the violence of the events. This alternating between
the (semi)transparent and the opaque is, as far as I am concerned,
the filmic idea which makes the remediation of the many involved
media so successful, as the viewer has no problem connecting with
the somewhat untraditional filmic setting. But the play between
the (semi)transparent and the opaque is also given a political con‑
tentual meaning in Dogville. In the following we shall look closer at
the composition of Dogville in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s
distinction between micoropolitics and segmentarity.
177 In Denmark this meant that the majority of people (including children) stayed awake most of the
night in order to follow the transmission.
178 Cf. Peter Hjort’s explanation in »Visual Effects Featurette« on the DVD’s Added value.

CONTENTS
Capitalistic segmentarity and terroristic
micropolitics in Dogville
In chapter 9 of A Thousand Plateaus, »1933: Micropolitics and Seg‑

mentarity«, Deleuze and Guattari analyse fascism as a micropo‑
litical activity which, from 1933 and onwards, was in the process
of undermining capitalist segmentarity. They put forward several
types of segmentarity: binary (for example, social classes, men‑
women, adults‑children); circular (myself, my neighbourhood, my
city, my country, the world); and linear (the linear processes of the
school and army). These are found transversely in various forms in
every society, but there is a tendency that ›primitive‹ societies cre‑
ate supple types and ›modern‹ societies create rigid types (Deleuze
and Guattari 2013, 244‑246). However, the latter should not be
understood so that ›supple‹ and ›primitive‹ always follow one an‑
other, as rigid segments are also found here. One ought to under‑
stand it almost as molar (fabric regarded as whole or mass) and mo‑
lecular structures in every society and individual, and that is why:
In short, everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously a

macropolitics and a micropolitics. Take aggregates of the perception or
feeling type: their molar organization, their rigid segmentarity, does
not preclude the existence of an entire world of unconscious micro‑
percepts, unconscious affects, fine segmentations that grasp or expe‑
rience different things, are distributed and operate differently. There
is a micropolitics of perception, affection, conversation, and so forth.
(Op. cit., 249; author’s italics).
Kafka’s description of bureaucracy is Deleuze and Guattari’s ex‑

ample of rigid segmentarity with ›soft‹ non‑definitive boundaries.
Fascism is an example of a molecular system of »a proliferation of
molecular focuses in interaction, which skip from point to point,
before beginning to resonate together in the National Socialist
State« (op. cit., 250‑251; author’s italics). According to Deleuze
and Guattari, Hitler »had at his disposal micro‑organizations«,
which meant that National Socialism became »flows capable of
suffusing every kind of cell« (op. cit., 250‑251). Here Deleuze and
Guattari make a connection with the depiction of fascist micro‑
organising in American films:

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What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power,
for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a totalitar‑
ian organism. American film has often depicted these molecular focal
points; band, gang, sect, family, town, neighbourhood, vehicle fascisms
spare no one. (Op. cit., 251)
It is obvious to associate this with film noir, whose icons are so

clearly paraphrased in Dogville. Aside from the femme fatale,
there is the gang and the authentic cars from the 1930s, which are
driven in and out of the scene, each time to considerable effect.
In addition the town turns out to be much less peaceful than first
assumed when Grace, the ›intruder‹, disturbs its order.
That the inhabitants of the town of Dogville ignite a molecular
fire as a result of their (also individually different) micropoliti‑
cal relations to Grace is, in fact, the pivotal point in the entire
film – its conundrum. Everything is grounded in the illustrated
Verfremdung, which Tom addresses to the audience (alias Trier
with Dogville). Tom is a person who would like to be able to ›ride
on‹ the molecular lines of flight in the dream of winning power
and fame as an author. He aims both to create chaos and to con‑
trol the flows which escape and mutate. This is the background
for his ›illustration‹, where the inhabitants of Dogville are sum‑
moned in order to participate in an experiment on ethics and
humane conduct. According to Deleuze and Guattari, this form
of controlled experiment in the »closed vessel« marks the way to
totalitarianism (op. cit., 267). We witness in the film how Tom’s
barely hidden power strategy proliferates to every cell in the town,
whose base structure is segmented in a capitalist manner with a
primary production (mine and orchard), a secondary production
(glass manufacture and transportation), a service sector (shop and
cleaning) and an official sector (priest and doctor), together with
budding artists (painting and literature).
Tom’s experiment, in which Grace acts as the central ingredi‑
ent (a gift) facilitating new forms of exchange in the small town
society, is eventually derailed. Tom’s ›gift‹ poisons the relations
which were already frayed, and rather than strengthening unity,
it all ends with conflict between everyone and the removal of
Grace, who does not have a clearly defined function in the seg‑

CONTENTS
mented society – and who therefore elicits unpredictable forms
of passionate, barrier‑breaking and unsavoury behaviour, before
she is contained and chained like a scapegoat. If one thinks of
Tom’s ›gift‹ as a pharmakon (which means both poison and rem‑
edy) in extension of Derrida’s critical reading of Plato’s dialogue
Phaedrus, it fits better with the film’s outcome. Derrida links the
double meaning of the word pharmakon – together with the words
pharmakeon (wizard, magician) and pharmakos (scapegoat) – to
writing, and he shows that Plato (with Socrates) also sees writing
as more than poison, in light of philosophically true speech con‑
nected to actual phenomena. Writing has an ambivalent character
with double meanings in all relations:
If the pharmakon is »ambivalent«, it is because it constitutes the medium

in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links
them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over
into the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside, memory/forgetful‑
ness, speech/writing, etc.). […] The pharmakon is the movement, the
locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. It is the differance
[la différance] of difference. (Derrida 1981, 127; author’s italics)
Grace becomes the extra ingredient, the pharmakon, which Tom

imagines could potentially make the ideal Dogville real in writing,
but she ends as a scapegoat rather than as a joker. She does not
become a sacrifice (like Bess and Selma in Breaking the Waves and
Dancer in the Dark respectively), however, because she refuses
to give in to the nuances and ambivalence which can be said to
characterise each incident. But she learns by experience, and in
several ways the middle ground of nuances, which both she and
Tom praise, must yield when events are given an outlet in actions.
A good example is her relationship to Chuck and Vera’s son,
Jason, whom Grace devotedly attends to. He displays a tyrannical
side when he, in his disdainful manner, seeks (more) physical
contact and presses Grace to hit him. He is victorious when she
reacts physically, and her principles of non‑violence are eroded.
Jason, who understands the adult forms of ceasefire, then ›tells‹
on her to his mother, Vera, without letting on that it was he
who manipulated Grace into hitting him. At this point Vera also

CONTENTS
believes that Grace has seduced her husband, so she confronts
Grace determinedly and smashes the children’s figurines which
Grace has collected. At the same time she exploits the situation
to teach Grace a lesson in stoic calm: if Grace can hold back her
tears, Vera will spare the last five figures. This instructive lesson
in ›controlling one’s emotions‹ develops during the violent shoot‑
ing in the film’s final act to yet another retributive action – but
this time with living children – as Grace instructs the gangsters
that the children will be spared if Vera can hold back her tears.
Stoic intervention and the mastering of the machinations of
affect against the body thus strike in terroristic retaliatory ac‑
tivities.179
The violent assaults on Grace escalate from and with her pun‑
ishment of Jason. Here her weakness is laid bare. Her idealistic
demand – the creation of an alternative to the terroristic forms
of control in the gangster milieu – means that she cannot re‑
spond. Her rape at the hands of Chuck follows the same pattern,
and happens because Chuck demands physical evidence of her
›respect‹. As with his son, Jason, Chuck gives Grace as good as
he gets in that he threatens to report her to the FBI, and the
rape functions in this way as payment for his silence. Chuck ex‑
ploits his physical superiority, and this is followed by the posters
which the police have distributed being changed from »missing«
to »wanted«. As the reward for reporting her to the police rises
more and more, Chuck is correct when he says: »You’re far too
beautiful and frail for this place«. Her worth must be devalued,
if she is to survive. After this Grace has no defence against her
social collapse, as all the men in the town (apart from Tom) regard
access to her body as their right. Tom must maintain that she is a
gift, when she insists that their reciprocal vows of love must not
be sullied. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, set up by Tom,
his chivalrousness crumbles, though, and he goes along with the
decision of the townsfolk to place her in chains. Escape is now
179 For a more developed analysis of the Jason and Medea theme in Euripides and Trier, see Thomsen
2005. Also in Trier’s Medea, the titular character displays stoic calm in the hanging of her children, which
repeats the motif of violence several times: Jason’s violence (leaving his family without thinking about
Medea and the children) leads to Medea’s (to rob Jason of a future, in the form of the children), and this
demands of her that she carries out her project stoically, in order for Jason’s cynicism to be revealed.

CONTENTS
out of the question; meanwhile, the exploitation and contempt
occur on a daily basis. This is how Grace is transformed from
functioning as a gift for the development of ethical forms of col‑
laboration in a capitalistic segmentation to being a hostage who, as
a commodity, can be exchanged for hard cash at any time. From
now on Grace sees no other way out than terroristic action, and
she – not Tom – finally collects the energy from the molecular
»micropercepts, unconscious affects, [and] fine segmentations«
(Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 249). As with her female forerun‑
ners, Brecht’s Pirate Jenny and Euripides’ Medea, Grace cuts
short the process, but before this the audience gains access to the
perceptive microprocesses that she goes through.
Microperceptual affect in Dogville
In the following we will look closer at how the style of classic film
noir and the Brechtian Verfremdung strategy work together in a
purely filmic sense – this in relation to the description of the mi‑
cropolitical form, emanating from the rape and gaining an outlet
in the mass execution in the final scenes, which is reminiscent of
the methods for a final solution associated with Nazism, gangsters
and the so‑called shock‑and‑awe tactics against Iraq.
Deleuze and Guattari emphasise that the biggest threat of the
molecular flow is the capture not of reterritorialization, but of the
line of flight: »instead of connecting with other lines and each time
augmenting its valence, turning to destruction, abolition pure and
simple, the passion of abolition« (op. cit., 268‑269). This could be
valid for both Tom’s and Grace’s lines of flight. They both fail,
but it is Grace who draws the longest (or shortest) straw, when
her father’s obscured rescue operation gives her power to allow
the molecular flow to result in a terroristic solution.180 Neverthe‑
less, one might say that during the final scenes Tom is suicidal in
his passionate desire for power and fame. His final line to Grace,
when the townsfolk are shot and the houses burned down, is:
»Bingo Grace. Bingo. I have to tell you your illustration beat the
180 This solution can to a large extent also be seen as a Trieresque comment on the so‑called ›war on
terror‹, which proclaimed democracy on the agenda in Iraq.

CONTENTS
hell out of mine. It’s frightening. Yes, but so clear. Do you think I
can allow myself to use it as an inspiration in my writing?« Even at
the end he holds on to the idea that written rhetoric must extract
its content from living life – by witnessing that this can cost him
his own life.181 A similar form of suicidal passion also occurred in
the ›war machine‹ of German fascism, with its objective, as Hitler
formulated it, being absolute war and the ruin of the State if the
war was lost (op. cit., 270).
Both Tom and Grace thus perpetrate micropolitical activ‑
ity – Tom on the grounds of strategies of power and Grace out
of necessity. The micropolitical, molecular flows, according to
Deleuze and Guattari, can be of both right‑ and left‑wing ori‑
ented convictions and can hardly be understood and regulated by
a classic State power, which one also experienced in Paris in May
1968. But the flows change their course and again create molar
segments, and it is extremely difficult to differentiate between the
de‑ and reterritorialised movements, because:
[The] first eludes the second, or the second arrests the first, prevents
it from flowing further; but at the same time, they are strictly com‑
plementary and coexistent, because one exists only as a function of
the other; yet they are different and in direct relation to each other,
although corresponding term by term, because the second only ef‑
fectively arrests the first on a »plane« that is not the plane specific to
the first, while the momentum of the first continues on its own plane.
(Op. cit., 256‑257)
It is worth noting that Tom’s literary experiment with Dogville’s

de‑ and reterritorialising fails, while Grace’s reterritorialising of
her own body only succeeds because of another micropolitical
agenda (namely that of the gangsters), on which the events in
the town have continuously been conditional from outside, so to
speak. It is Tom’s deceit and delusion – that he has not destroyed
The Big Man’s card – that takes over the scene from another
181 For me there is no doubt that Trier in this sense comments on his own artistic behaviour, where the
chaos incites the desire to be able to control creativity, and vice versa. The possibility that the moon landing
in 1969 could be a precisely staged studio recording functions as a kind of antithesis to the whole of this
sense of creative chaos.

CONTENTS
The repercussions of Grace’s (Nicole Kidman) deliberations can be experienced
as an event, as the moonlight hits the town and Grace’s face.
plane in an unexpected and molecular way and reterritorializes

Grace’s body as having another (familial) connection than Dog‑
ville’s. But throughout the entire film there is a suggestion that
such a turn could take place. The identification with Grace in‑
creases motivically in and with the camera’s zoom from the rape
up to the reflective, perspectival overview of the voice‑over. The
camera’s spiralling movement includes the Verfremdung form of
Brechtian theatre and the strategic form of hypermediacy from
computer games, and in this way seals Grace’s fate as a part of the
interface control, which with the voice‑over’s extradiegetic figure
has constantly spoken to the viewer. But it is at the height of the
body and head, in the human reactions, that the microperceptive
forms of affective emotion become crucial for the film’s unfold‑
ing of micropolitical ethics. The crucial event becomes an effect
of the moonlight’s activation of the relation between ceiling and
floor. The moonlight shifts several times in the film, but the final,
qualitative shift, where Grace considers whether she ought to fol‑
low macropolitical or micropolitical ethics, gains a diagrammatic
meaning as that which frames the film’s event. The voice‑over
advances her inner feelings:

CONTENTS
The cloud scattered and let the moonlight through. And Dogville un‑
derwent another of these little changes of light. It was as if the light,
previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town
any longer. Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would
appear on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there
right now. The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the
buildings and in the people! And all of a sudden she knew the answer to
her question all too well. If she had acted like them, she could not have
defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned
them harshly enough. It was as if her sorrow and pain finally assumed
their rightful place. No, what they had done was not good enough.
(Voice‑over from Dogville’s DVD)
This description of the event is in full accordance with Deleuze’s

description (in extension of Spinoza), in that the affective collision
simultaneously regulates a transition where the body goes from
one capacity or condition to another – a respectively minimised
or increased ability to act. In an interview with Brian Massumi,
he remarks on how this can be experienced. It leaves traces and
corporeal memory, which is virtually reactivated in the passage
towards the future – and »[t]his in‑between time or transversal
time is the time of the event« (Massumi 2015, 49). In the same
interview he expounds how this, occurring ahead of an event,
can have the character of microperceptual shocks, which each
moment is filled with:
For example a change in focus, or a rustle at the periphery of vision that

draws the gaze toward it. In every shift of attention there is an inter‑
ruption, a momentary cut in the mode of onward deployment of life.
The cut can pass unnoticed, striking imperceptibly with only its effects
entering conscious awareness as they unroll. […] Microperception is
not smaller perception; it’s a perception of a qualitatively different kind.
It’s something that is felt without registering consciously. It registers
only in its effects. (Massumi 2015, 53)
These microperceptions are thus present in each moment as

a potential extension of the forms of continuity that occur on
the surface. They can be experienced when, for example, one is

CONTENTS
shocked without knowing what caused the shock, and when one
only slowly realises that it is the traces from an earlier shock that
are influencing the event. We are not conscious of these affects,
which are experienced on a micro level, just as we are not aware
of how a thought is born and develops in our consciousness. But
nevertheless they gain a critical influence on the formation of an
event, as happens with Grace when the moonlight reveals a new
tonality in Dogville. The changes in lighting reveal for her (and
the viewer) the town’s faults and inadequacies, to which Grace has
turned a blind eye. The viewer, who perhaps has already judged
the town’s inhabitants in light of their actions, can only follow,
but not necessarily appreciate Grace’s violent reaction that follows
afterwards. Grace’s microperceptual transformation also leads to
a pause for reflection for the viewer. Here the film’s events can
be collated and brought on par with the ethical question Tom’s
narrative ambitions and the narrator’s reasoning have laid out as
guiding principles. Grace’s actions can thus be seen as an act of
mercy (cf. the name Grace), which liberate the world and herself
from debasement and self‑degradation. All lines of flight from the
town and its inhabitants have shown themselves to be impossible,
and the affective event takes over:
The microshocks don’t stop. They come in droves, all in intervals

smaller than the smallest perceivable. All cut, all the time in infinite
division. It is only because an affective tonality envelops groupings of
them, continues through or around them, that we feel the moment
as having extension, rather than feeling it implode into an infinitely
proliferating fractal cut. It is the quality of the experience that makes
the moment. The present is held aloft by affect. This is also something
that Whitehead insists on: affect is not in time, it makes time, it makes
time present, it makes the present moment, it’s a creative factor in the
emergence of time as we effectively experience it; it’s constitutive of
lived time. (Massumi 2015, 61)
The microperceptual registering, which Grace has experienced

throughout (witnessed by the viewer through the voice‑over’s
slightly ironic comments), disconnects in the affect narrative – to
raze the town and its inhabitants to the ground. This action can

CONTENTS
naturally be interpreted both positively and negatively: regarded
as Grace’s liberation from exploitation and coercion, it is positive,
but regarded externally, it is an act of terror, whose legitimation
(that is, to measure its fellow humans by its own standards) is no
better than the legitimation of the war in Iraq (that is, the intro‑
duction of Western democracy).182
Grace spares the dog, Moses, which only barks because she
once took a bone from it. Animals are not scheming, calculating or
abusive, and therefore the dog is spared. It is here – in the film’s
final image, which has been dominated by the red, iconic colour
reflecting on Grace’s tearful face – that Moses is suddenly ren‑
dered real and heard in a three‑dimensional way. The film’s final
image shows the barking Moses rise from its two‑dimensional,
chalk‑delineated form, and bare its teeth to the camera – an im‑
age of pure affective, transformative potentiality.183 Here we see
how Trier in an actual sense utilises the diagrammatic sign in a
creative, artistic manner. The dog, according to the Brechtian
method, was only a drawn outline and now appears in accor‑
dance with Peirce’s formulation (Peirce 1997, 226) as a thing in
another diagram (the filmic), which has almost always worked
indexically. By reducing the film’s houses, plants and animals to
chalk lines, the indexical evocation of the dog in the final image is
given a noticeable affective effect. The barking Moses turns into
a diagrammatic dog, whose sharp canine teeth have bite and thus
involve the audience in a kind of transition from theatre to film,
which in a historical context implies the interface of the computer
game. In addition, the closing image is an antithesis of the image
of the violated Grace, because the camera moves away. The rape
can thus be contained within the diegesis, so to speak, just as the
inhabitants of Dogville can also contain that which they ›know
of‹ without seeing. In contrast, the transformed image of Moses‹
affective bark is effective, in that it links to the audience’s own
microperceptive recollections of snarling and barking dogs.
182 Andrea Brighenti, who with Girard and Agamben in »Dogville, or, the Dirty Birth of Law« analyses
the role of the sacrificed figure and how they can err, also describes the viral effect of violence: »If the vio‑
lence released in the sacrifice is not well circumscribed, it will spread like a virus, like a maddened pharma‑
kon, an infectious vaccine« (Brighenti 2006, 108).
183 The image is not unlike the image of Bongo in the first episode of The Kingdom I.

CONTENTS
The barking dog, Moses, is rendered visible from its 2D existence.
All in all, one can say that with this film Trier takes hold of
the micropolitical layer, which can be seen diagrammatically as
signaletic flows in the form of lighting effects and the indexical
evocation of micropolitical affect.
Compositional planes in Manderlay
In the beginning of Manderlay, which is set in the year 1933,184

Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) follows her gangster father (Wil‑
184 The date refers to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech (cf. the documentary The
Road to Manderlay, Added value, disc 2 of the DVD), but it could also refer to Hitler’s speech to the
Reichstag, which paved the way for his seizure of power in 1934. The film tells how Grace (Bryce Dallas
Howard), with the best intentions of educating the slaves on the cotton farm Manderlay in the ways of
democracy, in reality only ends up repeating the white, racist forms of power. She is shocked that the
owner Mam (Lauren Bacall) in 1933 – 70 years after the abolition of slavery – still whips the slaves, but in
the film’s final scenes she herself carries out the same punishment. In the meantime, she has thrown the
white owners out in the understanding that they have to work just as hard and with the same food rations
as their slaves formerly received. The slaves, on the other hand, receive shared property rights, and she
educates them in the democratic principles of equality, voting and the distribution of goods. She also edu‑
cates them on being receptive to values and repairing the houses, because the wood for this must be taken
from the border of trees which functions as the estate’s garden. That the garden has in reality functioned
as a windbreak, which has protected the fields against the yearly sandstorms, and that sowing‑time has to
follow directly if it is to be harvested, are insights which Grace must learn the hard way. Starvation follows
the sandstorm and after the vote Grace must execute the old woman, Wilma (Mona Hammond), who eats a
sick girl’s food out of necessity because she can no longer bear eating soil. But it is Grace’s own fascination

CONTENTS
lem Dafoe) from Colorado to Alabama in the hunt for new ter‑
ritories for illicit activities.185 Grace, in the meantime, leaves her
father after becoming annoyed with his boasting that all women
have fantasies of being in a harem or dream of being chased by
natives with torches, even though they wish for democracy and
civilisation. His ideas, which see sexual attraction as the most vital
interaction between men and women, are, according to Grace,
outdated. Here – by the gate to the Manderlay estate – the nar‑
rative also leaves the stylistic film noir genre. Grace goes from
being a kind of free radical,186 a femme fatale who makes up the
pivotal point of desire but who must at the same time be left in a
capitalistic segmenting, to being an insistent pioneer whose con‑
scious wish it is to educate a group of (former) slaves to live and
work according to democratic principles. When Grace arrives,
the estate is organised in a feudal manner with slaves who work
without wages and are punished for minor errors. When it be‑
comes clear for Grace in the film’s final scene that her democratic
attempt at reform has failed, the status quo returns – with the
addition that the former slaves are now wholly aware of what form
of conscious stratification they have been exposed to. However, it
remains unclear whether the set of rules for this ›mind control‹,
Mam’s Law, will be destroyed, or whether in the future it can
be the starting point for new repetitions. With a starting point
in Moses‹ becoming‑animal in the final scene of Dogville, Trier
sets a slightly despondent question in Manderlay about how an
with the obstinate Timothy (Isaach de Bancolé) that once and for all tips the balance. When she – after
having given herself to him sexually – discovers that he has stolen and gambled away the community money
for the harvest, she finally finds support in the subdivision of slaves according to their humane characters,
which are noted in the so‑called Mam’s Law. The problem, which Grace is struck by in the meantime, is
the fact that this book was originally written by the elderly slave, Wilhelm (Danny Glover), who after the
abolition of slavery realised that the slaves would not be able to survive in a liberally organised world outside
of Manderlay.
185 This is shown cartographically by cars in miniature moving across a map of the USA, on which the
states are demarcated. The scene is reminiscent of the opening of both Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942)
and Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930), which both describe a Western idea of Morocco.
186 I refer to the definition on the website of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry
and Biotechnology: »Free radicals are molecules with unpaired electrons. They are everywhere – in the air,
our bodies and the materials around us. In their quest to find another electron, they are very reactive and
can cause damage to surrounding molecules. They cause the deterioration of plastics, the fading of paint,
the degradation of works of art, aging related illnesses, and can contribute to heart attacks, stroke and can‑
cers. However, free radicals are also useful because they help important reactions in our bodies take place
and can be utilised to manufacture pharmaceuticals, custom‑designed plastics and other innovative materi‑
als« (http://www.freeradical.org.au).

CONTENTS
affect‑born alternative to a capitalistic form of organisation can
be found – a form which does not follow the form for faciality:
white wall/black hole.187
Chalk lines, whose scenography clearly segments the unequal
relationship between the rich main building and the poor huts
where the slaves live, are retained from Dogville, but the floor is
lit in the background instead of being dark, and this is why the
houses, well, barn and garden are drawn in black. The film has
certain clear intertextual references to Brecht’s political‑satirical
opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), whose
body of songs, amongst others, includes the well‑known »Alabama
Song« and »The Mandalay Song«, and in which a tornado plays
a crucial role in the narrative. The extradiegetic narrator func‑
tion from the voice‑over is also retained from Dogville, and the
camera perspective from the ceiling grid, which, for example,
can generate haptic effects of migrating birds and sandstorms, is
just as effective.188 Stylistically the film has features in common
with the work of Josef von Sternberg, whom Deleuze calls anti‑
expressionistic – this should not be understood as an alternative
to expressionism but rather as a kind of rival to expressionism’s
strong antithesis between black and white. In Sternberg the re‑
flection of light is prioritised in the white face supplemented with
diverse nets, blinds and veils, which break up the light. These
alternations between white and various degrees of white and
shadow become a principle, which breaks with the obscurity of
expressionism (Deleuze 1986, 95). In the majority of Sternberg’s
films featuring Marlene Dietrich, the white screen’s expressive
quality is reflected in the face of the film diva, by which Stern‑
berg’s masochistic aesthetic is accentuated. This aesthetic tones
187 This question could have feminist undertones because in the beginning of the film Grace reacts to
her father’s misogynistic statements. The slaves (and their return to the known, patriarchal order) will in
this construction, like the women’s lot in a patriarchy, be seen as effects of a patriarchal organisation of
society, which functions as the foundation for a capitalistic economy of goods. Mam’s Law will be identical
with the (self)oppressive functions that women are made to fulfil as mothers and educationists. Thanks to
C. Claire Thomson for this point.
188 The camera grid with 13 cameras, which film the stage from above, is, however, extended and
covers a greater area (100m2). In order for the compilation of images in the computer to be able to cover
the entire surface (though neither seemlessly nor from a singular perspective), the entire floor of the stage
is turned into a green screen measuring 76 x 30 metres (Peter Hjort in »Visual Effects in the Making of
Manderlay«, Added value, disc 2, DVD).

CONTENTS
down the narrative in order to achieve greater tonal atmosphere,
paying tribute to the masochist’s woman, who like Lola (Dietrich)
attracts men like an electric bulb attracts moths (cf. The Blue An-
gel 1929/1930).189 The alternative to this role is submission and
a nomadic existence, as illustrated in Morocco, where Amy Jolly
(Dietrich) in the final scenes steps out of her stilettos in order to
follow her lover into the desert’s white boundlessness.
Struggle in the binary segmentation

According to Trier himself it was not Leopold von Sacher‑Mas‑
och’s (hence the word ›masochism‹) type of woman, depicted
in Venus in Furs (1870), which inspired him to create the Grace
character in Manderlay (and Dogville). Rather, it was the Marquis
de Sade’s (hence the word ›sadism‹) depiction of the maltreatment
of the pious, tender‑hearted Justine in Justine, or The Misfortunes
of Virtue (1791). In Manderlay, Trier investigates what would hap‑
pen if the Justine character, Grace, had armed power and did not
merely act passively, as in the majority of Dogville.190 The film’s
outcome is, on the surface, almost identical. When the gangsters
are no longer protecting her, Grace becomes a victim of Timothy
just as easily as she became Chuck’s victim in Dogville. Where
Chuck had his way by threatening to hand in her silk scarf to the
police, Timothy covers her face with a white cotton scarf in order
to take her. This, according to the »ancient traditions«, which in
and with the representation in the film gains the character of a
notion of Western orientalism, is strengthened by the portrayal
of Timothy’s sexuality as being animalistic.
In contrast to the shame and powerlessness which followed her
rape at the hands of Chuck, Grace experiences orgastic satisfac‑
tion with Timothy. At first it appears as if Grace, also after the
event, acknowledges her abandonment to Timothy even though
this would confirm her father’s misogynistic remarks that all
women dream of sexual submission. It is possible that she ima‑
189 See an analysis of all Sternberg’s films in Thomsen 1997. On the aesthetics of masochism, see
Deleuze [1967] 1989 and Studlar 1993.
190 Trier in The Road to Manderlay, Added value, disc 2, Manderlay DVD.

CONTENTS
Timothy (Isaach de Bankolé) covers Grace’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) face with
a white scarf prior to intercourse.
gines how she, in relation to Timothy, can abolish the racial seg‑
regation. Shortly afterwards, when it turns out that he drinks, lies
and steals, and thus oversteps other boundaries for civilised and
democratic behaviour, she punishes him with the whip. The anger
that accompanies the punishment and shows in Grace’s tearful
face while she whips with all her might is, however, just as much
turned towards herself, because she had erroneously assumed
that Timothy (according to Mam’s Law) was a slave in category
1 (the proud type of royal kinship) instead of being category 7
(the fraudulent and coquettish type). In this way it shows clearly
at the end of Manderlay that Grace has been guilty of a slightly
different type of arrogance than that she displayed in Dogville,
where, according to her father, she felt she was better than the
townsfolk and therefore judged them according to a different
standard than she judged herself. In Manderlay the arrogance
is shown with her submission to Timothy being conditional on
a hidden (but erroneous) knowledge that he belongs to a higher
rank than the other former slaves. Even when the teaching of
democratic principles is lost on Timothy, who in addition heroi‑
cally demonstrates to her how one masters the forces of nature,

CONTENTS
she believes she has found evidence of his more noble nature.
When this leads to her wholly and completely surrendering to
his sexuality, she implicates herself in a classic form of racist
arrogance where democratic principles of liberty, equality and
fraternity are set in parenthesis in sexual desire towards associ‑
ating themselves with, or submitting (themselves) to, the ›noble
savage‹. From a democratic viewpoint the desire can, however,
simultaneously be legitimised in an overriding wish for interracial
reform. White arrogance is due to the white person’s own position
being regarded as superior – no matter what the positioning.
Grace’s attempt to create (yet another) alternative to her
father’s ideas is at first regarded as being mistaken – viewed
from Grace’s individual position. If, on the other hand, one
views Manderlay as an allegorical illustration of the difficulties
of introducing a democratic system of control in a society that
is organised hierarchically, it is logical to see the film as not
merely a comment on the historical form of (American) racism
and capitalism, but also as a critique of the American strategy
in Iraq, which Denmark also participated in. The alleged pres‑
ence of ›weapons of mass destruction‹ and the introduction of
›democracy‹ was the motive which was presented, so the impor‑
tant possibility of accessing oil reserves became secondary in the
discourse. In this light, the Grace figure and her actions – par‑
ticularly in Manderlay – become a negative illustration of how
the Western form of arrogance might look when viewed from
a more collectively grounded view. In my opinion, Trier, with a
starting point in Brechtian Verfremdung (attached to a performa‑
tive narrator with space for irony), encourages criticism of the
Western understanding of the individual as an integrated part
of a capitalistically organised democracy. In fact, Trier points to
how Grace’s misinterpretations are caused by the fact that she
can abandon neither her individual perspective nor the belief
that the individual can make a difference, though she attempts
to organise a kind of commune embedded in capitalistic market
principles of supply and demand, the so‑called Free Enterprise
Manderlay.
Aside from the already mentioned example, where Timothy is
›celebrated‹ as the individual in the group, sealing both his and

CONTENTS
Grace’s fate in Manderlay, the clearest example of Grace’s belief
in the individual is paradoxically enough that she fails to identify
Venus‹ son, Jim. After Venus has implied that Jim’s awkward dis‑
position is due to the fact that he has artistic gifts, which cannot
find expression, Grace sees this as a way to prove that Timothy is
wrong when claiming that she is not interested in black people as
people, and that she, just like all other white people, has difficulty
in seeing the difference in individual persons from another race.
Grace’s answer is to give Jim painting equipment and an easel,
after having observed his face in detail and noticing, as she relays
to Venus, that it contains an artistic sensibility. But she cannot
differentiate him from Jack, who comes out at the same time as
Jim when their mother calls. Here she comes up short with the
group and with Timothy, who scornfully uses the word »charity«
in relation to her mixing of ideas that she is morally obliged and
that individuals can raise themselves above the collective. With
regard to her failure in identifying Jim the individual, the voice‑
over comments on this as a »blunder«, which in her former life
would have elicited a little laughter but is socially catastrophic for
her in Manderlay. This scene ends with the camera following her
as an object from the perspective of the slaves, as she leaves the
stage in order to take refuge in the main building.
The entirety of this scene, in which Grace persists with her
white ideas of benevolence, is kept in white tones and the white
accentuation appears again each time Grace more or less suc‑
cessfully attempts her ›white‹ arguments, until the crucial turn,
where Timothy attempts to cover her in a bestial way, in that he
first has her white face covered with his white neck scarf. She
introduces, for example, the idea that the former owners of the
plantation should paint their faces black and be waiters to the
blacks, because they (certainly) will not play along with the demo‑
cratic principles but will instead maintain that the needs of the
slaves and their own, as laid out in Mam’s Law, are just as varied
as oxen and rabbits. However, Grace realises that this lesson, in
which she sets black against black, is just as humiliating for the
blacks as it is for the whites. When the storm comes and cov‑
ers everything with reddish sand, this conflict between blacks
and whites is reconciled, while the actual leadership is slowly

CONTENTS
taken over by Timothy, who has experience in navigating through
the hopelessness. Grace’s aloof position is reduced accordingly,
and in hunger she even finds herself side by side with the black
women who eat soil. She is now sexually attracted to black skin
and especially Timothy’s, which is depicted in dark lighting and
by the voice‑over as nocturnal vision. After Grace has, against
her will, carried out the decision of the community to execute old
Wilma,191 who had unjustly eaten the food ration of a sick child,
a form of deep idyll sets in and it appears that Timothy’s near‑
fatal struggle in the storm in order to save some of the planted
areas has borne fruit. In the description of the cotton harvest, it
is the light’s white tone that dominates once more and the orders
of Grace have seemingly prevailed – up until Timothy shows his
true face, as he covers hers. But one might say that Grace’s need
to individualise the slaves also makes it possible for a repeat of the
principles in Mam’s Law of »bondage, even through psychology«,
and the conclusion of the struggle between the whites and blacks
remains uncertain. For the revelation that Timothy belongs to
the group of »pleasing niggers« (that is, a chameleon who can be
whatever type the beholder wishes to see) belongs only to a limited
truth, which Mam’s Law is an expression of – and in addition
it is revealed that the book was written by Wilhelm in order to
protect the group of former slaves.
Dividual qualitative transformation and an ethics

of affect
One could say that Timothy, just like Grace in Dogville, plays the
role of a free radical in Manderlay. Or one could – with the ac‑
centuation of white against black in mind – say that Timothy, in a
masochistic play on forms of dominance and submission, becomes
a kind of homme fatale in a film blanc. His dark and compelling
being becomes increasingly ill‑fated in direct relation to Grace’s
increasing interest in him. But in contrast to the femme fatale
in film noir, the enigma of Timothy does not bring the story to a
191 It cannot, however, be decided whether the vote here follows Mam’s Law to the same degree, ac‑
cording to which Wilma is characterised as a »Loser‑nigger« (34:36).

CONTENTS
conclusion, for his figure does not harbour a narrative, voyeuristic
desire. The film’s ending is almost identical with its beginning,
and Timothy is depicted as obeying cyclical and collective process‑
es of nature. He reacts spontaneously to the affects he is exposed
to, and his actions are controlled by his need for food, sexuality
and oblivion. He lives in the actual and can neither postpone his
needs nor obey abstract (for example, ethical) rules. He is depicted
as a divid, who must be understood as wholly different from an
individual. As mentioned earlier, Deleuze defines the dividual as
being linked to the ever modulating qualitative transformations
of the expression and the affect (Deleuze 1986, 105).
Timothy is depicted as a dividual, pure expression, who quali‑
tatively participates in transformations – from one situation to
the other. This can be understood positively as noble, animalistic,
original or pure potentiality – or negatively like the chameleon’s
ability to change itself in relation to the situation. What is crucial is
that the divid cannot be presented as a demarcated entity, but can
only be presented as if seen through a diagram. In this molecular
form facial traits cannot necessarily be released.192 The problem
that the individual Grace encounters with the divid Timothy, is
that he cannot individualise himself as »white, male, adult and
›rational‹» (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 341) – and also her
phantasmatic desire for that which her white, masculine gangster
father has mentioned as the oriental other: the black, the animal‑
istic, the child‑like and unpredictable. Both Grace and Timothy
are to a certain extent remotely controlled by the voting down
faciality and reminiscences of the white man, to whom the child,
the woman and the black person only have »childhood memo‑
ries«, […] conjugal, or colonial memories« (op. cit., 341). None of
them can position themselves in the white man’s face, the highest
point of authority. Therefore Timothy must again and again ac‑
cept the whip because he, as an expressive divid, belongs to the
so‑called primitive society, where the face plays a lesser role than
the semiotic of affect modulation: »their semiotic is nonsignifying,
192 Cf. Félix Guattari’s two types of faciality, the molar and the molecular type (Guattari [1979] 2011,
79), where the latter is described as having a »faciality‑occurrence that thwarts signifying traps and whose
stakes are decisive for the introduction of diagrammatic processes of semiotic control (for better or worse)«.

CONTENTS
non‑subjective, essentially collective, polyvocal, and corporeal,
playing on very diverse forms and substances« (op. cit., 205).
Likewise Grace must leave the stage once she finally understands
that the face is not universal, that the dividual affect is collective
and not individualising and that she as a Western individual in a
capitalistic stratification cannot go back and unite herself with this
pre‑faciality. Nevertheless, time on Manderlay has demonstrated
for Grace (and the film’s audience) that there is a limit to what
one can vote on (what the time is, and the regulation of laughter,
for example).
In Manderlay there is no actual event where a form of affec‑
tive momentum is virtually created and is turned into active ac‑
tion, such as the change of lighting in Dogville. Though Timothy
consciously relates himself micropolitically to faciality, by both
covering and uncovering »the passional power operating through
the face of the loved one« (op. cit., 205), this does not create the
background for an eruptive event; and the camera grid, which
can cover the space seen from above, is not utilised in a marked
way. Perhaps it was possible to utilise this more effectually in
Dogville, where the small town already represented the deeds of
a capitalistically segmented society, than in Manderlay, where the
binary relations proliferate endlessly and obstruct the stability of
the capitalist society. Though Manderlay is clearly alienated by
Christian faciality and the dawning of capitalistic segmentation,
this is still in its nascency. As with the conditions in occupied Iraq
(or Afghanistan), the molecular functions are not yet brought to
a halt in a reterritorialization. But something has happened with
Manderlay and its inhabitants: hopelessness is broken by fissures
of hope, and the alienated faciality has become so visible that crea‑
tive experiments in breaking the ›white wall/black hole‹ creation
of meaning might potentially take place.
In that sense one can imagine that the camera grid, which in
Dancer in the Dark was developed as 100 eyes to create affects
comparable to real‑time events, has gained an independent and
more defined function in Manderlay as a diagram that:
does not function in order to represent a ›persisting world‹ but rather

aims to produce a ›new kind of reality‹ and a new model of truth. It

CONTENTS
is not implicated in a subject of history and neither does it pretend to
survey history. Its task is to ›make history‹ by ›unmaking preceding
realities and significations‹, and it aims to do this by producing ›unex‑
pected conjunctions‹ and ›improbable continuums‹. It thus ›doubles
history with a sense of continual evolution‹. (Pearson 1999, 223)
Pearson here paraphrases Deleuze’s description of the diagram

in Foucault ([1986] 2004), in that he simultaneously aims to
characterise what is particular in Deleuze’s philosophy. I will say
that this description also lends itself to a characteristic of Trier’s
film. Though Manderlay is not Trier’s most well‑received film, it
is in fact consistent in its use of the diagram in relation to the way
in which it can orchestrate affects that come from outside and
are greater than the diagram; this is clarified by Deleuze: »The
diagram stems from the outside but the outside does not merge
with any diagram, and continues instead to ›draw‹ new ones«
(Deleuze 2013, 89). As an extension of this, if one regards the
camera grid as a diagram, giving the viewer an insight into the
invisible stratification and faciality that is ›layered‹ over events
and relations in Manderlay, it becomes evident that the film
cannot end in a conclusive eruption, because the various forms
of de‑ and reterritorialization, for example between blacks and
whites or democracy (Grace) and despotism (The Big Man),
cannot solve the conflict of stratification between smooth and
striated space. Instead the diagram becomes visible as an ab‑
stract machine, which does not operates iconically, indexically
or symbolically, but rather:
plays a piloting role. The diagrammatic or abstract machine does not

function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a
real that is yet to come, a new type of reality. Thus when it constitutes
points of creation or potentiality it does not stand outside history but
is instead always ›prior‹ to history. Everything escapes, everything cre‑
ates – never alone, but through an abstract machine that produces
continuums of intensity, effects conjunctions of deterritorialization,
and extracts expressions and contents. This Real‑Abstract is totally
different from the fictitious abstraction of a supposedly pure machine
of expression. It is an Absolute, but one that is neither undifferentiated

CONTENTS
nor transcendent. Abstract machines thus have proper names (as well
as dates), which of course designate not persons or subjects but matters
and functions. (Deluze and Guattari 2013, 164‑165)
The abstract machine in Manderlay also marks itself with a year,

namely 1933, which in a distinctly allegorical manner situates a
real event as its diagrammatic starting point. And instead of the
event as an interfacial involvement the viewer is presented – as
also in Dogville – at the end with an excerpt of Jacob Holdt’s
American Pictures (Amerikanske Billeder), which photographically
and analogically documents social and human misery and pov‑
erty among black Americans.193 Here Trier refers to something
outside the diagrammatically enabled allegory by which the film
finds itself in the social and political present where resistance can
take its starting point, because:
power relations operate completely within the diagram, while resist‑

ances necessarily operate in a direct relation with the outside from
which the diagrams emerge. This means that a social field offers more
resistance than strategies, and the thought of the outside is a thought
of resistance. (Deleuze op. cit. 89‑90)
Trier does not attempt to reconcile current conflicts but by open‑

ing diagrammatically he aims to enable the viewer to reflectively
connect the segments allegorically – in which they are culturally
and socially embedded – previously, currently, and in the future.
Both the use of Verfremdung and the diagrammatic knots,
which follow the favouring of light and dark respectively, strength‑
en the rhetorical power in the allegorical form, that is, speaking
in other terms, in that an expression is overlaid with a different
content than what is formally described or shown, by which two
meanings are held in one expression. Walter Benjamin describes
Baudelaire’s method as an heir to Baroque tragedy, which al‑
legorically endows time with a processual and undecided – that
193 The transition between the fiction, DV and computer‑edited levels and the documentary, analogue
level, accompanied in both Dogville and Manderlay by David Bowie’s Young Americans from 1975, appeared
shocking to many. The political strength that the documented analogue images had then is reinvested in the
remediated form in a real social context, which develops the level of fiction indexically.

CONTENTS
is, spatial – dimension. Baudelaire transforms the melancholic
experience in the encounter with the modern and allegorical sign
of ›sudden discontinuity‹, and in this way makes modern the frag‑
mented perspective of the baroque (Cowan 1981, 119‑120). Craig
Owens later utilises the Benjaminian determination of allegory
to a characteristic of the postmodern art of appropriation, where
the original meaning is replaced or overlaid with a supplement,
and gains the character of excess (Owens 2003, 1032). He is,
however, not so interested in the significance of the allegorical
figure according to Benjamin – namely that the spatialising of
time can be maintained as a becoming without end.
The stretchability between the molecular forces in the de‑
pression and pre‑war environments of the 1930s in the America
duology, and an actual experience of various attempts to fight
micropolitically against terror in Western Europe and the USA,
can be seen in light of Benjamin’s categorisation of the allego‑
ry. The power in the two films is that they allegorically open up
for time as creation, which contains a virtual wealth of possible
events and outcomes, and it is in the utilisation of the diagram
and the Brechtian Verfremdung that the possible short circuit in
the political‑global means is shown. In other words, Trier draws
attention to the notion that the micropolitical, molecular level
can relatively easily deterritorialise well‑established molar orbits,
and that the two levels are incommensurable with and therefore
incongruently effective in the constant de‑ and reterritorializa‑
tions we are witnessing, then as well as now.
Therefore, in my opinion, I do not believe that Trier attempts
to illustrate the ethical turn in Dogville, which in the comment
on the film by French philosopher Jacques Rancière follows the
fact that the ethics are being stretched into particular forms of
legislation connected to the ›ethical values‹ the Americans urged
in the fight against the ›axis of evil‹, from and with the invasion
of Iraq. For Rancière, this ethical turn demonstrates a consensus
based on the idea that the separation of the law from the factual
reality, which is normally negotiated morally, is suppressed. In a
global, political consensus the legislation is executed as a kind of
inner necessity of modernity and with reference to a preventative
politics of security. Rancière believes that the town of Dogville

CONTENTS
represents such a consensus society, and that Grace becomes a
sacrifice for the town’s administration of its politics of security,
which in the utmost instance can legitimise murder. Furthermore,
he believes that the aesthetic radicalisation (cf. the execution of
the town’s inhabitants) is a sign that the ethical turn dominates
even the aesthetic, and that the representation of the division of
time in a decisive event is no longer directed towards the future
(a revolution) but towards the past. For Rancière, Dogville’s end‑
ing represents the viewer’s witnessing of what is unrepresentably
catastrophic (Rancière [2004] 2010, 192).
A reading such as this seems to look past the diagrammatic em‑
bedding of the Brechtian Verfremdung as allegory’s time‑related,
undetermined form in a possibly critical interface with the viewer,
who can thus attain a reflective distance from the actual political
events. In addition, as I have shown analytically, Trier trans‑
fers the ethical perspective from the large global‑political level
to the body’s microsensoric level in accordance with Spinoza’s
ethics, where it is the immanent modi of existence decided by
the encounter with other bodies which replace the reference to
transcendent values in morality (Deleuze 1988, 23). In Spinoza’s
Ethics, absolute conceptions of good and evil are replaced with the
qualitative differences between good and bad modi of existence,
conditional on encounters with food, conditions of life and other
bodies fitting well or poorly into our nature:
That individual will be called good (or free, or rational, or strong) who
strives, insofar he is capable, to organize his encounters, to join with
whatever agrees with his nature, to combine his relation with relations
that are compatible with his, and thereby to increase his power. For
goodness is a matter of dynamism, power, and the composition of
powers. That individual will be called bad, or servile, or weak, or fool‑
ish, who lives haphazardly, who is content to undergo the effects of
his encounters, but wails and accuses every time the effect undergone
does not agree with him and reveals his own impotence. (Deleuze op.
cit., 23; author’s italics)
Bad or sad passions do not lead to anything good in Spinoza’s

philosophy of life, where conduct and what a body is capable of

CONTENTS
in a given milieu creates the basis for ethics, which involves rela‑
tions of affect between people, animals and environments. The
sad passions for Spinoza only lead to »hatred, aversion, mockery,
fear, despair, morsus conscientiaer, pity, indignation, envy, humil‑
ity, repentence, self‑abasement, shame, regret, anger, vengeance,
cruelty« (Deleuze op. cit., 26; author’s italics). Deleuze continues:
even in hope194 and security he [the sad individual] is able to find that
grain of sadness that suffices to make these the feelings of slaves. The
true city offers citizens the love of freedom instead of the hope of re‑
wards or even the security of possessions; for »it is slaves not free men,
who are given rewards for virtue«. (Deleuze 1988, 26; author’s italics)
This fits well in a characteristic of what it is the America duology

depicts, but it is also interesting in relation to Rancière’s critique,
that it is security in particular that is being targeted. For if one
regards the act of revenge in Dogville as a break with the secu‑
rity discourse, which binds individuals to sad passions, it also
becomes a suggestion for another affectively motivated form of
ethics where the question of what a body is capable of under given
relations and conditions becomes central. It is this question which
is brought further in Manderlay, though it is in no way brought
to an enduring reversal in an ethics based on good encounters.
Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac (2013)
continue the investigation of the sad passions, and these will in
a later chapter be analysed in the context of ideas on the value
of art from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But before these films
– making up yet another trilogy – Trier made The Boss of it All
(2006), which will be discussed by making use of elements from
The Five Obstructions (2003), a collaboration between Trier and
Jørgen Leth, in the sense that the former provoked the sad pas‑
sions in the latter’s aesthetic practice.
194 Here the English translation has erroneously translated ›espoir‹ as ›despair‹. I have corrected it to
read ›hope‹.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 7
The boss and the

performative-biographical
The aesthetics of the fall
Trier stopped working on the manuscript for the announced

third film in the America series (with the working title Wasington
– without the h), because according to him it became »a piece of
shit«.195 Instead he made The Boss of It All,196 which he himself de‑
scribes as »a film in the light comedy genre«;197 though it must be
made clear that the comedy form is absurd, in the style of Samuel
Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952). Another obvious reference
is the mockumentary series The Office, which is found in both a
British (2001‑2003) and an American (2005‑2013) version, and
where the office environment is represented in ultra‑documentary
style – for example, in the camera work, where the unfinished
verité style is imitated. The jump‑cut aesthetic of Dogme is also
noticeable in The Boss of It All, while the hand‑held principle is
replaced with the mathematically decided set of rules called Au‑
tomavision®, which was developed specially for this film by Trier
and the technician Peter Hjort. According to Hjort, 35mm film is
used, which has not been manipulated, but each shot makes use
of the camera settings that have been mathematically decided in
advance, so the »shooting angle, editing, exposure and sound level
are set according to a computer‑controlled principle of chance«
(Hjort 2006). A press of a button gave »a number of camera set‑
tings«, and the accepted rule was that it was »forbidden to rectify
195 Cf. the daily newspaper Politiken, 17 May 2005, citing Ritzau news agency.
196 Though the film also has an English title, The Boss of It All, only Danish actors are involved, and only
Danish is spoken (and Icelandic).
197 Jyllands Posten, 22 September 2006, http://jyllands‑posten.dk/jptv/ECE3976703/trier‑film‑inter‑
views/ (last viewed 4 April 2015).
the boss and the performative‑biographical 209

CONTENTS
Automavision’s ® ‘machinic autopoieses’ creates absurd framings such as here
where the projector, socket and computer monitor dominate the foreground.
the numbers manually« (op. cit.). According to Hjort, Trier chose

»a formula whereby approximately every 30th setting became
totally crooked, while the rest lie within what one would call the
normal field« (op. cit.).
Apart from this mathematically regulated principle of ran‑
domness, it uses neither light settings nor filters, and filming
takes place in an already existing office environment. Therefore
the interior’s various grey, blue and white tones fill much of the
finished film. In addition, Automavision® gives problems with
overexposure, creating an intensified experience of abrupt jumps
in the visual representation around scene changes. The auto‑
matic editing also means that objects in the interior, for example
a computer screen or a coffee cup, can be fully central, and thus
the non‑perfection of the image is given a lot of attention. On the
other hand, it also means that certain central actors from time
to time are reduced and appear as peripheral or flat, in that their
images are edited in such a way that, for example, one only sees
the upper part of their heads in the bottom part of the image,
while the upper part of the framing shows a greyish whiteboard.
In other words, this mathematically controlled principle of ran‑
domness creates focus on the signaletic qualities of the image
flow, which here support the absurd laughter. The machinic pre‑

CONTENTS
A nondescript window in a grey office building gains the possibility of function‑
ing as a multi‑layered opportunity for reflection.
programming of the camera in The Boss of It All seems creationist

with regard to the recorded ›data‹, which for the same reason are
experienced as dispersed and expressive, individual components.
This corresponds (in a regime of signs) to the diagrammatic
component which according to Deleuze and Guattari operates
»by the emergence of ever‑new abstract machines« (Deleuze and
Guattari 2013, 169), but also to the machinic component that
»outlin[es] the program of the assemblages that distribute eve‑
rything and bring a circulation of movement with alternatives,
jumps, and mutations« (op. cit. 169; author’s italics). The effect of
Trier and Hjort’s Automavision® could be fittingly characterised
by Guattari’s description of the ›machinic heterogenesis‹ or ›au‑
topoiesis‹, which is also described as a machinic interface where
all value is created between the real and the virtual (cf. Guattari
[1992] 1995, »Machinic Heterogenesis«, 33). This machinic heter‑
ogenesis is characterised by asserting a non‑human independence
that submits both to the dependences it is ascribed in the opera‑
tion, and the possible relations with previous forms and future
mutations of its function. The essential thing here – the creation
of new values – is distilled from the virtual point of view, which in
abstract machinic (non‑corporeal and non‑humane) expression
creates accentuations or »zones of proto‑subjectivation« that are
consistent or comparable with discursive realities (op. cit. 54).

CONTENTS
Such a machinic heterogenesis is introduced effectively in the
very first shot in The Boss of It All, where the camera’s independent
creative gesture shows grey wall cladding that is substituted by a
window in which a gigantic camera is reflected. As an integrated
part of the camera, Trier can be seen sitting behind it, reduced
to a function. This proto‑subjectifivation, the camera operator, is
again fixed in a machinic function, a dolly, which is immediately
made independent. The dolly enables a very unglamorous estab‑
lishing shot of a grey industrial building with identical windows,
looking onto the naked branches of a tree. The camera operator’s
dolly eventually finds its way to the office window behind which the
action takes place.198 Trier’s meta‑commenting voice‑over, which
again underlines the film medium’s machinic side, simultaneously
introduces the film:
So, here is a film. And though it might already come across as somewhat
weird, hang around, because with this film everyone can watch along
with it, I promise. And even though I now appear as a reflection, trust
me: this film isn’t worth a single reflection. It’s a comedy and, as such,
harmless. No attempt has been made to educate or shape opinions
here. Feel good, in other words. And what better place for this feel good
than in the ridiculing of fine culture. So, in other words, what we have
here is a self‑important – read out‑of‑work – actor who has somehow,
miraculously, just got a job; a rather special job. (DVD subtitles)199
With Trier’s reassuring commentary that the film should be re‑

garded as harmless entertainment, the camera zooms in on Krist‑
198 With this gesture it is possible to see an intertextual, ironic reference to Hitchcock’s well‑known
appearances in front of the camera – making the camera into a ›machinic‹ agent, an all‑seeing divine eye,
seeing and revealing that which is concealed from the viewer and thus inviting the viewer to take up a voy‑
euristic position.
199 In the video Lars von Trier – »Direktøren for det hele«, uploaded on YouTube on December 2006,
Trier gives another metafilmic commentary on performative art. He announces a competition to find the
so‑called ›lookies‹, which allegedly are hidden in the film, as in the old Donald Duck comics, and which
one can hunt for. Naturally this means that one needs to »see the film over and over again, which will give
a direct financial outcome for the rights holders«. Trier substantiates this gimmick with: »We have to fill the
empty space between the cradle and the grave with something or other. Lookies could be an idea for this«
(https://youtu.be/WWl1HG9fMnY; last viewed 11 April 2017), which anticipates that the film will not be a
great cinema success. But the surveillance perspective, lying implicitly in the ›machinic eye‹ that Automavi‑
sion® represents, also alludes to the fact that a ›lookie‹ formed as a key – whose lens mounting represents
an eye – is shown in the final scenes of the video.

CONTENTS
offer (Jens Albinus) standing by the window and fumbling with
something, which later turns out to be a piece of charcoal. The
job that has been devolved to Kristoffer involves him following
a note consisting of two lines: »Hi, so we meet at last. I am the
boss« and »I have handed over all authority with regard to the deal
to Mr Ravn«. The first line of the note is intended to affirm the
identity of the ›boss‹ to whoever seeks him, after which the other
line immediately gives his authority to ›Mr Ravn‹.200 The lines of
dialogue reveal that Kristoffer’s contract of employment is also a
contract of secrecy: there are games with masks, but these have
to be as real – that is, as concealed – as possible. This metaform,
which to a large extent is recognisable from modern theatre and
more specifically from Luigi Pirandello’s plays, where the question
of identity proliferates in almost absurd ways in diverse forms of
anti‑character, is also immediately verbalised by Kristoffer, who
mentions that he is inspired by Gambini’s absurd play Den hængte
kat (The Hanged Cat), with the famous »Skortensfejermonolog fra
byen uden skorstene« (Chimney sweep’s monologue from the city
without chimneys), and that »the theatre presents itself clearest
precisely at the point where it ends«. Neither Gambini nor the
play are real,201 but Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of
an Author (1921) is real and, just as in The Boss of It All, constantly
200 In short, the film is concerned with Kristoffer (Jens Albinus) who is hired by Ravn (Peter Ganztler)
to play the boss (Svend E.) of a small IT company that Ravn intends to sell to an Icelandic buyer, Finnur
(Fridrik Thor Fridrikson). Upon being employed by Ravn, Kristoffer signs a secrecy contract. During the
course of the film we discover that Ravn plans to cheat the six other employees, Lise (Iben Hjejle), Nalle
(Henrik Prip), Heidi A. (Mia Lyhne), Gorm (Casper Christensen), Mette (Louise Mieritz) and Spencer
(Jean‑Marc Barr), by having them discharged from their jobs, thus allowing Ravn to hold on to the profits
from the deal himself. Ravn has been acting as an undisclosed director, while the other employees have
been under the impression – instigated by Ravn – that the director of the company is living in the USA
and is only accessible via e‑mail. Ravn employs Kristoffer in connection with the sale, as Finnur will not
deal with assistants but only with the director in person. It is this scenario that Kristoffer unwittingly finds
himself in and aims to flesh out with a character. However, it quickly becomes apparent that his charac‑
terisation of the director is already fleshed out with all manner of demands, passions, questions of blame
and proposals. Kristoffer’s ex‑girlfriend, Kisser (Sofie Gråbøl), who is Finnur’s lawyer, becomes the one
who gives him a mission – namely to get Ravn to come to his senses and in this way avoid the other six
employees being cheated from their share of the products that they have developed together with Ravn.
This is thwarted, however, when Kristoffer makes a decision in his ambivalent character and signs the deal,
whereafter the piece ends with a tribute to absurdism, as Kristoffer, hidden behind a curtain, presents his
silent ›chimney sweep’s monologue from the city without chimneys‹‑ making the facts and passions of real‑
ity trivialise both the demands of fiction and the validity of illusion.
201 The Gambino family, on the other hand, do exist, as one of the five largest mafia families to have
operated in the USA; its intricate system of leadership is portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film GoodFellas
(1990), amongst others.

CONTENTS
challenges – in hypermediated ways – the fine line between stories
of life and theatrical illusion. Pirandello’s play breaks with natu‑
ralistic theatre in that the six people are searching for an author
in order to be able to step into character, so to speak, a quest that
naturally does not meet with success. The theatre director, who
consents to pose as the author and set up the living relations in
dramatic form with the six actors, does not succeed in his project
because the negotiations between the real persons and the actors
constantly break the plot. The play ends when life (in the form
of death) comes to act itself out on the stage – and thus actors as
well as the ›real‹ people and the director give up keeping track
of what is what.
In Pirandello’s play the six persons consist of a broken family
with relationships characterised by betrayal, loss and incestuous
assault, while the six characters in The Boss of It All are the ›good
old six‹, who together with the company’s lawyer, Ravn, have been
with the company from the start and, amongst other things, have
developed the IT system Brook of Five. Also here – behind the
IT office’s façade, devoid of passion, with technical meetings and
boring copy rooms – one finds betrayal, loss and assault, which
above all is due to the fact that the boss of it all, namely Ravn,
operates behind multiple masks. Through e‑mails (supposedly
sent from abroad) Ravn single‑handedly controls the group and
their relationships to one another. Special favours, threats or lack
of recognition turn the individual members of the group into his
puppets. This comes to a head one day when the Icelandic buyer,
Finnur, refuses to deal with a substitute for the Director; with
reference to the Edda poem, he states: »He who deals with assis‑
tants, deals with no‑one.« Kristoffer must therefore stay for the
week and incarnate the boss of it all, in the form of the character
Sven E. Hereafter the absurd drama unfolds. There is Gorm’s
pent‑up anger over not being given the credit he deserves, Heidi
A.’s revelation that Sven has proposed to her, Lise’s evidence that
Sven is not gay, Nalle’s position as a victim of bullying and Lise’s
reports that Spencer’s Danish lessons have been suspended by
Sven because he told of Mette’s fear of the photocopy machine
being due to the fact that her husband hanged himself with an
IT cable when Sven dismissed him from his job.

CONTENTS
Even though the employees only exhibit one‑dimensional
character traits, which are recognisable from the Holberg comedy
world and contemporarily from the Danish TV series Klovn,202 in
which several of the actors among the ›good old six‹ enact their
own biographies mixed with fictive traits, Kristoffer must on sev‑
eral occasions confront Ravn with these roughly sketched desti‑
nies. But Kristoffer and Ravn both treat the missing information
as data, which is to be filled out in order for the character to be
played, the act to continue and the contract to be played out in
real life – without any interest in moral questions. In addition,
Ravn is worried about the sale only because he wishes to maintain
his identity as the well‑liked, cuddly teddy bear with everyone’s
best interests at heart, rather than the person who in reality wants
to deceive them. Kristoffer is only interested in the shaping of his
character in relation to this ›life project‹; the question of who is
deceiving who is immaterial. It is only when Kristoffer’s ex‑girl‑
friend, Kisser, derides him for being a bad actor and at the same
time makes it clear to him that Ravn’s desire to be sympathetic
is his Achilles‹ heel, that it becomes possible for Kristoffer to get
into character as ›the boss of it all‹. He invents yet another layer in
the decision‑making process in the form of ›the boss of the boss
of it all‹, which enables him to take on Ravn’s role as the popular
›cuddly fella‹, and in this way he is able both to carry through the
company day trip and treat everyone to a little extra. With the clos‑
ing deal, which is witnessed by the good old six, Kristoffer plays his
final hand, lauding Ravn with sentimental clichés in the spirit of
the radio programme Giro 413.203 Although Ravn thereafter con‑
fesses to the six original employees and annuls the deal, Kristoffer
carries on with his signature, this time seconded by Finnur, who
202 In both the TV series Klovn (2005‑2009) and the film Klovn, The Movie (2010), Iben Hjejle, Mia
Lyhne and Casper Christensen appear. This fictio‑biographical comedy form has amongst its predecessors
the American HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Larry David in the central role. See also Jacobsen
2008.
203 Giro 413 is a radio programme that has been broadcast since the late 1940s as a listener programme
in support of charitable purposes, and organised by Save The Children and other institutions. The concept
is that the listeners collect money – often at parties – in order for their musical wishes to be played on the
radio. Over the years, the methods of collection have become both more spectacular and absurd, and Krist‑
offer begins his speech to Ravn in this way, with the words: »At Auntie Tut and Uncle Karl’s silver wedding
anniversary, a collection was made in an old sock«, in which the absurd element of the pathetic pomposity
becomes identifiable as the nerve of the popular comedy, which the film emphasises and isolates.

CONTENTS
leans on a new interpretation of the Edda poem: »He who deals
with a man without authority, deals with no‑one.« As it becomes
apparent that Finnur also pays homage to Gambini as the master
of absurdity, Kristoffer outdoes his immoral gesture as Sven E. by
becoming no‑one in the film’s finale – standing behind a curtain
with a charcoal mark on his forehead, while presenting the silent
›chimney sweep’s monologue from the city without chimneys‹.
At the end, just like the filmed director Kristoffer, Trier also
exits the scene, in that he zooms out from Kristoffer’s back – out
of sight to the others – against the window, which is identical with
the other windows in the office complex without chimneys, and
then sums up:
»And just like that we made it to the end of the comedy. Perhaps we
were on the verge of giving up. I will also finish because I, just like
everyone else, wants to go home. Apologies to those who expected
more, as well as to those who expected less. Those who got what they
came for, deserved it«.
Luigi Pirandello ends his play in a similar manner with an excla‑

mation from the director who has played the author: »Pretence?
Reality? To hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing
happened to me. I’ve lost a whole day over these people, a whole
day!« (Pirandello [1921] 2014). The pivotal point of the absurd in
Pirandello is the question of whether it is possible to discern a real
identity from an actor’s character. Pirandello discusses whether
one finds the true ›being‹ in the real human or in the playwright’s
bringing to life »living beings more alive than those who breathe
and wear clothes: beings less real perhaps, but truer!« (Pirandello
op. cit., act 1). As mentioned, Trier answers the question forensi‑
cally as Kristoffer finally gives his character identity only in the
moment when Finnur, with reference to the Edda poem, gives
the intermediary (the actor) the chance to sign the contract. But
this identity is abandoned immediately after – as it is in the two
sentences in Ravn’s note that Kristoffer’s character interprets. In
the ›chimney sweep’s monologue from the city without chimneys‹
Kristoffer, with the marker of a ›black charcoal stroke on the
forehead‹, finally becomes no‑one.

CONTENTS
By turning identities into masks worn by actors who are fi‑
nally turned into nothing, Trier links absurd theatre with non‑
representational, affective intensities, which Deleuze along with
Carmelo Bene, for example, sees as the reason for the performa‑
tive. Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie, in their article »Affect,
›subtraction‹ and ›non‑performance‹» (Bertelsen and Murphie
2012), describe how Deleuze construes Bene’s performative
strategy of ›stealing‹ or subtracting characters or representative
figures and forces in plays such as Romeo and Juliet or Richard III,
so neither the ›ego‹ nor the actor remains in the play. Through
this non‑performance the character is reduced to nothing more
than, in Deleuze’s words, »the totality of the scenic assemblages,
colors, lights, gestures, words« (Deleuze in Boundas 1993, 206).204
Bertelsen and Murphie continue:
For Deleuze then, what we experience in Bene’s plays are »the continu‑
ous series of metamorphosis and variations« (1993, 206), not the life of
a subject. We might say that we become immersed in the affect of the
world rather than of the character per se. The experience is no longer
primarily one of a subject performing or a character being performed.
Rather it is experience of a relational constellation of forces at work.
The works allow the operation of affect itself to come to the fore. Affect
becomes not a state for a subject, so much as an event of affecting and
being affected. (Bertelsen and Murphie, 80)
It is this reduction we see unfolded in the figure of Kristoffer,

who is reduced from an out‑of‑work actor to a fictive director of
nothing. Kristoffer’s fickleness gives the office environment and
its employees an absurd surplus of meaning.
It is evident in this reading that one could also involve Svend
Aage Madsen’s play, Nøgne masker (Naked Masks) from 1987, as
it constitutes an interesting connection between the discussions of
Pirandello and Trier on how far one can connect ›identity‹ to the
pronoun ›I‹, which constantly finds itself in a delicate balance be‑
tween fiction’s idealised truth and naked ›truth‹. In Madsen, Luigi
Pirandello appears in the role of a theatre director who accuses
204 The reference here and in the citation is from The Deleuze Reader (1993).

CONTENTS
Sigmund Freud – with his ideas on Oedipal trauma, repression
and the unconscious – of »attempting to represent the human
being as a clanking machine, bound to a one story, from which it
cannot release itself« – whereas Pirandello »believes that we have
numerous stories in us which we choose between« (Madsen 1987,
39). It is equally simple for Deleuze and Guattari’s critique in so
far as Freud, in his analysis of the Wolf‑Man, sees only Oedipal
structures and thus ignores the multiplicity which is found pre‑
cisely in the animalistic as well as the human flock. They write:
»Freud tried to approach crowd phenomena from the point of
view of the unconscious, but he did not see clearly, he did not see
that the unconscious itself was fundamentally a crowd« (Deleze
and Guattari 2013, 33). The crowd’s multiplicity makes up a body
without organs (BwO), and as such is rhizomatic. The intensity
of the swarm and the crowd consists of the variation in a single
element immediately leading to a modification of the swarm’s
whole nature (op. cit., 34‑35). In the multiplicity’s body without
organs one is met with passion or emotion – for example, love –
not of the representation or symbolisation, which can be affirmed
in an identity. In Deleuze and Guattari’s schizo‑analysis, which
is advanced as an alternative to Freud’s favouring of the Oedipal
neurotic, they put forward a description of subjectivisation based
on multiplicity:
There are no individual statements, there never are. Every statement

is the product of a machinic assemblage, in other words, of collective
agents of enunciation (take »collective agents« to mean not peoples or
societies but multiplicities). The proper name (nom propre) does not
designate an individual: it is on the contrary when the individual opens
up to the multiplicities pervading him or her, at the outcome of the
most severe operation of depersonalization, that he or she acquires his
or her true proper name. The proper name is the instantaneous ap‑
prehension of a multiplicity. The proper name is the subject of a pure
infinitive comprehended as such in a field of intensity. (Op. cit., 42‑43)
With this description the chimney sweep’s monologue in fact

makes sense, because it can be described as the intensive culmi‑
nation of depersonalisation: the charcoal mark on the forehead

CONTENTS
signifies Kristoffer as the any‑sign‑whatever, which thus can also
be no‑one – hidden behind a curtain. This double negation (as a
type and as a depersonalised part of the surroundings) is absurd
and necessary in order for one to have a random identity – actor,
director or no‑one. Trier intensifies this performative (subtract‑
ing) operation by, as mentioned, giving the camera a visible role
as a machine for independent heterogenesis in the framing of
the film, but it is in the use of Automavision® that he surrenders
control to the signaletic, machinic flux, which potentialises the
viewer’s contact with the film as a pure affective event.
Heterotopy, diagram and divid
The drama in The Boss of It All, as in Pirandello, is constantly ob‑

scured with ever‑new hypermediated layers being added on, with
which both the naturalistic drama and the theatre’s illusion‑mak‑
ing is undermined.205 In addition, it is in the abovementioned
techniques – the machinic autopoiesis of Automavision® and
the extradiegetic level from which Trier on several occasions
addresses his audience directly, especially in the use of a non‑
linear dramaturgical sequence – that the absurd elements are
noticed. This happens visibly as eruptive breaks in the diegesis
when Ravn and Kristoffer meet on ›neutral ground‹ outside the
office on several occasions, where identities change places. This
free space, where they seek to adapt their expectations of one
another, is a place for enjoyment, relaxation and diversion. The
two eat hotdogs at a stand in a shopping centre, look at figurines
of dogs in a garden centre, ride horses on a merry‑go‑round
in an amusement park, eat ice creams in the cinema and study
elephants at the zoo.
205 In »The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction« (1936), Walter Benjamin names Pi‑
randello as one of the first to register that theatre must relate to the new types of actors in film who appear
when the audience’s reactions are replaced by the camera’s mechanical form of testing. He cites Pirandello,
who characterises the actor in silent films as being »exiled not only from the stage but also from himself.
With a vague sense of discomfort he feels inexplicable emptiness: his body loses corporality, it evaporates,
it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into
a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence… The projector will play with
his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera.« Benjamin quotes
from Pirandello’s text »On tourne« from Léon Pierre‑Quint’s »Signification du cinéma« in L’Art cinémato-
graphique, vol. 2 (Paris, 1927; http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf, last viewed 11 April 2017).

CONTENTS
These environments, where pop culture and animal motifs
form the backdrop for metatextual discussions on dramaturgy and
law, function, in Michel Foucault’s words, as heterotopias. Het‑
erotopias should not be mistaken for utopias or dystopias. Het‑
erotopias exist as real places, things or arrangements, in contrast
to utopias and their forms of organisation that give rise to several
forms of experience – often opposite in direction – in one.206
The interesting thing in this context is that Foucault mentions
the mirror, which apart from being able to reproduce a (utopian)
place that does not exist, can also be an exemplary description of
a heterotopia that exists in reality, and which gives a counter to
the I‑position of the one who is reflected:
In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual

space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where
I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that
enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia
of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does
exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position
that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence
from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from
this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this
virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward
myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconsti‑
tute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia
in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when
I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all
206 Foucault names six principles or traits for heterotopias: 1) places for crises (for example, coming
of age rituals), which today have become deviations (rest homes); 2) places for the dead, which were once
placed centrally (sacral) in the cities and are today linked to a general death cult and the dead body’s right
to ›own‹ a place outside of the city; 3) universalising, microcosmic places where several spaces are brought
together in one, such as gardens or oriental rugs, whose modern forms are the theatre, the zoo and the
cinema; 4) places for archiving time, such as museums of modernity and libraries, where several times are
gathered together outside of time, and whose opposites are festivals and market places. The new event sites
where one can holiday, for example, as if back in Viking times, blend the eternity of archiving with the
rediscovery of time as an apparent space of knowledge; 5) places which publicly administer entrance and
exit points or ritual purification rooms for the living bodies, such as Muslim baths or Scandinavian saunas
which today are found in the form of the motel, where more or less unlegalised sexual interaction takes
place; 6) places with functions that can create the illusion of, or compensate for, all other places – which
bordellos and colonies respectively have been, in various ways, but the ship, in particular, which has always
found itself in an infinite sea between these, can be said to constitute the heterotopic space par excellence
(cf. Foucault [1967] 1984).

CONTENTS
the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be
perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.
(Foucault [1967] 1984)
This description of the mirror as a heterotopian space, which

must necessarily fold itself around a virtual point in order to
render the reflections as present, is equivalent to Deleuze’s de‑
scription of the modulation between actual and virtual in the
crystal‑image, a version of the time‑image. The time‑image oc‑
curs when filmic time is no longer indirect (that is, an effect of
the body’s movement in filmic representation). When the film
goes from actualising something virtual to crystallising itself in
pure time‑images (for example, in a reflection) or in false nar‑
ratives (for example, in the blending of documentary and fictive
layers), the viewer can unleash his or her expectations of the film
as representing something real or something true respectively.
According to Deleuze, this happened first with Hitchcock, Fritz
Lang and Orson Welles, who mixed the objective gaze (the camera
operator’s) and the subjective gaze (the actor’s) so one as a viewer
lost faith in the narrative’s veracity – fictive or not (Deleuze 1989,
148). This confrontation with narratives as simulations stands in
direct contrast to the understanding of the documentary genre
as describing the truth. But according to Deleuze, it was initially
with cinéma verité in the 1960s, when Pierre Perrault and Jean
Rouch amongst others attempted to give voice to the poor, op‑
pressed and colonised in society, that one actually eliminated the
relation of fiction not only to truth, but also to the notion that
the actual was the opposite of fiction. That is, one realised the
camera’s »pure and simple story-telling function« (op. cit., 150;
author’s italics).207 For these directors the camera could become
part of the recounted, so it functioned as a kind of narrative in‑
stance or intercessor. In, for example, Jean Rouch and Edgar
Morin’s film Chronicle of a Summer (Cronique d’un été, 1961),
the camera participates (as if it were a questioning or attentive
207 The English translation of the French »fonction de fabulation« to »story‑telling function« diminishes
Nietzsche’s notion of the power of the false, which influenced Deleuze’s use of the word ›fabulation‹ in
chapter 6: »The powers of the false.«

CONTENTS
person) in discussions on how one sees oneself as happy or not,
what political engagement is, and so on. What is interesting is that
those participating relate to the questions that are asked, but to
a large extent they also integrate the camera’s presence in their
answers and actions. In so doing both the situation and the per‑
sons change constantly. The camera can in this way be described
as creative or as a ›power of the false‹, which as an ›intercessor‹
enables a change of reality:
What cinema must grasp is not the identity of a character, whether

real or fictional, through his objective and subjective aspects. It is the
becoming of the real character when he himself starts to ›make fiction‹,
when he enters into ›the flagrant offence of making up legends‹ and so
contributes to the invention of his people. The character is inseparable
from a before and an after, but he reunites these in the passage from
one state to the other. He himself becomes another, when he begins
to tell stories [met à fabuler] without ever being fictional. And the film‑
maker for his part becomes another when there are ›interposed‹, in
this way, real characters, who wholly replace his own fictions by their
own story‑telling [Fr.: fabulation]. (Deleuze 1989, 150; author’s italics)
When neither we nor the director can confirm whether the char‑
acter belongs to a fictive or a real space, and when the character
constantly becomes another in and with his or her narrative, a
direct time‑image is created (Deleuze op. cit., 152). It is this which
the nouvelle vague directors, and in particular Godard, learned
from in their blending of fiction and reality, subjective and objec‑
tive, before and after – and which on Danish soil Jørgen Leth and
Lars von Trier, amongst others, have inherited. Deleuze sums up:
It is under these conditions of the time‑image that the same transfor‑

mation involves the cinema of fiction and the cinema of reality and blurs
their differences; in the same movement, descriptions become pure,
purely optical and sound, narrations falsifying and stories, simulations.
The whole cinema becomes a free, indirect discourse, operating in
reality. (Deleuze 1989, 155)

CONTENTS
It is clear that, with Trier’s The Boss of It All, we are dealing with
something other than the remediated blending of hypermediated
and immediated stylistic traits from the 1960s, of which The Idiots
was an expression. But nonetheless it is the same form of »free
indirect discourse« (op. cit.) that the film’s new time‑image allows
for, and which in The Boss of It All gives access to an experience
wherein nothing can be affirmed: »I is [always] another« (Deleuze
op. cit., 154). It is not only in the absurd comedy but also in the
relation between the many dysfunctional heterotopias and the in‑
different manner of filming, which is due to Automavision®, that
attention is drawn to the fact that the constituting of the I, alias
boss‑of‑it‑all, as the one who is in control is also identical with
the one who turns into no‑one. The gulf between the many scene
and role changes and the manufactured surveillance perspective
marks an absolute ›outer‹ – a Verfremdung – that the viewer can‑
not ignore. The empathy is hindered consistently as the narra‑
tor in a certain sense disappears in the machinic autopoiesis of
Automavision®. The camera’s function is, in addition, stipulated
as a registered trademark. The diagrammatically orchestrated
Automavision® makes up a machinic heterogenesis, leaving large
parts of the film without a direction. Without this function the
filmed ›signaletic material‹ of Automavision® becomes obvious
to the viewer.208
With The Boss of it All, Trier has established a perceptive non‑
place that can be identified as an encounter – which has something
missing – between the camera and the absurd story that unfolds.
This absence of a relationship between narrator and story can give
rise to an affective encounter with the signaletic material as such.
But just as the virtual has a function in the reality of Foucault’s
mirroring heterotopia,209 the automatic settings in Automavision®
create with Deleuze a reflecting point of crystallisation where the
virtual cannot be differentiated from the actual. Because Automa‑
208 One might say that this was already found in embryonic form in Epidemic, where the signaletic
material is emphasised through the many references to the physical materiality of the film medium, partly
through the small red trademark ›e‹ in the film’s top‑right corner.
209 Amongst other things, Foucault utilises the heterotopian space’s reflective function to analyse how
the artist Diego Velázquez can diagrammatically present both a classic form of representation and a more
modern visual episteme in the painting Las Meninas (1656; Foucault [1966] 2005).

CONTENTS
vision® in The Boss of It All depicts all the vicissitudes, affects and
emotions according to the same automatic principle of random‑
ness, attention is afforded to the diagrammatic, which apart from
creating identifiable meaning, transforms the filmed things and
persons into zones of intensity in the diagram. When characters
and individuals are thus transformed into divids, something else is
rendered visible. Peirce believes that art can create diagrammatic
effects (Peirce 1997, 226), and virtual relations can become actual,
but conversely they can also open to the fact that actual relations
link themselves affectively to the virtual as events. This happens in
this film by signaletic material making itself independent through
Automavision’s® machinic autopoiesis. For some viewers this
gives access to the laughter cramps of the absurd, which can give
rise to new thoughts.
The tradition in comedy of reducing people to things or equip‑
ping them with similar properties to things is recognised from
Holberg and Jonathan Swift. The absurd comedy form of the 20th
century especially (perhaps inspired by the then new sociologi‑
cal analysis) has an eye for how the individual within a society of
industrialisation and commodity transforms him/herself into a
mass individual. One of Brecht’s early theatre plays, Man Equals
Man (Mann ist Mann), which premiered in 1926, describes this in
an absurd‑surreal way, when an ordinary person is transformed
into a human war machine. With the play’s title Brecht empha‑
sises how every man answers to one another in the military. This
dividual principal, which Brecht, and to a large extent modern‑
ism’s master of the absurd, Samuel Beckett, already had a scent of
before the Second World War, can be rediscovered in Foucault’s
description of the biopolitical society of control where human
life is reduced to statistical components in order to enable state
regulation from the cradle to the grave. In »Postscript on the
Societies of Control« (Deleuze 1992), Deleuze clarifies that Fou‑
cault’s epistemic disciplinarian society, which functioned in the
18th and 19th centuries, changed rapidly after the Second World
War into the current society of control. The difference between
the two regimes is identified first and foremost by the discipli‑
narian society’s spatial control (in schools, factories and prisons)
changing into a constant but discrete surveillance. This structure

CONTENTS
generates the pairing of the individual/masses and divid/data bank
respectively, and is thus defined more precisely by Deleuze:
The disciplinary societies have two poles: the signature that designates
the individual, and the number or administrative numeration that indi‑
cates his or her position within a mass. […] In the societies of control,
on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or
a number, but a code: the code is a password […]. The numerical lan‑
guage of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or
reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual
pair. Individuals have become »dividuals«, and masses, samples, data,
markets, or »banks«. (Deleuze 1992, 5; author’s italics)
Although Brecht combines divid and masses in Man Equals Man,

there is no doubt that the play criticises the individual’s reduction
to the divid. The reduction of characters, stories and language
to the minimalistic is also the essence of Beckett’s theatre plays,
but here an absurd tour de force is also opened up in the sense
of whether one could grasp a non‑individualised person at all
outside of the fabula of fiction.
The Boss of It All opens in similarly absurd ways, with Kristof‑
fer’s introductory comments on how he imagines his character
unfolding: »It is often things characters do not have that define
them much more than what they do have.« And thus Trier shows
that he is thinking about both the absurd theatre and the power
of the false, which filmically is (re)found in the cinéma verité and
nouvelle vague of the 1960s, where the character’s pre‑fictive and
fictive status, according to Deleuze, cannot be separated because
the character itself becomes another and takes part in the nar‑
ration of his or her character (Deleuze 1989, 150). This creative
power of the false, which the camera as ›intercessor‹ could activate
between subject and object in Jean Rouch and Pierre Perrault’s
documentary films from the 1960s, is, in The Boss of It All, a con‑
nection that is made in an innovative manner, as Automavision®
in particular intensifies the camera’s machinic heterogenesis.
This machinic autopoiesis, however, no longer challenges the
paired fiction/reality. It makes contact with an affective immanent
level, in that the film’s fabula part, in an accomplished absurd

CONTENTS
way, amputates all attempts at identity‑narration, and its sjuzhet
(created by the closed Automavision® system) radically hinders
every empathic insight into the characters – for example when a
vacuum flask or kitchen roll randomly comes into focus instead
of the characters, who are now speaking and acting outside the
frame. The gulf between fabula and sjuzhet thus widens with the
society of control’s machinic heterogenesis, the digital databank
in the form of Automavision®. Its random diagrams create pass‑
words for the divid’s absurd non‑acting, which effectively makes
the absurd comedy and the film about it difficult to identify within
what we normally regard as filmic. Following on from Deleuze’s
discussion of how syntax is broken down into a creative, fabulat‑
ing nonsense in writers such as Beckett, Luca, Péguy, Roussel
and others, one can say that Trier in The Boss of It All plays with
creating an ›outside‹, and not merely something that is found
marginally or outside of that which we understand as the syntax
of the cinematographic film.210
In his book Post-Cinematic Affect (Shaviro 2010), Steven
Shaviro further analyses how the affective influence comes to
the fore in ›post‑filmic‹ works. He relates mass production of
film in factories to the modern surveillance society as described
by Foucault, while the post‑filmic, which includes the electronic
signal, the digital code and diverse formats of display, is related
to the society of control, which according to Deleuze formed
after 1945 (Deleuze 1992). His analysis tends towards the dysto‑
pian; for example, in »Corporate Cannibal«, where a neoliberal
world without alternatives only offers us the modulation that the
globalised network society allows. Here Trier’s vision is more lib‑
erating and humorous. The absurd comedy’s affective influence
is answered wholly instinctively, with laughter, when the viewer
comes to realise that the character Kristoffer will never be able
to get into character. He has, like us, left the mass society and
can become neither an individual nor no‑one. He is a divid in
a network of ›big data‹, which can accommodate diverse needs
on insights from the market, the tax authorities, the education
system or the bank – and as such he is forever modular‑like. But
210 Cf. Deleuze’s article »He stuttered«, Essays Clinical and Critical [1993] 1997, 107.

CONTENTS
with this there also comes a liberation from ›meaning‹, ›context‹,
›individuality‹ and ›character‹, benefiting an investigation of what
potential the (post)filmic signaletic material contains.
The one who falls: on Lars turning Jørgen

into a performative I
The Boss of It All premiered three years after The Five Obstructions
(2003),211 which Trier produced together with Jørgen Leth.212 It is
the latter’s aesthetic choice in the film The Perfect Human (1967),
presented as »a filmic pearl, to be destroyed« by Trier, which was
the point of reference for The Five Obstructions. Nevertheless,
one can say that Trier has the main role as a kind of boss‑of‑it‑all.
He turns Leth into a marionette who is sent out into the world
in order to fulfil diverse rules that force him diagrammatically to
submit himself to another, more affectively involved aesthetic. The
Perfect Human has certain similarities with Godard’s and War‑
hol’s more or less critical use of pop culture’s readymades, while
Trier’s Dogme film The Idiots (1996), together with a number of
other concurrent film and video projects, worked in extension of
the performative‑documentary tradition213 which is also found in
both Godard and Warhol. As in the Dogme films, the performa‑
tive documentaries – in different ways – make use of the power
of the false, which is created when the camera as ›intercessor‹
acts together with or takes part in the performance that is being
documented, and as a result the decoding of the film’s fictive or
genre‑like framing is obstructed. But the camera’s empathy is
haptically visible and audible as ›noise‹. So while the realistic film
tradition from the 1920s rendered visible the camera as a ma‑
chine of reproduction, and the involving aesthetics of the 1960s
turned it into a force of artistic production, in the 1990s it gained
211 The characters in this film, whose English title is The Five Obstructions, also speak Danish, and it
was perhaps primarily aimed at a Danish audience, though it has also been successful in other countries (cf.
Mette Hjort 2008).
212 Jørgen Leth (born 1937) came to prominence in the 1960s, partly from the Danish avant‑garde mi‑
lieu within film and poetry and partly as a sports journalist and commentator.
213 Aside from a number of Dogme films, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Proj-
ect (1999) and Linda Vestrik’s intimate documentary Pappa & jag (2000) can be mentioned as examples of
this investigation in the performative‑documentary field.

CONTENTS
a direct, physical‑affective effect on the viewer. There are at least
three consequences of this:
1. When the viewer has to concentrate hard in order to under‑

stand what the film shows, he/she becomes aware of him/her‑
self as a corporeal and mental co‑producing instance. Interest
in the fiction and narrative framework must give way to the
benefit of the interpretive work, with regards to the delineation
between viewer subject and work.
2. When the camera operator/director involves him/herself in a
performative way, the border between that artistic I and the
private person is blurred, which again influences the viewer’s
interpretive work.
3. When the relation between screen and viewer becomes central
to the film experience, the film as a work slides into the back‑
ground. The question of how the film is first and foremost a
fictive medium, which organises our (genre) expectation and
decoding, or whether its indexicality triumphs over narration
and plot, becomes secondary. The film establishes an interface,
making it impossible to determine where the work ends and
when the interpretation begins.
The Dogme rules strengthened the possibility of DV apparatus

getting close to the events and gave actors new improvisational
options. The production process in the majority of Dogme films
takes the character of an investigation, where the camera func‑
tions as the director’s alter ego. The camera’s work thus becomes
the director’s signature. The Dogme rules‹ ban on genre formats
also makes the camera’s work more visible, in that the classic
conventions to a large extent were developed in relation to the
neutrally registered camera. The actors‹ improvisation convinced
the majority of the justification of the Dogme rules, but it was
perhaps the limiting of known filmic means and of the romantic
idea of the director as an artistic genius that made the DV cam‑
era’s signaletic work in the foreground more obvious.
The following will show Trier’s collaboration with Leth in The
Five Obstructions as a controlled attempt to supplement Leth’s
aesthetic with the Dogme rules‹ techniques for involving the

CONTENTS
public – an attempt that within the film’s framework fails. The
idea for The Five Obstructions was Trier’s. He staged the process
as an exploratorium controlled by rules, which pours scorn on
Leth’s descriptive practice in The Five Obstructions in such a way
that Leth is forced to break with his own style. Trier’s rules, so
to speak, ought to function as diagrams that can open for a new
creative outflow of Leth’s practice.
The Perfect Human is shot in black and white, and documents
the science of gestures and physical activities (such as dancing,
falling, eating, kissing and shaving) in an objective, minimalistic
and poetically descriptive manner. It was shot with a stationary
camera on a white background and with few obvious edits. Leth’s
consciously alienating and dissecting style emphasises the various
planes of sound and image, as when he allows the actor Claus
Nissen to dance without background music and then comments
on it in the voice‑over. Jørgen Leth’s inquiring voice functions
as both a disjunctive and a linking element in the film.
Leth’s use of the voice marks the phenomenological poetics
which in the 1960s blended realism and modernism, as the film
camera’s registering of the surface occurs afterwards in the lin‑
guistic description – or vice versa. Apart from the Godardesque
inspiration, Leth’s filmic and literary practice is also inspired by
Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe‑Grillet; both worked together
with the director Alain Resnais, on the films Hiroshima, Mon
Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961) respectively.
In The Perfect Human the hand‑held camera is not used, and
although there is improvisation, the traits of documentary and
realism are toned down (as are the locations). Leth’s descriptions
of realism are linked to a literary tradition, where the phenom‑
enological sense of detail can momentarily break with the purely
descriptive meaning. Therefore, for Leth, it becomes crucial to
hit the right tone, the right lighting, the right gesture. In The
Perfect Human and others of his short films from the period, these
tonalities are just as crucial as rhythm is to poetry.
In The Five Obstructions Trier teases Leth with accusations of
being a controlling onlooker, who creates a »perverse« objectifi‑
cation of that which he describes. The filmic rules, which Trier
changes for every filmic obstruction, are generated in order to

CONTENTS
Jørgen Leth in the re‑filming of the meal scene from The Perfect Human.
force Leth’s distancing aesthetic to fall. Trier aims to see Leth »ba‑
nalized«, out of control and becoming a mere human. Trier also
goes after the player rather than the ball, creating a »therapeutic
situation« for Leth, where aesthetic control over what is filmed is
denied, in that »the perfect« is abandoned at the expense of the
»human«. In consultation with Leth himself, Trier sends him to
places that for the Westerner are mythological or oriental, such
as Cuba and Mumbai, and he gives him technological hindrances
in the form of »no edits over 12 frames«. In other words, he uses
the experiences from the Dogme films to ›trip up‹ Leth’s non‑
involving (self)mythologised aesthetic and aims to shake the filmic
representation in order for the artist’s body and its fall to be felt
by the viewer.
This does not happen, though. In Asger Leth’s hand‑held
video documentation of his father’s work on the production
of the requested film Leth considers Trier’s experiment as »a
romantic story«, as »one becomes so affected by being in a situ‑
ation in which a social drama occurs« that it can be seen in the
aesthetic product. In the next scene, where Leth gives a female
beggar some coins out of the car window, it appears that he,
nevertheless, is affected by his surroundings. However, this does

CONTENTS
not seem to be expressed in film number two, which is located in
the red light district in Mumbai. A semi‑transparent backdrop
partly screens Leth from physical contact with his surroundings,
the prostitutes and their children, while also partly giving a hapti‑
cally beautiful impression of them. But it also implies that Leth
is cool, and perfectly controlled. Trier’s ambition – that we need
to »damage Leth«; that he should make something »unsatisfac‑
tory« – does not succeed in the first four films. As a consequence,
Trier makes the last film on the basis of Asger Leth’s backstage
video material, but Jørgen Leth is to be credited as director and
thus take responsibility for this castigation of himself. In this film
Leth appears partly as a character with rumpled hair and bags
under his eyes, and partly incarnated as a voice‑over in Trier’s
text, which sums up:
nothing showed itself and nothing was of any help. I didn’t come stag‑
gering out of the ruins to thank you, Lars. And yet, at this moment, you
have me. This text is yours, after all, which you have forced me to read
aloud. So let’s get it over with: Dear Lars, thank you for the obstruc‑
tions. They have taught me to see what I actually am: a contemptible
human being. (DVD subtitles)
But the text also turns round in a chastising and ambivalent way
towards Trier’s attack and desire for control of Leth’s fall, end‑
ing with »and you [that is, Trier] fell on your face. How does the
perfect human fall? This is how the perfect human falls«. These
final words in the film are illustrated paradoxically enough by
Leth’s somewhat awkward falling actions in a hotel room.
The four short obstruction films made by Leth are related to
a literary tradition where the body only involves itself in forms of
tonality and rhythmic deposits in the voice. The fifth film (in the
film), which Trier edits on the basis of Asger Leth’s Dogme‑like
recordings, shows Leth as a body with corporeal affects and thus
attaches itself to the first films as backstage information. How‑
ever, it brings down Leth’s aesthetic only indirectly by placing the
words in his mouth. Here Trier utilises the filmic affordance of
editing, for example, to create a ›power of the false‹, with which
he also underlines that the flow of words commentating on the

CONTENTS
Asger Leth’s documenting of Jørgen Leth practising how to fall during the final
film within the film.
action make up a bond, a power in Leth’s aesthetic practice, with

or without the medium. And it is precisely this incongruence
between two aesthetics – a realistic‑phenomenological literary
aesthetic and a realistic‑performative filmic aesthetic – which
makes The Five Obstructions inspiring. For while neither of the
two directors in reality wins the fight, the viewer becomes a wit‑
ness to Trier’s tackling of Leth’s body and Leth’s redress by the
use of the voice.
If on the other hand one looks primarily at the exposure of
each director’s artistic ›I‹ in the film, it can be seen as an example
of »fictio‑biographism«, where »the well‑known play themselves«
in a way in which »the role cannot be unequivocally defined from
the person’s real life« (Jacobsen 2008). This phenomenon, which
from around the turn of the century and onwards has the (male)
body and its actions as an object of investigation, extends the per‑
formative as well as the absurd comedy’s search for the individual
between the biographic and the fictive, as in the creative invest‑
ment therein in the 1960s. In this ficto‑biographism the male
figure is objectified in the same way as the female figure usually
is. Leth’s fall, which Trier searches for, but which only happens
because of a substitution in The Five Obstructions, can be seen as

CONTENTS
a demonstration of the performative method. Leth realised the
method later, however, in Det uperfekte menneske (2005) and Det
uperfekte menneske 2 (2007), where, for example, the description
of an affair with a Cuban woman, Vivian, who appeared briefly in
the first obstruction film from Cuba, is described in a performa‑
tively involved manner.214
Leth has thus literarily embedded the fall and the body’s aes‑
thetic, which in Trier’s Dogme film The Idiots makes it impossible
to determine between a ›true‹ representation (of tears, erections,
ejaculation, blood and so on), and a construction (artificial tears,
porn extras and fake blood). The Dogme film’s affective involve‑
ment is naturally more difficult to create in a written representa‑
tion, but Leth makes an attempt by not differentiating between the
descriptions of intimate backstage experiences and more public
front stage situations (cf. Meyrowitz 1985). Leth’s literary practice
after The Five Obstructions is thus clearly influenced by the aes‑
thetic of the fall, which Trier challenges him to engage with. The
affective intensity and performative realism, which only shows
itself momentarily in The Five Obstructions in the form that Trier
is looking for, attaches itself to Leth’s descriptive poetics, which
also contain the sports journalist’s openness to the event and the
moment.215
And in this way the ring is closed: Leth’s descriptive camera
and voice relate to the aesthetics of the 1960s, and its then new
experience of the electronic TV medium’s transmission, and the
documentation of the performative now in art video, just as Trier’s
Dogme experiment The Idiots can be said to reflect the 1990s
experience with digital, real‑time interfaces. The difference be‑
tween the two artists‹ aesthetics can be described in relation to the
degree of, or lack of, control. Leth’s own I is invariably exposed
the more intimate (and seemingly non‑controlling) Trier’s text
is, with, for example, its use of backstage reporting. The closing
214 Leth’s description in the same place that he had sexual access to the »cook’s daughter«, whenever he
wanted, created a media storm, which in 2005 led to his dismissal as a commentator on the Tour de France
for the Danish TV station TV2. However, he was reinstated in 2008.
215 In Jørgen Leth’s Det erotiske menneske (2010), a kind of clash is created between the melancholic
voice of the poet and the beautiful young women who together inhabit orientalised or heterotopian places
in Haiti and Brazil.

CONTENTS
voice‑over narrative in The Five Obstructions is regarded bio‑
graphically, even though the opposite perhaps was intended. This
does not happen to the same degree as in Trier’s filmic Dogme
realism. For even though everyone knows who directed The Idi-
ots, the camera’s shaking, hand‑held registering blends with the
viewer’s sensations in a physically appreciable manner.
The blurred border between subject and object and the fact
that it is not possible for the viewer to determine whether depic‑
tions are fiction or documentary can be aesthetically productive
in several media. And though the constellation of camera and
body can create another type of physically perceptible shaking
in the film image than the co‑ordination of writing and voice in
the book’s (expanded) form, the discussion of the artistic I (in the
performative play between real and staged) also creates affective
repercussions which render superfluous a distinction between
fiction and reality in the classic sense.
But the question Trier asks in The Boss of It All is not whether
both the heterotopic places and the notion of intimacy and in‑
tensity have lost ground today, where ubiquitous surveillance has
seemingly territorialised every dream of deterritorialising. In this
experiment Trier plays with the notion of what would happen
if one could create a (surveillance) diagram, where the narrator
becomes a divid amongst others, while in The Five Obstructions he
attempts to make the narrator, Leth, become part of the diagram,
so he is reduced to a divid and a »contemptible human being«. In
the following film Trier abandons the notion of outer influence
to instead concentrate on the description of inner emotion and
affective states, which can also, however, have affective repercus‑
sions.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 8
Affective figures of depression,

melancholia and mania
Lars von Trier’s so‑called ›Depression Trilogy‹, consisting

of Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac
(2013/2014), offers various accounts of psychological states before
the word ›psyche‹ became synonymous with Freudian psychoa‑
nalysis. In the ancient Greek language, the word meant the soul
of life, which left the body when one died. ›Psyche‹ was seen as
different from ›thumos‹, which linked to the body’s force, initia‑
tive and will. Today the word ›psyche‹ incorporates both the soul
and spirit, and is used generally with regard to ›the mental life‹.216
In the following account of the compositional choices in the three
films, I will take the inspiration Trier draws from Nietzsche as
my starting point in the reading of Antichrist, and particularly
the representation of the struggle between Dionysian and Apol‑
linian forces. In the reading of Melancholia, the starting point is
the various interpretations of the ›notions‹ of melancholia and
tragedy found in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
respectively. This film actualises the opera of dissonant creation
Tristan und Isolde (1865), which Wagner composed while inspired
by the works of Schopenhauer. The analysis explores the repeti‑
tion of the distinctive Tristan chord, but also how the Dionysian
and Apollinian figures are advanced – this time supplemented by
Deleuze and Guattari’s smooth and striated relational spatiality.
These spatialities and conceptual figures are taken up again in
the analysis of Nymphomaniac, which diagrammatically creates
216 Cf. http://www.denstoredanske.dk/Sprog,_religion_og_filosofi/Religion_og_mystik/Guder_i_

antik_litteratur/psyke (last viewed 4 April 2015).
affective figures of depression, melancholia and mania 235

CONTENTS
a dialogue between the two positions, illustrating them in diverse
literary, filmic and artistic nodal points and in the form of plot
renewals from the entirety of Trier’s catalogue.
This reading of the trilogy as an alternative description of the
power contained in various mental states is expanded at the end
of the chapter to include a critique of the way in which Western
society has itself suppressed and subsumed the forms of desire.
Nymphomaniac in particular supports such a reading, hence the
reason why Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (Deleuze and
Guattari 1972) has been an inspiration in the analysis of this film.
Antichrist – in nature, chaos reigns

In the title sequence of Trier’s Antichrist the letter ›t‹ in the word
›Christ‹ is replaced by a mixture of the sign of the cross and the
sign for the female gender. This clear symbol will, in the fol‑
lowing, be the first interpretive clue.217 The blending is an obvi‑
ous comment on Dreyer’s depiction of a witch trial in Day of
Wrath (1943), which is introduced with the accusative shadow of
a cross.218 Trier’s combination of the cross and the female symbol
could, in extension of this, be read as a positive understanding of
the Antichrist, because the film also clearly refers to Nietzsche’s
attack on Christianity, The Anti-Christ (Nietzsche 1888), which
Lars von Trier, according to his own assertion, has had lying on
his table since the age of twelve.219 The other interpretive trace
is compositional and emanates from the film’s final image, where
Trier dedicates his film to Andrei Tarkovsky (1932‑1986). Several
of Tarkovsky’s films could have visually inspired Trier’s aesthetics,
but on a compositional plane The Sacrifice (1986) in particular
must be said to create an explicit dialogical frame for the motifs
217 This in particular because Trier has stated that with Antichrist he has made the thing which he most
hates, namely a symbolic film. Cf. the interview in Filmmagasinet Ekko, May 2009: http://www.ekkofilm.
dk/ (last viewed 4 April 2015).
218 Thanks to C. Claire Thomson for this intertextual point.
219 Cf. the interview in Film # 66, DFI, May 2009: http://www.antichristthemovie.com/?cat=8&lan‑
guage=da (last viewed 4 April, 2015). In the following I refer to Nietzsche’s Der Antichrist in Peter Thielst’s
Danish translation, Antikrist, to avoid any confusion between book and film.

CONTENTS
in Antichrist.220 With a basis in these two tracks, a philosophical
and a filmic, separated by 100 years, the following analysis will
lead into an interpretation of the affective power of haptic images.
An accent on the haptic is established as early as the black and
white prologue, by the film’s traumatically pivotal starting point.
This sequence, lasting more than five minutes, unfolds a haptic
organisation of images in the most beautiful way. Dominated by
close‑ups in ›slow motion‹ of naked flesh, faces, and slowly falling
water drops and snowflakes, the sequence forces the eye to rest on
the modulations in the surface of the image. But the images that
appear to be in slow motion are in fact high-speed recordings with
an auto‑digital camera, a so‑called Phantom Camera, which can
film 1000 frames per second as opposed to the normal 24 frames
per second. This makes it possible to create a kind of ultra‑slow
motion in filmic time (cf. the interview with Anthony Dod Mantle
in the DVD extra material). Aside from the haptic surface levels,
220 In short, the film’s narrative action begins with the depiction of an unnamed couple and the death
of their young son, Nick (approximately three years old at the time), who falls out of a window while his
parents are having sex. The mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) develops severe depression and is admitted
to hospital. The father (Willem Defoe), who is a psychotherapist, contests her hospitalisation and takes
responsibility for her (albeit unwilling) discharge from hospital. Back at home he receives a letter from the
hospital. He places it, unopened, in his jacket pocket. She throws away her pills, but her condition worsens,
and he calms her angst through sexual intercourse. He convinces her that she must go through the pain
and confront her angst. Together they travel to their holiday cabin, Eden, which lies in a dense forest, and
is a place of anxiety for her. During their hike out to the cabin, the man sees a fallow deer with a stillborn
calf hanging out of its rear. In the first part of their stay in Eden she overcomes her anxiety about nature,
helped by his exercises in stamina. However, he is not happy about her progress and becomes suspicious.
Alone in the forest, amongst the ferns, he sees an animal lying down. It is revealed as a fox, eating its own
entrails and speaking the words »chaos reigns«. Next a storm arrives, and he finds her lost thesis on Euro‑
pean witch trials, which contains images of the torture of witches, and he notices that her writing becomes
increasingly unintelligible and indistinct. He confronts her with this, and she confirms that in the writing
process she became persuaded of the dangerous and demonic in nature. He withdraws from her, and at
night she runs frustratedly out in front of the house where she masturbates, naked, by the roots of a tree.
He becomes involved and they have orgiastic intercourse, while naked hands reach up between the roots of
the tree. The following day she finds the post‑mortem report from the hospital, and he connects the mal‑
formed shape from the x‑ray of their son’s foot together with other pictures he finds, where Nick’s shoes
appear to sit the opposite way around. He retreats to the shed. She attacks him with accusations of wanting
to leave her, and in haste knocks him unconscious with a piece of firewood, fixes a grindstone to his leg and
throws the wrench under the shed. He awakens, fearing for his life, and retreats to a foxhole close by. She
searches for him and finally finds him when the fox’s cry exposes his location. She buries him alive and it
is not until later at night that she regrets her actions and saves him, taking him to the shed again. Here it
occurs to her that she could have avoided her son’s death, and she cuts off her clitoris and inner labia. He is
awakened by a hailstorm and the fallow deer and fox enter inside. At that moment he hears the raven under
the floorboards and knocks through a hole, upon which the raven joins the other animals while he gains
access to the wrench and frees himself from the grindstone. He strangles and then burns the woman on the
ladder. In the epilogue, which is black and white just like the intro, he hobbles around in the forest and eats
berries, while tenebrous women gather around him.

CONTENTS
The man (Willem Dafoe) and the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the haptic
intro sequence.
the intro sequence’s documentary‑prosaic ›nakedness‹ creates

allusions to the porn film genre, along with the intensifying of
everyday objects such as the washing machine. But because of
the high‑speed technique this scene contains the same form of
monumental beauty as later in the film, when the man’s visions
are depicted.221 The prologue is accompanied by the soprano
aria »Lascia ch’io pianga« (Let me weep) from Georg Friedrich
Händel’s opera Rinaldo (1711). The aria was performed by Tuva
Svenningsen and the Baroque soloists and recorded especially
for the film, so that it followed the rhythm of the image sequence
precisely (DVD extra material). The bleak vocal tone is thus able
to create a form of affective absorption, so that the otherwise
haptically described space expands symbolically and movingly.
Aside from the aria, the soundtrack is a mental form of horror
221 Mantle lists four different filmic methods utilised in Antichrist: 1) a naturalistic, semi‑documentary
style filmed with a normal, moving camera; 2) a monumental style used, for example, in the man’s vision
scenes with the deer and fox, and filmed with a high‑speed camera; 3) a montage style, used for the de‑
scription of panic attacks, and filmed with small, cheap lenses (lens‑babies), which decay the image; 4) a
transition style, where the description goes from hand‑held to linear images in balance (from the DVD
extra material).

CONTENTS
The fall of the son, Nic (Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm), is composed together with
the ‘fall’ of the mother and father’s orgasmic faces.

CONTENTS
The monumental style; here used to underline the man’s reflection.
produced especially for the film by Kristian Eidnes Andersen, who

together with Trier produced samples and modulated the sound
produced by organic materials (for example, horse hair dragged
over thin branches or whistling sounds with blades of grass). In
addition, recordings of inner bodily sounds (the flow of blood and
heartbeats) were utilised in the scenes depicting panic attacks.
Both this original, organically created sound tapestry and the
haptic intro belong to the film’s signaletic material, which helps
intensify the film’s affective impact. The perception of the hapti‑
cally modulating real‑time effect, the monumental vision images
and the unknown sounds make viewers vigilant and sharpen their
senses affectively. The mental frame of mind is, so to speak, tan‑
gible. The real‑time effect in the intro’s high‑speed recordings
is overlaid with a documentary level, depicting the moment of
tragedy/point of orgasm, and should also be seen as a signal‑
etic material, in that through the modulation in the image, the
space is created. The image organises a relational space, which
nonetheless remains within the frame. Though indexically speak‑
ing it depicts something, it is the individual processes within the
frame that capture the attention. In this case, it is the relations
between individual elements, creating real‑time effects, which

CONTENTS
appear claustrophobic. The boy’s exit or line of flight seemingly
puts an end to this level, but as the film shows all forms lead to
lines of flight (in the form of therapy) or exits (in the form of
violence and death) straight back to the event’s signaletic level,
which in this film is described through depression.222
Nietzsche – The Dionysian and the Apollinian
Friedrich Nietzsche published The Anti-Christ (1888) as a con‑

troversial treatise immediately before he wrote Ecce Homo (pub‑
lished in 1908), in which he signed himself as »Dionysos against
the Crucified« (Nietzsche [1908] 1992, 104). Prior to these On
the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) were published. They were
all related more or less to The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit
of Music (1872), which with its republication in 1886 was given
a new subtitle (Or: Hellenism and Pessimism) and a new preface.
After The Anti-Christ came Twilight of the Idols in January 1889,
thus ending his authorship. A few weeks after this final publica‑
tion, Nietzsche broke down in the street. He never overcame this
psychological breakdown. In this context it is most important
to maintain that Nietzsche makes Dionysos and the Antichrist
into identical figures.
Nietzsche endows the Antichrist with an untamed nature –
with the Dionysian forces that in ancient Greece were the noctur‑
nal side of Apollinian order. Where Apollo, the god of sculpture,
represented structure, marked boundaries, plastic forms, images,
consciousness, thought and concepts – in a word, form – Dio‑
nysos, the god of wine, represented the unbounded, the timeless,
the imageless, the unreflecting, music, drunkenness, but also the
will, which is noticeably physical and not metaphysical. As men‑
tioned, in the new preface to the reprint of The Birth of Tragedy
in 1886, Nietzsche wrote that he had given himself the freedom
of making Dionysos into the opposite of Christian morality, and
thus accorded the Antichrist the name Dionysos. But there is yet
222 Shaviro, in agreement with Rodowick, regards real‑time modulation negatively as a »perpetual pres‑
ent« (Shaviro 2010, 16). In other words, he does not see the expressive potential of haptic noise.

CONTENTS
another contrast, namely between the male and the female, in that
the Dionysian motif in Nietzsche is more conventionally femi‑
nine than masculine, as several researchers have noted (Oppel).223
Nietzsche’s preference for the female symbol in relation to the
Dionysian figure has a certain justification in the ecstasy of the
cult, which liberates one (traditionally the man) from being one‑
self – including one’s gender. In addition, as far back as ancient
Greece, the Dionysian figure has been presented as one that bal‑
ances between fantasy and reality, with both a male and a female
exterior; or, more precisely: the older the cult is, the more female
features Dionysos is given.224 The cultic Dionysos feasts consist of
three ritual phases. Firstly wine, which the god inhabits, is drunk
or inhaled from specific Dionysian cups. In this way the god’s spirit
is ingested and one reaches ecstasy, where one ›stands outside one‑
self‹, allowing a space for the god, who in enthousiasmos enters the
body. Next mania occurs, a manic rage, where one loses oneself
because the god takes over and the reveller becomes one with the
group of maenads. This momentary madness is expressed in wild
dance. Finally one achieves peace and joy, which is the harbinger
of the catharsis of tragedy, and is the reason why Dionysos is also
the god of theatre and in the tragedies had the narrator function
in the choir.225 Frances Nesbitt Oppel notes that in the Dionysos
figure Nietzsche in fact also includes the maenads, the women
who carried out the majority of the practices of the Dionysos cult.
According to Oppel, they represent the pain, emotion and ec‑
stasy associated with childbirth. The pain, the emotion and the
ecstasy transgress and subvert the boundaries in a similar manner
to intoxication (Oppel, 73). The Dionysos figure and the cult are
namely also connected with everything natural, the antithesis of an
edifying state, which brings life as well as death. The cult of Dio‑
nysos thus stands for natural sensations formed non‑aesthetically,
which should be balanced with the Apollinian aesthetic and con‑
ceptualised forming of the world.
223 This is most likely one of the main reasons for Nietzsche’s, to put it mildly, schizophrenic view of
women. He noticeably does not praise actual women – especially when they are educated. On the woman’s
meaning in Nietzsche and on his significance for (post)feministic philosophy, see Thomsen 1985.
224 Cf. the exhibition Dionysos – Verwandlung und Ekstase 2008‑2009, Museumsinsel, Berlin.
225 On the phases of the cult and Dionysos‹ importance to the theatre, see Hjortsø 1984.

CONTENTS
Returning to Trier’s Antichrist, which has been furnished in its
title with the symbol for female gender (in Denmark synonymous
with feminism in the 1970s), it is striking that here, after the intro,
we also find a trichotomy in: 1) grief, represented by the fallow
deer bearing an unborn or stillborn calf; 2) pain, represented by
the fox, who eats its own entrails; and 3) despair, represented
by the raven that cannot die. But where the first two of these
chapters might relate to stages in psychoanalytic therapy, which
the man exposes the woman to, the third chapter, Despair (with
the subtitle Gynocide), is the opposite of psychic well‑being in an
individual‑psychological sense. On the other hand, this chapter
allows one to see the film from a larger perspective, with regard
to the ›social body‹ and the cathartic form of purification, which
in its day was effected by the trichotomy of the feast of Dionysos.
The Dionysian figure has been actualised in Michel Maffesoli’s
sociological work The Shadow of Dionysus. A Contribution to the
Sociology of the Orgy (Maffesoli [1982] 1993). Maffesoli takes his
starting point in the idea that desperation and despair is in many
(also modern) cultures the background for many kinds of unre‑
strained or violent ritual behaviour. To these ritualised forms of
behaviour, often practised by youth in the form of, for example,
wild parties, Maffesoli applies the German expression zwecklos
aber sinnvoll (purposeless but meaningful; Maffesoli, 144). He
emphasises that it is nature’s cyclical time or (with Nietzsche)
the eternal recurrence that is the magical centre for such rituals
and parties (Maffesoli, 29). It is this cyclical time that Apollinian
reason and later the desire of Christianity, the Renaissance, the
Enlightenment and indeed also Marxism dominated and replaced
with a coherent and linear time that can be controlled. The eternal
recurrence of the same implies a Dionysian affirmation of life
where, as in the cyclical ecstasy, there also occurs a reappraisal
of all values. This event is always one and the same, a confirma‑
tion of life. Nature is thus not merely cosmos but is just as much
chaos and randomness. The same is true for the social, which in
all societies and cultures has become regulated through totem
and taboo. In many societies the animal, the stone or the tree are
in this way forms of totems, which indicate a link between the
individual and the cosmos (Maffesoli, 38). These totemic figures

CONTENTS
appear in Antichrist as well as in Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, to
which I shall return.
In Trier’s Antichrist it is the man (Willem Dafoe) who sees the
totemic figures, the animals, as types of visions, which influence his
interpretation. But the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg), through
her study of witch rituals, is already familiar with the three beggars:
the deer, the fox and the raven. As the man adheres to the psycho‑
analytical doctrine, where the word is supposed to pave the way for
reason and self‑insight, the vision of the three beggars, however,
only gives (for the sake of the viewer) cause for his wonder. And
yet they seem to anticipate (at least for the viewer) the progress of
things (the way in which things are to play out), but it is not until
the film’s ending that they cede, in a specific constellation, a sense
of meaning. Through the vision of the self‑devouring fox, invoking
the chaotic tone in the Garden of Eden at the end of the »Grief«
chapter, comes first rain and twilight and finally the night. Both
the Greek and Roman feasts of Dionysos, as well as the much later
witches‹ Sabbath, worshipped the night. It is only after the man has
noticed in the attic of the cabin the woman’s uncompleted thesis
on gynocide – whose final pages are dominated by disintegrated
handwriting – that he chooses to confront her with what he views,
from his Apollinian place of reason, as a psychological breakdown,
a possession or even worse: the worship of Dionysian forces. He
is finally on the trail of something concrete, a reason, which has
effects. And hereafter the events go at a pace. The anti‑Christian
anger unfolds in a manner that transforms not only the individu‑
als, but also the film’s body. Thoughts and fantasies materialise at a
furious rate in the narrative, in the unfolding of the form of direct
time‑images, which Deleuze calls »peaks of present« (pointes de
présent; Deleuze 1989, 98). That is, various accents or viewpoints
existing simultaneously (for example, are linked to various char‑
acters) so that which is the memory or notion of one can in no way
be recalled by the other.226
226 Deleuze mentions Robbe‑Grillet and Alain Resnais‹ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) as a film domi‑
nated by peaks of present. As there is no clear order of events, but a simultaneity of »a present of the future,
a present of the present and a present of the past« (Deleuze 1989, 100), time becomes inexplicable and
frightening, and it becomes impossible to decide who is lying, who is not guilty, who attempts to mislead
and whether anyone speaks from the »system of judgement« (Deleuze 1989, 133).

CONTENTS
The film’s ›point of no return‹ is reached when the man in‑
vites the woman to participate in roleplay, where it is his role to
represent the nature that provokes her anxiety, while she must
relate rationally to the same. The dialogue goes like this:
I’m Nature. All the things that you call nature./ Okay, Mr Nature. What
do you want?/ To hurt you as much as I can./ How?/ How do you think?/
By frightening me?/ By killing you./ Nature can’t harm me. You’re just
all the greenery outside./ No, I’m more than that./ I don’t understand./
I’m outside, but also …within. I’m nature of all human beings./ Oh,
that kind of nature. The kind of nature that causes people to do evil
things against women?/ That’s exactly who I am./ That kind of nature
interested me a lot when I was up here. That kind of nature was the
subject of my thesis. But you shouldn’t underestimate Eden./ What did
Eden do?/ I discovered something else in my material than I expected.
If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature of…/ Of
the women? Female nature?/ The nature of all the sisters. Women do
not control their own bodies. Nature does. I have it in writing in my
books. (Antichrist DVD, chapter 8)
Here the forces of nature are linked via the woman to societal
violence against women, which again is linked to the Garden of
Eden, to the Paradise from which, according to the Bible, hu‑
manity’s original sin emanates, where Eve is made guilty because
of her misalliance with the snake. It was precisely this that was a
central pivotal point for the European witch trials and for Malleus
Maleficarum (Mackay 2009), a Latin text published in Germany
in 1486. This book, which had the Danish title Heksehammeren
(The Hammer of Witches), was the canonical background for the
more than 50,000 public murders in the form of burnings of
people (most often women), which took place especially in Europe
in the period 1575‑1675. The last judicial witch trial took place
in Poland as late as 1793. In Denmark, the 1,000 witch burnings
took place from 1540 to 1693.227 In the film’s chapter »Despair«,
this book is the direct inspiration for a number of scenes contain‑
227 Source: Den Store Danske Encyklopædi. [(http://www.denstoredanske.dk/Livsstil,_sport_og_fritid/

Folketro_og_folkemindevidenskab/heks (last viewed 4 April 2015).

CONTENTS
ing strong images. First and foremost it is concerned with the
images in the woman’s dissertation, which reproduces some of
the illustrations from Malleus Maleficarum, of witches, wizards
and witch burnings, but soon after the cited dialogue the type of
images also materialise directly in the filmic material.
During the nocturnal intercourse, when the woman is to expe‑
rience the violence, the body, the pain (possibly in order to feel her
body’s limits or maybe, on the contrary, in order to unite herself
with a collective, Dionysian body), she leaves the marital bed and
masturbates out in nature, lying at the foot of a large tree with gi‑
gantic roots. When the man becomes involved, he reveals himself
as the Devil, which he has perhaps been the entire time. A form
of witches‹ Sabbath takes place in their copulation by the tree’s
roots, from which a number of hands slowly reveal themselves.
This scene more than implies the kind of fantasies concerning
orgies that Maffesoli sees as derivative of the Dionysos cult:
The fantasy of the Witches’ Sabbath and black masses are equally a
form that draws on the Dionysian. He then becomes demonic. It is, of
course, the Sabbath that remains the model of the genre, centered on
the goat personifying the maleficent, licentious devil which also recalls
Dionysus or the god Pan. In the phantasm of the Sabbath and in the
imagery which represents it, the orgiastic ceremonies hold a choice
place; a nude woman is adored for a young woman ritually deflowered,
acts that inaugurate and unbridled debauchery dedicated to the god of
evil, the devil in person. (Maffesoli, 144)
The image of the woman’s masturbation, which the man partici‑

pates in, is overlaid with demonic grunting, but the interesting
thing is that Trier, in the midst of the orgiastic act, allows the
woman to reference Malleus Maleficarum, as she says: »The sis‑
ters from Ratisbon could start a hailstorm.« And a well‑known
drawing depicting two women condemned as witches, Agnes and
Anne from Ratisbon, is glimpsed emerging at the front of the
screen. In Malleus Maleficarum, the hailstorm plays a central
role; as a symbol it is synonymous with the Devil. The account
of the two condemned witches is a slightly hidden reference to
both masturbation and the intercourse occasioned by the woman’s

CONTENTS
lust. In Malleus Maleficarum hail is interpreted as an initiation
of a diabolical relation, in that the witch becomes a helper who
can intensify demonic acts. Furthermore, the Devil materialises
especially through water and air, and mixtures in between – for
example, fog and hail.
The following day, after this nocturnal orgy, the man attempts
to teach the woman that wickedness and goodness have noth‑
ing to do with therapy, and that this form of natural evil, which
phantasmically reveals itself in the Sabbath, is a possession or
compulsion neurosis that cannot materialise in reality. Accord‑
ing to the man, the same is valid for the angst that would be able
to make one do things one normally would not do, even without
hypnosis. Shortly after this, however, he becomes a victim of his
own ideas when the woman finds the post‑mortem report that,
it is worth noting, is only read and seen by him (and the viewer).
One thing he notices (in a flashback) is the enclosed x‑ray image,
showing a slight deformity in a bone in the child’s foot. But this
image, as mentioned, is not seen by the woman. He confronts
her instead in an interrogative manner with photographs of Nick
from the past summer, which she spent in Eden together with the
child, around the same time as she was meant to finish her thesis
on witch trials. In the photograph the child’s left boot sits on his
right foot, and vice versa. The tacit guilt is laid upon her, because
she has mixed up the boots. The x‑ray image (in flashback) is thus
replaced or overlaid immediately by the photograph, with which
she is confronted, and which for the viewer indicates that she has
acted consciously. In addition, we preserve (as does the man) the
recollection of the x‑ray image as the hidden truth, which, as a
result of the mother’s maltreatment of the boy’s foot, could be
the reason for the boy’s fall.228 And the Devil’s goat or satyr hoof
attaches itself phantasmically to the x‑ray image, thus appearing
as an intensified image element.
Hereafter the camera follows the man, as he walks towards
the shed through the fog, which in Malleus Maleficarum is sig‑
228 In keeping with the analysis of how the x‑ray and scanning images are utilised in The Kingdom I and
II, one can say that a Gothic level (the skeleton shining through), so to speak, gains new grotesque‑demonic
repercussions when it is shifted from a past level to a present.

CONTENTS
nified as the Devil’s preferred medium of transportation (cf.
ground mist, which in Danish is described as ›mosekonens bryg‹,
›the brew of the moor‑wife‹). Here the viewer is presented with
several images of Nick with boots turned the wrong way. In
yet another flashback the man/viewer ›sees‹ how the woman
forces the child’s feet into the wrong boots – against his will.
This representation of the woman’s intentional, wicked action
thereafter becomes the cause‑effect relationship that legitimises
the following events, in accordance with the logic of the action‑
image, where a situation leads to an action, which again leads to
a new situation. However, on top of this figurative ›production
of evidence‹ is added yet another layering of a more deconstruc‑
tive kind. This time it takes the form of an equivocal linguistic
demarcation. The man has hidden his psychological investigative
work, consisting of a sketched triangle on a piece of paper upon
which he has earlier noted the possible reasons for the woman’s
angst. He produces it from a hiding place in the shed. In the
triangle’s lower section he has previously written »leaves« and
»trees«, on top of this »forest«, then »Eden (the garden)«, and
at the head of the page »nature« and »Satan«, which are both,
in the best Lacanian style, crossed out. Now he writes »ME« in
quotation marks at the same time as he says out loud: »herself«.
This finesse, where the personal pronoun ›me‹ also naturally
includes himself, in that it as a linguistic sign contains the one
who says it and generally includes both genders, indicates clearly
that the symbiosis has reached a mutilating stage.
If this is related to the altogether intricate ways in which Mal-
leus Maleficarum makes judgements, then it means that one can‑
not differentiate objects of desire or angst from the desirous or
anxious person. The difference between you and I, woman and
man, ›herself‹ and ›me‹ is eliminated when a woman is determined
to be a witch and an instrument of the Devil. The witch assumes
this form, so to speak, in and with the fact that she becomes an
object for the projection of various kinds of individual desire and
social angst in a local society. In the film a possible re‑establish‑
ment of the loving relationship between the man and the woman
is eliminated by this displacement between ›me‹ and ›herself‹ in
favour of the question of who is the object of desire or angst – and

CONTENTS
as such bears the blame.229 From that point onwards the struggle
between good and evil is found in the violence and the regime
of sacrifice, which has replaced the ecstasy and madness of the
Dionysos cult. In Malleus Maleficarum, as well as in the chapter
»Despair«, the man and the woman can thus – to use an expres‑
sion from the Middle Ages – transmigrate (metempsychosis) to
devil and witch and back again quickly. Time is annulled when
we find ourselves in an absolute or immediate time, which again,
according to Malleus Maleficarum, is characteristic of the Devil:
he himself knows our innermost thoughts and travels at the speed
of light. Through this the film finds itself in the regime of violent
ecstasy where the woman attempts to drive out the Devil from
the man (in that she crushes his genitals, so his penis ejaculates
blood), chains him (to a grindstone) and buries him alive. In the
final scene the sadomasochistic relationship becomes wholly evi‑
dent: she hates and loves him; she wants to kill him and yet longs
for him. She calls to him and implores his help, so she can kill
him. She wants to have him out of his hiding place, the foxhole,
and when that fails, she buries him and calls him a bastard. The
chapter ends with the man finding the third totemic animal, the
raven, who like himself is buried in the foxhole. As he frees the
raven from the ground, its cry betrays his hiding place and he
unsuccessfully attempts to kill it.
In the following chapter, »The Three Beggars«, the three to‑
temic figures are assembled. Each of them has influenced the chain
of events through nature with its death contingency and chaos,
which is characteristic of Dionysian and demonic forces. The three
figures are, according to Trier himself, his own inventions and
are allegedly figures he has met on the shamanic journeys he has
participated in through the course of his therapy.230 The birthing
229 Very much like the Bible’s Garden of Eden, where the woman is judged guilty according to God’s
prohibition because she tempted the man. The blame often lies (also in the witch trial) on the object (the
temptress) and not necessarily on the one who is committing the misdeed (the tempted).
230 Cf. the conversation with Murray Smith on the DVD’s commentary soundtrack. Jacob Bøggild
mentions Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) as possible sources (Bøggild
2010).

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The ›false‹ flashback, where the woman ›sees‹ that her son has left his bed.
deer,231 the self‑destructive fox232 and the ever‑recurring raven233

all belong to the Dionysian‑cyclical understanding of time, which
threatens chronological‑linear time. As with all totemic figures
they can also function as talismans, which they in fact do in the
film’s opening scene where three human figures named Grief, Pain
and Despair stand next to the child’s bed. The figures in the puzzle,
which menacingly falls out of its frame during the parents‹ copu‑
lation, also represent the deer, the fox and the raven respectively.
In hindsight, watching the film’s intro one might be in doubt as to
which of these figures holds the Devil away, or whether they invite
him inside. This occurs when, in the final scene, a ›false‹ flashback
of the intro scene is set in, depicting the woman, who in the grip
231 In the Middle Ages the deer, or hart, was synonymous with all that was not reared in nature. In
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1602) there is a play on words between the audible syncretism of heart and
hart.
232 The fox has since olden times been the object of mythological interpretation. It has denoted intel‑
ligence, cunning and resourcefulness, but also – in the form of werewolves and other mixtures between
animals and humans – has been both divine and demonised.
233 The raven can be associated partly with Odin’s ravens Huginn and Muninn, which, in Nordic my‑
thology, denoted memory and remembrance, in that they flew out each morning and returned each evening
with news about the world; and partly with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1845), where the raven with its
eternal refrain »(N)evermore« warns of the death of the narrator. In the final verse, the raven’s eyes are
described as being demonic: »And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming«.

CONTENTS
of orgasm in fact opens her eyes and sees the child, but chooses
to ignore him. In other words, she sets her lust for orgasm higher
than her obligations as a mother. Immediately after this the child
climbs up onto a chair, bats away the three beggars and moves, full
of self‑confidence in his own power, towards the open window. As
mentioned, the flashback is consciously misleading, in that if one
watches the intro scene again, the woman clearly does not open
her eyes. But nevertheless this could be viewed as a recollection or
a vision, and again this points towards the idea that what we may
be encountering indicates that the woman’s judgement is false,
which is underlined by her own self‑imprecation: »A crying woman
is a scheming woman«, who according to the rhyme is »false in
legs, thighs, breast, teeth, hair and eyes«. Next the woman is sac‑
rificed in the same way as Anne in Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, where
she acknowledges the accusations of witchcraft, having placed her
corporeal lust above her duties. In Trier the woman first mutilates
herself by carrying out a circumcision (type II: excision or clitori‑
dectomy) with a pair of scissors. Her screams summon the deer,
and the constellation which represents the three beggars, Grief
(the deer), Pain (the fox) and Despair (the raven), is revealed to the
man. Next follows a hailstorm, during which the deer and the ra‑
ven materialise in the shed.234 Finally it is the raven’s cry from the
space under the floorboards that attracts the man’s attention and
thus reveals where the woman has hidden the wrench. In this way
the raven becomes the man’s helper – his extended recollection.
While the man is freeing himself from the grindstone, the woman
attacks him with a pair of scissors. The panic attack overpowers
him (as it has previously with the woman) in a series of black and
white close‑ups of pulse, dilated pupils and trembling fingers.
He manages to cut the process short and strangles her, thereafter
burning the body, which as in Day of Wrath is lashed tightly to a
ladder – the same ladder that the man used to gain access to the
unfinished thesis and the illustrations of witch burnings in Eden’s
attic.
234 According to Malleus Maleficarum, the Devil, having animalistic senses, can show itself in the form
of an animal (the snake and the fox in particular are mentioned).

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That the man/Devil kills in cold blood at the very moment
the woman repents her actions, and that there is a notion (as al‑
most always in a patriarchal culture) of a female victim, is almost
unbearable in the film. It is perhaps also the most crucial reason
for the feminist critique it received, primarily in Sweden.235 But
it can also be regarded as Trier’s comment on the age we live in,
where women as well as other manifestations of scapegoats are
linked to the sovereign position of power, which is the reason
why humans can be killed or sacrificed, just as in the age of witch
gynocides – and, more to the point, this without the illusion of
a new, reborn established order rising up.236 This chapter in the
film ends with the man moving incredibly slowly past the with‑
ered tree, and the landscape changing with each step he takes, so
finally it consists of nothing but naked human bodies. The naked
hands, which first materialised when the couple copulated by the
tree roots, now appear as naked bodies or corpses, issuing from
or out of the ground.
In the film’s epilogue we see the wounded man/Devil walking
with his crutches outside the cabin. He collects berries, enjoys
eating them, and then discovers the traces (feathers) of the ea‑
gle’s meal (its own young, fallen or pushed from the nest). This
sight, which symbolically captures the motif of the whole film,
causes a (possibly demonic) knowing smile to cross the man’s
face, as he turns and sees the three beggars materialise in the
long grass. The smile resembles Nick’s smile when he turns
towards the camera during the prologue, as a kind of Peeping
Tom, having just witnessed his parents‹ copulation. Nick also
caught sight of the three beggars, Grief, Pain and Despair, when
he knowingly turned towards the window that he later fell from.
Father and son thus resemble one another, if one compares
the prologue and epilogue. The expression on the son’s falling
face and the father’s orgiastic face are likewise identical in the
prologue. The faces are edited next to one another: first the
235 The debate was raised in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 28 July 2009 by Maria Sveland and
Katarina Wennstam, both authors and journalists. In Denmark, the then director for KVINFO (the Danish
centre for the study of and work with issues relating to gender, equality and diversity), Elisabeth Møller
Jensen, amongst others, followed up the debate.
236 Cf. Agamben’s description in Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Agamben 1998).

CONTENTS
son, then the father. Here nature’s violent cycle is more than
implied: just as the eagle in nature eats its own young, Satan,
the Antichrist and Dionysos also live off their own progeny. The
notion that we are doomed to die in order for life to go on is the
gruesome and yet cheerful wisdom of the Nietzschean – and also
the Trieresque – Antichrist. In the final shot a mass of female
bodies with blurred faces gather around the man, which could
be seen as a group of maenads or witches, heralding their new
leader. No matter whether one regards the scene as liberating
or the opposite, it is clear that the Dionysian or Antichrist‑like
natural order is intensified in the final scenes of the film. To
use an expression from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, one
might say that the transformation the man undertakes in the
course of the film is as a ›becoming‑animal‹, an acknowledge‑
ment of life’s forces at the cost of the various proto‑scenes of
both psychoanalysis and Christianity. The psychoanalytic proto‑
scene is amputated at the start of the film, where the lust shining
from man and woman, as well as son – intensified by the aria
»Laschia ch’io pianga« – gives the entire film an affirmative
power despite its sombre egress. And the Christian proto‑scene,
which is presumably intended to represent a confrontation with
nature (the snake in the Garden of Eden), is not followed up by
an expulsion from paradise, after which working with edifica‑
tion and the cultivation of earth would be able to take place in
a religious yearning for a return to a Paradise beyond.
Antichrist is concerned with neither the striation (Deleuze
and Guattari 2013, 551f.) of the earth (in a religious frame of
reference) nor the striation of consciousness (in a psychological
frame of reference); rather, its focus is on how desire and angst
are culturally mnemotechnically linked with the victims and vio‑
lent assaults on individuals and groups that take place prior to
stratification, such as reason, churches, enlightenment thinking,
psychoanalysis and so on; for although violence in Nietzsche can
be described in connection with the Dionysian in culture, it is not
a force of nature, standing outside of culture. As Foucault also
explains (Foucault 1975), violence also registers itself directly in
the bodies that react in relation to the culturally set framework of
violence, in the form of desire, and the production and reproduc‑

CONTENTS
tion of, for example, the relationship between the genders. The
cultural memory, the language and the system of signs have a
violent background, which is often neglected if one, for example,
sees ideological and democratic processes exclusively:
Cruelty has nothing to do with some ill‑defined or natural violence that

might be commissioned to explain the history of mankind; cruelty is the
movement of culture that is realized in bodies and inscribed on them,
belaboring them. That is what cruelty means. This culture is not the
movement of ideology: on the contrary, it forcibly injects production
into desire, and conversely, it forcibly inserts desire into social pro‑
duction and reproduction. For even death, punishment, and torture
are desired, and are instances of production (compare the history of
fatalism). It makes men or their organs into the parts and the wheels of
the social machine. The sign is a position of desire; but the first signs
are the territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies. (Deleuze and
Guattari 2013, 145)
The female murder in Antichrist has the character of a sacrifice in

which the man, whose eyes the viewer is forced to look through,
himself becomes an Antichrist – through a ›becoming‑woman‹,
›becoming‑animal‹. Out of the chaos, something new emerges.
The Apollinian is, as a rule, victorious over the Dionysian, but
here, on the contrary, the man has become a new demon or maybe
a Dionysian god, who plucks the forest’s wild berries and is the
new attraction amongst maenads or witches.
The edification lies somewhere other than in the Apollinian
order. What is depicted in the final scene is (with Deleuze and
Guattari) a nomadic, smooth or haptic space, to which I shall
return. Here, in preparation, Malleus Maleficarum’s graphic de‑
piction of the Devil, as he acts in God’s blessed garden, should
be quoted:
Every heretic can be called a boar, because he is in fact a boar from the
forest, who destroys and ruins the plentiful fruits of the Faith by sowing
the brambles of heresy among the vine shoots. He is also called a coiling,
poison‑spitting snake, but he is actually the wicked Foe of our human
race: the Devil and Satan. The wish that is fixed most in our heart,

CONTENTS
more than all the desires that we can conceive, is that in our times this
Church should abound in plenty, and that the vine shoots and the fruits
of this vineyard of the Lord should not be devoured and consumed by
the heretical boar from the forest or poisoned by the snake’s injection
of the poison of heretical depravity into it. (Mackay, 627)
This text could have formed the inspiration for the film’s final
scene. No matter what source material has inspired its inception,237
for me there is no doubt that the film deals with Nietzsche’s in-
terpretation of the Dionysian cyclus, the eternal recurrence of
the same, where the Christian questions of guilt and non-guilt
are irrelevant.
Tarkovsky and the »eternal recurrence of the same«
Filming on Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice took place in 1985,

while he was living in exile in Sweden. It was filmed on Gotland, and
Tarkovsky, who was a great admirer of Bergman, used some actors
who were known from his films. The Sacrifice was Tarkovsky’s final
film; he was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the shooting was
complete. He participated in the editing phase from his sickbed and
died in 1986. According to his wife, the idea for the film was written
in his diary as far back as 1978. Tarkovsky explains:
There are two types of dreams: in one the dreamer steers events. He
controls what is happening and what will happen: He is a demiurge. In
the other he is incapable of control and is subjected to violence he can-
not defend himself against. Everything results in suffering and anguish.
(Offeret, DVD disc 2: English subtitles to »Regi Andrei Tarkovskij«)
The script for The Sacrifice is from 1983, and consists of a »witch«
and a »sacrifice«, together with »a son who is forbidden to speak«
(op. cit.). At the end of the film, when the son has regained the use
of his voice, he says: »In the beginning was the Word. Why is that,
237 A good suggestion is a scene from a 1970s documentary film, where a group of women from the
women’s liberation movement, gathered around a large oak tree, run up a hill laughing (cf. the broadcast
»Do you remember…’70s women«, 2015; first broadcast 7 February 2015 on TV station DR2).

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Papa?« Here the son expresses himself in extension of the tradition
which throughout the film is broken down due to the alliance of the
father, Alexander, with the witch, Maria, and the inversion of all
values which follows. In other words, it is the father who destroys
the Apollinian values that he himself has practised for his entire
life. This benefits a Dionysian sense perception, which makes it
possible for him to annul a third world war taking place in a linear
time. Through his intervention, the father maintains his child’s
innocence because he rewinds time in order for everything to re‑
main the same, even the tradition. In addition, he must sacrifice
his reason and is exiled from the normalised, civil community. Al‑
exander, weary of being an actor, philosopher, aesthete and liter‑
ary critic, listens at the start of the film to the postman, or nomad,
Otto. Later we learn that Otto is also a collector of inexplicable but
true incidences, where past events, amongst other things, actualise
themselves in that which we call the present. It is Otto’s narrative
on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) and on the eternal
recurrence of the same that leads to the film’s first sequence of ver‑
tically filmed black and white images of chaos, which in the form
of a vision that reveals itself to Alexander, anticipate both the war
and the son’s possible death.
During the bomber plane’s invocation of the war Alexander
goes into panic, and his first impulse is to shoot his son in order
to save him from the Apollinian catastrophe. He composes him‑
self, changes his mind and instead, for the first time in his life,
prays to God. He wishes to recall the events of the war, in order
that his son’s life might be saved. If God hears his prayer, he will
sacrifice the use of his voice as a thank you. But Otto pays him a
visit and urges him to seek out the witch Maria, whom he sleeps
with one night. Together with Maria in sexual orgiastic abandon‑
ment, Alexander succeeds in forgetting his angst for the future,
so the violent potentiality of the events does not take place. As an
end to the copulation, where the couple hover in the air, raised
high above the bed, Alexander’s vision is repeated: the black and
white film sequence showing vertical images of chaos. But this
sequence has appreciable differences from the earlier one. The
vision is now populated by people, and the final image shows the
son sleeping safely on a pillow.

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This depiction of the time of copulation, where past, present
and future co‑exist in an achronological, simultaneous time, can
occur with what Deleuze calls »pure« or »virtual« time. Deleuze
believes it is possible for film to illustrate this time in the time‑
image’s peaks of present (Deleuze 1989, 101). The immediate,
passing present is deactualised and chronological time, which is
created by sequences of the cause‑effect relation, is overlaid by
the time of the event. In the co‑existence of points of present,
this time‑image escapes the spatio‑temporal and causal em‑
bedment that is characteristic of the action‑image. All peaks of
present – the future’s present, present’s present and the past’s
present – co‑exist at the same time, and this simultaneity pre‑
cludes the creation of an ongoing narrative. Instead the viewer
is invited to dwell on the individual points or images of the
events, or more specifically to investigate the intermediate spaces
between the event’s individual points, so the event can be expe‑
rienced as fullness in time or as an extension. Deleuze explains
this in a way that is extremely appropriate to the development
of events in both Trier’s Antichrist and Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice:
We are, then, passing along different events, in accordance with an

explicit time or a form of succession which entails that a variety of
things fill the present one after another. It is quite different if we are
established inside one single event; if we plunge into an event that is
in preparation, arrives and is over; if for a longitudinal, pragmatic
view we substitute a vision which is purely optical, vertical, or, rather,
one in depth. The event is no longer confused with the space which
serves as its place, nor with the actual present which is passing: ›the
time of the event comes to an end before the event does, so the event
will start again at another time … the whole event is as it were in the
time where nothing happens‹, and it is in empty time that we anticipate
recollection, break up what is actual and locate the recollection once it
is formed. (Deleuze op. cit., 100)238
The development of the events in a pure, virtual time is shown in

The Sacrifice in the black and white sequences, which are found
238 Deleuze cites Bernard Groethuysen’s text on time in Recherches philosophiques, vol. 5, 1935‑1936.

CONTENTS
on the screen’s surface, where one is able to sense the individual
image elements in relation to one another in haptic ways.
It becomes possible for Alexander to escape the traumas of the
past and in so doing his angst for the future because he, in his
copulation with the witch Maria, experiences that all times have
several virtually possible results. In the joy of his newly found
freedom, Alexander sets fire to the past, represented by the fam‑
ily’s beautiful wooden house. He enjoys the anti‑aesthetic chaos
and accepts its repercussions on himself: his exile as a fool and
being labelled crazy. After the father trying all manner of things in
order to save his son’s innocence and happiness, the boy wanders
around the dead tree like a monk, which according to the father’s
story allowed life to return to the tree. In other words, the son
returns to the tradition, but whether this relates to a religious
practice or not remains unanswered and irrelevant. The most
important thing is that the withered tree transforms itself into
the tree of life through the constantly returning monk and his
efforts to water it. This is the cyclical practice the son undertakes.
Tarkovsky shows that if the experience of time as an event and as a
celebration of the eternal recurrence of the same is to be achieved
then it demands a sacrifice: the sacrifice of the Apollinian form.
And it is precisely this that the artist must be aware of.
Time as the »powers of the false«, creation

and transformation
If we now return one final time to Trier’s Antichrist, the inspiration

from Tarkovsky becomes clear. The low‑flying aeroplanes in The
Sacrifice become in Antichrist the fallen acorns and later the hail‑
storm. The witch’s song transforms into the many strange sounds
of nature (including the phantom wailing of the child, which ac‑
cording to Malleus Maleficarum is an expression of pure devilry).
The forest, the withered tree, the house made of wood, the in‑
nocent child and the burning, which initiates a new order, are all
symbolic ingredients Trier recycles from The Sacrifice. But Trier’s
dedication to Tarkovsky in Antichrist’s final scenes is probably due
to the style of images in particular. For Trier builds further on the
potential Tarkovsky shows when he allows the viewer to experience

CONTENTS
the event’s inner, virtual time through the peaks of present’s im‑
ages of pure time. They contain an inbuilt duplicity: no peaks of
present can be true simultaneously, and they are so enfolded that
they cannot be separated. If the points of present appear in series,
they can express time as a force or creation. This time‑image has
the ability to act as a power of the false, in that time as creation and
change constantly transforms stable and ›true‹ identities, so they
are seen and experienced as unstable and false.
In the concept of the powers of the false in Deleuze, we redis‑
cover Nietzsche and his interpretation of such falseness (beyond
lies and truth), such as the Dionysian force. Neither Tarkovsky
nor Trier support a classic contrast of truth and lies, but through
the powers of the false they create power of change in the filmic
material itself. This is the power of creation we are emotionally
struck by in haptic images, which in Trier are re‑worked in a
very specific way. Not unlike the use of the haptic images which
are manifest as visible pixels on the surface of the screen in The
Kingdom I and II, Trier transforms the film medium in order
to be able to document the creation of time, so it resembles the
real‑time transmission we recognise from electronic and digital
images. With his haptic forming of one of virtual time’s pure
forms – the peaks of present – Trier creates a Dionysian celebra‑
tion of time’s becoming and constant transformation. The haptic
can in this way characterise how the medium and its chronological
form can be rendered visible on the surface of the TV or cinema
screen. The time‑image’s peaks of present can thus be sensed
corporeally and directly on the screen, so to speak, before the
reflexive re‑working of what is seen is established. The texture of
the haptic surface, which as described is used in the majority of
Trier’s films in order to interpret psychic and hypnotic bound‑
ary states, is here given a demonic charge. The classic function
of the screen as an interface for the viewer’s voyeuristic, secured
identification is problematised stylistically as well as thematically.
The intro’s haptic‑affective layer ›performs‹ the event in that the
layer of signaletic material (the effect of the film’s high‑speed
recording) can be seen independently, similar to the falling snow.
The child’s fall follows on from both the woman’s and the man’s
orgiastic fall – but notably only after the child’s direct look into

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the camera has broken the viewer’s voyeuristic identification with
Trier’s barely hidden reference to a pornographic scenario. The
soprano aria »Lascia ch’io pianga« following the sequence of im‑
ages is a contributory factor in emphasising the event’s aspect in
the intro. It is not the case that the viewed sequence is merely
›filled in‹ with this or that – with (in a filmic sense, pragmatic)
content (cf. Deleuze 1989, 100, quoted above) – but, on the con‑
trary, the signaletic material performs an event in front of the
eyes of the viewer, who is, so to speak, ›caught by surprise‹. The
event is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The fall of
the child’s body is the visible, traumatic expression for the event,
but its actualisation is found in the audio‑visual sensation of the
time‑image’s peaks of present.
In extension of this we will return to how the film’s ending
and beginning, which both unfold as haptic black and white peaks
of present, relate to one another. In the final scenes where the
woman simultaneously confirms her identity as a witch and as a
Christian repenting her sins, because she has placed her lust be‑
fore her maternal instincts, a flashback to the introductory event
is shown, which at the first viewing withheld its question of guilt,
responsibility, truth and falseness. As mentioned previously, this
flashback of the woman with open, informed eyes is not congru‑
ent with the intro scene’s images of the woman, who abandons
herself to the sexual act with closed eyes. There is no question
of any reconstruction of an empirical sequence. There is, on the
other hand, the question of a false flashback where she (as was
the purpose of the man’s therapy the entire time) returns to and
re‑experiences the event from within – corresponding to the ex‑
perience of nature as something ›inner‹ and not merely something
that lies outside of one’s own corporeality. She acknowledges in
this scene that she cannot live with her guilt, and consequently she
chooses her own fate. Like Alexander in Tarkovsky’s film, in full
consciousness turning his back on the edifying aesthetic‑forming
world and choosing madness, the woman in Trier consciously
embraces her own ruin. The two worlds cannot co‑exist when a
judgement is to fall on truth or falsity. Some of the virtual must
be actualised and become form, identity or non‑identity. In the
same moment the woman renounces her own existence as iden‑

CONTENTS
tity and sacrifices herself/is killed as a person, the man becomes
a Dionysian, demonic, animalistic gestalt who, just as in nature,
breaks with all forms of linear time‑order, and who exists in all the
chaotic, intervening spaces in the peaks of present of the event.
It is this endlessly beautiful extension of the event’s virtual
time that we are presented with in the beginning of Antichrist,
and which shows itself in mystic ways in the final scenes. It is a
de‑individualised time, a non‑anchored, non‑materialised, non‑
sensorimotor time; although what we see most of all are bodies.
Both Tarkovsky and Trier choose to make this time sensory and
visible through haptic images which materialise in the surface of
the screen and negate depth. The haptic image is the constant
transformation of Dionysos and the Antichrist that creates meta‑
morphoses, without finding calm in an unambiguous aesthetic
form or a concluded self‑identical narrative. Perhaps that is why
this film cannot be dismissed, and no‑one wishes to know of the
judgement of others. As the man sees the woman as possessed and
does not include himself in the ›ME‹, which is expressed as »her‑
self«, the woman sees the man as an objectifying therapist or as
the Devil himself. As the two interpretations of the woman’s way
of being present – either jouissance with closed eyes or informed
with open eyes – exist simultaneously, Trier makes it impossible
in Antichrist to determine what is true and who is guilty. But
conversely, the viewer can experience truth as something that
is created, in that the event unfolds in an actualisation. And it is
here – in the midst of the development of the event – that the
greatest failure and the most violent transformation can take place
in relations; for example, between two people:
Two people know each other, but already knew each other and do not
yet know each other. Betrayal happens, it never happened, and yet
has happened and will happen, sometimes one betraying the other
and sometimes the other betraying the first – all at the same time.
(Deleuze 1989, 101)
This might perhaps answer the question of why the second ›t‹
in the title Antichrist resembles a mixture of the female sign and
a cross: because the woman in Antichrist resembles Nietzsche’s

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notion about the Antichrist in that both relate to the potential of
the forces of nature to bring about change and search for a kind
of haptic counter‑violence or smooth space, which can reverse
an Apollinian (or religious) endeavour towards the thoroughly
organised optic space. Nietzsche makes a working drawing of
the Antichrist as a potential for resistance, which actually ex‑
ists, even if marginalised in Christianity itself, and because Trier
transfers this potential to the power of the female sign and also
historically implicates Christianity’s demonising of the female,
he re‑actualises Nietzsche’s orbit of the Dionysian, Antichrist‑
like forces. The battle between Dionysian and Apollinian forces
develops, according to both Nietzsche and Trier (and Deleuze),
always and on all levels of the social space. And perhaps it is the
shadow of Dionysos or the Antichrist, as Maffesoli sees it in light
of his cyclical contingency, which in the end preserves tradi‑
tion; for though collective forms of ›orgies‹ can create panic and
be transcendent, »Dionysian wisdom, even in its most shocking
forms, remains the lesser evil« (Maffesoli, 102). This insight can
also be said to be valid for the use of the power of the false in
the form of the open, orgiastic female face and in the use of the
female sign in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.
Melancholia – the world’s Dionysian underground

Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s second film in the Depression Tril‑
ogy, is, like Antichrist, an intertextual cocktail of symbolic, trans‑
gressive images and an ultra‑close‑up registering of the processes
of nature, which is stylistically indebted to Tarkovsky. But while
Antichrist borrows traits from horror films of the 1980s and on‑
wards, characterised by unnatural colours, body parts acting in‑
dependently and overwhelming sound, Melancholia places a more
edifying emphasis on the creativity a melancholic‑depressive dis‑
position can activate. An obvious shared trait in the two films is the
classical music of the overture, accompanied by digitally modulat‑
ed images in slow motion.239 The overture’s acoustic parts together
239 As mentioned earlier, these are particular recordings filmed at high speed and played back at a nor‑
mal or slower speed. The video artist Bill Viola is also known for his experiments with high‑speed images.

CONTENTS
strike several philosophical modes, which are repeated through‑
out the narrative and, as with a symphony or opera, are redeemed
in the finale’s crescendo. Clear interpretive cues are laid out for
the analyst in both films, but one finds – as always in Trier – just
as many prosaic or ironic references.240 This chapter will pursue
the philosophical line and the tone set by the Tristan chord, from
Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (1865), which is also found as
a recurrent theme in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872)241 – a
work that, like Wagner’s opera, was inspired by the philosophy of
Arthur Schopenhauer. This chapter will also briefly refer to August
Blom’s Danish silent film The End of the World (1916).242
Antichrist ends by depicting the man in the same way as Mal-
leus Malleficarum describes the Devil: as an animal, helping it‑
self to the fruits and berries of the forest without heeding the
thorns. But as mentioned previously, his gaze displays an enjoy‑
ment and indulgence reminiscent of – in a Nietzschean sense –
the Antichrist‑like Dionysos. The eternal cycle of nature, upon
which our fragmentary life rests, must be validated in art, where
the potential for change (with Deleuze [1962] 2006) includes a
becoming‑woman and becoming‑animal. In Julia Kristeva, the
artist’s ability to transgress the established order and the predomi‑
nant language (in, for example, the horror genre) becomes vital
for the regeneration of culture (Kristeva 1982). She maintains
that the artist must associate with the abject as something that is
neither subject nor object, but which nonetheless is inseparable
from his/her own being (man or woman), in order to transgress
merely intellectual practice. She continues:
For abjection, when all is said and done, is the other facet of religious,
moral, and ideological codes on which rest the sleep of individuals and
the breathing spells of societies. Such codes are abjection’s purification
and repression. But the return of their repressed make up our »apoca‑
240 In Melancholia there is a repetition of the phrase »Enjoy it while it lasts!«, which is associated with
the popular Carlsberg beer advertisement from the 2010s.
241 The subtitle of this section refers additionally to the final page of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy:
»of that foundation of all existence, that Dionysiac underground of the world« (Nietzsche [1872] 1999, 115).
NB: I have referred to the Cambridge translation by Ronald Speirs throughout, in which he chooses the
term ›Dionysiac‹, whereas I prefer to use ›Dionysian‹.
242 For a more detailed description of The End of the World, see Claire Thomson 2013b.

CONTENTS
lypse,« and that is why we cannot escape the dramatic convulsions of
religious crises.
In the end, our only difference [from the artists] is our unwilling‑
ness to have a face‑to‑face confrontation with the abject. Who would
want to be a prophet? For we have lost faith in One Master Signifier.
We prefer to foresee or seduce; to plan ahead, promise a recovery, or
esthetize; to provide social security or make art not too far removed
from the level of the media. (Kristeva 1982, 209)
This argument pervades the following analysis of Lars von Trier’s

Melancholia, since the abject in Kristeva is, in this context, another
word for Dionysian creation in Nietzsche, whose book The Birth
of Tragedy (1872) plays an equally important role in Melancholia
as his book The Anti-Christ (1888) played in Trier’s film Antichrist
(2009). With The Birth of Tragedy, whose first two editions had the
subtitle »‑ from the Spirit of Music«, Nietzsche advances a kind of
manifesto for artistic creation, which with a background in musical
tonality can strike a Dionysian insight or artistic will, tearing apart
the limited (Apollinian) individualising world of images in order to
gain insight into more collective Dionysian forces, which appear
to affect all things. The Dionysian creative force corresponds with
the abject’s mould‑breaking and renewing role in (horror) fiction
in Kristeva, and this again plays well with the affective potentials in
art and culture established by Deleuze and later Brian Massumi. In
contrast to Trier’s Antichrist, where a classic horror motif prevails,
the following analysis will show how Melancholia invites a reinter‑
pretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the tragic and Schopenhauer’s
concept of the melancholic position – and how interpretations of
both are contained in Trier’s film.
›Melancholia‹ is the Greek designation for black bile, which
from circa 400 BC was believed to be behind the pessimistic or
depressed character, and constituted one of the four tempera‑
ments, the others being sanguine (optimistic), choleric (irascible)
and phlegmatic (steady). In Melancholia it is clear that Justine
(Kirsten Dunst)243 plays out Trier’s alter ego in her role as an artist
243 Lars von Trier has often mentioned a fascination with the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (written in 1787
and published in several versions in 1781, 1801 and 1815 respectively). The novel tells of how Justine and

CONTENTS
who dares to confront the abject or Dionysian forces. Her melan‑
cholic register is described as being particularly sensitive towards
the affective exchanges created by the catastrophe. It wakes her
lethargic creative forces into life, so that in the eye of the hurri‑
cane she shows herself to have Herculean strength. This register
remains unintelligible to the other temperaments, represented by
her choleric mother, Gaby (Charlotte Rampling), her sanguine
father, Dexter (John Hurt), and her phlegmatic boss, Jack (Stellan
Skarsgård). Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother‑
in‑law John (Kiefer Sutherland) attempt, in various ways, to steer
clear of the chaotic limbo by controlling any sign of affect and every
penetration from without that might disturb the order that reigns
in their immediate surroundings. The couple’s strategies alter‑
natingly predict, plan and aestheticise (cf. citation from Kristeva
above), in order for them to steer clear of the Dionysian, affective
force here depicted as nothing less than the end of the world – and
which I along with Nietzsche will interpret as the »Dionysiac un‑
derground of the world« (cf. Nietzsche [1872] 1999, 115).
The film’s plot falls into two parts. In the first, »Justine«, a
lavish wedding party is held for Justine and Michael (Alexander
Skarsgaard) at Claire and John’s Tudor‑style property.244 The
wedding disintegrates, in part because it is infected by Justine’s
extremely depressive condition, which makes the groom as well
as the guests withdraw. The reason for her unrest is the planet
Melancholia, which shows itself in the sky during the party, and
which in the film’s second part, »Claire«, makes up the orbit of the
catastrophe. Here an insight into Justine’s affective register is sup‑
plemented with an insight into the patterns of conduct laid out for
the day by Claire and John. Justine, who breaks free from her de‑
pressive paralysis and shows energy in the chaos of the apocalypse,
helps both Claire and her and John’s son, Leo (Cameron Spurr), to
(with Nietzsche) meet the Dionysian‑lyrical »swirl of images«.245
her sister Juliette survive as noblewomen without parents and without means. They use their sexuality in
various ways. Juliette uses her sexuality with cunning, so she eventually gains both riches and status, while
Justine, who tries in vain to follow the righteous path, is abused sexually by people of all social classes.
244 The exterior shots are from the Swedish castle Tjolöholm, which was rebuilt in the English‑inspired
Tudor style in the period 1898‑1904.
245 Cf. Isak Winkel Holm’s preface to the Danish edition of The Birth of Tragedy. The Danish word is
»billedhvirvel« (Holm 1996, 14).

CONTENTS
In accordance with the majority of Trier’s films after the
Dogme experiment, this swirl of images is depicted with the help
of hand‑held camerawork, which afterwards can develop into
an entire aesthetic, where error and misunderstandings are cel‑
ebrated. Melancholia’s Director of Photography, Manuel Alberto
Claro, describes Trier’s instructions to him in this way: »Follow
the energy, follow the acting. Don’t worry about mistakes. I love
mistakes. Mistakes are gifts«. Claro concludes:
I think one of the basic things in Lars von Trier’s camera style is that
the camera must not know anything of what is going on. It has to react
instantly or impulsively to what’s happening. And we do that by not
preparing anything, but even the actors, they don’t know what to do.
They don’t get any directions for the first take. You do the first take, and
nobody knows anything. They just do whatever they believe is written
in the script, and then Lars adjusts from there. (Manuel Alberto Claro,
DVD extra material)
Trier himself comments that one becomes seasick watching foot‑

age from the hand‑held camera if one attempts to see the frame
the entire time – but not if one focuses on what happens inside
the frame (DVD extra material). This defence of the signaletic
material and the haptic reality effect of the hand‑held camera
shows clearly how Trier prioritises the expressive, the intuitive and
immediate, which puts the forces of affect in the foreground.246
Iconoclasm
After seeing the planet Melancholia for the first time in the
first part of the film, Justine renounces the role of the happy
bride in the narrative of great love, which is bound in religious
and social rituals. She rudely ignores Michael’s notion of the
family with children, which is presented to her in the form of a
›paradisiacal‹ photograph of an apple orchard. She also refuses
to prostitute herself over another image showing three naked
246 Additionally, in Melancholia the same visual means are used as in Antichrist (though not the small
baby lenses, which depicted the panic attacks).

CONTENTS
female characters lying on the floor, as if they were skewered by
table legs.247 This image, projected in large format, is displayed
by Jack during the wedding meal, as he simultaneously demands
that Justine, on account of her promotion to art director, should
that same evening give the image a slogan. She refuses and as‑
saults Jack’s errand boy, Tim (Brady Corbet). Later she gives Jack
a piece of her mind and speaks from the heart, like Cordelia in
Shakespeare’s King Lear. Both Cordelia and Justine reply with
the word ›Nothing‹ when they are expected to say something
complimentary and flattering. Justine turns her back on the easy
money, which always tempts the artist, with the words: »You are
a despicable power‑hungry little man, Jack.« But her most radical
manifestation of the affective Dionysian force, which destroys the
wedding’s compulsion towards form, takes place in the library
in the form of a kind of iconoclasm. Claire has just chided her
sister with the words: »You’re lying to all of us«, because Justine
has turned her back on Michael’s naïve dream of the future.
Later, when she is alone, a teary Justine notices the shelving of a
number of art books, which amongst other things show concrete
abstractions of Kazimir Malevich. She affectively tears down –
depicted with clearly hand‑held camera work – book after book
and pores over them until she finds references to more classic
works with identifiable motifs: Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in
the Snow (1565), John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851), Bruegel
the Elder’s The Land of Cockaigne (1567),248 Caravaggio’s David
with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610) and Carl Fredrik Hill’s Crying
Deer (end of the 1900s). In this juxtaposed composition they
make up both an homage to Melancholia’s gloomy tone (the
winter landscape) and indicate possible ways out of the condi‑
tion (suicide, losing oneself in wine and food, the victory of the
brave over his superior).249
247 With intertextual reference to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s horror pastiche From
Dusk till Dawn (1996), where demons in female form are skewered with table legs.
248 This painting also depicts three bodies under a table. These are, however, well‑fed men who have
stuffed themselves with good food and wine, while the aforementioned advertisment image depicts three
naked, anorexic women.
249 In his informative article on Dürer’s Melancholia, Tsu‑Chung Su writes that in several places he
illustrated the four temperaments in the form of animal motifs. Thus in Adam og Eve (1504) the bull is de‑
scribed as phlegmatic, the red deer as melancholic, the rabbit as sanguine and the cat as choleric (Su 2007).

CONTENTS
This manifestation sets the tone for the destructive Dionysian
force of the depressive condition, whose affective tonality is shown
in Justine’s mother, Gaby, and her refusal to answer her daugh‑
ter’s cry for help. She chooses to interpret Justine’s registering
of the coming catastrophe as self‑centredness. Just like Justine’s
father, Dexter, she follows her own needs and escapes. The jilted
groom and the guests do the same, as the melancholic register
leaves no naïve hope for anyone.
The rescue of melancholia from ›the world as will

and idea‹
In part two, »Claire«, Justine arrives in a lethargic, depressive state

in order to be cared for by Claire and John, and she is transformed
with the help of the planet Melancholia. This happens especially
after her nocturnal bathing in the light from the planet.250 In this
scene the bluish colour is clearly perceived as melancholic ton‑
ing, which stands in contrast to the warmer, golden toning in the
first part of the film (cf. Director of Photography Manuel Alberto
Claro’s explanation in the DVD’s extra material).
In this beautiful scene, where the planet’s blue and translucent
membrane of light almost melds together with Justine’s naked
flesh as if in osmosis, the film creates a kind of visual, symbolic
recognition of Dionysian forces in an artistic context. In The Birth
of Tragedy Nietzsche describes the Dionysian impulse in relation
to the intoxication of forgetting oneself:
These Dionysiac stirrings, which, as they grow in intensity, cause sub‑

jectivity to vanish to the point of complete self‑forgetting, awaken either
under the influence of narcotic drink, of which all human beings and
peoples who are close to the origin of things speak in their hymns, or
at the approach of spring when the whole of nature is pervaded by lust
for life. […] There are those who, whether from lack of experience
250 Cf. lunacy or capriciousness, which since Aristotle has been a designation for insanity, in that it was
assumed that the full moon affected the fluid in the brain, in a similar manner to the way the sun and moon
affect the tide. No scientific reason can be given for this. The scene where Justine goes ›skinny dipping‹ in
Melancholia’s light mimics very precisely the poster for Holger Madsen’s A Trip to Mars (1918), which was
re‑released on the same DVD as The End of the World (1916), and which I will discuss later.

CONTENTS
Justine (Kirsten Dunst) bathes in Melancholia’s nocturnal light.
or from dullness of spirit, turn away in scorn or pity from such phe‑
nomena, regarding them as ›popular diseases‹ while believing in their
own good health; of course, these poor creatures have not the slightest
inkling of how spectral and deathly pale their ›health‹ seems when the
glowing life of Dionysiac enthusiasts storms past them. (Nietzsche
[1872] 1999, 17‑18)
Nietzsche’s Dionysos emphasises the exchange with the forces of

nature found in ecstasy and intoxication, and makes the cult’s pro‑
to‑forces into an antithesis of the Apollinian forces, which create
order and systems (in music, poetry and medicine). On the other
hand, if we follow Arthur Schopenhauer, who was Nietzsche’s
inspiration for The Birth of Tragedy, the power of the will that
occurs in everything as will to life is something to be renounced.
In The World as Will and Idea (1818), Schopenhauer revises Kant’s
notion of an object ›in itself‹ (an Sich), in that it is in its appear‑
ance that it gains a kind of effect on the subject. Schopenhauer
argues that »cause and effect exist only for the understanding,

CONTENTS
which is nothing but their subjective correlative« (op. cit., 45).251
The subject is reduced to representation and is unable to go be‑
yond it, and the existence of the world is founded here, which is
why »all knowledge of an object proper, of an idea perceived in
space, exists only through and for the understanding; therefore
not before, but only subsequently to its operation« (op. cit., 46).
Philosophy occurs as a necessary reflection on the agonising and
enigmatic world, and as a biological and physiological basis for
thought (the brain). Humans are equipped with their own will;
this will or ›inner nature of everything‹, which we have access to
through our own corporeal senses and will to survive, is in its
way animalistic and cyclical and cannot be realised or ordered
by our intellect. The worst incarnation of the will is found in
humans who hunt, and exploit and consume nature, including
other humans. Schopenhauer expresses it – in this context – in
an appropriate way:
Now the nature of man consists in this, that his will strives, is satisfied
and strives anew, and so on for ever. Indeed, his happiness and well‑
being consist simply in the quick transition from wish to satisfaction,
and from satisfaction to a new wish. For the absence of satisfaction is
suffering, the empty longing for a new wish, languor, ennui. (Op. cit.,
339; author’s italics)252
This being refers to a life of suffering, subsumed by the will’s insa‑

tiable demands, and can either be lightened through the contem‑
plation of art’s repetition of the idea (in a Platonic sense) where
the flux of time can be halted momentarily, or be repudiated in
the pain of melancholia, or (more seldom) in an »inward, intui‑
tive knowledge« (op. cit., 489). Schopenhauer’s final sentence in
The World as Will and Idea sends us directly back to Melancholia.
He writes:
251 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. 2, in Werke in fünf Bänden. Ludger Lütkehaus: Zürich,
1988. Here quoted from the English version, in The Project Gutenberg eBook: www.gutenberg.org/
files/38427/38427‑pdf.pdf (last viewed 22 June 2017).
252 My reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is indebted to Søren R. Fauth’s interpretation (Fauth
2009), quoted in more depth in the Danish version of Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film (1984-2014).

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Rather do we [the philosopher rooted in melancholia with no comfort
in mysticism] freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire
abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing;
but conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied
itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky‑ways
– is nothing. (Op. cit., 526)
It is this – romantic melancholia’s repudiation of the striving of

will – which Trier (with Nietzsche) turns on its head in Melan-
cholia. As is evident in Nietzsche’s description of the intoxication,
sympathy exists only in the will’s Dionysian‑creating power. This
power, which can also be said to be the driving force for the mod‑
ern (cf. Freud and Lacan), becomes in Trier a pivotal point for
the idea that melancholic depression is depicted as a particular
register for affective influences and exchanges, illustrated by the
planet’s modulating blue surface, which is reflected in Justine.
As in Nietzsche’s interpretation of the ancient myths, Dionysian
(self) destruction and mutilation is the condition for artistic crea‑
tion and the reinterpretation of all values.
Tristan und Isolde – Wagner as intermediary

According to Schopenhauer, music can give us a cognitive short‑
cut to the will of the world. It is in the paradoxical recognition
of music’s non‑linguistic power as being superior not only to
all genres of art but also to philosophy that we find one of the
keys to understanding contemporary Romanticism. It is in the
idea of the familial relation of music and religion that both
Nietzsche and Wagner find inspiration in Schopenhauer. He
regards music as an immediate representation of the powers of
the world’s will: joy, sorrow, suffering and pain in itself – and
though not necessarily attached to this or that sorrow or joy,
Schopenhauer believes that music, as a direct interpretation of
the mental state, is capable of creating a form of resistance in
its dissonances and harmonisations, and treating various forms
of suffering brought about by the life‑will. Although it cannot
directly represent our actual suffering, music can nevertheless
appear as a momentary release from it. And music goes one bet‑

CONTENTS
ter than the other art forms: it can be both obscure and removed,
yet communicate inner affective states (Lütkehaus, 103). Wagner
was greatly inspired by the philosophy of Schopenhauer when
he wrote Tristan und Isolde, which premiered in 1865. Nietzsche
considered – also after his break with Wagner – the opera as an
eminent interpretation of the eternal struggle between Dionysian
and Apollinian forces, and he especially extolled the melancholic
dissonance in the so‑called ›Tristan chord‹. Where the lacking
harmonisation was a source of dissociation in Wagner’s time, it
is precisely the characteristic use of triads with dissonant inter‑
vals and unfinished cadences that Nietzsche draws attention to
in The Birth of Tragedy:
The pleasure engendered by the tragic myth comes from the same
homeland as our pleasurable sensation of dissonance in music. The
Dionysiac,253 with the primal pleasure it perceives even in pain, is the
common womb from which both music and the tragic myth are born.
(Nietzsche op. cit., 114)
Where Schopenhauer diagnoses both classical art and traditional

philosophy as having become displaced in the contemporary world
and prescribes withdrawal or musical confrontation against the
power of the will, the ›philosopher with a hammer‹, Nietzsche,
prescribes an overthrow and re‑evaluation of all values, giving
space to the Dionysian destructive, but also affirmative, power.
Because art can achieve more than nihilism, in Nietzsche it is
given the role of the spearhead of philosophy. Art can confront
us with the abyss – the Dionysian underground – and present
nothingness, which is the condition for creativity. And it is this
– his and Wagner’s romantic gesture towards that which cannot
(yet) be represented and symbolically or emotionally contained
– that sets the tone for the modern world.
It is in this abyss/underground that Lars von Trier’s Melan-
cholia allows the world to go to ruin and thus be resurrected as a
253 In the quoted sections from the Cambridge University Press translation of The Birth of Tragedy, the
term ›Dionysiac‹ is used. However, I prefer the term ›Dionysian‹ instead, and have used this throughout
the remainder of the book.

CONTENTS
film. In the figure of Justine we find, without doubt, an autobio‑
graphical depiction of the melancholic/depressive register, which
through an artistic reworking – the film Melancholia – creates,
in Kristeva’s words, a link between affect and sign (Lechte 1990,
36). The unrepresentable becomes interpreted when it is given
a voice, sound and images. As with the characters in Tarkovsky,
Justine seeks the absolute, and as in Nostalgia (1983) and Stalker
(1979), the earth becomes porous and its fissures and cracks be‑
come inviting.254 But rather than embarking on a futile attempt
to escape – as with Claire – Justine embraces the creative chaos,
which in fact gives her strength to be in the event’s reinterpreting
creation. As in Nietzschean philosophy, she seeks melancholia’s
creative abyss, and Trier attempts to ensure that the viewer also
remains there – submerged in reflections of whether the inherit‑
ance from Wagner and Nietzsche still holds true today, more than
70 years after the Nazi interpretation and political application of
them.255
The end of the world – figures for interpretation
The overture to Tristan und Isolde at the beginning of the film

plays over the image of a pale Justine, who slowly opens her eyes.
They are without spark – empty. The viewer is invited to see
with her melancholic gaze, just as the viewer at the beginning of
Antichrist is invited to see as if through the boy’s – Nick, the lit‑
tle demon – knowing and slightly teasing gaze. The film’s central
visual elements are then presented in the so‑called visualisation
scenes, which are also employed in Antichrist, where the monu‑
254 Stylistically, in this film Trier also borrows many things from Tarkovsky, amongst them the ref‑
erence to Brueghel’s picture Hunters in the Snow, which also appears in Solaris (1972). Cf. also C. Claire
Thomson’s article on Solaris and Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love (Thomson 2007).
255 Cf. Trier’s appearance at the Cannes film festival in spring 2011 (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=stjM2q3D8I4 (last viewed 4 April 2015)). This public appearance took its starting point in a ques‑
tion about Trier’s thoughts on the Nazi aesthetic, in relation to his own remarks in an interview with Per
Juul Carlsen, in which he discusses Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde as inspiration, diverted by Marcel Proust’s
homage to the opera. In extension of this he declares a soft spot for the Nazi aesthetic, which amongst
other things showed itself in an interest in the design of their planes (Carlsen 2011).

CONTENTS
mental expression is intensified by digital high‑speed recording,
making it possible to slow down the filmic time.256
The film’s introductory images together with the Tristan chord
indicate the atmosphere. Melancholia is the affective register, and
remains the dominant filter throughout the film. With regard to
the film’s theme, there are (aside from the reference to Tarko‑
vsky’s Solaris and maybe especially to Khari and her recurring
ghost) a number of similarities with the Danish silent film The End
of the World, directed by August Blom and produced by Nordisk
Films Kompagni in 1916.257 Blom’s film has a fair‑haired sister
and dark‑haired sister in the leading roles and depicts the eternal
struggle between faith and knowledge, which is won by the fairer,
believing sister. She and her fiancée survive, in contrast to the
dark‑haired sister who dies in the mine with her husband, the
film’s villain. In several scenes an enormous telescope appears
showing the comet’s disruptive trajectory. The telescope is to a
large extent a ›scientific fetish‹ in the film, which, however, allows
the religious faith a kind of ›victory‹ beyond the catastrophe.
This is not the case in Melancholia, where there are neither
metaphysical nor scientific ways out of the Schopenhauerian
wretchedness. The fairer sister is dark of mind and waves away all
rational outlooks on life, while the darker sister and her husband
256 Initially it is all seen from a mental, symbolic level: 1) birds fall from the sky; 2) a baroque garden,
à la the garden in Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe Grillet’s co‑production Last Year at Marienbad (1961),
with thuja trees and a sundial projecting two shadows; 3) Brueghel’s painting Hunters in the Snow, which
slowly transforms into soot; 4) the planet Melancholia, which blots out the light from the other planets
as it approaches Earth. It is then registered from a more physical level as to how the planet’s orbit affects
Earth and its inhabitants: 1) Claire, with her son in her arms on a golf course, sinks down into the ground
with each step as if it were snow; 2) a horse, which collapses under its own weight; 3) Justine with arms
spread out stands still amongst the swarming insects in the dusk; 4) Justine, Leo and Claire, who, with
the main building in the background as a gothic backdrop, are seen walking in the baroque garden with
Melancholia, the moon and sun hovering above their heads; 5) the Earth, which from outer space circles
clockwise around Melancholia; 6) Justine, whose hands ›attract‹ the electric power streams to her; 7) Justine
in a wedding dress being hindered in her steps by some black material, which sticks to her feet like wool; 8)
the planet Melancholia, which ›swallows‹ the Earth – as seen from outer space; 9) a mosaic window in the
mansion, which is lit up in an obscure manner by a golden sphere containing a burning flame, reminiscent
of Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melancholia (1514), but also the numerous representations of the annunci‑
ation of the Virgin Mary, where the angel is guided by a dove and a beam of light from heaven, which falls
on Mary; 10) Justine, who appears as Ophelia painted by John Everett Millais (1851); 11) Leo and Justine,
who whittle branches in the forest with a penknife; 12) the Earth, which penetrates Melancholia’s mem‑
brane.
257 The film was made during the First World War and inspired by the fear that Halley’s comet, which
was close to the earth’s orbit in April 1910, might collide with the Earth. In 2006, in connection with 100
years of Nordisk Film, it was re‑released by the DFI (Danish Film Institute) in a digitally restored version.

CONTENTS
believe in the rationality of science beyond what is observable
through the senses. This is illustrated primarily by the telescope
that John, in the film’s second part, sets up on the veranda so
the whole family can be assured of the superiority of science.
However, during the course of the film he must acknowledge that
science has miscalculated the orbit of the planet Melancholia,258
and his world falls apart. His line of escape is suicide – with the
pills that Claire had intended to use herself. John dies a cowardly
death, lying under the hooves of Justine’s fiery stallion.259 After
this, Leo’s homemade measuring instrument becomes Claire’s
bearing. Its metal loop is adjustable so it can indicate the diameter
of the planet, as the person who is carrying out the measurement
holds it in the middle of their breast. Next one must wait, and
thereafter a measurement is again made in the same way. The
subject is, in other words, included in what is measured. Scien‑
tific objectification is not possible (no ›Ding an Sich‹), because
everything forms part of the same world.
The two methods of measurement correspond to an optic
and a haptic view, which Deleuze rather appropriately depicts as
›lookouts‹ with short‑distance and long‑distance vision respec‑
tively in A Thousand Plateaus. They refer to the novella »Histoire
du gouffre et de la lunette« (»The Story of the Abyss and the
Spyglass«) by Pierrette Fleutiaux (1976). The near‑seers »have
a simple spyglass«, which »in the abyss […] see[s] the outline of
gigantic cells, great binary divisions, dichotomies, well‑defined
segments«, but if something appears unclear, »they bring out the
terrible Ray Telescope. It is used not to see with but to cut with,
to cut out shapes.« This instrument »acts on flesh and blood, but
itself is nothing but pure geometry, as a State affair« (Deleuze and
Guattari 2013, 235). The far‑seers, who see in a haptic manner,
and have telescopes that are »complex and refined« and »see a
whole microsegmentarity, details of details, ›a rollercoaster of
possibilities,‹ tiny movements that have not reached the edge,
lines or vibrations that start to form long before there are outlined
258 Several diagrams show (as in The End of the World) Melancholia’s peculiar trajectory.
259 This is most likely an intertextual reference to Bernardo Bertolucci’s film 1900 (1976), in which
Kiefer Sutherland’s father, Donald Sutherland, plays the sadistic fascist Attila, who is murdered in a barn in
retribution for the gruesome acts he perpetrated during the war.

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A smiling Justine with Melancholia’s first physical manifestation.
shapes« (op. cit.). They »can divine the future, but always in the
form of a becoming of something that has already happened in a
molecular matter; unfindable particles« (ibid.).
John clearly belongs to the first category and Justine the latter.
The two types cannot communicate because one »sees, speaks,
and thinks on a given scale, and according to a given line that
may or may not conjugate with the other’s line, even if the other
is still oneself«, and one ought not to insist because »you first have
to change telescopes, mouths, and teeth, all of the segments« (op.
cit., 236). Justine is a far-seer and registers the tiniest changes,
but she does not attempt to master them. A fine example is when
Claire and Justine are picking berries, and something white drifts
down from the sky; both register it, but Claire becomes anxious
while Justine smiles, and that same evening she has her above-
mentioned tryst with Melancholia.
Affect and event
Justine does not fear the affective register; on the contrary, she
follows the music’s tonalities, the landscape’s modulations and
the trajectory of catastrophe. According to Brian Massumi, the

CONTENTS
affective register accounts for our current global media reality,
which like the film of Walter Benjamin’s time creates tactile forms
of shock.260 The affective cannot be understood in relation to
classic analyses of ideology and political power, in that it also ac‑
tualises virtual possibilities for events and conditions the senses‹
synaesthesia and embedment of emotions in a subjective register:
Affects are virtual synesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally

limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them.
The autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual. Its autonomy
is its openness. Affect is autonomous to the degree to which it escapes
confinement in the particular body whose vitality, or potential for in‑
teraction, it is. Formed, qualified, situated perception and cognitions
fulfilling functions of actual connection or blockage are the capture
and closure of affect. Emotion is the most intense (most contracted)
expression of that capture – and of the fact that something has always
and again escaped. Something remains unactualized, inseparable from
the unassimilable to any particular, functionally anchored perspective.
That is why all emotion is more or less disorienting, and why it is clas‑
sically described as being outside of oneself, at the very point at which
one is most intimately and unshareably in contact with oneself and one’s
vitality. If there were no escape, no excess or remainder, no fade‑out to
infinity, the universe would be without potential, pure entropy, death.
(Massumi 2002a, 35; author’s italics)
Justine is like a melancholic‑Dionysian person in contact with cha‑

os. She belongs to the far‑seer type, who microperceptively ›see
through things‹ and sense the arrival of an event before the ma‑
jority does. In the first part of the film she is facing the abyss after
affectively sensing that the planet’s trajectory will cross the Earth’s
and she turns away from the doings of the world – marriage, suc‑
cess, future. Because she melancholically distances herself from the
will to live, she follows Schopenhauer’s recipe for the philosophical
position, so to speak. In the film’s second part, Justine has yielded
260 Cf. also the conversation »Affective attunement in the field of catastrophe« between Erin Manning,
Brian Massumi, Jonas Fritsch and myself in Massumi 2015 (112‑146), first published in Danish in Peripeti
no. 17 (2012), as well as in the English full version: http://www.peripeti.dk/2012/06/06/affective‑attune‑
ment‑in‑a‑field‑of‑catastrophe/ (last viewed 5 April 2015).

CONTENTS
to the event and she manoeuvres like another Zarathustra in chaos,
allowing other values to occur.261 The Earth we have created is evil,
she says, with melancholy, but the event allows something new to
happen. It is the film’s assertion that chaos is creative, and that art
can unfold intensive and affective intermediaries that can reinvig‑
orate the world. The world that is torn asunder in Melancholia is
a limited world, controlled by the horizon of the near‑seer, who
chooses to be blind to the fact that the affective, immanent world’s
constant exchanges create new transindividual relations.
The affective collision and the transindividual affective accord
are shown positively in the form of Leo’s instrument of measure‑
ment and negatively in the limousine’s impossible passage down
the windy road. In the double layer of berry‑picking, where we
see as if through a membrane,262 two different forms of affective
response become equally obvious. The haptic level, which in the
latter example lies closest to the viewer, describes an affective
sensing of intensity, while the furthest layer describes the relation
between the two sisters. The image’s haptic level diagrammati‑
cally disturbs the recounted story in the form of a kind of ›snow‹
or ›ash‹ that strengthens and disturbs the two forms of opening
towards the world respectively. In the introduction’s high-speed
visualisation scenes one might say that we sense the nearing of
the events as much as see them, as if in a microsensory becoming
– through a haptic layer of deep colours and play with shadows
and nuances. We sense how the earth gives way, how the stride
is hindered, how the knife cuts the wood, and how the horse
falls gently to the ground. In this sequence of tableau images
the represented story and the sensorimotor agents are handled
directly through the medium; what is being shown is how the
body’s actions can modulate in the signaletic material. The body
appears to be subsumed by the destruction of the film’s signaletic
material, and as such those portrayed are too – as they belong to
the affective autonomous register.
261 Trier perhaps also had Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in mind. This film opens with a shot
of two planets and Richard Strauss‹ music Also sprach Zarathustra (1896).
262 Cf. Schopenhauer’s veil or skin, the representations linked to the blind driving force of the will, are
torn apart in Nietzsche in order to gain access to another interpretation of the will in the form of the Dio‑
nysian primordial force and creation.

CONTENTS
Schopenhauer’s melancholia, Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra, and Arendt’s thinker
Julia Kristeva employs Hannah Arendt’s rhetorical question about

philosophers being heralds or therapists for the despair and lone‑
liness that drives totalitarianism. She answers that philosophers
have always been notoriously melancholic types of men (Kristeva
2001, 196), and that from the time of Plato they have made hu‑
mans into demigods and transformed the gods themselves into
reason/thought. From Parmenides to Descartes, being has been
ascribed to thought, and the world is thus redoubled in thought –
and therefore each event is reduced to ›the same‹/›the different‹.
Therefore we never feel alone in thought: we hold ourselves in
company. But the problem is that the philosopher never reaches
the central point – the person as an acting and political creature.
What is lacking, according to Arendt, is reflection over the dis‑
tance (and the abyss) between the common world and the world
of thought. Arendt challenges the depths of the abyss with her
dictum: »[t]o think and to be fully alive are the same« (Kristeva
op. cit., 42). With this she affiliates Nietzsche with the notion that
life and thought and the relations in between are collated in order
for the world to be populated.263
It is the old, near‑sighted world and its lookouts that perish in
Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. The world that appears when the
old one perishes is attributed to the Dionysian renewal of natural
forces, which in Nietzsche also involves a celebration of the eter‑
nal recurrence of the same.264 It is a world that begs comparison
with Zarathustra’s speech:
They hate the creator most: him who breaks the law‑tables and the old
values, the breaker – they call him the law‑breaker.
For the good – cannot create: they are always the beginning of the end: ‑
they crucify him who writes new values on new law‑tables, they sacrifice
the future to themselves – they crucify the whole human future!
263 This viewpoint is also shared by Massumi who, in Semblance and Event, develops this link in chapter
2, »The Thinking‑Feeling of What Happens: Putting the Radical Back in Empirism« (Massumi 2011).
264 A detailed exposition of the eternal recurrence can be found in Keith Ansell Pearson 2002, chap‑
ter 7.

CONTENTS
Justine symbolised with Melancholia, Leo with the half‑moon, and Claire with
the sun.
The good – have always been the beginning of the end. (Nietzsche
1969, 229‑230)
It makes sense to view the film’s two parts as a depiction of Jus‑

tine’s (in the beginning all too open) affective concordance with
the catastrophe and Claire’s (and John’s) attempts to control the
fear (and the catastrophe) respectively. This is the case if one
takes Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s treatment of the melancholic
position ad notam and relates it to Trier’s use of the ordering
of chaos by the depressive.265 Justine goes from melancholia to
creation, while Claire only unwillingly lets go of her attempt to
control the fear. The closer Melancholia approaches to the earth’s
biosphere, the clearer Justine becomes. At no point does she lean
on objectifying methods, but remains faithful to her own senses
265 Cf. Per Juul Carlsen’s interview: »He does not consider Melancholia to be about the end of the world
and the human race but about humans acting and reacting under pressure. The idea for the film emerged
while he was in treatment for the depression that has haunted him in recent years. A therapist told him
a theory that depressives and melancholics act more calmly in violent situations, while ›ordinary, happy‹
people are more apt to panic. Melancholics are ready for it. They already know everything is going to hell«
(Carlsen 2011).

CONTENTS
and the affective consensus of opinion. Claire goes from (rays) in
the sights of the telescope to Leo’s inclusive instrument. Leo con‑
nects the two sisters, and their various strategies agree in the child,
who is already described symbolically in the intro images where
the three walk in the gardens, each with ›their planet‹ hanging
over their heads: Claire with the sun, Leo with the half moon and
Justine with Melancholia. The catastrophic trajectory the planet
Melancholia outlines in the beginning of the film diminishes over
the course of the film as haptic‑affective microperception takes
over. Its incorporation of the, according to Justine, »evil« Earth
is similarly – viewed from the planetary level – not described as a
catastrophe. On the contrary, the ending can be seen as a fecun‑
dation, where Melancholia’s ›egg‹ subsumes the earth’s ›sperm
cell‹. All in all, the entire film can be regarded as creating an ar‑
tistic fusion or opening towards the field of the event, captured
in Massumi’s description of affective agreement, which each time
involves an encounter with the world’s qualitative order:
Each new event retraces the world’s qualitative order, even as it ad‑
vances by a step the world’s objective ordering. Each time we experi‑
ence an event, we are nonconsciously returning to our own and the
world’s emergence. We are in re‑worlding. We are reattuning, and
reindividualizing. The ontogenesis of forms of life continues. New
attunements are added to the diversity of events that can be yoked
across distances in space and time. With each event, we are perceptu‑
ally feeling the expansion of that universe of qualitative order, as we
simultaneously advance along a world‑line. (Massumi 2011, 115‑116)
In extension of this it is clear that in Melancholia Trier raises the

question of whether a philosophy of art, of Nietzschean‑Wagneri‑
an dimensions, is possible today, when we are facing the threat of
climatic catastrophes, which could destroy our foundations of life,
the Earth and its ecosystem. Melancholia answers this question
clearly. Through a cultivation of the grandiose Romantic aesthetic
in traces from the previous centuries, an affective and inclusive
artistic practice is heralded, where unanimity of opinion with
the world is necessary in order for new ideas, events and forms
of practice to occur at all. But this is achieved through a filmic

CONTENTS
aesthetic, which in certain ways is realised by and distances itself
from the Wagnerian idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Considering the
signaletic material in Melancholia, the continuously growing plan‑
et Melancholia can be understood as a fluctuating, virtual event
level, which is capable of incorporating diverse segmentations and
representations (such as humankind’s limited sensorimotor view
from the Earth) to create non‑subjectifying forms of affect. The
›will‹ of Melancholia’s trajectory to enable it to fertilise itself with
the Earth’s seed forces the viewer to direct his/her attention in
humorous ways – especially through the many repetitions of this
scene – towards affectively oriented differences where the idea
of distinguishing subject and object is shown as futile (sperm and
egg become one in a conception).
One can also see the film, as Steven Shaviro does, as a de‑
scription of the Romantic anti‑sublime, in that the condition
– the world already being in danger of annihilation – calls on an
anti‑diegetic, with Schopenhauer’s melancholy and Raymond
Brassier’s (Brassier 2007) non‑human counterplay, which we,
notably, can neither experience nor narrate:
von Trier underlines the literalness of annihilation – the way that it

has in the deepest sense already happened – by making it imminent,
bringing it into our present moment as what is about to happen. In
Melancholia, the prospect of extinction has to be faced here and now.
We no longer need to wait five billion years for the Sun to burn out, or
trillions of years for the final disintegration of all matter. There is no
portrayal of widespread destruction in Melancholia, because the film
ends the moment that the world does. Catastrophe goes unrepresented,
because it literally, actually happens, in the diegetic world of the film,
and in that way marks the absolute limit of diegetic representation.
(Shaviro 2012, 42; author’s italics)
Melancholia’s ending makes such a reading obvious, and Shaviro

consolidates it with one of the film’s final haptic micro‑adjust‑
ments, where we see worms and insects working their way out
of the earth: »We are exposed to the beauty, and the ›evil‹ of a
Nature that does not belong to us, and that is not to our own
measure. What, we may wonder, do the denizens of this Nature

CONTENTS
feel?« (op. cit., 42). To this one can object that the non‑humane
or more than humane (Manning 2013) also makes up a consid‑
erable part of the sublime aesthetic of undepictability – and the
celebration of it. I would advocate that the ending of Melancholia
should be regarded together with the endings of Antichrist and
Nymphomaniac. Where Antichrist presents the Dionysian force
of creation as a force of nature as interpreted by Nietzsche, with
its eternal recurrence of the same (including violence and death),
the Earth’s ruin in Melancholia becomes a reflection on the no‑
tion that thought must necessarily let in affective tonalities and
events that cannot be premeditated (Grusin 2010) or calculated
beforehand. Claire (and John), in extension of Kristeva (cf. Kris‑
teva 2001, 196), redoubles the world in thought and reduces all
events to the same, so that the end of the world and the wedding
can be equated with ritualised markings (candlelight and crystal
glass), and Justine’s melancholia awakens, because thought and
action fuses in capitulation to the event; in Nymphomaniac, the
firing of the deadly shot ends the film, the Apollinian diegetic de‑
sire definitively ends, and the trilogy’s expressive force is revealed.
The outcome of this constant exchange between Apollinian and
Dionysian (as in the trilogy’s two first films) is to the advantage
of the Dionysian force, but this happens at the expense of the
subject’s controlled, voyeuristically formed mastering. This does
not necessarily refer to a non‑human register, but rather to the
more‑than‑human, which Brian Massumi develops on the basis
of Erin Manning’s work with what she calls »autistic perception«,
and which can best be thought of in extension of Nietzsche’s no‑
tion of the eternal recurrence of the same as an affirmation of life:
What Manning calls »autistic perception« is not an inherent property

of a subclass of the human category. It is a mode of perception that is a
necessary factor in all human experience, but is lived in different ways
to different degrees. It is the field perception no one can live without,
precisely because it brings the more than human into experience. (Mas‑
sumi, in Manning 2013, xxii)
This notion of a more‑than‑human autistic perception, which

develops perception towards the event and the affective field, also

CONTENTS
brings Deleuze and Guattari’s analytical term ›schizoanalysis‹ to
the surface. This term will be used in the following analysis of
Nymphomaniac. But before this analysis develops, it should be
clarified how the musical field also contributes to the establishing
of an affective and microperceptive modelling of the narrative,
so that the film’s signaletic material and the events come to the
fore in the viewer’s sensations and thoughts.
Affective diagrams: a haptic, signaletic material in

Antichrist and Melancholia
As a concluding reading of both Antichrist and Melancholia and
a prelude to my reading of Nymphomaniac, I will return briefly
to the role of music in the films: that is, in Antichrist the recur‑
ring aria »Lascia ch’io pianga« from Händel’s Rinaldo, and in
Melancholia the repetition of the Tristan chord from Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde. These musical pieces are not only found on
an atmosphere‑creating, extradiegetic level, which conveys sym‑
pathetic insight; they appear in connection with the visuals in
specific ways, which I will call diagrammatic because they radically
invoke haptic image compositions, the so‑called visualisations,
filmed with a high-speed camera, and from the beginning of the
film they initiate a symbolic (in the abstract meaning) – and at the
same time affective – disseminated experience. In Antichrist it is
the prologue’s black and white grainy sequence (the adults‹ bath‑
ing and copulation scenes, ending with the son’s fall into the white
snow), together with the epilogue’s similar aesthetic (the man’s
›rebirth‹ as a demon in the forest’s harvest landscape of flying
seeds and feathers). In Melancholia it is the prologue’s symbolic
colour‑saturated and Kodachrome‑granulated images, which
invoke the reoccurring Tristan chord. This musical interjection
plays ten times throughout the film, for varying durations.266
266 It concerns the following scenes: 1) the prologue; 2) Justine visits the golf course alone during the
wedding and urinates, staring at the sky; 3) Justine tells Claire her nightmare of dragging her feet through
yarn, which sticks to her legs like a quagmire; 4) Justine swaps the motifs in the library art books; 5) the
wedding guests walk out onto the golf course in order to light paper lanterns and release them into the
night sky; 6) Claire and Justine ride horses the morning after the wedding night; 7) Justine notices Melan‑
cholia for the first time at close quarters, at the same time as she whips the horse Abraham, which will not
cross the small bridge; 8) Claire watches Justine as she bathes in the light from Melancholia; 9) Claire flees

CONTENTS
In Antichrist the aria »Lascia ch’io pianga« was, as mentioned,
recorded specially for the film at a slightly slower tempo than
usual, and the vocals give a particular pathos to the film’s hapti‑
cally descriptive prologue. The first verse (in Italian) reads: »Lascia
ch’io pianga la cruda sorte,/ E che sospiri la liberta!/ E che sospiri,
e che sospiri la liberta!/ Lascia ch’io pianga la cruda sorte,/ E
che sospiri la liberta!« In Rinaldo the aria is sung by Almirena,
who has become bewitched and banished from the narrative by
magical means, while another person plays her character. She is
thus trapped outside what is being told, and it is sorrow for her
loss of liberty that she tearfully sings about. The sentences, which
are repeated with several variations, translate as follows: »Let me
weep over my cruel fate« and »I may sigh for freedom«. In Melan-
cholia the Tristan chord is clearly linked to the growing affective
influence of the planet Melancholia on the characters. From the
point of view of the filmic narrative, the chord is played every time
the symbolic level gains the upper hand and slowly undermines
the action level as a navigable narrative line of escape. As with
Almirena’s aria, Tristan’s chord speaks to us from a place outside
the film’s diegetic level. But at the same time the music in both
films delivers an acoustic expression, a signaletic materiality that
underlines the image surface’s fluctuating, sensuous material‑
ity. The music and the song’s tonality thus set the frame in the
scene the images describe, and at the same time set an ›outside‹
to the diegetic. The music’s interpretive‑like ›before‹, its being
an intensifying part of the statement and its signaletic ›now‹ give
it both a symbolic as well as an affective meaning.
The music in Melancholia and Antichrist is thus not identical
with the visual level, and in Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche it is
precisely this which provides »a very discontinuous, or rarefied,
presence« (Deleuze 1989, 240). Deleuze in fact refers directly to
the young Schopenhauer‑inspired Nietzsche and his delibera‑
tions in The Birth of Tragedy on visual images (in lyrical poetry
and drama) being an indirect Apollinian representation, while
with Leo in the golf cart and then drags him across the golf course in a hailstorm, while Justine watches;
10) Leo, Justine and Claire place themselves in ›the magic cave‹ of slender tree trunks, and Melancholia
swallows the Earth.

CONTENTS
music’s more immediate presentation, which stands in contact
with the Dionysian will, can create a more direct effect (op. cit.,
239). In the same place Deleuze differentiates between tragedy,
where the music’s direct, figurative force is designated as central
(a ball of fire surrounded by Apollinian processing images), and
film, where the images are central but the music attaches a direct
sound image (op. cit.). The music thus constitutes an independ‑
ent Dionysian force, different from the indirect form of the film
images, but the two also enter into relations, notably without the
music losing its independent power:
In fact, all the sound elements, including music, including silence,

form a continuum as something which belongs to the visual image.
Which does not prevent this continuum from being continually dif‑
ferentiated in accordance with the two aspects of the out‑of‑field which
also belong to the visual image, one relative, and the other absolute. It
is in so far as it presents or fills the absolute that music interacts as a
foreign body. But the absolute, or the changing whole, does not merge
with its direct presentation: this is why it continually reconstitutes
the sound continuum, off and in, and relates it to the visual images
which indirectly express it. Now the second movement does not cancel
out the other, and preserves for music its autonomous, special power.
(Deleuze 1989, 241)
The music’s specific power is described elsewhere as a direct time‑

image that (in modern film) results in the images and sound being
constantly separated and connected together in new »›irrational‹
relations« (Deleuze op. cit., 256). In the case of Marguerite Duras,
it is precisely these edits and irrational juxtapositions of images
and soundtrack that, in India Song, for example, create »a free
indirect or incommensurable relation« between an interior (the
event) and an exterior (the story of it). These two never meet,
but nonetheless make up a new relation in and with the film (op.
cit., 279).
In extension of the power of the direct acoustic image, which
Deleuze also describes as tactile (op. cit., 236), I would describe
Lars von Trier’s use of the aria »Lascia ch’io pianga« in Antichrist
and the Tristan chord in Melancholia as direct acoustic images,

CONTENTS
demonstrating the autonomous power of music, and affectively
placing the viewer in connection with the power of will, which
lies outside it but also intensifies fabula and gives strength to the
characters that act intuitively. In a broader sense I believe that the
music’s strong compositional role, which shifts the viewer’s atten‑
tion from the narrative plane and towards the affective forces in
the film’s signaletic material, can be called diagrammatic. Thus it
is first on the basis of the Tristan chord’s diagrammatically direct
sound‑image, which fuses the image’s sign (Melancholia’s hapti‑
cally modulating surface) with another (the body of the melan‑
cholic Justine), that an affective mode of acting can be conceived.
This time‑image can be seen, in Trier’s words, as the symbolic
manifestation, while one might also be able to understand it, along
with Deleuze, as the actualisation of the virtual. The direct sound‑
image, which in Melancholia is synonymous with the dissonance of
the chord, links to a Dionysian power of will, which in a number
of ways (most clearly in the first part of the film) tries in vain to
be stratified in the register of the Apollinian image symbol.
Massumi (as mentioned previously) exemplifies this diagram‑
matic function in art with Proust’s introductione of the madeleine
episode in In Search of Lost Time.267 In the fiction’s representa‑
tion, the taste of the madeleine activates the direct sense effect
(smell and taste) of a lost time and thus establishes a diagram,
depicting affective, transverse tracks in the fabula’s stratification.
The diagram is experienced in the reading as a sense relation
between the present and the past, which is brought virtually in
correspondence with the idea that the cake’s taste sensation, so
to speak, fills the melancholic loss with (new) meaning (Massumi
2011, 25). The diagram is drawn virtually, irrespective of whether
the reader knows about the sense effect that is described or not.
In this context it is interesting that Proust was in fact inspired by
Wagner’s operas, and in particular by Tristan und Isolde. Accord‑
ing to Margaret Mein, Proust’s lengthy description of Vinteuil’s
small sonata, which links to Swann’s melancholic infatuation with
Odette (or maybe rather in the melancholia), ought to be read as
267 Proust published the first volume in 1913, but it was only after his death in 1922 that the remainder
was published in an edited version.

CONTENTS
an attempt to describe Wagner’s Tristan chord (Mein 1989).268
The description (in part) reads:
Even when he was not thinking of the little phrase, it existed latent in
his mind on the same footing as certain other notions without material
equivalent, such as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of
physical pleasure, the rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is
diversified and adorned. Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will
be obliterated, if we return to nothingness. But so long as we are alive,
we can no more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have
known them than we can with regard to any material object, than we
can, for example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lit,
in view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which
even the memory of the darkness has vanished. In that way Vinteuil’s
phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a
certain emotional accretion, had espoused our mortal state, had en‑
dued a vesture of humanity that was peculiarly affecting. Its destiny
was linked to the future, to the reality of the human soul, of which it
was one of the most special and distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is
not‑being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent;
but, if so, we feel that these phrases of music, these conceptions which
exist in relation to our dream, must be nothing either. We shall per‑
ish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will follow and
share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less
inglorious, perhaps even less probable. (Proust 2003, vol. 1, 497‑498)
In this passage the melodic phrase becomes linked to the future,

to the soul’s reality or to the dream. As a result, there is in Proust
a clear consciousness that art (and its diagrams) belong to a virtual
domain, which can only fleetingly grasp and influence the real,
including death, but which nonetheless can seem less plausible in
these moments. These virtual interjections, however, in no way
have the character of flight and utopian improvisation. On the
268 Others have pointed to Saint‑Saëns (for example, Le cygne (The Swan)), and judging by the music
soundtrack to the menu on the DVD for Nymphomaniac, Lars von Trier interprets the piece for violin and
piano as belonging to César Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major.

CONTENTS
contrary – the affective intensities in the music’s phrases speak
directly to Swann:
How beautiful the dialogue which Swann now heard between piano
and violin, at the beginning of the last passage! The suppression of
human speech, so far from letting fancy reign there uncontrolled (as
one might have thought), had eliminated it altogether; never was spo‑
ken language so inexorably determined, never had it known questions
so pertinent, such irrefutable replies. At first the piano complained
alone, like a bird deserted by its mate; the violin heard and answered
it, as from a neighbouring tree. It was as at the beginning of the world,
as if there were as yet only the two of them on the earth, or rather in
this world closed to all the rest, so fashioned by the logic of its creator
that in it there should never be any but themselves: the world of this
sonata. Was it a bird, was it the soul, as yet not fully formed, of the little
phrase, was it a fairy – that being invisibly lamenting, whose plaint the
piano heard and tenderly repeated? Its cries were so sudden that the
violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they came.
(Op. cit., 499‑500)
Finally, in this developed description it becomes clear that it is the

diagram that illustrates the intensities. The diagram is drawn in
the language – here in synaesthetic relation to the play of colours:
It reappeared, but this time to remain poised in the air, and to sport
there for a moment only, as though immobile, and shortly to expire.
And so Swann lost nothing of the precious time for which it lingered. It
was still there, like an iridescent bubble that floats for a while unbroken.
As a rainbow whose brightness is fading seems to subside, then soars
again and, before it is extinguished, shines forth with greater splendour
than it has ever shown; so to the two colours which the little phrase
had hitherto allowed to appear it added others now, chords shot with
every hue in the prism, and made them sing.
(Op. cit. 500‑501)
Proust here seems to utilise the phrase (or the dissonance of the
Tristan chord) as a diagram, causing Swann to realise that his love
for Odette perhaps has the character of a melancholic longing

CONTENTS
that cannot be satisfied by any individual. Proust turns the phrase
into a diagrammatic concept, with which the music transforms
the surroundings (to which the others belong) into symbols and
vice versa, so the music is given a concrete and immediate effect
on Swann, and he comes to realise his own folly. However, it is
also the little phrase Swann coincidentally hears that enables his
entire love story to unfold. The phrase appears as a Baudelaire‑
like infatuation with a woman passing by:
he was like a man into whose life a woman he has seen for a moment
passing by has brought the image of a new form of beauty which deep‑
ens his own sensibility, although he does not even know her name or
whether he will ever see her again.
(Proust op. cit., 296)
It is significant that the music in the first part of the chapter

causes Apollinian image formations that accompany the mel‑
ancholia, and which are experienced partly by Odette. In the
quoted sequence that creates self‑insight in Swann, it is revealed
that the music describes melancholia, but also that it is precisely
the melancholia that is the music’s creative force and will, and
is also valid in Proust’s own creative stimulus. He writes of the
rainbow’s fading brightness, which is at its clearest precisely when
it is about to disappear.
In Trier’s Antichrist the prologue with Händel’s aria from
Rinaldo reflects the gruesome, Dionysian ending of the story.
Similarly, the Tristan chord from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
indicates the Earth’s ruin at the end of Melancholia. In both in‑
stances viewers are tuned in affectively to orient themselves in
an aesthetically sensitive manner towards a virtual level, which is
found both inside and outside the narrative. This level is found
developed in the final scenes of the two films, which simultane‑
ously function as an intoxicating celebration of the virtual actu‑
alisation in the narrative. Here the signaletic material takes over,
just as the phrase’s effect on Swann is the abandonment of his
infatuation with Odette, which in turn gives him an insight into
the power of melancholia. The Dionysian creativity and simul‑
taneous melancholic insight, which characterise Antichrist and

CONTENTS
Melancholia respectively, are revisited in Nymphomaniac, blend‑
ing the two forms in a dialogue between two characters, Joe and
Seligman. Here literature (and especially Proust’s digressive and
diagrammatic approach)269 has the central role in a contrast of
Apollinian and Dionysian voices, but it is in these first two films
in the trilogy, and first and foremost in the making independ‑
ent of the sound continuum (cf. Deleuze 1989, 242) and in the
encouragement of the tactile level, that the diagram creates space
for thought and for a symbolic level.
Nymphomaniac – mania’s (self)destructive force

The third film in the depression trilogy, Nymphomaniac, had its
cinematic premiere in Denmark in December 2013, in an edited
two‑part version with a combined running time of 231 minutes.270
At the Berlinale in February 2014, the film was shown in a direc‑
tor’s cut version with the two parts having a combined running
time of 312 minutes. The following is based on the DVD version
of the director’s cut, distributed in autumn 2014 in Denmark.
In short, the film constitutes an illustrated dialogue, which Joe
(Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Ananya Berg, Maja Ar‑
sovic, Ronja Rissmann), a woman of about fifty, has with the
older Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). In his humble apartment
Seligman serves her with tea and cakes, while she tells stories of
her nymphomania, or sexual addiction.271 Her narrative, like the
classic literary models one could mention (The Canterbury Tales,
The Decameron and One Thousand and One Nights), is serialised.
The episodes are interpreted consecutively by Seligman, but as
the reason for his interpretations becomes clear, she begins to
269 Vinca Wiedemann, who collaborated with Lars von Trier on the manuscript for Nymphomaniac, has
made it clear, in an interview with Per Juul Carlsen, that Proust’s main work was a great source of inspira‑
tion in the writing phase (http://www.dfi‑film.dk/mornings‑with‑von‑trier (last viewed 14 May 2015)).
270 The two parts of this edited version of Nymphomaniac, Vols. I and II, are prefaced with the follow‑
ing ›Disclaimer‹: »This film is an abridged and censored version of Lars von Trier’s original film ›Nympho‑
maniac‹. It was realized with Lars von Trier’s permission, but without his involvement otherwise«.
271 The word ›nymphomaniac‹ is used only in connection with women who have a greatly increased
compulsion for sex. This behaviour in a man is known as satyriasis (http://www.denstoredanske.dk; last
viewed 14 May 2015). Today both words are used unassumingly, as the idea of a normal area of sexual
desire is diminishing. In Vol. 1 Joe easily attracts lovers, but in Vol. II she loses her desire to do so and must
use violence in order to be stimulated (in the DVD version this is illustrated with a so‑called fly, as used in
fly fishing, decorating the disc of Vol. 1, while a whip decorates the disc of Vol. II).

CONTENTS
object more and more. Her voice and his voice also quarrel, so
to speak, about which of them is the most reliable as the film’s
intra‑diegetic narrator. The various episodes make up the film’s
chapter divisions, and they will in the following be regarded as
nodal points in a diagram that depicts various intensities accord‑
ing to various roles taken on by Joe. Vol. I contains the following
chapter divisions: 1) The Compleat Angler, 2) Jerôme, 3) Mrs. H.,
4) Delirium and 5) The Little Organ School. And Vol. II contains:
5) The Little Organ School (continued), 6) The Eastern and The
Western Church, 7) The Mirror and 8) The Gun. The film begins
with a prologue scene where Seligman finds the battered Joe in
his backyard and takes her to his apartment.272
The diagrammatic trace is already established in the title,
spelled Nymph()maniac. The two parts of the parenthesis can be
seen as an intertextual reference to Anne Cécile Desclos‹ (alias
Réage) Story of O ([1954] 2011), which was inspired by Leopold
von Sacher‑Masoch’s Venus in Furs (Sacher‑Masoch 1869).273
In this context one might see the film as a reinterpretation of
Sacher‑Masoch’s trichotomy of the three forms of the maso‑
chist’s woman. According to Deleuze they can be characterised
as 1) the sensual hetaera or Aphroditean hermaphrodite, who
recognises neither the norms nor other cultural products of
marriage, the church or the state, and who acts in a revolution‑
ary manner;274 2) the other extremity, the female sadist, who
creates passion and sacrifices, but who risks becoming a victim
herself as she is in collusion with her male co‑conspirator; or 3)
Sacher‑Masoch’s ideal, in between these two extremities, who
272 The film shows, in episodic form, Joe’s love life and sexual encounters, which she recounts to Selig‑
man. In the film’s first part, sexuality is depicted as a lust‑filled search for novel erotic experiences, which
in a Freudian sense could be described as a life drive. The film’s second part describes the hunt for a miss‑
ing lust, which gives space for the longings Freud describes as a death drive. Joe and Seligman have vastly
different opinions of how Joe’s nymphomania ought to be interpreted, and he attempts to save her from
the notion that she is wicked and guilty. Although Seligman finally wins the reconciliatory argument and
enables Joe to get on with her life, he shows through his actions another side of himself, in that he attempts
to have intercourse with her while she sleeps. This becomes Joe’s line of flight back to the hunting grounds
of sexuality, as she shoots him and leaves his apartment.
273 A feministic interpretive trace – in agreement with Luce Irigaray – could also be followed. Irigaray
points out that the two female labia can never be reduced to one, and that women in a patriarchal society
are reduced to things which are exchanged between men, in the roles of mother (utility value), virgin (ex‑
change value) or prostitute (both utility and exchange value; Irigaray 1977).
274 It is this which in the film Joe explains as »I was an addict out of lust, not out of need«.

CONTENTS
can enter into a playful seductive game, precisely because sexual
affection is lacking. The ideal masochist’s woman is imposing
and combines aloofness, solicitude and severity: »The trinity of
the masochistic dream is summed up in the words: cold – ma‑
ternal – severe, icy – sentimental – cruel« (Deleuze [1967] 1989,
51). The masochist’s aloofness should be understood as a protec‑
tive layer, »[t]he coldness is both protective milieu and medium,
cocoon and vehicle: it protects supersensual sentimentality as
inner life, and expresses it as external order, as wrath and sever‑
ity« (op. cit., 52). Deleuze adds that this type also includes the
oral mother, the breastfeeder, who rules over life and death and,
though silent, has the last word.275 The masochistic ideal is to be
found between the Freudian principles of life and death drive,
Eros (libido) and Thanatos.276 The masochist, together with the
masochist’s woman, performs a game with life and death, where
choice is deferred in favour of stimulation. In Deleuze this gives
rise to a description of a masochistic aesthetic, which notably is
not the complementary opposite of the sadistic, voyeuristic aes‑
thetic; the masochistic aesthetic resides in fetish, repetition and
deferral, and thus undermines any form of narrative drive.277 I
will argue that the first type in Deleuze’s Sacher‑Masoch read‑
ing is depicted to a certain extent in chapters 1‑4 in Vol. I. The
second extreme is portrayed especially in chapters 6‑8 in Vol. II.
The middle position is developed in chapter 5, which stretches
across both Vol. I and Vol. II and thus inserts itself between the
film’s first part, dedicated to Eros, and the latter part, dedicated
to Thanatos. The reason for this displacement of desire in Nym-
phomaniac is that Joe’s sexual lust suddenly disappears.
Aside from the reference to Deleuze’s Proust and Signs ([1964]
2000) and Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty ([1967] 1989), the
following reading draws especially on Deleuze and Guattari’s
275 It is important here to add that the types of masochism are seen from the perspective of the mas‑
ochistic male.
276 Deleuze uses an analogous figure in Proust and Signs, divided thus: »machines of partial objects (im-
pulses), machines of resonance (Eros), machines of forced movements (Thanatos)« (Deleuze 2000, 160; author’s
italics).
277 For more on the masochistic aesthetic, see the analysis of Dietrich’s film in Filmdivaer. Stjernens
figur i Hollywoods melodrama 1920-40 / Film Divas: The Star Figures in Hollywood Melodramas 1920-40
(Thomsen 1997).

CONTENTS
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia ([1972] 1990), where
schizoanalysis is presented as a critique of the Freudian, neuroti‑
cally coded Oedipus complex. In a positive sense schizoanalysis
can be seen as a way of confirming desire as a deterritorialising
stream which can dissolve state creations, capitalistic systems and
patriarchal families in favour of equivocal and still new molecular
relations. With this reading of Nymphomaniac, the masochistic
aesthetic is interpreted in conjunction with schizoanalysis, but,
more importantly, the diagram is added as an extra layer on top
of the interpretation of the affective streams in order to render
the filmic, signaletic material apparent.
Two kinds of diagram: material signs

and signaletic material
The prologue scene begins in darkness; for 100 seconds we

hear the sound of water running and beating down, along with
a squeaking metallic sound. The sound stops and we see a back‑
yard, lit by a yellowish lamp. The sound continues and reveals it‑
self to be real, in ultra‑close haptic images of rainwater running
down weather‑worn, reddish‑brown walls and a rusted iron ring
with bolts. The rain beats on a large metal rubbish bin; snowflakes
fall, landing on a pent roof, and continue as water through an old
drainpipe. This sequence of close‑ups of hard materials, which in
the haptic depiction can almost be seen as soft, ends with the hard
concrete, where a bloody female hand pokes out of the sleeve of
a tweed jacket. Thereafter the camera slowly zooms in on a ven‑
tilation grid in the wall, and the squeaking sound of a draught is
heard. The zoom in on the grid is slow, like David Lynch’s study
of holes which the camera perforates, creating a portent of horror.
As was the case with the hole in the wall from The Kingdom, which
Mrs. Drusse made in order to exorcise the devilry, this passage
also implies that something unwanted can come in. This element
of meaning is not unveiled until the film’s final minutes. The in‑
troduction’s long panning shot is reminiscent of the comparable
introduction sequences in Antichrist and Melancholia, but here
high‑speed recording has not been used in order to accentuate the
film as a haptic, signaletic material. Instead, the film begins with

CONTENTS
a haptic description of a violent, claustrophobic space seemingly
bereft of hope. Aside from its introduction and ending, Nympho‑
maniac does not contain anywhere near as many haptic images as
the first two films in the trilogy. But the haptic is still very present
throughout the film, not least due to the fact that the introduction
is abruptly interrupted by the refrain from Rammstein’s »Führe
mich«: »Führe mich, halte mich/ Ich fühle dich, Ich verlass dich
nicht – Nymphomaniac«.278 While this is playing, the viewer sees
in the backyard the body of the woman to whom the hand belongs
(Joe’s). She is lying with bent legs and, wearing a beige tweed jacket
and polka‑dot scarf, blue jeans, a black shirt and long black boots.
The music continues, while the camera follows an elderly man
(Seligman) leaving his book‑filled apartment. He buys something
in a Jewish shop, which he meticulously places in his net shopping
bag. On his way back he sees Joe’s beaten body out of the corner
of his eye. He moves slowly through the labyrinthine backyard and
revives her. He offers to call an ambulance or the police, because
he assumes she has been involved in an accident, but she declines.
In reply to the question of whether he can do anything for her,
she answers that she would like a cup of tea with milk. He helps
her up and shortly afterwards she is seen wearing his pyjamas and
drinking tea in his bedroom.279 He offers to wash her jacket, which
smells bad, but she declines the offer. A dull sound is heard when
he drops the jacket on the floor. He questions her about what has
happened because he assumes that she has been robbed, to which
she answers that she is merely a bad person. Seligman refuses to
accept that and asks to hear her story.280 Joe is reluctant to tell as
she does not believe he will understand, and, furthermore, does
not know where to begin, but this soon changes when Joe enquires
about the fishing hook hanging on the wall. Seligman answers the
question by introducing her to the fly‑fisherman’s weapon, the
278 Lukas Moodysson also used Rammstein in his film Lilya-4ever (2002). With or without the knowl‑
edge of this intertextual reference, the viewer can be in no doubt that the theme here is sex and violence.
Rammstein’s sound can in itself be described as haptic‑violent.
279 Proust’s reminiscences of Combray are also alluded to here: he drinks tea and eats a madeleine
while sitting in his bed one winter’s day, after being urged to do so by his caring mother.
280 The figure of Seligman could very well refer to the American psychologist Martin Seligman, who
in 1998 gave his name to so‑called positive psychology, which, with a humanistic starting point, focuses on
how people can succeed and become happy. This school has paved the way for many forms of therapy and
ideas of self‑realisation.

CONTENTS
so‑called ›nymph‹, which consists of a fish hook decorated with
colourful feathers, giving a convincing representation of an insect
larva. He also mentions his fondness for Izaak Walton’s book The
Compleat Angler (1653).
The close‑up of how a nymph is made, together with how the
line should be cast in order to get a bite, is the first of a number
of beautiful images – in a classic sense – we are presented with
in the film. Joe is inspired by this to tell her story anyway, but she
warns him (and the viewer) that it will be a long story. This warn‑
ing only seems to increase his interest. She adds that it will also
be moralistic, which does not deter him at all. The introduction
chapter thus creates a literary, imaginary zone inside, screened
from the haptic‑violent, realistically represented backyard outside.
The nymph’s literally described fishing hook thus becomes, in a
figurative sense, the hook with which the viewer will imaginatively
surrender to the story.281 The various methods of capture and
forms of baiting that are described in the first chapter correspond
to the narrative terms which will be utilised to hook the viewer.
In this first chapter, The Compleat Angler, where Joe and her
childhood friend B. compete over how many men they can hook
(that is, have sex with) on an unspecified train journey, one can
register a small but significant detail in the title.282 ›Compleat‹
is an antiquated form of ›complete‹, but additionally the word
›pleat‹ means a fold or plissé. With these alternative spellings (in
Izaak Walton’s book and in the chapter’s title), a diagrammatic
strategy is implied, a metaphoric addition, which places itself
almost indiscernibly in the metaphoric interpretations Seligman
gives for the girls‹ manhunt. In this context it is noteworthy that
in Proust and Signs Deleuze mentions Proust’s strategy as both
metaphorically and machinically producing, in that random, often
sensory encounters with signs force meanings out almost violently
in the material that cannot be anticipated. In the conclusion he
characterises Proust’s strategy as Jewish humour, as opposed to
Greek, Socratic irony (Deleuze [1964] 2000, 101). It is this form
281 As mentioned earlier, Glauce, the name of the king’s daughter whom Jason was to marry in Medea,
also means nymph.
282 On the DVD this spelling is also found in the menu.

CONTENTS
of humour that reoccurs in Trier’s small additions, interpreta‑
tion of words and intertextual references. The Proustian as well
as the Trieresque folding of the material can, in Anna Munster’s
reading of Deleuze’s concept of the fold, be expounded as:
a strategy for dealing with history or time from the point of view of
the present: a way to read events not as historical inevitabilities but as
pliable possibilities for the present. The question becomes not what is
the fold, but rather how does the baroque unfold, how does the present
enfold, and so on. (Munster 2006, 41)
To this principle of folding the word ›angler‹ is added, which

as a noun means both a fisherman and also a type of fish, but
it also implies the verb sense of ›to go angling for something‹.
The film shows how Seligman continually compares Joe’s ac‑
count of how she discovers her own lust and entices her lovers
with the angler’s various methods of capture. Fly‑fishing, for
example, decodes the waterway’s winding flow, and involves
copying insects‹ movements across the water and their colour‑
ing, while the Finnish weapon, the so‑called Rapala lure, directly
seduces the fish into believing that an insect is struggling. From
the very beginning Seligman is shown to be angling for her
story. Like a teacher instructing a pupil, he takes it on himself
to put forward the Apollinian voice across from her Dionysian.
His primary literary interpretations enfold and surround the
film’s descriptions of her experiences to such a degree that he
could be said to provoke his own murder in the narrative’s end‑
ing. In contrast, she constructs her stories literally, within the
framework he has set,283 so he is able to listen as she angles and
fishes for his interpretation of her ›sin‹. She lays out the bait in
order to reel in his trusting interpretations, because despite Joe’s
attachment to the word ›sin‹, she in no way appeals to Chris‑
tian absolution. Seligman nonetheless insists on interpreting
her sexual career as a cause‑effect relation, because this allows
him to explain, in a deconstructive manner, the advancement
283 Similarly, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) creates his story with diverse props in the police detective’s
office in The Usual Suspects (1995).

CONTENTS
of ideas such as ›sin‹ and wickedness in her autobiographical
narrative. Joe inclines towards natural science and energetic
or mechanical interpretations of her lust, while Seligman, who
refers to himself as a non‑practising Jew with anti‑Zionist per‑
suasions,284 finds humanistic explanations. Though neither Joe
nor Seligman adhere to Christianity, words such as ›guilt‹, ›sin‹
and ›punishment‹ pop up constantly in their dialogue, which all
belong to the Christian‑cultural register. In this sense the film
clarifies how difficult it is to break out of Christian values. And
just as Nietzsche ends Ecce Homo with the antithetical signature
»Dionysos against the Crucified«, the Apollinian Seligman and
the Dionysian Joe at the end of the film are so enfolded in one
another’s angles that violence must occur for the principles to
be separated once again, and torn from their Christian inter‑
pretation. So although the film offers neither Dionysian orgies
nor the end of the world, this last part of the trilogy also points
to the fact that there must be an inversion of all values in order
for the world to be able to change itself.
The film’s first chapter clearly values Dionysian principles over
Apollinian ones, as is also the case in Antichrist and Melancholia.
But for Nymphomaniac it seems that the two are inseparable. The
dialogical principle folds speaking and hearing into one another
as plot and reason, body and language, which are not identical
with – but do relate to – the film’s investigation of the masochis‑
tic, as opposed to the voyeuristic, form of pleasure.285 One must
not forget that the film is also an unveiling of the pornographic
genre, which in its classic form fulfils the voyeuristic urge to such
a degree that physical satisfaction can be achieved. The porno
film, which might be called realism par excellence on the basis of
its indexical ›proof‹ that masculine ejaculation is reached,286 has
284 This description could very well be a description of Trier’s own point of view, which can thus also be
read as a twisted commentary on the interpretation of Trier’s ironic‑literal comment, »I understand Hit‑
ler«, during the press conference for Melancholia.
285 In her article »Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema« ([1975] 1989), Laura Mulvey advances a much
discussed relation – based on Freud – between the sadistic, male voyeur and the masochistic, female exhi‑
bitionist. Many writers (amongst others, Gaylyn Studlar 1993) have since contested the validity of this rela‑
tion, for example, taking their starting point in Deleuze’s point that masochism ought not be understood as
a complementary form to sadism. Therefore, in the following a more complex and non‑congruent contrast
between a voyeuristic and a masochistic aesthetic is considered.
286 Cf. Rune Gade 1997.

CONTENTS
been marginalised – perhaps with the exception of the popular
Bedside films of the 1970s – in the Danish film industry. Trier,
who makes the genre into a paratext of the serial narrative in
Nymphomaniac, has often expressed to the press the idea of mak‑
ing a porno film.287 Where one can say that the intro to Antichrist
referenced such a project, Nymphomaniac represents a tour de
force through the genre’s preferred physiological positions and
methods for the achievement of sexual satisfaction, together with
various constellations: children’s sexual games, heterosexuality,
incest, homosexuality, masochism, sadism and paedophilia. The
episodic, serial parts are brought together in what becomes the
course of the narrative, namely Joe’s hunt for novel forms of
stimulation and the satisfaction of her nymphomaniac drive.
Meanwhile it is worth noting that the film does not seem sexu‑
ally stimulating in the same way as a pornographic film. This
might first of all be due to the masochistic mode of expression
being made visible as a widely extensive delta which, basically,
can never be hemmed in by narrative (and voyeuristic) desire
(Brooks 1984). Secondly, the diagrammatic additions contribute
to a large extent to the empathy being impeded. As in Godard,
the diagrams give cause for a Verfremdung, an amputation of the
voyeuristic desire regarding the sexual scenes. In addition, they
create awareness of the filmic, signaletic material as something
which in haptic ways involves the body in a treat for the visual
senses. In other words, what is created is an interface, where the
diagrams, which are extradiegetically supplemented fabula, con‑
stantly create other perspectives in the material than those which
in a Dionysian‑Apollinian sense meld body and word together.
The images that illustrate Joe’s narrative reside in corporeal
sensations and conditions, while Seligman’s words create cultural
and aesthetic threads in the material; for although Joe recounts
her sexual passions, it is Seligman who creates the narrative, and
›learned‹ points in her descriptions. Nymphomaniac is an accom‑
plished diagrammatic story: his educated drawings, which are
noted down as diagrams on the surface of the screen, settle as a
287 Cf. also Zentropa’s gamble on Pussy Power Aps [Inc.] (http://www.puzzypower.dk), which amongst
other things produced Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999) and HotMen CoolBoys (2000).

CONTENTS
layer over her sexual escapades, while the concrete things in his
ascetically ordered bedroom generate new visual signs in her nar‑
rative display of nymphomania. There is a continuous exchange
between his Apollinian fundamental narrative where things have
a reason, and her Dionysian narrative where everything copu‑
lates. Joe is an exhibitionistic image projector, while Seligman’s
words order the material narratively for the voyeuristic viewer,
who craves depth of content. The Dionysian body’s perception
material is, in other words, laid out by the forming of the Apol‑
linian language. The two – as previously mentioned – are linked.
This relationship is described by Deleuze in relation to the words‹
always‑already being sexual:
This reference [that language refers to erogenous zones] must not be in‑
terpreted as a denotation (phonemes do not »denote« erogenous zones),
as a manifestation, nor even as a signification. It is rather a question of
a »conditioning‑conditioned« structure, of a surface effect, under its
double sonorous and sexual aspect or, if one prefers, under the aspects
of resonance and mirror. At his level, speech begins: it begins when
the formative elements of language are extracted at the surface, from the
current of voice which comes from above. This is the paradox of speech.
On the one hand, it refers to language as to something withdrawn
which pre‑exists in the voice from above; on the other hand, it refers
to language as to something which must result, but which shall come
to pass only with formed units. Speech is never equal to language. It
still awaits the result. That is, the event which will make the formation
effective. It masters the formative elements but without purpose, and
the history which it relates, the sexual history, is nothing other than
itself, or its own double.
(Deleuze [1969] 1990, 232; author’s italics)
It is this interwoven relation between body and language that the

filmic diagrams appear to challenge – similar to Marcel Proust’s
specific style in In Search of Lost Time, which Nymphomaniac ex‑
plicitly refers to both in its images and its language. In Deleuze’s
reading of Proust, he stresses that it is the machinic production
of transversal relations that makes up Proust’s style. In Massumi’s
words, these can be described as diagrams which make it possible

CONTENTS
for the author to stylistically produce signs in the form of abstrac‑
tions in the material (crystals of pure time). According to Deleuze,
this can only be done »in the act of thinking within thought«, so
to remember is a thinking creation: »not to create memory, but
to create the spiritual equivalent of the still too material memory,
to create the viewpoint valid for all associations, the style valid for
all images« (Deleuze 2000, 111). Elsewhere Deleuze mentions this
formal work as Proust’s production of »transversal dimensions«
in the material (Deleuze op. cit., 168):
This additional dimension is added to those that are occupied by char‑

acters, events, and parts of the Search – it is a dimension in time without
common measure with the dimensions they occupy in space. (Deleuze
op. cit., 169)
One can say that the transversal dimensions function on two

levels in Nymphomaniac. Firstly, they are found in the same way
in Proust – put into fabula – as something that communicates
across, inspiring Joe to tell her story and Seligman to interpret it.
Secondly, they are found as extradiegetic, purely filmic diagrams
that intervene transversally outside the recounted, and which,
instead of developing intra‑ and extradiegetic relations and inter‑
textual references, actually involve the viewer, as in an interface.
These diagrams, which are described in more detail in the fol‑
lowing, create disjunctive attention on the notion of autonomy,
which renders fabula. Fabula thus clearly appears as a stylistically
reworked material. This postmodern, diagrammatic rendering of
material into signs and signs into material differs from Proust’s
transversal diagrams, which create pure time‑images outside in‑
dividuals and bodies in space, but which can still, however, be
found enfolded as effects in the literary material.
Deleuze describes Proust as modern. Deleuze also considers
de Sade and Sacher‑Masoch modern, working with seriality and
repetition. Lifting the sexual act to an event through linguistic
repetition is validated within modern pornographic literature.
Without the linguistic repetition no transgression can take place,
and this is the job of pornography. Likewise sexuality transgresses
language, which again challenges the language, the voyeur, the

CONTENTS
narrator. The difference and intensity is produced in between
the two, and language can in this process achieve a state of pure
expression, just as the body can be thought of as one of many,
and it is here, then, that the need for a break, in the form of an
aggression that creates meaning, occurs in de Sade’s writing:
»There is always another breath in my breath, another thought
in my thought, another possession in what I possess, a thousand
things and a thousand beings implicated in my complications:
Every true thought is an aggression« (Deleuze [1969] 1990, 298).
Seligman’s literary interpretations in Nymphomaniac also add
a new plane of intensity. But his synthesising associations and
metaphors simultaneously function as a kind of harmonisation,
which Joe opposes, making her deliver more and more excessive
image material, and angling for greater aggression in its interpre‑
tation. He does not bite, but instead gets the urge to unite himself
with the Dionysian through close bodily contact with her, which
happens precisely as she begins to believe that an Apollinian as‑
ceticism outside the Dionysian register is possible.
The various ›madeleine cakes‹, which inspire Joe and set the
narrative in motion, are intradiegetic and belong, so to speak,
to the literary diagram à la Proust. In Vol. I they are constituted
by Seligman’s nymph, by the rugelach with a pastry fork which
Seligman serves, by an artwork that Seligman has standing with
only part of the title visible to Joe: »Mrs. H«, and by a collection
of Edgar Allan Poe’s novels from which Seligman chooses to read
the beginning of »The Fall of the House of Usher«. These objects,
from which Joe’s narrative takes its starting point and which it
crystallises itself around, are owned by Seligman. As metaphors
they gather meanings in several layers, and Seligman collects
these meanings and delivers diverse educated connotations to
her denotations. But, as mentioned, the Trieresque extradiegetic
diagrams are attached to these diagrams, à la Proust, which, as an
interpretive visual layer, from time to time draw attention to the
screen in a demonstrative manner. This haptic presentation, mak‑
ing clear the narrative’s constellation of body and language form‑
ing two parts of the same signaletic material, creates the interface
which draws in the audience. The Trieresque diagrams appear
in the first chapter, »The Compleat Angler«, as the numbers 3+5

CONTENTS
(when Joe is taken from in front and behind respectively), as a
sketch showing twists in a river bed, as living images of a flowing
river and sea grass that add to the girls‹ hunt from compartment
to compartment like an extra image layer, as parts of ›wh‑words‹,
as calculations of sexual scores and as graphs for ovulation.
The diagrams belong to the film’s expression (sjuzet), but they
lead in an almost simulacral way to the ›figurative‹ meaning of
the film’s content (fabula) – or rather they produce, in literary
ways (as in Jean‑Luc Godard), new transversal connections from
the narrator’s positioning, so to speak, outside the filmic narra‑
tive relations between sjuzhet and fabula. In the following sec‑
tion it is shown how the Trieresque diagrams in Nymphomaniac
are different from Proust’s. Where Proust creates diagrammatic
exchanges between sensed affects and written signs, which are
actualised as events in the reading’s present and thus create the
now of recollection virtually, Trier’s diagrams have the character
of direct notations in the signaletic material. They do not merely
create intertextual, stylistic references to corresponding diagrams
in Godard’s film or to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994);288 they also
activate the filmic, signaletic material’s generic‑rendering side,
which reaches further than the borders of the screen. Where
Proust’s diagrams create virtual recollections through small shifts
and nuances in the linguistic signs, in Nymphomaniac Trier cre‑
ates opulent diagrams that demand attention and disturb the
eventual empathy in both Joe’s corporeal memory traces and
Seligman’s interpretive traces. These extradiegetic diagrams set‑
tle like abstractions ›on top of‹ the signaletic material, as ›pure
information‹ in the form of, for example, mathematical calcula‑
tions, the mapping of a stream, measurements of temperature,
sketches of optimal parking, but also as documentary images or
metaphorical figurations of a filmic type. They do not attempt to
either wrest meaning from or give meaning to the sign, but they
create direct – more or less informative or true – appeals to the
288 This alludes to the scene in which Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) describes Vincent Vega (John Tra‑
volta) as old‑fashioned, with the words »don’t be a …«, upon which she sketches a square‑like shape in the
air with her fingers. The two characters are seen through a car windscreen, and the viewer thus ›sees‹ her
gestured sketch as a diagram drawn as a dotted line on the ›outside‹ of the window, which thus comes to
›belong‹ to the viewer’s experience of the screen.

CONTENTS
viewer. In this way Trier’s diagrams displace both Joe’s Dionysian
account and Seligman’s Apollinian interpretation into a material
plane of information, which hinders voyeuristic and erotic sur‑
render to the purely narrative aspect of the film.
The subversive potential of sexual desire

in chapters 1-4
»The Compleat Angler« – on three types of sign

The first Trieresque diagram in chapter one shows the numbers
3+5, which are layered over the image when the young moped
owner Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf) takes Joe’s virginity at her re‑
quest.289 The numbers 1, 2, 3 enumerate (one at a time) Jerôme’s
three thrusts into Joe’s vagina. He turns her over, as she says,
»like a sack of potatoes«, which is illustrated in a metaphorically
documented way by a workman turning over a sack of potatoes,
in that the image is layered over with a +. The numbers 1, 2, 3,
4, 5 then list Jerôme’s five thrusts in Joe’s anus. Even though
Joe’s mind inclines toward mechanical thinking and she fixes his
machine, the moped, with a simple hand movement, just as he
fixes her erotic machine, she explains to Seligman that she has
never forgotten the two humiliating numbers, 3 and 5. Selig‑
man is fascinated by the fact that they are Fibonacci numbers,
and throughout the film we return to them many times in the
form of diagrams. Immediately after Joe talks of a train journey
with her friend B. (Sophie Kennedy Clark), who challenges her
to a competition of who can score the most men. Seligman is
this time fascinated by the idea that the girls read the men in the
train compartments in the same way that anglers read fish in a
river. The trip through the train, to the sounds of »Born to be
Wild«, with Joe dressed in red, shiny shorts and fishnet stockings
(just like Bess in Breaking the Waves), is quickly rewound so the
289 In the Marquis de Sade’s work Justine, Jerôme is the name of a monk – one of the most brutal and
callous sadists whom Justine meets on her erotic journey of suffering. Joe and Jerôme encounter one anoth‑
er several times in Nymphomaniac and the question is whether the pair, Joe and Jerôme, are chosen because
the ›o‹ creates the centre in both names, surrounded by the ›j‹ and ›e‹. The name ›Joe‹, which is normally
used for a man, in this sense gains a gender destabilising, queer scope.

CONTENTS
sound is played backwards. This occurs in order for Seligman to
develop his point, as a number of male train passengers are shown
overlaid with greenish, undulating seaweed, as if viewed from the
bottom of a river. His explanation is supported further by two
drawings of a river’s course through the landscape, which makes
A man depicted as a possible catch ‑ as seen through the eyes of an angler.
The picture of a river bed illustrates the diagrammatic method of Seligman

(Stellan Skarsgård) and the film.

CONTENTS
up the anglers‹/girls‹ topographical challenge. B. then directs Joe
on how eye contact can be best achieved through asking a simple
›Wh‑question‹. These two first letters also appear as a diagram,
drawn in red on the screen and then white in the following, as she
practises the method in a compartment: ›Wh‑at‹ (is the time?),
›Wh‑ere‹ (do you come from?), ›Wh‑o‹ (knows where the toilet
is?). Joe gets a bite, but B. does too, and she goes into the lead
1‑0 and then 5‑3, which also appears visibly on the screen in
diagrammatic form (like chalk on a blackboard).
Before Joe tells of her big catch, she recounts how although
it was easy in the beginning, there was suddenly no‑one who
bit. This makes the angler Seligman eager, and he draws on his
experience that one catches most fish in light rain:
That’s a very clear parallel to fishing in a stream. As it happens, either

none of the fish are feeding or they all feed at the same time. They go
into a feeding frenzy, all bite. And then just as suddenly as it started,
it stops. It’s observable, but it’s highly unpredictable. And it has to do
with, I don’t know, weather, barometric pressure, maybe some fish
psychology if that’s possible. Anyway, the fish most readily bite at the
beginning of a light rain, and I think that’s because they feel safe when
they swim in the stream. Because they can’t be seen from above, the
water surface is disturbed.
(DVD: 28:36‑29:23)
This sequence, which interrupts Joe’s narrative, can be seen as a

kind of poetics towards the function of the Trieresque diagrams
in relation to the viewer. If the water’s surface/screen is too opti‑
cally transparent/stratified, the fish/audience will not bite so easily.
The narrative intention of an optically arranged composition is
often too obvious, while the viewer is easier hooked or affected if
haptic streams and compositions dominate. Here it appears as if
the viewer is free to follow his/her own interpretive preferences.
The visible diagrams on the screen’s surface in Nymphomaniac
produce ripples, so to speak, making the viewer safe, as they open
up to several possible interpretive traces.
In this first part of »The Compleat Angler«, we see, in other
words, a displacement in three parts. Whereas Joe’s metaphors

CONTENTS
keep to corporeal sensations (›like a sack of potatoes‹) and lead
to fabula, Seligman’s metaphors influence transversally in the
film’s sjuzet (which is rewound, so the scene can be replayed).
His fishing diagrams, à la Proust, can be seen as added, but also
as integrated in the fabula (the audience is offered his figures of
interpretation, so to speak). Finally, there are three Trieresque
diagrams which settle like an extra, unnecessary layer ›on top of‹
the screen. They are simulacral, in the Deleuzian sense, which
here means that they presumably only work towards an over‑
all interpretation of the film, while in reality they merely throw
up an endless profusion of true or false meanings. Apropos the
film’s struggle between Dionysian and Apollinian forces, in the
following citation Deleuze advances the simulacral production
as a Nietzschean eternal recurrence of the same in relation to
Klossowski’s serial, erotic forms of intensity:
There is a difference in nature between what returns »once and for all«
and what returns for each and every time, or for an infinite number
of times. The eternal return is indeed the Whole, but it is the Whole
which is said of disjoint members or divergent series: it does not bring
everything back, it does not bring about the return of that which re‑
turns but once, namely, that which aspires to recenter the circle, to
render the series convergent, and to restore the self, the world, and
God. In the circle of Dionysus, Christ will not return; the order of the
Antichrist chases the other order away. All of that which is founded on
God and makes a negative or exclusive use of the disjunction is denied and
excluded by the eternal return. All of that which comes once and for all
is referred back to the order of God. The phantasm of Being (eternal
return) brings about the return only of simulacra (will to power as
simulation). (Deleuze [1969] 1990, 301; author’s italics)
It can be noted that Seligman’s interpretive diagrams are herme‑

neutically directed towards creating wholeness: he aims to save Joe
from Christian ›sin‹, which at the same time is her bait for him.
He is hooked and works on recurrences in the material in order
to gather its meanings. This form of recurrence, which in the
same place is described as a Kierkegaardian figure of repetition
(op. cit., 300), aims towards a unique rebirth (as in the story of

CONTENTS
Abraham, who is tested by God and finally forgiven). The eternal
recurrence’s simulacral repetition is thus an immanent celebra‑
tion of life in and with the repetition, but it is thus also possible to
see each moment as varied and singular, though part of a series.
The Trieresque diagrams distribute mathematical nonsense of
numbers on the screen’s visible surface, but they are as beautiful
as the patterns of the Fibonacci series. Although it is Seligman
who suggests the Fibonacci theme and follows up on it throughout
the film, he abandons it towards the end, while the Trieresque
diagrams remain faithful to it.
Shortly after this sequence Seligman refers to another fly fish‑
ing method, whereby one irregularly pulls on the line to simulate a
struggling insect, which awakens the interest of the fish. Following
on from this is Joe’s account of how she makes herself sexually
attractive by appealing to the man’s protectiveness. In this scene,
where Joe simulates grief over the serious illness of her dwarf
hamster, Betty, her narrative thus confirms Seligman’s diagram.
The choice of the hamster as an appealing object is commented
on by a male passenger, who reasons it would have been worse if it
had been a human, but Joe acts genuinely hurt and maintains that
she was incredibly fond of her hamster. This play on appealing to
sympathy for a small furry animal pays off, in that another man
bites and, in a duelling tone, accuses the first man of cynicism.
He allows Joe to talk about the hamster’s enthusiasm (for its cosy
cage), after which Joe is able to reel in her prey. Seligman points
out along the way the Freudian sense in which the choice of the
dwarf hamster could have certain sexual connotations, and Joe’s
words, »Would you show me where the lavatory is? I have to blow
my nose« (DVD: 32:39), makes it a linguistic sign for action – and
makes the point clear to the viewer.
In the next scene both self‑consciousness and ambiguity are
abandoned, and Joe goes directly to the prey, provoking him into
sex. When the ticket inspector catches the two friends aboard
the train without tickets, and a friendly man, S. (Jens Albinus),
pays for them, the girls offer to repay him. S. turns down their
advances, but when B. challenges Joe, who is trailing 10‑6 in the
race to win the bet and the prize, she strikes. Seligman approves of
what he calls the fly‑fisherman’s third method, which can provoke

CONTENTS
a passive fish – for example, one that is on its way to its spawning
ground – to bite with the help of the Finnish weapon, the so‑called
Rapala. This can look like a ›wobbler‹, preferably red, which is
presented to the fish (36:10‑36:27). This description functions
as a prelude to Joe challenging S. to answer how embarrassing
it is that he, who is travelling in first class, and has just bought
train tickets for Joe and B., has only bought a cheap gift for his
wife from the station shop. He defends this action by stating that
he needs to get home quickly, as he and his wife have decided to
have children, and therefore he must be available when she is
ovulating and is most fertile – which is this evening in question
(demonstrated diagrammatically with a thermometer and a graph
of ovulation patterns). He protests that there is no lack of sexual
desire. Joe then hurries into action, unzipping his trousers and
giving him a blowjob, which ends with her depriving him of de‑
livering his ›package‹. The account of the train journey ends with
a hasty edit away from Joe, who is wiping semen from around her
mouth, to a large fish being caught in a net, and then Joe eating
chocolate buttons. Seligman appears to be enjoying hearing Joe
recounting her stories and proposes what he calls a »culturally
blasphemous digression«, in that the pornographic description
makes him think of how Proust creates a relation between the
description of a taste sensation and memories: »In your case it
was not the taste of a madeleine cake moistened in a lime‑blossom
tea but the combination of chocolate and sperm« (40:41‑40:46).
But Joe has no intention of entertaining and would rather have
Seligman interpret her youthful manhunt as reprehensible. How‑
ever, he believes that sin and the mention of imprecation due to
Pandora’s Box is nonsense, and that she has merely given the men
an experience and maybe ensured that a healthy child has been
born into the world, because semen can degenerate if it is stored
for too long. He concludes: »If you have wings, why not fly?«, and
images are shown of a helicopter and a glider taking off.290
This chapter can be summed up by noting that Trier diagram‑
matically inserts Peirce’s signs, the indexical, symbolic and iconic,
290 Here one might have expected an image of a bird, but the point is that it is the airstream that holds
the glider up – and that throughout the film Joe is associated with machinic functions.

CONTENTS
in and with the three forms of capture with which Seligman is con‑
notatively associated. The first method utilises the actual (the insect
larva’s appearance and movements together with the shyness of
puberty and the toilet’s placement on the train) in order to be able
to resemble traces and create signs (the nymph hook and its move‑
ment, together with the girls‹ explicit attire and naïve appearance).
In the second method Joe creates sexual interest because her vagina
alludes to the (dying) animal (insect/hamster), which is attached
symbolically to the male/female sex organs. In the third method the
prey is paralysed, as the iconic sign (the red colour, an unequivo‑
cal provocation) calls for a reaction or makes escape impossible.
Furthermore, Peirce’s diagrammatic signs are presented several
times, in that we go from the linguistic description of something (a
›Rapala‹, for example) to the illustration of this in Joe’s story, which
is thus made into an ›actual‹ realisation of the sign.
The diagrammatic function, which runs through every chapter
of the film and creates connections between the leaves of the book,
labia and leaves on the tree, is also presented in this first chapter,
but it is only in the Director’s Cut version of the film that one
is given a clearly linked relation. This relation takes its starting
point in the scene where Joe, as a pubescent girl, leafs through
the pages of her father’s medical books and finds an anatomical
drawing of the female bodily organs. She reads aloud: »Nervus
Pudendus, nervus dorsalis clitoridis« (15:27‑15:39), and then no‑
tices her father observing her with a knowing look. She leaves the
room, while he closes the book and places it on the shelf. From
this incestuous suggestion there is an abrupt edit to the leaves of
the aspen tree, rustling in the wind, and the contented faces of
both the father and Joe. They stand with eyes closed, listening to
the rustling of the leaves, and while caressing Joe’s hair, the father
tells his story of the ash tree:
When the ash tree was created, it made all the other trees in the forest
jealous. It was the most beautiful tree. You couldn’t say anything bad
about it. It was the world tree in Norse mythology. Remember, Odin
hung from the ash tree in Yggdrasil for nine days in order to gain in‑
sight. [Odin is seen hanging in a tree as ›documentary‹ evidence.] The
ash tree had the strongest wood. Then in the winter, when the ash tree

CONTENTS
lost all of its leaves … all the trees noticed its black buds and started
laughing. »Oh, look – the ash tree has had its fingers in the ashes.«
See, you could always tell the ash tree in the winter by the black buds.
(DVD: 16:24‑17:30)291
The father then measures one of the leaves from the ash tree
with his sliding gauge, and the leaf is pressed and glued into Joe’s
herbarium, which she has with her – throughout her life. With a
pencil she notes down his measurements with the sliding gauge
in the book. It is not until later that the viewer learns the connec‑
tion. A sliding gauge is seen when Joe is present at an abortion, as
one is used to measure the opening of the birth canal. Joe gives
up her medicine studies shortly after. Later – in Vol. II, where
she carries out an abortion on herself (omitted from the shorter
version) – she uses the original sliding gauge, which she has in‑
herited from her father, to measure her own vagina, in order to
work out the necessary size of the instrument for the task. In this
way the sliding gauge brings various images of the vagina into
diagrammatical contact with the various shapes of leaves. This
relation is referenced by the herbarium: the book that preserves
the various types of leaf or vagina. The book is given a central
role in Vol. II, where Joe attempts to end her addiction to sex and
packs everything away that leads her to think about it – a handle,
mirrors, table edges – she even deprives herself of heat. She lies on
her bed shivering and flicks through the herbarium, but because
she licks her fingers in order to be able to leaf through the pages
better, she is stimulated, and she places her fingers in her mouth
and the herbarium between her legs. The leaves in the book and
the leaves in the vagina are brought together in masturbation,
and with this her father is also brought to mind.
291 Firstly the story alludes to Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Nordic mythology. It contains the eagle, the
squirrel, the stag, the goat and the worm. Each of these is in its own way a parasite, but the tree also has
connections, via the wells beneath its roots, to the underworld’s dead and wisdom. The god Odin receives
his wisdom here. Yggdrasil characterises a cosmological order, closely entwined with the threatening chaos,
Ragnarok. Secondly the story refers to Wagner’s use of Yggdrasil in the opera Götterdämmerung in the
operatic Ring cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Here, in short, Siegfried breaks off a branch from Yggdrasil,
which initiates Ragnarok, but this destruction in the opera represents liberation from a world ruled by the
powers of will – in fitting with Wagner’s inspiration from Schopenhauer. These associations with Yggdra‑
sil’s chaotically infiltrated order and Ragnarok’s cosmological chaos are juxtaposed in simple ways in the
story of the ash tree.

CONTENTS
Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) with her beloved herbarium, in which she notes the
sizes and appearance of leaves.
The incestuous theme becomes clear and forms yet another ex‑
planation for Joe’s nymphomania, as the father’s story of the leaves
is repeated many times throughout the film, and thus a transverse
connection is created between the sexual episodes and the experi‑
ences. Furthermore, one might say that the incestuous connections
between the words ›leaf through‹ and ›leaf‹ create diagrammatical
links between the sign of the word and the image of the sign, in
the same way as Proust creates images in the reader by describing
impressions of smell, sight and other senses. In a figurative sense,
the film creates diagrams between Seligman’s literary involvement
in how an ideogram can capture and trace meaning in Apollinian
ways, and the filmic images‹ acting out of Joe’s Dionysian corpo‑
real energy. In this way both the sliding gauge and the herbarium
become diagrammatic tools, which can both spread and collect
meaning from signs to update action and its converse: the sliding
gauge becomes the thing that the father and then Seligman (cf. the
film’s final chapter) are able to teach Joe, while the teaching of the
vagina is the thing that Joe is interested in.292
292 The father’s story of the lime tree is described in the same place with a parable about how its round

CONTENTS
»Jerôme« – on fetishising
Joe finds inspiration for the second chapter when Seligman serves
rugelach with a cake knife to Joe, who finds this feminine, and
unmanly. After a brief introduction where we see the young Joe
having sex with various lovers, as she simulates each one of them
giving her an orgasm for the first time, she recounts the story
of how she created a group together with B, a little flock, who
worshipped female sexuality with the rhyme: »Mea vulva, mea
maxima vulva«. Seligman responds swiftly that the interval be‑
tween B and F on a piano, which is heard in the film’s illustration,
is a tritone – also known as the ›devil’s interval‹. Simultaneously,
a node diagram is shown over the interval directly on the screen,
and Seligman explains that particular interval was forbidden in
music in the Middle Ages. Joe, unmoved, continues her story of
the group’s defence of a woman’s right to her own sexuality in a
society fixated on love. She leaves the group when even B cannot
resist, and tells the 3/5 (sic!), that she has had sex with the same
person several times. When Joe objects that one is only allowed
to have sex with the same person once, B whispers in her ear:
»The secret ingredient to sex is love« (55:07), upon which Joe’s
engagement in the revolutionary hetaerae vulva group dissolves.
But approximately 30 years later she still defends the message to
Seligman: »For me love was just lust with jealousy added. Eve‑
rything else was total nonsense. For every hundred crimes com‑
mitted in the name of love, only one is committed in the name of
sex« (55:16‑55:29). Seligman smiles when she says that her way
forward was to get herself an education. The smile is not due to
anything in her story, but his impression of her with pigtails and
wearing a school uniform, represented figuratively within the
genre of schoolgirl sex. This sequence, in contrast to the first
chapter, shows an incongruence between Joe’s story and Selig‑
man’s response. He listens to music, which is for the benefit of the
audience only, and his narrative on schoolgirl sex is likewise only
visible to the audience. Whereas in the first chapter he conveys
leaves became heart‑shaped because a fox with cubs, which lived in a hole under its roots, was shot and
died in the hole together with its young: »This made the lime tree so sad, and from then on the lime tree
decided to have heart shaped leaves.« (18:47). This story is retold by Joe as a lead‑in to the violence in the
film’s final chapter, »The Gun«.

CONTENTS
Joe’s narrative connotatively, here he undermines her narrative
voice with his imagination.
Joe continues her story of how she again meets Jerôme, who
employs her as a secretary without preconditions – only to then
initiate a non‑sexual power struggle with her when she protests
against his advances. Seligman assumes that she is then dismissed
from her job, but Joe answers: »If he had fired me, then he would
have lost« (1:03.30). She and Jerôme thus take responsibility for
a shared investigation of the games which the battle of the sexes
is built on. Her first action is simulated masochism: she tidies
up his desk and serves tea and rugelach. He complains that she
has forgotten the pastry fork. Although she doesn’t believe that
it is right for this type of cake, she accepts Jerôme’s complaint
and his feigned authority. Here Seligman interjects and defends,
in a joking tone, the pastry fork (and his own habit), in that it
is practical and has a function as an absolute detector of (petty)
bourgeoisie; for example historically, during the Russian revo‑
lution (this is overlaid by simulated documentary images). Joe
ignores Seligman’s parenthetical insert and recounts how she
soon has office sex with everyone other than Jerôme. His obvi‑
ous (though feigned) chastisement of her leads, in other words,
to her being able to have unsavoury (but real) sex with others.
As an underdog she can operate in a concealed way, but Jerôme
demands in addition that she should carry his coat when they
are out in town. On one of these trips Joe is victorious over him
when she, unlike Jerôme, manages to park his large car,293 as she
follows the parking diagram which is sketched on the screen. Just
like in chapter 1, the diagram shows what ought to happen, but
here it is not linked to Seligman’s narration, and thus specifies
the Trieresque diagram as compositional. Joe’s triumphant su‑
periority in relation to Jerôme with regard to machinic mastery
paradoxically enough releases an infatuation shortly afterwards,
as she attempts in masochistic ways to submit to his hands‹ el‑
egant negligence. She wants to be the object handled by him.294
293 This can be regarded as a reference to the sequence in Melancholia where Justine also takes over the
wheel from both the chauffeur and then her husband, Michael.
294 This is not dissimilar to O’s infatuation with Sir Stephen in Pauline Réage’s Story of O ([1954] 2013).
Dominique Aury, who wrote the novel under the pseudonym and was also an academic and worked as a

CONTENTS
She sees him in a new idealised light, though reverting to reason
she knows that:
Love distorts things. Or even worse. Love is something you’ve never

asked for. The erotic was something I asked for. Or even demanded of
men. But this idiotic love. I felt humiliated by it and all of the dishonesty
that follows. The erotic is about saying yes. Love appeals to the lowest
instincts wrapped up in lies. How do you say yes when you mean no,
and vice versa? I’m ashamed of what I became. But it was beyond my
control. (1.10.36‑1:11:22)295
Although Seligman believes that she is being defensive here rather

than laying herself bare, Joe continues the story of how she, in
longing for Jerôme’s careless elegance, goes for long walks in the
forest from her childhood, which contains a lady with a dog and
an old man on a bench.296 When she finally pulls herself together
enough to deliver a love letter to Jerôme, he has left with the
secretary Liz, and she fantasises about him now in fragments: by
collecting parts of his likeness from random men on the train –
as if they were pieces in a puzzle – in order to masturbate. This
fetishising is dramatically depicted on the screen as a metonymic
grouping of elements that is able (though with difficulty) to sup‑
port the material memory. But this scene is also haptic in its uti‑
lisation of the word, bearing a similarity to Deleuze’s approach in
the cinema books in relation to Bresson’s film. The eyes look out
in haptic ways and take elements from various bodies on the train
– back and forth across the eyesight’s usual coverage of a space.
A dialogue follows between Joe and Seligman concerning how
we perhaps only remember the essential silhouettes of things, after
which follows an edit to Joe’s childhood, where her father explains
to her that it is the souls of the trees we see during winter. As a
publisher with, amongst others, Gallimard, was a great admirer of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost
Time.
295 The assertion that love appeals to the lowest instincts wrapped in lies has an affinity with Nietzsche’s
general position that the narrative of love also includes the lie and can often hide a real resentment (cf.
ressentiment). The film’s strapline, »Forget about love«, which does not feature on the Director’s Cut DVD,
likewise supports Joe’s Nietzschean position on the nature of love.
296 The recurrent walks in the forest from her childhood clearly refer to Proust’s long descriptions of
the Bois de Boulogne, in which he reminisces about the women who used to be there (Proust in In Search of
Lost Time, vol. 1, Swann’s Way 2003, 592).

CONTENTS
result, the ash’s black buds are stigmata. As with her father, Joe
seeks out, and towards the end finds, the tree that corresponds
with her soul. Whereas the father’s tree is split in two, her tree
stands windswept and gnarled, alone on a golden mountain top.
The poetics here again relate to Proust. In the beginning of the
section on Combray’s notion of how in many cultures animals
and plants contain magical souls, he writes how memory should
be activated through something. Proust establishes this activa‑
tion through the main character’s combined taste sensation of
tea and madeleine cake. The following is the introduction to the
description of Marcel’s activation of memory through the tongue’s
sensory impression:
I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of
those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an
animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost
to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to
pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their
prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as
soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us,
they have overcome death and return to share our life.
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past
is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect,
in some material object (in the sensation which that material object
will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance
whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.
(Proust 2009, vol. 1, 59‑60)
Joe’s narrative continues with the loss of Jerôme leading to an ag‑

gressive hunt for men, as she makes her cunt into a kind of sensor
which, like a supermarket’s automatic door, opens and closes for
customers. As she notes that »[m]y sensitive door opening gave me
an opportunity to develop my morphological studies from leaves
to genitals« (1:21:25), images from The Kingdom I are shown of
the Rigshospital’s sensor‑equipped doors, where the wind al‑
lows leaves to blow in. Leaves now refer to both female and male
genitalia. Next follows typography over male genitals – black,

CONTENTS
yellow and circumcised penises – each image with a number at‑
tached on a yellow ›post‑it‹. This sequence is as if borrowed from
Deleuze’s self‑same summary of Proust’s poetics in the section
»Essenses«, which according to Deleuze shows itself best in art
(Deleuze 2000, 50):
Neither things nor minds exist, there are only bodies: astral bodies,
vegetal bodies. The biologists would be right if they knew that bodies in
themselves are already a language. The linguists would be right if they
knew that language is always the language of bodies. Every symptom is
a word, but first of all every word is a symptom. (Deleuze op. cit., 92)
To summarise chapter 2, »Jerôme«, one might say that it works

with the partial elements of fetishising and their joining in novel
constellations, where Seligman and Joe do not necessarily en‑
ter into a dialogue; rather, the opposite happens. This chapter
illustrates how the bodies (Seligman’s and Joe’s, the male and
female) are woven together in unpredictable ways through the
(love) sign, which springs from conception to projection to ac‑
tion, and so on. The sign’s meaning is enfolded in the bodies
and their relations, and the meaning of the narrative (and life)
is not unfolded through studies and the creation of semiological
typologising but through the meeting of senses, which through
memory (virtually) open up and set the essence (the souls) free
in new, topical contexts.
»Mrs. H« – on random and meaningful signs

The theme of the third chapter is the rather obvious language of
passion, which can be used, misused or misunderstood. Passion’s
fury is expressed in the form of the jealous Mrs. H, who confronts
Joe concerning her love escapades not only ruining and destroy‑
ing entire families, but also that one ought to be careful saying »I
love you« – no matter what the context.
With a starting point in part of the title of a painting, which
Seligman has standing in his apartment, Joe says that she must
give up keeping account of her relationships and predicting what
her various lovers want to hear. She invents a method based on

CONTENTS
casting dice, where a one represents a very loving answer, a two
results in a less passionate, but still positive answer; a five rep‑
resents a total rejection, while a six results in no answer. This
system merely arouses the men even more in the competition
for her favours, and this is the case with H (Hugo Speer), who
is described as too clingy. While waiting for a new lover, she at‑
tempts to get rid of him by lying and saying that she loves him
too much and that she has realised he will never leave his family
for her sake, and this is the reason they can no longer be together
(1:25:44‑1:26:25). The scene that follows, in which H returns after
having left his wife, illustrates how a person’s love, with unfail‑
ing security, leads to others lying to themselves, and rather than
controlling the emotions of ourselves and other people in our
declarations of love, we become lost in what Proust also describes
in the encounter with Albertine in the volume as »the Shadow of
Young Girls in Flower«.
Following on the heels of H is the jilted wife, Mrs. H (Uma
Thurman), together with the couple’s three young boys. In an
elaborate scene of jealousy she dramatises for Joe how her own
destiny and that of the three boys will look in the near future. She
expresses the feelings that brought her and Mr. H together, and
which are still found in relation to the children. Conversely, she
persists with the idea that the children need to see the source of
where it all happened, »the whoring bed«, and instructs Joe that
the »children’s father« usually has two lumps of sugar in his tea.
According to Deleuze, jealousy is a search for the truth; that is,
an attempt to find a reason for the lies and signs the lover has
given (knowingly or unknowingly):
If the signs of love and of jealousy carry their own alteration, it is

for a simple reason: love unceasingly prepares its own disappearance,
acts out its dissolution. The same is true of love as of death, when we
imagine we will still be alive enough to see the faces of those who will
have lost us. In the same way we imagine that we will still be enough
in love to enjoy the regrets of the person we shall have stopped loving.
It is quite true that we repeat our past loves; but it is also true that our
present love, in all its vivacity, »repeats« the moment of the dissolution
or anticipates its own end. Such is the meaning of what we call a scene

CONTENTS
of jealousy. This repetition oriented to the future, this repetition of the
outcome, is what we find in Swann’s love of Odette, in the hero’s love
of Gilberte, of Albertine. (Deleuze op. cit., 19)
Mrs. H’s performance comes close to Masoch’s ideal for the

masochist’s woman, who should be able to combine aloofness,
sentimentality and gruesomeness.297 When Joe’s next lover ar‑
rives, Mrs. H erroneously interprets this and believes a three‑
some is planned, which she (and the nuclear family of five) cannot
compete with. Mrs. H plays out the scene in a grotesque way
and leaves like a wounded animal with her sons, screaming, in‑
articulate and dishing out a stinging slap to Mr. H.298 Following
Seligman’s question of how the scene affected Joe back then, she
answers unaffectedly that one cannot make an omelette without
breaking some eggs. However, she returns to the fact that through
her life she has hurt and done harm to others and describes her‑
self as emotionally stunted. The only feeling that has followed her
always, through the years of lovers, is loneliness. This is illustrated
by an image of a memory from a hospital where she, as a seven‑
year‑old, had an operation: »It was as if I was completely alone in
the universe. As if my whole body was filled with loneliness and
tears« (1:40:11‑1:40:18). The utterance is illustrated with images
of the universe.
In this chapter, which does not contain diagrams added directly
on the screen, the Fibonacci sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 is played out
with people. First there is the 1 + 1 which gives 2 (Joe + H); the
2 + 1 (Mrs. H) gives 3; Mr. H and Mrs. H together with their
three boys gives 5. When Joe’s next guest arrives, Joe, H and
the guest make up a triangle, while H and his abandoned family
make a pentagon. The Fibonacci sequence cannot, however, carry
on in a harmonious manner: H cannot under any circumstance
participate in both the number 3 and the number 5, and it is im‑
297 The jealousy scene also anticipates Joe’s own future, which is shown in the film’s final chapter, »The
Gun«. In contrast to Mrs. H, however, Joe makes it a short process and does not attempt to recollect and
revive the signs of her falling in love (with Jerôme), but nonetheless her unconscious will plays tricks on her
when she ›forgets‹ that the gun’s safety catch is on.
298 The fact that Uma Thurman (like some of the other stars) almost has a scene to herself, where she
can play out her character, gives an extra dimension to the film and to the film’s poster, where every char‑
acter performs their own orgasm as themselves, so to speak.

CONTENTS
mediately too late for Joe to recall her lies. The damage is done.
The Fibonacci sequence’s 8 cannot be realised.
»Delirium« – on familial similarities

Chapter 4, »Delirium«, is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic
short story »The Fall of the House of Usher«, whose introduction
is read aloud for Joe by Seligman. The chapter describes Joe’s in‑
cestuous feelings towards her father (Christian Slater), which are
released after his violent death. He dies, just like Poe, of delirium
tremens, which Seligman describes thus:
It occurs when a long‑term abuse of alcohol is followed by a sudden

abstinence. Your body goes into some kind of hypersensitive shock.
You could see the most horrifying hallucinations. Rats and snakes and
cockroaches coming out of the floor. Worms slithering on the walls.
One’s entire nervous system is on high alert, and in constant panic
and paranoia. And then the circulatory system fails. But the panic and
horror remains until the moment of death. (1:41:48‑1:42:30)
This description is accompanied by Harry Clark’s black and white

drawings of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination ([1923] 2008),
and Joe’s story of her father’s death in hospital has additional
black and white images throughout. In this way the chapter, from
the beginning when Joe arrives at the hospital, strikes a gothic
and melancholic atmosphere with bleak pathways wet with rain,
reflecting the street lighting.
The father, who has said his goodbyes to Joe’s detested moth‑
er, Kay (Connie Nielsen), does not fear the arrival of death, but
his violent seizure scares Joe, whom he consoles by telling her yet
again how one can recognise the ash tree in winter. Joe breaks
up by degrees, as this time the story anticipates her father’s im‑
pending death. He suffers one attack of delirium after another,
while Joe observes helplessly. He is strapped down and reacts
against this in demonic ways, soiling the bed with his excrement.
The doctor who is attending to him explains to Joe that he has
brain damage, which causes delirium, and that this cannot be
alleviated with morphine. Joe accesses her own tears by having

CONTENTS
wild sex with the kitchen staff in the hospital’s basement,299 but
when her father finally dies, she has no more tears left. Never‑
theless, she reacts mechanically by ›becoming moist‹ when she
sees him as a cadaver, which causes her to feel shame. Even this
story does not shock Seligman, who with reference to literary
examples says: »It’s extremely common to react sexually in a
crisis« (2:00:39).
In conclusion, one can regard this chapter as dealing with
(unrealised) incestuous love. In and with the father’s demonic
look at Joe, there is a basis for a reading of the Uncanny (in line
with Freud).300 The chapter thus resembles its source, »The Fall
of the House of Usher«, which creates uneasiness rather than safe
signs. The father’s delirium is linked in unspecified ways to Joe’s
mother, Kay. Joe’s reactions are depicted as non‑conscious and
affective, in that she is trapped as a victim in the parents‹ game. It
is, for example, at the sight of her father’s body and her mother’s
reproachful look that Joe becomes moist. She interprets this her‑
self as shameful. Nevertheless, during her father’s death she learns
that impulsive affects are stronger than emotive bonds. One could
add that she is ›placed‹ in an interface between seeing and seen,
where she is given sole access to her own feelings through her
body’s involuntary, mechanical reactions. This chapter does not
include direct diagrams either, but there is nonetheless a strong
diagrammatical sense in that life (in accordance with the ash tree
Yggdrasil) returns in the form of the eternal recurrence of the
same – Joe’s affective, corporeal reactions. It is thus significant
that the viewer is offered the perspective from Joe’s body, in that
the camera captures the father’s dead body framed by her open
legs, and we see a fluid glide down her right leg. The viewer’s per‑
spective is from Joe’s body, which affectively ›becomes influenced‹
(cf. Spinoza), so to speak, without her will. Another point of note
is the gauge, which is the only thing Joe inherits from her father.
This is also presented again – this time on the father’s writing
desk, while he sits and reads – and she refers to it as beautiful
and worn down with use. Here also, in other words, there is a
299 These give clear intertextual references to Trier’s work, The Kingdom.
300 This demonic look resembles closely the look which the child, Nick, gives the viewer in Antichrist.

CONTENTS
connection between the vagina, the gauge and leaves (the book’s
and the tree’s).
In these first four chapters of the film the young Joe’s sexual
desire and its revolutionary potential is described. In the middle
five chapters, which stretch across and thus bind together Vol. I
and Vol. II, the ideal of the masochist’s woman is unfolded.
The asexual, super sensual woman in chapter 5
»The Little Organ School« – on polyphony

The thing that sets the fifth chapter in motion is Seligman’s re‑
cording of »Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ«, from Bach’s organ
work Das Orgelbüchlein (The Little Organ Book).301 The recording
is unfinished. It is likewise depicted in the chapter where Joe’s
sexual abilities are abruptly interrupted. The two meanings of the
word ›organ‹, a human body part and a specific musical instru‑
ment, are correlated very directly in this chapter, as her organ
is forced in a new direction – towards Thanatos – in that her
erotic desire dries up. Seligman’s introductory speech does not
deviate from the musical meaning of ›organ‹, in that he combines
the trichotomy of polyphony and the Fibonacci sequence in a
description of how the fugue achieves its harmony:
Polyphony is from the Middle Ages. It is an entirely European phenom‑

enon. It’s distinguished by the idea that every voice is its own melody
but together in harmony. Bach’s forerunner, Palestrina, he wrote many
works for several choirs at the same time, wallowing in polyphony. But
in my eyes, Bach perfected the melodic expression and the harmony.
Also mixed up with some rather incomprehensible mystique regarding
numbers – most likely based on the Fibonacci sequence. You know
the one that starts with 0, then comes the 1. The sequence is created
by adding the two previous numbers to create the new one, so it’s 0
+ 1 makes 1, and 2 + 1 makes 3, and 3 + 2 makes 5, and 5 + 3 makes
8, and 8 + 5 makes 13. The sequence has an interesting connection
to Pythagoras‹ theorem, the Golden Section. It was all about finding
301 The organ piece was written during the period 1708‑1717 and consists of 46 choral preludes.

CONTENTS
Seligman explains the Fibonacci sequence to Joe, and the numbers appear
diagrammatically to the audience.
a divine methodology in art and architecture. A bit like the way the
Tritone you played on the piano in your little club was supposed to be
a satanic interval. (2:02:05‑2:03:35)
The Fibonacci sequence, Pythagoras’s theorem and the Golden

Section are illustrated diagrammatically with numbers, calcu‑
lations and sketched diagrams of the Golden Section. He then
presents the musical piece consisting of the bass voice played with
the feet, the second voice played with the left hand and finally the
decisive voice, called cantus firmus, played with the right hand.
Joe takes over immediately and gives her more Dionysian
interpretation of the organ, referring to how the nymphoma‑
niac’s intercourse consists of several voices which create a whole.
It is thus a question not merely of the nymphomaniac ›getting
enough‹, but of how the sum of their various sexual experiences
also makes up a qualitative aspect: »So in that way I have only
one lover« (2:06:49). It is made clear, here, how the Apollinian
Seligman seeks the wholeness of polyphony in the harmony’s
complexity, which in the Fibonacci sequence takes the form and
can represent, for example, the Golden Section or the Devil’s

CONTENTS
Fibonacci numbers, employed as explanation of harmony and beauty.
Interval, while the Dionysian Joe experiences various methods

of sensation in the body’s organ and the sensibilities of the erog‑
enous zones. The Apollinian‑tuned organ collects voices for a
polyphonic, harmonic whole, while the Dionysian‑tuned organ
collects (erotic) sensations in order to spread their meaning (in
orgasms).
With this prelude, Joe then tells of her three lovers: firstly 1) the
bass voice, F., who with his monotone, predictable and ritual way
of making love, creates the foundation; and 2) the second voice,
G., who is erotically dominant like a leopard when it kills its prey.
The two organ voices supplement the descriptions of these two
erotic voices, each ascribed a third of the split screen. One third,
the middle section, remains empty. It is soon filled, however, by
Jerôme, whom Joe finds again on one of her many lonely, mono‑
tone and meaningless walks. She feels like an animal in a cage
when she finds various piles of torn photos spread out over the
plants. It is the abandoned puzzle, representing Jerôme, which
gathers together again, and he becomes the primary voice or pri‑

CONTENTS
mary lover, the cantus firmus.302 With this a threefold harmony
of split screens is also created in the visuals, literally a triptych,
which links the various sexual voices or impetuses in the bodily
instrument. The dialogue between Seligman’s Apollinian and
Joe’s Dionysian voice is likewise complete through the music.
But suddenly the music stops: Seligman’s tape is incomplete. Joe
synchronously loses her erotic desire, and there is nothing Jerôme
can do about it. He must relinquish answering her demand, »Fill
all my holes«. And Vol. I ends – to the sound of Rammstein’s
»Führe mich«.
The continuation (in Vol. II) denotes Joe’s introduction to the
death drive’s form of lust. But first one follows Joe’s futile attempt
to achieve orgasm; Seligman believes it is Zenon’s mathematical
paradox, where Joe is Achilles hunting the tortoise (the orgasm)
in vain. His story is illustrated by a children’s drawing of Achilles
standing at a point and the tortoise at another point, 100 metres
ahead. Joes is irritated with all the cultural‑historical and math‑
ematical associations Seligman serves up, and she realises that he
cannot relate to her story because he is a virgin and has not had
any sexual experiences. He believes himself to be asexual, and
his interest in sex is only literary. He believes, on the other hand,
that it is precisely this chastity which makes him a better listener
and judge of her character.
In summary, this chapter is concerned with the various ways
in which one can enter into relations with one’s own body and
with the bodies of others. While the chapter’s first part depicts
the affective range and potential of the various voices, the second
and third parts (on the spontaneous orgasm and its cessation)
show respectively how affect can occur unprovoked by an event,
and how the non‑occurrence of an expected affect can also be
an event. In the case of Joe, the absence develops her libido for
new forms of sensation. It is made clear in the chapter that the
Apollinian Seligman’s asexual existence is not the same as the
302 When Jerôme is again introduced into the story here, Seligman protests over the unrealistic manner
in which he appears so many times – and apparently randomly. Joe corrects him and asks how he believes
he can get the most out of her story – by believing in it or by not believing in it. He has to admit she is
right, and thus he gives in to her affective descriptions of coincidence and improbable meetings, with which
Proust’s narratives are also filled.

CONTENTS
The threefold harmony between Joe’s three lovers is presented via split screen:
the blasphemous triptych.
Dionysian Joe’s loss of sexual desire. Seligman’s dream of the

Fibonacci sequence’s Golden Section and perfect harmony cannot
be realised in practice in Joe’s actual world. Deleuze and Guat‑
tari sum up the relationship between the parts and the whole in
Anti-Oedipus in a manner that corresponds with Joe’s part of the
narrative in chapter 5:
We believe only in totalities that are peripheral. And if we discover

such a totality alongside various separate parts, it is a whole of these
particular parts but does not totalize them; it is a unity of all of these
particular parts but does not unify them; rather, it is added to them as a
new part fabricated separately. (Deleuze and Guattari [1972] 1990, 42)
This method relates in the same place to Proust’s writing style:
In the literary machine that Proust’s In Search of Lost Time constitutes,

we are struck by the fact that all the parts are produced as asymmetri‑
cal sections, paths that suddenly come to an end, hermetically sealed
boxes, noncommunicating vessels, watertight compartments, in which
there are gaps even between things that are contiguous, gaps that are

CONTENTS
affirmations, pieces of a puzzle belonging not to any one puzzle but
to many, pieces assembled by forcing them into a certain place where
they may or may not belong, their unmatched edges violently bent out
of shape, forcibly made to fit together, to interlock, with a number of
pieces always left over. It is a schizoid work par excellence: it is almost
as though the author’s guilt, his confessions of guilt are merely a sort
of joke. (Deleuze and Guattari [1972] 1990, 42‑43)
This could also be applicable to the narrative methods in Nym-

phomaniac. It becomes clear in chapter 5 that Joe’s Dionysian
experiences are quite disparate from Seligman’s Apollinian ones.
She nonetheless attempts to bend her story according to the vari‑
ous classic informative diagrams he produces. In the following
chapter, where the life drive of Eros slowly yields to the death
drive of Thanatos, her complaisance becomes reduced.
The sadistic woman’s unfolding in chapters 6-8
»The Eastern and the Western Church« – on the worship

and dissemination of signs
The prelude to chapter 6 occurs when Joe notices a small Rus‑

sian icon, which Seligman believes may have been painted in
the style of Rublev.303 He explains that the Russian Orthodox
Church predominantly praises light and joy (Maria with child), in
contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, which idolises suffering
(Christ on the cross). On this basis, Joe tells of her journey from
the light to suffering with a small addition, »The Silent Duck«,
at the end. The chapter begins with a flashback of the vision/
orgasm, which Joe, at the age of 12, had on a school trip. She
is seen lying in the grass, taking in all of the sounds, smells and
sensory impressions of nature.304 Her body raises itself,305 and she
quivers at the sight of two female figures appearing in the sky.
303 This is without doubt a reference to Tarkovsky’s film on the icon painter, Andrei Rublev (1969).
304 This is a clear reference to Trier’s Antichrist, where the woman lies in the grass near Eden.
305 This reference is to Tarkovsky’s use of the same trick.

CONTENTS
Joe is convinced that she has had a spontaneous orgasm, but not
convinced about what she has seen. Seligman identifies one of the
women as Valeria Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius, who is
characterised as the most notorious nymphomaniac of antiquity,
and the other as a Babylonian whore, riding on Nimrod in the
form of a bull. Seligman sees her vision as a blasphemous version
of Jesus’s transfiguration, an important passage in the tradition of
the Eastern Church. But as she is equally as innocent in relation
to religion as he is in relation to sex, he calls the cheerful vision
»the transfiguration on the Venus mountain« (vol. II 15:14). Nev‑
ertheless, he links the transfiguration from human to divine with
the demon’s transfiguration of Joe’s (child’s) body into the lust
of the nymphomaniac, who later in her adult life becomes lost.
In continuation of this loss of lust, the sounds of Wagner’s
opera Das Rheingold are heard, and Seligman asks half‑teasingly:
»Was it that bad?« (vol. II 15:33), while a naked Joe is seen falling
down in the Nibelung. She answers in a serious manner: »Try to
imagine that in one fell swoop you lost all desire to read. All your
love and passion for books and letters« (vol. II 15:34‑15:45), which
he cannot imagine at all. At the same time, a dressed Seligman is
shown falling down into a mound of books. Through this dialogue
and the illustrated tableaux, two things are thematised – that the
Christian and the anti‑Christian are parts of the same, which is
why the respective banishment and adoration of the body has
always caused difficulties; and that linguistic and corporeal desire
are interwoven.
The chapter then dwells on the description of Joe’s lack of
sexual drive, which again entails wandering alone in the forest.
Here she sees three dead leaves, which perform a kind of ballet in
the breeze, giving her hope of regaining her sexuality. She decides
to take the initiative with regard to Jerôme in order to force her‑
self to find her sexual desire again. Their changing roles provide
humour, illustrated by a scene at a restaurant where Jerôme bets
Joe that she cannot fit a spoon into her vagina.306 She goes along
with the joke and a number of spoons disappear from their table,
306 This is a pun in Danish, as the pronunciation of ›skede‹ (vagina) can bring with it the meaning ›ske‹
(spoon), as well as the expression ›to lie in a spoon‹ (spooning).

CONTENTS
causing the waiter (Udo Kier) to bring them new cutlery.307 When
they leave the restaurant, the spoons fall rattling to the floor, to the
indignation of the other patrons. This humorous section ends with
Joe reading, sprawled on a sofa naked from the waist down. Her
leafing through the book is watched by a naked, kneeling Jerôme,
who ›leafs‹ in her labia. Both are wearing glasses. As in the ballet
of dead leaves, one sees the labia and leaves linked together with
the meaning of sexual desire.
Joe becomes pregnant in this period, though without sexual
desire. During the Caesarean section she believes that she sees
the child’s smiling face reflected obscurely, and Seligman quickly
associates this with Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, which re‑
counts the story of Noah’s son, Ham, being born into the world
grinning, and how this was interpreted as yet another Satanic
sign.308 With an indifferent air, Joe tells of the child, Marcel,309
and how she felt as if he saw through her; and that he did not
return her love.310 Meanwhile Jerôme has to give up satisfying her
alone, and she goes out on the streets dressed as a piano teacher,
where she pretends to have no understanding of cars. This trick,
which causes men to wish to impress her with their knowledge of
both cars and Beethoven’s fugues, proves effective. Joe removes
the spark plug cables and exploits the time spent trying to fix the
car. Seligman again becomes eager to compete with the men in
Joe’s narrative (with his knowledge of Beethoven’s revival of the
fugue), whereas Jerôme’s reaction to the extra‑marital arrange‑
ment is jealousy and absence from home.
A particular section in the hunt for Joe’s satisfaction is given
its own chapter, »The dangerous men«. Here we see Charlotte
Gainsbourg in the role as Joe for the first time. She seeks out
black men in her neighbourhood, and also a sadistic man. The
first description ends in a disagreement between two black men
307 This is a clear reference to Melancholia, where at the wedding Justine’s father reprimands the waiter
because there is a lack of spoons for the dinner guests. Their spoons are, however, visibly placed in the
breast pocket of his jacket. Here also the waiter is played by Udo Kier.
308 Ham was the father of Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel. Filmically, there are references to
Polanski’s horror film Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
309 The reference to Marcel Proust is evident.
310 This reference to the woman’s relationship to her child, Nick, in Antichrist is followed up through
the remainder of the film, in that she abandons her child at night, as he is about to jump from the balcony.

CONTENTS
about how her holes should be approached. An angle framing Joe
sitting lost between two erect black penises is a funny pastiche on
mainstream porn in film, and at the same time a more serious
comment on ›dangerous sex‹ in which black people participate,
often portraying only their bodies.311 In her description Joe uses
the word ›negro‹ and is immediately corrected by Seligman for
her politically incorrect expression. Joe replies that new words
ought to protect minorities in a democracy:
Each time a word becomes prohibited you remove a stone from the
democratic foundation. Society demonstrates its impotence in the face
of a concrete problem by removing words from the language. The book
burners have nothing on modern society. […] and I say that society is
as cowardly as the people in it, who in my opinion also are too stupid
for democracy. […] The human qualities can be expressed in one word:
hypocrisy. We elevate those who say right but mean wrong and mock
those who say wrong but mean right. (Vol. II 35:46‑36:37)
Joe reveals – maybe for the first time in the film – that the Diony‑
sian way of life is dangerous for an Apollinian‑humanistic outlook.
Her nomadic position does not recognise principles and polity
of equal rights. She thinks and acts just like Deleuze and Guat‑
tari’s description of the nomadic outsider or deterritorialised
type, who with death instinct energy can crave their own sup‑
pression in society and also express themselves in a reactionary
way. This form of gesture is an expression for the revolutionary
unconscious, which now and again can take a short‑cut, allowing
for new connections and, for example, creating new discursive
streams, which can change the ways in which minorities or the
suppressed are kept in their place:
The nomadic and polyvocal use of the conjunctive syntheses is in opposi‑

tion to the segregative and biunivocal use. Delirium has something like
two poles, racist and radial, paranoiac‑segregative and schizonomadic.
And between the two, ever so many subtle, uncertain shiftings where
311 This is also a reference to Manderlay, where Timothy covers Bess’ face with a scarf before inter‑
course.

CONTENTS
the unconscious itself oscillates between its reactionary charge and
its revolutionary potential. (Deleuze and Guattari [1972] 1990, 105;
author’s italics)
Minorities are namely of such a nature that they cannot be in‑

corporated into the ruling order, or gain new status by means of
a different, politically correct designation. They can, on the other
hand, mark out the limits of the ruling axiom:
It is always astounding to see the same story repeated: the modesty

of the minorities‹ initial demands, coupled with the impotence of the
axiomatic to resolve the slightest corresponding problem. In short,
the struggle around axioms is most important when it manifests, it‑
self opens, the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of
flow and propositions of axioms. (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2013,
547‑548)
Joe’s words following the discussion of the politically incorrect

word ›negro‹ are regarded by Seligman as both wild and reac‑
tionary, but he engages in using them and recognises that her
experience with the two black men made her realise that she
must investigate a world far from her own in order to seek out
satisfaction and reclaim her lust and her life energy.
This search for a new way to access her sexuality becomes the
direct transition to the description of the consultations that she,
after several attempts, is given by the sadist K (Jamie Bell).312
In an attempt to explain Seligman’s puzzled questions, Joe tells
how she sought out the systematic violence recognised from
Christ’s story of suffering before the Crucifixion. Seligman adds:
»Via Dolorosa, the nine stations of the cross and 39 lashes« (vol.
II 42:26). Joe submits to K’s rules that there will be no talk of
sex, that she does not have the power to stop him, and that she
must wait between the hours of two to six each morning without
knowing when she would be called in. The last rule becomes
312 Kafka’s Josef K, who in The Trial struggles in vain against a judicial system’s impenetrable bureau‑
cracy, is an obvious reference but it can also be noted that the name of Joe’s mother, Kay, is articulated in
the same way, which indicates that this route has been open for Joe from the beginning. In the film’s final
chapter, »The Gun«, she takes up her mother’s habit of playing solitaire.

CONTENTS
the most difficult for Joe to keep, as her babysitter is unreliable.
Hereafter follows in detail how she, under the pet name Fido,
submits to lashes, with a whip she herself has bound (with so‑
called ›blood knots‹).
She insists that the atmosphere was sexual, though a sexual
exchange never took place. After having mentioned Freud’s con‑
cept of the polymorphous perverse young child as an explanation
for Joe’s submission to the whip, Seligman gets involved in a long
explanation of Prusik’s well‑known knot, which saved him from
death while climbing a mountain. His interruption is interpreted
by Joe as an angle for attention, and she comments on it in the
same belittling way K would have done: »I think this was one of
your weakest digressions. May I continue?« (vol. II 59:54).313 The
continuation shows the consequence of having left Marcel alone.
It is Jerôme, upon returning home, who saves their son from
falling off the balcony.314 The consequences are logical and grue‑
some. Jerôme challenges Joe: if she leaves the house on Christmas
Night, she will never see Marcel or him again. Joe cannot keep
away from K, and as a result the death drive intensifies, but also
the passion. Through the 40 lashes315 K gives her that same night
with the whip she herself has prepared, she achieves orgasm with
self‑stimulation.
When Seligman asks whether Jerôme and Marcel were gone
when she came back, she answers dispiritedly that she has not
seen Marcel since, upon which she throws her teacup against
the wall, while screaming: »This sentimentality … I hate it!« (vol.
II 1:16:08). The cup shatters and leaves a stain on the wallpa‑
per. Seligman gathers together the pieces and is told the story
of »The Silent Duck«, which recounts how K uses his hand,
formed in the shape of a duck’s head, to stimulate Joe. The
scene is then repeated without sound, and Seligman comments
humorously that »one hardly dare imagine the quacking duck«
313 This is a good example of how the rhetorical strategies and their interwoven relations produce hu‑
mour in the film. There are many such places where the audience can relax and laugh.
314 The reference to Antichrist’s intro is emphasised by the aria to Händel’s Rinaldo playing as the boy
stands by the bars of the balcony.
315 K announces pompously: »on account of the holidays and your behaviour today I’m going to give
you the original roman maximum of 40 lashes« (1:14:14).

CONTENTS
(vol. II 1:19:01), after which one sees a flock of quacking ducks.
The scene allows the viewer to smile – partly because the relation
between the single, silent duck and the quacking flock dissolves
the chapter’s sadomasochistic seriousness; and partly because
the universally recognisable drawing of a duck’s head, which
one can also view as a rabbit, here comes to life and even gains
a function. It is well‑known that Wittgenstein utilises the figure
to describe the difference between merely seeing this and seeing
as. In extension of this, the viewer can see the hand as a duck,
or as a hand that takes on the function of a penis.
If one sees the latter, the noisy ducks become an unmanage‑
ably funny image of machinic desire and the body without organs
(BwO), which according to Deleuze and Guattari is non‑repre‑
sentative and cannot be contained in either sadistic or masochistic
desire – and is certainly not compatible with the Freudian Oedi‑
pus complex, which is depicted as anal‑neurotic. BwO relates to
the flock and the intensities and streams of desire that function
relationally on a molecular level. And though, for example, desire
goes through the body and through the organs, BwO does not
direct itself towards the organism. BwO remains on the level of
the part‑organ, for example erogenous zones (cf. Deleuze and
Guattari [1972] 1990, 326). It is clearly the intensities in the BwO
that attract Joe in the sessions she experiences with K. There is
nothing she can do about emotions, whether they are expres‑
sions of love, sorrow or guilt. In the final chapter, »The Gun«, it
is revealed that she has learned to follow these microintensities,
even though they take place in the criminal register.
Seligman, on the contrary, certainly does not have access to
these microintensities, as he has never allowed the part objects
to interfere with his Apollinian whole interpretations. His only
affirmative access to Joe’s corporeal plane of intensity is through
mathematical sequences and diagrams, which make it possible
for him to hook on to her stories – as is the case here. He notes
that K was wrong with regard to the 40 lashes, for these should
be administered in series of three, and therefore Jesus received
only 39 lashes. The numbers and their endless sequences, pat‑
terns and diagrams make it possible for him to understand the
nomadic‑Dionysian order Joe experiences.

CONTENTS
»The Mirror« – on renunciation and the discharge of signs
Chapter 7, The Mirror, which takes its starting point in Selig‑
man’s mirror, refers directly to Tarkovsky’s partially autobio‑
graphical film of the same name from 1975.316 In Tarkovsky’s
film it is dreams and memories which create the representation
of the child and the man, Alexei – and not the other way around.
In this chapter it is, likewise, the reflection of the child Joe that
has a crucial bearing on the adult Joe’s final choice: to remain in
the Dionysian, schizoid stream of desire.
The chapter begins with Joe’s nymphomania becoming both
visibly corporeal (Joe’s clitoris bleeds) and socially unacceptable, as
her boss demands that she enters therapy. Joe mentions to Selig‑
man her aversion to psychologists. When he presses her, she de‑
scribes a previous experience with a psychologist in relation to
her request to be given an abortion. Joe’s aversion towards giving
either rational or emotional reasons for this request ended then
with the psychologist not wanting to help her. The result was that
Joe had to carry out an abortion on herself, for which she, amongst
other things, used her father’s measuring gauge. The film shows in
detail how she anaesthetises herself with both pills and vodka and
carries out the abortion as professionally as she can, using whatever
knowledge she gleaned from her medical studies. The sight of how
she gradually widens her cervix with knitting needles of various
thicknesses and then, with her homemade forceps, pulls the baby
out of her bleeding vagina, wakes memories of the clitoridectomy
in Antichrist. In Joe’s case, however, it is not her desire which is cut
away, but the child.317 Joe’s next discussion with Seligman turns
on how we can take the life of an embryo, or for that matter any
animal’s life, for our own sake. Joe accuses Seligman of closing his
eyes to what he does not want to see – for example, the woman’s
316 By the same token it is evident how one might interpret this chapter as an autobiographical refer‑
ence to Trier’s own experiences in therapy. When Joe is made aware of the mirror in Seligman’s room, it
reflects a person with a camera, who is filming. This postmodernist move is immediately followed by an
image showing Joe reflected in the mirror/camera. So in the chapter »The Mirror«, the person in the mir‑
ror could well be Trier himself, who thus mirrors himself in his lead character and her therapeutic sessions
in an autobiographical way.
317 Haptic scanned images of the foetus in the womb, of the foetus being ripped from the vagina and
the lifeless foetus outside allow for further recollections of The Kingdom I, where the abortion of Lillebror
must be abandoned when Judith goes into labour. The nurse’s definition here mentions how it is an abor‑
tion if the foetus is in the womb, but murder if it is outside.

CONTENTS
feelings about abortion, which is thus made into a construction
that he, as a man, would not be able to understand, let alone relate
to emotionally. She accuses him of not showing empathy, which
otherwise is the foundation of humanism, and that he does not
want to discuss the techniques of foeticide. But he does not believe
that macabre details will make him more knowledgeable. She then
accuses him in corresponding ways of closing his eyes to the fact
that animals die for our sake, and how they die, saying that taboos
are destructive. He responds by stating that her abortion is a luxury
problem. He believes that her principle on openness, »of showing
all the gory details« (vol. II 1:38:08), could be calamitous for those
who really are in need, and for whom an abortion can mean some‑
thing extremely positive. But Joe persists and shows the abortion
method, as it is used in hospitals: the so‑called nutcracker, which
crushes the foetus‹ head in the womb, in order for it to be removed.
This shocks Seligman, and Joe mocks a clearly emotionally af‑
fected Seligman for not wanting to allow people to make their own
choices on a well‑informed basis.
After this we see how Joe, despite her animosity, attends group
therapy, where she is pressured to recognise that her addiction
resembles everyone else’s. She also learns from the therapist that
it is only one person in a million who can live without sexuality,
but that she can help the process by removing everything which
instigates a sexual stimulus. Joe attempts to abstain for three weeks
and five days.318
As she reads aloud to the group her confession of how she has
moved on from her sexual addiction, she looks up for a moment
from her paper, and in the reflection in front of her sees an im‑
age of herself as a young girl. When she turns around, however,
the girl is nowhere to be found. But the vision in the mirror of
her own earlier self does not disappear, and this causes her to rip
up the statement and profess to nymphomania and to diversity,
which ends with a bombastic speech aimed at the therapist:
That empathy you claim is a lie. Because all you are is society’s morality
police whose duty it is to erase my obscenity from the surface of the
318 Again the Fibonacci numbers 3+5 are used.

CONTENTS
earth so that the bourgeoisie won’t feel sick. I’m not like you. I am a
nymphomaniac, and I love myself for being one. But above all I love
my cunt and my filthy, dirty lust.
(Vol. II 1:49:16‑1:50:48)
Following this, Joe leaves the group and sets a car on fire to the
sounds of Talking Heads‹ »Burning down the house« (1983).
Seligman does not understand this metaphor for desire, and this
is why Joe sums up how she does not have a place for society, as
there has never been a place for her in society.
In addition, she apologises that, in his monastic cell of a bed‑
room, she can no longer find anything to connect to her story. He
asks her to change direction. This is illustrated with the female
sexual organ, viewed from below, being turned over and the oval
creating a closed eye, which opens. This leap from the one part
element to another is known from Georges Bataille’s Story of the
Eye (Bataille [1967] 1986). In the introduction, »Metaphor of the
Eye«,319 Roland Barthes describes Bataille’s style thus:
For Bataille, what matters is to traverse the vacillation of several objects

(an entirely modern notion, unknown to Sade), so that they exchange
the functions of the obscene and those of substance (the consistency of
the soft‑boiled egg, the bloody and nacreous tinge of the bull’s testicles,
the vitreous quality of the eye). (Barthes [1964] 1992, 246)
Barthes is here clearly speaking of that which Deleuze and Guat‑

tari call objects or bodies without organs, which clash together and
create fields of intensity – as what is characteristic in Bataille is,
according to Barthes, that he exhausts the metaphor of the eye,
so the meaning is transgressed (op. cit., 142).
Joe takes up the challenge and turns her head so that the mark
made by the teacup on the wall resembles a gun. Seligman believes
that it is a revolver but Joe chides him, because it does not have
a revolving drum and therefore is not a pistol, according to Ian
Fleming’s books, which Seligman is not acquainted with. She
319 Barthes‹ text is included in the Danish version of Bataille’s Story of the Eye (Bataille 1986); the quo‑
tation underneath is from the latest printed version of Barthes‹ Critical Essays in English (Barthes 1992).

CONTENTS
teases him: »If you haven’t read that you haven’t read anything at
all« (vol. II 1:54:31), and then without difficulty she characterises
the stain as an imaginary Walther PPK automatic, well‑known
as the pistol used by James Bond.
In summary, Joe openly admits her desire in public for the
first time, in that she simultaneously goes from a masochistic to
a sadistic position. Through therapy she realises that desire has
a reason and should be sought in part objects. It is also the first
time that the Trieresque diagrams follow her and not Seligman’s
interpretation, which has already been clarified in the discussion
of the pistol and its characteristics.
»The Gun« – on the cycle of signs and death

The eighth and final chapter is entitled »The Gun« and not »The
Pistol« or »The Revolver«, which there is a reason for, as will be
shown. This section begins with Joe taking up the thread of leav‑
ing society: she becomes a criminal and enters into the unsavoury
world of debt collection, guided by L (Willem Dafoe), with whom
she enters into a kind of sadistic alliance. She utilises her sexual
experience and knowledge of a broad spectrum of men and be‑
comes successful. Amongst other things, she persuades a man
(Jean‑Marc Barr) to pay by telling erotic stories. His member
becomes a kind of truth‑detector, becoming erect at the point of
a paedophiliac twist in her story. She performs a blowjob on him,
in order to comfort him and because, as she explains to Selig‑
man, she felt sorry for him after living his entire life suppressing
his desire, and living in self‑denial without ever harming anyone.
Seligman cannot see anything commendable in paedophilia, but
Joe persists:
That’s because you think of the perhaps 5% who actually hurt children.
The remaining 95% never live out their fantasies. Think about their
suffering. Sexuality is the strongest force in human beings. To be born
with a forbidden sexuality must be agonizing. The paedophile who
manages to get through life with the shame of his desire while never
acting on it deserves a bloody medal. (2:03:13‑2:03:46)

CONTENTS
Another reason for fellating him, she explains, was that she saw a
man who, much like herself, had become a lonely sexual outcast.
Joe’s long defence, which to a large extent follows up on the
question of political incorrectness (around the word ›negro‹ and
the purpose of therapy), is an important contribution to her re‑
volt and defence of the rhizomatic, nomadic multiplicity, inter‑
mezzo and assemblage, which Foucault in the introduction to
Anti-Oedipus describes as »ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica«
(Foucault [1972] 1990, xii), and which Deleuze and Guattari in
A Thousand Plateaus describe as follows:
The nomads invented a war machine in opposition to the State appa‑

ratus. History has never comprehended nomadism, the book has never
comprehended the outside. The State as the model for the book and for
thought has a long history: logos, the philosopher‑king, the transcend‑
ence of the idea, the interiority of the concept, the republic of minds,
the court of reason, the functionaries of thought, man as legislator and
subject. The State’s pretension to be a world order, and to root man.
The war machine’s relation to an outside is not another »model«; it
is an assemblage that makes thought itself nomadic, and the book a
working part in every mobile machine, a stem for a rhizome (Kleist
and Kafka against Goethe).320 (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2013, 26)
When Joe is encouraged to find a successor in the debt collection

branch, it occurs anti‑genealogically. She is instructed by L to
become a mentor for a young person whose parents (because of
criminality or abuse) were not able to fulfil their role as parents.
He explains how taking on the role of a mentor entails show‑
ing interest and empathy and thus effectively being a parent. In
this way one gains a loyal helper, who perhaps would even serve
time in prison out of loyalty. Although Joe is against the idea, she
enters into a kind of mentorship for a 15‑year‑old girl, P (Mia
Goth), whose father is in prison and whose mother has died from
an overdose. Joe is not enamoured at the thought but takes an
interest in P, especially because of her misshapen ear that the
320 Interestingly, in connection with Nymphomaniac, just before this passage mathematics is character‑
ised positively: »it’s not a science, it’s a monster slang, it’s« (op. cit., 26).

CONTENTS
girl constantly attempts to hide. The meeting with P fills Joe
with sympathy and she turns up every weekend to her basketball
games in order to cheer her on, even though she is extremely bad
at it – a team sport she has chosen because she feels lonely. Joe
gives her a birthday present – a book about trees – and takes her
along to the forest from her childhood, where she is reminded
of the dialogue about the souls of the trees resembling human
souls, and her father saying: »Twisted souls, regular souls, crazy
souls. All depending of the kind of lives human beings lead« (vol.
II 2:10:13‑20:10.20). In contrast to him, Joe has not yet found
her tree, though she does later in the chapter. Joe’s tree is, as
mentioned, lonely, windswept and wizened, growing against all
the odds on a barren mountain top.
When P comes of age, she moves in with Joe and becomes a
great comfort (also sexually) to Joe, who has withdrawal symptoms
and a sore on her clitoris that will not heal. P finds her in the
bathroom suffering from cramps, after hearing her drop a glass
on the floor.321 They begin a relationship on the basis of their two
congenital deformities, the part objects, the sore and the ear. P
becomes involved in Joe’s business, and it does not bother her that
Joe’s work is illegal; on the contrary, P is so eager that Joe needs
to reprimand her when she suddenly threatens a man with a gun.
Joe takes the weapon into safe keeping and P calls her evil.
Shortly afterwards, when Joe and P need to recover a debt
from none other than (an older version of) Jêrome (Michael Pas),
who lives in a rich neighbourhood, Joe asks P to carry out the job
on her own. She is, however, emotionally affected by the sight of
Jerôme and walks home through the alleyway where Seligman
later finds her. Joe comments on how the poor quarter borders
the rich, as she makes her shortcut through the city centre.322 P is
in fine spirits when she returns home but Joe soon becomes jeal‑
ous. She seeks out Jerôme’s house and, much like a peeping tom,
sees Jerôme kiss P, who is naked and drinking wine from a bottle.
Joe’s response is to escape the city and go up into the mountains,
321 A clear reference to the images in Antichrist, where the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has with‑
drawal symptoms after throwing out her pills.
322 The smooth and striated space often border one another and constitute a variable boundary surface
(Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2013, chapter 14).

CONTENTS
where she finds her soul tree. She stands for a long while looking
at it, just as the tree ›examines‹ her, after which there is a zoom
out to reveal Joe and the tree, each on their peaks. The final shot
quite clearly marks the juxtaposition of human and tree in the
same landscape, which can be seen as a critical comment on the
Romantic centring of the human figure in relation to the sub‑
lime landscape.323 Joe’s body and the tree’s body are depicted in
this scene as equal parts of nature. This creates a run‑up to Joe’s
reflections on how obvious and natural it is for a human to kill.
In the following scene we see Joe take out the gun from its
concealed place in the cupboard, and pass through the alleyway
on her way to Jerôme’s house, before hearing a sound and hiding.
She sees Jerôme and P giddily flirting, and he offers P his hand, his
›fireman’s grip‹, which he often extended to Joe. This is the final
straw: Joe aims the gun at Jerôme’s head and squeezes the trigger
twice, but nothing happens. She then awkwardly places the gun
back in her pocket, after which the signs of dominance run amok.
Jerôme hits her in the head with his fist, and she falls. He kicks her
and hits her again in the face five times, which stimulates him as
well as P, and they have sex on a bin in the garden in Joe’s line of
sight. The well‑known numbers 3 + 5 appear, and the meaning
is just as hard‑hitting as the first time Joe experienced the effect
of their objectification, domestication and destruction. After this
follows contempt and degradation as P straddles Joe, who is lying
on the ground, and urinates on her. After the couple have left the
scene, Joe utters the same words as at the end of Vol. I: »Fill all my
holes, please«, while her eyes follow in the direction of the couple
who have walked away. This can be seen as a totally masochistic
acceptance of how Jerôme’s desire and rule dominates hers, but
also as Joe having the last word: he (still) cannot satisfy her desire
or satisfy her.
Speaking to Seligman, Joe wonders still why the gun, which had
a full magazine, did not work. Seligman reasons logically and says
that even though it was loaded and the safety was off, she should
probably have gone through the loading motions: »You pull and
release the sliding mechanism« (vol. II 2:36:34). On the screen
323 This is found/described in my analysis of Breaking the Waves.

CONTENTS
The sun shining on the wall across from Seligman’s apartment is described by
Joe as »beautiful«, and in this way she accepts her own direction.
one sees the movements carried out with three different guns,324
and Joe realises he is right. In this way her story as well as their
shared learning process and dialogue is brought to a close, and
likewise the night. The sun sketches a rectangle on the opposite
wall, as the camera looks out of the bedroom windows. Joe says
how beautiful it is, and this becomes the cue for Seligman, who
sums up his interpretation in the form of a kind of absolution in
relation to her story, while images from the film’s two parts file
past:
In the beginning you said that your only sin was that you asked more
of the sunset, meaning I suppose that you wanted more from life than
was good for you. You were a human being demanding your right. And
more than that. You were a woman demanding her right. […] Do you
think that if two men would have walked down the train looking for
women, do you think anybody would have raised an eyebrow? Or if a
324 He continues: »You have to wreck an automatic pistol.« Wreck means ›destroy‹, but the correct trans‑
lation for ›tage ladegreb‹ according to the dictionary is to cock. Under any circumstances the mechanical
conformity with the pistol and the male member’s ›physiognomy‹ is not coincidental here. There is thus a
reference to the fact that Joe (as yet) cannot quite command that which is attributed to the male physique.

CONTENTS
man had led the life you have? And the story about Mrs. H would have
been extremely banal if you’d been a man and your conquest would
have been a woman. When a man leaves his children because of desire,
we accept it with a shrug. But you as a woman, you had to take on a
burden of guilt that could never be eliminated. Your abortion was legal,
but more than anything else it was a punishment you afflicted upon
yourself. And all and all, all the blame and guilt that piled up over the
years became too much for you and you reacted aggressively. Almost
like a man, I have to say. And you fought back. You fought back against
the gender that had been oppressing and mutilating and killing you
and billions of women. In the name of religion or ethics or god knows
what. (1:46:56‑1:48:24)
Joe objects that she in fact was about to kill another human being,
but Seligman responds that she didn’t in fact kill anyone. She calls
this a fluke, while he calls it unconscious resistance, stating that
it was only on the surface that she wanted to kill, but that deep
inside she recognised the human value, which made her forget
how to cock the weapon (1:48:47‑1:48:57). Joe becomes too tired
to argue, though she believes he is only speaking in clichés. She
lies down and, just before falling asleep, says that she, like a de‑
formed tree on a mountain top, would like to work on being the
one in a million who, according to her therapist, succeeded in
ridding themselves of their sexuality, both mentally and physically,
as well as emotionally. She also thanks Seligman, believing him
to be possibly her only friend who might be happy (cf. his name).
And finally she says that she is happy that, in spite of everything,
she never became a murderer – and lays down to sleep.
Later Seligman enters, crawls into the bed and attempts to
have sex with the sleeping Joe. She wakes, sees what he is doing
and cries out: »No!«, grabbing the gun from her jacket pocket and
cocking the mechanism. Before the screen turns black, he says un‑
comprehendingly: »But you, you fucked thousands of men« (vol.
II 2:45:47). Only the sound of the shot remains, then something
falls, and there is the sound of Joe zipping up her long boots, her
footsteps, which we follow out of the room, down the staircase –
and finally the cat flap’s creaking motion as she opens the door
and the wind blows in.

CONTENTS
With this final chapter it becomes clear that the two princi‑
ples, the Apollinian and the Dionysian, will never be reconciled.
In accordance with theatre tradition, the last shot releases the
expectation that if one is shown a gun it will be fired.325 The
story thus comes to an end, and all its elements weave together
in Seligman’s summary that everything she has done, and which
she herself considers sinful, would not have been perceived in the
same way if it were a man who acted as she did.
But the ending becomes something else, if one relates the
umbrella description of »the gun« to the diagram. According to
this method of seeing, the mark on the wall is transformed into
a sign, which first (in Seligman’s representation) becomes a re‑
volver, and then (in Joe’s representation) into a gun, and which
Joe (in the real plane) learns to handle – and it is only then that
»the gun« becomes a real, conspicuous and tangible gun, giving
Joe a line of escape out of the enveloping movement or confine‑
ment of the interpretation. The diagrammatic exchange goes from
sign to reality.326 Seligman’s reasoning – that she has had sex with
thousands of men – does not legitimise his actions, but it keenly
explains how he thinks. He believes that Dionysian unruliness can
and ought to be ordered and interpreted in an Apollinian way, and
that this entitles him to a specific access to it. He, on the other
hand, does not recognise the contrary – that the Dionysian can
at any time break into the Apollinian order. This could perhaps
be the reason that he does not gain access to his own sexuality
as power. As Joe fires the weapon, and the screen turns black, it
is not merely Seligman’s desire for knowledge and form‑giving
which is destroyed; the viewer’s voyeuristic (and fundamentally
pornographic) visual appetite also stands in the line of fire in the
film’s final images. They are completely blacked out.
It is the diagrammatical, in Trier’s sense, which creates the al‑
ternative readings that are put forward. As mentioned previously,
Trier’s diagrams are different from Proust’s in that they settle like
an extra layer over the diagrams that create the story.327 Trier’s
325 Seligman’s gun, however, does not ›go off‹, which one perhaps might have expected after Joe showed
compassion in the scene with the paedophile. On the contrary, it is ›her gun‹ which shoots.
326 The same happens in the final scene of Dogville, where the sketched dog, Moses, is brought to life.
327 Cf, that it is the smashed teacup (à la Proust), which causes the final, exemplary diagram.

CONTENTS
The stain on the wallpaper left by the teacup becomes a sign of a revolver and
then a pistol.
diagrams collect affects in themselves, and the most important

thing is that they produce affects directly in the viewer. As with
the Brechtian Verfremdung, they hinder the abandonment and
immersion in the erotic images, and also communicate directly
with the viewer in a way that is not merely Apollinian machina‑
tions, but which also, in haptic ways, interpellate vision as being
allied corporeally. The machinic and mathematical diagrams point
to endless combinations and create a fertile breeding ground for
many kinds of relations.
In light of these diagrams, Trier gives the viewer access to a
molecular plane, which is alien to the narrative, and thus displays
the film’s signaletic material and the compositional elementary
forms, such as the relation between the measuring gauge, leaves
and genitalia. The Trieresque diagrams cause the viewer to be
kept occupied by the modulations of the surface, the haptic, the
skin – the signaletic. Seligman searches in the abyss and creates
confusion with all his attempts at interpretation and intertextual
references. This is bait for the viewer’s narrative desire. The dia‑
grams are thus superficial. Like Proust’s memories of a lost time,
Trier’s diagrams pay homage to the surface and draw attention

CONTENTS
to the film’s signaletic material, which has a direct questioning
effect on the viewer. Where Proust’s diagrams give perspective
on the material and bring it to life in the orchestration of a vir‑
tual space of resonance between the present time and the past,
Trier’s diagrams additionally involve the viewer affectively, and
this makes the signaletic material sensuous, perceptible like a
stream, a micropolitical desire of sexuality.
In other words, Trier involves the viewer as a part object, as
a body without organs – so when Seligman is shot, the viewer is
also shot, because:
the BwO is never yours or mine. It is always a body. It is no more projec‑

tive than it is regressive. It is an involution, but always a contemporary,
creative involution. The organs distribute themselves on the BwO, but
they distribute themselves independently of the form of the organism;
forms become contingent, organs are no longer anything more than
intensities that are produced, flows, thresholds, and gradients. »A«
stomach, »an« eye, »a« mouth: the indefinite article does not lack any‑
thing; it is not indeterminate or undifferentiated, but expresses the pure
determination of intensity, intensive differences. The indefinite article
is the conductor of desire. It is not at all a question of a fragmented,
splintered body, of organs without the body (OwB). The BwO is exactly
the opposite. There are not organs in the sense of fragments in relation
to a lost unity, nor is there a return to the undifferentiated in relation
to a differentiable totality. There is a distribution of intensive principles
of organs, with their positive indefinite articles, within a collectivity or
multiplicity, inside an assemblage, and according to machinic connec‑
tions operating on a BwO. Logos spermaticos. (Deleuze and Guattari
[1980] 2013, 191, 182, 209; authors’ italics)
Nymphomaniac is thus haptic both in the sense that composi‑

tions modulate the surface, and in the sense that the viewer as a
BwO is included affectively and becomes part of the diagram’s
assemblages, through which microperceptive displacements in
what is viewed can occur. Nymphomaniac creates the signaletic
material from all the signs we recognise from pornographic nar‑
ratives in literature and film. When these signs are included in
the signaletic material and create diagrammatic relations with

CONTENTS
the viewer’s BwO, the film can be understood as an interface: our
eyes, mouths, bodies and other part objects have become part of
the image. Sexual arousal, which against expectations does not
make an appearance, despite lots of nudity, copulating situations
and movements, has shifted itself to the diagrammatic interface’s
multiple assemblages of BwO, which the viewer becomes a part
of. The film thus also involves the culture and the cultural ques‑
tions which are ours.
If we now return to the relationship between the Dionysian
and the Apollinian, one can perhaps say that Joe administers a
Nietzschean critique of a Schopenhauerian philosophy. The mel‑
ancholic withdrawn denial of life forces, which is philosophy’s
(and religion’s) condition in Schopenhauer, is challenged by Ni‑
etzsche with a gamble on the eternal recurrence of the same,
which is the Dionysian motif. The eternal recurrence is qualified
in Deleuze, who in the diagram of the time‑image points to the
fact that, compositionally, other stylistic figurations can be created
in the material rather than the narrative. With this the virtual and
its actualisation can be covered as compositions in the signaletic
material. But in Nymphomaniac Lars von Trier succeeds – as in
the majority of his films, each in their own imaginative ways – in
creating affect diagrams, which involve the viewer affectively,
sensuously and corporeally.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER 9
Concluding remarks on Lars von

Trier’s filmic affect diagrams
As mentioned in the introduction, the various readings of Trier’s

films presented in this book will conclude in some determinations
of what I will call ›affect diagrams‹. This term is intended as an
extension of Gilles Deleuze’s categories of the filmic movement‑
image and time‑image. The need to develop a term for filmic
affect diagrams has shown itself through the book’s analyses, in
that the readings have clarified how Trier’s films involve the viewer
affectively in various ways. This affective level is not found in the
forms of affect which, for example, Steven Shaviro brings to light
through analysis in Post Cinematic Affect (2010), or which Eug‑
enie Brinkema seeks to clarify through the contexts of history of
ideas and filmically in The Forms of the Affects (2014). The post‑
cinegraphic, which is linked to neoliberal forms of production and
control by Shaviro, and the trans‑historical view, which Brinke‑
ma’s analyses develop, do not reflect on how viewers become an
interface’s ›third level‹ – as they do with Trier – expanding a
classic receiver position towards the affective, which is essential
to any reading of these films. Ideas about the film’s ›meaning‹ slip
into the background here, in favour of an affective activation of
the viewer’s entire perception apparatus with the use of haptic
images and affective diagrams.
The affect diagrammatic level can appear affectively activating
and inciting, but this simultaneously allows for an experience of
a diagrammatical, compositional level. Though one cannot in the
strictest sense understand films as interface‑creation between
viewers‹ bodies and the screen, this book’s readings show how
these films turn physical sensations into co‑composers. The pos‑
concluding remarks on lars von trier’s filmic affect diagrams 347

CONTENTS
sibilities of haptic images creating delineations other than the
representational, which Deleuze described in relation to Bres‑
son’s use of the work of the hands rather than the exchange of
looks (Deleuze 1986, 22), can, with Trier’s different forms of
composition, be said to expand diagrammatically. The result is
that Trier’s affect diagrams can create alternative forms of deline‑
ations (rather than the representational and narratological) in the
filmic, signaletic material. His dialogical reworking of haptically‑
oriented compositions from the films of Dreyer and Tarkovsky,
which Deleuze also has a strong interest in, have functioned in my
readings as some points of reference for analytically sharpening
attention on further innovations in haptic compositions, towards
an affective involvement of the viewer.
As has been shown, this happens primarily in the Golden Heart
trilogy, where the pathos of melodrama is drawn towards the
direction of both the passion of the Christian sacrificial figure,
and the tragic suffering. In and with the affective excesses of the
hand‑held camera, jump‑cut editing and several layers of dub‑
bing, which heighten the haptic noise in both Breaking the Waves
and The Idiots, as well as Dancer in the Dark, it is made clear
that irony and pathos are two sides of the same coin. These films
turn the critical position inside out, always entailing a subject
positioning from a distance and in control over the events. This
development of the haptic towards the affective in Breaking the
Waves and Dancer in the Dark effectively creates an antithesis to
the Romantic landscape painting and the musical respectively. In
Breaking the Waves, haptic descriptions of the face are brought
in diagrammatically close contact with the landscape to such an
extent that foreground and background meld together and disturb
the faciality prevalent in Christian culture. In Dancer in the Dark,
it is the 100 cameras which make it possible, in a diagrammati‑
cally‑rhythmic manner, to break with the dominance of the gaze
over the visual. In the same way that Breaking the Waves ends
with Bess’s body being swallowed up by the landscape, giving
a ›divine resonance‹, Dancer in the Dark ends with both vision
and hearing being lost. What is left is the viewer’s own feeling
of their own body in the darkness. In its attempts to fuse digital
sound and digital recordings, the film emphasises both how Selma

CONTENTS
can make ›outer‹ noise into rhythms, which enter into the body,
and how affective sensations ›from within‹ Selma can make the
outer world implode, so events can be remade, touched up and
rewound. Both films show how affect diagrams can function as
correctives to ›outer‹ narrative actions. The Idiots demonstrates
the Dogme rules functioning as diagrams in their pure form,
both including the viewer affectively and giving space for a new
realisation of how visual events are created interactively. The
viewer is enabled to feel the act of viewing through the corporeal
affects which the film gives rise to. At the same time, the lack of
conventional aesthetics and narrative criteria most often utilised
by entertainment films make it clear for the viewer that the clas‑
sic subject position is something that is constructed and selected.
With The Idiots‹ projection of its compositional diagram, Lars von
Trier draws attention to the idea that the body forms part of visual
perception and that affective, physical sensing is an important
part of the interface event, enabling a folding between sensing
from ›within‹ and ›without‹ simultaneously.
As the diagram is depicted here and in the following films,
Trier permits the viewer to experience the intervention of other
forms of affect diagrams. In The Five Obstructions and The Boss of
It All, other forms of losing control are allowed, which encourage
carnivalesque slapstick laughter and an absurd comedy respec‑
tively. In the first film, the body and its positioning are very much
central – in Jørgen Leth’s The Perfect Human (1967) as well as in
the documentary film showing Leth ›behind the films‹. As in The
Idiots, the demands placed on Leth’s filmic obstructions make
up clear diagrams, with the intention of bringing the controlled
subject’s position on to unstable ground. In The Boss of It All, the
specially developed Automavision® takes control of the function
of the diagram. Trier’s voice‑over frames the film, and he is shown
sitting (like a personal puppeteer of Automavision®) on a dolly
with the camera: ›outside‹, so to speak. With Automavison’s®
depersonalised take, Trier presents the viewer with a diagram‑
matical position, where the affective storm of ›inner disturbances‹
can be pinpointed as being absurd.
With Dogville and Manderlay, the laughter ceases at the ex‑
pense of a politically involved seriousness, which borrows traits

CONTENTS
from Euripides‹ Medea and Pirate Jenny’s song from Brecht’s
The Threepenny Opera. Both of these inspirations have uncon‑
ventional endings, where the female main character manages to
quite miraculously – and contrary to filmic conventions – carry
out her violent revenge and simultaneously avoid punishment.
With the cameras suspended from the ceiling, the lines on the
floor and the barely sketched houses are made to function, so
that the viewer – as in a Brechtian Verfremdung – must relate to a
digitally composed depiction of a total overview perspective. This,
together with the unconventional, violent endings followed by
Jacob Holt’s images, which actualise a ›then‹ to a ›now‹, simulta‑
neously creates an affect‑diagrammatical interface. For example,
one can both follow the rape of Grace close up and see it from
a distance – as if through the eyes of the other inhabitants. The
diagram’s surveillance perspective in Dogville and Manderlay is
visible as something which can, in fact, also be politically activat‑
ing, and which one can choose to break with by involving oneself
affectively‑diagrammatically in other types of perspectives. In
Dogville, where Grace changes her state of mind, this possibility
is shown by a cloud gliding away and the moonlight revealing
Dogville’s murky side, while the same can be said to happen in
Manderlay when the white handkerchief obscures Grace’s vision.
Both are instances of an affect‑diagrammatical transformation
from sign to action.
In Antichrist, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, the sketching of
the affect diagram as an extra aid to the visual investment in the
film is even clearer, in that the middle ground between the two
sexes, the woman and the man, is described as demonic through
an extraordinary activation of haptic images in high‑speed re‑
cordings, intensified musically by Händel’s aria in the intro to
Antichrist, which helps establish the film’s affective level. In addi‑
tion, it shows diagrammatically how both current therapy and the
historical judgement of the witch trials is based on transferences
between I and you. The haptic field functions here as a diagram
wherein the affective field – to influence and be influenced –
becomes uncontrollable and destructive. No matter whether one
follows the man’s or the woman’s track, the question of guilt
remains central. With the help of a false flashback, which makes

CONTENTS
the Nietzschean interpretive tracks more than mere formal tools,
Trier enables the viewer – in diagrammatical ways – to sense
how we are always already woven in interpretation due to our
positioning. In Melancholia the affective diagram includes human
relations not only to one another, but also to the universe. Here,
as in Nymphomaniac, the diagrams are drawn as mathematical
calculations and reckonings, which lay like an extra interpre‑
tive layer on the screen. These diagrams can be seen as forms of
Verfremdung, making it possible to create a distance to the film’s
fabula, but also as haptic forms of hypermediacy, which enable the
viewer to reside on the screen’s surface and concentrate on the
its affective plane of intensity. Justine’s melancholic and Claire’s
angst‑filled tracks are described most expressively, but it is in the
high‑speed recordings, where the melancholic beauty inspires a
Schopenhauerian step back from the stream of the events, that
the film’s affect diagram becomes clearest. In Nymphomaniac, the
relationship between the Dionysian and the Apollinian approach
to existence, which is characteristic of the Depression trilogy, is
described in a more literary manner. But the affect diagrams,
which partly weave Joe’s stories together with Seligman’s inter‑
pretations, and partly link the actual (filmic) narrative level with
the virtual (literary) interpretive level in line with Proust’s method,
also gain an obvious third function: they involve the viewer directly
in the work of interpretation, which often contains digressions
and false interpretive tracks. In this way the screen becomes rhi‑
zomatic, and the film’s signaletic material is rendered visible to
such a degree that a voyeuristic (and pornographic) way of viewing
can be abandoned. This film succeeds to a great extent in creat‑
ing an affect‑diagrammatic interface with the viewer, making an
affirmative, Dionysian approach to life tangible. The film’s affect
diagrams succeed so well because the viewer does not merely (like
Seligman) seek to understand Joe’s motives, but is also influenced
affectively by the signaletic material, constituted by the account
of her sexual lines of flight‑ and this to such an extent that the
desire for images gives rise to afterthoughts in searching for the
diagrammatic event in the material, which might yet be revealed.
In the final part of Cinema 2: The Time-Image (with a reference
to the films of Tony Conrad and George Landow respectively),

CONTENTS
Deleuze touches on how future films ought to be closely linked to
the work of the mind: »A flickering brain, which relinks or creates
loops – this is cinema« (Deleuze 1989, 215). He continues in an
inquisitive manner, anticipating Trier’s use of haptic images and
affective compositions – in short, what one might call the affect‑
diagrammatic method:
Everything can be used as a screen, the body of a protagonist or even

the bodies of the spectators; everything can replace the film stock, in
a virtual film which now only goes on in the head, behind the pupils,
with sound sources taken as required from the auditorium. A disturbed
brain‑death or a new brain which would be at once the screen, the
film stock and the camera, each time membrane of the outside and
the inside. (Deleuze ibid.)
Although this was written long before the interface became a real‑
ity, it is interesting that Deleuze, in this chapter, which concerns
the film’s body‑mind relation to reasoning, in fact anticipates
current digital interfaces involving body and mind in much more
than the decoding of classic filmic forms of representation. As
has been shown in Lars von Trier’s films, today’s post‑cinematic
reality, where multiple screens are on offer, actually makes it
possible to revisit the mind‑body relation. Those affect diagrams,
which through Trier’s film work have become ever clearer, show
how the film strip can be orchestrated as an interfacial mem‑
brane, connecting the inner and outer in a continuous exchange.
The diagram involves an extradiegetic level which no longer has
the forming of a whole of the film’s fabula as its aim, but which
transversally involves the bodies of the viewers affectively. In that
interface, which can thus exist, the virtual contact between an
outer gaze and an inner affect or sensation becomes crucial in
allowing thought to abandon the expected. It is my hope that with
the analyses in this book, I have been able to show that Trier’s
affect diagrams can provoke transversal relations.

CONTENTS
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CONTENTS
Danish director Lars von Trier has Lars von Trier’s “Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film is a master-
ful study of the full breadth of von Trier’s
Renewal of Film
produced more than 20 films since work. The book presents a chronicle of the
his first appearance with The Elements Bodil work, expertly situated in the history of the
of Crime in 1984. One of the most Marie medium of film, in its relation to video and
1984-2014
acknowledged – and most controversial Stavning digital media. More than that – and this is
– film directors of our time, Trier’s films what puts the book in a league of its own
Thomsen – Thomsen develops an original theory of
often escape the representational
the image unique enough to merit a new
production of meaning.
SIGNAL PIXEL DIAGRAM name: “signaletic materialism” might do.
Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film1984 -2014

But don’t be misled by the weightiness of
In Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film
the term. It signposts an approach uniquely
1984-2014. Signal, Pixel, Diagram
equipped to make felt immediacy of the
scholar Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen image, accounting for its embodied nature
offers a comprehensive discussion and affective force with both evocative power
of Lars von Trier’s collected works. and analytical precision. Thomsen’s in-depth,
Examining his experiments with narra- often scene-by-scene, analyses of von Trier’s
tive forms, genre, camera usage, light, compositional techniques go beyond formal
and colour tones, she shows how analysis to convey how the logic of the
Trier’s unique and ethically involving medium is one with an event of perception,
style activates the viewer’s entire ever renewed and endlessly varied.”
perception apparatus. In understanding Brian Massumi
this affective involvement, the author author of Semblance and Event:
frames the discussion around concepts Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts
from Gilles Deleuze, Alois Riegl, Brian

Massumi a.o. on the haptic image,
“An inspiring and insightful work of passion
the diagram, affect, and the signaletic
and scholarly dedication, Bodil Thomsen’s
material.
thorough analysis of Lars von Trier’s oeuvre
is an aesthetic revelation of haptic quality
and potentialities. While the Deleuze-
Guattarian inspired concept of the ‘affect
diagram’ is the guiding method to navigate
Trier’s audio-visual style across pixels,
colors and digital signals, one can almost
feel and touch the images on every page
AARHUS UNIVERSITY PRESS that disclose always new senses and
Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen sensations beyond the film’s stories and
representations.”
Patricia Pisters
University of Amsterdam

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Danish director Lars von Trier has Lars von Trier’s “Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film is a master-

ful study of the full breadth of von Trier’s

Lars von Trier’s Renewal of Film1984 -2014

from Gilles Deleuze, Alois Riegl, Brian

This page is protected by copyright and may not be redistributed.

aarhus university press | a

This page is protected by copyright and may not be redistributed.

This page is protected by copyright and may not be redistributed.

Carl Th. Dreyer: Fantasi og Farve, 1955; in Om Filmen, 1959

One normally chooses a style for a film in order to highlight a story.

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E-book production: by Narayana Press, Denmark

ISBN 978 87 7184 637 9

Aarhus University Press

Published with the financial support of:

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Lars von Trier’s TV and film production has been vehemently

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3 The term is defined further in the introduction.

12 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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6 The terms will be further defined in the introduction.

14 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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8 Fritsch & Thomsen 2012, and Massumi 2015. http://www.peripeti.dk/2012/06/06/affective‑attune‑

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16 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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The new filmic forms of realism, whose audience‑involving aes‑

18 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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20 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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15 For a closer analysis of this cf. Jerslev 2002.

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22 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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24 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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26 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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The theoretical landscape

In the introductory chapter to The New Media Reader, Lev

the theoretical landscape 29

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30 lars von triers renewal of film 1984-2014

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the theoretical landscape 31

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a continuous variation that exceeds any distribution of constants and

What we are concerned with here is a spatial method of ori‑

The change is everywhere, but inward; we localize it here and there,