Killer Images by Joram ten Brink Joshua Oppenheimer

Author:Joram ten Brink, Joshua Oppenheimer
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, PER004010, Performing Arts/Film & Video/Direction & Production
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

I know of no better image for the ideal of a beautiful society than a well executed English dance, composed of many complicated figures and turns … Everything fits so skillfully, yet so spontaneously, that everyone seems to be following his own lead, without everyone getting in anyone’s way. Such a dance is the perfect symbol of one’s own individually asserted freedom as well as of one’s respect for the freedom of the other.16

But this is clearly not what’s going on in Allemagne 90 neuf zéro. Godard’s manipulation of the dance undermines the political ideal through aesthetic means. Rather than harmony and play, a kind of formalised beauty, we have stuttered play-back; rather than a distanced perspective, overseeing the patterns formed by the dancers as a collective, we are immersed in the visual breakdown of their individual movements. What was, in the diegetic world of the clip, a rhythmic and graceful movement that evoked a well-ordered, successful society – even if one on the verge of collapse – is made into something distinctly messier: the patterns are broken down, disrupted by internal forces. And so, we might think, it should be. The dance takes place under the aegis of a violent and repressive state; we can take Godard to be arguing that the means for representing this social organisation should therefore be different than for those social orders which express Schiller’s aesthetic and political ideal. In a sense, Godard undermines an already undermined vision of politics.

The terms of this reading recur throughout Allemagne 90 neuf zéro. Indeed, we only need to look a little further to find the argument reiterated. As Zelten continues to read from Hegel, this time in both French and German, Godard cuts to a series of clips staged against the content of the quotation. The brief sequence runs as follows:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.