Death in Documentaries : The Memento Mori Experience [1 ed.] 9789004356962, 9789004356955

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Death in Documentaries

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Executive Editor Leonidas Donskis† Managing Editor J.D. Mininger

VOLUME 306

Philosophy of Film General Editor Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait) Editorial Board Nathan Andersen (Eckerd College) Costica Bradatan (Texas Tech University at Lubbock) John Caruana (Ryerson University) Rey Chow (Duke University) Hye Seung Chung (Colorado State University) Dan Flory (Montana State University) András Bálint Kovács (Budapest University) (elte) Jason C. Kuo (University of Maryland) Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie University) Daniel Shaw (Lock Haven University) Kevin Stoehr (Boston University) The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/pof





Death in Documentaries The Memento Mori Experience By

Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration by Marcelyn Bennett-Carpenter, 2017. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017041689

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0929-8436 isbn 978-90-04-35695-5 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-35696-2 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.



Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Basics of Memento Mori 2 From Art and Cultural History to Contemporary Documentary 4 Features of Memento Mori and How Memento Mori Functions 10 Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Documentaries 13 A Rhetorically-Oriented Phenomenology Applied to Documentaries 16 Composed Transformative Experience: Introducing Documentaries as Memento Mori 21 The Program Ahead 26 1 Memento Mori in Art and Literature 29 1.1 Memento Mori in Art: As Symbol and as Picture 30 1.1.1 Memento Mori as Religious Image 31 1.1.2 Memento Mori as Still Life and as Portraiture 34 1.1.3 Memento Mori as Visual Quotation in Art, Including Photography 37 1.2 Memento Mori in Literature: As Verbal, Literary, and Ideational 40 1.2.1 Memento Mori as Picture Nomenclature and Verbal Instruction 41 1.2.2 Memento Mori as Reference in Literature: Verbatim and Ideational 41 1.3 Memento Mori in Film and Television 52 2 Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten as Memento Mori 56 2.1 The Eameses as Designers of Experiences that Communicate Ideas 58 2.2 Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Powers 60 2.2.1 Symbolic, Verbal, and Ideational Memento Mori in Powers 61 2.2.2 Memento Mori as Mortality-Index in Powers 62 2.2.3 Memento Mori as Convention and Experience in or Related to Powers 65 2.3 The Intellectually Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Powers 69

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3 Memento Mori as “Consciousness of Mortality” and as a Cultural Phenomenon 71 3.1 Memento Mori is an Index of Death 71 3.1.1 Memento Mori (in Any Form) Refers to Death 72 3.1.2 Memento Mori Relies upon Consciousness, Memory in Particular 76 3.2 Memento Mori is Also an Artificial Convention 79 3.2.1 Memento Mori is an Artifice with a History or Cultural Genealogy that Relies upon Particular Social Reception 79 3.2.2 Memento Mori Relates to Various and Specific Genres, Media, and Materials 83 3.3 Memento Mori as Composed Transformative Experience 85 3.3.1 General Aspects of Memento Mori Experience 86 3.3.2 Intellectually, Ethically, and Affectively Transformative Elements of Memento Mori Experience 88 3.4 A Contemporary Form of Memento Mori: Documentaries 90 4 Ethical Memento Mori: Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes 91 4.1 Wenders as Contemplative Documentarian of Mortals 93 4.2 Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Notebook 94 4.2.1 Memento Mori as Symbolic, Verbal, and Ideational in Notebook 94 4.2.2 Memento Mori as Mortality-index in Notebook 96 4.2.3 Memento Mori as Convention and Experience in or Related to Notebook 99 4.3 The Ethically Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Notebook 103 5 Documentaries as Contemporary Memento Mori 108 5.1 Documentaries Index Death 108 5.2 Documentaries Also Rely on Convention with a Particular History and Function 114 5.3 Documentaries as Composed Transformative Experience 119 5.3.1 Documentaries as Intellectually Transformative: Determining and Distinguishing the Real from Irreal 122 5.3.2 Documentaries as Ethically Transformative: Contemplating Appropriate Responses to the Mortal Condition 123 5.3.3 Documentaries as Affectively Transformative: Moving Individuals into Distinctive Human Experience 125 5.4 Levels of Analysis by Which Memento Mori is Identified in Specific Documentaries 126

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6 Quintessential Memento Mori Experience: Derek Jarman’s Blue 131 6.1 A Word on Jarman as Ecstatic Seer 134 6.2 Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Blue 135 6.2.1 Memento Mori as Verbal, Literary, and Ideational in Blue 136 6.2.2 Memento Mori as Mortality-index and Convention in or Related to Blue 138 6.3 The Affectively Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Blue 142 7 Personal Memento Mori: The Iconic 9/11 Footage and the Threat of Death 144 7.1 The Viewer as Contemplative Seer of the Threat of Death 144 7.1.1 The 12th of September, 2001, Comet Burger Diner, usa 145 7.1.2 When Memento Mori Strikes Close 147 7.2 Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by the 9/11 Footage 150 7.2.1 Memento Mori as Symbolic, Ideational, and Composed in the 9/11 Footage 151 7.2.2 Memento Mori as Mediated Mortality-index, Indicated by the 9/11 Footage 154 7.3 Personally Transformative Points of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by the 9/11 Footage 159 7.3.1 Realizing One’s Place as a Mortal in a Vast Cosmos 161 7.3.2 “Making one’s life” as a Mortal in 21st Century “glocal” Society 162 7.3.3 Moving One’s Self into Distinctive Human Experience 164 7.4 Counterpoint: Memento Mori as Death Threat in Extremist YouTube Videos 164 8 Conclusion and Future Prospects 171 8.1 After Death in Documentaries 172 8.2 From Memento Mori to Memento Vivere? 173 8.3 Memento Mori in New Media Environments 176 References 181 Bibliography 181 Archives and Special Sites 202 Footage 203 Filmography (Chronological) 203 Index 206

Preface Memento mori is a broad and understudied cultural phenomenon and experience. The term “memento mori” is a Latin injunction that means “remember mortality”, or more directly, “remember that you must die”. This terminology is applied to items – including artifacts, images, texts, and performances – and to experiences that bring a renewed consciousness of human mortality. In art and cultural history, memento mori appears widely, especially in medieval folk culture and in the well-known Dutch still life vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet memento mori extends well beyond these points in art and cultural history. In contemporary culture, I suggest a prominent form of memento mori is the medium and genre of documentary film. Documentaries may be best understood as offering composed transformative experiences in which the viewer is offered an opportunity to renew one’s consciousness of mortality and, thus, renew one’s action in life. In this book, I introduce and provide context for the phenomenon of memento mori, its features, and its functions with special attention to how memento mori is referenced by documentaries. Memento mori is established as not only an item in art history but also as a broad cultural phenomenon that may be understood, first, as symbolic and pictorial, including religious imagery, still lifes, portraiture, and “visual quotations” in art, including photography. Second, memento mori may be identified as verbal, literary, and ideational, for example as picture nomenclature, verbal instruction, and verbatim and ideational references in literature. Third, memento mori may be found as referential, including its presence and operations in film and elsewhere in culture. I suggest that memento mori is an “index of death” that points to empirical death, relies upon consciousness, and, also, is a cultural convention. Memento mori is an artifice with a history or cultural genealogy that relies upon particular social reception and relates to various and specific genres, media forms, and material. Yet, ultimately, I suggest thinking of memento mori as a composed transformative experience, which operates on intellectual, ethical, and affective levels. Having established memento mori as consciousness of mortality, as a cultural convention, and as composed transformative experience, I argue, with the help of, among others, philosophers and theorists of film Vivian Sobchack (1984; 1992; 1999; 2004; 2011), Bill Nichols (1983; 1991; 1996; 2001; 2010; 2013), and Laura Mulvey (2002; 2004; 2006), that documentary film is an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori and is ultimately transformative, not simply informative.

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Building on these and other film studies, specific levels of analysis by which memento mori may be identified in particular documentaries, segments of documentaries, and select footage are outlined, and several examples are discussed in chapters that alternate with the larger discussion. These examples include Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten (1968/1977), Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), among numerous other works that are discussed throughout, including an in-depth discussion of viewer experience of the now iconic 9/11 news footage. Woven through the book and suggested in the conclusion is also a possible development and future for the phenomenon of memento mori as memento vivere: that is, “remember life”, “remember you will live”, or “wake up to the life one has to live”.

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge and offer thanks to a number of people and organizations that have contributed in various ways to my efforts in the completion of this project. First, thank you to the organizations that I employed for various portions of the research and writing: Cranbrook Academy of Art Library and Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; the Fine Arts Library at the University of Michigan; Kresge Library at Oakland University, Michigan; the Washington Research Library Consortium and Mullen Library at Catholic University of America, Washington dc; Sacred Heart Major Seminary Library, Detroit; the British Film Institute, London; the Getty Research Center, Los Angeles; the Library of Congress, Washington, d.c.; Bibliothèque – Centre Pompidou, Paris; and The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). My research for this project included not only online access to these important organizations but also, aside from IMDb, physical travel to and research at these locations in Bloomfield Hills, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington dc, London, Paris, and New York. The original “aha” moment of realization that the documentaries I had been researching were/are memento mori took place sitting at a desk in the Cranbrook Art Museum Library. The ongoing support of the people and institutions at Oakland University and Cranbrook Educational Community in Michigan, usa, remain immeasurable. In particular, thanks to Gerhardt Knodel (director emeritus, Cranbrook Academy of Art), Judy Dyki (director, Cranbrook Academy of Art Library), Leslie Edwards (head archivist, Cranbrook Archives), Mark Coir (former director, Cranbrook Archives), Karen Filippe (Eames House & Office), Eames Demetrios (Eames House & Office), Josie Walters-Johnston (reference librarian for the Motion Picture Division, Library of Congress), the staff of the Prints and Photographs Division (Library of Congress), the staff of Sacred Heart Major Seminary Library, Janet Moat and Vicky Hedley (Special Collections, British Film Institute), Eva von Malotky (personal assistant to Wim Wenders), Tony Peake (Derek Jarman biographer), and Dante Rance and the rest of the interlibrary loan staff at Oakland University. This book is a revision and expansion from a dissertation at the Catholic University of America, Washington dc, and portions of this book and related material were presented in earlier forms as “A New Mediation of an Old Art: Documentary Film as Memento Mori”, paper presentation for the panel “Methods and Approaches in the Study of Religion, Media, and Culture”, Religion, Media, and Culture Consultation, national meeting of the American Academy of Religion (aar), Washington, dc (2006a); “On Vivian Sobchack’s

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‘Documentary Consciousness’: Film’s Special Intimacy with Death Revisited”, paper presentation for the “Constructions of Death, Mourning, and Memory” conference, sponsored by the wapacc Organization, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey (2006b); “From Conversion to Transformation in Contemporary Rhetorical and Religious Theory”, paper presentation for the 7th Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society at Villanova University (2008a); “Still the King of Queens? Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion, and the Theorizing of Rhetoric and Religion Now”, in Kenneth Burke and His Circles, edited by Jack Selzer and Robert Wess (West Lafayette, Indiana: Parlor Press, 2008b); “Theorizing Documentary Film: Contemporary Memento Mori”, paper presentation for the Visible Evidence xvi conference, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (August 2009); and “Facing Up: Psychotherapists Writing About Dealing with the Idea of One’s Own Death”, Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying, 19(4): 361–378 (2014). Special thanks to Melvin P. Shaw who helped guide me through the toughest portions of this work on memento mori experience. And to William A. Barbieri, Jr., who provided extensive feedback and direction on earlier versions of this project, to Bill Nichols who read an earlier version of the film theory chapter and offered feedback/encouragment, and to Vivian Sobchack who read an earlier draft of the whole manuscript and provided recommendations and encouragement/praise for the project. Many thanks go in particular to Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, editor of this new Philosophy of Film series, for believing in this project, for giving it the opportunity to come to publication, and for the close attention and careful feedback throughout the process. Thanks also to the anonomyous reviewer for constructive feedback that made this book better and to Bram Oudenampsen, Jennifer Pavelko, and Jarno Florusse at Brill | Rodopi for producing the final product. Perhaps something like this book could have been completed otherwise, but in fact it is difficult for me to imagine it without the various c­ ontributions of the following individuals. Thank you, Glen Armstrong, Michael K. ­Brussow (d. 2017), Josh Carpenter and Mattie Hawkinson, Scott Crabill, Gioj ­DeMarco, Norma Forbes, Beatrix Fuzet and Andy Przekop, Joyce Ho and Adam Rubinstein, ­Stephen Happel (d. 2003), Kathleen Ivanoff, Julian and Kristin Loeks ­Jackson, Jane Kelley, Gerhardt Knodel and Ken Gross, Mike Lavoie (d. 2016) and ­Kristin Lavoie, Bill Loewe, David Maines, Michael McCallion, Kent M ­ cInnis, ­ Steve Mc­Kenna, Lori Ostergaard, Ira Povey, Shawn Rubin, ­Charlie Shaw, Greg Schreck, Cindy S­ ifonis, Darryl L. Taylor, Jonathan F. Walz, and the Ginsbergs, who once upon a time hosted me in their home in Silver Spring. Lastly, I want to thank the three people with whom I make my life: first, my sons, Nicolas Bennett-Carpenter and Gracey Bennett-Carpenter. I could not have written what I have without your contributions. Thanks to Gracey

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for a close and thoughtful reading of, and response to, a draft of the introductory chapter. Thanks to Nico for making possible a visit to a presentation by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Most of all, I thank Marcelyn Bennett-Carpenter, whose role in this work is incomparable, without whom it could not have been written, and to whom it is dedicated: To you, Lynn – with all my heart, mind, and strength.

Introduction Every human being faces death – this is an unavoidable empirical and existential fact. Human individuals observe and experience the deaths of others, whether a family member, a friend or acquaintance, an enemy, or a stranger, and they anticipate their own deaths. This observation and experience of death comes immediately and first-hand, by word of mouth, or otherwise by way of some form of media, from pen and paper to telephone, photograph, film, television, or internet. The limit of life as human beings know it is brought to one’s awareness frequently by a number of means in one’s life. Historically, and to the present day, art and religion are two primary ways that individuals and groups have sought to negotiate the fact of death, and they also may be seen as two – sometimes overlapping and sometimes distinct, sometimes cooperative and sometimes conflicting – strategies to organize human energies against the threat of a complete unknown, the threshold beyond which human individuals presently are left with nothing or with the power of their imaginations, but not their empirical knowledge. Freud put the threat in terms of “nature”, whose ultimate affliction is death, in The Future of an Illusion (1989 [1927]), drawing upon a tradition for this theme, e.g., in Lucretius in De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things] (1992 [1st century bce]) and Dr. Samuel Johnson (2003 [1739–1761]), a theme which continues to have explanatory power today, e.g., in Harold Bloom’s work (e.g., 1992; 1994; 1997 [1973]; 2011). The modern theme of anxiety in regard to, and denial of, the awareness of inevitable death is raised in many contexts, including Freud and Bloom, along with Ernest Becker (1997 [1973]) and Terror Management Theory (Greenberg et al. 1990; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and Lyon 1989; Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski 1998, 2004; Solomon, Greenberg, Schimel, Arndt, and Pyszczynski 2003).1 Besides the fact of death, there is the fact of human survival, not only as individuals but also as groups and as a species. Thus far, humans have survived, and part of the explanation for this survival is the development of efforts to cooperate in groups and, also, to imagine futures, some of which they actualize through new uses of materials and ideas. Among the extraordinary successes in technology and society are the accomplishments of specific cultural forms and ideas that mark out the terms for what many believe it means to be human 1 Extending the issue of denial to atrocities and suffering, see Stanley Cohen (2001). Among explanations for religion and art, dealing with death is one among many and need not be read as the only explanation, although it remains essential to understanding them.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004356962_002

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(e.g., see the work of John Dewey in Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1944 [1916])). One of these extraordinary accomplishments is the conception of what has come to be known in art history, Western culture, and beyond as “memento mori” – either an item or an idea, or both, in human culture that signals a bringing-to-awareness of mortality. As a distinctive item or idea in an emerging global culture, the experience of memento mori contributes to the human effort to survive and, beyond survival, to make the most of life here and now, for the sake of the future.2

Basics of Memento Mori

The Latin injunction memento mori is commonly rendered in English as “remember mortality” or, more directly, “remember that you must die”. The injunction is given in – or as – artifacts, including images and texts, that instruct, entice, and move a viewer toward consciousness of one’s final demise. The terminology of memento mori is used in various ways depending upon the context. Its use is no different here, but a distinction can be made for clarity’s sake. On the one hand, when the terminology or the phenomenon of memento mori is being referenced, the singular will be used (e.g., “it”). This, in part, is for efficiency, because the case may be made that memento mori is plural: phenomena. On the other hand, when particular memento mori items, artifacts, pictures, or texts are referenced, then the plural will be used (e.g., “they”), unless there is just one item. One of the most common references to memento mori, especially among scholars, is to sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch still life painting where it had a certain rise to prominence. Beyond the art historical context, specific ideational or conceptual contexts for memento mori depend upon the time period and locale. But two of these primary contexts may be identified as the 2 Beyond the question of survival and the future of life, it is difficult to say whether the primary context for the emergence of memento mori is religious or artistic. In fact, the context includes both and may better be described as cultural. In art history, memento mori is usually identified with sixteenth and seventeenth century art, especially vanitas painting, in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Italy for example. Memento mori also is identified with an era prior to this, around the time of the Plague, in images, songs, texts, and performances where “art” proper was difficult to distinguish from “religion” (cf. Belting 1994). To say that the context for memento mori is “cultural” is not simply to use it as a catch-all category. It also distinguishes the development of memento mori from the “natural”, a context which is important for understanding memento mori, but which is less immediately significant.

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religious and the secular. On the one hand, memento mori may deliver a warning for moral and spiritual repair before a person encounters the afterlife. On the other hand, it may insist that one must take advantage of the good things of life now because one’s time is short. While not excluding other responses, which could vary widely, it may be helpful to think of the options as either “Repent, for your time is short” or “Carpe diem, seize the day”.3 Memento mori offers viewers an opportunity for transformation as viewers consider their own mortality, whether for conversion or for renewed action in contemporary life. It may be helpful, also, to think of these two major themes not so much as “­religious” versus “secular”, nor even, for example, “Christian” versus “humanist”. Rather, one response to memento mori tends to emphasize the ­here-and-now, the practical, and the natural, while the other tends to be geared toward the “hereafter”, the speculative, and the supernatural. Dewey is good at sorting out these issues in a basic way in A Common Faith (1934). While not reducing these responses only to rhetorical concerns, these options, which in some ­cases could include opting for both rather than one or the other, offer two main rhetorical and practical programmatic emphases in engaging memento mori. In this context, Rose Marie San Juan (2013) makes the important point that, “If death is revealed to be final and without hope for continuity or redemption, it will serve to unsettle the symbolic system” (95). In art history, the most readily recognized era of memento mori usually identified is probably sixteenth and seventeenth century still life vanitas painting in the Netherlands, with precursors in the Middle Ages close to the time of the Plague. Beyond these eras, a survey of literary and art history, whether canonical or popular, shows a bounty of death themes and memento ­mori-related materials. Surprisingly, while memento mori artifacts, including images and texts, exist widely, they have largely been overlooked in critical writing. Though memento mori items abound in art and cultural history, they have not received much extended attention beyond museum and gallery catalogs, especially in English-language literature. The reason for this neglect may be a result of the fact that they are so commonplace as to be easily disregarded. In any case, memento mori, as recognizable as it is within an art historical tradition, appears as an item or idea well beyond these high profile points in art history. In fact, arguably the most extensive context for memento mori, even through art, is the experiential. Not only an item or artifact, memento mori as a phenomenon concerns the sensorial, the affective, and the material. The experiential context for memento mori includes the ideational (intellectual) and the ethical (human action), yet ultimately, in the experience of memento mori, one 3 Thank you to Bill Barbieri for seeing this broad-stroke schematic and suggesting it to me.

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does not simply contemplate death; one feels death knocking. Mortality (and the unknown of one’s immortal destiny or the lack of an immortal future) is palpable. “Mortality” refers to the definitive boundary lines of what constitutes human life as it is known empirically and, often, existentially. One observes a death’s head or corpse, sees the statistics of those dead or dying and knows, at least in part, the implications of these observations and statistics for one’s self and one’s group. Furthermore, one discerns one’s limited future, takes (or refuses) action in light of this discernment, and these actions (or refusals) have material (including psychological and social) consequences for one’s life, but especially consequences for coming generations.

From Art and Cultural History to Contemporary Documentary

In cultural history, memento mori themes and materials appear prominently as early as the medieval story and pictures of “The Three Living and the Three Dead” and as recently as the present-day Dia de los Muertos celebrations in Mexico, and elsewhere. Memento mori makes an appearance in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a “death’s head”, or skull. And in seventeenth century Dutch vanitas painting it takes on various guises, including skulls, timepieces, books, flowers, animals, and fruit. Twentieth century pop artist Andy Warhol’s electric chair and car crash silkscreens deal directly with death and his self-portraits carry memento mori symbolism. These are just a few of countless examples. In fact, if one pauses to consider all works dealing with death or mortality, including contemporary media forms such as photography and cinema, memento mori seems to be ever-present. (For literary examples on the theme of death, the collection The Oxford Book of Death, edited by D.J. Enright (1983), is helpful. In art, the references are numerous; see, for a taste, proceedings of the art history conference, “Constructions of Death, Memory, and Mourning”, edited by Lilian H. Zirpolo (2006).) It is important to recognize that not all death symbolism counts as memento mori necessarily, because memento mori is concerned more specifically with memory or awareness in regard to mortality. Yet, as will be discussed below, death symbolism proves more apt to be received as memento mori than does other content. (A crucial aspect of memento mori is that it has a purpose directed toward an audience: the viewer or reader or memento mori “consumer” is targeted for a message or command to remember and to become aware, perhaps again, of death.) Concerns of memento mori are widespread in Western and global culture, and they continue to play a significant part in cultural production and experience – in an especially prominent way, I will argue in what follows – in the form of contemporary documentaries.

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In literature and art, memento mori may be recognized from as early as, at least, classical and medieval sources. Though often identified in art historiography with vanitas paintings, memento mori’s reach extends far beyond vanitas in terms of time, cultural location, and medium. Commands regarding the awareness of mortality appear in various places throughout classical literature. Dr. Samuel Johnson, for example, cites the sage Solon in an epigram from Athens instructing the viewer to “‘Look at the end of life’” as the viewer faces the tomb (Johnson 1739–1761/2003).4 By the medieval period, memento mori seems to be common knowledge in folk culture, especially by the time, or shortly after, Noker’s homiletic poetry appeared entitled “Memento Mori”, circa 1080 c.e. (Gentry 1980). In the fourteenth century, while the Plague wiped out a third or more of Europe’s population, memento mori emerged with special relevance. Murray and Murray (1996) point, for example, to the …grim fresco of The Triumph of Death [attributed to] Traini (c.1360: Pisa, Campo Santo) [which] depicts a noble cavalcade passing three decomposing corpses in open coffins, with one horrified rider holding his nose. The corpses “speak”, with labels saying “As you are, so once were we. Thus you will be”, “Rich must die as well as poor”, and “None escapes death”. (319) There hardly can be a mistake about their message, which is the charge of “memento mori” itself, or, in long paraphrase, “remember, no matter who you are, even you rich, prestigious, and powerful (because the poor are already often painfully aware of their limited or unrecognized capacities), that you will die” with the implication that one should live one’s life in reply to this awareness. (The ethical theme here is pivotal, but it should not be taken as the exclusive theme. Along with the ethical, memento mori is in the first place didactic or instructional and, in the last place, an opportunity for existential, even “empirical”, identification with a human figure as a sharer in the mortal condition. Also, themes of denial, deception, and spoof/humor arise.) After the medieval period, memento mori in art took on a new form and prominence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as it appeared explicitly in – and as – what came to be known in art history as vanitas painting. Especially identified with Dutch and Italian artwork (cf. Vanhaelen & Wilson 4 See the The Greek Anthology (1968), Volume iii, translated by W.R. Paton, Book ix (“The Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams”), Epigram 366 (Anonymous, “Sayings of the Seven Sages”), 198–201. Importantly, to “look at the end” indicates a question of life’s purpose and not only a pointer to death.

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2013, 16), but also making a showing elsewhere in Europe, vanitas call to mind, in a context of increasing wealth and power, the charge of the teacher in the Hebrew scriptures that “all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). For example, there is the seventeenth century Steenwych picture entitled Memento Mori, Still Life: Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life. Because the vanity being identified is everything known to mortal life, and because no fact of life could better illustrate life’s vanity than death, memento mori played a prominent role in vanitas. Sometimes that role was so influential as to make what people called “vanitas” indistinguishable from “memento mori”, and in some cases “memento mori” became the preferred terminology. Yet, memento mori is hardly limited to particular points in art history. ­Rather, memento mori is a deep and wide cultural phenomenon and an occasion for transformative experience. In short, memento mori operates in rhetorical terms as ideographic: that is, it is a terminology/graphic that summarizes a wide range of various usages (McGee 1975; 1980; 2001; cf. Vanhaelen and Wilson 2013, 18) in relation to the idea of consciousness of mortality. Memento mori also incorporates a wide range of media and genres. Memento mori as experienced is considered to be transformative because no other human experience can surpass that of mortality or the encounter with the boundary between life and death, an experience that brings about altered ways for a person to be (or not be) and act (or not act) in the world. While not the only form of memento mori at work in contemporary culture, one of the most prominent forms of memento mori appears today in documentaries. There are many options for what constitutes “documentary”, in the singular, especially in an information society and in information science. (The expanse of what is designated by the “documentary” is increased when it includes all forms of recorded information. It is recognized that what constitutes a “document” has embraced a wide range of items beyond the two dimensional, including objects [Buckland 1997]. The more all-encompassing term recently has become “information”.) But the primary concern here is for filmed work, first in photography and, then, most importantly, in historically celluloid-based film or cinema. Susan Sontag, author of On Photography (1977), writes in On the Pain of Others (2003), for example, of how certain photographs – emblems of suffering, such as the snapshot of the little boy in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, his hands raised, being herded to the transport to a death camp – can be used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one’s sense of reality; as secular icons, if you will. (119)

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The Holocaust, war scenes, and other extreme subject matter including raw footage can be employed in terms of memento mori, and, in photography, ordinary scenes work this way as well. In fact, images of death or representations of mortal lives are ubiquitous in photography, television, and film. From The New York Times to the E! network or bbc News to newsstand tabloids, references to mortality are constant (cf. Hanusch 2010). While not all death- or mortality-content is necessarily memento mori, much is or may be, depending upon the context and reception of the content by a given audience. For example, primetime viewing on public television, the major television networks, cable, satellite, or online providers provide a steady stream of death-related or mortality-awareness content, including access to massive volumes of visual material and footage through venues such as YouTube, Vimeo, and social media platforms. While ostensibly the purpose of news programming is informational, further consideration of it reveals an epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric in which memento mori emerges as a primary operator, doing its work on the basis of audience identification with human figures or environments that powerfully bring to awareness the viewer’s situation as a mortal. At the local store, library, or Netflix, to browse the movie selections is to be offered a menu of symbols and themes for death and mortal life. These movies and television series are entertainment, but beyond this they often give occasion for reflection upon a viewer’s status as a mortal (and either an immortal with an uncertain future or not an immortal at all). Documentary films in particular take memento mori as their charge. That is, their purpose – sometimes explicit, more often implicit – is to bring the limits of mortal life, which is defined ultimately by death, to the consciousness of the viewer. This claim need not bring into question the intentions of the filmmaker necessarily. Rather, my concern is how documentaries function rhetorically, so the issue of purpose, rather than intention, is built into a consideration of the film work, though the biography and artistic context of the filmmaker are not excluded (cf. Bordwell 1989, 34ff, 205ff.; Plantinga 1995, 2013; Nichols 2001, 2010, 2013). Importantly, death is not the only definitional frame for a human being, but it remains one of several definitive marking points, including birth, in relation to a human being’s life. Death is “ultimate” in the sense that it is last in one’s life, both as anticipated and as fact. From the earliest documentary films, even in Robert Flaherty’s ­deliberately staged Nanook of the North (1922) to the more contemporary, such as Rob ­Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore (2006), or Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World (2007) mortality is documented in order that the audience bring it to

8

Introduction

awareness. One can identify particular symbols, themes, texts, and contexts that carry forward a memento mori tradition in documentaries, which previously had been carried most recognizably by print media and by painting. In addition, contemporary viewers have the perception that documentaries deal with mortality in a more immediate way than the older media. This perception may be challenged, yet there is something distinctive about photography and historically celluloid-based film as opposed to painting, drawing, or sculpture and to oral speech, theater, or written printed text. This “something” is discussed further below and is the subject of this book. Roland Barthes (1980; 1981), for example, notes that when one looks at a photograph, even an ordinary one, it seems to be dealing in a unique way with death or the dead (1980, 30–32, 56, 143–145, especially 148–151; 1981, 14–15, 31–32, 92, especially 95–96). This observation is not limited only to historical photographs but to all photographs of people, dead or living. Photographs of people seem to be implicitly accompanied with a text that runs something like, “This person is, or soon will be, dead”. As Barthes writes in Camera Lucida, the unique point to Alexander Gardner’s Portrait of Lewis Payne (1865) is “il va mourir” – “he is going to die” (Barthes 1980, 150; 1981, 96; emphasis in original). Beyond portraiture or figure pictures, anything living is “made still”, by a photograph. In film, where the image is perceived to be moving, even though it is merely a sequence of still images, usually 24 per second, the living items in the image are in real life either already dead or will be dead and are recorded as a negative on light-sensitive material (cf. Mulvey 2006). Thus, every photograph or film is, in this sense, a memento mori picture because it is documenting mortal life by mechanisms that result from material processes that can not be separated from the life and death that, then, is shown in the image. Not incidentally, this claim relies upon the fact that every picture exists within a context of human social reception and not only as an object. For contemporary viewers, in so far as photography and film take images of living things, they offer a record of mortal life. More is said on these themes, and qualifications of them, in the chapters that follow. Cinema and television, even more than still photography, seem to have a remarkably powerful relationship to mortality because their documentary capacity extends to “moving” images and to sound. Historically celluloid-based film offers a four-dimensional or five-dimensional experience, depending upon how one counts sound (cf. Zettle 1999) – including time, along with the spatial sense of projected light and sound – rather than two-dimensional experience. These capacities may greatly heighten the possibility of bringing mortality to awareness. In particular, film has an especially intimate relationship with mortality because of its ability to document the empirical. At the same

Introduction

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time, the conventions of film, especially documentary, lend themselves to manipulations that can lead to deception or spoofs, such as “mockumentaries”. Yet, even here, the axis of significance runs from the real to the irreal, illusory, or false, rather than to the imaginary. Viewers of documentaries tend to believe that documentary films and footage reflect reality in a way that most other media and genres do not. Because belief is involved, documentary is (inevitably) tied up in a social context. This belief helps mark out the primary distinction in viewers’ ideas of what is fact, or “reality”, and fiction as is recognized by, for example, leaders in the philosophy of film and documentary theory such as Sobchack (1984; 2004) and Nichols (1991; 2001; 2010), among others. In the pages to come, this thought will be elaborated and qualified but it remains a basic starting point for reflections on documentaries. Rather than beginning with, and attempting to fully utilize, human imagination as in fiction film, the makers of filmed documentation, understood this way, attend to particular information drawn “directly” from empirical reality to recognize the truth and the possibilities of a specific situation in the context of human life. Because of the idea that documentaries have close proximity to “real” life and its ultimate limit – death – documentaries have an exceptional cultural and personal place in negotiating a viewer’s experience of mortal existence. In identifying documentary film’s exceptional place, it is important to note that in fact any material (not only documentaries), hypothetically speaking, could trigger, embody, or exemplify the idea of mortality. In addition, in so far as any material makes this idea conscious to a human being, then it is, in this sense, as I am describing it, memento mori. Moreover, because of film’s ability historically to record empirical reality on to light-sensitive paper or celluloid, all film – not only the documentary genre – may be understood as recording mortal existence. (In a digital age and with digital media, the material processes of film medium become an effect. One may recall that the effect of older media continues to operate in the practices and beliefs of viewers so that a cultural education to what constitutes the real carries over, however transformed, into new media. Digital media also could be part of a shift in theme toward memento vivere). Film offers a physical memory of mortal existence – as such all films may be memento mori items. Moreover, filmmaking and viewing relies upon conventions of the real vs. irreal, or the empirical/historical and the imaginary, necessarily relying upon film viewers to sort out what they take to be real or not real. Documentaries as a genre, while wide variation exists in them, are normally understood by viewers to record and present empirical reality rather than fiction. Human beings, then, in documentaries are understood to be living (or dead) mortals,

10

Introduction

not imaginary characters, gods, superheroes, or, otherwise, immortals. Every human being and every living thing in a documentary film, film segment, or selection of footage either is or will be dead; as a fact, this makes every documentary a memento mori artifact. As particular viewers or groups of viewers become aware of mortality, then documentary films are regarded also as memento mori items in relation to particular contexts in which they are viewed. Ultimately, while a number of media and genres may be especially suited to the content and theme of memento mori, documentary film and television are especially apt. In terms of content and theme, mortal life and death are a primary theme, if not the primary theme, of documentary film and television. (Social instruction and justice – as in the questions, “Did you know?” and “What are you going to do about it?” – are probably the other main themes [cf. Nichols 2001; 2010]). In this sense, particular documentary films are memento mori, and others are not. One may search for implicit memento mori: if death or the fragility of life or the struggle for survival in the face of non-survival are a theme, then, as I am describing it, one is dealing with memento mori. For example, even though nature documentaries such as the American public television station program (pbs) Nature are often explicitly about non-human animals such as lions, wolves, or ants, its themes run very strongly in terms of (implicit) human survival or non-survival in mortal life. More explicit are documentaries that make use of memento mori symbols, phrasing, and themes that tie into the memento mori cultural tradition. And most powerful of all is the way we may encounter death in documentaries as our own memento mori experience.

Features of Memento Mori and How Memento Mori Functions

Broadly speaking, what characterizes memento mori as a phenomonenon and how it functions depend upon its contexts, which can be described in several ways, as we have begun to see, including the artistic, the ideational, and the experiential. In the context of art, particular items, especially in images or performances, appear as “memento mori”. For example, a classic memento mori item is a skull, which could appear in the form of a skull ring, a skull in a painting, or a death’s head (or skull) in literature, such as the memento mori in Hamlet. In addition, whole images, texts, or performances themselves, and not simply an item within them, may be referred to as memento mori. For example, classic memento mori appears literally as a memento mori painting or a Dutch vanitas still life or portrait painting such as Steenwych’s Memento Mori, Still Life: Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life in the seventheenth century, on the one

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hand, or, on the other hand, the medieval German homiletic poem “Memento Mori” by Noker in the eleventh century. In this artistic context, one can identify memento mori as a symbol and as a picture. Memento mori items appear in, and as, religious imagery, still life and portraiture, especially in painting and photography. Memento mori items appear, also, as particular details within images, texts, environments, or performances, which become not only an indication of a mortality-consciousness theme but, additionally or alternatively, as a signal of awareness of memento mori as an artistic tradition, which the artist both continues and alters with some new material or thematic reconfiguration of it. Sometimes memento mori is especially easy to identify because a work takes “memento mori” as an alphabetic graphic within the work or takes it as its very nomenclature. Beyond these, memento mori appears not only as verbal or symbolic items in literature, but as thematic content, which may operate as an occasion for consciousness of mortality, or alternatively as awareness of the memento mori artistic/cultural tradition itself, or both. Memento mori is characterized differently, and even more extensively, in an ideational or intellectual context. In this context, arguably any item, event, or situation that offers an occasion to bring about consciousness or renewed consciousness of mortality may be referred to as memento mori. In this case, anything hypothetically is possible; in fact, however, usually some items, events, or situations function as memento mori (an occasion for renewed consciousness of mortality) more than others. In particular, items, events, or situations that are materially or thematically concerned with death such as a corpse more often function as memento mori than those that do not carry these materials or themes. Importantly, media that have a readily identifiable material relationship or are perceived by an audience to have a direct relationship with empirical reality are more apt to function as memento mori, as mentioned above, and will be discussed further below, in terms of documentary. Memento mori, then, also may be identified in ideational or intellectual terms. That is, wherever one finds either the idea of (renewed) consciousness of mortality, on the one hand, or awareness of memento mori as an established convention in cultural works, on the other hand, then one is dealing with memento mori. To fully comprehend memento mori’s features, it is important to see that memento mori is a material pointer, or “index”, of or to death. In any form that particular memento mori items might take, they in fact refer to empirical, and not simply imagined, death. They point to that which, in empirical terms, is nothing, is “spiritual”, or is left to the imagination because “it” “lies beyond” the empirical or is the denial (though some would argue it is the “fulfillment”) of all empirical existence.

12

Introduction

In ideational or intellectual terms, memento mori is understood to rely generally upon human consciousness and specifically upon awareness by way of memory. In these terms memento mori makes little sense without consideration of the operations of consciousness and the mechanics of the brain. The complete operations of the brain to construct and store and reconstruct memories are only beginning to be understood, though remarkable progress has been made in brain research at the cellular level since around the turn of the nineteenth century (Kandel 2007). It is known, by way of both common sense and experimental science, that memory is critical for day-to-day human functioning and for learning. Memento mori as memory is not limited to the material operations of individual brains, however. It also appears materially in the works that form artistic canons that bear the thematic content of mortality-awareness. Memento mori is then, also, an artificial convention with a history or cultural genealogy. It does not exist in a historical and social vacuum. Rather, it relies upon particular social reception depending on, for example, the kind of religious or secular cultural context in which a particular memento mori item finds itself or the peculiar situation of one audience at one time and place as opposed to another. As a convention, memento mori relates to various and specific genres, media forms, and material that help define its distinctiveness. While any genre, medium, or material, hypothetically, could operate as memento mori, certain genres, media forms, material, and content tend to operate as memento mori more than others. For example, a genre such as biography, a medium such as photography, and a technological device or thematic content such as a documentary film about war (which is received by audiences as more closely tied to the empirical), fulfill conventions that match the requirements for a memento mori tradition better than others do. Perhaps a surprising feature of memento mori, though common, is that – as an artificial convention – it also functions as a spoof or even as deception. For example, who, one could ask in an appropriate context, is stupid enough not to know that humans are mortal and that all die? Memento mori becomes a joke. There may even be some deception in memento mori because of its implication that consciousness of mortality might lead to an insight or an action that could somehow make a difference, either for mortal or immortal “existence”, when perhaps there is no difference or the difference is relatively ­inconsequential. Memento mori becomes a trick or prank regarding the hopelessness of anything having to do with the mortal (including the immortal), including the “funny” experience of a person’s short life and activity (or lack thereof) in it.

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Ultimately, memento mori functions as experiential and, to put it more ­ recisely – as I will argue as we proceed – memento mori operates as a p “composed transformative experience”. Elaboration and qualification of this thought appears in the pages to come. But, to begin with, the phrase refers to the “total” experience of memento mori: from the symbols and texts to the idea, from the item, object, performance, environment, or event to the sudden or more often emerging consciousness of mortality. To take in such a large scope of things may be dangerous if it overlooks particulars, such as formal qualities of works or their socio-historical context. Yet, obviously, to home in upon particular aspects without getting the whole picture has its shortcomings as well. With these concerns in mind, I urge a critical, integrative, holistic approach to memento mori, and this is done by understanding it as what is referred to in contemporary terminology as user-experience, but ultimately finds its orientation in a rhetorically-oriented phenomenological approach to phenomena, including memento mori and documentaries. Memento mori in an experiential sense is transformative because it brings one into awareness of truths about human existence, as an individual and beyond, in a way that may not easily be surpassed. It not only shows or tells, but it brings one into an experience of what it is, or what it is like, to be mortal. In many contexts, this experience raises questions of the most fundamental kind that are often dealt with in religion, art, and science. Memento mori, as it operates experientially or existentially, asks questions such as “What does one know?”, “What does one do?”, and “What does one find oneself caught up in?” Not uncommonly, memento mori, in this sense, raises questions about immortality, about whether immortality exists, and, if so, precisely how. With immortality, or the lack thereof, at stake, along with one’s life and the future of one’s fellow human beings, especially biological and/or cultural offspring – no wonder memento mori, as experienced, is so definitive.

Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Documentaries

How, then, are features and functions of memento mori matched with their references in and to documentaries? Like other media and genres, some documentary films include a memento mori item as a symbol within the film such as the clock in Powers of Ten and some may be characterized as a whole as a memento mori picture such as Derek Jarman’s Blue. Memento mori may be stated verbally within a film or work in cooperation with a memento mori literary tradition. Yet, while these features of memento mori in an artistic ­context

14

Introduction

in ­relation to documentaries are important to note, the more significant links with memento mori come in the ideational and empirical contexts: first, where the idea of consciousness of mortality is present, and second, where material and historical links exist between documentaries and the experience of mortality. With the help of Sobchack, Mulvey, and Nichols, among many others (e.g., see Chapter 5 below), I suggest that “film” itself (including photography, filmed footage, and, also, non-documentary genres) operates as an index (pointer/ reference) to the empirical and its ultimate limit, beyond which it has no ­ability to document: that is, death. In this indexical capacity, the medium of film – in its documentary function (not only its documentary genre) – operates as ­memento mori, bringing again (and perhaps repeatedly) mortality to consciousness. Film has a material connection to the empirical in that it employs light-sensitive technology to render what is “really out there” in the empirical world. These ideas about film, documentary in particular, are much discussed and contested, and more will be said in a moment and in the coming chapters to qualify this assertion. One also finds film referencing memento mori by way of its thematic content, especially related, on the one hand, to death and dying, and, on the other hand, to mortal life (in which death is made either the explicit or implicit end). In documentaries in particular, memento mori thematic content is especially important because documentaries are understood to deal with the real rather than the imagined. And the definitive boundary or frame for the real, at least for individuals, is the life cycle events of birth and death. This point hints, also, at the fact that documentary film, among other media forms, could lead to a transformed sense of memento mori: that of memento vivere – “remember that you will live”, “remember to live”, or “remember life”, and a call to live life is brought to consciousness. Whether all strictly in accord with the Latin or not, these are a few of the ways that memento vivere is employed in English-language sources. Important to these considerations is the language of “reality” and the “real”. In short, in this book I attempt to navigate between a sort of Baudrillardian anti-realism (whether or not this may be attributed to Baudrillard himself – i.e., all as simulacra or, one could add, all as “mere” rhetoric or sophistry), on the one hand; and a “naïve realism” (whether it be fundamentalism, “scientism”, empiricism, or other varieties), on the other hand. I assume a kind of “critical realism” that while obviously there are nonhuman phenomena (events, forces, etc.) and that generally phenomena may operate with or without humans, humans constitute “reality” for themselves, not as a trifle but as the very arena that defines life and death and other fundamental matters for humans. This issue of how the language of the “real” is

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functioning in documentaries will reappear throughout the book, especially in the chapter on film theory. Film, especially documentaries, functions with reliance upon a viewer’s or audience’s extra-cinematic awareness (Sobchak 2004), recalling the “real world out there” as a material form of cultural memory: first, in its documentaryfunction as “documentation” – an information storage system and collection that may be accessed by future generations – and, second, as the genre of documentary, which articulates a vision of culture, a memory that is formed by reconstructed data into multiple narratives and symbols. Documentaries, also, as they are viewed and experienced, are in part constituted by their social reception, and they function as a result of a particular history or cultural genealogy. Viewers of film, including some scholars and theorists, often assume or cite film’s historical function of documenting the empirical world. The snapshot is taken, the film rolls, and filmmakers and viewers “know” that history is in the making by way of the camera (and projector). In the historiography of film, a mythical narrative, as Bill Nichols describes it (2001), has arisen that places “documentation” at the very beginning of film’s appearance, for example in the Lumière brothers’ pictures. But, as Nichols also points out, several other traditions go into the constitution of documentary as the genre one knows today, including scientific work and the fantastical works of side-show entertainment. In short, Nichols highlights the rhetorical operations of documentary that do not seek merely to inform, document, or even instruct, but also to entertain, engage, persuade, and enact or perform. To highlight documentary’s rhetorical operations is to pay special attention to the purpose of, and the audience for, the works in question (Bordwell 1989). As a function or result of a particular social reception, for example, documentaries are commonly received as real. The reception of documentaries as dealing in the real is especially significant in regard to memento mori because, I suggest, what definitively delineates the real for humans is death.5 Finally, as composed transformative experience, documentaries function as memento mori. Documentaries raise the question of what is real and what is not real and, as memento mori, they instruct that what one does within one’s mortal existence counts because death acts as a definitive boundary to reality 5 Death is not the only delineator of the real, but it is one of the most definitive. At the same time, documentary is particularly susceptible to spoof and to deception, precisely because it hinges on an axis of the convention of The Real. In this way, documentaries can take up death-consciousness and turn it on its ear, either by incorporating fictional elements or contrived scenes that only appear to be real but in fact are pure theater, or by exaggerating the conventions of documentary genre to make a joke.

16

Introduction

as human individuals know it. Documentaries raise questions in regard to how one responds, also, to the deaths of others, particularly other human beings and animals or species related to Homo sapiens. These questions are the same for memento mori generally, especially as conventions are employed to implicate empirical and existential realities, particularly death. Documentaries also offer viewers a move into distinctive human experience, owing in particular to memento mori, without which one may wonder whether human experience could really be comprehended in the way that it is. That is, the consciousness of mortality (whether for the “first time” or in a renewed way) delineates the endpoint of human life for an individual, just as birth or conception marks the beginning. (These comments hint, again, toward another tradition that goes with memento mori: that of memento vivere.) Documentaries, in this case as memento mori, also draw upon aesthetic and sensorial elements that make strong affective appeals. An affective or experiential “turning” is sought, which takes place by way of a profoundly persuasive transaction – something like what Bill Nichol’s (2013) has observed in Werner Herzog’s work as “ecstatic documentary” (37) – between the viewer and what the viewer sees as, if you will, not-the-viewer. Documentaries, then, as memento mori, are better understood as not simply formal and informative, but also, and more fundamentally, as experiential and transformative.

A Rhetorically-Oriented Phenomenology Applied to Documentaries

How is it, one may ask, that these claims may be made for memento mori and documentaries and, in particular, the examples discussed throughout this book? In short, with the help of philosopher-theorists Vivian Sobchack and Bill Nichols, I adopt a rhetorically-oriented phenomenological method applied to film (on “rhetorical”, see Nichols, e.g., 1991; 2001; 2010; 2013; on “phenomenological method” see Sobchack 2011, 193; and, e.g., 1992; 2004). The method I employ, following Nichols, owes itself to a tradition of rhetorical practice and discipline that runs with, and as a counter-part to, philosophy in the Western tradition, though not necessarily exclusive to it. Another way to describe it could be “philosophical rhetoric”, except that I am not tied to the distinctions that George Kennedy makes (1999), and I do not exclude, necessarily, “sophistical” elements to the method chosen. Phrases like “a philosophy of communication” or “communicative method” are not too far off, though a “method of transformation” might be more precise. For the sake of convenience, one may

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identify that this method owes much of its immediate debt to a kind of merger of Sobchack and Nichols. Previously, others have drawn on the rhetorical tradition as part of their theorizing on film, including Bordwell and Thompson (1990 [1979]), Bordwell (1989), and Plantinga (1995), but none of these with the clear, forceful, and fundamental assertion that documentaries cannot really be understood without attention to them as rhetorical. Such a rhetorically-oriented starting point from Nichols, rather than Bordwell, Thompson, or Plantinga, coupled with Sobchack’s phenomenology of film, allows me to analyze documentaries-asmemento-mori in terms of a composed transformative experience. Before elaborating upon what I mean by composed transformative experience and how this terminology is used in the discussion throughout, I want to clarify how attention to “rhetoric” is useful and, also, clarify some of the context and rationale for employing a rhetorically-oriented phenomenological approach. First, minimally it must be clear that “rhetoric” in this context does not mean “mere words” instead of “substantive action”, as the term is commonly used in or in reference to contemporary news media, politics, and discourse. Rather, rhetoric is, in the first place, a discipline and tradition, distinct from but entangled with philosophy, that is known in its classical form as “the art of persuasion” or, more precisely, in a paraphrase of Aristotle, “the ability to see (in any given situation) all the available means for persuading an audience (toward a particular action)” (Rhetoric 1.2.1). In modern conceptions of rhetoric, many variations and elaborations upon Aristotle and a range of issues related to communicative practice have arisen so that it is difficult to pin down just one description of rhetoric. (See, for example, the handy outline and summary of definitions for rhetoric given by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication, 2004, 4–8.) The humanist tradition of rhetoric, from the classical to the present-day, provides useful resources for describing what is happening in human culture, including memento mori. Rhetoric, even as conceived in antiquity by the Sophists and by Aristotle, reorients many of the problems posed by philosophy. In the last few centuries, the resources of rhetoric have often gone neglected, even though, prior to this, rhetoric constituted the very fabric of Western education. The revival of rhetorical studies in the twentieth century has been a key development that is corroborated by the turn to language and linguistics in philosophy (Rorty 1992 [1967]), especially in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (e.g., 1965) and Martin Heidegger (e.g. 1993). Since about the 1930s, a revival in philosophically oriented rhetorical studies has been led by, among others, students of the Polish-Belgian philosopher Chaïm Perelman and of the American

18

Introduction

literary and cultural theorist Kenneth Burke to bring Aristotelian “persuasion” to bear in argumentation and, especially, communication. This revived discipline of rhetoric draws upon a tradition of classical rhetoric running from the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle to Cicero, Quintillian, and Augustine. This tradition is often read as extending from ancient Greek and Roman oratory and education through centuries of medieval Christian homiletics and education to the Renaissance literary recovery of antiquity. Then from the Enlightenment’s concern for cultivating gentlemanly culture to John Henry Newman’s rhetorical theology and Friedrich Nietzsche’s r­ eligio-philosophical rhetoric of the nineteenth century. And, finally, from the early twentieth century to the more recent attention to language, whether as literature in composition studies or as communication in philosophy or literary theory (See, e.g., Murphy 1974; Conley 1990; Jarrett 1991; Blair 1998; Kennedy 1999; Jost and Olmsted 2000; Bizzell and Herzberg 2001; Sloane 2001; Booth 2004; or cf. Barnett 2017). (Carol Blair [1998] offers an account of how establishing histories of rhetoric or rhetoric as a tradition can be problematic. Nevertheless, many argue based upon the assumption that there is in fact a tradition; then the issue becomes how a history of it is drawn out.) What binds these various instances together is what classically was dealt with as “means of persuasion”, and in recent years has been regarded as any communication brought about by and for significant action in a particular situation. In broad terms then, I follow Kenneth Burke’s (1950) appropriation of ­classical rhetoric for a modern context, which helps us understand that “­persuasion” is now too soft of a word for what really is a fundamental “transformation”. That is, rather than being argued into a new perspective, people are ­persuaded – even more, transformed – as one identifies or simulates a shared experience with another. Here one finds the most effective and thoroughgoing consolidation of directed action. Rhetoric has some particular strengths that may be highlighted as it interacts with a number of related fields and disciplines, especially semiotics and phenomenology. The sources for thinking about signs are extensive and have a long history. As early as the fourth century c.e., Augustine outlined a hermeneutic and theory of signs in De doctrina christiana (1958 and 1995 [c. 396, 427 ce]; Sullivan 1930) that serves as foundational for semiotic and rhetorical analysis. The American pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce’s work on semiotics (1940 [1897–1903]) remains highly regarded and very useful, especially in the discussion of memento mori and documentary film as indexical. Ferdinand de Saussure, especially Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique ­générale) (1959 [1916]), should also be mentioned as foundational for semiotics. Roland Barthes’s work and other post-structuralists such as

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Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard, among others, are heavily employed by a generation of thinkers in art and literary theory and cultural theory. Norman Bryson and Mieke Bal (1991), for example, emphasize readings of art history that are not limited only to the literal or formal, but to the significant in terms of the effective exchange of signs. First among its strengths in this regard, rhetoric is familiar with many of the problems raised in philosophy in regard to language. One could argue that the linguistic turn (Rorty 1992 [1967]) in twentieth century philosophy was a turn to the tradition of rhetoric as a body of theoretical reflection and a discipline as carried out in the Western tradition since before the time of Plato, beginning, in particular, with the Sophists, and resulting in a rhetorical philosophy or philosophical rhetoric. It is no mistake, for example, that two of the ­primary carriers of the turn to language in twentieth century Western philosophy, ­Heidegger and Wittgenstein, owed a great deal to Nietzsche, a trained philologist, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to a practical-minded empirical ­tradition – a tradition that assumed that one had nothing to do without some data, and the particulars of languages were those data. Such a philosophical rhetoric may be thought of as cooperating with both semiotics and phenomenology. Differences between rhetoric, semiotics, and phenomenology often tend to be reduced to preferences in the way people identify their area of study or practice rather than to substantive differences. Often these disciplinary boundaries are simply a matter of emphasis. For example, rhetoric can include semiotics, and vice-versa, yet (with some exceptions) rhetoric tends toward what could be considered less of a “mathematical”, less “linguistic” approach to its subject and more of a “literary” and “humanities” approach. In my thinking, symbols and other sign functions and operations are taken up within an approach that includes the literary, the artistic, and the ­experiential. Meanwhile, arguably, phenomenology may be seen as employing a particular rhetorical practice – that of description – while allowing for the complexity of phenomena to emerge, perhaps, out of the ineffable. An important distinction may be made, however, in that phenomenology, as I understand it, does not normally attribute to itself a “constructive” capacity, unless it is “deconstructive” (of erroneous theory, for example), although its descriptions may be applied “constructively”. In this way, the rhetorically oriented method that I conceive of is close to something like a semiotic phenomenology. My approach seeks to be not only descriptive and analytical (toward what is “really out there”), but also to put things together that may not have been together before (“constructive”). This rhetorical approach is not unlike Foucault’s rhetorical historiography

20

Introduction

which employs poetics as it pushes forward an argument about various highprofile, but sometimes understudied, discourses, like those having to do with mental illness (1988 [1961]), prisons (1995 [1975]), sexuality (1980 [1976]), and even “man” (1994 [1966]), in order to put attention upon, and perhaps transform, how people use language. His constructive rhetorical history is not only ­descriptive and not merely informational, but also suggestive and even prescriptive of transformed language-use and individual action within culture. To attend to memento mori as a phenomenon, then, is to attend to it from a rhetorical approach that understands that human cooperative projects, artistic or otherwise, are galvanized by word-signs that allow human individuals and culture to be transformed. In this way, my approach is not only a semiotically-oriented phenomenology but, more accurately put for my sensibilities, a rhetorically-oriented phenomenology. Of course a disadvantage to putting forward any argument based on what is called “rhetorical” is that there may be the perception that the approach is too loose or that “anything goes”. Part of the confusion in regard to rhetoric is that sometimes the fact that the field of rhetoric is open to anything is mistaken for the discipline of rhetoric, which – on the contrary – has a specific history and a set of terminology and practices that, while varying widely, do not present any more of a problem in terms of shared practices than do most humanities or social scientific disciplines. In fact, rhetoric as a historical discipline has taken up a privileged role beyond “rhetorical studies” as a classic starting point within the field of communication studies and, also, is a fundamental historical starting point for Sophistic philosophical traditions. There, for example, the insights of classical rhetoric as appropriated for a modern context by Kenneth Burke and others are taken for granted as providing some of the fundamental insights into all human communication, including interpersonal communication, organizational communication, literature, art, and media, including film. Bill Nichols’s work on documentary in this regard is the hallmark source. Many scholars in rhetorical and communication studies today make basic assumptions that allow for highly useful analysis of culture and, also, for the creation of cultural projects, production, and composition. These basic assumptions rely upon, or coincide with, some of Kenneth Burke’s key ideas, which include his famous “definition of [humans]”, an anthropology that is taken for granted in many circles of students of rhetoric, communication, sociology, and elsewhere, including in philosophy. Burke’s (1966) oft cited passage is the following: “[Humanity] is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from [their] natural condition by instruments of [their] own making (…) moved by

Introduction

21

a sense of order (…) and rotten with perfection” (16). This appears in his landmark The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (1961) and also in Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (1966). Among other things, these rhetorical and communications scholars assume that texts, images, objects, and other items are artifacts of practice; that communicative practice is not only active or interactive, but also transformative; and that it is by way of symbols or signs, and sign-systems, that human beings constitute society for themselves. Transformation, in particular, takes place by a process of fundamental reorientation – sometimes instantaneous and sublime, sometimes gradual and mundane – in which an individual actively brings one’s self into cooperation with an other. But now let us turn to what memento mori in particular means in more detail as just such a transformation.

Composed Transformative Experience: Introducing Documentaries as Memento Mori

I am using the phrase “composed transformative experience” as both an analytic for what one finds when one encounters the documentaries and as something that is “imposed” upon them. That is, I take it that works of memento mori, in this case in the form of documentaries, are composed, intentionally or not intentionnaly, as works that create an occasion for a new or renewed sense of things – particularly in regard to mortal existence. The purpose of these works, while not necessarily including the question of the makers’ intentions, is not only formal or “aesthetic” but also sensorial. From the perspective of rhetoric, this purpose is directed toward an audience, without which the work cannot operate. This audience may be merely implied (Bordwell 1989, 34; cf. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969), as in the case of an extremely reclusive artist, for example. But works are not completely assessed until they are dealt with in terms of experience. In some circles today, the terminology of experience has become highly contested or outright rejected for being too “soft” or vague. Yet sometimes “vague” or fuzzy can turn out to be flexible, sophisticated and dynamic. In this book, I use the terminology of “experience” as a “sensitizing concept” (Blumer 1954) that refers generally to the totality of phenomena as negotiated by human individuals and groups, especially as they make those phenomena meaningful in symbols, narratives, and other useful semiotic schemas. Specifically here it refers to the encounter with memento mori items, documentaries in particular. In terms of film, Vivian Sobchack’s work (first 1992; then 2004; cf. ­Plantinga 2009) is the definitive contribution to date at least in the North American

22

Introduction

a­ cademy on the move beyond formal and ideological or ideational concerns only to the concern for film experience. Working out of a continental tradition, Sobchack (1992) recognizes the difficulties of the term “experience” (xiv), yet her task, as is the job of a phenomenological approach, is to “describe experience” (xvii). In Sobchack’s opening to The Address of the Eye: The Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992), she asks, What else is a film if not ‘an expression of experience by experience’ [quoting Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1968, 155]? And what else is the primary task of film theory if not to restore to us, through reflection upon that experience and its expression, the original power of the motion picture to signify? (3) In part, this is what the writing of this book attempts to do within a rhetorical phenomenology through film to memento mori. The larger context for this language of experience and, also, “transformation” has been known previously to be both religious and philosophical rhetoric. Transformation has probably become an overused term in both academic and popular contexts, yet it retains some usefulness for the time being because it refers to the fact that what we call “forms”, or the organization of material into identifiable units, can and does undergo alterations of varying degrees – sometimes to the point of becoming a distinct form (from the original) or even totally different. In religious rhetoric, for example in the work of the Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1996 [1971]), the terminology of transformation is closely related to the terminology of “conversion”. Such language has overtones that are not only evangelical, but also scientific. And, while enthusiastic or ecstatic elements are included in what I take to be transformative, I include much more mundane and graduated development as also a part of “transformative experience”. Granted, discussion of transformation in human affairs can very easily become overblown to the point where “transformations” are a dime-a-dozen, not unlike what Lonergan says about “insights”. One may also assert the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet one can distinguish different kinds and degrees of transformation, following Lonergan – and also highlight the limitations of the rhetoric of transformation, which include rhetorics of continuity and, also, the exploitation of transformation rhetoric for the sake of power-plays. Still, given these qualifications, we know powerfully motivating, constructive transformation takes place and often is deliberately constructed to do so. What does it mean, then, to compose transformative experience? And how does this function here as we go forward? First, I take the idea of composition

Introduction

23

in both its most basic and its disciplinary senses. That is, to compose is “to put together”. Coherence is essential, but artistry by way of distinctive style is the goal. Immediate usefulness may or may not be an effect, but it is not the goal. Rather, an “environment” is created for the sake of an insight (which may both have “already been there” and, also, is now “fabricated” or made) for, in the case of a text, the reader, and, in the case of a film, the viewer. To employ the language of “composition” is also to place this project in relation to rhetorical studies, not only of texts or discourse, but also of becoming “literate” with all forms of information. This is a contemporary understanding of rhetorical practice in any form of media, including film. Second, I understand the “transformative” in a number of ways, including the less dramatic. As I use it, a “transformation” may be not only profound but also momentary and temporary. On the one hand, it could occur as a dramatic change with effects for a lifetime. On the other hand, it could occur for the duration of a performance, within a defined encounter, or a portion thereof. In regard to memento mori items, including texts, objects, and performances, the transformative experience could take place on the spot or, alternatively, at a later time, through memory. The performance/art/work/event is recalled, and the individual’s organization of reality and meaningful narratives are reconfigured temporarily or for longer duration, in some cases becoming permanent, but not necessarily. I want to maintain the value of “temporary” and “momentary” because even these become permanent in memory, history, and empirical fact. I emphasize these humbler senses of transformation because I do not think that the rhetoric of transformation should be overblown, even as it does remain useful. There are obvious lessons to be learned in regard to this rhetoric from religious history and theory in terms of the rhetoric of conversion, which was not infrequently coupled with physical and psychological force, torture, systematic persecution, killing, or some combination of these, including genocide. Here, however, I am employing the idea more in the sense of William James (1929 [1902]) of an individual experience, even when there are also social consequences. One may look, also, to scientific rhetoric where “conversion” / “transformation” are employed as neutral, descriptive terms. I should hasten to add that I am including these more dramatic and sustained transformations, as Lonergan (1996 [1971]) describes, that take place at intellectual, ethical, and affective levels, and that go so far as to bring one into what Nietzsche (1990 [1895]) called a “transvaluation of values”, a more or less completely new orientation toward scales and qualities of value in life and action. I seek to accomplish this kind of critical integrative articulation through a rhetorical phenomenology by way of the films discussed throughout this study, and the filmmakers cited in this study are these kinds of creators.

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Introduction

They ­compose, through and beyond the particulars of their disciplines and fields, an experience of human life and its ultimate empirical limit – death – that offers a new or renewed sense of that experience, that is, a renewed consciousness. This is one way to talk about documentary filmmakers’ work as transformative, and this is a reason to think of their work as “moving memento mori pictures”. I elaborate on this point in the chapters that follow. Woven throughout the discussion and examples here is also more in-depth discussion and analysis of particular work by the Charles and Ray Eames, Wim Wenders, and Derek Jarman, among the many other cited filmmakers and examples, including the now iconic 9/11 news footage from cnn of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. The Eameses, Wenders, and Jarman create transformative work in their material and methods: each film/ filmmaker made extraordinary contributions to creative practice, in relation to film and documentaries in particular. I want to mention a few of these things by way of introduction because they also highlight the ways in which these filmmakers are strong personalities, and to experience them through their work is to come away differently, to have one’s “form of life” altered. The Eameses, for instance, reportedly stunned audiences with a media extravaganza in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, employing multiple big screens to play films simultaneously (a new procedure in their day) in order to create what amounted to both a sensorial blitz and a diplomatic gesture by way of humanistic appeal. Powers of Ten is particularly notable for not only its special effects, which prefigured the similar technological imaging capacity of Google Earth by thirty years, but for offering a new kind of “educational” film. The film, in the first place, is so well done as to be considered more art film than instructional film. Second, as a film commissioned for college physics classrooms, it continues to surprise viewers even today by raising issues of scale and cosmology in ways that transcend disciplinary boundaries. This documentary operates as “educational” in its broadest, deepest and best senses, as one finds described in the work of John Dewey or as aspired to at Cranbrook, where the Eameses first met and Charles did his first film work (Cranbrook Archives; Coir 2007; Demetrios 2008). Most of all, one finds in Powers an experience of being a mortal in the vast expanse of the cosmos as understood in contemporary science and as composed by master artist-designer-filmmakers. Wenders, also, has achieved an extraordinary place in contemporary filmmaking. In Germany, he went against the grain by forming an independent production company, setting out new terms for filmmaking in Europe and against Hollywood. He has become a lead spokesperson for film art as a filmmaker/intellectual pursuing his research through writing and, most of all, through images and sound. In Notebook on Cities and Clothes, he experiments

Introduction

25

with video and investigates its relation to film right on the cusp of the digital revolution. His employment of multiple points of view and especially framing, and frames within frames, becomes a study of the extensive capability of the contemporary technology. At the time, he especially employed the new experimental technology of split framing in which two parts of one composition, even if they are very distant from one another, can be shown together, both completely in focus. In Notebook, one also sees an unusual collaboration and cross-fertilization between two very different media and fields: filmmaking and fashion/clothes-making. This is trans-national work as well, with scenes being shot and work on the film being conducted from Berlin to Paris to Tokyo and back again. In Notebook (and elsewhere in Wenders’s work) the remarkable place of music or audio as a phenomenon and force is explored, a theme that reappears in Derek Jarman’s work. In the end, especially as one reflects on the film, Notebook is an experience of encounter with an ethical challenge of creating one’s life for one’s self within its defined existential limits and engaging the work one has inherited. As for Jarman, he is a film renegade and forerunner to the mtv (Music ­Television) and YouTube generations that brought a visual punk together with an atmosphere of post-apocalyptic High English culture. Jarman created extraordinarily charged performances that often were highly experimental: sometimes chaotic to the point of failure and other times soaring beyond expectation. He infused his filmmaking with theater, music, and queer liberation, himself operating as a political-social lightning rod and perhaps even a kind of prophet or seer. His influence is felt among his many collaborators and in contemporary British film and beyond, for example in the work of Sally Potter and Tilda Swinton. Blue, as possibly a culmination of all his films, is the “nofilm” film. The image is erased, and Jarman makes a radical turn to color, which is also a return in part to the medium of painting. He makes a nearly complete move to the oral/aural in the film and, beyond this, Blue becomes a phenomenon appearing in multiple formats (perhaps more common today, but not at the time of Blue’s making) as a notebook, a performance piece, an audio creation, a film, and an installation video artwork to be shown in a gallery or museum. In short, Blue becomes an experience on multiple levels, reaching ultimately for an affective alteration to one’s sense of life, death, and what makes them distinctive. Questions of Blue as a posthumous performance – one in which Jarman is, first, a living person, then a person who has died and is dead – raise, finally, the issue of personality more generally. All four of these filmmakers just mentioned are strong personalities, sometimes personalities that transcend even their work. I suggest that to experience their work is to experience, in

26

Introduction

part, their personality, and to experience their personality is to come away ­differently. As a point of clarification, however, I do not suggest that accomplished work requires exceptional personality, but in the case of the films cited here, their makers happen to be exceptional people, sometimes even “larger” than their individual works. In the case of the 9/11 news footage, personality of a maker withdraws into virtualy anonymity, while personality of individual viewers emerges. In all these cases, in the language of Wittgenstein, one’s Sitz im Leben, “form of [or situation in] life” may be altered. The site of such a transformation may be identified within life, including within the experience of a work. Of course the case may be made that a “transformation” occurs in the change from life to death, where one is dead, has no life, and is no longer living, or, if you will, one has one’s material constitution reconfigured. In both cases, these extraordinary documentary films and footage, among many other examples from the origins of documentary to the present, are occasions for new or renewed consciousness of mortal experience. In selecting these particular examples to discuss more in-depth, I do not choose at random, though perhaps other films could work just as well. Rather, these particular films, along with a selection of 9/11 footage I have singled out, are brought together in order to operate as case studies of documentary work as occasions for memento mori experience. That is, I seek not only to reflect upon documentaries individually as composed transformative experiences, but also, in part, to offer an occasion for such an experience in writing for a readership. Of course this attempt is necessarily “artificial”, just as any reflection upon phenomena necessarily is – and as created work necessarily is, as well. In addition, this project relies upon the viewing and experience of the films themselves and/or of recall of 9/11 or other footage, along with other memento mori items one may identify for one’s self, and the self-consciousness of the reader-viewer him- or herself. This lofty goal may sound pretentious to some ears, but I am not sure there is any other way to put it. At the same time, making such an effort in the context of a rhetorical phenomenology allows for a sense of contingency, irony, and humor about all claims and projects, including this one.

The Program Ahead

The program ahead addresses, then, the big question of human beings facing mortality by a discussion of documentaries as transformative memento mori experience. While mortality themes are nothing new for art, religion, or

Introduction

27

­ opular culture, the medium of film raises this concern with distinctive power. p The genre of documentary in particular brings filmmakers and viewers into what is perceived to be a direct communication with the empirical reality of human existence and its limitations, especially death. With this capacity, documentaries fulfill a role for some audiences of bringing mortality to consciousness in a transformative way. More specifically, documentaries offer occasion for intellectual, ethical, and affective transformation in the face of mortality – that is, documentaries are a new prominent form in cultural history of the wide cultural phenomenon of memento mori. To study and write about memento mori in this manner provides a way, also, to offer implications of a history of memento mori as it takes a place in digital culture and to speculate on its future, perhaps transformed itself to memento vivere. Memento vivere as “remember that you will live”, “remember to live”, “be conscious of life”, or “remember the life one has to live” often operates implicitly within memento mori or, as will be mentioned in the concluding chapter, may be an explicit development of memento mori and possibly an emerging cultural phenomenon in its own right. A study of memento vivere remains for another time and perhaps another writer. However, offering a contemporary context for memento mori as a cultural phenomenon may mark out a few of its twists and turns and suggest an emergence of a renewed consciousness of the distinctiveness of the life each has to live. In the following chapters, I attempt to spell out in further detail the specific operations of this distinctive cultural phenomenon. In Chapter 1, I establish the fact and variety of memento mori as an artistic and cultural phenomenon by showing examples of its appearance in art and culture as symbol and picture and as verbal, literary, and ideational. This chapter goes on to cite many examples of memento mori in film and television generally. Importantly, not a great deal of critical work has paid extensive attention to memento mori, especially in English-language literature. In Chapter 2, we begin a more indepth discussion of particular films, here starting with an introduction to the Eameses as filmmakers, and Powers of Ten is discussed in terms of the features and functions of memento mori. Chapter 3 offers an interpretation of memento mori, theorizing memento mori as consciousness of mortality, as a cultural genre, and as an experience. I claim that memento mori is an index, or pointer, to death and that it relies upon consciousness, and memory in particular, in order to do its work. At the same time, memento mori is an artificial convention that relies upon a cultural genealogy and particular social reception. Memento mori is a composed transformative experience, I argue, and one may find the features and functions of memento mori in documentaries, which are an especially apt contemporary

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Introduction

form of this cultural phenomenon. Chapter 4 continues the in-depth discussion of particular films with an introduction to Wenders as a filmmaker, and Notebook on Cities and Clothes is discussed in terms of the features and functions of memento mori. Chapter 5 offers a rhetorical phenomenological philosophy of documentaries as memento mori as the culmination of the discussion to this point and sets the stage for discussing Derek Jarman’s Blue and the 9/11 footage. The chapter theorizes documentaries as occasions for new or renewed awareness of mortality. I elaborate on the claim that: (a) documentaries index death, and that documentaries rely upon extra-cinematic consciousness, memory in ­particular, in order to do their work; and (b) at the same time, documentaries necessarily rely upon conventions with a particular history and reception. Documentaries may be “composed transformative experience”, I argue there. That is, we arrive at the realization that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori. The conclusion of Chapter 5 sets out the terms for analyzing contemporary memento mori through specific films, particular segments of films, or select footage. Chapter 6 discusses Jarman and Blue, while Chapter 7 ventures more deeply into the potentially personally transformative point of memento mori experience through reflections upon the now iconic 9/11 news footage from cnn as I experienced it one day after the attacks while sitting in a diner in Royal Oak, Michigan, usa. In the concluding chapter, I speculate on the possibility of a new artistic and cultural phenomenon in the digital age, that of memento vivere, and I suggest possibilities for a new cultural experience in which transformative media environments have become the norm.

chapter 1

Memento Mori in Art and Literature Until recently, memento mori has received surprisingly limited critical ­attention relative to its cultural importance in art history, literature, and ­beyond. Even though memento mori artifacts and references to memento mori are ubiquitous, few comprehensive sources exist in the English-language scholarly literature. More precisely, memento mori has received, relatively speaking, surprisingly limited critical attention in a sustained manner. Related to memento mori, but distinct in emphasis, is Cheney’s work (1992). ­Hallam and Hockey (2001) give memento mori some minor explicit attention. No readily available European-language source that I am aware of offers a complete treatment, though there are some notable sources related to, but distinct from, the present study of memento mori in their emphases and methods (e.g, Schützeichel 1962; Ingen 1966; Haneveld 1995; Pennington 2001; and Warda 2011). The recent stunning photo book by art historian and photographer Paul ­Koudounaris, Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us (2015), makes important first steps toward a more focused and sustained attention on memento mori, but it ­remains a beginning point. As far as I know, critical sources outside the West on this theme are minimal at this point in time. One of the few references is Nakagawa’s work (1983). Isolated references to memento mori abound in Western and global art history monographs, but then often they are not given a listing as a subject term in the monographs’ indices. Memento mori does receive more attention in articles, essays, reviews, and museum catalogs especially on particular uses of memento mori in images and artifacts from the medieval period to the present (e.g., Ascher 2004; Bergström 1970; Carretta 1980; King 1981; Napoleone 1998; Vinken 1999). There are also related theses and dissertations (e.g., Solo 1977, Gomes Witek 2012) and exhibition catalogues for shows related to memento mori (cf. Kerssemakers, van Pagée, and Visser 2000). These scholarly or critical works sometimes also appear, on the one hand, as art historical studies related to Dutch and Italian still life paintings, especially vanitas paintings, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Or, on the other hand, scholarly and critical works come forward as literary studies of poetry, drama, and fiction (e.g., Nord 1975; Doyle 1976; Scholz Williams 1976; Redwine 1977; Waite 1977; Frye 1979; Gentry 1979, 1980, 1981; Garber 1981; Koozin 1984; Spinrad 1984; Kobialka 2010; Louvel 2012). In some places, memento mori themes are reworked in terms of the transience of human life and the metaphysical reality of an afterlife. These

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mortality and immortality themes appear widely in many artifacts, including images and texts, in and beyond the West, e.g., in Chinese and Indian works. At the same time, scholarly and critical literature specifically focused on memento mori is just as impressive – in this case, by its relative paucity. This has started to change in recent years as interest in memento mori seems to be on the rise. We see this in Koudounaris’s work (2015), and some attention is put upon memento mori within the context of early modern Netherlandish art in The Erotics of Looking, edited by Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson (2013). Yet the relatively limited critical attention is surprising because memento mori is a key cultural artifact or phenomenon that appears widely across genres and in many media, but especially, for contemporary culture, in documentaries. As one looks to Western and global traditions, memento mori does indeed appear extensively in art, here discussed in terms of symbol and picture: for example, in religious images, still life, portraiture, visual quotations, and photography. And memento mori appears widely in literature, here discussed as verbal, literary, and ideational: as, for example, picture nomenclature, verbal instruction, and literary reference. Memento mori also appears widely in television and film, both fiction and documentary. But documentaries have a particularly special place in culture and contemporary human experience as memento mori. 1.1

Memento Mori in Art: As Symbol and as Picture

Describing “memento mori” initially is fairly straightforward, though there is some variation in how the term is used.1 According to Mayer (1991), memento mori is “a motif used in art and elsewhere as a reminder of death; from the Latin words meaning, ‘Remember that you must die’. A skull is a common memento mori. During the Renaissance a small ornament in the shape of a skull was often carried; it was usually of fine craftsmanship and might be set with gems. In art, a typical memento mori is the skull in Albrecht Dürer’s St. Jerome in His Study (1514). An entire painting may also be called a memento mori” (252). Thus both the skull in the painting and the entire St. Jerome picture may be referred to as a memento mori. 1

1 A note on terminology: in this book when memento mori is discussed in general or specifically as a cultural phenomenon, then it is discussed in the singular (“memento mori is…”). When particular images, artifacts, or items are discussed, then the plural is used (“memento mori items are…” or “these memento mori [images] are…”) – unless referring to just one of these items (“this [particular] memento mori [artifact] is…”).

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Sometimes this designation may be only a shorthand way of saying “the painting that includes a memento mori symbol, emblem or text”. Another description has it that “Paintings with [references to death] are called vanitas paintings” rather than memento mori; instead, “each feature is referred to as a memento mori” (Kleiner and Mamiya 2005, 731). Often when memento mori is referred to as a symbol, the context is understood to be within a still life vanitas picture. For example, the Grove Dictionary of Art defines memento mori as “Any vanitas symbol, such as [a] skull, candle or hourglass, or even an insect, employed to remind the viewer of the transitoriness [sic] of human existence” (Turner 1996, 100). These distinctions between memento mori and vanitas are peculiar to various sources in art historical literature and, sometimes, in common parlance. However, while it remains important to be precise about the terminology in the art historical literature, art historians and critics also refer to whole paintings as memento mori, as with St. Jerome in His Study. Thus, limiting memento mori terminology to vanitas painting is overly restrictive. As will be made clear below, the terminology of memento mori may extend far beyond particular paintings, and it may include a complex range of significance. For example, Jacobs (1993) writes in his essay on Shakespeare and “the ideology of memento mori”: the term memento mori is used in its literal sense to refer to physical reminders of death. In this sense, it usually signifies some portion of (dead) human anatomy, ranging from a skull to a complete skeleton and even an entire corpse. Occasionally, however, the term refers to a type of late medieval text in which death is “remembered” through contemplation of the dying, human mortality, the corruption of the flesh, and the like. In all cases, context clarifies which usage is intended. (n.p., ftnt. 2) In what follows below, specific contexts for using memento mori terminology are outlined and briefly discussed. It will be shown that memento mori extends well outside of vanitas, including, to begin with, medieval religious images and carries forward to contemporary photographic and filmed images. In short, “memento mori” in this wider context may refer to a symbol or item or to a whole picture or artifact that includes the symbol, item, or set of symbols or items. 1.1.1 Memento Mori as Religious Image In the art history literature, some of the most impressive cited works of memento mori appear in the medieval period close to the time of the Plague in the fourteenth century c.e., through the Renaissance, and shortly thereafter. Important works include the “Three Quick (or Three Living) and the Three

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Dead” and, also, the “Dance of Death” images (in French, Danse macabre; in German, Totentanz) (Speake 1994, 39, 140; Murray 1996, 129). There are the “wall-paintings of Doom (The Last Judgement) … frequently found in English medieval churches, over the choir arch or on the west wall [which] were intended as reminders of the transience of human life” (319). Pictures of saints, also, are particular favorites for bringing cognizance of death. Jerome, Francis, and Mary Magdalene are especially popular in this artwork. Like Mayer, Murray and Murray (1996) cite “Pictures of S. Jerome (…) where he sits at his desk writing, with his lion near by, and about the room are a skull, an hour-glass, a candle, all traditional emblems of mortality”. They also point to “two pictures by Zurbarán” of Saint Francis Meditating where “the saint holds a skull (1639 and undated: London, [National Gallery])”. Meanwhile, “A Titian (c.1552: Milan, Brera) depicts S. Francis with an hour-glass and a skull, and another Titian (c.1565: St. Petersburg) of The penitent Magdalene shows her holding a skull” (319). Cooper’s (1997) account concurs with Murray and Murray: Early iconographic sources for the vanitas and memento mori theme can be found in the depiction of the repentant sinner Mary Magdalen, and one of the early fathers of the church who stressed contemplation, St. ­Jerome, who both frequently appear with a skull. As a reformed courtesan and penitent Mary Magdalen is usually shown at the entrance to a hermits cave, drying Christ’s feet with her hair, or more rarely being rebuked for her vanity before her conversion. (n.p.) The images include skulls and other symbols including coffins, flowers, and books, and portray the saint in study, prayer or meditation, or other postures including those appropriate to the deathbed, often with the “remember mortality” inscription present (Drake 1971 [1916]). For example, there is Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Wilderness (Saint Francis in Ecstasy) (c. 1485). With urban and rural life depicted in the background, Francis stands in the foreground surrounded by a rocky, barren wilderness and, behind him, is his tomblike cave, which serves as his place of study or contemplation (Panel, 48 1/2 X 55 in. The Frick Collection, New York; see Bersson 1991, 43, figure 3.8). On his inclined desk, or what appears to a contemporary viewer like a drawing table, sits a human skull: a death’s head. Beyond this literal memento mori item, Francis is turned, with a bodily posture of openness and receptivity to something the viewer cannot see. Whatever it is, it lies beyond the frame of the picture. Francis’s eyes roll almost straight up toward the heavens. His contemplation is that of an immortal world that is beyond Bellini’s ability to picture (cf. Happel 2000). Rather, Bellini’s memento mori image of Francis offers an occasion for

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a viewer’s contemplation of one’s status, and one possible existential posture, as a mortal. Skulls and celebrity saints like Francis are especially popular in this religious art, but memento mori imagery extends, also, to ordinary saints, to skulls in a variety of compositional locations, and to other items that serve to bring mortality to mind. There are extensive examples throughout religious iconography of symbolic items such as the skull, which is given here, along with the particular form of appearance with a corresponding saint (and saint’s day). skull, in his hand at her feet, dog plucking her robe at his feet before her, saint scourging herself book, and rosary, in his cell on a book, in her hand saint in a cask, with skull and cross in his hand touching it, with his staff with eyes in it at her feet crucifix, rosary and book, at her feet

Francis (Apr. 2) Margaret (Feb. 22) Jerome (Sep. 30) and Odilo (Jan. 1) Mary (Apr. 2) Spiridion (Dec. 14) Mary (July 22) Rosalia (Sep. 4) Bl. Jordan (Feb. [15]) St. Macarius (Jan 2) Lucy (Dec. 13) Olympias (Dec. 17). (Drake 1971 [1916], 215; adapted)2

Other prominent examples of memento mori include images with items such as “Books”, “Flowers”, a “Coffin”, a “Corpse”, the “Dead” and “Deathbed”, and, also, “Lilies” (150–151, 177, 162, 168, 190–191). These religious images are historical precursors to memento mori as it appears in relation to the genres of portraiture and still life. They also point to basic concerns of memento mori that appear in various genres and media, from religious images to various secular artifacts. 2

2 The saints listed are the following: Francis of Paola, founder and confessor, fifteenth century; Margaret of Cortona, penitent, thirteenth century; Jerome, doctor of the church, mid-fourth to early-fifth century; Odilo, abbot, mid-tenth to mid-eleventh century; Mary the Egyptian, penitent, attributed to the fifth century; Spiridion, bishop and confessor, fourth century; Mary Magdalen, penitent, first century; Rosalia, virgin hermitess, twelfth century; Blessed Jordan of Saxony, confessor, thirteenth century; Macarius of Alexandria, or Macarius the Younger, desert monk, fourth century; Lucy, virgin martyr, third century; Olympia, widow and deaconess, mid-fourth to early fifth century (Attwater 1983 [1965]; Delaney 1980).

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1.1.2 Memento Mori as Still Life and as Portraiture Along with religious imagery, memento mori is closely associated with still life painting, especially sixteenth and seventeenth century vanitas painting, and with portrait painting. In French, and as a part of the French Academy’s hierarchy of genres, still life is literally nature morte: “dead nature”, or “dead life” (Frazier 2000, 651).3 As the Tate Museum (2016) describes: Still life … [is one] of the principal genres (subject types) of Western art  – essentially, the subject matter of a still life painting or sculpture is ­anything that does not move or is dead. Still life includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and so on. Still life can be a celebration of material pleasures such as food and wine, or often a warning of the ephemerality of these pleasures and of the brevity of human life (see memento mori). Living things or environments are “made still” or “made dead”, so to speak, by the artist’s medium, which very often is painting or, later, photography (e.g., see the stunning images in Koudounaris 2015). The concerns of still life and memento mori are specifically taken up in what is known as vanitas. As Murray (1996) describes, the “first independent vanitas still-lifes [sic] (i.e. those not combined with a portrait) were probably painted in the northern Netherlands c.1600”, probably in “the Calvinist university town of Leiden” (553). As Van Miegroet (1996) indicates, among the earliest examples is a signed Vanitas by Jacques de Gheyn ii, with the inscription Humana vana (1603; New York, Met; see fig. 1 on p. 882). In a central niche is a skull, placed on a few stalks of grain, above it floats a transparent ball (a well-established reference to homo bulla), in which are reflected many objects relating to transience and vanity, including playing cards and a tric-trac game; a vase of flowers (with the expensive yet quickly decaying tulip) on the left, some coins in the middle and a smoking urn on the right reinforce the explicit reference to the transience

3

3 “In the hierarchy of genres (or subject types) for art established in the seventeenth century by the French Academy, still life was ranked at the bottom – fifth after history painting, portraiture, genre painting (scenes of everyday life) and landscape. Still life and landscape were considered lowly because they did not involve human subject matter” (Tate 2016, n.p.).

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of earthly things; and in the spandrels above are images of Democritus laughing at human folly and Heraclitus bemoaning it. van miegroet 1996, 881

Van Miegroet goes on to explain that “Many theories have been advanced to explain the origins and the sudden rise of the vanitas still-life [sic]. Some scholars have seen its source in the Counter-Reformation (Mâle [1931] and Knipping 1974 [1939–1940]), others in 16th century symbolism and Calvinism (Bergström 1983 [1956]), and still others in the then new conception of the importance of painting as an art form, a direct development of the Italian Renaissance (Sterling 1981 [1959])” (881).4 As Murray (1996) describes, [Vanitas] consists of emblems of transience and mortality – a skull, a guttering candle, an hour-glass, a butterfly, soap bubbles, even a cankered flower – juxtaposed to objects of vanity, wealth, or power – a mirror, an objet de vertu, even books ([signifying] learning) or musical instruments ([signifying] the pleasures of the senses) (553). Thus, sometimes vanitas and memento mori are identified with one another. Yet, minimally, there is a difference in emphasis between the two. On the one hand, “vanity” applies a qualitative judgment to the value of mortal things and actions, especially what are taken to be the most superfluous. On the other hand, “remember mortality” may lead to an evaluation that “all is vanity”, but it comes as its prerequisite or rationale. In Pieter Boel and Jacob Jordaens’ Vanitas, for example, the image is filled with, at first glance, worldly goods of all sorts, including a musical instrument, a gun and body armor, a statuette, a parrot perched outside its cage, spilled fruit, a book, a large globe and serving platter, flowers and other items (­Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels; see Bryson 2001 [1990], 141, figure  41). But there is also the strange ghostly figure in the background on the right hand side, along with a cherub, both of which do not appear to be mere objects but, rather, otherworldly animations. Most of all, and most startling, is the death’s head, or human skull, sitting at the center of the image. There is no mistake 4

4 “The principal painters include W.C. Heda (1594–1680), P. Claesz (c.1597–1660), J.D. de Heem (1606–83/4), and perhaps D. Bailly (1584-c.1657). An example of the genre is in London ([­National Gallery]), by the Delft painter Herman van Steenwyck (1612-after 1655)” (Murray 1996, 553). See also Alpers (1993) and Bryson (2001 [1990]).

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about the painting’s message: all is vanity because the Grim Reaper comes, and this passing world revolves around the stark reality of death – thus, beware. Memento mori also appears, in addition to still life, as portraiture. In fact, “memento mori portraits where sitters [are] displayed with a skull, hourglass or vanities appear to be one of the largest categories of death-related” images from the sixteenth century (Cooper 1997, n.p.).5 Portraits of doctors, theologians, soldiers, commanders and, most particularly, artists can be found connected with the theme of memento mori. (…) artists such as Lucas Van Leyden, Jacob Binck, Bartholomaeus Spranger and Abraham Bloemaert chose to be represented with skulls or hourglasses…. (n.p.) Or take, for example, the very interesting seventeenth century memento mori picture by David Bailly entitled Still Life (1651) that includes several portraits, including the artist’s own portrait, within the picture (Stedelijk Museum “de Lakenhal”, Leiden, the Netherlands; see Alpers 1983: color plate  1; and 104, ­figure 57). The tipped-over goblet, the pearls and pipe, the books and papers, knife, instrument, candle, vase, the skull, hourglass, statues, including of Saint Sebastian, the collection of portraits, the artist’s utensils along with the young artist himself, and the bubbles, all serve in this picture to bring to mind the transience of human life and the reality of human mortality. It should be noted also that the indication of mortality extends even beyond the explicit content of the image, as the art historian Svetlana Alpers’s brilliant discussion highlights (1983 throughout, but especially pages 103–109), to begin with, in the fact that the art has been produced in the first place, which will have a life, so to speak, beyond that of the artist, and, also, in particular, the way that Bailly’s art work cooperates with his contemporaries’ concerns about both artistic conventions, nature, and a sort of existentialist experimentation. Among other things, Bailly’s picture is not only a meditation on mortality. The work is also, as Alpers puts it, “in the company of other great seventeenthcentury pictorial meditations [or ‘pictorial experiments’] on the relationship 5

5 “A skull, as a symbol of mortality, and a carnation, emblem of the hope for eternal life, appear in Dirk Jacobz’s portrait of the banker, merchant and humanist Pompeius Occo (?1531; Amsterdam; Rijkmus.). In Bartholomaeus Bruyn (i)’s [sic] Vanitas Still-life on the back of the portrait of Jane-Loyse Tissier (1524; Otterlo, Kröller-Müller) the skull and candle symbolize the shortness of life, and the inscription reads: Omnia morte cadut, mors ultima linia rerum (‘Everything is conquered by death, death is the end of things’)”. (Van Miegroet 1996, 881).

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of craft and art, picture-making, and deceit: Velázquez’s Waterseller, his Spinners and Las Meninas, Vermeer’s Art of Painting, and even Dou’s Quack” (105; cf. Kostelnick and Hassert 2003, 5ff). Thus, along with religious imagery, memento mori includes vanitas and appears both in still life and portraiture. Moreover, memento mori is not limited to painting, but includes still life and portraiture in photography and film, and a variety of other media. In fact, memento mori appears throughout and across the art world, from antiquity through the medieval period, Renaissance, sixteenth and seventeenth century, and through to twentieth century and contemporary art. 1.1.3 Memento Mori as Visual Quotation in Art, Including Photography Artists in every medium refer to elements of memento mori by making literal memento mori items such as the death’s head or by employing the ideational content of memento mori. Memento mori operates as an explicit warning and offers an occasion for contemplation, and it is also an artistic convention with a history that artists find themselves drawing upon, as art historian Svetlana Alpers suggests (1983), to meditate upon or rework their particular medium or craft. It may be suggested that the idea of consciousness of mortality and, subsequently, the confrontation of this stark reality with the powers of art to achieve “immortality” for the artist are so ubiquitous as to be a truism in a discussion of death-awareness and art. Artists, looking to establish themselves one way or another in relation to an artistic tradition, research the visual and material composition, methods, and strategies of artists that have come before them and, one way or another, reference these predecessors. In short, artists visually or materially “quote” images and materials that have come before them in various ways.6 The quotation of memento mori is no different. For example, Pablo Picasso’s bronze sculpture, Death’s Head (1943), directly references the memento mori tradition (Penrose 1965, plate 15). This ­reference extends to the pictures discussed above and also beyond them, from the ­ancient to the contemporary, especially in relation to burial or death masks. As art ­historian Paul S. Wingert (1998) describes, these masks appear from Egypt in the ­Ptolemaic period and Greece in the thirteenth century b.c.e. to 6

6 See the art and cultural theorist Mieke Bal’s illuminating discussion of multiple senses of visual quotation (1999; and also 1991). Some discussion on quotation also appears in BennettCarpenter (2002).

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­ exico in the medieval Aztec empire and Britain in the eighteenth century. M For example: [1] Egyptian burial mask of the Ptolemaic period. Painted stucco over cloth. [2] Gold funeral mask placed over the face of an unknown Mycenaean ruler. Greece, 13th century bc. [3] Aztec skull mask from Mexico inlaid with turquoise and lignite with pyrite in the eye sockets. [4] Effigy mask of Edmund Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, 1735. Painted death mask with human hair, dressed in his peer’s robes. (547, adapted) The nineteenth century painter Gustave Courbet includes the death’s head as a matter of course in A Burial at Ornans (1849) and the complex and much discussed The Studio of the Painter: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic Life (1854–1855) (see Eisenman 1994: 217, figure 209; and 216, f­ igure 208). The later especially highlights the concern for both mortality and the practices of an artist in relation to artistic tradition and to their contemporary social situation, such as the mid-nineteenth century Paris art scene. Death’s heads appear prominently in the foreground of a finished shot for the 1930s filming of Sergei Eisenstein’s lost project Qué viva México! (1930/1979) (Bordwell 1993, 20–21). Pop artist Andy Warhol explores the idea of memento mori in his Death and Disaster series, especially his silkscreen pictures, Suicide (1963) and the electric chair series including Lavender Disaster (1963) and Big Electric Chair (1967) (see Dillenberger 1998, 68, 69, 70, figures 44, 45, 46). Even more explicitly, Warhol directly quotes memento mori conventions in, for instance, his Polaroid Self-Portrait (1977), the silkscreen Self-Portrait with Skull (1978), and the silkscreen installation Skulls (1976) (installation at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; see Dillenberger 1998, 71, 72, 74–75, figures 47, 48, 50). As art historian Jane Daggett Dillenberger (1998) points out, Warhol is referencing the memento mori tradition as one finds, for example, in Frans Hals’s ­seventeenth century portrait Young Man Holding a Skull (73, figure 49 and mentioned above). In addition, Warhol articulates the memento mori idea verbally: Few people have seen my films or paintings, but perhaps those few will become more aware of living by being made to think about themselves. People need to be aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly. solomon 1966, n.p.; dillenberger 1998, 73, 77

One of Warhol’s final projects, other than the Last Supper Series, was a collection “of 120 numbered and signed copies of four stitched-together photographs

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of skeletons” (Dillenberger 1998, 76–77).7 These are just a few examples of what appears throughout the arts and, from time to time in recent years, in exhibitions devoted to it such as the 2014 show at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague, 12 July – 30 Nov 2014), featuring Damien Hirst’s giant diamondstudded skull.8 Memento mori appears in painting, sculpture, metal work, and photography, not to mention drawing, costuming, film, and installation art – and one could go on to discuss architecture, music, performance, and popular culture as well (e.g., Chase 2007; Beauchamp 2014). Two of the most prominent forms of contemporary memento mori appear as photography and film. For example, in photography, one finds memento mori recapitulated in pictures and symbolism that recall painting, especially still life and portraiture. The 1850 portrait photograph Professor John Collins Warren (Boston) has him seated at a small table, his left hand resting on it while his right hand holds the back of a skull (Photographer unknown; see Norfleet 1993, 91). The Portrait of Lewis Payne (1865) shows Payne, who is about to be hung for an assassination attempt, in his cell. As Roland Barthes puts it, “Il est mort et il va mourir”, “He is dead and he is going to die…” (Barthes 1980, 149; 1981, 95). Even ordinary portraits in photography become occasions to contemplate mortality: August Sander’s Chief Pastry-Cook (1928), for example (Daval 1982, 180). The contemporary viewer knows that the moment shown in the image is gone now, that the cook must be dead, and that there is no way to go back to that time and place. In Robert Frank’s St. Helena, South Carolina (1955–1956), death seems to hang in the air, as the men wait and contemplate whatever 7 8

7 Skeletons (1987), machine-sewn photographs. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York; see Dillenberger (1998, 76, figure 52). In part, this series references the assassination attempt on his own life and the extensive medical stitching required after his surgery, which resulted in pronounced scarring across his torso. Beyond his paintings and photographs are a number of films such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964), which serve to bring cognizance of death and reference the artistic tradition of memento mori. Warhol is a prime example of how extensively, both explicitly and implicitly, memento mori may appear in artists’ work. 8 “Damien Hirst’s diamond-studded skull entitled For the Love of God (2007), exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in 2008, is an iconic part of his oeuvre. Before he produced it, he made a series of sketches, one of them inscribed with the title Death Explained. In these sketches, Hirst represents human mortality in a more clinical way, in which decay does not inspire either fear or resignation in the face of death. The skulls depicted in Hirst’s Memento etchings are a reminder of death; they give a final image of a face”. Accessed at https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/memento-mori-%E2%80%93-damien-hirst on 30 May 2016. Cf. San Juan (2013, 93). Also cf. Walz (2016).

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event is taking place before them, perhaps a church service or a funeral (­Daval 1982, 196). In Zarina Bhimji’s 1822-Now (1993), ordinary photographs are set up as an installation in a stark, fluorescently lit room, white walls, and cheap metal shelving, as a kind of contemporary graveyard for bureaucrats.9 In Bill Brandt’s People Sheltering in the Tube, Elephant and Castle Underground Station, London (1942), the sleeping men and women appear dead, as if a massacre has just taken place.10 The tunnel invokes the idea of there being no “light at the end of the tunnel”, only darkness. The timepiece, or clock, appears as a measure of the mortal moment. Paul Koudounaris’s Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us (2015) offers poignant examples from burial sites and memorials from around the world, including the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Peru, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Memento mori pictures are widespread in photography, in part, because the medium is particularly suited for registering empirical reality for a viewer, a point that will be discussed further in relation to documentaries as we proceed. But before discussing this at more length, establishing memento mori in verbal and literary terms is important to show how extensive the phenomenon of memento mori is, not only in art history and in imagery but in literature and text as well. While those scholars in the visual arts and cinema often are well aware of the presence of memento mori in art history, there may be less awareness of how extensive the memento mori phenomenon exists also in literary traditions from the Bible and Shakespeare to Melville and contemporary fiction. Moreover, the literary and terminological background assists in elaborating upon the fact that memento mori in documentary experience also exists as an idea, operating not only at ethical and affective levels, but also intellectual. 1.2

Memento Mori in Literature: As Verbal, Literary, and Ideational

Along with memento mori imagery is the crucial verbal instruction that goes with it and in fact it is built into its nomenclature. Memento mori is translated into English variously as the commands “remember death”, “remember mortality”, “remember that you must die”, or passively, and as a noun, as 9 10

9

“Colour and black and white photographs on library shelving. Photographs: h50 x w40cm. h19 3/4 x w15 3/4 in. Collection of the artist”. See Barnes, et al. (1996, 43). 10 See Daval (1982, 193). See also Ruby (1995) for an excellent introduction to the theme of photography and death. For a piece “Against the Photograph as Memento Mori”, see ­Edwards (1998). A classic social documentary with remarkable photographs is James Agee and Walker Evan’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (2001 [1939]).

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“­remembrance of death”.11 Memento mori may also be employed as “be mindful of dying”, “remember to die”, “recall that you are mortal”, “remember you will die”, “remember your death”, or, again, as a noun, “a reminder of your death (or mortality)”. In terms of the Latin imperative translated into English, it is clear that the basic point is to bring mortal existence, which concludes with death, into awareness through memory. As for the noun, the reminder is an item, as mentioned above, such as a skull, which has the purpose of bringing the reality of death to awareness (cf. Vanhaelen and Wilson 2013). This memento mori language as it appears in picture titles, in literature, and elsewhere appears as a major theme or injunction in Western tradition, especially but not exclusively Christian and humanist, as verbal, literary, and ideational. 1.2.1 Memento Mori as Picture Nomenclature and Verbal Instruction Aside from a memento mori picture as a whole, whether painting, photography or otherwise, memento mori inscriptions may at times appear within the picture itself, or they may bear the inscription as their title. As such, the title “memento mori” may be read as both a description of the picture at hand (that is, memento mori as a picture that contains a mortality-recall item such as a death’s head or skull) and, also, the verbal instruction for the viewer (“you, do not forget death”). The power of the nomenclature in relation to the image is distinct from those images that do not carry a command (such as Portrait No. 5 or Untitled). Some of memento mori’s distinctiveness and power comes from its presence as a verbal instruction and not only as an image. In fact, the command appears visually, as does anything that is for reading. But the text also invokes a strong oral and aural sense that is related to oratory and homiletics. From a whisper in the ear to a thundering from the pulpit, the imperative to remember mortality appears as a verbal charge. Presently, in an age when Latin is considered mostly a dead language, “memento mori” ordinarily is translated into the appropriate vernacular. Yet the idea of memento mori is clear and intelligible, and like memento mori as symbol and picture in art, it has a long history with wide references in Western literature and culture, both verbatim and ideational. 1.2.2 Memento Mori as Reference in Literature: Verbatim and Ideational There are both verbatim or direct quotes and references to memento mori in literature, as in art, and, also, references that carry the idea of being conscious of, or remembering, mortality. As a cultural phenomenon, the language

11

11

Works consulted for these translations, and those that follow, come from a wide range of art and cultural history sources and, also, Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary.

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of ­memento mori, in its various forms, allows for a range of related ideas to organize under its terminology. In fact it appears as a major theme in Western literature from Plato to Freud, from the Bible to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and Virginia Woolf, from Cervantes and Montaigne to Goethe, Emerson, Melville, Emily Dickinson, Jorge Borges, among many others. In part the reason for such extensive appearance comes from considering memento mori in terms of really making death come to awareness; that is, the fact of biological death coming fully to the individual’s awareness, and what results from this awareness. (The notion of memento mori as “real” will be discussed below in regard to documentaries and contemporary memento mori.) Yet contemplation of death is not separated from the artistic work itself. Memento mori is found both as direct quotation and as a reference that carries the ideation of memento mori, or main set of ideas that define it. Verbatim references to memento mori appear in English literature, for example, as early as Shakespeare.12 In Henry iv, Part One [1596], Act 3, Scene 3, Sir John Falstaff says, “No, I’ll be sworn; I make good use of it [Bardolph’s face] as many a man doth of a Death’s-head or a memento mori: I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire…” (Bloom 2004, 131). In the nineteenth century, an eleventh century manuscript by a German author called Noker was discovered that was subsequently titled, “Memento Mori” (c. 1080). Noker writes: Nu denchent, wib unde man, war ir sulint werdan. ir minnont tisa brodemi unde wanint iemer hie sin. si nedunchet iu nie so minnesam, eina churza wila sund ir si han; ir nelebint nie so gerno manegiu zit, ir muozent verwandelon disen lip. Now reflect, o women and men, upon where you will be journeying! You love this fragile, brittle world and think you will always be here. 12

12

Following the Oxford English Dictionary, a direct memento mori quotation appears around the same time in Thomas Nashe’s Summers Last Will and Testament (Wks viii.48) in 1592. The oed also cites, among others, John Wilmot Rochester, A Letter from Artemiza in the Town, to Chloe in the Country (1680) in the seventeenth century. A representative piece for the eighteenth century is George Lillo’s Marina, I.ii (1738). The nineteenth century marks a shift. Around the time of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Pendennis ii. xxiii.229 (1850) (following Redwine [1977], see also Thackeray’s Vanity Fair), a variation of memento mori appears: memento vivere (“remember, you will live”, “remember life”, “remember to live”), even as verbatim memento mori references have carried on to the present day. Aside from the oed, especially useful here are three sources: Johnson’s Selected Essays (2003 [1739–1761]), Montaigne’s essay, “Que philosopher c’est apprendre à mourir” (“To Philosophize is to Learn to Die”) (1958 and 1965 [1572–1574]), and Harold Bloom’s work, throughout, but especially The Western Canon (1994).

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(But) no matter how lovely it seems to you, you will have it only for a short while. No matter how much you would like to live for a long time, you will have to leave this life. gentry 1980, 11

The idea of memento mori is clear. In fact, the presence of memento mori as an idea hardly can be overlooked as one deals with the entire Western literary canon, beginning with antiquity and running through to the present day. In the first century b.c.e., some particularly strong pieces appear in a number of places in Horace on the idea of memento mori. The English edition subtitle to Horace’s Odes, Book i, Ode XXVIII-1 (1968 [23 bce], 76, 77) is “Death is the Doom of All”, which goes on to say, “percurrisse polum morituro” / “For thou wast born to die!” and “sed omnes una manet nox, / et calcanda semel via leti” / “But a common night awaiteth every man, and Death’s path must be trodden once for all”. Likewise in Odes, Book ii, Ode xiv (142, 143): Ehev fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni, nec pietas moram rugis et instanti senectae adferet indomitaeque morti… Alas, O Postumus, Postumus, the years glide swiftly by, nor will righteousness give pause to wrinkles, to advancing age, or Death invincible….13 In biblical sources one may look to Ecclesiastes 1:2 on vanity and to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 12: 16–20) where the self-satisfied rich man is schooled in death in an immediate way. A “certain rich man … thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” He decides to pull down his storehouses and build bigger ones for all of his goods. 13

13

The English edition subtitle is “Death is Inevitable”. Womsley’s notes on Johnson also mention Horace’s Odes, iii.xxix.29–32 and xxx.6–8 and Epistles I.ii.3–4; and Anacreontica, iv. Other ancient sources that may be mentioned include Tertullian, Apologeticus 33; Boethius in Consolatio, iii. metr. 9.1–2, 25–28; Herodotus on the common theme of “thou shalt die” in Herodotus, ii.78; The Greek Anthology, ix. 366, on the “end of life”; Epictetus in Enchiridion, c.21.; Lucan’s Pharsalia, ix.14; Hippocrates’ and the “[art is long] life is short” theme in Aphorisms, I.i; and Seneca’s Thyestes, ii.401–3.

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And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall these things be, which thou hast provided? The New Testament’s 1 Corinthians 15 draws upon both memento mori and vanitas, but with the twist of Christian “victory:” O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethen, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. The Bible: Authorized King James Version 1997 [1611]; emphasis added

The references are not all somber, however, and can be the occasion for uproarious comedy, as in Chaucer’s hilarious fourteenth century “Pardoner’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales, where three men hear that one called “Death” is killing people – so they decide to go find this “person” in order to kill him. One rallies the three in a one for all, all for one, against the “traitour”, Death: I make avow to Goddes digne [noble] bones! Herkneth, felawes, we thre been als ones: Lat ech of us bicomen otheres brother, And we wol sleen this false traitour Deeth! He shal be slain, he that so manye sleeth. chaucer 2005 [c.1387–1400], 464

Memento mori as comedy and spoof is part of the twist of it as an artificial “convention” and way to respond to human mortality. For example, Cervantes, in serious humor, mentions in Don Quijote de la Mancha that when dealing with the topic of death, all one need do is trot out some Latin aphorisms (Cervantes 1998 and 2001 [1605, 1615]) and that will take care of the matter!14 14

14

Other medieval sources back on the serious side may be mentioned: Saint Benedict’s Rule may be discussed in terms of memento mori (and memento vivere) (see Sipe 1974); ­Helinant’s Vers de la mort (1194–97); a number of sources appear particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Scholz Williams 1976); and cf. Pope Innocent iii’s

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Meanwhile beyond the ancient and medieval periods, memento mori finds a place right at the heart of the Western literary canon, in Shakespeare. Beyond the serious joke by Falstaff, the verbatim memento mori mentioned above, memento mori appears as an important element elsewhere in Shakespeare’s work and deserves further attention. In particular, Shakespeare’s Hamlet offers a superb verbal, not to mention dramatic, presentation of the idea of memento mori. As Act 5, Scene 1 unfolds, Hamlet and Horatio are observing the gravedigger / “clown” in the cemetery (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1, line 71ff., adapted). Clown. ([With spades and pickaxes, digs and] Sings) But age with his stealing steps Hath clawed me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such. [He throws up a skull.] The scene is as serious as it is funny, and, at first take, may be a bit shocking in its handling of a death’s head, or human skull.15 Hamlet [to Horatio.] That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ‘twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? Shakespeare references a twist on memento mori themes found in other works of his day, that which could be called “memento vindictae”, a revenge tradition (­Jacobs 1993). He steers clear, ultimately, of vengeance, but Hamlet contemplates mortal life and inquires, with pain, into its transformative existential operations: And now my Lady Worm’s, chapless, and knocked about the mazzard16 with  a sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution, if we had the trick to see’t. 15 16

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De c­ ontemptu mundi (c.1200). There is also the popular and widely known morality play, Everyman (Lester 1990). Theatrical performances of this scene in Hamlet are variously played as more somber, more comedic, or, best of all, a complex mixture of the two, as in a performance, e.g., at the Quintessence Theatre, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, directed by Alexander Burns, starring Josh Carpenter as Hamlet (2013). “…her skull, having no lower jaw, and knocked about the head/face”, notes Burton Raffel in the Yale Annotated Shakespeare [yas] (Shakespeare 2003 [c.1600], 193, ftnt 52).

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Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at Loggets17 with ‘em? Mine ache to think on’t. The scene increases in both seriousness and humor as the gravedigger-clown tosses another death’s head into the air. Clown. (Sings) A pixaxe and spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. [He throws up another skull.] Hamlet’s reflections intensify, not without some “dirty” humor and provocation, as he articulates cognizance of death with plays upon words that recognize death and the vanity of various aspects of life as human beings know it: Hamlet [continues.] There’s another [skull]. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? …Hum! This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pat full of fine dirt? …The very conveyances of lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha? Horatio [replies.] Not a jot more, my lord. From referencing a personal apocalypse, the end for every human being, Hamlet turns to an empirical line of inquiry, which the gravedigger-clown makes both descriptive and moralizing. Hamlet. How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot? Clown. Faith, if he be not rotten before he die (as we have many pocky corses [sic] now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in), he will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year. Hamlet. Why he more than another? 17

17

“a game in which small pieces of wood were thrown, to see who could get them closest to a designated target-object”, notes Raffel in the yas (Shakespeare 2003 [c.1600], 193, ftnt 54).

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Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. The scene takes another turn as a third skull is contemplated, this time of one who Hamlet knew well in his youth. The gravedigger-clown continues, Here’s a skull now: this skull hath lien i’ the earth three-and-twenty years. Hamlet. Whose was it? Clown. …This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester. Hamlet. …Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath born me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! … [To the skull.] Where be your gibes now? your gambols?18 your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfall’n? The humor rushes away as quickly as it returns, and Hamlet moves from the homely Yorick to the mortality of Alexander the Great. Hamlet. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. Horatio. What’s that, my lord? Hamlet. Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth? Horatio. E’en so. Hamlet. And smelt so? Pah! [Puts down the skull.] Horatio. E’en so, my lord. Hamlet. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! …Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam;19 and why of that loam (whereto he was converted) might they not stop a beer barrel? shakespeare, Hamlet 2003 [c.1600]

No one escapes, including the greatest worldly figures, the ridicule of death’s “conversion”. Then, to Hamlet’s surprise, the King and Queen arrive with 18 19

18 19

“where be your taunts / scoffing now? your leaping about / dancing?” notes Raffel in the yas (Shakespeare 2003 [c.1600], 197, ftnt 96). “compound of clay or other dirt, plus water, sand, and so on”, notes Raffel in the yas (Shakespeare 2003 [c.1600], 198, ftnt 106).

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Laertes and priests and lords attending a coffin, in which, as it turns out, lies Ophelia. This scene provides a center point in Western literature for memento mori as elaborated verbally – and dramatically.20 Dr. Samuel Johnson provides another key point in the literary history of memento mori. His essays are so saturated with the theme as to be a kind of companion piece to Shakespeare on it. To begin with, as a scholar and critic, he knows the ancient literature and cites it readily. He writes, for example: It is recorded of some eastern monarch, that he kept an officer in his house, whose employment it was to remind him of his mortality, by calling out every morning, at a stated hour: Remember, prince, that thou shalt die. And the contemplation of frailness and uncertainty of our present state appeared of so much importance to Solon of Athens, that he left this precept to future ages: Keep thine eye upon the end of life. johnson 2003 [1739–1761], 49; The Rambler, No. 17. Tuesday, 15 May 1750

But he goes on, in the mode of wisdom literature: The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, our fears, and to all these, the consideration of mortality is a certain and adequate remedy. Think, says Epictetus, frequently on poverty, banishment, and death, and thou wilt then never indulge violent desires, or give up thy heart to mean sentiments, [‘Keep before your eyes day by day death and exile, and everything that seems terrible, but most of all death; and then you will never have any abject thought, nor will you yearn for anything immoderately’.21] 49; The Rambler, No. 17. Tuesday, 15 May 1750

As instructive and wise as this commentary is, Johnson does not avoid social and personal implications, which are devastating.

20 21

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With regard to the sharpest and most melting sorrow, that which arises from the loss of those whom we have loved with tenderness, it may be observed, that friendship between mortals can be contracted on no other terms, than that one must sometime mourn for the other’s death: And Beyond this scene, it has been suggested that the entire structure of Hamlet is based upon a tradition of the “‘moritimor mortis’ lyric as it is practiced in English tradition from 1483 to 1600” – that is, Hamlet itself is “a ‘Memento Mori’ poem” (Morris 1970). Greek saying: Enchiridion, c.21, Womersley’s edition, emphasis added.

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this grief will always yield to the surviver one consolation proportionate to his afflictions; for the pain, whatever it be, that he himself feels, his friend has escaped. 51; The Rambler, No. 17. Tuesday, 15 May 1750

Responding to Johnson, the literary critic Harold Bloom (following Becker 1997 [1973]) suggests that artistic work is primarily concerned with the attempt to face or evade mortality by way of human powers of invention. Bloom (1994) writes, Johnson understood how little we can bear any anticipation of death, especially our own death … The basic law of human existence, for Johnson, cannot vary: human nature declines to confront death head on. When Johnson praises Shakespeare by observing that his characters act and speak under the influence of the general passions that agitate all mankind, the critic is thinking in the first place of the passion to evade the consciousness of dying. (198) This explanation for art, which could be extended to religion and other ­domains of human effort (Becker 1997 [1973] and subsequently Terror ­Management Theory: Greenberg et al. 1990; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and Lyon 1989; Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski 1998, 2004; Solomon, Greenberg, Schimel, Arndt, and Pyszczynski 2003), is quite compelling, and it need not be a psychological explanation only. It is corroborated by anthropological explanations, and, also, fits into evolutionary narratives of what came before the accomplishments of humans today and, to some extent, why the accomplishments came about. Following Bloom, all artistic effort could be said to hinge on the acceptance or evasion of the “contemplation of death”, as Johnson puts it, or, as I am putting it, the injunction of memento mori. Granted, the acceptance or denial of consciousness of death are not the only terms of the debate and, ultimately, solutions to causes or “origins” of human motivation and work, such as art and religion, probably find their most compelling basis for credibility in their coherence with empirical studies. As just one mundane example, not to be flippant but the case may be that a person makes great art because a person has bills to pay, not because she or he thought much of death. To engage the idea of acceptance or denial of m ­ ortality-consciousness is primarily an engagement of a discourse that is meaningful in the context of the arts and humanities and, perhaps, some “humanistically oriented” social science (Wuthnow 2005, xvi), including artists, critics, patrons, and fans of the

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same, rather than, for example, scientific discourse, whether from the (empirically-based) social sciences or the natural sciences. This is not to say that these latter could not cohere with the former and that the terminology of “mortality”, “consciousness”, and matters of mortality-consciousness would not remain definitive. We do find that this is the case with the evolutionary- and empiricallyoriented Terror Management Theory. The fact is that the appearance of the idea of memento mori extends throughout the literary canon of the Western tradition, including its critical ­literature, and provides a crucial contextual background for understanding documentaries.22 For example, there is the important Montaigne essay, “Que philosopher c’est apprendre à mourir” (“To Philosophize is to Learn to Die”) (1958 and 1965 [1572–1574]). Herman Melville’s whale in Moby Dick (2000 [1851]), is a mortality-consciousness symbol, and in fact, Moby-Dick begins with a memento mori reference: The pale Usher – threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. melville 2000 [1851], xxiii, adapted

The Modern Library edition of Moby-Dick includes early twentieth century illustrations by Rockwell Kent, and a memento mori drawing appears on the first page with these opening lines of the novel. Most importantly, however, the whale – as a manifestation of the threat of death, which, like the biblical account of Jonah and the great fish, may swallow up the mortal (even as the mortal may triumph through the fish’s or the whale’s resignation or defeat) – is a memento mori symbol. Meanwhile, among many other examples, Emily Dickinson’s body of poetry (1960 [c. 1886]) could be considered a complex, sustained contemplation of mortality, which leads to transformative ends. Throughout Freud’s work, which like Plato arguably represents some of the most important

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As previously mentioned, Bloom’s work, throughout, but especially The Western Canon (1994), is helpful on these themes. He emphasizes, however, evasion as the primary tactic of artists in the face of mortality. This raises issues, also, like not “remembering”, but rather “forgetting” mortality, in an active way – a theme of defying death and of affirming life, especially by way of human powers of invention or creativity. It is not my purpose at this point in time to engage Bloom’s argument, but it could prove to be another resource for memento vivere.

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imaginative literature in the West (even as they founded schools of philosophy and psychology and set the stage for fully-developed modern sciences [Makari 2008]), Freud deals with the operations of consciousness (subconscious, unconscious, etc.) in relation to life and death, e.g., in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1989 [1920]) and elsewhere (1989 [1927], 1989 [1930]). The ideational context of memento mori throughout literature is extensive and obviously cannot be fully treated here. For the sake of providing context for documentaries as memento mori, one can only mention, for example, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), Muriel Spark’s novel, Memento Mori (2000 [1959]), Borges’s short story, “The Immortal” (1964), and the contemporary medical essayist Frank Gonzalez-Crussi who writes on these themes in Three Forms of Sudden Death and Other Reflections on the Grandeur and Misery of the Body (1986) and Day of the Dead and Other Mortal Reflections (1993).23 Once memento mori is sought for as not only a symbol or picture in the art historical tradition, and not only as literal picture nomenclature or verbal instruction in art and literature, but also as a reference in literature, both literally and intellectually (in terms of the idea of being conscious of or remembering mortality) then memento mori’s pervasive appearance in Western literature, as in art, across genres and media comes as no surprise. The establishment of memento mori in various sources from Ecclesiastes and Horace to the Gospel of Luke, Noker, Chaucer, Shakespeare and beyond, including critical literature (Montaigne and Johnson, e.g.), sets an indispensable context for more adequately understanding documentaries and comes in part because of memento mori’s reference to death as understood empirically and existentially, and not only in terms of the imagination. The idea of memento mori is unmistakably compelling, and artists have found remarkable ways to thematize one of the most defining lessons a human being may learn: remember, you must die, you will not live forever. Or: be conscious that you are mortal, not immortal. Of course this begs the question of what “immortal” and “immortality” mean precisely and, also, why one cannot be both “mortal” and “immortal”. But the emphasis of the lesson here, however one responds to it or defines it precisely, is upon mortality and the empirical fact of death, not upon possibilities “beyond”, “through”, or otherwise in distinction from mortality. Such a lesson (“be conscious that you are mortal, not immortal”), which has transformative implications intellectually, ethically, affectively, defines an individual’s life and gives human beings the chance for a future beyond one 23

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A play by that latter title was directed by Sharon Evans at Chicago’s Live Bait Theater, adapted from Gonzalez-Crussi’s work [Accessed at http://www.livebaittheater.org/ on 14 November 2006].

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particular mortal life. With themes this powerful, neither is it surprising, then, that memento mori appears in the most popular and successful contemporary forms of media as well: that is, in film and television. 1.3

Memento Mori in Film and Television

Film has a special relationship to memento mori in contemporary culture ­because of the medium’s technological ability to record empirical reality, an important point that will be discussed further in the chapters below. And documentary film in particular, as is suggested below, is a particularly apt form of contemporary memento mori. However, here I want to briefly highlight memento mori’s appearance in fiction film, television, and documentary film, before discussing documentaries further in the coming chapters. We know that fiction film is as obsessed with the consciousness of mortality as any of the genres of art and literature discussed above. For example, in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), based upon the John Steinbeck novel, the people, individually and as families, struggle for survival in the face of harsh nature and highly competitive society. The images of Ford’s film are saturated with the fragile situation as a displaced mortal. In Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (1957), the figure of Death makes a call on an individual as the Grim Reaper, which results in a strategic negotiation within the individual’s mortal condition, facing Death over a chess game. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the murder victim stares at the viewer, so to speak, from the bathroom floor as if one were being peered at by death itself. Many other examples may be cited with a variety of related themes and contexts, but all with mortality-consciousness as decisive. In The Godfather (i,ii,iii) (1972, 1974, 1990) series, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the drama hinges upon the brutal fact of death and the furious competition to have one’s family and tribe survive with an honorable legacy. In Das Boot [The Boat] (1981), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, the men aboard a World War ii German U-Boat submarine struggle for their lives, with their mortal condition hanging thick in the air of the boat, as if measured by the instruments that gauge the craft’s condition. In many American cowboy Western movies, death and the imminent threat of it are so present in the exterior conditions of the landscape and rough society – and also on the minds of the characters – as to provide a primary and definitive orientation for every thing that is said and done. These and many other films range from serious and painful meditations on death to the ecstatic and overwhelming.

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There are, also, the humorous and satiric takes on memento mori in film. In Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), the cutting satire intermixes religious ritual, suicide, and sex. In Woody Allen’s work, mortality-consciousness is more or less ubiquitous. Annie Hall (1977) is a classic example. One finds the Allen character, Alvy, reading Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (1997 [1973]) as recreational reading. At one point, Alvy finds himself preoccupied as a passenger riding at night in a rainstorm in a car driven by his girlfriend’s brother (Christopher Walken), who has, minutes before, confessed to him a suicide fantasy in which he (the brother) was in precisely those conditions! Whether serious or humorous, or both, consciousness of mortality is a central concern in film. One can also look to examples in television, both fiction and documentary. In the television series In the Heat of the Night (1988–1994) with Carol O’Connor and Howard E. Rollins, Jr. (based on the Norman Jewison film [1967] with Sidney Portier), death, before or after a murder takes place, hangs in the thick Southern American air, and the sense of mortality is almost as wearable as one’s clothing. In the hbo series Six Feet Under (2001–2005), the drama centers around a family mortuary business. Each episode begins with a death, from the ordinary to outrageous. This death sets the tone for a frank and entertaining look at people dealing with mortality and the consciousness of it. If one turns to journalistic and documentary genres in television, the presence of memento mori becomes even more pronounced. For example, cnn, bbc World News, or Al Jazeera bring death-related footage from around the world to one’s living room, laptop, or mobile phone at any hour or minute of the day. American public television’s American Experience (pbs) offers biographical and cultural histories that are defined by the mortal condition. Even shows such as Nature, while usually explicitly focusing upon non-human ­animals, very strongly reference the most defining power of nature for living individual human beings: non-survival or death. From the New York Times to newsstand tabloids or the latest Facebook posting, readers are reminded regularly in graphic terms of the mortal condition. In documentaries, the presence of memento mori is pervasive, so much so that in some senses documentary film as medium and genre may be said to be memento mori, not simply contain it. As examples of memento mori in documentary films, one may look to the earliest classics and survey to the present-day. Robert Flaherty’s classic documentary Nanook of the North (1922), for example, even while deliberately staged, documents the life, largely defined by the struggle for survival, of an Inuit family, especially the father, Nanook, and ends with his death. Even while scenes were fabricated and Nanook obviously played for the camera, the man and his family may be seen, in part, living

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his life, and the viewer knows that he really existed and that ultimately he really died. Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog [Nuit et brouillard] (1955) offers a more extreme and horrific example. As anyone who has seen the film will readily recall, it documents the atrocities of Auschwitz a decade after the horrors of the Holocaust. Many other examples may be cited, and here we will just mention a few to get started, before turning in the chapters ahead to several in-depth discussions and analysis. Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), for instance, traces the short-lived career of a rising gay politician in San Francisco who is assassinated. There is no question about Harvey Milk’s tragic (and unjust) end. From the very beginning, without having any historical knowledge of Harvey Milk, many viewers may immediately have a sense that someone, probably Milk, will die. A mortality-pathos hangs about the film from start to finish, even as other themes that emerge in documentaries also arise, one of them being memento vivere. Or take the oft-cited The Thin Blue Line (1987) directed by Errol Morris, where the fragility of a life, especially in an unjust system, rolls out before one’s eyes. The sense of death, along with injustice, is almost crushing. This sense of injustice, arguably, extends existentially to the entire human condition of being born and living but then, cruelly, apparently being set up to die. Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore (2006) is ostensibly put forward as an educational presentation weaving in Gore’s biography. However, the film creeps deliberately toward showing the threat of mass-death due to global warming. As the images roll, even simulated images, the potential for unmistakably real death on a large scale is indicated. While many will, justifiably, want to say that the point of the film is for people to change their behavior and policies that affect the global environment, a fundamental orientation toward mortality provides the basis for that point. Along with the environmental message, the film also intones, “Recall, mortals, you will die”. Documentaries such as these and possibly, in various ways, all documentaries and documentary footage reference memento mori by indexing, or pointing to, mortality in a way that refers to empirical reality and its limits. This indexing may take place in fiction film as well, yet audiences may be more apt to expect that they are dealing with “the real” rather than the imaginary when viewing documentaries. If death is referred to in fiction film, as it often is, it comes to the audience “at one (more) remove” by way of the conventions of fictional scenes and narrative. In some cases and for some audiences, this could make the mortality references even more effective than documentary. Yet in documentary, the conventions are in place to set viewers up for “direct” encounter with death from an empirical point of view rather than an imagined

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one. There is the sense, also, that documentary films offer a record of what is “really” there or not there, of real lives lived, and actual deaths of people that once lived. I suggest that awareness of mortality in the documentaries mentioned above, and many others like them, is palpable. And this mortality-awareness may not simply be informative, nor merely titillating – but it may be transformative as well. The potential range of films to discuss in this regard is massive. But here we shall begin with a classic: Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten.

chapter 2

Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten as Memento Mori In a pantheon of potential documentaries to discuss as memento mori, Powers of Ten (1968/1977) stands out as one of the most prominent among them. As one of the definitive works of Charles and Ray Eames’s many successes, Powers reveals the Eameses as masterful designers of experiences that communicate compelling ideas. Perhaps unexpectedly even for many familiar with their work, one of those ideas has to do with memento mori. The film Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero (1977) is a revised and updated version of an earlier film, Rough Sketch of a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe (1968). Both were made in the United States, produced by the Eames Office, and are widely available on dvd as Volume 1: Powers of Ten through the collection entitled The Films of Charles & Ray Eames, which includes several volumes and many short films and also online through the Eames Office and on YouTube (http://www .­eamesoffice.com/ the-work/powers-of-ten/ accessed 27 May 2016). The 1977 version of Powers is in color and runs about nine minutes and is the primary focus for the discussion that follows.1 Ralph Caplan (1976) writes that “[Powers of Ten] is an ‘idea film’ in which the idea is so compellingly objectified as to be palpably understood in some way by almost everyone” (36). The film was, in part, “inspired by Kees Boeke’s 1957 book Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps [Haarlem 1957] and originally commissioned to be shown at a conference of 1000 American physicists” (Kirkham 1995a, 350). (The film was originally “[m]ade under the auspices of the Commission on College Physics” [Caplan 1976, 36]). The images for the film were first jotted out in pencil or taken from photographs or photographs of models and manually cut and pasted in to sequence on paper that folds out several meters long. Some of the early story boards and images for Powers of Ten (lc Prints and Photographs Division lot 13385 (H): Box 1) show both 1 Executive producer, Lucia Eames; producers, Eames Demetrios and Shelley Mills; introduction narrated by Gregory Peck; Pyramid, Image Entertainment, and Eames Office, Lucia Eames, 1989. The narration is given by Philip Morrison of Scientific American magazine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit), and the music is by Elmer Bernstein.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004356962_004

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its homeliness and, at the same time, the singularity of the idea: starting at “home” or some mundane place, first, in this case, Earth and, second, the park on the Chicago lakeshore (for the 1977 version) not far from Soldier Field (the 1968 version took place on Miami Beach) – and articulating our remarkable place in nature, huge and small. Many Chicagoans or anyone who has spent time there during the summertime will recognize the spot and know the atmosphere. The cityscape lies to the northwest and Lake Michigan to the east with a narrow strip of park running along the lakeshore, meeting place for thousands of people everyday for walking, running, and biking, for pick-up soccer and volleyball, for concerts, boating, barbeques, and picnics. In this chapter, I suggest that in Powers of Ten, the Eameses compose for viewers a transformative experience of the definitive place of mortals in the vast expanse of the universe. The explicit concept of the film, as the subtitle indicates, A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero, is as compelling as it is singular. Moving from ground level first to a distance of 10 meters, then 100 meters, and so on by powers of ten, the “camera zooms” backwards from a picnic scene on the Chicago lakeshore to outer space and back again. (In fact, the scene is a simulation of a reverse track/dolly shot, not a “zoom”, technically speaking.) In seemingly one continuous shot, it starts at the picnic scene and, then, in a style not unlike what one may find today on Google Earth or in a planetarium show, the perspective pulls back to a birds-eye view and continues traveling outward to beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, then turns around and speeds forward, returning to the lakeshore. Instead of stopping with the picnic scene, however, the camera proceeds “through” the skin of the sleeping picnicker into the interior universe of his body, focusing in at increasingly smaller scale to conclude beyond the infinitesimal space of the nucleus of an atom. In the first moments of the film, a sense of vertigo takes hold of some viewers as they begin to “fly”. As years go by and audiences get more sophisticated in their visual experience, perhaps some of the immediacy of Powers’s effect is lost, though perhaps less than one might expect. Even after approximately four decades of progress in film and computer imaging, Powers of Ten still invokes awe from its viewers. This sensation still takes place even at a time when almost anyone with a computer and internet connection can view satellite images of their neighborhood on Google Earth and “fly” around the earth. In the midst of viewing Powers and afterwards, many people have had the sensation of having “really” made the voyage. They continue to think about the film or, even after many years, recall the film and a particular image, idea, or experience directly referencing it. As Eames Demetrios (2001) puts it, “Tens of ­millions of people – students, teachers, poets, businessmen, gurus – all around the world, many of

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whom have never heard the name Eames, will remember these Eames images all their lives”.2 The starting point and center of the film is the image of the man napping on a blanket next to a woman amongst the paraphernalia of a picnic. After a speedy journey into outer space and back again, the sequence returns the viewer to this same scene at the middle of the film. It is a scene from ordinary life with mundane items but, also, those that in artistic tradition have signified the fragility of life, the passing of time, and of mortality: the fruit basket with fruit, a meal partially eaten with the remains left, worldly delights (in this case not only wine but also a Hershey’s chocolate bar), books and magazines (in this case, Scientific American and Science), eyeglasses, and a clock. Most of all there is the sleeping man himself. At the very center of Powers, then, is a still frame picture containing contemporary symbols of memento mori, or, more directly, the reprised still frame scene in Powers is a memento mori picture. The levels by which memento mori can be identified in Powers, however, while including this scene, go well beyond simply a contemporary version of memento mori or vanitas symbolism. 2.1

The Eameses as Designers of Experiences that Communicate Ideas

Designers first and foremost, Charles Eames (1907–1978) and spouse Ray Eames (1912–1988) traversed disciplinary boundaries and took up the resources of their craft – design – to deal artfully with what empirical observation and experience tell us to be certain: that we are born, we live, work and play, and we die. They saw little use for a strict division between science and art, and though 2 Demetrios (2001) continues, “It is a fitting capstone [to their life’s work] because it encapsulates so many dimensions of their vision and process. In 1998, the film was added to the Library of Congress’s National Historic Film Registry…”. (245). Architect, curator, and writer Donald Albrecht (1997) has suggested the appropriate place for Powers among the Eameses’ work as a whole: “No exhibition, film, or book better conveys the Eameses’ ability to make science come alive than Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero (1977, first version 1968). The ultimate Eamesian expression of systems and connections, Powers of Ten explores the relative size of things from the cosmic to the microscopic. (…) It also reveals the scope of the Eameses’ ambition. Charles and Ray Eames started by designing a simple molded-plywood chair, and they ended by tackling the challenge of explaining the nature of the universe”. (41) Powers was their final film together. Demetrios calls Powers of Ten “…the last major achievement of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. The film was completed not too long before Charles’s death” (244) and may be seen as a culmination of their work.

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they respected the specialties of scientific endeavor, their task often was to bring what would have been inaccessible for common people to bear directly upon their lives, whether by way of their bodies or their brains. Design and cultural historian Pat Kirkham (1995a) offers a helpful introduction to the Eameses: Charles Eames and his wife and collaborator Ray Eames (née Kaiser) occupy a central position in the history of postwar American design and are considered by many to be among the most, if not the most, important American designers of the twentieth century. It is as furniture designers whose work was both technologically and aesthetically innovative that they are most famous. Their 1946 bent plywood chair, their 1950 fiberglass chair, and their 1956 lounge chair and ottoman quickly became regarded as classics of mid-century modernism [cf. 405, ftnt 1]. Their architecture and exhibition design brought them international acclaim, as did their films and their multi-media presentations. Their home became internationally known as a warm and ‘human’ solution to standardized prefabricated domestic building. Their many short films (more than eighty) brought them awards at film festivals in the United States, Europe, and Australia. In addition, they received an Emmy Award, and they were part of the team that produced (in 1953) the first American multi-media presentation. Their exhibitions, films, and multi-screen shows testify to their role as educators and their dedication to communicating ideas. (1) Kirkham also offers an excellent introduction to their films and other media works (309ff). One of their early films was A Communications Primer (1953), an introduction to basic principles of communication theory for ibm employees (Albrecht, ed., 1997; Demetrios 2001). From architecture, furniture design, drawing, and modeling to exhibitions and experimentation with various gadgets, ideas, and systems, the Eameses took up whatever interested them, including filmmaking. In fact, filmmaking emerged as a crucial, even primary, tool with which they could experiment and implement their ideas. As early as 1970, Paul Schrader writes of their work in terms of a “cinema of ideas”, and a number of people close to their work have mentioned the importance of their filmmaking (Schrader 1970; Caplan 1976, 36; Kirkham 1995a, 3 and 369; Demetrios 2001, 148). Kirkham (1995a) writes that “their work as communicators and educators was of equal importance to their design and architecture. Indeed, it was their desire to transmit to others their passion for ideas and objects that led them into film, multi-media presentations and exhibition design” (3).

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In fact, Charles had been experimenting with film as early as his days at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1930s, where Charles and Ray first met (Eames Film Footage, dvd 12, Cranbrook Archives; Demetrios 2001, 144; Coir 2007; Demetrios 2008). A grandson of Charles and head of the Eames Office, Eames Demetrios, reports that “Ultimately, the Eames Office produced more than 125 short films in 28 years” (Demetrios 2001, 144). Demetrios rightly indicates that Powers of Ten can be linked with the concern at Cranbrook, particularly by way of the architect Eliel Saarinen, to think in terms of scale. Even before Charles’s time at Cranbrook, Demetrios points out, there is some indication that Charles was already thinking in this direction (245, cf. 55). “Throughout Charles’s last year at Cranbrook, filmmaking was constantly on his mind”. It “was part of the vision even before Charles and Ray began working on the furniture” (95, 97; cf. Eames Film Footage, dvd 12, Cranbrook Archives; Coir 2007; Demetrois 2008). Perhaps one reason for the increasing role of film in their later years was the efficacy of the medium to educate the public about the latest advances of human knowledge. Often identified with the Eames Lounger and Ottoman, their work extends far beyond this, and ultimately they may be identified more accurately with experience design itself, of which Powers is perhaps their most definitive contribution.3 2.2

Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Powers

Powers instructs the viewer about the place of a human being in the cosmos. That place is as a mortal in a vast outer (and inner) expanse of the universe and, in Powers, the phenomenon of memento mori can be identified on a number of levels that include this central point. These levels include, but go beyond, what at first may be taken as obvious memento mori symbolism. Taking the levels of analysis by which memento mori may be identified in a given documentary film, I discuss memento mori here in Powers of Ten as symbolic, as verbal, and as ideological, then I discuss it as indexing mortality, and, finally, as “conventional” and experiential. How Powers is related to an intellectually transformative experience is discussed at the close of the chapter.

3 E.g., see Nathan Shedroff’s Experience Design i (2001, 62). One may also think of the contined work of The Eames Office, under the direction of Eames Demetrios, to extend the phenomenon of Powers of Ten so that by 2008, it included an interactive cd-rom, museum exhibits, and even a “holiday” (October 10 or 10/10) each year, including a 10/10/10 celebration in 2010.

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2.2.1 Symbolic, Verbal, and Ideational Memento Mori in Powers As mentioned above, there are several memento mori items, particularly symbols, within the film. The still frame picnic scene, which is reprised at the ­center of the film, is a classic memento mori or vanitas picture, with the fruit and fruit basket, the remains of a meal, a bottle of wine and a chocolate bar, and eyeglasses. There are books (and magazines), too, and the books refer, along with the man’s watch and his clock, to time, which in memento mori tradition is taken to be an indicator of the limits of existence for the mortal. The most conspicuous book is The Voices of Time by J.T. Fraser (1966), and the clock is noticeably oversized for the rest of the picture composition. This clock appears completely out of place in the picture, unless one considers the memento mori tradition. In addition, the numbers running in the image that indicate the powers of ten, first increasing and then decreasing, operate like a countdown for not only the spatial limits but also the time limits of the human beings at the picnic site. Particularly noticeable in this realistic scene is the rather large clock lying on the picnic blanket with the book. As the man and woman settle in to their recreation – she to read a book, and he to nap – his hand settles down in such a way as to clutch the book. This creates a strong visual line through the image from his right shoulder, across his body, along his left arm to his watch and the large clock, as if a pointer, with his hand clutching The Voices of Time. This clock, among all things, should tip off the viewer that the scene is artificial and deliberately constructed. This scene is designed to appear as natural, but not quite. Ray, who set the picnic scene as Charles shot it, drew upon the art historical tradition of vanitas or memento mori in constructing the scene (cf. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division).4 The timepiece or clock is a prominent memento mori symbol that particularly stands out in Powers, yet even more than this is the image of the sleeping man – a classic symbol of “the dead man”. Not unlike the sleeping Underground patrons, stranded in the London Tube in Bill Brandt’s photograph, People Sheltering in the Tube, Elephant and Castle Underground Station, London (1942), the man can be mistaken for dead literally or the sleep can be taken metaphorically as referencing death. The reference is even stronger in the 1968 version of Powers of Ten, in part because it is filmed in black and white rather than color 4 lc Prints and Photographs Division, lot 13385 (H), Box 1, Item nos. 48–61 and 134–135, “Old Powers of Ten shooting B/W 6/24/68 A”, contact sheet for Powers of Ten book, includes an image of Ray setting the picnic scene and multiple images of Charles shooting the scene from a cherry picker truck.

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and, in part, because the figure is framed more as a kind of post-mortem mug shot or even crime scene shot, as if the man had been murdered. The 1977 version of Powers distances itself from these obvious overtones, but the memento mori symbolism is unmistakable. In addition to obvious memento mori symbolism, verbal memento mori is suggested in Powers. When the initial part of the “journey” into outer space comes to a halt at the limits of what scientific knowledge had been able to visualize in the 1970s, the voyage “pauses”. Philip Morrison, the narrator of the film tells the viewer at this point that the “vast emptiness” of outer space that the viewer sees before her or him is “normal”, implying that the abundance of life that one knows in ordinary life on planet Earth is a very peculiar, limited experience and perspective. The narration couples with the imagery to make clear an idea that humans are but mortals in the vast expanse, both cosmological and biological. This expanse is not only “external”, but also “internal”, shown in the microscopic universe within the man’s body, which appears just as expansive, infinite, and empty as the macro.5 These memento mori items mentioned thus far, symbolic and verbal, already determine Powers of Ten’s identification as a memento mori picture. Yet the extent of memento mori as an idea allows for further consideration of Powers. As we have just seen, the idea of memento mori, or consciousness of mortality, appears in relation to the content of Powers. I suggest, however, that through and beyond its symbolism and its narration, the entire thrust of the film is to make the viewer intellectually aware of her or his place in the cosmos, which is that of the finite mortal in the infinite universe. This intellectual point or idea is brought about by letting the viewer “experience for oneself” a perspective on a human individual’s place on Earth and importantly, also, from “within” the equally impressive microscopic perspective – from skin follicles to atoms. This particular idea of memento mori in and related to Powers is discussed in what follows as, first, a “mortality-index”. 2.2.2 Memento Mori as Mortality-Index in Powers Material and semiotic references to mortality in Powers of Ten are crucial to note in order fully to identify memento mori’s operations. Powers, while it can be experienced as a fun-loving roller-coaster ride through the universe, also 5 The gender aspects of this film are obviously present, minimally beginning with the centering on the male rather than the female, to the male narrator, and scenes arranged by a female and shot by a male. Perhaps this very important aspect of the film may be addressed elsewhere. For starters, check out Kirkham (1995b).

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operates as an index of, or pointer to, human mortality. As an “index”, it is important to recognize the material connection of Powers in its film medium to the empirical world by way of its technological operations. The images of the man and woman on the Chicago lakeshore in the film, for example, result from the sophisticated technology of light, chemicals, and machinery, that leave the audience with the sense that these are real people in a real place, in this case at a picnic site on the shore of Lake Michigan not far from Soldier Field, the Natural History Museum, and the Adler Planetarium. The thematic content of Powers deals explicitly with the empirical world, not an imaginary one (even if imagination is required to construct pictures of empirical or abstract realities), and the limits and possibilities of human capacity. Also, implicitly, the film points to the very limit of “this world”, that is, death. Again, one may think of the “dead man” in the film (the sleeping man), but, beyond this, to the points in the universe at which humans disappear – in the film, first this disappearance takes place in outer space, and then in inner space, at the cellular level of life.6 In the 1968 version of the film, it seems that the man really could be dead, though in the 1977 version, a companion plus picnic preparations are added to the scene that tone down the death reference. At least two of the Eameses’ earlier films dealt explicitly with the theme of death, first with Charles’s filming of the Día de los Muertos festival in Mexico (Day of the Dead, 1957; Demetrios 2001) and, also, more directly, with Dead of the Fifties (1960), which shows a sequence of people who died during the 1950s. The people shown are luminaries from a wide range of areas of practice, including science, politics, and the arts. In the opening of Dead of the Fifties, the narration begins: Although the curve of a census chart may seem cold and abstract, it’s made up of a very many human items, vital statistics, gains and losses. It is the loss, strangely enough, that we as a group feel more strongly than the gain. To review these losses may give still another measure to the past decade. Library of Congress Motion Picture Division, “Dead Sequence ‘Dead of the Fifties’”, fab 3648

6 A comparison to Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), to be discussed later, may be made here. In Wenders’s Notebook, humans make and are constituted by complex systems into which human individuals appear, disappear, reappear, and disappear again. In Powers, a similar theme is indicated by the maps and systems images.

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The film includes, on the one hand, approximately seven images of babies, babies with mothers, and families, and, on the other hand, approximately 125 images of those who died, plus another 20 or so where names of the dead are offered textually (lc Motion Picture Division, “Dead Sequence ‘Dead of the Fifties’”, fab 3648). The film operates rhetorically as panegyric, a genre, though in a different medium, not unlike The New York Times obituaries and the ­year-end review in The nyt Magazine of individuals that died during the given year. Powers deals with mortality in a more suggestive way than Dead of the Fifties, first by the concrete image of the sleeping man, the one who could and will “sleep forever” – the image, after all, is fixed and permanent, not ­temporary – and, second, by dealing with human limits in terms of knowledge, physical locale, and capacity: the extent of the known universe from macro to micro and the human’s miniscule place there. Memento mori as an index, or as indexical, in Powers may also be identified in another way. Powers functions as a mortality-index not only as a logical exercise in relation to its content, in part, because that content can have other significance such as the visualization of mathematical principles. But, also, a mortality-index, in this case Powers, is in interaction with human consciousness, embodied in a particular medium (film) and viewed as a genre (documentary). Though it may go without saying, it easily may be overlooked that for a human being to engage references, whether material or semiotic, or both, the human being’s consciousness is engaged. This is true in any case, but there is particular significance for this insight in relation to mortality and to Powers of Ten. It should be noted that for a person (or persons) to realize the particular situation of human beings in the universe and to communicate that situation to other human beings suggests an extraordinary capacity, which is awareness of mortality. It is important to note that Powers, as it is dealt with as a mortalityindex, relies upon consciousness, including memory, first of what is “out there” in the empirical world (Sobchak’s “extra-cinematic knowledge”, 2004), and, second, of the film images themselves as they are recalled or reconstructed at a time after their original viewing. Importantly, then, the film does not operate in a merely formal way, but also has a “life of its own” within “real life” that is dependent upon human consciousness. As indexical of “real life”, then, including the limits of human living for an individual, which is death, Powers both operates in the context of real life as understood by human beings and enacts the film medium’s primary function as “documentary” (Nichols 2001; 2010). Functioning as documentary, Powers both takes documentation of the empirical world and posits a particular documentary articulation that is not merely informational. In the latter case,

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as documentary, the film is meant to transform a less complete picture of the world into a more complete one. These observations build upon memento mori as a mortality-index in Powers in terms of both formal content and extracinematic awareness (Sobchack 2004). At the same time, genre expectations for documentaries in a given viewing situation by an audience are included in a consideration of Powers as mortality-index and as a documentary. What sets up these descriptions related to Powers is a methodological orientation that observes film experience in terms of communication processes that are fundamentally rhetorical. First, Powers takes and offers documentation of the empirical world. It documents the empirically real universe in which humans are inhabitants, not an imaginary universe. The people in the filmed footage really existed, really sat there at the picnic site in the real city of Chicago, near the real Lake Michigan, on the real North American continent, on the real Earth, and so on. One can go visit the site today. As documentation of the empirical world, Powers also is documentation of a time now gone and place now changed. One particularly notices the technology, conventions, and knowledge of the time – the 1970s in middle America filmed, along with 1970s-style special effects. As a viewer in the twenty-first century, one knows well that this time-space is now past/gone. The 1970s are no more, the “high tech” special effects of the day now appear quaint, and obsolescence is imminent. (Furthermore, viewers today often are aware or reasonably assume that the people in the film and the filmmakers already are or soon will be dead. This extra-cinematic awareness [Sobchack 2004], coupled with the film medium’s ability to document the empirical world, contributes to the film’s referencing of mortality.) Second, Powers of Ten posits a particular documentary articulation that is not merely informational but is meant to transform a less complete picture of the world into a more complete one. It articulates not only information about human beings’ place in the universe, but it operates as an instruction meant to transform one’s sense of self by one’s “seeing” and “experiencing” the idea being communicated. That is, Powers fulfills the basic function of documentary as a genre, as Bill Nichols (2001; 2010) articulates it, which is rhetorical. However, this observation in regard to Powers’s rhetorical operations leads to further consideration of the film in terms of “convention” and experience. 2.2.3 Memento Mori as Convention and Experience in or Related to Powers In or related to Powers of Ten, one may identify memento mori items or ­phenomena as conventional and experiential. The “convention” is that which depends upon the making and viewing of the film in a given context by a given audience and, also, associations that are identified in relation to Powers,

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i­ ncluding a given person’s “total” experience of the film. One may also identify the functioning of memento mori as a result of convention by highlighting a particular history and cultural genealogy and by paying attention to audience reception – for example, an audience’s belief that documentary images of the empirical world deal with reality. Attention may be put upon the particular point of view, devices, and images in Powers and to specific traditions of art, documentary film, and reception in relation to the rhetorical operations of Powers to deliver its intellectual point. As we have noted, Powers takes part explicitly in an art historical tradition close to memento mori and vanitas. Audiences that are aware of a memento mori artistic tradition may pick up on it in Powers or recognize it immediately once it is pointed out – because of awareness of the cultural tradition. Many viewers easily recognize the general area of where the central frames of the film were shot, also, because of the Great Lakes (in this case, in North America, not in Africa). Either they immediately recognize the spot on Earth, or it is easily pointed out to them. The choice of location and the content, then, are not “simply there”, but they have been chosen and composed to create the kind of effect that will best communicate the film’s idea. For example, part of the convention of the film is that it is a “science film” or a documentary film and therefore offers the audience the empirical facts. At the same time, most of the images have been constructed: physically and photographically composed, such as the picnic scene, reproduced from other previously taken photographs, hand-modeled and then photographed, or actually hand-drawn. Some of these methods can be attributed to the date of the filmmaking and the limitations of the technology. While the audience takes the film to be referencing the real universe, the “real universe” that the viewer gets is unreservedly composed, with editorial choices being made from the very first storyboards that were laid out as the film was being conceived (see Eames Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division). Other conventional aspects of Powers include the central device of the film, which is the simulated tracking backward and forward from still frame to still frame in what appears to be a single shot. The “flying” that takes place actually “runs” on a track, a single line that does not deviate, like a cosmic locomotive. Film and trains have strong material and semiotic associations with one another, not just thematically – for example, Arrival of a Train (Arrivée d’un train) (1895) is regarded as one of the first films in cinema history (and, incidentally, trains appear as an explicit theme in the Eames’s film, Tocatta for Toy Trains [1957]) – but also as nineteenth and early twentieth century “track machines”. (For more on the relation between cinema and trains, see Kirby [1997]. Meanwhile, trains have come to be associated with death, from the image of a Soul Train to the facts and images of the Holocaust.)

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With its frames within frames that are explicitly highlighted (as a white square box) for the viewer, the film becomes a study of scale in which the ­viewer experiences him or herself journeying as a mortal within the universe’s vast expanse. Critically, the image of the napping man is positioned at the center both of the film and, in the context of the film, at the center of the universe.7 Very noticeably, then, while the explicitly articulated cosmology of ­Powers is one that owes itself to a universe that leaves the human being not much more than a blip among the galaxies in the midst of a “vast emptiness”, which narrator Philip Morrison tells the viewer is “normal”, the Eameses reassert the centrality of human beings in terms of the images and the sequence of the images in the film. While the collections of stars in “our neighborhood”, and, one may add, the particular conditions of planet Earth, are, as Morrison recites, “the exception”, even the “trip” through outer space and into the atom’s nucleus are (with the right technology) offered from a human being’s point of view. This placement of human beings at the center frame of the film operates as a pivotal point of connection for the film audience. Without this placement at the center, “people could get lost” in “the big picture”, people here as both the subject matter and as the audience itself. In fact, many viewers so feel themselves hypothetically participating in the content of the film that one could argue that the film achieves at virtually the highest level possible for its medium and purpose. An interaction between a viewer and an other is so transformative that a kind of new “unity” is achieved. Because such a process and result already implies differences, which are not then suddenly removed, this unity is not necessarily “monistic”, and it does not dissolve difference. But the idea, not unlike Bernard Lonergan’s discussion of conversion (1996 [1971]), is that of transformation at multiple levels, but ultimately one that references a “fundamental” level, which arguably could be empirical or existential. Very noticeably, the stage is set in Powers for just such a transformative experience. In fact, the invocation of religious or spiritual language may not be entirely out of place in this context, especially as a basic transformative experience along the lines of what is described in William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience (1929 [1902]). Here, however, a turn to the discipline and practice of rhetoric may be even more enlightening. Classically defined by Aristotle in The Art of Rhetoric, the rhetorical function of a communication refers to the employment of all the means by which persuasion is achieved in a given situation. For example, one does not merely instruct on memento mori, but rather one marshals forth all the means necessary to “bring the audience around” to 7 Again, strong questions related to gender may be raised here, as they are, also, with the complicated working relationship of Charles and Ray as a team and as individuals.

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the idea. In a modern appropriation of the classical, this rhetorical function operating in Powers indicates not only a sense that the film is giving ­information to the viewer about the facts of her or his existence, but, also, is in some sense performing (cf. Nichols 2001; 2010) the reality of those facts so that the viewer ends up with a transformed sense of her or his existential place among the “data”, if you will, of her or his empirical situation. For many viewers, Powers of Ten achieves an existential definition of mortal life as human beings know and feel it, even if one was not able to communicate it thus previously. A viewer may have the sensation that after having seen Powers that one has “always already” seen it because of its immediate sense of coherence. Certainly, experience of the film could vary as widely as the ­peculiarities of every single individual viewer, especially now in the era of Google Earth and high-tech special effects. Even more: any one individual could experience the film in various ways at various times either in a given day or over a lifetime. Yet one of the main recollections and reports on the viewing of the film is, first, not only that it was “extraordinary” or “amazing”, but also, second, that the viewer, having suspended one’s disbelief, had a sense of “really” having made the trip to the very edges of contemporary human existence, beyond the Milky Way and “down” to the atom. Accompanying these responses is a contemporary sense of clarity about human beings’ definitive situation in the cosmos, one that is distinct from a biblical cosmos, including an afterlife as it is traditionally imagined. There is a sense that viewers have finally “got the real deal” as in: “We are mortals, and here is our domain, nothing more – isn’t this domain wonderful? And what will we – or those after us – discover next?” In Powers, then, the idea of memento mori refers to the material and the natural and not, strictly speaking, the spiritual and the supernatural, although these always could be implied (or redefined). Powers seems to embody the rephrasing of the terminology of memento mori as “remember materiality” or, more directly, “remember that you are material” – with the additional point of how remarkable the particular configurations and operations of materiality really are. To experience Powers of Ten is to be (or become) conscious of the material conditions of one’s existence, “beyond which” there is nothing other than more material conditions. Thus, the content of Powers refers to the entire existence of the individual and of human society in so far as they are known by way of the conventions of modern technology and science. Empirically speaking, what Powers shows is “it”. Imagination or fantasy may be invoked, but Powers deals with “the whole” in so far as it can be presently known, and “beyond which” one can not escape without further empirical exercise in order to engage “it”. As a viewer of Powers, there is a palpable sense of experiencing oneself as a “mere mortal”.

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The Intellectually Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Powers

While varying in degree and in kind, the experience of Powers of Ten engages an intellectual reorientation of the human as a mortal in the vast p ­ ost-Copernican expanse. The precise way that such an experience proves effective (and the responses to it) may be as peculiar as the individual viewer, and, in large measure, the extraordinary effectiveness of Powers is the medium and genre of documentary film “itself” to bring about a moving “experience of experience” (Sobchack 1992, 3, citing Merleau-Ponty 1968, 155). Yet, it is the intellectually transformative point of memento mori experience, referenced by Powers of Ten, which leaves a lasting mark on the consciousness of individuals. In terms of the composition and experience of Powers, I suggest the definitive moment in the film is when the “camera enters” the skin of the man’s hand and then proceeds through ever-increasing (or decreasing, as the case may be) microscopic levels. While in the first part of the film, there is the soaring sensation that accompanies the early frames as the shot moves out step by step from the lakeshore by powers of ten and then, of course, the important scene when the “camera hovers” out past the Milky Way galaxy in the “vast emptiness”. But, beyond this, after the rapid straightforward roller ride directly back to earth, after the “dolly tracking” slows, the shot approaches the hand. At this point, there can be, even if one knows better, a sense that the image will stop at the surface of the hand, but it does not. The definitive moment, then, arguably is the “camera’s entry” through the surface of the skin. The startling point begins with the failure of the zooming image to stop there and, instead, the zoom proceeds right to, and then through, the surface of the man’s skin on his hand. From there, it proceeds to a microscopic space beyond the atomic, which appears to be just as vast and expansive as outer space. The surprising discovery of the film is to find that the “inner expanse” is comparable to the outer expanse. Thus, to be mortal is not only to be miniscule and limited, but also to “be a universe”, so to speak, in and of one’s self with infinity “contained within” the mortal’s finite existence. If the viewer of Powers accepts the vision given of the human beings’ place in the cosmos, then, intellectually, there is a great deal to own up to. As memento mori, Powers implicates the individual ethically because the viewer necessarily will respond one way or another to the realization, including an assessment or reassessment of the individual’s relations with one’s self, with other people and with the world or cosmos. In terms of memento mori experience, Powers also can be affectively transformative, in part because its images, texts, and sounds can have an immediate and/or sustained effect over time that exceeds purely intellectual considerations. In fact, Powers can invoke deep

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emotional responses, from fear or awe, to delight, disgust, wonder, relief, and lightheartedness.8 Most of all, however, Powers is intellectually transformative because the empirically real boundaries and potential of human life are shown, and human life is brought into a “corrected perspective”. The intellectual transformation is, among other things, that of the individual facing up to one’s relative place in the universe. The expanse of the cosmos is astounding and challenges the limits of human imagination. One is taught about the heliocentric universe in elementary or grammar school and, thus, has been introduced to the kind of de-self-centered thinking required to get a handle on reality as it is known to modern science. But how can anyone really be prepared for the astronomical sense of reality of life as humans are coming to know it at a perspective of ten to the twenty-fifth power, or approximately one billion light years? The picnickers disappear into oblivion. Furthermore, as the film’s narrative reaches the limits of scientific ­knowledge in regard to outer space, the “turn around” at that point marks the beginning of the other end of human limits, into the infinitesimal. The picnickers reappear, but only for a moment. Then through cells, atoms, and nuclei, it becomes less clear whether or not this is a different space or the same as when one was among the stars. Space seems to turn upon itself so that the linear becomes non-linear, and emptiness appears to be, as Morrison narrates, “normal”. One’s sense of reality is transformed from attention to the obvious concerns on earth and in ordinary existence to consciousness of immense complexity, at macroscopic and microscopic levels. Importantly, the Eameses are not simply constructing an argument that would convince the viewer of an intellectual point – such as, the human being is simply one item, albeit important, in the vast outer and interior space of the universe. More than this, the Eameses show the viewer this fact. The film informs the viewer by its performance so that, by its conclusion, there is no doubt about the point – one has experienced it. Thus we see that to adequately get at what is at stake in Powers and in documentaries more generally, the discussion must include both the empirical/existential context of the fact of death and also the reality that memento mori is an immensely powerful product of human art and culture.

8 In the context of early modern Dutch art, Rose Marie San Juan (2013) makes a related point about the relief that may come from contemplation of finitude and mortality: “It may seem odd to argue for a narrative about the certainty of death as somehow reassuring but this is precisely what I seek to do” (92). On a different note, a question may be raised in this context as to notions of subjectivity that may be “privileged” in contrast to assumptions of apolitical “being” (e.g., cf. Baudry 1974 [1970]).

chapter 3

Memento Mori as “Consciousness of Mortality” and as a Cultural Phenomenon Memento mori as a phenomenon is both a cultural product and an i­ndicator of an existential fact. That is, along with the appearance of memento mori artifacts – including images, texts, and ideas in art history, in literature, and in particular films such as Powers of Ten – memento mori points to empirical death itself. To highlight artistic or cultural aspects but then overlook empirical death in regard to memento mori may be like mistaking the finger pointing to the moon in the night sky for the moon itself (an analogy that is raised in the context of Zen Buddhism; cf., e.g., Suzuki 1949, 19). As an identifiable phenomenon, memento mori relies upon human consciousness and memory in particular to bring about awareness of mortality. Granted, this awareness as well as the stark reality it presents do not come about in an unmediated way. We may highlight that, when pointing to the moon, without the finger and the person to whom it is attached (including his or her brain) the moon could not be deciphered as such. At the same time, memento mori is also then necessarily an “artificial” human convention: an artifice with a history, or a cultural genealogy, that relies upon particular social reception. “Memento mori” is not simply “out there” in a vacuum, but rather it relates to various and specific genres, media, and material. Most of all, I suggest that a fuller understanding of memento mori, as we have begun to see in Powers of Ten, recognizes its operations as a composed transformative experience of the empirical and existential facts of the mortal condition. 3.1

Memento Mori is an Index of Death

A primary reason for memento mori’s wide appearance in art and culture, including film, owes to its indexing of the starkest limits of human existence. If, with Saint Francis, Hamlet, The Grapes of Wrath, or Powers of Ten, the viewer follows from the symbolism to the line of reasoning of memento mori, the viewer really comes into awareness of the empirical fact of dying and death. Memento mori texts and pictures point to that which is both prior to, and beyond, imagining. This is the existential or empirical reality defined by birth, © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004356962_005

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or conception, as a starting point, and death as an end point, after which there is, even for the Christian Samuel Johnson, “nothing”.1 Meanwhile, human involvement with empirical reality, including death, is constituted for humans by human artistic convention and is not merely immediate. But once the awareness of mortality is there, given in part through ­memory, there is no denying the reality without absurdity, mystifying antics, and utter abnegation of intellectual responsibility. The encounter with a memento mori artifact, no matter how it happens in a particular case, is defined by its bringing one into some contact with, or offering an indication of, the reality of death. That “reality of death” is empirically real death as opposed to imagined death or death as depicted in artistic forms. And that encounter is defined by the person’s becoming conscious of the fact of his or her own mortal existence. 3.1.1 Memento Mori (in Any Form) Refers to Death As is becoming increasingly clear, to study memento mori in a substantial way, whether in documentaries or in anywhere else, is to come into ­significant ­contact with the reality of death and its implications for life as a mortal. Most generally, and minimally, memento mori artifacts arguably share a place among other human efforts to facilitate survival. Part of their distinctiveness, however, is to directly reference the fundamental issues of survival or ­non-survival for human beings as individuals and as groups. In these terms, memento mori items belong to an evolutionary history, both biological and cultural, with fundamental personal and social implications. To engage a serious study of memento mori artifacts including documentaries is to engage with the starkest limitation of human biological capacity – that is, death. Human beings have common sense about what death is, though some ­differences do appear in determining its significance either generally or specifically. In common understanding, what “death” means is quite straightforward, and, when someone is dead, there normally is no question that life has come to an end. Once closer attention is paid to the terminology of death, however, complexities do arise as to its precise meaning. Nevertheless, common sense is usually enough. As medical ethicist Robert M. Veatch (1989) describes, For most of human history, of course, people have not been concerned with [the definition of death] at all. They have had a clear enough idea 1 As a twist on this theme and noted above, Bloom (1994) has emphasized the literary artist’s effort to “evade” awareness of this reality. Other twists and turns on this theme include conceiving death as a radical material reconfiguration or hoping for, and working toward, a new form of existence, one that brings about “immortality”.

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to be able to transact the business of death: to cover the corpse, bury the dead, mourn, read wills, and transfer authority. (16) Modern technology has complicated things because it “permits us to treat the body organ by organ, cell by cell”, and, thus, “we are forced to develop a more precise understanding of what it means to call a person dead” (16). Among other issues, formal, conceptual, locational, and technical matters are raised for defining the parameters of life and death, both biologically and ethically (Veatch 1989, 16). While “[a] strictly formal definition of death might be the following:” “Death means a complete change in the status of a living entity characterized by the irreversible loss of those characteristics that are essentially significant to it”. Nevertheless, “such a definition would apply equally well to a human being, a nonhuman animal, a plant, an organ, a cell, or even metaphorically to a society or to any temporally limited entity like a research project, a sports event, or a language”. In addition, “to define the death of a human being, we must recognize its essential human characteristics”. Yet, as difficult as some of the issues have become in modern society around defining death for human beings, most people, including scholars and experts, “[realize] that death already has a well-established meaning” in social practice. And, while there are many complicated aspects to the dying process, death is not that process but the event that defines that process by ending it. (17–18; cf. Kass 1971) In cultural history, various responses have arisen regarding its significance, including seeing death as something rather “tame” or unthreatening; thinking of it in either individual or group terms (or both); considering the death of others versus one’s self; and viewing it as shameful, “forbidden”, or as a matter of fact (Ariès 1974; 1981 [1977]; cf. Becker 1997 [1973], on the denial of the reality of death). In modern societies, boundaries between life and death that ­otherwise would be left to common sense are also the subject of debate. ­Notably, as Veatch (1989) points out, “to ask what is essentially significant to a human being [in regard to death] is a philosophical question – a question of ethical and other values” (19), not only a medical question, and thus there are differences, sometimes highly contested, among individuals and groups (cf. Schumacher 2010). To set out a concept of death, including its “location” and criteria, however, affords at least several choices. Death may be defined by one or more of the following. 1) 2) 3) 4)

irreversible loss of flow of vital fluids [a traditional concept of death] irreversible loss of the soul from the body [vitalistic concept] irreversible loss of the capacity for bodily integration the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness or social interaction. (Veatch 1989, 19–32)

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Then questions may be raised as to the “locus” and the “criteria” of death, including the locus and measurement of the loss of vital fluid flow, loss of the soul, loss of integrating capacity, and loss of capacity for consciousness and social interaction (32–41). Veatch writes, “I therefore believe that death is most appropriately thought of as the irreversible loss of the embodied capacity [which includes consciousness] for social interaction” (29–30). Still, he says, he “[advocates] a range of discretion for individuals to pick their own concept of death…” (30). In the practical situation of confronting death, questions arise in regard to a person’s awareness of death and the expectations of its precise timing. A given situation may be characterized, as sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (2006 [1965]) outline in their classic study, by various “death expectations”, having varying responses. 1) 2) 3) 4)

certain death at a known time certain death at an unknown time uncertain death but a known time when the question will be resolved uncertain death and unknown time when the question will be resolved. (18–19)

They write of dying as among the major human “status passage[es]” (24) with a range of varying “awareness contexts”, specifically in hospitals. Also, “the resulting impact [particularly of an unexpected death] is tremendous. The [­person’s] death is too sudden: there is not time to prepare oneself for it” (­25–26). Indeed, one of the most disturbing situations related to death is that of “the sudden death, or [sudden] onset of death” of a person especially when it is unanticipated and when the person appeared to be healthy (25–26). From the point of view of medical doctors (mds) in relation to an expectation of a patient’s death, the “direct disclosure of terminality” becomes ap ­ rimary issue. In a medical context, there are issues around the patient’s awareness of his or her terminal condition. Glaser and Strauss (2006 [1965]) indicate five: 1) 2) 3)

most patients are not especially experienced at recognizing the signs of impending death. [some] physicians ordinarily do not tell patients outright that death is probable or inevitable. families also tend to guard the secret.

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[open awareness depends upon] the organization of hospitals and … the commitments of personnel who work within them. [often] the patient has no allies who reveal or help him discover the [hospital] staff’s knowledge of impending death. (29–32; cf. Gawande 2015)

Even if a person is fully aware, “ambiguities” remain: first, “the patient’s awareness is frequently qualified by his [or her] ignorance or suspicion about other aspects of his death” (79). And second, “The patient may wish to die in certain ways: without pain, for instance, with dignity, or perhaps in private” (80). Thus, “One of the most difficult of doctor’s dilemmas is whether or not to tell a patient he has a fatal illness” (119).2 This question of disclosure may be no less true for doctors of philosophy (PhDs) in the Western tradition and beyond, raising the issues of mortality and consciousness to those trusted to their care.3 2 “Occasionally patients who discover that they are about to die attempt suicide” (83). Once disclosure has taken place, the person then responds, very often first with depression, and then with either acceptance or denial of the terminal condition (120–121). The disclosure itself often takes two forms: “First, the patient is told that he is certain to die, but not when he will die…” and “Second, the doctors typically do not give details of the illness, and the type of patient under consideration usually does not ask for them” (123). Also, “…there is the important statement that softens any form of disclosure: ‘We can control the pain’” (124). “In some forms, the blunt announcement sharpens the blow of a disclosure by forcing a direct confrontation of the truth with little or no preamble” (124). There is also the “silent disclosure” (125). Once “The ‘nothing more to do’ phase of dying” sets in then “the fundamental goal for the patient changes from recovery to comfort…” (177). Cf. Gawande (2015). 3 Adapted from Bennett-Carpenter, 2014, pp. 360–361. Responses to the awareness of death are often thematized in terms of acceptance or denial and, one might add, action or non-action based upon that acceptance or denial. Paul Ramsey, for example, takes issue with the notion identified with Epicurus and Wittgenstein that, as Ramsey puts it, “death is not a part of life, so why worry?” (1974, 49), referring to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 6.4311. He points out that discourse on “death as a limit makes use of a visual or spatial metaphor” while “death itself steadfastly resists conceptualization” (49) (in this context, Ramsey cites James Van Eura, “On Death as a Limit”, 1971). He continues by arguing for the “indignity” of death: “‘Awareness of dying’ means awareness of that; and awareness of that constitutes an ultimate indignity in and to the awareness of the self who is dying” (50). In the Hebrew scriptures, he writes, sin is the primary problem, not death. “In contrast (…) the central theme of Greek religious thought and practice was the problem of death” (57). In Christianity, he claims these two tied together (57), and “death is an enemy” (57) to be fought against: “it is an enemy, surely, and not simply an acceptable part of the natural order of things” (57). He concludes that: “A true humanism and dread of death seem to be dependent variables” (62).

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3.1.2 Memento Mori Relies upon Consciousness, Memory in Particular At the same time, works of memento mori call upon the most impressive of human biological capacities, which is human consciousness. The injunction of memento mori to remember or to bring mortality to mind is a charge to own up to this capacity. The capacity of human consciousness includes both collective and individual memory that offers societies and individuals the opportunity to not forget a fundamental fact of their existence, by which everything else may be defined. Works of memento mori imply that there is something worthwhile in calling to mind, being aware or cognizant of mortality rather than not doing so. In this way, memento mori is directly related to Socrates’s assertion that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. In the case of memento mori, one is being asked to examine the fact that life is limited and that a crucial measure to its worth is to be found through or within this limitation as a mortal. To “Know Thyself” is to “Memento Mori”, to “Remember that thou art mortal” (Bennett-Carpenter 2014, 362). Thus, memento mori ties into the very foundations of a Western philosophical and humanist tradition. As an important aside, the language of “limitation” or “limits” in relation to mortality, where death is a definitive limit for a human individual, invokes questions of finitude. At the same time, a discussion of limits invokes infinitude, such as infinite possibility within or through finite bounds. One may highlight both finitude and infinitude in a discussion of limits or death-as-limit, but the conceptual frame becomes infinitude-in (or through)-finitude. If one turns to the idea of death-as-possibility rather than limit, or otherwise emphasizes infinitude, then the discourse turns away from memento mori, strictly speaking. Rather, it would be more apt to reference a consciousness or awareness of immortality rather than mortality. The injunction would then read something like “Remember that you are immortal”. An alternative to the immortality theme could be to remember life, “remember you will live”, “remember the life you have to live”, or memento vivere. Yet, in any case, as relevant as finitude, infinitude, immortality, life, and memento vivere are, complete consideration of them lies beyond the scope of this project. Certainly a follow-up to the present work on memento mori could be on memento vivere, and the concerns about mortality, death, materiality, and other sobering or earthy themes could be followed up by these other themes. As just one exemple, San Juan (2013) puts forward the “the possibilities of reanimating life” possibly through technology (109). In any case, the awareness of death raises the issue of awareness more generally. How, after all, do human beings, or does an individual, come to be aware or conscious of anything at all? “Consciousness” is one way of describing what is most remarkable and still most mysterious about human beings, which are

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the operations of the brain and of “mind”. After a little more than a century of study of the brain at a cellular level (Kandel 2007),4 very little, relatively speaking, is known about how it works. While important strides are underway, there is also a great deal of debate as to what the real problems are (Blackmore 2004, 2006), including the issue of what could be described as how “mind” is mechanistic or not mechanistic (cf., e.g., Dennett 1991, 2017; Searle 1997; ­Pinker 1999).5 On a practical level, however, people know that they are aware of things, or were not and then were; they experience themselves or others losing consciousness; and know or act in such a way that reveals their awareness of mortal danger and the facts of human living and dying. The awareness or consciousness of mortality is understood, dealt with, and felt to be one of the most definitive human experiences. What is at stake for human beings is their very survival, so their awareness of it is crucial. Human beings have learned from experience, however, so that information in regard to mortality, extreme danger, or death is stored for future use, particularly as a new generation arrives and grows. Not only relying upon instinct, the young are educated in the cultural memory of the group for the sake of their survival. In fact, human memory, which is sometimes underrated in contemporary intellectual thought, is one of the great capacities of the brain and of human 4 Eric Kandel (2007) highlights the work on the brain at a cellular level of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934), “a neuroanatomist who was comtemporary with Freud (…) [and] laid the foundation for the modern study of the nervous system” (60, 61). 5 Of the many people working on the brain, one was Francis Crick (Kandel 2007, 377), who in 1953, with James Watson deciphered the genetic code. Crick describes the beginning of his career after the conclusion of World War ii: “I decided there were several problems, but there were two in particular which most people thought were difficult, if not impossible, to understand scientifically. One was the borderline between the living and the non-living, and the other was how the brain works – and that would include (…) consciousness” (in Blackmore 2006, 75). As Kandel describes, “when Crick first entered biology, after World War ii, two great questions were thought to be beyond the capacities of science to answer: What distinguishes the living from the non-living world? And what is the biological nature of consciousness?” (2007, 377) Crick’s research agenda was significant because, while the difference between the living and non-living should not be conflated with the divide between the living and the dead, it reveals concern for issues that are directly related to life and death and to consciousness. Important to note, also, are centers of study such as the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Center for Consciousness, which has held regular conferences for many years with a wide range of thinkers and scientists, through the University of Arizona in Tucson and, more recently, in conjunction with the University of Michigan Center for Consciousness Science (e.g., 25–30 April 2016). Consciousness may be discussed as an interactive event; on this in relation to the visual, and analogical thinking (in a digital age), see Stafford (1999).

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culture, a key component of human learning.6 In brief, as Peter Morriss and Martin A. Conway (1993) describe, “memory and remembering are central aspects of our cognitive functioning” (xi) and identity. Memory provides stored information, including significance and meaning, for short or long periods of time, by way of stimuli that can be “translated” and “activated” in a way that is useful for constructing significance or meaning and for social interaction (Conway and Morriss 1993, xi).7 Memory provides a basis on which common life may be built and from which human beings learn about the past and innovate in order to overcome present problems for the benefit of their future. Importantly, in consciousness, the “data” of death or mortality that are dealt with by way of memento mori artifacts are not usually “immediate”. Rather, what constitutes a realization of death is consciousness through memory in some medium of symbolic or semiotic communication with a history that has proved meaningful or useful to human beings. Generally speaking, this realization is no different than any other, except that the singular idea indicated is the end to human reality and consciousness as a human being presently knows them. As such, this realization makes all the difference for human existence. 6 For psychological studies of memory, see Morris and Conway (1993). For how memory works, why human beings forget things, and the neurological basis for memory and learning see Kupfermann (1981), Rupp (1998), and Kandel (2007). On the issue of differentiation or distinctiveness in memory, see the collection of papers in Hunt and Worthen, eds. (2006). Various ways in history of thinking about, and especially imagining, memory appear in Draaisma (2000 [1995]), McConkey (1996), and Carruthers and Ziolkowski (2002). Specifically, on the role of memory in the medieval period, see Carruthers (2006 [1990]). Many ethical issues may be raised in relation to memory; one handling of them in terms of historiography is Wyschogrod (1998). On memory in relation to photography, see Sontag (2003). Carruthers (2006 [1990]) is particularly interesting in her discussion of memory in the medieval period in relation to contemporary Western culture. She writes, for example: “It is my contention that medieval culture was fundamentally memorial, to the same profound degree that modern culture in the West is documentary” (8). And on memory, information, and nature, she notes: “A modern experimental psychologist has written that ‘some of the best “memory crutches” we have are called laws of nature’, for learning can be seen as a process of acquiring smarter and richer mnemonic devices to represent information, encoding similar information into patterns, organizational principles, and rules which represent even material we have never before encountered, but which is ‘like’ what we do know, and thus can be ‘recognized’ or ‘remembered’” (1–2, citing Miller 1963). 7 Commonly, “several different types of memory” may be identified: Shorter term, including sensory memories, working memories and longer term, including semantic memory, autobiographical or episodic memories (Conway and Morriss 1993, xi-xii). Meanwhile, “Underlying these knowledge structures are the neurological networks and biochemical transmissions between the neurons that make possible human memory skills” (xii).

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Nevertheless, even this realization owes itself to symbol or sign systems. Whatever it is that is indicated by the English words “death” or “mortality”, or in Latin, “mori”, is not automatically fixed in an unmediated way in one’s mind or brain. Rather, images, symbols, or signs mediate consciousness of mortality. 3.2

Memento Mori is Also an Artificial Convention

As an index of mortal reality, then, memento mori is also a human convention. As a convention, or some would say invention, of human beings, memento mori items owe themselves to particular histories, and, at the same time, they are characterized by remarkable plasticity in the unique form and function they take in particular cases. Notably, as a convention memento mori emerged with special popularity at certain points in history, in particular places, through specific media. In addition, these memento mori artifacts were received in particular ways by people, not simply willy-nilly. Specifically memento mori emerged historically as an especially popular convention through forms of media such as printing (Cooper 1997). As Cooper indicates, “From the 1530s when Hans Holbein first published his woodcut series A Dance of Death, printed imagery on [the] theme of memento mori … slowly became familiar across Northern Europe” (n.p.). These images, like texts, were produced in a printed medium (cf. Lucke, Lucke, Gogol, and Rademacher 2012). In part, as a popular convention memento mori owes itself to the invention of the printing press and the distribution of printed literature and images, from Holbein’s woodcuts to the vernacular Bible. These media had a direct relationship to forms of religious culture. Memento mori’s appearance and popularity, then, does not exist in a historical vacuum. Owing to its particular history, memento mori as a convention is not simply identified with an ontological reality, but also with particular turns, accidental and practical, in the history of human technology, art, and culture. Memento Mori is an Artifice with a History or Cultural Genealogy that Relies upon Particular Social Reception It is important to see that memento mori, as a particular work such as Powers of Ten or otherwise, does not exist in a vacuum but, rather, is a unique historical artifice with significance that owes to the reception of it in particular social groups. Historically, memento mori is closely tied to religious history and thought, especially from the medieval period, through the Renaissance, Reformation, and into at least the nineteenth century, and to some extent to the present day. It appears to have a particularly close, though not exclusive, link

3.2.1

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with Christianity and, also, with humanism. Its significance is dependent upon a place in history and in social groups, significance that varies but which can be sorted out in terms of Christianity and humanism, and also supernaturalist and non-supernaturalist views in regard to immortality. For example, aside from their positions today as exhibits in modern museums or popular home decor, the medieval memento mori saints pictures functioned primarily as an iconography to facilitate contemplation for pious or would-be pious Christians. Yet the images operated not necessarily to bring about the individual’s sense of a blessed destiny. Rather, in their cultic context, images of Francis, Mary Magdalene, and others first offerred the viewer a sense of the human condition as a collective, both mortal and “immortal” (cf. Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the uses of art for exhibit and cult [1986 (1968)]). An exception to this use may be some religious virtuosi who were caught up in a solo pursuit of, or engagement with, the beyond, and less immediately the concern for one’s fellows. These saints’ pictures did not function as portraiture, strictly speaking, as one would understand in an art historical context. Rather, they served as a help in devotional practice that had more to do with the ­devotee’s communal participation in, and supplication for, and on behalf of, the entire community (or, less usually, the whole “human family”) than with one’s self as an individual. Thus, remembering mortality was, in this context, less for one’s self than for the collective. I suggest that this kind of reception of memento mori characterized the medieval period and continues in some circles today, despite a basic hermeneutical shift that took place around the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. This shift was toward the individual so that “remembering mortality” meant not primarily that one should remember that “we (humans) are all in this together”, but more as “remember that you are mortal”, you, the individual. Various distinctions and developments in regard to memento mori as received take on religious, political, and cultural implications that cooperate with the dynamics of specific times and places. Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcuts, for example, appeared in Northern Europe right at the center of the Lutheran Reformation (Cooper 1997). This had critical religio-political implications. Memento mori imagery and text in this context communicated to many individuals, because of its wide distribution, the fact that all, even church authorities, were mortals like all other mortals – a kind of democracy of death, if you will. The significance of memento mori items, in part because of popularity by way of an easily distributed medium, became particular to individuals whose mortal condition became increasingly their own business rather than the church’s. This individualized realization of mortality had ­political and

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­existential implications. At the same time, all of this activity took place in relation to established conventions. Shakespeare’s memento mori scene in Hamlet, for example, is not simply existential, but also is directly related to both literary and dramatic conventions and to competing ideologies of the day over the role of God in human affairs (cf. Jacobs 1993). When one is done harm, perhaps egregious, how is justice then achieved? Does God employ, or leave the matter up to, a human being (or human systems) to make things right, perhaps exacting revenge? Or does God ordain, and thus the human must adhere to, a posthumous judgment, inflicting otherworldly, perhaps everlasting, punishment on the unjust? Questions like these related to memento mori historically pointed to various negotiations of humanist and Christian, natural and supernatural, explanations for worldly events and experience. Memento mori artistic conventions in fact also appeared in close relation to a humanist tradition that sought to recover some of antiquity’s best cultural works and thought, including realism about mortal existence and death, and the achievement of “immortality” through artwork rather than through piety or by divine means. As Cooper (1997) explains, Fame, artistic identity and human mortality are closely linked throughout the late 16th and early 17th century, as is shown by Hendrick Hondius’ work. The liberal arts as understood by humanists and neo-stoics were sources of enhancing wisdom and were thus valuable in maintaining a rational approach to death. (n.p.) This humanism, with precursors in antiquity, runs through at least the ­nineteenth century, and probably into the twenty-first, though it may have taken a significant turn around the middle of the nineteenth century toward favoring memento vivere. This humanism combines realism with an awareness of convention and, at times, a spoofing of memento mori. Shakespeare, for example, (perhaps it goes without saying) was not entirely serious in his use of memento mori. In fact, the scene in Hamlet discussed above can be played, and often is, as a hilarious mockery of anything that is too serious about death. Or take Andy Warhol’s work as an example. He directly quoted the memento mori tradition and played upon it with an irony that both spoofed the convention with his copied pictures of himself with a skull on top of his head, glossed over in pink or other bright, primary colors – yet also took himself seriously as a “real artist” because he had done what real artists do: memento mori pictures. Clearly, memento mori is not simply a reference to death; it can also be a reference to itself or is a simulacrum, as “merely” an item in art or cultural history.

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Memento mori in this sense, then, is not simply “everywhere”, but rather is a phenomenon that has in fact appeared in religion, art, and media in relation to Christian and humanist traditions with various kinds of responses emerging at different points in a history of reception. A critical point in memento mori as received is the way the “remember mortality” injunction is deciphered either as a charge to “seize the day” or to “­repent”, an option usually thought (though not necessarily) to depend upon supernaturalist or non-supernaturalist approaches to mortality and immortality. While variations among particular groups and individuals can be wide, one of the main ways that memento mori rhetoric is traditionally received is as a moral and spiritual charge to repent, to turnabout, to convert, because one’s time on Earth is short, and at any moment, one will be required to face an Almighty God whose judgment will determine whether one will be accepted by Him into heaven or cast out by Him into hell (or, alternatively for Catholics, relegated for a term to purgatory). Many variations on this theme exist and “conversion” need not associate necessarily with the supernatural, but usually, in this interpretation, the charge of memento mori is a tactic to turn individuals’ attention and action away from the concerns of the world toward the spiritual Promised Land or Paradise. Another main way that memento mori is received is in terms of something like carpe diem, or seize the day. Seizing the day could also have supernatural rationale and purpose, but usually it is understood as making the most of things right now, again, because our days, at least for individuals, do not go on forever. Taking a perspective that finds supernaturalism erroneous, misguided, and/or superfluous, memento mori in this context means making the most of one’s life immediately because mortal life is all one has to work with. Remembering or being conscious of mortality, then, may not only be a moral (or “spiritual”) charge, but also a factual, empirical, and existential one. A paraphrase might read “Remember, you human individual, you have your mortal life, and that is all, so make the most of it”. Further replies could run along the lines of the hedonistic battle cry of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” to sober deliberation on what material or cultural legacy an individual will leave to future generations. In this case, immortality is achieved by way of the material or cultural legacy or inheritance, not by continued existence of an identifiable individual in a now unrealized, but later to be realized, “form” “beyond” the natural universe. Memento mori as a convention also is dependent upon group and individual reception of it. As we have seen, classic ordinary memento mori items in art feature the skull and also include flowers, fruit, timepieces, weapons, books, and animals brought in from the hunt for the dinner table. Classic memento

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mori references in literary history refer to images from art and they elaborate verbally on the theme. At the same time, memento mori as a convention is socially received by individuals within traditions and may be combined with other conventions and other images, symbols, and texts. Furthermore, however, in terms of reception, there need not be necessarily any particular artifacts that must operate as memento mori for all individuals or groups. Furthermore, if a memento mori image, symbol, or text does not bring about awareness of mortality, then in an existential sense, it has not done the work of memento mori. Sight of a skull or news of another person’s death does not necessarily immediately translate into consciousness of mortality. Thus, what designates a memento mori artifact in terms of reception is that someone or some group calls it a memento mori or, otherwise, a human being’s response to an artifact in fact does bring about awareness of mortality. Memento Mori Relates to Various and Specific Genres, Media, and Materials Hypothetically, then, in terms of reception there could be as many individual memento mori artifacts as there are individuals, and memento mori could ­appear as easily in one genre or medium as another, and not only those commonly identified with memento mori in art history, literature, or film. Even more: any one individual could experience memento mori from any given number of artifiacts any given number of times. As any item that calls mortality to mind, memento mori appears to be a massive collection of artifacts extending through not only the major artistic traditions, as indicated above, but well beyond. For example, these collections are to be found in religious ritual as well as domestic and decorative practices. On the one hand, the traditional “death masks” in ancient and tribal practices (Moore 1977) may be cited, along with the crucifix, as a prime memento mori symbol in the religious tradition of the Latin West. On the other hand, flowers, as mentioned above, along with trees and gardens (cf. Delvaux 2001) may operate as memento mori. Memento mori also appears widely in funerary practices and tomb decoration (e.g., Norfleet 1993; Zirpolo, ed. 2006). It appears as urns and as rings (Murray 1996, 319). Memento mori appears in music, from folk to classical, in sports, and in ordinary conversation and environments. Of the numerous examples, take for instance the 1927 blues song “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” by Blind Lemon Jefferson (later covered by Bob Dylan): 3.2.2

Well, it’s one kind favor I ask of you. (3X) See that my grave is kept clean.

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It’s a long old lane ain’t got no end. (3X) …Gonna take me to my burying ground. My heart stopped beating, and my hands got cold. (3X) It wasn’t long [be]fore service by the cypress grove. Have you ever heard a coffin sound? (3X) Then you know that the poor boy is in the ground. Oh, dig my grave with a silver spade. (3X) You may lead me down with a golden chain. Have you ever heard a church bell tone? (3X) Then you know that the poor boy is dead and gone.8 In fact, the phenomenon of memento mori may be as widespread as are human beings, their activities, and their artifacts. At its fullest extent, what is designated by “memento mori”, as a cultural phenomenon, may be anything that brings about the awareness of death or mortal life. “Anything” may include not only skulls in vanitas paintings or on a memento mori ring, but also an x-ray or a functional magnetic resonance image (f  M RI) from the hospital laboratory. It could be an actual human skull. It could be a pirate’s flag pictured in a children’s book or silkscreened on a T-shirt. Memento mori may be not only images or textual injunctions to “remember mortality”, as one finds in Dürer’s pictures or Shakespeare’s discourse, but also any text at all in which one has the occasion to consider that paper decays and passes away, as does the particular author and the reader. Memento mori may include not only historical photographs of ancestors or contemporary video footage of a war-struck locale but also an elderly, terminally ill, or wounded loved one himor herself in the flesh. Memento mori, generalized, may embrace the concern of mortality or death and the awareness of it wherever it appears. “Real” or empirical death, its effects manifested by the presence of a corpse (rather than a living body), probably is the prime occasion for consideration of mortality. But a memento mori artifact may be as particular as the individual or the situation in which awareness of death is achieved. Indeed, what is designated by the terminology of memento mori may include any work or material that operates, whether purposefully or not, to bring mortality or death to awareness. At the same time, however, memento mori, considered in social, cultural, and historical terms, is most closely related to materials, genres, and 8 Adapted from lyrics (public domain) from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/See_That_My _Grave_Is_Kept_Clean, accessed 21 March 2017. Another version was recorded by Bob Dylan, Columbia Studios, New York, ny, Nov 22, 1961, transcribed by Manfred Helfert; accessed at http://www.bobdylanroots.com/see.html on 26 May 2016.

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media, such as film, that most effectively reference mortality and bring it to consciousness. A roll of tape on the desk or a sticky pad might bring awareness of death to someone at some point in time (who knows?),9 but a knife pulled or gunshot is more apt to do so (cf. Bennett-Carpenter 2014, 363). Greeting a friend on an ordinary day might bring mortality to mind, but touching the cold skin of someone hours after death and, afterwards, seeing his or her corpse, ordinarily has a stronger effect. Hearing a certain tune played on the car radio could bring nostalgia for days past, but a requiem leaves less to wonder about: in the latter case, the listener has death brought immediately to awareness. After all, it is Saint Francis and Hamlet with a skull that are discussed as memento mori, not Henri Matisse’s pastel paintings, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. It is the photo of Professor John Collins Warner, or for that matter, Marilyn Monroe, not Sally Potter’s film version of Woolf’s novel, Orlando (1992), or the comedy of Groucho Marx, that brings the reality of death so powerfully to mind. This is because a skull, for example, is the very habitat for the source of consciousness, the brain, and the skull as shown (without skin, muscle, and especially eyes and brain) indicates that the once living human being that is identified with the particular skull is now dead. Thus, it is no surprise that the classic symbol for memento mori, or consciousness of mortality, is a skull. Meanwhile, other items or works may or may not rely upon an awareness of memento mori though in fact they often seem to imply it, but they ­emphasize other aspects of human existence. For example, instead of emphasizing death, they emphasize life. Instead of emphasizing limits or ends, they ­emphasize the infinity (that still may be had within mortal bounds) of human life. For the present study of documentaries, it is nevertheless critical to see memento mori’s fullest sense as a deep and wide cultural phenomenon in which an individual comes to awareness (or renewed awareness) of mortality. As such a phenomenon, memento mori is probably most fully understood as transformative experience. 3.3

Memento Mori as Composed Transformative Experience

To see memento mori as composed transformative experience in which a person becomes newly aware of human mortality requires that one keep in mind 9 After the time of writing this section, I received a package of sticky pads in the mail from a friend. On the 3 x 3 inch notepaper is an image of a death’s head on it, and the printed text reads “It could be worse”.

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a sense that one is dealing both with empirical reality and with cultural tradition, genealogy, or artistic convention, and that these two elements are mutually constitutive. In other words, memento mori can be discussed in terms of both “experience” and “composition”, that is, as being “put together”, not merely “found”. The compositional elements of a transformative experience include sensitivity to the total given situation, to materiality, to the transaction of information, to design and chance, and to the overall educative function, which ultimately may be discussed in terms of various forms of transformation, including intellectual, ethical, and affective. It is important, also, to pay attention to the limits of both “transformation” and “experience” as useful and/ or desirable centerpieces for projects of any kind. 3.3.1 General Aspects of Memento Mori Experience Memento mori experience includes a number of different aspects such as being “total” or integrative, material, “informational”, both designed and contingent upon chance, and educative. First, it helps to understand memento mori experience as total or integrative. For the individual, to be a “mortal” refers to her or his entire existence. There is nothing “else”, empirically speaking, for the individual. Anything “else” is either completely unknown or left to imagination or fantasy. Thus, mortality refers to “the whole shebang”, the entire state of being, for the individual in and of her- or himself. Beyond the individual, and in regard to groups, including the human species, mortality is what defines a definitive boundary for all human existence: humans are mortals, and they live a mortal existence. Mortal life makes up the “total picture” or whole environment in which humans operate. To speak of “the beyond” is either an imaginative exercise or a mental trick in which one continually tries to make a distinction between “the whole” and beyond the whole, without making the whole, then, a part (cf. Sokolowski 1995 [1982]). To be conscious of mortality is to be aware of “the whole”, “beyond which” there is nothing or one turns to imaginative, not empirical, exercises. In specific cases of memento mori items, the items are contextualized by the individual’s whole experience and the recall of information stored and reconstructed through memory so that the significance of the item is constituted within this “total” context. For an individual, on the one hand, personal history, including biological, cultural, social, and psychological, goes into making the complete response to items that trigger a realization of mortality. On the other hand, the total environment of the memento mori item makes up the conditions for the realization or remembrance of the fact of a human being’s mortal condition. This environment is made up of every material component, whether by design or chance, and the transfer of “information”, sensory and semantic or semiotic, that constitutes that environment as a whole.

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Memento mori items, then, are constituted by their material conditions and, in addition, memento mori as experience references the material, as we have seen in Powers of Ten, and not, strictly speaking, the spiritual, unless one includes the “spiritual” within the material and in no way “outside” it. Along with the total material conditions that constitute memento mori experience, the experience of memento mori includes the individual’s consciousness, instinct, and the socio-cultural memory that human beings are material. In this context, as our discussion of Powers began to suggest, the terminology of memento mori could be rephrased as “remember materiality” or, more directly, “remember that you are material” – “material” being more or less synonymous with “mortal”. To be conscious of one’s mortality, then, is also to experience the material conditions of one’s existence, “beyond which” are only more material conditions, with or without other human individuals.10 Memento mori experience, I suggest, also involves information transaction. As informational, certainly the experience of memento mori is instructive and does communicate a crucial fact to a human being. But memento mori experience is “informational” also in the sense of involving a complex of interchanges at sensory and semiotic levels, which include, but far exceed, linguistic or verbal communication. First, sensory data is given in the total material environment that instinctually indicates that one’s self as an identifiable unit or entity is, could be, or will be substantially or completely terminated. The proverbial hair standing up on the back of the neck could be one example. Second, semiotic, including semantic, data interacts to constitute a significance, which may be paraphrased as “I now realize, or I recall, that the conditions of my continued existence as the I that I know or that I think I know are relatively precarious and definitively limited”. And, by extension, “This re-orders my very self”. In memento mori experience, such critical sensory and semiotic information is transmitted both as designed and contingent upon chance. It may seem that such a potentially dramatic or momentous realization or memory (of mortality / death) would simply occur, unplanned, or perhaps as a natural part of cognitive or cultural development. Yet, with the relatively extensive knowledge human beings have of their environment and the conditions and limits of that environment, there is knowledge enough to design conditions for 10

The phrase “beyond which” here is not used uncritically but rather as the kind of terminology that in fact is sometimes used, whether precisely correct or not. The description of memento mori as concerned with the material does not exclude other descriptions of phenomena such as phenomena in “spiritual” terms. However, in short, memento mori does not tend toward a theme like “remember that you are spiritual”, an injunction that could be picked up better by some other cultural ideograph or phenomenon such as “memento vivere”.

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b­ eing more cognizant of mortality than not. It is a crucial lesson, after all, one that probably would leave individuals dead, and groups or the entire human species extinct, without its presence, teaching or recall. All of the elements of design (including line, shape, texture, color, and value) plus human encyclopedic knowledge, wisdom, and, increasingly, empirical studies, go into designing experience to be smart, not stupid, about what delineates human life. Meanwhile, the dynamics of phenomena tend to regularly confound human manipulation of phenomena, such that beyond design, chance occurrences take place (unforeseen, unplanned, random, not designed) that pull the trigger necessary for mortality-awareness to fire. Accidentally, events emerge in a given environment that bring about awareness of mortality for an individual. Why? On the one hand, one can say it is for the sake of survival: in the short term, for the individual; in the long term, for the group. On the other hand, one cannot say why: complex events occur with consequences, with or without “­intelligent” manipulation that leads to present conditions. Memento mori experience, finally, is in my description of it an educative opportunity. It is possible to imagine memento mori experience as not being educative, as one perhaps has a realization or remembrance that one is mortal, that one will die, and nothing results from the realization. This certainly happens all the time. Still, it is probably safe to say that experiencing one’s mortal state in a conscious fashion is an unprecedented opportunity to learn. Memento mori experience offers an occasion for learning a most fundamental fact, indeed truth, in regard to one’s existence as an individual and as a member of the species homo sapiens, among many other animals and species, who also are mortal. This learning is not merely instructional but, rather, involves the growth of one’s very sense of self, others, and “the world” or cosmos. The educative aspect is “total” or holistic, also, in that it involves much more than verbal or linguistic registration, including the entire material conditions, sensory and semiotic information exchange, and consciousness, which includes one’s sense of self and others and one’s affective responses to one’s environment, relations, and events that compose one’s life. One knows one will die because one can “see” it and can feel it. Intellectually, Ethically, and Affectively Transformative Elements of Memento Mori Experience Along with these general ways that memento mori experience can be described is also a classical tripartite schema of the intellectual, ethical, and affective.11 These can be applied usefully to memento mori experience, i­ ncluding

3.3.2

11

Classic descriptions of human consciousness in Western philosophy, rhetoric, and psychology, from Plato and Aristotle to Freud, have included variations on the logos / ethos /

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the experience of documentaries. First, memento mori experience refers the individual to the empirical reality of death and, in so doing, the individual is confronted with the fact that she or he can not escape bodily decomposition. Such a confrontation can be intellectually transformative because the real boundaries of human life, in so far as they are known empirically, are defined, and illusions about immortality are brought into correct perspective. Memento mori experience allows for direct negotiation of the issues of human ­survival or existence, challenging the individual intellectually to own up to his or her mortal state. In this contex, I think in particular, for example, of Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006). Memento mori, then, implicates the individual ethically because the viewer responds in a particular fashion, appropriately or not, to the fact of human death, either his or her own or others’. Memento mori experience could result in despair or apathy, but ultimately it calls for courage to face human reality in a new or renewed way. Such an experience can be ethically transformative because it requires reordered relations with one’s self, with others and with one’s environment. In particular, the reality of an individual’s mortal state calls forth efforts for benefiting one’s biological or cultural offspring, that is, by way of children or by way of students or successors. Concern for the group, including the well being of humanity and humanity’s habitat, take over as a primary concern. Memento mori experience is also affectively transformative, or affectively moving. Memento mori artifacts, including images, text, and sound, and other materials, are either immediately startling or have an emerging and sustained effect over time that is more than intellectual. They touch human beings at their most sensorial as creatures driven by desire for life and defiant of death, even to the point of fabricating reality for themselves, composing tragedy and comedy for relief and entertainment, and setting up devices to deal with themselves as mere mortals. One can not help but experience, generally speaking, deep emotional responses to the reality of death (to say the least), a reality that wrenches away loved ones, appears to wipe out whole groups of people without care, and seems ready to knock for any individual at any moment. At the same time, death and awareness of mortality can bring “rest”, and a sense of relief comes. One feels the burden of immortality lifted. Many other emotions could ensue, including grief and lightheartedness, but as an experience, pathos triad. While understanding of the brain has radically increased in the last century, these classic categories retain practical use, in part because they are simple enough to remember and use, while not reducing consciousness or experience to one dynamic alone. These elements form a crucial triad in a classical rhetorical method that, in a modern context, understands these to be elements of transformative communication.

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memento mori touches people affectively, even as it does intellectually and ethically. In fact, there may be no other experience like coming to consciousness of death and human mortality. Perhaps the only comparable experience would be related to birth. The experience of mortality-consciousness can be so powerful as to serve as a basis for great laments and tragedies and, also, for grand denials, spoofs, and comedy, often as spirited attempts to defy the knowledge of the mortal condition. There appear, also, to be particular times and forms that have brought awareness of death more effectively to a larger group of people than others, such as the point at which woodcuts could be reproduced by a printing press. In fact, there seems to be a close, though not exclusive, relationship between the rise of print-media culture and the rise of memento mori. Yet arguably since the appearance of photography and historically celluloid-based film, the cognizance of death has taken on a new distinctive form of power and, simultaneously, both mediation and accessibility not known previously in this way. In large measure, this seems to be attributable to the extraordinary effectiveness of the medium of film to offer viewers a composed moving experience of experience (Sobchack 1992, 3, citing Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, 1968, 155). Indeed, mortality and consciousness, along with artistic convention, come together in film, especially in documentaries, as never before. 3.4

A Contemporary Form of Memento Mori: Documentaries

The experience of documentaries, as a contemporary form of memento mori, is transformative on the multiple levels and with respect to the issues discussed above. While hardly the only form in contemporary culture, an especially apt form of memento mori is documentary film. First, documentaries operate as indices, or pointers, to real death. Meanwhile, they also are conventional in that they have a particular history and way of functioning for audiences in regard to the empirical and what defines its boundaries. Moreover, documentaries at their most effective can be intellectually, ethically, and affectively transformative in regard to reality, society, and human experience. Because documentaries may operate as composed transformative experience, they aptly exemplify a contemporary form of memento mori. We have begun to see this through a discussion of the Powers of Ten in the previous chapter. Now, with these further reflections in mind, we turn to delve into Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes, and then, thereafter, to look at implications for the philosophy of film.

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Ethical Memento Mori: Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes At first take Wim Wenders’s Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989) may appear to be concerned with the obvious front and center topics of fashion, contemporary urban life, and filmmaking. But, more than this, Notebook offers its viewers a privileged look into the particulars of the making of a distinctive life, especially by the inhabiting of one’s given situation and activity as a mortal in the contemporary world, thus taking up the next spot in our discussion of documentaries as memento mori. The film Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten; also known as Notes on Clothes and Cities) (1989) is written and directed by Wim Wenders (b. 1945) and features the Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto (b. 1943). Known for a number of other contemporary masterpieces, Wenders has made a definitive mark on filmmaking, especially as what I would describe as a contemplative of film and of film’s primary concern, which is mortal life. Notebook was made in cooperation with Yamamoto as he prepared for a show at the Louvre during the Paris fashion season and for his flagship store’s reopening in Tokyo. Wenders makes use of the occasion to reflect upon contemporary life and the filmmaking process with the media of film and video in an increasingly electronic and digital age. He anticipates much of the concern over the so-called death of cinema surrounding the 1995 centennial of its “birth”. (As Mulvey [2006] points out, “In 1995, the cinema celebrated its 100th birthday. Critics, theorists, historians and even the public at large suddenly focused their attention on the current ‘state of cinema’” [17]. As film scholars are well aware, the “death” of cinema as a medium and institution made news beyond the walls of academia.) In Notebook, Wenders’s contemplative abilities take the form of an engaging portrait of the life and working process of Yohji Yamamoto. As Wenders reports in his commentary on the film, Notebook was shot primarily by himself on his own as a “one man crew”. Some shots, Wenders reports, had help or were shot by Wenders’s long-time cameraman Robby Müller, e.g., at the Louvre show. (Wenders reports this and portions of what follows in his commentary on the film twelve years after its making. The full narrative of the film by Wenders is reproduced in text format [Wenders 1989],

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and ­commentary about the making of the film is available through the Wim Wenders Collection dvd.) Part of the time he used an Eyemo camera, a famous war-time camera with no motor and a hand crank that allows it to take thirty seconds of film. The rest of the time, he employed, to his self-reported surprise at the time, a handheld video camera, a video “High 8”, the predecessor to the mini dv camera. “Today”, Wenders said back in 2002, he would have made the whole film on dv. Yet he does cite the unique quality achieved by shooting video directly from screens as Chris Marker did in his influential documentary film Sans Soleil (1982). A central tool in the whole film, as Wenders himself comments, is the use of a split focus lens, which allows both halves of a shot to be completely in focus at the same time, even though the subject matter may be long distances apart from each other. This allows Wenders to shoot, for example, an interview with Yamamoto on the exterior steps of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, with Montmartre and the Basilica of Sacré Coeur in the background, completely in focus. Montmartre, known for being home to artists, including Picasso during his “blue period”, was where Wenders began as a painter and engraver, before turning to film. Wenders notes that one effect of the split focus lens is a double image that runs through the middle of the frame and can be seen in these interview shots with Yamamoto and, for example, the shots out of the car in both Paris and Tokyo. The effect of Wenders’s film technology is a split vision that is focused and, also, a double vision boundary line between what is far and what is close at hand. As is the case throughout Wenders’s work, Notebook includes long-take shots that allow for the viewer’s contemplation of the scene in a way that most other films and television programs, especially in America, do not. Robert Philip Kolker and Peter Beicken (1993) write of “the growing sureness of [Wenders’s] craft and style” in his earlier films and the employment of “extended shots that provide long sequences of uninterrupted observation” (27), something of a signature in Wenders’s work as a whole. His images appear like snapshots, still prints, or slides that one flips or flashes, leaves still, contemplates, and then passes on. While employing extraordinary framing and screening techniques, Wenders muses about personal identity, cities, and the process of carrying out a creative project from start to finish in a way that one does in a paper notebook. Notebook has been referred to in an interview as a “diary film” (Wenders 1990, 350). It wrestles with the question of what cinema’s place might be in relation to emerging media forms, including video and especially digital. Wenders candidly ponders, both implicitly and explicitly, where cinema and his work as filmmaker terminate and how the making process is analogous to other forms, including clothes-making.

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Noticeably, Notebook is bookended – near the beginning of the film and near the end – by scenes from the cemetery near the Grande Arche de la Défense in Paris, and some of the film’s most compelling narrative, taken from the interviews with Yamamoto, are in regard to the lack of belief in a “future” for one’s self,1 the implication being that this mortal life is all one has to work with. While these are some of the explicit symbolic and verbal references that we may begin to identify as memento mori in Notebook, some of the other levels of memento mori analysis bring out the phenomenon of ­mortality-consciousness even more strongly. In the end, Wenders’s contemplation of mortality by way of Yamamoto offers viewers a transformative ethos about the responsibility of a unique life, of its endeavors, identity, and measure of care for other human beings as fellow mortals in the contemporary world. 4.1

Wenders as Contemplative Documentarian of Mortals

Regarded as a leading contemporary international filmmaker, Wim Wenders has directed an extraordinary number of accomplished documentary and fiction films. One of the most compelling aspects of his wide body of work as I understand it is his contemplation, by way of film and video, of the transcendent existence of mortals defined by death. In fiction films such as Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987) and in documentary films such as Notebook (1989),2 Buena Vista Social Club (1999), and Pina (2011) that transcendence is found within mortal existence, which, on the one hand, seems to be a measured, calm, felt agony, and, on the other hand, appears as an exquisite meditation and journey to negotiate one’s mortal life and central activity in it. Suffering and death are shown to be the price mortals pay for enjoying the particular pleasures of the human domain, as opposed to, for example, an ­angelic existence. As Wenders articulates it, “Die materielle und sinnliche Welt ist den Menschen vorbehalten. Sie ist das Privileg der Sterblichkeit, ihr Fluch ist der Tod” / “The physical and sensual world is reserved for human beings. 1 On the Wim Wenders Collection dvd, these comments appear in “Chapter 16: Consumer Society”, around the 71 minute mark shortly before the closing credits. 2 Wenders reports in his commentary on the film that Notebook was shot in the summer, fall, and spring after the release of Wings of Desire. Notebook was edited in 1988 in Berlin and released the following year. Wenders’s earlier film with Nicholas Ray should be noted, Lightning Over Water (1980), in which fiction and documentary mix into an account of Ray’s dying of cancer.

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It is the privilege of mortality, and death is its [curse]” (Wenders 1988a, 102 / 1991, 81). As Kolker and Beicken (1993) point out, in Wenders’s fiction-feature The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge) (1982), a character in the film that could be a thinly disguised Wenders, “the director Friedrich”, says, “Death … that’s all stories can carry. All stories are about death … Todesboten [messengers of death]” (43). The theme of mortal existence and of attempting to face or overcome it seems to be ever-present in Wenders’s work, yet, I suggest, the outgrowth of this contemplation becomes not simply a commiseration, but also an intelligent, active ethos of questing to sort out one’s life in a contemporary context and the activity that is to be done in it, whether filmmaking, clothesmaking, or something else. 4.2

Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Notebook

This ethos concerns the “making of one’s life”, rephrasing Yohji Yamamoto’s terms,3 and of “inhabiting” one’s activity in life, which is defined by negotiations of mortality in the late twentieth and now early twenty-first centuries. While memento mori can be identified in Notebook on a number of levels, I suggest that this ethos may best describe how memento mori as a phenomenon and experience operates in the film. Employing the various levels of analysis by which memento mori may be identified in particular documentaries, here I discuss, as we have seen in previous chapters, memento mori as symbolic, verbal, and ideational in Notebook, then memento mori as mortalityindex, memento mori as “conventional” and experiential, and, in the final section of the chapter, how Notebook references the ethically transformative point of memento mori experience. 4.2.1 Memento Mori as Symbolic, Verbal, and Ideational in Notebook While not the most important memento mori references in the film, there are a few explicit memento mori symbols in Notebook. First are Wenders’s shots that open and close the film with a cemetery scene near the Grande Arche de la Défense in Paris, shot by the World War ii Eyemo camera. The Eyemo pans left to right while tilted up and, near the end of the film, right to left, within 3 Yamamoto gives responses in Japanese for the Pompidou Centre interview, while the rest of the film has both Wenders and Yamamoto speaking English. Yamamoto’s phrase, speaking in Japanese and translated into English in the subtitles, is “…make your life”. See “Chapter 15: Fabric of Reality”, beginning at approximately the 66 minute mark and following to near the 68 minute mark.

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the old wind-up camera’s thirty-second limit. The purpose of these images is not so much to “commemorate” the dead as to be given actively the charge to remember or to be conscious that where one begins (or originates) is from those who are now (or will be) dead – one’s ancestors – and this is where one ends, as dead. Second, both Wenders and Yamamoto draw particularly upon the photography of August Sander’s Citizens of the Twentieth Century (1986), which contains prime examples of memento mori pictures. (As Wenders points out in the commentary on the film, Sanders’s book was also “featured prominently in Wings of Desire”.) Sander’s images are portraits of a variety of people, particularly from the early part of the twentieth century. Wenders reports this as one of his favorite books, and Yamamoto, also, is shown employing the book for inspiration for his clothing designs. As historical photographs of people, the images have strong and explicit references to mortality in terms of both their medium and their subject matter. As one contemplates the images, one knows that these people are dead and that the time and place depicted is long since gone. As a particularly apt example, Wenders highlights Yamamoto’s use of a photograph of Jean-Paul Sartre, standing near the Pont des Arts across from the Louvre, a spot that Wenders reprises-by-contrast with a shot from the present-day. Perhaps even more explicit than these symbolic and pictorial memento mori references are the verbal and “ideational” references that may be identified in Notebook. For example, in an interview on the outside steps of the Pompidou Centre, with Montmartre and Sacré Coeur in the background, Yamamoto says that he does not feel that there is a future for himself: “…in my case”, he says (in English translation from the Japanese), “…I’ve rather always wanted to get older as quickly as possible (…) and finish it all, just as quickly. For me, what is coming is the end. I don’t feel that something will begin [for me] in the future”. The result of Yamamoto’s narrative and Wenders’s editing, especially the clip from the steps of the Pompidou Centre back to the cemetery near the Grand Arche, implies both an uncertainty in regard to the immediate future, even a sense of doom, and, also, an assertion that probably there will be nothing for him after his death. The idea is that “the present” (and the past that has led up to it) is all there is for the individual; that is, Yamamoto understands himself as mortal, and “immortality” seems to be achieved through successive generations and the work of those generations, including his own work. For instance, in another interview between Wenders and Yamamoto at a local bar, the two shoot pool while Wenders asks about Yamamoto’s father. ­Yamamoto reports that his father died during “the war” (World War ii) and, ­Yamamoto says in the film (Wenders at this point cutting back to the ­Pompidou

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Centre interview) that the war is still raging inside him. Yamamoto’s father was drafted into the army, was not a professional soldier, and died in the war. That reality is described as still operative in Yamamoto’s life. Psychologically, he is still fighting against powers that enlist men against their will for actions that are elements of society and that sometimes cost men, like his father, their lives. At the same time, he sees himself as attempting to offer protection and help for his mother in such a society through his clothes-making. In both cases, in relation to his mother and his father, he puts forward the sense that he is carrying on traditions that were begun by those that came before him, including working against the grain and designing clothes, and that this work will be what he leaves behind to patrons and especially successors. What begins to emerge from these images and discourse in Notebook is a particular significance for the idea of memento mori: “Remember or be conscious that you are mortal” because this life is all one has, and one’s only option is to make the most of it, or not. What come before an individual are the generations that precede her or him. Likewise, it is offspring, biological or cultural “works” – children, successors, or artifacts such as dresses or movies – that survive the individual. It is up to the individual to take responsibility for the limitations and the potential of one’s life. Or, as Yamamoto puts it in another context, to “make your life”. And to take up that life within the situation and activities that happen to define that life. That this particular significance for the idea of memento mori strongly emerges through the film is illuminated by keeping in mind the role of memento mori as ethically transformative. But before elaborating further on that point, memento mori as “mortality-index”, convention, and experience should not be overlooked. 4.2.2 Memento Mori as Mortality-index in Notebook The material and semiotic references to mortality in Notebook are important to note in order to establish a fuller sense of its operations as memento mori. Memento mori as a “mortality-index” may be identified in the film in several ways. First, while Notebook on Cities and Clothes may be experienced simply as an unusual biographical documentary about an important contemporary fashion designer, it is important to recognize that the film is much more than its explicit formal content. At its very most basic, as a film, Notebook is operating in a medium with a material connection to the empirical world, defined existentially for individual humans by their mortal condition. By way of its technological operations, whether by celluloid or video, the particular configurations of light, chemicals, and machinery of film leave viewers of Notebook with the sense that, even with the documentary filmmaker’s (Wenders’s) “intrusion” into the film, they are seeing the “real deal”. No one

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imagined Yamamoto’s studio, built a set, and then filmed an actor rehearsing a scripted storyline. Rather, the images shown are taken “directly” from Yamamoto’s studio in Tokyo, another studio in Tokyo, the Pompidou Centre, and the Louvre. That is really Yamamoto speaking about his life and work. When he talks about his father, the viewer knows that is not just a story; it is a personal history that is being given. The content of Notebook is not primarily imaginary, but rather documentary, and, as such, it deals with the empirical world of which, for humans, death is definitive. In terms of explicit references, Notebook points to one (real) man in the (real) world by way of another (real) man. This referencing or “indexing” takes place in one (real) city and, then, another (real) city and back again. As noted above, there are symbolic, verbal, and ideational references by, or involving, one or both of the men (Wenders and Yamamoto) in regard to death or mortal life. In addition, however, what is included and implied by these explicit references to the empirical world and its limits for the individual is that there is nothing “beyond” or outside of the empirical. What comes after one individual is another individual. Humans make and are constituted by their systems, which are often quite complex (such as a contemporary city like Tokyo or Paris). Perhaps the systems may be “immortal”, Wenders’s images imply, but individuals seem not to be – unless they are made so by art or documentation, such as photographic, filmed portraiture, or footage.4 More will be said on the question of mortality and immortality in regard to Notebook as a portrait of Yamamoto in a moment. As an index, or material and semiotic reference, to “the real” for human beings, including its boundary line for the individual, which is death, Notebook functions within that extra-cinematic world (Sobchack 2004). In addition, Notebook operates in terms of film’s fundamental de facto task as “documentary” (Nichols 2001; 2010). Documentary, in this context, indicates, first, the taking (and giving) of documentation of the empirical world and, second, the articulation of a vision of the “real world” that is, as we saw in Powers, more complete, “more correct”, relatively speaking, than a vision of the world before the film was made. In this latter aspect, a documentary like Notebook is not merely informational but is transformational because it not only refers abstractly to, but it also participates materially in, mortal life. This observation underpins memento mori as a mortality-index in Notebook from a phenomenological and “rhetorical” perspective (as discussed above and further 4 A point of comparison may be made here with Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten (1968/1977), in which humans disappear in outer space or inner space, at the cellular level, amidst vast, complex material systems.

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elaborated upon in Chapter 5) that goes beyond formal content, to that of “extra-cinematic” awareness (Sobchack 2004) (though the “intra-cinematic” is not then excluded) and, also, to audience expectations about the genre they are viewing in a given communicative situation. In the first sense of “documentary”, Notebook records and then makes available documentation of what’s “out there” in the empirical world. This documentation includes not just the obvious subject matter of a fashion designer and a filmmaker, what they do, and what they are thinking about in relation to their work. But, also, Notebook on Cities and Clothes itself becomes documentation of a time and place, particularly the technology, conventions and knowledge of the time. In Notebook, the general space-time is the 1980s and turn to the 1990s in Europe and transnational culture, with a focus upon the cities of Tokyo and Paris in particular. Moreover, every item and “bit” of data that is a part of the film is a record of this time and this cultural and physical environment that is disappearing or now has already disappeared. As an example of how this particular time and cultural milieu are disappearing or have already disappeared, consider how Wenders’s reflections on video now come across as mostly quaint, and his shock at the potential rise of digital culture already appears manifestly antiquated. Furthermore, viewers may have the sense that the main figure in the film and the filmmaker either already may be or already are dead – though as of the time of writing, they are not! The footage appears as a rapidly disappearing or already bygone era. This awareness of a particular situation on the timeline of history, coupled with the film medium’s ability to document the empirical world, contributes to the film’s referencing of mortality. This extra-cinematic awareness, however, also points to the “conventional” aspects of Notebook because there may be a “sense” that they are dead when in fact they are not. To my knowledge, Wenders and Yamamoto are still going strong in life and work as of 2016. In this case, conventional and audience expectations related to documentary reveal their role as co-constitutive of the experience of Notebook. Along with documentation, then, Notebook as documentary also puts forward a unique composition that may employ information and informational conventions and utilize a sense of “the real world” toward not simply an argument for, but also a performance of, the creation of a particular individual’s life and work as a mortal in the contemporary world. In so doing, Notebook fulfills a fundamental function of the documentary film genre as rhetorical (Nichols 2001; 2010). And, at the same time, the rhetorical operations of Notebook may be seen especially in terms of memento mori as a “convention” and as an experience in or related to it.

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Memento Mori as Convention and Experience in or Related to Notebook As “conventional” and experiential, memento mori may be identified in a number of ways in relation to Notebook, without which our sense of it as memento mori would be inadequate. First, memento mori operates as a function or result of particular histories and cultural genealogies in relation to the film that are tied to mortality-consciousness and to documentation of the empirical world. For example, as identified above, items and ideas appear in Notebook that emerge from a tradition with ties to the explicit and specialized memento mori tradition in art history and from the broader cultural phenomenon of mortality-consciousness in cultural works more generally. Importantly, viewers do not empty themselves of their knowledge of, or associations with, these memento mori traditions or phenomena when, as the case may be, they sit down to view Wenders’s film. In addition, viewers of Notebook are normally aware that they are viewing “a documentary film”, and this brings about certain expectations, which, although highly complicated, can be and are thematized along the lines of the irreal and real, or fiction and non-fiction (more on this in Chapter 5). This raises the second and closely related operation of memento mori as convention in terms of a particular social reception of Notebook. In fact, viewers, filmmakers, and people, even scholars, involved with documentaries are all caught up into the artifice of “the real”, to one extent or another, and this is an explicit theme that Wenders is working on while making Notebook. As he is filming Notebook, he is revealing the fact that, and the processes by which, he has made the film in the first place. Ironically, as he reveals the artifice of documentary filmmaking (and viewing), in which one may be dealing with “the real”, that artifice then becomes part of what is being documented and, simultaneously, forming the documentary performance. Yet just as the Centre Pompidou in its architecture reveals its “inner workings” to the outside, which then simply becomes another layer of the real as artifice (and vice-versa), so Notebook offers layers of the real as convention (and vice-versa). The artifice or convention of Notebook is stark, first, in Wenders’s technology and stylistic devices and, also, in some of the main content of the film. Both of these elements of the film serve as further levels by which to analyze the operations of memento mori as a convention. First, Wenders alternates between an old film camera, the Eyemo, and a new (as of the 1980s) video camera. The effect is to reveal without question that when one is viewing Notebook’s images, one is viewing particular media that come about by way of specific technology,

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namely the Eyemo, on the one hand, and the video camera, on the other. As one looks to the experience of viewing a film, these conventions only are highlighted more, whether one views Notebook, for example, on a small television screen from a videocassette or dvd, or, alternatively, on a mobile phone, lap top computer, or a large screen projector. The significance of various media forms are of high importance to Wenders, so much so that they take on direct references to mortality. For instance, as Wenders (2001) says in another context, one may take “[v]ideo as a kind of … death image…” (351) in which film as celluloid and as image is destroyed. Video and, even more, digital imaging are taken by Wenders at the time of the making of Notebook as a threat to the ongoing “life” of cinema as a medium. In Notebook, he reveals a growing awareness of the power and potential for video and digital technology and images, and he experiments with them, in part, to show the conventional constitution of “the real” versus/and/or “the image”. This experimentation in Notebook is deliberate and sometimes painfully obvious. The central device in the film is the use of split-framing technology to create multiple frames, frames within frames, and, also, to film live, video and celluloid playing on various kinds and sizes of screens, sometimes all rolling in “real time”, or played back through one or another of the media formats or machines. I count at least twenty-five different compositional arrangements of frames and screens within a medium (film) that normally has just one, or sometimes two, such as a frame within a frame. Wenders implodes his framing technique into the movie picture, offering a highly experimental Film/Video Notebook that succeeds in highlighting the conventions and devices of documentary filmmaking, while still pulling off a successful portrait of Yohji Yamamoto. Yet, also, the Yamamoto that emerges from the film is very deliberately composed. The devices or conventions of Notebook, then, extend beyond Wenders’s technology and stylistic devices and include the central subject matter of the film: Yamamoto himself. Perhaps, it goes without saying that Wenders, in part, is composing a portrait of Yamamoto for posterity that will live on long after Yamamoto has died, that will “immortalize” him. Part of the reason that this may seem obvious, however, is Wenders’s drawing upon a memento mori tradition that comes directly from still photography, especially portraiture, and, before that, painting, particularly iconographic painting of saints. Thematically and pictorially, Yamamoto appears as “an icon” that inspires others to create their life, or to take upon themselves useful and beautiful forms that will constitute one’s survival and well-being amidst the fragile mortal condition. Specifically, one experience of Notebook can be that, while this is ostensibly a movie about Yohji Yamamoto with many different shots of him, here and

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there, doing this and that, saying that and this, one is left with a sense of just one image of him, an image that does not move, like his namesake, “a mountain”. Wenders’s film appears, then, rather as a portrait with an effect of being more still than in motion. In this sense, Yohji becomes iconographic, not simply in the pop cultural way, but in a “religious”, “familial”, or ancestral way that serves not only to instruct others, but also to provide an exemplar for what other individuals ought to do: not to make clothes or design fashion necessarily, but to be makers of one’s own life and work by accepting the inevitable limitations given, first in one’s ancestry (and culture), in one’s life-activity (e.g., work), and, then, in one’s relatively-imminent death. In the Wenders Collection dvd version of Notebook, an interview is given with Yamamoto a decade after the original making of the film, and while watching it, a viewer may remind him- or herself that, in fact, Yamamoto is not already dead in the first place. I suggest this sense that Yamamoto has passed on to the “other side” is a result of Wenders’s ability to employ the conventions of iconographic and portraiture traditions. Intentionally or not, he draws upon conventions of iconography and portraiture in relation to a memento mori tradition that, in this case, is not only functioning to immortalize the artist/maker, but also is at least implicitly making a case for a certain ethos. First, the instruction is there to remember or be conscious of mortality. But, along with this, I suggest, comes a way of being – once “saintly” (religious), now selfconstituting (secular) – in the contemporary world. This ethos is markedly shifted, fortunately, in Notebook, from an earlier Wenders documentary film with explicit mortality themes. In Lightning Over Water (1980), directed with Nicholas Ray, Ray is filmed in the process of dying from cancer. There is, however, an overbearing sense in the film that Wenders perhaps artistically may be “killing”, in a mix of fact, simulation, and fiction, his subject matter: Nicholas Ray (compare The Act of Killing [2012], dir. by Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, and Christine Cynn). In Notebook, the feeling is very different. In addition to the film itself, the celebratory and humorous reunion of Wenders and Yamamoto ten years after the making of Notebook makes this clear. Other documentaries that Wenders went on to make also reveal a growing, mature, vision that has received wide acclaim, such as Buena Vista Social Club (1999), which may emerge from a memento mori tradition toward that of memento vivere, or “remember the life one has to live”. This appears to be carrying forth in the later work post-2000, e.g., in Pina (2011). It is important to note, also, as Keith Phipps (2003) has rightly pointed out, that Yamamoto’s interviews and conversation, as they come to us through Notebook on Cities and Clothes, of course are not simply about Yamamoto. They also are a kind of script of what a Wenders character or Wenders h ­ imself would say.

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Thus, when Yamamoto discusses his increasing feeling over the years toward the endearing quality of weakness among his fellow human beings, one may read into this Wenders’s own thought. When Yamamoto says that an asymmetrical or even destructive element must always be included in his work and that if something is just right then he feels the need to break it, one is getting a new Wenders thought. Yamamoto’s struggle with his father, the sense of continuation over generations in the work that he does, the questions of form and content (and form taking precedence so that the content may either be empty or filled in by the viewer or wearer of the form), the struggle between what is marketable and respectable or classic, the coordination of a supporting team to his authorial vision – all of these concerns are worked through Yamamoto and tell the viewer, also, about Wenders, particularly about what he values. Importantly, however, Notebook is not explicitly an argument about those values or an explicit normative statement. Rather, the values and norms emerge in the performance and experience of the film. The iconic status and address, explicitly of Yamamoto and implicitly by and of Wenders, is exemplified and performed. One may see/hear it, one may feel it, one may know it, and the viewer is supposed to come away from the film “a different person” to one degree or another. Moreover, Wenders not only shows one individual in the contemporary world that has taken up his particular situation and work in a distinctive way (Yamamoto), but Wenders also does, or actually performs, the kinds of “deeds” that make him, through his filmmaking (subject matter, compositional choices, technological devices, working processes), another distinctive individual in contemporary life negotiating his situation and activity self-consciously. The purpose of Notebook, then, is not primarily informational but rather to bring about transformation by way of audience connection with these contemporary “icons”. In the holistic rhetorical situation of the performance of the film, the viewer is supposed to recognize both similarity and difference between her- or himself and the figures and actions taking place on the screen that are conceived as showing real people engaged in real life. An action of fundamental persuasion or reorientation is supposed to take place, as Kenneth Burke (1950) describes. This fundamental persuasion or reorientation is transformative, and while multiple levels of transformation may be described that cooperate with one another, from the intellectual, to the ethical and affective (Lonergan 1996 [1971]), the main thrust of Notebook may be best understood as an ethically transformative memento mori experience. Such an ethical transformation is a crucial point in the “vocation of cinema”, documentary in particular, following the philosophy of film of Sobchack,

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­ eleuze, and possibly Kracauer as well (Robnik 2009, 46).5 After an experience D of Wenders’s film (the idea is) one should be able to better create and inhabit one’s life as a human individual defined by death and defined by the activity that takes place within one’s life, before death. 4.3

The Ethically Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Notebook

The charge and phenomenon of memento mori – “be conscious that you are mortal”, or “know thyself (that thou art mortal)” – is taken up in, and in relation to, Notebook because of the idea that negotiating the challenge of mortal life in the contemporary world is worth thinking about, worth talking about, worth sharing with other people, and worth continuing to negotiate in one’s life and work. Specifically, there may be a number of ways to articulate a verbal ethical thesis like this in Notebook, and some of these ways have been discussed above. But also I want to highlight the transformative point as I see it as referenced by Wenders’s film. Formally, I suggest that point can be precisely identified in the film not unlike a Barthian punctum (1980; 1981) or as a specific detail that is not the main subject matter of the image but nevertheless “takes over” the whole picture. Within the film itself, the definitive moment comes near the center: a slow motion video sequence, a detail in the filming of the dress rehearsal for the Yamamoto show at the Louvre (within “Chapter 8: Montage” at approximately the 33 minute mark of the film). The shot frames a model’s feet and dresstail passing by in the foreground with the hand of Yamamoto’s assistant, pen in hand, marking notes on a piece of paper in the background. The scene is played in slow motion with the Laurent Petitgand soundtrack increasing in volume. The video image, while offering a sense of immediacy to reality, also has a sense of dissipating it and, in this case, the picture almost is a “mere occasion” to listen to Petitgand’s extraordinary musical score.6 So that the viewer does not miss the film’s (visual/aural) “thesis”, Wenders reprises it near the 5 “Nothing less than the building of ‘an ethic or a faith’ (Deleuze 1986 [1983], 173) becomes the vocation of cinema, for which without referring to Kracauer, Deleuze uses the latter’s key term: ‘Redemption, art beyond knowledge, is also creation beyond information’ (Deleuze 1986 [1983], 270)” (Robnik 2009, 46, citing Deleuze). 6 Wenders reports in the commentary on the film that Laurent Petitgand did the circus music in Wings of Desire and played the director of the circus orchestra. Pettigand had a band in Paris at the time called “Dick Tracy”, with whom Petitgand performed the music for Notebook.

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close of the film (within “Chapter 18: The Favorite for Last” at approximately the 79 minute mark). Visually, at this point in the film (center and conclusion), an image flashes slowly across the screen. The dress, of which this particular image shows a portion, leaves all color other than black hidden, except, as the model walks, two folds in the back of the dress stretch with each step and, in so doing, reveal a brilliant red color flashing as the model steps across the stage. Because the color black for Yamamoto is considered to be pure form and devoid of meaning (which is for him desirable because it allows for a pure concentration on form), this “moment” in his dresses, of this collection, is a break, a flash, or an alteration that introduces the key asymmetrical moment of the collection. Asymmetry, rather than symmetry, is for Yamamoto, as he says, the key element of beauty and, thus, of prime value (“Chapter 12: At the Foot of the Mountain” at approximately the 49 minute mark and following). Wenders identifies this important point in Yamamoto’s clothes collection and documents it. But, also, Wenders attempts to replicate this same asymmetry and definitive moment within this documentary. The break, tear, or dissipation of film as celluloid (as a medium) by way of film as video (as a medium) in slow motion (as a device) at the center of Wenders’s film is a deliberate construction by Wenders to explicitly reference Yamamoto’s work and implicitly, though no less strongly, reference death. (Incidentally, the red point, line, flash, or other presence of the color red in Notebook serves as a significant link across scenes throughout the film, as does the presence of Solveig Dommartin in Notebook, who starred in Wings of Desire, and to whom Notebook was dedicated. As Wenders points out in the commentary on Notebook, the red dress that Solveig is wearing at the conclusion of Wings is made by Yamamoto.) One may recall, as noted above, that Notebook was made just after Wenders’s well-known fiction feature Wings of Desire, and that the theme of death and the contemplation of the mortal condition are at the forefront of Wenders’s concerns as a filmmaker. As mentioned above, Wenders (1988a) writes, “Die materielle und sinnliche Welt ist den Menschen vorbehalten. Sie ist das P ­ rivileg der Sterblichkeit, ihr Fluch ist der Tod” (102);7 and as Kolker and Beiken (1993) indicate, the statement that “All stories [including films] are about death … Todesboten” in Wenders’s The State of Things may be attributed to Wenders himself (43). Moreover, as discussed above, Wenders directly associates the medium of video with mortality: video as “death image” (Wenders 2001, 351; cited above).

7 “The physical and sensual world is reserved for human beings. It is the privilege of mortality, and death is its [curse]” (Wenders 1991, 81).

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This definitive point in the work of both Yamamoto and Wenders, reprised at the close of the film, operates as a charged moment of “seeing”, “unveiling”, or more accurately, becoming conscious of mortality – that is, a memento mori moment – and out of this a response is called for. Because Wenders’s picture is put into slow-motion and is video (not celluloid), it calls to mind (because of the sense of the dissipation of the image) the aural, emphasized by Wenders by employing the surging Petitgand instrumental. Not incidentally, Wenders calls this audio portion his favorite part of the Petitgand soundtrack, and it is this point in the film that becomes a direct reference to death, which can not be literally pictured, since one can only picture “the dead”, not “the beyond”, as in “beyond the empirical world”.8 This moment, also, may be experienced as a breaking or tearing in the “fabric” of reality as it is known conventionally by human individuals, and this moment invites response. I suggest that part of the reason for the centrality of this image in the film is not only the mortality-reference by way of particular choices of media-use, but also the specific content of the image, which is emotionally charged and is suggestive of a transformative ethos. For Wenders and Yamamoto, this kind of image references some of their most important and emotionally charged values. Yamamoto says, in his discussion of asymmetry, that it is this asymmetrical or breaking element in his work that is highly emotional for him (“Chapter 12: At the Foot of the Mountain”, approximately 49 minute mark and following). Wenders reveals in his commentary on the film that scenes of people working together are for him very emotional (“Chapter 18: The Favorite for Last”, shortly before the 78 minute mark). What I want to highlight is, first, the direct reference to Yamamoto’s dresses and the tear or punctum of his collection. This has been mentioned above. But, second, at the same time there is included in the picture, the image of the assistant’s hands in the background marking the surface of the notebook paper with the pen. The image of the assistant’s hand marking the notebook directly references the final clip in Notebook, which Wenders reports he did not know what to do with, but found as his favorite. Wenders calls this “a privileged moment” in which Yamamoto’s assistants are pictured in his studio working together on where and how to make certain cuts to a particular article of clothing. Here, I suggest, galvanized in an image but emerging from the film as whole is the value of individuals taking up the work that is before them, a work that is “worn”, “put on”, “inhabited”. In this case, the clothing image references any activity 8 Notable is the ultimate visual boundary line of the narrative or sequence of the film: an initial snapping-on of blue video static and, at the conclusion, the snapping-off, like an old tube-television just having been turned off.

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that one takes upon oneself for the purposes of survival, identity, and, hopefully, well-being. A consideration of survival, identity, and well-being is part and parcel of care for others, and care for others emerges from the consideration of each individual’s struggle for survival and of that struggle as it crosses generations facing the reality of death and the condition of mortal reality. As mentioned above, Yamamoto says, “For me, what is coming is the end … I don’t feel that something will begin [for me] in the future”. Yet, despite this, or perhaps more accurately, because of this, Yamamoto feels compelled to carry forward things through his work, things that were begun by others before him. And, while part of his modus operandi, he announces, is to be “irresponsible” (to demands by others to understand his work immediately), at the same time, he reports feeling tender toward human weakness and feeling responsible for others. A central thrust of his work becomes offering ease for men and women amidst the difficulties of contemporary life, whether in Japan or in Europe, America, or elsewhere, particularly in urban metroplexes. Part of this affection for humanity and feeling of responsibility comes from people’s fragile place as mortals in a century (twentieth, now twenty-first) that was and is ravaged by war, and, in fact directly claimed the life of his father (wwii) and, indirectly, but no less dramatically, affected the life of his mother as she struggled to survive and raise children. It was within his mother’s clothes-making business that he grew into the work he does today. Clothing, importantly, is closely tied to survival and identity, particularly in the specific work that an individual does for a living. At the most basic level, in cold climates and poor societies, Yamamoto points out that to lose one’s coat is to risk one’s bodily survival. In this context where items are not simply bought and sold at will, particular clothing means “life for you”. “Without this coat” … “you can’t make your life” (at “Chapter 16: Consumer Society”, from the beginning and following). Likewise, especially in industrial cultures or contexts, to wear particular articles of clothing is to identify exactly what one’s profession is and the means by which one constitutes one’s life. These concerns for bodily survival and professional identity develop, also, into particular articulations of well-being through clothes in modern or global societies, especially in contemporary cities. Noticeably, then, what emerges in the images and discourse in Notebook on Cities and Clothes is that this contemporary world, these cities, these clothes, comprise the habitat for one’s life and work and that, because this life is defined by mortality for the individual, one is compelled to make the most of it. Coming away from Notebook, the individual must take responsibility for the empirically real limitations and, also, the potential of life as he or she knows

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it, which originate with those who have gone before one and, one hopes, will continue with those who come after. A discussion of a documentary in these kinds of terms, then, positions it within a memento mori tradition that often is initially primarily associated with vanitas still lifes, Hamlet’s gravedigger scene, or self-portraits with skulls but, we increasingly see, goes far beyond these particular items. Notebook and Powers are just a couple of the seemingly countless examples, of documentaries as they index, or point to, death within their given conventions. Yet this “indexing” and these conventions create a context for an experience, what I am calling the memento mori experience, in which documentaries are seen to be both composed by filmmakers and also transformative for viewers.9 That is, documentaries are a form of contemporary memento mori.

9 In terms of the experience of documentaries, they also may be said to be composed by viewers and also transformative for filmmakers.

chapter 5

Documentaries as Contemporary Memento Mori In contemporary culture, documentary film as genre and medium is particularly suited to bringing about awareness of mortality. In the first place, documentaries operate as indices of death. As film theorist Laura Mulvey (2006) and others such as Kracauer (1997 [1960]) and Bazin (1967) have noted, the medium of film has a material relationship to empirical reality. Documentary distinguishes itself by relying upon knowledge of, and making claims about, the extra-cinematic world, as philosopher and phenomenologist of film Vivian Sobchack (1984; 1992; 1996; 2004; 2011) elucidates in her discussion of film experience and consciousness. Of all concerns of the empirical world, the survival or non-survival of a being’s bodily existence including “most animals”, but especially humans, endures beyond all other concerns (Sobchack 2004, 279). As films – especially documentaries – reference reality, this survival or non-survival is of prime importance. At the same time, documentaries also rely on “artificiality” and “convention” with a particular history and function, especially rhetorical function, as documentary film theorist Bill Nichols argues (1983; 1991; 2001; 2010; 2013; cf. Cowie 2011). I suggest, then, with the help of Sobchack, Mulvey, and Nichols, that in their indexical and conventional capacities, documentaries such as Powers, Notebook, and many, many other potential examples of documentaries, segments of films, and select footage, may operate as occasions for composed transformative experience as human viewers become conscious of their own mortality. In short, I suggest documentaries are an especially apt and most prominent form of memento mori in contemporary culture. 5.1

Documentaries Index Death

From early in its history, philosophers of film have observed that the medium of film, first in photography and then in cinema, has a distinctive relationship to “the world beyond the film”, including, I would add, the limits of human existence. As the twentieth century German film theorist Siegfried Kracauer puts it: Film brings the whole material world into play; reaching beyond theater and painting, it for the first time set that which exists into motion…It is

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interested in…what is just there – both in and outside the human being. [Furthermore, the] face counts for nothing in film unless it includes the death’s-head beneath.1 hansen 1997, vii

For the human figure, film takes on a role closely related to the ancient practice of the death mask. As Mulvey (2006) points out, André Bazin: identifies [film with] the death mask (…) a direct imprint, tracing the practice back to the “mummification” of bodies in ancient Egypt. The death mask is (…) an index; it is an image formed by an actual imprint of the deceased’s features. (…) This process, holding the flow of time, or “embalming” time, and preserving the actual features of the dead person through an imprinted image, would, Bazin argues, be realized finally and perfectly with photography. Photography would thus take over a function that art had struggled, in the meantime, to fulfill. (…) The connection was understood very quickly in the nineteenth century as people adopted photography into the rituals of mourning and memorials. The deathbed photograph came to replace the death mask. Both record the reality of the dead body and, in preserving it, assumed a ghostly quality. 58–59, citing bazin 1967

Historically, the technology of celluloid-based film relies upon the imprint of light and chemical reaction, through the mechanisms of the camera. As Mulvey puts it, “The index [is] an incontrovertible fact, a material trace that…is a property of the camera machine and the chemical impact of light on film” (55). And: “Whatever their limitations, photographic machines register the image inscribed by light on photosensitive paper, leaving the trace of whatever comes in front of the lens, whether the most lavishly constructed of sets or the most natural of landscapes” (19). The material relationship between film and the empirical world provides a rationale for conceiving of documentary film as an index of empirical death. Historically celluloid-based film, including photography, “may have other properties”, Mulvey writes (2006), but “the physical link between an object caught by a lens and the image left by rays of light on film” is the reason for “its privileged relation to reality” (18). Mulvey draws upon Roland Barthes (and others), who addresses this link in his classic work on photography, Camera Lucida (1980; 1981). She notes that the film theorist Peter Wollen (1998 [1969]) 1 From Kracauer’s notes toward a book on film aesthetics, November 1940, cited by Hansen.

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and Charles Peirce write on the likeness of photographic images to reality based on a physical correspondence to nature (by way of chemicals, machinery, and light) (56). Mulvey writes: The cinema (like photography) has a privileged relation to time, preserving the moment at which the image is registered, inscribing an unprecedented reality into its representation of the past. This, as it were, storage function may be compared to the memory (…). Both have the attributes of the indexical sign (…) the mark of light. (…) As an index, cinema necessarily fixes a real image of reality across time. (…) The index, fixed as it is in the photograph, is a record of a fraction of time. 9, 10, 56; cf. gunning 2010, 255 ff.; cowie 2011; wilson 2012; and kahana 2016

The ability of the machine to “snap” at once, or in a series, reflected light onto light-sensitive materials treated with the appropriate chemicals so as to leave a negative, by which later they can be shown by projected light as a positive image, is singular in the history of human technology and media. This ability, which is unique to cameras, has a distinctive relationship to death and the consciousness of it, which is particularly effective in documentary film. As Sontag (2003) puts it, “Ever since cameras were invented in 1839, photography has kept company with death. Because an image produced with a camera is, literally, a trace of something brought before the lens, photographs were superior to any painting as a memento of the vanished past and the dear departed” (24). Echoing Bazin, she writes: “To catch a death actually happening and embalm it for all time is something only cameras can do…” (59). For instance, in the 1994 fiction feature The Crow, the actor / protagonist is believed to have been killed during the filming of a scene. Or, for example, one may also look to the death of the animals in Renoir’s Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) (1939). Arguably, film technology has the capability to mediate reality in a way that has never been done before. It makes artifacts of light that operate similarly to the way the human eye works. Documentary’s “constitution is dependent on an extracinematic knowledge”, as Sobchack puts it (2004, 247), which is most definitively indicated for humans by death. This knowledge “contextualizes and may transform the sign-functions of the [film image]” not simply within the film but also “within a social world” (247) that really exists. In other words, for documentaries to operate, they take up not the imaginary, but rather the empirical, taking in the “data” of light into their machinery and the information of human existence as it is there empirically. This empirical reality, in so far as it is known, reaches a definitive limit with death because, while dying can be pictured, death, strictly speaking, cannot be pictured (233).

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While particularly found in documentaries, consciousness of empirical reality and its limit, death, may be found in fiction film as well. But even then the experience of reality in fiction takes on a documentary quality. For example, Sobchack (2004) points to the hunt scene in Renoir’s fiction film Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) where a rabbit not only appears (on screen) to be killed, but there also is the distinct sense that the rabbit really has been killed. Usually, fiction is understood to “[confine] itself to the screen or, at most, [extend] offscreen into an unseen yet still imagined world” (247) but, in this case, the fictional order of the film is suddenly overtaken by the non-fictional or documentary (Sobchack 1999, 246; 2004, 241–242, 245–247, 268–270, 274–276, ­282–284). This happens because of empirical death and film’s ability to document that reality. Renoir’s hunt scene takes on the quality of a massacre not simply suggesting the brutality of human violence metaphorically, war in particular, but also showing animals brutally killed. The viewer sees the animal’s living body, fleeing from danger – and then, in an instant, the animal’s corpse. The scene suggests much more than a mere appearance or image of brutality. The viewer knows that what he or she is viewing in this particular footage really did happen. Empirically real death, and not only acted or simulated death, is indicated by the images. Sobchack extends indexical operations beyond images to death itself. As she says, “death as it appears on the screen and is experienced” is “indexically real” (Sobchack 2004, 226–227). In Proposition 1 of her “Ten Propositions on Death, Representation, and Documentary”, she writes: The representation of the event of death is an indexical sign of that which is always in excess of representation and beyond the limits of coding and culture: Death confounds all codes. That is, we do not ever “see” death on the screen nor understand its visible stasis or contours. Instead, we see the activity and remains of the event of dying. Whereas being can be visibly represented in its inscription of intentional behavior (the “having of being” animated concretely in action that is articulated in a visible world), nonbeing is not visible. It lies over the threshold of visibility and representation. Thus, it can only be pointed toward, the terminus of its indexical sign forever offscreen, forever out of sight. (233) The viewer may see a “before” and an “after”, living body, then corpse, but there is no way to compose visually that which lies beyond the visible, at least in any literal or empirical sense, “death itself” (cf. Connolly 2011). An indicator is needed to mark that which was alive, and therefore could still be represented, and which has entered death, that is, a corpse (cf. Sobchack 235–236). In Proposition 2, she continues:

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It is the visible mortification of – or violence to – the intentional, responsive, and representable lived body that stands as the index of dying, and it is the visible cessation of that body’s intentional and responsive behavior that stands as the symbol of death. (…) In this regard, although generally taken as an indexical sign of death (that is, existentially connected to and symptomatic of the cessation of existential being), the corpse is also understood in its particularity as a symbolic sign of the “dead”. (235–236) Documentaries from a very wide range, from their earliest history to the present-day, show “moving” pictures of what the viewers understand as real death, thus bringing human mortality to consciousness. From the earliest documentary films to the present-day, many examples of documentaries as “mortality-indices” may be cited. For instance, the classic Nanook of the North (1922) directed by Robert Flaherty, follows Nanook in various “day-to-day” activities as he and his family struggle for survival in the frozen North where non-survival or death seems potentially ubiquitous and, in the end, wins. The reality of these daily activities and the threat of nature, death in particular, may only be temporarily paused by knowing that Flaherty deliberately staged scenes with Nanook and actively constructed the “reality”. Even knowing this “fictive” element is there, as we saw above with Renoir’s Rules, we know that Nanook really existed and that ultimately he really, eventually, died. We will discuss the constructive, compositional element as a part of documentary experience further in a moment. Many, many examples, including extreme examples may be cited. The Nazi propaganda documentary directed by Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will [Triumph des Willens] (1935), references Nazi strategies, Nazi political “theater”, and, ultimately, the genocide of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others. Generally, moviegoers especially in the West are aware of the extracinematic facts in which Riefenstahl’s film was made so that the experience of it strongly references the empirical horror. Many documentary films, including ordinary ones that reference the Holocaust, operate as instruments in the effort to “never forget” so that such an event may “never again” happen. In the classic Holocaust documentary Night and Fog [Nuit et brouillard] (1955) made just a decade after the Allies’ liberation, Alain Resnais unveils the horrific results of atrocities at Auschwitz through filmed documentation. Hundreds of examples of documentaries may be cited and each of us will have particular films that come to mind, from classic / “canonical” to peculiar favorites. A classic for me, for instance, is The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) directed by Rob Epstein, which gives an account of the assassination of a gay

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politician in San Francisco, a rising star cut down in the prime of life. Viewers learn right from the start that Milk has been killed, and the fact of his (unjust, tragic) death frames and permeates the entire film. The mortality-pathos is thick, even as another related theme of memento vivere, I would suggest also emerges. Yet we know, if we allow ourselves to experience it, that the entire picture is a mortality emblem. Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1987) is oft-cited and illustrates the point. The atmosphere of death, along with gross injustice, is stiflingly dense. And the fact of life-as-a-mortal hangs about in the air as facts, interviews, and accounts are given in relation to a murder, an unjust trial, and an impending death-sentence. I take it that the sense of injustice extends existentially to our entire situation within the mortal condition: that just as surely has we have been born and been living, cruelly, these also have been a set up for us to die. On seemingly a lighter note, in a film about penguins, we still get pointed toward death. In La Marche de L’Empereur [The March of the Penguins] (2005), directed by Luc Jacquet, the fragile condition of the emperor penguins’ lives, the deaths of some, and the struggle for survival become a forceful reference to human mortality. This is the case for many nature documentaries, which usually are explicitly discussing non-human animals such as penguins, while their themes strongly (usually implicitly) reference the threat and fact of individual humans’ non-survival. In Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World (2007), the penguin scene is unmistakable as Herzog suggests a mentally unstable individual penguin marches off on a suicide mission toward its own death. Herzog’s Encounters also points to humans seeing the end of things, particularly the death of humanity through environmental collapse. We see this in An Inconvenient Truth (2006) featuring Al Gore, directed by Davis Guggenheim. The possibility of mass death due to changing climate conditions, including the rise of sea-level, is strongly and directly referenced in its images and narration. While someone could insist, cynically, that the film is an infomercial for Gore and environmentalist propaganda, this would not actually be to experience the film in any serious way. A fundamental orientation toward humans as mortal and the Earth as we know it as destructable is the massive, sometimes creeping, sometimes ecstatic point of this film. Along with a potential memento vivere message in the context of the environmental challenge, the film also forcefully persuades: “Death is your future”. As these and many other documentaries connect to and show the real world at its limits, sometimes explicitly, more often implicitly, they become, as Sobchack (2004) puts it, “mediated contemplation[s] of death”.

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Documentaries Also Rely on Convention with a Particular History and Function

While recognizing the indexical function of film and documentaries in particular, it is important to note that documentaries, also, rely upon convention with a particular history and way of functioning – especially rhetorically. Documentaries have a history related not only to photography and to camera obscura, which actually presents reflected light images in real-time, but also to entertainment. Mulvey (2006) writes about “the tradition of optical illusions that exploit a peculiar ability of the human eye to deceive the mind. Contained in this ancestry is a scientific drive to understand the eye, optics or light. But this scientific drive fed into new kinds of popular entertainment” (33). Nichols (2001) challenges a simplistic account, what he calls a “mythic” account, of film history that runs continuously from early films like the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train (Arrivée d’un train, 1895) and into the 1920s and 30s with Flaherty’s Nanook (1922) and Riefenstahl’s Triumph (1935) (82–84, 88; cf. Plantinga 1995, 34 ff.; Barnouw 1995, 217; Bordwell 1997; Musser 2013). Nichols (2001) claims that the first films, around the end of the nineteenth century, did not simply evolve from cinema’s realism joining with a sense of narrative purpose to become what is now known as documentary film (83– 85). Instead, the early films tended to also go in two other directions: (1) they served as a “basis for scientific modes of representation” (85); and by variation or contrast, they developed into (2) a “‘cinema of attractions’” (86; citing Tom Gunning 1990; see also Nichols 1991, 213). It was not really until the 1920’s that documentary as such had its origin or, as Nichols puts it, until “documentary finds its legs” (88 ff.). And what are those legs, or elements? Nichols suggests that along with the two just mentioned (“cinema of attractions” and narrative – even “story telling”), the third element is poetic experimentation as in the avant-garde tradition (88–91), and “[t]he fourth”, and final, “is also shared with other genres but remains most distinctive to documentary itself”: that is, rhetoric (94; cf. Nichols 2013; cf. Bordwell and Thompson 1990 [1979], 99–100).2 The driving force of cinema as entertainment is that the audience thinks they are dealing with reality, when in fact they are being given illusion. The so-called fathers of documentary were very strong on their claim to reality, and all the elements of filmmaking, such as framing, composition, and editing were employed to support various versions of that claim. From Dziga Vertov to John Grierson and Flaherty, along with anyone doing “documentary 2 Notably, however, rhetoric does not automatically or necessarily conflict with realism. See also the “received history” vs. “the received history critiqued” in Winston (2013), 2 ff.

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work” in any field, as Robert Coles (1997) writes, “the pursuit [is toward] what James Agee [author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (2001 [1939])] called ‘human actuality’ – rendering and representing for others what has been witnessed, heard, overheard, or sensed” (87). The work renders and represents and, as such, it creates, as Brian Winston (1995) points out, a problem for something like Grierson’s “strong claim to the real” (Rotha 1952 [1935], 70; cited in Winston 1995, 11).3 Grierson wanted “a strong claim to the real” while not wanting documentary cinema to be merely “mechanical, automatic (…) arising from nothing more than the (…) apparatus” (Winston 1995, 11). Grierson’s description of documentary therefore as “the creative treatment of actuality” became problematic (11; citing Rotha 1952 [1935], 70), or at least complicated. That is, as documentary work renders and represents, it utilizes various devices, mechanical and compositional, which bring about a certain kind of reception for audiences. As a medium, film is simultaneously limited and effective in its particular capacity. Filmmakers select some prime material, cropping it for the purposes of the final product (Bordwell and Thompson 1990 [1979], 338), and even with the media form’s extraordinary capacity, the camera and screen are relatively limited in and of themselves, materially, compared to the complexity of phenomena. The literal frames of the camera and the screen are rigidly rectangular like those of a painting. Sound adds another dimension, but – perhaps it goes without saying – the flat image on the screen is radically different from threedimensional visual reality. Moreover, choices of the filmmakers at every stage and aspect of the making process offer variation in the completed presentation. For example, differences in compositional style such as open, closed, or variable framing and specific editing decisions inevitably lead to the emergence of a particular hermeneutic, even argument or critique, and political stance in relation to events. In fact, because of this, some documentary filmmakers deliberately choose not to conceal what are normally these “invisible techniques” in filmmaking (Ward 2003). Yet this deliberate revelation also is a compositional choice that alters the “reality” that the audience ultimately will get to see in the film. In terms of 3 Winston (1995) argues that Grierson’s “creative treatment of actuality” is “at best naïve and at worst a mark of duplicity” (11), the idea being that once there is “creative treatment,” then havoc is wreaked upon “actuality” to the point of being unrecognizable or false. In the 1930s, Grierson wrote “First Principles for Documentary” for Cinema Quarterly (Hardy 1966 [1947], 147, these and related themes originally appearing in Cinema Quarterly, 1932–1934), in which the language of a creed, “We believe,” is joined to the language of the real. Cf. Rotha (1952 [1935]); Plantinga (1995; 2009; 2013); Cowie (2011); and Aitken (2013).

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reception, of course the movement in the images of film is an illusion of reality. As students of film well know but viewers usually forget or are unaware, viewers perceive the images as in motion though they literally are a sequence of still images being run rapidly together, like a flip-book. In the midst of these conventions, audiences generally associate documentaries with reality. They believe in the empirical reality that the documentary offers. As Sontag says (2003) in regard to photographs: “The photographs are a means of making ‘real’ (or ‘more real’)” and their “immediacy” makes them “prized as a transparent account of reality” even though they “are a species of alchemy” (7, 62, 81). Viewers take the film image to be real. As Nichols (2001) puts it, “Fiction may be content to suspend disbelief (to accept its world as plausible), but non-fiction often wants to instill belief (to accept its world as actual)” (2; cf. Nichols 2013, 33 ff.). Rather than suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy an imaginary world, viewers believe in the real world presented on the screen. Nichols (2001) writes: “Belief receives a premium in documentaries since these films are intended to have an impact on the historical world itself and to do so must persuade us that one point of view or approach is ­preferable to others” (2). Nichols’s point is that the e­ ffect or ­reception of (documentary) film “invites us to believe” and is not necessarily Nichols’s normative view or his own argument for how film should work. Part of the way ­documentary is able to accomplish this belief is through metaphor (73–81) or analogy. The audience believes that reality, though different strictly speaking from what appears on a ­two-dimensional screen, is really “like this” – that is, reality is like what appears on the screen. In other words, as the viewer knows that what they are watching is not taking place in real time, but was filmed at another time and usually another place, they have a sense of knowledge that the image and reality are, on the one hand, completely different things and, on the other hand, can be compared: this is like that, or, This [i.e., film] is [i.e., making an equation between two different phenomena or items] really how things are [i.e. as if it really were]. Winston (1995), among others, concurs with Nichols on this point of reception: “The whole issue is not one of such formal differences on the screen at all. What prevents a documentary from being a ‘fiction like any other’ is rather ‘what we make of the documentary’s representation of the evidence it presents’” (253, citing Nichols 1991, 108, 125, emphasis added by Winston). It is audiences who can tell the difference between a fictional narrative and a documentary argument: “In other words, it is a question of reception. The difference is to be found in the mind of the audience” (Winston 1995, 253). Making the connection between documentary and the representation of death for viewers in connection to memento mori is something Nichols recognizes and finds interesting (Nichols 2010,

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Nov 30; cf. Cowie 2011, 38 ff.; Comolli 1977). In large measure, documentaries are of distinctive interest because of the (rhetorical) claim to historical or empirical reality as received by audiences. In addition, documentaries seem to have a power or effectiveness in asserting this claim that other media and genres are not easily able to match. Documentary film as medium and genre operates in various modes as well, including one of its contemporary culminations as “performative”. Nichols (2001) outlines various types or modes of documentary, revising earlier scholarly work on documentary by Eric Barnouw (1993 [originally 1974]). These modes include the poetic, the expository, the observational, the participatory, the reflexive, and the performative, and roughly but do not necessarily correspond to various eras in documentary film’s historical development (99–138). The performative mode is particularly important for much of contemporary film, especially for the 1980s (138, Table 6.1) and following. Nichols describes: Performative documentary freely mixes the expressive techniques that give texture and density to fiction (point-of-view shots, musical scores, renderings of subjective states of mind, flashbacks and freeze frames, etc.) with oratorical techniques for addressing the social issues that neither science nor reason can resolve [on their own]. Performative documentary approaches the domain of experimental or avant-garde cinema but gives, finally, less emphasis to the self-contained quality of the film or video than its expressive dimension in relation to representations that refer us back to the historical world for their ultimate meaning. 134; cf. nichols’s comments on Night and Fog

Following Nichols, performative documentary may have been but is not ­necessarily a culmination of all other prior modes of documentary, which may employ the other modes and, also, other film genres. Among other modes, the performative mode may best characterize documentary film as it is understood in contemporary theory, although a more recent turn may be toward the use of raw footage and formats that translate easily from mobile documentation to wide distribution such as YouTube videos. Notably, the period, from around 1977 to 1993, though not limited to this time frame, defines the era of the films, Powers of Ten, Notebook on Cities and Clothes, and (in the next chapter) Blue, that are the focus of our in-depth discussion throughout this book (before fast forwarding to 2001 to 9/11 footage). Among other things, the performative is a sophisticated interaction with what is taken to be real and illusory, fact and fiction. Attention to the performative shifts concern from purely formalist approaches to film in favor of the p ­ ractices

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of filmmaking and viewing as a part of a tradition of humanistic work, including rhetorical practice. As performative, documentary employs the full range of available means of persuasion, or the classic practice of rhetoric, to address concerns in the social and empirical world. As Nichols (2001) puts it, “documentary films and videos speak about the historical world in ways designed to move or persuade us” (80). In fact, what is “most distinctive to documentary itself” is rhetoric (94). Notably, this is not limited to performative documentary only, but to documentary generally. Nichols puts it unequivocally: “Rhetoric in all its forms and all its purposes provides the final, distinguishing element of documentary” (87–98; cf. Bordwell 1989; Plantinga 1995; 2009; 2013; Renov 2013). Importantly, as discussed above, “rhetoric” here is understood as a humanist discipline and practice, not as “mere rhetoric”, or as the empty use of words. Rather, as one may recall, rhetoric is classically defined as the ability to find all the available means of persuasion in any given situation. In a modern context, persuasion may also be understood as a means of transformation, and rhetoric is conceived in a variety of ways but especially as transformative communicative practice. To describe the significance of documentaries-as-memento-mori as transformative is to assume that it is a part of the transformative communicative practice that constitutes human culture. That human culture is constituted by such transformative communicative practice derives from many of the best sources in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and elsewhere and, also, is a commonplace assumption in communication, media, and rhetorical studies (e.g., Burke 1950, 1961, 1966; Foucault 1972 [1969], 1980 [1976], 1994 [1966]; Gadamer 1993 [1960]; Habermas 1984 [1981]; Lonergan 1967, 1996 [1971], 2000 [1957]; Ong 1967, 1977, 1982; Rorty 1979, 1989). That documentary is distinguished in terms of rhetoric is highly significant. This means that documentary is not only concerned with information (or mere “documentation”), particularly in regard to empirical reality, but also, and even more so, it is concerned with transforming a human being’s experience.4 4 In this context the question of falsification or deception may be raised. If documentary relies upon conventions of reality, then certainly the conventions can be manipulated in such a way as to present something as real that in fact is not real, or, more to the point, something as true that in fact is false. If purposes of persuasion or transformation are the endgame, then certainly one could, and people do, use deception to achieve their aims (cf. Nichols 2013, 36; Plantinga 2013, 45). In the history of rhetoric, this issue is often sorted out as a distinction between classical rhetoric (which relies upon philosophy [“the love of wisdom”] and the triad of logos, ethos, and pathos, with logos as the “starting point,” if you will) and sophistical rhetoric or, simply, sophistry (which is often characterized as being only concerned with success in argumentation or persuasion and, therefore, prone to deceit, falsehood, and disregard

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Documentaries as Composed Transformative Experience

Put simply, in their empirical and conventional capacities to reference death, documentaries are transformative. This transformative power operates on several levels and is due to its operations materially and conventionally, and also in relationship to human consciousness and experience. As Sobchack (1999) articulates it: documentary is less a thing than an experience – and the term [documentary] names not only a cinematic object, but also the experienced “­difference” and “sufficiency” of a specific mode of consciousness and identification with the cinematic image (241; latter emphasis added). This “specific mode of consciousness and identification” is, for Sobchack, “documentary consciousness” (1999; 2004). In part, here and below, Sobchack is building on her earlier foundational work in the phenomenology of film (Sobchack 1992; cf. 2011). While Fricke and Taylor (2005) and others (including Perez 1998; Montgomery 2000; and Girgus 2002) mention documentary consciousness, and there is some reflection upon “historical consciousness” in documentary film in Nichols (e.g., 1996), Sobchack more extensively pursues the idea (especially in 1999 and 2004). And while Sobchack’s work draws upon the work of Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, the American phenomenologist of communication Richard L. Lanigan, and the Belgian psychologist Jean-Pierre Meunier, among others, Sobchack’s discussion of documentary consciousness is ground-breaking work. She writes, “The film experience is predicated (…) on the significance of movement, on its activity of choice-making which is lived through the bodies of both the spectator and the film” (277), adding, “If we are to understand how we understand the film experience, why it has significance for us, and why we care about it, we must re-member [sic] that experience as located in the lived-body” (300; also cf. 2011). for truth). In more recent scholarship, though, beginning as early as Nietzsche, the Sophists have been “rehabilitated” and a more profound truth of their own is being recognized. In any case, however, in short, in an empirical sense, falsification and deception take place within documentary conventions, while in a normative sense, generally speaking, one may argue that these things should not happen because documentary should rely upon accurate facts, ethical handling of that information, and leave affective appeals to emerge from ethical handling of accurate information. Compare Bordwell’s (1993) discussion of pathos in the context of Eisenstein’s work (190 ff.). Another context for this discussion takes place within art, for which there is a significant bibliography, but which lies outside of the specific concerns of this study.

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The turn to experience, allowing that “experience” is both “found” and “composed”, in understanding and analyzing documentaries, involves attention to a number of general aspects that may be identified as constituting that experience. These include attention to, as introduced in in Chapter 3 above, the “total”, integrative, or holistic; attention to materiality and “informational” qualities; attention to the facts of both design and chance contingencies; and attention to an educative function. These general aspects of composed experience set up a better understanding of how documentaries are transformative, especially in intellectual, ethical, and affective terms, and, as such, are especially well suited to exemplify one particular manifestation of contemporary memento mori experience. In the first place, documentary experience may be a “total”, integrative, or holistic experience. Documentary experience includes everything from that which constitutes a viewer’s body and consciousness to the total space in which the film is made and shown and beyond, to the whole empirical or historical environment in which the film is made and shown.5 Of course, “experience” is recognized as a loaded term, and, while its usefulness understandably is critiqued (e.g. Gadamer 1993 [1960]; Rorty 1979; Sharf 1998), the case for it is made, for example, within pragmatist circles (Alexander 1987; Shusterman 1997; 2000) drawing upon William James (1929 [1902]) and John Dewey (1944 [1916], 1958 [1925], 1980 [1934]). Also, the concept and rhetoric of experience is readily employed in both popular and critical literature within contemporary design (e.g., Norman 1988; Grefe 2001; Shedroff 2001; Milligan and Rogers 2006), film (Sobchack 1992, 1999; Plantinga 2009), business (e.g., Pine and Gillmore 1999; Pullman and Gross 2004), and psychology (e.g., Mahrer 1978; Csikszentmihalyi 1990; Ackerman 1991; Privette 2001) to name a few. Dewey’s Art and Experience (1980 [1934]) remains a basic starting point for considerations of experience in this context. In the way I am referring to it, a more complete understanding of documentary experience might be achieved if every department or program in a major research university – and every scholar or researcher within those departments or programs – were to take their methods and study-practices and apply them to documentaries, segments of documentaries, and/or select footage: from film and literary theory to sociology and anthropology, and on to biology, brain sciences, optics, and others fields across liberal arts and sciences, and even into the professions such as law and medicine. This would be a phenomenological and interdisciplinary take on human ­experience. In addition, 5 Distinct but related, compare Bordwell’s (1997) comments on Bazin’s ideal of a “total cinema” (70–71).

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the experience of documentaries in particular is constituted by the complete material conditions that constitute human experience in the first place, including bodies (brains included), tools or machinery, structures and surfaces, and anything else that makes up what humans know to be the world or cosmos (including Earth). Moreover, documentary experience also may be said to be informational, though it goes well beyond instruction. While its informational-instructive capacity is certainly critical because it teaches a viewer crucial facts, such as “See this here? This is the world you inhabit”, even more than this it teaches the critical fact, “See the living? Now see the dead? This is reality for us humans”. But documentary experience is “informational” also in the sense of involving the complex of sensory and semiotic interchanges, which include, but far exceed, the explicit text or pictorial objects that blip on and off the screen. Sensory and semiotic, including semantic, data is given in the total experience of film, which may be transmitted by both designed and accidental or chance-contingent means. Various degrees and kinds of design take place in the making, showing, viewing, and otherwise experiencing of documentaries that end up contributing more or less strongly to that experience. At the same time, design elements hardly exceed the almost overwhelming happenstantial elements that define documentary experience, from “outside” operations and undesigned systems to accidental, random, and chaotic forces beyond human capacity to control either by consciousness or by technology (including cameras). One of the most definitive of these forces, while acknowledging human being’s reproductive and creative capacities, is the threat and reality of death. Documentary experience is, then, educative, in the deepest or most comprehensive sense of the word. For the viewer to experience her or his mortal state in a conscious fashion by viewing that state as presented on screen, by recalling images from a film, or by making associations between the film and one’s memories, both stored and reconstructed, is for contemporary viewers an unprecedented opportunity to learn a most fundamental fact in regard to human existence. That is, as an individual and as a member of human society, though not excluding other animals, one comes to the knowledge that humans/animals die, that one will die because one can see it on screen and can “feel it in one’s bones”. This may be the ultimate characteristic of a medium and genre that is particularly suited to being an “experience of experience”, as Sobchack, following Merleau-Ponty, has put it. And, while other themes may be pursued such as the idea that “life goes on”, documentary’s operations as composed transformative experience still hinge upon a person’s awareness of human mortality.

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Moreover, I suggest the transformative powers of documentaries operate on intellectual, ethical, and affective levels of human consciousness and experience in life:6 1)

to determine and distinguish reality from irreality, including one’s empirically real place in the cosmos (human society and conventions included), 2) to contemplate appropriate responses to the mortal condition, ­including taking responsibility for one’s life and inhabiting one’s social/­cultural situation and activity with others (including identity, work, and relationships), 3) and to move individuals into distinctive human experience, including of love or friendship and appropriate acceptance, courage, or productive defiance toward mortality. Documentaries as Intellectually Transformative: Determining and Distinguishing the Real from Irreal First, the experience of documentaries raises the issue of what is real and what is not, which is to be sorted out intellectually based upon extra-cinematic knowledge. As Sobchack (2004) puts it, this knowledge is constituted “by social and contingent experience” (273–274). But “documentary consciousness”, as she calls it, not only “informs and transforms the space of the irreal into the space of the real” (261),7 thereby constituting reality (a crucial point), it also is

5.3.1

6 As discussed above, these terms emerge from Lonergan (1967; 1996 [1971]; 2000 [1957]), Burke (1950; 1961; 1966), and, more generally, on thematic traditional elaborations of human consciousness and interaction as given in Western tradition, especially in philosophy, rhetoric, and psychology, from Plato to Freud to the present. 7 Sobchack (2004) notes, “there is [not necessarily an essential] difference between the [fictional or factual] at all. Certainly, we cannot resolve this paradox if we only look to the film as an objective text. Rather, its resolution lies in our recognition that the designations fiction and documentary name not merely objective and abstracted cinematic things distinguished and characterized historically by particular textual features but name also – and perhaps more significantly – distinctive subjective relations to a variety of cinematic objects, whatever their textual features. In sum, what the generic terms fiction and documentary designate are an experienced difference in our mode of consciousness, our attention toward and our valuation of the cinematic objects we engage” (261). Yet beyond subjective relations with cinematic objects, there is, minimally, relations with non-cinematic or extra-cinematic objects. Cf. Sobchack (2004) on a “phenomenology of interobjectivity” (286–318). Ultimately, terminology other than “subjective” and “objective” may prove more useful for describing documentaries.

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a label for the activity of the documentary viewer as she or he makes comparisons between what previously has been judged to be real or is remembered as real “outside the film” and what is “inside” it, sometimes revising what is judged as real based upon new information from the film. Because documentaries are understood as recording and presenting ­empirical reality, documentary consciousness and experience also highlight the definitive limit of empirical reality for individual human beings: death. The individual’s realization of his or her own inevitable death raises some of the strongest intellectual and existential questions known to human beings. This issue of the awareness of mortality raised for a viewer by documentaries can also bring about a new or renewed intellectual clarity about one’s empirically real existential place, including as a part of human society, in the cosmos. Documentaries as Ethically Transformative: Contemplating Appropriate Responses to the Mortal Condition Documentaries also raise questions about how one appropriately responds to the realization of one’s own inevitable death and to the death or deaths of other human beings and some animals. Ethical considerations come to the fore in documentaries in several ways. As Sobchack (2004) points out, “Before the nonfictional screen event of an unsimulated death, the very act of looking at the film is ethically charged, and this act [of looking] is itself an object of ethical judgment” (244, Proposition 6 of the “Ten Propositions”, deemphasized). The question of snuff films could be raised here, where allegedly an actual death or murder is filmed and shown. (Supposed examples of snuff films, however, require authentication by specific analysis and investigation techniques employed, for instance, in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) [Scientific Working Group on Imaging Technology (swgit) 2005]). Other examples include highly controversial genre-bending films, e.g., Faces of Death (1978), or footage montages with extreme visual content on media such as YouTube or through social media platforms. In any case of a particular film or set of footage, the question is raised as to how one looks appropriately at real dying and the dead on screen. Beyond this, however, is the question of how one deals with the dying and the dead in real life. On screen, as Sobchack indicates, death is often represented as “abrupt”, and it is often “violent action” which most typifies “cinematic representation of death” in its “most effective” way (cf. Propositions 3, 4, and 5 of “Ten Propositions”). So if war, murder, terrorism, or a reckless accident is the cause of death, the documentary viewer is called to account for how he or she responds to such injustice or, in some cases, imprudence. Documentaries are dealing, after all, with the empirical, and one’s responsibility extends beyond

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film images to “real life”. The experience of documentaries extend “beyond” the “text” or image; the viewer is engaged ethically because documentaries concern “intertextual” significations “provided by [the] personal and cultural knowledge” involved in a viewer’s subjective “gaze” that extends to a social world, or “a world shared with other human subjects” (Sobchack’s Propositions 7, 8, and 9). Sobchack writes: The charge of the real always is also, if to varying degree, an ethical charge: one that calls forth not only response but also responsibility – not only aesthetic valuation but also ethical judgment. It engages our awareness not only of the existential consequences of representation but also of our own ethical implication in representation. It reminds us reflexively to ourselves as embodied, culturally knowledgeable, and socially invested viewers. (284) Documentaries that show the dying and the dead highlight the filmmaker and viewer’s personal or ethical responsibility.8 But also, whether the dying or dead appear explicitly or not, human beings involved with documentaries are implicated because documentaries engage the real world, which is defined by basic issues of life and death, as constituted by human society and their machines. “[The documentary space] is always also a space co-constituted by and ‘pointed to’ by the viewer whose consciousness re-cognizes and grasps that onscreen space as, in some invested way, contiguous with her or his own material, mortal, and moral being” (Sobchack 2004, 284). Thus viewers are not viewers only but also remain human beings within their local and also global human context. Documentary experience challenges a viewer to take responsibility for life in the face of death and to make something constructive of one’s self in relation to human society. A productive contribution is called for, which may be understood as the activity (including work, relationships, self- and ­group-identity) that an individual chooses or has foisted upon her or him. The individual is challenged to own up to the real, given, peculiar, social, and cultural situation that makes up the individual’s “habitat”.

8 “Although death itself confounds and exceeds its indexical representation in documentary space, the filmmaker’s and viewer’s ethical behavior does not” (248; deëmphasized). This is Sobchack’s Proposition 10. She elaborates: “Whether by necessity, accident, or design, the documentary filmmaker represents – and thus encodes – his or her act of vision as a sign of an ethical stance toward the actual event of death s/he witnesses” (248).

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Documentaries as Affectively Transformative: Moving Individuals into Distinctive Human Experience Ultimately, the experience of documentaries may help move viewers into more distinctive human experience. Along with intellectual and ethical engagement with what constitutes the real, especially life as a mortal in a given social and cultural context, documentary experience employs aesthetic, or otherwise sensorial, elements that have strong affective appeal.9 In addition, documentaries present what is apparently different or other-than the viewer, and either the viewer comes to recognize what was already really similar, or otherwise the viewer actively connects through simulated experience with something or someone that is not him- or herself. Such a connection is transformative because it involves the process of either resolving illusion or of adjusting one’s sense of reality, including one’s self, in relation to other human beings and the empirical world. The experience of documentaries engages not only the intellect and sense of self, but also the basic sensorial responses of the human body, from skin and nerve endings to the brain and back again, including everything that amasses into what are identified as the emotions. This power may be “located” in the images and sound of a documentary itself, a portion of a documentary, or particular footage; in particular audiences or viewers; in the mind or body; and in the experience of the total interaction of all data, sign systems, and environment that make up the documentary experience. Depending upon a viewer’s existential position and perception, documentaries’ operations in relation to the human brain and body will have varying affect. Their affective power depends upon the interaction of the viewer’s consciousness within the entire material situation. In large measure, it also is the content of documentaries that engage human emotions so effectively. This content includes the primal and thoroughgoing concerns of human beings, not only for survival, but also for the most distinctive aspects of mortal life, such as sex and love, acceptance of one’s self and condition, individual belonging within a group or groups, and conflict or defiance appropriate to the challenges of mortal life – what could be summed up as the experience of human courage. In an era and culture of digital technology, how documentaries are precisely “moving” has changed, and the experience of documentaries certainly is

5.3.3

9 As Sontag (2003) says, “Citizens of modernity (…) are schooled to be cynical (…). Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved” (111). This, in part, is because there is a dangerous side to the affective. “Sentimentality, notoriously, is entirely compatible with a taste for brutality and worse” (102).

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t­ ransforming itself as new technologies and circumstances arise (cf. Noonan, Little, and Kerridge 2013, 476–477), but for the time being and probably for the foreseeable future, documentary experience continues to engage consciousness of mortality at its most sensorial. 5.4

Levels of Analysis by Which Memento Mori is Identified in Specific Documentaries

From theorizing documentaries as an especially apt form of memento mori generally, one may analyze specific films, select portions of films, or particular footage as examples or cases of the phenomenon of memento mori. To conduct such analyses is to look for how a specific example is transformative in regard to awareness of death and to identify the levels at which features of memento mori may be referenced. An eye for intellectual, ethical, and affective issues that may come to the fore is helpful, particularly in the way that the film is composed and experienced. Attention is put upon the framing of shots, stylistic choices, editing, and other elements that compose the film or selected segment as one whole. These compositional elements – composition meaning all the elements involved in putting together the final version of the film – may include consideration of the following: color, scale, figure and ground, shape, line, pattern, framing of the shots, open and closed framing, frames within frames, point of view, editing, cutting decisions, staging, movement, sound, light and lighting, lens choice, camera placement and movement, lens angle and focal length, depth of field, intuition, rhythm, and relation of sound and picture (cf. Bordwell and Thompson 1990 [1979]; Zittle 1999; Murch 2001; Giannetti 2002; Ward 2003). My mode of analysis primarily engages the films themselves, select portions of the films, and select footage, but also includes, along with other films and primary writings by the authors and secondary scholarship about the films, some first or second hand contact with the filmmakers and/or their work through site visits, e.g., to the Eames House, to the Powers picnic site on the Chicago lakeshore, to Cranbrook Educational Community, to the Pompidou Centre, to the World Trade Center site in New York City; archives, e.g., the Library of Congress, Cranbrook Archives, special collections of the British Film Institute; and, when possible, contact or interviews, e.g., with the filmmaker or those who knew or know him or her well, such as family members, biographers or scholars, or those with first-hand knowledge of the films, footage, or related material.

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Along with these considerations, I suggest with the help of a number of film scholars (e.g., Bordwell and Thompson 1990 [1979]; Sobchack 1984, 1992, 1999, 2004, 2011; Zittle 1999; Murch 2001; Nichols 2001, 2010, 2013; Giannetti 2002; Mulvey 2002, 2004, 2006) one may direct analysis of memento mori along the following lines. 1) Identify one or more memento mori items, particularly as a symbol, in a specific documentary film, segment of film, or portion of footage, 2) Identify one or more memento mori items, particularly as verbal or literary, in a specific documentary film, segment of film, or portion of footage, 3) Identify the idea of memento mori, or consciousness of mortality, in direct relation to the content of a specific documentary film, segment of film, or portion of footage, 4) Pay attention to material or semiotic references to mortality (memento mori as index of death) within or related to a specific documentary, segment, or portion of footage and within or related to its viewing by an audience, 5) Search for memento mori as a convention in, or related to, the viewing of a specific documentary film, segment of film, or portion of footage in a given context by a given audience, 6) Inquire into the phenomenon of memento mori as experienced in relation to a specific documentary, segment, or portion of footage. These steps obviously need not be followed robotically, they may overlap with each other, and other lines of analysis potentially could be pursued, but these offer a fairly comprehensive and useful starting point for analysis. The analysis of specific films, select portions of films, or of documentary footage in terms of the phenomenon of memento mori is accomplished, also, in the experiential context of each film or viewed segment and in some measure knowledge of the filmmakers, other films, and/or other cultural items or experiences, such as all those discussed in terms of memento mori above in this and in previous chapters. These include the general aspects of “composed experience” outlined above: “total” or integrative, material, “informational”, both designed and contingent, and educative. Various levels, then, can be identified by which memento mori is identified in a specific film or chosen segment of a film or portion of footage. Each documentary will be more or less accessible to each level of analysis, some fulfilling more features and functions of memento mori than others. First, one

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may identify one or more memento mori items, particularly as a symbol, in a specific documentary. For example: a death’s head appears, or a timepiece (such as a clock, hourglass, or watch), the remains of an animal brought in from a hunt, dead flowers (or in some cases live) such as lilies, rotten (or in some cases fresh) fruit or half-eaten food or casks or bottles of wine, or other ordinary items of human life that indicate life at one remove or gone, such as strewn clothing or clothing hung but not worn by a person, a tombstone or cemetery, a sleeping person or a dead person, a corpse or corpses, a casket, a deathbed, death masks (or masks generally), portraits (painted, or especially photographic), religious artifacts (such as a cross, crucifix, or rosary), a candle or candles (lit or snuffed out), armor or weaponry (such as knives, guns, bombs), smoking paraphernalia (pipe, cigarettes), even books, musical instruments or bubbles, and death scenes (such as battlefields, automobile or airplane accidents, murders, suicides, executions, such as an image of a gas chamber or an electric chair, aftermaths of terrorist attacks, funerals or memorial services) or, sometimes, more implicitly, the noticeable lack of something related to human life that seems obviously missing, like a human figure that was in the picture but now is not. Each of these items can be identified as a memento mori item or symbol within a film. If the film’s content warrants it, because of substantial memento mori content (or because of the other levels at which memento mori is referenced, which are discussed below), then the film or selected work as a whole may be dubbed as a memento mori picture. Second, one may identify one or more memento mori items, particularly as verbal or literary, in a specific documentary. A memento mori reference like this may reference not only an artistic memento mori tradition, but also a literary tradition of memento mori. This reference may be a direct quote, verbatim in Latin, or it may carry the language of memento mori as translated

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or paraphrased in English or another language such as “remember mortality”, “remember that you must die”, “be mindful of dying”, or “recall that you are mortal”. In addition, a specific documentary may reference a memento mori item in literature, particularly but not exclusively that of Western literature, either literally or referentially in a way that accesses the idea of memento mori. Each of the features of memento mori mentioned thus far is important. However, even more significant analysis in terms of memento mori comes when attention is directed to ideational and empirical contexts. One looks for where the idea of consciousness of mortality is present in a specific work, and one may take special note of material and historical links between a documentary and the human experience of becoming or being conscious of mortality. Third, then, one may identify the idea of memento mori, or consciousness of mortality, in direct relation to the content of a specific documentary. Thematic content in a particular documentary may be identified as relating either to dying and death or to mortal life, with death being the implicit or explicit end. Moreover, the film itself, particular moments in the film, or even unique details in the film such as particular footage (that may or may not be identified as central to the narrative or as immediately dominant elements of an image, such as a central figure or object) may be identified that prove particularly compelling a la Barthes’s punctum (1980; 1981). Fourth, as we see in the examples discussed in this book, one may pay attention to material or semiotic references to mortality in or related to a specific documentary and its viewing by an audience; that is, memento mori as index of death. It is basic to pay attention to the fact that the specific film or selected footage itself, because of its medium, operates as an index (pointer/reference) to the empirical limit. Specific documentaries and documentary footage may be analyzed as that which brings (or brings again) mortality to the awareness of the viewer, because of the medium of film and film’s documentary function – and not only the genre of documentary. Fifth, one may search for memento mori as an artificial convention in, or related to, the viewing of a specific documentary or selected segment within a given context by a given audience, and lastly, one may inquire into the phenomenon of memento mori as experienced in relation to a specific work. These are the levels of analysis I have applied to the films discussed above and in the next chapters on Derek Jarman’s Blue and select 9/11 news footage, our penultimate chapters. These documentary films and footage I discuss have been viewed and reviewed numerous times and in various contexts. I have watched the films by myself and with audiences, ranging from one other

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person to approximately twenty-five people, of a variety of ages and a variety of locations and venues. Of course the documentaries have been viewed as whole works, but also they have been broken down into segments, which is standard practice for paying close attention to detail in film, on dvd, digital file, or streaming.10 I have talked about them with people, listened to people’s observations, thought about the work, and let their images and sounds brew in my own consciousness. While not the only way to view and experience documentaries, I would suggest that to get the levels of analysis discussed here, such practices would be prerequisites. We turn now to reflections upon Derek Jarman’s Blue – an example of memento mori that charges these themes with particularly affective power.

10

As a “mediated contemplation of death” (Sobchack 2004), the transformative experience of a particular documentary takes on increased significance in a multi-media, digital culture, with media forms that allow for repeated play, for freeze- or still framing of images (Mulvey 2006), and for engaging the films in multi-media formats in various environments and audiences. This technological ability and mobility allows for both pointed and sustained consideration of the films over time that is ideal for lovers of film, for critics, and for scholars.

chapter 6

Quintessential Memento Mori Experience: Derek Jarman’s Blue Derek Jarman’s film, Blue, is a transformative documentary that creates a strong sense of space in which the process of dying is hashed out with pathos – especially with humor and anger, and with resignation toward, and defiance of, a terminal condition. It was made in color in Great Britain – completely in a color of blue close to the artist Yves Klein’s “international blue”, which fills the screen for the entire production, and it runs approximately 76 minutes. Most directly, Blue presents Jarman’s situation as an artist with aids who is losing his sight and is dying. Blue, also known as Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is written and directed by Jarman, with narration by Nigel Terry, John Quentin, Tilda Swinton, along with Jarman, and music by Simon Fisher Turner. Because there is no image other than the blue screen throughout the film, there is some rationale for accessing the audio portion of the film only, which is available on an audio cd entitled Blue: A Film by Derek Jarman (1993). In fact, Blue took on various forms, including a performance piece, as it evolved (Peake 1999, 473–478). In addition, Blue was released in various venues including movie theaters, television, and radio (526–528). There is also the text of the film itself and writings that led to it, which appeared in book form (Jarman 1993; 1994). As I see it, Jarman’s thoroughly daring work, from his earliest feature film to the avant-garde documentaries at the close of his life, especially in Blue, articulates a vision of life in apocalyptic and ecstatic terms. Jarman’s biographer Tony Peake (1999) reports that the film began from “some notes entitled Bliss” (362) and went through a variety of forms before settling in as the film. There was some consideration of “a fictional film” and then a performance based upon, and as a tribute to, the work of Yves Klein (Peake 1999, 398–399; and Special Collections, British Film Institute). The proposal for Blue is dated August 1987 (559, ftnt 31) and titles for it as it progressed include Bliss, International Blue, Blue is Poison, Into the Blue, My Blue Heaven, Blueprint for Bliss, and Blueprint (398; 435; 559, ftnt 30) – which help give a sense of the wide range of its associations (see also Jarman 1995, 103–124; and Special Collections, British Film Institute). Originally, Jarman assembled a large hardcover blue notebook (approximately 15 × 15 in.) with gold lettering that shows the crucial role of the artist © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004356962_008

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Yves Klein’s work as an influence upon Jarman, especially in contemplating mortality and immortality in regard to one’s life and work (“Jarman ii Blue” [gb, jp, 1993] Box 16, British Film Institute, Special Collections). Along with pressed flowers and photo-booth shots of Jarman in red and blue, the notebook is full of jottings and various cut-outs and photocopies especially related to Klein. The color blue has definite associations for Jarman with the “immaterial”.1 This notebook is another indication of a definitive place for what began as idea sketches for a film about Klein, evolved into a performance piece, and finally became a film, not about Klein, but rather about Jarman himself, his condition, and his articulation of mortal experience. The structure of Blue is something like a Buddhist meditation, with the sounding of a bell marking the opening, the closing, and select points in between to call the mind to attention. Watching Blue in its entirety requires, in part, an acceptance of its conventions. Like in religious practice or theater, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to adequately participate in this performance, though ultimately it is the belief that what the narration references is really happening (or has happened) that defines the film’s conventions. Notable also, however, is that, while an all-blue color film seems to be peculiar, it may also be seen as formally objectifying a universal experience of film and television viewing: the continuous flash of the bluish screen. The music and narration are divided into episodes, clips, or tracks that are short self-contained meditations in and of themselves, and they work together as a whole. Framing, composition, editing, and other visual stylistic choices are rendered virtually moot, except for the fact of Jarman’s singular use of the particular blue color, and the stylistic choices fall, in the first place, to a consideration of the audio performance. Because of the all-blue screen, compositional issues are also pushed visually into the performance space in which the film is played and to the viewer him- or herself. The long-running blue screen morphs into different forms in the perception of the viewer who is left to the workings of his or her own imagination and associations and to the various physicalchemical reactions of the body and the interaction between eye and brain in response to the continuous bright blue rectangle.

1 For example, there is a photocopy of “Klein delivering his lecture at the Sorbonne on ‘The Evolution of Art toward the Immaterial’ Paris, June 3, 1959”. Jarman writes on the backside of a letter dated June 30, 1988, “If I could choose any painting to hang on my wall it would be an Yves Klein monochrome” (“Jarman ii Blue” [gb, jp, 1993] Box 16, British Film Institute, Special Collections).

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Inevitably, depending upon the audience and the venue, there will be various experiences of the film, much more so than a more standard-format film. This is especially true in comparison to other films in regard to the quality of the particular film reels, videotape, dvd (disc), or digital stream that is ­employed, because the effects of wear to a videotape’s surface, for example, can be seen on the screen, like flashing points or lines of light within the blue colored screen. The size of the screen and the conditions of the showing room affect the intensity of the blue glow that to one degree or another fills the room. Jarman’s documentary film Blue, then, becomes, in its showing, a work of installation art. In this way, it both recalls and distinguishes itself from works such as Andy Warhol’s eight-hour long still frame films, Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964).2 Most explicitly in terms of their content, Sleep and Empire ­offer explicit memento mori symbols as their central themes, while Blue narrates memento mori themes in an account of a man, that is Jarman himself, dying with aids. Moreover, Blue creates a physical and mental space in which a viewer may experience through film an individual or personal apocalypse, the end of an individual’s world for her- or himself or the end of self-reality as it is known empirically. Jarman’s films as a whole, but especially Blue, I suggest, give a clear sense of an effort to “show” what can not be shown in order to reveal the limitations and possibilities of the visual and visible world, and to invoke or provoke a rolling back of one’s eyes into the head, as it were, to experience one’s own materiality in a sort of carnal sublime that may be one’s only access or index of self- or human transcendence.3 Especially easy to identify are the explicit memento mori references in Blue, as just mentioned, but before elaborating upon them, and several references that may be less obvious, a brief word on Jarman is in order. His work as a whole, one could argue, amounts to that of an ecstatic seer, definitive in his individual articulation of transformative experience, especially in affective terms. 2 These Warhol films run approximately eight hours each. Viewers describe various responses from boredom and exasperation to amusement, or from disgust and impatience to a sort of contemplative bliss. Warhol’s films were silent, so they offer another whole range of perceptual void to fill in by the viewer-listener. Sleep (1963) shows a man sleeping, and Empire (1964) shows the Empire State Building with the atmosphere shifting in the background. Blue, instead, visually offers all-blue only. There is no visual story, and it relies upon the audio. Visually, it relies upon the projection of the blue into performance space and particular viewers’ associations with that projection. 3 Compare Sobchack’s (2011) take on this (204).

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A Word on Jarman as Ecstatic Seer

Derek Jarman’s films create an atmosphere in which flashes of ecstatic brilliance appear and disappear. In Chris Lippard’s interviews with him, Jarman refers to “flashes”, which has to do with how the films operate (Lippard 1996b, 167). They prefigure the kind of imagery and use of sound that has become commonplace since the emergence of Music Television (mtv) in the 1980s and, later, YouTube and social media culture.4 Jarman’s films rebel and agitate while still somehow working within tradition, especially traditions of English theater and cultural history. They draw upon those histories while also thoroughly re-imagining them within a kind of high punk culture of personal and national apocalypse. Recognized as a major contemporary figure in the British avant-garde film and arts scene, Derek Jarman (1942–1994) articulates a distinctive gay or queer vision of society in films such as Sebastianne (1976) and Edward ii (1991) prior to, and in the midst of, political posturing by leaders in the United Kingdom and internationally about gay social status and the aids epidemic. I suggest this vision is an enactment, a performance through the films, for the sake of what could be described as “an ecstatic revolution”. Jarman’s films may also be thought of in terms of experimentation and self-creation within society. As Richard Porton (1996) writes, “… films as disparate as Sebastianne (1976) and Blue are aesthetic experiments that share the provisional quality” that one finds, for example, in [the philosopher Ludwig] Wittgenstein (138). Jarman directed a biographical film on Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein [1993]) just before Blue, albeit in a way that remakes the genre of ­biographical film. Jarman’s films, Porton rightly points out, “partake in the Wittgensteinian desire to fuse private experience with public resonance” (1996, 138), and they also partake in a similar activist-therapeutic mode that is not foreign to the (later) Wittgensteinian project. In Jarman’s films, there is simultaneously a liberating and a ­self-destructive mode – a charge for societal reversal from “heterosoc”, or normative 4 Bill Nichols’ discussion (2013) of Werner Herzog is apropos in this context: “As Werner Herzog put it, in speaking of the quality he seeks in his documentary work (the particular reference was Grizzly Man [2005] and what we learn of the horizon at which the animal and human conjoin)[:] ‘In great moments of cinema you are hit and struck by some sort of enlightenment, by something that illuminates you, that’s a deep truth, and that’s what I’m after in documentaries and feature films’”. (37) Nichols goes on to say, “Hit and struck. This is a form or a way of seeing that is closer to a paradigm shift than the accretion of information, the laborious process of conventional learning, mystery solving, or the marshaling of evidence of a pre-existing form of political activism. Herzog’s ecstatic documentary is the work of orators who set out not to show but to move, to establish movement that may come in a flash and extend forward in an altered temporality” (37).

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­ eterosexual society, to a queer anarchy, while at the same time a sense of imh pending or a­ lready-accomplished doom. They operate as a mix of high and low political theater for the downtrodden moviegoer, as if Jarman, his audience, and particular figures in his films coalesce into kinds of Shakespearean Iggy Pops turned queer militiamen.5 Works such as Jubilee (1977), Caravaggio (1986), and The Last of England (1987) rage with violence, abound with naked bodies and sex, and haunt with beautiful stark passageways, grand ballrooms, and stunning costumes. ­Humor and campiness are selectively abundant depending upon the particular film, but most of all there are the distinctive moments, which add up over the course of his films, and culminate in a transformative affective memory. In the end, Blue, it may be suggested, is like a screening of all Jarman’s films at once, the culmination and final achievement of what are films of beauty, rage, chaos, and enactments of – and rebellions against – the drives of death and life.6 6.2

Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by Blue

In Blue, the phenomenon of memento mori can be identified on a number of levels. The analysis takes as its starting point a search for memento mori as verbal, literary, and ideational. After this, memento mori as an index of mortality and artificial convention is discussed. Memento mori as “mortality-index” in both material and semiotic terms is sought for in regard to thematic content, both explicit and implicit, related to Blue. As a documentary, Blue’s material connection to the empirical world is highlighted and, also, raised as a problem because of the film’s lack of imagery and an overthrowing of a main convention of film content. Blue’s relation to the functions of “documentary” is raised, first as documentation and then as a documentary articulation. In and related to 5 Not incidently, Martine Delvaux (2001) highlights the garden, an important image and place for Jarman, as memento mori, specifically referencing Jarman’s work, including The Garden (1990). She writes, “[The Book of] Genesis teaches us that the garden is the place where one learns about dying. It is a memento mori. It says: remember your death to come …” (138). Jarman’s actual garden at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness in the United Kingdom is featured in the book Derek Jarman’s Garden (Jarman 1995). 6 Chris Lippard (1996) calls “… Blue (1993), perhaps [Jarman’s] most successful, human and intimate film, as well as his most formally radical and avant-garde” (1). David Gardner (1996) goes farther: “Jarman’s last major film, Blue is nothing less than a revolutionary cinematic achievement. It stands alone even among Jarman’s works as a contribution to the modern evolutions of film art. The intense blue screen and evocative soundtrack have redefined the notion of what is possible in the cinema. (…) Jarman’s enduring contributions place him in the ranks of film pioneers such as Cocteau and Eisenstein” (57).

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Blue, I suggest that memory can function as both documented information and as reconstructed articulated information that is composed as transformative. This suggests the artificial conventions that constitute what ends up as an experience of memento mori. The phenomenon of memento mori in and related to Blue functions as a result of the convergence of particular histories and cultural genealogies. Consideration of how audiences receive the film in rhetorical terms is crucial to understanding how Jarman’s film performs. In the end, seeing Blue as memento mori results from particular social reception, including of individuals and groups, which, like Jarman, are caught up into affective realization of their singularly mortal condition. 6.2.1 Memento Mori as Verbal, Literary, and Ideational in Blue In Blue, since there are no images at all other than the “image” of the color blue, then no memento mori symbolic items appear. An exception to this description could be the claim that symbolic items do appear in the visual field of the viewer as she or he is watching the blue screen. Also, most audiences are aware that the “narrative voice” and the subject matter of the film, Derek Jarman, is himself dead, thus the entire film and film experience become a memento mori symbol. But these matters will have to be taken up later in the consideration of the conventions and experience of Blue, not in its explicit content. In terms of the explicit content, then, memento mori “appears” as primarily verbal and literary, and these references strongly carry the idea of being, or becoming again, conscious of mortality. Memento mori as verbal, literary, and ideational in Blue abounds and is a primary reason to identify the film as memento mori in the first place. The audio of the film, the script of which appears in book form (Jarman 1993), alternates between music and narration, given by Jarman and his friends and colleagues Terry, Quentin, and Swinton. The main narrative of Blue presents Jarman’s reflections, especially as an artist and as a gay man whose eyesight is declining and who is in the process of dying from the effects of aids admidst many friends who are also dying or have already died. For instance, as the film opens, with the sound of a café and radio in the background, and news of the war in Sarajevo in the headlines, Jarman asks, “What need do I have of news from abroad when all that concerns life or death is transacting within me?”7

7 The text from the book version of Blue has it slightly different: “What need of so much news from abroad while all that concerns either life or death is all transacting and at work within me” (Jarman [1993], 3). The following citations will reference the transcript/book listed as “Jarman (1993)”.

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Jarman gives account of particular experiences while staying at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, weaving prose and lyric with the plight of himself and his friends dying of, or dead from, aids. “Another year is passing”, the narration runs: In the roaring waters I hear the voices of dead friends… My heart’s memory turns to you David. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul… (…) The virus rages fierce. I have no friends now who are not dead or dying. Like a blue frost it caught them. At work, at the cinema, on marches and beaches. In churches on their knees, running, flying, silent or shouting protest. (…) It started with sweats in the night and swollen glands. Then the black cancers spread across their faces – as they fought for breath tb and ­pneumonia hammered at the lungs, and Toxo at the brain. Reflexes scrambled – sweat poured through hair matted like lianas in the tropical forest. ­Voices slurred – and then were lost forever…. jarman 1993, 5, 7–8

Jarman’s account contains the outrage that gives his work generally such energy and pathos. In Blue, however, it remains finely tuned, sometimes softened by grief or, often, by a sense of absurdity and even ­humor-within-the-absurdity. A tragi-comedic sensibility wins out, for example, as the rundown of his medication’s side effects is given. Jarman gives himself over in a bewildered, thoroughgoing resignation to the legal-medical jargon that becomes ridiculous in the juxtaposition with his situation as diagnosed and suffering from aids. Jarman decides, despite all, to take the medication (18–19). Or earlier, contemplating the Buddha’s teachings, Jarman notes, “The Gautama Buddha instructs me to walk away from illness. / But he wasn’t attached to a drip” (9). Jarman’s reflections also, understandably, brood: How did my friends cross the cobalt river[?] [W]ith what did they pay the ferryman? As they set out for the indigo shore (…) Did they see Death with the hell hounds (…) did they hear the blast of trumpets? David ran home panicked on the train from Waterloo, [came] back exhausted and unconscious to die that night. Terry (…) mumbled incoherently into his incontinent tears. Others faded like flowers cut by the scythe of the Blue Bearded Reaper, parched as the waters of life

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receded. Howard turned to stone, petrified day by day, his mind imprisoned in a concrete fortress until all we could hear were his groans …. We all contemplated suicide. We hoped for euthanasia. We were lulled into believing Morphine dispelled pain Rather than make it tangible. (16, 17) For at least one friend, the pain seems to have been too much of a price to pay for continuing his life, and Jarman’s response to his suicide is telling. While at first take, seemingly flippant, Jarman urges the deeper point that dead is dead, and from that point of view how someone “goes” is irrelevant: “Karl killed ­himself – how did he do it? I never asked. It seemed incidental. What did it matter if he swigged prussic acid or shot himself in the eye” (17). Implicitly, this point extends his reflections from his specific consideration of aids and the fate of his circle of friends to other catastrophic incidents, including the mortal condition of all human beings. Explicitly, he turns to an airplane accident and to the state of the planet. As I slept a jet slammed into a tower block. The jet was almost empty but two hundred people were fried in their sleep. (…) The earth is dying and we do not notice it. Approximately a quarter of a century after these comments were made, the significance of them seems as close to home as any that might be suggested in contemporary global culture. The events of September 11, 2001, in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington d.c., usa – and increasingly amidst the rising temperatures and populations on Earth with the subsequent effects upon the survival of people, animals, and the total environment of the ­planet – leave Blue’s references to mortality that much more salient. But to identify these historical and empirical realities “outside”, but related to, Blue is also to begin to see examples of memento mori as “mortality-index”. Memento Mori as Mortality-index and Convention in or Related to Blue Examples of memento mori as a “mortality-index” in or related to Blue include and go beyond the examples given above from Blue’s narration. In addition to the

6.2.2

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idea of memento mori, or consciousness of mortality, appearing in relation to the content of Blue, it is important, also, to pay attention to the material and semiotic references to mortality that relate to the film as a medium and genre. Taken by an audience as a “documentary film”, the references associated with Blue emerge from their associations with this genre and “extra-cinematic” considerations are freighted “into” the experience of Blue. One knows, for example, rather than simply dying, as is narrated in the film, that Jarman is in fact now dead. One also knows that one is not trafficking in the realm of the imagination, even when Jarman waxes poetic. Rather, in Blue, one is being presented with facts of the empirical world by way of Jarman’s written / audio reflections and the deliberate action of asserting a blue screen as a “film”, rather than imagery. Jarman’s blue screen is to enact or perform for the audience what is or has happened to him. One sees images, then they fade, then all one can see is blue or black, as blindness sets in. One lives (in the visible world), and then one disappears (and cannot be seen), when one dies. Explicitly, aside from the Yves Klein reference, and among other references that will be mentioned below, the color blue is to indicate in as singular a way as Jarman knew possible his ordinary and extraordinary situation as an artist and friend dying of aids in the late 1980s, early 1990s, in the United Kingdom. Importantly, this is no fiction. Blue seems to raise problems for the idea of film’s material connection to the empirical world if by that one means the light-technologies that allow film to constitute its distinctive images. However, this apparent problem related to Blue as a mortality-index only forces the issue further and is part of why Blue is important conceptually in the history of contemporary film. While the obvious question Blue asks may be, “What, after all, makes a film a film?”, that question does not end simply in mystification. In Blue, while variation is almost absolutely minimized and differentiation of items within the film frame is rendered virtually moot, Blue still relies on the same light-sensitive technology with material connection to its subject matter as any other film does. Blue, rather than negating the connection, only highlights it that much more. One of the replies to the question above, then, becomes, “A film references the empirical world in a material way”, or, in other words, films document (as a verb) (Nichols 2001). This point is only galvanized that much more by the thematic, narrative, and extra-cinematic context of Jarman’s dying, death, the fact of his being dead, and the memory or associations of him and his work. Blue documents what is “out there” in the empirical world at the time, most explicitly by way of audio sequences. But Blue itself becomes documentation of a time and place. The technology, conventions, and knowledge of the 1980s and turn to the 1990s in Europe and transnational culture, but especially in the United Kingdom within the arts community and gay or queer culture, is referenced. This is

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a time-space that, strictly speaking, is now gone. The fact of aids as a “new” epidemic, as an “era”, and as a mass-killer is strongly referenced by the film and creates part of the pathos of an experience of it. In this discussion, one already gets a sense of memento mori, also then, operating as a convention in, or related to, the viewing of Blue in a given context by a given audience. The “era” of aids in the 1980s and 90s is now gone, but a new, and continued era of its killing continues, and audiences of Blue generally are aware of this. The political, cultural situation in the United Kingdom and elsewhere obviously has changed; however, the political, scientific, social, legal, cultural, educational situation anywhere for any audience still plays into how Blue ultimately does its job. Its pathos, for example, is directly related to its audience, not simply the “facts out there”. In this context, the facts do not “speak for themselves”. Rather, Blue functions rhetorically as not simply documentation but also, and more importantly, as a documentary articulation whose purpose it is to transform the audience. Blue may be said to do this by directly pointing to dying and death. Yet one also sees that it operates very much in strong conventions and a distinctive milieu of British arts, including theater and design, fine and performing arts, including music. In the midst of Jarman’s films generally, one gets the sense of being flanked by symbolization of the Elizabethan era, on the one hand, and bbc (British Broadcasting Corporation) media, on the other hand. Blue, not completely unlike Wim Wenders’s Notebook also follows the conventions of a diary film. Jarman takes on a journalistic/poetic mode with a not uncommon narrative of the man dying of a disease speaking out “within earshot” of the “powers that be” who seem careless and who do little or nothing to address the crisis. The glaring problem and the terrible injustice is protested against vehemently and with affect. In this sense, Blue shows Jarman operating out of conventions well known to a seer / prophetic tradition of consciousness-raising. This consciousnessraising not only points to the fact of the mortal condition but, also, to injustices that alter the timing of individuals’ deaths and their quality of life before they are dead. The effectiveness of this consciousness-raising is directly related to the degree to which the documentary is received by its audience as dealing with “the real”. Calling mortality to consciousness, or memento mori, then, operates within artificial conventions, and those conventions may be both artistic and political. Noticeably, such consciousness-raising can also turn to an implicit message or outgrowth of memento mori, which is memento vivere – a call to live life now that is brought forward as cathartic, celebratory, defiant, and funny. In Blue, this takes the form of a campy musical number, a Jarman staple. With the wickedly raucous chorus “I am a Not Gay”, Jarman and friends spoof “hetersoc”

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mentality and politics.8 Here and elsewhere, the music appears in samples as a kind of aural commentary on the text, which freights stage-musical conventions into an audio-only “film” meant to make a difference in the lives of the audience. Blue is not meant to be, is not, “just a film”, then, but rather an experience that may actually do something to or for its viewers.9 With Blue, Jarman’s effort is also a political-prophetic move within the arts, particularly within the film world. Not unlike Wenders in Notebook, as discussed above, Jarman calls attention to film itself as a medium. Yet Jarman takes the whole matter another step: Blue is the same as any other film in its technological operations, while at the same time, it does not have any of the content that viewers ordinarily expect from a film. Blue becomes a meditation, then, not only on the mortality of the individual or of human beings generally, but also upon the use of a particular medium in relation to, and distinction from, other mediums, and the eventual “death” of a medium – in this case, film. In a manner of speaking, Jarman commits a kind of film-suicide – Blue, as a film, “kills itself”. Jarman has not just given himself over to the “natural” processes of his medium’s decline. Rather, he anticipates the end and, instead, takes his own life-work’s life, so to speak. (One may recall that Blue was released in 1993, just two years before the centennial in 1995 of cinema’s “birth”. Jarman died in 1994.) Blue also can be taken as a sort of anti-portrait of Jarman, at least visually, since color blots out the image and leaves the primary association with Jarman as this color rather than an image of his face or figure. In the film, the color blue has many associations, some of which have been mentioned already. But it is important to note, as Tracy Biga (1996) does, that “Jarman never fixes the symbolism of the ‘blue’”. She says, “It is variously a colour, a person or agent, a mood, a concept and a thing” (26). One may note that the color blue is a reference to death, and as Jarman and his narrators give account of this or that of his suffering, one has occasion to consider a human’s frail state in this life. Generally, Jarman’s account is for all mortals and, specifically, it is for those artists, lgbt and Queers, and perhaps a few others, especially among Jarman’s friends, particularly in response to the aids epidemic 8 This mentality and politics, among other things, does not understand, or is opposed to the manifestation and celebration of, the complexity of human sexual identity and practice, unless it conforms to what it considers normative heterosexuality. Jarman’s politics and practice coincide with much that is written about in Queer Studies. 9 The flip-side of the raucous in Jarman’s films and particularly in Blue is the meditative quality. In Blue, the music samples, for example, are interspersed within Simon Fisher Turner’s score, which has a lonely beachfront quality, as if the sound were lapping at the shore of words and vision.

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and various responses, or lack thereof, from individuals and organizations, including the British government and medical establishment. But “blue” also is a flower, the ocean, an active force or energy, a pleasant object, a less-mysterious-than-pleasing atmosphere and space, and a “rest”. There is also the fact that a so-called blue movie is a euphemism for a pornographic film, more politely put than a “fuck film”, its common name, but in Jarman’s work it is as if “we all get fucked” – that is, we all die. That sex and death reference each other is commonplace enough, but in Jarman the distinction sometimes seems to be largely erased. Sex is death, and death is sex, at times, and seems to be something more material than mere metaphor or play of words. In most of Jarman’s work, sex and death seem to be, simultaneously, violently passionate and a passionate escape and refuge in a violent, pathological world. In Blue, all the passion and rage is still there, but now under the calm of not so much an oceanic blue as a blue sublime. This blue is, as the narration puts it, “international”, crossing “all borders and distinctions”, and also pleasing, like a pleasant home or an arrangement of flowers. Blue then becomes the antithesis of the world’s rage, violence, and pathology. Rather, it is the singular, delicate material experience that calls to mind and body the pleasant, even ecstatic, “salvation” from the raging world.10 6.3

The Affectively Transformative Point of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by Blue

It becomes fairly easy to see, then, the phenomenon of memento mori as experienced in relation to Blue. “Blue”, in the film and the viewer’s experience of it, becomes a phenomenon into which one can enter or toward which one can engage a self: Jarman’s, something like Jarman’s (or another human individual’s), or one’s own. The strongest argument for a, or the, affectively transformative point of memento mori experience as referenced by Derek Jarman’s Blue is an experience of the film itself. Along with its formal elements, Blue is defined by its surges of affective power, which may come or go, and which may occur at different points in or “outside” the film. Of a number of moments, I call particular attention to a few. First, there is the rehearsal of the names of Jarman’s dead friends, which Jarman reprises, and 10

It is easy to refer to the spiritual aspects of Blue, but that may misguide because it sets up distinctions, for example, of material and spiritual that do not seem necessarily friendly to Jarman’s vocabulary, whether verbal or visual. Having said that, Jarman is interested, at some remove, in Buddhism, and in the discourse of material and immaterial.

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which is cited above. There is, also, a pivotal moment near the middle of the film when, for several seconds, the narration pauses and the soundtrack rolls into a sample of a nightclub atmosphere, a number called “Disco Hospital”. The audio transports an entire space and time, otherwise inaccessible, in which one is amidst a crowd of people who, facing despair, struggle, e­ mptiness – or, perhaps, nothing at all – defy the odds of life and death by dancing the night away with others. I suggest that there can be an awareness in sequences like this in Blue that flip the sense of life and death around: memento mori becomes memento vivere. Moments like this can occur in Jarman’s work at points particularly in Blue and elsewhere at points throughout his work. These moments or “flashes”, as Jarman once called them, typify Jarman’s jubilant defiance in the face of death-dealing in any form it takes, whether biological or social. These moments related to Blue, which may vary widely from viewer to viewer, issue a palpable sense of the distinctiveness of human experience as defined by its mortal nature. The final “moment”, or “point”, related to Blue is probably Jarman’s greatest concern. Along with his own personal satisfaction in making the work, it is the reception of Blue by its audience, especially through memory, after Jarman’s death, that Jarman is most concerned with. In the first place, as Richard Porton (1996) notes, “Jarman shares the belief that art’s reception and assimilation by actual viewers, readers and listeners are of more interest than abstract notions of beauty” (138). Formal considerations become auxiliary to particular selves’ “assimilation” of Blue. That assimilation begins with the viewing and listening of the performance but continues on especially in the referencing and remembering of it in other contexts, even after long periods of time, including beyond the life of the artist. Importantly, this memory not only is visual, aesthetic, or conventional, but is also existential. William Pencak (2002) writes: [Blue’s] meaning rests in [Jarman’s] audience’s determination to postpone as long as possible, perhaps until the sun grills us to the roasting point or a comet collides with the earth, Jarman’s ultimate judgement of the human adventure and his own: “In time / No one will remember our work. (…) Our name will be forgotten”. 166; citing jarman 1993, 30

In Blue, a performance is conducted to nevertheless defy the remarkable transience and delicacy of mortal life. It is a creative action to “rouse the troops” by rage, humor, and art so that they will hang together and not cower at the apparently insurmountable odds.

chapter 7

Personal Memento Mori: The Iconic 9/11 Footage and the Threat of Death To not cower at apparently insurmountable odds calls for courage, and the need to “hang together” and advance creative action is crucial for human life. In the context of national and global challenges, life as a mortal on a personal level is perhaps as challenging as ever, though in distinct ways from bygone eras. In this penultimate chapter, I seek to increase attention toward individual viewers as they face a threat of death. How does each one of us assimilate the things we have experienced in life, particularly those mediated through documentaries, segments of ­documentaries, and documentary footage, as they present us with mortality? In this penultimate chapter I look to how the phenomenon of memento mori may strike close and how it in fact did strike close as mediated through news footage I saw in the United States on cnn a day after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. I discuss here the levels at which memento mori is referenced by this now iconic 9/11 footage, first as “symbolic, ideational, and composed” and then as “mediated mortality-index”. I elaborate on personally transformative points of memento mori experience as I see it and as referenced by the footage. Then, in closing, attention is turned to a prominent form of memento mori today as “death threat” in extremist YouTube videos. In the end, I suggest, perhaps there is nothing more clarifying and motivating in life than the threat of death. 7.1

The Viewer as Contemplative Seer of the Threat of Death

On 12 September 2001, I sat with my sons, Nicolas and Gracey, ages 3 and almost 1 at the Comet Burger diner in Royal Oak, Michigan, usa. We ate chicken strips and peanut butter and jelly while cnn played on the overhead tv. Nico was perched on his knees on the chair so he could reach the tabletop and Gracey sat in the buggy next to the table. None of us had yet seen the footage. The day before I had received the news from our friend Joyce who had been visiting us and got stranded in metropolitan Detroit because the airport had shut down all flights. She was catching an Amtrak train from Ann Arbor back to Denver. She called mid-morning on September 11th asking if we had heard © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004356962_009 .

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the news. I was at home with the boys, while Lynn, my wife, was in her first days at Cranbrook Academy of Art. I turned the radio low and never turned on the television, hoping to shield my boys from scenes of catastrophic death. But the next day, sitting at Comet Burger, we saw the footage, and I thought to myself, “This will forever change the world my boys will grow up in”. We were just three individuals among several billion that witnessed the planes crash into the World Trade Center buildings in New York by way of live or replayed footage on television and later via internet. “Never have so few people … caused so much fear in so many”, says cognitive anthropologist Scott Atran (­Malcolmson 2016; see also Atran 2010). The event of 9/11 is probably beyond any ability to adequately “interpret” it, as Jacques Derrida has suggested (­Borradori 2003; cf. Elsaesser 2014, 310). Yet one powerful idea that may emerge in Western and global society from the now iconic 9/11 news footage is an aggressive memento mori: remember that at any time even where you least expect it, death may strike. Thus, beware. The threat is real. 7.1.1 The 12th of September, 2001, Comet Burger Diner, usa When referencing news or other footage of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York, Washington dc, and what ended up being the Pennsylvania ­countryside, there need not be any one particular filmed source, and there are many, many possible news and individual sources that could be referenced. For me, my primary source – in terms of timing, immediacy, and longevity of influence – was, is, the cnn (Cable News Network) footage I saw that morning (the day after the attack) at approximately 11 o’clock at the Comet Burger diner with my sons and now accessible on YouTube (cnn 2001, September 12).1 By singling out the attacks on September 11th in the usa, I by no means intend to overlook or slight the many other attacks around the world and on other occasions, including but not limited to Oklahoma City (19 April 1995), Bali (12 ­October 2002), Madrid (11 March 2004), Amsterdam / Theo Van Gogh (2  ­November 2004), London (7 July 2005), Mumbai (11 July 2006), Karachi (18 October 2007), Breivik, Norway (22 July 2011), Boston (15 April 2013), Paris (13 November 2015), San Bernadino (2 December 2015), Brussells (22 March 2016), Orlando (12 June 2016), and Istanbul (1 January 2017). This is not to 1 “cnn 9/11 LIVE tv Coverage (9/12/01) 10:45 a.m – 11:00 a.m”, posted by The 9112001 on 9 January 2012. From the Cable News Network. Retrieved at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HJeqN_-QvpU on 19 September 2016. [Images starting at 4:20 / 14:59.] Incidentally, Royal Oak, Michigan, in metropolitan Detroit, was known in those years for Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his efforts toward assisted suicide for patients that sought him out (Lessenberry 2016, 20), sometimes referred to as Dr. Death.

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­ ention the countless other incidents all around the world, whether by people m or nature, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), the Katrina Hurricane and aftermath (2005), the mass shootings at Virginia Tech (2007) and Sandy Hook (2012), the killing of Trevon Martin (2012), and incidents of police brutality and killing of Amadou Diallo (1999), Sean Bell (2006), Eric Garner (2014), and Michael Brown (2014), among many other incidents of various types, including, at the time of writing the killing of many civilians in Aleppo, Syria. Each of these and others deserve chapters and books unto themselves, but obviously cannot be done here within the present project. I recognize that the 9/11 news footage does not constitute “a d­ ocumentary film”. Nor does it constitute “a film”. Yet this footage is filmed documentation doing precisely the “documentary work” of “rendering and representing” empirical, lived “actuality” as Robert Coles put it (1997, 87, citing James Agee 2001 [1939]). The 9/11 footage and other footage arguably may be designated as documentary at its most basic and primal. As Nichols (2001) has asserted, “Every film is a documentary” (1): that is, even fiction film has a documentary quality. Likewise, all filmed footage has core documentary functions of being “visible evidence” and making “a claim something like, ‘This is so’” (39; emphasis added). If Derek Jarman’s Blue is the “no-film film”, this 9/11 footage is the “­non­documentary documentary”. By putting it forward, it invites the question, “What really makes a documentary a documentary?” Could an era and mode of raw documentation from news and other footage be a post-perfomative mode in reaction to Nichols’s “performative” mode (2001, 138; 2010)? More importantly, and more central to the project here, I turn attention in this chapter to the “total” experience of this particular raw footage in a select moment for me, a given place and time with all the “extra-cinematic” (Sobchack 2004) or extramedia experience that I relate to that select footage in that given moment of viewing it. Thus, the individual experience of watching and contemplating this documentary footage takes center stage. By turning to this news footage, I recognize also the shift away from an ­emphasis on the makers of documentary in a case where, for all practical purposes, the cameraperson or videographer, director, and producers are anonymous – just blips in the cnn global news network machine. An advantage of this shift, however, may be an increased place for individual viewers and their experiences in discussing moving images. As Iyer and colleagues (2014) point out, with few exceptions (such as Monahan 2010), “almost no research has examined how exposure to images of terrorism” including the 9/11 attacks “might affect individual viewers” (511). And while there are many philosophical reflections on the event of 9/11, including the high profile discussions of Baudrillard (2002), Habermas, and Derrida (Borradori 2003), among many others, I am not

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aware of any other account of individual experience of the 9/11 news footage within the context of a rhetorical phenomenology of documentaries explicitly discussing it in terms of memento mori. What, after all, are the experiences each one of us has as we view the footage? What are the particular triggers that draw us in to memento mori experience? Hypothetically, these are as unique as every one of us on the planet: 7.5 billion and counting. If any one of us human beings were to select one moment that operated for us as a memento mori experience, we might end up with 7.5 billion discrete instances. Yet, as we have seen above, particular items are more apt than others, and patterns and themes do emerge. Some strong common materials, artifacts, and items emerge such as being in the presence of a dead body or seeing a skull, seeing bones, or seeing dead flowers. In Western and global society, memento mori experiences increasingly happen in conjunction with some form of media, not least of which has been filmed work, first historically celluloid-based photography, film, and then television, and more recently in digital and mobile formats. Among all of these, one of the most prominent instances in the last generation has been the footage of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. The catastrophe on 9/11 is one of those select, pivotal points for many people in the West and globally, particularly as it was mediated through the news footage. While certainly and obviously not the only instance, this now iconic footage stands out for me and for many other individuals as particularly prominent. For some, perhaps many, it served as a personal turning point in their lives. 7.1.2 When Memento Mori Strikes Close Awareness of mortality comes to us by way of a number of means in our lives. A  pivotal moment prior to 9/11 for me was at the age of 22. A bullet came through my window while I was asleep in bed in a little room in Honduras. As I have shared elsewhere (Bennett-Carpenter 2014): I was teaching at a bilingual college prep school on the Caribbean coast in Honduras and lived in an apartment complex that included several North American teachers from the school along with local Hondureños. The watchman that normally patrolled and lived on the grounds had become severely sick and returned inland to his home in the mountains to recover. The apartment complex owner’s son, a school alum, had taken over watchman duties. While an alum of the school, he also was regarded by locals as a baracho, a “drunk”, and known as a gun dealer. One night, while drunk he dropped his gun and it fired through my window. The bullet came through the glass about 18 inches above my head where I was in bed asleep. Debris from the plaster wall lay all over

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my desk, sprinkled across my books and papers. Prior to this incident, I had imagined myself in a kind of cloister or monastic cell, safe from the outside world to do my reading and writing. But in an instant, I felt like the whole universe came into my little cloister, and I felt I could no longer keep reality out. One of the stark realities of the universe that came to me at that moment was the immediacy of death and my own fragile mortality. (363) That was a most dramatic mortality-awareness moment for me. Yet awareness of the threat of death was something that seemed to come to me through my mother’s milk. Both of my parents earlier in their lives had been in very bad automobile accidents. But my mother in particular had been traumatized by an accident at the age of 10 when a drunk driver blew a ­stoplight and left her in the hospital for days mostly alone with her jaw wired shut, sipping soft foods through a straw. The particular religious climate of my upbringing was one that insisted upon love and faith within the context of a hostile and threatening world. The threat of death in this context meant also the threat of God’s judgment: death could mean heaven or it could mean hell. This was a traditional religious cosmos where awareness of death was awareness of one’s moral and spiritual status. But also death did not mean an end ultimately; it meant a transition. New ideas about death came to me at age 16 shortly after hearing of my grandfather’s passing. Our family had arrived in Florida after a long car ride from Washington dc. We pulled through the gate of my grandparents’ wintertime campground, and my two cousins greeted us with big, beaming faces. Appearing elated, they said to us, “Grandpa’s gone to heaven!” That is, he was dead. He had died that morning. Since we had already planned to go to Disney World that day and this news was supposed to be good news (to be happy about) because supposedly he was in heaven, all of the cousins and two parents still went off to Disney World! I recall having a sense then of heaven as not a place, no place really, and that my grandfather, Carl, was really gone. I was sad, not happy, and the happiness displayed in this context looked to me as mildly psychotic. Still, I was relieved because I knew he was not suffering anymore, and he had been suffering a great deal. As previously mentioned above in an earlier chapter, one of the traditional contexts for memento mori is religious – where the injunction to remember death is to Repent, for your time is short. The short time leads up to a judgment by an Almighty God. Death then is the end of earthly life but really is a transition rather than a termination (cf. Metcalf and Huntington 1991; Draper, ­Holloway, and Adamson 2014). The philosophy of death as a transition to some

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form of afterlife is a very prominent, traditional view among human beings around the world. Perhaps it issues from our deep grief and our incredulity that this moment could be the end for that individual, particularly a loved one or friend. At the time of writing, my wife Lynn and I have had a colleague and friend, out of the blue, suddenly die. Our friend Mike was seemingly in good health and alive and kicking. One evening a few weeks back, he was not feeling well. As the evening went on, he felt more and more sick, then suddenly could not speak. The medics arrived shortly thereafter and rushed him to the hospital, but by that point nothing could be done. He had died of a massive heart attack. The sense of disbelief that Mike was, he is, gone is strong. For several days after his death, Lynn kept saying she had the feeling that she needed to text Mike the news. Did Mike know what had happened? Our cognitive files labeled “Mike”, “person”, and “living” were still running, along with the accompanying affect, even as the new information, “non-living”, was entered into our thinking. The “Mike” file kept running – and is still running (seems like he is just away on a long trip or has moved away) – even as we observed his body at the funeral home visitation. “That’s not Mike. Mike’s gone”, I thought when I saw his body. Of course it was indeed his body. But even with a secular, materialist, or physicalist view of death, as Shelly Kagan (2012) points out, we still do not completely identify the person with the body only. While a soul is not recognized, one does have a sense of the person even as the body shuts down. So the “Mike as person” cognitive file keeps running to some extent even as the body begins to decompose. While traditional religious beliefs about him will have him living on with God in heaven, possibly passing through purgatory on the way, secular accounts will look to him living on through his legacy and through our memory of him. Now Derek Jarman seems all that much more prophetic as he spoke in Blue about his friends’ deaths, an airplane slamming into a building, and, in what perhaps remains to be fully seen, environmental destruction. But there is also the opportunity every one us human beings has, every viewer of death or mediated death, to the kind of insight Jarman had. As one contemplates the scene, one sees with the mind’s eye the proximate or ultimate death threats. One meditates on the secular iconography of a dead friend’s picture, of mass homicide news footage, or of “Acts of God” destruction due to climate change. The showing and viewing of such iconography may take on an epideictic or ceremonial role with the trauma-image operating as a visual koan. In the now iconic 9/11 news footage or something like it, each viewer may have occasion for a personal apocalypse and transformation where one realizes one’s place

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as a mortal in 21st century global society – a mortal challenged with making a distinctive life contribution in the context of existential threats. 7.2

Levels at Which Memento Mori is Referenced by the 9/11 Footage

At approximately 10:49 in the morning on September 12 – one day after the attack – I saw with my sons the footage that probably has become the most prominent from 9/11: with one of the Trade Center towers on fire and smoking, an airplane comes into the frame from the left side headed toward the other tower and, before one knows it, the plane has struck the second tower. Until then it may not have been clear why the first tower was smoking – e.g., perhaps a very bad office fire. Minutes later one tower falls, collapsing straight down like vertical falling dominoes or an accordion folding into black dust and smoke. And then the second tower falls (search “cnn 9/11 tower collapse” on YouTube).2 The image is so shocking that one cannot believe it is really ­happening. This can’t be real. And yet we also know, It is real. But the sense of disbelief was widespread. There was a sense “as if” (Zelizer 2010, 76ff) this was happening, and people kept saying, at least in the United States, that “the events ‘looked like a movie’” (Semanti 2006, 153). As Stephen Prince (2009) puts it, “When the World Trade Center erupted in fireballs and came crashing down on 9/11, many people felt they were seeing a Hollywood movie come to life” (1). The “as if” had become actual. It can be easy to go immediately from this footage and this event to a discussion of “terrorism” and what came to be known as the global “War on Terror”. As Ewa Mazierska (2014) puts it, “The political context of the new films” she discusses and many, many documentaries since 2001 “is the ‘War on Terror’” (102). Although, perhaps it should go without saying that labeling something “terrorism” results from interpreting an event or phenomenon as “terrorism” rather that the event or phenomenon inherently being so (103), strictly speaking (cf. Nesser 2015, 941, ftnt. 1). Of those many films, what comes to mind immediately for me are Errol Morris’s Fog of War (2003) and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). (Among many others, two other oft cited include 11’09”01 – September 11 [2002], an anthology film directed by Youssef Chahine and ten other directors in 11 minute films, and Control Room [2004] directed by Jehane Novjaim.) Morris’s work is much cited among film critics and scholars in this context, while Moore’s work, both loved and hated by the public, gets scathing 2 The planes struck the North Tower and then the South Tower. The South Tower fell first and then the North Tower.

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dismissal from some documentary filmmakers (Christensen 2009, 197). While, like much his other work, Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 stretched conventional definitions of documentary (Holloway 2008, 100) as it moved into unapologetic propaganda, it still made an important mark in documentary film history: “in the minds of the general non-film-making population, Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, with box office receipts of over $100 million [usd], sparked a renewed interest in documentary film” (Christensen 2009) that probably began in the 1980s just prior or around the time of Moore’s Roger and Me (1989). There may also have been a renewed “call to realism” (Semanti 2006, 158) in the 9/11 footage as they saw this “movie scene” as “really real”. In the context of a renewed realism, the call for a “War on Terror”, critical responses to that call, and the politics and actions that followed, perhaps, as Christensen (2009) put it in a special issue of Studies in Documentary Film, “a shift has taken place” within documentary film since 9/11 (197). It’s not a “greater ‘watershed moment’ than others such as the shift to digital” (197), but, nevertheless, the turning point of that shift is the news footage that documented that moment. In reference to this footage, the phenomenon of memento mori as experienced may be identified, including material and semiotic references to mortality. The phenomenon of memento mori in relation to the 9/11 footage may be identified on a number of levels that go beyond the obvious of the initial “presumed death” (Zelizer 2010, 76 ff.) and then the actual deaths of those three thousand people that day. Taking the levels of analysis by which memento mori may be identified in documentaries, I discuss memento mori here as referenced by the 9/11 footage as a symbol, as an idea, and as “composed”, then I discuss it as a mortality-index (pointing to real death) while also being “mediated”. How this cnn footage I saw at the Comet Burger diner is related to personally transformative experience occupies the next section of the chapter, before turning to a counter-point: memento mori as a death threat in contemporary extremist YouTube videos. Memento Mori as Symbolic, Ideational, and Composed in the 9/11 Footage As Barbie Zelizer (2010) puts it in About to Die: How News Images Move the Public, “Taken together the towers surfaced as the predominant visual markers of the events of 9/11” (118; cf. James 2016). They stood as “Twins”, as two figures that seemingly permanently defined the skyline of New York City. For people of my generation (Generation x), they had “always been there” and, all assumed, always would be there. Now, however, what remains are at least three things: memories of that skyline brought to us primarily by old photographs, movies, and tv shows; the news footage of the strike on that day; and the void left now, 7.2.1

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first, at the actual 9/11 memorial site in Manhattan and also in newer images of the city where those figures no longer appear. Now, when one turns on a movie or tv show filmed prior to 9/11, one sees those old figures and is reminded of what has become a bygone era. For example, the opening of the early seasons of hbo’s The Sopranos carries with it documentation and nostalgia for late 90s New York and New Jersey, punctuated by the towers, flashing briefly but strikingly as a memento mori symbol. In whatever past images one sees of the towers, they can appear like candles, snuffed out, or like ghostly tombstones. For some, these figures, however intuitively and metaphorically, stand even as portraiture (cf. Goodyear, Walz, and Campagnolo 2016), drawing images of them into the tradition of both still life and portraiture, including vanitas. These emblems of global capitalism, a focal point of worldly wealth, success, and power appear now, apparently, and evidently transient. The apparently firm, solid, and permanent suddenly became permeable, collapsing, and dissipating. Of all the news footage of that day, it is the footage of the two towers still standing, one burning, and the other about to be struck that defines the central image of the event for many viewers. Still frame images of “the burning towers appeared repeatedly across the media” thereafter in the United States, “including”, as Zelizer (2010) documents, tv Guide, Business Week, People, Newsweek, and The New York Times, and book covers from Magnum Photos, World Wide Photos and Associated Press, editors of New York magazine, and from editor Ethan Casey in 9/11 8:48 am: Documenting America’s Greatest Tragedy, among others (358–359, ftnt. 165). Images of the towers have become “images of presumed death” and rest “on the familiarity of the visual trope of impending death” (119). One sees the towers and one knows, people died – “we” were struck. “We” were struck down. To communicate that idea in a visual context, it becomes virtually a necessity to begin with that particular image of both towers still standing. A viewer, in visual terms, would miss the significant loss narrated by the image if, at first, the two towers were not shown. For example, in an ahistorical context, if one saw only two pillars of smoke, one might have to do a fair amount of compositional and inferential work (cf. Krug 2006) to surmise that there may have been buildings there originally. In an ahistorical context, one could very well miss the fact that buildings once stood there, thinking there was an accident or perhaps a bombing on the ground, on a street, or in an open space. Obviously most viewers in the West and globally would not make such a mistake because they know the New York skyline and they know 9/11. Yet keep in mind that they – we – have been educated to these images. In the iconic 9/11 news footage, it is crucial that it begins with both towers standing, as if to tell the story:

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Once upon a time, there were two towers. In their day, they were once the tallest towers in the world. These towers lived in what the people believed to be the most powerful city in the world in the most powerful country in the world. The stage is thus set for tragedy to strike. One is set up for the significance of the fall or loss. Then one morning, out of the blue, the towers were struck down. First one was hit, and people didn’t know what was happening. They thought a terrible accident had taken place at one of the buildings. All this moves toward the striking moment – both literally as the second airplane struck the second building and metaphorically as a penetrating emotional blow. But then everyone saw an airplane. It was flying directly toward the second tower! It didn’t fly past it. It flew directly into the second tower! Shock of witnessing such a catastrophe and intense foreboding of impending doom rush in. And then the towers fell. The second tower collapsed down like falling dominoes or a stretched out accordion, contracting. One, then the other: the first tower fell too. And all that was left was pillars of smoke and dust, and piles of rubble. This narrative, like a dark fairy tale, draws upon a great deal outside the visual frame. In a more stripped down version of the visual “story”, we begin with the figures, then a moving dot from the left side of the frame “strikes” one figure. The figure collapses down and is gone. And then the sequence is repeated for a second time. Even when presented with simple shapes or lines, especially if conjoined with movement, we human beings construct narratives around such figures (Heider and Simmel 1944). As a part of our intuitive psychology, we tend to attribute agency to figures and to moving items in space as a way to make sense, to define patterns, and ascribe meaning to what otherwise would be meaningless data. Our intuitive psychology may suggest to us, perhaps without our awareness, figures as person-like, and pictures of buildings such as the towers as something like portraiture, or portraiture itself.

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Figures, which could be “us”, symbolically, were struck down, and so beyond the dark story is the impact of the image of wide and immediate threat. In terms of the imagery, Iyer and colleagues (2014) have suggested that “the­ September 11th attack wasn’t just a direct hit on the twin towers and the ­Pentagon [−−] the footage burned into the collective psyche of everyone alive to see it. It was the antithesis of Neil Armstrong stepping on the surface of the moon” (511, citing Gibson 2004). Rather than promise, achievement, adventure, and the p ­ ossibilities of life beyond what we thought we could do, as the Armstrong image points to, the 9/11 footage carries the “spectacle of terrorism” (James 2016, 142; citing Giroux 2006), which “consists of imagery that appeals to fear, survival, death, life, and security. It uses shock and awe to bypass democracy, debate and dialogue” (James 2016, 142). Part of the terror is the encounter with the fundamentally unknown and unimaginable in empirical terms: death – that which is beyond representation, strictly speaking, and is inaccessible to the living. “[V]isual representation”, as part of an “aesthetics [and spectacle] of terror”, “works as much through what the image doesn’t tell us, as what it does” (144, referencing Hall 1997). The footage of Al Qaeda’s attack on the twin towers and other terrorist imagery such as the beheading videos employed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (isil) operate with the shocking “reveal” and “conceal” of life and death communicating a clear idea: you will die. This is the idea of memento mori as death threat. Memento Mori as Mediated Mortality-index, Indicated by the 9/11 Footage But the 9/11 footage is not just an idea or symbol. It points to actual death. Real people really died that day in New York, Washington d.c., and on the countryside of Pennsylvania. To miss this fact is to miss what is most fundamental. People went to work that day, clunking away on their keyboards in their offices and never came home. Behind some of the most imposing display of security in the world (the Pentagon), individuals were in fact not secure and were killed. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and friends said goodbye over mobile phones as they knew that their presumed mundane plane ride was now suddenly their ticket to the grave. In the cnn 9/11 news footage of the planes crashing into the buildings, one sees no bodies, no people, no figures (other than the buildings), and yet these are all very strongly implied, accompanied with verbal report, and one clearly knows the implication: mass death both on the planes and in the building and on the ground. Nearly 3,000 people died that day and are now commemorated at the 9/11 memorial site, with each name listed around the perimeter of the void-turned-waterfalls where the towers once stood.

7.2.2

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No amount of reflection, philosophizing, or analysis of media semiotics or international politics brings back those individuals. Perhaps death is considered on par with deity in some traditions because of death’s irrevocable power over everything we humans know life to be for an individual. We know that people in the towers that day were faced with horrific choices such as choosing to be engulfed in flames and burned alive or choosing to jump out of the building to a certain death below. I type those words, you read those words, we “imagine” it perhaps, and we can see the footage and photos, but in an existential sense, we really have no idea. To get at that experience at all, we must enter the “as if” space, which certainly has empathetic and imaginative value, but is – for most readers of this book – far removed from the empirical reality of that time-space. The 9/11 news footage becomes “iconic” not simply because of its symbolism or the idea of a mass threat but also, more fundamentally, because many human beings really were killed and really did die. One cannot take their picture today, or interview them, or talk with them over lunch. They are gone, and they are never coming back. Many people, perhaps most, recall what they were doing that day or when they received the news. As Giovanna Borradori (2003) puts it: Even though the degree of personal involvement varied from case to case, virtually every New Yorker remembers in detail what they were doing when they learned that two commercial airliners, full of passengers and jet fuel, had crashed into the tallest buildings of the Manhattan skyline. Wall street lawyers and cabdrivers, shopkeepers and Broadway actors, doormen and academics – all have a story to tell. Even children have their own special stories, usually tinted with disbelief, fear, and loneliness. (x) The indication and reality of mass death of course was not limited to New Yorkers or those immediately within the vicinity of the attacks. Through media, the attacks became “real” for millions, if not billions, of people around the world almost instantaneously. What might have come over the radio wire and been narrated verbally in days past or communicated only through the written word by telegraph, letter, or newspaper, now came in to people’s living rooms, bars, restaurants, and bedrooms through the television screen. As Holloway (2008) puts it, “When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the scale of the audience facilitated by twenty-first-century mass media meant that the event was ‘real’ on the day for millions of Americans, as well as … billions around the world …”. (65). For example, Borradori (2003) reports that Jürgen Habermas saw the “breaking news” on television in Germany and, while absolutely not the equivalent of being in

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New York at the time, experienced a version of the reality of what happened. Borradori writes: As graphic and shocking as they were, the images [Habermas] saw on his tv screen in Germany were delivered in the “breaking news” format, leaving the possibility of a third-person [rather than a first-person] perspective. By contrast, New Yorkers like me were left in existential and sensory chaos: not only did a pervasive smell hang over Manhattan for weeks, but the acute scream of sirens, usually lost in acoustic pollution, kept puncturing the silence left by the empty airspace – the great dome of contrails and roars crisscrossing above the city. And yet, as Habermas points out, never before did anyone get as much reality from a tv screen as people got on 9/11. (49) I know that was my experience of it when I was sitting there with my sons at Comet Burger and the footage came over the diner’s tv screen. Borradori also spoke with Jacques Derrida not long after September 11, 2001, and what I find most notable in this context is that in the midst of his provocative reflections related to “philosophy in a time of terror” (Borradori’s title for her conversations with Derrida and Habermas post-9/11), Derrida still had to negotiate the new insecurity and threat context post-9/11 when he came to the United States shortly thereafter. I know, because this threat and the courage it took to continue to work and travel arose in comments as he was introduced at a conference I attended where he was a featured speaker just weeks after 9/11 (Religion and Postmodernism 3, Villanova University, September 27–29, 2001). I took the opportunity then to speak with him (very briefly) about the work of cultural theorist Mieke Bal, and he also was thanked by the conference organizers for making the trip in such a time. Everyone was on edge. There was no mistake that the threat was real. There was no mistake that people were indeed dead. There now is no mistake, years later, that Derrida (d. 2004) is dead. And there is no mistake that I will be dead one day, perhaps dead as you now read this, though hopefully long after the time of writing. Yet there is no mistake for any of us. I recently visited the World Trade Center memorial site (15 August 2016). Fifteen years after the event, I thought about Iyer and colleagues’ (2014) point that “even those who are far removed from the physical sites of terrorism can experience the powerful impact of these attacks” (511). I thought, “What happened here has made a significant impact on the lives of my boys, on all of our lives, perhaps a very significant impact”. Buildings fell that day and people died. One can now peer into the waterfalls that have been constructed there,

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down into the void, where water falls beyond one’s sightline (a kind of “navel” into the abyss, cf. Bronfen 1994). Or one can gaze upward into empty spaces where the towers once stood. One can trace a hand along the names of each person who died in the attacks and aftermath. But also – when the existential and empirical reality of that day is noted – one may also look to how the symbolic and ideational power of that day could point to the deaths of many, many others. How, for example, whatever one’s political orientation or commitments, do we account for the deaths of the countless people in the ensuing “War on Terror”? Over the years, I have had to explain to my boys that the United States is not always at war. I have to explain that fact to them because, throughout their growing up, reports of war are all they have known: post-September 11, Iraq, Afghanistan, isil. I talk to them about my generation growing up during the Cold War and aftermath. We talk about Vietnam and about American interventions around the world. And I talk to them about the reality of terrorism prior to 9/11, while describing a very different global context. (Some of my students now do not recall 11 September 2001 because they were only two or three years old [cf. Baldas 2016, 1A].) I talk about how, as a youngster myself, my family’s car periodically would be searched for bombs as we entered Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, where my father worked and my siblings and I went to school. This was because of ongoing threats, not least of which was a bombing near Torrejón, close to Madrid, months before we moved to Spain in 1985, targeting American service people (cf. Jordan and Horsburgh 2005, 170). One finds that part of the empirical and existential reality of terrorist threats is not only death but it is also the threat. Part of the massive power of the 9/11 footage is the threatening message: the American empire is mortal, it could fall, it will die. As real as this threat of death is, one also returns to the point that the 9/11 footage is, even as a mortality-index, mediated. As all memento mori experience does, the composition and experience of the 9/11 footage relies upon consciousness, memory in particular, and relies upon particular social reception within a given history or cultural genealogy. One has frames and brains involved, brains with particular memories and frames that include certain things and exclude others to compose a scene. The cnn 9/11 footage in p ­ articular takes place within the 24-hour “breaking news” genre “that produce[s]”, as Thomas Elsaesser (2014) puts it, “memory as trauma … the permanent repetition of images of disasters whenever and wherever these strike” (27). The repeated showing and repeated viewing of this particular footage is part of the “aesthetics” and “spectacle” (James 2016) that is designed for audiences to keep watching. As David Holloway (2008) points out, “References to Pearl Harbor, constructing 9/11 as a new ‘day of infamy’, quickly became one of the day’s most widely used

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media clichés” (62). While millions, even billions, of people around the world in reality had a completely “normal”, mundane day wherever they were – I was at home taking care of my two little children, cleaning up from breakfast while they played, at our home in Michigan – the news media through twenty-first century technology brought a “realist simulacra” of “terror” (James 2016, 146) into our lives. It is “as if” the attack “really” affected me, but in fact that day, empirically speaking, it had no direct effect on me nor on millions and billions of other people either, strictly speaking. But the conventions of “as if” (Zelizer 2010), framing, composition, narration, repetition, and amplification of the message “this is real” end up making it real to those for whom it would not otherwise be. It can seem heartless but nevertheless is factual to point out that the number of people killed or wounded in a given attack such as 9/11 are a miniscule percentage of the American or global population so that, quantitatively speaking, the effect on humanity’s population as a whole is negligible. Most people do not directly experience such attacks and are not directly affected. Rather, “Individuals who do not directly witness a terrorist attack … rely on the media to provide information about such events” (Iyer et al. 2014, citing Chermak and Gruenwald, 2006, and Nacos 2003). The news media repeats, amplifies, and saturates (Holloway 2008, 64–65) mass audiences and thereby “makes real” what otherwise only directly affects a few. When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the scale of the audience facilitated by twenty-first-century mass media meant that the event was “real” on the day for millions of Americans, as well as … billions around the world, and then endlessly “real” again and again, through the constant recycling of images that had long since ceased to be conventionally newsworthy in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. (65) cnn’s 9/11 coverage in particular repeatedly used the word “war” – “234 times in the first twelve hours of coverage, or once every three minutes on average” (62, citing Reynolds and Barnett 2003). The footage being employed was not only meant to inform but also to transform people: persuasion toward war had already begun.3 3 Other footage and still frame photography, images of people jumping to their deaths to avoid being burned alive, stand out for their “beauty”, which can seem inhumane to say considering they are documenting suicides. Yet, as Zelizer (2010) points out, even these images carry forward a tradition of spectacular jumping-from-heights suicide news photography. See “­Figure 2.5: I. Russell Sorgi, ‘Genesee Hotel Suicide’, Buffalo Courier Express, May 7, 1942,

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Thus the footage is not “just the footage”. It is also the showing and viewing of that footage over and over again. A composed message emerges so that the footage is not only mere documentation but engages what Bill Nichols (2001) calls the “final, distinguishing element of documentary”: “rhetoric” (97–98). The rhetorical purpose of the showing of the footage, including its repeated, saturating effect on American and global audiences, is to say, Can you believe it? Can you believe this is real? This really happened. This really is happening. The repeated showing and viewing is to increase belief that this is real and did really take place. Suspension of disbelief is crucial to accept the “reality”. Interestingly, the repeated showing of it ends up having a cinematic effect, not at 24x per second, but perhaps 24x per day or some other given time frame. As it is thus shown, there also is a sense of the moving imagery, sometimes given in slow motion, becoming a freeze frame or still frame. The rhetorical function here then is also to say, See this here? THIS is what will change us. As if to say, This imagery will be an emblem of our transformation. We – many Americans and many people around the world – already knew then we would be years and years out and this footage would be one, if not still the most crucial, of our primary emblems. And it continues to resonate for many human beings around the world as each faces their own particular threats. 7.3

Personally Transformative Points of Memento Mori Experience, Referenced by the 9/11 Footage

How is it that the experience of tragic death can transform us? Contemplating that reality is a mainstay of human experience and fuels the best of our human cultural productions from Shakespeare to the latest dramas streaming on hbo Go or Netflix. We humans document our tragedies, and the 9/11 attack has stood out in particular for many Americans and people around the world as poignantly tragic. While the cognitive “framing” and interpretation of that event could be widely divergent depending upon who the audience for it is, I am going to suggest that for me, along with others I know and know of, that attack got personal.

Courtesy of the Buffalo State College Archives and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society” (38); and “Figure 2.8: Richard Drew / ap, Contact Sheet, September 11, 2001; Richard Drew / ap, Bodies Falling From Towers, September 11, 2001” (44, 45). Such imagery carries forward the idea of the “aesthetics” and “spectacle” of what is put forward as “documentation” or “documentary” photos or footage.

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On Day 1, September 11, perhaps I was in shock or just in straightforward denial. Since the news of the attack had come by way of a phone call from my friend Joyce, and then I listened to news reports of it by way of National Public Radio (npr), it was as if I was living in the era of radio, pre-television. Were that really the case, I might have headed down later that week to the movie theater downtown to see news reels as people did after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and subsequently on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I certainly had no intention on Day 2 to see the footage or have my boys see it. But ultimately there was no denying it: the footage of the attack was being shown everywhere – in every café, restaurant, bar, corner store, diner – wherever there was a television. And the constant “stream” then centered primarily around one network: cnn. I recall seeing the image, while the first tower burned, of the airplane striking the second tower. I could feel an impact in and with my whole body – like a blow to the whole body – like being blitzed in American football. And I immediately felt great fear. A central image – the Twin Towers – of my childhood and of American society had just been struck and decimated. While other attacks or accidents may have had a plane striking a building, this attack was arguably original and unprecedented in its symbolism and location. No verbal statements necessarily needed to accompany the strike; the message was clear: This is what we do to you. We can bring you down. No matter how rich or powerful you think you are – you can, you will be, you have been cut down. Thou art mortal – we’ve made you so. I confess that, so far as that message goes in and of itself without respect to this particular attack, it is a message I would have for any of my mortal enemies as well. I confess that in the early minutes of learning of the World Trade Center attack, the thought popped into my head, What does this have to do with me? I confess I thought of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and wondered if human aspirations toward capital and building toward the “heavens” had been cut down “naturally” as a part of a divine machinery, however cruel that might be. I confess I thought of the ruins of fallen empires and wondered, Is this the beginning of the end for us? It’s a moment, it’s a flash, and it’s taken. Could the empire be taken so quickly? Could America go so quickly? The Towers, along with the Pentagon and the targeted us capitol, were (are) symbols of “the Infidel” by a select few with an extremist religio-political jihadist vision, not shared by the vast majority of people in any region of the world, no matter their religious persuasion. James (2016) suggests that part of what “generated fear” from the “imagery of the Twin Towers under attack” was/is “fear of the reversal of colonial and racial order” (144). Was this the end for an Anglo-European-American order of things in the West and globally? Could this be a sign for things to come for global capitalism? Was this to be the beginning of (the long-feared) World War iii?

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The strike on the Towers generated widespread and deep fear, including countless questions about the future, but it also resulted in – for me and others I know and know of – new clarity, courage, and self-innovation. To put it bluntly, there is nothing so motivating in life as the threat of death. Whether by nature or by way of a mortal enemy, the will to live arises perhaps most when life seems about to be taken. The initial viewing, repeat viewing, and then recall and contemplation of the 9/11 news footage “composed” for me, without necessarily intending to do so, a transformative experience. 7.3.1 Realizing One’s Place as a Mortal in a Vast Cosmos Intellectually, this experience became part of a growing realization of my place as a mortal in the vast cosmos. At first, it may have seemed that this place was within a religio-political cosmos, a “great chain of being”, one that pines and fights toward some version of theocracy, whether Muslim, Christian, or otherwise “spiritual” or idealistically driven toward one, single, unified order of things. This religio-political cosmos could be a very important, even extremely important, order we live in or in relation to, but from an empirical perspective is not the ultimate order of things. Perhaps, instead, post-9/11 we all needed to realize that our world exists within a free-trade capitalist global society with ongoing terrorist threats, international and domestic, that will have to continually be managed and fought. These threats may occur from a number of different sources, not only extremist jihadi sources, including extremist nationalist and racist individuals and groups, “eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists”, the “sovereign citizens movement”, “anarchist extremism”, “militia extremism”, “White supremacy extremism”, and lone wolf offenders (adapted from fbi 2009; cf. Morgan 2016). But as seemingly all-pervasive as globalization and terrorist threats within it often appear to be, there remains a larger order of things. That “order” is the cosmos itself, the tiny little Earth, our home, within it, and the nature of human life on this planet. Beyond the “great chain of being” and the negotiation of global and local order (sometimes dubbed “glocal”) is our Big History (Spier 1996; Christian 2011 [2005]). This is our empirically real place in the cosmos as it has evolved and we have evolved and developed over vast periods of time and in interaction with growing environmental threats and other threats.4 In the midst of these threats, we all live on the picnic blanket, so to speak, near the lakeshore within the scope of Powers of Ten, perfectly situated between the exponentially micro- and macro-scopic. 4 Threats “[range] from environmental degradation to natural and manmade disasters such as floods, tornados, and droughts, as well as the threat of disease epidemics, violations of human rights, humanitarian crisis, and poverty” (Norris and Inglehart 2011, 14).

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Granted, all this might sound like a lot to emerge out of a few seconds of news footage. Yet a bounty of symbolic and ideational references is exactly how some pictures work. Some pictures, perhaps most, are worth the proverbial thousand words, while others may be worth a million or ten to an exponential power. My contemplation of this 9/11 Towers footage freighted in massive “extra-documentary” awareness (compare Sobchack 2004), accompanying and facilitating a re-constitution of what I took “reality” to be. On the one hand, the television frame could be an abyss, a black hole from which no one ever returns. On the other hand, that frame could be a space for new or renewed intellectual clarity about what constitutes reality. Such clarity is precisely what emerges for certain viewers experiencing certain documentary films, segments of documentaries, or select footage. 7.3.2 “Making one’s life” as a Mortal in 21st Century “glocal” Society With new or renewed intellectual clarity comes the question as to how one will respond. With what one has seen (in the footage) and knows to be true (­extra-documentary knowledge), what does one do? One’s responsibility extends beyond the viewing of footage to “real life”. We viewers are implicated ethically. We are challenged to contemplate appropriate responses, to take responsibility in the face of tragedy and injustice. This ethical responsibility is not an impoverished sense of being “morally correct” but rather is a critical and holistic sense of responsibly “inhabiting” one’s life situation and activity with others, including one’s identity, work, and relationships. In the 9/11 aftermath, a colleague and friend of mine reports he was ready to kill people. He wanted to join the army, seek out anyone responsible for the attacks, and kill the fuckers. It was a sentiment shared by many Americans at the time and many other human beings throughout history and across cultures anytime someone’s own people are harmed or killed. There was the natural, at least for many, drive for vengeance. Shortly after 9/11, there was also the infamous call from us President George W. Bush for citizens to carry on as “normal” and, shockingly, to get out there and shop. By twists and turns, the response of Bush’s administration was then to invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein. As the “War on Terror” was declared, other efforts were against war and for diplomacy. New inter-faith and community organizations were created and efforts at cross-cultural understanding were amplified. Very vocal criticisms of religion(s) emerged calling for its end or fundamental reform, while others distinguished between forms of religion and forms of extremism. In the end, instead of joining the army, my friend decided to study existentialist psychology and to make his mark in the face of such threats as a student and healer of the human psyche. My response, in large measure, has been to write this book.

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But what will it be for each person? Is it business-as-usual? Is it contemplation of the past? Is it being in the moment? Is it preparing for the future? A few mainstream responses, at least in the us, were to blame one religion or to blame all religion(s); to carry on with a “normal” life of one’s job, making money, and shopping for one’s material wants; and/or to support or enact bombing and killing one’s perceived enemies. Alternative responses called for renewed military defense, but not offense; for “spiritual” renewal, whether in a religious context or a secular humanist context a la John Dewey’s A Common Faith (1934); or for building new alliances and re-framing “the enemy” (cf. Atran 2010). Renewed courage and creativity was called for. Among many examples I think of the quasi-documentary-style, fiction, us Navy SEALS recruitment film, Act of Valor (2012), that proposed a highly powerful ideational and affective antidote to suicide terrorism: i.e., sacrificing one’s self to save others. Instead of sacrificing one’s self to kill others – the film’s narrative argued – sacrifice yourself to save others. For myself, on my own terms, I think of my response first as the will to live and, second, of making a different way. I think of prevention, of distraction, of relationship-building, and of diplomacy. I do think of both “soft power” and “hard power” responses. Ideally, I would like never to use or support the use of hard power, but this ideal is just not realistic in terms of human nature and societies as they are currently and likely shall be for the foreseeable future. The Grim Reaper “himself” is arguably the ultimate hard power, and when others use “him” against “us”, “we” have to engage at least in a tit-for-tat response in order to not lose the game (cf. Waldrop 1992, 264–265). One has to be able to recognize hate and/or indifference and not waste one’s time with empty, unproductive, or destructive relationships. Of course in some cases one does have to reach across the lines and “talk to the enemy” in an effort toward the ultimate conversion: making one’s enemy a friend, because, as Abraham Lincoln suggested (cited in Atran 2010, 479), once the enemy has become a friend, they are no longer an enemy. As I see it, in the face of death threats, love or friendship, however they come, are absolutely worth it. Negative discrimination over gender, race/ ethnicity, age, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, ­you-name-it, appear starkly foolish in the face of death. “Making one’s life”, to paraphrase Yohji Yamamoto from Notebook, as a mortal in post-9/11 21st century society means being “glocal” – an individual in a local context that also has both potential and actual immediate and mediated interaction with global society through transnational markets and media. This interaction is both material and semiotic. As we make local contributions through our own particular assertions of identity, productive work, and constructive relationships,

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we p ­ rovide alternatives to zero sum life or death scenarios. Among many possible creative problem-solving/managing efforts, we need to challenge young people to risk their senses of self through intra- and inter-national exchange programs; to challenge them with adventurous trips in cities and in wilderness areas; to invent for or with them new high-aggression, low-impact, strategy games or sports so they may fully exercise their intellectual, social, and ­physical powers; to challenge them to develop their minds, along with their emotional intelligence, through research and affect-regulating practices; to challenge them to service; and to truly value their innovations in fashion, music, liberal arts, technology, and social policy going into a new generation of life. What will be their legacy? we may ask them. What is our legacy? How will we leave things better than we found them? 7.3.3 Moving One’s Self into Distinctive Human Experience These are a few ways one may move one’s self into distinctive human experience. These are ways that counteract the meaninglessness and magnitude of being a mortal in the vast inner and outer expanses. Through acceptance, courage, or productive defiance toward one’s existential situation, one may turn fear into courage, vengeance or rage into constructive power, and indifference into care and life-giving action. In the face of something like the 9/11 footage, one may feel moved, compelled to fight back, to avoid the reality, or be “frozen” in shock or numbness. But there is occasion to embrace the strong affective, sensorial, and primal mortal vision that motivates humans to powerful creative action. One may outwit, overcome, transform. One may recall, Your life goes on. Remember, you are living. Live now. Life goes on. Do you feel it? 7.4

Counterpoint: Memento Mori as Death Threat in Extremist YouTube Videos

I ask that question to you now within the context of existential threat. No matter one’s intellectual clarity, ethical response, or affectively soaring transvaluation of values toward the sublime in and of life, something or someone will be out there seeking your death. In the West and globally, a new face to such death threats now come through extremist videos posted to YouTube and other online social media venues. On the heels of reflecting upon the “personally transformative points of memento mori experience”, it can be helpful to be reminded that some people’s idea of “personal transformation” is to “transform” you and me into corpses. In Shakespeare, this is the ultimate “conversion” ­experience of body decomposed to dirt in Hamlet’s gravedigger/clown scene.

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In the context of extremist videos, memento mori’s injunction “remember you must die” may be a threat of murder within a vengeance tradition. In recent years with the rise of the internet and social media, the ­production, spread, and viewing of videos from extremist groups has grown dramatically. Extremist groups use “websites, posts, blogs, videos, music, games, tutorials, and email drops” (Holt, Freilich, Chermak, and McCauley 2015, 11) to spread their messages. Venues such as YouTube, Twitter, and “regional social media” around the world constitute “platforms that collectively have more than one billion daily views” (James 2016, 145; see also Friis 2015, 726). While the range and type of extremist groups could widely vary, I want to make a few brief comments here in the context of post-9/11 “jihadist terrorism”.5 Amazing to realize, perhaps for many readers, according to data from the Global Terrorism Database as reported by The New York Times, aside from 2001, terrorism deaths in the West are mostly in decline (Sanger-Katz 2016, A3). But those statistics do not usually reduce the affective impact or perceived threat for many Western viewers when they see a beheading video, videos with killings, and/or “dead and mutilated bodies” (Vergani and Zuev 2015, 11), whether as part of “jihadi videos” or “victim videos” (Holt et al. 2015, 107 ff.). Such videos are, more than anything, meant to be watched, they are meant to be watched widely, and they are meant to deliver a message. “As Saudi Arabia’s General Khaled Alhumaidan said to [Scott Atran] in Riyadh [several years ago], ‘The front is in our neighborhoods but the battle is the silver screen. If it doesn’t make it to the six o’clock news, then Al Qaeda is not interested’” (Atran 2010, 290). Now we might add the interest goes well beyond the silver screen

5 Nesser (2008) reports that in his study of jihadism in Western Europe from 1994–2007, the subjects “referred to themselves as ‘mujahidin’ or ‘jihadis’ [Holy Warriors]” (924; see also Weisburd 2009, 1066). “Terrorism” is described by Okamoto and Bladek (2010) as “reliance on actual violence or its credible threat that seeks to produce fear in a targeted population (often described as [an] ‘audience’)” (39). Terrorism is “a method of per- and dis-suasion” to “deliver a message of power, resolve, ubiquity, invincibility”, particularly “fear inculcated in the survivor or spectator” (Elsaesser 2014, 34). And it is “violent, or equally important, threatens violence” and is “designed to have far reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target” (Nesser 2008, 941, ftnt. 1). Of course terrorism is nothing new and long pre-dates 9/11. Near the turn of the 20th century it was an anarchist attack that Atran (2010) cites as the first or at least a pre-cursor to terrorism as we now know it, and it was the anarchist Leon Czolgosz who assassinated us President William McKinley (93–94). “Europe is no stranger to terrorism”, and “terrorism was widespread and frequent” in the 1970s and 80s, including groups such as eta (Euskadi Ta Fraktion), the ira (Irish Republican Army), and raf (Rote Armee Fraktion) [Marxist-Leninist Red Army Fraction] (941).

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or ­television to the mobile smartphone and from the six o’clock news to any ­particular media venue where a video might go “viral” such as on YouTube. In recent years, primary attention has turned from Al Qaeda to isil. “From Twitter to YouTube, the is [so-called Islamic State, isis, isil, or Daesh] has sought to publicize its message, spread fear, and reach out to new recruits. Just like [Al Qaeda], the media front is a central pillar of is’s strategy and it is clear that the group invests heavily in this area” (al-‘Ubaydi, Lahoud, Milton, and Price 2014, 47). As Friis (2008) points out, “it becomes increasingly difficult to understand war and violence without taking visual media into account” (726) and “beheading and execution videos have not been given sufficient theoretical attention” especially in terms of “the visibility” and the experience of “‘watching’ the videos” (727). Finsnes (2010) rightly points out that “the overall intention of the videos is propaganda” (9) with “two main goals”: (1) “promoting and glorifying the jihadis, and [(2)] discrediting their enemy …” (20). Yet I suggest there could be other ways to describe what is happening with these videos. At least one of these is to view them in terms of epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric where death is revered. In the midst of this reverence, at least two messages may be delivered: first, that all remember their pathetic mortal status in relation to the divine and, second, that enemies of these video-makers see and hear that they will be killed by the jihadist(s), in some cases as the jihadist also kills himself. In such a reading/viewing of these videos, they operate as memento mori in terms of remembering mortality but also as a death threat. Of course it depends upon which particular videos one is referring to, made by whom, at what time, directed toward whom, and for what particular purpose.6 The range of studies is wide and growing (e.g., ctc 2006; Hafez 2007; Nesser 2008; Weisburd 2009; Caldwell 2010; Finsnes 2010; Friis 2015; Holt et al.

6 The list of operating groups is long; the us National Counter Terrorism Center lists approximately 25 groups, and those are just highlights of the hundreds of groups that exist (see https://www.nctc.gov/site/groups.html). These groups include, as the cia reports, isil, Boko Haram, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte), and operate all around the world including in “major urban areas”, e.g., isil in Algeria, Belgium, Egypt, France, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen; Boko Haram in Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger; and ltte in India and Malaysia (cia 2016). Finsnes (2010) reports that the “intended audience” for various videos may be to “‘the Muslim Umma’ (national community), ‘my Muslim brothers’, ‘the mujahideen’, or to ‘the people of the West’, ‘the people of Europe’, or ‘the American people’ for instance” (9). As al-‘Ubaydi and colleagues (2014) report, the “network of online supporters” of isil “is larger than anything that has been seen before in terms of an insurgent organization” (50).

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2015; James 2016).7 As just one example among hundreds, I will point to a beheading video as reported by Friis (2015) and James (2016). “On 19 August 2014 a video was uploaded to YouTube showing the beheading of us journalist James Foley by the man who later became know as Jihadi John. This was the first of seven videos …” (James 2016, 138).8 Foley’s video entitled “a message to America” shows Jihadi John, dressed in black, condemning the American attacks in Iraq and describing his action as a reprisal. The execution takes place in a desert scene, with Foley, in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling beneath Jihadi John. As with [other] videos, the orange jumpsuit references the uniforms worn by detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The video shows Jihadi John holding a knife to Foley’s throat. The following shot is of Foley’s decapitated head on his torso. The video ends with an image of [us–Israeli journalist Steven] Sotloff and a warning to [us President] Barack Obama that [Sotloff’s] fate depends upon the President’s future actions. The executions of Sotloff and [British aid worker David] Haines were shown in similar fashion. james 2016, 142

Or as Friis (2015) describes: On 19 August 2014, shortly after 5 p.m. us eastern time, a video lasting 4 minutes and 40 seconds appeared on Al-Hayat Media Center’s account 7 In 2006, the Combating Terrorism Center (ctc) at West Point issued the “first comprehensive cataloging of the most important and recurring images used in violent jihadi literature, websites, and propaganda”. Hafez’s work (2007) looks at 29 different video clips, which range in length from one minute to one hour long (112). Weisburd (2009) compared so-called cholo videos with jihadi videos, using “450 of each class of video” (1067). In 2010, Finsnes with the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (ffi), gave an overview of “videos (…) issued by al-Qaida, al-Qaida-affiliated groups, or other groups adhering to the same global salafi-jihadi ideology” (3). “As of March 2010, ffi’s jihadi video database contained 800 videos” and these range from “short clips” to “long documentary-like productions” (8). Videos in this collection are “produced by 32 groups” (11) and “49 production companies” (14) such as Al-Sahab Media, which produced 176 of them (15). Finsnes also points to the Jihad Archive (www.jarchive .info), which at least as of 2009, had “one of the largest organized internet collections of jihadi propaganda material, including written texts, videos, pictures and audios [sic] from at least the 1980s [up to] today” (32). 8 “Jihadi John” was later “identified [by The Washington Post] as Mohamed Emwazi, a University of Westminster graduate” (James 2016, 139).

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on the social networking platform Diaspora.[9] The slickly produced video, entitled ‘A message to America’, purported to show the beheading of the American photojournalist James Wright Foley at the hands of a masked insurgent from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (isis [or isil]). In the video, the black-clad insurgent condemns the American government’s actions in Iraq and announces that the execution of Foley is in retaliation for the air strikes ordered by President Barack Obama on 7 August 2014. The actual beheading is not explicitly shown in the video. However, the video does show the black-clad insurgent pressing a knife against Foley’s throat, followed by a shot displaying a beheaded body in a prone position with a head placed on the back, thus leaving little hope for Foley’s fate. Ominously, the video concludes with the reappearance of the isis insurgent, this time holding another kneeling hostage (the American photojournalist Steven Sotloff) and warning Obama that “the life of this American citizen depends on your next decision”. (725) As events that were contemporary with the uploading, distribution, and viewing of them through YouTube and other means, there was the strong sense that these events were not history but were, rather, taking place in the present. As James (2016) puts it, “Because of the perception of speed and immediacy that accompanies YouTube and other social media platforms, viewers were given the impression not that the beheadings had happened (…) but that they were happening” (145) right then, right now. Many other examples of videos could be cited. Finsnes (2010) points to documentary-style propaganda videos such as “The Destruction of the American Destroyer uss Cole” where “scenes of dead and wounded children, women and men in Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and other Muslim countries and regions are presented”, and “the video ends with images of the bombed us warship” (21). Some videos show footage of victims within them while others are focused primarily upon the victims throughout, as in what Holt and

9 As Friis (2015) notes, “Al-Hayat is isis’s leading distributor of western-aimed propaganda disseminated in several languages, including English, French and German. Diaspora is a community-run, decentralized network based on the free Diaspora software. Al-Hayat’s ­account on Diaspora began posting content on 20 July 2014. As of 20 August 2014, all isis’s accounts on Diaspora have been deleted. SITE Intelligence, ‘Islamic State releases video on Diaspora showing beheading of us journalist James Foley’, 19 Aug. 2014, http://news.­siteintelgroup.com/ blog/index.php/entry/236-islamic-state-releases-video-showingbeheading-of-u-s-journalistjames-foley%2C-threatensto-kill-another-prisoner, accessed 20 Aug. 2014”. (725).

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colleagues (2015) call a “victim video”.10 “Victim and jihad[ist] videos together create ‘a mobilization frame’ to move individuals toward ‘extremist action’” (114). The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (ctc 2006) reports “onehundred motifs that commonly occur in jihadi propaganda” (6) and among them are an index of “martyr” images, “afterlife” themes, and “blood”. “Guns and religious books” (Finsnes 2010, 23) are common, including the “ubiquitous” “ak-47 assault rifle” (Wiesburd 2009, 1072). Finsnes (2010) reports that “the defiling of religious symbols such as the Koran, the prophet and mosques, are often referred to”, along with “images of dead bodies of civilians and ruined houses as a result of air raids” (20). Weisburd (2009) reports motifs of weapons, religious symbols, and “honoring the dead”, e.g., a “presentation of image(s) of a departed comrade” (1068, Table 2). In “martyr videos” which honor and glorify martyrs “footage of the person(s) often both alive and dead” are shown (Finsnes 2010, 24). While this only scratches the surface of what is to be said about extremist videos, one may say, in summary: jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and isil produce “instant icons” (Friis 2015, 733) combining raw footage with “sophisticated rhetorical methods” (Caldwell 2008, 80), generated from “extensive media infrastructures” (al-‘Ubaydi et al. 2014, 47, referencing isil in particular) that are highly “pr-” and “media-savy” (Caldwell 2008, 80; al-‘Ubaydi et al. 2014, 47). They produce images of “holy warrior[s]” or “holy martyr[s]” (Vergani and Zuev 2015, 12; Hafez 2007, 95) who are supposedly part of an exciting, gloryfilled, honorable “brotherhood” (Vergani and Zuev 2015, 6; cf. Atran 2010) that is to enact judgment or vengeance to initiate a new or restored order and claim heaven and/or honor. In the discussion above, it was previously mentioned that one response to memento mori could be Repent, for your time is short. I wonder if, instead, in the context of Al Qaeda, isil, and related groups, the correlated response for them could be something like Vengeance is mine or perhaps “memento vindictae” (cf. Jacobs 1993). Likewise, a response to memento mori such as Carpe diem, Seize the day, might shift for them to something like Claim heaven now or Claim honor now. Memento mori in this context could be on par with skull and crossbones imagery: as a warning – danger here, poison – though extremist videos go further, preferring to show heads and corpses. Post-9/11, how does one respond? In the context of extremist videos, what does one do? How does one present counter-images? I think first of the 10

“A jihad[ist] video picks up where victim videos leave off” (Holt et al. 2015, 114). “A victim video shows injustice in human terms” (114). Holt and colleagues give an account of how Colleen LaRose, a us citizen born in Romulus, Michigan, aka “Jihad Jane” became radicalized through these victim videos.

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­unquestionably reprehensible “hooded man” Abu Ghraib images (Holloway 2008, 147, citing Wallis 2004, Griffin 2004, and Apel 2005, 97; see also Mitchell 2011), on the one hand, and the arguably praiseworthy images of Pope Francis kneeling to ceremonially wash the feet of Muslim women, on the other hand. But far beyond either of these, I think of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon and what it might be like to see the first human step onto the surface of Mars. I think of the red, white, and blue – from the us to the French, particularly as an image of liberté, égalité, fraternité. I think of the call for sophisticated visual propaganda going in the other direction and wonder what that might look like. I think particularly of new epideictic visuals, perhaps a 21st century version of what the Eameses displayed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War in a celebration of science, art, and shared human aspiration. I think of New York City today, alive and more energetic than ever. And I think of images of loved ones and friends – how I call them to my mind’s eye or see them on Facebook and think, memento vivere.

chapter 8

Conclusion and Future Prospects In the preceding chapters, memento mori has been identified as a broad, cultural phenomenon and experience, particularly in relation to documentaries, segments of documentaries, and select footage. Here one finds a sound basis for the study of memento mori beyond what ordinarily has been conducted in relation to particular memento mori items only. The terminology of “memento mori” has been drawn into the purview of a contemporary phenomenological rhetorical method that makes use of a classic schema for sorting out human experience and consciousness. This contemporary appropriation of a classic schema takes “fundamental” levels of human experience and consciousness as dynamic, not static, and transformative in ways that are thematized as intellectual, ethical, and affective. Memento mori has been shown to appear widely in artistic and cultural history, well beyond medieval European folk culture that was understandably obsessed with the Plague. Importantly, memento mori also has been shown as a phenomenon that has a place far beyond that of a counterpart or footnote to the vanitas tradition, most often identified in art historical literature with sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch still lifes and portraiture. Rather, as a cultural phenomenon and experience, memento mori assumes newfound, well-justified, and much overdue recognition. The next step in this effort could be a full, comprehensive study purely of memento mori not limiting one’s scope to particular items such as corpses or skulls as Koudounaris (2015) has done or to documentaries as I have done here. While that complete study of memento mori is beyond the scope of what has been accomplished here, this book sets good ground for this follow-up for whoever might be interested in doing it. The present study also has shown that a particular form of memento mori may be pursued and how fruitful insights can come of it. In this case, a simple idea that perhaps should have been elaborated long ago finally is e­ laborated – that is, that documentaries are a contemporary form of memento mori. ­Furthermore, as a prime example of memento mori, it has been suggested that documentaries offer a composed transformative experience in which the viewer is given occasion to renew consciousness of mortality. My guess is that this assertion will be found as commonsensical to many people, yet now there is an analytical, critical, and philosophical case for sustaining that common sense. Likewise, lines of critiquing common sense ideas about documentaries have

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been explicitly pursued to draw common sense into more critical thinking about documentaries within the context of contemporary philosophy of film and film theory. 8.1 After Death in Documentaries Here I have shown that, as a broad cultural phenomenon, memento mori may be identified not only in religious imagery, still life, and portraiture, but also as a “visual quotation” that exists very widely in art, including photography and film, and in culture, including popular and ordinary imagery from the ordinary lives of individuals, their groups, and their environments. We have seen that memento mori can be identified not only as a verbatim quote, as picture nomenclature, or as a verbal instruction, but also an ideational reference that appears very widely in Western literature and culture, with a special emphasis on its appearance in film. A very interesting next step to a project such as this could be to explore non-Western traditions and culture, or those that overlap with the traditions that I have mentioned but that deserve focused attention in their own right. For instance, a full comparative study of memento mori tradition could be developed to include Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, African, and Native American or indigenous cultures, just to name a few. I do not doubt that the findings would be fascinating. Koudounaris (2015) has initiated this effort covering, among others, traditions from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Thailand. Above also, I have presented a preliminary attempt to theorize or philosophize memento mori. I have argued that memento mori operates as an “index of death” or “mortality-index”, by which I have meant that memento mori really refers to death – while at the same time, the referencing of mortality or death relies upon human consciousness and is a human convention. We have seen how it may be useful and instructive to discuss memento mori in these terms, in part, as an exercise in sorting out the rhetorical status of epistemological claims and, at the same time, the epistemological status of rhetorical claims. For example, we discussed memento mori as an artifice with a history or cultural genealogy that relies upon particular social reception and relates to various and specific genres, media, and material. Throughout, it has been ­suggested that this “artifice” is not only no less real than what would not be an artifice, but that that artifice is part and parcel of what constitutes reality for human beings in the first place. As an inkling of where this thought could go next, one could get a hint from Noonan, Little, and Kerridge (2013) on what they call a “neo-memento mori”: a notion of memento mori within Baudrillard’s hyper-real proliferation of simulacra. Then again most will not be

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content with a collapse into simulacra and will continue to seek multi-layer, multi-textured levels of analysis for what and how things are real and how they affect each other (cf. Bennett-Carpenter 2002, on the work of Mieke Bal). Above, also, I have theorized or philosophized documentaries as memento mori. Employing the outstanding work of Vivian Sobchack, Bill Nichols, and Laura Mulvey, I have argued that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori and are ultimately transformative, not simply informative. Building upon their work and others in film theory and philosophy (such as Bordwell, Plantinga, Winston, and many others), I have identified and outlined specific levels of analysis by which memento mori may be identified in particular documentaries. Importantly, however, these lines of analysis may provide a starting point for memento mori analysis of any item in any context. A future study could adjust and develop further what has been initiated here. The result of these lines of analysis may be an original insight into phenomena, in this case specific documentaries, segments of films, or select footage. Importantly, as I have argued that memento mori is a composed transformative experience that operates on intellectual, ethical, and affective levels, I have not said that this is the only way to discuss memento mori, or “the transformative”, or consciousness, or experience. Rather, I have employed one classic schema emerging out of Western traditions of philosophy, rhetoric, and ­psychology tied to logos, ethos, and pathos. In terms of experience, other sensitizing terms have been added to help sort out its elements in a practical situation: first, that experience is considered in “total” or integrative terms, that it concerns the material, etcetera, as discussed above. These elements of experience could be developed further in connection with an emerging literature that is oriented by Dewey’s Art as Experience (1980 [1934]) as a classic starting point and empirical user-experience studies as its present-day avant-garde. Likewise, a completely thorough study of consciousness of mortality would, on the one hand, have to distinguish classic or folk psychology as useful within given practical or artistic contexts while moving on, for example, to scientific studies of the brain – for instance, empirical studies at a cellular level and those that employ neurological imaging or statistical measurements. On the other hand, social and natural scientific studies of mortality would provide entirely new insights to add to what has been discussed in this book in a basic way such as how “death” is defined in the first place. 8.2

From Memento Mori to Memento Vivere?

In the end, a possible future for the phenomenon of memento mori not only for individuals but also for culture at large has been hinted at at various

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points in the chapters above. After some consideration, it should be seen as a strong implicit element within, and perhaps an explicit development beyond, memento mori: that is, memento vivere. As “remember you will live”, “remember life”, “consciousness of the life one has to live”, “life-awareness” or other ­English-language paraphrases and interpolations, memento vivere suggests another kind of dealing with memento mori items and perhaps the identification of distinct items that appear in their own right as memento vivere rather than memento mori. For instance, very noticeably, around the time of the invention of the camera and the emergence of photography and historically celluloid-based film – between 1850 and the 1920’s – memento vivere terminology began to appear in English-language literature.1 What if, then, memento vivere were to emerge as a cultural phenomenon as or more potent than its predecessor, memento mori? Or, perhaps, it has already? One can speculate that an increasing awareness of mortality could translate to new responses to death that emphasize a new concentration on life. This memento vivere element is not hard to imagine in relation to Powers of Ten, for example. Perhaps concern on present action and conditions for the sake of future generations could come to increasing awareness. The question, then, might be raised as to what physical and cultural inheritance one cultivates, here and now, for human beings here and now, and in the future. We have already seen these themes emerge in Notebook on Cities and Clothes. For its part, memento mori educates its interlocutors in reality, meets societal need, and engages individual and cultural memory at their most dynamic. It does this for a purpose: not consciousness of mortality for the sake of death, but rather consciousness of mortality for the sake of life. Blue may viewed this way, too, as may the 9/11 footage. Yet to use the terminology of memento vivere – what could amount to an emerging cultural phenomenon of its own – also could indicate a decisive limitation on, and alteration of, the use of “memento mori” terminology. In the first place, memento mori, in bringing to mind mortality, could be taken directly as memento vivere, an instruction to remember life. In this context, for example, I think of the bbc-produced documentary series called Life Story (2014). In the second place, entirely new works could come into consideration other than the many memento mori examples that have been given above. The life one has to live certainly includes all of one’s activity, including picnicking by the lakeshore, designing clothes, filmmaking, celebrating – and 1 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, as a few instances, “memento vivere” appeared in Bluden’s Undertones of War ii.17 (1928); Aldous Huxley’s Cicadas 8 (1931); and in Punch 19 Oct 603/2 (1966).

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­ rotesting – social, political, and biological conditions, and reflecting upon p one’s life and work. The experience of contemporary memento mori can move one from death to life, so to speak, turning memento mori around. Of course one’s response to memento mori never need be, in the first place, a morbid occupation with a human being’s inevitable death-sentence. Rather, turning one’s self around and seizing the day, whether for religious or secular rationale and purpose, can be an affirmation of life with a renewed sense of life’s distinctiveness. Furthermore, a study of memento vivere could be pursued as a follow-up or extension of the study of memento mori. First, the question of memento vivere as possibly a broad under-recognized cultural phenomenon and experience could be addressed. One could search for memento vivere quotations in literature and culture, and memento vivere symbolism could be suggested – for example, the human face and body or images of nature, especially of water and the color green. The idea of memento vivere could be sought for wherever it possibly could be found, and items that operate as a “life-index”, where the item has material and semiotic references to living, could be investigated. Documentaries that address biological, animal, and human life, for example, immediately come to mind. The remarkable capacities of human consciousness could be further recognized and emphasized, and identification of a memento vivere tradition or traditions emerging from particular histories or cultural genealogies could be pursued. For instance, one could pursue a memento vivere genealogy from within (and beyond) the memento mori tradition discussed in the above chapters. Or, perhaps, on the one hand, one could look to a memento vivere tradition emerging from both Jewish and Christian sources, along with Greek and Roman as well – or beyond to global traditions, both indigenous and international. Perhaps a memento vivere tradition could be identified as appearing from a scientific-humanist tradition. Or perhaps one might look to Epicurean sources. In Freudian terms, this could be a turn from a focus on death to a focus on sex or, more broadly speaking, life. As one investigated not only memento vivere items, but memento vivere as a phenomenon and as an experience, then attention to particular audiences would be crucial, both as groups and as individuals. Of course, like memento mori, memento vivere could be found open to deception and to spoof. Memento mori may be turned into a joke because – the idea being that – everybody is already well aware that they are going to die (or that they are mortal). In other words, if everyone is already well aware of mortality, then the idea that one has to be reminded of it can become a way to comically poke people – for example, “Don’t forget to die”. Likewise, spoofs of

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memento vivere could hinge on the fact, again, that nobody needs to remind themselves to live because they already are living – for example, “Don’t forget to breathe”. (And once one is dead, there is no point or possibility of remembering or being conscious of anything anymore anyway.) A memento vivere spoof or deception could also conclude, for example, with the figure of Death returning victorious over the living: that is, memento mori again! For example, Koudanaris (2015, frontispiece) offers an illustration entitled “The Champion” with a skeleton-boxer standing victorious, with raised boxing gloves, over three challenging (and now apparently knocked-out or dead) humans, reminiscent of Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale”. At the same time, it would be interesting to see if, and if so, how, memento vivere had special connections to specific mediums, genres, and materials. I speculate that music could take up particular prominence in a study of memento vivere, along with comedy and the performing arts. I wonder about this because I think of performing arts as potentially more closely tied to memento vivere than would be texts and images, though obviously this idea would have to be investigated. I also wonder about how new digital media and emerging genres would play in, or not play in, to the phenomenon of memento vivere. In the context of memento vivere, one may think of the Marx Brothers’ performances, of, perhaps, new religious liturgies, and of musicals on and off Broadway and elsewhere. Above, I have shown the close connection between memento mori and documentaries, which leads me to wonder what media or genres, if any, might be tied to memento vivere. At this point in time, I speculate memento vivere could be closely tied, as at least one prime example, with music and, for a particular instance, I would begin by looking at operatic genres or styles, starting with classical and then focusing attention upon present-day emerging forms from jazz to experimental. 8.3

Memento Mori in New Media Environments

Another interesting direction for inquiry for both memento vivere and memento mori could be further in the direction of new media environments. Above, I have discussed documentaries in terms of transformative experience that engages intellectual, ethical, and affective issues that often are neglected. But much more could be done particularly with the place of the emotional and ­especially the somatological in film experience, including the total sensorial appeal in a given performance and situation (cf. Sobchack 2004; Plantinga 2009). These insights could continue to be linked or extended further to media experience more generally. Many empirical studies are being c­ onducted on media e­ xperience, but often these studies are so particular as to have

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piecemeal results for a full consideration of all the aspects of a truly complete “user-experience”. In particular, the experience of films in video or digital medium, which allows one to identify, stop, and replay film excerpts or details, it has commonly been suggested, could be the beginning, for a new kind of interaction with older media forms. This reality has now expanded exponentially with “smart” mobile phones with apps such as Instagram and relatively high quality photo, video, and editing capabilities in devices such as Apple’s iPhone. With video or digital technology – and now mobile technology as well – viewers may, if they are so inclined, compose their own experience of a film in a way that could not be done with the older technologies (cf. Wenders’s commentary on Notebook). Thus, a powerful argument may be made that viewers or “consumers” of television and film, for example, are having increased creative control over the material, though this claim may be contested within the context of increasing monopolization from corporate media giants. These recently invented compositional capacities include the ability for repeated play of films or portions of films, for freeze- or still frame viewing (Mulvey 2006), slow motion and reverse play, jumping in and out of particular moments of films, and – beyond these – for interacting with films in a variety of media formats, such as television, video projector, radio, audio, book, video installation art, mobile phone – and, even, as wide a range as performance art, on the one hand, and posters, postcards, or clothing, on the other hand. Digital technologies – including what we know as “smart” phones, cell phones, mobile phones, or just “mobiles”, but which are better understood as small, mobile, powerful personal computers – allow for mobility within and of the images and sound presented. Digital technology may enable more focused or limited and, at the same time, more sustained consideration of aspects of select films, segments of films, or particular footage over time. Because of a contemporary viewer’s capacity to manipulate images and sound more easily, a viewer has the means, in various ways, to recompose the film or elements of the film or footage, if the viewer is so inclined. In fact, the capacity, especially, to delay or stop images, to replay them, and stop them again lies at the basis for critical assessment of images and for film analysis (Mulvey 2006). In a multi-media culture that has these video and digital capacities, an increased significance may be appearing for memento mori images because of the increased ability to contemplate particular images. On the one hand, we may see this with the ability of individuals to film in real time a bombing in Paris, Orlando, or Istanbul. On the other hand, we may see this with the ability of individuals all around the world from Johannesburg to Sri Lanka to Alberta to view the aftermaths of those bombings on their mobile devices.

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Notably, at the same time, this ability to halt images revives themes that once were identified with older technology and media, such as photography and painting, and, beyond this, to human capacity with or without the newest gadgets. Ironically, the “new school” capacity of the new technologies also facilitates the “old school” capacity of memory – not only as materially documented as an image, but also as recorded and stored information in the brain. If not always the most powerful for particular tasks, such as playing chess or the Chinese game Go, remembering where one put one’s keys, or storing exponential amounts of immediately retrievable number data, the human brain (human body included) still remains by far the most complex memory “machine” (see, e.g., Dennett 1991; Kandel 2007). This observation calls attention to the fact that even with the remarkable achievements of new technologies and media, low-tech and no-tech “media experience” still leaves us with the most complex phenomena: human consciousness and experience within the environment that makes up the space-time for human beings, individually and collectively. In part because of many generations of human experience, human beings now remember, teach and learn, and remember again that their existence runs, roughly, a certain way – and then ends. This lesson may not be forgotten easily by human societies, especially among the older and the more perceptive members. Yet it is a lesson that is taught to the individual either through raw experience or by education. We observe various individual and collective, peculiar and systematic, responses to this lesson resulting in grand denials, willed forgetfulness, despair, vengefulness, apathy, deceit, fantasy, and anything other than candidness rooted in empirical knowledge. As this book concludes, I suggest that candidness about mortality takes courage in the face of fear, which is widespread among individuals and in culture, and new levels of transparency are required about the use of items of, or practices that engage in, fiction or imagination, on the one hand, and ­non-fiction or the empirical, on the other. I have found that a study of memento mori facilitates this courage. Perhaps the sooner memento mori’s lesson is learned, the more opportunity human beings may have for attending to the survival and well-being of themselves and of the next generations. As I have mentioned above, Works of memento mori imply that there is something worthwhile in calling to mind, being aware or cognizant of mortality rather than not doing so. In this way, memento mori is directly related to Socrates’s assertion that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. In the case of memento mori, one is being asked to examine the fact that life is limited

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and that a crucial measure to its worth is to be found through or within this limitation as a mortal. To “Know Thyself” is to “Memento Mori”, to “Remember that thou art mortal” (Bennett-Carpenter 2014, 362). Thus, memento mori ties into the very foundations of a Western philosophical and humanist tradition. Montaigne (1958 and 1965 [1572–1574]) put this as, “Que philosopher c’est apprendre à mourir” – “To philosophize is to learn to die”. And as Merleau-Ponty (1962) puts it, “philosophy has no function other than to teach us once more to see [historical situations] clearly” (456). As a legacy of this philosophical and humanist tradition, memento mori is a gift to the world: a gift that in recent years has been powerfully communicated and experienced through the mundane and the sublime of documentaries as they deal with death.

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Archives and Special Sites

British Film Institute, Special Collections, London. Combating Terrorism Center presentation, 21 October 2016, United States Military Academy, West Point. Comet Burger diner, Royal Oak, Michigan, USA. Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA.

References

203

Eames House and Office, Santa Monica, California. Library of Congress, LC Motion Picture / LC Prints & Photographs Divisions, Washington DC. Picnic site for Powers of Ten near the Adler Planetarium, Chicago. Pompidou Centre, site of Wenders / Yamamoto interview, Paris. World Trade Center site, New York City.

Footage CNN. 2001, September 12. “CNN 9/11 LIVE TV Coverage (9/12/01) 10:45 A.M–11:00 A.M”, posted by The 9112001 on 9 January 2012. From the Cable News Network. Retrieved at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJeqN_-QvpU on 19 September 2016. [­Images starting at 4:20 / 14:59.]



Filmography (Chronological)

Arrival of a Train [Arrivée d’un train]. 1895. Dir. August and Louis Lumière. Nanook of the North. 1922. Dir. Robert Flaherty. Qué viva México! 1930/1979. Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Triumph of the Will [Triumph des Willens]. 1935. Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. Rules of the Game [La Règle du jeu]. 1939. Dir. Jean Renoir. The Grapes of Wrath. 1940. Dir. John Ford. A Communications Primer. 1953. Dir. The Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Night and Fog [Nuit et brouillard]. 1955. Dir. Alain Resnais. Day of the Dead. 1957. Dir. the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. The Seventh Seal [Det sjunde inseglet]. 1957. Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Tocatta for Toy Trains. 1957. Dir. the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Dead of the Fifties. 1960. Dir. the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Psycho. 1960. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Sleep. 1963. Dir. Andy Warhol. Empire. 1964. Dir. Andy Warhol. M*A*S*H. 1970. Dir. Robert Altman. The Godfather [I, II, III]. 1972, 1974, 1990. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Alice in the Cities [Alice in den Städten]. 1974. Dir. Wim Wenders. Sebastianne. 1976. Dir. Derek Jarman. Annie Hall. 1977. Dir. Woody Allen. Jubilee. 1977. Dir. Derek Jarman.

204

References

Powers of Ten. 1977 (first version 1968). Dir. The Office of Charles and Ray Eames. [DVD, Color, 9 minutes.] United States. (See also The Films of Charles and Ray Eames below.) Faces of Death. 1978. Dir. John Alan Schwartz aka Conan Le Cilaire. Lightning Over Water [also known as Nick’s Film – Lightning Over Water]. 1980. Dir. Wim Wenders with Nicholas Ray. Das Boot [The Boat]. 1981. Dir. Wolfgang Peterson. Sans Soleil. 1982. Dir. Chris Marker. The State of Things [Der Stand der Dinge]. 1982. Dir. Wim Wenders. Paris, Texas. 1984. Dir. Wim Wenders. The Times of Harvey Milk. 1984. Dir. Rob Epstein. Caravaggio. 1986. Dir. Derek Jarman. The Last of England. 1987. Dir. Derek Jarman. The Thin Blue Line. 1987. Dir. Errol Morris. Wings of Desire [Der Himmel über Berlin aka The Sky Over Berlin]. 1987. Dir. Wim Wenders. Notebook on Cities and Clothes [Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten a.k.a., Notes on Clothes and Cities]. 1989. Dir. Wim Wenders. Starring Yohji Yamamoto. [DVD, Color, 81 minutes.] Paris, Tokyo, Berlin. Roger and Me. 1989. Dir. Michael Moore. The Films of Charles and Ray Eames. 1989–2012. The Eames Office. The Garden. 1990. Dir. Derek Jarman. Edward II. 1991. Dir. Derek Jarman. Orlando. 1992. Dir. Sally Potter. Blue [aka Derek Jarman’s Blue]. 1993. Derek JarmanDir.. [Videocassette / DVD / digital stream, Color, 76 minutes.] Great Britain. [See complete credits for Blue in Peake 1999, 586.] [Also: Blue: A Film by Derek Jarman. 1993. Audio CD. Composed by S­ imon Fisher Turner. Written by Derek Jarman. Mute Corporation (1993, 1994).] Wittgenstein. 1993. Dir. Derek Jarman. The Crow. 1994. Dir. Alex Proyas. Buena Vista Social Club. 1999. Dir. Wim Wenders. 11’09”01 – September 11. 2002. Dir. Youssef Chahine et al. Fog of War. 2003. Dir. Errol Morris. Control Room. 2004. Dir. Jehane Novjaim. Fahrenheit 9/11. 2004. Dir. Michael Moore. La Marche de L’Empereur [The March of the Penguins]. 2005. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Grizzly Man. 2005. Dir. Wernor Herzog. An Inconvenient Truth. 2006. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Starring Al Gore. Encounters at the End of the World. 2007. Dir. Werner Herzog.

References

205

Derek. 2008. Dir. Isaac Julien. Pina. 2011. Dir. Wim Wenders. The Act of Killing. 2012. Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, and Christine Cynn. Act of Valor. 2012. Dir. Mike McCoy (aka Mouse McCoy) and Scott Waugh. Life Story. 2014. Dir. Sophie Lanfear, Emma Napper, Tom Crowley, and others. Produced by BBC. Hosted by David Attenborough.

Index 11’09”01 – September 11 (2002) 150 1822-Now (1993) 40 1970s 62, 65, 165n5 1980s 98, 99, 117, 134, 139–140, 151, 167n7 1990s 98, 139–140 9/11 / 9/11 footage 26, 28, 117, 129, 144–170, 174 A Burial at Ornans (1849) 38 academics 155 A Communications Primer (1953) 59 Act of Valor (2012) 163 action / actions 164, 167–169, 174 actors 155 Acts of God 149 actuality / actuality, creative treatment of 115, 146 Address of the Eye, The (1992) 22 Adler Planetarium (Chicago) 63 aesthetic / aesthetics 16, 21, 59, 109n1, 124, 125, 134, 143, 154, 157, 159n3, affect / affective / affectively 3, 16, 25, 51, 119n4, 120, 130, 136, 140, 149, 163, 164–165, 171, 176 and levels ix, 23, 40, 102, 122, 173 and transformation / transformative 27, 69, 86, 88, 89–90, 102, 125–126, 133, 135, 142–143 Afghanistan 157 Agee, James 40n10, 115, 146 airplane / airplane accidents 128, 138, 149, 150, 153, 160 ak-47 assault rifle 169 Alexander the Great 47 Al Jazeera 53 Allen, Woody 53 Alpers, Svetlana 35n4, 36–37 Al Qaeda 154, 165, 166, 169 Altman, Robert 53 al-‘Ubaydi, Muhammed 166, 169 America / American 92, 106, 119, 147, 152, 155, 157–162, 166n6, 167–168, 172 American Experience (pbs) 53 analysis (of memento mori) 13–15, 60–68, 94–102, 126–130, 135–143, 150–158 anarchist / anarchy 135, 161, 165n5

animal / animals 4, 10, 16, 20, 53, 73, 82, 88, 108, 110, 111, 113, 121, 123, 128, 134n4, 138, 161, 175 animal remains 128 An Inconvenient Truth (2006) 7–8, 54, 89, 113 Annie Hall (1977) 53 apocalyptic 25, 131 Apple’s iPhone 177 Aristotle, Rhetoric 17–18, 67–68, 88n11 Armstrong, Neil 154, 170 Arrival of a Train (Arrivée d’un train, 1895) 66, 114 Art and Experience (1934) 120 art history ix, 2–6, 19, 29–40, 71, 83, 99 artists 36, 37, 39n7, 49, 50n22, 51, 81, 92, 141 artificial 12, 26, 27, 44, 61, 71, 79–85, 108, 129, 135, 136, 140 “as if” 40, 45, 52, 62, 116, 150, 152, 155, 158 asymetrical / asymmetry 102, 104–105 Atran, Scott 145, 163, 165, 169 attacks 24, 28, 128, 144–147, 155–162, 167 audience 17, 24, 27, 54, 57, 63, 65–67, 90, 98, 102, 125, 127, 129–130, 133, 135, 139, 155, 157–159, 165n5, 166n6, 175 and belief, expectations, perception, or ­reception 7, 11, 12, 66, 114–117,  136, 140–143 and purpose 4, 15, 21 audio 25, 105, 131–143, 167n7, 177 Augustine 18 Auschwitz 54, 112 automobile / automobile accidents 128, 148 awareness 1, 4, 7, 11, 13, 15, 40, 64–66, 74–77, 81, 85, 98, 100, 124, 143, 153, 162, 174 awareness of mortality 1, 5, 7–8, 12, 28, 37, 55, 64, 121, 123, 126, 129, 174 bringing about 2, 71–77, 83–85, 88–90, 108 coming to 41–42, 90, 147–148 see also consciousness of mortality Bailly, David 35n4, 36–37 Bal, Mieke 19, 37n6, 156, 173 Barbieri, William xii, 3 Barnouw, Eric 114, 117 Barthes, Roland 8, 18, 39, 109, 129

Index Basilica of Sacré Coeur 92, 95 battlefields 128 Baudrillard, Jean 14, 19, 146, 172–173 Baudry, Jean-Louis 70n8 Bazin, André 108, 109–110, 120n5 Becker, Ernest 1, 49, 53, 73 beheading 154, 165–168 being 70n8, 86, 101, 106, 108, 111–112, 114–115, 124, 161, 163–164 bell 84, 132 Bellini, Giovanni 32–33 belief / believe 1, 9, 66, 93, 110, 115n3, 116, 132, 138, 143, 149, 150, 153, 159, 162, 174 Benedict, Saint 44n14 Benjamin, Walter 80 Bennett-Carpenter, Benjamin 37n6, 75n3, 76, 85, 147, 173, 179 Berlin 25, 93 Bergman, Ingmar 52 Bergström, Ingvar 29, 35 beyond / the beyond 51, 80, 82, 86, 97, 105, 124 Bhimji, Zarina 40 Bible, the 40, 42, 43–44, 79 Big Electric Chair (Warhol, 1967) 38 biological / biology 13, 42, 62, 72–73, 76–77, 86, 89, 96, 120, 143, 175 birth 7, 14, 16, 71, 90, 91 Blind Lemon Jefferson 83 Bloom, Harold 1, 42, 49–50, 72 Blue (aka Derek Jarman’s Blue, 1993) 13, 25–26, 28, 117, 129–130, 131–143, 146, 149, 174 Blue Bearded Reaper 137 body 50, 51, 57, 61, 62, 73, 125, 132, 142, 160, 164, 168, 175, 178 dead 47, 109, 147–149 lived or living 84, 111–112, 119–120 Boeke, Kees 56 Boel, Pieter 35 bones 44, 46, 121, 147, 169 book / books 4, 32, 33, 35, 36, 58, 61, 82, 95, 128, 148, 169 Bordwell, David 7, 15, 17, 21, 38, 114, 115, 118–120, 126, 127, 173 Borges, Jorges 42, 51 Borradori, Giovanna 145, 146–147, 155–156 Boundary 4, 6, 14, 15, 86, 92, 97, 105 Brandt, Bill 40, 61

207 breaking news 155–157 Britian / British 25, 126, 131–132, 133, 140, 142, 167 British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc) 140 British Film Institute (London) 126, 131–132 Bryson, Norman 19, 35 bubbles 35, 36, 128 Buddhism / Buddhist 71, 132, 142 Buena Vista Social Club (1999) 93, 101 Buffalo, New York 158n3 buildings 145, 152–156 Burke, Kenneth 18, 20, 102, 118, 122n6 cabdrivers 155 Cable News Network (cnn) 24, 28, 53, 144–160 Calvinism 35 camera / cameras 15, 53, 57, 69, 91–92, 94–95, 99–100, 109–110, 115, 121, 126, 174 Camera Lucida 8, 109 camera obscura 114 cancer 93n2, 101, 137 candle / candles 31, 32, 35, 36, 128, 152 Canterbury Tales, The 44 Caravaggio (1986) 135 car crash 4 see also automobile carnal sublime 133 carpe diem 3, 82, 169 casket 128 celluloid-based film or cinema 6, 8, 90, 109, 147, 174 cemetery 45, 93, 94, 95, 128 ceremonial rhetoric 7, 149, 166 see also epideictic rhetoric Cervantes 42, 44 Chahine, Youssef 150 Chaucer 42, 44, 51, 176 chess game 52, 178 Chicago 51, 57, 63, 65, 126 Chief Pastry-Cook (1928) 39 Children 84, 89, 96, 106, 155, 158, 168 Chinese 30, 172, 178 Christ / Christian / Christianity 3, 18, 32, 41, 44, 72, 75n3, 80, 81–82, 161, 175 church / church service 32, 33, 40, 80, 84, 137 cinema, centennial of birth 91, 141 Cinema Quarterly 115n3

208 cigarettes 128 Citizens of the Twentieth Century (1986) 95 clock 13, 40, 58, 61, 128 clothes / clothes-making / clothing 25, 38, 53, 92, 94, 95–96, 101, 104–106, 128, 174, 177 coffin / coffins 5, 32, 33, 48, 84 cold skin 85 Cold War 24, 157, 170 Combating Terrorism Center, The (ctc) 166, 167n7, 169 comedy 44, 85, 89, 90, 176 Comet Burger diner 144, 145, 151 commanders 36 communication 16, 18, 20–21, 27, 59, 65, 67, 78, 87, 89n11, 118, 119 composed transformative experience ix, 13, 15, 17, 21–25, 27, 28, 71, 85–90, 108, 119–125, 171, 173 composition / compositional 18, 20, 22–23, 37, 98, 112, 126, 177 as “put together” 23, 86 of a picture or image 25, 61, 69, 100, 102, 114, 115, 132, 152, 157, 158 consciousness 7, 12, 14, 24, 28, 50–51, 64–65, 69, 70, 73–79, 85, 87–90, 119–126, 130, 140, 157, 178 of mortality ix, 2, 6, 11, 16, 26, 27, 37, 49–53, 62, 71–90, 93, 99, 108, 110–112, 126, 129, 139, 171–174 see also awareness of mortality contemplation / contemplative / contemplate 6, 32–33, 37, 45, 80, 91–95,  122–124, 137, 138, 144, 146, 149, 159,  161, 162–163, 177 of death or mortality 4, 31, 39–40, 42, 47–50, 70n8, 93, 95, 104, 113, 130n10, 132–133 Control Room (2004) 150 Conversion 3, 22–23, 32, 47, 67, 82, 163, 164 Cooper, Tarnya 32, 36, 79, 80, 81 Coppola, Francis Ford 52 corpse / corpses 4, 5, 11, 31, 33, 73, 85, 85, 111–112, 128, 164, 169, 171 Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (Haarlem 1957) 56 cosmos 24, 60, 62, 68, 69–70, 88, 121, 122, 123, 148, 161 courage 89, 122, 125, 144, 156, 161, 163, 164, 178

Index Courbet, Gustave 38 Cowie, Elizabeth 108, 110, 115, 117 Cranbrook (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, usa) 60, 126, 145 cropping 115 cross 33, 128 crossbones 169 crucifix 33, 83, 128 cultural genealogy i, 12, 15, 27, 66, 71, 79, 157, 172 cultural history ix, 3, 4, 27, 41n11, 73, 81, 134, 171 Cynn, Christine 101 “Dance of Death” images (in French, Danse macabre; in German, Totentanz) 31–32,  79, 80 Das Boot (The Boat, 1981) 52 Day of the Dead (Charles Eames, 1957) 63 Dead of the Fifties (Charles & Ray Eames, 1960) 63 death (and dead) ix, 1–11, 14–16, 24–28, 30–55, 61–64, 66, 70–85, 87, 89–90, 91, 93–97, 100–114, 116, 119, 121, 123–130, 135–143, 144–145, 148–166, 172–176, 179 acceptance (or denial) of 1, 5, 49, 53, 73, 75n2–3, 90, 122, 125, 160, 164, 178 bed (deathbed) 32, 33, 109, 128 camp 6, 170 certain / certainty 70, 155, 174 head (death’s head) 4, 10, 32, 35, 37, 38, 41, 44–46, 85n9, 128 index of 71–78, 127, 129, 172 knocking 4 masks 37–38, 83, 109, 128 scenes 128 threat of (death threat) 50, 144, 148–151, 154, 157, 161, 163–166 uncertain / uncertainty of 74 dead flowers 128 “Death is the Doom of All” 43 Death’s Head (Picasso, 1943) 37 deception 5, 9, 12, 15, 118–119, 175–176 decomposed / decomposition 5, 89, 149, 164 De contemptu mundi (c.1200) 45n14 De doctrina christiana (c. 396, 427 ce) 18 defiance / defy 50, 90, 122, 125, 131, 143, 164 Deleuze, Gilles 103, 119

Index Demetrios, Eames 24, 56, 57, 58n2, 59, 60, 63 denial 1, 5, 11, 49, 53, 73, 75n2–3, 90, 160, 178 denial of death (see death, acceptance [or denial] of) Derrida, Jacques 19, 145, 146–147, 156 design / designer 24, 56–61, 86–88, 91, 95–96, 98, 101, 118, 120–121, 124n8, 127, 140, 157, 165n5, 174 Dewey, John 2, 3, 24, 120, 163, 173 Dia de los Muertos 4, 63 diary film 92, 142 digital media / digital age 9, 28, 77n5, 91, 176 dirt 46–47, 164 disbelief 116, 149, 150, 155 suspension of 68, 132, 159 disclosure of terminality 74–75 doctors 36, 74–75 document, to (as a verb) 8, 14, 65, 98, 111, 139 documentaries / documentary ix–x, 4–28, 30, 40, 42, 50–56, 60, 64–66, 69–70, 72, 78n6, 85, 88–94, 96–104, 107, 108–130, 133–135, 139–140, 144, 146–147, 150–151, 159, 162–163, 167n7, 168, 171–176, 179 consciousness (documentary consciousness) 119, 122–123 function 14, 129, 146 theory 9 documentation 9, 15, 64–65, 97–99, 112, 117–118, 135–136, 139–140, 146, 152, 159 Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605) 44 Don’t forget to die (joke) 175–176 doormen 155 drawing 8, 32, 39, 50, 59 Dürer, Albrecht 30, 84 Dutch ix, 2, 4–5, 10, 29, 70, 171 dying 4, 14, 31, 41, 49, 71, 73–77, 93n2, 101, 110–112, 123–124, 129, 131, 133, 135–140 Dylan, Bob 83–84 Eames, Charles and Ray x, 24, 27, 55, 56–70, 97n4, 126, 170 Eames House 126 Eames Lounger and Ottoman 60 Eames Office 56, 60 earth / Earth 46–47, 57, 62, 65–70, 76, 82, 113, 121, 138, 143, 161 Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! (saying) 44, 82

209 Ecclesiastes 6, 43, 51 ecstatic 16, 22, 52, 113, 131, 134–135, 142 ecstatic seer 134–135 education / educative 2, 9, 17–18, 24, 54, 86, 88, 120, 121, 127, 140, 178 Edward ii (1991) 134 effect / effects 9, 23, 24, 56, 57, 58, 65, 66, 68, 69, 84, 85, 89, 90, 92, 99, 101, 116, 123, 133, 136, 137, 138, 158, 159 Eisenstein, Sergei 38, 119n4, 135n6 electric chair 4, 38, 128 Elizabethan 140 Empire (1964) 39n7, 133 empirical / empirically ix, 1, 4–5, 8–16, 19, 23, 24, 27, 40, 46, 49–55, 58, 63–72, 82–86, 88–90, 96–99, 105–112, 116–125, 129, 133, 135, 138–139, 146, 154–155, 157–158, 161, 173, 176–178 empiricism 14 encounter 3, 6, 7–8, 10, 21, 23, 25, 54–55, 72, 78n6, 113, 154 Encounters at the End of the World (2007) 7–8, 113 enemies / enemy 1, 75n3, 160–161, 163, 166 environment / environments 7, 11, 13, 23, 28, 34, 54, 83, 86–89, 98, 113, 120, 125, 130n10, 138, 149, 161, 172, 176–178 Epictetus 43, 48 Epicurean / Epicurus 75n3, 175 epideictic rhetoric 7, 149, 166, 170 see also ceremonial rhetoric epistemological / epistemology 172 Epstein, Rob 7, 54, 112–113 Erotics of Looking, The 30 ethic / ethical / ethically / ethics ix, 3, 5, 23, 25, 27, 40, 51, 69, 72, 73, 78, 86, ­88–90, 94, 96, 102, 103–107, 119n4, 120, 122, 123–125, 126, 162, 164, 171, 173, 176 ethos 40, 51, 69, 72, 73, 78, 86, 88n11, 93, 94, 96, 101–102, 105, 118n4, 119n4, 120, 122, 126, 162, 164, 171, 173, 176 Europe 2n2, 5, 6, 24, 29, 59, 79, 80, 98, 106, 139, 160, 165n5, 166n6, 171 euthanasia 138 Evan, Walker 40n10 Everyman medieval morality play 45n14 executions 128, 166–168

210 existence 9, 11–13, 15, 21, 27, 31, 41, 49 61, 68–72, 76, 78, 81, 82, 85–89, 93–94, 108, 110, 121, 178 existential / existentially 1, 4, 5, 13, 16, 25, 33, 36, 45, 51, 54, 67–68, 70–72, 80–83, 96, 112–113, 123–125, 143, 150, 155–157, 162, 164 experience / experiential ix–x, 1–18, 21–28, 30, 40, 53, 56–60, 62, 65–70, 71, 74, 77, 81, 83, 85–90, 94, 96, 98–108, 111–113, 118–144, 146–147, 151, 155–164, 166, 171, 173, 175–179 extra-cinematic knowledge 15, 28, 97, 98, 108, 122, 139, 146 extra-media experience 146 extremist 144, 151, 160–161, 164–165, 169 Eyemo camera 92, 94–95, 99–100 fmri 84 face / faces 39n8, 42, 45n16, 109, 123, 137, 141, 148, 164, 175 Facebook 53, 170 Faces of Death (1978) 123 fact and fiction 117 Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) 150–151 Falstaff, Sir John 42, 45 fantastical / fantasy 15, 53, 68, 86, 178 fashion 25, 47, 91, 96–101, 164 father / fathers 32, 53, 95–97, 102, 106, 114, 154, 157 fear 39n8, 48, 70, 145, 154–155, 160–161, 164, 166, 178 Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi)  123, 161 figure 5, 7, 8, 35, 52, 62, 98, 102, 109, 126, 128, 129, 135, 141, 151–154, 176 film-suicide 141 film theory 9, 15, 22, 117, 120, 172–173 filmmaker / filmmaking 7, 9, 15, 23–28, 59–60, 65–66, 91–94, 96, 98–104, 107, 114–118, 124, 126–127, 151, 174 finite / finitude 62, 69, 70n8, 76 Finsnes, Cecile 166–169 Flaherty, Robert 7, 53, 112, 114–115 flowers 4, 32–35, 82–83, 128, 132, 137, 142, 147 Fog of War (2003) 150 Foley, James 167–169 folk culture ix, 5, 171

Index footage x, 7, 9, 10, 14, 24, 26, 28, 53–54, 65, 84, 97–98, 108, 111, 117, 120, 123, 125–129, 144–164, 168–169, 171, 173–174, 177 For the Love of God (2007) 39n8 Ford, John 52 “form of life” 24, 26 Foucault, Michel 19–20, 118 frame / frames / framing / frames within frames 7, 14, 25, 32, 58, 61–62, 66–67, 69,  76, 92, 100, 103, 114–117, 126, 130, 132–133, 139, 150, 152, 153, 157–159, 162–163, 169, 177 Francis, Saint 32–33, 71, 80, 85 Frank, Robert 39 Fraser, J. T 61 French 34, 168n9, 170 fresco 5 friendship 48, 122, 163 Friis, Simone Molin 165–169 fruit 4, 34–35, 43, 58, 61, 82, 128 funeral / funerals 38, 40, 128, 149 future x, 1–4, 7, 13, 15, 27, 48, 51, 77, 78, 82, 93, 95, 106, 113, 126, 161, 163, 167, 171–179 gallery 3, 25 Gardner, Alexander 8 gas chamber 128 gay 50, 54, 112–113, 134, 136, 139–141 gaze 124, 157 Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague) 39 genre / genres ix, 6, 9, 15, 27, 30, 33–35, 51–53, 64–65, 69, 71, 83–85, 98, 108, 114, 117, 121, 123, 129, 134, 139, 157, 172, 176 German / Germany 11, 24, 32, 42, 52, 108, 155–156, 168 Gheyn ii, Jacques de 34 ghost / ghostly 35, 109, 152 Glaser, Barney G. 74–75 gravedigger-clown 45–47, 107, 164 grief / griefs 48–49, 89, 137, 149 God / gods 10, 44–45, 81–82, 148–149 Gonzalez-Crussi, Frank 51 Google Earth 24, 57, 68 Gore, Al 7, 54, 113 Grande Arche de la Défense 93, 94 grave 44, 83–84, 154 graveyard 40

Index Great Lakes, the (North America) 66 Greek 5n4, 18, 43n13, 48, 75n3, 175 Grierson, John 114–115 Grim Reaper 36, 52, 163 Grizzly Man (2005) 134n4 Guggenheim, Davis 7, 54, 89, 113 Gunning, Tom 110, 114 gun / guns / gunshot  35, 85, 128, 147, 169 Habermas, Jürgen 118, 146, 155–156 habitat 85, 89, 106, 124 Haines, David 167 Hals, Frans 38 Hamlet (c.1600) 4, 10, 45–48, 71, 81, 85, 107, 164 Haneveld, G.T. 29 Happel, Stephen 32 hbo (Home Box Office) 53 heaven / heavens 32, 82, 131, 148–149, 160, 169 Heider, Fritz 153 Heidegger, Martin 17, 19 Helinant (of Froidmont) 44n14 heliocentric 70 Henry iv, Part One (1596) 42 here and now, the 2–3, 174 Herzog, Werner 7, 16, 113, 134n4 heterosoc 134–135 Hirst, Damien 39 Hitchcock, Alfred 52 Holbein, Hans 79–80 Holloway, David 148, 151, 155, 157–158 Hollywood 24, 150 Holt, Tom 165–169 Holocaust, The 7, 54, 66, 112 homiletic / homiletics 5, 11, 18, 41 homo bulla 34 Honduras 47 Horace 43, 51 horror 54, 112 hospital / hospitals 74–75, 84, 137, 143, 148, 149 hourglass 31, 36, 128 humanism / humanist / humanistic 3, 17, 24, 36n5, 41, 49, 75n3, 76, 80, 81–82, 118, 163, 175, 179 humanities 19, 20, 49 Humana vana 34

211 ibm (International Business Machines) 59 icon / iconic / iconographic / iconography / icons x, 6, 24, 28, 32–33, 80, 100–102,  144–149, 152, 155, 169 ideational ix, 2–3, 10–12, 14, 22, 27, 30, 37, 40–43, 51, 61, 94–97, 129, 135–136, 144, 151, 157, 162–163, 172 ideograph / ideographic 6, 87n10 immortal / immortality / immortals 4, 7, 10, 12–13, 30, 32, 37, 51, 72n1, 76, 80–82, 89, 95, 97, 100–101, 132 impending death 74–75, 113, 152 index / indexical ix, 11, 14, 18, 27–28, 54, 60, 62–65, 71–79, 94, 96–99, 107–114, 124n8, 127, 129, 133, 135, 138–142, 144, 151, 154–159, 169, 172, 175 India / Indian 30, 146, 166n6, 172 Instagram 177 In the Heat of the Night (1988–1994) 53 information / informational 6–7, 9, 15, 20, 23, 64–65, 68, 77–78, 86–88, 97–98, 102–103, 110, 118–123, 127, 134n4, 136, 149, 158, 178 inherit / inheritance / inherited 25, 46, 82, 174 installation art 25, 38–40, 133, 177 instruction / instructive ix, 5, 10, 24, 30, 40–41, 48, 51, 65, 87, 101, 121, 172, 174 integrative 13, 23, 86, 120, 127, 173 intellectual / intellectually ix, 3, 11–12, 23–24, 27, 40, 51, 60, 62, 66, 69–70, 72, 77, 86, 88–90, 102, 120, 122, 126, 161–162, 164, 171, 173, 176 intention / intentions 7, 21, 101, 111–112, 160, 166 interdisciplinary 120 international blue 131 intertextual 124 Iraq 154, 157, 162, 166n6, 167–168 irony 26, 81 irreal / irreality 9, 99, 122 see also real / realism / reality Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (isil) [aka so-called Islamic State, isis, or Daesh] 154, 166–168 Istanbul 145, 177 Italian / Italy 2n2, 5, 29, 35, 40 Iyer, Aarti 146, 154, 156, 158

212

Index

Kevorkian, Jack 145n1 kill / killed / killing 23, 44, 101, 110–111, 113, 138, 140, 141, 146, 154–155, 158, 162–163, 165–166 Kirkham, Pat 56, 59, 62n5 Klein, Yves 131–132, 139 knife 36, 85, 167–168 Know Thyself (saying) 76, 103, 179 Koran, the 169 Koudounaris, Paul 29–30, 34, 40, 171–172 Kracauer, Siegfried 103, 108–109

Library of Congress 58n2, 126 Prints and Photographs Division 61, 66 Motion Picture Division 63 life 1–16, 21, 23–27, 29, 32, 34, 36, 38–39, 43–54, 58, 62–64, 70, 72–73, 75n3, 76–78, 84–89, 93–103, 106, 113, 121–125, 131–132, 135–143, 144, 148, 150, 154–155, 161–164, 168, 178–179 mortal 6–10, 14, 45, 52, 68, 82, 84, 86, 91, 128–129 remember and/or renew ix–x, 3, 14, 42n12, 76, 174–175 life-index 175 Life Story (2014) 174 Lightning Over Water (a.k.a. Nick’s Film – Lightning Over Water, 1980) 93, 101 lilies 33, 128 limit / limits 1, 7, 9, 14, 24, 25, 54, 61–64, 69–76, 85, 87, 96–97, 101, 106, 108, 110–113, 123, 129, 133, 178–179 Lincoln, Abraham 163 linguistic turn, the 19 Lippard, Chris 134–135 Lonergan, Bernard J.F. 22–23, 67, 102, 118, 22n6 loss 48, 63, 73–74, 152–153 Louvre 91, 95, 97, 103 love 42, 118n4, 122, 125, 130n10, 148, 163 Lucretius 1 Luke, Gospel of 43, 51 Lumière, August and Louis 15, 114 Lutheran Reformation 79–80

Lake Michigan 57, 63, 65 lakeshore 57, 63, 69, 126, 161, 174 La Marche de L’Empereur (The March of the Penguins, 2005) 113 Last Supper Series (Warhol, 1986/1987)  38–39 Latin ix, 2, 14, 30, 41, 44, 79, 83, 128 lawyer / lawyers ix, 2, 14, 30, 41, 44, 79, 83, 128 learning 12, 35, 38, 78, 88, 134n4 legacy 52, 82, 149, 164, 179 Leiden, Netherlands 34, 36 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939) 40n10, 115 liberal arts 81, 120, 164

M*A*S*H (1970) 53 massacre 40, 111 mass death 54, 113, 154–155 Marker, Chris 92 marking 7, 103, 105, 132 Marx Brothers 176 Marx, Groucho 85 Mary Magdalene, Saint 32–33, 80 mask, burial / funeral / death 37–38, 83, 109, 128 mass killing 140 material / materiality / materially 3–4, 8–9, 11–15, 22, 26, 34, 37, 62–68, 72n1, 76, 82, 83–88, 96–97, 108–110, 115, 119–121, 124–125, 127, 129, 133,

Jacobs, Henry E. 31, 45, 81, 169 Jacquet, Luc 113 James, Malcolm 151, 154, 157–158, 160, 165–168 James, William 23, 67, 120 Jarman, Derek x, 13, 24–25, 28, 129–143, 146, 149 Jerome, Saint 30–33 jet 138, 155 see also airplane Jewish / Jews 112, 175 Jewison, Norman 53 jihadi / jihadist 160–161, 165–169 Johnson, Samuel, Dr. (1739–1761) 1, 5, 42–43, 48–49, 51, 72 joke 12, 15, 45, 175 Jordaens, Jacob 35 Jubilee (1977) 135 justice 10, 81

213

Index 135, 139, 142, 151, 163, 173, 175, 178 mds (Doctors of Medicine) 74 “mediated contemplation of death” 113, 130n10 meditation 32, 36, 52, 93, 132, 141 memento mori 2–4, 10–15, 21–25, 29–55, 71–90, 126–130 as symbolic and pictorial 30–39, 61, 94–95 in picture nomenclature 41 references in literature 40–51, 136 terminology of ix, 2, 6, 29, 40 Memento Mori (by Muriel Spark, 1959) 51 Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us (2015) 29, 40 Memento Mori, Still Life: Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (c. 1640) 6, 10 memorial / memorials 40, 78n6, 109, 128, 152, 154, 156 memory (also see awareness) 4, 9, 12, 15, 23, 27–28, 76–79, 86–87, 110, 135–139, 143, 149, 157, 174, 178 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 22, 69, 90, 119, 121, 179 Mexico 4, 37–38, 63 Milky Way Galaxy 57, 68, 69 mind 76–79 Moby Dick (1851) 50 mockumentaries 9 momentary 23 Montaigne, Michel de 42, 50, 51, 179 Moore, Michael 150–151 Morris, Errol 54, 113, 150 Morrison, Philip 56n1, 62, 67, 70 mortal condition 5, 52–53, 71, 80, 86, 90, 96, 100, 104, 113, 122–124, 136, 138, 140 mortality-index 62–65, 96–99, 135, 138–142, 144, 151, 154–159, 172 mother / mothers 64, 96, 106, 148, 154 mourn / mourning 48–49, 73, 109 movement 116, 119, 126, 134n4, 153 moving memento mori pictures 24 mtv (Music Television) 25, 134 Müller, Robby 91 Mulvey, Laura ix, 8, 14, 91, 108–110, 114, 127, 130n10, 173, 177

murder / murders 45, 52–53, 62, 113, 123, 128, 165 music 25, 39, 83, 117, 140, 164, 165, 176 musical instruments 35, 128 museum 3, 25, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 60n3, 63, 80 Museum de Lakenhal (Leiden, the Netherlands) 36 Muslim 161, 166n6, 168, 170 Nanook of the North (1922) 7, 53 narrative / narratives 15, 21, 23, 49, 54, 70, 91, 93, 95, 105n8, 114, 116, 129, 136, 139, 140, 153, 163 National Public Radio (npr) 160 nationalist 161 Nature (pbs television program) 10, 53 nature documentaries 10, 113 nature morte (“dead nature” or “dead life”) 34 neo-memento mori 172 Netflix 7, 159 New York Times, The 7, 53, 64, 152, 165 Nichols, Bill ix, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15–17, 20, 64–65, 68, 97–98, 108, 114, 116–119, 127, 134n4, 139, 146, 159, 173 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 18–19, 23, 119n4 Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard, 1955) 54, 112, 117 Noker 5, 11, 42, 51 nomenclature ix, 11, 30, 40–41, 51, 172 non-supernaturalist 80–82 Noonan, Estelle 126, 172 Northern Europe 79–80 Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten,1989) x,  24–25, 28, 63, 90–107, 117, 140, 141, 163, 174, 177 nothing 1, 11, 19, 68, 72, 75n2, 86, 88, 95, 97, 143 Novjaim, Jehane 150 Obama, Barack 167–168 oblivion 70 Odes (Horace, 23 bce) 43 Office of Charles and Ray Eames, The (also see Eames Office) 58n2

214 offspring 13, 89, 96 Orlando (Florida, usa) 145, 177 Orlando (Sally Potter film, 1992) 85 Oxford Book of Death, The (1983) 4 painting / paintings ix, 2–11, 25, 29–41, 84–85, 100, 108, 110, 115, 132, 178 pale Usher, the 50 “Pardoner’s Tale” 44, 176 Paris 25, 38, 91–94, 97–98, 103n6, 132, 145, 177 Paris, Texas (1984) 93 pbs (Public Broadcasting Service) 10, 53 Peake, Tony 131 Pearl Harbor 157–158, 160 Peirce, Charles 18, 110 Pencak, William 143 Pennsylvania 45n15, 138, 145, 154 Pentagon 154, 160 People Sheltering in the Tube, Elephant and Castle Underground Station, London (1942) 40, 61 percurrisse polum morituro / For thou wast born to die! (saying) 43 Perelman, Chaïm 17–18 performance / performances / performative  ix, 2n2, 10–11, 13, 23, 25, 39, 45n15,  70, ­98–99, 102, 117–118, 131–134, 143, 146, 176–177 person 3, 6, 8–9, 12, 28, 44, 49, 64, 66, 71–75, 83, 85–86, 102, 109, 121, 128, 141, 169 personal 9, 46, 48, 72, 86, 92, 97, 124, 143, 144–164 apocalypse 133–134 personalities / personality 24–26 persuade / persuasion 15–18, 67, 102, 113, 116, 118, 158, 160 Petersen, Wolfgang 52 PhDs (Doctors of Philosophy) 75 phenomena 2, 13–14, 19, 21, 26, 65, 87n10, 88, 99, 115–116, 173, 178 phenomenology / phenomenological 13, 16–23, 26, 28, 90, 97, 108, 119–122, 147, 171 of film 17, 22, 99 philosophical / philosophy 2, 9, 16–22, 28, 42n12, 50, 51, 73, 75, 76, 88n11, 90, 102, 118, 122n6, 146, 148, 155–156, 171, 172–173, 179 of film 9, 90, 102, 172 philosophical rhetoric 16, 22

Index phone / phones 1, 53, 100, 154, 160, 166, 177 photograph / photography ix, 1, 4, 6–8, 11–14, 29–31, 34, 37–41, 56, 61, 66, 78n6, 84, 90, 95, 97, 100, 108–110, 114, 116, 128, 147, 151, 158n3, 172, 174, 178 physical 9, 23, 31, 64, 66, 93, 98, 104n7, 109–110, 132–133, 149, 156, 164, 174 Picasso, Pablo 37, 92 picnic / picnickers 57–58, 61, 63, 65–66, 70, 126, 161, 174 picture / pictures ix, 2, 4, 6, 11, 15, 22, 27, 30–40, 51, 58, 61–67, 71, 80–81, 84, 86, 95, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112–113, 126, 128, 149, 153, 155, 162, 167n7, 172 memento mori 8, 13, 36 “moving memento mori” 24 piety 81 Pina (2011) 93, 101 pirate’s flag 84 Plague, The 2n2, 3, 5, 31, 171 Plantinga, Carl 7, 17, 21, 114–115, 118, 120, 173, 176 Plato 18–19, 42, 50, 88n11, 122 pointer 5n4, 11, 14, 27, 61, 63, 90, 129 pointing to the moon 71 poison 131, 169 political / politics 25, 80, 112, 115, 134–135, 140–141, 150, 157, 160–161, 175 Pompidou Centre 92, 94n3, 95, 97, 99, 126 Pont des Arts 95 Pop, Iggy 135 pornographic 142 Portier, Sidney 53 Porton, Richard 134, 143 Portrait of Lewis Payne (1865) 8, 39 portrait / portraiture / portraits / selfportraits ix, 4, 8, 10, 11, 30, 33–41, 80,  85, 91, 95, 97, 100–101, 107,  128, 141, 152–153, 171–172 Potter, Sally 25, 85 posture 32–33 Powers of Ten (1977, first version 1968) x, 13, 24, 27, 55, 56–70, 71, 79, 87, 90, 97n4, 117, 161, 174 practice / practices 9, 16–24, 38, 63, 67, 73, 75n3, 80, 83, 109, 117–118, 120, 130, 132, 141n8, 164, 178 prayer 32 printing / print media 8, 79, 90 Professor John Collins Warren (1850) 39, 85

Index propaganda 112–113, 151, 166–170 prophet / prophetic 25, 140–141, 149, 169 Psycho (1960) 52 psychological / psychology 4, 23, 49, 51, 78n6, 86, 88n11, 96, 120, 122n6, 153, 162, 165n5, 173 punctum 103, 105, 129 purpose 4, 5n4, 7, 15, 21, 41, 67, 82, 95, 106, 114–115, 118, 140, 159, 166, 174–175 queer / queer liberation / Queer Studies 25, 50, 134–135, 139, 141 Quentin, John 131, 136 Que philosopher c’est apprendre à mourir (To Philosophize is to Learn to Die) (1572–1574) 42n12, 50, 179 Qué viva México! (1930/1979) 38 Quintessence Theatre 45n15 rational approach to death 81 raw footage 7, 117, 146, 169 Ray, Nicholas 93n2, 101 real / realism / reality 6, 8–11, 14–16, 23, 27, 29, 36–42, 52, 54–55, 63–66, 68, 70–73, 77–81, 84–86, 89–90, 94n3, 96–103, 105–106, 108–118, 121–125, 132–133, 138, 140, 145, 148, 150–151, 154–159, 161–164, 172–174, 177 see also irreal / irreality “realist simulacra” 158 reception / received ix, 4, 7–8, 12, 15, 27, 66, 71, 79–83, 99, 114n2, 115–117, 136, 140, 143, 157, 172 Reformation 79–80 religion / religious 1–3, 11–13, 21–23, 26, 30–34, 37, 49, 53, 67, 75n3, 79–83, 101, 128, 138, 148–149, 156–163, 169, 172, 175–176 imagery ix, 11, 31–34, 37, 172 remember ix–x, 2, 4–5, 14, 27, 30–35, 40–42, 48, 50–51, 58, 68, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 87, 89, 95–96, 101, 123, 129, 135, 143, 145, 148, 155, 164–166, 174, 176, 178–179 see also life, remember and/or renew Remember that thou art mortal 76, 179 Renaissance 18, 30–31, 35, 37, 79 renewed ix, 3, 11, 16, 21, 24, 26–28, 85, 89, 123, 151, 162–163, 175 Renoir, Jean 110–112

215 Renov, Michael 118 repent 3, 82, 148, 169 Repent, for your time is short 3, 148, 169 representation / representations 7, 110–111, 114, 116–117, 123–124, 154 Resnais, Alain 54, 112 reveal and conceal 154 revenge 45, 81 see also vengeance rhetoric / rhetorical / rhetorically 3, 6–7, 13–23, 26, 28, 64–68, 82, 88–89, 97–98, 102, 108, 114, 117–122, 136, 140, 147, 159, 166, 169, 171–173 Rhetoric (Aristotle’s) 17, 67 rhetorically-oriented phenomenology 13, 16–21 rich and poor 5, 43, 160 Riefenstahl, Leni 112, 114 Roger and Me (1989) 151 rolling back of one’s eyes (into the head) 133 Rollins, Jr., Howard E. 53 Roman 18, 175 Rorty, Richard 17, 19, 118, 120 rosary 33, 128 Rotha, Paul 115 Royal Oak, Michigan, usa 28, 144–145 Ruby, Jay 40n10 Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu, 1939) 110–111 Saint Francis Meditating (1639) 32 San Juan, Rose Marie 3, 39n8, 70n8, 76 Sander, August 39, 95 Sans Soleil (1982) 92 Saussure, Ferdinand de 18 Schrader, Paul 59 science / scientific 6, 12–15, 20, 22–24, 49–51, 56, 58–59, 62–63, 66, 68, 70, 77n5, 114, 117, 120, 123, 140, 170, 173, 175 sculpture 8, 34, 37, 39 Sebastian, Saint 36 Sebastiane (1976) 34 seer / seeing 25, 133–135, 140, 144 semiotic / semiotics / semiotically 18–21, 62, 64, 66, 78, 86–88, 96–97, 121, 127, 129, 135, 139, 151, 155, 163, 175 semiotically-oriented phenomenology 20 sensorial 3, 16, 21, 24, 89, 125–126, 164, 176

216 sex / sexual / sexuality 20, 53, 125, 135, 141, 142, 163, 175 Shakespeare 4, 31, 40, 42, 45–49, 51, 81, 84, 135, 159, 164 sign / signify / signs / sign systems 18–22, 31, 58, 74, 79, 110–112, 124–125 Simmel, Marianne 153 simulacra / simulacra of terror 14, 158, 172–173 simulate / simulated / simulates 18, 54, 66, 111, 125 situation 7, 9, 11–12, 17–18, 26, 38, 52, 64–68, 74, 84, 86, 91, 96, 98, 102, 113, 118, 122, 124–125, 131, 137, 139–140, 162, 164, 173, 176, 179 Sitz im Leben / form of life / situation in life 24, 26 Six Feet Under (2001–2005) 53 skeleton 31, 39, 176 skull / skulls 4, 10, 30–41, 45–47, 81–85, 107, 147, 169, 171 Skulls (Warhol, 1976) 38 sleep 138, 147 Sleep (1963) 39n7, 133 sleeping man / men / women / person 40, 57–58, 61, 63–64, 128 snuff films 123 Sobchack, Vivian ix, 9, 14, 16–17, 21–22, 65, 69, 90, 97–98, 102, 108, 110–111, 113, 119–124, 127, 130n10, 133, 146, 162, 173, 176 social reception (see reception / received) Socrates 76, 178 soldier / soldiers 36, 96 Solon of Athens 48 somatological 176 Sontag, Susan 6, 78n6, 110, 116, 125n9 sophist / sophistry / Sophists 14, 16–21, 57, 118–119 Sotloff, Steven 167–168 sound / sounding / sounds 8, 24, 26, 69, 84, 89, 115, 125–126, 130, 132, 134, 136, 141n9, 177 Soviet Union 24, 170 space 57–58, 62–63, 65, 67, 69–70, 97n4, 98, 120, 122, 124, 131–133, 140, 142–143, 152–153, 155–157, 162, 178 spade / spades 45–46, 84 Spark, Muriel 51

Index speech 8 spiritual 3, 11, 67–68, 82, 87, 142n10, 148, 161, 163 spoof / spoofs 5, 9, 12, 15, 44, 81, 90, 140, 175–176 sports 73, 83, 164 Steenwych, Herman van 6, 10, 35n4 Steinbeck, John 52 still / stills / still life / still frame ix, 2–3, 6, 8, 10–11, 29–37, 39, 58, 61, 66, 92, 100–101, 107, 116, 130n10, 133, 152, 158n3, 159, 171–172, 177 Still Life (David Bailly, 1651) 35n4, 36 St. Jerome in His Study (1514) 30–31 Strauss, Anselm L. 74–75 Studies in Documentary Film 151 study 19, 25, 30–32, 67, 120, 178 sublime 21, 133, 142, 164, 179 successors 89, 96 sudden death 51, 74 suffering 1n1, 6, 93, 137, 141, 148 suicide / suicides 38, 53, 75n2, 113, 128, 138, 141, 145n1, 158n3, 163 Suicide (Warhol, 1963) 38 superheroes 10 supernatural / supernaturalist 3, 68, 80–82 suspension of disbelief 132, 159 Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro 71 Swinton, Tilda 25, 131, 136 symbol / symbolic / symbols ix, 3–4, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 15, 19, 20–21, 27, 30–41, 50–51, 58, 60–62, 71, 78, 79, 83, 85, 93–97, 112, 127–128, 133, 136, 140–141, 144, 151–157, 160, 162, 169, 175 systems 21, 58n2, 59, 63n6, 79, 81, 97, 121, 125 television / tv 1, 7–8, 10, 25, 27, 30, 52–54, 92, 100, 105n8, 131–132, 134, 144–145, 147, 151–152, 155–156, 160, 162, 166, 177 terminal / terminality / terminal condition 74–75, 84, 131 termination, death as 148 terror / terrorism / terrorist / terrorist attack 123, 128, 146, 150–158, 161–169 Terror Management Theory 1, 49–50 Terry, Nigel 131, 136 theater / theaters 8, 15n5, 25, 108, 112, 131–132, 134–135, 140, 160

217

Index The Act of Killing (2012) 101 The Crow (1994) 110 The Garden (1990) 135n5 The Godfather [I, ii, iii] (1972, 1974, 1990) 52 The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 52 The Last of England (1987) 135 The Penitent Magdalene (c.1565) 32 The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet, 1957) 52 The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge, 1982) 94, 104 The Studio of the Painter (1854–1855) 38 The Thin Blue Line (1987) 54, 113 The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) 7, 54, 112 The Triumph of Death (c.1390) 5 theologians 36 threat of death (see dead / death, threat of) “Three Quick (or Three Living) and the Three Dead” 31–32 time 2–5, 8–9, 12, 39, 46, 58, 61, 68–69, 78, 80, 82, 89, 95, 100, 109–110, 114, 116–117, 130n10, 146, 148, 159, 161–163, 166, 169 and space 64–65, 98, 139–140, 143, 155–156, 177–178 known and unknown 74 timepiece (such as a clock, hourglass, or watch) 4, 40, 61, 82, 128 To the Lighthouse (1927) 51 Tocatta for Toy Trains (1957) 66 Tokyo 25, 91–92, 97–98 tomb / tomb decoration / tombstone 5, 32, 83, 128, 152 total / totality 13, 21, 66, 86–88, 120–121, 125, 127, 138, 146, 173, 176 tower / towers 138, 144, 155–162 train / trains 66, 114, 137 transience 29, 32, 34–36, 143 transition, death as 148–149 transnational 98, 139, 163 transvaluation of values 23, 164 trees 83 trigger / mortatily-awareness trigger 9, 86, 88, 147 Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935) 112 truth / truths 7, 9, 13, 54, 75n2, 88, 89, 113, 119n4, 134n4 T-shirt 84

Turner, Simon Fisher 131, 141n9 Twitter 165–166 value / values 23, 35, 73, 88, 102, 104–105, 155, 164 Van Miegroet, Hans J. 34–35 Vanhaelen, Angela 5–6, 30, 41 vanitas ix, 2–6, 10, 29, 31–37, 44, 58, 61, 66, 84, 107, 152, 171 Veatch, Robert M. 72–74 verbal / verbally / verbatim ix, 11, 13, 27, 30, 38, 40–51, 60–62, 83, 87–88, 93–97, 103, 127–128, 135–138, 142n10, 154–155, 160, 172 Vers de la mort (1194–97) 44n14 victim 52, 165, 168–169 viewer / viewers ix–x, 2–10, 15–16, 23–27, 31–33, 39–41, 52, 54, 65–71, 80, 89–93, 96–99, 101–103, 111–113, 116, 120–125, 129, 141–146, 149, 152, 165, 168 experience / experience of x, 57–58, 60–62, 67–68, 70, 107–108, 121, 125, 132–133, 136, 141–143, 146, 162, 171, 177 Vimeo 7 violence / violent 48, 111–112, 123, 135, 142, 165–167 visual quotation / quotations ix, 30, 37, 172 vengeance 45, 162, 164–165, 169 see also revenge ultimate limit 9, 14 unexamined life…not worth living 76, 178 universe 56–70, 82, 148 see also cosmos urban 32, 91, 106, 166n6 United Kingdom 134–135 United States 59, 123, 144, 150, 152, 156–157 urns 83 user-experience 13, 173, 177 Walken, Christopher 53 wall-paintings of Doom (The Last Judgement) 32 war / war scenes 7, 12, 24, 52, 77, 84, 92, 94–102, 106, 108, 111, 123, 136, 150–151, 157–170, 174–175, 178 warning 3, 34, 37, 167–169 Warda, Susanne 29

218 Warhol, Andy 4, 38–39, 81, 133 “War on Terror” 150–151, 157, 162 Washington D.C. 138, 145, 148, 154 weaponry / weapons (such as knives, guns, bombs) 82, 128, 169 well-being 100, 106, 178 Wenders, Wim 24–25, 28, 63n6, 90–106, 140–141, 177 West / Western tradition / Western ­civilization 2, 4, 16–17, 19, 29–30, 34,  41–51, 52, 75–76, 78n6, 83, 88n11, 112, 122, 129, 145, 147, 152, 160, 164–166, 168, 172–173, 179 whole shebang, the 86 Wilson, Bronwen 5–6, 30, 41 Wilson, Emma 110 wine 34, 58, 61, 128 Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über, 1987) 93, 95, 103–104

Index Winston, Brian 114n2, 115–116, 173 wish to die 75 Wittgenstein (Jarman film, 1993) 134 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 17, 19, 26, 75n3, 134 Wollen, Peter 109 Woolf, Virginia 42, 51, 85 World Trade Center site (New York City) 24, 126, 145, 147, 150, 155–160 x-ray 84 Yamamoto, Yohji 91–106, 163 YouTube 7, 25, 56, 117, 123, 134, 144–145, 150–151, 164–170 Zelizer, Barbie 150–152, 158 Zen 71 Zurbarán, [Francisco de] 32