Mimesis, Movies, and Media Volume 3: Violence, Desire, and the Sacred 9781628924640, 9781501304873, 9781628924664

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Mimesis, Movies, and Media

Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Series Editors: Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Volumes in the series: Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, Volume 1: Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, Volume 2: René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love and Literature edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge

Mimesis, Movies, and Media Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Volume 3 Edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, Joel Hodge, and Contributors, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mimesis, movies, and media / edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge. pages cm. -- (Violence, desire, and the sacred; volume 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62892-464-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Mimesis in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures--Philosophy. 3. Girard, Ren?, 1923---Influence. I. Cowdell, Scott, editor. II. Fleming, Chris, 1970- editor. III. Hodge, Joel, editor. PN1995.9.M53M57 2014 791.4301--dc23 2014025402 ISBN: HB: 978-1-62892-464-0 PB: 978-1-50132-437-6 ePub: 978-1-62892-465-7 ePDF: 978-1-62892-466-4 Series: Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Printed and bound in Great Britain

For the clergy and people of All Saints’ Anglican Church, Ainslie, from their Theologian-in-Residence Scott Cowdell To Eris and John Fleming, with much love, for all of yours Chris Fleming To Ed Conrad, Anne Brown, and Rick Strelan, with heartfelt gratitude Joel Hodge

Contents Contributors Introduction

ix 1

Part 1  Media and Representation 1

On the One Medium  Eric Gans

2

The Scapegoat Mechanism and the Media: Beyond the Folk Devil Paradigm  John O’Carroll

17

The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised  Chris Fleming

33

3

7

Part 2  Film 4 5 6 7

Mirrors of Nature: Artificial Agents in Real Life and Virtual Worlds  Paul Dumouchel

51

Superheroes, Scapegoats, and Saviors: The Problem of Evil and the Need for Redemption  Joel Hodge

61

Sanctified Victimage on Page and Screen: The Hunger Games as Prophetic Media  Debra E. MacDonald

77

The Matrix E-Motion: Simulation, Mimesis, Hypermimesis  Nidesh Lawtoo

89

Apocalypse of the Therapeutic: The Cabin in the Woods and the Death of Mimetic Desire  Peter Y. Paik

105

Eyes Wide Shut: Mimesis and Historical Memory in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining  David Humbert

117

10 Against Romantic Love: Mimeticism and Satire in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, and To Rome with Love  Scott Cowdell

129

11 A Beautiful Crisis? Ang Lee’s Film Adaptation of The Ice Storm  Carly Osborn

137

8 9

viii Contents 12 Cowboy Metaphysics, the Virtuous-Enough Cowboy, and Mimetic Desire in Stephen Frears’s The Hi-Lo Country  Thomas Ryba

149

Part 3  Television 13 The Self in Crisis: Watching Mad Men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel  Paolo Diego Bubbio

171

14 Media, Murder, and Memoir: Girardian Baroque in Robert Drewe’s The Shark Net  Rosamund Dalziell

189

15 Conversion in Dexter  Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge

201

Appendix: René Girard at a Glance  Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Glossary of Key Girardian Terms  Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Further Reading Index

211 215 219 229

Contributors Paolo Diego Bubbio (PhD, University of Turin, Italy) is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Il Sacrificio Intellettuale: René Girard e la Filosofia della Religione (Intellectual Sacrifice: René Girard and the Philosophy of Religion; Il Quadrante, 1999), Il Sacrificio: a Ragione e il suo Altrove (Sacrifice: Reason and Its Other; Città Nuova, 2004), and is the co-editor of two other books. Scott Cowdell (PhD, University of Queensland) is an Anglican priest, currently Research Professor in the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre (PACT) at Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia, and  Canon Theologian of the Canberra–Goulburn Diocese. He is the author of seven books, most recently Abiding Faith: Christianity Beyond Certainty, Anxiety, and Violence (Cascade, 2009) and René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). He is completing a second Girard volume for Notre Dame, entitled Non-Violent Theology: René Girard and the Drama of Salvation. Scott Cowdell is Founding President of the Australian Girard Seminar. Rosamund Dalziell (PhD, Australian National University) is an Associate Researcher in the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre (PACT) at Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia.  Her publications include Shameful Autobiographies: Shame in Contemporary Australian Autobiographies and Culture (Melbourne University Press, 1999). Paul Dumouchel (PhD, University of Waterloo, Canada) is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. He is co-author, with Jean-Pierre Dupuy, of L’Enfer des choses, René Girard et la logique de l’économie (Seuil, 1979), and author of Emotions: essai sur le corps et le social (Les Empêcheurs de Penser en rond, 1999). He co-edited, with Jean-Pierre Dupuy, L’auto-organisation de la physique au politique (Seuil, 1983), and edited Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard (Stanford University Press, 1988). His latest books include Le sacrifice inutile: essai sur la violence politique (Flammarion, 2011), Economia dell’invidia (Transeuropa, 2011), and The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays (Michigan State University Press, 2014). Chris Fleming (PhD, University of Western Sydney) is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and Founding Vice President of the Australian Girard Seminar.

x Contributors He is the author of René Girard: Violence and Mimesis (Polity, 2004) and of Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid (Bloomsbury, 2014), co-authored with Emma A. Jane. He is on the editorial boards of three international journals: Anthropoetics (UCLA), The Open Journal of Philosophy, and Advances in Sociology. Eric Lawrence Gans (PhD, Johns Hopkins University) is Distinguished Professor of French at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His was the first doctoral dissertation completed under the direction of René Girard. Beginning in 1978, Gans conceived his alternative Girardian account of human culture and its origins, called generative anthropology. In 1995, with a group of former students, he founded the semi-annual online journal Anthropoetics (www.anthropoetics.ucla. edu), and began the online Chronicles of Love and Resentment (www.anthropoetics. ucla.edu/views/Chronicles_home.cfm), which number over 450 items. Since 2007, an annual conference on generative anthropology has been organized by the Generative Anthropology Society and Conference (GASC: http://artsites.uottawa.ca/gasc/en). Eric Gans’s 15 books as well as his online essays and scholarly articles deal with a wide range of themes: anthropological, literary-historical, religious, cultural, and linguistic. Joel Hodge (PhD, University of Queensland) is Lecturer in the School of Theology at the Australian Catholic University (St Patrick’s Campus, Melbourne), and Founding Treasurer and Secretary of the Australian Girard Seminar. He is the author of Resisting Violence and Victimisation: Christian Faith and Solidarity in East Timor (Ashgate, 2012) and co-editor of Vatican II: Reception and Implementation in the Australian Church (Garratt, 2012). David Humbert (PhD, McMaster University, Canada) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies of Thorneloe College, at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of articles on Kierkegaard and Kant (Journal of Religious Ethics 2014) and René Girard (Contagion 2013), and is completing a book on Girardian theory and the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. Nidesh Lawtoo (PhD, University of Washington) is Visiting Scholar in the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, and the recipient of a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship for Advanced Researchers. He is the author of The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and the editor of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought: Revisiting the Horror with Lacoue-Labarthe (Bloomsbury, 2012). Debra MacDonald (MTheol, University of Auckland) is a Professional Teaching Fellow in New Testament Greek at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis on satanic narrative in the Gospel of Luke, intertextuality, and mimetic theory.

Contributors

xi

John O’Carroll (PhD, Murdoch University, Western Australia) is Associate Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. His publications include Borderwork in Multicultural Australia (with Bob Hodge) (Allen and Unwin, 2006) and Our Fathers: What Australian Catholic Priests Really Think about Their Lives and Their Church (with Chris McGillion) (Garratt, 2011). Carly Osborn (BA[Hons], University of Adelaide) is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Adelaide, Australia, applying Girardian theory to late twentieth-century American novels investigating tragedy and the American Dream. She received the Raymund Schwager Memorial Award 2012 for best postgraduate paper at the international conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Peter Y. Paik (PhD, Cornell University) is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is the author of From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), also co-editor of Debt: Ethics, the Environment, and the Economy (Indiana University Press, 2013), and Aftermaths: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora Reconsidered (Rutgers University Press, 2009). Thomas Ryba (PhD, Northwestern University) is Notre Dame Theologian in Residence at the St Thomas Aquinas Center of Purdue University. He is author of The Essence of Phenomenology and Its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion (Peter Lang, 1991), and co-editor of René Girard and Creative Mimesis (Lexington Books, 2013), René Girard and Creative Reconciliation (Lexington Books, 2013), For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth (Michigan State University Press, 2009), and The Comity of Grace and Method (Northwestern University Press, 2003). He has also authored numerous articles on religion, was North American Editor for the journal, Religion, 2004–2007, and sits on the editorial boards of a number of journals. Matthew John Paul Tan (PhD, Australian Catholic University) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Catholic Studies at DePaul University and a Lecturer in Theology and Philosophy at Campion College, Sydney. He is author of the forthcoming Justice, Unity and the Hidden Christ: The Theopolitics of the Social Justice Approach to Ecumenism in Vatican II (Wipf and Stock, 2014). He blogs at the Divine Wedgie.

Introduction

The astonishingly wide-ranging oeuvre of René Girard developed out of his early literary studies. From the great French writers of the later-nineteenth century, along with the novels of Dostoyevsky, Girard derived his triangular understanding of desire, which is focused on the model rather than the object of desire (refer to the Appendix and Glossary for a short overview of Girard’s thought and definitions of key terms).1 The escalating pathologies of mimetic desire represented by envy, rivalry, and violence were also uncovered by Girard in these sources, affording an early foretaste of his later, more developed accounts of sacrifice and apocalypse. Meanwhile, Girard discovered earliermodern versions of his mimetic theory in the writings of Cervantes and Shakespeare. Girard has had very little to say about modernist twentieth-century narrative, despite acknowledging that a work such as The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, could have easily gone into Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Such developments in the literary field have been left to literary scholars inspired by Girard, such as William A. Johnsen on high modernism (Ibsen, Joyce, Woolf), Stephen Gardner on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jeremiah Alberg on Flannery O’Connor, Gary M. Ciuba on Southern fiction more generally (O’Connor, along with Porter, Percy, and Cormac McCarthy), Nidesh Lawtoo on Conrad and Lawrence, and Trevor Cribben Merrill on Milan Kundera. Girard has not ventured into media theory or modern forms of narrative (e.g. film), either. And, even in the wider Girardian conversation, the application of Girardian hermeneutics to media remains an area thus far, if not unexplored, then certainly underexplored. In a related way, although Girardian studies has taken up mediation, it has less commonly taken up the idea of how that mediation itself has been mediated— that is, it has rarely concerned itself with what is often called, albeit presumptively, “the media.” This volume attempts a partial remedy of this surprising lacuna. As you can see, a major focus in these pages is film and television (see Parts 2 and 3). Girardian film criticism is emerging in tandem with the abovementioned Girardian literary studies as a new frontier of mimetic theory. Indeed, reflection on film is beginning to provide a privileged entree to mimetic theory for many educators and newcomers to Girard alike. However, apart from a throwaway reference to Seinfeld as a leading source of contemporary mimetic awareness (in his book Evolution and Conversion), Girard himself does not dabble in popular culture. So we have had to do it for him.2 In La Conversion de l’Art, Girard maintains, unsurprisingly, “l’art ne m’intéresse [en effet] que dans la mesure où il intensifie l’angoisse de l’époque. Ainsi seulement il accomplit sa fonction qui est de révéler” (“art interests me only insofar as it intensifies the anxiety of the age. Only thus does it carry out its function, which is revelation”).3 But he argues—harking back to an essay of 1957, reproduced in the same volume (“Òu

2

Mimesis, Movies, and Media

va le roman?”)—that the novel may no longer be the “privileged form” of revelation; it may even, he says, be “outmoded” (in this early essay, Girard points out that both Sartre and Malraux eventually abandon the novel—perhaps this accounts for his own self-declared lack of interest in most literature that comes after Proust).4 Whatever the case, in the very least we can allow—or hope—that our interpretive lenses are able to incorporate more than words on a page, allowing us to countenance the idea that high ideas may come in putatively low forms. Indeed, might such “revelations” have been broaching the bounds of the fin de siècle for some time, especially in contemporary film and media? The role of narrative in contemporary Western societies is certainly changing. What we now know as novels of Charles Dickens were first serialized and eagerly awaited by an avid readership. Today, however, since the TV series has long replaced the bloated Victorian novel for popular audiences, Netflix is providing whole TV series for download so that viewers no longer even have to wait for the DVD release in order to gorge on their favorite narratives. Here the narrative is decoupled from its onetime authoritative diffusion by TV channels and stripped of the commercial setting sustained by advertising, making access to it less obviously mediated, through a direct commercial relationship. A related phenomenon is provided by new viewer interfaces, whereby the course of a developing storyline can be redirected by audience feedback. There are differing versions of this, from the choice of endings for fictional narratives to the voting-out of unfavored contestants in reality TV series. Video games represent perhaps the limiting case of this phenomenon, whereby individual skills and interests open up different paths through the “gamespace” to various participants. There is, of course, the possibility that narrative itself might not only be busy relocating itself to non-traditional, non-textual locations, but that it may soon be eclipsed altogether. A major recent publishing phenomenon is the six-volume diaristic epic of Karl Ove Knausgaard, emerging under the collective heading “My Struggle.” Here is a widely-commented-upon departure in literary style, in which narrative structure is replaced by a meandering text extending the stream-of-consciousness forms of earlier modernism. Yet many find real satisfaction in such writing, even if it is literally “going nowhere.” They report a palpable sense of life and character despite the non-narrative portrayal, more like impressionist than academic painting (i.e. pictures that do not so obviously set out to tell a story, but are content to record impressions). The Norwegian comments on how his published diaries could more effectively mediate the reality of a world than narrative could, though they were “not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet.” It has been speculated that this might be a new beginning for realism, though it may also represent its end. Despite this, narrative retains a crucial place at the heart of film and television. One might of course wonder if narrative can entirely be overcome, or if human brains will continue to discern narrative patterns in even disconnected experience, much as we irrepressibly impose meaningful patterns on the random shape of clouds. Even Knausgaard may be more narrativistic than he gives himself credit, especially as detailed memories of his abusive childhood have clearly not deserted him, while many

Introduction

3

others subjected to similar trauma have excised these painful recollections from the narrative of their emerging selfhood, losing touch with them under a veil of forgetting. So perhaps it is sufficient to acknowledge the vigorous tenacity of narrative, despite its present re-homing in new contexts, and despite reports from Norway of its impending demise. That we live in an era of media and  the contemporary  reimagining of narrative forms has done nothing to diminish the mimetic nature of homo imitans. If anything, modern media forms allow for various amplifications, certainly not diminutions of speed, of volume, of verisimilitude. Hence, this volume registers not simply an intellectual opportunity to engage with contemporary media, but also something of an obligation—to understand the world we actually inhabit. The first part of this volume engages in an attempt to understand the world mediated by the media. We have an international collection here, reaching both across continents and generations. From our base in Australia, and with the core of this collection representing papers given at the third annual conference of the Australian Girard Seminar, held at the University of Western Sydney in January 2013, we have drawn in old and new scholars and friends from the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and further afield. The result is something of a taster in new directions for Girardian literary and media studies, taking mimetic theory largely beyond the written text. Exciting young scholars from Johns Hopkins and Adelaide, distinguished professors from UCLA and Kyoto, priests and postmodernists, couch potatoes, theorists and humorists, of different ages, institutional affiliations, and disciplinary orientations are all represented. Prominent among our contributors are several of today’s emerging second generation of Girardian thinkers, in whose hands the exploration, critique, and development of mimetic theory is advancing. A particular tendency of the Australian Girard Seminar is also in evidence: to emphasize the currency and contemporary relevance of mimetic theory. There is also perhaps an Australian flavor to be discerned in this collection, as it approaches topics of high importance with a light touch. As is always the case, it has taken a small village to raise this child, and any attempt to list all of the villagers would try the patience of even the most dedicated reader— carrying so many proper nouns that it would destroy the equanimity of all but the most diligent among us, while simultaneously risking offending the same reader for leaving crucial names off when so many others were allowed in. So what to do? While we are not awaiting invitations to any awards ceremonies (or at least are not prepared to admit as much here), if we were forced to give an acceptance speech it would necessitate loud and sincere thanks at least to Imitatio, whose generosity we cannot hope to reciprocate, save through the quality of our efforts; to Haaris Naqvi, who is helping make us part of the furniture at Bloomsbury; and to Christopher Brennan, a copyeditor so terrifyingly acute that his capacity to see errors so small they hardly seem to matter, as well as those so large we wonder how we missed them, leads us to suspect either divine or even alien intervention. Or both. Actually, that sounds like a good plot for a film—so, onward … Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge

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Notes 1

For detailed and concise overviews of Girard’s thought, see Scott Cowdell, “René Girard, Modernity, and Apocalypse,” in Violence, Desire, and the Sacred: Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines, ed. Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge, 3–17 (London and New York: Continuum, 2012); and Chris Fleming, “Mimesis, Violence, and the Sacred: An Overview of the Thought of René Girard,” in Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, Volume 2: René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love, and Literature, ed. Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge, 1–13 (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014). See also the Appendix to this volume. 2 In this vein, alongside this volume, Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture has featured a number of articles on film criticism. 3 René Girard, La conversion de l’art: Textes rassemblés par Benoît Chantre et Trevor Cribben Merrill (Paris: Carnets Nord, 2008; Flammarion, 2010), 15. 4 Ibid.

Part One

Media and Representation

1

On the One Medium Eric Gans

Ever since Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” in Understanding Media (1964),1 the notion of “media” has entered the consciousness of the human species, which media of one kind or another have indeed always connected. McLuhan’s rewriting of world history in terms of the medium characteristic of a given era (writing, print, radio ...) was surely prophetic; his differentiation (does anyone remember this?) between hot media (e.g. radio) and cool media (e.g. television), no doubt less so. But what his writing was prophetic of was something McLuhan himself would not have been able to anticipate. The fulfillment of McLuhan’s media prophecy (as well as of very different earlier dreams of universal libraries and museums, from early modern encyclopedias to the Mundaneum of the Belgian visionary Paul Otlet [1868–1944]), has been the emergence of a universal medium that seems well on its way to absorbing all the others: the One Medium—the Internet. The universality of the sight-and-sound-reproducing screen with access to the interconnected web of human culture is the virtual realization of the universality of the (human, cultural) scene.2 It is surely not without significance that, for the moment, the word media is insistently associated with the word social. The One Medium is remarkable even more for the ever-more-realized potential of its universal clientele than for its absorption of the old media. Yet the two phenomena are complementary. The Internet would be far less significant as merely a universal system of telephones or television broadcasts. We have hardly begun to assess the potential theoretical and practical consequences of this transformation. We shouldn’t expect the old media simply to disappear; some forms of presentation of audiovisual data (books, magazines, CD players …) may remain more practical in some contexts than the ubiquitous computer/television screen. And it is useless to speculate on the emergence of new platforms through which the One Medium may be accessed. Google Glass may be just a gimmick, or else it, or something like it, may become mainstream. Perhaps holographic 3-D presentations will one day become practical—and portable. Those of us old enough will recall that the early, pre-Internet versions of “tablet” computers didn’t sell very well, whereas now I am typing this text on (one of my) iPads, and younger people seem to prefer smartphones’ still smaller screens, even for watching movies. This development is

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a direct result of the Internet’s ability to distribute its products through ever more compact, if not simpler, devices. But if speculation on platforms is futile, we can already begin to reflect on the apparently definitive phenomenon of the Internet as the One Medium that, precisely, reduces all earlier media to secondary differences of platform and presentation. A movie in a theater is, one might say, independent of the Internet, but at some point it may well become stored on the Internet (on the site of Netflix or Hulu), downloadable in only secondarily modified forms to computer screens and even phones, at which point the media distinction has been reduced to a matter of platform. Today movies are commonly shot in digital video, that is, as binary files, sequences of bytes. What will be the consequences of the reduction of all of culture—art, music, cinema, and the various forms of literature (literary texts, but also records of their performances)— to collections of bytes, to files coded to be displayed (at least for the moment) on two-dimensional screens? It is hardly insignificant that books and paintings, the two most prominent visual media of the past centuries, are “screen-ready.” My wife, Stacey Meeker, director of publications for the UCLA Graduate Students Association (which, in a university program I believe unique in the entire world, sponsors some 30 scholarly journals run by graduate students), had to deal recently with a practical problem posed by this universalization. Journals increasingly appear in electronic form, making them cheaper to produce and above all easier to distribute, and are often made available online free of charge (“open access”); the articles that appear in them are “just” computer files. This has led some ideologues (notably in the Free Culture movement) to attempt to impose on these articles a uniform “CC-BY” licensing agreement (CC stands for “Creative Commons,” a non-profit foundation; see “About the Licenses,” https://creativecommons.org/licenses/, accessed March 15, 2014) that would allow users of these materials, once the original source is referenced, to “tweak, remix, and build upon” the materials they contain. One can imagine the headaches the author of a scholarly article would have with this form of licensing, where inclusion of his name in the bibliography associates him with a “tweaked” version of his text that he may not even recognize. Clearly this terminology was designed (in “old media” terms) for music or video; text can be modified but hardly “remixed.” But if everything is just a sequence of bytes, then the tweak-remix temptation becomes understandable as an easy gesture to creative freedom, one-sizefits-all, that only reflection on these works’ original intention can prevent. Stacey was able to stave off this particular challenge to her journals’ scholarly and textual integrity. But the question it poses for the future is whether our sense of the difference between genres of representations—musical, plastic, textual … —will indeed erode not just anecdotally but permanently as a result of the subsumption of all our creations under the One Medium. Thus what for the moment can be seen as the too-quick overgeneralization of a protocol may in time come to reflect a new reality: that in an Internet world of files and bytes, such things as textual integrity no longer need to be respected. However unlikely this may seem, we are nonetheless obliged to face the question of how current media genres evolve when they are increasingly seen within the One Medium.



On the One Medium

9

In the domain of video-cinema-TV, one evolution is already apparent. The growing practice of binge-watching whole TV series at once on one’s computer or on a cyberconnected TV breaks down the chronology-based notion of a “series.” For example, Olivier Assayas’s Carlos (2011) was released in two versions, a movie-length version of 165 minutes and a three-episode “mini-series” version of 338 minutes. Watching such a film over the Internet, the two versions can be seen not as representatives of two media genres, but merely as occupying more or less time.

The utopian market This reflection on media is not the place for an analysis of the economy of the Internet. But the latter’s self-sustaining nature should not be taken for granted. As the recent offer of $19 billion for a start-up indicates, all these marvelous free or near-free services are sustained by a vast input of advertising dollars, which in turn are brought in by the steady growth of Internet commerce. The prow of this ship bears the figure of the Amazon, a non-phallic warrior whose victory in battle combines aggression with attraction. It is this market-grounded utopia that nourishes the “social media” that help make the Internet the locus of an uncontrolled and centerless interaction, an esthetic and practical sharing that shows the One Medium at its most typical. Nowhere is the unity of text, song, and image more obvious than in the tweets, Facebook entries, Snap- and WhatsApp chats, Instagram posts, and so on, that so many spend so many hours posting, sending, receiving, resending, “liking,” and commenting on. To the extent that we are “all” equally creators and consumers of representations, their absorption by One Medium is our final destiny. But we must not forget that this operation is financed by the “capitalist” market, and that the market, here as everywhere, is itself dependent on political systems, with peace enforced by arms. The visible existence of the Internet in places in the world where peace does not reign, or its use to promote neo-Nazism or jihad, depends upon its core remaining in lands that have not been at war since I was a small child. There is little chance that the Internet would survive the first days of World War III.

Media holdouts: The two originary modes There remain two sets of phenomena that cannot be reduced to the One Medium because they depend on an immediate relationship to their public: performances on the one hand, and art-objects on the other. Students of GA will recognize the two essential components of the human (cultural-representational) scene: the sacred central object and its sacrificial/alimentary substitutes, and the peripheral human group that surrounds the center, celebrates and consecrates it, and eventually, in a typical rite, takes nourishment from it.

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Performance We are all familiar with Jacques Derrida’s pregnant revelation of the différance or deferral inherent in writing, although to situate it in a coherent anthropology (such as GA claims to be) it is necessary to supplement it with René Girard’s conception of the human as, to put it in GA terms, the species that poses a greater danger to itself than does the outside world.3 The deferral Derrida associates with the sign as a member of a paradigm within which the speaker/writer must choose is indeed inherent in all use of representation, all “media,” which term in this context takes on the literal reality of a mediating element, both between me and the object I refer to, and more essentially, between me and the other human(s) I am communicating with about (rather than fighting over) this central object. Derrida’s most telling point is that the temporal separation between emission and reception characteristic of writing is in fact an aspect of all communication through signs—notably the apparently immediate relation between speaker and hearer—and by extension, of all human interaction. But Derrida perversely makes of this revelation a debunking of the notion of “presence,” which reflects what is in his view the spurious social unity achieved in ritual (which he rather unanthropologically associates as a matter of course with centralized hierarchy, neglecting the essential egalitarianism of les formes élémentaires described by Durkheim).4 Derrida views the center of the public scene as a kind of pharaonic sun radiating the unifying force of the community and its centralized leader (we might recall that, in his 1873 Introduction to the Science of Religion, Max Müller posited the sun as the object of the first human worship and therefore of the first linguistic/representational sign).5 This critique of presence fails to grasp the element of mediation that is fundamental to “presence” itself as a human phenomenon—a mediation nicely expressed in topological terms by Sartre’s idea of the néant that intervenes between the human consciousness and the world.6 Even in moments of social “effervescence” (to use Durkheim’s term), the apparent immediacy of human interaction is mediated by signs—which may on occasion exacerbate rather than moderate its potential violence, a phenomenon familiar to Georges Bataille, and of course to Girard. Ritual, which provides the tacit model for Derrida’s examples of “presence,” is by its very nature a “paradigm” that the participants are following, however apparently spontaneous their actions. Which is to say that our relationship to “performance” in any form is always mediated, even if, as in ritual, we are among the participants. Thus we are encouraged to speculate as to the degree to which performance can be (re)produced in the One Medium. The point is often made that the proliferation of pornography and such things as “sex dolls,” or practices such as “sexting,” reflect a movement of sexual activity toward the latter pole of the equilibrium Chamfort noted two centuries ago between le contact de deux épidermes and l’échange de deux illusions—and if sex leaves the sphere of performance, the species is in big trouble. Yet the retreat into the world of the imagination extends the chain of mediations between the imaginer and the performer without really cutting it off. Societies may decline demographically, but it is surely too soon to associate the One Medium with the death of human



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connection, sexual and otherwise. The dream of transforming the “real” world into a representation in fulfillment of Schopenhauer’s (and in a very real sense, Nietzsche’s) nineteenth-century dream cannot be realized except as a representation. We cannot conceive a human world wholly devoid of performative interaction, and therefore of performative art as well. We can watch a play on TV; we can watch an opera (for a much lower price) in a movie theater, but we cannot be unaware of the difference between seeing a worldly event and watching its transmission on a screen. Even if the two elements may be combined, for example in “live TV” where there is a studio audience to serve as our surrogates, no one can be oblivious to the difference between watching the screen and watching the actors themselves perform. A theater or concert performance takes place in real time and is accessible only to those present, whereas anything that appears in a Medium is at least in principle re-produced and therefore indefinitely re-producible. Thus it is not surprising that as the One Medium assimilates the traditional performance media, it does not give rise to radically new forms of performance on its own. The ultimate source of all representational forms is living human interaction on the cultural scene of (deferred) presence, and to the extent that this interaction is not simply reduced to an exchange of symbols, it must itself be witnessed. We cannot predict the space live performance will continue to occupy in the culture. To what extent will live theater, opera, ballet, concerts of popular and classical music continue to flourish? Will DJ’ed raves take the place of rock concerts, for example? But even if public live performance were wholly replaced by some form of cybervideo, given that live performance is the principal source of media reproductions, resisting (indefinitely?) its dethronement by increasingly sophisticated techniques of animation, we can say with no obvious fear of historical refutation that in order to fill at least some, and the most meaningful, of the screens of the One Medium, performance must be maintained as a human practice, and therefore as a profession. Actors, singers, dancers will remain, and consequently there will always be a demand for their live as well as reproduced and/or simulated performances. At least for the moment, “lifelike” advanced animation still requires human models. But I would predict (in contrast with many sci-fi plots) that even the future’s most lifelike “virtual” human performers will fail to create the link we feel with living humans. We might consider the example of the game of chess. Computer programs have by now achieved ratings beyond the capacity of any human player, yet we still hold “human” tournaments and championships in which fans display immeasurably greater interest than in the higher-rated cybernetic battles.

Performance art Performance art is best understood as an esthetic ritual. Its practitioner combines the performing arts with the plastic arts by playing both of the constitutive roles of ritual: the sacred center and the human periphery. The artist-sacrificer as representative of the mob performs a sacrifice, normally on his/her own body, although other symbolic and/or real victims may be added or substituted. This activity of the artist-as-artwork

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is not truly reproducible in the One Medium. A reproduction of an art-performance is better understood as a reportage than as a re-presentation comparable to showing a play or ballet on screen. For in the latter performance, the players act and suffer only “in the play,” whereas the performance artist and/or his/her victim-double “suffers” at least a bit for real. This tension between the real and its representation within the One Medium is itself productive. Such things as Lady Gaga music videos, not to speak of the graphic violence of film, suggest that the increased unity of the Internet encourages more intensely simulated performances that at least appear to threaten to pass over into lived reality. This intensification of the scenic appears destined to compete with the Medium’s invasion by the banality of the social media and its endless reproduction of “life itself.” If the cat videos and Facebook photos and tweets of everyday activity make use of the Internet’s limitless connectivity to transmit the only perfunctorily estheticized stuff of daily life, then to be an “artist” requires that performance be marked, and a key possibility for this marking is not an excess of skill or even spectacle but sacrificiality, (the image of) irreversible violence, which is in such cases a not altogether mocked sacrality.

The art-object The art-object, separated now from the sacrificial artist of performance art, is the complementary element of the cultural-ritual scene that resists assimilation to the Medium, even as it may itself include displays, that is, screens of all kinds. Because the plastic artwork takes the place of a sacred object re-presenting the central divinity, it cannot be merely a (reproducible) representation. Although the archetype of the art-object is the icon/statue representing a god, the substitutive sacrificial animal of ritual provides a more originary, pre-esthetic model. It is eaten as a representative not simply of its species but of the sacred, peace-bringing center itself, traceable in principle to the scene where humans first deferred consumption via a reciprocally shared proto-linguistic sign. Separated from all but the loosest definition of “art,” the sacrificial animal remains at the center of the religious and secular feasts of the modern world. Here, at least, the difference between reality and Medium is clear: it is felt in the pit of the stomach. In the world of the One Medium, the contrast between the in-principle indefinite reproduction of non-nourishing, merely signifying signs and the object-reality of the art-object is enhanced. The Internet appears to have stimulated an increased fetishizing of the object-ness of the object, of its presence as and on display. This phenomenon may be traced back to Duchamp’s urinal (“Fountain,” 1917), but whereas Duchamp’s gesture of exhibiting a “found object” among crafted works of art was openly subversive—less of the works themselves than of the pseudo-sacred space in which they were obligatorily exhibited—the same cannot be said for such things as Jeff Koons’s notoriously high-priced “sculptures” of balloon animals. Here the revolutionary gesture is to deny that there is any useful distinction to be made between the “readymade” and the “true”=pretentious, artistically accomplished artwork. Koons’s sculptures are, so to speak, scandalously expensive reproductions of urinals.



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Thus whereas Duchamp made us realize that the essential precondition of the art-object was the scene of artistic display, today’s “installation” work, which seems to take up an ever greater proportion of museum space, can include such things as repainted cheap furniture, parts of old bicycles and other machines, and just about anything found or findable—for example, the 340-ton boulder called “Levitated Mass” visited from below in a 456-foot trench at the Los Angeles County Museum—simply ignores the values of traditional art altogether. This is not simply an effect of the One Medium, but it is reasonable to speculate that the assimilation of all forms of mediated communication to a single model leads to a more intense and absolute emphasis on the physicality of the esthetic scene as an “art space,” whether empty or filled with “content,” that is emphatically unlike the computer-television-cinema screen. By contrast, in galleries, which operate through sales, the greater space efficiency of wallhanging over free-standing no doubt mitigates this factor. I must admit I find this trend disturbing. The space-occupying installation finds its value in the “concept” it incarnates rather than in the craft or skill it embodies; it sacrifices beauty for the increasingly hollow “sublimity” of a well-worn sense of scandal. A surprising number of installation artworks consist of trivially portentous statements lettered on walls, as though “installed” language constituted a kind of deconstruction of painting. But the markets for “real” painting and sculpture remain vigorous; it is surely too early to declare (for the nth time) the “end of art”—although we may be witnessing the “dead end of the museum.”

Old and new media Libraries today are caught in an ill-defined transition between the age of books and that of electronic documents. Although many volumes, especially old serial collections, have been trashed or at any rate “de-accessioned,” clearly libraries are not about to replace their book collections with PDF scans. Yet the mighty BnF of France continues to scan immense numbers of manuscripts and old periodicals for its publicly available Gallica collection. A personal anecdote: in the 1960s, when I wrote my dissertation on Flaubert’s early works, I was able to consult, beyond the old and loosely edited Conard edition of 1910, Jean Bruneau’s recent Les débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert, which included scholarly transcriptions of a number of the stories, an invaluable aid in those days when travel from the United States to Europe was less usual.7 Today, a mouse-click or two will take you to Gallica, where you can read highresolution scans of young Flaubert’s original manuscripts and note for yourself his (mis)spellings and ratures. Unless you are doing research on old paper and ink, there is really no scholarly reason to visit the originals. But the same can be said of most books we use for scholarly purposes, which a simple word search function renders far more useful, not to say accessible, in their scanned than in their printed version. Yet books and (some) periodicals seem to be hanging in there, and the so-called paperless office, as everyone knows, has as much paper as ever now that cyberspeed printers have replaced humanspeed typewriters. For other media such as music and

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video, the future is less clear. The DVD or CD has no special advantage over an online computer file—certainly not, like the book, that of tradition. And as we have seen, art-objects and performances have a physical presence that cannot be reproduced with equivalent effect on a screen. Scenes and screens can never become wholly interchangeable.

Conclusion The Hebrew revelation of the One God was a great step forward in our understanding of the sacred, regardless of whether we understand it as grounded outside us or as an “internal otherness.” Belief in a plurality of gods involves a naive fixation on the specificity of their divine attributes, whereas the essence of the sacred lies precisely in its difference as such from the everyday world: Durkheim’s Ur-opposition between sacred and profane that founds difference itself. Analogy suggests that the realization, however imperfect, of the One Medium should be similarly, if not equally, a source of anthropological insight. The (also McLuhan-originated) term “global village” is no longer in vogue, but the Internet confers on the global world an immediacy no one could have predicted even 20 years ago. Every accepted fact is at everyone’s fingertips; every pseudo-fact as well, yet however much we are troubled by the Internet’s facilitation of “conspiracy theories” (the eponymous subject of a stimulating and enjoyable new work co-authored by Chris Fleming and Emma Jane), their content is of less significance than accepted knowledge by several orders of magnitude.8 This knowledge includes the entire heritage of the Old Media that the One Medium transmits via its screen; all music, artworks, films, not to speak of books and other written materials, are available for perusing and for sharing with others. Even when the esthetic presence itself, as in some of the examples I have discussed, cannot be fully experienced in reproduction, a virtually complete if mediated knowledge of the artworks can indeed be transmitted, and goes far to permit our appreciation of works we cannot witness at first hand. We may tentatively conclude that so far, at least, under the reign of the One Medium, if the periphery appears to be doing fine, the center seems to be increasingly less figurable, either as a god or as an artwork. This might be thought to signal the decline of the sacred, with as a result perhaps the impending end of humanity itself. But let us avoid apocalypse. A world where rocks and old furniture have taken the place of the works of the masters as the “cultural” replacement for traditional religion may just find that traditional religion does a better job. Certainly, as David P. Goldman (aka “Spengler”) likes to point out, religious people are greatly overrepresented among those who produce children beyond the replacement level, and who therefore guarantee their participation in future generations.9 Religion too may be found on the Internet, and not only serving its more pernicious functions, such as the recruitment of jihadists. Do there exist the equivalent of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in religious services? Or should we rather



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learn to look at the Internet itself at a given moment as a MOO religious service, where virtual universal togetherness replaces the central godhead with the figure of global humanity itself, nameless and figureless, existing by right of its ubiquity alone? No, I rather think not. But our massive dissolution in the crowd may have for effect our enhanced attraction to the Subject, real or constructed, that we experience in its center: the One God, I AM WHO I AM.

Notes 1 2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9

Marshall MacLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). In the terminology of generative anthropology (GA), the scene is the fundamental locus of specifically human interaction—that involved in the exchange of signs. Typically, a scene has a (sacred) center and a human periphery whose attention is focused on this center. I have recently discussed the relationship of GA to René Girard’s mimetic theory in a little work entitled The Girardian Origins of Generative Anthropology, available for US$1 on amazon.com. Readers interested in learning more about GA should also consult the Anthropoetics website at www.anthropoetics. ucla.edu. On the idea of “différance,” see Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and other essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973); “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1982); and Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (1912; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976). Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion (London: Longmans, Green, 1873). Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (1943; New York: Washington Square Press, 1984). Jean Bruneau, Les débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert, 1841–1845 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962). Emma A. Jane and Chris Fleming, Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014). See, for instance, Spengler, “First Things Last,” Asia Times Online, July 22, 2013, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-220713.html.

2

The Scapegoat Mechanism and the Media: Beyond the Folk Devil Paradigm John O’Carroll

Few who have witnessed schoolyard bullying or even volatile crowd behavior would question the capacities of humans for victimization. In some social contexts, those who perpetrate exclusion often feel justified in doing so, even if the reasons given seem strange to those outside the community in question. In the media sphere, the pattern is evident. If we are to believe press accounts of the matter, we live in an era of Internet “flaming,”1 of popular demonization of public figures, including former celebrities, and sometimes indeed entire social groups. Noticing scapegoat behaviors is not quite the same thing as understanding them, however. Indeed, as soon as a conflagration is named in terms of scapegoats and crowds, the commentator can seem to stand outside the behavior as if he or she knew better, beginning a more subtle process of scapegoating. Despite the justifications given for scapegoating, according to two quite distinct analytic traditions, the victims of persecution can be arbitrary, and in some respects, almost anyone can be part of the lynch mob. In a context with increasingly anonymous media environments, scapegoating patterns hold importance for understanding the media and, more generally, social behaviors. The best-known account of scapegoating is that proffered by the sociologist, Stanley Cohen. His landmark work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, was published in 1972, and it still dominates conceptions of the issue in the fields not just of sociology, but also of cultural and media studies.2 As his title suggests, Cohen calls the popularly demonized figures “folk devils.”3 His focus on modern society suggests that the role of the mass media has made the “folk devil” into an unprecedented target of “mass panic” or hysteria. Cohen proceeds by a simple combination of a sociological ontology of difference (which shows how small social differences can become significant) and a cybernetic model of a feedback cycle (which amplifies the small group distinctions into ones that turn a group or individual into a target). Perhaps because of the simplicity of its thesis, Cohen’s book remains influential in both his own field of sociology (especially in studies of deviance, crime, and media representation) and in the field of cultural studies. A second, less well known, tradition treats media cycles as no more than a part of normal social patterns and does not emphasize the prevalence of scapegoat

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behavior today over that in former societies. On this view, developed in the work of René Girard, scapegoat behaviors are far from novel, and are at the heart of social order, though they have been to some extent transformed as a result of the impact of Christianity. If there be a risk of scapegoating in the mass media or online worlds of today, these are resurgent rather than new social behaviors. Unlike Cohen, Girard works from source texts across a variety of cultures, societies, and belief traditions. For this reason, Girard is renowned mainly as a theorist of religion and violence.4 In contrast to Cohen, he finds that pre-Christian and non-Christian societies were not destabilized by the persecution of the victim, but rather, the victim was part of a process of stabilization and of conflict settlement. In this chapter, I outline the two approaches in relation to each other initially and I tease out some of the underlying complexities hidden in Cohen’s apparently simple argument, especially concerning his use of cybernetics. From here, it becomes possible to compare the approaches each writer takes to media and to mediation, and to do this in light of work in media theory itself. In particular, this work suggests that not only are media more interlaced with content than Cohen realizes, but that persecution is bound up with notions of the sacred, and in the media sphere, the celebrity. That it is now possible for certain celebrities to be both arbitrarily chosen and also transformed into fallen figures, or even scapegoats, is an extreme instance of the system of signs at play—and while it does not apply to all celebrities, it has the potential to do so.

Cohen on the scapegoat Cohen’s book may have iconic status as the best-known account of scapegoats, but it exists in relation to a tradition. Folk Devils and Moral Panics stands squarely in the field of sociology, especially the sociology of difference. Cohen launches his argument by twinning “moral panics” with the literature of “deviance” (especially the transactionist tradition). It is true that Cohen also seeks to situate it briefly in relation to earlier analyses of crowds, especially those of Gabriel Tarde (which he rejected) and of Le Bon, but he does not refer at all to Girard’s work on scapegoating, even in the substantial introductions he wrote to later editions.5 The book also has a place in cultural studies and sociology. Cohen’s use of cybernetic ideas from communications has, perhaps, helped it gain currency in contemporary communications debates about censorship and outsiders.6 It has also been influential in his own field of sociology, where the fields of deviance studies and, later, of criminology have taken hold. For example, in relation to the study of violence in schools, Goode and Ben-Yehuda seem to simply follow Cohen in their analysis: “There is no ‘epidemic’ of school violence, and by using the term, the media exaggerate its incidence: in fact, during this period, the media fabricated a moral panic of school shootings.”7 Cohen’s own augmented introduction lists seven “objects” of moral panics, one of which is school violence (the others are young working-class males, drugs, child abuse and satanic rituals, sex/violence and media, welfare cheats, and refugees).8 This kind of theorization also informs media studies in its conception of



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news values. Even critical texts such as Graeme Burton’s simply describe these values as instances of dominant ideology, and then state that they fit Cohen’s template.9 While the media can create panics, Cohen’s arguments do not tell us why, or even fully how, scapegoats are created. When we take up Cohen’s book itself, initially, it is difficult to see why it has been so persistently influential. To plunge into the pages of Folk Devils and Moral Panics is to dive into a dated book. Its examples, the Mods and the Rockers, have passed into folk memory. In terms of framing his argument, the literatures cited have receded, be they of the symbolic interactionist or of the transactionist schools of sociology. The book uses a combination of news stories and qualitative interviews to propose a model of the creation of scapegoat groups (rather than a model of the creation of individual scapegoats). As I have outlined already, Cohen suggests that small points of deviation are progressively enlarged through processes of social alienation of the slightly different or distinct group, and that these are amplified by mass media technologies and audiences. He makes use of a cybernetic idea, that of feedback, to support this view. The book proposes a theory of sociological deviance to explain the creation of “folk devils” and their demonization. Yet it remains the case that this work proposes what is obviously an attractive argument to critical social commentators. It is worth tracing some of the reasons for that attractiveness, including the genuine insights of this work. The first reason the book has social force even now is that it named the issue of the scapegoat and staked the claim that scapegoats can (but need not) be arbitrary. The route to this claim is not as obvious as it looks, and it reveals an interesting set of source literatures. Cohen cites Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, a social psychological foray that pays attention to lynch mobs and mimetic behavior. Cohen looks at what Le Bon called the “psychology of crowds,” as well as Le Bon’s attempts to typologize the kinds of crowds. Cohen then links this analysis to a progression developed by Neil Smelser (himself a theorist of collective behavior).10 Cohen, however, turns away from this to use a model of response to natural disaster. This decision is not really explained, but he actually uses these ideas to structure the greater part of his book. This is despite the fact that, as he himself remarks, “some of these stages have no exact parallels in the Mods and Rockers case …”11 His subsequent chapters, described as “inventories” of attitudes and behaviors, do not lead to strong theorizations of any kind. Indeed, there are two long chapters on “reaction” (which do little more than catalogue resentments). Still, the use of disaster theory leads to the suggestion that there is a lack of self-awareness on the part of those doing the victimization. In this respect, of special importance is Cohen’s realization that the definition of scapegoats is arbitrary in just the way that all sign systems are arbitrary, and that, therefore, there is no inherent guilt, or even inherent difference, to be attached to an individual, or to a sociologically defined “folk devil” grouping. While his way of arriving at this position is a little convoluted, it is very similar to Girard’s position. The second reason for Cohen’s influence lies in how he joins, apparently without theoretical effort, the traditions of social and media analysis. In his handling of what he called moral panics, Cohen sees the process as social, and yet he stages it via a kind

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of communications theory.12 In terms of such theory, Cohen uses just one source, an essay by Leslie Wilkins about “deviance amplification,” which, he says, “describes in highly mechanistic language derived from cybernetic theory” the “spiraling or snowballing effect.”13 He sees shortcomings in her approach, but says that it has the merit of “particular emphasis upon the ‘information about deviance variable’ and its dependence on the mass media.”14 As for the further work that, he says, corrects for the weakness of cybernetic technicism, Cohen offers qualitative interview research on media practitioners and other players, but does not alter the theoretical orientation he begins with.15 The third reason for the book’s accessibility is that it spells out what a sociology of difference (or deviance, as he calls it) looks like. This clarity allows for critique of Cohen’s work (and indeed the literature that relies on it), and has value for that reason alone. Cohen’s words about the sociology of deviance seem as current, and in my view as incorrect, as they were when they were written: Why does a particular rule, the infraction of which constitutes deviance, exist at all? What are the processes and procedures involved in identifying someone as a deviant and applying the rule to him? What are the effects and consequences of this application, both for society and for the individual?16

Without prejudicing our view of Cohen’s achievement, these questions presuppose other questions, which Girard helps to clarify. They posit a consensus hegemony and a series of defined outsiders. That these outsiders, these Mods and Rockers, are so fundamentally the same that they could even be the children of the readers of the target audience never seems to occur to Cohen as a problem for his modeling. The fourth and perhaps most interesting aspect of Cohen’s book is that he has allowed what he calls an “analogy” to guide the way he has conceived his project. At the outset of the book, he states that he will analyze media representations to find evidence of negative stereotyping or worse. Cohen writes that an audience is at stake, and this, he suggests, means it is best to trace defined folk devils “through the eyes of societal reaction,”17 that he will be paying “less attention to the actors than to the audience,”18 and moreover, that this indeed has the logic of a “dramaturgical analogy.”19 The media, he says, “interpreted and presented” events and their contexts, and because of the importance of such mediation in the modern world, “it is in this form that most people receive their pictures of both deviance and disasters—reactions take place on the basis of these processed or coded images.”20 The loaded words he cites become an inventory of labels; for example, “Invasion from London” captures the sense that an innocent seaside town is assailed by marauding hoons from elsewhere.21 Representation, in this view, is not simply mirroring or distorting a true picture, but is actually a process of re-creation and re-staging. Cohen never quite gets this far, but the dramaturgical analogy is useful as far as he takes it, and it has more potential force than he himself realized. Keeping these merits in mind, we still have a very limited theorization of the scapegoat, and in this context I turn to Girard.



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Girard, the scapegoat, and the ontology of difference Unlike Cohen, who uses qualitative interviews and media reports as evidence, Girard’s approach to persecution is historically and textually based. Girard uses the texts of anthropology, of religion, and of myth to produce observations about the nature of scapegoat behavior and of its role in human societies. If both Girard and Cohen would in some ways condemn persecution of the scapegoat in a modern social context, their reasons for doing so, and indeed, the basis for their claims, would be quite different. Where Cohen treats the demonization of folk devils as examples of unfair persecution in a media age, Girard’s reason for criticizing such behavior is based on the transformation of self-understanding that Christ effects in the account of the first stone and indeed in the accounts of the crucifixion: it is possible, of course, for a crowd still to kill the person designated as a scapegoat, but the fact that the mechanism now is visible as a mechanism means that it will not operate to stabilize society as it did before. Unlike Cohen, in other words, Girard does not see modern society as more prone to scapegoat behavior than before, and more important still, he sees scapegoat behavior as evidence of a mechanism that has structured human cultures from their beginnings. Girard contends that scapegoat figures emerge as the resolution to a conflict— and this conflict results from the interactions of mimetic desire. Despite the works of Le Bon and Tarde, Girard argues that our grasp of the power of mimesis has not advanced far beyond classical conceptions of it as copying and representation. Girard’s suggestion is that mimesis concerns not just representation, but also a process whereby the desires of one person for an object trigger mimetic desire in another for the same object: it is the desire that is replicated. Mimesis for Girard is amplified and intensified when the model’s and the imitator’s desires are replicated in a spiral that leads to rivalry—increasingly a lack of differentiation between the two: When we copy the desire of other people, we desire the objects already desired by the latter who, understandably, want to keep these objects for themselves. Models and imitators thus become rivals for the same objects. And mimetic rivalry triggers a circular process that intensifies—not one—but both desires, making them more and more similar as their reciprocal hostility increases.22

Mimetic rivalry, therefore, has the potential to be amplified, but Girard’s cybernetics (if we were to treat it as such) is social all the way down. For Girard, any process of mimetic rivalry has the potential to trigger conflict, which, if it becomes sufficiently widespread and intense, leads to lynchings and scapegoats. According to Girard, scapegoating is a social means to resolve and prevent conflict: it focuses disparate and widespread violence on one person or group to provide and maintain order. Thus, the scapegoat in Girard, but not in Cohen, has itself the double quality of being at once utterly rejected, yet also, upon rejection, the possibility of being a sacred and revered object that scandalizes and provides order out of chaos. Nevertheless, both Cohen and Girard agree upon the fact that scapegoats are usually chosen arbitrarily, despite agreeing on little else.

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Girard bluntly disputes the ontology of difference that Cohen and many other sociologists take for granted. He questions the obsession of cultural analysts and sociologists with theories of difference and marginality. In an often-cited interview with Le Monde, he bluntly put the case for rejecting this paradigm: The error is always to reason within categories of “difference” when the root of all conflicts is rather “competition,” mimetic rivalry between persons, countries, cultures. Competition is the desire to imitate the other in order to obtain the same thing he or she has, by violence if need be. No doubt terrorism is bound to a world “different” from ours, but what gives rise to terrorism does not lie in that “difference” that removes it further from us and makes it inconceivable to us. To the contrary, it lies in an exacerbated desire for convergence and resemblance. Human relations are essentially relations of imitation, of rivalry.23

For example, the 9/11 hijackers wore the same kinds of clothes as Westerners, and in many deeper respects, resembled them in their mode of attack and in their thought. The essential conflict concerned a shared desire for hegemony. Thus, for Girard, the key to conflict is the imitated desires that lead rivals to seek the same things and to resemble each other in their attempted acquisition. The fear that humans have in these rivalries, according to Girard, is the sameness that is exposed, not the differences. The rivals desperately profess differences in order to avoid and cover up the sameness. Furthermore, Girard’s commentary takes account of the mass media’s role in initiating and/or exacerbating the process of mimetic sameness and “mimetic contagion,” particularly in universalizing Western culture.24 Girard’s version of social conflict is based on an anthropological interpretation of archaic myths. He posits a relationship between mimetic behavior and scapegoat creation. Whether the scapegoat is morally innocent or not is beside the point for Girard. It is mimetic rivalry that drives social crises, not the construction of differences or deviancy. He notes that myths themselves frequently “ascribe human conflict, not to too much difference, as most of us do, but to too little.”25 He points to the case of twins,26 who are often seen as taboo in archaic cultures and are murdered, because of the reminder of sameness that the twins provoke, and with it, the fear of a return to crisis. For Girard, victims are chosen arbitrarily, though they may or may not contain distinguishing or vulnerable features that the group desperately latches onto to justify their persecution. Indeed, where Cohen seeks to find small differences that might explain their genesis, Girard finds no such need: sometimes there are differences, and sometimes there are not. The differences are secondary to the crisis of mimetic contagion and rivalry. He does remark that, in some contexts, myths do mention “one or two attributes that make their possessors more attractive as victims than other members of the crowd.”27 Nevertheless, the primary role of the scapegoat is to resolve the crisis and bind the community back together. The word, religion, as Girard rightly says, means to bind people together (cf. the verb form, religare),28 and this is how many non-biblical religions have indeed operated: “The community made dysfunctional by the mimetic crisis, becomes functional again thanks to the lynching of the single victim.”29 The community is bound together as one in lynching the victim:



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Why does the final lynching succeed in ending the crisis which nothing could end before? Why does the death of only one victim satisfy the universal appetite for violence which, during the mimetic disorder, numerous victims could not satisfy? … The final lynching is unanimous. The fact that the myth itself believes in the justice of the lynching confirms the unanimity of the lynchers who are the authors of the myth, the entire community.30

These lines explain why the scapegoat mechanism works, or at least, in pre- or non-Christian societies, used to work.

Cohen and Girard on the “sociology of the scapegoat” Where Girard argues a mimesis-based analytic developed in terms of the scapegoat as a resolution to social crisis, Cohen presumes, and indeed states his case in terms of, what he clearly sees as self-evident processes of exclusion of the one or ones who are different. Cohen argues his version as follows: “An initial act of deviance, or normative diversity (for example, in dress) is defined as worthy of attention and is responded to punitively.”31 But why? Ideology is still the most common answer (others, of course, would call it, even more problematically, human nature). Cohen takes the fact that small differences are seized upon as evidence of an entirely difference-based ontology. This sets in train a series of feedback loops that include the group itself. That is, Cohen suggests, the minor difference is amplified socially: The deviant or group of deviants is segregated or isolated and this operates to alienate them from conventional society. They perceive themselves as more deviant, group themselves with others in a similar position, and this leads to more deviance. This, in turn, exposes the group to further punitive sanctions and other forceful actions by the conformists—and the system starts going round again.32

“The system starts going round again” is Cohen’s social theory of the scapegoat group’s emergence as scapegoats—to which amplification is added. In the arbitrariness of what is clearly a structuralist schema, the play of difference Cohen outlines is strikingly superficial, even unbelievable. What makes better sense of this situation is that this is no crisis of difference, but rather a crisis of what Girard calls undifferentiation. In such a situation, any small marker is seized upon to lay claim to the same territory, the same cultural space, the same public space—for Cohen’s initial story concerns a contest for actual space, which then is reported as, and then reverberates into, a story of supposed difference. Intergenerational rivalry becomes a mimetic contest, with parents and offspring laying claim to the same social and cultural terrain, and in the case of visiting youth, the same shared public space. This brings us to the question of acquisitive mimesis: the attempt to grasp and acquire the object that is desired in common. According to Girard, by contrast, the “crisis of undifferentiation” is at the root of social crises and is driven by people who have and seek objects in common, especially

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the things that they seek by acquisition. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Girard makes the point that mimesis is not just a matter of, or a problem with, copying others, but as with the laws of copyright, the matter always concerns the ownership of property, intellectual or otherwise, as mediated by desire. In its most basic form: It is obvious that appropriation figures formidably in the behavior of human beings, as it does in that of all living beings, and that such behavior can be copied. There is no reason to exclude appropriation from imitation.33

At first, this does not seem to apply to issues of interpersonal communication, to cultural phenomena such as dress codes, let alone to mediation itself. The latter is more complex, and needs to be handled separately, but as to codes of politeness or rudeness, or laws governing behavior, the application is very obvious as these codes seek to prevent acquisitive mimesis from arising, and when it does, to quickly punish, quash, and cleanse it. Indeed, for human cultures, openly acquisitive mimesis is itself framed by codes of behavior and of law in order to prevent or punish it. Moreover, in Western culture, law itself appears as transcendent, allowing for a view of mimetic violence and rivalry in isolated cases: What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and to view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there … the imitative and repetitive character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is a fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal protection it had not previously possessed.34

Thus, law seeks to distance the community from the dangerous consequence of violence, which in its “natural” form leads to a crisis of sameness. This crisis can rapidly escalate in an effort by its protagonists to establish victory and difference over rivals, but without a common victim, it leads to destruction: “mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance … vengeance turns them into doubles.”35 Having suggested that each model treats the scapegoat as a social problem, it is time to take up the thing that clearly—or apparently—separates them. Cohen offers a theory of media amplification targeting modern society, while Girard does not. If Girard’s is the more comprehensive social theory, perhaps Cohen’s attention to the contemporary world of rock music and subcultures leads to him having more relevance to the situation of today. In my view, as we shall see, things are not so simple.

Mediation, media, and representation Folk Devils and Moral Panics has a model of the media that is drawn from cybernetics. Cybernetics occupies a difficult cultural space of its own in communications history, and Cohen distances himself from the complexities of this model. Girard, by contrast, does not offer any model of the mass media, but what he does instead is pay



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attention to the narrative, mythic, and religious formations of social groups just as an anthropologist would, and in addition, he turns that critical eye at times on to our own culture and society. The approaches are not, for all these reasons, readily comparable, but at the risk of comparing oranges to apples, there are a number of fields where comparisons can usefully be initiated. The first concerns the ways in which each writer stages his fields of media (Cohen with cybernetics, Girard with narrative and myth). The second concerns the testing of Cohen’s approach to communications by taking advantage of insights in later work in that field (especially that by Jean Baudrillard). The final field of comparative analysis concerns Cohen’s theological or perhaps anthropological language concerning “folk devils” in relation to Girard’s view of the sacred in persecution behavior. At this point, something in common does emerge as each theorist in his way sees the arbitrariness of victimhood—and indeed, in some contexts that have been noticed in contemporary media studies, the arbitrariness of celebrity. I begin with Cohen’s use of cybernetics. Cohen’s version of the scapegoat relies on cybernetics, even though he says that it could be argued in other ways. In terms of media analysis, these other ways turn out to be qualitative interviews with audiences and media practitioners. The cybernetic claim is not disturbed by this, and indeed it is the only basis Cohen deploys to justify his own media theory. But cybernetics is a very particular form of communications theory, and it suits Cohen’s claims mainly because, even though he does not spell out its workings, it offers a cover to explain how small and local events spread more widely. Instead, Cohen tells us what people think about the media, about the Mods, and so on.36 Cybernetics is a powerful field of theory and indeed of modeling. But it has particular characteristics that need to be considered in any adaptation. Cybernetics explores the system and the signals, not the content, of the communications. The systems orientation does not mean that cyberneticists were uninterested in social solutions or problems, but rather, it suggests complexities in their approach to them. For instance, the French cyberneticist, Henri Laborit, based much of his work on cybernetic systems of the city and society on his own earlier medical work. For Laborit, as for Norbert Wiener, the best-known cybernetics exponent of the postwar period, it did not matter whether the homeostasis being investigated was part of an air conditioning system, a social system, or the blood flow of the human body.37 The brilliance of this work lay in its holding assumptions constant. Such an approach is not always suitable, or at least, not simply suitable, for media intensification to be added somehow to an already-theorized modeling of the social. For writers such as Laborit or Wiener, it is cybernetic all the way down. For Cohen to use such work, and not to reduce it to something akin to Shannon and Weaver’s formulations about senders and receivers, he needs to explain its operation, and its limits.38 He does not do this. In the context of a theory of scapegoats, the “content” of Cohen’s system is very heterogeneous, and this socially mediated complexity cannot be ignored except provisionally as a stage in analysis. For instance, the analysis of the rapidity of mobile text messaging today may be helpful in a given case, but it makes a difference as to how that technology exists in (or perhaps even defines) a given

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community, and the scale and nature of that community makes a difference too. More generally, the problem for Cohen is that he needs to be able to show how the media itself operates as a social phenomenon, as something that is not just a formal system, but is part of the society in question. Mediation in other words is a social, not merely a technical, problem. Girard, by contrast, does not propose a theory of media. Perhaps though he does not need to—or at least, not in that form. In suggesting that media are part of social processes, I do not mean to say there is no such thing as media: that would be as facile as joining Margaret Thatcher in her contention that there was no such thing as society. Rather, it is a matter of seeing how, in any given social context, mediation of information and indeed of worlds takes place. It is possible to imagine, as Campanella did in his fictional account of learning in his City of the Sun, that knowledge and the arts could be transmitted by painting it onto city walls and making the class walk round and round them.39 This colorful illustration has a serious edge if we look at how Girard conducts his inquiry. He uses narratives, sacred texts, and myths. He uses anthropological records. These sources are themselves—if read carefully—instances (at least potentially) of media, indeed, of media specificity. There is a long tradition in communications studies of attention to the specificities of media. James Carey performed the useful task of reminding us of a time before electricity to show how communications channels impact on their messages. He contrasted the horse-delivered physical message with the telegraph, something that ushered in the era of signal communications. Indeed, he remarks, “the telegraph can stand metaphorically for all the innovations that ushered in the modern phase of history … it permitted for the first time the effective separation of communication from transportation.”40 His key point is that for most of human history, transportation and communication were part of the same problem: a message could be sent only as fast as it could be transported physically. We tend to forget this, and it blinds us to cultural practices that support communications, and about how that which is communicated still has materiality. To this kind of example, we could add those adduced by Harold Innis. Innis, as well as Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan, contrasts messages that are conveyed via stone, like the pyramids, with media like the newspaper.41 Such physical instances highlight the need for Régis Debray-style “mediologies” that pay attention to the way particular social orders in history interact with media formations, be they electronic or clay tablets.42 The reputation of Cohen’s book in media studies is surprising given its lack of any kind of detailed model. His thesis highlights the role of the media, and he recognizes that he needs to know how they work, but beyond the cybernetic model I have already outlined, his other innovation is to conduct interviews where he asks ordinary people for their opinions of the media. The skills of self-assessment of readers do not seem to matter to Cohen, but they should. Media practitioners have long been attacked (often by themselves) for being unreliable and for being agents of the system. Indeed, apart from the general idea of a feedback loop of media intensification, Cohen’s only other guiding idea is that of a theatrical audience that participates in the scapegoating in a gladiatorial way. To establish such a claim even in the age of 1970s newspapers and



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television (let alone now), it is necessary to engage with media specificities as well as with their anthropological dimensions. The latter are needed because the addition of media does not merely increase a given social response, but rather, it changes it. Cohen, as we shall see, has a very limited grasp of this issue. In the case of Girard, the situation is different. Girard’s work suggests that a mimetic analytic may explain events mediated by the media (such as the motivation for and the success of the 9/11 attacks), but he himself has rarely sought to show this, let alone explore how such mediation might work to mitigate or to amplify the effects of a situation of nascent rivalry or indeed of difference, such as the one Cohen described. Girard does, however, pay attention to textual specificities. In a number of places, but especially in The Scapegoat, he encounters and describes the specificities of oral and written media, and genre. Indeed, the breakthrough Girard makes is in his questioning of the way that ethnography and history cannot even make sense of oral texts that are well known. He does not talk about this in terms that we would call “media studies.” Even so, he pays attention to both genre and context in the following passage: Persecution exists but we do not recognize it, either because we are not in possession of the necessary documents, or because we do not know how to decipher the documents we do possess … Mythical, ritualistic societies are not exempt from persecution. We possess documents that allow us to prove this: they contain the stereotypes of persecution that I have named, they emerge from the same total pattern as the treatment of the Jews in Guillaume de Machaut. If our logic is consistent we should apply the same type of interpretation to them. These documents are myths.43

The most prominent aspect of Girard’s argument is that persecution exists in all societies, but the way he shows this is also significant. He rewrites a Greek myth into ethnographic language. He tells the tale of a stranger whose arrival coincides with bad events to the extent that it was as if “a spell had been cast on the village.”44 No one reading such a gloss would now believe that the victim did what he was accused of doing, and no one “will suggest that it is an innocent fable … a work of poetic imagination.”45 Now if Girard is correctly and principally concerned with the underlying shared pattern of victimage, his way of showing this is by generic transposition. The task of connecting Girard’s insights to media specificities is not as difficult as it is for Cohen, whose book is supposed to be insightful in these very respects.

The case of the celebrity as sacred and scapegoat Cohen and Girard are united in their view of the object of persecution as potentially arbitrary and in their treating him or her in terms of any given society’s versions of evil. Cohen calls those being persecuted “folk devils” casually and ahistorically, summoning up a medieval Western specter of those to be cast out. Girard’s work on scapegoats is contextualized by his engagement with the issue of sacred violence. In

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this context, to show how such behavior might be genuinely arbitrary in just the way that the Saussurean signifier is arbitrary, I raise the folk devil’s opposite, the modern celebrity, and do so in the context of sacred polarities of persecution and reification.46 The case of the celebrity concerns a position that seems very desirable. But is it? Garry Whannel has argued that the increasing speed of social media and mass media interaction leads to a whirlpool of ideation, and at times, social implosion. Now this sounds like an argument that would favor Cohen’s analysis. To some extent, it does. For Whannel, the celebrities of today are often both potential scapegoats and idols, caught up in what he calls “vortextuality” as the media “feed off each other and, in an era of electronic and digital information exchange, the speeds at which this happens can become very rapid.”47 Yet his examples, David Beckham and Posh Spice, can be seen live (as opposed to virtually), and the interaction between the domains of “real life” and of online or “virtual” life has, as he realizes, anthropological dimensions.48 This brings him closer to the Girardian analysis of the relationship of violence to the sacred. Whannel’s close attention to actual cases of celebrities being demonized allows him to make startling claims about the transformation of audience admiration to contempt for celebrity figures. Images are carried effortlessly by the media, including social media. If everyone can own an image of Paris Hilton, the particular image that each person chooses, the reasons for choosing it, and the claim that is staked upon it nevertheless lead to a real vortex effect. By this, Whannel means no more than the metaphor of a vortex of a whirlpool that sucks everything into it, doing great social damage in the process. Hilton, like the David Beckham whom Whannel described, is at once hated, despised, and worshipped. If these figures never were at risk of actual sacrifice, the echo of the crowd can still be found in the hostility of online forums. Baudrillard explores the significance of the media image in particular, as well as how these images circulate in society. He supplies the answer to the way something carried by the media, even in the most trivial sense of that word, can have materiality: “There is a kind of primal pleasure, of anthropological joy in images, a kind of brute fascination unencumbered by aesthetic, moral, social or political judgements.”49 Baudrillard saw all this just by analyzing the image itself. Writing of Diana Spencer (Princess of Wales), using the same dramaturgy as Cohen, but rather more literally, he says: It is said that Diana was a victim of the “society of the spectacle,” and we were passive voyeurs at her death. But a much more complex dramaturgy is involved, a collective scenario in which Diana herself was not innocent (in terms of exhibitionism), but in which the masses played an immediate role, in a true reality show of the public and private life of Lady Di, with the media as an interface. The paparazzi were only carriers, with the media, of this murderous interaction, and behind them, all of us, whose desires inform the media—we who are the masses and the medium, the network and the conducting electricity.50

In these lines, the intertwined nature of what we call media and society is shown in action. For Baudrillard, the domains of society and media are inseparable—something



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we have already seen. “We,” he says, “who are the masses and the medium, the network and the conducting electricity”: we are the ones whose actions constitute, actively and passively, the social systems they convey; we are also the ones who shun or seize the platforms that in turn are embedded technologically and endlessly in a series of layers into every living act of communication.51 The media are a part of society, not separate from it. In this way, mass media and society are potentially subject to the mimetic dynamics of scapegoating that Girard describes. Baudrillard’s contribution is to show how the almost infinite economy of images that perpetuate the image of Diana (for instance) participates in, and alters, society. The shock of finitude, and then the mass spectacle of mourning, however, shows that the intersection of mortal life (another of Baudrillard’s themes) and the virtual realm of reproducible images creates a social shock. If the “reality effect” is a function of this new form of mass mediation, by calling it “murderous,” Baudrillard seeks to emphasize its actual impact. Technologies, including media technologies, do create change, but they do so because they are part of the social system, not external to it. This does not mean there is nothing to say about the impact of “the media on society,” but the route to such understanding requires attention to the way the texts actually work in the specificities of their genres. For all Cohen’s qualitative research about what audiences themselves felt, he misses the socially symbolic logic at stake in their representations of their feelings. Just as the celebrity can become the victim, so indeed can any one of us. Both Cohen and Girard understand this dimension of scapegoat situations. Cohen, however, is blind even to the theology he raises. The scapegoat is indeed a folk devil, one that did not emerge with Christianity, but rather one that Christianity helped dispel. The fact that Cohen reached for that analogy, however, is suggestive that the force of the scapegoat, like that of the mimetic rivalry that underpins it, is still stirring in the social body. Girard’s analysis shows this pattern not just in our society, but in all human societies.

Conclusion This chapter has staged an engagement between the works of Stanley Cohen and René Girard as exponents of two quite distinct traditions of scapegoat analysis. Cohen’s important realization that the processes of “folk devil” creation are not based on essential qualities but rather on social constructions shows scapegoating to be arbitrary. However, his work would benefit from Girard’s contention that scapegoating is not only a social process (as Cohen realizes), but that it is also a mechanism that provides order, arising from mimesis. Furthermore, Cohen’s analysis offers snapshots of popular views of the media and of social institutions, but he does not offer a convincing adaptation of cybernetic theory to support his ideas of feedback and amplification. Instead, his efforts to use the simplest possible model of amplification lead him to treat media as empty channels that merely amplify social patterns. The media, however, are social too, and the genres

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of storytelling matter. In this respect, Girard’s generic sensitivity offers useful insights into how to proceed. Moreover, the Girardian contention that mimesis is appropriative and contagious is essential to any understanding of any given media “moral panic.” Moral panics in mass society, especially of the kind he describes, are usually crises of undifferentiation, which lead to scapegoating. The scapegoating logic (whether describable cybernetically or not) then is social, not merely formal. Fundamentally, the two traditions I have outlined are sharply demarcated by two aspects, both of which favor a widening of social inquiry to include the Girardian approach. First, sociology (and indeed media studies) needs to be more attentive both to history and to genres. In this case, Cohen’s book is blind to the fact that the scapegoat mechanism was altered by the historical rise of the Christianized West (and again historically, it was modified in some societies that made sacrifices using animals or used other substitution rites). This weakness in Cohen’s book comes from his ahistorical treatment of the issue. The other weakness lies in the entire tradition of difference itself. In Cohen’s case, it lies in his presumption of a sociology of deviance and difference as foundational. Girard has long suggested otherwise. It is time now to test in a sustained way the Girardian hypothesis of mimetic rivalry in precisely those disciplinary spaces where difference-based analysis presently holds sway.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

6

“Flaming” refers to the practice of attacking someone or someone’s site in a vicious way; “trolling” is sustained and often coordinated attacking of this kind. It is often directed at public figures, and even celebrities, as in the case of Charlotte Dawson, who, despite priding herself on her imperviousness to Internet attack, suffered a breakdown, and eventually committed suicide, triggered in part by Internet trolling. Often trolling involves attacking people for their publicly held views, as when a student who “led a campaign to ensure that a female figure appeared on a Bank of England banknote” was trolled with threats of rape and invited to “go kill” herself. “Trolls Facing Jail over Vile Twitter Threats,” The Times, January 8, 2014, 16. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers, 3rd edn. (1972; London: Routledge, 2002). Cohen says that folk devils are drawn from a “gallery of social types … visible reminders of what we should not be.” Ibid., 1–2. Girard has of course had significant influence of his own, especially in the work of Eric Gans. Gans has written repeatedly on mimesis and the relationship of his work to Girard’s. On the originary hypothesis and mimesis, see, for instance, The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the Present Day (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 4–6. Originals of both are available. Gabriele Tarde, L’Opinion et la foule (Opinion and the Crowd), 3rd edn. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910), archive.org/stream/ lopinionetlafoule00tardeoft); Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: PUF, 2013). See, for example, Catherine Lumby and Duncan Fine, Why TV Is Good for Kids: Raising Children in the Twenty-first Century (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2006). This



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book does cite a number of reports, but there is little theoretical analysis, and empirical evidence is not handled systematically (e.g. Ch. 3, “Media Violence Panics”). 7 Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Constitution of Deviance (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 105. 8 Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, viii–xix. 9 Graeme Burton, Talking Television (London: Arnold, 2000), 127–9. 10 Ibid., 10. 11 Ibid., 13. 12 Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 4. In later work, Cohen explored issues of social control and exclusion. While he still adhered to a difference-based problematization of deviance, he sought to question the nature and stability of our notions of the “community” we appeal to when we look at those they exclude; and his work in this case was more historical and interpretive than the earlier work. See Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification (Cambridge: Polity, 1985), 124–7. 13 Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 8. 14 Ibid., 9. 15 Ibid., 135–7. 16 Ibid., 4. 17 Ibid., 15. 18 Ibid., 16. 19 Ibid., 16. 20 Ibid., 18. 21 Ibid., 23–4. 22 René Girard, “The Mimetic Theory of Religion: An Outline,” in 2000 Years and Beyond: Faith, Identity and the “Common Era,” ed. P. Gifford (London: Routledge, 2003), 90. 23 René Girard, “What Is Occurring Today Is a Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale,” interview by Henri Tincq, Le Monde, November 6, 2001, trans. for COV&R by Jim Williams, http://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/cover/girard/le_monde_interview.html. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 91. 26 Ibid., 91. 27 Ibid., 95. 28 Ibid., 88. 29 Ibid., 97. 30 Ibid., 93–4. 31 Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 8. 32 Ibid., 8–9. 33 René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (London: Athlone, 1987), 8. 34 Ibid., 12. 35 Ibid., 12. 36 On cybernetics, see Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 8–9; on audience and media: ibid., 134–9; on police etc.: ibid., 140. This book freely uses, but does not further justify in any media sense, the idea of amplification. 37 Laborit, L’Homme et la Ville (Paris: Flammarion, 2011). In cybernetic systems,

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feedback mechanisms exist (as Cohen weakly takes for granted without exploring the consequences) to maintain homeostasis, a key cybernetic idea. Girard, by contrast, does not require cybernetic mechanisms to explain the creation of scapegoats themselves, although up until Christianity, scapegoat behavior appears to have been a necessary social regulator. 38 Claude Shannon, “The Mathematical Theory of Communication,” The Bell System Technical Journal 27, no. 3 (1948): 379–423. 39 Thomas Campanella, “The City of the Sun,” Ideal Commonwealths (Sawtry: Dedalus, 1988), 144–5. 40 James Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin, 1989), 203. 41 See both McLuhan’s introduction (and indeed McLuhan’s other works) as well as Innis in this edition: Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1951); on newspapers, see also Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991), 25. 42 Debray actually recognizes a Christian mediology, which seems to be little more than a claim that deities are constituted by their followers, rather than the other way round: Régis Debray, Transmitting Culture, trans. Eric Rauth (New York: Columbia, 2000), 18–19. Girard and Debray have clashed in relation to their respective approaches to religion, though Girard himself makes a point of downplaying the actual differences between their underlying views. See Debray’s God: An Itinerary, trans. J. Mehlman (London: Verso, 2004), and the text Girard discusses, Le Feu Sacré: Fonctions du religieux (Paris: Fayard, 2003), in Les Origines de la culture (Paris: Hachette, 2004). 43 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989), 25. Girard, of course, reads the Christian texts as making a breakthrough. The basis of this claim is not his own faith, but rather, the structure of the story: Christ is said to be the one who saw the scapegoat mechanism for what it was: a mechanism. He could not prevent the persecutors from killing him, but he could rob the scene of its stabilizing power. 44 Ibid., 29. 45 Ibid., 29. 46 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Fontana/Collins, 1974), 67–8. 47 Garry Whannel, “Punishment, Redemption and Celebration in the Popular Press,” Sports Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity (London: Routledge, 2001), 143. 48 Ibid., 144. Whannel cites Hayden’s book on the anthropology of the British royal family. 49 Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. T. Docherty (New York: Harvester, 1993), 194. 50 Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities or the End of the Social, trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, Paul Patton, and Andrew Berardini (1978; Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007), 129. 51 Ibid., 129.

3

The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised1 Chris Fleming

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He. —Friedrich Nietzsche We are as gods and have to get good at it.

—Stewart Brand

Being good at being God: even the capacity to contemplate such an imperative is irreducibly modern, and so—living as we do, in “modern times”—bears on our selfunderstanding. Unlike many gods, however, we moderns remain decidedly mortal, and so are subject to our own deaths, even if those deaths can only appear to us as such through our witnessing of the deaths of others and by the morbid contortions of our own imagination. (The already-dead, we might say, are not here to represent it for us.) Recalling in some ways Epicurus’ letter to Menoeceus, in which the philosopher famously announced Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo [“I was not; I was; I am not; I don’t care”], Jacques Derrida once made the infamous claim in his essay “No Apocalypse, Not Now,” that nuclear war is “fabulously textual”—“something that one can only talk about.”2 Where some predictably read this statement as further proof of the French philosopher’s idealism and textual relativism, Derrida’s point was anything but: that nuclear annihilation can only be represented because its actualization would leave no one—and perhaps nothing—to represent. Be that as it may, we are obliged to ask a question Derrida himself does not. Is this absolute horizon of ad nihilum, utter nothingness, the only way in which apocalypse can “appear?” Might it be possible, for instance, to claim that some have witnessed apocalypse and lived to say something about it? And if they have, can the actuality of that experience really be articulated, or articulated in a way that is adequate to the signified? We will begin at least with these questions.

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Improper nouns: Auschwitz and “Auschwitz” In Henry Leroy Finch’s book, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, we find the following claim: Two names symbolize this century: Hiroshima, in which we brought the powers of the sun down to earth for the purposes of war destruction, turning 50 thousand people into radiation in three seconds; and Auschwitz, where categories of men, women, and children were treated as utterly worthless, no better than vermin, and fit only to die or be worked to death.3

The assertion is an interesting one, not least for the many questions it leaves hanging. In what way or ways do these names “symbolize”? Why these two? And why is it that Finch thinks that the twentieth century can be symbolized by mass killings? If we preserve the classical definition of the sign—aliquid stat pro aliquo—“something stands for something else,” then what is the something else that is stood for in the act of symbolization?4 If the sign is a proxy, then what is the that in whose place it stands? Despite the largeness of Finch’s claim, it is one that the author simply makes and then leaves. Of course, that is in itself a significant datum; in a book which otherwise gathers its theses via a kind of neo-scholastic philosophical labor, the point here is simply assumed. But why? Is it because Finch considers the claim to be a clear and distinct idea or a Foucault-style historical a priori?5 In the tone of Finch’s remark there is perhaps an ethical taboo at play, a far-from-neutral language concerning the horrors signified by the two places. That is, the lack of further analysis or qualification itself suggests that beyond the minimal designation offered, all attempts at the representation of these events or their paradigmatic status will commence, stutter, falter, and then fail. Whatever the case, Finch’s claim appears suddenly at the front door and then leaves through the back just as rapidly. Yet despite this, or perhaps even because of it, what Finch alludes to here contains an interesting possibility: that even if we cannot represent apocalypse (and, as I’ve noted, he makes no effort to do so beyond the minimal) perhaps the inverse is conceivable: that the specter of apocalypse itself can represent something—and what it represents is nothing other than the very age in which we live. But we are now in danger of moving too quickly over uncertain ground. Any claim that certain signal events of modernity—as disastrous as they may be—are somehow “unrepresentable” in themselves poses obvious problems, not least for anyone who claims even the vaguest allegiance to cultural empiricism. To take the case of the Holocaust, it is represented all the time. In many respects, surely I am doing it now, in this very essay, just as Finch did in his book on Weil; else about what might we be either trying or (inconsistently) refusing to represent? Of course, the claim—posed thus—is difficult to gainsay; our world is indeed awash with talk of Nazis, the Holocaust, and nuclear annihilation, and the most banal of this talk is, in many respects, the most salient to understanding the world in which we live. One case: The Washington Post recorded that in his first 18 months on air, the Fox News television and radio host, Glenn Beck—who averaged about two million viewers on



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his television show nightly—managed to invoke Hitler 147 times, the Nazis a further 202 times, fascism 193 times, the Holocaust 76 times, and the proper-noun “Goebbels” 24 times.6 The majority of these references were employed to furnish analogies of Hitler to Barack Obama and, less commonly, Hitler or Goebbels to Woodrow Wilson. Sometimes these came with denials of the soundness of the analogies which provided a slight fig leaf for Beck’s rhetorical strategy. For instance, in 2009, Beck’s editorial on Obama’s “single-payer” health-care system involved a stunningly convoluted series of assertions and retractions: “I am not comparing him to this, but please, read Mein Kampf for this reason,” he told his listeners. “You see that Hitler told you what he was going to do. He told the Germans.”7 Further elaboration was seemingly unnecessary. When the Obama administration injected capital into GM and Chrysler, Beck said, less ambiguously, “This is fascism!” He then went on to echo, and not for the first time, Martin Niemöller’s famous lines:8 “You know what … keeps going through my mind is ‘First They Came for the Jews.’” Once he had started, Beck saw parallels everywhere: Al Gore’s goal of a global carbon tax pursues a different goal, he said, but “the same tactic” as “rounding up the Jews and exterminating them.”9 Moreover, the United Nations for Beck was the modern incarnation of National Socialism. And in Obama’s 2008 campaign speech, which called for an expansion of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and the Foreign Service, Beck again saw unmistakable echoes: “This is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brown shirts …”10 As illuminating—and as sobering—as we may find Beck’s rhetoric there is an obvious difficulty in maintaining that the issue of representability can be answered simply through an accurate count of a pre-specified range of words or phrases in the mainstream media. Indeed, one might say that what happens when Beck invokes the Holocaust is little else than a kind of semantic bullying; his technique relies on the moral freight of the terms he employs, and yet his own use of them is so opportunistic and counterfeit that if we conceded that this counted as evidence for adequate signification of the referents he invokes, it would henceforth be hard to draw any meaningful distinction between what we call “representation” and misrepresentation. Yet if we admit that Beck fails—and surely he does—then who, if anyone, succeeds? Who can or has succeeded?—and when? Some have answered such questions “nobody and never,” claiming that the Holocaust itself has fractured the very possibility of its own representation. To gain access to this argument, we need to probe in a somewhat different, self-avowedly “postmodern” direction. Here what we encounter is a depiction of not just a world in ruins, but the correlative claim that our concepts have met a parallel fate. In what he doubtless regarded as a devastating critique, Jean-François Lyotard attempted to skewer Jürgen Habermas’s vision of modernity as an “incomplete project” thus: I would argue that the project of modernity (the realization of universality) has not been forsaken or forgotten but destroyed, “liquidated.” There are several modes of destruction, several names which are symbols for them. “Auschwitz” can be taken as the paradigmatic name for the tragic “incompletion” of modernity … At “Auschwitz,” a modern sovereign, a whole people was destroyed. The attempt

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Mimesis, Movies, and Media was made to destroy it. It is the crime opening postmodernity … how could the grand narratives of legitimation still have credibility in these circumstances?11

Lyotard is perhaps the best-known advocate of the inadequacy of representation of Auschwitz and events like it (although even here we are left to ask: If an event can be given no representation, then how can we compare other events with it?). In a number of places, notably in The Differend, he suggests that Auschwitz calls for representation at the same time that it confounds the attempts which respond to that call. In the passage above, the inverted commas indicate Lyotard’s own questioning even of the adequacy of its naming. Part of his argument consists in the claim that our narrative recollections of this event, whatever these amount to, operate beyond the purview of philosophical conceptuality—outside of what he calls ‘litigation.’12 Another dimension to Lyotard’s argument is more generic: the claim that no representation can do justice to the event it seeks to capture—even if the event stood for is banal and quotidian. To be sure, Lyotard later somewhat qualified his views,13 but his thesis nonetheless remained that there was something both epistemologically and ethically untenable in acts of representation, especially esthetic representation, of events like Auschwitz. This thesis was one of the mainstays of his argument against the kind of “rational consensus” philosophy that Frankfurt School thinkers like Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel have advocated. It is not the place here to attempt to adjudicate this “debate” between Lyotard and the (late) Frankfurt School—an adjudication that Lyotard may, perhaps too conveniently, have seen as impossible in any case. Yet there are good reasons to believe that Lyotard’s impulse towards what we now call a “postmodern ethics” should be seen as merely that: an impulse. It allows us at once to use a word like “Auschwitz,” under erasure as it were, to see its yield, to witness what happens when it is deployed; and, to be sure, when we witness usages such as Glenn Beck’s, both the ethical and historical standards are at every turn found wanting. Yet if we shrink Lyotard’s thesis to this size, it cannot and clearly does not mean that nothing can be said about these events, or subsequent representations of them.14 Indeed, to make an obvious if necessary point, Lyotard’s claim—the most striking perhaps of its kind—is itself a representation of that which he would prohibit representing. An odd feature of his prescribed proscription is that it appears itself to be an attempt to signify something for the last time, to have, if I may put it so, the last word.15 Lyotard seeks to invoke the limits of representation while he himself engages in a representational activity about the supposed event or apocalyptic scene, not just for the sake of somehow depicting and then refusing to depict that scene, but in order to use it to make a claim about modernity, and modernity’s “failure.” Yet, the cogency of this broader ambition, ethical in orientation—and perhaps ultimately cogent—certainly isn’t self-evident. Indeed, writers like Primo Levi have made it their business to represent this event precisely as one which must not be forgotten, which must indeed be continually re-represented so that nothing like it ever happens again. The fact that representation itself can be traumatic does, of course, raise its own challenges; to represent an event is not an exclusively cognitive affair, like some neutral



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act of communicating what analytical philosophers call “propositional content.” The mere thought of nuclear annihilation, of extermination, or of catastrophic climate change, can itself be threatening. And there can also emerge metonymic chains which are also placed under suspicion in a kind of guilt-by-association. Hence the questioning of German music after the war (especially the music of Richard Wagner, whose compositions had to be carefully calibrated until, finally, they were played in full form in Israel itself for the first time in 2000, and not without considerable protest). But there now appears before us a possible danger: that, like Don Quixote, we will turn mere windmills into foes, or source tragedy in order to produce unintentional farce. In the 1950s, Leo Strauss, a European émigré Jew, wrote in his discussion of Weber of the dangers of what he calls “reductio ad Hitlerum”: Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.16

This seems no more than common sense, but it again raises—at least in part—the question of the potential gap between representation and that which is ostensibly represented. But it also highlights an economy of desire at stake in the very act of representing. What is it that drives us to invoke horror where there is no apparent need? If the spectacle of the death camp, say, is so horrendous and rare, why do we return to it so tirelessly, and often with so little care with respect to context?

The deeply troubling joy of the deeply troubling image Apart from the Big Bang—the origin of space-time—what we think of as “events” are time and space bound. We see this in the very names cited in this chapter as the key examples. That is, these words—Hiroshima and Auschwitz—are place names. Further, even as places, they do not refer to just any time at all, but rather to a defined moment or series of moments in history. We should pause over that fact, considering that in their very naming they remind us of a political and ethical concreteness by virtue of the fact that these acts of naming specify locations, towns, and implicitly, times; perhaps general talk of “genocide” or “atomic attack” is always risking us being overly abstract in our discussions of mass violence. The fact that the talk here is of place names offers us an opportunity to avoid the kind of distancing that might otherwise take effect in attempts to look at these horrors squarely. But the important word here is “may”—the fact of these being place names and not abstract nouns does not, of course, prevent them from being signs. Indeed, the fact of the force of their signification makes them very attractive to rhetorical opportunists who understand their power without necessarily comprehending their concreteness. But if Beck’s tireless and indeed tiresome incantations of “Nazi!” fail to hit their mark, they still seem to be aiming at something beyond themselves—to certain historical realities, however ludicrously invoked. Yet in the world in which we live there exists a circulation of images whose relation to their

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referents is altogether more ambiguous. If the Internet is teaching us anything with its collection of so-called “fails”17—of dashboard camera footage of maimings, miscellaneous humiliations, and accidental deaths—it’s that our relationship to suffering, or at least to its representation, is wildly ambivalent. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulation offers some insight into our relationship to representation in this context. Although much attention has been devoted to his ideas about “the order of signs” and “simulacra”—and this is certainly not irrelevant here18—his work contains another suggestion, far less often remarked upon. For Baudrillard indeed, like for Girard and Eric Gans, humans are a representing species. Yet he does not mean by this that we are what some linguists and neuroscientists call the “symbolic species.” Rather, Baudrillard has strived to show that the human consists above all in its fascination with images; we are the species with an unbreakable attachment to l’imaginaire. In his best-known essay on precession and of simulation, he offers his now well-known analysis of the orders of signs. Before he does so though, he argues in little-noticed words that humans take a “kind of primal pleasure, of anthropological joy in images, a kind of brute fascination unencumbered by aesthetic, moral, social or political judgements.”19 The act of representation, he suggests, ultimately defies morality. This, for Baudrillard, is not a normative claim; indeed, his own work is, in some ways, even avowedly against itself, an attempt to problematize this, to put into question this anthropological joy, this primal—and problematic—pleasure. Baudrillard’s claim here is that we look first, and seek to explain afterwards—whether it be the execution of Saddam Hussein, the beheading of a Briton, or in the cases of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the images of starvation, of piled-up corpses and emaciated prisoners of war, of the atomic mushroom cloud, of decimated cities, and charred bodies. In endorsing these arguments of Baudrillard, as suggestive as they are, we are admittedly no closer to seeing why any one kind of sign would be more or less proscribed than another or why many, like Finch, have selected the two events—Auschwitz and Hiroshima—as intrinsically significant, even if not ultimately signifiable. In this context, I take up the two events in terms of the anthropologies that frame them in an attempt, no doubt inadequate, to sketch something of our sense of what it means to be a human with respect of—and in light of—these epochal occurrences.

The Holocaust and victimary culture For Girard, as is well known, a Judeo-Christian anthropology (and as a consequence, ethos) of the victim is what allows victimage itself to be understood precisely as victimage. That is, the crowd about to throw the first stone do not see themselves as persecutors and the woman as a victim until it is pointed out to them (Jn 7:53–8:11). More salient still, it is the murder of Jesus on the cross that disturbs the crowd, for the usual scapegoat mechanisms have failed simply because he made them aware that while they were able to kill him, they were doing so in the knowledge that he was guiltless. As that famous utilitarian Caiaphas would say, “it is expedient for us, that



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one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”20 Thereafter, all victimage, including the Holocaust, becomes thinkable in these terms—as acts of scapegoating of innocents, or at least of the unexceptionably guilty. If Girard’s work has shown us anything, it is surely that we can commune with the dead—or at least we can see the cover-up beyond the tomb. Yet as to what that this communing means in the cases under examination, we need to turn to one of Girard’s closest critics, Eric Gans. In one of the most perceptive analyses of the fate of modern culture that the academy has produced in the last couple of decades, Eric Gans—in “The Holocaust and the Victimary Revolution”—has offered an account that bears consideration.21 In this essay Gans contends that the Holocaust is foundational of the postmodern cultural idiom which is now so pervasive in contemporary thought. For Gans, the effect of the Holocaust has been to trigger a return of what Hitler sought to annihilate—an orientation towards the victim; although what emerges in this post-Auschwitz space is in some ways a self-serving burlesque of a genuine ethics of Otherness. Gans names this strange admixture of the ethical and the self-serving as “victimary thinking.” Here we witness an intensification of ‘victimhood’ as a frame in which culture and history are viewed, but one in which a mixture of a concern for victims and the competitive striving for claiming victim status often becomes difficult to tease apart. In giving rise to victimary thought, Gans contends, the Holocaust “is the beginning of postmodernity.”22 By this deceptively simple term, Gans means to capture what he goes on to call “an infinite victimary bavardage … Victimary discourse has proliferated like a life-form whose natural predators have been removed. Western civilization, having created the Holocaust, now indicts itself for the totality of its other creations.”23 That is, postmodernity also defines the cultural space in which the West engages in a form of self-critique indistinguishable from narcissistic self-castigation. For him, the only acceptable riposte to this new situation is recourse—through an ever-renewed adherence—to the market, something he sees as a second Judaic invention.24 Gans’ prescription for the future is perhaps less compelling than his diagnosis. Put differently, though, his diagnosis of postmodernity as an ethical opening out from the horror of the Holocaust is in line with many, including Lyotard himself, even if his scathing assessment of the inadequacy of victimary thinking is different in its evaluation of the shape and efficacy of this opening. Like Lyotard, Gans undoubtedly figures the Holocaust as an event-sequence which disturbed the very foundations of Western modernity. But if this is true—and there can be little doubt that it is—it is not the only site at which modernity was brought to face itself in the starkest possible terms.

Hiroshima: Back to the future Both Auschwitz and Hiroshima show us forms of violence whose structure of asymmetry is part of their very horror. In the former, the asymmetry is that of an unarmed population facing an army whose weaponry was not only modern in the sense of “militarily advanced,” but Fordist in its industrial scale. In the latter,

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the asymmetry is primarily that of the scale of the nuclear attack compared to the conventional warfare that preceded it.25 In taking up the case of the atomic bomb, the problem of representation is no longer of the same type as what concerns us with the Holocaust, although it too offers its own challenges. Its imaginings—and threatened reality—are those of a science that can destroy humanity in toto. Despite the radicalness of the actual assault on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the kind of Promethean science in evidence in the nuclear attacks on Japan has been fictionalized since Mary Shelley’s two works, Frankenstein on science, and The Last Man on extinction; and there have been any number of works since which imagine the end of the world. But we are concerned here with one particular imagined end of the world: the atomic bomb, its first usage, and the worlds it destroyed and engendered. To be sure, there was enormous cultural interest in Hiroshima almost immediately after it was dropped— and certainly by the 1950s. It became something that needed to be justified and hence emerged as a troubling sign for pacifists and communists alike. Its event and sign-like nature was something acknowledged from the start, and not—at first—by cultural or political theorists. Indeed, in the notes of the presidential interim committee from May 31, 1945, It was pointed out that one atomic bomb on an arsenal would not be much different from the effect caused by any Air Corps strike of present dimensions. However, Dr Oppenheimer stated that the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous. It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height of 10,000 to 20,000 feet.26

What is so unsettling about this observation is the way the value of the attack renders a civilian population mere collateral damage—simply a “means” expended in the generation of a spectacular “message.” In terms of representing the “truth” of Hiroshima—as hinted at by the presidential interim committee—we are confronted with the fact it was not the most deadly aspect of the Second World War—even in the Pacific—but rather, had signifying force that made it seem so. For instance, more Japanese people had died in Tokyo in the fire bombings from those that were victims of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so here we see perhaps an originary moment with respect to the symbiotic relationship between the media and spectacular acts of violence. In many respects, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were as much for the media as they were reported by it.27 And the semiotic power of Hiroshima has been used—and perhaps, like Auschwitz, misused—repeatedly. In the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, “He” asks “What did Hiroshima mean to you?”28 The wording of the question points to something important—certain things assumed. Both Hiroshima and the weight of its significance are taken for granted. The question was not “Do you know about Hiroshima?” or “Is Hiroshima meaningful to you?” but what did it mean to you. The question points in two directions simultaneously. In the first, it asserts the meaningfulness of Hiroshima; in the second, it asserts that this meaning is indeterminate.29 Neither character was actually in Hiroshima for the bombing; they are as far removed from a wartime sensibility as could be imagined. And yet, the significance hangs there, for them, assumed.



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And yet, whatever meaning may be ascribed to Hiroshima, the range of possibilities is distinct from that of Auschwitz, meanings which are determined by their respective places in the cultural imaginary. The signifier “Hiroshima” specifically ended up being a stand-in for Cold War threats and was present in various forms until 1989. But this is only the beginning of meanings engendered by the nuclear assaults; the seeming ideological fecundity of the mushroom cloud gave rise to a vast range of “applications.” Once again, the ease with which these images were deployed is remarkable, as is the fluidity of their contexts of representation. The images of Hiroshima were used often in the argument that the US, as the only state to use nuclear weapons on a civilian population, had a special guilt vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. At the same time, the notion of mutually assured destruction was used against both powers under its well-known acronym, M.A.D. Hiroshima also came to stand not just for the dangers of atomic weapons, but for big science in general. It stood also for those critiquing US foreign policy. It stood for peace in those who critiqued the arms race. It stood for the dangers to the environment of especially, but not only, nuclear pollution. And in one of the more touching scenes of representation (Sadako Sasaki’s paper cranes), it stood for a capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation. In other words, unlike the Holocaust with its ethical strictures (howsoever abused), Hiroshima has been made to stand for many things. But how, we may ask, do they stand in relation to each other?

The join One thing that joins our two events is their framing within World War II. This war was, at least in the West’s self-perception, the last one in which it involved itself and about which it has, at least now, no moral misgivings in going to war; it was, in other words, the last morally “legitimate” war, one in which suspicions about colonial ambitions, ideological imperialism, and conflicts engendered by cultural paranoia do not generally arise. Or this, it is thought, is mostly true. This is what makes Hiroshima stand out in this particular context: the bombing of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) remains a troubling feature in the Western imaginary. Indeed, so-called “revisionist” historians, following in the trail of Gar Alperovitz’s influential book Atomic Diplomacy, argue that the decision to use the bomb was the result of political rather than military decisions; a devastating sign, the thesis goes, that was a message to Russia about the power of the US and the folly of trying to confront it militarily.30 And here is a central difference between Hiroshima and Auschwitz. Hitler’s ambition was that the Jews and his annihilation of them be part of a cultural amnesia that he observed had already occurred with respect to the Armenian genocide. The “spectacle” of Nazism was oratory and propaganda, not the act of the annihilation of the Jews. Indeed, the aim of the Nazis precisely was to de-spectacularize the killing of the Jews, to avoid the sacralizing effects of their extermination by carrying it out as efficiently and surreptitiously as possible. Another way of saying this is to assert that the Holocaust wasn’t originally a hyperbolic sign, although it has now become one. That is, the visible part of the Holocaust

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at the time was the propaganda, not the mass killing. The killing took place in secluded locations and was meant to be un-dramatic—or rather, all the drama was to take a back seat to ruthless function and deathly efficiency. The Nazis did not want, in other words, the Jews to be seen as scapegoats. In this sense, and only of course with historical hindsight, can we say that Nazism not only failed in this, but failed as dramatically as it possibly could have: Auschwitz now has assumed almost paradigmatic status as a site of victimhood. Hiroshima, on the other hand, was more explicitly a sign—both intended and received—where a cataclysmic “message” was delivered, and the killing, as profoundly devastating as it was, was subservient to that message, in a kind of application of a reductio ad absurdum of consequentialist logic.31 (The conventional bombings of Japan took more lives, although—semiotically speaking— “signified” less at the time and to us now.) Of Hiroshima, both the sign and the victims are now visible, although its hyperbolic garishness as sign—as well as the infliction of this weapon on an Axis power—often threatens to make the victims of this atrocity less visible. This is surely a tendency to be resisted. And here I’ll admit some unease with looking at Hiroshima and Auschwitz as “cultural configurations”—as themselves symptoms or signs or metonyms of the end of an age or the start of another. Indeed, this is how we began: with Henry Leroy Finch’s claim that Hiroshima and Auschwitz are “uniquely symbolic.” Surely, one danger in treating certain historical cataclysms as “symptomatic” or symbolic of broader cultural anxieties or preoccupations is that the events themselves may start to seem secondary. One possible defense of the approach adopted in this chapter is that our obligation to think of these events as not only singular and historically distant is that such an approach lessens the risk that we will fabricate a screen for ourselves in which they pose no current threat. But as Derrida reminds us, a nuclear war, and not simply the dropping of a bomb, is an end in an absolute sense—we will not be here to discuss it; the idea “we no longer exist” cannot be consistently thought—except now, through the use of future perfect tense. So perhaps, as such, we might think it appropriate—even urgent—to discuss it now. The issue of temporality is surely relevant here. By necessity too simple a claim in terms of the cultural imaginary, Auschwitz and Hiroshima have different temporal orientations: where both engage forms of memorialization, our relation to these events involves us looking in different directions. Auschwitz’s rallying call is “never again,” although most attempts to suggest that it is about to happen again—or in the case of internet invective or Glen Beck’s political commentaries—strike as a rhetorical ploys that become less convincing with each use. Hiroshima, however, prompts the imagination to look forwards. Hiroshima has been associated with futurity—with what might happen. This is not a normative claim: that we should not engage in remembrance of the nuclear attacks on Japan. It is a recognition that, for instance—from On the Beach (1959) through to Unthinkable (2010)—our filmic fascination with nuclear war has been seemingly unquenchable.32 The nature of Hiroshima and the potential threat it still represents engages the imagination. Perhaps one of the key reasons here is that we can fictionalize nuclear war because of its potential for disengagement from historical specificity; for example, the bombing of Japan has been seen as simply “getting over



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the line first,” with the Americans beating the Germans in the race to develop and use the weapon. Thus, the bombings have slowly been disengaged from their context and treated as merely a manifestation of necessity, a contingent encounter between the United States and historical destiny. However, there is also a deeper reason for the portrayal: the realization that resentment and rivalry now have the capacity to achieve aims that had previously been constrained by inadequate means. “Hiroshima” thus names the site where the technology of war became so overwhelming that the intolerability of using it again has become a fixation of culture, a way of representing it as a proxy for carrying it out. If, as Eric Gans contends, culture is the deferral of violence through representation,33 then our obsessions with apocalypse, manifest in our capacity to rehearse it symbolically and narratively, may be one of the ways we can keep it before us without allowing us to become it; or so I would hope.

Conclusion The Second World War announced for us something we ourselves were incapable of articulating: the inconceivability of total war—the realization that a global war worthy of the name that would come in its wake would incarnate a kind of cataclysm in which any conventional sense of “victory” would be nonsensical. This threat has surely been as foundational to a sense of a “global community” as any communicational innovation. If destruction is “mutually assured” as the acronym would have us believe, then it is truly global. But beyond the entirely pragmatic issue of human selfpreservation stands the ideational legacy of the two paradigmatically apocalyptic acts of World War II: both are revelations of the fact that humanity’s technological capacity is now finally equal to its resentment—where the means to express hatred has caught up to hatred itself; and both incarnate the principle, increasingly common during modernity, that “non-combatant” isn’t equivalent to “non-target.” Perhaps we are left with a conclusion that, although theoretically inescapable, is untidy, veering away as it does from the recurrent philosophical orientation to produce some kind of algorithm or filter to sort good from bad, wise from unwise. What needs to be countenanced is the idea that the adequacy or appropriateness of representation cannot be decided a priori. Representation is, above all, a labor, an effort, something that does not or simply cannot fail on the basis of a single attempt. Here surely the burden is not to produce ever more rigorous demonstrations of the conceivability or (alternatively) the impossibility of representing apocalypse, but sensitize ourselves to the demands and the purpose of representing apocalypse itself, even when we find such representations wanting. To simultaneously demand that a single representation capture everything about an event and then reject it for not doing so is surely to damn something by imposing an absurd criterion upon it. The fact is—whether we would proscribe all attempts—representations do go on. What might need to be considered is perhaps one of the reasons that we find it so difficult to represent apocalyptic events is not because of their distance, but their extraordinary proximity; they are less objects of thought than the irreducible means by

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which we see, the lenses through which our historical and cultural vision is mediated. In other words, we look back to Auschwitz and Hiroshima as historical catastrophes that we are forced not so much to think about but to think from: these are now unavoidable departure points for thinking and less objects of thought. As such, we need to think that apocalypse is not merely something we are forced to think about, but a condition that we are obliged to think from. The responsibility therefore is not whether we represent these, but how, and to what end. Where human violence had previously been configured by its occurrence within delimited scenes of representation and interaction, both Hiroshima and Auschwitz are unique in the sense that they stage a violence that annihilates that very configuration, destroying or effacing the very scenes in which the violence occurs, albeit in different ways. There is good reason to believe that more hangs in the balance here than historical accuracy or right depiction. This is perhaps not merely about the possible shape of our human future, but the very possibility of any future whatsoever.

Notes 1

This chapter is a revised version of the Keynote Address I gave at the joint conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and the Generative Anthropology Society in Tokyo, Japan in 2012, entitled Apocalypse Revisited. I’d like to thank Jeremiah Alberg for the invitation to present as well as here express my gratitude to those who gave invaluable feedback on the paper at the time—and subsequently—including Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Eric Gans, Andrew Bartlett, Talia Morag, and Sandy Goodhart. 2 Derrida, Jacques, “No Apocalypse, not now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives.),” trans. Catherine Porter and Philip Lewis, Diacritics 14.2 (1984): 23. Epicurus’s (materialist) point—and counsel—was that we should not fear death, because death is not an event we experience or “live”; it is precisely the event par excellence which precludes experience. 3 Henry Leroy Finch, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace (New York: Continuum, 1999), 94. 4 Cf. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine. Book I, Chapter II: “No one uses words except as signs of something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs: those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine. Bk. I. Ch. II). 5 For Foucault, the historical a priori in general consists of exactly such positivities as these, as the following description makes clear: they define “a field in which formal identities, thematic continuities, translations of concepts, and polemical interchanges may be deployed.” Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan-Smith (New York: Tavistock, 1972), 127. 6 Dana Milbank, 2010. “Glenn Beck is Obsessed with Hitler and Woodrow Wilson,” The Washington Post. October 3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/09/30/AR2010093005267.html. 7 Ibid. 8 Martin Niemöller is best remembered for the following lines: “First they came for



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the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Martin Niemöller: ‘First they came for the socialists.’” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392. 9 Dana Milbank, 2010. “Glenn Beck is Obsessed with Hitler and Woodrow Wilson.” The Washington Post. October 3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/09/30/AR2010093005267.html. 10 Ibid. If Beck wanted to see the terrifying proximity of Nazism to the contemporary age, some chose another rhetorical strategy: ontological distance. In a self-conscious reference to St John’s Apocalypse, Bertolt Brecht called fascism “the filthy beast” (cited in Elisabeth Roudinesco, Our Dark Side: A History of Perversion, trans. David Macey [Cambridge: Polity, 2009] 119). Gideon Hausner, during the course of the Jerusalem trial of Eichmann, labeled the Nazi as “inhuman” on the basis that he had sunk to the level of animality (cited in Roudinesco, 119). But ontological distance here is bridged through historical proximity; the beast apparently walks among us. This, in itself, is both a morally and ontologically troubling claim—in the first instance because to label Eichmann as “inhuman” effectively doubles Eichmann’s reasoning; and second, because only humans behave like Eichmann—not animals. If anything, Eichmann was profoundly human, not in an honorific sense, but in the sense Girard would maintain: the being who demands sacrificial victims. In other words, the Nazis were the most modern of national leaders, and the Holocaust is one of the hallmarks of late modernity—and there is a need therefore to explore its representations, then and now, in order to better understand its nature and its continuities. 11 Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. G. Van den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 30–1. Lyotard’s linking here of modernity and “universality” refers to a contention of Habermas’s theory of “discourse ethics,” which entails—among other things—that all participants in a dispute adopt a principle of considering all other participants’ perspectives and interests. See Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 43–115, esp. 65. There are obvious problems applying this imperative equally to both Jews and Nazis. 12 Lyotard, The Differend, 55–7, 86–91, 104; Lyotard, Heidegger and “the Jews,” trans. Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 45, 81. Cf. Karyn Ball, Disciplining the Holocaust (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 95–147. To explain: Lyotard’s idea of “the differend” names a dispute which can find no neutral language in which a contest of views can take place, an inability to “subject[ing] them to a single law” (The Differend, 128). Unlike what he calls a “litigation,” a differend cannot be accommodated within a single and determinate semiotic regime in which the adjudication of a dispute could take place, because the arguments of each side inhere in the very language in which they choose to represent their views and experience (The Differend, xi, 128). The frame of Lyotard’s book is Auschwitz. He begins, in fact, with Robert Faurisson’s denial of the reality of the gas chambers, and Faurisson’s criterion that the only evidence he would accept would be an eyewitness account of being inside a working gas chamber; the

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16 17

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19 20 21

Mimesis, Movies, and Media overlooked fact is that anyone who attains this is thereby denied the capacity to express it: they are dead (5–8). Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982–1985, trans. D. Barry et al. (Sydney: Power Press, 1992), 31. Interweaving with Lyotard’s somewhat oblique and extreme claims about the representation of Auschwitz may be discerned an argument which suggests that it is the traumatic import of the event that cannot be reproduced. Trauma, in the Freudian account, consists precisely of a kind of affective excess, a “too much,” which is manifested through inarticulacy. Articulation, then—in other words, representation—is assumed to change the affective experience after-the-fact. Almost all forms of psychodynamic therapy are themselves bound to this conception of trauma and the transformative potential of its articulation. Of course, having the “last word” is a very common philosophical ambition. Although he certainly did not intend his remark to be taken in this way, what Ludwig Wittgenstein says in Culture and Value is nonetheless apt: “In philosophy, the winner of the race is the one …who gets there last.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 34e. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 42–3. A “fail” (sometimes “epic fail”) in web-speak is a meme often superimposed over an image or appended to a GIF or video sequence, where it labels something falling short of expectations or otherwise failing. It includes, as part of its remit, a wide variety of accidents, dangerous mishaps, and public humiliations. Baudrillard’s work on the Gulf War raised the question of that “event” even as it was unfolding. Before the war “happened,” he wrote the essay, “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place,” while it was happening, he wrote the essay, “The Gulf War: Is It Really Taking Place?” and eventually published it all under the title, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans. Paul Patton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). At stake, he says, is a war that “makes its way by speculation and promotion,” not by war per se (30). The point is brutally simple, and it concerns the disjunction between the representations of war and what was happening on the ground—with the greatest significance being the “war” waged on television. For him, in this situation, the representation has overtaken the event, has perhaps itself, become the event. The troops on the ground’s view of the war comes to them, in part, by virtue of CBS and CBS gets its view from the soldiers on the ground. But this very fact does not mean that he—or we—should cease to represent at all. To the contrary, his book called attention to representation as a problem, by analyzing it, indeed by representing it anew, not by avoiding it. Jean Baudrillard, “The Evil Demon of Images and the Precession of Simulacra.” Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty (New York: Harvester, Wheatsheaf, 1993), 194. John 11:50. Cf. 18:14. Eric Gans, “The Holocaust and the Victimary Revolution.” In Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, and Textuality (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 123–39. John O’Carroll and I have taken up some of these issues raised in this essay previously. See especially, Chris Fleming and John O’Carroll. “Towards a New Cultural Studies.” Anthropoetics 13.1 (2007). http://www.anthropoetics.ucla. edu/ap1301/1301fleming.htm.



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22 Ibid., 136. 23 Ibid., 137. 24 Ibid. 25 “Primarily” because it is also worth stressing that the vast majority of those killed in the nuclear attacks were—like the Jewish population—“non-combatants.” 26 “Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, May 31, 1945. 10am–1.15pm/2.15pm– 4.14pm.” http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/ documents/fulltext.php?fulltextid=7. 27 Although in the latter case, the semiotic power on show was demonstrative of a dearth of the terrorist’s genuine politico-military power, not a representative of it. 28 Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour, trans. Richard Seaver (New York: Grove Press 1961), 33. 29 See Lindsay Barrett. “The Shadow.” Cultural Studies Review. 17.2 (2011): 183–97. 30 See Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965) and The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). Implicit in much of the cultural criticism that has emerged since the appearance of Alperovitz’s work is the contention—sometimes implicit, sometimes not—that where the victims of the Holocaust have become in some sense exemplary and visible, the victims of Hiroshima have become erased, casualties of some kind of implicit racism, or else a form of neglect owing to a certain problematic bias resulting from a privileging of Western interests and narratives. This raises an enormous number of complex issues that this chapter cannot deal with in any substantive way. However, what complicates this thesis, at least in its most reductive forms, is that the rehabilitations of Japan—figurations of it as a victim nation and not as an aggressor—come quite early. Surely one of the notable aspects of Hiroshima Mon Amour is that it contains no suggestion that the Japanese are anything but victims—and even the German soldier that appears in the film (through recollections of “Her”) is a fundamentally benign figure. Further, such views are reinforced by certain strains of current nationalist Japanese historiography and its preservation of a de-contextualized sense of Japan as a mere victim of American aggression. There is, of course, no doubt that the use of the bomb was a historical and ethical cataclysm—but it is because of this significance, rather than despite it, that certain distortions concerning Japan’s role in the war can be more easily sustained. By the same token, although the Holocaust has undoubtedly become iconic in how it represents victims, it has also undoubtedly given rise to new and virulent forms of anti-Semitism, ones predicated on a resentment of the Jews for having exemplary victim status and against whom they engage in sickeningly competitive struggles over this (“Oh the Jews! They think they’re so special! We suffered far more than them, and nobody notices!”). I point this out not to attempt to somehow settle the issue, but to highlight the fact that cultural criticism tagging Western figurations of Hiroshima as inherently ethnocentric requires at least some supplementation. 31 See previous note on the claim about the paradigmatic status of the Holocaust. 32 Although nowhere near a complete list, other well-known films dealing with nuclear war and atomic threat include: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959); Fail Safe (1964); Dr Strangelove (1964); A Boy and His Dog (1975); Hadashi No Gen (1983); The Day After (1983); Testament (1983); Threads (1984); When the Wind Blows (1986); The Fourth Protocol (1987); Miracle Mile (1988); By Dawn’s Early Light (1990);

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Terminator 2 (1991); Crimson Tide (1995); The Sum of All Fears (2002); and A Clean Escape (2007). 33 Eric Gans, “Originary Narrative.” Anthropoetics 3.2 (Fall 1997/Winter 1998) http:// www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0302/narrative.htm.

Part Two

Film

4

Mirrors of Nature: Artificial Agents in Real Life and Virtual Worlds Paul Dumouchel

Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this imitated also, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within: why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the Hearth but a Spring; an the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificier? —Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) This passage from the introduction of Hobbes’s Leviathan is often quoted by authors in cognitive science, in philosophy of mind, or in robotics who take pleasure in showing how modern Hobbes was—one who, in the mid-seventeenth century, already compared man to a machine and automaton and had a mechanistic understanding of life. Interested as I am in robots, this reading I think misses something essential. What strikes me most in this quotation is the beginning of the first sentence: “Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this imitated also …” Art, philosophy, and science have traditionally often been conceived as mirroring nature; that is, they should copy, imitate, and represent it in their own particular ways. This is what it means for knowledge to be true, that it represent the world as it is. That is also what it means for art to be good or successful. As Hamlet explains to the actors of the play within the play, good acting consists in “holding a mirror to nature.” Aristotle, a long time before, had already defined poetry as mimesis, imitation. What does it mean then to say, as Hobbes does, that nature is an art? What is it a copy of? Of course nature is the art of God by which he made and governs the world, and not a mere human artifice, but it is nonetheless, according to Hobbes, an art. If it is the nature of art to be the “mirror of nature,” what is nature the mirror of if it is an art? Though it does sometimes seem as if nature was imitating art, it could be that what Hobbes is suggesting is that both nature and art are mirrors of mirrors, that

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imitation is the art through which God both made and governs the world, just as it is the essence, the heart, of human art. If this is the case, if the world is imitation from the beginning, so to speak, then it means that there is no “true original,” that the model is not superior to the copy, or, to put it in other terms, it means that nature has no normative value. This is an interpretation that Hobbes’s conception of the state of nature, as the war of everyone against everyone, confirms. According to him, we need (and wish) to abandon the natural condition of humankind, which is neither pleasant nor rewarding. And the way to do this is through artifices, through art and conventions. Unlike Plato, who argued that imitation was bad because a copy is always different and hence of less value than the original, Hobbes, like Girard, thinks that imitation is the means through which is created that which did not exist before. To be consistent, Hobbes should have believed, though perhaps he did not, that imitation is also at the source of what is unpleasant in unadulterated nature abandoned to its own devices. Artificial agents are agents because they are actors, creatures that act—that is to say, creatures to whom we attribute the authorship of their actions. This is what in philosophy is meant by acting, as opposed to simply moving or behaving: an agent is considered as the origin of its own actions. Artificial agents are artificial because they are man-made (sic) rather than “natural,” but of course in view of the previous discussion we should remember that we are not quite sure what this means anymore, for it is not clear that nature is less artificial or more authentic than art. In fact, if imitation or mimesis is as important in human life as Girard says it is, then we should also wonder exactly what it means to say that an agent is a creature that is considered as the origin of its own actions, since mimetic theory implies that others are, just as much as we are, at the origin of our actions. We are not autonomous and independent agents, but mimetic agents. Examples of artificial agents are social robots, that is, robots that are designed to interact with people in “normal” social conditions. Such robots are becoming more and more common in some service industries, especially in health care and education. The character (usually annoying) that appears at the bottom or side of your computer screen and offers to help you write a letter or organize your desktop icons is also an artificial agent, as are the smiling faces that answer your questions concerning schedules on the open access public terminals that we find in some train stations or airports. Moreover, characters in plays and in movies are artificial agents (but maybe not quite in the same sense as a robot), and so are all characters of fiction in as much as they can be said to act. * During the Fourth International Conference on Social Robotics, in Chengdu, China, in October 2012, Cynthia Breazeal—who is one of the foremost American researchers in social robotics—presented a research project entitled “Playtime Computing,” which is an attempt at what she calls “blended reality.”1 The idea of blended reality is to create objects or characters that can travel between the real world, primarily characterized



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by three-dimensional physical existence, and the virtual reality with which we interact through video screens, joysticks, simulators, and the helmets that are used to produce what is precisely called “virtual reality.” Playtime computing takes place in a spacious room that contains large blocks that children can move around and on which they can attach either letters, numbers, or various decorations. One of the walls of the playroom is actually a large video screen showing an outdoor-like space—a hill covered with grass—where there are blocks similar to those with which the children interact in the play space. The blocks on the screen are animated like autonomous agents: they move around by themselves, apparently purposefully, and can communicate with each other; while those in the playroom are normal blocks (though large, at 45 × 45 × 45 cm3): they are inert material objects, like the building blocks on which children can attach letters or numbers, but simply bigger. In front of the screen there is a small portal in which children can push a block that they have decorated, while on the screen there is another portal or, if you prefer, the other end of the portal. The block that is pushed through the portal reappears on the screen with all the decorations that the children have put on it. Once it is “back” in the virtual world the block becomes animated, interacts with the other virtual blocks, and shows them what happened to it while it was in the “real” world, that is, that it had decorations, letters and numbers put on it by the children. Alternatively blocks from the virtual world can follow the same road in the opposite direction: enter the portal on the screen and come out of the portal in the room, where the children can then physically interact with them. Needless to say, this is not what really happens; physical blocks remain in the physical world, hidden behind the portal while a digital image of the blocks is projected on the screen. This is defined as “blended reality” because the “same” blocks exist in both the virtual and the real worlds, and because changes that have been made to the blocks in one universe are carried over into the other. It is called “Playtime Computing” because the children can partially control the blocks on the screen through computer terminals that are in the room. It is like a video game but the objects in the game can actually, so to speak, step down from the screen and enter the three-dimensional world where we live—and vice versa: objects can travel from the real world to the virtual world. A playing-blocks Matrix for kids. When she presented this research, which she illustrated with short video clips of children interacting with blocks in both worlds, Cynthia Breazeal mentioned that one child “even tried to go through the portal,” adding that he was 11 years old and “big enough to have known better.” The research project, whose explicit goal was educational, involved about 140 children, aged from six to 11, and represents many thousands of hours of play.2 Since the material blocks are large, the portal that can receive or dispatch them is sufficiently big for a small child to try to crawl into it. Later, I asked her if only one child had tried to use the portal to access the “virtual reality.” She answered that they did not keep track of such incidents, but that to her knowledge there was only one case of this happening, or at most there may have been a second. My initial reaction was surprise. Intuitively I would have expected every child or at least most of them to have tried to use the portal to go “through the mirror” into the wonderful world of dancing and chanting blocks showing to each other their

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special decorations. I would have expected that, if the project of blending realities had succeeded, children would have been tricked into imitating the blocks. Of course it may be objected that these children came from mostly the American middle class and therefore that, even at a young age, they were quite familiar with video screens of all sorts and well aware that you cannot physically enter the virtual world of the screen any more than you can climb into the page of a storybook, no matter how wonderful the universe it depicts may seem. It is certainly the case that these children were familiar with virtual worlds and agents, but wasn’t the point of blended reality precisely to tunnel a passage through the rigid separation between these two universes and to have children experience “real” three-dimensional objects that can become virtual, and virtual objects that became real—blocks that could exist on either side of the divide? The fact that children did not try to cross onto the “other side of the mirror” suggests that they perceived the game for what it was—a game— and were aware that the realities never properly blended. The children recognized that “blended reality,” for all its technological sophistication, was but a fiction, a story, a stage play, and that in the “real world,” “realities” do not blend or communicate in that way. Interestingly enough, in private conversation, Breazeal mentioned that she undertook this research partly because she felt that children in general, and closer to home her eldest son, were spending too much time with virtual agents that exist only on the screens of videos, cell phones, or playstations, and not enough time in the real world with persons and three-dimensional objects that react differently, that are heavy to carry, and that do not move instantaneously. It seemed implicit from that conversation that playtime computing could be understood as an attempt to bring the children back from the virtual to the “real” world. However the children’s reactions suggest that they never left the “real world.” They were clearly conscious that one cannot enter the virtual world with a three-dimensional, physical body, that the portal was an operator of “make-believe,” and that blended realities rested on the “suspension of disbelief.” They were certainly taken by it and enjoyed the game, but in the same way in which we enjoy a movie, or a play at the theater. The blocks were blended as realities that existed in both the physical and the virtual worlds. For the children those two worlds clearly remained separated and they were aware that passage between one and the other could take place only in the imagination. The blocks in the real world are simply blocks, inert material objects. In the virtual world, on the screen, they are (limited) artificial agents. When they go from the screen world to the room world, the blocks, so to speak, die, and when they travel from the room to the screen they are born again. If the blocks were sophisticated robots, they could also be artificial agents in the room world. They would be the same in both worlds, but, as it is, they are not. When they go from the virtual world to the real, they lose agency and gain materiality. Conversely from the real world to the virtual they gain agency and lose materiality. This difference, I suspect, is what explains that the children did not try to follow the blocks into the screen world. Because in the real world the blocks had to be pushed and carried around like objects, they could not constitute rivals or models to be challenged or imitated. Because of that, the artificial



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agents remained artificial, in the sense of “not real,” in the sense of fiction. What, then, does it take for an artificial agent to become real? * Steven Spielberg’s 2001 movie A.I. provides elements of an answer to that question. Elements only, because in many ways this is a failed movie, which is probably partially due to the fact that this film originally was a Stanley Kubrick project, which he never managed to finish, and finally handed down to Spielberg. The end result is a disparate collection of very interesting ideas that are never really followed up, to which is added a very “Spielbergian” ending. The film opens on a class of Professor Hobby, who tells his students that the real challenge, the real difficulty, would be to make a robot that had true emotions, especially a robot that could love. It is not entirely clear in this context what “true emotions” means, or rather what it means for a robot to have emotions. David, the loving robot that Professor Hobby will later create, and who is the “hero” of the film, provides Spielberg’s answer to that question; but many details of the film, I will argue, propose a different and more interesting answer. It is important that this class is taking place in a society that has very elaborate robots that are much more sophisticated than anything we can make at this point in time, that they are part of everyday life, and that humans interact with them daily. These robots are known as “mecas” and many of them have a physical appearance that is indistinguishable from that of a human. Mecas provide all sorts of services, from entertaining to doing household chores to the more intimate services of, for example, Gigolo Joe. So what Professor Hobby is really telling his students is: “Creating robots with emotions is something that we have not yet done, and the most difficult and the most interesting challenge.” He illustrates his thesis with a robot, a young woman-like machine indistinguishable from any other student until he asks her to take herself apart, at which point she shows us her mechanical inside and turns herself off. This scene illustrates how advanced this society’s robotics technology is, since it can make machines that look exactly like a human being. Simultaneously, the robot’s willingness to reveal its inner self as nothing but a machine should be viewed as an illustration of its indifference and lack of feeling. Its response to the demand is a bit as if a young woman student had been asked to undress in front of the class and had simply done it without hesitating a second. However, unlike what Professor Hobby says, the point he is really making should, I believe, be understood as social rather than psychological. First, it is easy for anyone to imagine situations and power relationships in which undressing publicly when asked to do so would be perfectly normal. Second, as the film unfolds it becomes quite clear that mecas are far from indifferent and lacking in feelings. They may not have “true emotions” in the sense that Spielberg seems to imagine emotions to be, but they certainly have feelings. What this scene illustrates, perhaps, is not robots’ lack of feeling, but rather their position as victims. Cybertronics, the firm of Professor Hobby, creates a loving robot boy named David. They convince one of their employees, Henry Swinton, and his wife Monica to adopt

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this prototype. Henry and Monica’s own child, Martin, is gravely sick from a rare disease and is in a hospital. At this point there is no prospect of him being cured, but he is kept in a state of suspended animation in the hope that one day a cure will be found. Martin is alive, but absent from the world as much as if he were dead. David is a surrogate. He looks and acts as if he were about eight or 10 when introduced into his new home, and once the imprinting mechanism is activated by Monica, David starts loving her the way a child loves his mother. What does it mean to say that David loves Monica as his mother? For Spielberg, it means that David wants to be with her and wants her to love him in return. It also means that David has only pure, good, tender feelings for Monica. No matter what the circumstances may be, David has toward Monica neither hatred, resentment nor jealousy. He was programmed to love; that is all. Martin, who is suddenly and miraculously cured, comes back home and rivalry between the two “brothers” soon emerges. Martin objects to the presence of David, who is “just a machine,” and David, who senses Monica’s love for Martin, is afraid of losing his place in her heart. There is a scene where all four (including Martin’s father) are at the table having dinner and David, who wants to be a “real boy” just like Martin, starts eating and drinking, which of course he should not do because he is a machine. The food and liquids rapidly clog David’s inside and he collapses at the dining table. From a social robotics point of view this scene is perfectly ridiculous. First, if you can make such sophisticated machines, it cannot be too difficult to design them in such a way that they can eat and drink normally and eliminate later on whatever they have consumed. Second, if you are designing a social robot to interact with humans in situations of intimacy, such as when a child is with his or her mother, then you certainly would want it to be able to participate normally in what constitutes one of the most fundamental social activities of family life: meals. From a mimetic point of view, the scene is more successful, but not entirely so. Clearly David imitates Martin. He wants to be just like him. Further, in its desire for Monica’s love, the robot is ready to hurt itself; whether this is conscious or not is really irrelevant. The main point is that his desire brings him to harm himself and this is what makes him appear so human: human because it shows him to be vulnerable and hurt, and vulnerable precisely because of the love he has for another person. However, David’s desire for Monica is not mimetic. Martin is not the model of his desire. David’s love for his mother is a perfectly autonomous desire. It does not depend on anybody else but himself. Given the way he is made, once his imprinting mechanism has been activated by her, he cannot but love Monica.3 Martin is a model, but David’s imitation of him seems to be strategic, rather than mimetic in Girard’s sense. David imitates Martin in order to get to Monica, but it is not because Martin loves his mother that David also loves her. Martin is only a model in the sense of what Girard calls the mimesis of behaviors of representations, the imitation of those who dress the same way, talk the same way, walk the same—the imitation of the outside appearance of others—which he constantly opposes to mimesis of desire, as he understands it. Unless it is the case that what David is imitating is not Martin, but Monica’s desire for a “real boy.” Though this imitation is strategic in its intent, it is also hopeless and grotesque, a complete failure. David stuffs himself rapidly and massively in an effort to convince



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himself and others of the truth of what he knows to be false: that he is a real boy. What gives Martin his value as a model is that he is David’s rival. Martin’s return to the household and Monica’s love for him deprived David of something that he did not know he did not have. He knew that he was a robot, but he did not know what difference it makes to be a real boy. To be a real boy will then become the object of David’s desire and his lifelong quest, like Pinocchio. What makes this object desirable is Monica’s love for a real boy named Martin. That, however, is not what Spielberg is telling us. He tells us that David loves Monica because of an imprinting algorithm that was implanted in him by Cybertronics. Nonetheless, in order to represent David’s love for his mother in a convincing way, Spielberg shows that what David wants most is for her to love him in return. If David did not desire Monica’s love we would judge him indifferent. We would think that he did not love and that the attempt to make a robot that has real emotions has failed. There is no other way of showing that David, the robot, really loves his mother than by showing that he has become fragile and vulnerable, than by showing that his desire has lost its autonomy. David is repaired and shortly after there is another incident, in which he falls in the swimming pool and, as he does, carries Martin with him. It is not quite clear if it was on purpose or by accident that David fell while holding on to Martin, but once in the bottom of the pool he keeps holding on to him, endangering his life. The rapid intervention of Martin’s father insures that nobody really gets hurt, but David has now become a danger both to himself and to others and the decision is taken to get rid of him. Monica will abandon him in a forest, heartbroken and crying, but nonetheless she abandons him, telling him not to go back to Cybertronics because they will destroy him. David will then engage on a quest to find the “blue fairy” that can change him into a real boy. This scene marks the end of the first half of the film, which could be entitled, “David among Humans: The Adventures of a Robot.” However, before moving onto the second half of the film, we need to consider another “character” from the first half who I have not mentioned yet. When David first came to the Swintons’ house, this other character—another robot: a robotic teddy bear called Teddy—already resided there; and he becomes David’s mentor. Teddy, who can walk and talk, tries to help David find the right behavior to interact in the strange community of humans in which he has been introduced. But in the end, as we have seen, David is rejected from that community, but it is not because David is different, that is, it’s not because he’s a robot that he’s rejected. Rather it is because he is too much like a human. Unlike Teddy, who is but a sophisticated toy, David desires what humans desire. The suggestion implicit in the character of Teddy is that there is something like a community of robots. In spite of Professor Hobby’s opening argument, mecas care for other mecas and try to help one another. The second half of the film, which could be entitled “David among Robots,” confirms this hypothesis. Rejected by his family and running away from Cybertronics during his quest for the “blue fairy,” David will repeatedly be helped, guided, and protected by other more or less sophisticated robots. Some, like Gigolo Joe, will even abandon their own purpose in life to help David

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achieve his end, apparently out of pure sympathy. Given the premise of the film, this of course should not be happening; apart from David, robots are not supposed to have emotions. Yet they can be quite kind to each other. Actually, what is clear is not that robots do not have emotions; rather it is that they do not have certain emotions. This is clearly brought out in what is surely the most “Girardian” scene of the film: the collective sacrifice of substitute victims to satisfy the violence of humans, a circus where human-like robots are publicly destroyed for the ecstatic joy of a shouting and jeering crowd. David is captured with an older female robot that helped him earlier. She will be destroyed and faces her sad destiny with dignity and resignation, but not indifference. David will be saved at the last minute when people in the crowd start saying: “This is not a robot. It’s a real boy.” The emotions that robots do not have are hatred, revenge, the feeling that they can or should do something against their persecutors. They are totally enslaved. If it is the case that, in this world, ordinary robots actually have (some) emotions, that they function to some extent like members of a community and help each other, in what way is David different from other mecas? The answer should be evident: David imitates; he copies the desires of humans; and he can in consequence be in rivalry with them. In consequence, maybe David actually did try to drown Martin, and because of his mimetic ability, unlike other robots, David has a lifelong project for which he was never programmed. Interestingly enough David will be able to interest other mecas in joining his quest. Gigolo Joe partakes in David’s quest and to some extent he shares his goal. This disposition to take interest in each other’s interests was already implicit in the robots’ ability to help each other, but it becomes explicit only in their relation to David, as if his ability to imitate humans made other robots able to imitate him. * What does it take, then, for an artificial agent to become real? Is it enough for him or her to step down from the screen and come and sit among us, as do Cynthia Breazeal’s blocks? David’s tale suggests that to be a real, human-like agent is to be non-autonomous. That is the true difference between him and the other mecas, who are supposed to remain enclosed within the function for which they have been programmed. They are to themselves their own law; the algorithm that defines their function is the unique rule of their own behavior, insensitive to any external influence.4 They are perfectly autonomous. David to the contrary is mimetic, that is to say fragile and vulnerable, and … capable of violence. Spielberg’s film provides only limited, though not entirely uninteresting, insights into that question: violence. The public violence of the destruction of the mecas is presented as entertainment. To the spectators, however, this is not real violence. It is like a movie, except that the characters are three-dimensional. It is assumed by the spectators who recognized, or should we say, misidentified, David as a real boy that robots are not real persons, that they do not suffer or fear their demise. The film suggests that this perhaps is not the case, that humans may be wrong about the apparent indifference of robots. There is no evident suggestion that some form



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of misrecognition may be at work here, that the crowd actually knows that what it pretends to be the case is false, that is, that robots actually have feelings and therefore that the true reason the crowd enjoys the show is the proximity rather than the distance between humans and robots. However, this scene, in which the mecas’ complete submission and resignation defines them as perfect sacrificial victims that will never be avenged, should be seen in relation to numerous other films, such as The Matrix or The Terminator, where machines are the enemy and robots that are even more violent than humans try to take over the world. In A.I., robots are not evil and violent but the helpless victims of human violence and discrimination.5 Where A.I. is less successful is in relating the violence of humans to some of their other characteristics that distinguish them from ordinary mecas. David, who is a different type of robot, could be viewed—as roboticists often view their own machines—as a scientific instrument to gain insight into human behavior. To some extent this is the way he functions in the story, except that Spielberg suggests an interpretation of David’s behavior that is completely at odds with the way in which his actions influence those of others. There are two scenes, mentioned earlier, where David is actually violent. In the first one, he hurts himself by trying to eat and drink. This however is simply presented as the result of the fact that David is afraid and confused by the arrival of Martin. It is presented as a pure expression of his suffering and helplessness, rather than also as an expression of self-hate and an attempt at selfdestruction, in the paradoxical imitation of the rejection he feels. In the movie the violence of the gesture disappears. All that is left is David’s pure love for his mother. The same applies to the swimming pool scene, where David pulls Martin down with him when he falls in the water and maintains him under water at the bottom of the pool. Again, as presented in the film, the dominant emotion is fear—fear of the other boys. We are not supposed to feel that David did this on purpose and tried to hurt Martin. To the contrary, it is because this was only an accident that we are supposed to see his subsequent expulsion from the family as unjust and without reason. In both incidents, David is presented like a loving boy who has been hurt and confused by the sudden arrival of his brother and rival, but who desires only for his mother to love him in return for his love of her. Yet, the alternative interpretations of these events, interpretations that reveal David’s behavior as violent and his violence as linked to his love for Monica, must also be present in the film, for they are what motivates the parents, especially Henry the father, to decide that “David cannot stay here anymore.” These alternative interpretations of the events are necessary for the story to work, for it to move along, and for the various actions of the different agents to be understandable. Because he essentially wants to picture the pure, unadulterated love of David for his mother (an emotion that will send him on a quest that will last for his whole existence), Spielberg argues that these interpretations are false. We are to understand David as always being a good and loving boy unjustly rejected from the family he loves, and his love has nothing to do with violence. However, the interpretations that Spielberg rejects are inevitable; without them there would not be any story. Choosing them would also have made the film more consistent and interesting by showing that you cannot make a robot that

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can have only one emotion, love, independently of other strong feelings, and that our ability to love is not without relation to our propensity for violence. This of course would have given a much darker and more complex portrayal of human emotions and behavior than Spielberg has ever really given, one that would perhaps have been more in touch with Kubrick’s understanding of human behavior. David, and ultimately all the other robots in the film, are convincing and plausible characters of fiction to the extent that they do not act as robots should according to the film. In consequence, we have here an interesting and revealing contradiction between what Spielberg thinks robots and emotions are, and the way in which he must present them in a movie in order for the film and story to function successfully. In conclusion, we may ask: what does it take for an artificial agent to appear real? He (it) must be mimetic, vulnerable, non-autonomous in its desire, and capable of violence—and we must further be ready to recognize it as the origin of its own actions.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

Information on playtime reality can be found at: http://web.media.mit.edu/~ cynthiab/research/research.html. The “about” in this sentence reflects the fact that I quote these data from memory and cannot find anywhere the exact number of hours over which the experiment was conducted or the number of children who participated in it. It may be objected that David’s desire has been implanted in it by its designer and therefore is not autonomous. That, however, is just like saying that he did not make himself. But he is not the only one like this, is he? At least that is the case in principle, but we know from their interactions with David that they can also care for, and are open to, others. Similarly in the film, District 9, aliens are not monstrous invaders but victims— stranded refugees who are exploited and discriminated against by humans.

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Superheroes, Scapegoats, and Saviors: The Problem of Evil and the Need for Redemption Joel Hodge

The superhero genre has recently risen to new levels of popularity. It raises a number of interesting questions about the preoccupations of modern life, particularly around justice, goodness, the supernatural, human finitude, violence, scapegoating, modeling and Christian archetypes. In this chapter, I examine three key themes in these films: the motivations of the protagonists; the nature of evil and violence; and savior figures. I argue that superhero films provide important insights into violent mimesis and seek to provide a way out of it through a savior figure. In certain films, the superhero has a vision for redemption and the Good that is Christlike and that seeks to inspire faith and solidarity rather than only to defeat evil through force or violence. Nevertheless, these films contain problematic uses of violence and superpowers. Indeed, some of these issues are explored in the films themselves. I will explore these themes as they appear in the figures of Batman, in the “Dark Knight” trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises); Superman, in Superman, Superman II/ III/IV, Superman Returns, and Man of Steel; and, to a lesser degree, Spider-Man, in Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2/3 and The Amazing Spider-Man.1

Motivations: Justice, revenge, and goodness Superhero films are characterized by the problem of injustice and evil, which results in the need for a superhero. As in archaic myths, chaos, disorder, and injustice pervade the beginnings of most superhero narratives. However, in contrast to archaic myths, with their floods or plague, each chaotic beginning is given a human and even a mimetic setting: for Superman, there is civil war on his home world of Krypton and criminal activity on earth; for Batman, there is the corruption of the city by organized crime and increasingly extreme forms of evil; and for Spider-Man, there is the transformation of petty crime into more serious crime, such as murder, and the corruption of power and technology, with humans rendered morally powerless.

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Evil is characterized in different ways in this genre, from simplistic childlike narratives of goodies and baddies to more complex treatments. Motives include accumulating money, status, or power (e.g. gangsters), achieving a misguided ideal (e.g. perfecting the human race, as in The Amazing Spider-Man), destroying a corrupted humanity (as in the Dark Knight trilogy), and corrupting humanity (cf. the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight). Interestingly, in the rivalry between hero and villain, the object of desire is often forgotten as each party seeks to defeat its opponent. This phenomenon is explored in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man (in all of which Spider-Man loses sight of his purpose and is challenged or corrupted by power, vengeance, jealousy or rivalry) and in the Batman films. For example, in The Dark Knight, the Joker tries to induce Batman to forget his desired values and tempts him into killing. The way in which the motivation of one or both protagonists in superhero films becomes fixated on rivalry presents metaphysical implications. According to Girard, rivalrous protagonists become fixated on winning out of all proportion to the value of any contested object of desire. This reveals a felt lack of being in each protagonist that they try to overcome by acquiring the very being of their rival by defeating them. In superhero narratives, the typically rivalrous villain will twist goodness into evil by explicitly drawing the hero into their own rivalrous fixation. The Joker’s declaration at the end of The Dark Knight reveals this: he does not want Batman to be killed (“you complete me”2) but believes instead that “you and I are destined to do this forever.”3 The Joker gradually realizes his dependence on Batman, which does not diminish his desire to corrupt Batman and Gotham, but rather it allows him to focus it. While Batman resists this logic of rivalrous escalation by not killing the Joker, he does nevertheless succumb to another form of moral corruption (lying) in order to prevent the Joker from winning and hence destroying the legal system. The superhero’s stated motivation, on the other hand, is frequently simplistic: “for truth, justice and the American way.” Yet, the hero’s backstory is often filled out in greater detail in more recent superhero films to provide a psychological rationale. And so we see that the early lives of superheroes are marked by tragedy, which gives rise to a righteous thirst for justice and even revenge. Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man are all motivated by personal tragedy, namely the murder of their parents or guardians. Such tragedy is explored in interesting ways: Spider-Man must confront his desire for revenge at the death of his uncle (and his parents), while gaining new powers; Batman grapples with the murder of his parents, while experiencing apathy, depression, and the desire for vengeance (Batman Begins); and Superman in Man of Steel struggles for identity while being an alien refugee from his home world, which was destroyed along with his parents. Each superhero is formed and tested in relation to the tragedy of loss and murder. There is the desire to imitate the murderer in vengeance (Spider-Man/ Batman) and there is descent into meaninglessness in the face of loss and evil (Batman)—though each is accompanied by a journey of personal discovery. In his struggle for identity, each superhero must learn goodness and virtue, drawing on the example of his parents (either by access to them in virtual reality, for Superman; or by memory, for Spider-Man and Batman). Each superhero’s desire is



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tested as he faces evil and becomes involved in violent rivalry. As we have seen, the Joker explicitly attacks Batman’s desire for justice and goodness. Similarly, General Zod tests Superman by setting his desire to protect humanity against his loyalty to fellow Kryptonians. After Superman succeeds at protecting humanity, Zod further tests him by forcing him to choose between killing Zod and protecting innocent civilians. While this test proves costly, Superman remains focused on protecting humanity.4

Negative mimesis: Evil, rivalry, and scapegoating At the heart of superhero films is the battle with evil in its different forms. Some recent superhero films have explicitly explored the darker side of human life and how goodness can fight and resist this evil. For example, in The Dark Knight, evil personified by the Joker promises to feed off and corrupt the Good and tempts Batman into believing that good and evil are in a symmetrical relationship, both needing each other. At the end of the film, we are left in a state of moral ambiguity and uncertainty in which evil cannot be destroyed by force. Showing the different manifestations of evil, the Dark Knight trilogy has three different kinds of villain: (1) Organized crime—driven by the desire to accumulate money and power. (2) Utopian evil—driven by seemingly good or virtuous ends, but using evil means that distort their ideals, such as mass destruction to wipe out corruption. For example, Batman’s mentor, Ra’s al Ghul (and later Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter and her collaborator, Bane), wants to destroy Gotham in order to rid it of corruption and to rebuild it. Like Abraham in the book of Genesis, Batman sees the good in Gotham and wants to save it, with a view to its eventual redemption.5 Batman derives his vision from his parents, which allows him to resist being drawn into the plans of Ra’s al Ghul. Evil has been allowed to flourish because of the symbolic lack of the Good (remedied by faith in Batman) and the social conditions that allow evil to flourish (e.g. economic crisis, inequality, and unemployment). Batman’s vision is essentially redemptive and inspirational, while that of his enemies is essentially selfish, destructive, and idolatrous, and realizable only at the expense of people’s lives. (3) Pure or satanic evil—the desire to corrupt others, leading them to perpetrate violence by arousing fear, rivalry, and an obsession with self-preservation over against others.

This last category is explored in the second film of the Dark Knight trilogy, which features Heath Ledger as the Joker. In this film, the Joker is naively hired by desperate crime bosses to defeat Batman but the Joker is interested only in causing moral corruption and destruction. Charles Bellinger compares The Dark Knight’s Joker to Satan as he is interested only in causing dissension, rivalry and destruction for its own sake, all motivated by a narcissistic nihilism.6 An explicit comparison is made in the film between the ordinary mob boss, who seeks money, status, and power, and the

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Joker, who wants to pull people down to his absolutely corrupt level. In doing this, the Joker shows that the crime bosses are just mirrors of the capitalist entrepreneur and democratic politician who seeks money, status, and power, though the crime bosses play the capitalist game by illicit and violent means. In contrast, the Joker seemingly plays according to his own rules, in which nihilism, self-preservation, fear, and destruction triumph. Like Satan, the Joker is completely corrupt and irredeemable. His existential state indicates why the Joker is not given any backstory in the film to explain his origins or motivations: his evil is inexplicable; he is more devil than man. Yet the Joker is not truly free or independent. The whole of the Joker’s identity is dependent on the Good, that is, he is addicted to rivalry with the Good, seeking to corrupt and distort the Good—exemplified by his rivalry with Batman and morally upright public officials. The Joker, then, exploits humanity’s corrupted condition, which has a propensity for narcissistic idolatry rather than the common good. For example, the Joker’s greatest achievement is to corrupt Gotham City’s “White Knight,” Harvey Dent, aka “Two-Face.” Harvey Dent is the district attorney and Batman’s main source of hope to prosecute his war against crime through due process. The White Knight is meant to replace the violent vigilante, the “Dark Knight” (Batman), who sees the need for proper legal process and longs to withdraw into an ordinary life. However, the plan goes awry when the Joker tempts the White Knight into illegal interrogation techniques and murder to avenge the killing of his girlfriend, Rachel Dawes. Rachel is a pivotal character for both Harvey and Bruce Wayne/Batman—not only as their love interest, but as the model for their public virtue in pursuit of the Good. For example, in Batman Begins, Rachel challenges and inspires Bruce to overcome apathy and battle injustice through good means, which starts him on the path to become Batman. After a failed attempt at revenge for the murder of his parents, Rachel warns Bruce about confusing justice and revenge—against confusing the public and proportionate recompense for evil with a personal quest to satisfy his own grief, loss, and anger by imitating the violent other. Rachel’s efforts at restoring law and order to Gotham through due process—what might be called her ‘project’—fails in Harvey Dent. In Harvey’s case, the Joker is able to corrupt her positive modeling by distorting Harvey’s love for Rachel and his desire for justice into revenge for Rachel’s murder. Harvey goes on an illegal crusade to hunt down the corrupt police who had allowed the Joker to kill his girlfriend. Rachel herself had accepted her death with calm resignation. She was aware of the dangers of vengeance and wanted Harvey to resist them, reminding him of the bigger picture: that no one person is more important than the quest for justice, and that sometimes the love of one’s city requires sacrifice. Her life is the first major sacrifice for Bruce and Harvey in their battle against crime: only one of them can eventually accept and imitate it. Harvey rails against the decision by the police to save him rather than his girlfriend, for whom he wanted to sacrifice himself. In rejecting Rachel’s sacrifice, which she offered so that Harvey would survive to give Gotham a chance at law and order, he makes an idol of his self-obsessive love and grief. On the other hand, Rachel’s project of justice, founded on positive mimesis and sacrifice, succeeds in Batman. Bruce Wayne’s Batman becomes a symbol of hope and



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goodness, given his complete devotion to the good of the city to the point of being willing to sacrifice himself. This goodness is explored in three important scenarios and decisions in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The first is Batman’s moral imperative to never intentionally kill another human person, not even the Joker. This sets Batman apart from the Joker, who tries to provoke Batman into killing him. For the Joker, his life means nothing to him if forgoing it might allow further corruption of the Good. For Batman, however, life has an absolute dignity that must be respected, leaving open even the possibility of redemption for the most corrupt. Thus, by rejecting absolute power over others, he avoids making an idol of himself as Harvey had done. Batman is willing to give up his desires and plans kenotically in obedience to the Good, even when it may not fully make sense according to the logic of “the world,” according to which killing—whether pre-emptive, retributive, or judicial— often seems the best way to overcome evil. This moral imperative is also Batman’s best defense against being compromised by his use of violence. He avoids using lethal force to justify a sacred order based on killing scapegoats. Unfortunately, the Joker finds a way round this moral imperative by forcing Batman into becoming a scapegoat himself, which is Batman’s second important decision. By undermining Batman’s attempts to confirm Harvey in the role of White Knight, the Joker twists Batman’s devotion to Gotham by leading him to take on the consequences of Harvey’s moral corruption, ostensibly because the city cannot cope with Harvey’s failure. As Bott argues, the violent sacred—in the form of scapegoating and its concealment—are used by the “good” guys to stop the Joker’s corruption of Harvey Dent, which would break the “spirit”7 and “faith”8 of Gotham.9 In doing this, Batman sacrifices his persona and reputation. Because Batman is not an official part of the justice system, it is argued that he can take on the blame, corruption and outrage of the city in a way that a politician could not, thus helping preserve the integrity of the system itself. It has been argued that Batman resembles Christ in this act, in which he accepts blame and victimization out of love to bring reconciliation.10 However, as Bott argues, the aim and effect of this moment are different from Christ’s sacrifice: it perpetuates sacred violence and uses lies to cover it up, rather than opposing violence with love in order to expose and transform it.11 Thus, the hero who sacrifices himself (Batman) is held up for public blame, while the “monster” who commits evil (Harvey) is celebrated. Moral value is attributed to each in the wrong way because, as the Joker states, the human moral system is a “sick joke,” relying on violence and lies to make mythic heroes and villains.12 Batman, in a sense, becomes a scapegoat like Christ, who stands with all victims whose crowd-pacifying immolation has helped to save the social system from collapse—though his act is not the same as that of Christ in the crucifixion nor does it have the same effect.13 The morally ambiguous nature of the law is revealed in this moment: the law becomes an accomplice to the city mob that wants a scapegoat to blame for the failure of the Good. In contrast, the trilogy affirms the ideal of the legal system to the extent that it follows due process in a proportionate pursuit of justice (represented by Harvey). This system, however, is shown to fail under the weight of corruption,

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fear and inaction—a situation that Harvey argues implicitly commissions Batman to restore justice. Despite this, Batman’s extrajudicial acts retain an ambiguity as they are not subject to legal or democratic scrutiny or process, though he does cooperate with the civil authorities. The films also show that Batman and the legal system require an ethical populace inspired by the Good to support their actions and maintain the integrity of the legal system. On this view, the law can represent virtue and goodness, rather than just a monopoly on violence for the sake of maintaining public order. Moreover, the law determines responsibility for evil and restrains those who would do harm, but this lawful apportioning of blame can easily morph into victimization. In this way it becomes a parody of justice, as in The Dark Knight Rises when Bane takes over Gotham. The end of the second film presents the stark reality of human life according to the scapegoat mechanism: when goodness fails and is corrupted, a victim is required to restore order. This is an important insight: when goodness is distorted and corrupted then rivalry and scapegoating emerge.14 Batman’s willingness to embrace this logic in order to save the legal system represents his submission to a satanic logic, despite his self-sacrificial intentions: it is better that one man loses his life than the social order disintegrates.15 This act confirms Girard’s assessment: culture and religion are not violent in themselves but seek to contain violence through an unworthy mechanism that, nevertheless, brings a return to order that seems miraculous. The Dark Knight trilogy is aware of this problem, which it explores in the third film, when the lie of sacrificial violence is exposed, causing scandal and more violence and destruction. The third and most important decision that Batman makes is, at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, to sacrifice himself. He does this to save the corrupt city from the impending nuclear destruction from which it could not save itself. I will explore this decision in the next section.

Why do we need a savior? Positive mimesis, modeling, and redemption The superhero film genre seems in many ways to be at odds with modernity, which emphasizes scientific rationality, and self-autonomy. Not only do these films have fantastical and supernatural elements but they also highlight the desire for a savior who will solve human problems, particularly those associated with suffering and evil. There seems to be a recognition that we humans cannot defeat evil on our own and that we need help from those with power and invincible virtue. We seek a savior on whom to model ourselves: one who will inspire, protect, and save us. However, the concept of savior in the West has been heavily contested, especially in the last few hundred years, and this is explored in some superhero films. As Lois Lane resentfully remarks to Superman in Superman Returns: “The world doesn’t need a savior.”16 In fact, in the film, she wins a Pulitzer Prize for an article on this topic, as the world loses hope that Superman will return after his disappearance on an intergalactic



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journey. On his return, Superman replies to Lois’s article by highlighting the sufferings and needs of the world: “Lois, you say the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day, I hear people crying for one.”17 In the Dark Knight trilogy, on the other hand, it is Batman’s strange, vigilante nature that calls this savior role into question. Likewise, Batman himself is uncertain about his own identity. He ultimately wishes to put away his cape and cowl because he sees his efforts to rid the city of corruption as having at best a temporary effect.

What kind of savior? Generally, a superhero must undergo a demanding induction. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne undertakes a journey of self-discovery involving an intense period of physical and spiritual training. Through this testing, he proves himself able to use violence rightly by redirecting his life away from vengeance, selfishness, and listlessness toward pursuit of the Good. This training is complete only when he rejects his fundamentalist mentor, Ra’s al Ghul, and embraces the example of his parents. Similarly, in The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is tested spiritually following his loss to Bane and the collapse of the legal and social system after the lies about Harvey are exposed. Throughout these episodes, Batman learns that violence can be deployed only redemptively rather than destructively, in the context of absolute respect for life. Nevertheless, Batman’s use of violence is seen to have ambiguous effects on both Bruce himself and Gotham. It leads to more extreme forms of violence, demonstrating the escalation to extremes that Girard discusses. Yet Batman ultimately avoids being enslaved to cycles of violence by being willing to sacrifice himself for others in the service of the Good, rather than by winning or losing in rivalry, which drives the movement to extremes. Similarly, Clark Kent (in the Superman films) must learn to direct his powers through training provided by his father, in which he gains a sense of his personal identity in pursuit of the Good. His biological father had stood on the virtuous side of a conflict against power-seeking Kryptonians, who later come to fight Clark, and it is in his father that Clark finds a model for his vocation as Superman: “They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you … my only son.”18 There are divine and mimetic overtones: humans require a model and savior to show them how to live in the Good for which they are intended—a model who is in solidarity with them and who draws his identity from a transcendent source. In Man of Steel, in contrast to the earlier Superman films, Clark’s model is as much his adopted father, Jonathan Kent, as his biological father. Jonathan wisely instructs Clark on virtue and responsibility, and selflessly sacrifices his life to protect Clark and his unique vocation. Based on this example, Clark (Superman) voluntarily surrenders himself to humanity in solidarity and friendship, conscious of the human fear of outsiders about which Jonathan had warned him. Thus, rather than being welcomed according to the mythic norm of spontaneous universal adulation, this savior figure—like Jesus—is faced by the possibility that humans would fear and cast him out. This fear connects to the

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character of Superman, who shows that humans cannot overcome evil on their own but need grace in the form of a perfectly virtuous savior willing to give him- or herself completely to the world. Moreover, there are Trinitarian resonances of the Father offering his Son for the life of the world. This relationship and offering aims to inspire a new form of solidarity amongst humans. Further, the film shows that the concept of son does not mean God the Father is trying to get out of doing something himself. Instead, God as Father is offering to us that which is most precious to him “to show the way.” Ultimately, superheroes like Superman and Batman model desire for the good of others (love). Both are not only moral exemplars but are at the center of a new type of social bonding, held together by the desire for justice and loving solidarity. They build this solidarity through sacrifice, even to the point of becoming victims of mob violence. Admittedly, Batman becomes a victim in an ambiguous way, though he eventually sacrifices himself to save Gotham from nuclear threat. In Superman Returns, Superman experiences victimization at the hands of Lex Luthor and his gang, which is accompanied by his descent into chaotic waters. In this moment, Superman himself requires saving and assistance from humanity, so that he may recover and defeat evil. In both cases, Batman and Superman are effectively expelled and killed, but are later resurrected: Superman is seemingly dead in hospital yet he seems to come back after being visited by Lois and his son; and Batman is expelled from Gotham but “rises” to finally defeat evil, as the title of the third film suggests. In fact, Batman’s true “rising” occurs in the third film after his defeat by Bane: he descends into a hellish prison, with seemingly no escape or hope, but rises after learning the true meaning of death and love. Death is not to be embraced in itself—as Bruce was doing in a fatalistic way—but only coincides with love, that is, it becomes necessary only when Bruce’s love for the city leaves him no choice but to transport the nuclear bomb at the threat of his own life. His sacrifice is the pinnacle of his journey of self-discovery as a savior figure. Bruce learns true love in this moment: such love is not an enslavement to duty or to the Good, but a free choice for the good of others. His “escape” from death is a kind of resurrection (though it is only an image), where Bruce’s life is realized in love and freedom, in which he has escaped his demons and given all for love.

The Dark Knight as savior The Dark Knight trilogy poses a central question for the superhero genre: what makes a superhero? Is violent force the most important factor, or is it virtue? The Batman character lends itself to an exploration of this question as he is the most human of superheroes. He has no superpowers; he could be anyone (excluding the fact of his wealth). In fact, the Dark Knight trilogy argues that Batman symbolizes the potential for anyone to be a hero and is meant to inspire the desire for goodness and heroism amongst the populace of Gotham in a direct mimetic strategy. It is interesting to note that Girard distrusts the hero genre because of its potential to portray a romantic, spontaneous notion of identity and because of its sacrificial resonances.19 While some



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superhero films can be accused of creating romantic figures, films like those in the Dark Knight trilogy attempt to portray the complexity of superhero identity, particularly in their dependence on others, and the way that their heroism is ultimately linked to mimetic models and self-sacrifice, rather than to purely self-generated violence and power. Batman’s identity shows that goodness must be exemplified and imitated for it to become a social reality, especially when corruption and evil are dominant. What is more, superhero films present the alternative to heroic virtue, when a fallen hero is broken by loss and descends into revenge (e.g. Spider-Man; and both Harvey Dent and Bruce in Batman Begins). To address the question of superhero identity, Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy must clarify the source of his power to fight evil: is it sheer, autonomous, physical strength or rather goodness and virtue that inspire a community toward solidarity in the Good? The source of Batman’s power is clarified when Batman proves unable to defeat the Joker by brute force. Batman had been able to inspire Gotham by his actions, but the Joker, who understands “the battle for Gotham’s soul,”20 manages to manipulate Gotham to turn on Batman. The Joker does this by issuing an ultimatum: that people will be killed unless Batman’s identity is revealed. In this ultimatum, a related question to the superhero’s identity emerges: what drives a city or polis? Will people simply follow the most powerful force, or can an appeal to goodness transcend self-interested inertia? In this scene, the Joker is like a mythic god: he has the power to cause chaotic violence, or to save the city from violence if his will is followed. The will of the gods, like that of the Joker, always involves the sacrifice of victims; in this case, they are Batman and substitutes for him. Batman himself must decide whether to give himself up, acceding to a seemingly more powerful force, or to resist the Joker’s efforts to corrupt the city. He is uncertain if he can endure the killings of innocent bystanders that take place in order to force his capitulation, and so he decides to surrender. However, before Bruce can surrender himself, Harvey Dent intervenes to take Bruce’s place. Through this act, Bruce realizes that by giving himself up he would have been submitting to the dictates of the terrified mob, giving legitimacy to the Joker’s violence and power. In other words, belief and hope in the Good, no matter how difficult, would have been eclipsed by death and violence. Yet, in contrast, Bruce/Batman later submits himself to victimization by the city-cum-mob in order to prevent the Joker’s corruption of the city. Batman thinks he can bury the violent gods through using violence against himself.21 Thus, The Dark Knight is intimately concerned with who can inspire the goodness, confidence, and fear of the people, in particular whether to accept violence and the scapegoat mechanism. The climax of the film focuses on this dilemma when the Joker threatens to blow up two barges by midnight, unless those aboard one barge are willing to blow up the other barge. The occupants of each barge are provided with the means to destroy the other barge. One barge carries ordinary citizens while the other is filled with criminals. The ordinary citizens vote to detonate the criminals’ barge because “those men had their chance.”22 Hope—as a powerful director of human life toward a good telos (and an important theme of the films)—is reduced by pragmatic self-interest and fear. But no one has the will to actually push the detonator button.

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On the other barge, however, when one of the prisoners is given the detonator by a guard in order to strike first and save his own barge, the prisoner surprisingly throws the detonator out the window, preferring to rejoin a group of criminals praying together. Here is an important message about the way criminals are declared to be different from the rest of us, dehumanized and blamed, denoting them as acceptable scapegoats fit to die so that respectable middle-class citizens might live. The “good” prisoner, however, bears a contrary witness in his non-violence and willingness to accept death. For this prisoner, life is greater than death, suggesting a transcendence that is further exemplified in his prayer with others. In contrast, for the “good” citizens on the other barge, life is defined at the level of self-preservation—by death and the avoidance of death, even to the point of killing others—though they ultimately lack the courage and will to put this perspective into effect themselves.23 The Joker’s failure to incite violence leads Batman to affirm the ultimate basis of his own power: “This city just showed you that it’s full of people ready to believe in good.”24 Batman’s power or success is ultimately based in people wanting to seek and act for the Good themselves, even in unlikely circumstances (e.g. under threat of death), or at least in avoiding the worst kinds of evil. His role is to support, inspire, and strengthen their desire through his own faith and hope in the Good and through exposure of and resistance to evil. Batman embodies the Good so that it can be effective symbolically—in his actions and identity, but even further in solidarity, built around him, with the police and others. Moreover, The Dark Knight reminds us that the Good has a transcendent quality, pointing beyond the material world, around which solidarity can be built. The film indicates that the battle between the superhero and the villain is ultimately spiritual, which is why the Joker seeks to corrupt Harvey Dent in order to break the city’s spirit. It is also why Batman believes he must stop the city’s spirit breaking—by submitting to the scapegoat mechanism and perpetrating a lie to reward the people’s “faith” in the city’s White Knight.

Christ, the Church, and the superhero Superheroes are often seen to offer an image of God or Christ in some way, particularly in the goodness superheroes inspire and in their becoming scapegoats. Batman is arguably an avenging Christ figure, and Superman is the powerful savior Christ figure: being figures, there are evident differences between them and Jesus Christ as he is portrayed in the Gospels and understood in Christian tradition. For example, Jesus does not come to sweep humanity off its collective feet like some romantic hero, preventing them from experiencing the painful consequences of their freedom; nor does he impose himself and his power on humanity like a pagan god. There are elements of the superhero genre, particularly superpowers, that challenge the nature of human freedom and finitude, revealing a misunderstanding of God and the power of love. Furthermore, while the superhero is or appears to be human, he is in many ways seemingly more than human and often not subject to normal human limitations. This is



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particularly the case for Superman, albeit less so for Batman. The analogy of Superman to God and/or Christ as a powerful outsider who comes to save is clear. However, this analogy is problematic in that Christ is both outsider and insider—divine and human. Christ is fully incarnate, that is, he bears the fullness of human nature, and shares in the limits and sufferings of human life, even though he is also the bearer of divine nature. In the superhero genre, the radical implications of the incarnation are curbed by superpowers (and the associated violence), perhaps out of fear and uncertainty over the All-Powerful One subjecting himself to the evils of human life. For example, in Superman II, when Superman voluntarily gives up his powers to be in a relationship with Lois, he confronts unexpected struggles as he can no longer aid humanity, and ultimately must retract his decision to be human.25 In contrast, Christ does not retract his decision to be human, because this very incarnation as a human opens the truest path to salvation, bringing God and humans together through loving sacrifice. Through Christ, humans are incorporated into the relationship of love and equality between the Father and the Son. This mutuality is important: God and humanity come into direct relationship in Jesus, allowing for a truly loving relationship. As McCabe argues, God without the incarnation is at best a benevolent ruler; through it, however, God enters into a relationship with humanity based in love, which is possible only between partners who are vulnerable to each other.26 The superhero genre comes closest to this idea when the superhero is willing to sacrifice himself out of love, such as at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, and Superman Returns, or when the superhero surrenders himself to humanity, as in Man of Steel. However, death remains an ambiguous possibility for the superhero, though deathlike states in which sacrifice is made out of love are suggested in Superman Returns and The Dark Knight Rises. Without this possibility the full import of the incarnation, borne out in the crucifixion and resurrection, will not been fully appropriated by the superhero genre. Related to the issue of superpowers is the use and spectacle of violence in the superhero genre. Violence, heroism, and action are integral to the genre (e.g. Superman Returns was criticized for not having enough action, and so Man of Steel had extended action scenes27). In this respect, Girard’s analysis of Shakespeare’s plays seems relevant. Girard argues that Shakespeare had two audiences or interpretations of his plays in mind: a violently sacrificial interpretation for the audience fixated on scapegoating (what Girard called the ‘groundlings’), and a non-sacrificial interpretation that meditated on and exposed envy, rivalry and violence (the ‘galleries’).28 Something similar can be argued for the superhero genre: it must have action, violence and romanticized heroism, but ultimately these categories are undermined by the subtle, though clear, messages of the films in regard to violence, goodness and redemption. Thus, the films use the form of violent stories of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ to tell a deeper story of mimesis, redemption, and non-violence. For example, in the Dark Knight trilogy, there are constant questions over how long Bruce can sustain Batman as an identity. Ultimately, Bruce must give it up for his own sake and to be truly heroic. Despite the ambiguities or misconceptions, the analogies to the biblical God and to Christ are important in the superhero genre and, while there are limits, they allow for an exploration of Christ and the biblical worldview in the modern age, with its

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particular problems and anxieties. For example, the superhero’s powers emanate from a human yearning for relief from suffering and can be compared to forms of prayer that are open to the workings of God, who desires all evil to be defeated. Moreover, the superhero’s interventions in human life are usually not arbitrary, like those of the mythic gods, but are done purposefully for good and to address some need or evil in a similar way to Christ’s healings and exorcisms, which were selfless and purposeful. Furthermore, one could also argue that the superhero does not ultimately take away human freedom, but relies on his ability to freely inspire goodness, hope and faith—a point that is made in the stories of Batman and Superman. This inspiration relies on the hero’s exemplary virtue, which is usually developed in relationship, rather than through a mythic spontaneity. However, in contrast to Christ, the superhero’s character is not uncorrupted and violent power is usually involved in his virtuous action. Nevertheless, despite the limitations, there are interesting explorations of the savior’s identity (emphasizing the humanity of the savior, who develops a deep sense of goodness) and the kind of sacrificial actions that are carried out by a truly loving savior; these are explored particularly in the Dark Knight trilogy, which shows different forms of sacrifice. Some films acknowledge the deficiencies of the superhero and seek to address them, especially by having the superhero reach the limits of his powers or lose them, leading to suffering and sacrifice. The suffering and sacrifice of the superhero reflect in varied ways and according to context the suffering and sacrifice of Christ; for example, Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, and Superman in Superman Returns and Man of Steel. Ultimately, the superhero narrative provides an analogy to divine revelation and incarnation, though an incomplete one. The superhero reveals a transcendent model who embodies and inspires good in concrete human living and communities. The ability to mimetically inspire a desire for the Good and the building of solidarity on this basis is the superhero’s ultimate and most important weapon. Without this “power” of good mimesis, nothing lasting can be won and no evil truly overcome, no matter how physically strong the superhero is. This is why, for Bruce Wayne, anyone can be Batman—meaning that anyone can be inspired to goodness in the way of virtue, whether they be weak or strong. Furthermore, superheroes need help from those who participate in the Good. In Superman’s case he is assisted, in his weakness, by humans, such as when Lois and her family risk their lives to help him in his defeat by Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. In the midst of the superhero’s failure, goodness and light remain and are given a chance to flourish. Similarly, it is at the point of Batman’s defeat at the hands of Bane that the goodness and love of Catwoman comes into view, and with these qualities, the possibility for redemption. It is by this inspiration for redemption that the superhero gives vital support to the institutions of human society and allows them to change. For example, Batman enables Commissioner Gordon to reform the police and fight criminal gangs. Further, after Batman and Gordon are corrupted by the Joker into telling lies, they undergo purification through penitential experiences requiring them to give up everything—their identities/reputations, the system they have fought to build, and even their lives—for the good of the city. The mistake they both make in The Dark Knight is a Pelagian one:



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they thought they were solely responsible for saving the city and rewarding people’s faith by building a social order according to their own (misguided) lights (“We have to save Dent! I have to save Dent!”29). Instead, they had to discover themselves as the people’s servants, seeking their good in love. Underlying the desire for social redemption is a personal redemptive vision, in which the superhero is not just there to save institutions, but to help people and enable conversions. While this possibility for conversion is often obscured by the violent battles with villains and the obstinacy of evil, it is exemplified in Batman’s relationship with Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. Catwoman is drawn into a life of crime to support herself, and is resentful of the capitalist world in which she has been marginalized. Underneath this resentment also lies a desire to participate freely and legitimately in the world like others. This desire is shown in her search for a device that will wipe out all record of her past. Batman later offers the device to her because he believes she genuinely wants to start a life free from crime. Yet, before Batman can make this offer, Catwoman struggles in a double bind: she wants a normal life but it is out of her reach; this leads her deeper into resentment, crime, and evil. In this double bind, and still believing that evil is more powerful than good, she betrays Batman to Bane out of fear and the impulse for self-protection, which has been her customary modus operandi. Rather than rejoicing in the new world created by Bane (which is analogous in many ways to a communist dictatorship that supposedly liberates the oppressed but causes destruction and entrenches new forms of abusive power and violence), Catwoman is disillusioned by it. She wants to believe in the Good, as Batman does, but is too disillusioned, resentful and self-protective to do so. Yet, Batman knows that her desire for a new life can be truly realized only through the Good, which will require Catwoman to transcend her selfish past, and change. Batman’s vision is summarized in one of his statements to Catwoman when she is bargaining to save herself, rather than save the city: “There is more to you than that.”30 In the space created by this insight and their relationship, Catwoman begins to change. Rather than finding a new start in the world of evil, she finds it in a loving relationship that inspires her to believe and act for the Good. The ultimate power for the superhero is thus shown again not to reside in physical power, but in a relationship of gratuitous love that allows human goodness to grow and flourish. Ultimately, this desire for social redemption requires a community to embody it. A social body like the church is necessary: one with a clear transcendent foundation and vision, one that superheroes roughly image in the solidarity they seek to build in order to heal the polis. For example, The Dark Knight Rises points to this via the character of a priest who operates a charity to help poor children. Bruce financially supports this charity to address social problems (though this support dries up). Both priest and superhero need each other as joint outsiders seeking to reform the social system. In this way, evil is shown to arise from complex factors: it does not just result from bad character or distorted desires and ideals, but flourishes in certain social conditions. Furthermore, the priest offers an alternative to the righteous violence of Batman in seeking to build community pacifically and to address the conditions that lead to division and evil, which Patterson argues provides an example to Batman and

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Gordon. Actions by the priest and others, such as Rachel, orient Batman, Gordon, and Robin toward the Good and peace beyond violence.31 By alluding to the church, and the importance of spiritual battle and self-sacrifice as the only path to victory, the Dark Knight trilogy seems to point beyond Batman: Batman’s deeds and plans are not perfect but his character is an image of the savior, who incarnated self-sacrifice in love and seeks the conversion of all.

Conclusion The superhero genre has its limitations in terms of how violence is used and how superheroes can be portrayed as romantic figures but, despite this, the symbolic nature of the genre enables important social and spiritual issues to be explored in a way that other genres cannot. In particular, the superhero genre presents the depths of evil and the continued need for savior figures who model goodness and build solidarity in order for the human polis to function, despite its struggles with corruption and evil. Even more, the superhero genre reflects the continuing search for human unity, salvation, and a transcendent source for goodness. The implications of the Christian idea of an incarnate savior who seeks to save and build human community from history’s rubble of evil, lies, and violence remains a rich, though incomplete, concept and source of hope in the superhero narratives that imperfectly and incompletely embody it.

Notes 1

Please note that the films themselves have received various forms of criticism. I will be dealing with only the thematic aspects of the films. 2 Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, The Dark Knight (2008). 3 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight. 4 There are analogies here to “just war theory” in that Superman does not desire to kill but only does so in order to protect innocent people as a last resort (which seems to be the case as he mourns what he has done afterward). This position may be given support in Girard’s later writings, which critique both pacifism and warmongering, at least when they are doubles of each other. Cf. René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary Baker (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 183. 5 Genesis 18:16–33. 6 Charles Bellinger, “The Joker Is Satan, and So Are We: Girard and The Dark Knight,” Journal of Religion and Film 13, no. 1 (April 2009), https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/ vol13.no1/JokerSatan.htm. 7 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight. 8 Ibid. 9 Nicholas Bott, “How Can Satan Cast Out Satan? Violence and the Birth of the Sacred in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight,” Contagion 20 (2013): 244–6. 10 Cf. Bott, “How Can Satan Cast out Satan?” 246–7.



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11 Bott, “How Can Satan Cast out Satan?” 246. 12 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight. 13 Cf. Gil Bailie, “Raising the Ante: Recovering an Alpha and Omega Christology,” Communio 35, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 97–8. 14 This sequence is similar to the Genesis account, in which good creation fails after corrupting the relationship with God (Adam and Eve), which leads to rivalry and violence (e.g. Abel and Cain). 15 John 11:50. 16 Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, and Dan Harris, Superman Returns (2006). 17 Singer, Dougherty, and Harris, Superman Returns. 18 Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, and Tom Mankiewicz, Superman: The Movie (1978). 19 Girard, Battling to the End, 77–86. 20 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight. 21 One could argue that Bruce’s earlier aborted surrender may have forced the city to decide between a good savior and an evil terrorist, rather than requiring Bruce to later become an outcast in order to salvage the identity of the White Knight. Instead, Harvey’s surrender and Gordon’s ability to capture the Joker prevents the city from making a decision, or at best, from scapegoating Batman. 22 Ibid. It’s interesting that a guard leader on the citizens’ barge exhorts the citizens to not even discuss blowing up the other barge. His intuition seems to be that the discussion of evil leads to its contemplation and rationalization. 23 This could be an analogy to the huge US prison mechanism, and to capital punishment, which mediates America’s anger at its disowned other and allows the “good” citizens to punish the other by proxy. 24 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight. 25 This sequence presents a central dilemma for Superman because he is forced to choose between, on the one hand, his private life, and on the other, his public life, in which he must choose to serve all. There is some possible analogy here to Christ, though Christ’s love is not divided in such a way: his personal love is for all people. Moreover, this presents another contrast to Christ: where romantic love is ostensibly not an issue in the Gospels, in modern superhero films romance is a key element of the superhero’s journey. Romantic narratives are obviously a key narrative style in modern stories and films, which superhero films have appropriated. The romance genre has a long history, which I cannot deal with here, but suffice to say it expresses elements of Christian love but also reifies and romanticizes elements of this love. Having said this, the Dark Knight trilogy, especially The Dark Knight Rises, often deals with romantic love in a subtle way and integrates it into the narrative of redemption and positive mimesis that it is ultimately seeking to promote—first in Bruce’s relationship with Rachel, from whom he learns virtue and justice, and second, in his relationship with Catwoman, in which he enables her redemption. 26 Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters (New York and London: Continuum, 2002), 3–12. 27 Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub, “60 Things to Know About MAN OF STEEL From Our Set Visit; Plus a Recap of What We Saw Being Filmed”, Collider, 2013, http://collider. com/man-of-steel-set-visit/. 28 René Girard A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 6. 29 Nolan and Goyer, The Dark Knight.

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30 Ibid. 31 Brett Chandler Patterson, “No Man’s Land: Social Order in Gotham City and New Orleans,” in Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul, eds Mark D. White and Robert Arp (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2008), 41–54.

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Sanctified Victimage on Page and Screen: The Hunger Games as Prophetic Media Debra E. MacDonald

If the theme of mimetic theory, movies, and the media is to be discussed, then The Hunger Games must surely receive attention. Written by Suzanne Collins as a trilogy, her first book in the series was published in 2008, and this work of a modern genius spread like a contagion. Collins published the second and third in successive years, and the first of the films was released in 2012. So Girardian is the trilogy in its portrayal of human rivalry and the practice of scapegoating that it will resonate profoundly for those familiar with mimetic theory. Recognition of oneself in the books or on the big screen as either victim or subtle victimizer is unsettling and raw, fostering selfawareness in a prophetic manner.

The rite Collins has cited the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur as an inspiration for her work and has drawn on gladiatorial games, as well as the repulsive yet enjoyably addictive phenomenon of reality television.1 In her contemporary narrative, the fictional country of Panem is divided into 12 (remaining) districts, each forced into an annual ritual called the Hunger Games. Echoing the ancient Athenian myth, each district must give over one male and one female between the ages of 12 and 18 as “tributes” who will then fight to the death with all the others in a designated and prepared outdoor arena. Mythic Athens sacrificed its children as retribution on its own population, as does Panem, as punishment for a historical rebellion against the Capitol, which is supposedly a utopian city of wealth and opulence, yet in reality one that is run under a dictatorship. The eerie use of symbolic names and imagery in the series calls up meaning from myth, and memories from history. By naming numerous characters after Roman figures, Collins evokes aspects of the Roman Empire and mythic legend.2 The juxtaposition of the districts and the Capitol is marked in the film by way of visual contrast.3 The districts are gray, bleak, cold, often rain-swept, and barren within their civilian limits. The occupants are heavily controlled by force and surveillance, confined within

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physical boundaries, and bound for starvation from lack of resources. Meanwhile, the Capitol is bright, colorful, extravagant, modern, and technologically advanced. Its residents are the rich, powerful, and celebrated; the fashionable and flamboyant. Their consumables and opportunities are plentiful. The victims of the games are not chosen from the Capitol, but from the districts—which are technically part of the whole, yet in fact they are totally subservient and socially distanced. This recalls René Girard’s insight into typical mechanisms and victims of ritual sacrifice: We need only think of those social categories and individuals that provide the victims in scapegoat rites—vagabonds, beggars, cripples—to recognize that derision of one form or another plays a large part in the negative feelings that find expression in the course of the ritual sacrifice and that are finally purified and purged by it.4 The reaping May the odds be ever in your favour.5

In the first volume of the trilogy, the 74th annual Hunger Games is to take place. The day arrives for the “reaping,” whereon the tributes are chosen from each district. The names of children are submitted for random selection and are chosen from a glass bowl.6 All aspects of the games are mandatory to watch and large screens, on which the entire event is broadcast, are positioned around the district. The reaping is a solemn and terrifying ritual event for the community as its children are offered up, with a 4 percent chance of survival if chosen. The children are to attend the reaping washed, with hair brushed and in their best clothes, as a first stage in their lavish preparation as potential victims. The scene is reminiscent of communist state meetings, with subjects in rows, dressed in plain garb, making them into one large whole and hence limiting any risk of expressing individuality. The concrete utilitarian surroundings with a red banner hanging from the “Hall of Justice” mimics familiar scenes of dictatorial state gatherings from the early twentieth century, despite the futuristic setting of the narrative. Every year a propaganda video is played, reminding the citizens of the reason for the games. Narrated by the President of Panem, Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), the propaganda spiel reads as follows. (Expressions in the spiel that echo Girard’s mimetic theory are italicized.) War, terrible war. Widows, orphans, a motherless child. This was the uprising that rocked our land. Thirteen districts rebelled against the country that fed them, loved them, protected them. Brother turned on brother until nothing remained. And then came the peace, hard fought, sorely won. A people rose up from the ashes and a new era was born. But freedom has a cost. When the traitors were defeated, we swore as a nation we would never know this treason again. And so it was decreed, that each year, the various districts of Panem would offer up in tribute, one young man and woman, to fight to the death in a pageant of honour, courage and sacrifice.



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The lone victor, bathed in riches, would serve as a reminder of our generosity and our forgiveness. This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.7

For Girard the fact that we desire what others desire leads typically to rivalry in various forms. The phrase brother turned on brother quoted above recalls the biblical narrative of brothers Cain and Abel, which Girard expounds at length.8 In the locution, then came the peace, hard fought, sorely won … freedom has a cost, President Snow “reminds” the people that in order for “peace” to return, relief from tension must come by way of a sanctioned victim. Such scapegoating of one for the temporary benefit of others is the main line in The Hunger Games and a major concept of Girard’s work,9 offering apocalyptic comment on the present state (and eventual fate) of humanity: Violence seems to be escalating in a way that may be likened to the spread of a fire or an epidemic. The great mythic images rise up again before our eyes; as if violence had rediscovered a very ancient and rather mysterious form … teenagers slaughter their classmates … terrorism without limits or boundaries (heralds) an age of wars against civil populations. We seem to be hurtling toward a moment when all mankind will be confronted with its own violence.10

The vile notion in the narrative of the games, which becomes more and more unsettling as one ponders it, is the idea of children fighting each other to the death. The killings in the film are horrific, as is the concept. It is the complete stripping of innocence and the ultimate event of manipulation and perverse theater. During the games, as each tribute dies, his or her image is projected up into the sky above the arena for a short time to the sound of cannon fire. Tributes are portrayed in a heroic stance, above captions of their names and districts, like soldiers who have gone to war and sacrificed themselves for their countries. They are sent to the arena and glorified upon their deaths, because their veneration and “heroism” binds the community together in a false patriotism. And there are two audiences here: the entertainment is lapped up by the people of Panem but also by us as modern viewers—we who enjoy the films and pour millions into their creation and ticket sales. In his book Empire of Sacrifice, about sacrifice in American culture (notably, too, about sacrifice throughout American cinema), Jon Pahl discusses Scott Appleby’s concept of “ecstatic asceticism” or “transcendence through suffering”11 in film and various media portrayals of sacrifice marketed toward, and featuring, American youth. Pahl suggests that, “in these experiences of ecstatic asceticism, a violent act ‘lifts’ the participant beyond the mundane through an act of violence that identifies the agent with a greater cause (e.g. an institution or tradition).”12 He goes on to say that these ways of understanding the narratives as covert religious violence reveal a function of displacement. The sacrificial youth of the films become substitutes for any audience member, especially adolescents, in that the depiction of child sacrifice effects an “experience of transcendence” or survival for the viewer.13 Describing this pseudocathartic result of sacrifice in Violence and the Sacred, Girard says the following (notably using the term “tribute”): “The death of the individual has something of the

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quality of a tribute levied for the continued existence of the collectivity. A human being dies, and the solidarity of the survivors is enhanced by their death.”14 This sense of unity is an anthropological function that Snow uses as a reality, and a lie, to entertain and control his subjects. It is a reality because of the sense of harmony it brings to the victimizers and the audience, but it is also a lie because it is a mechanism that requires victims in order to function. The sense of unity is temporary and ill-gotten. From the last paragraph of the spiel, the games’ lone victor goes from the status of sacrificial victim—albeit treated royally in preparation—to that of scapegoat for the masses, thrown into the arena to die, thence onward to hero status, fêted and celebrated: bathed in riches. This outcome, with each year’s lone victor living on in wealth and status, is, however, abolished in the second of the trilogy, Catching Fire, as all the previous victors of the games who are still living (one is in her eighties) are forced back into the arena. Such a return of previous victors to the arena occurs every twenty-five years and is known as the “Quarter Quell.” The games’ victors, made sacred and admired as celebrities and saviors, are lynched again and slaughtered for entertainment’s sake. The people love the victors, but they resent them all the same. The victors have been able to escape the poverty and oppression of the districts and live in opulence, surrounded by the rich and famous. However, in Catching Fire, they are forcibly set against each other as victims yet again. Any genuine alliance within the arena is seen as subverting the Capitol’s system, despite the pretense of overall unity. It is this mechanism of scapegoating that the Capitol extols as means to safeguard our future. In Giuseppe Fornari’s recent work, A God Torn to Pieces, this is identified as part of Girard’s theory around the skandalon, or stumbling block: “the skandalon indicates the model that has become an obstacle in our path, the double bind of the rival who scandalizes us because we are secretly fascinated by him and since we are fascinated we are scandalized.”15 There is desire and repulsion in regard to the models we rival. On the one hand we want to be like them, but on the other we want to rid ourselves of them. As an example of this, Jean-Michel Oughourlian discusses with Girard, in Things Hidden, the ritual cannibalism of the early Tupinambá people of Maranhão, Brazil. Oughourlian points out that the victims of the rituals (who are prisoners of war) are first integrated into the community, even marrying and reproducing: They are treated with the kind of double standard accorded the purifying and sacred scapegoat. They are driven to commit certain transgressions and are then persecuted and honoured, insulted and esteemed. Finally they are ritually murdered and devoured.16

The preparation of the victim Immediately following the reaping of two tributes from every district, they are taken via luxury bullet train (the likes of which they have never seen) to the Capitol to prepare for the arena and for a building up of media hype around their personalities.



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The depth of Collins’s insight comes through here as she portrays a modern equivalent of the deification and bedecking of the victims. As mentioned briefly above, in certain ancient rituals a victim might be made “holy” or treated well before they were sacrificed. The victim was made into something precious and adored for a certain time before being offered up on the community’s behalf.17 This odd aspect of the rite made the victim (seem) sacred, worthy, and valuable; therefore increasing the value of their “sacrifice.” The importance of “seem” regarding the processes of sacrificial rite must be acknowledged. The appearance of, and beliefs lying behind, the sacrificial victim supply the rite with all of its power, since results (such as the relief of tension and the establishing of unity) are generated by the people, and not by any ethereal external magic (though its existence was a genuine belief for many societies). The victim seemed to be all that the people needed and, because of their treatment of the victim and their cultivation of the rite, the victim is made sacred. Collins’s understanding of the celebration of personality, the fickle yet powerful nature of corporate sponsorship, and the anthropological function of deifying victims, is apparent in the details of her narrative. Each tribute must aim to attract “sponsors,” who use them as marketing tools, but also aid them during the games. The more popularity a tribute gains prior to and during the games, the greater the possibility they have of receiving help in the midst of their ordeal, via their sponsors. Upon their arrival in the Capitol, the tributes are kept in district pairs and assigned mentors, stylists, and luxury apartments. Their mentors are the victors of earlier games, drawn from their own districts, who are able to give them insight and strategy for the arena. They train them in survival techniques and public relations. Once they enter the arena, all tributes wear the same uniform, which is suitable for the particular climate and setting. Prior to this, the tributes’ stylists do their best to attract positive attention and popular opinion in the tributes’ direction. This modern form of marketing recalls an ancient form of victim deification. The welcoming ceremony for tributes in the Capitol consists of the pairs riding into a stadium, reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s ecstatic yet carefully stage-managed Nuremberg rallies, and of the Roman amphitheater with its gladiatorial spectacles.

(Under)mining, modeling, memorials, and mimicry The protagonists, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence)18 and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), hail from District 12, known for its industry of coal mining. They enter the stadium last, in dramatic fashion, and are immediately popularized and admired. They are dressed in black, with flames and cinders appearing to leap from their outfits, evoking the district’s coal mining history. Their stylist for the games is Cinna (pronounced sinner) (Lenny Kravitz), who seeks subtly to undermine the philosophy of the Capitol through his craft, and is put to death in front of Katniss as a result. Marked out as exceptional from the beginning of the trilogy for her resourcefulness, independence, and ability to hunt, Katniss is the darling and the hunted of the show. The first sign of her rebelliousness and initiative is her habit of ducking under the

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district boundaries in order to hunt for food. When her younger sister is chosen at the 74th games’ reaping, Katniss volunteers in her place. From that point on she becomes a marvel and an intrigue to the country. Her entrance into the Capitol stadium amplifies this. She becomes a model thanks to her professionally cultivated image and she is, as it were, deified for her selfless act. Yet she remains a victim marked for slaughter. However, despite the tightly scripted plot of the Hunger Games spectacle, there remains a thread of triumph undermining and challenging an oppressive system. In recognition of the function of the games, on the day of the reaping, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), the best friend of Katniss, suggests to her an outright rebellion, consisting of the basic act of not watching the television: GALE: What if they did? Just one year. What if everyone just stopped watching? KATNISS: They won’t, Gale. GALE: What if they did? What if we did? Root for your favourite, cry when they get killed. It’s sick. No one watches and they don’t have a game. It’s as simple as that …19

Non-participation by all would mean the end of the ritual slaughter, but it would also be the beginning of an uprising causing retaliation but with no guarantee of a successful revolution. Participation in the games as an audience is mandatory but also desired. Katniss is correct in saying that “they” won’t stop watching. As a form of subversion, there is a sense of positive modeling and a subject/object dynamic between Katniss and the youngest tribute. At 12 years of age, Rue (Amandla Stenberg), from District 11, has been silently following Katniss like a shadow in the forest arena. They bond and trust each other as sisters for a short time until Rue is killed by another tribute’s spear, meant for Katniss. Following her death, Katniss honors Rue by surrounding her body with white flowers. In true dictatorial style, a further act of subversion is put down in Rue’s district when a man is summarily executed by the authorities for gesturing to Katniss on her “victory tour”: his display of true unity and gratitude toward Katniss is a rebellion against, and a threat to, the empire of the Capitol (more on this shortly). One cannot help but recall Caiaphas’s logic: to keep the “peace” by having Jesus killed, rather than risk an uprising of the people (Jn 11:49–50; 18:14), or Pilate perceiving an uproar, and therefore deciding to hand Jesus over to be killed (Mt. 27:24). A genuine show of love for Rue and solidarity and empathy with the people of District 11 continues into the second film as a means of rebelling against the philosophy of the games. In Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta directly challenge the authorities of the games in a “show of skill” to sponsors prior to entering the arena. Instead of the usual skills for which they are well known (archery and strength), they use artistic means to spit in the faces of the games supporters. Peeta draws a memorial of Rue on the floor, which is a signal to, and inspiration for, Katniss, who follows his lead when her turn arrives. Using the materials provided, she creates an effigy of Seneca Crane. He was killed by President Snow in the first film, by way of forced suicide. Katniss depicts the death of the “Gamemaker” and reveals the murderous intention of the games and the president. Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Gamemaker,



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is watching from behind the glass as Katniss hauls the effigy up with a noose around its neck. In a sadly ironic leap into real life, Heavensbee was played by the recently deceased Philip Seymour Hoffman. The theme of mimesis (or mimicry) presents itself in the trilogy most blatantly in the form of a fictional bird, the Mockingjay. The second of the series is named after the bird, which appears first in the form of a pin worn by Katniss, then again in the 74th games’ arena. In a subtle gesture that not all sacrificial acts have to be negative, the pin was freely given to her by an elderly female trader in her district after Katniss enquired of the cost. The bird is noted for its ability to mimic sounds, and is used as a signal between Katniss and Rue. It is this melodic whistle, copied by the Mockingjay, that the elderly man in District 11 used to communicate with Katniss. A symbol of unity, its song appears in the film before the killings of Rue and the elderly man. The Mockingjay pin is also a semiprivate symbol of hope for Katniss and those who love her. It must be kept secret because whenever an occasion of genuine camaraderie arises, the Capitol delivers death as a result. The pin suggests a positive, non-victimizing mimesis, as does the positive model Katniss presents. Due to the influence of the late Raymund Schwager, Girard acknowledges and defends the possibility of positive sacrifice as a result of positive mimesis.20

The role of the media the masses The masses are masses of individuals not knowing what they desire, and so following others. Girard says, “the outstanding characteristic of imitators is not violence; it is passivity, herd behavior.”21 The mob mentality is on the one hand reliant on individuals (making up a group) and, on the other, on people not being individuals in their thought. The media portray a manufactured or manipulated image in order to persuade individuals to think or feel a certain way. Individuals mimic one another and become a mass that has large sway and at the same time can be swayed. Together we can raise up a hero and then cause that same person to fall to their death. The victim is considered a polluted object, whose living presence contaminates everything that comes in contact with it and whose death purges the community of its ills … (yet) we find him surrounded by a quasi-religious aura of veneration; he has become a sort of cult object.22

Aiding this aura of veneration is the overbearing and overdramatic game show host, Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), who interviews the tributes, and commentates on the events of the games alongside Claudius Templesmith (Toby Jones). The name of one points to the ephemeral, flickering nature of the mimetic desire that “Flickerman” shapes and directs, while the fabricated, false sacred nature of the whole sacrificial enterprise is suggested in the name “Templesmith.” Flickerman wins the crowd and works to generate mimetic fascination in the individual tributes. He diminishes the reality of their fate by joking with them, and at times puts on a grave tone during his performances, disingenuously suggesting the moral high-mindedness of the games.

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He represents the media in the games and is a willing pawn for the kingdom of the Capitol. He is a model for it and receives his desires from its culture, which he in turn passes on to the audience. The media, however, are effective only in the presence of an audience. They cannot be useful or evil in and of themselves. Therefore, it is the audience that gives the media their power, as individuals who make up the mass think alike.23 As a herd, they follow whatever direction is given them; they are subservient because change is too costly—and because they have yet to find a model to awaken their rebellious desires. President Snow uses this dynamic of collective fear to control the country. Reminiscent of the gladiatorial games that Roman emperors used to control the populace, Snow uses the Hunger Games as a tool with which to manipulate the people of Panem. The “Gamemaker,” who designs and controls the way the game plays out, can manipulate surroundings and climate within the arena, introducing potentially fatal dangers and predators; he is directly responsible to President Snow. Seeing the potential of the games being undermined by Katniss in the first of the films, Snow says to the Gamemaker, Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley): Seneca … why do you think we have a winner? … If we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up twenty-four at random and execute them all at once? It would be a lot faster. Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained … So contain it.24

Following this order, the danger facing Katniss is increased. From her entrance into the stadium, she is celebrated as “the girl on fire.” Yet, in an ironic twist, she also becomes a model by awakening awareness and setting a flame to the smallest tinder of hope. * The Hunger Games is an amplified reflection (or commentary, perhaps) on modern society from the perspective of ancient society, which René Girard has so powerfully explicated. Suzanne Collins’s narrative is prophetic, though not anthropologically original.



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Notes 1 “The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins’ Classical Inspiration,” video interview with Suzanne Collins by an unnamed interviewer, http://www.scholastic.com/ thehungergames/videos/classical-inspiration.htm. 2 These names are Brutus, Caesar, Claudius, Coriolanus, Darius (Persian), Flavius, Lavinia, Octavia, Plutarch, Portia, Romulus, Tax, and Titus. As an additional note on the name Coriolanus, it is the first name of the dictatorial President Snow in The Hunger Games trilogy. The moniker originates with Roman leader Caius Martius, who, in a treacherous move, led troops against Rome in the fifth century bce, and whose story was told by Shakespeare. A modern adaptation of the legend has been distributed by the same distributor as that for The Hunger Games trilogy: see Coriolanus (Lionsgate, 2011), starring Ralph Fiennes. 3 All references I make to The Hunger Games are to the films rather than the books. Therefore quotes will by default be attributed to Gary Ross as a director, though they are most likely derived from Collins as the author of the books. Collins was however a screenwriter for the first film. 4 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (1972; London: Continuum, 2005), 268. 5 Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), to the children of the district, in Gary Ross, The Hunger Games (Lionsgate, 2012). 6 The concept of electing a victim by way of random lot is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s mid-century short story “The Lottery.” Widely read by American school children as part of the curriculum, it tells the fictional and shocking story of a village awaiting the draw of an annual lottery that occurs in all towns throughout the country. The tone of the narrative and description of the characters is jovial and light. The assumption is that the name drawn in the lottery designates the winner of a prize, when in fact it becomes clear toward the end of the story that the person whose name is drawn will become the victim of a village stoning. All are involved and even the victim’s baby son is encouraged to pick up stones. This ritual has become such a normal function of the fictional society that it is almost a chore for the townspeople to drop what they are doing to participate, though at the actual time of the stoning, they come upon the victim in a frenzy. Jackson masterfully portrays our immunity to recognizing our own violence toward others. See Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery,” The New Yorker, June 26, 1948, 25–8, http://archives. newyorker.com/?i=1948-06-26#folio=024. 7 Ross, The Hunger Games; emphasis mine. Arguably, more might be drawn from this passage alone, yet for the sake of space I will address only the few expressions that I have chosen. 8 René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001), 83–5, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (London: Athlone, 1987), 142, 144–9. 9 See Girard, “That Only One Man Should Die,” in The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 112–24. 10 René Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, trans. Malcolm B. DeBevoise, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 4. 11 R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and

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Reconciliation, Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict Series (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). 12 Jon Pahl, Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 48. 13 Ibid. 14 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 269; emphasis mine. The Latin tributum means “a thing paid or contributed,” deriving from an extra tax paid by Roman citizens and, later, colonies. Both Girard and Collins use the term in the sense of a payment or levy in return for peace, highlighting the religious notion of the sacrifice. 15 Giuseppe Fornari, A God Torn to Pieces: The Nietzsche Case, trans. Keith Buck, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 93. 16 Girard, Things Hidden, 71. 17 See Girard on sacred kingship; e.g. René Girard, The Girard Reader, ed. James G. Williams (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 270–1; Things Hidden, 51ff., 71–2; Violence and the Sacred, 107, 287, 303. In The Golden Bough, James G. Frazer details various rites, some of which are excellent examples of deification of the victim. Among the Khand of Bengal, for instance: The victims were often kept for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went … On the day before the sacrifice, the victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village … with music and dancing, to the Meriah [victim] grove, a clump of high forest trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the axe. There they tied him to a post … He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and “a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration,” was paid to him throughout the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round the post to music, and addressing the earth, said, “O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health”; then speaking to the victim they said, “We bought you with a price, and did not seize you; now we sacrifice you according to custom, and no sin rests with us.” … Then [the priest] wounded the victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched.’ James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1915; Ware: Wordsworth, 1993), 435. 18 The surname Everdeen may be an echo or reference to Bathsheba Everdene, in Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 19 Ross, The Hunger Games. I have condensed this quote by editing some of Katniss’s brief responses. 20 See Rebecca Adams, “Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: Conversations on Myth and Culture in Theology and Literature,” Religion and Literature 25, no. 2 (1993): 9–33; also Girard, The Girard Reader, 272, 292; and specifically on acquisitive and positive mimesis, see Martha J. Reineke, “Transforming Intersubjective Space: From Ruthlessness to Primary Creativity and Loving Mimesis,” in René Girard and



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Creative Mimesis, ed. Thomas Ryba and Vern Neufeld Redekop (Lanham: Lexington, 2014), 37–50. 21 Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, 7. 22 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 100. 23 In The Scapegoat, Girard discusses the identifying and concealing of the scapegoat rite. He suggests that when we think of the “scapegoat” we picture a religious rite involving priests, auspicious times, and intentional sacrificing of innocent victims within a specific context. He goes on to say, “such things … cannot happen … without the availability of an eminently manipulable mass to be used by the manipulators for their evil purposes, people who will allow themselves to be trapped in the persecutors’ representation of persecution, people capable of belief where the scapegoat is concerned” (p. 40). In The Hunger Games, the media are the unintelligent or unaware persecutors, with President Snow as the puppeteer. He does not “believe” in the power of the scapegoat, or in the heroic character of the victim, as the people do, but he uses such belief to his advantage. 24 President Snow to Seneca Crane, in Ross, The Hunger Games. I have condensed a conversation between the two by editing out Crane’s responses.

7

The Matrix E-Motion: Simulation, Mimesis, Hypermimesis Nidesh Lawtoo

What is the best medium to invoke in order to reflect on the mimetic transformations that are currently generating phantoms in place of egos? Does the classical choice of the theater still capture the “shadow” of mimesis and the affective confusions that ensue, as Plato suggested at the origins of mimetic theory? Or does the modern choice of the novel now serve as the privileged medium to frame “mimetic desires” and the contagious rivalries that follow, as René Girard indicates at the other historical and theoretical end of the mimetic spectrum? In a recent book titled The Phantom of the Ego, I argued that looking back to both classical and modern media, such as the theater and the novel, can help us look ahead toward the mass-mediated phantoms that animate the modern and postmodern world.1 Furthering this line of inquiry, I would like to capitalize on Girard’s recent assertion that the novel no longer captures the “meaning of an era,”2 in order to look for alternative media that can help us reload the old problematic of mimesis for our contemporary, digitized times. Focusing on an artistic form that has its origins in modernity, but continues to inform postmodernity as well, namely film, this volume provides a timely direction of inquiry to further mimetic theory in the twenty-first century. As pioneering anthropological accounts in cinema studies have recognized, the seventh art functions as a privileged medium to dissect what Edgar Morin calls the “imitation-hypnotic” states that viewers experience in movie theaters.3 And as media theorists have observed, cinema helps unmask new forms of virtual mimesis that can no longer be contained within realistic notions of “imitation,” but generate what Jean Baudrillard calls “hyperreal simulations.”4 Rather than adjudicating between these competing perspectives, I would like to articulate the dynamic interplay between what might be described as the ancient logic of embodied imitation and the postmodern logic of virtual simulation in order to reflect on the real and hyperreal emotions that inform the contemporary imagination. If René Girard’s account of the “contagious” nature of human emotions caused by the triangular structure of “mimetic desire” remains useful to frame all-too-human rivalries in the real world,5 I argue that this approach needs to be supplemented in order to describe the spiral of mimetic impersonations that is currently connecting posthuman subjects to computerized alter egos in the virtual world.

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Faced with choosing a case study, I turn to a much-discussed sci-fi blockbuster that reloads mimetic shadows as virtual simulations: Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999).6 My wager is that this film complicates accounts that pit the classical logic of mimesis against the postmodern logic of simulation in order to open up an interface that, at different junctures, alternately connects and disconnects these antagonistic worlds. In particular, I suggest that in The Matrix mimesis can neither be considered simply in terms of realistic imitation (representation), nor can it be relegated to a hyperreal cyberspace without origins (simulation). Rather, it emerges from the interplay where real bodies and hyperreal phantoms face each other, without confusing one for the other (hypermimesis).7 Critics have noticed that the Platonic account of mimesis is electronically reloaded in The Matrix and informs the much-discussed distinction between the true world and the illusory world. Less discussed is that such a mimetic heritage triggers “ancient quarrels” (Plato’s term) between artists and philosophers, generating “mimetic rivalries” (Girard’s term) between popular filmmakers and pop philosophers as well. Confronting affective/ conceptual rivalries at the level of the philosophical message, before considering the specificity of the cinematic/virtual medium, I suggest that what is at play in this philosophical blockbuster is a type of bio-electronic “extension of man” (McLuhan’s term) that emerges from the interplay between real, mimetic emotions, and hyperreal, simulated motions. Out of this confrontation emerges what I call hypermimetic e-motions, in the double sense of embodied, neural-based emotions and electronic, digitally-based motions.8 As we will see, The Matrix e-motion reveals a posthuman subject increasingly connected to virtual reality that emerges from the interface where real impersonations and hyperreal simulations meet, clash, and above all reflect (on) each other.

Mimetic simulations The Matrix is programmed to trigger philosophical responses, and these responses have not failed to materialize since its release in 1999. Despite the film’s futuristic representation of a posthuman world around 2199, dominated by machines, this philosophical blockbuster brings us back not only to a virtual representation of the world in 1999, but also to the origins of mimetic theory in classical antiquity. It is in fact a critical commonplace to identify the illusory world of The Matrix in terms of the ancient Platonic determination of mimesis understood as a false representation, or “phantom,” of reality.9 Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), the philosophical gadfly who sets out to liberate Neo’s (Keanu Reeves) enslaved mind from an illusory world of virtual simulation articulates it in well-worn terms. Claiming that “the Matrix is everywhere,” he defines this virtual reality in terms of its wide and indiscriminate visual reach (“you can see it out your window or on your television”), its metaphysical status in terms of illusion (a “world pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”), and its physical effects in terms of mental bondage (“a prison for your mind”). If the metaphorical allusions to a virtual web characteristic of ramified digital media—from TV to the Net—are future-oriented, the Platonic conceptual echoes are past-oriented:

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just as the chained subjects in the Republic watched “shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave,”10 so human subjects in The Matrix are chained in vats that connect their brains to a dream world of virtual shadows.11 Looking through the mesmerizing “holy” trinity of Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), we see that mimesis functions as the conceptual protagonist of the Matrix, if only because this Janus-faced concept serves as the medium that both divides and connects the true world and the illusory world, structuring the ontological polarity at play in The Matrix. It is thus not surprising that the philosophical reception of the film has been determined by the Platonic ontology that programmed it in the first place. Thus, if a philosopher of Platonic orientation such as Alain Badiou prescribes The Matrix “as a preparation for Plato,”12 an anti-Platonic theorist of Nietzschean inspiration such as Jean Baudrillard diagnoses it as a symptom of an “embarrassing … Platonic treatment.”13 Be it with Plato or contra Plato, philosophers on both sides of the ontological fence tend to agree that the old Platonic account of mimesis understood as illusory representation continues to animate what is now called “The Matrix simulation.”14 In a sense, then, The Matrix looks back to the ancient problematic of mimesis to foreground the postmodern concept of simulation, in a spirit of artistic and philosophical reconciliation.15 That the medium (cinema) intends to mediate a philosophical message (the world is just a simulation) is clear. In the opening scene, we see a close-up of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation serving as a cover for Neo’s illegal software: an obvious indication that simulation will be central to the film.

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The message emerging from this artistic homage to the father of simulation is clear and operates on different levels. First, this scene sets spectators on the path of a conceptual adventure that used to be confined to philosophy books, but can now be mediated by philosophical blockbusters. Second, it provides a clue to the telos of this philosophical investigation by establishing a link between computer programs and the postmodern conception of simulation. And third, it suggests that simulation has a double function insofar as it hides as much as it reveals: if the medium of the hollowed-out book within the diegesis covers the material software necessary to live out hollow dreams in the Matrix, the medium of cinema sets out to reveal the material reality behind the virtual illusion we see at play in The Matrix. And what we see is a dualistic world in which the reality of material exploitation of human bodies around 2199 is hidden behind the illusory surface of a virtual reproduction of the human world in 1999. Surface vs depth, illusion vs reality, mind vs body, original vs copy: despite its futuristic orientation, the mimetic ontology of this film is familiar. And the growing number of books on The Matrix and philosophy testify to the possibility of productively joining what once were two rivalrous perspectives (philosophy and art) by reflecting on the very concept that caused the quarrel in the first place (mimesis).

Mimetic quarrels reloaded And yet, ancient quarrels can easily be reloaded in the present, for even postmodern philosophers are programmed to notice the poisonous effects of artistic gifts. Baudrillard, in fact, (in)famously critiqued the Wachowski Brothers for their lack of comprehension of what simulation truly is. Baudrillard’s condemnation is looking toward a hyperreal future without origins. Yet his critique is less original than it appears to be, and is steeped in layers of Platonic irony that cut both ways: against the artists, for their lack of conceptual understanding of the postmodern logic of simulation, but also against the philosopher, for his reproduction of the mimetic ontology he wants to distance himself from. In order to move beyond true and false affective/conceptual polarities, we need to take a closer look at the two sides of this ancient quarrel reloaded. On the conceptual side, the French philosopher reminds spectators of the original meaning of simulation in his written work in order to denounce the cinematic reproduction of his conceptual formulations as an illusory artistic manifestation. Baudrillard was in fact quick to recognize that The Matrix’s artistic take on simulation proved to be far removed from the conceptual reality—not in the Platonic sense that the mimetic medium represents a copy of a book three times removed from the French original but, rather, in the anti-Platonic sense that the mimetic message of The Matrix is far removed from the anti-mimetic origins of hyperreality.16 For Baudrillard, in fact, the Wachowski Brothers framed the hyperreal logic of simulation within the Platonic ontology of imitation he so sharply opposes. As he puts it: “They took the hypothesis of the virtual for an irrefutable fact and transformed it into a visible phantasm. But it is precisely that we can no longer employ categories of the real in order to discuss the

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characteristics of the virtual.”17 For Baudrillard, this is a serious transgression. As he had made clear at the opening of Simulacra and Simulation, “simulation” has nothing to do with the world of “imitation” and the dualistic “metaphysics” it entails: “No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concepts,” he says; rather, it is a question of “generating models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”18 No wonder that Baudrillard concludes his interview by trenchantly quipping: “The most embarrassing part of the film is that the new problem posed by simulation is confused with its classical, Platonic treatment.”19 And this ontological sin against postmodernism is itself aggravated by what he perceives as the film’s “absence of a glimmer of irony.”20 The philosopher contra the artist, conceptual irony contra artistic seriousness: Baudrillard’s critique is intelligible, subtle, persuasive. And yet, as always with artistic reproductions, irony may generate destabilizing, mirroring effects that concepts cannot fully stabilize. In this case, in a reflective move reminiscent of a looking glass, it even generates an inversion of perspectives that unmasks, in a playful way, the mimetic logic the philosopher seriously denounces. It is, of course, ironic that the Platonic conception of mimesis that, to this day, informs philosophical discussions of The Matrix, has been inspired by a book whose clear goal was to transgress, not promote, a Platonic theory of imitation. It is also quite ironic that thanks to the mass-mediated success of The Matrix the version of simulation that impressed the popular imagination has nothing to do with the real, conceptual version, which is itself an ironic artistic confirmation of Baudrillard’s theory that signs of the real have now replaced reality—including the very concept of hyperreality. But the most embarrassing part of this mirroring inversion is that the anti-Platonic philosopher feels compelled to articulate the true, original meaning of simulation, dismissing the cinematic representation as a false artistic copy, phantom, or simulacrum, thereby replicating the most classical take on mimesis—with the exclusory logic and ontological hierarchies it entails—that postmodernism is up against. The philosopher contra the artist, the power of concept contra the power of the image, the logic of simulation contra the irony of imitation … Echoing Neo, we could say: “Whoa. Déjà vu.” This is, indeed, an ancient quarrel reloaded. And given that artists’ massive power of impression (from the Iliad to The Matrix) always had an affective advantage over philosophers’ conceptual investigations (from Plato to Baudrillard), it is no wonder that a pop philosopher with a literary disposition feels compelled to counter the smashing power of affective mimesis by engaging in a “mimetic rivalry” that is at least double—in the Girardian sense of an imitation of a “model” that generates rivalrous emotions (from jealousy to ressentiment),21 which, in turn, reproduce the most classical Platonic stance on the epistemic value of artistic mimesis based on aristocratic emotions (from pride to contempt).22 In short, under the new banner of simulation we find a contemporary reenactment of what Plato called an “ancient quarrel”23 between philosophy and mimetic art. As Morpheus equitably puts it: “There are some things in this world … that will never change.” But then, he adds: “Some things do change.” Now, if looking back to the past allows us to see that change is not on the side of the mimetic message (mimesis as the source of emotional rivalries), it is perhaps on

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the side of the mimetic medium (mimesis as a source of artistic spectacles) that we need to turn to if we want to look ahead to what does change. As modernist quarrels have taught us, it is in fact possible to go “beyond the rivalry principle”24 in order to articulate more playful, re-productive, and affirmative investigations that keep up with the old phantom of imitation as it crosses over into new digital mediations. If Girard does not himself address the mimetic effects of digital mediation, he nevertheless offers us a methodological principle to look ahead to the future of mimetic theory. Privileging the practice of hermeneutics over the abstractions of theory, he usefully reminds us that “one cannot map out the way mimesis works with writers in general.” And he adds: “Each one demands an entirely different demonstration.”25 As we turn to see, this lesson is especially timely when the texts under scrutiny open up futureoriented lines of investigation that turn egos into digital phantoms.

Digital phantoms In order to go beyond past-oriented quarrels and move toward the future that The Matrix invites us to consider, we should remember that from the very beginning of mimetic theory mimesis has resisted all attempts at unitary conceptual definition that would freeze it into some univocal idea.26 Mimesis is indeed a dramatic, protean concept whose identity is not one, in the sense that it is at least double, if not multiple. It is thus as stabilizing as it is destabilizing, generative of conceptual disjunctions as much as of affective conjunctions. As that Janus-faced artist-philosopher par excellence, Friedrich Nietzsche, was quick to notice, already in Plato’s Republic mimesis concerns not only the making of shady representations that Socrates calls “phantoms” of reality, and the ontological disjunctions between the true and the false world such phantoms entail, but it also concerns emotional impersonations that generate what Nietzsche calls a “phantom of the ego,” and the psychic conjunctions between self and others this phantom generates.27 This is why Socrates inaugurates the discussion of mimesis via the medium of the theater, and the actor’s psychosomatic transformations, rather than via the medium of painting, and the painter’s visual reproductions. As Socrates puts it in Book 3 of the Republic, the actor (mimos) speaking in direct speech (mimetic lexis) “assimilates” a fictional character by “likening oneself to another in speech or bodily bearing,” thereby “deliver[ing] a speech as if he were someone else” (mimetic impersonation).28 And this bodily motion, in turn, generates emotions such as “anger” or “pity” that spread contagiously across the body politic. From the origins of mimetic theory, then, we witness the postulation of a contagion of emotions and a multiplying series of bodily replications—a process that moves actors from within and that spectators see, initially at least, from without.29 Now, reloading The Matrix from the angle of bodily impersonation reveals the digital reality that informs virtual simulations in the Matrix. Take the Agents, for instance: computer-sentient programs designed to protect the Matrix from hackers such as Morpheus. Despite their virtual reality being disconnected from any bodily referent, Agents are the clearest manifestation of this virtually embodied mimesis.

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They are, in fact, mimetic not simply in the sense that they are copies of each other that can be digitally reproduced ad infinitum (reproduction); nor solely in the sense that they are virtual figures without a real referent (simulation); nor only in the sense that they generate violent “battles to the end” that turn difference into sameness (mimetic escalation)30—though mimesis operates on all these levels. What is new in The Matrix is that Agents are mimetic in the most disturbing sense that they can infiltrate, viruslike, other virtual bodies, assimilating themselves to others in such a fundamental way that the other does not simply act as if s/he were an Agent, but becomes one. In this digital impersonation, then, the other is dispossessed of an identity that, in any case, has never been a real one—but only a virtual one.

To be sure, this form of virtual impersonation is not a simple reproduction of theatrical mimesis. It is not a question of speaking in the name of the other via assimilation of mimetic lexis, but of digitally becoming the other via a reconfiguration of pixels. Yet, this virtual transformation reframes a mimetic principle that was once bodily at play on theater stages via a new, digital medium. And what this mimetic principle shows us is a total bodily assimilation, itself mediated via a screen-like framing surface of a helicopter window that self-reflectively recalls a TV screen. If we reflect on this doublyframed screen, then, we see that when it comes to virtual reality and the emotions it

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generates, the boundaries dividing self and other(s), what is me and what is not me, are not as stable and self-enclosed as they appear to be, but instead turn out to be unstable and fluid, allowing for an endless regress of digital impersonations that inform the phantasmal world of simulation. In The Matrix Reloaded, Agent Smith puts it with characteristic succinctness: “The best thing about being me … there’s so many of me.” In a sense, then, a digitized impersonation functions as a virus that infects the medium of virtual reality, a mimetic virus the protagonists of The Matrix set out to exterminate. And yet, what was true of philosophical therapies in the past is still true for digital therapies in the present, insofar as in the Matrix not only the distinction between self and others, but also that between the poison and the cure is far from stable. Just as Plato, with the support of the Oracle, reconfigured a real character named Socrates to combat, via mimetic dialogues, mimetic poets and rid the world of artistic phantoms, so in The Matrix Morpheus, with the support of the Oracle, discovers a hyperreal character named Neo, whom he trains in virtual impersonations to combat the mimetic Agents and rid the world of virtual phantoms. The medium has changed, but the paradoxical message has not. In fact, within The Matrix, digital mimesis emerges as a double-faced concept that functions as much as a poison as a cure—or, as Plato used to call it, a pharmakon.31 This pharmaceutical side of mimesis is fully at play in the interface that connects and disconnects the real world and its virtual copy, and vice versa. Take Neo’s initial liberation from the Matrix: in a mirroring inversion of Alice in Through the Looking Glass, Neo transitions from the dream world of the Matrix to what Morpheus (echoing Baudrillard) calls the “desert of the real” world, as he realizes that the bodily referent reflected in a mirror is, in reality, nothing but a pack of digits! Having swallowed the red pill, Neo is shown in front of a cracked looking glass that does not represent a unitary image but, rather, a multiplicity of fragmented reflections—an indication that, despite his nickname, Neo has an identity that is far from being one, for he is virtually no one: “virtually” both in the sense that he approaches non-being and in the sense that he is a being whose horizon of existence is itself virtual. And as the red pill begins to have its effect, the reflective deformations increase, the mirror loses its representative function and becomes a plastic, malleable, and transparent fluid that threatens to dissolve his virtual imago.

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The shift between two models of mimesis could not be more striking: we move from a distanced, stabilizing refraction in a mirror that generates low degrees of emotional participation to a fully immersed, fluid, digitized body overtaken by powerful emotions; from the Matrix’s dualist ontology to its power of digital disfiguration.32 Clearly, in this state of digital transformation, dualistic distinctions between copy and original, self and other, inside and outside, surface and depth no longer hold, generating a digital continuity in place of ontological discontinuities.33 And it is once the boundaries of Neo’s digital body are about to dissolve that the camera plunges—via a close-up shot—down that rabbit hole of his open mouth and we find ourselves on the other side of the looking glass virtually impersonating—via an I-camera shot—a naked, embryonic human body immersed in amniotic fluid in a vat. Thus, Neo is finally unplugged from the world of virtual phantoms without substance that held his mind prisoner of an ego that was not one, let alone The One, but the product of serial 101 digits. Dissolution of a hot digital representation, rebirth via a cool bodily impersonation: this is, in a nutshell, the initial pharmacological effect of the red pill. Now, if mimesis uploads the human mind in digital images without substance whose virtual existence poisons the real body, it also has the power to download a digital mind in a bodily referent for the therapy to start. Mimesis is thus not only part of the pathological message of The Matrix; it is also the very medium that enables such therapeutic transformations to take place. And yet, the distinction between the poison of virtual representations and the therapy of bodily impersonations is, once again, far from being clear cut. In fact, Neo’s return to a bodily impersonation in the real world is only the necessary condition to be uploaded in the Matrix simulation. And here is where the medium of neural and digital motions, which are both embodied and electronic and are, thus, strictly speaking, not emotions but e-motions, come into play.

Hypermimetic e-motions The problematic of mimesis in The Matrix is more slippery than it appears to be and cuts different ways: if the mimetic representations in the Matrix set up an ontological

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distinction between two worlds that fascinates idealist philosophers of Cartesian derivation, the one of digital impersonation articulates the interplay between the virtual and real world that interests materialist philosophers of Nietzschean inspiration. Baudrillard, for one, is true to the stabilizing, idealist side of mimesis at the level of the ideological message, as he identifies the duality it generates as follows: “The actors,” he says, “are in the matrix, that is, in the digitized system of things; or, they are radically outside it, such as in Zion, the city of resistors.”34 Yet, he misses the material fluidity of the virtual medium as he says that “what would be interesting is to show what happens when these two worlds collide.”35 This collision is, in a sense, precisely what animates The Matrix. The entire movie is based on the plugging and unplugging of human bodies in and out of computers, thereby generating emotional continuities (confidence, hope, and love, being the primary ones) between two clashing yet nonetheless linked worlds: one related to human (neural) impersonations, the other to CG (computer-generated or virtual) simulation. Indeed, the definition of the Matrix as a “neural interactive simulation” articulates the interplay between reality and hyperreality along lines that are based on neither a realistic notion of imitation (or mimesis), nor on a real account of appropriation (mimetic desire), nor on a purely virtual notion of simulation (or hyperreality), but, rather, on the connection between “hyperreal” simulation and “neural” mimesis (or hypermimesis). Every gamer is already familiar with a virtual-bodily reality generated by new computerized media. The film’s massive success arguably stems from spectators’ emotional familiarity with videogames (the medium), rather than with classical conceptual speculations on metaphysics (the message).36 And yet, this does not mean that the hypermimetic medium that in-forms (gives form to) the message of this film has been fully analyzed. In order to do so we need not let go of both the affective and conceptual dynamic informing neuralelectronic simulations whereby the subject is uploaded and downloaded in and out of the Matrix. Since this neural simulation generates virtual motions mediated by the “interaction” of “neural” and virtual “simulations,” I call this interaction between two opposed yet connected worlds “e-motions”—in the double sense of human, embodied emotions, and e-lectronic, digital motions. The diagnostic of the hypermimetic e-motions that animate The Matrix cuts both ways. On the one hand, the virtual world is what the human rebels on Zion oppose since it is part of the technological poison responsible for “the desert of the real.” On the other hand, it is only by “jacking” into the Matrix and playing out virtual simulations that a virtual fight against this growing desert can start. Despite the technological changes, the structure of mimesis never changes: it is the locus of both poisonous exploitation and therapeutic revolutions; a source of both material dispossessions that generate virtual motions and virtual (dis)possessions that generate neural interactive e-motions. In order to complete our diagnostic operation it is thus necessary to abandon stabilizing metaphysical solutions and trace the destabilizing physical and virtual movements generated by the “bioelectricity” that mediates between these connected worlds. The Matrix e-motion generates a spiraling, hypermimetic paradox that can be summarized as follows: the same electricity that generates unconscious phantoms

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without substance that poison human bodies also provides the energy to upload digital phantoms as a virtual cure. This dynamic is perhaps nowhere more visible than in the plugs at the base of the human heads, symptomatic of a posthuman, e-motional subject. Used to connect and disconnect brains to and from machines, this disjunctive conjunction is also responsible for what McLuhan prophetically called an “extension” of “our senses and our nerves.”37

The Matrix’s diagnostic of this e-motional extension of man is double-faced: if machines originally use these plugs to drain human bodies of their “bioenergy” in the real world, this energy can also be recycled by humans to upload a “digital projection of the mental self ” in the virtual world. The e-motions that animate virtual phantoms are thus not simply the product of the “bioenergy” generated by human bodies qua batteries, nor solely the effect of “interactive simulation” qua Matrix, but rather they are generated by the interplay between the CG electronic simulation and the human neural energy qua e-motion. We reach here the paradoxical movement of hypermimesis that sets The Matrix simulation in motion, generating e-motions that are as neural as they are virtual, as poisonous as they are therapeutic. In this e-motional interplay, the distinction between the human mind and the virtual image, neuro­ biology and digitization, bodily emotions and electronic motions no longer holds. In fact, the virtual e-motion that allows humans to hack into the Matrix can be activated

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only once computer simulation programs have been downloaded in the human mind (or, better: brain), generating a spiraling loop whereby neural impersonations and digital simulations, bodily emotions and electronic motions are not only one, but virtually generate The One. The conception of the posthuman brain that underscores the Matrix e-motion is clear. Just as software needs hardware for computer programs to work, so a digital alter ego needs a human brain as its material support for e-motions to be activated. Hence, in order to be reloaded in the Matrix, Neo is subjected to a “loading program” training that downloads virtual combat programs directly into his brain, formatting his neural motions, which, thus reformatted, can trigger e-motions necessary to impersonate his virtual alter ego in the Matrix.

Here we see how hopelessly outmoded both the realistic notion of mimesis and the hyperreal notion of simulation are to capture the logic of e-motions. Clearly, the computer screen does not simply reflect Neo’s movements in the virtual training program at one additional remove from biological reality, as the logic of representation suggests. Nor does Neo’s virtual alter ego operate without a material, biological referent, as the logic of hyperreality suggests. And if it is true that the virtual violence at play in the Matrix is based on “mimetic rivalries” that generate apocalyptic “battles to the end,” 38 it is equally true that the logic of “mimetic desire” that structures Girard’s

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analytic does not capture the specific relation between the human brain and the virtual alter ego, which gives form to The Matrix. Let us thus not let go of our specific “demonstration” (Girard’s term) so as to derive the theory from the text itself. In fact, if we focus simultaneously on the medium of the computer screen on the left and its CG referent on the right—both mediated by a cinematic screen—a new mimetic lesson emerges: namely that the interplay between neural interactions in the human brain and digital representation on the virtual screen provide a neuro-digital key that opens the door for e-motions to operate, as the logic of hypermimesis suggests. It is in fact because computer programs have been directly downloaded in the human brain, rewiring its neural connections, that this brain can, in turn, generate an extension of humanity necessary to activate the Matrix e-motion. Conversely, it is only because of the existence of fully embodied, human emotions—and Trinity’s love is the key emotion—on the side of reality that Neo is resuscitated on the side of virtuality: his e-motions are powerfully reloaded, turning a figure who was virtually no one, into The One. Perhaps, then, the final battle, which puts an end to the battle, is as cinematic as it is theoretical and reveals that a shift in power relations has taken place: just as Agent Smith’s virtual motions are absorbed by Neo’s e-motions, the logic of hyperreality is absorbed by the logic of hypermimesis. Welcome to the desert of hypermimesis! Above all, as a welcome to this growing desert, The Matrix is a reminder that even in a world of simulation, embodied emotions are the rock on which virtual e-motions rest. Take away the human—all too human—emotions that generate powerful e-motions, and the virtual simulation is unplugged. No matter how hyperreal cyberspace is, the neural and digital side of hypermimetic e-motions cannot easily be disconnected. This is true for the virtual simulations within the Matrix, but it may also be true of the virtual media—from TV to portable phones, the Internet to iPhones— that the Matrix mirrors. That is, when it comes to the e-motions that the new digitized media massively generate, it is not simply a question of the body being connected to the mind, or of the real ego to the digital alter ego. Rather, it is a question of electronic CG stimuli having real, all too real, effects on human bodies, which, in turn have set a virtual alter ego in motions, generating hypermimetic e-motions that transgress the boundaries between the real and the hyperreal, neural impersonations and digital simulations. Hence the pull to follow up our neural extensions via the hypermimetic medium of e-motional simulations. Hence the urgency for future theorists of mimesis to diagnose the emotional effects of new mimetic media on our neural system. To conclude this mirroring operation, The Matrix makes us wonder: is the reliance on a computerized model of the human brain still in line with our increasingly digitized times? Or is it rather the digital world that turns to the human brain as a model to reflect on the increasing ramification of virtual lives? While The Matrix suggests that the former option is the correct one, its diagnostic is symptomatic of a film that, while looking ahead to the 2190s, still remains very much the product of the 1990s: a period under the spell of an emerging computer-based reality (or virtual reality) that serves as the very model (or matrix) for digitally reproducing a computerized version of the human self (or brain). And yet, if we look at more recent futuristic representations that The Matrix helps to bring into play, the second option seems the more plausible one.

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In a mirroring counter-movement, contemporary sci-fi films—from James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) to Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013)—are, in fact, turning to the neural connections in the human brain (brain as network) as a model to frame hypermimetic e-motions generated by new virtual media (network as brain). Given that empirical discoveries in the neurosciences are currently confirming the mimetic foundations of human emotions—from mirror neurons to neuroplasticity— it is perhaps not unlikely that the brain will be the medium that will serve as a model for reflecting e-motional messages yet to come. Whether new futuristic sci-fi films will also continue to generate mirroring reflections that look back to where we came from in order to look ahead to where we are going remains to be seen.

Notes 1 2 3

4

5

6 7 8

Nidesh Lawtoo, The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013). René Girard, “The Future of the Novel,” Contagion 19 (2012): 1–8, at 1. Morin considers that spectators in the darkness of the movie theater enter a light, hypnotic trance that generates a form of psychic mimesis or imaginary “identification” with the figures on the screen. Edgar Morin, The Cinema, or the Imaginary Man, trans. Lorraine Mortimer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 96. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulation (Paris: Galilée, 1981). For a pioneering account of the “technological simulation of consciousness” and the “extension of man” new media generate, see Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 19. Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” has its origins in writers whose “novelistic genius” deconstructs the romantic mensonge of originality; see Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 38. Still, as Girard’s career-long meditation on the real effects of mimesis (and the violent rivalries it generates) makes clear, he never loses sight of the referential dimension of fictional texts. His emphasis on the “contagious” dimension of desire and violence in particular has contributed to the emerging dialogue between mimesis and the empirical sciences. See Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion, ed. Scott R. Garrels (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011). For reasons of space, I concentrate primarily on the first, and for my purpose, most relevant, film of the Matrix trilogy. On hypermimesis, see Nidesh Lawtoo, “The Avatar Simulation in 3 Ts: Techne, Trance, Transformation,” Science Fiction Studies (forthcoming). Both that article and the present chapter contribute to extending mimetic theory to sci-fi studies. The “affective turn” tends to consider emotions in opposition to affects. Influenced by Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, one of the foremost advocates of affect theory, defines emotions as subjective, ideological, and social, and affects as pre-subjective, pre-ideological, and unconscious, and characterized by bodily speed and intensity. Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham:

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Duke University Press, 2002). Influenced by Nietzsche, I think of emotions along unconscious, bodily, and intersubjective lines that most theorists now tend to group under the new rubric of “affect” but that, on closer scrutiny, resonate with the ancient notion of “pathos.” See Lawtoo, The Phantom of the Ego, 3–19. I retain the concept of emotion not only for its playful rhetorical potential to be reloaded as virtual emotion, but also because internal to this notion (emotion, from Latin emovere, move out, remove, agitate) is already an embodied, troubling dynamic that moves the subject in and out of itself along emotional lines I will discuss below. 9 See John Partridge, “Plato’s Cave and The Matrix,” in Philosophers Explore The Matrix, ed. Christopher Grau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 239–57; Matt Lawrence, Like a Splinter in Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind The Matrix Trilogy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 4–6; Catherine Constable, Adapting Philosophy: Jean Baudrillard and The Matrix Trilogy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 42–5; William Irwin, “Computer, Caves, and Oracles: Neo and Socrates,” in The Matrix and Philosophy, ed. William Irwin (Chicago: Open Court, 2002), 5–15; Slavoj Žižek, “The Matrix: Or the Two Sides of Perversion,” in The Matrix and Philosophy, 240–66, at 241. 10 Plato, The Republic, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), 575–844, at 747. 11 This rationalist skepticism reappears in the modern period in Descartes’ radical doubt and finds a more recent analytical manifestation in the “brain in a vat” thought-experiment; see Gerald J. Erion and Barry Smith, “Skepticism, Morality, and The Matrix,” in Irwin, ed., The Matrix and Philosophy, 16–27; Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Seeing, Believing, Touching, Truth,” in The Matrix and Philosophy, 41–52. 12 Alain Badiou, “Dialectiques de la fable,” in Matrix: Machine philosophique, eds Ellie During et al. (Paris: Ellipses, 2003), 120–9, at 129. Unless specified otherwise, translations from French are mine. 13 Jean Baudrillard and Aude Lancelin, “The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard,” http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/ articles/the-matrix-decoded-interview/ (accessed March 15, 2014). 14 See Constable, Adapting Philosophy, Ch. 3; David Weberman, “The Matrix Simulation and the Postmodern Age,” in The Matrix and Philosophy, ed. Irwin, 225–39; Elie During, “Trois figures de la simulation,” in Matrix: Machine philosophique, 130–46; Seyda Ötztürk, “Simulation Reloaded,” http://cinetext.philo. at/magazine/ozturk/simulation_reloaded.html (accessed March 10, 2014). 15 Philosophy and art were opposed in the classical period, but furthering a modernist tendency I have traced elsewhere (The Phantom of the Ego, 8–12), the artists here quote the philosopher in a spirit of reconciliation. 16 On Baudrillard’s complaint on the “the film’s role as an unfaithful adaptation of his ideas,” see also Constable, Adapting Philosophy, 22–8, at 26. 17 Baudrillard and Lancelin, “The Matrix Decoded.” 18 Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulation, 10. 19 Baudrillard and Lancelin, “The Matrix Decoded.” 20 Ibid. 21 See Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 14. From a Girardian perspective, Baudrillard’s violent rejection of the artists is symptomatic of a prior identification with the artists as “models,” which, in turn, leads to a “mimetic desire” of their mass-mediated success and the “rivalry” that ensues.

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22 As Chris Fleming has usefully pointed out, this classical stance might itself be inflected by Baudrillard’s reluctance to have his name linked to one of the most popular manifestations of the postmodern medium he so carefully studies from a distance. Additional twists could be given to this ironic spiral. 23 Plato, The Republic, 832. 24 Lawtoo, The Phantom of the Ego, 45–52. 25 René Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha) (London: Continuum, 2007), 174. 26 I have discussed this elsewhere (The Phantom of the Ego, 8–12), but the claim is far from original. Jacques Derrida reminds us that “one cannot avoid missing mimesis as soon as one identifies it and wants to decide on its truth value.” “Introduction: Desistance,” in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, ed. Christopher Fynsk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 1–42, at 25. The origins of the “constitutive undecidability of mimesis” are not postmodern but can be traced back to Plato’s thought; see Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Typography,” in Typography, 43–138, at 97. See also Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), 23–7. 27 Lawtoo, The Phantom of the Ego, 52–68. 28 Plato, The Republic, 638. For an important discussion of theatrical mimesis in Plato and its relation to Girard’s mimetic theory, see Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Typography,” in Typography, ed. Fynsk, 43–138, esp. 96–117. 29 For an account that roots simulation in The Matrix back in the “concrete dispositifs” informing the “interactive” and “psycho-technical” dimension of “virtual reality” as an “interface” between man and machine, see also During, “Trois figures de la simulation,” 134–7. 30 There is a sense in which Mr Smith and Mr Anderson, like many antagonistic sci-fi figures, are “mimetic doubles” in Girard’s sense of twin rivals. See René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), Ch. 7. In particular, the final fight between Neo and Agent Smith in Matrix Revolutions dramatizes Girard’s account of mimetic “escalation” typical of a “battle to the end”— though the trilogy provides an end to the battle. See René Girard, Battling to the End (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011). 31 See Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 61–171. 32 This shift from mimetic representation to mimetic digitization parallels McLuhan’s account of “hot” and “cool” media and the shift in emotional participation it entails: the former he defines in terms of “exclusion” and “low participation,” the latter in terms of “inclusion” and high “empathy or participation”; see Understanding Media, 36–43. 33 If this mimetic continuity distantly recalls a “mimetic crisis” in Girard’s sense, the anthropology that underscores it is distinctly posthuman. See Lawtoo, “The Avatar Simulation in 3 Ts.” 34 Baudrillard and Lancelin, “The Matrix Decoded.” 35 Ibid. 36 On The Matrix as a “response to the challenge of videogaming,” see Joshua Clover, The Matrix (London: BFI, 2004), 24–8, 48–51. 37 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 19. 38 Girard, Battling to the End, Ch. 1.

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Apocalypse of the Therapeutic: The Cabin in the Woods and the Death of Mimetic Desire Peter Y. Paik1

Readers of René Girard are familiar with his thesis that the primary source of conflict in the modern, secular world is rivalry, which is no longer constrained by the sacred hierarchies and sacrificial practices that defined the archaic community. For Girard, the danger posed by the escalation of rivalry and competition in modernity is the necessary and unavoidable consequence of the demystification of sacrificial violence. Although the Bible has succeeded in dispelling the essential illusion on which the efficacy of sacrifice depends, this epistemological and anthropological breakthrough has at the same time deprived human beings of the beliefs and mechanisms that enabled them to control violence in times of crisis. The Judeo-Christian revelation has the effect of leaving the world more at the mercy of rivalry and antagonism than ever before. Whereas the hierarchy of class and networks of interlocking duties formerly restrained and moderated competition, whether by curtailing the material aspirations of the common people or by channeling ambition into otherworldly directions, modern society, by removing these social barriers, exacerbates feelings of envy and resentment, as equality becomes the defining value.2 Modernity, in drowning the ambitions of the nobility and the devotions of the religious in the icy water of equality and egotism, brings people to face the real conditions of their life and relations with each other, which for Girard means the worsening of antagonism as rivalry becomes experienced as an increasingly compulsory aspect of social life. The disappearance of sacrifice leaves only “mimetic rivalry,” which is prone to “escalate to extremes.”3 For Girard, the breakdown of the sacrificial illusion leaves modern societies hovering on the brink of apocalyptic calamity, in which the outbreak of mimetic conflict can easily escalate into the effort to annihilate entire peoples. Human beings are thus left with a stark dilemma, in which they must choose between becoming “reconciled without the aid of sacrificial intermediaries” and resigning “themselves to the imminent extinction of humanity.”4 Although he framed this either/or during the penultimate decade of the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over the globe, Girard has continued to insist on the relevance of this formula for the crises of the present—the war on terror, ecological destruction, and economic meltdown—on the basis that they remain subject to the possibility of

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apocalyptic escalation. Yet in his recent books, Girard’s remarks imply that a different interplay of forces might be at work in contemporary consumer society and that his model of mimetic conflict may require some rethinking in light of present-day realities. In one dialogue, he admits that it might be the case that “contemporary individuals aren’t strong enough to have mimetic desire,” a development that he had earlier regarded as unthinkable: “Consumption society, which was ‘invented’ partially to cope with mimetic aggressive behaviour, has eventually created these socially indifferent human beings.”5 Similarly, in his discussion of anorexia, Girard observes that “our entire culture looks more and more like a permanent conspiracy to prevent us from reaching the goals it perversely assigns to us.” It is thus “no wonder” that “many people want to drop out, as a result of sheer exhaustion, and also, perhaps of a peculiar type of boredom.”6 What happens when one loses the willingness or the capacity to copy the desire of the other? The only alternative to mimetic desire that Girard offers in any detail is its overcoming: the spiritual liberation in which one renounces rivalry and gives up the fantasy of one’s exceptional status in a manner that evokes and encompasses the Christian experience of conversion. Can the loss of desire, and the impulse to drop out of an increasingly ferocious competition for status be grasped within Girard’s paradigm of mimetic rivalry, or does it call for fundamental revisions to his theory of imitative desire? Indeed, theorists such as John Gray and Jean Baudrillard take as their point of departure the dilution and enervation of desire in a society characterized by unprecedented affluence and the dissolution of taboos and prohibitions. In taking up the question of what causes these mechanisms of mimetic desire to unravel in the absence of a spiritual revelation, and how a narrative portraying such a collapse might lead us to reconsider or revise Girard’s theory of violence, I will examine a recent metafictional work of horror cinema, The Cabin in the Woods, as well as the work of Gray, Baudrillard, Pierre Manent, and Philip Rieff. These thinkers focus on the kind of nihilism that Girard, I will argue, underestimates. The dissolution of mimetic desire that takes place without reference to a spiritual conversion is likely to be a tale of horror, as it points to a psychic condition where there is neither hope nor anything one desires. Yet one of the chief emotions evoked by horror cinema has been the intense desire to live. Carol Clover observes that the “final girl,” the courageous and intelligent female who alone among her friends escapes death at the hands of the serial killer or monster, demonstrates an “astonishing will to survive” in withstanding brutal tortures, repeated reversals of fortune, and severe injuries to escape her assailant and even to defeat him.7 But recent horror narratives feature endings where no one, including children and infants, is spared a violent death, or depict evils that are so overwhelming as to drive characters to suicide. In The Mist (2007), which deliberately evokes monster movies from the more optimistic decades of the American century, a father shoots his own young son to prevent him from being killed by the grotesque creatures that have entered the earth from another dimension. In the comic The Walking Dead (2003–the present), the climax to one of its major story arcs breaks a taboo of mainstream entertainment by depicting, in a panel that takes up the entire page, the killing of the hero’s wife and infant daughter. It is an ending that



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Gerry Canavan describes as the “moment” when “the circuit of reproductive futurity is cut” and “all hope is lost” in the series.8 Such depictions of suicidal despair are not limited to comics and popular films, nor is the despair merely suicidal: in the art film Melancholia (2011), written and directed by Lars von Trier, the depressive heroine curses all life as “evil” and welcomes the impending destruction of the earth in a collision with another planet. We could account for the fascination with such unrelievedly bleak narratives in terms of the demand for novelty, since nothing ages more rapidly in modern mass culture than spectacles of violence and transgression, and so even more shocking images must be contrived in order to arouse the interest of the viewer. But these representations of crushing hopelessness and despair evoke the finality of extinction itself, a turn that also indicates the exhaustion of novelty itself. But is it possible to grasp this fixation with extinction and annihilation, an event that is impossible to integrate into any psychic framework or symbolic system, as yet another instance of the escalation of mimetic desire that for Girard defines the modern, post-sacrificial age? Can the “traumatic reality of extinction,” which in Ray Brassier’s view not only erases the future but also voids the past of any meaning, become a proper object of mimetic rivalry?9 Or could it be that sacrificial murder does not constitute the most foundational form of violence after all, and that there is a violence that is more anterior and thus more foundational still, one that would generate the desire to destroy oneself as well as all other things besides? One of the most promising narratives with which to unravel these questions is the recent horror film, The Cabin in the Woods, directed by Drew Goddard and co-written by him and Joss Whedon (2012). As a work of metafiction, the film operates as a playful, self-reflexive satire when it is not offering up scenes of carnage, but its resolution has special relevance for Girard’s theory. For The Cabin in the Woods culminates in the failure, with apocalyptic consequences, of a sacrificial ritual. Moreover, this apocalypse, which ends in the destruction of humankind, results from a decision that, within the moral universe of the film, appears wholly justified and legitimate. The film opens with the clichéd premise of five undergraduates traveling to a remote and isolated house in the country for a weekend of partying. Each of the students evokes a distinct social type, corresponding in turn to the archetypes from whom the sacrificial victims must be drawn: the athlete, the prostitute, the fool, the scholar, and the virgin. The five friends inadvertently summon demonic creatures that attack them in the order one expects in a horror film. But the film also reveals that these creatures are being controlled by a group of technicians working in an underground bunker beneath the cabin of the title. The technicians belong to the American branch of an organization charged with arranging the slaughter of the young as part of an ancient ritual to appease the dark gods that slumber deep beneath the earth. If these “ancient ones” are not satisfied by the bloodshed, they will rise up and destroy all human life on the planet. The Cabin in the Woods alternates between two storylines. In the cabin and its environs unfolds a familiar horror scenario, in which the students, in the course of drinking and playing truth-or-dare, come to explore a hidden basement. Descending

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into the dark and sinister cellar, they come across strange artifacts, which exert an irresistible fascination on the group. By handling these items, the friends cause undead ghouls to emerge from the depths to murder them. In the underground complex, on the other hand, the managers and scientists meticulously orchestrate the events above ground. They monitor the vital signs of their victims, use chemicals to tamper with their hormone levels, alter the temperature in different sections of the forest, and prevent escape by blowing up a tunnel. The entire operation takes place in a high-tech bunker that calls to mind NASA (the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration) or perhaps more properly NORAD (the North American Air Defense Command), given that the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Yet the banter between the two chief administrators is made up mostly of ribald jokes and risqué observations about their co-workers as well as the five doomed youth. They run a betting pool in which the various departments (engineering, maintenance, accounting, R&D, bio-med, digital analysis, security, electrical, psychology, etc.) make wagers over which murderous creature will be (unintentionally) “chosen” by the five victims as their executioner. Both storylines are defined primarily by their comic elements. In the case of the five friends who are to be offered up to the dark gods, the humor arises mostly from the disparity between them and the roles they are forced to play as part of the sacrificial ritual. Jules, the woman who is given the role of the whore in the rite, is in fact a studious pre-med major, and so the organization resorts to adulterating her hair dye to reduce her intelligence and weaken her inhibitions. She shocks her friends with her wantonness when, during a game of truth-or-dare, she plays at kissing the head of a wolf mounted on the wall. She becomes so swept up by her role that her tongue makes contact with that of the decapitated trophy. Later, when she sways erotically to a song with sexually wanton lyrics, the camera cuts to a reaction shot of the virgin, Dana, and the scholar, Holden, gaping in shock and embarrassment. The athlete Curt makes crude remarks about Jules’s sexual desirability and then rubs into Marty’s face the fact that he and not the latter will be having sex with her. Marty, who as the fool is the only male in the group without a female counterpart, is not insulted but puzzled by Curt’s bluster, which he finds uncharacteristic of him. When Dana expresses skepticism toward Marty regarding his suspicions that they are being observed and influenced by shadowy forces, he reminds her that Curt is a serious student who is receiving a full academic scholarship. While Dana and Holden for the most part do not conflict with the roles assigned to them, Marty perhaps fits too well the role of jester for the purposes of the ceremony. Although his head is in a cloud of marijuana smoke for the first half of the film, he is the only one of the five to suspect that something is gravely awry. Indeed, Marty’s behavior proves disruptive and unpredictable to those in the control room, and his words and actions on several occasions threaten to ruin the ritual altogether. While the scenes focusing on the young victims usually involve an irony that is not always humorous, the scenes in the control room play out as a black comedy in which the lewd and coarse repartee of an upstart tech firm or too-big-to-fail investment bank is transposed into an institution charged with performing human sacrifice. Making bets on how the victims will be butchered and eager to watch the woman assigned



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the role of the whore engage in sexual foreplay, the personnel working for the organization in The Cabin in the Woods fail for the most part to display the solemnity and reverence one would expect from murderous cults that commit atrocities to placate dark gods. Instead, we are presented with a series of humorous episodes in which the chief administrators, Sitterson and Hadley, make crude remarks laced with sexual innuendo, gyrate their hips to the music played by their victims, and otherwise display an arrogance that would be insufferable if it were not made comical by the straightforwardly horrifying nature of their work. Only two employees demonstrate a degree of seriousness about the operation. Mordecai, the grim and repulsive old man whose job is to give the young victims fair warning about the sinister history of the cabin, is turned into the butt of a joke when he calls the control room to confide to Hadley his worries that the ritual could turn out badly. Daniel Truman, who is the new head of security, is secretly horrified by the proceedings and keeps to himself, refusing to take part in the betting pool or to celebrate with the others when it appears that the sacrifices have succeeded in propitiating the evil gods. At the premature celebration of their success, the lower-rung employees complain about not receiving overtime and make pathetic romantic overtures to each other, while the video screen above them shows Dana being thrashed by a ghoul. It is thus with elation and delight that the viewer takes in the destruction of the complex and the slaughter of its personnel, after Dana and Marty, who also survives the attack of the undead, release all the monsters from the menagerie. What follows is a spectacular encyclopedic montage of post-1970s horror films, as demonic creatures and fantastic beasts set about massacring the employees. Swarming into the complex, the monsters voraciously dismember, devour, impale, stab, strangle, and set fire to panic-stricken scientists in lab coats and managers in button-down shirts. A wraith pulls a guard’s soul from his body, while goblins tear apart their victim and throw half of the bisected corpse against the camera. Zombies feast on mutilated scraps, while a ballerina whose face is made up of fangs pirouettes through the carnage. The sadomasochistic demon from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser tortures an employee hanging upside down from the ceiling, and the face-hugger from Alien leaps onto the shoulders of its prey to implant its lethal egg. The film cuts between direct shots of the carnage and images of the massacre shown on multiple video screens used by the security system, lending a documentary immediacy to the massacre of the organization’s personnel. In unleashing the monsters on the organization charged with sacrificing them and their friends, Dana and Marty cause the ancient gods to reawaken. An encounter with the director of the organization, played in a cameo by Sigourney Weaver, almost convinces Dana to kill her friend Marty for the sake of saving humankind. In a nod to Carol Clover’s groundbreaking study of horror films, the ritual stipulates that all the designated victims must perish except the virgin, who herself need not die but only suffer. The timely intervention of a werewolf prevents Dana from firing the gun she has aimed at her friend. In the final moments of the film, the two friends, bruised and soaked in blood, reconcile and huddle together to share a joint while the complex collapses around them. The final image of the film is of a giant hand rising from the depths to smash the cabin.

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The two groups portrayed in the film—the attractive victims slaughtered above and the leering workers below—are not enmeshed in mimetic rivalry with each other, but it is nevertheless the case that there is an unbridgeable gap between them. It is properly inconceivable for the members of the organization, with the possible exception of the newcomer Truman, to place themselves in the role of the sacrificial victim, just as Dana and Marty are stunned by their discovery of the organization seeking to offer them up to vicious gods. Although Dana aims her pistol at Marty when informed that the salvation of the world depends on his death, she hesitates because she cannot quite assume the subjective position of the director who urges her to murder her friend. In a catastrophic twist, the “destruction of differences” takes place as the direct consequence of the miscarriage of sacrifice, rather than serving as the condition that drives the strife-wracked community to look to sacrificial murder for its salvation.10 Although the friends risk their lives in their efforts to save each other, nevertheless the ending depicts Dana and Marty as too weighed down by their own perspectives to be swept up into the orbit of envy, imitation, and disavowal that enables one first to identify with the object of sacrifice, then to dismiss the doomed other to that one’s fate, and finally to reap the fruits of sacrifice. The inability to respond imaginatively to the other, even if the ultimate purpose is to ensure his or her murder, appears to sap the qualities needed to bring the brutal and pitiless ceremony to a successful conclusion. Indeed, the brief moment when Hadley expresses his awe and admiration for the pluck and resolve shown by Dana to keep fighting even in the face of impossible odds comes to an abrupt end when he is distracted by the arrival of his subordinates bearing liquor to celebrate the completion of the ritual. Similarly, the one occasion on which Sitterson behaves with solemnity is when he mutters an anxious and fearful prayer of supplication to the ancient ones just after the zombie family has butchered the unfortunate Jules, their first victim. These latter scenes reveal that the ceremony of sacrifice has degenerated into a sterile, utilitarian exercise. It has become, in the absence of reciprocity, a vacuous, contractual operation that is destined sooner rather than later to run off the rails. The element of reciprocity for Girard both exacerbates rivalry and hastens the recourse of the community to finding a scapegoat in order to prevent conflicts from escalating into the war of all against all, the ultimate expression of reciprocal violence. The absence of reciprocity in the film, by contrast, has the effect of depriving the organization of perhaps the only effective countermeasure to the possible uncovering by the young victims of the apparatus behind their suffering and death. If a member of the organization were selected to be slain as part of the ritual, perhaps by fulfilling the archetypal role of the adult who makes a courageous but futile effort to save the young victims, then perhaps the director might have succeeded in persuading Dana to save humankind by appealing to her sense of guilt. On the other hand, the neglect of the organization of the advantage of participating in the sacrificial ritual as victims alongside the doomed youth conceals a form of violence that, though notably lacking in mimetic character, sets in motion an outcome perhaps no less destructive than unchecked mimetic rivalry. For the belief of the technicians in efficiency is far stronger than their awe of the sacred or their fear of annihilation. They are willing to have others die for their sake,



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but they are unwilling to do everything in their power to prevent the worst of all evils. Indeed, it never occurs to them that there might come a time for them to do everything in their power, because to this point at least one of the rituals, which play out in multiple locations across the globe, including Stockholm, Rangoon, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Berlin, has always managed to succeed. The ugly reaction of the administrators to the shock of learning that the Japanese team, which had hitherto a perfect record of success, has failed is so unabashed as to be comical: Sitterson leans over the video monitor, screaming out obscenities at a group of intrepid elementary school-age girls holding hands in celebration after having defeated a demonic spirit: “The Japan group should have had this in the bag! They fucked us! How hard is it to kill nine year-olds?” The technicians in The Cabin in the Woods thus exemplify the subjective position in which one is willing to have others suffer and die for the sake of one’s own comfort and wellbeing but is unwilling to put at risk one’s own life and wellbeing, even for the sake of defending oneself. They come around to fighting for their lives only when it is too late and the instruments by which they secure their safety and wellbeing—or the entities they have instrumentalized for this purpose—turn against them. Such a disposition is not the consequence of mimetic desire running rampant or of its magnification in the competitive capitalist market, but rather of the death of desire, in which the will and attention required for purposeful action are dissipated in advance by the constant need to keep one’s eyes from glancing at an obscure verdict against oneself. According to John Gray, what endangers desire is the immense affluence achieved by the industrialized world. The high-tech, hyper-capitalist economy that has spread across the globe since the late 1990s is distinguished by the fact that it depends not on “stimulating demand,” but instead on “inventing new vices.”11 The most characteristic products of an economy “driven by an imperative of perpetual novelty,” which requires the “manufacture” of ever more “exotic needs,” are S and M (sadomasochism) clubs and drugs such as Viagra and Ecstasy. But we would be wrong, argues Gray, to understand the ceaseless production of transgression as the consequence of the cheerful and insouciant pursuit of hedonism. Rather, “designer drugs and designer sex” are not “just aids to pleasure” but more importantly function as “prophylactics against the loss of desire.” Provocation and transgression, and their constant escalation, have become economic necessities in a race to forestall the satiety that would cause the economy to unravel. Yet the constant exposure to formerly forbidden spectacles and experiences cannot stave off the uneasy thought that such a way of life cannot have a healthy and peaceful future ahead of it: “The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which—though it is busier than ever before—secretly suspects that it is useless.”12 This secret suspicion, and the directionless anxiety it arouses, is what supplies most of the humor in the sequences set in the underground facility, as we come to realize, with a touch of uneasy identification, that Sitterson and Hadley have been unknowingly laughing at their own violent deaths. But the virulent effects of this festering doubt do not spare their intended victims either. Marty, in one of his marijuana-induced soliloquies, gives voice, on the level of everyday wise-cracking, to the sentiment that

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the social and economic order is undeserving of continued existence: “Society needs to crumble, [but] we’re all just too chicken-shit to let it.” Indeed, it is the decision of Dana and Marty to doom the world that makes evident the peculiar psychic deadlock created by this verdict. For although their treatment at the hands of the organization is clearly outrageous and unjust, the two friends do make a choice that goes against the good of all. Yet, the film depicts their refusal to sacrifice themselves as the logical and natural response to a social order that needs to commit inhuman violence for it to continue. Martyrdom and self-sacrifice have become accordingly inconceivable where the only choices are to betray one’s friends or die as a dupe for gloating jackasses. On the other hand, even if one accepts that the decision they reach is an unavoidable one, it is hard to suppress the thought that the two friends arrive at it with inordinate haste. Dana and Marty, in subjecting the world to a cruel demise, are not constrained by the hope that there might be some uncorrupted quarters of human life; for example, the principle that children are innocent of adult vices and should not be punished for the wrongdoings of their elders does not factor at all in their deliberations. Indeed, it should be noted that the director makes no effort to mention the triumph of the Japanese schoolgirls over the demon sent to slaughter them, as though realizing that it would be futile to appeal to their sense of guilt. In The Cabin in the Woods, it appears that humankind is annihilated in a fit of thoughtlessness that evaporates all doubts, as well as their not inconsiderable benefits, by protagonists who have come to the realization that there is nothing enviable about their own existence. The ending of the narrative thus offers an intriguing addendum to Girard and his theory of violence. For Girard, what is to be feared most in the demystified, modern age are manifestations of what Nietzsche called active nihilism, exemplified by mass ideological movements that embark on cataclysmic, self-defeating attempts to restore the practice of sacrifice. The collapse of Soviet communism has not caused the threat of planetary conflict to diminish by any appreciable degree. Rather, Girard characterizes the era of globalization as one in which “mimetism has gained ground since 1945 and is taking over the world,” with radical Islam as the most conspicuous form of “violent imitation” that has become the “rule today.”13 The breakdown of the sacrifice in The Cabin in the Woods, by contrast, implies that the dangers of passive nihilism, having to do with the weariness and decline of the powers of the spirit, should not be underestimated. Indeed, passive nihilism, the hallmarks of which are resignation, self-disgust, morbidity, and the readiness to resort to opiates and euthanasia as an escape from these feelings, has become more widespread than more vigorous and energetic varieties of nihilism in those parts of the world pacified by globalization. In contrast to the heated and passionate violence borne of rivalry, Baudrillard argues that the violence endemic to the global system of interconnected markets and interdependent economies derives from the impulse to prohibit violence. The global system, spearheaded by the West, seeks to impose a society “in which conflict is virtually banned and death forbidden.”14 It aims at establishing a monopoly that would subject all cultures to an “unforgiving law of equivalence.” But such an undertaking to proscribe violence is self-defeating and doomed to end in catastrophe, not so much



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because it stokes mimetic passions and harnesses them to a project of domination, but rather because the global system seeks to universalize itself at the very historical moment when the ideas and values that constitute and legitimate this universality— “human rights, democracy, and freedom”—have become drained of substance.15 The neglect of “symbolic equilibrium” means that, like the hapless individuals running the sacrificial organization in Cabin, we can no longer properly conceive of being placed in a situation of “having to do everything in our power,” even if it looms right before our eyes. Far from being a sign of our freedom or a proof of our moral progress, Baudrillard likens our exemption from sacrifice to the condition of slavery, in which we have been stripped of the right to give a part of ourselves back to the “technical system of generalized exchange and general gratification.”16 The deeper source of violence in the global system lies in the fact that globalization is a project advanced by a “culture that has lost its values” and “can only take its revenge on the values of others.”17 Operating under the horizon of consensus, the global system cannot conceive of the other as anything other than a criminal, and its understanding of itself as “obvious Good” means that, unlike traditional empires, it cannot even conceive of the long-term advantages or strategic prudence of allowing the enemy a right to his otherness.18 The other has become an entity whose difference is a temporary aberration and who is fated to share the same pleasures and to submit to the same appetites as oneself. The destruction of values does not require the exercise of deadly force to proceed, and it can also be carried out by people who have no idea of what they are doing and who possess no awareness of the impact of their actions. Baudrillard’s account of global violence goes a long way toward explaining why Marty and Dana, though lacking malevolent or vengeful intentions, nevertheless act with a hubris that is invisible to them. For the judgment whereby they condemn the world rests on the certainty that the emptiness of their lives, as well as those of their persecutors, is the ultimate destination of modernity. Although they are quick to recognize the global system as destructive and sterile, they nevertheless cannot help giving their assent to its values in their conviction that the deprived will become just as depraved and as undeserving of life as the wealthy should they themselves ever attain wealth and status. They are, in effect, the products of a culture that, in the words of Meic Pearse, has “excommunicated all cultures” but their own, as well as their own “past.”19 Dana and Marty might chafe at having to be attired in the mantle of the virgin and the motley of the fool for the purposes of the ceremony, but they fail to realize that these costumes are draped over the nakedness of a still more radical commission, that of the mediator, which confers on them the imperial prerogative not to envy or copy the beliefs and dispositions of the other. Accordingly, they find it natural to suppose, or to cling to the conviction, that they have circumnavigated all human desires and found them empty. This belief, to be sure, has nothing to do with arrogance in any conventional sense, because it presumes that human beings are incapable of resisting or rising above their appetites. In other words, it considers its foundations base enough to nullify any accusations of elitism or oppression. Such an attitude is in essence totalitarian, as it issues from an act of closure toward vital and enduring human realities. It denies that human beings are capable of

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dedicating themselves to ends and objectives that transcend self-interest. For although Dana and Marty make uneasy references to the need for “a change” and to give “someone else a chance,” the other in the film cannot but be demonic. Unlike the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, the totalitarianism of the present, which, in accordance with what Philip Rieff calls the therapeutic, is based on the eradication of all “renunciatory modes” and “creedal constraints.”20 It does not impose moral demands on people for the sake of creating a new society, incite them to persecute targeted minority groups, or mobilize them for war. Instead, it is a totalitarianism of the individual, centered on one’s desires as well as one’s feelings of powerlessness, which operates through a volatile and contradictory pair of injunctions. On the one hand, the individual is told that it is hopeless to struggle against one’s weaknesses and appetites. To be human is to submit to nature. No one can sincerely believe that one can have too much money, or that anyone would forgo the sexual opportunities that come with an improved social status. On the other hand, one is also told that, in addition to being equal to others in one’s submission to nature, the only thing that stands in the way of one’s efforts to raise one’s status is an unjust status quo. To be an individual is to be free of the bounds of nature, since nature is merely a social construction that can be reshaped and re-engineered to alleviate one’s resentments and grievances. These contradictory injunctions comprise the divided and ambivalent heart of a totalitarianism that operates by means of inflated pride and low moral expectations, yet this very deadlock serves as the fuel for a staggeringly prosperous economy. But as Stephen L. Gardner points out, such an economy requires a “vast amplification” of personal and public debt to keep the resentments and grievances of individuals from boiling over and destroying society.21 The capitalist market succeeds in transforming “envy, jealousy, resentment, rage” and the other forces that endanger human societies into sources of profit, but it cannot escape periodic crises created by imbalances of appetite and the flagging of desire, or, more disastrously, by the onset of self-hatred when the population becomes poisoned with disgust at the spectacle into which it has made itself.22 The strategy that capitalism adopts toward the debts it accumulates and the social crises it sets in motion can only be one of postponement, but the longer it puts off the day of reckoning, the more devastating this reckoning will be when it finally arrives.23 In The Cabin in the Woods, this strategy of postponement is shown arriving at its inglorious demise. Desire can no longer be sustained, in spite of the brutal fates to which the adults are willing to abandon their children. Like other varieties of the katechon, institutions that employ measured doses of force and fraud to stem the tide of chaos that would otherwise sweep away the possibility of commodious living, the capitalist market serves to distract human beings from the dark truths regarding their conditions of life, postponing in effect their confrontation with the violent foundations of social existence. Girard frames the exposure of this elemental violence as an apocalyptic encounter: the individual, upon being confronted with the violence that founds the community—and continues to contribute to its wellbeing—may shrink from the implications of this disclosure and double down on his or her defense of



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sacrificial practices, a path that Girard on numerous occasions emphasizes will lead to global destruction.24 The other choice at this moment of cataclysmic danger is to renounce violence in a manner that Girard associates with the Gospels. The endings of such films as The Cabin in the Woods and Melancholia imply that Girard’s theory must make room for a third possible response to the revelation of foundational violence alongside the reactive defense of sacrifice and the renunciation of violence: impotent self-hatred. It is difficult to imagine that this third response would not be far more common than the other two, as it belongs to those who have become convinced of the pointlessness of all communal enterprises and who lack the will and inclination to commit themselves to a spiritual discipline.25 In other words, it is the response proper to passive nihilism. After being deprived of the distractions afforded by an expanding capitalist market, such individuals are henceforth delivered over, insignificant and helpless, to an evil that strikes them as pervasive and omnipotent. They cannot find a way to integrate this knowledge into a historical narrative, whether Hegelian or realist, or into a spiritual framework, such as the Augustinian doctrine of the fallenness of humanity. They are thus plunged into guilt at having been the beneficiaries of cruelties and injustices while being unable to take consolation from the virtues and struggles of the past. Thus, far from imagining that they and their contemporaries can take meaningful action on behalf of victims undergoing persecution and oppression, they appease their guilt by consenting to piecemeal measures that have no hope of altering power relations in society and in the world yet do not threaten to erode substantially their standard of living. The revelation, moreover, that domination is the way of humankind leads them not to renounce domination altogether but to maximize the petty dominations, sexual or economic, that they believe will never rise to the level of a communal or political purpose. Such individuals end up doing what the founding myths sought to prevent men and women from doing, which, in the words of Manent, is to “stumble interminably over the scandal of their origin.”26 This “stumbling” may take men and women back to the cruelty of their origins, but for all the turmoil and despair it stirs up in them, it does not serve to deepen their sense of historical identity. They are not led for the most part to wonder at how previous generations might have dealt with such knowledge, and why it would not have triggered in them the same response of overpowering horror. The monsters of the contemporary imagination revert directly to cannibalism without an intervening phase of barbarism. The horror they evoke reflects our collective decision to feed on ourselves. For the immobilization of perspective is a consequence of the pact that the totalitarian individualist has made with him- or herself to salvage his or her pride from humiliation, which Gardner calls the “definingly democratic passion,” the “sense of nothingness experienced in self-comparison to others.”27 It is to defend his or her pride as the final redoubt of a brittle and precarious identity, rather than to embrace a spiritual discipline based on compassion for the other, that the therapeutic individual heeds the Girardian commandment not to copy the desires of the other.

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Notes 1

The author wishes to thank Gerry Canavan, Dan Hassler-Forest, and Chris Fleming for their help and inspiration in his writing of this chapter. 2 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 137. 3 René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary Baker (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 198. 4 René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 136. 5 René Girard, with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (London: Continuum, 2007), 251. 6 René Girard, Anorexia and Mimetic Desire, trans. Mark Anspach (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 36. 7 Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 36. 8 Gerry Canavan, “ ‘We Are the Walking Dead’: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative,” Extrapolation 51, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 444. 9 Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 239. 10 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 127. 11 John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Animals (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 163. 12 Ibid., 160. 13 Girard, Battling to the End, 42, 13. 14 Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2003), 98. 15 Ibid., 88–9. 16 Ibid., 102–3. 17 Ibid., 97–8. 18 Ibid., 100. 19 Meic Pearse, Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 51. 20 Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2006), 15. 21 Stephen L. Gardner, “Democracy’s Debt: Capitalism and Cultural Revolution,” in Debt: Ethics, the Environment, and the Economy, eds Peter Y. Paik and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 95. 22 Ibid., 109. 23 Ibid., 95. 24 See, for example, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 180 and 251, Battling to the End, 103, and Evolution and Conversion, 237. 25 Stephen L. Gardner, “The Eros and Ambitions of Psychological Man,” in Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 232–3. 26 Pierre Manent, “La leçon de Ténèbres de René Girard,” Commentaire 5, no. 19 (Autumn 1982): 462; translation mine. 27 Gardner, “Democracy’s Debt,” 96.

9

Eyes Wide Shut: Mimesis and Historical Memory in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining David Humbert

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) appears thematically remote from some of the Kubrick productions, such as Barry Lyndon (1974) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), that preceded it.1 But the theme of violence that is so central to Kubrick’s only horror film is also present in most of Kubrick’s films. In the opening scenes of 2001, for example, violence in prehuman history is inaugurated by an australopithecine who kills one of his own kind. As the film shifts to the future, Hal, the homicidal computer, repeats this first act of violence when he murders the astronauts whom he fears will disconnect him. The glowing red camera lens that functions as his all-seeing eye suggests the forgotten blood of ancient violence to which his bureaucratic astronaut companions seem oblivious until their lives are threatened. As a product of human intelligence, not even the first self-aware computer can free itself of the history of aggression he has inherited from his makers. This theme of past, forgotten violence that repeats itself in the present is as central to The Shining as it is to 2001. In The Shining, Jack Torrance, a failed writer, attempts to kill his family while they are living at a remote hotel where he has been hired as a caretaker. Although Torrance is initially portrayed as already unstable, his recourse to violence turns out to be due to the influence of the Hotel (“the House”)2 that, in the form of demonic ghosts that inhabit it, urges him to commit a murder similar to a previous multiple murder there. He attempts to murder his wife and son but only at the behest of the House that is revealed to be a repository, a magically charged locus horridus, of the history of violence. Much has been made of the fact that Kubrick consulted Freud’s essay The Uncanny3 in preparation for the film (or even, according to one apocryphal story, made his cast members read it). It has been suggested in much criticism on The Shining that Kubrick’s approach is “psychological” even though he has gone on record as avoiding psychology in his films.4 It could indeed have been Kubrick’s intention to translate the theories of Freud’s essay directly to the screen, but there is simply no evidence that this is true apart from the fact that Kubrick was interested in the book. There are, of course, perplexing elements in the film that certainly point to phenomena that Freud was the first to highlight with such acuity: mirrors, doubles and doubling, repetition, and the experience of déja vu, not to mention the Oedipal tensions among the characters.

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But how are we to judge that Kubrick’s evaluation of these phenomena is the same as Freud’s, or that he adopted the same reductive formula for explaining them? The point of Freud’s essay, after all, is to explain rationally the experience of such phenomena in reference to a psychologically determined “return of the repressed.” There are no true ghosts, no doubles, no déjà vu, only the recrudescence of psychic states of animistic magical belief. The double is an expression of primary narcissism, long surmounted in childhood and in civilization, but returning to experience by means of a repetition compulsion.5 I argue that it is the return of violence, not of Freud’s primary narcissism, that is the source of the uncanny in The Shining. This recurrence is not rooted in unconscious fantasies and sexual urges but has real foundation in human history and action, with which Kubrick was deeply preoccupied. Furthermore, our inability to acknowledge it, or our tendency to remain with our “eyes wide shut,” does constitute a very real repression, but of the Kubrickian rather than the Oedipal variety. * An electronic version of the hymn Dies Irae (Latin: Day of Wrath) accompanies the opening traveling shots of Jack Torrance’s car as it winds along the road through the massive mountains of Colorado. Not only a director but an assiduous student of film, Kubrick had to have been aware that this music recalls the Carl Theodor Dreyer film Vredens Dag (Danish: Day of Wrath), a claustrophobic tragedy in which an intrafamily erotic entanglement plays out against the background of witch persecution in the seventeenth century.6 In spite of the film’s subject, Dreyer’s treatment of the story is far from Freudian. An innocent young woman, Anne Pedersdotter, is married without her consent to Absalon, a much older man, but falls in love with her stepson Martin. Her love is then transformed by stages into a destructive passion. The self-delusion that leads Anne Pedersdotter to betray her husband with her stepson turns out to be an inverted reflection of the delusive mental atmosphere of witch persecution. The Shining, on the other hand, concerns a dangerously unstable man who comes under the influence of a hotel with a mysterious history of violence. There are indications that he suffers from a well-established inferiority complex and from frustration with his unsuccessful career as a writer. It is also clear that he has problems with drinking and with violence. But these psychological difficulties only predispose him to the influence of the House over his mind; they do not explain the subsequent dissolution of his personality. It is worth considering that Jack Torrance’s relationship to the House is parallel to the relationship between Anne Pedersdotter and the witch trials. I will argue that Jack, like Anne, is determined not by the autonomous incestuous desires that find their source in his individual psyche, but by a collective history that precedes and engulfs him. Without doubt both films evoke the uncanny, but in a way that suspends judgment on its nature. In a remarkable scene after Anne has been told that her mother, a convicted witch, could summon the living and the dead, she calls for her lover, Martin, who then appears as if confirming her own powers of invocation. That the appearance



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could also have been a coincidence is very clear, but the viewer is left in an uncomfortable state of uncertainty. In some respects Kubrick’s approach is similar in The Shining, but if anything he tips the balance away from the psychological interpretation by suggesting that truly paranormal events are occurring. He explained to the interviewer, Michel Ciment, that the references to Jack’s mental instability are employed as “psychological misdirection” to prepare the audience for the supernatural elements in the story: Stephen Crane wrote a story called “The Blue Hotel.” In it you quickly learn that the central character is a paranoid. He gets involved in a poker game, decides someone is cheating him, makes an accusation, starts a fight and gets killed. You think the point of the story is that his death was inevitable because a paranoid poker player would ultimately get involved in a fatal gunfight. But, in the end, you find out that the man he accused was actually cheating him. I think The Shining uses a similar kind of psychological misdirection to forestall the realization that the supernatural events are actually happening.7

Added to the psychological causes of violence are historical and magical factors. Jack’s instability is preceded by a variety of historical events that cluster around the Hotel. As the Torrances travel on the road to the Hotel, they discuss the fate of the Donner party, a group of settlers who were forced to pass the winter in the Sierra Mountains. Snowbound by blizzards, the group resorted to cannibalism to survive. Later, Jack’s employer, Mr Ullman, will casually mention to Jack and Wendy that the Hotel was built on an Indian graveyard, which became the site of violent battles between the builders and native warriors. Jack is also informed by Ullman of a previous caretaker who, while looking after the Hotel during the winter, murdered his family and then shot himself. Jack’s history with his son Danny, whom he has abused, is one among many acts of violence referenced in the film. His own history and the history of the Hotel condition what transpires later, but he is also magically infected by the ghosts of the Hotel, whose orders he carries out. Infection and contagion are principal categories in magical religion as well as in the horror genre. Vampires, zombies, aliens that duplicate humans, etc., replicate by contagion and, even if scientific causes are sometimes awkwardly adduced, magical replication. Magical causation plays a significant role in sympathetic magic, where change is effected through contact and the influence of like upon like. But the ghosts, too, are traces left by the history of the Hotel. The supernatural and the historical are intimately linked in what transpires. There is some evidence, particularly in his interviews with Ciment and Playboy, that Kubrick was interested in the paranormal, and its influence on The Shining is clear.8 Telepathy, telekinesis, and ghostly encounters are all present in the story. There is a sense, too, in which the problem of violence is linked with magical causation, but not because it springs from any paranormal ability. According to René Girard, violence, like magical propagation, spreads by a kind of contagion. The magic involved is imitation. Mob violence can ignite and spread contagiously on the slimmest of pretexts: a vague suspicion, a flimsy piece of evidence, a delirious and universal imitation of the first act of violence perpetrated by a leader. Violence spreads by imitation because of the automatic

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prestige it confers, the charismatic authority it commands, and the protection it seems to afford. The desire it evokes, according to Girard, is contagious—mimetic desire is itself a potent engine of both violence and crowd solidarity. Girard has suggested that ritual practices and religious prohibitions can be seen as attempts to channel violence, to limit the operation of contagious desire.9 It is conceivable that the obsessive character that some, following Freud, have observed in ritual and magical behavior is also a kind of protection/sublimation of imitative desire. Though Freud’s observations on ritual practice in Totem and Taboo stopped with repressed sexual desire, Girard opens the vein anew and follows its origins to a different source: the calamitous potential for violence in human desire and culture.10 * The establishing shot of The Shining is an aerial shot of the Overlook Hotel, where Jack has been heading by car during the credit sequence. It is here that the interview between Jack and his employers takes place, during which the history of the Hotel is first broached. Once inside the Hotel, Jack has his first meeting and interview with Mr Ullman, the manager. Jack, who is applying for the winter-long job of caretaker for the Hotel, projects false enthusiasm for the position. Mr Ullman discloses the fact that a multiple murder had occurred at the Hotel, but his staid and affable manner stands in stark contrast to the horrific nature of the story. His assistant registers his uneasiness with a look that Kubrick is careful to record. Jack shows some momentary loss of confidence but very quickly recovers, and he assures his future employers that he can be relied upon. A motif of the film is introduced here: the failure to acknowledge with full emotional resonance the content of a past act of violence. Just as both Jack and Ullman paper over and suppress the horrific nature of the murder with bland humor, Jack’s wife, Wendy, is later unable to acknowledge her husband’s past brutality to her son Danny. Early on in the film Danny demonstrates psychic abilities of telepathy and premonition. While Jack is in the interview, Danny is playing in the bathroom, talking to an imaginary friend named Tony, who, according to Danny, lives in his mouth. Tony appears to be able to hide or disclose things to Danny. When Danny, gazing at himself in the bathroom mirror, asks that Tony reveal to him why he does not want to go to the Hotel, Tony at first refuses. But when Danny insists, he has a vision of blood cascading from two elevator doors decorated with native motifs. After he collapses with a seizure, a child psychiatrist examines Danny and then interviews Wendy. Curious about Tony, the psychiatrist finds out that Tony appeared in Danny’s life shortly after he had dislocated his shoulder. When Wendy cautiously discloses that Jack caused the injury in a drunken rage, she tells the story with a nervous grin, out of keeping with the seriousness of what she is describing. She excuses him by saying, “It’s just the sort of thing you do a hundred times.” Kubrick is careful to record the psychiatrist’s shocked expression. Even Tony’s initial refusal to “say” to Danny why he didn’t want to go to the Hotel repeats what one might call the eyes-wide-shut motif. Danny’s adoption of a protective imaginary friend is an attempt



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at preemptive censorship, partly from the threat of a violent father, partly from the evil nature of the Hotel itself. Danny’s unconscious self-protection and repression do not stem from weakness as they do in the case of Wendy, or social artifice as in the case of Jack and Mr Ullman. Instead it is the emergency protective measure of a child who, unlike adults, is not habitually closed but rather too open to the monstrosity of violence. A further instance of this variety of repression is found in the conversation of Danny with the cook Mr Halloran, with whom he talks later about his ability to “shine.” Halloran is a singular character in the film. Unlike the employers at the Overlook, his geniality is natural and unforced. Not only does he give Wendy and Danny an entertaining tour of the Hotel kitchen, he comically recommends the consumption of prunes because “you want to keep regular if you want to be happy.” Later we see erotic nudes on the wall of his apartment, as if he is the kind of man who is at ease with sexuality. He contrasts sharply with Jack, whose writer’s block and intellectual constipation have generated an inferiority complex, not to mention a mean-spirited contempt for his wife, his abuse of Danny, and perhaps even his alcoholism. It is also noteworthy that Jack shows very little interest in sex per se—with the great exception of his encounter with the ghost in Room 237, which I will discuss more fully below. He does plenty of leering and makes other gestures that suggest lasciviousness, but largely in scenes in which his violence is frothing to the surface—as when Wendy is fending him off with a bat. Halloran is also one of the representatives of three historical crimes that are consistently alluded to in the film: the conquest of Native Americans, the Jewish Holocaust, and American slavery. Bill Blakemore has argued that references to native culture and history of extermination and broken treaties are rife in the film.11 Peter Cocks has demonstrated that references to both the Holocaust and Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of European Jews are present in specific scenes.12 Both confirm that the presence of the African-American Halloran echoes other allusions to historical oppression, murder, and injustice that are evoked by references to native and Jewish history. To return to Halloran and his conversation with Danny, the theme of historical memory and the resistance to it, the failure to react fully to its emotional content, is both repeated and distilled in the oddly paced exchange between the two. Danny and Halloran sit rigidly throughout the entire conversation with their hands folded—a remarkable posture for both if one considers Halloran’s personality and Danny’s age. The scene is stark and brightly lit. At first, Halloran begins to probe Danny about his telepathic ability, because he has already noticed Danny’s capacity for “shining” in an earlier scene in a food storage locker. Though Halloran is keen to show Danny that his power is real and to share his experience, Danny is reluctant to speak. Pressed to explain why, Danny replies “I’m not supposed to” and attributes the prohibition to Tony. In a likely reference to his previous conversation with Tony in the mirror and his collapse before he came to the Overlook, Danny says that Tony “shows” him things that he can’t remember, because he has shown things only when Danny has gone into a kind of sleep. Asked if Tony has shown him anything about the Overlook, Danny changes the subject and turns the conversation back toward Halloran.

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In the course of the conversation it becomes clear that it is not only Danny but Halloran who refuses to speak frankly. Asked if he is scared of the Hotel, Halloran denies it, though he is clearly made uncomfortable by the question. He explains that not only people but places can “shine.” In response to Danny’s direct question, “Is there anything bad here?”, Halloran does not reply directly but instead suggests how a place like the Hotel can shine. Events in the past can leave “traces” that only those who shine can see. They can see not only things that happened in the past, but things that will happen in the future as well. He then discloses, without being very specific, that “a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years. And not all of ’em was good.” Halloran’s refusal to be direct can be attributed at least in part to a desire to protect Danny from seeing or hearing about something that he is not equipped to handle. He may be playing the same role as Tony, refusing to reveal too much or something too horrific. He chooses not to mention the killing that took place in the Hotel. His genial condescension turns stern, however, when Room 237 is mentioned. Asked once again what is in the room, Halloran abandons his role as avuncular educator and issues a command, the tone of which is chilling: “There ain’t nothin’ in Room 237. But you ain’t got no business goin’ in there anyway. So stay out. You understand? Stay out!” Room 237 is closely associated with the violence in the film. It is the sole topic that causes Halloran to nearly give way to a fit of temper. Danny reports that a woman attacked him there. When Jack goes to investigate, he undergoes a harrowing encounter with her, then returns to Wendy and reports that he saw “nothing at all.” In the course of this encounter, which takes place in the bathroom of the suite, a three-way telepathic communication begins between Danny, who drools and shakes in extreme distress; Halloran, who stares in horror at what he is seeing through the eyes of Jack; and Jack himself, who seems to embrace symbolically, in the form of a naked, decaying woman, the evil of the Hotel. It is soon after his visit to the room that Jack violently accuses Wendy of ignoring responsibilities when she suggests leaving the Hotel and begins his murderous rampage. Not only is the room the seeming origin of the violence that is to follow, it is also is the agent of forgetfulness and repression. The room acquires a magical significance as a repository of traces of those events in the past that Halloran refuses to mention and of the horror of violence itself. Halloran’s dictatorial instruction to stay out of the room mirrors Tony’s prohibition on speaking. It raises the motif of authority. The benevolent authority of Halloran and of Danny’s imaginary friend contrasts sharply with the abusive authority Jack has over Wendy and Danny. In turn, the authority that Jack claims for himself over his family appears to pale in significance to the authority that the House itself acquires over Jack. Once he has offered to sell his soul for a glass of beer he is not allowed to pay for his own drinks, as the ghost bartender Lloyd insists, because of “orders from the House.” When he finds Wendy sorting through his papers by his typewriter he begins a long rant, culminating in threats of violence, in which he berates Wendy for suggesting that they leave the Overlook and rails about the importance of his contract and his obligations to his employers.



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Kubrick’s ability to combine a complex set of motifs and problems in an individual sequence is no better demonstrated than in the scene in the Gold Ballroom that precedes this confrontation with Wendy. Here the motifs of authority, historical crime, class differentiation, and denial are superbly blended. When Jack enters the ballroom, there is an obvious contrast made between the wealthy and privileged participants and the déclassé Jack. A waiter crashes into him, spilling drinks on his clothes. The butler is deferential and subservient and, after apologizing and offering to clean Jack up, leads him into an adjoining restroom. A verbal folie à deux ensues between Jack and the waiter, who turns out to be Delbert Grady, the perpetrator of the murder of his wife and two children. In the course of the conversation, the relation of dominance between Jack and this quasi-servant is reversed until Grady, now staring with a cold and imperious authority, prevails upon Jack to “correct” his son and wife just as he “corrected” the members of his own family. Grady at first denies his identity and that he was the caretaker at the Hotel, then contradicts his own denials by describing his murder of his family. He, too, forgets. His English accent evokes both the image of the sycophantic and deferential butler and, as he undergoes the transformation to condescending domination of Jack, the image of the domineering aristocrat. Furthermore, his principal objection to Danny is that he is attempting to bring a “nigger cook” to the Hotel. This short exchange chillingly evokes all the violence of race hatred, the presumption of authority in exerting power over a supposed inferior. The fact that this encounter between violent doubles occurs in a restroom is often cited as yet more evidence that Kubrick is referencing Freudian categories of repression and anal personality types, not to mention the passages in The Uncanny on the theme of the double.13 It is perhaps significant, too, that Danny has his first visionary experience of blood cascading from the elevator of the Hotel while staring into the bathroom mirror. Also, Jack not only has his encounter with the woman in Room 237 in the bathroom of the suite, he also nearly corners Wendy in their apartment bathroom in the culminating, iconic scene in which he crashes through the door with an axe and utters his famous line, “Heeeere’s Johnny!” Blood has its significance even in the encounter of Jack and Grady. The walls of the restroom are blood-red, recalling the blood of Danny’s vision and the Native American holocaust represented by the native motifs on the elevator from which the blood pours.14 It remains an important question whether Kubrick’s use of blood as metaphor and metonym is preeminently Freudian. In all of these scenes, the association of blood with historical and potential violence is paramount. Even the encounter with the naked ghost in Room 237, the sole reference to sexuality in the film (apart from the erotic nudes on the walls of Halloran’s apartment), is both the consequence of and the catalyst for violence and bloodshed. One should not forget that perhaps the most iconic murder in cinematic history, of which Kubrick was certainly aware, was the murder of Marion Crane in a bathroom in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Just as significant as the rather brief shower scene in that film is the much longer sequence in which Norman Bates cleans up the blood from the killing.15 Like Hitchcock, Kubrick’s staging of The Shining demonstrates that he is alive to the significance of blood as a signifier not only of violence, but of fatal pollution as well.

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René Girard has commented on the connection between blood and aboriginal notions of taboo, impurity, and pollution: Spilt blood of any origin, unless it has been associated with a sacrificial act, is considered impure [in aboriginal religion]. This universal attribution of impurity to spilt blood springs directly from the definition we have just proposed: wherever violence threatens, ritual impurity is present. When men are enjoying peace and prosperity, blood is a rare sight. When violence is unloosed however, blood appears everywhere—on the ground, underfoot, forming great pools. Its very fluidity gives form to the contagious nature of violence. Its presence proclaims murder and announces new upheavals to come. Blood stains everything it touches the color of violence and death.16

“Blood stains everything it touches the color of violence and death,” including the walls of the mirrored restroom where Jack and Grady confront each other. It is the stain of violence that cannot be flushed away or purified. It also cannot be expunged from the family, from sexuality, or from class relationships. It is even reflected in the bright red key that opens the door to Room 237 and the red “eye” of Hal in 2001. There is a “return of the repressed” in Kubrick’s films, yet it is not the collective or individual unconscious, or primordial sexuality, that recurs, but instead primordial violence that escalates by mimetic contagion that, dissolving all boundaries, constitutes an endemic threat to human social and political order. According to Girard, this is not to say that sexuality is unrelated to violence, only that the causal relationship is the reverse of what Freud claimed it to be: “[Following Freud] we are tempted to conclude that violence is impure because of its relation to sexuality. Yet only the reverse proposition can withstand our scrutiny. Sexuality is impure because it has to do with violence.”17 Taking this cue from Girard, it is illuminating to interpret the encounter of Jack with the woman in Room 237 as asserting a connection between sexual desire and transgressive violence. At first, it is indeed tempting to interpret Jack’s embrace of the woman after she emerges from the bath as a sexual sin that leads to a sort of acceptance of evil and an absorption into the House. However, if one takes the House as the repository of acts of violence throughout history and Room 237 as its central locus horridus, then the woman might represent the sexual allure, the false beauty, and prestige of violence, and not the uncanny attraction of the “monstrous feminine,” as some have called it.18 As we are accustomed to attributing libido to sex and not to violence, we forget that violence has its own allure, its own élan. This sheds a different light on Jack’s lascivious mugging as he threatens Wendy, backing her up the stairs and extending his tongue in the scene that occurs after the one in Room 237. It is not just a case of a primordial id that is breaking through Jack’s civilized veneer, as is often Freudianly argued. This scene on the stairs demonstrates not the return of incestuous desire that is tinged with violence, but the return of violent desire that is tinged with sexuality. The House absorbs Jack’s soul and makes him an agent of its “mad” authority. For Jack, having been won over by the House, violence is sex. He is not possessed by his own desire, or his individual id, but by the desire of the “others,”



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or the House: “Possession, then, is an extreme form of alienation in which the subject totally absorbs the desires of another.”19 This, in a nutshell, is mimetic desire. Again according to Girard, there is a reason that violence is forgotten and laid away. It has the quality of an unendurable infinitude, the unending back and forth of retribution. It is certainly possible that Danny reacts with horror and a seizure when he sees the cascading blood because it represents the mother, or the monstrous feminine. But isn’t it more persuasive to attribute his horror to what it plainly appears to be: a horror of violence? Blood calls up the boundlessness, the infinitude of violence. As Girard writes, “its very fluidity gives form to the contagious nature of violence.”20 In one sense it calls up the history of violence, which the adults around Danny cannot seem to fully register, but also the present and future possibility of violence. An unbounded potential for the infectious escalation of violence arises from any blow that is delivered, because one blow can call up another. This is very evident in the relation of doubles. The scene between Grady and Jack in the restroom underlines their status as doubles. In the course of this sequence, Jack’s desires become aligned with those of the House. He “borrows” his desire to kill from Grady. Grady has already committed the murder of his family, a twin of Jack’s own family and, although he denies it at first, is eager to set up his violent “correction” of his family as a model for Jack. Their identities are confused. Grady says he has “always” been at the Hotel, just as he claims Jack has “always” been the caretaker. But Grady also admits to being the former caretaker, making their relationship to each other difficult to unravel. The boundaries between them, their specific differences, are eroded in the viewer’s mind. Once the relationship is established between Jack and Grady, Jack meets with surprisingly stiff resistance from Wendy when he attempts to subdue her on the stairs. Upon awakening in the food locker in the kitchen, he is taunted by the disembodied voice of Grady, who speaks through the locked door. What he says is crucial as it alerts Jack to the threat that Wendy poses to him. She becomes a dangerous rival to his authority, just as Danny’s ability to shine and the imminent arrival of Halloran appear to be dangers to the House and to Grady. Earlier Grady had emphasized, with Jack’s agreement, that Danny is a “willful” boy: “Your son has a very great talent. I don’t think you are aware how great it is. That he is attempting to use that very talent against your will.” Skillfully Grady turns Jack’s attention to Danny and Wendy as antagonists. Once in the food locker, Grady goads Jack with the thought that his wife has thwarted him: “Your wife appears to be stronger than we imagined, Mr Torrance. Somewhat more … resourceful. She seems to have got the better of you.” When Jack replies that she has the upper hand only temporarily, Grady continues: “I and others have come to a belief that your heart is not in this. That you don’t have the belly for it.” Grady makes it clear that the battle between Jack and Wendy is a fight to the death for prestige, the prize for which is recognition, or the respect of the “others.” The dissolution of the boundaries between husband and wife and father and child occasions unbounded rivalry between them, which holds the potential for unbounded, reciprocal violence. Once conceived of as a simply a willful boy, Danny becomes a potential object of revenge, not a son who needs protection. Similarly, conceived as

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a competitor for his authority (“It’s his mother. She … interferes”), Wendy attracts Jack’s escalating desire for retribution. The thought of violence for Jack is beautiful, because it gives him being: it erases in a single outburst the humiliations and failures of a lifetime. This is perhaps why Kubrick allowed, and perhaps encouraged, Jack Nicholson’s extreme acting: the distortions of Jack’s face when he describes Danny as a willful boy clearly show the animalistic distortion worked in the human frame by the reduction of human relationships to the opposition of dueling wills.21 As he pursues Danny and Wendy toward the film’s dénouement, his animalistic vocalizations underline his spiraling “possession” by violence. Much as the evils of the ancient city were transferred to a scapegoat, or pharmakos, to purify it, Jack attempts to transfer his overwhelming sense of failure and defeat to his victims.22 The fact that he does this at the behest of Grady and the “others” confirms that this desire for resolution through violence is borrowed, the inheritance of an historical chain of which the Overlook Hotel is both the reservoir and the agent. This links Danny and Wendy to historical victims—Native American, African-American, and Jewish—because all are scapegoats for the unbounded, retributive violence that regularly crops up in human affairs and that is routinely repressed and forgotten. The theme of the double in the film is best understood as associated with this repressed history of violence rather than with sexuality. It is important to note that the first sight of Grady’s twin girls occurs during Danny’s first vision of the Hotel—a brief glimpse of the two is afforded the viewer right after the blood is seen pouring out of the elevator. The doubling effect is enhanced by the fact that Danny has the vision while staring at his own image in a mirror. Jack’s encounter with his double, Grady, is one long incitement to envy, jealousy, rivalry, and violent resolution. The twin girls, whom Danny sees in the hallway while he is exploring the Hotel on his trike, invite him to join them in play “for ever and ever,” but are immediately shown lying in pools of blood, slaughtered by their father. Jack glimpses himself and the decaying corpse he is kissing in Room 237 by gazing into a mirror, which in turn is the prelude to the violence against his family. Finally, the maze in which Danny is pursued by Jack, and in which Danny tricks his father into losing his way so that the boy can escape, appears to be more than a representation of the unfathomability of the human mind. But my reading suggests a different and perhaps more specific reading of this symbol. The maze becomes a visual image of the numerous dead ends and traps that perpetuate the cyclical repetition of violence and its contagious propagation. Danny’s fairy-tale—and nonviolent—escape from the maze and the clutches of his father represents release from the maze of history, the nightmare from which humanity is trying to awake.

Notes 1

The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1980; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2007), BD; Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1975; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2011), BD; 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1968; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2007), BD.

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In the course of the film, the Overlook Hotel is also referred to as the House by the ghost bartender Lloyd. The term House is used when referring to the Hotel as an agency or entity that issues commands and initiates actions. I will use these terms interchangeably depending on the context. 3 Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in Sigmund Freud, Studies in Parapsychology (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 19–60. 4 See quotation from Stanley Kubrick, below. 5 Freud, “The Uncanny,” 40–4, 46–7. 6 Day of Wrath, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1943; New York: Criterion Collection, 2001), DVD. 7 Michel Ciment, “Kubrick on The Shining: An Interview with Michel Ciment,” The Kubrick Site, http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html (accessed April 15, 2014). 8 “Playboy Interview with Stanley Kubrick,” in Jerome Agel, ed., The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 (New York: Signet, 1970), 321–54. 9 See René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 28–31. See also Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 14–16. 10 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Random House, 1946). See Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 193–222, and René Girard, in collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 352–82. 11 Bill Blakemore, “Kubrick’s Shining Secret,” Kubrick Shining, http://williamblakemore. com/Blakemore-%20Kubrick%20Shining.pdf (accessed April 15, 2014). 12 Peter Cocks, “Bringing the Holocaust Home: The Freudian Dynamics of Kubrick’s The Shining,” Psychoanalytic Review 78, no. 1 (1991): 103–25. 13 Freud, “The Uncanny,” 40–7. 14 One more example of reference to blood is significant: the bright red lapels of Lloyd the bartender seen as Jack begins his absorption into the Hotel. 15 Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1960; Universal City: Universal Studios, 1998), DVD. 16 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 33–4. 17 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 34. 18 See Robert Kilker, “All Roads Lead to the Abject: The Monstrous Feminine and Gender Boundaries in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining,” Literature Film Quarterly 34, no. 1 (2006): 54–63. See also Christopher Hoile, “The Uncanny and the Fairy Tale in Kubrick’s The Shining,” Literature Film Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1984): 5–12. 19 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 165. 20 Ibid., 34. 21 Similar effects of facial distortion can be seen in the close-ups of the respective killers Alex and Leonard Laurence in A Clockwork Orange (directed by Kubrick [1971; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2001], DVD), and Full Metal Jacket (directed by Kubrick [1987; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2007], BD). The australopithecine who commits the first murder of 2001: A Space Odyssey is also seen in close-up after the killing. Seen in slow motion, his features are distorted in rage before he throws the murder weapon, a bone, in the air in triumph. All of these parallel and extreme close-ups have nothing to do with realism or expressionism, but represent Kubrick’s

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deliberate stylization of the act of violence. Even the liberal writer of A Clockwork Orange, filled with rage when he recognizes Alex as his attacker, is given such a close-up. 22 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 94.

10

Against Romantic Love: Mimeticism and Satire in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, and To Rome with Love Scott Cowdell

The recent films of Woody Allen mount a sustained attack on romantic love, presenting it as derivative, invincibly delusional, and invariably destructive. Indeed, Allen’s conviction that our lives are chiefly devoted to preserving such delusions is stated in voice-over at the start of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, so that we cannot miss it. Allen’s films have tended to insinuate his assessment of our deluded yearnings under the cover of comedy. This is something that René Girard observed about William Shakespeare, the genius expositor of mimetic theory in all its dimensions, who nevertheless revealed these unpalatable truths gently to audiences lest they take umbrage.1 I suspect that a similar anti-mimetic mission is at work when Woody Allen satirizes what René Girard calls “metaphysical desire”—our desire for the “being” of a desirable model, albeit approached through our desiring whichever “object” it is that they desire. Such metaphysical freighting is evident in the exaggerated aura that Allen confects around places: from Manhattan to Barcelona, from London to Paris to Rome. It was also on display in Allen’s quintessentially mimetic earlier character, Leonard Zelig (in the 1983 “mockumentary,” Zelig), who was known as “the human chameleon,” and who became famous for automatically adopting the behavior and appearance of whoever he was with. Such “metaphysical desire” is also suggested in another recent Woody Allen film about self-deception, Midnight in Paris, with each generation seeking in earlier periods the repository of fuller “being.” Owen Wilson’s struggling screenwriter Gil pines for the Paris of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, while they look back to the belle époque of Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, and Degas, who in turn wistfully cast their eyes to the Renaissance. Eventually Gil decides that it is best simply to live in the present, and he abandons all such escapist yearning. This is all good fun. But, in the three other recent films under consideration here, Allen increasingly takes leave of subtlety. He goes too far for many fans in what I

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suggest is a progressively more explicit, mimetically aware onslaught on the delusion and self-destructiveness underlying romanticism. Where audiences might expect the romance of pure attraction, imbued with a sacred force that ensures the triumph of true love over every obstacle until it attains the transcendence of a Hollywood ending, here this is all deconstructed to reveal the mimetically derivative obverse of noble passion. The transcendent bliss of romantic authenticity is punctured, uncovering a mimetic substructure of unoriginality, restlessness, and self-deception. Hence these films have attracted significant audience negativity on websites such as Rotten Tomatoes. In what follows, the works are considered in the order of their appearance. I will conclude with some Girardian reflections on how the project of human love might fare better if mimeticism, and hence romanticism, were kept in check.

I The mimetic triangle of subject, model, and object of desire is echoed in the threefold title of Allen’s 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Vicky craves the “being” of Barcelona, where she is researching a dissertation on Catalan identity. But with Javier Bardem’s supremely self-confident artist character Juan Antonio, after a romantic evening of Catalan guitar music, she seeks this identity in his embrace—aided no doubt by the strong attraction that her free-spirited friend Cristina has first felt for Juan Antonio, awakening Vicky’s own desire. Girard points to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the classic text of love’s awakening and shifting according to others’ desire, with Puck’s love juice serving as a metaphor for this mimetic principle.2 (I note in passing that Woody Allen once made a film called A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy in which, among other things, an American pragmatist philosopher was overcome by the elixir of love and transformed into a wood sprite.) Vicky, like her older friend Judy, is typically drawn to the solid if boring male types that Cristina despises so that, in the grip of romance, Vicky’s and Judy’s lives are torn between different models of desire, leaving them perpetually unresolved and dissatisfied. Scarlett Johansson’s Cristina is the real mimetic firecracker, however. Perpetually restless and loath to commit to anything that is not individual and unconventional, Cristina knows that she wants something exceptional out of life but is never sure what. Her mimetic restlessness, devoted to self-differentiation at all costs, ensures that she will gravitate to only what is contrary, intense, and dangerous.3 This she finds in a threesome with Juan Antonio and his troubled on-again, off-again wife, María Elena, played by Penelope Cruz. These warring spouses at last find some stability together thanks to the desire that Cristina feels for both of them, which reawakens Juan Antonio’s and Maria Elena’s passion for each other. “Something had always been missing,” Maria Elena reflects, but now the mimetic agency of Cristina has provided it. Maria Elena’s pistol-wielding rivalry with Juan Antonio reasserts itself the moment that Cristina calls it quits, recalling Girard’s linking of madness to “internal mediation” that has become obsessive, when the “mimetic doubles” emerge. Non-mimetic



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psychology views madness as an individual condition, whereas for Girard it is always an interdividual one, representing extreme mimetic escalation.4 At the film’s end, everyone is left just as they were at the beginning. As Jerry Seinfeld said of his own TV series, “Nobody learns, nobody hugs.” And of course Girard credits Seinfeld with significant mimetic awareness.5

II Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris explored the theme of escapist fascination with the past, while You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger satirizes the occult as a further realm of self-delusion. Yet, unlike the Paris film, Tall Dark Stranger joins Allen’s two other recent films under consideration for the significant attention it pays to delusory romantic attachments. Linked couples in the film manifest linked mimetic dynamics. Anthony Hopkins’s Alfie is a wealthy older Londoner obsessed by the sexy young adventuress Charmaine, yet blind to the gold-digging and philandering of this textbook Girardian coquette.6 His estranged wife Helena is the chief vehicle of occult fascination in the film, and while this particular theme cannot be pursued here, it is notable that her new romance with Jonathan, a widowed occult bookshop owner, provides the film’s only happy ending—happy because of their invincible delusions. It is the happiness of grotesque folly, as the film’s mock-theatrical romantic closing scene reveals. There we see the depleted “being” of Helena and Jonathan mimetically supercharged thanks to an endless supply of reincarnated mediators. These emerge in the form of exotic past lives that the lovers spur each other into conjuring up. In the film’s next generation of characters, Josh Brolin’s Roy, a doctor turned writer’s-blocked novelist, abandons Naomi Watts’s beautiful Sally, who just wants a reliable husband who will give her a family and some support. Roy, however, has become moonstruck by Freda Pinto’s exotic dark beauty, Dia. He looks longingly across the way into the window of Dia’s apartment, watching her play the guitar. The “metaphysical desire” that Dia arouses in Roy is symbolized by her red dress, which provides the only image of color in an otherwise dull filmic palette, suggesting her state of heightened “being.” Once Roy moves in across the way with Dia, however, he immediately finds himself looking wistfully back into his old apartment. Roy’s eye is drawn admiringly to the shapely form of his former wife, Sally, whom he watches through the window while she is wearing only her underwear. These two confident and attractive women present an image of self-assured being that draws in Roy’s ontologically deficient self. Yet these mimetic mirages quickly dissipate, so that Roy’s mimetic desire must turn elsewhere to find its accustomed romantic fix—even back from whence it came. Meanwhile, Sally falls for Antonio Banderas’s cool, self-possessed gallery owner, Greg, who presents a metrosexual version of the Girardian coquette, and whose stylish persona and aspirational lifestyle prove mimetically irresistible. Yet the infatuation turns out to be all in her mind. Likewise, Sally’s dream of becoming her own sophisticated London gallery owner founders on the callous withholding of a promised

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loan by her dotty mother—who turns out to be the occult-obsessed Helena, ex-wife to Alfie. The offer of money is withdrawn because Helena is in the grip of a charlatan clairvoyant who is consuming her substance with Tarot readings. Unsurprisingly, most people in the film end up as victims in states of greater or lesser despair. Romantic desire here is both mimetic and sacrificial, portrayed by Allen as tragedy overlaid by farce.

III What was sufficiently explicit in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger appears even more clearly in Allen’s 2012 film, To Rome with Love. There are a number of interwoven stories in this film, but mimetic dynamics unite them all. There is Roberto Benigni’s character, Leopoldo, who is a non-entity turned overnight media sensation—until the crowd’s mimetic attention suddenly shifts elsewhere. Newlywed hayseed Milly is drawn into the arms of her favorite screen actor, then into those of the armed burglar who bursts in on their tryst. Milly is surprised to experience an intensity of desire for this bold criminal that has eluded her in marriage to the staid Antonio. Ironically, Penelope Cruz’s prostitute Anna cannot keep her hands off Antonio once she finds out how chaste he is. Milly’s desire is modeled by that of the burglar, whose supremely self-assured persona seems to offer the sense of “being” that she lacks. Similarly, the prostitute’s desire is awakened by the indifference of Antonio, whose perceived self-sufficiency likewise proves to be a mimetic aphrodisiac.7 A third mimetic dynamic is provided by Woody Allen’s own character, Jerry—a failed impresario who stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his own lack of talent and judgment—whose succession of operatic flops reveal what Girard would call “counter-imitation.” This condition, Girard writes, “typifies the proud among life’s perennial losers: those who demonstrate their independence (that they possess, after all, the being of a worthy model) by systematically pursuing courses opposite to those that the winners have chosen.”8 But the central mimetic dynamic in the film is that between Jack and Monica, with Jack played by Jesse Eisenberg—who we previously saw as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (a figure for mimetic networking, perhaps, and hence an intertextual reference on Allen’s part). Jack’s girlfriend Sally awakens his desire for her visiting friend Monica by telling Jack about Monica’s apparently universal sexual allure. We saw this phenomenon in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, too, in which desire for an object was heightened by the mimetic enhancement of its desirability through the intervention of another. Girard illustrates this principle in, among other places, Dostoyevsky’s The Eternal Husband and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. In both these narratives, an uncertain passion is strengthened by the mimetic borrowing of desire from a rival claimant.9 There is also Monica’s own aura of desirability. She is a Girardian coquette who herself provides the mimetic model for her attentive admirers, while her own confected coquette’s persona of supreme self-admiration feeds in turn on the desire that admirers exhibit toward her. In this way, coquettes and celebrities



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bootstrap themselves into a mimetically fueled state of awed fascination. Jack’s alter ego John, played by Alec Baldwin, delivers a world-weary, mimetically aware, antiromantic counterpoint through all this, guaranteeing the disappointment of filmgoers who were expecting something more conventionally starry-eyed. The one pointer beyond mimetic delusion in To Rome with Love is the character Giancarlo, who Jerry overhears singing opera in the shower. Allen’s failed impresario thinks that this undiscovered miracle tenor will bring him success at last, except that Giancarlo is able to sing only in the shower. Jerry solves the problem by incorporating a mobile shower into the operatic set. In a laugh-out-loud production of Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci, Giancarlo as Canio has to reach out of his shower cubicle to stab Silvio. Afterward Giancarlo happily returns to obscurity, having fulfilled his dream. While his desire for success was mimetically awakened by Jerry’s desire, nevertheless Giancarlo avoids mimetic entrapment. Perhaps his shower signifies a place of withdrawal from the world and its mimetic dynamics. And it is surely suggestive that Giancarlo is a mortician: he can look death in the face, and hence defy the existential threat of non-being. Perhaps this has implications for Giancarlo’s apparent capacity to accept his lot and hence to escape the threat of non-being as Girard describes it, by resisting the mimetic blandishments of “metaphysical desire.”10

IV The psychology of Dostoyevsky’s underground man, in Notes from the Underground, is also called “ontological sickness” by Girard. This core truth of mimeticism is hidden in secular modernity, according to Girard, with its preference for a deviated transcendence to replace the genuine transcendence once accessed by Christian faith and discipleship. This deviated transcendence is always sought in self-differentiation and specialness (though at the regular price of defeated and disappointed yearning for the “being” of others), becoming the cause of much destructiveness.11 Girard’s first book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, was, in its French original, titled Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, literally “romantic lie and novelistic truth.” It revealed how great modern writers have woken up to this state of affairs. Girardian thinker Stephen Gardner, in a discussion of one such text—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—names this “romantic self-immolation” as the first version of human sacrifice uncovered by Girard, arriving over a decade before the more familiar single victim mechanism was revealed in Violence and the Sacred. Gardner writes that romantic passion collides with reality, for Girard, not because its sublime infinity is tragically superior to it, as it likes to think, but because its desire is by definition impossible, parasitical on what obstructs it. It hides an inter-personal relation, a relation of imitation that it cannot admit without annihilating itself. Were the obstruction miraculously to disappear, the desire would lose its appeal; were the desire to be achieved, it would prove to be quite different … than “metaphysical desire” imagined it to be, far less exalted in reality.12

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Girard’s proposed solution reveals his understanding of sanity: “Being rational— functioning properly—is a matter of having objects and being busy with them,” he writes, while “being mad is a matter of letting oneself be taken over completely by the mimetic models.”13 Note here that Girard acknowledges the possibility of choosing, which he later clarifies as referring to the possibility of choosing better models for our desiring.14 Girard identifies monogamous marriage as the most reliable relationship context for keeping our mimetic impulses safely and productively occupied,15 investing desire in the objects of home, family, and community obligations while avoiding the mimetic self-destructiveness and disappointment that haunts romantic individualism. Because, as María Elena reminds us in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, “only unfulfilled love can be romantic.”

Notes René Girard (with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha), Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 250. 2 René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (1991) (South Bend: St Augustine’s, 2004), 29–79, 234–42. 3 René Girard, To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (1978) (London: Athlone, 1988), 96. 4 René Girard (with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort), Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 421; see also Girard, “Monsters and Demigods in Hugo,” in Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005, ed. with an introduction by Robert Doran, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 125–33, on 129. 5 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 250. 6 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 367–92. A clear and helpful exposition is provided by Bruce W. Wilson, “What Do We Want and Why Do We Want It? Chasing After the Wind: Coquetry, Metaphysical Desire and God,” St. Mark’s Review 202 (2007): 3–9. 7 René Girard, “The Passionate Oxymoron in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,” in Mimesis and Theory, 274–89, on 282. This recalls the attraction of Roy to Dia in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, thence back to his former wife who has become the new model of self-sufficient desire. 8 Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 43; see also Girard, “Innovation and Repetition,” in Mimesis and Theory, 230–45, on 240. 9 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (1961), trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 45–52; also Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky (1963, 1976), ed. and trans. with a foreword by James G. Williams (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 47–50; and finally A Theater of Envy, 133. 10 My fellow editor, Chris Fleming, pointed out the distinction between existentialist

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and Girardian non-being—the one linked to death, and the other to perceived heightened “being” in our model of desire. I see possibilities for linking them, but to explore that would lie outside the scope of this chapter—Sartrean influence on Girard has been suggested, for instance, but is yet to be fully explored. I take this opportunity to thank Chris Fleming for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 11 See Girard’s chapter, “The Dostoyevskian Apocalypse,” in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 256–89; also Girard, Resurrection from the Underground, 93. 12 Stephen L. Gardner, “Democracy and Desire in The Great Gatsby,” in Passions in Economy, Politics and the Media: In Discussion with Christian Theology, ed. Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmair-Pösel, Beiträge zur mimeticshen Theorie 17. (Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2005), 273–94, on 276. 13 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 311 (emphasis added). 14 René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre (2007), trans. Mary Baker, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), x, 35, 101. 15 René Girard (with Guillio Meotti), “Intellectuals as Castrators of Meaning: An Interview with René Girard,” Il Foglio (20 March 2007), trans. Paul N. Faraone and Christopher S. Morrissey, First Principles (28 August 2008): 2, viewed online at http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1086&theme=home& loc=b (last accessed May 2011); also Girard, “Interview,” in Richard J. Golsan, René Girard and Myth: An Introduction, Theorists of Myth (London: Routledge, 2002), 129–49, on 146. Marriage is not the only traditional alternative commended in the Girardian literature. There is also, for instance, scope for overcoming mimetic compulsion in monastic life under the Benedictine Rule: see Andrew Marr, Tools for Peace: The Spiritual Craft of St. Benedict and René Girard (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007).

11

A Beautiful Crisis? Ang Lee’s Film Adaptation of The Ice Storm Carly Osborn

The Ice Storm traces the dramatic events of a single winter’s weekend in the lives of a few Connecticut suburbanites. It is 1973, and the spirit of sexual adventure arrives in these suburbs with the advent of the “key party,” at which the men put their keys into a bowl, and their wives in turn pick out keys assigning them a sexual partner for the night. On the night of the key party, an extraordinary snowstorm sweeps through the town, wreaking environmental havoc that parallels the built-up social chaos reaching its climax at the key party. The novel written by Rick Moody was first published in 1994, and the film adaptation by director Ang Lee was released in 1997, with Moody’s involvement as consultant. Moody has written about his experience of the film adaptation, and made this comment: “When I saw the final cut … the story before me was so removed from my own imagining that it was no longer necessary to think of it as my own.”1 While he praised Lee’s film highly, Moody considered the film a very separate, and different, work from his own novel. One of the key differences Moody noticed was an aesthetic difference between his imagined characters and the actors who played those roles in the film: What I took away … was how beautiful everyone in the movie was. Of course, this had nothing to do with the book. The characters in the book looked like real people. They had bad skin, multiple canker sores, glasses. They were puffy, they didn’t exercise enough. These actors, on the other hand, were beautiful … Sometimes I was irritated by all this beauty, since it didn’t seem to have anything to do with my vision …2

In this chapter I hope to take Moody’s observations further by noting some of the differences between the book and the film—not only of aesthetics but of plot, language, and structure—and suggesting that these differences are key to a Girardian reading that reveals fundamental differences in the function of the film text compared to that of the novel. I am especially interested in the category of tragedy, and whether the film can be said to perform a tragic function.

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So what is the function of tragedy? For René Girard, tragic texts are a continuation of the scapegoat ritual: violent sacrificial ritual was memorialized in myth, which in turn developed into the theatrical genre of tragedy. Girard argues that in Western society, beginning with the ancient Greeks, tragedy “has taken over the role of ritual” in keeping violence safely “outside the community”:3 Once upon a time [there was] a temple and an altar on which the victim was sacrificed .  .  . now there is an ampitheatre [sic] and a stage on which the fate of the katharma [scapegoat], played out by an actor, will purge the spectators of their passions … this katharsis will restore the health and well-being of the community.4

Classical tragedy, Girard claims, is simply another incarnation of the scapegoat myth: this is a narrative in which a scapegoat is cast as responsible for the intrusion of evil into the community, is consequently killed or exiled, and peace is restored. The vicarious audience of tragedy thus participates in the sacrificial process, and feels a cathartic benefit at its conclusion.5 I have written previously about the characteristic features of the tragic genre,6 which parallel the features of the scapegoat ritual. In this chapter I want to observe the film’s conspicuous lack of those Girardian/tragic features that are present in the novel. It is not my intention to speculate about the reasons for the omission of these features—directorial style, investors’ demands, or what have you—but rather to consider the cumulative effect of these omissions on the function of the film as a potentially tragic text.

Evidence of mimetic desire For Girard, the crisis that threatens a community is “mimetic crisis,” proceeding from the phenomenon of “mimetic desire.” Mimesis (Gk. μίμησις = imitation) is the basis of desire: subject A desires an object because he has observed B desire it, and he imitates that desire.7 So first, does Lee’s Ice Storm depict a community struggling with mimetic desire? Indirectly, yes, but desire in the film is not depicted as particularly mimetic. The two families at the heart of the film are the Hoods: Benjamin and Elena, and their children Paul and Wendy; and the Carvers (in the novel called the Williamses): Jim and Janey, and children Mikey and Sandy. Benjamin and Janey are having an affair, in which Benjamin seems to be the pursuer. There are occasional hints that Ben envies Jim Carver, such as when he feigns pleasure at hearing of Jim’s latest financial success, but the film is fairly opaque about the motives behind the affair. Benjamin says, “We’re having an affair. Right. An explicitly sexual relationship. Your needs, my needs”8 (21:00); and while the film might suggest that Benjamin’s “needs” are more than sexual—for someone to talk to about his job, for instance—there is little suggestion that his desire for Janey is rooted in imitation of her husband.



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Ben is also shown as having rivalrous feelings toward his colleague, George Clair, but again this isn’t given much treatment in the film. In one scene, Ben watches with resentment as Clair pitches a popular idea at a work meeting; later, in bed with Janey, he complains about the way Clair also beats him at company golf matches: “I bet the entirety of his disposable income has been dedicated to humiliating me on the golf course” (20:50). Contrast this with the emphasis in Rick Moody’s novel on the mimetic nature of the characters’ desire. Benjamin dwells at length on Jim Williams’s enviable, “lucky” life, and as he sits in the Williams’s spare room with his pants around his ankles, he admits to himself that “he knew … that it was always the cuckold or the betrayed who was honored by the adulterer.”9 With similar insight, the rivalry between Benjamin and George Clair is described in terms of what Girard calls the ontological nature of mimetic desire, a desire for the mediator’s being:10 in Moody’s words, “[Clair] just wanted the space Benjamin Hood took up.”11 The world of the adolescents, in the film, contains hints of mimetic desire if one is looking for them. Mikey and Sandy Carver secretly watch their parents’ dinner parties, eating leftovers and drinking wine in the kitchen, in imitation of the forbidden adult world (11:35). Sandy stares at Wendy Hood with obsessive fascination (28:00), perhaps made more powerful by the fact that he suspects (rightly) that she and Mikey have been meeting for regular make-out sessions in the woods. And Paul Hood is advised by a schoolmate not to tell his friend Francis Davenport about his latest crush: “since he sleeps with every girl you ever show an interest in, why don’t you keep your Libbets fixation from him?” (5:36). Yet, again, the novel emphasizes and elucidates the mimetic nature of desire in ways the film does not. The Moody novel’s description of Francis Davenport goes much further than an offhand comment about rivalry over girls: [Davenport] wanted to inhabit his friends, to neutralize them. He wanted Paul’s socks and Paul’s records and Paul’s homework assignments and even Paul’s nuclear family …12

If this were not enough to demonstrate the novel’s explicitness about what Girard calls the “triangular” nature of desire, the next time Paul is together with Libbets and Davenport he describes himself as “a third term, an unwelcome geometrical element.”13

Evidence of mimetic crisis It is clear that the mimetic nature of desire is not dwelt upon in the film. What about the next element of a Girardian tragedy: the symptoms of mimetic crisis?

Physical/environmental decay, dirt, disease Girard notes that in mythical and tragic narrative, mimetic crisis is often symbolized by physical or environmental crisis, disease, destruction, and decay, and the contagious

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nature of these phenomena.14 The film contains occasional references to disease and destruction; for instance, after dinner at the Carvers, Ben complains to Elena that his chicken drumstick “was still frozen” and mumbles something about potential “disease” (12:32). Sandy Hood enjoys destroying things: he blows up his toys with firecrackers, and then attacks an attractive potted flowering shrub with a stockwhip, stripping the foliage from the only living and vibrant plant in a landscape of bare-timbered trees and snow (30:52; 32:18). Mikey Carver gives a presentation in class about “molecules,” the film’s most explicit reference to imminent disease: So when you smell something bad it’s like, in a way, you’re eating it. This is why you should not really smell things, in the same way you don’t eat everything in the world around you, because, as a smell, it gets inside of you. So, the next time you go into the bathroom after someone else has been there, remember what kind of molecules you are, in fact, eating. (1:08:06)

This speech is not in the novel, and its contribution to the film is, in part, to suggest an atmosphere of disease and potential contagion. However, the effect of this speech is also clearly humorous—a blackly comedic scene that captures the awkwardness of high school in the clash between Mikey’s earnest interest in science and the inappropriateness of what he is saying. By contrast, the novel is so heavy with the weight of references to disease and waste that one almost feels a desire to disinfect the pages. The suburb is referred to as “decomposing Canaan parish,”15 located on highway I-95, which is “a noxious artery, more like an intestine, really, a bearer of wastes and bacteria.”16 The novel is full of references to bodily wastes, with details of the characters’ bleeding mouth ulcers17 and frequent scenes of masturbation18 (in the film, the only reference to masturbation is a brief and humorous scene, a substantially reduced excerpt from the novel, in which Benjamin asks Paul not to do it in the shower [39:57]). Making small talk between the plot events, the novel’s narrator pauses to invite the reader to meditate upon the body of the Guinness-Record-holding fattest man in the world, or the “sheer total volume” of semen besmearing the planet from daily masturbation worldwide.19

Contagion Girard notes that scapegoat myths often employ the language of contagion as a metaphor for the infectiousness of mimetic desire and violence: The essential … concern here is ritual impurity … impurity is contagious … contamination is a terrible thing … If the sacrificial catharsis actually succeeds … some kind of infection is in fact being checked.20

In the novel, Benjamin Hood is a walking collection of distasteful diseases, with eczema, piles, ulcers, and canker sores described as a “pox.”21 The word “pox” evokes the plague, and marks Benjamin as a carrier of pestilence.



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When Jim Williams discovers Wendy and Sandy naked in bed together, he makes one of the most ironic speeches of the novel: having just gotten out of bed with Elena Hood, he blames the media for infecting the kids with sexual curiosity: Well, obviously there’s some kind of contagious quality to behavior like this. You guys didn’t get an idea this far out just by yourselves … so you must have gotten it somewhere.22

Wendy’s unapologetic defiance provokes Elena to forcefully wash her mouth out with soap,23 an attempt to cleanse Wendy (and perhaps herself) of the spreading crisis. None of the above appears in the film. The novel also goes to great pains to frame the story in the context of its time and place. The opening pages of the novel list significant modern phenomena before and since that fateful weekend: amongst the inventory of fax machines and multiplex cinemas are the rife infections of modern America: HIV/AIDS and computer viruses.24 While the film keeps the narrative voice (Paul, looking back on events), it omits these narratorial asides. Of course, the film has a significant and rich capacity to show the time and place visually, which the novel cannot do; but while the novel seethes with images of weeping sores, rotten timbers, and soiled undergarments, the film is visually resplendent with shiny American cars with bench seats, colorful plastic kitchenware, and shoulder-to-shoulder lapels.

Transgression and monstrosity In order for a scapegoat to be “wholly sacrificeable,” he or she must be marginal. An ordinary member of the community may become eligible to be scapegoated because of physical deformity or acts of moral transgression, making in Girard’s words “more foreign a victim who is too much a part of the community … in order to eliminate his lingering and superfluous humanity.”25 A tragic narrative may thus present characters as eligible to be scapegoated because of their transgressions or deformities. The Ice Storm, both in film and in novel form, centers on the event of the key party and the potential moral transgressions therein. But the novel goes much further in making its characters transgressive, marginal, imminent victims of a crisis. The Wendy Hood of the novel forges an identity based on transgression, shame, and blame—she is part of a group of “delinquents,” and has a reputation for salacious sex acts, as when she engages in mutual oral sex with another girl at a sleepover and word spreads of her “transgression, her perversion.”26 In the film, Wendy is portrayed as a sassy small-time rebel, stealing the occasional candy bar, a teenage girl curious about sex and boys who kisses Mikey and plays “I’ll show you mine” with Sandy (34:18)—encounters that are marked by shyness and giggling. This attitude of curiousbut-naïve adolescent banter about sex is also present in another scene, in which Wendy is asked by a classmate if there is any truth to a rumor that she “licked Dave Brewster’s weenie,” a charge she laughingly denies, and the film offers no suggestion that she is lying (16:15). The Carvers’ basement, which in the novel is a dusty, dingy

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underworld of “decay” and “neglect,”27 in the film is clean and colorful, and Wendy and Mikey’s trysts there are again a humorous snapshot of adolescence in the 1970s rather than evidence of Girardian crisis (46:25–47:12). The film also excludes much of the transgressive behavior of Wendy’s brother Paul that appears in the novel, and in one case actively reverses the character’s choice: when he is finally alone with his crush, Libbets Casey. In the film (as in the novel), Paul and Davenport are at Libbets’s family home, drinking, and taking recreational drugs from her parents’ medicine cabinet. Paul plans to give Davenport enough drugs to make him pass out, which he does; Libbets remains awake but incoherent. In the film, Paul and Libbets are talking when suddenly she slumps forward and passes out into his lap, her face buried in his crotch. The camera angles and editing point up the humor of the moment, framing Libbets as she topples, then framing Paul’s lap from above with her head between his legs, and then his astonished face (1:18:21). For a moment, he is stunned. The film cuts to another scene (Wendy and Sandy together), leaving the viewer uncertain—perhaps vaguely worried—about what Paul is going to do next, although there have been no indications that his intentions are sinister. In the next scene, after no apparent lapse of time, we see Paul carefully and caringly (if awkwardly) lifting Libbets off his lap and lowering her to the floor. He tenderly touches her face for a brief moment, and then leaves the house. In the novel, Paul slides into bed next to Libbets’s unconscious body, lifts her nightgown so he can touch her breasts, and masturbates against her buttocks. Although after ejaculating he is immediately horrified (“Was he a fool? Was he a deviant?”),28 he has nevertheless moved into the category of the transgressive, and thinks that he belongs with “deviants and losers and mutants and the loveless.”29 The Benjamin Hood of Lee’s film is not a particularly appealing character—he is an ineffectual father and an unfaithful husband—but he is nevertheless handsome and selfassured, deep-voiced and well-dressed (50:20–51:17), far from the bad-skinned loser of Moody’s novel. Girard examines the plethora of mythical scapegoats with physical deformities (e.g. Oedipus’ limp) and notes that “physical and moral monstrosity go together in mythology,”30 and tragic tales often depict the eligible scapegoat as having monstrous qualities. Benjamin’s physical faults are dwelt upon at length in the novel, which is highly relevant to a reading for tragic tropes—for example, when Benjamin’s monstrosity appalls onlookers at the key party, as he charges heavily around the room, grunting and stinking, “a tusk of [saliva] protruded from his cavernous and angry mouth.”31 There are two brief and original additions to the film—items not in the novel—that treat the theme that transgressors deserve punishment. The first is very early in the film, as Wendy watches Richard Nixon speaking on television: she makes the offhand remark, “He should be shot … he’s a liar” (8:00). Her family make no reaction to this statement. Later, though, the figure of Nixon reappears as Wendy puts on a rubber Nixon mask before lying down on the basement floor to make out with Mikey. The visual image of teenage Mikey thrusting desperately against a prone body with a large Nixon head is obviously humorous, and contributes to the film’s rich 1970s imagery that connects the character’s experiences so deeply to their historical moment. But the idea of Nixon as a transgressor, deserving of punishment, is not revisited.



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The second addition is a scene in which Elena steals some lipsticks from a chemist store (29:09). While both the novel and film depict Wendy shoplifting, the film adds this scene of Elena stealing from the same store as the one Wendy stole from. There are some intentional echoes between mother and daughter here (Elena even rides Wendy’s bike, in imitation of her, to the store), and these are perhaps intended to imply that Elena was once a bored teenager like Wendy, shoplifting for thrills, and that one day Wendy will be a bored suburban wife like Elena. A scrupulous Girardian reading might even find the idea of monstrous doubles here, a symptom of mimetic crisis. However, the scene does not imply that Elena deserves blame or punishment. As she coasts down the hill on the bicycle, smiling, her hair blowing in the breeze, Elena seems a much more sympathetic figure than the pursed-lipped housewife we have seen so far. When the chemist, catching Elena shoplifting, moves to confront her, the camera seems to share the viewer’s sympathetic dismay and moves a discreet distance away from Elena’s ensuing humiliation: panning away, out of the store, the viewer sees only dim figures behind glass doors. In all these ways, the film omits one characteristic feature of the novel: characters committing significant moral transgressions, adding to the sense of a community at the brink of mimetic crisis.

Sacrifice What of the final denouement of the mimetic crisis—the sacrificial violence? Girard notes that mimetic crisis inevitably leads to sacrifice, as an unfortunate victim is blamed for the community’s ills, and is expelled: Real or symbolic, sacrifice is primarily a collective action of the entire community, which purifies itself of its own disorder through the unanimous immolation of a victim.32

In both novel and film, there are climactic events that could be described as sacrificial, but they are treated very differently. Once again, the film rejects the novel’s grimy and visceral focus in favor of cleaner and prettier depictions. In both film and novel, teenage Mikey is electrocuted by a power line downed by an ice storm. In the film, the scene is stark, but not distasteful. It is a crisp, dark, empty night. As the power line snaps and falls onto the metal guard rail, upon which Mikey is sitting, his face is virtually expressionless—perhaps he is mesmerized, realizing what is happening but too slow to react. Then the camera switches, once again to a more discreet angle and distance, and we see Mikey topple silently onto the road (1:34:23). The death scene is peaceful, even picturesque. By contrast, in the novel, Mikey’s death is a violent act of sacrifice. The live wire that kills Mikey takes on the role of the crazed community eager for sacrifice, in its personification as it dances “the jig of the dervish, or delirious and religious mad persons.”33 Mikey’s death is by far the most grisly moment in the novel: First his face grew terribly red and he began to foam at the mouth. His teeth

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chattered and his hair began to cook … His hands were scorched black … He smoked from the ears and bled from the nose and mouth.34

I consider Mikey’s death in the novel to be a physical metaphor, a visceral illustration of the novel’s central scapegoat sacrifice, which occurs at the exact same time: the social execution of Benjamin Hood, the character marked for persecution from the story’s beginning. Benjamin takes a dive—literally—at the key party, where the community turn on him as the scapegoat for their collective guilt. Since he appears more obviously dissolute than they are, adultery is permissable: Benjamin, not themselves, is the source of corruption and chaos. When Janey deliberately avoids Ben’s keys in the bowl, and selects the keys of another man (also not her husband), Ben’s drunken reaction is to blurt out “No, no,” and move toward Janey, tripping and falling onto the floor. The scornful gazes of his neighbors condemn Benjamin as the guilty one, particularly guilty of destroying communal bonds, and he feels the justness of his punishment-by-explusion: … his guilt—guilty of drunkenness, of boorishness, of adultery, of forging a bad relationship with chance … Guilty of weakening and diluting what bonds of family remained … He was quarantined and he deserved it.35

When, drunk and belligerent, he trips over the coffee table and falls down heavily on the grubby shag rug, nobody makes a move to help him; instead, there is a “whisper” of denunciation, as the assembled group observe with distaste the “vomit on his breath,” his eyes like a “bloody foam.”36 They leave him to pass out in a puddle of bile. The film version retains the basic plot point but alters the atmosphere. Benjamin does react, but his “No, no,” is a debonair murmur, and his fall a brief stumble. The group reaction is embarrassed and awkward, but not condemning; his friends move quickly to take his arms and help him to his feet with cries of, “You okay?—He’s okay, he’ll be okay—You okay?” (1:23:15). There are no close-ups of his face, or of anyone else’s, to suggest strong emotion or dramatic climax; there is comedy in the inappropriateness of his sudden reaction, and then the scene is played with plenty of time and space for the awkwardness to develop, as the men help Ben to his feet and toward the bathroom. It is not a pleasant scene, but it is a far cry from what the Benjamin of Moody’s novel later describes as an “ordeal and dismemberment.”37

Conclusions The physical attractiveness of the characters in the film, remarked upon by Rick Moody, may just be a symptom of the kind of smooth and charismatic faces possessed by much of the acting profession. But the film goes further than simply casting attractive people in the story when it depicts sexual acts between the characters, scenes not found in the novel. There is a passionate kiss between Ben and Elena in their kitchen (37:23), and a sex scene between Ben and Janey in her spare bedroom. The sex scene, especially, is classic modern Hollywood: soft lighting,



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smooth skin, warm tones (20:21). Both the kissing scene and the sex scene present Benjamin, Elena, and Janey as attractive and desirable, inviting the viewer to envy their experience. The experiences of the characters in the novel are almost universally unenviable— for instance, Ben’s experience in Janey’s spare room bed is a lonely ordeal of waiting until he realizes she has deliberately stood him up. Even Thanksgiving dinner, which in the film is admittedly a fairly bland ritual of abundant food and familial awkwardness (41:58), does not appear in the novel—which is in fact set in the following days, “thanksgiving just past and quickly forgotten,”38 and the leftovers described as just another instance of the pervasive rot and decay: the peas in “simulated butter” are a “sulphurous oil slick” next to a turkey “carcass … exhumed from its tomb.”39 In the film, Paul comes home for Thanksgiving (38:06) and seems to be glad (or at least relieved) to see his sister and parents, despite their inability to communicate; in the novel, Paul is isolated at school and on the icebound train, unable to make it home until the final pages. So while the novel and the film share a common major plot, the characters in the film are having a much nicer time in between the major events, flirting with their good-looking partners and neighbors, hanging out with their siblings, having satisfying sex, and delicious dinners. The trailer of Ang Lee’s Ice Storm begins with the words “Once there was a time . . .,”40 and paints a picture of family life something like the quirky, lovable American dysfunctionality depicted in television shows like The Wonder Years. While it is unlikely that Ang Lee directed the trailer himself (it is loaded with the saccharine sameness of big-studio trailers—in this case Fox Searchlight), the trailer does capture some of the atmosphere of the film. When the key party is introduced, the music changes to an upbeat, funky tune, hinting at the thrill of sexual experimentation. The voiceover murmurs that “It was 1973, and the climate was changing.” The film is pitched as a nostalgia piece for the 1970s, with hints of the dark, wild night (brief shots of a car skidding, ice on the trees, the sparking live wire) that will frame the drama’s climax. The voiceover promises that “one winter’s weekend they would discover something that would change their lives forever.” What the something is that they discover is not entirely clear, but there is a sense that each character is engaged in some meaningful personal exploration. So the film is a story of discovery: the characters go through these dramatic events and gain insight about themselves, and their place in family and community. Ang Lee’s Ice Storm is not a tragedy. There is no community threatened by crisis and contagion. There are no monstrous scapegoats. In fact, nobody is guilty. Where Rick Moody’s novel deviates from the classic tragic structure by painting everybody with the muddy brush of guilt, Ang Lee’s film deviates in the opposite way: there is no crisis and nobody is to blame. The alienation of teenagers from parents, spouses from one another, envy and hostility between neighbors, the transgressions of adultery— these are not crises. They are the “changing climate” of the modern world, and the film is the story of the characters’ fumblings and failings as they learn to navigate it. Mikey’s death is the collateral damage of this process, and in their shock and grief the characters are sentimentally reminded of their foundational affection for one another, which has perhaps been lost beneath headier distractions.

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I have previously argued that modern narratives may play with the conventions of tragedy in order to engage with the “complex interaction” between awareness of the scapegoat’s innocence and the impulse toward sacrifice and catharsis.41 But in order to explore this tension, a text must present at least part of the problem: the true nature of desire, and the ensuing crisis in which a troubled community seek scapegoat relief. Ang Lee’s film, however, pays little attention to either mimetic desire or crisis. It could be argued that in adapting a novel to film, much detail must be cut away because of the limitations of time. However, it is not just the omission of time-consuming but inessential plot events (such as Wendy’s lesbian sleepover) that contribute to what I think is a serious change of affect in the film. The film elides the mimetic nature of desire at the heart of the crisis. The symptoms of mimetic crisis—the novel’s pervasive atmosphere of filth, rot, and contagion—are replaced by an atmosphere of nostalgic fondness for the characters and their lives. In removing the problem of mimetic desire and crisis, Ang Lee removes the need for a scapegoat altogether, and thus takes the film out of the realm of tragedy.

Notes 1

Rick Moody, “The Creature Lurches from the Lagoon: More Notes on Adaptation,” in The Ice Storm (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), 290. 2 Ibid., 291. 3 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (1972; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 168, 92. 4 Ibid., 290. 5 Ibid. 6 Carly Osborn, “That False Paradise: A Girardian Reading of Desire, Sacrifice, and the American Dream in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides,” in Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, vol. 2, eds Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 115–26. 7 Rene Girard, “Mimesis and Violence,” in The Girard Reader, ed. James G. Williams (1979; New York: Crossroad Herder, 2005), 9. 8 Ang Lee, The Ice Storm, DVD (New York: Criterion, 2008), at 21 minutes (21:00); henceforth timestamps for quotes from the film are noted parenthetically after each quote. 9 Moody, The Ice Storm, 125. 10 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 53. 11 Moody, The Ice Storm, 119. 12 Ibid., 94. 13 Ibid., 93. 14 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (1982; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 29–30. 15 Moody, The Ice Storm, 271. 16 Ibid., 195. 17 Ibid., 8.



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18 Ibid., 23, 28, 88, 189, et al. 19 Ibid., 22, 23. 20 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 28, 29, 31. 21 Moody, The Ice Storm, 8. 22 Ibid., 246. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 3. 25 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 272. 26 Moody, The Ice Storm, 134. 27 Ibid., 42. 28 Ibid., 189. 29 Ibid., 192. 30 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 35. 31 Moody, The Ice Storm, 215. 32 Girard, “Mimesis and Violence,” 10. 33 Moody, The Ice Storm, 211. 34 Ibid., 213–14. 35 Ibid., 216. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 215. 38 Ibid., 1. 39 Ibid., 62. 40 The Ice Storm: Official Trailer (1997), YouTube, April 29, 2009, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=-t2zWobwh0U. 41 Osborn, “That False Paradise,” 125.

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Cowboy Metaphysics, the Virtuous-Enough Cowboy, and Mimetic Desirein Stephen Frears’s The Hi-Lo Country Thomas Ryba

My purpose in this chapter is to explore the theme of mimesis as it is developed narratively and characterologically in Stephen Frears’s film, The Hi-Lo Country.1 I argue this film is part of a literary and cinematographic subgenre that Peter French has coined “cowboy metaphysics.”2 According to French, this descriptor refers to a specific set of anthropological, ethical, and thanatological ideas present, with differing frequency and tenor, in a wide variety of Westerns.3 For about 10 years, without knowledge of French’s 1997 book, I have been using the same term to discuss literature and films which (I would argue) have “philosophical views” intentionally and as their distinguishing feature, though these views include other ideas in addition to those French has discussed. Thus, the way I use the term in this chapter both narrows and expands French’s use: narrows it because my only concern, here, is a particular movie, in this subgenre, treating specific ideas; expands it because I think the philosophical ideas treated in this subgenre are many and not limited to ethics and death. Its treatment of transcendence and virtue would be enough to qualify Stephen Frears’s movie, The Hi-Lo Country, as cowboy metaphysics, in either French’s or my sense. However, this movie carries added interest for those familiar with Girard’s mimetic theory in that its plot and character development are highly charged with mimetic polarities, which— though (probably) unintended by the writer and director—are unmistakably revealed when one views it through the lens of mimetic theory. To hear its plot described, one might easily mistake The Hi-Lo Country for an average, run-of-the-mill cowboy story. On its surface, its plot is hardly exceptional. It is the story of a postwar friendship between two cowboys (Pete and Big Boy), precipitated by the sale of a horse (Old Sorrel) but nearly broken apart by their competition for the love of an ex-prostitute (Mona), and ultimately healed by two acts of self-sacrifice, finally proving that male friendship is more powerful than any disagreement over a woman. Western novels and movies about cowboys in love with the same woman are commonplace. And the theme that the dyadic friendship of man and man was a sacred primary social relationship in the old West has become so trite

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that it is often lampooned as comic relief—as in the Saturday afternoon serial, The Cisco Kid—and so rare, today, that it is even subjected to psychological inspection as a form of homoeroticism—as in Brokeback Mountain. Even the cultural setting of The Hi-Lo Country, with its theme of the industrialization of ranching and the extinction of the old cowboy ways, is not original. It is prominent in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy (and the movie made from the first novel of the trilogy, All the Pretty Horses); it is cultural contradiction in The Misfits, and more recently, with hyper-realization and fatalistic acceptance, in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. However, in its take on these typical Western topoi, The Hi-Lo Country is sui generis. At the direction of Stephen Frears, what was an emplottedly diffuse, existentialist cowboy novel by Max Evans, turned into a somewhat lumbering script by Walon Green, becomes an object lesson in mimetic theory, one that is positively dizzying in the way it portrays the interlocking strands of mimetic triangularity coupling and uncoupling in the imaginary town of Hi-Lo, New Mexico. To my mind, Frears’s movie is a superior work of art in that it is nearly perfectly constructed, foregrounding the Girardian features, distilling the major plotline of the novel, and conveying a much less nihilistic message than any written treatment that preceded it, one that is rolled out according to both Girardian and Aristotelian understandings of rivalry and emulation. In this film, topographic highs and lows, captured so beautifully in Oliver Stapleton’s cinematography of Northeast New Mexico and Northwest Texas,4 are mirrored by the comedic and tragic passages in the plot, in the vaulting virtues and the sinking vices of its characters, especially the eight principal characters, who (often violently) interact to form five interlocking triangles of emulation, competition, and desire.5 Finally, ‘Hi-Lo’ also signifies a variety of Poker, where the one holding the best hand and the one holding the worst hand split the pot, the suggestion being that, in this movie, both the winner and the loser leave the table a bit richer. This meaning— that life is like a Poker game that follows just this rule—is made particularly poignant under a Girardian interpretation, as long as one is clear that what is finally “won” by the loser is self-knowledge—and, then, only at the cost of the loss of the object of desire.

Forms of life, cowboying, and Aristotelian values The town of Hi-Lo in Frears’s film becomes a concentrated instantiation of the violence to which desire leads. It is an imaginary microcosm that mirrors and explains the real macrocosm that the moviegoer inhabits. More than that, Frears does not leave his portrayal as clinical anthropological description but charges it with a moral dimension which betters Max Evans’s novel, elevates an unfocused script, and provides a take on the missing ethical dimension to mimetic theory. Specifically, Frears pits two forms of life against one another as the fictional backdrop for the action in The Hi-Lo Country. One form of life is the traditional cowboy way, a way of living—which in Frears’s treatment—is neither primarily driven by the maximization of profit nor its accompanying instrumentalization of everything that serves that end. The cowboy way is a



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form of life in which working for a living wage is coupled with the development of a unique set of virtues and, most importantly, with the transcendent joy of cowboying, especially as an end in itself. This is shown especially in the disdain of the real cowboys for the mechanization of cattle ranching, which is one of the constants in the movie. The cattle drive is important because it signifies what is at the basis of positive mimesis in the film. It defines the transcendence that sets the values of the cowboys against the cattle industrialists. There are two places, however, where the centrality of the cattle drive is particularly emblematic of transcendence. The first and most important is connected to a montage of scenes of a cattle drive set against the metaphysical landscape of red-walled arroyos and the mountain-fringed scrub plains of New Mexico. Pete’s voice-over narration (and the swelling musical theme) defines the significance of the cattle drive:6 The pure simple joy of a cattle drive—all that sky, all that land, stretching out towards all horizons—there’s no sense of freedom that sets a man so high, makes him feel “Yeah, this is what I was born to do.”

Here, Hoover is featured prominently riding into the foreground mouthing something inaudible, something which may well be a prayer. As his horse crosses the path of Pete’s horse, the camera zooms in on Pete’s face to show him striking the side of his head three times in joyous disbelief at the beauty of the spectacle, almost as if to waken himself from a dream. The second scene appears toward the end of the film. After Big Boy has taken over the outfit as Hoover requested before his lingering death (a death caused by his horse falling down, in a blizzard, and crushing his hip—a death which Pete is indirectly responsible for), Pete meets him in the middle of the herd on horseback, and Big Boy feigns his intention to stop driving cattle to market because it does not make economic sense. Pete visibly registers disbelief, to which Big Boy responds: “Had you going, didn’t I? You bet your ass we’re going to drive them. Hell, yeah. Who’s caring about profit, when it’s this much fun being a cowboy?” These passages establish the cattle drive as the cowboys’ analogue of a transcendent good, which, in this case, happens to be beauty, a beauty which brings happiness.7 This is shown in the way the cinematography makes sensible the philosophic content of the narrative. The cattle drive functions as a transcendent or ultimate good because it fits the Aristotelian definition: it is simple; it engenders joy or happiness; it is a human activity8; and it is not to be subordinated to profit. (It also confirms French’s identification of cowboy axiology as predominantly Aristotelian.) The price for admission to this hierophany, however, is high. There is an askēsis required of all who would be cowboy, an askēsis embodied perfectly in Hoover, imperfectly in Big Boy Matteson, and aspired to by Pete. It implies a tacit code where loss, material discomfort, courage, self-reliance, generosity, and the honing of practical skills are among the prerequisites. In linking the cowboy life with the fullness of lived being, Frears provides a connection which makes it possible for the informed viewer to see an analogy between the Aristotelian notion of the virtuous life and that state to which cowboys aspire. This virtue is summarized in the Aristotelian notion of magnanimity (megalopsuchia)

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as “the crowning ornament of the virtues” because “it enhances their greatness and cannot exist without them; … it is hard to be truly magnanimous without nobility and goodness of character.”9 What magnanimity is for a cowboy may not exactly be what magnanimity is for us, however. Implicit in the Aristotelian description of virtues as mean10 is the fact that—as evaluable—they are tied to forms of life. We should not expect—at least from an Aristotelian reading—to find everything within the frame of the cowboy’s form of life as admirable in our own. All that can be expected is that there will be an analogy between virtue there and virtue here. In the implicit notion of the ideal cowboy, ethical excellence, and the excellence of technique are mixed together. To be able to live excellently, one must first have the skill to live. In the ideal cowboy, these come as a package. Moral excellence and technique, however, are alike in that they are helped by deep experience, so that the more experience one has had in building well or acting excellently, the more that technique or virtue becomes second nature. Aristotle also recognizes that both the artisan and the hero can possess an uncanny innate proclivity toward skillful production or right action. In English, we describe these gifted individuals as “naturals.” Throughout The Hi-Lo Country, Frears make it evident that Big Boy is a “natural” at cowboying. However, far from being the perfect magnanimous cowboy—that role is left to Hoover—Big Boy shows himself to be a character in evolution. He is—to adapt a term from the psychiatrist Winnicott—merely the “good-enough” virtuous cowboy. This is because his virtue is imperfectly developed. In Aristotelian terms he suffers from his lack of mastery (akrasia) of virtue and/or his incomplete mastery of it (hupo-krasia). Emotionally, there are not two individuals as different as Pete and Big Boy. Pete is the quintessential melancholic—introverted, quiet, brooding, reflective, pessimistic, and unsure of himself. Big Boy, on the other hand, is sanguine—extroverted, loud, gregarious, optimistic, and self-assured. Their personal differences suggest that Big Boy’s and Pete’s paths to the achievement of virtue will be divergent. Each will have different defects to overcome. Big Boy’s positive demeanor is fueled by his superiority in all of his cowboy skills over his companions. It is this that attracts Pete to him as a friend in the first place. This attraction is established in the opening scene of the movie in the contrast between Pete’s uncertainty and Big Boy’s self-assuredness. Their friendship begins with the sale of an unreliable horse, Old Sorrel, and Pete’s sale of him to Big Boy. Old Sorrel had been spooked by his reflection while drinking water and had dragged Pete, nearly killing him. At the sale, Big Boy immediately takes command of the skittish animal—a feat of which Pete is incapable. In the horse trading scene, Big Boy’s casual and assured way with horses and his offer of help without strings attached establishes his aretological excellence and provides the ground on which a friendship can grow. In Big Boy are two responses to the things Pete needs: (1) someone to watch out for him in the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths; and (2) a model to emulate, in order to hone his cowboy skills. From that point on, they begin to run together, to chase girls, to raise “every kind of hell,” and for the first time Pete begins to find out “what good times are all about.” All of this leads him to a premature conclusion—“Hell, I even started to think I knew something about



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life.” This is a conclusion whose uncertainty is signaled by its passive construction, a conclusion whose naiveté will be nullified by his real epiphany toward the end of the film, when he really comes to know something about life—namely, that desire is the mainspring of mimetic violence.

Women as horses Despite his integrity in pursuit of the cowboy ideal, Big Boy’s less than righteous behavior is not only shown in the many ways he demonizes and abuses the purveyors of the industrialization of ranching, but also in his dismissive attitude toward women. He ignores the warnings about violence sounded by his mother and grandmother; drunk, he makes a pass at Josepha; in a drunken stupor, he sleeps through the prognostications of Old Missa; and (drunk, again) he expresses his appreciation of Mona on account of a virtue which is properly that of equines. It is in the way he characterizes Mona according to the virtues of a horse that is symptomatic of another of Big Boy’s deficiencies—narrowness of vision. He imagines that the categories of cowboying extend, without qualification, to all varieties of being. If this were merely the matter of stretching a limited vocabulary to describe a realm which it does not quite fit, like the language of a sommelier or mystic, I think Big Boy’s inarticulateness might be forgiven. Among cowboys and camel-pullers, some comparisons are for humorous effect, but some comparisons express the real affection that exists between an animal and its rider under forms of life where the rider depends upon the animal for his subsistence. However, usually, these works attribute to the animal characteristics which are human; they anthropomorphize the animal, rather than zoomorphize the woman. (Without getting into a discussion about which is marginally less offensive, let us just recognize that this anthropomorphization is an established topos in the cowboy way of life.) Part of Big Boy’s phronēsis is his easy way with horses and women, but Big Boy—unlike Pete, who is much less facile with but also much more respectful of the latter—makes analogy or metaphor into univocity. Orders that should be segregated in being are blended in Big Boy’s understanding. This is a defect of both understanding and insight. This is the negative side to his personality and perhaps a dangerous temptation within the cowboy life itself. The only woman Big Boy treats almost fully as a person is his mother, and with her, blind to her wisdom, he is patronizing. Big Boy is also the master at coking up frustration in competitive rivalries through the cowboy equivalent of trash-talking. This serves him well at the poker table, and, at one point in the film, he uses it to provoke a response from Pete. An example of his attitude occurs in a bar at Hi-Lo (at night) when Big Boy brags about “working off his brother’s ass” earlier that day. Big Boy is slightly drunk and brandishes a gun. Pete expresses worry and Big Boy tells him he’s tired of Pete’s looking worried all the time. I know exactly what I am doing at all times. I know what I’m doing being with her. You see, Pete, I am one son of a bitch who can judge women. Not many men

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can. Lots of them can judge … horses. A man that knows horses don’t really need to look at their teeth, he can just tell. An old pony with holes above his eyes, a drooping lower lip, and a sunken butt-hole is past the go-get-’em stage. But it takes a master to tell if a horse has got bottom. Some of the best conformed horses in the world ain’t got bottom. They will let you down, when you get in that old bind. Now a fellah can’t go looking around to see if a woman has got knobby knees or a sunken butt-hole, now can he? He’s got to be able to sense it. A good woman is like a good horse. She’s got bottom—what Old Sorrel’s got. Now, that old horse will go day and night, when the wind is trying to tear your head off and when a wild cow cuts back through the brush, Old Sorrel’s right there running, turning, working his heart out for you. But now, Mona, [pause] this Mona that everybody is so damned interested in. [pause] She’s a beautiful woman. That ain’t all. She’s got [pause] bottom, and she’s going to make me a partner to go along with Old Sorrel. And there ain’t no back-stabbing, gossiping, bunch of yellow-bellied chicken shits who are going to stop me. Carry the message you bastards.

In this address, Big Boy rhetorically accomplishes a number of things. First, he establishes that he possesses cowboy phronēsis, the coveted ability to be a master at judging horses and (more important to the situation) to be a master of judging women. Second, he indirectly shames Pete, reminding him that he was a poor judge of Old Sorrel, and an incompetent master, so that he was ultimately rejected by his steed in the same way Mona sensed Pete’s incompetence and rejected him. Third, he begins by addressing Pete as an intimate but effectively shifts the address in such a way that Pete’s envy is implicated along with the rest of the men in the bar, envy that is two-fold—the general envy that springs from Big Boy’s embodiment of cowboy virtues and their envy of his possession of the unpossessable seductress, Mona. He, in effect, is responsible for the crystallization of the scapegoating mob or at least exacerbating its intent. He anticipates it, but at the same time incites it. This is a part of his bravado. This shows also that Big Boy’s magnanimity is not perfectly constituted. His bravery fluctuates with foolhardiness. One of his miscalculations comes in thinking that he will provoke Pete to action. His other mistake is the form of the analogy he universalizes between horses and women. Though he seems to draw the analogy too closely between a horse’s “bottom” and Mona’s commitment, this analogy seems to hold, in some respects, on the physical level and psychological levels. Mona, indeed, seems to be up for anything, physically. And she—like Old Sorrel—is a redhead. Even in the cowboy’s world, not all women are analogues to horses, just as not all women fall prey to Big Boy’s charms—Josepha seems to treat him as something of an oaf—but there is a sense in which Mona’s relationship to Big Boy is zoophilic, and Girard provides the key to what Frears expresses cinematically. In Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Girard makes the point that, when interpreting sexual desire, one need not look for mediators outside of the dyad.11 A variety of mutual mediations may occur within the lovers’ dyad, mediations in which the beloved and lover are each split into subject and object in each other’s eyes. In the Sartrean version, the triangle is constituted by the “the lover, the beloved, and the body of this beloved.”12 What this means



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is that the original desire of the lover for the body of the beloved is imitated by the beloved; this is to “desire oneself, thanks to the lover’s desire.”13 This is the structure that lies at the heart of coquetry, and it has a sadistic and masochistic side. What Girard does not say is that the structure may be worked from either side. The coquette cannot always control the structure. To be sure, Pete is the masochistic victim of Mona’s sadistic refusal to surrender herself to him, and slave to her indifference. Both serve only to arouse his desire. Pete follows the established Girardian pattern. Mona’s (like Pete’s) attraction to Big Boy is an attraction to his expansive (if flawed) spirit. One might say that the object of her desire in Big Boy is his magnanimity, the possession of which she hopes will fill her emptiness. The object of Big Boy’s desire for Mona certainly begins with her physical body, but it moves on to something which Big Boy sees in her and which, even as he zoomorphizes her, he admires: that is the ineffable quality he calls “bottom.” Though Mona’s relationship with Big Boy was (no doubt) initiated via flirtations similar to those she employed with Pete, Big Boy breaks the pattern of seduction, tease, and indifference. Big Boy is immune to Mona’s stratagems. He accomplishes a reversal through the very objectification that she employs for control. In this reversal, Big Boy is master and Mona is slave. In love with Big Boy, Mona is able to admit she is never bored because her repetitious pattern of coquetry is deconstructed. Big Boy breaks the cycle of her expectations. It is just because Big Boy objectifies her as something other than the role she is stuck in, because he zoomorphizes her in a way that wrests away control of her identity and reads her as something more than a stereotypical coquette, and because—from her side—this is excitingly new, because Big Boy has command of the reins and rides well in the saddle, that Mona masochistically succumbs to his control. Thus, Mona is the double of Pete’s horse Old Sorrel. She follows the same pattern of loss and possession in which Big Boy proves to be the superior practical master.

Girardian desire and cowboy rivalry The portrayal of Pete’s obsessive desire is at the heart of Frears’s The Hi-Lo Country, and this is what makes it of such interest for mimetic theory. That this is the fulcrum on which the story is leveraged is shown very early in the narrative, when for the first time after the war, Pete and Josepha make love, his desire for Mona is already the backdrop, as is the cry of the coyotes that night. Josepha explains to Pete that the witch, Old Missa, “says that lovers come back as coyotes and cry for the love they’ve lost.” To which Pete replies: “The Navahos think that will be the last sound heard on the earth.” Conflated in the narrative, as they are, the two lines suggest that desire is one of the constants of earthly existence; they are also a portent of Pete’s eventual (though not ultimate) fate: to cry out in desire for the loss of Mona. It is Pete’s desire for Mona, inflamed by his rivalry with Big Boy, that is the barrier to Pete’s achievement of virtue, but, paradoxically, this also is the source of his ultimate enlightenment. In the end, he will lose the cowboy life but will gain wisdom. Though

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Girard posits the origin of all desire in mediators (whether the mimetically entangled is conscious of them or not), I am not aware of any passage where Girard describes “the mechanics” of how exactly desire is awakened. Søren Kierkegaard, however, does provide just such a supplement in Either/Or, which, though not recognizing desire’s triangularity, is nevertheless compatible with Girard’s account and also squares neatly with the way Frears develops Pete’s education in desire. Though the superficial purpose in Either/Or is to work out the stages of desire as an explanation of the effects and significations of the music in Mozart’s operas, his insights can be transferred with smooth application to Frears’s cinematic depiction of desire in The Hi-Lo Country. Kierkegaard, beginning his description, files an important disclaimer: “[I]n using the word ‘stages’” to describe erotic desire “the idea must not be taken in such a literal way as to imply that each stage exists independently, the one outside the other.” He grants that “metamorphoses” is a better description for the immediacy of the stages as “disclosures of predicates, so that all the predicates tumble down into the wealth of the last stage, since this is the real stage. The other stages have no independent existence; in themselves they exist only in the concept, and from this one may see their contingent character against the last stage.”14 The “stages” of desire are three. Stage 1: Dreaming desire: Dreaming desire is the awakening of the sensual which is not an awakening “to movement but to motionless rest, not to joy and gladness but to deep melancholy.”15 Here, desire is both asleep and dreaming but it sleeps uneasily. Desire exists in a shadow state, where the object of desire and the desire are incompletely differentiated, the object being present without being possessed. The incipient awareness that accompanies this stage is sweet pain, a “captivating and fascinating contradiction which resounds with its sadness, its melancholy.”16 “Desire’s object hovers over the desire, sinks down into it, yet without this movement occurring through desire’s own power of attraction, or because it is desired.”17 Desire, at this stage, is enrapt in fascination but cannot differentiate an object of its fascination because, in a sense, no such object exists.18 This is the stage that may be understood as the deep presentiment of desire. Stage 2: Seeking desire: At this stage desire “awakens, and as one always first realizes one has been dreaming at the moment of awakening, so here too the dream is over.” Here, the arousal of desire is produced by the separation and differentiation of the object. “[Desire] is plucked out of its substantial repose.”19 This is the stage where desire is awake but not fixed on a single object. Rather, multiple “objects vanish and appear, yet before every disappearance is a present enjoyment, a moment of contact, short but blessed, incandescent . . ., fleeting . . ., and harmless.”20 What was taken from one object is projected on its successor, but no object is discovered. Desire is awake but without the object it seeks it is not “specified as desire.”21 “Discovery and conquest are here identical”; the discovery is forgotten in the conquest.22 This is desire as the purely sensual. Stage 3: Desiring proper: Here, “desire specified absolutely as desire”; it “is connotationally and extensionally the immediate unity of the two preceding stages.”23 The particular is desired absolutely; it has an absolute object. Desire proper is “absolutely sound, victorious, triumphant, irresistible, and demonic”24 This especially is the stage



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where desire moves from the sensual to the spiritual, that is, where it involves the commitment of the subject’s entire being. Girard’s theory would add to this that at each stage desire is constituted by a background of mediation. At Kierkegaard’s first stage, that mediation is general and diffuse. It is a manifold of all of the models that have constituted the subject’s imitation of desire but which in their variety have assumed homogeneity. About this manifold, the subject of desire is unconscious. This mode is Pete’s before he meets Big Boy and after he returns from the war, but before he returns to Sano. At the second stage, mediators do emerge, but because the object of desire is not singular and fixed, mediation is like a competitive game, where conquests are achieved and then quickly forgotten. This is Pete’s desire when he begins to carouse with Big Boy, shortly after they establish their friendship, and then after the war at the fiesta dance in Sano. It is only at the third stage that desire becomes obsessively fixed on a single object, to the neglect of everything else, including the laws of God, the Good, and even transcendence. The trigger of this stage of desire occurs, at night, in Sano at the dancehall, when looking for Josepha, Pete finds Mona instead. Mona (coyly): Am I keeping you from something or someone? You look good Pete, real good. They begin to dance. Pete’s narration: She was right. I was looking for someone [Josepha or perhaps any other available object of desire]. But when she came up against me like silver foil, all fragrance and warm pressure, everything was gone from my mind—Mōōōōna.

Mona’s desire is fixed at Kierkegaard’s second level, but her seduction of Pete takes his desire to the third level. That Kierkegaard’s second stage is the pattern of her desire is indicated by the repetition of her actions and the boredom that accompanies it. Later in the film, before she finally commits to Big Boy, and before she finds she is pregnant (ostensibly with his child, but maybe Pete’s), she travels to Amarillo for an assignation with him, an assignation in which Pete uncomfortably plays the role of arranger. Once inside the hotel room, at dusk, Mona looks sadly out of the room’s window at the flashing motel sign and sighs: Mona: I hate things that go on and on without changing. Do you think we’re crazy, Pete? Pete: It’s not for me to say. Mona: Makes no sense what I’m doing, but I got to keep doing it.

For a moment, Mona appears to be receptive to Pete’s advances. She passively accepts his embrace and kiss, but when Pete attempts to take her, she pushes him away. In expressing the absurdity of her actions, one might assume that Mona is simply referring to her affair with Big Boy, but the setting—a shabby motel room, a clandestine assignation, her seduction and then refusal of Pete—suggests otherwise. Rather, what she seems to be reflecting upon is how many times she has been in a similar situation, the background here being her previous life as a prostitute and the

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many affairs repeated before and after it. In this despairing little gesture, she also indicates that even her affair with Big Boy may be simply the latest in a series of repetitions. This brings to the fore the question as to why the coquette, aside from being trapped in an ever-accelerating double mediation with the lover, reproduces this pattern, over and over. The answer may be that the repetition is accidental, that it is stopped when the lover finally refuses to be a masochistic partner so that the only way for the coquette to sustain her preciousness is to find another lover. In the above exchange, implicit is despair about the kind of repetition discussed by Girard in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, repetition in which anticipation of union with the mediator/lover brings excitement but attainment results in disappointment. No doubt, emptiness and boredom explain why she has broken the cycle of repetitions with lovers in the past, only to begin it again with new lovers. We also have another side to the coquette’s behavior, a side not discussed by Girard, but one addressed, again, by Kierkegaard in one of his most enigmatic works, Repetition. Kierkegaard sees the cause of Mona’s repetitions as a hopeful experiential pattern, one which coincides with Girard’s understanding that repetition is driven by a deficit of being but one which issues, finally, in transcendence. For Kierkegaard, repetition may also be an attempt to achieve a new return through experience. In Girardian terms, repetition is an expression of metaphysical desire, a striving for the acquisition of being. In its results, Kierkegaardian repetition resembles the three stages of desire, but it is a more universal structure of experience, one which is an answer to Platonic anamnēsis (recollection) and Hegelian mediation25 but whose effect is the existential equivalent of the Platonic diarēsis (distinction) and sunagōgē (collection), in that, under the right circumstances, it can lead one to truth. Kierkegaardian repetition begins in externality and objecthood, with the subject imagining that a past joy may be recaptured simply by reproducing the external conditions. This ultimately leads to frustration. This frustration, however, may point the way to a second recollection where subjecthood and objecthood are understood as mutually constitutive of it. When, however, recollection recaptures the joy as unconditioned by circumstances, it becomes transcendent; it winds up with the stable possession of what is sought in subjectivity, something which—in the end—might even be quite different from what was thought. Kierkegaard calls this final achievement, an achievement of the will and thus subjectivity, eternity, the movement to this final end being that of a spirit casting off all “earthly goods which for the spirit are indifferent.”26 According to this interpretation, Mona’s repetition of seduction is—as Girard suggests—an attempt at establishing self-value, or a plentitude of being, but as long as she remains at the stage of objectivity, where it is her body that is the object of desire, and where she feeds on the value that the other assigns it, then she remains at the level of bare physical repetition. With Big Boy, it may be that repetition has entered a second stage. Her boredom is broken because she is loved as she has not been loved before. The film does suggest that this new love allows her to surrender herself to Big Boy, but given his understanding of who she is, he hardly loves her from her standpoint, even though this may not be clear to her. The film gives us no indication as to whether Mona will ever move to the third kind of repetition. Her certain destitution predicted



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by Old Missa—that her future is nothing—might be a great aid to the self-abnegation that is required. Most likely, she will fall back into her earlier pattern of behavior. Whatever her fate, Mona is the figure through whom we get a momentary glimpse at the transcendent origin of desire, an origin Who is the only possible fulfillment of what humans seek. Mona moves beyond mere coquettishness in her effect on Pete. Whether it is her intention or not—certainly Pete is complicit in it—Pete’s desire is more than sensual obsession; it is a sickness of the soul. Following Kierkegaard we might identify Pete’s desire as spiritual desire and the effect Mona has on Pete, spiritual seduction. The spiritual seducer stands to the subject as an idolatrous object because s/he stands in the absolute position of desire which only is only proper for God. But as with all idolatry, here, a finite good—the pleasure associated with Mona’s body—is confused with the transcendent good—ultimate happiness—that erotic pleasure points toward. Mona makes herself a false god and elicits from her idolater, Pete, complicity in his worship of her. It is his desire which blocks Pete in his pursuit of cowboy transcendence because he is willing to sacrifice everything for Mona (a finite good). The first indication of this blockage occurs immediately after the first cattle drive. As the strains of the “transcendence” musical theme begin to fade, immediately following Pete’s soliloquy equating the simple joy of the cattle drive and the meaning of existence, Pete says the following: “But as we neared our home range in the Hi-Lo Country something else started welling up inside of me. It had come with Mona’s first touch, the sound of her voice, the brush of her lips. I had known it once, wanted to know it again.” The full extent of Pete’s obsession—and its revelation of it to him—is expressed near the end of the film where it looks as though Jim Ed Love’s men will kill Big Boy to restore the honor of his foreman, Les, Mona’s husband. There, Josepha tells Pete that the man who cooks for Jim Ed said that Les knows about Big Boy’s affair with Mona and intends to kill Big Boy. Pete says he will have to kill Les first. Josepha immediately condemns the stupidity of Pete’s intention, especially because the love of Big Boy and Mona is adulterous. Pete’s response is to describe the incomparable but antinomian love of Big Boy for Mona, a love which is a thinly veiled disguise of his own desire for her: “With that kind of love, nothing else matters, not the law, not what people say, not consideration for life or death.” Josepha sees through Pete’s hypocritical self-sacrificial intent and establishes the fact that Pete has lied about having a deep love for her. Pete denies the accusation, but his narration establishes the truth: “But I did lie. In fact, lies were taking over my life. And I felt nothing for the day to day work that consumed everyone else—only more and more regret over my desire for Mona and the deception I used to cover it up.” Pete then goes on to repeat the same warning to Mona, doubling his hypocritical actions with both beloveds. Mona, very familiar with Pete’s desire for her, outs his hypocrisy, charging that it was not based on any “high-minded concern for your best friend” but on his wish to save the object of his desire. In those lines, Mona delivers a hammer blow to the hypocrisy and self-deception of Pete’s apparently self-sacrificial action. But neither blow is effective. Before Pete can be delivered from his obsession

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with Mona, he will transgress the moral expectations of his friendship with Big Boy by physically possessing Mona and thus betraying his trust, a kind of trust which Big Boy had prized so much in their friendship and which Josepha had unconditionally offered Pete. Josepha, after seeing Mona’s torn dress and selflessly helping Mona cover her shame, says the following: “You’d better tell Big Boy, before she does, or he’ll kill you.” Pete’s narration: “She didn’t understand. I had no fear of dying. My fear was about how I would live with all the pain I had caused.” In the aftermath of this ultimate betrayal, if the movie had ended here, or with a final showdown between Pete and Big Boy for the love of Mona, then Pete would have remained unredeemed. Redemption, however, comes in the form of Pete’s response to two tragic events. These events introduce a new ethical dimension into the value-system of the cowboys which had been, up to this point in the film, confined to cowboy virtues and mimetic emulation and competition.

Christian values win out In The Hi-Lo Country, Christian values function along Girardian lines as the revealers and nemeses of mimetic violence. This is where The Hi-Lo Country departs from the formulaic ethical naturalism which Peter French has identified at the core of most Westerns. One kind of virtue, the kind that has to do with what Charles Williams calls the “way of substitution,” is related to the Christian understanding of self-sacrifice. It forms the basis for a positive mimesis which is not reducible to an Aristotelian virtue and which is inscrutable according to its naturalist assumptions. The second kind of Christian virtue is more directly related to the Girardian program in that though this virtue is mimetically positive, it is the chief means by which mimetic violence is ended. This suggests that the Aristotelian virtues—the cowboy virtues—are themselves implicated in the cycle of violence, and in the negative mimesis which is its motor, even though they sometimes provide the basis for positive mimesis, as well. However, by themselves, without the assistance of the supernatural virtues, they are impotent to stop negative mediated desire. Rather, they are party to it. Only the supernatural virtues break the cycle. The transformative effect of these Christian virtues is principally shown in two scenes in the movie. The first is the accident which causes Hoover’s death, an accident in which Pete’s imperfect horsemanship—read “imperfect cowboy virtue”—is a contributing cause. As Pete rides with Hoover and his men through a blizzard trying to get the cattle down from the high ground into the arroyos, Pete’s horse pitches as he comes down a slippery rise, throws him, then spooks Hoover’s horse, which rolls over, crushing Hoover. Pete’s horse runs into the white frozen gale. Hoover’s horse breaks its leg and Big Boy must take the gravely injured Hoover back to the ranch. After euthanizing Hoover’s horse with a blow from a barbed wire cutter, Big Boy tells Pete to hold tight to Old Sorrel’s tail. As they trudge blindly through the blizzard, Pete, exhausted, loses his grip, gets kicked by Old Sorrel, and falls into the snow.



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Here, Big Boy’s imploring Pete to “keep moving” is an allegory for the necessity of Pete’s moral improvement. He must not remain fixed in the guilt of his betrayal of Big Boy. As Pete inches along the barbed wire, it perforates his glove and the palm of his hand leaving a stigmatum. This is the third carnal inscription signifying punishment of Pete’s aretological imperfection. The first occurs at the beginning of the movie, where Old Sorrel mistrusts him and throws him, causing a scrape on Pete’s face; the second occurs while Pete—thinking of how he must suppress his desire for Mona—over-tightens barbed wire on a fence until it snaps and lacerates his cheek, but this third inscription—obviously resembling the nail marks in the hands of Jesus—signifies the first revelation leading to his redemption. That revelation is expressed in an inversion of the Golden Rule as Pete waits to die in the blizzard. The narrative expressing this inversion occurs immediately after Pete’s palm is punctured: “Alone out there. I put myself in Big Boy’s place. Thinking that if he’d done to me as I did to him, I’d have left him to die. So, the thought of my death seemed like justice well-served.” Pete resigns himself to his guilt and self-sacrificially offers himself up for his betrayal of Big Boy as well as to save Hoover’s life. He understands that justice—cowboy justice—might well demand that he surrender his life for his crime. Despite Pete’s death being warranted, Big Boy does return to rescue Pete, and Pete awakens in a warm bed inside Hoover’s ranch. The second of these events is the death of Big Boy. (Spoiler alert!) According to the expectations engendered by the beginning of the film—the film has the structure of a narrative flashback in three parts, the first two parts as flashbacks within a flashback—Pete seems to be gunning for the mediator of his object of desire (Big Boy) and maybe the object (Mona). The film’s opening has Pete sitting in the cab of his truck in a churchyard with a rifle on his lap. His narrative expresses his purpose: “I once set out to kill someone. I took pleasure in the thought of their death.” This line sets the expectation for the rest of the film. Given his obsession with Mona, the viewer expects that this film will be about one man (Pete) killing another (Big Boy) in a jealous rage over a woman (Mona)—a common-enough theme and one certainly amenable to a Girardian analysis on its own merits. As the film progresses, one imagines that the event going on in the church (there is a parking lot full of cars) is the wedding of Big Boy and Mona and that the film will end in violence, maybe even in a double murder. But just before the second of the two flashbacks is finished (thus bringing the viewer to what is ostensibly the present where Pete sits in his truck, plotting murder), Frears explodes the expectations of the viewer to reveal the pervasive nature of mimetic violence as well as to provide the second event which becomes an occasion for Pete’s redemption. Immediately after Big Boy wins the big poker game in Hi-Lo—the game which is the instrumental cause of Steve Shaw’s (Jim Ed Love’s accountant’s) death, a death about which Big Boy shows perverse joy by buying a round for everyone in the saloon—Big Boy and Pete bring groceries and some of the winnings to Big Boy’s mother and grandmother at their small broken-down ranch. Big Boy registers upset about his brother’s neglect of his mother’s farm, especially since Little Boy lives there and treats it like a boarding house. Their dialogue provides a few details of family

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history to show how ingrained vendetta is in the lifestyle of the men of the Matson family. Granny: I used to know poker real good. Big Boy: I reckon it is in our blood, Grams. Mrs Matson: Poker is a bad game; my husband shot a man at poker, and the man’s brother shot him. Granny: My Tom, Big Boy’s granddaddy, shot and killed two men, and was later shot dead himself. God knows, shootin’ has been a curse on our family. Big Boy: Stop bragging about all of the killing we’ve done. You’ll leave old Pete the impression we’re not church people.

Here, the women in the Matson household lift the veil to reveal the reality of the lifestyle whose central magnifier is poker. In the cowboy life, poker is the lens that focuses disputes about honor and injustice and brings them to combustion. What is taken as a point of pride—or maybe fate—on Big Boy’s part, is uncovered, by the women of the family, to be a series of imitative repetitions. The irony of Big Boy’s last line is in the fact that the Matson family are church-going people, and only the women have gotten the message. In fact, the sages in The Hi-lo Country (with the exception of Hoover) are predominantly prophetesses. Four women foresee the tragic consequences of the form of life that Big Boy and Pete are living: Josepha, Mrs Matson, Granny Matson, and Old Missa. That prescience is made all the more poignant when what has been the pattern of exogamous violence turns endogamous. The death of Big Boy is the tragic climax of the film. It is another one of the scenes that Frears makes axial and more shocking than the parallel episode in the novel. As suggested above, Frears constructs his narrative to suggest to the viewer (who has not read Max Evans’s novel) that Big Boy’s death will be a more glorious one—a showdown probably with his friend, Pete—instead of the mean death he actually experiences. This allows him to deflate the grandiosity of the cowboy form of life as unimpeachable, to show how rife this life is with behavior that has violence as its consequence, and to introduce an antidote to the cycle. After the death of Hoover, all seems set for Mona’s divorce from Les and Big Boy and Mona’s marriage. Moreover, the conflict between Big Boy and Pete is apparently resolved, the viewer thinks, because of Pete’s sacrificial action, but this reason seems somehow inadequate, given how little explanation is provided for it. At this point, Big Boy identifies the change that makes his marriage possible, and he reaffirms his friendship with Pete: “What Hoover did for me changed my life. I was even afraid to think about marriage, scared of not being able to provide, seeing my wife doing laundry behind some bunkhouse. That won’t be. No sir, that will never be—not for me or you, partner. Cause whatever is good for me is good for you. By the way. I want you to be my best man.” Pete looks back at Big Boy with a puzzled and guilty look on his face. On their way into town, Big Boy and Pete decide to stop at the Matson homestead. When they arrive at Big Boy’s family ranch. Big Boy is irritated that Little Boy has not made repairs with the lumber that Big Boy has had delivered for that purpose. He



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asks where Little Boy is. Mrs Matson says that he is asleep. Big Boy rousts his brother, violently. Big Boy strikes Little Boy, calls him a “lazy, no good, worthless piece of shit,” and runs him to his car. Then Big Boy pulls Little Boy from the driver’s seat and punches him, repeatedly, knocks him to the ground, and kicks him in the side. Mrs Matson intervenes: “Big Boy, don’t hit him no more. Make me a promise.” Big Boy: “All right, Maw, I ain’t touching him. Once again Momma saved your chicken shit little ass.” Little Boy goes to the cars and gets a six shooter from his truck. He points it at Big Boy. Little Boy, enraged, shouts at Big Boy: “Heeeey, don’t think you can mess me around anymore. I am tired of being screwed with, you hear me?” Big Boy asks Pete to take his mother inside and then advances on his brother. “Little Boy don’t be a fool. Give me that damned thing before you get me mad.” Little Boy discharges the pistol, and the first shot passes through Big Boy’s left palm, an image that evokes the stigmata of Christ. Big Boy looks at Little Boy, with surprise, then, he stares for a moment at the bleeding hole in his palm. Big Boy looks up into his brother’s eyes and Little Boy discharges the gun a second time hitting his brother in the left chest. Pete yells “No,” runs and tackles Big Boy so that no more shots can find their mark, just as Little Boy gets off a series of aimless shots before he drives away. Big Boy: “Shit. Who would’ve thought my little brother …? Pete?” [Pete nods assent.] “Tell Mona … Mona.” Blood issuing from his mouth, Big Boy dies as his mother weeps in the background. As shocked as Big Boy is to be murdered by his brother—a shock shared by the viewer—a Girardian might have seen it coming. From the beginning of the film, Frears engineers, with increasing visibility, the rivalry of the two brothers, each pursuing different ideals. First, and most obviously, there is the irony of their names. Big Boy is the smaller in height and frame of the two. Little Boy is the larger, though the names probably refer to nicknames the boys received when, according to growth or chronology, they really applied. I think it is also possible to see the names as reflecting an implicit Aristotelianism in their being thus named, their names reflecting their values. ‘Big Boy’ seems intended to be a synonym for ‘magnanimous’ and ‘Little Boy’ for the low individual. Second, even before he falls into Jim Ed Love’s clutches and Lebensform, Little Boy is at the beck and call of Big Boy and, in the early minutes of the movie, almost seems to be his manservant. Third, the bravery of Big Boy is highlighted in his volunteering for the Marines, while Little Boy remains home to chase profit. Fourth, there is the incessant badgering and condescension of Little Boy on the part of Big Boy.27 Fifth, and finally, in the rodeo scene even though Big Boy gives Little Boy sound advice how to avoid being injured by the bull he is to ride, Little Boy somehow mucks it up (failure of virtue). Big Boy intervenes, is gored in the thigh, and emerges the hero of the event. Little Boy is not even allowed to bask in the sympathy of the rodeo spectators. In these many ways, Frears establishes a relationship between Big Boy and Little Boy that is a complex dialectic of opposing values, spurned admiration, scorn and resentment. Frears, no doubt unacquainted with Girardian theory, nevertheless demonstrates two Girardian theses: first, that artists are the most mimetic of humans and, second, that resentment and its mimetic causes are at the root of violence. Were the film to follow the conventions of many other Western films, the expectation that Pete should go gunning for the killer of his friend and model would be

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fulfilled, but in the final scene of the movie Frears avoids the expected consequence and, in the process, shines a bright light on how the chain of mimetic violence can be broken. The last scene of the movie returns us to the point at which Pete’s recollection began. Pete sits in his Model A pickup truck outside the church, and only now the viewer sees that it is Big Boy’s casket that is being carried down the steps of the church. We hear the Marine Corps battle hymn played in the style of Taps. The little wooden church is the only structure on a vast desert plain, adjacent to a cemetery, illuminated in broad daylight. Pete cocks his Winchester rifle, nervously, trying to decide what to do. As the people throw dirt into the open grave onto the casket, and then begin to disperse, Little Boy appears at the edge of the graveyard, walking toward his pickup truck. Pete walks past Mrs Matson, stalking Little Boy. She sees Pete out of the corner of her eye. Pete pays his respects at the graveside, and then Mrs Matson makes the astounding request that Pete perjure himself on Little Boy’s behalf and claim the shooting of Big Boy was self-defense. Pete, incredulous, agrees reluctantly, citing as reason that it was Big Boy’s Momma who made the request. Pete then confronts Little Boy averring that he will go along with “this self-defense bullshit” but warning him that if Little Boy ever does anything to tarnish Big Boy’s memory, then Pete will go gunning for him. Despite the chivalric and Marian resonances of Pete’s deferral to the wishes of Mrs Matson, despite Pete’s having witnessed Big Boy’s love for her, Pete’s actions are not fully explained. Mrs Matson says that were their fates reversed, Big Boy would want to do the same, but the subtext of her statement is and he would do it, also suggesting a double bind for Pete. Mrs Matson asks him to do something which his model would think less than manly. Everything we have seen about Big Boy suggests that he was utterly ruthless in pursuing vengeance against those he thought deserved it. In this context, Mrs Matson’s appeal to Pete is an appeal which asks him to step outside of the values connected with the cowboy life, to transcend them. She is asking Pete for an act, which, relative to his cherished set of values, is an act of supererogation, but it is an act which, simultaneously, explodes the cowboy ideal and vitiates the integrity of Pete’s model, Big Boy. Pete assents and is redeemed. His assent and everything he has experienced up to this point suggests that he is also changed. His final interaction with Mona shows that a transvaluation has taken place, a real metanoia, and this sets the stage for a final revelation which is a little moment of grace. In it, Mona announces that Big Boy wanted to name his child “Pete” and Pete declares that he will leave cowboying to go to California and seek Josepha. Pete’s ambiguous statement at the beginning of this encounter—that “it is pretty much over”—refers as much to the chain of desire that has been broken as to Big Boy’s funeral. (It also faintly echoes Jesus’ dying words.) Big Boy is dead, Pete’s desire for Mona has ended, and Big Boy’s casket is resting in the earth. Mona’s response, though typical of a mourner, also expresses her general resignation, even as, in her, a dim hope (self-deceptively) flickers: it might be possible that Pete will remain with her. Mona is now with child, something which had either been impossible or unwanted when she was married to Les, as evidenced by her and Josepha’s acid exchange earlier in the film. The final surprise (and moment of grace) is communicated by Mona: though Big



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Boy was aware of Pete’s desire for Mona, he had also known of their infidelity because Mona had confessed it, on the very night that it happened. Big Boy had known all of this and still remained true to his friendship with Pete.  Big Boy had preserved the cowboy code, and, more importantly, he had forgiven Pete.

Pete’s narrative as the speculum of self and memory Reflection is also theme of the The Hi-Lo Country, one that is evoked in the first image and last lines of the movie. Girard has written brilliantly about mimetic specularity in As You Like It and Troilus and Cressida, but the specularity of The Hi-Lo Country is of another variety, as well.28 Ultimately, this movie is a speculum of reflection and memory. The theme is heralded at the very beginning with the horse, Old Sorrel, seeing its own reflection in a stream, then mistaking it because a sound disorients it and makes it doubt that the image it sees is itself. This is the misunderstood reflection that sets all of the following events in motion. The reflection theme again surfaces after the bar room fight which nearly ends in the gang murder of Big Boy. After their escape, Big Boy and Mona, Pete and Josepha all go to Silver Springs and see Old Missa, the witch, to have their fortunes read. Pete chooses the crystal ball and asks a question about the group. Mona selfishly asks about only her future. There is nothing. The different modes of prognostication can be read differently. Uniting her choice with the poker reference in the title of the movie, nothing in the cards means that Mona will always be a loser. Mona is a nothing—she has no moral or subjective center—but does not have the reflective ability to see that. It comes as a revelation to her. Like Old Sorrel, she does not see herself for who she is. Only Pete receives the truth, a truth about death, from a reflection in a crystal ball. Pete, in his final exchange with Little Boy, claims the position of keeper of the memory of Big Boy and his friendship. He threatens Little Boy with death, if he ever dares to tarnish the memory of Big Boy. On the surface—if one had not experienced the narrative up to this point—a Girardian might expect that this claim to proprietorship means that Pete would now sacralize the memory of Big Boy, turn him into a hero, in keeping with the multiple mimetic origins of his death. As keeper of the memory, however, the newly-enlightened Pete defies this expectation and in his narrative within the film—which is a recollection—reflects the undistorted truth about Big Boy. This casts Pete’s warning to Little Boy in a different light. Because Pete is the only one who loved Big Boy for his excellence—even though the fog of desire for a time obscured that view and despite all of Big Boy’s flaws—he is the only one worthy to tell the story. “Beyond internalizing memory, it is then necessary to think, which is another way of remembering.”29 Ruminative Pete does not merely internalize the memory of Big Boy; rather, he thinks it through to its moral significance. Pete’s telling preserves the truth about Big Boy, both according to his defects and his virtues, and this against the memory of a friendship that endured the trials of mimetic rivalry. The final scene of the movie makes it clear that Pete’s fate can never be fulfilled as a cowboy. (He was a pretty lousy one, anyway.) Pete’s fate is to be the teller of a tale

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about desire—the teller of truth. He, having played the game of Hi-Lo, is the loser, and is now, at the same time, the winner. The final frames of the movie reprise a beloved, if somewhat predictable, convention of Westerns. In his Model A pickup, Pete, rides toward Josepha, California, and the setting sun. Pete narrates his final reflection: When I left the Hi-Lo Country, I didn’t give a thought to my ranch, or the price of beef, or my abandoned dreams. In my mind’s eye, I saw Big Boy. I saw the good times we had, the hell raising, the cowboying, the old ways that lived on in that man and would live on in my memory for the rest of my days.

Notes 1 2 3

4

5 6

Martin Scorsese (Producer), M. E. Walon Green (Writer), and S. Frears (Director), The Hi-Lo Country [Motion Picture] (Polygram Filmed Entertainment, Inc, 1980). Peter French, Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in Westerns (Lantham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). French does not present a definition of “cowboy metaphysics,” a priori, but works out what he means through a series of chapters. From what he does say throughout his book, one may glean the following definition. Cowboy metaphysics is a set of ideas in Western films which characterize: (1) the conflict between the cowboy’s worldview (set of beliefs and cares reflecting a way of life, the lifeworld of the West) and the worldview or way of life of the civilizers (from the East), (2) which has its focus in issues connected with death, (3) which occurs as a result of this conflict. The conflict between these ways of life—or what I call “forms of life”—is a conflict between sets of values including West vs East, freedom vs social control, masculinity vs effeminacy, naturalistic ethics vs Christian ethics, acceptance of death vs denial of death, temporalism vs eternalism, integrity vs hypocrisy, tragedy vs comedy, etc. The conflict between these sets is the occasion for one of the topoi of Westerns, the memento mori. Ibid., 1–11. Whether apocryphal or not, the statement attributed to John Ford that in a Western the scenery is always another character certainly characterizes Frears’s film. Frears’s direction also establishes a topological relationship not much addressed by Girardians—how the close packing of people in social spaces creates a mimetic critical mass. In his treatment of topography, he also reverses Western conventions (as in John Ford’s The Searchers, for example) by having exterior Western landscapes stand not for trackless enormousness and alien danger, but for transcendence. Against Bachelard and the Western convention, internal space, as social, can be a space of hostile encounters. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 1–36. Although the two figures most mimetically entangled are Pete and Big Boy, space (and my editors) will not allow me to work out the mimetic chain in all of its detail. This I reserve for the future, in a longer version of this chapter. A word about citations from the film: in all cases these are based upon my transcription of dialogue, because the filming script had been changed so dramatically from Walon Green’s first revised draft. All interpretations of characters’ dispositions also are my own and do not follow Green’s comments.



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Nicomachean Ethics, 1120a23–4. Magna Moralia, 1184a30–1185a14. Nicomachean Ethics, 1124a 16. Eudemian Ethics, 1220b35–1221a 10. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Y. Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 105. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 106. 14 Søren Kierkegaard, Either / Or: A Fragment of Life, edit. V. Eremita, trans. A. Hannay (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 84. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 85. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 86. 19 Ibid., 89. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 90. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 93. 24 Ibid., 93–4. 25 Arne Melberg, “Repetition (in the Kierkegaardian sense of the term),” Diacritics, 20, #3, 1990, 73–5. 26 Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology, trans. W. Lowrie (New York, Harper & Row, 1941), 15. 27 The best example of Little Boy’s humiliation and Big Boy’s bullying comes in one of the earliest bar scenes when Jim Ed’s entourage arrives after Big Boy has already settled at the bar. Big Boy speaks: “Little Boy! D’you got a hanky?” Little Boy (uncomprehendingly): “A hanky?!” Big Boy: “I think I noticed a little spot on the bottom of Jim Ed’s shoe. Maybe, chewing gum or dog squeeze. Get a hanky, get under that table, and wipe it clean for him.” 28 René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2004), 100–2, 144–9. 29 Jacques Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 9.

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Part Three

Television

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The Self in Crisis: Watching Mad Men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel Paolo Diego Bubbio

Research work in the humanities in general, and in philosophy in particular, is today looked at with a certain degree of suspicion, for various and, sometimes, even opposed reasons. On one hand, work on subtle epistemological questions and/or historical analysis of the thought of past philosophers is regarded as a navel-gazing activity, otiose at best, wasteful at worst. On the other hand, when philosophy and intellectual analysis come to focus on popular culture phenomena, such as comics, movies, and TV programs, they are regarded as trivializing ideas and as committing themselves to marginal and eventually unimportant work. One possible solution to this dilemma is to dismiss the critical role of the humanities in its entirety. Another possible solution is to try to show that it is actually possible to look at popular phenomena as instances of more profound dynamics currently operating at social, cultural, and psychological levels, and to make sense of them by subjecting them to a critical analysis that connects them with ideas and conceptual frameworks. Unsurprisingly, it is the latter strategy that is adopted here. In this essay, two very popular American TV series are considered: Mad Men and Homeland. I approach them from a specific interpretive angle: that of the mimetic theory originally proposed and pioneered by René Girard. My main goal, however, is not merely to pursue a mimetic analysis of these TV series, because I have a more specific focus: I argue that they are both concerned, in different ways and from different perspectives, with the question of the identity of the self and its crisis, conceived as a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Someone might object that Mad Men and Homeland are “just” TV series, that they are commercial products, and that therefore their creators and writers are mostly concerned with retaining the audience by getting it interested in the development of the plot. This is obviously true. And yet, this does not mean that, while they are trying to keep us in front of the TV, the show writers are not also (voluntarily or involuntarily, this is not relevant here) raising a timely issue: that of the crisis of the self. After all, ancient Greek tragedians such as Sophocles and Euripides were themselves interested in getting appreciation from their audiences, but this does not prevent us from considering them as expressing the Athenian culture of the fifth century bc at its highest

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level. I regard, again unsurprisingly, ancient Greek tragedies as being of a higher level of literary perfection than the scripts of Mad Men and Homeland; however, we should recognize that, Sophocles and Euripides not being around, TV series today play a social role quite similar to that played by tragedies in fifth-century bc Athens. The first section of this chapter is devoted to Mad Men and the second to Homeland. I argue that the two shows represent two stages in the process of disintegration of the self, which here I consider from a mimetic perspective. In the third and final section, I address Girard’s account of this process, and I consider his related and critical remarks on Hegel. As I find Girard’s suggested solution of the problem of the disintegration of the self somewhat wanting, I therefore suggest that Hegel’s philosophy, once reconstructed beyond Girard’s own reading, might provide a more appropriate solution, while being not incompatible with mimetic theory.

“The way that they saw themselves is gone”: Mad Men and the cracked self Mad Men is an American television series set in the 1960s.1 The protagonist is Don Draper, the creative director of an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City, and the series focuses on him and on the people in his professional and personal life. The series has received critical acclaim and has drawn a lot of attention— even from philosophy, as exemplified by the interesting collection of essays Mad Men and Philosophy.2 However, none of the essays in the collection approaches Mad Men from the point of view of mimetic theory, which is quite surprising, because watching Mad Men for a mimetic theory scholar is like visiting a candy store for a kid.3 An entire essay could be written to analyze mimetic aspects and dynamics that affect all the characters in Mad Men. Let me mention some examples. Pete Campbell is an account executive who sees Don Draper as both a mentor and a hindrance to his advancement within the firm. Don is for Pete the model / obstacle in its prototypical form. Pete is a deeply mimetic character. When Ken Cosgrove, one of Pete’s colleagues, gets a short story published in the Atlantic Monthly, Pete, who had so far showed no interest whatsoever in pursuing a career as a writer, suddenly dusts off an old story he had written about a talking bear and tries to get it published. He even goes as far as asking his wife to meet with an old boyfriend (who took her virginity) to help him get published (cf. the episode “5G”).4 However, Pete is far from being the only employee of the firm to be prone to mimetic contagion. On a different occasion, Harry Crane finds out that Ken Cosgrove earns 100 dollars a week more than him (“The Benefactor”). Harry was not thinking of asking for a pay raise, but as soon as he becomes aware of this, he immediately starts to perceive his salary as being unacceptably low.5 Both these episodes closely resemble (and ultimately have the same structure as) the situation of the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, who despises his fellow schoolmates and is not interested in their company, until he discovers that they are organizing a dinner and that he was not meant to be invited; then suddenly



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he becomes obsessed by the reunion to the point of embarrassing himself by inviting himself to the dinner. This episode is used by Girard to emphasize the mimetic nature of desire, which longs precisely for that which others (the mediators of desire) possess, but whose possession is precluded from us.6 This is called by Girard “metaphysical desire,” and metaphysical desire inevitably leads to the destruction of the self. This is precisely what happens to another Mad Men character, the British financial officer Lane Pryce, who is seduced by Don Draper’s self-confidence and, despite his own lack of skills and weak temper, invests heavily in the new agency (Sterling, Cooper, Draper, and Pryce) to become a partner, thus amassing a substantial debt, and eventually committing suicide. Lane’s widow shows a remarkable awareness of the process that led her husband to take his own life, when she addresses Don, saying, “You had no right to fill a man like that with ambition” (“The Phantom”). And the list of the situations featuring Mad Men characters in a struggle with the power of mimetic desire could go on.7 But here I am mainly interested in considering Mad Men (and then Homeland) as instances of the crisis of the self, and for that purpose, the character that should be analyzed in more detail is the protagonist, Don Draper. As the show’s fans know, there is an obvious reason why Don Draper is an interesting character from the point of view of the crisis of the self. In fact, he stole his identity. Don’s real name, we learn as the show progresses, is Dick Whitman, and he is the illegitimate son of a prostitute. During military service in the Korean War, Dick assumed the identity of Lieutenant Don Draper after he was killed, by switching identification tags with him. From the early episodes of the first season, it is clear that Don is an expert in how to use the mechanics of mimetic desire. He knows the game. He even made a job out of it. In one of the most often quoted lines of the show, Don remarks: “By love you mean big lightning bolts to the heart, where you can’t eat and you can’t work, and you just run off and get married and make babies. The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me … to sell nylons” (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”). With his charm, success, and obvious self-confidence, Don is a model (a mediator of desire, in Girard’s terms) for basically everyone around him. He is aware of that, and he is happy to feed the attraction he exerts. Girard has a word for Don’s strategy, one that Don’s “macho” ego would definitely not like: coquetry. Girard first describes this dynamic in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, in the context of his analysis of Stendhal’s The Red and the Black: Julien starts to show indifference toward Mathilde, and as a consequence her desire for Julien suddenly escalates; it is Julien’s “state of perceived self-sufficiency”8 that makes Julien so attractive to Mathilde. Julien is a coquette, which is Girard’s term for Freud’s narcissist. Coquetry is “the enticing of desire from others by one who does not intend to respond to that desire but to make use of it for his or her own ends.”9 However, it is important not to forget that, as Girard writes, in reality the coquette “has no more self-sufficiency than the man who desires her.”10 Mad Men fans are familiar with the graphics that accompany the show’s opening music: the silhouette of a man, easily identifiable as Don, falling from a skyscraper; in the final sequence, we see “a tight shot of Don from behind, in which he initially appears to be still falling, but then the frame widens to reveal him sitting in a relaxed

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pose, his outstretched arm draped over the back of a couch, cigarette in hand.”11 This looks like an appropriate graphic representation of coquetry: self-sufficiency is just pretended, and in reality the coquette is as bound in the mimetic circle as anybody else: “the coquette’s self-desire is mediated by those attracted to her at the same moment that their desire is mediated by the coquette’s projected self-sufficiency.”12 Let us take a closer look at the ways Don’s self-desire is mediated by others. A prostitute’s son, Don, thanks to a change of identity and to his undeniable skills, was able to climb the social ladder. He now wants to be what others want him to be: a highly successful and self-confident creative director. However, Don’s inner self is far from being as confident as he usually pretends to be. He wants and needs others to see him as a successful businessman, because without the aura of self-sufficiency that is returned to him through others’ imitation, he sees himself as nothing else but a “whore’s child,” as his stepmother used to call him.13 When his wife Betty eventually finds out that his real name is not Don Draper but Dick Whitman, and Don reveals his past to her, Betty asks, “What would you do if you were me? Would you love you?” Don replies, “I was surprised you ever loved me” (“The Gipsy and the Hobo”; my italic). This is a revealing moment: Don’s fragile self, whom he has so far managed to shape externally in an attractive fashion, is now openly cracked—and Don even seems to be relieved by that. It is like, after a long time, he is free to be himself again. After the crisis with his wife, Don makes a trip out to California to see Anna Draper, the widow of “the real Don” (the lieutenant killed during the Korean War), who several years earlier had discovered the identity theft but who eventually became a very close friend and confidante of Don/Dick. Anna appears to be Don’s only true friend: she is the only one who knows Don’s real self,14 or at least the version of himself that is closer to an “authentic self.” Referring to the disclosure of his past to his wife, Don entrusts Anna: “I could tell, the minute she saw who I really was, she never wanted to look at me again. Which is why I never told her” (“The Good News”). Now Don might seem free to be who he truly is, and might seem free to express his true self. But he cannot. He does not know what he really wants.15 His self is irremediably cracked. Don knows far too well how mimeticism works to naively believe that one can easily get rid of mimetic mediation and reconstruct one’s “true self.” The point is—there is no “original self.” In the context of an interesting conversation with some beatniks, friends of his mistress Midge, Don is criticized by one of them (Roy) because of his job: as an advertiser, he is contributing to the creation of “the religion of mass consumption.” The dialogue continues as follows: Don: People want to be told what to do so badly that they’ll listen to anyone. Roy: When you say “people,” I have a feeling you’re talking about thou. Don: And I have a feeling that you spent more time on your hair this morning (points to Midge) than she did. (“Babylon”)

Roy is right: Don, even if he works in the industry of the “creation of desires,” is not immune from mimetic contagion. But this is not a revelation for Don. The point is: neither is Roy, as Don ironically points out by referring to Roy’s hairstyle, which he clearly copied from someone else to mark his belonging to an “alternative” and



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“dissenting” community.16 Don here is rejecting Roy’s pretense to a “look from nowhere.” We all want to be original, to be “authentic”—this seems to be Don’s argument—but what we end up being is merely a follower of another model. There is no escape from mimeticism. Don’s self is a cracked self. But perhaps this is not just about Don as an individual (or a character). The series is set in a specific historical moment (the 1960s), which featured a significant number of political and social changes that had a strong impact on individual adjustment in relation to values, gender roles, and self-perception. In one of his rare moments of disclosure, Don tells Peggy (a good copywriter and Don’s protégée): “There are people out there who buy things, people like you and me. And something happened. Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that’s very valuable” (“Shut the Door, Have a Sit”; my italic). What is Don referring to here? Maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis, which according to the show’s chronology happened less than a year earlier; or, more likely, the recent assassination of President Kennedy. However, there might be something more. People’s self-perception is changed. Peggy has good intuitions about what is going on, and this is what makes her so valuable to Don—not merely as a copywriter but, more importantly, as a companion. Apart from Anna, Peggy seems to be the only person who understands Don. Don is clearly a mentor and a model for Peggy. However, unlike other employees who are Don’s “disciples” (such as the aforementioned Pete Campbell, Harry Crane, and Lane Pryce), Peggy’s imitation of Don is, to some extent, conscious, and more professional than personal. In a tense dialogue between the two, Peggy faces Don by telling him: “You know something. We are all here because of you. All we want to do is please you” (“Public Relations”). Peggy seems to be the only one able to look beyond Don’s pretended self-sufficiency and see his cracked self. This is the reason why Peggy is so valuable to Don, but at the same time it is also the reason why he gets so easily irritated by her. Peggy’s awareness of the mimetic nature of her relationship to Don is what ultimately leads her to leave the agency, stating: “I’ve reached a point where it’s time for me to have a new experience.” When Don tries to convince her to stay by offering her an open pay raise and saying “You tell me the number. And I’ll beat it,” Peggy replies, “There’s no number.” Peggy leaves the agency because, she realizes, a close proximity with her mentor and model is now damaging rather than benefiting her. Peggy understands that “the way people saw themselves is gone.” It is not unlikely that Don, with this claim, is thinking not just in professional terms, but about himself personally. The way he saw himself is gone, but his self is cracked, and he does not know to what extent he can construct a new self (I will come back to this issue in the final section). In addition, Peggy understands that the way people saw themselves is gone also because she is very sensitive to all the changes her world is going through: the growing recognition of civil rights, changes in gender roles—and changes in politics. The world of Mad Men is the world of the Cold War: two superpowers maintaining a precarious equilibrium of rivalry. As we know, everything changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. And contrary to the optimistic expectations of the

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time, the post-Cold War world has been not less, but more, violent. That is the world of the other series that I consider here—our world: Homeland.

“Everyone’s not me”: Homeland and the shattered self Homeland is an American political thriller television series set in our times.17 The two main characters are Carrie Mathison, a CIA officer with bipolar disorder, and Nicholas Brody, a US marine sniper. The plot opens with the release of Brody, who had been held captive by Al-Qaeda for several years, and Carrie’s belief that he was “turned” by the enemy and that therefore he could be a “dormant” terrorist.18 Both the characters have identity issues. Carrie is bipolar. She has a fluctuating personality. This makes her different. And somehow she wants to be different. In the series pilot, we witness a conversation between Carrie and her mentor and CIA supervisor, Saul Berenson, referring to the events of 9/11. Significantly, these lines are included in the soundtrack that opens every episode: Carrie: I’m serious. I—I missed something once before, I won’t… I can’t let that happen again. Saul: It was ten years ago. Everyone missed something that day. Carrie: Yeah, everyone’s not me. (“Pilot”; my italic)

Carrie is aware of her difference. Also, she feels she has a mission in life: she wants to prevent violence. It might be objected that, being a CIA agent, this is simply her job. However, the show makes clear that it is more than a job for Carrie. Later in the series, Maggie, Carrie’s sister (who is also a medical doctor and is treating her for the bipolar disorder) tells her: “You say this is about patriotism, but we both know that’s not the whole story. Part of you wants to do this” (“The Smile”; my italic). This is the reason why Carrie comes to believe that Brody is a threat to the United States: she doesn’t want that violence to happen again. Her determination and persistence, however, make her appear as if she is paranoid. The point is: Carrie is right. Brody has indeed been “turned” by the enemy. As we come to realize as the show progresses, after being tortured, Brody was sold to Al-Qaeda commander Abu Nazir, who treated him kindly and asked him to teach his son, Issa, English. Brody became very attached to Issa, and was shocked when the boy was killed in a drone strike while attending school. And he was even more shocked when he watched US Vice President Walden falsely claim that no children were killed in the strike. It was this lie that made Brody see things from a different perspective. As a US marine, he was used to considering Americans as victims, and Islamic terrorists as persecutors. Suddenly he came to see Americans as persecutors. As a consequence, he converted to Islam and swore revenge on Walden. Therefore, Brody is effectively a dormant terrorist, whose mission is to kill the vice president in a suicide attack.



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Brody conceals his “true” identity, or, better, he conceals what he came to see as his “true identity”: he sees himself as the one who brings justice. This is clear from the videotape he makes before attempting his suicide attack (which will fail, first for technical problems, and then because Brody decides not to proceed after receiving a phone call from his daughter). In the video, looking at the camera, Brody states: “This is about justice for eighty-two children whose deaths were never acknowledged and whose murder is a stain on the soul of this nation” (“State of Independence”; my italic). Brody wants justice for the victims; he wants the persecutor to pay for his crime, and he builds his new “true” identity on this. But is it really justice that Brody is after, or is it just revenge? Brody is very insecure and confused—much more than Don Draper. Watching the series, we see Brody changing his mind several times. He decides not to detonate the bomb, but continues working for Nazir. When he is exposed, he agrees, on Carrie’s suggestion, to become a triple agent for the CIA, but then he kills Vice President Walden (something that he does under Nazir’s threat that he will kill Carrie if Brody does not comply, but it is also clearly something he enjoys doing19). In season 3, he agrees to be part of a CIA plot by seeking asylum in Iran, his mission being the assassination of the head of the Revolutionary Guard, but once the mission seems to have failed, he doesn’t show up for an attempted extradition out of Iran, which raises doubts about his loyalty to the United States (“Big Man in Tehran”). Brody’s identity is not just cracked. It is completely shattered. If Carrie has a fluid identity because of her bipolar disorder, Brody seems to have no stable identity at all. And yet, from the outside, Brody’s identity is perfectly clear. When he returns to the United States after eight years of captivity, he is unanimously celebrated as a hero— and Carrie’s attempts to expose him are ridiculed: how could a hero be a terrorist? Later, a bomb hidden in Brody’s car (unbeknownst to him) detonates and kills 200 of the mourners at Walden’s funeral; and suddenly he becomes the most wanted and hated terrorist of the United States. A hero first … and then a monster, Brody now becomes a scapegoat. No wonder everybody wants him dead. In the final episode of season 3 (“The Star”), Brody manages to kill the head of the Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian Government is now after him; he could be extracted, but the CIA decides to sacrifice him as  part of a deal with Javadi (the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guard, who secretly works for the CIA) to help him advance to a position of greater power. Brody is therefore killed in a public execution, surrounded by a crowd that celebrates his death. The following sequence is set a few months later. Saul Berenson’s wife is reading the following news: “In a stunning development at the Geneva summit, Iranian diplomats have offered IAEA inspectors full and unfettered access to the regime’s nuclear sites in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.” The cycle is completed: the expulsion of the scapegoat has allowed the peace process between the United Stated and Iran to evolve. Brody is depicted as a symbolic figure in the context of the mimetic rivalry between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam. As early as 2002, Girard had highlighted the essential mimetic nature of this conflict, writing: “… given their efficiency, the sophistication of the means employed, their understanding of the United States,

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and their training conditions, weren’t the attackers a bit American themselves? The whole situation is entirely mimetic.”20 In their struggle for victory, the Western world and fundamentalist Islam each end up using similar means—means that are highly technological, and extremely violent. We can mention two examples from Homeland here. First, Nazir’s plan to assassinate Vice President Walden involves the retrieval of a serial number that corresponds to Walden’s pacemaker, which is then used to manipulate the pacemaker wirelessly and induce a heart attack. Second, when Javadi, the deputy head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, kills his ex-wife and daughterin-law, who live in the United States, he is not punished, because he is considered an asset by the CIA, which intends to employ him as a double agent back in Iran. This is one of the reasons why Brody is so confused. He cannot really distinguish between the two “rivals” in terms of good and evil. Girard makes a claim along these lines in Battling to the End: … the Bush administration has done as it pleased in Afghanistan, as the Russians did in Chechnya. In return, there are Islamist attacks everywhere. The ignominy of Guantanamo, the inhumane American camp for presumed terrorists who are suspected of having ties with Al-Qaeda, demonstrates the contempt for the laws of war. Classical war, which included respect for the rights of prisoners, no longer exists.21

In the world of massive geopolitical mimetic rivalry in Homeland, everybody seems to consider Brody first a hero and then a monster, including his wife. Everybody but Carrie. Possibly thanks to her bipolar disorder,22 Carrie seems to be able to grasp the psychological mechanisms behind Brody’s shattered self. When Brody is arrested, and Carrie questions him, she starts describing to him how he was systematically broken by Nazir and how Brody’s identity was rebuilt by him. Then she provides an explanation (or, better, a set of explanations) for Brody’s decision to not detonate the bomb: Carrie: It was hearing Dana’s [Brody’s daughter] voice that changed your mind, wasn’t it? She asked you to come home and you did. Why? Maybe because … Maybe because you suddenly understood that killing yourself and ruining Dana’s life wouldn’t bring Issa back. Maybe because you knew then how much you loved your own child. Maybe because you were just sick of death. That’s the Brody I’m talking to. That’s the Brody that knows the difference between warfare and terrorism. That’s the Brody I met up in that cabin. That’s the Brody I fell in love with. (“Q&A”; my italic)

Carrie realizes that Brody wanted justice for Issa, but she also realizes that Brody’s sudden change of heart did not depend on a weakness, but on the intuition, prompted by the conversation with his daughter, that violence, far from bringing justice, could only perpetuate violent rivalry. It is in the hope of stopping violence through nonviolent means, which implies getting Nazir arrested, that Brody agrees to become a triple agent for the CIA. The relationship with Carrie seems to be the only thing that makes Brody overcome, at least temporarily, his involvement in the mimetic rivalry.



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However, as always when it comes to mimetic relationships, Carrie does not hold a privileged God’s-eye view. She might have a better understanding of Brody’s shattered self because of her own particular psychological condition, but she is as confused as anybody else. For instance, she seems to align with the general opinion when, in order to convince Brody to become a triple agent for the CIA, she tells him that he will be a “real hero” and that all the bad things he has done so far would not matter, as it would all lead to the arrest of Nazir (“I’ll Fly Away”). And in the final episode of the third season, a pregnant Carrie, who is still grieving Brody’s death, is represented as not being sure whether she should accept the offer to become the CIA station chief in Istanbul, or be the mother of Brody’s child. Brody’s only escape from his shattered self was his death, and Carrie seems to be lost. Is there no redemption, no hope for a reconstruction of the self?

“It was about redemption”: Girard, Hegel, and the reconstruction of the self Both Mad Men and Homeland are concerned with a phenomenon typical of modernity that can be labeled the “crisis of the self.” This is clearly a huge topic that cannot be exhaustively addressed here: the following remarks, therefore, are inevitably generic but they are meant to pave the way for a brief analysis of Girard’s account of the self and its suitability. Premodern conceptions of the self were organized around the idea of “fixed” identity roles (here one can think of, for example, the more rigid and hierarchical organization of society in the Middle Ages). Even Descartes, who claimed that everything must be doubted, considered the self as the only substance whose existence was beyond doubt. However, the notion of the self started disintegrating soon thereafter. Progressively losing its fixity, the definition of the self became increasingly dependent on its relations with other selves. A critical moment in this process is represented by that triad of thinkers whom Paul Ricoeur called the “masters of suspicion,” namely, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. They showed that what we usually regard as the integrity of our “self ” is actually heavily determined by a set of ideological (that is, economically driven), unconscious, and will-to-power-driven circumstances and motives. The self becomes fluid.23 What in modernity becomes more and more evident is that, as Girard writes: “It is in the confrontation with otherness that the individual acquires self-consciousness. The self has no meaning except in the relation, even when the relationship takes the form of a duel.”24 Both Draper and Brody have very few authentic relationships, and, significantly, those that appear as most meaningful often take the form of a duel (Draper with Peggy; Brody with Carrie). However, as we have seen, there is a difference between Draper’s cracked self and Brody’s shattered self. We might consider them as representing two different stages of the process of disintegration of the self. Consider Don Draper in opposition to another character in Mad Men, senior agency partner Roger Sterling. Roger’s self-perception is that of a late (or decadent)

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romantic hero, living his life as if he were “on shore leave” (“Long Weekend”): he thinks of himself as “thoroughly original.”25 Conversely, Don knows he is not original. A coquette is always aware that the pretended self-sufficiency is a strategy. When he does not have to show off his fake confidence, his ontological sickness becomes evident: he experiences that lack of being that mimetic desires falsely promise to fill. Don is unanimously considered a man who “has everything”; a guest at his daughter’s birthday party points that out explicitly. And yet, a few hours later, Draper sits in his car “in front of a railway crossing, staring vacantly into the distance”26 (“Marriage of Figaro”). What’s the problem with Don Draper? Unlike other characters, Don knows he is neither “original” nor “authentic.” The point is: he knows the mimetic mechanism too well to believe that he can become authentic. In season 4, Don unveils his “true” identity to Faye Miller, a woman he is having a relationship with. She tries to convince him to stop living under cover: Faye: Listen, maybe it’s not all about work. Maybe that sick feeling might go away if you’d take your head out of the sand about the past. Don: You know it’s not that simple. Faye: Of course it isn’t. And you don’t have to do it alone, but if you resolve some of that, you might be more comfortable with everything. Don: And then what happens? Faye: Then you’re stuck trying to be a person like the rest of us. (“Tomorrowland”)

In this conversation, we can appreciate Don’s reluctance to reveal his true identity to others. Although the concealment of his identity is certainly risky and distressing, there is an aspect of it that is very attractive to Don. If the identity of the self is always a farce (something that Don knows very well, and that the people around him constantly confirm), what’s the point of being stuck in one identity? Every time the crisis of his self worsens, Don feels the temptation to “start over,” to build a new identity.27 Don’s main fear is not the threat of being exposed: it is, rather, to remain stuck in a fixed identity once he is exposed, because this would condemn him to stick to an identity that he does not perceive as authentic (“Dick Whitman” is just a name, not his “true identity”). As long as he plays a character (the successful businessman, the charming womanizer—that is, “Don Draper”), he can keep the hope that maybe one day he will become an authentic self. But as soon as he identifies with his character—be it Don Draper, Dick Whitman, or someone entirely different—he does not become “authentic.” He becomes that character. Girard beautifully expresses this predicament when he writes: “Mimetic desire makes us believe we are always on the verge of becoming self-sufficient through our own transformation into someone else.”28 Mimetic desire is co-essential with a process of disintegration of the self.29 Consequently, a worsening of ontological sickness corresponds to a further disintegration of the self. Don Draper is a man of the sixties, and his self is seriously cracked; but Nicholas Brody is a man of the twenty-first century, and his self is irremediably shattered. Is there any solution to the disintegration of the self, or is this process irreversible? According to Girard, freedom from mimeticism can be achieved through



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redemption, which is the final point of a process of conversion. Girard employs religious terminology, but it should be stressed that conversion does not always have to be religious in content.30 The process of conversion is usually tormenting, and often features an acute crisis, whose paroxysms can coincide with hallucinatory phenomena. In a Mad Men scene that (no irreverence intended) has an almost Dostoyevskian flavor,31 Don is in bed with fever, and one of his previous mistresses, Andrea, apparently enters his flat, seduces Don, has sex with him, and then declares that he will continue meeting her because “he can’t change who he is”; in response, Don chokes her to death. But this is merely a hallucination: Don awakens the next morning and realizes he had a fever dream. He says nothing of his vision to Megan (his new wife), and tells her she does not need to worry about him (“Mystery Date”). This might be Don’s chance to start a process of liberation from the mimeticism in which he is trapped; however, he decides to go back to his usual, shattered self: a lost opportunity for redemption. For Nicholas Brody, things are (unsurprisingly) even more difficult. While he is in Iran waiting for an extraction that will never happen, Brody questions the meaning of his actions, and especially his very recent assassination of the head of the Revolutionary Guard. Carrie replies with an interesting claim, and the following conversation follows: Carrie: It was about redemption. Brody: In what universe can you redeem one murder by committing another? Carrie: You’re a marine, Brody. The rules are different. Brody: I’m a lot of things. But I’m not a marine anymore. I haven’t been for some time. Carrie: You were asked to do a mission on behalf of your country, and you did it. Brody: Is that what you tell yourself? Carrie: That’s what I believe. Brody: Wind us up and point us in a direction? Carrie: If that’s what you think, why’d you agree to do it in the first place? Brody: That is becoming less and less fucking clear. (“The Star”)

They both have a point. Carrie sticks to the only element that defines her otherwise very fluid identity, namely, her desire to control violence. She believes that the assassination performed by Brody will have benefits in terms of the peace process and, as we have seen, she is right. Therefore, from her point of view, Brody has redeemed himself. However, Carrie is right in only her “universe,” the universe of mimetic victimage, where it is possible, effectively, to redeem one murder by committing another. She even appeals to Brody’s military status: the idea that there are some individuals who have a monopoly on violence, for whom “the rules are different,” is a classic assumption of a sacrificial society that seeks to control violence. But, as Brody points out, he no longer sees himself as a soldier. The lack of clarity to which Brody refers in his final statement is an expression of an existential failure: he failed to be a “true self,” a “real human subject.”32 Can we analyze this problem in terms of Girard’s mimetic theory?

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Girard does not provide a systematic analysis of the “self.”33 However, on the basis of various references and reflections that can be found in his text, we can construct the following account. We are used to assuming the Cartesian idea of the self as a selfsufficient substance. However, this idea does not correspond, in Girard’s view, to the reality of the self, as it creates a false expectation of ontological self-sufficiency, which is nothing but an illusion. In Webb’s words: It is the misguided will to be such an object-subject, that lures us to seek psychological fusion with figures of power, individual and collective, to try to find in the desires of rivals the secret of ontological self-sufficiency. It is what leads us to seek to be seen and admired by others: so that we can believe in our own substantial reality. It is also what leads us, in an extension of that effort, to try through relationships of domination and victimization to turn ourselves into gods.34

The substantial reality of the self is an illusion: the self is continuously being transformed through our (mimetic) relationships.35 Building on Girard’s insights, Jean-Michel Oughourlian defines this “interdividual self ” as follows: I have always thought that what one customarily calls the I or self in psychology is an unstable, constantly changing, and ultimately evanescent structure. I think … that only desire brings this self into existence. Because desire is the only psychological motion, it alone, it seems to me, is capable of producing the self and breathing life into it.36

In other words, the self is always unstable because it is generated by desire. First there is mimesis, and then the self.37 This is the reason why Oughourlian argues that the self must be conceived not in metaphysical but in functional terms: the self is merely “a function of its operations.”38 And since its operations are intrinsically mimetic, the self is constantly remodeled through interdividual relationships with the mediator. And this is where psychological dynamics acquire an historical dimension. The disintegration of the self, conceived as a modern phenomenon, is a self-feeding process that gets worse generation after generation: the more cracked the self of the model, the more shattered the self of the disciple. Mad Men seems to provide us with a clear description of this process when it shows us Don arguing: “Kids today, they have no one to look up to ’cause they’re looking up to us” (“New Amsterdam”). To sum up: in Girard’s view, one should renounce the idea of the (mimetically constructed) substantial reality of the self, and become a “real human subject.” But what is a real human subject? Unfortunately, Girard is reticent on this point. He invites us to choose Christ as our model because, being divine, Christ is the only subject who does not respond to imitation with rivalry.39 But is this enough to address the modern crisis of the self? Although for space reasons I can provide only some brief remarks on this point, I believe that a crucial point in addressing Girard’s account of the “real human subject” (and maybe in establishing a framework for the further development of the inquiry) is represented by Hegel’s philosophy. Girard’s relationship to Hegel is a complex one, and deserves to be treated in



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more detail than can be done here. It is Girard himself who admits: “I felt an affinity with Hegel’s philosophy.”40 As early as Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Girard claims that “underground psychology” (the psychology of the mimetic subject) “parodies the Hegelian struggle for recognition.”41 However—and this is the point—Girard seems to assume Kojève’s reading of the Hegelian struggle for recognition,42 with the master/slave dialectic as its prototype. Even Andrew O’Shea, one of Girard’s best interpreters, and the author of a very acute study on mimetic theory and the notion of the self, seems to subscribe to this interpretation of Hegel when he marks the difference between the two thinkers by arguing: “the self, for Girard, is not a vehicle of Geist (as in the Hegelian dialectic), but rather must come to the humble realization that its historical becoming is also an illusion based on its belief in ‘originality.’”43 The self may well be a “vehicle of Geist” for Hegel, but the Geist is not merely, or primarily, the one that manifests itself in the power-exchange process of the master/ slave dialectic, which is an early stage of the Phenomenology of Spirit; a much more advanced stage is the one represented by the “forgiveness and reconciliation” episode. Here a “hard-hearted judge” is represented as acknowledging that he is as historically located as is the beautiful soul, a move that allows reconciliation. But this is perfectly consistent with the “humble realization” of the self ’s historical becoming that O’Shea attributes (quite correctly, in my view) to Girard. Girard is right when he provides the following description of Hegel’s philosophical enterprise: “To open up to the other, to get outside of oneself through alienation, is to prepare a return to oneself that provides true access to the real, access to real rationality free of any subjectivity.”44 Hegel’s limitation, in Girard’s view, was to give priority to the desire for recognition over the desire to acquire: “It is the desire to acquire, much more than the desire for recognition, that quickly degenerates into what I call metaphysical desire, whereby the subject seeks to acquire the being of his or her model.”45 Here Girard’s thought becomes slightly ambiguous. Is the desire for being prior to the desire for the object, or vice versa? Girard seems to opt for the priority of the object when he describes the process by claiming: “He [the mediator] then becomes my model, to the point that I finally completely forget the object that I initially thought I desired.”46 Sticking to this description, one might summarize the process as follows: the subject experiences an existential lack; he or she tries to fill that lack with the possession of an object; than he or she forgets the object, and tries to acquire the being of the model. Isn’t this process a bit convoluted? Isn’t Girard making a mistake similar to the one he identifies in Freud’s account of the Oedipus complex—that is, opting for a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand?47 Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to argue that the subject has a desire for the being (of the model), and that the desire for the objects (possessed by the model) is secondary to the being? If we employ Hegelian terminology, we might say that the desire for recognition is the desire for being, because for an idealist such as Hegel there is no proper being for humans without mutual recognition (I am a human being because I am recognized as a human being by my peers).48 Hegel too is not content with the Cartesian idea of the self as a self-sufficient and atemporal substantial reality. To think of the self independently of the world is an illusion. Hegel regards the self as a “mediated and achieved

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identity, which is realised through the process that Hegel calls ‘World-history’”49—that is, it is an historical product. By the same token, Hegel would not dislike, I think, Girard’s parallel between the (Hegelian) notion of the “return to oneself ” through recognition and “Christ’s death and resurrection.”50 What is missing in Girard’s account, from a Hegelian perspective, is the philosophical moment linking the critique of the Cartesian notion of substantial reality with the religious representation of Christ. Hegel’s theory of recognition is meant to be that philosophical moment. In a scene from the final episode of Homeland season 3 that is both “Girardian” and “Hegelian,” Javadi (the forthcoming head of the Revolutionary Guard, secretly working for the CIA) addresses Carrie (who is desperate because of Brody’s imminent execution) by mentioning everything Carrie has been through, and comments: Why would anyone do that to themselves? Why would you? And I think I know now. It was always about Brody. That’s what you care about. Maybe the only thing. Who Brody is, that’s for Allah to know. But what he did, that’s undeniable. It was astonishing … Everyone sees him in your eyes now. Saul. The President. Lockhart. Even me. (“The Star”; my italic)

Carrie wants others to see Brody through her eyes, so that, through the recognition of others, Brody can reconstruct his shattered identity on that recognition—because this is the only identity possible in a mimetic world. Beyond that, there is the higher recognitive moment represented by forgiveness and reconciliation. Rather than trying to win back an always-illusory substantial reality of the self, one should give up that illusion once and for all, and reject every mimetic relationship, maintaining a forgiving attitude toward others. In a nutshell, this is the philosophical/ethical meaning of Hegel’s theory of recognition. Girard addresses recognition, but only in religious (rather than philosophical) terms, by maintaining that this can happen only through the imitation of Christ, the son of a nonviolent and forgiving God.51 The content of the message, however, is the same. The reconstruction of the self (or redemption, in religious terms), can pass through the acceptance of our finitude only, and through an ongoing attitude of forgiveness and reconciliation. This is not an easy task. And yet, we have no alternatives, if we do not want to end up like Don Draper: in the final episode in season 6, in the very last sequence, Don picks up his children and shows them the now-dilapidated brothel he grew up in (“In Care Of ”). While his daughter looks at him, he remains silent, stuck in front of the past, unable to rebuild his self.

Notes 1 2 3

Mad Men is created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on July 19, 2007, on the American cable network AMC and is produced by Lionsgate Television. The seventh and final season will be aired during 2014 and 2015. Rod Carveth and James B. South, eds., Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems (Hoboken: Wiley, 2010). Mad Men and Philosophy features a chapter by George A. Dunn entitled “‘People



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Want To Be Told What To Do So Badly that They’ll Listen to Anyone’: Mimetic Madness at Sterling Cooper” (20–33); however, it does not make any reference to Girard’s mimetic theory. To the best of my knowledge, the only attempt to analyze Mad Men using mimetic theory is Christopher S. Morrissey’s conference paper “Mimetic Desire according to Mad Men,” presented at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) Conference, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, June 30–July 4, 2010 (paper abstract available on the conference website: http:// transformingviolence.nd.edu/assets/22954/morrisseyabstract.pdf). 4 Cf. John Fritz, “Pete, Peggy, Don, and the Dialectic of Remembering and Forgetting,” in Carveth and South, eds, Mad Men and Philosophy, 53–65, at 56: “We even get the feeling that it isn’t success as a writer that Pete cares about, but the fact that Cosgrove succeeded and he failed. But Pete feels no qualms about forcing his wife into an incredibly awkward situation to satisfy his desire for success. When she does come through with an offer for publication in Boys’ Life, Pete is further enraged because that isn’t good enough for him.” 5 Cf. Robert White, “Egoless Egoists: The Second-Hand Lives of Mad Men,” in Carveth and South, eds., Mad Men and Philosophy, 79–94, at 91: “Crane’s self-appraisal is based not on his actual job performance, but on how his paycheck compares to someone else’s.” 6 René Girard, Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky (New York: Crossroad, 1997). 7 Cf. White, “Egoless Egoists,” 90: “Most, if not all, of the characters in Mad Men live second-hand lives. Betty Draper is a housewife and mother, not because this is her chosen profession (she would rather be a model), but because this is what was expected of women in 1960s America. Harry Crane’s wife, Jennifer, is pleased her husband has become the head (and only member) of the television department at Sterling Cooper, not because this is good for him, but because this will impress her friends (“The Benefactor”). Peggy Olson smokes a cigarette and drinks beer while on a blind date, not because she likes cigarettes and beer, but in order to look “Manhattan” (“Indian Summer”). Although White does not make explicit reference to Girard, his remarks are definitely consistent with mimetic theory. 8 Chris Fleming, René Girard: Violence and Mimesis (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 23. 9 Eugene Webb, The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993), 111. 10 René Girard, with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (1978; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 370. 11 Dunn, “‘People Want To Be Told What To Do So Badly,’” 32. 12 Fleming, René Girard, 38. 13 “… the adult Whitman/Draper accepted others’ evaluation of him as the standard of his own self-worth, and so sought to manipulate how others saw him by taking on another man’s identity.” White, “Egoless Egoists,” 92. 14 White, “Egoless Egoists,” 87. 15 “For, even if he is a master at manipulating the desires of others, we see he is dramatically powerless to master his own desire, which is just as human, just as mimetic.” Morrissey, “Mimetic Desire according to Mad Men,” abstract. 16 Cf. George Teschner and Gabriel Teschner, “Creating the Need for the New: ‘It’s not the Wheel. It’s the Carousel,’” in Carveth and South, eds, Mad Men and Philosophy,

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126–40, at 129: “Don understands something about Roy that Roy doesn’t understand about himself. Roy’s values are no different from that of the ‘middle class’ that he rejects.” 17 Homeland is developed and produced by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. It is based on the Israeli series Hatufim (English title: Prisoners of War), which was created by Gideon Raff. Homeland premiered on October 2, 2011, on the cable channel Showtime and is produced by Fox 21. Homeland has been renewed for a fourth season, to air in 2014. 18 While there is, to my knowledge, no previous published work on Homeland, a book entitled Homeland and Philosophy, edited by Robert Arp, is in preparation for the Open Court Publishing Company’s Popular Culture and Philosophy Series. 19 Walden (gasping): Call … an ambulance! Brody: No. WALDEN clutches at the phone, but BRODY moves it away. Walden: What are you doing? Brody: You still don’t get it, do you? (fierce whisper) I’m killing you. (“Broken Hearts”) 20 René Girard, “What Is Happening Today Is Mimetic Rivalry on a Global Scale,” an interview with René Girard, conducted by Henri Tincq, trans. Thomas C. Hilde, South Central Review 19, nos. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 2002): 22–7. 21 René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary Baker, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (2007; East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 67. 22 While there is no evidence in the show explicitly supporting this hypothesis, I think it is interesting to consider the possibility that Carrie’s bipolar disorder puts her in a unique position to understand Brody’s identity crisis. 23 “Modernity frustrates the pursuit of integrity because it casts doubt on our received stories about who we are or what we should do.” John Elia, “Don Draper, on How to Make Oneself (Whole Again),” in Carveth and South, eds, Mad Men and Philosophy, 168–88, at 174. Teschner and Teschner, “Creating the Need for the New,” 134–5, talk about the “disintegration of the ego,” presenting Don Draper as a Nietzschean nihilist. 24 Girard, Battling to the End, 97. 25 “The romantic vaniteux does not want to be anyone’s disciple. He convinces himself that he is thoroughly original” (René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero [1961; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965], 15). O’Shea comments: “The key to this structure is the Romantic figure who functions as a kind of archetype for autonomous being, standing apart and believing in his own separation, independence and, as Girard ordinarily understands it, his own selfhood.” Andrew O’Shea, Selfhood and Sacrifice: René Girard and Charles Taylor on the Crisis of Modernity (London: Continuum, 2010), 39. 26 White, “Egoless Egoists,” 93. 27 “If Don keeps his future open, he can always re-create himself again, as he once even proposes to do with Rachel Menken, the Jewish department store heiress (“Nixon vs. Kennedy”). Freedom from his past is Don’s blessing as well as his curse.” Elia, “Don Draper, on How to Make Oneself (Whole Again),” 172. 28 René Girard, Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005, ed.



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with an introduction by Robert Doran, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 265. 29 “Because the self is in some sense generated by its own recognition of and active attempts to achieve the good, mimetic desire necessarily involves a kind of depersonalization or disintegration. This is captured in part by Girard’s insistence that the process of mimetic rivalry leads to a suppression of difference. In desiring the desire of another, the imitator becomes a passive hostage to the model. The model’s selfhood, in turn, is threatened not only by the potential loss of the desired object, but of the desire itself.” Nathan Jun, “Toward a Girardian Politics,” Studies in Social and Political Thought 14 (Fall 2007): 22–42, at 36. 30 Girard, Things Hidden, 401. 31 One can think of the breakdown that leads to a nine-day-long period of a lack of conscience, accompanied by hallucinatory phenomena, experienced by Arkadi (the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Adolescent), which represents the starting point of his healing from ontological sickness. 32 “… the real human subject can only come out of the rule of the Kingdom [of God]; apart from this rule, there is never anything but mimetism and the ‘interdividual.’ Until this happens, the only subject is the mimetic structure.” Girard, Things Hidden, 199; the claim is made by Oughourlian. 33 Cf. Jun, “Toward a Girardian Politics,” 40. 34 Webb, The Self Between, 243. 35 Cf. ibid., 237. 36 Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria, Possession and Hypnosis, trans. E. Webb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 11. 37 “… mimesis precedes consciousness and creates it by its action.” Ibid., 6; cf. Fleming, René Girard, 36. 38 Webb, The Self Between, 233. 39 Girard, Things Hidden, 219. Cf. Webb, The Self Between, 232: “… it is not clear exactly what Girard thinks a ‘real human subject’ could be understood to be. Even his positive references to the concept of a subject tend to be cast more in negative than positive terms, as when he explains the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ by saying that he is the only agent (‘sujet’ in the French) who is free from the controlling power of violence and therefore capable of radically nonviolent action.” 40 Girard, Battling to the End, 30. 41 Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 111. 42 The thought of Alexander Kojève had an influence on the development of Girard’s mimetic theory, and in particular a strong influence on Girard’s reading of Hegel. See George Erving, “René Girard and the Legacy of Alexandre Kojève,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 10 (2003): 111–25. 43 O’Shea, Selfhood and Sacrifice, 45. 44 Girard, Battling to the End, 38. 45 Ibid., 31. 46 Ibid. 47 See Girard, Things Hidden, 352ff. 48 Here I am appealing to the so-called “post-Kantian” or “revisionist” approach to Hegel pioneered by Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard—but I must acknowledge that this interpretation is still disputed. For a brief account of the dispute, see

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Paolo Diego Bubbio, “God, Incarnation, and Metaphysics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, January 2014, doi 10.1007/s11841-013-0391-z. 49 Dennis Schmidt, The Ubiquity of the Finite: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Entitlements of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1988), 50. 50 Girard, Battling to the End, 28. 51 In the Mad Men episode set in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Father Gill, a Catholic priest who recently discovered that Peggy gave birth, but gave the baby up for adoption, rebukes her saying: “That is your guilt, Peggy. All that God wants is for you to reconcile with him. Don’t, don’t you understand that this could be the end of the world and you could go to Hell?” To this she replies: “I can’t believe that’s the way God is. Goodnight, Father” (“Meditations in an Emergency”).

14

Media, Murder, and Memoir: Girardian Baroque in Robert Drewe’s The Shark Net1 Rosamund Dalziell

Robert Drewe’s memoir The Shark Net (2000) revisits the novelist’s West Australian childhood and early career as a journalist in the 1960s. This well-observed and carefully crafted memoir evokes a city in the throes of a mimetic crisis, reveals complex practices of scapegoating, and creates a disturbing mimetic doubling that links Drewe’s personal narrative and identity with serial killer Eric Cooke. Cooke terrorized the inner suburbs of Perth in the early 1960s,2 his nocturnal roaming undetected for four years. During that period he committed random murders by strangling, stabbing, shooting, or running down victims with his car, creating a prolonged crisis of fear and wary anxiety among residents.3 As a child growing up in one of Cooke’s target neighborhoods, I recall the impact of the serial murders on my own family and others: my father kept a metal sprinkler spike on his bedside table as a defensive weapon. In this chapter I suggest that The Shark Net develops a Girardian mimetic doubling between the middle-class teenaged Drewe and the disadvantaged and physically disfigured Cooke, with the two narrative strands balanced and entwined in a contrapuntal structure. Drewe depicts the isolated coastal city of Perth in a mimetic crisis produced by Cooke’s random violence, with local police and journalists in pursuit of scapegoats and sensational stories. Cooke acquires the nickname of “the Nedlands monster,” exemplifying lack of differentiation and society’s projected fear. His disabilities accord with the physical criteria identified by Girard in The Scapegoat as constituting a stereotype of persecution. Girard notes that: “It is even possible that the crimes of which they are accused are real” but that persecutors may choose their victims “because they belong to a class that is particularly susceptible to persecution,” rather than because of their crimes.4 As Drewe’s narrative develops, Cooke is shown as persecuted due to his disabilities (a hare lip, cleft palate, and a speech defect) and social ineptitude, before his crimes are revealed. The memoir deploys a baroque emphasis on death, sensuality, and the grotesque, an aesthetic well adapted to convey the feverish atmosphere of a mimetic crisis and the sacralization of the criminal as victim. The “shark net” of the title refers to the morbid fascination and fear of shark attacks that accompanies Perth’s passionate beach culture. West Australian beaches are not

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netted, and on the rare occasions when a swimmer is taken by a shark, the local media, as Drewe demonstrates, makes the most of the shocking event. Fatal shark attacks on the West Australian coast have led to a controversial state government initiative (in 2014) to bait and catch sharks cruising close to popular beaches: Drewe’s memoir continues to speak to Australian beachgoers. The Shark Net also resonates with the American police radio and TV show “Dragnet,” popular in the 1950s, when Drewe was growing up. The Shark Net itself was faithfully adapted as an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) miniseries in 2003. The serial crimes of Eric Cooke parallel the terrifying randomness of shark attacks, and the eventual detection and arrest of Cooke resemble the netting of a killer shark. In this memoir Drewe minimizes the features that differentiate his young self from Eric Cooke. The writer chooses instead to highlight their shared desire for public recognition and for social and sexual approval from the confident and attractive young women of Perth’s well-to-do suburbs, though the odds are stacked in favor of the middle-class if diffident Drewe and against the disadvantaged and physically disfigured Cooke.5 Both are subject to what Girard terms “borrowed desire”: Cooke desires the privileged life of Drewe, while Drewe desires Cooke’s transgressive streetwise freedom. At a low level, each becomes the other’s mediator. The two meet numerous times in Drewe’s teenage years (Cooke is a delivery driver for Drewe’s father’s firm, Dunlop Rubber), and come face to face again in court during Cooke’s trial for the murder of a young university student, John Sturkey, who was Drewe’s friend. Drewe, then 20 years old, was probably the youngest media representative covering the sensational case. More than 30 years after these events, Drewe, an award-winning Australian novelist, published The Shark Net, with the subtitle Memories and Murder. The Shark Net, though to my mind a strikingly original work, shows some parallels with earlier Australian autobiographical writing. A canonical Australian work shaped by mimetic doubling between two male characters is George Johnson’s autobiographical novel My Brother Jack (1964). Here the paired characters are Davey Meredith, the first-person narrator, and his brother Jack. Davey is the protagonist, but paradoxically, his brother’s name is in lights in the book’s title. Davey, like Drewe, becomes a journalist while still in his teens, and similarly critiques his younger self for naïvety combined with professional self-interest. The backdrop to The Shark Net is the isolated coastal city of Perth in the 1950s and 1960s, where a complacent way of life rests on foundations as insecure as the precarious sand cubbies built by local children and as risky as swimming without shark nets. Drewe portrays the suburban culture as a network of rivalries, corruption and hypocrisy, exacerbated by the crisis of fear that Cooke’s violence produces. The memoir also critiques the print media of the period, and offers a probing and largely unflattering self-portrait of the writer as a young newspaper reporter. Although Drewe is writing of an intensely traumatic period in the history of Perth, he makes an unusual autobiographical move in linking his personal narrative so closely to that of Eric Cooke. Drewe has a literary precedent of a kind in Merv Lilley’s memoir Gatton Man (1995). Lilley, one-time resident in Western Australia



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and married to writer Dorothy Hewett, claimed that his violent father John Lilley committed the still unsolved Gatton murders in Queensland in 1898. Louis Nowra’s memoir The Twelfth of Never (1999) is also a tale of family murder.6 But Drewe is not a relative of Eric Cooke. I shall now discuss how Girard’s concept of mimetic doubling illuminates the characterization of the young Robert Drewe and the somewhat older Eric Cooke, and suggest why Drewe as autobiographer creates these parallels. I shall then comment on how Drewe’s representation of panic in the suburbs accords with Girardian features of a mimetic crisis, and how the print media contributes to this crisis, noting that West Australians at that time relied heavily on newspapers and radio for news reporting, as television was introduced only in the late 1950s. Third I shall highlight various examples of the scapegoat mechanism in The Shark Net, and the mature autobiographer’s attempts to present a balanced assessment of his three major scapegoats, Eric Cooke, Drewe’s father, and himself. I shall also point to baroque elements in The Shark Net’s style and structure, where these intersect with Girardian theory. Art historians Borngasser and Toman state that: “Baroque art tends … to make a sensual appeal to the viewer: with theatrical pathos, illusionistic devices, and the interplay of different forms the artist seeks to impress, to convince, and to arouse an internal response.”7 “Give baroque writing a break,” declared influential Australian literary critic Ivor Indyk, arguing that in Australian literature “the baroque, with its emphasis on the uninhibited emotions, on theme and variation, repetition and elaboration, gesture and performance, appears to have hardly any legitimacy at all, so little is it spoken of.” Indyk considers this a legacy of English literary traditions characterized by reticence and understatement.8 The Shark Net, with its murders, drownings, shark attacks, sensuality, petty corruption, morbidity, and everyday hazards, is emotionally expressive in portraying danger, pathos, and death, as well as compassion and reconciliation, typically baroque in their juxtaposition.9

Mimetic doubling Despite the yawning social gulf between Drewe and Cooke, The Shark Net draws specific parallels between the two lives, although with some distortion. Both young men excel at swimming and are passionate about the beach; Cooke swims across the narrow point of the Swan River at night, fully clothed. Drewe spends his free time swimming and surfing, though he omits the differentiating biographical information that he was captain of his swimming team at an expensive private school. Both young men endure physical crises in their early teens. Drewe is dangerously ill with meningitis; Cooke is left with serious head injuries from a diving accident. Both men grow up with problematic alcoholic fathers. Cooke’s father subjects his family to drunken violence. Drewe’s family life is not as stable as it appears, though his father’s drinking does not undermine his social standing, and he is not shown to be violent.

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The two young men are also linked by Dunlop Rubber. Drewe’s father is WA (Western Australia) state manager, a dedicated company man, his mother a former Dunlop secretary. Cooke is a casual delivery driver for Dunlop until sacked for theft. The young Drewe encounters Cooke often when he delivers Dunlop products to Drewe’s family home. When Drewe attends the massive West Australian Billy Graham crusade with his mother, he recognizes Cooke in the crowd, and notes how he goes forward at the conversion call, while the young Drewe determinedly resists what he already senses as an overwhelming crowd-driven compulsion, in Girardian terms, “mimetic contagion,” orchestrated by a skilled mediator. Both young men are involved in sexual transgression. Consumed by desire in the repressive society of 1960s Perth, the teenaged Drewe ogles the beautiful Roberta Ainslie, and later has a secret rendezvous with his Catholic girlfriend Ruth, resulting in her pregnancy and their early marriage. Cooke has also married young, is the father of seven children, but still seeks out the elegant young women of Drewe’s social circle, and is enraged by their rejection. He is unfaithful to his wife, with other, unnamed women. Drewe represents his younger self as a sensitive and observant teenager who is prone to shame. He reviews mortifying escapades of his young life so vividly that readers are likely to cringe in sympathy, while enjoying the humor. Cooke on the other hand is shown to be so consumed by shame and rage that he is grandiose and insensitive to others, illustrated by discomforting backyard conversations with the younger Drewe. Cooke both despises and desires the women he calls the “North Cottesloe molls,” and the “Ned-heads,” privileged residents of the suburb of Nedlands. But the teenaged Drewe, stifled by this same suburbia, is impressed by Cooke’s scornful confidence, and by his declared membership of the Scarborough Beach Surf Club. For the 13-year-old, Scarborough “smells of danger and excitement”: … being a ‘clubbie’, a Scarborough lifesaver, was pretty impressive. The beach was bigger at Scarborough, the surf was better and often more treacherous. That wasn’t all. Scarborough was the centre of Perth’s teenage myth. It was the home of the Snake Pit, a notorious patch of beachfront cement where older, tougher, more reckless and even more extravagantly dressed teenagers jived to a jukebox. It was where the motorbike gangs congregated at the end of a satisfying sweep of intimidation along the West Coast Highway … Rumours had also filtered down from older boys that it was the best pickup place in the whole city.10

The adolescent Drewe once visited a Scarborough milk bar with his mother, and was fascinated by the “mad confidence” of a “chunky lout” who reeled off a string of forbidden sexual words to impress and outrage other customers. Drewe’s mother is disgusted. The episode affects the naive Drewe differently: “I wanted to impress Eric the Scarborough lifesaver. ‘I’m going for my bronze [medallion] next year,’ I blurted.”11 But Eric is consistently sardonic and mocking, though surprisingly sociable. His home deliveries end when he is sacked. The Scarborough “clubbie” status proves to be a lie: Eric had been expelled from the club long before. And there is heavy irony in Cooke’s apparent status as a lifesaver when he was to make his name as a murderer.



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Both young men, Robert and Eric, seek the public gaze for complex psychic reasons. Drewe as a cadet reporter longs for sensational crimes and tragedies. Cooke is the secret perpetrator of much-publicized serial murders, and after his arrest, appears proud of his ingenious criminality. The young Drewe roams Perth in search of stories that will make him famous. Cooke roams Perth in search of victims. The small world of Perth is a stage for journalists, businessmen, teenagers, American evangelists, and serial killers to display. “The metaphor of ‘the world as a stage,’ prevalent throughout the baroque period,”12 applies to the strutting rivals of the isolated city who seek to impress and maintain their status. Drewe’s mother identifies the strutting factor when she explains to her son that, as manager of Dunlop in WA, his father is now “a big fish in a small pond,” though she also wickedly trains the family budgerigar to say “Today you’ll use a Dunlop product.” Much display is involved in business hospitality in the Drewe family home. The young Drewe bitterly resents having to wear Dunlop casual shoes instead of fashionable desert boots. For local judges such as Justice Virtue the stage is the Perth courtroom; for Drewe and his fellow journalists it is the pages of the West Australian newspaper; for Scarborough teenagers, “The Snake Pit”; for hormonally driven middle-class teenagers such as Drewe and his peers, it is the holiday island of Rottnest. The young Drewe’s home life is economically secure but troubled. His parents’ marital problems contribute to his lively mother’s chain smoking and decline into depressive illness. He portrays his father as a remote and contradictory figure, valuing respectability while enjoying casual affairs, emotionally inaccessible to his family, and participating in the dodgy practices linking wealthy Perth businessmen to police and the judiciary. The warmth and pleasure the teenage Robert finds in his relationship with his girlfriend compensates for coldness at home. The insecure young Drewe feels a connection with the odd delivery man Cooke. When the two meet again in court at Cooke’s trial, Drewe, at 20, is himself in crisis. Shamed by his parents and their circle for getting his girlfriend pregnant, he is now married and the father of a son. Two days after the birth, his mother, unreconciled to her son, dies suddenly. The traumatized and grieving Drewe is summoned by the family doctor to be told that he might have “killed his mother,” by causing her to die of shock. The mimetic doubling of the autobiographical self with serial killer Cooke intensifies and leads to erasure of difference when the young Drewe fears that he too is a killer. The cadet reporter is further traumatized when Cooke in the dock recognizes and winks at him, and in an involuntary mimetic response, Drewe winks back. Drewe, like Cooke, finds himself alienated from his mother. In Cooke’s case his mother left his abusive father but then returned to him, exposing the young Eric to further physical violence. Drewe’s emotional vulnerability does not entirely suppress his inner sense that he is not the great criminal as painted by his parents. The memoir contrasts the predicament of teenage pregnancy for a young couple who genuinely love each other with the shocking crimes of the serial killer at large. Like a pair of baroque statues, Drewe portrays his younger self and Eric Cooke as twinned, with unnerving similarities and desires borrowed from each other, bound together within shared local networks. As with baroque architecture, the narrative’s

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initial impression is of symmetry. Closer scrutiny reveals differences, but these are temporarily erased at the height of the autobiographical crisis, when the young Drewe’s overwhelming shame and grief, together with overprescribed medications, lead him to identify with Cooke as murderer. Reflecting in maturity on his early life Drewe draws out the factors contributing to the family crisis and reallocates responsibility—some to his foolish teenage self, but much to his parents and their social world. Mimetic doubling at its most intense is emotionally damaging and distorts reality when the distressed Drewe overidentifies with Cooke. But once free of the most undifferentiated sense of mimetic doubling, the older Drewe is left with a capacity to empathize with Cooke and to offer a realistic portrait of the “Nedlands monster” as a suffering, rejected and possibly brain-damaged human being who committed a series of incomprehensibly cruel murders. In the process of mimetic doubling, Drewe has gained insight into the humanity of Eric Cooke, and when able to differentiate again, makes a case for the inhumanity of the death penalty, both for Cooke himself and for his innocent wife and children. What remains for the mature Drewe himself is the tragedy of his mother’s sudden death, with no time for reconciliation.

Mimetic crises The German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann “saw the baroque period as representing merely ‘feverish frenzy’” and was unimpressed.13 However as the Girardian mimetic crisis is characterized by “feverish frenzy,” a baroque aesthetic is particularly relevant to a work such as The Shark Net, structured by interwoven mimetic crises, both familial and social. The Shark Net captures the mimetic doubling between Western Australia and “the Eastern States,” a low-level but ongoing crisis where West Australians perceive themselves as both inferior and superior to “the East” but constantly define themselves in relation to the latter. This ambiguous perception is the product of distance, isolation, and complacency. When Drewe’s father is appointed to Dunlop Rubber’s WA branch, Drewe’s mother’s grief at the move from Victoria intensifies Drewe’s childhood sense of dislocation. Drewe represents 1950s Perth by images of crumbling and disintegration. In this city built on sand, the very foundations of his home symbolically turn into a stream of sand when he interferes with them. Skin peels off the sunburnt Perth people as if they too are disintegrating. In its isolation, the citizens of Perth are prone to panic. Drewe realistically depicts the great “sparrow” panic, when strict quarantine regulations were rumored to have been breached by a couple of sparrows escaping from a ship, though the immigrant birds were never found, while native birds and the public were endangered by increased use of shotguns. Another panic involved extermination of Argentine ants in suburban backyards, with the poison more dangerous than the invasive species. The city is shown to be beset by ignorant and dangerous local government practices. Meanwhile dangers to health such as heavy smoking and drink-driving are tolerated.



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Drewe’s father wriggles out of a DUI (“driving under the influence [of alcohol]”) charge by promising Dunlop benefits to local police officers. Recurrent in The Shark Net is the baroque theme of memento mori (remembrance of death), allied with sensuality and the grotesque. Borngasser and Toman, in defining the baroque, observe that “the uninhibited sensual pleasure of life was imbued with an awareness of the inevitability of death. The motto memento mori might be seen as the leitmotif of a disturbed society oppressed by existential anxieties”.14 Drewe’s mother, sporty and fun-loving, becomes increasingly anxious after moving to the west, fearful that family members will succumb to “boiling brain,” presumably heatstroke. Her sons joke and shrug off the genuine risks in Perth’s extreme summer temperatures. She imposes restrictions on her children stemming from her fear of polio, a serious threat to children in the 1950s that mothers felt powerless to prevent.15 Drewe’s West Australians may be hedonists, but sudden death is ever present. Swimming in the ocean is one of the citizens’ greatest pleasures, but strong swimmers drown, including Drewe’s friend Richie Male, and shark attacks are an ever-present risk. A young woman whom Drewe admires, Roberta Ainslie, threads her way through the narrative, with Drewe’s sensuous descriptions of her fresh and elegant beauty. The teenage Drewe makes a grotesque and failed attempt to impress her by killing and cutting up a shark. Drewe’s West Australian readers may well recognize her name and anticipate what Drewe later reveals: that the newly married Roberta walked into the propeller of a light aircraft and was killed. Drewe’s friend, John Sturkey, makes a cameo appearance, cheerfully intruding on Drewe’s romantic interlude with his girlfriend in a parked car. Later another couple in a car are interrupted by Cooke with a shotgun. Although this older adulterous couple have a narrow escape, John Sturkey, asleep on a veranda in a share house, is murdered by Cooke. Death is everywhere, from random murder to shark attack, drowning, collapsed sand cubbies, cerebral hemorrhage. The health of the unwary is at risk from smoking, drink-driving, pest extermination, polio, accidents, heatstroke, medical incompetence. The accumulating deaths foreshadow Drewe’s greatest tragedy—the sudden death of his mother—against a background of sexual transgression by both husband and son. With Cooke’s rampage of attempted and actual murders, the atmosphere of low-level crisis intensifies. Differences are erased as the killings appear increasingly random. The victims are young and old, single and couples, living alone in flats or in family homes. Women are run down by cars; Drewe’s friend is shot while asleep on a veranda; a young woman is shot while babysitting. For Drewe the personal and familial mimetic crisis merges with the communal, intensified by his role as a newspaper reporter.

Scapegoats The mimetic crisis produced by Cooke’s murders fuels the pursuit of scapegoats by journalists and police. The scapegoating includes blaming the victim and wrongful

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arrests. One murder victim, Patricia Berkmann, is designated “the naked divorcée” by a local paper (according to Drewe, it was not his own employer, the West Australian). This scapegoating blames the victim for a lack of respectability that invited the crime and thereby reassures conventional others that they are safe. Patricia Berkmann as victim was scapegoated as an attractive woman, divorced (therefore sexually experienced), and living alone: these spurious grounds reveal the prejudices and repressed sexual anxieties of the dominant society. Desperate to find a culprit, the police apprehend a disabled man for the axe murder of one young woman, and arrest the boyfriend of another woman run down and killed by a car. Both men, Darryl Beamish and John Button, were convicted and served prison terms, although Cooke in prison confessed to both murders. Both convictions were eventually overturned, in 2002 (Button) and 2005 (Beamish). Beamish, being deaf and without speech, was vulnerable to scapegoating in Girardian terms, in consequence of his disability. As murder follows murder, scapegoating becomes increasingly difficult, until Cooke himself is caught. Drewe, despite being a reporter covering the case, critiques the damaging pursuit of sensationalism by the print media, including his employer, and exposes shortcomings in the police investigation and the state’s justice system, particularly the rapidity with which Cooke’s trial was conducted. Drewe considers that Cooke did not receive an objective psychiatric assessment. While horrified by the murders, Drewe nevertheless suggests that by being designated a “monster,” Cooke has been scapegoated, with scant consideration of his humanity. Beaten and abused as a child, humiliated for his facial disfigurement and speech impediment (and nicknamed “Birdmouth”), Cooke may also have suffered brain damage after his diving accident, or have had a mental illness that diminished his responsibility for his crimes. Drewe opposes the death penalty, to which Cooke was sentenced; he was the last person to be hanged in Western Australia. Drewe touches on the sacralization of the scapegoat, exposing his own desire to be in the photo with the celebrity murderer, grateful to be acknowledged by a wink. He refers to the phenomenon among Perth people, after Cooke’s conviction, of trying “to outdo each other in their claims … of a firm and everyday connection with him … Suddenly there was a kudos in having once worked alongside him, or even being related to someone who had.”16 Perth society is freed from fear after Cooke’s arrest, and united in the sharing of stories about unwitting contact and lucky escapes. Drewe himself appears to have surpassed all rivals in claiming connection with Cooke: The Shark Net is a gripping and sophisticated narrative that trumps lesser accounts. Other scapegoats include deceased parents, who often fill this role in a memoir. Drewe celebrates his mother’s attractive qualities, but criticizes her for scapegoating her sexually active teenage son instead of confronting her philandering husband. Drewe’s father receives harsher treatment, for his double standards of respectability and extramarital affairs, for his obsession with his job, his dodgy dealing with the police, for being an inattentive father and a lousy husband. But the memoir concludes with some degree of reconciliation between father and son, as the intensity of the crisis and family grief begin to abate.



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Drewe presents his teenage self as the scapegoat of respectable suburban dwellers, including his own mother. But with changing social attitudes 30 years on, The Shark Net demonstrates the innocence of the victims, Robert and Ruth, guilty only of unprotected teenage sex and exonerated by their mutual love, “honorable” marriage, and commitment to their son. Drewe also points the finger at evangelist Billy Graham, whose skilled manipulation of human mimetic contagion fails to help Drewe’s distressed mother and is “powerless against real evil,” given that Eric Cooke also responds to the altar call. One scapegoat remains: the family doctor, who misdiagnosed the young Robert’s meningitis, and who later told Robert that he could have caused his own mother’s death, possibly to deflect attention from his own ineffective treatment. Drewe mentions this fashionable Perth general practitioner by name.

Conclusion A partial Girardian “conversion” occurs as the mature writer concludes his review of his troubled youth: parents are largely forgiven and old rivalries renounced. The writer implies that he has learned from his interview with Cooke’s widow, Sally Cooke, “the gift of acceptance.” The memoir critiques West Australians’ acceptance of avoidable everyday dangers, symbolized by swimming without shark nets. At the same time, the writer demonstrates his shared culpability as a young journalist, for desiring to exploit these elements, both to assuage his emotional pain and to further his own career. The Shark Net also resembles a baroque memorial to the dead—to Drewe’s mother, to his friends Richie Male, who drowned, and John Sturkey, whom Cooke shot dead, and to his first love, Roberta Ainslie, accidentally killed. Disappointingly, as with many Australian memoirs, the autobiographical quest concludes with a narrow focus on the prospect of professional success, as 21-year-old Drewe leaves Perth for a promotion with the Melbourne Age.17 The memoir itself, though highly reflexive, is not free from the sensationalism it condemns and bears traces of the sacralization of the executed criminal as victim.

Notes 1 2

Robert Drewe, The Shark Net: Memories and Murder (Ringwood: Viking/ Penguin Books, 2000). In November 1963 Robert Drewe, as a junior reporter for the West Australian newspaper, covered the trial of notorious serial killer, Eric Cooke, for the murder of his friend, John Sturkey. Cooke was acknowledged by the state to have murdered eight people, with the attempted murder of a couple whom he shot at and wounded but did not kill. After his arrest Cooke claimed responsibility for hit-and-run offenses against young women and confessed to two additional murders for which

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two other men had been convicted and served lengthy jail sentences. One of these men, Darryl Beamish, was both deaf and mute. The other, John Button, was young, 19 years old. Both men were eventually declared wrongfully convicted, Button in 2002 and Beamish in 2005. Hugh Collins, “Cooke, Eric Edgar (1931–1964),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooke-edgar-eric-9817/ text17357, accessed January 4, 2013. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 13, by Melbourne University Press, 1993. See also “Life Begins Again for Wrongly Convicted Man [John Button],” by reporter Mick O’Donnell, 7.30 Report, ABC Television, February 25, 2002, http:// www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2002/s490290.htm (accessed April 7) 2014; “After 45 Years, Deaf Mute [Darryl Beamish] Cleared of Axe Murder,” AAP, Sydney Morning Herald, April 1, 2005, http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/After-45-years-deafmute-cleared-of-axe-murder/2005/04/01/1112302213642.html (accessed April 7, 2014). 3 Hugh Collins, “Cooke, Eric Edgar (1931–1964).” 4 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (1986; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 17. 5 In Girardian theory, when the desire of two subjects converges upon the same object, the mimetic process turns the mediator/model into a rival, also referred to as a mimetic double. This process is discussed in René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (1965; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 101–2, inter alia. 6 Tim Winton’s novel Cloudstreet (1991) also represents the impact of Cooke’s murders on suburban Perth. Truman Capote’s famed work In Cold Blood (1965), based on investigative research, was widely read, although I have not seen any reference to it by Drewe. 7 Barbara Borngasser and Rolf Toman, “Introduction,” in Baroque Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, ed. B. Borngasser and R. Toman, (2004; Cologne: Ullmann and Konemann, 2007). 8 Ivor Indyk, “Give Baroque Literature a Break,” Australian, October 27, 2012, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/give-baroque-writing-a-break/storyfn9n8gph-1226503179256 (accessed January 14, 2013). 9 In interpreting The Shark Net in the light of Girardian theory, I have found baroque aesthetics to be helpful in analyzing the literary playing out of mimetic doubling, as in the contrapuntal interweaving of the young Drewe’s story with that of Cooke. The baroque, both as a historical period and an aesthetic (or in Borngasser and Roman’s terms, a “concept of style”), is characterized by theatricality, sensationalism, emotional intensity, eroticism, and at the same time, careful underlying structure. 10 Drewe, The Shark Net, 118. 11 Ibid., 120. 12 Borngasser and Roman, “Introduction,” 7. 13 Ibid., 8. 14 Ibid., 7. 15 Drewe, The Shark Net, 76. 16 Ibid., 332–3. 17 John Colmer observes that most of the writers in his study, the first study of



Media, Murder, and Memoir Australian autobiography, “have become part of the professional middle classes by the time they come to write their autobiographies.” Australian Autobiography: The Personal Quest (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), 157. In the two-and-a-half decades since Colmer’s study, a much greater diversity of autobiographies has been published in Australia, and other lesser known works uncovered—though Colmer’s observation remains relevant.

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Conversion in Dexter Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge

The HBO1 series Dexter is one of those rare shows that is able to tie together two seemingly antithetical threads. It combines a sophisticated exploration into religion and the portrayal of a constant pattern of violence by the main villain (who is usually responsible for multiple deaths, including those of central characters, within a season of the series). This is met by the stronger counterviolence of the show’s protagonist, Dexter Morgan, a Miami Police blood-spatter expert who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer. The killings perpetrated by Dexter serve two purposes in his mind: to rid the city of Miami of those who elude the criminal justice system, and to satisfy his own urge to kill, which he calls his “Dark Passenger.” One question that subtly arises is whether the tying of these two elements is an accident. The impulse at this point would be to apply the standard Girardian analysis of mimetic violence to the show’s constant stream of ritualistic killings. We could, for instance, talk about the streams of desire that pulsate through every episode, which in turn drive each character, particularly Dexter Morgan, to act with often violent and lethal outcomes. Or we could talk about the doubling that takes place in each season, as Dexter’s main nemesis exposes something of himself that he did not previously know or that he secretly desires. But what we intend to do, instead, is to pursue another, more obscure line of inquiry. This pertains to the tension generated by Dexter’s constant internal debate about whether he should stop his killings and transform himself into a normal citizen of Miami. The assertion here is that a nexus ties the religious, the violent, and the transformative elements in Dexter, and that the lynchpin of this nexus is Girardian novelistic conversion. Consciously or otherwise, Dexter bears some similarities to the processes of writing a novel. But rather than seeing the TV series as only a novel, we can recognize (to a certain extent) Dexter Morgan playing the role of a novelist within the series. The expression “to a certain extent” hints at a very important qualifier. For, if we were to refract the show through the lens of Girard’s work on the novel, we would find one key qualification to the notion of Dexter as a novelistic act. This qualification touches on Girard’s idea of conversion in novelistic endings. It is our contention that while the show seems to have some of the features of the novelwriting process, that process stalls precisely at the point of conversion. In short, the

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real transformation that a viewer may see in Dexter’s character still falls short of a novelistic conversion.

Dexter as novelist One approach to analysing Dexter would be to explore the TV series as a novel in itself, and indeed a lot of material could be mined at this level of analysis. However, this level of analysis might gloss over what may seem to be a minor artistic detail: a voice-over that acts as an audio journal, forming a narrative background to the entire series. The journal provides Dexter’s own reflections on the difficulties of fitting into “normal” life, as well as analyses of the other characters in the show and analyses of his own life. At the heart of all this rumination is his struggle with the “Dark Passenger.” The journaling seems sporadic and disjointed in the context of each episode, but when put together throughout the entire series, it seems to describe a world experienced through its author, Dexter. The designation of the journaling as a novel seems an apt one, given the central theme is not merely Dexter’s experience of the world. To echo Lucien Goldmann in Towards a Sociology of the Novel, Dexter’s journaling, like a novel, is underpinned by a realization of a “rupture” between the hero and the world: he realizes that he is unable to escape and must try to fit “authentically” in this world, yet he also must be “authentic” to himself (what Goldmann tellingly terms “vertical transcendence”).2 This is made clear from the beginning of the series, for the reflections seem to center on Dexter’s difficulty with authentically belonging in a “normal” world. This is encapsulated most intensely by his relationship with his girlfriend, and later wife, Rita. For Girard, the novel centers on the construction of self and other, most particularly whether this constitutive and dependent relationship is revealed in its different manifestations or covered over with “romantic” notions of the spontaneous nature of the protagonist’s desire. The novelistic elements in Dexter can also be seen from the fact that Dexter’s path toward authenticity is constantly blocked by his obsession with a particular mediator. Such mediators include the specter of his deceased ex-policeman father, Harry, who trained Dexter in the art of killing in the first place. Apart from Harry, the mediators also come in the forms of his sister Debra, and the main rival serial killer in each season.

Conversion in the Dexterian novel? At first blush, there appears to be ample evidence pointing to the novelistic aspect of Dexter. However there exists one crucial bridge to a Girardian novel that the TV series does not cross, and the failure to cross this bridge adversely affects Dexter’s status as a novelist in the Girardian sense. This concerns what Girard identifies as the protagonist’s experience of conversion.



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The concept of conversion may seem apt owing to the constant entanglements Dexter has with characters—and to the objects, murders, and discussions—that have religion as a central theme. For instance, there is the naming of a killer (who also happens to be a church deacon) after the Trinity, in season 4. There is also a set of killings organized around montages of the book of the Apocalypse, in season 6; discussions of the soul, in season 2; and on a lesser scale, figurative encounters with Saints Death and Brigid. The list goes on. These episodic encounters are part of a religious symbolic ecosystem for the viewer, in which more sustained, profound, and increasingly fervent calls are made by various characters for Dexter himself to embrace some kind of religious faith. What is more, there are instances where Dexter makes some tentative steps on a more religious trajectory (such as when, in a private moment with his newborn son, Dexter says a prayer to St Brigid). These religious motifs form the backdrop to a more significant and profound transformation that Dexter seems to undergo as each season progresses. Where once Dexter sought to ensure little more than his own safety and welfare, there emerges from relatively early in the series a real solicitude for the welfare of others, particularly his family. This transformation is demonstrated most acutely in season 5, with his encounter with Lumen Pierce, a victim of a rape-and-torture gang. This encounter with Lumen signals a turning point in Dexter’s life because it is on Lumen’s behalf that Dexter volunteers to apply his skills to hunt and execute the members of this gang. In a highly symbolic scene in season 5, Dexter collects a slide containing the blood of the first member of the gang, whom he had executed in front of Lumen. However, instead of keeping it as a trophy, as he had done in every previous killing from season 1 onward, Dexter gives the slide to Lumen. In this gesture we see one of the clearest signs that Dexter is shifting away from being overwhelmingly self-centered to living an authentic life; he comes to realize that the authentic life is to be found in the very things that he had previously used merely as camouflage—in a life marked by belonging with and living for others.3 With seasons 4 and 5, we find Dexter expressing thoughts in the journal that seem to do what Girard expects heroes to do toward the conclusion of a novel, namely “utter words which clearly contradict their former ideas.”4 Such contradiction centers on a conversion from a self-focused, spontaneous notion of both one’s own life and one’s desire, to a recognition that both life and desire depend on relationship with the other. However, the shift we see in Dexter falls short of full conversion in a Girardian sense. An important clue to this falling short relates to Girard’s use of the Bible as a privileged standpoint, a point outlined by Michael Kirwan in Girard and Theology.5 Though the novelistic conversion need not be explicitly religious, Girard sees conversion to orthodox Christianity as linked to novelistic conversions (which Girard defines with reference to The Brothers Karamazov in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel), for in such conversions, the “distinctions between the novelistic and religious experience are abolished.”6 While it is true that religious motifs are peppered throughout the series and that Dexter does flirt with the possibility of a conversion to Christianity, his conversion falls short of Girardian conversion. This rejection of Christian orthodoxy is made most obvious in season 6, when Dexter is drawn to but eventually rejects the

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Christian faith that is demonstrated to him by an inmate-turned-pastor, Brother Sam. Brother Sam also carries within him a “Dark Passenger,” which he keeps in check by ministering to recently released inmates who work in his car repair shop. While Dexter is impressed by Brother Sam’s selflessness, he rejects Brother Sam’s offer to join him as a coreligionist. This rejection is acted out following the killing of Brother Sam by one of his congregation, after which Dexter offers forgiveness on behalf of Brother Sam to the latter’s killer. When the murderer shows no remorse, however, Dexter ends up slaying the murderer as one of his many victims, albeit in an uncharacteristically crude, non-ritualistic fashion. As the episode in season 6 in which all this happens suggests, it is not just the rejection of Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior that points to the conclusion that Dexter’s transition falls short of the kind of conversion that one sees in, say, Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, who confesses to his crime of murder, and, in a less explicit way, to faith in Jesus Christ. Dexter’s inability to follow through with forgiveness, especially in the face of violence and vengeance, reveals his stillborn conversion. His inability to forgive represents an inability to see himself in relation to the other, except in violent, exclusionary terms over against the other. Even in circumstances where Dexter does adopt a posture of selflessness, that posture is still refracted through the rubric of violence and counterviolence against others. This is ironic, since Dexter’s acts of violence constantly seek to differentiate him from his villainous enemies/victims, who deserve justice and retribution for their acts. Ultimately, Dexter cannot see the distinction between his own violent desires and acts and those of his enemies. While motivated by a mixture of self-interest and justice, Dexter is increasingly and ultimately driven by his “Dark Passenger,” that is, his desire to kill that is formed in relation to his victims and fed by violence. His victims’ acts of violence stimulate Dexter into violence, in pursuit of the same object: the power to inflict violence, to impose justice and to order the world according to one’s own desire and identity. Dexter believes that his victims have defeated the justice system through rivalry with it, and so it is his personal task to right the imbalance. Yet, in doing so, he places himself in rivalry with his victims and enemies, entering into a game of domination and power, rather than constructing a truly just order. Dexter’s victims conform to that final sacred category that Girard identifies: those who victimize others. Following the biblical revelation of the innocent victim, the category of persons who can inspire the most violence is victimizers (e.g. criminals, including murderers). Dexter feels justified in defending the victimized against the victimizer in the pursuit of his own notion of justice. Yet, of course, in doing this, Dexter becomes a victimizer, one who imitates the violence of the other and acquires the same “inclination to kill” as the victimizer.7 The ultimate tragedy of Dexter is that he becomes a mirror image of his victims and fails to recognize it. This is his major failure, and the reason why he cannot forgive. Raymund Schwager pinpoints the reason for this failure to forgive in the dark depths of the human heart formed by a distortion of desire and violence, both of which remain unrecognized. He demonstrates this in relation to Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies, which includes the challenge:



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to love fully those whom we love, thus including also the enemy hidden in the friend. If all men and women have conspired against Jesus and all harbour a secret resentment against God, then even in the beloved ‘you’ slumbers a secret inclination to kill. An interpersonal relationship thus attains its truth only when it has penetrated to its depth. Since falling away from God automatically perverts all interpersonal behaviour, the disturbed relationships can be genuinely renewed through a conversion of the heart only if at the same time the secret perversion is uncovered and acknowledged.

Wherever the message of love glosses over the darker regions of human experience with nothing but sentimental words, it will inevitably, sooner or later, be recognized as unreal and irrelevant. If fear of others prevents us from laying bare the dark depths of our own hearts, and if, out of fear that conflicts might erupt, one does not respond to the impenetrable depths of a “you,” then the Christian message remains sterile. An inseparable part of love is the uncovering of the sophisticated mechanisms of deception inherent in violence.8 The “darker regions” here are glossed over by Dexter with acts of violence. His imitative desire reveals an underlying fear and pride: one’s fear of the other’s violent domination, which one must control. This rivalry with the other constructs barriers that seemingly protect the self from the other, including psychological barriers that prevent one from recognizing one’s identity with the other. Such psychological barriers are fed by and allow distorted desire (acquired from the other) to flourish while remaining unrecognized by the self. The self mistakenly believes that the desire is one’s own. In this way, Dexter cannot allow his “Dark Passenger” to be recognized for what it is: his own distorted desire, fed by his rivalry with his victim-enemies. In contrast to a disinterested justice system, Dexter becomes personally involved in rivalry with those he perceives to have eluded justice. Even when his actions and desires become altruistic, Dexter still remains trapped by his own violence. Dexter’s freedom can be ensured only by his altruism being combined with conversion, which would involve confronting and exposing the “Dark Passenger” and recognizing how his identity is dependent on the other. Only in this space would forgiveness and love become truly effective in changing Dexter. Dexter almost undergoes conversion, however, prompted by a relationship with a nonviolent, forgiving model who had experienced conversion himself. But Dexter remains unable to cope with the consequences of forgiveness: of its ambiguity and its deepest insights into who one is (in relation to the other). He tries to imitate the forgiveness of Brother Sam, the Christ-figure who, as victim, forgives his enemies, but he cannot truly inhabit this space for himself. He cannot see his own self, as well as his scapegoat, in the other. Dexter’s inability to accept the consequences of forgiveness also shows why he cannot leave the dispensing of justice to God, that is, to an omniscient Other who is a just judge, and whose justice and forgiveness are entwined in a paradoxical way. This presents another obstacle to Dexter’s conversion being novelistic: his religious experiences remain within a purely immanent frame. This is contrary to the transcendence

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that is indispensable in confessing the Christian faith. We find an example of Dexter’s being locked within immanence in a very small but telling scene in season 3. In this scene, Miami’s assistant district attorney, Miguel Prado, who befriends Dexter, discusses where the soul goes when a person dies. Instead of concluding that the soul goes to a heavenly realm, Prado concludes that the soul is transposed to a place no further than another person, a claim to which Dexter provides no response. Whether this is suggestive of his own disposition concerning the transcendent is unclear, though this ambiguity may also be indicative of the show’s attitude to the transcendent more generally. What is more suggestive is a scene where Dexter, holding his infant son, whispers a prayer to St Brigid. Instead of looking heavenward, where the saints reside, Dexter says the prayer with his gaze fixed outward in a horizontal direction, with the camera panning back. This may suggest that Dexter’s religious horizons are locked within an immanent frame, which is demonstrated far more clearly in the first episode of season 6. When asked by his sister as to what he believes, Dexter explicitly confines his religious horizons to “a set of rules on how to conduct myself in the world, so that I don’t get into trouble.” As the show progresses, it becomes clearer to the viewer that Dexter’s religious horizons fall short of transcendence. The significance of such falling short is pointed out by Gil Bailie in his Violence Unveiled. In a passage on the trial of Susanna, recorded in the Old Testament book of Daniel, Daniel calls out two Israelite elders who accuse Susanna of adultery after she refuses their sexual advances. Bailie alerts the reader to the fact that, prior to the accusation, these elders not only “threw aside their reason” as a result of their desire for Susanna, but that they, in the words of the book of Daniel, “made no effort to turn their eyes to heaven.”9 This failure is significant for Bailie, for the “extent to which one’s existence is grounded in religious transcendence” is the extent to which one is able to “resist … the otherwise intoxicating power of mimetic passions,”10 and is consequently able to resist the resultant cycles of violence. Moreover, Dexter resembles in an important fashion the Daniel character in the Susanna story, that is, the avenging judge who inflicts sacred violence on the victimizers. The biblical story presents the ambiguity of this sacred violence, which condemns sexual predators and false witnesses but also presents Daniel and the crowd as inflicting mob violence against the false witnesses, ultimately justifying a sacred order. Similarly, Dexter claims to use his violence on behalf of the city of Miami in order to justify his own “sacred” use of violence, one that seeks to make up for where the legal system fails. In both cases (the book of Daniel and Dexter), there is an advance beyond forms of injustice, but there is a reversion to violence legitimized in a sacralized order to contain violence. For Girard, the “sacred” refers to the way that human violence is supernaturalized or divinized in order to explain the extraordinary power of scapegoating violence and maintain its absolute legitimacy. The “sacred” in archaic cultures conventionally is double-sided (both a destroyer and a savior). Girard argues this two-sidedness is explained by the chaos that precedes scapegoating violence and the order and stability that result from it. Dexter’s violence imitates and participates in the violent sacred in that he inflicts violence against “monsters” and restores order through their murder. Dexter’s efforts are sacralized under the cover of justice, though (in contrast to Daniel)



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the effort is not complete or convincing. Dexter cannot fully sacralize his activity, shown by the fact that his victims do not become extra-human, supernatural figures (as in archaic myths). Touched enough by the biblical revelation in his imagination, Dexter’s victims remain human, and so are capable of affecting his conscience. Thus, Dexter’s transformation falls short of a Girardian conversion, a conversion exemplified by Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. The fruits of such a purely immanent conversion are that, unlike Raskolnikov, Dexter does not renounce his pattern of violent domination and duplicity as the aberration that it is in favor of living an authentic life. On the contrary, by season 5 we find Dexter resigning himself to the fact that authentic living on his part would involve embracing the part of him that is a serial killer, and being willing to carry Lumen’s “Dark Passenger.” Here, we see glimmers of Dexter becoming a Christ-figure, a person who takes on the sins of others, and willingly becomes bound on behalf of others. But Dexter is a pseudo-Christ-figure with a murderous twist—a modern Antichrist figure—for while Christ steps in as the innocent victim, Dexter’s pseudo-christic function is carried out by finding and killing victimizers on behalf of the victims and the city of which he is a part. In this way, Dexter’s efforts at self-sacrifice and so his whole identity are inherently contradictory. They are contradictory in the manner that Girard argues that Satan operates: by casting out the Satan (the enemy-victim), which ultimately ensures Satan’s power through scapegoating violence.11 This twist on the Christ-figure is demonstrated in a sequence that might be regarded as the pinnacle of Dexter’s transformation from self- to other-centeredness (in his service to Lumen) in season 5, which takes place against the backdrop of a continuation of Dexter’s ritual of killing a victim. While the altruistic tone of this transformation cannot be doubted, the fact that the continuation of the cycles of violence underpins that very transformation of Dexter shows that his conversion is not one where the myth of righteous violence as a stabilizing social force is exposed as the illusion that it is.12 Instead, Dexter’s conversion is characterized by his continuing to adhere to the idea that people still have to die at his hand to uphold a good cause, whether that cause be the good of his significant other, or that of his family, or that of his city. Thus, while this transformation may have an altruistic trajectory, it is not accompanied by the other elements of a Girardian novelistic conversion, which are outlined in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel and which include a turn from “humiliation and humility, mediated desire to autonomy.”13 The perpetuation of his urge to kill and thus to exercise violent domination over others is anything but a sign of humility, and his impression that the “Dark Passenger” that compels him to kill can never be put aside is anything but a sign of autonomy. The writers of Dexter, nevertheless, seem novelistic in the way they present the ambiguities of the modern self, particularly in relation to the fixation on crime and justice, and the challenges of being human and Christian in the midst of a world dominated by mimetic violence. In particular, Dexter ultimately presents the lack of a truly satisfying social mechanism to contain the rivalry and the “inclination to kill” that drives Dexter, despite the exposure of the scapegoat mechanism by the Bible, and the psychological effects and challenges for the modern self posed by such exposure. In this way, the show seems to reflect the subjective

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consequences of the use of violence in a way that is characteristic of modern novels that are aware of the identity between the self and other and that are influenced by the Christian revelation of violence and victimization. Whether the show has an explicit Christianity informing it is another question, but it seems to reflect insights that are part of a Christian milieu, albeit one that is subject to fragmentation and breakdown, as the identity of Dexter shows.

Conclusion We have shown how Girard’s work on the novel could provide some insights into the new religiosity and explorations of subjectivity becoming increasingly apparent in TV shows such as Dexter. In the face of this new religiosity and subjectivity, it may be tempting to equate both with a newly found affinity to a particular faith tradition, such as Christianity. However, as we have shown, there is a need for a grammar peculiar to the Western Christian tradition with which one can distil the material presented in these programs and assess if an affinity to a faith tradition actually exists. It is hoped that the theme of Girardian novelistic conversion could contribute to the building of this grammar. For Dexter demonstrates how the effects of Christian revelation on the subject and social order can be far from clear, immediate, and decisive. The show presents the modern dilemma of the pursuit of order, justice, and identity in the midst of violence in stark terms. It even seems to ask: can conversion to divine forgiveness and love really penetrate the darkest depths of the human heart? Or are we left with the violent pursuit of justice that twists the heart toward further violence and rivalry? In this way, the show presents the burgeoning awareness of the difficulties and tensions present in the modern subject, particularly in the relation to the other and the need to decide between sacred violence and conversion. Dexter tantalizingly hints to viewers the prospects of overcoming the seemingly endless cycle of scapegoating violence through a conversion to the religion of a scapegoat named Jesus Christ. But ultimately the show shies away from going any further than taking the viewer to the threshold of this possibility. Because of this inability to accept Christian faith and forgiveness, Dexter becomes more entrenched and extreme in his use of violence, ultimately descending further into a crisis of identity that cannot really justify its own violence. Thus, the evangelical capacity of Dexter is ambiguous, though it does present the outcome of Christianity’s rejection. Still, the development of a rubric of analysis could at the very least enable a critical assessment of the extent to which particular traditions converge with themes within TV shows such as Dexter. More importantly, these tools would also be critical in identifying the otherwise subtle divergences between a faith tradition and its portrayals within popular culture, lest there be too easy a misidentification between the two, or the fallacious determination that one can be a substitute for the other.



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Notes 1

HBO is the Home Box Office, a company that specializes in the production and distribution of cable television shows. 2 Lucien Goldmann, Towards a Sociology of the Novel (New York: Routledge, 1987). 3 Michael Kirwan, Girard and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009), 3. 4 René Girard, The Girard Reader (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 47. 5 See Kirwan, Girard and Theology, 28. 6 Ibid., 4. 7 Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible, trans. Maria L. Assad (New York: Crossroad, and Leominster: Gracewing, 2000), 223. 8 Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats?, 223–4. 9 Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (1995; New York: Crossroad, 2004), 187. 10 Ibid., 188. 11 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 184–97; I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 32–47. 12 Bailie, Violence Unveiled, 58. 13 René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 294.

Appendix: René Girard at a Glance Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge

Note: Terms in UPPER CASE are defined in the Glossary. René Girard (1923–) is a French-American thinker and an immortel of l’Académie française. He has honed a remarkable account of human culture and religion over 50 years of research across the humanities and social sciences. He began with modern realist fiction in the 1950s to uncover a novel account of human DESIRE as mimetic (see MIMETIC DESIRE); he went on to engage with foundational texts in anthropology, sociology, and ethnography in the 1960s, venturing a new approach to culture and religion that recalls the socio-psychological phenomenon of l’esprit de corps, in terms of an ersatz peace that SCAPEGOATING a victim introduces to human communities; then he set out an alternative account of religion, seen to emerge in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Human desire, for Girard, is desire “according to” the desire of another. Our desires, in other words, are borrowed from and stimulated by the desires of others. What Girard terms “mimetic desire” (or “triangular desire”) means that the subject of desire imitates the desire of the model of their desire for an object of desire (see also MEDIATION). From Shakespeare and Cervantes to the great nineteenth-century novelists (Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Dostoyevsky), a psychology is revealed in which the mimetic influence of others proves to be the true unconscious. Girard offers his own parsimonious account of Freud’s major conclusions to demonstrate the power of his approach, while, following Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, he explores various pathologies of the modern self. These pathologies center on the distortion of desire into envy and rivalry, in which the subject seeks to acquire the object of desire from the model/rival. The subject risks being scandalized by the rival whenever their desire becomes a stumbling block to the fulfillment of the subject’s desire (see DOUBLING). In such rivalry, the dependence of the subject/self on the other’s desire is heightened yet repressed in increasingly unhealthy and obsessive ways, to the point that the object’s value decreases as the subject advances in obsessive competition with the model/rival, resulting in the madness described by Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. This pathological stage of MIMESIS is a manifestation of what Girard calls METAPHYSICAL DESIRE, in which the desire for being that underlies mimesis becomes clear. In this stage, the object

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eventually drops from view altogether and obsession with the model/rival becomes all-consuming. The subject in effect seeks the being of the model/rival. Explicating this state of thralldom allows Girard to theorize what he calls PSEUDO-MASOCHISM and PSEUDO-SADISM, along with self-destructive addictive behaviors, as mimetic phenomena. Meanwhile, in the social context, the accumulation of mimetic rivalries risks wider mimetic contagion and disorder, threatening social breakdown. Girard argues that the mimetic escalation toward catastrophic violence in the proto-human group is contained by scapegoating, which founds and then maintains human culture. The contagion of mimetic violence comes to be focused on an individual or group arbitrarily chosen by the social whole, becoming a scapegoat upon which social chaos is focused and hence discharged. According to Girard, archaic cultures that manage by these means to survive their own violence show a common pattern in their myths, in which a violent crisis suddenly and miraculously gives way to peace and order. This change occurs as the hostile desires of “all against all” suddenly become the murderous desires of “all against one.” Through this victimization, the community returns to peace and to differentiation around the slain victim. This victim is made SACRED and divinized by the mob, which transfers responsibility for the crisis and its resolution onto the victim—the two sides of the sacred (the destructive and the saving) that constitute Girard’s original account of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. Religion is the part of culture that emerges from this single-victim mechanism to encode its beneficial effects in PROHIBITION, MYTH, and RITUAL. Girard sees archaic religion emerging naturally in the evolutionary process as a necessary evil, containing rivalry’s potentially catastrophic escalation by the memory of primal cathartic violence that scapegoating represents. Rooted in the management of our unfocused and unstable desiring, religion’s targeted, culture-founding violence is both recapitulated and revivified through ritual (especially by sacrificial rituals), justified in myth, and safeguarded by prohibition and taboo—these latter elements regulate relationships and establish boundaries to avoid further mimetic rivalry and violence. Yet, in the Judeo-Christian vision that comes to its climax in Jesus, Girard argues that religion overcomes its origins: the innocence of the victim is revealed, the scapegoat mechanism is exposed, and human desire is shown to be distorted and diverted from its true source in God the Father’s gratuitous and self-giving love. Through analysis of many biblical texts, and especially the Gospels, Girard argues that the biblical revelation can be figured precisely thus: as a revelation from outside conventional human religion and culture that lifts the veil on human violence and distorted desire. He does this through a distinctive hermeneutical approach that first identifies the common structural characteristics of mythical and biblical stories: (1) the presence of crisis, (2) the identification of a victim, (3) vulnerable characteristics associated with the victim (e.g. disfigurement or disability), (4) the climactic and unanimous violence of SURROGATE VICTIMAGE, and, (5) the restoration of



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order and peace that follows this scapegoating violence. Then, on the basis of these structural commonalities, Girard identifies significant differences in the content and trajectory of mythical versus biblical accounts, showing that while archaic myths endorse the violent mob, the biblical narrative reveals and champions the victim’s innocence. In this way, according to Girard, the victim-making engine of all religions and cultures is sabotaged by the Bible, setting history on a secularizing path toward modernity. For Girard, this is Nietzsche’s death of God properly understood: the collapse of religion’s social function and the release of a dangerous instability evident in today’s most pressing global challenges.

Glossary of Key Girardian Terms Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge

Note: Terms in UPPER CASE are defined within this Glossary. Apocalypse/apocalyptic: Although present in his work on METAPHYSICAL DESIRE from the 1960s onward, the theme of “the apocalyptic” has assumed increasing importance in Girard’s oeuvre. Harking back to the etymology of the Greek term apokalypsis, apocalypse concerns the “disclosure” of something—a “revelation” or “unveiling.” The term itself has biblical roots, and Girard’s interest in it concerns the revelation of violence. Here Girard emphasizes violence as that which threatens human order and security because of its contagious nature, and he emphasizes the extent to which this revelation itself further undermines human order and security. That is, the biblical uncovering of human violence—the laying bare of SURROGATE VICTIMAGE—itself destabilizes culture and society. By desacralizing the principal mechanism by which humans have attained unanimity and social cohesion— SCAPEGOATING—human communities are thrown into chaos that, in the short and intermediate terms, can exacerbate rather than ameliorate violence. In this situation, Girard argues that the internal logic of mimetic violence plays itself out as the mimetic and contagious nature of violence generates an “escalation to extremes” that leads to destruction. Although Girard argues that his concept of apocalypse remains utterly faithful to the biblical tradition, it runs counter to a widespread understanding of apocalypse as divine violence against humanity. Desire: Girard acknowledges that, while humans have evolved biological appetites that operate at the level of instinct, it is the further evolved capacity for MIMESIS that most fully accounts for the dynamics of human desiring, whether or not any particular desire builds on or directs a biological appetite. Doubling: In Girard’s schema, conflictual MIMESIS is characterized by “doubling.” “Doubling” refers to the progressive and mutually reinforcing de-differentiation of subjects that occurs by virtue of an intensification of mimesis. That is, mimesis encourages, through positive feedback, an increasing symmetry between antagonists, which emerges despite increasing attempts at differentiation; it tends toward the erasure of significant differences between individuals—those differences that mark their sociopsychological identity and position within a particular cultural order. Mediation: For Girard, whose conception of DESIRE is not object-oriented, desire is always mediated via a third party (a model or mediator) through a process of MIMESIS. There are two primary ways in which such mediation occurs: externally and internally. External mediation (médiation externe) occurs where the model

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or mediator is historically, socially, or ontologically distant from the subject such that conflict over the object of desire is precluded. Conversely, internal mediation (médiation interne) occurs where the desiring subject’s object of desire and their model’s object of desire overlap and thereby becomes a pretext for rivalry or “conflictual mimesis.” In this instance, there is a mutual convergence on a desired object and the model is designated a “model-rival” or “model-obstacle.” Metaphysical desire: Metaphysical desire (le désir de metaphysique) is an attraction to the very being of a mediator. In metaphysical desire, the object is merely a means by which the desiring subject can attain or absorb the mediator’s (imagined) autonomy, uniqueness, or spontaneity. Metaphysical desire is particularly evident when the object of desire is honor or prestige directly, and not just one of their concrete markers. Mimesis/mimetic desire: The idea of “mimesis” is at the center of Girard’s thinking. The etymology of the term can be traced to ancient Greece (μίμησις) (mimesis), from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), “to imitate,” and it has served a variety of purposes in theoretical discourse since at least Aristotle. In Girard’s thought, it refers to imitative desire (le désir mimétique). For Girard, desire is itself imitative: we desire what we desire because we imitate—consciously or not—the desires of others. Girard has called this a “mimesis of appropriation” (une mimésis d’appropriation). The other main area in which Girard sees mimesis operating is in SCAPEGOATING. Here, the form of imitation observed is that of members of a crowd or populace converging around a victim or group of victims. Girard has dubbed this a “mimesis of accusation” or a “mimesis of antagonism” (une mimésis d’antagonisme). Girard’s conception of mimesis can be traced back to his very first work, Deceit Desire, and the Novel, where he posits a distinction between novelistic (romanesque) versus romantic (romantique) works; where the former reveal and demythologize the mimetic nature of social relations, the latter continue to propagate delusions about absolute human spontaneity and originality. Myth: Myth is one of the three institutions of the SACRED—along with PROHIBITION and RITUAL. Myth is preeminently concerned with narrating the sacred. Myth is characterized by stories that possess a radically incomplete recollection of cultural degeneration and SURROGATE VICTIMAGE. Like rituals, myths represent stereotypically distorted accounts of both the cultural chaos associated with the sacrificial crisis and the cessation of this crisis through collective violence. Myths typically encode such mis-knowing (méconnaissance) by representing a primordial chaos—through, for example, “natural” and cultural calamities that signify the dissolution of difference, such as plagues or the appearance of warring twins or brothers (such as we see, for instance, in the mythical narrative of Romulus and Remus). Prohibition: Prohibition is one of the three institutions of the SACRED—along with MYTH and RITUAL. For Girard, the main function of prohibition is to control mimetic contagion and thereby proscribe interpersonal conflict. Religious taboos/ prohibitions commonly target mimetic behavior and the mythical transpositions of that behavior through representation. For instance, taboos are often focused on things such as behavioral mirroring, “imitative magic,” representational art, and the problematic of “twins.” By targeting these domains, prohibition is best seen as a sacred prophylactic that, although manifesting only dim self-awareness, is preoccupied with the forestalling of rivalry and the dissolution of differences that conflictual reciprocity engenders.



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Pseudo-masochism and pseudo-sadism: Pseudo-masochism and pseudo-sadism represent two of the primary poles of psychopathology in Girard’s understanding. The prefix “pseudo” in both cases indicates what deconstructionists would call terms “under erasure”: terms that are considered necessary but problematic because of their traditional constructions. Here, Girard wants to distance himself from the Freudian conceptions under which the notions of masochism and sadism have been developed while wanting to retain something of their ambience or semantic field.   From one perspective, pseudo-masochism can be seen as a kind of METAPHYSICAL DESIRE in extremis. In MIMETIC DESIRE, the prestige of the model is sometimes boosted by his or her seeming indifference toward others. The pseudo-masochist concludes that their rejection by the mediator confirms the mediator’s supremacy and the absolute desirability of what the mediator desires. The pseudo-masochist looks for objects whose value is conferred and confirmed by the resistance encountered in attempts to attain them. Where a model serves initially as an obstacle to the consummation of a desire, the pseudo-masochist eventually will seek the obstacle itself—the model is valued because of the obstruction that he or she can provide. Pseudo-sadism involves what Girard calls a “dialectical reversal” of pseudo-masochism: where the masochist will seek a mediator who will oppose them, the pseudo-sadist seeks masochists for the same end, of turning him or her into a demigod. The sadist seeks to be a mediator for imitators for whom he or she will provide violent opposition and, in so doing, hopes to turn this role of human divinity into a reality. For Freud such social pathologies are externalizations of internal disquiet; for Girard, these psychopathologies represent the internalization of external social dynamics. Ritual: Ritual is one of the three institutions of the SACRED—along with PROHIBITION and MYTH. Ritual, along with prohibition, functions to control mimetic behavior. Both freeze into institutional form an imperfect comprehension of SURROGATE VICTIMAGE; they are distorted recollections of both the cultural chaos associated with a sacrificial crisis and its abatement through SCAPEGOATING. The primary form of ritual is sacrifice, which usually begins with carnivalesque features (masks, intoxication, the theatrical erasure, or suspension of normal cultural codes, and so on) and concludes with the killing of an animal (or, in the past, a human or group of humans). Ritual is the institution of the sacred that is preeminently constituted by a performative restaging of a cultural crisis and its resolution through surrogate victimage, usually by means of a sacrifice. (The) sacred: Girard continually emphasizes the connections between religion, social structure, and culture, which he sees as holding firm in so-called “primitive” (or pre-state) cultures, in ancient cultures, and even in “modern” (so-called) “secular” cultures—although the way these features interconnect and function in each case is importantly different. There are two senses of the sacred (le sacré) in Girard’s work. The first, evinced in early works such as Violence and the Sacred, is that the sacred is the anthropological correlate of the social; further, that violence lies at the basis of the sacred and that the institutions of the sacred—MYTH, RITUAL, and PROHIBITION—give institutional form and religious underwriting to the cultureforming power and ambit of human violence.   However, beginning with Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Girard develops a new conception of the sacred that does not so much overturn as supplement his earlier view. He develops this view by posing the question of how it is we came to know about the (violent) sacred and its effects. His answer is that this

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knowledge is the product of the radically desacralizing effect of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, beginning with the psalms, the Joseph story, Job, and the Servant Songs of Isaiah, and culminating in the gospel narratives of Jesus’ passion.  Girard posits a fundamental distinction between myth and biblical narrative; where the former narrates events structured by SURROGATE VICTIMAGE in a way that legitimizes violence, the latter takes the point of view of the victims of that violence— thematizes violence—in a way that undermines its legitimacy. In this sense at least, Girard acknowledges the breakthrough insight of nineteenth-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), whose antithesis between “Dionysus” and “the Crucified” anticipates Girard’s thesis in many respects—anthropologically, if not ethically, since Nietzsche repudiates Christian regard for victims in favor of Dionysian excess. Scapegoating: Girard’s use of the term “scapegoating” (scapegoat: bouc émissaire) is consistent in many ways with the commonsense uses of that term: the violent and arbitrary convergence around a victim or group of victims who are seen as uniquely responsible for a particular group’s misfortunes. Although scapegoats need not be innocent in any strong sense of that word—that is, utterly blameless—they bear the blame for the social disorder surrounding them out of all proportion to their responsibility. In The Scapegoat, Girard argued that scapegoats are (mis)represented in remarkably similar ways—with what Girard calls “victimary signs”—and so we can see scapegoating in certain texts, even when authors do not see this themselves. Scapegoating is a central feature of SURROGATE VICTIMAGE. Surrogate victimage: In Girard’s thought, “surrogate victimage” (mécanisme de la victim émissaire / le mécanisme victimaire) names the principal mechanism by which cultures constitute themselves sacrificially. Where MIMETIC DESIRE denotes those dimensions of imitative behavior oriented by reference to acts of appropriation, surrogate victimage has its basis in an increasingly envious and rivalrous MIMESIS of accusation. Surrogate victimage is best encapsulated by reference to a hypothetical scenario where a contagion of rivalrous mimesis has swept through a proto-human milieu and leveled the identities of individuals, so that mutual suspicion and enmity become pandemic. In such a situation of pervasive DOUBLING, Girard proposes that what invariably occurs is that an individual or group will emerge that is seen to be different enough by the crowd to polarize it in an escalating mimesis of accusation. In other words, the SCAPEGOAT functions in a sociopsychological sense by reintroducing difference when all other differences or markers of identity are collapsing. The mob polarizes around the scapegoat, who is lynched or banished. (Of course, the persecuting community does not see their victim as a scapegoat. Rather they see themselves as scapegoats of those they are accusing.) The esprit de corps produced by the lynching or banishment then ends up justifying or legitimating the lynching to the mob, post hoc. This accounts for the origin of the SACRED, according to Girard, as the victi—formerly thought to be the malign source of violent contagion threatening the community—is experienced post mortem as the bringer of a seemingly miraculous order and stability by virtue of their murder, which spontaneously quenched the mob’s mimetic violence.   Thus, religions begin with the deification of victims. Surrogate victimage is the mechanism that lies behind the primitive religiocultural nexus, giving rise to MYTH, RITUAL, and PROHIBITION—the three institutions of the sacred. Girard thus proposes that conflict rooted in rivalry better explains human violence and conflict than either “aggression” (the biological / zoological explanation) or “scarcity” (the economistic explanation).

Further Reading Books by René Girard (By year of original publication) Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (1961). Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. Proust: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by René Girard. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1962. Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky (1963). Translated by James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad, 1997. And Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012. Violence and the Sacred (1972). Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. “To Double Business Bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, 1978). Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. The Scapegoat (1982). Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Job, the Victim of His People (1985). Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer (1994). Translated by Trevor Cribben Merrill. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. The Girard Reader. Edited by James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad, 1996. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (1999). Translated by James G. Williams. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001. The One by Whom Scandal Comes (2001). Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. Sacrifice (2003). Translated by Matthew Pattillo and David Dawson. Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011. Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire. Edited with an introduction by Mark R. Anspach. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (with Gianni Vattimo, 2006). Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and translated by William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre (2007). Translated by Mary Baker. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010. Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha). London and New York: Continuum, 2007.

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La conversion de l’art: Textes rassemblés par Benoît Chantre et Trevor Cribben Merrill. Paris: Carnets Nord, 2008; Flammarion, 2010. Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005. Edited with an introduction by Robert Doran. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Anoxeria and Mimetic Desire. Translated by Mark R. Anspach. Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013.

Selected articles and shorter publications by René Girard (Alphabetically by title) “Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11: An Interview with René Girard” (with Robert Doran). SubStance 37, no. 1 (2008): 20–32. “Are the Gospels Mythical?” First Things: The Journal of Religion and Public Life 62 (April 1996). www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9604/girard.html “The Bloody Skin of the Victim” (with Wolfgang Palaver). In The New Visibility of Religion. Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl, 59–67. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. “A Conversation with René Girard (August 2006/May 2007)” (with Phil Rose). Contagion 18 (2011): 23–38. “Disorder and Order in Mythology.” In Disorder and Order. Edited by Paisley Livingston, 80–97. Special issue of Stanford Literature Studies 1 (1984). “Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire.” Contagion 3 (1996): 1–20. “The Founding Murder in the Philosophy of Nietzsche.” In Violence and Truth. Edited by Paul Dumouchel, 227–46. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. “From Literature to Science.” In Mapping Michael Serres (2005). Edited by Niran Abbas, 10–23. Studies in Literature and Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. “Generative Scapegoating.” In Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Edited by Robert G. HamertonKelly, 73–145. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. “Intellectuals as Castrators of Meaning: An Interview with René Girard” (with Giulio Meotti). Il Foglio (March 20, 2007). Translated by Paul N. Faraone and Christopher S. Morrissey. First Principles (August 28, 2008). Available at www.firstprinciplesjournal. com/articles.aspx?article=1086&theme=home&loc=b “Interview with René Girard” (with Marcus Müller). Anthropoetics 2, no. 1 (June 1996): 1–13. “Literature and Christianity: A Personal View.” Philosophy and Literature 23 (1999): 32–43. “The Logic of the Undecidable: An Interview with René Girard” (with Thomas Bertonneau). Paroles Gelées—UCLA French Studies 5 (1987): 1–24. “Nietzsche and Contradiction.” Stanford Italian Review 1, nos 1–2 (1986): 53–65. “Origins: A View from the Literature.” In Understanding Origins. Edited by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Francisco J. Varela, 27–42. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992. “Ratzinger is Right” (with Nathan Gardels). New Perspectives Quarterly 22, no. 3 (Summer 2005). Available at www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2005_summer/10_girard.html



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“Violence and Religion: Cause or Effect?” The Hedgehog Review 6, no. 1 (22 March 2004): 8–13. “Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with René Girard” (with Rebecca Adams). Religion and Literature 25, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 11–33. “Violence in Biblical Narrative.” Philosophy and Literature 23, no. 2 (1999): 387–92. “ ‘What is Occurring Today is Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale’: René Girard on September 11” (with Henri Tincq). Le Monde, November 6, 2011. Translated by the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Available at www.morphizm.com/politix/ girard911.html.

Further reading Aglietta, Michel, and André Orléan. La Violence de la monnaie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982. Alberg, Jeremiah L. A Reinterpretation of Rousseau: A Religious System (with a Foreword by René Girard). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. —Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses: Reading Scandalous Texts. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Alison, James. The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes. New York: Herder and Herder, 1998. —Knowing Jesus (1993). 2nd edn London: SPCK, 1998. —Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001. —On Being Liked. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003. —Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-In. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006. —Broken Hearts and New Creations: Intimations of a Great Reversal. London and New York: Continuum, 2010. —Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 2nd edn London: SPCK, 2010. —Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice. 4 vols. Glenview: Doers, 2013. Anspach, Mark R., ed. René Girard. Les cahiers de l’Herne. Paris, Éditions de L’Herne, 2008. Astell, Ann W., and Sandor Goodhart, eds. Sacrifice, Scripture, and Substitution: Readings in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Bailie, Gil. Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad, 1995. —“René Girard’s Contribution to the Church of the 21st Century,” Communio: International Catholic Review 26, no. 1 (Spring 1999), 134–53. —“Raising the Ante: Recovering an Alpha and Omega Christology,” Communio: International Catholic Review 35, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 83–106. Bandera, Cesáreo. Mímesis conflictiva: ficción literaria y violencia en Cervantes y Calderón. Madrid: Gredos, 1975.

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—The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. —The Humble Story of Don Quixote: Reflections on the Birth of the Modern Novel (2005). Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. —A Refuge of Lies: Reflections on Faith and Fiction. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Bartlett, Anthony W. Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement. Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2001. Baudler, Georg. Töten oder Lieben: Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit in Religion und Christentum. Munich: Kösel, 1991. Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. Le Lien affectif. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1991. Bubbio, Paolo D. Il Sacrificio Intellettuale: René Girard e la Filosofia della Religione. Turin: Il Quadrante, 1999. —Il Sacrificio: a Ragione e il suo Altrove. Rome: Città Nuova, 2004. Chilton, Bruce. The Temple of Jesus. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Ciuba, Gary M.  Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy. Southern Literary Studies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Collins, Brian. The Head Beneath the Altar: Hindu Mythology and the Critique of Sacrifice. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. Cowdell, Scott. Abiding Faith: Christianity Beyond Certainty, Anxiety, and Violence. Eugene: Cascade, 2009; Lutterworth: James Clark, 2010. —René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Cowdell, Scott, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge, eds. Violence, Desire, and the Sacred: Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines. London and New York: Continuum, 2012. —Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, Volume 2: René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love, and Literature. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Daly, Robert J. Sacrifice Unveiled: The True Meaning of Christian Sacrifice. London and New York: T and T Clark, 2009. Dawson, David. Flesh Becomes Word: A Lexicography of the Scapegoat or, the History of an Idea. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Deguy, Michel, ed. René Girard et le problème du mal. Paris: Grasset, 1982. Dieckmann, Bernhard. Judas als Sündenbock: eine verhängnisvolle Geschichte von Angst und Vergeltung. Munich: Kösel, 1991. Dizdar, Draško. Sheer Grace: Living the Mystery of God. New York: Paulist, 2008. Dumouchel, Paul., ed. Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. —Emotions essai sur le corps et le social. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de Penser en rond, 1999. —Economia dell’invidia. Massa: Transeuropa, 2011. —Le sacrifice inutile: essai sur la violence politique. Paris: Flammarion, 2011. —The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014.



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Dumouchel, Paul, and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, eds., L’Enfer des choses: René Girard et la logique de l’économie. Paris: Seuil, 1979. —Colloque de Cerisy: L’Auto-organisation de la physique au politique. Paris: Seuil, 1983. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Ordres et desordres: enquête sur un nouveau paradigme. Paris: Grasset, 1982. —Le Sacrifice et l’envie: le libéralisme aux prises avec la justice sociale. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1992. —Economy and the Future: A Crisis of Faith. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, and Francisco J. Varela, eds. Understanding Origins: Contemporary Views on the Origin of Life, Mind, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992. Finamore, Stephen. God, Order, and Chaos: René Girard and the Apocalypse. Paternoster Biblical Monographs. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2009. Fleming, Chris. René Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Cambridge: Polity, 2004. Fornari, Giuseppe. “Figures of Antichrist: The Apocalypse and its Restraints in Contemporary Political Thought.” Innsbrucker Discussionspapiere zu Weltordnung, Religion und Gewalt 31 (2009): 1–39. (Appearing also in Contagion 17 [2010]: 53–85). —A God Torn to Pieces: The Nietzsche Case. Translated by Keith Buck in collaboration with the author. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Gallese, Vittorio. “The Two Sides of Mimesis: Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Embodied Simulation and Social Identification.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 16, no. 4 (2009): 21–44. Gans, Eric. The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. —The End of Culture: Toward a Generative Anthropology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. —Science and Faith: The Anthropology of Revelation. Savage: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991. —Originary Thinking: Elements of Generative Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. —Signs of Paradox: Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Gardner, Stephen L. Myths of Freedom: Equality, Modern Thought, and Philosophical Radicalism. Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1998. —“Democracy and Desire in The Great Gatsby.” In Passions in Economy, Politics and the Media: In Discussion with Christian Theology. Edited by Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmair-Pösel. Beiträge zur mimeticshen Theorie 17, 273–94. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2005. —“René Girard’s Apocalyptic Critique of Historical Reason: Limiting Politics to Make Way for Faith.” Contagion 18 (2011): 1–22. Garrels, Scott R. “Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire: Convergence Between the Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Empirical Research on Imitation.” Contagion 12–13 (2006): 47–86. —ed. Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011. Golsan, Richard J. René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. Theorists of Myth. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

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Goodhart, Sandor. Sacrificing Commentary: Reading the End of Literature. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. —The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. Goodhart, Sandor, Jørgen Jørgensen, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams, eds. For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009. Grote, Jim. “The Imitation of Christ as Double-Bind: Toward a Girardian Spirituality.” Cistercian Studies 29, no. 4 (1994): 485–98. Grote, Jim, and John McGeeney. Clever as Serpents: Business Ethics and Office Politics. Collegeville: Liturgical, 1997. Hamerton-Kelly, Robert. G., ed. Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. —Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. —The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994. —ed. Politics and Apocalypse. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007. Hardin, Michael. The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity With Jesus. Lancaster: JDL, 2010. Hedley, Douglas. Sacrifice Imagined: Violence, Atonement, and the Sacred. New York and London: Continuum, 2011. Hodge, Joel. Resisting Violence and Victimisation: Christian Faith and Solidarity in East Timor. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. Jane, Emma A., and Chris Fleming. Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Jersak, Brad, and Michael Hardin, eds. Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Johnsen, William A. Violence and Modernism: Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. Juilland, Alphonse, ed. To Honor René Girard. Special issue of Stanford French and Italian Studies 34 (1986). Kaplan, Grant. “Widening the Dialectic: Secularity and Christianity in Conversation.” In New Voices in Catholic Theology. Edited by Anna Bonta Moreland and Joseph Curran, 23–50, 245–50. New York: Crossroad, 2012. Kirwan, Michael. Discovering Girard. Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 2005. —Girard and Theology. London and New York: T. and T. Clark, 2009. Lagrange, François. René Girard ou la christianisation des sciences humaines. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Lawtoo, Nidesh. The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Livingston, Paisley, ed. Disorder and Order: Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium (September 14–16, 1981). Special issue of Stanford Literature Studies 1 (1984). —Models of Desire: René Girard and the Psychology of Mimesis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.



Further Reading

225

Marr, Andrew. Tools for Peace: The Spiritual Craft of St. Benedict and René Girard. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007. McCracken, David. The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. McKenna, Andrew. Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Merrill, Trevor C. The Book of Imitation and Desire: Reading Milan Kundera with René Girard. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Mongrain, Kevin. “Theologians of Spiritual Transformation: A Proposal for Reading René Girard Through the Lenses of Hans Urs Von Balthasar and John Cassian.” Modern Theology 28, no. 1 (January 2012): 81–111. Moore, Sebastian. The Contagion of Jesus: Doing Theology as If It Mattered. Edited by Stephen McCarthy. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007. O’Regan, Cyril. “Girard and the Spaces of Apocalyptic.” Modern Theology 28, no. 1 (January 2012): 112–40. O’Shea, Andrew. Selfhood and Sacrifice: René Girard and Charles Taylor on the Crisis of Modernity. New York and London: Continuum, 2010. Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis. Translated by Eugene Webb. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. —The Genesis of Desire (2007). Translated by Eugene Webb. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010. —Psychopolitics: Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill. (Foreword by René Girard.) Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Palaver, Wolfgang. Politik und Religion bei Thomas Hobbes: eine Kritik aus der Sicht der Theorie Girards. Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1991. —“A Girardian Reading of Schmitt’s Political Theology.” Telos 93 (Fall 1992): 43–68. —“Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity.” Contagion 2 (1995): 57–74. —“On Violence: A Mimetic Perspective.” Der Innsbrucker Theologische Leseraum (February 23, 2002). Available at www.uibk.ac.at/theol/leseraum/texte/137.html —“Envy or Emulation: A Christian Understanding of Economic Passions.” In Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media. Edited by Wolfgang Palaver and Petra SteinmairPösel, 139–62. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2005. —“Carl Schmitt’s ‘Apocalyptic’ Resistance against Global Civil War.” In Politics and Apocalypse. Edited by Robert Hamerton-Kelly, 69–94. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007. —“The Ambiguous Cachet of Victimhood: On Violence and Monotheism.” In The New Visibility of Religion. Edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl, 68–87. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. —“Essay on Islam and the Return of the Archaic.” The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 37 (October 2010): 6–10. —“Mimetic Theories of Religion and Violence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence. Edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson, 533–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. —René Girard’s Mimetic Theory (2011). Translated by Gabriel Borrud. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. Palaver, Wolfgang, and Petra Steinmair-Pösel, eds. Passions in Economy, Politics and the

226

Further Reading

Media: In Discussion with Christian Theology. Beiträge zur mimeticshen Theorie, 17. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2005. Pfeil, Margaret R., and Tobias L. Winright, eds. Violence, Transformation, and the Sacred: “They Shall Be Called Children of God.” Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2012. Redekop, Vern Neufeld, and Thomas Ryba, eds. René Girard and Creative Mimesis: The Emergence of Caring, Consciousness, and Creativity. Lanham: Lexington, 2014. —René Girard and Creative Reconciliation. Lanham: Lexington, 2014. Reineke, Martha J. Intimate Domain: Desire, Trauma, and Mimetic Theory. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014. Roustang, François. Un destin si funeste. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1976. Schwager, Raymund. Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible. Translated by Maria L. Assad. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987. —Banished From Eden: Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation (1997). Translated by James Williams. Inigo Text Series 9. Leominster: Gracewing; New Malden: Inigo Enterprises, 2006. —Jesus of Nazareth: How He Understood His Life. Translated by J. G. Williams. New York: Crossroad, 1998. —Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption, Translated by James G. Williams. New York: Herder and Herder, 1999. Serres, Michel. Hermés III: La traduction. Paris: Minuit, 1974. —La Naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucréce: fleuves et turbulences. Paris: Minuit, 1977, esp. 127–66. —The Parasite. Translated by Lawrence R. Schehr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. —Rome: The Book of Foundations. Translated by Felicia McCarren. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991, esp. 89–136. —Genesis. Translated by Geneviève James and James Nielson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Simonse, Simon. Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in the Southeastern Sudan. Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992. Smith, Theophus, and Mark Wallace, eds. Curing Violence. Sonoma: Polebridge, 1994. Swartley, Willard M., ed. Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking. Telford: Pandora, 2000. Tyrrell, Wm. Blake. The Sacrifice of Socrates: Athens, Plato, Girard. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012. Vanheeswijck, Guy. “The Place of René Girard in Contemporary Philosophy.” Contagion 10 (2003): 95–110. Vattimo, Gianni. Belief. Translated by David Webb and Luca D’Isanto. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1999. Ward, Graham, and Michael Hoelzl, eds. The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics. Continuum Resources in Religion and Political Culture. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. Warren, James. Compassion or Apocalypse?: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of René Girard (Foreword by Brian McLaren). Lanham: John Hunt, 2013. Webb, Eugene. The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993. Williams, James G. The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. Valley Forge: Trinity, 1991.



Further Reading

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Wilson, Bruce W. “What Do We Want and Why Do We Want It? Chasing After the Wind: Coquetry, Metaphysical Desire and God.” St. Mark’s Review 202 (2007): 3–9. Readers are also directed to Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, which from 1994 has published articles exploring, developing, and critiquing the mimetic theory of René Girard.

Index 9/11 40 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie) 117, 124 acquisitive desire 183 acting 51, 52 see also agents affluence and desire 111 agents, artificial 51–60 and autonomy 58 see also robots A.I. (movie) 55–60 and violence 58–60 Ainslie, Roberta 192, 195, 197 Alberg, Jeremiah 1 Alien (movie) 109 Allen, Woody 132 Midnight in Paris (movie) 129, 131 Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, A (movie) 130 To Rome with Love (movie) 132–3 Vicky Cristina Barcelona (movie) 130–1, 132 You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (movie) 129, 131–2 Zelig (“mockumentary”) 129 All the Pretty Horses (C. McCarthy) 150 Alperovitz, Gar Atomic Diplomacy 41 Amazing Spider-Man, The (movie) 61, 62 analogy, dramaturgical and media 20 anamnēsis (“recollection”) 158 anthropology, generative 10, 15n. 2 anthropomorphization 153–5 see also zoomorphization Antichrist 207 see also Satan anti-Semitism 47n. 30 see also Auschwitz; Holocaust (Jewish); racism apocalypse 105–15, 215

and representation 33–44 Appleby, Scott 79 Aristotle on poetry 51 Armenian genocide 41 art and nature 51–2 and philosophy 92–4, 103n. 15, 103n. 21 and representation 51 and sacrifice 11–12 value of 1 artificial agents 51–60 and autonomy 58 see also robots art-objects and Internet 9, 12–13 As You Like It (W. Shakespeare) 165 Atlantic Monthly 172 Atomic Diplomacy (G. Alperovitz) 41 Auschwitz 34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 44 see also anti-Semitism; Holocaust (Jewish); racism Australian Girard Seminar 3 authenticity 175, 187n. 32, 202, 203, 207 autonomy and mimesis 52, 56–8, 60n. 3 Avatar (movie) 102 Badiou, Alain 91 Bailie, Gil on transcendence 206 Violence Unveiled 206 Baldwin, Alec 133 Banderas, Antonio 131 Bardem, Javier 130 Barker, Clive, Hellraiser (movie) 109 baroque aesthetics 189, 191, 193–7, 198n. 9 Barry Lyndon (movie) 117 Bataille, Georges 10 Batman Begins (movie) 61, 62, 64, 67, 69

230 Index Battling to the End (R. Girard) 178 Baudrillard, Jean 25, 28–9, 98, 106 and globalization and violence 112–13 “hyperreal simulations” 89 on The Matrix (movie) 92, 103n. 16 Simulacra and Simulation 91, 93 on simulation 38, 92–3 Beamish, Darryl 196 Beck, Glenn 34–5 Beckham, David 28 Bellinger, Charles 63 Benigni, Roberto 132 Bentley, Wes 84 Ben-Yehuda, Nachman 18 Berkmann, Patricia 196 Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) Gallica collection 13 blended reality 52–5 blood and violence 123–4, 125 “Blue Hotel, The” (S. Crane) 119 books, printed value of 13 Border Trilogy (C. McCarthy) 150 Borngasser, Barbara on baroque art 191, 195 Bott, Nicholas 65 brain, human and computer programs 98–102 Brand, Stewart 33 Brassier, Ray 107 Breazeal, Cynthia 52, 53 Brecht, Bertolt on fascism 45n. 10 Brokeback Mountain (movie) 150 Brolin, Josh 131 Brothers Karamazov, The (F. Dostoyevsky) 203 Bruneau, Jean: Les débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert 13 Burton, Graeme 19 Button, John 196 Cabin in the Woods, The (movie) 106–15 Caiaphas 38–9, 82 Cameron, James: Avatar (movie) 102 Campanella, Thomas: City of the Sun 26 Canavan, Gerry 107 capitalist market and desire 111, 112, 114

and foundations of society 114 and Internet 9 Carey, James 26 Carroll, Lewis: Through the Looking Glass 96 Carveth, Rod: Mad Men and Philosophy 172 Catching Fire (S. Collins) 80, 82–3 catharsis 138, 212 CC-BY licensing 8 celebrities arbitrary choice of 25 as sacred 27–9 scapegoating of 27–9, 80 censorship of media 18, 30n. 6 Chamfort 10 Christ, Jesus 21, 32n. 43, 38, 65, 182 and superhero movies 70–4, 75n. 25 Christian values 160–5, 208 see also enemies, love of; forgiveness church, the and redemption 73–4 Ciment, Michel 119 cinema see movies; particular movies by title Cisco Kid, The (serial) 150 City of the Sun (T. Campanella) 26 Ciuba, Gary 1 Clover, Carol 106, 109 Cocks, Peter 121 Cohen, Stanley Folk Devils and Moral Panics 17, 18–20, 24, 26 on media 25 on scapegoating 18–20, 23–4, 29–30 Collins, Suzanne Catching Fire 80, 82–3 Hunger Games, The (literary trilogy) 77 communications studies 24–7 see also media computers homicidal 117 and human brain 98–102 and simulation 92, 98–102 see also robots computing, playtime 52–5 contagion 139–41, 172, 174, 192, 197 of emotions 89, 94

Index and the magical 119 mimetic 212 and violence 119–20 see also impurity conversion 181, 197 novelistic 201–8 see also novelistic truth Cooke, Eric 189–97 Cooke, Sally 197 coquetry 131, 132, 155, 158–9, 173–4, 180 corruption and scapegoating 66, 75n. 14 “counter-imitation” 132 “cowboy metaphysics” 149–66, 166n. 3 Crane, Stephen: “Blue Hotel, The” 119 creative commons 8 creative freedom 8 Cribben Merrill, Trevor 1 Crime and Punishment (F. Dostoyevsky) 204, 207 criminals, treatment of 69–70, 75n. 23 Crowd, The (G. Le Bon) 19 crowds 19 see also mob mentality Cruz, Penelope 130, 132 culture 43 and violence 66 cybernetics and media 19, 24–5 Dark Knight, The (movie) 61, 62, 63, 65, 69–70, 72–3 Dark Knight Rises, The (movie) 61, 65, 66, 71, 72–3 Dark Knight trilogy, the (movies) 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68–70, 74 darkness, inner 201, 202, 204–5, 207, 208 Debray, Régis and Girard 32n. 42 on media and social order 26, 32n. 42 Deceit, Desire and the Novel (R. Girard) 1, 133, 154–5, 158, 173, 183, 203, 207 del Toro, Guillermo: Pacific Rim (movie) 102 delusion 129–34 democracy, devaluation of 113 demonization 17, 30n. 1 Derrida, Jacques “No Apocalypse, Not Now” 33 on presence 10

231

on writing 10 Descartes, René, on the self 179 desire 156–7, 211, 215 acquisitive 183 and affluence 111 borrowed 190, 205, 211 and capitalist market 111, 112, 114 loss of 105–15 metaphysical 129, 131–3, 134n. 10, 158, 173, 183, 211, 216 mimetic 21, 105–15, 138–9, 155–60, 211, 216 modeling of 82, 134, 135n. 15, 172, 173 for recognition 183 and representation 37 and robots 56, 57 spiritual 159 and transgression 111 triangular 154–5, 211 Destruction of European Jews, The (R. Hilberg) 121 deviance 18–20 Dexter (television series) 201–8 diarēsis (“distinction”) 158 Dickens, Charles 2 Dies Irae (hymn) 118 difference 30, 125, 130, 193, 194 destruction of 110 ontology of 21–3 and the self 187n. 29 sociology of 17, 18–20 see also doubling “differend” 45n. 12 Differend, The (J.-F. Lyotard) 36 digital media 94 and neural interplay 97–102 see also computers digital phantoms 94–7 disability/disfigurement and scapegoating 190, 196 disaster theory 19 District 9 (movie) 60n. 5 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 211 Brothers Karamazov, The 203 Crime and Punishment 204, 207 Eternal Husband, The 132 Notes from the Underground 133, 172–3

232 Index doubling 123, 125–6, 130–1, 189–97, 211, 215 see also difference Dragnet (television show) 190 dramaturgical analogy and media 20 Drewe, Robert: Shark Net, The 189–97 Dreyer, Carl Theodor; Vredens Dag (movie) 118 Duchamp, Marcel 13 “Fountain” 12 Dunlop Rubber 192 Durkheim, Émile 10 and the sacred and profane 14 “ecstatic asceticism” 79 egos and phantoms 89, 94 Eichmann, Adolf 45n. 10 Eisenberg, Jesse 132 Either/Or (S. Kierkegaard) 156–7 electronic documents 8, 13, 14 emotions 60 and affect 102n. 8 contagion of 89, 94 real and hyperreal 89–102 and robots 55–60 e-motions, hypermimetic 97–102 Empire of Sacrifice (J. Pahl) 79 enemies, love of 204–5 envy 211 see also rivalry Epicurus letter to Menoeceus 33, 44n. 2 escalation, mimetic 67, 79, 95, 104n. 30, 105, 212 Eternal Husband, The (F. Dostoyevsky) 132 ethics discourse 45n. 11 and mimetic theory 150–2 see also morality Euripides 171–2 Evans, Max 150 evil 61–6 see also Antichrist; Satan Evolution and Conversion (R. Girard) 1 “extension of man” 99, 102n. 4 “fail” memes 38, 46n. 17 false world and the true world 94 see also real and the virtual fascination, mimetic 84

fascism 35, 45n. 10 Faurisson, Robert, on denial of the gas chambers 45n. 12 fear and violence 69–70 feedback cycles 17 films see movies; particular movies by title Fishburne, Laurence 90 Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Great Gatsby, The 133 flaming 30n. 1 folk devils 17–30 Folk Devils and Moral Panics (S. Cohen) 17–20, 24, 26 forgiveness 165, 184, 204, 205 Fornari, Giuseppe: God Torn to Pieces, A 80 Foucault, Michel, historical a priori 44n. 5 “Fountain” (M. Duchamp) 12 Fox News 34 Fox Searchlight 145 Frankenstein (M. Shelley) 40 Frankfurt School 36 Frazer, James: Golden Bough, The 86n. 17 Frears, Stephen 150 freedom creative 8 devaluation of 113 French, Peter 151, 160 “cowboy metaphysics” 149 Freud, Sigmund 179, 211 on Oedipus complex 183 on sex and violence 124 Totem and Taboo 120 Uncanny, The 117, 123 Gallica collection (Bibliothèque nationale de France) 13 Gans, Eric on culture 43 Girardian Origins of Generative Anthropology, The 15n. 2 “Holocaust and the Victimary Revolution, The” 39 Gardner, Stephen 1, 114, 115 and romantic passion 133 Gatton Man (M. Lilley) 190 generative anthropology 10, 15n. 2 Girard, René Battling to the End 178

Index on blood and violence 124 on “counter-imitation” 132 and Debray 32n. 42 Deceit, Desire and the Novel 1, 133, 154–5, 158, 173, 183, 203, 207 and digital mediation 94 on the escalation to extremes 79 Evolution and Conversion 1 on forgetting violence 125 on globalization 112 on Hegel 183 on the hero genre 68 on the human 10 on imitation 52, 56, 83 La Conversion de l’Art 1 and media 18, 25, 26 on monstrosity 142 on the novel 89, 202 overview of thought of 211–13 on positive mimesis 83 on ritual sacrifice 78 on rivalry 62, 89 on romantic passion 133 Scapegoat, The 27, 87n. 23, 190 on scapegoating 21–4, 29–30, 32n. 43 on the self 179, 180, 182, 183 on Shakespeare’s plays 71, 129 Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World 24, 80 and tragedy (drama genre) 138, 139 on tributes 80 on veneration of victims 83 and victimage 38 Violence and the Sacred 80, 133 on war 178 on the West and fundamentalist Islam 177–8 Girard and Theology (M. Kirwan) 203 Girardian Origins of Generative Anthropology, The (E. Gans) 15n. 2 gladiatorial contests 77–84 global destruction 114–15 see also apocalypse globalization and violence 112–13 God, “death” of 213 Goddard, Drew Cabin in the Woods, The (movie) 106–15

233

God Torn to Pieces, A (G. Fornari) 80 Goebbels, Joseph 35 Golden Bough, The (J. Frazer) 86n. 17 Goldman, David (“Spengler”) 14 Goldmann, Lucien: Towards a Sociology of the Novel 202 good, the see virtue Goode, Erich 18 Google Glass 7 Gore, Al 35 Graham, Billy 192, 197 Gray, John 106, 111 Great Gatsby, The (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 133 Green, Walon 150 Gulf War (1990–1) 46n. 18 Habermas, Jürgen 35 on discourse ethics 45n. 11 Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the d’Urbervilles 86n. 18 Hausner, Gideon, on Adolf Eichmann 45n. 10 Hegel, Georg Phenomenology of Spirit 183 on the self 183–4 Heizer, Michael: “Levitated Mass” 13 Hellraiser (movie) 109 Hemsworth, Liam 82 heroes execution of 79 and revenge 69 and self-sacrifice 69 see also superhero movies Hewett, Dorothy 191 Hilberg, Raul: Destruction of European Jews, The 121 Hi-Lo Country, The (movie) 149–66 Hilton, Paris 28 Hiroshima 34, 37–44 see also nuclear war Hiroshima Mon Amour (movie) 40, 47n. 30, 47n. 32 Hitchcock, Alfred: Psycho (movie) 123 Hitler, Adolf 35, 36, 39, 41 Mein Kampf 35 Hobbes, Thomas 51, 52 Holocaust (Jewish) 34–5, 39, 41–2, 47n. 30, 121, 126

234 Index and victimary culture 38–9 see also anti-Semitism; Auschwitz; racism Holocaust (Native American) 123, 126 “Holocaust and the Victimary Revolution, The” (E. Gans) 39 Homeland (television series) and disintegration of the self 176–9 Homer: Iliad 93 hopelessness 107, 114 see also nihilism Hopkins, Anthony 131 horror movies 105–15, 117–26 human, understanding of the 10 human rights, devaluation of 113 Hunger Games, The (S. Collins’ literary trilogy) 77 Hunger Games, The (movie) 77–84 Hutcherson, Josh 81 hypermimesis and mimesis 89–102 hypermimetic e-motions 97–102 “hyperreal simulations” 89

Internet, the 7–15 absorption of other media by 7, 9 and art-objects 9, 12–13 and the market 9 and performance (art) 9–12 and religion 14–15 Introduction to the Science of Religion (M. Müller) 10 Islam, fundamentalist and the West 177–8

Ice Storm, The (movie) 137–46 identity crises 171–84 see also self, the Iliad (Homer) 93 images and violence 38 imitation counter- 132 passive 83 realistic 90 and robots 55–60 significance of 52 and virtual simulation 89–102 see also mimesis; representation “imitation-hypnotic” states 89, 102n. 3 impersonation, digital 94–7 see also mimesis; simulation impurity 140–1 see also contagion incarnation, the 71 indifference 106 Indyk, Ivor on baroque writing 191 Innis, Harold 26 installation works 13 internal mediation 130

Kierkegaard, Søren on desire 156–7 Either/Or 156–7 Repetition 158 killers, serial 189–97, 201–8 Kirwan, Michael: Girard and Theology 203 Knausgaard, Karl “My Struggle” 2 knowledge, mediated 14 Kojève, Alexander 183, 187n. 42 Koons, Jeff 12 Kravitz, Lenny 82 Kubrick, Stanley 55 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie) 117, 124 Barry Lyndon (movie) 117 on human behavior 60 Shining, The (movie) 117–26

Jackson, Shirley “Lottery, The” 85n. 6 Johansson, Scarlett 130 Johnsen, William 1 Johnson, George My Brother Jack 190 Jones, Toby 83 journals, electronic 8 justice 61–6, 68 and revenge 64 “just war theory” 74n. 4

Laborit, Henri 25 La Conversion de l’Art (R. Girard) 1 Last Man, The (M. Shelley) 40 law and morality 65–6 and violence 24, 178

Index Lawrence, Jennifer 81 Lawtoo, Nidesh 1 Phantom of the Ego 89 Le Bon, Gustave 18, 21 Crowd, The 19 Lee, Ang 137, 145, 146 Le Monde 22 Leoncavallo, Ruggero: Pagliacci 133 Leroy Finch, Henry Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace 34 Les débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert (J. Bruneau) 13 Levi, Primo 36 “Levitated Mass” (M. Heizer) 13 libraries, changes in 13 Lilley, John 191 Lilley, Merv: Gatton Man 190 “Lottery, The” (S. Jackson) 85n. 6 love 73 ideals relating to 134 and violence 60 Lyotard, Jean-François 35–6 on the differend 45n. 12 Differend, The 36 Mad Men (television series) and disintegration of the self 172–6 Mad Men and Philosophy (R. Carveth and J. South) 172 magical, the 118, 119 see also paranormal, the magnanimity 151–2 Male, Richie 195, 197 Malraux, André 2 Manent, Pierre 115 Man of Steel (movie) 61, 62, 67–8, 71, 72 market and desire 111, 112, 114 and foundations of society 114 and Internet 9 Marx, Karl 179 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 14 master/slave dialectic 183 Matrix, The (movie) 53, 59, 90–101, 103n. 16 and Platonic ontology 91, 92–4 Matrix Reloaded, The (movie) 96

235

Matrix Revolutions (movie) 104n. 30 McCabe, Herbert, on the incarnation 71 McCarthy, Cormac All the Pretty Horses 150 Border Trilogy 150 McLuhan, Marshall 26, 99 “extension of man” 99, 102n. 4 “hot” and “cool” media 104n. 32 Understanding Media 7 media censorship of 18, 30n. 6 consumption of 9 “cool” 104n. 32 and cybernetics 19, 24–5 digital 94 and “extension of man” 102n. 4 “hot” 104n. 32 Internet 7–15 manipulation by 83, 84 and mediation and representation 24–7 and narrative 1–3 old/new 13–14 and representation 7–15, 17–30, 33–44 and ritual 9–13 and scapegoating 17–30 and social order 26, 32n. 42 see also particular media platforms mediation 10, 157, 158, 211, 215 internal 130 and media and representation 24–7 Meeker, Stacey 8 Mein Kampf (A. Hitler) 35 Melancholia (movie) 107 memorials 82–3 memory, and mimesis 117–26, 165 Menoeceus, letter to (Epicurus) 33, 44n. 2 metaphysical desire 129, 131–3, 134n. 10, 158, 173, 183, 211, 216 Midnight in Paris (movie) 129, 131 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (W. Shakespeare) 130 Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, A (movie) 130 mimesis 94, 104n. 26, 211, 216 and autonomy 52, 56–8, 60n. 3 and hypermimesis 89–102 and impersonations 94–5

236 Index and memory 117–26, 165 negative 63–6 and neuroscience 102 and phantoms 94 pharmaceutical aspects of 96–7 positive 72, 83, 151, 160 and scapegoating 21–3 and simulation 90–4 and theater 89 virtual 89 mimetic crises 139–44, 194–5 mimetic desire 138–9, 173, 211, 216 death of 105–15 mimetic rivalry 21, 155–60 escalation of 105 and hope 106 and nihilism 106 and spiritual liberation 106 between West and fundamentalist Islam 177–8 mimetic specularity 165 mimetic theory and ethics 150–2 and robots 55–60 and virtues 150–2 mimetic triangles 130, 150 mirroring see imitation; representation Misfits, The (movie) 150 misrecognition 59 misrepresentation 35 Mist, The (movie) 106 mob mentality 83, 84, 87n. 23 modeling desire 82, 134, 135n. 15, 172, 173 modeling the good 67–70, 134, 135n. 15 modernity 34–7, 39, 105, 186n. 23, 213 monstrosity 141–3, 177, 196 see also disability/disfigurement “monstrous feminine,” the 124, 125 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) 14 Moody, Rick: Ice Storm, The 137–46 morality debased 114 and law 65–6 see also ethics moral panics 18, 19–20 moral transgressions

and scapegoating 141–4 Morin, Edgar, “imitation-hypnotic” states 89, 102n. 3 Moss, Carrie-Anne 91 movie directors see particular movie directors movies artificial agents in 51–60 gladiatorial contests in 77–84 horror 105–15, 117–26 nihilism in 105–15 nuclear war in 47n. 32 paranormal in 117–26 romantic love in 129–34 simulation in 89–102 superhero 61–74 tragedy (drama genre) in 137–46 Western 149–66 see also particular movies Müller, Max: Introduction to the Science of Religion 10 Mundaneum, the 7 murder 189–97, see also serial killers music, future of 13–14 My Brother Jack (G. Johnson) 190 mysterium tremendum et fascinosum (R. Otto) 212 “My Struggle” (K. Knausgaard) 2 myths 27, 61, 77, 212, 216 narcissism 173 see also coquetry narrative and the media 1–3 Native Americans, violence against 121, 123, 126 nature and art 51–2 and war 52 Nazis 34, 35, 42, 45n. 10 Nazism 42 see also fascism Nedlands (Western Australia) 192 “Nedlands monster” see Cooke, Eric negative mimesis 63–6 neural and digital interplay 97–102 neuroscience and mimesis 102 Nicholson, Jack 126 Niemoller, Martin 35, 44n. 8 Nietzsche, Friedrich 11, 33, 179, 211

Index and “death of God” 213 on mimesis 94 nihilism 105–15 active 112 passive 112, 115 Nixon, Richard 142 “No Apocalypse, Not Now” (J. Derrida) 33 Notes from the Underground (F. Dostoyevsky) 133, 172–3 novel, the 89, 202 novelistic conversion 201–8 novelistic truth 133 Nowra, Louis: Twelfth of Never, The 191 nuclear war 47n. 32 Obama, Barak 35 occult, the 131–2 see also paranormal, the Oedipus complex 183 One Media (Internet) 7–15 Ong, Walter 26 On the Beach (movie) 42 ontological sickness 133, 180 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 40 originality 180 see also authenticity O’Shea, Andrew 183 otherness, devaluation of 113 Otlet, Paul 7 Otto, Rudolf: mysterium tremendum et fascinosum 212 Oughourlian, Jean-Michel 80 on the self 182 Pacific Rim (movie) 102 Pagliacci (R. Leoncavallo) 133 Pahl, Jon: Empire of Sacrifice 79 paranormal, the 117–26 Pearse, Meic 113 performance (art) and Internet 9–12 Perth (Western Australia) 189–97, 198n. 6 Phantom of the Ego (N. Lawtoo) 89 phantoms digital 94–7 and egos 89, 94 and mimesis 94 pharmakon 96 pharmakos 126

237

Phenomenology of Spirit (G. Hegel) 183 philosophy and art 92–4, 103n. 15, 103n. 21 and representation 51 Pilate, Pontius 82 Pinto, Freda 131 Plato and imitation 52, 93 pharmakon 96 Republic 91, 94 and theater and mimesis 89 Playboy 119 “Playtime Computing” 52–5 poetry and mimesis 51 positive mimesis 72, 83, 151, 160 possession (spiritual) 124–5 postmodernity 36, 39 presence 10 pride 114, 115 profane and the sacred 14 prohibitions 212, 216 see also taboos Proust, Marcel 2 pseudo-masochism 211, 216 pseudo-sadism 211, 216, 217 see also sadomasochism Psycho (movie) 123 psychology and violence 117–26, 130–1 racism 47n. 30, 123 see also anti-Semitism; Auschwitz; Hiroshima; Holocaust (Jewish); Holocaust (Native American) real and the virtual 51–60, 92–3 reality, blended 52–5 reality television 77 recognition 183, 184 Red and the Black, The (Stendahl) 173 redemption 65, 68, 72–4, 179–84, 181 and the church 73–4 Reeves, Keanu 90 reflection (mental) 165 religion and Internet 14–15 meaning of term 22 and television 208 and violence 66, 79–83, 201, 203, 206–7, 212 Repetition (S. Kierkegaard) 158

238 Index representation and apocalypse 33–44 and art 51 and desire 37 inadequacy of 36 and media 7–15, 17–30, 33–44 and philosophy 51 and science 51 and trauma 46n. 14 and war 46n. 18 see also symbols Republic (Plato) 91, 94 resentment 163 revenge 177 and heroes 69 and justice 64 in superhero movies 61–3 Ricoeur, Paul 179 Rieff, Philip 114 ritual 120 and media 9–13 ritual sacrifice 77–81, 212, 217 failure of 107 rivalry 62, 79, 163, 204, 205, 211 and mimetic desire 21, 155–60 in the novel 89 from robots 56–7 see also doubling; envy; mimetic rivalry robots and desire 56, 57 and mimetic theory 55–60 as research tools 59 as rivals 56–7 and sacrifice 58 as victims 55 and violence 58–60 Roman Empire 77, 85n. 2 romantic individualism 134, 186n. 23 romantic lie 133 romantic love 129–34 Rotten Tomatoes (website) 130 Rottnest Island (Western Australia) 193 sacred, the 217–18 and the everyday/profane 14 and violence 66, 79–83, 201, 203, 206–7, 212 see also transcendence

sacrifice 77–81, 177 and the arts 11–12 degeneration of 110 exemption from 113 ritual 212, 217 and robots 58 sadomasochism 111 Sartre, Jean-Paul 2, 10 Sasaki, Sadako 41 Satan 63, 207 saviors 66–8 see also Christ, Jesus; superheroes Scapegoat, The (R. Girard) 27, 87n. 23, 190 scapegoating 29–30, 79, 195–7, 211, 212, 218 and arbitrariness 19 of celebrities 27–9, 80 and Christ 32n. 43 and corruption 66, 75n. 14 and disability/disfigurement 190, 196 of groups 19 and media 17–30 and mimesis 21–3 and moral transgressions 141–4 sociology of 23–4 and tragedy (drama genre) 138 Scarborough (Western Australia) 192, 193 Schopenhauer, Arthur 11 Schwager, Raymund 83 on love of enemies 204–5 science and representation 51 seduction 159 Seinfeld (television series) 1 Seinfeld, Jerry 131 self, the crises of 171–9 and difference 187n. 29 disintegration of 171–9 fluidity of 179, 181 premodern conception of 179 reconstruction of 179–84 see also identity crises self-hatred 115 see also hopelessness; nihilism self-sacrifice 67–8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 160 value of 112 September 11 40

Index serial killers 189–97, 201–8 sex and violence 124 Seymour Hoffman, Philip 83 Shakespeare, William 71, 129 As You Like It 165 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 130 Troilus and Cressida 132, 165 Shannon, Claude 25 Shark Net, The (R. Drewe) 189–97 Shark Net, The (television series) 190 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein 40 Last Man, The 40 Shining, The (movie) 117–26 sickness, ontological 133, 180 signs 10, 34 Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace (H. Leroy Finch) 34 Simulacra and Simulation (J. Baudrillard) 91, 93 simulation 38, 89–102 and computer programs 92, 98–102 hyperreal 89 and mimesis 90–4 skandalon, the 80 slavery, American 121 Smelser, Neil 19 social control 19, 31n. 12 Social Network, The (movie) 132 sociology 18–20, 30 Sophocles 171–2 South, James: Mad Men and Philosophy 172 spaces, social 166n. 4 specularity, mimetic 165 Spencer, Diana (Princess of Wales) 28, 29 “Spengler” (David Goldman) 14 Spice, Posh 28 Spider-Man (movie) 61 Spider-Man 2 (movie) 61 Spider-Man 3 (movie) 61, 62 Spielberg, Steven 55 on robots and emotions 60 spiritual desire 159 Stapleton, Oliver 150 Stenberg, Amandla 82 Stendhal: Red and the Black, The 173 Strauss, Leo 36

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Sturkey, John 190, 195, 197 suffering and transcendence 79 sunagōgē (“collection”) 158 superhero movies 61–74 and Jesus Christ 70–4, 75n. 25 motivations of protagonists in 61–3 Superman (movie) 61 Superman II (movie) 61, 71 Superman III (movie) 61 Superman IV (movie) 61 Superman Returns (movie) 61, 66, 68, 71, 72 supernatural, the see paranormal, the; superhero movies surrogate victimage mechanism 80, 212, 218 Sutherland, Donald 78 symbols 34 see also representation taboos 124, 212 see also prohibitions Tarde, Gabriel 18, 21 television, reality 77 television series’ themes conversion 201–8 doubling 189–97 identity crises 171–84 serial killers 189–97, 201–8 Terminator, The (movie) 59 Tess of the d’Urbervilles (T. Hardy) 86n. 18 textual integrity 8 Thatcher, Margaret 26 theater 89, 94, 95 therapeutic, the 114 Theseus and the Minotaur 77 Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (R. Girard) 24, 80 Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (movie) 150 Through the Looking Glass (L. Carroll) 96 Toman, Rolf, on baroque art 191, 195 To Rome with Love (movie) 132–3 totalitarianism of the individual 114, 115 of the present 114 Totem and Taboo (S. Freud) 120 Towards a Sociology of the Novel (L. Goldmann) 202 tragedy (drama genre) 137–9, 145–6 tragedy (personal) 62

240 Index transcendence 70, 79, 133, 151, 158–9, 166n. 4, 205–6 see also sacred, the trauma and representation 46n. 14 see also sadomasochism; scapegoating; violence triangular desire 130, 150, 154–5, 211 tributes 80, 86n. 14 Troilus and Cressida (W. Shakespeare) 132, 165 trolling 30n. 1 true world and the false world 94 see also real and the virtual truth, novelistic 133 see also novelistic conversion Tucci, Stanley 83 Twelfth of Never, The (L. Nowra) 191 uncanny, the see paranormal, the Uncanny, The (S. Freud) 117, 123 Understanding Media (M. McLuhan) 7 undifferentiation 23 see also difference Unthinkable (movie) 42 values, destruction of 113 Vicky Cristina Barcelona (movie) 130–1, 132 victimage 38 see also surrogate victimage mechanism victimary thought 39 victimhood 39 victimization 19 see also surrogate victimage mechanism victimizers 204 victims deification of 81, 86n. 17 robots as 55 surrogate 212, 218 veneration of 83 see also scapegoating; surrogate victimage mechanism video, future of 14 violence and blood 123–4, 125

and contagion 119–20 and culture 66 dismissal of 114 and fear 69–70 forgetting of 125 and globalization 112–13 historical 120–6 and images 38 and law 24 and love 60 mass 37 and psychology 117–26, 130–1 reciprocal 110 renunciation of 106, 115 and robots 58–60 and the sacred 66, 79–83, 201, 203, 206–7, 212 and sex 124 subversion of 82–3 virtual 100 see also apocalypse; murder; rivalry; sadomasochism; scapegoating; surrogate victimage mechanism; trauma; victims Violence and the Sacred (R. Girard) 80, 133 Violence Unveiled (G. Bailie) 206 virtual mimesis 89 virtual and the real 51–60, 92–3 virtual simulation 89–102 virtue 61–3, 160–1 and heroes 69–70 magnanimity 151–2 and mimetic theory 150–2 modeling of 67–70, 134, 135n. 15 see also redemption Virtue, Justice 193 von Trier, Lars: Melancholia (movie) 107 Vredens Dag (movie) 118 Wachowski Brothers (Andy and Larry) 90, 92 Matrix, The (movie) 53, 59, 90–101, 103n. 16 Matrix Reloaded, The (movie) 96 Walking Dead, The 106–7 war 41, 43 “just war theory” 74n. 4

Index laws of 178 and nature 52 nuclear 47n. 32 and representation 46n. 18 Washington Post 34 Watts, Naomi 131 Waves, The (V. Woolf) 1 Weaver, Sigourney 109 Weaver, Warren 25 Webb, Eugene, on the self 182 West, the and fundamentalist Islam 177–8 West Australian 193, 196 Westerns (movie genre) 149–66 Whannel, Gary on celebrities 28 Whedon, Joss: Cabin in the Woods, The (movie) 107 Wiener, Norbert 25 Wilkins, Leslie 20 Williams, Charles 160 Wilson, Woodrow 35

241

Winckelmann, Johann, on baroque period 194 Winnicott, Donald 152 on winning 46n. 15 witches, persecution of 118 Wittgenstein, Ludwig on winning 46n. 15 women in Westerns 153–5 Wonder Years, The (television series) 145 Woolf, Virginia: Waves, The 1 World War II 41–3 see also Auschwitz; Hiroshima; Holocaust (Jewish) writing, value of 10 You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (movie) 129, 131–2 Zelig (“mockumentary”) 129 zoomorphization 153–5 see also anthropomorphization Zuckerburg, Mark 132