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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Rashomon

-Slavoj Zizek, "The Parallax View" (on Rashomon)
So not only is appearance inherent to reality: what we get beyond this is a weird split in appearance itself, an unheard of mode designating "the way things appear to us" as opposed to both their reality and their (direct) appearance to us. This shift from the split between appearance and reality to the split, inherent to appearance itself, between "true" and "false" appearance is to be linked to its obverse: to a split inherent to reality itself. If, then, there is appearance (as distinct from reality) because there is a (logically) prior split inherent to reality itself, it is also that "reality" itself is ultimately nothing but a (self) split of appearance? But how does this topos differ from the boring old Rashomon theme of an irreducible multiplicity of subjective perspectives on reality, with no way (no exempted position from which) to establish the one truth represented in a distorted way by these multiple perspectives? What better way to clarify this point than to refer to the very film (and the short story on which the film is based) whose title was elevated into a notion, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon?
According to the legend, it was through Rashomon, its' European triumph in the early 1950's, that the Western public discovered the "Oriental Spirit" in the cinema; the little-known obverse of this legend is that this same film was a failure in Japan itself, where it was perceived as much too "Western" - and it is easy to see why. When the same tragic event (in a lonely forest, a notorious bandit rapes the samurai's beautiful wife and kills the samurai) is retold by four witnesses participants, the effect (pertaining to the very Western realism of the cinematic image) is simply that we are shown four differnet subjective perspectives. What, in effect, distinguishes the so-called "Oriental Spirit" from the Western attitude, however, is that, precisely, ambiguity and undecidability are not "subjectivized": they should not be reduced to different "subjective perspectives" on some reality beyond reach- rather, they pertain to this "reality"itself, and it is this ontological ambiguity-fragility of the "thing itself" that is difficult to express through the realism of the cinematic medium. This means that the authentic Rashomon has nothing to do with pseudo-Nietzschean perspectivism, with the notion that there is no objective truth, just an irreducible multitude of subjectively distorted biased narratives.

The first thing to do apropos of Rashomon is to avoid the formalist trap: what I am tempted to call the film's formal-ontological thesis (the impossibility of reaching the truth from multiple narratives of the same event) should not be abstracted from the particular nature of this event - the feminine challenge to male authority, the explosion of feminine desire. The four witness reports are to be conceived as four versions of the same myth (in the Levi Straussian sense of the term), as a complete matrix of variations: in the first (bandit's) version, he rapes the wife and then, in an honest duel, kills her husband; in the second (surviving wife's) version, in the course of the rape she gts caught up in the passion of the bandit's forceful lovemaking and, at the end, tells him that she cannot live in shame with both men knowing about her disgrace - one of them must die, and it is then that the duel ensues; in the third version (told by the ghost of the dead husband himself), after the husband is set free by the bandit, he stabs and kills himself out of shame; in the last version (told by the woodcutter who observed the events hidden in a nearby bush), when, after the rape, the bandit cuts the rope binding the husband, and the husband furiously rejects his wife as a dishonored whore, the ecstatically furious wife explodes against both men, accusing them of weakness and challenging them to fight for her. The succession of the four versions is thus not neutral, they do not by any means move at the same level: in the course of their progression, male authority is weakened step by step, and feminine desire is asserted. So we privilege the last (woodcutter's) report, the point is not that it tells us what "really happened" but that, within the immanent structure that links the four version, it functions as the traumatic point with regard to which the other three versions are to be conceived as defenses, defense formations.

The "official" message of the film is clear enough: at the very beginning, in the conversation that provides the frame for the flashbacks, the monk points out that the lesson of the events recounted is more terrifying than hunger, war, and chaos that pervaded society at the time - in what does this horror exist? In the disintegration of the social link: there was no "big Other" on which people could rely, no basic symbolic pact guaranteeing trust and sustaining obligations. Thus the film is not engaged in ontological games about how there is no unambiguous reality behind the multitude of narratives; rather, it is concerned with the socio-ethical consequences of the disintegration of the basic symbolic pact that holds the social fabric together. However, the story - the incident retold from different perspectives- tells more: it locates the threat to the big Other, the ultimate Cause that destabilizes the male pact and blurs the clarity of the male version, in a woman, in feminine desire. As Nietzsche puts it: in its inconsistence and lack of any ultimate point of reference beneath multiple veils, truth is feminine.

8 comments:

Q said...

Yeah, we a blessed to have such a semi-aliens on our planet.

But, well, that try to analyse, to dissect it... leaves you with lukewarm spritless corpse. :-(((

Well, they know how to re-animate corpses too. ;-P

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

You didn't enjoy Zizek's analysis? I suppose its' an acquired taste.

Q said...

Sorry for saying that.

But... it's too primitive.

"Something-somthing Nietzsche
...
something-something Levi Strauss
...
" and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's good that he have such an erudition.
But what HIS own ideas is?
That is opaque. No, that is transparent -- that there is none.


Well, I can propose you to watch "Man who threaded tiger's tail". ;-)

But not for the plot... but for -- reactions.
How people BEHAVE.
And try to devise to yourself -- why?
Who are free there? And who are bound? Who is master? And who are servant? ;-)

For the very least.
Japan... that is non-christianic country.

That mean for example -- thier attitude toward suicides.
It is not something shameful. Forbiden. Tabooed.

But somthing VERY honorary.

Omitting. Or not knowing, not grasping such a trivia...

That is like to say that egyptican graphities are that way -- because egyptians was exactly like that -- special case of paltus-humans. ;-P

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

My love of Zizek is that he's completely transparent and a great communicator and Lacanian analyst. I cannot understand Lacan's writing to save my life... but Zizek made it all make sense. He was able to interpret Lacan for non-intellectuals, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

He's also an honest Marxist. I never really understood Marx, but Zizek made him, and the USSR, "intelligible". He lifted the veil.

A story. After WWII was over and before I was born, my parents, including my older brother and sister, lived in Japan. Shortly after they arrived, my mother saw a brass lamp in a Japanese shop near where they lived which she admired, and asked the owner its' price. He quoted her something well beyond her ability to afford, as it was a cultural piece that he did not wish to sell to a gaijin. (It was in the form of a Japanese monk, reading a scroll). For the next two years, she would casually drop into the shop and barter for the lamp with the shop owner. The price remained too high for her to afford. This went on for two years. Near the end of my father's two year tour of duty, she stopped in the shop for a final negotiation, told the owner she wouldn't be back. At that point, the owner lowered his price, and she bought the lamp. It sits in my bedroom today, a tribute to both her AND that stubborn and formerly? racist shop owner. Over the two years of American-Japanese Occupation, they had developed a respect for one another, one based in mutual interest.

I hold a deep love and respect for the Japanese people and their culture to this day.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

erratum: mutual self-interest.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Yes, their cultures are NOT Christian. That doesn't mean that can't be both rich and interesting though.

As for suicide, have you ever heard of a "passage a l'acte"? THAT is suicide.

The passage to the act is thus an exit from the symbolic nework, a dissolution of the social bond. Although the passage to the act does not, according to Lacan, necessarily imply an underlying psychosis, it does entail a dissolution of the subject; for a moment, the subject becomes a pure object.

As in Martin Scorcese's "Taxi Driver". THAT is what American is doing in Ukraine.

Q said...

\\My love of Zizek is that he's completely transparent and a great communicator and Lacanian analyst. I cannot understand Lacan's writing to save my life... but Zizek made it all make sense.

Well... that is what sophists do.


\\He's also an honest Marxist. I never really understood Marx, but Zizek made him, and the USSR, "intelligible". He lifted the veil.

ROFLing.


\\I hold a deep love and respect for the Japanese people and their culture to this day.

EXCELLENT story.
All I can do in responce -- it's to recomend "Oji-chan's Lamp" anime flick.
As I accustomed with them, only through such media.
Have no other experiences. :-(




\\THAT is what American is doing in Ukraine.

Again.
You do not know history of Ukraine.
WHAT f*g WHAT Americans could do WORSE then Golodomor??? 10 millions of people died.
Not easiest of deaths.

WADAYATKNG, man??? (evil laughter)

You, americans, just know too little about BADs of this world.
That much, so you need Hollywood to make some thrillers, for you to not lost it completely.

But that is... just a films... not reality.
Your Captain Obvious.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I can see why you liked it.