Wu Wei, 2009

Wu Wei is an intervention of nine metal toys shaped liked little boys and girls 15 cm tall, carrying paper placards with one hand on which nothing is written. It took place on different streets of Lyon  in 2009. The toys are so thin that might remind of the two dimensional paper cut - holding hands - girls and boys that children usually do when they first find their ways with simple paper folding. The toys are readymades of shiny bright metal which reflects what it faces, like a mirror.

I named the intervention 'Wu Wei' based on a Tao concept for knowing when to act and when not to act. Wu is translated as 'not have' or 'without'; Wei is translated as 'do, act, or effort'. The literal meaning of Wu Wei is 'without action' and is often included in the paradox wei wu wei: 'action without action' or 'effortless doing'. Wu Wei is commonly explained as natural action, thus knowing when (and how) to act is not knowledge in the sense that one would think 'now' is the right time to do 'this', but rather just doing it, doing the natural thing.

The philosophical background to the concept is found in the Taoist scripture 'Tao Te Ching' and its alluded to 'diminishing doing' or 'diminishing will' as the key aspect of the sage's success.  Taoist philosophy recognizes that the universe already works harmoniously according to its own ways; as a person exerts their will against or upon the world they disrupt the harmony that already exists. This is not to say that a person should not exert agency and will. Rather, it is how one acts in relation to the natural processes already extant.

A related translation from the Tao Te Ching by Priya Hemenway: 


The Sage is occupied with the unspoken 
and acts without effort. 

Teaching without verbosity, 
producing without possessing, 
creating without regard to result, 
claiming nothing, 
the Sage has nothing to lose.

Since Wu Wei has also been translated as "creative quietude," or the art of letting-be, I thought of the 'sage' in the lines above is also a representative of the 'artist', not because that the artist should own a tutor role for the viewer but art of 'now' is a historical stone for the art that will follow. This idea harmonizes my thoughts on the very self process of the artist and art in general with the perception of the Tao as being within all things and conforms oneself to its "way."



On the physicality of the work, the relation of the concept to the form can be explained as follows: as one diminishes doing (here 'doing' means those intentional actions taken to benefit us or actions taken to change the world from its natural state and evolution) one diminishes all those actions committed against the already present natural harmony. Since my little people in the installation are perceived as the little demonstrators on the first look, their appereance has a lot to do with the idea of changing the world, which stands on the opposite side of Wu Wei philosophy. But the harmony of the world is already distrupted with previous actions of the human kind so the little people here only function as a mirror (the reflective quality of the material used) to human kind if one comes to think of Tao in practice as 'clear seeing'. So what the little people do in the street intervention is to pull the people's attention on the street to their appereance as if they are demonstrating, and when the viewer gets closer to see what they are demonstrating on, they only see their own reflections on the little people.

A Story of Wall Street

Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener is one of the texts that is open to unlimited interpretations as can be realized through the countless pages written on the story to link the loose ends, that Melville presumably left on purpose, to some theory. Bartleby is a character that is not easy to reflect upon but how Melville uses the language to position Bartleby in the environment he exists and the setting of 1850’s New York provide the necessary tools for an analysis that will be undertaken below. As far as the economic environment that the story takes place is concerned, the analysis will follow the path to position Bartleby and the narrator as representatives of different classes and argue how the definitive lines separating those classes collide with regard to the development of the relation between Bartleby and the lawyer, and how the story still ends with the preservation of those lines.

            To serve as a basis for the argument it will be appropriate first to touch upon the advancements in the capitalist economy of 1850’s New York and how the effects of these changes in the work place are reflected in Melville’s text. In 1850’s America, especially New York, capitalism is in its rapidly growing state bringing the need for the necessary changes to evolve through its maturity. These changes are plainly the physical changes in the working place as a response to the changes in the role of labor and capital. What is the nature of capitalism is that capital takes the control over the labor and uses that control to exploit the means of labor to the extent that is possible. Capital becomes the valuable asset explaining the change in the focus of the economic system from labor intensive markets to the financial sector.  Wall Street even by that time becomes the symbol of this change as the new emerging finance center of the world. The image it creates fits perfectly to the needs of the capital system with all its high buildings separated into little booths that the divided labor who works as machines in order to specialize for the highest level of efficiency. The work place is now another reality for the workers that it separates them from their usual living space. These little offices become even more separated within themselves with additional glass doors, lessening the employer-employee relations and forcing the increase in the gap between classes. Under those circumstances, in 1850’s, workers protest the working conditions that require more of their energy with less returns and big demonstrations take place in New York to pull attention to the unequal distribution of income and workers insist upon their God-given right to  land and the full value of their labor. As the Industrial Congress declared in 1851:

all men are created equal…they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are the right to Life, Liberty, and the fruits of their Labor, and to the use of such a portion of the earth and other elements as are necessary for their subsistence and comfort.[1]

            In such an environment where the labor and the capital system is the issue of zealous discussions, Melville, also being sensitive on the issue, reflects the realities of his era through the lawyer’s narration in his text Bartleby, the Scrivener. What Melville offers the reader is the viewpoint of an upper-middle class lawyer on the physical transition that the city is experiencing as a result of the accelerated evolving of the economic system. How the lawyer describes his office as a contrast of two opposing sights can be read as a metaphor to that transition:

My chambers were up stairs…At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered…deficient in what painters call “life”. But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.[2]

As well as describing the capitalist vision of the era with this passage, Melville gives clues about the personality of the narrator. The reader derives the sense of a crash in the emotions of the lawyer while acknowledging his appreciation towards the new sight of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom as in collision with the value he puts into the beauties of the old. This conflict that the narrator is experiencing adds a degree of depth in his character. Later on in the story, this conflict will form the ground for his interaction with Bartleby, which will also be the main focus of the analysis here. But before proceeding with that aspect of the analysis, it will be useful to look for the causes of the conflict based on Marx’s Theory of Class Struggle. 

            A Marxist approach to the text in question would allow such an observation of the characters as representatives of different classes. The lawyer, as he describes himself in the first pages of the text, functions on the ruling side of the society, who owns a certain amount of property, but he adds that he is not eager as his colleagues to possess more than he has since he is an ordinary elderly man. He informs the reader about his admiration towards John Jacob Astor, the later millionaire of the Astor family who is famous in his capitalist returns in fur trading and real estate, but he also says that he is on the side of easy life, implying that he is not a strong advocate of ideas and supports the one that provides him an easier life. In that respect, with regard to Marx, the lawyer can be seen a representative of the bourgeois, but rather with a conformist approach. Marx explains this adjustment to a particular class in The German Ideology;

the class in its turn achieves an independent existence over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under it. [3]

And he continues with the suggestion that private property and labor should be abolished in order to break the barriers of classes. Later in Melville’s text, the confrontation of the lawyer with Bartleby, who refuses to put his labor into work, can be seen as a minor case study for Marx’s expectations on the abolishment of labor. It is important to note how the lawyer positions himself within the conventions of the capitalist system to understand the effect of that confrontation on both sides, especially on the narrator’s part.

            As explained above, the lawyer’s thoughts and behavior is comfortably shaped by the adopted beliefs of the class he belongs to and he internalizes those beliefs not consciously but as elements in the preconscious mental framework that constitutes his sense of reality. The lawyer sees the hierarchical distribution of labor in his office, which relegates the clerks to copying the documents and promptly responding to his requests, as a natural setting. In other words, although it is a social construct deriving from an economic system that invests employers with power over their wage-dependent employees to some extent, and since he is on the side which has the power, he identifies his authority with the natural order as if its exercise is a given natural contract and it should be applied on his employees whereas he also places himself in this framework in a position unlike his employees that he does not have to please an immediate superior, but in order to insure the success of his practice he must prove himself to be a responsible businessman who conforms to the accepted practices and values of his profession. Marx analyzes this kind of framework under the terms of utilitarianism;

this is actually the case with bourgeois. For him only one relation is valid on its own account—the relation of exploitation; all other relations have validity for him only insofar as he can include them under this one relation, and even where he encounters relations which cannot be directly subordinated to the relation of exploitation, he does at least subordinate them to it in his imagination.[4]

Thus Bartleby’s refusals strike him not as acts of resistance to an unjust subordination but as ‘violently unreasonable’[5], whereas he assumes his own behavior when he requests additional things as being ‘perfectly reasonable’[6]. He places Bartleby inside his office behind a high screen so that the scrivener may be hidden from view and yet “within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done”[7]. On the third day of Bartleby’s employment, the lawyer relates how he “abruptly called to Bartleby” in “natural expectancy of instant compliance”[8]. It is in response to this abrupt call that Bartleby issues his first “I would prefer not to”[9].

            Bartleby’s never clearly explained reaction towards the lawyer’s calls and the silent conflict that arises between the lawyer and Bartleby can be interpreted in a Marxist framework based on Marx’s ideas on the ‘private interest’ and the ‘general interests’ of the members of a class. Bartleby can be seen as a representative of the proletariat in the story, and his action to stop working matches with Marx’s ideas on the abolition of labor:

For the proletarians…the condition of their existence, labor, and with all the conditions of existence governing modern society, have become something accidental, something over which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organization can give them control. The contradiction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labor, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him himself, for he is sacrificed from youth upwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class. Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labor, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very conditions of their existence hitherto…namely, labor.[10]

He explains how the process, that takes the proletariat to the point of the abolishment of his labor, works in terms of the ‘general interest’ becoming alien to proletariat’s ‘individual interest’, since the general interest is meant to reflect the interest of the ruling class:

Just because individuals seek only their particular interest, which for them does not coincide with their communal interest (in fact the general is the illusory form of communal life), the latter will be imposed on them as an interest “alien” to them, and “independent” of them as in its turn a particular, peculiar “general” interest; or they themselves must remain within this discord, as in democracy.[11]

One last quote from Marx is necessary to link the standpoint of Bartleby in his relation to the lawyer, in order to clarify the point where they get stuck in this conflict based on the loss of control on their “will”:

The material life of individuals, which by no means depends merely on their “will”, their mode of production and form of intercourse, which mutually determine each other—this is the real basis of the State and remains so at all the stages at which division of labor and private property are still necessary, quite independently of the will of individuals. These actual relations are in no way created by the State power; on the contrary they are the power creating it. The individuals who rule in these conditions, besides having to constitute their power in the form the State, have to give their will, which is determined by these definite conditions, a universal expression whose content is always determined by the relations of this class, as the civil and criminal law demonstrates in the clearest possible way…the same applies to the classes which are ruled, whose will plays just as small a part in determining the existence of law and the State.[12]

            It is now possible to work with Marx’s ideas on the loss of will and the abolishment of labor and how do they apply to Bartleby’s case by focusing on the relationship that develops between Bartleby and the lawyer after the conflict arises. For the lawyer, it can be argued that property rights supersede the other rights, including equality and the rights to privacy and material necessities. Upon discovering that Bartleby is homeless and lives in the office, the lawyer justifies himself, based on his property rights, in violating Bartleby’s privacy by unlocking his desk in search of personal information. He tells himself, because “the desk is mine, and its contents too”.[13] Similarly he again asserts his property rights over Bartleby’s need for shelter and security: “What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?”[14] Although, he claims he feels compassion towards Bartleby, these are the moments he loses his temper based on his strong commissions for the private property laws. But still he cannot reflect all his beliefs unto Bartleby and he cannot come up with the proper solution to the situation because Bartleby is able to carry a limited dialogue with him within the same language that is specific to the lawyer’s class. Bartleby does not give him an acceptable reason for his actions but he also uses a language that is familiar to the lawyer when he responds to Bartleby’s actions with a carefully controlled language.  One of his attempts to find a solution for Bartleby’s situation is again refused by Bartleby very kindly and with a carefully built language. He offers to help Bartleby find a new employment in different positions such as a companionship for a young gentleman traveling in Europe, and Bartleby declines all of his offers saying “I am not particular.”[15]One reason for Bartleby saying that he is not particular may be that he is not particular about the work he does. His dissatisfaction is not with the work environment or the nature of the work but with the employer-employee relationship.

            As a final analysis, the emotional development of the relationship between Bartleby and the lawyer will lead the way to the solution or dissolution of the conflict they are experiencing. Although the representation of the lawyer above may appear as him being an uncaring capitalist, it should be noted that he is in many respects an extraordinarily patient and sensitive man towards Bartleby. The image of the lawyer created by Melville with that aspect then turns into a lost character between the tension caused by the capitalist concern to maximize his economic interest and his Christian morality to love one’s neighbor. To keep a balance between the two sides of his personality, the lawyer needs to justify his actions with some kind of an approval that comes from the both sides. A good example for his conflict in this sense is when he assumes that Bartleby is not copying anymore because he has damaged his eyes. The Christian part of his character does not want to fire him because as he expresses himself he feels pity towards Bartleby’s miserable condition, but since he is a capitalist and each moment that Bartleby is not working will return him as a loss of profit he needs to justify the action he takes in not firing Bartleby by believing that he is sick and this situation will last only until he recovers.  

            Bartleby is not an explicit revolutionist instead his approach to the conflict is a more self-concerned resistance. That is why he also conditions his responses according to the lawyer’s actions, based not on a determined social activism but rather on a search for a more intimate relationship for his work and his being. Although he is very keen on not reflecting emotions, it is still possible to observe the signs of relaxing his personal resistance in response to the possible change in the lawyer’s approach to him. In the passage where the lawyer tries to get to know Bartleby in order to understand the reason for his resistance, he says “But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you.” Bartleby hesitates in maintaining his usual passivity as can be understood from the narrator’s observations on Bartleby: “the faintest conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth” and replies “At present I prefer to give no answer”[16]. The emphasis on ‘at present’ here faintly implies that he may become more cooperative in the future depending on the continuity of the lawyer’s friendly approach to him. In other words, Bartleby is open to change but cautiously awaits further evidence of a genuine transformation on the lawyer.

            The shift in Bartleby’s responses towards the lawyer’s actions occurs when Bartleby realizes that the expectations he had regarding the lawyer’s ability to understand him will not become true and he consciously chooses death after being sent to the prison while ignoring the lawyer’s attempts to contact him. The underlying reason for such an ending could be that Bartleby’s resistance only reached the surface of the lawyer’s consciousness towards his duties to the society he is living in, meaning that Bartleby’s resistance only evoked the sense of compassion in the lawyer. But the desired effect to be seen in the other by Bartleby’s resistance could be to create awareness in the other and receive back a response of intellectual honesty, imagination and courage to respond to the demands of justice.

      

 

---

[1] Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p.383.

[2] Melville, The Piazza Tales, p.14.

[3] Marx-Engels, The German Ideology, p. 82.

[4] The German Ideology, p. 110.

[5] Melville, The Piazza Tales, p.22.

[6] The Piazza Tales, p.25.

[7] The Piazza Tales, p.19

[8] p.20

[9] p. 20

[10] Marx-Engels, The German Ideology, p.85

[11] Marx-Engels, The German Ideology, p.53

[12] The German Ideology, p.106

[13] Melville, The Piazza Tales, p.28

[14] Melville, The Piazza Tales, p.35

[15] The Piazza Tales, p.41

[16] Melville, The Piazza Tales, p. 30

The wire

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Woody Allen’s quest for the meaning of life in his movies after his early period makes an existentialist peak with Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Just like Bergman comes up with a conclusion that “God is a spider” in his quest for God with Through a Glass Darkly, Woody Allen finalizes his efforts to overcome his understanding of the universe as an ‘empty void’ in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Eliminating all the remedies that he thought would be an exit to a meaningless life, in this movie he surrenders to ‘reality’. It is such a reality that no real feelings for love or arts can survive in it. All kinds of moral systems that are supposed to create a greater sense of belonging fail to achieve the aim of leading a meaningful life. In other words, Allen proves in Crimes and Misdemeanors that every individual has his/her own set of values that lulls them into a life-long dream which has no general values that are applicable to everyone in it. The themes of religion, love and art are investigated again in this movie and that investigation led to the outcome of a cruel reality in which ‘appearances’ win the battle against the ‘souls’.

Crimes and Misdemeanors follows two separate stories that do not intersect until the last ten minutes of the film. The first one is the story of an ophthalmologist, Judah (Martin Landau), who gets his mistress murdered in order not to be exposed to her threats anymore to announce their relationship to his wife. The second one is the story of Cliff (Woody Allen), a documentary filmmaker, who is unhappy in his marriage and falls in love with Halley (Mia Farrow). Although the stories do not intersect till the end, the characters in the two stories struggle with similar questions and converge to the same conclusion of the importance of how one appears to be in this world rather than caring about how one really is. The characters with a greater concern for the true feelings in both stories either die, or doomed to solitude.

In order to analyze Woody Allen’s set up for the reality that prospers the appearances in contrast to the ones who seek for a deeper true value in life, it will be appropriate to go into details with the main characters of both stories. The first story evolves on the axis of Judah in relation to his mistress Dolores (Anjelica Houston), his rabbi friend Ben (Sam Waterston), and his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach). In the opening scene we see Judah with his family at a dinner that he is going to be honored for his success in his career. Woody Allen gives the outline of the story right in the first scenes in which Judah finds the letter that Dolores had written to his wife and in the following scene with Judas’s speech at the dinner. Judah says in that speech “I am a man of science. I have always been a skeptic, but I was raised quite religiously. I challenged it even as a child, but some of that feeling must have had stuck with me.” From that speech and with the knowledge of him having an affair, the viewer is already introduced to Judah’s twisted moral values in the first five minutes of the movie. Judah follows his speech with the lines “I remember my father telling me, ‘The eyes of God are always on us.’ The eyes of God! What a phrase to a young boy.” With the reference to the eyes that can see everything, Allen starts to construct the theme of eyesight in relation to the ability to see the reality emphasized by Judah’s skepticism.

Judah is an ophthalmologist, Ben is a rabbi that is going blind, and Dolores is told, by her mother that her eyes are so deep that one can see her soul through them. The references related to the eyes, serve as hints to the character of the person. It is possible to claim that Judah being an ophthalmologist has a position in life of an observer. He is the one that is looking at others’ eyes. He knows how image appears on the eye. This is the knowledge that enables him to adjust himself to the appearance that he wants to appear on the other eyes. Having the confidence of knowing that the others will see him the way he wants to appear, he has only one fear he cannot get rid of, because of the lack of analytical evidence, that the eyes of God may be watching him. We see him using his ability to appear according to the situation several times in the movie. Because he does not want the moral responsibility of a murder, he appears to be confused on his brother Jack’s eyes when actually he makes Jack offer to murder Dolores. He also knows how to appear confident on the eyes of the police officer, although he is not confident at all because of the possibility of being seen by God, when the officer comes to ask questions about Dolores. He appears as a faithful husband on the eyes of his wife for two years. He is not in control of the image he creates about himself only in the case of Dolores, maybe because she was the first with the interest to look deep in his eyes. Being visible to some other person destroys his comfort in the observer position. After a cost-benefit analysis, as a scientist, he decides to get rid of the eyes that are watching him, physically. Allen reflects Judah’s first relief from his fear after the murder in the scene when Judah goes to Dolores’s apartment to get his things. Judah sees her lying down on the bedroom floor, her eyes open. He closes her eyes and leaves the apartment after getting his stuff. But the question of the metaphysical eyes that may be watching him remains unanswered till he collects enough evidence for their non-existence.

Although Judah expresses his twisted feelings about the guilt to his brother Jack when he tells him about the blackness behind Dolores’s dead eyes, he still tries to find a way to justify his crime to himself. “It is very important to make value judgements.”[1] says Woody Allen in his interview about Crimes and Misdemeanors in the book ‘Woody Allen on Woody Allen’. In the Bergmanesque flashback to a seder from Judah’s childhood, we see his family having a discussion on moral values. The lack of a sustainable analytical moral system shapes the form of discussion between Judah’s religious father and seemingly nihilist aunt May (Anna Berger). Using the metaphor of God’s eyes again, aunt May claims that there are no such eyes that can see everything if Nazis could get away with the holocaust. Aunt May’s that comment on morality specifically related to murder serves as a strong evidence for Judah to justify the fact that he got Dolores murdered in realistic terms and as the Nazis in example, he experiences a relief and gets away with it.

On the opposite side to Judah, there is Dolores, who has no ability to see her reflection on the other eyes. Judah, raised with the fear of being seen from God, has developed a sense of looking upon himself as an image, which later relates to his profession. In contrast, Dolores was raised without the notion of her image because she was told, by her mother that her eyes were actually the windows of her soul that enable her to be visible to everyone. This is also the reason why Dolores is blinded by her love and desire because she lacks the ability -- a prosperous ability for Allen’s ‘reality’ in Crimes and Misdemeanors-- to see herself from an outer point, that is to say she has no notion of a collision between the image of herself and her real self. In that sense, Dolores can be categorized on the losers’ side of the battle between the ‘appearances’ and the ‘souls’.

Ben the rabbi is on a different side of the set-up. He represents the character that Judah would have become if he did not approach skeptically to his father’s teachings. Given that Woody Allen’s moral system does not in any ways based on religious beliefs, Ben is reflected as a person that goes blind. His blindness is a metaphor to the illusion that he is living in. Like Dolores, Ben also does not have a collision between his image and his self because, unlike Dolores, he does not have a notion of his real self anymore. By looking upon himself from God’s eyes, he lost his self and totally became the image that he wants to show to God. Again in Allen’s reality, although Ben goes blind, he is an extreme example of ‘appearances’ in the sense that he is able to lead a life without the existential difficulties that the ‘souls’ are facing.

The second story evolves on the axis of Cliff in relation to Professor Levi (Martin S. Bergmann), his brother-in-law Lester (Alan Alda), and Halley. References to their eyesight is, again strong in this story, although they are not as extreme as in the first story. Cliff and Professor Levi wear glasses as a metaphor to show that they look at the world behind a set of philosophically investigated values. In the beginning of the story we also see Halley with glasses but later she takes them off to refer to a change in her set of values. In this story there is a stronger emphasis on the eyes related to a camera view, that is to say seeing the world through some lenses. Cliff, Halley and Lester are all in media scene whether in front of the camera or behind it. Additionally, Professor Levy in the film is only seen through Cliff’s camera. This difference in the two stories shows that with the first story Allen again investigates the theme of religion, which he had already come up with an answer in his previous movies that religion cannot be the meaning of life. With the second story he investigates the themes of love and arts that he somehow favored before as possible solutions to his existential deadlock. It is obvious in Crimes and Misdemeanors that Allen loses his optimism on those solutions as well.

Cliff is working on a documentary on Professor Levi but he needs money to continue his work and he accepts, just to make money, to make a portrait of his brother-in-law Lester, who is a successful TV producer. Woody Allen appeared as a director before in his movies like Stardust Memories, and as an image-maker in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Cliff also knows how to manipulate the visuals in order to make others see what he sees. If we are here to relate his profession and eyesight to his personality, the examples of him talking to Halley about Lester and trying to convince her to look at Lester from his point of view will serve as constructive. In one of those scenes when they are talking about Lester, Halley says “Lester is an American phenomenon.” Cliff replies “Yeah, like acid rain.” As in this example what Halley means and Cliff’s perception differ, but by being manipulative he tries to imply his point of view to Halley because he fears the possibility of her falling in love with Lester. Also the portrait he makes of Lester shows that appearances can be falsifying because perception is subjective. Everyone looks at the matter from his/her lenses and in the end sees what he/she wants to see. It is possible to say Cliff has a certain set of moral values that do not go through a change throughout the movie and he is a strong critic of images created by the media to fit into some forms that are accepted as appealing. His documentary on Professor Levi serves an opposite to the visual frenzy created by the mass media by discarding the influence of images and focusing on the ideas. Since he refuses to fit into those norms, he becomes one of the losers of the fight against ‘appearances’ in the end of the movie, when he learns that Halley chose the image instead of the ‘soul’.

Halley can be categorized as the only dynamic character in the movie because her character experiences a change through the movie. She is a divorcee and she is trying to figure out how she should continue her life. The former set of values she believed in proved her to be wrong in her previous relation, which did not last although she wanted it to. In order not to lose again she decides to play according to the rules of ‘reality’ and chooses to get engaged with Lester instead of Cliff. Like Judah does in the first story she also wants a confirmation to prove herself that she did right this time, by saying Cliff in the end of the movie that he does not now Lester, he has a very good personality inside. She still feels ashamed of choosing a less difficult but fake life. Judah and Halley can be both regarded as they went through a moral questioning period. Although Halley’s situation is a bit more ambiguous because we see her in Cliff’s story, so to say from Cliff’s eyes, we have more evidence to claim that Judah is not going through a change, finally he achieves to stabilize his situation in the way he wanted it to be from the beginning.

The other two main characters in the story Professor Levi and Lester are serving as examples of the opposites. Lester, being a TV producer is living in the virtual reality of the media, which exceeded its borders and became the reality of the world according to Allen’s view in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Lester is reflected from Cliff’s point of view as the perfect example of the image that everybody is trying to fit in. We see Cliff being entertaining in social atmospheres, productive and helpful to others in financial means. But when he thinks he is not observed by the others, we see him from Cliff’s hidden camera seducing a woman or oppressing his workers using the power of his image. He is definitely the winner of the game, because the image he created is so powerful that there is no one to resist in the end. Whereas, Professor Levi, the character that Cliff really intends to make a portrait of is leading a moral life according to his philosophical investments. He in no ways fits into the image form but seems quite in peace with life in the first interviews with Cliff until we are informed that suddenly he decides to go out the window. He is represented through Cliff’s lenses as such a soul that he does not find this life worth living anymore.

Although Woody Allen claims that he made the movie based on two different stories in order to spice up the murder story with some funny elements presented in Cliff’s story, the second story is not a cheerful one too. The viewer follows the failure of Cliff’s pure love when it is rejected by Halley. Additionally, his art is left unfinished because the whole story that Cliff build upon Professor Levi about the possibilities of a happy and peaceful life collapsed with the professor’s sudden decision to kill himself. It is at least encouraging to know that Woody Allen, the auteur, kept making movies after such a pessimistic peak.

The two stories proceed in parallel in the movie, since there is no interaction between them until the last scene. Allen uses movie footages to create a passage from one story to the other. The passages occur in the form of Cliff’s education on his niece through the cinema history. Allen uses related scenes from the movies like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, This Gun for Fire, Happy Go Lucky and The Last Gangster based on the scenes’ resemblance to the previous scene in Judah’s story and moves on with Cliff’s story. He also uses the film footage of Mussolini’s in Cliff’s portrait of Lester. Else than the footages he has the recourse to a flashback that was mentioned above as bergmanesque, his cinematographer being Sven Nykvist, and Professor Levi’s voiceover on a series of scenes from the previous parts of the movie in the end.

“Crimes and Misdemeanors is about people who do not see. They do not see themselves as others see them. They do not see the right and wrong of situations. And that was a strong metaphor in the movie.”[2] says Woody Allen in his interview, summarizing the overall argument above. The characters in the movie either lack the ability to see themselves from an outer point or unable to realize the rights or wrongs of the situation they are in. Although all the characters lack something in perspective, the movie results in a conclusion that there are some people who are able to live as long as they present an appreciated image to the others and who are unable to do that suffer in different ways in the reality of the world. The peak of the film in that respect is when Cliff and Judah meets and have the conversation of Judah’s murder story. Cliff stuck in his moral beliefs tells Judah that he would use a different ending for the story in which the murderer turns himself in to the police. Judah replies in short that it is not a Hollywood movie but the real world, and goes back to his wife with a feeling of a complete relief from his moral conflict. Allen prefers to end his movie not with such a cruel ending but instead with an explanation by Professor Levi’s voiceover:

“We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.”

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[1] Woody Allen on Woody Allen, p. 213

[2] Woody Allen on Woody Allen, p.213

Noisebin, 2009

Noise bin is a garbage bin for dirty sounds. On the surface of the bin "Gürültü" (Noise in Turkish) is written in big red letters and underneath it says "Throw away the noises in your head here". Inside the bin there is a hidden computer that recognizes nearby sounds, records them and adds to its continuously playing shuffle list.   

Hotel Rwanda

“When people ask me, good listeners, why do I hate all the Tutsi, I say, "Read our history." The Tutsi were collaborators for the Belgian colonists, they stole our Hutu land, they whipped us. Now they have come back, these Tutsi rebels. They are cockroaches. They are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land. We are the majority. They are a minority of traitors and invaders. We will squash the infestation. We will wipe out the RPF rebels. This is RTLM, Hutu power radio. Stay alert. Watch your neighbours.”

George Rutaganda

Is it possible to develop a common sense, even arouse a public opinion against the ongoing wars all around the world, without using stunning mottos and presenting them in a fiction movie? Violence, even as a concept, not arguing on the physical outcomes, already cannot be taken as naïve, but through media we are experiencing a period of consuming small portions of violence in fictional stories and accept it as normal. It is like reading the third episode of a best-seller series and hopelessly laughing at the clumsiness of the main character when one comes across with a shocking sentence uttered by a United Nations officer like “We don’t provide peace, we protect peace”. Hotel Rwanda is full of similar “realities” that is expected to provoke anger inside us, but being exposed to so much fake violence by the media causes great insensitivity and we finally become not responding to the calling needs of the world.

Hotel Rwanda narrates the civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda with a script based on the true life story of Paul Rusesabagina. Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) is a hotel manager, who himself is a Hutu, and his wife is a Tutsi named Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), at the time when the genocide begins, suddenly, but after a 32 years old history. The film shows the beginning of Rwanda's troubles with the aspect of the European colonial powers established nations that ignored traditional tribal boundaries. For years in Rwanda under the Belgians, the Tutsis ruled and killed not a few Hutu, but after Rwanda’s liberation from Belgium, the Hutus took control, and armed troops prowled the nation, killing approximately one million Tutsis.

There is a United Nations "presence" in Rwanda, represented by Col. Oliver (Nick Nolte). He sees what is happening, informs his superiors, asks for help and intervention, and is ignored. Paul Rusesabagina informs the corporate headquarters in Brussels of the growing tragedy, but the hotel in Kigali does not seem to be the chain's prior concern. These are the facts of the war reflected in a drama. Although it is true that Rusesabagina saves more than one thousand refugees’ lives in the time of the genocide, the film looses its critical point of view by giving a heroistic mission to the two man, Paul Rusesabagina and Col. Oliver, to save those lives.

Hotel Rwanda has been called an African Schindler's List. Each movie portrays one imperfect individual who uses his social position, interpersonal skills, and quick wit to rescue thousands of lives from a holocaust. This resemblance can be uttered as the personification of the subject matter, a subject that drew attention of many critics. Hotel Rwanda was generally criticized for making little effort to depict the genocide as a whole. Despite the emphasis of the arguments being on the narrative structure, the film was yet able to bring up crucial questions on social and political issues.

Issues of racism against black people, insufficient efforts of UN to handle the problem, and the timid approach of the media were the main themes of the film. There is a similar pattern in the film conveying its critical standpoint on the attitude of the UN, Red Cross and the media. These organizations were reflected as irresponsible by comparing their efforts to that of the individuals’ in the battle field. This approach of the film leads to the questioning of the actuality of war for the people who are observing it from a distance.

Hotel Rwanda comes up with a subtext of people becoming easily ignorant to the still images of the wars reflected by the media, which are far distant from the sense of reality. It implies that these images are even used to stimulate fear over the public, as fear being the first medium used by the media to control the consumption habits of the public. The viewer, unaware of the intentions of the media, first, feels sorrow for what is going on for some time and then starts worrying for possible threats to his security. By that way, reflecting the selected scenes from a reality causes media to maintain its power. Just like the media’s so called concern for the African people, United Nations’ attitude is reflected as being uncaring as well throughout the film.

This harmony of the heroistic narrative structure, the main theme and the subtext of the film can be found in any diaologe in the film. The quote from Paul Rusesabagina “There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad, you must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us... say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as if you are reaching through the phone and holding their hand. Let them know that if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help.” is a clear example of the theme, the institutions being ignorant, conveyed in a dramatic narrative.

The film was produced ten years after the genocide, in 2004, and it can do no better than serving as a rememberance for the ones who lost their lives in the genocide. However, it was important in drawing attention to another prolonged civil war between the Arabs and non-Arabs in Darfur, Sudan.