Thelma and Louise

Thelma and Louise (1991) is often referred as a successful mixture of different genres in a single picture. To begin with, it is possible to trace the elements of contemporary Western, seventies ‘buddy’ movie, and most notably road movie. Since it is the story of the journey of the two heroines Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon), it will be more appropriate to analyze the film within the scope of road movie, without losing out the influence of the other genres that are well placed in the movie as the indispensable roadside bars for an American road movie.

The film opens with the introduction of the two main female characters separately with the scenes from their daily routines. The viewer first gets to see Louise in the café she is working. The first bits of information provided is that she is a self-dependent middle age woman with some emphasis on her being hard-edged as she talks like an elderly sister on the phone to Thelma, while smoking. On the contrary, Thelma is a young housewife, who is oppressed in her marriage by her husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald). The road story begins as the two women hit the road for a little weekend escape from their seemingly not entertaining daily lives. It will not be wrong to claim at this point that as opposed to most of the other movies within the road movie genre, Thelma and Louise’s journey does not start with a drive for the search of something related to their being or a higher aim to leave everything behind. But it is still an escape from their lives although their initial plan is to get back to their routines after a couple of days of break.

The story evolves as Thelma and Louise become outlaws after Louise murders Harlan (Timothy Carhart) when he attempts to rape Thelma in the parking lot of their first stop on the road. From this point on their little escape from home turns into a bigger escape from the police and their route shifts to Mexico, which is the ultimate direction of American outlaws for freedom when the West closes down. Up until that moment in the film the Western influence is present to be felt strongly, especially with the men and women dressed alike in the Western style and filling a Western space with the scene in the roadside bar. When the two heroines lose the direction of their lives after the murder, a map comes handy to show them the route they have to follow to reach Mexico that is passing through Texas. Louise’s refusal to go to Texas can be read as the refusal of the movie to mess about genres as they offer wide spaces that can conjugate different styles. The movie instead follows the main lines of the road movie still with notable references to Western, such as the panoramic views from John Ford’s Monument Valley.

As common to road movies, the two women’s relationship changes form as the journey takes place. They get to know each other better while they get to know themselves better and develop a more emotional and deeper relation. In that sense, the film can be said to have elements of seventies ‘buddy’ movie because the relationship they develop on the road converges to the typical male protagonists’ buddy relationship as they admit their new identities as outlaws. Thelma and Louise has been the focus of different criticism by the time it was released, most of which aroused from that shift in gender perspective. One interpretation of the movie was that of a feminist reading whilst antifeminist reading was also among the popular critique. It is hard to agree with both claims since the movie is a collaboration of a liberal director, but still working in a capitalist Hollywood cinema industry, Ridley Scott and the female screenwriter Callie Khouri. So it will be more appropriate to analyze the gender aspect of the movie while going deeper with the characters and at the same time considering the loose end in its gender discourse.

Since the change that the two women go through will be the focus of the analysis now, it is important to look at their ex-ante and ex-post conditions in relation to the journey. Thelma and Louise before the journey fit into two different woman stereotypes of the late eighties and early nineties. Thelma is typical to the continuation of a tradition of young housewives, whom are in need to secure themselves with the first man they have interacted in their lives and more or less dependent on their husbands in life because they are inexperienced to sustain themselves. This dependency also creates a sense of isolation from life for Thelma and once she is on the road she is eager to experience whatever the road brings to her with an enthusiasm of a teenager, but she also portrays a vulnerable woman since she does not have the knowledge on how to respond to potential threats that are awaiting her. On the other hand, Louise appears to fit into another socially accepted woman figure by that time, which is self sufficient to stand as a single woman, but in order to do so she must play the tough woman. In comparison to Thelma, she is more organized with her life and suspicious to whoever approaches to her because she has some sort of a social phobia as a consequence of her interactions with life. The differences in their characters first give the sense of a default power relation amongst each other of Louise being dominant in this friendship. From those ex-ante conditions, two women go on the road that will create a change in their standpoints and Scott gives the hints of this change right after the journey starts with the scene, in which Thelma takes a cigarette from Louise’s pack and acts as if she is smoking while watching herself on the side mirror of the car and says “Hey, I’m Louise.”

Louise’s dominance over Thelma does not change until JD (Brad Pitt) steals the money that Louise gets from Jimmy (Michael Madsen) in order to get to Mexico. Louise killing Harlan creates the first shock in Thelma and Louise’s relationship but since they behave respectful to each other all through the movie they take the responsibilities of their own actions and play the strong to fix the problem they created for both of them. In other words, first shock comes from Louise losing her control over what she sees and it is now her responsibility to take care of the situation and Thelma still appears to be the weak one to be taken care of. After the only night they spend off the road, they realize that JD fooled Thelma and ran away with their only asset to their freedom. The loss of their last hope breaks Louise’s strong image and now it is time for Thelma to take control and get Louise back on the road. This break point works as a tool to balance the power scale of their relationship and they become buddies, running to the same end consciously and willingly.

The feminist reading of the film focuses on what unites Thelma and Louise in their journey to their freedom whereas antifeminist reading of the film concerns what follows after they form that male type of alliance. Feminist manifesto finds its form also as a character in the movie, which is the sympathetic detective Hal (Harvey Keitel), who keeps his belief till the end in the heroines being ordinary women, driven to extraordinary ends by male oppression. This is actually the main idea that the movie advocates. There are several indicators in the movie to claim that feminist manifesto holds, such as Thelma being oppressed by her husband, Louise with her mystical past presumably a traumatic experience of rape, JD as an abuser of Thelma’s naivety, Harlan’s attempt to have sexual intercourse as opposed to Thelma’s wish, the truck driver’s almost absurd reaction to the two women travelling on the road and so on and so forth. These are direct critique to American culture with its easily accepted empty pleasures and demoralized sexual chauvinism toward women, in which Thelma and Louise stand as feminine figures who are still struggling to redefine their individualities.

The antifeminist critique can be explained through the similarity between Thelma and Louise and another famous road movie Easy Rider. In Easy Rider, the two heroes hit the road for the search of freedom, as well as adventure and hedonistic fun. In that respect, Thelma and Louise offers the same thing, but the underlying approach to a decaying culture beyond desire. The similarity of the macho actions in both movies can be explained as the standpoint of antifeminist critique because what those feminine figures stand for should be a protest against that macho violence rather than a portrayal of dangerous phallic caricatures of the same behavior, if the movie advocates some kind of a resistance to women’s oppression. The problem defined and the action taken in order to fix the problem seems controversial if the resistors also adopt using the same tools that cause the problem. The movie falls into the same trap while trying to define that trap, for the sake of entertainment that conventional Hollywood cinema has to offer its audience by turning tragedy into tragicomedy. Yet, it is argued that the film evoked sympathy in male audiences and enabled them to engage with the women’s story through attributing male characteristics to the two heroines. Although the antifeminist reading puts a strong emphasis on the fallacy of using male symbols such as the usage of guns and violence, the film insisting on the tragicomic aspect by letting the heroines make their own feminine ways how to use those symbols, as can be realized from their polite way of committing the crimes by uttering how sorry they are to do it every time they break the law, is claimed to have worked out in delivering the underlying message to a larger number of audiences. The analysis here then results in a harmonized cinematic conveyance of the depiction of the two believable female figures by Callie Khouri when combined with the heroic representation of Ridley Scott.

Back to the topic of change that Thelma and Louise go through, there is an issue of relativity still to be touched upon. Although the journeys reveals a lot about the two main characters, it is easier to observe the change that Thelma goes through whereas the viewer gets to know less about Louise. They come to the same grounds on their escape to freedom but Thelma deviates more from her initial state. She discovers the repressed lust in herself towards life. Once she goes out her limited life she realizes that she does not want to go back and does whatever she has to do in order to keep being on the road even if it requires her to break the laws. Although in the beginning Louise seems to be the one who does not want to surrender and keep going till she reaches a place where she will be free, Thelma does not pause to join her as soon as she realizes that she was trapped in her own prison by attributing such importance to an unloving husband. The relief from her mental prison makes her act in the opposite direction with such passion that she becomes the one that leads the way to their end. Louise on the other hand, does not deviate very much from her initial set of mind. She is fond of her freedom to some extent in the beginning and she is headed towards that direction whole throughout the movie. She experiences a different kind of relief in the sense of her repressed emotion from a past trauma which finds a way out to the surface, but that does not create a domino effect in her reactions and she does not experience a major change in her character.

The end of the road in Grand Canyon is both physically and metaphorically the end of their journey. Until they reach the cliff in the Canyon they were able to shift to sideways, changing their destination for the sake of being able to move on. The dead end of the road, revealing their ultimate end, brings them up to the final point that they have choose between going on or giving up. As freedom, being reduced to the only option of eternal freedom after death, the two heroines decide, acknowledging the irreversible change they had been through, to keep moving and reach their eternal freedom with Ridley Scotts’ freeze frame. With such a heroic ending it is possible to step back from the reality within the film and look at the tools Scott uses to turn the story into a myth. Two angelic figures fly into a deep opening holding hands, and another heavenly good figure trying to reach them before their salvation. He refers to such tools to break the thick air of a tragedy also in some other scenes some of which are mentioned above as the ridiculous truck driver and the Rastafarian biker who blows joint to the policeman locked in the back of his car.

The narrative structure of the film is also chosen as convenient in a way not to disturb the audience with back and forth movements. The narrative is linear and as plain as possible meaning that there is no use of special editing or voice over. The only structure notable is the parallel narrative of the women and the police. The escapees and the chasers are shown with a parallel timing and Scott makes good transitions from one story to the other especially after Thelma’s robbery scene when she starts telling what happened in the story the story shifts to the chasers line and the viewer watches the robbery from the police’s screen. These smooth transitions strengthen the flow of the road movie and leaves necessary space for the viewer to digest the on the run rhythm of the road story and follow the timing of the episodes. Additionally, the setting of the parallel stories works as a reminder to the viewer where the story started from because the police is located in Arkansas, with the people that the two women left behind, till the end of the movie when the two lines finally emerge. In the meanwhile, the viewer is reassured of the incidents happened on the road by encountering the people involved in the storyline of the police. In other words, the viewer is left to enjoy the privileged position of getting informed about both of the stories even before the two parties figure out what is going on with the other story.

As prior to the road movie genre, much attention is given to the landscape in the film. The open spaces head along with the deserted highways of the American dream enforcing the idea of freedom as the two women proceed with their journey. The photographic images from the different timelines of the day such as the dawn and the sunset create a feeling of continuity in the flow as well as referring to the women’s control over their own time by being able to experience all the difference feelings the day has to provide them to link their broken identities in a continuum of time. The images also change as they escape from the reality of their initial lives, the massive machinery, oil drilling equipments fade into the images of Monument Valley. Especially Louise lightens up with all the faces she confronts on the road. She loses, leaves, her belongings after each confrontation of herself in the other. She leaves her watch and earrings to the old man then she throws away her lipstick after seeing the old woman becoming more simple, admitting herself the way she is and gaining her freedom by losing her belongings. All those scenes being emotionally strengthen by Hans Zimmer’s influential music with the classic tones specific to road movie and Western. Ridley Scott seems not to have missed one single detail to put out a complete movie of road movie genre.

For Women, 2009

For Women is a video installation based on the findings of a research on what women would prefer to see in porn movies. The video to be installed is made according to fifty women's answers to a questionnaire on their preferences in porn watching and shows a man's face while masturbating for 1 min. 30 sec. While the installation analyzes the female gaze on pornographic images, it avoids being explicit. In order for the viewer to question the intimacy that she/he develops with the image, the installation is screened inside the elevator of the exhibition space using the up and down movements of the elevator as its primary reference to the act on the screen.

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