Godard, Akerman and Prostitution

Godard has said that a theme returns to over and over again is prostitution, and it's interesting to me how he characterizes prostitutes across his films. What strikes me, especially in looking back through JLG's films we've seen this semester, is not only that he keeps returning to prostitution (Vivre sa vie in 1962, 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle in 1966, and Sauve qui peut in 1980), but that he characterizes the central characters in similar ways, even if the films they're featured in are quite different. Nana, Juliette, and Isabelle are all portrayed inhabiting their daily lives in a matter-of-fact, stoic manner. Their faces often do not betray any emotion, and often hold the viewer at a distance.

This cinematic treatment of prostitutes brings to mind Chantal Akerman, who was heavily influenced by Godard, and specifically her 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Clocking in at three and half hours, Akerman's film is a quiet, incredibly slow-paced character study of a widow who supports herself and her son by prostituting herself while her son is at school. Jeanne is a creature of habit, and the camera documents the minutiae of her daily life. Jeanne retains the same emotional stoicism that is exhibited by Godard's characters - at least until the end of the film, where her stoicism breaks down.

I find the resemblence in facial expression + attitude most striking in these shots of Nana and Jeanne:

Féminin masculin

With Godard’s emphasis on the exchange value in/of capitalism as colonizing (most often, although not exclusively) the female body, contemplations of prostitution, trade, manual labor and misogyny abound.  We have discussed this from Vivre sa vie (1962) to 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1966) to Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979).  The dialogue or narration in these films highlight the trajectory of influences from Brechtian distanciation with Nana to Rouchian ethnography with Juliette to the internal thoughts of Isabelle as externalizes her focus while her body is in the act of a sexual-barter.  

Vivre sa vie

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle

Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Morrey discusses Debord’s argument of the effacement of freedom by the “alibi” of choice in consumer capitalism.  I want to take this level of prostitution, labor and capitalist choice into another colonization of the body and look at the labor of war on the male body (although we now have many women in the armed forces, for the sake of this argument I will focus on the male war-body as juxtaposed to Godard’s female sex-body).  While Godard focuses on prostitution as a choice/non-choice within a capitalist system, it is important to acknowledge that prostitution is a profession that retains a long history (it did not birth from capitalism).  Likewise, the soldier is a profession with a history of ideals including protection, honor and sacrifice that are aligned with and by the body as implemented through national identity (other than mercenaries who also retain a long historical practice).  The dilemma with the contemporary global market economy is that the retained national allegiance of the soldier is problematized as countries negotiate new trades and alliances.  We all know these issues of war and legitimacy…I need not elaborate especially in this time regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, especially in this time of the US’s global influence. 

On the subject of “choice” and the soldier, many (although certainly not all) of our warriors are young and basically educated (high school) prior to their enlistment.  Many of them have limited employment/educational choices.  Indeed, my father enlisted with the Navy when he was 18.  At the time he could chose to join the Navy with the possibility of educational compensation after his initial service, or he could chose to stay in Illinois and work at the steel mill on the Mississippi River.  For my father, joining the Navy meant an education and employment.  I guess what I am trying to express is: what is the essential difference between representations of those working in the trade of sex and the trade of killing?  I’m not trying to negate one over the other- these are choices.  Choices based on survival.  However, the choice of the prostitute is often negative and the choice of the killer is valorized as the protector.  What Godard chooses to do is “represent” the prostitute (more often) as opposed to the warrior.  This in and of itself drastically juxtaposes his work to other (traditional/normal/safe) cinematic protagonists or the Hollywood system, for example.  Although, it is also evident that an instant critique towards Godard is that his work can be construed as a chauvinistic approach especially in regard to capitalism as a colonization of the female sex-body (as opposed to say the male war-body).  However, as Aiste mentioned to me in conversation on the topic, he is obviously “concerned.”  And he is much more concerned about this topic than most other filmmakers.  I guess my concern regarding the female sex-body is my own curiosity about the “prostituted” bodies of the warrior and the warring mentality of humanity in general, as well as the issues over representations of sex (pornography versus love) and violence.  I have no answers here, just more concerns; more questions. And I’m thankful to Godard for making the choice to address the topics of prostitution and labor though his (perplexing at times) discourse.  

Codey Wilson of YouTube fame

Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Codey Wilson 

-courtney

CARNAL GODARD

It’s difficult to believe that there is an aspect of Godard’s work that we haven’t discussed in detail.  With so many images, or perhaps interpretations, there is a component of Godard’s work that has remained primarily latent…at least until we consider Sauve qui peut (La Vie), aka Every Man For Himself aka Cover your ass.  In Sauve qui peut, the audience is treated to a blatant expose of carnal desires.  Throughout the film, there are robust expressions of erotic content.  Ultimately, these themes have been present in Godard’s work since Breathless.  At the same time, the vigorous approach to corporeal analysis transforms into the focus of Sauve qui peut.

There are several examples of erotic discourse within the Godard trajectory.  Several that come to mind include the Hotel room discussion between Michel and Patricia in Breathless.  Speaking of lovers past, the characters count on their fingers to calculate their number of sexual encounters.  During Michel’s turn, he flashes his whole hand once, twice…multiple times to show that he has had numerous experiences. 

In Week-end, Godard makes use of Georges Bataille’s Histoire de L’oeil to construct Corinne’s explicit dialogue scene.  The use of suggestive sexual dialogue informs the viewer that this is a more profound level of interpretation from the director.  As Morrey states, “The appeal to this novel, in which the narrator and his lovers repeatedly smear each other in their piss, shit, blood and sperm, would seem to be an abject, unclean, unrecuperated sexuality, in which the true strangeness of desire appear ungovernable by an normative discourse.” (75)


   

In Tout va bien, the sexual nature of Godard’s exploratory is expressed via graphic imagery of the male phallus.  During the “On va au cinema, on bouf, on baisse” scene, Yves Montand debates libidinous dynamics with Jane Fonda.  After exclaiming that the couple is reduced to “going to the cinema, eating, fucking,” Montand is exposed by Fonda. In her argument, Fonda reduces Montand’s thought process to a single visual: The image of a penis sitting static within a female hand.  The penis serves as an exclamation point to the dialogue within the scene.

These examples serve as a precursor to the shock value that awaits in Sauve qui peut.  After an extended period of time away from feature filmmaking, Godard returns with his most explicit approach to sexualized cinema. The more prominent scenes include the suggestion that a cow’s tongue can serve as an adequate source of carnal pleasure.  Likewise, Paul Godard questions whether a soccer coach has ever had erotic thoughts in relation to his daughter, “Do you ever have the urge to feel up her tits or to fuck her up the ass?” The scene in which Paul Godard jumps over a table to embrace his ex-girlfriend suggests the impossibility of connection between men and women.


Perhaps the most explicit scene in Sauve qui peut is what Morrey labels the “orgy” scene.  Although it is not an orgy in the traditional sense (refer to Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick, Stanley for perceived mainstream orgy) the scene does bring several questions to light.  During the scene, the boss gives succinct directions in relation to sexual acts and process.  The absurdity of the scene has the tendency to promote laughter as opposed to erotic stimulation.  However, when compared with the wealth of examples that precede this sequence, the viewer can legitimately question the intent of the director.  First, how does the sequence fit within the area of gender studies?  Should we accept the depiction at face value and view it as a harsh criticism or reinforcement of the male gaze?  Secondly, what do these examples suggest about Godard?  During the course we’ve been speaking of the presence of the Godard surrogate.  Does this depiction show Godard for what he really is?  A cinematic Henry Miller or a highbrow Ron Jeremy?  Lastly, should these depictions have extenuating consequences?  It’s widely known that Nabokov faced intense scrutiny for his authoring of Lolita.  Is it justified to expose Godard to similar examination?

I’m curious to hear the dialogue during our next class session.  Unlike before, it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to Godard’s sexual dynamics.  Quietly, he has dispensed carnal representations within his films.  Like a slap to face, I believe that we have all been woken by the director. If before, we chose not to address the matter, following Sauve qui peut, we have no other option.

echeverria

A full mouth and the shit of it

In Godard’s films we see the role of a participating capitalist consumer from gaze to touch to taste.  With mouths so occupied in their delivery of lines and musings, it’s surprising that they even have time to ingest anything at all.  And the cigarettes, yes, these are another ingestion completely- a distraction, a poetic abstraction of a species domesticated on terra Americana and repackaged abroad.  Something so French, so intellectual, so useful at the cafes…like coffee (the galactic microcosm in Deux ou trios choses que je sais d’elle [1966]), like sugary desserts and chocolate; like pommes frites…it does often percolate back to the American capitalist-dream-landscape, yes?  So the smoking, it’s an intentional, capitalist mannerism as well as an imbedded, addictive after-thought most accused in Deux ou trios choses que je sais d’elle and always present in Godard’s other films (having not seen all of his films “always” is a definite but no less firm assumption).

So the food: in Week-end (1967) there is the bread, or rather sandwich scene of the garbage workers.  However, the image of the sandwich itself escapes me and is overshadowed by the hefty loaves of bread and their ensuing mess of crumbles and the full-mouths of the worker’s monologues.  Monologues thus colonized and glutenized by this ensuing signifier of French sustenance and therefore existence; monologues hurriedly eaten through (however lengthy) and chomped-down lest they run out of time to nourish themselves (like the workers in Tout va bien [1972] who run out of time to urinate, etc. in their five minute breaks).  Do I remember much of what these garbage (one Arab, one African) men said?  No, I mostly remember that very French bread; those very full mouths. 

Later in Week-end there is the cannibalistic scene that ends the film with Corinne consuming her husband’s ribs.  Cannibalism aside, I don’t think of ribs as a French dish but rather as an American gustatory trope (at present); or a camping food (Hollywood westerns?); or as a dish habitually derived du porc- one of the two animals sacrificed in tribal scene.  The pig: a devoted consumer full of an expansive desire and willingness to engorge itself- even in its/our own waste- for pure pleasure.  The rib: as in Adam?  Thus, is Corinne participating in a metaphorical self-consumption as well?  Is she a consumer so obsessed with pigging out that it leads her to the ultimate degradation[1] of the self?  Is the/her return to zer0 only possible through ingesting one/herself?  But can a zer0 exist in the archeological traipsing-about of all that shit and in all those remains?

Next.  In Tout va bien (1972), co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin, the majority of the mise-en-scène occurs within the Salumi sausage factory.  A space that is “anti-realistic” and “a metaphorical representation of the state of the political struggle in France in 1972” (Morrey, 99).  It could come as no surprise then that the state is represented through the production of a meaty phallus.  (Or could it?  This shows a marked difference from his earlier work when the capitalist hegemony was represented through variations of “literal” prostitution: Vivre sa vie [1962], Alphaville [1965], Deux ou Trois que je said d’elle [1966]).  In Tout va bien, Godard and Gorin present the analogy of the dominant phallus not only as a factory product but as a producer of oppressed rights within the factory (even at a most basic, physical level as in the aforementioned urination scene where we witness male workers address the complications of the simple act of peeing) and within the society as a whole.  Towards the end of the film, this image of oppression is further propagated with the black and white photograph of an erect pecker exhibited by Jane Fonda’s character, Susan[2].  As the scene with the CGT representative initiates (“flanked by two goons” [Morrey, 100] and placed in front of a meaty poster), the hegemony of the “giant” food producers encompasses more than the production of food, but system of trade as well (from salumi to other industrialized products [coffee, cigarettes, sugar, oranges...]).

To conclude: the supermarket and the oranges.  There is a scene in the factory in which Susan and her husband Jacques (Yves Montaud) sit with some of the workers to talk.  They have a spread of food before them consisting of bread, sausages and meats and some fruit I think, however, the only fruit I remember is the segment of orange, peel intact, that Susan sucks and nibbles on.  Later in the (awesome) tracking shot within the supermarket, large bags of produce are repeatedly piled onto the automated conveyor belts ready to be tallied by the checkout workers.  Bags of firm oranges repeatedly appear.  (Where were those ripe oranges grown)?  So here we are, ending this film that began within an “anti-realistic” factory within the hyperreal invention of the system of trade that is the supermarket.  We track back and forth on the 0°/180° degree line[3] and each time the same consumers unload their baskets (sometimes they even unload the same item as revealed right before [!]).  We see this ingestive behavior factorized in the body- these consumers without dialogue repeat their dance with their products accompanied by the mechanical rhythm of the registers, meanwhile activists or “agitators” (Morrey, 104) behind them give voice to an uprising and everything is free…. Well anyway, these ripe oranges, plump potatoes, French baguettes etc. are a different genre of waste than Silverman addresses.  These are necessary wastes unlike a new Hermès bag or an Alfa Romeo, however they are nonetheless illusory in their mechanically perfected natures.  They are a means to sustenance and then, ultimately evacuation: the coffee, the bread, the ribs, the salumi and the oranges are all assimilable modes of absorption within this marketed slurry of production and sa bouche gustative.

clip (in Spanish) of tracking sequence in Tout va bien:

                                                       

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[1] Morrey writes of Silverman’s commentary on the “serial degradation” in that “each new product implies the degradation of the previous one into so much waste and, as the time allotted for the enjoyment of each new commodity becomes briefer and briefer, the entire system of value on which consumerism rests is revealed as so much shit” (78).

[2] Granted, this is an image relating to communicative duress of their marriage, but it is also representative of the total imagery of Tout va bien as well.

[3] À la Week-end (Henderson, 423).

C. Krantz