In Kent Jones introductory essay, he mentions that "narrative information is imparted to us as if in passing,” and that “from scene to scene, image to image, action to action, we are plunged, often violently, into a new texture, mood, or state of being” (27). This was highly at play in Demonlover (2002). The violence is not only happening on the screen.
Through handheld camera shots, tracking shots, and jump cuts, the camera is set in a relentless spiral of colors and images. It doesn’t allow for the camera to bring cohesiveness or trust. There is nothing or no one trustworthy. Just like the characters, the camera takes on a disorienting and relentless force that moves without regard for who can keep up.The story happens, but its progress is not tied to comprehension. It is not complete. It is just a fragment.
In this sense, the full movie acts as a strange and eerie re-creation of the torture videos. Just like the videos are a fiction and fragmentary view into someone’s misfortune, so the film is a look into a life where there is no introduction or conclusion, but just an observation of violent events and their effect on human bodies.
The movie is a futile attempt to understand a story, a life, and the “real” consequences through bringing awareness to what it is like to be disassociated. For example, by bringing attention to how the young boy at the end is a partial witness of the woman in his screen, but disassociated and oblivious to it, all at the same time, it denounces it.
Demonlover takes the torture videos, and prevents passivity. It takes it a step further by shaking the viewer to acknowledge not just their existence, but their making, and distribution. It takes the abstract into the concreteness of the “real” world. It disturbs the ability to simply sit and watch as some of the characters do.
There is constant inescapability from the assault of the senses—particularly through visual disorientation, temporal gaps, and auditory disturbances. It constantly blurs what is and what isn't real, and forces a separation from conformism by putting us face to face with…well, with the corporate demons that need to be denounced.
I’d like to draw on what you say about how the viewer views the film. You say, “Through handheld camera shots, tracking shots, and jump cuts, the camera is set in a relentless spiral of colors and images.” The intensity of the shots, in an of themselves, (regardless of the intensity of the content of the shots) produces very heightened emotions among viewers. These heightened emotions can be representative of the intensity of desire in Demonlover. We don’t see romantic desire so much in Demonlover, like we saw in many of Petzold’s films. Rather, we see a carnal desire, as well as a desperation of Demonlover’s characters to make corporate gains.
We certainly see the connection between capitalism and desire in this film, whose content seems far from similar to any of Petzold’s work. However, we might venture to make parallels between this film by Olivier Assayas and Petzold’s Yella. In both films, we see how society has become bent on capitalist gains, and how capitalism can create a happiness (whether it is temporary or permanent/real happiness is certainly up to debate) that can replace a human’s desire for love. It is not to say that Yella and Demonlover are not very different from one another. Yella presents capitalism in a way we would all like to believe capitalism, business deals, and meetings operate, while Demonlover presents a much more crude view on these subjects. We have read in Kent Jones’s book that “for all the sex conducted, bartered, consumed, aborted in the course of the film, alienation from the body is the starting condition for its characters” (Jones 150). We can draw on what Jones says here, and see that the characters are alienated from their own bodies because they put their own lives and well being on the line just for the sake of capitalism. This is the major way in which the businesspeople in Demonlover differ so greatly from those in Yella. Demonlover’s characters are participating in high stakes business deals, which puts their human lives on the line, while the business deals in Yella at the very worst are only putting someone’s economic success on the line. This alienation from the body in Demonlover allows the characters to willingly dig themselves into deep inescapable holes.
I think your point on the absence of "romantic desire" and the presence of "carnal desire" was very well said. I certainly noticed that pattern as well and would like to expand on that part of your argument.
"demonlover" is no romantic comedy. It isn't even close to "Dreileben," which had a somewhat charming love story. There is no passionate kissing or love scene with a track of beautiful orchestra music playing over it. Instead, the sexuality of the film is, at best, animalistic. For instance, when Diane and Herve finally have sex near the end of the film, they do so not as two individuals with a deep emotional bond between them, but as individuals with only a sexual, not a romantic, interest in each other. The result is a mechanical, rough copulating session, rather than a passionate, intimate love-making session.
This view is supported by the scene immediately before at the restaurant. Herve tells Diane, "I admire you." She responds, "You don't know me." That sets up the conversation between the two on "desire," doubt" and "trust." Herve admits that while he "desired" her, he had his "doubts" and did not think he could "trust" her. This conversation sets up a distinction between desire and trust and, thus implying a distinction between "romantic" desires (where trust is present) and "carnal" desires. Their "carnal" desire was strong enough that they chose to sleep together despite not trusting each other (no "romantic" desire), a poor choice for Herve.
This expression of love and sexuality is part of the overall emotional detachment of the characters. To quote the section of the assigned reading we read in class today, the characters "wear their bodies as they wear their faces - rigidly, as armour - since, in this world, to open oneself emotionally is to risk losing control of one's own avatar." They end up living out the "paradox of pornography: the wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out" (Jones, 150).
This is due to the requirements of capitalism, namely that individuals loosen "interhuman bonds." They must do this in order to survive the "vagaries of commodity-and-labour markets, which inspires and promotes division, not unity; it puts a premium on competitive attitudes, while degrading collaboration and team work to the rank of temporary stratagems that need to be suspended or terminated the moment their benefits have been used up" (Bauman, 2-3). The end result is a desire that mirrors the economic system, a ruthless, profit-driven desire that ebbs and flows with the "market." As the American businessman said regarding the Hell Fire Club, "It's supply and demand."
Demonlover (2004) is a very intriguing film. While it was hard to watch due to the content, Assayas is touching on a problematic aspect of society that is deeply integrated into everyday life. Compared to Petzold who explored the external world of capitalism, Assayas is diving into the internal infrastructure. Assayas brings the viewers into the world of adult entertainment and its operations, and as we discussed in class, it is arguably the most profitable industry in the world. Of course, the film exploits the side of the industry that “we watch, but do not understand”.
Assayas captures the quickness and abruptness of this industry with many cuts in the film. Compared to Petzold, one does not experience many long cuts, but this is done to an effect. One experiences an uneasiness of this fast-paced world, as the characters seem to not have a grounded life in their careers. For instance, Dianne is always traveling and the thing that she desires most, control, is never attainable for her. A quote from “symposium” in the “Touching the Void” article by Michael Joshua Rowin states, “Manga and anime porn function within cinematic quotation marks, like found footage, and the overall feel of Assayas’s film is one of detachment, not absorption” (Rowin). This feeling of detachment is the kind of tone throughout the film that resonates with the “pornos” shown and one can see how Dianne is beginning to be detached from herself, as she loses control of the industry. Also tying to the notion that the digital porn in the film is viewed through a computer screen. The viewers and porn actors (or cartoons) is separated through cyberspace, and to an extent, different realities.
Notably, the scene that pans to a typical Tokyo neighborhood, as Jean Pierre and Dianne’s limo is leaving a business meeting, illustrates this detachment. The viewer is exposed to the industry and its operations, as one sees artists painting depictions of monsters raping girls. The uncomfortable notion is indeed that this kind of operation is transpiring within the neighborhood—an internal part of society. Moreover, the most uncomfortable notion is when these kinds of operation is brought into one’s home (the deep integration), as depicted with the ending scene of a probably prepubescent boy gaining access to hellfireclub.com. Yet, one is still detached from all of this because one simply does not know that it is an integral part of life—especially the parent of that boy who is divulging in hellfireclub.com. The operation is something so bizarre that one does not think their neighbor or children could be capable of participating in.
This world of adult entertainment is inhabited by demons, monsters, sex, drugs, money, and corporate espionage. Again, looking back at Dianne’s quote, “Nobody sees anything. They look but don't understand”, the internal part of capitalism within adult entertainment is illustrated as such. Porn is just one aspect of contemporary society, and it resonates the fact that everything can be commoditized, as illustrated in the film even sex is just a commodity as the operator of hellfireclub.com expresses, “supply and demand”, for BDSM porn. A difficult, but true notion.
You make some good points in your post, Khoi. There's one more point I would like to add to your argument. That is the fact that adult entertainment industry is filled with demons at a molecular level. I didn't get that notion until the end, when the boy is studying with a DNA model while having the hellfireclub site up on his computer. This was where Assayas makes this statement.
B. Kite says in the book "Oliver Assays", "and I don't even want to touch that genetics book and DNA model, which sure look like a way for the movie to hedge even its own late-blooming moralism by ascribing the blame to...what, the human animal?" (Kent 153). I agree with that statement, but I think there was more to the DNA model at the end. It symbolizes that the movie has come full circle and the viewer has seen the nastiness behind this. The end of the circle is also the worst part about it, and that is that we can't fix it because it stems from our DNA.
While it's easy to separate ourselves from the hectic hyper-sexual world of Demonlover, I have found that it's a film doesn't just reflect our own world, but a reflection that continues today in terms of media and sexualization. Even now, the role of women in pop culture remains a hot topic for debate, particularly in the video game genre, one that is still in it's cultural infancy, yet poised to become the center of popular culture, until the next big thing hits. From start to finish, Demonlover acknowledges the association between violence against women and culture, where it starts and whom it affects.
While certainly not implicit, the scenes taking place in the Japanese animation studio clearly depict a genre of animation where violence is synonymous with sex. The hypersexual characters fight parallel-dimension demons and whatnot, then are punished for the entertainment of the viewer. In a strange way, Diane's story could almost serve as a stand in for that anime, as she takes on a fantasy role (the cat burglar scene), then over the course of the film she is then punished in increasingly erotic ways, including the fight between Diane and Elaine (which was shot from promiscuous angles and their moaning was was meant to mimic that of the porn scene earlier in the film), Hervé's rape scenes and finally Diane's capture and torture in the Hell Fire Club.
Assayas is clearly creating an association between pornography culture (and perhaps the larger pop culture, if Elise's scene playing a video game intercut with Diane's sexual violation is intentional) and violence against women. However, it's important to understand that in the end of the film, Assayas answers the question of who actually supports this violence. In the last scene, a young kid is seen ordering a torture sequence from the Hell Fire Club, staging it as a scene from an X-Men comic (once again, an association with real world violence to pop-culture characters). This kid isn't given any character traits aside from his fondness of comic books and his room, wall to wall in pop culture memorabilia. This shows that this kid isn't just a character, a lone supporter of the Hell Fire Club. He represents consumer culture as a whole, which is to blame for the exploitative pornography industry. In itself, Elaine's buisiness partner mentions that the website is created solely to cater to the sadomasochistic desires of the populace. Keith Jones comments on this stating "Demonlover saves it's nearest candidate for a Mabuse placeholder for the end: it's-any-kid-with-a-credit-card. The blank room is now explicitly the place of torture,and it can be located anywhere so long as it maintains it's web address." (Jones 148)
One of the difficult elements of criticizing the explotative violence against women is that any depiction only feeds the sadomasochistic culture. However, the gaze Diane gives the kid (and the audience of the film) is a reminder that we too are to blame for these transgressions. Pop culture isn't just mindless entertainment, it's a mirror that reacts to us, changing to reflect our desires as we see fit, bot the good but ESPECIALLY the bad.
If the film indeed ends with a certain moralism--it's we who are culpable--it might be interesting to compare this to Michael Haneke's two versions of his movie Funny Games. FG quite explicitly assaults the viewer with the goal to teach us. Such a move, of course, does beg the question of the film's own role, as you point out w/r/t Demonlover.
“Haneke said the people who walked out of Funny Games “didn’t need it,” implying it was a necessary medicinal corrective for those who stayed, but the only fans of the movie I’ve encountered are youngish males who pride themselves on their ability to tolerate extreme depictions of violence” (153). This longer sentence can be summed up to say that people choose to desensitize themselves to violence. Oivier Assayas proves this by using the violent website throughout the film, while not attaching too much meaning to it at the same time.
The first time the audience hears about it is during the business meeting with the Americans. Volf bring up the subject, not out of a personal sense of moral justification, but because the business could have problems with the law if the allegations were true. As an audience we don’t think too much about the situation because the focus is on Diane and her part in the plot. The American even describes it in such a way that it seems like a normal business that just so happens to be run by illegal traffickers.
No one in the entire film shows any moral responsibility to shut down this website. When Diane gets taken to the house where this website if based from and we see her through the screen on the teenager’s laptop it finally underscores the desensitization that we had during the entire film. These girls held no meaning, nor did they have any sort of history, and only when the character we had been following for two hours is included in this slavery is there any remorse for the situation.
Assayas uses this film to comment on the fact that, globaly, no one stops to really question how this has come about, and how even through porn which some people think is “okay” does the reaction cause brutal consequences. His film isn’t meant to be enjoyed as entertainment, it is supposed to make the viewers think along the lines of what society is consuming as entertainment and how it can seriously harm people. The shock of this realization is made even more evident by Assayas’s use of the teenager at the end. Assayas shows how this industry is distributed enough to even is on a young person’s computer. Like the “youngish males” who watch the film, the teenager’s actions signifies a right of passage in today’s society that is so skewed from what is appropriate. This film brings to light the repercussions of desires of humans.
That the "girls" (as you call them) don't seem to have any history is an interesting observation that you coild have fleshed out more. How does the film establish this lack of history and to what end?
Throughout Demonlover, the car scenes were some of the most intense and unsafe scenes. Assayas used a lot of jump cuts and other video shooting techniques to give us this feeling of being unsafe. What he never really did was put us in the car, like Petzold did.
In the majority of Petzold's films, the camera was placed behind the people in the car. This gave the viewer the feeling of being in the back seat, or right in the mix of the action. Throughout Petzold's films, for the most part, we were with the characters each step of their journey. But in Demonlover, that is not the case.
We weren't in the car with the characters. We were always outside looking into the car. Even when we were in the car, we would have strange viewpoints that wouldn't give the feeling that we were there.The camera was jostled, in a sense we were disoriented, so we didn't know where we were going. This helped strike fear into these scenes. For the story Assayas was trying to tell, this was the right approach to shooting these scenes.
According to B. Kite, "Demonlover isn't a machine film, it's a film of (jagged, frustrated) flow, that liquid Internet time of distracted attentions that gave rise to the metaphor of surfing the Web." (Kent 150). This really is demonstrated well in the filming of the car scenes. Surfing the Web, we go from one place to the next just like a car gets us from point A to point B. There's also the chance that one wrong move in the car, and you could be in a rollover accident. Just like one wrong move on the Internet and you could be in all different sorts of trouble.
Had Assayas taken what Petzold did in his car scenes, I don't think the film would've had the same feeling. In filming, like we discussed in class today, the director has to set the scene. The way a director does this should contribute to how the director wants his/her audience to feel. Also B. Kite mentions that Assayas knows his audience better than another director, and this film shows it.
This is my second time watching Demonlover. The first time, i was very confused and disturbed and couldn't actually put all the parts together do form a whole. I can't exactly do that now, but theres a quote by Assayas in a dvd extra, in which he describes demonlover as "more a poetic film than a theoretical film." I took this to mean that all the espionage and extremely descriptive business meetings, are not as important as the Diane's poetic journey to the deepest darkest circle of the capitalist Hell. At the beginning of class, Marco asked some great questions that i kept thinking about through the film. The first question he asked was what exactly makes capitalism so attractive? The movie focuses on a group of corporate elites, who, because of competition and profit, do some pretty destructive things to each other and to others. If the outcomes of a such a system are death and slavery and sexual exploitation, why is the system still there? To answer this question, i think we need to look at another question Marco posed, namely, how natural is capitalism? The globalized system is so big and sprawling and complex that it seems inhuman, robotic, and yet, it is humans who are the building blocks of the system. But what motivates the humans? Desire. Unlike with other economic systems such as communism, which, in theory, attempts to foster duty, social responsibility and communal values on its population, capitalism works on an individual's most private lusts, tastes, pleasures. I think the main reason demonlover has so much pornography and sexual violence is to remind that although the majority of dialogue is global executive business jargon and almost nothing personal is ever learned about the inner lives of the main characters, that they are still human, and deep down just want to have sex and destroy things. But now here is my question. Is capitalism so destructive and erotic because humans are? Or has the current brand of globalized capitalism made the characters as violent and erotic as they are shown to be.
sidenote: i noticed in Petzhold's films, characters were always traveling horizontally. Trains, cars, etc. I never see any characters fly a plain in a Petzhold film (but i haven't seen em all) In demonlover though, i noticed quite a lot of vertical movement and scenes in high elevation. The movie begins in a plane, up in the air. Characters are seen going up and down elevators quite often. There are a few shots of characters looking out from windows out into the big sprawling city. There is the scene where Elise drives Diane down, down, down under a parking garage. Towards the end of the film, there are shots from a helicopters perspective and also characters traveling in a helicopter. As Diane is put into a sex dungeon towards the end of the film, i think its safe to say that she is underground (underneath a nice mansion?). I haven't quite formed an opinion on these elevational shifts, but i think there is something to them.
Demonlover was a break-neck pace story of the globalization of capitalism and the dog eat dog nature of corporate business practice. This is evident from the first scene which depicts Diane scheming the fall of her superior to the finale where she is a prisoner to Hellfire Club. This exemplifies to me that no matter how good, bad, moral, or immoral one's decisions are the risks may never be worth the reward. One can take it a step further and make the case that an ultimate payoff doesn't exist at all in the corporate business world because of the nature of capitalism.
Another obvious theme throughout the film was the desensitization of sex and violence. Aside from the gratuitous scenes, the general style of the camera work and edgy score highlighted this as well. The most personal, vulnerable scenes seemed to be filmed with handhelds. They were also shot very close up which gave the scenes a feeling that personal privacy is relative. This camera style and film direction accentuated the story and characters perfectly.
Ok, the basic observations are solid but note that you don't develop either through somewhat sustained argumentation, and note as well that the two ideas don't really link up with each other (at least not in the way you present them).
I found it strange somehow empathizing for Diane’s character after the blackmail, deceit, and even murder she commits throughout this film. But somehow, after all of this, a piece of me wanted her succeed, not financially, but emotionally. Diane is disconnected and certainly confused, one point at dinner even saying “I’m not in control of anything”. Demonlover raises a basic question: how much control over our lives can digital images (or the virtual world) have? I think after of the scene displaying that “Any kid with a credit card” can control what happens to Diane, Demonlover seems to suggest that the virtual world has a great deal of control.
It’s this notion of disconnection that I can relate with in Diane’s character. I felt sorry for her at times. I walk up a sidewalk and watch nearly zombie-like people truly hypnotized by what they can access on a cell phone. Sure, there are many aspects of how we are a disconnected society, but Diane’s major separation seemed to be surrounded by her lack of moral values about the world. There was no point she showed regret for the human suffering she and her colleagues caused. It was Diane who became a physical victim by the very thing that she financially profited from.
I believe that she only said "I'm not in control of anything" was because by then she already lost a large amount of control. Her control over things was immediately lost when she was blackmailed by Karen. She used to have a say in things and had a huge control on Volf Corporation and Mangatronics but after the blackmail, she lost both.
It might have appeared that Diane was in control, and the narrative gave this sense early in the film to develop the plot, but as the story unfolded we found out that Herve and Elise had more influence and power over not only Diane but Volf Corporation and Hellfire Club. This reinforces Jason's point that as diabolical as Diane was she never really was in control. I think the perception that Diane was the puppet master was nothing more than a mirage.
Remember that some close film analysis IS desirable as a means to substantiate content or interpretative observations. Work more with the film and think about its "how" in relation to its "what" a bit more.
Jones quotes Assayas in his book, "'Ultimately, in one way or another, you have to go on the set and create chaos... So that people lose their reference points and just use their brains, and don't just go through the motions. Ultimately that's what movies are about. Because they don't need you to make the film. They need you to create confusion'" (34). Assayas succeeds in doing this in Demonlover to an exponential degree. As many others have pointed out above, Assayas creates confusion in this movie through jump cuts, disorienting shots, and a constant relocation of characters, all of which gives the viewer a feeling of disconnection. This is especially relevant during the last 20 or so minutes of the film, from the rape scenes to the end.
The rape scenes culminate in Diane shooting Hervé, then responding to this by acting scared/alarmed as though the action of shooting him took her by surprise. Next, we see a helicopter flying over a picturesque canyon- different from any landscape we've seen in previous shots due to its lack of people and it's ranging height. Then, Diane is drugged, then she escapes, then there's a car chase, then there's a car crash, then there are bones sticking out of one of the pursuers' arms, then a young American boy is stealing his father's credit card and subscribing to Hell Fire Club, then he's the one setting up Diane's torture.
I purposely wrote that as a long run-on sentence because that's how the pace of the last 20 minutes feels. We rarely get the satisfaction of a period. We rarely get our footing/begin to comprehend what is really happening in a scene before it moves on.
Assays uses these last 20 minutes to challenge the viewer. It's as though he's asking "What's wrong here? Aren't sex scenes, murder, explosions, and torture the reason you go to the movies? Don't you want information as quickly as possible?" Assayas cleverly makes us frown upon our own societal expectations of film, even if only subconsciously.
From the beginning of the movie, where there are women in the background dancing, as Andrew said previously, Demonlover shows the perception of how women are portrayed in the media today. Today, the media portrays women in an environment where women will never be satisfied with how they look and feel. In Demonlover, Herve admits as much on a date with Diane later in the film. Herve tries to figure out who Diane is as she claims “no one sees anything ever.” During this scene, I assumed that Diane was trying to play hard to get, even though she had been blackmailed and lost almost all of her control. She loses more of her control when Herve rapes her even though she ends up killing him. In my opinion, this film is all about control and power. Diane is shown as weak in the end of the film, when she looks up helplessly from the computer screen.
Also, I found the music in this film interesting. The music in Demonlover was upbeat and a lot different than the music in Petzold’s films. Petzold used classical music whereas Assaysas uses faster music like techno. In one scene particular, Assaysas uses an interesting techno sound while Diane is being followed by another car. As the music goes faster and faster the scene becomes more thrilling because you expect someone to pop up and scare Diane while she is smoking a cigarette. Even though both directors used different genres of music, it still left a thrilling vibe to the films.
I like your interpretation on how the movie shows how women was being portrayed in the media. I would like to add that the movie also shows how women are in the working world. Higher rank women were called inhuman, weak and demanding just because they worked hard and gives tough love. This was rarely the case when it comes to men.This was clearly shown in the movie when Diane was called a bitch by Elise and inhuman by Herve.
However, also in the movie, I noticed that most of the blackmails and fights were among women themselves. For example, Diane fighting with Elaine, Elise pointing a gun at Diane, and Karen blackmailing Diane. It was all among women as if they are trying to say that women have to step on other women to succeed and that competing with men was out of the question.
Note that your two paragraphs don't really come together. Note also that one of the possible readings--in the "symposium" reading--discusses in some detail the film's use of music. you could have productively worked with the reading on how Sonic Youth scored the film to develop your own argument and view about the film's content etc.
I would like to preface my response to this film with two brief notes. The type of pornography shown in Demonlover was not, in fact, BDSM, but torture porn. By contemporary definitions, BDSM (which requires consent from all involved parties, safe practice of infliction of pain, and strict, clear rules on boundaries) is an entirely different genre that has absolutely nothing to do with the rape, kidnapping, abuse, and reckless violence depicted in both the Japanese pornography and the hellfireclub website. What was shown in this film was straight up torture porn and should not be labeled as or confused with anything other than that. I’d also like to point out that this film most definitely needed a seizure warning in the opening credits. I don’t suffer from epilepsy myself, but there were several times throughout the film in which the overload of visual and auditory information was enough to make me nauseous and lightheaded - while this was only an annoyance for me, it could be a serious problem for someone with a medical condition. The lack of recognition for the need of such a warning was sloppy on the part of the filmmakers and DVD distributors. As someone currently studying and training to be in the industry, I have learned to have very little patience for basic mistakes and oversights such as this.
Given the fact that I’m still feeling the effects of the deeply disturbing content and implications of the story that Demonlover tells, I will keep this blog post to a few brief observations. Just the thought of the last five minutes of the film makes me feel physically ill. I will say this: I believe that the messages hidden within the creepy crawly, rushed and unfocused scenes of Demonlover are important. However, I did not enjoy the way in which they were presented and I do not think that having an important message automatically makes a film good. Well made? Effective? Sure, Demonlover is both of these things. But good? Worthwhile? I’m on the fence.
“Karen, the carrier of the briefcase, who was drugged and locked in a car trunk for three days, compares the experience to rape. Perhaps it is so in a corporate sense as well.” (Kite, 149) This is one of the things that really stuck with me from this film - we have become so connected to and dependant upon our careers that when part of our job has been violated, we feel as though our very beings have been violated as well. Rape is one of the most traumatic things a human being can experience. The fact that Karen feels as though she has been raped after having the files forcibly stolen from her speaks volumes about the mental and emotional stock we place in what we do for a living.
In addition to this, Diane’s dedication to her work as a double agent astounded me. She was willing to kill another human being in cold blood over a deal for animated porn. That’s what her life amounted to: slaughtering another to ensure that one group of people got to distribute drawn characters being raped instead of a slightly different group of people. But that’s not what it was about to her, was it? It was about money. Who was paying her. Who was assuring she’d get ahead. We’ve become so focused upon the result of what we do that we ignore the content.
If we let it, the value of money will devalue everything else we have - love, ethics, life purpose, and even ourselves.
As a closing note, I’d like to point out the thing that has me most unsettled about this film. Sociopolitical symbolism aside, the fact of the matter is that sites and programs like hellfireclub.com do exist. If they could think it up for a movie, someone else has thought it up for reality. Most likely, the women used for these videos have been kidnapped, tricked, or otherwise forced into becoming vessels - stripped of life, soul, and greater purpose - to be used for anonymous people’s violent, carnal, and torturous sexual pleasures. That fact, above all else implied by this film, absolutely terrifies me.
The movie, Demonlover, showcases power shifts, control and fantasy. The whole industry itself is about people’s fantasy and desire to control. For example when Diane was in Japan to take a look at the animation pornographies. There was two type of anime pornography shown, the present 2-dimensional one and the futuristic 3-dimensional one. They both showcase very different storylines, characters and power. In the 2-dimensional one, the two ninja were more submissive and weak whereas, the 3-dimensional one uses a more dominant woman that beats all the demons and devil. I guess this also shows the shift in people’s preferences and fantasies. People back then and now might prefer girls that were submissive to them. However, people these days crave power and dominance hence causing the shift in fantasies. The revolution of people’s fantasies and desires were indirectly shown through that scene of the movie.
Since the start of the movie, I couldn’t tell is Diane was going to be a submissive or dominant character. In the plane, she looked like an obedient employee that constantly does what she is told. Her hair was pinned to the sides and she keeps her head down. She looks powerless at that time. However, that began to change as soon as we see her in the office. She keeps her hair unpinned that made one of her eyes covered. Now, she gives off a more intimidating vibe. We now see that she's demanding and controlling. She wanted to take control of everything and frankly did not trust anyone (For example, when she scolded Elise and told her that she didn’t need her help with the files) to the extent where it caused a lot of people to dislike her. Also in the movie, I’ve noticed the director’s play on reflections. The first reflection of Diane was seen in the car, where she was crying at the back. This shows that despite the tough exterior, she has a soft interior. The reflection showed her true inner self. Then there was the reflection in the elevator after she visited Hervé’s room. We can see her rubbing her lipstick off and smirking as if it was her intention to seduce Hervé.
There was a lot of shaky camera movement in the movie, especially during distressed scenes. When Diane realize her house was broken into and during the scene when she drove off after, the camera starts being shaky with extra-diegetic music. The shaky camera movement was used as though to emphasize on the stress and worry that Diane was going through. It also gives us a more realistic perspective as if we were in the very same house searching around with her. The extra-diegetic music that was used when she drove off after finding out that her house was invaded was very messy and loud. It kind of blocks off your mind from thinking and analyzing any situation. That was probably how Diane felt at that time. She was left mind-boggled. Therefore, by adding that particular extra-diegetic music, the audience can feel the same thing.
At the end of the movie, there was a huge shift in power. Diane was dominant and had complete control at the start of the movie. She thought that she was the one observing and analyzing other people. However, in the end, she was the one that was being observed by Hervé, Elise and Karen. She was manipulated by Hervé during their dinner. He constantly told her how much control she has and how observant she was, but then he went on to burst her bubble by telling her that he was the one controlling her. The power then immediately shifted to Herve. Her power was also shifted to Elise because of blackmail. The scene where Diane was reporting to Elise and asking her if she needed something was the exact opposite of the earlier scene where Diane was lecturing Elise and rejected her help. This showcased more of the power shift from Diane to Elise.
Like many of my classmates mentioned in their posts as week, Demonlover was not an easy film to watch. Going with the theme of this class however, I do think it was a really interesting addition to the love/money theme. The more we are exposed to, the more these seemingly simple themes are expanded and stretched. For instance, in last weeks films we expanded money to power and capitalism. In Demonlover I think we expanded love to sex, lust, and the trust (or distrust) that accompany it. The film did an excellent job combining these themes in a terrifying, yet also undeniably true way and demonstrates the raw nature of capitalism. Capitalism in the sense that this free market is in essence driven by the concept of supply and demand; there is a supply and demand for almost anything and in reaction to this notion, a market for almost anything.
Bauman states "For most people, freedom of choice will remain an elusive phantom and an idle dream, unless fear of defeat is mitigated by an insurance policy issued in the name of the community, a policy they can trust and rely on in case of misfortune. As long as it remains a phantom, the pain of hopelessness will be topped by the humiliation of haplessness; the ability to cope with life challenges, tested daily, is after all that very workshop in which confidence in oneself is cast or melted." (pg. 65)
I know that the quote is a big one with a lot in it, but for the purpose of this blog post I think that it really goes with the underlying tone of the entire film. Like I mentioned previously, capitalism is a free market, that goes hand in hand with freedom of choice. We see this theme throughout the film. I'm going to try to focus on this in my writing because I don't trust myself to get too in depth into some of the other aspects of the film.
Diane seems to have a lot of choice in the beginning of the film. She chooses to work on behalf of a rival company. We know this isn't the first time either because she has a "usual" account. She makes all of these choices herself to make a profit. She seems to have firm control on her life: she works out, seemingly takes very good care of herself, and has a strong work ethic (even if she is a spy). In the beginning of the film she is always being described as cold, or as an ice-queen. She might not do everything we might agree with ethically but she is portrayed as a strong female. However, as soon as that power and control is taken away from her, when she receives the tape, she has an instant change in character. Going back to the quote, she becomes aware of this "phantom" of freedom of choice because she is being blackmailed. Diane becomes this "pain of helplessness.., [etc.]" personified. She loses all sense of power and the last scene, which was so sad and so powerful, she becomes an item that people can view and do whatever they want to with online. Her torture becomes background noise as a kid works on his homework, because he paid for it with his dad's credit card. This is the dark side of capitalism, the realization that supply and demand exists for not just porn, but something as sick as torture porn.
The question of choice seems an important one indeed, both in the film and with regard to capitalism, and the Bauman book has much to say about it, as your qt suggests. Consider avoiding editorializing your own comments and just saying what you have to say. That gives you a bit more space to elaborate on your insight, perhaps also by offering an example via close film analysis.
Like Kite said in his essay on "demonlover" in Jones' book, I can't really say that this is a film that I enjoyed, but one I was relatively ambivalent to. There's certainly some interesting topics to discuss. Tonight, I'm going to focus in on the abundance of digital images in the film.
Plenty of people have gotten around to discussing some of demonlover's disturbing content- torture, porn, etc. While we could get into why Assayas decided to make a film about the corporate mechanisms of the porn industry, I'm more interested in the mere presence of- or abundance of, at that- of the images in the movie.
Kite described "demonlover" as "a film of (jagged, frustrated) flow, that liquid Internet time of distracted attentions that gave rise to the metaphor of surfing the Web (150)." I was certainly frustrated watching the movie, not just because of the violent and pornographic elements, but because their constant presence made watching the "real" plot of the movie (business transactions, traveling, etc.) difficult to keep up with.
I appreciated the statement that Assayas made with the stark contrast in the film's opening scene. The passengers on the airplane were mostly asleep in front of the TV playing bright, violent video. It suggested a sort of desensitization on the part of the characters. It's worth noting that in the plot, the businessmen and women deal with this sort of content on a daily basis, as such they're less distracted by it. People have to be literally kidnapped to feel much of an effect.
As a side note, I thought the American businesswoman's shirt (guessing American due to her good English) when she first appeared in the film- that read "I heart gossip" was such an apparent way of showing society's addiction to online content that it was both funny and seriously concerning. The viewer can read the commonplace societal view of "gossip-" which I read as some of the seedier elements of the film- on a shirt.
I'd be willing to venture that the average viewer of "demonlover" is relatively desensitized to an amount of sex and violence, seeing how pervasive they both are in the media and online. In order to drive home his point of their negative effect on society, Assayas had to bring those digital images up front and center, occupying the entire screen and making the viewers watch them for several minutes by the film's conclusion.
Assayas intentional frustrated his viewers with "demonlover." It will certainly be fun when we can compare some of his other works to this film.
Take another look at your post. You start by telling your reader that you will focus on the digital images in the film--I assume by that you mean the images within the film. But then you don't seem to stay with this. There is the side note ,which doesn't have any bearing on what the ostensible focus of this post is, for example. And elsewhere you don't necessarily say much about the digital images and offer little analysis of their use, though your observation toward the end that the images occupy the entire screen at times is a good and interesting one that coud have been elaborated and connected to other examples as well as to an overall point about the film's use of and engagement with the digital realm.
Windows. It is interesting that this is the first video we watched after Petzold films who was notorious for using mirrors and reflective windows to represent dualism because in today’s film the director focused on windows through out the film, but not to represent dualism but rather something else. This film, while losing it’s way towards the second half, focusing on a major company attempting to do business with an American and Japanese porn company, this idea of pornography while very graphic and in your face in certain sections appears in more subtle areas as well, IE-the windows. When any of the characters, but more specifically Diane, are in a car we always see the camera shoot them from the outside of the car. Almost every single shot while she is driving we see it from an outsider’s perspective, almost like a voyeur. Now this idea of voyeurism is though out the movie, Diane is constantly feeling that she is being watched or followed as a result of what she did to Karen in the plane. Voyeurism is a theme/genre in pornography that involves watching others without their knowledge, even the final scene when Diane is locked up in the cell for Hellfire club that is an example of voyeurism. But what takes this from just an idea to a clear-cut intention is with Mssr. Assayas use of the windows from the outside view. What is also interesting is that the windows slightly blur the views of Diane or Elise in the car, perhaps this has something to do with the blurring of the female anatomy in the Japanese studio? I wasn’t quite sure what the reasoning for this blurring, if it was simply to keep the movie away from being NC-17/X or if that is just something the Japanese create on their own (it isn’t something I really want to investigate so I will simply assume it maybe could have a connection to the blurring of the windows) The idea of porn themes being present is also shown in the movie with the idea of dominant and submissive natures. In this film we see three very strong women Elaine, Diane, and Elise and they all exhibit this binary of submissive and dominant nature that ebbs and flows throughout the film especially with Diane. Now Diane starts this film by being so strong and creating that attack with Karen. Diane is a ruthless go-getter that doesn’t care who she steps on to be successful, a very dominant trait. However after the attack with Elaine she is starting to lose control and we can see this from the technical side of things too. The film begins to become disjointed, almost chaotic. The plot from the first half of the movie seems almost irrelevant by the time Elise and Diane are talking in the car together. This makes the film extremely hard to follow and you almost seem like you’re lost and confused. This is similar feeling that someone has when they are submissive; lost, confused, out of control, out of the loop. The narrative goes completely out of left field and leaves us with Diane a prisoner of the Hellfire club. All in all this movie, while slightly uncomfortable at times did what it was supposed to do, make us feel uncomfortable. It took the themes and ideas of the world of porn and made it blend fairly seamlessly into the world of artistic cinema. I look forward to the rest of the films we will be watching this week.
Jessica hit the nail on the head. After taking my mind off of the cruelty of what was actually happening and really diving into what was the purpose, it hit me that the movie was based around a torture video itself. In the first couple pages we read about how Assayas did not want to make movies that looked like movies. This movie is undoubtedly unlike anyone I have ever scene. It was confusing, layered, controlled, manipulated, yet free of security and as a viewer I never felt comfortable. Another thing that really just pushed the lack of trust over the edge was the camera constantly being behind something. Whether it was a window, bars, a computer, etc. The audience was constantly put in a position where they couldn't quite see everything, or things blurred together. The car scenes are prime examples of confusion and lack of awareness. Reading about him as a painter, this idea of camera work made more sense.
Jones says, "There is also a painterly side to Assayas' moviemaking, manifested in a lyricism of motion married to a tremendous fluency with color" (28). The slow dissolves, the layering of two sequences, accompanied with the quick cuts and hand held camera movement certainly emphasized the real life experience. The intensity that the characters brought played a huge role, but without the camera work and itself adding its own characteristics, this movie wouldn’t have had the same effect.
Joseph brings up that the movie isn't a romantic comedy, which is undeniably true. Although I have to state that the entire film is based around sexual attention and arousal. Every thing about it, I was unsure of which characters were attracted to whom and if they were actually having sex behind close doors or not. Even till the very end with the teenage boy looking on the Internet for porn, sex was a key factor and always seemed to be on everyone’s mind, sex and money. Assayas said while talking about movies, "they should be about your experience of life" (9). Focusing on the ideas of the course, this movie really plays into the real life quality of capitalism in the porn industry that I believe Assayas was going for. Subtle things like when the characters were introduced to the Anime features of porn, there was a line that said, we have to move to 3-D after a couple years or we will go out of business. There is a supply and demand that revolves around every one. Porn is essentially is the same thing, the Internet viewers are the supply and then the sites, porn stars, and tortured girls become the demand.
Speaking about girls and porn in the movie, my last thought has to be about the role of women. I felt extremely uncomfortable with the fact that it was so sexualized around women and how manipulated women were, even by other women. I was astonished to see the discrimination, mostly because I usually don’t catch it or can make up reasons why the female roles were used in a certain way. I just shake my head to the fact that it was completely homophobic in the fact that no men were ever used, except for in a rape scene. Andrew does make a valid point that maybe it isn’t homophobic as much as it is trying to point out the culture of our society and the violence against women. Still it was hard to watch.
In the context of this discussion it might be usefu to take a look at one of the pieces in the "Symposium" reading assignment in which the film is critiqued from a feminist point of view.
A couple of observations. One, note that the one quotation your are providing has already been cited at least twice by other students. Since you don't necessarily do much with this quotation it's really not an effective use of the reading. As well, try to proofread your oosts better. This one is a bit too rough. (& I'm saying this from the persepctive of someone who is also not a native speaker/writer, so I understand that some mistakes happen just as a result of this--& I'm sympathetic to this. Still, I think you can take care of some of this by just spending a bit more time reviewing your writing before posting. What i often do is read out aloud to myself what i have written because one's ear often picks up on things one's eyes don't.
What stood out to me in this film was the use of noise. In many scenes Diane and Herve walked through rooms crowded with yelling people, or they were at a bar with loud music playing in the background. They never react to the noise because they must used to it.
Assayas may be saying that in the world today so many people are used to the noise and volume of the world, but it isn't natural for us. Scenes where silence is used as a tool to convey uneasiness and discomfort can also be a comment on the world today. People can't stand to be alone in a room without noise. (the scenes where Herve and Diane were both watching porn).
In many scenes it wasn't just noise, but sounds of porn. Walking through the anime studio is a big example. This business setting for such a personal part of one's life seems like bizarre juxtaposition.
In the end, sound or lack of sound, comments on the society we live in today. In certain situations we tune noise out and pay no attention to it. Then when we are alone we cannot stand to sit in a quiet room and be left to our thoughts.
I noticed these repeated scenes of crowded rooms with yelling people you reference as well. In this sense Demonlover was a polar opposite of the Petzold films which makes it interesting that both of these directors have an admiration for each others' work. This film was full of close up shots with handheld cameras and jump cut scenes that were hard for the eye to keep up with.
Not only was the film visually overstimulating but the score was unsettling as well. There was always some sort of noise. And in most scenes there was an edgy industrial instrumental music.
Assayas used these visual and audio tactics to exemplify that even in a crowded room one can feel alone and even when alone no one is really isolated in this digital world we live in.
As mentioned in response to someone else's comments on the film's use of sound/music, note that one of the texts in the "Symposium" reading assignment discusses how Sonic Youth scored the film. You could have easily worked with this text more to develop your argument.
One of the things I found interesting in class that we talked about in class today was the topic of alienation from one’s own body. Assayas does a great job of demonstrating this in Demonlover. In many ways the characters in the film feel alienation from themselves. This is evident in the amount of times the main character Diane is drugged and left unconscious only to wake up and piece together her surroundings. She leads a double life working as a secret agent for both companies and by the end of the story we still really don’t have any idea who she is or what is her real identity. On a side note, Diane being unconscious happens an astonishing amount in the film.
The companies trying to cash in on the Japanese pornography sites focused on customers who want to alienate themselves from their own reality and live in a fictional world filled with fantasy creatures, 3D animated women and sex. Living in this fictional world comes at a price and I think that is another thing that Assayas portrays very well.
One big question raised in class was "Who is responsible for all the crime?" Demonlover is filled with all sorts of violence and forceful sex act but all of this is for one reason. To give the consumer what they want. The two companies in the film were buying up every domain name they could get their hands on and investing in the technology to produce the most realistic product for viewers. A lot of time and money was going in to making sure that the Japan Anime event was a success. Alliances were built and broken and it felt like no one in this money could trust the person sitting next to them. Even Diane’s assistant ended up working for the other team.
I would like to encourage you to force yourself to focus a bit more on one central point that you would then elaborate on with the help of some close film anaysis. For example, your point about the characters' alienation from their body is an interesting one and you could have put more anaytic pressure on it by investigating more cosely how the film renders this alienation sensible for us etc. providing a bit more sustained focus would make it unnecessary for you to offer side note observations etc.
**note: I had to go to work right after class and didn’t get to bed until 1:30a so that’s why this is being posted so late!
I think this film had a lot to say about our consciousness and how we’re always plugged into another reality. The opening scene on the plane shows people burning alive on the tv’s above the passengers’ dreaming heads this shot is then recreated or mirrored in the end with the firery car accident. I noticed the excessive use of violence and I believe it was Assayas’ aim for the audience to feel uncomfortable with the amount of screen time explicit violence gets in Demonlover.
The type of porn represented in the film is hate-filled, violence and torture driven, and is exclusively made up of women as the subjects. Earlier in the film, before the discovery of Hell Fire Club, Diane drinks a scotch and begins watching lesbian Asian porn but not pleasuring herself – no one seems to actually be masturbating or acting on the sexual images they see on screen – instead, Diane is captivated and watches intently and the camera reflects this in such extreme close ups. When Herve and Diane finally take out their sexual frustrations on each other, he gets too aggressive and rapes her. I saw this as Herve is a product of a porn obsessed culture, he’s used to watching the porn that makes it seem like if a woman is in distress or against her will, she will still enjoy sex. Diane becomes and object of beauty and a sex toy for Herve to use.
This film also has a lot to do with indulgences and vices. Everyone has their own vice and so many of them are scattered throughout the film. When the American’s come to visit, the woman asks, “Do you think it’s hard to get pot in Paris?” whether it’s pot, BDSM, drinking, smoking, fashion, or beauty, each character has their weaknesses and obsessions.
Diane is constantly referred to as a bitch and an “ice queen”. Herve says, “She’s cold, inhuman, but I respect her.” Although she has that presence at the beginning of the film, her role changes drastically as Diane becomes a slave for someone else’s pleasure in the end. This brings into question Diane’s agency as a feminist character – is she or isn’t she in control of everything she does as Herve once says at the dinner table.
In Kent Jones introductory essay, he mentions that "narrative information is imparted to us as if in passing,” and that “from scene to scene, image to image, action to action, we are plunged, often violently, into a new texture, mood, or state of being” (27). This was highly at play in Demonlover (2002). The violence is not only happening on the screen.
ReplyDeleteThrough handheld camera shots, tracking shots, and jump cuts, the camera is set in a relentless spiral of colors and images. It doesn’t allow for the camera to bring cohesiveness or trust. There is nothing or no one trustworthy. Just like the characters, the camera takes on a disorienting and relentless force that moves without regard for who can keep up.The story happens, but its progress is not tied to comprehension. It is not complete. It is just a fragment.
In this sense, the full movie acts as a strange and eerie re-creation of the torture videos. Just like the videos are a fiction and fragmentary view into someone’s misfortune, so the film is a look into a life where there is no introduction or conclusion, but just an observation of violent events and their effect on human bodies.
The movie is a futile attempt to understand a story, a life, and the “real” consequences through bringing awareness to what it is like to be disassociated. For example, by bringing attention to how the young boy at the end is a partial witness of the woman in his screen, but disassociated and oblivious to it, all at the same time, it denounces it.
Demonlover takes the torture videos, and prevents passivity. It takes it a step further by shaking the viewer to acknowledge not just their existence, but their making, and distribution. It takes the abstract into the concreteness of the “real” world. It disturbs the ability to simply sit and watch as some of the characters do.
There is constant inescapability from the assault of the senses—particularly through visual disorientation, temporal gaps, and auditory disturbances. It constantly blurs what is and what isn't real, and forces a separation from conformism by putting us face to face with…well, with the corporate demons that need to be denounced.
I’d like to draw on what you say about how the viewer views the film. You say, “Through handheld camera shots, tracking shots, and jump cuts, the camera is set in a relentless spiral of colors and images.” The intensity of the shots, in an of themselves, (regardless of the intensity of the content of the shots) produces very heightened emotions among viewers. These heightened emotions can be representative of the intensity of desire in Demonlover. We don’t see romantic desire so much in Demonlover, like we saw in many of Petzold’s films. Rather, we see a carnal desire, as well as a desperation of Demonlover’s characters to make corporate gains.
DeleteWe certainly see the connection between capitalism and desire in this film, whose content seems far from similar to any of Petzold’s work. However, we might venture to make parallels between this film by Olivier Assayas and Petzold’s Yella. In both films, we see how society has become bent on capitalist gains, and how capitalism can create a happiness (whether it is temporary or permanent/real happiness is certainly up to debate) that can replace a human’s desire for love. It is not to say that Yella and Demonlover are not very different from one another. Yella presents capitalism in a way we would all like to believe capitalism, business deals, and meetings operate, while Demonlover presents a much more crude view on these subjects. We have read in Kent Jones’s book that “for all the sex conducted, bartered, consumed, aborted in the course of the film, alienation from the body is the starting condition for its characters” (Jones 150). We can draw on what Jones says here, and see that the characters are alienated from their own bodies because they put their own lives and well being on the line just for the sake of capitalism. This is the major way in which the businesspeople in Demonlover differ so greatly from those in Yella. Demonlover’s characters are participating in high stakes business deals, which puts their human lives on the line, while the business deals in Yella at the very worst are only putting someone’s economic success on the line. This alienation from the body in Demonlover allows the characters to willingly dig themselves into deep inescapable holes.
I think your point on the absence of "romantic desire" and the presence of "carnal desire" was very well said. I certainly noticed that pattern as well and would like to expand on that part of your argument.
Delete"demonlover" is no romantic comedy. It isn't even close to "Dreileben," which had a somewhat charming love story. There is no passionate kissing or love scene with a track of beautiful orchestra music playing over it. Instead, the sexuality of the film is, at best, animalistic. For instance, when Diane and Herve finally have sex near the end of the film, they do so not as two individuals with a deep emotional bond between them, but as individuals with only a sexual, not a romantic, interest in each other. The result is a mechanical, rough copulating session, rather than a passionate, intimate love-making session.
This view is supported by the scene immediately before at the restaurant. Herve tells Diane, "I admire you." She responds, "You don't know me." That sets up the conversation between the two on "desire," doubt" and "trust." Herve admits that while he "desired" her, he had his "doubts" and did not think he could "trust" her. This conversation sets up a distinction between desire and trust and, thus implying a distinction between "romantic" desires (where trust is present) and "carnal" desires. Their "carnal" desire was strong enough that they chose to sleep together despite not trusting each other (no "romantic" desire), a poor choice for Herve.
This expression of love and sexuality is part of the overall emotional detachment of the characters. To quote the section of the assigned reading we read in class today, the characters "wear their bodies as they wear their faces - rigidly, as armour - since, in this world, to open oneself emotionally is to risk losing control of one's own avatar." They end up living out the "paradox of pornography: the wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out" (Jones, 150).
This is due to the requirements of capitalism, namely that individuals loosen "interhuman bonds." They must do this in order to survive the "vagaries of commodity-and-labour markets, which inspires and promotes division, not unity; it puts a premium on competitive attitudes, while degrading collaboration and team work to the rank of temporary stratagems that need to be suspended or terminated the moment their benefits have been used up" (Bauman, 2-3). The end result is a desire that mirrors the economic system, a ruthless, profit-driven desire that ebbs and flows with the "market." As the American businessman said regarding the Hell Fire Club, "It's supply and demand."
I like that you manage to work with two different texs as well as what had already been said by your peers.
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ReplyDeleteDemonlover (2004) is a very intriguing film. While it was hard to watch due to the content, Assayas is touching on a problematic aspect of society that is deeply integrated into everyday life. Compared to Petzold who explored the external world of capitalism, Assayas is diving into the internal infrastructure. Assayas brings the viewers into the world of adult entertainment and its operations, and as we discussed in class, it is arguably the most profitable industry in the world. Of course, the film exploits the side of the industry that “we watch, but do not understand”.
ReplyDeleteAssayas captures the quickness and abruptness of this industry with many cuts in the film. Compared to Petzold, one does not experience many long cuts, but this is done to an effect. One experiences an uneasiness of this fast-paced world, as the characters seem to not have a grounded life in their careers. For instance, Dianne is always traveling and the thing that she desires most, control, is never attainable for her. A quote from “symposium” in the “Touching the Void” article by Michael Joshua Rowin states, “Manga and anime porn function within cinematic quotation marks, like found footage, and the overall feel of Assayas’s film is one of detachment, not absorption” (Rowin). This feeling of detachment is the kind of tone throughout the film that resonates with the “pornos” shown and one can see how Dianne is beginning to be detached from herself, as she loses control of the industry. Also tying to the notion that the digital porn in the film is viewed through a computer screen. The viewers and porn actors (or cartoons) is separated through cyberspace, and to an extent, different realities.
Notably, the scene that pans to a typical Tokyo neighborhood, as Jean Pierre and Dianne’s limo is leaving a business meeting, illustrates this detachment. The viewer is exposed to the industry and its operations, as one sees artists painting depictions of monsters raping girls. The uncomfortable notion is indeed that this kind of operation is transpiring within the neighborhood—an internal part of society. Moreover, the most uncomfortable notion is when these kinds of operation is brought into one’s home (the deep integration), as depicted with the ending scene of a probably prepubescent boy gaining access to hellfireclub.com. Yet, one is still detached from all of this because one simply does not know that it is an integral part of life—especially the parent of that boy who is divulging in hellfireclub.com. The operation is something so bizarre that one does not think their neighbor or children could be capable of participating in.
This world of adult entertainment is inhabited by demons, monsters, sex, drugs, money, and corporate espionage. Again, looking back at Dianne’s quote, “Nobody sees anything. They look but don't understand”, the internal part of capitalism within adult entertainment is illustrated as such. Porn is just one aspect of contemporary society, and it resonates the fact that everything can be commoditized, as illustrated in the film even sex is just a commodity as the operator of hellfireclub.com expresses, “supply and demand”, for BDSM porn. A difficult, but true notion.
You make some good points in your post, Khoi. There's one more point I would like to add to your argument. That is the fact that adult entertainment industry is filled with demons at a molecular level. I didn't get that notion until the end, when the boy is studying with a DNA model while having the hellfireclub site up on his computer. This was where Assayas makes this statement.
DeleteB. Kite says in the book "Oliver Assays", "and I don't even want to touch that genetics book and DNA model, which sure look like a way for the movie to hedge even its own late-blooming moralism by ascribing the blame to...what, the human animal?" (Kent 153). I agree with that statement, but I think there was more to the DNA model at the end. It symbolizes that the movie has come full circle and the viewer has seen the nastiness behind this. The end of the circle is also the worst part about it, and that is that we can't fix it because it stems from our DNA.
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ReplyDeleteWhile it's easy to separate ourselves from the hectic hyper-sexual world of Demonlover, I have found that it's a film doesn't just reflect our own world, but a reflection that continues today in terms of media and sexualization. Even now, the role of women in pop culture remains a hot topic for debate, particularly in the video game genre, one that is still in it's cultural infancy, yet poised to become the center of popular culture, until the next big thing hits. From start to finish, Demonlover acknowledges the association between violence against women and culture, where it starts and whom it affects.
DeleteWhile certainly not implicit, the scenes taking place in the Japanese animation studio clearly depict a genre of animation where violence is synonymous with sex. The hypersexual characters fight parallel-dimension demons and whatnot, then are punished for the entertainment of the viewer. In a strange way, Diane's story could almost serve as a stand in for that anime, as she takes on a fantasy role (the cat burglar scene), then over the course of the film she is then punished in increasingly erotic ways, including the fight between Diane and Elaine (which was shot from promiscuous angles and their moaning was was meant to mimic that of the porn scene earlier in the film), Hervé's rape scenes and finally Diane's capture and torture in the Hell Fire Club.
Assayas is clearly creating an association between pornography culture (and perhaps the larger pop culture, if Elise's scene playing a video game intercut with Diane's sexual violation is intentional) and violence against women. However, it's important to understand that in the end of the film, Assayas answers the question of who actually supports this violence. In the last scene, a young kid is seen ordering a torture sequence from the Hell Fire Club, staging it as a scene from an X-Men comic (once again, an association with real world violence to pop-culture characters). This kid isn't given any character traits aside from his fondness of comic books and his room, wall to wall in pop culture memorabilia. This shows that this kid isn't just a character, a lone supporter of the Hell Fire Club. He represents consumer culture as a whole, which is to blame for the exploitative pornography industry. In itself, Elaine's buisiness partner mentions that the website is created solely to cater to the sadomasochistic desires of the populace. Keith Jones comments on this stating "Demonlover saves it's nearest candidate for a Mabuse placeholder for the end: it's-any-kid-with-a-credit-card. The blank room is now explicitly the place of torture,and it can be located anywhere so long as it maintains it's web address." (Jones 148)
One of the difficult elements of criticizing the explotative violence against women is that any depiction only feeds the sadomasochistic culture. However, the gaze Diane gives the kid (and the audience of the film) is a reminder that we too are to blame for these transgressions. Pop culture isn't just mindless entertainment, it's a mirror that reacts to us, changing to reflect our desires as we see fit, bot the good but ESPECIALLY the bad.
If the film indeed ends with a certain moralism--it's we who are culpable--it might be interesting to compare this to Michael Haneke's two versions of his movie Funny Games. FG quite explicitly assaults the viewer with the goal to teach us. Such a move, of course, does beg the question of the film's own role, as you point out w/r/t Demonlover.
Delete“Haneke said the people who walked out of Funny Games “didn’t need it,” implying it was a necessary medicinal corrective for those who stayed, but the only fans of the movie I’ve encountered are youngish males who pride themselves on their ability to tolerate extreme depictions of violence” (153). This longer sentence can be summed up to say that people choose to desensitize themselves to violence. Oivier Assayas proves this by using the violent website throughout the film, while not attaching too much meaning to it at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThe first time the audience hears about it is during the business meeting with the Americans. Volf bring up the subject, not out of a personal sense of moral justification, but because the business could have problems with the law if the allegations were true. As an audience we don’t think too much about the situation because the focus is on Diane and her part in the plot. The American even describes it in such a way that it seems like a normal business that just so happens to be run by illegal traffickers.
No one in the entire film shows any moral responsibility to shut down this website. When Diane gets taken to the house where this website if based from and we see her through the screen on the teenager’s laptop it finally underscores the desensitization that we had during the entire film. These girls held no meaning, nor did they have any sort of history, and only when the character we had been following for two hours is included in this slavery is there any remorse for the situation.
Assayas uses this film to comment on the fact that, globaly, no one stops to really question how this has come about, and how even through porn which some people think is “okay” does the reaction cause brutal consequences. His film isn’t meant to be enjoyed as entertainment, it is supposed to make the viewers think along the lines of what society is consuming as entertainment and how it can seriously harm people. The shock of this realization is made even more evident by Assayas’s use of the teenager at the end. Assayas shows how this industry is distributed enough to even is on a young person’s computer. Like the “youngish males” who watch the film, the teenager’s actions signifies a right of passage in today’s society that is so skewed from what is appropriate. This film brings to light the repercussions of desires of humans.
That the "girls" (as you call them) don't seem to have any history is an interesting observation that you coild have fleshed out more. How does the film establish this lack of history and to what end?
DeleteThroughout Demonlover, the car scenes were some of the most intense and unsafe scenes. Assayas used a lot of jump cuts and other video shooting techniques to give us this feeling of being unsafe. What he never really did was put us in the car, like Petzold did.
ReplyDeleteIn the majority of Petzold's films, the camera was placed behind the people in the car. This gave the viewer the feeling of being in the back seat, or right in the mix of the action. Throughout Petzold's films, for the most part, we were with the characters each step of their journey. But in Demonlover, that is not the case.
We weren't in the car with the characters. We were always outside looking into the car. Even when we were in the car, we would have strange viewpoints that wouldn't give the feeling that we were there.The camera was jostled, in a sense we were disoriented, so we didn't know where we were going. This helped strike fear into these scenes. For the story Assayas was trying to tell, this was the right approach to shooting these scenes.
According to B. Kite, "Demonlover isn't a machine film, it's a film of (jagged, frustrated) flow, that liquid Internet time of distracted attentions that gave rise to the metaphor of surfing the Web." (Kent 150). This really is demonstrated well in the filming of the car scenes. Surfing the Web, we go from one place to the next just like a car gets us from point A to point B. There's also the chance that one wrong move in the car, and you could be in a rollover accident. Just like one wrong move on the Internet and you could be in all different sorts of trouble.
Had Assayas taken what Petzold did in his car scenes, I don't think the film would've had the same feeling. In filming, like we discussed in class today, the director has to set the scene. The way a director does this should contribute to how the director wants his/her audience to feel. Also B. Kite mentions that Assayas knows his audience better than another director, and this film shows it.
I like your comparative insight regarding how the two directors shoot car scenes differently, as well as what the effect of that difference is.
DeleteThis is my second time watching Demonlover. The first time, i was very confused and disturbed and couldn't actually put all the parts together do form a whole. I can't exactly do that now, but theres a quote by Assayas in a dvd extra, in which he describes demonlover as "more a poetic film than a theoretical film." I took this to mean that all the espionage and extremely descriptive business meetings, are not as important as the Diane's poetic journey to the deepest darkest circle of the capitalist Hell.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of class, Marco asked some great questions that i kept thinking about through the film. The first question he asked was what exactly makes capitalism so attractive? The movie focuses on a group of corporate elites, who, because of competition and profit, do some pretty destructive things to each other and to others. If the outcomes of a such a system are death and slavery and sexual exploitation, why is the system still there? To answer this question, i think we need to look at another question Marco posed, namely, how natural is capitalism? The globalized system is so big and sprawling and complex that it seems inhuman, robotic, and yet, it is humans who are the building blocks of the system. But what motivates the humans? Desire. Unlike with other economic systems such as communism, which, in theory, attempts to foster duty, social responsibility and communal values on its population, capitalism works on an individual's most private lusts, tastes, pleasures. I think the main reason demonlover has so much pornography and sexual violence is to remind that although the majority of dialogue is global executive business jargon and almost nothing personal is ever learned about the inner lives of the main characters, that they are still human, and deep down just want to have sex and destroy things. But now here is my question. Is capitalism so destructive and erotic because humans are? Or has the current brand of globalized capitalism made the characters as violent and erotic as they are shown to be.
sidenote: i noticed in Petzhold's films, characters were always traveling horizontally. Trains, cars, etc. I never see any characters fly a plain in a Petzhold film (but i haven't seen em all) In demonlover though, i noticed quite a lot of vertical movement and scenes in high elevation. The movie begins in a plane, up in the air. Characters are seen going up and down elevators quite often. There are a few shots of characters looking out from windows out into the big sprawling city. There is the scene where Elise drives Diane down, down, down under a parking garage. Towards the end of the film, there are shots from a helicopters perspective and also characters traveling in a helicopter. As Diane is put into a sex dungeon towards the end of the film, i think its safe to say that she is underground (underneath a nice mansion?). I haven't quite formed an opinion on these elevational shifts, but i think there is something to them.
Demonlover was a break-neck pace story of the globalization of capitalism and the dog eat dog nature of corporate business practice. This is evident from the first scene which depicts Diane scheming the fall of her superior to the finale where she is a prisoner to Hellfire Club. This exemplifies to me that no matter how good, bad, moral, or immoral one's decisions are the risks may never be worth the reward. One can take it a step further and make the case that an ultimate payoff doesn't exist at all in the corporate business world because of the nature of capitalism.
ReplyDeleteAnother obvious theme throughout the film was the desensitization of sex and violence. Aside from the gratuitous scenes, the general style of the camera work and edgy score highlighted this as well. The most personal, vulnerable scenes seemed to be filmed with handhelds. They were also shot very close up which gave the scenes a feeling that personal privacy is relative. This camera style and film direction accentuated the story and characters perfectly.
Ok, the basic observations are solid but note that you don't develop either through somewhat sustained argumentation, and note as well that the two ideas don't really link up with each other (at least not in the way you present them).
DeleteI found it strange somehow empathizing for Diane’s character after the blackmail, deceit, and even murder she commits throughout this film. But somehow, after all of this, a piece of me wanted her succeed, not financially, but emotionally. Diane is disconnected and certainly confused, one point at dinner even saying “I’m not in control of anything”. Demonlover raises a basic question: how much control over our lives can digital images (or the virtual world) have? I think after of the scene displaying that “Any kid with a credit card” can control what happens to Diane, Demonlover seems to suggest that the virtual world has a great deal of control.
ReplyDeleteIt’s this notion of disconnection that I can relate with in Diane’s character. I felt sorry for her at times. I walk up a sidewalk and watch nearly zombie-like people truly hypnotized by what they can access on a cell phone. Sure, there are many aspects of how we are a disconnected society, but Diane’s major separation seemed to be surrounded by her lack of moral values about the world. There was no point she showed regret for the human suffering she and her colleagues caused. It was Diane who became a physical victim by the very thing that she financially profited from.
I believe that she only said "I'm not in control of anything" was because by then she already lost a large amount of control. Her control over things was immediately lost when she was blackmailed by Karen. She used to have a say in things and had a huge control on Volf Corporation and Mangatronics but after the blackmail, she lost both.
DeleteIt might have appeared that Diane was in control, and the narrative gave this sense early in the film to develop the plot, but as the story unfolded we found out that Herve and Elise had more influence and power over not only Diane but Volf Corporation and Hellfire Club. This reinforces Jason's point that as diabolical as Diane was she never really was in control. I think the perception that Diane was the puppet master was nothing more than a mirage.
DeleteRemember that some close film analysis IS desirable as a means to substantiate content or interpretative observations. Work more with the film and think about its "how" in relation to its "what" a bit more.
DeleteJones quotes Assayas in his book, "'Ultimately, in one way or another, you have to go on the set and create chaos... So that people lose their reference points and just use their brains, and don't just go through the motions. Ultimately that's what movies are about. Because they don't need you to make the film. They need you to create confusion'" (34). Assayas succeeds in doing this in Demonlover to an exponential degree. As many others have pointed out above, Assayas creates confusion in this movie through jump cuts, disorienting shots, and a constant relocation of characters, all of which gives the viewer a feeling of disconnection. This is especially relevant during the last 20 or so minutes of the film, from the rape scenes to the end.
ReplyDeleteThe rape scenes culminate in Diane shooting Hervé, then responding to this by acting scared/alarmed as though the action of shooting him took her by surprise. Next, we see a helicopter flying over a picturesque canyon- different from any landscape we've seen in previous shots due to its lack of people and it's ranging height. Then, Diane is drugged, then she escapes, then there's a car chase, then there's a car crash, then there are bones sticking out of one of the pursuers' arms, then a young American boy is stealing his father's credit card and subscribing to Hell Fire Club, then he's the one setting up Diane's torture.
I purposely wrote that as a long run-on sentence because that's how the pace of the last 20 minutes feels. We rarely get the satisfaction of a period. We rarely get our footing/begin to comprehend what is really happening in a scene before it moves on.
Assays uses these last 20 minutes to challenge the viewer. It's as though he's asking "What's wrong here? Aren't sex scenes, murder, explosions, and torture the reason you go to the movies? Don't you want information as quickly as possible?" Assayas cleverly makes us frown upon our own societal expectations of film, even if only subconsciously.
From the beginning of the movie, where there are women in the background dancing, as Andrew said previously, Demonlover shows the perception of how women are portrayed in the media today. Today, the media portrays women in an environment where women will never be satisfied with how they look and feel. In Demonlover, Herve admits as much on a date with Diane later in the film. Herve tries to figure out who Diane is as she claims “no one sees anything ever.” During this scene, I assumed that Diane was trying to play hard to get, even though she had been blackmailed and lost almost all of her control. She loses more of her control when Herve rapes her even though she ends up killing him. In my opinion, this film is all about control and power. Diane is shown as weak in the end of the film, when she looks up helplessly from the computer screen.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I found the music in this film interesting. The music in Demonlover was upbeat and a lot different than the music in Petzold’s films. Petzold used classical music whereas Assaysas uses faster music like techno. In one scene particular, Assaysas uses an interesting techno sound while Diane is being followed by another car. As the music goes faster and faster the scene becomes more thrilling because you expect someone to pop up and scare Diane while she is smoking a cigarette. Even though both directors used different genres of music, it still left a thrilling vibe to the films.
I like your interpretation on how the movie shows how women was being portrayed in the media. I would like to add that the movie also shows how women are in the working world. Higher rank women were called inhuman, weak and demanding just because they worked hard and gives tough love. This was rarely the case when it comes to men.This was clearly shown in the movie when Diane was called a bitch by Elise and inhuman by Herve.
DeleteHowever, also in the movie, I noticed that most of the blackmails and fights were among women themselves. For example, Diane fighting with Elaine, Elise pointing a gun at Diane, and Karen blackmailing Diane. It was all among women as if they are trying to say that women have to step on other women to succeed and that competing with men was out of the question.
Note that your two paragraphs don't really come together. Note also that one of the possible readings--in the "symposium" reading--discusses in some detail the film's use of music. you could have productively worked with the reading on how Sonic Youth scored the film to develop your own argument and view about the film's content etc.
DeleteMy comment was meant to address Emily
DeleteI would like to preface my response to this film with two brief notes. The type of pornography shown in Demonlover was not, in fact, BDSM, but torture porn. By contemporary definitions, BDSM (which requires consent from all involved parties, safe practice of infliction of pain, and strict, clear rules on boundaries) is an entirely different genre that has absolutely nothing to do with the rape, kidnapping, abuse, and reckless violence depicted in both the Japanese pornography and the hellfireclub website. What was shown in this film was straight up torture porn and should not be labeled as or confused with anything other than that. I’d also like to point out that this film most definitely needed a seizure warning in the opening credits. I don’t suffer from epilepsy myself, but there were several times throughout the film in which the overload of visual and auditory information was enough to make me nauseous and lightheaded - while this was only an annoyance for me, it could be a serious problem for someone with a medical condition. The lack of recognition for the need of such a warning was sloppy on the part of the filmmakers and DVD distributors. As someone currently studying and training to be in the industry, I have learned to have very little patience for basic mistakes and oversights such as this.
ReplyDeleteGiven the fact that I’m still feeling the effects of the deeply disturbing content and implications of the story that Demonlover tells, I will keep this blog post to a few brief observations. Just the thought of the last five minutes of the film makes me feel physically ill. I will say this: I believe that the messages hidden within the creepy crawly, rushed and unfocused scenes of Demonlover are important. However, I did not enjoy the way in which they were presented and I do not think that having an important message automatically makes a film good. Well made? Effective? Sure, Demonlover is both of these things. But good? Worthwhile? I’m on the fence.
“Karen, the carrier of the briefcase, who was drugged and locked in a car trunk for three days, compares the experience to rape. Perhaps it is so in a corporate sense as well.” (Kite, 149) This is one of the things that really stuck with me from this film - we have become so connected to and dependant upon our careers that when part of our job has been violated, we feel as though our very beings have been violated as well. Rape is one of the most traumatic things a human being can experience. The fact that Karen feels as though she has been raped after having the files forcibly stolen from her speaks volumes about the mental and emotional stock we place in what we do for a living.
In addition to this, Diane’s dedication to her work as a double agent astounded me. She was willing to kill another human being in cold blood over a deal for animated porn. That’s what her life amounted to: slaughtering another to ensure that one group of people got to distribute drawn characters being raped instead of a slightly different group of people. But that’s not what it was about to her, was it? It was about money. Who was paying her. Who was assuring she’d get ahead. We’ve become so focused upon the result of what we do that we ignore the content.
If we let it, the value of money will devalue everything else we have - love, ethics, life purpose, and even ourselves.
As a closing note, I’d like to point out the thing that has me most unsettled about this film. Sociopolitical symbolism aside, the fact of the matter is that sites and programs like hellfireclub.com do exist. If they could think it up for a movie, someone else has thought it up for reality. Most likely, the women used for these videos have been kidnapped, tricked, or otherwise forced into becoming vessels - stripped of life, soul, and greater purpose - to be used for anonymous people’s violent, carnal, and torturous sexual pleasures. That fact, above all else implied by this film, absolutely terrifies me.
The movie, Demonlover, showcases power shifts, control and fantasy. The whole industry itself is about people’s fantasy and desire to control. For example when Diane was in Japan to take a look at the animation pornographies. There was two type of anime pornography shown, the present 2-dimensional one and the futuristic 3-dimensional one. They both showcase very different storylines, characters and power. In the 2-dimensional one, the two ninja were more submissive and weak whereas, the 3-dimensional one uses a more dominant woman that beats all the demons and devil. I guess this also shows the shift in people’s preferences and fantasies. People back then and now might prefer girls that were submissive to them. However, people these days crave power and dominance hence causing the shift in fantasies. The revolution of people’s fantasies and desires were indirectly shown through that scene of the movie.
ReplyDeleteSince the start of the movie, I couldn’t tell is Diane was going to be a submissive or dominant character. In the plane, she looked like an obedient employee that constantly does what she is told. Her hair was pinned to the sides and she keeps her head down. She looks powerless at that time. However, that began to change as soon as we see her in the office. She keeps her hair unpinned that made one of her eyes covered. Now, she gives off a more intimidating vibe. We now see that she's demanding and controlling. She wanted to take control of everything and frankly did not trust anyone (For example, when she scolded Elise and told her that she didn’t need her help with the files) to the extent where it caused a lot of people to dislike her. Also in the movie, I’ve noticed the director’s play on reflections. The first reflection of Diane was seen in the car, where she was crying at the back. This shows that despite the tough exterior, she has a soft interior. The reflection showed her true inner self. Then there was the reflection in the elevator after she visited Hervé’s room. We can see her rubbing her lipstick off and smirking as if it was her intention to seduce Hervé.
There was a lot of shaky camera movement in the movie, especially during distressed scenes. When Diane realize her house was broken into and during the scene when she drove off after, the camera starts being shaky with extra-diegetic music. The shaky camera movement was used as though to emphasize on the stress and worry that Diane was going through. It also gives us a more realistic perspective as if we were in the very same house searching around with her. The extra-diegetic music that was used when she drove off after finding out that her house was invaded was very messy and loud. It kind of blocks off your mind from thinking and analyzing any situation. That was probably how Diane felt at that time. She was left mind-boggled. Therefore, by adding that particular extra-diegetic music, the audience can feel the same thing.
At the end of the movie, there was a huge shift in power. Diane was dominant and had complete control at the start of the movie. She thought that she was the one observing and analyzing other people. However, in the end, she was the one that was being observed by Hervé, Elise and Karen. She was manipulated by Hervé during their dinner. He constantly told her how much control she has and how observant she was, but then he went on to burst her bubble by telling her that he was the one controlling her. The power then immediately shifted to Herve. Her power was also shifted to Elise because of blackmail. The scene where Diane was reporting to Elise and asking her if she needed something was the exact opposite of the earlier scene where Diane was lecturing Elise and rejected her help. This showcased more of the power shift from Diane to Elise.
Like many of my classmates mentioned in their posts as week, Demonlover was not an easy film to watch. Going with the theme of this class however, I do think it was a really interesting addition to the love/money theme. The more we are exposed to, the more these seemingly simple themes are expanded and stretched. For instance, in last weeks films we expanded money to power and capitalism. In Demonlover I think we expanded love to sex, lust, and the trust (or distrust) that accompany it. The film did an excellent job combining these themes in a terrifying, yet also undeniably true way and demonstrates the raw nature of capitalism. Capitalism in the sense that this free market is in essence driven by the concept of supply and demand; there is a supply and demand for almost anything and in reaction to this notion, a market for almost anything.
ReplyDeleteBauman states "For most people, freedom of choice will remain an elusive phantom and an idle dream, unless fear of defeat is mitigated by an insurance policy issued in the name of the community, a policy they can trust and rely on in case of misfortune. As long as it remains a phantom, the pain of hopelessness will be topped by the humiliation of haplessness; the ability to cope with life challenges, tested daily, is after all that very workshop in which confidence in oneself is cast or melted." (pg. 65)
I know that the quote is a big one with a lot in it, but for the purpose of this blog post I think that it really goes with the underlying tone of the entire film. Like I mentioned previously, capitalism is a free market, that goes hand in hand with freedom of choice. We see this theme throughout the film. I'm going to try to focus on this in my writing because I don't trust myself to get too in depth into some of the other aspects of the film.
Diane seems to have a lot of choice in the beginning of the film. She chooses to work on behalf of a rival company. We know this isn't the first time either because she has a "usual" account. She makes all of these choices herself to make a profit. She seems to have firm control on her life: she works out, seemingly takes very good care of herself, and has a strong work ethic (even if she is a spy). In the beginning of the film she is always being described as cold, or as an ice-queen. She might not do everything we might agree with ethically but she is portrayed as a strong female. However, as soon as that power and control is taken away from her, when she receives the tape, she has an instant change in character. Going back to the quote, she becomes aware of this "phantom" of freedom of choice because she is being blackmailed. Diane becomes this "pain of helplessness.., [etc.]" personified. She loses all sense of power and the last scene, which was so sad and so powerful, she becomes an item that people can view and do whatever they want to with online. Her torture becomes background noise as a kid works on his homework, because he paid for it with his dad's credit card. This is the dark side of capitalism, the realization that supply and demand exists for not just porn, but something as sick as torture porn.
The question of choice seems an important one indeed, both in the film and with regard to capitalism, and the Bauman book has much to say about it, as your qt suggests. Consider avoiding editorializing your own comments and just saying what you have to say. That gives you a bit more space to elaborate on your insight, perhaps also by offering an example via close film analysis.
DeleteLike Kite said in his essay on "demonlover" in Jones' book, I can't really say that this is a film that I enjoyed, but one I was relatively ambivalent to. There's certainly some interesting topics to discuss. Tonight, I'm going to focus in on the abundance of digital images in the film.
ReplyDeletePlenty of people have gotten around to discussing some of demonlover's disturbing content- torture, porn, etc. While we could get into why Assayas decided to make a film about the corporate mechanisms of the porn industry, I'm more interested in the mere presence of- or abundance of, at that- of the images in the movie.
Kite described "demonlover" as "a film of (jagged, frustrated) flow, that liquid Internet time of distracted attentions that gave rise to the metaphor of surfing the Web (150)." I was certainly frustrated watching the movie, not just because of the violent and pornographic elements, but because their constant presence made watching the "real" plot of the movie (business transactions, traveling, etc.) difficult to keep up with.
I appreciated the statement that Assayas made with the stark contrast in the film's opening scene. The passengers on the airplane were mostly asleep in front of the TV playing bright, violent video. It suggested a sort of desensitization on the part of the characters. It's worth noting that in the plot, the businessmen and women deal with this sort of content on a daily basis, as such they're less distracted by it. People have to be literally kidnapped to feel much of an effect.
As a side note, I thought the American businesswoman's shirt (guessing American due to her good English) when she first appeared in the film- that read "I heart gossip" was such an apparent way of showing society's addiction to online content that it was both funny and seriously concerning. The viewer can read the commonplace societal view of "gossip-" which I read as some of the seedier elements of the film- on a shirt.
I'd be willing to venture that the average viewer of "demonlover" is relatively desensitized to an amount of sex and violence, seeing how pervasive they both are in the media and online. In order to drive home his point of their negative effect on society, Assayas had to bring those digital images up front and center, occupying the entire screen and making the viewers watch them for several minutes by the film's conclusion.
Assayas intentional frustrated his viewers with "demonlover." It will certainly be fun when we can compare some of his other works to this film.
Take another look at your post. You start by telling your reader that you will focus on the digital images in the film--I assume by that you mean the images within the film. But then you don't seem to stay with this. There is the side note ,which doesn't have any bearing on what the ostensible focus of this post is, for example. And elsewhere you don't necessarily say much about the digital images and offer little analysis of their use, though your observation toward the end that the images occupy the entire screen at times is a good and interesting one that coud have been elaborated and connected to other examples as well as to an overall point about the film's use of and engagement with the digital realm.
DeleteWindows. It is interesting that this is the first video we watched after Petzold films who was notorious for using mirrors and reflective windows to represent dualism because in today’s film the director focused on windows through out the film, but not to represent dualism but rather something else. This film, while losing it’s way towards the second half, focusing on a major company attempting to do business with an American and Japanese porn company, this idea of pornography while very graphic and in your face in certain sections appears in more subtle areas as well, IE-the windows. When any of the characters, but more specifically Diane, are in a car we always see the camera shoot them from the outside of the car. Almost every single shot while she is driving we see it from an outsider’s perspective, almost like a voyeur. Now this idea of voyeurism is though out the movie, Diane is constantly feeling that she is being watched or followed as a result of what she did to Karen in the plane. Voyeurism is a theme/genre in pornography that involves watching others without their knowledge, even the final scene when Diane is locked up in the cell for Hellfire club that is an example of voyeurism. But what takes this from just an idea to a clear-cut intention is with Mssr. Assayas use of the windows from the outside view. What is also interesting is that the windows slightly blur the views of Diane or Elise in the car, perhaps this has something to do with the blurring of the female anatomy in the Japanese studio? I wasn’t quite sure what the reasoning for this blurring, if it was simply to keep the movie away from being NC-17/X or if that is just something the Japanese create on their own (it isn’t something I really want to investigate so I will simply assume it maybe could have a connection to the blurring of the windows)
ReplyDeleteThe idea of porn themes being present is also shown in the movie with the idea of dominant and submissive natures. In this film we see three very strong women Elaine, Diane, and Elise and they all exhibit this binary of submissive and dominant nature that ebbs and flows throughout the film especially with Diane. Now Diane starts this film by being so strong and creating that attack with Karen. Diane is a ruthless go-getter that doesn’t care who she steps on to be successful, a very dominant trait. However after the attack with Elaine she is starting to lose control and we can see this from the technical side of things too. The film begins to become disjointed, almost chaotic. The plot from the first half of the movie seems almost irrelevant by the time Elise and Diane are talking in the car together. This makes the film extremely hard to follow and you almost seem like you’re lost and confused. This is similar feeling that someone has when they are submissive; lost, confused, out of control, out of the loop. The narrative goes completely out of left field and leaves us with Diane a prisoner of the Hellfire club. All in all this movie, while slightly uncomfortable at times did what it was supposed to do, make us feel uncomfortable. It took the themes and ideas of the world of porn and made it blend fairly seamlessly into the world of artistic cinema. I look forward to the rest of the films we will be watching this week.
Jessica hit the nail on the head. After taking my mind off of the cruelty of what was actually happening and really diving into what was the purpose, it hit me that the movie was based around a torture video itself. In the first couple pages we read about how Assayas did not want to make movies that looked like movies. This movie is undoubtedly unlike anyone I have ever scene. It was confusing, layered, controlled, manipulated, yet free of security and as a viewer I never felt comfortable. Another thing that really just pushed the lack of trust over the edge was the camera constantly being behind something. Whether it was a window, bars, a computer, etc. The audience was constantly put in a position where they couldn't quite see everything, or things blurred together. The car scenes are prime examples of confusion and lack of awareness. Reading about him as a painter, this idea of camera work made more sense.
ReplyDeleteJones says, "There is also a painterly side to Assayas' moviemaking, manifested in a lyricism of motion married to a tremendous fluency with color" (28). The slow dissolves, the layering of two sequences, accompanied with the quick cuts and hand held camera movement certainly emphasized the real life experience. The intensity that the characters brought played a huge role, but without the camera work and itself adding its own characteristics, this movie wouldn’t have had the same effect.
Joseph brings up that the movie isn't a romantic comedy, which is undeniably true. Although I have to state that the entire film is based around sexual attention and arousal. Every thing about it, I was unsure of which characters were attracted to whom and if they were actually having sex behind close doors or not. Even till the very end with the teenage boy looking on the Internet for porn, sex was a key factor and always seemed to be on everyone’s mind, sex and money. Assayas said while talking about movies, "they should be about your experience of life" (9). Focusing on the ideas of the course, this movie really plays into the real life quality of capitalism in the porn industry that I believe Assayas was going for. Subtle things like when the characters were introduced to the Anime features of porn, there was a line that said, we have to move to 3-D after a couple years or we will go out of business. There is a supply and demand that revolves around every one. Porn is essentially is the same thing, the Internet viewers are the supply and then the sites, porn stars, and tortured girls become the demand.
Speaking about girls and porn in the movie, my last thought has to be about the role of women. I felt extremely uncomfortable with the fact that it was so sexualized around women and how manipulated women were, even by other women. I was astonished to see the discrimination, mostly because I usually don’t catch it or can make up reasons why the female roles were used in a certain way. I just shake my head to the fact that it was completely homophobic in the fact that no men were ever used, except for in a rape scene. Andrew does make a valid point that maybe it isn’t homophobic as much as it is trying to point out the culture of our society and the violence against women. Still it was hard to watch.
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DeleteIn the context of this discussion it might be usefu to take a look at one of the pieces in the "Symposium" reading assignment in which the film is critiqued from a feminist point of view.
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ReplyDeleteA couple of observations. One, note that the one quotation your are providing has already been cited at least twice by other students. Since you don't necessarily do much with this quotation it's really not an effective use of the reading. As well, try to proofread your oosts better. This one is a bit too rough. (& I'm saying this from the persepctive of someone who is also not a native speaker/writer, so I understand that some mistakes happen just as a result of this--& I'm sympathetic to this. Still, I think you can take care of some of this by just spending a bit more time reviewing your writing before posting. What i often do is read out aloud to myself what i have written because one's ear often picks up on things one's eyes don't.
DeleteWhat stood out to me in this film was the use of noise. In many scenes Diane and Herve walked through rooms crowded with yelling people, or they were at a bar with loud music playing in the background. They never react to the noise because they must used to it.
ReplyDeleteAssayas may be saying that in the world today so many people are used to the noise and volume of the world, but it isn't natural for us. Scenes where silence is used as a tool to convey uneasiness and discomfort can also be a comment on the world today. People can't stand to be alone in a room without noise. (the scenes where Herve and Diane were both watching porn).
In many scenes it wasn't just noise, but sounds of porn. Walking through the anime studio is a big example. This business setting for such a personal part of one's life seems like bizarre juxtaposition.
In the end, sound or lack of sound, comments on the society we live in today. In certain situations we tune noise out and pay no attention to it. Then when we are alone we cannot stand to sit in a quiet room and be left to our thoughts.
I noticed these repeated scenes of crowded rooms with yelling people you reference as well. In this sense Demonlover was a polar opposite of the Petzold films which makes it interesting that both of these directors have an admiration for each others' work. This film was full of close up shots with handheld cameras and jump cut scenes that were hard for the eye to keep up with.
DeleteNot only was the film visually overstimulating but the score was unsettling as well. There was always some sort of noise. And in most scenes there was an edgy industrial instrumental music.
Assayas used these visual and audio tactics to exemplify that even in a crowded room one can feel alone and even when alone no one is really isolated in this digital world we live in.
As mentioned in response to someone else's comments on the film's use of sound/music, note that one of the texts in the "Symposium" reading assignment discusses how Sonic Youth scored the film. You could have easily worked with this text more to develop your argument.
DeleteOne of the things I found interesting in class that we talked about in class today was the topic of alienation from one’s own body. Assayas does a great job of demonstrating this in Demonlover. In many ways the characters in the film feel alienation from themselves. This is evident in the amount of times the main character Diane is drugged and left unconscious only to wake up and piece together her surroundings. She leads a double life working as a secret agent for both companies and by the end of the story we still really don’t have any idea who she is or what is her real identity. On a side note, Diane being unconscious happens an astonishing amount in the film.
ReplyDeleteThe companies trying to cash in on the Japanese pornography sites focused on customers who want to alienate themselves from their own reality and live in a fictional world filled with fantasy creatures, 3D animated women and sex. Living in this fictional world comes at a price and I think that is another thing that Assayas portrays very well.
One big question raised in class was "Who is responsible for all the crime?" Demonlover is filled with all sorts of violence and forceful sex act but all of this is for one reason. To give the consumer what they want. The two companies in the film were buying up every domain name they could get their hands on and investing in the technology to produce the most realistic product for viewers. A lot of time and money was going in to making sure that the Japan Anime event was a success. Alliances were built and broken and it felt like no one in this money could trust the person sitting next to them. Even Diane’s assistant ended up working for the other team.
I would like to encourage you to force yourself to focus a bit more on one central point that you would then elaborate on with the help of some close film anaysis. For example, your point about the characters' alienation from their body is an interesting one and you could have put more anaytic pressure on it by investigating more cosely how the film renders this alienation sensible for us etc. providing a bit more sustained focus would make it unnecessary for you to offer side note observations etc.
Delete**note: I had to go to work right after class and didn’t get to bed until 1:30a so that’s why this is being posted so late!
ReplyDeleteI think this film had a lot to say about our consciousness and how we’re always plugged into another reality. The opening scene on the plane shows people burning alive on the tv’s above the passengers’ dreaming heads this shot is then recreated or mirrored in the end with the firery car accident. I noticed the excessive use of violence and I believe it was Assayas’ aim for the audience to feel uncomfortable with the amount of screen time explicit violence gets in Demonlover.
The type of porn represented in the film is hate-filled, violence and torture driven, and is exclusively made up of women as the subjects. Earlier in the film, before the discovery of Hell Fire Club, Diane drinks a scotch and begins watching lesbian Asian porn but not pleasuring herself – no one seems to actually be masturbating or acting on the sexual images they see on screen – instead, Diane is captivated and watches intently and the camera reflects this in such extreme close ups. When Herve and Diane finally take out their sexual frustrations on each other, he gets too aggressive and rapes her. I saw this as Herve is a product of a porn obsessed culture, he’s used to watching the porn that makes it seem like if a woman is in distress or against her will, she will still enjoy sex. Diane becomes and object of beauty and a sex toy for Herve to use.
This film also has a lot to do with indulgences and vices. Everyone has their own vice and so many of them are scattered throughout the film. When the American’s come to visit, the woman asks, “Do you think it’s hard to get pot in Paris?” whether it’s pot, BDSM, drinking, smoking, fashion, or beauty, each character has their weaknesses and obsessions.
Diane is constantly referred to as a bitch and an “ice queen”. Herve says, “She’s cold, inhuman, but I respect her.” Although she has that presence at the beginning of the film, her role changes drastically as Diane becomes a slave for someone else’s pleasure in the end. This brings into question Diane’s agency as a feminist character – is she or isn’t she in control of everything she does as Herve once says at the dinner table.