SPOILER ALERT for the aforementioned movie
In Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), a couple, Anna (Susanne Lothar) and Georg (Ulrich Mühe), and their young son Schorschi head to their summer getaway, a lakehouse in a secluded community. In their first few hours of staying there, they become acquainted with Peter (Frank Giering) and Paul (Stefan Clapczynski), two young men who are introduced as friends of friends. These two young men come into the house with the pretense of borrowing eggs from Anna. Their behavior and diction is always meticulously polite, but with each phrase there is an undertone of threat. When bringing the eggs away, they drop it and have the audacity to come back to ask for more eggs. When Anna states that these are the last eggs they insist and she complies. This is only the beginning of the psychological and physical games which Peter and Paul play on the family.
As the movie progresses to increasingly gruesome and unsettling scenes, which are genuinely some of the most uncomfortable scenes I have ever experienced, the viewer cannot but help question his motives into coming into this movie. All movies are advertised with a genre in mind, and Funny Games was marketed as a crime/ horror / thriller movie, so Haneke had the advantage of having audiences come into the movie as willing, knowing participants. He exploits this fact by breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience through Paul.
Paul: Okay, we bet- what time is it?
Peter: 8:40.
Paul: That in, let's say, 12 hours all three of you are gonna be kaput. Okay?
Anna: What?
Paul: You bet that you'll be alive tomorrow at 9 o'clock and we bet that you'll be dead. Okay?
Peter: They don't want to bet.
Paul: Well it's not an option. There has to be a bet.
[turns toward camera, breaks fourth wall, addressing the audience]
Paul: I mean, what do you think? You think they stand a chance? Well, you're on their side, aren't you? Who are you betting on, hmm?
Peter: But, wait, what kind of bet is this? If they're dead, they can't live up to their side. If they win, they can't live either.
Paul: Yes, they'll lose either way. That's what I'm saying.
In his psychoanalytical film theory essay “The Passion for Perceiving”, Christian Metz discusses the concept of voyeurism in film. Under Lacan’s theories of sexual drives, voyeurism falls under the category of the invocatory drive, which is “distinguished from the others in that they are more dependent on a lack….which marks them from the outset…as being on the side of the imaginary” (702). Voyeurism requires a certain detachment and distance from the object, “Cinema’s voyeurism must do without any very clear mark of consent on the part of the object” (704). Film, inherently a representation of an object, naturally creates distance between the object and the voyeur. Without the object there is no possibility of consent, which is what the voyeur desires. Because of the psychological needs of the voyeur, or viewer, there is an “origin in particular of that recipe of the classical cinema which said that the actor should never look directly at the audience (= camera)” (705).
By breaking that convention, Haneke is questioning the deep seated psyche of the viewer, disturbing and forcing conscious acknowledgement of voyeurism. The viewer is no longer a voyeur, no longer the camera, but as present in a movie as characters off-screen. Funny Games is a piercing criticism of the destruction and gore in the movie industry, and makes viewers confront their psychological positions in watching it.
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I think voyeurism allows us to watch such brutal and graphic scenes because we feel like we are outside observers, removed from the scene and powerless to affect the outcome. Moments in cinema where the fourth wall disappears, like the scene you mentioned, calls us out and forces us to participate. Here it forces us to take part in the torture of the family and makes the viewer deeply uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of another situation where voyeurism is made blatant. On the Final Destination 3 DVD, viewers have the option of choosing at different points in the film whether characters live or die. Once we become active in the scene, either through our "presence" or our influence, we are no longer passive viewers and can no longer escape accountability for what we see on screen.
I am very intrigued to see Funny Games now! After seeing Caché , I have wanted to see another of Michael Haneke's films, and this sounds like the perfect opportunity! It is interesting that he chooses to break the fourth wall in this film, since he seemed so intent on keeping viewers away from the action with the odd camera perspectives he offered in Caché .
ReplyDeleteI would argue that film becomes much more like opera or theatre when the fourth wall is broken. Christian Metz talks about the fundamental difference between film and theatre and opera in his book, The Imaginary Signifier : "Their difference from the cinema lies elsewhere: they do not consist of images , the perceptions they offer to the eye and the eat are inscribed in a true space (not a photographed one), the same one as that occupies by the public during the performance." When the fourth wall is broken, the photographed space being projected and the actual space the audience occupies collide. Now there is not that clean separation between the photographed and actual spaces. The two are interacting with each other; the audience now is being directly addressed by characters onscreen. You say it well when you say, "The viewer is no longer a voyeur, no longer the camera, but as present in a movie as characters off-screen." The voyeurism is definitely gone, and the audience is no longer passive viewers of a work of art.
I'm intrigued by the concept of voyeurism and consent that you brought up. You quoted Metz as saying "Cinema’s voyeurism must do without any very clear mark of consent on the part of the object.” I wonder if this lack of consent has a greater impact for certain genres. For horror films, especially, "torture-porn" films like Saw, there are clear victims who are brutalized throughout. In contrast to a simple drama or comedy, the viewer has made an active choice to take part in the sadistic pleasure of watching the suffering of other human beings. I assume that most people would feel some kind of guilt that an audience exists for these movies. Horror films must somehow absolve this guilt by creating distance between the filmed objects and audience. Haneke closes the distance by breaking the forth wall, which is why Funny Games is so disturbing.
ReplyDeleteKevin-
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up an interesting point that breaking the audience's voyeurism, via the actors addressing the audience, makes them aware of their fascination with it. Funny Games is in the same vain as Cache in that it makes the audience think for themselves and it breaks lots of film conventions.
I wonder, though, if film is as voyeuristic as it seems. Because, as you say, voyeurism derives pleasure from the object being watched unaware of the viewer's gaze. However, actors being filmed are aware that they are being watched. Does that minimize the pleasure a voyeur feels? Is it no longer defined as voyeurism because the object is aware? I'm not sure I can answer that, but it does make it more interesting regarding Funny Games, because I definitely think the characters Paul and Peter derive pleasure themselves from others watching.
I agree that voyeurism is something that, if removed from film, gives the audience an uneasy feeling. But that is because voyeurism is a word that has negative connotations attached to it. We always attach peeping on people to the word voyeurism. If the fourth wall is broken, that means the audience was "caught peeping" and that is something that no one wants to be caught doing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don not agree with what Bel D says. Voyeurism is something that does exist in films. Even though actors are aware that there are cameras and that they are being filmed so that people can watch them later, they are technically creating a scene in which none of the cameras exist. There is always a sense of voyeurism. People might not get the same pleasure from peeping on people in real life than peeping on people in films because they subconsciously know that what they are watching in films is staged and scripted.
I think that a film such as Funny Games raises some very interesting questions regarding the voyeuristic pleasure that supposedly motivates our enjoyment of movies. The viewer does go into the film as a willing participant, but cannot necessarily be considered as totally consenting to whatever will be placed on the screen in front of him. Rather, he consents to handing over the reigns to the director and accepting that he is not in control of what he will witness throughout the duration of the film. In the case of Funny Games, the viewer is then obligated to watch a series of incredibly disturbing and uncomfortable scenes. The voyeuristic pleasure that we usually experience when given the opportunity to peer into the fictional lives of the film's characters may then be overpowered by our revulsion and desire to remove ourselves from the unpleasant reality of this alternate universe.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, by removing the fourth wall, the director strips us of our voyeuristic enjoyment by forcing us to become involved in the world that he has created. In my experience, this detracts even further from my enjoyment of the film, because I would already be gripping the edge of my seat and desperately waiting for the movie to end so that I could sever all ties with the fictional world I had entered. Nothing could seem more unpleasant than becoming even more intimately involved in such a situation. At the same time, however, I think that the movies that stick with viewers the most are the ones that leave them unsettled and unable to think about anything else. The director therefore succeeds in making an impact, whether or not it is one that creates a pleasurable response.
I agree with Alex's assertion that film "voyeurism" allows the viewer to take in scenes through a detached (but still very much involved) perspective of the "third party viewer." Unlike viewing scenes of violence or horror through other means, film and video allows regular individuals to experience the "thrills, chills, and overly-gruesome spills" of the spectacle without the nasty "psychological trauma" that might normally be associated with seeing such things in real life. Thus, we can satisfy our morbid curiosity and visceral fixation with such spectacles, in a relatively safe and controllable environment. I'm curious, however, (no pun intended) to know why you think this might be the case. Is it because that, at least with film, the human psyche can rationally tell itself that "it's not real," or is there something about film media (perhaps its inherently 2-D flatness or unnaturally focused and "framed"-ness of the visual narrative) that allows the viewer to "partake but not be part of" the scene?
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