REVIEW ON A SECTION OF LES STATUES MEURENT AUSSI (1953, ALAIN RESNAIS AND CHRIS MARKER).
This is a review on a section of the French film Les statues meurent aussi (1953), directed by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, two French filmmakers framed in the Nouvelle Vague that refused to follow the Hollywood industry.
The reason why I have selected this film is because of its contemporary relevance due to its exploration of the notion ‘culture’, which is increasingly challenged and problematic in a world shaped by globalisation.
My aim is to produce a re-reading of the issues approached in the film through the lens of Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). Les statues meurent aussi is pioneering in its approach to debates that take place decades after its production. It is also my aim to suggest a figure proposed in the film that I would call the ‘voyageur-voyeur’, which explains –although it may not provide an answer- certain questions that come up when studying ‘culture(s)’.
The strong message of the film finds its place from the starting point- an overwhelming voice over dominates the black screen: “Quand les hommes sont morts, ils entrent dans l’histoire. Quand les statues sont mortes, elles entrent dans l’art. Cette botanique de la mort c’est ce que nous appelons la culture”. This reflection on ‘what we call culture’ is the core of Les statues meurent aussi, from a first scene of random sculptures in different locations. “The film depicts the way the [African] statues lost their meaning and were mummified as soon as they were cut off from their active environment and put in European museums as objets d’art”. (Diawara, 1992: 23).
Twenty years after the film, Geertz stated that the hermeneutical approach to culture, which considered it a symbolic system whose elements could be isolated, was misleading because “it locked cultural analysis away from its proper object” (Geertz, 1973: 17). Likewise, Ricoeur believed that context was indispensible to understand the meaning of sentences. (Ricoeur, 1976) Hence, Geertz, Ricoeur and the film are suggesting a loss of ‘authenticity’ of the object of art when it is taken out of context.
However, Geertz affirms that “culture is public… because meaning is public… though ideational, it does not exist in someone’s head; though unphysical, it is not an occult entity”. (Geertz, 1973: 10-13). Although the word ‘meaning’ has been problematized, referred to as something “far from clear and indeed far from culturally neutral” (Hobart, 1982: 40), there are two problematic missing points in the understanding of culture as something public that I would like to highlight.
The distrust in museums as an appropriate space to come across cultures lies, firstly, on its unquestionable organisation of the disorder of things so that they become a public ‘objet d’art’. If it is stated that culture is public, how is it possible to apprehend it and who has the power to do so? Who decides what is displayed? Does art mean the same thing once placed in a museum? Secondly, museums hardly provide an accurate portrayal of cultures because of the erasure of context. One must notice the highlighted shot of placards in the museum- Origine inconnue- under some objects. In much the same way, films in general, and documentary film in particular, are also acts of decontextualization. Narrative is constructed by connecting ideas that were originally disconnected so that once reunified, they deliver a new message. Therefore, it could be argued that the purpose of a documentary film is to provoke questions, to interrogate the object of study and its representation. It is my strong belief that this constant and endless interrogation is a convenient way to encounter reality, since it insists on the interdependence of the subject and the object.
This idea comes to light in the scene depicting patrons gazing in the museum. Un objet est mort quand le regard vivant qui se posait sur lui est disparu » –suggesting that art is not complete without the interpreter. “Nous la regardons comme si elle trouvait sa raison d’être dans le plaisir qu’elle nous donne ”. On screen, there is a close-up of two European women and a longer one of a black lady staring at an African mask. Then, there is a new narrative block about “L’Afrique: La Terre des Enigmes”. Africa is shown from a distance and approached as the traveller, the ‘voyageur-voyeur’, approaches it on a boat. Following this, there is an innovative montage with the sculptures in an expressionist hard lighting and the movement of the camera replicates the approach of the ‘voyageur-voyeur’. A steady camera moves into the sculptures, and then pans horizontally, never stopping on them because neither does the ‘voyageur-voyeur’.
This film is about observation but also about the appreciation of culture. It links the ‘voyeur’ with the ‘voyageur’. Although etymologically the roots don’t seem to match, since ‘voyageur’ comes from viaticum (via)- to see- and ‘voyeur’ from videre[1] – to ‘search’- the resemblance invites an association of both terms. Voyageur can be replaced by voyeur and one completes the other one. Hence, we can speak about a ‘voyageur-voyeur’ who approaches cultures with the difficulty of his outsider gaze.
In conclusion, this film provokes questions of the limitations of approaching cultures due to the impossibility of reproducing their contexts. My attempt here has been to shed light on various implications and suggest a new object of study: the ‘voyageur-voyeur’.
References:
- CNRTL: http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/voyage
- Diawara, Manthia (1992), African Cinema: Politics and Culture. Chapter III. Indianapolis (USA).
- Geertz, Clifford (1973) The interpretation of Cultures. N. Y. : Basic Books.
- Hobart, M. 1982, “Meaning or moaning? An ethnographic note on a little-understood tribe”. In Semantic anthropology. ASA 22, ed. D. J. Parkin, London: Academic Press.
- Ricoeur, Paul (1976) Interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning, Fort Worth: Texas Christian Universitiy Press.
[1] Interview with Anna Raventós (French Filology, University of Seville).
Popularity: 2% [?]
Related posts:
