The representation of intentional communities in cinema: a read into the power structures of our societies

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Master’s in Film Studies

Master Thesis

The representation of intentional communities in cinema:

a read into the power structures of our societies

by

Jade Durbecker

11311851

University of Amsterdam

June 2017

Supervisor/Examiner: Assessor:

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Abstract

Analysing the workings of artificial communities as represented in cinema was undertaken as a mean to demonstrate the relevance of films for the study of societal power structures, as well as bringing two areas of research, films studies and socio-political studies together. Elsaesser’s model of thought-experiment served as methodological guidance, because of its combination of filmic objects with national politics of European countries to touch upon systemic societal issues. This project aimed to demonstrate that filmic objects, used as thought-experiment, can function as a testing ground for sociopolitics. The focus was on the microcosms depicted in Dogtooth and The Village, and how they articulate the workings of power structures at a societal scale. In other words, how do these communities, in imitating our actual society, point at flaws in its regulatory mechanisms? Three main pointers: knowledge management, discourse manufacturing, and the question of self agency (through individual transgressions) were addressed to tackle the subject.

Using critical discourse analysis, along with cinematic means associated with textual passages (camera work and mise en scene mostly) was efficient in showing that cinema is a powerful lens through which to approach societal phenomena, as it amplifies or mirrors larger phenomenon.

Keywords: film experiment, intentional communities, ideological fictions, discourse

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1.

Introduction

“The real must be fictionalized in order to be thought” claims Jacques Rancière in “The Politics of Aesthetics”. This quote stresses the role of fiction, notably as created by seventh art, in providing a thinking box for the substance of reality to be conceived. Indeed, cinema is the interface where representations of reality can be shown, and the interactions between reality and the fictional worlds of films have been a topic of interest for film scholars, particularly in the field of film-philosophy.

The various manners in which films are fictionalising the real is of great interest for the purpose of this topic in general, because it touches upon the way these objects function as mirrors of societal phenomena at large. Therefore, diving into the diegetic universes of certain films could give us insights into the workings of our society, notably by examining the representation of certain social organisations. This research is motivated by a drive to bring two different areas of research, film studies and socio-political studies together. If this interdisciplinary approach has been chosen, it is because cinema creates space and provides the means for these films to function as a thought-experiment in a socio-political context. Particularly, the representation of secluded communities in films, and their achievements in amplifying the power workings of broader societal phenomena may serve such a purpose. A few papers in the cinematic field, notably in film philosophy, have been issued on the analysis of various elements of films (narratives, camera work, colour coding…) representing secluded communities and how they reveal power structures. Patrick Charles Collier in his article “Our Silly Lies” examines The Village’s (Shyamalan, 2004) narratives, grounding his analysis in classical narrative theory of film studies, using Bordwell’s work. This allows him to discuss how knowledge management operates in the film, and how the process of make-believe operates. In the same manner, the film scholar Psarras relies on narrativity in

Dogtooth to touch upon topics such as familial representation and sexual power relations

but as he engages in a discussion over patriarchy and non-autonomy, none of his references belong to the socio-political spectrum. However, for both scholars, the focus mostly remains within the diegesis of the films examined, i.e. inside the fictional worlds of the latter.

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5 The Village has been examined by the cultural theorists Sicks and Nünning, who have looked

at the community portrayed in the film to parallel it with actual communities which have marked American culture. Nevertheless, this reflection upon the film comes closer to a literal recognition of such communities, but does not relate them to larger societal phenomena, or see the allegorical reading the film makes possible.

Alternatively, Elsaesser’s approach in “Europe – A Thought Experiment” combines filmic objects with national politics of European countries to touch upon systemic societal issues. This model demonstrates how films work to produce insights about society at large; therefore it offers a methodological guidance for the structure of this thesis. It is that Elsaesser’s work will be used as a model because it offers a dialectical approach between concepts borrowed from film theories and socio-political theories as thought experiments.

Therefore, this research project aims to analyse the workings of artificial communities as represented in films, and will demonstrates their relevance for the study of societal power structures. The main purpose of this research is to demonstrate that filmic objects, used as thought-experiment, can function as a testing ground for sociopolitics, particularly in the light of Foucault and Shenker. More specifically, how do the microcosms depicted in Dogtooth and The Village articulate the workings of power structures at a societal scale? In other words, how do these communities, in imitating our actual society, point at flaws in its regulatory mechanisms?

These primary objects of analysis, Dogtooth and The Village, were chosen because they suit the following criteria of selection: as films that portray a microcosm shut off from society, located in a single place, whose ideology is based on a discourse of territorial boundaries and confinement. Undertaking a comparative analysis of both films would be appropriate because they operate in the same way regarding the three main points to be discussed: knowledge management, constructed boundaries, and discourse manufacturing (notably when the social order in place is being challenged). Moreover, these two films portray the seclusion of different communities as resulting from an intentional decision, respectively by the elders of the village, and by the parents. This is a crucial element in regards of the function of these two filmic objects as thought-experiment, because the enclosing of these communities succeeds dissatisfaction with society in both films, and therefore a will to exploit the potentialities of community management.

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6 These two films have also been chosen for their complementarities: they display different institutions of power: the family institution for Dogtooth and the community institution for

The Village. Moreover, the stories unfold in two different locations: in Greece and in

Pennsylvania. This configuration is optimal in that, when reflecting on a larger scale, both films are representative of respectively Europe and the United-States. This allows for a more comprehensive view on the situation as it covers two continents.

To elaborate on social order and containment, several sociological publications will be consulted, chiefly for their critical reviews of Goffman and Foucault’s works: Goffman’s notion of containment will be considered along with his argument on the normative nature of the framework constraining individuals. This will shed light on the containment strategies carried out within these intentional communities.

Foucault’s point on discursive formation, emphasising the process by which an individual becomes a socially constructed subject, will be used as a tool to analyse this same phenomenon in the films.

Finally, a few political papers examining real-world secluded communities will be used to inform this phenomenon and highlight enriching additional facts about the topic, stressing the comparability of the films’ artificial communities with actual ones. The term “intentional communities” as coined by the political scientist Barry Shenker, interested in these organisations since the 1960s will be an entry point for the argumentation. His theory being supported by empirical research, this publication represents a pertinent source to look into these films as thought-experiment for actual social processes. Similarly, a publication by Ostrom on theories of individual choice and its entanglement with self-governance models will be used, as it grounds itself on survey data too. Its development on the pitfalls of self governed communities in the long-run, along with these societies’ “boundary rules” will feed the discussion on the achievements of these films as experiments for larger societies.

After a short introduction of Shenker’s concept of “intentional communities”, an attempt at identifying the factors behind the seclusion of these communities in both films, and what legitimisation is offered to support the latter will be undertaken, based on an analysis of discourse in Dogtooth and The Village. To do so, some fragments of the films’ scripts will be selected to put the emphasis on the content of the justification given by the

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7 dominant group, and other cinematic means associated with textual passages will be described, such as camera work and mise en scene, in that they also convey this sense of management and strict regulation.

In the same manner, the prospects promised to the dominant community members and how it establishes the narratives’ direction throughout the films will be examined, in a critical discourse theory perspective. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) “explores the relationship of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices (…) and (b) wider social and cultural structures” (Van Dijk 183), that is to say it investigates how discourse (mainly text and talk, but also other forms carrying information ideologically shaped by relations of power. This theory, developed in the 1990s, proposes to look at the:

role of discourse in the (re) production and challenge of dominance. Dominance is defined here as social power by elites, institutions or groups, that result in social inequality, including political, cultural, class, ethnic, racial and gender inequality. This reproduction process may involve such different ‘modes’ of discourse-power relations as the more or less direct or overt support, enactment, representation, legitimisation, denial, mitigation or concealment of dominance, among others. (Van Dijk 249)

The scholar, to complete this definition adds: “Dominance may be enacted and reproduced by subtle, routine, everyday forms of text and talk that appear ‘natural’ and quite ‘acceptable’” (Van Dijk 254). Hence, CDA needs to focus on the discursive strategies that legitimate control, or otherwise ‘naturalize’ the social order and especially relations of inequality. This multidisciplinary approach, delivering a meta discourse, is relevant in that it aims at breaking down the workings of discourse manufacturing to better reveal the intricate connection between discourse and power structures, in the case of these intentional communities, the ideology in place. This method, both examining the conditions of production of discourse, as well as its reception and effect on the recipients, seems suited to look into both films’ diegetic worlds.

Examining how information is issued in these communities through CDA will help us gain a better understanding of how containment operates. Goffman’s theory will aid clarification of the depiction of the outside as threatening. The role of boundaries, their

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8 epistemological treatment as well as the space they occupy in the dominant discourse is crucial because it demonstrates the power of discourse manufacturing in the films, and how it reproduces relations of dominance.

Moreover, particular attention will be paid to the manufacturing of discourse in these intentional communities, and how individuals engage with it. To discuss the establishment of a normative structure in the communities observed, Foucault’s theory of subjectivisation will be used, in order to show that this ensures a control over the individuals. In the same way, looking at the dialogues between characters and how it enlightens the manufacturing of discourse, notably in terms of re-adaptation, will demonstrate how discourse plays a substantial role in maintaining power structures within these communities.

To examine the way discourse is being produced and reshaped, a focus will be placed on the transgression of the social order of these communities, respectively to be seen in short scenes and ending sequences. They reflect on the management of the individuals at a societal level, as similar acts of disobedience are observed in both cases.

Lastly, looking at the possibilities of individual choice in these films considering them as thought experiment will give us insight into the regulatory mechanisms of our actual societies: how these normative frameworks are sustained and perpetuated over time, both in the United-States and Europe. The principle of thought experiment as defined by Elsaesser is to conceive the film “as a form of thought” (3). He presented it as following: “Thought experiments formulate a proposition that cannot be tested in reality or in situ, but is taken to its logical – which usually means paradoxical or impossible – conclusion, thus trying to break a sort of glass-ceiling of our ‘normal understanding’ of how the world works (3). Thought experiments, as defined by Elsaesser, enable us to think through the medium of cinema and reflect on the what-if scenarios proposed in the films, to examine and question the actual configuration of our societies. As he formulates it: “Thought experiments often involve a “what-if” situation: they can take the form of fictional scenario, they can suppose a set of conditionals, or they can simulate a real-world situation” (3). With this methodology at work, films become fascinating objects of study for the many societal workings they amplify, in our case, intentional communities.

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2.

Seclusion, an intended choice

2.1 Based on an ideological legitimisation / justification

The term ‘intentional communities’ as coined by the political scientist Barry Shenker pertains to an approach which aims at carrying out research on communities both in regards to their internal structure and their external interactions. The author claims that “As self-contained ‘total communities’ and distinct social groups interacting with their environment we can see them both as micro-versions of large societies and as social groups with unique characteristics” (Shenker 3).

This micro to macro perspective he adopts is insightful for this thesis project because it touches upon various issues such as “Questions of belief and commitment, ideology, alienation, integration, deviance, the functioning of sub-groups in a society”, which are present in these intentional communities used by the author as case-studies to examine larger societal phenomena (Shenker 3). The scholar’s work is positioned in the fields of economics and social studies, but his crossing of ideology and individuality, as pillars for understanding the workings of these intentional communities, are particularly relevant for the purpose of this thesis. Indeed, in this configuration cinema appears as the medium, the apparatus through which these communities can be represented. If the depiction of these communities remains fictional, cinema is the interface on which they can take place; and the cinematic tools to represent them are various and abundant. Therefore, it enables the scholars to gain insight into the societal trends of our time, going beyond the virtuality of the representation. The films, presenting hypothetical scenarios, function as an amplification of actual societal principles, that is how they can be conceived as though experiments. The internal factors discussed by Shenker, which are belief, meaning and commitment are mechanisms at stake in the communities’ organisation, which are active for community cohesion and how it is maintained among its members. Therefore, Shenker’s methodology is a model to follow, as well as a starting point for my discussion. The term ‘intentional communities’ is fitting when it comes to identifying and defining the object of research of this project, as it carries this notion of intentionality, and therefore the idea that the seclusion of the communities present in the films is the result of an intended choice. It

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10 will be reused throughout the thesis, thus an agreement on its terms is required: “Intentional communities have emerged as a result of a number of people consciously and purposefully coalescing as a group in order to realize a set of aims (although the founders may have existed as an informal group prior to declaring their ‘intentionality’)” (Shenker 6). This remark in brackets is particularly informative in that it connotes the existence of a preliminary group which could have set up the conditions for launching the community beforehand.

In order to examine the conditions for the establishment of intentional communities in the films Dogtooth and The Village, it is necessary to look at the pre-given information, to identify who is delivering it, and finally to determine whether there is a withdrawal, a distortion or an absence of information.

In both Dogtooth and The Village, the justification that is provided to the members of these communities can be revealed by diving into the film narratives, and parts of the scripts are particularly insightful for this undertaking.

In the case of The Village, in one of the very first scenes, the viewer begins collecting hints about the community’s seclusion: the community’s territory has been breached, and the discourse of the dominant group (the elders, i.e. the ones who made this decision to live remotely) is the following:

- What we seem to have amongst us is a predator of some type, most likely a coyote or a wolf. Its manner of killing and removing the fur but leaving the flesh torn may be a sign that this animal suffers from madness. And for the next fortnight, we should be vigilant for sightings of this coyote. Keep careful watch over our little ones as they play on the hills. As for the other notion, we do not believe our boundary has been breached. Those We Don’t Speak Of are much larger creature than coyotes. We would know if they had been here.1

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11 Therefore, the potential perpetrators / intruders are represented with the terminology of creature, either animal “a coyote or a wolf” or “Those We Don’t Speak Of”, an informative label to refer to the town people. In this very same passage, the elders are also making sure a certain mystery is being kept around the inhabitants of the city, conveying a sense of taboo, of a forbidden subject to talk about. From this signifier, the viewer can assume the inhabitants received no other information about “Those We Don’t Speak Of” except that silence should be maintained around the matter.

The mise-en-scène of this specific scene is worth considering here as it room crowded with people, the members of the village, all looking at the stage where the elders are standing, a bit higher than the crowd, and the camera places the speaker at the vanishing point of this image, the spot the viewer’s eyes fix upon. As the camera zooms in to reveal the speaker’s reassuring facial expression as she makes her announcement, the crowd dissipates in the off-screen, directing the viewer’s attention to the elders’ position and the words delivered by the speaker, beholder of the truth in that scene. The spatial arrangement of this shot already delivers some information about knowledge management in The Village’s community (Figure 1).

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12 On the film’s poster, the three main rules of good conduct of the village are presented, and among them is “Never enter the woods, that is where they wait”: this order, conveyed with a dramatic tone, also insists on the connotation of these “Others” as beasts of prey, adding to the already present feeling of fear (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Village.

The threat is addressed very similarly in Dogtooth, where the same terminology is used: in this scenario where the kids are being kept enclosed, a “creature” is the main cause for containment:

- Your brother is dead. A creature like the one in the garden tore him apart. On one hand... he made a huge mistake, venturing out ill prepared. On the other hand, he was my son and I feel sorry for him. The animal that threatens us is a "cat". The most dangerous animal there is. He eats meat. Children's flesh in particular. After lacerating it's victims with its claws, it devours them with sharp teeth. The face and whole body of the victim. If you stay inside, you are protected. We have to be ready in case it invades the house or the garden.

- Our dear brother we're sorry you couldn't kill the cat, as I did. We will miss you ... despite the mistakes you did. It's a pity that this would happen to you and I wasn't

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13 able to use my knowledge to save you. My dear brother, I would have never imagine that things could go so wrong. I hoped that you'd survive on the supplies I secured for you. But there are too many dangers.”2

Figure 3. Dogtooth.

The composition of this scene is particularly allusive as it portrays the father figure covering himself in red paint and tearing his shirt apart, placing the viewer in an omniscient position. (Figure 3). The camera plays with shots and reverse shots to successively show the father’s performance in making up a lie in the most serious possible manner, and the children, horrified, accompanied by the mother who fakes being in shock. The diplomatic voice of the father, paired with a few close ups of his very stern face, brings authority to the scene and neutralizes the speech he gives.

This paragraph can be dissected in order to put the emphasis on the ideological constructs present within the institution of the family. A life threatening creature is introduced as an external danger, and functions as a (made up) rationale to serve as a containment strategy. The extent, to which language can be manipulated to fit ideologies and power structures, is tremendous in Dogtooth because different signifieds are being used for signifiers: the same signifiers established and accepted by society are used in

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14 Dogtooth, but they are granted a different meaning, a different signified if we resort to

semiotic terms. Therefore, in that very same part of the dialogue, the signifier ‘cat’ refers to a cannibal creature. As the film-philosophy scholar Ben Tyrer explains, “this reactive re-signification is also joined by a pro-active dictation of signifieds through the children’s homeschooling regime.” “And signifiers themselves that seem to constitute the greatest threat. Contact with signifiers of and from the outside is strictly controlled. When the father buys branded goods such as bottled water, he strips them of their labels before returning home” (Tyrer 5).

This emphasises the role of discourse manufacturing and meaning making, especially in situations where it is made possible because the community members were born inside the designed community and therefore developed language (and signifiers associated with specific signifieds) based on their belief system.

Therefore, as observed in these script passages, the justifications provided for choosing seclusion are grounded on external elements that shaped and keep shaping the communities’ policies in terms of staying inside the community, in that staying inside guarantees safety and protection by the group. These narratives, as set up by the dominant groups in both films, are highlighting representation systems worth examining to reveal how the decision of seclusion is legitimised and sustained to ensure the community remains secluded and the members comply with the established rules.

2.2 Elders’ position set up the (dominant) narratives

The representation matter is particularly present in The Village where it is not made clear how the town people have been described to the members, but a bit later in the dialogue, a discussion between the main character Lucius, and Finton gives the viewer insight on their views of town people:

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15 - The towns? What for? They are wicked places where wicked people live. That’s all.3

In that conversation it is made quite clear that the justification provided by this community member does not come up with any grounded knowledge but takes the form of an assumption derived from what has been said about this group of people who are living in town. This is what Van Dijk names as “social cognitions”: “social cognitions allow language users to form and use their representations of social groups, classes, institutions and their relationships, also those of dominance and powers” (Van Dijk 133). What the scholar explains in his work is that the shared representations are biased because based on “strategies that tend to seek and attend to information that confirms existing prejudices”, in

The Village case, personal past experience which have left disagreeable memories. This

subjective view on the town inhabitants is an important mechanism in that, when the given representation is integrated in the other group members’ mindset, becomes powerful as it regulates social organisation. This is due to the authority of the elders as such, but also to the suggested threat and fear that the elders elicit, which contributes to the fixation on the social cognition and its sustainability.

When it does not concern representations of groups outside of the community, the discourse can be self-depicting, working on the elaboration of the ideal representation for the dominant group. That is the model Dogtooth seems to be organised around, as the parents, absolute knowledge holders, are punishing and rewarding the teenagers in regards to “their good deeds”. This functions as the base for reinforcing parental authority and growing a sense of infantile dependency that will ensure the kids do not try to escape. An obvious scene which displays this: as the father plays a vinyl record, Ben Howard’s “Fly me to the moon” which he translates from English to his kids as the following:

- “Dad loves us. Mom loves us. Do we love them? Yes, we love them. (..) My parents are proud of me, because I do my best. But I'm always trying to do better. My house, you're beautiful and I love you. And never ... I will never leave you.”4

3_{From <}_{http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Village,-The.html}_{>. May 2017.} 4

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16 This can be depicted as a sneaky indirect way for the parents to portray themselves as the figures to please and the regulators of the family institution, for which individual efforts have to be made.

Regarding the scenes in both films when the dominant group, either the elders in

The Village or the two parents in Dogtooth are manufacturing this discourse of containment

by exposing to the other members of the group an external threat is to ensure they take on the role of the “reassurers”. This ensures the consent of the members and their full consent to the presented argument, and builds trust while sustaining the containment speech. Because the dominant group is the oldest one in both scenarios, no other members of the community can check for the accuracy of the facts presented to them, as the justification offered for seclusion is either based on facts that occurred when these members were very young (The Village) or before they were born (Dogtooth). This deprives the non-dominant group members of credibility when checking for the reasons of the seclusion.

What is observable in both cases is that speech, is the medium of receiving the information delivered, notably the representations given. These representations, because of their anchoring in past experiences and their re-actualization in the present through a sudden disruption in the form of a threat, are consolidated.

Therefore, we have seen that the status of the group was determining the position over knowledge. In both films, it is the same principle of dominance occurring, but what makes the filmic objects complementary and an efficient pair is that they display different conditions of realization: social cognitions, built upon previous social situations, and self-depiction, a pro-active process triggered by the dominant group itself.

In the case of the chosen filmic objects, the dominant group is always the elderly, either parents or the oldest generation members. This correlation knowledge / power has been theorised quite extensively, mainly in Foucauldian terms, but applying this model to social sciences is the enterprise of Nick J. Fox. Looking into his work, notably in “Foucault, Foucauldians and Sociology” will initiate a discussion on knowledge management as a powerful tool in the films, and on a larger societal scale secondly.

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3. Knowledge management, a powerful ideological tool

3.1 A strict control over information

The manufacturing of discourse and the management of knowledge are intrinsically connected, in their correlation to power: discourse manufacturing is situated at the level of production, while knowledge management comes after, at the level of regulation of discourse, but both establish power relationships. Foucault introduces this binary model/relationship, power-knowledge, as the scholar Nick Fox studying his work stresses: “discourse is the surface manifestation of the underlying will to power” (Fox 7).

In his analysis of Foucaudian theories and their relevancy for today’s sociologists, Fox comes to the conclusion Foucault’s model cannot be directly used in sociological empirical cases, because of the lack of methodological rigour for sociological applications, and because his reading of power can be seen as determinist and / or essentialist, which brings some bias into the picture. Some parts of Foucault’s model of power-knowledge are still insightful for this project in that they deals with “regimes of truth”: “The system of rules which govern the production, operation and regulation of discursive statements (the surface level) mediates power or more precisely a 'will to power': not the will of one particular person or group but a generalized will to create the possibilities to be able to 'speak the truth' “ (6).

This truth for Foucault is “the type of discourse which it accepts [the society] and makes function as true”. When he discusses this concept, the philosopher also makes use of the term “parrhesia”, “truth-telling” from Greco-Roman times, where parrhesia was understood as “truth-telling as an activity” in which the truth teller was risking his life to convey the truth to others, and have the moral courage to do so. “Often the danger [in telling the truth] is invoked because the parrhesiastes risks putting himself in danger and his life at risk for example in challenging a tyrant or a teacher or father” (Besley 93). Foucault’s return to ancient times to trace the history of parrhesia and what it originally meant is informative in that it creates a distinction between the truth-claim, and the knowledge-claim, as the sociologist Gérard Leclerc noticed. “Du truth-claim au knowledge-claim, il y a en somme le passage d’une pré- tention qui s’appuie sur l’essence même du langage et de la communication à une autre, qui relève de la sphère culturelle et politique. L’autorité

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18 énonciative est ainsi doublée d’une autorité institutionnelle” (14). The author here specifies that while truth-claim is based on the ability of language, of communicating, knowledge-claim resorts to the political and cultural spheres, the enunciative authority (or authority over enunciation) being coupled with an institutional authority. In this configuration, only the dominant group can claim knowledge, in that truth-claim starts carrying some sense of relativism if solely based on the ability to speak. What Leclerc remarks is that this will to know the truth immediately comes with power and modes of production and regulation of “the truth”5 in the group where it is delivered, through a close control over discourse. It is the group’s reception and integration of “the truth” that is revelatory of power structures in discourse and this central relationship of power-knowledge.

This “truth” telling process is central to narrative practices because it emphasizes the role of discourse, particularly the regulation of the delivered discourse, in establishing power structures and a normative truth system.

Patrick Collier in his article “Silly Lies”, undertakes a close examination of the narrative structure of The Village, relying on the power structures present in the narratives of the film to show how knowledge management operates in the village. Collier’s analysis includes the viewer’s position towards the information released, as it places us neither in an omniscient position nor in a strict third person position but involves us in some ways, continuously tricking us and making us shift from one belief to another, unlike the members of The

Village’s community who are deceived throughout the whole story. For example, the author

mentions that “because of the multiple, conflicting hypotheses the viewer must raise and reject, the film evokes - even requires - suspicion of its narrative grounds even as it mocks its suspicious characters. This tension risks straining what George Wilson calls the "epistemic reliability" of the film: “A viewer could be forgiven for throwing up her hands and asking what it's all about” (Collier 271). This play with the truth, or what the viewer makes function as true, is tricky in that “it positions the spectator in complex, shifting narrational positions”: by subsequently releasing and withholding information, it makes it impossible not to get confused or lost in the narratives. Collier’s argument is also an invitation to question our position as viewer, and to a larger scale, as a citizen of a given society. The viewer is deluded

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19 about his own position towards information: he is misled into believing he is given the truth, compared to the rest of the community’s members, but as the story unfolds, he realizes the filmmaker is playing with his beliefs and what he established as true as a result of the elements of the story he accumulated. From a societal perspective, isn’t a similar proceeding happening? The mechanism which links the diegesis of the film to society here is the management of the belief system and of what individuals hold to be true. The film therefore sheds light on a potentiality, a what-if scenario which relatedness to our societal system is left open.

In any cases, this is a demonstration of how powerful the management of discursive statements are because in the case of The Village, it is bi-directional. In the first place, it puts the viewer in an uncertain, doubting position, by playing with the information and the way it is released, creating shifts in “the truths” the viewer has established for his understanding of the film’s narratives. In the second place, it plays with the community members who are kept away from “the truth”, no information being delivered, or more accurately, the made-up “truth” the dominant group (the elders) created for them.

The narrative of Dogtooth seems to follow the same mode of operation: if we, as viewers are omniscient and are positioned behind the scenes, in the backstage where the parents are manipulating the “truth”, the unnamed children are completely dependent on the input of their parents to make sense of the narrow world surrounding them.

A specific part of the narrative, which can be located in the script, is a striking example of that control over information and how powerful the normative frame it creates is:

- “The most creative time for man is ...? - Between 30 and 40 years of age. - And for women?

- Between 20 and 30.

- A child is ready to leave his house when ...?

- When the right dogtooth falls off. Or the left one, doesn't really matter.

- At that time, the body is ready to face all dangers. To leave the house in safety one should use the car.

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20 - When can one learn to drive?

- When the right dogtooth grows back. Or the left, it doesn't really matter.6

This passage is crucial in that it both puts the film’s main myth to the fore, and epitomizes this power-knowledge relationship here in the scene: the children’s absorption is total, and what could appear as an obvious absurdity to the viewer works perfectly in terms of regulation and integration within the manufactured system.

Therefore, the narrative of Dogtooth takes us into its confidence, turning us into the witnesses of an absurd horror scenario where there is no way out. The passive, powerless position it puts us in is an efficient way of subtly raising the question of our own condition of citizen, particularly in the nation of Greece. The scholar Ipek A. Celik drew this connection between the Greek nation, and the diegetic world of Dogtooth: “In order to further clarify the larger social connotations of family implied in Dogtooth allow me to take a close look into the contemporary focus on the institution in Greece and Europe” (222).

On the other hand, The Village plays with our assumptions and “allows us to recognize the deception, then asks us to consider whether, all things considered, we really want to know, or would be happier living in a protected ignorance carefully sustained by a power elite”, as Collier explains (273). This meta level of reading points to the relatable nature of these filmic objects with broader societal phenomena and raises the question: what are the “silly lies” our existence as beings and members of a society are based on?

3.2 Borders

Examining the role of borders and their epistemological treatment, i.e. how they are presented in the given discourse, will shed light on the efficiency of discursive statements at creating imaginary spaces, following up the narratives present in both films.

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21 “The real boundary of woods that surrounds the village is just as important as the imaginary boundary of ideological narrative, sealing the village's inhabitants off not only from the physical dangers of urban modernity” claims Patrick Collier. (9)

The role of boundaries in the intentional communities represented is crucial in that it marks a sharp divide between the protected space of the community and the threatening outside. Therefore, the physical borders observed in both Dogtooth and The Village are the interface between the two territories, and the cinematic tools used to emphasize this marking out are insightful in that they inform us about the ways the two communities have organised their territory and resort to different strategies to contain the community members in the inside space.

In The Village, the two zones are colour-coded, as Ira Torresi, specialized in the representation of national identities, indicates:

The way the enclosure is realised – basically, with yellow paint over the poles surrounding the communal space, yellow flags fixed to the same poles, and watchtowers which are apparently staffed only at night – suggests that its function is mainly to claim the villagers’ ownership over their territory (identified by the colour yellow) so that the creatures will keep to their own lands, recognising the yellow area as off-limits. (1)

Very similarly, the enclosure in Dogtooth is represented by the fences of the garden, which surround the parental house so well that it is impossible to see above the leafy barricades, the sky being the only sight allowed for the children to look at (Figure 4). Overstepping the boundaries is therefore impossible in the case of Dogtooth, and the condition for the teenagers’ potential release is that their dogtooth falls off (which is technically impossible because their dogtooth fell off already when they were younger).

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22 Figure 4. Dogtooth.

In the case of the diegetic space of The Village, it is possible to breach the border but it is strongly discouraged, and presented as one of the core rules of the functioning of the community. The viewer rapidly understands that taking this action is scandalous and worth reprimanding. A part of the script reveals that Lucius Hunt, the forger of the community, has crossed the boundary through a letter he wrote and addressed to the elders: “Please read so that all may hear. I have brought this burden upon us. On the day before last, I crossed

the forbidden line into Covington..Woods...

... and was witnessed there by Those We Don't Speak Of. I am deeply sorry. I have shamed myself and my family. I pray that my actions will cause no further pains. With deepest sorrow... Lucius Hunt ».7

If the boundaries in both filmic objects are interesting, it is because besides being physically represented, they are simultaneously both geographical landmarks, and epistemological borders. In point of fact, they are shaped and defined by the discourse delivered by the elders, who actively maintain it. Looking at the epistemological treatment of territories in both films, and the terminology used to refer to the boundaries is a step towards understanding how containment operates in these communities: in both films the

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23 outside is depicted as life threatening. The towns are described as “wicked places” in The

Village, as a place where “there are too many dangers”, and for which preparation is

required. Labelling the outside territory this way is both a mean to ensure the community members’ containment, and to use fear as a personal motivation for not venturing out.

In his work on containment, the sociologist Black Hawk Hancock, discusses Goffman’s notion of containment and how, according to him, normative frameworks pressure individuals to conform. Goffman’s “philosophy of containment” claims that the normative order in a given situation is based on fabricated frames and an “agnostic vision of life” which opposes stability vs unstability. He highlights an important concept, stigma, as a “socially constructed category used for discrediting action and enforcing a normative order that includes and excludes accordingly. (…) When incorporated into the normative order, stigma becomes part of the collective consciousness”. (Hancock 322)

This description of the workings of containment and their enmeshment within the normative order is fitting with the role of boundaries in both films: they are part of this regulatory mechanism which keeps the power structure going within the communities and which strengthens the authority of the dominant group over the community members. This discourse of containment and strict boundaries is based on the perpetuation of fears inside the group, as Jennifer Varney stresses in her article on The Village: “The myth of fear which surrounds and contains the community can also be read as an attempt to contain the individual. Fear of the presence inhabiting the woods, and more generally the fear of the “violent towns,” serves to prevent the community from straying beyond its own boundaries” (Varney 2). The introduction of frightening creatures as an external threat contributes to the sustainability of fears, just like the cat has been introduced in Dogtooth. Therefore, it seems that the borders are guarded more by the members’ own fears than by the obstacle created by the physical marking out of boundaries. This stigma elaborated upon by Goffman, as a category including and excluding, designates who is part of the community and who is out, conveying a sense of the community’s identity in contradistinction to the people living in the town, the outsiders.

These phenomena as intrinsic to these specific communities can be transferred to a larger societal scale, as the media scholar Ipek A. Celik demonstrates in her article “Family as

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24 Internal Border in Dogtooth”. She sees this film as reconsidering the meaning of borders and exclusions, a theme which has been explored in Greek cinema since the 1990s. For her,

Dogtooth functions as “an allegory to internal borders in and of Greece, and in extension

those in and of Europe”, and the family is perceived as “a frontier, an internal border in the core of society, to be protected from external intervention, controlled and disciplined in a way that promotes it further close in on itself” (224). Therefore, the author draws a parallel between the boundaries represented in the film Dogtooth and the external borders of Greece, between the nationals and the migrants. “Lanthimos’s grotesque realism dissects the politics of exclusion that surround the focus on protection of family and its values both in Greece and in Europe” (Celik 231). In this configuration, the integration of newcomers is seen as a threat for national families. The scholar’s approach is insightful in that it places the film Dogtooth in a register of contemporary societal policies, exploiting the film as a material mirroring national representations. This breaching of the film’s diegetic world with Europe’s society in general is a direction Elsaesser also took in his piece “Europe – A Thought Experiment”. As he explicates in his introductory chapter: “From a certain perspective, European politics and European cinema can be understood as the recto and verso of each other, on condition of ‘enlarging the problem’” (1). If the agenda of Elsaesser is quite different from the one undertaken in this project, drawing out the potential parallels between Europe’s politics and Europe’s cinematic representations is a meeting point. Therefore, looking at the boundaries in the films and how they relate to national boundaries in Europe will be informative in that similar processes are occurring on both scales.

Anecdotic but nevertheless insightful: in an interview about Dogtooth, Lanthimos announced: “After we wrote the script, I did realize that this film (…) is about how much you can really control people’s minds, and with the information you’re giving people, how much they can have a distorted view of the world. So of course, on the next level, that can really be about media, or the information that leaders give their countries…”8. This shows that the possible enlargement of the film to the situation of Europe, for instance, is a parallel he had also drawn himself.

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25 The role of boundaries in the intentional communities of the films and their existence as resulting from epistemological manipulations is paired with a sense of confinement in the filmic objects. The cinematic treatment of the space reflects this containment, to be seen in the camera framing work mostly. The film scholar Brinkema observes it in Dogtooth, where many shots display fragmented bodies: “The signature look of the film is a frame containing partial bodies. (…) The bodies are composed as forms of deviation from a unified corpus” (Brinkema 5). In the film, the camera rarely allows medium shots, but rather shows parts of the bodies, as territories whose contours are limitations. The body can be seen as the limit of the world the characters evolve in, showing the confinement of space. Indeed, what the camera displays and bumps into are the fixed territories of the bodies, the clear and defined physicality, the known location. The visual limitation created by the characters’ bodies prevents the viewer from having a broader cinescape, and is a metaphor for the confined environment of the teenagers. In that sense, the body contours also constitute a locality and another boundary which cannot be overcome.

A specific scene in Dogtooth insists on the narrowness of the given space: the teens walking around blindfolded, having to reach the decking in the middle of the garden (Figure 5). This platform works as a frame within the frame, an enclosure within the larger enclosure of the cloister. By doing so, it plays with the conventions of the given space, both physically and epistemologically speaking.

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26 If the allowed space given to the teenagers to grow up and develop as individuals cannot go beyond the fences of their garden, this same space is boundlessly reducible: to the frames constituted by the wooden decking, by their bedroom walls, by their bed and finally by their own bodies.

In relation to boundaries, picking up this metaphor of blindness is important as it contains underlying references to the epistemological sense of boundaries. This metaphor is differently connoted in The Village. The blind character, Ivy, is the only one who dares trespassing the boundary of the woods, venturing into the forest, facing the supposedly threatening creatures, creating contact with the Those We Don’t Speak Of and coming back. It is exactly because she is sightless that the physical boundary between the territory of the village and the woods does not mentally come into existence, possibly weakening the epistemological boundaries associated with it, and if not, at least giving her enough courage to venture into the forest.

The blindness of Ivy “allowed for the preservation of the child-like innocence inherent to the ignorance of living in a village hidden from everyone inside a natural reserve bought with the money Edward Walker inherited from his father (…) and that the monster who attacked Ivy in the woods was actually Noah” according to the cultural studies scholar Ansgar Nünning (169). Here, being deprived of sight is paired with innocence in a positive light: her blindness does not connote her narrow perception but her fortune in a way, in not being able to visually see “the silly lies”, but only imagine them.

These epistemological boundaries draw their strength from their combination with physical boundaries, allowing an abstract concept (us the community vs the others) to be crystallized. It is because of its pairing with an actual concept (the edge of the woods) that the sharp divide inside / outside can be delineated and strengthened as a core principle for the community members. Looking at it with a wider perspective, the same argument could be transferred to a country’s level, defining its inhabitants as situated inside, as opposed to the outside. In the discipline of anthropology, this self versus other argument has been perpetuated since the study of non-western societies. As the anthropologist Abu-Lughod

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27 highlights in her works, “The process of creating a self through opposition to another always entails the violence of repressing or ignoring other forms of difference”9 (468).

Abu-Lughod explains here that the construction of the figure of the self sparks a naturalization in selecting what is a “worth it” form of culture and in this Western domination scheme, there is a real misrepresentation of some cultural differences of the Other. This binary opposition is transferable to the reality of national borders and how otherness is presented. Defining the insiders of the community (regardless of its scale) through their opposition to the outside and how they occupy a certain territory also contributes to a feeling of containment within the community.

As Hancock refers to when talking about containment “Goffman introduces the term "gathering" to identify the interactive setting in which the contextually bound, historically grounded, socially constructed frames that interpret our experiences become the regulatory mechanisms of society” (322). In the case of The Village, all elements are reunited: there is an historical justification for the community’s seclusion, a specific context has been established for the community to live within, and normative frames have been fabricated to keep it in order, and finally all three elements became regulatory mechanisms of the community. These entities, as Goffman’s conceptual thinking shows, are transferable to our actual societies. Abu-Lughod’s argument above, points at the designation of the community (regardless of its size) and its definition as opposed to the others. This phenomenon is part of a larger set of normative frames which legitimate the power structure in place and perpetuate it. For this reason, looking at the manufacturing of discourse will give us more insight in the way control is ensured over the individual and how it turns them into subjects of these same power structures.

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4. Manufacturing discourse, to ensure control over individuals

4.1 Individuals as subjects of power structures

To discuss the manufacturing of discourse in these intentional communities, we will be looking at the different ways knowledge is being managed inside the communities, in terms of information (as controlled and unevenly distributed).

Along with cinematic tools such as camera work or mise-en-scène, passages of the scripts will be examined, as they reveal that discourse is fabricated by the dominant group (the parents in Dogtooth, the elders in The Village) before being delivered to the other community members, thus setting the codes of conduct for them to follow. Therefore, the manufacturing of discourse can be seen as part of a strategy of containment set up by the dominant group. By manipulating the given speech, notably by delivering biased representations, the dominant group manages to confine the community members and perpetuate their seclusion from society.

Looking at the way individuals within these communities engage with the given set of rules, and to a larger extent, power structures in the microcosm they represent and live in, will give us insight into the workings of discourse manufacturing and its role in asserting control over a group. Notably, it will reveal the strategies that are relied upon to construct discourse and what it draws its strength from.

Then, the Foucauldian process of subjectification will be introduced to place the emphasis on the individual level and see how this process, which turns an individual into a subject of the ruling system takes place, and how it informs the complexities of the connection between identity fabrication and power structures. Indeed, the epistemological treatment of the community members in the discourse produced by these power structures seems to be one explanation for the subjectification which occurs in these communities. This process will also enlighten the process of discourse manufacturing in demonstrating that the members themselves play a role in shaping the information they are given.

To engage with the matter of control over the individuals, Foucault’s concept of subjectivisation is insightful. Nevertheless, this term he coined requires some clarifications. It is mostly due to translations from French to English and the fact Foucault uses two

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29 different terms to address this topic: “assujettissement” and “subjectivation”. The political theorist Samuel A. Chambers explicates the difference: the term assujettissement appeared first, to “designate the process by which a subject is formed within a nexus of power-knowledge relationships, while at the same time the subject serves as a nodal point that makes the power-knowledge nexus possible” (99). In the 1980s, Foucault introduced the concept “subjectivation”. This concept was pertaining more to “the relation of the individual him/herself; to the multiple ways in which a self can be constructed on the basis of what one takes to be the truth" (99). Because this project is mostly interested in what produces the individual as a subject, Foucault’s assujettissement seems more appropriate. The translation suggested by Chambers for it is “subjectification”, while subjectivation will remain the same in both languages to designate the subject’s own formation. We will therefore stick to the concept “subjectification” to discuss how the transformation of the individual into a subject occurs.

The two similar ways to look at the transformation of the individual into a subject is highlighted by the scholar Leblanc: either it is looking at the external aspect of power, which is producing corporeal behaviours, mental representations and a specific function for the subject in the community, or it is looking at the internal aspect of it, which engages with discussions about attachment, and subjective consent to power relationships. The scholar specifies that for both Foucault and Althusser, subjectivisation works with the “function sujet”. That means that it turns individuals into subjects: “Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all)”. Without getting too far into both philosophers’ theories, analysing the way subjectification takes place in both filmic objects in light of their description of the phenomenon is very informative for understanding how power structures function within these films.

In Shyamalan’s film, the community members define their identity as a group, as opposed to “Those We Don’t Speak Of”, and mark this distinction thanks to colour-coding: they belong to the yellow zone, and wear yellow coats, to protect themselves against the Others, represented by the colour red (Figure 6).

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30 Figure 6. The Village.

It is therefore logical to acknowledge that a key rule of the village is: “Let the bad color not be seen, it attracts them”. Therefore, the subject formation comes as an opposition against another group, another community and not as an entity in itself. Every member has a specific role in the community, and perceives the rest of the community and the surroundings as defined by the Elders. In a way, all subjects are constituted by the rules set by the dominant group and perpetuating these rules is to make the subjectivisation process sustainable, and to create more uniformity in the community, and therefore more adherence to the system, as well as to increase faithfulness from the members. What is noticeable about that subjectivisation process is the loss of individuality which accompanies it; most members are depicted as part of a mass which is bigger than them as separate individuals. Only a few characters stand out from the crowd for narrative purposes: Ivy as she is the heroin venturing into the woods, Lucius as he transgresses the norms in place, and Noah as he, in some ways, allows the village’s myth to be perpetuated. Other characters, when framed individually, are given minor and meaningless roles; their appearances on the screen serve the purpose of displaying the standard behaviour. The comings and goings of

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31 villagers for instance is used mostly to insist on the order and harmony present in the community.

Dogtooth, on the other hand, illustrates Althusser’s notion of interpellation as the

mechanism by which the individual is subjectivised: there is a very literal example in the film, in which the children have no names and only referred to as their position in the family tree: older sister, brother…

More than a loss of individuality, it is a loss of identity which is displayed here and pushed to its extreme thanks to the grotesque, absurd universe the filmmaker imagined for

Dogtooth. The viewer witnesses a routine the father figure has set up for his family: each

morning after a session of work out exercises, the kids and the mother have to bark back at their father. This is an extremely interesting element of the diegesis of the film to pick up for its metaphorical nature: more than a simple loss of identity, it is a process of dehumanisation triggered by the father, who embodies power and authority. The philosopher Mark Kelly insists on the regulatory nature of such practice in the light of Foucault’s philosophy: “Foucault details in Discipline and Punish particularly the way physical training is a part of disciplinary power, and Subjectivity this, Foucault argues, determines the way the body behaves, through practised movements which become second nature, through practices which become habitual” (97). This specific workout routine the family members are required to do on a daily basis can thus be seen as part of the power structure that turns individuals, in the case of the film, the teenagers into subjects. This situation questions the submission of the family members to the paternal figure, and to a larger extent, the patriarchy portrayed in Dogtooth.

The account Psaras is giving of the object in his article, is also insisting on the patriarchal dimension present in the film: “The film (…) highly problematizes the demand for unconditional submission to the patriarch. In this way, it effectively projects a problematic version of a form of familial subjectivity, in which such values as autonomy and freedom dissolve in the face of the communal familial good, and where the individual’s own material and emotional survival is always already negotiable and subjected to the given familial political economy” (70). In the familial configuration of Dogtooth, the mother figure is put in the same position as the kids, and it is to the viewer to guess if she has herself decided to

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32 take part in this game, to reinforce the credibility of this routine set by the father, or if she has been forced to do so by her husband (Figure 7). Nevertheless, she is also in a submissive position and this peculiar scene within the narratives of the film, along with the patriarchal system it represents, can be looked at from a larger perspective: the national perspective.

Figure 7. Dogtooth.

Psaras in “Dogtooth, On Narrativity” establishes a connection between the familial and the national structure, and sees the depiction of this patriarchal family “as an allegory for dictatorial regimes, and particularly, as an allegory for the nation’s former dictatorial past” (76). The connection it draws between the authoritarian family structure of Dogtooth and the family as being a central pillar in the Greek national discourse shows the achievements of filmic objects as mirrors of actual societies, rather than merely audiovisual objects. In this light, the family members in Dogtooth become more than subjects of the patriarchal authority within the narratives of the film, but subjects of a larger institution: Europe.

The role of the mother in the family of Dogtooth can be thought of in a larger perspective, particularly if we consider the context of Europe, notably in countries where regimes are close to dictatorships. If the position of dictator is unique and exclusive, taking away its citizens’ individuality, state apparatuses are working alongside his policies, supporting his scheme. Just like the mother figure is working hand in hand with the father in

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33 exerting this authority, her motivation is primarily the belief that their endeavour is the best option for the survival of the kids, and of them as a familial institution. The children are equally convinced obeying the rules is ensuring their safety. Their attitude towards their mother, characterised by strong affection and dependence, displays their trust and loyalty towards her and the fact her behaviour is not questionable. This argument of authority, which erases the notion of individuality, but considers the whole as a strength, is also used in European countries with conservative, nationalist parties such as Hungary or Bulgaria. More recent situations also translate this tendency: in Turkey, the recent constitutional referendum whose outcome was the expansion of Erdogan’s powers, allows him to be both the head of state and a political party in itself. The system was democratically chosen by the supporters (51.4% voted in favour). These actual examples are contemporary enlargements of the workings of the power structures of the film, notably when it comes to authority. If those examples are straight-forward and relatively simplistic, this amplification these films enable is also to be recognized in cases where it is more subtle and concealed in a complex manner. These films, as thought experiment propose open what-if scenarios that can apply to multiple societal matters.

What we observe is that the connection between the power structures present in the community of Dogtooth, and the ones in some societies in Europe is undeniable. The subjectivisation process, notably, occurs regardless of the community’s size, in that the ideological system which establishes itself manipulates knowledge and speech, which are correlated to the formation of subjects. Is the subjectification process solely the causal effect of the normative mechanisms set up by the power structure or is there another dynamic at stake to explain this phenomenon? Foucault’s concept of self as enterprise adds another layer of understanding to this phenomenon: self-regulation. Incorporating this idea into the argumentation will demonstrate that authority not solely comes from the dominant group but can also be the result of individual mechanisms, where subjects are “nodal points” as Chambers describes it.

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4.1 Process of self-regulation

One of Foucault’s central ideas was the concept of self-regulation, particularly what he called “bio power”. The sociologist Jen Pylypa rephrased his definition: “Michel Foucault coined the term "biopower" to refer to the ways in which power manifests itself in the form of daily practices and routines through which individuals engage in surveillance and self-discipline, and thereby subjugate themselves” (1). It is informative to dive into it as it documents the process of subjectification looking at the way the individual is self-regulating because of factors such as fear or knowing they are being observed.

Chambers has already introduced this idea that the subject functions as a nodal point where the power-knowledge relationship can come into existence, showing that the body is the interface where this self-regulation operates.

In both films, this self-regulation process is made visible in the way the individuals conform to the given rules. In The Village, everyone soundly sticks to the territory of the village and respects the colour coding instructions, while in Dogtooth the children engage in the same morning routine (including barking at their father) without questioning it or incorporating variations.

Jen Pylypa enriches the definition of compliance to the rules by claiming that “such conformity is not achieved through coercion or force, but rather through desire. By constructing conceptions of normality and deviance, power makes the norms appear moral or "right" and creates the desire to conform to these norms” (24). In both films, there is always the presence of the individual who did not conform and suffered the consequences: a supposedly dead brother in Dogtooth, who escaped as he was not ready, and Lucius in The

Village, who dared poaching the forbidden territory, has to pay the price of it: being shamed

publicly (this point will be further developed in the chapter on transgressions). These behaviours are presented to the communities as deviant acts which must not be imitated. Therefore, the discipline and obedience displayed by the community members, albeit triggered by the community’s rules, are imposed by themselves. “Disciplinary techniques organize time, space, and daily practices; these techniques are institutionalized in schools, prisons, hospitals, and workshops, but also internalized in individuals through self-regulating behaviours” (Pylypa 22). This quote emphasises the bi-directionality of discipline: as coming

The representation of intentional communities in cinema: a read into the power structures of our societies

Master’s in Film Studies

Master Thesis