Indeterminacy and Blurred Identities in Synecdoche, New York
Ties Wijnker
10643222
Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Irina Souch
MA Thesis – Comparative Cultural Analysis (Arts and Culture) 13 June 2018
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: The Artwork as a Map: Two Approaches to Conveying Reality 10 1.1. Big and Small Maps 10
1.2. The Artwork as Simulacrum 12 1.3. Noise as Complication 16
Chapter 2: Beyond the Unidirectional: A Blurring between Self and Other 24 2.1. The Unidirectional Spectacle 24
2.2. Blurred Identities 26
2.3. Precariousness and Precarity 33
Chapter 3: Fictional Realities: The (Dis-)Identifying Spectator 40 3.1. Frames of Reality 40
3.2. Spectatorship as Connection and Disconnection 43 3.3. Metafiction: A Reality among Other Realities 45 Conclusion 50
Introduction
An emblematic scene of Synecdoche, New York shows theater director Caden Cotard—along with Hazel, his assistant and a love interest—walking through the gargantuan set of the theater piece he is developing. Ahead of them walks Sammy, the actor who portrays Caden in the play. Sammy comes across two of the actors and instructs them: “I told you before. This is not a play about dating, it’s about death!” Caden subsequently notes to Hazel: “He doesn’t need to yell at them… It is a play about dating. It’s not a play just about death. It’s about everything. Dating, birth, death, life, family. All that.” He then points at a wall of one of the buildings on set and mumbles: “Still not real.” On another building’s wall, there is a speaker which simulates sounds of traffic. Moments later, passing one of the countless actors
rehearsing on the set, Caden tells him “You don’t walk like that. Just walk like yourself,” upon with the actor takes some steps back and tries a different walk. Caden subsequently finds Sammy flirting with Hazel, rather than the actress who plays Hazel. When asked what he is doing, Sammy responds: “I was being you… You know, you like Hazel, I like Hazel.” This short sequence brings forward some of the core themes and issues of the film, evoking questions regarding art, reality, and identity. Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 feature-length American film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. It is a 123-minute-long story revolving around Caden Cotard (portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theater director who receives a grant for his rendition of Death of a Salesman. With this new budget he plans to produce an ambitious new play that is inspired directly by his own life and that of the people around him, with which Caden attempts to convey the “truth”—of his experience of life, but also of the lives of those around him—as accurately as possible. The play is
developed in a colossal warehouse in which Caden sets out to (re)produce a whole part of the city, as well as the lives of the people in it. The play is in production for many years and is ultimately never finished.
Although the film has generally been received favorably, it has been met with both praise and disapproval. Film critic Robert Ebert has opened his review of the film by pointing at its striking complexity: “It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely” (par 1). Ebert goes on to call Kaufman “one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium” (par. 7), and praises the film for its wide-reaching subject matter: “The subject of ‘Synecdoche, New York’ is nothing less than human life and how it works. […] Think about it a little and, my god, it's about you. Whoever you are” (par. 3; emphasis in original). A reviewer for the New York Times has similarly noted its simultaneous complexity and
pertinence: “It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now” (Dargis par. 9), and notes that despite the film’s seriousness, it is also “serious about being funny” (par. 8). Yet, other critics have accused the film of being incoherent and self-indulgent.1
The film is Kaufman’s directorial debut and, like many of his film, it deals with themes of identity, reality and fiction, and mortality, containing a mixture of severe subject matter, playful absurdism, and social criticism. Although a considerable amount of articles has been written on Synecdoche, New York, there is relatively little scholarly analysis on the film. Existing analyses focus on a wide variety of subjects such as mortality and personal crisis (see e.g. Ott), solipsism (e.g. Siron), temporality, and postmodernism. I will set out to contribute an extensive exploration of reality, identity, and the particular notion of art as they appear in the film. While some existing analyses have dealt with these same themes (see e.g. Carroll and Deming), as of yet there has been little in-depth exploration on the specific type of art brought forward in the film, with regard to notions of reality and social or political
emancipation.
With Caden’s play, the film presents a model of a very particular type of art: one
1 See for instance a review in Entertainment Weekly: “It’s a hallowed ritual of film culture. An artist makes a movie that is so labyrinthine and obscure, such a road map of blind alleys, such a turgid challenge to sit through that it sends most people skulking out of the theater — except, that is, for a cadre of eggheads who hail the work as a visionary achievement” (Gleiberman par. 1).
which tries to be as complete as possible, creating many fragmented and multiplicious narratives, growing rather than narrowing down, and, through this, trying to reach as close to the truth as possible. Looking at this kind of art raises questions regarding notions of reality and the spectacle, as well as the emancipatory possibilities or limitations of such art. Much criticism of the cultural industry deals with the notions of unidirectional communication, hegemonic ideology, and the idea of the impossibility of dialogue in mass-cultural art.2 The
approach toward art presented in this film suggests that there are nonetheless different kinds of opportunities for art to function as a means of emancipation and social connection. At the same time, it shows the obstacles that such an artwork faces, even depicting its ultimate failure, thus highlighting many possible challenges and complications to the emancipatory aims of such art.
With this thesis I will attempt to explore the ways in which the particular kind of art embodied by Caden’s play complicates this notion of the unidirectional cultural artifact, and to examine the ways in which it might provide possibilities for social and political
emancipation with regard to making visible shared—i.e., by the artist(s) and spectator(s)— realities, opening up dialogue, and reframing reality. I will do textual and visual analyses of different scenes in the film, as well as an analysis of the particular models of art and reality presented within the film. I will thus be looking at the film on two levels: the intradiegetic level (in which I will focus particularly on Caden’s creation of the play, but also the narratives outside of it such as his personal life and other characters in the film), and the meta level (i.e., how the film itself deals with notions of art and fiction).3 As such, my object will be
Synecdoche, New York in its totality. I will explore how the approach toward art presented in the film—i.e., a type of art which is as multiplicious and complete as possible—offers
possibilities for a conveying a reality that is shared by the spectator and, through this, enables 2 See Adorno and Horkheimer, and Debord.
3 Somewhat confusingly, on which I will later expand, the intradiegetic level also contains a metafictional aspect.
dialogue. In my analysis of this form of art, I will demonstrate how notions of indeterminacy and noise can provide the possibility to go beyond the unidirectional nature of the spectacle and, therefore, can open up social and political potentials. Along with this, I will investigate to what extent an interconnected and blurred sense of identity might provide emancipation (for both the artist and audience), and in what ways it might complicate and limit the conception of a shared reality.
Concerning notions of reality and representation, there has been a long tradition in the humanities of Marxist and post-structuralist theorists providing criticisms of different forms of modern media and culture. Notions such as the spectacle and the simulacrum describe late-capitalist Western society and culture as providing people with illusory images of reality. For Guy Debord, for one, this means that people are separated from each other through spectacles, and held captive by these illusory images and forms of ideology: “Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at” (7; emphasis in original). As such, according to Debord, the spectacle is a tool of oppression, isolating audience members from each other. For Baudrillard, in turn, this increasingly media-saturated reality and dominance of “images” comes with more
fundamental, philosophical implications, affirming that there is no longer any such thing as an original. For him, the present late-capitalist neoliberal condition can be seen as a simulation in which everything is a copy without original.
Jacques Rancière is an example of a contemporary theorist who opposes these models, looking for ways in which one can go past these views of a “society of the spectacle,” in which the spectator is seen as merely a passive subject. He suggests the notion of the emancipated spectator, arguing that spectatorship alone consists of active participation, by interpreting and reacting to a work, forming one’s own view of it, and forming new
associations about the world one inhabits. In The Emancipated Spectator, Rancière notes how the Marxist criticism of the spectacle has become increasingly defeatist over time:
Forty years ago, it was supposed to denounce the machinery of social domination in order to equip those challenging it with new weapons. Today, it has become exactly the opposite: a disenchanted knowledge of the reign of the commodity and the spectacle, of the equivalence between everything and everything else and between everything and its own image. (32)
He suggests that such a criticism or even parody will not be able to provide social
emancipation since it follows the logic of the commodity and assumes a distinction between viewing and acting. Instead, Rancière suggests that for art to be political, it should not attempt to directly affect the outside world, but rather provide new frames of reality, new narratives and sights. In his statement on a Klartext! panel discussion he argues: “Art does not enact politics by reaching the real. It enacts it by inventing fictions that challenge the existing distribution of the real and the fictional” (3).
Through a close engagement with my object, I will explore the tension between the views of art as merely a pseudo-reality or unilateral communication on the one side, and as providing empowering and unifying possibilities on the other side, thus painting a nuanced and multiplicious picture of the social effects, possibilities, and limitations of the particular fragmented, noisy kind of artwork depicted in the film. Through my analysis, I will attempt to go beyond the pessimism of traditional Marxist or post-structural readings of the spectacle, complicating notions of the illusory, unidirectional spectacle and unreal simulacrum, while nonetheless acknowledging certain limitations and struggles that this type of art faces. In the first chapter, I will look at the notion of reality as it comes forward in the film’s depiction of artworks, which form different ‘maps’ of reality. Here, I will compare two kinds of art presented in the film. On the one hand there is Caden’s wife, Adele (portrayed by Catherine
Keener), who makes almost microscopically small, simple portrait paintings, and on the other hand there is Caden, whose play is developed in an immense warehouse. These two forms raise questions about representation and reality, and the friction between the two: How do the two art forms presented in Synecdoche, New York provide possibilities and limitations for truthfully and accurately conveying a reality? Here, notions of the simulacrum and noise will be used to explore the ways in which they enable but also complicate the artwork as a reality.
In attempting to go beyond a unidirectional logic, this type of artwork brings forward a very specific notion of identity, suggesting the possibility of art breaking down divisions and distinctions, presenting not independent or separate individuals or groups, but instead arriving at a complex notion of subjectivity through a focus on interconnectivity. In the second
chapter, I will look at this particular notion of identity as containing a potential for opening up dialogue and a sense of shared reality. Here, I will discuss Debord’s notion of the spectacle, as a “pseudo-world” which divides and dominates its audience, and subsequently to what degree the indeterminate, multiplicious type of art presented in the film might be subject to this or rather subvert or challenge it, opening up a specific notion of identity in which the self is part of a bigger, interconnected whole. To what degree might such a conception of identity and subjectivity offer the possibility for “dialogue,” and go beyond the unidirectional logic of the spectacle as described by Debord? Here, Anna Tsing’s use of the notion of assemblages provides a possibility of complicating this notion of the spectacle, opening up an
indeterminate view of subjectivity and the self. I will furthermore explore in what ways such an approach poses certain limits: there is, for instance, the problem of who decides which life is made visible, and which is not.
The particular notion of identity—along with the notion of shared reality—presented in Caden’s play subsequently brings forward the involvement of the spectator of such an artwork. Rancière discusses—with his conception of the political as being aesthetic in nature
—how art is able to make visible or sensible certain experiences or realities, and thus contains a political potential in its ability to provide new frames of reality. Here, the viewer becomes a crucial agent in the production of meaning and ‘truth’. How does the multiplicious type of art that Caden’s play embodies enable the viewer to have a dynamic relationship to the artwork? In connection to this, I will investigate how the film’s focus on metafiction points at the social and political possibilities of art, as a (re)framing of reality—and, crucially, at the part the spectator plays in this.
Chapter 1: The Artwork as a Map: Two Approaches to Conveying Reality 1.1. Big and Small Maps
In this chapter, to explore the social and emancipatory possibilities—as well as limitations— of the kinds of art presented in Synecdoche, New York, I will look at notions of representation and reality as they relate to two types of art depicted in the film. Through Caden (the
protagonist) and through his wife Adele (another main character), the film presents two contrasting forms of art. When Caden receives his grant and starts to set up his new ambitious play in the second act of the film, the viewer is gradually introduced to his particular type of art: one that grows continuously, contains many fragmented narratives, and seems to lack a clear univocal plot, message, or conclusion. The warehouse in which the play develops becomes an enormous set with countless characters, all of them acting out their parts simultaneously. Adele is also an artist, using the medium of painting. She is shown in her studio creating extremely small portrait paintings (with the canvas being about an inch square), using customized glasses to be able to paint on such a small scale. At one point in the film, there is an exhibition of Adele’s miniature paintings, with visitors viewing them through magnifying glasses, and an inscription on the wall that reads “Small Miracles: The Paintings of Adele Lack.” Relating these two types of art to notions of reality and viewing them as kinds of ‘maps’, in this chapter I will explore how the two art forms presented in Synecdoche, New York provide possibilities and limitations for truthfully and accurately conveying a reality. Subsequently, I will investigate to what extent these framings of reality can effectively be communicated to, and shared by, an audience.
In certain aspects, the artworks of Caden and Adele are very similar. For one, both artists use their own life stories and the people in them as the subject matter for their art. Both of them also attempt to be truthful or real in their work. In Adele’s work, for example, one of
the ways in which she does this is by painting portraits of people completely naked, in a vulnerable and exposed position. Caden develops similar ambitions only later in the film. When Caden’s art is introduced, the viewer is first shown his rendition of Death of a
Salesman. After seeing the play, Adele complains to Caden that she “can’t get excited about your restaging someone else’s old play. There’s nothing personal in it.” She goes on: “What are you leaving behind? You act as if you have forever to figure it out.” Not much later, Caden gets his grant, which consists of a significant sum of money, and now he seems determined to pay regard to Adele’s criticism. He tells his therapist: “I think Adele’s right when she says I’m not doing anything real. I’m afraid I’m going to die, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I want to do something important while I’m still here.” He then explains what it will be: “A theater piece. Something big and true and tough. Finally put my real self into something.” Caden is now focused on reproducing his own reality in the play, to convey his true self and leave something behind that he can be remembered for.
The way in which Caden and Adele go about achieving this truthfulness is completely different. Whereas Adele’s work is small, contained, and has clear and simple subject matter, Caden’s work becomes almost boundless, growing more and more elaborate, essentially attempting to produce a full-scale reality. As such, Caden’s play in specific prompts further questions about the possibilities of the artwork as a simulacrum for conveying reality and producing meaning. How does a noisy artwork such as Caden’s play—in its multiplicity and over-abundance of information—complicate this communication, and to what extent can this noisiness become a source of value and meaning? As opposed to Adele, Caden wants to create the reality; not merely provide a glimpse of it. It is an attempt to provide a model of his reality (and of others’) that is as accurate and complete as possible. In this regard, Caden’s artwork is evocative of the short story “On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis Borges. This one-paragraph parable describes an empire in which the “Art of Cartography” has become so
advanced that its cartographers have been able to produce a map so detailed and accurate that it becomes the size of the territory, coinciding “point for point with it.”
1.2. The Artwork as Simulacrum
Such a notion of a representation—as becoming as ‘real’ as the reality it represents—has significant implications for the position and possibilities of art (and, as I will later discuss, also brings complications with it). Viewing art as such a mapmaking in which one attempts to get closer to reality, it becomes more than mere representation. Such a model blurs the lines between the original or reality and the representation or copy of it, as the difference between the two becomes less and less clear. This idea would later be echoed by Jean Baudrillard in his treatise Simulacra and Simulation, in which he references Borges’ story to build his argument regarding simulacra. Baudrillard contends that in a technologically advanced, late-capitalist society, a condition similar to that of Borges’ story has developed: in which the inhabitants live in the representation of the world, rather than the original reality. For Baudrillard, this takes on the form of an all-encompassing simulation in which images no longer refer to an original, but are instead copies of copies—which he calls simulacra. Thus, Baudrillard takes it even further than Borges by suggesting that there is no territory—no original—to speak of anymore: “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (3). Because of this, one can no longer make a distinction between map and territory: “Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other, that constituted the charm of abstraction” (Baudrillard 3).
It appears that a similar condition arises in Synecdoche, New York for Caden: the map of his life becomes his territory. Caden gets increasingly caught up in its production, spending many years developing it, including every possible event in the play, and even including his
own writing of it within the play. There is no boundary between his character in the play and his ‘true’ self, and thus there is no longer an outside to the play, or an original, real Caden to speak of. At one point in the film, Caden even explicitly mentions that he is thinking about calling the play “Simulacrum.” This emphasizes a view of the play as such a copy without an original, in which images represent nothing but themselves, i.e., simulations that replace reality. To quote Baudrillard: “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (4). To
Baudrillard, simulacra offer no sense of reality or truth, but instead a world “in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance” (6).
Yet, Caden’s artwork carries out a notion of simulacra that is fundamentally different from the one used by Baudrillard. Caden wants to go past mere representation and—as discussed earlier—produce something truly real. He creates an elaborate world of narratives to form a kind of reality; not as a criticism or copy but as being the truth. Caden thus attempts to remove the distinction between the two: i.e., reality is not regarded as lost here, but instead the simulacrum becomes the reality, as opposed to a mere copy of a copy. As such, while Caden considers calling his play “Simulacrum,” it is really not a simulacrum at all—at least not as Baudrillard has conceived it. Caden’s conception of his artwork is gradually revealed in the many scenes of its development, such as the recitals of the actors on set. During a
rehearsal of a recreation of an argument between Caden and Claire (one of Caden’s actresses, with whom he is in a relationship at this point), the boundary between performance and reality blurs more and more. Sammy, a man who has been following Caden for twenty years, and at some point was chosen to portray Caden in the play, gropes Claire (who plays herself) from behind, after which Claire says to Caden: “I don’t like the guy you got to play you.” But it is
Sammy who responds: “You don’t like Sammy? Why, I think he’s good.” Now, Claire turns to Sammy and addresses him as if he really were Caden: “He’s coming onto me. […] He’s not my Goddamn husband! You are!” Only after pronouncing this last line does she turn to the ‘real’ Caden again, as if the distinction between the two was lost for a moment.
This scene emphasizes the way in which it becomes increasingly less clear to what degree the people involved in the play are being sincere, or simply acting their parts, as the distinction between the two is blurring. At this point of the film, a crucial shift takes place from unreal to real. While the scenes were initially just reproductions of Caden’s memories and experiences, over time, Caden grows dissatisfied with this indirect image of reality. In the scenes following the one described above, this shift is gradually made complete. Here, Caden looks upon the open apartment building on set, in which many of the characters’ lives are depicted, and suddenly proclaims: “This is a lie.” He now decides that a wall should be put up on the side of the building, just like the building has a wall in the outside reality. The set now becomes more and more of a reality, inhabited by people. When Adele’s new apartment is also built on set, Caden believes he hears her voice inside it and begins to knock on the door calling for her, even though it is the set and not the actual apartment in which Adele lives. The actress who is supposed to go into the apartment tells Caden “you’re breaking the fourth wall. I get to open the door.” In these scenes, instead of the play being a copy that represents a reality, it becomes living, living the play, as a reality, and as such Caden constructs a reality that is both the original and the copy. In other words: the map is the reality. What was initially recreation is now creation.
Building on Borges’ story, Baudrillard posits the simulacrum as unreal, describing an overarching philosophical condition in which objects or images have lost their essence, and in which access to reality is irretrievably lost. Departing from this approach, Caden’s artwork points to a different, more promising view of the concept of simulacra, one that is applied
specifically to art. Whereas Baudrillard contends that, in late-capitalist, neoliberal society, there are only unreal copies, this can be opposed with the suggestion that simulacra are real in their own right: i.e., no longer subservient to reality, since the distinction between the two is no longer present. This offers possibilities for the artwork regarding its place in the hierarchy of truthfulness. Gilles Deleuze describes such a possibility in “Plato and the Simulacrum”:
to overthrow Platonism means: to raise up simulacra, to assert their rights over icons or copies. The problem no longer concerns the distinction Essence/Appearance or Model/Copy. This whole distinction operates in the world of representation. The goal is the subversion of this world, ‘the twilight of idols’. The simulacrum is not degraded copy, rather it contains a positive power which negates both original and copy, both model and reproduction. (52-53; emphasis in original)
Deleuze’s view thus suggests a “positive power” for such simulacra: it posits that the model or map is exactly a real as lived reality. As opposed to Baudrillard’s dystopian philosophical conception of simulacra, Deleuze suggests that the dominance of simulacra can provide a power to ‘images’ such as models and artworks to be regarded as being true in their own right, instead of forming an unreal copy. This is essentially what Caden attempts to do with his play: to have it become its own reality—i.e., to go beyond mere representation and become independent from the notion of an original. Whereas Baudrillard takes the rise of simulacra to mean that reality can no longer be retrieved, Caden’s approach suggests that, in such a condition of hyperreality, everything is real insofar that the signifier or image is the original. As such, no longer approaching the artwork—the map—as a mere indirect copy or as derivative of real life, the artwork is able to present Caden’s notion of the “brutal truth” directly.
1.3. Noise as Complication
In his attempt to convey this truth, Caden develops a work that involves many fragmented narratives and which constantly grows into something more and more complex. While this enables him to form a kind of reality, it also confronts him with complications in
communicating and expressing this reality. Despite his intentions, Caden is creating his own map of the truth, and he is not necessarily able to communicate it to—or share it with—others around him.
To be able to explore the limitations as well as the possibilities of Caden’s approach, noise theory can offer an insightful model of communication. In “Culture, Litterature [sic], Information,” Fred Botting discusses how literature has become “increasingly subject to economic criteria” (216), and how “postmodern capitalism’s pursuit of innovation” (217) has caused culture to expand into every sphere in life: sports, technology, commercialism,
science, economy, and so on (226). The question then becomes: What is the value of art and literature in all this? To answer this, Botting discusses the information theory of Claude Shannon. According to the model of Shannon, information on its own is not meaningful, but rather depends on communication: “What matters is the form not the content” (230). Here, making selections of what to include and what to leave out of the message is what creates its meaning. Using Shannon’s model, Botting points out an important implication:
A key problem emerges in the link made between information and entropy, the tendency of closed systems towards loss, to become increasingly degraded or
disorganised. […] The commoner the message, the less information it delivers, to the point, perhaps, where it can no longer be considered information at all. […] If
information measures a change in knowledge, an element that is new, surprising or different has to be introduced to stave off entropic homogeneity. If, however, what is
introduced is too new or unfamiliar it may not be considered information and be relegated to the category of noise. (230)
Thus, a spectrum is described: on one extreme of the spectrum, the message is so common and unsurprising that it becomes completely meaningless; on the other extreme of the
spectrum the message is so unfamiliar and incomprehensible that it becomes an absolute kind of noise and fails to convey any meaning.
Adele’s artwork leans heavily to the side of the first: her paintings are extremely small and their subject matter is often clear and simple. They are so small and contained that they almost become too familiar, nearly forming a closed system which would result in entropy, where there is a complete lack of new input. But instead, her artwork manages to avoid such entropy, by still providing enough input to be meaningful, while remaining simple and contained. This becomes apparent when Adele ends up becoming very successful, not only obtaining exhibitions but also becoming a celebrity and renowned artist. The paintings’ unusual form—i.e., their extremely small size—combined with the interesting personal subject matter, such as the expressive and vulnerable portraits, makes it that her works do produce difference and novelty, while not reducing matters so much that they become cliché or meaningless. The fact that Adele’s paintings require magnifying glasses to look at could be seen as a suggestion that she reveals the small and intimate realities that would usually be overlooked by people. In this sense, she goes into depths by exposing the small and intimate details that are contained in her reality, and enhancing them, in the same way that Caden goes into depths in an inverted sense; through maximalism. Adele becomes a renowned
international artist for this success in being both clear and simple, and adding something new or original.
confusion and indeterminacy and never receives a public. His art, then, leans toward the other extreme of the spectrum of noise, in which one attempts to say so much and provide so much new information that it might end up conveying nothing meaningful or comprehensible at all. Now, before turning to the possibilities and value of this noisiness, I will first look at the complications and limitations this same noisiness can result in. Caden’s artwork, after all, balances precariously somewhere in between those two, and thus the risk of veering too far to the extreme is a very possible outcome here. With the effort to create such a truthful,
complete, and accurate model of a world, it might fail to make enough selections, and this lack of filtering could end in total noise, with a chaotic abundance of unfamiliar information and narratives. Shortly returning to Borges’ story, one is provided with an example of this. After the description of the life-sized map, the reader finds out that after the territory-sized map was created, it did not last very long. The narrator describes how the map was soon “delivered […] up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters” by the following generations, so that it deteriorated, leaving only some “Tattered Ruins” in the deserts. While it was at first a completely accurate map, the territory it recreated soon changed: the newer generations “were not so fond of the Study of Cartography” as their forebears, and the weather destroyed most of the map, revealing how such a ‘truthful’ map can be impractical and unable to be sustained through time, or among other, external realities.
This metaphor of a physical map thus evokes the idea of Bonini’s paradox: i.e., the more complete and realistic a model or simulation becomes, the less understandable it
becomes.4 This is exactly one of the complications that Caden faces. His attempt to depict the
complete, accurate truth results in a prolonged production, which keeps growing and does not seem to reach an end. Its fragmented, manifold narratives all take place simultaneously, and there is no clear principal narrative or progression to take away from it. As such, it fails to
4 Named after Stanford business professor Charles P. Bonini (see Bonini), this paradox has notably been articulated by John M. Dutton and William H. Starbuck (4).
communicate an intelligible notion of the truth just like the map in Borges’ story becomes unusable on account of its size and completeness. This parallel with Borges’ story becomes strikingly apparent on a visual level in the final scenes of the movie, when the buildings and streets on Caden’s set have become ruins of their own, dilapidated and desolate. As the now very old Caden wanders through it, he even comes across the map of the set’s different sections and warehouses; now lying on the ground, dirty and crumpled.
In Caden’s own life, the viewer is shown how this same problem of communication takes place in his personal relationships and interactions. At a certain point, Adele moves to Germany and takes their daughter Olive along. Caden travels there to look for his daughter, and in a surreal late scene Caden gets to see her again as she is dying at the age of forty.5 She
tells Caden to wear a headset which translates speech because she no longer speaks English. A digital, depersonalized voice speaks aloud the translations. Here, Caden cannot properly communicate with his daughter because she only speaks German now. There is too much difference between the two, to the point of complete misunderstanding. This same issue of miscommunication happens throughout the film. There are several scenes in which Caden visits the doctor’s office, having constant misunderstandings about what is going on with him. In one of the scenes, Caden’s doctor says “I’d like you to see an ophthalmologist.” Caden then asks “A neurologist?” and the doctor responds “What? No. An ophthalmologist. I said an ophthalmologist. Do you hear that?” as he starts snapping his finger next to Caden’s ear. This is followed by a discussion between Caden and Adele about what exactly the doctor said, and after this, the viewer is shown another such doctor-office scene: “That doesn’t seem right.” “Like morally correct or as in accurate?”
These instances of miscommunication reveal the extent to which Caden’s
5 Next to Caden and Adele’s forms of self-expression, it is also worth noting how their daughter Olive is an artist in her own right, with her own particular form of expression; one that is literally on her body in the form of elaborate tattoos. In a sense, she goes even further than her parents in her expression, completely becoming her art in a way that is similar to Caden’s ,but even more extreme, as the tattoos eventually kill her at a young age: “The flower tattoos have become infected, and they’re dying. So am I.”
multiplicious and maximalist approach to reality and expressing it—a lack of narrowing down and making selections, in which all possibilities and options are considered—becomes an obstacle in communicating a clear narrative of his truth or reality.6 However, there is a
balance to be found here: while Caden’s play results in the issues of miscommunication and disconnect described above, it is the same confusion and over-abundance of input and narratives that offers possibilities regarding the expression of reality. Returning to Botting, there is the suggestion that such noise can indeed become a source of value and meaning. While Shannon’s model is a mathematical one, Botting goes on to apply it specifically to art and literature, and their value within culture. Botting discusses how the process of
globalization enhances cultural homogeneity: language is universalized through code, and “operations of consumerism” (231) bring about “cross-cultural” sameness where, for instance, the same fast food franchises can be found no matter which city on the globe one is in.
In this lack of distinction, art can offer difference and new information through noise. In the first place, Botting links this to economic value: “Culture assumes a new function in this promotional culture: it becomes the reserve of difference, the supplement on which economy can readily capitalize” (233). Nonetheless, he also suggests a value of such noise in literature that is separate from capitalist concerns: “Literary, artistic, cultural energies […] function as the autopoietic excess necessary to the renewal of energy in entropic,
homogenising systems” (233). As opposed to familiar and expected messages (of which clichés are the ultimate example), literature is able to offer new, unexpected or unfamiliar information, adding difference rather than sameness. Botting cites Neil Paulson’s definition of literature as the “noise of culture” (234), and as such he posits art and literature as the
production of difference, distinction, and uncertainty; helping the reader try to understand the world in a more nuanced way; producing meaning and value through complexity, manyness, 6 Moreover—as I will further discuss in the next chapter—Caden’s self-absorption and preoccupation with his map estrange him from the people around him and make him unable to listen to them, thus becoming an obstacle in realizing a shared reality.
and sometimes even incomprehensibility.
In the film, the viewer can see this taking place with Caden’s play: his refusal to make selections, to be reductive, or to privilege a single narrative, allows him to portray his truth more accurately and completely. The noisiness that causes the miscommunication is the same noisiness that opens up new meaning and patterns, adding difference to existing ideas and information. Caden attempts to incorporate all possibilities into his play, even if this results in contradicting and confusing narratives. Through this, he tries to communicate every possible thing about the people around him, the events in his life, and words that are spoken in it, to accurately capture the noisiness of his reality. He keeps adding to the play and he keeps changing it as time progresses. In this sense, he is constantly adding difference; creating new input and new possible ways of viewing the world. This keeps his artwork situational, as opposed to contained in a ‘small canvas’ like the works of Adele. Whereas Adele’s paintings consist of individuals in contained portraits, Caden’s play places people in constant
connection with each other, exploring new patterns and notions of reality.
That is the value that a noisy type of artwork like Caden’s play might provide: a challenge to cultural homogenization and sameness through the use of noise; introducing new patterns and information, opening up new possibilities for conveying reality. It is used by Caden to create a map that becomes more complete and closer to reality in all its possibilities and multiplicity of narratives. As such, Caden creates a reality of its own with the play, which enables him to explore new narratives, new information, adding meaning in a way that a small, representative artwork is—by nature—not able to. It achieves a status of a reality in the way it thoroughly explores different narratives and experiences to the point that it becomes more than representation.
Going back to the enquiries posed at the beginning of the chapter, the two art forms presented in Synecdoche, New York both convey reality in different ways: Adele’s artwork is
successful in its contained and simple form. It provides value by conveying clear subject matter, while still adding difference through an original form: i.e., microscopically small paintings. Caden’s artwork becomes a simulacrum, growing continuously, so as to form its own reality. But this is a kind of simulacrum that is fundamentally different from the one conceived by Baudrillard. For Caden’s play, the copy becomes the reality, and thus reality is not lost here, but created, continuously growing more elaborate. As such, the over-abundance of information in Caden’s artwork enables the production new patterns and information, adding cultural difference and expressing reality in a truthful and as-complete-as-possible way. Only through its confusing and sometimes incomprehensible abundance of narratives is it able to truly express the multiplicity of Caden’s reality, effectively becoming a reality instead of mere representation. It can thus be said that it becomes a reality or territory of its own, gaining a performative aspect, while Adele’s type of art remains a ‘map’, i.e., distinct from a reality which it represents. Bound in a small canvas and depicting clear and simple subject matter, this type of art is not able to produce a reality or simulacrum, and thus remains representative and familiar. The use of noise, then, helps Caden to create a truthful map; to create a reality that is increasingly complete and multiplicious.
At the same time, this noisiness obstructs a comprehensible message, overwhelming people with information to the point of misunderstanding, thus complicating Caden’s attempt to express a certain reality. To truly say something, Caden needs to make selections and create a focus to some extent (like Adele successfully does with her artworks). This is where the limitations of Caden’s approach come forward: his occupation with his reality, as an increasingly complete simulacrum, results in miscommunication and estrangement from others. The more he creates his own map of reality, the less he is connected with—or on the same frequency as—others. As a result of this, he does not achieve his aims to produce the “brutal truth,” in the sense that it does not go beyond or outside himself, and thus is not able
to remove the separation between the artwork and the outside reality. This is what leads to his ultimate failure, and thus leaves unanswered questions regarding the social possibilities of this type of art. In the next chapter, I will explore to what extent this detachment—of the artwork from that which is outside of it—complicates Caden’s notion of the real and the Deleuzian notion of the simulacrum. Here, I will also specifically focus on the notion of identity as it appears in the film. While Caden does not manage to finish the play and thus does receive an audience, it is in his particular conception of identity that a possibility resides to go beyond these limitations, and thus to enable dialogue and a shared reality.
Chapter 2: Beyond the Unidirectional: A Blurring between Self and Other
2.1. The Unidirectional Spectacle
Having looked at the possibilities and limitations of producing a sense of reality through the two kinds of art in Synecdoche, New York, I will now explore how Caden’s artwork expresses a particular sense of identity, and in what ways this can offer the possibility to go beyond his detached and isolated ‘reality’. In particular I will analyze some scenes in relation to
expressing a dynamic notion of identity and opening up social connection and dialogue. Here, I will shortly discuss Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle, to investigate how Caden’s type of artwork might resist the oppressive and unidirectional logic it implies. I will also discuss Anna Tsing’s use of the notions of assemblages and polyphony to explore how these concepts can offer a way of going beyond conventional notions of identity through an emphasis
interconnectivity and interdependency. With the help of these concepts I will analyze the particular notion of identity that Caden’s approach to art enforces, and argue how a loss of individual identity can provide possibilities for enabling dialogue and a sense of shared reality. In connection to this, I will explore to what extent a focus on indeterminacy and polyphony in art can resist the unidirectional logic of the spectacle.
Throughout the film, Caden’s play becomes bigger and bigger, and everything that happens in his life happens in the play (since the boundary between them steadily disappears), as do the lives of others around him, until it becomes a gigantic production with hundreds— perhaps thousands—of characters in a set that recreates (or rather, as discussed in the previous chapter, creates) a whole part of the city. About halfway through the film, in one of the scenes depicting the production of Caden’s play, he is shown standing in front of hundreds of actors within the enormous set. He addresses them, saying “I won’t settle for anything less than the brutal truth. Brutal. Brutal. Each day I’ll hand you a scrap of paper, it’ll tell you what
happened to you that day: you felt a lump in your breast, you looked at your wife and saw a stranger, et cetera.” He is then interrupted by one of the actors: “Caden. When are we going to get an audience in here? It’s been seventeen years.”
Here, the viewer is faced with the scope of the play: its production is seemingly endless, with Caden continuing to elaborate and complicate it. This conveys a profound sense of indeterminacy, and the actor’s question serves as a reminder of how Caden’s approach requires a constant development so as to avoid the indirect, contained nature of an artwork that he would regard as unreal. The viewer witnesses how the play becomes bigger and bigger, how it takes many years to make and never seems to become a finished product. At one point Caden declares: “None of those people is an extra. They’re all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.” So Caden does not want to produce a contained narrative; he wants to truly express a complex, constantly moving reality.
Caden’s struggle lies in his failure to truly give people their “due.” To investigate this struggle and the possibility of going beyond it, I will shortly discuss the notion of the
spectacle here. This concept is useful to explore the difficulties involved in achieving notions of connection and a shared reality. French theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord, a founding member of the Situationist International movement, has elaborated on the notion of the spectacle in an influential work—published in 1967—called Society of the Spectacle. In this treatise he uses the spectacle as a criticism of western capitalist society, in which illusions of reality are distributed in the form of spectacles to impose ideology and keep dominant
capitalist structures in place. There are many different qualities to the spectacle which make it an oppressive tool, according to Debord. First, they often appear in the form of commodities, promoting and supporting the cultural industry. Next to this, they are illusory, appearing in the form of images that present a misleading view of reality: “Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at”
(Debord 7). Finally, they are unidirectional, imposing a certain narrative, worldview, or ideology on the people. Debord discusses the idea that a spectacle separates people by providing them with a common illusion to look at, which provides a false view of reality and stops them from connecting directly on the level of their actual, shared reality: “Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very centre that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness” (16; emphasis in original). As such, Debord contends that the spectacle is the opposite of dialogue. Such images alienate the viewers, isolating them from their direct surroundings through the illusion of the spectacle.
2.2. Blurred Identities
Synecdoche, New York complicates this Debordian notion of the spectacle by opening up a type of art which diminishes the boundary between the artwork or image and lived reality, and which does not impose a single narrative but instead provides the possibility for many
different ones. Through his use of noise, Caden offers a challenge to the artwork as spectacle: it forms a type of artwork in which indeterminacy and multiplicity become a source of value and meaning, helping to avoid the univocal, linear, illusory form of a spectacle. These former notions of indeterminacy are used here in an attempt to make the play as complete and truthful as possible, containing every possible experience Caden and others around him have.7
After announcing that he will write each actor a note with something that happened to them that day, Caden is shown sitting at a collection of joined-together tables, over which hundreds of notes are laid out, each of them reading a possible experience for the characters: “You have a hangover”; “Nothing matters any more”; “Your wife just had a miscarriage”; “You keep
7 This indeterminacy and lack of narrowing down to a main narrative also comes forward in Caden’s struggle to decide on a title for the play. He offers many possible titles (“Simulacrum,” “Unknown, Unkissed, and Lost,” “The Flawed Light of Love and Grief,” “The Obscure Moon Lighting an Obscure World,” and “Infectious Diseases In Cattle”) but never definitively chooses one.
biting your tongue”; “You were raped last night”; “You lost your job today.” The notes form a huge collection of interconnected experiences, all on the same plateau of tables, forming a kind of map of human experiences. As such, Caden explores new possible interconnections between people, portraying them not in a solitary, isolated canvas as individuals, but instead as all being located in the same world of narratives, sharing traits and struggles and qualities. However, it is only by avoiding the unidirectional nature of the spectacle that the play can truly enable connection and the expression of a shared reality. The many different
narratives Caden writes all try to capture the possible experiences people go through, but nonetheless they are only that: possible. Caden is the one deciding what the experiences of the characters are. So while his intentions are good, at this point the narrative is essentially still unidirectional. Crucially, as the film progresses, it is in the particular notions of identity and subjectivity that Caden’s play carries out, where a possibility of going beyond these
limitations appears, and where a promising potential for narratives outside of the self is revealed. It is when Caden’s sense of identity begins to fall apart and blur that the notions of dialogue and a shared reality become possible.
At a certain point, beginning early on in the film, Caden starts losing his sense of self. He is supposed to go to Berlin with Adele and Olive for Adele’s art show, but Adele tells him she has decided to go with Olive only. When he later goes home with Hazel, the woman who works at the box-office counter of the theater, Caden has trouble giving himself over to her, saying “I’m just… I’m just really confused. […] I’m really sick and I think I’m dying. I have a kid, and I’m married.” He still feels something for Adele and still loves Olive, but at the same time he feels connected to Hazel. Later, when he becomes involved with Claire, this becomes even more complicated. In a scene where Caden meets Claire for dinner, he finds Hazel in the booth next to them, and Caden is shown constantly switching his attention between Hazel and Claire. In the same scene, Caden tells Claire “I don’t know what I’m
doing,” and she responds: “Knowing that you don’t know is the first and the most essential step to knowing, you know.” Eventually, he gets married to Claire, and together they have a daughter called Ariel. While he seems to be settled with Claire now, Caden suddenly goes to Berlin to look for Olive when he sees a photo of her with a full-body tattoo in a magazine. Later, he changes his mind again, telling Claire that he wants to get back with “her and Olive. […] Ariel. I mean Ariel.” On top of this, he also drives to Hazel’s house, trying to reconnect with her, but finds out that she is still with her new boyfriend.
All of these are the first instances of Caden’s sense of self beginning to blur and fall apart, setting off a progression in which his identity dissolves, going past notions of
individuality or a singular self. This conception of identity becomes crucial for Caden in creating an interconnected and shared view of his position in the world. Just like himself, the people in his play are defined through their interconnectivity, all sharing different variations of similar fundamental struggles and experiences.
Anna Tsing’s discussion of the notion of assemblages provides a useful way of looking at such an interconnected configuration of individuals and, consequently, of
complicating this notion of a unidirectional, imposed narrative such as that of the spectacle. Regarding this multiplicity of processes that take place simultaneously and in connection to each other, Tsing makes use of the concept of the assemblage to describe a collection of subjects that live within a constantly changing and indistinct whole; containing different elements that all affect each other: assemblages “allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them. They show us potential histories in the making” (22-23). To clarify her use of the word, she adds the term “polyphony” to describe this multiplicity of elements.8
Polyphonic music requires one “to pick out separate, simultaneous melodies and to listen for the moments of harmony and dissonance they created together. This kind of noticing is just
8 While Tsing does not refer to it, this musical term has notably been used by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe a literature which uses a plurality of different, independent ‘voices’ (see Bakhtin).
what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the
assemblage” (24; emphasis in original). Instead of offering a single, linear narrative, such a polyphonic and indeterminate view of people and the worlds they inhabit might provide a more complete and manifold picture, creating connections that might not have been made before, and reaching closer to reality, as opposed to becoming a univocal, imposed narrative or pseudo-reality.
While Anna Tsing does not apply this concept specifically to art, I will apply it to the type of artwork that Caden’s play embodies to explore how this notion of assemblages—and their fundamental indeterminacy—provides the basis for a view on identity as being formed in shared realities in which everyone is interconnected. In the process of Caden beginning to lose his sense of self, he can be seen as opening up the possibility for interconnection: he defines himself in his relations to others, and the boundaries slowly disappear between him and the people around him. This process continues as the film progresses. Soon after Adele tells Caden that she does not want him to come along to Berlin, Caden begins to obsessively brush and clean her studio. When Adele and Olive have later arrived in Berlin, Caden calls Adele, who is at a party and initially answers with “Ellen?”, mistaking him for her cleaning lady. Later in the film, Sammy hands Caden a note with an address on it, and Caden’s transition continues. Sammy tells him to go there so Sammy can see him “lose even more of yourself.” It turns out to be the address to Adele’s new apartment in New York. When Caden enters the building and walks up to the door, a lady comes up to him and asks: “Are you Ellen?” Caden seems defeated and responds, “Yes, I’m Ellen,” after which he receives the key. Inside, he reads a note of Adele’s directed at Ellen, and he begins to clean the apartment. Back at home —he lives with Claire at this point—Claire says he smells like cleaning products, and like he is menstruating, and asks him if he is wearing lipstick.
play Ellen’s part. Later, during rehearsals, Caden says he needs “a Caden for his Hazel,” and the woman playing Ellen proposes to play Caden. Caden agrees, and now slowly she begins to take over his role, the way he has taken over hers. At a certain point, Caden says he is out of ideas, and the actress, now as Caden, suggests that she could take over for a while. In the final scenes of the film, Caden follows her (or perhaps his) instructions through an earpiece. This, then, is the former actress of Ellen, now playing Caden, giving the ‘real’ Caden instructions as if he is Ellen. Caden’s becoming Ellen is complete here: “You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours. […] As you begin to lose your characteristics one by one.” Finally, Caden dies—as Ellen, and within the play. Next to him sits the woman who plays the mother in Ellen’s dream. This final sequence shows how the shift has completed: from Caden’s control and unidirectional narrative, to his being part of the play; no longer directing it but living it, sharing it, and listening. This is emphasized when, right before taking over, Ellen tells Caden that “Caden Cotard is a man already dead.” Furthermore, with Caden wearing an earpiece, this sequence reminds the viewer of the scene in which he wore one to speak to his Germanized daughter. Whereas that scene revealed a fundamental distance and estrangement between Caden and his daughter—arguably a result of Caden’s self-absorption—Caden is now instead receiving direction from someone, listening rather than talking. Here, he is the one being dictated to. He is completely in the play, as a reality. It is no representation anymore on any level, nor a univocal message by Caden. Instead, Caden listens to Ellen’s directions, experiencing her memories, remembering her picnic with mother, being her.9
Caden’s play, then, proposes an unconventional notion of identity.10 Caden’s approach
—in which he gradually dissolves his individual identity—does not define the identity of a
9 Moreover, it is not only Caden who displays a fluid, blurry, polyphonic kind of identity. Several other prominent characters, for instance, seem to lose distinctions regarding notions of gender and sexuality. At one point, as Caden and Claire are discussing the play, their daughter Ariel randomly asks the following question: “Can me have a nickel if I don't play with my peepee no more?” Olive becomes the “muse” of Adele’s best friend, Maria, and they have a passionate romantic relationship. Caden himself is asked if he is gay several times throughout the film.
person as distinct or independent from others, but instead aims to emphasize interrelationality and connectivity. This suggests a kind of art that focuses not on defining one’s identity in opposition to other identities, but instead in one’s connections with others, aiming to reveal shared and even universal experiences, viewing the self and others as part of a constantly changing and nebulous whole. It suggests a view of identity formation as a dynamic and ongoing development rather than a fixed or contained defining of boundaries and divisions.11
As such, for Caden, this does not entail him finding himself, but rather losing himself, becoming increasingly indeterminate and amorphous. Caden defines himself and the other characters in the play through their connections with others. At one point, Hazel is fired from her job and calls Caden for help, after which he takes her on as his assistant. Soon after, Caden says “I feel like we need a Hazel in here. There’s a whole side of Caden I can’t explore without a Hazel.”
Such a notion of identity posits the individual as being part of a larger whole, and of the self as being intricately connected to others within it. This particular conception of identity and being is echoed in the film’s use of tropes. The title of the film is a play on words: the story and play take place in Schenectady, which is a city in New York. The play can be seen as a synecdoche, since it is shows a part of the city, and the lives of the people in it, that is meant to represent the bigger whole; in the same way that Schenectady is a part of the bigger whole of New York, which in turn is a part of the bigger whole of the world. This same notion of being part of a bigger whole even appears in the film’s soundtrack: one of the songs
contains the lyrics “I’m just a little person / one person in a sea / of many little people.” The recurrence of such a fractal structure, in which a part represents the whole, points to a complex, interconnected sense of the self. This same structure appears visually, too. The many shots of the set of Caden’s play show the characters’ different rooms right next to, 11 It can be compared to Jill Bennett’s notion of “migratory aesthetics”: focusing on relationality instead of identity, and “emphasizing dynamic process (being-in-common at any given moment) rather than foundation” (Bennett 112).
above, and under each other within the same building, the building with other buildings on the same block, the block with other blocks contained in the same warehouse, and the different warehouses all contained within the biggest, overarching warehouse of the set.
As such, on a visual level, the city is shown as containing many different variations of the same self—i.e., individuals who share the same fundamental problems and experiences— in an attempt to expose this shared and interconnected reality. In an analysis of the film, Richard Deming discusses how the structure of the synecdoche embodies a simultaneous connectedness and separateness: “what does it mean to be at work in the work of art? In theater and movies, roles are also known as ‘parts’—one plays a part, and if an actor is lucky, it is a speaking part. The part speaks to and for the whole: it is a synecdoche. But to speak as a part is to be separated from the whole” (194). Deming argues how notions of time and space are distorted in the film to dismantle fixed notions of certain boundaries or distinctions: “These and other destabilizing elements undo the possibility of having a coherent idea of the self, and so many of the criteria for establishing distinctions necessary for the difference between subject and object, self and Other, time and space, are dismantled” (195-96). In this way, the film posits one’s position in the world as a dynamic and fluid one, in which it
“becomes impossible to determine an essential, unchanging self” (Deming 196). Instead, there is a constant discovery of the self, for which the play keeps adding new narratives, never becoming a finished product, for that would not be true to the indeterminate nature of everyday existence, in which new experiences and new connections take place, constantly changing who the self is and how this self fits into the larger collective. This constant process of connection and movement is what all the characters in the play share. As Caden suggests: “I want all of us […] to soak in the communal bath of it […]. We’re all in the same water, after all.”
This conception of the self as being part of larger assemblages implies a fundamental
interdependency and shared constitution. As a consequence, one of the major ways in which Caden attempts to produce connections is through an emphasis on precariousness. This concept has prominently been discussed by Judith Butler as denoting a shared, bodily vulnerability. In “Precarious Life, Grievable Life,” Butler notes how “we are, as it were, social beings from the start, dependent on what is outside ourselves, on others, on institutions, and on sustained and sustainable environments, and so are, in this sense, precarious” (23). As such, precariousness denotes a fundamental vulnerability to violence or bodily harm, and a dependency on others. Subsequently, Butler differentiates this “more or less existential conception” of precariousness from the “specifically political notion” of precarity (3), in which some bodies are more vulnerable, or less protected, than others. Both Caden’s play and the film seem to emphasize the notion of precariousness to make visible possible shared vulnerabilities and dependencies.
Right from the offset, the film introduces many references to death and illness. The radio alarm clock sounds with an announcement of it being the first day of fall, followed by an interview with an author who discusses the month of fall, which according to her can be seen as “the beginning of the end” when one views the year as a life. Caden’s wife is shown coughing, and their daughter Olive is found to have green-colored feces. Faintly in the background the radio continues to sound with a report of an earthquake with apparently an estimated 73.000 victims. When Caden opens the mailbox there is a health magazine in it with the title “Attending to Your Illness.” Caden seems puzzled but when he looks at the postage label on the magazine it is clearly addressed to his name. The sequence goes on like this: Caden turns on the TV for Olive and it shows an educational cartoon about viruses; Caden takes milk out of the fridge and smells it and says “Milk’s expired”; on set of Death of a Salesman, the main actress has an incident where a prop falls on her head, and so forth.
These are just the beginning scenes of the film, and they reveal how prominent the notion of precariousness is brought forward in it. Similar to the argument made by Butler, Anna Tsing suggests that “our time is ripe for sensing precarity,” and that such a perspective can be useful in rethinking our position within the world: “We can’t rely on the status quo; everything is in flux, including our ability to survive. […] Indeterminacy, the unplanned nature of time, is frightening, but thinking through precarity makes it evident that
indeterminacy also makes life possible” (20).12 As such, both Caden’s and the film’s emphasis
on (bodily) precariousness serve to expose interconnections between bodies in their fundamental vulnerability, and to reveal them as all being part of bigger assemblages, as opposed to being independent, static, or clearly demarcated individuals. It evokes
fundamentally shared struggles, positing people as being interdependent, i.e., as being subject to other people and outside forces of the social structures in which they are contained.
Caden himself does not have one disease; he has a countless amount of conditions and diseases: sycosis (pustules on the face caused by infection of hair follicles), pupils that do not dilate, abnormally-colored feces, scabs on his arms and legs, eyes that are unable to tear, loss of the ability to salivate, seizures (possible synapse degradation or fungal infection), erectile dysfunction, rotten gums which require surgery, and, as he grows older, a limp which requires him to walk with a stick. Many of these conditions seem to appear and then disappear again, as if Caden is portraying a person’s general vulnerability and precariousness, showing all the possible things that can happen to a person, going through all the options, rather than him being an individual with a particular set of issues.13 In a review of the film for Disability
Studies Quarterly, David Church argues that Caden’s many afflictions form interchangeable traits that hint at the struggles that all people share in some form or another: “It is not just a play about death, [Caden] clarifies at one point, but a play about everything—as though the 12 It is useful to note that Tsing uses the term “precarity” in a more general definition here, and is thus more akin to Butler’s use of the term “precariousness” than it is to her specifically political notion of “precarity.” 13 As Ferencz points out, what Caden appears to be suffering from is really “the human condition” (par. 16).
apparent individualities of the population at his disposal are readily interchangeable, with the presence of illness or disability serving as part of a collective human experience” (par. 8). As such, these different afflictions all show a fundamental precariousness, a vulnerability which is shared by every person regardless of whether they suffer any of these particular conditions. Caden reinforces this same idea of general precariousness when he talks about the ideas behind his play: “I will be dying, and so will you, and so will everyone here. We’re all
hurdling toward death.” In this regard, Caden’s hypochondria could be seen as another way of exploring possible shared struggles and experiences, and of including all possible options in his play, so as to produce a shared reality. It signifies a loss of individual identity, and in its place opens up the possibility for an interconnected view of reality and experience, suggesting that the play is not about writing one’s own life, but about writing or mapping (precarious) life in general.
Still, however, this precariousness needs to be made visible, and is dependent on someone who decides which precarious life is shown, and which is not—and it is in Caden’s introspection and self-absorption that he ultimately fails to achieve his intention to let others’ voices be heard. Isolating himself from the outside world and the narratives of others, he mostly remains occupied with his own vulnerabilities. While Caden thus accounts for precariousness in his play, it is only near the very end—when he gradually loses his identity or sense of self—that he opens up the possibility for accounting for precarity—i.e., to make visible the precariousness of those outside of himself, and to give other “bodies” a voice. Rewinding back to the developments before Caden’s ‘blurring’ of the self, what has held him back throughout the production of his play was his constant introspection. Caden’s
estrangement from his daughter and other people around him can be seen as a direct result of his self-absorption. His own map of the truth had taken over everything in his life and he grew so absorbed by it that he no longer lived outside of it, no longer listened to actual people, only
