High angles, souls, spirits and bodies: a filmic hike in Jim Jarmusch’s cinema
p. 195-209
Texte intégral
1Jim Jarmusch’s films challenge the rules of the classical Hollywood style1, they remove the importance of storytelling2, and they reject the primary role of causality. Then how are his films bound together, how do they acquire a measure of consistency? They do so by a system of repetition that affects all the levels of the filmic text for one individual film, but that also occurs between films. Repetition pushes away narration, while it creates a semiotic system that allows the viewer to find his or her way in Jarmusch’s films.
2Incidentally, repetitions of a technique such as the tracking shot point to Jarmusch’s presence as an auteur3. In the space of this paper we have chosen one filming technique, the extreme high-angle shot, and we will try to show how it creates meaning. We will try to assess the meaning of the technique at the scale of the sequence, the film, and eventually of Jarmusch’s complete filmography since the cinephiliac filmgoers reinvest previous interpretations in subsequent films.
Presentation of the technique
3Extreme high-angle shots are present, if not in every, in many of Jarmusch’s films. In Mystery Train (1989) they appear firstly when characters are making love and secondly after one character has been shot. In Dead Man (1995) they occur several times to show dead bodies and reclining characters. In Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) they picture hands moving over checkered tabletops. In Ghost Dog (1999), they first introduce New Jersey’s suburban landscape, and then let us see the hero’s corpse. They disappear in both Broken Flowers (2005) and The Limits of Control (2009) but come back in Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). Most of these high-angles frame bodies.
4From a purely geometric point of view, we may say that reclining bodies are easier to see when shot from a high angle. And we are used to seeing, in classical painting, recumbent bodies from above. When the lying (often dead) body is shown from a standard or even low angle, it looks strangely foreshortened, as in Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ4. When a standing person shot directly from above is nearly reduced to a skull, we often talk of “overhead shot”. Jarmusch includes two instances in The Limits of Control [2’ & 1h47’], where we find it hard to understand what we are seeing and from what point of view the scene has been shot.
5To better focus our study, we will limit ourselves to one stylistic element: extreme high-angle views of lying bodies.
Theoretical questions
6On the level of filmic enunciation, the high-angle can be studied according to Francois Jost’s trichotomy5. The high-angle point of view can be ascribed to a character, which is a case of internal ocularization; it can be felt as an eye, which is a case of external ocularization (which leads to the question: who or what is this agency?), or it can feel neutral, which is a case of zero ocularization.
7Under certain conditions, it is possible to forget about the camera as an eye through which we see the film and to get the impression that the fictional world is unfolding on its own. The processes of suture and identification, as described by Jean Pierre Oudart6 and Stephen Heath7 or Slavoj Zizek8, immerse us in the diegetic world. This involves forgetting that “the show is run by the Absent one (or rather, Other) who manipulates images behind my back”9.
8The camera, like a godly eye, or an absented gaze, is consistent with the dualistic tradition that is prevalent in religious philosophy. Ontological dualism may be defined as a separation, an opposition, between two substances such as flesh and spirit. Indeed according to St John’s Gospel, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (St John’s Gospel III, 6). Such a tradition has, we contend, eased the possibility of separating a narrating agency from the presence of character, and this is Deleuze’s interpretation of Descartes’Cogito10:
There is a dualism at the level of thought and the object thought. There is a dualism at the level of soul and body, there are as many dualisms as you like. And if we ask: What is the source of all the Cartesian dualisms? – it lies in this scission internal to the subject, between the subjects of the statement, which allow no conclusion, and a subject of enunciation, which is subtracted from doubt: “I think.”11
9Deleuze traces a link between the separation of soul and body and the separation of the subject of enunciation and the subject of the statement. In other words, this brings back the question of dualism on the side of language. By pushing this a step further, we can apply it to filmic enunciation, and relate it to “the gap that separates two totally different levels: that of the enunciated content (the narrative fiction) and that of the decentred process of enunciation”12 which is meant to be filled or “flattened” in the process of suture.
10In two contexts, death and love, we will examine how the high-angle sequences on bodies can be analyzed in the theoretical framework defined above. We have termed the separation of body and soul (or mind, or spirit) dualistic. On the contrary the union of body and mind in one substance will be termed monistic13.
High angle and death: a dualistic Christian soul vs Monistic Amerindian spirits
11Death is an obvious context for high-angle shot sequences, as the spirit (or the soul) may survive the person and flutter above the dead body. According to Christian theology and many thinkers in western philosophy: the body dies and perishes and is returned to dust, but the soul does not. Plato asserts that the soul is immortal in The Republic14. And his argument when proving so in Phaedo relies on conceiving the body and the soul as different substances that are forced to interact and can only separate after death15.
12In Dead Man the Indian, Nobody, hints at the possibility of William Blake’s soul or spirit wandering outside the hero’s body after his death: he is afraid that removing the bullet in Blake’s chest will “release the spirit from within” (47’). Indeed the film is about a character whose body is decaying after he has been shot. His Indian friend believes in metempsychosis. For Nobody, the dying William Blake is a reincarnation of British poet William Blake. He also uses the word “spirit” to refer to an immaterial substance that can be understood as either anima as mentioned above, or as a supernatural being. For example, he says that Blake’s spirit is supposed to travel in order to “return where all the spirits came from” (Nobody, 1h49) and he tells him earlier in the film “Great spirit watch over you William Blake” (Nobody, 1h09).
13The word “soul” is only used in the film in a Christian context. Souls can alternatively be “blessed” (Dickinson, 29’) or “condemned to fires of hell” (Man at trading post, 1h34). So the film opposes an inclusive, transient, supposedly native American “spirit” to a binary Christian conception of the “soul”.
14The film is also concerned with dying or dead bodies. One of the silliest characters in the film is ironically portrayed as a religious icon after his death, transformed into a religious icon with his head surrounded by a halo (1h15). Another corpse seems to embrace the mud (1h03). In both cases, these minor characters are seen in a high-angle shot that corresponds to the point of view of another character (here Cole Wilson). A third corpse is represented as food, when at eye level we gaze at Cole Wilson who contentedly nibbles at a roasted hand (1h16).
15But the film is not only frolicking with over-the-top black humor, it also represents a meditation on death when Blake comes across the corpse of a fawn. The sequence starts with a very bodily oriented experience. In standard eye-level shots Blake spots the fawn visually, touches the fawn’s black blood and compares it with the blood in his own wound. Blake checks all the senses data, feels the stickiness of the blood, looks at its color and smells it. During this exploration, the pattern of ocularization is standard. We see what Blake sees, and get reaction shots of his facial expressions.
16After checking the senses data, Blake lies close to the fawn, nearly embracing it. We see both bodies from a completely vertical high-angle. Then instead of a standard reverse-angle shot, we get a completely vertical low-angle shot of the sky. It creates a 180° degree angle match that increases the stylistic strangeness of the sequence. William Blake has given up his haptic reflection for a more abstract one. Is he contemplated by an external and unknown narrator? Or is he seeing himself, either through a fantasy or via a more supernatural de-corporation. Being on the verge of dying, the soul is ready to leave his already decaying body.
17The alternation between close-ups on Blake’s face and long shots on both bodies helps us to consider all views as Blake’s meditation. The spinning camera announces Only Lovers Left Alive, and the cross-fades that superimpose Blake’s face with the sky, diegetise the situation and render the idea of Blake’s fleeting spirit less present for the benefit of our identification with Blake. In other words, the process of suture works in a satisfactory way.
18According to Deleuze, the separation between the subject of enunciation and the subject of the statement, or here the filmic enunciation and the filmic content are linked to the dualistic tradition. This sequence transitions between different standpoints on the level of content (dualistic to monistic), and in the same way, the position of its enunciation varies (unsutured to sutured).
19The result is that both figures lay under “the sheltering sky”16, that is an all-encompassing substance (in the Aristotelian sense of the word). After his sensory exploration, Blake has decided that being dead is equivalent to being alive and that animal is equivalent to human. We are close to this extended form of monism Freud calls an Oceanic Feeling17.
20Here Deleuze’s argument that conflates Cartesian dualism with the possibility of disassociating the narrated and the narrating I, is particularly relevant. The question of dualism vs. monism diffuses itself because the spectators are able to separate narrative instances from the diegesis itself. In Dead Man the apparent dualism subsides into a form of monism thanks to the ability for the spectator to curb the sense of lack, the sense of an absented gaze.
Japanese immanence, Protestant transcendence, icons and souls
21The reflection path Jarmusch has led us to take in Dead Man was from dualistic conceptions toward monistic ones. In Ghost Dog we are invited to retrace our steps.
22As the main character is versed in Asian philosophy, the film is suffused with logical non-dualism18. Through the numerous quotes from Hagakure and also thanks to the filming techniques, the film rejects the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction, which posits that “opposite statements are not both true at the same time”19. The film professes that “it is bad when one thing becomes two”20 (9’). By doing so, it unites in the same frame the road that is in front of the character and the road that is behind him. This image that is neither one nor two exemplifies how Ghost Dog translates a Zen “unitive point of view”21. In such a system there can be no separation between God and the world. Spirituality is thus immanent and permeates the world22.
23In Dead Man, the ominous Christian metaphysics of the soul’s damnation were offered a relief thanks to Native American beliefs in spirits endowed with power and freedom. Zen Buddhism collides with Biblical quotes and the iconic representation of the Holy Spirit.
24To begin with, the Holy Bible is seen as a manual by Wu Tang Clan rappers who are cast in the film and whose songs can be heard on the soundtrack. They transform the word “bible” into an acronym: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth23. Moreover the lyrics in their song refer to Christian and biblical themes24.
25Furthermore the film begins with the image of a bird (it is a pigeon, but could be a dove). It is initially the eye through which we see the film: we alternatively see the pigeon and its subjective vision. Its subjective vision appears in a high-angle shot that reveals the suburban landscape. The pigeon is our first guide in the film. As a carrier pigeon it gives all the necessary information to its owner, Ghost Dog. The pigeon performs the functions of vision and communication for Ghost Dog. Even if Ghost Dog has many pigeons, it is always the same dappled gray pigeon that represents them all. It is quite striking to notice that the pigeon is always represented against a blue background. It remains at the center of the frame when it flies against a blue sky but also when it is indoors where the walls are always painted (16’-17’, (1h-1h04). The fixed characteristics of the pigeon are reminiscent of a religious icon, as if the filmmaker, like an icon painter, respected the rules that lifted the Old Testament interdiction of making graven images. These rules depend on the notion of resemblance. It is possible to represent Christ since he has been seen by men and has left and unmade images: such as the image of his face imprinted on a veil. By respecting a great resemblance to acheiropoieta, it is allowed to produce icons25. As a result, the pigeon can be traced back to the dove that is a symbol of the Holy Spirit in Byzantine icons. And we could stretch this interpretation to the point of seeing the pigeon/dove as a representation of Ghost Dog’s soul.
26Indeed, after his shack has been wrecked, the pigeons’ death prompts Ghost Dog to write a message where he considers himself beheaded, virtually dead. The dappled gray pigeon is the only one to escape the massacre. During Ghost Dog’s death scene, the dappled gray pigeon flies in and lands next to Ghost Dog who has been shot several times and is about to give his last breath. After Louie, who has fired the bullets, runs back to his car and little Pearline pretends to kill him with an unloaded gun, the camera cuts out to an overhead shot of Ghost Dog’s body in a pool of blood accompanied by a slow and rhythmic music and the pigeon’s cooing. The vision flattens out the perspective and reminds us of the chalk outline in detective films or series. But here, the shape, instead of being limited by a line, receives two additions: first, Ghost Dog’s friend, Raymond who first literally leans on him to pray and then sits with his back against him; second, little Pearline, who stands by Ghost Dog’s corpse.
27If one traced the chalk outline, the form would contain both living and dead bodies. The adjunction of the other characters creates a link between those who are alive and the dead body as if keeping the latter in the realm of the living for a while. The complete overhead shot cannot be ascribed to any viewing character. It can somehow correspond to the pigeon’s eye, even if not strictly so since the pigeon is also seen in a high-angle as it leaves the frame. The distance between the bodies lumped together and the high point from which the camera sees the scene allows us to perceive a clear separation between an immaterial agency and the corporeal world: a representation of transcendence. This last concept that refers to the separation between God and the world is directly linked to, if not a synonym of, dualism. In the same way, immanence, that holds that God is the world, allows, or is equivalent to, monism26.
28However, the lumped bodies that are separated from the godly eye watching them are hybrid. Additionally in the film’s coda, little Pearline is seen at eye level, reading Ghost Dog’s favorite book, Hagakure. All this restores a measure of immanence. So we can say that the film adopts a completely “unitive point of view” that can even accommodate a transcendent high-angle shot.
High angle and lovemaking: ambivalent encounters
29Discussing the high-angle shots of bodies in the context of death, we have dwelled on the possible separation of the soul in competing philosophical paradigms. Yet, we have said very little about the bodies. During William Blake’s meditation with the fawn’s corpse, the two bodies (dead and alive) are huddled like a couple after lovemaking. Indeed they have somehow mixed their blood, if not other bodily fluids. Love is the second other context where high-angle shots appear in Jim Jarmusch’s films. The parallel between love and death is underlined by the French term “petite mort”, referring to the temporary loss of consciousness experienced during or after intercourse, in other words a moment when the distinction mind/body is no longer experienced.
30Mystery Train shows successively the adventures of three sets of characters that occur simultaneously from dusk to dawn in Memphis. The tales contain stories of fandom that verge on mystic love, stories of erotic love, stories of chance encounters with strangers. How we meet the other, and the Other, is a question that is central in many films by Jarmusch, and is explored here on several levels.
31Chance encounters are the best way to meet a stranger who is the other, and thus get in contact through friendship with a sense of transcendence understood as exteriority27. Here, chance encounters are rather felicitous: first Mitsuko and Jun are asked for a light by an old man (who is in the extra-diegetic world Rufus Thomas – one of the rock stars they have come to celebrate). They fail to identify him, yet they hurry to light his cigar, and he thanks them using their language, Japanese, showing that there has been a short but real encounter between strangers [8’]. When Luisa literally stumbles upon Dee Dee [54’] she meets another being that reveals complete alterity and exteriority while maintaining a connection.
32Erotic love offers a more ambivalent sort of encounter because of the desire for another body as alterity, and the return to oneself in sexual satisfaction28. The sequence when the Japanese couple has sex seems to render exactly this. The first shots at a standard-angle show sexual congress as looking for alterity, with caresses that “search” for the other [31’]:
The caress consists in seizing upon nothing, in soliciting what ceaselessly escapes its form toward a future never future enough, in soliciting what slips away as though it were not yet. It searches, it forages.29
33The following high-angle [32’-35’] shows Jun’s back and lets us hear Mitsuko moaning in a rather traditionalist gendered scheme. After both partners have found their pleasure, they de-unite. As they recover consciousness, they stare at the ceiling, that is, at the camera or us. Their gazes run more or less parallel: they emphatically do not look into each other’s eyes. Their bodies are separated on screen, and Jun’s narcissistic question “Do you ever think about your hairstyle when you make love?” is a sign of mental separation. This cruelly comical remark leads to Mitsuko turning her back on him. But eventually and rather ironically they hug each other.
34The high-angle shot is still and lasts for about two minutes. Both the previous shot and this shot give the spectators the position of witnesses, halfheartedly invited in the couple’s intimacy, provoking mixed feelings of arousal, unease and boredom. The lack of a reverse shot insists on our voyeuristic position and prevents identification with any of the characters. Yet, this is no bird’s eye view or godly eye. We remain very close to the characters. And the sense of separation between the camera (narrating agency) and the filmic text is not pleasurably assigned to a transcendent agency, nor can it be “flattened” completely, absorbed into the filmic text, which would create a monistic effect. The sense of exteriority is not felt positively by the character through transcendent encounter, but negatively by the spectators as immodest spying.
35Here in Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch deals with the question of body and soul in a very familiar way – a lot more familiar to us than the 19th century reincarnation of an 18th century poet. Going on a holiday as a couple seems very common, and so does the lovemaking. Jarmusch does not re-enchant the ordinary world: his irony may feel dispiriting.
High angle and spiritual communication
36In Only Lovers Left Alive Jarmusch finds a solution by changing the rules. Even if he depicts a couple’s life that we may relate to, he films it in a genre that is not realistic. The world the vampires live in has its own fantasy rules, and this matters regarding two elements in our reflection about body and soul, first, and about transcendence and exteriority, second.
37As early as 1734, The Oxford English Dictionary defines vampires as “evil spirits” who animate the “bodies of deceased persons”30. The definition given here is highly dualistic: body and spirit seem to be separate entities that can work together nearly independently. Such a vision goes hand in hand with Adam and Eve’s arrogant idea that humans are but soulless “zombies”. The two overbearing heroes believe they have a soul: they are conscious in a political, environmental and a Cartesian way; they exist, and this makes them, by definition, real humans.
38However, the representation of these vampires does not hint at the separation between a bodily substance and an immaterial one. Obviously the vampires are not threatened like us by age and death, or at least, not in such an unavoidable way. If, for the sake of reasoning we put ourselves in a dualistic framework, we can say that their spirit or soul (if we can grant them one) is lodged in a body that is not subjected to quick decay. Thus their bodies and souls can journey together for centuries and disappear together: a monistic perspective.
39The sequence when Kit dies from blood poisoning is centered on presence and immanence thanks to the sense of touch, through the ingestion of blood, and the emotions that are to be read in facial expressions and gestures. The scene is shot with very slight high-angles and low-angles that correspond to the various points of view of the different characters. The chiaroscuro lighting enhances the wrinkles on Kit’s face, and dramatizes the facial expressions in every character, leading for example to erasing part of Adam’s face. In the last sequence all the characters surround the corpse as they link physically. Eve, extending her naked hand to touch Bilal’s head, bridges the gap between normal humans and vampires [1h45]. The well-structured composition formed by the bodies is pleasurable to see. Visual grace is immanent; it emerges among the protagonists, and not from any other divine or separated agency.
40In the context of erotic love, we have seen that ordinary narcissism hinders the possibility of a true encounter with the other and eventually the Other, that is, the possibility of transcendence through love. But, vampires cannot look at themselves, or to be more precise, at their body image in the mirror. They cannot engage in basic everyday narcissism. Their image only exists in other people’s gaze. Here, friends and lovers and relatives are the ones who see the heroes and tell them how they look. They identify them (calling them by their names), acknowledge their existence, assess their physical appearance: “Eve, you look like shit” [Kit, 1h41]. The vampires could sing to each other “I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you are in case you don’t know”31, defining a relation of fusion and interdependence.
41The opening sequence [1’-3’23] can be interpreted as an example of lovers’ communication. It is an alternation of three series of high-angle shots, one on the turntables, with the vinyl record spinning clockwise, one on Adam swooning on a couch, and another on Eve lying supine with her eyes closed at the foot of a colorful four-poster bed. The two high-angles spin clockwise, which creates a unity with the movement of the vinyl record in the static shot on the turntables. After each fade we get closer and closer to the characters. The music has its source on screen. We suppose it is diegetic, although we do not yet know whether it belongs to Adam’s or to Eve’s world: it blends the three series of shots.
42The editing at times manages, thanks to dissolves, to make Eve reappear where Adam has disappeared. In fact, all the spinning shots are taken from a strictly vertical angle, which makes them perpendicular to the floor. The editing does not at all respect the rules of continuity editing; as a result, we are not tempted to build a diegetic, unified space where the two characters would be together. It is obvious that they are separated in two diegetic non-contiguous spaces, and yet that they are together because of the shared spinning movement and superimpositions when dissolves occur. They are together in another dimension that is a notch up from the diegetic reality – a fantasy world. The coincidence of physical separation and mental as well as emotional reunion again leads to a dualistic interpretation.
43The high-angle shot is then a clear spectatorial ocularization; it gives us the impression of an agency that emerges independent of the characters. This time the high-angle is able to picture an encounter that is not marred with self-preoccupation. Indeed, the idea of “self obsession” is forcefully condemned by Eve, who thinks that meeting alterity is far more important:
This self-obsession is a waste of living, it could be spent on appreciating Nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, surviving things and dancing. [Eve, 1h]
44However, the moment when the characters open their eyes at the end of the sequence pretends to respect the 180°line system32. The two characters are located on opposite sides of the screen, as if conversing on a couch. The pretense of the reverse-angle shot editing gives us the impression that they can see each other (which, in the case of vampires is vested with a superior importance). By artificially unifying the space, the last images do not completely remove the sense of an external agency. The high angle view has thrown us “deep into the funnel of love”33 and created a match between the lyrics and the image that hints at the presence of an auteur. Thus, the underlined presence of an ultimate substance is linked to the notion of love, and programmatically prepares us to experience transcendence through love in the rest of the film.
45When the characters are together in the same apartment, the film again shows images that express an ambiguous mixture of union and separation. Many standard eye-level shots show entangled and convoluted bodies with chiaroscuro lighting reminiscent of baroque painting. One high-angle shot represents Eve and Adam asleep, utterly naked [46’]. This shot is the equivalent of the sequence we have previously analyzed insofar as it represents the couple sleeping. They are static but their bodies take angular shapes that seem to repeat themselves, creating a visual motif that evokes movement in stillness. The materiality of the bodies is obvious but it is contradicted by the very geometrical shape. They aptly form a “yin yang” sign, in accordance with the colors they wear (off-white for Eve and black for Adam). They touch each other; yet they are separated.
46They are themselves and they are together: the couple, in sleep, gives a visual access to their perfect encounter. They sublimate every binary; but, once again, the monistic image is dominated by a transcendent camera that is never reclaimed inside the narrated content. This camera does not spin; it just tracks out slightly before a cross fade on the town, thus eventually including the couple in the world. The layering of narration and filmic content enable us to see both immanent and transcendent love. So by changing the rules of realism, Jarmusch shows us the perfect union, enchanting the world, proposing a solution to the question of body and soul.
47This filmic hike through Jarmusch’s high-angle shots, and among various theoretical paradigms, has led us to see how the notions of dualism and monism (or transcendence and immanence) can interact fruitfully with the opposition between the filmic content and the filmic enunciation. The latter is generally very elusive, except in such cases as high-angles where it tends to call attention upon itself immediately. Baring the techniques that he uses to build a narration is typical of Jim Jarmusch; but by doing so, he delineates an external agency, obviously (but not always irretrievably) separated from the diegetic world. Thus, through the high-angles, he often offers unsutured sequences, where the sense of gap, of an absented gaze is unavoidable. But the director layers this transcendent vision by including many instances of monism.
48It would be erroneous to say that suture creates a unified and monistic world; it rather removes the real Otherness and maps it into the movie in a filmic representation of God or any other ultimate principle. Jarmusch’s films very rarely allow such a thing; and if so, they do it with a wink, as when the Holy Spirit flies in, under the form of a New Jersey pigeon revealing the suburban scene in a high-angle.
Bibliographie
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Notes de bas de page
1 David Bordwell & Janet Staiger, Kristin Thomson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
2 Céline Murillo, L’Esthétique des films de Jim Jarmusch: répétition et référence. Dissertation. Université Toulouse II Le Mirail, 2008, p. 276.
3 Ibid., pp. 201-211.
4 Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation of Christ, 66 × 81 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, c. 1480.
5 François Jost, L’Œil caméra: entre film et roman. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1987. p. 28.
6 Jean Pierre Oudart, “La Suture”, I & II, Cahiers du Cinéma. No. 211, April 1969, pp. 36-39 & No. 212, May 1969, pp. 50-55.
7 Stephen Heath, “Notes on Suture”, Screen, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1977-78.
8 Slavoj Zizek, “Back to the Suture”, The Fright of Real Tears. London: BFI, 2001, pp. 30-54.
9 Ibid. p. 31.
10 “But I do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this ‘I’is, that now necessarily exists. So I must be on my guard against carelessly taking something else to be this ‘I’, and so making a mistake in the very item of knowledge that I maintain is the most certain and evident of all. I will therefore go back and meditate on what I originally believed myself to be, before I embarked on this present train of thought. I will then subtract anything capable of being weakened, even minimally, by the arguments now introduced, so that what is left at the end may be exactly and only what is certain and unshakeable.” René Descartes, “Second Meditation”, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, 25, p. 17.
11 Gilles Deleuze, Dualism, Monism and Multiplicities (Desire-Pleasure-Jouissance), Seminar of March 26th. Daniel Smith (trans.). Contretemps. No. 2, May, 2001, p. 94.
12 Slavoj Zizek, op. cit. p. 31.
13 “Monistic philosophy sensitizes us to the fact that we are not dealing with a dichotomy, but rather that we are using different words as labels for equally ‘real’ points of a behavioral continuum.” John M. Berecz, “Towards a Monistic Philosophy of Man”, Andrews University Seminar Studies. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Autumn, 1976, p. 288.
14 “Haven’t you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?” He looked at me with wonder and said: “No, by god, I haven’t. Are you really in a position to assert that?” (608d). This and all subsequent quotes by Plato are taken from J. M. & D. S. Hutchinson, (eds.), Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997.
15 “Such things show clearly that the philosopher more than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible.” Ibid. 65a, for separation and death see 64 c.
16 Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky. New York: New Directions Books, 1949.
17 “But I would have liked to see you make an analysis of the spontaneous religious sentiment or, more exactly, of the religious sensation which is (…) the simple and direct fact of the sensation of the eternal (which can very well not be eternal, but simply without perceptible boundaries, and like oceanic). Similar as an independent contact, the feeling is fundamentally subjective.” Sigmund Freud & Romain Rolland. Correspondance, 1923-1936. Vermorel, Henri, and Vermorel, Madeleine (eds.). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993.
18 Céline Murillo, “Bastardy: Jarmusch’s Way From Mongrelization to Non-Dualism”, In Praise of Cinematic Bastardy. Sebastien Lefait & Philippe Ortoli (eds.). Cambridge Scholar Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012, pp. 52-64.
19 Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV 6 1011b13-20, Aristotle in Twenty-Three Volumes¸ trans. Hugh Tredennick, G.P Goold (ed.). Vol. XVIII, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933, p. 189.
20 Second quote from Hagakure: “It’s bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the way of the samurai [..] If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own.” Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai [1716], trans. William Scott Wilson. Tokyo, New York & London: Kodansha International, 2000, p. 50.
21 “First, Zen believes that the logical dissection of reality will never bring about the unitive point of view, the only method by which reality can be presented as it is. The unitive point of view achieved by the intuitive method transcends not only subject and object but also all logical categories, including affirmation and negation.” Ha Tai Kim, « The Logic of the Illogical: Zen and Hegel”, Philosophy East and West. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1955, p. 22.
22 Céline Murillo, “L’esprit ou la lettre de La voie du samouraï, dans l’incipit de Ghost Dog (1999) de Jarmusch”, Le Cinéma en toutes lettres: jeux d’écritures à l’écran, Nicole Cloarec (ed.). Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2007, pp. 239-252.
23 Killah Priest, “From then till Now”, Heavy Mental. 1998.
24 Ibid.
25 “La théologie de l’icône a très rapidement conclu à la nécessité d’une représentation directe du Christ. C’est ce qu’exprime la règle LXXXII du concile Quinisexte in Trullo.” Philippe Sers. Icônes et saintes images. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2002, p. 47.
26 Encyclopaedia Britannica makes it even more radical: “In philosophy, dualism is often identified with the doctrine of transcendence – that there is a separate realm or being above and beyond the world – as opposed to monism, which holds that the ultimate principle is inside the world (immanent).” Encylopaedia Britannica Online, retrieved from encyclopaedia. britannica.com.
27 “Le mouvement de transcendance doit être radical et irréversible. Il ne saurait se satisfaire de la demi sortie – de soi qui s’opère avec l’eros – car celui-ci donne beau jeu à l’intéressement et s’achève dans un retour à soi, mais il exige une sortie de soi sans retour, marquée par la gratuité, le désintéressement. Pour cela, il faut qu’entre en scène un nouveau personnage, l’Étranger, dont la venue noue l’intrigue du drame et lui confère une intensité inédite.” Simonne Plourde, Avoir-l’autre-dans-sa-peau. Lecture d’Emmanuel Lévinas. Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003, pp. 43-44.
28 “L’équivoque de la relation érotique marque d’équivoque la subjectivité des partenaires, qui oscille d’une part entre l’immanence du besoin comblé par la jouissance et d’autre part, la transcendance du désir dans son ouverture à l’altérité.” Ibid. p. 42.
29 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity (1961), trans. Alphonso Lingis (1969), Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1979, pp. 257-258.
30 Quoted in Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 20.
31 The Velvet Underground and Nico, Andy Wharol (prod.), “I’ll be your mirror”, The Velvet Underground and Nico, New York: Verve, 1967.
32 “In the continuity style the space of a scene is constructed along what is called variously the axis of action, the center line, or the 180° line. The scene’s action – a person walking, two people conversing, a car racing along a road – is assumed to take place along a clear-cut vector. This axis of action determines a half-circle, or 1 800 area, where the camera can be placed to present the action. Consequently, the filmmaker will plan, film, and edit the shots so as to respect this centerline. The camera work and mise-en-scene in each shot will be manipulated to establish and reiterate the 180° space.” David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Film Art (1979). New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2008, p. 231.
33 Wanda Jackson, “The Funnel of Love” [1960], Wanda Live! At Third Man Records, Third Man Records, 2011.
Auteur
-
Céline Murillo
Université Paris 13 Sorbonne Paris Cité
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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