Anthony Lane on violence and suffering
Anthony Lane’s review of Watchmen has its share of those wonderful damn-I-wish-I-had-written-that sentences that Lane specializes in: “There is Dan (Patrick Wilson), better known as Nite Owl, who keeps his old superhero outfit, rubbery and sharp-eared, locked away in his basement, presumably for fear of being sued for plagiarism by Bruce Wayne.” Better: “Last and hugest is Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), who is buff, buck naked, and blue, like a porn star left overnight in a meat locker.” Damn, I wish. . . .
But there’s also this serious point:
You want to see Rorschach swing a meat cleaver repeatedly into the skull of a pedophile, and two dogs wrestle over the leg bone of his young victim? Go ahead. You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore’s book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is Snyder’s own embroidery. You want to hear Moore’s attempt at urban jeremiad? “This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard; either way, it makes it directly into the movie, as one of Rorschach’s voice-overs. (And still the adaptation won’t be slavish enough for some.) Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like, or what pity should attend it; they are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race — a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity — to be bothered with lesser plights.
Lane has been concerned for some time about the difficult relationship between the portrayal of violence and the depiction of suffering. Here he is four years ago writing about Sin City:
Nothing is easier than to tumble under the spell of its savage comedy—Marv driving along with the door open, say, holding another guy down so that his head is roughly sanded by the road, or Jackie Boy continuing to chatter with his throat cut. We have, it is clear, reached the lively dead end of a process that was initiated by a fretful Martin Scorsese and inflamed, with less embarrassed glee, by Tarantino: the process of knowing everything about violence and nothing about suffering.
What I like about Lane’s approach to this vital question is that it’s unencumbered by the need to make global pronouncements, universal sweeps through the whole territory of cinema. His worry has gathered over years, movie by movie, review by review. And that makes it more worthy of our attention. If indeed we moviegoers are learning to know “everything about violence and nothing about suffering,” into what human situation are we maneuvering ourselves?
I feel like suffering has become the province of low budget indie films and good television shows, where production constraints continue to force directors and actors to grapple with physical violence without resorting to ever more impressive special effects. Blockbuster directors aren’t really faced with fiscal or production trade-offs, so the urge to go all in on elaborate set pieces must be damn near irresistible.
— Will · Mar 4, 05:26 AM · #
Same could be said for porn: my generation knows everything about sex (and I mean everything), but nothing about love.
I don’t buy it though. Too pat.
— JA · Mar 4, 06:06 AM · #
When I first read Lane’s “everything about violence and nothing about suffering,” and (not surprisingly) immediately made JA’s transliteration. But unlike JA, I don’t think it’s too pat. In fact, I think it’s dead on.
We have somehow convinced ourselves that within cinema sex and love are not just separate, but actually exist in opposition. Take this quote from John Cameron Mitchell, director of SHORTBUS, the last notable film that depicted actual sex between it’s actors:
“We tried to de-eroticize the sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of eroticism is waved away.”
I was appalled when I read that, and further despondent when it was repeated over and over again without question. We seem to have arrived at a point where (cinematically at least) we seen erotic pleasure as antithetical to meaningful human emotion. We simply do not have the cinematic language to depict sex as wholesome, healthy, and above all, human experience.
I think this is in absolute parallel with Lane’s critique of violence in movies, but the question of violence may be even more insoluble in a modern audience. At least a modern audience will have some experience with sex as a part of their daily lives; but what do modern audiences know about violence? A little domestic abuse, a shooting or two; but how many have any real experience with the phantasmagoric violence of war? Or the mundane horror of seeing half of your siblings and half of your elder kin die as you make your journey from childhood to adulthood.
Take for example the response to Peter’s post with the Dearth Cab for Cutie “Grapevine Fires” video. Peter gamely tried to head off the expected criticism of the band because he’s had an emotional reaction to the pathos of the video. He doesn’t want a discussion about how DCFC used to be good, but now they suck.
But even with my attempt to link up the narrative of the video with something contemporary, the other commenters won’t give Peter what he asks for. They know everything about Death Cab for Cutie, but nothing about suffering.
It’s also worth noting that year zero for the changes in treatments cinematic violence and cinematic sexuality is the MPAA’s abandonment of the restrictive and (self) censorious Hayes Code in favor the (theoretically) open-ended four-tiered system we have today.
The result has been a forty year long cultural experiment into what sort of movies can and will be made if the commercial space for serious film (both commercially and artistically) about violence expands while the commercial space for serious films about sex collapses.
How “X-rated” Came to Mean “Porn” and the Death of Movies for Grown-ups
http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2007/08/07/how-x-rated-came-to-mean-porn-and-the-death-of-movies-for-grown-ups/
— Tony Comstock · Mar 4, 01:43 PM · #
Tony: At least a modern audience will have some experience with sex as a part of their daily lives; but what do modern audiences know about violence?
This reminds me of David Milch’s interview at MIT, where he characterized our turning against the Iraq War as the deep indignation of Americans at seeing a scheduled four-week miniseries of post-9/11 catharsis turn into something ugly, unending, and worst of all, unscripted. (There was no post-war planning!)
But think: this was a war devised and executed by people weened on socially-responsible cinema and movies of the week. And most of my friends who fought the war, and know suffering better than anybody, can’t wait to see Watchmen.
Don’t know if that gives us any conclusions, but it certainly complicates the issue. And unless these guiltless movies lead to an increase in domestic depravity, or greater stupidity in foreign policy, what exactly is the problem with enjoying, no strings attached, a good cinematic thrashing every once in a while?
As for porn, there’s no stopping the love train. Companionship, like shit, just happens.
— JA · Mar 4, 02:52 PM · #
I don’t know that much about violence, suffering or Deitrich Bonhoeffer. It seems to me though, as if there might be something worth saying about ‘cheap violence’ and ‘costly violence.’
Psalm 137:
Beside the rivers of Babylon —
There, we sat down,
we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the trees in its midst
we hung up our harps.
For there, our captors asked us
for the words of a song,
and out tormentors for mirth —
“Sing for us a song of Zion!”
How could we sing the song of YHWH
on foriegn soil?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget —
May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not exalt Jerusalem
at the height of my happiness.
Remember, O YHWH,
against the sons of Edom,
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
those who said
“Strip her!
Strip her to her foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon,
you devastated one,
Blessed is the one who pays you back
with the payment
that you have paid to us.
Blessed is the one who seizes
and dashes your little ones
against the rocks!
When violence is the data that you feed into every equation that involves suffering, it just comes out looking like you have mutiplied the whole thing by zero.
When violence is a solution that you arrive at, only after the experience of unmitigated suffering, it becomes something that demands a response.
Which is probably what makes costly grace so costly.
No?
— yo la tengo · Mar 4, 03:31 PM · #
“This reminds me of David Milch’s interview at MIT, where he characterized our turning against the Iraq War as the deep indignation of Americans at seeing a scheduled four-week miniseries of post-9/11 catharsis turn into something ugly, unending, and worst of all, unscripted. (There was no post-war planning!)”
You might enjoy this:
http://oregonbrickblockrock.com/wot_war_on_fiction.html
As to your warrior friends who are itching to see WATCHMEN I think you’re scoring another point for my point of view; the very idea that soldiers are the people who know suffering or the horror of war better than anybody is preposterously naive, but perfect understandable coming from a contemporary American.
What exactly is the problem? I don’t know that any of this makes for a problem, per se. But like Alan, I have an avocational interest in thinking about how things are, how they got to be that way, and how they might be different.
Also, how did you do the italics thing. I’ve discovered * for bold, but the rest of the tags used here elude me. I don’t know that that’s a problem, per se, either. But it might help me be more clear in my quoting and linking.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 4, 03:41 PM · #
In defense of Watchmen(the comic),Roscharch is supposed to be ridiculous and funny,but moreover, pitiable.(Many accuse Moore of contempt, but I never saw anything but pity.I suppose you bring to it what you will.) From what I’ve seen of the film, the problem appears to be Snyders re-mytholigizing of de-mytholigized characters. I don’t know if Roscharch eats beans out of a can in the movie, but if he does, I fear it’s in slow motion.
— Ha! · Mar 4, 03:49 PM · #
I dunno, this criticism is a lot like watching “The Dark Knight” and saying “man, all they did was plagiarize a comic book!” Is Lane really unable to perceive the difference between plagiarism and homage? (In this case, the homage of the Nite Owl is double-ended.)
Watchmen may lack something, but it’s possible that what it lacks is something that, by definition, can’t be in a movie.
— Chet · Mar 4, 07:13 PM · #
My wife read and enjoyed WATCHMEN, and was not charmed by the quote Lane criticism of the author when I read it to her this morning.
And the fact is I haven’t seen SIN CITY or WATCHMEN, so to a certain degree I cleave to Lane because he’s saying what I want someone to say.
That doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 4, 11:41 PM · #
The difference is this:
Violence is my pleasure.
Suffering is your problem.
Why would I let your problems interfere with my pleasure?
— Sammy Z · Mar 5, 12:11 AM · #
Why would I let your problems interfere with my pleasure?
I can’t help feeling like at least part of the answer to this question is found in the careful observation of the behavior of leaf cutter ants.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 5, 01:07 AM · #
It surprises me, Alan, that you quote approvingly from Lane the exact sort of sentences which have made him so frustrating to me as a reader. I find he traffics in nothing more than the well structured snark which characterizes the full review. By the time we get to his one genuine insight about the film (I agree with Tony, I don’t think it is pat, but I sympathize with JA, it feels pat because it concludes a string of one liners.), the article is over. The review reads like something yelled across a playground.
— chyatt · Mar 5, 02:27 AM · #
While I generally avoid reading reviews of movies that I intend to see, Alan piqued my curiosity on this one. And upon reading it, I have come to the conclusion that Anthony Lane Just Doesn’t Get It.
His final line: “Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?”
That is the point of Watchmen, to make you wonder that very thing. It is an anti-comic. It intentionally points up the worst aspects of superhero mythology, from Rorschach’s vigilante psychosis to Ozymandias’s utilitarian messianism to the Comedian’s nihilistic nationalism. It intends to show how superheroes become vehicles for exaggerated forms of the lower human impulses as well as the higher.
The book is equally unsparing in its dissection of typical comic style. That’s where the ultraviolence, misogyny, and “over the top” writing come into play. Those things have always been latent in “straight” comic books; Moore aims to bring them out front so that they can’t be as easily ignored or justified.
But what makes Watchmen really interesting is that it’s not merely an anti-comic book. It ultimately indicates that the themes and techniques of superhero comics still retain some value, even when taken to a miserable extreme. If a standard comic book contains a seed of darkness contained within a cheerful light, Moore’s story contains a point of light surrounded by darkness.
None of the characters are wholly despicable, no matter how horrible they are (not even the Comedian), and the admirable sides of their personalities are emphasized precisely because they are otherwise so distorted.
The same goes for the tropes of comic book style. Ultimately, Moore presents superhero mythology with a strong critique, but he finds that it still survives.
I have no idea whether any of that comes through in the movie, but if it’s bad, it’s not because it follows the book in this manner — which, judging from Lane’s review, it seems to.
— Ethan C. · Mar 5, 03:20 AM · #
I like how Ethan C. lists all the reasons why Watchmen is such a staggeringly inept failure, and thinks it’s a refutation of Anthony Lane.
— Freddie · Mar 6, 02:06 PM · #
While Ethan C is right that the characters in Watchmen may not be wholly despicable, there is no room for heroism in the story they are in. Unlike, say, The Dark Knight, Watchmen is not a story of heroism compromised or conflicted, but of heroism negated.
The most traditionally heroic (by disposition) character, Nite Owl, is literally as well as figuratively impotent. He is also the most benighted. Other prominent characters — Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach and Ozymandias — are each in their own ways more “enlightened” than Nite Owl, and they all have some sort of nihilistic worldview. Arguably the most enlightened one of them all, Veidt, debunks heroism — and then his own utopian vision is debunked as the story lurches inexorably toward meaningless annihilation.
FWIW, my review of the film.
— SDG · Mar 6, 04:40 PM · #
Lane’s review was awful, if only because it condemns Moore for his masterwork being poorly adapted into a mediocre movie.
This guy takes it apart masterfully: http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/watchmen-and-the-scene-of-reading-being-a-response-to-anthony-lanes-review-of-zack-snyders-adaptation-of-alan-moore-and-dave-gibbons-novel/#comment-35611
— Babylonian · Mar 10, 09:33 AM · #