Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 44, November 2002
Fatal Strategies and Film Studies
_Fatal
Strategies_ Translated by Philip
Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski Edited by Jim
Fleming London: Pluto
Press,
1999 ISBN
0-7453-1453-8 191 pp. The back cover of this
edition of _Fatal Strategies_ [1] accurately
describes it as 'Baudrillard's writing at its most
aggressive, its most extreme, and its most exciting'. In
fact, several of the chapters and subsections have been
translated and published separately ('The Crystal Revenge'
and 'The Ecstasy of Communication' among them). This volume
continues some of Baudrillard's earlier work, as well as
anticipating future writings, presenting an argument against
practices and philosophies of subjectivity, including
psychoanalysis, in favor of the 'fatal strategy' of
surrendering to the object, by submitting to the power of
seduction. Baudrillard uses his characteristically bombastic
style to present a world where objects have taken over,
through strategies of seduction, drawing subjects to them.
The power of the object is manifested most extremely in the
case of catastrophes, such as earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions, showing that, contrary to popular philosophical
belief, the will of the subject is powerless. The only way
the subject can defeat this is by taking the side of the
object, and adopting its strategies of seduction, and by
taking everything past its limit. For example, just as
pornography is more sex than sex (the ecstatic form of sex),
obesity represents a hypercorporeality, as the body grows
beyond its original use. Through this strategy of
metastasis, the body is negated, and becomes pure object
(27-33). Similarly, the model is truer than true (8),
illusion and appearance falser than false (7), and terror is
the ecstatic form of violence (41). Through this strategy of
extremes, Baudrillard proposes a way to avoid dialectics, as
objects have, 'by proliferating indefinitely, increasing
their potential, outbidding themselves in an ascension to
the limit' (7). In 'The Crystal Revenge',
Baudrillard writes: 'What makes you exist is not the force
of your desire (wholly a nineteenth-century imaginary of
energy and economy), but the play of the world and
seduction; it is the passion of playing and being played, it
is the passion of illusion and appearance, it is that which
comes from elsewhere' (139). As we move away from the
economy of desire of psychoanalysis, and toward a strategy
of seduction, where the object attracts the subject, we
begin to see that the magic of illusion is always in effect,
and strategies of 'realistic' representation become
overrepresentation, hollowed out of any real meaning,
becoming all sign with no referent, making information
dominant, at the expense of communication. Baudrillard
advocates a return to illusion, stating 'that which is no
longer illusion is dead and inspires terror'
(51). Film and media scholars
might be interested in this book insofar as it addresses
issues of media, illusion, and simulation. Near the end of
the book, Baudrillard proposes that art, theatre, and
language preserve illusion in ways ceremony used to, but no
longer does: they 'maintain the tiny distance that makes the
real play with its own reality' (173). We may certainly
include film and other moving image technologies in these
categories. Perhaps the following quote can be applied to
_Fight Club_'s imaginary character, Tyler Durden: 'one
should by no means attribute to matter this inertia and
passivity, but instead a genie, even an evil one, able to
undo all attempts to subjugate him' (84). It is this evil
genie in the object (Durden) which prevents it from being
observed, which lets it seduce. It is not the subject's
desire which motivates action, but surrender to the
seduction of the object, which rules the subject. This work will have a
different appeal to film scholars, and those interested in
television and media in general, for when Baudrillard talks
about media, he differentiates between television and film.
'Electronic surfaces . . . are without illusion; they offer
only the inconclusive' (87), he says about television. The
images on the television monitor are created from inside,
not reflected from anything. 'We used to be able to say
about something, in order to unmask its rhetoric: 'It's only
literature'; to reveal its artificiality: 'It's only
theater!'; to denounce its mystification: 'It's only a
movie!' But we can't say 'It's only TV!' Because there is no
longer a universe of reference. Because illusion is dead or
because it is total' (87). Television scholars may
take interest when he examines the relationship between the
image on the television monitor, and the event being
reproduced, observing that this is not a transparent
representation. Television causes events, he says -- they
may not exist without it (85). His assertion that the media
distance us from things with 'overrepresentation' hints at
the role of simulacra as a new order of the sign, 'since
images in the media are made to be seen but not really
looked at' (65). This line of thinking is useful in
considering the role of television as manufacturer of
opinion, and, combined with his thoughts on terrorism,
serves as a useful lens through which to view the media's
role in representing, and creating, events. 'It is said that
without the media there would be no terrorism. And it is
true that terrorism does not exist in itself as an original
political act: it is the hostage of the media, just as they
are hostage to it' (44). As digital technology
becomes more sophisticated and ubiquitous, Baudrillard's
assertions about television may also seem true of film. In
any case, his analysis of simulacra comes into play in such
films as _Final Fantasy_ and Disney's Pixar films, where
digital characters become more and more realistic. As
digital technologists begin to imitate more closely hair and
fur, flesh tones, and natural human and animal movements,
the link between the moving image and an independently
existing real becomes tenuous. When the characters on the
screen are not photographically reproduced images, and the
difference between the two is obliterated, cinema will
achieve television's status of manufacturer, not reproducer,
of events and objects. This type of analysis could apply
equally to films such as _The Matrix_, and a slew of other
recent films which portray an illusionary real. In films
such as these, illusion is an important factor in
challenging the viewer, and transforming our notion of the
real, of representation, of film's mimetic capabilities,
and, finally, of our relationship to the media and to the
(moving) image. Overall, _Fatal
Strategies_ may well be Baudrillard's first work that begins
to theorize the moving image, but some of his later work is
more developed and may be better suited to the film scholar.
In fact, many of the subjects he treats here are also found
in his other works. The 'fatal strategy' of taking
everything to the extreme can be seen in _Symbolic
Exchange and Death_,
and other places, as can the supremacy of the sign, and the
reversibility of laws. The idea that information and media
have overtaken communication through processes of simulation
recurs in works such as _Simulations_. The theme of
seduction, and the focus on the object pervades much of his
work. While the previously cited examples serve as possible
entry points for this work into film studies, Baudrillard's
interpretations of media here are incidental to his main
argument, most of which does not bring much to bear on
moving image technology itself, but instead on proliferation
of information, making it more suited to television and
media scholars. Detroit, Michigan,
USA Footnote 1. The original text, _Les
Strategies fatales_, was published in 1983 by Editions
Grasset, Paris, and this particular translation was
originally published in 1990 by Semiotext(e). Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Erik Marshall, 'Fatal
Strategies and Film Studies', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no.
44, November 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n44marshall>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
are published. here
Save as Plain Text Document...Print...Read...Recycle
Film-Philosophy (ISSN 1466-4615)
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD, England
Contact: editor@film-philosophy.com
Back to the Film-Philosophy homepage
