Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 8 No. 14, April 2004
Cara O'Connor
A Certain Sense of the Absolute and the Desire to Control Things:
_Jane Campion: Interviews_
Edited by Virginia Wright
Wexman Conversations with
Filmmakers Series General Editor: Peter
Brunette Jackson, Mississippi:
University
Press of Mississippi,
1999 ISBN
1-57806-083-4 216 pp. A collection of interviews
is an (auto)biography with special problems. No more so than
in _Jane Campion: Interviews_, edited by Virginia Wright
Wexman. Published in 1999, and part of the University Press
of Mississippi's _Conversations with Filmmakers_ series, the
book chronologically compiles talks with Jane Campion from
1984 (before she made her first feature) through 1997 (the
release date of _Portrait of a Lady_). The book includes
thirty-seven pieces with thirty-one different journalists
from Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the UK, and
the United States. The book also includes a filmography
(which is now out of date), a thoughtful introduction by
Wexman, and an especially well organized index. Looking through this index
I found that the two concepts which recur most frequently
are 'Autobiography' and 'Collaboration'. This offers a
certain perspective on the book, not only in its ability to
underline the fact that film is a highly collaborative art
form, or to confirm that Campion fields her share of
inquiries about links between her filmmaking and her life,
but it works to remind the reader that the interview itself
is a *collaboration* towards autobiography. The artist is
asked to respond truthfully to a limited set of questions.
These questions are isolated opportunities for her to
explain herself to . . . the interlocutor, the world,
herself, the future. She's clearly disadvantaged against
historical truth -- so much so that in this chronologized
setting her very own words can only be said to exist out of
context. The interviewee is asked to describe the future,
and her inaccurate predictions are held side by side with
the reality that successive interviews reveal. The editor
takes on the role of the historian -- albeit a somewhat
passive one. Yet if you add the shaping force of the
editor's linear construction to the interviewers'
professional conventions, the result is a fragmented but
influential biographizing team, like a village of
Lilliputians, guiding the larger-than-life subject -- a
subject divided by time into as many sections. And unlike
her tiny collaborators she has the burden of being
completely glued to her own story. Of course any book of
interviews might be described this way [1]. So, why
would someone interested in *philosophy and film* be
interested in this book of interviews in
particular? She wouldn't, necessarily,
but she might. Obviously, if you are interested in Jane
Campion, the filmmaker, then it is a useful book, or if you
are interested in any one of the films (ending with
_Portrait of a Lady_) there are useful anecdotes and details
about the production process, from artistic influences to
financial issues. And of course the questions of the
interviewers reflect what the public perception of a
particular film was, and how the public perception of the
filmmaker changed over time. These are all issues that could
be useful to someone studying or writing about the
construction of the Author. How is the construction of 'Jane
Campion' sustained, revised, and re-created by Campion
herself, and how is it created by the contexts of her
various interviews? What I want to think about
is this: In the construction of 'Jane Campion the Director'
it is the subject's unified but contradictory identification
with the idea of *feminine perspective* over which all other
artistic matters are tossed around and propelled forward.
Campion's fascination, or identification with the *feminine*
seems on the one hand disappointingly over-determined, and
on the other vitally necessary to her practice. For those of us interested
in the possibilities of feminism and art, Campion's
self-presentation asks to be energetically scrutinized. And
efforts to reconcile the contradictions in her *personal*
philosophy carry all the more weight when there exists no
comparable book on another a female director.
[2] Campion's is a story of a
woman who succeeds as an artist because she continually
finds a way to prioritize, in her professional life,
obsessions which could have so easily divided another woman
against herself. In fact, we find out that she was only able
to really focus as an artist when she started making art
about 'relationships, love . . . and sex!' (3). In a 1984 conversation
with Mark Stiles, Campion says: 'I would go to art school
and draw and I couldn't wait to get home and gossip about
the intricacies of relationships and so on. Then I thought
'why am I not doing my work about these things?''. (3) And
with Marli Feldvoss in 1993 she says, 'Passion can be the
path to happiness as well as to folly . . . I'm interested
in this kind of ultimate experience' (100). And again in
1996 she tells Rachel Abramowitz: 'One of the most important
things is to participate in relationships and friendships
and particularly in the mythology of love. I have a deep
need for intimacy. Almost every human being has it, and how
you reconcile that with everything else in your life is a
problem that comes up.' (187) Throughout the interviews she
insists that the most important subjects for her filmmaking
are passion, the mysteries of desire, and the redemptive
power of love. But what does it mean for a woman to make art
about love? Is there no other option? Simone de Beauvoir
explains the processes at work in the imagination of the
'young girl', and how these processes by which 'even when
she chooses independence she none the less makes a place in
her life for a man, for love . . . will work to weaken
'well-defined purposes''. [3] The ambitious young
woman cannot compete with her male colleagues, whose free
thoughts are taken up with their areas of worldly interest.
For the boys, 'flights of fancy' are continuous with their
studies and result in solutions to professional problems or
brainstorms for new ideas. The girl's free thoughts are
occupied by a fascination with love and desirability,
concerns that contribute little or nothing to more concrete
interests. Campion clearly grew up
thinking about men: 'I had a very low opinion of what sort
of career potential I had as a person . . . The idea that I
had never admitted to myself consciously was finding a
husband whom I respected and whose work I though was
wonderful . . . I was undirected mostly because I was
confused about a woman's role.' (6) Campion was 'well aware
that [she] was no genius' (89); 'never would have
thought [she] could make a feature (203); and
struggled with questions about whether or not she was good
enough to be a director (49), because: 'I thought you had to
become a kind of near genius to make movies . . . I knew I
wasn't' (189). And yet she *did* become a director -- and
not just any director but a semi-mainstream auteur easily
compared to Peter Greenaway, Gus Van Sant, and David
Lynch. Campion is quick to
acknowledge her influences and the importance of women in
her imaginative and professional life. She goes into detail
about her collaborations with cinematographer Sally Bongers,
actor Holly Hunter, and producer Jan Chapman. She considers
Wertmuller one of her heroes, and gives credit to Gillian
Armstrong for making it possible to realize she could be a
woman and a director. Turn to any page and you are likely to
find the director speaking reverently about 19th century
writers like Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, whose works
are seen as among her foundational influences, as well as
the inspiration for her gothic-romance, _The Piano_. So much
credit does she give to these writers that she ends up
speaking of her original screenplay as if it were an
adaptation of one of their works. ('If I didn't bring a 20th
century perspective to [_The Piano_] I wouldn't
bring anything. I would just be riding on the backs of great
women.' (118)) On several occasions Campion mentions the
influence of Frida Kahlo on her development as a painter,
and of Diane Arbus on her photography design for her first
feature, _Sweetie_. Campion gives the reader
an impression of enthusiastic awareness of the path laid for
her by women artists of previous generations, as well as a
her unapologetic determination to show what she sees as a
feminine point of view: 'I can't imagine telling the story
of a man. I don't know why I should either.' (5) But when
asked if she calls herself a feminist she responds: 'My
stance towards filming is not defined just by this challenge
. . . Even if my representation of female characters has a
feminist structure, this is nevertheless only one aspect of
my approach.' (87) This stance can't be
simply explained by saying that she's an artist who
naturally doesn't want to be politically pinned down, for
there are other artists who are against didacticism, but
still call their work 'feminist'. Chantal Ackerman, when
asked about the labeling of her film, _Jeanne Dielman_, had
this to say: 'I do think it's a
feminist film because I give space to things which were
never, almost never shown in that way, like the daily
gestures of a woman . . . but more than the content it's
because of the style. If you choose to show a woman's
gestures so precisely, it's because you love them. In some
ways you recognize those gestures that have always been
denied and ignored.' [4] As with Ackerman, looking
at Campion's films it becomes evident (whatever one thinks
of the stories proper) that the filmmaker is formally
interested in gestures and details which are usually ignored
-- especially details concerning women. Why then does
Campion resist, as if it were a strict aesthetic limitation,
the designation 'feminist'? Though it would seem risky
to treat someone of such substance as if she were a
specimen, with her background in anthropology and her
conscious interest in the complexities of human
relationships, Campion might very well appreciate our desire
to come to terms with the things about her situation that
perplex us. Anyway, our efforts need not be
reductive. In Brecht's famous essay
'Against Georg Lukacs', he argues that the art-making
process is far more complex than most theorists are willing
to admit. Though he agrees that shortcomings must be
acknowledged he reminds the reader that works of art fail
much more easily than they succeed: 'One man will fall silent
because of lack of feeling; another, because emotion chokes
him. A third frees himself, not from the burden that weighs
on him, but only from a feeling of unfreedom. A fourth
breaks his tools because they have too long been used to
exploit him.' [5] And importantly, Brecht
reminds us that *partial success* is another possibility. I
mention this because the debates of the Frankfurt School
relate strongly to the conflicts among feminist artists
during the 1970's and into the 80's (and some would say
until today). In the 70's, important debates were waged over
methodology. By the mid 1980's certain distinctions had been
articulated and positions divided. There was art which tried
to show a uniquely feminine point of view, especially by
using the body in performance and by creating images
inspired by female anatomy; there was art which looked at
women as an isolated class -- exploring and elevating folk
arts like quilting; there was art which drew from mainstream
traditions without any conscious association with the
feminist movement; and finally there was work which
deconstructed and examined patriarchal culture. [6]
The first two came to be seen as essentialist and were for
the most part rejected by radical and/or materialist
feminists who, for their part, made work which was often
rejected for being academic, inaccessible, and
un-entertaining. [7] Though feminists acknowledged
the value of exposing the world to women's points of view,
there was also a need to reject art, no matter who made it,
if it uncritically reproduced the language of patriarchy.
Understandably, certain types of speech that glorified a
so-called universal-feminine, including the mysteries of
feminine sexual desire, were seen as damaging to the
struggle for women's equality. Consciousness raising and
activism helped many women to understand that their own most
personal impulses and passions actually worked against their
social hopes and economic well-being. As a result,
politically concerned artists, especially heterosexual
women, found it necessary to maintain an intellectual
distance between their felt desires and their methods for
self-expression. But for many this created
a bind. How were feminists and women-identified artists
going to find modes of speech which were pleasurable,
passionate, visceral, and direct, without stupidly invoking
the myths and fantasies of an ideology they knew worked
against them. Ackerman continues her response to the
question about _Jeanne Dielman_, shedding light on this
dilemma: 'I think that the real
problem with women's films usually has nothing to do with
the content. It's that hardly any women really have
confidence enough to carry through on their feelings.
Instead the content is the most simple and obvious thing.
They deal with that and forget to look for formal ways to
express what they are and what they want, their own rhythms,
their own way of looking at things. A lot of women have
unconscious contempt for their feelings. But I don't think I
do. I have enough confidence in myself. So that's the other
reason why I think it's a feminist film -- not just what it
says but what is shown and how it's shown.'
[8] Unlike _Jeanne Dielman_,
_The Piano_, released in 1993, was not considered a feminist
film. In fact, it was heavily criticized for repeating
heterosexist tropes, from the muteness of woman to her
exchange between men, as well as her ultimate resolution as
a character through her relation to a man. At the same time,
the film was also loved by huge numbers of women, who saw in
it something sensuous and intensely emotionally real. Even
among detractors it was agreed that Holly Hunter's character
was not turned into a typical sex object and that, on the
contrary, the female protagonist's desires were depicted
quite directly through the camera eye. In her analysis, de
Lauretis expands upon Ackerman, suggesting that femininity
is but one of the things that feminism can make visible,
while at the same time she suggests that it might be one of
the more important things: 'call them femininity and
feminism; the one is made representable by the critical work
of the other; the one is kept at a distance, constructed,
framed, to be sure, and yet respected, loved, given space by
the other. The two logics remain separate.'
[9] Is Campion using the logic
of femininity without the logic of Feminism? How does
Campion feel about female desire? Does she believe there is
an essential difference between a female and a male point of
view? The interviews can be studied for tentative answers to
some of these questions. I WANTED TO TELL A STORY
ABOUT AN OBJECT. Simone de Beauvoir, on
'The Young Girl': 'It may happen that the
young girl authentically accepts this situation which she is
prone to flee from in a thousand inauthentic ways. She is
vexatious in her faults, but sometimes she is astonishing in
her special qualities. Both have one and the same
source. 'Her denial of the world,
her restless expectation, her nothingness, she can use as a
springboard to gain the heights in solitude and freedom.'
[10] Campion is less
self-objectifying and more self-centered than de Beauvoir's
'young girl', but they seem to share the same obsessions and
feelings of eccentricity: 'The young girl . . . is
inward, disturbed, the victim of severe conflicts, but this
complexity enriches her, and her inner life develops more
deeply than that of her brothers, she is more attentive to
her feelings and so they become more subtly diversified; she
has more psychological insight than the boys have with the
outward interests. She can give weight to the revolts that
set her against the world. She avoids the snares of
over-seriousness and conformism. The deliberate lies of her
associates encounter her irony and clairvoyance. She feels
daily the ambiguity of her position; beyond sterile protests
she can bravely put in question official optimism,
ready-made values, hypocritical and cheerful morality.'
[11] In _Bodies That Matter_
Judith Butler asks whether or not the 'recourse to sex is
necessary in order to establish that irreducible specificity
that is said to ground feminist practice'. [12]
Butler creates a set of questions whose answer might be that
while it is not necessary, it may still be useful -- this is
because the creation of gender happens on the level of
consciousness, or if you like, language -- and the subject
must have recourse to the logic of her language if she hopes
to elucidate its silences and change its structure or its
power to structure her life. One way to investigate the
language of gender is by truthfully examining relationships
in order to draw out complexities. Campion's filmmaking
might be mainstream but it is still interested in developing
complicated situations, and is sophisticated enough not to
simply reverse the problem of the gaze. This is perhaps what
would lead her to say: 'Pure ideas don't take into account
that there are complexities.' (110) _Holy Smoke_, released
*after* the publication of _Jane Campion: Interviews_,
attempts to mix humor and terror to explore the interest in
complexity and contradiction between feminist ideals and
feminine desires. The independent-minded-but-brainwashed
heroine is held captive by a dirty-old-man who is powerful
enough to deprogram her, but fragile enough to fall
helplessly in love with her. She remakes him in the image of
a woman, just in order to teach him a lesson, to objectify
him -- but when he falls in love with her power she is so
disgusted (with herself) that she attempts to abandon him.
There is a constant question of who is fragile and who is
strong. The characters are constantly shifting from one side
of power to the other. Talking about the male
protagonist, and her appropriation of Bunuel's 'doubling' in
_The Man Who Envied Women_, Rainer explains: 'His case, from
a narrative standpoint, remains unsolved, unresolved. He is
never brought 'under control' as his cinematic 'wild woman'
counterpart has traditionally been. That would be too
utopian for my tastes.' Rainer wanted to make 'a very
complicated situation'. She didn't simply want to make an
'agitprop' film: 'We get it right in some areas and in other
areas we have these emotional needs and desires for autonomy
and power that take various forms and may be injurious to
those around us.' [13] I'M A CHARLATAN WHO CAN
LIVE IN THE WORLD QUITE HAPPILY. In 1997 Campion tells
Kennedy Fraser at _Vogue_: 'Growing up as a woman -- without
power -- is very interesting. You learn to get around it. To
work without power but still feel expressed. It makes you
very observant.' (200) When Fraser asked her whether or not
she thought women had made progress since the 'days of Henry
James' her reply was: 'I don't believe in progress! . . .
It's such a short life we all have. We're here only to
explore our humanity. Each one of us starts at the
beginning. It's not as if we can start where the ancient
Greeks left off.' (199) What can we make of such a
convoluted statement? Campion understands powerlessness,
feels she could not be doing what she's done were it not for
the work of earlier women/artists, and yet she believes that
each of us starts at the beginning. It seems that Campion
wants to emphasize the irrational power of desire which she
thinks is universal, while she is not clear about the fact
that the objects of desire, and our ways of conceptualizing
desire change as the economic situation changes. In spite of this
frustration it's possible to accept that the same Campion
who succeeds in looking at desire honestly, and who immerses
herself in dense emotional terrains, is also the one who
fails to gain the critical distance necessary to be
suspicious of the mysteries and myths which fascinate her.
She understands the specificity of power games and, like
Rainer, she knows better than to opt for simple fantasies of
reversal. Like Ackerman she pays attention to details which
she could only care about if she truly identified with women
-- but her delight in human complexity, which she claims is
realist (as opposed to theoretical!?), makes her believe
almost too idealistically that the 'exploration of humanity'
is a universal possibility. Perhaps it would be too
pessimistic to admit that many people are far too
dehumanized to explore anything. Butler gives us a
perspective on the work of Irigaray by showing how 'Plato's
Hysteria' confronts and tries to subvert the Platonic
insistence that Man is different from Woman. Though Irigaray
was criticized for being essentialist in her conception of a
biologically derived female consciousness, Butler suggests
that Irigaray's efforts might be a necessary part of a
process (which also deconstructs itself) of questioning
'what is excluded from the domain of philosophy for
philosophy itself to proceed'. [14] Campion is preoccupied
with passion. She says that her works become something else
-- something outside of her -- but with the interviews we
are able to see something of how a mind works which can make
the kind of associations hers does. The authenticity of her
films should not be judged by her biography -- however, the
questions her films raise, which are questions that
transcend the films themselves, happen also to be questions
raised in many of these interviews. This renders the
thoughts more dimensional and gives us a chance to examine
them even more thoroughly. I am struck by the difference,
however, between the emotions I feel when I watch, to take
even the awkward _Portrait of a Lady_, as opposed to when I
read what she has to say about the film. In the first
instance I feel I am being touched by something. There are
visual questions simply not as richly expressed by Campion
when she speaks -- to read her description of the camera
holding on the china cup is not the same as to see it.
Campion's camera shows an insistent respect for the
integrity of people and things, along with a sort of reverie
for living-goofiness that is more convincing than her own
verbal explanations. One is tempted to say that she has a
more nuanced understanding of gender and representation than
she *claims* to have -- and that this understanding finds
expression through the socially complex activity of
directing movies. In what is perhaps her
most accurate and ambiguous utterance in the book, asked how
she relates to her heroines Campion has this to
say: 'I don't think I project
my fantasies in these characters, and in any case I don't
know who I am. We are what we do. On the other hand, I have
a lot of tenderness for them, even if none of them represent
me . . . What is a part of me is a certain sense of the
absolute and a desire to control things. I always had
trouble understanding the separation between myself and the
world; the mystery of sexuality, of hate, of passions, has
always been a problem.' (110) Brooklyn, New York,
USA Notes 1. But it's interesting to
note that in a book of the same series, _Steven Soderbergh:
Interviews_, neither the word 'autobiography' or
'collaboration' is indexed. 2. In a search of over 250
books of interviews with directors I was unable to find
another devoted entirely to one female filmmaker. The
closest were a book of Duras's interviews (though in her
capacity as a novelist) and a book about Yvonne Rainer which
was not devoted entirely to interviews. 3. See chapter 'The
Formative Years: The Young Girl' in Simone de Beauvoir, _The
Second Sex_ [1952], trans. H. M. Parshley (New York:
Vintage Books, 1989), pp 368-369. 4. Ackerman, 'Chantal
Ackerman on _Jeanne Dielman_', _Camera Obscura_, no. 2,
1977, pp. 118-119. Quoted in Theresa de Lauretis,
_Technologies of Gender_ (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 132. 5. Bertolt Brecht,
'Against Georg Lukacs' [1938] in _Aesthetics and
Politics_ (London: NLB, 1977), p. 74. 6. See Section IV,
'Strategies of Feminism', in _Framing Feminism: Art and the
Women's Movement 1970-85_. Edited by Rozsika Parker and
Griselda Pollock. (London: Pandora, 1987). Especially see:
Mary Kelly, 'On sexual politics and art', (pp. 303-312) and
Judith Barry and Sandy Flitterman, 'textual strategies: the
politics of art making', (pp. 313 -- 320). 7. Ibid. 8. Ackerman, 'Chantal
Ackerman on _Jeanne Dielman_', p. 119. 9. de Lauretis,
_Technologies of Gender_, p.132 10. de Beauvoir, _The
Second Sex_, p. 359. 11. Ibid., p.
360. 12. Judith Butler, _Bodies
that Matter: The Discursive Limits of Sex_ (New York:
Routledge, 1993), p. 29. 13. Yvonne Rainer, _The
Films of Rainer_ (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1989), p. 43. 14. Butler, _Bodies that
Matter_, p. 29. Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2004 Cara O'Connor, 'A Certain
Sense of the Absolute and the Desire to Control Things:
_Jane Campion: Interviews_', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no.
14, April 2004
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n14oconnor>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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