University of Colorado, Boulder CU Scholar Undergraduate Honors Theses Honors Program Spring 2015 Lars von Trier’s Trinity of Negativity: Nature, Chaos, and Downward Momentum in Antichrist Meghan Newton [email protected] Follow this and additional works at:https://scholar.colorado.edu/honr_theses Part of theEnglish Language and Literature Commons,Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and theFilm and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Newton, Meghan, "Lars von Trier’s Trinity of Negativity: Nature, Chaos, and Downward Momentum in Antichrist" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 827. https://scholar.colorado.edu/honr_theses/827 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Honors Program at CU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of CU Scholar. For more information, please [email protected]. Newton 1 Lars von Trier’s Trinity of Negativity: Nature, Chaos, and Downward Momentum in Antichrist Written by: Meghan Newton The Department of English, University of Colorado at Boulder Primary Thesis Advisor: Dr. Jeremy Green, Department of English Thesis Defence Committee: Dr. Jane Garrity, Department of English Dr. Robert Nauman, Department of Art and Art History Defended on April 6, 2015 Newton 2 Abstract This thesis explores the dense symbolic world of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist through theories of the grotesque. I will argue that Antichrist confronts a repressed cultural ideology regarding dangerous femininity that continues to inform modern Western culture. By recreating the Biblical fall in the fictional realm of “Satan’s church” von Trier exposes the historical gendering of the threatening aspects of nature—chaos, death, and evil—as feminine in Christian theology. But, while this distorted Christian creation myth frames the story, the interaction between the two protagonists, “He” and “She,” reflects familiar discourses of modern gender politics. Antichrist exposes the underlying cultural anxiety around women’s bodies that continues to motivate modern sanctions on female sexuality and reproduction as echoes of archaic, misogynist perceptions of femininity. Von Trier uses the female grotesque motif to confront this cultural anxiety around female sexuality, rather than to promote it. Antichrist inverts Christian iconography and myth to subvert the hierarchical gender roles that Christianity has historically helped to construct. Newton 3 Introduction “If it were a film—life—a very well written film that is…now, that would really be a horror film of substance”1 Von Trier’s statement here, taken from an interview in 2007, is purely hypothetical, but suggests that life itself may be a profound source of horror. Cynical as this may be, most would admit that the idealized notion of a purely beautiful world doesn’t always hold up to the realm of human experience and suffering. But, perhaps suffering with the “conclusion that it’s really a nasty idea, life,” as von Trier does, is just asking too much of the average individual (Badley, Interview 2007). When presented with the tremendous complexity and volume of the world of experience, humanity has again and again felt the need to sort, label, and repress the pieces of the world that otherwise seem too chaotic. In the Western world, Christianity has played a large role in taking on this meaning-making project, and its patriarchal motives have left an imprint on modern thought that persists in parts of society today. In Antichrist, von Trier exposes a repressed patriarchal anxiety toward female nature through a grotesque inversion of the Christian theology that has historically contributed to cultural female marginalization; the resonance of the discourse Antichrist presents, as both archaic and strikingly familiar in a modern context, speaks to the role that female subjugation has played in the construction of Western identity. Von Trier is no stranger to controversy, but Antichrist’s premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival likely marked the biggest scandal of his career thus far. The response from the audience was harsh; the film was booed, laughed at, and generally 1 Lars Von Trier Interview, October 2007 Newton 4 dismissed by many of the attendees; reviews ranged from calling Antichrist “an abomination” to the, not much more articulate, review that it was “a big-fat art film fart” (theguardian.com). In fact, during a press conference for the film, one Daily Mall columnist went so far as to demand that von Trier “explain and justify” making the movie at all. As one would expect, von Trier declined to justify, or as he put “apologize for,” Antichrist (Zolkos 178). But if the critics simply thought it was a bad film, one has to wonder why it was so upsetting, if it was just plain inferior work. What was at stake for viewers that caused Antichrist to receive so much bad press in the first place? The overwhelming negative reception of Antichrist has been that it sympathizes with, or at least is too ambivalent in its representation of, misogynistic views. However, for nearly every critic that argues this, there are as many critics who argue the opposite. Aside from drawing the attention of film and literary theorists, Antichrist has also piqued the interest of scholars of theology and even studio artists. In an interview with The Guardian, artist Gillian Wearing describes her reaction to the film: “This is film as art. It’s not trying to be reasonable, and I find it quite close to a painting in the way it plays with the abstract, the real, and the unreal.” As reflected by Wearing’s description, Antichrist, is an extremely dense and symbolic film, on a level that is somewhat atypical for the film medium. As a result, its meaning resists reductive interpretation; yet critics seem to label the film as representative of one of two opposite messages: misogynist or feminist. Perhaps, this urge speaks to the way audiences have become accustomed to interpreting films as promotional messages, which they either find agreeable or do not. Von Trier’s interest in doing the opposite of what Hollywood cinema does did not begin with Antichrist; in fact, it’s an endeavour you’d likely find documented somewhere Newton 5 in Denmark’s history books2. “The Dogma 95 Manifesto”, considered “von Trier’s brainchild,” caused its own scandal when released during a prominent film festival in Paris in 1995 (Hjort 49). Historian Mette Hjorte describes the event in her book, Small Nation, Global Cinema: With his characteristic sense of spectacle and provocation, the only invited Danish filmmaker, Lars von Trier, indicated a desire to part depart from the program, proceeded to read the Dogma 95 manifesto and so-called Vow of Chastity aloud, threw copies of the red leaflet into the audience, and, having declared himself unable to reveal any further details, left the theatre (34). After reception, the “Dogma 95 Manifesto” became the antithesis to the Hollywood model of filmmaking and a symbolic protest to “Hollywood’s non-reciprocal relations to other film cultures” (Nestingen 229). The manifesto’s “Vow of Chastity”3 restricted the use of modern technology to produce films so as “to force the truth out of [their] characters and settings” (“Dogma 95 Manifesto”). Although Antichrist does not (by any means) adhere to the technical rules set out by the Dogma 95 Manifesto, it still embodies the spirit of radical alternative cinema that the manifesto envisioned. The manifesto also, as many of von Trier’s films do, plays with theological concepts (dogma and chastity) in a somewhat subversive way. 2 Von Trier’s Dogma 95 film The Idiots (1998) was nominated for inclusion in the the Danish Ministry of Cultures “canon” for “nationalizing [Danish] culture” (Badley 2). 3 The Dogma 95 Vow of Chastity consisted of the following rules: “1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice-versa. 2. The camera must be handheld. Any movement or mobility attainable in the hand is permitted.3. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. 4. Optical work and filters are forbidden. 5. The film must not contain superficial action. 6.Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. 7. Genre movies are not acceptable. 8. The film format must be Academy 35mm. 9. The director must not be credited.” Newton 6 Antichrist tells a familiar, but tragic tale of parental loss and the subsequent grief and suffering that follows; but it does so in a world distorted by primal darkness and the omnipresence of evil. Historian Joanna Bourke describes the question the film poses as “an ancient one: what is to become of humanity once it discovers it has been expelled from Eden and that Satan is in us” (theguardian.com). Von Trier is hardly subtle with Antichrist’s allusions to the Biblical fall in Genesis; the two main characters, only named in the credits as He (William Defoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and the primary setting of the movie in “the garden near Eden” pretty obviously provide a symbolic reading, or re-envisioning, of the Genesis story (Antichrist). The portrayal of the fall in Antichrist is not treated as a single event, but rather one that literally and symbolically repeats itself and becomes a permanent state of being. Antichrist, opens with an extremely stylized prologue that depicts the most resonant instance of “the fall” in the movie. As He and She are filmed making passionate love in various locations in their apartment, their only child, Nick, wanders out of his crib and to an open window. Juxtaposed against the couple’s moment of orgasm Nick stands on the windowsill holding his teddy bear, before slipping, and falling to his death. The remainder of the film is separated into four chapters, “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” and “The Three Beggars” (Antichrist). The chapters chronologically follow the couple after Nick’s death, beginning with Nick’s funeral and then the discovery that She has been placed in a hospital because of her intense grief. He, disagrees with the treatment being administered to his wife in the hospital and decides to remove her and treat her himself. Meanwhile, He doesn’t seem to be grieving the death of his child himself; we see him cry once during Nick’s funeral, and for the rest of the film Newton 7 he shows nearly no emotion. Instead, he focuses all of his attention and efforts on his plan to cure her of her depression, which is at best ineffective, and at worst a death sentence. The location for her therapy, Eden, was determined based on her fear of that setting, which she connects to an event that occurred during her work on a thesis project called “gynocide” (Antichrist). Once arrived in Eden, He engages her in a series of psychological exercises, that are themselves very symbolic, and reveal something much darker happening between the two of them. Throughout this process, the psychological stability of both of them becomes suspect as her manic behaviour intensifies and He experiences a series of disturbing hallucinations. Eventually, the relationship becomes violent, and after a painfully long series of brutal acts She commits against her husband, He strangles her to death and torches her body, symbolizing another symbolic recreation of Christianity’s dark past as well as the topic of She’s thesis: gynocide and the burning of witches. There are many important details that this summary omits that my later close readings will, but before delving into specific scenes, I want to return to my argument that Antichrist uses the grotesque to expose a politically repressed fear of female sexuality. Before elaborating on how Antichrist employs the grotesque, I would like to clarify the meaning and function of the grotesque as a genre. Defining the grotesque can be challenging as, by its nature, it is ambiguous and resistant to categorization, and thus to language as well. However, through surveying grotesque works of art and literature throughout history and observing “certain recurrent notions”, critic Philip Thomson provides a useful working definition. He defines the grotesque as “the unresolved clash of Newton 8 incompatibles in work and response” adding that “it is significant that this clash is paralleled by the ambivalent nature of the abnormal as present in the grotesque” (Thomson 27). The presence of abnormality in grotesque works say more about normality, and the dangers of normative thinking, than it does about the status of what it abnormal. Interacting with grotesque forms can place the reader in a discomforting place of uncertainty of meaning, but “this is not just uncertainty for the sake of uncertainty” as it is a necessary step toward understanding the significance of the paradox being presented (Edwards & Graulund 3). In his in depth study of the origins of the grotesque, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, Geoffrey Harpham describes the function of allowing oneself to (temporarily) exist in a state of non comprehension and confusion: While we are in the paradox, before we have either dismissed it as meaningless or broken through to that wordless knowledge (which the namelessness of the grotesque imagery parodies), we are ourselves in ‘para,’ on the margin itself. To be in ‘para,’ then,” is a necessary preludial condition which dissolves into the act of comprehension (20). Although some of this insight may seem excessively abstract, the effect Harpham describes becomes much more tangible in the context of specific grotesque works and the socio-historic context they emerge from. Although works of the grotesque rely on “the materiality of [their] relation to the world around” to induce a grotesque effect, they also deal with that which has been “estranged, defamiliarized, and dislocated” (Edwards & Newton 9 Graulund 12). So, as Harpham describes, allowing oneself to exist in “the margin itself” leads to a better understanding of “the center” or of conventional, normalized thinking. The particular subject that grotesque art work aims to expose varies, but it nearly always “refers to aspects of human experiences that we have denied validity to, that we have rejected, excoriated, attempted to eliminate and image as a distorted aspect of reality” (Yates 40). However, these realities still “belon[g] to our world” they can only be “literally and metaphorically hidden” but “cannot be destroyed” (Yates 40-41). The grotesque has been described as taking place on the margin but teaching of the center, by reminding that the two modes are always inextricably linked (Harpham 79). The desire to “ceaselessly orde[r] and re-orde[r] the world” and tendency to “assig[n] hierarchies of meaning” is an ancient one, but the manifestations of our ancestors’ attempts continue to inform many modern belief systems (79). Theology, and particularly Christianity, has played an enormous role in the construction of hierarchical meaning, which evolved in to many of the normative “high” and “low” categories that still influence much of modern Western thought today. Religious historian, James Luther Adams, regards the grotesque as in direct conversation with (at least) three archetypal Christian myths that aim to answer the question: “What are we to do when faced with the absurd and chaotic in history” (Yates 50)? Adams argues that the following Christian myths have played the largest role in informing future responses to this question: The myth of creation that maintains that God overcame ‘the chaos by originally giving it form.