Page 255 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

remains as redundant as a Hitchcock 'MacGuffin'. Yet in their centrality in the world of the film, the
edges take on the role of the sublime, in the sense defined by Kant and considered by Zizek.8 They
'intervene' in the world of the film, possibly even fatally in its closing moments. Yet in their failure
to represent the 'Thing' (the suprasensible Idea: that the truth of the bourgeoisie is that the world
'behind closed doors' is 'the civilised world'), the limitation of the film itself is apparent. The edges do
not even really achieve a denotation of their inherent failure to hint at that which they fail to represent.
However, the suggestion of such a relationship is transcribed into the film elsewhere. During a party,
the protagonist's mother is shown a violin (gingerly removed from a glass case - a historical piece, but
also a fetish object) and a painting of some antiquity that includes this violin. The representation (the
painting) and the object (the actual, historical item) are present in the same frame; we are confronted
with the fascinating failure of the representation to capture the empirical-phenomenological 'truth' of
the violin and the violin itself.
Perhaps, in this, Haneke was attempting to anticipate the sexual violence that will follow and
its disconcerting double-nature. A rape seems to achieve the actual status of unwished-for forceful
sexual battery within the context of role-playing, but the protagonist's compliance suggests that it is
the actual unwished-for forceful sexual battery that allows her to reinvent rape as role-playing. Surely,
through this, a dematerialisation of the empirical-phenomenological 'truth' is achieved. The item is
removed - the empirical-phenomenological 'truth' of rape is dissipated across the ambiguities of the
role-playing, reduced to a 'real simulation'. The item becomes the sublime; it is no longer afforded
its empirical-phenomenological status since the context in which that status could be recognised is
removed altogether. This is a fetishisation of the sublime.
Hence the presence of the item, becoming overwhelmed, is made redundant and is stripped of
the epistemological value of its empirical-phenomenological 'truth'. Thus the violin is placed back in
the glass case, now 'safe' behind a glass screen, in the manner of the previous fetish objects such as the
performative aesthetics of hardcore pornography, viewed on a screen in a porn booth. The illogical
frenzy of such a process - a kind of perversion of the sense of meaning - informs the nature of the
deeply unsettling rape scene in which there is no point of reference for the real, or 'real simulation', or
unwished-for or role-playing status of the events as they unfold. The return of the repressed (that is,
the materialisation of an empirical-phenomenological 'truth' adjacent to the suprasensible Idea itself)
occurs in the protagonist simply stabbing herself with a kitchen knife. 'Real simulation' or otherwise
in intention, the injury is real enough in the context of the actions of the character. Yet rarely are
weapons so commonplace and so blunt.
The oppositional suprasensible Idea seems to find a precedent in Un Chien Andalou and LAge
d'Or ('seems' since the films remain resistant to readings and fixed meanings). It is difficult to pinpoint
in these early works but refractions of it can be caught later on - in Los Olvidados, for example, but
throughout your 'Mexican Period' in particular. The theme is civilisation, in the widest possible sense.
In all these films, it is addressed in a panoramic, observational fashion. Even in Las Hurdes there is a
context of 'civilisation' in the way in which the modern world has failed to reach or, rather, neglected
to encompass, the occupants of the villages. Hete, the location is initially announced as being 'on
the edge of Europe [where] there are still places underdeveloped', and the film ends with a call for
'workers and peasants' to align themselves with the international anti-fascist front - fascism, absent

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