Drive in Cinema: Essays on Film, Theory and Politics

310 Pages·2015·8.443 MB·English

by  Marc James Léger

spine: 17.72mm
total file size: 357.72 mm
trimmed book size: 170 x 230 mm
‘DRIVE IN CINEMA CAN BE SEEN AS AN INTELLECTUAL “MOLOTOV L MARC JAMES LÉGER
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COCKTAIL,” BRINGING TOGETHER DIVERSE THEORETICAL
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ELEMENTS IN ORDER TO IGNITE THE CINEMA SCREEN WITH THE E DRIVE
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FLAMES OF RADICAL THEORY AND AVANT-GARDE PRACTICE.’

– FROM THE FOREWORD TO THE BOOK BY BRADLEY TUCK
IN
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Drive in Cinema offers Žižek-influenced intersubjective social exchange? What are
R
studies of films made by some of the most the possibilities for avant-gardism today and
CINEMA
engaging and influential filmmakers of our how does this correspond to what we know
time, from avant-garde directors Jean-Luc about cultural production after capitalism’s I
V
Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, real subsumption of labour? How have
Pier Paolo Pasolini and Věra Chytilová, to various filmmakers communicated radical
ESSAYS ON FILM, THEORY AND POLITICS
E
independent filmmakers William Klein, ideas through film as a popular medium?
Oliver Ressler, Hal Hartley, Olivier Assayas, Drive in Cinema pursues Lacanian ethics

Vincent Gallo, Jim Jarmusch and Harmony to avenues beyond the academic obsession
I
Korine. These essays in critical cultural with cultural representation and cinematic
N
theory present interdisciplinary perspectives technique. It will be of interest to anyone
on the relations between art, film and politics. who is concerned with film’s potential as an

How does filmic symbolization mediate emancipatory force. C
I
MARC JAMES LÉGER IS AN INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR LIVING IN MONTREAL. HE IS N
AUTHOR OF BRAVE NEW AVANT GARDE AND THE NEOLIBERAL UNDEAD, AND IS
EDITOR OF CULTURE AND CONTESTATION IN THE NEW CENTURY AND THE IDEA OF E
THE AVANT GARDE – AND WHAT IT MEANS TODAY.
M
A
intellect | www.intellectbooks.com
Drive in Cinema
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Drive in Cinema is concerned broadly with artists and filmmakers who exemplify the ‘triple A’
of avant-gardism: the antagonist, activist and agonist relationships between everyday life,
art, theory and politics. This original and challenging contribution, an extremely readable
and well-researched text, will be recognized by readers and filmmakers alike as a powerful
intervention into the space of cinematic studies.
– Bruce Barber, author of Trans/Actions: Art, Film and Death
Marc James Léger’s Drive in Cinema is precisely what we need in film theory today. More than
just a reading of cinema, it attends to the urgent necessity of thinking film and art beyond the
more common formalist varieties that continue to dominate, and to the urgency of
emancipatory politics in the new age of austerity. Drawing on recent readings of the Lacanian
theory of the drive and a Lacanian ethics of the political inspired by the work of Slavoj Žižek,
Léger provides a clear and enjoyable analysis of cinema through the prism of contemporary
psychoanalytic and political theory. The essays collected here demonstrate with brilliance
why Léger is one of our leading writers on avant-garde art and culture. A pleasure to read!
– Matthew Flisfeder, author of The Symbolic, the Sublime,
and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film
Marc James Léger’s Drive in Cinema is a vivid and compelling account from the front lines of
post-avant-garde and popular cinema, bringing into view a politics of cinematic form in the
wake of the long drawn out crisis of revolutionary film since the 1970s. If one wanted to
distinguish today’s neoliberal moment of film criticism from the 1970s – the partisan
professionalized radical film theory of Screen, etc – this is where you’ll find it.
– John Roberts, author of Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde
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Drive in Cinema
Essays on Film, Theory and Politics
Marc James Léger
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
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First published in the UK in 2015 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2015 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Cover image: Slavoj Žižek during the shooting of The Pervert’s Guide to
Ideology, 2011. Photo by Remko Schnorr. Courtesy of Sophie Fiennes.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Claire Organ
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-485-4
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-486-1
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-487-8
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
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This book is dedicated to Kemosabe.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword: Revolution at the Drive-in by Bradley Tuck xi
Introduction: 1 + 1 + a 1
Chapter 1: Sad Bunny: Vincent Gallo and the Melancholia of Gender 27
Chapter 2: Drive in Cinema: The Dialectic of the Subject in Daisies
and Who Wants to Kill Jessie? 47
Chapter 3: The Ghost Is a Shell 79
Chapter 4: Ecstatic Struggle in the World System: Werner Herzog’s Encounters
at the End of the World 91
Chapter 5: Alexander Kluge’s News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx – Eisenstein –
Das Kapital: A Conversation with Michael Blum and Barbara Clausen 119
Chapter 6: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Obama (But Were Afraid
to Ask Mr. Freedom) 137
Chapter 7: An Interview with Marc James Léger on Radical Politics, Cinema and
the Future of the Avant Garde by Bradley Tuck 151
Chapter 8: Pasolini’s Contribution to La Rabbia as an Instance
of Fantasmatic Realism 159
Chapter 9: Godard’s Film Socialisme: The Agency of Art in the Unconscious 185
Chapter 10: What Is to Be Done? with Spring Breakers 209
Chapter 11: Analytic Realism in Activist Film 239
Conclusion: Only Communists Left Alive 255
Index 265
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Acknowledgements
There is no point watching films unless you can share the experience with someone. My
appreciation of cinema would undoubtedly have gone without the benefit of countless post-
screening conversations had it not been for the abiding friendship of Rosika Desnoyers. Her
stories about film classes with Tony Brown at the University of Ottawa inspired my own
effort to introduce ‘avant-garde’ film to students at Lakehead University. My viewing partner,
Cayley Sorochan, deserves a star for not only insisting on a regular quota of East European
films, but for also tolerating my obsession with Westerns. Cayley’s love of the films of Andrei
Tarkovsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini and František Vláčil undoubtedly has something to do with
her appreciation of the fantasy genre, which serves to underscore rather than detract from
her materialism. The Goethe Institut (in Montreal and elsewhere) deserves kudos for its
invaluable collection of German films and in particular for releasing Alexander Kluge’s film
and television work on DVD. So does my neighbourhood video store La Boîte Noire, an
island of cinephilia that along with the Cinémathèque Québécoise provides Montrealers with
an inestimable repository of films. I invited Brad Tuck to write a foreword for this book
because I found that he and his co-editors at One+One Journal exemplify the kind of writing
on film that, in contrast to the sometimes-stolid passions of academics, corresponds to the
cinephilic thinking of filmmakers and audiences. The essays in this book, produced mostly
after 2010, were not written by a film scholar but by an art theorist who recognizes how the
seventh art affects his thinking. Bradley Tuck has kindly reflected on this endeavour with his
own take on revolution at the cinema and indeed on the drive’s eternal recurrence.
Thanks to Loralee Edwards and Kelly Andres for inviting me to present my research
on Vincent Gallo at the Gender Research Symposium, University of Lethbridge, March 3,
2006. My work on William Klein was presented at the Popular Culture and World Politics
conference, York Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, November
6, 2012 and research on Pasolini was presented at the Universities Art Association of
Canada Annual Conference, Concordia University, November 2, 2012, as well as at the
Cycle Citoyen Pasolini, organized by Julie Paquette at the Université de Montréal, March 17,
2014. Presentations on Jean-Luc Godard were given at the symposium Radical Imagination:
Provocation and Dialogues, organized by Jason Bowman and Mick Wilson at the Valand
Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, November 14, 2013, and in the ‘Open Media’
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