Duvan Duque Vargas The Stranger in 20th Century Literature and Film University of Pennsylvania

Cach: The Piercing Image

In Michael Hanekes Cach, a successful middle-aged French literary critic and TV presenter is forced to face his past actions. As a six-year-old boy, Georges made up a story to make his parents send Majid, an Algerian boy they had adopted, to an orphanage. A series of surveillance tapes and drawings delivered to him confront him with those past events. Far from being an isolated thriller story, Hanekes film can be useful when thinking about social relations in our post-colonial world. Just like in Georges story, the colonizers past actions are not buried in the past; they are constantly actualized in the social relations of the following generations, either through the present material conditions produced by such past or through a reproduction of the same kind of behavior that was previously established towards the colonized other. How can we escape from this constant reproduction of oppressive, hostile, and estranged relationships? Even though Hanekes film gives no definite answer, I will argue that, for such a change to be possible, the walled comfort bourgeois bubble must be opened or pierced in some way in order to allow closer interactions and overcome the construction of the estranged other. What would have happened if Georges wouldnt have made up the story when he was a kid? Would Majids present life be different? That is precisely what Majids son tells Georges when confronting him at his office building: You deprived my father of a good

education. The orphanage teaches hatred, not politeness.1 Georgess action had a profound consequence on Majids life. In making him leave the house he deprived him of several opportunities to have a good life quality. The past is present in the presents material conditions; it has shaped them, it has produced them. In the same way, the past actions of colonial empires have shaped the present material conditions of both the colonized and the colonizers. A vast majority of Europes developments were only possible thanks to the exploitation of labor and resources from colonized territories and societies. This exploitation has also had vast consequences on those territories economic and social conditions, before and after their independence. Franz Fanon, whose insight to the relation between colonized and colonizer and whose view on postcolonial responsibility are echoed, as we will see, throughout the film, sums up this debt that the present has to past actions in a fragment of The Wretched of the Earth:
The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too. [] For in a very concrete way Europe has stuffed her- self inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries: Latin America, China, and Africa. From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the under-developed peoples.2

The colonial power would like to undo their actions by letting the colonized proclaim independence. However, what was done cant be undone. Fanon demands reparation: We

Haneke, Michael, dir. Hidden (Cach). Hidden (Cach). Les Films du Losange, 2005. Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 102.

are not blinded by the moral reparation of national independence; nor are we fed by it.3 Are we allowed to demand such things to the generations that followed after the independence of the colonized? Can we blame Georges for his actions as a young boy? As we have stated, what was done definitely has repercussions on the present, but are they responsible for it? We cannot blame generations or individuals for those things that they didnt commit (and we cant blame an adult for his actions as a kid), but they certainly are responsible for the way they negotiate their relationships with those that are affected by the consequences of the actions of previous generations. Indifference, in this case, is taking the side of the oppressor. Benefiting from the status quo means perpetuating past injustices. The postcolonial subject knows this, and because of this he experiences guilt and shame. Catherine Wheatley uses these two feelings in Shame and Guilt to structure her analysis of Cach. According to her, both shame and guilt involve some kind of selfawareness. However, the unpleasant emotion causes the subject to look for mechanisms to suppress it, passing from the initial self-awareness to a form of disavowal. She uses the explanations from psychologists June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing to identify two kinds of responses. The first of these is withdrawal, escaping the shame-inducing situation and hiding the horrible self from the view of others.4 We see this in several of Georges actions. After talking to Majids son he goes home to be alone and takes some sleeping pills (called cachettes, allowing Haneke to draw a relation between those escape mechanisms and those memories that remain hidden). His whole life could be seen as a withdrawal. As Max

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Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 102. Wheatley, Catherine, Michael Hanekes Cinema. The Ethic of the Image, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), p. 166.

Silverman points out5, Georges and Annes house reflect the reclusion of liberal bourgeois French people in gated security zones. The house entrance is protected by a tall gate and obscured by bushes. The juxtaposition of enclosed private spaces of the first shot, where the sky is not even seen, are symptomatic of this tendency towards the private and secured space, carefully designed to be protected from the outside view. Silverman explains this postcolonial shift in the following terms:
Since the end of the Algerian war, the world has moved on. Liberal bourgeois France has renounced its colonial aspirations and retreated behind high walls to adopt a defensive position. The most effective way now to keep that troubling world at bay and to preserve a secure identity is no longer to civilize the bloodthirsty savages in the colonial farmyard and reduce the other to the same, but rather to keep the other out altogether6

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In: Silverman, Max, The Empire Looks Back, Screen, 48: 2 (2007a), pp. 2459. Silverman, Max, The Empire Looks Back, Screen, 48: 2 (2007a), p. 246.

The refuge is not only conceived as a physical space but also an intellectual one. Culture works as another type of refuge from reality, from the outside world. Walls of books surround both the dining room and Georges TV show studio. The refuge is carefully constructed to produce an enjoyable experience for the viewer, as the editing scene where we can see Georges cutting parts of his show that are too intellectual and giving protagonism to those parts that seem more attractive. Cinema itself is presented as a form of evasion, a mechanism to escape. Right after being present in Majids suicide Georges, clearly shocked and in need of relaxation, decides to go to the movies by himself. This controlled and harmless image is the way this social class experiences the world outside their gated communities. However, it is precisely the image what also presents itself as a tool to pierce these secured bubbles. Before elaborating this point, lets move on to the second mechanism used to escape from shame.

The second alternative [] is to turn the tables and shift the blame outward (as in Georgess persecution of Majid). Blaming others (instead of the self) serves as an ego-protective function: a shamed person may find it much less objectionable to think that the problem is the other, rather than accept their own responsibility for an event of situation.7

In this way, the other is blamed, and instead of feeling shame the self experiences anger. Haneke provides a perfect example within the film of this type of behavior. Georges comes out of the police station with Anne and is about to cross by the middle of the street when a cyclist driving in the wrong direction passes by him. None of them expected the other and they almost crash. Even though they were both doing something wrong, once confronted with each other they transferred all the blame to the other. None of them accepted their part of the fault.

This is also the way Georges behaves towards Majid. He automatically transfers all the blame to Majid. He constantly refers to him as someone thats crazy and resented, but he

Wheatley, Catherine, Michael Hanekes Cinema. The Ethic of the Image, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), p. 167.
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never takes responsibility for his wrong doing when he was a kid. He even blames Majid for kidnapping his son when Pierrot doesnt show up one night. Pierrot comes back the next morning and they find out that he had decided to spend the night at his friends house without telling them. Majid and his son have been blamed unjustly but they never get an apology from Georges. How can one transfer blame to someone else with such ease? Several analysts of the colonial processes have observed the same process. The other, the colonized, is blamed for its own exploitation and oppression. Both a lack of empathy and a construction of a dehumanized or evil other are necessary for this. The strictly compartmented world of the colonization, a world strongly divided in two, provides the adequate environment for a lack of empathy, a clear definition and separation between us and them. Such world is described by Fanon as a world divided into compartments [] The colonial world is a world cut in two. [] The zone where the natives live is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the settlers. The two zones are opposed [] No conciliation is possible, for of the two terms, one is superfluous.8 As we have seen, the postcolonial world is not that different from this. The sons of the colonizers, back in their European countries, have compartmentalized their own world to protect themselves from the sons of the colonized. Majids apartment and neighborhood are clearly part of a world different from Georgess. The aesthetic of the apartment and the building brings to mind the immigrant and low class neighborhoods of several European capitals. Intrusions from the world of the immigrant to the world of the liberal European bourgeois are either controlled and constructed, such as the exotizised woman of African

Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp. 38-39.

descent in Georges dinner with friends, or received with aggression, such as in Georgess discussion with the black cyclist. It is interesting that, just like Fanon identified the police and the legal use of force as a mechanism to preserve such boundaries, the French police appear in the movie as a weapon of the bourgeois to protect their space. The police has no problem with breaking into Majids apartment using violence, having no connection between Majid and his son and Pierrots disappearing other than Georges hunch. Both Majid and his son spend the night in jail (in part because of their violent response to the violence received from the police), but when Pierrot comes back home there is no intention from the police to punish or question Georgess false incrimination. As we have said before, apart from a protection of such compartmentalization, a constructed image of a dehumanized or evil other is necessary. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon discusses some of the French scientific description of the Algerian. The characteristics resemble those that are imposed on Majid and are even mirrored by him:
Certain magistrates wonder if the Algerian has not an inner need for the sight of blood. The Algerian, you are told, needs to feel warm blood, and to bathe in the blood of his victim [] A certain number of magistrates go so far as to say that the reason why an Algerian kills a man is primarily and above all in order to slit his throat.9

Such scientific explanations to the high index of criminality among the colonized Algerians, explained later through theories of the structure of the Algerian brain, fail to see the material conditions that force the Algerian to act in such ways, fail to see the violent Algerian as a

Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp. 296-297.

product of colonization, and instead impose the French psychological repressions on the figure of the other. It is precisely on those terms that young Georges sees Majid. He sees him as one who spits blood and as a violent boy that represents a constant threat. The fact that the doctor doesnt find anything wrong with the boy suggests that what Gorges sees is a set of assumptions and fears about the Algerian that have been transmitted to him. He even makes him kill a rooster he despised, using Majid as a tool to act his own repressed impulses. However, Georges tells his parents Majid did it to scare him: Then I told him dad wanted to kill the rooster. It was a nasty bird. Evil, always attacking us. And he did it. He cut its head off. The rooster flapped around. Majid was covered in blood. And I told them he did it to scare me.10 He continues to see him like that when theyre adults. When talking to his boss about one of the tapes, Georges refers to Majid as someone who has a pathological hatred for my family.11 He assumes Majid wants to hurt him, he never gives him a chance to speak. Georges shows no intention to view Majid as another person he could ever relate to. The drawings that Georges receives show precisely figures of someone spitting blood. Even Majids suicide mirror Georgess projections on him. Majid slits his throat with a razor blade, splashing blood all over the wall. The other has been forced to internalize the projections pressed upon him (in a similar process to what Fanon described).

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Haneke, Michael, dir. Hidden (Cach). Hidden (Cach). Les Films du Losange, 2005, min. 1:34-1:35. Haneke, Michael, dir. Hidden (Cach). Hidden (Cach). Les Films du Losange, 2005, min. 1:03.

How can we overcome this situation of lack of empathy and interaction and of dehumanization of the other? The compartmentalized world must be opened; the secured bubbles of the bourgeois must be pinched in order to allow a real interaction between postcolonial subjects. How can we achieve this? As we mentioned previously, the mediated image, such as the one of the film Georges watches in a theater or the one of his carefully edited TV show, is part of those tools that construct the walled and protected security zone of the European bourgeois. The harmless image is the window to the real from this comfort zone. However, the image in Cach also plays another role. It is precisely the image that disturbs such security, the needle that pinches the bubble. Several images disturb the security zone of the main character. He receives drawings and cassettes. Even his memories, in the form of images, come to haunt him when he wants to escape (for example, in one of the last scenes, during his sleep). The image functions, as

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Absjorn Gronstad12 suggests, as a way to revisualize the deliberately suppressed events. After all, Hanekes intention to make the film came after watching a documentary of a massacre of Algerians in Paris in the 60s of which barely anything is usually said. The image presents itself as tool to make those repressed acts come to the present. Video surveillance cassettes are mailed to Georges. This is what sets the whole plot in motion, what disturbs the otherwise perfect lives of the main characters. The identity of the producer of those images remains a mystery even after the movie has ended. Different interpretations have been given to them. Burris suggests that surveillance mechanisms such as the panopticon, which were once used to preserve the status quo of the colonizer, have been internalized by the postcolonial subject and now threaten him. According to her, the tapes would be an expression of Georgess both self-alienating and paranoid perspective. Such interpretation is supported by the impossible angles from which some of this tapes are recorded as well as the fact that Georgess own memory of Majids expulsion from his house is framed and constructed through this same aesthetic. The fact that, as some people have suggested, the audio tracks of the first shot and the second to last scene are almost the same, seems to support this interpretation as well. Wheatley, on the contrary, rejects such interpretation (especially due to the fact that psychological expressionism is not part of Hanekes aesthetic) and suggests that the fact that Haneke does not give a satisfactory answer to the puzzle fits among several other devices that the filmmaker has used to raise the self-awareness of the viewers responsibility to the image. In denying the pleasurable answer to the riddle Haneke uses a common genre to give

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Gronstad, Abjorn, Downcast Eyes Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion, Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 1, pp. 133-144.

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an unexpected result and then upsetting the usual non-reflective experience of the viewer. This interpretation, which matches the usual reading of most of Hanekes films, lets us see the film itself as a mechanism to disturb the security zone. Haneke uses some of the mechanisms of those films carefully designed to protect the pleasurable experience of the security zone to then turn them against the comfort zone. His usual discourse about the ethic of the image intends to reject the use of the image as a pleasurable and irresponsible escape. However, does the pinching result in a greater tendency to secure division lines and anger towards the other or in a greater understanding and interaction between postcolonial subjects? Does it enable the passing from the evasion of shame to the acknowledgement of guilt? The difference is that the latter involves a greater self-reflection and questioning of ones own responsibility. The scholarship has agreed that such is one of the intentions of Hanekes cinema, forcing the viewer to question their own responsibility. However, disturbing images throughout the film produce an aggressive response and not one of guilt or acceptance. The drawings and cassettes make Georges angry and aggressive towards Majid. However, we do see him profoundly disturbed and reflexive sometimes, especially in his last scene, where he goes to sleep and in his dreams is faced with the repressed scene. The image can produce both reactions. When Georges and Anne are discussing about the disappearance of Pierrot, a TV news show dominates both the visual frame and the soundtrack of the scene. Images of the war in Irak and what appears to be the Palestinian conflict are seen while Georges and Anne imagine that Majid has kidnapped their kid. The intrusion of this kind of images, instead of opening borders towards a mutual understanding, fuels the paranoia of the walled bourgeois and dehumanizes and makes evil the other.

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Will the walls and the lack of interaction ever be over? The characters of Pierrot and Majids son offer a possible positive reading of the problem. The last shot of the movie shows the two of them talking to each other at the exit of Pierrots school. The image is the most enigmatic of the film, as it was never suggested that they knew each other. Some have read it in a positive way, thinking it shows how there is hope for understanding between future generations. Pierrots character doesnt seem to be comfortable in the secured environment that his parents have build for him (he continually goes out of his house refusing to tell his parents about it). Majids son approaches Georges in what appears to be a true invitation for interaction. Seeing them talking in a non-violent way could imply that future generations will abandon the conception of the other as something external and opposed and will internalize a more human conception of inclusion. However, this positive reading is disturbed by the fact that the scene is framed in the same way that the surveillance tapes were and we do not hear what theyre saying. Does it represent one of Georgess fears? Or does it imply a further continuation of the production of the tapes to terrorize George? 13

The answer is not clear. The film invites to a reflection on the postcolonial relations of our times. As long as the compartments are guarded there will be no room for true interaction, no room for empathy and understanding, and therefore more dehumanization of the other and more blame projection. Fanon proposed violence as the only possible mechanism to deolonize the colonized space. What about the space of the colonizer? How can we open the guarded security zone? The image presents itself as the tool for intrusion. However, the effect of the violent image is not always one of opening.

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Bibliography Burris, Jennifer, Surveillance and the indifferent gaze in Michael Hanekes Cach (2005), Studies in French Cinema 11: 2 (2011), pp. 151163. Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1963) Gronstad, Abjorn, Downcast Eyes Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion, Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 1, pp. 133-144. Haneke, Michael, dir. Hidden (Cach). Les Films du Losange, 2005. Silverman, Max, The Empire Looks Back, Screen, 48: 2 (2007a), pp. 2459. Wheatley, Catherine, Michael Hanekes Cinema. The Ethic of the Image, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009)

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