Who Wants to Die for Art!?!: Reflections on a Meta-Film Sub-Genre: Part IV
ππ―ππΊ ππ°π·π¦π³π΄ ππ¦π§π΅ πππͺπ·π¦: The Rebel Artist in Self-Exile
Speaking of art and dyingβ¦ A week after the publication of this seriesβ previous entry, which focused on Pierrot le fou (1965), that filmβsΒ director, the legendary and controversial Jean-Luc Godard, died at the age of 91. Hopefully the same wonβt happen to Jim Jarmusch, whose Only Lovers Left AliveΒ (2013) is the subject of this fourth installment of the βWho Wants to Die For Art?!?β series.
Iβm only half-joking. Of course I donβt believe that my writing possesses magical powers over life and death. But I frequently wonder whether even rationally motivated writing, filmmaking, etc. retains traces of βprimitiveβ superstition β of an artistβs desire to alter society and/or guard oneself against its forces by constructing a substitute fictional world that he or she can control.
If so, then Godard and Jarmusch provide a contrasting study of approaches to a possible talismanic cinema. Starting from his very first feature, 1959βs Breathless, Godardβs primary artistic concern was the discovery of aesthetic forms that might effectively represent and reconfigure a complex, fragmented, heterogeneous, and constantly conflicted socio-political reality. These discoveries proved as complex, fragmented, heterogeneous, and constantly conflicted as reality itself, but they were nonetheless resolutely anti-realist in their ceaseless rupturing and questioning of the illusionistic βseamlessnessβ that dominates popular entertainment. As discussed in the prior entry of this series, a film likeΒ Pierrot exemplifies Godardβs anti-realist strategies by realizing not only an alternative cinematic practice but also an alternatively imperfect Real β as opposed to the transcendent Real of Western Christian societies β that might join disparate modes of art and life: introspection and action, fantasy and fact, destruction and creation.
Certain facets of Jarmuschβs cinema converge with those of Godardβs, but toward a decidedly different goal. Both directors explore anti-realistic cinematicΒ possibilities by mixing seemingly incompatible generic elements, by imagining surreal intersections of history and modernity, by rendering violence as disturbingly deadpan, irreverent slapstick. But whereas Godardβs cinematic style invokes a sort of hyper-critical eight-dimensional chess (cubist montage sequences, multi-layered soundscapes, dense inter- and extra-textual allusions), Jarmuschβs films approach, yet never fully reach, a disillusioned minimalism, wry in tone and unfolding as a series of distanced, discrete observations. Godard reconfigured the world according to a frenzied intellectualism in order to intervene in it, but Jarmusch reduces the world according to a caustic hipsterism in order to resign from it. In the work of Godard the world is portrayed as dying but nonetheless capable of redemption through kinetic reconstruction; in the work of Jarmusch the world is portrayed as unredeemable and perhaps best left for dead by way of aloof renunciation.
For the purposes of this series, Only Lovers Left AliveΒ most fits the billΒ of a meta-film in which βan artist gravitates toward madness and murder to break through the unsatisfying limits of representation so as to discover and work within the Real.β This is becauseΒ Only LoversΒ is the kind of elegiac βdead worldβ narrative that Jarmusch has made throughout his career, the kind in which an alienated iconoclast upholds, though doesnβt quite fight for, the values of a vanished civilization that has lapsed into barbarity and ruin. But unlike the protagonists ofΒ Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), or The Limits of Control (2009) β and note, by the way, the scorched Earth evoked by all of these titles β the protagonist of Only Lovers is an artist. Not only that, he is a vampire. And beyond even that, he is symbolic of humankindβs beginning as well as its ending: his name is Adam. (Jarmusch has stated that he named the filmβs central characters after those in Mark Twainβs The Diaries of Adam and EveΒ [1906] rather than those from the Bible, but the symbolism of the latter nonetheless resonates throughout Only Lovers.) In the figure of Adam (Tom Hiddleston) Jarmusch thus melds the myths of the Visionary Creator, the Damned Monster, and the Original Man, and in so doing he offers a haunting self-portrait of the artist in exile within his own expired culture. Unsatisfied with the communicative properties of creativity, this isolated artist seeks the Real by insulating himself from hisΒ unreceptive, undeserving audience.
Before Only Lovers,Β Jarmusch had hinted at the artistic self-portrait: none of the anti-heroes of Dead Man, Ghost Dog, and The Limits of Control are artists, but they all evoke the artistic sensibility in name (Dead Manβs William Blake) or preoccupation (Ghost Dogβs and Controlβs Zen-like esthetes). These characters are also killers, however, and so itβs interesting to note that the artist-protagonist of Only Lovers, though a vampire, does not β until filmβs end, and then only by implication β kill anybody. Whereas the predecessors to Adam within Jarmuschβs oeuvre embody characteristics and interests that define the artist, they also directly engage with the world β even if in a murderous vein β rather than represent it through creative endeavor. Adam does the opposite: a virtual recluse living in a cluttered Victorian house in Detroit (a city whose post-industrial decline serves as a major visual and thematic motif), he monastically devotes himself to creation and only engages with the human world through Ian (Anton Yelchin), a contact in the record industry who procures for him vintage instruments and who leaks his music to media outlets. Like his longtime Tangier-based girlfriend, Eve (Tilda Swinton), Adam doesnβt even directly feast on human blood. Because humans have so polluted their bodies with sundry chemicals and diseases, Adam must obtain pure (or purified) blood through a plasma laboratory in a local hospital.
Purity is a significant theme in Only Lovers. Historically, the vampire myth has trafficked in the concept of purity, though usually of the sexual or racial kind β in Dracula (1897), for instance, Bram Stoker strongly implies that the titular villain must travel to Britain to drink the blood of a βpure raceβ now that his Eastern European homeland has been defiled by mixed βstock.β Jarmusch isnβt interested in racial or sexual purity but instead artistic purity, and so the biological toxicity of 21st Century human blood metaphorically represents the toxicity of a flat-lined American and global culture. (In Hebrew βAdamβ contains the word βdam,β which means βblood.β In Only Lovers, Adam remains one of the few beings on the planet composed of pure blood, Γ la his biblical namesake prior to the Fall.) Just as Adam must avoid direct contact with tainted humans (whom he and Eve derisively deem βzombiesβ), so does he live as a shut-in to minimize contact with a declining human civilization. βIβm sick of it,β he tells Eve when explaining his suicidal ideation. βThese zombies, what theyβve done to the world, their fear of their own imaginations.β Since humans have corrupted their imaginative and creative abilities, Adam chooses to work as an artist in anonymity β he retains an interest in βgetting the work out thereβ (as he says of the trick fellow vampire Christopher Marlowe [John Hurt] played on the world by crediting his work to Shakespeare), but only on the condition that his creativity avoid compromise through treacherous dealings with the culture industry, the vampiric institution man has erected to place art under capitalist control.
Remaining aloof from a civilization of philistines, Adam fashions an artistic sanctuary within his Detroit home. He surrounds himself with his own instruments and other technological devices for the creating, recording, and playing of music, he keeps books in his refrigerator, and he cordons off a section of his house as a shrine to his (and presumably Jarmuschβs) favorite artists (Franz Kafka, Iggy Pop, Michel Basquiat, etc). Here the myth of the vampire as a doomed, solitary romantic fuses with the myth of the overly sensitive artist who can exist only in an insulated environment that mirrors his own exalted sense of creativity. Such an environment helps retain the artistβs purity even as it prevents him from directly communicating through his art β Adam has been able to βget the work out there,β but his societal role as an artist has become almost completely abstracted.
Adamβs nullification of a public persona through anonymity and seclusion is reflected in the nature of his music (mostly created by Jarmuschβs real-life musical project, SQΓRL): lyric-less, repetitious, and droning, the ouroboros-like sonic quality of these compositions is visually echoed in the film's opening scene, which matches rotating overhead shots of Adam and Eve as they bliss out to his recordings. It is art in its purest but also its least signifying form, hypnotic art that refers to little beyond itself and that refuses to reflect or comment on present socio-political conditions and realities. Once more, Jarmusch inverts the vampire myth through bittersweet irony: Adamβs disengagement from his social responsibilities as an artist mirrors his disengagement from his symbolic purpose as a vampire. Since vampiric attacks famously symbolize uninhibited lust, a vampireβs rejection of βthe thrill of the huntβ functions as the ultimate expression of disdain for mankind. Adam and Eve, the latter a muse and art connoisseur, are the βonly lovers left aliveβ and thus cannot condescend to βmake loveβ to humans who are barely deserving of their artistic gifts, let alone their erotic ones.
One can argue that Jarmusch offers hope by endingΒ Only Lovers with a restoration of the vampireβs mythic/symbolic role as well as the artistβs societal role, yet one must also observe that this restoration is depicted as only being made possible through violence. Forced to leave Detroit when Eveβs intrusive and gregarious younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) feasts on Ian, Adam and Eve escape to Tangier and find themselves without their regular supply of pure (or purified) blood. While starving in the streets of the city, Eve asks Adam about Einsteinβs discovery of βspooky action at a distance.β Adam explains: βWhen you separate an entwined particle and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected.β They then spot a pair of young lovers and β more out of a renewed sense of purpose than desperation β decide to suck their blood and turn them into vampires. The last shot of the film depicts Adam and Eve baring their fangs as they approach the couple, the camera, and, by proxy, the viewer.
The ending depicts Adam and Eve recognizing that to exist in the world β even as creatures of superior artistic talent and temperament β is to exist in relation to others, or what Martin Buber describes as an βI-Thouβ partnership. Even if morally, intellectually, and creatively remote from a civilization that has headed toward oblivion, Adam and Eve are nonetheless βidentically altered or affectedβ by that civilization, and so in choosing existence (albeit as the undead) over nonexistence they also accept that society will impinge upon their lives in ways from which no form of seclusion can offer protection. The best they can do is to avoid self-obsession and self-pity, two modes that Eve accuses Adam of wallowing in and that she believes he can extricate himself from through the joys of life: βappreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing.β In turn they can also conscientiously participate with others β that is, they can conscientiously decide on the manner in which they βidentically alter or affectβ the world.
But as indicated by the βin-your-faceβ menace of the final shot,Β Only Lovers insists that any reciprocal transformation on the part of artists and their audience can only be achieved through a Faustian bargain. Adam and Eve recognize that as artists or esthetes who wish to break through the unsatisfying limits of representation, but also as artists or esthetes who can no longer seek the Real in and through isolation, they must change the perception of others via non-consenting transformation. Jarmuschβs ending is thus simultaneously rejuvenating and despairing: the artist-in-exile can only reconnect with his public through transgressive force. The artist-audience relationship, as Jarmusch envisions it, must involve the imposition of one upon the other, with the audience corrupting the artistβs purity and the artist manipulating, and perhaps even overriding, his audienceβs senses. Instead of a creative partnership that is founded on communication, on the making and receiving of meaning through art, Jarmusch sees the artist and audience as coexisting through mutual antagonism and within a potentially self-defeating battle of wills.
Which returns us to Godard, a filmmaker who repeatedly accepted and even celebrated the antagonist tendencies of art. What made Godard a visionary rather than a mere provocateur, however, was his insistence on respecting an audienceβs ability to interpret challenging work, a respect founded on his own sense of responsibility in foregrounding any biases, limitations, and manipulations that might color his representations and reconfigurations of reality. Such an approach emerged from the distinct time and place in which Godard was formed, his calling as a director influenced not only by the cinephiliac wave that swept Europe after the Second World War, but also by the moral reckoning that attended his generationβs drive to understand the rise of fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust. For Godard and so many of his peers, filmmaking could never, and should never, transcend reality in favor of the Real β rather, the cinema could, and should, create conceptual frameworks for imagining an entirely new relationship between the two.
The time and place that informs Jarmusch is of a wholly different order. His formative years occurred during the Vietnam/Watergate era, a period in which numb disillusionment gradually replaced righteous political outrage. Godardβs characters often attempt estrangement but are always roped back into social engagement, and when theyβre not theyβre punished for it β see Jean-Pierre LΓ©audβs protagonist in Masculine Feminine (1966), who falls to his death when seeking an impossible βobjective distanceβ from the subject he wishes to film. The reverse could be said of Jarmuschβs characters, who in one way or another are depicted as marooned β in prisons, taxis, and de-peopled landscapes and cities β from the rest of the human race, or whatever remains of it. To live through such isolation these characters adopt the hipster βcoolβ with which Jarmusch has become so strongly associated. But that cool is a cover, a permutation of masks that hide the faces of people so overwhelmed by brutal socio-political realities that they cannot relate to them except as dead men, as ghosts, as vampires. Whatever energy these individuals possess to intervene in the world can only be channeled through violence, a violence enacted not in the service of social change β an attitude with which Godard sometimes flirted β but rather a violence in the service of leveling the cultural playing field, of making the living a little more dead and the dead a little more alive.
And so in our journey through films in which βartists gravitate toward madness and murderβ¦β we encounter in Jarmusch an entirely new mode. Previously we saw how in different ways β and toward different moral and philosophical ends β films like Alfred Hitchcockβs Rope (1948), Michael Curtizβs Young Man with a Horn (1950), and Godardβs PierrotΒ offer portraits of artist-protagonists desiring destructive transformations in themselves and the world in pursuit of the Real. In contrast,Β Only LoversΒ offers a portrait in which destructive transformation isnβt desired at all by the artist-protagonist except as a last resort. As conceived by Jarmusch, the Real is ideally founded on (self-)preservation, not (self-)transformation, with the function of art aimed toward achieving the Real through insulated purity, not metamorphic sublimity. And just as Godardβs artistic project epitomized the two or three decades after World War II in which cinema was thought of β and often passionately argued over β as the preeminent medium by which the world could be remade in the image of the Real (or as a radically Real image), Jarmuschβs project epitomizes its changed role within an image-saturated mediascape. Adamβs music and Jarmuschβs cinema must now serve as personal safeguards, as art forms that, having been at this point more corrupted than honored, now function as aesthetic hermitages in which artists can take refuge to shield themselves from a world beyond saving.
