A Belated Glance at 'Munich': Art, Ideology, Symptom

Some time ago, I was asked how it was that I, a supposedly 'politically literate' person, could listen to both East-coast and West-coast hip hop. For those who are unsure, EC hip hop is more likely to features raps on the 'gritty' nature of street life, injustice within America, or take a trenchant political stance on things. WC hip hop, on the other hand, is characterised by fairly simply motifs: money and 'bitches'. I am oversimplifying things here somewhat, but hopefully, you get the picture.



As often happens, I couldn't think of a particularly good answer at the time. Upon reflection, however, it occurred to me that the trashy, materialistic WC hip hop was just as 'political' as its EC counterpart, if not as directly so.



To explain a bit further, EC hip hop seemed to incorporate strident criticisms of the system that created the harsh soundscapes of rap, and served as an explicit political attack on injustice and inequality. WC hip hop, on the other hand, does not attack the system, so much as over-identify with it, exaggerate and caricature it, and thereby undermine it by other means. The preoccupation with violence, the obsession with cars and jewellery, and the sexualised objectification of women are not the antithesis of US consumer capitalism, but the logical consequences of it.



It is for this reason that, in the pantheon of cinematic myths, Michael Corleone is a genuine American hero, who, in Godfather II, is right to emphasise his credentials as a good businessman and patriot. De Palma's Scarface is an over-the-top, operatic riff on a similar theme, namely, the 'American Dream'. Both films (and their protagonists) are admired by a very large audience, in the US, and elsewhere. Neither film is overtly 'political', but both films nonetheless wear their ideology on their sleeves. This ideology functions as a kind of 'symptom', in a psychoanalytic sense; that is, as something to be interpreted.



Another example can be found in the HBO series, The Sopranos. The incorporation of ideology in this series is more overt and self-conscious than in my previous examples. Tony Soprano (and his goons) take explicit political stances on a number of issues throughout the series, by way of their discussions. The viewer is treated to mockery of gays, minorities, women, and the welfare system. Human beings are viewed as merely being a means to and end, and violence is routinely instrumentalised as a means of getting one's way. In short, we might say that The Sopranos is symptomatic of the dominant, conservative ideology, in that it embodies an extreme version of this Weltanschauung. Saying this is not to suggest in the least that the shows' makers endorse this ideology in any way, but rather, that they depict it.



With the forgoing discussion in mind, I'd like to turn my attention to Steven Spielberg's Munich. Yes, I know it's old, but I've only seen it recently, and it got me thinking.



Munich, for those who don't know, stars Eric Bana as the leader of a group of Mossad agents, following the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Bana's character travels through Europe, locating those responsible, and liquidates them. In addition to this basic plot, the viewer also sees glimpses of Bana's character wrestling with his conscience - that is, he attempts to rationalise his actions, minimise civilian casualties, and so forth. We also see his interactions with his wife and family, and his fidelity to the former.



As we might expect from any film touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film was controversial, and attacked from both the left and the right (and the Zionists) for its depictions of the Mossad agents. One such attack came from Melbourne's very own village idiot and Murdoch lapdog, Andrew Bolt. I can't find Bolt's original article, as News Ltd. seem to take these offline after a while, but the Boltwatch response to the article contains a few original quotes. Here were some of the criticisms of Munich, coming from the Right:

AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein argued, “The film’s [Munich] message is both
historical nonsense and morally dangerous. There is a world of difference, both
ethically and legally, between deliberately murdering the innocent to promote a
political cause, and carefully targeted attacks on armed terrorists. To ignore
this distinction, even in the service of a naïve ‘all violence is wrong’ premise
that may feel ‘moral’, is to destroy the basis of the international laws of war
which are a vital foundation our civilisation.” The Daily Telegraph

Dvir Abramovich, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, argued,
“Nowhere in the film is there historical background or context. Decades of
conflicts are reduced to clichés. Munich fails to mention that Israel suffered a
series of attacks before the Munich massacre…The image of the World Trade Centre at the end of Munich seems to suggest that Israel’s counter-terrorism policy of
the 1970s led to the September 11 atrocities in 2001.” The Herald-Sun

Andrew Bolt argued, “The most sinister thing about this hyped film, with
its noisy soundtrack of the wringing of well-manicured hands, is not that it
attacks Israel – although it does. Nor is it that in telling how Israel hunted
down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the Munich slaughter and other
attacks on Jewish civilians Spielberg presents fiction as facts – although he
does that, too. No, the true shame of Munich is that he spent nearly $100
million to make a seductively deceitful film that warns we are evil if we fight
back against the terrorists trying to kill us… In fact, killing even in
self-defence makes us worse than the Palestinian terrorists who tie up Jewish
sportsmen and then machinegun them… Germany, for instance, let go three of the
Black September terrorists behind the Munich massacre after Palestinian
hijackers threatened to blow up a plane. France, Greece, Italy and Cyprus all
allowed Palestinian terrorism suspects to freely roam their countries. Spielberg
doesn't investigate that, of course. Giving in to violence doesn't seem to shock
him.” Herald Sun (source)

Some of these responses are predictable, of course. Any portrayal of Palestinian terrorists whatsoever (excluding 2-dimensional cartoon characters) is liable to accusations of anti-Semitism. The Palestinian terrorists in Munich are little more than caricatures, or cyphers, and naturally, do not receive the interiority of the Israeli characters. Apparently, to film them at all is to paint too sympathetic a portrait.



Given that the Mossad agents and their missions are central to the film, one might have expected reproaches of Spielberg for portraying these characters (and their goals) as murderous, or cold-blooded. Au contraire, amis. If memory serves, one of Andrew Bolt's foremost objections to the film was that the Israelis were portrayed as being too 'soft', too troubled by conscience, too possessed of hand-wringing questions. For Bolt, the film could be interpreted as sending a dangerously pacifist message.

At this point, we may do well to question precisely why Spielberg goes to such lengths to assure us that the Mossad avengers do indeed have human hearts beneath their breasts. Hirsute Slovenian Slavoj Žižek examined the propaganda function of these sorts of depictions:

How does Israel, one of the most militarized societies in the world, succeed
in...presenting itself as a tolerant, secular, liberal society? The ideological
presentation of the figure of the Israeli soldier is crucial here; it
parasitizes on the more general ideological self-perception of the Israeli
individual as ragged, even vulgar, but a warm and considerate human being. We
can see here how the very distance toward our ideological identity, the
reference to the fact that 'beneath the mask of our public identity, there is a
warm and frail human being, with all its weakness,' is the fundamental feature
of ideology. And the same goes for the Israeli soldier: he is efficient, ready
to accomplish the necessary dirty work on the very edge of (or even beyond)
legality, because this surface conceals a profoundly ethical, even sentimental,
person...This is why the image of the weeping soldier plays such an important
role in Israel: a soldier who is ruthlessly efficient, but nonetheless
occasionally breaks down in tears at the acts he is compelled to perform. In
psychoanalytic terms, what we have here is the oscillation between the two sides
of objet petit a: shit and the precious agalma, the hidden treasure: beneath the
excremental surface (vulgar insensitivity, gluttony, stealing towels and
ashtrays from hotels, etc. - all the cliches about Israelis propagated by
Israeli jokes), there is a sensitive core of gold. (The Puppet and the
Dwarf, 2003).

In this light, we have another perspective on Munich, whereby the film is symptomatic in the manner of a dream, with manifest and latent content. On the one hand, we have a portrayal of the Mossad agents as tortured sentimentalists, loving family men who kill only out of sheer necessity; this offsets the manifest content of the film, consisting of a series of 'extrajudicial' killings (to say nothing of the innocent civilians who were killed by Mossad in reality). Indeed, pre-emptive, extrajudicial killing by Israelis is more common now than it was back then, but, contrary to anything resembling fact, beneath these ruthlessly efficient and unquestioning killers' surfaces lies a 'sensitive core of gold'.



Aaron Klein, an Israeli military historian, said as much when interviewed about the film:

Asked about the portrayal of Mossad agents in the film as plagued by
doubts, Klein replied, “Well I've spoken with more than 50, as I said, more
than
50 veterans of Mossad and military intelligence and I must say that all
those
that I met and spoke with are very proud of what they did. They are
very proud,
they have no remorse, no second thoughts of what they did. They
saw their work
as the holy work – they were protecting the people of Israel.
This is the way
they see the whole incidence, the whole counter terrorism
campaign that they
were involved with,” ABC Radio “The World Today” (Feb.
13) (source).

Whilst Spielberg's film may not be factual in this regard, it'sembellishments serve a purpose nonetheless. Far from showing Israeli agents as'soft', equivocal souls, Munich preserves the ideological myth-making thatfacilitates the doctrine of 'preventative' murder, of execution without trial. It anaesthetises viewers to the killing, by assuring us that the killers areoverflowing with the milk of human kindness. I have no idea what Spielberg'sintentions were with making this film, but he has succeeded in propagating a colossal piece of ideology, and has converted this most symptomatic ideology into celluloid form.

Eleven theses on Psychoanalysis

In response to a long and interesting thread on Larvatus Prodeo, I think it timely to provide some clarificatory remarks on psychoanalysis, a much-maligned and oft-misunderstood discipline. I will try to be as schematic as possible.

1. Psychoanalysis is radical. The notion of a psychoanalytic unconscious, a part of ourselves that is fundamentally and irreducibly unknowable, beyond any control, and causative of a range of 'symptoms' (from the hysteric's phantom pains, to dreams, to the symptomatic nature of our romantic lives) is radical. Other psychoanalytic notions can make claims of being radical, however, the psychoanalytic unconscious is what gives the discipline its revolutionary character. Whilst Kant, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others all dipped their toes into the murky waters of a radical unconscious, none were as detachedly systematic, whilst at the same time frighteningly intimate as Freud.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is not politically radical, Reich being the obvious exception. Freud rejected Marxist theories of the origins of society, and Lacan too was dismissive of Marxism, at least, until the uprisings in 1968 Paris. It is possible that, being Jewish, many early psychoanalysts thought it impolitic to also be socialist, given the Zeitgeist in which they operated. A strong sense of social justice can be found in psychoanalysis, from Freud's Free Clinics to the low-cost services provided by psychoanalytic schools today. This notwithstanding, Freud, and psychoanalysis is best understood, in 19th Century terms, as neither conservative nor radical, but as liberal-bourgeois.

2. Psychoanalysis is not a science. At least, it is not scientific in the sense by which we understand the term in physics or mathematics. Psychoanalysis is a science of the particular, which means it will never deal in the relatively tidy universals of the 'hard' sciences. All the same, psychoanalysis displays greater rigour, reasoning, and explanatory power than most of the rest of psychology, which is why today's neuroscientists, such as Damasio, or Kendall, are turning to Freud rather than Beck or Skinner.

Those who proffer narrow and dogmatic notions of scientificity (that is, most of academic psychology) will find psychoanalysis wanting. However, psychoanalysis is perfectly 'empirical' - it deals with a series of 'ones' rather than seeking to apply structural equation modelling or alpha-tests to subjects reduced to some kind of statistical totality. Like any of the 'human sciences', psychoanalysis incorporates 'qualitative' methodologies, which, though they eschew statistical methods, nonetheless proceed by way of evidence and reasoned argumentation. Indeed, given the flimsy conceptual foundations of mainstream psychology, the latters' fear and hostility towards psychoanalysis must be explained by means other than a recourse to notions of 'empirical validation'.

3. Psychoanalysis is not an art. The discipline, as least in its clinical guise, is not simply some whimsical expression of its practitioner's fancy. Nonetheless, unlike other 'therapies', true psychoanalysis cannot be 'manualised', that is, broken into a recipe book-style series of prescriptions for a therapist or subject. Psychoanalysis stands closer to the arts than any other of the psychologies, partly because art itself is 'symptomatic' and 'over-determined', but also because psychoanalysis does not suffer from the same knee-jerk rejection of all that is not narrowly scientific that its psychological cousins exhibit.

4. Psychoanalysis is anti-authoritarian. When practised by way of assisting the analysand to interpret his or her own associations, psychoanalysis is far removed from the likes of CBT, and refrains from issuing directives and imperatives. Furthermore, psychoanalysis does not stigmatise and pathologise in the manner of the DSM-IV; after all, in psychoanalysis, neurosis is 'normal', or even a best-case scenario, given that the alternative is psychosis. Clearly, someone like Foucault was not enamoured of psychoanalysis, yet any criticism that he (or Deleuze or Guattari) might have made could be doubly said of the highly authoritarian treatment 'regimes' currently predominating in our healthcare systems

5. There are different schools of psychoanalysis. Few analysts would accept all of Freud's teachings, though virtually all would cite Freud as the founder of their discipline. In the post-Freud era, psychoanalytic schools include the Anna Freudian, ego psychology, Bion's analysis, object relations, Kleinian approaches, Lacanian analysis, and the intersubjective school. In addition, there are various offshoots initially inspired by, but ultimately distinct from psychoanalysis, such as Jungian psychology, the neo-Freudians, and Adler's individual psychology. Whilst some of these approaches differ sharply from each other, there is no more sectarianism that what one would find in any other discipline, and the dominant form of analysis that one learns is often a result of one's time and place, or the orientation of one's school. Still, psychoanalysis is not homogeneous.

6. Psychoanalysis is neither misogynist, nor anti-feminist. Whilst feminism has an uneasy relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, there is a relationship nonetheless. Freud made several problematic statements in relation to feminine psychology, which can be attributed to 3 basic origins:

1. Freud was a (relatively enlightened) product of his times, and consequently gave voice to a number of fairly typical prejudices.
2. The exigencies of some of Freud's theories, and the extent to which he took these theories literally, inevitably led him to some odd conceptual formulations. The Oedipus Complex, when applied to females, is among the more notorious of these.
3. Some of Freud's statements are in fact sexist, and seemingly have no basis in either theoretical or empirical necessity, and cannot be explained away via 19th Century prejudice.

Having established this, it should be remembered that not all feminists are hostile to Freud or psychoanalysis. American analysts such as Nancy Chodorow or Jessica Benjamin are excellent examples of a feminist (and intersubjective) engagement with psychoanalysis.

7. Psychoanalysis is not always encountered in its pure form. Indeed, whilst the neuroscientists and 'cognitive analysts' say that they engage with psychoanalysis, it would be more accurate to describe this engagement as one of colonisation. Psychoanalysis is often subordinate to some other discipline, or else the more radical and subversive aspects of its teaching are neutered. For instance, American ego psychologists, and the CBT practitioners (former analysts) shift the focus from the unconscious to the controllable and knowable conscious. Or take the difficult notion of the death drive, which has been virtually neglected by all post-Freudians other than Klein and Lacan. It is surely no coincidence that psychoanalysis becomes more acceptable, and more 'scientific' to people once it has been stripped of the unconscious, sex, and death.

8. Psychoanalysis is analogous to Marxism. That is to say, as Foucault pointed out, both psychoanalysis and Marxism are discourses that critically interrogate other discourses, often discourses of mastery. In psychoanalysis, discourses of mastery belie the subject of the unconscious, repressing to produce this illusion of 'mastery'. In Marxism, analysis is directed to looking at how class-relations are perpetuated through ideology, and how 'neutral' discourses are often sodden with ideological blindspots. This contributes to both disciplines being 'unacceptable'. Freud's discourse is further unacceptable because it engages meaningfully in those things often presumed to be meaningless, that is, the nonsensical elements of experience normally banished from polite academic company, such as neurotic symptoms, jokes, dreams, and slips of the tongue.

Whilst both psychoanalysis and Marxism undermine discourses of mastery, neither were intended to be applied in a haphazard, reductionist fashion. For instance, whilst a Marxist analysis of 'crime' enable us to observe how class relations and private property underpin our notions of legal transgression, phenomena such as sexual assault can never be exhaustively reduced by an analysis of class relations alone.

9. Psychoanalysis is not post-modern. Despite the protestations of Sokal, and others, there is nothing that Lacan has in common with the likes of Derrida, or Baudrillard, other than a similarly difficult oeuvre. Whilst psychoanalysis is applicable to non-clinical phenomena, there are many examples of what Freud called 'wild analysis' in this field. In addition, Kristeva and Irigary, inspired by analysis, have consciously engaged with the 'post-modern'. It should be remembered, however, that in his New Introductory Lectures, Freud explicitly said that the Weltanschauung of psychoanalysis was scientific and medicinal. All of the major theorists of psychoanalysis have since continued in this tradition, albeit incorporating the concerns of feminism, or linguistics. The struggles of psychoanalysts are not merely confined to obscurantist debates on paper; French analysts, for instance, have documented their battles with an unsympathetic and cynical healthcare system in the journal Lacanian Praxis.

10. Psychoanalysis is not dead. In particular, psychoanalysis thrives in places where Latin languages predominate, from Portugal to Quebec. It is Buenos Aires, and not New York, that actually has the highest per capita amount of psychoanalysts. In fact, psychology in Argentina is taught with mandatory units in philosophy, and does not waste its time with the niceties of statistical analysis. Last year, as I travelled through Europe, it was clear that Freud's 150th birthday was celebrated in London, Berlin, and Vienna. On the other hand, psychoanalysis, as enduring as it is, will never be the dominant paradigm, cumbersome as it is to both the 'normalising' discourse of bureaucratic-medical models, and to consumer capitalism. Historian of psychoanalysis, Eli Zaretsky, said much the same thing in the speeches he gave in Melbourne in 2005.

11. Psychoanalysis is on the side of freedom. This may be paradoxical, given Freud's apparent commitment to a thoroughly determinist model of mental functioning. Nonetheless, if we adopt a notion of freedom that is not simply either/or in nature, we can observe how psychoanalysis helps the analysand obtain freedom by degrees, by replacing ignorance and compulsion with knowledge and awareness.

It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has been demonised by totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Hitler's Germany, to Stalin's Russia, and is today excluded from authoritarian modes of 'treatment' peddled in consumerist regimes. An anecdote that I heard from an Argentinian Lacanian suggested that Lacan's work found resonance in this latter country precisely because the obscurity of its language kept it from the attention of authorities.

Psychologist have ever but sought to change the human subject, that is, transform him/her into an object, force him/her to identify with a 'therapist', or to become the 'healthy', narcissistic, alienated subject of consumer capitalism.

The point is not to change things, but to interpret them. Through interpreting, change follows in any case, or moreover, analysand interprets for his or her own self. Psychoanalysis teaches the analysand how he or she 'enjoys' his or her symptoms; it does not enjoin the subject to necessarily cease this enjoyment.

Stoopidity

Intellect is often at issue when discussing the exploits of this guy:












Particularly in relation to the vexed question of Iraq:

This shouldn't be surprising, when we remember that this guy has given us such gems of oratory as:

'I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president'.

And:

'I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things'.

Among others.















Clearly, the guy isn't 'very analytical'. Beyond the apparent imbecility, it is often further presumed, both popularly, and among the more 'critical' sections of the media, that this guy is actually at the mercy of these guys:

The problem is, however, that this is precisely the message from the media that allows voters to identify with this guy - after all, most of us are a little incompetent at times, most of us are at times the victims of malevolent (and in Bush's case, moustachioed) forces. Being able to identify with a candidate is important when your elections are as much about 'personality' as they are about policy. And, as any psychoanalyst will tell you, identification can be a very powerful thing, irrespective of whether you are an average family person:

Or a core part of the right-wing constituency:

When we, who presume ourselves to be among the non-stoopids, characterise the likes of Bush as imbecilic, we tend to forget that, if we live in Australia or the US, we are part of an aggressively anti-intellectual, consumerist culture:

In short, we forget that stupidity, marketed well, can win votes. Bush has gone out of his way to promote himself as a 'down home', bumbling kinda guy. The non-stupids have, unwittingly and indirectly, made (the stupid) Bush more palatable, by facilitating identification with him.

The tragedy of this is two-fold; firstly, it means that scheming money-grubbers continually win elections (in the US and Australia).

Secondly, it means that discussion about things like the war in Iraq, far from being construed as ethical, is simply reduced to a debate over tactics (the latter being the practical manifestation of 'intellect'). Tactical 'debate' has been characteristic of popular discourse on Iraq for the past few years, whilst the media conveniently forgets that disarmament was the purported goal of the war. A debate that should have occurred on whether it is permissible to 'pre-emptively strike' (i.e. kill) was relegated to the sidelines, in favour of a debate on how the striking might cimply be made more efficient. When almost all of the disastrous consequences of the invasion were entirely predictable, it is only the most disingenuous of observers who can blithely attribute Iraq's 'problems' to 'resourcing' issues, or tactical blunders.

It goes without saying that, when protesters march in their thousands against Bush, from Beirut to Buenos Aires, it is not precisely in opposition to foolish tactics. Bush's stupidity has been one of his greatest strengths, and it has been one of the Western media's greatest achievements to (almost) completely transform Iraq's catastrophes into mere errors of judgement on the part of the West. This should (but inevitably won't) give food for thought to those lining up warships in the Persian Gulf, about whether the Western world wants to open another door it has no ability (or intention?) to shut.