Representing Evil

The films of Lars von Trier, especially Europa and Melancholia, grapple with the problem of representing evil and insist that the avoidance of evil is a failure of representation. Evil presents a peculiar problem for any theory of political representation. Is a political society the better for including the representation of evil or avoiding it? Von Trier’s films address this problem by depicting evil as something omnipresent and yet difficult for some to see or to acknowledge. To be a faithful representative in a world that contains evil is not an easy vocation. A representative may have the unpopular task of bringing to light not just what a population says or thinks, but what they are in the whole, for better or worse. A good representative, then, may not be a popular one.

The Legitimacy of Representation

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance examines the classic democratic paradox and proposes an unusual resolution. How can representation be legitimate, many democratic theorists have asked, when it rests on political exclusions? Rather than a legitimacy that rests on voting rules or legal obligations, we see in this film the bond between a society and its representative forged as an erotic relationship of debt and obligation. A good representative, on this account, is someone who sacrifices part of his or her identity for the sake of others. The means for doing so is a narrative that gathers together reason and power into an expression that ties the representative to the constituents. But this experience is costly for all parties, and it demonstrates the permanent tension between freedom and happiness that is a feature of political pessimism. Representative systems are sustained by our endurance of this tension.

Blade Runner’s Humanism

Blade Runner is concerned to humanize our social and political relationships, which are in danger of falling into the affective trap that Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D’Alembert. Rousseau described citizens who mistake a theatrical experience for an equal, reciprocal human experience. To understand the problem, we must learn to differentiate, as the characters of Blade Runner do, between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. Surveillance can create in us the illusion of power and freedom that we mistake for real autonomy. Regard for others, which can be interrupted by representation, needs to be sustained for human society to flourish. If we must use representation to have a democracy, we must insure that its tendency toward inequality and surveillance does not come to dominate us.

Introduction

Film offers us many perspectives on political representation that are not otherwise readily available. Good representation is hard to conceptualize and hard to enact because the human being to be represented politically is not like any other object. Human subjectivity is always evolving; therefore, its representation is always chasing after a moving target. Film, as a moving image, has some advantages in representing this kind of being. But film also shows the limits of representation that frustrate democratic aims. This chapter outlines the dilemmas of representation that are discussed in the rest of the book.

The Up Series and the Future of Representation

Why are democratic populations so dissatisfied with their representatives even when elections are free and fair and the representatives are honest and well-informed about their constituents’ desires? The Up documentary series, which follow the same small group of Britons for fifty years, helps us to understand and address this perpetual problem. Humans are hard to represent, both because they are always growing and changing and because they are often opaque to themselves. Thus, human freedom and any static representation are in permanent tension. Individually, the Up films each have this problem, but as a series, they are an accumulating presentation of citizens as emergent in time and therefore show something of their subjects that they cannot show by themselves. Representation, properly structured, may express freedom, but it cannot embody it. The Up films do not show how representation can succeed but how it can fail better.

Conclusion

Film can be a political narcotic, suppressing rather than expressing the humanity that is supposed to flourish in democracy. Most popular films today, like many elected representatives, have this effect. In its best form, however, representation, both filmic and political, can add something irreplaceable to democracy. A human being is something that makes itself available for presenting and representing only over time. When representation succeeds, it causes some part of this being to come to the fore and be visible in a way that it was not before. Great representatives and great representations are rare, but when they do appear, they enhance our politics by sustaining the reciprocal equality that is at the heart of any human society.

Citizenship in an Age of Representation

The problems of representation are not just those of fidelity and competence. Even when representatives are perfectly honest and dedicated, as in Spike Jonze’s film Her, representation itself is in tension with the equality and reciprocity that is at the heart of human relationships. Humans are apt to ignore this tension, however, in favor of the pleasures of representation. Jonze’s film, about a man in love with an artificial intelligence designed to serve him, exemplifies this dilemma of pleasure and autonomy. To the extent that a system of representation interferes with human society, it is an enemy of democracy. Democracy may be supported or aided by representation, but it cannot be wholly constituted by it.