Realism as Protest: Kluge, Schlingensief, Haneke

187 Pages·2015·4.273 MB·English

by  Tara Forrest

Tara Forrest
Realism as Protest

Film
For Christoph and Julian

TaraForrestlecturesinScreenStudiesattheUniversityofTechnology,Sydney.
She is the author of »The Politics of Imagination: Benjamin, Kracauer, Kluge«
(also published by transcript).
Tara Forrest
Realism as Protest
Kluge, Schlingensief, Haneke
Research for this book was generously supported by
the Australian Research Council.

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Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld
Cover illustration: Christoph Schlingensief, Quiz 3000 (2002).
© Thomas Aurin.
Layout: Justine Haida
Printed in Germany
Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-2973-6
PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-2973-0
Content
Introduction | 7
CHAPTER 1
Subjunctive Realism:
Kluge on Film, Politics, and Feelings | 11
CHAPTER 2
Creative Co-Productions:
Kluge’s Television Experiments | 45
CHAPTER 3
Mobilising the Public Sphere:
Schlingensief’s Reality Theatre | 69
CHAPTER 4
Productive Discord: Schlingensief, Adorno,
and Freakstars 3000 | 95
CHAPTER 5
From Information to Experience:
Christoph Schlingensief’s Quiz 3000 | 117
CHAPTER 6
A Negative Utopia:
Michael Haneke’s Fragmentary Cinema | 141
References | 169

Introduction
[A]rt no longer has the task of representing
a reality that is preexisting for everyone in
common, but rather of revealing, in its iso-
lation, the very cracks that reality would
like to cover over in order to exist in safety;
and that, in doing so, it repels reality.
THEODOR W. ADORNO1
The modern form of Fascistisation is much
more the mass mobilisation of passivity, of
collective inattention.
ALEXANDER KLUGE2
In the Poetikvorlesungen (Poetics Lectures) he delivered in Frankfurt
in 2012, Alexander Kluge argues that the Frankfurt School tradi-
tion of Critical Theory “works with an antagonistic conception of
realism”. For Kluge, who is a contemporary heir to that tradition,
reality is not a straightforward concept that accurately reflects the
world in which we live. While “[t]his reality”, he states, “is real in the
sense […] that an accident kills people, or that wars exist”, it is also a
1 | Theodor W. Adorno, “Why is the New Art so Hard to Understand?” in:
Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2002, p.131.
2 | Alexander Kluge, “Die Utopie Film (1983)” in: Alexander Kluge, In Ge-
fahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod. Texte zu Kino, Film, Poli-
tik, ed. Christian Schulte, Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 1999, p. 94.
8 Realism as Protest – Kluge, Schlingensief, Haneke
“cocoon” we build around ourselves in order to “keep reality out”. As
Kluge makes clear, the image of reality represented, for example, in
the mainstream news media does not necessarily bear a meaningful
relationship to the possibilities inherent in existing circumstances.
“It is”, he argues, “characterised by an extreme rigidity, a hardness.
It sits in jail and bangs its head against the wall when it notice[s] how
objective real relationships are”.3
This violent, disaffected image of reality – embodied in the fig-
ure of someone locked in a cell banging their head against a wall – is
an important one because it evokes a palpable sense of the degree
to which it is both removed from the real conditions of the everyday
world and mindful of its status as an ideological construction. As
Kluge’s description makes clear, this rigid conception of reality is
seriously flawed because real conditions cannot be described in rela-
tion to an objective state that is removed from the subjective input of
people who experience reality first hand. He argues, rather, that it is
subjectivity embodied in the form of human experience that serves
as a form of resistance to so called “objective” conceptions of reality.
If the productions explored in this book are driven by what Kluge
describes as a “realism of protest” then it is because they cultivate a
subjective mode of engagement that challenges the status quo. Al-
though disparate in their form and content, each of the works can be
described as “realistic”, not because they accurately reflect a partic-
ular political or social reality, but because they encourage viewers to
become active participants in the meaning-making process; to draw
on their own capacity for experience in an attempt to make sense of
the material in question. For Kluge “this capacity to make an effort,
to strain something in oneself, to strain something in the senses”4
is part and parcel of what it means to lead a vital and productive
existence. When, he writes, someone “sits in front of the television
watching Deutschland sucht ein Superstar on Saturday or in January
3 | Alexander Kluge, Theorie der Erzählung. Frankfurter Poetikvorlesun-
gen, 2013.
4 | Ibid.
Introduction 9
1939 listens to Radio Leipzig”, then this capacity is not put into prac-
tice.5
As this statement suggests, there is a certain passivity cultivated
by the rigid form of the constructed realities generated by the main-
stream media; a rigidity that stymies the capacity to conceive of the
extent to which reality could, in fact, be very different. As Christoph
Schlingensief makes clear: “One sees an image and thinks that is
the world, but forgets that there are actually many images of the
world. That one also has within oneself many images, ideas, long-
ings that couldn’t be satisfied on which one continues to depend to
the point where one could cry. Because one had to give them up.
The human being consists not just of chemisty, but also of so much
longing”.6
As Kluge’s delineation of reality banging its head against a wall
suggests, reality – in the restrictive sense of the term – is deeply
alienated from this longing because it is divorced from the subjec-
tive needs of the constituency it is supposed to represent. If the pro-
ductions explored in this book cultivate feeling then it is not because
they seek to channel the viewer’s response in a particular direction,
but because they cultivate a certain “obstinacy” (Eigensinn) in the
face of existing circumstances; circumstances that lock people into
accepting an image of reality that neither supports nor sustains their
own interests.
Obstinacy, in this context, refers not only to a straightforward re-
fusal of reality but to a mode of engagement that is driven not by the
machinations of an external force but which is guided by one’s “own
sense” or “meaning” (Eigensinn). The productions explored in this
book are significant not because they seek to close down meaning
by presenting the viewer with a pre-packaged image of how reality
should be, but because they actively cultivate this Eigensinn in the
face of a dissatisfying reality; a reality that bangs its head against the
5 | Ibid.
6 | Christoph Schlingensief, Christoph Schlingensief: Ich weiß, ich war’s,
ed. Aino Laberenz, Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2012, p. 52.