Masculin Feminin and the (Dis)junction Junction
In a previous post I wrote about my interest in reading Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (1965) as demonstrating the type of highly methodological progression that Roland Barthes lauds with regard for print media (see The Pleasure of the Text – page 18). I argued that in addition to simply alluding to Godard’s filmic transgressions – the obvious and often critical gestures he makes towards dominant Hollywood cinema – we also have to account for Godard’s move towards the method of “drift” or “cruise” that one can read in some of his later texts; the more highly segmented, and perhaps seminal, works that make up his extended oeuvre. And, it must be noted, that any serious investigation of Godard’s work would also have to account for some of the other stylistic conventions that define his corpus (i.e. the dramatic use of filters/color, and his emphasis on disruptions and disjunctive diegetic sound). Although I focused on Pierrot le Fou most specifically, Masculin/Feminin also demonstrates the focus on segmentation I referred to in the previous post. First though, in order to get at the relevance of previous observations to this film I want to turn to Andre’s comments over at La Nouvelle Vague.
Specifically, I am interested in Andre’s first (narrative-driven) consideration of this film. Although I agree with some of his more basic observations, I’m ultimately dissatisfied with his take on the moments of “shock” that occur throughout this text.
Andre initiates his discussion by reflecting on the disruptive moments that the audience witnesses throughout the course of this film. Namely, he is interested in both the Vietnam War protestor’s “self-immolation” and the rather brief murder scene that occurs in the beginning minutes of Masculin/Feminin. For Andre’s purposes, these highly disruptive moments serve as dramatic precursors to the final and invisible moment of shock; the protagonist’s death. Though there is surely some import in discussing these strangely and humorously tragic moments, especially considering the frequency with which they occur, I’m not sure that I agree with the type of narrative emphasis that Andre gives these events. Though, in a later post, he argues with an emphasis on thematic concerns as opposed to plot motivations, a move that I appreciate, this particular analysis refuses to move beyond the limitations of narrative driven logic: Andre insists on discussing that which the audience is ultimately inhibited from seeing; the narrative developments that result in Paul’s death. Instead, what the audience gets is Madeleine’s rather cold and disaffected testimony. For his purposes, Andre’s narrative assessment seems to fit pretty coherently with a certain feminist imperative – to decry Godard’s rendering as wholly problematizing any involvement with the feminine being. That is to say, that if one were to take Andre’s argument to the extreme, Madeleine ultimately becomes somewhat of a femme fatale. Though there is, perhaps, room to make this argument, I’m a little more interested in the attention that Degregoris gives Marx and Coca-Cola. If Madeleine, as some of the other characters, is representative of a younger generation torn between two “irreconcilable” poles, one would have to read this invisible moment of “shock” as being something else entirely.
The problem with reading these strange instances or moments as something other than narrative indications of Madeleine’s deceit (the “Evil behind a Pretty Face”) is that it is much more difficult to assess what these renderings might mean otherwise. In a sense, it seems that reading Godard’s Masculin/Feminin as the prototypical anti-narrative forces one to reconcile Marxism and Coca-Cola. The moments of shock that Andre is getting at seem, ultimately, less of a plot or narrative convention than another play on binary. Perhaps, there is room to read that Godard is playing with the theme of oscillation as we witnessed in some of his earlier texts. This is to say that just as Godard plays with what DeGregoris refers to as the seemingly “irreconcilable” nature of Marxism and Coca-Cola, Godard is also interested in another contrast; the juxtaposition of violence and extreme action with otherwise mundane circumstances. Here, of course, one has to be careful. To move away from this film understanding it as a series of rather simplistic oscillations or comparisons would actually do great injustice to the film. As I suggested earlier, this move seems highly methodological. This is to say that Godard is trying to create meaningful juxtapositions. His texts really operate on these disjunctions; at the very seams of image, sound, and even, with consideration for later texts, language. This is the drift, in a strange sense, exemplified. As I also argued in a previous post, it is important to consider whether or not Godard is attempting to enact what Virno refers to as the exodus; whether he is attempting to exit a particular system of language (dominant Hollywood film) for a wholly different and experimental form of expression.
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