Introduction
In his oeuvre titled “Inextinguishable Fire,” Harun Farocki presents a movie that not only conforms to a short investigational documentary style but also an essayistic format linking narrations, texts, and pictures. Produced early in the legendry artist’s roughly fifty-year profession, the flick is a critique of the war in Vietnam and the industry’s role in producing deadly chemical weapons. It opens with the following tale: “When we display the images of napalm victims, you will irresistibly close your eyes for such portrayed scenes. You will also shut them to memory as well as to the facts” (Ružić 279). Analyzing images can be seen as the leitmotiv in this film. The main issues relate to the jointly incompatible manners of insight practiced in the various public spheres, blunting the gaze, and blocking communication. In assessing the creation, distribution, and consumption of imageries, he illustrates the inextricable connection between politics, media culture, violence, gesture, and technology.
In her work titled “Cut Piece,” Yoko Ono performed on stage putting on a black dress while holding a pair of scissors with the audience invited to cut down her clothing. At the beginning of the film, the invited attendees are hesitant to cut her dress, but as she continues to perform, they get courage and become more intrepid. Towards the end of the movie, partakers shred the cloth to near tatters. One male participant sliced the straps of her bra, nearly exposing her breasts. She clutches up her bra to prevent the revealing of her breasts. The two films depict social challenges bewildering society; Inextinguishable Fire highlights the unscrupulous dealings in the production of lethal weapons for the Vietnam War while Cut Piece illustrates the sexual aggression met on women.
Analysis of the Two Films
The two films highlight violence in society in two different levels. In the Inextinguishable Fire, Farocki reads a document on both the impacts of napalm and the motives for its wide usage. To depict a minimal illustration of the special effects of napalm, he grasps off-frame for the scorching cigarette and extinguishes it on his naked forearm. A voice-over explanation records laconically that ‘the cigarette combusts at around 600 degrees Celsius; Napalm does it at roughly 3000 degrees” (Gustafsson 10). The actions portrayed in the film make an individual start thinking about whether Farocki is an activist or an artist. It entails a state of mind about a political movement (Schuppli 167). Farocki distinguishes two pictures, one printed by the opponents representing an American combatant beating a Vietnamese parochial and the other from the regular newsprint displaying the fatalities of communist vengeance.
The difference between the two photos puts Vietnam more unfathomable than noticeable; no messaging whatsoever occurs between the two pictures. The images explain the ideological complexity of the unfolding discourse in the Vietnam Skirmish. The moment of individual observation depicts a war movie, a thrilling love account set against the background of genocide and conflict (Bueno 740). The film does not attempt to establish factual imageries of something, nor offers pictures as proof. Instead, it points to make a structural association with these images both striking and even evident to offer a graphic form of the conceptual separation between public spheres (Schuppli 168). The film provides a minimalist but short period on the theme of production and the impacts of napalm. A man is monotonically construing the evidence of one of the Vietnamese victims and suddenly extinguishes the cigarette on the back of this arm. He proceeds to elaborate that the temperatures of napalm are nearly seven times higher than that of the lit cigarette.
Cut Piece also comments on sexual aggression and violence evident by how Ono’s dress is being materially cut by the participants. Moreover, her work reflects on feminism rather than proto-feminist as others might suggest. In a point of view, it is a feminist art since it touches on the grave matters of gender subordination, violence against women, desecration of a female’s private space, and sexual aggression. The themes presented in the movie also show more inclination to feminism. The art exposes the victimization and subordination of women, as well as comments on the sexual aggression through visual evidence of people in the film.
Farocki’s art majorly points in opposing the obvious and the visible. His political assertion is to portray that in realism, nothing is concealed, sealed, or veiled. The meticulous viewpoint in his approach arises from self-imposed nonage. The pictures do not reflect the conceptual mist or the ontological obscurities of an appearance. His voice-over remarks show that the observable contrasts the evidence (Ružić 280). Moreover, the visualization is stratified by inherent ancient structures that organize the gaze and occasionally blind the viewers’ sight. According to historical analysis, observing with an individual’s eyes is an issue of political battle. Seeing against the ounce of the expected, alongside pieces of evidence, and shade spots are the role that stays in the machines’ world, which has seized human sight.
Inextinguishable Fire provides images that have a vivid linkage to politics as evident in the dispute in the Vietnam War. In the documentary, Farocki addresses the application of napalm while directly criticizing Dow Chemical for making the lethal product. In the Brechtian acting mode, he sits at a bench as a kind of a host, conversing the impacts of napalm. Farocki proceeds to roll up the sleeves and pulls out a ciggy, then remarks that napalm scorches seven times hotter (Gustafsson 11). Moreover, most parts of the movie feature purposefully stiff performers at the improvised Dow Chemical industrial, attempting to reckon with their contribution to manufacturing sizzling liquid death.
The film is a suitable medium for keeping and transferring history’s fact-claim because the camera stores more capacity than any mind can recollect. To appropriate history would therefore infer adopting the medium by investigating its suitable logics of taping, loading, transforming, and collating sensory events. Farocki emphatically trusts that cinema’s deferments prevent the closing of history (Ružić 281). However, his only major concern was to institutionalize a theoretical account of the moving image while emphasizing the genealogical analysis of concepts and semantics, as well as disassembling the idealistic core. History is a matter of living bodies associated with the machinery of the visible, which are, as currently known to viewers, extensions of industrial ordnance as depicted in the Inextinguishable Fire.
The film challenges the television account on the impacts of napalm in the Vietnam Conflict. However, as Farocki depicts by snuffing a cigarette on his armrest to provoke empathy, there is no compassion with unimaginable pain. In the role of the omniscient news reporter, Farocki reasons: “When we present to you the images of napalm victims, you will uncontrollably close your eyes. You will also shut them to reminiscence as well as to the facts” (Gustafsson 12). The above narrative depicts the consequences of ferocity that will continually arrive too late to avert injustice and suffering. His concern is to combine pictures that can interfere with various events, transform them (Balsom 358). To achieve such desire, this documentary returns to the plant gates: “When napalm is combusting, it is too late to snuff. It should be fought when it is manufactured in the industry” (Ružić 280). Farocki’s historiography experience is politically simple and topologically complex, all shots encompass a slight messianic suggestion of its counter shot.
In Cut Piece, gender is directly addressed since Ono is depicting a sexual object. Through her performance, she does not move or walk much, prompting her to portray an object instead of a subject with a voice about the prevailing actions. She does not utter anything as the participants cut her dress, although, through the facial expression, it becomes apparent that she is sore with how sexually belligerent they have become with her clothing and body. However, like government, art requires the involvement of several people to become the assets of an influential and intently self-interested few. Therefore, by permitting her audience to take part in cutting the dress, Ono allows her art to also resonate with her spectators. Not only does she make a pronouncement about women being seen as sexual objects through her audience, but also allowing them to engage in the process to illustrate that “Cut Piece” is for everybody involved
Conclusion
In conclusion, it was intriguing watching the Cut Piece as I was not aware of how the events will unfold when the participants were invited to take part in cutting Ono’s clothing. I believed most people would reluctant just as it appeared in the opening minutes of the work. However, the sheer courage that the audience gathered to cut down her dress to the point of nearly exposing her breast was startling. I was also appalled by the level of sexual aggressiveness depicted by the participants and commendably Ono sat on the stage without any emotion or motion. Therefore, Cut Piece is an essential art since it addresses the sexual aggression existing in society, especially on women. In the Inextinguishable Fire, assessing the creation, distribution, and consumption of imageries depicts the inextricable connection between politics, media culture, violence, and technology. Tremendously well-familiar with contemporary and historical structures of thought, Farocki has demonstrated historical structuralism, semiotics, and materialism, but has defied them in the film dialogue.
In the modern industrial and social discourse regarding the development of vision, Farocki’s film acts as a reminder that every picture requires its interpreter and viewer. He also notes that watchers should strive to query the pictures seen in a flick. Furthermore, the constructive assessment of the images can help the audience to contest the unscrupulous creeds of the mainstream agenda. He represents an individual that does not sentimentally petition for the “ancient period” of the dominant media industry. Moreover, the Inextinguishable Fire, pledge of fact can be seen in resilience in repelling aspects of images, voices, or sounds that escape the strategies and intentions of single recipients and authors. The cinema illustrates its strength not by the closed accounts, but through its openness or incompleteness. Theoretical argumentation of the idea of emancipation can be seen as constitutive aspects of the images. The moving pictures, visible movie procedures, and wrangling editing methods combined with clear raconteurs in the documentary act as the caveat.
Works Cited
Balsom, Erika. “Moving Bodies: Captured Life in the Late Works of Harun Farocki.” Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 18, no. 3, 2019, pp. 358-377.
Bueno, Claudio. “Harun Farocki’s Asignifying Images: Communication, Capitalism, & Critique.” Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, Vol. 15, no. 2, 2017, pp.740-754.
Cut Piece. Directed by Albert Maysles and David Maysles, Performance by Yoko Ono, Vimeo, 1966.
Gustafsson, Henrik. “A New Image of Man: Harun Farocki and Cinema as Chiro-praxis.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-17.
Ružić, Boris. “Lost in Narration: Transparent Storyteller and Mobile Spectator in Early Harun Farocki.” Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, Vol. 17, no. 2, 2019, pp. 272-281.
Schuppli, Susan. Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence. MIT Press, 2020.