Word: humanistic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...more contradictions of the system. In seeking new possibilities for the novel, Robbe-Grillet has pointed out "the destitution of the old myths of depth," the notion that the artist's task should be to suggest the "hidden realities," the "hidden unities," etc, between ordinary men and objects. The humanist portrays Man's continual striving to extend himself everywhere, to accomplish everything, and to achieve impossible spiritual communions. Failing (naturally) in these Man suffers, and finally exalts in the tragic beauty of his suffering, the "sublime necessity" of his alienation. Robbe-Grillet attacks tragedy-the bourgeois artist's ultimate weapon...
...experience as a film director, however, indicates a reappraisal of the concrete cultural situation. Duet for Cannibals openly invites the interpretations that are inevitable anyway and uses them as traps, frustrating slaps in the face with each contradiction designed to break us of our interpretive habit (and of our humanist consciousness...
Tomas himself leaps hungrily for each morsel of interpretation: (1) Bauer is dying, (2) Francesca is hopelessly insane, (3) He himself is engaged in a Manichaeistic battle of will with the Doctor (i. e. Faust convention), etc., etc. All of these roles are consummated purely in Tomas' (and our) humanist consciousness, which sustains his faith in comprehending, sympathizing with, relating to, perceiving all the depths of Bauer as a human individual. Instead of succeeding, he confronts an elusive set of surfaces which remain opaque, as in the scene where Francesca hides an orgy with her husband by covering a window...
WHEN INGRID gets into the sex action too the Bauers destroy the basis of the young couple's relationship, which is the metaphysical conventions of humanist love: "trust," "belief," "basic human goodness," sentimental associations, and other banalities. In trying to understand and participate, the innocents are seduced in over their heads, as Robbe-Grillet explains...
...been this skillfully manipulative (or this frustrating), using pure surfaces to arouse "dangerous emotions," and then refusing to purge them. In perhaps overemphasizing Sontag's aesthetics I've neglected to mention how extremely disquieting the film is emotionally, with respect to familiar personal relationships. I'm speaking of monogamy-humanist love-which is crumbling these days anyway, whose foundations Duet for Cannibals digs up mercilessly to expose. Anti-humanism seems somehow progressive, but I'm politically distrustful of this kind of manipulation, which is almost an unconscious, emotional dialectic, primarily destructive (even if it may ultimately be liberating). Sontag goes...