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Dead Man Walking : On the Cinematic Treatment Of Licensed Public Killing

1998; Michigan State University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ctn.1998.0000

1930-1200

Edmund Arens,

Political Theology and Sovereignty

DEAD MAN WALKING: ON THE CINEMATIC TREATMENT OF LICENSED PUBLIC KILLING Edmund Arens University ofLucerne I regret that so many people do not understand, but I know that they have not watched the state imitate the violence they so abhor. (Sister Helen Prejean) ~T\eadMan Walking, thehighlyacclaimed second film directed by Tim -Z-^Robbins, seems appropriate for discussion in the symposium's context oíFilm andModernity: Violence, Sacrifice andReligion. This film on the one hand thematizes different forms ofviolence and victimization; on the other hand it presents divergent forms ofreligion. And it does so in a way which not only demonstrates the interplay of violence and religion but also opens up the chance of transcending various kinds of sacrificial structures inhabiting that interplay. We can approach DeadMan Walking in five steps. After some general remarks about this film as a work of art, I will briefly review the story line. In the part called Themes and Topics, I will outline some of the predominant topics addressed in this movie. The fourth step is devoted to the interrelation of Violence, Victimization and Redemption. Finally, the religious or theological question comes into view under the heading of Proximity and Testimony, an aspect which at the same time has a definite link to law and the legal system. I. DeadMan Walking as a Work of Art According to Susan Sontag, film "currently is the most vivid, the most stimulating, and the most important of all genres of art" (Sontag 13). But Edmund Arens15 whether a particular film really can be considered as a work of art depends on a number of presuppositions, a few of which I shall mention here. Without going too deeply into the debate on the nature and purpose of aesthetic production, there are at least some requirements which point to a work ofart. Roughly speaking, it is defined by putting matter and form into a certain relation, by creating or producing a certain structure, by adopting a certain style and by organizing the material by means ofgenres (all ofwhich relates to the classical notion of poesis). Secondly, a work of art deals with perception in a double way: while it implies a certain perception ofreality, it also invites the audience to participate in this perception and thus to deepen, alter, or correct the perception that they experienced (something which relates to aisthesis). Thirdly, art aims at having certain emotional effects on the public that are either purifying or edifying (something which since Aristotle has been discussed as katharsis). Ifthese three dimensions (cf. Jauss; Siller) are always involved in works ofart, we can ask how in DeadMan Walking the interplay ofpoesis, aisthesis, and katharsis is at work. Under certain conditions a film is a creative work ofart. In this case, the motion picture, whether documentary or fictitious, includes an aesthetic creation of an imagined reality. It does not simply mirror reality but always reconstructs or reshapes it. In fictional film narrative, everyday reality is disrupted and rearranged by means of a variety of formal and material techniques. The treatment of reality necessarily involves the question of representation. What Paul Ricoeur considered as decisive for narrative fiction, applies to narrative fiction films as well: they make use of "calculated dissonance" which disrupts everyday reality and thereby points to a "redescription ofreality" (Ricoeur 1975; 1976; 1986). We shall see later on how this process, attributed especially to certain metaphors, works in the case ofDeadMan Walking. Besides the topic ofrepresentation, any kind of art raises the question of perception. Art implies a certain perception and at the same time it offers or invites—in the case of visual art—the audience to perceive reality in a different or deeper manner. In amovie the audience, whether by a manipulative "aesthetics of overwhelming"1 or by an aesthetics of disclosing, is moved emotionally and imaginatively, the aim being to direct their attention to the secret ofthe things shown and thus to direct or redirect their view ofreality. From the point of view of a pragmatic theory of action (cf. Arens 1994; 1997b) which additionally takes up Ricoeur's most important insights, I would 'The term has been coined by Heiner Müller; quoted from Kirsner...