TY - JOUR
T1 - White Paranoia
T2 - Michael Haneke's Caché reflected through Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel La Jalousie
AU - Jørholt, Eva
PY - 2017/1/2
Y1 - 2017/1/2
N2 - Inspired by Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel La Jalousie (1957), the essay contends that Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005) takes its viewers inside a postcolonial white paranoia which is, arguably, the root cause of the exclusion, segregation and racist discrimination that many immigrants from the former colonies – and their children – are experiencing in contemporary France. It suggests that the entire film be read as the protagonist’s paranoid vision that imagines white privileges to be menaced by some non-white conspiracy. His obsession, which hinges on a fear of a reversal of the power inherent in ‘the gaze’, as brought out in the central ‘stalking plot’, informs the entire film’s narration and audiovisual make-up and explains, among other things, the serial repetitions and variations of certain settings and objects as the protagonist’s desperate attempt to create order in a threatening world. The construction of the film, however, also allows Haneke to critically comment upon his protagonist’s paranoia and demonstrate its ill-foundedness, for instance by pointing to a possible ‘banal conviviality’ (Paul Gilroy) between people of different ethnicities, cultures and religions.
AB - Inspired by Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel La Jalousie (1957), the essay contends that Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005) takes its viewers inside a postcolonial white paranoia which is, arguably, the root cause of the exclusion, segregation and racist discrimination that many immigrants from the former colonies – and their children – are experiencing in contemporary France. It suggests that the entire film be read as the protagonist’s paranoid vision that imagines white privileges to be menaced by some non-white conspiracy. His obsession, which hinges on a fear of a reversal of the power inherent in ‘the gaze’, as brought out in the central ‘stalking plot’, informs the entire film’s narration and audiovisual make-up and explains, among other things, the serial repetitions and variations of certain settings and objects as the protagonist’s desperate attempt to create order in a threatening world. The construction of the film, however, also allows Haneke to critically comment upon his protagonist’s paranoia and demonstrate its ill-foundedness, for instance by pointing to a possible ‘banal conviviality’ (Paul Gilroy) between people of different ethnicities, cultures and religions.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Michael Haneke
KW - Caché
KW - postcolonialism
KW - France
KW - immigration
KW - Alain Robbe-Grillet
U2 - 10.1080/14715880.2016.1241585
DO - 10.1080/14715880.2016.1241585
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1471-5880
VL - 17
SP - 91
EP - 108
JO - Studies in French Cinema
JF - Studies in French Cinema
IS - 1
ER -