5 - A Dream Play: Shame

Summary

In Shame, civilization itself has become threatened and is at the brink of extinction. The global destruction of the biblical apocalypse is no longer a dramatic figure or the framework for a medieval morality play. What was feared by Jonas comes to pass, and what appears to be some sort of civil war or intra-European conflict brings about the end of the world. The geopolitical terror that invaded an otherwise secure national life through the newspapers in Winter Light and through television in Persona has become real and at hand.

That modernity is an attack on civilization itself and not just stressful to this or that individual is marked throughout the film on three levels. Most obvious, of course, is the dominance and ubiquity of the military (and of whatever the military is fronting, which goes unanalyzed). Tanks, soldiers, personnel carriers, planes are everywhere. Persons – people living ordinary lives – are first transformed into citizens and civilians, and then into enemies or patriots. Everything is a proper target of destruction – farms and churches, refugees, children, animals, prisoners of war, unarmed boys, former friends and associates – even wives and husbands. There remain no ties that bind.

When this occurs, when anyone and everyone becomes an acceptable object of violent force, social relationships and human intercourse itself become transformed into something inhuman, brutal, and equally deadly. This is the second level of ruin. ruin. Words can no longer mean what they say, and all discourse is governed by ulterior ends and meanings: All speaking is constrained, and so undermined, by ideology.