As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

by Susan Sontag

  When a small child, I felt abandoned and unloved. My response to this was to want to be very good. (If I’m tremendously good, they’ll love me.) I could have responded quite differently: with self-hatred, with delinquency (revenge on others, calling attention to myself), with identifying with rebel-critic-outlaw-criminal role, as Eva did. Instead, I said, I will be enormously good—and deserve (attract) love—and seek responsibility, authority, control, fame, power.

  When C. said at Orly [Paris airport] before I left, “You’ve been an angel,” it wasn’t entirely a compliment. I’ve assumed—my old idea—that I will win C. by being fantastically “good” (generous, patient, loving, never angry). But part of what attracts her to me is that I am tough, autonomous—not that I’m angelic, which must suggest (unconsciously) to her that I’m naïve, childish, innocent—and, as a result, not really strong, in the way she needs.

  I musn’t be afraid of showing anger to C.—afraid that I’ll drive her away; indicate to her that I don’t love her; show that I’m not “good.” (Of course, I consider it precisely as not part of virtue—it’s a fall, it’s ignoble, it’s demeaning.)

  …

  I can demand things from C. but not on the basis of needing her. That scares her

  …

  … an essay: Wittgenstein: Remarks on his influence on the contemporary arts

  …

  [For Wittgenstein] ethics and aesthetics are one (Tractatus)

  …

  2/22/70

  … [Carlotta] fears that need is continual, insatiable—that she’ll be trapped. Also, she doesn’t believe she can satisfy anyone’s needs—she’s too weak and unworthy, she’s a piece of shit, etc.

  It’s important to continue to indicate that she does satisfy needs of mine (that she’s not just “a pole of erotic attraction,” in Colette’s words)—because that’s true and it gives me pleasure to say it, and because it enhances her own self-esteem (something she needs so badly). But I must not plead with her to satisfy my needs—only indicate that she does in fact do that.

  2/23/70

  Could I write to C in several weeks: “I’m outraged, I’m hurt, I’m angry. I won’t let you do this to me.”?

  The difficulty of contacting my anger (when it’s aimed at people I love) is that it directly contradicts my notion of how to deserve love:—being good. No problem, of course, in getting angry with people I don’t know, with people I don’t know well, with people I don’t love very much.

  Being good! “I’m so good that it hurts”!

  My idolatry: I’ve lusted after goodness. Wanting it here, now, absolutely, increasingly. Hence, built-in disvaluation of past work. It’s good but it’s not good enough … There is always more (more goodness, more love). I suspect now that lusting after the good isn’t what a really good person does.

  3/2/70

  Re conversation with Giovanella: cynicism of society in Rome (and south)—suspicion of idealism; fear of being ridiculous; demand that one be light, have a “sense of humor.” The game of saying things that wound (not to be wounded is to win the game). Compulsive gregariousness—traveling in packs.

  …

  3/5/70

  I think I am ready to learn how to write. Think with words, not with ideas.

  …

  3/7/70

  [Luis] Buñuel’s La Voie Lactée, which I resaw yesterday, is a “mannerist” film. (Cf. [ the twentieth-century German art historian Gustav René] Hocke’s book on mannerism, Die Welt als Labyrinth, esp[ecially] chapter on Arcimboldo, pp. 154–64). Mannerist art: dwarfs, dreams, giants, Siamese twins, mirrors, magic machines. Metamorphosis: animate < > inanimate, human < > animal; ordinary < > marvelous.

  Emphasis on theatrical: costume, decors.

  …

  3/10/70

  [In the margin:] “Lustra”: five-year periods by which Romans marked out life’s phases or stages

  Read William Godwin’s early anarchist novel, Caleb Williams.

  “L’homme qui médite est un animal dépravé” [“The man who meditates is a depraved animal”] (Rousseau, Discours sur [ …] L’Inégalité)! D H L[awrence] etc.

  …

  4/26/70

  Novel about a doctor—trying to cure …

  Enchiridion = handbook or survival manual

  …

  David’s immense value in my life:

  —someone I can love unconditionally, trustingly—because I know the relationship is authentic (society guarantees it + I make it)—because I chose him, because he loves me (I’ve never doubted that)—: my one whole-hearted experience of love, of generosity, of caring

  —my guarantee of adulthood:—even when I experience my childishness, I know I’m an adult because I’m a mother. (Being a teacher, a writer etc. never has brought me this unequivocally)

  —order, a structure, a limit to any tendency to self-destructiveness.

  —endless delight in his company—having a companion, a friend, a brother. (Bad side: a chaperone, a shield against the world)

  —what he has taught me, since he is as philosophically perceptive as he is and knows me so well

  —appeasement of my fantasies of being a boy. I identify with David, he is the boy I wanted to be—I don’t need to be a boy because he exists. (Bad consequence of this: it would upset me if he became homosexual. I’m sure he won’t. But I shouldn’t unconsciously forbid it.)

  …

  5/25/70

  Art is the ultimate condition of everything.

  …

  Grotowski: “In life the first question is how to be armed; in art it is how to be disarmed.”

  Not true, but helpful.

  …

  Looked at [Edwin] Denby novel [Mrs. W’s Last Sandwich]. Not promising. I’m more + more intrigued by [Jack London’s novel] The Iron Heel. I need an American film. This is a propos (revolutionary sci-fi), could be cheap—Godardesque, etc. The two previous ideas I’ve had—[Melville’s] “The Confidence Man” + [Dashiell Hammett’s] The Dain Curse—would be more expensive + harder. (Dain Curse with Clint Eastwood?)

  A philosophical dialogue: “Reasons for Being.” A meditation on suicide, inspired by Susan [Taubes]’s death:

  —Choice

  —How do people find their lives endurable?

  —Change, mobility

  —The will (+ limits of)

  —The tragic view of life

  —The lunar perspective (Paul [Thek])

  —Appetite (fastidiousness)

  —Project of extending the self

  [In the margin:] Am I my own property

  …

  6/22/70 Naples

  More than ever—and once again—I experience life as a question of levels of energy. I’ve been drooping, waning these last eleven days, because of the unexpected sexual / affectional deprivation. I can’t find another source of vitality—in myself—because I expected to find it, these weeks, in my connection with C. That I didn’t makes me heavy, stupid, reproachful. I humiliate myself asking blatantly for reassurance, and I further depress C. When will I learn not to ask her to reassure me?

  Oh, to be rid of my fixed ideas of how things “ought” to be—

  What I want: energy, energy, energy. Stop wanting nobility, serenity, wisdom—you idiot!

  This isn’t Paris, but I reacted—at least the first few days—as if it were. I felt rejected, I became desperate, etc. It’s better now, but I’m still hoping to break through to C. Because I would never react to me as she is doing, were I in her situation. But she is different, and as I respect her, I must stop trying (covertly, partly unconsciously) to get her to behave as I would.

  7/8/70 Naples

  I’m loyal to my feelings. What does that mean? That if I’ve had a feeling I like I try to go on having it? What nonsense!

  C. follows her feelings, but she isn’t loyal to them.

  C’s face as a child (in the album of photos I saw at her house this afternoon): so much anger and belligerence. Ready to fight, read
y to contradict. I look so vulnerable, sensitive, docile, in photographs from the same age. But which of us is really tougher, really more rebellious? C’s boyishness in the photos meant that she had the right to fight, to be physically belligerent. My boyishness as a little girl meant something entirely different—I never fought, or wanted to fight; I wanted the right to be free, to run away. I didn’t want to tell them off (I must have given up on that idea very, very early). I just wanted to turn my back on them, to go away.

  7/9/70

  C. says that she is always sorry after she has eaten—even if she enjoyed the meal—I understand that; I feel it now, too. But also that she’s always, somewhere, sad after making love. She feels she’s lost something, killed something (the desire), that she is now weaker, less. I don’t understand that. I always feel glad after making love—unless, it’s with someone I don’t like really (in which case, I’m sad because sex is like playing at love and what I really want, miss is love). But even then I’m glad to feel alive, more alive as I always do when I’m in my body. I love anyone—at least a little—who touches me. Anyone who touches me gives me something in that instant: my body.

  I musn’t say to C: How could you think that I could do that, think that? Being hurt, insulted that she might think I’m less committed, serious, pure—etc. Tacitly assuming that we share the same standards—which, alas, we don’t. I always protect her against my potential reproach that she is shallow or disconnected or insensitive, I take this potential reproach to her, and convert it into a reproach (inexplicable, unjustified) to me. I shouldn’t. Rather, I must say: Would you really do that? Is that the way you would feel? How strange! I wouldn’t, couldn’t. E basta!

  *Another title for the film: Brother Carl [This became the title of SS’s second film, made in Sweden in 1970.]

  7/11/70

  Parameters of a film

  [1] length of shot

  [2] composition of shot

  [3] camera movement/stasis

  [4] shot changes

  Rhythm of a film primarily determined by quality of (4). Any shot change should have more than one justification: polyphonic function, “double discourse” of film (continuity < > discontinuity)

  Most people think (1) is the key to rhythm, but this isn’t so. Duration of shot is too subjective—depends on lecture, readability of a shot. Follow a plan-fixe close-up of a face lasting 10 seconds with a plan-fixe long shot of a busy street lasting ten seconds, and most people will think the first shot lasted 20 seconds and the second shot lasted 5 seconds.

  For (2) note the value of asymmetry. Cameramen usually, automatically, center the figures in a shot. Don’t let them do this unless this is what you want.

  *Advantages of ’Scope: all that extra space—poses formal problems that must be solved! Use it on this film? ($200 worth of special lenses—same raw stock; black-and-white ’Scope is unusual. Cf. Buñuel, Journal d’une femme de chambre)

  Noël [Burch] says there are too many shot changes in DFC [SS’s first film, Duet for Cannibals]. Instead of 400 shots there should only be about 200. Most of them, he says, serve no function. The only ideas I’ve had about shot changes have been a) dramaturgical, or b) promote some sense of spatial disorientation

  a. = Now!

  b. = Where are we?

  Most of Godard’s shot changes are cut-aways, not direct cuts (different shot of the same thing).

  Bresson almost never uses anything except a 50 [mm] lens.

  Potemkin has more shots (per foot) than any other film of Eisenstein. Each action is morcelized—mosaic of shots. Opposite is [the Hungarian director Miklós] Jancsó and [the French director Jean-Marie] Straub—all sequence shots (why cut?) For e.g. of morcellizaton final sequence of Storm over Asia.

  [A box is drawn around this:] Movies

  Naples:

  [Vincent Sherman,] The Young Philadelphians (1959)—Paul Newman, Barbara Rush

  Mario Bava, Il Rosso Segno della Follia (1970)—Laura Betti

  Paris July 9 >:

  Hitchcock, Under Capricorn (1949)—Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton

  Jean Eustache, Le Cochon (1970)

  Michel Fano, Le Territoire des Autres (1970)

  Stockholm July 13 > Sept. 27

  • *Terence Young, Doctor No (1962)

  • Elliot Silverstein, A Man Called Horse (1970)

  • Michael Wadleigh, Woodstock (1970)

  • *Mai Zetterling, Flickorna (1968)

  • **Bergman, Tystnaden (1963)

  • Roman Polanski, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

  • René Clément, Le Passager de la Pluie (1970)—Charles Bronson, Marlène Joubert

  • Roy Andersson, En Kärlekshistoria (1970)

  • *Michael Curtiz + Wm. Keighley, Robin Hood (1938)—Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains

  • Tony Richardson, Ned Kelly (1970)

  • Alf Sjöberg, Barabbas (1953)—Ulf Palme

  • Claude Chabrol, La Route de Corinthe (1967)

  …

  Rome Sept. 27–Oct. 9

  Buñuel, Tristana (1970)—[Catherine] Deneuve

  [George Seaton,] Airport (1970)—B[urt] Lancaster, Dean Martin

  New York Oct 9–25

  Mike Nichols, Catch-22 (1970)

  [Bob Rafelson,] Five Easy Pieces (1970)

  [Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg,] Performance

  What I did between sequences in DFC I must do between each shot in this film. The best shots in DFC are the “attacking shots” and the next one—i.e. the first two shots in each sequence. The “attacking shot” often poses a problem of spatial or dramaturgical orientation, the second shot answers it. Then the sequence runs down.

  The longer the shot the more important (privileged) the shot change—the more justification you need for it.

  …

  Each shot change must either create tension or resolve it.

  Noël says I’m like [the French silent film director Louis] Delluc, Bergman, Bellocchio.

  …

  Complicate (by shot changes) the spatial itinerary of the film.

  …

  Russians concentrated on shot changes—virtually eliminated camera movements.

  [In mid-July, SS went to Stockholm to begin work on Brother Carl.]

  7/16/70

  … I’m working again on the script. I take things out, but then I add things. It does seem better with every change, but far too long. I’m afraid I’m going to make a three-hour movie that will be impossible to cut. Sometimes it seems to me too ambitious, too complicated. It’s about suffering, sanctity, moral corruption, neurosis, health, love, sadism, masochism—in short, everything. The characters are so damned complex. I wonder if it’s worth it. I wish I could make moral fairy-tales, like [the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo] Pasolini.

  From [Emanuel] Swedenborg to Zarah Leander, [August] Strindberg to Gunnar Myrdal. [Sweden is] a country of strong, obstinate personalities anyway.

  Gamla Stan [Stockholm’s Old Town; SS lived in an apartment there during the shooting of Brother Carl]: An artisanal world (crooked lines, weathered materials, uneven surfaces) is a human world.

  7/26/70

  … Habits of despair

  10/3/70

  It’s over—just as suddenly, mysteriously, arbitrarily, unpredictably as it began.