Deleuze and Holiday Part 1

(this essay begins here: https://4kdirector.blogspot.com/2018/12/good-and-evil-on-holiday-introduction.html )

 

From Judgment to Discernment

Holiday replaces the abduction standard of Good versus Evil with five conflicts.  The five conflicts dramatized were borrowed from 20th century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s essay, “To Have Done with Judgment”.  These conflicts necessitate discernment, as opposed to judgment.  For Deleuze, judgment inhibits life and shuts down creativity, “Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge”.²  Arguing for the need to do away with judgment, Deleuze offered five conflicts of forces.  They are neither good nor evil, but forces that are in opposition to each other.  The conflicts are: 1) vitality versus organization, 2) intoxication versus the dream, 3) the will to power versus a will to dominate, 4) combat versus war, and 5) cruelty versus infinite torture.

Beyond Good and Evil in 5 Conflicts and 4 Acts

Act One: Vitality versus Organization 

Anne allies herself with what Deleuze would refer to as forces of life and vitality, while the abductor, Graham, allies himself with organization.  These forces express themselves at the level of the body, our physical, corporeal existence.  The energy of vitality and the compartmentalized control of organization are not good or evil, and are harmful in the extreme.  In political terms the limit of one would be anarchy and the limit of the other a fascist dictatorship.  In aesthetic terms one could be expressed as raw, unfocused creativity, versus rehearsed mastery.  The extreme of either is limiting at best and madness at worst.

As an expression of this conflict, Graham strategizes and seduces in the first act, while Anne finds herself joyously overwhelmed with the vibrancy and life of Venice Beach, allowing it to take her where it wants her to go.  Her energy and curiosity counter Graham’s organizing schemes.  In the middle of the act, Anne’s youthful innocence almost allows her to slip away from Graham’s gaze.  Graham delays the abduction by providing beauty and admiration from Anne.  By the end of the act, however, the forces of organization overwhelm Anne and she is abducted.

Act Two: Intoxication versus the Dream

In act two, Anne is lost in drugged intoxication, while Graham lives in a nightmare dream of reality, haunted by Death.  Spooked by a flash of Death at the beginning of the act, Graham changes plans, calling his client to move up the sale, then pilots his boat all night to get Anne to Mexico.  Graham imagines the Russians plotting against him with phone calls to his accomplice in Mexico as memories of the Tattooed Woman sweep back into his consciousness in waves.  He has trouble discerning what is a memory and what is his imagination in his waking nightmare.  Exhausted, but finally in Mexico with Anne under control, Graham falls asleep and dreams the Russian calls the Indian Industrialist to plot against him.  He wakes after an hour or two, only to have to clean up Anne, imagining Death, as pure judgment, on his way.

For Deleuze, “The world of judgment establishes itself as in a dream”.³  Judgment “imposes limits and imprisons us” by erecting walls and creating shadows on the walls we take to be Truth.⁴  The appearance of Death for Graham creates walls on which he projects the immorality of his acts and tries to escape.  He stays awake all night only to dream of the Russians plotting against him, of judgment closing in on him.  He is reminded of the Tattooed Woman and her loss.

Opposed to the force of the dream, Deleuze offers intoxication.  Deleuze writes:

What we seek in states of intoxication—drinks, drugs, ecstasies—is an antidote to both the dream and judgment . . . Whenever we turn away from judgment towards justice, we enter into a dreamless sleep.⁵

Such states should be the affect of our own choices, however, or they become their own form of control by an external source.  Anne’s intoxication is not voluntary and she suffers for it.  Midway through the act she drifts back into consciousness only to find reality more terrifying than the intoxication.  Graham knows this state of almost conscious, dreamless sleep is a challenge to his control and force-feeds her more drugs.  By the end of the second act Anne finds herself moving from child-like dream to semi-consciousness, sliding back and forth between the nightmare of the intoxication and the nightmare of reality as she is washed and cleaned up.  She eventually loses consciousness and Graham moves on, further fulfilling his destiny.

Deleuze suggests we negotiate between the ecstasy of intoxication and the dream of judgment.  This negotiation of forces is the path to justice and Anne follows that path.