Deleuze and Holiday Part 3

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

Cruelty versus Infinite Torture

This fifth Deleuzian point of conflict is explored throughout the story via Graham and Anne.  Deleuze articulates a doctrine of judgment that finds its extreme limit in subjugation to an infinite law, beyond our appeal.  He asserts we must move away from judgment, although it risks physical cruelty.  Within such system of cruelty, debts are marked on the body, but the debts are finite.  Deleuze lays out a history where justice begins with this system of cruelty and develops into a doctrine of judgment:

There exists a justice that is opposed to all judgment, according to which bodies are marked by each other, and the debt is inscribed directly on the body following the finite blocks that circulate in a territory.  The law does not have the immobility of eternal things, but is ceaselessly displaced among families that either have to draw blood or pay with it.¹⁰

This system of cruelty, in its extreme would be anarchy with its corporeal pain and suffering.  That force is opposed to the mental infinite torture of judgment.  The promise of judgment is eternal existence and corporeal peace.  But that comes at a price.  Within this seemingly more “humane” doctrine of judgment Deleuze writes: “In the doctrine of judgment, by contrast, our debts are inscribed in an autonomous book without our even realizing it, so that we are no longer able to pay off an account that has become infinite”.¹¹

We judge because we are judged and it feels “just”, but judgment crushes creativity and possibility.  Deleuze warns: “The bookish doctrine of judgment is moderate only in appearance, because it in fact condemns us to an endless servitude and annuls any liberatory process”.¹²  Deleuze is speaking to our engagement with the world—from our brutality as apex predators to our capacity for infinite subjugation to an unknowable power.  These are not opposing magnetic poles, these are dynamic forces that are part of existence.

Anne’s character expresses affectation of all the opposing forces through her constant state of what Deleuze calls “becoming”.  She is Helen, weaving her story, willing to dominate and then express a will to power, to ally with War, then return to combat.  She allies and resists to the end, without judgment.  She doesn’t insist justice is about personal revenge on Graham.  Justice, first and foremost is about freedom to choose.  Deleuze states this requires combat, not only against external powers, but more importantly, internally, asking the question, “who is one being in the world?”  Anne’s acts of violence are not revenge or judgments, they are a manifestation of a will to live.

As Graham spirals down into himself he aligns with the forces of judgment and Death.  The specter of War haunts him as he passes judgment on all around him, most importantly, himself.  He lives an immoral life and can never escape the face of Death.  Eventually Graham becomes Death, although refuses to take accountability by imagining “the Russians” delivering the fatal blows to all but the hermit.  For this murder, Graham exacts his revenge for stealing his property, Anne.  In the end, he feels Death very close, but manages to slither away into the grass.

This conflict between Anne and Graham is also represented visually, but with an ironic twist.  Anne is in a constant state of becoming someone different, although visually very little about her changes.  For most of the narrative, Anne wears only one outfit.  In contrast, Graham is seen with numerous looks, from his early 30’s with tattoos and a shaved head, to early an early forties wealthy beach bum, to a late 40’s man on the run, to finally a grey-haired, middle-aged salesman, all while solidifying himself internally into a monolith of paranoia.

Graham’s need is the same as Anne’s—to escape.  But instead of looking to others as Anne does, Graham only sees himself and his own thoughts of Death.  There is no escape for Graham as he finds himself subjected to infinite torture in his war with Death as judgment.  Deleuze states: “Judgment prevents the emergence of any new mode of existence”.¹³  Anne will keep growing, Graham will keep dying.

These characters embody a conflict not based on Good and Evil.  These conflicts help us to consider justice, rather than judgment, as motive that is a significant departure for the abduction genre.  The project itself is an inquiry into nature of genre narrative and whether there might be a different way to represent justice.