Vinz, Saïd and Hubert

Le monde est à vous – The first metastasis of Ressentiment

In a chapter of ‘Nietzsche and Philosophy’, Deleuze covers a topic widely integrated into modern philosophy – a topic discussed by Hegel and Nietzsche, later popularized by Sartre – the omnipotent depiction of an impotent character. Deleuze outlines in this chapter the notion of (re)action as it would be used a couple of years later in his ‘Difference and Repetition’. The kernel of that work, as is already known, belongs to Nietzsche, who is, through a Deleuzian perspective, a philosopher advocating action as opposed to reaction. What is even more important here is a short passage perfectly encapsulating what ressentiment is for both thinkers:

[T]he memory of traces is full of hatred in itself and by itself. It is venomous and depreciative because it blames the object in order to compensate for its own inability to escape from the traces of the corresponding excitation. This is why ressentiments revenge, even when it is realised, remains “spiritual”, imaginary and symbolic in principle.[1]

It is none other than hatred that connotes the ultimate feeling of ressentiment, the mouthful of revenge that it creates. In a way, Matthieu Kassovitz poses a bridge between the Nietzschean/Deleuzian definition and the world of cinema in his black and white 1995 masterpiece ‘La Haine’ (translated simply as ‘Hate’). The word ‘simply’ is used here precisely because the French word signifies more than its English translation – beyond intense hostility and aversion, French draws a vivid image in itself – a feeling that brings a person to wish or do harm to another[2].

The definition offered here seems to perfectly fit the title, and even broader – the movie itself. Wishing harm to another cannot escape even the laziest viewers as an overarching theme of the film – whether it is through Vinz and his manic wish of killing a police officer, an undoubted idolatry of Travis Bickle, or through Saïd whose suppressed abusive thoughts threaten to prevail at many times during the movie. Even Hubert, the true, passive mediator (from the beginning at least), shows propensity for killing – one should only recall the confrontation between Vinz and a random skinhead towards the end. Everyone is similarly involved in the downward spiral of the film’s motto – la haine attire la haine, however different their cases and reactions may be. The intensities of young men living in a Parisian banlieue could not have been described more succinctly than in this movie – a series of linear events in a seemingly regular setting perfectly wrap around them and develop their tendencies simultaneously.

What we are left with is the first metastasis of ressentiment, the metastasis historically occurring in the early ’90s (but incurable nonetheless), the one of a slow fall and pure loss. The fall in itself is never slow, but in order to produce the inevitable pure loss it must be moderated. To achieve this moderation, awareness, which is directly proportional to the speed of the fall, must be curbed accordingly – Vinz, Saïd and Hubert achieve it by, to put it in Žižek’s terms, disavowing realization, i.e. continuously avoiding it. Such coping can at most enable delay, but what is really at stake, what is at all times in the pipeline is a double positing of pseudo-awareness. The key to understanding this double positing lies in itself, therefore we must not confuse the notions and search for the answer in the otherness, in their externality – the important thing to grasp here is the state of absolute recoil, the absolute gap within. In order to proceed, we must look further and determine the exact complex structure of their position, along with the only possible ‘solution’ to the deadlock.

Approaching this layered structure imposes on us a set of chronologically distant occurrences, with all three providing different trails to follow. The easiest one to grasp is the layer of what Lacan would call the symbolic castration – the act of immersion into a person’s surroundings and simultaneous realization of helplessness. In the case of Vinz, Saïd and Hubert it is the immersion into the banlieue – it’s mannerism, ethic, language and code. By the time the film begins, this layer is already deeply set in them and the people around them – the first function of unconnected consecutive events is to depict habituation to their respective roles. Vinz serves as a prime example of this – while he’s alone in the bathroom (the most notable scene of the movie) he silently identifies with the common violent showcase of the banlieue’s youth – flashing guns, hooligan mannerisms etc. The layer of castration perfectly flows into the question of its determination, or better yet – a lack thereof. Whatever their current awareness (having in mind only the first layer) it can never be externally confirmed because their lack of experience – the predicament of life within the banlieue is not only life itself, but a lack of alternative, a lack of exposure. The second layer is at the same time the first negation, and to illustrate this better we can borrow a famous example from Sartre, “In order for this in-itself to be grasped as the crescent moon, it is necessary that a human reality surpass the given toward the project of the realized totality – here the disk of the full moon – and return toward the given to constitute it as the crescent moon…”[3]. We need only replace ‘crescent moon’ with ‘banlieue’ and ‘disk of the full moon’ with ‘French society’ to be left with a vivid understanding of the negation of the first layer (described as being castrated). We thereby discover that everyone in such an enclosed suburb experiences not only a primary (half-)castration, but a secondary (full) one as well. There is ample evidence of this in the movie – clashing with the bourgeoisie at an art gallery, admiring apartment buildings on the other side of town etc. The only problem with such an overdue castration is that it is therefore almost fatal for the symbolic.

The only way of preserving the symbolic of the banlieue at the point of negation of the first castration is simply pretending like the negation did not even take place, like the symbolic is, in itself, intact. Pretending, in this sense, is nothing other than postponing the act of the fall, suspending the immediate impact and lingering in the air. Such a self-deceptive narrative acts as a kind of mauvaise foi, to use Sartrean language – putting oneself out of reach, an escape[4]. But unlike in Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’, mauvaise foi does not directly lead to shame precisely because there is already one suppressed negation left unanswered, the complex structure of the characters’ deadlock is pivotal here. Instead of reaching a point of “[B]eing irremediably what I always was: “in suspense”­ that is, in the mode of the “not-yet” or of the “already-no-longer.” “[5], this point remains unachievable for them solely based on the fact that they do not know what they always were, on the fact that their (full) symbolic castration was overdue and that their innate ‘being’ is inexistent. A much more hard-hitting Real awaits however, that of the Hegelian double negation – the loss of a loss.

The movie illustrates this point beautifully, all built up tension – the dense layers of the banlieue’s symbolic which are at this point indistinguishable from the symbolic of the main characters – is realized in just a few seconds. The banlieue, the castration, the first (suppressed) negation, the pretending – everything is lined up for this moment, a moment at which all unconnected events seem profoundly connected. The loss of a loss is at this point inexorable, its immanence is terrifying but at the same time provides absolutely no closure – the closure is not even anticipated. Just like in Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, the ambiguous ending leaves us filled with uncertainty – whether it provides Scottie with “utter despair or reconciliation”[6] is not apparent – but unlike ‘Vertigo’, ‘La Haine’ does not seem to offer even this ambivalence, it on the contrary seems to have traversed the Hegelian notion. This conclusion is, however, impossible – to traverse it would mean to undermine it completely, to break the hierarchy of strata that it had itself constructed. What is more likely to happen, and what indeed takes place at the end of ‘La Haine’ is a sort of amalgam of both reconciliation and utter despair, ultimately signaling the real overarching point of the movie – the point that unconnected events, characters’ inexactness and the sheer bleakness tried to put across. To grasp it we may need Deleuze.

In a brief overview of ‘ghetto’ cinema in ‘Cinema 2’ Deleuze arrives at an important conclusion that deserves to be repeated (especially regarding ‘La Haine’) – that, looked at from this guise, cinema embodies “this new value of the black or white screen”[7].

…[C]inema makes a return to the ghettos, returns to this side of a consciousness, and, instead of replacing a negative image of the black with a positive one, multiplies types and ‘characters’, and each time creates or re-creates only a small part of the image which no longer corresponds to a linkage of actions, but to shattered states of emotions or drives, expressible in pure images and sounds[8]

Without this passage, understanding the underlying, silent presence of ‘La Haine’ in other (even color) examples of cinema, is impossible. The weight this movie carries with its cog-like, interchangeable characters is incredible, albeit not novel – our conception of the first metastasis of ressentiment stops at nothing and is not singular in its core, but rather universal. Only because it applies to multiplicity and particularity are we able to conclude with such certainty that in the case of this ressentiment there exists no difference between these notions. This amalgam of both resembles an uncanny connection to the previously mentioned amalgam; when put parallel to each other, one can observe a cross-cancellation of both – the particularity (of the situation) bars the reconciliation, while the multiplicity (of affects) cancels the utter despair, and vice versa. Before this cancellation, the totality of the fall was at stake, therefore is the landing represented by the cross-cancellation of notions itself, ultimately resulting in the true loss of a loss represented in ‘La Haine’. Conceived in this way, the Hegelian notion is produced by the mediation of none other than – Deleuze.

The Plan – The second metastasis of Ressentiment

The path towards the second metastasis is cleared by Deleuze himself with his primary assertion that “We have not understood ressentiment if we only see it as a desire for revenge, a desire to rebel and triumph”[9]. Having observed at first hand (or through the lens of Matthieu Kassovitz) the plight of the French youth during the last decade of the previous century, and having realized, albeit this plight is admittedly particular, that certain qualities of it can be applied universally, we can only ask ourselves – where? This question found its answer this year in another masterpiece film – Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’. The second metastasis, therefore, requires close examination, if not for itself, then for its delicate, tightly-knitted relationship with the first, reached by its repetition (in a strictly Deleuzian sense).

Albeit the premise of ‘Parasite’ shows no logical extension to ‘La Haine’ – a story of an ex-middle class and now struggling Korean family does not strike as compelling or useful to the exploration of ressentiment (in cinema) – it perspicuously renders the crisis of 21st century Korean capitalism and its relation to ressentiment itself. Indeed, it just may be that the real crisis lurks behind the colorful guise of Bong’s vision – unlike the shots of ‘La Haine’, which immediately, in their grayness, connote (as we have seen) a setting of hate and suppressed affects – ‘Parasite’, as the name implies, suppresses not only affects, but people themselves. Moreover, it will undoubtedly show, and this is where a careful dissection of ‘La Haine’ proves essential, how the second metastasis encapsulates the first one and goes further, how the loss of a loss is not the final destination of ressentiment’s fury.

The first substantial divergence from the first metastasis can be seen early on during a passing conversation between Mr. Kim, the father of the poor family, and his wife. Chung-sook asks him, in a slightly joking manner, whether he has a plan regarding the family’s hardship; later on in the film, the conception of the plan plays a central role to the determination of both the father, and the son. At many instances during the movie the plan is regarded as an omnipotent, get-out-of-jail-free card, a strict strategy of avoiding ones condition – the plan takes the role of a supreme mediator. From the second it is introduced, one can observe the characteristics of Lacan’s objet petit a embodied in and through the (imagined) semblance of the plan. It, however, also designates the true awareness of the family, unlike the one observed with Vinz, Saïd and Hubert; unlike them, the members of the Kim family are not double-castrated, nor is their castration overdue – this is where the discrepancy lies. The sheer fact that they live in a semi-basement apartment is not enough to constitute their lack of integration into society – conversely, precisely such living conditions are what integrates them, even if within the underprivileged. The conditions for pseudo-awareness are non-existent – the Kim family is fully aware and, as such, unable to fabricate realities. Consequently, the only thing available, the only plane on which their desire can be thought is the one of objet petit a – the plan. The first characteristic to which the second metastasis must adhere to is, therefore, the object-cause of desire, which, by being the only remainder, is the single thing distancing the Kim family from the void. This void, like any other, must be avoided at all costs and the symbolic of the plan must be replenished in order to prevent proximity to it. In yet another passing conversation we get closer to the ambiguity of the plan and its previous errors – Mr. Kim, who has for years tried to provide for the family and failed continuously, has worked as a valet, a personal driver and even owned several restaurants that faced bankruptcy. Such an absurd perseverance of never-ending oscillations in an endless fight for keeping their head above the water is a direct product of exponential capitalism. Exponential capitalism of the Asian type provides a believable setting for this family, but ‘Parasite’ is not a strictly Korean movie – its message of struggle is far-reaching and lays out the future of global capitalism.

Never-ending oscillations uncannily resemble a direct reversal of another reformed Nietzschean notion – the eternal return (of the Same). A concept heavily reflected on by Deleuze in ‘Difference and Repetition’ almost needs no introduction – it has been in constant use as a kernel of his thought since ‘Nietzsche and Philosophy’. “And what would eternal return be, if we forgot that it is a vertiginous movement endowed with a force: not one which causes the return of the Same in general, but one which selects, one which expels as well as creates, destroys as well as produces?”[10], Deleuze rhetorically writes at the very beginning of his magnum opus, thereby providing a succinct overview of the concept. It is immediately clear that back and forth movement does not interest Deleuze, oscillations can never provide an authentic formation of difference which would in turn create the New. This spell of Newton’s cradle – continuous blows and trials resulting in no movement – is precisely the one this family falls under, but by a stroke of luck it seems to be broken when Ki-woo (the son) is hired as an English teacher for a rich family. In a matter of weeks, the ingenious poor family used the ignorance of the rich to infiltrate their home – the father works as a personal driver and the daughter poses as an art therapist. By far the most elaborate con is set in motion when the rich are deceived into thinking that the previous maid (who has worked in the house since its construction) is terminally ill. She is fired as a result and Chung-sook takes her position.

As the Newton’s cradle always abides the laws of physics and the middle balls never move, the objet a is never found – the primordial lack can never be constituted, filled up or diminished. The object-cause of desire remains as vague and impenetrable as ever, and ‘Parasite’ does not miss this Lacanian point. Just as when the psychoanalyst finally grants the analysand access to his objet a, and it turns into shit – “I give myself to you…but this gift of my person…is changed inexplicably into a gift of shit”[11] – yet another plan turns into shit as well. It was none other than the naïveté of the Kims that led to their position – the instantaneous fall is, we recall, wholly different to the fall represented in ‘La Haine’. Pretended awareness allowed at least the curbing of the fall, while obfuscating the role of objet a resulted in a sudden, rapid plunge. During a stormy weekend, while the rich family is out camping and the Kims are getting drunk in their home, the fired maid arrives and reveals her husband living in a secret bunker under the house. The maid soon understands why and how she was fired and gains leverage over the Kims threatening to call the Parks (the rich family). With an early arrival of the Parks, the celebration does not last for the maid and her husband who are quickly overpowered and returned to the bunker. Whether or not the poor family grasped the inaccessibility of the plan, it is too late to prevent collision with the Real, just like in ‘La Haine’.

After a quick digression to psychoanalytic theory, we can easily spot the deadlock preventing the poor family from reaching fulfillment of the plan, without consulting prior conclusions. The deadlock is by nature twofold, it cuts across two different axes and is, therefore, set in stone. Similarly to how Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Odysseus “realizes that however he may consciously distance himself from nature, as a listener [Hörender] he remains under its spell.”[12], the Kims remain under the spell of capitalism (Newton’s cradle in our analogy). They, as Odysseus, actively participate, but contrary to his, their participation is not only sensory – capitalism embodies everything they do, its traces are felt in the most minute of tasks, it is omnipresent and encapsulates their mannerisms. Precisely because of this embodiment, because they are permanently saturated with capitalist mementos can they never propel themselves past the eternal return of the Same and carry out Deleuze’s theory of eternal return of the Different. The Kims in ‘Parasite’, like the fired maid and her husband, serve as martyrs of perpetual movement under capitalism. The New is always adjacent, vaguely conceivable and, paradoxically, elsewhere – the only thing standing in between is capitalism. If the New cannot be produced, if the objet a always evades our grasp, what is left is only the second fall, created by mediation of the first. The film realizes that the second leap only grounds itself in the first and that, as such, it must be even more abrupt and unforeseen. The way Bong constructs the scene, however, remains unprecedented.

The bright and expressive setting of the Parks’ garden is shattered when it is collided with the now loose maid’s husband (the first parasite). In a couple of bloody minutes of screen time the parasite kills Mr. Kim’s daughter, Chung-sook finishes him with a skewer in return and Mr. Kim stabs Mr. Park in final retaliation of the poor. As we, retrospectively, find out from Mr. Kim’s last message from the bunker -“That day as I went out the gate, I suddenly knew where I needed to go”. His, in a way, last words signify the true cyclical toll of what we can almost call parasitic capitalism – he came to understand, at the very end, the necessity of the cycle imposed on him by the plan. This grisly obligation is even more engraved in the life of this family than Mr. Kim could have ever imagined – the first words of his son’s response illustrate this beyond any other formulation – “Dad, today I made a plan”. And we cannot have a single doubt about his future, he will in turn become the parasite.

The difference between ‘La Haine’ and ‘Parasite’ that is crystal clear at this point can be summarized perspicuously. Whereas the landing for Vinz, Saïd and Hubert was fatal, for Mr. Kim and his son has been the opposite – it has allowed them to continue their lives. The gradation between metastases is pivotal, more than ever – life is here much worse than death precisely because it continues – ‘La Haine’ ends, ‘Parasite’ does not, and it never will. The paradox of ressentiment gets the last laugh.

[1] Deleuze, G. (2013). Nietzsche and philosophy. (p. 116)

[2] Taken from Larousse

[3] Sartre, J.-P. (1966). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology. New York: Washington Square Press. (p.86)

[4] Ibid. (p.65)

[5] Ibid. (p.288)

[6] Žižek, S. (2012). Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. London: Verso. (p.479)

[7] Deleuze, G., Tomlinson, H., & Galeta, R. (2007). Cinema 2: the time image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p.200)

[8] Ibid. (p.220)

[9] Deleuze, G. (2013). Nietzsche and philosophy. (p. 116)

[10] Deleuze, G., Patton, P., & Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. (p.11)

[11] Lacan, J., Sheridan, A., & Miller, J. A. (1998). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis: The seminar of Jaques Lacan Book XI. New York: W.W Norton & Company. (p.268)

[12] Adorno, T. W., Horkheimer, M., & Schmid, N. G. (2009). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press. (p.47)