The woman in Lars von Trier’s Cinematography: An “Antichrist”?*

Towards the end of Nietzsche’s ‘Der Antichrist’, the first article of “Decree against Christianity” discusses and defines a new kind of relationship between “nature” and “sin”. As defined there, everything that is consistent with the nature is allowable. In Nietzschean terms, the “nature” that is somehow still alive in a time of decadence in which we have to redefine all definitons, stands as the last humane area to take shelter. A deep understanding of Nietzsche’s principles, which takes “the natural” as the basis, is a sine qua non in comprehending Trier’s Antichrist (2009) –and the “woman” image which is visible there and quite prevailing in all his works- . After the Antichrist; however, writing on “woman” theme, which has turned into a must for any claim about Trier’s cinematography, is not that easy anymore. We are just at the beginning of a long path, which embraces all those twenty years with certain common points from Medea (1988) to Breaking the Waves(1996), from Idioterne (1998) to Dancer in the Dark (2000), from Dogville (2003) to Manderlay (2005) and finally to Antichrist. If our intention, as it has been done usually, is not listing the actions of woman characters in Trier’s cinematography, but trying to comprehend the woman image that is created by Trier as an “auteur” and understand what this image, ontologically or with respect to gender, stands for; we shoud steer another course. Nietzsche -although his philosophy is the arena of conflicting ideas, the life he pursued was on the borderline of madness, his interminable anger stands against the convention- is the safest harbour for Trier. If we can properly approach and cast anchor to this harbour, we can understand both why and how Trier –just like Nietzsche- is not a misogynist; and what is the seemingly aggressive and provocative but in fact quite “tragic” aspect in his approach to woman.

Nature, Power and The Woman As the God
“I call on a living being, a species, an individual as corrupt if he has lost his instincts and choses, prefers what is self-destructive.” says Nietzsche. At the first confluence between Trier and Nietzsche, stands the concept of decadence. For both figures, between whom stands a century marked by wars and massacres, the starting point is the decadence in our social life. One establishes his arguments in a time towards the climax of modernity; the other one, in a period when the lifespan and ideals of modernity is a matter of debate. It would be easier to understand “decadence” when we look into the ruins brought out by the 20th century man, who is estranged from the instincts equalling to savagery. The society, in the sovereignty of reason, experienced the “inhumane” thoroughly in that century. It forced millions of total strangers to kill one another; the capital stock that is blessed for the sake of the advance, led to the concentration camps;dreaming about a III. Reich, a new “migration of peoples” was lived through where Rome left off. These phenomena that are interconnected through the cause and effect chain which was pulled to shreds by Adorno and Horkheimer’s “enlightenment criticism”, brought us into the arena of ambiguities that we live in today, where the reason has collapsed. That’s eaxctly why Trier cleansed us with the dream of enlightenment criticism in Idiotorne. Against the society that is both rationally and irrationally alienated from its own actions, he proposed to go back to the phenomena themselves, like a phenomenolog: Tragedy was standing against us, still and incommensurably strong with respect to the past. More importantly, Trier places the people who assume the role of the irrational and suppose that they criticize the social structure pretending as if they are mentally retarded, on the target board; and chooses the image of “woman” to bring the “decadence” into light. In this society that is refined from its instincts and has gone more and more artificial, we would not go beyond being a part of the game that is directed by the reason though it performs the irrational, only until Karen comes into sight. Bodil Jørgensen, who exposes the game, plays the naive Karen who is ruptured suddenly from her ordinary life; and this character is actually the return of “nature”. In contrast to the pretensious anger of the others, Karen’s anger is so deeply strong that it has the power to run the reality, of which dullness we are weary of, upside down.

The power of the woman in Trier’s cinematography has deeply rooted in its propriety to the nature. Karen almost never troubles herself. She does not endeavour to sail under false colors, to present herself as more strong, more decent and more proper. On the contrary, she usually seems as a “meek” character. In contrast to the director’s adaptation of Medea –by Europides- where he began to deal with the woman issue for the first time, the foremost phenomenon that determines Karen’s character is her naivity. This “naive woman” motif which persists in the subsequent movies of Trier, is never identified with weakness. In almost all movies of the director, great powers such as “god”, “fortune”, “social code” accompany to the woman theme and we usually watch the “woman” motif as victorious, resistant and fighting against these powers. Trier exposes how the irrational and the one which asserts itself through instincts is intertwined with the tragic; and how this is both inhuman and natural.

An action which is done with the life instinct is right and precedes any kind of virtue and common moral code. Nietzsche’s concept of “power” or “the will to power” that has been subject to many misunderstanding, steps in here. Nietzsche does not define power as rulership; on the contrary, he usually assesses Christian ideology or several governmental mechanisms (inspired by this ideology, according to him) as “reign of the weak”. The reason-based modern life is described as the reign of “impoverishment of the the powerful by the weak”. Thereby, the woman that we meet via the character of Karen, appears as a natural power: Nietzsche’s “god” who appears as “the will to power”. This idea, originating from the polytheistic religions and suggesting that this god, who is both good and bad, stands in the nature having almost the same meaning with the nature. Nietzsche identifies the god that is isolated from the nature as “the fall of a god”. In this sense, he considers it identical with the patriarchial Christian society. The one who tries to reason out the woman image of Nietzsche, first of all, tries to see the woman - who is despised as she claims her rights in the patriarchial order and who is criticized of her participation into public life - as a social identity. However, he gradually realizes that Nietzsche refers to the woman as a matter of existence. Here, a turnout is necessary for the ones who wants to comprehend the philosopher. Some regard him as “misogynist” thinking that he identifies the women with weakness; some considers him as “nature” to be eventually returned (which is set apart for not to be stained by the filth of the social life) and some regard him as “god” by overinterpretation. When we consider that -especially in monotheistic religions- “nature” is formed as a concept that is against the god and therefore what is natural is regarded as sinfulness, we can better see how the idea of god in Nietzsche is identified with the nature and woman. This is the figure of “woman” that Trier has taken over from Nietzsche.

In almost all the movies of Trier, the theme of woman is treated in company with the theme of god. The rebellion against god, fate and laws in Medea; the feminine posture against the patriarchial god that wants to subdue in Breaking the Waves, the defense of the irrational against the rational that has godlike aspect in Idiatorne, the anger against the divine pride in Dogville… Actually, the reason of all is, as Nietzsche says, “laying the focal point of the life not into the life but beyond it”. Therefore, the woman in the Trier’s cinematography grows stonger, becomes a god, not as a constructed identity in gender but as a target. Together with Karen in Idiotorne, Emily Watson who plays Bess in Breaking the Waves seem to be in the forefront among these powerful women. The two are the characters who have many resemblances. Initially they are extremely naive, humble and defenseless. They seem to submit to the established order, common moral laws and god. Bess, in their first lovemaking with Jan, directs her eyes to the god and says “Thank you,”. For Bess who grew up in a conservative, religious atmosphere, sexuality initially appears as a means to give thanks to god. We listen to, in the following scene, the sermon of giving up all worldly things. Therefore, when Jan falls ill Bess thinks that her love for him is tested by god. However, during this test, love becomes gradually sexualized for Bess. Later on in the movie, this extends over to “How do you ever like one word? You cannot love a word.” Christianity presupposes the sinfulness. Making someone feel sinful deepens his devotion to god. Nietzsche, thereof, says that hope was regarded as the worst of all, “the residue at the bottom of the jar with the evils”. It is not accidental that hope is kept secret in the box of Pandora. It has to stay in the box. The hope has no place in Bess’s life, either. At the end, when her corpse was thrown to sea rather than being buried in the ground, we see the ringing bells in the sky. This is not a divine message, rather, an earthly one. The woman is victorious. Bells does not toll for the god but for Bess this time; probably it is Bess herself who rings those bells or –favourably- the bell itself…

A Messiah who has lost his god: Antichrist and the Woman
The woman of Antichrist, Charlotte Gainsbourg; hence, denies the hope. God or godlike “übermensch” does not need the hope. During the film, she emerges as a godlike figure because she both rebels against god, and satanized (turns into an antichrist); she is like the dark side of the god. The transformation of the woman in the cinematography of Trier, is not a transformation from the powerless to the powerful as it is stated with a plain assessment; it is a transition from “naive” power to a “fictional” power. As the women undergo this transformation in each movie, we can discover this process of turning into a subject in the relationship between the woman and the power, through his movies as well. The passiveness of Karen takes the first step towards the activity in Breaking the Waves; in Dogville, she works out what does it mean to be active and in Antichrist she thoroughly wraps herself up as the subject. It is the return of the lion and the eagle in Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. All the temporary governments, the patriarchial order, common moral laws, and religion gradually retreats here.

The opening scene of the Antichrist is the baptism. In the first scene –black and white, in slow motion- which mystifies the whole atmosphere; as Christ (William Defoe who plays the Christ in Scorsese’s “Last Temptation of Christ”) is baptized at the shower, under the vicious glance of the woman, the vapour/”holy spirit” is thrown out of the fan. In the following lovemaking scene, woman’s orgasm and the death of the child are simultaneous. Thereby, the hope is locked in to the Pandora’s box: At the very first scene, the child has died and the future is destroyed. The washing machine finally stops; purification is completed. This scene is the messenger of the fact that the reign of the god will end and the time of the satan has come. The myth of “witch” which stands as a secondary element in the movie, not only serves to correlate between the feminity and the satan but also tears apart the Christian myth into the nature. The woman completes the destruction and witnesses everything with the return to the nature. Her husband who is a psychiatrist brings her to the forest in order to bring her back to the reality. The nature of Nietzsche stands before her again, as a forest. Hereupon, integration of the woman with the forest, and the woman’s acknowledgement of herself as being a forest, will be necessary. This integration takes place in the middle of the forest, under an old tree through the woman’s masturbation. During the film, Trier draws the anatomy of the 20th century, by attracting attention to the psychiatry and the anxiety. In this casting which we can identify as the dichotomy of the culture and the nature, the one who signifies the supremacy and the mind is the man and the one who signifes the nature is the woman. As the man tries to rationalize the death of his child, the woman seems to have lost her sense of reality in lamentation. Notwithstanding, the woman who seems weak and miserable and feels herself “guilty” (one must think of the concept of guilt in Christianity) is the one who actually manipulates the incidents. It does not matter whether she does it consciously or not; the “nature” which is there by itself and for itself sets everything right, in some way. Therefore we can think that the woman is sincere in all her woe, losing herself and her rage. The woman in the movie is not only “manipulative” with reference to the man but also “realistic”. The man’s insistence on not accepting the pain, brings along his castration by the nature. Ultimately, the woman achieves to convey her anxiety and her existence as the nature to the man. As the fingers of the man are strangling her neck up until the point that we hear the crackling, the scene begins to blur.

From this point onwards, the power is in the hands of the woman; the woman, with her death, embraces the power –which she once had given rein to the man-. The question then changes as such: What will the woman do with this power? The misreading of the Antichrist which lead to the proclaim that Trier is a misogynist, starts with the interpretations about the end of the Antichrist. What this woman wants to attain? A woman who is cruel enough to torture her child, obsessed enough to kill him, brutal enough to thrust irons into the body of the man who tries to protect himself. Could the woman be an antichrist?

Trier who does not like using music in his movies, gives place to Handel’s Rinaldo opera in the epilogue and prologue of the Antichrist. In this opera -which has a strong connection with the movie- as Rinaldo -who is the commandor of the Crusades- tries to conquer Jerusalem, -in the background- a cutthroat competition goes on between his lover Almirena and the queen of Damascus in order to gain Rinaldo. This fight that they carry on by masquerading from time to time as witches, is more passionate and more destructive than the war that is fought with the sublime Christian sentements. The woman figures who turn the earth and spiritual world upside down for the sake of their love (“demand”) do not hesitate to bargain with the sinister forces, when necessary. In the Antichrist, towards the end of the movie, we realize that the woman who has been in disguise of the satan is actually the one giving birth to the messiah. Despised, expelled, crucified, burnt, and excommunicated as an evil, “the women” is the nature itself as the one giving birth to the messiah. Being both the provider and the holder of the power, “the woman” symbolizes the real power in power: the demand. The women’s demand once again has shapened the man. Thereafter, whether the messiah is real or fake is not her responsibility. Submitting the power to the man -who she herself constructed-, the woman is not interested in his being as a god or satan. The nature has completed its mission, finished its game. Actualizing itself with the destruction of the nature, the reason walks proudly with the surmise that it has strenghtened its might, while dead bodies of men encircle it. Symbols of his kingdom, the raven, fox, and antelope try to bless him with a faint existence; however, thousands of faceless women, quietly but steadily, get closer to this scrawny and stricken being, just like the Bacchae.

Nietzsche and Trier get anxious, looking at the “modern” world, all sunk in decadence. In such a universe where no solution seems to be the real one, “nature” is the only way out. Therefore, Nietzsche creates the “Zarathustra”, Trier creates the “dogma”. Quite ruthless to their epoch and disciplines, both figures decide on the “the woman” as a “demand” at the end. The day will come, and while we are fighting somewhere for something, “tragedy” of Antigone will already have prepared us something better than this decadent life.

* This article started and ended with the accompaniment of Lhasa’s songs; therefore, it is inevitably dedicated to her.

Translated by Gül Şahin