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Chapter Four:
The Impaired Body of Disability 'Deformed bodies depress me.' Nicholas Van Ryan (Vincent Price) in Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz,
US, 1946) This chapter will build upon the issues raised in the previous chapters,
in order to examine the ways in which disability is specifically constructed on
film as pathological. It will be
discussed below, how representations of impairment place the problems of disability
as being caused by impairment rather than their being socially orientated or constructed.
The key strands of my discussion of the body will revolve around medicalisation
(cf. Bryan
Turner, 1992; 1995); the body as a metaphor for society (cf. Mary
Douglas, 1966; 1970); the carnivalesque or grotesque (cf. Bakhtin,
1984); and normalisation (cf. Foucault, 1977; 1978). As has already been stated in earlier
chapters, the Medical Model of disability has almost total
hegemony over the modern Western definition of disability. Thus, it places all problems of disability
within the individual's own body and his / her impairments. For the Medical Model (of
disease as well as deformity) the body is a machine, one with a physiological
norm to which the body either does or does not conform. When a body does not fit the physiological
norm all subsequent problems are seen as arising from its corporeal deviance and
not from how it is perceived or placed socially, making a chapter on the body
essential in any thesis of impairment and disability in whatever form or medium. In concentrating on how filmic representations of disability accept the
hegemony of the Medical Model I have applied the theories
of Foucault, Bakhtin and Douglas in order to understand why the Medical Model is so persuasive, and pervasive, in the representation of disability.
When Gilman (1988, p.255) writes: 'it is in the world of representations
that we banish our fear of [the Other ... ] proof that we are still whole' (Gilman's
emphasis), it is possible to see why some representations remain negative even
after social or political change; although some social change has occurred - legal
rights, economic advancement et al - the archetypal and
stereotypical persist even though many have been forcefully challenged –
be they of minorities of one kind or another, or the disabled. Douglas, Bakhtin and Foucault enable us
to deconstruct the symbols of the Other (the impaired, in this case) more effectively.
Also, issues of masculinity and femininity as manifest in the body will
be discussed in relation to how 'norms' are used to define both what they themselves
are and how deviation from them is used to reinforce the 'norm' and devalue the
abnormal. The main emphasis of this
chapter will be on the film Whose Life Is it Anyway?, and,
as such, the theories of the carnivalesque body are not utilised until the latter
part of the chapter, when this thesis will explore the concept of the body in
the other core films of this study. Whose Life Is It Anyway? is about Ken Harrison,
a man who has been involved in a car accident and sustains irreversible quadriplegia
necessitating, in the logic of the film, lifelong hospitalisation.
In the hospital, every possible act of objectification and surveillance
- medicalisation (Armstrong, 1983) - is enacted upon Ken to keep him alive. It seemed ideal for this thesis: a prime
example of how we are dehumanised and pathologised due to medicalisation.
Yet, this interpretation did not seem completely accurate, and I realised
why: the film is a critique of medicalisation; it even advocates de-medicalisation. The problem is that the means used to
criticise modern, technologically-advanced medicalisation consists of people with
impairments. Consequently, they,
the disabled, are dehumanised and pathologised as a burden, out of a desire to
demean the technology that keeps them alive.
The basis of the film’s argument is that the problem with modern
medicine is that it unnaturally keeps certain people alive and, as such, those
people have to be portrayed as less than human or the Other in order to demean
medicalisation. The way the film
ascribes certain characteristics to the body of Ken Harrison, which are culturally
unacceptable or filmically constructed, makes him - and his type - inhuman and
the Other. Thus,
medicalisation is seen as bad because it keeps the negative, sub-human disabled
alive. The film Whose Life
Is It Anyway? is far more subtle than one
like A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg in its construction
as a political piece of film-making. The way in which Whose Life Is It Anyway? de-humanises
Ken is by having him articulate his inhumanness himself (see earlier chapter)
in a particularly human way; so much so that Ken was described, in a review of
a revival of the play, as having: 'a personality which he lets shine to the full'
(Sweeney, 1993, p.24). Ken shows
his humanness through his ability to be a thoughtful, rational and intelligent
person. Ken's inhumanness must therefore
be made apparent in his body, which is achieved by having Ken appear as dependent,
impotent and 'feminine' (impaired). The film achieves this most conventionally
by having before-the-accident and after-the-accident components in the chronological
narrative and in flashbacks. Ken is told of his ‘Catch 22’ situation - his intellectual
humanness whilst at the same time being bodily the Other - by Sandy, the hospital
psychiatrist, who tells him that his plea for death: 'is weakened by his obvious
intelligence'. The way the film avoids
the ‘Catch 22’ situation is by having the negative pathology of the
body as more severe than the positive capacity of his intelligence.
Consequently, Ken is multi-impaired, quadriplegic with renal, muscle, bowel
and almost complete body failure in order for his body's negativity to be greater
than his intellectual positivity. The
failure of the (Ken’s) body is thus shown as dominant over the success or
power of the (his) intellect. Ken
and Sandy's 'Catch 22' conversation continues: Ken:
I don't think doctors realise that their patients can and want to understand what's wrong with them, and they're
capable of making decisions about their own bodies. Sandy:
Then what they need is information. Ken:
Well, a doctor doles out that information like a Kosher butcher doles out pork sausages. Sandy:
That's true, but wouldn't you agree that patients need good medical advice to make good decisions? Ken:
Absolutely. I would be grateful for any information
so that I could make the proper decision. It would, however, be my decision. This conversation reveals some of the problems the film addresses and how
it sets out to resolve them. Ken
is arguing for the control of his own body, a re-appropriation of his body after
its appropriation by medicine, so that he can take the decision to die.
In doing so Ken criticises modern medicalisation.
Ken’s actions condemn medicalisation's de-humanisation of the patient
and himself for its objectification of Ken achieved through its exclusion of him
from the decision-making process that most nearly concerns him. Thus, the emphasis lies on the 'my decision'
part of his speech, but the reason for his wanting control is to end his own life
(and, by logical corollary, control over his body). In this simple way Ken is stating that
if he cannot have control of his body, nor should anyone else. The ideal(s) of the Independent Living
Movement - with disabled people living and controlling their own lives (Oliver
and Barnes, 1998) - is denied when the implication of the mise en scène is that of having medicalisation as essential in
keeping Ken alive. It implies that
one without the (O)ther is not an option and, as if to support this, Ken is having
his daily dialysis treatment during the entire conversation. Concomitantly, Sandy and Ken's conversation
is not presented in a conventional shot / reverse shot sequence of dialogue between
two characters. Instead, the mise
en scène is created by having
Ken shot straight-on in close-up and Sandy in a medium shot straight-on. Tubes (flowing with blood from the dialysis
machine) frame Sandy as he stares at the machine. Sandy avoids Ken’s gaze by looking
at the dialysis machine. Consequently,
Ken has, in the logic of the film, become the machine that is keeping him alive
and, as such, Sandy's looking at the dialysis machine is both logical for the
film's meaning and for Ken's own view of his life as it now is.
The film’s criticism of medicalisation is strengthened by Ken's own
acknowledgement that medicalisation is essential for his survival but that in
keeping him alive it dehumanises him; this realisation is identified and reinforced
when Ken himself states earlier in the film that he cannot survive outside the
hospital - a debatable point in itself yet one that is offered by the film as
being the truth. Significantly, despite Ken’s astute criticisms of the medical profession
for their grip on medical knowledge, he wants for himself this same knowledge
in order execute his own destruction. In Ken's view, and that of the film, his knowledge of his condition
is restricted by the doctors. He
feels that he is being exploited by the medical profession for their own purposes
- for the medical team's discussions of Ken's condition rarely include him.
Such purposes are summed up by Bologh (1981, p.194) as: 'professionals
use[ing] the patients' illness for their own ends - research, teaching, income,
learning, while depriving the patient of medical knowledge and control over their
own bodies, even causing illness'. The
perspective is seemingly confirmed when in one scene, consisting of Dr Emmerson’s
doing his rounds with student doctors, he demonstrates his power, position and
status. The film addresses a public
desire of the time (and the present) to question the intrusiveness and coldness
of a profession that has become rich on the privileges it has made for itself
through the objectification of the patient.
Fox (1977, p.21) sees a movement - significant in itself – towards
the achievement of the goals of demedicalisation manifest in the success of many
'right to die' cases of the mid-seventies; the period in which the play and film
originate and upon which philosophy the film is not only based but also supports. Sandy, during his conversation with Ken, is portrayed as Ken's intellectual
inferior: in the dialogue he feeds
Ken the correct lines for the appropriate condemnations of the medical profession,
then agrees with him when these are explained to him. Prior to sitting down and conversing with
Ken-as-the-dialysis-machine, Sandy wanders around the room exhibiting a 'neatness
compulsion', as Ken speculates on the cause of the compulsion to him; a 'compulsion'
involving picking up linen napkins, folding them and placing them across the room
in neat piles. One could read this
particular nuance as the psychiatrist being shown to be as 'mad' as his patient
(after all, he is sent to commit Ken). All the staff in this film are obsessed
with preserving all life to a degree which is compulsive rather than caring; 'care'
has been replaced by a compulsion to keep bodies neat, tidy and alive, in hygienic
Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Sandy's
'neatness compulsion' also acts more directly as its ironic comment on Ken's bodily
state. Sandy's actions emphasise
his physicality and movement; he is using his hands because he can. Ken
cannot use his hands, so no matter how intellectually superior Ken may be to Sandy
(or others), they are superior beings because they are able to control their hands,
legs, kidneys and bowels, and have an intellect. If Mead's view (cited in Turner, 1992,
p.29) that 'hands are vital in the development of the social being' is acceptable,
then we can detect one of the methods the film uses to degrade Ken: it removes
his conventional social / bodily idiom such that Ken becomes less of a human being.
The whole question of what constitutes a human being is thus defined in
Whose Life Is It Anyway? as a person’s having the facility to combine
intellectual ability with bodily control.
One without the other, in this case mind without body, is shown as a life
not worthy of living. In an earlier scene, Ken ironically describes himself as a vegetable, a
statement that has further clear implications: the film's criticism of how medicine
keeps alive those who would otherwise naturally die applies to those with learning
difficulties as well as himself. Karpf states (1988, p.75) that 'modern medicine
seems to be the full flowering of Cartesian reductionism' and that the presentation
of disability and medicine 'relieves public anxiety about its potential'.
In this light we can see that Whose Life Is It Anyway? addresses
a public concern about medicalisation in that it seems to have become impersonal,
where the individual is no longer the concern of medicine but only its object
of corporeal subjection. The argument in the film against medicalisation is intentionally revealed
in a scene prior to Ken's dialogue with Sandy, the psychiatrist. Dr Emmerson calls into his office the
psychiatrist and the young, attractive, female Dr Scott; he explains to Sandy
that he wants Ken committed. He bases
this on Ken’s desire to have the right to die as the doctors have: 'just
about [got] a viable human being'. At
this point the psychiatrist immediately agrees to carry out committal proceedings
(without having met Ken - further reinforcing the domination, and power, of doctor
over patient as excessive medicalisation), then leaves. The scene takes place
in Dr Emmerson's office, an office lined with live television monitors of the
ICU's patients. As Dr Scott starts
her speech she strides to the monitors and points at them. She argues: [D]oes
he look crazy to you? Look at him
lying there. I mean, Christ, he's
got no privacy at all, he's got no sense of dignity. I tell you, if that happened to me I don't know if I'd have
the courage to live either. Would
you like to live like that? Significantly, it is a generalised argument: she is speaking not merely
about Ken but about all ICU patients. The
validity of Dr Scott's perspective is clearly established in this scene and by
her prior and subsequent character development. For example, in this scene, Dr Scott,
a stereotypical WASP, walks into the light as she speaks her lines and is touched
by the natural light coming through the office windows. Her adversary (which is what Dr Emmerson
becomes), on the other hand, played by John Cassavetes, both is in the shade and,
significantly, has a much darker ethnic appearance. Since Emmerson has just ordered a psychiatrist
to commit a man established in the film as highly rational and perhaps, even,
illuminated by intellect, the lighting and mise en scène contrast - literally and metaphorically - with the
light in which we see Emmerson. Emmerson
is also smoking. It clouds close-ups
of him in his share of the shot / reverse shots of his argument with Dr Scott,
and in this way further degrades him through the negative medical connotation
of smoking; an unavoidable association emphasised by the film's setting.
Similarly, Emmerson is the only person in the film who smokes tobacco –
so Emmerson allows himself and is allowed by society to self-destruct, yet he
is the one to decide whether to ‘allow’ Ken a similar right. The monitor screens in Emmerson's office, and the whole institution itself,
appear as a visual representation of what Foucault called the 'clinical gaze'
(cf. Armstrong, 1983), a gaze that is on the individual
at all times and in all places. Dr
Scott herself states that privacy and dignity are non-existent. Armstrong (1983, p.8), adopting Foucault,
writes of the modern hospital (in England) that: 'it is a medical Panopticon writ
large'. Emmerson's hospital signifies
the epitome of such a hospital. The tragedy of the film is that it uses disability as the perspective
through which to examine medicalisation; the film practises in its discourse an
extreme form of normalisation by demeaning the successes of medical advances.
Thus, the film, and culture in general, is unable to divorce the technological
benefits of medicine from the excessive potential for dehumanising that it exhibits. The film's normalisation is a highly prescriptive
one in that it sets up a rationale for preserving a life only if the life has
a certain degree of both bodily and intellectual control over itself.
The philosophy of the film seems to follow that which Foucault (cited in
Rabinow, 1991, p.150) credits to the normalising state: 'if man is made in God's
image then one needs to protect that image of God in man's body'. The name ‘Emmerson’ is an ironic, and comparable, comment on
human alienation in modern society since it conjures up the philosophy of the
nineteenth-century transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and all the natural
/ nature ideas that he professed. Ralph
Waldo Emerson is a well-known disparager of the impaired in his works on the ideal
American self, whilst at the same time being highly critical of conservatives
afraid to react in defence of the ideal American self (cf. Garland
Thomson, 1997, p.41-44). The film
plays with Emerson’s philosophy throughout the film and could be the subject
of a thesis in itself. In Whose Life Is It Anyway? Emmerson,
a compulsive technocrat, is a comparable subject which reduces his stature and
questions his whole philosophy: i.e., total medicalisation. Dr Scott, on the other hand, symbolised
through her embodiment, represents the value of the natural and nature and the
ideal (re: Emerson rather than Emmerson).
At the start of the film Dr Scott is equally against Ken’s having
the right to die, through her involvement with Ken - she herself calls it 'love'
at one point - she is persuaded also from his perspective that his life is indeed
not worth living (cf. her earlier speech). Dr Scott
is a woman stereotypically classified as having 'child-bearing hips' that make
the body of Dr Scott noticeable as more 'earthy' (larger) and 'emotional' and
'feminine'. The point is emphasised
when Ken compliments her on her 'beautiful' breasts twice within the film and
by contrast with the other central female characters, who are more akin to an
arbitrary modern male aesthetic of what constitutes female beauty for its own
sake (thin and virtually asexual). Thus, Dr Scott’s argument with Emmerson is additionally given as
overtly physical in a way that is more emotional than rational (i.e., archetypally
'motherly'). Such a division of rationality
and emotionality are clearly relevant to the questions of what is defined as masculine
and feminine, aspects to be discussed later. However, Scott, by her conversion, also
represents an open-mindedness, the obverse of which is represented by the dogmatic
Emmerson. That she listens to, counsels
and eventually 'loves' Ken validates her above all other characters, a validation
that further confirms Ken's view of his impaired embodiment as abject.
She can think, change her mind, and act upon her insights, whereas Ken
is trapped in his inability to act. Viewed logically, it is somewhat bizarre that all the characters who 'befriend'
and 'love' Ken are those who eventually support his wish to die: Dr Scott; a petite
white female student nurse named Joey; his white male lawyer; and a black Caribbean
hospital porter called John. Although Ken states that to respect someone is to respect their
choice, to respect such a choice to die could be considered to be a bad reflection
of the kind of friend to have. As
they all talk, when Ken is not present, about how wrong it is to keep him alive,
it clearly demonstrates the correctness of his choice. John is indicative of the emphasis of
the film when, whilst trying to get her to go out with him, he asks Joey: [h]ow much does it cost to keep him alive; thousands
of dollars a week? Joey:
That's not the point. John:
Well the point is that in Africa people die of the measles, ya
know; little babies even. Only
cost a few pennies to keep
'em alive. No, there's got
to be something crazy somewhere,
man! Joey:
Well that's wrong too. Here, then, the cost of medical treatment, as opposed to the ethics of
it, seems to be of equal significance in whether they should keep Ken alive.
The power of John and Joey’s viewpoint is reinforced by the choice
of camera angle. They are shot from a very low angle to
emphasise the intimacy of their conversation, giving the scene a greater visual
authority; a cinematic boost to their opinion necessitated by their lowly status
within the hospital hierarchy. The
perspective is reinforced by the fact that John and Joey are very friendly to
Ken; they 'kidnap' Ken from the ward to take him to the basement to hear John's
reggae punk band. Consequently, as
Ken's friends advocate his death on purely economic grounds, it gives their argument
a validity (and an airing) that places it as a central theme of the film's criticisms
against medicalisation and, by implication, marks impairment as expensive and
unproductive. Ken's body is seen as totally unproductive with his inability
to use his hands clearly symbolic of such a viewpoint. As Joey, in the above conversation, starts
by saying: '[T]hat's not the point', and ends: 'that's wrong too', it is quite
a volteface. By
agreeing that the treatment of African children is wrong 'too' she agrees that
keeping Ken alive is wrong, thus undermining her initial reluctance to support
Ken in his suicidal wishes. Equally,
Joey’s support for Ken soon becomes positive support for his wishes to die.
The 'nature' of Ken's impairment does necessitate a high degree of personal
assistance, a fact that places it in the realm of what Turner (1992, p.177) calls:
'chronic degenerative illness'. Through
having such a physically dependent central character, the film indicates the financial
problems incurred by revealing how modern medicine has moved from curing infectious
diseases to containing and curing chronic degenerative illness.
Significantly, Joey wishes Ken 'good luck' when he goes to court (a makeshift
court in the hospital library) to plead for the right to die.
An ill body, and similarly Other bodies, are consequently seen in Whose
Life Is It Anyway? both as symbolic of and the cause of social
ills (somatic ills, or problems such as excessive tax burdens, health care costs
or even recessions). Ken's
body is indicative of the excesses of medicalisation and its alienating consequences.
It is also a symbol of the 'sick' society that pursues such medicalisation
at all costs, both metaphorically and literally.
One scene in particular sums up the above points and firmly places them
in the embodiment of Ken, and Others, as representative both of social malfunction
and of a false sense of social responsibility. In the scene Ken falls out of bed; interestingly,
it is an incident which he calls an accident when it is clearly nursing negligence.
Joey brings Ken a can of coffee, and he playfully refuses to drink it. On turning his head to look at Joey he
knocks the drink which she is holding to his face. It spills down him. Joey
sets about changing the bed on her own (negligently, as it should be two).
In the process of Joey’s changing the bed, Ken falls to one side,
hangs out of bed, and is rescued by four other staff.
Dr Emmerson is at the time with Dr Scott doing a ward round with some students. As Joey changes his bed, Ken asks: '[H]ow does a quadriplegic cross the
road?', rhetorically answering: '[H]e was stapled to a chicken'. Ken's dependence is encapsulated both
by his own joke and by the state of his body: unable to drink or to clean itself
up, with Joey lifting and tugging him in a way that is not within the realm of
most people’s experience. Ken's
complete physical dependence on others, once he has quadriplegia, characterises
Ken's embodiment throughout the entire movie. All the scenes of Ken have him undergoing
some kind of essential life-saving treatment - dialysis - or requiring the actions
of others to compensate for his own total lack of physical movement (i.e., wiping
away his tears) in order to construct his dependency through mise en scène. The only scene in which he is having neither
of the above is when Dr Emmerson is giving him an injection of valium that he
does not wish to have. This scene
has added resonance, emphasising - and constructing - as it does Ken’s powerlessness,
through a carefully constructed mise en scène, over
what others do to his body whether or not he needs or wishes them to perform a
medical function. The film consists predominantly of long takes, some lasting up to nearly
two minutes, and the scene under discussion starts with a fairly static long take
of Joey giving Ken his coffee. The
simple visualisation that Ken has to have special canned coffee makes specific
the high cost of keeping him alive; it is not just technology but special people
and nourishment that are required. His needs are time-consuming, too. However, at the beginning of the scene in which Ken falls,
there is an increase in the pace in the choice of camera positions, angles and
music; cuts become increasingly rapid. Between
Ken’s starting to fall, falling and being put back in bed into his former
position, there are twenty-seven shots which together last under seventy seconds.
They consist of straight-on medium shots of Joey, who is panicking, long
shots of male and female nurses coming to rescue Joey / Ken and shots of Ken’s
body slipping down to the floor, from the bed, from under the bed and from the
opposite side of the bed to Ken. Most
importantly, though, we have point-of-view shots from where Ken is; shots which
involve the camera panning left, tilting ninety degrees, rapidly, and shots canted
from the floor as Ken's head rests upon it. The disorientation suggested by the movement
of the camera, its pace and rapidity, all combine to emphasise the helplessness
and terror that a lack of body control - in Ken and the disabled - is constructed
as entailing in circumstances where control would be advantageous. In other situations, Ken is simply helpless.
Ken becomes a spectacle for the camera initially and then for the medical
gaze: Emmerson, his students, and Dr Scott walk in upon Ken hanging from his bed. Embarrassment is the emotion that Ken first seems to feel upon falling
out of bed, but it turns to outrage when Emmerson walks in with the student doctors.
Ken orders them all out and Emmerson, realising how Ken feels, leads them
out. Ricks' (1974, p.1) assessment of Keats'
art and its use of embarrassment is applicable here to how Ken feels, and what
the art of the film is achieving, when he states that embarrassment is connected
with feelings of: 'defencelessness [ ... and that A]rt uses embarrassment to help
[the spectator / reader] deal with it, not by abolishing or ignoring it, but by
recognising, refining and putting it to good human use'.
Ken's embarrassment is rooted in his defencelessness.
The art of the film uses the audience's defencelessness against developing
quadriplegia (an impairment) to make the audience feel as uncomfortable in observing
Ken's defencelessness as Ken is in experiencing it. The embarrassment, which is the embarrassment
of witnessing the deformed, or non-controllable body, is achieved by having it
individualised in Ken; closure is achieved by Ken’s deciding for himself
that it is all right for this embarrassment to be removed (by his suicide).
Consequently, through such a resolution, an audience's embarrassment and
discomfort are relieved and the ideal world (of entertainment and normality) is
restored. The embarrassment in the scene is not
only the audience's point of view but also the audience's required emotional response,
because embarrassment is both personal and social in this, and all, contexts.
It is a reaction to a social situation, whoever is involved. Once Ken is revealed to be deeply embarrassed Dr Emmerson takes the student
doctors away. The student doctors
had stood motionless, gazing at Ken when they come in to the room. Significantly, our view of this part of
the scene is a point-of-view shot from Ken on the floor - low angle canted, slightly
moving all the time - with Ken seeing only their shoes and legs the closer the
crowd of student doctors come to Ken. His humiliation (and embarrassment) at the feet of the crowd
of student doctors (Ken's positioning as both constant spectacle and in constant
humiliation) is left in no doubt by our being given his perspective in a point-of-view
shot. This key scene sets out the
film's view very clearly: Ken's life is a life that is not worth living due to
its dependence, humiliation and inability to protect itself.
No other single scene in the film more explicitly combines its philosophy
and imagery to greater effect – it is a wonderful piece of film-making.
Equally, in having Ken's body require four people to lift him into bed,
with two more nurses present, and two doctors to check him medically after the
event, his financial cost in manpower is shown and, by implication, condemned. Mary Douglas (1970, p.160) tells us that: 'the body is a symbol of society',
and that: '[W]e cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk,
saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society,
and to see powers and dangers credited to social structures reproduced in small
on the human body' (Douglas, 1966, p.115). Although Douglas is talking of the typical
- normal - body, the anxiety about the disabled body can be understood only if
we see the disabled body as part of a range of available bodies that may act as
potential cultural symbols in general. Ken's body has been normal and now it is not; its value as
a symbol is both metaphorical and as a potentially lived reality. If we take Douglas's views on the
body and apply them to this film, Ken's body is a body / society paralysed by
rationality and intellect, a society whose head thinks but whose body has become
a danger to itself, ready to topple at any moment. Ken needs such a multiplicity of technology
and bureaucratic hierarchies to survive that, if we take Douglas's point again,
it is impossible now to enjoy death or dignity as a natural part of living.
After all, it is death that is the root desire of Ken.
In contrast, Emmerson, in an earlier scene with his student doctors, cites
death as 'the enemy'. Death is, more
radically, for Foucault (1977) the last resistance to power. This gives rise to a crux in interpretation:
with the film as seen through a Social Model analysis,
death is given as the release from abnormality, and not as Foucault meant it:
a last stand against the tyranny of normality over us all. Turner (1992, p.55)
summarises Douglas's views when he states: '[F]or Douglas, the body is a metaphor
of society as a whole with the consequence that disease in the body is, for example,
merely a symbolic reflection of disorders in society. The stability of the body is, equally,
a metaphor for social organisation and social relationships'. Consequently, Ken acts both as an example
of the impaired life and as a metaphor for society. The film’s narrative and overall
philosophy uses his body to initiate anxiety about both his own body and that
of society. Ken's body acts
as a symbol of the failure of society because it uses the body language of anxiety
about the social state to criticise medicalisation. If we relate Ken's dependence and inability to protect himself
from potential danger to his lack of freedom of choice (the 'right to die') then
Ken is also a metaphor: for a society paralysed by its construction of people
so dependent while nevertheless keeping them alive that they become 'useless eaters'
draining society. Ken represents
not only society but also a particular product of that society; he can be read
in both ways. The need of eight to
ten people to put Ken back into bed and check him is surely meant to indicate
such an interpretation. Once Ken is back in bed, Dr Emmerson tells
Ken that he will be a quadriplegic for life and that it is hoped he will be transferred
in the near future to another ward or hospital for continuing rehabilitation.
Ken retorts to this statement: '[Y]ou mean you just grow the vegetables
here, the vegetable store is somewhere else'.
Again, Ken's humanity is contrasted with his own words but, more importantly,
whilst this conversation is continuing, a new 'vegetable' is brought in to an
ICU cubicle along from Ken's (it is in view as all the ICU cubicles are Panopticon-like
glass constructions). The medical
production line of 'vegetables', the wholly dependent and very expensive, are
shown being created and damned in the same process of medicalisation as Ken has
undergone. The lighting of the characters
in this dialogue shot / reverse shot part of the sequence is of interest.
Emmerson - in medium shot from the side - is again lit in a cinematically
sinister manner with the left side of his face in near darkness which, when combined
with his ethnic (Italian-American) features, gives him an appearance of being
obsessed. In itself alarming, this
is in sharp contrast to Ken, who is well lit in close-up (for extra intensity
and feeling it is shot straight on), with no shadow on his face.
Thus, Ken's words are more pure and possibly vulnerable through their purity
(signified by the lighting) than Emmerson's.
The latter’s appearance is shown to be a prediction of evil. This reading is confirmed later at the
hearing when Ken classifies Emmerson's wishes as committing him to 'a life sentence'. The professional counselling is given to Ken by a woman whose manner seems
(and then Ken confirms this for us) patronising: 'we'll teach you to read on a
machine'; further proof of the delusions, as the film sees it, of any idea(l)s
of Independent Living. The counsellor’s
insistence that she can 'teach' Ken to do what he calls 'the three R's', by which
he means basic functions, further emphasises the child-like nature of his - the
impaired - body. There is no comprehension of the quadriplegic body as the product
of a patronising, de-personalising discourse. The film’s makers are seemingly unaware of this perspective
because the film is, as I have shown, acting as part of the (cultural) discourse
that is describing quadriplegia as dependent, inhuman and child-like.
As such, it demonstrates its lack of awareness of the fact that, as Foucault
stated, the body is a product of discourse.
The ideologies of the film, a normalising individualism and disabling medicalism,
are revealed by the absence of disability-specific issues; the film carries its
own ideological theme forward with no regard for alternatives, despite its supposed
liberal philosophy of choice. The film’s makers cannot be assumed
to have read Foucault - they may have - but the film does propose itself as a
challenge to disempowering situations of (medical) hegemony. In fact, it challenges only the right
to be (medically or socially) different, despite the film's makers message that
they understand all the issues. The
view held by this thesis is that they do not and, as such, they merely reinforce
continued (mis)understandings about the issues upon which the film purports to
comment. As Ken has his bed changed for him and he is then washed and dressed (adequately
for his environment), the film places him bodily as the equal of an infant.
It is important to note here that social relationships are mediated by
our bodies and that Ken’s is constructed in the film as the root of his
social exclusion. It is only if we see what Goffman (Burns,
1992, pp.38;85) calls our 'body idioms' - movement, gestures - and 'body gloss'
– the desire to enact those 'idioms' - as natural rather than constructed
that the loss of one's standard 'idiom' or 'gloss' becomes problematic.
A loss is indeed a loss; however, it becomes the reason for living - or
dying in Ken's case - only if the loss is seen as the loss of one's natural state. Whose Life Is It Anyway? inadvertently
demonstrates the acceptance of such norms as natural through the film’s
attempt to have Ken rationally decide to commit suicide because of his inability
now to have the 'idioms' and 'gloss' that were part of his existence before the
accident. There is nothing essentially
negative about being dependent or needing help in changing, for example; it is
only if one constructs the body as the 'showcase of the self' which is in turn
a 'showcase of a successful life' (Seymour, 1989, p.13) that it is seen –
constructed and interpreted - as negative.
In contrast, a temporarily sick or incapacitated adult expectantly receives
care and consideration, as will be discussed below. Usually, body idioms do define the difference between what is considered
masculine and feminine. Taking a
cue from Creed (1993, p.131), who states that 'the abject body is identified with
the feminine, which is socially denigrated, and the symbolic body with the masculine,
which is socially valorised', it will be demonstrated how Ken's body is denigrated
by being placed in the idioms of the feminine. The negation of Ken’s masculinity
is effectively and intentionally, even by its own logic, achieved by having valorised
it as overtly masculine prior to the accident that led to his quadriplegia.
At the beginning of the film Ken is welding, adding the final touches to
a giant metal abstract sculpture that he has been commissioned to make, about
fifty feet up in the air and hanging from a mobile crane. This is a very masculine image indeed;
instantly, we are assured that we have an energetic, strong and physical man with
a grand, and very public, artistic vision - no weedy little sculptures for this
guy. The sculpture in question is
approximately a hundred feet high and appears to be a minimalist iron representation
of a sailing ship. Upon clambering
down, Ken's virile sexuality is immediately shown when his girlfriend Pat (a dancer)
instantly embraces, kisses and is carried by him.
As such, Ken is a man's man, a bourgeois artist whose physicality is manifest
in his art. His art can be classifies as bourgeois
due to its non-representational, and therefore 'difficult', quality; 'difficult'
being what Bourdieu (cited by Vincendeau, 1992, p.35) tells us is: 'a condition
for great (bourgeois) art, as opposed to popular art which delivers its goods
straightforwardly'. To push the emphasis
on Ken’s masculinity beyond doubt he even drives a sports car. The accident occurs immediately following the above opening display.
The audience next sees Ken having his bed changed, his body rubbed (to
prevent pressure sores) and being washed and fed in the Intensive Care Unit. We further see Ken being fed and this seems to signify the
child-like quality of what he has become; more so than his feminisation. Infantilising is very closely allied to
feminising - i.e., the Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, GB, 1962)
syndrome that places each within the (O)ther - feminisation occurs in the way
that the camera uses tight close-ups of Ken's body when it is being rubbed, fragmenting
him in a way that children are rarely represented. Ken becomes an object similarly to when
Mulvey (1975, p.19) describes the objectification of the female, as Ken is submitted
to a 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. The
process can be seen as part of a criticism of medicalisation, as indeed is intended
in this film. The difference lies
in the constant 'to-be-looked-at-ness' which aligns Ken with the feminine, in
contrast with his having previously been so masculine.
Ken has moved from a situation where his creations were looked at and into
a situation where he himself is the object that is looked at.
Equally, the to-be-looked-at-ness process is part of the construction that
makes Ken an abject creature (or 'vegetable') through medicalisation as much as
feminisation. Feminine to-be-looked-at-ness
is considered to be pleasurable, as is impairment to-be-looked-at-ness; in the
latter case, it is pleasurable because the normal body's anxiety about its own
condition is relieved and passed on to an[O]ther.
It is interesting to note that the term for the condition one step worse,
medically, than Ken’s is termed PVS: Persistent Vegetative State.
The turn of phrase shows where the medical 'truth' has taken its cue from popular culture,
with each clearly mediating the other. Part of Ken's masculinity in normality was his bodily control; his ability
to keep his balance whilst hanging from a crane; his fearlessness; his strength
and poise - without our being shown its (O)ther bodily functions. The above are factors which combine to
encapsulate his masculine attributes. They
are of equal importance in Ken’s (and society’s) perception of masculinity.
Later, in the hospital when Ken falls out of bed (a scene discussed earlier) the
symptoms of his fear are most often associated culturally, with the aspect of
the weaker: the feminine. Control of the body can easily be paralleled
with social control and the control of nature. The disquiet about Ken's lack of control
is best explained by Scott (1970, p.273) when he states that: 'cripples make us
feel uneasy; they threaten our sense of mastery over nature'. Although Ken represents almost total control
over nature – the severity of his accident was such that he should be dead
- his presence as a lack of bodily control threatens the spectator's desire for
individual mastery, making the close of death preferable, in order to restore
order. Joey's reaction to Ken is
basically the same as Ken's. Subsequently, we are left in no doubt
that Ken is on a par with her, a weak woman, as it is Joey's lack of physical
strength (that which Ken had but now lacks) which caused Ken to fall in the first
place. Such an interpretation relates back to my earlier comments about not being
able to protect one's self, a state usually ascribed to the female – culturally
and cinematically (Brosnan, 1991; and Burchill, 1986) that is.
To emphasise this, the film shows a symbolic rape of Ken by Dr Emmerson,
immediately following his fall from his bed.
Emmerson decides to increase Ken's dosage of Valium, a decision Ken rejects
and thus refuses to take orally. Emmerson
then arrives with a double-dosage injection of Valium that Ken asks him not to
give intravenously: 'do not stick that fucking needle in my arm. God damn you, I specifically refuse you
permission to do that'. Ignoring
his plea, Emmerson plunges (quite literally) the needle in to the unflinching
Ken. Ken himself raises the idea
of rape by saying 'fucking' in his language (in the original play the symbolic
homosexual rape is made more explicit by having Dr Emmerson turn Ken over and
inject the Valium into his buttocks). Significantly,
during this scene, the shot is a medium shot from a high angle that tracks back
to an even higher angle, as if to imply the victim being abandoned in the place
of his assault, which is visually similar to many rape-type mises en scènes. Ken, as Emmerson leaves the room (apparently walking under
the camera to the left), shouts at Emmerson: '[I]s that all I am to you, wait
a minute, is that all I am to you, a lump of clay?' Ken's feminisation is complete: he is fetishised; he endures
a constant voyeuristic gaze; he is at the mercy of male power; and his pleas for
respect are ignored. The completeness
of Ken's feminisation is later confirmed: Ken, having told Dr Emmerson that to
him he is only a lump of clay, is later shown to sculpt his girlfriend Pat out
of clay as she dances for him (a flashback). Another way that Ken is made abject, and feminine, is by his showing of
emotion. If we consider Tasker's
view (1993, p.237) that 'a familiar cinematic definition of masculinity constructs
restraint, a control over the emotions, as providing a protective performance'
for men, one can see Ken being feminised and made monstrous (Baldick, 1995; Brooks,
1995) throughout the film’s narrative. Ken is feminised through the breakdown
of a protective performance, a breakdown which is conversely constructed as feminine
(and as such the Other and abject for men). Consequently, medicalisation is criticised by the equation
of having Ken as monstrous (because he is a feminised man) whilst equally being
a metaphor for society at large, in this case medicalised society; for Whose
Life Is It Anyway? society at large has become monstrous because
it creates monstrous beings. This
is signified by the fact that Ken loses his calm and 'in control' manner from
his masculine beginning - his normal period - and becomes emotional - in his abnormal
period. The best example of this
is when Ken is crying after having told his girlfriend Pat to leave him and to
go and get married and have children with someone else. He has himself indicated that he is impotent.
Ken is further emasculated by the feminising implications of the construction
of his condition and, if taken together and in light of his own view that he has
'a piece of knotted string between his legs', it leaves us in no doubt about the
socio-sexually emasculated state of Ken’s body. John is one of the characters who comes in to Ken's cubicle to wipe his
tears away, saying as he does it: '[I]f a man cannot use his hands he's got to
be a real dumb son-of-a-bitch to cry. I
mean, it's just another way of getting your gown wet'. John instantly places the issue
of being 'a man' into the discussion and parallels it with Ken's inability to
move his hands. As John talks of
crying as 'another way' of wetting a gown, the lack of bodily function control
is paralleled to crying (feminine / infantile). Consequently, Ken's crying and uncontrolled excretions also
act to place his body parallel to that of a baby's; however, one grows out of
a baby’s body, not into one. As
babies grow up, they also learn, they are socialised, to control their emotions. Having control of one's emotions is, as Tasker states, part of the process
of restraint that signifies masculinity, but it is the idea of it as a 'protective
performance' which makes Ken, via his
body, monstrous and an abomination of and against society in the logic of the
film. Masculinity as a performance
implies that it is above nature, whilst identifying it as a performance reveals
that it is in fact unnatural. If
we combine this perspective with Creed's (1993) view that the masculine male body
is the 'symbolic' and with Kristeva's view (1982, p.102) that: '[T]he body must
bear no trace of its debt to nature: it must be clean and proper in order to be
fully symbolic'; furthermore, that the body that does betray its debt to 'nature'
is perceived to be the female body, then we can see Ken's body as being shown
as feminine. The female body is seen
to betray its debt to nature through menstruation and its function's ability to
determine behavioural patterns; just as Ken's body does. Ken is unable to control his bodily functions
(after kidney failure it has its blood purged regularly), and they are actions
and bodily necessities shown both to affect and to determine his emotional state.
Consequently, Ken's dialysis is both mentioned and shown in great detail, as in
the interview with Sandy the hospital psychiatrist, and paralleled with menstruation
for the viewer explicitly to infer Ken’s feminisation. As it is only women who cry in the film, apart from Ken, crying is part
of the method by which he betrays his new 'femininity'. Ken gets emotionally angry - tossing and
banging his head against his pillow - thereby confirming his character as 'emotional'
and, as such, feminine. In the description
of his poise prior to his accident it was commented that Ken had an energetic
and strong body, one showing assurance in his movements and posture; his head
is held high and he has a darkish beard covering a strong chin.
Significantly, once the accident occurs, his posture is given an attitude
that reflects the change in the nature of his personality and ideals: it emanates
hopelessness and it is portrayed in a manner that is not logically, medically
speaking, related to his quadriplegia. Once the accident has happened Ken's chin is always resting
on his chest and even the beard has paled, apparently in order to signify the
waning of his masculine health. Yet
Ken can hold his chin up (he is shown having physiotherapy to strengthen his chin
/ neck) in a way that would drastically change the way the spectator perceives
his posture and, by extension, his character. His character is inextricably linked with
his posture to reinforce the ideology of the film that his condition is hopeless. The whole question of posture relates to Goffman's points about body idioms.
Murphy (1991), an anthropologist who himself developed quadriplegia, states
about quadriplegia that: [T]he
quadriplegic body can no longer speak a 'silent language' in the expression of
emotions or concepts too elusive for ordinary speech - for delicate feedback loops
between thought and movement have been broken. Proximity, gesture and body set
have been muted, the body's ability to articulate thought has been stilted.
(p.101) In Murphy's comments we can see how the body, if muted, can place an obstacle
upon social relationships, but also that we should not take the muted version
to be the full expression of the individual. If we understand muted bodies as mutations only comprehensible
as outsiders to interactive social relations then an acceptance of bodily difference
will become increasingly difficult. Another method the film employs to advocate
the muted body as the equivalent of the dead body is by having others speak Ken's
body language for him. A good example
of this is in the scene where Ken is being fed a chicken leg by Joey: she lets
him take a bite, puts the bone down and then she licks her fingers.
Ken makes an envious comment. Such
an apparently natural reaction of licking one's fingers is used against Ken in
order to mute his body still further. The
same point occurs when John wipes away Ken's tears and when Ken has to ask another
nurse to get his lawyer's card out of his bedside cabinet and telephone him.
The repeated use of having others carry out bodily reactions and simple
tasks either for, or in contrast to, Ken places him further into the realms of
'the dependent useless eater'; with the 'useless eater', or useless of body, being
equated with the dead body. Any
understanding of dialysis would also lead the spectator to realise that even his
bodily functions are being carried out for him, only this time by a machine. Perhaps part of the problem for society of the quadriplegic body can be
related to Featherstone's (1991) argument that consumer culture needs a plastic
body that will be stimulated into buying decay-delaying consumables. Ken is unable to consume freely and repeatedly
in the manner that consumerism requires. Ken does consume, but it is of high cost, low demand, technology;
thus, he consumes in a way that is considered to drain capital from a more rapid
product consumerism. Equally, Turner
(1992, p.11) states that old and sick bodies are: 'a brake on growth [due to their
being a] burden of dependency [ ... ] a form of hyper-Malthusianism'.
Even so, Ken still has a function in consumerism, as does the film itself,
if we take Featherstone's (Featherstone et al, 1991, p.186) point that consumer
culture 'needs to stimulate the fear of decay and incapacity which accompanies
old age and death by jolting individuals out of complacency and persuade them
to consume body maintenance strategies'. Ken, and the film, facilitate this process
by signifying all that is horrific about not controlling one's own body functions
and not having specific control over one's own body idioms. It is a perspective that extends even
to fashion and body garments in Whose Life Is It Anyway?, where,
for example, Ken is almost at all times seen in his hospital gown - in his wheelchair
he has a particularly tasteless dressing-gown on over it - which ensures that
he is never represented as anything other than a sick person. Equally, the 'sick person' implies loss
of bodily control, dignity, privacy and freedom, but also implies decay and mess
due to its chaos of faecal and urinary excreta (i.e., bodily decay). That the quadriplegic body is unable to
fulfil its part of the paradigm of the 'sick role' also accounts for the desire
to see it as useless and worthy of termination (as defined by Parsons (cited in
Murphy, 1991, p.19). The failure
to play the ‘sick role’, where the individual promises to make the
effort to recover in return for the temporary abdication of responsibility to
work, is clearly a part of the overall negation of impairment as a validated state
and seen to be so in Whose Life Is It Anyway? As clothes are increasingly seen to signify the worth of the individuals
within them (Kaiser, 1985), the degree of success and worth manifest in their
apparent cost or individuality, then Ken's apparel singles him out (and all who
are sick) as both a social and a physical failure (Hoffman, 1979). Goffman (1990) argues that normalisation
is the act of the individual to cover up his abnormality and appear normal (Burns,
1992, p.99), an aspect of the 'sick role' which Ken is unable to carry out.
Ken's inability to cover himself (his abnormality) acts as an incitement
to the spectator to see Ken as abnormal and as not fulfilling his part of the
social contract 'sick role' (cf. Parsons, 1961). Bourdieu (cited in Featherstone, 1991,
p.68) sums up, by his terminology, Ken's social status if his apparel and bodily
state are considered as his 'cultural capital'. It is a 'capital' that is culturally worthless
with a potential debt to society rather than a profit: socially, financially or
interactively. The value, 'cultural
capital', that this film, and society / culture in general, are to Ken (the disabled)
not his potential, or capable value / capital, but his discursively determined
worth as manifest - and reinforced - in Whose Life Is It Anyway?
Consequently, Ken, and all those with quadriplegia, are culturally devalued.
This film merely reinforces such a devaluation through its ideological
affiliation and adherence to the tenets of the Medical Model of disability, identifiable
here through the application of the Social Model. All the characters in the film are seen in clothes which vary and signify
the social multiplicity of individuals (Kaiser, 1985). For example, the main doctors are seen
in their professional outfits (white coats) and leisure / daily wear. When Dr Scott has an evening out with
Ken's lawyer, and then visits Ken in the hospital in her elegant dress, the scene
serves to show that she has an external (private) life, as well as a professional
(public) life, in direct comparison to Ken; it is, thus, a created comparison
which acts further to demean Ken in his impaired state. If we take Gilman's (1988, p.26) view
that 'human identity lies in the individuality of the body', and that 'the outer-man
is a graphic reproduction of the inner-man' (ibid, p.128),
then we can interpret Ken's body as symptomatic of his limited character and performance
capabilities. As such, Ken’s
character and performance is in the singular once his body has become quadriplegic.
Ken's body has become his sole character whilst all the other characters
signify that to be a social being one has a multiplicity of uniforms / hats for
a multiplicity of bodily or social performances. Representationally, here and in many other impairment-orientated
films, the individual with quadriplegia becomes his body and, as Gilman states,
'the cultural image can become the self definition' (ibid, p.10).
The limitation of this film is that it does not question how the 'image
becomes the self definition' through social discourse and its processes, yet merely
reinforces it as the logical and natural, essentialist definition generic to quadriplegia. Significantly, the two other main characters
of the film, John and Joey, also have an external life - they begin courting -
whilst at the same time the film is showing us Ken's inability to have either
a private or a satisfactory public life. Another method by which Ken is made a hideous liminal man,
half-alive, half-dead, half-man, half-animal, is in the way in which the characters
other than Ken are all seen as mobile or physical. One example is the scene when Ken sees Joey and John's private
life in full physical union, when they 'kidnap' him and take him to the basement
to see John's reggae band, a scene during which John and Joey dance in a particularly
sexual manner. Significantly, John's physicality is apparent from the first
time that we see him; it is axiomatically given in a traditionally racist cinematic
manner (Cripps, 1993). John is black,
therefore: he is musical; he dances; and he desires white women with an aggressive
sexuality (in fact, his courting of Joey - a new, innocent, petite, white nurse
- borders on harassment). Consequently, when Ken is taken to see
the band, it is a dope-smoking, jiving, black band, where the male members dance
with the female singers groin to groin. To make the point beyond doubt, in a negative
comparison, Joey grabs Ken's hands and does as much of a dance as is possible
with him, hand to hand. Movement is the subtlest way in which the film disables and objectifies
Ken as a body and as an individual, particularly since it is movement of other
people. The mise en scène of movement to degrade Ken lies both in the characters'
direction and in the movement of the camera, in the lighting and in the editing.
The mise en scène is striking in that a large number of scenes impact
a style of movement that gives a flow that permeates the entire film.
It starts to decrease only when Ken gets closer to winning his battle to
die (the ultimate in non-movement). Two
segments of the film epitomise this point: firstly, one with a scene in the operating
theatre that dissolves to Ken's girlfriend, Pat, waiting for the result of the
operation immediately after the accident and, secondly, in a scene involving a
view of Ken's sculpture (and then a dissolve to the ICU). These two segments are closely linked
although there is a brief connecting scene between the two to demonstrate the
passing of six months. The first segment’s initial scene starts with a high angle close-up
of the x-ray negatives of Ken's broken spine, from which the camera pans and tracks
back left gradually to become a higher angle medium shot of Dr Emmerson talking
to another surgeon about the impending operation they are about to carryout on
Ken. Immediately they have finished
talking, they walk off screen left with the camera levelling into a tracking shot
forward, combined with a zoom-in, to the right of the operating theatre which
is all the time visible behind Dr Emmerson and his fellow doctor.
Thus, we have moved from a close-up of x-rays in the foreground to a medium
shot of Ken lying on the operating table in the background. This scene, which is continuous and lasts
over thirty seconds, then dissolves slowly (it is a four-second dissolve) in to
a panning left shot of a nurse's legs walking left, with the camera finally stopping
on Pat sitting in a chair in medium shot. The previous shot had started as a minor left pan immediately as it dissolved
into a left pan to Pat. Once the
camera is on Pat she starts to take her thigh length boots off, necessitating
overt physical movement. Pat then
squirms in the seat: legs are lifted up and out and, finally, sitting on her feet
by placing them up under her to the left and then the right. This sequence is a continuous take of
twenty seconds. The camera movement,
in lesser hands, could have seemed very jarring, yet here flows majestically.
It would conventionally have been an ideal rapid cut sequence but its intention
is specific in providing an alternative to Ken's predicament. It is worth noting that the film’s
director, John Badham, was to become well known for his highly successful rapid
cut 'action adventurer' movies War Games (US,
1983), Short Circuit (US, 1988) and the highly physical
dance film Saturday Night Fever (US,
1977). The long take gives the best opportunity
for the camera to move whilst at the same time giving the actors ample space to
show how they can move, or 'act' with their whole bodies, especially when they
are around Ken but also when they are not. It is the excess of movement of both characters
and camera that places Ken's immobility, his impaired body, at the forefront of
the spectators' consciousness, whether or not Ken is in the shot or sequence.
The second segment of shots to be discussed reinforce the same points.
It starts with a twenty-second extreme long shot, continuous take, at sunset,
of Ken's grand abstract sculpture. It
consists of a rapid tracking shot right, from a low angle, with camera panning
left, of the sculpture, to imply that the sculpture is itself moving - sailing
freely - around the city. The low
angle of the camera makes the sculpture look as tall and as wide as the tallest
office block of the city. Concomitant
to the visuals the sculpture's majesty, strength, beauty and size are emphasised
by the orchestral violins that non-diegetically accompanies them. This scene then dissolves to a slow right
panning shot of the ICU's control centre's heart monitors, only now it has changed
to being a high angle shot and six months are supposed to have passed.
The musical accompaniment continues as the camera tracks back panning slightly
left as the video monitors of the ICU's patients are lined up next to the heart
monitor; this is a high technology, high cost control centre, we are being informed. The camera continues tracking back, only now it levels off
to take in the nurses who are picking up notes and bed sheets to take into Ken's
room. The camera then pans right,
tracks forward and follows the nurses into Ken's cubicle of the ICU unit.
Once in the cubicle we are at the bottom of Ken's bed watching two female
nurses change, rub and electrically lower the head and shoulders part of the bed. As the nurses entered the room they took
headphones off Ken's head, at which point the music becomes diegetic and, as such,
has fidelity, before being switched off. Once the bed-changing and rubbing has begun, the camera goes
to the opposite side of the bed to the two nurses rubbing Ken's naked back. We see Ken prostrate across the screen
in a medium shot, with the nurses vertical. This one-take sequence takes one hundred and five seconds,
making it a considerable take indeed. The success of the camera's movement is astounding, in that it gives every
character and item around Ken a movement that would otherwise seem either irrelevant
or minor. That the camera follows
the nurses from one room, the control centre, right in to Ken's cubicle is a good
example of this. As Ken's sculpture
(as a 'real' sequence or as his memory of the sculpture) is given such a free-flowing,
ethereal, quality - it is shot at sunset - the mise en scène serves to imply that Ken was
then in control. Control is indicative
of the masculine rather than the feminine and, as such, Ken as masculine is indicated
only when he was normal (we see him climbing his sculpture early on in the film
prior to the accident to make the point clear).
That the scene prior to Ken having his headphones removed (bringing the
ship-like-sculpture scene to a close) is subsequently shown to be an 'imagined'
scene further reinforces the idea that Ken had a 'beautiful' past, but also that
he has no future. Ken has his bed changed, the nurses roll him from side to side to get the sheets under him, and then he has to have his body massaged in order to prevent bedsores from occurring. Ken, a body with quadriplegia, is thus seen as someone who has produced his last great piece of art; the sunset of his life has arrived just as it has for his last work of art. The state of his body tells us that Ken's masculinity and strength have both literally and metaphorically vanished; Ken is now dependent and his muscles have withered. As Joey rubs his calf and buttock muscles he fantasises that he has: 'dreamed of situations like this'. To which the senior nurse says: '[B]eing injured'. Ken replies: '[N]o, massaged by two beautiful women'. Thus Ken's de-sexualisation is stated a |