Bugs in the Machine:
Anti- and Post-modernism in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”
Introduction:
“8:49 P.M.”
Since the 1960’s, an underhanded revolution in the artistic world has been underway, rejecting the formalism, universalism, and ahistoricism of the era before it. This revolution calls itself “post-modernism,” and it spans all artistic genres. There are those who would say that such a relatively new artform as film does not have a coherent enough body of tradition to qualify as part of the postmodern movement. Art, no matter in what form or time period, however, has a tendency to reflect the thought of its time. In a postmodern era, we have several landmark examples of postmodern film. One of these is Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil. Brazil defines its postmodern stance in two primary ways: as both a critique of high modernism and a step into the convoluted swirls of post-modern art and thought.
1.1
Anti-Modernist Visuals: The Iron Cage
As
a filmmaker, Gilliam is perhaps best known for his unconventional visuals. He rarely comes out and blazons his themes
across the screen in human-high letters; instead, he employs the purely
aesthetic element of film to convey thematic content. Throughout Brazil, the
aesthetics of modernism are consistently portrayed as the enemy. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is
in the dream sequences. In one of these
early interludes, Sam qua Winged Warrior, swooping towards his diaphanous Dream
Girl, is suddenly interrupted by what the screenplay describes as “massive,
monolithic stone skyscraper[s]” bursting out of the ground -- the absolute
embodiments of modernist architecture, with “nothing whatsoever to interfere
with their clean, harsh, rectilinear design” (Gilliam 23). These modernist sentinels come to symbolize
the corporate modernist maze that traps its inhabitants like rats. In fact, by the end of the film, these
structures literally become a maze in
which Sam finds himself inextricably trapped.
Indeed, the endless high-rise buildings, fabricated housings, and cell-like offices are certainly references to the form-follows-function impersonality of modernism. One architectural motif that consistently reoccurs is the tiled square, appearing in everything from glass windows to people-movers to the walls of the final torture chamber. The square, of course, is a perfect geometric form, endlessly replicable and functional. As such, it fits perfectly into the modernist artistic arsenal, which sports a “prevailing passion for...uniformity and the power of the straight line (always superior to the curve)” (Harvey 6). This visual motif is omnipresent throughout the architecture of the film, but perhaps its most effective incarnation of is in one of the mid-film dream sequences. This particular interlude features Sam’s Dream Girl, imprisoned in a perfectly cubical cage, the bars of which mimic the repeated square motif exactly. Brief flashes to the “real” world show Sam in an urban people mover which has essentially the same structure: a glass cubical cage, shuttling the city’s dwellers around. The parallel is transparent -- just as the Dream Girl is trapped, Sam is imprisoned by the oppressive modernist structure that is his natural habitat. Keith Hamel believes this to be a reference to Max Weber’s theory of the iron cage:
Weber
was deeply ambivalent about modernity…the triumph of the zweckrationalitat on
the societal level, which promised greater economic and administrative
efficiency, was accompanied by the impersonality of the “iron cage”
bureaucratic machine, which curbed individual freedom, while on the cultural
level it led to the intellectualization and disenchantment of the world with a
loss of meaning (Featherstone, qtd. in Hamel 16),
making the insistence of the tiled
square a visual metaphor for the entrapment of the modern individual --
specifically, the high modernist individual of the inter-war years.
The cultural echoes in Brazil span the mid-century decades (the movies/television that we see sucking in the attention of the city dwellers, for example: Casablanca [1942], Sgt. Bilko [1950’s], and The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly [1966]). There is an interesting emphasis, however, on images and sounds from the late 1930’s and early 40’s. The title track, “Brazil,” is a pop escapist song from 1939, the costumes are “vintage Hollywood fashions from the ‘30s and ‘40s; the large eagle statue at the entrance of the Ministry of Information symbolically recalls the Nazi domination of the late ‘30s/early ‘40s” (Hamel 11). In focusing inimical power on this particular 20-year span, Gilliam is effecting a critique of the high modernism that rose in both artistic and intellectual spheres in the late inter-war period. Alfred Toynbee (one of the men credited with coining the term ‘post-modernism’) writes that “the first postmodern general war in AD 1914, brought into focus a series of problems with the rapidity of technological change” (qtd. in Hamel 11). In this moral and social upheaval, left in the wake of the Great War, high modernism blanketed the situation with universal morals and an glorification of the machine as the ideal myth for humankind. This blind faith in mechanistic progress, the triumphs of science, and America’s universal “rightness” led to the unthinkable violence of the atom bomb in World War II. It is not unseemly, then, that Gilliam chooses to center his critique in this period.
1.2
Anti-Modern Thematics: Consumers for Christ
Brazil shares several thematic elements with other 20th century dystopias: an individual fighting against a monolithic system notably among them. Whereas such dystopias as 1984 (written in 1949) critique socialism, however, Brazil is a direct attack on consumerist corporate capitalism, the dream of high modernism. The predominant values of the film’s socioeconomic system seem to be personal ambition and rampant materialism. Everywhere the pervasiveness of consumerism shines through: the constant meaningless giving of Christmas gifts, the emphasis on physical beauty, the sheer proliferation of gadgets and trinkets cluttering the camera’s view. As F. Pfeil notes: “it is no accident that the three terrorist explosions in the film…take place in consumer land” (239). The characters move through the film as if hypnotized, performing rote actions in accordance with rules already set down -- mechanically performing their duties in order to support a consumerist, corporate machine, one whose functionality has gone dramatically awry.
Though the predominance of machinery is painfully obvious throughout the film (vis. the exposed ducts in virtually every scene), very little of it actually functions with any real efficiency. “We don’t make mistakes,” a worker claims early in the film, yet the plot hinges around the mistakes of the machine (i.e. the bug falling into the typewriter that sets the action off). In the inter-war period in America, as Harvey puts it, the “real nether side…[of high modernism] lay in its subterranean celebration of corporate bureaucratic power and rationality, under the guise of a return to the surface worship of the efficient machine as a sufficient myth of embody all human aspirations” (6). What we have in Brazil is a society where the machine myth has worked too well, a modernism that is so pervasive/universal that even malfunctioning as badly as it does, it manages to self-perpetuate and dominate. This is the nightmare that occurs when the principles of modernism are co-opted by corporate capitalism.
2.1
Postmodern Visuals: Pastiche
Gilliam’s aim is not only to critique modernist aesthetics and values; Brazil is not merely anti-modern. Rather, it also employs conventions which land it squarely in the realm of post-modern art. Brazil refuses to settle the viewer comfortably in any given time period, instead effecting a kind of timelessness in its narrative, an “effac[ing] of the boundaries between the past and present...which locates the viewing subject in a perpetual present” (Denzin, qtd. in Jencks 225). The opening subtitles read: “Somewhere in the 20th Century,” and indeed, Brazil’s on-screen elements constitute a mad collage of artifacts from this century. Gilliam has been quoted as saying he wished the film to look as if “the century were compacted into a single moment” (Cowen 2), and so we are presented with costumes that are “drably 1930s,” inter-war propaganda posters mingling with 80’s-style billboards, music and movies from the mid-century years, and architecture from varying decades. The heavy emphasis on technology would seem to indicate a futuristic setting; as Keith Hamel notes, however, the “gadgets of the future (the computer consoles…) simply echo the gadgets of the past (…look like old-fashioned typewriters),” giving us “simultaneous past and present” (8).
Gilliam even goes so far as to actually include post-modern architecture in the film. Sam’s apartment building, where a great deal of struggle takes place, was filmed at the Arena Apartments in Marne la Vallée, a touchstone of postmodern architecture designed by Ricardo Bofill in the early 80’s. The constant infusion of neon and bright color, not to mention the perpetual confusion of cultural artifacts, styles, and people, are clear departures from the “massive spaces and perspectives,” the clean lines and monochrome of modernist aesthetic. The film avoids any clear-cut, expansive shots; every scene seems crowded, cluttered with color and activity. One viewing is hardly enough to pick up all the visual nuances. The backgrounds are filled with kitschy references to our current culture, as well as throwbacks to earlier eras.
All of this corresponds to one of the postmodern hallmarks -- that of pastiche, which includes “eclecticism, ambiguity, wit, and a playful allusion to earlier styles” (West 4). Whereas modernism defies tradition, rejecting anything historical in its faith in progress, postmodern art is conscious of its roots and welcomes references to it. In immersing its audience in timeless present, postmodernism negates the blind futurism of modernist ethics, as well as validating the richness and variety of the now.
2.2
Postmodern Reflection: Parody
One of the predominant criteria for postmodern media is self-consciousness -- the art being self-aware, the art that parodies its own formal elements. Although Brazil does not display this trait prominently, a few major plot elements stand out as deliberate parodies: the mythic hero and the romantic object, the damsel in distress. Although Sam functions as the film’s protagonist, he is far from heroic. The true hero figure of the story is Harry Tuttle, the renegade heating engineer who throws the wrench into the works in the first place. Harry seamlessly avoids the system, sweeping in to help those victimized by its impersonality when he is least expected, refusing payment and then sweeping off grandly into the night. He serves as Sam’s inspiration and a much more effective hero. The irony cannot help but strike the viewer between the eyes. The story’s true hero engages in all the trappings of the crime-fighting superhero; his mission, however, is not to rescue princesses, lead revolutions, or defend justice, but rather to fix people’s central air.
Despite his heroic status, Tuttle is actually a minor character in the film, appearing only thrice (and, in the end, even his idyllic character is ultimately consumed by the system -- the paperwork he so despises). Our real protagonist, Sam Lowery, is anything but a hero -- a corporate lackey, hopelessly inept at anything besides submitting to the machine system. His one asset (besides a rather bull-headed obstinacy) is his efficiency with machines, the lifeblood of the system he aspires to strive against. Contrasted against his heroic dream-self, Sam does little but stutter and bungle jobs. His one conquest comes in the form of Jill, the Dream Girl for whom he drops his anonymity and relative lack of ambition to start this quest.
As in other films in the genre, the romantic subplot in Brazil is dreadfully sarcastic. The courtship between Sam and Jill is ridiculous in its formal extremes -- the abrupt surges of romantic melody at their first kiss, the over-dramatic sexual frenzy Sam goes into at the pastel-hued consummation scene. Jill’s character, at first a foul-mouthed, truck-driving, cigarette-smoking renegade who seems far more sincere and prone to action than Sam, undergoes an improbable transformation into Sam’s dream-angel, the archetypal damsel who does little but submit to Sam’s ridiculously inept overtures. This over-the-top cheesiness does little but illustrate the true flimsiness of Sam and Jill’s relationship -- Sam objectifies Jill, remaking her into a cardboard character for him to possess. It is no coincidence that it is when Jill succumbs to the stereotypically feminine mold Sam imagines for her that all hell breaks loose.
2.3
Postmodern Thematics: Tension Unresolved
The
sum of all these elements -- the fight against modernism, the effacement of
temporal barriers, the roles of Tuttle and Jill -- revolves around a single
tension that informs the entire film, between fantasy and reality. Gilliam explores this tension in virtually
all of his films: the individual subjective flight of fantasy up against objective
reality. Sam’s dreams are ultimately
what drive this film, causing him to rise out of his mid-level
cog-in-the-machine position to pursue Jill and attempt to rescue the little
people (including himself) from the evil forces of modernity. This is not, however, a film about
revolution. Sam is not trying to
liberate the people; his quest is not heroic.
Rather, his story centers around his individual ambition, his individual
dreams, and his individual frustrations/failings in a system that cares little
for personal concerns.
Modernism
is concerned with the individual subject only as it relates to and reflects the
larger shared whole. Part of the
postmodern individual’s plight is a struggle against these universalizing,
self-negating values. The reality of Sam’s life is that of a “technological
world of modernity [that] tries to eliminate any need for magic, fantasy, or
any irrational forces” (Hamel 10).
Midway through the film, Sam pleads with Jill to leave with him,
“Somewhere else. Far away.” Jill’s answer: “There is nowhere else.” This film’s reality is the iron cage, a trap
that has spread everywhere, inescapable.
In
an imperialistically modern world, universal values and faith in objective
science discount personal experience unless it coincides with impersonal
“facts.” What experience could be more
personal than that of fantasy? The
fantasy world is wholly subjective, for dreams are not something one can hold
up to objective standards. It is natural,
then, for modernity to want to belittle the importance of dreams -- and with
them, the power of the personal. “The question of ideology’s relation to
subjectivity is central to postmodernism,” says Hutcheson. “The challenges to the humanist concept of a
coherent, continuous, autonomous individual (who paradoxically also shares in
some generalized universal human essence) have come from all sides today”
(108). Sam’s dreams should be “the
postmodern solution to life in the present,” (Denzin 232), the only way out of
an oppressively modern objectivity.
Should be. The fact is, however, that fantasy does not ultimately prove the idyllic way out. Throughout the film, Sam’s fantasies intrude on the narrative in increasingly inappropriate times and places until neither Sam nor the audience can distinguish between the two realities anymore. In the end, he escapes from the maze (into a hyper-fantastical dreamlife in the country with Jill), but then Gilliam drops the bug into the works. Pulling out of Sam’s perspective for the first time, we find that he never really left the torture chamber. The scene fades out on Sam, apparently lobotomized, forever trapped in his false fantasy. The audience is left with two endings: one depicting the continuation of violence, death, and oppression and one depicting a happily romantic idyllic fairytale. Gilliam leaves us with the question: Which reality is more real? Who really wins in the end? There are no clear-cut answers. Does this dilemma present us with a solution (Gilliam considers the ending a “happy” one) or a problem?
Conclusion:
“Somewhere in the 20th Century.”
This unresolved tension is what finally christens this film as postmodern. In the end, can we really judge these types of stories against modernist standards of good/bad, tragedy/comedy, real/false? Who really is to say where Sam is better off? The story is essentially postmodern by the very questions it raises, “underlin[ing] and to undermin[ing] the notion of the coherent, self-sufficient subject as the source of meaning or action”(Hutcheson 109). In the end, Brazil offers no definites, no tidy escapes, no black-and-white moral choices. In a postmodern world, matters tend to be painted in shades of grey. Brazil paints a portrait that is, in some ways, too close to home -- a yarn frustratingly symptomatic of postmodern theory, postmodern values, and the postmodern individual’s plight.
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Denzin, Norman K. “Blue Velvet: Postmodern Contradictions.” In The Postmodern Reader. Charles Jencks, ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Every, Peter. “Gilliam’s Brazil: The last Modern Dystopia?” http://www.csad.coventry.ac.uk/ IDN/neopraxis/brazil.htm (26 Sept 1999).
Gilliam, Terry. Brazil. http://www.trond.com/brazil/brazil_script.txt (25 Sept 1999).
Hamel, Keith James. “Modernity and Mise-en-Scene: Terry Gilliam and Brazil.” Images Journal. http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue06/features/brazil.htm (19 Sept 1999).
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Hutcheson, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Pfiel, F. Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Narrative in Postmodern Culture. Verso, 1990.
West, David. “Postmodernism.” In An Introduction to Continental Philosophy. Polity Press, 1996.
(Christa Dickson, 10.20.99)