Ah, I'm first for once! Though, I'm not sure I have much to say about Demonlover. Similar to Boarding Pass, the shady maneuvering of corporations serves as a backdrop for one woman to go through a several situations she doesn't seem to understand. Once again, there's this tension between control and helplessness; between knowledge and utter confusion. That a game is being played by people with power who use pretty women as pawns.
It could be argued that this film is about what happens to those pawns when they fail to fulfill their tasks; when explored, this argument has rather depressing implications. The film insinuates that usurpation of power is ultimately a fool-hardy endeavor that might leave you in a dungeon awaiting your next torture porn scene.
I could be wrong, though. I'm not confident that this film is ultimately about usurpation either; nor morality; nor coherency. If anything, it argues that it's pretty easy to lose your bearings in the world of corporate espionage. So, it might be best not to try? K, got it. Definitely won't be trying that.
Seriously though. Olivier Assayas likes to conflate huge corporate financial transactions with sex and murder--as if the business deal is primarily meant to facilitate the sex and the murder. It's all weirdly amoral and hollow, and annoyingly self-obsessed.
Demonlover showcases two specific elements of contemporary society, though one is more successful because it is not addressed in such an obvious manner. On one hand, the film is grappling with the desensitized violence that has become a core aspect of Western life, but it also suggests an understanding of power that is less pronounced on the other. While Elizabeth Walden's analysis highlights these conversations, she ultimately focuses on the less interesting option through her interaction with Abu Ghraib.
The film depicts this desensitization in a rather blunt way that seems to conflict with the other large message gleaned from it. It is easy to highlight the TVs in the opening scene showing explosions and people aflame, while Diana and Volf pay no attention because it exists in the background. Likewise, the ending sequence depicting the boy casually watching torture porn while he does his homework serves as a nice bookend to suggest the continuity and ubiquity of casting violent images to one's periphery. While Walden astutely brings up the incongruity of the characters through a reading of Jameson, she also suggests “It is the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, however, which perhaps best emblematizes this era” (60)--which I think is too extreme. It could be that her analysis was more of the time, as the essay was written almost a decade ago, but she also recognizes in her footnotes that the attention to Abu Ghraib has declined even while she is writing. Though this decline is evidence for her argument—that proof of political violence, torture, and humiliation were made known but that the public outrage was only fleeting—it also showcases her second point about the visibility of power.
Abu Ghraib is also powerful example of Walden's other claim, but if it “emblematizes this era,” it perhaps does so in a different way. Walden writes of the conspiracy element of Demonlover, “The workings of power and its violence have been right before us all along. There is no secret, no mystery and, hence, no need for revelation. The truth about our age is that the violence of power, the pathological effects of the totality, no longer attempt to hide” (60). This claim is far more intriguing for Demonlover because it is kept in the margins. One might watch the film and feel outraged that Diana and others are subjected to this kind of torture, or that consumers ultimately cause the business to persist. But what is more sinister is the way Karen, Hervé, and Elise conduct themselves in relation to Hellfireclub and Diana. The situation is treated as business—and it is for them—that is conducted in the open with many people aware of how the site functions. After Diana's first Hellfireclub experience, one can observe the marked difference in her countenance, her demeanor, and her relation to Elise, while seemingly nothing has changed for Elise (she is, in multiple ways, “at the office”). It is similar to how large corporations are focused entirely on economics, because any immoral action will either be swept under the rug or ignored. So, while desensitization problematizes the issue of the visibility of power's violence, it is some other phenomenon altogether that is responsible for our ignorance of it.
Walden, Elizabeth. "'You Want To Torture Zora?' Olivier Assayas's Demonlover As Critique." New Cinemas: Journal Of Contemporary Film 3.1 (2005): 55-66. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 3 June 2014. http://0-search.ebscohost.com.library.unl.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fah&AN=16920172&login.asp&site=ehost-live
Demonlover, I think, is purposely confusing to the audience. In an article for New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, Walden references an interview with the director of the film, “In an interview with Reverse Shot, Assayas says that his film is trying to connect cinema with the experience of the modern world. It’s trying to function on many different levels and the whole point of the film is to say that all these different levels do connect ... this film is trying to say: ‘All these things are connected. I’m not sure how, I’m not sure why, but the one thing I know is that all of this is connected.’ And connected to a bigger picture, which is the way economy is ruling and transforming our world. It’s about the struggle that is going on between humanity and economy - the circulation of commodity (Assayas 2003).” I think this film, however fantastic it may seem, has that air of “realism” that we talked about yesterday in class. It doesn’t really make sense because Assayas realizes that reality, real life, doesn’t always make sense and that’s what he was trying to capture.
I think there are some similarities between this film and The International. It has that feeling of espionage and spy genre, all while dealing with coroporate finance issues. This film is obviously a lot less focused on explaining every little detail to the audience, a difference that we find from Hollywood cinema. I found myself often confused as to what was going on in Demonlover, and I think that somewhat had to do with the fact that a lot of people working with Diane (as well as Diane) were double agents with another company or had ulterior motives for their actions. It takes us a long time to figure out who Elise is working for, or if she’s even an important character. At the beginning she just seems very trivial, just an office assistant, but we find out later she plays a big role in the plot.
I don’t know how much globalization is involved in this movie, other than the fact that Diane’s (presumably French) company is working with companies in America and Japan. I feel like we are not really in the loop so to speak about the business transactions, we see a few meetings and such, but we don’t know how much money is at stake (although we can assume it is probably a lot if so many people are trying to sabotage the deal).
Walden, Elizabeth. “‘You Want to Torture Zora?’ Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover as Critique.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 3.1 (2005): 55–66. Web. 3 June 2014.
Demonlover was an interesting film that showed me how sick people could be. We see how globalized the concept of pornography has become. Earlier today in my human trafficking class I saw a documentary called Sex + Money. The documentary dealt with human trafficking in various ways. At one point it discussed the porn industry. One can see how huge it has become. The filmmakers went to a porn convention and recorded all the weird and just plain sick fetishes in porn. Believe me that Demonlover wasn’t exaggerating how intense adult entertainment can be. The porn industry has become a lucrative business as we saw Volf and Mangatronics competing to sign a big 3D Manga porn business called TokyoAnime. It is unfortunately true when one of the characters saws that this industry is supply and demand.
The ending was crazy how Diane ended up in the Hell Fire Club. The film baffled me a few times like how Roger Ebert said, “no one seems to question the fact that they play to make money by torturing people. It’s all just business.” (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/demonlover-2003) Just like how big corporations are exploiting others and they sleep peacefully at night. But the demand is there, just like how one employee from TokyoAnime said that their content is what the clients want. Also at the end of the film when the child steals his father’s credit card to make an account of the Hell Fire Club. It just shows that everyone can be part of the supply and demand cycle.
We saw similar shots in Demonlover as we did in Boarding Gate. It’s not a surprise because Olivier Assayas directed both films. I felt more confused with this film than with Boarding Gate. Demonlover was less explained than Boarding Gate. I agree with Elsa that Diane was trivial. I also felt that Sandra in Boarding Gate was a bit ambiguous like Diane. Both female characters are loners in a corrupt world. I couldn’t decide if I should root for them or not.
I too, like others have expressed, was somewhat shocked by some of the things that went on in this film and was unaware that things like this even existed. Although when you really think about it, it isn’t that surprising. I certainly hope people aren’t losing their lives over pornographic websites however, I’m sure disturbing sites that feature torture are out there.
Demonlover seems to take its audience through a maze going back and forth and up and down with what it is really going, who’s bad, who’s good, and who actually works for whom. The film was confusing to say the least. I’m not quite sure what the director was trying to get across then again I’m not quite sure what his point was in Boarding Gate either.
Both films dealt a lot with people fighting for their lives – literally running from death, lies, manipulation and a significant male character that betrays the female lead. In both films, we see a male character get shot in the head in a sexual situation. We also see a female character who at first - doesn’t seem very significant just kind of a character in the background, who ends up playing a much larger role than anticipated. Both Elise, in Demonlover and Sue in Boarding Gate act as antagonists toward the female lead.
Also like Boarding Gate, we see people from different countries conjoin in terms of work, in order to profit for themselves. And in both cases it seems greed and own self-pride get the better of most of the characters resulting in some type of demise. Demonlover and Boarding Gate were both confusing throughout their entirety and ended ambiguously. Perhaps Olivier Assayas does this on purpose and doesn’t want his audience to have all the answers, maybe he just likes to leave us questioning.
As I take a break from inspecting the damage of tonight’s tennis ball sized hail, I couldn’t help but think back to the film. Demonlover was, at least for me, somewhat difficult to watch during some scenes that I’m sure we all vividly remember. And, coming from a senior Film Studies student, I’d say that this could be stating a lot. Yet, that’s beside the point and more of a personal observation. Don’t take my word for it.
Like many of the other students have already mentioned, I was left utterly confused through most of the film in terms of what exactly was occurring and why, although through the bits and pieces I pulled out, I could assemble the puzzle as best I could. It wasn’t until later in the film when I began to slowly gather up my ideas and make a coherent thought upon what exactly this film might be trying to state. Like many of my peers have noted there seems to be a rather extreme realism in a sense of the graphic content within this motion picture. And as how Monica stated the facts about what the filmmakers did to gather this information, this isn’t exactly something that is up for debate. (More so, I doubt it’s something we’d want to debate anyway). But I believe that it is that stark realism that in fact makes this film not only so shocking, but also incredibly relevant in terms of this type of trade and interaction. The director is stating this does happen and is not trying to sugar coat this information in an effort for us to take it willingly. In fact, the feeling of being force-fed this information did actually creep into my mind.
It was along these same lines where I began to look at this film in terms of the director’s previous work, most notably the film we screen in class, Boarding Gate. Despite having a similar story and thematic structure to an extent, I could definitely pick up the director’s style in terms of how he works the camera in an effort to portray his leading female characters. In fact, as many of us have probably noted, there are quite a few parallels within these two films, particularly that of sexual interactions as means of trade or a sort of separated class structure between characters that causes friction. All of these details eventually coming together in an interconnected web that sets the basis for globalization within these films.
But, perhaps I simply should just leave it at that. While as don’t take pride in admitting this, I feel like I didn’t understand this particular film as well as I probably should have. Although I do think that perhaps our in-class discussions could help clear the skies for me viewing this particular film in a more understanding light.
Demonlover is a film that shows a lot of sex and violence through the use of the media. Globalization is seen here because of the rising demand for the sex on the Web and it is in demand all throughout the world, from Paris to Tokyo, to the United States and Mexican desert, and to suburban America. All sorts of people demand this sex violence in this film, which really shocked me.
The thing that is different about this film is the fact that all of the scenes are in upper scale, higher class locations, around people who have money and aren’t struggling to survive. In the expensive looking hotel rooms in Tokyo, in an expensive shoe boutique where the American and Elise are looking at boots, in a huge mansion where Diane was taken to get tortured by the Hellfire club, even in a nice suburban home where a young boy is a member of the Hellfire club. All of these locations are places where people with enough money go to and have. People in the other films that we have watched in class would not be at these types of places, just because of their financial situations.
In an article titled “Children of Men and Demonlover: Corporate psyches, media bodies and the possibility of Tomorrow,” Vicente Rodriguez Ortega writes that the demand for digital violence is ever growing and that these digital sources help achieve the want for violence to be seen. Ortega later goes on to explaining that Diane “has evolved from vendor to product” (42). She is drugged by the men of the Hellfire club and is on the website as a victim. Ortega makes the point that the screenshot changes into “black-and-white, grainy look of surveillance camera…bearing the unmistakable imprint of realism” (42). This type of shot makes it look like a more painful scene and as if it were really on a computer screen of violence being watched by the members of this Hellfire club.
Ortega, Vicente Rodriguez. “Children of Men and Demonlover: Corporate psyches, media bodies and the possibility of Tomorrow.” Film International, Issue53, 2011. Web. 3 June 2014. http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.library.unl.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=f2826650-f6d6-4fbf-9cbb-e9dac5373375%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4104
I didn't notice until now, but both Demonlover and Boarding Gate take place unanimously in upper-class locations, even in scenes on airplanes where mostly only the First Class is filmed. As pointed in out in many others' points, the two films have many similarities but they also have significant differences as well. In Boarding Gate, the characters were not as amoral as they are in Demonlover; it seemed like a few of the characters had the possibility of loving each other. In fact, one of the main driving forces of the plot of Boarding Gate results from Sandra's love for Lester and the revenge she plots when she figures she was betrayed by him.
In Demonlover, there is no such passion. Diane seems to be after power and money, but she seems to view them as ends in themselves; money and power for the sake of money and power. And sex, to Diane and perhaps all the other characters in Demonlover, is also something she values simply for its own sake, with no necessity for any sort of emotion in the act. The same also goes with violence. There is no tangible profit for consumers to attain through watching such videos as seen on Hell Fire Club, and yet, the sight seems to be quite popular. It seems the porn viewing public in the movie is entertained by violence because it is violent, and this is worth paying for. In this film, profit and pleasure and violence are synonymous , although it does not seem possible to have one without sacrificing the other two. This film's outlook on its characters is far bleaker than that of Boarding Gate is with it's own characters. In Demonlover, there are no characters with passions, or moral scruples. There is no character in the film who ever actually enjoys anything at all (unless one counts Herve enjoying raping Diane (which i bet he stopped enjoying once his head got blown off.)) Although sex is prevalent throughout the film, it is mostly animated, simulated, acted, removed from reality, and when it is shown between characters, no character ever is shown to orgasm. The pleasure of sex is never actually shown, what is shown is mostly only horrific phallus attacking women.
Much like Code 46, Demonlover’s characters communicate through various languages, albeit here it is more of a form of personal choice rather than a collective vocabulary. Primarily Diane and Elise’s characters are able to transition between French and English as a representation of the varied workforce available as a result globalization and less of an accommodation to English-speaking audiences as was the case with Code 46. Similar to French actress Audrey Taotou playing Turkish born Seney, the actresses playing Diane and Elise are Danish and American respectively, a unique aspect that one may guess Assaya intended to represent corporate precedence over nationalism.
Author Vicente Rodriguez Ortega assess that while Dirty Pretty Things criticizes “the exploitative socio-economic infrastructures that support the skeleton of the uneven process of a Capital-ridden world,” Demonlover exposes the “de-humanizing drive that exists at the center of its dynamic of production” (2007, p.423). This detachment of human nature is seen in the non-reactions of airplane passengers during what a continuous fight scene, Elise’s video games and the American teen completing homework accompanied by HellFire Club. Assaya’s decision associate HellFire Club requests with “media” figures (and this very well could be true of actual S&M sites), The Avenger's Emma Peel and X-Men's Storm, was intentional and an expression of our culture today.
Rodriguez Ortega, Vicente. (2007). Transnational Media Imaginaries: Cinema, Digital Technology and Uneven Globalization. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. 1472131351.aa
This movie made me very cynical towards humanity. But that aside, the themes of globalization, as others have observed, exist in the globalized occurance of pornography. The internet not only makes it viewable all over the world, but the real money-makers from internet pron are from a variety of nations and speak many different languages. That seems to be a common theme in many of these films; so many languages are spoken. What is very interesting is that, in Demonlover, everyone understands each other, for the most part (there are a few interpreter scenes, but not many), these business people seem to understand each other if they are speaking French or English or another language. This shows the importance of language fluency in this globalized society. It is both a necessity and a result of globalization.
Because of globalization, our actions do not just affect those who are immediately around us. They affect people across the world that we will never meet. This is most evidenced in the ending scene when the teenage boy steals his father's credit card in order to pay for viewing torture porn. The boy, obviously comfortable in Westernized suburbia, can casually cause a woman in another country to be tortured in front of cameras for the boy's viewing pleasure. This is a downside of globalization; it is an imminent result of globalization in a world that is inherently depraved.
As many of my classmates have stated, I too was very confused for the majority of the film. I left class wondering what it was that I had just watched and even after I have had some time to digest it, I still don't think I understand. I was very confused by the torture website. At first I thought it was animated like the other sites the film shows but the end of the movie suggests otherwise.
The Japanese company's clients were mostly Americans, I found this idea to be very interesting. This shows how the internet is playing a major role in the globalization of our world. We are now able to connect with people from almost anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. This has never been done before. Further, this allows different businesses to connect and work together that may not have been able to before the internet existed. Demonlover shows how the internet has played and will play a major role in the globalization of the world. I found it particularly interesting that the culture that seems to be the prominent culture being globalized was Asian culture. I can't think of a film that we have watched up until this point that didn't portray western culture as being the prominent culture of the future.
First off I agree with Dillon on what he had to say. This movie, like Boarding Gate, is a film that seems to be about how the little people can be lost inside a system built on the misfortune of others. Though I find it difficult to see such a level of corporate espionage in the porn industry, and Japanese porn at that. I do suppose that a Hostel style porn ring could have some unsavory characters. However, I found even those parts of the movie somewhat far fetched and looking hard for a reaction.
I did find that this movie does show how even the weirdest shit can be sold. I am not sure on the profit margins Manga porn and 3D porn. The porn industry is a multi-billion one, but my point stands. culture's and what they produce as their entertainment may be exported and sold, leaving nothing not tagged for the check out.
A couple other posts talked about the internet. And yes if it weren't for the internet such porn would never make it into the bedrooms of credit card stealing teenagers. Yet, what shocks a little bit more is that that teenager would never know if what he was watching was real or fake. No thoughts about human misery were running through his mind. I suppose this is a statement on how disconnected we become when we see things, horrible things, through 15 inch screens. We become desensitized. If this is a point of the movie, we went through a lot to get that point.
Ah, I'm first for once! Though, I'm not sure I have much to say about Demonlover. Similar to Boarding Pass, the shady maneuvering of corporations serves as a backdrop for one woman to go through a several situations she doesn't seem to understand. Once again, there's this tension between control and helplessness; between knowledge and utter confusion. That a game is being played by people with power who use pretty women as pawns.
ReplyDeleteIt could be argued that this film is about what happens to those pawns when they fail to fulfill their tasks; when explored, this argument has rather depressing implications. The film insinuates that usurpation of power is ultimately a fool-hardy endeavor that might leave you in a dungeon awaiting your next torture porn scene.
I could be wrong, though. I'm not confident that this film is ultimately about usurpation either; nor morality; nor coherency. If anything, it argues that it's pretty easy to lose your bearings in the world of corporate espionage. So, it might be best not to try? K, got it. Definitely won't be trying that.
Seriously though. Olivier Assayas likes to conflate huge corporate financial transactions with sex and murder--as if the business deal is primarily meant to facilitate the sex and the murder. It's all weirdly amoral and hollow, and annoyingly self-obsessed.
Demonlover showcases two specific elements of contemporary society, though one is more successful because it is not addressed in such an obvious manner. On one hand, the film is grappling with the desensitized violence that has become a core aspect of Western life, but it also suggests an understanding of power that is less pronounced on the other. While Elizabeth Walden's analysis highlights these conversations, she ultimately focuses on the less interesting option through her interaction with Abu Ghraib.
ReplyDeleteThe film depicts this desensitization in a rather blunt way that seems to conflict with the other large message gleaned from it. It is easy to highlight the TVs in the opening scene showing explosions and people aflame, while Diana and Volf pay no attention because it exists in the background. Likewise, the ending sequence depicting the boy casually watching torture porn while he does his homework serves as a nice bookend to suggest the continuity and ubiquity of casting violent images to one's periphery. While Walden astutely brings up the incongruity of the characters through a reading of Jameson, she also suggests “It is the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, however, which perhaps best emblematizes this era” (60)--which I think is too extreme. It could be that her analysis was more of the time, as the essay was written almost a decade ago, but she also recognizes in her footnotes that the attention to Abu Ghraib has declined even while she is writing. Though this decline is evidence for her argument—that proof of political violence, torture, and humiliation were made known but that the public outrage was only fleeting—it also showcases her second point about the visibility of power.
Abu Ghraib is also powerful example of Walden's other claim, but if it “emblematizes this era,” it perhaps does so in a different way. Walden writes of the conspiracy element of Demonlover, “The workings of power and its violence have been right before us all along. There is no secret, no mystery and, hence, no need for revelation. The truth about our age is that the violence of power, the pathological effects of the totality, no longer attempt to hide” (60). This claim is far more intriguing for Demonlover because it is kept in the margins. One might watch the film and feel outraged that Diana and others are subjected to this kind of torture, or that consumers ultimately cause the business to persist. But what is more sinister is the way Karen, Hervé, and Elise conduct themselves in relation to Hellfireclub and Diana. The situation is treated as business—and it is for them—that is conducted in the open with many people aware of how the site functions. After Diana's first Hellfireclub experience, one can observe the marked difference in her countenance, her demeanor, and her relation to Elise, while seemingly nothing has changed for Elise (she is, in multiple ways, “at the office”). It is similar to how large corporations are focused entirely on economics, because any immoral action will either be swept under the rug or ignored. So, while desensitization problematizes the issue of the visibility of power's violence, it is some other phenomenon altogether that is responsible for our ignorance of it.
Walden, Elizabeth. "'You Want To Torture Zora?' Olivier Assayas's Demonlover As Critique." New Cinemas: Journal Of Contemporary Film 3.1 (2005): 55-66. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 3 June 2014.
http://0-search.ebscohost.com.library.unl.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fah&AN=16920172&login.asp&site=ehost-live
Demonlover, I think, is purposely confusing to the audience. In an article for New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, Walden references an interview with the director of the film, “In an interview with Reverse Shot, Assayas says that his film is
ReplyDeletetrying to connect cinema with the experience of the modern world. It’s trying to function on many different levels and the whole point of the film is to say that all these different levels do connect ... this film is trying to say: ‘All these things are connected. I’m not sure how, I’m not sure why, but the one thing I know is that all of this is connected.’ And connected to a bigger picture, which is the way economy is ruling and transforming our world. It’s about the struggle that is going on between humanity and economy - the circulation of commodity (Assayas 2003).” I think this film, however fantastic it may seem, has that air of “realism” that we talked about yesterday in class. It doesn’t really make sense because Assayas realizes that reality, real life, doesn’t always make sense and that’s what he was trying to capture.
I think there are some similarities between this film and The International. It has that feeling of espionage and spy genre, all while dealing with coroporate finance issues. This film is obviously a lot less focused on explaining every little detail to the audience, a difference that we find from Hollywood cinema. I found myself often confused as to what was going on in Demonlover, and I think that somewhat had to do with the fact that a lot of people working with Diane (as well as Diane) were double agents with another company or had ulterior motives for their actions. It takes us a long time to figure out who Elise is working for, or if she’s even an important character. At the beginning she just seems very trivial, just an office assistant, but we find out later she plays a big role in the plot.
I don’t know how much globalization is involved in this movie, other than the fact that Diane’s (presumably French) company is working with companies in America and Japan. I feel like we are not really in the loop so to speak about the business transactions, we see a few meetings and such, but we don’t know how much money is at stake (although we can assume it is probably a lot if so many people are trying to sabotage the deal).
Walden, Elizabeth. “‘You Want to Torture Zora?’ Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover as Critique.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 3.1 (2005): 55–66. Web. 3 June 2014.
Demonlover was an interesting film that showed me how sick people could be. We see how globalized the concept of pornography has become. Earlier today in my human trafficking class I saw a documentary called Sex + Money. The documentary dealt with human trafficking in various ways. At one point it discussed the porn industry. One can see how huge it has become. The filmmakers went to a porn convention and recorded all the weird and just plain sick fetishes in porn. Believe me that Demonlover wasn’t exaggerating how intense adult entertainment can be. The porn industry has become a lucrative business as we saw Volf and Mangatronics competing to sign a big 3D Manga porn business called TokyoAnime. It is unfortunately true when one of the characters saws that this industry is supply and demand.
ReplyDeleteThe ending was crazy how Diane ended up in the Hell Fire Club. The film baffled me a few times like how Roger Ebert said, “no one seems to question the fact that they play to make money by torturing people. It’s all just business.” (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/demonlover-2003) Just like how big corporations are exploiting others and they sleep peacefully at night. But the demand is there, just like how one employee from TokyoAnime said that their content is what the clients want. Also at the end of the film when the child steals his father’s credit card to make an account of the Hell Fire Club. It just shows that everyone can be part of the supply and demand cycle.
We saw similar shots in Demonlover as we did in Boarding Gate. It’s not a surprise because Olivier Assayas directed both films. I felt more confused with this film than with Boarding Gate. Demonlover was less explained than Boarding Gate. I agree with Elsa that Diane was trivial. I also felt that Sandra in Boarding Gate was a bit ambiguous like Diane. Both female characters are loners in a corrupt world. I couldn’t decide if I should root for them or not.
I too, like others have expressed, was somewhat shocked by some of the things that went on in this film and was unaware that things like this even existed. Although when you really think about it, it isn’t that surprising. I certainly hope people aren’t losing their lives over pornographic websites however, I’m sure disturbing sites that feature torture are out there.
ReplyDeleteDemonlover seems to take its audience through a maze going back and forth and up and down with what it is really going, who’s bad, who’s good, and who actually works for whom. The film was confusing to say the least. I’m not quite sure what the director was trying to get across then again I’m not quite sure what his point was in Boarding Gate either.
Both films dealt a lot with people fighting for their lives – literally running from death, lies, manipulation and a significant male character that betrays the female lead. In both films, we see a male character get shot in the head in a sexual situation. We also see a female character who at first - doesn’t seem very significant just kind of a character in the background, who ends up playing a much larger role than anticipated. Both Elise, in Demonlover and Sue in Boarding Gate act as antagonists toward the female lead.
Also like Boarding Gate, we see people from different countries conjoin in terms of work, in order to profit for themselves. And in both cases it seems greed and own self-pride get the better of most of the characters resulting in some type of demise. Demonlover and Boarding Gate were both confusing throughout their entirety and ended ambiguously. Perhaps Olivier Assayas does this on purpose and doesn’t want his audience to have all the answers, maybe he just likes to leave us questioning.
As I take a break from inspecting the damage of tonight’s tennis ball sized hail, I couldn’t help but think back to the film. Demonlover was, at least for me, somewhat difficult to watch during some scenes that I’m sure we all vividly remember. And, coming from a senior Film Studies student, I’d say that this could be stating a lot. Yet, that’s beside the point and more of a personal observation. Don’t take my word for it.
ReplyDeleteLike many of the other students have already mentioned, I was left utterly confused through most of the film in terms of what exactly was occurring and why, although through the bits and pieces I pulled out, I could assemble the puzzle as best I could. It wasn’t until later in the film when I began to slowly gather up my ideas and make a coherent thought upon what exactly this film might be trying to state. Like many of my peers have noted there seems to be a rather extreme realism in a sense of the graphic content within this motion picture. And as how Monica stated the facts about what the filmmakers did to gather this information, this isn’t exactly something that is up for debate. (More so, I doubt it’s something we’d want to debate anyway). But I believe that it is that stark realism that in fact makes this film not only so shocking, but also incredibly relevant in terms of this type of trade and interaction. The director is stating this does happen and is not trying to sugar coat this information in an effort for us to take it willingly. In fact, the feeling of being force-fed this information did actually creep into my mind.
It was along these same lines where I began to look at this film in terms of the director’s previous work, most notably the film we screen in class, Boarding Gate. Despite having a similar story and thematic structure to an extent, I could definitely pick up the director’s style in terms of how he works the camera in an effort to portray his leading female characters. In fact, as many of us have probably noted, there are quite a few parallels within these two films, particularly that of sexual interactions as means of trade or a sort of separated class structure between characters that causes friction. All of these details eventually coming together in an interconnected web that sets the basis for globalization within these films.
But, perhaps I simply should just leave it at that. While as don’t take pride in admitting this, I feel like I didn’t understand this particular film as well as I probably should have. Although I do think that perhaps our in-class discussions could help clear the skies for me viewing this particular film in a more understanding light.
Demonlover is a film that shows a lot of sex and violence through the use of the media. Globalization is seen here because of the rising demand for the sex on the Web and it is in demand all throughout the world, from Paris to Tokyo, to the United States and Mexican desert, and to suburban America. All sorts of people demand this sex violence in this film, which really shocked me.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that is different about this film is the fact that all of the scenes are in upper scale, higher class locations, around people who have money and aren’t struggling to survive. In the expensive looking hotel rooms in Tokyo, in an expensive shoe boutique where the American and Elise are looking at boots, in a huge mansion where Diane was taken to get tortured by the Hellfire club, even in a nice suburban home where a young boy is a member of the Hellfire club. All of these locations are places where people with enough money go to and have. People in the other films that we have watched in class would not be at these types of places, just because of their financial situations.
In an article titled “Children of Men and Demonlover: Corporate psyches, media bodies and the possibility of Tomorrow,” Vicente Rodriguez Ortega writes that the demand for digital violence is ever growing and that these digital sources help achieve the want for violence to be seen. Ortega later goes on to explaining that Diane “has evolved from vendor to product” (42). She is drugged by the men of the Hellfire club and is on the website as a victim. Ortega makes the point that the screenshot changes into “black-and-white, grainy look of surveillance camera…bearing the unmistakable imprint of realism” (42). This type of shot makes it look like a more painful scene and as if it were really on a computer screen of violence being watched by the members of this Hellfire club.
Ortega, Vicente Rodriguez. “Children of Men and Demonlover: Corporate psyches, media bodies and the possibility of Tomorrow.” Film International, Issue53, 2011. Web. 3 June 2014.
http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.library.unl.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=f2826650-f6d6-4fbf-9cbb-e9dac5373375%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4104
I didn't notice until now, but both Demonlover and Boarding Gate take place unanimously in upper-class locations, even in scenes on airplanes where mostly only the First Class is filmed. As pointed in out in many others' points, the two films have many similarities but they also have significant differences as well. In Boarding Gate, the characters were not as amoral as they are in Demonlover; it seemed like a few of the characters had the possibility of loving each other. In fact, one of the main driving forces of the plot of Boarding Gate results from Sandra's love for Lester and the revenge she plots when she figures she was betrayed by him.
DeleteIn Demonlover, there is no such passion. Diane seems to be after power and money, but she seems to view them as ends in themselves; money and power for the sake of money and power. And sex, to Diane and perhaps all the other characters in Demonlover, is also something she values simply for its own sake, with no necessity for any sort of emotion in the act. The same also goes with violence. There is no tangible profit for consumers to attain through watching such videos as seen on Hell Fire Club, and yet, the sight seems to be quite popular. It seems the porn viewing public in the movie is entertained by violence because it is violent, and this is worth paying for. In this film, profit and pleasure and violence are synonymous , although it does not seem possible to have one without sacrificing the other two. This film's outlook on its characters is far bleaker than that of Boarding Gate is with it's own characters. In Demonlover, there are no characters with passions, or moral scruples. There is no character in the film who ever actually enjoys anything at all (unless one counts Herve enjoying raping Diane (which i bet he stopped enjoying once his head got blown off.)) Although sex is prevalent throughout the film, it is mostly animated, simulated, acted, removed from reality, and when it is shown between characters, no character ever is shown to orgasm. The pleasure of sex is never actually shown, what is shown is mostly only horrific phallus attacking women.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMuch like Code 46, Demonlover’s characters communicate through various languages, albeit here it is more of a form of personal choice rather than a collective vocabulary. Primarily Diane and Elise’s characters are able to transition between French and English as a representation of the varied workforce available as a result globalization and less of an accommodation to English-speaking audiences as was the case with Code 46. Similar to French actress Audrey Taotou playing Turkish born Seney, the actresses playing Diane and Elise are Danish and American respectively, a unique aspect that one may guess Assaya intended to represent corporate precedence over nationalism.
ReplyDeleteAuthor Vicente Rodriguez Ortega assess that while Dirty Pretty Things criticizes “the exploitative socio-economic infrastructures that support the skeleton of the uneven process of a Capital-ridden world,” Demonlover exposes the “de-humanizing drive that exists at the center of its dynamic of production” (2007, p.423). This detachment of human nature is seen in the non-reactions of airplane passengers during what a continuous fight scene, Elise’s video games and the American teen completing homework accompanied by HellFire Club. Assaya’s decision associate HellFire Club requests with “media” figures (and this very well could be true of actual S&M sites), The Avenger's Emma Peel and X-Men's Storm, was intentional and an expression of our culture today.
Rodriguez Ortega, Vicente. (2007). Transnational Media Imaginaries: Cinema, Digital Technology and Uneven Globalization. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. 1472131351.aa
This movie made me very cynical towards humanity. But that aside, the themes of globalization, as others have observed, exist in the globalized occurance of pornography. The internet not only makes it viewable all over the world, but the real money-makers from internet pron are from a variety of nations and speak many different languages. That seems to be a common theme in many of these films; so many languages are spoken. What is very interesting is that, in Demonlover, everyone understands each other, for the most part (there are a few interpreter scenes, but not many), these business people seem to understand each other if they are speaking French or English or another language. This shows the importance of language fluency in this globalized society. It is both a necessity and a result of globalization.
ReplyDeleteBecause of globalization, our actions do not just affect those who are immediately around us. They affect people across the world that we will never meet. This is most evidenced in the ending scene when the teenage boy steals his father's credit card in order to pay for viewing torture porn. The boy, obviously comfortable in Westernized suburbia, can casually cause a woman in another country to be tortured in front of cameras for the boy's viewing pleasure. This is a downside of globalization; it is an imminent result of globalization in a world that is inherently depraved.
As many of my classmates have stated, I too was very confused for the majority of the film. I left class wondering what it was that I had just watched and even after I have had some time to digest it, I still don't think I understand. I was very confused by the torture website. At first I thought it was animated like the other sites the film shows but the end of the movie suggests otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese company's clients were mostly Americans, I found this idea to be very interesting. This shows how the internet is playing a major role in the globalization of our world. We are now able to connect with people from almost anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. This has never been done before. Further, this allows different businesses to connect and work together that may not have been able to before the internet existed. Demonlover shows how the internet has played and will play a major role in the globalization of the world. I found it particularly interesting that the culture that seems to be the prominent culture being globalized was Asian culture. I can't think of a film that we have watched up until this point that didn't portray western culture as being the prominent culture of the future.
First off I agree with Dillon on what he had to say. This movie, like Boarding Gate, is a film that seems to be about how the little people can be lost inside a system built on the misfortune of others. Though I find it difficult to see such a level of corporate espionage in the porn industry, and Japanese porn at that. I do suppose that a Hostel style porn ring could have some unsavory characters. However, I found even those parts of the movie somewhat far fetched and looking hard for a reaction.
ReplyDeleteI did find that this movie does show how even the weirdest shit can be sold. I am not sure on the profit margins Manga porn and 3D porn. The porn industry is a multi-billion one, but my point stands. culture's and what they produce as their entertainment may be exported and sold, leaving nothing not tagged for the check out.
A couple other posts talked about the internet. And yes if it weren't for the internet such porn would never make it into the bedrooms of credit card stealing teenagers. Yet, what shocks a little bit more is that that teenager would never know if what he was watching was real or fake. No thoughts about human misery were running through his mind. I suppose this is a statement on how disconnected we become when we see things, horrible things, through 15 inch screens. We become desensitized. If this is a point of the movie, we went through a lot to get that point.