Ilse Aichinger, 1948
Lilly Axster
Katherine Klinger
Conversations
Hannah Arendt, 1950
Hannah Fröhlich
Nicola Lauré al-Samarai
Conversations
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949
Dagmar Fink
Tom Holert
Conversations
Billie Holiday, 1939
Jamika Ajalon
Rúbia Salgado
Conversations
Adrian Piper, 1983
Belinda Kazeem
Anna Kowalska
Conversations
Yvonne Rainer, 1990
Monika Bernold
Shirley Tate
Conversations
|
 These conversations are meant to open up spaces for thought between the authors and the ways they relate to the reference text. The editors pose a number of questions, which the authors may address or reject. It is up to the authors to answer, not to answer, or to introduce their own topics.
Conversations Monika Bernold / Shirley Tate
Conzepte /
At the beginning of the film everything is still open but the basic concept is already visible in condensed form. Monika chose the beginning of Privilege and she works with some of Yvonne Rainer’s formal decisions. Shirley takes the title literally and focuses on who says what in the film rather than on how the film is made. How did you select scenes or pieces of dialogue from the film? How did you define your main focus?
Monika Bernold /
I’ve been interested in beginnings for many years. Beginnings mark thresholds to the not-yet and passages into becoming. They are defined by a fundamental openness and uncertainty, but at the same time by a potentiality that contains much if not all of what follows. In my work as a historian, I have studied the beginnings of memoirs written by so-called “simple folk” from mainly rural regions of Austria and it became clear that the meaning attributed to each person’s own life in these written narratives, as well as perceptions of discrimination and privilege, are often closely interwoven with the way that person tells the story of his or her own birth. This view of a double representation – as the start of a life history and as a narrative of the beginning of a life – was very helpful for the historical reconstruction of the complex structures of facts and fictions of identity in written forms of self-reference.
In Rainer’s film, I was particularly fascinated by the idea of repeating the beginning. In a play on the convention of authorization in the opening credits of Privilege, the double beginning both problematizes and duplicates the identity of the figure of the filmmaker. I think the film is very much about the multi-dimensionality of stories and history. Engaging with the stylistic means of film is an important transmitter for this complexity, as the first pages of the script make especially clear. That reinforced my decision to refer to the beginning of the script.
Shirley Tate /
I chose not to focus on how the film is made, as I am not a film critic but a cultural sociologist who focuses on postcolonial/decolonial studies, racialization, affect, gender and discourse analysis. For me, looking at the dialogue was therefore an essential starting point in understanding how privilege emerges in the film itself. To ignore the dialogue or to favor filmic over discourse analysis just would not make sense for someone from my disciplinary background. It’s also about how privilege itself emerges in something which was supposedly about the menopause, which I found really interesting as very often it is the mundane that dictates how racism, white privilege, Black disadvantage and gender inequality operate. So how easy it is in a conversation about the menopause to begin to also tap into taken-for-granted ideas on people who have been made into racialized others in ways which “aren’t about giving offence” but “speaking about real life experiences of racialized others”.
For me the decision to focus on the body of the Black male other as problematic had been made by the film itself, based on existing stereotypes of Black men which exist within the social and are easily accessed by everyone. It was their very banality which made the choice a straightforward one. As well as the fact that these stereotypes span the Black Atlantic and have as much resonance in the USA as they do in the UK. This is what is really interesting, then, about anti-Black racism and its Western hemisphere configuration. Yvonne Rainer’s choices made me choose specific dialogues from the film, since to me, speaking about racial difference between Puerto Ricans and African Americans, quoting Fanon, touching on Black men as rapists and abusers of women, already establishes the boundaries of the Black male subject being outlined.
Conzepte JS /
The reasons for your decision to focus on the dialogue and leave the film’s aesthetic strategies to one side are understandable. But as a filmmaker, I’d be interested in your (postcolonial/decolonial) view of the visual dimension or, more precisely, in your analysis of the interaction between dialogue and cinematographic aesthetic in Privilege. At some points in the film, there is friction and contradiction between what is said and what one sees on screen. Carlos’s dialogue about Brenda’s sexual interest in Blacks and Latinos, for example, is filmed in black and white, Carlos is heard as a voice-over (he looks into the camera, but doesn’t speak in the shot) while the camera slowly zooms in for an extreme close-up. This work with and on cinematographic conventions can also be interpreted as an attempt by the filmmaker to show different ways of seeing (including clichés) and to open up a critical discussion of the racist status quo of the early 1990s. What do you think?
Shirley Tate /
You are really right here. I have watched the film again to get an understanding of what you mean and you are really right. I think that at all times the film seems to show a gritty underside to whiteness, one occupied by fear of, but fascination with, the Black other. This was also shown, for example, in the park scene when Carlos was sitting on the bench looking at the white woman and child, very present to the gaze of white threat but absent to the dominant parent-child coupling which underpins the USA as a racial state. I wonder though if we would have read this the same without Fanon’s words being spoken?
Conzepte SR /
The rape of a white woman by a Black man, as dealt with in the film, is a constellation that combines both racist and sexist stereotypes in complex ways. Rainer’s use of this motif is a provocation, and Shirley is very critical of it. What is your view?
Monika Bernold /
Using and quoting stereotypes can be a provocation. But the question is: who does the stereotype provoke, who does it reassure, who is disturbed by it? There they are, the differences and their multiplication offered by the film, which render privilege visible, perhaps even unmistakable. The multiplication of perspectives allows me a distance from which I can judge not only in terms of film aesthetics but also in political terms—political because it rejects simple perpetrator/victim dichotomies. Concerning rape, the constellation of violence and desire that Rainer brings into play, addressing its ambivalence, is something I think is important. My own interpretation of the sequence was very strongly influenced by my ambivalence memories of reading Fanon.
Conzepte /
How did the specific form of your text emerge in terms of overall approach (e.g., writing in the first person), structure, and stylistic devices (e.g., including directing instructions)?
Monika Bernold /
The invitation from you, Jo, to write experimentally allowed me to try out an associative way of writing in which I was able to playfully combine two separate areas of my academic work, film studies and auto/biography studies, while engaging with Yvonne Rainer’s primary text. Writing outside of academic templates was unfamiliar at first, but pleasurable and insightful.
Shirley Tate /
I watched the film several times to make sure that my angle made sense and then my text emerged quite quickly after that. The film itself is so very multi-faceted that I could have gone down many avenues, but I chose the one that seemed paradoxical in a film supposedly about menopause. That is: why in a film about menopause did Black men become such a central issue? What did they represent about the nation and white women’s positioning within that? Why not do a comparative account with equal numbers of Black and white women on the menopause if that was the point? What function did the Black men serve? Was the film a comment on a whole unequal society and its approach to minority groups? These were some of the questions I asked myself in order to get a focus on the film which made sense from my particular perspective.
Monika, can you tell me what inspired you the most to begin writing?
Monika Bernold /
The inspiration actually came out of my dialogue with Jo, the appeal of becoming part of the weave of voices in the Conzepte project. In the beginning there was my desire for more open narratives than those I am used to from feminist, academic contexts, “open” also in the sense of experiments in writing and reading. The possibility to practice confrontation, dialogue, and dissent with other feminist and critical positions, texts, and films.
Conzepte /
In her film, Yvonne Rainer combines two genres—documentary and fiction—running side by side in two parallel plots. The cast also includes two directors: Yvonne Rainer playing herself (as a white documentary filmmaker) and the Black feature film director Yvonne Washington, played by actress Novella Nelson. How do the film’s formal strategies affect its protagonists, its themes, and the links between them?
Shirley, you write: “Choosing to look at menopause and Black men as threat erases the intersections of racism, sexism, class and white feminist privilege in narrating lives and subjectivities.” Do you think that the film is racist in terms of its structure and its choice of themes—or is that an exaggeration?
And Monika, you write: “The ambivalence and polyphony of discrimination and difference were translated onto the stage of the cinematic space by Privilege as early as 1990.” So you see this openness, that nonetheless exposes differences in power, as a strength.
What do you make of each other’s viewpoints here?
Monika Bernold /
Spelling out the privileges of whiteness and the privileges of white feminism as a psychodynamic of white myths, as Shirley does in her text, was very illuminating for me, especially in terms of her chosen form of address, that surprised me and shook me out of my routine distance as a reader. After reading Shirley’s text, I was able to see certain aspects of Privilege differently, in a new way. In her critique of Yvonne Rainer’s film, Shirley makes clear that ‘we’ (not only as a privileged collective but also as a privileged ME) repeatedly face the decision of where to direct our gaze and the question of which privileges this reveals as privileges of white feminism, MY white feminism. My reply to Shirley would be as follows: I, as a white feminist, produce a form of ignorance that cannot be simply broken down by a correct viewing of Privilege. But I also believe that privileges do not disappear just because we become aware of them.
The project of de-privileging whiteness from positions of white feminism must perhaps acknowledge the dimensions of its own impossibility, at the same time as striving for the impossible. For me, Yvonne Rainer’s film tried to achieve this to a degree in 1990, succeeding especially in its formal insistence on the ambivalence and polyphony of identity and privilege. At the same time, as Shirley makes clear, Privilege failed to an extent, necessarily I believe, to see the connection between racialization, racism, and the privileges of white feminism.
Shirley Tate /
I wouldn’t say the film is racist, as I’m sure that was not the intention. What it does do, though, is tread a very fine line in its documentary/fiction format where, as a viewer, one begins to question what the purpose of this film really was. I think it has a clear anti-racist function, as seen in Yvonne Washington’s interjection much later in the film. However, getting to this needs a quite detailed teasing through in discussion with the audience, as it is quite possible to sit and think “yes, that is what Black people are like so it’s no wonder they appear like this in this film”. It is, in other words, a film that could be used in teaching about white privilege.
I think you’re right, Monika, when you write that Privilege translated the ambivalence and polyphony of discrimination and difference onto the stage of the cinematic space early on. But again, I think that this is something relevant to the audience. We see this because of our perspectives, but this need not necessarily be the case for everyone. For example, I can imagine that anti-racists would be very disturbed by the portrayal of Black men in the film and also that of the young, Black Puerto Rican wife.
What do you make of the positioning of the young, Black Puerto Rican woman, Monika?
Monika Bernold /
Do you mean the character in the film called Digna, or the ‘young Black Puerto Rican women’ who does not appear in the film? She, the nameless one, would stand for various young Black women whose stories are not told and whose bodies remain invisible in the film. I know little about the lives of young Black Puerto Rican women in New York, nor do I learn much about it from the film. They have no place in the film. They are represented by Digna alone. As a young Black Puerto Rican, Digna is positioned in her relationship with Carlos as a migrant and as a victim of racist psychiatry. She is seen and heard in various film representations of this position and in various film constellations. To me, it feels as if she is functionalized in the car/mobility scene when she is ‘used’ as an ironic figure of (self-)criticism of Jenny. In spite of this, I like her line, “I’m still hanging around,” that speaks against the principle of her disappearance, although without being able to cancel it out. Digna almost always speaks in the form of directly addressing the audience, performing in strongly connoted costumes and linguistic idioms that both emphasize and call into question her positioning as Other.
I find your analysis of the feminization of racism in Privilege very interesting, related, as you argue, to psychiatric diagnoses and the figure of Digna. Do you know of films that work on deconstructing categories of knowledge at the same time as successfully critiquing forms of feminization of racism?
Shirley Tate /
I just watched The Help [1] recently. It’s an amazing film about Black women’s struggles to be heard through class, race and segregation in the American South. This film looks specifically at the part that the white mistress and Black domestic and care worker roles play in keeping racism in operation. That is: even at the level of such intimacy within private households, shared gender does not guarantee connections, be they political or affective. The film Imitation of Life [2] is also interesting as it deals with the same worker/mistress dynamics alongside a story of romantic attachment and unsuccessful passing which leads to eventual return to Black community as the only location of acceptance.
Conzepte /
Which readers were you thinking of while you were writing on Privilege?
Monika Bernold /
You, the editors, were my imaginary ideal readers, because speaking about the text has been an integral part of the Conzepte project. Beyond that, I may have had readers in mind with an interest in politics and film, with whom, ideally, it might be possible to speak about Privilege or about my text and the autobiographical and conceptual figures it contains.
Shirley Tate /
I was thinking of a German-speaking audience who needn’t necessarily be white or women, but who would be antiracist and antisexist.
Conzepte /
A question on a strong “character” in your text, Shirley, namely the YOU in capital letters. To us, this seems to be angrily addressing the audience (as we understood your text, you also see this audience as white and privileged). How did you conceive of this device, what is the thinking behind it? It is also interesting that the text works not with a plural “you and us” (in the sense of “them and us”) but with a individual “you”...
Shirley Tate /
This YOU emerged organically for me because I really thought that the political message of the film should not be lost and should be conveyed in a forceful way. I also think that we are all imbricated in various discourses which we struggle with on a daily basis, so the YOU need not be a white YOU here, it could be a racialized other YOU who has taken on board ideas of Black inferiority, Black danger, Black men’s abuse of women etc. As Charles W. Mills reminds us in his book The Racial Contract [3] we live in societies structured to ensure white privilege and Black people and other minoritized groups can participate in keeping this contract in place.
Conzepte /
And a question on the “characters” in your text, Monika: like Yvonne Rainer in Privilege, you use opening and closing credits, lists of names, as a stylistic device. In your case, however, the list includes not only names, but above all concepts that might be said to shape your text as its “cast,” concepts like Nesigurnost (uncertainty), Rape, or Similarity. Can you tell us something about this (and about your “main characters”)?
Monika Bernold /
Yes, I probably did cast concepts as characters, as you so aptly put it. In the closing credits of my text, they represent questions, ideas, and images that caught my attention while reading Yvonne Rainer’s text and while watching the film, and around which I constructed my own text and its imagery. Beginning, Repetition, Nesigurnost, Inequality, Similarity, Stara žena (old woman). Some of these concept-characters also represent those that do not appear in my text, but which could do, as embodiments of the stories Rainer tells in Privilege or which she touches in me through the film. Memory, for example, Exclusion, or Absence. An interesting question concerns the relationship between these concept-characters. How are they positioned in space and which directions do their movements take? The figure of repetition, for example, might enter the picture together with that of memory, or make it disappear. Concept-characters might also invite identification, no? Nesigurnost and Stara žena are, I think, conceptual interfaces between Privilege and the autobiographical aspects of my text.
Conzepte /
One thing explicitly requested by the Conzepte project [4] was a willingness to develop a personal-political position. What we had in mind were (many and varied) speaker positions. The editors discussed whether this would prompt authors to adopt an identity-based position or whether it would enable other, freer forms of self-positioning.
In your texts, the two of you develop your respective positions by very different means: Monika weaves autobiographical information and commentary into her text, while Shirley’s position is articulated via an interplay of objective statements and remarks addressed directly to the reader. What did you make of the Conzepte brief? How does each of you view the other’s text in this regard?
Shirley Tate /
I chose not to have autobiography here as I thought the film provided so much very rich material that it was unnecessary. Having said that though, I think that whenever we write we are always positioned as someone, and we position our readers as someone, too. Here, for me, the power of the film was in the very visceral way it spoke directly to me, and that is the response it elicited from me, a visceral one which I could only convey by speaking directly to the imagined reader of the text, the YOU. Watching, thinking, reading, writing are affective processes to me, and too often we put that to one side and never speak directly to our reader because of the constraints of the project, the medium, and also in my case the academy and what is seen as valid knowledge.
Monika Bernold /
For me, the interesting thing about your Conzepte project was entering a space of possibility where one’s own biographical, academic, and political positioning while watching a film, while reading and writing, can be reflected on and discussed with others. This creates shifts, it creates motion.
I would be interested, Shirley, to hear how you define the relationship between your two titles. What kind of connection is marked by the colon between the “facts of Blackness” and the “psychic life of white myths”?
Shirley Tate /
I came up with that title and the colon after I watched Privilege a few times. I was trying to see what connection the film was trying to make between whiteness which seemed to be its main focus and Blackness which seemed to be its threatening opposite. What intrigued me was the fact that even when the camera was focused on the Black participants who were telling their stories, it was inevitably a white story of Blackness as threat, as mental illness, as violator of women, as Black women violated by Black men, as tragic “mulatta,” as under-employed. It seemed to me to be a story of white America and its continuing need to keep Blackness at bay through its own myths of itself and the racialized presence within. The colon helps to show this psychic connection between the Self and the Other which attempts to remain hidden within a white story of Black abjection.
Monika Bernold /
The concept of narrative is a recurring topic in your text. What do you think is the status of biographical and subjective narratives within the complex systems of hierarchizing privilege and especially for perspectives of shifting, reflecting and altering these systems?
Shirley Tate /
I work on narratives (life stories) and I think that however they are constructed they have much to tell us about how the world is viewed and constructed and how identifications are made. I think, for example, that overlaying Fanon with the image of Carlos in the park helped us to see at that moment that Carlos was not the threat but the white psyche itself which dredges up threat as its focus. Digna’s words made me pause to notice the absence of Black women, but also that she did not speak about the menopause but nostalgia for home and the good life in Puerto Rico where she would have been understood, as well as domestic violence and mental health. Her narrative changed the perspective of the film’s privileging of something that women experience later in life—the menopause—to make us think about the specificities of Black women’s experience of racism at any age. The question for me was why was her narrative inserted when it was so off-topic in terms of the menopause? This question about her narrative helped to make clear that the focus was on that very colon you mentioned earlier.
/
The conversation with Monika Bernold and Shirley Tate on their texts about Yvonne Rainer’s film Privilege (1990) took place via e-mail and has been shortened in the editing process. Sabine Rohlf and Jo Schmeiser asked the questions.
Translation from the German (Monika Bernold) by Nicholas Grindell
Literature
Privilege by Yvonne Rainer, 16 mm, color and black & white, 103 min., 1990. In: Yvonne Rainer, A Woman Who …, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore 1999. For the film see: http://boystown.tumblr.com/pos...
Notes
1) The feature film The Help by Tate Taylor (USA 2011) is based on the novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett (New York 2009).
http://kathrynstockett.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
2) Imitation of Life is a novel by Fannie Hurst (New York 1933 / Durham, NC 2004) that was filmed by John M. Stahl (USA 1934) and by Douglas Sirk (USA 1959). Shirley Tate is referring here to the version by Sirk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
3) Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract, Ithaca, NY 1997
4) “We hope to receive texts that give a clear idea of the links between the chosen book, film, song and the thinking, work, and personal/political viewpoint of the writer. This may include autobiographical elements, but not necessarily.” |
|
