BUYING A BUNCH OF RADISHES? VAN SANT'S ELEPHANT

The first chapter focused on a series of films in which the director established an oppositional relation to the spectator. In many of these films the director was aiming to tell the spectators something that they supposedly did not want to hear. This particular stance explains why it was possible to sum up in small (and schematic) formulas the directors’ confrontation with the spectators. It also explains why the analysis of the films led to Ranciere's critique of the stultification that the traditional pedagogue performs: these directors are not ignorant schoolmasters, but appear instead as all-knowing masters. However, as suggested in the discussion of Lars von Trier, things can be more complex and paradoxical than that. Rather than simply embodying the all-knowing master, thereby producing a form of ‘authoritarian fiction’ (Suleiman 1983), von Trier, in particular, tends to play the role of the master in a more ironic manner. This irony does not reduce the manipulative nature of his films, but it opens a breach in the didactic discourse, inviting us to implicate the director in the critique the film delivers. I do not think that something similar can be said about Simon Staho's or Brian de Palma's films; Haneke, however, does have a dry irony – so dry that in the violent climate of Funny Games it can be overlooked.

The films that take centre stage in this second chapter speak from a very different directorial position. They are much less direct in their confrontation with the spectator, they produce unease and disturbance in a subtler manner, and they even contain an element of seduction. Both of my key examples are heavily aestheticised films, and are therefore often pleasing to the spectator. As a result of this more oblique approach, these films produce varied responses. To some viewers they might be beautiful and sad, others might find them uneventful and disappointing, and still others might find them hugely offensive, not least on ethical and political grounds. I shall maintain that they belong to the feel-bad category in so far as they appeal to the spectator's desire for catharsis, only to refuse it.