Who Did It?
    Keywords: Narratives, Spectator, Immediacy, Modernism, Postmodernism Sérgio L Tavares Filho (selutava@jyu.fi)
    
    Introduction
    The following analysis relates to the transition from modernist to postmodern cinema/audiovisual, and the understanding of how the focus has changed from one “era” to another is essential to understand how new media (and especially computers) can be perceived on contemporary society. What is seen on the film Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005) is an unsolved mystery: this analysis will try to understand how an interpretation of it can display several of the most contemporary ideas on media, such as immediacy, transparency, interaction and repositioning the audience. Although it is a practice that comes from early cinema, as it will be presented, in contemporary media paradigm it seems to make much sense and to represent a stronger tendency. Hopefully it will also pose questions about how texts are viewed by the readers nowadays and if there are possibilities of subverting, creating or enhancing the experience of interpretation. Finally, the essay makes a modest attempt to classify Caché as a modernist or postmodernist film. Together, the answers provided and discussions raised by the article are an important part of the whole study presented by this compilation as a thesis, since it goes from traditional narrative to subversive storytelling. Using traditional media but already aiming the effects of new media might raise an important question: where is, exactly, the change on new media?
    
    Caché: plot outline
    Caché1, portrays the fictional story of a couple terrorized by the mysterious arrival of videotapes through the mail, a fact that may be related to events occurred years ago, when the protagonist, Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) had issues with his adopted brother. Once the investigations take place, several conflicts unfold, from the character’s childhood to a marriage crisis caused by the investigations. 2 However, the question of who delivered the tapes, of what generated the entangling mystery, remains unanswered.
    
    1 2
    
    Caché. Dir. Michael Haneke. Les Films du Losange. 2005. IMDB, Caché. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/ Access in September 30, 2009.
    
    Reader, narrator and author: at the same room
    An interpretation of the plot solution leads us to a conclusion that may open a discussion about an unusual form of narration. The relevance of such discussion is justified by new ways of creating meaning and interaction with the viewer, an interaction that may be broadened by new media technology as, for example, the internet as a supporting media to film, books or other 'texts'. This Under the paradigm of new media this interaction might have raised the demand for interactivity, not in the usual way of “films talking to audience”, but rather a demand for the audience to reach a different status, closer to the film development (matters that are going to be discussed on this and other essays contained on this compilation of articles). What follows is not the complete analysis of the film, but discussions on this specific interpretation that answers the film question (“who delivered the tapes to the protagonists?”) by saying that who did it was Michael Haneke himself. According to Tzvetan Todorov, Russian formalist, the genre of the “fantastic” narrative may belong to the “eerie” universe (as Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, where mysteries are solved by unusual, but rationally explainable coincidences) or to the “marvelous” universe, where facts are explained by supernatural phenomena3. However, the particular interpretation on Caché presented by this work invites us to engage on a peculiar form of narrative: the fact would have an “acausal” genesis, apart from the diegesis4 of the film. It may not even be considered a non-digetic feature, like the soundtrack score that the viewer listens and that the characters do not, for this soundtrack belongs to the film, but not to the fictional universe: tthere characters do not hear the music, but the viewer does (HAYWARD, 2000). The fantastic event (the mysterious delivery of the tape to the protagonists) has no cause inside the story’s world, not supernatural, not rational, not even a deus ex machina situation.5 It might be perceived as counter-cinema or deconstruction, that is, practices of cinema that subvert the usual cinematographic narration, codes and practices (HAYWARD, 2000:80). In deus ex machina, the author intervenes on the story as a direct agent, without empowering any character to make the intervention (having the tapes delivered). Inside the world of Caché, which is
    3
    
    Todorov, Tzvetan. Pour une theorie du recit [For a Theory of Prose]. Sao Paulo, SP: Perspectiva, 2001. P. 35
    
    “Diegesis refers to narration, the content of the narrative, the fictional world as described inside the story, Ub film it refers to all that is really going on on-screen, that is, to fictional reality.” Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies, The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 84-86. 5 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, deus ex machina is an expression in Latin that means “a power, event, person, or thing that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; providential interposition, esp. in a novel or play”. "Deus ex machina." Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. . From the Aristotelian point of view, the deus ex machina resource is criticized for offering an easy solution with not much truth likeness. “[…] the incidents should be nothing illogical; and should anything illogical be necessary.” Aristotle. Poetics. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, University of Copenhagen, 2001. Print. Pp. 30-32.
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    depicted as the “real world” (no supernatural forces, but a rather rational investigation about who delivered the tapes) there is not, allegedly, an agent; no character delivered the tape, no divinity, no force of nature, no miracle. Much is advocated against the use of such tool (Aristotle, 2001), since it is a simple solution that compromises the verisimilitude as well the suspension of disbelief. That goes, for example, to a film portraying the sufferings and struggles of a poor family which, in the end, simply finds a lottery ticket flying over the property. It is a picturesque example that serves to understand why the tool of deus ex machina is often criticized and treated as scriptwriting inadequacy. However Haneke uses this artifice in a different way; it is precisely the deus ex machina that generates the mystery in the story, and unlike the common usage of this narrative structure, which often portrays the “miracle” of the deus ex machina as a coincidence, a divine manifestation or a force of nature, the agent is external to the narrative. We might remember of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, where people that lived by or crossed a street named Magnolia had their lives changed on a night that frogs fell from the sky6. In this case, it is possible to think that it is also a direct intervention from P.T. Anderson to the diegetic world of the characters empowered by a God-like force. Haneke’s works, on the other hand, relates more to the idea of interaction and post-modern film, if his films are to be considered together as an opus7. In Caché there is a cause for the delivery of the tapes. It lies, however (and accordingly to the present interpretation), outside the narrative’s universe. Thus the fact is not completely acausal, having its genesis on the author himself, on peculiar way of deus ex machina where there is no divinity empowered but the author himself, and an intervention that is so subtle that does not take place within the screen, being part of the film: the viewer won’t see Haneke leaving the tapes at the couple’s mailbox; the viewer will only realize that if reflecting about the movie after the movie has ended. Usual interventions made by authors consist in the author empowering a character to perform interventions relevant to the story. They can be either a thunder storm or odd coincidences (if the story follows no supernatural occurrences). In another case, the author will empower supernatural forces to do so, creating a fantastic diegetic (fictional) universe. But in Caché, it is hard to believe that a supernatural force delivered the tapes. Differently from a fantastic tale where tapes “materialize” on a room (it is very unlikely that Haneke was trying to write a science fiction film about spontaneous materialization of objects, or even an eerie
    
    Magnolia. Dir. P.T. Anderson. New Line Cinema. 1999. “A work or production in any of the arts; a production or performance more generally”. "Opus." Oxford English Dictionary. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. .
    6 7
    
    story about dream and madness, being the case of the characters imagining the whole conflict). It is possible, though, to affirm: who delivered the tape was Michael Haneke. This direct intervention of the author on the universe of the narrative changes the perception of the whole narrative experience, since the reader knows (or gets to know after the story has ended) there is an external agent acting on the diegetic universe of the story. Furthermore, this agent (the film director) shares the same world (or level, or dimension) as the reader: we might suppose that Haneke is in Germany, or in France, or shooting a new movie while the viewer is watching the film, and the entangling idea is that even being part of the real world he was able to “sneak” inside the story and put the tape at the character’s house. The lack of a logical, rational or supernatural explanation within the narrative that explains the appearance of the tape in the character’s bedroom implies an agent located outside the whole universe of the characters. In other words, it is an agent that is able to travel between the real and fictional world. Viewer, author and characters are taken to a similar level. It might be relevant to illustrate how Haneke’s intervention, on this interpretation of Caché, should not be classified as an “extra-diegetic feature”. His intervention does not belong to the level of the fictional world. Seymor Chatman brings some interesting discussions on the topic, based on Gérard Genette’s graphic of the narrative elements8.
    
    8
    
    Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell U.P. 1978:150
    
    ImpliedAuthor
    MICHAEL HANEKE
    
    Implied Reader
    (“real world”: level of nonfictional communication)
    
    Narrator
    
    (fictional universe)
    
    Addressee
    
    Character
    
    1
    
    (level of action)
    
    Character 2
    
    Figure 3.1: Based on Gérard Genette’s graphic, the illustration of Haneke’s intervention on the fictional world. On one hand, such position may set a fracture on the narrative diegesis and weaken its verisimilitude 9 (or truth likeness), generating an undesired effect of breaking the illusion of the film. Haneke dodged this effect by creating the expectation that the viewer would find a solution to the mystery until the end of the film (never breaking the illusion, never showing he could be the one responsible for delivering the tapes). However this solution never comes and the viewer is compelled to think of the possibilities after the movie is over. In this sense, Haneke preserves the sense of reality and narrative cohesion until the final credits appearance, to only play his deus ex machina trick afterwards and thus preserve the suspension of disbelief10.
    
    Verisimilitude is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the fact or quality of being verisimilar; the appearance of being true or real; likeness or resemblance to truth, reality, or fact; probability”. As the dictionary states, it is a term also applicable to statements or narratives. “Verisimilute” Oxford English Dictionary. Web.
    9
    
    30 Sept. 2009. .
    The notion that an audience watching a fictional film permits itself to believe that the story is believable. Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges has a very succinct definition for that: “[The Actor] on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person.” (from “Everything and Nothing”, Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, eds. New York: New Directions, 1962, p. 248.
    10
    
    Stepping a little out of this analysis, we might consider an example that illustrates how a director might “break in” the film’s diegesis: Alfred Hitchcock appeared in nearly 37 self-referential cameos in his movies, from 1926 to 1976. The appearances were usually plain, as a passerby trying to catch a bus in North by Northwest (1959), or even glancing at the camera on a corridor as in Marnie (1964)11. That may have been a playful way Hitchcock used to interact with the viewer, stating that there he was, the magician behind the curtain, offering the viewer another story. On Haneke’s Caché, although there’s no appearance, the intervention is much stronger, considering that he was the one who delivered the tapes to the main characters. If Hitchcock would play with the spectator in this manner, we might think of him changing the position of crime evidences, or stashing the crime weapon somewhere else — which would consist on a very diverse way of storytelling and definitely break the feeling of verisimilitude, since his movies were mainly crime stories and the audience most probably wanted, first and foremost, to see the mystery being solved in a rational, investigative manner. Since Haneke didn’t appear on the screen, the viewer will only realize the director’s interference after the movie has ended. But Hitchcock and his cameos are an interesting way of perceiving the director within the narrative waiving to us, the viewers.
    
    A reality-game?
    Regarding the problem of diegesis and verisimilitude, it is proper to claim that a strong diegesis is more based on coherency rather than physical laws or the boundaries of rationality. If the characters remain loyal to their natural and spontaneous reactions, the diegesis coherence is preserved. “Every fictional work projects purely intentional objects outside the narrative”12, that is, the story must convince the viewer that the object depicted could exist as autonomous objects on the real world (people, places, cities etc). On Haneke, however, the object of the ‘actor’ who delivered the tapes is not a projection, but Haneke himself. If so, the viewer is facing a narrative with a direct external interference, and a very contemporary and popular analogy would be the reality-shows, where characters on a closed environment develop a narrative and suffer specific external influence by an agent (the public, for example).
    
    11
    
    Alfred Hitchcock - The Master of Suspense. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. .
    
    12
    
    Rosenfeld, Anatol. A Personagem de Ficcao [The Fictional Character]. Sao Paulo, SP: Perspectiva,
    
    2005, p. 15
    
    Hence Caché is a film that places the reader on a higher level of participation, as an accomplice of the author, witnessing the author’s intervention over the “aquarium” where the characters are: in a way, the feeling of standing on the shoulder of a giant that not only had the power to create all the narratives and character, but also to intervene on it the way he wants. After the film ends, the puzzle lingers on. Will the reader realize the agent is the author only after the end of the narrative? The reader may even become part of the author’s game, becoming another character trying to figure out who delivered the tapes. Or on a written/narrated text, even the narrator, allegedly omniscient, might question who performed that action. After that, it is possible to ask when the story has really ended – if we have reached a point where the reader is one of the characters, does the narrative end in the aftermath, in the real world? The possibilities are multiple, and if not new phenomena, we might ask what is new on the media paradigm that makes these features more relevant, more appropriate or more in line with the context: will they make more sense as new media becomes more interactive? We might also wonder about narratives that openly display to the viewer this kind of direct intervention, or even how the characters would react within the story if they knew that someone is able to do such illogical interferences. New media, with its channels and platforms, allow the viewer to have much more power of interaction – even a power that the viewer may not want to have. But taking interpretation on account, we might discover such potential of interaction and agency in other ways. Supporting websites, cross-media of all kinds, puzzles, enigmas, investigations gathering different kinds of media are possible, making the opera even more broad, abstract and open. As the content of internet is unlimited and overtly accessible, an author might even lead the text's intention to the web and the range of possibilities becomes broadens up. Such “freedom of choice” is not always welcomed by the viewer, who often prefers to be a spectator rather than a co-author. Apart from viewers co-authoring and making their own intentions as authors on the texts (useful to remember Umberto Eco declaring that the texts have intentions of their own)13, it is possible to realize that when author, narrator and reader reach the same level, there are also less hierarchically fixed parts and, thus, a puzzling and exciting experience may be proposed, somewhat differently from what viewers are used to.
    
    Eco, Umberto. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Ed. Stefan Collini. New York: Cambridge UP, 1992. Pp. 7677.
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    Modernism, Postmodernism, Self-reflection: a change in the mirror position
    The characters of Caché rationality won’t solve Haneke’s game, unless they consider at some point that they are characters in a film. Having that in mind, we might straight-forwardly ask: are we all characters on Haneke’s story? Regardless if we are or if we are not, as viewers, we must find the path from difficulty of interpretation to the stability (perhaps to the instability) of realizing the obvious fact that he’s at the same the same in our physical world as the director, but as a director who can cross the frontier of fictional and real world. It is important to remember that after the reader realizes this, there is a change on the paradigm, and the reader assumes a role that is closer to the role of Haneke: if not the role of an agent, the role of an accomplice of the director. The modernist film is essentially self-reflexive, usually drawing attention to the medium of narration, that is, to the way the story is told, such as graphics, aesthetics, subverting the chronological order of the narrative. There is also a very influence of modernization, rationality, technology, science and knowledge. But post-modernist film (as well as post-modernism in a whole) has not a clear definition of what it is. Pluralist, a product of social, political and cultural agendas, post-modern film is a vague concept14. Under the light of Caché, however, we might think that the self-reflexive feature of modernist film is turning the mirror to the audience: post-modernism seem to be, still, self-reflexive. Discussions about the media have never been so heated, but the element of “narcissism” seems less present on its metalanguage. In Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hours Party People the main character speaks directly to the camera, breaking the “4th wall”15; or in Karel Reizs’s The French Lieutenant, a film where actors’ and characters’ lives interconnect and overlap. Haneke himself has a wide use of 4th wall break and fictive universe subversion in Funny Games (Michael Haneke, Denmark, 1997, and USA, remake, 2007), where the characters speak and look at the audience and even rewind the movie with a remote control in order to change the course of the narrative. We can see a prominent participation on the viewer here, not in the “web 2.0” mode, but one step closer to that – participation and interaction seem a reality much closer from these narrations than in previous types of narratives or attempts to interaction.
    
    Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies, The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 232-242, 274-285. Defined by art critic Vincent Canby, the 4th wall is “that invisible screen that forever separates the audience from the stage”, and here, in this case, the wall that separates the audience from the film. “Film view: sex can spoil the scene” (review). Canby, Vincent. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jun 28, 1987. p. A.17.
    14 15
    
    Figure 2. Pulp fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1995): focus on narrative subversion
    
    Figure 3. Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 2007): focus on interaction with spectator
    
    Figure 4. Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 2007): and with the medium devices
    
    “Something larger than the film”
    In Horse Feathers (Mark Z. McLeod, 1932), starred by the Marx Brothers16, one character sits by a piano and another one turns to the audience, breaking the 4th wall, and states: “I've got to stay here, but there's no reason why you folks shouldn't go out into the lobby until this thing blows over”. That illustrates that the breakage of the 4th wall is not something new. Woody Allen writes and directs an ode to this rupture with The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985), telling the story of a waitress that goes to the movie theater everyday and is surprised by the leading character getting out of the screen and living an adventure with her in the real world17. Those ruptures were, however, showing fictional characters relating to the audience. What we see in Haneke’s Caché or Funny Games is a relation of interaction, as well, however with different undertones: the relation to the audience does not come from the diegetic universe ― the audience, in postmodern cinema, doesn’t seem to be interested in talking to the characters but rather in relating to the movie makers, almost as in a participatory way ― it is not even necessary to say that this is what new media is increasingly providing, a participatory culture. The audience seems to be demanding a different position in relation to the film. That is intimately in line with the way self-reflection happens in post-modern film. This cinema is no longer allured with the possibilities of the device and the graphic effects it might show, but the selfreflection is still present, in the sense of an awareness of the movie, of the medium ― and not only awareness, but there is, in several filmmakers, an attempt to reach the audience beyond film. In Caché, Haneke himself enters the diegetic world as his own deus ex machina device. In Funny Games, the characters are playing with a film, but the perpetrators of the torture are not exactly part of that film, they are more of intruders, who break the 4th wall and relate to the audience in some points, who even rewind the film when their plans get frustrated. The magical illusion films can produce doesn’t seem so alluring as the possibility of playing actively with the viewer: we all know what can be reached in terms of special effects, but can movies see the viewer? Considering the self-reflexive undertone of modernist film, we might think that in the “YOU” era (relevant to remember Time Magazine’s person of the year: “You”, with the picture of a YouTube screen, on December 2006), the reality-TV era, the medium is still self-reflexive but changing the mirror direction towards the audience ― and taking a step forward.
    The Marx Brothers: Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx, successful comediats of stage and motion pictures. hico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, Zeppo - The Marx Brothers. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. . 17 "The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 30 Sept. 2009. .
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    In 2001, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller created an art installation for the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Bienalle. Their aim was to deal with cinema language and experience, therefore a small film theater was created showing an ordinary film (a pastiche of genres) and different surrounding sounds, apart from the film narrative, with whispered sentences as “Did you check the stove before we left?” 18. This play with the layers of experience on cinema is relevant to this discussion: the artwork is proposing that the film experience proposes something bigger than the film; the film experience would then be a sum of parts that may be exterior to the fictional film, and that result in something that is beyond the ordinary reception. On Cardiff & Bure the elements were material (sound), in Haneke’s films, the narrative solution or the character’s invading the screen and using the remote control were responsible for the creation of a similar effect. The possibilities, therefore, are plural and the question is not if these features are new, but rather why they seem to make more sense at this point of media history, and how it would be possible to enhance these attempts in order to fulfill the audiences expectations, that seem to grow not only towards the direction of interaction, but rather to a position of participation: by that, the key concept doesn’t seem to be participation on voting or choosing the protagonist’s actions, but rather sharing something with the characters, with the film creator/creation, or even, ultimately, seeing themselves on the screen.
    
    Figure 5. The Paradise Institute. Installation View, 2001.
    
    18
    
    The Paradise Institute | 2001." Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. Web. 30 Sept. 2009.
    
    .
    
    If in future narrative constructions the viewer is willing to take part on what the directors are proposing ― from breaking the 4th wall and narrative strategies to create agency, to, let’s say, virtual reality and active 1st person participation ― is on your behalf.
    
    References
    Caché. Dir. Michael Haneke. Perf. Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche. Film. 2005. "Caché." International Movie Database. 2001. IMDB. 5 Dec. 2008 . Eco, Umberto, and Richard McKay Rorty. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Ed. Stefan Collini. New York: Cambridge UP, 1992. Hayward, Susan. Cinema studies, the key concepts. New York: Routledge, 2000. McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1993. Rosenfeld, Anatol. A Personagem de Ficcao [The Fictional Character]. Sao Paulo, SP: Perspectiva, 2005. Todorov, Tzvetan. Pour une theorie du recit [For a Theory of Prose]. Sao Paulo, SP: Perspectiva, 2001. [INCOMPLETE: uptdated soon]

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