Reparation and the art of theatrical mourning in Punchdrunk’s ‘The Drowned Man’ and David Lynch’s ‘Rabbits’ (Part 2)

What lessons can cinematic immersion and theatrical masquerade teach us about the way we mourn? In this comparative analysis of Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man and David Lynch’s Rabbits, I aim to find out how the experience of losing our loved ones inside a fantasy world can fundamentally affect the way we think and feel about them. In doing so, I hope to produce a critique towards the importance of community in the event of a loss, as well as an explication on how repairing lost contact can help us in even the most unexpected situations.

In Part 1, I looked at how ordinary family life and the role of masked spectatorship can intersect to produce unexpected feelings of loss. In The Drowned Man, the spectator wears a white, deindividuating mask not only to create a generic barrier between himself and the performance, but also to separate him from his loved ones for the show’s duration. This has the uncanny effect of blurring together the common lines of distinction between ‘family’ and ‘stranger.’ As a result, the narrative spectacle of the showcase itself works as a kind of mourning ritual. Isolated yet joined at the hip to the spectators around us, we work independently to reconvene our losses in a story we construct of our own accord. Although this ultimately allows us to come to terms with our separation anxieties, we are also left feeling more disconnected than ever, as we realise that our fantasies simply cannot accommodate every event in the showcase as it unfolds.

Reparation and the art of theatrical mourning in Punchdrunk’s ‘The Drowned Man’ and David Lynch’s ‘Rabbits’ (Part 1)

Recently I had the pleasure of attending Punchdrunk’s hyped and much talked-about Hollywood promenade show The Drowned Man. In case you haven’t heard of it, the show is approximately the closest thing I would describe as a walking, or lucid, nightmare. It is also the closest I have come to the intimate recreation of a communal mourning rite.

Situated in London’s multi-story Temple Studios, the showcase is billed as the troupe’s “biggest and most ambitious yet.” Not unlike a haunted house or Halloween attraction, it takes an enormous series of seemingly unconnected setpieces and weaves them together to form a living, breathing world. Many of these setpieces take the form of scenes straight out of Hollywood, with lovers caught in passionate binds, loners sat contemplating murder in cramped apartments, and dazzling troupes of dancers in mass formation.

All of this you can explore of your own volition. The open-nature of the studios not only enables you to ‘immerse’ yourself in the action as it unfolds, but also to construct your own narrative out of the bits and pieces you witness. This apparent freedom becomes more pleasurable, however, the minute you step ‘outside’ the studio-style spaces, and the action continues. Wandering through a fog-filled forest, or in the private residence of a missing townsperson, gives the immediate impression of dreams and fantasy overlapping onto reality.

CURRENT EVENTS: Tom Daley and the spectacle of the closet

We are all born in closets. This truth, for many, is immutable. The absolute of the closet today is seen as a less of an obstacle of blatant inequality, and more and more a gauntlet of personal will – hardwood paneling – a self-imposed tomb only you can muster the courage to escape from.

Tom Daley’s recent coming out video took the media by storm – headlining newspapers, trending Twitter, and becoming a general overnight event. It eclipsed even the catastrophe of the Philippines, elevating it to the status of a sublime point de capiton – momentarily colouring the entire spectrum of daily political activity.

Banal responses to the story ranged from confusion as to why a celebrity’s “private life” still ought to be public spectacle in the year 2013, to frantic celebration, emphasising how the outing of a celebrity paves the way for a younger generation to embrace their own confessional narratives.

The double-bind here, between two modes of ‘support’ for Daley and his bravery in staging a public address, of course misses the third crucial option. Why is “coming out” today is seen as the only way for LGBT people to live authentic public lives?

CURRENT EVENTS: Channel 4’s ‘campaign for real sex’ misses the point of sex

Channel 4 has a history of exploitation-driven programming. From the racist-baiting ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ to the freak-show spectacle of ‘The Undateables’ – no group is safe when it comes to the pandering of public interest.

Now, in the network’s latest scheme, the audience itself stars as the prime tableau for ridicule and scorn. It is Channel 4’s ‘campaign for real sex’ – a series about us, and why we need some “frank discussions” about what goes on in our bedrooms.

I always find it unnerving when broadcasters attempt these kinds of social engineering projects. Of course, many people must know that ‘telly campaigns’ are little more than cynical ratings ploys, but what gets me is that one of these days they might just change something. I am scared of what they will change.

The premise of this campaign plays on some of the more notorious fears about our sex lives. With three programmes in the series so far, they have covered the usual suspects of hysteria, including online pornography, teenage virginity, and the value of having sex in a box live on television.

Its motif is a “need to start talking about sex.” Channel 4 claims that online pornography has damaged young people’s sex lives so thoroughly that they are no longer able to engage in healthy, sustainable relationships. Now is the time for our doting parents to intervene.

Dreamscapes #1 Rinsing a Body

Say you’ll tuck away your terrible doubt
So you can’t have it, but I can have it out
So use in saying, “you’re always mean to see”
In an eye of crying cyanide meant softly for me

To drink till I can’t see but black,
And whisper say, “that’s all I ever lacked?”
Trust you, and whatever you tried to say –
Just run in veins on lain old yesterday

Ain’t it a bitch, a kick in the head
And you, and all you do instead
Say you’ll stand and steel your mind,
But die in folds of an insufferable time

Vitriolic Pages #9 Bringing Back the Bile

This island lapses for a moment, listen
Cool the air out of your clavicles, fishmonger
We’ll eat chips in the harbour tonight
Bring me seashells or smash oysters in your teeth

I can’t tell you about the bird in the black canal
with its slippers caught in tantacles of steel wire
or about the time your eyes moved past me
Little hooks, let me pierce the film of vitreous fluid

Touch the inner vane, make it shiver

Listen, surely you’re not hoping this canal
This seam, this line, this entire time,
Will bring back the body and the feathers

Well, I can’t put your face away now
The bird doesn’t need me, but I reach in anyway
I pull out a branch like a sword unsheathed
But it slips like mildew from my shores

This bird doesn’t need its angel anymore

Essay: Apparitions and Appropriations of Camp in Cinematic Horror

A shadow haunts the world of western sexuality. It is a shadow with no organs, no bones, and no teeth. It is a darkened membrane – transparent and endless – but if you could pierce it, it might scream out. Today we reconcile this shadow under the symbolic mandate ‘Queer,’ but even with this symbol, the shadow is as murky and precarious as ever.

As Cathy J. Cohen argues on the lost radical potential of queer politics, “in its present form queer politics has not emerged as an encompassing challenge to systems of domination and oppression, especially those normalizing processes embedded in heteronormativity. [1]”And as Cindy Patton in her essay Tremble, Hetero Swine! furthermore reflects, “apparently, hetero swine do not tremble. Instead they arm themselves […] in opposition to what they understand to be a dominant culture in the grip of homosexual activists.[2]” Thus, if it is indeed a shadow, the question remains as to whether this shadow is dense enough to be seen, or whether it is now so much “embedded” that it cannot distinguish itself from assimilationist politics and apolitical activism. In any case, exactly what does it mean for Queer to be ‘radical’ today?