Alphaville
Jean-Luc Godard – Alphaville
At the immediate glance, Alphaville is a story of a dystopian future where technocratic totalitarianism has succeeded in abolishing emotion, sensibility, and every form of artistic expression. This is also the theme which this paper will deal with, but should not be mistaken as the single attribute of this movie. A defining fundamental of art lies in its diverse form of expression. Visual arts, like cinema, is obviously no exception. There are many sides to Alphaville that can be discussed endlessly, one of them taking form in a question regarding why this film was made, and why Godard decided to portray Alphaville the way he did. I will however not address these questions, as they belong to a paper better described as a cinematic review. Focus will lie on the Orwellian, dystopian theme that Godard illustrates, and I will try to review it as thoroughly as possible.
The paper is divided into two parts. The first part will be outlining the social, governemental and physical structure of Alphaville, while the second part will revolve around dystopia as a concept.
Part I.
As we are introduced to Alphaville, we learn that it is ruled in a totalitarian fashion by a centralized power in form of an advanced super computer. Much reminiscent of Stanely Kubrick’s HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the super computer advocates logical reasoning in a most extreme manner. A twisted form of consequentialism, where the ultimate happiness for common man resides in collective scientific achievment, provides the institutional law of Alphaville. Spontaniety, creativity and critical thought is effectively disencouraged, and machine-like logical thought is enforced upon its citizens through indoctrination, punishment, survelliance and medication. Individuals deemed illogical are brutally excecuted, motivated by the strive for the ”common good”.
Throughtout the movie, we are never certain of the geographical, or physical form of Alphaville. Neither do we know where it is, or when the events in the film is taking place. It is suggested that one has to travel through ”galactical space” to get to Alphaville. However, we do not know whether it is a literal expreesion, as we find our protagonist driving his car to Alphaville in the film’s opening sequence. The car, a Ford Galaxy, is one of the few pieces of resemblance we encounter in an otherwise broken and malformed reality. What we do know is that time, space and geography plays a minor role in Godard’s Alphaville.
The film’s human antagonist, puppeteer of the super computer and dictator of Alphaville alike, is represented by a character named Professor Vonbraum. Credited for every scientific achievment in history, Vonbraum does not only represent the ideal human being. Sharing similarities with the relationship between an authoritative father and his young child, the citizens of Alphaville channel and accept Vonbraum’s actions and directives without question, regardless of consequences. Unsurprisingly, we get the sensation that Professor Vonbraum is one of the few, if not the only person in Alphaville that possesses integrity. Although thinking of Vonbraum as the expatriate founder of Alphaville is tempting, we do not know per certainty that his position has not been passed down from a previous dictator. Additionally, the age of the citizens suggests that Alphaville and all its organs of governance have existed longer than its present leader has. The ultimate role of Alphaville’s human leader, beside serving as an object for admiration and gratitude, is to direct labor, science and research while the super computer enforces logical thinking.
The film’s protagonist, a secret agent disguised as a journalist is sent from les extérieurs to be our leading hand through Alphaville. In the film, his objectives consist of rescuing a fellow agent who later dies, and to capture or kill the leader of Alphaville. Through our protagonist, we witness the colorless alienation that the inhabitants of Alphaville radiates. Automized phrases reveal an extreme lack of sensibility, and absence of characteristics dissolves individuals into a grey, collective mass of labour, separatable only by the bar codes imprinted on the back of their necks. With a distaste of a defiant teenager, our protagonist refuses to conform to any of the customs of Alphaville, even though he is being treated physically well and his integrity never is questioned, albeit never understood. Soon, his out-of-line behavior recieves the attention of the super computer and he is deprived of liberty. The growing bubble of discomfort and repressed fear, in which our protagonist resides, unavoidably bursts into an ethical nightmare.
In a scene with the super computer, depicted as a flashing light accompanied by a distorted voice of an old man, our protagonist is questioned about values and the mysteries of life. He lies, not undetectably, and answers in manners which no Alphavillian citizen would. Unable to derive either logic or illogic from our protagonists replies, and sensing information and thought processes it cannot yet understand, the super computer lets our protagonist go for the time being. During his temporary freedom, our protagonist discover new facts about Alphaville that further motivates his cause. He discovers that the bible – a recurring object in the film – de facto is a constantly evolving dictionary containing the Alphavillian language, having a strong resemblance to George Orwelle’s Newspeak in 1984. It is also revealed that Alphaville send spies to neighbouring civilizations, in order to spread their technocratic, totalitarian consequentialism and if that fails; bring about havoc.
During the second interrogation scene, where the true identity and intentions of our protagonist have been discovered, our protagonist tells the computer a riddle. He continues by saying that if the computer finds the solution to the riddle, it will destroy itself simultaneously. The nature in the answer lies in a sensible understanding of the human being, and would bring the computer to the same mindset as our protagonist upon realisation. Distilling the dramaturgy from the story; this is effectively what happens. Alphaville crumbles under the self-destruction of its mastermind, and our protagonist kills Professor Vonbraum – an act no longer addressing purpose or logic, but being a manifestation of free, unconditioned will. Dramaturgy aside, I believe this sums up the dystopia presented in Alphaville.
Part II.
The concept of dystopia is often regarded as the opposite to utopia. While I agree with this, I would like to further elaborate on the concept. In my definition of utopia, a utopia isn’t a finite state of being at a fixed point in time and space. I consider a utopia to be a utopia only when we know that we can make it better. If we decide that no improvement can be done, how is that perfection and not mere failure to see the room for improvement? From this follows that I see utopia as an ever-converging state of being that never reaches an end.
Speaking from personal thought, I do not consider dystopias to theoretically exist. Following my view on utopia, a dystopia is a state of being where no improvement can be done, and we think it can be done. While this sounds plausible, consider the following: If a state of being to us, is utopian, but we cannot improve, is that not dystopian?
Consider the situation of the inhabitants in Alphaville, and (for the sake of the example) regard their mindset as thinking they are in the perfect state of being where nothing can be improved. They are in their perfect world. But in a more objective sense, with improvement as the key word, they are in dystopia. Leaving the example and returning to my definition, we see that a perfect state of being does not exist, and neither does dystopia.
Although one might argue that perfection equals utopia, and that my definition where improvement contradictously is the key ingredient of utopia is mere nonsense, I think that discussing utopia from a slightly different viewpoint can arise some thoughts that people ordinarily wouldn’t pursue.
I found Alphaville particularly interesting for its very prominent image of what a dystopia is and how people watching it relate to it. Today, the everyday use of ’dystopia’ still refers to the the fictional, totalitarian worlds created by Godard, Huxley, Orwell, and somewhat reflects in us the fear of where a distant future might lie, and somewhat comforts us in the idea that we are not yet there. I suppose similar things could be said for other types of fictional media regarding other subjects, whether it deals with romanticism or some sort of realism.
Dystopia in general is not as thoroughly discussed as utopia, and being each others opposite, presumably, I think that one can learn something about one extreme by digging deeper into the other, perhaps even use their symmetry as a basis when reflecting over either one of them.
My only reference for this paper, save for stray mentionings of similar works, is the movie; Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution directed in 1965 by Jean-Luc Godard.
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Etienne Cabet’s Icaria In Theory and In Practice
Midterm Paper
“Contemporary Issues in Development” Class
Professor Cuz Potter
Yavor, student number: 2009230073
Etienne Cabet’s Icaria
In Theory and in Practice
The following paper focuses on John Derek McCorquindale’s “A Spatial History of Icarian Communism” thesis submitted in Brigham Young University in 2008, as source of explaining and summarizing the rise and fall of Etienne Cabet’s Icarian Commune in Nauvoo, Illinois. The paper will start by introducing Cabet’s early life and transition from a democrat to a communist. It will then take us to his “Voyage en Icarie” novel in order to better understand his theoretical idea of the perfect utopian world. After that the rise and fall of Icarianism as a movement in France will be presented and eventually the rise and fall of the Icarian commune in Nauvoo will be discussed.
Etienne Cabet was born on January 1st 1788 in Dijon, France. Both of his parents were republicans and supporters of the Jacobin revolutionary ideals shaping up in France (Page 5). Cabet quickly shows fantastic organisational skills and will to enforce republican ideas and the importance of democracy in the French society. He establishes bonds with the poor and disadvantaged class as well as impressing high-ranked members of society. Using, what he would transform into the most popular newspaper in France, Le Populaire, he promotes his fight as a desire “to participate in all social rights, [and] in all benefits of civilization.” (Page 13). In 1834, he is convicted and sentenced to an exile in London for trying to put the French monarchy down. His pre-London experience sees him as a republican and a democrat, but he returns from London as a communist and a utopian (Page 16). Cabet would eventually wish to create a new and better social sphere, a society that would circle around the inherent good in human beings (Page 21). The undisputed, self-admitted influence on Cabet’s writings is Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia”. What would follow is Cabet’s own utopia, described in a 600-hundred-page book called “Voyage en Icarie”. The book follows an Englishman’s fictional journey into Icaria. The traveller discovers a society that does not use money and is at the same time rich in purpose of existence, as it is exposed to the ideals of family value, literature and art, industrial progress or in other words the spheres explored in many European societies. The envisaged utopia sees the equality between individuals as essential (Page 24). The Icarian state functions under a representative democracy.
John Derek McCorquindale has suggested utilizing the spatial norms as a means of analyzing Cabet’s work. In “Voyage en Icarie” Cabet describes a new world which focuses on the social and political utopian advancements. The spatial distance between the state of Icaria and the rest of the world is full of peril and the English traveller experiences incessant danger until he reaches the perfect place. Cabet’s way of describing this voyage can be seen as the long way society has to walk until it reaches a perfect way of existence (Page 32). The influence of real history is left outside of Cabet’s novel, as he has described an already perfect world, without going into detail about how that world came into existence. Cabet dreams of long, clean and straight streets, removes hospitals and cemeteries out of the city and puts them into more spacious areas. He supports the idea that idleness should not be tolerated and that whoever wishes to take a rest, should do it outside of the city. For rest and relaxation, he has created special programmes involving separate accommodations, daily trips, and horse riding among many others. Cabet promotes the very straightforward idea people should live and work in the city but take their leisure activities to the outskirts. The people of Icaria are engulfed by the beauty of monuments in the very centre of the city. The centre includes a large monument that is surrounded by beauty and splendor and people from all corners flock to experience that perfection, be inspired by it and follow it religiously. Cabet delivers a very mathematical and metric way of organizing his Utopian state. He has planned for it to have both cities and villages. The country has 100 provinces and each is equal in population and area (Page 43). The centralized government in Icaria has the power to remove all possibility of underdevelopment through means of perfect and proportional distribution of people and land in cities and villages. The largest city in Icaria is the city of Icara; the city is perfectly circular and combines different cultural views and monuments of art. All of them are gathered together in Icara in order to make the city a small perfect world, as John Derek McCorquindale explains. It seems that Cabet is “…borrowing major elements from Jacobinism, democratic-republicanism, constitutionalism, liberalism, positivism, socialism, industrialism, capitalism, communism, utopianism, and Christianity.” (Page 52) and is trying to combine those into a universal philosophy that supports the idea of perfection, a retrospect of what has already been learned.
Repelled by the aggressive ideas of France’s communist supporters in the 19th century, Cabet fights to promote the opposite, a communist society that relies on a steady and non-aggressive transition to communism. Cabet cleverly uses his appeal to the masses and his utopian writing style encrusted with pacifism to win the French public and quickly establishes Icarianism as a social movement in the 1840s. He becomes the single most popular theorist in France, the success of his writings overthrow the opposition posed by all of his counterparts. He uses the example of Christ the redeemer as a way of explaining the need for fight against aristocracy and the need for a reformed society that would make everyone equal (Page 66). Eventually the French would start divorcing themselves from the Icarian communist ideals. A drastic change of events follows, as the French Revolution in 1848 isolates the communist principles. The decreasing number of supporters leads Cabet to believe that Icaria should not be waited for but can be created and America seems to be the best choice. The initial choice of a part of Texas as the new Icaria proves to be a disastrous decision as the first wave of Icarian settlers in 1848 finds itself in an unknown land, where they can barely survive as they speak no English. Some of them die, while others try to rebel against an idea they start to see as dysfunctional and unrealistic.
After Cabet’s arrival to America in 1849 the Icarians find a way to move up the Mississippi river and reach a small town called Nauvoo in the state of Illinois. The town had been occupied and deserted by a Mormon religious group. What the Icarians find in Nauvoo that impresses them immensely is a gigantic Mormon Temple, a temple they attempt to use as the centerpiece of monumental importance described in the Cabet’s novel. The temple, however, is almost completely destroyed by a tornado in the following months. The Icarians do not lose faith and try to restructure the abandoned town to suit their own needs. They create a school in the place of the fallen Mormon Temple as well as the highest building in their community - a communal hall. Eating time is seen as one of the most important aspects of the newly formed commune as it provides the possibility of community bonding (page 128). The communal hall is undoubtedly the heart of the Icarian Utopia, as it is the gathering point of the adults in the community. The place itself has most things that would be needed to get people together in large numbers, it is big enough to accommodate all the Icarians in the community, where they can eat, communicate, have fun and even sleep (Page 129). It also provides single women with accommodation. The Icarian community has no intentions of militarizing itself or fighting battles as this would only clash with their ideas of perfection and pacifism. The living spaces the Icarinas occupy are provided with the basic institutions for normal life: “bakery, blacksmith, locksmith, foundry, butcher, leather works, and harness garage … shops on the south side of the temple square, for producing home goods, such as candles, soap, linens, mattresses, clothes, and shoes.” (Page 130). Cabet sees the architecture of the former Mormon city as too “fractured and individualized” - concepts that do not agree with the perfect proportions meticulously detailed in his volumes about the perfect city. There is a world of difference between Cabet’s ideology of the book and what he actually settles for. The main issue would probably come from the fact that the Icarian Utopia is not a self-built one, as the French inhabit a land that has already been exploited by others. The idealism of immaculate proportions described in the novel is destroyed by the realistic image of a small insignificant place that resembles a village. The Icarians have a very strict regime, they would lead rigidly regulated lives and would eat, work and exist only as instructed by their leader. Interestingly, the regime delivers fruitful results as initially, the Icarian society is very successful. They “turned an $11,000.00 debt into a $64,000.00 surplus in less than two years.” (Page 134). What is more, there is a constant flow of Icarian followers coming and going and the society has enough supporters to help continue the utopian principle. Their leader also manages to keep his promise of proper leisure activities outside of the city, as mentioned in his “Voyages en Icarie” novel. However, discontent would soon start to grow. In 1851 Cabet returns to France in order to defend himself from charges raised by a former fellow communion (page 136). The people in his Utopian city, who had already started to harbor a strong discontent with a system that was too harsh on their bodies that gave them little privacy and deprived them from seeing their children more than once a week, start taking independent decisions during Cabet’s absence (page 137). After his return to America and threatened by the unfavorable discourse in Nauvoo, Cabet imposes harsher regulations that limit almost all type of privacy within the community. The newly imposed Cabet regime supports a never-ending surveillance in a society which is already completely deprived of space and privacy and this, John Derek McCorquindale sees as the major point in the rapid downfall of Icaria. Suspicion starts to grow between members of the small community about compliance with law and possible misuse of the rapidly decreasing amount of material goods (page 141). Forcing people into incessant get-together activities destroys bonds instead of fostering such. The anti-individualism, anti-freedom of choice rigidity is what proves to be Cabet’s number one enemy, the extreme “form of spatial communitarianism” (page 144) that grows into a tumor; a “tyranny of intimacy”, a “claustrophobia” (page 145). After growing discontent and disputes, in 1854 Jean Baptiste Gérard and Alexis Armel Marchand manage to organize a majority that would overthrow the Cabet regime and his followers. Two years later Cabet dies of a heart-attack at the age of 68 (page 148).
This paper deals with Cabet’s rise to fame in his native France, explains his transition from a staunch believer in democracy to a communist admirer, follows the rise and fall of Icarianism in France as well as the rise and fall of Icarianism in Cabet’s American ambitions. Cabet’s utopia, as explained in the paper, is seen as an ending point and its visionary seems to be little concerned with how the perfect world he describes in “Voyage en Icarie” came to be. Unfavourably for him, fiction does not seem to be able to transform into reality and the Nauvoo utopian commune last less than 6 years. Attempting to create equality through the means of unity, Cabet creates a dysfunctional commune which deprives its members of privacy and freedom of choice. Instead of being elevated to new levels of happiness, the Icarians grow weary of their leader. Consequently the disputes erupt from within and the commune falls apart.
Bibliography:
“A SPATIAL HISTORY OF ICARIAN COMMUNISM” by John Derek McCorquindale, Brigham Young University, Department of French & Italian, Master of Arts, April 2008
http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2352.pdf