The Dream Scene and the Future of Vision in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World
In her article, "The Dream Scene and the Future of Vision in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World," Donna Wilkerson Barker examines how these films investigate the place of imagination (or representation) in postmodern visual culture through their portrayal of technologized vision as an obstacle to experience. Drawing parallels between the dream scenes in these films and virtual reality and cyberspace, she argues that image technologies in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World lead to a dissociation of experience from corporeal reality, a dissociation that is ultimately linked to a loss of vision (understood as sight and imagination) Exploring the question of how image technologies affect the way we see and relate to the world in depth, these films interrogate the foundations upon which we construct experience and make meaning from it as well as our potential for productive social engagement in the future. Donna Wilkerson Barker, "The Dream Scene and the Future of Vision in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.3 (2007) <http:/docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol9/iss3/4> Donna Wilkerson Barker The Dream Scene and the Future of Vision in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World What would happen if the content of our dreams became the stuff of television? The City of Lost Children, co directed by French filmmakers Jean Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, and Until the End of the World, directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, confront us with this as yet unrealizable scenario in their portrayal of two scientists on a mission. On the surface, these films could not seem more disparate. The City of Lost Children, released in 1995, is a highly fantastical allegorical tale about a scientist who abducts children in order to steal their dreams. Set in a timeless surreal cityscape and populated with grotesque, hallucinatory characters, the film has been described as "the sort of universe children might dream of if they've had Perrault tales read to them while they're delirious with the measles" (Romney 29) In contrast, Until the End of the World, released in 1991, is more realistically embedded in postmodern culture; cast as a science fiction love story that takes place in 1999 in the midst of an impending nuclear disaster, the film revolves around a scientist who seeks to restore vision to the blind, chief among them his wife. His mission involves sending his son on a "dance around the world" to collect material that he urgently needs for his experiments; the world that we see in the film is a logical extension of the present; "it's the technology dominated future of videophones and videofaxes and computerized cars It's a toy world with its boundaries opened up" and within which characters move "as if they were pieces on a giant game board" (Hinson <http:/www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/style/longterm/movies/videos/untiltheendoftheworldrhinson_a0a732.htm> Upon closer analysis, however, The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World are similar in their complex use of advanced technology as central plot and theme. Indeed, the question of how image technologies affect the way we see and relate to the world lies at the heart of these films, interrogating the foundations upon which we construct experience and make meaning from it. Ultimately, in their portrayal of technologized vision as an obstacle to experience understood here as our (emotional) relation to reality and the (sensory) nature of our engagement with the world or "the possibility of being touched by the unknown" the films investigate the place of the imagination (or representation) in visual culture and the potential for productive social engagement in the future (Robins, Into the Image 29) The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World share many of the same preoccupations in their approach to visuality. Drawing on predominantly visual aesthetics and centering their stories around the problematic of vision itself (understood here in the sense of sight and imagination) these films recognize one of the most striking paradoxes of postmodern visual culture: the more sophisticated technologies of vision become, the less we are able to truly see. For if, as Nicholas Mirzoeff comments, "Human experience is now much more visual and visualized than ever before," it is also true that "the visualization of everyday life does not mean that we necessarily know what it is that we are seeing" (1 2) This state of metaphorical blindness, brought about through the high speed global circulation and consumption of (virtual) images, is a byproduct of the time space compression that characterizes perception today. As Andreas Huyssen explains, in postmodern visual culture, "a sense of historical continuity or, for that matter, discontinuity, both of which depend on a before and an after, [has given] way to the simultaneity of all times and spaces readily accessible in the present" (253) The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World foreground this experience of deterritorialization: in each film, audiences inhabit a world that is both familiar and strangely dislocated, a world that is both here and nowhere. In The City of Lost Children, as Jen Webb and Tony Schirato describe, the "buildings, machines, street lights and other aspects of the cityscape all seem to be made of the same material, and to merge into a largely undifferentiated mass" (58) In like fashion, Until the End of the World which begins and ends in space evokes the postmodern city as a largely undifferentiated mass via a telescoping of time and space, for even while the characters travel Donna Wilkerson Barker, "The Dream Scene and the Future of Vision in The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World" page 3 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.3 (2007) <http:/docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol9/iss3/4> to nine different cities in nine different countries during the film, their high speed trajectory renders the cityscape uniform. In Gerd Gemunden's words, "the cities of Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Tokyo, and San Francisco all look alike, resembling in their gratuity the sets for James Bond thrillers. They are the mere backdrops for the speedy chase across countries and continents, leaving neither time nor space for the camera to discover, that is, to see" (216) Evoking the discourse on cultural homogeneity that has often been problematically associated with the globalization of mass media, The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World openly acknowledge the logic of commodification that informs the proliferation of images today. This logic finds its ultimate expression in The City of Lost Children in the film's representation of mindless (mechanical) reproduction: the scientist aptly named "l'Original" and his six identical clones whose existence shatter the very concept of origin and individuality; the Octopus, conjoined twin sisters whose symbiosis is so absolute that they function as a single person; and the Cyclopes, a fundamentalist cult whose members dress alike and elect to be blinded and then outfitted with a prosthetic eye in an attempt to flee "the world of appearances" to form a superior race, are prime examples. Engaging directly with Jean Baudrillard's theory of the hyperreal and the culture of the simulacrum, and conjuring up scenarios that resonate with those of the global modern (such as trafficking in children and religious fundamentalism) The City of Lost Children presents a world where appearances proliferate according to their own logic. In Until the End of the World, the globalized marketplace surfaces as "a world of fluid identity, multiple languages, shifting genres, proliferating plots, and complex interlocking networks of information and capital" (Berger 8) Significantly, the primary way the multiple characters relate to and keep track of each other in this film is through the money they spend or the money they need when credit cards are used, computer tracking software lights up; when the main protagonist Claire phones home, it is only because she needs money. Indeed, both films highlight the predominant role of money and consumerism in social interactions, presenting consumption as the driving force of social organization. If Caro, Jeunet, and Wenders go to such great lengths to represent modern consumption, it is because The City of Lost Children and Until the End of the World document, in Kevin Robins's words, a "fundamental transformation in the epistemological structure of our visual culture," (156) one that has emerged in the rise of digital culture and the so called death of photography and the cinema and that has resulted in a substantial devaluation of the image and its connection to subjectivity, truth, and experience. As Robins describes, "Digital technologies put into doubt the nature and function of the photograph/image as representation. The essence of digital information is that it is inherently malleable Through techniques of electronic montage and manipulation, what we once trusted as pictures of reality can now be edited and altered seamlessly and undetectably. Whole new vistas are opened up for the manufacture of fakes, fabrications and misinformation" "The Virtual Unconscious in Postphotography" 156) Images today function as a sort of currency, to be fabricated, used, sold, or manipulated at will. More importantly, in their suppression of and substitution for the real world, image technologies are facilitating greater detachment and disengagement from the world. As Baudrillard explains in La Transparence du mal, while screened images simulate direct contact with the other, "the other, the interlocutor, is never really involved: the screen works much like a mirror, for the screen itself as locus of the interface is the prime concern. This is communication in