Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society

Abstract

Are we really more connected interpersonally in the age of accelerated globalization? Do global social networks principally empower connected agents, or are “powerless places” further marginalized by “placeless power”? This article examines how twenty-first century US cinema maps social networks, both international and interpersonal. Whereas communication and technology scholars often characterize the network society as a social formation promising more “symmetrical” and “co-ordinated” global relations, the past decade's most-discussed “global network” films (Traffic, 2000; Crash, 2004; Syriana, 2005; Babel, 2006 etc.) envision the network society as a complex landscape of enduring inequality. In the cinematic network society, empowered agents fail to co-ordinate or even comprehend the networks that surround them. Borrowing from social problem films, economic guilt films, and city films of the past, these network narratives illustrate how networks can link us in unwanted ways. In the 11 films examined here, privileged Westerners are often forced to confront their networked relationships with suffering others. In a neoliberal fashion, these protagonists routinely opt to privatize their affective and political responses: they act alone, even as vigilantes, despite their connections. Their portrayals by humanitarian celebrities further entwine on-screen conduct and actors' private charity work, powerfully articulating a questionable vision of what global citizenship should look like in an age when everyone is connected.

Keywords:

• Network society
• Historical trauma
• Hollywood cinema
• Humanitarian celebrities
• Foucault
• multi-plot cinema

Notes

1. Terranova (2004) suggests that “in terms of the actual power to capture the passions of the global masses, the Internet is no match for the reach and power of television, which, from local and national broadcasting channels to satellite TV such as CNN and Al-Jazeera, can count on the wider accessibility of the technology (the TV set) and on the high impact of images and sounds broadcast in real time (p. 41).

2. By “neoliberal,” I refer to the “ideology of individualism, including policies promoting privatization, consumer sovereignty, user-pays, self-reliance, and individual enterprise, as the solution to all economic and social ills” (Peters, 2001, p. 125).

3. Foucault's (1972) earlier epistemological work, concerned with how institutions negotiate, through their discursive formations, their relative ability or inability to articulate the “truths” of a given issue at a given time, also helps anchor this investigation of Hollywood's problematic mapping of the world. As political economic analyses of global communication attest, the ability of several dominant media institutions to shape articulations of the real, along with embodiments of “correct,” disciplined behavior, imbues them with an obvious degree of power. That is, discursive formations invested with sufficient power shape ideas into constellations of social consensus, such that they become accepted as true and correct, if only temporarily (see Foucault, 1972).

4. Allejandro Gonzales Inarritu, for instance, directed Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and Babel (2006), the latter two for major American studios. Guillermo Arriaga wrote Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel. Brad Pitt appears in Babel and produced the Daniel Pearl story, A Mighty Heart (2007), and a documentary, God Grew Tired of US: The Story of Lost Boys of Sudan (2006). Stephen Gaghan wrote Traffic (2000) and wrote and directed Syriana (2005). Stephen Mirrione edited the multiplot narratives Traffic, 21 Grams, and Babel. Steven Soderbergh directed Traffic, and produced Syriana, on top of exploring the network narrative playfully in Oceans 11, 12, and 13. Actor Don Cheadle appears in Traffic, Hotel Rwanda (2004), and Crash (2004), and he produced Crash as well as a documentary, Darfur Now (2006), which details his own plight to publicize the violence in Sudan and reconcile his celebrity and privilege with distant suffering. Fellow human rights activist and Syriana star George Clooney supports Cheadle in several scenes.

5. Spielberg dramatizes the mistreatment of the poor, white, Southern couple whose baby is held by Child Services in his feature film debut, The Sugarland Express (1974); the middleclass Amity police chief (Roy Scheider) and family man vs. the greedy town council and business interests promoting a cover-up in Jaws (1975), from which the outdated working class man (Robert Shaw) is violently dispatched; the middleclass family vs. the greedy developers building tract housing over native burial grounds in Poltergeist (1982), and a country club over a middleclass neighbourhood in The Goonies (1985); and even the re-constituted family vs. the industrialist and his greedy investors who are putting the finishing touches on Jurassic Park (1993).

6. In Grand Canyon, for instance, when car problems strand Mack (Kevin Kline) in South Central Los Angeles, he encounters black gangs as well as his black “saviour,” Simon (Danny Glover), a tow truck driver. Mack's sense of existential debt to Simon prompts him to develop a new ethical stance in relation to the other's suffering. In Falling Down, by contrast, a traffic jam motivates its white, lower-middleclass protagonist, William (Michael Douglas), to abandon his car on the freeway and rampage violently through East Los Angeles's vast gangland. Traversing several districts, William unleashes his rage alternately upon the city's poor, multicultural inhabitants, and upon its privileged ruling class who enjoy their country club as a refuge from a malevolent urban landscape in which empathetic relations with the other no longer seem possible (Mahoney, 1997). By focusing on a low level weapons manufacturing employee coping with having been recently downsized, Falling Down illustrates William's conversion from disciplined, militaristic patriot to transgressive, nihilistic, anti-American “terrorist.”

7. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (2006) is the other prominent Hollywood treatment of the attacks, but that film operates as a family melodrama, concerned with two fire fighters’ survival and the activities of their anxious families while the men are pinned beneath rubble. In fact, the film strains to obscure the people, the motivations, and the act of terrorism that caused the catastrophe, opting instead to provide an uplifting tale of exceptional survival and American resolve. These creative and ideological choices, made in opposition to Stone's previously conspiratorial narratives (Salvador, Platoon, JFK) are themselves of great interest, of course.

8. Hollywood's neoliberal propensity to delimit narrative focus to the disciplined individual is even evident in the considerable production of fantasy franchises this century. Examining the repression of trauma and ethical questions in this genre, Cubitt (2006) and Werber (2005) analyze the ideological function of fantasy films such as Lord of the Rings (2001–2003), Harry Potter (2001–-2009), and Christian-themed Chronicles of Narnia (2005–2008) in the post-9/11 symbolic universe.

9. Extending Hook's (2007) scrutiny of “affect” in his case studies, I have proposed that “proper” affective responses (of disgust at abject poverty, for instance) are elicited in these films and their wider discussions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neil Narine

Neil Narine recently received his Ph.D. in Communication at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, and in 2008 was a Visiting Research Student in the School of History of Art, Film, and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, University of London, supervised by Prof. Laura Mulvey. His publications appear in the Journal of American Studies, Americana, Memory Studies, Communication, Culture & Critique and Theory, Culture & Society