User:Emily/RW&RM/Trimester 02/01

What a converted notion brings

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Renzo Martens’s artistic strategy in his documentary film is to grasp the notion of poverty to its countered way. It not only reveals the illusion that we simply get used to or accepted, but also question the social economic scheme.

In Renzo Martens’s film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, people can pretty much tell that the artist himself was doing the similar thing within the film as the western media did in Republic of Congo. They both produced economic values from poverty, or we could say they both function under the western institute dealing with certain needs that western worlds want to extract from the third world. Martens considers poverty as a resource of Congolese who can hardly benefit from. Different from the western media, Martens fulfil his documentary by trying to fully inform them how to utilise their poverty resource. The notion of the poverty as a resource function as “the big other”, stage a harsh situation there with a solution doomed to be failed.

What is the big other? Zizek point out that “the big other is the basic element of every ideological edifice. It contains two contradictory aspects, on the one hand, the big other is the secret order of things like divine reason, fate or whatever is controlling our destiny. On the other hand, the big other is the oder of appearances that every things which are prohibited are not simply prohibited but they should not happen for the big other. This contradictory aspects are contained within the notion of poverty. When Martens questioned the politician about poverty resource that benefit western world, he gave us straight away his idea of poverty which shouldn’t be considered as resource but the thing we should try to get rid of. But the secret of it is those journalists and photographers indeed exploit from poverty with knowing clearly there is a market out there. Compare to those exploiting Congolese natural resources, these situations stage a even harsher scene. Martens as the man both be in front and behind the camera taught the local photographers to benefit from their own resource by simply repeating what the western journalists and photographers do.

As audiences, we could simply get the idea will be a failure in both way. If the poverty can be a sustainable resource to support them, they have to stay poor. By doing so, if they get rid of poverty gradually , they will also loose their resource. Then we end at what Zizek said of the symbolic deadlock. What’s more he points out that “even the most brutal violence is the enacting of a certain symbolic deadlock.” I think what makes the documentary different from other propaganda videos or images is that it provide audience a chance to notice the deadlock, the hopelessness instead of simply showing sympathy or believing in an illusion. The sympathy towards them would be the most powerless reaction. Because if so, we only consider them as generic representations of suffering, without being aware of the dominated functioning of our social economy mechanism. Zizek indicated that today’s form of capitalism is cultural capitalism. It is “the tendency to bring the two dimensions, both consumption and anti-consumption together in the same cluster”. We buy into ethic. We buy our redemption from being only a consumerist. This is the circuit without the involvement of the poor, of anyone who really need that extra part from each consumption behaviour. It is simply an illusion created by this monetary scheme. But as Zizek puts “it is much easier to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.” What Martens did in the documentary is to shut down our illusion, which can be painful. It is not anymore the poor makes us feel painful but the notion that what we get used to believe before turns out to be an excuse of gathering money. And we are buying into it.

What’s more Zizek points out that “capitalism has a strange religious structure. It is propelled by this absolute demand: capital has to circulate, to reproduce itself, to expand, to multiply itself and for this goal anything can be sacrificed up to our life and nature.” Here, it is fully presented in Martens documentary.Today’s capitalism functioning works pretty good, or at least we can say it is working well in the western world, since there are still endless westerners come to Republic of Congo to exploit the images, stories, whatever they want. As contrast, the artist already showed his attitude through a talking with a local guy. With hoping and begging the help from westerners, they would still stay poor, they have to live with this truth. We seems won’t doubt this point. But what will we expect from this doomed failure? “Maybe something new only emerges through the failure suspension of proper functioning of the existing network of our life.” Here Zizek call for a suspension of a proper functioning. Martens’s failure won’t to be anything but fail. However, it reveals the big other that makes us can no longer be real at ease. On one hand, we need this big other to maintain the appearance. Because the truth hurts. On the other hand, we can no long be at ease with it, just like the lady as an intruder cut in the couple in Brief Encounter.

Conclusion: The converted notion of poverty functions as “a big other” that explicit our ideological edifice. Contradictorily, this big other indicates secret order but also questions current structure. It is the illusion that we want to live with in order to remain the stability. At the same time, it is the “tragedy of our predicament" , that we can no longer live with it at ease.