Great essay by Lorenzo Chiesa (University of
Kent), published on <http://www.film-philosophy.com/>Film-Philosophy.
The term 'grace' designates a key-notion of
Christian theology. 'Grace' derives from the
Latin 'gratia', which is the translation of the
Greek term 'charis' as used in the New Testament.
In the Bible of the Seventy, charis renders in
its turn a similar notion which is already
present in the Old Testament in the guise of the
Biblical term 'hén' / 'chén'. In his philological
review of Lars von Trier's film Dogville, Charles
Baladier (2003) reminds us that this Hebrew term
has three different intertwined meanings: it
refers to the abstract favour that is awarded by
a high rank personality to one of his subjects,
the concrete witnessing of this benevolence on
the part of the benefactor who thus fait grâce,
as well as the charm that the beneficiary
receives from the fact of being in the
benefactor's good graces. Grace can never be
attributed to just one person. The dialectical
character of this notion is even more evident in
the Latin term 'gratia', which can signify both
generosity in giving and gratitude for having
received. To put it simply, both the Biblical and
the Roman pagan grace are ultimately based on a
continuous exchange of favours, or gifts, in
which what Marcel Mauss named the gift-exchange
of primitive societies still resonates.
More precisely, Mauss describes the gift-exchange
as the 'exchanges and contracts [that] take place
in the form of presents [...] given and
reciprocated obligatorily [...] a "total" social
phenomen[on] [that gives expression to] all kinds
of institutions at one and the same time
religious, juridical, moral, [...] economic'
(1990, 3). From this standpoint, the whole social
fabric, the symbolic order as such, however
complex, is born out of and constantly relies on
the gift. Jacques Lacan fully endorses this, as
is shown in Seminar IV, when he relates the
mythical emergence of primitive symbolisation in
the child to the transformation of the virtual
object into a gift. After the mother has
neglected the child's appeal, objects first of
all the breast that up to this point were, for
the child, virtual objects that satisfied a
biological need, are transformed into gifts that
may or may not be donated by the real mother as a
power. What is more, the real object of need can
be perceived as such only after the child has
confronted himself with a lack of object, after
having realised that the object may not be
donated: the relation subject-object is clearly
based on the productive nature of the lack. The
virtual Real precedes the Symbolic but it can be
'given' as actual only by the symbolic dimension of the gift.
In Dogville, something definitely goes wrong at
the level of the gift-exchange. And this for two
main reasons: first, the gift of the charming
fugitive named Grace (Nicole Kidman), the gift of
Grace who gives herself away to the
townspeople, as Lars von Trier remarked in an
interview is not reciprocated, or better, stops
being reciprocated. As we have just seen,
following Mauss, the gift, and the symbolic order
it sustains, is nothing but reciprocation.
Second, the unconditional way in which Grace
offers herself to Dogville is as such dangerous:
the pure gift soon turns into a poison (Mauss
1990, 62-63), a dis-grace. On this point, von
Trier states the following: 'The idea behind
Grace's treatment at the hands of the townspeople
was that if you present yourself to others as a
gift, then that is dangerous. The power that this
gives people over the individual corrupts them'.
[...]
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/2007v11n3/chiesa.pdf>Link (PDF)
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2008/04/what-is-gift-of-grace-on-lars-von.htm>monochrom
at 4/28/2008 12:40:00 PM
