Power and Individuality in "Under the Peony"
(Cao Jingyu, Institute of Comparative Literature, Tianjin Foreign Studies University)
Abstract: In 2017, Sofia Coppola won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for "Under the Peony", which shows the living conditions of women in a closed environment in a minimalist way. While revealing the real situation of women, the film also shows the power relationship between individuals in the group from the side. Among them are those who exercise power, those who are submissive, some who try to subvert the existing power, and some who return to the original point in resistance. Starting from Foucault's social theory, this paper interprets "Under the Peony", in order to illustrate the power relations in the film, as well as the existence and survival of individuals under the constraints of the power structure.
Keywords: Under the Peony; Power, Michel Foucault
Power is the most basic concept that runs through the social composition, and it is constantly derived from it, filling every corner of society. At the 70th Cannes Film Festival, Sofia Coppola won the Best Director Award for her film "Under the Peony". The story takes place in a missionary school in the American South, where Principal Martha leads teacher Edwina and five female students living a life of isolation during the Civil War. The intrusion of the wounded northern soldier McBurney shattered their peaceful lives. In the end, they work together to kill the rebellious soldier with poisonous mushrooms. "Under the Peony" is based on Thomas Cullinan's novel. Different from the 1971 version, Sofia Coppola deleted the secondary characters, shot with natural light, abandoned the complex soundtrack, and highlighted the survival status of women in a closed environment in the most intuitive way.
Foucault pointed out in Madness and Civilization that rights are exercised and exercised through a network-like organization. It is closely related to every social person, and the individual not only flows between the veins of power, but is always in a state of experiencing both being dominated by power and exercising new power at the same time. [1] (P.85) The author believes that the director's creative method of reducing complexity and simplicity highlights the power relationship between the characters and subjects in the film. Starting from Foucault's social theory, this paper interprets "Under the Peony" to illustrate the operation of power, and the existence and survival of individuals under the constraints of power structure.
1. Implementation of power
For Foucault, everything about the individual comes from a network of power. In Under the Peony, Principal Martha uses a set of disciplines that exert power over the management of the school. Foucault proposed in Discipline and Punishment that an important means of forming a social power relationship network is the construction and maintenance of the power relationship structure. As the enforcer of discipline in the school, Martha's first job is to classify and organize the disciplined to ensure that the power hierarchy is effectively enforced. All students in the school have to study their homework, cultivate the farmland, and conduct security patrols every day. Each student also has his own task, for example: Amy is in charge of picking wild mushrooms, and Jane is mainly practicing the violin. In the film, unqualified students are not allowed to leave the school, and the rebellious Alicia is not given the opportunity to patrol with binoculars. There is also a division of labor among teachers, and Principal Martha is mainly responsible for management. For example: arrange homework and tasks for students, and stipulate a daily bedtime. Most importantly, she presides over daily religious activities as a ruler. The dominant teacher Edvina is responsible for grammar lessons, sewing lessons, and preparing the students' daily meals. It can be seen that the two have achieved a relationship of subject and subordination in the division of labor.
Principal Martha's use of power is also reflected in the constraints of space. Foucault proposed the concept of power geography in Discipline and Punishment on the relationship between power and space. He believes that the methods that discipline relies on start with the allocation of space, and the most important means of spatial discipline is the "closed principle". The school in the film is a closed space isolated from the world, and only Principal Martha has the key. Because of the war, the girl and teacher Edwina were sent to the school by their families, and the wounded soldier McBurney was helpless. All disciplined have the property of being isolated, and this condition lays the foundation for Principal Martha to exercise power. As the person in power, Martha is the sole holder of the key. She kept the door closed all the year round, and all the strangers were met by Martha alone. The creation of this closed environment is the spatial discipline that Martha imposes on individuals in the school.
While closing the campus, the closing of the room is another discipline. In the school, different rooms have their own functions. Prayer room, grammar room, music room, library, the attributes of each space are determined by the principal, and no one can break it. At the same time as the closure, Martha clears the discipline through the agreed space. When the wounded McBurney entered the campus. In the face of individuals who have not yet been disciplined, Martha immediately implements spatial discipline. She encloses them in the music classroom to conduct enclosed space discipline. The two disciplines of changing room attributes and prohibiting visits have to be formulated, emphasizing her own status as a discipliner. When wounded soldiers began to follow school rules, they were given a moderate amount of freedom. But when the wounded soldiers began to violently resist the existing power, Martha put him under house arrest and continued the closed discipline. The use of this closed space is an important means of whether the discipline formulated by the discipliner can be implemented.
In order to ensure the safety of the existing enclosed space, Principal Martha arranged for the young students to observe the situation around the school through telescopes in shifts, so as to protect the enclosed space from being violated. In "Discipline and Punishment", Foucault summarized the practice of prison guards observing the situation in the prison through the telescope in the tower as the "panoramic open prison system". However, the surveillance in "Under the Peony" has the characteristics of "internalization". This philosophy requires that individuals within a surveillance system internalize surveillance, that is, each person performs surveillance of himself. Coppola has shown seven times in the film that students use binoculars to monitor the surrounding environment of the school. These girls who actively monitor and maintain the existing closed space are the substantive embodiment of the "internalization" of discipline.
The "internalization" of power is also reflected in discourse. For the right to use discourse, Foucault puts forward the "Ritual Principle" of the control of discourse over the subject. In the school, Principal Martha, who gives orders, holds the command of the discourse. She organizes and comments on everything from daily religious sacrifices to small conversations during meals. The film repeatedly shows Martha's ideological instruction to other individuals from the side, such as criticizing Alicia who yearns for an outside life during a meal. As the wounded soldier's condition improved, Martha began to allow simple schoolgirls to communicate with him. But this does not include the beautiful and rebellious Alicia in adolescence. It can be seen that Martha has realized that she is not firm with Alicia's ideological discipline. Therefore, when all the girls are trying to get close to the wounded soldiers, Martha To achieve discipline by preventing Alicia's behavior with imperative words that enforce discipline. In addition to disciplining the students, Edwina and the wounded soldiers were not spared. In "Under the Peony", Martha repeatedly interrupted Edwina's speech, prohibiting her from expressing views different from her own, and even revising the content of Edwina's prayers. McBurney, who is in the Union Army, knows that he will face the fate of being arrested if he leaves the closed environment created by Martha. In order to impose discipline on him, Martha, who knew it well, expressed her willingness to hand it over to the Confederate Army many times as a threat. When McBurney wanted to stay at the school by being a gardener, she continued to oppress her by refusing to exert power, thereby forcing McBurney to discipline herself mentally.
While disciplining her words, Martha also disciplines her body. Foucault pointed out that human beings have discovered that "the human body is the object and goal of power" since classical times. The operation of social power is the operation of power over those who are controlled. The discipline of the body is not only limited to the body, but even rises to "the execution of nuanced coercion on the body, even to the level of machinery, including body movement, posture, attitude and speed" [2] (P.137) . In "Under the Peony", the students' standing and sitting postures have clear manners. When Principal Martha appeared they had their hands crossed on their knees, their thighs together, their bodies always straight and curtsey. The posture of girls is subtly regulated as a daily norm, and they must learn to always obey the discipline of the posture of each part of the body. This limitation of body posture is a manifestation of Foucault's normative ruling.
Body control is also reflected in the restrictions on clothing. Girls must wear long pastel dresses with frustrating aura in all weathers. The lengthy sleeves, down to the neck collar, down to the ankle skirt, completely obliterate the girl's gender curve. The uniform colors and the old-fashioned makeup and hair have further obliterated their individuality. It is by constraining the manifestations of the body that the tamer visually unites the subject and thus integrates everyone into a network of collective rights. The opposite of uniform is fashion. Because fashion embodies individuality and freedom, fashion with a dystopian and anti-totalitarian nature is rejected in closed religious schools. Therefore, when Edwina wore a dress with leaky shoulders at the dinner party, she was stopped by Martha.
The most important manifestation of the control of the subject is the direct manipulation of the body. Martha's discipline of the wounded soldier's body is embodied in her amputation. The wounded soldier who had sex with Alicia was pushed down the stairs by Edwina and fractured. Martha, who is not proficient in medicine, has no ability to perform surgery, and McBurney violated the rules and should be allowed to die. But she amputated McBurney with the only anatomy book and saw in the room. McBurney woke up and shouted: "Now I'm at your mercy!" This method of castrating McBurney is undoubtedly the most effective discipline, and he has no possibility of resistance.
2. Resistance to existing power
"Where there is power, there is resistance." No resistance will leave power, and resistance is an important attribute of power itself. Rebels usually come from the opposite pole of the power relationship and are inexorable opposites.
The world of power that Martha has built will naturally encounter resistance.
The resistance to the existing power network in the film is first reflected in the group's struggle for the right to gaze. Foucault believes that gaze, as a way of seeing, is a force exerted by the subject on the receiving object. The gaze itself symbolizes a power relationship, a particular form of violence. When McBurney arrived, everyone took out their dusty jewelry and dresses, trying to get McBurney's gaze through their gorgeous beauty. Alicia, who is tired of Martha's rules, and Edwina, the female teacher, are particularly outstanding. They do their best to attract McBurney's stare through their charisma, so as to get rid of the stare that Martha imposes on them. At the same time other little girls have joined in the stare power struggle, such as the "Apple Pie Battle" at the dinner, and all the girls have joined the discussion centered on McBurney. The girls' fight for McBurney's gaze made him the object of the group's gaze, and Martha's gaze power was subtly decomposed. This subversion of the gaze order confirms Foucault's power dynamics argument that "power is neither unilaterally constituted and maintained by the ruler, nor is emanating unilaterally to society as a whole. Rather, it consists of the interrelationship of multidirectional and organized process forces between ruling and being ruled, central and local, individual and individual, group and group.” [3] (P.273)
The individual's break free from Martha's discipline is reflected in student Alicia and teacher Edwina. Alicia, who is in love, has a precocious mind than other girls. The closed and disciplined space could not satisfy her fresh and bold desire. McBurney's arrival sparked her desire to break free from the predicament of existing discipline. Her resistance to power is first and foremost reflected in her words and deeds. At the beginning of the chapter, Alicia made fun of her arrogant classmate Jane as an orphan with nowhere to go in the war. At dinner, when faced with the principal's question, she replied contemptuously, "There are other things in this world besides homework." Second, her flowing, sexy makeup, her inelegant sitting posture, and her impatience with class all show her distaste for existing discipline. The stunner Alicia tries to break out of the enclosed space Principal Martha has set up for McBurney. After being forbidden by Martha from approaching McBurney, she left during prayers and broke into the room privately in a way that broke the rules, in order to gain McBurney's favor. When McBurney was dismembered, it was also Alicia who provided him with the key and revealed to him the pistol in the headmaster's cabinet, in order to break the web of power that Martha made.
Discipline prescribes the various relationships between the body and the objects it manipulates. In school, students must learn to always abide by the principal's regulations on the postures of various parts of the body, that is, become "automatic bodies of habit". Once they become "automatic bodies of habit", the subject itself will lose control over his own body. Adolescent Alicia vaguely understands that as a woman, the first way to break free from the existing discipline is to break free from the existing discipline that Martha has imposed on her. For this reason, she chose to use her young and enchanting fresh body to seduce McBurney and subject her body to the discipline of a new object. Through the new disciplined, it is the destruction of the existing disciplined net that Martha has attached to herself. Alicia's behavior is blind, and the essence of her behavior is to ban Martha's discipline by McBurney's discipline of her own body, and she has no subject consciousness. After the plan failed, when the school's discipline enforcer changed back to Martha, she panicked and tried to use lies to wash away her behavior and McBurney's behavior, and took the initiative to return to the discipline system created by Martha.
Power relations are always based on the two-way action of domination and confrontation, continuity and rupture, restriction and impact, and restraint and escape. [4] (P.8)
Alicia and Edwina are both rebels against Martha's discipline. But unlike Alicia's blindness, as a grammar teacher, she is wiser than most women, and looks forward to a different future, so she is not satisfied with the current state of being disciplined. The arrival of McBurney ignited her passion to escape from her existing environment and explore new worlds. So she decided to leave with McBurney and head west. Edwina's resistance is to find a more free space for herself to construct her own subject after breaking free and completely escaping from the regulated environment created by Martha. McBurney was castrated in the end, and she still chose to conform her body to him, thus breaking her self from her existing discipline. And unswervingly continue to stand with him, and then support each other to leave Martha, and jointly create a new life that belongs to each other. That is, to break free from the existing rules, and use one's own knowledge and labor in a new environment to achieve real control over one's own body and spirit.
3. Conclusion
In "Under the Peony", Sofia Coppola showed the audience the operation of power within the group. Through the fixed space, the change of the relationship between specific characters shows that all subjects are in the network of power. It is also the relationship of power that gives birth to the subject. The power struggle between the characters in the film appeals to us that power is not a monolithic phenomenon that dominates the whole, but is interactive and fluid. It is precisely because of this that the relationship of power becomes the essential relationship of human beings, it is the relationship of power that makes us what we are, and it is the relationship of power that constitutes us as subjects and individuals. In this sense, "Under the Peony" is by no means just a women's film, but a narrative of social power. Through this story, Sofia Coppola emphasized to the audience that human beings are social beings, and that human subjectivity is always involved in the network of power relations of the organizational structure model between people.
references:
[1] Michel Foucault. "Madness and Civilization" [M]. Life·Reading·New Knowledge Triple Book. 2012: 85
[2] Foucault, Michel: Discipline and punish The Birth of Prison , New York: Vintage book: 137
[3] Gao Xuanyang: Introduction to Contemporary French Philosophy, Shanghai: Tongji University Press, 2004: 273
[4] Hu Chunguang: The Eyes of Power: On Foucault's Analysis of Power. Journal of Chongqing Normal University. March 2011: 8
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