By Imogen Reid.
Part Two of Don DeLillo’s epic novel, Underworld, is separated, or dis-enchained, from Part One of the novel by a black screen/page. The film that plays within it opens without introduction or explanation. We the viewer/reader do not know at which point we have been dropped into it, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. We do not know why we are being shown it, who filmed it, or what relevance, if any, it has to the rest of the narrative. We do not know if the footage is real or imaginary, fictional or documentary. We do not know who the players are that perform in it. Part Two of Underworld opens in the absence of an establishing shot. It opens in the following way:
It shows a man driving a car. It is the simplest sort of family video. You see a man at the wheel of a medium Dodge.
It is just a kid aiming her camera through the rear window of the family car at the windshield of the car behind her.
A page later and the man at the wheel of the medium Dodge has been shot in the head by a serial killer, a felon at large, a man the newspapers have dubbed the Texas Highway Killer. A random death caught from the window of a moving car by a child with a movie camera. Filming what? Nothing in particular. The tape is banal, ordinary. Death interrupts its seemingly endless duration. An amateur video, a chance encounter: ‘[t]he victim, the killer and the child with a camera’ (DeLillo, 1997, p.157). A tape that is played rewound and played again, an event that has already passed and is always also about to happen. A death that will be and has already been (1). A historical document. A testimony. A news report, visual evidence broadcast over and over, a spectacle on national TV. An event that is endlessly repeated. An event that is unrepeatable.
And yet, despite the fact that DeLillo tells us early on in his text that we can expect to see a murder, thereby generating an air of suspense, he also continually implies that this is not the only reason why we are compelled to watch the footage that: ‘seems to go on forever’ (DeLillo, 1997, p.157). As he says:
you keep on looking not because you know that something is going to happen […] you do look for that reason but you might also keep on looking if you came across this footage for the first time without knowing the outcome (DeLillo, 1997, p.156).
Although there is undoubtedly a dramatic end to the film in sight, for me at least, it is not the imminent death that keeps the viewer/reader watching/reading. DeLillo’s amateur film demonstrates what he calls the ‘crude power’ (DeLillo, 1997, p.156) of this kind of imagery, I take him to mean its capacity to somehow captivate the viewer/reader without the promise of narrative progression. What interests me here, is how DeLillo evokes an alternative kind of viewer/reader engagement with his amateur film; a mode of engagement that is not propelled by drama, but by the captivating material qualities of the film footage itself. In the absence of a title, and having already given the punchline away, I will refer to DeLillo’s amateur film as The Texas Highway Killer Film, or simply as DeLillo’s film.
The Texas Highway Killer Film goes a long way to demonstrating the ‘power’ of this kind of imagery, its seemingly inexplicable capacity to captivate and take hold of you, to keep your eyes glued to the screen in the absence of dramatic event. In this text the writer manages to evoke a film that is neither boring nor interesting, you watch, you wait, you are hooked, caught up by ‘the sense of the random, the amateurish, the accidental, the impending’ (DeLillo, 1997, p.156), the imminent possibility of nothing in particular ever actually happening. DeLillo’s film engages the viewer/reader in an alternative way to a conventional narrative movie; we are held fast by the camera’s persistent and aimless determination (DeLillo, 1997, p.156), and by the quality of the footage shot by it. It captivates and fixates you.
In The Texas Highway Killer Film the viewer/reader is returned to the same image again and again, each time with a slight variation, an alternative emphasis on angle, detail, posture, or light. You are returned to the image of a man at the wheel of a medium Dodge again, and again, and again. To a man in his forties. To a nice guy in his forties, bald up the middle of his head, again, and again, and again. With each repetition suspense fails to build, time appears both condensed and extended. Yet each repetition holds you. In this bland, and at least initially uneventful time, the material properties of the film itself begin to take on a significance that is equal to any human action, equal to the death the camera eventually, and incidentally, records. The viewer/reader’s attention is drawn to the grain of the image, to its starkness (DeLillo, 1997, p.157), to the way it is punctuated by outside interference, washed with reflections and sunlight, and spluttered with black and white tones (DeLillo, 1997, p.156). DeLillo makes the viewer/reader aware of the ‘Low-Tec’ quality of the film itself, of its hand held-ness, you feel the camera’s presence in the light as it hits the lens, in the reflections as they bounce across the windshield of the car, you feel its presence in these chance encounters, and they hold you.
DeLillo does not simply evoke the film for the viewer/reader, he draws you into an impersonal vision of it. In The Texas Highway Killer Film the compelling mesmeric nature of the footage shot by the camera is accented by the constant use of the second person ‘you’: ‘you see’, ‘you are watching’, ‘you keep on looking’, ‘you know’, ‘you don’t think’. DeLillo’s use of the second person has a suggestive, directive quality, you are told what you are seeing, when and how you will see it, periodically throughout the text. For me, this technique not only encourages ‘you’ to experience the thoughts, feelings and visions described within the text as if they were your own, it also renders you simultaneously dissociated from them, in other words, you are made aware that ‘your’ thoughts and feelings do not entirely belong to ‘you’, that they have been conjured into existence by DeLillo’s evocative use of suggestion. DeLillo’s film is steeped in these kinds of free-floating visions and sensations, visions and sensations that seem to pass freely between the viewer/reader and the film/text, ‘travel-happy’ and homeless (DeLillo in DePietro, 2005, p.136). You could say that the mode of viewer/reader engagement generated by DeLillo’s use of the second person ‘you’ is not only captivating and fixating, you could say that it is utterly hypnotic (2).
(1) This is a reference to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (1982), specifically to the image of the failed assassin, Lewis Payne, who was photographed in his cell before his execution. About the photograph of Payne Barthes says, ‘he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake’ (Barthes, 1982, p.96). While looking at this photograph amongst others Barthes’ experiences a ‘vertigo of time defeated’ (Barthes, 1982, p.97). I suggest that Barthes’ observations are relevant to the reader’s experience of a death that is both imminent and past in DeLillo’s Texas Highway Killer Film.
(2) In his book Hypnosis (1966) the practicing hypnotherapist, Leon Chertok, describes the process of ‘Hypnosis By Fixation Of An Object’: ‘The practitioner gets the patient to fixate an object – a pencil, a key, a coin, a coloured ball suspended on a piece of string,’ etc. […] the practitioner then gives a series of suggestions for a period which may be longer or shorter according to the subject’s responsiveness. These suggestions, like all those to follow, are given in a monotonous voice are repeated many times over and are always of a concrete and vivid nature. (Chertok, 1966, p.103). For example, ‘I am holding an object in front of you. You are looking back at this object. You are listening to my voice. If your eyes wander, bring them back to the object and keep looking at it. Relax and listen to my voice. I want you to relax. You feel relaxed all over. You are feeling more and more relaxed. You also feel sleepy. You are going to feel sleepier and sleepier. Listen carefully to my voice. Now a feeling of heaviness is creeping over you, your body is becoming heavy. Your feet and your legs and your whole body are becoming heavy, heavy, heavy. Pleasant warmth suffuses your body. You are thinking of sleep’ etc. (Chertok,1966, p.103). In the longer version of this essay I go on to explore the idea that DeLillo’s use of terms such as, ‘now you see’, ‘you are thinking’ etc., engage the viewer/reader in a manner that is not dissimilar to techniques used by the hypnotist.
Bibliography
Barthes, R. (1982) Camera Lucida. Berkshire, 1993: Vintage.
Chertok, L. (1966) Hypnosis. London & Edinburgh: The Pergamon Press.
DeLillo, D. (1997) Underworld. London, 1999: Picador.
DePietro, T. (Ed.) (2005) Conversations with Don DeLillo. Mississippi: University of Mississippi.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Imogen Reid completed a practice-based PhD at Chelsea College of Arts, her practice being writing. Her thesis focused on the ways in which film has been used by novelists as a resource to transform their writing practice, and on how the non-conventional writing techniques generated by film could, in turn, produce alternative forms of readability. Her work has appeared in: Hotel Magazine, LossLit, gorse, Zeno Press, Elbow Room, Sublunary Editions, IceFloe Press, Babel Tower Notice Board, and Lumin Journal. She has chapbooks with Gordian Projects, Nightjar Press, and Timglaset Editions.
