Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

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HistoryProf
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#76 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:09 am

James Mills wrote:Fwiw, I saw an interview a few days ago in which McQueen tersely states that that scene is his "rock bottom, his OD if you will" so I don't think i's meant to be interpreted as just another night. I still don't believe this makes the scene homophobic, however. I'm still of my earlier opinion: "He could have been having his dog lick peanut butter off his balls and it would have been the same: he's sexually acquiring affectionate attention from something he isn't sexually attracted to."
so why not have him go to a gay bar, have a drink, pick up a guy, and go to the alley and get a blow job - you know, like he does with women? why does it have to be the most outlandish representation of the Sodom homophobes assume all gay bars must be like? There were a million ways to frame a scene where Brandon gets a gay guy to lick peanut butter off his balls, but Steve McQueen decided the most reprehensible presentation of what a "gay bar" is was most appropriate to emphasize how low he had fallen. Wouldn't going to Bukowski's Bar and having Grandma Moses swallow his paste for $20 be just as effective - especially if he tossed her $15 after the fact?

The point is that engaging in a gay act does not REQUIRE a glory hole orgy dungeon, and to suggest it does is insulting beyond belief.

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knives
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#77 Post by knives » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:25 am

Or maybe even just have him do the bestiality. Certainly that would be more to the point.

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warren oates
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#78 Post by warren oates » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:59 am

But bestiality would have threatened the self-seriousness of Shame, which is all that's keeping most people from realizing how facile the film is.

Idk, to me the clumsiness of this scene is much more related to poor construction of the film's overall narrative than any specifically damning homophobia. There are few scenes in the film that aren't just as awful in their own special ways. For me, the real problem with Shame is that Brandon has nowhere to go and nothing at stake whilst he's going nowhere -- something that we grasp in the first 10-20 minutes of the film. Yet there's really nothing more to it all. No arc, no drama, no potential for his position to change for better or worse and so, ultimately, no story and no reason to keep watching. You can't hit bottom when you're already gliding along the lowest valley.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#79 Post by McCrutchy » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:28 am

HistoryProf wrote:so why not have him go to a gay bar, have a drink, pick up a guy, and go to the alley and get a blow job - you know, like he does with women? why does it have to be the most outlandish representation of the Sodom homophobes assume all gay bars must be like? [...] The point is that engaging in a gay act does not REQUIRE a glory hole orgy dungeon, and to suggest it does is insulting beyond belief.
I never thought if the bar in that way, and I don't think McQueen is suggesting anything about being gay or where and how gay people engage in sex. There are certainly those types of bars for straight people as well, and I never felt an insinuation that "all gay bars are seedy" coming from the scene. I think it was more about the fact that Brandon remains in a seedy bar (gay or not) once he's in there and sees what's going on. At that point in the film, he's so desperate fox sex that, in denial of his own sexual identity, he heads to the back of this seedy bar and gets the stimulation he needs--gay sex or not. Otherwise, being a straight guy, he's obviously not going to bother with gay sex, so it seems far less likely that he would go to the trouble of picking up a guy when all he wants is the stimulation. If he ended up in a less shady bar, he probably would have run back out and tried the next place in search of quick sex.

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HistoryProf
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#80 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:46 am

warren oates wrote:But bestiality would have threatened the self-seriousness of Shame, which is all that's keeping most people from realizing how facile the film is.

Idk, to me the clumsiness of this scene is much more related to poor construction of the film's overall narrative than any specifically damning homophobia. There are few scenes in the film that aren't just as awful in their own special ways. For me, the real problem with Shame is that Brandon has nowhere to go and nothing at stake whilst he's going nowhere -- something that we grasp in the first 10-20 minutes of the film. Yet there's really nothing more to it all. No arc, no drama, no potential for his position to change for better or worse and so, ultimately, no story and no reason to keep watching. You can't hit bottom when you're already gliding along the lowest valley.
This is a much more succinct rendition of my long-winded rant at the end of the previous page. The "gay" scene is only one of many odious moments, all of which are rendered pointless by the fact that the film fails to give any dimension whatsoever to its main characters. His situation at work is another glaring screw up - we're teased with a big "uh oh" with his computer going in for repairs, only to have his boss say "oh, dude, your intern was looking at some crazy ass porn". no arc, no drama, and no change nails it perfectly.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#81 Post by warren oates » Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:38 pm

The few supporters of Shame I've run into tend to argue that there's no traditional dramatic arc because the film is about that moment in an addict's life when he is hopelessly stuck. Okay, fine, but why do we need to watch a feature length film about that? We could get that idea intellectually in a few minutes and viscerally in a few more. A feature length narrative film -- no matter how challenging or artistically adventurous the approach -- demands the possibility of change for the protagonist. And I'm not talking about Hollywood-ending style happiness and redemption. Things can either get better or worse for the hero, but he must care about the outcome and there must be some pursuit of some kind of goal. The missed opportunities for Brandon to want things and risk them and lose them or gain them abound.

Compare Brandon to, for example, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, a character who is similarly troubled and stuck but who goes on a veritable cross country journey dramatically in contrast. Or what about the protagonists of The Devil, Probably or Leaving Las Vegas, both of whom are caught in a very negative place, but they're both actively trying to solve their problems -- even if it's not in the way we or other people in their world would want.

I had a similar issue with the character of Mary (the main character if not the point of view character) in Mike Leigh's Another Year who seems utterly oblivious to and complacent in some kind of low-level dysthymia. She's got the blahs and it annoys the heck out of everyone but not enough to bring the issue to a head until a final belated non-epiphany epiphany. She doesn't seem to want anything or be screwing up anything badly enough to make a story. Mike Leigh's warmth and empathy go a long way toward making this film more palatable. Still, this is the danger of starting with character in an actor's workshop. That you'll have a fully imagined character who's still not worthy of a story.

All that said, I am a pretty big fan of McQueen's Hunger. And I do look forward to his next picture, a period piece about American slavery, which seems like it has both a better story and the potential for the sort of intense political drama he found in his first feature.

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HistoryProf
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#82 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 25, 2012 6:46 pm

Once again he'll reel me in for 12 Years a Slave - one of the most profoundly moving slave narratives that survived the 19th century. The cast is indeed phenomenal - in addition to Fassbender, there's Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and the best name in the history of movies: Benedict Cumberbatch. I do believe Omar be comin too.

What frightens me is that the screenplay is cocredited to McQueen and the guy behind Red Tails. I pray they stay faithful to the narrative - which needs no embellishment, no wistful long takes, nor any other McQueenish flourishes to be compelling. I'll be seeing it in the theater for sure though...with fingers crossed.

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knives
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#83 Post by knives » Mon Jun 25, 2012 6:49 pm

He'll probably ruin that great event like he did with the hunger strikes. I guess I'll be keeping to Sherlock and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for my Cumberbatch needs.

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Professor Wagstaff
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#84 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:25 pm

knives wrote:I guess I'll be keeping to Sherlock and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for my Cumberbatch needs.
Off topic, but if you can somehow see Danny Boyle's Frankenstein production stage at the Royal National Theatre, please do. A filmed version of the play showed in select theatres over the last few months with Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller alternating the roles of Frankenstein and the Creature and it made for a very stirring production.

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knives
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#85 Post by knives » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:27 pm

I've been excited about it and if there were to be a DVD release I would snatch it up, but a live showing is geographically impossible for me.

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warren oates
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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#86 Post by warren oates » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:40 pm

Is there no one around who likes Hunger as much as they detest Shame? The jury's still out on McQueen for me, bigtime. Like after the first two Haneke films I saw were The Seventh Continent (a necessary gut punch) and Funny Games (a didactic pseudo meta snoozer).

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#87 Post by lahaine » Sat Aug 04, 2012 2:25 pm

warren oates wrote:Is there no one around who likes Hunger as much as they detest Shame? The jury's still out on McQueen for me, bigtime. Like after the first two Haneke films I saw were The Seventh Continent (a necessary gut punch) and Funny Games (a didactic pseudo meta snoozer).
I think Hunger is one of the best films of the past 10 years and Fassbender's performance is probably the best from actor in as many years. After Shame, i still think Mcqueen is a highly talented director but the film is nowhere near as strong or as gripping as his debut feature but Fassbender is the real star of this and probably will keep this film from been an ok follow up to a very good one, how he lost out on an oscar nod and a Bafta is still mind boggling. 12 year slave could be the film that sends him into the a-list of directors, great material,great cast but lets see how he goes about this story.

I disagree Funny games isn't a snoozer but probably top 3 Haneke with a wonderful and deep down scary performance from Arno Frinsch and as bleak as they come.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#88 Post by jbeall » Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:59 am

I think warren oates' assessment is fair. I thought Hunger was quite good, and while I didn't "detest" Shame, the latter definitely isn't a good film. Others have leveled effective criticisms more articulately than I can, but my two cents: Regardless of whether or not you grant the existence of sexual addiction, that's the film's starting point, However, for a film that purports to depict sexual addiction, Shame does a remarkably poor job of convincing the viewer that Fassbender's character does in fact suffer from such a malady. Even in this discussion thread, some have argued that Brandon's issues stem, as do Sissy's, from a need for affection. I think that's a legitimate reading of the film, but it also shows just how short of its mark Shame falls when the film resorts to predictable, sentimental tropes because it doesn't have the guts to explore the thematic territory that is its very raison d'être. (Sissy's voicemail for Brandon was particularly irritating in this regard.)

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#89 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon Aug 06, 2012 6:03 am

warren oates wrote:Is there no one around who likes Hunger as much as they detest Shame?
He's not around here, but Michael Sicinski gave Hunger an 8 and Shame a 4 -- though his full takes on the films are perhaps more and less positive than those numbers suggest (I think he tends to be stingy on the high end and generous on the low end).

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#90 Post by John Cope » Sun Aug 26, 2012 7:25 pm

A truly confounding experience and one I will admit to going back and forth on throughout, often within individual scenes. I keep thinking that it will emerge with more clarity for me if and when I return to it but I also suspect that it might just as equally emerge as more clearly incoherent, an arrangement of conflicting intentions that may not complicate and deepen but simply obscure or distract and negate one another. Still, I would be be skeptical of anyone who came out of this picture with a resolved perspective. It seems to deny and frustrate that at every turn. Obviously a piece determined to be "ambiguous", its intentional vagueness is as detrimental to its ultimate impact and effects as it is an enhancement of them. And that's really the crux of the matter. It's a tremendously strange, frustrating experience not because its ambiguity is so inherently confrontational or obfuscating but rather because the actual application of that ambiguity seems poorly judged at times, counter-productively directed. That's why it's so difficult to think through as well because it genuinely is a work demanding of a moment by moment assessment. Much of the Big Climax, for instance, comes across as unjustified, absurdly overwrought, but the skill behind its enactment and delivery is undeniable--as is the clear conviction (that much is clear). The ending, too, is perfection; I was literally chanting, "End it, end it, end it," as we linger on Fassbender's face because ending it there is such a well considered move (that investment of consideration is another thing that seems undeniable). The location of the problem is in the mechanics, not the aesthetics. This isn't some Todd Haynes type problem of overly fixating on filmic devices. The surface expression is not the distraction here, the underlying mechanics are. And yet, in the midst of that, is the very real wonder associated with profoundly effective aesthetic accomplishment.

Fassbender's performance is, in a weird way, part of the problem. It's truly outstanding and certainly the best thing I've ever seen him do but it exists in strained relationship to McQueen's directorial approach. Fassbender is so great here that he virtually overwhelms many of McQueen's subdued set pieces. That may have been intentional but it doesn't always feel that way. Frankly, the performance seems miscalibrated for the film it is in with Fassbender's intensity burning holes through even the most clearly intentional sequences of matching measured excess. And yet, and yet. I don't believe for a minute that McQueen doesn't anticipate those kinds of objections, doesn't fully integrate them into his almost disturbingly intricate design. So while we may be troubled by the consistently distinct impression that the seeming moralism of much of this is just too pat we also can't dismiss any of it or shake the sense that it is we who are being too pat with this material, too glibly reductionist, and that McQueen has been trying to goad that recognition all along. We can accept that it's Sissy's presence that starts the ball rolling and forces Brandon to confront his inability to attain intimacy within a relationship and see that this in turn sets him off on his out-of-control spiral at the end (confused too much I think with a descent-into-degredation). But we can't understand enough about this character to be as hugely impacted by all this as McQueen must surely want. He's an intentional cipher and that stands at odds with, if not outright negates, our empathy or sympathy. We can only really observe what amounts to a fairly facile form of tragedy. And that lack of success is the real shame here because so much has so clearly gone into the effort to evoke our sympathies. Still, it's just undone by the underlying approach. Fassbender seems to understand his character all too well. That performace emanates from a place that just screams utter comprehension. But we don't get it well enough. The chasm of remove is kind of fascinating if it weren't in its way so tragic.

I admire any attempt to treat this picture's underlying subject and themes seriously as to do so is to constantly court being risible. And I won't deny that it had that effect on me at times (the scene in which Brandon's boss rattles off the list of porn found on his hard drive was particularly hilarious). I'd like to assume that McQueen anticipates these reactions, too. I keep thinking that he must as to not do so would not just be naive but quite profoundly naive. There are times when I'm very unsure though. The comedy (such as it is) sits pretty awkwardly here when it does appear and the picture comes off as having far more assurance with the dark, bleak ramifications of its central subject than any blackly comic, absurdist ones. My lingering problem with McQueen's treatment of Brandon's sex addiction as metaphor for vacant life keeps coming back to that whole issue of intentionally obscured backgrounds and the way that makes all the expressive demonstrations we see seem either trite or relatively minor. If there is no larger context that makes clear sense then the result must be one of pure demonstration and observation and on that level it seems only like the enactment of an admittedly hollow, unsatisfying life. But beyond that, if McQueen only wants to locate the source of Brandon and Sissy's distress in a vaguely defined history of abuse ("We're not bad people. We just come from a bad place.") then he's unduly limiting the resonance of his portraiture. Because it goes without saying that we live in an era saturated with sex and its easy satisfactions are unprecedented. To miss the way that shapes and effects an individual struggling with this subject is irony indeed, though I suppose one could say that it is the society's casual ease with sex that accommodates Brandon's own specific and personal pathology.

Part of the unique problem for me is that I kept thinking of Lodge Kerrigan's Claire Dolan and its similar themes, similar aesthetic style. It's another rigorous, mostly frigid piece that details the life of a sex worker as it equates to being an economic commodity, the way that mental attitude permeates all else and affects relationships throughout. There is a deep emotional element in that film as well but it is much more of a piece with the rest, carefully composed and restrained. It's more immediately impactful for me because of that; the fact that it all appears to take place in the same world--the continuity strengthens and re-inforces the effectiveness of those moments of emotional collapse. And it also helps that what is going on is clear enough to have that impact. Clarity by no means has to mean some kind of systematic reduction of possibility. In Kerrigan's film the narrative obscurity (and there is much of it) is handled with an adeptness that never causes distraction or an undermining of the ability for direct investment. McQueen wants Big Operatic Moments to co exist with his study in geometric minimalsim. There's nothing wrong with that and maybe even everything right about such an ambition but it can't come off if there is also such an adamant determination to keep all motives and backgrounds veiled. So I can't help but think that the picture may have been better served by tha approach of a Claire Dolan. Or a Claire Denis. But, once again, maybe the type of picture I'm describing was never the type of picture McQueen wanted to make. Maybe he wanted frustration and alienation to co exist with emotional catharsis, too.

Finally I want to point to an early scene which I believe contains some kind of elusive key to this whole thing (certainly it stayed in my mind throughout and I kept returning to it). It's the seemingly irrelvant establishing office sequence in which we're introduced to Brandon's boss and assorted co-wrokers around a conference table. I want to work through it briefly as I think it's a fit subject for analysis of the type I've been trying to do here and the deceptively irrelevant contents nag at me, making me think again that there may be a far deeper level of comprehension here than what sits on the surface. The scene begins on Brandon with a voice over we seem meant to think is directed at him. Quickly it is revealed that it is not and he is simply one of many seated around this table listening to the boss' speech. I'm going to transcribe all of it here:

"'I find you disgusting. I find you inconsolable. I find you invasive.' This is what the cynics used to say. Companies would refuse to look into the future. They would say, 'Can we stop this virus?' As if it was a negative progression. But it's growing. More and more, with a momentum that is unstoppable. Now some kid snorts the entire load of his mother's spice cupboard. Post that on Youtube. They would watch as that becomes the buzzword amongst high school students everywhere. Eventually, the cynicism is turning into awe."

Now, as I said, at first we think this is directed at Brandon and that initial dislocation lingers long enough to partially distract us from what is said. But if we are listening it seem like background patter, in some ways relevant to him and in others not. The scene is brief and not distinguished by much emphasis so I think the inclination is to blow it off. But in a film with so little dialogue of any kind it would be a mistake to blow this off. I'm still unsure of what to make of it as it could be, as with much of the rest, just an extension of the opening feint--a sub-Egoyan move made to speak to some pretty obvious not so sub themes. But if you look/listen closely to just what is said here it's much harder to think it rests in such a place. It may be referring to Brandon's "sex addiction" as signifier of secret source but it goes beyond that by complicating its metaphors in a bizarre way. Ostensibly it sounds like condemnation but it's actually a kind of tacit acceptance, a passive approval of cynical business ethics, perhaps then even as a way of life. The implications of that do speak to the sort of cultural source I mentioned earlier and proceeds to quite literally chill: "Eventually, the cynicism is turning into awe."

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#91 Post by Black Hat » Mon Aug 27, 2012 6:52 am

One of those films I found myself recommending to people not because I thought it was good but, rather because I wanted to discuss it but, if you find yourself recommending something does that not mean it's good? Drives me nuts when this happens but, I've figured out that it usually means that the movie had a lot of potential but, failed.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#92 Post by RIP Film » Wed May 20, 2020 10:33 pm

Guess I'm the only one who liked this film. Watched it again recently and feel like some of these criticisms are beyond exaggerated for what is a quiet meditation on addiction, and maybe the sterile vacuity of modern life. This is the last film by McQueen where I didn't feel like he was trying to covertly manipulate my emotions while remaining "detached". Instead I think his detached style works well in this; you see this character's behavior as a human in his environment, and you aren't let in. There's no "character development", it's just an everyday life sort of portrait. The one-dimensional approach aligns with Brandon's POV. His life is just noise in between the moments he's not wacking off or having sex. Fassbender is so good at showing the weight and burden of his obsession; and there are brief moments in the film where it seems he might be able to notice the value others have or could have on his life, like when his sister is singing, but they are fleeting.

In regard to the gay scene at the end, it does sort of reek of that 90s apprehension toward homosexuals. But at the same time, from the perspective of the character, he just dumpstered all of his porn and is having a relapse. His impulse to want to crater hard by going to that club didn't seem far fetched, though maybe the depiction of the club was itself? I don't know. He did immediately go from that to a three-way with some prostitutes though, and it must be said none of the scenes with women are depicted in a glamorous or affirmative manner, either.

In any case, I enjoyed the film's effortless style and the breathing room in its pacing, which manages to not be dragged down by its subject matter. I wonder if McQueen is still able to go this small and quiet; I would have liked to see him develop more from here instead of going more Hollywood.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#93 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed May 20, 2020 10:52 pm

Great thoughts, agreed on the “quiet meditation on addiction” lens. The character development exists but in terms of a man hitting his ‘bottom,’ and that face of desperate pain Fassbender makes toward the end, during a moment that should be ecstasy, never fails to sell me on this depiction of what McQueen is getting at. The scene at the gay club is only a piece of a great exercise in showing that it isn’t about sexual preference as much as sex as an addiction, an obsession, compulsion, and spiritual loss of values. People can take the latter as problematic if equating that “loss of values” to “succumbing to homosexuality” but it’s more to do with the abandoning of his sister and the series of events that occur - the unsolicited groping and egging aggression, the club, and then the threesome culminating in the actual spiritual bottom of numb realization in his face. A man who once seemed to have it together (a “functioning” addict) is now magnetically drawn out into a world that makes him an outsider, rather than existing as a closeted outsider in a comfortable milieu as he did before. The club is more symbolic to that self-destructive removal from manageability using space than anything specifically meaningful about the details of that space.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#94 Post by RIP Film » Wed May 20, 2020 10:59 pm

Well said.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#95 Post by nitin » Sun May 24, 2020 1:34 am

Another fan here, but I have really liked all of McQueen's output so far.

Aside from the points RIP and twbb make above, I also thought the scenes with Nicole Beharie were really well done.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#96 Post by moreorless » Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:43 pm

Its been awhile but in terms of the characters development I took it to be more than just a study of addiction. I felt his addition was shown to be the product of his emotional withdrawl, desperately seeking sex to provide some kind of relief from his inability to engage with anyone emotionally. There seems to be the implication of some shared negative background with his sister as well to me, its left vague but perhaps their Irish background suggesting sexual abuse by the catholic church? In that respect I did think it was very strongly cathartic in terms of seeing his character finally being able to emotionally release when confronted with his sisters attempted suicide.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#97 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:58 pm

No study of addiction is "just" a study of addiction, but it doesn't matter what was a product of what (if there is a directly linear progression to these things) since we are intentionally kept at a distance to draw empathy from a behavioral study. Co-occurring disorders mark nearly all people who struggle with addiction- so following the self-medication hypothesis which most, but definitely not all, addicts identify with- you'd be right that there is some emotional issue triggering the outlet of the addictive behavior (the dysphoria is too unbearable to cope with) but that doesn't necessarily explain the entire addiction itself, it just helps identify part of its reinforcement and part of what may have planted seeds that led to the behavior somewhere down the line.
moreorless wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:43 pm
There seems to be the implication of some shared negative background with his sister as well to me, its left vague but perhaps their Irish background suggesting sexual abuse by the catholic church?
I think that's a huge stretch, but often times people who were abused or underwent trauma find ways to issue control, and Fassbender's sexual behavior could partly highlight that adaptive (and ultimately maladaptive) coping mechanism, yet it still doesn't explain everything. The reality is that this thing is so complex that people studying it forever can't identify many tangible explanations, its enigmatic status being partially why it's been classified as a disease, along with the fact that it's chronic. I realized I've just used "partly" an insane amount of times, which is appropriate for a disease so mysterious and impossible to pin down to a clear cause-and-effect. I admire this film a lot, almost completely because of McQueen's humility in not reverting to such simplistic attempts to analyze its mystifying nature away, and just exposing us to its pain instead.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#98 Post by moreorless » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:34 am

You do get the more direct if non specific comment from his sister that they "come from a bad place" which I think would seem to imply some form of abuse they shared which has led to their adult behaviour, at least in her view.

I would say there's significant build-up of the idea his addiction is tied to his inability to be open with others or even himself emotionally, the conservation with his date and even moreso his sisters pleading phone call. I think that makes his reaction to her suicide and his breaking down at the end a cathartic giving the film more weight that just showing an addiction hit bottom.

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Re: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

#99 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:45 am

Well, sure.. I think everyone noticed that line about “coming from a bad place” which is deliberately ominous and suggestive without distracting from the current pain via diagnostics of the past. And yes, his addiction is absolutely tied to that social and personal emotional numbness, the former is reminiscent of DSM criteria for addiction. My point is that we are graciously spared an opinion on specific causality, which is problematic, and instead are presented with a clear relationship as vague and only part of the complex arena, which is fair.

It also seems that you think, for some reason, that ‘hitting bottom’ is divorced from emotional experience from personal history. Something that a lot of people outside the communities of addiction often struggle to understand is that abuse of whatever the person is addicted to is frequently cited as “not the problem but the cure to the problem that is me.” Naturally the use becomes the problem too, unmanageability that prompts change, but the purpose of the statement is that addiction is related to managing dysphoric states and unbearable experience- however, the causality of direction is not a tangible clear linear formulation, but enigmatic territory. The ‘bottom’ is often indicative of that occurrence of unmanageability and all of those repressed emotions brought from the repressed subconscious into awareness.

In this case, I agree (though far more broadly) than you’re aiming at: Fassbender’s bottom is obviously not that he had a sad orgasm in a threesome or that he went to a gay club... his bottom is that his outlet for escape as well as his uncontrollable addictive behavior is no longer working for him and he cannot stop it. Part of it “not working” is in alleviation from emotional flooding, and so yeah his emotions come back but he also has to face his own behavior too. I take the crying as less of a specific emotional reaction to a specific signifier, but a form of surrender to conscious but still nebulous emotions. He is at once becoming aware of his behavior (spiritual loss of values in ignoring his sister, inability to resist his physical compulsions) and emotions (perhaps trauma, probably a murky swarm of current cognitive dissonance relating to his self-focused way of life and empathic-focused relationships that have caused harm) and feeling trapped within them and also from them.

As an addict he doesn’t have the tools to cope with this awareness- he’s had one tool and it’s no longer working. People in early recovery or who hit their bottoms, in my experience, frequently describe themselves as feeling like infants inside- despite being (often) full-growth people, due to re-conditioning themselves to deal with life on life's terms for the first time in a long time, sometimes ever, after utilizing a maladaptive mechanism to ignore these opportunities for self-reflection and growth, because their intangiblility is linked to their unmanageability without a program to help them through it. That's why it's defined as a complex mental illness.

It sounds like I’m being diagnostic myself but I’m trying (and likely failing) to verbalize how “hitting bottom” doesn’t need the word “just” in front of it- because it can be, and is, inclusive of your theory but also far more complicated than that. The experience is intensely flooded with unclear foreign emotions and thoughts that it causes a breakdown. There’s so much psychologically ineffable experience bubbling to the surface that McQueen does not take a step towards explaining it because doing so would be a disservice to the experience of an addict hitting bottom, which is indescribable.

A shorter version of my response would be: Yes, and let’s pare back on differentiating what is not asking to be clarified as such, since it can be unintentionally invalidating to the more convoluted experience of addiction. Your point is a correct formulation, but we need to leave room for this to be merely a fragment of the “bottom” as well as a whole lot more, none of which Fassbender’s character is consciously connecting in that moment - which is what is really important in the scene. In that moment, McQueen is only asking us to sympathize with an addict’s moment of surrender, and has placed those vague pieces of information to indicate that it is absolutely more than “just” a superficial idea of a physical bottom. His entire identity is being pulled apart from every which direction, and he is being exposed to that raw pain with no safety net of relief.

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