Am I the Monster, or Are You? The Representation of the (In)Human in Mathieu Kassovitz s La Haine

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1 Draft CFP: 7 th Global Conference on the Monster and the Monstrous Tamara El-Hoss Brock University Am I the Monster, or Are You? The Representation of the (In)Human in Mathieu Kassovitz s La Haine Mathieu Kassovitz s critically acclaimed film La Haine (1995) portrays, on the surface, the cycle of violence and hatred between inner city youth living in la cité (public housing) in the banlieue (suburbs) of Paris, and the police. According to William Kornblum, one of the three social scientist interviewed in the documentary Social Dynamite 1 included in the supplements to the North American release of the film on DVD in 2007: La Haine has had enormous influence in the last ten years, both as a film and as a social commentary on high-rise public housing, the problems of the segregated and marginalized people in that housing. The film is shot in black and white, which gives it the feel of a documentary, and follows a day in the life of the black-blanc-beur trio of protagonists, Hubert (African origin), Vinz (white, Jewish) and Saïd (Arabe origin, Beur) who visit Paris after a riot in the cité. If we move beyond the surface, however, Kassovitz s film is a brilliant study of marginalization, alienation, segregation, and the search of one s identity in a hostile environment. La Haine reveals a fact that we all know too well, that the distinction between us and them is a universal problem and centers really on the alienation that these young people are feeling and the bleak prospects for their lives (Kornblum). The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which Kassovitz constructs the (In)Human, as well as the Monster/Monstrous, in his film. The three protagonists, representing three ethnic groups living in la cité, are growing-up apart from the rest of society; they are poor, alienated, segregated and 1

2 marginalized. Hate is engendered in the film by the sense these young men have of being disliked themselves. The young people feel hate directed at them and are returning that hate back (Kornblum). Who then is the barbarian, or rather, who is the monster? Is it us or is it them? La cité, built in the suburbs of large urban cities like Paris, Marseille and Lyon, propagates a culture of fear within French society; the media is at the center this proliferation in view of the fact that it often plays on the idea of the barbarians at the gate in its coverage of the banlieue, a reality the film illustrates very well. La haine rapidly became a media phenomenon in a way that might appear ironic for a film which criticizes the media s tendency to turn any spectacle, however gruesome or violent, into entertainment (Forbes 178). Kassovitz s film was inspired by a fait divers, the death of 16-year-old Makomé Bowole, a Zairean, who was shot in the head by a police inspector in a Parisian police station in 1993 (Tarr, 2005, 67). La Haine is divided into sequences, in black and white, representing twenty-four hours in the life of three youths living in La Cité des Muguets [lilies of the valley], a housing project in the banlieue on the outskirts of Paris. It could further be divided into the following three major parts (a structure which can be compared to that of a tragedy in three acts): 1- the cité, 2- the trip to Paris, and 3- back to the cité. The film begins and ends with violence, alienation and death (Tarr, 2005, 62) and starts with a sequence depicting a violent clash between banlieue youth and the police while Bob Marley s Burnin and Lootin plays in the background. Policeman are lined-up military style in riot gear confronting a crowd of young people, while the latter are throwing rocks, bottles, and anything they can get their hands on, on authority. Cars are burning and people are running in all directions, the scene is chaotic 2

3 and violent. The media, of course, is present and filming the clash. We learn, through a television news clip, that a young man from the banlieue named Abdel Ichacha has been beaten by police and is in hospital; Abdel serves as the catalyst in the film. It is ironic that throughout La Haine the trio learns the condition of Abdel who eventually dies from his wounds through television news clips. During the beginning credit sequence, a Molotov cocktail is thrown in the direction of the earth. The camera follows the Molotov cocktail, moving in slow-motion, while we hear the following voice-over by one of the protagonists, Hubert: It s the story of a guy who is about to fall off a fifty story sky scraper. On his way down past each floor, he keeps telling himself so far so good, so far so good, so far so good; it s not the fall that matters [the Molotov cocktail hits the earth and there is a big blast], it s how you land. The story of the falling man will be referred to again throughout the film, once in the middle (when Hubert recounts it to Vinz), and once at the end when the trio returns to the cité (with a slight but important modification). At the beginning of La Haine [t]he spectator is introduced to the banlieue and its inhabitants through two sources: documentary footage of demonstrations against police brutality within the banlieue and the newsreader s account of the previous night s rioting in la cité (Higbee, 2005, 130). After the credits, a digital clock on the screen informs the spectator that it is 10:38 in the morning, the camera focuses on Saïd s face, his eyes are closed, and we hear a gunshot. It s the morning after the riots, all is quiet in the cité but police officers in riot gear resembling an occupying army are still on the grounds. When Saïd opens his eyes, the camera follows his gaze, he is looking at the riot police, decides to tag their truck and writes Baise la police [Fuck the police], signing his masterpiece and thus clearly 3

4 marking his territory ( tagging, quite common in housing projects in general, is seen not only as marking one s territory but also as a mean of communication). The first part of the film illustrates life in the banlieue and in the cité. Hubert, Vinz and Saïd, the three protagonists, live in a desolate land and try to fill their days as best they can. They are unemployed, don t go to school, and don t seem to have any form of structure in their lives. The school in the cité has been destroyed by the riots, so has the gym, so has everything else. They walk aimlessly around the destroyed cité, smoke-up, loiter, and clash with the riot police on numerous occasions due to the fact that they view them as occupying their territory. We learn, once again through news clips, that a police officer has lost his weapon in the cité the night before during the riots; we later learn that Vinz has found the hand-gun and vows to kill a police officer if Abdel (the young man in the hospital) dies. Vinz is the volatile character who seeks revenge and who dreams of killing a cop. He even imitates Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver (by Martin Scorsese) at the beginning of the film in a scene where he s looking at his reflection in the mirror, makes a gun with his hand, and pronounces the infamous line Are you talking to me?. Hubert, on the other hand, a boxer, is the wise character who serves as the moral compass he is the one who tells Vinz that hate attracts hate and is therefore not a solution to their problems. Saïd seems to be a witness to the all of the events, a neutral character within the trio. Between 10:38 and 17:04, in the cité, we are shown numerous sequences where the three protagonists are sitting on a rock, or a bench, silent and bored. The spectator is confronted with the emptiness of their lives, the mounting tension, as well as the inevitable tragic end. Carrie Tarr sustains the following: [T]he problematic in La Haine is not so much ethnic difference as social difference, the fracture 4

5 in French society, of which ethnic difference is only a relatively minor element (1997, 78). The fracture in society Tarr is referring to is specific to the banlieue and the cité. In the seventies, the French State decided to build affordable housing (large apartment buildings) for young couples and/or young professionals in the outskirts of big cities, like Paris, where land was available. Once residents moved in, the State had planned to invest resources in order to build infrastructures which would support an independent community with a prosperous future. When Valéry Giscard d Estaing became the President of France ( ), however, he decided to facilitate the purchase of homes for first-time buyers; the banlieusards (people living in the suburbs) decided to be home owners and consequently moved out of the banlieues where infrastructures had not yet been established. The cités were emptied and demand to live there was quite low. Prices dropped and these housing projects became an ideal first and sometimes only residence for new immigrants and people who could not afford to live elsewhere. The State never did invest in these areas, the buildings were very badly maintained, crime was on the rise, and most inhabitants realized that the odds of improving their lives in the cités were quite low, if not impossible. According to the social scientist Sophie Body- Gendrot, interviewed in Social Dynamite : These spaces had been conceived for a full salaried society. You had major unemployment hitting these families who could not pay their rent anymore. And gradually decay took over and people stopped wanting to live in these areas. The cités are segregated neighborhoods even the police are afraid to enter; these areas are geographically isolated from the rest of society. In order to go to Paris, for 5

6 example, one must take a commuter train; the latter has limited hours of operation and is considered to be quite dangerous. According to the social scientist Jeff Fagan, also interviewed in Social Dynamite : The cultural and social distance, and the distance of the kids from the banlieue to the mainstream society, creates sparks and resentment and anger, and it s extreme hatred. Our three protagonists are a product of the cité. They have grown-up in an area where opportunities are nonexistent, the future bleak, and they consequently live for the moment with no hopes, aspirations or dreams. They feel like second-hand citizens and mistrust any form of authority, specially the police. [T]he film shows [ ] this anticipation of young men who think that they are invisible. Sometimes they say that they feel like rats, they want to express the violence they resent with a confrontation (Body-Gendrot). There are numerous examples of confrontations in the film. Even though the latter are mainly between the young people and the police (be it in the banlieue or in Paris), we are also shown a confrontation between the trio and a group of skinheads in Paris, as well as one between them and bourgeois society, also in Paris. Living in these housing projects makes them feel segregated and alienated, and sometimes even inhuman. When a television crew, in a car, enters the cité and asks them about the riots (the reporter never leaves her car), the trio plays the part that is expected of them: they act-up, start screaming and cursing, playing on the inhuman / monstrous image that people in the society at large have of them. They end the encounter by proclaiming very loudly that this is not a Safari Park, implying of course that they are not animals to be visited, filmed and/or photographed. This example supports Higbee s argument that in his film Kassovitz is [ ] questioning the effect of media stereotypes, not only on our broader perception of the banlieue, but also on shaping the identity and 6

7 behaviour of the male youths who inhabit these excluded spaces within society (2005, 130). The inhuman and monstrous are further developed by Kassovitz in the second part of La Haine when the three protagonists take the commuter train to Paris in order to recover a debt owed to Saïd. The digital clock on the screen announces that it s 18:22. In Paris, their inability to bridge what is essentially a social and therefore a psychological and cultural divide (Fagan) reinforces their sense of alienation. They feel different than the people around them and seem foreign to their surroundings. Their lack of familiarity and distance from the everyday social rules and normal discourse that takes place in the bourgeois and middle class society (Fagan) is emphasized in a scene where the trio, having missed the last commuter train back to the banlieue because of an altercation with the police, must spend the night in Paris and take the first morning train back. They walk into an Art Gallery where an opening reception is taking place. They eat and drink like savages, unaware of the social rules of conduct in such a setting. They feel alienated from the people who are wealthier than they are, and whose French is more proper in certain ways, and they act that out, they act out their hostility towards them (Kornblum). When the gallery owner politely asks them to leave, they play the part that is expected of them: they scream, curse, and break a table on their way out. The three friends behaved as they are perceived, as in the scene with the television crew trying to interview them in the cité, and take-on an identity that has been constructed by the media. After their chaotic and somewhat violent departure, the gallery owner declares: le malaise des banlieues. The remark, which seems to explain as well as excuse the barbaric behavior they all witnessed, is readily accepted. 7

8 One of the main focuses of La Haine is the clash between young people from the banlieue and the police, and how that conflict is more often than not exceedingly violent. Kassovitz s criticism of police brutality is serious, especially when it is set alongside the relative triviality of the friends misdemeanours (Forbes 178). Extreme emotions drive both sides of the battle: hatred and revenge. The police try to control the area through violence, often abuse their power and are perceived as an occupying army. Kassovitz has defined his film not as anti-flic, but anti-système policier. La Haine thus criticises a police system which leaves officers ill-prepared to deal with the explosive situation in the banlieue and continues to tolerate the presence of racist thugs (Higbee, 2001, 206). The banlieue depicted in the film is a war zone and is monitored by the police as such. Examples of confrontations with the police are present throughout the film, be it in the cité or in Paris, and they all seem to have a common denominator: violence. It is obvious that Kassovitz is highly critical of the authority s abuse of power and demonstrates that policing with an iron fist is a method prone to failure, since it inevitably leads to hatred and violence on both sides. According to William Kornblum The film really predicted a lot of the social dynamite that was building and finally erupted in 2005 in a terrible rash of violence. I agree with Kornblum s assessment. To a certain extent, La Haine can even be used as a blue print to what happened in 2005 in France. It does not, however, offer any solutions to the multitude of problems and the social unrest in the banlieue. The film ends, in the Cité des Muguets, with the violent although accidental death of Vinz at the hands of a stressed-out detective assigned to that cité. The digital clock on the screen announces that it s 6:01 (the next day). Hubert, who until that point had been a pacifist, picks-up 8

9 Vinz s gun and aims it at the detective s head, while the latter aims his own weapon at Hubert s. The camera moves to Saïd s face (as in the beginning), he closes his eyes and the screen goes black. We hear the following voice-over by Hubert: It s the story of a society that is about to fall off a fifty story sky scraper. On its way down past each floor, it keeps telling itself so far so good, so far so good, so far so good; it s not the fall that matters, it s how you land. We hear a gunshot. The End. 1 The other two are Sophie Body-Gendrot and Jeff Fagan. Works Cited Body-Gendrot, Sophie. Social Dynamite. La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz The Criteron Collection, North American release. DVD disk 2. Fagan, Jeff. Social Dynamite. La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz The Criteron Collection, North American release. DVD disk 2. Forbes, Jill. La haine. European Cinema. Éd. Jill Forbes and Sarah Street. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz The Criteron Collection, North American release. DVD disk 1. Higbee, Will. The Return of the Political, or Designer Visions of Exclusion?: The Case for Mathieu Kassovitz s fracture sociale Trilogy. Studies in French Cinema 5.2 (2005): Screening the other Paris : Cinematic Representations of the French Urban Periphery in La Haine and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er. Modern & Contemporary France 9.2 (May 2001): Kornblum, Willam. Social Dynamite. La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz The Criteron Collection, North American release. DVD disk 2. Tarr, Carrie. Reframing difference : Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. New York: Manchester University Press, French Cinema and Post-Colonial Minorities. Post-Colonial Cultures in France. Éd. Alec G. Hargreaves and Mark Mckinney. London: Routledge,