ChainedforLife is a remarkable exploration of representation in film that transcends a simple call for empathy jess_weixler adam_pearson
as a riposte to Browning’s pre-Code horror, whose legacy as one of the greatest and shocking films in the genre is stained by its exploitative and, certainly, ableist streak. It casts sideshow workers as both villains and victims cognizant of their own oppression, attempting a tricky mix of disdain and a searching humanity.
Still, Schimberg’s preoccupations extend beyond that one film, and perhaps even beyond the subjects of marginalization and representation. Throughout , he forces his characters into a tete-a-tete between sympathy and empathy, between acting as object and as subject. Ingenue Mabel might think that sympathy and empathy are effectively the same thing. They come from the same place. When speaking to a journalist on the set of the schlocky horror movie she’s starring in, she avoids broaching controversial subjects. On casting, particularly the casting of differently-abled people for said movie, she demurs, saying that it’s up to the director, but in her avoidance of discussing the social and political implications, ends up defending. Rookie mistake? Shortly after, in a conversation with her German “villain-sounding” director and co-star Max concerning a scene where her now-blind character must touch someone’s face, it becomes clear that nearly everyone’s notion of empathy is misplaced or miscalculated—or completely absent. When the people playing the “creepy” hospital residents in the film arrive, everyone treats them nicely in such an overly practiced way they can barely keep the contempt from seeping through their teeth. Most of these performers new to the set don’t seem to care, but Adam smells the crew’s shit. He’s right to: Mabel literally practices in the bathroom how to conduct herself. So nice, so perky, so happy to give Adam, who has neurofibromatosis, acting tips on his first day and corny platitudes like “you’re too hard on yourself.” They play an acting game, with Mabel performing emotions: happiness, sadness. Adam then offers “empathy.” Mabel is caught off-guard. She makes a face. “I think that’s pity,” he says, unsurprised. Ideally perhaps, empathy is the equalizer so many need and so few have, positioned by everyone across the political spectrum as the ultimate cure for all that is wrong with the world. Weaponized, it congeals and becomes perverted. Sympathy is hierarchical, and empathy is supposed to ask people to identify with others for the sake of justice—as if it’s a replacementjustice—but empathy is peanuts in the face of systematic discrimination and oppression. Schimberg wrestles with this idea, navigating a cultural landscape saturated with conversations about representation in media, but what he posits is unlikely to make your garden variety self-identified woke person feel better. Representation is a double-edged sword, particularly when the site of representation is created or directed by someone not of the group being represented. On the one hand, there is raised visibility and potential for normalization. On the other, because everyone’s experience is inherently subjective, representation is, at least abstractly, impossible to perfect because it’s still denying agency and voice to. The camera is often a de facto source of objectification, depriving those not behind the lens of their voice.
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