2 - Sonic Subjection: Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible and the Dystopian Limits of the Resonant Body

Summary

VIBRATION

In 2002, the BBC, reporting on the Cannes Film Festival, ran an article about a film so shocking and violent that 250 people walked out of the screening, ‘some needing medical attention’ (BBC News 2002). The report goes on to detail how ‘fire wardens had to administer oxygen to 20 people who fainted during the film –which includes a 10-minute depiction of sodomy and also contains graphic scenes of rape and murder’. That film was Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (2002), a brutally structured take on the rape-revenge genre, that plays out in the manipulative indifference of reverse chronological order. Critical attention on this film has mostly focused on the way the reversed narrative structure forces us to experience effects before causes and in turn impacts the filmic presentation of time and trauma (Brinkema 2005) or our experience of violence (Higbee 2005). Palmer's monograph on the film described Irreversible as ‘a limit case or outlier contemporary French film, a lightning rod for debates inherent in expectations about cinema's acceptable conduct –or otherwise’ (2015: xviii). Here, I discuss how Noé's use of noise is integral to understanding the violence of his films, as well as the trauma of time. Irreversible is famous for making use of a sub-bass frequency, somewhere between 27 and 28 Hz, which rests in the sound-mix throughout much of the film, barely audible but palpably felt. This chapter thus takes forward the unlistenable as set up in Chapter 1 to explore the somatic effect of noise on the body. Volume is just one threshold that challenges our listening. It describes the intensity of a vibration, the amount of energy it has. It is measured in decibels and felt as loudness or quietness. Meanwhile frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz) and experienced (if it can be heard) as pitch, describes the number of vibrations per second. The limits of the body circumscribe the range of Hz we can cognitively process as between 20 and 20,000 Hz. At a level below 20 Hz, inaudible sound becomes tactile. It can produce organ resonance, nausea, concussion and physical impact, as well as possible respiration inhibition.