Blog Post #4: Shaming the Audience's desire for the Spectacle of Death

Paul, the Unsung Hero

Ryan Chau

Michael Haneke writes and directs Funny Games as a twisted social commentary on the generic audiences’ desire for the spectacle of death. Two masochistic men invade a household and torture a family. The family is made to do humiliating deeds as a twisted prelude to their inevitable demise. Despite their ephemeral encounters with security and escape, the protagonists are destined to die, shown simply through the employment of reflexive narration, or the breaking of the fourth wall, by Paul, the psychotic administrator of the ‘games’ the audience bares witness to. Throughout the duration of the film, we are treated as another character of sorts, but connected to the film exclusively through Paul. Paul constantly addresses the audience, blatantly including the audience as an accessory to the crime. The first instance of reflexive narration is Paul’s sly wink, indicating to the audience that the movie is starting and will soon be approaching rising action. The wink is a message to viewers, commenting, “This is what you’re here for isn’t it?” Paul is later heard stating, “The people at home don’t want to hear this,” implying that he is catering to the spectators’ masochistic desires rather than his own. Although Paul inquires the audience, “You’re rooting for these guys aren’t you?” he still has the audacity to ask us “who we will bet with.” Funny Games was engineered to questions moral desires. Would you rather see the gruesome torture and death of a generic family, as is so commonplace in horror films, or would you rather see our protagonists win and kill their demented assailants, as has become so cliché in modern film?

As a result of the breaking of the wall by Paul, viewers are forced to identify with him, despite whether or not sorrow is felt for the family. As stated by Sconce: “As the conversation between the two girls at the video store suggests, some teenagers have a difficult time identifying with the “cardboard victims” (Sconce, 104). The audience is not given much time or material in order to establish a connection with the family. Reflexive narration is used as a tool in order to strengthen the relationship between Paul and the audience. “The self-reflexive techniques thought by many theorists to challenge dominant modes of enunciation and identification are used instead as a means of intensifying certain forms of viewer identification” (Sconce, 111). Paul is the source of entertainment of the movie; he is the facilitator that controls every event and what we are shown, as is displayed in the rewinding scene. This relates to Sconce’s quote on Freddy: “As episodes of spectacle punctuated by brief narrative links, the Nightmare series’ entire structure is designed to promote and indulge these episodes of intense visual excitement. In this sense, viewers identify with Freddy not so much as a character but as a facilitator, the dynamic ‘source’ of the phantasmagoric imagery” (Sconce, 113-114). By being the facilitator, Paul, in a twisted way, is the faux hero of Funny Games. Viewers are naturally attracted towards the spectacle of death, and Paul seems to promise to deliver suffering and death to the family; he is only giving the audience what they desire.

As the film progresses, the audience realizes the message of the film and the travesty that is the spectacle of death.  Viewers are punished for succumbing to their desire to watch a horror movie and witness the struggle between predator and prey. A film is not exciting if there is no struggle or conflict, and it is not enjoyable if this struggle or conflict cannot be witnessed. A horror film is not exciting if neither faction suffers, nor is it enjoyable if the suffering cannot be witnessed. As a social commentary, Funny Games remarks on the general audiences’ desire to behold this suffering flawlessly. Sconce reflects, “The ‘pleasures’ afforded by each type of identification differ also; indeed, these pleasures may very well be defined in opposition to one another. Perhaps Freddy has enjoyed such popularity in American youth culture over the past decade because his power to combine vicious wit and visual weirdness resonates with a generation more attuned to spectacle than narrative, who prefer the spectacular over the normative” (Sconce, 117-118). But Michael Haneke as the director completely removes this pleasure from the film and from the spectacle of death from the viewers. When Anna manages to grab the shotgun and finally achieve vengeance for her family’s suffering by killing Peter, Paul’s accomplice, Paul immediately finds and uses a remote to rewind the film. He stops Anna from killing Peter a second time, and thus the conflict between the two factions is negated. Paul and Peter suffer no loss throughout the duration of the film, in fact they essentially do not suffer at all, in any aspect. The film is entirely biased toward the two assailants. The very spectacle of death is denied, and not only in that instance, but also during the deaths of the family. The deaths of both the son and the father go unseen in the film. The lack of inclusion of gory violence is used to punish the audience for yearning to see. 

Funny Games is a social commentary on the generic audience's desire for the spectacle of death, as defined by Sconce. Michael Haneke employs reflexive narration through Paul in order to involve and shame the audience simply for enjoying the spectacle of death. And so it is denied through clever cinematography and Paul's omnipotent facilitation. The audience is blamed for the family's suffering, in a sense, Paul gives the audience what they wanted, but Michael Haneke strips any possible enjoyment from it.

Work Cited

Sconce, Jeffrey. "Spectacles of Death." Film Theories Goes To the Movies. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins. London: Routledge, 1993. 102-119.