JCVD opens with an action-packed scene that encompasses Jacques Derrida’s idea of “différance.” For the first four minutes of the movie, Van Damme fights in a street battle against multiple men in one single shot of film. Derrida’s theory suggests that the men van Damme battles (referred to as “extras” in the movie industry) should be viewed “not [as] identities but [as] a network of relations between things whose differences from one another allows them to appear…separate and identifiable” (Rivkin 258). Van Damme fights through multiple attacks from dark and mysterious opponents. Van Damme makes his way through many obstacles such as unpredictable bursts of fire and spontaneous gunshots. The men he fights against are not identifiable causing the scene to be best described as, “a kind of ghost effect, a flickering of passing moments…They have no full, substantial presence (much as a flicking of cards of slightly different pictures of the same thing creates the effect of seeing the actual thing in motion)” (Rivkin 258). Like a deck of cards, though each warrior plays a role in the movie, each individual’s identity is arbitrary as they are all one in the same. Flicking a deck of cards is also reflective of a reel of film running through a projector, both serving as postmodern qualities. The action scene ends abruptly when a wall of the movie set falls over. The audience is watching reflexive cinema: a movie being filmed within a movie. This movie appears to take place in an Asian country. The director demands a retake. Van Damme is no longer idealized by the movie set and his true, aged self is exposed. On film, van Damme plays a muscular, impenetrable machine-like force, however, once the camera stops, van Damme must catch his breath and he admits to his limited capabilities. Van Damme declares, “It is very difficult for me to do everything in one shot. I am forty-seven years old!” Van Damme walks away from the scene with his head down in defeat.
The scene that follows takes place in an American court room. The audience draws this conclusion by the signs of a brightly-lit American flag and a gold-plated eagle plaque. Within the realm of the courtroom, it is apparent that van Damme is faced with the American Judicial “Panopticon.” According to Foucault, “The major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (Foucault 554). Van Damme stands no chance of liberty as a French man inside of an American court room: the symbol for justice. Van Damme sits under the surveillance of the judge who sits in the “all seeing” seat of the circular room. As the hearing proceeds, the opposing attorney speaks ill of van Damme, illuminating him in an undesirable light. The attorney says, “My client is aware of the responsibilities of raising a child…On the other hand, we have an actor here who[‘s] entire career experience is with films…no responsible, aware parent would expose their children to…How does this actor play death? Let me count the ways.” Van Damme’s profession as an actor can not substitute his role as a parent, not are they interchangeable. The assumption of such is an example of what Derrida calls “supplement at the origin.” This idea refers to, “if one tries to grasp the presence of something, one encounters a difference, not something substantial” (Rivkin 259). The attorney uses the logical fallacy, ad hominem, by judging Van Damme’s character based on his profession. This fallacy also violates Derrida’s idea that, “either the [signs, or identities] represent an idea which they signify in order to mean something, or, they must substitute for the presence of an object in the world that they designate” (Rivkin 258). What does the lawyer mean when he emphasizes the word, “awareness”? In the spirit of a postmodern screenplay, the importance of self-awareness is the most appropriate in. It is ironic that van Damme should be accused of lacking self-awareness based on the sole fact that he is an actor in violent films when his profession provides the means to feed his family. Simultaneously, van Damme lacks awareness in his ability to see past what he already knows. Van Damme “is seen, but he does not see” (Foucault).
The action of the film takes place in van Damme’s native country of France where his loyal fans reside. Van Damn is threatened to be fired by his own attorney unless he wires money to pay for his lawyer fees. In a rush to get to the “post office,” van Damme is distracted by two young men that rush from a video store to meet him. The young men capture the moment by taking photos with the actor, reflective as another means of portraying van Damme’s life under surveillance. Van Damme is able to break from the men and head toward the post office; he escapes the frame for a moment. The young men show off their digital photographs to a police officer and the three of them join in praise toward the actor. One of the men says at random, “Aware!” Within moments, a gunshot shatters the window of cab and the people in the streets begin to panic. The loud noise acts as an attribute of a postmodern text forcing the audience to be shaken from their focus and start again. The movie can be categorized (nonexclusively) as a mystery, for the audience knows nothing about the source of the gun shot. When the shock of the bullet dies down for the audience, the silent air is replaced with instrumental detective music. Like traits of a postmodern text, the movie’s story unravels out of sequence. As the question of where the bullet comes from remains a mystery, the screen turns black and the following phrase appears: “1. La Réponse avant la Question.” Intentionally implemented by the director are English subtitles beneath the phrase: “1. The Answer before the question.”
The frame changes to focus on the police man running toward the post office. He comes face to face with van Damme, however, van Damme stands behind a glass window. The window’s reflect casts a glare that makes van Damn appear be behind bars. To the audience, van Damn looks like a potential perpetrator in the unsolved mystery. In his essay, “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral Sense,” Friedrich Nietzsche writes, “What indeed does man know about himself? Oh! that he could but once see himself complete, placed as it were in an illuminated glass case!” (Nietzsche). Is it possible that the illusion of van Damme behind bars can signify inner completeness? The audience is redirected to the interior of the building and the truth of the mystery begins to reveal itself. Prior to van Damme’s entrance, the post office was in the midst of being robbed independent of van Damme. By chance, van Damme forces himself into an active robbery by pressuring Arthur, one of the conmen to let him into the building. Once van Damme enters and discovers that he has become a hostage, the robbers make use of his identity and set him up to be perceived at the criminal. Van Damme becomes the liaison between the robbers and the outside authority.
Van Damn does not rebel against the robbers when they demand him to act as the leading criminal with the understanding that, “A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behavior” (555). Van Damme cannot control the impulses of the psychopaths within the Ponopticon, but he can appease the situation so as to manipulate it. Van Damme intends to find away to free the hostages as he later suggests to Arthur, "We gotta free the hostages.” With this intention, van Damme’s awareness begins to develop. He adheres to the requests of the robbers in order to create a “fictitious” relationship. Outside of the post office, a large crowd has surfaced believing that van Damme is the responsible party for the hostage situation. The Chief of police persuades Van Damme’s mother to manipulate her son into freeing one of the hostages. The robbers allow this to happen and they release the single mother from the building, but keep her child captive. The chief of police rush toward the building when his fellow officers announce that, “They are raising the curtain!” In the English language, a curtain is defined as: “The screen separating the stage from the auditorium, which is drawn up at the beginning and dropped at the end of the play or of a separate act” (O.E.D.). To a native English speaker, the raising of a curtain signifies the beginning of a live performance. In the movie, however, a gate is opened, not a piece of drapery. Gate is defined as, “An opening in a wall, made for the purpose of entrance and exit, and capable of being closed by a movable barrier…or the enclosure-wall of a large building (O.E.D.). There exists a strong disconnection between the symbols. They both serve the purpose of acting as a barrier between the internal and the external, however, what purpose does the word choice signify? The Popticon of the moment is the post office with an all seeing eye in the large crowd of people. Foucault explains that the Ponopticon is “like so many cages, so many small theaters in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible...It reveres the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide – it perseveres only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap" (Foucault 554). Are curtains and gates intended to be substitutions and/ or interchangeable? Is van Damme putting on a show for his fans to see? Van Damme breaks the fourth wall and looks directly into the camera. Filled with tears, van Damme rids himself of any fear of vulnerability and delivers a monologue to the audience. His self reflexive, stream-like consciousness confesses his inner feelings toward his life, its meaning and his current situation.
Van Damme acknowledges his decision to submit his life and body to the power relations of Hollywood when he transformed or “invested” his body from being “small and scrawny” into a fit form filled will the muscles that will be the defining feature of his fame. His body is “Under a regime of controlled consumption shaped by marketing and advertising, to consume signs of status or of self identity” (Rivkin). During his monologue, van Damme shows resentment toward Hollywood for his constructed identity and mourns the loss of the things he once loved. He says, “I took up karate…"Oss!" It's Samurai code. It's honour, no lies…In the US…No one says "Oss" to you. Sometimes people in show business say, "We're gonna' fuck em.'" I believed in…the Dojo.” The passion and inspiration he once found in Karate becomes one of the many signifiers for popular culture and trends. Van Damme expresses his disappointment in the “différance” that has developed within his field of fighting. Van Damme continues, “I went from poor to rich and thought, ‘why aren't we all like me, why all the privileges? I'm just a regular guy…It's not my fault if I was cut out to be a star…I asked for it, really believed in it.” The evolution of van Damme’s life exemplifies Foucalt’s concept of power relations. Van Damme becomes empowered by his fame in Hollywood, however, “This power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who 'do not have it'; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them” (Foucault). Van Damme encompasses the nature by which power relations exist: just as the subject submits the force of power, the institution also “exert[s] pressure upon the [subject]" (Foucault). Van Damme willingly resists the force that has controlled his life for so long. At this moment, he is willing to sacrifice his power for the total ownership of himself and his life. Van Damme concludes, “What I've done on this Earth. Nothing! I've done nothing!...I truly believe it's not a movie. It's real life. Real life…It's hard for me to judge people and it's hard for them... not to judge me. Easier to blame me. Yeah, something like that.” Van Damme becomes “aware” and “assumes responsibility for the constraints of power [that] he makes them play spontaneously upon himself” (Foucault 556). Van Damme’s tears are convincing, however, the reality for the audience is that they are watching a performance, not real life. The camera zooms out of the bust shot of van Damme and an aerial view films the actor downward as he floats into a seat within his reality. As if he listened to the entire monologue, Arthur stands still, staring at van Damme with an intense look of astonishment and sympathy.
Van Damme lives his life under constant surveillance. For ninety-seven minutes, he is being watched from every side of the spectrum, especially the fourth wall. The audience serves as a reminder to van Damme of his restricted lifestyle and at the same time, the viewer is constantly reminded to be self-aware. With twists, turns, bangs and silence, the director intends to shift the environment for the viewer as a means to remind the viewer of its purpose: watch the movie, do not be immersed in it. However, is the audience watching a film of van Damme’s reality, or are we merely being entertained?
Van Damme’s shift in genre is influential to his Hollywood-made identity. In JCVD, he deconstructs this so-called identity and no longer limits himself to be defined based on a genre of film. Instead, he chooses to be undefined and behave an ordinary person. When his life slips from his hands and he loses custody of his daughter, all of his money and is threatened for his life, van Damme is finally “aware” of the constructed identity he stood by for so long. He chooses to abandon his identity because has no truth value. How can one be identified through signs of material in death? Van Damn invests his entire life in Hollywood, only to come out empty handed. It is Hollywood where he loses himself, and it is not until his jail sentence that he becomes “aware” of his self-prescribed “power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” instead of something outside of himself (Foucault). Thus, van Damme is removed from the Ponopticon of Hollywood and the public eye, and placed into prison. While serving his term in jail, van Damme uses his Hollywood identity to reinvent his pure passion for Karate. Van Damme creates value in his immediate environment through teaching Karate to his fellow inmates. In the finals moments of the movie, the aged actor is visited by his daughter while in jail. Van Damme sits across the table from her, separated by a glass window. At this moment, the audience sees van Damme smile genuinely for the first time. He does not look to any camera or put on any kind of show, but looks directly at his daughter and finds happiness in his state of being undefined. Nietzsche writes, “Only by means of forgetfulness can man ever arrive at imagining that he possesses ‘truth’” (Nietzsche). Perhaps the reflection in the window from the beginning of the movie was a premonition for his future. Van Damme finds his complete self within a “glass case” and behind bars. Nietzsche concludes, "Only by the invincible faith, that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself: in short, only by the fact that man forgets himself as subject, and what is more as an artistically creating subject: only by all this does he live with some repose, safety, and consequence. If he were able to get out of the prison walls of this faith, even for an instant only, his 'self-consciousness' would be destroyed at once" (Nietzsche). Jean Claude van Damme successfully finds the “awareness” he has lost for so long once he is able to see through the glass to his true reflection.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 549-565. Print.
JCVD. Dir. Mabrouk El Mechri. Perf. Jean Claude van Damme. Peacearch, 2008. DVD.
Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Postmodern Condition.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 355-364. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral Sense.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 262-265. Print.
Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. “Introduction: Introductory Deconstruction.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 257-261. Print.
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