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 I
feel that people are ultimately individuals and it's only when
they
are trained to fit into a sociological pattern that is convenient
to someone that they begin to blame their conditions [on things
outside themselves]. All my pictures are … about individuals.
That's the only thing I believe in … Groups can go fuck themselves.
All of them. You know, a Black to me is a Black. And when he's
a person, he's a person. And when a Puerto Rican is a "Puerto
Rican"
or a "Hispanic" – I don't care what title [they
put] on – to me
there's a name for each person. I think it's marvelous to have
a name. And a woman is not a "woman." It's either Gena
or my mother
or some person.
Insofar as Cassavetes
defines experience in terms of internal states, his films resist
"ideological" or "sociological" analysis, which invariably define
characters' relations to the world in terms of external systems
of power and dominance. To the ideological critic, experience becomes
its outsides; while Cassavetes defines it in terms of its insides
– characters' insecurities, needs for approval, fears, desires
to
be independent. In Cassavetes' imaginative universe, the deepest,
most important aspects of his figures' identities completely elude
external systems of scrutiny and control. That is why Cassavetes'
narratives are so indifferent to social, economic or political
concerns.
If we ask how the siblings in Shadows support themselves
or how they can afford the furniture in Lelia's bedroom, we are
asking the wrong questions. The allusions to Ben's unemployment
or Hugh's underemployment exist to create emotional issues they
must deal with, not financial ones. The problems the characters
undergo do not originate in economic, political or social systems,
but from their unacknowledged needs and desires.
Cassavetes' understanding
of life was color-blind, class-blind and individualistic. Shadows'
racial theme might seem flatly to contradict this line of argumentation,
but in fact Cassavetes completely rejected any interpretation of
Shadows that viewed the film in terms of race relations,
precisely because it located Ben's, Hugh's or Lelia's problems
outside
themselves. In his own words, the film was not about racial but
"human problems." Of course, it's not necessary to take
his word
for it; Shadows is its own best guide to how it should be
understood. And what the film makes abundantly clear is that although
Ben and Lelia would undoubtedly blame their problems on racism
or
others, their only real problems are themselves. Their racial confusions
pale in comparison with (and in fact are only as a kind of metaphor
for) emotional confusions that have nothing to do with race.
Shadows, Published
by the British Film Institute (London, England)
Distributed in America by
the University
of California Press at Berkeley
ISBN: 0-85170-835-8
88 pages; thirty illustrations
This
page only contains excerpts and selected passages from Ray Carney's
writing about Shadows. To obtain the complete text as well
as the complete texts of many pieces about Cassavetes that are not
included on the web site, click
here.
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