In a secular world is there such a thing as sin? That is: behaviour which most people, most of the time will agree is wrong, bad; not just by reference to its consequences social and personal, but in itself. As implied religious narratives weaken and lose their historical force in our social lives we are left struggling to find a new consensus upon which to base agreed judgements of morality and value.

Our cultural paradigm of contemporary knowledge, science, does not help us here. In extreme contexts it leads to what French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy on the BBC recently, called the “medicalisation of crime.” The principle however also holds more widely when unacceptable, anti-social behaviour is attributed to physical or social causal forces over which the individual has no control and of which he/she is therefore the helpless victim. We might say that the first is the response of a secular society to the problem that used to be called ‘evil’; and the second to that of ‘sin’.

Alcoholics Anonymous is perhaps the most empirically successful protective response to addiction ever devised. It sees addiction as a challenge to the will not simply as a disease of the body. It rigorously rejects the delusion of cure with the clear implacable demand of total abstinence as the only sure way to free the addicted from the multiplicity of harms alcohol inflicts: physical, social, personal and spiritual. It challenges the person, the will, to accept and understand he/she will always be an alcoholic and thus must accept responsibility for avoiding alcohol for the rest of his/her life. AA’s irreducibly social structure of support is equally dependent upon personal choice, intention, and resolve - not physical, bio-chemical remedies. This is an impressive achievement especially as at its most severe, alcohol addiction transmutes from aberrant emotional, psychological behaviour into a diagnosable physical disease.

Strategies to protect against drug addiction are more diverse, some emulating AA, others treating it as a physical disease with physical solutions. There are people whose dependency upon alcohol or drugs is profound but remains psychological or social, falling short of bodily disease. To date I am not aware that anyone has argued that Sex addiction is a physically diagnosable disease. It is, in terms of comparison therefore, a psychological, social, even spiritual dependency which should be distinguished from physical disease if understanding it aright is the first step to ameliorating its effects on people’s lives.

The profound empirical truth of the success of AA remains: that it can and does succeed, even against diagnosable disease, by motivating and supporting the non-scientific qualities of the will, intention, resolve – collectively what we call character.

A film cannot, nor should it be, a philosophical treatise or a scientific experiment. But if you are going to use art to reveal and explore a serious issue like the apparent phenomena of addiction to sexual gratification, then it seems to me one should take it seriously enough – not to explain it; but to represent its complexity as truthfully as possible. On this basis, for me Shame is a shallow film perpetuating by default rather than by artistic intention, the victimhood account of destructive obsession with sex.

I watched Shame at the gala preview shown in 60 cinemas across the country and followed by a discussion with Steve McQueen and fellow script-writer Abi Morgan. They were united and adamant that their artistic purpose was purely descriptive; to strenuously avoid linking current behaviour to previous experience; to avoid judgmental attitudes as to how and why Brandon (Michael Fassbender) and his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) the two principle protagonists in Shame, behave as they do.

This strategy is heroic but self-defeating. What we have are just two sets of symptoms displayed by characters we don’t even begin to know let alone understand, and therefore feel nothing towards: no empathy, sympathy or even anger or comtempt. Of course engaging actors like Fassbender and especially the entrancingly strong yet vulnerable Mulligan, do generate some emotional response from us but it derives from their acting personas not remotely from our engagement with their cryptic, unrealised characters.

McQueen and Morgan’s Brandon is defined by his obsession: apart from f*cking, masturbating and ogling porn; his only other activity is supposed to be work. But as a supposed account executive of some kind, I have no idea what, he is utterly unconvincing as the script gives him nothing to do that would convince us. As a result his masturbating in the office toilets and cramming his work PC with porn just seems pathetically adolescent and immature. Indeed even his serial conquests seem more like hands-free masturbation than anything as demanding as physical intercourse with another human being.

McQueen may argue that this is exactly the point. If so it seems to me any half-way intelligent person who enjoys sex gets that point within about 5 minutes of watching the meaningless moaning of even routine commercial porn.

Tantalisingly we get little hints about Brandon: his meticulous prissy tidiness in a totally characterless flat; his precious territoriality in response to Sissie’s invasion of his space; even his homosexual blow job at one point. Shamefully, pun intended, with all the full-on graphic gyrating nudity and grunting and groaning going on, the interesting possibility of an incestuous sexual bond between Brandon and Sissy is merely coyly hinted at. I am happy to take up McQueen’s challenge to form my own opinion about Brandon; but he gives us no character to form a judgment about.

Mulligan nearly scuttles McQueen and Morgan’s rigorously contrived detachment. With virtually no screen time in which to do it, she almost makes Sissy a real flesh and blood character. Her passion and strength in scenes with Fassbender make Brandon look even more insipid and blank. She brings the only sense of colour and well, balls, to the action.

I’m sure that an unremittingly aroused obsession with sex every waking moment must be a curse and a burden not lightened by the mocking dismissal of popular sentiment, especially male, that a chance would be a fine thing. But it is people who have pain, not bodies; thinking, feeling, willing persons who love, suffer, and indeed obsess.

We may be aroused by a body but we make love to a person. That may be what McQueen wants to show, not tell us, is part of Brandon’s emotional void - I can’t bring myself to say tragedy – but the invitation to see Brandon as a helpless victim with no choices, no possibility of fighting his own self-destructive impulses; seems to me to be a deeply objectionable form of sentimentality. And dangerously false.

Downbeat, drab and depressing. Interesting more for the serious questions it hints at rather than the ideas it develops.

Coda

There is a pattern here. I have been banging on about Lisbeth Salander in the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. By every objective standard Lisbeth is in (her fictional) reality the ultimate victim: subjected to systematic, prolonged abuse physical, psychological, sexual; personal social and institutional. Yet as Larssen writes her she utterly rejects the excuses of victimhood. Against all the odds she assembles her personal qualities to fight those who would harm her, control her. And importantly, against all her experience she gradually accepts help from others to succeed in this. As different from Brandon or even Sissy as it is possible to be - though Sissy at least seeks help from Brandon.

Again: compare Paddy Consadine's Joseph in the brilliant Tyrannosaur with Andrea Arnold's Mia in Fish Tank: the one utterly free of the self-indulgence of excuse the brutal context of his life invites; the other portrayed as a helpless victim we are asked to feel sorry for.


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I actually thought this was a very good film, Zettel.

Indeed even his serial conquests seem more like hands-free masturbation than anything as demanding as physical intercourse with another human being.

You said you thought this may have been the director's point - and I agree it was for me. Take the fact that he had no idea what the girl from the office whom he went out for dinner with was talking about when she challenged him about his view of relationships/marriage. Later he couldn't climax with her - he could only relate to people as orifices.

I like the idea that you had to draw your own conclusion about the brother and sister. I didn't want flashbacks to their childhood. For me I assumed it was sexual abuse from a parental figure - Cissy's "We're not bad people, we just come from a bad place" seemed to suggest that. Maybe there had been incest too.

I never thought I'd be able to sit through a film on sex addiction but was surprised at how unsexy it was.

I agree we don't know what he did at work but that's the same in so many films and books. In fact the only kind of jobs that are remotely convincing in films are jobs in films or writers/musicians/arty types.

I never bought Lisbeth Salander as a character remotely so I can't address the issue of one abused person being compared to another. For me she was a male fantasy figure. No woman on earth apart from a cartoon character could do all the things she can do! No man either, I hasten to add! And surely the Paddy Consadine's character in Tyranasaur is extremely damaged!

I kind of think there's hope at the end of "Shame" when the brother goes to his siter's bedside. Maybe it's a start.

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I'd definitely give this ****

Geraldine

Absolutely no doubt the reading you give to McQueen's film and his intentions can be sustained: it is definitely a valid way to see and read the film. But it all depends on whether you buy into the medicalisation of what used to be regarded as challenges to the will, to the character.

It is clear from interviews that McQueen does. There are for me two issues here: the first is - do you buy into sex 'addiction' as a physically irresistible illness like narcotics or alcohol or even tobacco addiction? However the second question is equally important - if you do accept sex-addiction as a physically causal process does it help? Treating these behaviours as physically caused, invites a physical chemical solution and invites the sufferer to see themselves as victim of an illness rather than the reality of being a victim of their own choices and decisions.

I know someone is, rightly, going to come back at me about how one understands and treats depression. All I can say is for me, as a matter of empirical fact, that I can decide not to bed dozens of women in a way that I cannot decide not to be clinically depressed. To resist medicalising all failures of willpower is not to say that some are not correctly accepted as having a physical root cause.

Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character of course - but if she is a fantasy then it seems to me that she can serve equally as a fantasy women will find engaging as well as men. Most men would find Salander threatening - from her mastery of what many would regard as 'male' dominated skills to her bi-sexuality and fierce independence.

There clearly are men who can do what she does which is largely supreme hacking: for they are regularly arrested and extradited etc. So your incredulity here does seem to have a gender element.

Of course most of the characters in Tyrannosaur are damaged: my point was, in contrast to Shame - they have not a shred of self-pity.

Interesting issues though: thought provoking and demanding a personal judgement rather than an objective, logical inference from the facts.

best

Z

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PS

I suppose my view boils down to this:

I cannot control my feelings: but I have to accept that I have the responsibility to control my actions.

That also perhaps offer the clue to the difference between depression and say sex and other similar 'addictions'.

It is also the core assumption without which AA could not exist.

Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character of course - but if she is a fantasy then it seems to me that she can serve equally as a fantasy women will find engaging as well as men.

No, not me. She can speak several languages fluently though she I dont remember she was ever exposed to them, strip a motorbike, not to mention all the other techno wizardry she gets up to plus she can fell the strongest most brutal males going. It's this last bit I take issue with more than anything. She is a tiny, tiny little woman. I don't buy her physical strength.

My kind of heroine is one who uses her brain not her non-existent brawn. In fact it's because of lack if brawn that women have to develop other skills to get out of bad situations - negotiation, cunning, charm etc. Most women will do anything to get out of a potentially violent situation than confront it!

The only males I can think of who can do what she can are perhaps SAS types who have done years of vigorous training.

I don't know if I do believe in sex addiction but I believed in Fassbender's portrayal of a sex addict so that was enough for me.

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"that I can decide not to bed dozens of women in a way that I cannot decide not to be clinically depressed."

I think most men would get fed up with this after a while - that's what sowing wild oats is all about, surely.

Fair enough. But in his other remarks in the trilogy it is clear that Larssen is obviously pre-occupied about the evidence of abuse to women in the real world and rather than a male fantasy it seems to me Salander is his idealised view of a woman who possesses the skills necessary to sustain a non-male dependent, fiercely independent perspective on her life but still, unlike male 'hero's' with such skills, to show a degree of reluctant emotional vulnerability.

As for the physical 'power' the narrative has her as a dedicated kick-boxer: these forms combat are based upon using the weight and power of ones opponent against them. It is not so far fetched: Gina Carano who stars in Haywire is a real world martial arts champion and Jonathan Ross recently had a delightful young lady from our Olympic team who is a martial arts champion and didn't look all that beefy.

There is also a rich diversity of other female characters in Larssen's Trilogy: His sister who is more in the mold you mention using her intelligence and legal skills combined with a withstanding kind of courage; Erika Berger is it seems to me a very intersting character who has adopted an unorthodox sexual life-style driven by her perception of her own needs.

And finally, and importantly, the men in the Trilogy are interestingly varied: the unspeakable but only too credible Bjurman, the kind and supportive Palme, Berger's husband who loves his wife despite her unconventional desires, Bolmkvist himself who is multi-layered and who Salander forces to accept her on her own terms. Plenty of male neanderthal's, abusers, as well but also men with an instinct to protect and passion for the truth.

Larssen ain't Tolstoy but in the crime/thriller genre has unusually interesting unconventional perspectives on gender and relationships it seems to me.

Of course Salander's qualities are exaggerated to sustain the characterisation but quasi-autistic individuals with eidetic memory and instinctive maths and linguistic skills do exist. She had a Russian father, a Swedish mother and in a succession of care homes would probably have come across a wide range of kids from different countries.

I guess even if Salander does stretch credulity a bit - it's nice for a change for a woman character to do that rather than the inevitable male. And she really isn't a Lara Croft male fantasy stereotype.

Anyway the books and the films do seem to raise interesting questions - so that's gotta be good eh?

Best

Z