Abstract

Laurent Cantet’s film Vers le sud (2005), based on three short stories by the Haitian-Canadian author Dany Laferrière, explores the problems of ‘aliveness’ and ‘deadness’, both physical and psychical, questioning the systemic and emotional methods by which these states become racialised and concomitantly commodified. Central to the film’s living potency is the acuity of its politicised analysis: from start to finish, Vers le sud shines an unswerving spotlight on the simultaneous precariousness and over-exposure of certain kinds of Black (in this case, poor Haitian adolescents’ and children’s) lives. The film’s politics, grounded in a lucid presentation of the material and ideological conditions of racialised inequality on which neo-colonial, neo-liberal (and, in this case, sexualised) tourism takes place, are combined with a specifically cinematic critique of the gaze of the wealthy, White female subject who buys the power not only to look at this life, but also, vampirically, to ingest its perceived qualities of vitality. Politics and aesthetics come together in the film to deconstruct a set of (frequently masked and insidious) operations formed at the disavowed crossroads of capitalist, racist and child-abusing phantasies of corporeal and emotional appropriation.

摘要

Laurent Cantet 的电影Vers le Sud（2005 年）根据海地裔加拿大作家 Dany Laferrière 的三篇短篇小说改编，探讨了身体和心理上的“活力”和“死亡”问题，质疑这些问题所采用的系统和情感方法国家变得种族化并随之商品化。这部电影的生命力的核心是其政治化分析的敏锐度：从头到尾，Vers le Sud坚定不移地关注某些黑人（在这种情况下，海地贫困青少年和儿童）的生活同时不稳定和过度暴露。这部电影的政治，基于对新殖民主义、新自由主义（以及在这种情况下，性化）旅游发生的种族化不平等的物质和意识形态条件的清晰呈现，与对凝视的特定电影批判相结合富有的白人女性主体购买了权力，不仅可以看待这种生活，而且还可以吸血鬼般地吸收其感知到的生命力品质。政治和美学在电影中结合在一起，解构了一系列（经常被掩盖和阴险的）行动，这些行动形成于资本主义、种族主义和虐待儿童的肉体和情感挪用幻想的十字路口。