Sisyphean Unproductivity in Narrative Film

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between labour, productivity and film. The purpose of this intervention is to suggest that narrative film can show us the unproductive tendencies that humans carry within them but that cannot always make themselves known. These leisurely desires erupt as musicality, ecstasy, and the undoing of the self when we carry out the repetitive gestures of work. This article compares Camus's freedom and Georges Bataille's sovereignty as they share an interest in anti-futurity and anti-productivity and it uses these concepts to propose worker's ecstatic escapes from labour as Sisyphean unproductivity. Using this theoretical framework, I carry out a comparative and formal analysis of Sisyphus (Marcell Jankovics, 1974), Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936), The Apartment (Billy Wilder,1960) , Saut ma ville (Chantal Akerman, 1971) and Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000). While the field of film studies has highlighted the role of cinema as a tool for propagating ideologies of productivity, the scenes examined suggest that film also has a history of subverting ideologies of productivity through repetitive, Sisyphean unproductivity. By updating the plight of the Greek hero to 20thand 21stcentury capitalism, these directors uncover a fundamental, yet impossible, human desire for non-productive activities This re-centering of the unproductive could be useful in future academic re-categorizations of the working class through its desires to not work, that is, it provides preliminary materials for understanding class identities through their deformation, and not just their formation.