Abstract

As a fictional adaptation of the life of a real-life drifter (Setina Arhab), Agnès Varda’s 1985 film Sans toit ni loi presents the filmmaker with certain ethical questions. How can one ethically mediatize the poverty of others? How can one create and sell images of the poor which do not voyeuristically, hypocritically, or reductively exhibit them? Can one represent those who may refuse representation? I claim that Varda engages with these questions via a metafilmic reflection on the two means by which she might adapt Setina to the cinematic screen: documentation and aestheticization. Whereas Varda first seems to side with the plasticity of aestheticization over the strict mimesis of documentation, she then problematizes such a choice by dialogically questioning her decision not merely to document Setina but to transform her into a protean aesthetic spectacle for exhibition. This analysis reveals that Mona’s death by exposure is not random but rather concretizes Varda’s ethical concerns with the act of capturing and exhibiting—with mediatizing—life.

摘要

阿涅斯·瓦尔达 1985 年的电影《Sans toit ni loi》改编自现实生活中的流浪者 (Setina Arhab) 的生活向电影制片人提出某些道德问题。一个人如何能够在道德上调解他人的贫困？一个人如何能够创造和出售穷人的形象而不是偷窥、虚伪或还原性地展示它们呢？一个人可以代表那些可能拒绝代表的人吗？我认为瓦尔达通过元电影反思来回答这些问题，她可以通过两种方式将塞蒂娜改编成电影银幕：记录和审美化。尽管瓦尔达一开始似乎倾向于审美化的可塑性，而不是对记录的严格模仿，但她随后通过对话质疑她的决定，不仅记录塞蒂娜，而且将她转变为千变万化的审美奇观以供展览，从而对这种选择提出了问题。