Even before Killing Them Softly begins exploring its interest in money, the film can be seen as setting up the question: from where does money draw its power in the first place? Besides Russell’s business venture, the other reason why he is not interested in coming along
364 The idea is most commonly ascribed to Fredric Jameson, but it originates actually from H. Bruce Franklin’s
1979 essay on J. G. Ballard. In the essay Franklin suggests that Ballard mistakes the end of capitalism with the end of the world. Jameson later recalls having come across such an idea, but does not mention the correct source, after which Žižek uses it without directly referring to Jameson. Finally, Mark Fisher uses the idea, saying that it is commonly ascribed to both Jameson and Žižek. The connection between Jameson and Franklin was originally drawn by Qlipoth 2009: n.p. See Franklin 1979: n.p. Jameson 1996 and 2003; Žižek 2005; Fisher 2009.
135 to Johnny’s new meeting is that he, to put it politely, already has a date for the night. Russell himself explains it in more unpolished terms, with phrases such as: “Well yeah, these girls, you see ‘em, you probably wouldn’t want to rape them, but all the plumbing works just fine”. This clarification is followed by a short pause to allow the viewer to absorb Frankie’s repulsion, after which the film appears to top it off by having Russell burp loudly. Such scenes serve not only to reaffirm an unpleasant impression of Russell – and are not solely an indication of the kind of social-realist dialogue that many commentators noted – but also highlight the way in which women are treated in (and by) the film. Although many commentators mention the lack of women in the film they do not really elaborate on it.366
While the lack of gender diversity can be seen as simply suggesting a male centred world of business (with or without quotation marks), the fact that women are so pronouncedly missing from the film appears to also suggest how the idea of a woman operates in a hetero-male fantasy. Whereas almost all the characters can be heard fantasising about women at great length, there is only one female character in Killing Them Softly who has a more substantial role and even she is identified in the end credits simply by her profession as a “hooker” (Linara Washington). Depriving the only female character of a proper name and describing her instead via her occupation, which is sexual occupation and thus the most stereotypically objectifying job, suggests that Killing Them Softly, similarly to Žižek,is more interested in the economic side of inequality than in purely gender politics.367Killing Them Softly could be seen as first narrowing down its narrative world through depicting only the mafia and then again via gender, in order to end up with a world where in order to survive one has to rob oneself from all emotions and intimacies. Jackie’s success is shown to emerge partially from the fact that he is not willing to engage with women while working – Jackie resolutely rejects the prostitute’s request to zip up her dress. On the other hand, Mickey ends up in prison, set up by Jackie, because of his inability to give up women while being engaged in “business” – instead of preparing for the murders that he is paid for, he spends his time boozing and sleeping around with prostitutes. Mickey calls the latter his “hobby”, which suggests that he is aware of a strict difference between business and pleasure, but that in his weakened state he is simply unable to follow the rules of contemporary capitalism. Women are therefore treated by the film’s characters as a distraction from work and equated with alcohol and hard drugs, which are shown to be the downfall of characters.
366 Corliss 2012: n.p.; Slater-Williams 2012: n.p.
136 Although the film’s own role in supporting such a patriarchal fantasy should not go without notice, the film can be understood to be setting up the contrast between the lack of female characters and the male characters’ constant obsessing about women, in order to propose a psychoanalytical understanding of the nature of desire.368 According to which, crudely put, an object of desire operates as a fetish, needing a certain distance in order to be truly desirable.369 Žižek goes so far as to claim that an understanding of how fantasy and desire are related is the central idea of psychoanalysis, saying: “If there is a point in psychoanalysis, it is that people do not really want or desire happiness”.370 Žižek goes on to explain how an affair
can operate only because one is already in a relationship and how scientists are often willing to risk their very lives in the name of their intellectual pursuits – examples that he understands to suggest a more general indication of the nature of one’s desire.371 Therefore Russell’s crude dialogue is not only a marker of his uneducated manners, but one could argue that in order for him to really desire the woman that he is meeting later, he has to first create a certain distance from her via his appealing use of language about her.
However, the situation is more complex than this, because Russell’s dialogue specifically describes the woman as undesirable, by emphasising only her sexual “functionality”. As such there appears to be a close parallel between how Russell and Mickey objectify women by identifying them via a single function and as objects that can be brought and collected. What the film can be seen as suggesting is that contemporary desire has gone through a transformation by implementing business logic. Whereas according to psychoanalysis sexual relationship does not exist in the sense that, without fully acknowledging it, people use their partner in a sexual affair as a prop to an extent, mentally desiring something or someone else, then Killing Them Softly, on the other hand,shows this aspect of intimacy to be obvious to some of the characters, who openly treat people as mere props for their desire.372 This in turn suggests – made evident by Mickey repeatedly obsessing about the loyalty of his wife and the sexiness of his ex-girlfriend, while sleeping with prostitutes – that whereas according to a stereotypical psychoanalytical scenario one is sleeping with one’s partner while desiring someone else, then in Killing Them Softly’s masculine world of business, one goes straight to the “lover”, available in exchange for money, because in this world a faithful wife or a kind
368 Bruce Fink offers a good overview of Lacan’s understanding of “There is no such thing as a sexual
relationship” 1991: 59–85.
369 Žižek 2011: 303. 370 Žižek 2013. 371 Žižek 2013. 372 Žižek 2013.
137 girlfriend, or any emotionally meaningful relationship for that matter, has become the true missing object of desire.
Even if unacknowledged by Killing Them Softly, the film, with its focus on the masculine world of crime and pronounced omission of female characters, can be seen as highlighting the limitations of the psychoanalytical framework, in which it can be recognised to be operating. By depicting a world in which women are commodified as objects of male desire – an understanding of male desire that could be argued to correspond to the Lacanian model – the film can be seen to be stressing the shortcomings of such a world. Although a detailed criticism of Lacan’s ideas from a feminist position is beyond the scope here, I would like to briefly highlight the similarity between how the film depicts the male characters’ attitude towards women and Luce Irigaray’s understanding of the commodification of women. Killing Them Softly appears to correspond very accurately to what Irigaray terms hom(m)o-sexuality, signifying both the order of the same (homo) and that of men (homme) – ignoring differences between women and treating them as the means for men to form alliances with one another.373
Irigaray claims: “The production of women, signs, and commodities is always referred back to men […]. The work force is thus always assumed to be masculine, and “products” are objects to be used, objects of transaction among men alone”.374 Not only does this idea correlate with the way, as I have identified, women are recognised by the main characters as a distraction from the masculine work, but the prostitute is not only used by Mickey for his personal enjoyment, but also abused, as by the end of their transaction he threatens to kill her – a sudden cut to Jackie as his face turns serious, indicates the severity of Mickey’s threat given the men’s profession. Following Irigaray’s logic a bit further, according to which “heterosexuality has been up to now just an alibi for the smooth workings of man’s relations with himself, of relations among men”, suggests that Mickey needs to demonstrate his masculinity to Jackie, because the latter has been suggesting that Mickey is unable to perform masculinely by doing the work that is expected from him.375 Jackie not only makes this point again as soon as the prostitute leaves, but he is also depicted throughout as the most masculine character of the film. This is largely so, following Irigaray, because of Jackie’s ability to work at all times and in the most various conditions. Killing Them Softly can therefore be seen to be suggesting that as long as the work force remains being rendered masculine by the society, the latter will act as a stimulus for capitalist production.
373 Irigaray 1985: 170–172.
374 Irigaray 1985: 171. 375 Irigaray 1985: 172.
138 A liaison between fantasy and desire that can be potentially dangerous not only to the object of desire, but also to the subject of desire, can be seen operating also in the flashback scene through which Johnny explains to Frankie how Markie robbed the very card game that he himself is responsible for. While it might have been Markie’s desire for the easy money that he saw exchanging hands in his gambling place that originally drove him to organise the robbery, as Johnny explains, his impulse to later reveal that it was him that robbed the place is much harder to understand. Although Markie’s sudden urge to confess is more strongly motivated on the narrative level than on the character level, for it is a necessary event that makes the following actions possible, it can be interpreted as being caused by Markie’s playful nature additionally lubricated by alcohol. However, Markie’s irrational urge to make known that he was the one behind the robbery, something that could easily cost him his life, appears to be adequately explainable via the complicated nature of desire. Having obtained the money from the heist and after realising how easily he got away with it, the stolen money likely quickly lost its appeal for Markie. From this it can be concluded that Markie was potentially more drawn by the desire to see if he can get away with the heist all along, than the actual fruits of his labour. After Markie had successfully achieved the seeming goal of his desire, the only thing that could still arouse him was to see if he can also get away with revealing that it was him who robbed the place – an initiative that intellectually makes very little sense.
A similar suggestion is even more strongly proposed via Russell revealing to Kenny, who works for the mafia’s enforcer Dillon, that he was the one behind a robbery of a mafia protected card game. The fact that the film returns to the topic of irrational confessions indicates that this is not an insignificant element of the film, but that it rather expresses its deep interest in desire. This is particularly so when considered that the spectator finds out about Russell’s unintelligent confession in a scene where he and Frankie get high and where soft light and gentle sounds, indicating their enjoyment, merge with the sound of children playing. Because the film’s point of view constantly switches between Russell’s mental images and reality, it is impossible to say whether the sounds are coming from outside or if they emerge from his thoughts. Either way the film can be seen as making a strong suggestion that one’s desires are rooted in early childhood.
In Russell’s case there are several excuses for his unnecessary confession that leads Jackie to attempt to track him down, along with Frankie and Johnny. Russell is shown to be a foreigner not only by his strong Australian accent, but also via the fact that when Johnny was asking around about him, nobody knew Russell. This can indicate that he was simply unaware of the workings of the local mafia. In addition, Russell was also bragging to Kenny, because he
139 was attempting to hire Kenny as a dealer and wanted to show himself in a more serious light than his criminal actions would really suggest. Nonetheless, while finding out from Frankie that Kenny works for Dillon, he remains ignorant of the danger that this entails, countering Frankie’s revelation, by saying: “So what?” Although, his ignorance is partially caused by him being high, it can also be seen as him not really caring about the danger. Nonetheless, whereas Markie’s confession is entirely irrational, Russell’s is much more connected to capitalist ideology. Not only did Russell get himself in trouble for attempting to hire Kenny, but he also changed from stealing and selling dogs to a more profitable, but also more dangerous career of dealing drugs. In Russell’s mind both selling stolen dogs and robbing the mafia protected card game were ways of raising enough cash to start his own business. Russell’s dedication to capitalistic pursuit is stressed by the fact that even when learning from Kenny that hitmen are after him, he still opts for staying around and attempting to hire dealers to work for him, rather than selling the drugs quickly as this would significantly reduce his profit from the deal.
The film’s interest in the nature of desire to constantly replace its goal-object and money as a perfect vehicle for such a deferral becomes even more apparent as Russell and Frankie are about to execute Johnny’s heist plan. The scene begins with Russell complementing Frankie on the chosen getaway car. While I will analyse the use of cars in Killing Them Softly more closely below, it is important to recognise here how the car operates as a reference point for Frankie’s desire. As Frankie is also very fond of the car, Russell suggests that Frankie should simply keep it for himself. Russell’s amateur status as a robber is hinted by the fact that he fails to consider that by keeping the getaway car Frankie would obviously make it much easier for the mafia to associate him with the robbery. That is why Frankie bitterly replies to Russell: “That’s just what I need – is a nice hot car”. As after this Russell starts teasing him for still “not getting any”, the car can be seen as being “hot” in two different way – being a marked car and being hot in sexual terms, as a prop that supposedly is alluring to women. The film highlights that both Frankie and Russell see the car to an extent as a means of attracting the opposite sex, rather than as means of transportation. This is further supported by the fact that soon after the heist, Frankie is shown to have brought himself a “hot” car.
The large heist car, which Russell describes “as a lounge room”, is also often considered in the American Imaginary as a place to have intercourse. Such a sexual connotation, produced by countless cinematic images of couples parking their cars on a promontory overlooking the city, indicates how media helps to commodify one’s most intimate desires. For instance, the advertising industry typically associates cars with an image of freedom – with black mustangs running next to the shiny vehicle in Grand Canyon like setting – whereas in reality people spend
140 a large proportion of their time stuck in traffic. This is particularly the case in the United States where the distances between homes and workplaces are often very long, and because the state generally favours private transport over public transport. The key point here, however, is not that one is unaware of the actual traffic situation when purchasing a car or that such commercials manage to deceive people about reality, as earlier theories of ideology would have one believe, but rather that, according to Žižek, it is precisely one’s belief that is a determining factor in such situations.376 Žižek describes the situation in the following way via Kung Fu Panda’s (Osborne; Stevenson, 2008) plot about a secret recipe: “I know very well there is no special ingredient, but I nonetheless believe in it (and act accordingly)”.377 He continues by saying: “Cynical denunciation (at the level of rational knowledge) is counteracted by the call of “irrational” belief – and this is the most elementary formula of how ideology functions today”.378 To put it differently, consumerism does its best to ensure that one’s subconscious
urges get the better of one’s conscious decisions. As Žižek puts it: “The progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumerist ideology, is gradually undermining the very (Protestant ethical) attitude which rendered capitalism possible”.379 Consumerism is an aspect of capitalism
that directly contradicts capitalism’s original core of concentrating on work ethic and increasing the efficiency of production.
The line of reasoning that “I know that money is just a piece of paper, but I treat it nonetheless as there was something more to it”, Žižek argues, highlights precisely the fetishist disavowal related to money.380 Not only is money an ideal object of desire because it can be seemingly converted to almost whatever one desires, but money is also highly appealing in such a role in its own right because there never seems to be enough of it. Killing Them Softly highlights such senseless greed in the heist scene where, despite the clear danger to their lives,