Page - 50 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

50 | Gerwin van der Pol www.jrfm.eu 2018 4/1 the horrors witnessed, for example by seeing the unimaginable, as Niven and Swiatek theorise. But the act of seeing itself has been given too little attention, with the possible exception of the response of Blumenthal-Barby. He describes the film in terms of Michel Foucault’s ideas about surveillance and draws at- tention to the characters’ problems with surveilling and not-surveilling, and how that is complicated by the surveillant gaze of the film(maker) and of the spectator. Blumenthal-Barby suggests, “The most prominent ‘disciplinary’ dis- course in Haneke’s film undoubtedly is that of education, including the work of the schoolteacher, whose voice-over guides us through much of the film, but also the rigid educational regime enforced by the pastor and symbolised by the white ribbon that he ties around his children’s arms or into their hair.”7 Despite recognising this “prominence”, even Blumenthal-Barby leaves it at that. In my opinion surveillance – knowing and seeing – does not form the core of the film’s meaning. And “education” in a Foucauldian universe is merely a synonym for discipline. From a Brechtian perspective, teaching has different connotations. Bertolt Brecht called his plays Lehrstücke and translated that con- cept both as learning plays and teaching plays. These complexities of learning and teaching help to elucidate the film, the spectator and the characters. As such, The White Ribbon (the film) teaches the spectator just as the white ribbon (the object) teaches the characters in the film. THE LEARNING SPECTATOR Even without a Brechtian definition, every film is a learning process for its spec- tator. He is thrown into an unknown world and builds this world with scraps of information he receives from the film to form a coherent unit. The static black- and-white images of The White Ribbon, the long takes, the restrained move- ment of the characters suggest a clarity that should be easy for the spectator to handle. The incompatibility with the information given by the film, however, is a source of frustration. Even the simple beginning of the film is problematic: we see a horse tripping over a wire and its horseman, a doctor, falling and getting hurt. We see Anna, the doctor’s daughter, running out of their house towards him, coming to the rescue, as the voice-over narrator helps to explain. He tells us that the accident left the doctor hospitalised for months. The next shot shows the midwife, Mrs Wagner, who takes care of the doctor’s children, Anna and Rudi, walking hastily to fetch her own child Karli, who is mentally disabled, from the schoolteacher. We do not know why she is hurrying. Is it because her life is so busy, with looking after the doctor’s children, being a midwife, and now also having to deal with the doctor’s mishap? 7 Blumenthal-Barby 2014, 96.