Quentin Dupieux's film Deerskin – in my opinion gratuitously underrated – remains till today the crown of his oeuvre. This is the case – again in my opinion – not only in the field of cinema. Dupieux is best known as an electronic musician, producer and DJ, under the stage name Mr Oizo. Thankfully, his primary occupation would hardly have less weight on the one-hour and seventeen-minute long movie that will concern me here. Deerskin I saw for the first time back in 2019, just a few weeks after its European release. It somewhat took me aback. To a greater extent, I knew what to say and what found important in it even then. Some of the concepts I've seen at play were discussed with no small part of my close circle. At the same time, I was sure that putting it on paper won't do much of a favour to what went through during and after this first encounter with Dupieux’s work. My general feeling was of a rather arbitrary reading, largely imposed from outside the plot. However, having just recently re-watched it, I realized that the vast majority of the elements, initially conceived as mostly unrelated to my interpretation, in fact not only complement it, but build a solid thread, quite immanent to the content itself. In this brief contribution, I will try to lead you through this impression of mine. My intention is not to present a fixed, ‘this is how things are’ reading, but to engage in a rather sparse and largely idle conversation about a film that deserved more. Especially from the quarters of critical theory.

“Deerskin is a French film that tells the story of a man named Georges, who becomes fixated on a deerskin jacket. He purchases the jacket and starts to believe that it gives him a sense of power and status. Later on he meets a young woman named Denise, who becomes his accomplice in his quest to convince others that he is a successful filmmaker and to get rid of all the other deerskin jackets. As Georges' obsession with the jacket deepens, he becomes increasingly delusional and manipulative and starts to lose touch with reality. Denise becomes more aware of his dangerous behavior, but she's trapped in their relationship. The film explores themes of obsession, masculinity, and the dangers of materialism and it shows the characters' descent into madness.” At least that is what ChatGPT “thinks,” rephrasing the reviews and analysis available online.

There are few other, more in-depth comments which the bot didn’t reach or “purposefully” left aside. The major claim circling within them is that “the object of fetishization” around which everything else revolves is the jacket. Even Denise says it within the film, although concerning the theme of Georges amateur endeavours. This line comes, in a weird concatenation, as a meta-commentary of the movie itself. But these sorts of claims are somehow self-evident. The surprising part is, however, that the jacket might be seen as more than an object; more than an inanimate focus of the narrative. Under a reading like the one I’m about to propose here, Georges will no longer be seen as a pathological persona, “delusional and manipulative […] loosing touch with reality” and carrying out senseless violence in a quasi-schizophrenic delirium. Moreover, the movie will no longer be seen as a return to absurdism and/or exercise on the topic of mental illnesses – one of the scarce effects of mankind’s meaningless existence, as other popular review claims. In the former case, Georges will turn out to be rather close to each one of us. In the latter, the movie will unfold as a socioeconomic critique of our current way of life. To achieve this, my suggestion is to look at the jacket first and foremost as a commodity  – a very special instance of the object. To some extent, this means to comprehend it as something subjectified. (Here understood in the sense of having a kind of subjectivity of its own, not in that of being significant to the subject. I’ll get to that in more detail in a moment.)

Generally speaking, the process of attaining the status of a commodity, of arriving at the being of the commodity, means becoming more than just an object. This argument goes back at least to Marx’s Economic and Philosophic (or Paris) Manuscripts, if not even to Hegel’s early philosophical writings. I will sketch here succinctly the former’s well-known formulation since it will help us navigate the next part of the exposition. According to the young Karl Marx (wink!), there are two types of labour. The first he calls concrete. This type is in some way primordial, almost organic. That’s why later, in Capital Vol. 1, this first kind of labour will form the basis for his concept of the metabolic relationship between man and nature. That which opposes it he calls abstract labour, or the one that Marx sees as dominant within the confines of the capitalist form of production. Concrete labour, in so far as it is a byproduct of an individual's free activity, produces something important both for its maker and the community/society he is part of. The outcome of it (both in time and significance) he calls use value – the practical implication of the thing made. Jackets are valuable because they protect us from the wind and rain. Abstract labour, as it’s opposition, is subordinated to the needs of the market and as such is also a producer of value, but on top of the implicational, use one, it adds what he calls exchange value. Following its "getting out" in the marketplace, in the market race, are a host of machinations to elevate a given thing into something more than other commodity of similar use value. For example, an iPhone costs many times more than a regular phone of a different brand, while covering similar consumption needs. Those two forms of value are, to a great extent, given in our everyday interactions as complimentary. Nevertheless, they are in fact quite distinct regimes of decoding. Although the former is preserved in the latter, the exchange value’s capacity to reflow and readjust every single thing according to its competitive nature makes it more or less idiosyncratic. 1

Later in the Marxist tradition, this general formula will be refined (from concrete and abstract labour through the opposition between labour and work with F. Engels’ footnote into the English edition of Capital Vol. 1, to the doing-labour opposition, respectively, by John Holloway, etc.), but the spirit of differentiation will remain. And the commodity will still be treated as a special instance of the object-production, of the human’s activity outcome, more generally. Remaining within the terminological distinction drawn here, however, I would vaguely assume that concrete labour produces concrete objects, while abstract labour produces concrete objects with abstract bearings. Further support for such a claim comes from the literal meaning of the Latin abstractus. For something to be abstract – if we stick to the etymological charge of the term – it must be drawn away (or alienated) from something. The commodity, in other words, is an object drawn away from its own concreteness, from its objectivity. That is to say, an object that gets as close as it may to a subject. Going even further, one might rephrase Deleuze and Guattari, asserting that the Oedipal form of the object is its commodity form. Put another way, it's not just about comprehending an object as something that satisfies greater than the needs it was made for, but as an object of desire, a kind of machine generating desires, which is itself desired, a desiring machine.

Thus what we can call the becoming-commodity involves a sort of metamorphosis into “a supernatural entity,” to borrow from Derrida. And we see the unfolding of this supernaturalism throughout the film locked up in the montage juxtaposition between the jacket, peacefully resting somewhere, and the young deer looking directly into the camera. This same juxtaposition is usually accompanied by short musical excerpts that successfully recreate the inconsistently spiritualist, almost romantic notion of the ‘Indians’, widespread during the times of so-called ‘Spaghetti Westerns.’ One can assume that the Italian jacket we see, the designer leather jacket that is both "out of fashion" and worth all the money of its new owner, comes from around the same period. It might keep Georges warm or protect him from the rain, although it is a bit short for his middle-aged body, but that’s not all. The jacket is a transcendent agent insofar as it resides or might again reside in the shop, the physical or online fleamarket or else, and as such, it bears exchange value. This is the crucial addition that creates a difference between two historically distinct worlds. It seems to me that being a vintage commodity, this economic element of the Jacket is even more strikingly emphasized. The alchemy of that premise, I think, culminates not only in its subjectification, but also in Jacket’s ventriloquism through Georges.

Sticking to the juxtaposition between the deer and the jacket, my suggestion is to look at the used technique as another special instance – that of the montage as conflict. To be more precise, an Eisensteinian conflict which turns the repetitive occurrence of this juxtaposition as important as a montage could possibly be – a conflict that produces thought. And the thought that it produces, at least in me, has a dualistic nature. On the one hand, the climactic antagonism between our commodity-driven way of life – an abstract, destructive existence; and, on the other, the living, vibrant life that nourishes it – the concrete being of nature and non-human lives. The argument here is pretty straightforward – this is a thought-provoking conflict between the commodity and its origin, as well as the spectre of that origin, haunting the commodity.

Any commodity, of course, even an electronic device, the one you are using to read these lines, for example, manages to put on such garments, to come vivified, to become a mad animal or machine. A divine automaton in the realm of exchange, facing up other machines and animals, as well as potential consumers through the flows of other animals and machines, obsessed, possessed by the spectacle of advertising and desiring-production. However, my feeling is that a movie for a jacket made from artificial materials couldn’t have such an effect. That’s why, I think, Dupieux insists that the mighty justification of our protagonist – namely, the Jacket – subjectification is possible solely via the previously embodied existence of its material.

Nothing, not even the parts of our electronic devices, came out of nowhere. They are either direct or indirect derivatives of nature. Thus the supernatural character of commodities, to draw a broader conclusion, comes in a procured form not purely as a derivative of their market-gained exchange value, but – likewise – from their fundamentally subjectified past as part of the living world. Such a reading is also evident in the way many indigenous peoples have honoured the items that serve them, instrumentally, based on their ancestry, on their material genealogy. It’s the lost subjectivity of the deer, the wood, etc. that needs to be reclaimed somehow. By the same token, the opportunity for this reclaim lies not only in the market itself but also in the Jacket’s owner. Or, to put it in the same frame but through a somehow bio-philosophical lexicon, through an attempt to gain a sort of niche and/or territory in a domain quite unlike its own – the market domain of exchange – the deer comes to life again.

The conflict is, in other words, between an object and the subjectivity (or agency) that made it possible, being its material basis. I intentionally left aside the artisanal, purely human role that comes between the two poles of production as their intermediacy. The liminal plateau of a given commodity’s happening would've only distracted us from the essential problem Dupieux’s film poses. Namely, the problem of life-generated inanimacy that acquires – through its commodification – a  sort of hyper-subjectivity which enables it to rule, to exert dominion over people and relations, to have perhaps stronger subjectivity than its owner and its previous life. Being more alive in its afterlife than in its living one. In fact, we observe a similar phenomenon everywhere where there’s exploitation. The great heroes of the oppressed have become so precisely as a result of the oppressed lives they have led. Becoming a saint or a martyr is, strictly speaking, becoming super-natural. And here I’m not talking about the fictional martyrs of the church. I'm talking about the real heroes of the people, who came not from the oppressive institutions and authorities, but from the subordinated themselves. Of course, the nature is different, though something of significance is retained, namely, the significance itself, the very meaning of sacrifice.

In our case, it's Georges who begins to clear the path for the deer-Jacket’s sovereignty, for the deterritorialization of the actual deer, the realization of the actual subject, into another plane. Or one could say the opposite, that it is through and over Georges. It's the deer-Jacket own self-made realization done utilizing Georges. The previous owner didn't manage to accomplish that as he was absorbed in the new fashions that followed his purchase, a new sacrifice, a new machine. But the distancing in time, the becoming-retro or vintage, gives an added impetus to this transcendental aspect of the commodity. It’s something we are seeing more and more around us lately. Apart from clothes, mainly vintage cars and furniture guide the drama of return.

Still, when the Jacket speaks to Georges, through Georges to Georges, it shares with him its "innermost dream" – "To be the only jacket in the world." It’s essentially the innermost dream of any commodity – not just to be singular or unique (as the designer, deerskin-made protagonist fundamentally is), but to be the only commodity of its kind, to have no one to compete with. Not just outdoing the rest, defeating them in a market race of who’s-the-best-commodity, but depriving them of being. Not solitude, but greatness amid loneliness. The same type of formulation fuels any capitalist enterprise whatsoever and as such enters within its products and services. This isn’t the call of nature, on the contrary. It’s the inner urge towards monopoly. No deer would "ask" or "dream" of being alone, of not having others alike. It might mark out its territory within the intraspecies’ interactions, and fill its niche within the interspecies’ one, but would never wish to be alone. Never. That would be the doom of his own possibility. Therefore, we witness the ultimate call of capitalism, which – although continuing with its loud and insistent self-naturalization – is anything but the culmination of nature it pretends to be.

The process of commodification appears as the process of all processes, just as any commodity wants to be the commodity of all commodities. Our present is fully encapsulated by it. It’s such a big part of our lives that there seems to be no room for much else. We are specialists in transforming even ourselves into a products of exchange. A life devoted to prequalification, to adjustment, to the pursuit of new lines of realization. Byung-Chul Han claims that in the contemporary, late-capitalist era we are less and less subjects and more and more projects precisely as a result of this. In that sense, the film taps into two different sides of commodification – let’s say the industrial and post-industrial types. The former is the one in which a thing or an object turns into a commodity, as in the case above. The contemporary, post-industrial one, on the other hand, is the one in which we become a kind of commodity ourselves. This latter one is, I think, masterfully recreated through Georges' impulse to form his style (of both dressing and making movies). That is to say, he tries to, by laying hands on new possessions, launch a new project of himself – to “re-create” or “re-invent” his personality, as the popular jargon demands. We never really learn who Georges is. The only connection between the time interval in which the narrative unfolds and Georges’ prior life – the conversation with his wife – doesn’t gives us much. At least we know that the portrayed self-project of his isn’t the only Self he has ever had.

Moreover, in that phone conversation his wife asserts that "You're nowhere, Georges, you don't exist anymore." Thus a new Georges appears on the scene, a new project with the same name, one that must unleash his newly acquired – through the jacket and the camera – potentialities.

And that's an interesting line of inquiry, which I'll leave you with in awe of my contagious logorrhea. I’ll supplement it, however, with a few questions: why did Georges decide this new project of his should be one of a filmmaker? Did the camera somehow manage to be possessed by the deer as well, or it possess him, haunt him through the imperative of filming his new persona? What is the contradiction between the old digital camera, which will never be "vintage" in the sense that the Jacket is, and the Jacket itself? How do the additional deerskin acquisitions – the hat, the gloves, the boots, the trousers – deploy Georges’ new project (or perhaps the deer’s project realizable only through Georges)?

Concluding, let’s say that – following Bergman – there are two types of movies: dreams and documents. I would say that Dupieux's Deerskin bares the traits of the second type.

Bibilography

Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power; Verso, 2017. 

Notes

1. One obvious example would be how to exchange value turns something otherwise emptied of use-value into a fetishized item, say gold. And while the latter tends more towards what Marx calls the universal equivalent, namely money, this does not change its essentially commodified character – the so-called 'commodity money', or commodities you can use as money (or, for that matter, buy with money-money). If you can get hold of anything else with gold, since everyone wants it, then it's the commodity of all commodities. If you can keep it since it has (presumably) "intrinsic worth" – one might suspect as a result of this same wants, and surely not due to a phantasmic case of use value – then it's the commodity of all commodities. ↩

Volume 28, Issue 8-9-10 / August 2024 Essays   art cinema   film criticism   french cinema   marxist theory   quetin dupieux