All language subtitles for Letter to Jane

Dear Jane,

In the advertising leaflet which accompanies Tout va Bien

to the festivals of Venice, Carthage, New York, and San Francisco,

we preferred using a photograph of you in Vietnam

instead of photographs from the film.

We found this photograph in an issue of L'Express early in August 1972,

and we think it will enable us to talk in a more concrete way

about the problems raised by Tout va Bien.

This is not a way of changing the subject

nor is it a way of not talking about Tout va Bien,

as if we were afraid of talking about the film.

Not by any means.

It is a way of not marking time,

like the puppet [Nguyen Van] Thieu's troops at Quang Tri,

which eventually leads to stepping on others,

as with the shells of the 7th fleet on Quang Tri.

Actually this is a way of making a detour,

but if we dare say so,

a direct detour.

In other words, a detour

which will enable us to run directly into the treacherous little problems,

that the film we made together at the beginning of this year is concerned with.

And rather than talk right away

about the qualities and the faults of our film,

from one end to the other, we prefer to ask critics, journalists, and spectators,

to kindly make the effort of analyzing this photograph of you in Vietnam,

which was taken a few months after the film we did in Paris.

As a matter of fact, this photograph, and the short text that appeared with it,

does a better job of summing up Tout va Bien than we could.

And for a very simple reason.

This photograph answers the same question that the film is asking:

What part should intellectuals play in the revolution?

To this question,

the photograph gives a practical answer:

the answer it gives is its practice.

This photograph shows you,

yes you, Jane,

serving the Vietnamese people's struggle for independence.

Tout va Bien provides an answer to this question too,

but not in the same way.

Because, less certain than the photograph of the answers to be given,

the film asks other questions first.

And finally these questions amount to not asking

the question of intellectuals and the revolution in that way.

How can this question be raised then?

The film does not answer yet exactly.

But the way why in which it does not answer yet is actually

an indirect way of asking new questions.

Because there is no use in giving old answers to the new questions

that are being raised by the development of revolutionary struggles today.

One must learn how to ask these new questions.

And learn from those who,

even if they haven't had enough time to formulate these questions clearly yet,

have already taken possession of the ground where they will be able to grow and flourish,

and they have accomplished this by inventing new forms of practical action.

We're telling you that our way of not really giving an answer yet,

like the Vietnamese and you in the photograph,

was actually an indirect way of asking new questions.

An indirect way.

A deviated way.

Now you can understand why

we had to make a detour before talking about the film.

And why there to be a detour through Vietnam?

First of all,

because everyone agrees about the fact that some really new questions are being raised over there.

And secondly, because you were with them

after having been with us.

As we were looking at this photograph of an actress on the theater of military operations,

that one made us want to ask some questions.

Not to the actress, but to the photograph.

And, for us, this means asking a certain number of new questions

about the classical answer that the Vietnamese and you

have given to the well-known question of the intellectuals, by publishing this photograph.

There is something else that has influenced our decision

to take advantage of this photograph in order to make a detour through Vietnam.

This something is our desire to have a real discussion about the film with the spectators,

journalists or not.

Everyone is his own journalist or editor

depending on how he changes his own concrete day-to-day activity into a film,

making himself the star of this film.

And it is precisely this kind of little star system

that we want to talk about...

to talk about with the audience.

But in order do so, we must make a detour.

Because, just as a film is a kind of detour

that leads us back to ourselves,

in order to get back to the film,

we must first make this detour into ourselves.

And here, in the USA today, "ourselves" still and always means Vietnam.

We'll try to explain a little further.

We think that it's important and urgent to really speak

to those who have taken the trouble to come and see our film.

"Really" means right where they are,

and also right where we are.

And so we must find a way to enable them to really ask questions,

if they feel like it,

or give answers to the questions we have asked.

A spectator must be able to really think,

and think, first of all, about this problem of questions and answers.

We must be able to be really upset by the spectators' questions

(or answers),

and to answer (or ask questions),

other than with ready-made answers (or questions), to ready-made questions (or answers).

But ready-made by whom? For whom? Against whom?

This means that in order to have a real possibility of discussing Tout va Bien,

we're going to place ourselves outside of Tout va Bien.

To talk about the machine, we're going outside of the factory that uses it.

We're going to find our basis for discussion outside of the world of cinema,

in order to have a better view of it when we return,

and in order to set out in a better way

toward the real problems of our real concrete life,

of which the cinema will have been only one of the elements.

We're not going to leave or abandon Tout va Bien. We're going

to go away from it, on the contrary, to go somewhere else,

to Vietnam, for example, since you have come back from there.

But what is important is that we're going to travel there by our own means.

What sort of means are we talking about?

The technical means we work with and the way we use them socially,

you in the photograph from Vietnam, and we in the film in Paris,

and we will be in a better position to evaluate the issues.

And for once, we will not be alone,

the spectator will be there too.

He will be a producer at the same time he is a consumer,

and we will be consumers at the same time as we are producers.

Perhaps all this seems complicated to you.

As [Dziga] Vertov said to Lenin:

The fact is that truth is simple, but that it's not simple to tell the truth.

And Uncle Bertolt [Brecht] had come up with five difficulties for telling the truth back in his time.

Okay, we will explain that another way.

Today one often hears people say that cinema should "serve the people."

Fine.

Rather than talk theoretically about the faults and the virtues of Tout va Bien,

we are going to Vietnam.

But we are going there by and with the means of Tout va Bien.

We are going to see, if one may use the expression that way,

how Tout va Bien is working in Vietnam.

And then from this practical example, we eventually will be able to draw a few conclusions

about what to do and what not to do,

each of us right where he is,

with his wife, his boss, his children, his money, his desires, et cetera.

We are going to use this photograph then to go and seek an answer to the following question in Vietnam:

how can cinema help the Vietnamese people win their independence?

And as we have already said several times,

we are not the only ones who have used this photograph to go to Vietnam.

Thousands of people have already done so,

probably, almost everyone here has already seen this photograph

and for a few seconds, each in his own way, has used it to go to Vietnam.

That is precisely what we think is important to know:

how each one has used this photograph to go to Vietnam;

in actual fact: how he has gone to Vietnam.

Because Dr. [Henry] Kissinger goes to Vietnam too, several times a year.

And it's precisely someone like Dr. Kissinger who is going to ask us why this photograph

and what connection this photograph has with Tout va Bien.

And he and his friends will tell us that we're mixing things up or just playing around,

that we would be better off getting down to some serious talk about the film, about art, et cetera.

But one must make the effort to see how this kind of remark

contradicts itself when it is made that way,

thus confusing the whole issue and blocking access to other questions of a more simple nature,

simple, as might be asked by ordinary folks.

For instance, before saying: "What connection?"

one must first ask: "Is there any connection?"

And if so, then one may ask which one. And then,

having discovered which connection, we will discover a little further on

that the connection between our film and this photograph

is in the problem of expression.

We will eventually be able to judge how important it is,

which means, making other connections

with other important questions and other important answers.

People will say that all this seems like empty words,

but already, at the other end of this new assembly-line of questions,

the question of what is important,

that which others call the question of practical result,

is beginning to look like an extremely important question.

And this is because the North Vietnamese/Vietcong collective

has already answered the question of whether or not this photograph is important,

by succeeding in having it published in just about every corner of the "free" world,

the same free world that is holding them in chains.

And it has shown what importance it gave to this photograph,

the importance it gave to the questions of practical results,

the importance that it gave to the question of what is important.

This photograph is therefore a practical answer that the North Vietnamese

have decided to give with your help, Jane,

to the well-known question we asked earlier:

What part should cinema play in the development of revolutionary struggles?

Or in other words: how should intellectuals take part in the revolution?

The photograph gives a practical answer to this question,

the answer for a whole people.

The photograph has been taken and published,

and it has been taken in a certain way to make sure that it would be published,

both on the right and on the left.

And this is what has happened obviously, otherwise we would not have obtained it.

Tout va Bien answers this question too,

but from somewhere else and in another way.

A way in fact of not being too quick to give this kind of answer,

a way that is a means of saying: here in France, where we are, in 1972,

ruled by the friends of the Americans and the Russians,

everything is not so clear, everything is not so obvious.

Fidel Castro said at the [United Nations] that

for revolutionaries, there are never any obvious truths,

that they are an invention of imperialism,

and that those who are big use obvious truths cleverly to oppress those who are small.

And since everything is not obvious, Jane, let us continue asking ourselves questions,

but let us make an effort to ask them differently.

In other words: let us ask new questions in order to be able to give new answers.

For example, let us observe how the Vietnamese express their struggle. Let us ask ourselves some questions,

since we wish to express our struggle too.

And first, let us ask ourselves honestly

what makes us able to say that we are really struggling.

But at this point perhaps you, Jane, will ask us:

Why this photograph of me and not one of Ramsey Clarke, for example?

He was in Vietnam too, and he also witnessed the bombing of the dikes.

Simply Jane, because of Tout va Bien

and because your social rank in the film was the same as in this photograph.

You're an actress.

We are all actors in this stage of history, yes,

but what's more, you work in films and so do we.

"Then why not Yves Montand in Chile?" you could say.

He was also in the movie, true.

But it so happens that the Chilean revolutionaries (the MIR)

did not judge that it would be a good thing to publish photographs of Yves.

Whereas the Vietnamese revolutionaries did judge, with your agreement,

that it would be a good thing to publish photographs of you,

in fact, to publish photographs of your agreement with the Vietnamese rebels.

There is another problem too, and one that we can't avoid.

We are both men who have made Tout va Bien and you are a woman.

In Vietnam the question is not put that way, but here, it is.

And as a woman, you undoubtedly will be hurt a little (or a lot)

by the fact that we are going to criticize, a little (or a lot),

your way of acting in this photograph.

Hurt, because once again as usual, men are finding ways to attack women.

If for no other reason,

we hope that you will be able to come and answer our letter by talking with us,

as we go reading it in two or three places in the US.

In the US and in Europe,

it's true that things are still, or have already become, that way.

And we are, as you, submerged in some pretty troubled water

through which this photograph can help us to see clearly.

This is where we have to start from.

From you in the US, from us in Paris.

From you and us in Paris. From you in Vietnam.

From us in Paris looking at you in Vietnam. From us, going to the US.

And from everyone here in this theater, listening to us and looking at you.

We are starting from all this.

It is organized in a certain way, and functions in a certain way.

We want to discuss it all, starting from there.

To start from Tout va Bien, to go to Vietnam, to come back to Tout va Bien,

in other words, to come back to Vietnam in this theater where Tout va Bien is being shown

and afterward to go back home, and tomorrow to go back to the factory.

In order to discuss all that,

we are slipping this photograph under people's noses

for a second look,

since the Vietnamese and you already slipped it there once.

In other words, we ask, and we are asking ourselves:

did we really look at this photograph? What did we seen in it?

And beneath each question, we discovered another question.

For example: how did we look at this photograph? How did our eyes function in regard to this photograph?

And what makes them glance that way instead of another?

And still another question:

What makes our voice interpret this glance in a certain way instead of another?

Tout va Bien asks all of these questions.

These questions can all be summed up in the big question

of the role of the intellectuals in revolutionary struggles,

or rather, this big well-known question about intellectuals.

One begins to see that, by expressing itself in that way, it becomes paralyzing

and that it paralyzes others.

And finally,

that it is no longer a question belonging to the revolution.

To these questions about the revolution,

as we will discover in relation to the photograph, then in relation to the film,

should be: how to change the old world?

And one can see right away that the old world of the Vietcong

is not the same as the old world of the Western intellectual,

that the old world of a Palestinian is not the same as that of a black child from Harlem,

that the old world of the worker from the Renault factory is not the same as that of his girlfriend.

One can see that this photograph gives a practical answer

to the question of changing the old world.

And therefore we are going to examine this photographic answer. We're going to make an investigation.

We're going to look for some clues.

We're going to analyze and put them together.

We will try to explain the organization of these elements that make up this photograph.

On the one hand, we will explain things as if we were doing with a photographic molecular structure,

and on the other hand, as if we were doing with a kind of social nerve cell.

Then, we will try to show the connection between the scientific investigation and the more political one.

"Where do the right ideas come from:

from the struggle for production, from the class struggle, and from scientific experimentation" [– Mao Zedong].

In making this investigation, questioning this photograph,

we're doing nothing other than trying to find out how the answer that this photograph gives was produced

in the context of the struggle in Vietnam.

Then we will see if the answer is entirely satisfactory for everyone.

For whom? Against whom?

And if, perhaps, other questions won't start cropping up,

just those that Tout va Bien somehow or other manages to raise.

For example, as far as an important part of the photograph is concerned,

the actress's expression, the relation between the eyes and the mouth,

in Western Europe, in our opinion, one cannot be satisfied with it

for the same reasons as its authors, those who took the photograph or decided that it should be taken,

the North Vietnam/Vietcong collective.

And this at first seems absolutely normal, the context being different;

but then, one ought to inquire as thoroughly as they do into what has conditioned

this idea of what is "normal."

In saying this, we are not doing as most of the Communist Party

and their allies in the Western world

(the Pope, the UN, the Red Cross)

who say simply: let us help Vietnam toward peace.

Saying what we have said, on the contrary, is saying something much more precise.

For example: let us help the North Vietnam and the South Vietnam alliance

make its own peace.

And even more precisely:

since Vietnam, in changing its old world, helps us change our own,

how can we really help Vietnam in return?

And since the Vietcong/North Vietnam collective

is struggling, criticizing, and transforming Southeast Asia,

how can we struggle in our context for changing Europe and America?

Of course, all this takes a little longer to say, than just "peace in Vietnam,"

and it necessitates doing things more thoroughly than just creating 2 or 3 Vietnams,

and that's why Marx, in the preface to the first edition of Capital,

was asking for readers who were not afraid of minute details

in order to overthrow "the king of hell and free all the smaller devils."

Faced with this photograph a few months ago by you, Jane, and the Vietnamese,

and now by us again, each person can, if he is willing, make his own investigation.

Then we will be free to compare the results.

And we will be able to speak without taking the desire to speak away from those who are listening.

Perhaps we will be able, just for a moment,

to say a little less nonsense about ourselves and the revolution.

And one more thing,

so that you won't feel attacked personally,

although we can't really avoid it.

We feel that the question is badly put, but we hope that,

by the end of this letter, things will be a little clearer,

and that's why we really need you to come and answer us directly,

because we are writing to you not only as authors of Tout va Bien,

but also because we have been looking at this photograph.

And you must admit it is the first time anyone who has seen a photograph

of you in a magazine writes to you about it this way.

So that you won't feel like our chosen victim, as they say,

and so that you'll understand that we're not aiming at Jane, but at the function of Jane,

when questioning this photograph, we will refer to you in the 3rd person.

We won't say Jane has done such and such,

we will say the actress or the militant, just by the way as in the text which accompanies the photograph.

In our opinion, these are

the principal elements, or elements of elements

that play an important part in this photograph

which appeared in the French magazine L'Express at the beginning of August '72.

ELEMENTARY ELEMENTS

This photograph was taken at the request of the North Vietnamese government,

representing, on this occasion,

the revolutionary alliance between the people of South Vietnam and the people of North Vietnam.

This photograph was taken by Joseph Kraft, who is described, beneath the photograph, in a text

which was not written by those who were responsible for taking the photograph,

but by those who have published it.

In other words, a text composed by several writers from L'Express,

who had not made any contact with the North Vietnamese delegation in France (we checked that).

The text describes him

of one of the most well-known and most moderate American journalists.

It also says

that the actress is a devoted militant for peace in Vietnam.

But the text doesn't mention the Vietnamese people in the photograph.

For example, the text does not tell us

that the Vietnamese who cannot be seen, in the background,

is one of the least known and least moderate of the Vietnamese people.

This photograph, like any photograph, is physically mute.

It talks through the mouth of the text written beneath it.

This text does not emphasize, does not repeat,

because the photograph speaks and says things in its own way,

the fact that the militant is in the foreground and Vietnam is in the background.

The text says that "Jane Fonda is questioning the people of Hanoi."

But the magazine does not publish the questions asked

nor the answers given by the representatives of the Vietnamese people in this photograph.

In fact, the text should not describe the photograph

as Jane Fonda questioning, but else, Jane Fonda listening.

This much is obvious, and perhaps the moment only lasted 1/250th of a second,

but that is the 1/250th that has been recorded and sent throughout to the Western world.

Being written this way, the text is probably trying to tell us

that the photograph was taken at random during a discussion

where the actress/militant was actually questioning the people of Hanoi,

and therefore, we shouldn't pay any attention to the detail of the mouth being closed.

But we will see a little further on,

that it is not a question of chance, or rather, even if it is chance,

the chance is then exploited according to the logical necessity of capitalism,

the necessity for capital to describe what is real

at the same it reveals it. In other words,

the necessity of tricking the customer about the product.

LESS ELEMENTARY ELEMENTS: LESS ELEMENTARY ELEMENTS

The camera took this photograph from a low angle.

Actually, in the history of cinema, this low point of view cannot be considered an innocent one.

This fact has been emphasized technically and socially,

by Orson Welles in his first pictures.

The choice of frame is not neutral or innocent either.

The frame is composed in relation to the actress who is looking, rather in relation to what she is looking at.

She is presented in the frame as if she were the star.

And that in fact is because the actress is an internationally known star.

So on the one hand, the frame shows the star in a militant activity,

and on the other, it focuses on the militant as a star,

which is not the same thing.

Or rather, which might be the same thing in Vietnam,

but not in Europe or in the US.

The following page shows photographs of what the militant saw at other moments,

but not what she was looking at in this photograph.

As far as we're concerned, they are the same type of pictures

that now flow automatically through the channels of TV and newspaper publications in the "free" world.

Pictures that we have seen hundreds of thousands of times,

as many as there had been bombs.

And that don't change anything,

except for those who are struggling to organize this flow in a certain way,

their way,

the 7 points of the GRP.

The truth is, if these photographs had been presented by some Ms. Jones or Smith,

within the same newspapers, we'd have refused them as too ordinary

(ordinary, one must admit,

just as it has become a very ordinary thing

for an agricultural community situated just outside of Hanoi

to rebuild its schoolhouse for the 20th time,

after the Phantoms of Kissinger have destroyed it).

But of course, no one is going to talk about this extraordinary ordinary fact,

neither the militant being given star treatment, nor L'Express.

Neither will anything be said about what the American actress and her sisters, the Vietnamese actresses

that one can see in the photographs on the next page, have said to each other.

Did the American actress ask about acting in Vietnam,

or how someone who acts in Hollywood can act in Hanoi,

knowing he must return to Hollywood?

L'Express doesn't mention anything about all that, and we think this is because

the American actress doesn't talk about it either.

It's true that the militant talked about the antipersonnel bombs and the dikes.

But one must not forget that the militant is also an actress,

whereas the Russell tribunal and Ramsey Clarke, for example, are not.

We think that one must realize that, because she is an actress,

the officials in the White House will have no difficulty

if no one strives to stop them,

saying that the actress has more or less unconsciously played into the enemy's hand

and that she is just reciting a text that she has learned by heart.

Such criticism can easily destroy

all the efforts of the actress and the militant.

And one must understand why she remains vulnerable to this kind of attack.

We think in this case, it is because the actress-militant did not refer to the dikes

by using an example, such as that of a Vietnamese actress who works

to fill in the holes in the dikes, and then,

acts in a theatrical representation in the village that is threatened by the breaking of the dikes.

In relation to this, we believe that, if the militant considered herself

first of all as an actress, as the Vietnamese who were making use of her do, on their level,

she could begin to play her part historically

otherwise than in Hollywood.

Perhaps the Vietnamese do not have a direct need for this yet

but Americans probably do,

and therefore, indirectly, the Vietnamese do too.

Once again we find the necessity of making a detour:

the Vietnamese are obliged to make a detour through the USA.

In this photograph, in this reflection of reality,

two people are seen facing the camera, the others have their back turned.

Of the two people, one is in sharp focus and the other is not.

In this photograph, the famous American is sharp and clear, and the anonymous Vietnamese is blurry and unclear.

But in reality, it is the American left that is blurry and out of focus,

and the Vietnamese left that is exceptionally sharp and clear.

In reality, it is also the American right that is always exceptionally sharp,

while the Vietnamese right, the "Vietnamization," is becoming less and less clear.

What should we think then of the moderation of Joseph Kraft,

who took a moderate view of this contradiction

set the lens opening, and measured the focal distance accordingly?

It was all carefully measured, as we have seen in relation to his choice of frame,

and he intentionally set the focus on the star in the militant activities

in order to obtain a certain product, a certain ideological merchandise,

and once more, with a deliberate aim in mind.

Let's not forget that the processing of this product

is directly controlled by North Vietnam.

But its distribution outside of Vietnam is not.

Or rather it is, but in a very indirect way,

not to mention the feedback.

This distribution is controlled by the TV networks

and newspapers of the "free" world.

And so we see that one of the moves necessary to complete this act of communication

cannot be made by those who have planned it.

Which move? Or is it a move in some kind of a game? And who have the right to play?

And who plays for whom, against whom?

At this point we find, and we will come back to it again later,

that in examining the relationship between what seems sharp and what does not,

in relation to the two faces in the photograph, we have discovered something quite unusual:

the face out of focus is sharp and clear, and the sharp and clear face is vague and out of focus.

The Vietnamese can stand being viewed out of focus,

because he has been in sharp focus for a long time in his everyday reality.

The American is obliged to appear in sharp focus,

because the Vietnamese way of remaining clearly out of focus makes this inevitable.

The American is obliged to focus clearly on his real lack of clarity.

But nothing of that thought is said in the text.

The general fact of this photograph emphasized that of another photograph of the actress

on the cover of the same issue of L'Express.

This cover composition is very revealing,

if one is willing to see that a photograph can cover up just as much as it reveals.

A photograph imposes silence as it speaks.

In our opinion,

this is one of the working principles of the two-faced fall: Jekyll and Hyde,

principal and interest,

that information/deformation takes on when it is transmitted by images and sounds in our epoch,

which is that of the decline of imperialism and of the general tendency toward revolution.

The American left says

that the tragedy is not in Vietnam, but in the US.

The facial expression of the militant in this photograph is in fact that of a tragic actress.

But a tragic actress with that particular social and technical background,

formed and deformed by the Hollywood school of Stanislavskian showbiz.

The militant's expression was the same in the third reel of Tout va Bien, when,

as an actress, she was listening to one of the film extras singing a text written by Luta Continua.

This actress also had this expression in [Alan J. Pakula's] Klute,

as she looked at her friend, a policeman played by Donald Sutherland,

with a tragic sense of pity on her face,

and made up her mind to spend the night with him.

We can find the same expression already in the 1940s

used by Henry Fonda to portray an exploited worker

in the future fascist [John] Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath [dir. John Ford].

And even further back in the actress's paternal history, within the history of cinema.

It was still the same expression that Henry Fonda used

to cast a profound and tragic look on the black people in Young Mr. Lincoln,

made by the future Honorable Admiral of the Navy, John Ford.

One can also find this expression on the opposite side,

as John Wayne expresses his deep regrets about the devastation

of the war in Vietnam in The Green Beret [dir. Ray Kellogg & John Wayne].

In our opinion,

this expression has been borrowed (principal and interest)

from the free-trade mask of [Franklin D.] Roosevelt's New-Deal.

In fact, it's an expression of an expression,

and it appeared inevitably by chance

just as the talkies were becoming a financial success.

This expression talks, but only to say how much it knows

(about stock-market crash, for example),

but it says nothing more than how much it knows.

That's why, in our opinion, this Rooseveltian expression is technically different

from those that had preceded it in the history of cinema:

the expression of silent screen stars,

Lilian Gish, [Rudolph] Valentino, [Maria] Falconetti, et cetera.

Just make the experiment

and have these faces look at a photograph of US crimes in Vietnam:

not one will have the same expression

although all of them have the same knowing look.

Film equals editing of "I see."

This is because, before the talkies, silent films had a materialist starting point.

The actor said: I am filmed,

therefore I think,

at least I think of the fact that I'm being filmed.

It's because I exist that I think.

After the talkies, there was a "New Deal"

between the matter being filmed (the actor) and thought.

The actor began saying:

I think (that I'm an actor)

therefore I am (filmed).

It is because I think that I am.

I think, therefore I am.

As we have just seen in this experiment which elaborates [Lev] Kuleshov's,

before the New Deal expressed itself,

each star of the silent screen had his own individual expression

and the wide popularity of silent movies was a real fact.

On the contrary, as soon as films begin to talk like the New Deal,

each actor begins to speak the same thing.

Just make the same experiment

with any big star from the world of cinema, sports, or politics.

I think, therefore I am....

This expression that says it knows a lot about things...

this expression that says it knows a lot about things,

but says no more and no less, is an expression that doesn't help one...

is an expression that doesn't help one to see more clearly into one's personal problem,

to see how Vietnam can shed some light on them, for example.

So why be satisfied with it and say:

it's better than nothing, something gets across a little,

as in the union speech in Tout va Bien, reel 3, or in the [Communist Party] speech in Tout va Bien, reel 5.

And why, even if the actress is not capable of acting differently yet,

and even if we are not yet as able to help her act differently as we would like to be,

why should the Vietnamese be satisfied with it?

In our opinion, we risk doing them more harm than good,

by producing a good conscience for ourselves in such a cheap way

(scientifically speaking,

the movement from life to information is cheap).

After all, this expression is also addressed to us,

we, who are making an effort to look at it a second time.

These eyes and this mouth are not saying anything to us,

and for us, they are filling themselves with emptiness,

like those of the Czechoslovakian children in front of the Russian tanks

or the swollen little bellies from Biafra or Bangladesh,

or the Palestinian feet carefully looked after in the mud by the [United Nations].

Full of emptiness, full of empty meanings. But watch out only for capitalism, because capitalism

knows how to fuck things up, and fill the real eyes of its future enemies with emptiness,

forcing them to look nowhere.

How can one fight against this situation?

Not by banning the publication of this kind of photograph.

One would have to stop all these TV and radio programs

in practically every country in the world, as well as the publication of practically every form of newspaper,

which would be utopian.

No. But one could publish them differently.

And it is in relation to this "difference"

because of their financial and cultural influence, that the stars can play an important role,

a very heavy role, as they say.

And the real tragedy is that they don't know how to play this heavy role.

How can one learn to play?

Many questions must still be asked in Europe and in the United States,

before one can answer clearly.

We are asking a few in Tout va Bien,

as Marx did, in his day, by taking German Ideology

and raising the question of the misery [poverty] of philosophy against [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon,

who only knew how to philosophize about misery.

If one looks carefully at the Vietnamese behind the actress,

one realizes very quickly that his face is expressing something entirely different

than that of the American militant.

But even if one can't see what he's looking at,

one can see that his face reflects what he must face everyday:

antipersonnel bombs, broken dikes, and the torn bodies of dead women,

a house which must be rebuilt for the nth time, the hospital, and a lesson to be learned.

(Lenin said: first lesson: learn; second lesson: learn; third lesson: learn.)

And this face immediately reflects a day-to-day struggle for a very simple reason:

it's not just the face of a revolutionary, but of a Vietnamese revolutionary.

A long past of struggling has been written on this face

by French, Japanese, and American imperialism.

In fact, this face has been recognized for a long time now,

throughout the world, as the face of revolution, even by his enemies.

Let's not be afraid of words:

this is a face that has already won the independence of its own code of communication.

Today, no other's revolutionary face

reflects as much daily struggle as this.

Simply because no other revolution, except the Chinese,

has made as long a march as the Vietnamese revolution.

Let's make the experiment.

This black man for example.

We cannot say right away why he's struggling, or where and how:

in Detroit, on the assembly line of the Chrysler corporation

for better wages and a slightly slower work rate?

In Johannesburg, to have the right to enter a movie house

where white people are showing white people's film?

And this worker?

And this European girl?

And this Arab?

And this young radical?

As Uncle Bertolt said,

one must have the courage to say that we have nothing to say about these faces,

unless there is a caption with some sort of nonsense or lies that we can swallow,

and one must have the courage to admit one's weakness and failure,

for one has nothing to say.

This Vietnamese face, on the contrary, needs no words written underneath.

Anywhere in the world, people will say: this man is Vietnamese,

and the Vietnamese people are fighting to kick America out of Asia.

Let's look, on the other hand, at the face of the American actress without the rest of the photograph.

One can see right away that it doesn't reflect anything,

or rather, that it only reflects itself,

but a self that is nowhere,

lost in the infinite immensity and immortal tenderness of the Pieta by Michelangelo.

A woman's face that does not reflect other women.

The Vietnamese face was a function reflecting reality,

whereas the American's face

is a function that only reflects a function.

A face that could also belong to a hippie needing a fix,

to a student in Eugene, Oregon,

whose favorite runner, [Steve] Prefontaine, just lost the Olympic 5,000 meters,

to a young girl in love who has just been dropped by her boyfriend,

and also to a militant in Vietnam.

It's too much!

There is too much information in too small an element of space and time.

At the same time, we are sure that the militant is thinking of Vietnam

and not sure at all,

because she might be thinking of something entirely different, as we have suggested.

Therefore we must eventually ask the question:

why was this photograph of a militant actress

who is not necessarily thinking of Vietnam,

been published precisely in place of that of an actress-militant

who is necessarily thinking of Vietnam?

Because the true reality of this photograph lies in just this:

a star disguised, unveiled by the absence of Max Factor.

But L'Express doesn't say anything about this

because that would be starting the revolution in journalism.

It would be the beginning of revolution to say in Europe and in the US

that today, it is not possible to take a photograph of someone thinking of something

(Vietnam, fucking, Ford models, factories, Senomber seashore, et cetera).

Perhaps people will say that we should not have isolated this part of the picture from the rest

since it was published as part of a whole.

But we think this is a very a bad argument.

We have isolated this part to show

that it already stands alone in fact, and the tragedy is in this solitude.

If we had been able to separate this face from the rest of the picture,

it is because the face lends itself to this separation.

Whereas the Vietnamese face, on the contrary, remains a part of its surroundings

even if we try to look at it alone.

It has a definite reverse-shot.

On the contrary, here, there is no reverse-shot possible.

No reverse-shot!

In France, we are very familiar with the expression used by the actress in this picture.

It's a working model of Cartesian thought process:

I think, therefore I am,

the same that inspired the statue of "The Thinker" by [Auguste] Rodin.

Why not carry this statue around, wherever there is a catastrophe in the world,

to inspire the crowds with a feeling of pity?

The swindle of capitalist art and humanism

would be exposed immediately.

One must realize that stars are not allowed to think.

They are only social functions: they are thought [of], and they make you think.

One just has to look at the acting of big think-ers like Marlon Brando

or any other motherfuck-ers,

to understand why capital needs this sort of art,

to reinforce the strength of idealistic philosophy in its fight

against the materialist philosophy of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, who represent their peoples.

We have said that we are able to isolate, on the contrary, the face of the American actress.

Now we are going to isolate the expression "on the contrary" in this sentence

(isolate, separate: Lenin said that a revolutionary kind of separation is needed to fight against the way capitalism separates workers into isolated categories).

The face of the American militant

and that of the North Vietnamese are opposites.

The struggle of opposites is precisely what is happening

in the imaginary reality of this image.

The American eye in Vietnam is satisfied with just reading the word "horror."

The Vietnamese eye sees the reality of America in all its horror.

In this scene, the Vietnamese just appears in the background, like a film extra,

but behind him, we can already feel the force of the astonishing

incredible machine built by the North Vietnam/Vietcong collective.

And standing behind the star, we can still sense the vile, deadly capitalist machine,

looking full of cynical humility and limpid confusion,

as [Claude] Lelouch said in Adventure Is Adventure (1972).

In all of this we find a struggle between what still is and what already is,

a fight between the old and the new.

A struggle which does not limit itself to the taking of this picture,

but is perpetuated by the way it has been published

and by the fact that people in this theater are looking at it

at this very moment.

A struggle between the process of making a product and the process of its distribution,

depending on who controls the process, capital or revolution.

OTHER ELEMENTS OF ELEMENTS

The North Vietnamese are right in taking the risk of publishing this picture,

or rather, they have their reasons for doing so.

This picture plays the part of a small screw

in the mechanism that has been conceived for developing their current military-diplomatic offensive.

This picture is one of the thousand that the Vietnamese have given with their blood,

in answer to US war crimes.

You may have noticed by the way, Jane, that the Vietcong/North Vietnam collective

often publishes documents of their struggles,

but seldom of atrocities.

In this case, the North Vietnamese government has answered on behalf

of its people, and specifically representing the Committee for Friendship with the American People,

by calling on the services of Jane Fonda,

which means asking her to play a certain part.

Unlike what many Americans would have done,

the American actress accepted to go to Vietnam and play this part.

She went to Hanoi to help the Vietnamese revolution.

Now, one must ask the question: how does she help?

Or more precisely: how does she play this part?

The American actress at work in this picture

is helping the Vietnamese people in their struggle for independence,

but she's not only helping in Vietnam,

but particularly in the US and in Europe too,

since the picture has come to us in France as well.

As we look at the picture here, then,

we are freely obliged to ask: does this picture help us?

And above all: does it help us to help Vietnam?

(Vietnam forces us to ask this question.)

PUTTING TOGETHER SOME ELEMENTS, OR SOME ELEMENTS OF ELEMENTS

Neither L'Express nor the American militant have made the distinction between

Jane Fonda speaking, asking questions, and Jane Fonda listening.

For the Vietnamese, in the present historical stage of their struggle,

the most important fact about this picture is that Jane Fonda is in it.

And in our opinion, it doesn't matter much for them, whether she is speaking or listening

because the silence is just as effective. The important thing is that she is there.

But here, in 1972, the most important thing is not necessarily the same.

We must learn what determines this "necessarily."

We couldn't help observing that the text beneath the picture was lying

when it said that the actress was speaking to the inhabitants of Hanoi,

since the picture plainly showed that the militant was listening.

And since we need the contradictory truth of this picture and not its eternal truth,

it is also important for us to make the observation that L'Express is lying on every level.

But we must also add that if the magazine is able to lie,

it is because the picture makes it possible.

Actually, L'Express takes advantage of (profits by)

the implicit authorization of the picture to hide the fact that the militant is listening.

By saying that she is speaking, and speaking about peace in Vietnam,

L'Express is able to avoid saying what peace,

leaving this up to the picture alone, as if the picture said precisely what sort of peace was involved.

We have proved, however, that this is not the case.

But if L'Express can do this, it is probably because

the American actress does not express a struggle as a militant by saying anything other than: peace in Vietnam.

And because she doesn't ask herself exactly what peace, and particularly what peace in America.

And if she doesn't ask herself this yet, or is not able to,

it is not because she still acts as an actress and not as a militant. But on the contrary,

because as a militant, she doesn't ask herself questions yet

about what new approach or style might be applied to her function

as an actress, both technically and socially.

In other words, she doesn't consider her militant activity as an actress,

even though the North Vietnamese invited her precisely as a militant actress.

And she's talking from somewhere other than where she really is, in America,

which is what interests the Vietnamese most of all.

This is why she also covers up the fact that the most important fact about this picture is listening:

listening to Vietnam, before talking about it.

Whereas at the same time, [Richard] Nixon, [Henry] Kissinger, and the big barrel of steel [William J.] Porter

are not listening to anything, or refusing to listen to anything at the Paris Talks.

We must be able to examine this masquerade.

And unmasking Nixon's hypocrisy does not mean saying: peace in Vietnam.

Because he says it too, and so does [Leonid] Brezhnev.

One must say the opposite of what he says.

One must say: I am listening to the Vietnamese, who are going tell me what sort of peace they want in their country.

And one must say:

as an American, I'll keep my mouth shut,

because I admit I have got nothing to say about this.

The Vietnamese must say what they want,

and I have to listen and then do whatever they say

because I am not a part of Southeast Asia.