A “Common” Sense
A “Common” Sense: When Public Space Fails Us—A Study of Two Films
Stacy Thomas
Abstract
In their 2022 book On the Inconvenience of Other People, Lauren Berlant examines how social (and physical) infrastructures are broken down during times of crisis or transition. They also discuss alternatives to these broken infrastructures, and how non-reproductive forms can be built or can grow out of the chaos of those glitches. One such alternative Berlant approaches is the sensus communis: an aesthetic or philosphical theory of felt communal sense that can operate in place of a traditional “Commons.” Through the discussion of Transit (2018), directed by Christian Petzold, an example is presented of how public space can easily be broken down or corrupted by forceful takeover. Transit also demonstrates how attempts to covertly build supportive networks under such conditions are fragile and prone to collapse under pressure. In the Air (2009) by Liza Johnson is another example of loss of infrastructure due to oppressive forces. However, Johnson’s film presents an alternative to the concept of common space. Through “embodied tactics” (circus performance, in this instance), we see opportunities to unlearn dependence on institutional structures, helping to articulate new ideas through the political potentialities at the core of Petzold’s film.
Introduction
When an idea of a “Commons” (an egalitarian space open to anyone for public discourse and connection) disappears, a vacuum is created, and that space cannot exist for long. It will morph and be sucked into any pockets it can find. Or, it might cause an entire community to crumble and disperse, flying off into the ether. In the two films discussed in this article, Transit (2018) by Christian Petzold and In the Air (2009) by Liza Johnson, this vacuum effect is observed and resolved with two very different outcomes. Using Lauren Berlant’s ideas of the sensus communis in their book On the Inconvenience of Other People, I will show how these two films’ disparate narratives demonstrate the necessity for subversive organization—organization outside of the framework of institutionally sanctioned connection—and alternative modes of community connection such as is demonstrated in In the Air.
Both films explore themes of broken community and systemic oppression: one film based on a Nazi-era novel that follows political prisoners and refugees in quasi-modern France; the other, a short film about a group of neglected teenagers in a defunct industrial town in America. They are both examples of community breakdown effected by outside oppressive forces. The respective oppressors presented in the films are different in force but also appear the same in nature: capitalistic forces (Fascists, corporations) unleashed on unprepared populations. Johnson’s subjects wander listlessly in an eroded town that was left for dead by industry. The Nazis in Petzold’s film descend swiftly and violently, arresting public space, private space, and the people within it who scramble for escape. Both of these examples, which can be viewed either as opposing ends of a stick or as different stops along a timeline, show how loss of common space can lead to social breakdown. The abuses captured in the films can be violent or insidious, but they achieve the same end: fractured social structures. However, Johnson’s film offers a possible preventative measure, while Petzold’s demonstrates the scenario played out to the bleakest end.
Georg’s Web of Safety in Transit
Berlant posits that the very idea of a common, public and democratic space is no longer possible in our age of police surveillance, closed circuit television, and corporate ownership of public spheres. A genuine space of this nature, Berlant explains, is impossible, requiring “people to honor the common spirit of the common. It turns out that this trust has no object to sustain it, that any place in ordinary life might convert in a snap to an event in which something alive or held close to life has been massively transgressed” (Berlant 80).
We can observe just such a transgressive event in one of the opening scenes of Transit. Georg leaves his friend (we assume they are friends, but the tone between them is so tense that they seem more like recent allies or accomplices) to run a dangerous errand. When he returns, he finds the street full of storm troopers, his friend one of a group of confused strangers being held, lined up and arrested; a space which moments before had been safe public territory had vanished, like walls being moved in a labyrinth. Georg breaks away and escapes, and as he runs, a woman in civilian dress calls out to give him away to authorities. Any structure of safe public space is crumbling away, rendered meaningless in the span of a couple of hours.
Georg must seek refuge in various private spaces, and when in public by keeping on the move, keeping to himself, being invisible. On one hand, he laments this isolation. As the narrator explains in a sequence reminiscent of well-known refugee narratives: “That was the terrible thing. Not that they stare at you, your dirty, tired face, your torn clothing. The terrible thing is, they don’t see you. You don’t exist in their world” (Transit). However, it is this invisibility that keeps Georg safe, forcing him to embrace and embody his role as outsider.
As a balance to this isolation out in the open, there is a common web being created in private. It is disjointed, tenuous, but vital, its connections made covertly and quickly. As the movie progresses, we witness Georg getting pulled into the intimate relationships and spaces of strangers: the father-son bond in Melissa’s apartment, agreements of transit and romantic commitment in Richard’s hotel room. In these instances, the idea of private space is turned on its head. There is foreshadowing of this inversion in Paris, when Georg encounters the lonely hotelier in the dead writer’s room, and learns from her of the suicide and a wayward wife. The moment of honest intimacy between himself and the hotel owner runs counter to our expectation of how two strangers might relate; it is as though the privacy and urgency of the space gives them permission to risk honesty. Are they both reaching blindly for safety? This desperate search for connection continues when Georg reaches Marseille. He encounters Driss and Melissa, Marie and Richard, the dying composer, and the woman with two dogs—all of them connected psychically and physically by a common thread of survival, all of them seeking (secretly) for allies. He is able to form the beginnings of bonds where there is private space available. But, without the ability to congregate, to become more than only random, separate numbers, with shrinking public and private space, they are defeated, the web is broken, and Georg ends up alone, once again exposed in a public space.
Common Movement in In the Air
In her writing on the (failed) formal and democratic spaces of the public commons, Berlant puts forward the concept of the sensus communis: a “higher gut feeling” associated with the common space that can exist outside of any physical or literal framework (Berlant 83). Rather than the fleeting, false public safety of a commons that can be manipulated or taken away by an overpowering entity such as a psychotic corporation or a murderous political regime, the sensus communis is innate—primal, even—and is based on a felt sense of commonality, rooted only in mutual safety.
The protagonists in In the Air (three teens) are adrift too, wandering the streets as Georg does in Marseille. Not welcome in the spheres of their parents (the adults are distracted by addiction and work), they are forced to occupy open, exposed areas of their broken-down town.
As in Transit, the oppressive force in In the Air is omnipresent. However, the fascist regime which descends upon the towns and cities of France is tangible, and seen. The oppressors of In the Air are absent; they have vacated the town which they used for capitalist gain, leaving the remaining occupants to fill in the gaps. These spaces are seen in the empty, boarded up storefronts and streets which the teens occupy—they are displaced and invisible, just like Georg in Marseille. Rather than finding common ground in the private spaces of strangers, as Georg does, they find another common-private space: the gym where they practice circus arts (Transit).
Although they lack the foundation of a supportive larger community and common space, the teens have been—covertly—building a sensus communis. They have been learning to depend on each other’s physical bodies for support, slowly building bonds of trust. We see this when two potential sweethearts are volunteered for collaboration easily and without malice by their peers. With a simple glance, the two youths transform into a couple, dependent on each other’s physical bodies, existing in each other’s intimate space. It is just this sort of “embodied tactic,” Berlant proposes, which can be an alternative to traditional forms of public, political discourse requiring any sort of democratic common (Berlant 115).
“How can a discipline of the ordinary body toward pleasure and kindness create an atmosphere for a new economy’s good life that does not begin with where the wealth is and judgments of who’s deserving?” Berlant asks (111). The answer is in the final scene of In the Air, where we witness the community come together to join in a collaborative, spontaneous “perceptual event that bypasses cognition.” Awkwardly, but working together, the teens from the circus club are joined by the adults of their community to perform acts of choreographed team dance to the poignant lyrics of a nineties techno song: “Do you think you’re better off alone?” (Alice Deejay).
As Berlant summarizes in the following quote, when it is their turn to create a common space by extending these bonds—the sensus communis they have built on their own—to the adults in their lives, the teens are ready to do so:
The film’s older figures appear too beaten down to protest the exploitation of supply-chain capitalism, and the abandonment of working populations by the wealth hoarders seems to produce less a politics than rampant and depleting nervous conditions, from irritation to short fuses and numbness. The receptive posture of aesthetic attention helps the youths to loosen or unlearn their defenses against taking each other in. They train each other, then the adults, to reoccupy existence in a chilly place. Individuals may be exhausted, but as a whole they’ve not yet given up on the world. (111)
Johnson’s subjects find their commons, not in a place but in an event, and not alone but together. Their physical expression of unity supercedes the lack of a formal common space.
Sensus communis as Political Act
In Transit, a hostile, oppressive force descends quickly upon a society, leaving inhabitants scrambling for quickly receding safety. In this environment, as trust in public spheres and institutional systems vanishes, connections are attempted in private. Unfortunately, as Georg and his companions discover, the kind of bonds forged under such circumstances break under pressure, as all of his connections scatter in the final moments of Marseille’s occupation.
Contemplating the statement “We are in it together!” which proliferated during the COVID-19 panic, Berlant writes, “Who is ‘we’? What is ‘it’? Fantasies of democracy as the experience of collectively equal exposure to vulnerability tried to establish a ground where there is no ground” (113). This is the “lack of ground” that Georg experienced when the woman on the Paris sidewalk, a complete stranger, gave him away to authorities as he tried to escape incarceration. It is the lack of ground experienced by all people displaced or dismissed by an aggressive or unseeing society, institution, or family.
In answer, the teens in In the Air manage to (perhaps subconsciously but no less significantly) find new ground by forming a sensus communis in the absence of any sanctioned public space to do so. “The frictions of counternormative affective infrastructures can bring structural political imaginaries to their knees,” Berlant writes (115).
In the Air’s example of transformation-through-interaction can be used as a jumping-off point for discussions around alternatives to the traditional and problematic concept of a commons for public discourse, and what “discourse” even means in these contexts.
Stacy Thomas has worked as a freelance writer and editor since 2013, and is a returning student of Creative Writing and German Studies at UBC. With a focus on social exclusion, hierarchy and mental health intersecting with movies, music and poetry, she loves researching and writing in a variety of forms, such as dystopian fantasy, lyric poetry and nonfiction. She is currently researching a book about systemic abuse, and plugging away at a queer sci-fi novel, occasionally interspersed with a poem or two about water. She edits books for a living, which allows for midday forays into nature and rambling internet deep dives which sometimes lead somewhere but mostly nowhere.
Works Cited
Alice Deejay, “Better Off Alone,” by Sebastiaan Molijn and Eelke Kahlberg, vocalist Judith Pronk, recorded 1997, single released 1999, Violent/Universal.
Berlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
Johnson, Liza, dir. In the Air. Portsmouth, OH: Wexner Center, 2008.
Petzold, Christian, dir. Transit. Germany: Schramm film, 2018.
Picture: “Transit” by https://unsplash.com/@jonathanborba.
