The documentary film Derrida produces a conflicted image of Jackie Derrida as a construct of his own theories; his philosophy lives within the movie whether the filmmakers intended this or not. The filmmakers act as bricoleurs, trying again and again to construct a film supplement of the person Jackie. They use the filmed images and interviews to build this study, never really hitting on the true Jackie.
The film pulls on the idea of the value of presence over absence. It attempts to use Jackie’s image to make him present, placing more importance on his spoken words by asking him philosophical questions. Jackie, on the other hand, questions why the center of knowledge is presence but he says that truth does not exists within presence. While the filmmakers are trying to make him present, he is rejecting them in order to make the film accurate. He supplies no more information in his spoken interviews than he would in his personal writings, therefore granting the writings the same value as the spoken word. This is embodied in the film when the female narrator reads portions of Jackie’s writings over visual vignettes, thereby bringing these writings into the spoken word and making them more accessible to the audience. As an ode to the theories presented in “Structure, Sign, and Play” Jackie “plays” with the structure of the film in order to give it legitimacy.
This brings an interesting possibility to the table. Jackie Derrida is a zombie. In all seriousness, this film presents this dead man for all eternity (or at least until DVDs and other forms of visual entertainment are obsolete). This grants Jackie zombie status! While he is not necessarily chomping on the viewers’ brains, he exists in a sort of half-life. While his physical body may be deceased, his intellectual body remains alive, embodied by the filmic memory of his body. The movie purposefully makes him a very human entity. The filmmakers show Jackie going through the every day movements of his life—getting his hair cut, eating, visiting friends, talking about love, and fulfilling liberal duties through seeing Nelson Mandela’s jail cell in South Africa and addressing students to further their intellectual growth. Through his death, the film perpetuates the image of this “living” man. It presents a constructed image of a man who is no longer with us, showing him not as he was, but as the filmmakers edited him, effectively killing the man before he died.
Jackie purposefully evades giving the filmmakers the answers they want. While initially watching the movie, one is frustrated. Upon reflection, the viewer comes to the realization that his evasive responses are an attempt to avoid centering himself. As presented in “Structure, Sign, and Play,” “the concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a play based on a fundamental ground, a play constituted on the basis of a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which itself is beyond the reach of play” (196). The film image of Jackie attempts to cement him, to “reassure his certitude” and to immobilize him as a simple image, simply Derrida from the film. Jackie’s avoidance and acknowledgement of the artificial nature of the interview process of his person is his attempt to de-center himself. Therefore, the film becomes as uncomfortable as his writing—heady and disconcerting.
Now that we have a highbrow intellectual image of Derrida comes a melodically pleasant presentation of deconstructing an image or idea—in this case, love.
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
The Scritti Politti song “Jaques Derrida” from the 1982 album Songs to Remember plays with the idea of heart as a center. By professing love for Jackie and then proclaiming that the singer will “take apart my baby’s heart”, the singer deconstructs the typical connotations of a love song. Is the baby in question Jackie? Or is it a lover? A literal baby? Is it a song about abortion? Whatever the context that the song exists in for the listener, it ought not to exist or even matter, for a context provides a center, a means to examine.
Through the persistent repetition of the phrase “I’m in love”, Scritti Politti attempts to cement the song within a specific genre. The words, with this incessant repetition, become meaningless background noise. They lose any value, existing as mere babble. This acts to de-center the meaning of the song. What does this song really say about love?
Speaking of love and Derrida, Jackie has some interesting opinions—that is, he hides them from the viewer. When the interviewers ask him how he met his wife, Jackie responds cryptically, giving only the facts, none of the emotion, and stopping at what most would consider the critical moment. Despite his reservations with sharing his own intimacies, he is greatly interested in the love lives of other philosophers, confirming to the viewer that his own writing is indeed based on his own sex life. Therefore, his reservation becomes a double entendre, providing an ironic perspective for the viewer (who is now curious about ALL philosophers’ sex lives. What’s “up” with Plato?)
As a closing thought, we leave you with this quote from “Structure, Sign, and Play”:
“The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics of ontotheology—in other words, throughout his entire history—has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play” (209). Through a film of Derrida, one hopes to construct a finite image of Jackie the philosopher, but ultimately cannot grasp his entity through simply a series of visual and verbal signs.
Here’s the image we’re left with:
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