垂直城市：《摩天樓》中的反烏托邦、空間與性別 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文. 指導教授 : 陳音頤先生. Adviser：Professor Yin-I Chen. 立. 政治大. 垂直城市：《摩天樓》中的反烏托邦、空間與性別. ‧ 國. 學. Vertical City: Dystopia, Space and Gender in High-Rise. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 研究生 : 蔡瑩慈撰 Name: Jamie Yin-Tzu Tsai 中華民國一〇八年六月 June 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(2) VERTICAL CITY: DYSTOPIA, SPACE AND GENDER IN HIGH-RISE. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English,. 政治大立National Chengchi University. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. In Partial Fulfillment . Ch. engchi. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i n U. v. of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Jamie Yin-Tzu Tsai June, 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(3) Acknowledgements My warmest thanks go to my thesis advisor, Professor Eva Chen, for her encourangmnt, patience, motivation and immense knowledge throughout my research for this work. Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a better mentor for my gradtuate studies at NCCU. Her advice and assistance have truly been appreciated. Besides my advisor, I. 政治大 Chen, for their reading of the manuscript and for helpful suggestions and valuable 立. want to thank Professor Tsui-fen, Jiang, Professor Yih-Dau Wu, Professor Chung-Jen. ‧ 國. 學. feedback on my thesis. In addition, I also wish to thank Dr. Vivienne Westbrook, for her inspring course English Literature and Adaptaion Studies, which I once took at. ‧. NTU and was so grateful to be a part of.. Nat. sit. y. Finally, I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks and love to my family and. n. al. er. io. friends. Thank you for helping me get through the hard times. Last but not least, thanks Jamie for being brave and persevering to the last.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. iii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(4) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文題要論文名稱：垂直城市：《摩天樓》中的反烏托邦、空間與性別指導教授：陳音頤. 先生. 教授研究生：蔡瑩慈論文提要內容： J.G.巴拉德的作品常被歸類為科幻小說，但是不同於以往科幻小說場景通常. 治政大設為外太空，巴拉德的作品著重在心靈的探索，包括幻想、衝動、精神病理學。立. 《摩天樓》是J.G.巴拉德小說四部曲的最後一本。四十年之後《摩天樓》由導演. ‧ 國. 學. Ben Wheatley改編為電影《摩天樓》。電影改編版在許多方面都非常忠實於原創. ‧. 小說。在小說中，《摩天樓》中建築原始設計概念是將空間分為上層階級住在上. sit. y. Nat. 層樓，而下層階級都住在低層樓層，但在現實中，這樣的概念被推翻。而在電影. n. al. er. io. 之中，導演賦予這些在小說中沈默的女性角色一個重建自己身份的機會。第二章. i n U. v. 將從小說裡三個不同的敘述者中回顧反烏托邦世界，並探討小說與電影中的靜音. Ch. engchi. 電視與環爾德對紀錄片，與電影裡強調《摩天樓》崛起的新一代。第三章進一步討論導演如何在電影中呈現J.G.巴拉德強調的心理建築圖像，並重新分析三個主要人物的心理。第四章將重點關注在小說中的沈默女性，以及電影如何扭轉女性角色，將其從這父權制建築中解放。. 關鍵字：J.G.巴拉德、《摩天樓》、改編文學、空間、反烏托邦、階級差異、女性性別認同 iv. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(5) Abstract Often categorized as science fiction, J.G. Ballard’s novels often work on mind exploration, including fantasy, impulsiveness, psychopathology. High-Rise is the final part of a quartet of novels that Ballard wrote. Having been nursing the project for almost forty years, in 2015, High-Rise is adapted to the film High-Rise by the director Ben Wheatley. The film adaptation is quite faithful to its original novel in many aspects. But the film also brings out one hidden element in the novel, the subversive. 治政大 of High-Rise power of female characters. In the novel, the original design 立 ‧ 國. 學. construction project is to hierarchize space – the upper class on top, the lower class at the bottom, but the reality overturns the plan. Moreover, in the film, the director. ‧. empowers these silent female characters to rebuild their identities. Chapter two is. Nat. sit. y. going to review the dystopian world in the novel with the shifting narrators from the. n. al. er. io. three different voices, the next generation emphasized in the film and the important. i n U. v. theme, the muted television and Wilder’s documentary film. Chapter three further. Ch. engchi. discusses how the director presents the images of the mental building on the screen and reanalyzes the psychologies of the three main characters. Chapter four will focus on the silent women in the novel and how the film reverse and emancipate these women from this patriarchal building.. Keywords: J.G. Ballard, High-Rise, Film adaptation, Space, Dystopia, Class differences, Female identities v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(6) Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………...iii Chinese Abstract ......................................................................................................... iv English Abstract ........................................................................................................... v Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Brief Introduction about the Wheatley’s adaptation of High-Rise …….... 4 1.3 Literature Review…..…………………………………………………… 6 1.4 Methodology and Organization of Chapters ……………………………10 Chapter 2 The Dystopian World in High-Rise…………………………………........ 16. 治政大Film................................ 25 2.2 Muted Television and Wilder’s Documentary 2.3 Parties all over立 the Building…………………………………………….28. 2.1 Shifting Narrators from The Three Different Voices…….....………….. 19. ‧ 國. 學. 2.3 The Next Generation……………………………………....................... 29 Chapter 3 Space in High-Rise..................................................................................... 31. ‧. 3.1 Housing Styles of Laing, Royal and Wilder……………........................ 35 3.2 Organic Building………………………………………………………. 39 40. sit. y. Nat. 3.3. From Civilized to Barbarian…………………………………………. Chapter 4 Gender in High-Rise …………………………………………………….. 47. io. n. al. er. 4.1 Patriarchal Space: Man-made Construct…………………………… 47. i n U. v. 4.2 Women and the Space…………………………………………………. 50. Ch. engchi. 4.3 Female Identity Through Lens……………………………...…………. 52 4.4 Women on Top…………………………………………………….…... 55 4.5 Women and Their Intimacy with Men…………………………………. 57 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………... 61 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………… 63. vi. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(7) Chapter One: Introduction J.G. Ballard’s novels are often categorized as science fiction. Nonetheless, rather than wandering in the vast galaxy with the spaceships, or fighting the menacing mechanical robots with laser guns, it is mind exploration that interests him more. For Ballard, the Earth and human beings are way more alien than real aliens. For him, imaginative fiction is all about the workings of the mind, fantasy, and its impulses. “J.G. Ballard is renowned for a lifetime’s work investigating the extremes of. 政治大 and surrealist art” (Matthews 122). In his novels, Ballard creates a landscape that 立. subjectivity in a series of novels influenced by psychoanalysis, experimental literature,. ‧ 國. 學. surreally embodies the psychopathology of modern humanity. His lead characters are often set to middle-class professionals who are described as affectless and benumbed.. ‧. High-Rise is the final part of a quartet of novels that Ballard wrote – the first. sit. y. Nat. three are The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), and Concrete Island (1974) –. n. al. er. io. with each book seeded in the previous one. With a landscape usually surreally. i n U. v. embodying the psychopathology of modern humanity, J.G. Ballard often focuses on. Ch. engchi. his character’s physical surroundings and the effects they have on their psyches. Along with these novels, Ballard portrays an estranged protagonist in a dystopian world full of post-catastrophe scenarios in the near future. The traditional dystopian world is said to be related to an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. The ending for the dystopian fiction is either the righteous heroes unrealistically form a good-guy government or the evil government wins and everything stays the same way. In High-Rise, Ballard takes dystopian fiction to a new level with its time and place setting close to the world we live and its Byronic hero, Dr. Laing. 1. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(8) High-Rise was once a project developed by film producer Jeremy Thomas and originally with Nicolas Roeg scheduled to direct. Having been nursing the project for almost forty years, in 2015, J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise is finally adapted to the film High-Rise by Ben Wheatley at the helm. In many aspects, the film adaptation is quite faithful to the novel itself. But the film also brings out one hidden element in the novel, the subversive power of female characters. In the novel, the original design of the High-Rise construction project is to hierarchize space – the upper class on top, the lower class at the bottom. But the reality overturns the plan. For the unfair distribution. 治政 original plan is defeated when the leader of the upper大 class and the lower class both 立 of electricity and amenities, the lower class start to rebel against the upper class. The. die. In the film, on the other hand, those who are at the lowest hierarchy, the women,. ‧ 國. 學. take over the building. In this thesis, I’ll treat both novel and film in further. ‧. discussions.. sit. y. Nat. Starting with The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Ballard has devised a new language.. io. er. Influenced by media images, The Atrocity Exhibition consists of a non-linear narrative. al. with a series of fragments, short conversations without coherence based on eerie. n. v i n historical figures or events, suchCashMarilyn Monroe, Nixon, e n g c h i U the Vietnam war, etc., and is filled with pictures related to physiological anatomy, geometry and engineering, which Ballard describes as ‘condensed novels’. For Ballard, the 20th century is “a mixture of visionary dreams of amazing scientific advancement and the nightmares of barbarism” (Juno and Vale iii). The twelfth chapter, “Crash!” in The Atrocity Exhibition later gives the seed for Ballard’s next novel Crash (1973), a story of symphorophilia, specifically car-crash sexual fetishism. Its lead character, a TV director, discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred omnisexual car-crash victims and is sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car accidents so as to rejuvenate his sex life with his 2. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(9) wife. Ballard once says the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. He regards the motor car as the “elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy” (J.G. Ballard’s voiceover in Crash! a short film by Harley Cokeliss, 1971). His obsession with motor car later passes on to the Concrete Island and High-Rise. Written shortly before High-Rise, Concrete Island (1974) is a parable of alienation of an individual in the vast urbanized world, a story focusing on a single. 政治大 high-speed highway onto the island below, its protagonist, Robert Maitland, a wealthy 立 individual with his inner mind. After a car accident over the concrete parapet of a. architect, is trapped and stranded in a large derelict traffic island. However, the car. ‧ 國. 學. crash is not the real cause of his inner alienation. Readers might come to realization. ‧. when another character Jane shows up near the end of the story and pointing out that he. sit. y. Nat. was on this solitary island long before he crashed there. Maitland’s car crash is only. io. er. the outer manifestation of his inner reality. No one even notices Maitland is gone. His. al. life represents a fate of the individual in the dehumanizing modern world, a. n. v i n Cpeople technological world that alienates each other. The world leaves this main h e nfrom gchi U character feeling empty even when he possesses all the social marks of success – a Jaguar, a mistress, a high-paying career. Despite the fact that the novel is frequently classified as science fiction, readers might find the phenomenon mentioned in the novel quite familiar to the world around us. In every novel of his, Ballard shows a close connection between technology and his own perspective toward the world. “The new emotions and new feelings are being created, that modern technology is beginning to reach into our dreams and change the whole way of looking at things, and perceiving reality, that more and more it is drawing us away from contemplating ourselves to contemplating its world” (J.G. 3. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(10) Ballard’s voiceover in Crash! a short film by Harley Cokeliss, 1971). In each novel, by emphasizing the relationship between human beings with motor cars, advertising and consumer goods, Ballard elaborates his question on to what degree has human beings desensitized themselves to their environment due to their obsession with modernity. Beguiled by all the convenience technology brings to our life, can people again go back to our earlier existence – being closer to nature -- or will we embrace technology at the expense of our emotional lives? Of course, the question concerning the relationship between technology and modern human beings is tackled in. 治政大 well-educated and something in common. They are all modern, urbane creatures, 立. High-Rise as well. All the main characters in Crash! Concrete Island, High-Rise share. detached people who embrace their technology-centric urban lifestyle. But when. ‧ 國. 學. something goes wrong, their primitive urges and psychopathology emerge to a certain. ‧. horrifying effect.. sit. y. Nat. Brief introduction about the Wheatley’s adaptation of High-Rise. io. er. People used to believe that no matter how good the copy is, it is always inferior. al. v i n Ch have their own imagination and interpretation e n g cthrough h i Uevery line and description in n. to the original one. The novel communicates solely with its readers and readers can. the book. Reading a novel is seen as highly personal. Readers can have a certain orientation based on their own growing environment and physical habits. Different people may have various reflections and perspectives on the novel. On the contrary, on the screen, the director frankly shows audiences the genuine images which frame or constrain the viewer’s imagination about the world created by the author. The cinema provides a black space for all the audiences to sit in and projects all the motion-picture on the screen. It gives audiences a sense of involvement in the film itself and their emotions will follow the characters. It, on the other hand, provides a universal feeling to all the audiences. Later, the introduction of sound in 1927 allowed 4. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(11) movies to more fully recreate literary and theatrical dialogue, character psychology, and plot complexity found in novels. For Ballard, writing is, among other things, a space in which to reflect on the nature of media images and take some distance from them. His style often parodies scientific or pornographic texts, as much as media imagery. Besides, his works mostly focus on the character’s psychological aspects and transformation. But how does a director transform their ideas and reflect them on the screen with vivid images? How does the film build up the psychological environment through the lens? The director. 政治大 into a film. At first, the story in the novel indeed offers a central structure and 立. of High-Rise (2015), Ben Wheatley mentions the two faces about adapting the novel. storyline for every playwright and director to rely on. The story and structure are. ‧ 國. 學. already mapped out. When the director shoots a film originally written by the. ‧. playwrights, if something doesn’t work, the director can simply cross out or edit the. sit. y. Nat. part, but with adaptation, every amendment should be there or taken out for some. io. er. explainable reasons. One difficulty of adapting High-Rise is that it is different from. al. the traditional film narrative of the three-act structure, in which the lead character. n. v i n realizes or discovers something C at the survives and learns at the third h esecond i U n g cact,hand act. This conventional narrative of storyline would never happen in High-Rise. In this novel, there are three different narrators and readers need to switch their perspective to understand the story. In the film, on the other hand, Laing is the only narrator in the story. Rather than a traditional hero, he is more like a Byronic hero. In the film, except for his indirect responsibility for his student, Marlow’s death, Laing is more like a bystander and observer of every incident. Rather than learning a lesson after havoc in this tall building, Laing barely sustains his life with the forelimb of the dog, surreptitiously welcoming the newcomers to another building and, expecting another apocalypse to come. 5. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(12) With the film industry’s need to appeal to the mass taste and push for a profit, the movie version of High-Rise has to sensationalize the ambiguous affairs among characters and portray the brutal scenes in a shocking way. However, while the original story in the novel offers no motivation behind every incident and every savage deed is done without certain reason, the film, on the other hand, provides some background stories for the characters. Thus, in some aspects makes each character more humanized and their stories more acceptable for the viewers. While Ballard writes his novel in an enigmatic and bewildering way to offer a. 政治大 film in the 1970s to 1980s when people still held optimistic views about the future 立. dystopian sense of coming catastrophe, Wheatley’s adaptation of High-Rise sets the. unlike present society’s view of the future as “bleak and dystopian” (Hall). To. ‧ 國. 學. recreate the 1970s atmosphere, Wheatley wisely uses Abba’s SOS as the soundtrack. ‧. to violent events in the High-Rise, and successfully builds up tension when the. sit. y. Nat. incidents jar with the nostalgic atmosphere and sense of safety created by the familiar. io. er. songs. When the characters in the film are crying out for help, the audiences may be. al. surprisingly, by contrast, find peace with the lyrics “it used to be so nice, it used to be. n. v i n C h the film ends with so good.” Aside from the soundtrack, e n g c h i U Charlotte’s son, Toby,. listening to the radio of Thatcher’s remarks, which indicates that these residents in the High-Rise gradually become accustomed to the chaos with no idea about the coming catastrophe and look forward to Thatcherite society as the bright future. Despite through many scenes, the film presents a postmodern world with unease montage, at the end of the movie, it still offers a sense of hope despite the fact that only we as the audiences know what the situation will become – degeneration and deterioration. Literature Review. 6. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(13) Because this thesis is going to focus both in novel and film, the literature review is divided into two parts. The first part is the literature review of the novel and the second part is the literature review of the film itself. Charlotte Matless in her article divides the entire building into the superego, ego, and id from the top to the bottom floors, each represented by the three characters -- Royal, Dr. Laing (closely related to RD Laing, the author of The Divided Self), and Wilder. She suggests that Royal is the super-ego, Dr. Laing is the ego and Wilder is the id. Royal is thought of as the super-ego, the watchdog. 政治大 contains internalized societal standards of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong” 立 of the building. However, there is a rough edge in this article. The superego. behavior. It consciously appreciates the rules and regulations as well as. ‧ 國. 學. incorporates them unconsciously (Freud 15-20). At first, based on his idealism,. ‧. Royal sets up a lot of regulations to control and maintain the order of the building.. sit. y. Nat. Gradually, when High-Rise starts to fall apart and turns into total chaos, instead. io. er. of working out some solutions to fix the damage and situation, Royal does. al. nothing like a bystander and refers to these residents as some peculiar birds. n. v i n C harchitecture project locked in one big bird cage. This e n g c h i U is actually more like his little experiment. Moreover, not just being incompetent to solve the problems in the building, he increasingly waits for the catastrophe to come. In Mobility and Masochism: Christine Brooke Rose and J.G. Ballard, Robert Caserio analyses the social meaning in High-Rise. He points out that human beings all have a natural tendency toward class division and usually the turmoil starts with the resentment felt by the lower class against the upper class (Caserio 293). The working-class hero named Wilder emerges from the fighting and makes his way to the building top, and slays the structure’s patriarchal architect, Royal. While traditional stories often provide poetic justice with a happy ending, 7. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(14) here the merciless death of Wilder indicates that the characters’ striving to ascend to the top is pointless and all the struggles and searching for the goal of life turn out to be in vain. The death of this ideal revolutionary who fights for his right and equality among classes suggests that such a revolution is scarcely possible to win. The lodger like Wilder fights and makes his way toward the top, and slays the evil one who is in charge and should bear responsibility for everything happening in the High-Rise. With the death of the owner, the working-class hero should at least earn himself someplace on the upper floor. To. 治政大 and the only man High-Rise, no one uplifts himself to a better social condition, 立 the contrary, at the end of the story, no one is responsible for the chaos in. who survives in this anarchic turmoil is the affectless Dr. Laing. Along with the. ‧ 國. 學. development of the story, the social mobility was stagnated and frustrated. ‧. (Caserio 292-310).. sit. y. Nat. Later, in Why J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise Takes Dystopian Science Fiction to a. io. er. New Level, Chris Hall shares his idea about Ballard’s novel and later offers. al. another point of view about the ending of the film. Firstly, he states that Ballard. n. v i n keeps repeating his mantra, inC a totally society, madness is the only freedom. h e nsane gchi U Defining our own civilization, this madness would actually free ourselves from repression. In High-Rise, Laing’s detachment and cruel reaction toward his surroundings makes him the last man standing at the end of all chaos. Steele’s unbearable cannibalism allows him to overcome hunger. Though Wilder’s aggression and eagerness to climb up to the top of the floor cost him everything even his life, and though he is often thought of as a troublemaker by many elite residents in High-Rise, his madness is probably closer to human nature with the sanest behaviours. He finally frees himself from this mad world to hallucination and his final destination when being stabbed by all the women around him. 8. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(15) Descending from civilization to tribalism to hunter-gatherer savagery, and cannibalism, High-Rise assembles a mass psychosis where all the dodgers retreat from the outside world. At the end of the film, Thatcherite society comes exactly when Toby listens to Thatcher’s speech on the radio. Different from the director’s viewpoint, Hall claims that the ending is actually a premonition of the selfish Thatcherite society to come. The man-eat-dog scene actually represents the dog-eat-dog society in High-Rise. Different from Hall’s and other critics’ viewpoint which purely view. 政治大 Concrete Island and High-Rise (2009), Pedro Groppo argues that Ballard’s works 立 High-Rise as a dystopian science fiction, in Body and Space in J.G. Ballard’s. and gothic fiction share many things in common - the immersion in the psyche of. ‧ 國. 學. the main characters with the focus on the landscape of mind, particularly those. ‧. distorted by the pressure of the surroundings leading to some psychological. sit. y. Nat. obsessions. A typical gothic fiction involves a ghost luring the living and. io. er. provoking their fear and terror. In High-Rise, Laing is haunted by his past.. al. Gothic narratives are often the antithesis to the bright side of Enlightenment and. n. v i n C hof stone walls, darkness, develops “a whole fantasy-world e n g c h i U hideouts and dungeons” where “imaginary spaces are like the negative of the transparency and visibility it is aimed to establish.” (Groppo 45). Located somewhere in the docklands of east London, with its rigid lines and geometrical design of living space, High-Rise often refers to Le Corbusier’s design – a modern architecture reinforced by the concept of transparency. In this crystal building hid the darkest well-organized experiments – a place once designed with modern facilities gradually turns its residents to embrace their primitive desires and welcome carnivalesque barbarism.. 9. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(16) The film critic, Mark Kermode in his High-Rise review – Black Humor and Horror, categorizes Wheatley’s film adaptation as the combination of black humor and horror. With the montages and background music, especially with Toby’s kaleidoscope, the violent scenes in the novel are turned to a splendid world in the eyes of the next generation. Sharing the same views to Kermode, Anna Winston, an architecture and design journalist, in her interview with Wheatley, comments that High-Rise is a “disorienting mix of social commentary, dark comedy, and non-traditional horror, with a narrative that jumps around inside the increasingly sinister building” (Winston). Wheatley himself also says. 治政大 architecture, but rather that he doesn’t view High-Rise as a criticism of post-war 立 Methodology and Organization of Chapters. 學. ‧ 國. a metaphor.. ‧. Previous researches about High-Rise have focused more on psychoanalysis. sit. y. Nat. and social studies. This thesis aims to review the psychological aspects in terms. io. er. of space and the reverse of female status that is particularly well presented in the. al. v i n C U have on their psyches. For character’s physical surroundingshand e nthegeffects c h i they n. 2015 movie adaptation. The Ballardian landscape emphasizes much his. instance, in many of his novels, there are repetitive scenes of abandoned runways, curvilinear flyovers, and endlessly mysterious drained swimming pools. Very little space is given to conversations and dialogues in Ballard’s novels. He uses many descriptions to delineate how physical surroundings affect the inner mind. Ballard’s exquisite description of his characters and the setting around them make it difficult to render on screen the “inner space” of his characters. How the director applies camera shots at particular scenes, such as swimming pools, supermarket, Wilder’s house, Laing’s dwelling, Royal’s penthouse, parking lots, the television and lifts should be an interesting subject for analysis. Also, the 10. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(17) relationship between the application of light and mirror and the characters to project their inner psychological world will also be mentioned. The black out and the mal-functional lifts are the essential turning point in High-Rise. In the novel, High-Rise residents seem to indistinctly enjoy the breakdown of the building service and the growing confrontation between different floors. Like the dark instinction buried under the surface of these well-to-do professional people with their decent appearances, these inhabitants could do any filthy and illegal things, for instance, exchanging their wives and eating human flesh in the dark.. 政治大 male perspectives: Laing, Wilder and Royal. All female characters are described 立. Moreover, in the novel, all the stories are different when told from the three. by the male narrators. The female voices are ignored like the muted television. ‧ 國. 學. constantly appearing in the story. These women’s desire and intimacy are passive. ‧. and objectified by the male’s gaze. Their selves are incomplete. They are more. sit. y. Nat. like accessories belonging to these male characters, the offering that could be. io. er. sacrificed at any time. By comparing the text of the novel and the setting in the. al. film, this research would further look into the relationship between space and. n. v i n gender, review the public and C private spheres in theUfilm and how the hen gchi. rearrangements of these settings and space empower these muted women to speak up and finally fight against the patriarchal building. Through the discussion of space, this thesis will first look into the dystopian world presented in both Ballard’s novel and Wheatley’s film adaptation and how the oppressive living space causes the decent residents to embrace their barbarian human nature in both novel and film. Last, I will focus on the subversive power by female characters, which makes the film adaptation a better version than its novel.. 11. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(18) Chapter Two reviews the dystopian world in the novel with the shifting narrators from the three different voices – Laing, Wilder and Royal. Many of his novels mention about mazes, blocks or bunkers, Ballard is drawn to the psychology of an enclosed and brutal environment. Ballard has one hypothesis – can we overcome fear, hunger, isolation, and find the courage to defeat anything that these elements can throw at us? The ending of High-Rise resonates with Ballard’s hypothesis. Laing’s expectation toward the near future and the new building next to the one Laing lives in are welcoming the civilized residents with. 治政大 future – a place without hunger and isolation and finally welcomes the new brutal 立 a new brutal world. Here, the affectless main character, Laing overcomes fear,. civilization. In the novel, there is no salvation at the end of the story like every. ‧ 國. 學. other dystopian fiction. Nonetheless, the time setting of the film switches from. ‧. the unknown near-future time setting in the novel to the 1970s in which everyone. sit. y. Nat. holds a positive attitude toward the future. With the ending of a character that. io. er. barely mentioned in the novel, Toby listens to Thatcher’s speech, how does the. al. film represent this dystopian world on the screen? Moreover, this chapter will. n. v i n C h narrators from three also elaborate more on the shifting e n g c h i U different voices, Laing, Wilder and Royal, in the novel. Another important theme is the scene of muted television and Wilder’s documentary film that relates to the dystopian world. Chapter Three further discusses one of the difficulties while adapting Ballard’s work to film. The building in High-Rise itself is organic, and there are secret routes of communication through the building which is also mentioned by Laing who thinks the building is a living organ. This chapter will mostly cover Wheatley’s adaptation and its representation of Ballard’s inner world with High-Rise to see how the images of the mental building are presented on the screen. The first half of this chapter looks into Wheatley’s film adaptation and its setting of space to reexamine how the certain 12. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(19) setting and props reflect the character’s inner world and architectural psychology to see what influence the environment and the building have on each character’s psyche. The buildings and the space presented in the film devises a concept of transparency like modern Benthem’s panopticon. Every resident wants to be isolated and locked all their secrets in their small “cells” but at the same time, the modern architecture is transparent. High-Rise is the building without extra ornaments, simple with straight lines, boxes and rectangles with solid colors, laid bare of decorations and this blankness creates a dead space surrounded with lots of mirrors that reflect only the residents’ worst impulses. Like what Danny Friedman mentioned in his study of. 治政大 connected to not only Social Impact of Poor Housing (2010), poor housing strongly 立 individuals’ health and well-being, but also criminal grievances and educational. ‧ 國. 學. underachievement. Besides the exterior building, this chapter will look into different. sit. y. Nat. design of housing leads to its residents’ psychosomatic illness.. ‧. housing styles of Wilder, Laing, Royal and Charlotte in the film and discuss how the. io. er. The second half of chapter three is devoted to Freudian ideas to re-examine the. al. open ending in Ballard’s novel and reanalyse the psychologies of the three main. n. v i n C hsociety, there are many characters. Built within a reclusive e n g c h i U residential rules for all the High-Rise dodgers to keep the order in this vertical society. For Freud, civilization itself is the main source of unhappiness among civilized people. By inhibiting their natural instincts, civilization drives people into a perpetual state of guilt. Freud further asserts that “the reform of social institutions and conventions cannot in fact lead to human happiness, because civilization is by its very nature antagonistic to certain basic human impulse and therefore fundamentally a source not of happiness, but of unhappiness” (Freud 29). These rules of civilized society don’t eventually lead to improvement of the society but only give rise to degeneration and decadence of human races. 13. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(20) Chapter Four firstly deals with the muted female characters, Helen, Charlotte, Jane and the patriarchal space built up in Ballard’s novel. According to Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, sexual relations – always conceived in terms of the “model act of penetration, assuming a polarity that opposed activity and passivity – were seen as being of the same type as the relationship between a superior and a subordinate, and individual who dominates and on who is dominated, one who commands and now who complies, one who vanquis hes and on who is vanquished” (Foucault 215). All the relationships between men and. 政治大 Moreover, according to Fredric Jameson, nostalgia film is the practice of 立. women show their power struggles.. postmodern pastiche. He believes that nostalgia film “sets out to recapture the. ‧ 國. 學. atmosphere and stylistic peculiarities” (Jameson 159). In other words, it provides. ‧. viewers with stability and prosperity, and delivers a sense of innocence of the. sit. y. Nat. countercultural impulses as well. Nonetheless, Barbara Creed criticizes. io. er. Jameson’s interpretation of nostalgia film, rather than longing for the past,. al. nostalgia film shows a desire to see gender roles more clearly defined, stable, and. n. v i n C h scenes in High-Rise, predictable. There, in the previous e n g c h i U the gender roles are more defined and predictable like Creed’s statement. The female characters, either Helen or Charlotte, bear the great responsibilities of their mother roles. They take care of their children, whether in a right or wrong way. The stereotypical gender role is emphasized by Helen especially. In the previous scenes, she plays a distressed housewife waiting for Wilder, the husband to save her and the whole family from the lower floors to get away from all the misery. Her several ambiguous callouts to Wilder by mentioning the drawbacks of living at the lower floor, complaining about the dimly light in the apartment. Her role as a caring. 14. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(21) mother again is stabilized in the first half of the film, which is much similar to the female characters in the novel. However, at the second half of the film, Wheatley turns these helpless women into some amazons who can reject what they do not want, reverse the situation and speak up for themselves. The gender hierarchy is reversed through the lens. Sexuality functions as a central focus for repressive energies largely because it is also a potential source of powerful subversive energies. Different from Freud, the Neo-Freudians – Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown. 政治大 regard the attainment of sexual liberation as an important step towards more 立. believed sexuality is “a potential source of inherently transgressive energies and. general freedom from social and political repression” (Booker 31). In High-Rise,. ‧ 國. 學. sexuality is the subversive energy for these female residents to climb up to the. ‧. upper floors, especially the female characters in the movie, they emancipate. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. themselves from this patriarchal oppression.. Ch. engchi. 15. i n U. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(22) Chapter Two The Dystopian World in High-Rise Utopia, anti-utopia and dystopia are the very relative terms. An anti-utopia is a place which is the exact opposite of utopia, a place that gathers all the kindness and goodness looking for the golden and pure innocence. Anti-utopia is the shadow, the negative side of utopia, a place or human condition that under no circumstances is desirable. Dystopian literature seems no difference from anti-utopian fiction in the. 治政 originally designed as a utopia, dystopian literature, in 大 other words, is a utopia gone 立. sense that everything in the work is bad. Given the impression that dystopian fiction is. wrong. It is a beautiful dream that gradually becomes a nightmare, just as the. ‧ 國. 學. well-equipped building, high-rise is eventually swarming with barbarians.. ‧. “There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first. sit. y. Nat. – the Orwellian – culture becomes a prison. In the second – the Huxleyan – culture. io. er. becomes a burlesque” (Postman, 155). High-rise is the spirit mixed with two ideas.. al. High-rise is firstly the prison, but with juxtapositions of violent scenes and the. n. v i n harmonious music background, C it eventually more like a burlesque. All the h e n glooks chi U. death, corruption, confrontations and skirmishes become common incidents happening every second in the building. Usually, traditional utopian fiction keeps a distance from reality and present possibilities. Utopia seems to be a faraway place to reach. However, the recent utopian/dystopian world often sets their time at the corner and close to the time we are living in to perform a sense of misfortune and urgency is coming. Ballard creates a dystopian world that sets its time and place not far away from human beings. The High-rise project is said to be built in the dockland near central London. It presents a dystopian world that is reachable and builds up an atmosphere that we, modern people 16. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(23) are all now living in this vicious circle in the high-rise building, the calamitous world is right at the corner. Having been passed down from Jonathan Swift and Voltaire, utopia/dystopian literature uses satire to criticize the present social life. The dystopian novel is one of the imaginative literature that “one of the most important means by which any culture can investigate new ways of defining itself and of exploring alternatives to the social and political status quo” (Booker, 3). In High-Rise, Ballard points out the problem of present social and political status quo without offering alternative solutions to the. 治政 community, human beings are the building to eradicate these bad habits in the vertical大立 problems. For instance, in the film, even though the architect, Royal is said to design. prone to negative characteristics that should be suppressed by civilized regulations. ‧ 國. 學. and conservative social hierarchy and gender inequality have been passed down from. ‧. generations to generations. Pointing out the problems, Ballard ends the story with an. sit. y. Nat. open ending implying that with this well-designed building, its convenience and clear. io. er. orientations to maintain the order in the building and provide tenants a sense of. al. belongings and security, human beings still have a tendency to fall and will. n. v i n permanently be locked up in thisCcannibal without certain reasons. h e ncommunity gchi U Dated back to Enlightenment, the scientific impetus is for a drive to dominate nature which later results in an internally repressed individual subject who strives for domination of each other. Aggression grows its roots deeply in human nature. As the classic dystopian fiction, in Brave New World, Huxley sees people will ultimately come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capabilities to think. There is no superior power being requiring to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. In his perspective, human nature has its tendency to fall. According to Krishan Kumar, he mentioned that utopia is doomed and fated to fail for “men are sinful, fallen creatures. They are weak and in need of authority and guidance. 17. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(24) Left to their own devices, they will always be the prey of selfish and aggressive impulses” (Kumar 100). In high-rise, these residents are the fallen creatures, along with the collapse of the system, these lodgers have progressively become the prey of their selfish and aggressive impulses. Only those who are truly affectless like Dr. Laing can survive in the building. In the film, it starts with Laing being surrounded by ruins around him at the balcony, Laing plays the music of symphony and says his monologue, “For all its inconveniences, Laing was satisfied with life in the high-rise.” His detachment from the surrounding environment explicitly is presented on the. 治政大to show a character’s strong scenes happening in the building. A close-up is supposed 立 screen when the director juxtaposes many close-up shots of Dr. Laing with chaotic. emotion. However, even from these close-up shots of Laing, with his dull eyes, we. ‧ 國. 學. audience cannot tell how he feels.. ‧. There is no salvation in dystopian novels, much like the ending of High-Rise,. sit. y. Nat. “Laing watched them contentedly, ready to welcome them to their new world”. io. er. (Ballard 248). The undiscovered and unrecognized side of human beings’. al. aggressiveness will sooner or later become the new future to these new residents.. n. v i n Only when people realize these C superficial of civilization is our real h e n gperfections chi U. restriction and repression toward happiness can we have an optimistic vision toward the future like Dr. Laing’s contentment to the coming storm to those neighbors who move in the next building. In this vertical community of high-rise, with the death of two representatives from the upper floor and the lower floor, the bourgeois represented by Laing is the only survivals and the dominated one in the building. In all the chaos, “Wilder’s boys were dressed in miniature paratroopers camouflage suits and tin helmets – the wrong outfit, Wilder reflected, in the light of what had been taking place in the high-rise. The correct combat costume was stockbroker’s pin-stripe, briefcase and homburg” 18. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(25) (Ballard 167). In modern economics, performance and marketing are more important than what is inside the products. The appearance is over-judged in the modern world. High-rise presents this idea by the residents. Their looks and social status are way more important than who they really are. The higher the floors, the more respect and dignity one can earn. Self-images become a product to sell. But, those who wear suits and ties are truly monstrous inside for they have the most resources and enjoy the privileges but are stingy to offer helps to those who are in need. Shifting Narrators from Three Different Voices. 治政大 ranks in high-rise. perspectives representing three different people from different 立 In the novel, the story is told by the third persona from three different. They are the affectless Dr. Laing, the bellicose Wilder, and the arrogant Royal.. ‧ 國. 學. Laing represents the voice of bourgeois society, which “creates the illusion of. ‧. individual freedom in order to assure that individuals will, in fact, behave themselves. sit. y. Nat. properly within the dictates of a capitalist economy” (Booker 2). High-Rise is a. io. er. building ensuring its resident’s privacy. After his divorce, Laing bought the over-priced studio apartment at the 25th floor not for others but for “its peace, quiet. al. n. v i n C h for Laing is a shelter and anonymity,” the apartment studio e n g c h i U to keep him away from his past. Royal believes Laing is the truest tenant “staring out all day from his balcony. under the fond impression that he was totally detached from the high-rise” (Ballard 1, 101). On the other hand, Laing on the screen is more a futurist, he buys the house for investment in the future. It is a clean slate with his mark on. The second narrator is Richard Wilder, a thick-set, pugnacious man who is once a professional rugby league player. He lives at the 2nd floor with his wife, Helen and two sons, which is different from the film, a daughter and a son. Wilder seems protective in the first place when he tries to fight against the unfairness happened in the building. Nevertheless, in the end, he is not able to save and protect his family. 19. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(26) His action toward the top floor can only be seen as the realization of his own desire and ambition. He only concerns his own pleasure of having affairs with various women and power as a clan leader to gratify his vanity Through his affairs with different women in the high-rise, at first glance, Wilder may be seen as the one who ignores the class differences among different floors, such as his brief affair with Jane Sheridan, an actress at the 37th floor. Nonetheless, though he thinks he can dominate them via intimate contact, his pride and arrogance are all gone in front of those who live far above him. In Sheridan’s apartment, “he was. 治政大women and child laborers deep in the lowest seams of the building like the exploited 立 conscious of the distance to the ground, and of his wife and children far below him,. of the 19th century” (Ballard 82). It may be the first time that Wilder finally thinks of. ‧ 國. 學. his role as a husband and a father. Rather than protecting his families to go through. ‧. the chaos in the building, Wilder has already left them far behind him. It is so ironic. sit. y. Nat. that in this advanced building, the image and the community it present to the readers. io. er. is way more feudal and conservative.. al. During his trip to the top, he has been questioned about his loyalty, whether he. n. v i n will abandon his lower residentsC and of the upper people’s members. Not h become e n g one chi U just having affairs with other women in the building, Wilder is an irresponsible man for his family. Because Wilder does not take good care of his family, Helen gets bruises on her wrists and knees like an elaborate system of conscious self-mutilation as an attempt to win back her husband. After searching food for his children in the supermarket, Wilder suddenly decides to leave his family for his ambitious ascendancy to the top. Unlike a dutiful father, Wilder acts more like a male bird which only goes out searching for food or his own mate but neglects his children’s psychological need for a father. What’s worse, the family is more like a vast burden for him. 20. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(27) Wilder sees the world around him is all related to wartime. From the death of the jeweler, he saw the asterisk of cracked glass as a cryptic notation on the aircraft marking a kill. In the mental and physical condition, he considers himself as the strongest man in the building. Along with his wife continued neglect of his affairs with bachelor women in the high-rise, Wilder came to realize that he “needed to be looked after just as much as ever, but Helen cannot offer this mother-love to him” (Ballard 62). He may be physically strong like a chief, but inside of him is a child looking for a mother’s love. In the film, Wilder’s great dependence on Helen is more. 治政 upper-class people. It is for see whether Wilder needs a lobotomy suggested by the大立. unequivocal on the screen when Laing consults with Wilder as the pre-diagnosis to. first time Wilder shows his concern for Helen by saying that “I’m no good without. ‧ 國. 學. her. She shouldn’t leave me alone, won’t let me find my equilibrium.”. ‧. The third narrator is Anthony Royal, who lives at 40th floor, the penthouse owner. sit. y. Nat. and the architect of high-rise project. He has a shoulder-length fair hair and bony. io. er. forehead with scars indicating the intimidating car accident that once happened to him. al. before the story of high-rise begins. At a line of bulk-cement carriers entering the. n. v i n C hinjured when his carUhad been crushed by a construction site, “Royal had been engchi. reversing grader” (Ballard 45). Described by Laing, he is also a man with ambiguous personality, for he believes Royal should not only have become the project’s first road casualty, but have helped to design the site of the accident like the conflicts he plans in the disguise of his blueprint of ideal vertical community. Royal in the book treats high-rise as his social experiment which is also mentioned by his wife, Anne in the film while they are having a Victorian style party at their penthouse. While the Royal in the book is more restrained from the conflict and look forward to all skirmishes that happen in the high-rise from his patio high above the building. The Royal in the film, on the other hand, has eagerness to solve 21. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(28) the imbalance between different social ranks and try to sustain his utopian building. In the film, through his little bird, Charlotte, Royal learns that Dr. Laing can play squash, a sports game that is often perceived as an upper-crust sport that every preppy can play. It bridges a gap between these two people from two totally different worlds. He every now and then plays squash with Dr. Laing and it becomes his only connection to the outside world. In his squash game with Laing, Royal claims that he is an idealist wishing to break down social hierarchy and class disparity by reconstructing a new community in the building. Perhaps the Royal presented on the screen is more. 治政大place in the building rooftop studio and watches all the violent incidents taking 立. humane than the one described in the novel. During all the chaos, he hides in his. neighbors and Laing about the solutions to the conflicts.. 學. ‧ 國. wondering how to solve the problems, and he even discusses with his supercilious. ‧. Nonetheless, without coming up with practical solutions to the existent conflicts. sit. y. Nat. and inconvenience that happen in the building, Royal starts to care more about the. io. er. other four new buildings that are under construction. Although he wishes to wipe out. al. the class differences, the way he divides the floors only makes the class more. n. v i n C that divergent. Not to mention the fact party thrown by his wife, Anne h ethen Victorian gchi U sharpens the class inequality and the residential services designed for different people. For example, there are some lifts especially distributed to those who live at the upper floors. In the film, the manual states that “there is no mistaking that our lift system is a state of art piece of machinery.” Based on upper-class people’s standards, the lifts for upper-class tenants are indeed luxurious with the decoration of four-wall mirrors and a high-tech control panel, but only those who own the top houses can use them. Different from the feeble Royal presented on the screen, the Royal in the novel, looks more arrogant and supercilious. At his encounter with Laing, he watches Laing “with a thoughtful gaze. As always, his expression was an uneasy mixture of 22. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(29) arrogance and defensiveness, as if he were all too aware of the built-in flaws of this huge building he had helped to design, but was determined to out-stare any criticism.” As the first tenant and the owner of the high-rise, Royal sees himself more like a lord of the manor. Every new resident is “the invisible tribute to his well-being” (Ballard 31, 100). With his descending to the lower floor to save his wife who is being bullied in the supermarket, Royal for the first time feeling the dead atmosphere in the high-rise. He finds himself nearly suffocated in the lower section crushed by the pressure of all the people around him, “he waved his cane at the humid air trying to stir it into life”. 治政 (Ballard 121). Wilder sees Royal during his field trip to大 the lower levels but doesn’t 立. attack him but only shows his interesting look at Royal as glad to welcome him in this. ‧ 國. 學. lower section. Disregard her own suffering of indignity at the supermarket, Anne sees. ‧. this as an interesting journey while seeing people “makes their own films down there,. sit. y. Nat. every time someone gets beaten up, about ten cameras are shooting away” (Ballard. io. er. 125). These incidents happen more like a circus to residents all over the building. Royal’s rich young wife, Anne is half of Royal’s age, who seems not to fit in this. al. n. v i n Ch modern building. Raised up as the only daughter in anU e n g c h i insulated country house in a. nineteenth-century manner, Anne deliberately surrounds herself with mirrors for the replication of herself gives her some kind of security. Living in a penthouse swarming with invisible sensors and computerized devices as another master-servant relationship is nothing familiar to her. She is more like “a reluctant Alice attending over-extended Mad-Hatter’s tea-party” (Ballard 97). Anne is often taken out by other men as a symbolic emasculation, Royal doesn’t seem to care much and ignores Anne’s urgency to leave the high-rise. Based on Laing’s observation, there is a new social type emerging in the apartment building, those who own a cool and unemotional personality with minimal 23. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(30) needs for privacy. Holding their neutral ground and staying quiet in the hostile building, they are the ones who should be responsible for the tension happening in the high-rise. Their poverty of involvement with others makes them free to explore the darkest corners they could find. With its advanced technology, high-rise becomes an experimental subject of free psychopathology. Instead of figuring out a solution to wipe out the inequality, Royal comes to embrace the change by saying that “it wasn’t that I left an element out. It was that I put too many in. And the building’s failure has offered those people the beginning of a means of escape to a new life. Perhaps it will become a paradigm for future developments.”. 治政大 is the only one who At the end of the novel, besides the women clan, Laing 立. survives. But in the film, there are two male characters last until the very end. First,. ‧ 國. 學. Laing’s neighbor, Steele is a paranoid orthodontist and surgeon who has a pushy. ‧. fashion consultant wife. Steele’s condition corresponds with Ballard’s mantra, “in a. sit. y. Nat. totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.” Among all these chaos and. io. er. disorder, like Dr. Laing, an alienated individual from the society and dehumanizes. al. himself to an affectless person, the neurotics and the mad will be the last one who. n. v i n C h the likable psychiatrist stands. Another one is Adrian Talbot, e n g c h i U on the 27. th. floor. He had. been drenched in urine as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. However, he seemed more numbed by “the personal hostility in these anti-homosexual obscenities than by the wholesale destruction” (Ballard 152). With the lurid caricatures on the walls like the priapic figures drawn by cave-dwellers, Talbot is the scapegoat for these residents to go back to their phase of infantile aggressions. Losing their ability to speak the language, these residents now form an aggressive behavior with a primitive instinct to communicate with each other. In his recording in the supermarket, Talbot says that “It’s a mistake to imagine that we’re all moving towards a state of happy primitivism, our neighbors had happy childhoods to a man and still feel angry. Perhaps they resent 24. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(31) never having had a chance to become perverse,” which may give a reason why these residents finally deteriorate. Muted Television and Wilder’s Documentary Film Despite the fact that Ballard does not put much attention to the rest of the residents, he does mention the residents watching the muted television. “Everyone in the high-rise, Laing reflected people watched television with the sound down,” and he “turned down the sound, not out of boredom with these documentaries and situation comedies, but because they were meaningless. Even the commercials, with their concern for the realities of everyday life, were transmissions from another planet.”. 治政大theme in the film. Like the (Ballard 35, 149). This imagery also becomes a repeated 立 muted television, these dwellers are affectless and refuse to connect to the outside. ‧ 國. 學. world. They feel nothing about the tension or clashes happening to them. In the film,. ‧. aside from the scene that Helen switches from the news report to some old romantic. sit. y. Nat. movie indicating her innocence and waiting for rescue by her husband, there is. io. er. another scene that Steele watches TV with his wife. This scene is juxtaposed with. al. messes happening outside their apartment. Residents turn on the television without. n. v i n C are sound indicating that these people of the need to connect to the outside h eaware ngchi U world, but meanwhile, they pay no attention to it.. “Nowadays, a massive culture industry whose goal is to numb the minds of the populace with a constant flow of banalities and thereby render them incapability of the kinds of critical abstraction required to mount a meaningful challenge to the official ideologies of modern society” (Booker, 13). The frame of television of anti-communication featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason and sequence that is also known as schizophrenia in the psychological terms. It is much like the residents living in the building. In the end, High-rise is more like a bird-caged asylum for schizophrenic patients than a futuristic model of the building. 25. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(32) Moreover, in the film, the telephone dictionaries were torn to make a campfire indicates the fact that tenants’ desire to detach themselves from the external world, for these telephone dictionaries are originally a means for social communication. Despite the growing chaos around them, the residents show no interest in the external world. No one seems to care about the disconnected phone in the hall, they have received no outside calls during the previous week, and feel a distinct sense of security at knowing that they would receive none in the future. The pay-phones in the lift and lobbies have been ripped out as if the tenants have agreed to shut off any contact with the world. 治政大they themselves build up a we live in, with these resident’s schizophrenic behavior, 立. outside. Firstly, the building is located near the central London, a real world in which. dystopian world shutting down the passage and connection to the real world outside. ‧ 國. 學. the building. For readers and viewers, this is definitely a dystopian world, but this. ‧. wasteland itself is, on the other hand, a new utopian world for high-rise residents.. sit. y. Nat. In the novel, instead of reporting to the police about the death of the jeweler,. io. er. Wilder tries to make his documentary film to record what has been happening in the. al. high-rise and his ascendancy to the top floor fighting against the upper-class for his. n. v i n C hAlthough it is calledUthe documentary film which right and overcome the inequality. engchi originally should present the facts to the viewers, in order to create the highlight to attract audiences’ attention, he even ignites skirmish by himself. Based on his observation to complete his plans for the documentary of high-rise, “living in high-rise required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, and even perhaps slightly ‘mad’” (Ballard 69). High-rise residents cannot feel nor have any emotion around their surroundings like their brains have been taken out. Wilder’s behavior might be reckless. With no doubt, he is a pain in these upper-class people’s neck, so they ask Laing to lobotomize him. In the movie, Wheatley adds a psychotherapy consulting scene between Laing and Wilder. After raping Charlotte, 26. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(33) Wilder occupies her home to be his new base where Laing finds him lying on the sofa and starts his diagnosis to see whether Wilder really needs a lobotomy surgery. Different from his previously childish acts, the Wilder here is an accurate observer to the building. He sees through Laing by saying “the ones who are the real danger are the self-contained types like you. Impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life. Professionally detached. Thriving like an advanced species in the neutral atmosphere.” The standoffish Laing becomes the new advanced species to fit in this apocalyptic world. And thus, instead of lobotomizing Wilder, Laing diagnoses. 政治大. Wilder as the sanest man in the building and gives him a map of the secret route up to Royal’s penthouse.. 立. Furthermore, based on his observation, Wilder believes that people in the. ‧ 國. 學. high-rise are split into three distinct and hostile camps according to the old social. ‧. subdivision – power, capital and self-interest. The lower class with the shopping malls. sit. y. Nat. as the boundary are the ‘proletariat’ of film technicians and air-hostesses. As the. io. er. modern world we now live in, these people are easy-going and have “an inclination to tolerate an undue amount of interference” (Ballard 71). The middle class lives on the. al. v i n Clawyers, floor. There are doctors, accountantsUwho worked for large heng chi n. th. th. 10 -35. corporations. This group of people is self-centered, docile and self-discipline. The upper class is those who live at the top five floors of the building. They are tycoons and entrepreneurs, TV actresses and careerist academics who rule over the high-rise and set the pace of it. Everyone in the high-rise describes episodes happening in the building in a calm tone. Secretly, these people enjoy the breakdown. It is the growing confrontation that brings them together and ends the frigid isolation of the previous months. Later following the invasion of others’ apartments, the denizens start to ransack the empty apartment for the party. The apartment is no longer a comfortable home for the 27. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(34) residents but more like an animals’ territory. People start to carry cameras or any equipment to record acts of hostility, any incursion into one’s territory. “Metallic flash of the Polaroid camera, recorded a moment of hoped-for violence for some later voyeuristic pleasure” (Ballard 154). This voyeuristic disorder must eventually cause severe distress or dysfunction in social, professional, or another significant area of the person’s day-to-day life, but the residents don’t seem to care about it at all and regard it as a pastime. Parties all over the building. 治政大 sterility of life in the medieval carnival is the utopian release from the oppressive 立 Like Mikhail Bakhtin mentioned in his book Rabelais and His World, the. Catholic Middle Ages. Bakhtin views the medieval carnival as an explosive. ‧ 國. 學. emancipatory transgression against the prevailing norm, so does structural. ‧. functionalists. They believe that the whole society lives in harmony. There are. sit. y. Nat. entertainments to release the repression, such as festivals, feasts and games, so human. io. er. beings would not break down by the constraint of civilized laws and regulations. On. al. one hand, dressed in the tidy and decent suits, these high-rise dodgers go to work in a. n. v i n presentable way. Soon after theyCcome from work, they take these suits off h eback ngchi U having their parties with relish. In the film, the parties are frequently held throughout the whole building.. Residents attend the parties they belong to. For those who live at the middle or lower floors, night after night, they have their own dazzling and voluptuous parties filled with alcohol, insomnia and promiscuity. These social events are their release of oppression from their tedious work and life and the discrepancy weighted from the upper floor. Different from the parties held on the middle floors, the occasions taken place in the penthouse are more like a Victorian party with carnival masks. These upper-floor residents host parties inviting all the participants dressed up like those 28. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(35) who lived in the Victorian era. In such an advanced building with all the progressive technologies and devices, throwing a Victorian party as a social event not only shows their nostalgic feeling but also their desire which is returning to the old good days when these aristocrats were privileged and exploited the working class. Benjamin’s strong note of nostalgia has a great influence on dystopian literature. Dystopian literature in the first place is regarded as sci-fi and has a futuristic view within the space created in the text. However, high rate of dystopian descriptions of conditions is set in the modern world, “even as it sometimes tends to suggest a rather utopian longing for the past” (Booker, 21). In Ballard’s version of high-rise, he. 治政大film, on the other hand, doesn’t directly point out the time setting in the text. The 立. builds an atmosphere that is quite different from the setting presented in the novel.. ‧ 國. 學. The time setting is in 1975. The director creates a kind of nostalgic environment for. ‧. the viewers. Furthermore, Wheatley believes that by setting the time in the 1970s, it. sit. y. Nat. shows some optimism about the future which we don’t have right now. These. io. er. residents who live in the high-rise have no idea about the coming catastrophe but. al. preserve Thatcherite society as a bright future. Although the film presents High-Rise. n. v i n with a lot of violent scenes withC uneasy montages, at the end of the movie, it still hen gchi U. offers a sense of hope despite the fact that we audiences already know the situation will not turn better but only worse. The Next Generation In the book, Ballard simply mentions that Charlotte has a six-year-old son and she is struggling for his welfare. On the other hand, the playwright gives this six-year-old son a name, Toby and he is quite important in the film. Unlike other children making trouble, Toby reads books silently, does his scientific experiments like a professional researcher and spies on his own mother. At a birthday party of a proletariat’s kid, Toby seems too smart and mature to fit in and asks Laing to 29. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(36) accompany him home as soon as possible. In his talk with Laing, he looks up at the ceiling and says his father is literally up there. It is the moment that the audience learns that he may be the child of Charlotte and Royal. With all the residents secretly enjoying the ridiculous incidents happening in the building, viewers, without proper digestion and the right judgment, may start to look at these events like a burlesque. The idea is precisely presented when Toby holds the kaleidoscope to look at the shot scene of Royal and watch Wilder being stabbed by a group of women. Toby uses a kaleidoscope to see the world around him. Every. 治政 Typical dystopian narratives seem to start again, to大 resurrect civilization through 立. incident in high-rise looks more like a twisted circus for the kid.. farming and be self-reliant. The film reflects the loop of the ending of the novel,. ‧ 國. 學. which is unknown to its characters but pronounced to the audiences. The blackout. ‧. from the other building which Laing sees as a new future and looks forward to the. sit. y. Nat. following corruption to these new residents. Nothing actually changes. It is a cycle. io. er. and the pattern repeats itself over and over again. Characters in the film are not aware. al. of what is coming while the audiences understand promptly when they hear. n. v i n C hToby at the very end Thatcher’s speech on the radio with e n g c h i U of the movie. Toby dresses in a business suit, a correct combat custom in high-rise, climbing to the antenna to listen to Thatcher’s speech about the bright future. Unlike the ending of the novel about new residents moving to the next building, the film emphasizes a new world develops in the high-rise. Aside from Toby, among all the chaos, Helen gives birth to the new baby indicating a new order and futuristic world.. 30. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.

(37) Chapter Three Space in High-Rise Influenced by Ballard’s experience in the internment camp in Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre in Shanghai where are full of the drained swimming pools, abandoned hotels and nightclubs, deserted runways and flooded rivers, these images recur in many of his novels. The reappearance of an enclosed environment with potential violence that recurs in many of his novels may as well come from his. 治政大stage in which he can enact These closed and almost reclusive spaces offer a perfect 立. childhood experience. In his work, Ballard often isolates characters in the setting.. the key problems in this modern world – urban alienation. Right in the beginning of. ‧ 國. 學. High-Rise, “with its forty floors and thousand apartments, its supermarket and. ‧. swimming-pools, banks and junior school – all in effect abandoned in the sky – the. sit. y. Nat. high-rise offered more than enough opportunities for violence and confrontation”. io. er. (Ballard 1). Manifesting the modernity by compartmentalizing and embodying every. al. living need and comfort for its inhabitants, high-rise is a utopian place to live in at the. n. v i n C h cause, people who first glance. But without a discernible e n g c h i U live in the high-rise are. driven to liberate their atavistic impulses, descending into barbarism and full-fledged clan warfare, indulging in every kind of moral transgression, including rape and murder. Jeremy Thomas, the film producer, has been trying to get the novel filmed for nearly 40 years. The setting of previous production of the high-rise is at a desert-like place for mega-tower. But if we go back to the original text, the location of high-rise is the construction situated in a distance from the metropolitan. “For all the proximity of the city two miles away to the west along the river, the office buildings of central London belonged to a different world, in time as well as space” (Ballard 3). In other 31. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900588.