Reconstruction 7.3 (2007)
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"A Name in Search of a Disease": Illness and Identity in Todd Haynes' Safe / Anthony Enns
Abstract: Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe tells the story of a San Fernando Valley housewife named Carol White (Julianne Moore), who discovers that she has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), otherwise known as environmental illness, a disease which causes her to become hypersensitive to toxins in her environment. This diagnosis follows a long series of recurring symptoms, which both her doctor and her psychiatrist are unable to explain, and it eventually leads her to a "wellness" center named Wrenwood, where her condition continues to deteriorate. Haynes modeled this film on the "disease of the week" TV movies, which "have this guise of teaching the viewer, informing them about breast cancer, about AIDS," and in which the central characters always have "a transcendent realization as a result of their illness" (Maclean 50-51). In other words, the genre allows the viewer to rationalize and cope with the possibility of illness by both eliminating its mystery and representing disease as a means of personal improvement and emotional transcendence. Safe, on the other hand, turns this genre on its head: rather than providing a means of rationalizing or coping with the threat imposed by the disease, the film mercilessly leads the audience towards an encounter with finitude itself. Haynes thus subverts traditional methods of translating the experience of disease into narrative and ultimately critiques the "disease of the week" genre by calling into question the ways in which disease has been and should be represented in film.
<1> While the purpose of Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe could be interpreted as simply to inform and educate viewers about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), otherwise known as environmental illness, a disease which causes her to become hypersensitive to toxins in her environment, the film repeatedly suggests that Carol's symptoms are a response not only to the toxins in her environment, but also to the social structure of her environment, such as her family and suburbia. While the purpose of this film could be interpreted as simply to inform and educate viewers about MCS, the film repeatedly suggests that Carol's symptoms are a response not only to the toxins in her environment, but also to the social structure of her environment, such as her family and suburbia. Because Haynes' representation of MCS bears striking similarities to both AIDS and the history of "women's illnesses," Carol's resistance to her social environment also activates gay/lesbian as well as feminist concerns: at the same time that Carol's illness makes her sick, it also allows her to resist being interpellated into various institutional ideologies. This interpretation is complicated, however, by the fact that Carol fails to discover her "true" identity by the end of the film, which has lead some critics to question the film's seemingly ambivalent politics. Roy Grundmann, for example, claims that Carol's failure to develop a critical consciousness suggests that "Safe is a eulogy on the demise of the left," but he adds that if this is true, "it is a curious one, for not only does the film ignore the most viable left-wing agendas, it also fails to account for their absence" (24). This political ambiguity is partly caused by the film's suggestion that Carol's symptoms are potentially psychosomatic: while MCS functions in the film as a symptom of both ecological and social dysfunction, the possibility that MCS sufferers are simply crazy is never completely ruled out. Haynes' representation of MCS - a disease which has not yet been recognized by the medical establishment - also seems to imply a critique of traditional medicine in the first half of the film, but this interpretation is complicated by a parallel critique of alternative medicine and the new age movement in the second half. These ambiguities have led to a general confusion about the film's politics, which has become focused on the function of MCS in relation to the construction and destabilization of identity.
<2> The politics of Safe are better explained through a consideration of the film as a post structural critique of identity politics. Even though Haynes was considered a leading figure in the New Queer Cinema of the mid '90s, for example, he frequently expressed a certain resistance to identity politics. His films rarely contained gay and lesbian characters, and Haynes attempted to explain this apparent contradiction in a 1993 interview by offering a new, structural definition of gay cinema:
People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it's a gay film . . . . I think that's really simplistic. Heterosexuality to me is . . . an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society . . . . Of course, seeing two men kiss in a movie is important, but I think it needs more than that. That just replaces the content and pretends the structure is natural . . . . It's more exciting to think of revising, rethinking the ways that films are put together - the way you are positioned as a viewer, the way you are told to identify with characters or not, the way that the film is alive because of the work that you do as a viewer. It's really just a reflection on the wall otherwise. (Wyatt 8)
Subsequent critics have thus interpreted Haynes' work as containing an implicit critique of identity politics. Edward R. O'Neill, for example, argues that Haynes' 1990 film Poison reflects a "nonessentialist account of identity, wherein identity is an empty position whose contents are fundamentally contingent but whose place in social relations and institutions is rigidly determined" (17). In other words, Haynes frequently represents identity as a construction of institutions and discourses, and O'Neill adds that his films also employ "a variety of cinematic mechanisms and genres . . . in order to find some way of speaking an identity above and beyond what's spoken" (19).
<3> This paper extends this approach to Safe by examining the relationship between illness and identity in the film and by considering Haynes' representation of MCS within the context of current debates within the scientific/medical community concerning the legitimacy of the disease, as well as the attempts of sufferers to form identities and communities which resist the institutions of traditional medicine. The underlying issue in the representation of this disease is the way in which the body is seen as simultaneously a site of competing ideological forces as well as a site of potential resistance to these forces. Just as historical accounts of women's illnesses have been interpreted as both caused by and resistant to forms of patriarchal oppression, MCS has also been seen as a disease which is caused by the oppression of industrial capitalism and which enables the body to resist these same oppressive forces. Rather than suggesting that the film ultimately illustrates the futility of these attempts by preventing Carol from asserting her own identity, however, Haynes' film should also be considered in light of post structural approaches to talking about AIDS. Alexander García Düttmann, for example, argues that political activism based on identity politics actually "reproduces the repressive politics against which it stands" (65). In other words, rather than interpreting the film as politically ambivalent, Düttmann's approach illustrates the ways in which the film's avoidance of identity politics might actually better serve a leftist agenda. His theory therefore not only provides a clearer explanation of the relationship between illness and identity in Haynes' film, and of the film's critique of identity politics, but it also helps to explain Haynes' controversial decision to use MCS as a metaphor for both AIDS and women's illnesses.
<4> Haynes' representation of MCS is similar to many of the current statistics. According to Linda Davidoff, for example, "[w]omen comprise nearly 80 percent of the hypersensitive who are currently known to physicians" (21). Pamela Gibson also points out that the disease frequently threatens the victim's sense of identity:
Since the exposures in MCS often cause emotional reactions that feel so different from the person's usual state of mind, there may come to be a discontinuous feeling of identity. When not reacting, the person cannot imagine being that sick. When reacting, previous experiences of feeling well, and previously established growth and direction, cannot be accessed. Therefore, identity comes to be punctuated by periods of limbo. (180)
Haynes' representation of Carol as a housewife with an identity crisis seems to perfectly fit these profiles of MCS victims, and Haynes illustrates Carol's crisis of identity through a series of scenes in which Carol looks at images of herself in mirrors. Following her first visit to her doctor, who insists there is nothing physically wrong with her, Carol goes to a beauty parlor and decides to get her hair permed in order to cheer herself up. She still believes that her illness is simply due to stress, but when the perm is finished and she looks at herself in the mirror, she notices blood coming from her nose. This is the first indication that something serious is happening to her body, and her body articulates this problem through the symptom - in this case, the nose bleed. This symptom directly contradicts her doctor's earlier diagnosis, indicating that her body is resisting the identity prescribed for her by the medical establishment, and it also seems to suggest a rejection of suburban strip mall culture. The second time Carol stares into a mirror occurs during a baby shower, when she goes to the bathroom. In this scene, her reflection is effectively erased when she opens the mirrored door to leave the room, and when she returns to the baby shower, she begins to have a seizure. Her illness is thus clearly destabilizing her identity (in this instance, her identity as an affluent, suburban mother), and in the following scene, when her husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) walks into their bedroom, she is no longer able to remember who or where she is. This episode of amnesia - yet another erasure - is an extreme illustration of the way in which the identity of MCS victims is marked by periods of limbo, which threaten any sense of stability or continuity.
<5> Carol also seems to illustrate the claims of MCS proponents, who emphasize that patients "tend to be well educated, are interested in their diagnosis, attend support groups, read [MCS] literature," and that they "develop a lifestyle organized around their illness" (Black 3169). Despite the fact that this disease has not yet been recognized by the medical establishment, MCS activists have lobbied for changes in public policy and succeeded in getting them, including worker's compensation, disability pay and special considerations from Housing and Urban Development. MCS sufferers have therefore been engaged in a struggle against a medical establishment, which refuses to acknowledge the reality of their illness, and this struggle has forced them to find definitions of their disease outside of traditional medicine, as well as alternative forms of treatment. The severe economic hardships that victims of MCS must suffer have also forced them to organize and become politically active, and this need to organize, in turn, has led them to develop communities with other sufferers. At the center of the MCS phenomenon, therefore, is the desire to be in control of one's own body and one's own life; in other words, to reject the position one is given in the dominant ideological discourse of one's culture. Carol's illness similarly forces her to become more socially active and aware, and to take control of her own life. Following her episode of amnesia, for example, Carol decides to attend a meeting on environmental illness, which appears to be the first real decision Carol has made on her own in her entire life. This scene begins with a video test pattern (a tabula rasa), and then the words "Who are you?" suddenly appear on the screen. This question turns out to be the first image in an introductory video that explains the nature of MCS, and it also marks the moment when Carol first hears the name of her disease; in other words, it is the moment when she first begins to redefine her identity as a victim of MCS. Her subsequent move to Wrenwood also seems to represent an active attempt to join a community of fellow sufferers and to resist the definitions of her disease provided by the mainstream medical establishment.
<6> Carol differs from the typical MCS sufferer, however, in that her symptoms seem related to psychological problems, which seems to support the claims of the scientific establishment, which does not recognize MCS as a legitimate disease. There are five factors which lead scientists to such a conclusion: 1) symptom patterns are erratic, 2) the results of testing are inconsistent, 3) the carrier of the illness is unknown, 4) the victims tend to have a history of psychological problems, and 5) there is no known cure (Castleman 109-110). Symptoms can manifest in any part of the body, and common symptoms include skin irritation, coughing, headaches, amnesia, swelling, diarrhea, exhaustion, food allergies, arthritis, and fainting spells. They are usually sparked by an initiating trauma, such as a gas leak, a new carpet in the office, or a broken ventilation system, but once a person becomes sensitive to one toxic chemical, he or she usually becomes sensitive to others, a phenomenon contrary to current immunological theories. Science also does not recognize the concept of the "toxic load," what MCS researchers refer to as the total amount of toxins a normal person can carry in their bodies at a given time. Philip Witorsch, an environmental toxicologist at George Washington University, has even gone so far as to call MCS "a name in search of a disease" (Bovard A10). Researchers have also attempted to explain MCS by comparing it to psychiatric illnesses. A 1990 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, concluded that "many if not most of these patients have common psychiatric illnesses that are easily diagnosed, including affective disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders" (Black 3170). The symptoms of somatoform disorders are physical, but they are caused by mental illnesses, such as depression, panic, disorder, and paranoia. Somatoform patients are also distinct in that they "emphatically reject the notion that [a] psychiatric disorder causes or explains their physical symptoms," and they claim that any attempt to explain these symptoms as a result of underlying psychiatric disorders "dismisses the symptoms themselves as unimportant" (Simon 905). This description of somatoform patients comes from a 1990 article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, which concludes that "the development of environmental illness is related more to . . . prior psychological distress than to current psychiatric symptoms or diagnoses" (904).
<7> Carol seems to support these claims because she does not become ill due to a sudden change in her environment, such as improper dumping or a chemical spill or even a change in carpeting, but rather she becomes ill in a gradual, cumulative way. Her illness grows incrementally from common events, such as driving in traffic and getting her hair permed, which are uncommon triggers of MCS. These details seem to support the psychological interpretation of her disease, and they are often reminiscent of Freud's description of hysteria, a neurotic disorder that was frequently diagnosed for women at the turn of the century. One of the first scenes in the film, for example, shows Carol having sex with her husband, but she is clearly disaffected and uninterested. The scene is filmed from directly above their bed, and all the viewer can see is the bland expression on Carol's face as her husband makes ridiculous and ineffectual bodily contortions. Carol's response, or lack thereof, could be interpreted as a manifestation of what Freud refers to as a "reversal of affect," where sexual stimulation fails to arouse pleasure. Carol also displays other hysterical symptoms, such as vomiting, fainting, headaches, coughing, loss of voice, depression, seizures, as well as periods of amnesia and suffocation. The repetition of these symptoms is an essential part of hysteria, and it is often diagnosed at first as over-exertion or stress, just as Carol's doctor originally diagnoses her. And it would be easy to interpret Carol's symptoms in Freudian terms. Her sudden aversion to milk, a common feature of MCS, could be explained as an oral prohibition. The connection between milk and breastfeeding, as well as the possible unconscious connection of milk and sperm, might also indicate sexual repression. The film's portrayal of Carol could be a complete psychoanalytic portrait of a hysteric if it were not for the absence of an original trauma.
<8> Haynes subverts this negative depiction of women, however, by suggesting that Carol's disease is linked to her unsatisfying role as a suburban housewife, which makes Carol's illness appear less as a Freudian case study and more as an illustration of "the problem that has no name" described by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. In this book, Friedan examines the dissatisfaction of American housewives in the '60s, who were brought up to believe that finding a husband and having children was all they needed to be fulfilled. These women became disenchanted with their culturally determined notions of happiness, and they often developed symptoms of depression and hysteria. Carol is similar to these women in that she is solely a housewife, with no occupation outside the home, and she suffers from a depression of unknown origin. Carol's position is further alienated by the fact that she has no relationship with her child (Rory, her husband's son from a previous marriage) and she doesn't even perform the most basic domestic tasks (her maid does all the cooking and cleaning); in other words, she does not even have the role of mother or housewife from which to be fulfilled. Haynes emphasizes Carol's alienation by using long shots when filming Carol inside the house; the enormous rooms make her seem even smaller, and Haynes typically includes the ceilings of the rooms within the frame in order to give the viewer the sense that Carol is trapped. Carol gradually becomes nothing more than a ghostly presence in the house, which is illustrated by several haunting scenes in which Carol sleepwalks around the house at night. Her lack of involvement is further illustrated by her inability to articulate her own thoughts and opinions, which is her most distinguishing character trait. There are two scenes where she even needs her husband to speak for her - at the dinner party and at the MCS meeting when she is asked to introduce herself - and her psychiatrist directly comments on the fact that she needs to articulate herself before she can be cured: "We really need to be hearing from you." When asked to describe a room she grew up in as part of a community-building exercise at Wrenwood, all she can say is "I guess this one I had had yellow wallpaper." This line is also an obvious reference to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman suffering from depression is prescribed a rest cure by her husband-doctor and slowly goes insane. This story, based on Gilman's own personal experience with the American nerve specialist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, also describes a woman who is silenced by the discourses of family and medicine, and whose illness is her sole method of resisting these patriarchal institutions.
<9> In Safe, however, the threat of being interpellated by these discourses does not end when Carol escapes her family, suburbia, and the medical establishment. Instead, she finds herself subject to the discourse of alternative medicine, which becomes yet another language she fails to articulate. The promise of the Wrenwood center is that it will provide Carol with the identity for which she has been searching. This is emphasized when Claire, a recovering MCS patient who is now one of the center's directors, tells Carol about her own personal experience at Wrenwood: "Everything got taken away . . . everything in the material world, and what was left was me." According to Claire, therefore, it was only through contracting MCS that she was able to break free of the controlling discourses to which she was subject and to find a deeper sense of her own true identity. In other words, the disease allowed her to speak for herself, and this moment of liberation occurred one night when she looked at herself in the mirror and repeatedly said the phrase "I love you" to herself.
<10> This message is repeated by the new age health guru Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman), a man suffering from both MCS and AIDS who claims that the cause of disease is purely psychological and that the only cure is self-love. Dunning's rhetoric is taken directly from Louise Hay's The AIDS Book: Creating a Positive Approach, a popular book from the mid '80s which drew a clear connection between AIDS and an increasingly toxic environment:
Why is AIDS on the planet? I think it is here to show us we are making a mess of our lives and of the planet. Our physical bodies and the physical world are in great need of healing. Our air is polluted. Fish are filled with poison and chemicals. Land is being stripped of its vegetation in many areas. We still create wars and torture each other. Our bodies are loaded with chemical foods and abused with cigarettes and alcohol and drugs of every description. We live in fear of a nuclear holocaust. These conditions are like dis-eases, and this is why I feel the whole planet has a form of AIDS. (29)
Hay's advice for AIDS victims also resembles the rhetoric of Wrenwood when she encourages sufferers to become more involved in their own treatment. Hay states, for example, that "[w]hen we are ill, we often give our powers away to doctors and other medical authorities," but she insists that a "powerless person finds it harder to heal himself or herself. It is best when healing can be teamwork. You choose the health practitioner to help you get well. Together you make the decisions. This way, you powerfully contribute to your healing process" (55). Hay ultimately argues, however, that this personal initiative extends to the contraction of the disease as well. AIDS, she argues, is caused by a lack of love, and AIDS victims contract the disease because they do not love themselves enough: "From the many PWAs I have come to know, it seems clear that the lack of love . . . has played a large role in their acquiring the disease . . . . AIDS shows us how incredibly un-loving we can be" (31).
<11> In a 1995 interview Haynes argues that Hay's book was actually cruel to AIDS victims because it "puts the subjects in an impossible situation where they will never overcome their illness because they'll never love themselves enough" (Schorr 128), and he repeatedly critiques this rhetoric of self-blame in the film. This is most clearly illustrated in a group therapy session where Dunning asks each member why they got sick; everyone is expected to answer that they got themselves sick by not loving themselves enough, an obvious repetition of Dunning's rhetoric. During her stay at Wrenwood, Carol tries to believe that she is personally responsible for the failure of her immune system, that she has deserved it, and that she would be healed if she could only love herself enough, but she continues to have difficulty articulating herself, and she even complains to Dunning about her inability to talk: "I'm still learning, you know . . . um . . . the words." Dunning replies, "Words are just the way to get to what's true." This idea is complicated, however, by a speech he gives soon afterwards in which he says, "I've stopped reading the papers . . . . If I believed that life was that devastating, that destructive, I'm afraid that my immune system would too. I can't afford to take that risk, and neither can you." Dunning's speech echoes Hay's own diatribes against the "gloom and doom" of the media (3), but his previous conflation of words and truth would seem to contradict this statement, in which the words in the newspaper fail "to get at what's true" because the truth they describe is unacceptable. Dunning therefore conceives of words as a means of constructing truth, and by rejecting the media he effectively encloses himself, and the other residents, in their own private world. This is emphasized by the mantra of the Wrenwood residents: "We are safe, and all is well in our world." Haynes uses this phrase, which is taken directly from Hay's book (21), with obvious irony, as it becomes increasingly clear that all is not well at Wrenwood, and that their attempts to retreat into safety are ultimately misguided.
<12> This is suggested by Carol's steady decline and by the death of another resident, who had previously isolated himself in a "safe house," a small, windowless, porcelain-lined dome. Carol is subsequently offered the opportunity to move into the safe house, which is now unoccupied. On the night before her move, as the group celebrates her birthday, she is asked to give a speech, but she has difficulty making the simplest statements about either herself or her illness. She is clearly trying to borrow words from Dunning's speeches, but in the end she is only able to make some vague comments on the positive improvements in society and growing ecological awareness, until finally she says, "I am trying to see myself more as I am." By failing to adopt Dunning's rhetoric, it is clear that Carol has not been interpellated into the ideology of Wrenwood either. This is once again illustrated through the use of a mirror in the final scene of the film, in which Carol stares at herself, repeating the words "I love you." Although this action is inspired by Claire's story earlier in the film, there is no suggestion here that Carol has found her "true" identity. On the contrary, Carol's deteriorating condition, her gaunt face, the lesion on her forehead, her increasing isolation, and the death of the safe house's previous tenant, all seem to suggest that Dunning and Claire's psychological definition of her disease is not adequate. In other words, Carol's disease ultimately seems to shift back from a psychological symptom to an undeniable, physical reality, and by giving a scientific explanation for what appear to be psychological symptoms, the second half of the film seems to transform Carol from a dissatisfied housewife attempting to escape an oppressive social structure into a victim of a toxic environment whose illness signifies nothing more than the reality of death itself.
<13> Therefore, while Haynes clearly uses MCS as a metaphor for the broader history of women's illnesses, thus representing the disease as a response to the social environment, he also uses it as a metaphor for AIDS, which reveals an awareness of the dangers of ascribing psychological causes to the disease, and in the end it is impossible to completely separate the impact of both psychology and biology on Carol's condition. This ambiguity has often complicated critics' attempts to interpret the film. By representing MCS as simultaneously psychosomatic and real, for example, Haynes appears to be criticizing both MCS advocates, who argue that the disease is purely the result of environmental factors, and the medical establishment, which often irresponsibly diagnoses MCS as neurotic depression, neurasthenia or hysterical neurosis, thus dismissing and disempowering actual sufferers. Critics like Gaye Naismith reconcile this apparent contradiction by arguing that Carol's illness can be interpreted as "symptoms of hysteria and of environmental illness if we take hysteria to be a form of environmental illness, instead of regarding environmental illness as a form of hysteria" (369). This position seems to follow an alternative definition of MCS held by a small minority of scientific researchers, such as Dr. Mark R. Cullen, a specialist in occupational health and safety at Yale University School of Medicine, who argues that "both psychological and biological factors play a role" in MCS (Reinhold 65). Dr. Abba I. Terr, a San Francisco immunologist who conducted a study of MCS victims, agrees: "[T]hose who were chemically sensitive were much more likely to have past and current psychological symptoms like anxiety, depression and panic disorders . . . . [P]sychological vulnerability strongly influences chemical sensitivity" (Reinhold 68). Rather than suggesting her illness is all in her head, therefore, Haynes' film seems to illustrate the ways in which Carol's psychological problems make her more susceptible to the disease, as well as the ways in which the disease itself becomes psychological, because it causes depression and makes its victims believe they are going crazy.
<14> Carol's symptoms can thus be interpreted as both the result of a real, physical illness produced by an increasingly toxic environment, and as a reaction to an unhealthy social environment, such as the institution of heterosexual marriage or the traditional values associated with the suburban family. She is therefore a victim not only of capitalist industry but also of patriarchal ideologies, and these forces of oppression take the form of various discourses in the film, such as psychology, western medicine, and even the new age movement, which all represent ideological constructs through which Carol is spoken as a subject. By representing Carol as a woman without a fixed identity, but whose social position is rigidly determined by various institutions, Haynes' film seems to support what O'Neill's calls a "nonessentialist account of identity." Throughout the film, Carol White never seems to be anything more than a name, an empty signifier to which various meanings are attributed, and she repeatedly rejects all of the identities assigned to her in order to search for a subject position from which she can speak for herself. In this way, Carol can also be interpreted as "a name in search of a disease," because it is only her illness - the non-verbal articulations of her body - which make it possible for her to break free of these socially constructed identities.
<15> This is precisely the same reason, however, that the film has received criticism for not supporting either a feminist or a gay/lesbian activist agenda. In contrast to the "disease of the week" movies, for example, Haynes argues that "Safe is on the side of the disease and not the cure" because the disease "completely opens Carol's eyes and makes her rethink her life," while the cure "returns her to this sealed-off existence" (Maclean 50-51). In other words, Haynes subverts this genre by not offering any clear resolution, and by not containing and rationalizing the disease itself through the narrative structure. This method of representing MCS seems to be a perfect illustration of Alexander García Düttman's discussion of illness and identity in At Odds With AIDS: Thinking and Talking About a Virus. In this book, Düttmann presents two possible responses to AIDS: 1) interpreting the experiences of AIDS victims as "dying before one's time," and 2) interpreting the disease as a profound revelation that one's death has the potential to occur at any moment. Düttmann argues that the first response is an attempt to rationalize the disease and reconstitute our notion of the "total subject." Examples of this approach include the confessions and testimonies of AIDS victims, such as Jean-Paul Aron's claim in Mon sida ("My AIDS") that the disease helped him to understand himself, which seems to parallel Wrenwood's rhetoric of self-discovery through illness. Düttmann argues that these testimonies are basically driven by the desire "to survive oneself in language" and the fantasy that "through this purification one escapes a death 'before one's time'" (13). Düttmann adds, however, that these confessions actually "increase the destructive effects of the virus, and credit AIDS, make a reputation for AIDS, a reputation to which the one who confesses falls victim," and therefore "by confessing AIDS, one promotes AIDS" (13-14). The first response to AIDS thus serves as a denial of the true nature of being, which Düttmann refers to as a "Being-towards-death," and it ultimately fails because finitude itself can never be rationalized or defeated.
<16> Instead, Düttmann claims that the second response is more effective, because it does not attempt to deny the finitude that AIDS reveals to us, the truth that the subject is not "one": "AIDS . . . exposes . . . the Being-not-one of time and the self, and sets off the impossible experience of this Being-not-one, experience of the uncertainty of all bounds and limits" (16). Düttmann argues that existence will always exhibit this quality of "Being-not-one," and he therefore calls this response "Being-not-one with AIDS." Carol's attempts to articulate her own experience throughout the film seem to represent Düttmann's first response to disease: by attempting to articulate her own story, Carol is effectively trying to survive her disease through language, but such a survival would, in the end, merely promote and empower the destructive effects of the disease. However, because Carol is not able to articulate her own identity at the end of the film, and because she does not learn a valuable lesson in the style of "disease of the week" movies, her story actually represents Düttmann's second response: it is a revelation of death itself, and the notion that one's death has the potential to occur at any moment. In other words, by representing a victim of MCS as a woman who is unable to discover her own identity as a unified subject, Haynes' film ultimately represents Carol's experience as "Being-not-one with environmental illness."
<17> This type of response also necessitates a new form of political activism, which is not based on identity politics. Düttmann suggests, for example, that a political activism based on identity politics merely "reproduces the repressive politics against which it stands up and which it justifiably denounces" (65). This occurs because in the process of speaking to a "particular, limited, and identifiable public" it effectively negates and represses "the danger of contagion: linguistic purity and purification, conjuration meant to stave off AIDS" (65). In other words, the logic of identity politics replicates the first response to AIDS by attempting to rationalize the disease and purify its victims. This logic is clearly illustrated by Dunning's attempts to restrict his address to an increasingly narrow risk group - the residents of Wrenwood - and his maniacal demand that they isolate themselves from the outside world as a way of staving off further contagion.
<18> Düttmann concludes that "being-not-at-one with AIDS must therefore mean not-at-one with a politics of identity" (65), and this approach seems to explain Haynes' decision to make a film about MCS rather than AIDS, for which he received a great deal of criticism from the gay community. In some ways, there is a natural connection between MCS issues and gay rights: not only do gay rights activists lobby for AIDS research and awareness, but some researchers also suggest that the "experience of lesbians/gays and others who have historically been socially ostracized are similar to the experience of women with MCS" (Gibson 181). Manohla Dargis points out, however, that "Safe has racked up doubt, even wholesale anger from those who are looking for a new, instantly identifiably queer movie from one of film's leading queer voices . . . [but] the very thing that some Haynes followers may long for - a place in the narrative in which to slot in a solid sense of identification and therefore identity - is the very thing he's set out to deny" (39). In other words, at the same time that the film illustrates Carol's failure to articulate her own "true" identity, it also challenges audience identification and fails to promote identity politics. This is partly due to Haynes' desire to critique the notion of AIDS as a metaphor for homosexuality: "I was just frustrated by this defensive, fearful acceptance of the terms that AIDS imposed on what being gay meant . . . . All of a sudden there was this metaphor for homosexuality lurking, this awful, horrible metaphor for AIDS that had to be continually distinguished, and I think it should be distinguished, from homosexuality" (Wyatt 7). James Lyons, the film's editor, also explains Haynes' decision as an attempt to avoid addressing his film to a particular risk group: "Why wasn't it about AIDS? I think it's really clear. Part of the problem with AIDS is that it's been located as a specific problem with a specific group. In terms of Safe, I think this is a way to talk about the metaphor of immunity vanishing without blaming it or assigning it to faggots and junkies" (Dargis 39). In other words, by not addressing the film to an exclusive audience, Haynes effectively resists what Düttmann refers to as the "politically dangerous fictions of meaning control and of the thinking of identity," which are part of identity politics (65-66).
<19> What Haynes' film ultimately makes unsafe, therefore, are notions of identity and faith in the transgressive potential of identity politics. While some critics have seen this project as politically irresponsible or simply obscure because it fails to assert a clearly left-wing agenda, a reconsideration of this film in light of post structural critiques of identity politics reveals the ways in which it questions the underlying assumptions of that agenda while still supporting its basic goals. Throughout the film Haynes wrestles with the problem of destabilizing institutionally-determined subject positions without replicating the notion of the "total subject" upon which these positions were originally constructed. By not allowing Carol to discover her own "true" identity at the end of the film, for example, Haynes effectively illustrates a victim of MCS as a fragmented subjectivity, a "being-not-one," which has no clear bounds and limits. Rather than interpreting her disease as serving a purpose in her life, as a pivotal event which will allow her to finally understand herself or provide a long-awaited political awakening, Haynes uses the disease as a way of illustrating the essentially fragmentary nature of being itself. In other words, Haynes rigorously and systematically refuses merely to replace one ideologically-determined subject position for another, even one provided by the left, and instead his film illustrates a radical reconfiguration of subjectivity itself, in which identity is not fixed and a plurality of possible positions remains open.
Works Cited
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