Cutting through the fourth wall: The violence of home invasion in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games

Abstract

Cutting through the fourth wall: the violence of home invasion in Michael Haneke's Funny Games I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others Burke (1757: 39) CLOSE-UP A slim, dark-haired youth moves into the frame. The camera pans with him as he walks into a kitchen. He opens a fridge and picks out ingredients. We hear the noise of motor racing from an off-screen television. The character is dressed all in white: white sneakers, socks, shorts and a long-sleeved top. There is a sense of disquiet. The white cotton gloves seem out-of-place (Douglas, 1966). Surely the whiteness of the gloves will be spoilt through contact with the food? The character looks off-camera and calls 'can I get anyone anything?' He is answered with the percussive boom of a shotgun. The youth makes his selection and crosses the kitchen to assemble his sandwich. Whilst he butters the bread, we hear the drone of the cars from the television. The noise of hyper-ventilating joins it. We hear a struggle. Cheese goes into the sandwich. A scream. The sandwich is cut on the horizontal.

Extreme dwelling: Assemblingdomus horribilis

“…Yet, how concealment is accomplished through a constellation of socio-material-spatial practices, is not further deliberated or interrogated -for exceptions see: Pain (2014); Price (2002). At the same time, it is noted that the genre of 'home invasion' has been a focus of cultural criminological work keen to expose how traumatic disruptions of domestic space render the 'home' fragile, uncertain and unstable (Fiddler, 2013(Fiddler, , 2017. 7.…”

Earth–world–planet: Rural ecologies of horror and dark green criminology

“…In horror cinema, the rural is the rural because it is not the urban/suburban, and vice versa. While the anxious horror of urban and suburban life and landscapes is expressed in a visual language that reflects contemporary political anxieties relating to outsiders coming in (the home invasion fantasies of Funny Games (see, generally, Fiddler, 2013Fiddler, , 2017 or the political and cathartic violence of The Purge, or-perhaps most aptly-the horde-invasion fantasy of the vast majority of the wildly popular zombie genre), rural horror relies first and foremost on the sympathetic perspective of the terrified outsider. While the "rural" of rural horror can encompass fields, deserts, forests, and more, in the visual world(s) of horror, the rural can be taken most simply to mean that which is neither urban, suburban, or cosmic.…”