The moment we capture an event or person on film, they become unreal to us. They’ve become possessable objects, something to be replayed and thus controlled. Through this ownership, the spectator retains the power to watch without being held accountable for what is taking place on the screen. When the film is that of a real act of violence, the power dynamic becomes particularly apparent: though the spectator may sympathize with the people on the screen, he or she typically feels no sense of direct responsibility. What is happening on the screen remains on the screen. The film is a separate world altogether, one which can be turned off and forgotten, or even replayed again and again until it has lost its ability to shock. How many times have we watched bleeding victims and decimated cities on the news? It may be an evocative sight but not a lasting one.
Benny, the fourteen year old protagonist in Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video, is the archetype of someone lost in an illusionary, dream-world of the seen and the controlled. Born into a wealthy family obsessed with career and social reputation, he himself is lost in delusion, albeit one composed of television screens. Just as his parents’ are trapped in their fear of losing face to their coworkers and friends, Benny is trapped in a self-imposed, psychological landscape of his bedroom which feeds his obsession with videos. There is a video constantly playing in the background while he quietly works at his desk, along with a second television screen showing a live feed of his apartment building’s exterior and his own bedroom’s interior. It is a life of relentless observation, one in which Benny plays the role of stoic, cold spectator.
The extent of his psychotic containment reaches its peak when Benny invites a girl over to his home to watch a video he’d recorded of a pig being slaughtered at a relative’s farm. Their sparse dialogue alone reveals a sort of naivety and a disconnect between violence in reality and on film. When asked by the girl, “have you ever seen a dead person – a real one, I mean,” Benny replies, “No. I once saw a TV program about the tricks they use in action films. It’s all ketchup and plastic.” He remains unaware that actions in reality, unlike on video, have real consequences, and when he eventually discharges a slaughtering gun, the same one used in the pig video, on the girl’s chest, he is taken aback by the girl’s agonizing screams.
Proceeding the girl’s death, the greatest moment of horror is when we realize that, despite having murdered a human being, Benny still remains locked in his internal world. The real physical action of violence fail to raise any real emotional response from Benny, and like how the murder scene is shown solely on his television screen rather than being shown in real time, Benny has internalized the incident as an “unreal” event isolated within the video tape. Even when Benny’s parents discover his son’s crime, they show a similar lack of emotive response and immediately begin strategizing how to save their reputation. It becomes increasingly apparent that the absence of consequence is more noticeable than the absence of a life itself. The dead girl remains a stranger, and though she mentioned having a large family, nothing is to be known about the impact of her death. In fact, it is as though Benny’s murder tape carries a higher value than the girl herself and is almost more “real” due to its ability to prove the murder had occurred. Later on, the video tape is the only object capable of bearing any real consequence, by acting as legal evidence and resulting in the family’s arrest. Preceding this, however, the family remain in a strange limbo, spending a whole week vacationing in Egypt.
The loss of a human life could hardly be felt as “real,” when there are absolutely no repercussions against the murderer: how is it possible to dictate one’s actions as being real, if they hold no visible effect? The emotionless psychological vacuum of Benny’s mind is therefore all the more terrifying than any real physical damage he can cause. Ultimately, it is this lack of emotional and social consequence that is felt as being “more violent” than the actual murder itself.