Chelsea Leigh Trescott 1

A Question of Alliance

We continue to think that children have to be taught the

difference between right and wrong, but we know in our
bones that this teaching is not a species of either factual or
technical instruction. What sort of teaching, then, is the
teaching of the difference between right and wrong? What
sort of learning is the learning of this difference? What kind
of knowing is the knowing of it? Gilbert Ryle, Collected
Essays.

On a prior night, through an exchange of emails, I had mentioned the film I will be
reviewing. “A Question of Silence is such a great choice to write about,” the reply read. “So
hilarious and campy.” Brief enough, sure; yet her response immediately measured any
outstanding reviews. The reflection seemed mirrored, and almost leisurely; an attitude that
imposed a frivolity onto the film—pulling from it an artifice I hadn’t agreed with. In a way
it reminded me of another assignment I was working on for a magazine. The topic I had
been given was models that sing. “It’s hilarious,” the editor also briefed me, “write
something snarky.” Both assignments were made to sound easy, as if they afforded less will
or thoughtful investment. And maybe the inclination to mock these artists’ efforts is what
has sparked me most of all. When anything is passed off as funny—though ironically has
been brought on for me to consider—I have to reason the contradiction is of a deeper logic.
My assignment, I assume, is more over to challenge the noncommittal by championing
content.

What is hilarious and campy about A Question of Silence can quickly be orientated
and moved away from. Just as in any modern cinematic production, a soundtrack is
interlaced throughout; some of the moodiest melodies are allocated to comparable scenes—
an alliance that despite its calculation earns the heed of an audience. It isn’t rocket science.
What I mean is there may be no use in intellectualizing the gestures of a soundtrack.
Moments that need heightening attain this recognition when paired with a sister modality.
If braided seamlessly, any artfulness is perceived as genuine, and the film’s concept is not
compromised.

But what if such scenes are rendered otherwise; what if a score reversed the logic?
Instead of enhancing an emotion, what if the emotion was exaggerated, what if it felt out of

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place? I am referring to moments in A Question of Silence of flashback and reflection1—an
example being Annie at the window. Looking behind her, she is confronted with a memory
whereby freedom appears more like a penalty. The music pervades the flashback
immediately—a scene that shows her empty apartment, and transitions into the living
room, where sitting nearby her husband and a younger version of herself, Annie watches as
they stare, laughing into a television. What could be a contemplative flashback is exercised
otherwise by the choice of music. Even the cat trailing around the sofa seems to be involved
in an event of exorcism. And we are sensitive to this because the music paired here is less
likely to suggest a humble evening spent watching a series (which the image alone reflects),
and more indicative of stress and tantrum, delusion and mania, being cross and feeling
caged in. In the flashback, however, the actions from the characters bare no semblance to
the music, which, inevitably in their silence, the music is made to speak on their behalf.
What cannot be measured by the stupor shared on the sofa, can be better accounted for
with regard to the music. Understood this way, the music is then an interior translation of
blood boiling rage—the maddening truth that the man in scene would claim had never
existed in the women at all. If this is the case, the music is but one revelation to the
question of silence.

Still, the logic that I have provided for Annie may be considered intolerable or
inapplicable to what is deemed the larger picture—that is the murder scene. In the
instances leading to the storeowner being pummeled to death, a similar tune plays. This
orchestration makes the murder seem queer. But holding heavier weight is the ironic tone
presented during A Question of Silence’s most climatic scene. The music bares the three
offenders no sympathy. They seem automatic, flippant, cursed, deranged, and perverse. So
counter to how we expect a human subject to be—whether criminal or innocent—that
viewers might have mistaken this as irresponsible filmmaking or mockery. This then, I’d
like to offer, is what makes the film “so hilarious and campy.” And I value this assessment

1
In Cahiers du Cinema, Jean-Pierre Oudart sees the cinema as essentially the same kind of enunciation as that of
classical representation. Oudart calls the articulation of narrative and image flow in which the film constantly poses an
absence, a lack in relation to subject, suture. In addition, the effect on the spectator must always be retroactive. When
we finally know what the other field was, it is no longer on the screen. The meaning of any shot is thus given
retrospectively. It represents a memory in the mind of the spectator. The subject is always elsewhere: only the marks of
the subject can be located. Johnston: Towards a Feminist Film Practice, 318.

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A Question of Alliance

not because it was shared with me singularly, but because it was a collective response, I
remember, coming from the audience that pronounced an immaturity. For this film is
without question one that, in demonstrating the theory it comments upon, risks being lost
in translation.
What can be said at all can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about we must pass
over in silence. Wittgenstein, Tractatus
Introduction.

A Question of Silence is smart, perhaps exceptionally smart, but it takes more than
acknowledging this, because if we should learn anything straightaway it is that immediate
recognition is no more than an open and shut case. It denies everything essential, and
doesn’t make us very clever after all. “What do you expect to do with [the women
offenders]?” the male escorting Janine2 into the jailhouse asked. “Talk to them, try to get to
know them.” “You can recognize women like those three a mile away,” he responded. Here
the tonality resembles the kind that introduced both assignments of my own. In fact, the
commitment that Janine establishes in the case surprises her superiors—confusing her
husband most, who cannot register how this case is different and more complicated than
others or what makes it important. When Janine tells him she’s asked for more time with
the case, her husband doesn’t acknowledge her earnest ambition, but responds coldly,
“that’s annoying”—as if flagging his wife a failure, an impotent professional.

Unfortunately, many viewers remained at a miles distance. Assuming that the

inevitable could not be negotiated, I imagine much of Marleen Gorris’ audience never got
past the ghastly murder at the store. A Question of Silence, thereby, gains no backbone—and
without context—the film never grows beyond the humour and campiness that I believe
Gorris presented as a way of heralding the theory to come. A clever try at integrating even

2
The suturing process addresses itself precisely to [the] process of ‘fading’ by retroactively closing up the distance
opened up between the subject and its mark, introducing ‘stand-ins’ to fill the gap opened up, establishing an imaginary
unity. This imaginary unity is available as support for ideology and accountable for much of its force…Lacan discusses
suture as the situation in which the subject becomes an effect of the signifier (the absent one): this situation in which
she is stood in for. It thus relates to the relationship of the individual as subject to the chain of her discourse, and is a
process which constantly attempts to close or bind up the gap between the subject and the signifier. But in that as soon
as the subject is posited, it is, in fact, elsewhere, this process is doomed to failure. (Hence questions that Janine puts
forward are never answered: Was anyone else at the shop; Are you crazy; I’d like you to tell me why is it you stopped
speaking?) Johnston: Towards a Feminist Film Practice, 318.

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her most uninspired viewer, that realized differently, does no more than shortchange the
seriousness and power that should be conceived with a glance. However, because the film
was ultimately a case of answering to [women’s] silence, I would like to trace over the film
carefully to locate instances where language assaulted women. And furthermore, to suggest
that in order to know women, men must either find a silence of their own, establish a
partnership, or their rhetoric must undergo new systems of knowledge to change.3

When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey

the rule blindly. Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations § 219.

The scene, which establishes Janine as a psychiatrist and her husband, Ruud, as a
lawyer, happens early on; they have a couple over to drink sherry while the two wives play a
game. The husbands seem more invested in their wives competition than they are;
frequently looking on to ask who is winning or to probe, “are you ahead?” More telling is
the conversation that guides us in around the table where the women are playing.

“What Ruud means is that the opportunity to acquire information still exists but
everyone is systematically taught not to look at it; isn’t that right darling.” –MC4
“Another way to look at it is, it keeps the status quo; that’s my theory.” –Rudd
“How can anyone be taught not to look?” –FC5
“It’s easy just stimulate their preoccupations with what is merely pleasurable. What
can’t get pleasure instantly is then done away with. Consider it unimportant,
ridiculous, or underrated.” –Rudd

Standing out is a control that the men are exercising—a kind of pigeonholing. The
conversation opens with an explanation—one the husband is able to give for Ruud.
Suggested here is that the men share a common language, a language that the women are
expected to go along with (ie. “isn’t that right darling”—a rhetorical question) but aren’t
able to follow. In fact, their husbands’ rationale seems to mystify, if not concern, the wives.
The question “how can anyone be taught not to look” assumes that the men know how to
play this game effectively—that they have the answer—and implies that the women aren’t
capable of this blindness; they are always sensitive and therein, manipulable. Rudd’s closing

3
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 378.
4
Male Couple
5
Female Couple

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A Question of Alliance

sentence is especially indicative being that it is made as Janine answers a phone call
assigning her to a new case. A case that Janine becomes truly invested in; a case that brings
her pleasure erotically (not only through the other but in relation to self-empowerment)
and emancipates her from the lawful expectations of the court and the ideals of her
husband. Ultimately, it is in the case’s importance that the women are distinguished from
Janine’s husband, Ruud. What preoccupies him throughout the film is the freedom his wife
has initiated; in losing the control of his wife, the outcome of her behaviours and ideations
are no longer consistent with how he would have it. This conversation will be returned to as
the essay closes.

Escorting Janine into the prison, where she will meet her first “client”, is an
outspoken man that promptly admits, “If they wanted to get rid of somebody they should
have done it more professionally. They’re absolutely crazy. I don’t need to explain what you
already know professionally.” While professional could be understood as a title of
refinement, or a way of honoring Janine’s qualifications, instead it seems more like an
accessory dictating her worth—her competence. And further along—in the courtroom
particularly—Janine’s title begins to feel heavy-handed, political, like a pledge of
brotherhood. What I mean is that while others stress Janine being a professional (and
never once does she fall back on doing this herself), one begins to feel like Janine’s own
credentials—Janine’s own achievement—works in opposition to her; like it marks her
otherwise as an outsider, questions her position, or reinstates her role. Professional doesn’t
seem to express freedom, but rather qualifies a responsibility. And because professional
constantly serves as Janine’s introduction, Janine actually appears detached from the title
others are reminding her of, as if what she has deserved/has worked for is actually only
making an allowance for her acceptance within the hierarchy. Therefore, her involvement is
necessary within its context but negotiable if applied to other vocations. Finally, “If they
wanted to get rid of somebody they should have done it more professionally” is an odd
sentiment. Is the man trying to say the woman should have been more professional
murders? I think not, and that is why I am willing to accept this sentiment as a curious
foreshadowing more associated with Janine’s role.

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 This gap in logic should not wait to be mended by my concluding analysis. Instead,
let me jump ahead to the court case. By claiming the three women responsible for the shop
owner’s murder were sane, Janine makes it possible for the court to give the women the
severest sentence. More time in prison means more time for the women to “become crazy”.
As the only professional psychiatrist covering the case, has Janine annihilated these
women’s subjectivity—has she gotten rid of their freedom? For starters, the judges and
prosecutor were not convinced that this assessment exemplified Janine being a
professional. When she pledges their sanity6, the court instead disapproves of her
decision—questions the legitimacy, the tact—and reminds Janine once again that she is a
professional. But if Janine’s evaluation entitles the women to the severest sentence, why do
the men in the courtroom resist her judgment? What makes them strained and insecure;
why did Ruud excuse himself from the back of the courtroom in a rush of dissatisfaction?
By claiming the women sane, the man’s murder was therefore mindfully within reason—
within benefit; its function was fair. On this level, Janine’s purpose in the case is more an
involvement in the allowance of the murder. As the psychiatrist, she holds the power of
permission. If the murders are sane, then Janine becomes the professional which has
gotten rid of somebody—not the women, but man. In the case of the murder and within
her self, Janine fulfills what was lacking. She does this not by repeating history or denying
it either. Instead, by the end of the film, Janine is able to establish a different logic—a
competence founded in cleverness and thought. However, this logic offends what has
already been established, and that is the reputation of men.

To return to the question of why Ruud left the courtroom: It is quite clear that his
dismissal mocks the way in which his wife is no longer playing to his standards—is no
longer performing to his needs. But it is also important to note that Janine’s evaluation also
affirms her understanding of the women, and is a larger remark of her own feminineness.
This bond can be recognized in the women’s laughter that takes over the court case—they
are all of the same mind—just as the uniformity of the male’s bafflement and unease

6
If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This
is simply what I do.” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations § 217.

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 Chelsea Leigh Trescott 7
A Question of Alliance

clumps them into a category of their own. The women’s laughter7 stumps them, and in the
first moment, which they cannot control, they are the pit of a joke. The fury following Ruud
out the courtroom highlights less his anger, and more his own powerlessness. By dismissing
himself, we realize the husband is trying to disassociate from the other men, and above all,
cannot support his wife if his reputation is not being validated.

In A Question of Silence, reputation is really a single term for a larger idea; an idea
involving the standards that men expect women to live in accordance with. On a base level,
expressions like “I’m going to work; briefcase; you be good now”, “come to bed”, “turn the
light off” seem less like invitations and more like demands, requirements. While comments
such as “the wine was much better than last time”, “you’ve spent enough time on [the case].
I wouldn’t expect it to be so difficult”, “she was an excellent worker”…(“did you consider
putting her on the board?”)…”she was a secretary” feel passive aggressive, disapproving and
sexually discriminating. Even though we never learn of the women’s feelings in the
moment, nor do we have verbal reflections confirming the oppression brought on by any of
the males in the women’s lives, we learn through the men themselves that there could not
have been any other way to exist as a woman.

This is where Gorris’ smarts glare. Not wanting to add to the reputation of women
being ruminative, emotional, and chatty, Gorris represses them—to the point that one of
the women, Christine, is even catatonic, or in the words of another character, Christine is
“brave”. However, this repression seems like a requirement when paired with the male’s
persistent reactions. “It was a fine marriage,” Christine’s husband tells Janine. “I don’t
know how she could do this to me. She knows I’m useless with kids. She never had much to
say. I work hard; if you work hard all day all you want is peace. Quiet. She could have kept
[the kids] quiet for me. She didn’t have anything to do all day.” And yet, in a previous scene
the husband refers to his children as “your kids”. Ruud is just as forbidding; he, too, seems
to have fixated his wife’s personality, allowing little room for surprise or desire of her own.
For example, working late at night, Janine asks her husband for a cigarette, but instead he

7
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys
of silliness. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 76e.

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asks what is wrong. Nothing, she tells him, why would you say that? You never smoke
cigarettes, he reminds her. Well, she tells him, I just wanted one.8 Janine is placed in a
position where her desire feels regrettable—as if she is acting out of character—as if she is
stepping into a myth. These questions of desire are imperative to the feminist critique. In
large part, A Question of Silence makes us wonder who we live for.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my

world. Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.6.

Before closing this essay, I want to ruminate on A Question of Silence’s sensitivity to

noise. The film opens with a panning shot of Janine and Ruud on a couch, the radio is
playing; “Can’t you turn that thing down just a little,” Ruud insists9. He is reading with a pen
drawn. Her husband’s reaction makes Janine seem like the initiator—the one responsible
for the noise. She complies, and playfully dances her fingers across his page, which he grabs
and forces back. The tone is hard to determine, as taking his pen, she also begins licking his
fingers—this happens as they observe each other. A moment of intimacy appears close to
unfolding, but Ruud’s change in position was merely to bring the book up over his head and
continue reading on his back. Persistent, Janine mimes an incision that she makes on her
husband with his pen. It isn’t till she reaches his gentiles that he reacts, restlessly taking her
in his arms. She giggles, but this desire is too hard to determine.

Is the opening intimacy merely a game of cat and mouse or was the husband’s
response less a flirtatious compliance and more over a ruse that established his phallic
entitlement? Might it have also illustrated what Ruud’s friend tells us later about the Dutch
judiciary system; “the system’s inadequacy is such that everything [the verdict] has been
arranged before the trail.”10 Similar to the development in court, does Janine no chance in
determining when and how she receives pleasure from her husband? Is the judiciary system

8
It is the experience of loss which sets the metonymic process of desire in motion, the gap forever to be filled…The
inauguration of narrative and its constant development as a series of enigmas (the hermeneutic code. As Metz observes,
the filmic system is essentially a displacement, ‘ a movement of negation, of destruction—construction’, which is that of
desire, and thus the death drive. Johnston: Towards a Feminist Film Practice, 320.
9
Drawing on Emile Benveniste’s distinction between two different registers of speech acts, the “enounced” (what is
said) and “enunciation” (how things are said).
10
Culture consists not simply of language to which we must all submit in order to achieve ‘humanity’, but also of rules
stating how the games of communication should be played. Johnston: Towards a Feminist Film Practice, 321.

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A Question of Alliance

another way of stimulating opportunity yet defacing that chance by teaching those within
the system not to look for new knowledge? Are male to female relationships not a finding of
love but a concession to the status quo? This points to a view of women as necessarily being
guardians of negative and passive structural relations, with the social language of political
practice (which Janine develops throughout the film), [she is] destined to form an identity
in relation to negativity aimed at the demands of the system of reproduction.11 But I would
like this scene to also be opportunity for establishing A Question of Silence’s dominating
concern with noise, and the way in which it offends males, as well as interrupts their work.

A second and more deviant example happens in the boardroom. Andrea is stirring
cream in her coffee, when her boss locks his hand around her wrist. The meeting’s attention
is quickly subverted as Andrea is seen as the only women in the room and the only subject
in need of being hushed. Overseeing this is disturbing, and even for Andrea, one that is too
damaging to forget. Her eyes appear locked on her stirring hand, and the space that has
been inappropriately invaded, as music builds, creating for us not a sonic alleviation but a
space filled with dread, conviction, and surmounting hostility.

The real discovery is the one which enables me to

stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one
that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer
tormented by questions which bring itself into
question. Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations § 133.

These are not isolated instances for Janine and Andrea, but are the case for
Christine and Annie as well. They testify to the larger thesis that women act on the outside,
are shamed into standing out as the other, and are essentially bound up in functioning
against language and lacking power and self-control. This involves the examination of the
moment from the world of difference…to that of sexual difference, brought about through
the production of symbolic positions which force a meaning to the distinction male/female.
With this movement goes the development of desire organised according to the demands of
reproduction. The phallus is the privileged signifier…the signifier par excellence of desire

11
Johnston, Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses, 321.

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and difference.12 The two closing scenes, however, mark a change or rather a new
discipline. In the courtroom, the laugher that takes over the courthouse happens as a
chorus between all the women in the case and the audience. What must be registered here is
the bond, which overwhelms and redirects the control, from off the men and onto the
women. When women take part together, the noise displaces and undermines the symbolic
power of the male. However, this achievement is carried outside the courtroom as well.
When standing on the steps, Janine hears—what we can assume—Ruud honking the horn.
We have already established that he has left her; yet learn now that by staying at the exit,
Ruud is waiting to reclaim his control. Janine looks in no rush though, and held in
place/support by the sheer aura of the women behind her, we realize that Janine has
relocated her priorities and, after all, her husband has become the noise. In connection with
this…is the process of rejet or ‘throwing out’, a movement of destruction linked to the death
drive and experienced as jouissance as a fundamental expression of the semiotic modality
and a condition of such a relativisation.13 It is through negativity and the expression of the
destructive drives that structures previously repressed emerge, namely the feminine. It is
the pleasure on the side of the death drive which is the condition of putting the subject in
process. While A Question of Silence was about locating the women’s desire to kill, it was
more a film about witnessing Janine shed her naivety to confront her genuine self.

“Do you always ask things first without a thought14?” –Andrea

“Why have you asked?” –Janine
“Can you ever think for once?” –Andrea
“All I do is think.” –Janine15

The point is until Janine realizes her own story—her own struggle—in that of
others, she cannot honestly invest or establish change. More than providers of knowledge,
questions are a flight from responsibility, from ownership. Once Janine has stopped asking
for insight or more time, has stopped rewinding the tape recorder, she is capable of

12
Johnston, Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses, 321.
13
Summarizing Julia Kristeva. Johnston, Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses, 324-5.
14
The total picture of the facts is the thought. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.
15
Juliet Mitchell says, placed outside history—which men are predominantly defined by—woman is to a large extent a
message which is being communicated, a sign which is exchanged in patriarchal culture. Johnston: Towards a Feminist
Film Practice, 321.

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A Question of Alliance

producing a thought that puts her in the position to honor the truth of others, amend, and
activate change.

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following

way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them
as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb
up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the
ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these
propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.54:

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