Multiple Dialectics in “Bound” (1996)

            This time I want to examine Andy and Larry Wachowski’s film “Bound” without using a particular theorist as a guide. Specifically, I want to ask why Caesar has a look of what I understand to be calm right before killing Gino. Is this moment of peace just an eye at the center of the storm? Or is there something more behind it?

            I will try to argue that there is something more behind it. I think the peace is the result of an inner dialectic within Caesar that results in the victory of Caesar’s inner Johnny.

            One obvious interpretation of this scene suggests itself immediately. It runs something like this: Caesar closes his eyes because he cannot face what he is about to do, and, once he does not have to face it anymore, he grows calm and at peace. This interpretation locates Gino’s power in his physical person and appearance, which obviously goes away (and, in a superficially Arendtian sense, becomes unreal) once Caesar’s eyes are closed.

            Another interpretation that readily lends itself to the scene is that Caesar – in the face of actually making a decision, of permanently committing himself to an act – gains calm. In a pseudo-existential vein, this interpretation claims an authenticity in his act that lets him escape from the bad consciousness that had plagued him until then. He had always hated Johnny; he had always resisted the official side of the mafia by joining business and desire. This moment he is at peace with himself because he is following through with who he is.

            I would suggest that both of these interpretations miss the point. Caesar is calm both because he is abdicating responsibility (by not seeing his decision, as the first interpretation suggests) and because he is finally taking responsibility (by being true, though perhaps not to “himself”, as the second interpretation has it). But because they are both true, they both miss the point (since their truths, from the perspective of the two readings, are in tension). Caesar is, by closing his eyes and abdicating responsibility for what is right in front of him (even clearer when he denies his agency by claiming that Johnny made him do it), assuming responsibility not for the act of killing Johnny but for becoming Johnny.

We do not see him pull the trigger because he is not truly taking responsibility for the killing. He is, instead, allowing another agency to work within him. He is letting that agency take control, and it is not the act of killing but the act of releasing himself into that agency that gives him a moment of peace. My perspective is that that agency is really bisexuality’s presence. [Footnote: I would read the gun, or the wielding of the gun, as a bisexual act. While traditionally a masculine weapon (with the shaft, or penis, and the bullet, or sperm) the movie focuses on the hole in the gun (with the hole, or vagina, and the chamber, womb). To wield it, to use it, or to desire it, is to have a bisexual desire. But, again, my main point is not to push this reading, but to show that some agency must be at work within Caesar.] However, even if that is not accepted, there must be something at work within Caesar to cause him to be at peace. And when he claims that he did not do it, he blames Johnny (claiming that Johnny made him do it).

Thus, I think that it is possible to read this scene as Caesar ceding control to the part of him that is like Johnny. [Footnote: And, since Johnny signifies bisexuality in my reading, of bisexuality.] He exercises so much control through the previous scenes in the movie, but really – underneath it all – he is someone exactly like Johnny. That is why the scene where he is beating Johnny’s dead body is reminiscent of Johnny’s beating of Shelly (which Caesar detested). This view would also be able to explain Caesar’s animosity towards Johnny – a constant reminder of what lurks within him, being in his presence has to be torturous for the Caesar that wants to be in control. That’s why he hits Johnny, when Johnny splatters everything with blood – because lurking within him is another Johnny. And that is why, finally, he is suspicious of Violet colluding with Johnny, because if Caesar is ultimately like Johnny, and Violet likes Caesar, then there is no reason not for her not to like Johnny.

Finally, this explains why Caesar kills Gino. While Johnny is very ostensibly upset with Gino at reprimanding him, Caesar looks relatively unaffected when Gino passes judgment on him. Johnny can let out his feelings, but Caesar cannot. Caesar has to let out his disapproval, and that happens more disastrously because he cannot slowly let off his steam like Johnny. When Gino tries to claim that Caesar is family that is only half right. Yes, Caesar is Gino’s family in the sense of the mafia, but Johnny is both that and his son by right of blood. And Caesar cannot possibly deal well with being unfavorably compared with Johnny – who is at best Caesar’s worst half. Thus, Caesar takes out his anger, or rather gives his inner Johnny free reign, by killing Gino: after all, if Johnny is more favorable in his eyes, than Caesar – by releasing his Johnny – should also be more favorable to him.

To briefly summarize, then, Caesar looks calm because he has released all of his inner tension, his inner conflict, and ceded control to his inner Johnny. Whether that inner Johnny signifies bisexuality is another matter, but at the very least the inner Johnny is a plausible explanation of the scene. He kills Gino because he is mad at being reprimanded (without being able to cool off less disastrously, as Johnny was doing), because in favoring Johnny Gino is implicitly telling Caesar to let go and become Johnny, and, finally, because he cannot stand Gino favoring Johnny over him. There are thus two dialectics going on in the scene – the dialectic internal to Caesar (which culminates in his peaceful expression and the inner Johnny’s victory), and the dialectic between Johnny and Caesar. Because of the success of the inner Johnny within Caesar, the outward dialectic can no longer resolve in the synthesis that Gino represents. Instead, that synthesis must be destroyed, as the – now destructive – dialectic between Johnny and Caesar plays itself out. And that dialectic’s result is the schizophrenic, constantly moving, Caesar that we see for the remainder of the movie.