The fourth film in my
retrospective analysis of the films of Karyn Kusama is the slow burning Hitchcockian
style thriller The Invitation. Released 7 years after Jennifer’s
Body with no money or studio
affiliation, this film is a brilliant cinematic portrait of Kusama’s power and
brilliance as a filmmaker, waving a story with multiple characters and misleading
the audience at every turn until its revelatory horrific final shot. Kusama’s
tale of a dinner party with dark intentions is predicated on sociological
concepts of courtesy, following social norms, and the internalized desire to
maintain the broader social order at the literal cost of people’s lives. This paper examines The Invitation as a
creative boon out of asphyxiation by a corporate industry of the time that is
often devoid of creativity, while also diving deeper into the sociological
relevance of various interaction rituals and the societal power of religion and
belief.
PLOT
Two
years after the sudden and tragic death of their son Ty, Eden (Tammy Blanchard)
invites her Ex-husband Will (Logan Marshall Green), his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy
Corinealdi), and the rest of their estranged friend group to a dinner party at
Will and Eden’s former home. The friends reconnect and painstakingly move past
initial awkwardness and begin to remember why they were friends in the first
place. But as the night progresses, and new revelations made, that awkwardness slowly
turns into anxiety, then to mistrust, and later to dread.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Production
After
the initial specious panning of Jennifer’s Body, Kusama came away from
that experience understanding the vacuous emptiness of the Hollywood Studio
system and declared that she would not work on a film where she did not get
final cut, because as she put it:
“I'm a
strong-minded director with a very clear sense of what I want to do, and I just
want to be left alone to do it and I'm not sure the studios are necessarily the
most instructive places for filmmakers to be, except to maybe to learn about
the hard realities of commerce and art intermingling.”
Here, Kusama is openly challenging the studio system
and speaks truth to power about the process of corporate controlled studio
filmmaking. She is then rewarded for that mindset with only a single additional
credit for directing between Jennifer’s Body (2009) and The
Invitation (2015). The unbridled sexism is apparent here because there is a
litany of examples of male director making similar demands and they get heralded.
This
gender double standard while directing a studio picture is reinforced by the structural
misogynistic glorification of the Patriarchy that is embedded in the everyday
practices of the film industry. The symptomatic common deflection of this
pestilence is that women often do not “pick the right careers” or “they don’t
ask for what they are worth” again putting the onus on women to protect themselves
and navigate through these sexist trip wires. Yet, when they do make all of the
right career choices (Average
film director in LA makes $153,773 dollars on the low end)
and they ask for what they are worth (in this case Kusama demanding Final Cut)
they nearly get blacklisted.[1] Granted, working in TV/short
form content is not the death sentence for a director that it once was. Premium
TV and the creation of limited series in recent years has attracted stars, talent,
and rich storytelling into its development. However, it is still not director
focused. The focus and creative vision usually stay with the showrunner, transforming
many of these episodic directors into glorified cat wranglers.[2] Kusama being an obvious exception.
The trade off to Kusama’s
“insolence” for asking for what she is worth, and fighting to have creative
control, meant that her next film, The Invitation, would need to be
independently financed and have a shoestring budget. This led to changes in the
framing and shot composition of each scene. Inspired by Kurosawa’s masterwork
of blocking during the first half of High
and Low, Kusama makes every frame a tapestry;
understanding that with the right placement of actors in a scene you can get a
variety of reactions within a single shot, without the added cost of additional
lighting set ups. Infuriatingly, when the film eventually gets praised for such
feats of ingenuity, often citing the lack of budget for its necessity, with it
comes the glorification of low budget independent film without the acquiescence
that these were also films that were fundamentally unsupported.
Kusama also drew upon was the master of
suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Some may point to suspenseful Hitchcockian classics
like Rear Window, Vertigo, or Psycho as the inspirational force
behind the Invitation’s delicious suspension. But, the clearest homages
between Kusama’s film and Hitchcock’s body of work lies in the 1948 noir
thriller Rope. Both Rope and The Invitation take place in
one location during a dinner party, and each have a sinister undercurrent of
murder running through it. However, the source of the tension that consistently
and methodically builds with each passing moment is inverted between these two
films. In Rope, the audience is a spectator to the crime, just waiting
for it to be uncovered. With The Invitation, we know something sinister
is about to happen, we are just waiting for the inciting incident. What
constructively links each film is the way both Hitchcock and Kusama are
mathematically precise on when the tension needs to be tightened, and when it
needs to be released…usually right before a reveal. Interestingly, in Rope it
is when Rupert (James Stewart) leaves the party in The Invitation it is
when Choi (Karl Yune) arrives…a wonderfully cinematically serendipitous
comparison.
Politics
At the time of this film’s
development, production and release, the US social and political graces were beginning
to be tested. President Obama was finishing his first term while in production,
and was finishing his second term upon the film’s release. In that time, a
resurgence of racist, misogynistic pro-capitalist crypto fascist began with the
swell of “Tea Party” candidates elected to Congress in 2010. This, and a well-placed
joke at the 2015 correspondence dinner, seeded the way for a Donald Trump Presidency;
all of which had the alluring message to older white voters of a bid time
return. Whether that be the “Tea Party’s” mantra to “take the country back”, or
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” these are all mournful longingly fearful
statements, albeit also irrational.
In
a recent Podcast Episode, Kusama compares the sense of grief and loss Will
and Eden experience in The Invitation with the motivations of Right-wing
Fascist ideologs stating: “[Continued Support of] The Patriarchy, Late-Stage
Capitalism and Toxic Masculinity are all related by a denial of death.” For
Kusama, what these people are feeling is the grief over the challenging of and
incremental weakening of these systems to the point that they would rather kill
themselves, or see themselves die, rather than feel. Nowhere is this more
apparent to Kusama than the initial governmental response to COVID under Trump
and the continued resistance of some Americans to not do even the bare minimum
in the name of Public Health. These people instead choose denial, and for Kusama,
this is the difference in “the price we pay to feel, versus the price we pay to
not.”
In the development and
the execution of The Invitation, Kusama, Hay and Manfredi unintentionally
reveal the cyclical nature of US politics and the similarities between two
political extremes. In the US two party political system there is a tendency to
polarize and alienate the two most widely embraced groups present, and
fundamentally position them as opposites of one another. Not only is this a
manufactured comparison that ultimately serves to better segregate and isolate
individuals from each other thereby reinforcing a false dichotomy resulting in
the developing of “in groups” and “out groups” based upon political ideology,
it also creates dangerous echo chambers of ideological rhetoric that ultimately
keeps us at odds with each other and thwarts social progress. The reality of
these political extremes is then obfuscated by this binary, ignoring the
reality that many of the people on the extreme ends of both parties can agree
on the same interpretation for completely different reasons. Many leftist
socialists and right leaning libertarians agree on the dangers of Government
Surveillance. However, whereas Libertarians object to Government Surveillance
on the grounds of the encroachment on individual personal liberty, leftist
socialists reject Government Surveillance based on the powerful’ s imposition
of their will on the nonpowerful leading to systemic oppression. Same outcome,
different motivations.
The cyclical nature of
political ideologies is illustrated in The Invitation by the characters of
Eden, David (Michiel Huisman), Pruitt (John Carol Lynch), and Sadie
(Lindsay Burdge). In the film, the organization known as “The Invitation”
bought these four together at a “spiritual retreat” in Mexico. From what we have
explained in the film, and the personalities depicted, these four would not likely
meet, nor interact with each other if not for their shared experience at the
retreat. From the minute they are introduced, Eden and David’s friendship and
intimate closeness with Pruitt and Sadie seems odd and out of place. In fact,
Kusama uses this incongruity as the first subtle building of tension in the
film; hinting that things are not what they seem. Still, it is the
juxtaposition of Eden and Pruitt that mirrors the similarities found at the
edges of political extremes. Eden is looking for answers and solace from the
horrors of the chaotic randomness of the world. Pruitt is looking for solace
and absolution from the horrors of what he has wrought. One person is looking
for an answer to the trauma that has befallen her, the other is looking to justify
the trauma they have inflicted on someone else. Yet, both were attracted to the
teaching and messages of “The invitation”. One to relieve pain, the other to
find forgiveness. Same outcome, different motivations.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Religion
“You’re in a cult.” This is the first reaction the
revelation that Eden, David, Pruitt, and Sadie are part of “The Invitation.” The
word cult is used as a mechanism of social control to be synonymous with danger
and with a break from reality. Later, when Ben tells Eden that the whole thing
sounds “a little crazy”, she immediately and aggressively slaps him. This
extreme response was predicated on the notion of belief, and its power to
motivate and control. The reaction of Ben and the rest of the friend group is the
social structure (built on a foundation of recognizing only a limited number of
religions) placing the belief system of “The Invitation” outside of the
acceptable beliefs and ritualic practices.
According
to Durkheim (2001), Much of what we attribute to a religion/religious power or
deity is actually a function of society. We, the people living in society,
build religion through the crafting of the word and stories about gods, whether
they be polytheistic pantheon or a monotheistic all-powerful entity. Even
though it is the stories that attract new believers, gods are nothing without people to believe in
them. Mythology only became so when fewer and fewer people believed in those
stories. A community built around shared beliefs creates a state of collective
effervescence where the emotional connection and solace one finds in religion
is actually because of a group of shared believers. It does not matter what you
believe, (the content) what matters is that you believe and that belief becoming
validated by others through specific rites, rituals and joyous festivals
(Durkheim 2001). The only difference between “The Invitation” and a more
socially acceptable belief system is the amount of people that believe in it,
the collective acceptance to believe, and the integration of those beliefs into
institutions and systems of power.
“The Invitation” as a religious cult is nothing new. Kusama even points to many notable cults throughout history as inspirations (particularly Heaven’s gate, Jonestown, and the Manson Family). This is because anything can become sacred and because that sacredness is based on belief and the emotional confluence of that, it is very hard to break free from. Yet, this is not brainwashing as many like to assume. Cults use the same organizational social control mechanisms that societies have been using through religions for generations. From a Functionalist perspective, regardless of the content of the belief, both cults and legitimized religions answer the questions of morality (they give us a sense of “right and wrong” e.g., the “desires” speech from David) and mortality (the understanding that if they go through with this murder suicide, they will free themselves from the pain of living). The valuing of those beliefs is determined not by their content, but by their integration into society and their link and access to positions and institutions of Power. The legitimation of Scientology is a perfect example of this.
Basics: Agency vs. Structure
When developing the script
and the overall cinematic narrative for The Invitation, Kusama, Hay and Manfredi
were interested in the way that social norms and socialized courtesy dulls our
survival instincts. They were fascinated with the idea that people would openly
put themselves in an increasingly more dangerous position because they do not
want to break the veneer of social group etiquette. Sociologically speaking,
this is by design to maintain a social order through the constant tension
between Agency and Structure
In a
previous essay I wrote:
Agency
is defined as the ability to have free, non-coerced choice. The term may also
be used in conjunction with Autonomy, the ability to make your own decisions
and trajectory of your life. Structure is defined as any relatively stable
pattern of social behavior often coalesced into a series of groups and
institutions for the purposes of governance.
The existence of every society rest along this spectrum between agency
and structure. The more agency the society has, the weaker the cohesive social
order, and the greater focus on the satisfaction of individual desires. This leads to normlessness, what Emile
Durkheim called “Anomie”. The more
structure there is within society, the less there is independence, potentially
leading to Totalitarianism. This necessary balancing between agency and
structure (equal or not) is epitomized by Rousseau’s (and later Weber’s) idea
of the Social Contract: the idea that individuals must give up some amount of
personal freedom to enjoy the stability and security that the structure may
provide. How much personal freedom for how much stability is, in a “democratic”
bureaucratic rational system, consistently in flux, as opposed to other systems
with a tighter or more relaxed grasp
Kusama plays with this tension expertly allowing the
odd and deviant behavior of the Hosts, and their unknown guests, to be easily rationalized
and explained away. Part of the way the social structure is maintained is
through the internalization of social norms, to the point that we effectively
relinquish control to the systems that we are a part of. We quiet that nagging
voice of danger a lot of the time because we’ve been in other social situations
and by remaining calm and civil, we have survived.
Impression Management and Interaction
Rituals
Sociologist Erving
Goffman wrote most of his work on the relational interactions with other people,
and the consequences attached to those interactions. According to Goffman (1959) everyone engages
in “impression management” through various social interactions we have with
others. We want to control how other people see us, so we put on a performance
to try and “give off” a particular impression we want others to adopt about
us. Because we are constantly performing
to maintain these impressions, we rely on others to both help us maintain our impressions
and develop larger impressions that one cannot create alone (Goffman 1959). To
maintain the order of this, we develop defensive and protective practices
to both ignore breaks in an individual’s impression and repair our own
impressions. Goffman calls one of these practices, tact; utilized when a
person’s impression falters, or you find yourself an audience for an
impression(s) that you are not supposed to see. For Goffman, we use tact to try
and spackle the edges of our fractured impression or to make our presence known
if we are witnessing impressions that are not for us.
According to Goffman
(1967), The use of tact is designed to “save face”; face being the “the image
of self-delineated in terms of approved social attributes.” (p 5). Everyone
fears the “loss of face “within a group, so we decide to protect others while
defending our own impressions through agreed upon rules of conduct that
establish obligations and expectations within social situations. While people
are often more resistant to obligations because their constraint, usually put
upon people by an authority, is
perceived as burdensome. However, When an individual becomes involved with the
maintenance of rules, those obligations become expectations. It transforms from
something that they have to do, into something that they must do in order to
retain the image they have cultivated for themselves (Goffman 1967).
This process of saving
face and a composed demeanor is ultimately in service to the avoidance of embarrassment
(Goffman 1967). We have been conditioned to the anathematic understanding of
embarrassment, that to even witness an embarrassing situation triggers an
empathetic solidarity, causing people to feel embarrassed on behalf of others
(second hand embarrassment). We avoid and try to hide our embarrassment as part
of the defensive practices of impression management. We sacrifice our identity
for the moment and situation we find ourselves in; “the social structure gains
elasticity, the individual merely loses composure (Goffman 1967:112).
Throughout The
Invitation, Kusama deftly deploys Goffman’s ideas. The obligations of Will
and his friends began when they were invited to Eden and David’s home. They
could have easily not shown up, politely declined or “ghosted” and they all
would have been alive to see another day. But once they entered into the house,
they became involved in the maintenance of the rules, and they followed through
the social expectations of a dinner party. Kusama brilliantly divides the film
into thirds, each increasing the deviant behavior and straining social
conventions until the deaths begin. The first third ends with the showing of
the video and talking about “The Invitation”, punctuated with Pruitt’s
admission. The guests experience embarrassment, laugh off the deviant behavior,
while some lean into the hedonism espoused by “The Invitation.” The second
third ends with the voicemail from Choi and the impromptu celebration of a
birthday a week early. Here, characters
get more suspicious, and emotions begin to run high. However, rationalization
again prevails and most see Will, the father unable to cope and grieve the
death of his son, as the transgressor. The final third releases the tension into
utter violent chaos.
Kusama, Hay and Manfredi
comment on these sociological conventions in the film during the “desires”
scene. The members of “The Invitation”
reinforce this neo-bohemian rhetoric of stripping away constraint and
embarrassment. By doing that, cult members believe that people can be free to forgive
themselves and face the truth. This lack of inhibitions is alluring in the context
of a party where, at least at this point in the film, most of the characters
still feel safe. However, we later learn that this rhetoric and the maintenance
of social norms, courtesy, and basic societal conventions, are being weaponized
by their hosts to participate in a grand murder suicide.
CONCLUSION
The Invitation
is a deliciously suspense laden thriller that preys on the social norms and the
acceptable understandings of the general public. While the film lost money at
the box office, its indie word of mouth and successful run on demand and other
streaming platforms makes it one of Kusama’s best known films. This is because Kusama
Hay and Manfredi were able to successfully tap into the everyday anxieties of social
interactions and many people found themselves in similar situations in their
own life; and while they most likely did not end in (attempted) murder, many of
us can related to the discombobulation of the breaking of social norms and the
awkwardly alienating fallout that follows. Hitchcock was known for building a
thriller by having a mundane situation and then adding a twist. The
Invitation is a worthy addition to the efficacy of that formula.
REFERENCES
Durkheim, Emile 2001. The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life Oxford: Oxford University Press
Goffman, Erving 1959. The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life New York: Anchor Books
Goffman, Erving 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on
Face-to-Face Behavior New York: Pantheon Books
[1]
This is what I can only assume happened between
Kusama and Miramax and the recent fallout of her Dracula themed film
focusing in Mina Harker for which I mourn
[2] Understand
that I say this with the full knowledge that as of this writing, I have yet to
see Yellowjackets and that every Kusama directed piece of short form
content I have seen has been the best direct piece of TV I’ve seen that Year.
Particularly, The Outsider episode titled “The One About the Yiddish
Vampire”
