Sickness

Zsolt David
4 min readJan 31, 2023

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Consider John Hyams’ Sick as an allegory for hostility. It imprints this notion in the film’s representation of bodies. Human flesh is pummeled, pierced and cut. Violence is being done by humans to humans. The extension of such interaction between bodies is how the film creates the general idea of hostility.

Mask mandates against COVID-19 and its association with death seem to have escalated interaction between people to violence in Sick. By saying that escalation took place, one may point towards the idea that violence was always present, just haven’t surfaced yet, or that it has a point of inception, if one lays this movement down linearly. A scene shows this idea of a violent presence, where trespassing one’s property puts the trespasser at gunpoint by the owner. This means that the domain of private property houses violence that comes forward in case a foreign body enters it. Going by the law that formulates private property and violence, we can’t tell either’s origin, just that it names and conceptualizes the way they emerge. If abstractions with concrete properties receive names, that makes what precedes naming violence. Hence violence was there before it was formulated by the law.

This violence is different from the one that takes place in what the law conceptualizes as private property, that also differs from the construction of guns that sustain such conceptualizations, but a violence nonetheless. By portraying violence as movement between concepts, the film puts forward a general idea of violence that comes forth when conceptual movement takes place.

Consider the perpetrators in the early stages of film. They appear as shadowy figures dressed in black, carrying a knife on their belt. They kill and maim bodies, and penetrate personal space in private property. A representation of violence with multitudinous associations. In one moment violence sneaks around, in another it jumps to the foreground. The camerawork generalizes these movements by focusing on such representations or by pushing it to the background. It appears, disappears then reappears. It is present. In another moment we may see a silhouette, then see it disappear as the camera pans away. This movement didn’t make the abstract figure cease to be, but shifted so that it cannot be seen.

Violence is represented by the movement of the camera. Does this make violence a movement in general? If camerawork introduces movement to a picture like a moving body does to still objects, then we shall say that movement characterizes the relation between concepts. But as with violence preceding naming, a relation is present between a picture and moving picture by the camera as it captures them. What is captured is present before the camera captures them in a different way then they are captured, that’s also different from when the camera pans away. The camera introduces a framework that conceptualizes what is captured. We call this conceptualization as movement. But it is incidental, as shown by how we reframed this name to that of relation. The same can be said about objects in relation to bodies of subjects. Differentiation of objects from subjects allow us to conceptualize them as relational entities and call this relation as movement. Can we conceptualize movement prior to the categorization of subject and object? By rephrasing this question in relation to the camera where we know capturing as movement, we shall only be able to associate notions with capturing and movement. We can’t name what is captured, just know how capturing operates through movement, such as how it can only capture what it focuses on. Focusing and deducing difference between what is captured and not captured presupposes a relational association between one thing and another, such as subject and object, that is part of movement, but distinct from it as it must remain still to see pictures and conceptualize them as such.

The generalization of movement thus takes place by capturing moving bodies and by movement of the camera, we propose. Considering in relation to what these bodies take part in movement, and in relation to what the camera pans and cuts away, we may relate concepts, such as private property with the former, and violence with the latter. Movement as capturing therefore captures movement, where these capturing movements and moving captures create relations that we call the general. The answer to the question whether violence is movement in general in the film’s depiction cannot be deduced from the film, because it operates by a generalization of movement.

We may as well call this generalization as hostility, a notion that imbues violence with intent and alludes that it lingers, waiting to act on this intent. Or we may relate this generalization with judgement. Evaluations preceding judgement calls move freely, then stop to assert their judgement, e.g. about a character’s behaviour, about the virus, about murder, and so on. It is incidental when this evaluative movement stops, before it starts moving again. Or perhaps even during a judgement call it evaluates. It is present in its multitudinous associations and doesn’t go away when it emerges to assert itself.

If we describe violence and judgement as totality that lingers and emerges, then what can we unveil about them through the movements of the camera that seem to capture them by lingering and emergence? The movements of the camera are inseparable from associations with movement. If this is true, then assessments can only be about associations with movement, such as violence, the law, judgement, and so on, that then come forth in association with the film’s expression. One association in association with another association makes up an assessment in this analysis, a totality (assessment) to totality (film) that we end up calling totality (movement.) This general is the metaphysical that affirms humanity with associations, such as with the film’s title Sick that alludes to one idea while containing multiple.

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