Whity (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is an acquiescent disillusionment western that depicts one’s existence in society as either suffering inhumane oppression or voluntarily walking away from it thus ensuring your own doom. Embedded within its moral there are questions of identity, imposing a frightening trap where it’s impossible to dismantle the source of what’s destroying you because in doing so there’d be nothing left. It’s also a psychologically expressionist horror movie about the corruption of wealth. Yet Fassbinder nevertheless manages to get us to empathize with the downtrodden and afford us the relief of a cathartic awareness resulting in what amounts to violently overthrowing the status quo out of desperation.
It’s easy to be drawn to Fassbinder if you identify with social outcasts or the weak. Victims. Usually women, sometimes gays, often the poor, always the lovesick. At the center of Whity its dual protagonists are a black slave and his lover, a whore. And what’s so striking upon entering this world is the profound dignity possessed by WHITY (Günther Kaufmann). It’s a matter of honor for him to supplicate himself before the Nicholsons and confirm the law here that black people aren’t human. His girlfriend isn’t just a prostitute, she’s the town’s entertainment, performing in a cabaret act in the saloon. And HANNA (Schygulla) accepts Whity both in public and into her bedroom (even though he has to sneak in through the window). However when the angry bar patron (played by Fassbinder) beats Whity because of an impending transgressive miscegenation this is exemplary of a web that covers every part of the town: someone paying for something someone else did wrong. Because it’s Hanna who shows Whity affection, but it’s he who the Fassbinder belligerent fights.
America’s treatment of black people is another theme in Whity. And it’s the perfect fit for what Fassbinder is about. In the case of the Nicholsons, exploiting someone emotionally, psychologically, and physically. In this case providing for them for life. Food and shelter. Treating them with both contempt and at the same time affording them the status of belonging, in name and title practically another member of the family. (In Whity’s case even by blood.) Call it what you will: you only hurt the ones you love, gaslighting, domestic abuse, but it’s a form of extreme contrasts that plays perfectly in melodrama. And America is an analogy for it here. A hundred years before the civil rights movement would gain traction we have the family meeting scene where KATHERINE (Katrin Schaake) says if we gave the blacks more maybe they wouldn’t cause as much trouble is the cynical opportunist mechanisms working behind the scenes but highlighted when MARPESSA is heard singing spirituals in the kitchen and FRANK (Uli Lommel) notices it coming through a door slightly ajar, and then shuts it all the way to make the sound go away—just ignore the problem.
If Whity feels like the family is more despicable depraved than we might usually get in Fassbinder, one reason could be because if money is the root of all evil in this case paterfamilias BEN NICHOLSON’S seed is poisoned. There’s the retarded son. There’s the partially retarded (syphilitic?) crossdresser KKK other son. There’s the hyaena cheating new young wife plotting to claim a stake in his inheritance. And in a sense there’s even Whity himself.
That’s what makes for the most morally ambiguous part of the narrative psychologically. Whity is an illegitimate Nicholson. An Uncle Tom because he believes in his duty to his family. His awakening comes by way of the love of a woman. The midpoint is when Ben pays off Hanna for faking her testimony. That shot is staggeringly epic western, the wide day exterior panning with Ben walking through the empty square. Hanna then tries to talk some sense into her man and get him to stand up for himself but it backfires. Because Whity’s so helpless and weakened by his perceived (but misread) apprehension that Hanna’s lost her respect for him that he cowers and asks if he can pay for sex, which gets him kicked out. Everybody’s telling Whity who to be and how to be. He has to decide for himself. But it’s not an easy question.
In that scene Whity lays back like he’s in psychoanalysis and Hanna is his doctor. “I don’t understand you. You don’t want to be free. You like it when they beat you. You swine.” And there’s this rad 180° dolly that tells us this is undoubtedly the precise moment Whity has decided he will kill everyone. Also even though it isn’t said, it seems like he’s telling Hanna about the candy incident that just preceded this scene and how Katherine and Frank get so much joy from abusing their power to humiliate Whity. And that once he’s become able to tell Hanna the truth it’s the first step to his empowerment.
Then he numbs himself with whiskey and goes and asks for a seat at the gambling table. Fassbinder’s his friend now. Fassbinder loves the image system of a game of chance because as we know in his films it means wagering your heart or dignity or everything you are for love or sex and usually losing it all. Just when you thought losing it all couldn’t get any lower, the real Fassbinder low point is when that happens and after that you lose all self esteem.
And here’s where Fassbinder proves he’s not as bleak as we might think. Because the one thing he avoids is fear. His characters hit the bottom but while they’ve been down on the floor long enough they come back, despite losing all they never lose their own self esteem. For Whity it’s a massacre of the Nicholsons. But there’s a tinge of melancholy in this final act. The family and that home were everything to him. His entire existence. He couldn’t help but suffer some distorted residual attachment, even resembling a sense of love.
Along with Hanna, Whity wanders into the desert and they have nowhere else to go. It’s only a matter of time before they die of thirst. But this final sequence is powerful. And evocative because although it’s the end, we still get to see him flee his captors. We see him drink that last drop of water from the canteen. We see them share that final waltz without music. And if you think that’s futile I guess it’s all a matter of interpretation.
America’s treatment of black people is another theme in Whity. And it’s the perfect fit for what Fassbinder is about. In the case of the Nicholsons, exploiting someone emotionally, psychologically, and physically. In this case providing for them for life. Food and shelter. Treating them with both contempt and at the same time affording them the status of belonging, in name and title practically another member of the family. (In Whity’s case even by blood.) Call it what you will: you only hurt the ones you love, gaslighting, domestic abuse, but it’s a form of extreme contrasts that plays perfectly in melodrama. And America is an analogy for it here. A hundred years before the civil rights movement would gain traction we have the family meeting scene where KATHERINE (Katrin Schaake) says if we gave the blacks more maybe they wouldn’t cause as much trouble is the cynical opportunist mechanisms working behind the scenes but highlighted when MARPESSA is heard singing spirituals in the kitchen and FRANK (Uli Lommel) notices it coming through a door slightly ajar, and then shuts it all the way to make the sound go away—just ignore the problem.
If Whity feels like the family is more despicable depraved than we might usually get in Fassbinder, one reason could be because if money is the root of all evil in this case paterfamilias BEN NICHOLSON’S seed is poisoned. There’s the retarded son. There’s the partially retarded (syphilitic?) crossdresser KKK other son. There’s the hyaena cheating new young wife plotting to claim a stake in his inheritance. And in a sense there’s even Whity himself.
That’s what makes for the most morally ambiguous part of the narrative psychologically. Whity is an illegitimate Nicholson. An Uncle Tom because he believes in his duty to his family. His awakening comes by way of the love of a woman. The midpoint is when Ben pays off Hanna for faking her testimony. That shot is staggeringly epic western, the wide day exterior panning with Ben walking through the empty square. Hanna then tries to talk some sense into her man and get him to stand up for himself but it backfires. Because Whity’s so helpless and weakened by his perceived (but misread) apprehension that Hanna’s lost her respect for him that he cowers and asks if he can pay for sex, which gets him kicked out. Everybody’s telling Whity who to be and how to be. He has to decide for himself. But it’s not an easy question.
In that scene Whity lays back like he’s in psychoanalysis and Hanna is his doctor. “I don’t understand you. You don’t want to be free. You like it when they beat you. You swine.” And there’s this rad 180° dolly that tells us this is undoubtedly the precise moment Whity has decided he will kill everyone. Also even though it isn’t said, it seems like he’s telling Hanna about the candy incident that just preceded this scene and how Katherine and Frank get so much joy from abusing their power to humiliate Whity. And that once he’s become able to tell Hanna the truth it’s the first step to his empowerment.
Then he numbs himself with whiskey and goes and asks for a seat at the gambling table. Fassbinder’s his friend now. Fassbinder loves the image system of a game of chance because as we know in his films it means wagering your heart or dignity or everything you are for love or sex and usually losing it all. Just when you thought losing it all couldn’t get any lower, the real Fassbinder low point is when that happens and after that you lose all self esteem.
And here’s where Fassbinder proves he’s not as bleak as we might think. Because the one thing he avoids is fear. His characters hit the bottom but while they’ve been down on the floor long enough they come back, despite losing all they never lose their own self esteem. For Whity it’s a massacre of the Nicholsons. But there’s a tinge of melancholy in this final act. The family and that home were everything to him. His entire existence. He couldn’t help but suffer some distorted residual attachment, even resembling a sense of love.
Along with Hanna, Whity wanders into the desert and they have nowhere else to go. It’s only a matter of time before they die of thirst. But this final sequence is powerful. And evocative because although it’s the end, we still get to see him flee his captors. We see him drink that last drop of water from the canteen. We see them share that final waltz without music. And if you think that’s futile I guess it’s all a matter of interpretation.
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