"THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER" "HER:" "THE PARIS REGION" "On August 19, a decree concerning the organization of state services in the Paris region was officially published." "Two days later, the government appointed Paul Delouvrier prefect of the Paris region, which, as the official release claimed, now enjoyed specific new infrastructures." "She is Marina Vlady." "She is an actress." "She's wearing a midnight-blue sweater with two yellow stripes." "She is of Russian origin." "She has dark chestnut or light brown hair." "I'm not sure which." "Yes, speak as though quoting the truth." "Old man Brecht said it:" "That actors should quote." "Now she turns her head to the right, but that means nothing." "She is Juliette Janson." "She lives here." "She's wearing a midnight-blue sweater with two yellow stripes." "She has dark chestnut or light brown hair." "I'm not sure which." "She's of Russian origin." "Two years ago, in Martinique." "Just like in a Simenon novel." "No, I don't know which book." "Yes, Banana Tourists - that's the one." "I have to manage somehow." "I think Robert makes 110,000 francs a month." "Now she turns her head to the left, but that means nothing." "I infer that the Gaullist government poses as a reformer and modernizer, though it only normalizes the natural tendencies of capitalism." "I infer too that through centralization this same power further disrupts the nation's economy and undermines its moral fiber." "What am I looking at?" "The floor, that's all." "18 LESSONS ON INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY" "I can feel the tablecloth." " Terrific!" " Hear anything?" "What is it?" "Saigon-Washington." " Who's speaking?" " Johnson." "What's he saying?" ""In '65... to force Hanoi to negotiate... it was with a heavy heart that I ordered my pilots" "to bomb North Vietnam."" "And?" ""It was tremendous... but Hanoi wouldn't negotiate." "In '66... it was again with a heavy heart that I ordered my pilots to bomb Haiphong and Hanoi."" "Let me listen a bit." ""It was tremendous, but Hanoi wouldn't negotiate." "In July '67..." "I ordered my pilots, again with a heavy heart, to raze Chinese atomic installations." "It was tremendous, but Hanoi wouldn't negotiate."" ""In '67... to force Hanoi to negotiate... and again with a heavy heart," "I ordered my pilots to bomb Peking."" "And?" ""It was tremendous, but Hanoi wouldn't negotiate." "Now my missiles are aimed at Moscow."" "And?" ""President Johnson says... that Hanoi must understand" "that his patience is limited."" "Shit!" "I can't hear now." ""Should I wear trompe-I'oeil ankle-sock designs on pantyhose designed by Louis Ferraud?" "They make daring dresses decent and make calves look pert and charming, if they're slender and young."" "Cut the crap!" " It's in Madame Express." " Never heard of it." "You've got no culture." "Come on, children." "It's the American generals now." "What are they saying?" "That they want to send the North Vietnamese back to the Stone Age." "Hey, Juliette..." ""stone" means the same as pierre, right?" "How'd you get your Austin?" "Juliette found it." "She's terrific." "She's great at finding bargains." "I could use a wife like her." "Dear George Washington, what madness made you play cruel William Pitt?" "Pax Americana, the economy-size brainwasher." "Like a "message from the beyond."" "I was doing the dishes." "I started to cry." "I heard a voice say to me..." ""You're indestructible."" "Me, myself, I." "All of us." "Juliette!" "It's all very mixed up." "Time?" "I don't really know." "No real definition." "Roger's leaving." "Be right out." "We often try to find, to analyze the meaning of words." "But we're too easily amazed." "Frankly, nothing is easier... than to take one thing or another for granted." "Naturally, such regional development facilitates the state's class discrimination policy and allows the large monopolies to shape its economy, regardless of the needs and aspirations of its eight million inhabitants." "The eyes are the body... and the noise is..." "Mommy, do you ever have dreams?" " You'll be late for school." " Tell me." "When I used to dream, it was like being sucked into a great big hole, disappearing down a big hole." "Now when I dream, it's like being scattered in a thousand pieces." "Before, when I'd wake up, even if it took a while," "I'd wake up all at once." "Now I'm afraid of missing pieces." "I had a dream last night." "About what?" "I dreamed I was walking alone along the edge of a cliff with room for only one person." "Suddenly two twins appeared and began walking toward me." "I wondered how they would get by." "And then, suddenly, one of the twins walked toward the other, and they came together to form a single person." "That was when I realized that these two persons were North and South Vietnam reuniting." "Mommy, what's language?" "Language is the house man lives in." "NEW LESSONS ON INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY" "Power company." "Where's the meter?" "This will hurt: 50,000 francs." "The mere fact of suddenly enjoying a new appliance spurs power consumption without regard for the bill." "It's the same old story." "Either no money for rent or no TV, or else a TVbut no car, or else a washer but no vacation." "In other words, in any case, no normal life." "Seven minutes left." "Hello, Mrs. Janson." "I brought Solange." "Aren't you forgetting something?" "It's all I have, but I'll do better next week." "Go join the others." "Three minutes left." "Go join the others." "Can we come in?" "Yes, in there." "I only have cat food." "Go join the other children." "Come and play." "We'll read a story." "We'll read a little story." "Come on, honey." "Sit there." "I'll read you a story." ""Picky Pouc." "By the riverside, Picky Pouc strolls along sitting on her eggs..." "Madame Pelican..."" "The same old story." "An embroiderer's apprentice gets hired by a small company." "She meets a boy who leaves her with a child." "A year later, a second guy, a second child, abandoned again." "She gets lectured at the maternity ward, where she makes girlfriends who tell her how to earn enough to feed her kids." "She goes back to her job but works nights as a prostitute." "One day, a stroke of luck." "A nice man falls in love and marries her." "They move into a modern apartment - too expensive, of course." "Two years later, a third child." "They can't get by." "The husband himself asks his wife to walk the streets." "Is this cotton?" " You have dresses like this?" " Upstairs." "I get off at 7:00." "I'm meeting Jean-Claude at 8:00." "We're going out to eat, and maybe to a movie." "Yes, I know how to talk." "Let's talk "ensemble."" ""Ensemble" is a word I like." "An "ensemble" (housing project) Is thousands of people." "Maybe even a city." "Nobody knows what the city of tomorrow will look like." "Some of its past semantic richness will be lost, undoubtedly." "Undoubtedly." "Maybe." "The city's creative and formative role will be taken over by other systems of communication." "Maybe." "Television." "Radio." "Vocabulary and syntax." "Knowingly and intentionally." "I haven't had lunch yet and it's 3:00." "Navy-blue Shetland sweaters." "We'll need a new language." "I got up at 8:00." "I have hazel eyes." "PSYCHOLOG Y OF FORM" "May I help you?" " Can I try this on?" " Of course." "There are blues, reds and greens in here." "Yes, I'm sure of that." "My sweater is blue." "White suits you." "I'd like a cotton dress with sleeves." "I'll show you." " Because I see that it's blue." " This way, please." "Had we mistaken blue for green from the start, that would be serious." "This is fine, but when do you close?" "At 7:00." " I'll come back for it." " I can't put it aside." " Why not?" " Ask her." "Can you hold this while I go to my bank?" "Of course, but no later than 6:00." " I'll be back before 6:00." " Fine." "Because my impressions don't always relate to a specific object." "For instance, desire." "Sometimes we know the object of our desire." "Sometimes we don't." "Say I feel I'm missing something but I don't know what or I feel afraid, even if there's nothing to frighten me." "What expression... does not refer to a specific object?" "Oh, yes." "Order, logic." "Yes." "For instance, something can make me cry." "But the cause of my tears can't be found... in the traces they leave on my cheeks." "By this I mean..." "You can describe everything that happens when I do something... without necessarily indicating... what makes me do what I do." "I'll be back at 6:00." "I study the projects and their inhabitants and the bonds between them as intensely as the biologist studies the relationship between the individual and race in evolution." "Only then can I tackle problems of social pathology, nurturing hope for truly new projects." "Me, in a word?" "Indifference." "How are things?" "Not bad." "I got here this morning." "I'm staying a while." "I'm waiting for Jean-Paul." "I'm staying till tonight." "Do you have Winstons?" "Say, you've got new shoes." "I live in the tall apartment blocks in the southern suburbs." "I come to Paris twice a month." "You know, the big blue-and-white buildings." "A pack of Winstons and matches." "Yes, miss" " I mean madam." "Yes, American shoes." "They trample Vietnamese toes in them." "And South American toes." "I think we've met." " Sure." "Not so fast." "Still don't want me to manage you?" "For only 10%?" " Yeah, right." "Ask Colette about Isabelle." " I know." "Got her face slashed." " You're not scared?" "The war's over." "And it's only temporary." "Not for long, I hope." "A Coke, please." "This is how Juliette, at 3.37 p.m., looks at the pages of this object, which, in journalistic parlance, is called a magazine." "And this is how, some 150 frames later, another young woman, her fellow creature, her sister, sees the same object." "Where is the truth?" "In full-face or in profile?" "But first of all, what is an object?" "Maybe an object is what serves as a link between subjects, allowing us to live in society, to be together." "But since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself" "from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved," "and every failure deepens my solitude, since..." "Since... since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness..." "I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother." "The world alone." "Today, when revolutions are impossible and bloody wars loom, when capitalism is unsure of its rights and the working class is in retreat, when the lightning progress of science makes future centuries hauntingly present, when the future is more present than the present," "when distant galaxies are on my doorstep." "My fellow creature, my brother." "Where do we start?" "But start what?" "God created heaven and earth, sure, but that's too easy." "We should put it better." "Say that the limits of language are the world's limits, that the limits of my language are my world's limits, and that when I speak, I limit the world, I finish it." "And one inevitable and mysterious day, death will come and abolish these limits, and there will be no questions nor answers." "It will all be a blur." "But if by chance things come into focus again, it may only be with the advent of conscience." "Everything will follow from there." "I don't know where or when... only that it happened." "I've tried to recapture the feeling all day." "There was the smell of trees." "I was the world." "The world was me." "A landscape is like a face." "Is this hotel for Jews only?" "Why?" "It only has one star." " Don't watch me undress." " Why not?" " Because I don't want you to." " But you'll be naked in a minute." "That's different." "I'm Parisian." "INTRODUCTION TO ETHNOLOG Y" "I work in the Metro." "There are two million Parisians there too." "You never see them because the police won't let anyone take photos." "Mind if I put the mirror here?" "No, I'm not to blame if I have a passive side." "Having sexual intercourse." "Why be ashamed of being a woman?" "Or if so, often it's being happy or indifferent." "That's what I'm ashamed of sometimes." "He's going to put his organ between my thighs." "I feel the weight of my arm when I move it." "Maybe I should dump Robert." "He doesn't want to climb the social ladder." "He's happy with what he's got." "He was like that in Martinique." "Why are you putting on lipstick?" "None of your business." "What do you want to do?" "I don't know." "Italian style?" "What's that?" "You stand, with me on my knees." "That way you can watch me." "All right." "Being sexually independent of a man is tempting." "But actually it revolts me." "No, humility isn't such a good idea." "Because it's depressing." "The same goes for shame." "If it could keep people from quarrelling... since it affects our actions... on the basis of approval or criticism." "The criticism of others." "It's also depressing... so it's no good." "Like self-contempt." "And feelings of that kind." "How about like this?" "Certainly not." "She offered me 30,000 francs a day to work in the Madeleine area." "Can you imagine?" "I'm a secretary." "I speak English and Italian." "But I can't find work because I'm too old." "Yesterday the agency said they had nothing for me." "What is art? "That by which forms become style, " someone said." "Well, the style is the man, so art is what gives humanity to forms." "I look at the wall, at objects." "Now." "Never." "Here." "For the time being, I'm looking outside." "You're so tan." "Where were you?" "In Russia." " Where?" " Silence." "In Leningrad." "Are the Russians nice?" "Happiness." "They're like everyone else." "I was just asking." "They're nice enough." "Some noises." "Have you seen the Dupereys lately?" "I saw them as I walked by the St. Lazare station." "It's true, though, that people never really know each other." "It's broken." "Robert." "Christophe." "Blue spiral notebooks." "How have you been?" " Fine." "Not being forced to have sex." "It's better than the factory." "I wouldn't want to work in a factory either." "How are your kids?" "They're fine." "What I say with words is never what I'm really saying." "They're fine, but they don't behave." "I wait." "I look." " I'm using this one." " Okay." "My hair." "The telephone." "Marianne, it's for you." "Coming." " Yvonne's not here?" " She's out sick." "Mr. Michel." "Can I get off a half hour earlier again?" "Work it out with Colette." "I'm careful when I cross the street." "I think about the accident I might have... and my life ending there." "Unemployment... illness... old age." "Death, never." "I don't have plans for the future." "There are no prospects." "My name is Paulette Cadjaris." "I didn't make it as a secretary." "I don't believe in the future." "I go for walks." "I don't like being shut in." "I read whenever I can." "I really like to study people's characters." "I like walking, climbing... riding a bike." "Just for fun." "Movies two or three times a month... but not during the summer." "I've never been to a play... but I'd like to." "I prefer reading." "Biographies." "Studying people's lives, their characters... their achievements." "Travel writings... ancient history." "A tree." "Later, when I'm married to Francois." "What else have I done?" "Lots of ordinary things." "There is increasing interaction between images and language." "You might say that living in modern society is virtually like living in a giant comic strip." "Still, language in itself cannot accurately define the image." "For instance..." "For instance." "How do you describe an event?" "How do you say or depict that at 4.10 that afternoon," "Juliette and Marianne came to a garage where Juliette's husband works?" "Sense and nonsense." "How do you describe exactly what happened?" "Sure, there's Juliette, her husband, the garage." "But are these the right words and images to use?" "Aren't there other possibilities?" "Am I speaking too loud?" "Am I too close or too far?" "For example, there's foliage, and though Juliette is no Faulkner heroine, couldn't it be as dramatically valid as the foliage in Wild Palms?" "There's also another woman we will learn nothing about." "I won't even know how to say that with total honesty." "There's also a cloudy sky, provided I turn my head and don't stare straight ahead, and words on the walls." "Why all these signs that make me distrust language and submerge me in meanings, drowning reality, not freeing it of the imaginary?"