According to The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes, any text can be broken down into two basic experiences known as pleasure and bliss. These experiences are difficult to define. They are complex ideas, and in this essay I will be using the film Zatôichi (2003) as an example in discussing them.

"Text of pleasure: the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading" (Barthes, 14). Pleasure is exactly as the name implies. It is a warm and happy feeling. It is the enjoyment of the experience. This is what most people are seeking out when they go to the movies. It is the traditional way of telling a story—the way everybody knows and understands. Pleasure does not result in confusion or shock. An example of this is the way most films end—with the hero defeating the villain in the end. This usually is accompanied by a confrontation. This confrontation can be physically violent or simply a battle of wills, but regardless, the villain loses and things are made right. In Zatôichi, this is readily apparent when, near the end of the film, the villains of the piece are battling in a village. Zatôichi arrives and begins to kill these attackers in a large choreographed fight scene. Then, at the very end of this battle, Zatôichi slices through the main villain with his sword. The villain drops to the ground and, with a look of shock, dies. This is a very satisfying way to end the film. It is safe, and exactly the way I would expect the movie to end. I feel pleasure because it is what I wanted to happen.

Bliss is a completely different experience. "Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language" (Barthes, 14).

Bliss does exactly what pleasure does not. It shocks, confuses, and makes the viewer scream, "What was that?" Bliss is an experience that can be unpleasant and uncomfortable. It is that which is not normal. Bliss is the experience that makes many people hate a film. Bliss is a subjective experience: one person's bliss is another's pleasure. In Zatôichi, my first moment of bliss was a simple moment—it was something that jumped out at me unexpected. There is a scene near the beginning of the film where Zatôichi is attacked by a group of warriors in the middle of night. Zatôichi quickly dispatches with them and the film moves on. In that moment, there is a shot of Zatôichi's face after he has slashed the last attacker with a gruesome half severed head squirting blood right behind him. It was something I had not expected. I suddenly bolted upright as I was immediately disgusted at the sight. It was a moment that suddenly yanked me out of the film and made me verbally exclaim how truly nasty that shot was, even though I was alone. That is a moment of bliss.

It should be mentioned, however that such gore exists in the rest of the film, but I did not experience such a reaction again. Once I was used to it, the ability to experience bliss from that was gone. It was a one-time, transitory thing. I should also point out that while is was disturbing for a moment, it was also a strangely thrilling and memorable moment. Bliss can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean it's something to be avoided.

Upon first viewing, Zatôichi seems bizarre and surreal. Takeshi Kitano’s 2003 rendering of the popular Japanese samurai movie is sometimes unsettling, as the character, a blind masseur that traverses the Japanese countryside, maims and kills while being humorous all the while. From the opening scene of the movie, a barrage of peculiar events almost catches the viewer completely off-guard. Strange scarecrows, persistent retards, and excessively violent fight scenes are splattered across the entire plotline. However, none of these strange moments properly convey what Roland Barthes would consider jouissance. Although these scenes may in fact lack the culturally shattering qualities that Barthes would call bliss, there is one sequence that takes the cake, so to speak: a tap dance interlude that helps conclude the movie.

Barthes describes pleasure as a type of “controlled discontinuity” (“narrativity is dismantled yet the story is still readable”). This does not apply to the townsfolk’s final celebration of the fall of the “gangsters.” The narrativity is in fact dismantled, but the story becomes almost unreadable (unviewable). Is this happening? Are these characters, once proponents of seriousness and bloodshed, actually tap dancing? Yes, in fact they are, and it is almost impossible to wrap the mind around. All one is left with is a state of ambiguous observation and forced digestion. Barthes describes the text of bliss:

[T]he text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.

This statement describes the transition into a triumphant tap dance perfectly. I am unaffected by a completely unexpected slice of the sword that removes a man’s entire arm in one fell swoop, but my aesthetic and cultural core is greatly molested by a group of tap dancing Japanese (do the Japanese tap dance?). The movie as a whole may not contain a vast array of textual jouissance, but it does in fact posses a great case study in an unforeseen (and seemingly even perverse) tap dance sequence.

It is possible for a scene to be interpreted as both a text of bliss and a text of pleasure. Zatôichi accomplishes this in the second “musical” scene. In this scene, a few farmers are dancing in the rain. They are dressed in ragged, muddy furs, and their faces are covered with “rice hats.” Their movements make the music they dance to. This scene mimics a dryer version of music making that took place earlier in the film. When it is cut to, in that brief second before anyone can make sense of what just happened, all of the audience is experiencing bliss. However, the seconds that follow divide the viewers. For those who walked in as the film was starting, this scene becomes a text of pleasure. But, for those who attended the lecture before the film, it is bliss.

Those that heard the lecture were expecting a “tap dance” at some point in the film. The first musical scene set it up, but did not deliver. In this new scene however, the farmers are actually “tapping” or stomping on the ground. Anyone expecting a tap dance would have to ask themselves, “Is this what he was talking about?” The mud dampens the noise that is commonly associated with tap, but the farmers are making the movements. Before any conclusion can be reached, one of the farmers freaks out and tackles another; end of scene. Those seeking a tap scene are left discomforted and wondering if that was what the lecturer was mentioning. According to Barthes, bliss “imposes a state of loss.” The state of loss here is in the mind of the viewer when they feel cheated by what must be “the tap dance the lecturer talked about.”

The other group, however, sees this scene as a pleasure scene. They are not expecting anything and therefore are not discomforted or confused by this new musical scene. They have already been set up for it earlier in the film. In fact, because of that earlier setup, this scene becomes a strong text of pleasure. The first scene introduces the musical formula. This new scene changes it only slightly. It is an acceptably comfortable variation on an earlier scene. In other words, pleasure.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatôichi is definitely a pleasure text punctured by moments of bliss. Pleasure is often predictable and repetitious, which is what this movie is. Zatôichi switches back and forth between scenes of violence and scenes of comedy, which is where the repetition and boredom comes in, but as Barthes says "boredom is not far from bliss: it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure" (26). The comedy scenes in this movie are usually the bliss scenes (because they are unpredictable and erratic) and the viewer does not know when they are coming if they are seeing the movie for the first time. Pleasure in a film is easily sought and seen, just as in this next scene, but becomes boring if it is repeated.

One particular scene that is purely pleasure is the scene where the thugs enter the tavern to harass the owner so that they may attain money that is supposedly owed to them because their gang runs the village. The samurai is sitting nearby, drinking sake and hears what is going on. He approaches them and scares them off. This scene was very predictable. Barthes says "The pleasure of the text is...in knowing the end of the story" (10), or in this case knowing how the scene will turn out, which also makes it boring because the viewer predicts what is going to happen. Bliss in this movie, on the other hand, is harder to point out, mostly due to the fact that modern day audiences are exposed to a great deal more, which makes it difficult for an author or director to do something that has not been seen yet by audiences.

Bliss in Zatôichi can be found, though, such as during the dance scene at the end. The brother, who is dressed as a girl, and the sister are dancing among the others. The director creates an effect where their bodies morph so smoothly between being adults and children, and then back to adults, that the viewer does not notice the change until it is nearly complete. The moment the viewer realizes this change happened is the moment of bliss. This change is unpredictable, as bliss often is. Barthes uses a piece of wood as an example of this. He says "if you hammer a nail into a piece of wood, the wood as a different resistance according to the place you attack it: we say that the wood is non-isotropic. Neither is the text: the edges, the seam, are unpredictable." With this example the person who is doing the hammering does not know if the nail will penetrate the wood or will pop back up surprising the hammerer, thus creating the unpredictability and bliss.

These are two examples of pleasure and bliss that would alter according to the viewer and their experiences. A different audience may see them as something else entirely and get neither pleasure nor bliss. While pleasure is easily defined, bliss is not because of its unpredictable nature.

In Zatoichi there are a few things that would have thrown me off guard or would have produced a blissful moment for me (for example, the blind masseur’s blonde hair), but because the introducer of the film pointed out such things before the film started, the bliss effect was disrupted. Because of this, the CGI and the unconventional short shots became comedic rather than blissful.

However, there were two moments that I distinctly remember thinking that I must have missed something, or ‘what the hell is going on here.’ Towards the end of the film there was a shot of the village and street. A man on the street was singing and the captions revealed to the audience that he was singing about a turtle. I couldn’t even tell you now what the song was about, I only remember something about a grand-father turtle. This went on, and so did my confusion. Barthes describes texts of bliss as follows, “…the text that discomforts, unsettles the reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.” (Barthes, 14) Not only was I discomforted and unsettled, but this oddly placed turtle song disrupted the narrative and for the next few minutes I was at a loss trying to figure out what the hell that was all about! I’m not a samurai film connoisseur, but I don’t think that most films have a random turtle song or tap dance sequence at the end. The tap dance scene is another example of bliss because even though the introducer mentioned that there would be an odd tap dance scene I was still taken aback at what was going on once the movie ended. There were no turtles or tap dancers anywhere else in the film, why here? Why was it necessary to caption the turtle song? Without the caption, we still would have gotten that a man in the street was singing a song.

When it comes to pleasure, the film delivers an anticipated amount of violence. The flashback in the film, where the men are fighting each other with sticks, was a concrete example for me. This seemed natural and common in such movies—to have a dominant male fighting others and showing their ability to fight well. Barthes states that, “Every fiction is supported by a social jargon, a sociolect, with which it identifies…” (27). To me, this scene signified a certain samurai/martial arts “jargon” that is expressed and that others can identify with. This scene can also be expressed in words, unlike the blissful moments (21).

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Last update: 10/23/2004