Mediatizing Poverty: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Adaptation in Agnès Varda’s Sans toit ni loi

Abstract

Abstract As a fictional adaptation of the life of a real-life drifter (Setina Arhab), Agnès Varda’s 1985 film Sans toit ni loi presents the filmmaker with certain ethical questions. How can one ethically mediatize the poverty of others? How can one create and sell images of the poor which do not voyeuristically, hypocritically, or reductively exhibit them? Can one represent those who may refuse representation? I claim that Varda engages with these questions via a metafilmic reflection on the two means by which she might adapt Setina to the cinematic screen: documentation and aestheticization. Whereas Varda first seems to side with the plasticity of aestheticization over the strict mimesis of documentation, she then problematizes such a choice by dialogically questioning her decision not merely to document Setina but to transform her into a protean aesthetic spectacle for exhibition. This analysis reveals that Mona’s death by exposure is not random but rather concretizes Varda’s ethical concerns with the act of capturing and exhibiting—with mediatizing—life.