SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE IN THE CINEMA OF MICHAEL HANEKE AND ITS SOCIO-LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

As a cultural product, cinema can either succumb to the zeitgeist, producing works aimed at uncritical consumption, or question it through films that analyze the human condition. Michael Haneke's cinema falls into the latter category because, by avoiding traditional resources such as clear explanations of events, emotive soundtracks, or logical resolutions, the director proposes an experience that forces the audience to grapple with tension and emptiness, preventing the passive consumption of images. Thus, based on how the viewer is inserted into this dynamic, this text aims to investigate how symbolic violence is represented in Michael Haneke's cinema. Regarding methodology, this exploratory research, with a qualitative approach, uses the bibliographic review method to uncover social and legal interpretations of five of the director's works, selected through a representative sample of his filmography: The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), Funny Games (1997), Caché (2005), and The White Ribbon (2009). The results show that Haneke transforms cinema into a space for ethical reflection, destabilizing the gaze and revealing how certain forms of violence are structural, silent, and constantly reproduced. It concludes that, by exposing the relationship between the filmmaker, what is filmed, and the viewer, his work points to the need to reconsider the role of images in the construction of common sense, demanding a reactive stance from the viewer, lest a misanthropic complicity with the current state of affairs be revealed.