Jack Zipes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153384
- eISBN:
- 9781400841820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153384.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyzes Catherine Breillat's film Bluebeard. It argues that Breillat's filmic appropriation of Charles Perrault's “Bluebeard” is part of a memetic process that entails imitation, ...
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This chapter analyzes Catherine Breillat's film Bluebeard. It argues that Breillat's filmic appropriation of Charles Perrault's “Bluebeard” is part of a memetic process that entails imitation, innovation, and transformation. Her interpretation of Perrault's tale is a contestation, and while she seeks to replace Perrault's version with a double rendition of his tale, she also emphasizes the significance of Perrault's tale and demonstrates how all Bluebeard tales are part of a singular discursive process within the larger genre of the fairy tale. Interestingly, both Perrault and Breillat become merely markers in the evolutionary history of a tale type about mass murders that continues to breathe and demand our attention through supernormal stimuli.Less
This chapter analyzes Catherine Breillat's film Bluebeard. It argues that Breillat's filmic appropriation of Charles Perrault's “Bluebeard” is part of a memetic process that entails imitation, innovation, and transformation. Her interpretation of Perrault's tale is a contestation, and while she seeks to replace Perrault's version with a double rendition of his tale, she also emphasizes the significance of Perrault's tale and demonstrates how all Bluebeard tales are part of a singular discursive process within the larger genre of the fairy tale. Interestingly, both Perrault and Breillat become merely markers in the evolutionary history of a tale type about mass murders that continues to breathe and demand our attention through supernormal stimuli.
Jack Zipes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153384
- eISBN:
- 9781400841820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153384.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, ...
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If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread—or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. This book presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold—and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world. Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, the book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making its case, the book considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's “Bluebeard”; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions. While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales, this book provides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved—and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.Less
If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread—or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. This book presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold—and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world. Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, the book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making its case, the book considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's “Bluebeard”; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions. While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales, this book provides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved—and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.
John Paul Ricco
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226717777
- eISBN:
- 9780226113371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226113371.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter looks at Marguerite Duras’ short story The Malady of Death and Catherine Breillat's book Pornocracy, and film Anatomy of Hell—the latter two of which are redactions of the Duras story. ...
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This chapter looks at Marguerite Duras’ short story The Malady of Death and Catherine Breillat's book Pornocracy, and film Anatomy of Hell—the latter two of which are redactions of the Duras story. All three works are discussed in terms of their presentation of the scene of naked sharing of bodies and the inappropriable finitude that is impossibly shared between them, right up to death. The bed scenes in the Duras and Breillat are in turn compared with Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson as analysed by Sarah Kofman, and to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ photographic image of an unmade bed. By providing visual evidence of two bodies having been in the bed but that are no longer present, Gonzalez-Torres's image is an emblematic image for the entire book and its study of the retreat of bodies as retracing the scene of the decision between us as already-unmade and as erotic and funereal, at once.Less
This chapter looks at Marguerite Duras’ short story The Malady of Death and Catherine Breillat's book Pornocracy, and film Anatomy of Hell—the latter two of which are redactions of the Duras story. All three works are discussed in terms of their presentation of the scene of naked sharing of bodies and the inappropriable finitude that is impossibly shared between them, right up to death. The bed scenes in the Duras and Breillat are in turn compared with Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson as analysed by Sarah Kofman, and to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ photographic image of an unmade bed. By providing visual evidence of two bodies having been in the bed but that are no longer present, Gonzalez-Torres's image is an emblematic image for the entire book and its study of the retreat of bodies as retracing the scene of the decision between us as already-unmade and as erotic and funereal, at once.
James Quandt
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641604
- eISBN:
- 9780748651221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641604.003.0017
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book began as a brief review of Bruno Dumont's film, Twentynine Palms (France, 2003). It intended to puzzle out the reasons for Dumont's descent into gore and hard core, whether it was a mere ...
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This book began as a brief review of Bruno Dumont's film, Twentynine Palms (France, 2003). It intended to puzzle out the reasons for Dumont's descent into gore and hard core, whether it was a mere exaggeration of the brute corporeality of his previous cinema, or something more disturbing: a submission to fashion. Twentynine Palms felt like a forced anomaly, a freakish excursion into the unknown. Was it sheer coincidence that Twentynine Palms followed a spate of self-styled transgressive French films by Jean-Jacques Beineix, Catherine Breillat, François Ozon, Gaspar Noé and, most unlikely of all, Claire Denis, whose vampire nocturne, Trouble Every Day (France, 2001), seemed a radical departure from her earlier films, even those dealing with such ‘extreme’ subjects as cockfighting and serial killers? What was the New French Extremity? Though the ‘new extremism’ has perforce rejected humanism as false piety, pitilessness should not be mistaken for truth or courage, an error too often made by its reflexive defenders.Less
This book began as a brief review of Bruno Dumont's film, Twentynine Palms (France, 2003). It intended to puzzle out the reasons for Dumont's descent into gore and hard core, whether it was a mere exaggeration of the brute corporeality of his previous cinema, or something more disturbing: a submission to fashion. Twentynine Palms felt like a forced anomaly, a freakish excursion into the unknown. Was it sheer coincidence that Twentynine Palms followed a spate of self-styled transgressive French films by Jean-Jacques Beineix, Catherine Breillat, François Ozon, Gaspar Noé and, most unlikely of all, Claire Denis, whose vampire nocturne, Trouble Every Day (France, 2001), seemed a radical departure from her earlier films, even those dealing with such ‘extreme’ subjects as cockfighting and serial killers? What was the New French Extremity? Though the ‘new extremism’ has perforce rejected humanism as false piety, pitilessness should not be mistaken for truth or courage, an error too often made by its reflexive defenders.
Tanya C Horeck and Tina Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641604
- eISBN:
- 9780748651221
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Explosive images of sex and violence in films by directors such as Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier have attracted media attention for the ways in which they seek to ...
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Explosive images of sex and violence in films by directors such as Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier have attracted media attention for the ways in which they seek to shock and provoke the spectator into powerful affective and visceral responses. This book, devoted to the new extremism in contemporary European cinema, critically interrogates this highly contentious body of work and demonstrates that these films and the controversies they engender are indispensable to the critical task of rethinking the terms of spectatorship. Through critical discussions of key films and directors, it sheds new light on cutting-edge debates in film studies regarding sexuality, violence and spectatorship; affect and ethic; and the political dimensions of extreme cinema.Less
Explosive images of sex and violence in films by directors such as Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier have attracted media attention for the ways in which they seek to shock and provoke the spectator into powerful affective and visceral responses. This book, devoted to the new extremism in contemporary European cinema, critically interrogates this highly contentious body of work and demonstrates that these films and the controversies they engender are indispensable to the critical task of rethinking the terms of spectatorship. Through critical discussions of key films and directors, it sheds new light on cutting-edge debates in film studies regarding sexuality, violence and spectatorship; affect and ethic; and the political dimensions of extreme cinema.
James Quandt
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641604
- eISBN:
- 9780748651221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641604.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The convulsive violence of Bruno Dumont's film Twentynine Palms (2003) has dismayed many, particularly those who greeted his first two features, Life of Jesus (1997) and L'Humanité (1999), as the ...
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The convulsive violence of Bruno Dumont's film Twentynine Palms (2003) has dismayed many, particularly those who greeted his first two features, Life of Jesus (1997) and L'Humanité (1999), as the work of a true heir to Robert Bresson. Twentynine Palms elicits an unintentional anxiety: that Dumont, once imperiously impervious to fashion, has succumbed to the growing vogue for shock tactics in French cinema over the past decade. The critic truffle-snuffing for trends might call it the New French Extremity, this recent tendency to the willfully transgressive by directors like François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Philippe Grandrieux — and now, Dumont. Images and subjects once the provenance of splatter films, exploitation flicks, and porn — gang rapes, bashings and slashings and blindings, hard-ons and vulvas, cannibalism, sadomasochism and incest, fucking and fisting, sluices of cum and gore — proliferate in the high-art environs of a national cinema whose provocations have historically been formal, political, or philosophical or, at their most immoderate, at least assimilable as emanations of an artistic movement (mostly Surrealism).Less
The convulsive violence of Bruno Dumont's film Twentynine Palms (2003) has dismayed many, particularly those who greeted his first two features, Life of Jesus (1997) and L'Humanité (1999), as the work of a true heir to Robert Bresson. Twentynine Palms elicits an unintentional anxiety: that Dumont, once imperiously impervious to fashion, has succumbed to the growing vogue for shock tactics in French cinema over the past decade. The critic truffle-snuffing for trends might call it the New French Extremity, this recent tendency to the willfully transgressive by directors like François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Philippe Grandrieux — and now, Dumont. Images and subjects once the provenance of splatter films, exploitation flicks, and porn — gang rapes, bashings and slashings and blindings, hard-ons and vulvas, cannibalism, sadomasochism and incest, fucking and fisting, sluices of cum and gore — proliferate in the high-art environs of a national cinema whose provocations have historically been formal, political, or philosophical or, at their most immoderate, at least assimilable as emanations of an artistic movement (mostly Surrealism).
Martin Barker
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641604
- eISBN:
- 9780748651221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641604.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter draws on a 2005 study sponsored by the British Board of Film Classification to evaluate the ways in which real audiences (not audiences artificially assembled for purposes of a ...
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This chapter draws on a 2005 study sponsored by the British Board of Film Classification to evaluate the ways in which real audiences (not audiences artificially assembled for purposes of a laboratory-like ‘test’) make sense of and respond to watching sexual violence on screen in extreme cinema. It argues that such an endeavour is imperative because it challenges the widespread tendency to make general predictions regarding the ‘ways in which films might affect audiences’. Looking at the different responses that Critics (those who reject the film) and Embracers (those who engage with it) had to the violent ending of Catherine Breillat's À ma sæur! (France, 2001), the chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of heeding the ‘rich and complex’ ways that Embracers engage with films, noting that we need as film scholars to learn how to learn from them rather than falling back onto generalised predictions about the figure of the spectator.Less
This chapter draws on a 2005 study sponsored by the British Board of Film Classification to evaluate the ways in which real audiences (not audiences artificially assembled for purposes of a laboratory-like ‘test’) make sense of and respond to watching sexual violence on screen in extreme cinema. It argues that such an endeavour is imperative because it challenges the widespread tendency to make general predictions regarding the ‘ways in which films might affect audiences’. Looking at the different responses that Critics (those who reject the film) and Embracers (those who engage with it) had to the violent ending of Catherine Breillat's À ma sæur! (France, 2001), the chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of heeding the ‘rich and complex’ ways that Embracers engage with films, noting that we need as film scholars to learn how to learn from them rather than falling back onto generalised predictions about the figure of the spectator.
John Tulloch and Belinda Middleweek
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190244606
- eISBN:
- 9780190244644
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190244606.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Chapter 3 explores the critical frame of feminist Lacanian postmodernism, underpinning an understanding of real sex films like Romance as art-house cinema in mutual dialogue with pornography. It ...
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Chapter 3 explores the critical frame of feminist Lacanian postmodernism, underpinning an understanding of real sex films like Romance as art-house cinema in mutual dialogue with pornography. It argues that this fusion and tension between genres misses significant disparities within art house, and neither offers a robust history nor acknowledges that the Romance narrative focuses on Marie’s negotiation of her own sexuality and embodiment via a picaresque series of female/male encounters in a changed modernity. In its detailed analysis of Romance, the chapter draws on Giddens’s concepts of plastic sexuality and confluent love, Raymond Williams’s notion of emotional realism, and Trevor Griffiths’s historical understanding of the (raced and classed) wandering vagrant in an interdisciplinary “extension” of Tanya Krzywinska’s analysis of real sex cinema. This textual analysis combines “mutual understanding” of feminist mapping theory with risk sociology’s recognition of history as the growth of dialogue with the ars erotica.Less
Chapter 3 explores the critical frame of feminist Lacanian postmodernism, underpinning an understanding of real sex films like Romance as art-house cinema in mutual dialogue with pornography. It argues that this fusion and tension between genres misses significant disparities within art house, and neither offers a robust history nor acknowledges that the Romance narrative focuses on Marie’s negotiation of her own sexuality and embodiment via a picaresque series of female/male encounters in a changed modernity. In its detailed analysis of Romance, the chapter draws on Giddens’s concepts of plastic sexuality and confluent love, Raymond Williams’s notion of emotional realism, and Trevor Griffiths’s historical understanding of the (raced and classed) wandering vagrant in an interdisciplinary “extension” of Tanya Krzywinska’s analysis of real sex cinema. This textual analysis combines “mutual understanding” of feminist mapping theory with risk sociology’s recognition of history as the growth of dialogue with the ars erotica.
