Justin Thomas McDaniel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824865986
- eISBN:
- 9780824873738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824865986.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative ...
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Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists across Asia have worked to build a leisure culture both within and outside of monasteries. The author looks at the growth of Buddhist leisure culture through a study of architects who helped design tourist sites, memorial gardens, monuments, museums, and even amusement parks in Nepal, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In conversation with theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, this book argues that these sites show the importance of public, leisure and spectacle culture from a Buddhist cultural perspective. They show that the “secular” and “religious” and the “public” and “private” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, many of these sites reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism being built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons, institutional campaigns, and sectarian developments. These sites present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise—a gathering not a movement. Finally, despite the creativity of lay and ordained visionaries, the building of these sites often faces problems along the way. Parks, monuments, temples, and museums are complex adaptive systems changed and influenced by visitors, budgets, materials, local and global economic conditions. No matter what the architect intends, buildings develop lives of their own.Less
Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists across Asia have worked to build a leisure culture both within and outside of monasteries. The author looks at the growth of Buddhist leisure culture through a study of architects who helped design tourist sites, memorial gardens, monuments, museums, and even amusement parks in Nepal, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In conversation with theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, this book argues that these sites show the importance of public, leisure and spectacle culture from a Buddhist cultural perspective. They show that the “secular” and “religious” and the “public” and “private” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, many of these sites reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism being built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons, institutional campaigns, and sectarian developments. These sites present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise—a gathering not a movement. Finally, despite the creativity of lay and ordained visionaries, the building of these sites often faces problems along the way. Parks, monuments, temples, and museums are complex adaptive systems changed and influenced by visitors, budgets, materials, local and global economic conditions. No matter what the architect intends, buildings develop lives of their own.
Maaheen Ahmed
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496825261
- eISBN:
- 9781496825315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496825261.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This concluding chapter traces the forms of rebelliousness discernible in comics monsters by highlighting the rebellious romantic heritage ensconced in the comics medium itself. It summarizes the ...
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This concluding chapter traces the forms of rebelliousness discernible in comics monsters by highlighting the rebellious romantic heritage ensconced in the comics medium itself. It summarizes the shared and distinct romantic features embodied by the monstrous protagonists in the previous chapters. This is followed by a brief close reading of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters to show how many of the romantic features brought out through the other comics reappear in this graphic novel.
Drawing links between the prominence of the spectacular and the spectacle in the analyzed stories as well as the medium, the chapter then elaborates on the embedding of romantic features and monstrous inclinations in comics, especially on spectacularity as an inevitable accompaniment to rebelliousness. The chapter ends with a brief coda on the presence of Romanticism through monsters in contemporary culture.Less
This concluding chapter traces the forms of rebelliousness discernible in comics monsters by highlighting the rebellious romantic heritage ensconced in the comics medium itself. It summarizes the shared and distinct romantic features embodied by the monstrous protagonists in the previous chapters. This is followed by a brief close reading of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters to show how many of the romantic features brought out through the other comics reappear in this graphic novel.
Drawing links between the prominence of the spectacular and the spectacle in the analyzed stories as well as the medium, the chapter then elaborates on the embedding of romantic features and monstrous inclinations in comics, especially on spectacularity as an inevitable accompaniment to rebelliousness. The chapter ends with a brief coda on the presence of Romanticism through monsters in contemporary culture.
Jacob C. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781529212501
- eISBN:
- 9781529212532
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529212501.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This book offers a new perspective on the theory of spectacle to explain the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism in American society and politics. While Trump is inseparable from the existence of a ...
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This book offers a new perspective on the theory of spectacle to explain the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism in American society and politics. While Trump is inseparable from the existence of a mass consumer culture under capitalism, few have elaborated on that aspect of his identity and rise to the Presidency. Drawing on Guy Debord and his interlocutors, as well as others like Deleuze and Guattari and Walter Benjamin, this book conceptualizes spectacle as an embodied assemblage that includes the affective and emotional components of life amid a broader materialization of capitalism in the everyday landscape. Inspired by the methodology of Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, this book triangulates theories of the spectacle with (1) journalistic coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign and its aftermath and (2) other journalistic coverage of contemporary consumer culture. Together, the spectacle appears as a bundle of intense feelings and sensations that enrol us into new relationships with commodities, technology and data, as well as the materiality of the consumer infrastructure itself, including built environments and the technologies therein. In total, we get a sense not only of how the State uses spectacle to govern, but how the spectacle came to transform the political sphere itself, thereby providing a context for Trumpism. The spectacle, then, leads not only to “post-truth” horizons, but more precise articulations with the far-right. As such, this book illuminates how Trump embodies the frightening potential of capitalist consumerism to intersect with and further enable fascistic forms of power.Less
This book offers a new perspective on the theory of spectacle to explain the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism in American society and politics. While Trump is inseparable from the existence of a mass consumer culture under capitalism, few have elaborated on that aspect of his identity and rise to the Presidency. Drawing on Guy Debord and his interlocutors, as well as others like Deleuze and Guattari and Walter Benjamin, this book conceptualizes spectacle as an embodied assemblage that includes the affective and emotional components of life amid a broader materialization of capitalism in the everyday landscape. Inspired by the methodology of Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, this book triangulates theories of the spectacle with (1) journalistic coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign and its aftermath and (2) other journalistic coverage of contemporary consumer culture. Together, the spectacle appears as a bundle of intense feelings and sensations that enrol us into new relationships with commodities, technology and data, as well as the materiality of the consumer infrastructure itself, including built environments and the technologies therein. In total, we get a sense not only of how the State uses spectacle to govern, but how the spectacle came to transform the political sphere itself, thereby providing a context for Trumpism. The spectacle, then, leads not only to “post-truth” horizons, but more precise articulations with the far-right. As such, this book illuminates how Trump embodies the frightening potential of capitalist consumerism to intersect with and further enable fascistic forms of power.
Maaheen Ahmed
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496825261
- eISBN:
- 9781496825315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496825261.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
The second chapter elaborates on the history of Romantic monsters and their connections to comics monsters as well as the medium of comics. It describes the context of the burgeoning romantic visual ...
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The second chapter elaborates on the history of Romantic monsters and their connections to comics monsters as well as the medium of comics. It describes the context of the burgeoning romantic visual culture, including the perpetuation of imaginative prints by William Blake and Francesco de Goya as well as the increase in freak shows and other forms of entertainment based on visual illusions.
This underscores the close ties between entertainment, 'spectacularity' (which combines theatricality and the spectacle while also alluding to specters) and monsters, while also showing how more rebellious, anti-Enlightenment strains crept in through the interest in the abnormal and the increasing space offered for unbridled emotionality at the ends of both production and reception.
The inclinations towards ambiguity and even human-like renditions discernible in the literary monsters created by Mary Shelley and Victor Hugo are discussed. Three monsters with strong romantic inclinations—Frankenstein’s monster, Baudelairian ennui, and the trickster (included for his playful ambiguity and love for the spectacle)—are introduced which personify the different potentialities of the medium while having commonalities with comics monsters.Less
The second chapter elaborates on the history of Romantic monsters and their connections to comics monsters as well as the medium of comics. It describes the context of the burgeoning romantic visual culture, including the perpetuation of imaginative prints by William Blake and Francesco de Goya as well as the increase in freak shows and other forms of entertainment based on visual illusions.
This underscores the close ties between entertainment, 'spectacularity' (which combines theatricality and the spectacle while also alluding to specters) and monsters, while also showing how more rebellious, anti-Enlightenment strains crept in through the interest in the abnormal and the increasing space offered for unbridled emotionality at the ends of both production and reception.
The inclinations towards ambiguity and even human-like renditions discernible in the literary monsters created by Mary Shelley and Victor Hugo are discussed. Three monsters with strong romantic inclinations—Frankenstein’s monster, Baudelairian ennui, and the trickster (included for his playful ambiguity and love for the spectacle)—are introduced which personify the different potentialities of the medium while having commonalities with comics monsters.
Maaheen Ahmed
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496825261
- eISBN:
- 9781496825315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496825261.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter begins by drawing out the similarities between Baudelairian Romanticism—especially the Baudelairian monster, ennui—and the protagonists and aesthetics of Enki Bilal’s Monstretetralogy. ...
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This chapter begins by drawing out the similarities between Baudelairian Romanticism—especially the Baudelairian monster, ennui—and the protagonists and aesthetics of Enki Bilal’s Monstretetralogy. The ambiguity of the monster is likened to the relativization of good and evil discernible in Baudelaire's works. In addition to discussing the problematization of memory, the chapter also highlights connections between monstrous spaces and its monstrous inhabitants. A discussion of the amorphousness of monstrosity is followed by an examination of the roles of specularity and rebelliousness. The chapter ends with a brief reflection on how Monstreand fluid monsters reflect on modern and contemporary history. Comparisons are also made between Baudelaire's modern ennui and Bilal's postmodern monster, both of which reflect upon a broader cultural change and experience of everyday life.Less
This chapter begins by drawing out the similarities between Baudelairian Romanticism—especially the Baudelairian monster, ennui—and the protagonists and aesthetics of Enki Bilal’s Monstretetralogy. The ambiguity of the monster is likened to the relativization of good and evil discernible in Baudelaire's works. In addition to discussing the problematization of memory, the chapter also highlights connections between monstrous spaces and its monstrous inhabitants. A discussion of the amorphousness of monstrosity is followed by an examination of the roles of specularity and rebelliousness. The chapter ends with a brief reflection on how Monstreand fluid monsters reflect on modern and contemporary history. Comparisons are also made between Baudelaire's modern ennui and Bilal's postmodern monster, both of which reflect upon a broader cultural change and experience of everyday life.
Maaheen Ahmed
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496825261
- eISBN:
- 9781496825315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496825261.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter shows how both the content and the structure of The Crow illustrate the notion that the monster is an embodiment of affect and representative of ruptures with logic and chaos. The Crow ...
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This chapter shows how both the content and the structure of The Crow illustrate the notion that the monster is an embodiment of affect and representative of ruptures with logic and chaos. The Crow reflects the disruption that is part of both monstrosity and Romanticism.
The chapter begins by unpacking the fragmented structure of the comic, which incorporates literary and visual references to Romanticism as well as diverse, mostly romantic, poems and post-punk, gothic rock lyrics in those fragments. Being fragments, these elements are also gothic in their intertextual cravings. The role of emotions in the story is then examined followed by a concluding section on the theatrical aspects of intense emotionality and its central role in the protagonist's quest. Spectacularity is complemented by the Crow's self-stylization as a painted figure with a permanent smile, immortal on one hand, but still deeply traumatized, for although he quickly heals from the shots directed at him, he still bleeds. The final section also discusses the coexisting ghostliness and spectactularity of the Crow’s revenge while also elaborating on the unfulfilled nature of his vengeful quest.Less
This chapter shows how both the content and the structure of The Crow illustrate the notion that the monster is an embodiment of affect and representative of ruptures with logic and chaos. The Crow reflects the disruption that is part of both monstrosity and Romanticism.
The chapter begins by unpacking the fragmented structure of the comic, which incorporates literary and visual references to Romanticism as well as diverse, mostly romantic, poems and post-punk, gothic rock lyrics in those fragments. Being fragments, these elements are also gothic in their intertextual cravings. The role of emotions in the story is then examined followed by a concluding section on the theatrical aspects of intense emotionality and its central role in the protagonist's quest. Spectacularity is complemented by the Crow's self-stylization as a painted figure with a permanent smile, immortal on one hand, but still deeply traumatized, for although he quickly heals from the shots directed at him, he still bleeds. The final section also discusses the coexisting ghostliness and spectactularity of the Crow’s revenge while also elaborating on the unfulfilled nature of his vengeful quest.
Tili Boon Cuillé
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781503613362
- eISBN:
- 9781503614178
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503613362.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The Enlightenment remains widely associated with the rise of scientific progress and the loss of religious faith, a dual tendency that is thought to have contributed to the disenchantment of the ...
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The Enlightenment remains widely associated with the rise of scientific progress and the loss of religious faith, a dual tendency that is thought to have contributed to the disenchantment of the world. In her wide-ranging and richly illustrated book, Tili Boon Cuillé questions the accuracy of this narrative by investigating the fate of the marvelous in the age of reason.
Exploring the affinities between the natural sciences and the fine arts, Cuillé examines the representation of natural phenomena—whether harmonious or discordant—in natural history, painting, opera, and the novel from Buffon and Rameau to Ossian and Staël. She demonstrates that philosophical, artistic, and emotional responses to the "spectacle of nature" in eighteenth-century France included wonder, enthusiasm, melancholy, and the "sentiment of divinity." These "passions of the soul," traditionally associated with religion and considered antithetical to enlightenment, were linked to the faculties of reason, imagination, and memory that structured Diderot's Encyclopédie and to contemporary theorizations of the sublime. As Cuillé reveals, the marvelous was not eradicated but instead preserved through the establishment and reform of major French cultural institutions dedicated to science, art, religion, and folklore that were designed to inform, enchant, and persuade.Less
The Enlightenment remains widely associated with the rise of scientific progress and the loss of religious faith, a dual tendency that is thought to have contributed to the disenchantment of the world. In her wide-ranging and richly illustrated book, Tili Boon Cuillé questions the accuracy of this narrative by investigating the fate of the marvelous in the age of reason.
Exploring the affinities between the natural sciences and the fine arts, Cuillé examines the representation of natural phenomena—whether harmonious or discordant—in natural history, painting, opera, and the novel from Buffon and Rameau to Ossian and Staël. She demonstrates that philosophical, artistic, and emotional responses to the "spectacle of nature" in eighteenth-century France included wonder, enthusiasm, melancholy, and the "sentiment of divinity." These "passions of the soul," traditionally associated with religion and considered antithetical to enlightenment, were linked to the faculties of reason, imagination, and memory that structured Diderot's Encyclopédie and to contemporary theorizations of the sublime. As Cuillé reveals, the marvelous was not eradicated but instead preserved through the establishment and reform of major French cultural institutions dedicated to science, art, religion, and folklore that were designed to inform, enchant, and persuade.
Ying Xiao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812605
- eISBN:
- 9781496812643
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812605.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter revisits Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1987) and highlights the film’s innovative employments of sound as metaphor and spectacle that speak to the larger issues of gender, sexuality, ...
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This chapter revisits Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1987) and highlights the film’s innovative employments of sound as metaphor and spectacle that speak to the larger issues of gender, sexuality, national identity, and human nature. As a formal analysis of the film and its indigenous songs and musical themes exhibits, Zhang Yimou and Zhao Jiping’s idiosyncratic, legendary collaboration and superlative synthesization of image-music-text have not only created an extraordinary spectacle that few other films could match, but have also sparked a new trend of cross-production and cross-fertilization between popular music and film since the late 1980s.Less
This chapter revisits Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1987) and highlights the film’s innovative employments of sound as metaphor and spectacle that speak to the larger issues of gender, sexuality, national identity, and human nature. As a formal analysis of the film and its indigenous songs and musical themes exhibits, Zhang Yimou and Zhao Jiping’s idiosyncratic, legendary collaboration and superlative synthesization of image-music-text have not only created an extraordinary spectacle that few other films could match, but have also sparked a new trend of cross-production and cross-fertilization between popular music and film since the late 1980s.
Katy Layton-Jones
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099694
- eISBN:
- 9781526104038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099694.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
In chapter five, attention turns to nineteenth-century attempts to represent the increasingly incendiary politics of urban Britain. The long nineteenth century was a period of significant political ...
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In chapter five, attention turns to nineteenth-century attempts to represent the increasingly incendiary politics of urban Britain. The long nineteenth century was a period of significant political upheaval, civil unrest and the complete reorganization of the nation’s political power base. In this climate of conflict and change, visual representations of collective action and the violence that frequently ensued were used to promote and condemn specific towns and the urban project in general. Using journalistic images and pictorial commemorative souvenirs of events such as the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the Bristol riots of 1831, chapter five explores the manner in which towns’ political identities were forged, circulated and interpreted.Less
In chapter five, attention turns to nineteenth-century attempts to represent the increasingly incendiary politics of urban Britain. The long nineteenth century was a period of significant political upheaval, civil unrest and the complete reorganization of the nation’s political power base. In this climate of conflict and change, visual representations of collective action and the violence that frequently ensued were used to promote and condemn specific towns and the urban project in general. Using journalistic images and pictorial commemorative souvenirs of events such as the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the Bristol riots of 1831, chapter five explores the manner in which towns’ political identities were forged, circulated and interpreted.
Benjamin Bigelow
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474438056
- eISBN:
- 9781474476591
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438056.003.0029
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter investigates cinematic strategies used to depict Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 on screen. The critical discourse surrounding Heyerdahl’s 1950 documentary film has centered ...
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This chapter investigates cinematic strategies used to depict Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 on screen. The critical discourse surrounding Heyerdahl’s 1950 documentary film has centered on the ontology of its images, which film history’s most influential theorist of realism, André Bazin, famously praised in Kon-Tiki. Despite Bazin’s enthusiasm, both expedition and documentary were highly mediated and staged promotional events from the beginning. The only reason a film could be cobbled together at all from the waterlogged 16mm film that Heyerdahl brought home with him was because of the intervention of a Swedish film technician who resized and repaired the badly damaged sequences. In 2013, Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg turned to Heyerdahl’s expedition for their own film. In their take, the sedate source material of the documentary has given way to spectacular visual effects and scenes of peril on the high seas. All the absent scenes of danger in the original take center stage in the latter film. Subtext has become text, as Rønning and Sandberg transform the source material into cinematic spectacle.Less
This chapter investigates cinematic strategies used to depict Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 on screen. The critical discourse surrounding Heyerdahl’s 1950 documentary film has centered on the ontology of its images, which film history’s most influential theorist of realism, André Bazin, famously praised in Kon-Tiki. Despite Bazin’s enthusiasm, both expedition and documentary were highly mediated and staged promotional events from the beginning. The only reason a film could be cobbled together at all from the waterlogged 16mm film that Heyerdahl brought home with him was because of the intervention of a Swedish film technician who resized and repaired the badly damaged sequences. In 2013, Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg turned to Heyerdahl’s expedition for their own film. In their take, the sedate source material of the documentary has given way to spectacular visual effects and scenes of peril on the high seas. All the absent scenes of danger in the original take center stage in the latter film. Subtext has become text, as Rønning and Sandberg transform the source material into cinematic spectacle.
Jacob C. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781529212501
- eISBN:
- 9781529212532
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529212501.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
The introduction lays the philosophical foundations for the study by discussing Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” and relevant critiques. To reconstruct this theoretical approach, the ...
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The introduction lays the philosophical foundations for the study by discussing Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” and relevant critiques. To reconstruct this theoretical approach, the Introduction also incorporates one of the first theorists of the spectacle – Walter Benjamin – and other more contemporary theorists that are essential for understanding the spectacle of consumption today, namely Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Justification for “an embodied assemblage” approach is provided, as a way to transcend previous shortcomings of theories of the spectacle. This overview is critical for understanding Trump and Trumpism today.Less
The introduction lays the philosophical foundations for the study by discussing Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” and relevant critiques. To reconstruct this theoretical approach, the Introduction also incorporates one of the first theorists of the spectacle – Walter Benjamin – and other more contemporary theorists that are essential for understanding the spectacle of consumption today, namely Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Justification for “an embodied assemblage” approach is provided, as a way to transcend previous shortcomings of theories of the spectacle. This overview is critical for understanding Trump and Trumpism today.
Geneva M. Gano
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474439756
- eISBN:
- 9781474490955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439756.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Playwright Eugene O’Neill jumpstarted his career and had his first major successes in and from the little art colony in Provincetown; this chapter focuses on O’Neill, the Provincetown Players’ most ...
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Playwright Eugene O’Neill jumpstarted his career and had his first major successes in and from the little art colony in Provincetown; this chapter focuses on O’Neill, the Provincetown Players’ most prominent member, who lived and worked there between 1916 and 1922. The chapter shows how the compressed scale and distinctive mobility of Provincetown’s creative community was crucial to O’Neill’s success. There, O’Neill was exposed to the art colony’s distinctive amalgamation of modern and experimental theatre practices, including those dealing with writing, staging, and promotion. His own work built upon these: he was especially adept at harvesting, adapting, and exporting these practices from the rural outpost to the metropolitan hub of modernist activity in New York. This chapter argues that the formal and topical elements of O’Neill’s notorious play The Emperor Jones (conceived and written in Provincetown), along with its production and promotional strategies, were distinctive to the little art colony. There, O’Neill cultivated and marketed to a ‘special audience,’ drew topical inspiration from long-simmering racial anxieties in the region, and expanded upon the Provincetown Players’ theatrical practice of superpersonalization: a writing and staging strategy that amplifies the bleed between character and actor in order to heighten the audience’s engagement in the play. These strategies kindled his white audience’s ‘racial feelings’: a move that brought the relatively unknown O’Neill into the national and international public consciousness and created a still-resonant sensation about his work.Less
Playwright Eugene O’Neill jumpstarted his career and had his first major successes in and from the little art colony in Provincetown; this chapter focuses on O’Neill, the Provincetown Players’ most prominent member, who lived and worked there between 1916 and 1922. The chapter shows how the compressed scale and distinctive mobility of Provincetown’s creative community was crucial to O’Neill’s success. There, O’Neill was exposed to the art colony’s distinctive amalgamation of modern and experimental theatre practices, including those dealing with writing, staging, and promotion. His own work built upon these: he was especially adept at harvesting, adapting, and exporting these practices from the rural outpost to the metropolitan hub of modernist activity in New York. This chapter argues that the formal and topical elements of O’Neill’s notorious play The Emperor Jones (conceived and written in Provincetown), along with its production and promotional strategies, were distinctive to the little art colony. There, O’Neill cultivated and marketed to a ‘special audience,’ drew topical inspiration from long-simmering racial anxieties in the region, and expanded upon the Provincetown Players’ theatrical practice of superpersonalization: a writing and staging strategy that amplifies the bleed between character and actor in order to heighten the audience’s engagement in the play. These strategies kindled his white audience’s ‘racial feelings’: a move that brought the relatively unknown O’Neill into the national and international public consciousness and created a still-resonant sensation about his work.
Catherine Morley
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748626014
- eISBN:
- 9780748670673
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748626014.003.0016
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Focusing on long and short prose pieces which emerged in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, this chapter traces the shift from writers’ personal responses to the events to ...
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Focusing on long and short prose pieces which emerged in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, this chapter traces the shift from writers’ personal responses to the events to more considered, longer fictional works. The author, Catherine Morley, observes how many writers felt bereft of purpose after the attacks, unable to find words commensurate with the visual spectacle and psychological devastation of the day. While covering a range of contemporary literary writers including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith and Jay McInerney, the chapter concentrates on Don DeLillo’s novel Falling Man (2007), John Updike’s Terrorist (2007) and a selection of works from Ulrich Baer’s edited collection, 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11 (2002), including Siri Hustvedt’s short essay on the inefficacy of language in the wake of trauma. The discussion of DeLillo and Updike addresses themes such as performance, spectacle, memory, language and the redemptive role of art in the processes of grief.Less
Focusing on long and short prose pieces which emerged in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, this chapter traces the shift from writers’ personal responses to the events to more considered, longer fictional works. The author, Catherine Morley, observes how many writers felt bereft of purpose after the attacks, unable to find words commensurate with the visual spectacle and psychological devastation of the day. While covering a range of contemporary literary writers including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith and Jay McInerney, the chapter concentrates on Don DeLillo’s novel Falling Man (2007), John Updike’s Terrorist (2007) and a selection of works from Ulrich Baer’s edited collection, 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11 (2002), including Siri Hustvedt’s short essay on the inefficacy of language in the wake of trauma. The discussion of DeLillo and Updike addresses themes such as performance, spectacle, memory, language and the redemptive role of art in the processes of grief.
Melissa Dickson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474443647
- eISBN:
- 9781474477055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474443647.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns to the science of stagecraft, and to the endless recreations and adaptations of the wonders, magic, and treasures of the Arabian Nights that took place within the shows culture of ...
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This chapter turns to the science of stagecraft, and to the endless recreations and adaptations of the wonders, magic, and treasures of the Arabian Nights that took place within the shows culture of nineteenth-century Britain. These authorless, ownerless tales presented ideal theatrical opportunities to display the rich landscapes, domestic interiors and dazzling treasures of the East within the public spaces of Britain. In so doing, they facilitated a kind of ‘virtual’ tourism, whereby audiences might participate in the adventurer’s narrative of discovery, infiltration, exploration, and safe return, without ever leaving England. At the same time, however, such performances fostered a self-reflective, inward movement, as an imaginative destination of childhood became a physical space that might be stepped into, examined and explored. Performances of the Arabian Nights had a disturbing capacity to evoke and to disrupt childhood memories, as they were reliant upon a substantial amount of labour and technical expertise in order to realise fully the workings of magic and the apparently spontaneous eruption of the supernatural on stage. As a vehicle for exploring the material and technological limits of nineteenth-century stagecraft, the wonder and enchantment of the Arabian Nights thus became inextricably intertwined with the wonder of machinery and technical ingenuity, as new techniques were developed for representing fantasy and manufacturing magic.Less
This chapter turns to the science of stagecraft, and to the endless recreations and adaptations of the wonders, magic, and treasures of the Arabian Nights that took place within the shows culture of nineteenth-century Britain. These authorless, ownerless tales presented ideal theatrical opportunities to display the rich landscapes, domestic interiors and dazzling treasures of the East within the public spaces of Britain. In so doing, they facilitated a kind of ‘virtual’ tourism, whereby audiences might participate in the adventurer’s narrative of discovery, infiltration, exploration, and safe return, without ever leaving England. At the same time, however, such performances fostered a self-reflective, inward movement, as an imaginative destination of childhood became a physical space that might be stepped into, examined and explored. Performances of the Arabian Nights had a disturbing capacity to evoke and to disrupt childhood memories, as they were reliant upon a substantial amount of labour and technical expertise in order to realise fully the workings of magic and the apparently spontaneous eruption of the supernatural on stage. As a vehicle for exploring the material and technological limits of nineteenth-century stagecraft, the wonder and enchantment of the Arabian Nights thus became inextricably intertwined with the wonder of machinery and technical ingenuity, as new techniques were developed for representing fantasy and manufacturing magic.
Miles Orvell
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190491604
- eISBN:
- 9780197523285
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190491604.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Cultural History
Empire of Ruins explores the meaning of ruins in American culture, from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, arguing that photographs have been the chief means by which the ...
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Empire of Ruins explores the meaning of ruins in American culture, from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, arguing that photographs have been the chief means by which the significance of ruins has been created in American culture. The book traces a historical argument that begins in the nineteenth century, when Americans yearned for the ruins of Europe, then moves to the discovery of Native American ruins in the Southwest. Later chapters explore the visualization of inner city ruins, abandoned factories, and shopping malls, and the “creative destruction” of buildings in order to make way for bigger ones. In addition, it analyzes the imagery of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster; the ruins of the industrial landscape through mining operations; the ruins created by natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy; and the ruins produced by climate change, including the melting of the ice caps. Empire of Ruins considers, in conclusion, the way the picturing of ruins has served to mark revolutionary moments in political culture, symbolizing the choices societies must make.
Empire of Ruins focuses mainly on photography, but it encompasses painting, literature, and popular films as well, in order to provide a larger picture of the cultural meaning of ruins. At the same time, it examines the powerful aesthetic attraction of ruin imagery in photographs and films, showing how the Destructive Sublime, a new category of experience, evokes contrary responses in viewers.Less
Empire of Ruins explores the meaning of ruins in American culture, from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, arguing that photographs have been the chief means by which the significance of ruins has been created in American culture. The book traces a historical argument that begins in the nineteenth century, when Americans yearned for the ruins of Europe, then moves to the discovery of Native American ruins in the Southwest. Later chapters explore the visualization of inner city ruins, abandoned factories, and shopping malls, and the “creative destruction” of buildings in order to make way for bigger ones. In addition, it analyzes the imagery of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster; the ruins of the industrial landscape through mining operations; the ruins created by natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy; and the ruins produced by climate change, including the melting of the ice caps. Empire of Ruins considers, in conclusion, the way the picturing of ruins has served to mark revolutionary moments in political culture, symbolizing the choices societies must make.
Empire of Ruins focuses mainly on photography, but it encompasses painting, literature, and popular films as well, in order to provide a larger picture of the cultural meaning of ruins. At the same time, it examines the powerful aesthetic attraction of ruin imagery in photographs and films, showing how the Destructive Sublime, a new category of experience, evokes contrary responses in viewers.
Lisa Purse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638178
- eISBN:
- 9780748670857
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638178.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Action cinema is a popular and familiar form that reflects the cultural, industrial and historical landscape from which it emerges. This study analyses action cinema's pleasures and complexities in ...
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Action cinema is a popular and familiar form that reflects the cultural, industrial and historical landscape from which it emerges. This study analyses action cinema's pleasures and complexities in the light of its cinematic history and the latest critical debates. Focussing on 2000s action cinema, the book explores visual style, narrative, representation and various contexts of production through a diverse series of case studies including Avatar (2009), Casino Royale (2006), The Hurt Locker (2008) and Banlieue 13 (2004). The first three chapters address contemporary action cinema's aesthetics, its narrative structures and audio-visual presentation. Bringing phenomenological film theory together with close textual analyses, these chapters assert the centrality of the relationship between an embodied mode of spectatorship and the spectacle of embodied empowerment to the communicativeness of narrative development and action sequence design. The second half of the book explores the representational hierarchies evident in contemporary action movies, and their relationship to wider ideological and cultural sea-changes and the genre's interactions with a proliferating media landscape. The book ends with a chapter on the impact of globalization on action cinema, interrogating notions of ‘Americanisation’, the national and the international through a case study analysis of French company EuropaCorp's recent attempts at an internationalising formula for action. The study proposes a flexible critical approach to the action film that draws on a range of pertinent areas of critical discourse (on genre, narrative, the body, aesthetics and social, cultural and political contexts) in order to accommodate the action film’s varying traits and characteristics.Less
Action cinema is a popular and familiar form that reflects the cultural, industrial and historical landscape from which it emerges. This study analyses action cinema's pleasures and complexities in the light of its cinematic history and the latest critical debates. Focussing on 2000s action cinema, the book explores visual style, narrative, representation and various contexts of production through a diverse series of case studies including Avatar (2009), Casino Royale (2006), The Hurt Locker (2008) and Banlieue 13 (2004). The first three chapters address contemporary action cinema's aesthetics, its narrative structures and audio-visual presentation. Bringing phenomenological film theory together with close textual analyses, these chapters assert the centrality of the relationship between an embodied mode of spectatorship and the spectacle of embodied empowerment to the communicativeness of narrative development and action sequence design. The second half of the book explores the representational hierarchies evident in contemporary action movies, and their relationship to wider ideological and cultural sea-changes and the genre's interactions with a proliferating media landscape. The book ends with a chapter on the impact of globalization on action cinema, interrogating notions of ‘Americanisation’, the national and the international through a case study analysis of French company EuropaCorp's recent attempts at an internationalising formula for action. The study proposes a flexible critical approach to the action film that draws on a range of pertinent areas of critical discourse (on genre, narrative, the body, aesthetics and social, cultural and political contexts) in order to accommodate the action film’s varying traits and characteristics.
Hélène Ibata
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526117397
- eISBN:
- 9781526136114
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117397.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter 5 focuses on what appears to be one of the most conscious responses to the Burkean challenge: the invention of the panorama by the Irish-Scottish painter Robert Barker in the late 1780s. By ...
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Chapter 5 focuses on what appears to be one of the most conscious responses to the Burkean challenge: the invention of the panorama by the Irish-Scottish painter Robert Barker in the late 1780s. By literally removing the edges of representation, and immersing its viewers within an uninterrupted circular view, the panorama created a striking illusion of reality which, at least while the medium was still novel, caused unprecedented spectatorial thrills. While the medium could be linked to a tradition of illusion and immersion which predated the Enlightenment reflexion on the sublime, Barker clearly saw its relevance as a means to deny the limitations of painting. The chapter’s analyses of programmes, narratives and descriptions of panoramas by Robert Barker, Henry Aston Barker, Robert Ker Porter and Robert Burford suggest that this conception of the panorama as the most adequate pictorial vehicle of the sublime was to endure for several decades.Less
Chapter 5 focuses on what appears to be one of the most conscious responses to the Burkean challenge: the invention of the panorama by the Irish-Scottish painter Robert Barker in the late 1780s. By literally removing the edges of representation, and immersing its viewers within an uninterrupted circular view, the panorama created a striking illusion of reality which, at least while the medium was still novel, caused unprecedented spectatorial thrills. While the medium could be linked to a tradition of illusion and immersion which predated the Enlightenment reflexion on the sublime, Barker clearly saw its relevance as a means to deny the limitations of painting. The chapter’s analyses of programmes, narratives and descriptions of panoramas by Robert Barker, Henry Aston Barker, Robert Ker Porter and Robert Burford suggest that this conception of the panorama as the most adequate pictorial vehicle of the sublime was to endure for several decades.
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748683178
- eISBN:
- 9781474408684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748683178.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
For Jean-Luc Nancy there appear to be three ways in which art today is contemporary: conceptual non-identity with itself, being in tune with its own questioning, above all a political signification. ...
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For Jean-Luc Nancy there appear to be three ways in which art today is contemporary: conceptual non-identity with itself, being in tune with its own questioning, above all a political signification. Nancy is in agreement with the first two, the third he disclaims. Art's conceptual non-identity is consonant with its self-questioning, for the question which art unfolds is the ontological one of what it is; a question which makes art different from itself in itself. According to this twofold conception, art is before anything else the exposition of the question ‘What is art?’ It will be argued in this paper that art is our ‘disengagement’ from signification, our ‘suspension’ from it; it ‘isolates what we call a “sense,” or a part or feature of this sense… so as to force it to be only what it is outside of signifying’. Sense beyond signification is the abandonment of the signifier and the forswearing of the appropriation of signifieds in favour of opening, opening the world to its sense, opening the world to its possibilities.Less
For Jean-Luc Nancy there appear to be three ways in which art today is contemporary: conceptual non-identity with itself, being in tune with its own questioning, above all a political signification. Nancy is in agreement with the first two, the third he disclaims. Art's conceptual non-identity is consonant with its self-questioning, for the question which art unfolds is the ontological one of what it is; a question which makes art different from itself in itself. According to this twofold conception, art is before anything else the exposition of the question ‘What is art?’ It will be argued in this paper that art is our ‘disengagement’ from signification, our ‘suspension’ from it; it ‘isolates what we call a “sense,” or a part or feature of this sense… so as to force it to be only what it is outside of signifying’. Sense beyond signification is the abandonment of the signifier and the forswearing of the appropriation of signifieds in favour of opening, opening the world to its sense, opening the world to its possibilities.
Jing Meng
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528462
- eISBN:
- 9789888053490
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528462.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 2 looks into the film Youth, which chronicles the lives of several performers in a military art troupe throughout the decades and focuses on coming- of-age romance. Similar to Under the ...
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Chapter 2 looks into the film Youth, which chronicles the lives of several performers in a military art troupe throughout the decades and focuses on coming- of-age romance. Similar to Under the Hawthorn Tree, Youth also reveals a strong sentiment of nostalgia. Whereas the former longs for the simple and pure life of the past, the latter is obsessed with the aromatic smell of youth. Youth reproduces a lot of Mao-era dances and songs, rendering memory as a form of spectacular performance, while history has become merely a footnote to youth and performance.Less
Chapter 2 looks into the film Youth, which chronicles the lives of several performers in a military art troupe throughout the decades and focuses on coming- of-age romance. Similar to Under the Hawthorn Tree, Youth also reveals a strong sentiment of nostalgia. Whereas the former longs for the simple and pure life of the past, the latter is obsessed with the aromatic smell of youth. Youth reproduces a lot of Mao-era dances and songs, rendering memory as a form of spectacular performance, while history has become merely a footnote to youth and performance.
Brett Levinson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223848
- eISBN:
- 9780823235421
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223848.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Like many before him, Foucault draws a strong connection between language and death. He describes the aversion of discourse in similar terms which he later used to posit the biopolitical “ban” on ...
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Like many before him, Foucault draws a strong connection between language and death. He describes the aversion of discourse in similar terms which he later used to posit the biopolitical “ban” on death: “I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers”. In order to respond to such a claim, the chapter weighs three related issues: the news media, ideology, and consciousness raising. It examines Agamben's treatment of Debord's Society of the Spectacle, offering a model for analyzing the role of the media in the discussion of biopolitics. It also highlights the connection between the loss of language as the loss of what is common to man and as a manifestation of the society of the spectacle.Less
Like many before him, Foucault draws a strong connection between language and death. He describes the aversion of discourse in similar terms which he later used to posit the biopolitical “ban” on death: “I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers”. In order to respond to such a claim, the chapter weighs three related issues: the news media, ideology, and consciousness raising. It examines Agamben's treatment of Debord's Society of the Spectacle, offering a model for analyzing the role of the media in the discussion of biopolitics. It also highlights the connection between the loss of language as the loss of what is common to man and as a manifestation of the society of the spectacle.
