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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dan Laughey
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623808
- eISBN:
- 9780748653034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623808.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter follows on closely from the previous one by seeking to conceptualise music consumption and its necessary ‘other’ — production — within a paradigmatic framework that suspends orthodox ...
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This chapter follows on closely from the previous one by seeking to conceptualise music consumption and its necessary ‘other’ — production — within a paradigmatic framework that suspends orthodox structuralist models of hegemony polarised by dominant and subordinate socio-economic classes, in favour of dynamic interactionist models which systematically explore concrete, everyday cultural practices. These dynamic interactionist approaches to cultural practices do not all neatly fit into the same ‘spectacle, narcissism, and performance’ framework, but they necessarily contain elements of the Spectacle/Performance Paradigm in their movement away from structural Marxism. After first evaluating the most ground-breaking theories into everyday consumption and production, it applies those theories of greater usefulness for the aims of this research to the relative merits of studies into audiences and — more pressingly — performances.Less
This chapter follows on closely from the previous one by seeking to conceptualise music consumption and its necessary ‘other’ — production — within a paradigmatic framework that suspends orthodox structuralist models of hegemony polarised by dominant and subordinate socio-economic classes, in favour of dynamic interactionist models which systematically explore concrete, everyday cultural practices. These dynamic interactionist approaches to cultural practices do not all neatly fit into the same ‘spectacle, narcissism, and performance’ framework, but they necessarily contain elements of the Spectacle/Performance Paradigm in their movement away from structural Marxism. After first evaluating the most ground-breaking theories into everyday consumption and production, it applies those theories of greater usefulness for the aims of this research to the relative merits of studies into audiences and — more pressingly — performances.
Lisa Purse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638178
- eISBN:
- 9780748670857
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638178.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter argues against action cinema's reputation for narrative paucity, by demonstrating the ways in which the action film is highly narratively communicative. Using Avatar and I, Robot as case ...
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This chapter argues against action cinema's reputation for narrative paucity, by demonstrating the ways in which the action film is highly narratively communicative. Using Avatar and I, Robot as case studies, the chapter shows how narrative information is communicated not just through dialogue and action but through the audio-visual presentation of those elements. Audio-visual presentation can supplement explicit narrative information with thematic detail that then shapes our responses to subsequent narrative developments and action sequences. The chapter elaborates the concept of the action hero's ‘narrative of becoming’ that articulates the protagonist's physical and emotional trajectory towards achieving full occupation of the heroic action body. This narrative of becoming is an integral part of the main narrative thrust that moves the ?lm towards its resolution. In this formulation action sequences display the extraordinary capacities of the action hero, but in a manner that is inextricably linked with narrative process. Rather than being discrete tests of the hero's stamina, agility and ingenuity, action sequences operate developmentally across the action ?lm to construct the hero's ‘becoming-powerful.’Less
This chapter argues against action cinema's reputation for narrative paucity, by demonstrating the ways in which the action film is highly narratively communicative. Using Avatar and I, Robot as case studies, the chapter shows how narrative information is communicated not just through dialogue and action but through the audio-visual presentation of those elements. Audio-visual presentation can supplement explicit narrative information with thematic detail that then shapes our responses to subsequent narrative developments and action sequences. The chapter elaborates the concept of the action hero's ‘narrative of becoming’ that articulates the protagonist's physical and emotional trajectory towards achieving full occupation of the heroic action body. This narrative of becoming is an integral part of the main narrative thrust that moves the ?lm towards its resolution. In this formulation action sequences display the extraordinary capacities of the action hero, but in a manner that is inextricably linked with narrative process. Rather than being discrete tests of the hero's stamina, agility and ingenuity, action sequences operate developmentally across the action ?lm to construct the hero's ‘becoming-powerful.’
Lisa Purse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638178
- eISBN:
- 9780748670857
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638178.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the aesthetic tendencies evident in the construction of the contemporary action sequence, exploring what might be at stake in their inclusion and popularity, and the ways in ...
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This chapter discusses the aesthetic tendencies evident in the construction of the contemporary action sequence, exploring what might be at stake in their inclusion and popularity, and the ways in which they are narratively expressive as well as spectacular. The stylistic and representational aspects of the staging of speed, risk and mastery are investigated using Fast and Furious and Live Free or Die Hard as case studies, and the discussion of action cinema as sensory experience is developed in relation to these dimensions. The chapter ends with an explicit emphasis on sound design, considering the sound strategies used in the contemporary action sequence to stage the body, and their consequences for a film's representational hierarchy.Less
This chapter discusses the aesthetic tendencies evident in the construction of the contemporary action sequence, exploring what might be at stake in their inclusion and popularity, and the ways in which they are narratively expressive as well as spectacular. The stylistic and representational aspects of the staging of speed, risk and mastery are investigated using Fast and Furious and Live Free or Die Hard as case studies, and the discussion of action cinema as sensory experience is developed in relation to these dimensions. The chapter ends with an explicit emphasis on sound design, considering the sound strategies used in the contemporary action sequence to stage the body, and their consequences for a film's representational hierarchy.
G. Andrew Stuckey
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9789888390816
- eISBN:
- 9789888455133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390816.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Peter Chan’s 2005, Perhaps Love, depicts the filming of a musical film, and serves as a prime example of mise-en-abîme metacinema, or in other words, the metacinema of production. Close reading of ...
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Peter Chan’s 2005, Perhaps Love, depicts the filming of a musical film, and serves as a prime example of mise-en-abîme metacinema, or in other words, the metacinema of production. Close reading of the film reveals the circulation of musical genre conventions from Bollywood to Hollywood to Hong Kong and China. Key among these conventions are the display of spectacular images of singing and dancing in combination with dazzling editing speeds reflecting the influence, particularly, of Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge! Gender relations, always an important focus in musical film, here point to postcolonial formations linking (and distinguishing) mainland China, Hong Kong, and Hollywood, and which, in the end, abandon the female lead.Less
Peter Chan’s 2005, Perhaps Love, depicts the filming of a musical film, and serves as a prime example of mise-en-abîme metacinema, or in other words, the metacinema of production. Close reading of the film reveals the circulation of musical genre conventions from Bollywood to Hollywood to Hong Kong and China. Key among these conventions are the display of spectacular images of singing and dancing in combination with dazzling editing speeds reflecting the influence, particularly, of Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge! Gender relations, always an important focus in musical film, here point to postcolonial formations linking (and distinguishing) mainland China, Hong Kong, and Hollywood, and which, in the end, abandon the female lead.
Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 1: “Tableaux Mort: Execution, Cinema, and Carceral Fantasies” explores the nature of the carceral imaginary within the context of the early execution films, Galvanism and the electrical ...
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Chapter 1: “Tableaux Mort: Execution, Cinema, and Carceral Fantasies” explores the nature of the carceral imaginary within the context of the early execution films, Galvanism and the electrical wonder show, and the Phantasmagoria. I use the contested cultural meanings of electricity and capital punishment as suggested in The Execution of Czolgoszto discern how electrocution represented in examples as diverse as an episode of Harry Houdini’s Master Mystery series (1919), a fictional reconstruction of Ruth Snyder’s 1928 electrocution in Picture Snatcher(Lloyd Bacon, 1933), and The Green Mile(Frank Darabont, 1999). These films satisfy a psychic impulse to witness punishment and incarceration while illuminating the long durée of punishment as embodied spectacle in numerous nineteenth century entertainment.Less
Chapter 1: “Tableaux Mort: Execution, Cinema, and Carceral Fantasies” explores the nature of the carceral imaginary within the context of the early execution films, Galvanism and the electrical wonder show, and the Phantasmagoria. I use the contested cultural meanings of electricity and capital punishment as suggested in The Execution of Czolgoszto discern how electrocution represented in examples as diverse as an episode of Harry Houdini’s Master Mystery series (1919), a fictional reconstruction of Ruth Snyder’s 1928 electrocution in Picture Snatcher(Lloyd Bacon, 1933), and The Green Mile(Frank Darabont, 1999). These films satisfy a psychic impulse to witness punishment and incarceration while illuminating the long durée of punishment as embodied spectacle in numerous nineteenth century entertainment.
Gian Maria Annovi
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231180306
- eISBN:
- 9780231542708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231180306.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter Three discusses the conditions for the strategic branding of Pasolini’s authorship in the Italian media during the 60s, and his attitude to celebrity culture. In this chapter, I consider the ...
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Chapter Three discusses the conditions for the strategic branding of Pasolini’s authorship in the Italian media during the 60s, and his attitude to celebrity culture. In this chapter, I consider the idea of performing authorship in the terms of self-fictionalization and masquerade. In particular, in his short film La ricotta (The Ricotta, 1964), which represents the first example of the spectacularization of Pasolini’s authorship, he projects his authorial self onto the figure of American star director Orson Welles. An outsider of the studio system, Welles furnishes Pasolini a model for an auteur who persistently seeks out a performative mode, putting himself in play as the author alongside the other characters. At the same time, through the figure of this star director, Pasolini also expresses his uncompromising attitude toward celebrity culture and culture industry. In La rabbia (The Rage, 1963)—created through montages of unused film footage from a film archive—Pasolini uses another international star, Marilyn Monroe, to stage his ambivalence towards the role of his own representation in the media. For Pasolini, Monroe’s death becomes a tragic, symbolic form of subjective resistance and a protest against the conformist system of celebrity that they both confronted.Less
Chapter Three discusses the conditions for the strategic branding of Pasolini’s authorship in the Italian media during the 60s, and his attitude to celebrity culture. In this chapter, I consider the idea of performing authorship in the terms of self-fictionalization and masquerade. In particular, in his short film La ricotta (The Ricotta, 1964), which represents the first example of the spectacularization of Pasolini’s authorship, he projects his authorial self onto the figure of American star director Orson Welles. An outsider of the studio system, Welles furnishes Pasolini a model for an auteur who persistently seeks out a performative mode, putting himself in play as the author alongside the other characters. At the same time, through the figure of this star director, Pasolini also expresses his uncompromising attitude toward celebrity culture and culture industry. In La rabbia (The Rage, 1963)—created through montages of unused film footage from a film archive—Pasolini uses another international star, Marilyn Monroe, to stage his ambivalence towards the role of his own representation in the media. For Pasolini, Monroe’s death becomes a tragic, symbolic form of subjective resistance and a protest against the conformist system of celebrity that they both confronted.
Jennie Chapman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617039034
- eISBN:
- 9781621039891
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039034.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter explores the ways in which evangelical agency issues not only from the interpretation of the written word, but also the deciphering of visual cues and signs, Thus, watching and observing ...
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This chapter explores the ways in which evangelical agency issues not only from the interpretation of the written word, but also the deciphering of visual cues and signs, Thus, watching and observing are central to the Left Behind narrative. The chapter shows how the end of the world functions as a particularly compelling spectacle in apocalyptic literature, including Left Behind, one which commands a sometimes voyeuristic gaze. In Left Behind, violence, particularly that inflicted upon nonevangelicals, is depicted in graphic detail. I argue that the characters’ belief that God controls all events and humans cannot intervene renders them passive in the face of violence and suffering. Furthermore, the protagonists’ positions as an audience to, rather than actors in, the apocalypse reinforces their passivity, inertia, and emotional detachment. Thus, the apocalyptic gaze precludes the exercise of compassion, particularly for those of a different faith or no faith.Less
This chapter explores the ways in which evangelical agency issues not only from the interpretation of the written word, but also the deciphering of visual cues and signs, Thus, watching and observing are central to the Left Behind narrative. The chapter shows how the end of the world functions as a particularly compelling spectacle in apocalyptic literature, including Left Behind, one which commands a sometimes voyeuristic gaze. In Left Behind, violence, particularly that inflicted upon nonevangelicals, is depicted in graphic detail. I argue that the characters’ belief that God controls all events and humans cannot intervene renders them passive in the face of violence and suffering. Furthermore, the protagonists’ positions as an audience to, rather than actors in, the apocalypse reinforces their passivity, inertia, and emotional detachment. Thus, the apocalyptic gaze precludes the exercise of compassion, particularly for those of a different faith or no faith.
Kristian Moen
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, written by Kristian Moen, explores the nineteenth-century French ‘transformation views’ of the féerie. Moen situates Georges Méliès’s work within this tradition of the féerie, thus ...
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This chapter, written by Kristian Moen, explores the nineteenth-century French ‘transformation views’ of the féerie. Moen situates Georges Méliès’s work within this tradition of the féerie, thus illustrating how through the use of elaborate spectacles cinema and theatre are entwined. Like its theatrical counterpart, the cinematic féerie is no less concerned with the trickery of ‘transformation’. As Moen explains, such transformations come in a variety of guises: bodies, objects and settings transmorph, as if to indicate that the world itself is ‘a place of mutability’, is in flux. Whether in the form of theatrical plays, luminous fountain displays at the Universal Exposition in Paris, or the kaleidoscope, the so-called transformation view of the féerie (used by Méliès as a term to categorize cinema itself) creates ‘a vision of instability’ which must be understood within the larger context of modernity’s impact on visual perception.Less
This chapter, written by Kristian Moen, explores the nineteenth-century French ‘transformation views’ of the féerie. Moen situates Georges Méliès’s work within this tradition of the féerie, thus illustrating how through the use of elaborate spectacles cinema and theatre are entwined. Like its theatrical counterpart, the cinematic féerie is no less concerned with the trickery of ‘transformation’. As Moen explains, such transformations come in a variety of guises: bodies, objects and settings transmorph, as if to indicate that the world itself is ‘a place of mutability’, is in flux. Whether in the form of theatrical plays, luminous fountain displays at the Universal Exposition in Paris, or the kaleidoscope, the so-called transformation view of the féerie (used by Méliès as a term to categorize cinema itself) creates ‘a vision of instability’ which must be understood within the larger context of modernity’s impact on visual perception.
Roger R. Tamte
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252041617
- eISBN:
- 9780252050275
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041617.003.0037
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
Camp has a philosophy about sports competition and broadcasts it in his Collier’s column, among other places, in an openly preachy style: compete to the limit of your ability, but whatever the ...
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Camp has a philosophy about sports competition and broadcasts it in his Collier’s column, among other places, in an openly preachy style: compete to the limit of your ability, but whatever the outcome, in the words of a Thackeray poem, “Be each, pray God, a gentleman.” A gentleman, Camp said, enters a contest committed to do his best, does not cheat, is courteous, and never insults a loser. But the growth of American college football introduces complications for such an ideal—large numbers of spectators pressure their team to win, some of them with little regard for sportsmanship; coaches are under personal pressure to win; players are glorified in an ever more spectacular event. In an effort to control some aspects of the spectacle, the New York Thanksgiving Day game is moved to the college campus, and under the Camp-Brooks agreement Harvard and Yale agree to play their contests on campus.Less
Camp has a philosophy about sports competition and broadcasts it in his Collier’s column, among other places, in an openly preachy style: compete to the limit of your ability, but whatever the outcome, in the words of a Thackeray poem, “Be each, pray God, a gentleman.” A gentleman, Camp said, enters a contest committed to do his best, does not cheat, is courteous, and never insults a loser. But the growth of American college football introduces complications for such an ideal—large numbers of spectators pressure their team to win, some of them with little regard for sportsmanship; coaches are under personal pressure to win; players are glorified in an ever more spectacular event. In an effort to control some aspects of the spectacle, the New York Thanksgiving Day game is moved to the college campus, and under the Camp-Brooks agreement Harvard and Yale agree to play their contests on campus.
Robert Shaughnessy
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780719086939
- eISBN:
- 9781526132192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086939.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter offers an overview of the book’s contents and a summary of its main arguments and findings, and also presents an outline of the performance history of As You Like It from the eighteenth ...
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This chapter offers an overview of the book’s contents and a summary of its main arguments and findings, and also presents an outline of the performance history of As You Like It from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It considers in particular the play’s relationship to the history of English pastoral.Less
This chapter offers an overview of the book’s contents and a summary of its main arguments and findings, and also presents an outline of the performance history of As You Like It from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It considers in particular the play’s relationship to the history of English pastoral.
Elizabeth Rottenberg
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280100
- eISBN:
- 9780823281541
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280100.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter will explore a phantasm that lies at the heart of both Derrida's and Foucault's analyses of the death penalty. While Derrida’s theoretical questions are and remain very different from ...
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This chapter will explore a phantasm that lies at the heart of both Derrida's and Foucault's analyses of the death penalty. While Derrida’s theoretical questions are and remain very different from those of Foucault—for Derrida the death penalty will be the example par excellence of sovereign power, whereas it becomes but another example of power-knowledge in a specific regime of punishment for Foucault—both thinkers end up, curiously, pointing to a similar phantasm that underwrites the death penalty, namely the phantasm of the mastery of time. In the end, this chapter hopes to show that unlike other questions on which Derrida and Foucault remain divided (e.g., the question of the "medical gaze" or the despectacularization of punishment), the question of the death penalty brings their thinking together in new and surprising ways.Less
This chapter will explore a phantasm that lies at the heart of both Derrida's and Foucault's analyses of the death penalty. While Derrida’s theoretical questions are and remain very different from those of Foucault—for Derrida the death penalty will be the example par excellence of sovereign power, whereas it becomes but another example of power-knowledge in a specific regime of punishment for Foucault—both thinkers end up, curiously, pointing to a similar phantasm that underwrites the death penalty, namely the phantasm of the mastery of time. In the end, this chapter hopes to show that unlike other questions on which Derrida and Foucault remain divided (e.g., the question of the "medical gaze" or the despectacularization of punishment), the question of the death penalty brings their thinking together in new and surprising ways.
Elissa Marder
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280100
- eISBN:
- 9780823281541
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280100.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
In his seminar on the Death Penalty, Derrida insists upon the irreducibly theatrical and spectacular nature of any legal execution. An execution is not merely the material outcome of a legal process, ...
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In his seminar on the Death Penalty, Derrida insists upon the irreducibly theatrical and spectacular nature of any legal execution. An execution is not merely the material outcome of a legal process, but also the very representational means by which the law stages and asserts its own legitimacy. He also raises a set of questions concerning the relationship between the machines that administer the death penalty and dominant male fantasies regarding feminine sexuality, calling attention to the fact that the death machine is always a woman (virgin, mother, whore or widow) who, in carrying out the cold decree of the law, is depicted as a voracious and terrifying vampire. This chapter examines how discourses surrounding the death penalty have consistently called upon and been haunted by powerful phantasies about female sexuality and why those phantasies paradoxically belong to the very logic rational justice to which they appear to be opposed.Less
In his seminar on the Death Penalty, Derrida insists upon the irreducibly theatrical and spectacular nature of any legal execution. An execution is not merely the material outcome of a legal process, but also the very representational means by which the law stages and asserts its own legitimacy. He also raises a set of questions concerning the relationship between the machines that administer the death penalty and dominant male fantasies regarding feminine sexuality, calling attention to the fact that the death machine is always a woman (virgin, mother, whore or widow) who, in carrying out the cold decree of the law, is depicted as a voracious and terrifying vampire. This chapter examines how discourses surrounding the death penalty have consistently called upon and been haunted by powerful phantasies about female sexuality and why those phantasies paradoxically belong to the very logic rational justice to which they appear to be opposed.
