William V. Spanos
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823268153
- eISBN:
- 9780823272464
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823268153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold ...
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Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War–era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries. The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben’s sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America. At once timely and personal, Spanos’s meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, “the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.”Less
Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War–era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries. The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben’s sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America. At once timely and personal, Spanos’s meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, “the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.”
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
In the mid-eighteenth century, France reached a crisis point as competing cultural trends and practices ran headlong into one another: the rising public fascination with executions, the logic of ...
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In the mid-eighteenth century, France reached a crisis point as competing cultural trends and practices ran headlong into one another: the rising public fascination with executions, the logic of exemplary deterrence (predicated on the idea that the spectacle of execution terrified spectators and deterred crime), and contemporary sensibilities (which held that human beings were instinctively compassionate and incapable of watching the suffering of others). The execution of Robert-Francois Damiens in 1757, during which enormous numbers of spectators watched a human being torn to pieces and flayed alive, epitomized this cultural crisis, and marked a cultural turning point, after which the privileged classes would largely forsake the penal spectacle as “horrible.” The vulgarization of the penal spectacle marked a crisis in its own right, as the very individuals who continued to delight in the penal spectacle were precisely the ones who were meant to be the target audience for exemplary deterrence.Less
In the mid-eighteenth century, France reached a crisis point as competing cultural trends and practices ran headlong into one another: the rising public fascination with executions, the logic of exemplary deterrence (predicated on the idea that the spectacle of execution terrified spectators and deterred crime), and contemporary sensibilities (which held that human beings were instinctively compassionate and incapable of watching the suffering of others). The execution of Robert-Francois Damiens in 1757, during which enormous numbers of spectators watched a human being torn to pieces and flayed alive, epitomized this cultural crisis, and marked a cultural turning point, after which the privileged classes would largely forsake the penal spectacle as “horrible.” The vulgarization of the penal spectacle marked a crisis in its own right, as the very individuals who continued to delight in the penal spectacle were precisely the ones who were meant to be the target audience for exemplary deterrence.
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.
T. P. Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199239764
- eISBN:
- 9780191716836
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239764.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Roman political life was a spectacle, not only for the magistrate on the rostra addressing the assembled People, but for prosecutors and defence counsel in the courts, and for other senators on great ...
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Roman political life was a spectacle, not only for the magistrate on the rostra addressing the assembled People, but for prosecutors and defence counsel in the courts, and for other senators on great occasions, such as Cicero on his return from exile in 57 BC. This chapter examines the evidence for the places in the Forum and elsewhere that were used by the People as vantage points, for the temporary stages and auditoria that were put up for the games, and for the use of magistrates' tribunals as stages for performance. In the light of this information, an examination of the evidence for Antony's behaviour at the Lupercalia of 44 BC, when Caesar was offered the crown, provides a vivid insight into the overlapping conceptual worlds of politics and spectacle at Rome.Less
Roman political life was a spectacle, not only for the magistrate on the rostra addressing the assembled People, but for prosecutors and defence counsel in the courts, and for other senators on great occasions, such as Cicero on his return from exile in 57 BC. This chapter examines the evidence for the places in the Forum and elsewhere that were used by the People as vantage points, for the temporary stages and auditoria that were put up for the games, and for the use of magistrates' tribunals as stages for performance. In the light of this information, an examination of the evidence for Antony's behaviour at the Lupercalia of 44 BC, when Caesar was offered the crown, provides a vivid insight into the overlapping conceptual worlds of politics and spectacle at Rome.
Andrew N. Weintraub
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395662
- eISBN:
- 9780199863549
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395662.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Popular
Chapter 5 describes the development of new musical forms, the emergence of new stars, and the expansion of the dangdut industry in the 1980s. The discussion focuses on the most dominant groups and ...
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Chapter 5 describes the development of new musical forms, the emergence of new stars, and the expansion of the dangdut industry in the 1980s. The discussion focuses on the most dominant groups and artists of this period: two prominent production teams (Tarantula and Radesa) and three celebrated singers (Camelia Malik, Elvy Sukaesih, and Mansyur S.). In addition to its appeal among “the people,” analyzed in chapter 4, dangdut became the music of dance and pleasure in nightclubs, bars, and discos. Performers used a heightened sense of theatricality, costumes, and movements to express gut-wrenching stories about “suffering” and “surrender” in songs. The combination of emotional lyrics, upbeat dancing, and a camp performance style captivated audiences and baffled critics. It seemed contradictory to commentators that the songs of this period would memorialize people's emotional and material suffering. An analysis of songs reveals strategies of polysemy, ambiguity, and camp that encouraged creative and playful interpretations of song lyrics, images, and sound. This explosion of new styles, seemingly contradictory texts and music, and polysemy, characterized in this chapter as the “spectacle of excess,” generated its pleasure and its commercial popularity.Less
Chapter 5 describes the development of new musical forms, the emergence of new stars, and the expansion of the dangdut industry in the 1980s. The discussion focuses on the most dominant groups and artists of this period: two prominent production teams (Tarantula and Radesa) and three celebrated singers (Camelia Malik, Elvy Sukaesih, and Mansyur S.). In addition to its appeal among “the people,” analyzed in chapter 4, dangdut became the music of dance and pleasure in nightclubs, bars, and discos. Performers used a heightened sense of theatricality, costumes, and movements to express gut-wrenching stories about “suffering” and “surrender” in songs. The combination of emotional lyrics, upbeat dancing, and a camp performance style captivated audiences and baffled critics. It seemed contradictory to commentators that the songs of this period would memorialize people's emotional and material suffering. An analysis of songs reveals strategies of polysemy, ambiguity, and camp that encouraged creative and playful interpretations of song lyrics, images, and sound. This explosion of new styles, seemingly contradictory texts and music, and polysemy, characterized in this chapter as the “spectacle of excess,” generated its pleasure and its commercial popularity.
Ida Ostenberg
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199215973
- eISBN:
- 9780191706851
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215973.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of ...
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This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of the world. Aiming at approaching issues of identity, the book analyses how Rome presented and perceived the defeated on triumphal display. Spoils, captives, and representations are the objects, and the basic questions strive to establish both contents and context: What was displayed? How was it paraded? What was the response? Arms, ships and rams, coins and bullion, sculptures and paintings, art and valuables, golden crowns, prisoners, hostages, animals, and trees are all examined in separate chapters, as are the representations that were made specifically for the occasion: models and personifications of cities, peoples, rivers, and vivid tableaux staging scenes from the war. To be able to engage in issues of processional contents and sequence, acted roles, visual interplay, spectator participation, and emotional effect, the study embraces the complete corpus of ancient sources of the historical triumph, literary and pictorial. The approach includes discussions of the triumph as a religious rite and as a political act. But performance is the key word, and attention is in the first place paid to the visual expressions and schemes of the parade, and the interplay between these and the spectators.Less
This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of the world. Aiming at approaching issues of identity, the book analyses how Rome presented and perceived the defeated on triumphal display. Spoils, captives, and representations are the objects, and the basic questions strive to establish both contents and context: What was displayed? How was it paraded? What was the response? Arms, ships and rams, coins and bullion, sculptures and paintings, art and valuables, golden crowns, prisoners, hostages, animals, and trees are all examined in separate chapters, as are the representations that were made specifically for the occasion: models and personifications of cities, peoples, rivers, and vivid tableaux staging scenes from the war. To be able to engage in issues of processional contents and sequence, acted roles, visual interplay, spectator participation, and emotional effect, the study embraces the complete corpus of ancient sources of the historical triumph, literary and pictorial. The approach includes discussions of the triumph as a religious rite and as a political act. But performance is the key word, and attention is in the first place paid to the visual expressions and schemes of the parade, and the interplay between these and the spectators.
Honora Howell Chapman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262120
- eISBN:
- 9780191718533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262120.003.0014
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter explores the importance of vivid narrative in history-writing by probing the importance of spectacle in the Judaean War. It focuses in particular on two spectacles narrated by Josephus: ...
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This chapter explores the importance of vivid narrative in history-writing by probing the importance of spectacle in the Judaean War. It focuses in particular on two spectacles narrated by Josephus: first, his description of his own capture by the Romans at Jotapata, where he makes a historiographical spectacle of his own body, and second, the detailed and vivid account of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, where the temple becomes a central spectacle in his narrative. The rhetorical emphasis that marks these episodes served to focus the reader’s or listener’s attention and allowed the historian to underscore key themes of the entire work: celebrating the power of his Flavian patrons, damning the rebels for their conduct during the rebellion, enhancing his own reputation as general and priest, and finally, highlighting the former grandeur of Jerusalem and its temple, and the tragedy of their destruction.Less
This chapter explores the importance of vivid narrative in history-writing by probing the importance of spectacle in the Judaean War. It focuses in particular on two spectacles narrated by Josephus: first, his description of his own capture by the Romans at Jotapata, where he makes a historiographical spectacle of his own body, and second, the detailed and vivid account of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, where the temple becomes a central spectacle in his narrative. The rhetorical emphasis that marks these episodes served to focus the reader’s or listener’s attention and allowed the historian to underscore key themes of the entire work: celebrating the power of his Flavian patrons, damning the rebels for their conduct during the rebellion, enhancing his own reputation as general and priest, and finally, highlighting the former grandeur of Jerusalem and its temple, and the tragedy of their destruction.
Patricia A. Cahill
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199212057
- eISBN:
- 9780191705830
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212057.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace ...
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This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace cultural fantasies of individual distinction. The chapter focuses on Marlowe's two‐part Tamburlaine, one of the most popular and most explicitly militaristic plays in the Elizabethan repertory and a play that has long been a touchstone for critical discussions of the emergence of the modern subject. This chapter argues that Tamburlaine's preoccupation with military calculation and the organization of bodies in space produces a spectacle not just of overreaching singularity but also of uniform personhood and mathematically rationalized violence. Ultimately, by pointing to the play's sustained attention to visions of men in the aggregate, this chapter revises the usual reading of Marlowe's text so as to tease out its renderings of modern “massifying” practices, which presage a new world of social abstraction.Less
This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace cultural fantasies of individual distinction. The chapter focuses on Marlowe's two‐part Tamburlaine, one of the most popular and most explicitly militaristic plays in the Elizabethan repertory and a play that has long been a touchstone for critical discussions of the emergence of the modern subject. This chapter argues that Tamburlaine's preoccupation with military calculation and the organization of bodies in space produces a spectacle not just of overreaching singularity but also of uniform personhood and mathematically rationalized violence. Ultimately, by pointing to the play's sustained attention to visions of men in the aggregate, this chapter revises the usual reading of Marlowe's text so as to tease out its renderings of modern “massifying” practices, which presage a new world of social abstraction.
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. This book traces the theory and practice of ...
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From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. This book traces the theory and practice of public executions over time from the perspective of the executioners and government officials who staged them, as well as from the vantage point of the many thousands who came to “see justice done.” While penal theorists often stressed that the fundamental purpose of public punishment was to strike fear in the hearts of spectators, the eagerness with which crowds flocked to executions and the extent to which spectators actually enjoyed the spectacle of suffering suggests that there was a wide gulf between theoretical intentions and actual experiences. Moreover, animal executions and the execution of effigies and corpses point to an enduring ritual function that had little to do with exemplary deterrence. In the eighteenth century, when a revolution in sensibilities made it unseemly for individuals to take pleasure in or even witness the suffering of others, capital punishment became the target of penal reform. From the invention of the guillotine, which reduced the moment of death to the blink of an eye, to the 1939 decree which moved executions behind prison walls, the death penalty in France was systematically stripped of its spectacular elements.Less
From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. This book traces the theory and practice of public executions over time from the perspective of the executioners and government officials who staged them, as well as from the vantage point of the many thousands who came to “see justice done.” While penal theorists often stressed that the fundamental purpose of public punishment was to strike fear in the hearts of spectators, the eagerness with which crowds flocked to executions and the extent to which spectators actually enjoyed the spectacle of suffering suggests that there was a wide gulf between theoretical intentions and actual experiences. Moreover, animal executions and the execution of effigies and corpses point to an enduring ritual function that had little to do with exemplary deterrence. In the eighteenth century, when a revolution in sensibilities made it unseemly for individuals to take pleasure in or even witness the suffering of others, capital punishment became the target of penal reform. From the invention of the guillotine, which reduced the moment of death to the blink of an eye, to the 1939 decree which moved executions behind prison walls, the death penalty in France was systematically stripped of its spectacular elements.
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
Striving for a method of capital punishment that was, as much as possible, painless for the victim as well as for the spectator, legislators in the National Assembly settled upon the idea of a ...
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Striving for a method of capital punishment that was, as much as possible, painless for the victim as well as for the spectator, legislators in the National Assembly settled upon the idea of a decapitating machine. This machine, almost immediately dubbed the guillotine after the lawmaker who first proposed the idea, promised a public death that happened so quickly that it was invisible to the naked eye. While, at first, there was a good deal of public fascination with the speed with which the guillotine could transform a living human being into a lifeless head, over time the spectacle of the guillotine proved somewhat disappointing to spectators, particularly during the Terror when it was repeated with great frequency. The executioners of France became a casualty of the machine, as the complex craft which they had practiced for generations was now reduced to the simple act of pulling a cord.Less
Striving for a method of capital punishment that was, as much as possible, painless for the victim as well as for the spectator, legislators in the National Assembly settled upon the idea of a decapitating machine. This machine, almost immediately dubbed the guillotine after the lawmaker who first proposed the idea, promised a public death that happened so quickly that it was invisible to the naked eye. While, at first, there was a good deal of public fascination with the speed with which the guillotine could transform a living human being into a lifeless head, over time the spectacle of the guillotine proved somewhat disappointing to spectators, particularly during the Terror when it was repeated with great frequency. The executioners of France became a casualty of the machine, as the complex craft which they had practiced for generations was now reduced to the simple act of pulling a cord.
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
With the end of the Terror, government officials and many townspeople expressed abhorrence of the spectacle of execution, and guillotines throughout France were gradually moved from city centers to ...
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With the end of the Terror, government officials and many townspeople expressed abhorrence of the spectacle of execution, and guillotines throughout France were gradually moved from city centers to more remote locations. Although the law insisted that executions be public, and although many still clung to the idea that public punishment served the purposes of exemplary deterrence, contemporary sensibilities frowned on those who actually showed up to watch. Consequently, officials did everything in their power to dissuade the public from attending executions, and to limit the visibility of those who did. Executions were performed at twilight and with little warning; elevated scaffolds were banned. Although the number of executioners in France was reduced to a single practitioner, he continued to perform the vestiges of the penal spectacle until the curtain finally came down in 1939, after which all executions would be performed behind closed doors.Less
With the end of the Terror, government officials and many townspeople expressed abhorrence of the spectacle of execution, and guillotines throughout France were gradually moved from city centers to more remote locations. Although the law insisted that executions be public, and although many still clung to the idea that public punishment served the purposes of exemplary deterrence, contemporary sensibilities frowned on those who actually showed up to watch. Consequently, officials did everything in their power to dissuade the public from attending executions, and to limit the visibility of those who did. Executions were performed at twilight and with little warning; elevated scaffolds were banned. Although the number of executioners in France was reduced to a single practitioner, he continued to perform the vestiges of the penal spectacle until the curtain finally came down in 1939, after which all executions would be performed behind closed doors.
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
Through the beginning of the sixteenth century, executions often attracted large crowds of people who saw themselves as full participants in a ritual with profound spiritual meaning. With the first ...
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Through the beginning of the sixteenth century, executions often attracted large crowds of people who saw themselves as full participants in a ritual with profound spiritual meaning. With the first executions of Lutheran heretics, however, who refused to play the traditional role of the remorseful penitent but instead went to the scaffold joyously, crowds of spectators began to attend executions as a spectacular novelty. From the middle of the sixteenth century onward, wealthier segments of the population began viewing executions as a form of novel entertainment, renting windows overlooking the scaffold. By the seventeenth century, the upper classes had developed a fascination with criminality, which they satisfied through the reading of scandalously realistic true-crime novels as well as through a growing taste for witnessing real criminals be put to death in spectacles of public execution.Less
Through the beginning of the sixteenth century, executions often attracted large crowds of people who saw themselves as full participants in a ritual with profound spiritual meaning. With the first executions of Lutheran heretics, however, who refused to play the traditional role of the remorseful penitent but instead went to the scaffold joyously, crowds of spectators began to attend executions as a spectacular novelty. From the middle of the sixteenth century onward, wealthier segments of the population began viewing executions as a form of novel entertainment, renting windows overlooking the scaffold. By the seventeenth century, the upper classes had developed a fascination with criminality, which they satisfied through the reading of scandalously realistic true-crime novels as well as through a growing taste for witnessing real criminals be put to death in spectacles of public execution.
Paul Friedland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199592692
- eISBN:
- 9780191741852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, European Early Modern History
By the turn of the eighteenth century, spectators from all social classes had developed a fascination with the spectacle of capital punishment. Unusual executions or the execution of particularly ...
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By the turn of the eighteenth century, spectators from all social classes had developed a fascination with the spectacle of capital punishment. Unusual executions or the execution of particularly noteworthy individuals drew enormous crowds. At the same time, however, a revolution in sensibilities was reimagining human nature to be instinctively prone to compassion, and especially to sympathy with the suffering of others. As the very nature of humanity came to be defined as having “humane” sensibilities, the practice of finding pleasure in the sufferings of others came to be seen as unnatural and inhuman. This chapter traces these two, largely incompatible, and yet nearly simultaneous trends in watching and making sense of executions from the turn of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century.Less
By the turn of the eighteenth century, spectators from all social classes had developed a fascination with the spectacle of capital punishment. Unusual executions or the execution of particularly noteworthy individuals drew enormous crowds. At the same time, however, a revolution in sensibilities was reimagining human nature to be instinctively prone to compassion, and especially to sympathy with the suffering of others. As the very nature of humanity came to be defined as having “humane” sensibilities, the practice of finding pleasure in the sufferings of others came to be seen as unnatural and inhuman. This chapter traces these two, largely incompatible, and yet nearly simultaneous trends in watching and making sense of executions from the turn of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century.
Sam Rohdie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992637
- eISBN:
- 9781526104151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992637.003.0030
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Visconti’s intense realism touched on an extreme of spectacle and hence the unreal. Thus, there were two realities that interested Visconti: a cultural one (the text) and a performative one (setting ...
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Visconti’s intense realism touched on an extreme of spectacle and hence the unreal. Thus, there were two realities that interested Visconti: a cultural one (the text) and a performative one (setting and action). What made Visconti one of the greatest metteurs en scène of theatre and opera also made him one of the greatest metteurs en scène of the cinema: he imitated realities and brought them to life on stage or in front of a camera, putting them ‘in scene’, not exactly documenting them so much as spectacularising them, transfiguring them. This apparent opposition or mélange that mixed realism with theatricality, a punctilious concern with the real side by side with the artificial, are central to all his works and single him out, not only in Italy, but globally.Less
Visconti’s intense realism touched on an extreme of spectacle and hence the unreal. Thus, there were two realities that interested Visconti: a cultural one (the text) and a performative one (setting and action). What made Visconti one of the greatest metteurs en scène of theatre and opera also made him one of the greatest metteurs en scène of the cinema: he imitated realities and brought them to life on stage or in front of a camera, putting them ‘in scene’, not exactly documenting them so much as spectacularising them, transfiguring them. This apparent opposition or mélange that mixed realism with theatricality, a punctilious concern with the real side by side with the artificial, are central to all his works and single him out, not only in Italy, but globally.
Sam Rohdie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992637
- eISBN:
- 9781526104151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992637.003.0051
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Welles became famous, indeed infamous, by a radio play based on the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Welles dramatised the H.G. Wells’ novel as a radio documentary of an ...
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Welles became famous, indeed infamous, by a radio play based on the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Welles dramatised the H.G. Wells’ novel as a radio documentary of an invasion by Martians of America that parodied the form: the report of the fictional invasion as a news event taking place at the moment of broadcast, made to interrupt a light entertainment swing band programme. The false broadcast of a fictional invasion seemed to be a true report of a real invasion, so convincing that there was panic in the American northeast where the invasion from Mars was being reported as having occurred. The War of the Worlds seemed true because it mimicked radio broadcasts of which it was a travesty. Because of the line between truth and spectacle, reality and fiction, Welles transformed an apparent substance (an invasion by aliens) into a form (documentary) and a commentary Welles’ Citizen Kane is similar to War of the Worlds. Like it, Kane is a spoof of the great man biography on the line between reportage and fiction.Less
Welles became famous, indeed infamous, by a radio play based on the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Welles dramatised the H.G. Wells’ novel as a radio documentary of an invasion by Martians of America that parodied the form: the report of the fictional invasion as a news event taking place at the moment of broadcast, made to interrupt a light entertainment swing band programme. The false broadcast of a fictional invasion seemed to be a true report of a real invasion, so convincing that there was panic in the American northeast where the invasion from Mars was being reported as having occurred. The War of the Worlds seemed true because it mimicked radio broadcasts of which it was a travesty. Because of the line between truth and spectacle, reality and fiction, Welles transformed an apparent substance (an invasion by aliens) into a form (documentary) and a commentary Welles’ Citizen Kane is similar to War of the Worlds. Like it, Kane is a spoof of the great man biography on the line between reportage and fiction.
Antony Augoustakis and Monica Cyrino (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474407847
- eISBN:
- 9781474430982
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474407847.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
The figure of Spartacus often serves as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements, while his legend has inspired numerous receptions over the centuries in many different ...
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The figure of Spartacus often serves as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements, while his legend has inspired numerous receptions over the centuries in many different popular media. This new book brings together a wide range of scholarly perspectives on the four seasons of the acclaimed and highly successful premium cable television series STARZ Spartacus (2010–13), with contributions from the fields of classics, history, gender, film and media studies, and classical reception. The book uncovers a fascinating range of topics and themes within the series such as slavery, society, politics, spectacle, material culture, sexuality, aesthetics, and fan reception.Less
The figure of Spartacus often serves as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements, while his legend has inspired numerous receptions over the centuries in many different popular media. This new book brings together a wide range of scholarly perspectives on the four seasons of the acclaimed and highly successful premium cable television series STARZ Spartacus (2010–13), with contributions from the fields of classics, history, gender, film and media studies, and classical reception. The book uncovers a fascinating range of topics and themes within the series such as slavery, society, politics, spectacle, material culture, sexuality, aesthetics, and fan reception.
Stephen R. Haynes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195395051
- eISBN:
- 9780199979288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395051.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter describes the genesis of the kneel-in movement in the months after the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. It details the first wave of kneel-in protests that began in Atlanta in August of ...
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This chapter describes the genesis of the kneel-in movement in the months after the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. It details the first wave of kneel-in protests that began in Atlanta in August of that year as a collaboration between the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Atlanta Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights. Emphasis is placed on how the kneel-ins were understood—by those who planned and engaged in them, by those inside the targeted churches, and by those who analyzed and publicized them. An interpretation that emphasizes kneel-ins' dramatic character is developed using the categories of “spectacle of exclusion” and “spectacle of embrace.” Conflicting views of the motives of those who engaged in kneel-ins are considered. Finally, 1960 kneel-in campaigns in Atlanta, Savannah and Memphis are described in detail.Less
This chapter describes the genesis of the kneel-in movement in the months after the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. It details the first wave of kneel-in protests that began in Atlanta in August of that year as a collaboration between the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Atlanta Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights. Emphasis is placed on how the kneel-ins were understood—by those who planned and engaged in them, by those inside the targeted churches, and by those who analyzed and publicized them. An interpretation that emphasizes kneel-ins' dramatic character is developed using the categories of “spectacle of exclusion” and “spectacle of embrace.” Conflicting views of the motives of those who engaged in kneel-ins are considered. Finally, 1960 kneel-in campaigns in Atlanta, Savannah and Memphis are described in detail.
David Francis Taylor
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199642847
- eISBN:
- 9780191738869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642847.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 18th-century Literature
Building on the preceding chapter’s discussion of the trial of Warren Hastings, this chapter turns to Sheridan’s phenomenally successful tragedy Pizarro (May 1799), a loose adaptation of a German ...
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Building on the preceding chapter’s discussion of the trial of Warren Hastings, this chapter turns to Sheridan’s phenomenally successful tragedy Pizarro (May 1799), a loose adaptation of a German play by August von Kotzebue in which Sheridan recycled as dramatic dialogue several passages from his Hastings trial speeches. Dramatizing the Spanish conquest of Peru, and appearing just a year after the bloody 1798 Rebellion in Ireland (a crisis about which Sheridan spoke passionately), this chapter argues that Pizarro represents a theatrical meditation on the failure of humanitarian rhetoric to prevent colonial atrocity—in India and Ireland. If Sheridan’s play finally stages a redemptive politics then this is to be found not in speech but rather in the organization of space and the performance of silence.Less
Building on the preceding chapter’s discussion of the trial of Warren Hastings, this chapter turns to Sheridan’s phenomenally successful tragedy Pizarro (May 1799), a loose adaptation of a German play by August von Kotzebue in which Sheridan recycled as dramatic dialogue several passages from his Hastings trial speeches. Dramatizing the Spanish conquest of Peru, and appearing just a year after the bloody 1798 Rebellion in Ireland (a crisis about which Sheridan spoke passionately), this chapter argues that Pizarro represents a theatrical meditation on the failure of humanitarian rhetoric to prevent colonial atrocity—in India and Ireland. If Sheridan’s play finally stages a redemptive politics then this is to be found not in speech but rather in the organization of space and the performance of silence.
Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the ...
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A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the prison emerged as a setting and narrative trope in modern cinema. Focusing on films shown in prisons before 1935, Alison Griffiths explores the unique experience of viewing cinema while incarcerated and the complex cultural roots of cinematic renderings of prison life. Griffiths considers a diverse mix of cinematic genres, from early actualities and reenactments of notorious executions to reformist exposés of the 1920s. She connects an early fascination with cinematic images of punishment and execution, especially electrocutions, to the attractions of the nineteenth-century carnival electrical wonder show and Phantasmagoria (a ghost show using magic lantern projections and special effects). Griffiths draws upon convict writing, prison annual reports, and the popular press obsession with prison-house cinema to document the integration of film into existing reformist and educational activities and film’s psychic extension of flights of fancy undertaken by inmates in their cells. Combining penal history with visual and film studies and theories surrounding media’s sensual effects, Carceral Fantasies illuminates how filmic representations of the penal system enacted ideas about modernity, gender, the body, and the public, shaping both the social experience of cinema and the public’s understanding of the modern prison.Less
A groundbreaking contribution to the study of nontheatrical film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the U.S. penitentiary system and how the prison emerged as a setting and narrative trope in modern cinema. Focusing on films shown in prisons before 1935, Alison Griffiths explores the unique experience of viewing cinema while incarcerated and the complex cultural roots of cinematic renderings of prison life. Griffiths considers a diverse mix of cinematic genres, from early actualities and reenactments of notorious executions to reformist exposés of the 1920s. She connects an early fascination with cinematic images of punishment and execution, especially electrocutions, to the attractions of the nineteenth-century carnival electrical wonder show and Phantasmagoria (a ghost show using magic lantern projections and special effects). Griffiths draws upon convict writing, prison annual reports, and the popular press obsession with prison-house cinema to document the integration of film into existing reformist and educational activities and film’s psychic extension of flights of fancy undertaken by inmates in their cells. Combining penal history with visual and film studies and theories surrounding media’s sensual effects, Carceral Fantasies illuminates how filmic representations of the penal system enacted ideas about modernity, gender, the body, and the public, shaping both the social experience of cinema and the public’s understanding of the modern prison.
Steven Connor
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184331
- eISBN:
- 9780191674204
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Alexandre Vattemare’s corporeal performance escapes all attempts to do justice to it in words, but relies upon the supplement of words for the disclosure of this transcendence of words. The more ...
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Alexandre Vattemare’s corporeal performance escapes all attempts to do justice to it in words, but relies upon the supplement of words for the disclosure of this transcendence of words. The more overblown the poems discussed in this chapter are, the closer they nudge towards parody of their own extravagance. The poems appear to take revenge on Monsieur Alexandre for evoking the desire to take him as seriously as the poems evidence. This slight wavering of tone is the mark of that ambivalence which this chapter suggests would go on to characterize ventriloquism up to this day, in which the very ludicrousness of ventriloquism as a spectacle may be in part what allows us to hope that there might really be such a thing as ventriloquism, as opposed to the pretence of it, that there might be in actuality an art to correspond to our imperious, infantile fantasies of ventriloquial power.Less
Alexandre Vattemare’s corporeal performance escapes all attempts to do justice to it in words, but relies upon the supplement of words for the disclosure of this transcendence of words. The more overblown the poems discussed in this chapter are, the closer they nudge towards parody of their own extravagance. The poems appear to take revenge on Monsieur Alexandre for evoking the desire to take him as seriously as the poems evidence. This slight wavering of tone is the mark of that ambivalence which this chapter suggests would go on to characterize ventriloquism up to this day, in which the very ludicrousness of ventriloquism as a spectacle may be in part what allows us to hope that there might really be such a thing as ventriloquism, as opposed to the pretence of it, that there might be in actuality an art to correspond to our imperious, infantile fantasies of ventriloquial power.
