Abject Spaces in American Cinema

Abject Spaces in American Cinema PDF Author: Frances Pheasant-Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780755698417
Category : Abjection in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, this book analyses a range of films including 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994), 'Full Metal Jacket' (1987) and 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999) through to cult films such as 'Carrie' (1976.

Abject Spaces in American Cinema

Abject Spaces in American Cinema PDF Author: Frances Pheasant-Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780755698417
Category : Abjection in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, this book analyses a range of films including 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994), 'Full Metal Jacket' (1987) and 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999) through to cult films such as 'Carrie' (1976.

Abject Spaces in American Cinema

Abject Spaces in American Cinema PDF Author: Nigel Bell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781548751333
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, this book analyses a range of films including 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994), 'Full Metal Jacket' (1987) and 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999) through to cult films such as 'Carrie' (1976) and 'Bubba Ho-tep' (2002).

Abject Spaces in American Cinema

Abject Spaces in American Cinema PDF Author: Frances Pheasant-Kelly
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857733672
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, thi book analyses a range of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) through to cult films such as Carrie (1976) and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). In these films, locations of coherence and order become places where the internal and repressed aspects of the body, individual and social, threaten to overwhelm the individual. Identity is compromised through harsh conditions, extreme discipline, the exertion of absolute control, and above all the restriction of personal space. Symbolically infantilised, forced to reassess aspects of the adult, the only escape is through violence; the eponymous Carrie escapes from her cupboard for a massacre, the women of Girl, Interrupted mutilate and annihilate themselves and Kubrick's Gomer Pyle shoots sadistic patriarch Sergeant Hartman in the 'head'. By analysing scenes of horror and disgust within the context of abject space, Frances Pheasant-Kelly reveals how threats to identity manifest in scenes of torture, horror and psychosexual repression and are resolved either through death or through traumatic re-entry into the outside world. Bringing together contemporary theoretical debates and critical disciplines, Abject Spaces in American Cinema offers a coherent and meaningful analysis of institutonal films and shows that the chaos of the abject space cannot be resolved- only escaped. This readable and engging tour of the abject in the institution of film will be immensely valuable to students of Film Studies, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies.

European Cinema and Continental Philosophy

European Cinema and Continental Philosophy PDF Author: Thomas Elsässer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441129499
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction), Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'. Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismäki, abjection and Julia Kristeva; Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek; Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, Elsaesser is able to approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a global context. His combination of political and philosophical thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years to come.

Spaces of Surveillance

Spaces of Surveillance PDF Author: Susan Flynn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319490850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, watching and being watched are the salient features of the lives depicted in many of our cultural productions. This collection examines surveillance as it is portrayed in art, literature, film and popular culture, and makes the connection between our sense of ‘self’ and what is ‘seen’. In our post-panoptical world which purports to proffer freedom of movement, technology notes our movements and habits at every turn. Surveillance seeps out from businesses and power structures to blur the lines of security and confidentiality. This unsettling loss of privacy plays out in contemporary narratives, where the ‘selves’ we create are troubled by surveillance. This collection will appeal to scholars of media and cultural studies, contemporary literature, film and art and American studies.

Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture

Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture PDF Author: G. Padva
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137363649
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This international collection focuses on the phallic character of classic and contemporary literary and visual cultures and their invasive nature. It focuses on thrillers, horror cinema, sexual art and photography, erotic literature, female and male body politics, queer pleasures, gender/cross-gender/transgenderism, CCTV and phallic ethnicities.

Spaces of the Cinematic Home

Spaces of the Cinematic Home PDF Author: Eleanor Andrews
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317648811
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
This book examines the ways in which the house appears in films and the modes by which it moves beyond being merely a backdrop for action. Specifically, it explores the ways that domestic spaces carry inherent connotations that filmmakers exploit to enhance meanings and pleasures within film. Rather than simply examining the representation of the house as national symbol, auteur trait, or in terms of genre, contributors study various rooms in the domestic sphere from an assortment of time periods and from a diversity of national cinemas—from interior spaces in ancient Rome to the Chinese kitchen, from the animated house to the metaphor of the armchair in film noir.

Cinema, Suffering and Psychoanalysis

Cinema, Suffering and Psychoanalysis PDF Author: Laura Stephenson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Cinema, Suffering and Psychoanalysis explores psychological disorder as common to the human condition using a unique three-angled approach: psychoanalysis recognises the inherent suffering encountered by each subject due to developmental phases; psychology applies specific categorisation to how this suffering manifests; cinema depicts suffering through a combination of video and aural elements. Functioning as a culturally reflexive medium, the six feature films analysed, including Black Swan (2010) and The Machinist (2004), represent some of the most common psychological disorders and lived experiences of the contemporary era. This book enters unchartered terrain in cinema scholarship by combining clinical psychology's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Five (DSM-V) to organise and diagnose each character, and psychoanalysis to track the origin, mechanism and affect of the psychological disorder within the narrative trajectory of each film. Lacan's theories on the infantile mirror phase, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, Žižek's theories on the Real, the big Other and the Event, and Kristeva's theories on abjection and melancholia work in combination with the DSM's classification of symptoms to interpret six contemporary pieces of cinema. By taking into consideration that origin, mechanism, affect and symptomatology are part of an interconnected group, this book explores psychological disorder as part of the human condition, something which contributes to and informs personal identity. More specifically, this research refutes the notion that psychological disorder and psychological health exist as a binary, instead recognising that what has traditionally been pathologised, may instead be viewed as variations on human identity.

James Bond Will Return

James Bond Will Return PDF Author: Claire Hines
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231556969
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
For over six decades, James Bond has been a fixture of global culture, universally recognizable by the films’ combination of action set pieces, sex, political intrigue, and outrageous gadgetry. But as the British Empire entered the final stages of collapse, as the Cold War wound down and the “War on Terror” began, and as the visions of masculinity and femininity the series presented began to strike many viewers as outdated, the Bond formula has adapted to the changing times. Spanning the franchise’s entire history, from Sean Connery’s iconic swagger to Daniel Craig’s rougher, more visceral interpretation of the superspy, James Bond Will Return offers both academic readers and fans a comprehensive view of the series’s transformations against the backdrop of real-world geopolitical intrigue and sweeping social changes. Leading scholars consider each of the twenty-five films in the series, showing how and why Bond has changed and what elements of the formula have stood the test of time. Each chapter examines a single film from a distinct position, giving readers a full picture of the variety and breadth of the longest-running series in cinema history. Close formal readings; production histories; tracings of the political, social, and historical influences; analyses of the series’ use of then-new filmmaking technologies; reflections on the star personas that have been built around the character—these and many more approaches combine to produce a wide-ranging view of the James Bond film franchise. Essential reading for Bond scholars and aficionados alike, James Bond Will Return brings out the many surprising complexities of an iconic character.

Through the Black Mirror

Through the Black Mirror PDF Author: Terence McSweeney
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030194582
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This edited collection charts the first four seasons of Black Mirror and beyond, providing a rich social, historical and political context for the show. Across the diverse tapestry of its episodes, Black Mirror has both dramatized and deconstructed the shifting cultural and technological coordinates of the era like no other. With each of the nineteen chapters focussing on a single episode of the series, this book provides an in-depth analysis into how the show interrogates our contemporary desires and anxieties, while simultaneously encouraging audiences to contemplate the moral issues raised by each episode. What if we could record and replay our most intimate memories? How far should we go to protect our children? Would we choose to live forever? What does it mean to be human? These are just some of the questions posed by Black Mirror, and in turn, by this volume. Written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of contemporary film and television studies, Through the Black Mirror explores how Black Mirror has become a cultural barometer of the new millennial decades and questions what its embedded anxieties might tell us.