During my sophomore year in college, I had always restricted myself to a modest diet of long weekend nights alone reading or trying to watch as many films from the Criterion Collection as I could find. I would never get very far. I would always end up re-watching Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl. A film one critic noted for having a “brutal narrative structure”. Nothing sentimental about it; brutal. The mid-fifteenth century understanding of the word is most compelling to me: to be brutal is to relate to the lower animals. I found this to be true the night a friend texted me an address and demanded I meet her there within the next thirty minutes. The house was aglow with such warm inviting light, my friend and I did little work in finding it.
The host, a stoic and slender man, insisted that we remove our shoes and take a hit from his bong before entering. We acquiesced with little trepidation and as he slid the door back, we were both met with a wisping wall of weed smoke. Behind it, a room full of at least twenty people and a perky Golden-Retriever stared at us, the new guests. In the center of the room, two young men in hoodies and sweatpants played Street Fighter on a first generation PlayStation, both in extreme concentration. A small group talked of lucid dreaming. Some read poetry while others conversed about the absurd insecurity of our government. I heard someone talking about how they spent most of the semester on their back and short man with a perpetual smile asked me if I wanted to join him and ten others in renting a house somewhere in Pittsburg. A boy with a tattoo of someone’s face just below his right eye asked if I knew how to roll a joint. I lied and said I did; it was much easier than expected. A beautiful raven-haired woman lumbered towards me smelling of black licorice and plums. She told me she could read minds. Grabbing the stone I wear around my neck, she closed her eyes for a moment, then spoke: “You sleep too much.” More people flooded in, removing their shoes and partaking in complimentary bong hits. I was happy to see these strangers almost as much as the dog. The Golden Retriever leapt from person to person, in a joyful frenzy, making new friends. It licked the palms of my hands and placed its head on my lap as I watched the scene. Outside, the light drizzle became a thunderstorm. Daggers of rain pounded the windows and the roof. The host turned off his lights so that we could enjoy the lightning. Flashes framed us all in eccentric family portraits. Electric-green halos floated and outlined our bodies. The storm progressed into a primordial production. The dog began to howl and the group whooped and whined with it, all in great unison. At each thunderclap, at each strike of lightning, the hysterical racket and movement responded in vigorous growth—a beautiful and brutal burst of energy only rivaled by the screaming silence that came after.
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, written by Chris Crutcher, is about being an outcast, friendship, and standing up for what is right. The main character Eric, or Moby, whose best friend is Sarah Byrnes, find themselves going through a series of events of dark secrets, violence, betrayal, and more. In the book, these two best friends learn that friendship and sacrifice are vital in order to help find themselves.
The cinema as a form of leisure was not new to British society, and indeed most western industrialised societies, during the interwar era. Prior to World War One it was not much more than a 'technical curiosity', but by the 1920s it was the 'new medium' and one that was a 'fully fledged form of art'. (Taylor 1970 p, 180) Throughout most of the 1920s, films shown in cinemas around the world were 'silent'. While silent films were not new to this era, the popularity of them experienced a 'new' and unique interest amongst the general public. Indeed, Vile Bodies highlights the popularity of the cinema and in particular, the 'silent' film as a regularly experienced leisure activity. Waugh's character, Colonel Blount, is the most obvious representation of the popular interest of films and film making at the time Vile Bodies was written. He tells Adam, after asking his interest in the cinema, that he and the Rector went 'a great deal' to the 'Electra Palace'. (Waugh 1930 p, 59)
Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel which has been challenged for its graphic descriptions of events which occurred during the later years of World War 2. There are many other reasons which prompted communities to ban the book such as its anti-religious thoughts and sexual content. Although this book is highly graphic and can be offensive toward some religions, it should not be banned because it shows you the inside of a person who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and it also encourages readers to think differently of how life works and gives historical information about a firsthand experience of being a prisoner of war and a survivor of the bombing of Dresden. Although it is true that it uses graphic imagery and at some points ridicules
(Brinkema, 2015) This article vividly explains where the genre of horror came from and the visual culture it relates to.. This article has primary sources of data through the form an interview with Noel Carroll. “Carroll reflects on contemporary films, digital media, video games and televisual monsters, and the paradoxes, familiar and new, that govern his philosophy of horror today, a philosophy that, as it did 25 years ago, is still durably bound to the aesthetic.” (Brinkema, 2015) This research on aesthetic values was from past generations. The article was represented well explaining visual cultures of horror but it had too many examples to text rather than film. Which is what is being
Of special note is that the horror is created, in large part, by suggestion rather than a heavy sledgehammer approach, In the most famous sequence of the film, the man d...
As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning of the novel.
“Raging Bull” (1980) is not a so much a film about boxing but more of a story about a psychotically jealous, sexually insecure borderline homosexual, caged animal of a man, who encourages pain and suffering in his life as almost a form of reparation. Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece of a film drags you down into the seedy filth stenched world of former middleweight boxing champion Jake “The Bronx Bull” LaMotta. Masterfully he paints the picture of a beast whose sole drive is not boxing but an insatiable obsessive jealously over his wife and his fear of his own underling sexuality. The movie broke new ground with its brutal unadulterated no-holds-bard look at the vicious sport of boxing by bringing the camera into the ring, giving the viewer the most realistic, primal, and brutal boxing scenes ever filmed. With blood and sweat spraying, flashbulbs’ bursting at every blow Scorsese gives the common man an invitation into the square circle where only the hardest trained gladiators dare to venture.
...ual difference.” Also, by introducing the concept of fantasy, Penley asserts that, “film analysis, moreover, from the perspective of the structure of fantasy, presents a more accurate description of the spectator’s shifting and multiple identifications and a more comprehensive account of these same movements within the film: the perpetually changing configurations of the characters, for example, are a formal response to the unfolding of a fantasy that is the filmic fiction itself.” Thus, Penley’s final sentence states that, “the feminist use of the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy for the study of film and its institutions can now be seen as a way of constructively dismantling the bachelor machines of film theory (no need for Luddishm) or at least modifying them in accordance with the practical and theoretical demands of sexual modernity” (Stam and Miller, 470-471).
Jones, Peter G. "The End of the Road: Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade" Modern Critical Interpretations Slaughterhouse-Five Ed. Harold Bloom.
In horror film, the filmmaker relies on the plot of the story to introduce curiosity to viewers. The filmmakers want the audience to anticipate things like the villains backstory, or which characters they believe will survive. The filmmakers then introduce grotesque images over the plot to increase the feelings the audience associates with the characters and their stories. Ebiri writes that “the idea of revulsion, not just in terms of gore but also in terms of emotion and state of mind, lies at the heart of the genre.” (pp. 1). Horror films grow more grotesque with each year, and this is thought to continue. In a world where one can turn the news on and see that a mother killed her child, or that a mass shooting has occurred at a church, it forces filmmakers to explore imagery extreme enough to evoke curiosity in an
In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses the relationships amongst psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian theory), cinema (as she observed it in the mid 1970s), and the symbolism of the female body. Taking some of her statements and ideas slightly out of their context, it is interesting to compare her thoughts to the continuum of oral-print-image cultures.
In the third story of Loves Executioner: “The Fat lady” , Dr.Yalom decides to treat a twenty-seven year old overweight woman named, Betty. Though Dr. Yalom was reluctant to treat Betty at first due to her being obese, Dr. Yalom decides to put aside his counter-transference issues and views treating Betty as a way to improve his skills as a therapist. Not only does Dr.Yalom learn throughout treating Betty that there was more substance to her than he had initially anticipated, but he connects with betty while overcoming his counter-transference issues,helping Betty uncover the pathology of her depression and discovering her identity.
Romney, J 2004, 'Le sex and violence', The Independent Online Edition, September 12, 2004. Retrieved: December 21, 2004, from http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/story.jsp?story=561392
The theme of sacrifice can be seen in countless examples throughout film. Many films that contain death could be considered a form of sacrifice (Paul, 465). Some examples of sacrifice seen in early cinema could be Ben Hur, and a more recent film would be l Million-Dollar Baby. This week I chose to watch Sophie’s Choice, directed by Alan Pakula in 1982. In this essay I’m going to be looking at sacrifice and its influence on cinematic culture. In this essay I’ll look into the different identification methods when looking at sacrifice, and the two different sacrificial paths one can take.
Low, A. (6 Jun 2009) T.S. Eliot [Television documentary episode]. BBC (Producer), Arena. UK: Illuminations Films