Buster Keaton

Filmische metaforen in Buster Keatons kortfilms

by Maarten Coëgnarts

Metaphors in Buster Keaton’s Short Films

by Maarten Coëgnarts

2012 - Metaphors in Buster Keaton's Short Films

by Peter Kravanja

Co-authored with Maarten Coëgnarts, published in 'Image & Narrative', vol. 13, nr. 2, 2012, pp. 133-146.

This article seeks to address the topic of metaphor in relation to the nineteen two-reel short films Buster Keaton... more This article seeks to address the topic of metaphor in relation to the nineteen two-reel short films Buster Keaton made between 1920 and 1923. These films are characterized by a comedy of aesthetics and kinetics whereby the themes come across primarily visually through aspects of film style and Keaton's body as opposed to narrative. It is our claim that within these confinements of the imagery metaphor plays a crucial role in transferring thought and thematic meaning. In demonstrating this claim we shall fall back on recent developments within metaphor studies, in particular Forceville’s newly introduced concept of multimodal metaphor which shall allow us to grasp the significant role of the body in identifying metaphor.

2007 - Charlot et Buster au temple de Delphes

by Peter Kravanja

Published in La Revue générale, vol. 6-7, June-July 2007, pp. 25-33.

2011 - Filmische metaforen in Buster Keatons kortfilms

by Peter Kravanja

Co-authored with Maarten Coëgnarts, published in CineMagie, vol. 274, Spring 2011, pp. 32-42.

2007 - Buster Keaton's Comedy of Hegelian Beauty and the Body

by Peter Kravanja

Published in 'Image & Narrative', vol. 20, 2007.

Though in the field of silent comic cinema there exist many examples supporting Aristotle’s statement that what is... more Though in the field of silent comic cinema there exist many examples supporting Aristotle’s statement that what is funny is linked to what is ugly, Buster Keaton is a shining exception: his comedy is entirely derived from the aesthetic. Keaton’s visual comedy is a comedy of beauty (in the Hegelian sense). He moves his graceful body in spatial configurations characterised by order and symmetry, evoking the world of the circus (the discipline of acrobats) and the 19th-century Romantic marionette. The body plays a key role in understanding the modern relevance of Keaton’s silent films. As we shall see, the running about and other physical feats of the great comic actor, far from formalising representation, bring the spectator to a sort of true and intimate understanding of self-experience. Perhaps this is precisely what the aesthetic experience is: the emotion brought about by a form which has been neither intellectualised nor objectivised, but actually felt, or even appropriated. With Keaton, furthermore, the search for beauty is not a sterile one: often this formal aspect can best be interpreted with respect to a film’s narrative context or to the primary traits of a given character. Thus, form and idea meet, arriving at the same time.