The Body in Film

Excremental Ecstasy, Divine Defecation and Revolting Reception: Configuring a Scatological Gaze in Trash Filmmaking

by Zoe Gross

Based on paper given at B For Bad Cinema Conference at Monash University, 2009

‘“Normality is Threatened by the Monster”: Robin Wood, Romero and Zombies’, CineAction, 84, 2011, 24-31.

by Lucy Donaldson

‘“The suffering black male body and the threatened white female body”: Ambiguous Bodies in Candyman’, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 9, 2011.

by Lucy Donaldson

‘Human monstrosity: rape, ambiguity and performance in Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)’ in Baumgartner, Holly & Roger Davis (eds.), Hosting the Monster (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2008).

by Lucy Donaldson

The monstrous in Rosemary’s Baby is embodied in both the real and the supernatural. The film’s narrative hinges on a... more The monstrous in Rosemary’s Baby is embodied in both the real and the supernatural. The film’s narrative hinges on a central hesitation between the delusions of a pregnant woman and the existence of Satanism, yet I would argue that despite the inherent ambiguity of the plot, Rosemary’s husband Guy (John Cassavetes) represents the monstrous through both explanations. The positioning of him as the monster is crucially demonstrated by Rosemary’s rape. The film presents this as a nightmare where the semi-conscious Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is surrounded by a coven, approached by her naked husband who transforms into the devil and then rapes her. The next morning her husband claims he had sex with her unconscious body so as not to miss optimum conception. In this paper I would like to suggest that whether Guy exchanges Rosemary’s body to incubate the antichrist or not, the rape is still crucially performed by Guy and it is the duplicitous nature of his behaviour towards his wife and total disregard for her body that makes him monstrous.
  Furthermore, I would like to argue that detailed consideration of performance is the key to understanding his monstrousness and its effect on engagement with him. Through Guy’s status as an actor, combined with the various levels of performance he generates throughout the film - in the form of rehearsals as well as impressions and ridicule - Cassavetes reveals a detailed portrayal of actorly self-absorption, phoniness and charm that emphasises the depth of his duplicity regarding his wife’s body. By scrutinising the film’s depiction of rape, during the nightmare and after it, I will demonstrate how the notion of performance in both the literal physical embodiment of a monster and as selfish husband/rapist reveals Guy’s monstrousness as supernatural and real and the difficulties this represents in our engagement with him. 

"A National Filmmaker without a Home: Home and Displacement in the Films of Amir Naderi" in Comparative Studies of South Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (Vol. 31 No. 2, Fall 2011)

by Alla Gadassik

Amir Naderi is one of Iran’s most internationally acclaimed directors, and he is considered to be among the central... more Amir Naderi is one of Iran’s most internationally acclaimed directors, and he is considered to be among the central figures in the nation’s postrevolutionary film industry. Paradoxically, his choice to leave Iran in hopes of expanded artistic opportunities in the United States has cost him the critical and scholarly recognition bestowed on his former compatriots Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. This essay seeks to address this imposed cultural exile by analyzing Naderi’s work and situating him as an important diasporic Iranian filmmaker. Films discussed include The Runner (1985), the Manhattan Trilogy (1993–2002), Sound Barrier (2005), and Vegas: Based on a True Story (2008). The analysis foregrounds continuities of displacement and confinement between Naderi’s films about Iran and his subsequent portraits of the United States. The journeys and paths undertaken by Naderi’s protagonists are explored as reflections of a diasporic filmmaker who left the constraints of one home for the limitations of another.

"Ghosts in the Machine: The Body in Digital Animation" in Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture, Ed. Esther Pereen and Maria Del Pilar Blanco (Continuum Press, 2010)

by Alla Gadassik

"...Alla Gadassik continues the focus on new technologies, moving beyond discussing CGI's function in bringing... more "...Alla Gadassik continues the focus on new technologies, moving beyond discussing CGI's function in bringing the ghost to (nonorganic) life to explore the way animation is itself, to an ever greater degree, a ghostly technique that threatens to erase or spectralize the bodily presence of the animator" (editor's introduction)

Roundtable Discussion about the Post-Cinematic in Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2

by Julia Leyda

with Nicholas Rombes and Steven Shaviro; questions by Therese Grisham

Du regard au geste, à l’envoûtement des convives : figures de la cuisine, analyse sous l’angle des gestes culinaires

by Armando Menicacci

To be published in the "400 gouts" proceedings of the november 2010 symposium in Reims (France)

Having studied body movement analysis in Paris 8 I'm applying it to analyze documentaries about Pierre Gagnaire and... more Having studied body movement analysis in Paris 8 I'm applying it to analyze documentaries about Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Bras chefs to understand relationships between their movements and some of the specificities of their creativity in the  kitchen.

Bringing Bodies Back In: For a Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Film Criticism of Embodied Cultural Identity

by Kate Ince

This article reassesses the concept of identification in line with the increased importance phenomenology has taken on... more This article reassesses the concept of identification in line with the increased importance phenomenology has taken on in film-philosophy of the 1990s and 2000s. In the 1970s and 1980s, a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of identification dominated film theory and criticism, and spectatorial engagement with elements of films was understood as what psychoanalysis calls secondary identification – the identification with stable subject-positions (characters) in the film-text. But non-Lacanian psychoanalysis and Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology offer film-philosophy a very different understanding of identification as a non image-based, ‘blind’, bodily affective tie that is established between spectators and what Vivian Sobchack describes as ‘the sense and sensibility of materiality itself’ (Sobchack 2004, 65). By first exploring how this more bodily (for psychoanalysis, primary) identification is theorized by psychoanalysts (Freud, Paul Schilder, Henri Wallon) and by film theorists (Kaja Silverman), the article proposes that film criticism make greater use of it in order to engage more meaningfully with the visible cultural specificities – size, skin colour, age, sex – of the images of bodies viewed on cinema screens. It is not just ‘the’ body that needs bringing back into thinking about film spectatorship, but culturally differentiated bodies, both on the screen and in the auditorium. A psychoanalytic and phenomenological film criticism of embodied cultural identity, one that attends to the materiality of the film and of the body-images and objects on the screen, may be the most culturally and politically useful successor to ‘screen’ theory of the 1970s and 1980s.

“I’ve Got you under my Skin: Narratives of the Inner Body in Cinema and Television”, Nuncius. Journal of the material and visual history of science, vol. 26 (Ways of Voyaging Through the Human Body), 2011, pp. 201-221.

by Alberto Brodesco

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/nun/2011/00000026/00000001;jsessionid=55uv63qjch9i.alice

1966 Twentieth Century Fox big-budget film Fantastic Voyage represents a corner stone around which a whole audiovisual... more 1966 Twentieth Century Fox big-budget film Fantastic Voyage represents a corner stone around which a whole audiovisual trope was built. The topic of the voyage of shrunken people sent to explore the inner space of the body was adopted since then by many feature films, television series and animated TV series, for the aims of education, entertainment or edutainment. While the exploration of the body (and, often, the meeting with its inhabitants) gives space to just a few possibilities of plot development, it leaves open ground for metaphors. Starting from the hypotext, this article analyzes a sample of audiovisuals to try to summarize a taxonomy of narrative schemes and the diffferent metaphors (and their uses) that our body can host.

“I’ve Got you under my Skin: Narratives of the Inner Body in Cinema and Television”, Nuncius. Journal of the material and visual history of science, vol. 26 (Ways of Voyaging Through the Human Body), 2011, pp. 201-221.

CFP: XIV. International Film and Media Studies Conference in Transylvania, THE CINEMA OF SENSATIONS Cluj-Napoca, May 25-26, 2012. Deadline for submissions: 15 January 2012.

by Ágnes Pethő

Updated CFP with confirmed keynote speakers: Laura U. Marks, Yvonne Spielmann.

From 'minor' to 'major' cinema: women's and feminist film-making in France in the 2000s

by Kate Ince

An overview of developments in women's filmmaking in France from 2000 to 2007 that also offers some sustained... more An overview of developments in women's filmmaking in France from 2000 to 2007 that also offers some sustained consideration of Catherine Breillat's contribution to this field.

BOOK EXCERPT: Arnold Schwarzenegger: a biography

by Louise Krasniewicz

This biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger investigates how he framed his life as the fulfillment of the American Dream.... more This biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger investigates how he framed his life as the fulfillment of the American Dream. This chapter examines Arnold's body and the history of bodybuilding in the United States.

Das Publikum des Lebens - Einleitung

by Dirk Verdicchio

Article sur Le sentiment de la chair de Roberto Garzelli

by Pierre-Alexandre Fradet

Séquences, juillet 2011.

"Le corps et sa double teinte". Article sur Un poison violent de Katell Quillévéré

by Pierre-Alexandre Fradet

Séquences, juillet 2011.

Finding the mother, finding the child audience: Signifying practices in two recent family films. In C. Bradford, ed. Writing the Australian child: Texts and contexts in Australian children’s literature. University of Western Australia Press,

by Leonie Rutherford

Author's pre-print, draft copy, published in Writing the Australian Child (University of Western Australia Press, 1996)

Discusses representations of animals (horses) and the materrnal in an Australian (Silver Brumby) and Irish (Into the... more Discusses representations of animals (horses) and the materrnal in an Australian (Silver Brumby) and Irish (Into the West) children's/ family film.

Notes From the Underground: Guerilla Filmmaking In Australia

by jack sargeant

Metro Magazine 168

Interview and discussion on the film Nude Study, an underground / indie Australian feature.
Interview and discussion on the film Nude Study, an underground / indie Australian feature.

Hot, Hard Cocks and Tight, Tight Unlubricated Assholes: Transgression, Sexual Ambiguity and “Perverse” Pleasures in Serge Gainsbourg’s Je t’aime moi non plus

by jack sargeant

Monster Queen: The Transgressive Body of Divine in Pink Flamingos

by Lindsay Hallam

Published in Bright Lights Film Journal, Feb 2010