Screening the Tortured Body

Inspired by Michel Foucault's examination of state subjugation and control, this book considers post-structuralist notions of the 'political technology of the body' and 'the spectacle of the scaffold' as a means to analyse cinematic representations of politically-motivated persecution and bodily repression. Through a critique of sovereign power and its application of punishment 'for transgressions against the state', the collected works, herein, assess the polticised-body via a range of cinematic perspectives. Imagery, character construction and narrative devices are examined in their account of hegemonic-sanctioned torture and suppression as a means to a political outcome. Screening The Tortured Body: The Cinema as Scaffold elicits philosophical and cultural accounts of the 'restrained' body to deliberate on a range of politicised films and filmmakers whose narratives and mise-en-scène techniques critique corporeal subjugation by authoritarian factions.

Explores notions of state power, subjugation and punishment of the (gendered) body Examines current cultural debates over the efficacy of torture Considers how cinema has built a constituency for torture

Autorentext
Mark de Valk is the Programme Leader and a Senior Lecturer in Film Production at The University of Winchester. His personal filmmaking includes working with essay film practices and experimental techniques across documentary and drama forms.

Inhalt
SECTION I STATE EVISCERATION/TORTURED FLESH.- 1. Tortured Spectators: Massacred and Mucosal Patricia MacCormack.- 2. Torture Porn: The American Sadistic Disposition in the Post 9/11 Horror Genre Aaron Kerner.- 3. DisciplineBut Punish!: Foucault, Agamben and Torture Porn's Thanatopolitical Scaffold Xavier Aldana Reyes.- 4. The Expectational Body: The Becoming of the Tortured Vampire Horde in Daybreakers Simon Bacon.- 5. An Apology for French Torturers: L'Ennemi intime Nicole Beth Wallenbrock.- SECTION II THE SUBJUGATED BODY-POLITIC AS SPECTACLE.- 6. The Ideological Purpose of Torture: Artur London's Nightmare of Reality in L'aveu/The Confession (Costa-Gavras, 1970) Susan Hayward.- 7. Mr. Stone Goes To Washington: JFK 2.4 Mark de Valk.- 8. Giorgio Agamben Meets the Wachowskis: The State of Exception in V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2006) Melissa M. Jacques.- 9. Modes of Silence and Resistance: Chilean Documentary and Gender Torture Lisa DiGiovani.- SECTION III FRAMING SPECTATOR RECEPTION OF STATE RETRIBUTION.- 10. Torture Documentaries and Taxi To The Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007) Julia Lesage.- 11. Zero Dark Thirty: A Filmmaker's Notion Larra Anderson.- 12. Hypermediacy, Embodiment and Spectatorship in Brian De Palma's Redacted Calvin Fagan.- 13. Enemy of the State: Framing the Political Assassin Shane O'Sullivan.- 14. She's a Killer: The Image of the Women of Zero Dark Thirty.Dorothea Olkowski