Mark de Valk (ed.)
Screening The Tortured Body: The Cinema as Scaffold
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 342 pp.
ISBN: 9781137399175
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 ‘retrained’ body to deliberate on a range of politicised films and filmmakers whose narratives and mise-en-scène techniques critique corporeal subjugation by authoritarian factions.
Table of contens
Tortured Spectators: Massacred and Mucosal
MacCormack, Patricia
MacCormack, Patricia
Torture Porn: The American Sadistic Disposition in the Post-9/11 Horror Genre
Kerner, Aaron
Kerner, Aaron
Discipline… But Punish!: Foucault, Agamben and Torture Porn’s Thanotopolitical Scaffold
Aldana-Reyes, Xavier
Aldana-Reyes, Xavier
The Expectational Body: The Becoming of the Tortured Vampire Horde in Daybreakers
Bacon, Simon
Bacon, Simon
An Apology for French Torturers: L’Ennemi intime (2007)
Wallenbrock, Nicole Beth
Wallenbrock, Nicole Beth
The Ideological Purpose of Torture: Artur London’s Nightmare of Reality in L’Aveu/The Confession (Costa-Gavras, 1970)
Hayward, Susan
Hayward, Susan
Mr. Stone Goes to Washington: JFK 2.4
Valk, Mark
Valk, Mark
There’s No Geneva Convention Here: Torture in Three Films Set in World War II
Turim, Maureen
Turim, Maureen
Modes of Silence and Resistance: Chilean Documentary and Gendered Torture
DiGiovanni, Lisa
DiGiovanni, Lisa
Torture Documentaries and Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007)
Lesage, Julia
Lesage, Julia
Zero Dark Thirty: A Filmmaker’s Notion
Anderson, Larra
Anderson, Larra
Hypermediacy, Embodiment and Spectatorship in Brian de Palma’s
Fagan, Calvin
Fagan, Calvin
Enemy of the State: Framing the Political Assassin
O’Sullivan, Shane
O’Sullivan, Shane
‘She’s a Killer,’ ‘The Image of the Women of Zero Dark Thirty’
Olkowski, Dorothea
Olkowski, Dorothea
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