Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier's intense, disturbing, and sometimes funny films have led many to condemn him as misogynist or misanthropic. The same films inspire this collection's reflections on how our fears and desires regarding gender, power, race, finitude, family, and fate often thwart — and sometimes feed — our best democratic aspirations. The essays in this volume attend to von Trier's role as provocateur, as well as to his films' techniques, topics, and storytelling. Where others accuse von Trier of being clichéd, the editors argue that he intensifies the "clichés of our times" in ways that direct our political energies towards apprehending and repairing a shattered world.

The book is certainly for von Trier lovers and haters but, at the same time, political, critical, and feminist theorists entirely unfamiliar with von Trier's films will find this volume's essays of interest. Most of the contributors tarry with von Trier to develop new readings of major thinkers and writers, including Agamben, Bataille, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Deleuze, Euripides, Freud, Kierkegaard, Ranciére, Nietzsche, Winnicott, and many more. Von Trier is both central and irrelevant to much of this work. Writing from the fields of classics, literature, gender studies, philosophy, film and political theory, the authors stage an interdisciplinary intervention in film studies.
1123741599
Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier's intense, disturbing, and sometimes funny films have led many to condemn him as misogynist or misanthropic. The same films inspire this collection's reflections on how our fears and desires regarding gender, power, race, finitude, family, and fate often thwart — and sometimes feed — our best democratic aspirations. The essays in this volume attend to von Trier's role as provocateur, as well as to his films' techniques, topics, and storytelling. Where others accuse von Trier of being clichéd, the editors argue that he intensifies the "clichés of our times" in ways that direct our political energies towards apprehending and repairing a shattered world.

The book is certainly for von Trier lovers and haters but, at the same time, political, critical, and feminist theorists entirely unfamiliar with von Trier's films will find this volume's essays of interest. Most of the contributors tarry with von Trier to develop new readings of major thinkers and writers, including Agamben, Bataille, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Deleuze, Euripides, Freud, Kierkegaard, Ranciére, Nietzsche, Winnicott, and many more. Von Trier is both central and irrelevant to much of this work. Writing from the fields of classics, literature, gender studies, philosophy, film and political theory, the authors stage an interdisciplinary intervention in film studies.
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Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier

Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier

Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier

Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier

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Overview

Lars von Trier's intense, disturbing, and sometimes funny films have led many to condemn him as misogynist or misanthropic. The same films inspire this collection's reflections on how our fears and desires regarding gender, power, race, finitude, family, and fate often thwart — and sometimes feed — our best democratic aspirations. The essays in this volume attend to von Trier's role as provocateur, as well as to his films' techniques, topics, and storytelling. Where others accuse von Trier of being clichéd, the editors argue that he intensifies the "clichés of our times" in ways that direct our political energies towards apprehending and repairing a shattered world.

The book is certainly for von Trier lovers and haters but, at the same time, political, critical, and feminist theorists entirely unfamiliar with von Trier's films will find this volume's essays of interest. Most of the contributors tarry with von Trier to develop new readings of major thinkers and writers, including Agamben, Bataille, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Deleuze, Euripides, Freud, Kierkegaard, Ranciére, Nietzsche, Winnicott, and many more. Von Trier is both central and irrelevant to much of this work. Writing from the fields of classics, literature, gender studies, philosophy, film and political theory, the authors stage an interdisciplinary intervention in film studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780190600174
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 09/23/2016
Pages: 470
Product dimensions: 7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bonnie Honig is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor in the Departments of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University.

Lori J. Marso is Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies and Professor of Political Science at Union College.

Table of Contents

Preface by Davide Panagia
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors

INTRODUCTION
Lars von Trier and the 'Clichés of Our Times'
Bonnie Honig and Lori J. Marso

I. ANTI-SEMITE/JEW
VON TRIER
Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

1. An Invitation from Lars von Trier - Transcript of the First TV interview since the Cannes Press Conference, with Martin Krasnik, Danish journalist.
Translated by Troels Skadhauge and Lars Tønder

II. WOMAN/NYMPH
2. Must We Burn Lars von Trier? Simone de Beauvoir's Body Politics in Antichrist
Lori J. Marso

3. The Suffering Spectator? Perversion and Complicity in Antichrist and Nymphomaniac
Rosalind Galt

4. The Nymph Shoots Back: Agamben and the Feel of the Agon
Lynne Huffer

III. FATE/MARTYR
5. Sharing in What Death Reveals: Breaking the Waves with Bataille
Stephen S. Bush

6. Broken by God: Fate and Divine Intervention in Breaking the Waves
James Martel

IV. YOUNG AMERICANS
7. Blind Spots and Double Vision: National and Individual Fantasy in Dancer in the Dark
Victoria Wohl

8. "Young Americans": Ranciére and Bowie in Dogville
Paul Apostilidis

9. Three Emancipations: Manderlay and Racialized Freedom
Elisabeth R. Anker

10. Face Value: von Trier, Bowie, Kanye (Notes on a review and three rants)
Tony Cokes

KANYE
Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

V. EUROPE/EVIL
BOWIE
Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

11. "At the Fringes of One's Consciousness": Kierkegaard, The Idiots, and the Politics of Comic Rule Following
Lars Tønder

12. A Philopoetic Engagement: Deleuze and The Element of Crime
Michael J. Shapiro

13. Evils of Representation in Europa and Melancholia
Joshua Foa Dienstag

VI. THINKING/MELANCHOLIA
14. Black Suns and a Bright Planet: Melancholia as Thought Experiment
Thomas Elsaesser

15. "I know what has to happen": Tragedy, Mourning, and Melancholia in Lars von Trier's Medea
Miriam Leonard

16. Out Like a Lion: Melancholia with Euripides and Winnicott
Bonnie Honig

17. The Gravity of Melancholia: A Critique of Speculative Realism
Christopher Peterson

18. Melancholia and Us
William E. Connolly

Index
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