The Pulse in Cinema: The Aesthetics of Horror

by Sharon Jane Mee

Overview

When we think of the pulse in cinema, we may think of the heartbeat of the spectator as they respond to affective or moving scenes in the film, or how fast-paced and shocking images exacerbate this affective response. Conceptually extending cinema spectatorship, The Pulse in Cinema contends that cinema is an energetic arrangement of affective and intense forces, where the image and the spectator are specific components. Analysing body horror films such as The Tingler (1959), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and The Beyond (1981), this book builds on Lyotard's concept of the dispositif, Deleuze's work on sensation and Bataille's economic theory to conceptualise a pulse in cinema, arguing for its importance in cinema spectatorship theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474475846
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr Sharon Jane Mee is Publications Officer at Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Rosalind E. Krauss’s Theory of the Pulse

Rhythm and Pulse

The Pulse: A Philosophical Enquiry

Body Horror

1. The Rhythm of Life: The Pulse in the Image

Rhythm and Pulse

Rhythm in Experimental Cinema

1. American Avant-garde and the Structuralist/Materialists
2. The French Impressionists
3. Dada

Protocinema: Étienne-Jules Marey

The Pulse in Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud

2. The Rhythm of Life: The Pulse in the Spectator

Surfaces of Inscription and Passages of Intensity

Movement, and an Opening

The Logic of Sensation as a Diastolic–systolic Opening

The Aesthetics of the Open: Georges Franju’s Le Sang des bêtes/Blood of the Beasts (1949)

A Libidinal Economy, and an Opening

Candour as the Body’s Openness to an Outside

3. Aisthesis and Dispositif: The Pulse and its Analogues

Extracting the Fear that Tingles the Spine: The Hype, the Buzz of the Gimmick, and the Bottom Line

The Execution: The Tingler (1959)

Aisthesis and Prescribed Lines

Prescription and the Aesthetics of Blood Spilled

The Pulse ‘Exposed’

Dispositif: Lines of Fright

Figural Analogues or ‘a Metonymy Without End’: The Heart that Throbs, the Spine that Tingles, the Mouth that Screams. Do you have the Guts?

4. Automutilation and Metonymy: The Economy of the Pulse

General Economy as Energetic Expenditure

Two General Economies of Communication and Communion

1. Automutilation: Effects on the Flesh
2. Metonymy and the ‘Operation’ to Undo Identity

Automutilation and George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)

An Operation in the Morgue: Lucio Fulci’s L’aldilà/The Beyond (1981)

The Sovereign Operation as Affective Experience

The Pulse as a Sovereign Operation in Horror Cinema

5. Blood and Convulsive Affect: Vectors of the Pulse as Sovereign Operations

Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981)

Possession and Dispossession

Body Horror and Convulsive Affect

The Copula and the Copulation of Bodies: The Convulsions of Language and Self, Even (Fucking Language)

The Movement-Image and Vectors of Sensation

The Machinic and the Non-Machinic

The Vector and Communication

The Magnitude and Direction of Vectors that Result in Possession and Dispossession

Material Vectors and their (Non)sense

Bibliography

Filmography

Index.

What People are Saying About This

Steven Shaviro

In this book, Sharon Mee gives a bold new account of the power of cinema. Movies both enthrall us and unsettle us. The Pulse in Cinema works through this double allure, and offers us a profound meditation on what aesthetic experience might mean in the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

Mee’s impressive analysis of film is matched by her ability to connect complex ideas to films that are recognized as canon and films that are often marginalized. [...] Highly recommended.

CHOICE - S. B. Skelton

In this book, Sharon Jane Mee gives a bold new account of the power of cinema. Movies both enthrall us and unsettle us. The Pulse in Cinema works through this double allure, and offers us a profound meditation on what aesthetic experience might mean in the twenty-first century.

Steven Shaviro