Beugnet, Martine

Sorfa, David

Ostrowska, Dorota

Yacavone, Daniel

Ravetto-Biagioli, Kristine

Iannone, Pasquale

Bugaj, Malgorzata

2015-10-13T10:41:32Z

2015-10-13T10:41:32Z

2014-11-25

This thesis investigates cinema’s attempts to engage in a dialogue with the trace of the physical body. My concern is with the on-screen presentation of the body rather than its treatment as a representation of gender, sexuality, race, age, or class. I examine specifically The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980), Crash (Cronenberg, 1996), Attenberg (Tsangari, 2010), Taxidermia (Pálfi, 2006), and Sokurov’s family trilogy (Mother and Son, 1997; Father and Son, 2003; and Alexandra, 2007). The recurring tropes in these seven films include references to the medical gaze (both objective and objectifying) and haptic visuality which privileges sensual, close engagement with the image of the material object. I consider the medical and the haptic as metaphors for depictions of the body in cinema. To develop my analysis, I draw on the works of Michel Foucault, Laura U. Marks and Vivian Sobchack amongst others. I conclude that the discussed films, preoccupied with images of corporeal forms, criticise cinema’s conventional treatment of the body as simply a vessel for a goal-driven character and portray bodies which appear to consciousness in their own right.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10653

en

The University of Edinburgh

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

cinema

film

body

hapticity

medical

haptic

Lynch, David

Cronenberg, David

Sobchack, Vivian

Pálfi, György

Tsangari, Athina Rachel

Visceral material: cinematic bodies on screen

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy