Body Memory in David Cronenberg's the Fly Dylan Trigg
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Irish Gothic Fiction
THE ‘If the Gothic emerges in the shadows cast by modernity and its pasts, Ireland proved EME an unhappy haunting ground for the new genre. In this incisive study, Jarlath Killeen shows how the struggle of the Anglican establishment between competing myths of civility and barbarism in eighteenth-century Ireland defined itself repeatedly in terms R The Emergence of of the excesses of Gothic form.’ GENCE Luke Gibbons, National University of Ireland (Maynooth), author of Gaelic Gothic ‘A work of passion and precision which explains why and how Ireland has been not only a background site but also a major imaginative source of Gothic writing. IRISH GOTHIC Jarlath Killeen moves well beyond narrowly political readings of Irish Gothic by OF IRISH GOTHIC using the form as a way of narrating the history of the Anglican faith in Ireland. He reintroduces many forgotten old books into the debate, thereby making some of the more familiar texts seem suddenly strange and definitely troubling. With FICTION his characteristic blend of intellectual audacity and scholarly rigour, he reminds us that each text from previous centuries was written at the mercy of its immediate moment as a crucial intervention in a developing debate – and by this brilliant HIST ORY, O RIGI NS,THE ORIES historicising of the material he indicates a way forward for Gothic amidst the ruins of post-Tiger Ireland.’ Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame Provides a new account of the emergence of Irish Gothic fiction in the mid-eighteenth century FI This new study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of CTI the beginnings of Irish Gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland. -
“No Reason to Be Seen”: Cinema, Exploitation, and the Political
“No Reason to Be Seen”: Cinema, Exploitation, and the Political by Gordon Sullivan B.A., University of Central Florida, 2004 M.A., North Carolina State University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Gordon Sullivan It was defended on October 20, 2017 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, Department of English Jennifer Waldron, Associate Professor, Department of English Daniel Morgan, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago Dissertation Advisor: Adam Lowenstein, Professor, Department of English ii Copyright © by Gordon Sullivan 2017 iii “NO REASON TO BE SEEN”: CINEMA, EXPLOITATION, AND THE POLITICAL Gordon Sullivan, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 This dissertation argues that we can best understand exploitation films as a mode of political cinema. Following the work of Peter Brooks on melodrama, the exploitation film is a mode concerned with spectacular violence and its relationship to the political, as defined by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, the political is an “intervention into the visible and sayable,” where members of a community who are otherwise uncounted come to be seen as part of the community through a “redistribution of the sensible.” This aesthetic rupture allows the demands of the formerly-invisible to be seen and considered. We can see this operation at work in the exploitation film, and by investigating a series of exploitation auteurs, we can augment our understanding of what Rancière means by the political. -
Transatlantica, 2 | 2017 Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema
Transatlantica Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal 2 | 2017 (Hi)stories of American Women: Writings and Re- writings / Call and Answer: Dialoguing the American West in France Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future Mehdi Achouche Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/10482 DOI: 10.4000/transatlantica.10482 ISSN: 1765-2766 Publisher Association française d'Etudes Américaines (AFEA) Electronic reference Mehdi Achouche, “Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future”, Transatlantica [Online], 2 | 2017, Online since 19 April 2019, connection on 20 May 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/10482 ; DOI: https:// doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.10482 This text was automatically generated on 20 May 2021. Transatlantica – Revue d'études américaines est mise à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Cybo... 1 Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future Mehdi Achouche REFERENCES Marianne Kac-Vergne, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men of the Future, London, I.B. Tauris, 2018, 246 pages, ISBN 978-1-78076-748-2, 3 1 If, as J.P. Telotte has pointed out, science fiction cinema “has focused its attention on the problematic nature of human being and the difficult task of being human” (2), this “humanist” proclivity is in fact often, like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, about making white men the heart of the system. -
Filmic Bodies As Terministic (Silver) Screens: Embodied Social Anxieties in Videodrome
FILMIC BODIES AS TERMINISTIC (SILVER) SCREENS: EMBODIED SOCIAL ANXIETIES IN VIDEODROME BY DANIEL STEVEN BAGWELL A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Communication May 2014 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Ron Von Burg, Ph.D., Advisor Mary Dalton, Ph.D., Chair R. Jarrod Atchison, Ph.D. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of people have contributed to my incredible time at Wake Forest, which I wouldn’t trade for the world. My non-Deac family and friends are too numerous to mention, but nonetheless have my love and thanks for their consistent support. I send a hearty shout-out, appreciative snap, and Roll Tide to every member of the Wake Debate team; working and laughing with you all has been the most fun of my academic career, and I’m a better person for it. My GTA cohort has been a blast to work with and made every class entertaining. I wouldn’t be at Wake without Dr. Louden, for which I’m eternally grateful. No student could survive without Patty and Kimberly, both of whom I suspect might have superpowers. I couldn’t have picked a better committee. RonVon has been an incredibly helpful and patient advisor, whose copious notes were more than welcome (and necessary); Mary Dalton has endured a fair share of my film rants and is the most fun professor that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing; Jarrod is brilliant and is one of the only people with a knowledge of super-violent films that rivals my own. -
Desire, Disease, Death, and David Cronenberg: the Operatic Anxieties of the Fly
Desire, Disease, Death, and David Cronenberg: The Operatic Anxieties of The Fly Yves Saint-Cyr 451 University of Toronto Introduction In 1996, Linda and Michael Hutcheon released their groundbreaking book, Opera: Desire, Disease, Death, a work that analyses operatic representations of tuberculosis, syphilis, cholera, and AIDS. They followed this up in 2000 with Bodily Charm, a discussion of the corporeal in opera; and, in 2004, they published Opera: The Art of Dying, in which they argue that opera has historically provided a metaphorical space for the ritualistic contemplation of mortality, whether the effect is cathartic, medita- tive, spiritual, or therapeutic. This paper is based on a Hutcheonite reading of the Fly saga, which to date is made up of seven distinct incarnations: George Langelaan published the original short story in 1957; Neumann and Clavell’s 1958 film adaptation was followed by two sequels in 1959 and 1965; David Cronenberg re-made the Neumann film in 1986, which gener- ated yet another sequel in 1989; and, most recently in 2008, Howard Shore and David Henry Hwang adapted Cronenberg’s film into an opera. If the Hutcheons are correct that opera engenders a ritualistic contemplation of mortality by sexualising disease, how does this practice influence composers and librettists’ choice of source material? Historically, opera has drawn on the anxieties of its time and, congruently, The Fly: Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée CRCL DECEMBER 2011 DÉCEMBRE RCLC 0319–051x/11/38.4/451 © Canadian Comparative Literature Association CRCL DECEMBER 2011 DÉCEMBRE RCLC The Opera draws on distinctly 21st-century fears. -
The Content of the Film for Group Discussion, As Well As a Brief Summary of the Film for Reference
(Photo Source: David via WordPress) Brandi Pessman, Tim Wucherer, Brad Dawson We present here guiding questions on the content of the film for group discussion, as well as a brief summary of the film for reference. Introduction: A Brooksfilm production, The Fly (1986) is an American science-fiction film directed and co- written by David Cronenberg. The Fly (1986) is based on the same-named 1957 short story by George Langlaan and a 1958 film written by James Clavell and directed by Kurt Neumann. Film Summary: Seth Brundle (played by Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist who, inspired by his life-long struggle with motion sickness, is developing a teleportation device. While at a science conference, he meets Veronica Quaife (played by Geena Davis), a journalist looking to write a story about the next great scientific discovery. Veronica proceeds to document his work on trying to teleport living beings. Things go horribly wrong when Seth attempts to teleport himself and a fly enters the “tele-pod” with him. Questions for Discussion: 1. How do Seth Brundle’s actions accurately or inaccurately represent those of a scientist? In other words, how are scientists portrayed in the film? 2. How could viewers’ perceptions of insects be influenced or changed by the film? 3. Why do you think the Brundle fly never developed wings or the ability to fly? 4. Did the Brundle fly’s transformation proceed by what you believe is a natural progression? 5. What role do you think the computer chip in Seth Brundle's’ back played in his transformation into a fly? 6. -
Body Horror by Matthew Ronay and Lane Relyea, May/June 2020
Body Horror By Matthew Ronay and Lane Relyea, May/June 2020 TISHAN HSU’s paintings and sculptures evoke nightmarish visions of the body’s forced integration with its technological surrounds. After a spate of exhibitions in the 1980s at venues including Pat Hearn Gallery and Leo Castelli, the artist’s work largely disappeared from public view. Now, New York’s SculptureCenter has organized the survey “Tishan Hsu: Liquid Circuit.” The show debuted at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, this past winter and was slated to open at SculptureCenter in May before being postponed in the wake of Covid-19. To mark this occasion, Artforum invited artist MATTHEW RONAY and art historian LANE RELYEA to reflect on Hsu’s dark, prescient, and singularly weird oeuvre. Tishan Hsu, Vertical Ooze, 1987, ceramic tile, urethane, vinyl cement compound, acrylic, and oil on wood, 61 3⁄4 × 70 7⁄8 × 24 1⁄4". MATTHEW RONAY I NEVER KNEW THAT I LOVED DRAINS. An algorithm on YouTube revealed this predilection to me. As a connoisseur of portals, orifices, and pores, I should have known that drains and the waste they imply, hidden beneath their sterile exteriors, would be in my pleasure zone. I look at most art in the same way I look at drains on YouTube: in reproduction, removed from reality. I came across Tishan Hsu at a similar remove, through books and the internet. The vents, screens, intakes, fantasy architectures, and fleshy degradations that pervade his work “clogged” me from my first impression. Some of Hsu’s pristine Euclidean models, such as Ooze, 1987, resembling a barren sauna basin waiting to be filled with myriad fluids, arouse in me a love for the rational illusion that architecture brings to sculpture. -
EB Insects in Movies
Movies Allen, I. (Director). (1978). The Swarm [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Brothers. Synopsis: Invading killer bees wreak havoc on the citizens of North America. Armstrong, R.K. (Director). (1997). Bugged [Motion picture]. United States: Troma Team Video. Synopsis: Exterminators Dave and Steve fight gigantic insects that have a taste for humans! Arnold, J. (Director). (1955). Tarantula [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Pictures. Synopsis: Disaster strikes when scientist Leo Carroll accidently creates a monster spider that wreaks havoc on the human population. Baker, R.W. (Director). (1950). Highly Dangerous [Motion picture]. United States: Lippert Pictures. Synopsis: British Secret Service agent Frances and American Bill must investigate an East European country were allegedly insects are being used to develop germ-warfare. Bass, S. (Director). (1974). Phase IV [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures. Synopsis: After a cosmic event in the desert town of Paradise city, super intelligent, well organized ants begin building vast structures and communicating in a way never seen before. Scientists Ernest Hubbs and James Lesko are called to investigate this strange new behavior. Brandon, C. (Director). (1994). Skeeter [Motion Picture]. United States: Image Entertainment. Synopsis: A young couple, in the small town of Mesquite, discovers that toxic waste has created a new species of mosquito intent on destroying mankind. Cardos, J. (Director). (1977). Kingdom of the Spiders [Motion picture]. United States: Dimension Pictures. Synopsis: A veterinarian and entomologist try to save a town infested by spiders. Corman, R. & Hill, J. (Director). (1960). Wasp Woman [Motion picture]. United States: The Filmgroup. Synopsis: Janice Starlin, an aging cosmetics company owner, transforms into a giant wasp after taking a youth rejuvenating potion. -
SYMPHONIES of HORROR Musical Experimentation in Howard Shore's
SYMPHONIES OF HORROR Musical Experimentation in Howard Shore’s Work with David Cronenberg A thesis submitted to the Oberlin College & Conservatory Musical Studies Department in fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors by Vikram Shankar Spring 2017 Shankar, Symphonies of Horror 2 Table of Contents: Introduction 3 Methodology 6 Theoretical Frameworks 9 Early Experimentation: The Brood 20 Synthesized Surrealism: Videodrome 30 Breaking Through to the Mainstream: The Fly 40 Scoring the Unfilmable: Naked Lunch 60 Conclusion 77 Works Cited 81 Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror: original score 84 Acknowledgments 86 Shankar, Symphonies of Horror 3 INTRODUCTION With a career spanning almost forty years, Canadian composer Howard Shore has become one of the most respected and sought after film composers working in the industry today. Much of his work, in particular his scores for the Lord of the Rings films, have received much academic attention; his longstanding working relationship with Canadian horror filmmaker David Cronenberg, however, has not yet benefited from such academic inquiry. Using the films The Brood, Videodrome, The Fly, and Naked Lunch as case studies, this thesis examines the way that Shore uses the arena of Cronenberg’s films as a laboratory for personal musical experimentation. Examples include Shore’s use of electronic synthesizer sounds alongside a string orchestra for Videodrome, implementations of canonic techniques and against-the-grain writing for The Fly, and the incorporation of free-jazz aesthetics in Naked Lunch. Using as sources Howard Shore’s words and what academic inquiry exists in this field, but more often utilizing my own analysis and observations of the music and films, I argue that Shore’s scores incorporate such musical experimentation to work in tandem with Cronenberg’s own experimental art. -
Cronenberg, Flyness, and the Other-Self William Beard
Document generated on 09/27/2021 1:46 a.m. Cinémas Revue d'études cinématographiques Journal of Film Studies Cronenberg, Flyness, and the Other-self William Beard Le Documentaire Article abstract Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 1994 David Cronenberg's recent work has shown a continuation of the same themes and motifs found in his exploratory and formative works of the 70s and early URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1001028ar 80s. The relationship of mind and body, of rationality and flesh, of control and DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1001028ar loss of identity, continues to be the dominating dichotomy of his cinematic world. But the relatively simple thematic oppositions of repression and See table of contents explosion, and their relatively unexamined emotional underpinnings of ironic detachment and regurgitative disgust, of an early film like Shivers (1975) have given way in the 1980s to a much more complex and sensitive exploration of the causes and implications of Cronenberg's understanding of things. The Publisher(s) author proposes, in this essay, to undertake a close examination of Cinémas Cronenberg's 1986 film The Fly as a partial illustration of this process of continuation and refinement. ISSN 1181-6945 (print) 1705-6500 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Beard, W. (1994). Cronenberg, Flyness, and the Other-self. Cinémas, 4(2), 153–173. https://doi.org/10.7202/1001028ar Tous droits réservés © Cinémas, 1994 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. -
Baring the Windigo's Teeth: the Fearsome Figure in Native
Baring the Windigo’s Teeth: The Fearsome Figure in Native American Narratives Carol Edelman Warrior A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Docrtor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: 1 Brian M. Reed, Chair Dian Million Christopher Teuton Luana Ross Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of English © Copyright 2015 Carol Edelman Warrior University of Washington Abstract Baring the Windigo’s Teeth: Fearsome Figures in Native American Narratives Carol Edelman Warrior Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Brian M. Reed Department of English Whereas non-Native American fictional fearsome figures tend to produce anxiety from their resistance to categorization, their unpredictable movement, and their Otherness, many contemporary Native American writers re-imagine fearsome figures and monstrous systems as modeled after, and emergent from settler-colonial transgressions against Indigenous values and relationships: these behaviors spread to tribal people/s through incorporation or assimilation into the “body” of the fearsome figure. Such violations can be represented by, and better understood, through an exploration of the behavioral traits of the Algonquian figure of the 2 Windigo, or wétiko, even when the text in question would not be classified as horror. In the Indigenous works of fiction that this dissertation explores, villainy is depicted as behavior that destroys balance, and disrupts the ability for life to reproduce itself without human mediation or technological intervention. In this dissertation, I develop and apply “Windigo Theory”: an Indigenous literary approach to reading Indigenous fiction, especially intended to aid recognition and comprehension of cultural critiques represented by the fearsome figures. -
Total Film | July 2015 Subscribe at for Use by [email protected] Only
MAKING OF PARK LIFE… …and death. The dino safari is all systems go in Jurassic World – until its latest , biggest attraction breaks out and eats people. Director Colin Trevorrow and (human) stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard tell TF how they created a new wave of carnage. WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM 70 | Total Film | July 2015 Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs For use by [email protected] only. Distribution prohibited. JURASSIC WORLD gamesradar.com/totalfilm July 2015 | Total Film | 71 MAKING OF The guardian: ex-Army man Owen (Chris Pratt) protects Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins). ‘ AN ADVENTURE 65 MILLION YEARS IN THE with fresh principal players and a shiny (or writing partner, Derek Connolly, they then began making’ ran the tagline to Steven Spielberg’s should that be scaly?) new story, is being laid working to “find a reason why Jurassic World 1993 blockbuster, a movie that took $970m at out by director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow… should exist”, the 38-year-old filmmaker the worldwide box office (it joined the billion “I got a call from [producer] Frank Marshall, admitting, “It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.” club when it was re-released in 3D in 2013) and who mentioned he and Steven had seen [time- He isn’t kidding: not only had a profusion of became the Star Wars of its generation. Given travel dramedy] Safety Not Guaranteed, my first writers and stories (dinosaurs breeding on the that Jurassic Park 4 – or Jurassic World as it was film,” he says, popping out of a side door at the Costa Rican mainland!) already been chewed titled on 10 September 2013 – has been in the Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage on the Sony lot up and spat out, the idea of a fourth installment pipeline since 2001, it’s sometimes felt like to be heard above a 104-strong orchestra.