Author: Tüysüz, Dilan Publisher: IGI Global ISBN: 1799847799 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Aestheticization of evil is a frequently used formula in cinema and television. However, the representation of evil as an aesthetic object pushes it out of morality. Moral judgments can be pushed aside when evil is aestheticized in movies or TV series because there is no real victim. Thus, situations such as murder or war can become a source of aesthetic pleasure. Narratives in cinema and television can sometimes be based on a simple good-evil dichotomy and sometimes they can be based on individual or social experiences of evil and follow a more complicated method. Despite the various ways evil is depicted, it is a moral framework in film and television that must be researched to study the implications of aestheticized evil on human nature and society. International Perspectives on Rethinking Evil in Film and Television examines the changing representations of evil on screen in the context of the commonness, normalization, aestheticization, marginalization, legitimization, or popularity of evil. The chapters provide an international perspective of the representations of evil through an exploration of the evil tales or villains in cinema and television. Through looking at these programs, this book highlights topics such as the philosophy of good and evil, the portrayal of heroes and villains, the appeal of evil, and evil’s correspondence with gender and violence. This book is ideal for sociologists, professionals, researchers and students working or studying in the field of cinema and television and practitioners, academicians, and anyone interested in the portrayal and aestheticization of evil in international film and television.
Author: Wheeler W. Dixon Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 602
Book Description
Terence Fisher brought the modern Gothic horror film to life in the second half of the twentieth century. As director John Carpenter (Halloween) notes in his introduction, "Terence Fisher and The Curse of Frankenstein was the beginning of it all for the modern horror film..."
Author: Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9401205272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
The popular media of film and television surround us daily with images of evil - images that have often gone critically unexamined. In the belief that people in ever-increasing numbers are turning to the media for their understanding of evil, this lively and provocative collection of essays addresses the changing representation of evil in a broad spectrum of films and television programmes. Written in refreshingly accessible and de-jargonised prose, the essays bring to bear a variety of philosophical and critical perspectives on works ranging from the cinema of famed director Alfred Hitchcock and the preternatural horror films Halloween and Friday the 13th to the understated documentary Human Remains and the television coverage of the immediate post-9/11 period. The Changing Face of Evil in Film and Television is for anyone interested in the moving-image representation of that pervasive yet highly misunderstood thing we call evil.
Author: Dara Waldron Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443865583 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Malevolence (and its causes) has been central to film since its inception; the birth of film coinciding with a fascination with crime, death, murder, horror, etc. Films which address the problem of evil, however, are less frequent and fewer in quantity; especially films which respond to a body of thought – philosophical or theological – which has deliberated on the topic of evil over the centuries. Cinema and Evil: Moral Responsibility and the “Dangerous” Film addresses these films. It explores the legacy of evil from Manicheanism to Arendt, assessing the alternative definitions offered by philosophers, theologians and writers per se, on its problematic status. It then considers how the films of filmmakers such as Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant, and Lynne Ramsay have responded to the problem of evil in their films. In case by case studies, filmmakers’ response to “evil” events, whether those such as the Holocaust or Columbine, in which evil is used as a descriptor for human behaviour, is explored. The book refers to these as “dangerous” films, tasking us with the need to consider evil as a problem which is also our responsibility. It argues that these filmmakers have been at the forefront of ethical deliberation on evil.
Author: Karen J. Renner Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317966740 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 202
Book Description
The 'evil child' has infiltrated the cultural imagination, taking on prominent roles in popular films, television shows and literature. This collection of essays from a global range of scholars examines a fascinating array of evil children and the cultural work that they perform, drawing upon sociohistorical, cinematic, and psychological approaches. The chapters explore a wide range of characters including Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter series, the possessed Regan in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, the monstrous Ben in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, the hostile fetuses of Rosemary’s Baby and Alien, and even the tiny terrors featured in the reality television series Supernanny. Contributors also analyse various themes and issues within film, literature and popular culture including ethics, representations of evil and critiques of society. This book was originally published as two special issues of Literature Interpretation Theory.
Author: Patton Oswalt Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451673221 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
"Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol or sex: it was film. After moving to L.A., Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton's life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships. Set in the nascent days of L.A.'s alternative comedy scene, Oswalt's memoir chronicles his journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way"--
Author: Christopher Frayling Publisher: ISBN: 9781861892850 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 239
Book Description
Since its origin cinema has had an uneasy relationship with science and technology: scientists are almost always impossibly mad or impossibly saintly, and technology is nearly always very bad for you. In Mad, Bad and Dangerous?, Christopher Frayling explores the genealogy of the film scientist in films made in Western Europe, and especially in Hollywood after the 1930s, showing how in film the scientist has often been used to represent the prevailing phobias of the time. In the 1950s, for example, films were dominated by the fear of botched atomic research, and were a showcase of mutated, outsized creatures and radioactive zombies. Since Hitchcock’s The Birds, however, the role of the scientist has been less straightforward, and by the 1970s damage to the environment and the spread of diseases were the predominant consequences of science gone wrong. Scientists – and the corporations that controlled them – became the ‘baddies’. The author also examines in parallel the portrayal of real-life scientists in the movies, noting how they are in the main depicted as misfits, immersed in their work, sacrificing any normal life to the interests of science, yet distrusted by the scientific establishment. Interestingly, the cinematic portrayal of fictional and real-life scientists follow very similar dramatic conventions, and Frayling concludes that the mad scientist and the saintly one are two sides of the same Hollywood coin.
Author: Claire Perkins Publisher: SUNY Press ISBN: 143844995X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Considers films that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability in taste, style, and politics. B Is for Bad Cinema continues and extends, but does not limit itself to, the trends in film scholarship that have made cult and exploitation films and other low genres increasingly acceptable objects for critical analysis. Springing from discussions of taste and value in film, these original essays mark out the broad contours of badthat is, aesthetically, morally, or commercially disreputablecinema. While some of the essays share a kinship with recent discussions of B movies and cult films, they do not describe a single aesthetic category or represent a single methodology or critical agenda, but variously approach bad cinema in terms of aesthetics, politics, and cultural value. The volume covers a range of issues, from the aesthetic and industrial mechanics of low-budget production through the terrain of audience responses and cinematic affect, and on to the broader moral and ethical implications of the material. As a result, B Is for Bad Cinema takes an interest in a variety of film examplesoverblown Hollywood blockbusters, faux pornographic works, and European art house filmsto consider those that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability.
Author: Ron Riekki Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476636044 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 221
Book Description
One of the top-grossing independent films of all time, The Evil Dead (1981) sparked a worldwide cult following, resulting in sequels, remakes, musicals, comic books, conventions, video games and a television series. Examining the legacy of one of the all-time great horror films, this collection of new essays covers the franchise from a range of perspectives. Topics include The Evil Dead as punk rock cinema, the Deadites' (demon-possessed undead) place in the American zombie tradition, the powers and limitations of Deadites, evil as affect, and the films' satire of neoliberal individualism.
Author: Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 100042782X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
This book offers a bold and dynamic examination of Lars von Trier’s cinema by interweaving philosophy and theology with close attention to aesthetics through style and narrative. It explores the prophetic voice of von Trier's films, juxtaposing them with Ezekiel's prophecy and Ricoeur’s symbols of evil, myth, and hermeneutics of revelation. The films of Lars von Trier are categorized as extreme cinema, inducing trauma and emotional rupture rarely paralleled, while challenging audiences to respond in new ways. This volume argues that the spiritual, biblical content of the films holds a key to understanding von Trier’s oeuvre of excess. Spiritual conflict is the mechanism that unpacks the films’ notorious excess with explosive, centrifugal force. By confronting the spectator with spiritual conflict through evil, von Trier's films truthfully and prophetically expose the spectator’s complicity in personal and structural evil, forcing self-examination through theological themes, analogous to the prophetic voice of the transgressive Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, his prophecy, and its form of delivery. Placed in context with the prophetic voices of Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, O’Connor, and Tarkovsky, this volume offers a theoretical framework beyond von Trier. It will be of great interest to scholars in Film Studies, Film and Philosophy, Film and Theology.
Author: Tüysüz, Dilan
Author: Wheeler W. Dixon
Author: 
Author: Dara Waldron
Author: Karen J. Renner
Author: Patton Oswalt
Author: Christopher Frayling
Author: Claire Perkins
Author: Ron Riekki
Author: Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran