Marieke / Annotated Bibliography

Bibliography / Essays

• Powers of Horror - Julia Kristeva

The term abjection literally means "the state of being cast off". The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts. Among the most popular interpretations of abjection is Julia Kristeva's, pursued particularly in her 1980 work Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Kristeva describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences, or is confronted by (both mentally and as a body), what Kristeva calls one's "corporeal reality", or a breakdown in the distinction between what is Self and what is Other.

Relevance: Abjection is related to bodily boundaries and violence towards another (that is not me).

• The Uses of Enchantment - Bruno Bettleheim

Fairytales are analyzed in terms of Freudian Psychoanalysis. Bettelheim presents a case that fairy tales help children solve certain existential problems such as separation anxiety, oedipal conflict, and sibling rivalries. The extreme violence and ugly emotions of many fairy tales serve to deflect what may well be going on in the child's mind anyway. A child's unrealistic fears often require unrealistic hopes.

Relevance: Interesting since the films I am interested in touch these ugly emotions.

• The Ghost is just a Metaphor - Kindinger

An analysis of Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak. It researches Crimson Peak and other horror films their symbolism and how these can be linked to female emancipation. In Crimson Peak's this symbolism is the ghost: As domestic phenomena, ghosts of women that are trapped at home and in ethereal bodies mirror women’s invisibility and powerlessness.

Relevance: An interesting take on patriarchy by Guillermo del Toro's use of symbolism in Crimson Peak (a male filmmaker)

• The Rhetoric of Cinematic Improvisation - Virginia Wright Wexman

Considering the importance of improvisation for many modern filmmakers, it is surprising that the technique has received so little critical attention. This essay explores the use of improvisation in cinematic settings.

Relevance: It discusses how improvisation can be employed in cinema succesfully by being experimental while keeping certain boundaries. It goes in-depth on how improvisation is used (un)succesfully in cinema.

• The audio Uncanny Valley: Sound, fear and the Horror game - Mark Grimshaw

Sound is a huge part of the horror experience as it builds the tension and the sound is an important indication of danger. This essay examines if sound also has the potential to be uncanny. The 1970 proposition that there is an Uncanny Valley which man-made characters inhabit as their human-likeness (both appearance and movement) increases has been a growing topic of debate in the fields of robotics, animation and computer games particularly since the turn of the century. However, what the theory and subsequent related writings do not account for is the role of sound in creating perceptions of uncanniness and fear, a particularly useful attribute in computer game genres such as survival horror.

Relevance: Sound is very important in the Horror genre, a genre I touch with my own film. Besides that my interest in gaming and the uncanney valley makes this text an interesting read for both filmmaking and game design.

• Against Abjection - Imogen Tyler

Whilst the abject has proved a compelling and productive concept for feminist theory, this article cautions against the repetition of the maternal (as) abject within theoretical writing. It argues that employing a Kristevan abject paradigm risks reproducing, rather than challenging, histories of violent disgust towards maternal bodies. In place of the Kristevan model of the abject, it argues for a more thoroughly social and political account of abjection.

Relevance: This is a critical analysis of the feminist interpretation that because of abjection there is violence against pregnant women. A text that provides further research in the more social and political aspects of the abject.

• The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord

From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century.

"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all life presents as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."

Relevance: A text that elaborates on mass communication. Interesting because I want to research the status quo of what is acceptable and entertaining.

• Invention of Hysteria - Georges Didi-Huberman

Story about the emergence of modern subjectivity from the netherworld and darkrooms of nineteenth-century medicine. This provocative landmark study is indispensable for anyone interested in questions of gender, the history of science, photography, and medicine: in short, in how we see ourselves as who we are.

Relevance: An important book related to objectivity and sexism. Hysteria was a made up diagnosis and this book documents in a way how we can manipulate reality.

• Death 24x times per second - Laura Mulvey

The book explicitly revises Mulvey’s account of the male gaze in her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1978). In what she describes as the current ‘delayed cinema’, rather than the male spectator’s voyeuristic look and male protagonists driving the narrative momentum forward, film is opened up to a non-linear, feminine aesthetic of ‘fetishistic’ spectatorship, which lingers on pose, detail and cinematic style.

Relevance: An interesting research to how the change in film from celluloid to digital changed our viewing experience. Also important because of my obsession with poses and stills.

• Why I am not a feminist - Jessa Crispin

Quote: Feminism is: A fight to allow women to participate equally in the oppression of the powerless and the poor.

Crispin rejects the idea of contemporary feminism because it, “focuses dementedly on “self-empowerment” …[and] requires no thought, no discomfort, and no real change”

Relevance: As a female filmmaker I think a critical outlook on feminism is always welcome. Even if I don't always agree with Crispin.

• An Atlas of Infrared Plates of the Unseen - Edward Thompson

British documentary photographer Edward Thompson set out to explore the boundaries of our perception. The projects have come together within the book to create a wider narrative that questions the nature of our reality, our past and what could be our future.

Relevance: In this master program I have only used infrared techniques for my images.

• Through the Looking Glass? Sexual agency and subjectification in cyberspace - Feona Attwood

Focuses on alternative pornography in the contemporary Western context where the rapid development of media and communication technologies offers women unprecedented access to various forms of cultural production. Attwood’s discussion of alternative pornographies highlights women’s active agency in making different forms of erotica and argues that ‘camgirls’ can be understood as defying objectification and controlling the gaze.

Relevance: Controlling the gaze is something I try to do in my own work. So it is interesting to read how camgirls do this and in a way rebel against objectification.

• The Body and the Screen, Theories of Internet Spectatorship - Michele White

Drawing on apparatus and feminist psychoanalytic film theories, art history, gender studies, queer theory, critical race and postcolonial studies, and other theories of cultural production, White conceptualizes Internet and computer spectatorship and provides theoretical models that can be employed in other analyses. She offers case studies and close visual and textual analysis of the construction of spectatorship in different settings.

Relevance: Computer spectatorship relates to voyeurism. These theoretical models are useful for my own approach to filmmaking.

• Reflecting on Reflections - Julian Hanich

Cinema's complex mirror shots.

Relevance: Useful because mirrors are used in the set-design for my short.

• Windows and Mirrors - Todd Jurgess

Metaphor and meaning in cinemas past and present.

Relevance: Useful because mirrors are used in the set-design for my short. The symbolism of mirrors is interesting to know in relation to other films.

• Insomnia: Sleeplessness as a cultural phenomenom - Sara Arrhenius; Sofia Curman; Camilla Larsson; Bonniers Konsthall

Insomnia shifts in sleeping habits go together with major changes in our ways of living. Today we are witnessing a corresponding shift, in which the possibility of direct communication at any geographical distance shatters the 24-hour rhythm of the time zones. We have the possibility of doing everything regardless of what time of the day it is. 'Insomnia' aims to draw a map of the sleepless state that this accessibility creates.

Relevance: I have insomnia and the main character in my film also experiences it.

• Wired for Story - Lisa Cron

Cognitive Secret 1: We think in story, story allows us to envision the future. Story Secret: From the very first sentence, the reader must want to know what happens next.

Relevance: Important because you cannot break the conventions of storytelling if you don't know the workings and rules.

Articles

Gaming

Empathy & Games

Virtual Reality & Empathy

Empathy games don't exist / Vice

Science / Violent media does not influence empathy

Empathic gameplay

Empathy / Powerlessness-vulnerability through interaction

Silent Hill2

Life is Strange 2

Film

Gaspar Noé's Irréversible

The Subjectivity of Horror

Film depictions of sexual violence are alarming

Female Gaze sexual violence

Gaspar Noé interview: Irrèversible

Photography

the-new-gen-japanese-photographers-killing-it

contemporary-japanese-photography/