FANTASIES OF THE MECHANICAL BODY IN MODERNIST AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

PhDThis study will look at fantasies of the mechanical body in a series of close readings of key modernist and contemporary texts. It will argue that these texts are sites of resistance or repression, in which unconscious and / or cultural narratives about the death drive have left their traces. Part One, Chapters 1-3, explores the links between war and fantasy, and between fantasy and gender. Chapter One looks at the art and writings of the Italian Futurists and English Vorticists, with the focus on Marinetti and Lewis, to consider how the rationalized bodies of the soldier and worker might be seen as the covert problems underpinning the fantasy, returning to it in the form of the repressed. Chapter Two concerns the writings of Ernst Jünger, where war, modern labour, the incursion of danger into everyday life, and photography are seen to provide signs of the emergence of the Typus, an organic construction, who has learnt to see himself as devoid of feeling, turning the death drive into the will to power in acts of aggression, and for whom the function of the eye is the same as that of the weapon. Chapter Three investigates the problem of war-shock and the shocks of cinema in First World War film footage of shellshocked soldiers, Lang's Metropolis, and Chaplin's Modern Times. It shows how discourses of hysteria, feminization and commodity relations form the common ground between the cultural reception of both shelishock and cinema, and how film-makers and critics responded to both sets of debates. Part Two, Chapters 4-5, explores the links between the machine, the maternal body and the death drive in the Terminator and Alien films, and considers the question of affect, mourning, and identification in Cronenberg's Crash

Cinema of Constraints: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Filmmaking from and about the Arab World and Iran

This paper is work-in-progress for a book which develops a new approach to freedomof expression in contemporary cinema from and about Iran and the Arab world. It explores the risks and constraints that underlie and shape independent filmmaking of various types, from fictional and documentary feature films designed for theatrical release to made-for-TV documentaries and short films uploaded onto the Internet

A Bollywood Commercial for Ireland: Filming Ek Tha Tiger in Dublin

The spectacular representation of overseas locations has traditionally been a generic trope of Hindi cinema (AKA Bollywood). Notably, stunning places unfamiliar to Indian audiences are constantly featured in commercial Indian films, mostly for their visual qualities, in order to add a further element of entertainment to the story

The Alterity of the Image: the Distant Spectator and Films about the Syrian Revolution and War

Images of the Syrian crisis, circulating on the international film festival circuit as well as in mainstream and social media, help to construct narratives about those events, people and places. This article explores how three Syrian documentaries – Silvered Water: Syria Self-Portrait, The War Show and Little Gandhi – appeal to their distant spectators and how the international film festival circuit shapes their aesthetic form. While the use of citizen videos in news reporting has generated a sense of familiarity with the audio-visual style and iconography of Syrian conflict imagery, these films invite us to look at their footage in a different way, foregrounding an experience of cultural distance through an emphasis on the formal qualities of the image. By focusing on the aesthetic rather than merely evidentiary qualities of these documentaries, I draw out a particular kind of transnational cinematic encounter in which, to borrow John Berger’s words, ‘meaning is a response not only to the known, but to the unknown’. Drawing upon the work of Berger and Laura Marks, the article offers a new conceptualization of distant spectatorship in terms of the alterity of the image

Snake charmers and child brides: Deepa Mehta's Water, 'exotic' representation, and the cross-cultural spectatorship of South Asian migrant cinema

The high media profile and ‘crossover’ success of South Asian migrant filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta has often bred accusations that they deliberately package themes and aesthetics in order to stir up controversy and produce an ‘exotic’ India for global audiences. This claim has recently been played out in relation to the Oscar‐nominated film Water (2005), which provoked protests from Hindu fundamentalists and death threats to Mehta and her crew. My article argues that exoticist representation is a significant tendency within contemporary world cinema and needs to be addressed without the customary moral condemnation implied in both popular reactions and academic studies that favour more experimental works. It attempts to shift the terms of the debate by deconstructing the notion of the touristic, Western gaze to which these films ostensibly pander and mobilise a more fluid set of perspectives – the invocation of different regimes of sensuous knowledge and the cross‐cultural adaptation of melodrama – to illuminate Water's aesthetic choices, export success, and interpretation of gender power dynamics

Feminist Film Theorists Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed

Focusing on the ground-breaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis and Barbara Creed, this book explores how, since it began in the 1970s, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood