Velvet/fracture: David Lynch, Clayton Eshleman, and the construction of the American underworld

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-31).The dominant American myth of selfhood is the "Protestant English pioneer," the conquering hero that pulled in the reigns on natives and wilderness. However, this heroic selfhood comes at an astonishing price. The maintenance of this identity structure requires the inscription of strict boundaries around the self. Completion of the hero narrative requires not only a mastery of self, but also the reification of that mastery though the domination of the external world. The emergence of a counter myth might allow the cultivation of a fluid selfhood, freed from the heroic narrative's egocentrism and domination of self and other. David Lynch and Clayton Eshleman are attempting a revision of selfhood. If experience must again be widened, then both Lynch and Eshleman must peel back the veneer of Billboard America and pry, apart the old consciousness. Lynch and Eshleman seek to forge this new version of self in the smithy of an American underworld

Children of Men\u27s ambient apocalyptic visions

Alfonso Cuarón\u27s Children of Men (2006) is part of the long stream of films that respond vividly to social crisis and the hovering threat of human annihilation and that have sought to reimagine the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic myth. But I will argue that it represents a unique take on this popular genre that I call the ambient apocalyptic. The film\u27s sense of pervasive crisis is not linked to a singular apocalyptic event and it redraws the tropes of many popular post-apocalyptic films. Cuarón intricately builds into nearly every scene referential signals to specific current political realities. He does this, however, without overburdening his film with either apocalyptic literalness or undisturbed certainty. He uses a layered referential style that seeks to create a kind of visionary realis