Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 330-400).

Thesis (M. A.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Kay Picart, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 21, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 38 pages. Includes bibliographical references. Includes filmography.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-152) Also available in print.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Comunicação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação, 2016. / Submitted by Fernanda Percia França (fernandafranca@bce.unb.br) on 2016-07-18T13:14:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_RafaelSantosdeGusmãoLobo.pdf: 65743304 bytes, checksum: a066bedd3d880f73c9a5a3cd63de25bc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Raquel Viana(raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2016-08-03T18:48:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_RafaelSantosdeGusmãoLobo.pdf: 65743304 bytes, checksum: a066bedd3d880f73c9a5a3cd63de25bc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T18:48:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_RafaelSantosdeGusmãoLobo.pdf: 65743304 bytes, checksum: a066bedd3d880f73c9a5a3cd63de25bc (MD5) / Este trabalho busca investigar o desenvolvimento da importância do gênero de horror na compreensão da trágica condição humana atual. Para tal fim, investigo o gênero de horror partindo do pensamento da corrente filosófica do realismo especulativo e, em particular, do autor Eugene Thacker, que reconhece no espectro da extinção humana que assombra gradativamente nossas vidas hoje – catástrofes ambientais, pandemias, guerras – a dificuldade em se pensar a existência de um mundo de onde fomos extintos. Tal pensamento traz um limite em si: a imagem de um mundo impensável que se situa nas fronteiras da dicotomia ciência e magia. A necessidade política de se pensar a coexistência entre o mundo não humano dos processos naturais e o mundo humano objetificado aponta para a importância do horror como um campo epistemológico privilegiado de investigação que, há tempos, tem no conhecimento dessa coexistência seu foco de interesse. Nesse contexto, opto por seguir minha investigação por meio do exame do pensamento do cineasta David Cronenberg, considerado um autor fundamental do horror. Juntamente com a perspectiva de Thacker sobre o mundo, investigo a hipótese de que a obra do diretor canadense perfaz uma visão autoral que pode ser compreendida como um dispositivo de uma cosmovisão de horror. A partir de uma particular dicotomia de seu cinema, que se apresenta cindido entre uma estética ora fantasiosa, ora mais realista, minha proposta segue a intuição de que há, na tensão dessa contradição, uma afinidade eletiva entre a dicotomia realidade e fantasia que associa sua obra ao horror. A motivação dessa hipótese está na premissa de que o cinema de Cronenberg encontra sua unidade como um pensamento sobre o corpo humano. Por meio do reconhecimento desta afinidade, os corpos dos personagens dos filmes revelam-se como significantes da monstruosidade, tal como pensada por Georges Canguilhem. Revelada a monstruosidade do corpo, a visão estética autoral do diretor pode ser entendida como a expressão de uma fantasiosa visão de lugar nenhum, cuja perspectiva de estranhamento radical se revela como fonte de uma experiência de horror fundamental. ‘New Flesh’, expressão cunhada pelo diretor em um de seus filmes para nomear a monstruosidade do corpo de seu personagem, é utilizada nesta pesquisa como conceito estético que operacionaliza essa afinidade entre realidade e fantasia no cinema de Cronenberg. Ao fim da dissertação, aprofundando a relação inerente da New Flesh com a noção de construção de realidade, experimento ludicamente este conceito como o dispositivo mediador de uma cosmovisão de horror. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / This work aims to investigate the development of the importance of horror genre in understanding the tragic human condition today. To this end, I investigate the horror genre following the philosophical thought of speculative realism, and particularly the author Eugene Thacker, who recognizes in the spectrum of human extinction that gradually haunts our lives today – environmental disasters, pandemics, wars – the difficulty in thinking of a world where we went extinct. This thought brings a limit within: the image of an unthinkable world that lies on the borders of the dichotomy science and magic. The political need to think about the coexistence between the nonhuman world of natural processes and the objectified human world point to the importance of horror as a privileged epistemological field of research, that has been having, in the knowledge of that coexistence, for a long time, its focus of interest. In that context, I choose to follow my research by examining the thought of the cinema director David Cronenberg, considered a key author of horror. Together with Thacker’s perspective, I investigate the hypotheses that the work of the Canadian director compiles an authorial vision that can be comprehended as an apparatus of a horror worldview. From a singular dichotomy of his work, divided between films with fanciful aesthetics and others with a realistic aesthetics, my proposal follows the intuition that there is on the stress of that contradiction, an elective affinity between the dichotomy reality and fantasy, which link his work to horror. The motivation of this hypothesis is grounded in the assumption that Cronenberg’s films finds their unity as a thought of the human body. By means of the recognition of this affinity, the bodies of his film's characters are revealed as signifiers of monstrosity as thought by Georges Canguilhem. Revealed the monstrosity of the body, the director's authorial vision can be understood as the expression of a fantasy view from nowhere, whose perspective of radical strangeness is revealed as a source of a fundamental horror experience. ‘New Flesh’, an expression coined by the director in one of his films, is used in this research to name the aesthetics concept that will operationalize this affinity between reality and fantasy in Cronenberg's work. By the end of the dissertation, deepening the relation of the New Flesh with the notion of construction of reality, I experiment playfully with this concept as an apparatus of mediation of a horror worldview.

No description available.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of David Cronenberg's body-horror films in relation to their embodied spectators. In these films, the horror is not only about the vulnerability of the mortal body, but also about the horrific consequences of organizing culture around the philosophical splitting of the mind from the body. To analyze this relationship, I utilize Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body, object-relations psychoanalysis, especially D. W. Winnicott's theory of the intermeshed psyche-soma, various pro-feminist approaches to horror films, and a concept of ideology informed by nonverbal communication research. The historical arc of Cronenberg's body-horror films has produced a unique cultural record of the impact of technological change on physical bodies through dark fantasies of biological-medical technologies in Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, and Scanners; video communication technologies in Videodrome; and genetic-engineering technologies in The Fly . / My primary thesis is that Cronenberg's body-horror films encourage spectators to "read" not only with their rational-cognitive skills but with their embodied experience as well, which includes emotional and sensory memories, and fantasies, both archaic and contemporary. Cronenberg's appeal to an integrated psyche-soma reading is crucial for understanding how the culturally induced splitting of the mind from the body impacts on working class resistance to exploitative ideology. / In chapter one I argue that the diverse and contradictory readings of Cronenberg's body-horror films are possible, because of the interdependence of the cinematic text, historical and cultural context, and the embodied experience of spectators-critics. Chapter two is a preliminary step towards developing an alternative theory of the horror film spectator, by exploring the productive tension between an active, creative and embodied real viewer, and an ideologically determined, ideal subject of the cinematic apparatus. Chapter three compares Cronenberg's fantasy of metamorphosis body-horror to the fantasy of "leaving the body behind" depicted in many contemporary cyborg films. Chapter four is a series of close readings, analyzing how Cronenberg embeds "imaginary spectators" into his body-horror films through interweaving the body language of his characters and the nonverbal communication of the mise en scene with narrative strategies formulated through the plot.

This thesis investigates cinema’s attempts to engage in a dialogue with the trace of the physical body. My concern is with the on-screen presentation of the body rather than its treatment as a representation of gender, sexuality, race, age, or class. I examine specifically The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980), Crash (Cronenberg, 1996), Attenberg (Tsangari, 2010), Taxidermia (Pálfi, 2006), and Sokurov’s family trilogy (Mother and Son, 1997; Father and Son, 2003; and Alexandra, 2007). The recurring tropes in these seven films include references to the medical gaze (both objective and objectifying) and haptic visuality which privileges sensual, close engagement with the image of the material object. I consider the medical and the haptic as metaphors for depictions of the body in cinema. To develop my analysis, I draw on the works of Michel Foucault, Laura U. Marks and Vivian Sobchack amongst others. I conclude that the discussed films, preoccupied with images of corporeal forms, criticise cinema’s conventional treatment of the body as simply a vessel for a goal-driven character and portray bodies which appear to consciousness in their own right.

Utilizando a teoria do polissistema literário de Itamar Even-Zohar, as concepções psicanalíticas de Sigmund Freud e de Erich Fromm, como também posições defendidas por teóricos tais como Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, Julia Kristeva e pelos líderes do movimento Futurista Italiano, entre outros, o presente trabalho analisa duas obras: Crash, romance de J. G. Ballard e Crash, filme de David Cronenberg. O objetivo não é de contrapôlas. Ao contrário, muitas vezes elas serão tratadas como se fossem partes de uma mesma obra, servindo assim uma para expandir a outra. Em relação ao filme, é destacada a forma como Cronenberg assume a autoria de Crash e como o filme rompe os limites do polissistema cinematográfico. É questão central deste trabalho a representação do desastre automobilístico, bem como dos elementos a ele associados, em Crash, romance e filme, especialmente sua reconstituição, bem como o acidente sendo encarado como uma maneira de concretizar o desejo de cometer suicídio e as conseqüências no corpo humano causadas por esse tipo de evento. Para expandir essa análise, aborda-se ainda a maneira como esse repertório é apresentado em outras formas de manifestação artística, fato do qual resulta um diálogo entre cada uma delas e Crash. / Making use of Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of the literary polysystem, the psychoanalytical ideas expressed by Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm, as well as point of view expressed by theorists such as Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, and Julia Kristeva, and the leaders of the Italian Futurist movement, among others, this thesis has as its basic aim to analyse two works: Crash, a novel by J. G. Ballard, and Crash, the film by David Cronenberg. The intention here is not to oppose them. On the contrary, in many cases they are to be considered as if they were parts of the same work, each one contributing to expand the other. Concerning the film, special attention is paid to the way Cronenberg takes hold of the authorship of Crash and how the movie breaks through the limits of the cinematographic polysystem. The focus of this thesis is centred upon the representation of automobile disasters as well related elements in Crash, novel and film, especially their reproduction, as well as the accident regarded as a means to commit suicide, and the consequences upon the human body caused by the violence of such events. In order to expand this analysis, the presence of the automobile accident in other forms of artistic expression is examined, a fact which will lead to a dialogue between each one of them and Crash.

Utilizando a teoria do polissistema literário de Itamar Even-Zohar, as concepções psicanalíticas de Sigmund Freud e de Erich Fromm, como também posições defendidas por teóricos tais como Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, Julia Kristeva e pelos líderes do movimento Futurista Italiano, entre outros, o presente trabalho analisa duas obras: Crash, romance de J. G. Ballard e Crash, filme de David Cronenberg. O objetivo não é de contrapôlas. Ao contrário, muitas vezes elas serão tratadas como se fossem partes de uma mesma obra, servindo assim uma para expandir a outra. Em relação ao filme, é destacada a forma como Cronenberg assume a autoria de Crash e como o filme rompe os limites do polissistema cinematográfico. É questão central deste trabalho a representação do desastre automobilístico, bem como dos elementos a ele associados, em Crash, romance e filme, especialmente sua reconstituição, bem como o acidente sendo encarado como uma maneira de concretizar o desejo de cometer suicídio e as conseqüências no corpo humano causadas por esse tipo de evento. Para expandir essa análise, aborda-se ainda a maneira como esse repertório é apresentado em outras formas de manifestação artística, fato do qual resulta um diálogo entre cada uma delas e Crash. / Making use of Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of the literary polysystem, the psychoanalytical ideas expressed by Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm, as well as point of view expressed by theorists such as Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, and Julia Kristeva, and the leaders of the Italian Futurist movement, among others, this thesis has as its basic aim to analyse two works: Crash, a novel by J. G. Ballard, and Crash, the film by David Cronenberg. The intention here is not to oppose them. On the contrary, in many cases they are to be considered as if they were parts of the same work, each one contributing to expand the other. Concerning the film, special attention is paid to the way Cronenberg takes hold of the authorship of Crash and how the movie breaks through the limits of the cinematographic polysystem. The focus of this thesis is centred upon the representation of automobile disasters as well related elements in Crash, novel and film, especially their reproduction, as well as the accident regarded as a means to commit suicide, and the consequences upon the human body caused by the violence of such events. In order to expand this analysis, the presence of the automobile accident in other forms of artistic expression is examined, a fact which will lead to a dialogue between each one of them and Crash.

Utilizando a teoria do polissistema literário de Itamar Even-Zohar, as concepções psicanalíticas de Sigmund Freud e de Erich Fromm, como também posições defendidas por teóricos tais como Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, Julia Kristeva e pelos líderes do movimento Futurista Italiano, entre outros, o presente trabalho analisa duas obras: Crash, romance de J. G. Ballard e Crash, filme de David Cronenberg. O objetivo não é de contrapôlas. Ao contrário, muitas vezes elas serão tratadas como se fossem partes de uma mesma obra, servindo assim uma para expandir a outra. Em relação ao filme, é destacada a forma como Cronenberg assume a autoria de Crash e como o filme rompe os limites do polissistema cinematográfico. É questão central deste trabalho a representação do desastre automobilístico, bem como dos elementos a ele associados, em Crash, romance e filme, especialmente sua reconstituição, bem como o acidente sendo encarado como uma maneira de concretizar o desejo de cometer suicídio e as conseqüências no corpo humano causadas por esse tipo de evento. Para expandir essa análise, aborda-se ainda a maneira como esse repertório é apresentado em outras formas de manifestação artística, fato do qual resulta um diálogo entre cada uma delas e Crash. / Making use of Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of the literary polysystem, the psychoanalytical ideas expressed by Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm, as well as point of view expressed by theorists such as Roland Barthes, Christian Metz, and Julia Kristeva, and the leaders of the Italian Futurist movement, among others, this thesis has as its basic aim to analyse two works: Crash, a novel by J. G. Ballard, and Crash, the film by David Cronenberg. The intention here is not to oppose them. On the contrary, in many cases they are to be considered as if they were parts of the same work, each one contributing to expand the other. Concerning the film, special attention is paid to the way Cronenberg takes hold of the authorship of Crash and how the movie breaks through the limits of the cinematographic polysystem. The focus of this thesis is centred upon the representation of automobile disasters as well related elements in Crash, novel and film, especially their reproduction, as well as the accident regarded as a means to commit suicide, and the consequences upon the human body caused by the violence of such events. In order to expand this analysis, the presence of the automobile accident in other forms of artistic expression is examined, a fact which will lead to a dialogue between each one of them and Crash.