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This month's blogs: 2005 March (3) | 2005 March (2) | 2005 March (1)
"Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show."
(Passagenwerk (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin)The "rhizome" allows for multiple,
non-hierarchical entry and exit points
in data representation and interpretation.
--Mille Plateaux - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizofrénie (1980)
Hi, Carolyn!
2005, Mar 20; 17:50 ::: EponymI wanted to name a couple of eponyms that I found in my regional word list: einsteinium, which is an element that was discovered by Albert Einstein, and quixotic, which means "relating to Don Quixote."
I also found a long list of eponyms mainly from Paideia: Platonic, Franciscan, Homeric, Miltonic, Newtonian, Marxist, Spencerian, Websterian, Hitlerian, Jacksonian, Dickensian, Hitchcockian, Naderism, Keatsian, Wagnerian, Franconian, Einsteinian, Thomism, Buddhism, Euripidean, Rubenesque, Ptolemaic, Jacobin, Brahmsian, Sophoclean, Daliesque, and Dostoevskian.
Cody Pagels
Michigan City, Indiana
Representative of the LaPorte Herald-Argus
in the 1998 and 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bees. --http://www.spellingbee.com/cc05/Week03/eponyms.shtml [Mar 2005]An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, whose name is thought to be, or has become, synonymous with the name of a particular object or activity. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eponym [Mar 2005]
see also: name - kafkaesque - sadistic
2005, Mar 20; 13:41 ::: R.I.P. Lyn Collins
James Brown's Funky People Pt1 (early 1970s) - various artists [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
RIP Lyn Collins, 56, soul singer aka "Female Preacher"
In the early 70s James Brown began recording for Polydor Records, and many of his sidemen and supporting players, such as Fred Wesley (and the JB's, Brown's backing group), Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Myra Barnes and Hank Ballard, released records on Brown's subsidiary label, People, which started up in 1971. These recordings are as much a part of Brown's legacy as those released under his own name, and most are noted examples of what might be termed James Brown's "house" style. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown_%28musician%29 [Mar 2005]
2005, Mar 20; 11:31 ::: Skull with a Cigarette (1886) - Vincent van Gogh
Skull with a Cigarette (1886) - Vincent van Gogh
2005, Mar 20; 11:27 ::: Romanticism in Belgium
The Beautiful Rosine (1847) - Antoine Wiertz
After a far too long hibernation, the time has now come to draw attention to a rather neglected period of the Belgian history of art, a period usually described as being that of Romanticism. This exhibition, celebrating Belgium’s 175th anniversary, is focusing on art which developed itself during the reign of Leopold I (1831-1865). A fascinating period thus, during which all kinds of new trends suddenly emerged as seeds shooting up in a conservatory. --http://www.romantisme.be/Engels/default.aspx?tabid=214 [Mar 2005]
2005, Mar 20; 11:15 ::: The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages () - Norman Cohn
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages () - Norman Cohn [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
At the end of the first millennium A.D., itinerant preachers crisscrossed Europe warning that the end of the world was nigh. Hundreds of thousands of people took heed, joining religious cults and anti-governmental militias in preparation for the coming war between good and evil. (If this sounds familiar, it is proof only that history is cyclical.) During this heady time, Europe exploded in religious war, peasant revolts and sectarian strife, marked by the first large-scale massacres of Jews and gypsies, the first inklings of inquisitions and holy crusades. Norman Cohn, a masterful writer and interpreter, carefully explores this extraordinary period in European history in a book that bears rereading as our own millennium approaches its end.Product Description:
The end of the millennium has always held the world in fear of earthquakes, plague, and the catastrophic destruction of the world. Now with the year 1999 approaching, the world is again experiencing these anxieties, as seen by the onslaught of fantasies of renewal, doomsday predictions, and New Age prophecies.This fascinating book explores the millenarianism that flourished in western Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Covering the full range of revolutionary and anarchic sects and movements in medieval Europe, Cohn demonstrates how prophecies of a final struggle between the hosts of Christ and Antichrist melded with the rootless poor's desire to improve their own material conditions, resulting in a flourishing of millenarian fantasies. The only overall study of medieval millenarian movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium offers an excellent interpretation of how, again and again, in situations of anxiety and unrest, traditional beliefs come to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities. --via Amazon.com
see also: free - middle ages - heretics
from the bibliography of Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus
2005, Mar 19; 17:51 ::: The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (1972) - Robert E. Lerner
The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (1972) - Robert E. Lerner [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The heresy of the Free Spirit is often considered to have been the most important continental European heresy of the fourteenth century. Many historians have described its membership as a league of anarchistic deviants who fomented sexual license and subversion of authority. Free Spirits are supposed to have justified nihilism and megalomania and to have been remote precursors of Bakunin and Nietzsche and twentieth-century bohemians and hippies. This volume examines the Free-Spirit movement as it appeared in its own age, and concludes that it was not a tightly-organized sect, but rather a spectrum of belief that emphasized voluntary poverty and quietistic mysticism. Overall, the movement was far more typical of the late-medieval search for God and godliness that is commonly supposed. --via Amazon.com
see also: free - middle ages - heretics - 1300s
from the bibliography of Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus
2005, Mar 18; 13:48 ::: The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) - Radley Metzger
The Opening of Misty Beethoven is an American hardcore film released in 1975. It is widely considered one of the best pornographic films ever made. Produced with a relatively high budget and filmed on elaborate locations in Italy and New York City, it owes much to its fastidious director Radley Metzger (as Henry Paris). In an era in which pornography was just beginning to be widely released, most movies of that time were expected to have at least minimal plots. Misty's plot was more elaborate than most; it was based directly on the old Pygmalion legend and, more recently, George Bernard Shaw's play of the same name, as well as the Broadway and Hollywood success My Fair Lady.
The three leads were Constance Money, Gloria Leonard, and Jamie Gillis. It received the first annual Erotic Film Festival Award for Best Movie. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opening_of_Misty_Beethoven [Mar 2005]
see also: pornographic film - Radley Metzger - porno chic
2005, Mar 18; 12:49 ::: Peeping Tom (1960) - Michael Powell
Milly just before ...
Peeping Tom (1960) - Michael Powell [Amazon.com]
"The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom, would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then the stench would remain." --Derek Hill, "Cheap Thrills," Tribune (London: April 29, 1960), 11.
2005, Mar 18; 12:35 ::: ParacinemaSo, what do we call these weird films and where do they come from? Well, it’s a long story, and as this column progresses, we will examine some of the issues and history that surround low-budget film industries and cult films-essentially non-mainstream film productions that appeal to a specific, unique and sometimes fetishistic audience. Critic and scholar Jeffery Sconce has labeled these types of films as “Paracinema” [1].
He describes paracinema as being less a distinct group of films than a particular reading protocol, a counter-aesthetic turned subcultural sensibility devoted to all manner of cultural detritus (372). The paracinema can contain any film so long as it adheres to the requirements of its counter-aesthetic. Sconce’s work, now nearly ten years old, is a solid foundation for academic interest in paracinema. His call for academia to acknowledge that paracinema is slowly being accepted and institutions are gradually addressing issues that surround these films. But his work is also a cultural watershed of sorts; his articles (perhaps unintentionally) split paracinema between the historical period of low-budget film production, on the one hand, and contemporary film and television productions that have adopted the counter-aesthetic of the past and brought it into the mainstream flow of our contemporary mediascape, on the other.
It is not difficult to see evidence of the paracinema’s counter-aesthetic in such films as the new crop of Slasher/comedy films, martial arts-stunt based films like the matrix trilogy (1999-2003) and Tarantino’s kill bill (2003), MTV’s reality films (jackass (2002) and the real cancun (2003)), all of Takashi Miike’s films, and direct to video productions (like girls gone wild and bumfights). And let’s not forget the plethora of television shows that have adopted a paracinematic counter-aesthetic, usually mixing it with a heavy dose of self-conscious style (the sopranos, queer as folk, six feet under, nip/tuck, just to name a few), or the so-called reality programs that dabble in it as well (extreme makeover, american idol, fear factor, etc.). --http://www.synoptique.ca/core/en/articles/vornoff_2/#fn1 [Mar 2005]
see also: paracinema
Ado Kyrou wrote, "Je vous en conjure, apprenez a voir les `mauvais' films, ils sont parfois sublimes" ("I beg you, learn to see `bad' films; they are sometimes sublime"). Ado Kyrou, Le Surrealisme au cinema, 276. Translation Joan Hawkins --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]
2005, Mar 18; 12:35 ::: 'Bad' filmssee also: bad - film - Ado Kyrou
2005, Mar 18; 10:55 ::: Grande Ecole (2004) - Robert Salis
Grande Ecole (2004) - Robert Salis [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: Michel Foucault - cultural theory - critical theory
2005, Mar 18; 10:51 ::: Brève Traversée/Brief Crossing (2001) - Catherine Breillat
Brève Traversee/Brief Crossing (2001) - Catherine Breillat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: Catherine Breillat
2005, Mar 18; 10:39 ::: Parfait amour!/Perfect Love (1996) - Catherine Breillat
Parfait amour!/Perfect Love (1996) - Catherine Breillat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: Catherine Breillat
2005, Mar 18; 10:07 ::: Münster rebellion
Hieronymus Bosch, detail from The Haywain, c1504
image sourced here. [image unrelated to subject]Proto-socialism
In 1534 the Anabaptists took power in the Münster Rebellion and founded a democratic proto-socialistic state. The town was recaptured in 1535; the Anabaptists were tortured to death, their dead bodies were exhibited in cages, which hung from St. Lamberti's steeple. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%FCnster [Mar 2005]Polygamy
The radical Anabaptists of Münster also practiced polygamy, but they had little influence after the defeat of the Münster Rebellion in 1535. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy [Mar 2005]The Münster Rebellion
The Münster Rebellion was an attempt by radical Anabaptists to establish a theocracy in Münster. The city became an Anabaptist center from 1532 to 1535, and fell under Anabaptist rule for 16 months - from February 1534, when the city hall was seized and Bernhard Knipperdolling installed as mayor, until its fall in June 1535. It was Melchior Hoffman, who initiated adult baptism in Strassburg in 1530, and his "brand" of eschatological Anabaptism, that helped lay the foundations for the events of 1534-1535 in Münster. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%FCnster_Rebellion [Mar 2005]Anabaptism
Anabaptists ("re-baptizers", from Greek ana and baptizo; in German: Wiedertäufer) are Christians of the so-called "radical wing" of the Protestant Reformation. The term was coined by critics, who objected to the practice of performing baptism for adults whose previous baptism, as infants, the Anabaptists claimed was not valid. Various groups at various times have been called Anabaptist, but this article focuses primarily on the Anabaptists of 16th century Europe. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabaptist [Mar 2005]Libertine
Libertine is the name given to certain political or social groups active in Europe in the 17th century. Libertinism was a form of freethinker philosophy, and was first derisively applied to a Dutch Anabaptist sect in the 16th century that rejected many of society's established mores, and advocated a community of goods and of women. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertine [Mar 2005]Peasant revolts
Peasant revolts were popular uprisings by European peasants against their lords and the institution of serfdom, including the 1358 Jacquerie in France, the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England, the 1524-1526 Peasants' War in Germany and the 1573 Croatian and Slovenian peasant revolt. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_revolt [Mar 2005]Peasant revolts (2)
The [Münster] rebellion came late in the whole series of peasant rebellions which characterized the late medieval world -- indeed the time of its occurrence belongs more to the renaissance than to the middle ages. Earlier rebellions had occurred in Italy (1304-7), Flanders (1323-8), France (1356), England (1381), Northern Spain (1437) and Hungary (1514), and in Bohemia (1419-34). Germany itself had undergone earlier insurrections in 1476; in the 1490s; in 1502; in 1513; in 1514; and in 1517. None of these succeeded; all were suppressed. None was as well organized or widespread as the rebellion of 1525. --http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/german_peasants_war.htm [Mar 2005]Peasant war
The Peasants' War (in German, der Deutsche Bauernkrieg) was a popular revolt in Europe, specifically in the Holy Roman Empire between 1524-1526 and consisted, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a mass of economic as well as religious revolts by peasants, townsfolk and nobles. The movement possessed no common programme. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasants%27_War [Mar 2005]Popular revolts
Popular revolts in late medieval Europe were uprisings and rebellions by peasants in the countryside, or the bourgeois in towns, against nobles and kings during the upheavals of the 14th through early 16th centuries. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_revolt_in_late_medieval_Europe [Mar 2005]The Peasant revolt in Flanders 1323-1328
The Peasant revolt in Flanders 1323-1328 was a popular revolt in late medieval Europe. Beginning as a series of scattered rural riots in late 1323, peasant insurrection escalated into a full-scale rebellion that dominated public affairs in Flanders for nearly five years until 1328.The uprising in Flanders was caused by both excessive taxations leveed by Count Louis II of Nevers, and by his pro-French policies. The insurrection had urban leaders and rural factions which took over most of Flanders by 1325. The king of France directly intervened and the uprising was decisively put down at the Battle of Cassel in August of 1328. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_revolt_in_Flanders [Mar 2005]
see also: counterculture - protestantism - rebellion - libertine
2005, Mar 18; 08:11 ::: Rap and hip hop index
Lil Kim - Keeping it Real (1999)- David LaChapelle
Record sleeve of Harlem Underground Band (1976) on Paul Winley records
Steppin' (1974) - The Fatback Band
Major elements: breakdancing - DJing - graffiti art - MCing - scratching - turntablism
Related: Africa - afrobeat - black music - black pride - proto disco - electro - electro funk - Enjoy! records - freestyle - funk - gay hip hop - hip hop - house - Jamaica - jazz - Miami bass - Martin Luther King, Jr. - P-Funk - popular music - r&b - rare groove - reggae - seventies - soul music
Musical elements: beat - break - mix - rhyme - rhythm - sample - sound system - version - vinyl
Artists: Afrika Bambaataa - Arthur Baker - Peter Brown - Chic - Fatback band - George Clinton - Grandmaster Flash - Spoonie Gee - Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez - Gil Scott Heron - Kraftwerk - The Last Poets - Lil Kim - John Robie - Sylvia Robinson - Todd Terry - Paul Winley
2005, Mar 17; 15:00 ::: The Place of European art films in American low culture / body genres
The War Game (1965) - Peter Watkins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
European art and avant-garde/experimental films) and popular culture
Open the pages of any U.S. horror fanzine--Outre, Fangoria, Cinefantastique--and you will find listings for mail order video companies which cater to afficionados of what Jeffrey Sconce has called "paracinema" and trash aesthetics.(1) Not only do these mail order companies represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the video market,(2) their catalogues challenge many of our continuing assumptions about the binary opposition of prestige cinema (European art and avant-garde/experimental films) and popular culture.(3) Certainly, they highlight an aspect of art cinema which is generally overlooked or repressed in cultural analysis, namely, the degree to which high culture trades on the same images, tropes, and themes which characterize low culture. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]High mingles with low
In the world of horror and cult film fanzines and mail order catalogues, what Carol J. Clover calls "the high end" of the horror genre(4) mingles indiscriminately with the "low end." Here, Murnau's Nosferatu (1921) and Dreyer's Vampyr (1931) appear alongside such drive-in favorites as Tower of Screaming Virgins (1971) and Jail Bait (1955). Even more interesting, European art films which have little to do with horror--Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), for example--are listed alongside movies which Video Vamp labels "Eurocinetrash." European art films are not easily located through separate catalogue subheadings or listings. Many catalogues simply list film titles alphabetically, making no attempt to differentiate among genres or subgenres, high or low art. In Luminous Film and Video Wurks Catalogue 2.0, for example, Jean-Luc Godard's edgy Weekend (1968) is sandwiched between The Washing Machine (1993) and The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975). Sinister Cinema's 1996-97 catalogue, which organizes titles chronologically, lists Godard's Alphaville (1965) between Lightning Bolt (1965) and Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966).(5) --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]Body genres (1)
[Linda] Williams identifies three pertinent features shared by body genres (which she defines as porn, horror, and melodrama). "First," she writes, "there is the spectacle of a body caught in the grips of intense sensation or emotion" (142): the spectacle of orgasm in porn; of terror and violence in horror; of weeping in melodrama. Second, there is the related focus on ecstasy, "a direct or indirect sexual excitement and rapture," which borders on what the Greeks termed insanity or bewilderment (142-3). Visually this is signalled in films through what Williams calls the "involuntary convulsion or spasm--of the body `beside itself' in the grips of sexual pleasure, fear and terror, and overpowering sadness" (143). Aurally, ecstasy is marked by the inarticulate cry--of pleasure in porn, of terror in horror, and of grief or anguish in melodrama (143). --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]editor's note: what about laughter ?
Body genres (2)
Finally, body genres directly address the spectator's body. And it is this last feature which, Williams argues, most noticeably characterizes body genres as degraded cultural forms. "What seems to bracket these particular genres from others," she writes, "is an apparent lack of proper aesthetic distance, a sense of over-involvement in sensation and emotion ... viewers feel too directly, too viscerally, manipulated by the text" (144). The body of the spectator involuntarily mimics "the emotion or sensation of the body onscreen" (143). The spectator cringes, becomes tense, screams, weeps, becomes aroused. This is such a pointed and calculated feature of body films that Mary Ann Doane, as Williams points out, "equates the violence of this emotion to a kind of `textual rape' of the targeted ... viewer" (144).(11) --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]The War Game (1965) and The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1972)
While Williams' assessment of the way body genres work--particularly the way they work in "specifically gendered ways" (144)--is excellent, the distinction between high and low, properly distanced and improperly involved audience response is not as neat as Williams suggests. Consider, for example, Amos Vogel's description of The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965), a British art film which is frequently listed in paracinema catalogues. "A terrifying, fabricated documentary records the horrors of a future atomic war in the most painstaking, sickening detail. Photographed in London, it shows the flash bums and firestorms, the impossibility of defence [sic], the destruction of all life. Produced by the BBC, the film was promptly banned and became world-famous and rarely seen."(12) Similarly, Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1972), which is hard to find outside experimental and avant-garde film venues, encourages an uncomfortably visceral reaction in the spectator. The chronicle of a real autopsy, the film is, Amos Vogel writes, "an appalling, haunting work of great purity and truth. It dispassionately records whatever transpires in front of the lens: bodies sliced length-wise, organs removed, skulls and scalp cut open with electric tools" (267).(13) While such descriptive terms as "haunting work of great purity and truth" are seldom found in paracinema catalogues, The War Game and The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes do address the spectator in ways that paracinema fans would appreciate. Clearly designed to break the audience's aesthetic distance, the films encourage the kind of excessive physical response which we would generally attribute to horror. Furthermore, their excessive visual force and what paracinema catalogues like to term "powerful subject matter" mark them as subversive. Banned, marginalized through being screened exclusively in museums and classrooms, these are films which most mainstream film patrons never see. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]Marquis de Sade
Supposedly. But that doesn't mean that it always does. Consider the works of the Marquis de Sade, whose books are sold in mainstream bookstores and adult bookstores, and housed in university libraries. De Sade's works, which the intellectual elite views as masterful analyses of the mechanisms of power and economics,(14) are also--at least if we are to take their presence in adult bookstores and magazines seriously--still regarded as sexually arousing, as masturbatory aids. Furthermore, as Jane Gallop's powerful admission that she masturbated while reading de Sade demonstrates, one set of cultural uses--one kind of audience pleasure--doesn't necessarily preclude the other.(15) It is possible for someone to be simultaneously intellectually challenged and physically titillated; and it is possible for someone to simultaneously enjoy both the intellectual and the physical stimulation. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]see also: Joan Hawkins
2005, Mar 17; 12:20 ::: François Schuiten (1956 - )
image sourced here.
The Invisible Frontier: Cities of the Fantastic (2002) - François Schuiten, Benoit Peeters [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
François Schuiten (born 26 April 1956) is a Belgian comics artist. During his studies at the Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels, he met Claude Renard with whom he created several albums. Schuitens brother's Luc also worked with him several times as a scenarist for the series Terres Creuses.
Schuiten is the son of two architects. His love of architecture became apparent in the series Les Cités Obscures, an evocation of fantastic, partly imaginary cities that he created together with Benoît Peeters. He also worked as a graphic designer for two movies: Gwendoline by Just Jaeckin and Taxandria by Raoul Servais, and as a scenographer, making designs for the metro stations of Porte de Hal (Hallepoort) in Brussels and Arts et Métiers in Paris. In 2002, he was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%E7ois_Schuiten [Mar 2005]
2005, Mar 17; 12:20 ::: Black Mahogoni 2 (2004) - Moodymann
Black Mahogoni 2 (2004) - Moodymann [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Echoes
...one of the most distinctive musical voices in contemporary Black music.Nuts
If Marvin Gaye were alive today this is the kind of music he’d be producing.Album Description
Following on from the soulful house masterpiece that is Black Mahogani, the album, comes Black Mahogani 2, an altogether jazzier affair mixing mostly live elements with Kenny Dixon Jr’s (aka Moodymann) own un-definable genius production style.Those expecting straight up deep house should tune out now as Kenny leads us into an exciting new territory under his Pitch Black City moniker.
Black Mahogani 2: The Pitch Black City Collection sees Kenny bring together some of Detroit’s finest and undiscovered musicians to produce an album on a par with jazz fusion classics from the likes of Herbie Hancock & Sun Ra. Essential. --via Amazon.com
see also: Moodymann - black music - Detroit
2005, Mar 17; 11:53 ::: Fiction index
Fantastic Planet (1973) - René Laloux [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Related: content - imagination - film - literature - narrative - non-fiction - novel - plot - story - theatre
By genre: cult fiction - erotic fiction - fantasy fiction - gay fiction - genre fiction - horror fiction - interactive fiction - science fiction
Grotesque fiction: grotesque art - grotesque film - grotesque literature
Erotic fiction: erotic art - erotic books - erotic fiction - erotic movies - erotic photography
Genre fiction: film genre - literary genre - music genre
Horror fiction: horror film - horror fiction - horror art
Modern fiction: modern art - modern literature - modern music
Postmodern fiction: postmodern art - postmodern literature - postmodern film - postmodern music
Underground fiction: underground film - underground press (books, etc...) - underground music
2005, Mar 17; 11:18 ::: Transgression (2003) - Chris Jenks
Transgression (2003) - Chris Jenks [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
Transgression is truly a key idea for our time. Society is created by constraint and boundaries, but as our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty and flux we find it more and more difficult to determine where those boundaries lie. In this fast moving study, Chris Jenks ranges widely over the history of ideas, the major theorists, and the significant moments in the formation of the idea of transgression. He looks at the definition of the social and its boundaries by Durkheim, Douglas and Freud, at the German tradition of Hegel and Nietzsche, and the increasing preoccupation with transgression itself in Baudelaire, Bataille and Foucault. The second half of the book looks at transgression in action in the East End myth of the Kray twins, in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, the spectacle of the Situationists and Bakhtin's analysis of carnival. Finally Jenks extends his treatment of transgression to its own extremity. --via Amazon.co.uk [Mar 2005]see also: transgression
2005, Mar 17; 10:44 ::: The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986) - Peter Stallybrass, Allon White
The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986) - Peter Stallybrass, Allon White [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In 1896, with The Devil Castle, Georges Melies introduced the world to vampire films. Since then, the vampire movie has become a mainstay of popular horror. According to John L. Flynn, Brain Stoker's Dracula has been adapted for the screen more often than any other book, while the word vampire has appeared 1046 times in film titles. One reason behind this remarkable popularity is the close association between vampirism and eroticism that cinema has explored and exploited to increasing degrees over the years. These films have frequently presented various taboo aspects of sexuality; from sadomasochism to dominance and submission to homoeroticism. The settings of horror and fantasy are used to showcase the titillation of these forbidden topics. Over the years the explicitness of these representations have been molded by the changing standards of censorship. --William Meyer via For the Purity of Our Precious Bodily Fluids: an Essay on Eroticism in Vampire Films, http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/fas/latent_image/issues/2000-04/vampire.htm [Mar 2005]
Another pertinent point is portrayals of the body in vampire films. In their book, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White write a great deal about representations of the body. Citing Bakhtin, they discuss the difference between the body as represented in popular festivals (low culture) and classic statuary (high culture). The high culture body "has no openings or orifices whereas grotesque costumes and masks emphasize the gaping mouth, the protuberant belly and buttocks, the feet and the genitals (Stallybrass and White, 22). The classical body is a perfect closed system, unsullied by the world around it. It is pure and self-contained, whereas the grotesque body with its various orifices and protrusions is constantly excreting or consuming. --William Meyer via For the Purity of Our Precious Bodily Fluids: an Essay on Eroticism in Vampire Films, http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/fas/latent_image/issues/2000-04/vampire.htm [Mar 2005]
As Peter Stallybrass and Allon White affirm in THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF TRANSGRESSION, "disgust always bears the imprint of desire" (201) --http://sites.uol.com.br/formattoso/pornography.htm
inspired by: Connie Shortes
see also: transgression - politics - poetics -
2005, Mar 17; 10:35 ::: Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (1991) - Jonathan Dollimore
Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (1991) - Jonathan Dollimore [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
First sentence
"In Blidah, Algeria in January 1895 Andre Gide is in the hall of a hotel, about to leave..."Product Description:
Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history--history rather than human nature--that has produced this paradoxical position? These are just some of the questions explored in Sexual Dissidence.Written by a leading critic in gender studies, this wide-ranging study returns to the early modern period in order to focus, question, and develop issues of postmodernity, and in the process brilliantly link writers as diverse as Shakespeare, Andre Gide, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Genet, and cultural critics as different as St. Augustine, Frantz Fanon, and Michel Foucault. In so doing, Dollimore discovers that Freud's theory of perversion is more challenging than either his critics or his advocates usually allow, especially when approached via the earlier period's archetypal perverts, the religious heretic and the wayward woman, Satan and Eve.
A path-breaking book in a rapidly expanding field of literary and cultural study, Sexual Dissidence shows how the literature, histories, and subcultures of sexual and gender dissidence prove remarkably illuminating for current debates in literary theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. It includes chapters on transgression and its containment, contemporary theories of sexual difference, homophobia, the gay sensibility, transvestite literature in the culture and theatre of Renaissance England, homosexuality, and race. --via Amazon.com
inspired by: Connie Shortes
Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
tragic ontology, transgressive aesthetic, privative theory, aberrant movement, sexual difference theory, liberated desire, internal deviation, civilized sexual morality, nature erring, homosexual sensibility, containment theory, psychoanalytic project, polymorphous perverse, masculine honour, subjective depth, reverse discourse, sexual nonconformity, depth model, transgressive desire, gay sensibility, female transvestite, repressed homosexualitysee also: opposition - sex - Oscar Wilde - Sigmund Freud - Michel Foucault
2005, Mar 17; 09:39 ::: James Whale (1889 - 1957)
Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester in James Whale's 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]James Whale (July 22, 1889 - May 29, 1957) was a Hollywood film director, best known for his work in the horror genre, making such momentous and iconic pictures as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man.
Despite being forced into maintaining certain levels of secrecy during his own lifetime, Whale's homosexuality is now synonymous with his name. Many suggest that there are homosexual themes and discourses in his motion pictures and as a result his biographies are considered noteworthy in gay and lesbian studies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Whale [Mar 2005]
see also: Frankenstein - homosexuality - horror film - queer horror - queer film - film
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