Transgressive
By medium: transgressive art - transgressive cinema - transgressive fiction
Elements of moral and normative transgression: drugs - sex - violence
Theory: Georges Bataille - Mikhail Bakhtin
Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962) was one of the prime theorists of transgression. He emphasized the irrational in opposition to the rational, the erotic as opposed to morality, celebration of excess as opposed to restraint, transgression as opposed to conformity. [Jun 2006]
Related: carnivalesque - controversial - exaggeration - experiments in art - excess - grotesque - irrational - offensive - scandal - subversion - grotesque - obscene - taboo
Definition
- Exceeding a limit or boundary, especially of social acceptability.
- Of or relating to a genre of fiction, filmmaking, or art characterized by graphic depictions of behavior that violates socially acceptable norms, often involving violence, drug use, and sexual deviancy.
Transgression (2003) - Chris Jenks
Transgression (2003) - Chris Jenks [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Synopsis
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
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: politics - poetics -
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