FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
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The Violation of Representation: Art, Argento and the Rape-Revenge Film
Get PDFConsidering the moral controversies surrounding films such as I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarch, 1976) and Baise-Moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh-Thi, 2000), the rape-revenge film is often typecast as gratuitous and regressive. But far from dismissing rape-revenge in her foundational book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992), Carol J. Clover suggests that these movies permit unique insight into the representation of gendered bodies on screen. In Images of Rape: The \u27Heroic\u27 Tradition and Its Alternatives(1999), art historian Diane Wolfthal demonstrates that contradictory representations of sexual violence co-existed long before the advent of the cinematic image, and a closer analysis of films that fall into the rape-revenge category reveals that they too resist a singular classification. Despite the broadness of the rape-revenge category, however, these films predominantly involve some kind of visceral skirmish between victim/villain, good/evil, female/male and right/wrong, and the desire for vengeance upon which their narratives rely provides a widely shared melodramatic foundation. The ideological leanings, thematic cores and moral messages of any given text hinge upon its representational mechanics-in this instance, how film formally constructs meaning-and can thus shift radically from text to text, despite the uniformity of the trope itself
“Eat Shit and Die!”: Rereading power dynamics in fictional depictions of coprophagia
Get PDFIn a 2010 online video interview, the pornographic actor Veronika Moser discusses her long-standing interest in \u27scat\u27 fetishism (sex acts involving faeces), in particular her "passion" for consuming the excrement of her lovers and fellow actors. Introducing her preferences, she discusses how "[her] main objective was to learn to swallow shit, because that\u27s something very special" (Moser). Indeed, the very excess of the act appears to form a large part of its appeal to Moser - she eventually justifies herself by claiming that "for me there\u27s no extremer act" (Moser). Many of those commenting on the video appear to share a belief in the distinct, "special" quality of the fetish, whilst condemning the practice itself. Such a reaction is to be expected. Coprophagia - the term which describes Moser\u27s fetish for consuming excrement - has long been a deeply controversial and potentially unsettling act, tied up in a series of debates about power and sexuality
Mammary Landscapes and Mother\u27s Figure: Vengeance and matrilineal legacy in the poetic drama of W.H. Auden
Get PDFThis article will focus on The Ascent of F6 (1936) and work back to Paid On Both Sides, as both plays explore the psychological malaise of the protagonist and the domineering influence of the mother to striking effect. These dramas find their central protagonists grappling with the malignant influence of mothers who compel the climactic acts of revenge through the neurotic anxiety they have engendered within their sons. The first act of vengeance examined is figurative and illusory as the mother of the Ransom brothers pits her neurotic sons against each other in an Oedipal battle for glory or favour in F6. The second, more formative, action to be examined is literal and physical, as the matriarchs of Paid\u27s Nower and Shaw families demand that their remaining sons commit acts of murderous revenge for slain fathers and brothers. Both are undoubtedly responses to the psychic deprivation and distress caused by the mother characters and their divided affections for their sons. While much work remains to be conducted in gendered approaches to the study of these texts, this article will explore the significance of vengeance and matrilineal legacy in W.H. Auden\u27s poetic drama and locate this theme within the context of his poetry from the late Twenties to the late Thirties. This study anticipates further discussion of the role of matriarchal figures and gender debates arising from post-war literature
Vampiric Narratives: Constructing Authenticity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Get PDFUsing Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a textual tool, this essay will explore not only the authentication of the Self and its subsequent deconstruction when confronted by its Other, but will also discuss how such a confrontation and the search for authenticity and authority are fashioned and perpetuated in the construction of personal histories. Acknowledging this presence illuminates the larger implications of the anxieties surrounding the unstable construction of the Self and its complex, sometimes contradictory, relationship to its long-repressed Other(s). This essay will begin by examining the Self as a psychological construct that initially seeks the affirmation established by the existence of its mirroring double figure. The Gothic novel intuitively gives voice to the repressed and in so doing, confronts the Self with its uncanny double, a reflection which the Self perceives as a threat to its own existence. This engagement of the uncanny as a device of the Gothic transforms the familiar into the unfamiliar, and, consequently, the psychological authentication of identity experiences a series of oscillations between the Self and the Other that leads to an identity crisis. This confusion is rooted in the confrontation between two estranged figures struggling to establish one as the authentic Self.
Seeking Vengeance: Revenge Tragedy, Coherence and Scepticism from Sophocles to Shakespeare
Get PDFLiterary representations of revenge frequently encourage us to question the motivations behind such an impulse towards symmetry and coherence, as well as the outcomes of such a quest. In this sense, such literary representations relate closely to tragedy itself, the dramatic genre in which revenge is most often given aesthetic form in the shape of revenge tragedy. While this particular sub-genre is principally located on the Renaissance stage, it has its roots in the Senecan tradition, which itself draws on classical Greek drama. This article aims to explore representations of revenge in tragedy from Sophocles to Shakespeare, focusing on the scrutiny under which such representations repeatedly place the idea of "coherence", the attempt to find pattern, meaning and justice in the midst of tragic horror and destruction. In so doing, it aims to draw parallels between the drive towards revenge and the quest for coherence in tragedy, suggesting that an obsessive attempt to find satisfaction in order and symmetry is repeatedly found to be ethically questionable, as it can be both punitive and violent
Revenge and Remake: Meir Zarchi\u27s Day of the Woman and Steven Monroe\u27s I Spit on Your Grave
Get PDFMeir Zarchi\u27s 1977 Day of the Woman was relatively ignored by the public before its title was changed to the more provocative and thus marketable I Spit on Your Grave(hereafter abbreviated as Spit). Appalled reviewers and its inclusion in the 1983 British list of "video nasties" earned the film a cult status that gave rise to a 2010 remake of what had been described as "an extraordinarily difficult film to watch" (Clover 115). Both films possess a typical rape-revenge plot: a young writer, Jennifer Hills, leaves New York to spend the summer in a remote country cabin, hoping to find the peace and quiet she needs to write her novel. She meets a group of local thugs - one of them being "mentally handicapped" (Ebert) - who first harass, then brutally and repetitively rape her. The second act of the film covers the young woman\u27s bloody revenge against her tormentors.The protagonist\u27s vengeance has been criticised for being "as vicious" (Martin and Porter 704) as the acts of violence committed against her. According to Carol Clover, "that is of course true. It lies in the nature of revenge or self-defence stories […] that the avenger or self-defender will become as directly or indirectly violent as her assailant, and, [...] these films are in some measure about the transformation" (123). The original Spit, however, is often regarded as an exploitation film aiming to bait its audience with unjustifiable and gratuitous violence. In order to address this idea this paper will first consider both movies from the angle of retributive justice and the "lex talionis" (Clover 120) - the law of retaliation - then analyse and compare how directorial choices support and undermine the avenger\u27s position in the 1977 Spit and its remake
Preface: "On Revenge"
Get PDFWhen Robert Mannion, the scheming villain of Wilkie Collins\u27s sensation novel Basil, reveals his revenge plot to the eponymous narrator, it might appear at first that he has thrown off the mantle of middle-class respectability to expose his "true" monstrous self: rapacious, violent, motivated equally by perverse appetites and the desire for vengeance. Yet, I would suggest that the relationship between Mannion\u27s persona as socially-productive, disciplined, and efficient self-made man and his role as a stealthily, indefatigably vengeful plotter is much more synergistic than antagonistic. Mannion stakes a claim to revenge based on his very rights as a man. The fear that Basil explores is that the "good citizen" of modern liberal society might also be the mauvais sujet of revenge, not because the semblance of the former masks the latter, but, more disturbingly, because Mannion\u27s "right to injure" is fundamental to the very social order that he ostensibly threatens. In other words, it is no coincidence that a villain like Mannion emerges at the same historical moment as some of the most enthusiastic articulations of liberal ideals of self-determining, autonomous subjectivity. Mannion not only embodies the very qualities that, according to Samuel Smiles\u27s runaway bestseller Self-Help, "make the man"- "great perseverance, application, and energy" (30)-but these qualities are explicitly the products of his "desire for revenge." So, what might that intersection of revenge fantasies with the liberal dream of self-determination and economic success that Smiles\u27s book pedaled in 1850s England have to tell us about revenge as a cultural phenomenon and a fictional device? What is happening at the interstices between revenge and rights, in other words
Digital Attraction : from the real to the virtual in manuscript studies
Get PDFIn a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast on 26 April 2011 (Tales from the Digital Archive), archaeologist Christine Finn explored some of the ways in which the digital revolution has changed writers’ working methods, and the consequential impact that these have had on librarians, curators and conservators. Wendy Cope recently donated an archive of 40,000 emails to the British Library, providing scholars with invaluable material for research on drafts of her poems as they developed. Fay Weldon found herself changing quite easily from pen and paper to computer and mouse, discovering in the process that it changed how she actually wrote her novels. Altering phrases or drafts became much easier, and much cheaper too. Weldon’s archive is destined for the University of Indiana. Salman Rushdie’s archive went to Emory University in 2006, becoming available to researchers in 2010; it includes 15 years of electronic material from his computer. The British Library has a Curator of Digital Manuscripts, Jeremy John, whose strongroom contains IBM and Macintosh computers, floppies, CDs and other ephemera such as post-it slips (stored in archive boxes alongside the machines they were attached to).
The Face of Comic Revenge in Jonson\u27s Alchemist
Get PDFWhen one thinks of early modern dramatic examples of revenge, the first titles that spring to mind may include Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and The Spanish Tragedy. These three and others adhere to a rough template: first, the play begins with social or political unrest; second, the conflict comes to a head through the action of the play; and third, the conflict is resolved by the final act, often with few survivors. You may even be familiar with the phrase: "In the Fourth Act the die is cast. In the Fifth Act the cast dies." These qualities can be anticipated in tragedies, but can also be found as tragic elements encompassed within other genres. Revenge can be found in comedies alongside other stereotypes and expectations: the restoration of social order and a marriage or at least the implication or anticipation of a marriage (Hopkins 16). Dramatic expectations and stereotypes were formed through years of perfecting and use by Renaissance dramatists; however, as soon as they were established, playwrights began to break with dramatic expectations and blur the lines between tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare created plays like The Tempest in which both tragic and comic circumstances fuel the plot and the conclusion includes both a death, as Prospero abandons his magic, and an impending marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda. Ben Jonson, too, contributed to this new genre and engaged tragic themes within comedy
Madness and Revenge: Gendered False Consciousness in the Golden Age Crime Novel
No full textElaine Showalter has objected to what she sees as a tendency in Cixous\u27s writing to reflect on hysteria as a subversive and even empowering \u27act\u27 in the confrontation of patriarchy. To Showalter, the self-destructiveness and further loss of autonomy suffered by female hysterics make it practically and ethically untenable as a form of protest: “[…] hysteria was at best a private, ineffectual response to the frustrations of women\u27s lives. Its immediate gratifications – the sympathy of the family, the attention of the physician – were slight in relation to its costs in powerlessness and silence” (161). Taking this dissonance in feminist thought as our starting point, this essay will examine representations of madness in three golden age mystery novels by female authors – Christianna Brand\u27s Green for Danger (1945), Gladys Mitchell\u27s Laurels Are Poison (1947),and Dorothy L. Sayers\u27 Gaudy Night (1935). In this account, \u27madness\u27 will not be taken to have a consistent or scientific meaning. While each text is steeped in Freud, only Brand and Mitchell use psychoanalytic terminology to diagnose their murderess\u27s motivations. Madness can signify irrationality, unconventionality, a delusional state of mind or severe emotional imbalance. Taking these various meanings into account, this paper will assess whether madness is used as a potent metaphor for acts of resistance and negation, and whether it costs female characters in powerlessness and silence. Specifically, this paper will consider acts of revenge carried out by each novel\u27s female antagonist because, like madness, revenge can be considered an empowered, highly insurgent act. While to Showalter madness is always a constrained form of protest, this essay will ask, can the same be said of revenge