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Language Eu-topías : revista de interculturalidad, comunicación y estudios europeos. 2015. Nº 9
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- Vintage Violence. La strana violenza del cinema di Losey(2015) Lancioni, TarcisioTexts about violence tend to take this concept for granted. This article tries to sketch a semiotic definition through a brief re-reading of some classics and of some vocabulary entries, to suggest a characterisation of violence as a semiotic device: an articulation of two different figures of aggression («laceration»/«constraint») against a conventional threshold.This hypothesis is developed in the analysis of Joseph Losey’s films, where violence appears in many forms, but never becomes (with rare exceptions) totally explicit or spectacular. The article reconsiders the analysis by Gilles Deleuze in his L’Image-Mouvement, where Losey’s violence is essentially related to the actor’s body and its power to vibrate under the influence of original «drives». But in Losey’s cinema there are also others expressions of violence, that the article tries to understand following the suggested device. It finally focuses on The Lawless, considered here as a reflection on the dynamics of violence building, through a complex play between the film’s diegetic development and the strategies to involve the viewer
- De cerca y de lejos. Pensar (y pesar) la violencia(2015) Larrauri, IñigoThere is a kind of image we call violent. One which attacks us and somehow inflicts pain from a distance. At the same time, there is a group of images we call sublime which are violent to some extent, and yet invite us to take delight in watching rather than making us close our eyes. While the former kind give rise to rejection, the latter one allows enjoyment; both groups, however, have some common features. It is precisely the way in which each group manages its own common features what invites us to propose a way to measure, weight, or at least think of, those violent images. For such purpose, we will make use of examples (audiovisual, pictorial, photographic, and sculptural) illustrating the differences between images of what we will call immanent violence and those of what we will call imminent violence.
- East and West. Dialogue or Monologues?(2015) Genequand, CharlesThe confrontation of Modern Western culture with that of the Middle East sometimes appears to boil down to the conflicting theses of Edward Said and Samuel Huntington. The examination of a few texts in a longer chronological perspective reveals on the contrary that the opposition served above all to the West in its efforts at self-definition, and that Easterners also made their contribution to the enterprise. Through a historical review of different cultural representations about Christianity and Islam from the origins to the present day, ranging from medieval times, the text question misunderstandings and cultural prejudices that have been forged through the stories of travellers, diplomatic and religious of both cultures. Among the texts of modernity that most significantly symptomatize the debates on the «East», stand out the reflection of eminent thinkers of the Illustration such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Volney, and the diversity of their positions and arguments.
- La violencia de la imagen o la imagen de la violencia: Introducción(2015) Lancioni, Tarcisio; Zunzunegui Díez, Santos
- Educación y propaganda en los textos confederados para niños (1861-1865)(2015) Galán, MaríaTexts intended for children have traditionally played a decisive role in forming the youngest minds, being often used as reinforcement for the propaganda oriented to adults. The Confederacy, in the process of building a new national identity, was aware of this influencing power. The present work analyzes what ideas used by Confederate propaganda appeared in texts addressed to children; it points which ones were aimed to the education of future citizens and which ones were meant to act as reinforcement of Confederate propaganda discourse; what issues followed a similar line in both discourses, the one for children and the one for adults (as in the patriotic exaltation of the nation), and in which ones there was a certain breakup (defense of slavery).
- Grecia, Europa. El plano-secuencia y la identidad en el cine de Theo Angelopoulos(2015) Revert, JordiThe latest fiction and non-fiction cinema has underlined the Greek crisis. Greece, formerly the cradle of European civilization, finds nowadays in cinema the portrait of a society in the midst of an economic downturn, having lost its identity. Nevertheless, this text looks to analyze beyond the socio-historical context in order to point to the structural aspects as a way to understand the eternal return to the trauma and the disaster. The tool used for that purpose is the shot-sequence in Theo Angelopoulos’ cinema. In the films of the Greek director, the shot-sequence works as narrative unity reelaborating time and space, and establishes a dialectic relationship with History and Greek identity. This dialogue works, at the same time, as previous step to the current thinking about Greece within a Europe gripped by the crisis.
- Sommes-nous tous Charlie?(2015) Levrat, Nicolas
- José Carlos Rueda, Elena Galán & Ángel L. Rubio. Historia de los medios de comunicación(2015) Calatayud, Elvira
- Dialectiques réalistes du discours critique: Barkin, Bazin, Desternes(2015) Tortajada, MariaDuring the forties and fifties, discourses about cinema were dealt with in terms of theory of representation. Italian neorealism catalyzed the critical positions within the debate about realism, yet Italian neorealist films were not the only ones to raise the question of the relationship between film and reality. If the notion of transparency was considered as the key concept within the discourse of realism, it is certainly does not provide an exhaustive explanation of it. By referring to three examples, we show here how the interest of the critical and theoretical debate about realism in post-war France displays various forms to conceive of reality, representation and the role of the spectator. In this article we will examine three models, or ‘ideologies’, of representation.
- Cinefilia entre la pasión, el análisis y el discurso desplazado(2015) Ramos Arenas, FernandoEspecially since the 1990s, a wide range of texts –from academic debates on postcinema/postmedia to journalistic articles mourning the ‘Decay of Cinema’– about cinephilian film culture has developed a nostalgic tone in their consideration of a past, combining historiographical reflections and autobiographical insights. The present essay analyses the main characteristics of cinephilian discourses since the 1950s and proposes in the first place a periodization that distinguishes between a classic phase (approx. 1945-1968) and a modern one (approx. 1968-late 1970s). Based on this distinction, this paper seeks also to analyse the way the constant revision (and reconstruction) of the cinephilian past is not just another consequence of the often mentioned ‘Death of the Cinema’, but an essential attribute of the cinephilian discourse since at least the 1950s as well as a further example of a (temporal) shift inherent to this discourse.
- Esperanza Guillén, Los artistas frente a la Primera Guerra Mundial(2015) Méndez Rubio, Antonio
- Isolina Ballesteros. Immigration Cinema in the New Europe(2015) Calatayud, Elvira
- Charles Chaplin Autobiografía & Un comediante descubre el mundo(2015) Fuente Soler, Manuel de la
- Pilar Pedraza, Brujas, sapos y aquelarres(2015) Guillamón Carrasco, Silvia
- Frank Zappa. La verdadera historia de Frank Zappa(2015) del Val, Fernán
- Erotismo y profanación. La representación de la violencia misógina en Drácula de Bram Stoker(2015) Fernández de Arroyabe, AinhoaBram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) creatively re-interprets the two representations of violence in the original literary work: sexual bestiality, and the ritual of vampire death. This re-interpretation relies on the devices of postmodern cinema and the iconographic references of decadent painting like dark romanticism or symbolism. As a result, the eroticization of the beauty of the decadent eye transforms the extreme sadomasochistic violence that characterizes the sexual encounters between Lucy and the Vampire, Harker and the women-beasts in voluptuous scenes where the spectator’s scopophiliac pleasure is notably increased by postmodern cinema’s mechanisms of immersion inviting the viewers to submerge themselves in this universe of pleasure and pain. Also, in the representation of of the woman-beast’s execution a distance is mantained and there is pleasure in illustrating the tremendous brutality with which the beloved destroys the body of his dead fiancée, and establishes the civilizing order of Victorian society.
- Soggetti alla violenza. Post mortem di Pablo Larraín(2015) Coviello, Massimiliano; Zucconi, FrancescoLa posibilidad de construir un sujeto que, sometido al ejercicio de la violencia, se vea conformado al respecto de la voluntad dictatorial representa la clave de lectura que se utilizará en el análisis de Post mortem (2010), el segundo capítulo de la trilogía chilena que el director Pablo Larraín ha dedicado a la narración de la dictadura que ha sufrido su país de origen. Los eventos narrados suceden en 1973, el año del golpe de estado perpetrado por el general Augusto Pinochet. El protagonista de la historia es Mario, un funcionario del estado encargado de transcribir y teclear los informes de las autopsias. Mario asiste diariamente al ejercicio de la violencia interiorizando por completo su praxis laboral, limitándose a registrar lo que pasa. En el seguimiento del funcionario en el cumplimiento de su rutina, este artículo analiza las estrategias con las que la película brinda al espectador las formas de la sujeción al régimen de violencia de la dictadura.
- Cuerpo, identidad y violencia (en un cierto cine contemporáneo)(2015) Marzabal Albaina, IñigoDe pocas cosas podemos estar tan seguros como de nuestra propia corporeidad. El cuerpo es soporte y límite de nuestra identidad, pues es lo que determina dónde acabo yo y comienza el otro. Y es precisamente en el cine donde, por su propia singularidad técnica, la cuestión del cuerpo y la identidad adquieren especial relevancia. Hay, además, un tipo de cine actual encarnado por personajes liminares y ambivalentes, solitarios y desarraigados que mantienen una doble relación con la violencia. Por una parte, se expresan a través de ella; por otra, es la violencia la que se expresa en ellos a través de cicatrices, tatuajes y demás bricolaje corporal, singularizándolos. Siendo el cuerpo lo único tangible en una situación en la que todo parece difuminarse, la carne se impone como la única superficie sobre la que dibujar de manera indeleble una identidad con tendencia a desdibujarse. A esta estirpe de narraciones pertenecen películas como Promesas del Este (Eastern Promises, 2007) de David Cronenberg.
- The Wolf of Wall Street. Sopravvivere nello stato di natura(2015) Addis, Maria Cristina; Tagliani, GiacomoEl cine contemporáneo ha profundizado en el retrato de la violencia del capitalismo financiero y The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) de Martin Scorsese denuncia el intento de establecer una representación plausible de las formas de vida y relaciones de poder que emergen de la globalización y de la volatilización de los mercados y de los bienes. El retorno a una dimensión salvaje y primordial de la violencia pone en escena un estado de naturaleza ajeno a las leyes que regulan el comportamiento colectivo, y que se convierten en el fundamento de un contrato social opuesto al del estado de derecho. Esta forma de violencia se desdobla en la enunciación con imágenes que agreden al espectador, imponiéndole un único punto de vista que fagocita el relato. Desde una perspectiva que combina la metodología semiótica y la teoría crítica, se analiza aquí el modo en que el film aborda las formas de subjetivación específicas del capitalismo financiero.
