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Auteurism and the Aesthetics of Irritation : Haneke, von Trier and Lynch
ISBN
978-1-60608-624-7
Type
book section
Date Issued
2010
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Ornella, Alexander D.
Abstract
One way of discussing filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier and David Lynch as auteurs is to identify a ‘hallmark' specific to their work: Lynch's complex play with phantasmatic space, von Trier's intermedial violations, Haneke's anti-psychological figures. Such identifications open onto further filmic and narrative practices that are specific to each and, like those just mentioned, unconventional. It is the overall characteristic of being against convention that will serve as our fundament for an aesthetics of irritation. We intend to theorize various categories of irritation for each filmmaker, but also identify categories common to all three: each can be discussed meaningfully in relation to Bordwell and Thomson's notion of neoformalism and viewer disorientation, each employ the depiction of physical and psychological violence in their strategies of irritation, each implicate or involve the viewer in unconventionally ‘irritating' ways, each has a particular irritating cinematic style, each generally leave their viewers with a feeling of discomfort by, in part, irritating conventions of closure. Finally, it is our contention that by positioning certain filmmakers in relation to the meta-genre of melodrama and illustrating where they repeatedly break with or ‘irritate' generic conventions, we can identify the opening up of a political space in which the viewer is unconventionally engaged as a social subject.
Language
English
Keywords
Film Studies
Visual Studies
Auteur theory
melodrama
narrative practices
aesthetics
Haneke
von Trier
Lynch
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Book title
Fascinatingly Disturbing: interdisciplinary perspectives on Michael Haneke's Cinema
Publisher
Pickwick Publications
Publisher place
Eugene, Oregon
Start page
196
End page
216
Pages
21
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
57609