1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910136935803321

Autore

Baxstrom Richard

Titolo

Realizing the witch : science, cinema, and the mastery of the invisible / / Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Fordham University Press, , 2016

ISBN

9780823274871

9780823268245

9780823268252

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (285 pages) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s)

Soggetti

History - Cinema

Anthropology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: What Is Häxan? -- Part I. The Realization of the Witch The Witch in the Human Sciences and the Mastery of Nonsense -- 1. Evidence, First Movement: Words and Things -- 2. Evidence, Second Movement: Tableaux and Faces  -- 3. The Viral Character of the Witch -- 4. Demonology -- Part II. A Mobile Force in the Modern Age 1922 -- 5. Sex, Touch, and Materiality -- 6. Possession and Ecstasy -- 7. Hysterias -- Postscript: It Is Very Hard to Believe . . . -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Benjamin Christensen’s Cited Source Material -- Contents -- Contents -- Filmography -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female “hysterics” and the mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical



and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of “documentary” and “fiction.”