1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910484080603321

Autore

Bliss Lauren

Titolo

The Maternal Imagination of Film and Film Theory [[electronic resource] /] / by Lauren Bliss

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

3-030-45897-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (187 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

306.8743

Soggetti

Motion pictures

Culture

Gender

Film Theory

Culture and Gender

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Pregnant Illusions and the Natural Body -- Ch1 Conceiving the Cinematic Body -- Ch2 The Witchcraft of Cinema -- Ch3 Pregnant Illusions: Natural Magic and the Imagination -- Ch4 Sound and Vision: The Cinematic Figuration of the Virgin Mary -- Ch5 Conceiving the Cinematic Body -- Ch6 The Pregnancy of the Cinematic Public Sphere.

Sommario/riassunto

This book challenges common sense understandings of the unconscious effects of cinema and visual culture. It explores the castrating power of the early modern witch and the historical belief that pregnant women could manipulate and distort body image as figurative analogies for feminist theories of objectification and the male gaze. Through developing this history as an impure but lively analogy, this book serves as a provocation against the dominant imagining of objectification. It offers innovative analyses of a wide-ranging selection of films and topics including Joyce Wieland’s Water Sark (1964) and its resonance with the works of John Cage and Stan Brakhage; the documentary Histoires d’A (History of Abortion, 1973), which contributed to the successful legalisation of abortion in France; the



Hong Kong horror film Dumplings (Jiaozi, 餃子 2004), where foetal cannibalism serves up an image of censorship; and the dual productions The Book of Mary (Le livre de Marie) and Hail Mary (Je vous salue, Marie, 1985) by Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard that figure a self-reproducing virgin who hears herself while remaining a virgin, unseen.