Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 00:21:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bryan N. Alexander" <bnalexan-AT-umich.edu>
Subject: violence and representation?


To wit:

On Thu, 10 Oct 1996 dionysus-AT-bway.net wrote, sneering:
(after I said:
> >Which Ferrara, THE ADDICTION? BODY SNATCHERS?
> >        And Cronenberg is the place to go.)
> >

Which responded to Jay's:
> >On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Jay Schwartz wrote:
> >
> >> Abel Ferrera is slicker and far more desensitizing than Tarrantino - try
> >> David Cronenberg or George Romero by way of Steve Shaviro's Deleuzian
> >> treatment of film/violence/pleasure in The Cinematic Body (Univ.
> >> Minnesota Press.)
> >>
> >> Jay Schwartz
> >>

And "Dionysus" opined from the grand heights:

> Croneneberg might be the way to go for those raised on video games, and

...or he might not.  C's films might also be brilliant examples of the
uses of violence as sensitizing/desens.  Toss-off condescension like this
does *wonders* for discussion, I'm sure.

> Tarantino might be the way to go for those raised on indie rock and rap,
> but if you want to understand Bataille and Nietzsche on (non)violence -
> which is where this discussion began - Ferarra is the way to go. From
> Driller Killer to Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, and The Addiction, the
> issue is human drive. Bataille and Lacan couldn't have been more pleased.
> Castration is explored as a solution to impending psychosis in modern life,
> but it never succeeds. Neither does addiction. As to whether these
> characters are saved before they are destroyed is open. As to whether the
> culmination is dionysus or the crucified is similarly indeterminant. But
> these are ethical (in Lacan's sense) explorations. (Tarantino's is a
> batchelor ethic like Baudrillard's).

Could you expland on this?
> 
> In a sense, American Psycho (a similarly crucial - and ethical - book for
> our time) doesn't need to be made into a film, since Ferarra's already done
> it.

As an earlier film, or has he actually made this?

>  No doubt the actual film will miss the whole point.
> 
> 
> 



Bryan Alexander					Department of English
email: bnalexan-AT-umich.edu			University of Michigan
phone: (313) 764-0418				Ann Arbor, MI  USA    48103
fax: (313) 763-3128				http://www.umich.edu/~bnalexan