In 1846, Allan Poe wrote that ‘the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world’. The conjunction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell,from Wuthering Heights to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein.
Introduction
The use of binary opposition, which is used as a descriptive tool, gives rise to notions of difference, which in turn produces the need to control and/or position ‘things’ perceived as ‘other’. This relationship has had dominance in…society and also within the industrial film system, with cinema being invented at the height of colonialism. This is evident in films such as ‘The Searchers’, through character (gender, race and age) and location (wilderness/civilization). Feminist film and theory emerged as a consequence of the dominant patriarchal order, which governs capitalistic institutions. Both ideologies have been well documented and analyzed.
In their analysis, the Situationist’s argued that capitalism had turned all relationships transactional, and that life had been reduced to a “spectacle”. What they added to Marx’s theories of alienation was that in order to ensure economic growth, capitalism had created “pseudo-needs” to increase consumption. While modern technology has ended ‘natural’ alienation (the struggle) for survival against nature); ‘social alienation’ in the form of a hierarchy of masters and slaves is still evident in contemporary society. Spectators viewing a film at a cinema for example are treated as passive object, not active subjects; the society of the spectacle has further transformed having into merely appearing.
The Ones
