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Transfigurations
Transfigurations
Violence, Death and Masculinity in American Cinema
Asbjørn Grønstad
Frontcoverillustration:StillfromthemovieAmericanPsycho(),starring
ChristianBale
Coverdesign:KokKorpershoek,Amsterdam
Lay-out:japes,Amsterdam
isbn (paperback)
isbn (hardcover)
nur
©AsbjørnGrønstad/AmsterdamUniversityPress,
Allrightsreserved.Withoutlimitingtherightsundercopyrightreservedabove,
nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoaretrieval
system,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans(electronic,mechanical,
photocopying,recordingorotherwise)withoutthewrittenpermissionofboth
thecopyrightownerandtheauthorofthebook.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prolegomenon
Introduction: FilmViolence asFigurality
I Screen Violence: Five Fallacies
Empiricism
Aristotelianism
Aestheticism
Mythologicism
Mimeticism
II Filming Death
1 The TransfiguredImage
2 Narrating Violence,or, AllegoriesofDying
III Male Subjectivities at the Margins
3 Mean Streets:Death and Disfiguration in Hawks’sScarface
4 Kubrick’sThe Killing andthe Emplotment ofDeath
5 BloodofaPoet:Peckinpah’sThe WildBunch
6 AsILay Dying: Violence and Subjectivity inTarantino’s
ReservoirDogs
7 One-DimensionalMen:Fincher’sFight Club and the Endof
Masculinity
Postscript
6 Transfigurations
Notes
Bibliography
Index ofNames
Index ofFilmTitles
Index ofSubjects
Acknowledgments
Academicworkrarelytakesplaceinavoid,andoverthecourseoftheresearch-
ing and writing of this text I have incurred many debts to a number of institu-
tions and individuals. The Faculty of Arts, University of Bergen, made this re-
search possible by providing me first with a two-month research grant (-
) to write a thesis proposal, and then with a four-year stipend (-)
towritethedissertationthatbecamethebasisofthisbook.Ialsowishtothank
the Fulbright Foundation for a grant that enabled me to spend the -
academicyearattheUniversityofWisconsin-Madison’sexcellentresearchfacil-
ities; the Norway-America Association and the Norwegian Research Council,
whose grants facilitated subsequent visits to Madison; the L. Meltzers
Høyskolefondfornumerousgrantswhichallowedmetopresentmaterialfrom
the dissertation at various international conferences; the Department of Com-
munication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for assisting me in every
wayduringmymanysojournsthere;andlastbutnotleast,theEnglishDepart-
ment,foralwaysbeingsocooperativeandaccommodating.Thanksarealsodue
to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research; UW-M’s Memorial
Library; and,aboveall, theUniversity Libraryin Bergen, whose staff members
havebeenimmenselyperseverantinputtingupwithmyseeminglynever-end-
ing loan requests. A second thank you to the Norwegian Research Council for
generouslyprovidingmewithapublicationgrantforthisproject.
Several friends and colleagues have at various stages contributed valuable
commentary to parts of the manuscript. My warmest thanks go to Ruben Moi,
ØyvindVågnes,ØyunnHestetun,OrmØverland,CharlesArmstrong,LeneJo-
hannesen, AnneHolden Rønning, Andrew Kennedy, RandiKoppen, Janne Sti-
gen Drangsholt, and Michael Prince for their input. For their helpful sugges-
tions I am also grateful to the many scholars I have met at conferences in
EuropeandintheUnitedStates,particularlytheparticipantsattheconferences
“NordicFilmTheoryattheTurnoftheMillenium”inCopenhageninDecember
and the “East-West American Studies Conference” held at the Johann
WolfgangGoethe-UniversitätinFrankfurtinMay.
My work has also benefited from conversations with David Bordwell, Per
Persson, Panayiota Mini, Eija Niskanen, Erik Hedling, Torben Grodal, and
AdrianaNeagu.IalsoowespecialthankstoNickBrowneandAnneJerslevfor
their careful reading of the manuscript and for articulating their criticism so
elegantly and constructively during my doctoral defense in December . I
8 Transfigurations
am also grateful to my co-advisor Peter Larsen for his productiveobservations
andincisiveinsights.
Since I joined the Department of Information Science and Media Studies in
,Ihavemuchenjoyeditsconvivialenvironmentandthemanystimulating
discussionswithmyfriendsandcolleaguesthere.
I would also like to thank Thomas Elsaesser for his judicious reading of the
manuscript and for suggesting alterations to it that proved to be composition-
ally significant. I am greatly indebted to my editor at Amsterdam University
Press and to its staff – Jaap Wagenaar, Jeroen Sondervan, Marieke Soons, An-
niek Meinders, Randy Lemaire, and Magdalena Hernas – for their excellent
workandefficiency.KristianJensenalsodeservesthanksformakingtheindices
forme.
A very special thank you goes to Željka Švrljuga, mentor, colleague and
friend,forherunflinchingencouragement,boundlesspatience,andinestimable
guidance.
Finally,my deepest thanks go to my friends and family, my parents Liv-Tor-
unn og John Grønstad for their constant support and encouragement, and my
dearStephanieandSunniva,formakingthedaysradiant.
Some segments of this book have been previously published in abridged or
slightly different versions. Chapter has been published as “Mean Streets:
Death and Disfiguration in Hawks’s Scarface,” in Nordic Journal of English Stu-
dies, . (). Chapter has appeared as “As I Lay Dying: Violence and Sub-
jectivity in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs,” in Karen Patrick Knutsen, Elin Nesje,
andEvaLambertssonBjørk,eds.ModiOperandi.HøgskoleniØstfold,,and
aversionofchapterhasbeenpublishedas“One-DimensionalMen:FightClub
and the Poetics of the Body,” in Film Criticism . (). I thank the anon-
ymous referees for helpful suggestions and the editors for the permission to
reusethematerial.
Prolegomenon
Pleasenote:
Thisexhibitioncontainsextremelygraphicandviolentimages,whichmayoffend
someviewers
PosteroutsidethePorterButtsGallery,MemorialUnion
OnedayduringoneofmyfieldtripstotheUniversityofWisconsin-Madison,I
went to the Memorial Union’s Porter Butts Gallery to see an exhibition called
“Representations of Violence: Art of the Sierra Leonean Civil War.” Consisting
overwhelminglyofatrociousimages,theworksondisplay–nearlyallofwhich
were by young Sierra Leonean artists – transmitted a Boschian sense of horror
whose lingering impression did not cease to repulse the spectator. Moses Sil-
ma’s “Kamajors Attack on Koribondo” () and “The Bo-Freetown Highway
Ambush” (), and Ayo Peters’s “January , Invasion” () rendered
in a fashion suggestive of comic-book graphics the mutilation and torture of
civilianLeoneanmen,women,andchildrenbytheRevolutionaryUnitedFront
(RUF). At that stage of my book project I had already interrogated and aban-
doned, examined and rejected a number of theories on the topic of both actual
andartisticformsofviolence,thoughmysoleemphasisthroughouthasbeenon
thelatter.So,coulditbethatthecaveatatthegallery’sentrance,quotedepigra-
phically at the top of this page, was also intended for someone who in a mo-
mentthatinretrospectseemsoddlyfoolhardyhaddecidedtoresearchasubject
as elusive and recalcitrant as screen violence? Was I among the viewers of-
fended by this exhibition’s images? The pictures appalled me more than any-
thing I can recall having seen, except for perhaps the first twenty minutes of
GasparNoé’sIrréversible().
ButforalltheunpleasantnessofmygallerytourIfoundtheencounterstran-
gely rewarding, not necessarily in and of itself, but because of its experiential
adjacencytotheviewingofanotherworkofartthathadcapturedmyattention
onlydaysbefore.ThiswasCarlosSaura’smetafictionalmusicalTango(),a
sumptuous yet minimalist homage to the gracefulness of the Argentinean
dance. I was particularly drawn to a sequence near the end, where the film-
maker within the film stages a theatrical, expressionistic ballet that references
the misdeeds of Jorge Rafael Videla’sdictatorship in acoloramicchoreography
whosepreternaturalmovementsseemedtotruncatethespacebetweenviolence
and art. I was reminded of the popular belief that the sequences of steps that
Description:4 Kubrick's The Killing and the Emplotment of Death.. 5 Blood of ematic representation at the point of the formulation of the Aristotelian notion.
