Table Of ContentCivilized violenCe
For Clare, with love
Civilized violence
Subjectivity, Gender and Popular Cinema
david HanSen-Miller
© david Hansen-Miller 2011
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
david Hansen-Miller has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and Patents act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing Company
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Union road 101 Cherry Street
Farnham Burlington
Surrey, GU9 7PT vT 05401-4405
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hansen-Miller, david.
Civilized violence : subjectivity, gender and popular
cinema.
1. violence in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures--Social
aspects.
i. Title
791.4'36552-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hansen-Miller, david.
Civilized violence : subjectivity, gender and popular cinema / by david Hansen-Miller.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography.
ISBN 978-1-4094-1258-8 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1259-5 (ebook)
1. violence in motion pictures. 2. Psychic trauma in motion pictures. i. Title.
Pn1995.9.v5H35 2011
791.43'655--dc22
2011012888
ISBN 9781409412588 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409412595 (ebk)
V
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 From Scaffold to Cinema: Violence as a Force of Subjection and
Subjectivation 7
2 Violence and Clinical Authority in ‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’ and
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 37
3 Violence and the Passage from Responsibility to Desire in The Sheik 65
4 The Death of Popular Sovereignty in Once Upon A Time In The West 97
5 Deliverance and its Uses:
Subjectivity, Violence and Nervous Laughter 131
Conclusion: Gender and Pervasive Violence 161
Bibliography 183
Index 199
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Acknowledgements
The Department of English at Queen Mary College, University of London, and
the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University each provided me with a
remarkable home for interdisciplinary research, and I am grateful to everyone I
worked with in both places. I would particularly like to thank Michèle Barrett,
Morag Shiach and Cora Kaplan. A number of colleagues and friends have helped
me put this project together through practical advice, reading and commenting
on my work, and generally being supportive. My thanks go to Tina Campt, Anne
Cronin, Megan Hiatt, Ranjana Khanna, Nayanika Mookherjee, Robyn Wiegman
and Yoke-Sum Wong. On that same note Kate Nash and Jackie Stacey have to be
singled out for their generosity. Special thanks are also reserved for Mary Evans,
who championed the book when it needed a champion. And then, of course, there
are the people who provided more general but just as essential inspiration and
support for – as well as respite from – the work. My gratitude goes to Carolyn
Rebuffel Flannery, Rosalind Gill, Laura Gowing, Ann Hemmings, Hilary Hinds,
Laleh Khalili, Gretchen Miller, Martin Murray, Mark Paterson, Jane Rowley, Fran
Tonkiss and Amal Treacher. Merl Storr and John Hemmings also belong in this
group, at the same time that I must thank them both for careful proofreading and
Merl for indexing. Ashgate, and my editor Neil Jordan, were a pleasure to work
with. Finally, I would struggle to do justice to the role that Clare Hemmings has
played in the development of this book. Her intellectual engagement, love and
support have made it both possible and pleasurable.
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Introduction
The media violence debate and its concern with the effects of watching violence
unquestionably takes up a significant amount of shelf space in university libraries,
yet there are few substantive studies of why violent representations appeal to
audiences in the first place.1 When reasons are provided as to why violence appeals
to audiences they are often cursory. It seems that unexamined assumptions about
innate aggressive drives and the desire to satisfy primitive impulses are doing
significant, but unacknowledged, explanatory labour. Further, while there are
many collections and monographs providing textual analyses of violent cinema,
there is a general tendency to see violence as symbolic of, or in service to, more
significant forms of social power. Another approach seems to assume that violent
representations deliver, in fantasy, the satisfaction of basic justice or revenge that
is so often denied in real life. In general, the prominence of violent representations
and their obsessive consumption seems uncomplicated.
One of the telling problems with such routine understandings is that they assume
an audience that is generally removed from the experience of actual violence.
Effects research generally starts from the assumption that representation introduces
the idea of violence into an arena where it is otherwise minimal or even absent.
Representation either stimulates the aggressive drives of an innocent subject or
offers them previously unimagined forms of excitement. Meanwhile, some of the
more prominent empirical research concludes that violent representations beget
violence and aggression only within those spaces already marked by real violence.2
Within both approaches we can discern an understanding of the social world in
which violent contexts and non-violent contexts can be readily differentiated.
Within ‘civilized’ societies there is a degree of cultural confidence that
audiences are not significantly touched by, or concerned with, violence. We
can even entertain arguments that the extreme violence found in some forms of
contemporary popular cinema exists for a young audience who are profoundly
removed from the experience of violence – insulated by class or other privilege
from the direct experience of war, street violence, police harassment and the
like. Thus a niche market of spectators can test their masculine endurance at the
movies. The embedded assumption seems to be what the historical-sociologist
Norbert Elias identified as a central myth of civilization: the view that modern
1 Jeffrey Goldstein, ed. Why We Watch: The Attraction of Violent Entertainment
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) is an excellent and broad-ranging exception.
2 Jo Groebel, The UNESCO Study on Global Media Violence (Paris: UNESCO,
1998).
