Session 6: Visual Engagements
Session 6: Visual Engagements
Chair: David Weir
Post 9/11 and Screen Violence
Gabrielle Murray
Cinema Studies Program, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
There is enormous unease in western society about the affects on audiences of being exposed to screen violence. An overriding perception exists in the critical discourse that an upsurge in “film violence” in popular western cinema occurred in relation to the social upheaval of “the Sixties” (Alloway 1971; Slocum 2001 & 2004; Schneider 2004; Prince 1998 & 2000). Similarly, current public and critical perception is that there is a strong link—a contagion—between violence in society since 9/11 and the escalation of images of explicit violence on the screen.
David Edelstein, the New York Magazine film critic, commenting on the surge in extreme, prolonged graphic torture, abduction, rape and dismemberment in films such as The Devil’s Rejects, Saw, Wolf Creek and Hostel, dubbed the phenomenon “torture porn” (2006). The current box-office success of films like the Saw and Hostel series stunned many critics; most seemed bewildered by young audiences’ thirst for such graphic fare. Edelstein’s uneasy review suggests that the media release of documentary images of US and UK military personal torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib helped feed the escalation of uninhibited images of torture, degradation and mutilation in fiction film. This claim is echoed in most reviews and commentaries on the phenomenon (Barber 2007; Douthat 2006; Rimanelli and Liden 2006; Newman 2006). Furthermore, the critical literature argues increasingly graphic scenes are appearing in a broader range of mainstream and art-house releases.
However, while much of the critical literature agrees that public attitudes toward violent imagery are generally historically determined, most discussion of the nature of the linkages between social and cinematic violence remain circumstantial and speculative (Slocum 2004). This project poses questions regarding the public and critical perception post 9/11 that there is a direct link between increased visual knowledge of violence and torture in the “real” world acquired from images on television and the internet, with an escalation of representations of explicit violence in the commercial and cultural medium of western cinema.
Representations of Violence and Intimidation against Women in the Arts: XVI to XX Centuries
Elena Alfaya Lamas and Dolores Villaverde
Universidad de A Coruña, Spain and Universidad de A Coruña, Spain
We will go through different Arts styles and observe when the artist was either an accomplice or an informer of women´s ill-treatment and abuse, of the way in which a rape topic was undertaken, of prostitution, of sexual harassment or the image of the so-called femme fatal. We have then selected some paintings and sculptures focusing either on sacred topics or on secular ones, from 1500 to1900.
The Bible has been an important source and a basis to represent violence against women. We will study Susana and the old Artemisa Gentileschi, an example of a woman being sexually harassed when she is having a bath. Also, we have an example of the femme fatal in Moreau´s Salome, similar to the seductive Dalila who makes Sanson lose all his strength. We will then analyse baroque Rubens painting.
Martyr women saints are cruelly and vile tortured and assasinated. We will go through Saint Catalina de Lucas Cranach and Saint Agueda de Sabastiano del Piombo Martyrdoms, both from the XVIth century.
In classic mythology, women also suffered such is the case of Apolo and Dafne (Bernini, XVIIth century) in which the nymph prefers to turn into a tree to render herself to Apolo or Leda, who is seduced by the false swam…
There is another topic that cannot be left aside: women prostitution. Renacentist Tiziano does not paint a Godess but a prostitute in his Danae. The same happens to Manet´s Olimpia in the XIXth century.
Gauguin, relates a rape in his Lose of virginity… the Rape of the Sabines by Poussin deals with violence and sexual harassment and the same happens with Bernini´s Kidnapping of Proserpin. We can analyze the death of a woman caused by a man in the Death of Sardanapalo, in which concubines are brutally assassinated in the story of Nastagio degli Onesti de Boticcelli…
The voyeurs topic is present in Cezanne Three Bathers who are being kept watch on when they are about to have a bath or Fragonard´s Swing , somehow hiding harassment from a young man who is watching on the young woman´s under skirt.
Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood: Breaking Down The Siege
Kenza Oumlil
Concordia University, Canada
The focus of this paper is to examine the construction of Arab and Muslim identity in the film The Siege (1998) and to investigate Arab and Muslim representations, and particularly representations of violence, in a media text that was widely circulated prior to September 11, 2001. This study will conduct a textual analysis of the movie The Siege. Although this paper will not examine visual messages sent through images, it will have the strength of examining the full script to evaluate the construction of Arab and Muslim identity. This research topic is important because representations of Arabs and Muslims in The Siege contribute to creating their public identity. The media play a major role in disseminating information and what is presented has real consequences (e.g., it constructs the identities of ‘Others’). Studying previous representations sheds light onto current ones by providing the history of how certain identities have been constructed in the mainstream media. A high-profile action thriller set in the present, The Siege stars Denzel Washington, an FBI special agent whose anti-terrorist task force needs to bring to justice Arab terrorists responsible for bombings in New York City. I chose to focus on this film because although it was a huge hit at the box office, it also created considerable controversy and anger. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and other Arab and Muslim organizations conducted press conferences, contesting the film’s stereotypes and negative portrayals of their communities.
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