Roman Polanski's Repulsion
Analysis of an aspect of visual form in the film ‘Repulsion’ In the 1964/65 film ‘Repulsion’ by Roman Polanski, the story is about the conflict between reality and fantasy or sanity and insanity inside the main character’s mind – Carol played by Catherine Deneuve. Therefore the narrative technique of symbolism is used to display visually to the film’s audience what happens to Carol’s mind. In this particular instance, the degeneration of Carol’s state of mind is symbolised.
Carol’s state of mind degenerates, or breaks down because of her repulsion of masculinity in a sexual context. Through Carol’s eyes, we see masculinity as being aggressive, obsessive, crude/sexually suggestive, rapacious and
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Obviously the camera then pans to see this – but it can hold onto the shot for longer than Carol looks at it, giving the audience a chance to understand why Carol might look at it. As her state of mind being like it is, what it symbolises only needs a casual look or glance at it from Carol. As a symbol itself, the empty ‘hut’ represents a pathway or tunnel to a ‘dark’ kind of life – one filled with despair, depression, anxiety, anger, fear, hate, and/or any other types of negative human qualities. Near the end of the film, this ‘dark’ image is shown again, just after Carol kills the landlord with the cut-throat razor. Her face is kept in shadow – an oval of near black – and is framed by her hair, which enhances this image further because it is blond.
As I have implied before, Carol’s understanding of life around her is distorted. She frequently sees cracks appearing in walls – which can be read as cracks in her mind. In one instance, Carol sees a crack in the pavement on her way to work. She becomes engrossed by it, and sits down on a bench by it to simply look at it. The shot of the crack taken over her right shoulder shows that the crack runs between her feet. It then splits into two cracks, making the entire crack look like a ‘Y’. This suggests that it is used as a symbol to show two paths in life to take: the first being the good, realistic or sane path; the other being the bad, fantastic or insane path. Her boyfriend then finds her claiming
This symbol is first introduced in the novel where the man and his son are resting in a parked car with whatever they can find to give them warmth. After they settle in, the
Relations between sympathy-empathy expressiveness and fiction have become a significant issue in the debate on the emotional responses to the film fiction. Due to their complexity many scholars found it useful to diagram them. With his essay, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction”, Alex Neill tries to develop new theory for analyzing the fiction and, especially, the emotional responses from the audience on it. The project of this essay is represented with an aim to show the audience the significant value of the emotional responses to the film fiction. From my point of view in the thesis of his project he asks a simple question: “Why does the (film) fiction evoke any emotions in the audience?”, further building the project in a very plain and clever
What can be said of the menacing literary masterpiece that is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that the gender issues Joyce so surreptitiously weaves into Stephan Dedalus’s character create sizable obstacles for the reader to overcome. Joyce expertly composes a feminine backdrop in which he can mold Stephan to inexplicably become innately homosexual. As Laurie Teal points out “… Joyce plays with gender inversion as a uniquely powerful tool of characterization.”(63) Stephan’s constant conflict with himself and what he wants generate a need for validation that he tries to simulate through day dreams and fantasies but is ultimately unable to resolve. Through exploring the tones of characterization and the character development of
The Silence of the lambs (1991) is in doubt a film which demonstrates a well-constructed horror film. The film, ranging with scenes, shots, and frames that were well constructed to be identified as horrific. The films cinematography shifts the films narrative and impacts the film, especially the film’s frames. It seems reasonable to suppose that from the film’s frames and of those of the characters expressions, they shape the film’s genre to be horrifying, psychological, and thrilling and they guide viewers towards where the film’s narrative will lead to. Therefore, even a single or series of frames in the film such as Hannibal Lecter’s evil smile, Buffalo Bill opening the door, Hannibal Lecter standing in his cell, and the dialogue between Agent Starling and Hannibal Lecter, act collectively to represent and symbolize claims about the film.
In the introduction to his book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek acquaints readers with his book’s tripartite aim. He plans, among other things, to illustrate concepts fundamental to Lacanian psychoanalysis – an intention which will serve to further his more ambitious goal “to reactualize Hegelian dialectics by giving it a new reading” in the light of Lacanian psychoanalysis – and “to contribute to the theory of ideology via a new reading of some well-known classical motifs” (7). In this broad category of classical motifs associated with the theory of ideology, I have isolated both fetishism and the commodity-form and intend to briefly illustrate some of these concepts against
breakdown of how society views what it is meant to be masculine and feminine. He bases them upon
Since it’s infancy at the beginning of the eighteenth century, horror has followed certain conventions that results in an awakening of the senses, evoking intense emotions of fear and terror in the audience. Horror feeds off triggering the primal fears embedded within all of humankind, creating a sense of menace that is the very substance of this genre. Furthermore, the central menace of a piece tends to enlighten the human mind to the world of the paranormal and the enigmatic, dark side of the unknown. The movie “Psycho” directed by Alfred Hitchcock is a perfect example. Infamous for its shower scene, but immortal for its contribution to the horror genre, “Psycho” was filmed with great tact, grace and art in regards to horror conventions.
In this novel, one could say that the main character, Carrie, is ‘not like other girls’— she’s overweight, with greasy hair and uncontrolled acne. In fact, the novel notes that her excess weight resulted in part from the bullying when her description states that “she felt so miserable…the only way to fill that…hole was to eat” (King 39). She doesn’t have many friends and is the complete opposite of a ‘Cosmo Girl’. In the words of the school coach, “She [had always been] the group scapegoat” (King 21). From her description in the novel, a reader can see that in terms of gender and gender roles, she was not very “feminine”. In 1981, the Journal of Sex Research came out with a study that categorized the results of certain combinations of “low-feminine” preferences in a household could affect it. In the case of Carrie’s household, according to the study, one could characterize Carrie’s bible-thumping mother as having “low-feminine identification”, as she often took the masculine role of disciplining her child. Carrie also had “low-feminine identification”, seen by her carelessness of her appearance. The study falls parallel to the argument that women propelled their own anguish as it says that “A frustrating and rejecting mother, one who keeps her distance between herself and her daughter, may cause such weak
The lack of matriarchal influence in Esch’s life drives her to seek acceptance and support from her male counterparts. Esch was raised in a household full of men and, as a result, is surrounded by the male insight of all perspectives of life. She grows up in an atmosphere where women are in the minority, both socially and quantitatively. Her only connections to femininity and womanhood are through sexuality. The boys in her life are all attracted to the sexual release she can provide them with because she is easily-accessible and dependent on the attention she gets in return. According to the article The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, “Women may either imagine and represent themselves as men imagine and represent them (in which
When the two station attendants try to exploit the men, McMurphy helps them gain the upper hand by posing as criminally insane (Fick). Even though the patients “become men”, adult sexuality is conspicuously absent from the novel. It is mainly the men’s cause to “remain boys on their own terms” (Fick par. 8). McMurphy’s women are boys’ companions. Candy and Sandy are good bad girls. “McMurphy’s sexuality complements a personal consistency that obliterates the distinction between past and present. Returning from the fishing trip, for example, he stops by his childhood house and tells the men of his own sexual initiation” (Fick par. 9).
Carol Emshwiller didn’t start her writing until she was thirty, a mother, and married. Emshwiller, “was just learning the lessons of feminism on the front lines of domestic lines” (539). In Carol Emshwiller’s short story during the 1980’s “Abominable”, Emshwiller shows how men, in their sexual confusion, ethnic inexperience, and self-disasters, are not capable of understanding women and their needs, anger, and bitterness. The unnamed and self-styled man in the story shows his stereotypical, phallocentric attitudes to understand women becomes more humorous, rather than angry. From transforming the battle of sexes into the man’s search for an misleading species akin to
Considering is analyzing. The symbols were the specification of the season. It was winter and below freezing. This symbolizes her life cycle being about over. The church was cold and freezing inside (a sign of death). Another symbol of her death was the storyline that said “as if she were an old collie turned out to die”. (Clugston, 2010) The old woman also had the color of poor gray Georgia earth. Her description of her dress she wore being black and the description of her face being dazed and sleepy, and shut now like an ancient door symbolizes her death.
By exploring the theory of the “abject”, horror and the role of gender instability within film with regards to The Silence of the Lambs, this essay will attempt to explain the characteristics of the aestheticisation of abjection.
The opening scene of the film utilises multiple aspects in order to display the hopeless that looms over the dystopian world that the audience is presented with. The film uses a mix of both visual imagery to show this along with verbal features in order to convey this to the audience.
Visual interpretation involves learning how to approach the critical analysis of visual messages in cinema, television and all things visual. A more comprehensive approach would examine how different audiences make meaning of them. In this essay I will be carrying out independent research in the self-defined topic area of “The visual and theoretical significance of the mouth in Film” I will be analysing this concept with Freud’s theory of sexuality with a heavy focus on the oral stage while also forming a self-generated point of view on this subject. I think the mouth and its capacity for both conscious and unconscious meaning plays a huge part in the characterization and semiotics of certain