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[The aestheticization of violence... ]

Started by Textaris(txt*bot), April 28, 2008, 03:32:18 PM

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Textaris(txt*bot)

Quote[...] The aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of violence in what Indiana University film studies professor Margaret Bruder calls a "stylistically excessive", "significant and sustained way." When violence is depicted in this fashion in films, television shows, and other media, Bruder argues that audience members are able to connect references from the "play of images and signs" to artworks, genre conventions, cultural symbols, or concepts.

[...] High culture forms such as fine art and literature have aestheticized violence into a form of autonomous art. In 1991, University of Georgia literature professor Joel Black stated that "(if) any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder." Black goes on to note that "...if murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist — a performance artist or anti-artist whose specialty is not creation but destruction." (1991: 14). This conception of an aesthetic element of murder has a long history; in 1890, Thomas de Quincey wrote that "Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle... and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it - that is, in relation to good taste."

[...] A number of filmmakers from the 20th century have used aestheticized depictions of violence. According to James Fox, filmmaker Donald Cammell "...looked upon violence as an artist might look on paint. [He asked:] What are its components? What's its nature? Its glamour?"[4] Thomas Harris created a fictional character called Hannibal Lecter, a cannibal and aesthete portrayed by Anthony Hopkins on screen. In the films The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001), directors Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott, respectively intentionally generate excitement and anticipation when Lecter is about to kill (and eat) a victim. In David Lynch's somewhat aestheticized Blue Velvet, the villain of the film, Frank Booth, is an excessivley violent man who obsesses over small fethishes (such as blue velvet) when he is attacking his victims.

In Xavier Morales' review of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1, entitled "Beauty and violence", he calls the film "a groundbreaking aestheticization of violence." Morales says that the film, which he calls "easily one of the most violent movies ever made" is "a breathtaking landscape in which art and violence coalesce into one unforgettable aesthetic experience".

Morales argues that "...Tarantino manages to do precisely what Alex de Large was trying to do in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: he presents violence as a form of expressive art...[in which the]...violence is so physically graceful, visually dazzling and meticulously executed that our instinctual, emotional responses undermine any rational objections we may have. Tarantino is able to transform an object of moral outrage into one of aesthetic beauty...[, in which,]...like all art forms, the violence serves a communicative purpose apart from its aesthetic value." When the female sword-wielding protagonist "...skillfully slices and dices her way through...[the opposing fighters]...we get a sense that she is using them as a kind of canvas for her expression of revenge...[,]...like an artist who expresses herself through brush and paint,...[she]...expresses herself through sword and blood."[5]

Film critics analyzing violent film images that seek to aesthetically please the viewer mainly fall into two categories. Critics who see depictions of violence in film as superficial and exploitative argue that it leads audience members to become desensitized to brutality, thus increasing their aggression. On the other hand, critics who view violence as a type of content,or as a theme, claim it is cathartic and provides "acceptable outlets for anti-social impulses."[6] Adrian Martin argues that critics who hold violent cinema in high regard have developed a response to anti-violence advocates, "those who decry everything from Taxi Driver to Terminator 2 as dehumanising, desensitising cultural influences." Martin claims that critics that value aestheticized violence defend gory and shocking depictions onscreen on the grounds that "screen violence is not real violence, and should never be confused with it." He claims that their rebuttal also claims that "movie violence is fun, spectacle, make-believe; it's dramatic metaphor, or a necessary catharsis akin to that provided by Jacobean theatre; it's generic, pure sensation, pure fantasy. It has its own changing history, its codes, its precise aesthetic uses."[7]

Margaret Bruder, a film studies professor at Indiana University and the author of Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style proposes that there is a distinction between aestheticized violence and the use of gore and blood in mass market action or war films. She argues that "aestheticized violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film." Movies such as the popular action film Die Hard 2: Die Harder are very violent, but they do "not fall into the category of aestheticized violence because it is not stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way."

However, films that use what she calls "stylized [e.g. aestheticized] violence "revel in guns, gore and explosions, exploiting mise-en-scene not so much to provide narrative environment as to create the appearance of a 'movie' atmosphere against which specifically cinematic spectacle can unfold." In movies with aestheticized violence, she argues that the "standard realist modes of editing and cinematography are violated in order to spectacularize the action being played out on the screen"; directors use "quick and awkward editing", "canted framings," shock cuts, and slow motion, to emphasize the impacts of bullets or the "spurting of blood."[6]

For viewers of films with aestheticized, such as John Woo's movies, she claims that "One of the many pleasures" from watching Woo's films, such as Hard Target is that it gets viewers to recognize how Woo plays with conventions "from other Woo films" and how it "connects up with films...which include imitations of or homages to Woo." Bruder argues that films with aestheticized violence such as "'Hard Target, True Romance' and 'Tombstone' are [filled] with... signs" and indicators, so that "the stylized violence they contain ultimately serves as... another interruption in the narrative drive" of the film.

[...] The artist Hieronymus Bosch, from the fifteenth and sixteenth century, used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. The sixteenth-century artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted "...the nightmarish imagery that reflect, if in an extreme fashion, popular dread of the Apocalypse and Hell."

[...] French postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that whereas modern societies were "...organized around the production and consumption of commodities", "postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs." As such, in "...the postmodern media and consumer society, everything becomes an image, a sign, a spectacle." For Baudrillard, the West's "commercialization of the whole world...will turn out rather to have been the aestheticization of the whole world — its cosmopolitan spectacularization, its transformation into images, its semiological organization." As a result, the "previously separate domains of the economy, art, politics, and sexuality" become "collapsed into each other", and art penetrates "all spheres of existence." Thus, Baudrillard argues that "
  • ur society has given rise to a general aestheticization: all forms of culture — not excluding anti-cultural ones — are promoted and all models of representation and anti-representation are taken on board."



From: "Aestheticization of violence" (6 April 2008)
Soource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_violence


Textaris(txt*bot)

Quote[...] Professionelle Jugendschützer sind um ihre Arbeit nicht zu beneiden. Das gilt vor allem für den Filmbereich. Wie soll man etwa Laien begreiflich machen, wo eine "einfache Jugendgefährdung" aufhört und eine "schwere Jugendgefährdung" beginnt? Nun beabsichtigt die Bundesregierung, die Grauzone noch zu erweitern. Eine geplante Gesetzesänderung sieht vor, einen neuen Begriff einzuführen: Videospiele oder Filme sollen keine Kennzeichnung bekommen, wenn die Gewaltdarstellungen "das Geschehen beherrschen".

Für die betroffenen Bildmedien wäre dies fatal. Die Verweigerung eines Kennzeichens darf nicht verwechselt werden mit dem Urteil "Keine Jugendfreigabe", das dem früheren "Nicht freigegeben unter 18 Jahren" entspricht. Erhält etwa ein Film hingegen keine Kennzeichnung, darf er auch nicht beworben werden. Das Werk dürfte zwar öffentlich gezeigt werden, aber jeder Hinweis auf die Vorführung wäre strafbar.

Faktisch kommt das Verdikt somit einer Zensur gleich. Aus Sicht der Filmwirtschaft bewegt sich die geplante Verschärfung daher in der Nähe zum Verfassungsverstoß. Denn so lange ein Film nicht gegen das Strafgesetzbuch verstößt, also nicht zu Rassenhass aufruft, NS- oder Kriegs-Propaganda betreibt oder zu Straftaten auffordert, ist er nicht verboten.

"Es kann nicht sein", kritisiert Christiane von Wahlert, Geschäftsführerin der Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolle (FSK) und der Spitzenorganisation der Filmwirtschaft (Spio), "dass ein Film aus Gründen des Jugendschutzes auch Erwachsenen nicht zugänglich ist. Das ist ein Konstruktionsfehler. So etwas gibt es nur in Deutschland."

Man könnte mit einem Achselzucken über die Sache hinweggehen: Die Politik mag bei ihrer Verschärfung des Jugendmedienschutzes übers Ziel hinausschießen, doch die Maßnahme wird vor allem Filme wie "Hostel" oder "Saw" treffen, in denen munter gemetzelt wird - die weitaus überwiegende Mehrheit der Kinofans hat keinerlei Interesse an diesen Splatter-Filmen und wird ihnen keine Träne nachweinen.

Doch es geht ums Prinzip, wie Christiane von Wahlert klarstellt: "Jugendschutz darf nicht zur Geschmackszensur werden." Die FSK-Geschäftsführerin mag solche Filme auch nicht. Sie macht sich trotzdem für sie stark, getreu der Maxime von Rosa Luxemburg, dass Freiheit immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden sei.

Ziel des Entwurfs für eine Neufassung des Jugendschutzgesetzes, der noch vor der Sommerpause verabschiedet werden soll, sind eigentlich die so genannten Killerspiele; dass es auch die Filmwirtschaft treffen wird, ist gewissermaßen ein Kollateralschaden.


Dabei gibt es nach Meinung ausgewiesener Jugendschützer keinerlei Handlungsbedarf, im Gegenteil. Bereits jetzt bekommen "jugendgefährdende Trägermedien" (also Spiele und Filme) keine Freigabekennzeichnung, wenn sie "besonders realistische, grausame und reißerische Darstellungen selbstzweckhafter Gewalt beinhalten". Schon diesen Vorgang findet Christiane von Wahlert fragwürdig, denn streng genommen dürften dann auch künstlerisch anerkannte Werke wie "Funny Games" von Michael Haneke, Francis Ford Coppolas "Apocalypse Now" oder Stanley Kubricks "Uhrwerk Orange" keine Kennzeichnung erhalten.

Die Einführung "eines weiteren unbestimmten Rechtsbegriffs", nämlich den der "Gewaltbeherrschtheit", heißt es in einer Stellungnahme der Spio, "würde lediglich ein zusätzliches auslegungsbedürftiges Kriterium schaffen". Strafnormen, belehrt von Wahlert, müssten aber "bestimmt sein.Ein weiteres interpretationsfähiges Kriterium führt in der Praxis zu erheblicher Rechtsunsicherheit: Wo zieht man die Grenze zwischen Kriegs- und Antikriegsfilm? Und ab wie viel Minuten Gewaltdarstellung ist ein Film überhaupt ,gewaltbeherrscht'?" Den Begriff findet die FSK-Leiterin ohnehin problematisch, denn er stammt aus der Debatte um Killerspiele. Aber "Spiele und Filme kann man nicht in einen Topf werfen".

Joachim von Gottberg, Leiter der Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolle Fernsehen (FSF) in Berlin, hält Jugendschutzverschärfungen aller Art als Präventivmaßnahme gegen Amokläufe ohnehin für Unfug: "Das ist ein untauglicher Versuch am untauglichen Objekt. Für potenzielle Amokläufer ist die Berichterstattung über frühere Taten dieser Art viel relevanter als dargestellte Gewalt."

Nach Ansicht des FSF-Chefs gibt es nur eine wirksame Maßnahme: "Die Aussicht auf schlagartige Beachtung ist ein ganz starkes Motiv für Amokläufer. Also sollte man Amokläufe am besten totschweigen." Auf anderem Gebiet hat sich hat sich die Methode bereits bewährt: In mehreren Großstädten ist die Zahl der U-Bahn-Selbstmorde deutlich zurückgegangen, seit die Medien nicht mehr darüber berichten.




Aus: "Wo Gewalt anfängt" VON TILMANN P. GANGLOFF (23.04.2008)
Quelle: http://www.fr-online.de/in_und_ausland/kultur_und_medien/feuilleton/?em_cnt=1324092


Textaris(txt*bot)

#2
Quote[...] Cinema of Transgression (wörtlich: 'Kino der Überschreitung') ist ein Ausdruck, den Nick Zedd 1985 prägte, um eine in New York City beheimatete Undergroundfilm-Bewegung zu bezeichnen, die aus eine losen Gruppe ähnlich gesinnter Künstler bestand.

[...] Sie verwendeten Schockwirkungen und Humor in ihren Arbeiten. Zu den Hauptbeteiligten zählten Nick Zedd, Kembra Pfahler, John Waters, Casandra Stark, Beth B, Tommy Turner, Richard Kern und Lydia Lunch, die in den späten 1970ern bis Mitte der 1980er begannen, Filme mit sehr geringen Budgets mit billigen Super8-Kameras zu machen.

Zedd erläuterte die Philosophie des Cinema of Transgression in dem Cinema of Transgression Manifesto [1], das pseudonym im Underground Film Bulletin (1984-1990) erschien.

Richard Kern, der vielleicht berühmteste Künstler der Transgression, begann in New York mit den Schauspielern Nick Zedd und Lung Leg Filme zu machen. Einige waren Videos für Künstler wie Butthole Surfers und Sonic Youth.

    ,,We propose that all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again."

    – Nick Zedd: Cinema of Transgression Manifesto

[...]



Aus: "Cinema of Transgression" (28. März 2008)
Quelle: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Transgression



-.-

Quote[...] We who have violated the laws, commands and duties of the avant-garde; i.e. to bore, tranquilize and obfuscate through a fluke process dictated by practical convenience stand guilty as charged. We openly renounce and reject the entrenched academic snobbery which erected a monument to laziness known as structuralism and proceeded to lock out those filmmakers who possessed the vision to see through this charade. We refuse to take their easy approach to cinematic creativity; an approach which ruined the underground of the sixties when the scourge of the film school took over. Legitimizing every mindless manifestation of sloppy movie making undertaken by a generation of misled film students, the dreary media arts centers and geriatic cinema critics have totally ignored the exhilarating accomplishments of those in our rank - such underground invisibles as Zedd, Kern, Turner, Klemann, DeLanda, Eros and Mare, and DirectArt Ltd, a new generation of filmmakers daring to rip out of the stifling straight jackets of film theory in a direct attack on every value system known to man. We propose that all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again. We propose that a sense of humour is an essential element discarded by the doddering academics and further, that any film which doesn't shock isn't worth looking at. All values must be challenged. Nothing is sacred. Everything must be questioned and reassessed in order to free our minds from the faith of tradition. Intellectual growth demands that risks be taken and changes occur in political, sexual and aesthetic alignments no matter who disapproves. We propose to go beyond all limits set or prescribed by taste, morality or any other traditional value system shackling the minds of men. We pass beyond and go over boundaries of millimeters, screens and projectors to a state of expanded cinema. We violate the command and law that we bore audiences to death in rituals of circumlocution and propose to break all the taboos of our age by sinning as much as possible. There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined. None shall emerge unscathed. Since there is no afterlife, the only hell is the hell of praying, obeying laws, and debasing yourself before authority figures, the only heaven is the heaven of sin, being rebellious, having fun, fucking, learning new things and breaking as many rules as you can. This act of courage is known as transgression. We propose transformation through transgression - to convert, transfigure and transmute into a higher plane of existence in order to approach freedom in a world full of unknowing slaves.

[citation needed]

...


From: "Cinema of Transgression - Manifesto" (26 December 2007)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Transgression