Sleaze Mania Eurotrash and High Art the Place of European Art Films in American Low Culture
Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art (1999) - Joan Hawkins
Parents: sleaze - Euro trash - art horror - picture show
Related: paracinema - Joan Hawkins - 1999
On the place of European fine art films in American depression civilization. [Aug 2006]
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The War Game (1965) - Peter Watkins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [Great britain]
"A terrifying, made documentary records the horrors of a future atomic war in the well-nigh painstaking, sickening detail. Photographed in London, it shows the flash bums and firestorms, the impossibility of defence force, the destruction of all life. Produced by the BBC, the moving-picture show was promptly banned and became earth-famous and rarely seen." --Amos Vogel, 1974
Description
Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and Loftier Art is a 1999 essay past Joan Hawkins which appeared in Film Quarterly of Winter 1999. In the essay she examines American mail social club horror film catalogues and is surprised to find art films in them. She cites as examples Peter Watkins's The War Game (1965), Godard's Weekend (1968) and Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with I'southward Own Eyes (1972).Hawkins concludes that in American cult flick mail order catalogues, high mingles with low and that European fine art and avant-garde/experimental films and popular culture see in nobrow land. While this may be very well the case, there is still the question of authorial intentionality.
Art filmmakers make films with the intention of making fine art, they seek creative merit, while exploitation filmmakers make films to brand coin. [Aug 2006]
Horror fanzines
Open up the pages of any U.Due south. horror fanzine--Outre, Fangoria, Cinefantastique--and yous will find listings for mail order video companies which cater to afficionados of what Jeffrey Sconce has called "paracinema" and trash aesthetics. Non merely do these mail society companies correspond 1 of the fastest-growing segments of the video market place, their catalogues challenge many of our continuing assumptions near the binary opposition of prestige cinema (European art and avant-garde/experimental films) and pop culture. Certainly, they highlight an aspect of art cinema which is by and large overlooked or repressed in cultural analysis, namely, the degree to which high culture trades on the aforementioned images, tropes, and themes which characterize low culture. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Pic Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins [Mar 2005]
High mingles with low
In the world of horror and cult picture fanzines and mail gild catalogues, what Carol J. Clover calls "the high stop" of the horror genre mingles indiscriminately with the "depression cease." Here, Murnau's Nosferatu (1921) and Dreyer's Vampyr (1931) appear alongside such bulldoze-in favorites every bit Tower of Screaming Virgins (1971) and Jail Bait (1955). Even more than interesting, European art films which accept footling to do with horror--Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), for example--are listed alongside movies which Video Vamp labels "Eurocinetrash." European art films are not easily located through separate catalogue subheadings or listings. Many catalogues simply list film titles alphabetically, making no attempt to differentiate among genres or subgenres, high or depression art. In Luminous Film and Video Wurks Catalogue 2.0, for example, Jean-Luc Godard'southward edgy Weekend (1968) is sandwiched betwixt The Washing Machine (1993) and The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975). Sinister Movie theater's 1996-97 catalogue, which organizes titles chronologically, lists Godard'south Alphaville (1965) betwixt Lightning Bolt (1965) and Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966). --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art, Picture show Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins [Mar 2005]
The State of war Game (1965) and The Human activity of Seeing with 1's Own Optics (1972)
While Williams' assessment of the way body genres work--specially the way they work in "specifically gendered means" (144)--is first-class, the distinction between loftier and low, properly distanced and improperly involved audience response is non as smashing as Williams suggests. Consider, for instance, Amos Vogel's description of The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965), a British art picture which is frequently listed in paracinema catalogues. "A terrifying, fabricated documentary records the horrors of a future diminutive state of war in the most painstaking, sickening item. Photographed in London, it shows the wink bums and firestorms, the impossibility of defence [sic], the destruction of all life. Produced past the BBC, the pic was promptly banned and became earth-famous and rarely seen." Similarly, Stan Brakhage'south The Deed of Seeing with I'southward Own Eyes (1972), which is difficult to find exterior experimental and avant-garde motion picture venues, encourages an uncomfortably visceral reaction in the spectator. The chronicle of a real autopsy, the film is, Amos Vogel writes, "an appalling, haunting work of great purity and truth. It dispassionately records whatever transpires in front of the lens: bodies sliced length-wise, organs removed, skulls and scalp cut open with electric tools" (267). While such descriptive terms equally "haunting piece of work of not bad purity and truth" are seldom found in paracinema catalogues, The War Game and The Act of Seeing with One'southward Own Eyes practice address the spectator in ways that paracinema fans would appreciate. Conspicuously designed to intermission the audience's artful distance, the films encourage the kind of excessive physical response which nosotros would generally attribute to horror. Furthermore, their excessive visual forcefulness and what paracinema catalogues similar to term "powerful bailiwick matter" marker them as subversive. Banned, marginalized through being screened exclusively in museums and classrooms, these are films which well-nigh mainstream picture patrons never meet. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Fine art, Movie Quarterly, Wintertime, 1999 by Joan Hawkins [Mar 2005]
Marquis de Sade
Consider the works of the Marquis de Sade, whose books are sold in mainstream bookstores and adult bookstores, and housed in academy libraries. De Sade'southward works, which the intellectual elite views equally masterful analyses of the mechanisms of power and economics, are also--at least if we are to take their presence in adult bookstores and magazines seriously--notwithstanding regarded as sexually arousing, equally masturbatory aids. Furthermore, every bit Jane Gallop's powerful admission that she masturbated while reading de Sade demonstrates, i set of cultural uses--one kind of audience pleasure--doesn't necessarily preclude the other.(15) It is possible for someone to be simultaneously intellectually challenged and physically titillated; and it is possible for someone to simultaneously enjoy both the intellectual and the physical stimulation. --Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and Loftier Art, Film Quarterly, Winter, 1999 by Joan Hawkins http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1070/is_2_53/ai_59210751/pg_1 [Mar 2005]
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