‘Daddy’s dead. Noooo!’: Quentin Tarantino and Psychoanalysis Beyond the Paternal principle

 Image from Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you links to audio recordings from a symposium on Quentin Tarantino and psychoanalysis "beyond the paternal principle", hosted by The London Graduate School and the London Society for the New Lacanian School. It took place on 4th April, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London. The symposium engagingly described itself thus:

‘Daddy’s dead. Noooo!’ (Tarantino, from Dusk Till Dawn)

Tarantino’s movies frequently turn on the abjection of a paternal figure (Marcellus Wallace, Jacob Fuller, Bill, Stuntman Mike), who loses his place and authority to become a redundant figure of consumption and expenditure. Tarantino’s movies themselves, in their restless play of reflexive images and references, are always seeking to produce the maximum in cinematic affect irrespective of the aesthetic unities of generic form, symbolic consistency, realism. This symposium explores the suggestion that Tarantino’s movies best symptomatise a tendency in Hollywood generally where cinema is no longer a vehicle of (anti)Oedipal desire, but a febrile, speculative generator of thrills, pleasures and anxieties swarming along an accelerating death drive which is itself death proof. In Tarantino’s film of the same name, for example, the impotence of itinerant ex-stuntman Mike is the condition of a romance between two iconic automobiles, vehicles not of male potency but an altogether Other jouissance.

• INTRODUCTION: Véronique Voruz (the London Society of the New Lacanian School)[AUDIO HERE] Right click to save

• TARANTINO’s GIRLS: Gérard Wajcman (writer, psychoanalyst, curator and art critic. He teaches at the Department of Psychoanalysis of Paris 8 University and is a member of the École de la Cause Freudienne and the World Association of Psychoanalysis) read by Scott Wilson [AUDIO HERE]

• POST-PHALLIC LIBIDINAL ECONOMIES: Hager Weslati (London Graduate School, Kingston University) [AUDIO HERE]

• SCREEN, DRIVE, ROMANCE: Fred Botting (London Graduate School, Kingston University, co- author of the Tarantinian Ethics (Sage, 2001)) [AUDIO HERE]

• PSYCHE, THAT INGLOURIOUS BASTERD: Scott Wilson (London Graduate School, Kingston University, co- author of the Tarantinian Ethics (Sage, 2001)) [AUDIO HERE]

• TOUGH LOVE: Marie-Hélène Brousse (practising psychoanalyst in Paris, a member of the École de la Cause freudienne and of the World Association of Psychoanalysis) [AUDIO HERE]

Split Screen Studies

The above is a FILMANALYTICAL, REQUIEM // 102 and FILM STUDIES FOR FREE video essay by Catherine Grant. It explores the use of split screens in some early sequences in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Darren Aronofsky, 2000).

    The essay was made according to principles of Fair Use (or Fair Dealing), primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in November 2010.

Today, Film Studies For Free presents an entry of links to online studies of the cinematic split screen. Rather excitingly (for this blog, at least), the resources include the above video essay on this very topic ... by FSFF's author. 

The essay is a contribution to the Requiem for a Dream // 102 Project, conceived by its inventor Nick Rombes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit, Mercy, as a form of "collective, distributed film criticism". Requiem // 102 is modelled loosely on Rombes' ongoing 10/40/70 project, in which he “reads” three screen captures from a given film taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks.

In this case, Nick has invited 102 contributors from across the film criticism spectrum to look at, or otherwise be inspired by, one frame from each minute of Darren Aronofsky’s 102 minute-long film Requiem for a Dream (2000), a movie that unsettled many audience members when it was first released in cinemas ten years ago.

To learn more about Requiem // 102, check out the 102 Project’s “About” page and/or follow it on Twitter. Chuck Tryon's great first post on the film is here. For an accompanying written text for the above video essay on the frame capture from 02:09 of Requiem for a Dream, visit FSFF's little sister site, Filmanalytical.

• Jim Bizzocchi, 'The Fragmented Frame: The Poetics of the Split-Screen', [Draft] MIT 6, 2009
• Jim Bizzocchi, 'Ambient Video: The Transformation of the Domestic Cinematic Experience', [Draft] in Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools, eds. Byron Hawk, David Rieder, and Ollie Oviedo. University of Minnesota Press, February 2008
• Dave Boothroyd, 'Cinematic heroin and narcotic modernity', Symbolism: Journal of Critical Aesthetics Vol.VII , 2007
• Nadia Bozak, 'Four Cameras are Better than One: Division as Excess in Mike Figgis’ Timecode', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Cormac Deane, 'The Embedded Screen and the State of Exception: Counterterrorist Narratives and the “War on Terror”', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Sergio Dias-Branco, 'The Mosaic-Screen: Exploration and Definition', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008 
• Tessa Dwyer and Mehmet Mehmet, 'Double Trouble: Editorial', Refractory, Vol. 14, 2008 
• Paul Eisenstein, 'Devouring Holes: Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and the Tectonics of Psychoanalysis',  International Journal of Žižek Studies, 1.3, Autumn 2007
• Ian Garwood, 'Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Catherine Grant, 'Establishing Split [video essay and text on Requiem for a Dream]', Filmanalytical, November 2, 2010
• David Grevin, 'Medusa in the Mirror: The Split World of Brian De Palma’s Carrie', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Andrew Grossman, 'Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 62, 2008
• Malte Hagener, 'The Aesthetics of Displays: How the Split Screen Remediates Other Media', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Ingrid Hoofd, 'The Threat of Modernity; Comments on Theories on the Impact of Modernity', Klari.net, March 5, 1998 
• Kirsten Johnson and Jim Bizzocchi, 'Lost Cause: An Interactive Film Project', International Digital Media and Arts Association Beyond Boundaries, October 30, 2007
• Adrian Jones, 'Meaning and the Interactive Narrative: In the context of Object-Oriented Interactive Cinema', Readings in Non-Linear Narrative (date unknown)
• Craig B. Knowles, 'The Temporal Image Mosaic and its Artistic Applications in Filmmaking', MSc Thesis, Queen's University, Ontario, December 2003
• Bruno Lessard, 'Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008 
• Tim Snelson, '“What Am I… Beloved or Bewitched?” Split Screens, Gender Confusion, and Psychiatric Solutions in The Dark Mirror', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Lorenza Mondada, 'Video Recording Practices and the Reflexive Constitution of the Interactional Order: Some Systematic Uses of the Split-Screen Technique', [Uncorrected proof], Human Studies, 32, 1, 67-99 
• Kim Louise Walden, 'Double Take: Rotoscoping and the Processing of Performance', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Maria Walsh, 'The Double Side of Delay: Sutapa Biswas’ film installation Birdsong and Gilles Deleuze’s Actual/Virtual Couplet', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Birk Weilberg, 'Beyond Interactive Cinema', Keyframe, August 2002 

Mapping the Lost Highway: New Perspectives on David Lynch (TATE Modern Event)

Image from Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

Film Studies For Free has taken the trouble to gather together in one (hopefully) very easily navigable setting the twelve videos (embedded below) that recorded for posterity a really excellent symposium that took place last year on October 30 2009 at London's Tate Modern. The symposium provided a space in which artists and film theorists insightfully discussed the work of filmmaker David Lynch in a range of theoretical and artistic contexts, including psychoanalysis, philosophy, prosthetics and photography.

One of cinema’s most compelling and innovative directors, David Lynch remains a major influence on contemporary art, film and culture. In this landmark event, Tate Modern [brought] together leading artists, academics and writers from around the world to offer a series of new perspectives on Lynch’s films.

[...] Speakers [included] the visual artists Gregory Crewdson, Daria Martin, and Jane and Louise Wilson, and there [were also] contributions from the writers and academics Parveen Adams, Sarah Churchwell, Simon Critchley, Roger Luckhurst, Tom McCarthy, and Jamieson Webster. A specially commissioned video interview with Lynch himself [was] screened, and an accompanying film programme [took] place at Tate Modern and the Birkbeck Cinema. 

PART 1: Marko Daniel: Welcome; Richard Martin: Introduction

PART 2: The Body: Roger Luckhurst

PART 3: The Body: Tom McCarthy

PART 4: The Body: Q+A (chaired by Marko Daniel)

PART 5: The Eye 1: Gregory Crewdson

PART 6: The Eye 1: Q+A (chaired by Sarah Churchwell)

PART 7: The Eye 2: Daria Martin

PART 8: The Eye 2: Louise Wilson

PART 9: The Eye 2: Q+A (chaired by Stuart Comer)

PART 10: The Mind: Parveen Adams

PART 11: The Mind: Q+A (chaired by Richard Martin)

PART 12: The Ear: Chris Rodley responds to the day's presentations in conversation with Sarah Churchwell. Followed by a Q+A with the symposium's speakers and the public

A monstrous talent: Blue Velvet Studies in Memory of Dennis Hopper

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper, 1936 - 2010

"Why are there people like Frank?"

"A truly Bad Bad Guy is not believable and impossible to connect with. That is unless your whole story world is twisted and strange in itself; Like Dennis Hopper's truly Bad Bad Guy in David Lynch's Blue Velvet." Sune Liltop, 'Good Guy / Bad Guy',  P.O.V. No.28, 2009

"...the conflict between smoothness and pent-up rage that defines Hopper's roles in films like David Lynch's Blue Velvet [1986]" Adrian Danks, "Nice 'N' Easy: Speaking Frankly about The Night We Called it a Day', Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, 2003

As Film Studies For Free is sure all of its readers will have learned by now, American movie actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper died yesterday. Some remarkable tributes to him have appeared in the last weeks, few if any better than those by filmmaker-critic Matt Zoller Seitz (see his video essay here; and a further written tribute here). Since the news of his death was made public, David Hudson has been collecting a full list of online tributes to Dennis Hopper here.

For FSFF's author, while she has a big soft spot for The Hot Spot (1990) as well as Easy Rider (1969), two films directed by Hopper, his most memorable contribution to the cinema was, in her view, his performance as the raging psychopath Frank Booth in David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet. So this masterful film forms the (usually main) subject of each of the notable resources linked to in the scholarly webliography offered up today.  

Rest in peace, Mr Hopper.

• Jason Bainbridge, 'Soiling Suburbia: Lynch, Solondz and the Power of Dirt', M/C Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 5, 2006 

• Jenny Barrett, ''You've Made Mistress Very, Very Angry': Displeasure and Pleasure in Media Representations of BDSM'', Participations, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003

• Michael Bloom, 'Rhetoric of Excess: Hyperbolical Irony as Transcendence in Blue Velvet', Offscreen Journal, Volume 13, Issue 9, 2009  

• Barbara Creed, 'A Journey through Blue Velvet: Film, Fantasy and the Female Spectator', New Formations, Number 6 Winter I988

• Stephan Gullatz, 'The Enigmatic Mr. Lynch', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2009

• Bernd Herzogenrath, 'On the Lost Highway: Lynch and Lacan, Cinema and Cultural Pathology', Other Voices, v.1, n.3 (January 1999)

• Randolph Jordan, Starting from scratch : turntables, auditory representation, and the structure of the known universe in the films of David Lynch, Masters thesis, Concordia University, 2003

• Valtteri Kokko, 'Psychological Horror in the Films of David Lynch',Wider Screen, 1, 2004 

• Stephanie Lam, 'David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: The Use of Binary Oppositions and Space', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2009

• Andrew Leggett, 'Violence Against Civility and the Destruction of Fantasy: The Waning of the Oedipus Complex in David Lynch’s "Blue Velvet"’, Croosroads, Rhizomes Conference 2008 Issue, Volume 111, Issue 11, 2009

• Clare Nina Norelli, 'Suburban Dread: The music of Angelo Badalamenti in the films of David Lynch', SOUND SCRIPTS Volume 2 (2009), Edited by Cat Hope and Jonathan W. Marshall, Published by Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts Faculty and Education Edith Cowan University and the Australian Music Centre (Scroll to p. 38)

• Matt Pearson, Authorship and the Films of David Lynch, e-book, BritishFilm.org.uk, 1997

• Fred Pfeil, 'Revolting Yet Conserved: Family "Noir" in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2', Postmodern Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1992 

• David Roche, 'The Death of the Subject in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive', E-rea, 2.2 | 2004