Passionate Detachments

Amy Rust

Description

Passionate Detachments investigates the rise of graphic violence in American films of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the popular aesthetics and critical responses this violence inspired. Amy Rust examines four technologies adopted by commercial American cinema after the fall of the Hollywood Production Code: multiple-camera montage, squibs (small explosive devices) and artificial blood, freeze-frames, and zooms. Approaching these technologies as figures, as opposed to mere tools, Rust traces the encounters they mediate between perception (what one sees, hears, and feels) and representation (how those sights, sounds, and feelings make meaning). These technologies, she argues, lend shape to film violence while organizing viewers' on- and off-screen relationships to it.

The result proves meaningful for an era self-consciously and perilously preoccupied with bloodshed. The post-Code period found Americans across the political spectrum demanding visual—and increasingly violent—demonstrations of presumably "authentic" realities. Corroborating fantasies of authenticity from military to counterculture, these technologies challenge them as well, pointing, however unwittingly, to the violently classed, gendered, and racialized blind spots such fantasies harbor. More broadly, the technologies answer concerns that films control violence too much or too little. Offering neither mere discourse nor mere thrills, they recover sense and sensation for all, not some, or even most, depictions of bloodshed. As figures, the devices also remediate vision and violence for film theory, which exhibits distrust for each in spite of the complexities phenomenology and psychoanalysis have brought to cinematic perception and pleasure.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Technology of Film Violence, or, Figuring the Sense in Sensation

1. A Parallax View: The Violent Synchrony of Multiple-Camera Montage

2. Violence Incarnate: Squibs, Artificial Blood, and Wounds That Speak

3. Hitting the “Vérité Jackpot”: The Ecstatic Profits of Freeze-Framed Violence

4. Extraction and Exchange: The Zoom and Environmental Intension

Conclusion: Passionate Detachments
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Popular culture
• Visual culture
• Media studies
• History of film
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 24 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438465418
• Langue: English

Extrait

Passionate Detachments
Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis, editors, B Is for Bad Cinema
Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors
Rosie Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood
Scott M. MacDonald, Binghamton Babylon
Sudhir Mahadevan, A Very Old Machine
David Greven, Ghost Faces
James S. Williams, Encounters with Godard
William H. Epstein and R. Barton Palmer, editors, Invented Lives, Imagined Communities
Lee Carruthers, Doing Time
Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren, editors, Looking with Robert Gardner
Belinda Smaill, Regarding Life
Douglas McFarland and Wesley King, editors, John Huston as Adaptor
R. Barton Palmer, Homer B. Pettey, and Steven M. Sanders, editors, Hitchcock’s Moral Gaze
Will Scheibel, American Stranger
Nenad Jovanovic, Brechtian Cinemas
Steven Rybin, Gestures of Love
Passionate Detachments
Technologies of Vision and Violence in American Cinema, 1967–1974

Amy Rust
Cover: Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, 1967)
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rust, Amy, 1974– author.
Title: Passionate detachments : technologies of vision and violence in American cinema, 1967–1974 / by Amy Rust.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031447 (print) | LCCN 2016047975 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438465395 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438465418 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Violence in motion pictures. | Motion pictures—United States. | Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.V5 R87 2017 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.V5 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/6552—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031447
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Scott
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Technology of Film Violence, or, Figuring the Sense in Sensation
1 A Parallax View: The Violent Synchrony of Multiple-Camera Montage
2 Violence Incarnate: Squibs, Artificial Blood, and Wounds That Speak
3 Hitting the “ Vérité Jackpot”: The Ecstatic Profits of Freeze-Framed Violence
4 Extraction and Exchange: The Zoom and Environmental Intension
Conclusion: Passionate Detachments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Illustrations Figure I.1. “Seeing more” violence ( The Passion of the Christ , 2004) Figure I.2. Graphic, corporeal violence at the end of the Hollywood Production Code ( The Wild Bunch , 1969) Figure I.3. “Why Are We Suddenly Obsessed with Violence?” ( Esquire , 1967) Figure 1.1. Robert Rauschenberg’s Bonnie and Clyde ( Time , 1967) Figure 1.2. Still (Reels [B+C]) (Robert Rauschenberg, 1968) Figures 1.3 and 1.4. Close-ups give way to wider views of Clyde and Bonnie ( Bonnie and Clyde , 1967) Figure 1.5. Long-shot framings reveal the couple’s position at the end of the sequence ( Bonnie and Clyde , 1967) Figure 1.6. Three-camera technique ( I Love Lucy , 1951–1957) Figures 1.7 and 1.8. Photographs recall Depression-era works by Dorothea Lange or Walker Evans ( Bonnie and Clyde , 1967) Figures 1.9, 1.10, and 1.11. Single-camera close-ups introduce abrupt shifts that prefigure multiple-camera montage’s mix of incongruity and unity ( Bonnie and Clyde , 1967) Figure 2.1. NBC footage of the “Saigon Execution,” part of the Huntley-Brinkley Report ’s coverage of the Tet Offensive on February 2, 1968 Figure 2.2. Squib exploding with artificial blood ( The Wild Bunch , 1969) Figure 2.3. An April 1970 CBS Evening News report avoids graphic depictions of wounded Americans (“Courage Under Fire,” The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite, Volume 1 ) Figure 2.4. A wounded Sergeant Floyd smiles and smokes a cigar in a December 1965 CBS Evening News report (“Courage Under Fire,” The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite, Volume 1 ) Figures 2.5 and 2.6. Dutch’s fatal wounding ( The Wild Bunch , 1969) Figure 2.7. A soldier questions Eileen/Bloom ( Medium Cool , 1968) Figure 2.8. Red, slippery organs are offered to the spectator ( Blood Feast , 1963) Figures 2.9 and 2.10. CBS coverage of the Tet Offensive reserved its most graphic images for Vietnamese bodies (“The Tet Offensive,” The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite, Volume 1 ) Figure 2.11. Wet, slippery blood leaps through Johnny Boy’s fingers ( Mean Streets , 1973) Figure 2.12. A broken hydrant figures the fluidity of wounds ( Mean Streets , 1973) Figure 3.1. A Steenbeck rerolls the previous scene’s footage as a frame within the frame ( Gimme Shelter , 1970) Figure 3.2. “There’s the Angel right there with the knife.” ( Gimme Shelter , 1970) Figure 3.3. Magick, the Rolling Stones, and the British Hell’s Angels ( Invocation of My Demon Brother , 1969) Figure 3.4. Rock music: one of the era’s many rituals of authentication ( Gimme Shelter , 1970) Figures 3.5 and 3.6. Night of the Living Dead conjures scenes of racialized brutality from Emmett Till, to Birmingham, to historical lynching souvenirs (1968) Figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3. The conclusion to McCabe and Mrs. Miller gathers and separates three lines of action (1971) Figure 4.4. A zoom to McCabe’s body tumbling through brush and snow ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.5. A snap zoom to the bullet McCabe fires into Butler’s skull ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figures 4.6 and 4.7. Zooms inward mark urgent advantages for McCabe, including a steeple-cum-watchtower and mineshaft retreat ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.8. When Butler shoots the town’s minister, a snap zoom travels against the bullet’s path to arrive at killer rather than victim ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.9. Zooms outward point to McCabe’s tenuous grasp on makeshift shelters and boardwalks ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.10. Immediately after its leap to the church, a zoom retreats from this space, revealing the unprotected expanse McCabe must traverse ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.11. Zooms pull back from violence to suggest McCabe’s haplessness in the face of his environment ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.12. The zoom’s flatness heightens correspondences among trees, bridge supports, and humans ( McCabe and Mrs. Miller , 1971) Figure 4.13. M*A*S*H ’s operating-room scenes typically begin with zooms out to situate doctors and patients, bodies and instruments, within broader milieus (1970) Figure 4.14. Zooms then press in to hospital staff, their faces obscured ( M*A*S*H , 1970) Figure 4.15. Finally, the film drifts or cuts to bodily cavities into and from which doctors push and pull various tools ( M*A*S*H , 1970) Figure 4.16. Dirty Harry ’s introductory zoom pulls back to a sniper’s scope (1971) Figure 4.17. The Conversation zooms in, mimicking aural surveillance (1974) Figure 4.18. Harry dons a pair of binoculars and spies a naked woman ( Dirty Harry , 1971) Figure 4.19. Harry’s gaze thus mirrors the killer’s look at the film’s first victim ( Dirty Harry , 1971) Figure C.1. Cinema’s dangerously sadistic spectator ( A Clockwork Orange , 1971)
Acknowledgments
In many ways, passionate detachments describes my experience of writing this book. Devoted to my technological approach to film violence, I nonetheless suffered the consequences of a charged topic, an uncommon method, and the mundane tasks of writing and writing and writing. Still, I remain attached to the project and its interventions, thanks in no small part to the many advisers, colleagues, friends, and family members who offered guidance and support along the way.
Among these are my mentors at UC Berkeley, where this book began as a dissertation and, before that, a seminar paper for Linda Williams. Later, as my chair, Linda proved an exacting yet g