Screen Bodies

We are pleased to present an excellent collection of articles that represent the newest directions in what Barbara Stafford called “body criticism.” The authors in this issue of Screen Bodies work in diverse fields and employ a wide range of methods, but all share a concern with spectatorship and the ways that the effects of screen-based technology are mediated by the body. This research centers women and offers advancements in feminist film theory, posthumanism, and studies of the horror genre.

In recent years, many scholars of performing arts, cinema, and mass media have been focusing their studies on the body, examining the perception of the physical experience of projection and connecting bodily states with spiritual and ethical constructs. The purpose of this article is to present how cinema and performance can utilize the body in ways that enhance the audience's empathy. The role of cinema is to enable the viewer to liberate their body from its “individual ownership” and to rediscover its potential. Similarly, performances challenge the audience to respond with their bodies to the stimulation of certain emotions, experiencing a pure sensation through participation. However, experiencing empathy, a viewer can impose their ideas or reactions onto the experiences or emotions of others, believing that what they are experiencing is what others experienced.

Building on Paul Schrader's thesis in Transcendental Style in Film that immanence and transcendence clash, this article explores a departure from this binary in Jim Jarmusch's 2016 film, Paterson. Although Paterson follows the formula of transcendental cinema, it lacks Schrader's prerequisite “Decisive Moments” for transcendence. I contend that films can evoke transcendence without distinct release moments, as exemplified by Paterson. To support this, Paterson is contrasted with Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 masterpiece, Tokyo Story, identified by Schrader as quintessentially transcendental and a key influence on Jarmusch. Introducing the concept of “immanent transcendence” to describe Paterson's unique position, I argue that transcendence and immanence can coexist. I challenge traditional notions of transcendental cinema, shedding light on cinematic experiences that bridge immanence and transcendence.

This article examines the inter-subjective touch in Ildikó Enyedi's film On Body and Soul (2017), employing a phenomenological approach by analyzing the aspects of horror, pleasure, dreaming, and breath. This film recontextualizes horror and reaffirms pleasure through the inter-subjective touch. The binary setting between the dreaming world and the waking world, through the perception of touch, is used not to disdain the cruel reality but to arouse inter-subjectivity. The representation of breath illuminates another tactility regarding spatiality and inter-subjectivity. I argue that On Body and Soul constructs layers of tactility and inter-subjectivity between the film and the spectator; the two protagonists (Mária and Endre); human and non-human; dreaming and waking; and mind and body.

French film director and screenwriter Julia Ducournau's sophomore body horror film, Titane (2021), like its predecessors of the same genre, examines the malleability and fragility of human corporeality. The film can be categorized under the New French Extremity, a genre coined by art critic James Quandt, who disapprovingly expressed his concerns with the rampant depictions of blood and violence in film; however, this article contends that Ducournau's film offer much more than mere shock factor and spectacle of taboo objects. Featuring a protagonist who is a manifestation of Donna Haraway's radical cyborg, Titane can be situated alongside recent debates in posthuman concerns, but more importantly, in its intersection and close connection to feminist and queer discourse. Although many have utilized Julia Kristeva's abject/-ion to examine the horror film genre through a feminist lens, this article seeks to expand on such existing literature by pointing to its emancipatory powers and its potential for a more inclusive, posthuman queer mode of being and kinship beyond the symbolic order.

Posthumanism stands as a complex and interdisciplinary intellectual movement that challenges and broadens conventional notions of human identity and existence, particularly in light of advancements in science and technology. It emerged in response to the swift evolution of technology and its profound impact on our understanding of what it means to be human. Embarking on a posthumanist inquiry, this research delves into the rich fabric of Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky (2003), meticulously unraveling the complexities of human transcendence amidst advanced technology. The article's objective is to unveil the nuanced layers of the author's exploration of posthumanist ideas. The analysis explores the dynamic interplay among characters and their technological surroundings, emphasizing moments where the amalgamation of humanity and cutting-edge technology acts as a catalyst for transcendence.

This article looks at how the “anorexic condition” gained public awareness through popular culture, specifically in the United States and Hong Kong, and argues that the 1980s saw the beginning of anorexia awareness-raising in the American public, contributed by the untimely death of Karen Carpenter and the rapid expansion of consumerism. It uses racial, feminist, and disability theories to interrogate how their intersections defined and continued to shape anorexia. It examines the paradox that popular culture could be the very same agency that creates both such oppression and the “redemption” of its problematic consequences. This leads to a critical evaluation of the nature of popular culture, its influence on young people and their body image, and its prevailing influence on global society.

Asian women are often marginalized in global contexts, and they are often disembodied or presented in sexualized images in film and television productions. Even in the Asian region, Asian women have difficulty giving themselves a voice in popular culture. This essay has selected three films and tends to explore the gender connotation, body, and sexuality in the film works of East Asian female directors in recent decades, with the intent to explore the female sexual desire that is expressed and reflected in those female directors’ works.

The main object of study in this research is the cutting of the female body in cinema. In order to simplify and rationalize such a broad and diffuse concept, it is necessary to redesign a methodology of analysis valid for the object of study at hand, which will be called the Triple Cut. This will advance self-referentially, as if it were Russian dolls, from the cut of the real itself, passing through the cut of the plane (or between planes) or the absence of the same, until arriving at the cut of the flesh itself. This is where the bodies end up being dismembered live in front of the camera's lens, pouncing like pieces of meat on the—willing or unwilling—audience.