Cinema of the dark side : atrocity and the ethics of film spectatorship / Shohini Chaudhuri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chaudhuri, Shohini, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights in motion pictures.

Violence in motion pictures.

Motion picture audiences--Moral and ethical aspects.

Motion picture audiences.

Physical Description:

v, 202 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2014]

Summary:

A ground-breaking comparative analysis of cinematic images of atrocity, combining critical perspectives on contemporary film and human rights. A few days after 9/11, US Vice-President Dick Cheney invoked the need for the USA to work 'the dark side' in its global 'War on Terror'. In Cinema of the Dark Side, explores how contemporary cinema treats state-sponsored atrocity, evoking multiple landscapes of state terror. Investigates the ethical potential of cinematic atrocity images, this book argues that while films help to create and confirm normative perceptions about atrocities, they can also disrupt those perceptions and build different ones. Asserting a crucial distinction between morality and ethics, a new conceptualisation of human rights cinema is proposed, one that repositions human rights morality within an ethical framework that reflects upon the causes and contexts of violence. It builds upon theories of embodied spectatorship to offer a new perspective or the ethics of spectatorship providing readers with fresh insights into how we respond to atrocity images and the ethical issues at stake. Covering a diverse spectrum of 21st century cinema, Shohini Chaudhuri deals with documentary or fictional representations of atrocity such as state-sanctioned torture, genocide, enforced disappearance, deportation, and apartheid. Close analysis of contemporary films includes Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Standard Operating Procedure (2008), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Sometimes in April (2005), Nostalgia for the Light (2010), Chronicle of an Escape (2006), Children of Men(2006), District 9 (2009), Waltz With Bashir (2008), and Paradise Now (2005). Cinema of the Dark Sideis a valuable resource for students and researchers in Film Studies and Human Rights alike. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Documenting the Dark Side: Fictional and Documentary Treatments of Torture and the 'War On Terror' 22

2 History Lessons: What Audiences (Could) Learn about Genocide from Historical Dramas 50

3 The Art of Disappearance; Remembering Political Violence in Argentina and Chile 84

4 Uninvited Visitors: Immigration, Detention and Deportation in Science Fiction 115

5 Architectures of Enmity: the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through a Cinematic Lens 146.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 184-196) and index.

ISBN:

9781474400428

1474400426

9780748642632

0748642633

OCLC:

899734012