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Unwatchable / Nicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, Gunnar Iversen.
- Format:
- Book
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (350 p.) : 51 images
- Place of Publication:
- New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2019]
- Language Note:
- In English.
- Summary:
- We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something "unwatchable": disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible? With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the "unwatchable" across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.
- Contents:
- Unwatchable
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable
- Part I. Violence and Testimony
- 1. Theorizing the Unwatchable
- Unwatchable
- The Gaze from Within
- The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable
- Melting into Visibility
- Pro Forma
- 2. Spectacles of Destruction
- Terminal Radiance
- Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen
- Breakaway
- The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage
- 3. Bearing Witness
- The Incommensurable
- Not Seeing Is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy
- Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched
- Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrávidos
- Alan Kurdi's Body on the Shore
- 4. Visual Regimes of Racial Violence
- Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X
- The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out
- Nothing Is Unwatchable for All
- Empathy .Complicity
- 5. Spectacularization and Resistance
- Entertainment Value
- Holocausts, Hallowe'en, and Headdresses
- Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence
- Part II. Histories and Genres
- 6. The Tradition of Provocateurs
- The Two Unwatchables
- Real Horrorshow
- Asymmetries of Desire: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
- Unstomachable: Irréversible and the Extreme Cinema Tradition
- 7. Enduring the Avant-Garde
- Unwatchability by Choice: Isou's Venom and Eternity
- The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord's Howls for Sade
- Warhol's Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable
- Warhol's Empire
- Watching Paint Dry
- 8. Visceral Responses to Horror
- "Peekaboo": Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films
- Why I Cannot Watch
- Apotropes
- 9. Pornography and the Question of Pleasure
- I Am Curious (Butterball)
- At the Threshold to the Void
- 10. Archives and the Disintegrating Image
- Restoring Blood Money
- Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess
- Twilight of the Dead
- Part III. Spectators and Objects
- 11. Passionate Aversions
- "Sad!": Why I Won't Watch Antichrist
- Transforming Nihilism
- Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant
- The Biopic Is an Affront to the Cinema
- 12. Tedious Whiteness
- White Men Behaving Sadly
- "You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important"; or, Why I Can't Watch The Help
- Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW?
- 13. Reality Trumpism
- TV Trumps
- The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch a TV Miniseries about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
- 14. Pedagogy and Campus Politics
- Why We Can't Take a Joke
- The Bridge and Unteachable Films
- Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort
- 15. The Triggered Spectator
- What Is an "Unwatchable" Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice)
- Watch at Your Own Peril
- Sects, Fries, and Videotape
- Off Watch
- Acknowledgments
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Notes on Contributors
- Index.
- Notes:
- Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)
- ISBN:
- 0-8135-9962-8
- OCLC:
- 1100457080
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