The Aesthetics of Violence in Contemporary Media

The Aesthetics of Violence in Contemporary Media PDF

Author: Gwyn Symonds

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-11-03

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1441117369

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The topic of violence in the media seems as inundated as can be. Countless studies and research projects have been conducted, mostly to show its negative effects on society. What Gwynneth Symonds proposes, though, takes this significant topic one step further: studying the aesthetics of media violence. By defining key terms like the 'graphic' nature and 'authenticity' of violent representations, and discussing how those definitions are linked to actual violence outside the film and television screen, Symonds broadens the arena of study. Engagingly written, The Aesthetics of Violence in Contemporary Media fills an important gap. Symonds uses existing studies for the empirical audience reception data, together with discussions of the different representations of violence to look at violence in the media as an art form in of itself. By looking at The Simpsons, Bowling for Columbine and Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love, just to name a few, Symonds cross-analyzes violence in multiple media to see their affective role in audience reception - an important aspect when discussing media. The book strikes a balance between the readers' need to see how theory matches what actually happens in the texts in question and the demands of a theoretical overview.

Legacies of the Degraded Image in Violent Digital Media

Legacies of the Degraded Image in Violent Digital Media PDF

Author: Stuart Marshall Bender

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-16

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 3319644599

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This book undertakes a concentrated study of the impact of degraded and low-quality imagery in contemporary cinema and real-world portrayals of violence. Through a series of case studies, the book explores examples of corrupted digital imagery that range from mainstream cinema portrayals of drone warfare and infantry killing, through to real-world recordings of terrorist attacks and executions, as well as perpetrator-created murder videos live-streamed on the internet. Despite post-modernist concerns of cultural inurement during the seminal period of digitalized and virtualized killing in the 1990s, real-world reactions to violent media indicate that our culture is anything but desensitized to these media depictions. Against such a background, this book is a concentrated study of how these images are created and circulated in the contemporary media landscape and how the effect and affect of violent material is impacted by the low-resolution aesthetic.

The Art of Cruelty

The Art of Cruelty PDF

Author: Maggie Nelson

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2012-08-14

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0393343146

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"This is criticism at its best." —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art, Nelson’s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimately offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

The Aesthetics of Murder

The Aesthetics of Murder PDF

Author: Joel Black

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 1991-09-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780801841811

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Since then, both traditional art forms and the modern mass media have contributed to the growing aestheticization of violence.

Portraits of Violence

Portraits of Violence PDF

Author: Suzannah Biernoff

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0472130293

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Investigates the artistic, medical, and journalistic responses to facial injury in WWI

Gender Violence at the U.S.--Mexico Border

Gender Violence at the U.S.--Mexico Border PDF

Author: HŽctor Dom’nguez-Ruvalcaba

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2010-03-15

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0816527121

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The U.S.ÐMexico border is frequently presented by contemporary media as a violent and dangerous place. But that is not a new perception. For decades the border has been constructed as a topographic metaphor for all forms of illegality, in which an ineffable link between space and violence is somehow assumed. The sociological and cultural implications of violence have recently emerged at the forefront of academic discussions about the border. And yet few studies have been devoted to one of its most disturbing manifestations: gender violence. This book analyzes this pervasive phenomenon, including the femicides in Ciudad Ju‡rez that have come to exemplify, at least for the media, its most extreme manifestation. Contributors to this volume propose that the study of gender-motivated violence requires interpretive and analytical strategies that draw on methods reaching across the divide between the social sciences and the humanities. Through such an interdisciplinary conversation, the book examines how such violence is (re)presented in oral narratives, newspaper reports, films and documentaries, novels, TV series, and legal discourse. It also examines the role that the media have played in this process, as well as the legal initiatives that might address this pressing social problem. Together these essays offer a new perspective on the implications of, and connections between, gendered forms of violence and topics such as mechanisms of social violence, the micro-social effects of economic models, the asymmetries of power in local, national, and transnational configurations, and the particular rhetoric, aesthetics, and ethics of discourses that represent violence.

Histories of Violence

Histories of Violence PDF

Author: Brad Evans

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-01-15

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1783602406

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While there is a tacit appreciation that freedom from violence will lead to more prosperous relations among peoples, violence continues to be deployed for various political and social ends. Yet the problem of violence still defies neat description, subject to many competing interpretations. Histories of Violence offers an accessible yet compelling examination of the problem of violence as it appears in the corpus of canonical figures – from Hannah Arendt to Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault to Slavoj Žižek – who continue to influence and inform contemporary political, philosophical, sociological, cultural, and anthropological study. Written by a team of internationally renowned experts, this is an essential interrogation of post-war critical thought as it relates to violence.

The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media

The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media PDF

Author: Steve Choe

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-09

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 3031053907

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The chapters contained in this handbook address key issues concerning the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of violence in film and media. In addition to providing analyses of representations of violence, they also critically discuss the phenomenology of the spectator, images of atrocity in international cinema, affect and documentary, violent video games, digital infrastructures, cruelty in art cinema, and media and state violence, among many other relevant topics. The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media updates existing studies dealing with media and violence while vastly expanding the scope of the field. Representations of violence in film and media are ubiquitous but remain relatively understudied. Too often they are relegated to questions of morality, taste, or aesthetics while judgments about violence can themselves be subjected to moral judgment. Some may question whether objectionable images are worthy of serious scholarly attention at all. While investigating key examples, the chapters in this handbook consider both popular and academic discourses to understand how representations of violence are interpreted and discussed. They propose new approaches and raise novel questions for how we might critically think about this urgent issue within contemporary culture.

Troubled Everyday

Troubled Everyday PDF

Author: Alison Taylor

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2017-04-28

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1474415245

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Extreme violence in contemporary European art cinema is generally interpreted for its affective potential, but what about the significance of the everyday that so often frames and forms the majority of these films? Why do the sudden moments of violence that punctuate films like Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl (2001), Gaspar Noe's Irreversible (2002) and Markus Schleinzer's Michael (2011) seem so reliant on everyday routines and settings for their impact? Addressing these questions through a series of case-studies, and considering notorious films in their historical and philosophical context, Troubled Everyday offers the first detailed examination of the relationship between violence and the everyday in European art cinema. It calls for a re-evaluation of what gives these films such affective force, and such a prolonged grip on our imagination.

Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence, Horror, and Power

Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence, Horror, and Power PDF

Author: Erdem, M. Nur

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2020-10-02

Total Pages: 696

ISBN-13: 1799846563

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Individuals seek ways to repress the sense of violence within themselves and often resort to medial channels. The hunger of the individual for violence is a trigger for the generation of violent content by media, owners of political power, owners of religious power, etc. However, this content is produced considering the individual’s sensitivities. Thus, violence is aestheticized. Aesthetics of violence appear in different fields and in different forms. In order to analyze it, an interdisciplinary perspective is required. The Handbook of Research on Aestheticization of Violence, Horror, and Power brings together two different concepts that seem incompatible—aesthetics and violence—and focuses on the basic motives of aestheticizing and presenting violence in different fields and genres, as well as the role of audience reception. Seeking to reveal this togetherness with different methods, research, analyses, and findings in different fields that include media, urban design, art, and mythology, the book covers the aestheticization of fear, power, and violence in such mediums as public relations, digital games, and performance art. This comprehensive reference is an ideal source for researchers, academicians, and students working in the fields of media, culture, art, politics, architecture, aesthetics, history, cultural anthropology, and more.