Tag Archives: Violence

Torture films

By Steen | May 9, 2007

OK, so I’m researching for a paper on torture films for a call for papers. For now, I’ll post some of my considerations on torture. First of all, however, I’m working on torture films and so will deal with the representation of torture in films as an aesthetic practice rather than actual torture such as [...]

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Sergio Martino, Torso

By Steen | April 29, 2007

Martino’s Torso is really a perfect example of the giallo genre. Plenty of naked girls, an insane killer, suspense and slashings. The only real weakness it has is its insistence on showing poorly executed gore sequences. As a low-budget film, it works extremely well, but in these gore sequences it is difficult not to lose [...]

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Mel Gibson, Apocalypto

By Steen | January 27, 2007

Mel Gibson is clearly fascinated by violence and blood. Just as, even if implicitly, The Passion of the Christ showed how civilization was born in blood, so does Apocalypto show how civilization dies in blood.
The film opens with a quote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” [...]

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Melvin Van Peebles, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song

By Steen | November 3, 2005

Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song is a peculiar film alternately hailed as the first blaxploitation film and criticised for its reductive images of the black man. I, however, believe that there is a reason to view the film not from a specific genre viewpoint, nor to regard it as having to conform to perceived notions [...]

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The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image: Transmetropolitan’s critique of the society of the spectacle

By Steen | September 19, 2005

In this paper, I investigate the binary opposition, which is instated between words as true and images as false in Warren Ellis and Darick Roberts’ Transmetropolitan series, which deals heavily with the notion of truth in a dystopic future. The series’ protagonist Spider Jerusalem is a journalist trying to show a world that doesn’t care [...]

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