Crash
Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis
Author(s)
Beckman, Karen
Collection
Knowledge Unlatched (KU)Number
103928Language
EnglishAbstract
Artists, writers, and filmmakers from Andy Warhol and J. G. Ballard to Alejandro González Iñárritu and Ousmane Sembène have repeatedly used representations of immobilized and crashed cars to wrestle with the conundrums of modernity. In Crash, Karen Beckman argues that representations of the crash parallel the encounter of film with other media, and that these collisions between media offer useful ways to think about alterity, politics, and desire. Examining the significance of automobile collisions in film genres including the “cinema of attractions,” slapstick comedies, and industrial-safety movies, Beckman reveals how the car crash gives visual form to fantasies and anxieties regarding speed and stasis, risk and safety, immunity and contamination, and impermeability and penetration.
Keywords
Performing Arts; Film; History & CriticismDOI
https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392767ISBN
9780822392767Publisher
Duke University PressPublisher website
https://www.dukeupress.edu/Publication date and place
2010Grantor
Imprint
Duke University PressClassification
Film history, theory or criticism