Troubled Everyday
The Aesthetics of Violence and the Everyday in European Art Cinema
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 Noé’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.
Case Studies- Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini 1975)
- Money (Bresson 1983)
- Come and See (Klimov 1985)
- The Seventh Continent (Haneke 1989)
- I Stand Alone (Noé 1998)
- Fat Girl (Breillat 2001)
- Irreversible (Noé 2002)
- Twentynine Palms (Dumont 2003)
- Michael (Schleinzer 2011)
Acknowledgments List of figures
Chapter One: ‘A lightning that illuminates the banal’: Violence and the Everyday From extremism to everyday Approaching Disturbing Aesthetics
Chapter Two: Everyday Moments Discourse of immediacy Towards the everyday Salò Come and See
Chapter Three: Everyday Style Reframing Everyday Style Style Versus Content in Money and The Seventh Continent Everyday Style and the ‘Fruitful Ambivalence’ of the Ordinary
Chapter Four: Everyday Structures / Everyday Language Fat Girl, Twentynine Palms, and the Critics Authorial personas Generic expectations and generic breaks Orientation beyond genre Twentynine Palms Fat Girl
Chapter Five: Return to the Everyday Everyday Time I Stand Alone Michael
Conclusion: Looking Back Mourning the world: the everyday as transcendent, the everyday as lost in Irreversible Works Cited Filmography
So often we are dazzled by spectacle; in Troubled Everyday Taylor makes a compelling case for the importance of paying attention to the quotidian. A beautifully written, carefully observed account of the relation of the everyday to violence in film, Taylor not only reframed my thinking about the films in question, but about film as a medium.
