IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001567170

Visualizing the Chaotic Body in Popular Culture (2010)

Davis, Dennis
Brownie, Stephen H
Pennsylvania State University
Davis, Dennis
Jordan, Matt
Brownie, Stephen H
McAllister, Matt
Jordan, Matt
Publication date: 2010
Language: English

ISBN: 9781303492662

Publication Date: 2010
Edition Details: Advisor: McAllister, Matt; Committee Members: Davis, Dennis, Jordan, Matt, Brownie, Stephen H.
Physical Details: 227 pp.

Outside Links

The proliferation of traumatized bodies on screen is matched by the proliferation of body studies in the humanities and social sciences. The interest in the body has exploded among a number of fields of study and is a staple in visual culture. What is happening in contemporary representation and spectatorship of pain and 'ruined bodies'? What is the relationship of contemporary visuality, the ruined body, and the social? Finally, what is the mode of selfhood deployed in contemporary visual culture and how is it related to other discursive-institutional realms of practice? In this dissertation I consider three fictional visual texts that elucidate particular institutional realms within which the body is centrally figured; these texts are the medical drama House M.D., the first three films of the horror series Saw, which draws heavily on religious discourse and iconography, and the forensic investigation drama Bones. The purpose is to consider the ways in which these texts represent the practices of each realm as well as the visualization of the body itself and the model of the self and the social deployed in each. I am proposing that these texts are not just symptomatic of cultural concerns, but that they help to articulate and constitute these concerns by incorporating and articulating them with other regimes of knowledge and representation. Moreover, as the literature on visual media, science, and culture has shown, the visual conventions developed and deployed in one arena of inquiry are rarely, if ever, unaffected by developments in other arenas of knowledge and culture nor do they remain in the 'originating' realm of practice but become quickly entangled in or create new nodes with other institutional-discursive realms. I conclude in the final chapter by arguing that the use of open bodies in contemporary visual culture--a characteristic of all three analyzed texts and others--can be read through the notion of the grotesque body, and I will discuss the ways in which each text's treatment of the grotesque body reflects broader socio-cultural shifts. I also consider some of the themes that emerge across the texts, which I suggest, are symptomatic of broader cultural concerns. Each text privileges the body as a means of knowing the other and cultivates an attitude of awe toward an authority figure who is a master of reading the body and its visual artifacts. I argue that this privileging of the body in popular culture is one cultural manifestation of an emerging challenge to dialogic and confessional practices in other realms. I then consider the implications of this for our notions of subjectivity by placing the challenge to confession alongside the implications of another conceptual recuperation in the texts studied here, that of the indexical property of the image. Bringing together two trends documented by a number of scholars, I suggest that visual mediation of the body may soon become a dominant means of understanding the self and others and speculate on some of the implications of this for contemporary modes of self making, the possibility for communication and cooperation, the limits of surveillance practices, and the nature of evidence in several (legal, medical, interpersonal) settings.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/01(E), Jul 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1442475979.

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001567170

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Jan Domaradzki; (2023)
From evil demiurge to caring hero: images of geneticists in the movies (/p/isis/citation/CBB948371310/)

Article Brodesco, Alberto; (2011)
I've Got You under My Skin: Narratives of the Inner Body in Cinema and Television (/p/isis/citation/CBB001024830/)

Article Jesse Olszynko-Gryn; (2016)
Film Lessons: Early Cinema for Historians of Science* (/p/isis/citation/CBB096785803/)

Article Cadence Kinsey; (2018)
Blind Windows (/p/isis/citation/CBB393527071/)

Book Ostherr, Kirsten; (2013)
Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging Technologies (/p/isis/citation/CBB001212070/)

Article Hudson, Dale; (2013)
“Of Course There Are Werewolves and Vampires”: True Blood and the Right to Rights for Other Species (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201821/)

Article Lykke, Nina; Bryld, Mette; (2004)
Bevisets teater: Videnskabsdokumentargenren og læsninger af Lennart Nilsson (/p/isis/citation/CBB000772817/)

Chapter Neal, Valerie; (2013)
Bringing Spaceflight Down to Earth: Astronauts and The IMAX Experience® (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201399/)

Article Domínguez, Martí; Mateu, Anna; (2013)
Spanish Darwinian Iconography: Darwin and Evolutionism Portrayed in Spanish Press Cartoons (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320577/)

Book Berkowitz, Edward D; (2010)
Mass Appeal: The Formative Age of the Movies, Radio and TV (/p/isis/citation/CBB001550395/)

Book Wright, David C; Austin, Allan W.; (2010)
Space and Time: Essays on Visions of History in Science Fiction and Fantasy (/p/isis/citation/CBB001033215/)

Book Bould, Mark; (2009)
The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (/p/isis/citation/CBB001033218/)

Article Boon, Timothy; (2015)
“The televising of science is a process of television”: Establishing Horizon, 1962--1967 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001202246/)

Article Fengler, Silke; Krebs, Stefan; (2005)
In Celluloidgewittern---Die mediale Konstruktion von Wissenschaft und Technik als Paradigma des Ersten Weltkrieges (/p/isis/citation/CBB000831004/)

Article Wexler, Rebecca; (2008)
Onward, Christian Penguins: Wildlife Film and the Image of Scientific Authority (/p/isis/citation/CBB000831709/)

Book Powell, James Lawrence; (2011)
The Inquisition of Climate Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB001500140/)

Book Broks, Peter; (2006)
Understanding Popular Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB000773185/)

Article Harvey, Matthew; (2007)
Citizens in Defence of Something Called Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB000720315/)

Thesis Gonder, Patrick; (2007)
Like a Monstrous Jigsaw: Genetics, Evolution and the Body in the Horror Filmsof the 1950s (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561295/)

Thesis Von Burg, Ron; (2005)
The Cinematic Turn in Public Discussions of Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB001560709/)