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The aperture is the exposed part of the camera lens, the opening through
which beams of light slash to reach the celluloid. Its analogy with the human eye
is only partial: apart from modelling human vision and complementing our
perception, the camera radically transforms our way of seeing. The narrow focus
of the journal Apertura is to explore
the cinematic medium and the mechanisms of its influence, while its broader
research spectrum embraces the critical discourse on visual culture
institutionalized in the 1990s. Apertura
wishes to offer itself as a forum for all those (theoretical critical,
historical, inderdisciplinary and intermediary) approaches that contribute to a
more nuanced problematization and understanding of the way images as cultural
products work, and to exhibit, for exploration, the non-evident, the invisible.
Papers
(following the Chicago Style Sheet)
are expected in the above mentioned genres to the following address: aperturafolyoirat@yahoo.co.uk
Papers
will be reviewed by the editorial board
(András Dér, Péter Galicza, András Bálint
Kovács and László Tarnay) and the main editor,
Izabella Füzi.
Table of contents and Abstracts
The theory and hisrory of visual culture
The potential theory of the image and visuality has been a debated
issue recently. The focus of the debate are such basic notions as the
"image" and "visual culture". A genealogical discussion of metaphors,
the Image, the Screen and the Gaze may serve as a useful illustration
of clashing viewpoints and disagreements. The only incontestable fact
is the emancipation of a new field, which is usually referred to as
visual culture studies, or just visual studies. Another term, following
the German model of Bildwissendchaft, is image studies. These different
terms entail different academic horizons and perspectives, which may be
revealed precisely through the scrutiny of the debates and the
underlying politics; while corresponding notions and interpretive
strategies have appeared in specific critical studies and film theory
research. Within this field, however, questionable genealogies may
endanger not only the analyses, but the academic field itself. It is
also beyond debate, however, that in the age of the computer, the
screen and the image the comparative analysis of academic methods and
notions may be useful not only for specific interpretations, but for
the disciplines themselves.
The essay traces conceptual connections between key aspects of Kant's
transcendental philosophy, especially aesthetic reflection, and basic
psychoanalytic concepts that have figured prominently in the European
film theory of the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, the essay proposes a
reevaluation of the phallic economy of signification in
placental-umbilical terms. Introducing the ephemeral materno-foetal
organ of the placenta into psychoanalytic film theory as the biological
prototype of the fetish, phallus, dream screen, virtual or lost
maternal object and object of desire (objet petit a) promises to
resolve the impasse reached by feminist theories keyed to Freud's and
Lacan's *patriarchal* phallic economy. The placenta is seen here as
having the same function as Kant's transcendental subject -- that of a
focus imaginarius, a virtual memory organ furnishing the idea of both
plenitude and lack, or castration, and making possible symbolic
signification as synthetic a priori.
This paper attempts to scrutinize the interrelationship between the
postmodern renaissance of theatricalized anatomy and the subject's
relation to the flesh of the Other, within the framework of what
Jacques Derrida called the carno-phallogocentric order of our culture.
I employ postsemiotic understandings of materiality and the concept of
the suture to theorize the subject's experience of the look of the
cadaver.
Éva Török: Roles of the Grotesque
in Contemporary Visual Arts
In order to find
out the roles of the grotesque in contemporary visual arts, I introduce four
recent critical books on this topic. These critical writings prove that the
grotesque is supported by notions borrowed from other disciplines. For example
we meet Kristeva's abject from
psychoanalysis and most often Bakhtin's grotesque
realism from the socio-cultural discourses. These terms are all productive
in describing the grotesque in visual culture, but I nevertheless emphasize the
return to the etymology of the word "grotesque". Describing the role of the
grotesque I start with the re-interpretation of the Bakhtinian idea: grotesque
is the border of art and life. This leads to the description of the perception
of grotesque artwork, where the openness (Eco) of the artwork insists on the
intrusion of the spectator. This intrusion is executed with the help of the
grotesque that provokes and wins the attention of the spectator and with the
involvement of the spectator, s/he becomes the spectacle itself.
Cinema and visual culture
The most vital characteristic of cinema is probably its persuasive
force, to withdraw its viewers from their everyday experience and
envelop them in an audiovisual stream. Ever since the rise of early
cinema, about a century ago, technological evolutions and developments
in the visual language of cinema focuses on finding new ways to
submerge the experienced audience in a new cinematographic experience,
through which a different world of living images, space, light, words,
music or movement reveals itself. But if immersion is the thriving
force behind the cinematographic experience, what are the new immersive
challenges in our contemporary postcinema era? This paper explores
three contemporary immersive strategies in terms of postmediality,
cybertribalism and hypericonography.
The essay analyses the concept of "cult film" in a way that diverges
from customary approaches; it examines the connection between real,
historical cults and their representation in cinema. The example of the
essay is the cult of the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler and his
filmic representations. It shortly surveys the history of pictorial
representations of Hitler from the photos of Heinrich Hoffmann through
the famous propagandistic films of Leni Riefenstahl to the postwar
filmic representations. The essay focuses on two significant
Hitler-films of the recent past: the American mini-series, The Rise of the Evil (2003) and the German film, Der Untergang (2004).
Approaching Zoltán Fábri's Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta,
1955) from anthropological and psychoanalytical perspectives, this
paper explores the connection between the sexual and political themes
that constitute the two main plots in the film. In contrast to several
critical views, the author argues that the representation of farming
and collectivization-which many contemporary viewers find
propagandistic and therefore outdated-is in fact a vital part of the
artistic vision that assumes-in conceptual harmony with the insights of
such theoreticians as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray
and Karl Polányi -that the rise of human communities occurred through
interconnected acts of sexual, economic and verbal exchange.
My essay undertakes the analysis of Christopher Nolan's Memento using
the concepts of Gilles Deleuze's film theory. I analyse the unique
condition of the hero in relation to both his incapability to act and
his being dominated by instincts. I compare the character of Lenny to
that of Sindbad which has an honourable place in the pantheon of not
only Hungarian literature (thanks to Gyula Krúdy), but in that of
cinema as well (due to Zoltán Huszárik). Besides discussing their
shared experience of temporality, I also examine the different
authorial intentions to make these out-of-this-world characters into
strong allegories. Whereas Sindbad comes to embody a positive hero in
his resistance to be anchored in everyday existence, Nolan's Lenny is
an antihero whose personal pathography should really be understood as
the diagnostic reading of contemporary civilization. In my view certain
Deleuzeian concepts, such as the affection-image, the impulse-image and
the small and large forms of the action-image may help us comprehend
this diagnostic aspect of Memento.
The paper examines the narratological status of images used in CSI: Crime Scene Investigations with
the aim to define the relationship between seeing, knowing and
focalization. After an image-typology is introduced, types of images
with special roles in the series are closely examined. One such
example, apart from images representing the mental content of
characters (flash backs, fake flash backs, images representing the
crime), is the so-called CSI-shot, consisting of hyper realistic macro
footages and their animation.
These image sequences are interesting from different perspectives. On
the one hand, they are excellent representations of problems linked to
the body image, in other words, of a recent and general urge that makes
people reconsider their attitude towards their body. The body image
presented in the series is discussed as part of the same issue. On the
other hand, it is important to remark that the narratological status of
the CSI-shots is vague, because it is impossible to decide clearly in
each case whether these shots belong to the non-diegetic narrator or to
a focalisor. According to the argument these sequences of images
(which are not always as long as a scene) represent a transitional
stage between the two levels mentioned above, because the images showed
during the investigation and the reconstruction of the crime can be
defined as highly subjective. Namely, in CSI a
transcendental technical gaze comes into existence, which (particularly
because of the numerous repetitions) does not leave the gaze of the
viewer untouched. Furthermore, a strongly held belief in evidence and
science refers to an ideologically biased definition of science,
according to which the proper objective use of science leads to
absolute truths, while (as presented earlier) visual narration also
strongly banks upon various forms of subjectivity. This duality is
masked with evidence, which neutralizes questions and doubts that would
potentially undermine scientific methods used in CSI.
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