Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Everywhere and Nowhere
- PART I BEFORE – FLIRTING WITH DEATH
- PART II DURING – DEPICTING DEATH
- 4 The Cinematic Language of Dying
- 5 Grammar Lessons: Dying and Difference
- 6 Watching Others Die: Spectatorship, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Being Moved
- PART III AFTER – RESPONDING TO DEATH
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
4 - The Cinematic Language of Dying
from PART II - DURING – DEPICTING DEATH
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Everywhere and Nowhere
- PART I BEFORE – FLIRTING WITH DEATH
- PART II DURING – DEPICTING DEATH
- 4 The Cinematic Language of Dying
- 5 Grammar Lessons: Dying and Difference
- 6 Watching Others Die: Spectatorship, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Being Moved
- PART III AFTER – RESPONDING TO DEATH
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Where the Lumière brothers' Train Pulling into a Station opened the first part of the book, this one begins with reference to another early film, indeed, that which appears to be cinema's first snufffilm: Thomas Edison's Electrocuting an Elephant of 1903. Topsy, an unruly resident of Coney Island's Lunar Park, was to be put down for bad behaviour. Edison, keen to display the dangers of his competitor's rival alternating current (AC), stepped in to test said current on the elephant. A shackled Topsy is connected up, the switch is pulled and, in a matter of seconds, the hulking figure falls to the ground. Topsy topples: the alternating current is deadly indeed. The execution is declared in its title, and the film's content is ‘purely’ a taking of life. From the first, dying is rendered by film a spectacle, a cinematic spectacle, to behold. The matter-of-factness of Topsy's demise, the pain-free finality (and punitive purpose) of it merges, somehow, with the grandeur of the display. This merging or combination – of the details and duties of dying, and its entertainment value – will resonate in the chapters to follow as we explore mainstream cinema's representations of the final act and their far from simple or singular import.
In this second part of the book, then, we turn from the anticipation of death towards its experience, from its proximity to its presence, and, most importantly, to its impact upon the body.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Death and the Moving ImageIdeology, Iconography and I, pp. 99 - 126Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014