Cinematic Corpographies: Re-Mapping the War Film Through the Body

Eileen Rositzka

Published by De Gruyter 2018

Cinematic Corpographies

Re-Mapping the War Film Through the Body

Eileen Rositzka

Volume 3 in the series Cinepoetics – English edition

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110580808

Overview
Contents

About this book

Writing on the relationship between war and cinema has largely been dominated by an emphasis on optics and weaponised vision. However, as this analysis of the Hollywood war film will show, a wider sensory field is powerfully evoked in this genre. Contouring war cinema as representing a somatic experience of space, the study applies a term recently developed by Derek Gregory within the theoretical framework of Critical Geography. What he calls “corpography” implies a constant re-mapping of landscape through the soldier’s body. These assumptions can be used as a connection between already established theories of cartographic film narration and ideas of (neo)phenomenological film experience, as they also entail the involvement of the spectator’s body in sensuously grasping what is staged as a mediated experience of war. While cinematic codes of war have long been oriented almost exclusively to the visual, the notion of corpography can help to reframe the concept of film genre in terms of expressive movement patterns and genre memory, avoiding reverting to the usual taxonomies of generic texts.

Author information

Eileen Rositzka, Freie Universität Berlin, Kolleg-Forschergruppe Cinepoetics - Poetologien audiovisueller Bilder,
Berlin, Germany.

Reviews

"By examining how cinematic representations of war speak so closely to our human condition, Rositzska skilfully depicts how such representations are inflected with intersubjective permutations and assumptions about the material body, gender, and even race, assumptions which can be challenged or interrogated through aesthetic, cinematic forms in order to undercut – even subvert – a predominantly visual discourse in film and media studies."
(Panayiota Chrysochou in: Punctum, 5(1): 271–273, 2019)

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
1. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Measuring the Trenches: Corpographies of the First World War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
3. From Above and From Within: Aerial Views and Corpographic Transformations in the WWII Combat Film Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
4. Dismembering War: Touch and Fragmentation in Anthony Mann’s Men in War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
5. Uncharting Territories: The Vietnam War’s Shattering of the Senses Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
6. Zero Dark Thirty: Corpographies of the War on Terror Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
7. Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Subject index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Name index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
Film index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: film scholars, media scholars, scholars of cultural studies and philosophy
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 202
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 20
Keywords: War film; genre theory; cinematic space; poetics of affect

eBook

Published: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 9783110580808

Hardcover

Published: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 9783110579635

Paperback

Published: July 6, 2020
ISBN: 9783110709124