Description
Book SynopsisWhy might interdependence, the idea that we are made up of our relations, be horrifying? On the surface, interdependence—the idea that individuals are each made up of their relations—appears to be a beautiful thing. Ecology, social theory, and the driving forces of digital media seem to agree that more and deeper connections to others are better. Yet there is a dark side of interdependence, too, that remains hidden away. Interdependence threatens the western philosophical ideal of individualism, and this threat lurks unseen in the backs of our minds like a dark spectre. Philosophy can give the contours of this spectre, and film can shine a light on its shadowy details. Together, they reveal a horror of relations. Contributors to this volume interrogate the question of interdependence through analyses of contemporary film and give voice to new perspectives on its meaning. Conceived before and written during the COVID-19 pandemic and through a period of deep social unrest, this volume illuminates a dark reality that is both perennial and timely.
Table of ContentsForeword: Fear of Film: Cinema and Affective Entanglements, Kendall Phillips
Introduction: The Horror of Relations, Jonathan Beever
Section 1: Familial Relations
Chapter 1: Love and Horror: In Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother and Lee Chang-Dong’s Poetry, Eunah Lee
Chapter 2: Predatory Masculinity and Domestic Violence in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, David Baumeister
Chapter 3: “Will God Forgive Us?: Interdependence and Self-Transcendence in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed”, Vernon W. Cisney
Section 2: Social-Political Relations
Chapter 4: The Dark Night Of Ecological Despair: Awaiting Reconsecration in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Chandler Rogers and Tober Corrigan
Chapter 5: The Horror of Interdependence: Climate Migration Anxiety by the Radical Right in Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja’s Aniara (2018) and Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), Sydney Lane
Chapter 6: Dissecting the Corrupted Body Politic: Fear, ‘Body Horror’ and the Failure of Relations, Josh Grant-Young
Chapter 7: The Danger of Ecological and Economic Interdependence in the Films of Cormac McCarthy, Jonathan Elmore and Rick Elmore
Section 3: Techno-Ecological Relations
Chapter 8: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth: The Horror of Being Prey and Forgetting Nature, Yet Again, in Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, Eric S. Godoy
Chapter 9: Weird Ecologies and the Uncanny in The Happening, Brian Onishi
Chapter 10: Resident Evil, the Zomborg, and the Dark Side of Technological Interdependence, Jonathan Beever
Chapter 11: When the Flame Goes Out: The Horror of Connected Consciousness, Luis Favela
Conclusion: Imaginaries of Interdependence, Jonathan Beever
Coda: Difficult Intersubjectivity: Interdependence and Cinematic Ethics, Robert Sinnerbrink
