Washed in Blood: Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema

256 Pages·2011·0.3 MB·English

by  Claire Sisco King

WASHED

IN BLOOD
Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema
CLAIR E SISCO KING
Washed in Blood
•

Washed in Blood
•
Male Sacrifice, Trauma,
and the Cinema
Claire Sisco King
rutgers university press
new brunswick, new jersey, and london
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King, Claire Sisco.
Washed in blood : male sacrifice, trauma, and the cinema / Claire Sisco King.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–5159–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–5160–9
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Heroes in motion pictures. 2. Death in motion pictures. 3. Sacrifice in motion
pictures. 4. Psychic trauma in motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1995.9.H44K56 2011
791.43'652—dc22 2011004715
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Copyright © 2012 by Claire Sisco King
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer
Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use”
as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
For Matt, MP, and Lo

C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Reel Presence, Sacrifice, and the Cinema 19
2 Unhinged Heroes and Alpha Traumas 43
3 Free Falls in the 1990s 79
4 Remakes, Resurrections, and Sacrificial Returns 120
Epilogue: Big-Screen Memories 161
Notes 167
Selected Bibliography 207
Index 211
vii

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
I want first to thank the members of the “New Directions in Trauma Studies”
seminar at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vander-
bilt University. Although a year spent thinking, writing, and talking about
trauma should not really be called a “good time,” this experience was amaz-
ing. I owe a great deal to each of the seminar participants: Laura Carpenter,
Kate Daniels, Jon Ebert, Vivien Fryd, Christina Karageorgou-Bastea, Linda
Manning, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, and Maurice Stevens. I also thank the cen-
ter’s executive director, Mona Frederick, and the center’s staff for facilitating
such a tremendous year.
I owe many thanks to my colleagues in Communication Studies at Vander-
bilt University: Vanessa Beasley, Bonnie Dow, Kass Kovalcheck, John Sloop,
and Paul Stob. I could not ask for a better place to work or for a better commu-
nity among which to spend my days. I also extend great thanks to Paul Young,
my colleague in Film Studies, who gave me a gracious welcome at Vanderbilt.
I heartily thank the American Association of University Women, whose
generous fellowship allowed me to complete graduate school. Without their
help many years ago, this project would not exist. I also thank Vanderbilt Uni-
versity for a pre-tenure research leave, which allowed me to finish this book.
An earlier version of portions of chapter 4 and the epilogue originally
appeared as “Rogue Waves, Remakes, and Resurrections: Allegorical Displace-
ment and Screen Memories in Poseidon,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94 (2008):
430–454. Permission to use this material is courtesy of the National Commu-
nication Association.
I am grateful for the faculty at Indiana University who shaped this work
(and me) for the better. Joan Hawkins earns special thanks for never judg-
ing my caffeine habits or bad taste in movies and for being an incomparable
advisor. I also thank Barbara Klinger, Beverly Stoeltje, Constance Furey, John
ix