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Comedies of Nihilism: The Representation of Tragedy Onscreen PDF

188 Pages·2017·3.578 MB·English
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C O M E D I E S O F N I H I L I S M The Representation of Tragedy Onscreen AMIR KHAN Comedies of Nihilism Amir Khan Comedies of Nihilism The Representation of Tragedy Onscreen Amir Khan LNU-MSU College of International Business Liaoning Normal University Dalian, Liaoning, China ISBN 978-3-319-59893-2 ISBN 978-3-319-59894-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59894-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944602 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Jeffrey Fletcher Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To the Occupiers A cknowledgements I am fortunate to have a second opportunity to compose a page like this. So much of my thinking and research is indebted to Stanley Cavell as both my previous work, I believe, and this work, will show. I know not how to go on exactly in expressing my gratitude because whatever I say will have been said and felt by many others as Stanley, fittingly, has had similar influences on a range of scholars of much finer calibre than me. Some fellow Cavellians whose encouragement and support, either ongoing or at select intervals in my thinking and writing, has spurred me along are Sérgio Dias Branco, Larry Jackson, Adam Gonya, Lawrence F. Rhu, Peter S. Fosl, Rachel Malkin, Byron Davies, Sara Saylor, Bruce Krajewski, and David LaRocca. Moreover, on this second occasion I am all the more grateful to have my daughter, Arden, in my life, my thoughts, and my aspirations; she remains one of my happiest achive- ments. I draw continued strength and inspiration from my sister, Sarah, and from my brother, Raheel, and his loving and supportive family. My mom’s sacrifices are the sort only the luckiest children have the privilege of taking for granted every day. Since my last dedication, I have found myself, unexpectedly and hap- pily (in hindsight) exiled, from a so-called North American or Canadian existence to a newfound geographical one in China. Friends whose warm company, either in person or over Skype, I am glad has thus far extended over the Pacific are Jonas Ng, Zac Schnier, Noah Richmond, Keith Friedlander, A.S. Dhillon, Nitin Kumar, Jeffrey Fletcher, and Andrew vii viii ACKNOwLEDGEMENTS Song. I am also blessed to know and have known Zahid Makhdoom, whose spirit spans continents and whose soul and presence I will spend a lifetime trying to mimic. Social media affords otherwise disparate souls, however awkwardly, or perhaps however conventionally these days, an opportunity to remain in touch, either through heated exchanges or via many accu- mulated likes and reactions. I’d like to thank Dave Durrant, warbling J. Turpitude (aka Don Lightband), Colin waddell, Samir Gandesha, Bethany Ruth Guenther Peter, Tim williams, Justin DeMaris, John O’Carroll, and Chris Fleming. And, being on this side of the world, I did have a chance to reconnect with other usual suspects in Nagoya, Japan at the tenth annual Generative Anthropology Summer Conference in 2016. I cherish the professional and personal exchanges I have had with Eric Gans, Matthew Taylor, Andrew Bartlett, Richard van Oort, Ian Dennis, Peter Goldman, Benjamin Matthews, and Kieran Stewart. Also, I must acknowledge a host of Shakespeareans and Renaissance men and women, whom I’ve run into elsewhere, including Bill walthall, the late Eric Binnie, Douglas Green, J.F. Bernard, Gail Kern Paster, Ryan Netzley, Robert Knapp, Neema Parvini, Laurie Johnson, Mary Crane, Emily Shortslef, and Douglas Lanier: I am so glad to know you all and so pleased to have shared my thoughts and ideas with you. New friends and colleagues in China I would like to mention include Dean Liu Yamei, who has been extremely helpful, supportive, and open to my research initiatives. I’d like to thank also members of a very capa- ble support staff, especially Abraham Hammar and Selina Song. Other colleagues I have the great pleasure of knowing, and who double as excellent building mates, include Steven Henry, Chandra Sinha, Fanis Trantos, and Moctar Alanda. To Associate Dean Mike Coutts, both mentor and friend: I cannot thank you enough for giving me the oppor- tunity to teach in Dalian. One should not use the word “lifeline” too hastily for fear of both exaggeration and cliché; but, to use another, I was at the end of my rope when I received a call, seemingly a world away—a call which opened up for me a world. Convention in China prevents close acquaintances from expressing heartfelt thanks. I am not likely to be pitch-perfect here, but I owe sin- cere thanks to Lü Yan Xia and wang Jing. I am also delighted to have discussed with and learnt from Chen Beile who has begun, like me, in a new world. Lastly, I’d like to mention Han Yang—in some ways my namesake and to whom I may‚ one day in future‚ owe a dedication. c ontents 1 Introduction 1 2 Farming Out Resentment: Up in the Air 29 3 All War and No Agency: Tropic Thunder 51 4 Tragic Cinema: The Death of Subjectivities in JCVD 65 5 Hiding from Significance: Winnebago Man 93 6 A Claim to Community: The Trotsky 107 7 A Plea for Time in a State of Nature: Be Kind Rewind 129 8 Losing the Name of Action: Hamlet 2 145 9 Conclusion 163 Index 167 ix l f ist of igures Fig. 6.1 The “Grand Narrative” of Leon’s life appears to us sans humains 115 Fig. 6.2 The camera begins its vertical pan 116 Fig. 6.3 The dialectic passes … 116 Fig. 6.4 … before our eyes 117 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction My central thesis is that film depicts decay and, further, that they have no choice in the matter (though I cannot say they had no choice in the mat- ter). The present-day ontological realities of film itself necessitate that even films that end happily (i.e., affirmatively) do so ironically, by way, that is, of presenting a world dead to us and past, to be received pas- sively. Movies cannot show us the future—or, perhaps, if they want to be taken seriously, a dystopic future (the sort parodied in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder, as Scorcher I–VI)—dystopic because, as I will go on to argue, film reveals, in the fullest sense of the Fryvian use of “revelation” (meaning “apocalyptic”) its hands as bare. The revelation is that there is nothing to reveal—a cause either of scandal or empowerment depend- ing on how you view things. Through the reading of seven films that makeup, but do not exhaust, a genre I loosely call, in lockstep with the Stanley Cavell, the comedies of nihilism, I want to emphasize that film, for whatever reason, has been made to show its hand as bare. The pos- sibilities of the art form are not to be explored here and the possibility of recovery—say, of possibilities for, or of, the medium lost—only ten- tatively expressed. This project is a continuation of Cavell’s treatment of comedy (which, incidentally, follows his reading of Shakespearean trag- edy [King Lear and Othello, anyhow])—more specifically, of comedy as depicted on film. Cavell argues in his Pursuits of Happiness (1981)1 that the golden age of Hollywood cinema, in working toward a certain type of happy conclu- sion, depicts not the marriage that consecrates the conventional happy © The Author(s) 2017 1 A. Khan, Comedies of Nihilism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59894-9_1

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