Deleuze, Altered States and Film

225 Pages·2007·0.9 MB·English

by  Anna Powell

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Anna Powell is Senior Lecturer in Film l Deleuze, Altered States and Film offers a
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Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University. typology of altered states, defining dream,
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in their cinematic expression. The book
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presents altered states films as significant

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neurological, psychological and philosophical
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‘Anna Powell does three valuable things in this book. First, she provides a lucid e simultaneously present and induce altered
introduction to Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of film. Second, she puts this philosophy to S consciousness. They consider dream states

work, showing how it is useful for the understanding of particular films. And third, she A and the popularisation of alterity in drugs
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vividly recalls for us the “altered states” to which film, at its best, gives us access.’ films. The altered bodies of erotic arousal and
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Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University trance states are explored, using haptics and

F synaesthesia. Cinematic distortions of space
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‘This book is a valuable contribution to the growing field of Deleuzian film studies. l and time as well as new digital and fractal
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By combining precise film analysis with insightful conceptual thinking, Anna Powell directions are opened up.

demonstrates how a Deleuzian approach of cinema provides a deep understanding of the
ways in which (digital) cinema alters our minds.’ Anna Powell’s distinctive re-mapping of
Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam the film experience as altered state uses a
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Deleuzian approach to explore how cinema
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alters us by ‘affective contamination’.
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Arguing that specific cinematic techniques
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derange the senses and the mind, she
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o makes an assemblage of philosophy and art,
counter-cultural writers and filmmakers to
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Deleuze
provide insights into the cinematic event as
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ISBN 978 0 7486 3282 4 The book applies Deleuze, alone and with
Altered StAteS Guattari, to mainstream films like Donnie
Darko as well as arthouse and experimental

Edinburgh University Press
cinema. Offering innovative readings of
And Film
22 George Square
‘classic’ altered states movies such as 2001,

Edinburgh Performance and Easy Rider, it includes

EH8 9LF E ‘avant-garde’ and ‘underground’ work. Powell
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in asserts the Deleuzian approach as itself a
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Cover illustration: Scene still from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). u kind of altered state that explodes habitual
Courtesy of MGM/The Kobal Collection. rg
Cover design: Barrie Tullett h ways of thinking and feeling.
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Deleuze, Altered States and Film
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Deleuze, Altered States
and Film
Anna Powell
Edinburgh University Press
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© Anna Powell,2007
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square,Edinburgh
Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd,Manchester,and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd,King’s Lynn,Norfolk
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3282 4 (hardback)
The right ofAnna Powell to be identified as author ofthis work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction:Altered States,Affect and Film 1
Mixed Planes and Singular Encounters:Methods 5
Critical Contexts 6
Altered States:Menu 9
1 The Dream Machine 16
Spellbound 16
Schizoanalysis,Becoming and Film 19
Dreams in Anti-Oedipus 21
Deleuze Bergson and Dreams 22
Ultra-confusional Activity:Dreams and Un Chien andalou 24
The Dreamer Entranced:Meshes of the Afternoon 26
Waking Dreams:Fire Walk with Me 32
Fire Walk with Me 33
Worlds Out of Frame 35
Beyond the Flashback:Recollections,Dreams and Thoughts 38
From Dream-Image to Implied Dream:The Cinema of
Enchantment and The Tales of Hoffmann 40
2 Pharmacoanalysis 54
Altered States:The Return of the Repressed 54
Castaneda and Becoming-Primitive 56
Creative (D)evolution 61
Becoming Anti-matter 63
Tuning In,Turning On,Dropping Out:The Trip and Easy
Rider 65
The Camera as Drug:Easy Rider 70
The Breakdown:Trainspottingand Requiem for a Dream 73
Black Holes and Lines of Death:Requiem for a Dream 75
Counter-actualisation:Two Kinds of Death 82
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome:Narcotic Multiplicity 84
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vi ,    
Dancing in the Light:Ecstasy in Human Traffic 87
Conclusions:Pharmacoanalysis and the Great Health 89
3 Altered Body Maps and the Cinematic Sensorium 97
Sensational Cinema 97
Images of Sensation 100
Stan Brakhage and the Art of Vision 101
Dog Star Man:Connection to the Cosmos 103
Flicker 107
The Flicker:Stroboscopic Film 108
Yantra and Lapis:Analogue Trance 110
Sensational Sex 116
Fuses 120
Performance:Erotic Home Movie 123
Strange Days:Sex in the Head 127
4 Altered States of Time 137
Sculpting in Time:Deleuze,Tarkovsky and Stalker 137
Bergson’s Time:Movement and Duration 142
Deleuze’s Time-Image 144
Entrancing Time:The Crystal-Image and Altered States in
Heart of Glass 147
The Crystal-Image 148
Agitation of the Mind 149
Crystal and Cloud 151
Liquid Crystal:Stalker 153
Donnie Darko:Incompossible Worlds 156
Deflecting Time’s Arrow 157
2001:A Time Odyssey 161
A Prehistory of Consciousness 163
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite 166
Insert:The Abstract Time-Image 168
Time in a Room 168
Conclusion:Becoming-Fractal 176
Virtual States/Actual Implications 179
Forms of Thought or Creation 182
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 vii
Bibliography 189
Works Cited 189
Electronic Resources 197
Filmography 198
Index 201
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to Berthold Schoene and the English Research
Institute, and Sue Zlosnik and the English Department at Manchester
Metropolitan University. They have encouraged my research, agreed to
host the Deleuze Studies Website and provided me with a term’s sabbati-
cal. PhD and MA students past and present have offered further mental
stimulus. I also acknowledge support from the UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council for a further term’s research leave to work on this
project. David Curtis of the Arts Council kindly lent me Belson’s cine
films and the viewing tables at the ICA in London long ago.Lux Cinema,
Hoxton was an excellent source of rare films.Sarah Edwards,James Dale
and the team at Edinburgh University Press have again been helpful and
efficient in bringing the book to completion.
Thanks to friends and fellow-travellers for their inspiration, support
and love through this book and always.David Deamer,Alan Hook,Rachael
McConkey, Venetta Uye and Ana Miller are the regular A/V team who
input long hours ofcreative work filming,editing and helping to make our
webjournal what it is today. Rob Lapsley takes the reading group to the
outer circuits (and beyond). Fiona Price offered musical insights. Janet
Schofield re-checked the proofs. And finally, special thanks to Ranald
Warburton for companionship,patience,sound advice and mind-stretch-
ing debate at untimely hours.