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The aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of violence in a manner that is "stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way" so that audience members are able to connect references from the "play of images and signs" to artworks, genre conventions, cultural symbols, or concepts.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links Information. ... Shortcut: WP:WIN Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, also an online community. ... Shortcut: WP:CU Marking articles for cleanup This page is undergoing a transition to an easier-to-maintain format. ... This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent format — it is a style guide. ... The Bath, a painting by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ... Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Power of representation

In high culture

High culture forms such as fine art and literature have aestheticized violence into a form of autonomous art. In 1991, University of Georgia literature professor Joel Black stated that "(if) any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder." Black goes on to note that "...if murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist — a performance artist or anti-artist whose specialty is not creation but destruction." (1991: 14). This conception of an aesthetic element of murder has a long history; in 1890, Thomas de Quincey wrote that "Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle… and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it - that is, in relation to good taste."^[1] This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Fine art refers to arts that are concerned with beauty or which appealed to taste (SOED 1991). ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... Joel Black is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. ... The Parthenons facade showing an interpretation of golden rectangles in its proportions. ... Thomas de Quincey from the frontispiece of Revolt of the Tartars, Thomas de Quincey (August 15, 1785 – December 8, 1859) was an English author and intellectual. ...

In popular culture

In addition to high culture aestheticizations of violence, mass media forms such as newspaper and television news reporting have also aestheticized violence with their sensationalized reports on crime and warfare. Maria Tatar’s book Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany analyzes murders in pre-Hitler Germany and their artistic representations, investigating "the chilling motives behind representations that aestheticize violence, and that turn the mutilated female body into an object of fascination." ^[2] The period of German history from 1919 to 1933 is known as the Weimar Republic (in German Weimarer Republik). It is named after the city of Weimar, where a national assembly convened to produce a new constitution after the German monarchy was abolished following the nations defeat in World...

Reviewer Patrice Petro calls Tatar’s book "a study of German avant-garde and modernist art and a sustained reflection on the relationships between gender, crime, violence and representation. . ."^[2] Leslie Kitchen called the book "...a profound and provocative contribution to our understanding of sexual combat and the aestheticization of violence in modern culture."^[2]

Lilie Chouliaraki's article The aestheticization of suffering on television (2006) analyzes "an example of war footage in order to trace the ways in which the tension between presenting airwar as an ‘objective’ piece of news and as an instance of intense human suffering is resolved in television’s strategies of mediation." For example, Chouliaraki argues that the "bombardment of Baghdad in 2003 during the Iraq war was filmed in long-shot and presented in a quasiliterary narrative that capitalized on an aesthetics of horror, on sublime spectacle (Boltanski). The aestheticization of suffering on television is thus produced by a visual and linguistic complex that eliminates the human pain aspect of suffering, whilst retaining the phantasmagoric effects of a tableau vivant", producing an "aestheticization of suffering [that] manages simultaneously to preserve an aura of objectivity and impartiality, and to take a pro-war side in the war footage."^[3] To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In movies

A number of filmmakers from the 20th century have aestheticized violence. According to James Fox, filmmaker Donald Cammell "...looked upon violence as an artist might look on paint. [He asked:] What are its components? What's its nature? Its glamour?"^[4] Thomas Harris created a fictional character called Hannibal Lecter, a cannibal and aesthete portrayed by Anthony Hopkins on screen. In the films The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001), directors Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott, respectively intentionally generate excitement and anticipation when Lecter is about to kill (and eat) a victim. Donald Seaton Cammell (January 17, 1934 – April 24, 1996) was a Scottish film director who enjoys a cult reputation thanks to his debut film Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. ... Thomas Harris. ... Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character in a series of novels by author Thomas Harris. ... This article is about consuming ones own species. ... Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE (IPA: ) (born 31 December 1937) is an Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Welsh film, stage and television actor. ... The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 Academy Award-winning film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. ... Hannibal is a 2001 film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. ... Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944, in Baldwin, New York) is an American film director, producer and writer. ... Sir Ridley Scott (born November 30, 1937 in South Shields, County Durham) is an influential Academy Award-nominated English film director, and producer. ...

In Xavier Morales' review of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1, entitled "Beauty and violence", he calls the film "a groundbreaking aestheticization of violence." Morales says that the film, which he calls "easily one of the most violent movies ever made" is "a breathtaking landscape in which art and violence coalesce into one unforgettable aesthetic experience". Morales argues that "...Tarantino manages to do precisely what Alex de Large was trying to do in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: he presents violence as a form of expressive art...[in which the]...violence is so physically graceful, visually dazzling and meticulously executed that our instinctual, emotional responses undermine any rational objections we may have. Tarantino is able to transform an object of moral outrage into one of aesthetic beauty...[, in which,]...like all art forms, the violence serves a communicative purpose apart from its aesthetic value." When the female sword-wielding protagonist "...skillfully slices and dices her way through...[the Crazy 88 fighters]...we get a sense that she is using them as a kind of canvas for her expression of revenge...[,]...like an artist who expresses herself through brush and paint,...[she]...expresses herself through sword and blood."^[5] Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, actor, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. ... Kill Bill is the fourth feature film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino released in two parts: Volume 1 & Volume 2. ... Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an influential and acclaimed American film director and producer. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Film critics analyzing violent film images that seek to aesthetically please the viewer mainly fall into two categories. Critics who see depictions of violence in film as superficial and exploitative argue that it leads audience members to become desensitized to brutality, thus increasing their aggression.

Critics who view violence as a type of content,or as a theme, claim it is cathardic and provides "acceptable outlets for anti-social impulses."^[6] According to Adrian Martin, these critics who hold violent cinema in high regard have developed "a response to those who decry everything from Taxi Driver to Terminator 2 as dehumanising, desensitising cultural influences." They argue that "screen violence is not real violence, and should never be confused with it. Movie violence is fun, spectacle, make-believe; it's dramatic metaphor, or a necessary catharsis akin to that provided by Jacobean theatre; it's generic, pure sensation, pure fantasy. It has its own changing history, its codes, its precise aesthetic uses."^[7] This article is about the 1976 American film. ... Terminator 2: Judgment Day (commonly abbreviated T2) is a 1991 movie directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick. ...

Bruder argues that "aestheticized violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film." Movies such as the popular action film Die Hard 2: Die Harder are very violent, but they do "not fall into the category of aestheticized violence because it is not stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way." Films that use "stylized [e.g. aestheticized] violence revel in guns, gore and explosions, exploiting mise-en-scene not so much to provide narrative environment as to create the appearance of a 'movie' atmosphere against which specifically cinematic spectacle can unfold." In movies with aestheticized violence, the "standard realist modes of editing and cinematography are violated in order to spectacularize the action being played out on the screen"; directors use "quick and awkward editing", "canted framings," shock cuts, and slow motion, to emphasize the impacts of bullets or the "spurting of blood."^[6] Die Hard 2: Die Harder, the second Die Hard movie, was released on Wednesday, July 4, 1990 and starred Bruce Willis as cop John McClane. ... In film theory, mise-en-scène [mizA~sEn] refers to everything that is to appear before the camera and its arrangement -- sets, props, actors, costumes, camera movements and performances. ...

For viewers of films with aestheticized, such as John Woo’s movies, "One of the many pleasures" from watching Woo’s films, such as Hard Target is that it gets viewers to recognize how Woo plays with conventions "from other Woo films" and how it "connects up with films...which include imitations of or homages to Woo." Bruder argues that films with aestheticized violence such as "'Hard Target, True Romance' and 'Tombstone' are [filled] with... signs" and indicators, so that "the stylized violence they contain ultimately serves as...another interruption in the narrative drive" of the film.^[6] John Woo (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) (born May 1, 1946) is a Chinese film director and producer. ...

History in art

Antiquity

Plato proposed to ban poets from his ideal republic because he feared that their aesthetic ability to construct attractive narratives about immoral behaviour would corrupt young minds. Plato’s writings refer to poetry as a kind of rhetoric, whose "...influence is pervasive and often harmful." Plato believed that poetry that was "unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community." He warned that tragic poetry can produce "a disordered psychic regime or constitution" by inducing "a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in ...sorrow, grief, anger, [and] resentment. As such, Plato was in effect arguing that "What goes on in the theater, in your home, in your fantasy life, are connected" to what you do in real life.^[8] PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... iDEAL is an Internet payment method in The Netherlands, based on online banking. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken and written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ...

Aristotle, though, advocated a useful role for music, drama, and tragedy: a way for people to purge their negative emotions. Aristotle mentions catharsis at the end of his Politics , where he notes that after people listen to music that elicits pity and fear, they "are liable to become possessed" by these negative emotions. However, afterwards, Aristotle points out that these people they return to "a normal condition as if they had been medically treated and undergone a purge [catharsis]...All experience a certain purge [catharsis] and pleasant relief. In the same manner cathartic melodies give innocent joy to men" (from Politics VIII:7; 1341b 35-1342a 8).^[9] Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... Catharsis is the Greek Katharsis word meaning purification or cleansing derived from the ancient Greek gerund καθαίρειν transliterated as kathairein to purify, purge, and adjective katharos pure or clean (ancient and modern Greek: καθαρός). // The term in drama refers to a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great...

1400s-1600s

The artist Hieronymus Bosch, from the fifteenth and sixteenth century, used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. The sixteenth-century artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted "...the nightmarish imagery that reflect, if in an extreme fashion, popular dread of the Apocalypse and Hell."^[10] Mathis Gothart-Neithart, a German artist known as "Gruenewald" (1480-1528) depicted "intense emotion, especially painful emotion." His painting of the Crucifixion "...does not spare the beholder. Gruenewald relentlessly brings out all the marks of terrible suffering and agony, induced by the cruelty and torture of the executioners...[vividly conveying] a sense of horror and pain."^[11] Gruenewald’s ‘Isenheim Altarpiece’ also shows a violent image of Jesus on the cross, "with his body covered in wounds", with the focus on "...Jesus’ suffering and his death." ^[12] Hieronymus Bosch, (latinized; also Jeroen Bosch or his real name Jeroen van Aken) (c. ... Bruegels The Painter and The Connoisseur drawn c. ... Look up Apocalypse in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Mathis Gothart-Neithart (1480-1528) was a German artist from the 1500s. ...

1700s-present

In the mid-18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an Italian etcher, archaeologist and architect active from 1740, did imaginary etchings of prisons that depicted people "stretched on racks or trapped like rats in maze-like dungeons", an "aestheticization of violence and suffering."^[13] In 1849, as revolutions raged in European streets and authorities were putting down protests and consolidating state powers, composer Richard Wagner wrote that "I have an enormous desire to practice a little artistic terrorism."^[14] Laurent Tailhade is reputed to have stated, after Auguste Vaillant bombed the Chamber of Deputies in 1893: "Qu'importent les victimes, si le geste est beau? [What do the victims matter, so long as the gesture is beautiful]." In 1929 André Breton's Second Manifesto on surrealist art stated that "L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule" [The simplest Surrealist act consists of running down into the street, pistols in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd]."^[14] Giovanni Battista (also Giambattista) Piranesi (4 October 1729 - 9 November 1778) was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric prisons (Carceri dInvenzione). ... Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or music dramas as he later came to call them). ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Auguste Valliant, french anarchist most famous for his bomb attack on the french Chamber of Deputies in 1893. ... André Breton André Breton (French IPA: ) (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of surrealism. ... Surrealism picks about cautiously with reality. ...

Theories and semiotic analysis

Baudrillard

French postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that whereas modern societies were "...organized around the production and consumption of commodities", "postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs." As such, in "...the postmodern media and consumer society, everything becomes an image, a sign, [or] a spectacle." For Baudrillard, the West's "commercialization of the whole world...will turn out rather to have been the aestheticization of the whole world — its cosmopolitan spectacularization, its transformation into images, its semiological organization." As a result, the "previously separate domains of the economy, art, politics, and sexuality" become "collapsed into each other", and art penetrates "all spheres of existence." Thus, Baudrillard argues that "[o]ur society has given rise to a general aestheticization: all forms of culture — not excluding anti-cultural ones — are promoted and all models of representation and anti-representation are taken on board."^[15] Postmodernist architecture of the Stata Center by Frank Gehry Sydney Opera House The term Postmodernism (sometimes referred to as Pomo, Po-Mo, or PoMo [1], [2], [3]) was coined in the early 1960s to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, founding the postmodern architecture. ... Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929 – March 6, 2007) (IPA pronunciation: [1]) was a French cultural theorist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. ... Commodification is the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, to assign economic value to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms, for example, an idea, identity, gender. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ...

Semiotic analysis

Still images

When a person views an isolated painting, photograph or cartoon, they are viewing a static image. This fact suggests that looking at a still image requires less interpretative skill than analyzing, say, a scene from a movie^{[citation needed]}. If a photographer takes a still photo of a police officer's struggle to arrest a young man, for example, the denotative meaning might be "there was a man dressed as a police officer struggling with a man of a certain age whilst a photographer made a picture." On the other hand, the connotative meanings might range from, "law enforcement in action" to "a heroic fight to subdue a dangerous terrorist about to release sarin gas," to "police use excessive force to arrest non-violent protesters," to "fancy dress party ends badly." The attribution of the specific subtext is left to the caption writer, the commentators and the audience. In semiotics, denotation is the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary. ... This word has distinct meanings in logic, philosophy, and common usage. ... Subtext is content of a book, play, film or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters (or author) but is implicit or becomes something understood by the reader / viewer as the production unfolds. ...

However, certain photographs, Susan Sontag observed, have become through repeated exposure "ethical reference points," such as the many images depicting the victims and liberation of Bergen-Belsen (1977). From this perspective, the subtext of such images, though still connotatively open, has been somewhat restrained by familiarity, predominant cultural beliefs regarding the Holocaust, and perhaps by overusage.

Film and video

News reporting

If there is a motion picture or video recording of the previously-described scenario of a police officer arresting a man, the filmmakers, videographers, and editors have a great deal of latitude to reframe this scene, by fragmenting the recording, depicting it from different vantage points, editing the material, and reassembling these components. A film editor can produce a non-realistic sequence of intercut, edited images, which forces the audience to interpret those images according to a different set of semiotic rules. Even without editing or alteration, a film or video recordings' mise en scène and non-verbal signs become much more explicit and enable the audience to attribute meaning to the scenario. Realism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation. ... Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... Mise en scène [mizɑ̃sÉ›n] has been called film criticisms grand undefined term, but that is not because of a lack of definitions. ...

The value of this video as a signifier will be determined by its relations to the other signifiers in the system. Thus, if the video is included in a reputable television news programme, it will acquire a greater claim to be indexical and its status is more likely to be considered reliable "evidence" of real world events. In semiotic terms, the words spoken by the television presenter will be symbolic, and the images will have both iconic and indexical qualities. In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used. ... In semiotics, a sign is generally defined as, ...something that stands for something else, to someone in some capacity. ...

The "semiotic value" of the video will change if it is transposed into a polemical or satirical programme, presented by a commentator, or screened with on-screen captions (e.g.,"Crime Wave in the Streets", or "Protesters Brutalized by Police"). These substitute contexts form modality indicators that may help the viewer to assess the plausibility, credibility, or truthfulness of the content. The violence shown on-screen can be aestheticized by the values of the symbolical signs used by the news presenter, by captions placed on-screen, or by the relations with other signifiers in the same programme (e.g., if the arrest video is preceded by a report about "antisocial and criminal behaviour"). In semiotics, modality refers to the particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i. ...

Fictional film or video

If a film or television director staged a similar scene, the audience will be predisposed to consider it less "real" because the scenario is being filtered through the film-maker's sensibilities and the outcome will reflect the director's motives. Hence, the lighting, make-up, costumes, acting methods, cutting, and soundtrack music selection will combine to inform the audience about the film maker's intentions. // In film formats, the sound track is the physical area of the film which records the synchronized sound. ...

The culture industry's mass-produced texts and images about crime, violence, and war have been consolidated into genres. Filmmakers typically choose from a predictable range of narrative conventions and use stereotyped characters, and clichéd symbols and metaphors. Over time, certain styles and conventions of shooting and editing are standardised within a medium or a genre. Some conventions tend to naturalise the content and make it seem more real. Other methods deliberately breach convention to create an effect, such as the canted angles, rapid edits, and slow-motion shots used in films with aestheticized violence. The term culture industry was coined by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973). ... A genre is any of the traditional divisions of art forms from a single field of activity into various kinds according to criteria particular to that form. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... For the 1996 Blur single, see Stereotypes (song). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Analysis of selected films

In The Accused (1988), filmmaker Jonathan Kaplan stages a detailed rape scene to consider the moral and legal quality of the spectators who, while not engaging in sexual intercourse, nevertheless shouted encouragement to those that were. Viewers were offended by the brutality of the scenes of the assault, which would have constituted hardcore pornography in a different context. Nonetheless, viewers accepted that the violence was contextualized and necessary to reinforce the social and political subtext of the script. The Accused is a 1988 dramatic film starring Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis, directed by Jonathan Kaplan. ... Jonathan Kaplan is a US filmmaker who was born on November 25, 1947, in Paris, France. ...

A film such as The Accused could be considered an example of sensitization, a form of reverse modeling in which the audience is invited to react strongly against some extreme example of realistic violence so that they are less likely to imitate it. There may also be a catharsis. Seymour Feshbach (1955; see also Feshbach & Singer 1971) has argued that fantasy violence can have a cathartic effect on the audience, defusing latent aggression, and reducing the possibility of aggressive behavior. Such outcomes would suggest that the depiction of realistic violence can be a public good and that its display should not be limited. Sensitization is an example of non-associative learning in which the progressive amplification of a response follows repeated administrations of a stimulus (Bell et al. ... Catharsis is the Greek Katharsis word meaning purification or cleansing derived from the ancient Greek gerund καθαίρειν transliterated as kathairein to purify, purge, and adjective katharos pure or clean (ancient and modern Greek: καθαρός). // The term in drama refers to a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great...

In contrast, Leonard Berkowitz's (1977, 1986) "Theory of Disinhibition" proposes that while some people are naturally aggressive, they are usually able to repress this tendency. An obsessive interest in violent imagery in the cinema or on television may weaken their inhibitions and lead to a feeling that the release of their aggression is acceptable. This is allied to the "Theory of Desensitisation" which proposes that the consistent viewing of violent imagery gradually conditions viewers to accept violence as normal, i.e., it dulls their sensitivity to aggressive behaviour in everyday life.^[16]

Matthew Crowder analyzes the aestheticization of violence in Strange Days, a film by director Kathryn Bigelow (1995), particularly for a scene depicting the rape of a woman that is "...filmed in real-time using a first-person subjective camera." Strange Days tells the story of Lenny Nero, who sells an illegal, futuristic technology that allows people to record their sensory experiences onto a minidisc, so that other people can "play back" these sensory experiences and have them "wired" directly into their brain. In the film, Max, a rapist, records his rape of a woman, Iris, and gives the recording to the unsuspecting Lenny. When Max, the "... perpetrator of violence is given control of the cinematic apparatus," this is "... referencing films such as Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1959) and Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)." Like "...Peeping Tom’s psychopathic killer, Max does seem to see himself as some kind of artist, recording the rape and sending it to Lenny." Strange Days is the title of a 1995 science fiction film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and produced and co-written by her ex-husband James Cameron with the assistance of Jay Cocks. ... ARSE FACE!(born 27 November 1951) is an American film director. ...

The "...first person perspective the filming of the rape scene is unrelenting, the camera never turns away from the fear and panic of Iris whose body is not only slung about by the unknown killer but also subjected to an unflinching gaze that the audience is punished with too, made complicit in the rape by their passivity." Crowder argues that "[t]he entire notion of the subjective camera - an aesthetic element of the film -, its scopophilic, voyeuristic and sadistic nature, is revealed in all its depravity." As such, "[t]he aesthetic experience of the [rape] scene is one of shock, horror, dislocation and passivity at the way the camera represents the helpless body of Iris as no more than an object." The film’s use of "playback" clips, as in the rape scene, causes a "...stylistic disruption of Hollywood codes and an even more important aesthetic effect: the disruption of the normal codes of identification with character and narrative."^[17]

Bigelow was criticized for the rape scene by University of Maryland professor Carla Peterson, in Peterson’s article ‘Director joins boys' club -- and it only costs her compassion’ (1995). Crowder claims that Peterson attacked Strange Days "... as misogynist and offensive because she [Peterson] feels that it tries to create an unproblematic, if slightly uncomfortable, spectacle out of rape." As such, Crowder argues that Peterson "... fails to see that the film concerns more than a logical narrative (which if anything grows increasingly incoherent)" and claims that Peterson has "...misread the scene out of context" and dismissed "...textual elements that clearly signal criticism of both Hollywood and the cinematic apparatus as a tool of masculinist domination." Crowder "challenge[s] whether Peterson’s response is actually aesthetic, as she makes little reference to communication between work and audience." In contrast, Crowder interprets Strange Days in a feminist context, which he argues is "...perhaps its most persuasive aesthetic effect." Crowder holds that "...Strange Days can be seen as a self-conscious discourse on cinema and that part of this discourse concerns the act of aesthetic judgement." Furthermore, he states that the film’s "narrative can be seen to allegorise the problem of aesthetics and value."^[17] Carla L. Peterson is a Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. ...

A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess. The plot, which is set in a futuristic England (circa 1995, as imagined in 1965), follows the life of a teenage gang leader named Alex. In Alexander Cohen’s analysis of Kubrick’s film, he argues that the "ultra-violence" of the young protagonist, Alex, "...represents the breakdown of culture itself." In the film, gang members are "...[s]eeking idle de-contextualized violence as entertainment" as an escape from the emptiness of their dystopian society. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an influential and acclaimed American film director and producer. ... Anthony Burgess (February 25, 1917 – November 22, 1993) was an English novelist, critic and composer. ... Ultraviolence is a term from the novel A Clockwork Orange, referring to acts of extreme violence — random and unjustified (e. ... A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia[1], kakotopia or anti-utopia) is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. ...

Cohen claims that in the film, "...the violence of modern technology sees its reflection in Ultraviolence, beyond violence." When the protagonist murders a woman in her home, Cohen states that Kubrick presents a "[s]cene of aestheticized death" by setting the murder in a room filled with "...modern art which depict scenes of sexual intensity and bondage"; as such, the scene depicts a "...struggle between high-culture which has aestheticized violence and sex into a form of autonomous art, and the very image of post-modern mastery."^[18]

See also

• Aestheticization as propaganda
• The art of murder
• Graphic violence
• Ultraviolence
• Anti-hero

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of beauty and the moral value of art, so aestheticization as propaganda is the process of presenting any form of behaviour considered dangerous or threatening as an acceptable means of promoting a political aim, for example violence that may involve... The idea of the Art of Murder is an expression of the modern notion that art, except for pure esthetics, is amoral, that murders may be dull, mundane and ordinary, or that they may be interesting and beautiful. ... Graphic violence is the depiction of violence in media such as film, television, and video games. ... Ultraviolence is a term from the novel A Clockwork Orange, referring to acts of extreme violence — random and unjustified (e. ... In literature and film, an anti-hero is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws and ultimate fortune traditionally assigned to villains but nonetheless also have enough heroic qualities or intentions to gain the sympathy of readers or viewers. ...

Further reading

• Berkowitz, L. (ed) (1977; 1986): Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vols 10 & 19. New York: Academic Press
• Bersani, Leo and Ulysse Dutoit, The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture (NY: Schocken Books, 1985)
• Black, Joel (1991) The Aesthetics of Murder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Feshbach, S. (1955): The Drive-Reducing Function of Fantasy Behaviour, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 50: 3-11
• Feshbach, S & Singer, R. D. (1971): Television and Aggression: An Experimental Field Study. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Kelly, George. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Vol. I, II. Norton, New York. (2nd printing: 1991, Routledge, London, New York)
• Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931-58): Collected Writings. (Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, & Arthur W Burks). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

References