From Tattoo to Saw, this book considers mainstream cinema's representation of the viscerally dominated and marked body. Examining a shift in the late twentieth century to narratives that highlight subjection, endurance and willed-acquiescence, it probes the confluence of pain, pleasure and consent to analyse the implications of the change. The idea that pain can be a pleasure is a troubling one, and yet it informs cultural practices ranging from extreme sports to BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism). This book considers how mainstream cinema borrows heavily from these cultural activities for its imagery, but typically rejects their social motivations founded on masochistic pleasure and an assertion of autonomy. Noting a shift in the late twentieth century to narratives that highlight subjection, endurance and willed-acquiescence, it probes the confluence of pain, pleasure and consent to analyse the implications of the change. Films addressed include Crash, Fight Club, Saw, Se7en and Sick. Individual chapters focus on the influence of BDSM, body modification, provocative artwork, dangerous games and torture, and collectively they offer an address of how cinema's viscerally dominated, marked and suffering body - the controlled body - destabilizes the pain/pleasure dichotomy, as well as other binaries founded on gender, sexuality and disfigurement/beauty

zlib/no-category/Allen, Steven/Cinema, Pain and Pleasure ||_53565350.pdf

Allen, Steven

Macmillan Education UK

Red Globe Press

Springer Nature, Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2013

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

sm21167111

Review: 'Really excellent: very well written and extremely well informed, both about BDSM and movies. The opening chapter very usefully disposes of some 'standard' psychoanalytic approaches to BDSM, and this greatly helps to situate the ensuing discussions of the controlled body in films in a refreshingly different context from that in which this subject is still all too often discussed.' - Julian Petley, Brunel University, UK 'Steven Allen's Cinema, Pain and Pleasure is sensational: it deals with extreme sensory experiences, it is controversial and provocative and it is very, very good. It requires a mind as calm, lucid and scalpel-like as Allen's to write so well about material like this. He is able to embrace a feeling for the pleasures of pain, domination and submission, and the significance of those pleasures, without falling into mere polemics or political incorrectness. This is an astonishingly illuminating piece of work that keeps its head and maintains its visceral sensitivity, wonderfully close to and wonderfully clear-eyed about the issues and films it analyses.' Richard Dyer, King's College London, UK

The idea that pain can be a pleasure is a troubling one, and yet it informs cultural practices ranging from extreme sports to BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism). This book considers how mainstream cinema borrows heavily from these cultural activities for its imagery, but typically rejects their social motivations founded on masochistic pleasure and an assertion of autonomy. Noting a shift in the late twentieth century to narratives that highlight subjection, endurance and willed-acquiescence, it probes the confluence of pain, pleasure and consent to analyse the implications of the change. Films addressed include "Crash", "Fight Club", "Saw", "Se7en" and "Sick". Individual chapters focus on the influence of BDSM, body modification, provocative artwork, dangerous games and torture, and collectively they offer an address of how cinema's viscerally dominated, marked and suffering body : the controlled body 6 destabilizes the pain/pleasure dichotomy, as well as other binaries founded on gender, sexuality and disfigurement/beauty

2015-07-15