Indocile Bodies: Bodily Transgressions in Selected Canadian Movies

Tomasz Sikora

Publié:

Vol. 5 (2010)

Indocile Bodies: Bodily Transgressions in Selected Canadian Movies

Tomasz Sikora

Résumé

The article looks at the representations of corporeality, desire and transgression in selected films by David Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and Bruce LaBruce. The body acquires some kind of independence in these films, and the forces of excess that work in/though it (drives, desires) push the modern subject into various acts of transgression, thus threatening its propriety and stability. At a cultural level, this phenomenological instability of body- and self-boundaries may be linked to the Canadian sense of a “weak” national identity, rephrased by some as a positive case of “queer” nationality.

Key words: Body, desire, sexuality, transgression, excess, queer, Canadian cinema.

Télécharger les fichiers

PDF (English)

Règles de citation

Sikora, T. Indocile Bodies: Bodily Transgressions in Selected Canadian Movies. Romanica Silesiana, 5(1). Consulté à l’adresse https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/RS/article/view/5779

Références

Allan, James, 2001: “Imagining an Intercultural Nation: a Moment in Canadian Queer Cinema”. In: Goldie, Terry, ed.: In a Queer Country. Vancouver, Arsenal Press: 138—159.
Google Scholar

Beard, William, 2005: “Conversations with Guy Maddin”. Available HTTP: http://iceberg.arts.ualberta.ca/filmstudies/Maddin%2005%20interview.html (accessed 26 February 2010).
Google Scholar

Beard, William, 2006: The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Google Scholar

Birney, Earle, 1995: “Canada: Case History: 1945”. In: Kuester, Martin, ed.: Canadian Studies: A Literary Approach. Bochum, Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.
Google Scholar

Creed, Barbara, 1998: “The Crash Debate: Anal Wounds, Metallic Kisses”. Screen 39: 2, Summer: 175—179.
Google Scholar

Creed, Barbara, 2000: “The Naked Crunch: Cronenberg’s Homoerotic Bodies”. In: Grant, Meichael, ed.: The Modern Fantastic: The Films of David Cronenberg. Westepoint, Praeger Books: 84—101.
Google Scholar

Douglas, Mary, 1966: Purity and Danger. London, Routledge.
Google Scholar

Edwards, Justin D., 2005: Gothic Canada. Reading the Spectre of a National Literature. Edmonton, University of Alberta Press.
Google Scholar

Francis, Daniel, 1997: National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History. Vancouver, Arsenal Pulp Press.
Google Scholar

Hurley, Kelly, 1995: “Reading Like an Alien: Posthuman Identity in Ridley Scott’s Alien and David Cronenberg’s Rabid”. In: Halberstam, Judith, Livingston, Ira, eds: Posthuman Bodies. Bloomington, Indiana University Press: 203—224.
Google Scholar

Jenks, Chris, 2003: Transgression. London, Routledge.
Google Scholar

Kipman, Simon-Daniel, 2005: “Transgression”. In: de Mijolla, Alain, ed.: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Available HTTP: http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/hatred (accessed 26 February 2010).
Google Scholar

LaBruce, Bruce, 1997a: “Forward”. In: Gonick, Noam, ed.: Ride Queer Ride. Winnipeg, Plug-In Gallery: 24—28.
Google Scholar

LaBruce, Bruce, 1997b: The Reluctant Pornographer. New York, Gutter Press.
Google Scholar

McIntosh, David, 1997: “Engines of Desire, Empire of the Undead: LaBruce, Sex, Money and Celebrity”. In: Gonick, Noam, ed.: Ride Queer Ride. Winnipeg, Plug-In Gallery: 142—160.
Google Scholar

Monk, Katherine, 2001: Weird Sex & Snowshoes, and Other Canadian Film Phenomena. Vancouver, Raincoast Books Allan.
Google Scholar

Morgan, Jason, 2006: “Queerly Canadian: Perversion Chic Cinema and (Queer) Nationalism in English Canada”. In: Sherbert, Garry, Gerin, Annie, Petty, Sheila, eds: Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture. Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier U P.: 211—227.
Google Scholar

Persky, Stan, 2003: “Letter from Berlin: Kanada Week”. Available HTTP: http://stanpersky.de/index.php/articles/latest/letter-from-berlin-kanada-week (accessed 26 February 2010).
Google Scholar

Rodley, Chris, ed., 1992: Cronenberg on Cronenberg. Toronto, Knopf.
Google Scholar

Shaviro, Steven, 2002: “Fire and Ice: The Films of Guy Maddin”. In: Beard, William, White, Jerry, eds: North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980. Edmonton, University of Alberta Press: 216—221.
Google Scholar

Stallybrass, Peter, White, Allon, 1986: The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London, Methuen.
Google Scholar

Toles, George, 2001: A House Made of Light: Essays on the Art of Film. Detroit, Wayne State University Press.
Google Scholar

Waugh, Thomas, 2006: The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. Carleton University Press.
Google Scholar

Williams, Linda Ruth, 1999: “The Inside-Out of Masculinity: David Cronenberg’s Visceral Pleasures”. In: Aaron, Michele, ed.: The Body’s Perilous Pleasures: Dangerous Desire and Contemporary Culture. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press: 30—48.
Google Scholar

Wood, Robin, 1976: “An Introduction to the American Horror Film”. In: Nichols, Bill, ed.: Movies and Methods. Vol. 2. Berkeley, University of California Press: 195—220.
Google Scholar

Filmography
Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David, 1983: Videodrome. Universal.
Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David, 1986: The Fly. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David, 1991: Naked Lunch. Twentieth Century-Fox.
Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David, 1996: Crash. Fine Line.
Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David, 1999: eXistenZ. Miramax.
Google Scholar

LaBruce, Bruce, 2008: Otto; or, Up with Dead People. Strand Releasing.
Google Scholar

Maddin, Guy, 1992: Careful. Cinephile.
Google Scholar

Tomasz Sikora

tsikora@up.krakow.pl

Affiliation:

Pedagogical University of Cracow

Note biographique

Tomasz Sikora teaches at the English Department of the Pedagogical University of Cracow. He received his MA degree from Adam Mickiewicz University (1996) and a PhD in English from the University of Silesia (2001). In 2003 he published Virtually Wild: Wilderness, Technology and the Ecology of Mediation and over the past several years he has co-edited (with Dominika Ferens and Tomasz Basiuk) three volumes of essays on queer studies; he is also a co-editor of the online journal of queer studies InterAlia. His interests include American and Canadian Studies, gender and queer theory, philosophies of nature and discourses of the unnatural.

Vol. 5 (2010)
Publié:

ISSN: 1898-2433

eISSN: 2353-9887

Éditeur

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Envoyer le texte

Indocile Bodies: Bodily Transgressions in Selected Canadian Movies

Résumé

Tomasz Sikora

Informations