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Realizing the Witch : Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible / Todd Meyers, Richard Baxstrom.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Series: Forms of LivingPublisher: New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: 1 online resource (296 p.)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780823268276
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: No titleDDC classification:
  • 133.4/309 23
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. What Is Häxan? -- Part One. The Realization of the Witch -- The Witch in the Human Sciences and the Mastery of Nonsense -- One. Evidence, First Movement: Words and Things -- Two. Evidence, Second Movement: Tableaux and Faces -- Three. The Viral Character of the Witch -- Four. Demonology -- Part Two. A Mobile Force in the Modern Age -- 1922 -- Five. Sex, Touch, and Materiality -- Six. Possession and Ecstasy -- Seven. Hysterias -- Postscript. It Is Very Hard to Believe . . . -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Benjamin Christensen's Cited Source Material -- Filmography -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the mentally ill.In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Häxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe. Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless "know" to be there.
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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. What Is Häxan? -- Part One. The Realization of the Witch -- The Witch in the Human Sciences and the Mastery of Nonsense -- One. Evidence, First Movement: Words and Things -- Two. Evidence, Second Movement: Tableaux and Faces -- Three. The Viral Character of the Witch -- Four. Demonology -- Part Two. A Mobile Force in the Modern Age -- 1922 -- Five. Sex, Touch, and Materiality -- Six. Possession and Ecstasy -- Seven. Hysterias -- Postscript. It Is Very Hard to Believe . . . -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Benjamin Christensen's Cited Source Material -- Filmography -- Bibliography -- Index

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Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the mentally ill.In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Häxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe. Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless "know" to be there.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:

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In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2022)

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