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Preface
- Wayne State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
ix This study attends to aspects of the cinema that have been mostly ignored or have proven difficult to categorize and analyze. Although it draws on diverse scholars to inform its approach, it primarily enlists Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power, bringing to the study of motion pictures Canetti’s understanding of crowds and their relation to individualistic power and transformation. Frequent as representations of crowds have been in movies, they have received surprisingly little study; nor have they been systematically related to the portrayal of power, another of the great, pervasive subjects of the cinema. The introduction discusses crowds both within films and as audiences in the theater. It focuses on Canetti’s conceptions of crowds and packs and what he sees as their obverse, the paranoia that characterizes seekers of power. Succeeding chapters on individual films, divided into sections on “Power versus Crowds” and “Predation versus Transformation,” analyze themes and imagery that have proven elusive, even in classic movies that have been extensively studied. In part 1, two silent classics, Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Griffith’s Intolerance, illustrate the affinity of the cinema for representations of crowds. Potemkin is precisely organized around the formation of a crowd and its subsequent transformations. For Intolerance, dense with representations of power, crowds, and crowd symbols, Canetti’s thought does not so much simplify our perception as assist us to understand the complex unity of Griffith’s work. Preston Sturges’s comedies emphasize throngs of people as central images and brilliantly embody the affinity between film comedy and affirming crowds. The isolation afflicting seekers of power is at the center of Kurasowa’s Throne of Blood. Ultimately triumphant, however, is the crowd of the dead that shall finally conquer all living ones. In Citizen Kane, the conflict between crowds and power takes place as much within the protagonist as between him and the people he attempts to master. Preface PREFACE x Part 2, “Predation versus Transformation,” begins with North by Northwest, a movie rich in hunters and predation, agencies of power, crowds, and what Canetti called “crowd symbols.” Transformation in that film functions as the primary means by which its protagonist attempts both to escape and to defeat the figures of power who pursue him. Burnett’s Killer of Sheep exemplifies predation, packs, thwarted transformation, and melancholia. Its archetypal groups—men and women, predators and quarry, adults and children—are at once conflicting and mutually reflective. The Silence of the Lambs shares with Killer of Sheep more than a title species; all its central figures desire to metamorphose into something stronger and more beautiful, and all are at once predator and prey. Following these chapters on individual films, the body of the study ends with a conclusion that summarizes the preceding chapters and extends some of their central ideas. An afterword on Crowds and Power discusses its genre, modes of argument, and relation to some other social thinkers. Finally, the appendix provides a summary of Crowds and Power. Attention to issues of gender, class, and race as well as the introduction of the perspectives of Freud, Lacan, and cognitive psychologists (among others) have broadened film studies during the past several decades. The subjects and arguments of Canetti’s work will, I hope, further broaden and deepen our understanding of one of the dominant art forms of our era. [3.236.18.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:13 GMT) This page intentionally left blank A rhythmic crowd gathers in Forman’s Loves of a Blonde ...