#jacques frantz

[mariocki]

Poulet au vinaigre (Cop Au Vin, 1985)

"I'm paid a modest sum to nose around, spy and pester people. And to find the truth."

[lovachromakiva]

Guyodo - Untitled

[dipnotski]

Tuğçe Kelleci – (Post)kolonyalizm (2023)

Postkolonyalizm, Türkiye’de akademik, entelektüel ve politik çevrelerde gecikerek de olsa etkili bir düşünce akımı oldu. Ancak içerdiği eleştirelliğe rağmen o da araçsal aklın hizmetine girmekten kurtulamadı. Bu çalışma çok önemli bir istisna oluşturuyor: Eleştirel düşünceyi postkolonyalizmin kendisine yönelterek sorgulanmadan alınıp tekrar edilen veya uyarlanan önkabulleri titiz bir teorik…

[marcogiovenale]

oggi, 1 aprile, roma: "corpo ricorda", l'art brut nella collezione giacosa-ferraiuolo

OGGI 1 aprile 2023, dalle ore 17 alle 22 via Francesco Negri 65 – Roma  SIC 12 artstudio presenta  CORPO RICORDA L’Art Brut nella collezione Giacosa-Ferraiuolo a cura di Gustavo Giacosa 02.04.23 > 03.12.23 Sarah Albert Noviadi Angksapura Guido Boni Frédéric Bruly-Bouabré Francesco Borrello Nicole Claude Michel Dave Gabriel Evrard Giampaolo Coresi Saverio Fontana Maurizio Fontanelli Davood…

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

[gallierhouse]

List of cameos I would’ve preferred to Sartre and Beckett

Frantz Fanon

Michel Foucault

Jacques Derrida

Tennessee Williams

James Baldwin

Simone Weil (although Louis understandably wouldn’t have run into her….)

Harold Pinter (but I would’ve taken Miller, too.)

Jean Genet (maybe even Dennis Cooper.)

Jean-Luc Godard.

Bob Mizer. Okay, this one is really for me, but perhaps he could’ve gone on vacation to Paris or something.

It’s not that Sartre and Beckett are bad cameos per se, but it’s also obvious that they were chosen for their recognizability. But knowing Louis — and the books he reads, and what he’s interested in — I think these figures would’ve added more value to the story.

Fun fact: Sartre and Beckett lie in the same cemetery, in Montparnasse.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 6: Freud to Lacan to Fanon

We look to Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny,” Jacques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I,” and Frantz Fanon’s “The Negro and Psychopathology” for our inquiry into the functions of psychoanalysis and subjectivity when examining visual texts.

Why do people call an experience or event uncanny, and what makes an occurrence that appears to be uncanny but is not uncanny?

What is the relation of personal neurosis to social passions?

In what ways are oppressed and marginalized viewers alienated when they are not or rarely represented?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[hillhouses]

@quarkfcker asked me to compile a list of my favorite works of critical theory - here you go! if anyone is interested in the titles i’ll try to find links later (i’m currently stuck in bed with an endometriosis flare up and posting this from my phone lol)

Susan Sontag - Illness as Metaphor (deals critically with attaching morality to health; in one of my favorite sections Sontag discusses the vocabulary around getting better - “fighting” cancer, “beating” a disease, etc)

Cassie Pedersen - “Encountering Trauma ‘Too Soon’ and ‘Too Late’: Caruth, Laplanche, and the Freudian Nachträglichkeit” in Topography of Trauma: Fissures, Disruptions, and Transfigurations (Deconstruction of Freud’s notion that trauma is time-based and only recurrent after the action)

Judith Butler - Gender Trouble (one of my favs forever)

Eve Sedgewick - “Epistemology of the Closet” and “Between Men” (Between Men especially)

I would try very hard to muscle through a little bit of Jacques Lacan just to understand the concept of the Other. It’s not gonna be easy or fun though.

Sigmund Freud - “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (I know I know boo we hate your pussy Sigmund but I think it’s important to read Freud so you can have a leg to stand on when you’re arguing against him. He also wasn’t wrong all the time, and a lot of his theory gets picked up by feminist scholars, especially these essays. I think often it’s a matter of needing someone who wasn’t a misogynist to contextualize his work.)

Edward Saïd - Orientalism

Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth (both are postcolonialist theory. Fanon is a huge name in poco that you should know.)

Louis Althusser - “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (don’t fuck with the working class etc. This one gives you cool and smart-sounding words like The Superstructure.)

Rosi Braidotti - The Posthuman (Good way to dip your toes into the never ending pool of posthumanism.)

Deleuze and Guattari are interesting but I would watch some Youtube videos explaining their work rather than just reading them because it is not brain friendly to me. Check out “The Body without Organs” and “Rhizomes” specifically. However be mindful that reading firsthand is always a good start to understanding, and videos should be supplemental.

Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold are dear to me because I’m a Romantic/Victorian scholar but if you’re not then you probably won’t get as much out of them. I still think Arnold’s Stones of Venice and Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance are good foundational reads to understand a lot of the basis of art and criticism today.

Sigmund Freud (again) - “The Uncanny”

Zora Neale Hurston is incredible and a good name to keep in your pocket. She was a Black anthropologist and a lot of her work is deeply astoundingly moving.

FUCK SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Roland Barthes - “Death of the Author” (this is required reading for everyone.)

Peruse a good bit of Foucault.

Jacques Derrida - “Spectres of Marx,” “Hauntology,” etc. (I LOVE DERRIDA!!!! I’d definitely read an introduction to deconstruction first.)

Toni Morrison - “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” (you should already be reading Toni Morrison.)

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar - The Madwoman in the Attic (Loove this one. Feminist reading of Victorian literature.)

Hélène Cixous is a good name to know and have in your filing cabinet, as is Julia Kristeva.

Any and all bell hooks you can find, especially “Postmodern Blackness” and Feminism is for Everyone. If you’re planning on being anywhere near the sphere of education, check out Teaching to Transgress.

Jack Halberstam - “Female Masculinity” (Butchness and how it differs from male masculinity)

Rob Nixon - “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor”

E. Ann Kaplan - Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (connection between the individual and cultural trauma)

[burlveneer-music]

Dominique Fils-Aimé - Our Roots Run Deep - conincidental (?) stylistic resonances with Moondog, who is the subject of a new tribute album

There is a cinematic quality to “Our Roots Run Deep”. Dominique Fils-Aimé frames her latest album with a loose, dreamlike narrative structure that tells a story of growth. The first track sets the stage with the phrase: “our roots run deep underground”. Along the way, there are a myriad of human challenges and forms of interference. An underlying life force presses on. The final track closes with the lyric: “let me climb all the way to the sun”. Dominique provides a spaciousness in her work by creating her own musical language. She layers a variety of catchy, wordless vocal licks that feel like mantras or prayers—repeating, soothing the nervous system, and distinguishing her sound. These patterns don’t have any literary definitions attached to them so they escape the clutches of our interpreting minds. The result is a sonic space where the listener can feel and dream alongside innovative melodic structures. All songs written by Dominique Fils-Aimé Vocals: Dominique Fils-Aimé Bass: Jacques Roy Drums: Frantz-Lee Leonard Keys: David Osei Afrifa Percussion: Elli Miller Maboungou Trumpet: Hichem Khalfa Guitar: Etienne Miousse Didgeridoo: Kevin Annocque Photography: Jetro Emilcar Artwork: Siou-Min Julien Ensoul Records, 2023.

[haitilegends]

🎥 Immerse yourself in the captivating performance of "SOUFLE VAN," a traditional Haitian folk song arranged by Johnbern Thomas and performed by an exceptional group of musicians. .

#Haitilegends

_________

May 18, 2023

(HAITIAN FLAG DAY)

Johnbern Thomas - Drums & Arranger

Pauline Jean - Vocals

Marcus Lolo Keys & BGVS

Marc Harold Pierre - BGVS, Congas, Percussions

Aaron Goldberg - Piano

Billy Buss - Trumpet

Jacques Schwarz-Bart - Saxophone

David Casseus - Electric Bass

Cisco Percussionniste - Congas

Imeran Norman - Cowbell, Guiro

Jose Figueroa - Electric Bass

Aris Stanley Shegger - BGVS

Clyde Duverne - BGVS

This production was made possible by Johnbern Thomas Music Production LLC, working in collaboration with Pauline Jean and Marcus Lolo.

Recorded at : Institut Francais D'Haiti by Pierre Elove Filmed by Jean Sénatus & Etienne Shneider (LGM Studios)

Sear Sound NY by Jeremy Lucas Filmed by Patrick Ulysse (Unimix Films) & Steve Azor

Starke Lake Studio by Harrison Bormann Filmed by Benjamin Altidor.

Earecordingstudio by Ezechiel Augustin

Filmed by Erode Lapointe.

Mixed By Alex Venguer Mastered by Ken Rich at Grand Street Recording.

Project Narrative and Communication: Rosny Ladouceur.

Video Editor: Prime Concept Graphic Design & Project Manager : Ralph Stephane Momperousse.

This project is supported by: Aaron Goldberg, Pauline Jean Music, Marcus Lolo, Frantz Kenol, Yvon Andre (Kapi), Patrice Piersaint Music, Jean Huberman Mercure and the Haitian American Art Network, Inc.

Thank you our musician, friends and supporters for participating in such a noble project. Thank you for gifting this project to our DEAR HAITI May 18, 2023.

_________

Tap/Click #👈🏽

#JohnbernThomasMusic

#JohnbernThomas

#Jazz

#JazzMusic

#Haitianmusic

#HaitianJazz

#KreolJazz

#NewMusicFriday

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#Haïti #Ayiti #haitianflagday

#covertunes

#PaulineJean

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#ayiticherie

#MarcHaroldPierre

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#JacquesSchwarzBart

#DavidCasseus

#CiscoPercussionniste

#ImeranNorman

#JoseFigueroa

#ArisStanleyShegger

#ClydeDuverne

#HaitilegendsJazz

#Haitilegends

#GabrisanMusiclounge

[laviedunefilledebordee]

Rentrée d’une journée surveillance de bac et se rappeler qu’il y a la saison 2 Notre planète sur Netflix qui vient de sortir ! (oui j’adore les docus dans ce genre!)

Mais se rappeler soudainement que le narrateur VF ne sera pas Jacques Frantz cette fois...

Sa voix si reconnaissable me manque tellement...

[nicklloydnow]

“But intellectual life is flourishing in the cafés, institutes and academies, as refugees forge community in exile. And at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, one of France’s most prestigious research universities, Alexandre Kojève has taken over Alexandre Koyré’s seminar on The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) by G W F Hegel. Between 1933 and 1939, Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, André Breton, Gaston Fessard, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éric Weil, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Raymond Queneau, Emmanuel Levinas all come to hear his lectures. A collection of the most renowned thinkers of the day, who would come to lay the intellectual foundations for 20th-century philosophy, political thought, literature, criticism, psychology and history. It is said that Kojève’s lectures were so intricate, so deft, that Arendt accused him of plagiarising. Bataille fell asleep. Sartre couldn’t even remember being there.

(…)

The short answer is that Kojève made Hegel accessible by bringing to the surface one of the essential elements of his work: desire. Kojève did not deny he was providing a reading of Hegel that transformed the text. His interpretation has been described as ‘creative’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘violent’. The question Kojève placed at the centre of his lectures was: ‘What is the Hegelian person?’ And he answered this question through a discussion of human desire by centring a brief section in the Phenomenology titled ‘Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage’, which is popularly rendered as ‘the master/slave dialectic’. And by centring this nine-page section of a 640-page work, Kojève offered readers a way to grasp an otherwise elusive text.

Poetic in its opacity, perplexing in its terminology, Hegel’s work offers an understanding of the evolution of human consciousness where the finite mind can become a vehicle for the Absolute. But what does that mean? Kojève took the lofty prose of Hegel down from the heavens and placed it in human hands, offering a translation: this is a book about human desire and self-consciousness. Or, as the philosopher Robert Pippin writes:

Kojève, who basically inflates this chapter to a free-standing, full-blown philosophical anthropology, made this point by claiming that for Hegel the distinctness of human desire is that it can take as its object something no other animal desire does: another’s desire.

What was Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic?

In Kojève’s reading, human beings are defined by their desire for recognition, and it is a desire that can be satisfied only by another person who is one’s equal. On this reading, Kojève unfolds a multi-step process: two people meet, there is a death-match, a contest of the wills between them, and whoever is willing to risk their life triumphs over the other, they become the master, the other becomes a slave, but the master is unable to satisfy his desire, because they’re recognised only by a slave, someone who is not their equal. And through the slave’s work to satisfy the master’s needs, coupled with the recognition of the master, ultimately the slave gains power.

What is essential for Kojève is that one risk their life for something that is not essential. The one who shrinks before the other in fear of death becomes the slave. The one willing to die – to face the inevitability of their own non-existence – becomes the master. In other words, desire is an exertion of the will over an other’s desire. Or, as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would come to say: ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’s desire.’ It is not an attempt to possess the other person physically, but to force the other person in that moment of contest to make the other give, to bend their will, in order to achieve superiority. And in this moment, Kojève writes: ‘Man will risk his biological life to satisfy his nonbiological Desire.’ In order to gain recognition in this sense, one must be willing to risk everything – including their life. It is a struggle for mastery of the self.

Instead of Hegel’s roundabout of self-consciousness that exists in itself and for itself but always and only in relation to another, Kojève gives us: self-consciousness is the I that desires, and desire implies and presupposes a self-consciousness. Thinking about the relation between the finite mind and Absolute knowledge is opaque, but desire is human. People know what it feels like to desire, to want, to crave to be seen, to feel understood. Desire is the hunger one feels to fill the absence inside themselves. Or, as Kojève put it: ‘Desire is the presence of absence.’

(…)

Perhaps most importantly, what Kojève understood was the extent to which we humans desire to exercise some control over how other people see us differently from the ways in which we see ourselves. However tenuous or certain our sense of self-identity may seem, it is our very sense of self that we must risk when we appear in the world before others – our identity, desire, fear and shame. There is no guarantee that we will be seen in the way we want to be seen, and feeling misrecognised hurts when it happens, because it wounds our sense of self. But this risk is vital – it is part of what makes us human, it is part of our humanity. And whereas Kojève’s reading drives toward an ideal of social equality that affirms one’s preexisting sense of self when confronted by an other, for Hegel, one must take the other’s perception of the self – whatever it may be – back into their own self-consciousness. In other words, whereas for Hegel freedom rested upon the ability to preserve difference, for Kojève it rested upon the ability to preserve one’s own identity at the expense of difference.

In bringing the lofty language of Hegel down from the heavens, Kojève offered readers a secular understanding of human action, which requires each and every individual to reckon with the inevitability of their own death, their own undoing. And in doing so he shifted the focus toward the individual as the locus of social change, where history unfolds toward an aristocratic society of equals, where all difference is destroyed. Influenced by Karl Marx’s account of class struggle as the engine of history, and Martin Heidegger’s understanding of being-toward-death, Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic presents another form of contest between oppressor and oppressed, where mastery over another in order to master oneself becomes the means to equality, and ultimately justice within society. Kojève adopted the master/slave dialectic in order to develop what Michael Roth called ‘a schema for organising change over time’, to think about the movement of history. And the master/slave dialectic unfolds at the level of the individual and the level of society, where the self gains recognition as a desiring subject through the endless battle for recognition that is appearing in the world with others, and the level of society where all past historical movements will be judged within a framework of right, which is the end of history.

This has been in part the legacy of Kojève. Influenced by Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic, Sartre argued in Being and Nothingness (1943) that man’s freedom is found in negation. In The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir turned to Kojève to think about women’s oppression in relation to man and the need for intersubjective recognition. Lacan’s ‘mirror-stage’ follows Kojève’s reading of Hegel to understand the role of desire as a lack in the formation of human subjectivity. Bataille turned to Kojève to argue that one could experience full self-sovereignty only in a moment of pure negation. For Foucault, it led to the belief that there is no desire free from power-relations – his central theme. And for Fukuyama, this historical contest of wills evolving along a linear temporal plane toward an equal and just society has become the much-mocked ‘end of history’ thesis – the idea that Western liberal democracy has evolved as the final form of human government in the postwar world. The postwar world Kojève himself helped to shape, before his untimely death in 1968. Ultimately, Fukuyama’s thesis captures the difference between Hegel and Kojève’s Hegel: for Kojève, the ideal of universal equality won through an endless battle for recognition was always an individualist notion that required domination when confronted by otherness. But for Hegel, human freedom could be won only through collectivity by embracing the opacity of otherness that we are constantly confronted with in ourselves, and in the world with others. It is an acceptance of that fact that self-mastery will always remain an illusion.”

[ulkaralakbarova]

Unable to find her runaway son, a woman deceives two of her ex-lovers from her youth, a mild-mannered teacher and a tough journalist, that each is the real father in order to obtain their help. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: François Pignon: Pierre Richard Jean Lucas: Gérard Depardieu Christine Martin: Anny Duperey Paul Martin: Michel Aumont Tristan Martin: Stéphane Bierry Milan: Philippe Khorsand Ralph: Jean-Jacques Scheffer Jeannot: Roland Blanche Verdier: Jacques Frantz Raffart: Maurice Barrier Mrs. Raffart: Charlotte Maury-Sentier Louise: Gisèle Pascal Stéphane: Patrick Blondel Michèle Raffart: Florence Moreau Patron of “Star Trek”: Patrice Melennec Hotel Receptionist: Robert Dalban Internal: François Bernheim …: Bruno Allain Man in garage blocked by car: Philippe Brigaud …: Pulcher Castan …: Luc-Antoine Diquéro Journalist who flirts with Lucas: Natacha Guinaudeau …: Sonia Laroze Thug: Patrick Laurent …: Jean-Claude Martin …: Guy Matchoro Julien: Jacques Maury Toilet attendant: Jacqueline Noëlle …: Christian Bianchi …: Gérard Camp …: Patrick Le Barz …: Philippe Ribes …: Claude Rossignol Michelle (uncredited): Florence Mancini Film Crew: Original Music Composer: Vladimir Cosma Producer: Francis Veber Director of Photography: Claude Agostini Editor: Marie-Sophie Dubus Producer: Pierre Richard Costume Design: Corinne Jorry Production Design: Gérard Daoudal Assistant Director: Francis de Gueltzl Casting: Françoise Menidrey Sound: Bernard Aubouy Producer: Gérard Depardieu Production Manager: Jean-Claude Bourlat Script Supervisor: Colette Crochot Boom Operator: Sophie Chiabaut Electrician: Richard Vidal Makeup Artist: Thi-Loan Nguyen Stunt Coordinator: Guy Di Rigo Location Manager: Jean-Yves Asselin Stunt Coordinator: Antoine Baud First Assistant Camera: François Amado Movie Reviews:

[sporadiceagleheart]

This is a tribute birthday edit to Judith Eva Barsi 1978-1988 10 years old of age and those from gta vice city, poltergeist poltergeist III, Jaws 2 Jaws The Revenge, All Dogs go to heaven, Land before time rest in peace Dominick DeLuise, Burton Leon Reynolds Jr., Charles Nelson Reilly, Victor Tayback, Anna Maria Manahan, Godfrey Quigley, Jack Angel, Harald Juhnke, Michel Modo, Jacques Frantz, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Jay, Hamilton Camp, Pat Cleo Corley, Wlodzimierz Bednarski, Vadim Kurkov, Edeltraud Schubert, William Ryan, Martin Patterson Hingle, Bill Erwin, Joseph Henry Ranft, Roger Carel, Linda Grey, Andrei Yaroslavtsev, Henri Virlogeux, Sven Erik Herman Vikström, Melvin Van Peebles, Elizabeth Lee Fierro, Fritzi Jane Courtney, Jan Rabson, Naomi Ruth Stevens, Marilyn Sue Schreffler, Murray Hamilton, Barbara Alston, Roy Richard Scheider, Marc Gilpin, April Gilpin, Gary Michael Dubin, Susan French Moultrie, Collin Wilcox Paxton, Charlton Heston, Anne Baxter, Forrest Meredith Tucker, Gilbert Roland, Thomas Lester Tryon, Joseph Peter Mascolo, Barry S. Coe, Herb Muller, Heather Michele O'Rourke, Zelda May Rubinstein, Nathan Davis, Richard Fire, Jane Alderman, John Garfield, Dominique Ellen Dunne, Julian Beck, Beatrice Whitney Straight, Will Sampson, Louis Byron Perryman, Sonny Landham, James Karen, Robert Houston Broyles, Noble Henry Craig Jr., Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald, Fred Rogers, Susan Peretz, Avicii, Michael Jackson, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Richard Belzer, Michael Gambon, Matthew Perry, Raymond Burr, Brittany Murphy, Denise Marie Nickerson, Roy Mitchell Kinnear, Nora Denney, Leonard Stone, Diana Mae Sowle, Lisa Loring, Raul Julia, David John Battley, Günter Meisner, Aubrey Woods, Ursula Reit, Robbie Coltrane, Peter Capell, Roberts Blossom, Billie Bird, Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Clara Blandick, Shirley Temple, Baby LeRoy, Baby Peggy Montgomery, Werner Heyking, Walker Edmiston, Anthony Newley, Michael Goodliffe, Yevgeny Vesnik, Georgiy Vitsin, Roberto Del Giudice, Manlio Guardabassi, Sergey Aleksandrovich Martinson, Judith Barsi, Maria Agnes Virovacz Barsi, Agnes “Agi” Barsi Lidle, Barna Barsi, John Ingle, we will miss you all stars

[miseryscrowned]

edgy oc ask for Frantz Jacques van Houtburg, 1, 10 and 17?

I feel like these asks were made for him my edgy pathetic faildad <3 Thank you for sending these 💜

1: What memory would your OC rather just forget?

All of them. Literally. The man spent decades drinking his ass into oblivion to avoid remembering everything he did wrong, from disappointing his father because he wanted to be an artist instead of a career that would restore the family’s wealth, losing his family’s seat at the council and then the deal and having to look after his dying wife while working day and night to sell his paintings for basically scraps. The look in her eyes, even while in pain they were so full of love which he didn’t deserve, of faith and trust in him and he would keep seeing them all the time in his mind. Frans hid all of Catharina’s belongings, all his portraits of her in a locked room because he only wished to forget, to escape the memories haunting him.

10: What's an AU that would be interesting to explore with your OC?

The first thing that would come to mind is “what if Frans never made a deal?” AU, his wife would be alive but idk how they would make a living because his art career would have never took off without the deal and i’ll be real he’s not that good at much else..

When I made him in bg3 CC I was thinking how he would do in that situation (technically it’s the same universe, dnd), and he would hate it so much that it’s hilarious to me, he would straight up Not have a good time but I think he would treat Wyll, Shadowheart and Karlach like his children but he would also complain all the time fr, he would also fistfight the other artist, the one you find at the hideout.

17: What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?

*Looks at Frans’ entire story* being the family disappointment and carrying the guilt for his family falling to disgrace is a pretty bad one (it’s not even his fault he was so young 😭) Losing his wife is no doubt the worst and he never gets used to the pain and the loss, Never. Then as I mentioned decades of hedonism and self destruction trying to escape grief and guilt.

Then he was put into an asylum ran by vampires which also caused him a great deal of distress, he would say it’s the second worst time of his life (but at least he found Lorenz <3)

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Analysis: Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity

00:22:00. The scene where Toom's supernatural ability is confirmed and the larger confirmation within the series of the existence of the supernatural.

Introduction

The third episode of the first season of The X Files exemplifies the uncanny as its main villain is seemingly a normal person who is hiding a supernatural evil. This episode was a huge setup for the rest of the series and is focus on the supernatural- many monsters of the week inspired by myths deriving from the collective unconscious or the fears of our childhood and ancestors.

By using several terms developed by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Frantz Fanon, we can analyze several key moments within the episode and why they are effective at creating horror and suspense by building on human fears of the unnatural lurking within the familiar.

Term: Uncanny

00:20:35. Appearance of Toom's eyes right before we see him commit another crime after being released.

(from left to right) 00:23:24 Toom's committing the crime. Toom's eyes from investigation scene 00:17:00 - 00:18:17. Toom's eyes from introduction at 00:01:00.

Defintion:

Freud describes the uncanny as the anxiety that arises from one’s interaction with the canny (the familiar or homely). This interaction causes anxiety because it brings out repressed fears from the unconscious belonging to the “phase of individual development corresponding to the animistic stage in primitive men”[1]. These fears stem from one’s childhood or the beliefs of our forefathers[2] that, in theory, should be set aside as one matures but can be reinstated through something that challenges one’s beliefs of what is real and what is unreal. Something that is uncanny feels familiar, but also has an element to it that causes unease as it triggers these repressed feelings[3].

[1] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, in Collected Papers, vol. 4, ed. By Ernest Jones (London: Hogarth Press, 1948),394.

[2] Freud, 401.

[3] Freud, 376.

Analysis

Throughout the episode we keep on getting shots of the villain’s eyes poking out from shadows. There is undoubtably something eerie about his stare, though eyes themselves are supposedly normal. In the opening scene at the one-minute mark, we get our first barely visible look at Toom’s. By placing him in the sewer, the appearance of these eyes becomes uncanny, provoking inner fears of being unknowingly watched or of someone not being where they are supposed to be. The eyes also seem to glow from the shadows, suggesting an unfamiliar or supernatural element. This is the perversion of the canny to provoke fear. Additional productional elements like the tense score and voyeuristic camera angles (from Toom's view) drive a sense of dread.

We see Toom’s eyes again in the lie detector scene. While his eyes lack the amber glow seen in other shots, there is still something eerily off about them- his cold stare that lacks human feelings. The audience is given a conflict of having a seemingly normal man, but also the unease of being reminded of the first shot of Toom's eyes. Toom’s facade of normality (especially towards the end of the lie detector test where he finally displays a different expression) causes a greater feeling of uncanny because the audience has already begun to recognize his evil and feels fear at his ability to mask it from the characters in the show. Toom’s effectiveness as a villain stem from the conflict between the real and the unreal. Through science and logic, the supernatural should not exist and throughout the episode Detective Mulder experiences ridicule because of his idea that Toom’s is a 100-year-old mutant that can stretch himself (like after the lie detector test at 18:17). The idea that this abnormality which seeks to harm others can mask himself as normal is the one which causes the uncanny as it takes what is normal and insinuates that something sinister is hidden underneath. Tooms is the direct confrontation of the contradicting reality and supernatural. The scene after the lie detector test, where the audience first sees Toom’s stretch and commit a murder is the official breaking of any belief that Tooms is a normal human.

Term: Misrecognition

Around 00:18:17. The other agents, Scully, and Milder (offscreen) looking at the results of Tooms' lie detector test, which he passed except for questions about him being over 100.

00:18:48. Mulder tells Scully that the other agents "can't open their mind to the possibilities that sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstones of humiliation".

Definition

Misrecognition is when someone doesn’t allow themselves to view/access their true self and its desires due to the creation of a new identity that has culture and convention imposed on it. It is additionally accompanied by an underlying aggression at the denial of one’s narcissistic self by the mediation of society. The “whole of [one’s] human knowledge” is “mediated by the other’s desire”[1]. The I formation, developed during the early years or the mirror stage, “establish[es] a relationship between an organism and its reality”[2], but this I formation (the id or the spectacular I) turns into the social I which links “the I to socially elaborated situations”[3]. This transformation can be proved by the fact that babies exemplify the spectacular I but lose this connection once more connected to the existence of others. Desires and beliefs become repressed and superimposed by more logical, conventional, and socially aware identities as society tends to view maturation as one’s acceptance and organization of the world through the reality principle[4]. 

[1] Jacques Lacan Écrits, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function”, in The First Complete Edition in English, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 79.

[2] Lacan, 78.

[3] Lacan, 79.

[4] Lacan, 80.

Analysis

While Mulder and eventually Scully can recognize that Tooms is both a threat and that he is abnormal, their peers (like Detective Colton or the other agents in the lie detector scene) are unable to come to that conclusion. The other agents are restricted by their understandings of the real world and the mortality of regular humans. They’re beliefs make them more accepting of Tooms’ play at normality and they easily brush off Mulder’s observation that Tooms lied when denying he was 100 years old (18:17). If one operated under the rules of science or adult maturity, it seems ridiculous to suggest that the man in front of them could have been 100 years old or committed previous murders decades ago. The other agents are projecting a mirror image onto Tooms, assuming that he works under the same rules of living that they do. Yet he doesn’t, and this misrecognition (the recognition of him as human) leaves them blind to his monstrous nature. This causes a bigger sense of dread as it furthers the feeling of uncanniness and drives up the fear that supernatural denying logic or presumptive understandings are blinding us from monstrosity.

The agents don't necessarily misrecognize their own identity like Lacan describes, but rather misunderstand the larger possibility of the supernatural by using their self image as non supernatural beings and the social conventions of believing in science over the supernatural (aka the reality principle) to understand Tooms. They believe him to be like themselves and subject to their (and society's) ideas of their own human limitations.

Term: Collective Catharsis

From 00:36:45 - 00:39:00. When the Genetic Mutant Tooms attacks Detective Scully in her own home and then Mulder arrives and saves her.

(from left to right) 00:38:40 Muller arrives with a gun to save the day. 00:38:29 the intimate nature of the attack which could be viewed as an allegory to fears of rape.

Defintion

Collective catharsis is a way to alleviate the anger that Lacan speaks of that accompanies the repression of one’s primitive and narcissistic desires and beliefs, in favor of the social I that is restricted by the conventions of society. Fanon suggests that the society, for its own good through promoting the sustainability of the social I, offers a channel for this aggression through things such as “games in children’s institutions”, “psychodramas in group therapy”, and “illustrated magazines for children”[1]. It is important to provide this catharsis to the youth because of their newfound aggression as society and conventions are increasingly forced on them[2]. The channel for catharsis is a way for society to normalization of the transition from the spectacular I to the social I. Different societies and groups will need to provide different forms of catharsis as different groups will have different understandings of the social I and where they fall within that society[3]. In general, collective catharsis potentially provides a representation of the violence and death that the repressed sexual and economic desires of the id craves but denies due to individual’s “perversion” through the social (moral) and economic structure[4].

[1] Frantz Fanon, “The Negro and Psychopathology”, in Black Skin White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 112.

[2] Lacan, 79.

[3] Fanan, 113.

[4] Fanan, 113. From G Legeman, “Psychopathologie des Comics,” in Les Temps Modernes, French tran. by H. Robillot (May, 1949), 919.

Analysis

G. Legman provides two possible ways of thinking about collective catharsis: as the channeling of a “forbidden sexuality” through a “maniacal fixation on violence and death” or as the channeling of “both the child’s and the adult’s aggression against the economic and social structure”[1]. If one is considering the definition of collective catharsis to channel one’s repressed violent and/or sexual thoughts, the way that the audience (in particular the male) achieves this is through Tooms and the violence he enacts against Tully. It should be noted that there is an intimate nature to this violence, as Tooms climbs atop and pins Tully down, gestures associated with the rape of women. Freud suggests that the fear of others harming us comes from the projection of wanting to harm. A man may be fighting a more animalistic or primitive sexual desire, but his conscious channels that into a fear of others being able to do that. There remains, however, an underlying desire that drives the “maniacal fixation on violence”[2], and which creates a fascination in the tension and fear that this depiction of violence creates. There is, however, the issue of the conscious, which does not enjoy openly admitting its violence. That is where Mulder’s  heroe comes in. G. Legman talks of the catharsis provided to the white audience by the archetype of the “bad injun”, and then the “uneasy [American] conscious” that is “averted only by denying responsibility and throwing the blame on the victim” and the creation of “the historic figure of the Noble redskin”[3] (who has become allies with the whites). In the example of the x files, the male audience has to deal with the uneasy conscious of entertaining the violence against a woman. Mulder allows them to continue to “always identity with the victor”[4] while maintaining their ego. Mulder is able to save Scully and defeat the monsterous ‘other’. Tooms provides catharsis for a violent craving audience, but in the end allows them to project their own unconscious desires onto another (alienated) figure both channeling and denying their aggression. This attitude is similarly applied to the black man, who is portrayed as providing a sexual threat to white women[5] and therefore a target to the heroic white man.

The issue of this catharsis is its portrayal of women. Scully is the victim of this situation; she is the women that males wish to enact violence on (perhaps because of their fascination with tor aversion toward the vagina as the point of origin as Freud suggests[6]) and she is the damsel that additionally allows this same audience to avoid their guilt. Women do not get to align themselves with the victor, as society will always remind them of their womanhood (similar to how a Black man will always be Black in the white man’s Europe). There is the suggestion that this also might bring about a catharsis for women as a channeling against the system and its gender roles. Through watching the violence against women, a woman can channel their aggression at not having been a man under this system. Through this representation they can project a separation between themselves and the victim, witnessing the violence as an attack not against the woman that they are but the woman that society frames them as being. This portrayal is hazardous because as stated before a woman will always be reminded of their womanhood which under this social structure of the white man equates to victimhood. Aggression towards the system can easily be translated into aggression against women such as Fanon hypothesizes[7]. Fanon’s call about the importance of media for all groups to provide their own specific catharsis rings true for woman as well.  

[1] Fanon, 113.

[2] Fanon, 113.

[3] Fanon, 113.

[4] Fanon, 113.

[5] Fanon, 121.

[6] Freud, 398, 399.

[7] Fanon, 138.

Term: Heimlich

(from left to right) 00:36:45 Detective Scully preparing to take a bath from the comfort of her own home. 00:38:00 Tooms appearing from one of her vents.

Definition

Heimlich is the German word which Freud deconstructs to define the uncanny or unheimlich (its opposite). Heimlich is the ‘familiar’, ‘native’, or homely[1]. Freud goes on to examine multiple definitions of the word that all fall within this broader area of comforting peace or security “as in one within the four walls of his house”[2]. There is however some definitions which describes Heimlich as secretive or behind someone’s back to the point of cruelty or sin. This probably stems to the connection of familiar security for oneself turning into an outward distrusting of the security of others (and the inability to see what they might be concealing). This definition of Heimlich, and the definitions of unheimlich as being something eerie or something which has been revealed that should have been kept secret establish a relationship to each other. They are not necessarily opposites, as the Heimlich can easily become the unheimlich. Too much familiarity (Heimlich) sets up the ability for something uncanny to come to light[3].

[1] Freud, 371.

[2] Freud, 372.

[3] Freud, 376.

Analysis

The attack scene also literally embodies Heimlich, as it takes place in the personal (and supposedly) secure location of Scully’s own house. This is something that adds to the horror and tension of the sequence. The idea that something so private and secluded can house (pun not intended) horrors is a terrible idea which forces us to think of how our own repressed desires can surface in anyone else who might do us harm. Perhaps the security of the house even causes harm as it falsely shields one from the reality of being safe from harm. The notion of security is challenged, as Mulder reminds us at the end of the episode. The scene going from something that should be intimate to violence is a representation of how the Heimlich can hide the unheimlich. The fear we feel for Scully is the fear we feel for ourselves at the possibility of the reveal of the unheimlich within one’s Heimlich (which we unconsciously recognize in ourselves and thus fear).

Tooms himself is also a representation of this as he presents as a normal nam (Heimlich), but hidden within is an evil which seeks to harm others. One’s inability to detect this abnormality (as previously discussed in relation to the investigation scene) is a deep cause of fear and the anxiety of the uncanny.

Term: collective unconscious

00:40:00 - 00:42:00

Definition:

Fanon references Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious which is “inherited cerebral matter”, or as Fanon restates, not one’s genes, but “the sum of prejudices, myths, collective attitudes of a given group”[1]. It is the continuous myth/archetype of the danger or sexual prowess[2] of a black man taught to white men, white women, and even black men themselves when attempting to assimilate into a white man’s society; Fanon references René Maran as a black man who has “breathed and eaten the myths and prejudices of a racist Europe”[3]. Freud speaks of how “repressed desires and archaic forms of thought belonging to the past of the individual and of the race” are part of the unconscious and can be brought to the conscious by the uncanny[4]. Some of these archaic (yet still present in some form) thoughts have to do with a society’s view of minorities or gender roles. Fanon points to the archetypes of the “extra-fragile woman”[5], “the intellectual danger”[6] of the Jew, and the “biological/danger”[7] of the Black man (sexual aggression that threatens women and men).

[1] 145.

[2] 128, 130.

[3] 145.

[4] 399.

[5] 128.

[6] 127.

[7] 127.

Analysis

The fear of security and the unheimlich hiding among the Heimlich that Tooms represents refers to a larger generational theory. Within the suggestions about origins of society, there are many references to the constant need for security and shielding from violence that people would otherwise be subjected to. The primitive fear of the destruction of constructed security thus goes back to our forefathers. Through the modernization and improvement of technologies and governments, the constant stress of security may be somewhat removed to the unconscious, but (as Mulder reminds us at the end) the depiction of Tooms (someone who can destroy the privatization and peace of the Heimlich by disguising himself within) reminds us that this fear is still very relevant. Not to mention that the episode hints that Tooms will be able to get out (his smile at the realization of the existence of a food slight he might be able to stretch through). This succeeds in enacting the anxiety and horror of the uncanny, by building upon a fear that is seemingly innate to human history. 

MULDER: All these people putting bars on their windows, spending good money on hi-tech security systems, trying to feel safe. I look at this guy and I think, "It ain't enough". (00:40:49)

Conclusion

In conclusion, the episode “Squeeze” is an effective horror and fascinating watch because of how it allows the audience to experience the fear of representing repressed fears such as the monster hiding in plain sight, while also, through its depictions of violence, allowing the catharsis for certain audiences so that they can continue in real life to live with a good conscious. This episode allows the repressed to come out, but only for the little while the tv is on.