Research Catalog

Title

Archaic modernism : queer poetics in the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini / Daniel Humphrey.

Author

Humphrey, Daniel

Publication

Detroit, Michigan : Wayne State University Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 171 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"Alongside Jacques Derrida's concept of ecriture, as well as more recent scholarship by queer theory scholars advocating for an antirelational and antisocial subjectivity, Humphrey maintains that Pasolini's Greek tragedy films exemplify a paradoxical sense of "archaic modernism" that is at the very heart of the filmmaker's project. More daringly, he contends that they ultimately reveal the queer roots of Western civilization's formative texts. Archaic Modernism is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on Oedipus Rex, assessing both the filmic language employed and the deeply queer mythological source material that haunts the tragedy even as it remains largely at a subtextual yet palpable level. Chapter 2 extends and deepens the concept of queer fate and queer negativity in a scene-by-scene analysis of Medea. Chapter 3 looks at the most obscure of Pasolini's feature length films, Notes Towards an African Orestes, a film long misunderstood as an unwitting failure, but which could perhaps best be understood as a deliberate, sacrificial act on the filmmaker's part. Considering the film as the third in an informal, maybe unconscious, trilogy, Humphrey concludes his monograph by arguing that this "trilogy of myth" can best be understood as a deconstruction, gradually more and more severe, of three of the most important origin tales of Western civilization. Archaic Modernism makes the case that these three films are as essential as those Pasolini films more often studied in the Anglophone world: Mamma Roma, The Gospel According to Matthew, Teorema, The Trilogy of Life, and Salò, and that they are of continuing, perhaps even increasing, value today. This book is of specific interest to scholars, students, and researchers of film and queer studies"--

Series Statement

Queer screens

Uniform Title

Queer screens.

Subjects

• Motion pictures, Italian
• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• 1900-1999
• Queer theory
• Motion pictures, Italian > History > 20th century > Criticism and interpretation
• Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 1922-1975 > Criticism and interpretation

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-161) and index

Call Number

MWES (Pasolini, P.) 21-1235

ISBN

• 0814343104
• 9780814343104
• 0814346065
• 9780814346068

OCLC

1144116252

Author

Humphrey, Daniel, author.

Title

Archaic modernism : queer poetics in the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini / Daniel Humphrey.

Publisher

Detroit, Michigan : Wayne State University Press, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Queer screens

Queer screens.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-161) and index

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

MWES (Pasolini, P.) 21-1235