Un/safe texts: 'madmen', masochists and the representation of self-endangerment
Un/safe texts: 'madmen', masochists and the representation of self-endangerment
This thesis identifies an a fascination with self-endangerment within contemporary western culture, and addresses its disavowal within the popular imagination. The 1990s filmic and literary representations of self-endangerment as mental illness or masochism, which constitute the focus of the study, negotiate this 'interest in but denial of' self-risk. This negotiation takes place through their play-off between conventional and more oppositional qualities, between the reassurances and the dangers that these un/safe texts provide. A range of narratives is considered, from different media, different genres, and with different relationships to the mainstream. All the texts, although with varying degrees of explicitness, challenges the disavowal of self-endangerment and do so, precisely, through implicating the reader/viewer within it. The key concern of this study is the exposure and exploration of the reader/viewer's self-risking involvement and investment in these un/safe texts.
Self-endangerment entails the individual risking, consciously or otherwise, his or her primarily physical existence. It functions here as the risk-taking behaviours of both the narrative's protagonist and is absorbed reader/viewer. The chosen texts employ various textual strategies to construct and incorporate the reader/viewer within the preoccupation with self-endangerment, but also to reveal him or her as desiring the threats to the self, threats that the texts make more and more explicit.
In chapter one the 1990s memoirs of mental illness undermine the readerly securities inherent in such traditionally therapeutic or self-assertive narratives, thereby introducing strategies of implication found throughout the chosen texts. Chapter two's focus upon Hollywood's depiction of mental illness in Fearless (Peter Weir, 1993) and Mr Jones (Mike Figgis, 1994) reveals texts suffused with self-endangerment, through both content and style, but constrained by mainstream imperatives which seem increasingly superficial.
University of Southampton
Aaron, Michele Suzanne
01d96072-2129-4c50-b6c9-0b8452c893ee
2000
Aaron, Michele Suzanne
01d96072-2129-4c50-b6c9-0b8452c893ee
Aaron, Michele Suzanne
(2000)
Un/safe texts: 'madmen', masochists and the representation of self-endangerment.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This thesis identifies an a fascination with self-endangerment within contemporary western culture, and addresses its disavowal within the popular imagination. The 1990s filmic and literary representations of self-endangerment as mental illness or masochism, which constitute the focus of the study, negotiate this 'interest in but denial of' self-risk. This negotiation takes place through their play-off between conventional and more oppositional qualities, between the reassurances and the dangers that these un/safe texts provide. A range of narratives is considered, from different media, different genres, and with different relationships to the mainstream. All the texts, although with varying degrees of explicitness, challenges the disavowal of self-endangerment and do so, precisely, through implicating the reader/viewer within it. The key concern of this study is the exposure and exploration of the reader/viewer's self-risking involvement and investment in these un/safe texts.
Self-endangerment entails the individual risking, consciously or otherwise, his or her primarily physical existence. It functions here as the risk-taking behaviours of both the narrative's protagonist and is absorbed reader/viewer. The chosen texts employ various textual strategies to construct and incorporate the reader/viewer within the preoccupation with self-endangerment, but also to reveal him or her as desiring the threats to the self, threats that the texts make more and more explicit.
In chapter one the 1990s memoirs of mental illness undermine the readerly securities inherent in such traditionally therapeutic or self-assertive narratives, thereby introducing strategies of implication found throughout the chosen texts. Chapter two's focus upon Hollywood's depiction of mental illness in Fearless (Peter Weir, 1993) and Mr Jones (Mike Figgis, 1994) reveals texts suffused with self-endangerment, through both content and style, but constrained by mainstream imperatives which seem increasingly superficial.
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Published date: 2000
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Local EPrints ID: 467021
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467021
PURE UUID: ef4c2986-e796-4498-b925-fa5bc81b0f1e
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 08:08
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 20:56
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Author:
Michele Suzanne Aaron
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