Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutional Settings, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film

(Hardback)

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American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, thi book analyses a range of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) through to cult films such as Carrie (1976) and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). In these films, locations of coherence and order become places where the internal and repressed aspects of the body, individual and social, threaten to overwhelm the individual. Identity is compromised through harsh conditions, extreme discipline, the exertion of absolute control, and above all the restriction of personal space. Symbolically infantilised, forced to reassess aspects of the adult, the only escape is through violence; the eponymous Carrie escapes from her cupboard for a massacre, the women of Girl, Interrupted mutilate and annihilate themselves and Kubrick's Gomer Pyle shoots sadistic patriarch Sergeant Hartman in the 'head'. By analysing scenes of horror and disgust within the context of abject space, Frances Pheasant-Kelly reveals how threats to identity manifest in scenes of torture, horror and psychosexual repression and are resolved either through death or through traumatic re-entry into the outside world. Bringing together contemporary theoretical debates and critical disciplines, Abject Spaces in American Cinema offers a coherent and meaningful analysis of institutonal films and shows that the chaos of the abject space cannot be resolved- only escaped. This readable and engging tour of the abject in the institution of film will be immensely valuable to students of Film Studies, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies.

Reviews

Institutions such as prisons are designed to punish and discipline the characters of those who that society defines as deviants. This fascinating study considers the ways in which films from widely different genres examine institutional spaces such as schools, hospitals, care-homes, asylums and prisons, examinations that present a fascinating and often contradictory discourse on the hopes and fears associated with such spaces.' Professor Mark Jancovich, Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia 'Frances Pheasant-Kelly's book offers a highly original take on the representation of institutions in American cinema. Through detailed analyses of a wide range of films, she explores some of the ways in which a complex politics of identity manifests itself. This book emerges as a text that is theoretically innovative as well as presenting some fascinating insights into the popular American films with which it deals.' Professor Peter Hutchings, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Northumbria University 'Pheasant-Kelly explores the Hollywood cinema's use of institutional settings across a number of different genres - including the prison film, thriller, horror and sports film - and styles. Arguing for the applicability of abjection beyond the familiar spaces of science-fiction and horror, Pheasant-Kelly shows that both subjectivity and, crucially, space are sites of abjection, succeeding in conveying the complex ideas and values that underpin our fascination with institutions as sites of containment and control.' Professor Yvonne Tasker, Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia 'This study of fictional institutional films is sophisticated and timely. Pheasant-Kelly argues that these films cannot be explained with reference to Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism. Instead, she turns to Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. This bold argument, which strongly links subjectivity and space and represents a broad new interpretation of abjection, should be of genuine interest to architectural scholars as well as those in film studies and visual culture.' Dr Barbara Penner, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Author Bio

Frances Pheasant-Kelly is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Course Leader for the MA in Film Studies and Course Leader for the MA in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. She holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of East Anglia and is the author of Fantasy Film Post- 9/11 (2013).