Wither the South on Screen: Revisiting Some Recent Releases

My article deals with the construction of a different South on screen in the posthuman context. It focuses on the way previous idealized embodiments of the South on film are being displaced to give way to an alternative South on screen informed by our contemporary aesthetics characterized by violenc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolish journal for American studies : yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies Vol. 13; pp. 207 - 333
Main Author Liénard-Yeterian, Marie
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Warsaw University of Warsaw 01.10.2019
Subjects
Aesthetics
Civil war
Corruption
Film adaptations
History
Human trafficking
Kristeva, Julia (1941- )
McCarthy, Cormac (1933-2023)
Motion pictures
Rhetorical figures
Violence
Voting Rights Act
War
Mississippi
United States > US
Texas
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Summary:My article deals with the construction of a different South on screen in the posthuman context. It focuses on the way previous idealized embodiments of the South on film are being displaced to give way to an alternative South on screen informed by our contemporary aesthetics characterized by violence and human reification. The filmic South increasingly coheres with the historical South through the rewriting of formulaic tropes such as the plantation, the Southern belle and gentleman, and the staging of significant historical moments such as the Nat Turner rebellion and the Civil War. Recent releases perform national cultural work at a time when the demons of Southern history have come back to haunt the national imagination, as recent events such as the shooting at Immanuel church (June 2015) and Charlottesville (October 2017) have tragically shown.
ISSN:1733-9154
2544-8781