The subject of torture
Subtitle: psychoanalysis and biopolitics in television and film
By: Hilary Neroni
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9780231170703; 9780231170710
Subjects: Motion pictures; Psychoanalysis and television; Psychoanalysis and motion pictures; Moral and ethical aspects; Torture in motion pictures; Television; Torture on television; Torture in mass media; Mass media
Description: Considering representations of torture in such television series as 24, Alias, and Homeland; the documentaries Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), and Standard Operating Procedure (2008); and torture porn feature films from the Saw and Hostel series, Hilary Neroni unites aesthetic and theoretical analysis to provide a unique portal into theorizing biopower and its relation to the desiring subject. Her work ultimately showcases film and television studies' singular ability to expose and potentially disable the fantasies that sustain torture and the regimes that deploy it.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: confronting the Abu Ghraib photographs; title: Torture, biopower, and the desiring subject; title: The nonsensical smile of the torturer: documentary form and the logic of enjoyment; title: Torture porn and the desiring subject; title: 24 and the torture fantasy; title: The biotective versus the detective of the real: truth in Zero dark thirty and Homeland; title: Alias and the fictional alternative to torture.