Journal Issue: EDGE - A Graduate Journal for German and Scandinavian Studies: Volume 1, Issue 1
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2009-01-12
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The Cinematic Defeat of Brecht by Artaud in Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade
(2009-10-01) Torner, Evan M
In this work, I analyze Peter Brook's film interpretation of Peter Weiss' modernist drama Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean-Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade (Marat/Sade, 1964-5) in terms of the dialectical aesthetic of the latter. Weiss had intended Marat/Sade to be a literal, figurative and aesthetic debate on equal footing between the dramatic theories of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, portrayed respectively through the figures of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat and the epicurean cynic Marquis de Sade. Techniques of Brechtian distanciation are also employed within the written play alongside contradictory Artaudian elements of grotesquerie and horror, each grappling with the other in an unresolved dialectic. Yet Brook's filmed version of his stage production unintentionally transgresses against Weiss' play-without-a-resolution, primarily siding with Sade, Artaud and the "theater of cruelty." Though the French and German New Wave movements in cinema, which questioned the artifice of film production using Brechtian alienation techniques, were contemporary with Brook's film in 1966, the film appears not to have taken these movements into account while trying to portray Weiss' dialectic in its cinematography and mise en scène. I contend that the violence portrayed within Brook's Marat/Sade is broadcast as a spectacle to be consumed by an omnipresent viewer, whereas Weiss cogently intertwines such brutality with a concrete understanding of its mechanical function within society. This begs the question of how one can filmically portray cruelty both as spectacle and as socio-political reality.
Another New Illustrated History: The visual turns in the memory of West German terrorism
(2009-10-01) Passmore, Leith
Terrorism in general has long been recognized as a medial event. In the context of the West German terrorist group the Red Army Faction (RAF), there has been a broad recognition that the group was rather photogenic, with the visual component of 1970s terrorism in West Germany only receiving the scholarly attention it deserves in recent years. Despite the methodological shift in the humanities known as the ‘visual turn’ only now coming to the history of the RAF, its historiography has always turned on visual culture. This paper track these 'visual turns' in the debate surrounding the RAF and West German terrorism from Gerhard Richter’s 1988 painted mourning to film director Uli Edel's 2008 attempt to produce an 'illustrated history' of the victims.
Paradigmenwechsel in der Antikenrezeption durch Nietzsche und Freud am Beispiel von Goethes Iphigenie auf Tauris und Hofmannsthals Elektra
(2009-10-01) Reidy, Julian K.
This article deals with the paradigmatic shifts in the perception and the artistic treatment of antiquity caused by the writings of Freud and, especially, Nietzsche in his Geburt der Tragödie. It achieves this goal by comparing two literary works from each phase and analyzing the stylistic, narratological and ideological discrepancies between these works. The “pre-Nietzschean” is represented by Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris and the “post-Nietzschean” by Hofmannsthal’s Elektra. The article also criticizes some scholarly contributions on the subject of gender in Iphigenie. The conclusion of the article argues that Goethe’s approach to antiquity is marked by an unburdened imaginative creativity that had already become impossible to imitate when Hofmannsthal wrote his play. Therefore, Iphigenie auf Tauris makes a lasting impact, while Elektra was and remains a work of its time.
„Von Kopf bis Fuß in Erz gerüstet, so unbegriffner Wut voll“: Totale Destruktion als Folge von Erkenntnislosigkeit in Heinrich von Kleists Penthesilea
(2009-10-01) Lüke, Martina
Heinrich von Kleists Drama Penthesilea (1808) wird von Gegensätzlichkeiten und Konflikten im inneren und äußeren Bewußtsein der Menschen dominiert: es stehen sich Griechen und Amazonen in unvereinbaren Gesellschaftskonstellationen gegenüber, Gewalt, Krisen und Auseinandersetzungen dominieren das Leben von Gesellschaft und Individuum. Meine Arbeit untersucht mittels eines close readings die Darstellung der Grenzen von Wahrheitserkenntnis und daraus resultierende (fatale) Kommunikationsdefizite vor dem Hintergrund der sogenanten „Kantkrise“, die als Wendepunkt im Leben Kleists gilt. Unwissen, Erkenntnislosigkeit und und Unkenntnis führen demnach bei Heinrich von Kleist zur Entfremdung und Gewalttätigkeit der Menschen untereinander und gipfeln letztlich in ihrer totalen Zerstörung.
Destination London: German-Speaking Emigréa and British Cinema, 1925-1950
(2009-10-01) Moeller, Martina