1), I show that the affective power of violence, figured as φαντασία in ancient epic, is blunted by intertextuality, which reminds the audience of its position outside of the fiction on display. First (discussing Thebaid 2 and Kill Bill Vol. These last two points shape my arguments throughout the three comparisons in this chapter. And both set against these responses complex intertextual and cultural signifiers. Both present scenes of extreme violence that provoke affective responses. Both foreground vision in their presentations of violence. Thus, I do not argue for any ties of reception between the poetry of Statius and the cinema of Tarantino instead, I suggest that author and auteur work with violence in similar ways. While classicists have traditionally confined themselves to the study of films set in the ancient world, the application of film theory to classical texts implies that modern cinema and classical literature share many preoccupations and can be studied together. 1 (2003), the ‘ear-cutting’ scene in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and the assassination of Hitler in Inglourious Basterds (2009). Instead, I compare three representative scenes of violence from the Thebaid – the battle of Tydeus against the fifty Thebans (2.496-743), Hypsipyle’s account of the Lemnian massacre (5.28-498) and the mutual fratricide of Polynices and Eteocles (11.403-573) – with three scenes from the films of Quentin Tarantino – the ‘Showdown at House of Blue Leaves’ in Kill Bill: Vol. But my writing is not primarily theoretical. In particular, I work with Murray Smith’s ideas about ‘character engagement’ and Paul Gormley’s articulation of the relationship between ‘affect’ and ‘meaning’. I do not, however, work much with psychoanalytical or feminist film theory rather, I adopt some ideas from the broad and developing field of cognitive film theory. Like other authors in this book and elsewhere, I look to film studies for a theoretical framework. 'In this chapter I explore ways of viewing violence in the Thebaid. The ancient mythology in Ghost Dog concludes the discussion of the Other with mechanisms of condensation and projection, and with an attempt to find a religious solution to postmodern skepticism and relativism. Dead Man is a Heideggerian Exploration of the Being whose Beckettian character resonates with neurotic anxiety and childhood trauma. Down by Law is seen as a quest for the Other which is “deprived of its Otherness”. Thus, Stranger than Paradise is explained through the concepts of big Other and the repressed Other. However, the main focus is on a psychoanalytic approach relying on theories of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. Philosophies of Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Foucault and Heidegger are used to analyze several aspects of these films.

It places Jarmusch’s opus within the larger frame of modern and postmodern cinema employing the theory of Jean-François Lyotard. This paper explores the possibilities of examining four of Jim Jarmusch’s films (Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Dead Man and Ghost Dog) from the perspectives of various postmodern philosophies.

Pulp fiction summary