Saturday, January 9, 2010: 2:30 PM
Manchester Ballroom E (Hyatt)
The paper will serve as an introduction of the panel.
In western fantasies and cultural production the island has always played a prominent role. However, its significance has changed a lot in the course of the last 200 years. After having served as utopian models for early theories on an ideal society, after the mapping of the entire oceanic world in the 18th century, islands no longer prefigured an utopian realm but instead symbolized a distant tropical paradise. As from the late 19th century onwards, two developments began to correlate: the creation of the modern state and the modern subject, which found its echo in the emerging psychoanalytical discourse and the cinematic apparatus of the early 20th century. Against this background, an ‘insular’ thinking achieved an universal status and was hence expressed on a popular level. Here, the island’s inland inhabited by uncanny creatures pointed to its psychoanalytical counterpart, namely the Freudian unconscious. The island’s circular bounds and borders – cliffs or beaches – served as a contact zone or a zone of invasion of the I / the Nation respectively whereby the ocean reflected the transcendent space between me / us and the Other. Island films with their specific spatiality carry all these notions and hence often serve as a laboratory of horror, psychic splitting or doubling, genetic experiences, cannibalism, and repressed volcanic forces and fears as well as heterotopian places of hope and joy.
Along with these theoretical aspects the paper will present some brief examples of different island movies and their specific historical relevance such as amongst others Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe, Cast Away, King Kong, Jurassic Park, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Mutiny on the Bounty, Stromboli, and Blue Hawaii.
In western fantasies and cultural production the island has always played a prominent role. However, its significance has changed a lot in the course of the last 200 years. After having served as utopian models for early theories on an ideal society, after the mapping of the entire oceanic world in the 18th century, islands no longer prefigured an utopian realm but instead symbolized a distant tropical paradise. As from the late 19th century onwards, two developments began to correlate: the creation of the modern state and the modern subject, which found its echo in the emerging psychoanalytical discourse and the cinematic apparatus of the early 20th century. Against this background, an ‘insular’ thinking achieved an universal status and was hence expressed on a popular level. Here, the island’s inland inhabited by uncanny creatures pointed to its psychoanalytical counterpart, namely the Freudian unconscious. The island’s circular bounds and borders – cliffs or beaches – served as a contact zone or a zone of invasion of the I / the Nation respectively whereby the ocean reflected the transcendent space between me / us and the Other. Island films with their specific spatiality carry all these notions and hence often serve as a laboratory of horror, psychic splitting or doubling, genetic experiences, cannibalism, and repressed volcanic forces and fears as well as heterotopian places of hope and joy.
Along with these theoretical aspects the paper will present some brief examples of different island movies and their specific historical relevance such as amongst others Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe, Cast Away, King Kong, Jurassic Park, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Mutiny on the Bounty, Stromboli, and Blue Hawaii.
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