The Face on the Screen
Therese Davis
ISBN 10: 1841500844 ISBN 13: 9781841500843
Published by Intellect, 2003
New
PAP
From
PBShop.store UK, Fairford, GLOS, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Heritage Bookseller
AbeBooks member since 1996
This specific item is no longer available.
About this Item
Description:
New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # CX-9781841500843
Synopsis:
There was a time in screen culture when the facial close-up was a spectacular and mysterious image…
The constant bombardment of the super-enlarged, computer-enhanced faces of advertising, the endless 'talking heads' of television and the ever-changing array of film stars' faces have reduced the face to a banal image, while the dream of early film theorists that the 'giant severed heads' of the screen could reveal 'the soul of man' to the masses is long since dead. And yet the end of this dream opens up the possibility for a different view of the face on the screen. The aim of the book is to seize this opportunity to rethink the facial close-up in terms other than subjectivity and identity by shifting the focus to questions of death and recognition.
In doing so, the book proposes a dialectical reversal or about-face. It suggests that we focus our attention on the places in contemporary media where the face becomes unrecognisable, for it is here that the facial close-up expresses the powers of death. Using Walter Benjamin's theory of the dialectical image as a critical tool, the book provides detailed studies of a wide range of media spectacles of faces becoming unrecognisable. It shows how the mode of recognition enabled by these faces is a shock experience that can open our eyes to the underside of the mask of self - the unrecognisable mortal face of self we spend our lives trying not to see. Turning on itself, so to speak, the face exposes the fragile relationship between social recognition and facial recognizability in the images-cultures of contemporary media.
About the Author: Therese Davis is a lecturer of film and cultural studies at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Bibliographic Details
Title: The Face on the Screen
Publisher: Intellect
Publication Date: 2003
Binding: PAP
Condition: New
Edition: 2nd Edition