On a Pilgrimage to Zabriskie Point - Antonioni and the Idyll Called USA
Sławomir Masłoń
slawomir.maslon@us.edu.plUniversity of Silesia (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5092-6149
Abstract
Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) – a film about political and cultural unrest in the US in the late 1960s – not only was a commercial failure, but it was also completely destroyed by American (and not only American) critics. Masłoń tries to show that the allegedly simplified representation of American conflicts that the film is accused of showing, is in the Zabriskie Point a reflection of ahistorical pastoral ideology, professed by a large part of American society, which Antonioni not only presents, but also analyses. What is more, what critics took for naive and groundless idealization of youth counter-culture, if one looks closely at the film, turns out to be an unbiased and perceptive analysis of the mechanisms of their fantasy and their relationship with the virtual world created by the media.
Keywords:
Michelangelo Antonioni, American cinema, countercultureReferences
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Authors
Sławomir Masłońslawomir.maslon@us.edu.pl
University of Silesia Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5092-6149
Adiunkt w Instytucie Kultur i Literatur Anglojęzycznych Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Opublikował „Père”-Versions of the Truth: The Novels of J. M. Coetzee (2007, wyd. rozszerzone 2018), Stating the Obvious: Celan – Beckett – Nauman (2012), a po polsku Coetzee. Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej (2009).
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