Phantasmal Distortion in Salem, or Modern Witches in the Era of #MeToo and New Technologies
Katarzyna Oczkowska
kat.oczkowska@gmail.comUniversity of the National Education Commission, Krakow (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7924-5697
Abstract
The text focuses on the analysis of Assassination Nation (dir. Sam Levinson, 2018) from the perspective of the psychoanalytic theory of cinema according to Todd McGowan. The American author specifies four categories of manifestation of Lacan’s gaze as objet petit a in the area of the film image, and the most important one in the context of the analysed film is the cinema of fantasy. It involves the introduction of phantasmal distortion and making visible that which is often transparent in everyday experience. The problem undertaken in the text is to trace how the gaze in the form of phantasmal distortion becomes present in the film and how it engages viewers. Reflections on the phantasmal outbreaks of violence in the film Salem and the hunt for teenage heroines are accompanied by a reference to the figure of the witch, seen as emancipatory in feminist theory. The heroines’ involvement in new technologies and their seductive and at the same time oppressive panopticism is also analysed.
Keywords:
psychoanalytic theory of cinema, gaze theory, Todd McGowan, feminist theory, witches, new technologiesReferences
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Authors
Katarzyna Oczkowskakat.oczkowska@gmail.com
University of the National Education Commission, Krakow Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7924-5697
Teoretician, art critic, curator, assistant professor at the Institute of Art and Design at the University of the National Education Commission in Kraków. Author of the podcast Wygląda na niezłą sztukę [Looks Like Quite a Piece (Of Art)].
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