The Uncanny Image - PLEASE POST AN IMAGE BY 3 pm OCT 16 for discussion in class

Following on Marina Warner's assertion that there is something uncanny in the nature of the image (as in mirror images and shadow images), please select an image that strikes you as arguably an instance of the Uncanny.
POST IT on the blog with
IDENTIFICATION - Artist(s), medium, whatever you know about its originating circumstances
SOURCE - Where and how did you find it?
JUSTIFICATION - How does it appear to you to constitute an uncanny image?

Your selections will be supplemented by works from fine-art photography and the world of "spirit photography"--spooky stuff. Background for that topic is provided in the reading from The Perfect Medium, the catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum show on uncanny photography.

DO extend beyond fine-art images if you wish. But please keep this distinction in mind: Our subject is the uncanny image, and we're asking whether there's some tendency to evoke the Uncanny in image-making and -viewing. That's quite different from using the image as supposed documentary evidence of the existence of another world or dimension. Please select what you consider a provocative but also relevant and productive image.

PS Boo.

The Haunting (1963) - Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Oct 1, in response to the film or to your reading of Poe's stories

Although we generally like to steer away from the most overused resource on the net, the Wikipedia entry on The Haunting  is a pretty good introduction to the film. It offers a handy guide to its key themes along with neat background facts/gossip about the production, and a restrained treatment of the key issue that may concern us in the context of this course:
How Uncanny is the isolation of Eleanor as the focal point of the film? How deftly does the film navigate between a reduction of the phenomena experienced by the characters (because it's clearly not "all in Eleanor's head") to either a psychological or a supernatural explanation? How does the story, including Eleanor's fantasies/recollections/disclosures, turn on Repression as an instigator of the Uncanny response--even if it doesn't fit neatly into Freud's scheme?

You may also enjoy:
Patrick Samuel's essay on The Haunting at the Static Mass Emporium website, which is a "deconstruction" of a key, famously frightening scene.

Another issue I hope you'll consider as you view and review The Haunting: The term "Cinematic space" may be used in two ways (at least). The first is the illusionistic image within a frame or between cuts--How does cinema create spaces on screen? The second is the imaginary space created in the viewer's mind by editing practice (and sometimes special effects). "Haunted house" films are a particularly convincing example of the power of cinematic practice to evoke a fantasy world--that has never existed in three-dimensional reality--and especially of the way that imaginary space can affect us emotionally and psychologically. (Consider how this film takes off from "The Fall of the House of Usher," the classic haunted-house gothic novels of the 18th-19th century such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, or for that matter, the novel upon which this film is based, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. It seems as if cinema were made to depict haunted houses; early experimental filmmakers were drawn to "Usher".)  The Haunting is sometimes praised and sometimes panned as a horror movie, but few critical treatments note this outstanding feature: Its capacity to identify domestic space created onscreen--with its obscurities and gaps--with characters and emotions so that we really develop a virtual experience of the Uncanny.

To provoke discussion next week, please offer your comments on either:
1. The role of Eleanor or of the house as a focus for the Uncanny in the film, or any other aspect of the film that seems to you worth considering as an indicator of the Uncanny;
OR
2. The position of the narrator and narration--who tells the story and how the story is told--in one of our readings from Poe, or any other aspect of a story, or common point among the stories, as an indicator of the Uncanny.

In a way, of course, we are still asking: What's spooky about these movies and stories? And why is the spookiness pleasurable? But I hope that beyond that, we might ask some questions about how and why we succumb to illusions in art.

You may find The Haunting online at Veoh, though I don't know how reliable that is. Our Poe short stories are online in the Required Readings folder on Blackboard, and accessible through links in the sidebar to the right of this post.

Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Oct 1, in response to the film or to your reading of Poe's stories. 

PS A similar set of themes and settings is to be found in the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House (click on link for Wikipedia entry). (The screenplay was adapted by the respected sci-fi/fantasy author Richard Matheson from his novel.) A key feature is the association of sexual repression, insecurity, and "perversions" with malevolent ghosts. Hmmmm . . .

Blog Reflection - Freud's Uncanny - Please comment by 9 am Tuesday, Sept 17 in reply to this post

The central influence of Freud's version of the Uncanny is evident from the fact that our key modern readings in theory derive from it: Garber, Todorov, and Jackson all use Freud's ideas as a point of departure.
But that's not to say that his statement on the Uncanny entirely satisfies all readers.

To provoke discussion at our next session, please post a comment here briefly (in a paragraph or so) evaluating Freud's conception of the Uncanny, taking up any or all of these questions:

What are the strengths and weaknesses of his definition?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of his analysis?
How fair and useful is his reply to Jentsch?
Does his formulation give you something meaningful to work with when you consider films, stories, artworks that you consider instances of the Uncanny?

BLOG REFLECTION - The Fantastic, the Sublime, and the Uncanny - PLEASE COMMENT BY 9 am TUESDAY, SEPT 10

To help guide discussion at our next session on Wednesday, please select one of the theoretical readings up to this date:
Edmund Burke on the Sublime
Tzvetan Todorov on the Fantastic
Rosemary Jackson on Fantasy
Noel Carroll on Horror

and assess the contribution that it makes to the understanding of works of art (literature, film, etc.).
   In one paragraph, state its main idea and examine whether and how it gives us a valid, useful principle for understanding the appeal of works that frighten, confuse, or distress us. You may wish to apply your chosen author's idea to a specific work--a film, story, artwork you already know--to see if it deepens your understanding of the selected work.

BLOG REFLECTION: DEAD OF NIGHT - PLEASE COMMENT BY 9 AM TUES SEPT 3

We've looked at Dead of Night as our first example of the Uncanny in art for a number of issues it raises:
-- The role of dreaming--the nightmare in particular--as exemplary experience of the Uncanny
-- The peculiar compulsion to narrate the uncanny incident, and the enthrallment of the audience
-- The reality status of the uncanny incident: Within the rules of the fiction, do we accept the supernatural event, or explain it as a psychological phenomenon?
-- The contribution of plot structure and style of narration/depiction to the uncanny effect

To prepare for next week's discussion, please post a comment below on the uncanny in Dead of Night.
You should review your notes first and focus on a key topic that you find promising in understanding how the film achieves its effects. You may want to consult your own sense of the uncanny, and your recollections of other films, tales, or artworks that struck you as uncanny, for comparison and contrast.