Papers by Nataša van de Laar
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brings to the fore that memory amputation critically endan... more Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brings to the fore that memory amputation critically endangers one’s sense of “being-in-the-world”, results in ontological self-doubt and insatiable emptiness as experienced by the protagonists. Next to this, I will argue that we are in fact our memories and that it is not something that we have. As a consequence of Lacuna’s procedure, the characters experience a sense of loss of identity, existential crisis and pathological melancholia.
I will argue that the Science-Fiction film is a well suited genre in order to investigate Cavelli... more I will argue that the Science-Fiction film is a well suited genre in order to investigate Cavellian ‘moral perfectionism’, which is greatly inspired by Emersonian perfectionist philosophy, in contemporary film. Many critics have wondered if the Cavellian genres of, how he calls it, the ‘Comedy of Remarriage’ and the ‘Melodrama of the Unknown Woman’, in which he finds perfectionist philosophical inference, still exist in film nowadays. Stanley Cavell himself feels that there are characteristics of those genres still to be found in modern films, however not exactly like in the films which he used as exemplary from the 1930s and 1940s. I argue in this essay that Cavell’s theory of ‘moral perfectionism’ in film is still quite prominent in the Science-Fiction genre. Science-Fiction is a genre where ethical themes are always very much present. First, I will elaborate on Emersonian perfectionism and Cavell’s own interpretation of how perfectionism comes about in film. Secondly, in order to contend that moral perfectionism is very prominent in many Science-Fiction films, I will use the film Contact as a case study.
In eerste instantie zal mijn onderzoek de metaforische aard van de emotie schrik belichten en ver... more In eerste instantie zal mijn onderzoek de metaforische aard van de emotie schrik belichten en verbinden aan het contemporaine onderzoek naar Cognitive Metaphor Theory en zal daarbij dienen als aanvulling op Kövecses theorie in de Nederlandse taal. Daarbij zal ik tevens de conceptualisering van schrik in het Nederlands vergelijken met die in de Engelse taal. Zodoende zal ik aanduiden dat de conceptualisering van emoties, of in ieder geval voor schrik, taalafhankelijk is. In tweede instantie zal uit mijn onderzoek blijken dat de conceptualisering van schrik zich heel anders uit in de Nederlandse taal dan in de visuele modaliteit, hetgeen specifiek geldt voor strips. In tegenstelling tot Forceville’s grensverleggende onderzoek naar de manier waarop de representaties van boosheid in La Zizanie compatibel zijn met Kövecses bevindingen rondom woede-metaforen in taal, zal ik aantonen dat dat voor schrik niet zo makkelijk toepasbaar blijkt te zijn. Met andere woorden, ik zal aantonen dat de toepasbaarheid van het ICM van bepaalde emoties niet alleen emotie-afhankelijk is, maar ook afhankelijk is van taal.
I will first elaborate on how the human unconsciousness and human’s essential values become extre... more I will first elaborate on how the human unconsciousness and human’s essential values become extremely crucial in the deadly environment of space. This wilderness, I will argue, has a power to bring the protagonist, sometimes literally, face to face with their deepest unconsciousness more so than an earthly environment. Second, I will use a psychoanalytical approach to establish Ryan Stone’s inner states of mourning and the traumatic aftermath of the death of her daughter and her journey of working through this trauma and I will further elaborate on how Ryan works through her trauma by drifting through the wilderness of space. Hopefully in the end I will have made clear that we need to re-evaluate the concept of ‘wilderness’ when it comes to the depiction of the wilderness of space in science-fiction. It is as essential or even more essential as exploring the symbolic meaning of earthly landscapes and environment when researching the meaning of wilderness in relation to the protagonists in film.
What I will argue in this paper is that Benjamin’s concept “aesthetics of destruction” has raised... more What I will argue in this paper is that Benjamin’s concept “aesthetics of destruction” has raised itself to a whole new ideology, what I would like to call the “aesthetics of human extinction” in the thought experiment Earth Without People (2004), the book The World Without Us (2005) and the documentaries Life After People (2009-2010) and Aftermath: Population Zero (2008). In these non-fictions, all people suddenly “vanish” from the surface of the earth. They speculate how nature would fully and ubiquitously thrive again, animals would roam our cities, and how all remnants of human civilization will be subject to decay. Eventually, every trace of humans having populated the earth will be erased by forces of the natural world.
In my analysis, I will show in the spirit of Benjamin and Buck-Morss how the above introduced objects are employed to alienate and anaestheticize their audiences. In order to make the argument more persuasive I will use the notion of the Sublime, as coined by Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and Jean-Francois Lyotard. I trace the Sublime back to Romanticism, where the Sublime powers of nature were able to overwhelm the individual, and the Sublime’s ineffable as being the visceral force of imagination and creativity. The Sublime in the romantic period was a sight that evoked an awe-inspiring feeling in the spectator. I argue that in the non-fictions I analyze, the images of the overwhelming power of nature are not Sublime, but a posthuman Anti-Sublime: the images are not awe-inspiring and terrifying, but alienating, comforting and entertaining.
Thesis Chapters by Nataša van de Laar
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Papers by Nataša van de Laar
In my analysis, I will show in the spirit of Benjamin and Buck-Morss how the above introduced objects are employed to alienate and anaestheticize their audiences. In order to make the argument more persuasive I will use the notion of the Sublime, as coined by Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and Jean-Francois Lyotard. I trace the Sublime back to Romanticism, where the Sublime powers of nature were able to overwhelm the individual, and the Sublime’s ineffable as being the visceral force of imagination and creativity. The Sublime in the romantic period was a sight that evoked an awe-inspiring feeling in the spectator. I argue that in the non-fictions I analyze, the images of the overwhelming power of nature are not Sublime, but a posthuman Anti-Sublime: the images are not awe-inspiring and terrifying, but alienating, comforting and entertaining.
Thesis Chapters by Nataša van de Laar
In my analysis, I will show in the spirit of Benjamin and Buck-Morss how the above introduced objects are employed to alienate and anaestheticize their audiences. In order to make the argument more persuasive I will use the notion of the Sublime, as coined by Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and Jean-Francois Lyotard. I trace the Sublime back to Romanticism, where the Sublime powers of nature were able to overwhelm the individual, and the Sublime’s ineffable as being the visceral force of imagination and creativity. The Sublime in the romantic period was a sight that evoked an awe-inspiring feeling in the spectator. I argue that in the non-fictions I analyze, the images of the overwhelming power of nature are not Sublime, but a posthuman Anti-Sublime: the images are not awe-inspiring and terrifying, but alienating, comforting and entertaining.