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2008 Abstracts Stage 2

In Contemporary Film, what does Violence Represent?

Joe Ambrose, 2008, Stage 2

My project will be based on the violence in films. During the course of my work I will be looking at three different films- “A Clockwork Orange” (written by Anthony Burgess and adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick), “The Football Factory” (written by John King and adapted to film by Nick Love) and the infamous “Fight Club” (written by Chuck Palahniuk and directed by David Fincher). Questions 1) Why do people take part in violent acts? 2) What do these acts represent? Are they pure needless violence or related to something, such as a sense of community, boredom or simply fulfilling a sensual need? 3) What can we take from the conclusions drawn? Can we somehow relate the violence in films to the violence we see in things like football hooliganism and the rise of violent sports? How does violence relate to my concepts? Concept 1: Religiosity. George Bataille and Emile Durkheim. The pair’s idea of religion as a unifying force means that they may feel that the characters in A Clockwork Orange are substituting conventional/organised religion for their own violence based religion. Concept 2: Alienation. Karl Marx. Alienation indicates the separation of things that genuinely belong together. In regards to humans, it refers to the alienation of people from features of “human nature”. People may argue that violence is part of the human nature, and so through the repression of this violent streak, we feel alienation.

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