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Memory and Resistance in the Contemporary Ghost Film
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23575652 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Scott Brewster (0000-0001-7948-0462, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Pages | 112-127 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Uncanny Modernity (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9780230582828_6 |
| OpenAlex | W2104393982 |
| ISBN | 9780230582828 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
To relive the past: that insistent impossibility of psychoanalysis and film. These forms of retelling invite, even demand, a distracted vision that flickers back and forth, scene by scene, repeating a past that is a present out of time. This essay examines the meditation on loss, frozen time and uncanny aftermaths in the contemporary ghost films What Lies Beneath (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2000) and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenâbar, 2001) in the light of debates surrounding trauma, therapy and recovered memory over the last two decades. In these confessional cinematic tales, there is nothing to escape, no ‘guilt’ to confess, yet a traumatic event structures each film, and the very act of resistance to remembering irresistibly draws its ‘survivor’ back to that haunting moment. This model of restlessness, of unfinished business, is not readily assimilable to standard notions of repression, and stands as a counterpoint to the imperatives within contemporary therapy culture to reveal, recover and bring a closure to the traumatic past. What Lies Beneath and The Others refuse to offer such closure. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Art · Art history · Closure (psychology) · Confessional · Counterpoint · Epistemology · Impossibility · Literature · Nothing · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Resistance (ecology) · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · Uncanny · Cinema and Media Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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