Michael J Shapiro - The Cinematic Political: Film Composition as Political Theory

First published 2020

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2020 Taylor & Francis

The right of Michael J. Shapiro to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shapiro, Michael J., author.

Title: The cinematic political : film composition as political theory /

Michael J. Shapiro.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019043541 (print) | LCCN 2019043542

(ebook) | ISBN 9781138596160 (hardback) | ISBN

9781138596177 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429487903 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780429947339 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780429947315

(mobi) | ISBN 9780429947322 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion picturesPolitical aspects. | Motion

picturesAesthetics. | AestheticsPolitical aspects. | English

languageRhetoric. | Report writing.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.P6 S523 2020 (print) |

LCC PN1995.9.P6 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/6581dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043541

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043542

ISBN: 978-1-138-59616-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-59617-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-48790-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

I want to thank my editor, Natalja Mortensen, for her encouragement of the project at every stage. I also want to thank Bonnie Honig and Lori Marso for recruiting me as a participant in the Lars von Trier Political Theory and Film project, which helped inspire this book, and Davide Panagia deserves special thanks for his suggestions after reading a draft of the Introduction. I also want to thank those involved in Routledges production process, especially Charlie Baker and Apexs Marie Louise Roberts for facilitating the final production process. This book is dedicated to Mom, my mother-in-law, Ruth Tavares-Toma, who has lived a remarkably unselfish, hardworking, and giving life. No one I have ever known has done more to support her loved ones or who better exemplifies grace.

This monograph is a research handbook dedicated to methods for thinking and writing cinematically. It is organized as a series of demonstrations that feature the articulation of political theory with cinema. Much of the emphasis is on composition, on writing projects in which a film or of a set of films is a textual vehicle for political theorizing. The project is inspired by my recent participation in a collective effort to extract political theory from the films of Lars von Trier. The analysis throughout this book endorses what Panagia implies: Staging an encounter between political theory and cinema requires attention to the way thinking is a form of (aberrant) movement in both the media genres of political theory and cinema and to the selection of innovative conceptual frames to intervene in the cinematic text in ways that challenge dominant understandings of life worlds. The diverse chapters in Honig and Marsos collection provide such encounters with much of von Triers film corpus. They compose political theory essays as they extract political theorizing from von Triers cinematic compositions.