
Possessed
Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema
Stefan Andriopoulos(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 1. August 2008
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-226-02054-9 (ISBN)
Description
Silent cinema and contemporaneous literature explored themes of mesmerism, possession, and the ominous agency of corporate bodies that subsumed individual identities. At the same time, critics accused film itself of exerting a hypnotic influence over spellbound audiences. Stefan Andriopoulos shows that all this anxiety over being governed by an outside force was no marginal oddity, but rather a pervasive concern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Tracing this preoccupation through the period's films - as well as its legal, medical, and literary texts - Andriopoulos pays particular attention to the terrifying notion of murder committed against one's will. He returns us to a time when medical researchers described the hypnotized subject as a medium who could be compelled to carry out violent crimes, and when films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" famously portrayed the hypnotist's seemingly unlimited power on the movie screen.
Combining theoretical sophistication with scrupulous archival research and insightful film analysis, "Possessed" adds a new dimension to our understanding of today's anxieties about the onslaught of visual media and the expanding reach of vast corporations that seem to absorb our own identities.
Combining theoretical sophistication with scrupulous archival research and insightful film analysis, "Possessed" adds a new dimension to our understanding of today's anxieties about the onslaught of visual media and the expanding reach of vast corporations that seem to absorb our own identities.
Reviews / Votes
"Ambitious and wide-ranging, Possessed is a remarkably invigorating interdisciplinary exercise that will be read with profit by individuals in cinema and media studies, comparative literature, and the history of science. It reaches conclusions that are both precisely stated and inordinately suggestive." - Eric Rentschler, Harvard University"More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 24 mm
Width: 16 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
425 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-02054-9 (9780226020549)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2008
1st Edition
University of Chicago Press
€55.59
Available for download
Persons
Stefan Andriopoulos is associate professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University.