Edinburgh University Press
The Besieged Ego
About this book
The Besieged Ego critically appraises the representation, or mediation, of identity in film and television through a thorough analysis of doppelgangers and split or fragmentary characters. The prevalence of non-autonomous characters in a wide variety of film and television examples calls into question the very concept of a unified, ‘knowable’ identity. The form of the double, and cinematic modes and rhetorics used to denote fragmentary identity, is addressed in the book through a detailed analysis of texts drawn from a range of industrial, historical and cultural contexts. The doppelganger or double carries significant cultural meanings about what it means to be ‘human’ and the experience of identity as a gendered individual. The double also expresses in fictional form our problematic experience of the world as a social, and supposedly whole and autonomous, subject. The Besieged Ego therefore raises important questions about the representation of identity onscreen and concomitant issues regarding autonomy and what it means to be ‘human’, yet it also charts a generic account of the double onscreen. Case studies include horror, fantasy, and comedy.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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Acknowledgements
vi -
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Introduction
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1. Why Psychoanalysis?
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2. The Ego in Freud and Lacan
36 -
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3. The Monster Within
55 -
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4. Gendering the Double
79 -
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5 Doubled Up: Body Swapping, Multiple Performance and Twins in the Comedy Film
104 -
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Conclusion
124 -
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Notes
128 -
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Bibliography
134 -
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Filmography
141 -
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Index
143
