Unwatchable

Book

Unwatchable

Edited by: Nicholas Baer , Maggie Hennefeld , Laura Horak and Gunnar Iversen
With contributions by: Erika Balsom , Kenneth Berger , Susie Bright , Alex Bush , Erika Balsom , Kenneth Berger , Susie Bright , Alex Bush , Alec Butler , Noel Carroll , Mel Chen , Jonathan Crary , Abigail De Kosnik , Samuel England , Mattias Frey , Peter Geimer , Michael Boyce Gillespie , Asbjørn Grønstad , Boris Groys , Frances Guerin , Jack Halberstam , Barbara Hammer , Julian Hanich , Stefano Harney , J. Hoberman , Lynne Joyrich , Alexandra Juhasz , E. Ann Kaplan , Katariina Kyrölä , Nathan Lee , Akira Lippit , Jennifer Malkowski , W.J.T. Mitchell , Brandy Monk-Payton , Fred Moten , Bill Nichols , Jan Olsson , Danielle Peers , Raul Perez , Mauro Resmini , B. Ruby Rich , Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi , Jonathan Rosenbaum , Rebecca Schneider , Jeffrey Sconce , Jared Sexton , Philipp Stiasny , Meghan Sutherland , Bennet Togler , Leshu Torchin , Alok Vaid-Menon , Christophe Wall-Romana , Meir Wigoder , Emily Wills , Federico Windhausen , Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa , Genevieve Yue , Alenka Zupancic , Poulomi Saha , Vivian Sobchack and Vivian Sobchack

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2019

Published by

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About this book

We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?

With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.

Author / Editor information

NICHOLAS BAER is a collegiate assistant professor in the humanities and Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago in Illinois. He is the coeditor of the award-winning The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933.

MAGGIE HENNEFELD is an assistant professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.

LAURA HORAK is an associate professor of film studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of the award-winning Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908–1934 (Rutgers University Press).

GUNNAR IVERSEN is a professor of film studies at Carleton University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books.

Reviews

"This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes."

— Communication Booknotes Quarterly

"The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize."

— Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

"Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun."

— Aurore Spiers, Discourse

"Confronting the Unwatchable," by Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Baer
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/confronting-the-unwatchable/#!

— Los Angeles Review of Books

New Books Network: New Books in Popular Culture -- New Books in film podcast interview with Nicholas Baer , Maggie Hennefeld , Laura Horak , and Gunnar Iversen

— New Books Network - New Books in Film

"A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable."

— Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

"While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years—if not generations—to come."

— Film Quarterly

"This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics."

— MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen

"Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book."

— Jump Cut

"This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator."

— The Communication Review

"This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship."

— Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting

"A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come."

— Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

"A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily."

— Times Literary Supplement

"By posing a seemingly modest question—what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'—the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly."

— Martin Jay, author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought

"The tone of the writing is refreshing—sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history."

— Moveable Type

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable Nicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak and Gunnar Iversen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
Part I. Violence and Testimony
1. Theorizing the Unwatchable
Unwatchable W. J. T. Mitchell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	35
The Gaze from Within Boris Groys Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	39
The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable Stefano Harney and Fred Moten Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	45
Melting into Visibility Alenka Zupančič Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	48
Pro Forma Meghan Sutherland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	52
2. Spectacles of Destruction
Terminal Radiance Jonathan Crary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	59
Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen Poulomi Saha Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	63
Breakaway Alex Bush Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	68
The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage Meir Wigoder Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	73
3. Bearing Witness
The Incommensurable Peter Geimer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	82
Not Seeing Is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy Leshu Torchin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	86
Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched Frances Guerin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	92
Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrávidos Federico Windhausen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	97
Alan Kurdi’s Body on the Shore Emily Regan Wills Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	102
4. Visual Regimes of Racial Violence
Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	110
The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out Jared Sexton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	115
Nothing Is Unwatchable for All Alexandra Juhasz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	121
Empathy .Complicity Michael Boyce Gillespie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	126
5. Spectacularization and Resistance
Entertainment Value Alok Vaid-Menon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	132
Holocausts, Hallowe’en, and Headdresses Alec Butler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	136
Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence Danielle Peers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	141
Part II. Histories and Genres
6. The Tradition of Provocateurs
The Two Unwatchables Asbjørn Grønstad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	151
Real Horrorshow Akira Mizuta Lippit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	155
Asymmetries of Desire: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom Mauro Resmini Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	160
Unstomachable: Irréversible and the Extreme Cinema Tradition Mattias Frey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	165
7. Enduring the Avant-Garde
Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’s Venom and Eternity Christophe Wall-Romana Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	172
The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’s Howls for Sade Kenneth Berger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	178
Warhol’s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable J. Hoberman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	184
Warhol’s Empire Noël Carroll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	189
Watching Paint Dry Erika Balsom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	194
8. Visceral Responses to Horror
“Peekaboo”: Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films Vivian Sobchack Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	201
Why I Cannot Watch B. Ruby Rich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	207
Apotropes Genevieve Yue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	213
9. Pornography and the Question of Pleasure
I Am Curious (Butterball) Susie Bright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	220
At the Threshold to the Void Bill Nichols Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	225
10. Archives and the Disintegrating Image
Restoring Blood Money Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	231
Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess Jan Olsson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	237
Twilight of the Dead Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	244
Part III. Spectators and Objects
11. Passionate Aversions
“Sad!”: Why I Won’t Watch Antichrist Jonathan Rosenbaum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	253
Transforming Nihilism Nathan Lee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	258
Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant Julian Hanich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	263
The Biopic Is an Affront to the Cinema Jeffrey Sconce Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	269
12. Tedious Whiteness
White Men Behaving Sadly Jack Halberstam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	274
“You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important”; or, Why I Can’t Watch The Help Brandy Monk-Payton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	280
Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW? Mel Y. Chen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	286
13. Reality Trumpism
TV Trumps Lynne Joyrich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	293
The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won’t Watch a TV Miniseries about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Abigail De Kosnik Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	299
14. Pedagogy and Campus Politics
Why We Can’t Take a Joke Raúl Pérez Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	307
The Bridge and Unteachable Films Jennifer Malkowski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	312
Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort Katariina Kyrölä Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	317
15. The Triggered Spectator
What Is an “Unwatchable” Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice) E. Ann Kaplan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	325
Watch at Your Own Peril Barbara Hammer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	331
Sects, Fries, and Videotape Samuel England Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	334
Off Watch Rebecca Schneider Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	341
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	347
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	349
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	355
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	375
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	389

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

September 2, 2019

eBook ISBN:

9780813599625

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813599625

eBook ISBN: 9780813599625

Audience(s) for this book

For a non-specialist adult audience

Unwatchable

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Bibliographic data