Realizing the witch : science, cinema, and the mastery of the invisible
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Realizing the witch : science, cinema, and the mastery of the invisible
(Forms of living)
Fordham University Press, 2016
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 257- 273) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Benjamin Christensen's Haxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Haxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the mentally ill.
In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Haxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Haxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Haxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe. Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless "know" to be there.
Table of Contents
Introduction: What Is Haxan? Part I: The Realization of the Witch The Witch in the Human Sciences and the Mastery of Nonsense 1. Evidence, First Movement. Words and Things 2. Evidence, Second Movement. Tableaux and Faces 3. The Viral Character of the Witch 4. Demonology Part II: A Mobile Force in the Modern Age 1922 5. Sex, Touch, and Materiality 6. Possession and Ecstasy 7. Hysterias Postscript--It is very hard to believe ... Benjamin Christensen's Cited Source Material Films Cited Bibliography Notes Index Acknowledgments
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