Martin Hall - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Martin Hall

1968 British Cinema, along with a number of other national cinemas, saw a selection of radical te... more 1968 British Cinema, along with a number of other national cinemas, saw a selection of radical texts that attempted to interrogate dominant modes of representation, ideology and social relations within the feature film. From Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, which analysed the failings of the officer class in the Crimean war through a modern prism, to Lindsay Anderson's if...., with its critique of the stratification of society and the illusion of classlessness in Harold Wilson's Britain, the cinema in Britain seemed to be responding to the perceived militancy of the day. These films can be argued to be broadly Utopian in their aims and can be read as indicative of the counter-cultural tenor of that year. Perhaps the most interesting example of a film that played with the cultural zeitgeist is Performance (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970 1 ). This paper will utilise a selection of psychoanalytic concepts that may usefully explicate Utopian tropes within this text. Then, more broadly, as a form of appendix or epilogue, psychoanalysis and its relationship to history will be explicated, with specific emphasis on the utility of this discussion for looking at texts from the late 1960s. Finally, the film's position within the British counter-culture will briefly be illuminated. Initially, a brief synopsis of the film will be given, followed by a discussion of its themes and the usefulness of a psychoanalytic approach.

1968 British Cinema, along with a number of other national cinemas, saw a selection of radical te... more 1968 British Cinema, along with a number of other national cinemas, saw a selection of radical texts that attempted to interrogate dominant modes of representation, ideology and social relations within the feature film. From Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, which analysed the failings of the officer class in the Crimean war through a modern prism, to Lindsay Anderson's if...., with its critique of the stratification of society and the illusion of classlessness in Harold Wilson's Britain, the cinema in Britain seemed to be responding to the perceived militancy of the day. These films can be argued to be broadly Utopian in their aims and can be read as indicative of the counter-cultural tenor of that year. Perhaps the most interesting example of a film that played with the cultural zeitgeist is Performance (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970 1 ). This paper will utilise a selection of psychoanalytic concepts that may usefully explicate Utopian tropes within this text. Then, more broadly, as a form of appendix or epilogue, psychoanalysis and its relationship to history will be explicated, with specific emphasis on the utility of this discussion for looking at texts from the late 1960s. Finally, the film's position within the British counter-culture will briefly be illuminated. Initially, a brief synopsis of the film will be given, followed by a discussion of its themes and the usefulness of a psychoanalytic approach.