Jeanne Deslandes | National Taiwan University of Arts (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeanne Deslandes

Cinémastodonte, 2024

La troisième édition du déambulatoire poétique de Coaticook tenue le 23 juin 2024 au Québec avec ... more La troisième édition du déambulatoire poétique de Coaticook tenue le 23 juin 2024 au Québec avec la participation de Marianne V, Vicky Bernard, Frank Poule, Anthony Lacroix, Andrée-Anne Chose et Audrey Babin-Alexandre fut un réel succès.

Cinémastodonte, autodidacte, 2023

Compte rendu critique de l'exposition solo de Diane Héon au musée Beaulne de Coaticook, du 17 sep... more Compte rendu critique de l'exposition solo de Diane Héon au musée Beaulne de Coaticook, du 17 septembre au 12 novembre 2023.

Cinémas: Revue d'études cinématographiques, 1996

S’inspirant de nouvelles théories psychanalytiques mettant en évidence un processus identificatoi... more S’inspirant de nouvelles théories psychanalytiques mettant en évidence un processus identificatoire antérieur à la phase du miroir, l’auteure développe la notion d’identification par l’intermédiaire de la musique. Les concepts de miroir sonore et de « Moi-peau » sont mis à profit, ils contribuent à développer une nouvelle avenue pour l’analyse psychanalytique du cinéma.

Séquences, 1991

Critique du film: La Demoiselle sauvage (Séquences, novembre 1991) Référence: Deslandes Jea... more Critique du film: La Demoiselle sauvage (Séquences, novembre 1991)

Référence: Deslandes Jeanne "La Demoiselle sauvage". Séquences, 155, November 1991: 56-57.

Cinémastodonte, 2020

Critique de la performance dansée tenue le 21 septembre 2019 à East-Angus. Une création collectiv... more Critique de la performance dansée tenue le 21 septembre 2019 à East-Angus. Une création collective sous la supervision de Grégoire Ferland.

Journal of Narrative Theory, 2004

This study examines the experience of stirring up emotion in reaction to fiction. Contemporary th... more This study examines the experience of stirring up emotion in reaction to fiction. Contemporary theoreticians call this experience narrative emotion, while philosophers traditionally use the expression aesthetic emotion. Unlike most of the existing literature on the topic, this research takes a phenomenological approach to studying narrative/aesthetic emotion. The purpose of this investigation is to target the essence of narrative emotion, to list its components so as to develop a functional understanding of what philosophers refer to as 'aesthetic emotion'. This may lead us to a better understanding of the cultural and psychological need for fiction.

This research considers fiction in a very broad perspective. It embraces any representational art that uses mimesis to narrate a story. In this manner, I use the term virtual world interchangeably with fiction, perhaps because this expression evokes new means of conveying fiction-like virtual reality. My approach consciously rejects fiction as a material object. I am not interested in the format itself. From this perspective, fiction can be conveyed in the form of books, plays, screenplays, films, operas, interactive media, art installations, etc. It is a construction of an author or authors that takes form through the workings of the spectator's imagination. This analysis concentrates on fiction as a practice. It is solely concerned with the virtual world as a cognitive and affective phenomenon. Taken in its functional sense and seen as a performance, fiction consists in the practice of viewing a drama, a film, a puppet show, an opera, reading a book or interacting.

In the first part of this analysis I expose how the empiricists' influence in the seventeenth century has lead to a viable study of aesthetics. However, studying aesthetics and studying aesthetic emotions are two different things.Because philosophy has a strong tradition of rational approaches, which does not leave much room for emotion, it is only since the 1970s that contemporary philosophers have started to address aesthetic emotion. And, since the late 1980s, philosophers who have had interest in aesthetic emotion actually focused obtusely on logic. In fact, currently the little written on the topic of aesthetic emotion relates to a logical conundrum, the paradox that fictional stimuli produce "real" emotions. Contemporary philosophers keep approaching emotion with logic and this very stance leads to the paradox.

In the second part, I flash-back in philosophical time to the 1970s, in order to debate Kendall Walton's notion of 'quasi-emotion' and dispute his arguments in regard to the necessity for motor reaction. This detour will be useful for two reasons: because Walton's theory has the intrinsic merit of probing the specificity of narrative emotion and, more especially, because Walton addresses one major specific trait: the non-voluntary reaction

In the third part, I target a few more specific traits of narrative emotion. I observe that the chief characteristic of narrative emotion pertains to the fact that it is an emotion felt for the sake of someone, or something, else: a virtual other. Narrative emotion is an emotion by proxy. Another trait of narrative emotion is that it leads to a voluntary passivity. I explain this voluntary passivity with the concepts of pathivity and symbolic embodiment.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, using Robert J. Yanal’s terms “emoter” in order to signify the agent feeling a narrative emotion, and “emoting” to refer to the state of being aroused by a fiction-generated emotion will lead to conclude that emoting is a non-motor, purposeless reaction that takes place for its own sake. Or rather, for the absurd sake of fusion with a virtual other. Emoting finds its stimulus in a representation, in a virtual realm and reacts to it emotionally in a way similar to real-life experience of other beings.

Les explorations musicales de Maurice Blackburn réunies dans un coffret

Cinéma québécois et musique de film dans ma série : musique de cinéma

Tamkang Review (Taiwan), 2002

The silver screen is a window on culture. When a Chinese film plagiarizes a French film; when bo... more The silver screen is a window on culture. When a Chinese film plagiarizes a French film; when both, in their own way deal with a woman held captive by government authorities; when captivity in each case serves to reconstruct the identity of the rebellious female, a comparison of the ideologies behind the two works is called for.

Chinese filmmaker Stephen Shin (Hong Kong) found inspiration in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita (1990) and modified the story’s basic structure by adding significant variations to make a forgery of the French film: Black Cat (1991).

This paper first looks at Chinese literature to determine the origin of the variations that emerge in the Asian version, then compares the two films to highlight the differences between the narratives. The comparative analysis examines each cultural ideology opposing them on various levels: Buddhism vs. Christianity, Confucianism vs. patriarchy, and the opposing notions of ‘duty toward community’ and ‘individual rights’. This establishes the respective cultural traits of the two stories, whose common starting point is the imprisonment of a woman by a patriarchal state.

Black Cat diverges from the original tale of La Femme Nikita with the addition of a twist inspired by a Chinese literary classic by Wu Cheng’en entitled Journey to the West (aka Pilmigrage to the West), published in the 1570s. In the classic Chinese novel and in the contemporary film the central character is controlled by a man, who metes out punishment in the form of atrocious headaches. The Black Cat variant deals with a woman under government domination, while the novel involved the relationship of a monkey to its master. Catherine, in the Chinese film, is indeed controlled by the state, but also by technology. Authorities implant a microchip in her brain to ensure her irrevocable loyalty by remote control.

This twist in the Chinese film has critical repercussions, as it alters the story’s ending. Consequently, although the two films share a basic framework, their development differs in several ways. In both, the central character is initially a victim; once equipped with a gun, the two women become assassins for government secret services. The Chinese heroine evolves according to Buddhist ideology: once ‘reincarnated’ she must pay for her crime by assuming a status inferior to that she enjoyed in her ‘previous life’. Her training gives her the power to attack and kill, but like the monkey in the classic novel she is unable to distinguish right from wrong and thus can only obey her mentor’s commands.

The French protagonist develops along the lines of Christian ideology insofar as the story is open-ended: following her ‘resurrection’, we never learn what becomes of her. Like Christ, she disappears. Contrary to her Asian counterpart, once ‘crucified’ she acquires the capacity to distinguish right from wrong and refuses to kill again. If the allusion to Buddhism is highly relevant, the analogous reference to Christianity is less substantial, the resurrection of sorts and open ending notwithstanding.

Both women must atone through punishment befitting their crime. Both have killed and must kill again. However, the Chinese woman will break out of the reincarnation cycle only by death.
…
Chinese ideology expresses the supremacy of the technology that holds her prisoner. For the French woman, it is rather a matter of affirming the freedom of individual choice. Catherine is bound by duty; Nikita will claim her right to freedom. Catherine’s role is above all social; Nikita’s, chiefly moral.

This dichotomy refers back to Chinese Confucianism, which commands absolute obedience to the father figure, and to French patriarchy, which in crumbling leaves a ray of hope that the bonds of servitude can be broken and freedom sought. In China, duty to one’s community overrides individual liberty. This consideration is highly present, as is the incapacity to make decisions until your parents died, whence the need to seek paternal judgment.

As the new millennium approaches, thoughts turn to pinpointing the most important development of the last century. For some, it is technological progress. For others, it is the release from thralldom to sovereign monarchs, access to democracy. Each of these films offers a distinct response. However they agree that the traditional male-hunter/female-gatherer types of social roles have changed, that women now have guns. And both films ask “At what price?” By permitting the Sino-patriarchal states to trivialize assassination through distance, by enabling them of remain clean, using the women to kill?

Jeanne Deslandes
jdeslandes@yahoo.com
2000

Une installation époustouflante d'Atom Egoyan et Juliao Sarmento à la 49e édition de la Biennale ... more Une installation époustouflante d'Atom Egoyan et Juliao Sarmento à la 49e édition de la Biennale de Venise. Réflexion sur le voyeurisme

Entretien avec le musicien Osvaldo Montes

Rétrospective sur la carrière de Henry Mancini suite à son décès

Entretien avec le musicien Milan Kymlicka

Entretien avec le musicien Jean Cousineau

Explication de la réduction de bruit et du système Dolby en expliquant les possibilités au cinéma... more Explication de la réduction de bruit et du système Dolby en expliquant les possibilités au cinéma inspiré des films À corps perdu de Léa Pool et Passiflora de Bélanger et Gueissaz Teufel

Third cinema and agit-prop cinema in the 1990s

Abstract Inspired by psychoanalytic theories setting forth an identification process that preced... more Abstract
Inspired by psychoanalytic theories setting forth an identification process that precedes the mirror stage, the author develops the notion of identification through the medium of music. The concepts of sound mirror and "Self-skin" are exploited, contributing to the development of a new avenue for the psychoanalytic analysis of cinema.

Cinémastodonte, 2024

La troisième édition du déambulatoire poétique de Coaticook tenue le 23 juin 2024 au Québec avec ... more La troisième édition du déambulatoire poétique de Coaticook tenue le 23 juin 2024 au Québec avec la participation de Marianne V, Vicky Bernard, Frank Poule, Anthony Lacroix, Andrée-Anne Chose et Audrey Babin-Alexandre fut un réel succès.

Cinémastodonte, autodidacte, 2023

Compte rendu critique de l'exposition solo de Diane Héon au musée Beaulne de Coaticook, du 17 sep... more Compte rendu critique de l'exposition solo de Diane Héon au musée Beaulne de Coaticook, du 17 septembre au 12 novembre 2023.

Cinémas: Revue d'études cinématographiques, 1996

S’inspirant de nouvelles théories psychanalytiques mettant en évidence un processus identificatoi... more S’inspirant de nouvelles théories psychanalytiques mettant en évidence un processus identificatoire antérieur à la phase du miroir, l’auteure développe la notion d’identification par l’intermédiaire de la musique. Les concepts de miroir sonore et de « Moi-peau » sont mis à profit, ils contribuent à développer une nouvelle avenue pour l’analyse psychanalytique du cinéma.

Séquences, 1991

Critique du film: La Demoiselle sauvage (Séquences, novembre 1991) Référence: Deslandes Jea... more Critique du film: La Demoiselle sauvage (Séquences, novembre 1991)

Référence: Deslandes Jeanne "La Demoiselle sauvage". Séquences, 155, November 1991: 56-57.

Cinémastodonte, 2020

Critique de la performance dansée tenue le 21 septembre 2019 à East-Angus. Une création collectiv... more Critique de la performance dansée tenue le 21 septembre 2019 à East-Angus. Une création collective sous la supervision de Grégoire Ferland.

Journal of Narrative Theory, 2004

This study examines the experience of stirring up emotion in reaction to fiction. Contemporary th... more This study examines the experience of stirring up emotion in reaction to fiction. Contemporary theoreticians call this experience narrative emotion, while philosophers traditionally use the expression aesthetic emotion. Unlike most of the existing literature on the topic, this research takes a phenomenological approach to studying narrative/aesthetic emotion. The purpose of this investigation is to target the essence of narrative emotion, to list its components so as to develop a functional understanding of what philosophers refer to as 'aesthetic emotion'. This may lead us to a better understanding of the cultural and psychological need for fiction.

This research considers fiction in a very broad perspective. It embraces any representational art that uses mimesis to narrate a story. In this manner, I use the term virtual world interchangeably with fiction, perhaps because this expression evokes new means of conveying fiction-like virtual reality. My approach consciously rejects fiction as a material object. I am not interested in the format itself. From this perspective, fiction can be conveyed in the form of books, plays, screenplays, films, operas, interactive media, art installations, etc. It is a construction of an author or authors that takes form through the workings of the spectator's imagination. This analysis concentrates on fiction as a practice. It is solely concerned with the virtual world as a cognitive and affective phenomenon. Taken in its functional sense and seen as a performance, fiction consists in the practice of viewing a drama, a film, a puppet show, an opera, reading a book or interacting.

In the first part of this analysis I expose how the empiricists' influence in the seventeenth century has lead to a viable study of aesthetics. However, studying aesthetics and studying aesthetic emotions are two different things.Because philosophy has a strong tradition of rational approaches, which does not leave much room for emotion, it is only since the 1970s that contemporary philosophers have started to address aesthetic emotion. And, since the late 1980s, philosophers who have had interest in aesthetic emotion actually focused obtusely on logic. In fact, currently the little written on the topic of aesthetic emotion relates to a logical conundrum, the paradox that fictional stimuli produce "real" emotions. Contemporary philosophers keep approaching emotion with logic and this very stance leads to the paradox.

In the second part, I flash-back in philosophical time to the 1970s, in order to debate Kendall Walton's notion of 'quasi-emotion' and dispute his arguments in regard to the necessity for motor reaction. This detour will be useful for two reasons: because Walton's theory has the intrinsic merit of probing the specificity of narrative emotion and, more especially, because Walton addresses one major specific trait: the non-voluntary reaction

In the third part, I target a few more specific traits of narrative emotion. I observe that the chief characteristic of narrative emotion pertains to the fact that it is an emotion felt for the sake of someone, or something, else: a virtual other. Narrative emotion is an emotion by proxy. Another trait of narrative emotion is that it leads to a voluntary passivity. I explain this voluntary passivity with the concepts of pathivity and symbolic embodiment.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, using Robert J. Yanal’s terms “emoter” in order to signify the agent feeling a narrative emotion, and “emoting” to refer to the state of being aroused by a fiction-generated emotion will lead to conclude that emoting is a non-motor, purposeless reaction that takes place for its own sake. Or rather, for the absurd sake of fusion with a virtual other. Emoting finds its stimulus in a representation, in a virtual realm and reacts to it emotionally in a way similar to real-life experience of other beings.

Les explorations musicales de Maurice Blackburn réunies dans un coffret

Cinéma québécois et musique de film dans ma série : musique de cinéma

Tamkang Review (Taiwan), 2002

The silver screen is a window on culture. When a Chinese film plagiarizes a French film; when bo... more The silver screen is a window on culture. When a Chinese film plagiarizes a French film; when both, in their own way deal with a woman held captive by government authorities; when captivity in each case serves to reconstruct the identity of the rebellious female, a comparison of the ideologies behind the two works is called for.

Chinese filmmaker Stephen Shin (Hong Kong) found inspiration in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita (1990) and modified the story’s basic structure by adding significant variations to make a forgery of the French film: Black Cat (1991).

This paper first looks at Chinese literature to determine the origin of the variations that emerge in the Asian version, then compares the two films to highlight the differences between the narratives. The comparative analysis examines each cultural ideology opposing them on various levels: Buddhism vs. Christianity, Confucianism vs. patriarchy, and the opposing notions of ‘duty toward community’ and ‘individual rights’. This establishes the respective cultural traits of the two stories, whose common starting point is the imprisonment of a woman by a patriarchal state.

Black Cat diverges from the original tale of La Femme Nikita with the addition of a twist inspired by a Chinese literary classic by Wu Cheng’en entitled Journey to the West (aka Pilmigrage to the West), published in the 1570s. In the classic Chinese novel and in the contemporary film the central character is controlled by a man, who metes out punishment in the form of atrocious headaches. The Black Cat variant deals with a woman under government domination, while the novel involved the relationship of a monkey to its master. Catherine, in the Chinese film, is indeed controlled by the state, but also by technology. Authorities implant a microchip in her brain to ensure her irrevocable loyalty by remote control.

This twist in the Chinese film has critical repercussions, as it alters the story’s ending. Consequently, although the two films share a basic framework, their development differs in several ways. In both, the central character is initially a victim; once equipped with a gun, the two women become assassins for government secret services. The Chinese heroine evolves according to Buddhist ideology: once ‘reincarnated’ she must pay for her crime by assuming a status inferior to that she enjoyed in her ‘previous life’. Her training gives her the power to attack and kill, but like the monkey in the classic novel she is unable to distinguish right from wrong and thus can only obey her mentor’s commands.

The French protagonist develops along the lines of Christian ideology insofar as the story is open-ended: following her ‘resurrection’, we never learn what becomes of her. Like Christ, she disappears. Contrary to her Asian counterpart, once ‘crucified’ she acquires the capacity to distinguish right from wrong and refuses to kill again. If the allusion to Buddhism is highly relevant, the analogous reference to Christianity is less substantial, the resurrection of sorts and open ending notwithstanding.

Both women must atone through punishment befitting their crime. Both have killed and must kill again. However, the Chinese woman will break out of the reincarnation cycle only by death.
…
Chinese ideology expresses the supremacy of the technology that holds her prisoner. For the French woman, it is rather a matter of affirming the freedom of individual choice. Catherine is bound by duty; Nikita will claim her right to freedom. Catherine’s role is above all social; Nikita’s, chiefly moral.

This dichotomy refers back to Chinese Confucianism, which commands absolute obedience to the father figure, and to French patriarchy, which in crumbling leaves a ray of hope that the bonds of servitude can be broken and freedom sought. In China, duty to one’s community overrides individual liberty. This consideration is highly present, as is the incapacity to make decisions until your parents died, whence the need to seek paternal judgment.

As the new millennium approaches, thoughts turn to pinpointing the most important development of the last century. For some, it is technological progress. For others, it is the release from thralldom to sovereign monarchs, access to democracy. Each of these films offers a distinct response. However they agree that the traditional male-hunter/female-gatherer types of social roles have changed, that women now have guns. And both films ask “At what price?” By permitting the Sino-patriarchal states to trivialize assassination through distance, by enabling them of remain clean, using the women to kill?

Jeanne Deslandes
jdeslandes@yahoo.com
2000

Une installation époustouflante d'Atom Egoyan et Juliao Sarmento à la 49e édition de la Biennale ... more Une installation époustouflante d'Atom Egoyan et Juliao Sarmento à la 49e édition de la Biennale de Venise. Réflexion sur le voyeurisme

Entretien avec le musicien Osvaldo Montes

Rétrospective sur la carrière de Henry Mancini suite à son décès

Entretien avec le musicien Milan Kymlicka

Entretien avec le musicien Jean Cousineau

Explication de la réduction de bruit et du système Dolby en expliquant les possibilités au cinéma... more Explication de la réduction de bruit et du système Dolby en expliquant les possibilités au cinéma inspiré des films À corps perdu de Léa Pool et Passiflora de Bélanger et Gueissaz Teufel

Third cinema and agit-prop cinema in the 1990s

Abstract Inspired by psychoanalytic theories setting forth an identification process that preced... more Abstract
Inspired by psychoanalytic theories setting forth an identification process that precedes the mirror stage, the author develops the notion of identification through the medium of music. The concepts of sound mirror and "Self-skin" are exploited, contributing to the development of a new avenue for the psychoanalytic analysis of cinema.

Imagination et fiction : La réception du récit Cette analyse étudie le vécu de l’être qui se réf... more Imagination et fiction : La réception du récit

Cette analyse étudie le vécu de l’être qui se réfugie dans le monde virtuel. Le travail de l’imagination à l’œuvre dans la réception de la fiction y est étudié en revisitant les notions de plusieurs philosophes : Scruton, Bergson, Deleuze, Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty et Ricoeur. L’imagination y est définie comme une aptitude à accéder à divers modes de participation, en tolérant un état de double conscience qui crée une convergence de deux niveaux de réalité.

Inspirée du travail de Paul Ricœur, la démarche de cet ouvrage appartient foncièrement à la famille de la phénoménologie herméneutique. Cette analyse poursuit le but de clarifier le fonctionnement de l’imagination dans un contexte narratif afin de spécifier de quelle manière la conscience réagit lorsque vient le temps de se laisser divertir par la fiction. La question dominante consiste à étudier le mécanisme imaginaire imputable à la conscience sous l’emprise de l’imagination.

Signifier pour dire, dire pour signifier, 2018

Dans le monde de la théorie du cinéma d'aujourd'hui, il y a une grande timidité, ou devrait-on pl... more Dans le monde de la théorie du cinéma d'aujourd'hui, il y a une grande timidité, ou devrait-on plutôt dire une méfiance, envers la sémiotique. Y a-t-il toujours un espace viable pour analyser le cinéma sous la loupe du sens qu'il transmet? Cette recherche sur la transition spatiotemporelle au cinéma tente de répondre à cette question en utilisant la modélisation implicite/explicite pour rendre compte de la complexité d’informations sonores et visuelles disséminées lors d’une ellipse spatiotemporelle au cinéma. Quelques extraits du film C.R.AZ.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2006) permettront d’exposer comment la trame musicale, la voix hors-champ et l’image articulent ensemble un amalgame de signifiants explicites, mais aussi souvent implicites qui résultent en une signification totale de l’ordre de la transition spatiotemporelle.

This paper uses excerpts from C.R.AZ.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2006) to delineate how spatiotemporal transitions are a complex array of visual, musical and sound components. Each of these providing meaning both implicitly and explicitly in order to deliver a signified sum.