Margaret Bruder

Margaret Bruder is a film studies professor at Indiana University (Bloomington). The author of "Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style", she is noted for her analysis of the aestheticization of violence in films and other mass media.

Theories

Bruder argues that "aestheticized violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film." She points out that movies such as the popular action film "" are very violent, but they do "not fall into the category of aestheticized violence because it is not stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way." [ Bruder, Margaret Ervin (1998). Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Archived from the original on 2004-09-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-08. ] She claims that films that use aestheticized violence use a "stylized" depiction that "revel [s] in guns, gore and explosions, exploiting mise-en-scene not...to provide narrative environment ... [but rather] to create the appearance of a 'movie' atmosphere against which specifically cinematic spectacle can unfold." [ Bruder, Margaret Ervin (1998). Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Archived from the original on 2004-09-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-08. ]

In movies with aestheticized violence, the "standard realist modes of editing and cinematography are violated in order to spectacularize the action being played out on the screen"; directors use "quick and awkward editing", "canted framings," shock cuts, and slow motion, to emphasize the impacts of bullets or the "spurting of blood." [ Bruder, Margaret Ervin (1998). Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Archived from the original on 2004-09-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-08. ]

For viewers of films with aestheticized, such as John Woo’s movies, "One of the many pleasures" from watching Woo’s films, such as "Hard Target" is that it gets viewers to recognize how Woo plays with conventions "from other Woo films" and how it "connects up with films...which include imitations of or homages to Woo." Bruder argues that films with aestheticized violence such as "'Hard Target, True Romance' and 'Tombstone' are [filled] with... signs" and indicators, so that "the stylized violence they contain ultimately serves as...another interruption in the narrative drive" of the film." [ Bruder, Margaret Ervin (1998). Aestheticizing Violence, or How To Do Things with Style. Film Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Archived from the original on 2004-09-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-08. ]

ee also

*Aestheticization as propaganda
*The art of murder
*Graphic violence
*Ultraviolence
*Anti-hero
*Maligno Art

Further reading

* Bersani, Leo and Ulysse Dutoit, "The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture" (NY: Schocken Books, 1985)
* Black, Joel (1991) "The Aesthetics of Murder". Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

References