engleski

The melancholy condition of realism (With notes on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia)

Drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud (1891, 1917) and Carl Schmitt (1956), I show how twentieth-century accounts of melancholia, in psychoanalysis and in political theory, entail a presentation of the world that dovetails with nineteenth-century realism. This suggests that realism is fundamentally a response to the melancholy condition that underlies modernity, and could be analyzed as such ; it also suggests that realism persists in the twentieth century as a peculiar configuration of melancholia. Erwin Panofsky’s film theory (1936) exemplifies this position. Based staunchly in realism, Panofsky’s film theory is consistent with his comprehensive early exploration of melancholia (1923) ; no less than the rationale of cinema is thus shown to be moored in the melancholy condition of realism. It is a juncture explored by Lars von Trier in Melancholia (2011): while studiously arranging his cinematic study of melancholia around realism, Trier implies that film’s likely neglect of realism in the twenty-first century amounts to cinematic suicide and, consequently, to the end of the modern world.

cinema, Lars von Trier, melancholia, metonymy, modernity, realism

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