Film Studies: Events

CFS Talk: Catherine Wheatley, "Do unto others": Self, Faith and Christian Foundational Myths in Contemporary European Film

Wed 20th February 2013 17:15 to 19:00

Catherine Wheatley

"The European feeling for self and the world has been shaped Christianity [...] If Christianity as observance and belief has been in decline over the past half-century, its ways of thinking and feeling are none the less still constitutive of both European culture and consciousness and the colonies and ex-colonies (notably the USA) that it has spawned." (Dyer, 1997: 15)

Since the turn of the century, and the events of September 11, the European media has seen an influx of images of Islam and the Arab race onscreen. While the above quote, taken from Dyer's seminal study, White, opens up onto questions of race on screen, my intention here is to focus on that other unspoken "norm" of European cinema - the Christian faith.

Looking at contemporary filmmaking from France (Bruno Dumont, Xavier Beauvois), Austria (Jessica Hausner, Gotz Spielmann, Ulrich Seidl), and Germany (Philip Groning, Michael Haneke) my talk will seek to examine a proposed turn in European cinema back to Christianity. The filmmakers in question differ in their deployment of Christian symbolism, from explict interrogation of Christian practice (Haneke, Hausner, Seidl), to its observation (Beauvois, Groning, Dumont - the latter of whom bring Christianity into direct confrontation with Islam) to oblique reference, or, to use Agamben's phrase a "gesture" towards Christianity (Breillat, Spielmann). Nonetheless, I want to argue, these various approaches are underpinned by a concern with the interrogation of what Dyer describes as a "feeling for self" (as opposed to the Arabic / Islamic "other"). By focussing on foundational Christian myths, these films make explicit precisely these Christian ways of thinking and feeling that constitute European culture today. Why and how they engage in this process will be the main subject of my discussion.

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CFS Talk: Catherine Wheatley, "Do unto others": Self, Faith and Christian Foundational Myths in Contemporary European Film

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