Abstract
Andrew Repasky McElhinney’s Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye (2003) begins with a grainy, close-up image of a woman giving birth. Over this image is narrated an account not of the life, but of the myth of Georges Bataille. It ends with his death in 1962, a year before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as if there were something uncanny about the relative proximity between the two events. This deliberate ‘uncanny’ misconception is a signal that Bataille haunts McElhinney’s scene, but is not part of it. As Freud notes: ‘the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’ (Freud, 1990, p. 340). Bataille is ob-scene (in the sense of being off screen), even though his life is referred to and the film takes the title of his most famous novella, Story of the Eye (Bataille, 2001b), the ‘Ur’-text of a considerable portion of avant-garde pornography or intellectual erotica.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ashton, Daniel (2006–7), ‘Design for an Orgasm’, in RevolveWire, Winter–Spring, pp. 20–1.
Auerbach, Jonathan (2000), ‘Chasing Film Narrative: Repetition, Recursion, and the Body in Early Cinema’, in Critical Enquiry, 26(4), Summer, pp. 798–820.
Barthes, Roland (1982), ‘The Reality Effect’, in Tzvetan Todorov (ed.), French Literary Theory Today: A Reader, trans. by R. Carter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–17.
Bataille, Georges (2001a), Eroticism, trans. by Mary Dalwood. London: Penguin Books.
Bataille, Georges (1988), Inner Experience, trans. by Leslie-Anne Boldt. New York: SUNY Press.
Bataille, Georges (2001b), Story of the Eye, trans. by Joachim Neugroschal. London: Pengu in Books.
Baudrillard, Jean (2005), The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, trans. by Chris Turner. Oxford: Berg.
Botting, Fred and Wilson, Scott (2001), Bataille Transitions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Buse, Peter (2001), Drama + Theory: Critical Approaches to Modern British Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Eidos Interactive, Tomb Raider (1996), available on www.tombraider.com, accessed on 2 February 2007.
Ellis, John (1992), Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television and Radio, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Flash Games, Orgasm Girl (2005), available on 2flashgames.com/f/f-738.htm, accessed on 21 November 2007.
Freud, Sigmund (1991), ‘Repression’, in Angela Richards (ed.), Penguin Freud Library 11: On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin, pp. 139–58.
Freud, Sigmund (1990), ‘The Uncanny’, in Albert Dickson (ed.), Penguin Freud Library 14: Art and Literature. London: Penguin, pp. 335–76.
Grosz, Elizabeth (1994), Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Guattari, Félix (1995), Chaosophy, Sylvere Lotringer (ed.). New York: Semiotext[e].
Hall, Phil (2004), ‘Review of Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye’, available on www.ARMcinema25.com/GBSOTEfilmThreatMarch25_2004.html accessed on 21 November 2007.
Jackson, Rosemary (1981), Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Routledge.
Jay, Martin (1994), Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. London: University of California Press.
King, Geoff (ed.) (2005), The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond. Bristol: Intellect.
Kipp, Jeremiah (2003), ‘Blue Movie: Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye’, in Filmmaker:The Magazine of Independent Film, 12(2), available on www.ARMcinema25.com/GBSOTEFilmmakerVol12No2.html, accessed on 25 January 2007.
Krzywinska, Tanya (2006), Sex and the Cinema. London: Wallflower.
Lorentzen, Jørgen (2007), ‘Masculinities and the Phenomenology of Men’s Orgasms’, in Men and Masculinities, 10 (1), pp. 73–4.
Pearce, Lynne and Wisker, Gina (1998), ‘Rescripting Romance: An Introduction’, in Lynne and Wisker (eds), Fatal Attractions: Rescripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film. London: Pluto Press, pp. 1–19.
Peirse, Alison (2006), ‘The Destruction of the Male Body in Classic Horror Cinema’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Lancaster University).
Williams, Linda (2001), ‘Cinema and the Sex Act’, in Cineaste, 27 (1), pp. 20–5.
Zizek, Slavoj (2002), Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Other Related Dates. London: Verso.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Beth Johnson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Johnson, B. (2009). Realism, Real Sex and the Experimental Film: Mediating Eroticism in Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye . In: Nagib, L., Mello, C. (eds) Realism and the Audiovisual Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246973_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246973_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36699-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-24697-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)