Resistance and Reparation: Steve McQueen’s Hunger

Abstract

The film begins with a torrent of sound, a cascade of beats slicing through the film’s diegesis. Rattling and shivering. Unrelenting noise. The film seems to vibrate and knock against my body in a number of places — I want to soften this noise, mute it, but it continues, driving itself into the core of the film until it suddenly stops. There was never a chance to be inattentive to this film: I will be ‘dragged’ through it,¹ pulled through its unpleasurable sensations.