Antonin Artaud was born in France and suffered from mental illness since an early age. He trained acting in Theatre de l’Atelier with Charles Dullin who shared a love for East Asian Theatre, and later was taken in by the Surrealists after sending his poems to Jacques Riviere. He worked in cinema as well as theatre, acting as Jean Paul Marat in Abel Gance’s Napoleon. Later, he broke away from the Surrealists when they devoted themselves to Communism and he created theatre Alfred Jarry along with other expelled Surrealists. Though his plays were a failure, it was his Theory of Cruelty which remained influential. Found in his collection of essays called the theatre and its double, the theory of cruelty did not see cruelty as a violent element, but as the state of human existence. He wanted theatre to return to its magical, ritualistic state, believing its function as a way to rid humankind of their repression and to liberate each individual’s instinctual energy. In a literal sense, overwhelming theatre with chants, pulsating lights, dance and spectacle to create catharsis or subconscious elevation. He believed that theatre should be transformative and make the audience aware of their own brutality, and with his last piece, to have done with the judgement of god, a radio play censored at the time, he created an angry, distressing rant against society and coined the term body without organs, which became influential philosophically. Not only did Antonin Artaud provide an alternative focus in theatre at the time, rejecting the idea that theatre is only for the wealthy and for materialistic values, his ideas spread into literature, specifically influencing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as well as music (such as the band Bauhaus who had a song about him). - Physical theatre - Movement - Ritualistic theatre - Use of masks - Fragmented storytelling - Music and sound

MAIN OVERARCHING: Power balances and the ever changing illusion of power. - Power differences in class - Power differences in gender - The universal thirst for power and how that is manipulated Other themes less related to power directly but indirectly supports it - Escape/the feeling of being trapped/bound - Sense of self/identity - Relationships - Religion and faith/tradition Questions based on the theme - What are the different responses towards being bound by inherent categories and how do they play off each other - If people dream of each other’s lives, what is the ultimate dream? - Idealism - Why must we thirst for power to establish our sense of self within the wide world? Symbols List - Flowers - Alcohol (Beer/Wine) - Birdcage/bird - Razer - Hat - Midsummer festivities - The kitchen - The count - Dancing - The kidney - In Pagan and Jewish rituals, “The rationale of this practice was the belief that the locus of thoughts and desires, the animal force itself (the “anima vita”) lies in the kidneys” - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0085253815508508#s0010 - Dog Midsummer, kitchen, dancing, dog

**The psychological thriller: an overview by Kristopher Mecholsky**

Motifs/Conventions of Psych Thriller

- Serial Killers - Psychotic protagonists - Children in danger - Paranormal danger or gifts - Revenge plots - Psychotic antagonists who stalk the protagonist - Crucial scenes that depict psychological torture - Misleading narratives and unreliable narrators - Psychotic parents/spouses/so who seemed good - Obsessive investigations - Psychological illness, trauma, or memory loss in main character - Past traumas that revisit in new danger

Three historical trends prompted the rise of of psychthriller: Gothic fiction, freudian psychoanalysis and psychological realism in fiction and mass market publishing

Strongest currents that have come to define the genre:

- Psychotic killers as antagonists or protagonists beyond reach of law, prompting obsessive investigation, antagonist is family member often - Children in danger - Revenge for psychological trauma, often perpetrated by family member - Unreliable narrators - Prominent citizens, close family relations, presumed innocents who turn out to be psychotic - Severe psychological illness, trauma, or memory loss in MC that haunts and threatens

“Patterns reveals profound dread that underneath appearances—either one’s own, one’s family’s, or others’— lurk insidious secrets that threaten social and personal identity”

This comes particularly from Gothic fiction, which “revealed how unknown the individual could be” in response to the modern period. Most important influence is arguably Edgar Allan Poe. Sensation fiction important too.

The decline of gothic fiction correlates with the rise of Freudian theories as Freud explained the “questions” of gothic fiction, or, exploring the unknown in human mind. Yet this is equally, if not more horrific, is it not? “The fact that the essence of humanity remained so elusive despite its apparently physical basis was more terrifying than supernatural phenomena”

Beginning of psychological thriller marked with the intersection of mass marketing, psychological realism, and gothic inspired fiction.

Ability to maintain suspense: the tension on whether the protagonist will lose what they value

1940s-50s, Freud’s theories became mainstream and echoed into popular fiction

“Current trends in psychological thrillers still usually vacillate between the poles of understanding (even commanding) aberrant behavior and staring into the ultimately unknowable void of the human psyche.

FILM GENRE AND ITS VICISSITUDES: THE CASE OF THE PSYCHOTHRILLER

The most characteristic feature of the thriller is the “psychological effect that unremitting relentless suspense produces on the audience through the delayed resolution of action, rather than elements that we could identify as generic features in terms of iconography, plot or formal structure.”

Key elements of psychothrillers in the late 80s-90s:

- Paranoid stress placed on the family as an institution - Presence of a mentally deranged killer

**NOIR AND THE PSYCHO THRILLER BY Philip L Simpson in the book A Companion To Crime Fiction**

“The “psycho thriller” is a subgenre of the versatile thriller genre in which crime is represented as an outward manifestation of the internal workings of the pathological individual psyche.” This is more of a character study than it is a plot-driven narrative. Thriller is structured on suspense or the heightened audience anxiety created when the protagonist is fighting a contest against what looks like overwhelming odds.

- Reliance on cliffhangers/sensational plot devices - Usually addresses at some subliminal level a contemporary anxiety facing the thriller’’s audience - Focus on violent crime and individual psyches of those who perpetrate crime and those charged with presenting it - Social deviants and outlaws - Morally gray, little moral difference exists between characters - Essence of character determines ultimate destiny - Paranoia

Evolved from the vibes of noir. Between classic and post-noir that contemporary psycho thriller begins to emerge. 1950s, Key writers in transitional zone: Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith. Thompson solidifies psycho thriller as separate genre. Intimate narration between reader and MC. Highsmith explores criminal psyche

**Labryinths and illusions in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive**

Modernist Philosophy - Using epistemological questions to ask about what we know and the world we are existing in

Post modernism - Ontology, the nature of human being

- Reality is a formation, it is constructed - Fabricated reality

Mise-en-abyme - Placed into abyss, or, a story within a story. According to Brian McHale’s book Postmodern Fiction:

- Nested representation inferior to that of the primary narrative world - Resembles something at the level of the primary - This something must constitute some salient and continuous aspect of the world

Example: Winkie’s restaurant scene with Dan and Herb talking about Dan’s dream

- Pre-shot and post-shot suggests that it is Rita’s dream. Setting and position of characters mirror Betty and Rita’s meeting. - “Here, by letting the dark-haired woman dream of Dan’s dying to see the reality behind his dream, the dreaming Diane protects herself from facing the fact that she can get rid of her god-awful feeling of guilt for having in fact gotten rid of Camilla only through getting rid of herself” - Thomas - “She is scared of her fate, death. The degree to which her fear is perceived mirrors the degree of Rita’s psychological trauma” - Duplication of primary diegesis

Example: Calling Diane Selwyn’s home

Betty: it’s strange to be calling yourself.

Rita: Maybe it’ not me.

Rita: That’s not my voice. But I know her. (0:55:41-0:56:01)

Clue that there exists another world despite character’s unawareness Corpse of Diane - Analepsis - Literary device where a past event is narrated at a point later than its chronological place Trompe l’oeil - fool the eye, these paintings posed as a three dimensional reality. To deceive the viewers into believing something which is an illusion. Example: Club silencio and the woman singing. Most revealing scene because:

- Rita and Betty are watching an illusion, so is the entire film - It is the threshold, in Derridian sense, of the Diane’s dream where the undesirable truth of her life comes to surface and puts and end to her fantasy.

Various diegetic levels like a “Chinese-box worlds that mirror the primary diegesis”

**MEMORY, IDENTITY and DESIRE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC READING OF DAVID LYNCH’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE**

Since the 1970s, theories of psychoanalysis have been adapted for cinema studies. Psychoanalysis Is concerned with the issue of subject formation and Mulholland drive is all about that. Subject formation is “the formation of a concept of the subject in which neither consciousness nor unconsciousness holds a privileged position in relation to the other” - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1399284/#:~:text=The%20contribution%20of%20psychoanalysis%20to,negating%20relationship%20to%20one%20another. The world “drive” can be symbolic of “Death drive” or “sex drive” This analysis reads this as Betty meeting lost Rita and those two entering a miraculous time-space distortion where past becomes future, connecting a present in which both Betty and Rita shift identities/positions. Sees Camile in S2 as a fantasy which realistically reflects all her needs. Diane rejects qualities that she perceives to make her submissive and incompetent. In this fantasy, Diane creates a second level of fantasy and represses her identity as Diane, leading to the breakdown of the first fantasy. “Thus, the unresolved conflicts between her unconscious inclinations and repressive demands of the ego resurface in the second segment of the film as the very first fantasy”. “Diane’s fantasy structure operates by displacing an unacceptable element onto the acceptable images of success and beauty” Identity switch explained through Freudian concepts of fixation, splitting, introjection and projection.

Reflection - reflection of the unwanted aspects of the self to the other. Diane freed herself of the burden of being the loser in F1 in F2..

Introjection - “Diane shapes her new self as Betty by adapting a role model outside of herself

Splitting, the object of anxiety into two. “This split translates itself metaphorically into a lock and key. The key found in Rita’s bag unlocks the blue box found in Betty’s bag in El Silencio, the place of deep unconscious. .png) Audition scene connects Betty to Diane as Diane’s unconscious begins to come back as a result of pushing the limits of her fantasy. The need to punish those who hurt her in the F1 conflicts with her desire to become a successful actress. Betty and Adam briefly come eye to eye, in a strange and unexplainable sexual encounter. Diane thought she could control two layers of her fantasy at the same time, but she cannot. When her ego fails, her unconscious takes over the conscious and control breaks down in Diane’s real life Lacan major concepts: the Real, the Imaginary , and the Symbolic.

Real - Realm of impossible enjoyment

Symbolic - the Symbolic order of language and communication

Imaginary - the domain of images with which we identify

Diane fantasizes herself as Betty and creates her own *Real.* “The opposition between the obscene superego in Diane’s second fantasy conflicts with the Symbolic Law in her first fantasy. The impossible Real conflicts as Betty’s fantasy world mixes with Diane’s unconscious”. For Lacan, ego is constructed through imaginary percepts and narcissistic fantasies. Diane forms false narcissistic unity with Camilla in F1 and brings out Betty as the narcissistic self in F2 (shown when Betty tells Rita I am in love with you). “Diane’s sense of reality has a connection with objects in the creation of a new self. Her mirror becomes Rita”.

Beance - fissure, opening into the reality

Object petit a - object of desire caught up in the unrealizable search for the eternally lost pleasure

In F2, Adam shows signs of Oedipal complex with everyone around him - Symptoms of love and jealousy for his wife which is punishment for flirting with Camille in F1 Adam takes his golf club wherever he goes—it is his phallic extension. Adam compromises after the more masculine threat of an eternal father, the mafia boss, which results in his temporary loss of money and influence. Adam’s desire to control people (make films), have sex (with lead actresses) and have expensive cars are repressions of the unconscious, forcing him to compromise. CASTRATION ANXIETY personified as the cowboy figure. Mr Roque being a Diane’s fantasy of a silent patriarch who can control Adam’s life. Lacanian terms: Mr Roque is pere joissance who represents the paternal law. The creation of such a powerful external fantasy element can only satisfy Diane’s loss of lead roles in the films she wants to act in both F1 and F1

CONCLUSION: Dynamic because of psychic phenomena, conflict of instinctual forces that lead to Diane’s fantasies Topographical because physical space is divided in terms of systems (unconscious, preconscious, and conscious) and agencies (id, ego, superego) to the point that fantasies are built on top of fantasies that blur reality and later implode. Diane is building a resistance to her disturbing reality by reaching out to her subconscious. **Brokenness and Hope: David Lynch’s Contribution to a Phenomenology of Anxiety in Mulholland Drive by Daniel Bradley, Gonzaga University, Journal of Speculative Philosophy** Kierkegaard makes a powerful phenomenological distinction between fear and anxiety; one fears this thing or that, but one is anxious of “no-thing”. Arguing that Mulholland drive reveals this aspect of anxiety and how the failure of modernity to adequately grasp the significance of anxiety helps us understand why Diane can see no escape other than the ending of all possibility.

Focusing on two:

1. Interplay between different temporal frames disrupting the ordinary future-oriented and linear progression of a narrative to to help train our attention to the ways that the manner in which we grasp the future and the manner in which our past effects our self understanding 2. Trains us to understand action through investigating psychological causation through pursuit of agent’s goals and in terms of symbolism

“His great innovation is to portray the anxiety that is experienced by the characters (and the audience with them) as more significant than merely the tension of suspense that is pleasantly released when the clues finally all form an intel- ligible whole in the resolution of the mystery” Anxiety is the most significant clue. In the case of a crime, one can only be anxious about the possibilities that arise from wrong action. In face of her massive failure and great crime, she sees no possibility for her life. “Anxiety is freedom’s possibility; this anxiety alone is, through faith, absolutely formative, since it consumes all finite ends, discovers all their deceptions.” We can’t only interpret Diane’s anxiety through possibility. Diane’s anxiety disappears in acceptance of her guilt (which I disagree with because I don’t think, if we’re saying anxiety as freedom’s possibility, she had much freedom to begin with). Lynch’s portrayal “has a richness that can be neither exhausted nor made transparent. By this interpretation of anxiety as an encounter with freedom—or freedom already chosen badly”. “The anxiety of her dream points continually beyond her guilt for this crime or that, to the brokenness and illusory character of her personal history, her particular sociohistorical reality, and ultimately of the human condition itself” So this guy is saying, basically freud, if she had understood anxiety less about possibility but more about opening onto the brokenness of one’s life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have killed herself. NO????????? I DISAGREE??????????? Anxiety in Mulholland Drive, reveals truth Central experience of the unknown, driving source of anxiety. Adam and Dan’s experiences towards the unknown are two contrasting. Dan literally dies, Adam is continuously calm. Betty initially was immune to anxiety, she knows exactly who she is. But Rita’s anxiety is contagious. Adam cannot experience anxiety in Diane’s dream as from her point of view, nothing could be wrong in his world “In the end, Diane is not able to maintain the projection of that anxiety onto other characters, and as anxiety mercilessly unmasks her illusions, we are pointed to the inescapable conclusion that she is a killer and that her life is a failure” Diane’s real life has an utter lack of anxiety “Diane can be guilty about her wrongdoing, but she cannot be anxious about it. The anxiety reveals not her sin, but her sinfulness, a general experience of brokenness, illusion, and deceit.”

The Dream of Anxiety in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive by Dyland Trigg

How anxiety is peculiar to a hypnagogic state between dreaming and wakefulness. Anxiety takes place in the transition between dreaming and reality. “At the heart of the film is an anxiety concerning humiliation, desubjectification, and betrayal. It is a betrayal not only between two lovers, but also of an image constructed in order to function as a person more generally.” Death of Betty’s dream leading to “sad illusion”, when they’re at Club Silenco, trembling with anxiety at the sight and realization of illusion An unbearable anxiety is throughout the film which goes from one scene to another “permeating the film’s atmosphere as a whole. This placeless anxiety invites us the viewers to restore it to narrative wholeness, to find a place for it by situating the film in-between what we term “reality”  and a “dream”. Dreaming becomes means for transformation of otherwise intolerable reality. Camilla’s transformation into Rita is only possible because of her amnesia which provides Diane with a tabula rasa, or, clean slate. However, the line between dreaming and reality gets blurred. Things from Diane’s anxiety in real life enters the dream “in a world unconsciously engineered to be a fictional retort to the nightmare of life”. Her anxiety isn’t only about being able to deceive herself and pretend that she is successful. “The film’s unbearable anxiety is not that we fail to become the people we desire to be and thus seek refuge in another role, but that the very concept of person-hood is itself a sad illusion, irrespective of the roles we assume. Anxiety tied up with hypnagogia. Dreaming and wakefulness put us at the center of things. When the nightmare proves unbearable, then something within us stirs us from our slumbers, returning us to the world of familiar constancy. There, we reassemble the intimate sense of being who we are, habitual and irreducibly in one’s own skin. Lynch aligns transcendence with hypnagogia “it’s an experience that you can have just before you go to sleep...” How did we go from the blissful transcendence to his films? Anxiety in Hypnagogia comes from that “it provides evidence of a consciousness outside of our ego, which we have limited access to but nevertheless casts a presence in our waking lives” Anxiety in hypnagogia points to the instability of selfhood. With each gap in the consciousness appears, Betty’s dreams becomes more and more fragile. Winkie’s diner scene. Power “is framed by its capacity to invoke an eerie sense of anxiety in the midst of what is ostensibly a safe space”. Uncertainty, something is not quite right. “The onset of anxiety does not mark a radical departure from what is already familiar to us, but instead confirms and underscores an instability that was there all along”. Camera never sets on a fixed point. There is no resolution in Lynch’s anxiety, like there isn’t in identity.

Framing - The boundary that surrounds a cartoon panel, separating it from other panels or from the background. Does the panel have a frame, and if so, how is it used? What effect does framing or the absence of a frame have on the viewer’s interpretation of the panel? How does the frame influence the focus or the narrative flow within the cartoon?

Gutter - The bit between the panels. What are the gutters separating and to what effect?

Speech Bubble - Contains direct speech. Shape of the speech bubble. Proximity of speech bubble to character. Tone, style, or wording of the speech affect the overall message or humor of the cartoon. Relationship between speech and action

Thought Bubble - Contains thoughts. Shape of thought bubble. Proximity of thought bubble. How does the thought bubble contribute to the message, what does it reveal about the character’s internal thoughts? Is there a contrast between what the character is thinking and what is happening in the scene?

Caption - Brief explanation or title accompanying cartoons. What is the relationship between captions and the action of the cartoon? Does the caption add irony, humor, or context that changes the interpretation of the visual elements? How does the caption interact with the images or characters in the cartoon to convey a specific point

Images - Visual elements that convey meaning. Significance of the main image in the cartoon? How do the images work together to communicate the cartoon’s message or theme? Are there any symbols or exaggerated elements in the images that add to the overall meaning

Juxtaposition - Placement of two or more elements side by side to highlight their contrasts or differences - What elements? - How do they relate?

Emanata - Squiggly lines showing emotions, like the emoting things. What emotion is the author trying to depict? How does the author capture that emotion? How does the emotion add to characterization?

Negative Space - Black space between a panel around a subject to between subjects. Empty space. What is the subject or subjects that are being surrounded by negative space?What impact does this space have upon the subject?

Long Shot - Zoomed out, long. LONG. - What is included in the long shot? - How does that establish message

Close Up - Zoomed in, focuses on particular subject. What is it focusing up on?

Foreground - Space closest to the lens. What appears closest to the viewer of the image? Does this positioning emphasize the subjects in the foreground? How does this relate to the rest of the elements?

Middle Ground - Elements in the Middle. same questions

Background - Elements in the back

Low Angle Shot - Looking up

High Angle Shot - Looking down

Facial Expressions - Emotions through facial features

Posture - Stance, body language, how they are seated or standing

Allusion - Alluding to other things. What is the source of allusion, how does it contribute to the message? How does recognizing the allusion change or deepen your understanding of the cartoon? What commentary is the cartoonist trying to make?

Graphic Weight - How the author directs your attention to a particular aspect of an image What is your attention drawn to in the image? How is the author drawing your attention to that particular part of the image? What is significant about that part of the image that’s given the weight?

Colors and Shading. What colors are being used? What do you associate with those colors? Mood? Contrast?