This thesis explores the question of how Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC serial adaptation and Joe Wright’s 2005 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s homonymous Pride & Prejudice (re)present female desire...Show moreThis thesis explores the question of how Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC serial adaptation and Joe Wright’s 2005 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s homonymous Pride & Prejudice (re)present female desire on screen. This research examines and consults adaptation theory to gain a better understanding of what transpires when adapting a concept such as desire from a novel onto a screen. Implicit instances of desire are explored in the novel, so as to contrast those occurrences with how they are translated on to the screen. Close readings of relevant scenes provide insight into the use of camerawork, acting, dialogue and framing and how they enhance the audience’s attention to the depictions of desire, love, attraction and interest. What this research can conclude is that both productions acknowledge the desire present in the novel, be it implicit, and translate it onto the screen in a literalized manner, highlighting on different ways how that desire could be conveyed. Both adaptations recognize the importance of transmitting information through glances and looks – their focus ranging from shared looks between characters to the female’s independent gaze.Show less
This thesis consists of three chapters, each built up around a case study. The three chapters are divided in temporal sense. In the first chapter the concept of a continuous now is central to the...Show moreThis thesis consists of three chapters, each built up around a case study. The three chapters are divided in temporal sense. In the first chapter the concept of a continuous now is central to the analysis of the case study, the second chapter has a relation with the future, and the final chapter is related with the notion of history. What the films have in common is that in each film the protagonist undergoes a trauma. How the counter-chronological and ‘a-temporal’ narrative structure of these films problematizes the film ending is observed, analyzed and linked to the psychoanalytic notion of drive and desire. Furthermore, throughout the flow of chapters, I will analyze to what extent this manner of ending a film has ideological implications. Psychoanalysis as a tool to analyze film and its protagonists is used as a theoretical framework to analyze the ideological implications these film endings might have. More specific, starting from the angle of the ‘Lacanian’ Mirror Screen theory it is questioned to what extent the apparatus theory is challenged and problematized by these specific films and their endings. Moreover the concept of the simulacrum, as an extreme notion of ideology is questioned and criticized. The notion of ideology, and violence are approached from a ‘Lacanian’, or, I should emphasize, ‘Žižekian’ point of view. I argue that these films in order of appearance demonstrate that the concept of the simulacrum by Baudrillard needs to be reconsidered and redefined in relation with the traumatic kernel of the real, or should be considered irrelevant, and moreover, I argue that the apparatus theory needs to be redefined.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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In the thesis “Anti-Cantos. A Collection of Stories on Listening and Desire” the relation between listening (to music), desire and the construction of the listening subject is discussed. It...Show moreIn the thesis “Anti-Cantos. A Collection of Stories on Listening and Desire” the relation between listening (to music), desire and the construction of the listening subject is discussed. It consists of three parts: 1) a theoretical introduction in which the traditional Lacanian psychoanalytical idea of desire is revisited through a positive understanding of desire in listening to music, combined with a critique on Adorno’s idea of structural listening, thought from Jean-Luc Nancy’s ideas on resonance and listening; 2) an essay on the relation between listening and desire in literary sources. The Siren episode from Homer’s Odyssey as well as Italo Calvino’s story A King Listens are deconstructed through ideas of Peter Sloterdijk, Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes; 3) a trisected essay on three (Blixa Bargeld, Jaap Blonk, Samuel Beckett) musical voices as conveyers of desire in listening. Primary sources are combined with Artaudian ideas on sound and Barthes’ understanding of the Grain of the Voice and jouissance.Show less
