Citation

Jukić T. Orbis Litterarum 2021; 76(4): 191-203.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/oli.12311

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud (1891, 1917) and Carl Schmitt (1956), I show how twentieth-century accounts of melancholia, in psychoanalysis and in political theory, entail a presentation of the world that dovetails with nineteenth-century realism. This suggests that realism is fundamentally a response to the melancholy condition that underlies modernity, and could be analyzed as such; it also suggests that realism persists in the twentieth century as a peculiar configuration of melancholia. Erwin Panofsky's film theory (1936) exemplifies this position. Based staunchly in realism, Panofsky's film theory is consistent with his comprehensive early exploration of melancholia (1923); no less than the rationale of cinema is thus shown to be moored in the melancholy condition of realism. It is a juncture explored by Lars von Trier in Melancholia (2011): while studiously arranging his cinematic study of melancholia around realism, Trier implies that film's likely neglect of realism in the twenty-first century amounts to cinematic suicide and, consequently, to the end of the modern world. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Language: en

Keywords

melancholia; modernity; cinema; Lars von Trier; metonymy; realism