Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editors' Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘But the facts of life persist’: Magic, Experiment and the Problem of Representing the World Otherwise
- 2 ‘And what has all this to do with experimental writing?’: Words and Ghosts
- 3 A ‘subtle metamorphosis’: Sound, Mimesis and Transformation
- 4 ‘Here is where the magic is’: Telepathy and Experiment in Film
- 5 ‘Disney against the metaphysicals’: Eisenstein, Pound, Ectoplasm and the Politics of Animation
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - ‘Here is where the magic is’: Telepathy and Experiment in Film
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editors' Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘But the facts of life persist’: Magic, Experiment and the Problem of Representing the World Otherwise
- 2 ‘And what has all this to do with experimental writing?’: Words and Ghosts
- 3 A ‘subtle metamorphosis’: Sound, Mimesis and Transformation
- 4 ‘Here is where the magic is’: Telepathy and Experiment in Film
- 5 ‘Disney against the metaphysicals’: Eisenstein, Pound, Ectoplasm and the Politics of Animation
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘We rise against the collusion between the “director-enchanter” and the public which is submitted to the enchantment.
The conscious alone can fight against magical suggestions of every kind …
Down with the scented veil of kisses, murders, doves and conjuring tricks!’
Dziga Vertov, ‘Kino-Eye’, 1926‘The reaction to a film play by Vertoff may be as strong, but as removed from the conscious intelligence, as that to any nightmare.’
C. J. Pennethorne Hughes, ‘Dreams and Films’, 1930The cultural history of film has often been rooted in the shifting conceptions of and metaphorical uses of light. Film produces life, movement and action from light, making it seem organic (as light produces life and growth in the natural world), but also uncanny (the creation of life and movement from nothing). That the world is reproduced through the effects of light in photography and film has led numerous critics recently to reassert the uncanny and occult status of the media (Gunning 1995). Indeed light has many occult resonances, from Emanuel Swedenborg, through theories of vitalism, to the metaphorical uses of light and electricity in occult and spiritualist discourse.
Information
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- Chapter
- Information
- Modernism and MagicExperiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult, pp. 103 - 134Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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