“See My Heart”: Art and Alchemical Reasoning, or Character Transformation in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal

Abstract Works of art seem to be used more and more frequently in scripted TV shows nowadays. Most often, they constitute a symbolic point of reference, an intertextual “interlude,” or merely a convenient plot device. However, Bryan Fuller’s 2013 TV series Hannibal goes beyond the stereotypical functions of art, using it as a sort of intermediary between literary and televisual fantasies and elevating its narrative status. It can even be argued that works of art in Hannibal constitute the key element to understanding character development and transmutation in the three seasons of the show. This article focuses on the ramifications of making Sandro Botticelli’s ever-elusive Primavera a striking aspect of Hannibal’s third season. Fuller foregrounds the painting’s motif of becoming in order to repurpose the literary franchise and its cinematic offshoots. As a result, a more in-depth portrayal of its principal characters is offered, together with their unending, but ultimately incomplete alchemical cycle of purification, “fiery love,” rebirth and death: stages representing the “enlightenment and perfection” (Gillies, Botticelli’s Primavera 133) of human souls. Alongside other masterpieces displayed in the series, Primavera helps destabilise the confines of the televisual medium and of the horror genre, while at the same time demonstrating the complexity of transmedial connections and influences.

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Nothing Absolute

10.5422/fordham/9780823290161.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Political Theology ◽

German Idealism ◽

The Political ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

The Earth ◽

The World ◽

Theological Perspective ◽

Traditional Approaches ◽

First Time ◽

Point Of Reference

Staging for the first time in extant scholarship a rigorous encounter between German thought from Kant to Marx and new forms of political theology, this ground-breaking volume puts forward a distinct and powerful framework for understanding the continuing relevance of political theology today as well as the conceptual and genealogical importance of German Idealism for its present and future. Against traditional approaches that view German Idealism as essentially a secularizing movement, this volume approaches it as the first speculative articulation of the political-theological problematic in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the advent of secularity. Via a set of innovative readings and critiques, the volume investigates anew such concepts as immanence, utopia, sovereignty, mediation, indifference, the earth, the absolute, or the world, bringing German Idealism and Romanticism into dialogue with contemporary investigations of the (Christian-)modern forms of transcendence, domination, exclusion, and world-justification. Over the course of the volume, post-Kantian German thought emerges as a crucial phase in the genealogy of political theology and an important point of reference for the ongoing reassessment of modernity and secularity. As a result, this volume not only rethinks the philosophical trajectory of German Idealism and its aftermath from a political-theological perspective, but also demonstrates what can be done with (or against) German Idealism using the conceptual resources of political theology today.

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Facing the Gorgon: Kenneth Burke on Dramatic Form, Catharsis, and Transcendence

Literature of the Americas ◽

10.22455/2541-7894-2020-9-43-59 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 43-59

Author(s):

Corey Anton

Keyword(s):

Kenneth Burke ◽

Applied Psychology ◽

Dramatic Works ◽

Therapeutic Benefits ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Dramatic Form ◽

Different Types ◽

Psychological Functions ◽

Tv Shows ◽

Symbolic Distance

Drawing mainly upon the thinking of Kenneth Burke, this essay overviews a few psychological functions performed within dramatic works of art. It shows how dramatic works of art (e.g. novels, plays, films, and even TV shows) operate as subtle modes of applied psychology: they offer different types of therapeutic benefits for those who produce such works and also for those who read them and/or audience members who witness them. I try to bring out how modes of catharsis as well as means of transcendence are afforded by dramatic form within art. Even more specifically stated, I review some of Burke’s ruminations upon his own semiautobiographical novel, Towards a Better Life, and I outline how dramatic works of art provide adequate symbolic distance for sizing up one’s life situations and for facing various challenges that can otherwise be too difficult to face head-on. Through symbolic and artistic maneuvers, which enable kinds of identification, authors and audience members learn to face their demons and gain new psychological resolves and/or vistas of self-understanding.

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Dilip Kumar: An Auteur Actor

Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej ◽

10.18778/1733-8069.17.3.12 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 226-238

Author(s):

Sharaf Rehman

Keyword(s):

Character Development ◽

Academic Discipline ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Professor Emeritus ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Production Of Culture ◽

Unique Approach

Dilip Kumar has been praised for his sublime dialog delivery, for his restrained gestures, and for his measured and controlled underplay of emotions in tragic stories as well as in light-hearted comedies. His debut in 1944 with Jwar Bhata (Ebb and Tide) met with less-than-flattering reviews. So did the next three films until his 1948 film, Jugnu (Firefly), which brought him recognition and success. Unlike his contemporaries such as Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, who propelled their careers by launching their own production companies, Dilip Kumar relied on his talent, his unique approach to characterization, and his immersion in the projects he undertook. In the course of his career that spanned six decades, Kumar made only 62 films. However, his work is a textbook for other actors that followed. Not only did he bring respectability to a profession that had been shunned by the upper classes in India as a profession for “pimps and prostitutes,” but he also elevated film-acting and filmmaking to an academic discipline, making him worthy of the title ‘Professor Emeritus of Acting’. Rooted in the theoretical framework of Howard S. Becker’s work on the “production of culture” and “doing things together,” this paper discusses Kumar’s approach to acting, character development, and the level of his involvement and commitment to each of his projects. The author of this article argues that more than the creative control as a producer or a director, it is the artistic involvement and commitment of the main actors that shape great works of art in cinema. Dilip Kumar demonstrated it repeatedly.

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‘Flying Shirts’ Creative Project: Vernissage

Visual Studies ◽

10.54664/agde1109 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Galina Tsvetkova ◽

◽

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Visual Language ◽

Central Point ◽

Essential Characteristic ◽

Pictorial Space ◽

Creative Project ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Special Meaning ◽

Point Of Reference

This analysis aims to present to a specialized public the artist’s conception and the process of creation of the ‘Flying Shirts’ project. Its creative interest is focused on the artistic intervention in everyday life objects, thus making them stand out and acquire the special meaning and status projection of ‘works of art’. An essential characteristic of this project’s different viewpoint is recognizing the authenticity of the Shirts as artefacts by embracing their unique attribute of personal belonging. This is the central point of reference in the creative programme, in which the original determines the character and state of phantasmal image. The paper considers some problems of composition, pictorial space, colour scheme and the means of expression in the construction of the visual language. The project was inspired by the intellectual and creative profile of the artist Tsanko Petrov (1942–2019), and was carried out in the belief that in its innermost essence every person’s being is linked with the whole Universe.

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Art and the critique of the enlightenment

Filozofija i drustvo ◽

10.2298/fid1003119n ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 119-144

Author(s):

Marko Novakovic

Keyword(s):

Modern Art ◽

Philosophy Of Art ◽

Social Injustice ◽

Critical Approach ◽

Empirical Reality ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Plausible Model ◽

Dialectical Self ◽

Subjective Reason

Summary The aim of this paper is to provide an examination of the concept of aesthetic rationality in the philosophy of art of Theodor W. Adorno, related to his celebrated critique of the enlightenment in The Dialectic of the Enlightenment written with Max Horkheimer. Our main purpose is to show how Adorno?s conception of art responds to a problem posed in the former study, namely that of a dialectical self-enchantment and alienation of subjective reason. In the first two sections is shown how self-preservation of subjective reason leads to its fall into the realm of myth. This turn was dialectically exposed in Adorno?s interpretation of Odysseus? voyage as prahistory of subjectivity. The next four chapters expose a necessity and mode of critical approach and possibility of a transcendence of this mythical reality of reification in the structure of works of art, especially their form, with its ultimate goal to free individuals from social injustice and unconscious enslavement. Adorno?s account of the dialectics of aesthetic semblance, artistic truth content and immanent law of its form which embodies the consciousness of non-identity provides an ex?planation how modern art mimetically manages to transcend conditions of empirical reality and at the same time offers a plausible model of a ?transitive? rationality, which serves to discover its better possibilities.

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Series Under Threat

Open Philosophy ◽

10.1515/opphil-2020-0165 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 155-167

Author(s):

Sandra Laugier

Keyword(s):

Specific Form ◽

Discussion Forums ◽

Television Series ◽

The Public ◽

Political Debates ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Ethical Discussion ◽

Internet Streaming ◽

Tv Shows ◽

Public Tv

Abstract Lockdown has given us an occasion to discover new television series and to revisit others. TV series accompany us in our ordinary lives, but they can also be a resource or refuge in extraordinary situations. As the enduring success of Friends proves, they provide us with universes of comfort. TV series provide strong common cultural referents, which populate both ordinary conversations and political debates. TV series, by virtue of their aesthetic format (their duration, weekly and seasonal regularity, and the fact that they are, or were until recently, usually viewed in the context of the home), the attachment they inspire to their characters, the democratization and diversification of modes of viewing them (internet, streaming, discussion forums), make possible a specific form of education and constitution of a public. TV shows are hence a medium for political and ethical discussion. The article studies two series, Homeland and The Bureau, which are paradigmatic examples of a genre that has grown exponentially since the beginning of the century, and which we refer to as the “security series” genre. These series are great works of art and can also be seen as powerful tools for educating and informing the public.

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Refining Spinoza

The First Modern Jew ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691142913.003.0003 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel B. Schwartz

Keyword(s):

Western Philosophy ◽

Moses Mendelssohn ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

History Of ◽

Point Of Reference

This chapter probes the pioneering if only partial vindication of Spinoza by the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), the first Jewish thinker for whom Spinoza served, both positively and negatively, as a point of reference—in his own eyes, and certainly in the eyes of others. In the history of the image of Spinoza, Mendelssohn looms large for several reasons. The first is his pioneering role in softening Spinoza's heretical reputation in German thought and thus aiding his integration into the canon of modern Western philosophy. However, near the end of his life, Mendelssohn defended Judaism by effectively rebutting Spinoza. Indeed, Mendelssohn furnished ammunition for friends and foes of Spinoza alike. His legacy was thus one of both reclamation and resistance.

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