Antichrist: An Analysis

Antichrist ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 19-76
Author(s):  
Amy Simmons

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009). In some respects, Antichrist is a deceptive title, implying a simple reversal of the Christian opposition between good and evil, yet the film should, in part, be understood in a context more complicated than that of Christianity, or even New Age pseudo-paganism. It occupies a unique territory, somewhere between horror film and psychodrama, where themes such as misogyny, maternal ambivalence, madness, and lust permeate a ruptured dreamscape with a sustained and unique oddness. Hence, the world of the film is, in a sense, gothic and fantastic; a mode particularly suited for expressing a heady mix of ‘unconscious desire, repressed energies and antisocial fantasies’. The gothic space is also a sight of seduction, sexual transgression, cruelty, humiliation, and death; themes that are all reworked and recombined in Antichrist's dramatic atmosphere. Ultimately, what makes Antichrist stick with audiences is the potent undertow, the sense of loss, guilt, and despair that pervades the locations and plasters itself across the mother's grieving face.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-193
Author(s):  
Yulia Sytina

The article analyzes the searches conducted by F. M. Dostoevsky and V. F. Odoevsky for a “positively excellent” hero. It compares the images of Prince Myshkin from The Idiot and the hero of the dramatic excerpt Segeliel, or Don Quixote of the XIX century. The similarity between these two characters is reflected as early as in the history of their creation. The authors hypothesize that in both cases an Easter archetype emerges behind the conscious or unconscious desire to substitute a grim and sinful character with a “positively excelent” one. Myshkin and Segeliel love the world with a compassionate, selfless and active love, but they are alien to other people, differ by their very nature and are aware of this otherness. The heroes do not accept the “earthly” hierarchy in relation to people, they are incomprehensible to others and are laughable from the point of view of “common sense.” At the same time, there are numerous differences between them. Segeliel is a spirit, but he is rational, he believes in laws and in science. Myshkin strives for a mystical experience of life. Failures lead Myshkin to humility, and Segeliel to rebellion. Dostoevsky’s hero seeks to flee from the world. Odoevsky’s hero wants to intervene in earthly affairs. Segeliel wants to remake the world without God. He does not believe in the Creator and repines against him. Segeliel’s throwings are reminiscent of the complex dialectic of good and evil, construed by rebels from Dostoevsky’s novels. At the same time, it is important to distinguish the positions of Segeliel and Odoevsky himself, who is not in complete agreement with his hero. Certain common motifs, i.e., those of childhood and foolishness for Christ, create parallels between Myshkin and Odoevsky, the character and the writer. The many intersections between the image of Segeliel, his author and the image of Prince Myshkin allow us to identify the cultural code that appears in the works of Russian writers who sought to find the earthly embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty in a rough physical shell, inevitably hindered by original sin.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

In the presented study, the authors raise the question of the need to include in the educational process of a preschool institution to familiarize children with some philosophical categories. The educational system in which the child is included, starting from preschool childhood, provides him with the opportunity to gradually and continuously enter the knowledge of the world around him. It is in preschool childhood that the child is exposed to various relationships, values of culture and health, diverse patterns in the field of different knowledge. This contributes to a broader interaction of the preschooler with the world around him, which, in turn, ensures the assimilation not of disparate ideas about objects and phenomena, but their natural integration and interpenetration, which means understanding the integrity of the picture of the world. The authors prove the idea that the assimilation of philosophical categories by children contributes to the understanding of the structure of the surrounding world. The analysis of research is presented, proving that children's fiction in an understandable and accessible language, life examples and vivid images is able to explain to children the laws of the functioning of nature and society, as well as to reveal the world of human relations and feelings. Fiction surrounds the child from the first years of his life. It is she who contributes to the development of thinking and imagination, enriches the sensory world, provides role models and teaches you to find a way out in different situations. Philosophical categories such as "love and friendship", "beautiful and ugly", "good and evil" are represented in children's literature very widely, and the efficiency of mastering philosophical categories depends on the skill of an adult in conveying the content of a work, on correctly placed accents.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 23-27
Author(s):  
Kadirova Nargiza Arivovna

Two great novelists, Franz Kafka and Robert Louis Stevenson at first blush seem to have absolutely nothing in common. But a detailed analysis of two distinguished works of thewriters, reveals surprising similarities in some aspects of their storylines. In particular, comparison of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with The Metamorphosis of Kafka shows that both works depict the issues of the struggle between Good and Evil through elements of metamorphoses that have common roots and motives. Focusing on the ideas that are implied rather than explicitly stated unveils deep correlation between these two seemingly unrelated novels


Author(s):  
Dr.Seethal Peenikkal ◽  
Dr.K.Savitha R. Shenoy ◽  
Dr.Sri Nagesh K.A.

Breast Cancer is one of the most common types of malignancy among Indian woman currently. The current increase in the world wide prevalence of this disease suggests an urgent need of detailed analysis, diagnosis and treatment line through Ayurvedic principles. As cancer is least understood in technical terms of Ayurveda, Nidana Panchaka a basic tool to understand and diagnose a Vyadhi, is used to analyze it. Even though a direct diagnostic correlation of breast cancer is not available under the major Vyadhi classifications, it is possible to elicit and formulate Nidana Panchaka based on the references of Sthana Roga, Shopha, Granthi, Arbuda etc. The current article is an effort to formulate Nidana Panchaka for Breast Cancer, from the background of basic principles of Ayurveda, for a better analysis and diagnosis of the Vyadhi.


2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-335
Author(s):  
Howard Lesnick

God has made man with the instinctive love of justice in him,which gradually gets developed in the world …. I do not pretendto understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyereaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and completethe figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.Theodore Parker (1853)A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in therevolutions of her … hurryings through the abysses of space, hasbrought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but giftedwith sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity ofjudging all the works of his unthinking mother. [Gradually, asmorality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to befelt, [giving rise to the claim] that, in some hidden manner, theworld of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thusman creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the mystic unity ofwhat is and what should be.


Neophilologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Jones

AbstractThis article examines the iconographic programme of the Last Judgement scene depicted in Christ III. A notable feature of the poem’s detailed visual programme is the way in which it provides the audience with a single, panoramic vision that encompasses the divergent perspectives of the blessed and the damned. It is on account of this dual perspective that the poem, through its precise use of language and imagery, presents the audience with a bifocal vision of Christ as King of Kings and Judge of the World, in keeping with the words of Revelation 19:16. A detailed analysis of the poem’s imagery, however, suggests that its portrait of Christ as Judge is not only informed by scripture and exegetical sources, but is also indebted to contemporary visual imagery, particularly the depiction of Christ as Majestas Domini, or Christ in Majesty. As a result, and by approaching the poem’s imagery from an iconological perspective, it is argued that the poet of Christ III had a detailed knowledge of contemporary Christological motifs. Furthermore, a careful analysis of the language used to describe the Judgement scene, and particularly the depiction of Christ as Judge, suggests that the poet intentionally seeks to evoke a range of specific visual images in the mind of his audience in order to amplify the poem’s instructive and penitential aims.


1986 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Michael Tanner

Although Nietzsche's greatness is recognized more universally now than ever before, the nature of that greatness is still widely misunderstood, and that unfortunately means that before I discuss any of Beyond Good and Evil (henceforth BGE) in any detail, I must make some general remarks about his work, his development and the kind of way in which I think that it is best to read him. Unlike any of the other philosophers that this series includes, except Marx and Engels, Nietzsche is very much concerned to address his contemporaries, because he was aware of a specific historical predicament, one which he would only see as having worsened in ways which he predicted with astonishing precision in the century since he wrote his great series of works. For he was above all a philosopher of culture, which is to say that his primary concern was always with the forces that determine the nature of a particular civilization, and with the possibilities of achievement which that civilization consequently had open to it. One of the reasons that The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, published when he was twenty-eight, created such a surge of hostility in the world of classical scholarship was that in it, whilst undertaking an investigation of what made possible the achievements of fifth century BC Greece in tragic drama, he felt it necessary to elicit the whole set of fundamental beliefs which the Greeks shared, and also to draw metaphysical conclusions from the fact that they were able to experience life in such a way that they needed great tragedies in order to endure it.


Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Raceeva ◽  

The author uses the study of the axiological systems of the Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian paremiological pictures of the world based on proverbs with ‘good–evil’ components and their synonyms as a framework for researching proverbs and sayings of Bessarabian immigrants who have lived in a foreign Russian-Romanian ethnical context for over 200 years. This article describes and presents in a comparative way some Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian proverbs with the components ‘good–evil’ and their synonyms, obtained as a result of continuous sampling of the most complete representative sources. The author brings forward statistical characteristics of arrays paired with observations upon the universal and nationally specific traits at the conceptual, structural and discursive levels. Some entry-level comparative interpretation is carried out, building upon the Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian paremiological ideas about the essence of such categories as ‘good’ and ‘evil’, as well as the balance between these categories and the expected reactions to good and evil.


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