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Author Baxstrom, Richard.

Title Realizing the witch : science, cinema, and the mastery of the invisible / Richard Baxstrom, Todd Meyers.

Publication Info. New York : Fordham University Press, 2016.

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Description 1 online resource.
Series Forms of living
Forms of living.
Contents Introduction: What Is Häxan? -- Part I: The realization of the witch. The witch in the human sciences and the mastery of nonsense ; Evidence, first movement: words and things ; Evidence, second movement: tableaux and faces ; The viral character of the witch ; Demonology -- Part II: A mobile force in the modern age. 1922 ; Sex, touch, and materiality ; Possession and ecstasy ; Hysterias ; Postscript: it is very hard to believe.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography.
Summary "Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of "hysterics" and the mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction". Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the witch" risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Häxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe--Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless "know" to be there"-- Provided by publisher.
Contents Introduction: What Is Häxan? -- Part I: The realization of the witch. The witch in the human sciences and the mastery of nonsense ; Evidence, first movement: words and things ; Evidence, second movement: tableaux and faces ; The viral character of the witch ; Demonology -- Part II: A mobile force in the modern age. 1922 ; Sex, touch, and materiality ; Possession and ecstasy ; Hysterias ; Postscript: it is very hard to believe.
Subject Häxan (Motion picture)
Christensen, Benjamin, 1879-1959.
Witchcraft -- Europe -- History.
Witches -- Europe.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Folklore & Mythology.
Added Author Meyers, Todd.
Other Form: Print version: 9780823268245 0823268241 (DLC) 2015008857 (OCoLC)905450182
ISBN 9780823268283 (electronic bk.)
0823268284 (electronic bk.)
9780823274871
082327487X
9780823268276
0823268276
9780823268245 (hardback)
0823268241 (hardback)
9780823268252 (paper)
082326825X (paper)
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