Screening the Tortured Body

Inspired by Michel Foucaults examination of state subjugation and control, this book considers post-structuralist notions of the political technology of the body and 'the spectacle of the scaffold' as a means to analyse cinematic representations of politically-motivated persecution and bodily repression. Through a critique of sovereign power and its application of punishment for transgressions against the state, the collected works, herein, assess the polticised-body via a range of cinematic perspectives. Imagery, character construction and narrative devices are examined in their account of hegemonic-sanctioned torture and suppression as a means to a political outcome. Screening The Tortured Body: The Cinema as Scaffold elicits philosophical and cultural accounts of the restrained body to deliberate on a range of politicised films and filmmakers whose narratives and mise-en-scne techniques critique corporeal subjugation by authoritarian factions.