Cinematographic aesthetics as subversion of moral reason in Pasolini's "Medea"

  • Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky's paper 'Cinematographic Aesthetics as Subversion of Moral Reason in Pasolini's Medea' explores the 1969 film "Medea". Pasolini's Medea, masterfully played by Maria Callas, betrays her homeland and her origin, stabs both her children, sets her house on fire, and dispossesses Jason of his sons' corpses. But Deuber-Mankowsky argues that it is ultimately not these acts that render the film particularly disturbing and disconcerting, but, rather, the fact that the spectator is left behind in suspension precisely because Medea cannot be easily condemned for her acts. Pasolini's film and its cinematographic aesthetics thereby not only subvert the projection of Medea into the prehistorical world of madness and perversion, but also undermine belief in the validity of the kind of moral rationality developed and constituted in an exemplary way by Immanuel Kant in his "Critique of Practical Reason". In particular, Pasolini seems to relate conceptually to Nietzsche's artistic-philosophical transfiguration of Dionysus and to accuse belief in a world of reasons of failing to grasp the groundlessness, irrationality, or even a-rationality of reason itself.

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Metadaten
Author:Astrid Deuber-MankowskyGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-520088
URL:https://www.ici-berlin.org/oa/ci-06/deuber-mankowsky_aesthetics-as-subversion.pdf
DOI:https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-06_14
ISBN:978-3-85132-681-9
ISSN:2627-731X
Parent Title (English):The scandal of self-contradiction : Pasolini's multistable subjectivities, geographies, traditions ; Cultural Inquiry ; 6
Publisher:Turia + Kant
Place of publication:Wien
Editor:Luca Di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2019/12/11
Year of first Publication:2012
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2019/12/20
Tag:Cinematography; Greek myths; Motion pictures; The Dionysian
GND Keyword:Pasolini, Pier Paolo; Medea (Film, 1969); Film; Filmtechnik; Callas, Maria; Kant, Immanuel; Kritik der praktischen Vernunft; Mythos; Griechenland (Altertum); Dionysos; Das Dionysische; Nietzsche, Friedrich
Page Number:12
First Page:255
Last Page:266
HeBIS-PPN:458872083
Dewey Decimal Classification:7 Künste und Unterhaltung / 79 Sport, Spiele, Unterhaltung / 791 Öffentliche Darbietungen, Film, Rundfunk
8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik
Sammlungen:CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
Sammlung Musik, Theater, Film / Literatur zum Film
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / ICI Berlin
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen