Asbjørn Grønstad

Modi operandi
Asbjørn Grønstad As I lay dying: Violence and subjectivity in Reservoir dogs

Om forfatteren

Cand. Philol., fra 1999-2002 stipendiat ved Engelsk Institutt, Universitetet i Bergen. Fra høsten 2003 førsteamenuensisvikar samme sted. Avhandlingen Transfigurations: Violence, Death and Masculinity in American Cinema ferdigstilles sommeren 2003. Grønstad har studert engelsk, nordisk og praktisk pedagogikk ved Universitetet i Bergen, og filmvitenskap ved University of California, Santa Barbara. Var i 1989-99 Fulbright Fellow ved University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sammendrag:

Did Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) represent a fundamental break with the established traditions of American screen violence? This article suggests that Tarantino's film was not so much a departure as a continuation of the concern with forms of violent masculinity that has informed the gangster movie from the 1930s and onward. Rather than emphasizing the level of nihilism and absurdity often associated with Tarantino's work, the article argues that the film may most profitably be understood as a cinematic treatise on the fractured subjectivity of the quintessential gangster persona. In exploring the ethical ramifications of this violent subjectivity, the argument also delves into an examination of the ways in which violence in Reservoir Dogs constitutes a discourse on death and the body as these are both produced and swallowed up by processes of narration and intertextuality.

acrobat Forfatterens bidrag som PDF-dokument

Høgskolen i Østfold

9. Februar, 2004

As I lay dying: Violence and subjectivity in Reservoir dogs