Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here

Drawing on Ewa Domańska’s theory of necrovitalism (2017), Rosi Braidotti’s works that engage with life/death ‘dichotomy’ (2006; 2008; 2013), and affect theories, I hope to show how normative understanding of death and mourning, typical for horror cinema as such, are questioned and transformed throu...

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Autor principal:	Agnieszka Kotwasińska
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	DA EN NB SV
Publicado:	The Royal Danish Library 2019
Materias:	Horror cinema sound necroperson grieving the dead zoe/bios Social Sciences H
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d8457af7a1724c80a527700631f35764
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:d8457af7a1724c80a527700631f35764
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d8457af7a1724c80a527700631f357642021-12-01T00:03:58ZBeyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here10.7146/kkf.v28i2-3.1163102245-6937https://doaj.org/article/d8457af7a1724c80a527700631f357642019-09-01T00:00:00Zhttps://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116310https://doaj.org/toc/2245-6937 Drawing on Ewa Domańska’s theory of necrovitalism (2017), Rosi Braidotti’s works that engage with life/death ‘dichotomy’ (2006; 2008; 2013), and affect theories, I hope to show how normative understanding of death and mourning, typical for horror cinema as such, are questioned and transformed through an affective engagement with spectral soundscapes in two recent horror films – A Dark Song (2016) and We Are Still Here (2015). To a large extent, both films replicate normative understanding of what constitutes a reasonable occasion for grieving: the sudden and seemingly unjust death of a child. A child’s lost life, often seen as the pinnacle of felt grief, is then mourned passionately by the mother (rather than the father), whose determination and intuition guide her over the life-death threshold in order to reunite with her dead child or find some kind of closure. And yet rather than stopping at representing bereavement as a finite process, these films incorporate mourning into their cinematic language and use it to comment on the limits of Western definitions of death and life after death. In both films, encounters with otherworldly necropersons (to borrow Ewa Domańska’s term) disturb the zoe/bios distinction that organises Western mourning practices. More importantly, since these encounters rely on sound rather than vision, the protagonists (and the viewers) can no longer depend on scopic regimes of knowledge and are encouraged to think/feel about death differently. Agnieszka KotwasińskaThe Royal Danish LibraryarticleHorror cinemasoundnecropersongrievingthe deadzoe/biosSocial SciencesHDAENNBSVKvinder, Køn & Forskning, Vol 28, Iss 3-4 (2019)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	DA EN NB SV
topic	Horror cinema sound necroperson grieving the dead zoe/bios Social Sciences H
spellingShingle	Horror cinema sound necroperson grieving the dead zoe/bios Social Sciences H Agnieszka Kotwasińska Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
description	Drawing on Ewa Domańska’s theory of necrovitalism (2017), Rosi Braidotti’s works that engage with life/death ‘dichotomy’ (2006; 2008; 2013), and affect theories, I hope to show how normative understanding of death and mourning, typical for horror cinema as such, are questioned and transformed through an affective engagement with spectral soundscapes in two recent horror films – A Dark Song (2016) and We Are Still Here (2015). To a large extent, both films replicate normative understanding of what constitutes a reasonable occasion for grieving: the sudden and seemingly unjust death of a child. A child’s lost life, often seen as the pinnacle of felt grief, is then mourned passionately by the mother (rather than the father), whose determination and intuition guide her over the life-death threshold in order to reunite with her dead child or find some kind of closure. And yet rather than stopping at representing bereavement as a finite process, these films incorporate mourning into their cinematic language and use it to comment on the limits of Western definitions of death and life after death. In both films, encounters with otherworldly necropersons (to borrow Ewa Domańska’s term) disturb the zoe/bios distinction that organises Western mourning practices. More importantly, since these encounters rely on sound rather than vision, the protagonists (and the viewers) can no longer depend on scopic regimes of knowledge and are encouraged to think/feel about death differently.
format	article
author	Agnieszka Kotwasińska
author_facet	Agnieszka Kotwasińska
author_sort	Agnieszka Kotwasińska
title	Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
title_short	Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
title_full	Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
title_fullStr	Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
title_full_unstemmed	Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here
title_sort	beyond death and mourning in a dark song and we are still here
publisher	The Royal Danish Library
publishDate	2019
url	https://doaj.org/article/d8457af7a1724c80a527700631f35764
work_keys_str_mv	AT agnieszkakotwasinska beyonddeathandmourninginadarksongandwearestillhere
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Beyond Death and Mourning in A Dark Song and We Are Still Here

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