Pregledni rad
Decadence of modernity in Luis Buñuel's films The Golden Age and The Discreet Charm of the Burgeoisie
Sebastian A. Kukavica
; Vukovar
Sažetak
In film studies Buñuel's films were rarely if ever analyzed as embodiments of a specific concept of decadence consolidated in literary criticism of the turn of the twentieth century. The absence of such research is striking, especially considering that many of Buñuel's films are, in fact, adaptations of representative works of decadent literature. The paper, therefore, offers an analysis of representations of historical and spiritual decadence of the Western modernity in two of Buñuel's films (The Golden Age and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), whereby Buñuel's representations of decadence are interpreted in accordance with the discourse of the anti-decadent literary criticism, which affirmed the conceptualization of “decadence” both as an imagination and as a literary style characteristic of the apparently morally and organically decaying Western societies stuck in their presumable state of nihilism. The central thesis of the paper is that Buñuel's ideological framing of the concept of decadence needs to be understood in line with the conceptualization of the bourgeois decadent imagination, due to the fact that in Buñuel's films the bourgeoisie is conceived both as the carrier of modernity and as an essentially decadent class. According to Buñuel's representation of decadence, the first attribute of the bourgeois decadent imagination is its utter detachment from the outside world and its obsession with maintaining the order of its social status and privilege through self-deception. The second characteristic of decadent imagination of the bourgeoisie is its desire for creating artificial utopias and emotional enclaves within which decadent subjects constitute their own castles of negative liberty guided by their individualist ethical systems and lifestyles. In Buñuel's representations of historical and spiritual decadence of the West, desire for maintaining the artificial order of the bourgeois hegemony – constituted by an ingenious and fierce imagination which dared to imagine beyond the limits of “the natural laws” – is conceived as the source of decadence of the bourgeois imagination. Analysis of the two films demonstrates that Buñuel's imagery, as well as its underlying editing and narrative techniques, represents a breakthrough at the core of the decadent imagination of the bourgeoisie. As such, bourgeoisie is imagined as a class that, in the realm of its negative liberty, develops mechanisms of self-deception, which ultimately allow it to perceive itself as still ostensibly living in the alleged golden age of its political and cultural hegemony.
Ključne riječi
decadence; modernity; nihilism; The Golden Age; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Hrčak ID:
288004
URI
Datum izdavanja:
21.12.2022.
Posjeta: 501 *