Unwatchable
edited by Nicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak and Gunnar Iversen
contributions by Noel Carroll, Mel Chen, Jonathan Crary, Abigail De Kosnik, Samuel England, Mattias Frey, Peter Geimer, Michael Boyce Gillespie, Asbjørn Grønstad, Boris Groys, Frances Guerin, Jack Halberstam, Barbara Hammer, Julian Hanich, Stefano Harney, J. Hoberman, Lynne Joyrich, Alexandra Juhasz, E. Ann Kaplan, Katariina Kyrölä, Nathan Lee, Akira Lippit, Jennifer Malkowski, W.J.T. Mitchell, Brandy Monk-Payton, Fred Moten, Bill Nichols, Jan Olsson, Danielle Peers, Raul Perez, Mauro Resmini, B. Ruby Rich, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Rebecca Schneider, Jeffrey Sconce, Jared Sexton, Philipp Stiasny, Meghan Sutherland, Bennet Togler, Erika Balsom, Leshu Torchin, Alok Vaid-Menon, Christophe Wall-Romana, Meir Wigoder, Emily Wills, Federico Windhausen, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Genevieve Yue, Alenka Zupancic, Poulomi Saha, Kenneth Berger, Vivian Sobchack, Susie Bright, Alex Bush and Alec Butler
contributions by Noel Carroll, Mel Chen, Jonathan Crary, Abigail De Kosnik, Samuel England, Mattias Frey, Peter Geimer, Michael Boyce Gillespie, Asbjørn Grønstad, Boris Groys, Frances Guerin, Jack Halberstam, Barbara Hammer, Julian Hanich, Stefano Harney, J. Hoberman, Lynne Joyrich, Alexandra Juhasz, E. Ann Kaplan, Katariina Kyrölä, Nathan Lee, Akira Lippit, Jennifer Malkowski, W.J.T. Mitchell, Brandy Monk-Payton, Fred Moten, Bill Nichols, Jan Olsson, Danielle Peers, Raul Perez, Mauro Resmini, B. Ruby Rich, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Rebecca Schneider, Jeffrey Sconce, Jared Sexton, Philipp Stiasny, Meghan Sutherland, Bennet Togler, Erika Balsom, Leshu Torchin, Alok Vaid-Menon, Christophe Wall-Romana, Meir Wigoder, Emily Wills, Federico Windhausen, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Genevieve Yue, Alenka Zupancic, Poulomi Saha, Kenneth Berger, Vivian Sobchack, Susie Bright, Alex Bush and Alec Butler
Rutgers University Press, 2019
eISBN: 978-0-8135-9961-8 | Cloth: 978-0-8135-9959-5 | Paper: 978-0-8135-9958-8
Library of Congress Classification B105.I47U59 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 153.32
eISBN: 978-0-8135-9961-8 | Cloth: 978-0-8135-9959-5 | Paper: 978-0-8135-9958-8
Library of Congress Classification B105.I47U59 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 153.32
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?
With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.
With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
NICHOLAS BAER is a collegiate assistant professor in the humanities and Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago in Illinois. He is the coeditor of the award-winning The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933.
MAGGIE HENNEFELD is an assistant professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.
LAURA HORAK is an associate professor of film studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of the award-winning Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908–1934 (Rutgers University Press).
GUNNAR IVERSEN is a professor of film studies at Carleton University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books.
MAGGIE HENNEFELD is an assistant professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.
LAURA HORAK is an associate professor of film studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of the award-winning Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908–1934 (Rutgers University Press).
GUNNAR IVERSEN is a professor of film studies at Carleton University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books.
REVIEWS
— Film Quarterly
— Film Quarterly
"By posing a seemingly modest question—what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'—the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly."
— Martin Jay, author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought"This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship."
— Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting"A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable."
— Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times"While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years—if not generations—to come."
— New Books Network - New Books in Film
— Los Angeles Review of Books
"A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily."
— Times Literary Supplement"The tone of the writing is refreshing—sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history."
— Moveable Type"Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book."
— Jump Cut"The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize."
— Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism"This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics."
— MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen"A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come."
— Journal of Cinema and Media Studies"This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator."
— The Communication Review"This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes."
— Communication Booknotes Quarterly"Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun."
— Aurore Spiers, Discourse
— Los Angeles Review of Books
"Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book."
— Jump Cut"This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes."
— Communication Booknotes Quarterly"This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship."
— Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting"While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years—if not generations—to come."
— New Books Network - New Books in Film
"The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize."
— Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism"The tone of the writing is refreshing—sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history."
— Moveable Type"This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics."
— MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen"A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily."
— Times Literary Supplement"A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come."
— Journal of Cinema and Media Studies"Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun."
— Aurore Spiers, Discourse"A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable."
— Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times"This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator."
— The Communication Review"By posing a seemingly modest question—what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'—the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly."
— Martin Jay, author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French ThoughtTABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable
Part I: Violence and Testimony
Theorizing the Unwatchable
1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Unwatchable
2. Boris Groys, The Gaze from Within
3. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable
4. Alenka Zupančič, Melting Into Visibility
5. Meghan Sutherland, Pro Forma
Spectacles of Destruction
6. Jonathan Crary, Terminal Radiance
7. Poulomi Saha, Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen
8. Alex Bush, Breakaway
9. Meir Wigoder, The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage
Bearing Witness
10. Peter Geimer, The Incommensurable
11. Leshu Torchin, Not Seeing is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy
12. Frances Guerin, Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched
13. Federico Windhausen, Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrávidos
14. Emily Regan Wills, Alan Kurdi’s Body on the Shore
Visual Regimes of Racial Violence
15. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X
16. Jared Sexton, The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out
17. Alexandra Juhasz, Nothing is Unwatchable for All
18. Michael Boyce Gillespie, Empathy. Complicity.
Spectacularization and Resistance
19. Alok Vaid-Menon, Entertainment Value
20. Alec Butler, Holocausts, Hallowe’en, and Headdresses
21. Danielle Peers, Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence
Part II: Histories and Genres
The Tradition of Provocateurs
22. Asbjørn Grønstad, The Two Unwatchables
23. Akira Lippit, Real Horrorshow
24. Mauro Resmini, Asymmetries of Desire: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
25. Mattias Frey, Unstomachable: Irréversible and the Extreme Cinema Tradition
Enduring the Avant-Garde
26. Christophe Wall-Romana, Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’s Venom and Eternity
27. Kenneth Berger, The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’s Howls for Sade
28. J. Hoberman, Warhol’s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable
29. Noël Carroll, Warhol's Empire
30. Erika Balsom, Watching Paint Dry
Visceral Responses to Horror
31. Vivian Sobchack, “Peekaboo”: Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films
32. B. Ruby Rich, Why I Cannot Watch
33. Genevieve Yue, Apotropes
Pornography and the Question of Pleasure
34. Susie Bright, I Am Curious (Butterball)
35. Bill Nichols, At the Threshold to the Void
Archives and the Disintegrating Image
36. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Restoring Blood Money
37. Jan Olsson, Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess
38. Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler, Twilight of the Dead
Part III: Spectators and Objects
Passionate Aversions
39. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Sad!”: Why I Won’t Watch Antichrist
40. Nathan Lee, Transforming Nihilism
41. Julian Hanich, Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant
42. Jeffrey Sconce, The Biopic is an Affront to the Cinema
Tedious Whiteness
43. Jack Halberstam, White Men Behaving Sadly
44. Brandy Monk-Payton, “You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important” or, Why I Can't Watch The Help
45. Mel Y. Chen, Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW?
Reality Trumpism
46. Lynne Joyrich, TV Trumps
47. Abigail De Kosnik, The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch Any Fictionalizations of the 2016 Election
Pedagogy and Campus Politics
48. Raúl Pérez, Why We Can’t Take a Joke
49. Jennifer Malkowski, The Bridge and Unteachable Films
50. Katariina Kyrölä, Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort
The Triggered Spectator
51. E. Ann Kaplan, What is an “Unwatchable” Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice)
52. Barbara Hammer, Watch at Your Own Peril
53. Samuel England, Sects, Fries, and Videotape
54. Rebecca Schneider, Off Watch
Acknowledgments
Filmography
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable
Part I: Violence and Testimony
Theorizing the Unwatchable
1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Unwatchable
2. Boris Groys, The Gaze from Within
3. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable
4. Alenka Zupančič, Melting Into Visibility
5. Meghan Sutherland, Pro Forma
Spectacles of Destruction
6. Jonathan Crary, Terminal Radiance
7. Poulomi Saha, Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen
8. Alex Bush, Breakaway
9. Meir Wigoder, The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage
Bearing Witness
10. Peter Geimer, The Incommensurable
11. Leshu Torchin, Not Seeing is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy
12. Frances Guerin, Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched
13. Federico Windhausen, Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrávidos
14. Emily Regan Wills, Alan Kurdi’s Body on the Shore
Visual Regimes of Racial Violence
15. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X
16. Jared Sexton, The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out
17. Alexandra Juhasz, Nothing is Unwatchable for All
18. Michael Boyce Gillespie, Empathy. Complicity.
Spectacularization and Resistance
19. Alok Vaid-Menon, Entertainment Value
20. Alec Butler, Holocausts, Hallowe’en, and Headdresses
21. Danielle Peers, Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence
Part II: Histories and Genres
The Tradition of Provocateurs
22. Asbjørn Grønstad, The Two Unwatchables
23. Akira Lippit, Real Horrorshow
24. Mauro Resmini, Asymmetries of Desire: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
25. Mattias Frey, Unstomachable: Irréversible and the Extreme Cinema Tradition
Enduring the Avant-Garde
26. Christophe Wall-Romana, Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’s Venom and Eternity
27. Kenneth Berger, The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’s Howls for Sade
28. J. Hoberman, Warhol’s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable
29. Noël Carroll, Warhol's Empire
30. Erika Balsom, Watching Paint Dry
Visceral Responses to Horror
31. Vivian Sobchack, “Peekaboo”: Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films
32. B. Ruby Rich, Why I Cannot Watch
33. Genevieve Yue, Apotropes
Pornography and the Question of Pleasure
34. Susie Bright, I Am Curious (Butterball)
35. Bill Nichols, At the Threshold to the Void
Archives and the Disintegrating Image
36. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Restoring Blood Money
37. Jan Olsson, Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess
38. Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler, Twilight of the Dead
Part III: Spectators and Objects
Passionate Aversions
39. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Sad!”: Why I Won’t Watch Antichrist
40. Nathan Lee, Transforming Nihilism
41. Julian Hanich, Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant
42. Jeffrey Sconce, The Biopic is an Affront to the Cinema
Tedious Whiteness
43. Jack Halberstam, White Men Behaving Sadly
44. Brandy Monk-Payton, “You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important” or, Why I Can't Watch The Help
45. Mel Y. Chen, Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW?
Reality Trumpism
46. Lynne Joyrich, TV Trumps
47. Abigail De Kosnik, The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch Any Fictionalizations of the 2016 Election
Pedagogy and Campus Politics
48. Raúl Pérez, Why We Can’t Take a Joke
49. Jennifer Malkowski, The Bridge and Unteachable Films
50. Katariina Kyrölä, Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort
The Triggered Spectator
51. E. Ann Kaplan, What is an “Unwatchable” Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice)
52. Barbara Hammer, Watch at Your Own Peril
53. Samuel England, Sects, Fries, and Videotape
54. Rebecca Schneider, Off Watch
Acknowledgments
Filmography
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
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