What can the taming of the monster reveal about its construction and the potential and limits of change? Modernist, individualist qualities of Western culture and society have shaped the construction and deconstruction of the monster in popular culture in general and film in particular. The idea of an historically emergent human nature and its associated norms is key to the construction of the monster as transgressive. Less obvious but nonetheless apparent is the constraining role this Western construction of human nature continues to play in recent cinematic attempts to approach the monster more closely. These are explored through a consideration of vampire movies within the horror genre, with a focus on Interview with the Vampire (dir. Neil Jordan, 1994), as arguably both influential within and emblematic of a more general trend. The film dismantles the conventional monster figure of the vampire, humanising her by detailing her transposition from a natural, human setting to something otherworldly. Human (read as Western) qualities are reinforced and salvaged from the disturbing ambivalence of conventional monstrosity, as we observe the logic of ‘human’ adaptation to alien conditions. In this way, both the paradoxical model of freedom as conformity to nature and the naturalising reification of contingent social groupings are re-affirmed.
The article considers one dominant tendency of independent filmmaking, and its impact on the treatment of the refugee (broadly conceived): the application of contemporary documentary methods to both fiction and nonfiction works. The goal is a preliminary exploration of the complex, context-sensitive political effects of the approach, sometimes dubbed the “documentary style”, as resistance of (and/or submission to) the hegemonic global-nationalist order. To this end, the paper investigates specifically how such filmmaking efforts may—or may not—redirect the phenomenological vehicle of imagination away from narrow nationalist imaginaries towards a broader humanist identification and emotional (and normative) investment in the stranger or “the other” per se. The focus is on two works in particular, Another News Story (Orban Wallace, 2017) and Before Summer Ends (Avant la fin de l’été, Maryam Goormaghtigh, 2017), identifying how the filmmakers’ broadly pluralistic techniques help avoid the potentially dehumanising pitfalls of more didactic approaches, but also generate their own potential limitations. While the slackening of the subject’s categorical—and the plot’s narrative—shape may be liberating, it also risks a phenomenological disconnection on the part of the potentially interested spectator. The cognitive effects—including impediments to memory and recall—may thus weaken the work’s potential as a vehicle of cultural awareness and social identification.
Students of regional integration in Europe have found it difficult to identify the nature of the European Union (EU). For some, it is the product of states rationally deciding to belong to an intergovernmental organisation to promote their utilitarian goals. For others, it is a putative supranational polity whose development requires the progressive diminution of state sovereignty. The authors argue that it is more fruitful to see the EU as a unique kind of regional 'institution'. Its endurance depends upon its ability to reflect and instantiate established social 'practices' rather than convergent 'i!1terests' among member states.
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