Impasses Mineures : Palindromes de Todd Solondz—Aviva, Deleuze et la poétique de l’image stéréotypée

Abstract

Cinematic narrative can only function through recourse to social stereotypes that function as the mediators of the relationships that spectators have with the pro-filmic world. Modern cinema has contributed greatly to the bringing forth of various issues in this process, a process that is fundamental to all artistic endeavours. The work of Todd Solondz, clearly an important part of this emancipatory tradition, is based in an ambivalent and extremist usage of stereotypes, which give the work its critical and poetic value. In his film Palindromes, Solondz puts a series of aesthetic and narrative processes into place in order to define the apparent object of the stereotype, all the while recognising its inevitably foundational quality in cinematic fiction. This article offers a study of these processes in the light of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of difference, particularly their concept of “(de) territorialisation.”