[ecrea] Screens of Violence

Screens of Violence

The Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and Culture, University of 
Wolverhampton invites you to a one day symposium at the Light House 
Media Centre, Wolverhampton Thursday 21^st November 2013

Programme:

9.45-10.00 Registration and Introduction

10.00-12.30 Illustrated talk on censorship by the BBFC

13.15-14.15 Keynote speaker, Elke Weissmann: Trauma, Masculinity and 
Contemporary British TV Drama: /Broadchurch/ and / Ripper Street/

British crime drama has often engaged in interesting and challenging 
ways with specific moral and ideological concerns of their particular 
period. This is also true for a recent spate of British crime drama 
which reconfigures masculinity and its relationship to society's moral 
core in particular ways. The paper will examine how two of these dramas, 
/Ripper Street/ (BBC since 2012) and / Broadchurch/ (ITV since 2013) 
re-imagine masculinity not so much in crisis as / traumatized/. As so 
often in crime drama, female sidekicks or ancillary characters carry the 
burden of emotional expression, whilst the violated female body remains 
central to mythic representations that highlight the severity of the 
crime. The men's trauma, however, seems to emanate from and be inscribed 
in the bodies of children, and in particular boys -- including younger 
versions of themselves. It reframes the investigators in relation to 
their paternal credentials and instincts and re-invests the moral core 
of crime drama with a decidedly paternalistic ethos.

Elke Weissmann is reader in film and television at Edge Hill University, 
Ormskirk, UK. She has published on transnational television and feminist 
media studies. Her two recent books are /Transnational Television Drama/ 
(Palgrave, 2012) and /Renewing Feminisms/ (ed. with Helen Thornham, 
I.B.Tauris, 2013). She is vice-chair of the television studies section 
of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association).

14.30-15.30 Keynote speaker, William Pawlett: Violence and Mediation: 
Media Theory and the 'Affective Turn'

This paper explores the relationship between violence and mediation, 
focussing on the fundamental level of the social and technological forms 
of mediation, rather than the level of media content, images and 
representations. Engaging with three influential media philosophers: 
Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Friedrich Kittler, an argument is 
made that the dominant forms of mediation enforced by neo-liberal 
consumer capitalism constitute an intensification of violence over the 
human body and the embodied mind. Far from liberating a rich array of 
moods, attachments, affiliations and aspirations amongst users and 
consumers of media, the 'affective turn' in capitalist commodification 
tends to reduce emotional life to states of fear, anxiety and 
insecurity. 'New Media' enable an extension of capitalist hegemony into 
the pre-cognitive, pre-conscious and proprioceptive (from repetitive 
strain injury and muscle aches to chronic fatigue) domains. Though the 
human body is adept at resisting capitalist endocolonisation, the scope 
and intensity of this violence is, I will suggest, badly under-estimated 
in current trends in media and social theory.

William Pawlett is Senior Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural 
Studies at University of Wolverhampton. His main areas of research are 
social, cultural and media theory, continental philosophy and the 
application of these to the issues of sexuality and consumerism and to 
violence, hatred and 'otherness'. His first book was a study of the 
sociological and philosophical ideas of Jean Baudrillard. This study 
challenges the perception of Baudrillard's work as 'postmodernist' by 
emphasising his notion of symbolic exchange. His second book is a study 
of social and religious philosophy of Georges Bataille which is applied 
to the contemporary issues of consumerism and violence and terrorism.

15.30-16.15 Discussion and questions

Cost: ?4 to be paid on the day. Lunch not included but Light House's 
café bar offers refreshments and there are also a number of other cafés 
and pubs locally. To register or for further information please contact 
Stella Hockenhull at (s.hockenhull /at/ wlv.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(s.hockenhull /at/ wlv.ac.uk)> or Fran Pheasant-Kelly at 
(f.e.pheasant-kelly /at/ wlv.ac.uk) <mailto:(f.e.pheasant-kelly /at/ wlv.ac.uk)>

Dr. Fran Pheasant-Kelly
Reader in Film and Television Studies
Course Leader MA Film Studies
Co-Director Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and Culture
Film Studies Department
MC333 Millennium City Building
University of Wolverhampton
Stafford Street
Wolverhampton
WV1 1LY
Tel: 01902 323325
Mobile: 07854 927468