Unwatchable

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.

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