European Cinema: Inside and out. Images of the Self and the Other in Postcolonial European Film by Guido Rings, Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 475 In some respects, Iconotropism seeks to do just this, the twelve essays contained within meeting and moulding the possibility that humanity has evolved to draw nourishment from totemic images, the neologism of the title combining, according to the book's editor, Ellen Spolsky, a 'culturally produced and valued iconwith the automatic or reactive notion of tropism', so as to describe just thatblend of 'cultural activity and natural potential that together describe how humans live in theirworld' (p. 12).The essays firstsaw the lightat a conference inTel Aviv inhonour ofMurray Roston in I997, and some make the transition fromdarkened lecture theatre towhite page more easily than others. Ellen Spolsky's keynote account of 'Representational Hunger' inRaphael and Titian is largelyconvincing, once, having dispensed with the theoryof iconotropism, itarrives at the art-historical nub; Albert Boime's account of the Judaic contexts ofWilliam Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat is exemplary in every respect;while Elliot Wolfson's account of ironic representations of theKabbalah, after descending into a tortuously Lacanian reading of theveiled phallus in the context of Jewishmysticism, concludes, to the reliefof all,with theobservation that 'todraw the picture ofGod in the imagination is theparamount act of pious devotion thatunifies thedivine nature and thereby sustains theworld' (p. 66). The most impressive essay, and certainly themost clear-eyed in itsassessment of theurge tomake pictures in the faceof imminent oblivion, isCarol Zemel's analysis of some images of theHolocaust. Here theGolden Calf assumes a finalpoignancy; for where once the Israelites' golden earrings,melted down, could be rendered into an image only to be destroyed by the wrath ofMoses, so in the death camps the similarly unthinkable was given material formon scrap paper and slivers ofwood by artists, some ofwhom would themselves soon be consigned to the gas chambers, the gold in theirmouths removed by the Kapos' pliers and melted down to nourish themonstrous vanity of theReich. For once, forever, these horrific images speak more powerfully thanwords ever could. UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW DAVID PASCOE European Cinema: Inside and Out. Images of the Self and the Other inPostcolonialEuro pean Film. Ed. by GUIDO RINGS and RIKKI MORGAN-TAMOSUNAS. (Anglistische Forschungen, 322) Heidelberg: Winter. 2003. 262 pp. E38. ISBN 978-3-8253 I474-3. This publication consists of fifteenessays edited and with an introduction byGuido Rings and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. They and several of the contributors are from Anglia Ruskin University, but the list includes academics from theUnited States, New Zealand, and Serbia. There is a similarly broad range of European cinemas covered: British (fiveessays), Spanish (three), French (three), and Italian (two),with single studies ofTurkish-German cinema and thework ofKusturica, inwhose case, as Nevena Dakovic makes clear, the nationality of thematerial ismuch contested. Most essays offerclose readings ofmaterial from the late I98os to the present. The subtitle of the collection allows the subject-matter foranalysis to range from repre sentations ofScottish, Nicaraguan, andAsian identity in the filmsofLoach, Kureishi, and O'Donnell to the depiction of French colonialist mentality inDenis's Chocolat. The work is given coherence by the specifics of this subtitle, and as might be anti cipated, the critical theories of Said, Bhabha, and Fanon are strongly in evidence. The overall quality of the contributions is strong, particularly those of Sarah Bar row,Marsha Kinder, and Isabel Santaollala, providing evidence that the topic of postcolonialism, established in the critical canon since Said's Orientalism of 1978, is by no means exhausted either critically or cinematically. The increasing fluidityof population movement inEurope, and the need to give cultural articulation towhat 476 Reviews might constitute Europeanness, are at theheart of the book. Almost inevitably, there is some variation in thequality of the contributions, and one notes a tendency togive excessive detail about the filmic text (in the essay of Stan Jones, for example), and more generally at times a failure to appraise more fully the cinematic qualities of the selected material, such as choice of shot or detail ofmise en scene. The editors are clearly aware of the need to strive foroverall coherence, and thus the essays are divided into categories such as 'Gendering theOther' and 'Engaging with thePast'. Other editorial strategies are less satisfactory,however. Some authors are allowed over-lengthy...