Abstracts "Michael Haneke's "Funny Games": Violence and the Media" At the Cannes film festival 1997 [I should here insert that Haneke in the meantime at the Cannes festival this past May received 3 of the top 4 awards for his most recent film, so he deserves some attention!] red stickers were put on the tickets for the premiere of Michael Haneke's "Funny Games," warning that the audience might find some of the scenes of the film shocking. The headlines of the reviews then referred to the electrochoc that had indeed been administered to the audience, usually with comparisons to Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," which in 1992 had received a similar caution about on-screen violence, and to "C'est arive pres de chez vous," the pseudo-documentary about a serial killer. Funny Games, however, features no graphic violence nor does it exploit violence for any possible entertainment value. For Haneke, the commodification of media violence is a conspicuous symptom for the moral degradation in the post-industrial life style. His films provide an incisive diagnosis of this condition. In my paper I will consider Haneke's film in the context of genre expectations for ultraviolence, film industry taboos, and viewing practices cultivated by mainstream productions and television. abstract-liste | core | home | kunstraum.gleisdorf [47•01] |
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