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'The in-between of things': intermediality in Ratcatcher

journal contribution
posted on 2023-07-26, 12:51 authored by Tina Kendall
This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer's materialist film theory, which suggests that film is interested in the 'refuse' of existence, drawn to 'what is just there' in reality. It will be suggested here that Ratcatcher's multi-sensory investment in a 'low-plane reality' works to reclaim some of the possibilities that Kracauer and other modern film theorists conferred upon the medium of cinema. However, in contrast to Kracauer's insistence on the 'redemptive' mission of cinema, it draws from the recent body of 'new materialist' theory in order to reframe cinema's relations with things. Through attentiveness to what Elizabeth Grosz calls the 'in-between of things', this paper develops an argument about the materiality of things that also accounts for the materiality of the cinema as a thing, and for the immanent relations it establishes with other media forms. The paper draws from the concept of intermediality, to suggest that this heightened awareness of materiality emerges most powerfully in Ratcatcher's creation of an interstitial space between film, art and the real. In turn, the paper suggests that it is ultimately in privileging the still life of things that Ratcatcher most powerfully foregrounds cinema's affective and aesthetic potential.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

8

Issue number

2

Page range

179-197

Publication title

New Review of Film and Television Studies

ISSN

1740-7923

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Language

  • other

Legacy posted date

2012-04-23

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences (until September 2018)

Note

Citation: Kendall, T., 2010. 'The in-between of things': intermediality in Ratcatcher. New Review of Film & Television Studies, 8(2), pp.179-197..

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