The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg (Heritage) - Hardcover

Beard, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802035698 ISBN 13: 9780802035691

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2001

Synopsis

PAPERBACK INCLUDES TWO NEW CHAPTERS

David Cronenberg is one of the most fascinating filmmakers in the world today. His provocative work has stimulated debate and received major retrospectives in museums, galleries, and cinematheques around the world. William Beard's The Artist as Monster was the first book-length scholarly work in English on Cronenberg's films, analyzing all of his features from Stereo (1969) to Crash (1996). In this paperback edition, Beard includes new chapters on eXistenZ (1999) and Spider (2002).

Through close readings and visual analyses, Beard argues that the structure of Cronenberg's cinema is based on a dichotomy between, on the one hand, order, reason, repression, and control, and on the other, liberation, sexuality, disease, and the disintegration of self and of the boundaries that define society. The instigating figure in the films is a scientist character who, as Cronenberg evolves as a filmmaker, gradually metamorphoses into an artist, with the ground of liberation and catastrophe shifting from experimental subject to the self.

Bringing a wealth of analytical observation and insight into Cronenberg's films, Beard's sweeping, comprehensive work has established the benchmark for the study of one of Canada's best-known filmmakers.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

'[The Artist as Monster] makes a significant contribution to the field in its relentlessly meticulous look at the filmmaker as an Auteur. No other book provides such a detailed analysis of so many of Cronenberg's films.'

'This book deserves to become the definitive account of Cronenberg. That is, this is the book that will tell people, in meticulous detail, what is actually in the films. Theoretical speculation may take off from there, but it will do well to be grounded in Prof. Beard's painstaking analysis.'

About the Author:

William Beard is a professor and film studies program director in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0802035698
• ISBN 13: 9780802035691
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 550