Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible

Richard Baxstrom

ISBN 10: 0823268241 / ISBN 13: 9780823268245

Published by Fordham University Press, 2015

About this Item

Realizing the Witch follows the unfolding of Benjamin Christensen's visual narrative in his 1922 film, Haxan (The Witch). Through a close reading of Haxan, Baxstrom and Meyers examine the study of witchcraft from historical and anthropological perspectives, as well as the intersection of popular culture, artistic expression and scientific ideas. Series: Forms of Living. Num Pages: 296 pages, 64 b/w illustrations. BIC Classification: HRQX5. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 238 x 159 x 23. Weight in Grams: 534. . 2015. 1st Edition. Hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780823268245

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823268241
• ISBN 13: 9780823268245
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female “hysterics” and the mentally ill.

In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Häxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Häxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of “documentary” and “fiction.” Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen’s attempt to tame the irrationality of “the witch” risked validating the very "nonsense" that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Häxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe. Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless “know” to be there.

About the Author

Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University-Shanghai. He is the author of The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy.