Publication details

Visions of the Silver Screen : Psychedelics, Cosmic Horrors and Cosmic Jokes in Film

Authors

MARRONE Tancredi Andrew

Year of publication 2023
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description From Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé to Altered States by Ken Russel, but also Mandy with Nicholas Cage and David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, this presentation will analyze the use of psychedelics and bodily alchemy as a hermetic key into both the cosmic horror and the cosmic joke. How will the screen interpret these effects with its own mind-altering qualities? How will the story be told and what perspectives and values will be given to the means for the expansion of consciousness and the meta perceptual? These will be some of the questions that will be explored in this presentation. I will moreover analyze how the use of psychedelics is often linked to the access to different levels of existence whether that of spirits, extraterrestrials, parallel realities or even temporal lines. These I will relate to the cultural background which presents narratives on a spectrum between the horrific, the bizarre and the transcendental.
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