Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers // Paul Schrader, The Comfort of Strangers (COS)

Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers // Paul Schrader, The Comfort of Strangers  (COS)

PK Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ridley Scott, BLADE RUNNER (DADES/BR)

Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs (SOL)

Thomas Harris, Hannibal (ch. 86 to end) // Ridley Scott, Hannibal  (HA)

Choose 2 out of the 3 questions and write approximately 3 pages on each of the 2 questions chosen.

1. SACRIFICE: Discuss the ways in which sacrifice is a major topic in Comfort of strangers, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Blade Runner (movie), and Silence of the Lambs. Use Girard’s definition of (mimetic) sacrifice. In relation to the concept and practice of sacrifice, what is the relationship between barbarism and civilization and how do the works we have discussed present it?

2.“BARE OR CREATURELY LIFE”: We discussed “bare life” in the context of King Lear, which meditates on the nature of the substance of the human being as creature, as instance of life itself, as a human life separated from social, legal, and political cover. King Lear places himself on the outside of political power, loses his “name” and his place. Together with Edgar and the Fool he is exceptionalized, moved outside of the framework of rights and protections. The refugee camp, the concentration camp, the comatose patient subject to medical discourse’s definition of “life,” the tortured, the “disappeared,” animals condemned to death— all these are forms of bare life bred by way of a state of exception. The power that declares the state of exception is also the power that can dispose over bare life with impunity. How do the later texts treat this theme/idea/concept of “bare life”? For example, in BR, bare life announces itself in Rachael’s quip: “I’m not in the business [of ‘retiring’ replicants]. I AM the business.”  In Comfort Of Strangers: Robert’s father had ruled over his household with absolute power, an allusion to Italy’s fascist period; now Robert exerts total domination over Caroline’s body. You may use these examples but you should also come up some of your own.

3. LIEBESTOD (“Love Death”): Discuss the concepts and categories of Eros & Thanatos (death drive, entropy); the intersections of pleasure and pain, sadomasochism; think of sadomasochism as a sociohistorical category, a way of thinking about certain civilizations of death and hatred, and other instances of destruction and self-destruction; intersections with Fascism, Nazism, modern total war & totalitarianism in Comfort of strangers, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Blade Runner (movie), and Silence of the LambsL, Hannibel.

PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂