Abstract
Cinema is no stranger to death and violence. Academic studies into violence and violent images have almost picked the bones clean when it comes to cinematic representations of death and blood. Kjetil Rødje’s text Images of Blood in American Cinema does not seek to interpret cinematic gore as much as it works to understand the response to it. Rødje’s intention is to follow the trail of blood lain down by American cinema between the 1950s and 1960s, charting, in his own words, ‘the complex trails of associations that together perform the blood images, as well as the potentials of these images to affect their audience’ (p. 18).
The crux of Rødje’s investigation is to study blood on the cinema screen as being something other than representation. Rather, it is argued that blood images constitute a ‘constellation’ of discursive, social and cognitive elements that pre-exist their screen presence, ensuring that an audience’s response to the sight of blood is a reckoning of affective ‘potentials’. In stating his case, Rødje samples from strains of affective thought that range from Massumi, to Deleuze, to Latour, providing a particularly focused account on the ‘experiences’ of the medium. He goes on to make a compelling argument for blood on screen making a progressive move away from appearances as a narrative device and towards a more uninhibited existence as a form of ‘exhibition’. Indeed, in the same vein as the carnival, or the travelling sideshow, blood came to be used as a form of ‘tamed attraction’ (p. 47), an abject – yet stylistic – device, intended to shock and intrigue audiences. Rødje follows the establishment of ‘exploitation cinema’ through a score of early splatter flicks, including several key pieces from Hershell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman’s gory repertoire, and concluding in such long-established bastions of cinematic violence as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Wild Bunch (1969). There is a noticeable lack of attention to the horror genre in the text – surprising given the time frame studied – but what is missing is touched upon in discussion between abjection versus affect and in the ‘evolution’ of the blood concoction in special effects.
The contribution of Images of Blood to the study of cinema and affect cannot be denied. Blood is a discursive element. It reminds us of our horrors, our mortality, those parts of ourselves we seek to contain and conceal. Here, blood is broken down to its minutiae, from the specificities of its colour and texture on screen to its signifiers and potentials to the audience. Rødje plunges his arms deep and draws out pieces for our examination. The work’s detailing of the ‘intensities’ blood evokes is adept and hints at the depths of spectacle in Western cinema, but in trying to justify some of the finer points of his engagement with affect there is a tendency for indistinction.
Where the work falls short, in my opinion, is in some of the ‘terms’ of Rødje’s investigation of blood images. He maintains early in the introduction that his stance on affect, in relation to Guattri and Deleuze’s work on performativity, is that it is located in ‘assemblages’, in relations of content and expression. What he also makes clear, however, is that he does not consider events in American society at the time as needing to contribute to these cinematic assemblages. It is a stoic point to make, and perhaps a necessary one when dealing with the more experiential aims of affect, but in terms of cinematic study, separating the filmic content and audience from social and cultural events is simply not viable. This is a distinction that Rødje struggles with several times over, when forced to admit the connection between discourses on violence and the Vietnam war, or that class division may play a part in the characterisation of onscreen victims. Though he does always acknowledge the difficulties of trying to detach cinema from culture, there is simply not enough evidence for a resolute counter-reading. Clear and critical articulation on this ‘lack’ would have saved several chapters of this work from appearing uneven.
I have little doubt that this work is a useful chronology of blood images in American cinema. Rødje has demonstrated particular sensitivity to the use of blood as attraction and has detailed an interesting stylistic leap between ‘classic’ Hollywood and ‘new’ Hollywood. Whilst the critical analysis of blood’s ‘experiential aspects’ has sometimes slipped through the fingers, the call for an investment in the responsive and emotive depths of the cinematic image is clear, and well matched to what was an especially formative time in American cinematic history.