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The play of iconicity in Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built
Lars von Trier’s most recent film, The House That Jack Built, premiered in 2018. The main character, Jack (Matt Dillon), is an engineer and mass murderer, who challenges the laws of society and gets away with it. But even though he is a criminal, his ambition is another: to become an architect and build an iconic house. Meanwhile, the film’s real forger is Verge (Bruno Ganz),[1] a figure who first appears as voiceover commentary who mocks and undoes Jack’s ambitions – both as a murderer and an architect/artist. Thus, Jack’s useless efforts to create an iconic masterpiece of architecture while murdering forms the diegetic world commented on from Verge’s initially extradiegetic voice, later integrated as a character. In this article, I intend to show that the film’s transversal relations between iconic features in the diegesis and various explorations of what characterises icons on a cultural level pave the way for abstractions. It is at this level that the film articulates its assessment of Western image regimes as emphatically iconic, a quality which provides for both their aesthetic promise and their political danger. ; Lars von Trier’s most recent film, The House That Jack Built, premiered in 2018. The main character, Jack (Matt Dillon), is an engineer and mass murderer, who challenges the laws of society and gets away with it. But even though he is a criminal, his ambition is another: to become an architect and build an iconic house. Meanwhile, the film’s real forger is Verge (Bruno Ganz),[1] a figure who first appears as voiceover commentary who mocks and undoes Jack’s ambitions – both as a murderer and an architect/artist. Thus, Jack’s useless efforts to create an iconic masterpiece of architecture while murdering forms the diegetic world commented on from Verge’s initially extradiegetic voice, later integrated as a character. In this article, I intend to show that the film’s transversal relations between iconic features in the diegesis and various explorations of what characterises icons on a cultural ...
The play of iconicity in Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built
Lars von Trier’s most recent film, The House That Jack Built, premiered in 2018. The main character, Jack (Matt Dillon), is an engineer and mass murderer, who challenges the laws of society and gets away with it. But even though he is a criminal, his ambition is another: to become an architect and build an iconic house. Meanwhile, the film’s real forger is Verge (Bruno Ganz),[1] a figure who first appears as voiceover commentary who mocks and undoes Jack’s ambitions – both as a murderer and an architect/artist. Thus, Jack’s useless efforts to create an iconic masterpiece of architecture while murdering forms the diegetic world commented on from Verge’s initially extradiegetic voice, later integrated as a character. In this article, I intend to show that the film’s transversal relations between iconic features in the diegesis and various explorations of what characterises icons on a cultural level pave the way for abstractions. It is at this level that the film articulates its assessment of Western image regimes as emphatically iconic, a quality which provides for both their aesthetic promise and their political danger. ; Lars von Trier’s most recent film, The House That Jack Built, premiered in 2018. The main character, Jack (Matt Dillon), is an engineer and mass murderer, who challenges the laws of society and gets away with it. But even though he is a criminal, his ambition is another: to become an architect and build an iconic house. Meanwhile, the film’s real forger is Verge (Bruno Ganz),[1] a figure who first appears as voiceover commentary who mocks and undoes Jack’s ambitions – both as a murderer and an architect/artist. Thus, Jack’s useless efforts to create an iconic masterpiece of architecture while murdering forms the diegetic world commented on from Verge’s initially extradiegetic voice, later integrated as a character. In this article, I intend to show that the film’s transversal relations between iconic features in the diegesis and various explorations of what characterises icons on a cultural ...
The play of iconicity in Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built
Thomsen, Bodil Marie Stavning (author)
2020-01-01
Thomsen , B M S 2020 , ' The play of iconicity in Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built ' , NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies , no. Spring . < https://necsus-ejms.org/the-play-of-iconicity-in-lars-von-triers-the-house-that-jack-built/ >
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720
| UB Braunschweig | 1878
UB Braunschweig | 1786
| UB Braunschweig | 1878