The Claim of Corporeity as Transgression in The Idiots
Abstract
The orgy’s episode in The idiots (Dogme #2. Idioterne, Lars von Trier, 1998) monopolized a large part of the controversy that the film caused. Far from implying a mere provocation, the scene plays a substantial role in the motion picture. This essay aims to expound the polyhedral claim of the body that the passage shows and which happens to be extrapolable to the film as a whole. To do this, the textual analysis will be combined with Cavell’s and Deleuze’s approaches to embodied subject and cinema. Attention to thematic aspects will reveal how the passage points to the body as a way of expression for the idiot gang and functions as a turning point in the story. On the other hand, the camera’s fixation with bodies and its somatic behaviour will be presented as the two main ways in which the film accomplishes its formal claim of corporeity.
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