Existential Enclaves: Terminal Illness on the Screen

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Lorena Amorós Blasco

Abstract

This paper explores the filmic trajectories experienced by the protagonists in two case studies: Lightning Over Water (1979) by Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders, and Sick, The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1996) by Kirby Dick. In both films, the limitexperience, caused by a disease, becomes an active device, one that produces knowledge for the protagonists. In this radical experience, what is revealed is the link between selfrepresentation and a will to self-destruction, and the normative margins of rationality are questioned. Based on the studies of Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean Baudrillard and Clément Rosset, this essay examines an approach to terminal illness and self-representation both in the context of pain and the voyeuristic process of death as a spectacle.

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Author Biography

Lorena Amorós Blasco

Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Murcia.

Murcia, España.

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