faces of leather, faces of wax - the contradictory destinies of the face in hollywood cinema 
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PDF for my presentation at the 2015 Interdisciplinary Conference: "AGEING: HISTORIES, MYTHOLOGIES, TABOOS" at the University of Bergen ( Department of foreign languages and literatures).TRANSCRIPT
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Faces of Leather, Faces of Wax
the Contradictory Destinies of the Face in Hollywood Cinema
PIA PANDELAKIS
Interdisciplinary Conference January 30-31, 2015
University of Bergen - Department of foreign languages and literatures
AGEING: HISTORIES, MYTHOLOGIES, TABOOS
2 0 1 5
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> BEAUTY INDUSTRY & the "fountain of youth"
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a binary discourse: desirable vs. repulsive body
+ the "right" use of surgery...
sandra bullock,2015 Golden globes
1
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...and its opposite:youth signifiers turned monstruous?
meg ryan, 2013mickey rourke, 2010mélanie griffith
2
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the caked facethe face disappearsbehind a mask
Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti, 1971.Mr. Skeffington, Vincent Sherman, 1944.
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understanding the actor’s relationship with age
virginia blum
kathleen woodward
gilles deleuze
Flesh Wounds, The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, University of California Press, 2003.
"Performing Age, Performing Gender" in NWSA Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, 2006.
L’image mouvement, Éditions de Minuit, collection : Critique, octobre 1983.
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> age blindness > age as a gendered process
Oblivion, Joseph Kosinski, 2013.
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"Gender plays a further role in the strategies of exclusion: not only are men on screen granted a longer life-span as sexual beings, but they retain a status as individuals, defined in terms of (actual or past) activities, professional, cultural, or political".
martine beugnet"Screening the Old: Femininity as Old Age in
Contemporary French Cinema" in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 39, No. 2 , 2006.
> old age threatens the individual's ability to appear as a sexual subject> women have a harder time maintaining this status
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> the aged body on screen> maintaining a status /
questioning a process
Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood, 2008.
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2
Little Big Man, Arthur Penn, 1970.
age as a function of the narrative
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Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder, 1950.
age as decay, loss of dignity3
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> the face : the location of the star persona
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> the face, central in a revelation process
The Fugitive, Andrew Davis, 1993.
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"Le visage est cette plaque nerveuse porte-organes qui a sacrifié l’essentiel de sa mobilité globale, et qui recueille ou exprime à l’air libre toutes sortes de petits mouvements locaux que le reste du corps tient d’ordinaire enfouis".
gilles deleuze
> the face is splitbetween surface & structurebetween a contour / a series of micro movements
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> the functions of movie makeup> making the actor look older
Dick Smith working on Dustin Hoffman, 1970
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“The effect of the very materiality of the body in age can be that at a certain point it performs us, reducing the latitude promised in part by the very concept of performance”
kathleen woodward
> the body/face is performedthe makeup performs the actor
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> a closer look at two moviesThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher, 2008.
Tron: Legacy, Joseph Kosinsky, 2010.
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> a reversed aging process
> benjamin button (2008)
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> tron: legacy (2010)> sequel to tron (1982)
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> tron: legacy (2010)
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> tron: legacy (2010)> meeting the fake father, clu
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> tron: legacy (2010)> meeting the real father
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> 2 actors constructing a younger body
> brad pitt
> jeff bridges
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acting +hmc
> the process of motion capture
1
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applying the movements to a modelized face
2
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providing a body to the face
3
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> an intricate rewriting of the notion of performance
> cf. aylish wood
> the complexity of mo-cap
"a construct of performances"
" Contests and Simulations: Tron: Legacy’s Connections with Technologies" in Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 66, No. 3, Fall 2014.
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> a thousand faces
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"La série intensive"expanding from deleuze
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> a new materialitythe impossibly smooth
benjamin button (2008)
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> a new materialitythe impossibly smooth
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> an impossible face> its opposite, therefore coded
as "real"
faces of wax faces of leather
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a reconciliation narrativebecoming a body of light in tron
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a reconciliation narrativereturn to a symbolic mother
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> performance & mo-cap: blurry lines
>mediation and the aesthetics of the face
> a symbolic unity // aesthetic deconstruction