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R&G 07_Tonra 01 11/10/2013 16:15 Page 73 7 ‘Not nude but naked’: nakedness and nudity in Barker’s drama Eléonore Obis The theatre is, etymologically, what makes us see; more precisely, the theatre exposes what is usually hidden. In Peter Brook’s words, the theatre makes visible the invisible.1 In this sense, the representation of the naked body is highly theatrical: the stage can reveal the body without clothes in public, although society, conventions and morals forbid it in ‘real life’.The naked body is a leitmotiv in Barker’s plays. It is a crucial moment of
nature’ has been fraught with significance: legal battles have been fought over it, children have been removed from their families because of it, books and art works have been banned for promoting it. For an apparently natural state of affairs, the condition of nakedness has taken up a remarkable amount of legal, political, theological, social, economic and cultural space. I want, then, to consider nakedness
told us that it was Uwiragiye who finished off Charles and took his shoes. We saw him wearing Charles’s shoes. It was that morning that we saw Karekezi’s body; he was very close to where Charles had fallen. Karekezi’s body was naked from the waist down; about Karekezi, this is just information I am providing. About the death of Paulin, Uwitije and Mugaragu: we brought them downhill, I don’t know where they were found. They were taken there by Rukeribuga, Ndamukura Innocent, Munyeragwe, Antoine Rwabuzisoni, Gasamaza, Gasake, Nzabandora, and Nemeye. When they got
Mike Leigh may well be Britain's greatest living film director; his worldview has permeated our national consciousness. This book gives detailed readings of the nine feature films he has made for the cinema, as well as an overview of his work for television. Written with the co-operation of Leigh himself, it challenges the critical privileging of realism in histories of British cinema, placing the emphasis instead on the importance of comedy and humour: of jokes and their functions; of laughter as a survival mechanism; and of characterisations and situations that disrupt our preconceptions of ‘realism’. Striving for the all-important quality of truth in everything he does, Leigh has consistently shown how ordinary lives are too complex to fit snugly into the conventions of narrative art. From the bittersweet observation of Life is Sweet or Secrets and Lies, to the blistering satire of Naked and the manifest compassion of Vera Drake, he has demonstrated a matchless ability to perceive life's funny side as well as its tragedies.
‘The future is now’: Naked 6 Nothing in the bittersweet tone or the precisely observed domesticity of Life Is Sweet prepared audiences or critics for Leigh’s next feature film, Naked, which remains his bleakest and angriest work, as well as his most controversial. It also marked his breakthrough to international recognition, and a shift in his career whereby each of his subsequent films would be radically different, in style or subject matter or both, from the one that had gone before. Indeed, in Leigh’s own opinion, ‘all of my work up to and including, and
the clothing of people from far-flung parts of the world. The popularity of costume books in the sixteenth century, which visually represented the dress of foreign nations, illustrates this apparent fascination. 3 Unsurprisingly, then, when Europeans began to explore the new lands of America, the clothing, or indeed lack of clothing, of the Indigenous peoples they came across drew significant comment. The following chapter examines the multi-faceted English understanding of both American clothing and nakedness, analysing the various ways that English explorers
Erotics of the body politic Erotics of the body politic: the naked and the clothed Supposing that Truth is a woman – what then? (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil) The film Rang Rasiya (Colours of Passion, 2008) based on the life of Ravi Varma situates the Pauranik tale of Urvashi and Pururavas at the heart of the narrative to tell the story not only of star-crossed lovers but of the proscriptions of the naked body. The Pauranik version told the story of the heavenly nymph Urvashi who could marry the mortal Pururavas only under the condition that
transgenderised viewpoints. Now that the modern media makes little differentiation between all categories, where metrosexual now covers a wider range of sexual categories, it becomes apparent that not only is the showing of the (near) naked male form now a part of everyday life, the image of the clothed man remains just as potent a symbol of (changing) ideals of masculinity as it always has been
humanitarian concern and casual arrogance. Although ‘German trading stations, that is to say, the beginnings of a “sphere of interest” ’, already existed in New Britain at the time, ‘the land was still masterless’ and ‘the natives were held in the most evil repute as “naked savages” and “cannibals” ’. 20 Although Finsch at no point acknowledged the possibility that ‘natives’ might legitimately consider themselves masters over their own land, he did
crucial moments strategically strip performers down to a state of naked vulnerability. In crucial moments of powerful idea-making where he relies on theatrical metaphors, opposes live stage performance to the kind that TV and film offer, and plays with definitions of the performer to unseat an ensconced idea, Wallace is, I argue, a philosopher-dramatist. I draw throughout from the literary and philosophical framework offered by Martin Puchner's The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy , which begins by arguing that Plato