Possessed

Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema
Focuses on the terrifying notion of murder committed against one's will in silent cinema and contemporaneous literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book helps readers understand anxieties about the onslaught of visual media and the reach of vast corporations that seem to absorb our own identities.
Silent cinema and contemporaneous literature explored themes of mesmerism, possession, and the ominous agency of corporate bodies that subsumed individual identities. At the same time, critics accused film itself of exerting a hypnotic influence over spellbound audiences. Stefan Andriopoulos shows that all this anxiety over being governed by an outside force was no marginal oddity, but rather a pervasive concern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Tracing this preoccupation through the period's films - as well as its legal, medical, and literary texts - Andriopoulos pays particular attention to the terrifying notion of murder committed against one's will. He returns us to a time when medical researchers described the hypnotized subject as a medium who could be compelled to carry out violent crimes, and when films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" famously portrayed the hypnotist's seemingly unlimited power on the movie screen.Combining theoretical sophistication with scrupulous archival research and insightful film analysis, "Possessed" adds a new dimension to our understanding of today's anxieties about the onslaught of visual media and the expanding reach of vast corporations that seem to absorb our own identities.

Contributor: Peter Jansen (Translated by)

Translator: Peter Jansen

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.