Week 6 The Carnivalesque and the Grotesque
Required Reading:
Mikhail Bakhtin, “Introduction,” Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana, 1984), 4-30.
Umberto Eco, “The frames of comic ‘freedom’,” Carnival (Amsterdam: de Gruyter, 1989), 1-9.
Both Bakhtin and Eco’s notions of carnival center around the subversion of rules, and of what is accepted. Because religion creates rules, and much of… Read More »Suburban, Blasphemous Grotesque in Santa Clarita Diet
When considering the grotesque within film and Bakhtin and Eco’s ideas on ‘Carnivalesque’ a recent example that came to mind was Emerald Fennells’ Saltburn (Emerald… Read More »Bakhtin, Bathtubs and Bodily Fluids
CONTENT WARNING for a Lot of vomit. There is no introduction to this clip better than the one provided by the talking fish at… Read More »Oh Dear, I Have Trodden in Monsieur’s Bucket
In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin defines several distinguishing features of folk carnival humor. Popularized by Francois Rabelais in the 16th century, carnivalesque comedy… Read More »It’s Always Carnivalesque in Philadelphia
Since its release, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024) has evaded explicit taxonomy—seemingly a hagsploitation horror, a sci-fi thriller, and a surreal comedy, at once (that is, if… Read More »Umm… There’s been a slight misuse of the Substance (Parthiv Chhabria)
Scenes mainly referenced (sorry this is a longer vid): [0:00-2:20] – Infection of the carnival; [6:00-7:10] – Death and fusion-birth; [9:20-9:55] – Revival and separation-birth… Read More »Throwing up at Target from the always-carnival