1.
MonstrosityMonstrosity
without a Facewithout a Face
The Cinematic-Discursive Construction of
Serial Murder as Monstrous Ab-
humanness in the Film The Silence of the
Lambs

2.
The Postmodern Monster:
“The postmodern monster is no longer the
other storming the gates of the human
citadel , he has already disrupted the careful
geography of self and other ,and he makes
the peripheral and marginal part of the
center.

3.
:
Monsters within postmodernism are already
inside the house, the body ,the head ,
the skin, the nation – and they work their
way out. Accordingly, it is the human , the
facade of the normal ,which tends to
become the place of terror within
Postmodern Gothic “
(Halberstam,1995)

4.
Queries which have triggered
the present research
 How does cinema function as a
signifying practice?
 How do cultures conceptualize and
metaphorize monstrous alterity ?
 How do the iconic and linguistic signifiers
interact in order to create meaning
within an audio-visual-verbal text such
as a film ?

5.
Queries which have triggered
the present research
 What is the importance of the intradiegetic
gaze within a cinematic text?
 How are fictional epistemic worlds
constructed?
 What is the connection between alterity and
fictional monstrosity ?
 What kind of links may be established
between human cognition processes and
cinematic film practice?

6.
Structure of the present paper
 A-Theoretical Framework : Multidisciplinay
approach in order to deal with a multicodal
text .Several perspectives should be taken
into account .
 B- Analysis : Corpus .The Silence of the
Lambs .The Epistemic World of the film and
the construction of fictional subjectivitiy The
serial killer as Gothic monster

7.
A-The Process of Cinematic-
Discursive construction of the
monstrous serial murderer
 1-The Cinematic Perspective
 2-The Construct of Monstrosity : possible
views
 3-The Literary Perspective
 4-The Linguistic Perspective

8.
1-Historical Reception
Studies(Staiger,1993)
 No immanent textual meaning
 No free readers
 Interpretation strategies determined by socio-
cultural conditions
 No unified reading
 Best means of interpretation is multidisciplinary.
(Staiger,1993)

9.
The Movie Thriller as Metagenre
(Rubin,2002)
 A genre might be defined as a series of syntactic
and semantic conventions which interact with
spectatorial interpretive strategies and
expectations.
 Labyrinthine nature of the thriller
 Ambiguity of narrative structure
 These two characteristics are part of the
epistemic world of the film.

10.
Safe vs. Paranoid Horror (Tudor,1989):
Safe Horror (1920-1950)
 Narrative closure
 Monsters seen as external threats
 Efficient human agency
 Faith in institutitons
 Clear boundary order/ chaos
 Monster expelled,(ab)jected

11.
Paranoid Horror(1950-the present)
 No narrative closure
 Monstrous threat within psyche or society
 Institutions are the site of danger
 Fuzzy boundaries between order/chaos
 Ineffectual human agency
 The Silence of the Lambs is located within
this patadigm .

12.
2- The Construct of
Monstrosity: Views I
 1-Analytic philosophy (Carroll,1990)
 2-Psychoanalytical tools: Abjection (Kristeva and
Creed,2002)
 3-Gothic (ab)humanness (Hurley,1998)
 4-Cognitive-psychoanalytic view (Schneider,1999)
 5-The Lacanian perspective (Hook-Soon Ng,2004)
 6-Cultural Studies (Cohen,1998)
 7-The Freudian Marxist View (Robin Wood ,2003)

13.
The construct of
Monstrosity:Views II
 1-The monster as an impure, hybrid entity
 2- Abjection: that which respects no
(b)orders and pushes against the Symbolic
order
 3-The Gothic fin-de –siecle (ab)human
subject
 4-The monster as the cognitive-metaphorical
embodiment of repressed childhood fears

14.
The Construct of
Monstrosity:Views III
 5--The monster as the link between
the Symbolic and the Lacanian Real
 6-The monster as a culturally and
historically contingent discursive
construct. Difference made flesh
 7-The monster as the oppressed
Other

15.
The Serial Killer (SK) as
Contemporary
Monster(Jenkins,1994)
 Compulsive
 Obssessive and Repetitive
 Rootless
 Irrational
 Lustful
 Violent
 Predatory
 The Cannibal Other
 Wound Culture (Seltzer,1998)

16.
3-The Literary-Generic
Perspective (Gomel ,2003
-Simpson 2000)
 Generic Origins of SK Narratives
 The Gothic Genre: (Ab)human Subjectivity
is not fully human .Deployment fo the
construct of monstrosity in Gothic
narratives .
 19th Century Detective Fiction: Cartesian
Subjectivity.The embodied subject . Skin as
signifier of embodied humanity.

17.
 Discourse :Formalist and Functionalist
approaches .The suittabiity of the
Functionalist paradigm.
 Interactions in Institutitonal Settings
4-The Linguistic Perspective

18.
Interactions in Institutitonal
Settings (Drew and Leena-
Sorjensesn , 1997)
 Focus of this approach : interaction
between participants in order to achieve
institutitonal goals .
 Linguistic and paralinguistic resources
are equally crucial .Crucial importance of
the gaze foregrounded by CA .
 Both text and (con)text are taken into
consideration . Erving Goffman’s
concept of Framing .

19.
B-Analysis
 How does film articulate the visual and
linguistic signifiers in narrative terms ?
 The importance of mise-en-scene and
editing as contextualizing cues
 Relation between language and image in
narrative film. Barthes: anchorage,relay
 The roles played by the intradiegetic gaze

20.
Relationship Gaze –Utterance in
film texts (Poggi-Pelechaud ,2000)
 The comunicative meanings of the gaze
as a paralinguistic feature
 Poggi and Pelechaud’s taxonomy :
 Information conveyed about the world
 Information on the Sender’s Mind

21.
Information about the World
 Deitic eyes
 Adjectival eyes

22.
Information on the Sender’s
Mind :
 Certainty eyes
 Metacognitive eyes
 Performative eyes
 Topic-comment eyes
 Meta –discursive eyes
 Meta- conversational eyes
 Affective eyes

23.
Analysis I :The Interview at the
FBI Headquarters
 The linguistic component is analysed .
 The visual narrative is addressed taking
editng and mise-en-scene into
consideration.
 The interaction gaze -utterance is
explored since this is the genesis of
fictional subjectivity .The interaction
between linguistic and paralinguistic
features is addressed in the analysis of
the selected scene .

24.
Analysis II
 The chart illustartes the interrelation
between camera shots , gaze and
utterance .
 Cinematic fictional subjectivity is partly
the result of this interactive process.
 The deitic /Symbolic gaze is focussed on
the abject work of the monstrous
Other,thus acknowledging the prescence
of monstrous abhumanness within the
habitat of the human liberal subject.

25.
Cognitive Linguistics:Conceptual
Metaphors :The Experientialist
Model (Lakoff and Johnson in
Rash,2005)
 Target Domain (abstract notions )
 Source Domain (concrete experiences )
 Conceptual Mappings : They underlie
the epistemic world of the film and thus
contribute to the creation of fictional
selfhood.

26.
The Epistemic World of
the Film (Stockwell, 2002)
 1-Mappings which structure the
cinematic-discursive construction of
Cartesian subjectivity (Kilgour,1998).
 2-Mappings which are the conceptual
basis for the construction of the
monstrous Other .
 3-Mappings which destabilize the
binarism upon which the text is built .

27.
The Epistemic World of the
Film :Conceptual Mappings I
 EVIL IS DOWN
 GOOD IS UP
 CRIME FIGHTING IS WAR
 THE MIND IS UNDER SIEGE
 ABJECTION IS A MURDERED BODY
 THE BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND
 KNOWING IS SEEING.

28.
Conceptual Mappings II :
 MURDERED BODIES ARE BLOOD PALIMPSESTS
 MURDERED BODIES ARE SPECTACLES
 GORE IS DEATH
 THE SKIN IS A (B)ORDER
 THE SELF IS A BOUNDED SPACE
 THE USE OF THE FORENSIC GAZE ON A
MURDERED BODY IS READING

29.
Conceptual Mappings III :
 BODILY WOUNDS ARE SIGNS
 THE DETECTIVE OR CRIMINAL PROFILER IS
A SEMIOTICIAN
 SERIAL KILLERS ARE WRITERS
 MURDER IS AN ACT OF COMMUNICATION
 THE BODY IS A TERRITORY

30.
Conceptual Mappings IV:
 THE HEAD IS A ROOM
 INSTITUTIONS ARE FAMILIES
 SERIAL KILLERS ARE PREDATORS
 SERIAL KILLING IS HUNTING
 LAW ABIDING BEHAVIOUR IS MOVEMENT IN A
STRAIGHT LINE
 SERIAL KILLERS ARE MONSTERS

31.
Conceptual Mappings V:
 THE CORPSE OF THE FLAYED VICTIM IS
MONSTROUS ABHUMANNESS
 CANNIBALISM IS CROSSING (B)ORDERS
 VICTIMS ARE PREY
 VICTIMS ARE FOOD
 PAIN IS FOOD
 THE MINDS OF SERIAL KILLERS ARE DARK
CELLS

32.
Conceptual Mappings VI:
 DEVIANT OFFENDERS ARE OBJECTS OF
STUDY AND CATEGORIZATION
 TOTAL OR SEMI-TOTAL INSTITUTIONS ARE
LABYRINTHS
 SERIAL KILLERS ARE REVERSE
COLONIZERS OF BODIES AND MINDS
 STATE SURVELLIANCE IS SYMBOLIC
CANNIBALISM

33.
Conceptual Mappings VII:
 STATE SURVELLIANCE IS COLONIZATION
 CANNIBALISM IS FREEDOM FROM
EMBODIMENT

34.
Constraints and weaknesses
of the present paper
 No auditory metaphors were analysed
 Choice of limited but representative corpus
 No exploration of cognitive audio-spectatorial
processes
 No systematic analysis of gender roles and
the gendered Gaze was implemented
 Functionalist multidisciplinary perspective
was followed

35.
 Cinematic narratives play a crucial role
in the construction of cultural
stereotypes.
 Fictional selfhood is the result of both
generic narrativization and cognitive
cinematic –discursive elaboration
processes.
 An interdisciplinary approach is best
suited to the interpretive analysis of film
texts .
Conclusions I
Have the initial queries been
addressed?

36.
Conclusions II
 The intradiegetic gaze is a crucial
componenet of fictional cinematic
subjectivity .
 The importance of mise-en-scene and
editing as a contextualization cues
cannot be underestimated .
 Cognitive Linguistics offers the invaluble
opportunity to delve into the way in
which fictional minds are constructed .

37.
ConclusionsIII
 Metaphorization is ideologically loaded and
as such it may serve diverse political
agendas.
 Monstrosity functions as an epistemic-
organizational device which both
endorses and undermines the subjectivity
of the liberal Cartesian subject .
 Canibalisation is a powerful deconstructive
force which effectively blurrs boundaries
between Self and Other .