“[Lars von Trier’s Melancholia] functions as philosophy as therapy in the best sense of that word, in forcing upon us its viewers the responsibility to grow its truth beyond the point that it itself manifests. It offers us some conditions of possibility for what we might risk calling ‘a political sublime’: through offering us a vision of communion.”
We are delighted to announce the publication of a response to Steven Shaviro’s magisterial article “MELANCHOLIA, Or The Romantic Anti-Sublime”, SEQUENCE 1.1 (2012), the launch essay for PLANET MELANCHOLIA, the inaugural issue of SEQUENCE, REFRAME‘s experimental, peer-reviewed, media, film and music studies serial publication.
Rupert Read’s engagement with Shaviro (the publication of which was delayed somewhat by the need to locate a technological solution to the matter of showcasing its innovative form: 33 philosophical sections, with 33 endnotes and 33 sidenotes) offers a personal, affective, and deeply philosophical account of Lars von Trier’s 2011 film Melancholia, one which engages in detail not only with Shaviro’s work on this film, but also, as the earlier essay also did, with the important issues Melancholia raises about depression and the extinction of our planet on their own terms.
Further responses to Shaviro’s article are also in the works, and will be announced here soon. In the meantime, you can additionally read the second issue of SEQUENCE: ‘We Need to Talk about the Maternal Melodrama‘.