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Genius, Gender, and the Contemporary Biopic
„Screening the Creative Process“ examines how biographical films about painters and writers depict the notoriously unfilmable process of artistic creation and asks what role gender plays in the conceptualisation of creativity and genius. Through the discussion of three very different 21st-century biopics focused on heterosexual artist couples, „Pollock“, „Frida“, and „Bright Star“, the book follows the hypothesis that the paradigm of creative genius remains uniquely powerful in this film genre. This distinguishes the biopic from other contemporary media and discourses in which the idea of singular, inborn genius has largely been replaced by the concept of creativity as a universal, trainable skill. The biopic's adherence to an emphatic notion of genius - a notion that appears not only obsolete but also politically problematic due to its historical exclusion of women - is especially relevant in light of how deeply these popular films shape public notions about history and art.
Figures of Image Control
Series:
Morphomata, Volume: 42
Autobiographies and self portraits can be understood as figures of image control that try to express and secure a person’s reputation for contemporary and future generations. However, there have always been competing perspectives between self-descriptions and descriptions of oneself by others. It is this interplay that determines the current effects and the lasting impact of self-fashionings – and produces the distinction between “Dichtung und Wahrheit” (facts and fiction), between illusion and reality. Morphomata’s annual conference thus questions the cultural, historical, and medial figures of these distinctions in case studies from antiquity to the present.