Seeing red: blood Images in American cinema, 1958-1969

This thesis makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of film and (audio)visual media by developing conceptual tools to examine how images operate as material assemblages with expressive potentials. The study formulates how theoretical perspectives from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari can be put to work in an empirically grounded study of the production of images and their potentials for affecting viewers in specific social, cultural and political locations. The study furthermore contributes to studies of film violence by mapping the shifting roles and performances of images of blood in American cinema from the 1950s through the 1960s. During this era, blood went from predominantly being used as a signifier, providing audiences with information regarding a film’s characters and plot development, to taking on other, and more sensational, roles. These new blood images not only inform the audience about characters and plot-lines, but rather do something to the audience, evoking visceral responses and performing affective intensities. In order to examine what these images do, this thesis formulates the images of blood as assemblages to examine how blood operates in terms of affect in films such as Blood Feast (1963), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and The Wild Bunch (1969), The study shows how these and other films bring about very different affective potentials that intersect with social, cultural, and political dynamics. To conceptualize images of blood as assemblages that perform and express affective intensities, connecting with social and discursive formations, the thesis combines the actor-network approach of Bruno Latour with the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. These blood assemblages are themselves transformative and transient material constellations, performed through multitudes of relational factors. The study elaborates a methodology that traces how images are historically constituted and operate in concrete material, economical, cultural and social settings. As such, this dissertation makes a unique theoretical and methodological contribution by focusing on the constitution and performance of affective potentials of images, as well as on how these potentials are actualized in encounters with audiences. In this regard, the study presents concepts and methodological approaches of wider relevance to media and communication and cultural studies.