Paul Melia asked:
"Is this understanding of the term 'liminal' one recognised within the film
community? "
As somebody who did my little bit to spread the word 'liminal' in both film
studies and cultural studies - specifically in my work on the teen movie
genre (eg in my book PHANTASMS, 1994) - I'd like to respond to Paul's
interesting question. No doubt this word/concept has various sources, and
various shades of meaning. I encountered it through film studies, firstly -
in the work of Durgnat, and also maybe later Mulvey - and my understanding
is that it comes via anthropology, the work of Victor Turner.
Liminality, as it was then passed on to cultural studies, refers to any
'suspended' state, 'neither here nor there', 'in-between'. It can exist in
space, in time, in representation (as Paul indicates), and last but far from
least in life itself!! For instance, it can describe the state of
teenagehood: neither child nor adult ... It can also describe very well
certain 'threshold' zones of any kind: like a holiday, or a weekend ...
As a critical metaphor, it's a wide concept. I think now, looking back, it
forms part of a series of words, terms or phrases within the critical
writing of the past few decades: 'border-crossing', 'neither here nor
there', the 'in-between', the 'hybrid', etc ... These don't all mean
precisely the same thing, but they point to the same kind of 'suspended'
phenomenon. Suspension has often been romanticised in criticism, look at
Barbara Creed's recent book MEDIA MATRIX with its endless celebration of
'being on the shifting border between real and virtual, past and future,
male and female, truth and fiction', etc etc. It's so exhausting to stay so
suspended for so long !!!!
Adrian
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