Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
'The Man of the Hour' : Hawthorn(e), 'Nebraska' and Haunting. / Gilloch, Graeme.
In: Arts, Vol. 8, No. 2, 53, 17.04.2019.Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - 'The Man of the Hour'
T2 - Hawthorn(e), 'Nebraska' and Haunting
AU - Gilloch, Graeme
PY - 2019/4/17
Y1 - 2019/4/17
N2 - Abstract: This paper provides a close reading and critical unfolding of central themes and motifs in Alexander Payne’s acclaimed 2013 comic ‘road movie’ Nebraska. It focuses on three key issues: (1) the symbolic significance of hawthorn as a threshold between different worlds (Hawthorne, Nebraska being the former hometown to which father and son make a detour); (2) the notion of ‘haunting’ in relation both to ‘importuning’ memories besetting the central characters and to particular sites of remembrance to which they return; and, (3) how the film’s pervasive mood of melancholy is subject to repeated interruption and punctuation by comic utterances and put-downs. In presenting us with a reluctant ‘gathering of ghosts’, a veritable phantasmagoria, the film articulates a particular sense of nostalgia, of a ‘homesickness’ understood here not in the conventional meaning of a longing to return to a forsaken ‘home’, but rather as a weariness and wariness at the prospect of revisiting familiar haunts and reviving old spirits.Keywords: memory; film; dreamworlds; arcades; ghosts; haunting
AB - Abstract: This paper provides a close reading and critical unfolding of central themes and motifs in Alexander Payne’s acclaimed 2013 comic ‘road movie’ Nebraska. It focuses on three key issues: (1) the symbolic significance of hawthorn as a threshold between different worlds (Hawthorne, Nebraska being the former hometown to which father and son make a detour); (2) the notion of ‘haunting’ in relation both to ‘importuning’ memories besetting the central characters and to particular sites of remembrance to which they return; and, (3) how the film’s pervasive mood of melancholy is subject to repeated interruption and punctuation by comic utterances and put-downs. In presenting us with a reluctant ‘gathering of ghosts’, a veritable phantasmagoria, the film articulates a particular sense of nostalgia, of a ‘homesickness’ understood here not in the conventional meaning of a longing to return to a forsaken ‘home’, but rather as a weariness and wariness at the prospect of revisiting familiar haunts and reviving old spirits.Keywords: memory; film; dreamworlds; arcades; ghosts; haunting
KW - memory
KW - film
KW - dreamworlds
KW - arcades
KW - ghosts
KW - haunting
U2 - 10.3390/arts8020053
DO - 10.3390/arts8020053
M3 - Journal article
VL - 8
JO - Arts
JF - Arts
SN - 2076-0752
IS - 2
M1 - 53
ER -