The Trauma of the Ephemeral Body in Michel Houellebecqâs Atomised and Oskar Roehlerâs Elementarteilchen

Imola MikÃ³

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The Trauma of the Ephemeral Body in Michel Houellebecqâs Atomised and Oskar Roehlerâs Elementarteilchen

In: Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

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Imola MikÃ³

Imola MikÃ³
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 127â136

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880856_015

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Michel Houellebecqâs controversial novel Atomised (1998), and its adaptation to the screen, the Elementarteilchen (2006) by Oskar Roehler present the personal trauma of two protagonists embedded in the collective debauchery of the 1960s - 1970s libertinism. Bruno and his half-brother, Michel, representative figures of their generation, are in their midlife crisis. Their problems are exposed as a direct result of the glorification of young and beautiful bodies by the hippie movement contrasted now with the lived reality of the ephemeral human physique. My aim in this chapter is to show how this traumatic experience is configured in the two media. More precisely, I would like to investigate how differently the two characters react, solve it and how divergently the literary and film texts âcope with it.â I argue that the âHollywoodisingâ techniques of the film adaptation envision a more sanitised perception of trauma than the novel does. This is achieved by rewriting the ending of the book, and by reducing and domesticating its philosophical flÃ¢nerie into a more consumable visual representation of the body. Is this technique a necessity implied by the medium of film? Does the seductive, colourful and idealistic display of bodies on screen prove an intrinsic relation between cinema and this corporeality? To address these problems, I shall delimit the medium-specific aspects from the directorâs filmmaking choices. For this reason I propose a comparative stylistic analysis of both texts by applying mise-enscÃ¨ne criticism to show how the traumatised body is visualised in a utopian frame and to examine how novel and film shape trauma differently.

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Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848880856

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 15 Apr 2011

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The Trauma of the Ephemeral Body in Michel Houellebecqâs Atomised and Oskar Roehlerâs Elementarteilchen

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Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

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The Trauma of the Ephemeral Body in Michel Houellebecqâs Atomised and Oskar Roehlerâs Elementarteilchen