Comic Rules: Kierkegaard, "The Idiots," and the Politics of Dogma 95

Lars Tønder

Comic Rules: Kierkegaard, "The Idiots," and the Politics of Dogma 95

Political Theory

Abstract

This essay attends to key questions about the lived experiences embedded in The Idiots, which unlike many of von Trier’s other movies is unusually place specific, targeting the Danish welfare state and the national culture underpinning it. To appreciate this dimension of the film, the essay stages an encounter between von Trier and another passionate auteur—the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Combining von Trier’s cinematic vision with Kierkegaard’s philosophical existentialism is helpful because it allows us to foreground the techniques of filmmaking while also specifying the lived experiences enabled by these techniques. Even if we accept that The Idiots highlights the meta-diegetic level of filmmaking, and even if we accept that this tension points to a different politics, we still have to specify the embodiment of this opening as well as clarify how it contributes to democracy and society. The dialogue between Kierkegaard and von Trier is an important step in this direction.

Original language	English
Journal	Theory & Event
Volume	18
Issue number	2
ISSN	2572-6633
Publication status	Published - Apr 2015

Keywords

Faculty of Social Sciences
Lars von Trier
Kierkegaard, Søren
Comedy
Democracy
Rule following
Dogma 95
Political agonisms

Cite this

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Comic Rules: Kierkegaard, "The Idiots," and the Politics of Dogma 95

Abstract

Keywords

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