Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Lecter series - unified analysis - part 38: Depiction of the nigredo

CATEGORY: MOVIES


























Top left: From The Silence of the Lambs: Pandemonium on Lecter's cell block after the Miggs 'incident' (one of the prisoners on the block, Miggs, had thrown some of his semen onto Starling's face). Top right: Starling's moment of despair following the incident. Above left: From Hannibal: Chaos during the attempted drug bust at the beginning of the movie. Above right: Shortly afterwards: Starling cries due to having killed a woman during the aborted bust.


Each of the two left-to-right photo sequences above depicts the representation of an alchemical nigredo for Clarice Starling; recall that the nigredo is the first stage of alchemy's Great Work, and is characterized by chaos and melancholia.


      

Posted at 12:44 PM
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