Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 302

GRIPLA302
Njála in my course on the courtroom drama, Laxdaela when I lectured
on the western, and Gísla saga when I did film noir and detective thrillers.
(and I put the sagas in for two reasons: first, to get the students to see
how deep-seated certain narrative patterns are; and second, because I think
everyone should read a saga.)
one chapter in my book on exploitation horror cinema is called
“Getting Even,” about the cycle I refer to as rape-revenge films. the stand-
ard rape-revenge movie has someone from the city come to the country
and there be sexually violated by local people in some appalling way; and
then, after a period of thoughtful convalescence, the victim rises to take ap-
propriately appalling revenge – by maiming, castrating, and/or murdering
the violators. (there are psychoanalytic and socio-economic dimensions to
all of this, but I won’t go into those here.)
the “Getting Even” chapter is the one I found easiest to write, for the
simple reason that I had a deep fund of knowledge to draw upon for the
forms, logic, and esthetics of revenge — a fund called the Íslendingasögur.
In the book manuscript I submitted, “Getting Even” had a lot of references
to sagas in the footnotes. But the Press nixed what they called these “ir-
relevant footnote essays,” and that was that. Still, some readers recognized
the medieval subtext, and some reviews even mentioned it.
* * *
now to another form of getting even: trials. I’m currently working on a
book titled The People’s Plot: Trials, Movies, and the Adversarial Imagination,
which is about how the anglo-american trial has given rise and shape to
some of the most characteristic features of (especially) american cinema.
What connects this book to the sagas is its point of departure: the premise
that where the adversarial trial is, certain forms of public attention and
entertainment will be.
a comparison of two scenes will make the point. the first scene you
know: it’s from the burning trial in Njáls saga, and is Eyjólfr’s advice to
his client flosi.
“You are to transfer your chieftaincy to your brother thorgeir, and
attach yourself to the constituency of the chieftain askel thor-
ketilsson of reykjardale, in the north Quarter. If your opponents