La  voragine del desiderio. Cooper e l'immaginario <i>snuff</i>

Giuseppe Previtali

doi:10.54103/2282-0035/29234

Authors

Giuseppe Previtali University of Bergamo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5856-718X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54103/2282-0035/29234

Keywords:

snuff movies, visual culture, Dennis Cooper, The Sluts

Abstract

The fantasy of the snuff movie has always been one of the most mysterious and fascinating topics in visual culture: the idea that videos where actual deaths can be seen are actually made and sold illegally has always been extremely productive in both cinema and literature. After tracing the presence of snuff in Dennis Cooper's novels Closer and Frisk, this contribution focuses on an analysis of the digital snuff imagined by Cooper’s The Sluts and its ability to articulate distinctive features of both contempora images and their processes of authentication.

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Author Biography

Giuseppe Previtali, University of Bergamo

Giuseppe Previtali is researcher at the University of Bergamo, where he teaches Cinema and Visual Studies and Arab and East Asian Cinema. His main research interests concern extreme forms of contemporary visuality with (specific reference to forms of conflict) and the issue of visual literacy. He has published extensively on these topics and is the author of several books, including L’ultimo tabù. Filmare la morte fra spettacolarizzazione e politica dello sguardo (2020), Educazione visuale (2021), Che cosa sono le digital humanities (2023), Postmedia Education (2025), and Che cos’è il trash (2025).

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