Abstract
I turn to the relational or interpersonal scale in the second part and begin with Shyamalan’s The Village (2004), a film that depicts the impossibility of isolating home from global flows and controlling the idea of home for others. In this film, a group of individuals founded and maintains a gated community that seemingly draws on older ways of life from what Bauman calls solid modernity. Ultimately, the film highlights the issue of isolationist ideas of home through “mixophobia” and a fear of strangers, which is a growing aspect of liquid modernity.
An earlier version of Chapter 6 was published in issue 69.4 of the Journal of Film and Video as “‘Mixophobia’ and the Gated Community as ‘Home Sweet Home’ in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
It is also unlikely that the villagers, as adults, could attain the level of craftsmanship of woodwork, metallurgy, masonry, and so on of artisans who apprenticed or required more complex tools and natural resources than those which appear to be available within the confines of the village. For instance, even though there is abundant wood and wool in Covington Woods, it remains unclear where replacement glass for windows or the intricately dyed cloth for the women’s voluminous dresses comes from.
- 2.
Lewis and Cho base their concept on Fredric Jameson’s application of the literary idea of “dirty realism” to architecture and space. According to Jameson, “dirty” in this sense signifies “a collective built space, in which the opposition between inside and outside is annulled” (The Seeds of Time 155).
- 3.
Additional associations might be made with Amish and Mennonite communities as well as aspects of British and Western European cultures from the earlier time periods.
- 4.
Katherine Fowkes suggests that the monsters that the elders invent increasingly become illusions even for the elders themselves as they begin to notice “that the monster is within” (85), and her observation is even more compelling when extrapolated to the myriad (dis)comforts of home that, as Julia Kristeva argues, offer glimpses of the foreigner being “within us” (Strangers to Ourselves 191). These monsters and strangers “within” have a place in the “dirty” home that Lewis and Cho theorize and that Shyamalan challenges us to imagine in the unwelcoming and unsustainable village in Covington Woods.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bida, A. (2018). “Roots” and Stability in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. In: Mapping Home in Contemporary Narratives. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97967-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97967-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97966-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97967-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)