#id argue that visuals are still. considered the most important thing in films its not 'laziness' or not caring about visuals in specific

[marklikely]

someone said 'movies have gotten really lazy about the visual part of the medium and are basically just audio dramas' and i would extremely disagree because the audio also fucking sucks.

[japaneseotakucult]

Analyzing the stylistic characteristics of the scenery depicted in Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ana M. Poot

Introduction

The anime Ghost in the Shell (1995) has been regarded by Western critics as cyberpunk, which is a subgenre of science fiction featuring dystopian futures where humanity struggles for power against technological forces (Napier, 11; Denison, 20-40). In Japan, this anime is considered part of the mecha genre (short for mechanical), since it combines robotics with high-tech urban settings (Denison, 35). However, Ghost in the Shell is far less action-driven than most Western cyberpunk films or mecha anime, setting its style apart from such genres to a degree. Rather than containing this anime within a specific genre, the following review takes on a broader cultural approach that investigates the aesthetic expressions of the film’s scenery. To understand the unique style of Ghost in the Shell, scenes have been analyzed in connection to traditional and contemporary Japanese culture.

Figure 1. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 33:12.

Figure 2. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 34:31.

Connections between traditional Japanese culture and the scenery of Ghost in the Shell

There are some particular shots in GitS (Ghost in the Shell) that have struck me for their purely aesthetic qualities. No action or dialogue takes place during these scenes, but a multitude of imagery is shown depicting the fictional New Port City in a futuristic vision of Japan. In a slow-paced sequence of long shots, the viewer sees the city through the protagonist’s eyes, as she travels alone on a boat across the canals. There is something distinctively Japanese about the style of the animated scenery depicted, which expresses aspects of traditional Japanese culture.

Firstly, this series of wordless images (Figures 1-6) can be tied to the Japanese expression mono no aware. Despite its origins in classical Japanese literature, the term has been adopted by writers to describe elements found in many Japanese art forms (Meli, 60-63; Napier, 32). The term can be translated as the “sorrow or misery of things” which signifies an awareness of the transitory nature of life, evoking a profound sadness within the spectator (Meli, 60). This concept has mostly been linked to nature, finding its expression in the passing of seasons, water imagery, and cherry blossom (Napier, 31). In GitS, references to mono no aware are expressed through images of urbanscapes in combination with sentimental, Japanesque music (Napier, 32). As the pouring rain submerges the city and its citizens, the protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is shown observing the world (Figures 1-6). The element of water plays a crucial role in these scenes since it induces a melancholic atmosphere. Rain is also indicative of autumn, which is an important motif in Japanese aesthetics as it symbolizes the season of change. In Figure 4, a broken bicycle is depicted in muddy water, which may further symbolize the impermanence of things, regardless of whether they are organic or artificial. This slow-paced representation of the city allows viewers to become aware of the mutability of life since it captures everyday moments that pass us by incessantly. According to anime author, Napier, this series of images is presented to draw attention to the vulnerability and alienation of humanity (32). And even though Kusanagi is a cyborg, she is mortal, and in these scenes, she appears to be pondering on the meaning of her existence. Although the depicted urbanscapes are visibly dark and gloomy, they evoke a unique kind of beauty associated with the concept of mono no aware, as its aesthetic qualities emerge from a world of sorrow (Meli, 62).

Figure 3. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 34:53.  

Figure 4. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 34:27.

Figure 5. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 34:01.

Secondly, the stylized nature of the animated urbanscapes of GitS brings forths visual codes characteristic of traditional Japanese woodblock prints. According to Napier, the scenery depicted in GitS is reminiscent of woodblock prints by artists such as Hiroshige (32). Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 –1858) was an artist of the Edo period in Japan, who became famous for his ukiyo-e prints depicting landscapes and other scenes from nature. Ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) was a popular genre of woodblock printing and painting, produced between the 17th and 19th centuries in Japan (Harris, 9). Ukiyo-e prints portrayed reality in a stylized, simplified manner through the rendering of Japanese figures such as theatre actors and courtesans, as well as scenes from everyday life. The style of ukiyo-e has had an impact on the emerging modern arts of Japan, whose influences can be seen in the development of manga and anime in the latter half of the 20th century (Brenner, 2). This influence can be perceived in GitS’s urbanscapes, for instance in Figure 7, the depiction of diagonally inclined rows of buildings evokes the representation of Hiroshige’s Night View of Saruwaka-machi (Figure 8). Common characteristics between the depicted scenery of GitS and Hiroshige’s prints are the use of aerial perspective, two-dimensional rendering of space, and asymmetrical composition. In both cases, the imagery depicted captures moments from everyday life to highlight the beauty found in our vulnerable world.

Figure 6. Film Still from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Captured at 33:25.

Figure 7. Saruwaka-machi yoru no kei (Night View of Saruwaka-machi), Utagawa Hiroshige, 1856. Print. https://woodblock-print.eu/utagawa-hiroshige-saruwaka-machi-yoru-no-kei-night-view-of-saruwaka-machi-detail.html.

Is anime like Ghost in the Shell considered subcultural?

Anime was introduced on a larger scale to the West in the 1990s, but it was initially critiqued by mundane audiences for its controversial tendencies and was associated with subaltern groups (Denison, 3; Napier 5). While a few years ago anime was watched by small subgroups, it is progressively becoming part of global popular culture (Napier, 6). Napier argues that anime belongs to mainstream culture in Japan, while in foreign countries it exists as a subculture (4). Perhaps at the time of its release GitS and other anime were considered subcultural by foreign audiences since they did not fit the standards of dominant Western mass culture. Nonetheless, anime has spread throughout the world on an immense scale, becoming a part of global media production and consumption. GitS, in particular, has become very famous, so despite its distinctively Japanese roots, it can be considered mainstream due to its extensive dissemination.

Conclusion

Anime is increasingly regarded as an art form that builds on the traditional low and high arts of Japan. Although GitS deals with contemporary issues, namely the impact of technology on society and the shifting nature of identity in a rapidly changing world, the pacing, and representation of its scenery evoke aspects of traditional Japanese culture.

Bibliography

Brenner, Robin E. Understanding Manga and Anime. Libraries Unlimited, a Member of the Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.

Denison, Rayna. Anime: a Critical Introduction. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

Groemer, Gerald. “Merchant Japan The Momoyama and Edo (Tokugawa) Periods.” Traditional Japanese Arts and Culture: An Illustrated Sourcebook, edited by Thomas Rimer and Stephen Addiss, University of Hawaii Press, 2006, pp. 137–224. De Gruyter, www-degruyter-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/view/book/9780824874469/10.1515/9780824874469-007.xml.

Harris, Frederick. Ukiyo-e: The Art of the Japanese Print. Tuttle Publishing, 2011. Google Scholar, books.google.nl/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LznRAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=woodblock+print&ots=y5ZBwItBLh&sig=zjLSqbsflVqLDxFXsYdq4Esh7oM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=woodblock%20print&f=false.

Meli, Mark. “Motoori Norinaga’s Hermeneutic of Mono No Aware: The Link between Ideal and Tradition.” Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, by Michael F. Marra, University of Hawaii Press, 2002, pp. 60–75, www-degruyter-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/view/title/530856.

Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. Updated ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Oshii, Mamoru, director. Ghost in the Shell. Production I.G, 1995.

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This review is based on the English-language version of One Hour with You. A French-language version, entitled Une heure près de toi, was shot simultaneously with the English-language production. Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald appear in both; Lili Damita plays Mitzi and Pierre Etchepare is Adolph in the French-language version. The availability and status of the French-language cut is unknown.

One Hour with You (1932)

There are certain words in the English language that make my blood boil for no rational reason. But one of those personally despised words is the first word that comes to mind when I think of One Hour with You, directed by Ernst Lubitsch “with the assistance of” George Cukor. The word is “chic” – give me a moment to clench my fists. For those who are not familiar with Lubitsch’s work (Cukor’s contribution to the film’s final cut is minimal, but more on that later), the German-American director is best known for a succession of sophisticated comedies from the silent era to the 1940s. The wit in these movies often alluded to things that the director, because of the Hays Code (a censorship guideline for American films not stringently enforced until 1934, later replaced by the MPAA ratings system in 1968), could not show. One Hour with You is among the funniest of Lubitsch’s talkie comedies and evidence that the director had successfully managed the transition from silent film to sound.

Dr. Andre Bertier (Maurice Chevalier) is a Parisian, hopelessly dedicated to his wife, Colette (Jeanette MacDonald). He wants you to know about their happiness and his faithfulness by breaking the fourth wall multiple times. If this sounds grating, you probably have never seen a Maurice Chevalier movie. Their nuptial joy is troubled when Colette’s best friend, Mitzi Olivier (Genevieve Tobin), unhappy with her marriage to the similarly dissatisfied Adolph (Charles Ruggles), takes a gander at the doctor. She begins to flirt – realistically and, dare I say it, racily – with Andre. Relations between the four leads come to a scandalous, yet hilarious, head as Colette plans and throws a dinner party for her friends.

One Hour with You was Lubitsch’s final musical romantic comedy (many of which starred Chevalier) working for Paramount. Compared to the film’s predecessors among Lubitsch’s filmography, it is the least beholden to fidelity. With a screenplay by Samson Raphaelson (1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, 1941’s Suspicion) paints the institution of marriage – or, at the very least, the idea of monogamous fidelity – the most cynically of all those films. Marriage itself is constricting, the film says, and this is even more so when the married couple have lost the romantic spark. As doting and puppyish as Andre is to Colette, the film depicts him as almost prudish when he is on the receiving end Collette’s suggestive “come hithers” – “Madame! You may think I’m a coward. I am!” Dialogue about Mitzi and Adolph considering divorce would have been stricken from the film because of the Hays Code if this film was released a few years later. But even in this pre-Code romantic comedy, the attitude towards their doomed marriage is jocular, as if both Mitzi and Adolph have intuited the silliness of their situation and have accepted the other’s flagrant adultery. It is at once refreshing to witness One Hour with You’s sexual freedom frankness as well as shocking to see two characters unfazed about adultery with a committed married person – yes, even in a pre-Code film.

This is not to describe One Hour with You as a searing of married life, arguing that the institution must be destroyed. One Hour with You is foremost an upper-class farcical comedy, akin to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. And like Wilde’s play, One Hour with You satirizes romantic pursuits – how easy it is to be infatuated despite your better senses, human fickleness, marriage’s fragility, and the performative nature of romantic and marital relations. Not one character is chastised in the film’s point of view; never is this any more obvious in the final moments, where Colette and Andre address the audience directly, asking what they might have done in their situations. Paris seems to bring this out in its residents and its visitors, as the rhyming police chief will tell you. Where modern comedies might easily veer into graphic, unimaginative dialogue, the grace of the film’s dialogue is delightfully subtle:

POLICE OFFICER: Come on, come on. Where do you think you are? What are you doing? What’s going on here? ANDRE BERTIER: The French Revolution! [resumes kissing Colette] POLICE OFFICER: Hey, you can’t make love in public. ANDRE BERTIER: I can make love anywhere! POLICE OFFICER: No, you can’t! COLETTE BERTIER: Oh, but officer, he can! ANDRE BERTIER (joyously): Darling!

Damn. The above is just one minor example of what is known as the “Lubitsch touch” – a bit of dialogue or visual technique that seems, on the surface to modern viewers, in keeping the supposed puritanism of classic American cinema but is anything but. For those unfamiliar with Lubitsch’s films, his touch might not be obvious at first. But if one keeps paying attention, Lubitsch’s naughtiness is bound to raise an eyebrow or inspire a blush. Another notable of the Lubitsch touch in One Hour with You comes as Andre and Colette engage in pillow talk, suggesting with darkened lights and a shared bed (the latter would not be permitted in American movies in a few years’ time). The entirety of Colette’s party is an example of the Lubitsch touch, especially the lively escapade in the garden.

How can someone resist the charm of Maurice Chevalier’s signature smile, his unevenly-placed hat, that rhyming scheme, and that ridiculous French accent? Chevalier is his usual charming self here, his face belying his character’s disbelief in the love triangle (or square) he is attempting to prevent. Briefly the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, he signed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) shortly after One Hour with You, only to be frustrated by a star-billing dispute, and leaving the United States for his native France to resume his stage career there. Jeanette MacDonald’s voice, which lends itself to operas and operettas, might be irksome to some viewers – especially those who cannot suspend their disbelief with film musicals – but her performance as Colette captures a mix of jealousy and a desire to forgive needed for this role. With her Paramount contract nearing expiration, she also left for MGM – teaming up with Chevalier once more for The Merry Widow (1934) and soon to forge her more famous working partnership with Nelson Eddy. Genevieve Tobin makes it evident her character wants some of that world-renowned French cooking in the form of Andre. Tobin has the best comedic moments of One Hour with You and makes her lines drip with desire. Charles Ruggles is operating on middle-aged id, somehow making his character’s social awkwardness and legitimately creepy lines somewhat funny.

Those expecting show-stopping musical numbers are bound to be disappointed. The songs by composers Oscar Straus (better known for his Viennese operettas, 1931’s The Smiling Lieutenant) and Richard A. Whiting (“Hooray for Hollywood” from 1937’s Hollywood Hotel) and lyricist Leo Robin (“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, immortalized by Marilyn Monroe in 1949’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) are in the style of a Viennese operetta, rather than the splashy, occasionally mass-choreographed, musicals being made at Fox Film Corporation (soon to be 20th Century Fox), MGM, and Warner Bros. at this period. Lubitsch’s musicals always resembled Viennese operettas (this does not mean these musicals were sung-through like actual operas and operettas): songs have limited orchestration and harmonic interest, function primarily to progress the plot or reveal character insight, and are jaunty in tone and tempo. None of the film’s song act as a drag on the action, but the title track (sung by all four lead actors, but I could not find this version anywhere) and “Oh That Mitzi!” are the standouts. Like the film’s dialogue, the soundtrack is engrossed in love and romance – matching the wit of non-musical scenes.

For unknown reasons at Paramount, a project that should have been Ernst Lubitsch was assigned to George Cukor. Cukor, a Broadway director who was only beginning to direct under contract to Paramount, had yet to establish himself at the studio. The Philadelphia Story (1940) and My Fair Lady (1964) were still some ways off. Lubitsch, given his résumé, was more idoneous for One Hour with You. Early in production, Lubitsch (who was “supervising” Cukor) and Raphaelson heard claims from the cast that Cukor was approaching the material incorrectly. Viewing the rushes, both men agreed that Cukor was filling the movie with overwrought, excessive moments that were sapping the piece of its hilarity. Gradually, Lubitsch began to insert himself in the process to the point where Cukor was fully sidelined. Internal Paramount documents claim that Cukor’s remaining contributions to One Hour with You are brief reaction shots and a moment with walking feet. After Lubitsch’s attempts to eliminate Cukor’s credit and a lawsuit by the latter, an out-of-court settlement resulted in Cukor being credited as dialogue director. Cukor immediately left Paramount, landing at RKO to work with David O. Selznick.

The Hays Code and the introduction of splashy, mass-choreographed musicals from Fox, MGM, and Warner Bros. soon rendered musicals like One Hour with You out of vogue. With the silent era already becoming a distant memory less than a decade after the introduction of talkies, audiences flocked to musical with booming numbers and lavish production values – the image of Maurice Chevalier standing square at the camera, singing double entendres and smiling, no longer would cut it. Audiences wanted Busby Berkeley’s hallucinatory choreography of women in Footlight Parade (1933) or Fox’s stars swinging to Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938). But those musicals owe much to the likes of One Hour with You. In the awkward transitional years between silent film and synchronized sound, the Ernst Lubitsch musicals starring Maurice Chevalier represented one of the rare havens for cinematic innovation. Lesser filmmakers in those years were too often using sound as a gimmick, leaving the mesmerizing aesthetics of the silent era aside. For the Lubitsch-Chevalier musicals, including One Hour with You, they envisage film as a symphony of visual splendor and aural delight.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[zayrickyear2jh]

13/12/19 BA2a Research: Session 4 The nightmare city and the urban laboratory

Plot Summary: Chapter 3

We meet Dr Jekyll at last. A large, well made smooth-faced man of fifty, although

In this chapter - Jekyll reassures Utterson he can be free of Mr Hyde whenever he wants. He says it’s a private matter and he asks Utterson to let is sleep. He calls Dr Lanyon hide bound, meaning narrow minded.

Plot summary:The Carew Murder Case Chapter 4

Nearly a year passes peacefully.

The Hyde commits murder. HIs victim is Sir Danvers Carew, a respected member of parliament.

The events witnessed and somewhat strongly described

Consider the careful setup

Before the coming of the ever-present fog, the night was cloudless and brilliant lit by a full moon. Why might the full moon be important to mention?

Stevenson writes in rapturous terms:

The maid servant sat at her window and fell into a dream of musing.

Carew appears to her as an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair and a very pretty manner of politeness

The moon shone on his face as he spoke

Such an innocent and old world

Hyde

A great flame of anger

Broke out of all bounds

Ape like fury

Why do you think Stevenson sets up the murder scene in such a romantic way? Its the contrast between the elements of good but evil. The scene represents tduality in action.

The association of Carew with innocent and beauty makes the violence more shocking by contrast.

It has the effect of turning Carew into a martyr-like figure. His death can be seen as symbolic.

Utterson exhibits his usual self-control (ego; reality principle)

He is ever the gentleman: refusing to draw hasty conclusions.

Uttterson travels through the chocolate-coloured fog towers Soho, accompanied by the police, to Mr Hyde’s lodgings the witness has identified him. It seems to Utterson like some city in a nightmare.

Mt Hyde has done a runner but the policeman is optimistic. Several thousand pound are found in Hyde’s bank account: surely the man will call to collect  it. All they have to do is lie in wait for him.

So the chapter ends on a cliff-hanger with a clear hook to chapter 5.

Carew ‘accosts’ Hyde with ‘a very pretty manner of politeness’

What might Stevenson be hinting at here?

Elaine Showalter calls the novella a fable of findesiecle homosexual panic. She notes that working class men of the ear were sometimes seen as erotic object by their aristatic superiors.

Hyde is classless rather than working class this itself would have been disturbing and bewildering.

‘Blackmaile’s Charter’

-Known as the Blackmailer’s Charter’s this was the piece of legislation that led to arrest of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Urannian- The word homosexual wasn’t used in English til 1892 in a translation of a German sexology manual Psychopathia Sexualis. Victorian mainly used the word Uranian for them, this actually meant having a female psyche in a male body. Ironically the 1885 act helped create the concept of a homosexual identity.

The duality of Rober Louis Stevenson

Stevenson himself was a man of contradiction

Effeminate but straight

Wealthy but dressed down )stuffy with bad teeth)

Born to strictly religious parents but lived a bohemian life as an adult.

Played at being lower class but exploited upper class connection.

Not conventionally handsome, he was said to have mesmirizing eyes and drew many male admirers including folklorist Andrew Lang and novelist Henry James. Stevenson appeared to enjoy the attention of his male admirers. And, whether he intended it or not, Uranian men of the era did find sympathetic undertones in his work. To use mourned parlance, could this be a type of queer baiting?

There is no biographical evidence that Stevenson himself experienced any same sex attraction, but Claire Harman suggest.

Social Taboos in Gothic horror

Jekyll and Hyde: The Gothic revival.

Stiles notes the Gothic conventions of Stevenson’s novella: the nocturnal settling, the theme.

The birth of Gothic horror

Horace Walpole’s dream Castel of Qtranto

Place and time

Power/Sexual power

Note how Walple’s The castle of otranto was also inspired by dream.

Key features of the Gothic

Wild landscapes vs improsonment. The re-emergece of the past within the rest.

Fascination with obscene patriarchal figures figures

Explores the limits of what is is to be human: internal desires or forces outside your control.

full of perverse weird and dangerous kinds of sexuality.

The vulnerability of women in the 19th century

The Gothic genre had scope to explore the lives of the 19th century woman.

The genre often depicts the triumph of young women over seemingly impossible forces.

If you’ve your story female protagonist you may like to explore the tropes of Gothic horror in your critical analysis.

The Uncanny

Gothic horror is all od uncanny moments.

Figures that are not quite human such as dolls, waxworks, automat

Strange, mysterious, unsettling, unnerving, unearthy

Meaning Un heimlich means un-homely

Therefore we don’t feet at home with the uncanny or the home is somehow transformed or changed.

No one can ever quite describe Mr Hyde. A prolonged state of uncertainty.

J and H was fascinated with clockwork autumata. Could be a potential

Tip: If you’re writing a horror film, try making it personal: use your own fears and phobias to make the terror.

And harness the power of the uncanny by focusing on dread and apprehension rather than outright horror.

main it unhomely: unsettle the viewer with sinister hints a radio that turns on by itself a child’s toy that is not where you left it, a writhing maggot in a piece of fruit.

Make it un-secret: show us something that shouldn’t be shown.

Give the view time to feel the fear: You have to allow the sense of underlying unease to intensify over time.

Birth of the city/the urban Gothic

Jekyll and Hyde is seen as the first Urban Gothic novel.

In the mid 1800s huge numbers of people left the country for an excited new life in the city. But many had to live in slums with no sanitation. Disease was rife. Young children worked in factories or cleaning chimneys.

London was the largest city in the world, totalling 4 million inhabitants in the 1880s’. Stevenson chose it as the setting for his ‘urban gothic’ tale but some critics argue it’s real settling is Edinburgh, where Stevenson grew up.

The evil within..

In the tale 19thC Gothic novel the threat is no longer some external force. Instead the evil is sinuously curled around the very heart of the respectable middle-class norm’ This made it more frightening because it made the evil inescapable.

Middle-Class Victorian had a great fear that sexual depravity and other kinds of moral decay would pass from the nocturnal world to the safe space of the home.

Like a district id time city in a night mare ( The Carew Murder Case)

They grew less interested in the wild landscapes of traditional Gothic, and focused instead on the new landscape of the city: an equally appropriate source of desolation and menace.

By identifying and exploring that obsession through art and literature, they sought to control and contain it.

This fear is made visual in Jekyll and Hyde through symbolic use darkness and fog.

The urban labaratory and the strange science of the mind.

The primary figure at the heart of most Victorian fin de siecle texts is the scientist and during the fin de siecle what the scientist tends more and more to dabble.

Questioning boundaries: science, pseudo-science, and the occult.

The greatest pace of advance and change in the fields of science and medicine led Victorians to necessarily suspend disbelief: unlikely things might easily turn out to be true.

As a result the gap between science and the occult was much narrower in Victorian Britain than today.

The dual brain

we’ve already seen that hypnosis suggested the possibility of a hidden self. This concept was reinforced by the victorian theory.

Left brain is seat of logic and reason

Right brain is emotions

Women and savages were strong in the right brain. Hyde is describe as ape-like

Sergeant F: the uncanny quality of the double

In 1875 the Cornhill magazine published the case study of a brain damaged French soldier Soldier F.

Sergeant F was male, and his condition was caused by a wound the battlefield. But the dual or multiple personality was almost overwhelmingly a female condition and still is today its known as Dissociative Identity.

Stles theories that small, puny, right brained Hyde has something of the victorian feminine about him: emotionally unstable.

Victorians also believed that your personality could be read in the shape of your skull.

The Victorian era saw a huge divide between rich and poor, and in essence these types of belief enabled upper class Victorians to feel okay about their unequal wealth.

Phrenology

Developed by Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, this pseudo-science made the claim that your personality and character could be recognised by the shape of your skull.

The Profession Sickist

In letter he described himself as a professional sickest. As a result, much of his work was written in bed.

Strange case of Jekyll and Hyde

The Lancet = medical journal

Jekyll is both physician and patient, call into question the legitimacy and objectivity of scaentific case studies.

As a professional sickest its likely the Steenson experienced it.

Film to watch - The burke and Hare murders