The Abortive Superman, Übermensch as monster in the work of Panos Cosmatos

What is it about?

The paper examines Cosmatos's work to date: the two feature films 'Beyond the Black Rainbow'(2010), and 'Mandy' (2018), and the episode ‘The Viewing’ (2022) from the Netflix series 'Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities'. I argue that Cosmatos's films act as a vernacular critique of popular culture iterations of Nietzsche's Übermensch, and as such addresses the political and psychological anxieties of a mass North American audience. I further argue that Cosmatos is a profoundly psychoanalytical film maker, staging as horror, the subject who has weakened their ego in the name of transcendence, only to find the forces of super-ego and Id causing violent psychotic breakdown. The article takes an interdisciplinary approach to Cosmatos's contextualization (alongside more obvious peers) looking at the work of British artist Dexter Dalwood to help understand the political and philosophical aspects of Cosmatos's output.

Featured Image

Photo by Taylor Smith on Unsplash

Photo by Taylor Smith on Unsplash

Why is it important?

An argument is made for the importance of Cosmatos's output as a form of critique of political and ideological positions that are relevant to contemporary culture. This includes the failure (and flaws) of the American counter culture, the dominance of new right-wing ideology, and the flawed and misguided up-take of the Übermensch as it manifests in representations of masculinity. Cosmatos's films are entertaining, but he combines genre tropes of thriller and horror with excess and absurdity in ways that prompt the viewer to question their expectations and consider the synthesis of once opposing ideas into a new and destructive mindset.

Perspectives