Intro; Acknowledgments; Contents; Notes on Contributors; Chapter 1: Introduction: Provocation to Philosophy; Chapter 2: The Ass I Kick Today May Be the Ass I'll Have to Kiss Tomorrow: What's Up with the Sacrifice of Women in the Films of Lars von Trier?; References; Chapter 3: Film as Phantasm: Dogville's Cinematic Re-evaluation of Values; The Destruction of Moral Belief in Dogville; Dogville's Moral Aporia and the Re-evaluation of Compassion; The Optics of Belief; Cinematic Phantasms; References; Chapter 4: Manderlay and the Universe of American Whiteness; References

Chapter 5: Art and Myth: Beyond BinariesIntroduction; Binaries; The Obvious and the Not So Obvious; The Familiar Binaries; She Is Lilith; Beyond Binaries; References; Chapter 6: The Need of the Antichrist to Tame the Wild Tongue of Nosotras; Antichrist Awakes My Wild Tongue; Crossing over, Entering into the Serpent; Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, They Can Only Be Cut (Anzaldúa 1999); References; Chapter 7: Lars von Trier: Traversing the Fantasy of the Child; References; Chapter 8: Melancholia's End; References

Chapter 9: Would It Be Bad If the Human Race Ceased to Exist? Melancholia and the Import of Human ExistenceSynopsis and Interpretation of the Film; Responding to the Argument for Pessimism in Melancholia; Implications for the Meaning of an Individual Life; References; Chapter 10: It Is There in the Beginning: Melancholia, Time, and Death; Of Cosmic Origins: Melancholia and the Planetary; Exploring the Semiotic: Entry into Psychic Life and Preconditions for Melancholia; To the Thing Itself: Melancholia, Time, and Death; References; Index