Boredom in Two Figures: A Space and a Gesture

This essay critically considers two modern figures of boredom in screen media: the cul-de-sac; and the protracted, disengaged expressive movement of body, face and hands – a space and a gesture. Its purpose is to show how boredom is conceived of here as a quality of space and espacement as much as that it is a register of time; that time cannot be made to count (and thus is counted obsessively) because space cannot be made to matter (and is only material). Through close analyses of films and series including American Beauty , Desperate Housewives and The Breakfast Club , it demonstrates that boredom spells out an inability to connect to one’s surroundings, a bodily discombobulation that manifests itself as visual, generic and spatial dualism, a restless moving in place between their poles, and a gestural indolence.