Perspectives | Lecture 6

Normativity: Our perception of things when related to a standard/Norm as well as the act of doing things based on or in line with the norm.

Binary Opposition: A binary system based on having two 'opposites'.

Deconstruction: Breaking concepts and idea's down into their parts/structures to understand them and to create new idea's from the pieces.

Reinscribe: Renaming or redefining in a new context.

Cognitive Dissonance: Discomfort caused by having conflicting ideas or beliefs.

Judith Butler is an American philosopher and theorist that focuses on gender and the effect of sex on gender. She explores the idea of gender being preformative and something that people perform on a place to place basis as opposed to being something that just is.

5 Reasons Funny Games is postmodern:

1. Deconstruction: The film deconstructs the horror tropes found in horror movies by not showing any of the violence on screen, this leaves the viewer without the experience the expect as the horror is all off-screen.

2. The fourth wall: The film breaks the fourth wall during the film as a character addresses the audience with winks and questions.

3. Non-linear/Fragmented: The film has elements of these, the most noticeable being the scene in which one character, Peter, gets shot only for Paul to rewind the scene and prevent it. This is non-linear and fragmented as it shows the character changing the way the film plays out and the order things would happen in. The scene also shows deconstruction as it deconstructs the idea of the characters being set on an unchanging course as Paul just rewinds and changes the story.

4. Appropriation: The film is a shot-for-shot remake of itself as the director originally made the film in German and then remade the film for America.

5. Stereotypes: The film plays with stereotypes as the antagonists are dressed differently to how stereotypical antagonists are portrayed. Instead of wearing dark colours the antagonists are shown wearing white and are surrounded by bright colours more than by darker ones.

Perspectives | Lecture 4

Keyword Definitions:

Avante-Garde: Something new and modern when placed in the context of it's place and time of creation. Things that are avante-garde have the purpose of pushing art, culture and/or politics.

Nostalgia: A desire to return to a specific time or place in one's own past. The reuse of previously existing media in order to create a sense of nostalgia, or desire, in regards to the past.

Appropriation: Taking something or aspects of a thing, (sometimes without the rights to do so), that belong to someone else and using it in another context thus altering the original meaning.

Pastiche: A piece of work that aims to imitate another artist's work, a time period or style. Often used as a way to reference prior works.

Parody: A piece of work that aims to imitate another artist's, their work, a time period or style in an exaggerated manner with comedic intent.

Irony: When a situation or text has a result that's contrary or different to what we expected. This often ends up being in a comedic way.

Ideology: A set of idea's or beliefs held or integrated into cultures, often considered as truths within those believing.

Genre: A style or category, often of films, i.e, 'Horror' and 'Romance'.

Sherrie Levine: Sherrie Levine is an American Photographer and Painter. Her work is often part of conversations about appropriation and originality. She uses her work, reproductions of other photographic works, to bring attention to females within art history.

Scream:

Scream - Movie Poster

Ways that 'Scream' is postmodern:

1. Scream is a pastiche to slasher movies as it makes use of the many tropes involved in that genre.

2. The film is also a parody as it points out the cliches of slasher movies while simultaneously using those same cliches in the film.

3. Appropriation is another reason this film can be seen as postmodern as the film's antagonist uses a mask of the figure in the artwork The Scream by Edvard Munch. Another way it uses appropriation is in it's use of tropes and cliches from previous slasher films.

The Scream - Edvard Munch

4. Irony is used in this film a few times, this is done for comedic value as it plays with our expectations of a horror film by setting a scenario up and having the characters mock it while still falling into the actions they mocked. One example being the main character, Sydney, and her rant against slasher protagonists for always 'running up the stairs when she should be running out the door' as moments later she herself is running up the stairs away from the killer. Another is when the character Randy is watching a slasher and yelling for the character to 'look behind them', all while the antagonist of this film is slowly walking up behind him.

5. Intertextuality is used in the film as it references multiple other films numerous times, both in the use of tropes from those films and in mentioning them during the film through dialogue.

Perspectives | Postmodernism in Inception

1. The way reality is treated in the film is one example of postmodernism as during the film the viewers sense of reality is tested. There are two ways reality is tested, one is through the blurring of the real and the dream worlds, the other is through the dreams themselves. The dreams test reality in that they are the dreamers perspective on reality more than an actual representation of the real. The blurring is done both at the very beginning of the film, in the scene where Ariadne and Cobb are talking only for Ariadne - and the viewer - to realise she's dreaming, as well as the end of the film. The blurring of reality is more extreme near the end as the viewer is left to wonder whether Cobb made it back to the real world at all or if he has accepted his dream as reality.

2. Time is distorted during the film in a postmodern way as the distortion of time lends the film to be less linear. This is due to time passing differently dependant on where they are. In reality time passes much faster than in the dreams, and in the dreams time is staggered - getting slower the deeper they sleep. This leads to multiple events happening at the same time but being shown one after the other.

3. Inception is fragmentary as the dreams are each separate from each other and we bounce between them all, this is to show what is happening in each dream as they all occur simultaneously. Another example of the fragmentary nature is that the opening and ending scenes are almost exactly the same.

4. The narrator in inception is an unreliable one as Cobb is often unable to tell the difference between reality and dream himself, making it more difficult for the viewer to know as well. Another reason is because of the circumstances around the end of the film. This is as according to the established 'rules' Cobb should still be stuck in the dream, he did not get awoken from the van in the first dream, but there is still uncertainty as to if he did as he is shown awake in the plane. This could then be because it is what his reality is seeing even if it's not what the true reality is.

5. The ending of the film leads the viewer to question the validity of a 'true reality' as the film leaves the viewer wondering if Cobb is still dreaming or not and whether it truly matters if he is as he has accepted where he is either way.