FS101

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FS101

• Week 11
• Postmodern Intertext

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FS Course Offerings 2005/6

• FS101 Literary Text Gates Fall
• FS102 Photographic Image Tiessen Winter
• FS243 Film Director Gates Winter
• FS240 Hist 1895 Tiessen Winter
• FS247 Hist 1969 TBA Fall
• FS253 Gangster Tiessen Fall
• FS341Film Theory TBA TBA
• FS347 Genre Theory TBA TBA
• FS343x Classical Hwood Gates Winter
• FS343x Sci Fi Film Heyer Fall
• FS362 Gender and Film TBA TBA
• FS4XX War Film/Lit Gates Fall

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Introduction
Essays Submit within 24 hours to Turnitin.com

• Exam Fri Dec 10th 900am
• Last week Adaptation and Transformation
• This Week Postmodernism Intertextuality
• Industry
• End of the Studio Era Corporate Hollywood
• Aesthetics
• Postmodernism Intertextuality Adaptation
• Next Week Course Review and Exam Info

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Adaptation

• www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2002/12/16/adapta
  tion/index.html?x
• Stephanie Zacharek says
• Plenty of people have written passionately about
  the impossibility of bringing books to the
  screen, because it is, pure and simple, an
  impossibility.
• If we set out to judge an adaptation by how
  closely it approximates the visions that an
  author has already coaxed to life in our own
  imaginations, were bound to be disappointed
• Filmmakers arent, and shouldnt have to be,
  mind-readers.

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End of the Studio Era

• 1920 to 1960
• studio era in Hollywood
• Oligopoly of the Majors vertical integration
• Reasons for decline
• Shift to younger audience (baby boomers)
• Competition of TV
• Paramount Decision
• Rising costs of film production
• Profits drastic decline
• 1946 121m to
• 1956 32m

• Post-war baby boom in
• More young families
• Move to the suburbs
• But cinemas downtown
• More leisure time but also at home TV
• of TV sets in US
• 1947 14,000
• 1948 172,000
• 1949 1,000,000
• 1950 4,000,000
• By end of 1950s
• in 90 of US homes

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Other Factors/Changes

• The Paramount Decrees
• The Paramount Case - 1948
• Big 5 vertically integrated
• MGM, Paramount, RKO, C20th Fox, Warners
• 1948 Supreme Court decision orders
• divorcement give up theatres/exhibition
• no guaranteed profits - blockbooking, runs
  clearance
• Production Code done away with
• Replaced with a Ratings System
• Began in late 50s 1st amendment rights extended
  to film
• Mid-60s - shifts in cultural values
• 1968 G (General) M (Mature) R (Restricted) X
  (X-rated)
• Today G PG PG-13 R NC- 17

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Hollywood fights back

• Response to the Decline?
• New technologies to attract audiences
• 3-D
• Color
• Stereo sound
• Widescreen
• Same thing in late 90s decline
• Because of VCRs, DVDs, Home theatres
• Response CGI and digital technologies
• Just not the same on the small screen

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Cinerama
3 cameras 3 projectors 3 film strips
Big image
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From Studio Era to New Hollywood

• Brief time of change the late 1960s and early
  1970s
• Time known as the Hollywood Renaissance
  rebirth
• Decline of Studio System
• Meant freedom to try anything to make a success
• Ratings system replace Production Code in 1968
• Independent producers Vs studio control
• Influence of French New Wave on US filmmaking
• Time of change, innovation, artistic freedom
• By mid-1970s,
• Reliance on blockbusters and money-makers vs
  artistry
• Birth of New Hollywood or Corporate
  Hollywood
• aka as Postclassical Hollywood

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1967 1969
Pushing the established boundaries sexviolence
The Graduate ? Bonnie and Clyde ?
Easy Rider ? ? Butch Cassidy
the Sundance Kid Midnight Cowboy ?
Counter-culture, drugs, sex, violence, male
prostitution, and homosexuality
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Postclassical Hollywood

• Bordwell and Thompson in Film Art say
• Some film historians argue that CH approach to
  narrative
• Faded by the 1970s replaced by something called
• Postclassical or postmodern cinema
• Contemporary films characterised by
• Extremely simple, high-concept premises
• Ie. narr can be summed up in a word or phrase
  Gladiator
• W/ cause-and-effect narr chain weakened by a
  concentration on
• high-pitch action at the expense of character
  psychology and
• tie-in merchandising and distribution through
  other media
• Postclassical Hollywood
• No longer invisible filmmaking now
  self-reflexive/attention-grabbing
• Narratives that play with conventions loose
  endings/lack of heroism
• More focus on sex and violence (ie. no more
  Production Code)

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Corporate Era1980s on

• Film profits generated from variety of sources
• Theatres
• Video (rentals and sales)
• Cable TV
• Network TV
• Merchandising
• Soundtracks
• Foreign distribution
• Between 1980-1999
• Film budgets skyrocketed
• Cost of average major studio picture has risen
• from US9.4m to US51.5m
• and 4x marketing costs

• Big business takes control of industry
• Huge emphasis on ancillary markets
• By 2000, home video 20billion /yr worldwide
• 3 x North American box office income

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Big Business Entertainment

•  Old Hollywood
• independent companies relied on
• stables of creative elements to
• produce films reflecting commercial artistic
  convictions of studio heads

• New Hollywood
• merely the film divisions of multi-national
  corporations
• that specialise in leisure-time products
• Books
• CDs
• Magazines
• Theme parks
• Toys

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Postmodernism (pomo)

• Pomo is a slippery term
• Hard to define
• Perhaps best understand in relation to Mo
• Modernism
• Movement pomo emerged out of
• But also in in reaction to modernism
• Postmodernism is an artistic, architectural,
  philosophical, and cultural movement or
  condition, said to arise after and in reaction to
  modernism www.wikipedia.com

Some of following info from, and more info
available at www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/the
ory/postmodernism/modules/intromainframe.html
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Modernism From about 1898 to WWII

• Time of experimentation in lit, music, art,
  politics
• Revolutionary movements
• Political fascism, communism, anarchism
• Artistic surrealism, dadaism, cubism, futurism,
  expressionism, primitivism, minimalism, etc.
• Questioning of values held by Victorian era
• Narrative, referentiality, religion, progress,
  empire
• Bourgeois domesticity, capitalism, decorum,
  industry

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Postmodernism / Postmodernity

• In many ways, postmodern artists/theorists
  continue experimentation begun in mo
• self-consciousness, parody, irony
• fragmentation, generic mixing, ambiguity
• breakdown between high low forms
• Some say pomoextension of mo experimentation
• Others more radical break
• One that is a result of new ways of representing
  the world including with television, film,
  computers
• Many date pomo from WWII others from 1960s

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Postmodern Texts

• Questioning the Real
• Blurring of boundaries between fiction and
  truth - ie.The Matrix
• Intertextuality
• Explicit implicit relation of a text to other
  texts ie.The Simpsons
• Pastiche, Parody, Irony
• Metanarrative
• LyotardGrand Narratives (ie. Enlightenment,
  Progress) attempt to explain the world but then
  become entrenched as correct
• Also - A narrative about narratives film about
  filmmaking or storytelling
• Anti-narrative
• structural devices prevent chronological telling
  of story
• Mixing genres
• Genre hybridity and genre-bending ie.Kill Bill

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Features of Postmodernism

• 1. Extreme self-reflexivity
• further than mo, but more playful and everywhere
• In pomo in high art pop cult ie. The
  Simpsons
• Acknowledging medium or self as a commodity/art
  work

• The Scream movies
• characters that debate rules of horror film
• - but it is a horror film too

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Features of Postmodernism

• 2. Irony, parody, and pastiche
• Pastiche
• a light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of
  another's style usually respectful of original
• Parody
• a form of satire that imitates another work of
  art in order to ridicule it
• Irony
• a form of speech in which the real meaning is
  concealed or contradicted by the words used

Madonna in a Kylie Minogue T-Shirt
Ques Which one is it with Madonna wearing this
shirt?
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Pastiche or Parody?
Edvard Munchs The Scream (1893)
vs Homer Simpson
Dead icons - Bogart, Dean, Monroe - hang in a
diner on The Boulevard of Broken Dreams Homer and
the gang hit the donut store
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Features of Postmodernism

• 3. Breakdown between high low art
• Pomo uses popular and mass-produced objects in
  more readily understandable ways
• Warhol's commentary on mass production
  and the commercial aspects of "high"
  art
• Cambell's Soup Cans

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Features of Postmodernism

• 4. Retro
• fascination with styles fashions from the past
• used completely out of original context
• architects juxtapose baroque, medieval, modern
  elements all in one room or building
• recycled TV shows as movies
• Charlie's Angels
• Scooby Doo

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Features of Postmodernism

• 5. visuality
• dominance of visual media
• means a gravitation to visual forms in postmodern
  era
• general breakdown in narrative linearity and
  temporality
• MTV videos
• Films that disrupt linearity ?
• News multimedia v paper
• http//www.pulse24.com/Front_Page/page.asp

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Features of Postmodernism

• 6. late capitalism
• dominance of capitalism
• no alternatives left
• symptom of this fear
• paranoia narratives
• Bladerunner, X-Files
• Matrix, Minority Report
• fear aided by technological advances
• Especially surveillance technology
• cell-phones

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Features of Postmodernism

• 7. disorientation
• attempts to disorient the subject/viewer
• ie. films with truth revelations at end that
  disrupt previous beliefs/knowledge
• The Sixth Sense
• The Others
• Unbreakable
• Matrix

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Features of Postmodernism

• 8. Secondary orality
• literacy rose steadily from
• introduction of print to through the modern era
• we have seen reversal
• increase in functionally illiterate population
• Crisis of the Word

Because of reliance on oral/visual media sources?
TV, Film, Radio, etc
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Intertextuality

• Texts are framed by others in many ways
• TV program part of a series and genre (sitcom)
• Understanding of individual text relates to such
  framing
• Intertext also reflected in fluidity of genre
  boundaries
• infomercials docudrama and reality TV shows
• Debt to other texts seldom acknowledged
• myth of authorial 'originality
• However, some texts allude directly to each other
  
• Remakes references in The Simpsons TV ads
• Pleasure of critical detachment not emotional
  involvement w/ narr
• Realist notion 'art imitates life
• intertextuality suggests that art imitates art
  or life imitates art
• Texts instrumental in construction of other
  texts
• But also in the construction of our experience of
  the world
• Much of what we 'know' about the world we have
  read from books, newspapers, mags or seen in film
  and on television
• We experience the world and life through texts

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Postmodern Film Genre Hybridity Ques What
genres do the following have in common?

• Films
• Scream
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• 10 Things I Hate about You
• Clueless
• The Bone Collector
• Sense and Sensibility
• Bridget Joness Diary
• Star Wars
• Alamo
• South Park Bigger
• The Lion King

• Genres
• Teen Movie
• Romantic comedy
• Detective film
• Western
• Sci-Fi
• Musical
• Period Piece
• Historical drama
• Animation

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Contemporary films narrative structure v
spectacle
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Postmodern film narratives

• Not necessarily
• Protagonists w/clear motivations
• Character arc - development
• Linear, cause-and-effect narrs
• Tie-up-the-loose-ends conclusions
• Instead
• Figure-eight/Infinity
• Lost Highway
• Adaptation
• Fragmented
• Pulp Fiction
• Backwards
• Memento

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Adaptation (Jonze 2002)

• So whats Adaptation got to do with
  postmodernism?
• Everything!
• Intertextual highly self-reflexive
• About a screenwriter struggling to adapt a book
  to screen
• but the charac in the film is the screenwriter
  from real life?
• Film stars Nicholas Cage as
• screenwriter Charles Kaufman and twin Donald
• screenplay credited to both brothers
• only trouble is Donald isnt real
• Film about Charlies struggle to adapt
• Susan Orleans book The Orchid Thief
• Real person and real book
• Real assignment that Kaufman was given
• Film about his struggle to write screenplay
• Now why would this be confusing?

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What is meant by adaptation?

• Adaptation n
• 1 a written work (as a novel) that has been
  recast in a new form
• syn version
• 2 the process of adapting to something (such as
  environmental conditions)
• syn adjustment
• The film is about both definitions

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For Tutorials

• Think about the film in terms of
• Different layers
• whats real and whats fiction
• Intertextuality
• playing with genre playing with audience
  expectations allusions to other texts
• Self-referentiality
• flagging up the film as a film an adaptation
• Parody, irony, pastiche
• Hollywood, creative process, selling out