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7. Genre and Myth
Rachel Ajisaka Pages 381-382
Genres in their classical phase tend to portray a world where right and wrong are fairly clear-cut.
The contemporary cinema tends to favor genres that are revisionist that are less idealistic, more ambiguous morally, and far from reassuring in their presentation of the human condidtion.
Unforgiven (U.S.A., 1992) is a revisionist western whose grim protagonist, William Munny (Eastwood), is a hired killer, so lost in violence that he has doomed his soul.
The People VS. Larry Flynt(U.S.A.,1996)is a biography film, not of an admirable role model or moral exampler, but of a notorioius pornography and his zonked_out junkie wife.
Fargo (U.S.A., 1996) is a revisionist detective film that's loosely based on an actual police case.
Michael Corzonkoff: Pages 383-384
Revisionist - The genre is generally more symbolic, ambiguous, less certain in its values. This phase tends to be stylistically complex, appealing more to the intellect than to emotions. Often, the genre's preestablished conventions are exploited as ironic foils to question or undermine popular beliefs.
Parodic - This phase of a genre's development is an outright mockery of its conventions, reducing them to howling cliches and presenting them in a comic manner.
The best example for these key terms
The Great Train Robbery (1903) - The first western ever made, and an enormously popular movie with the public. It was imitated and embellished on for decades.
Stagecoach (1939) - One of the few westerns of that era to win wide critical approval as well as box-office success.
High Noon (1952) - One of the first revolutionist westerns, ironicly questioning many of the populist values of the genre's classic phase.
Wild Bunch (1969) - an aging group of outlaws hope to have one final score while the West is turning into a modern society
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) - One of Altman's typically naturalist films, the director has called McCabe an "anti-western film" because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions.
All of the above films are examples of Revisionist films because they changed how people looked at life in the West.
Blazing Saddles (1973) - Is a satiric Western comedy film dircted by Mel Brooks. It was one of the first films to ever parady a genre as classic as a western. This movie demoslished many of the old ideas of the old western movies and as a result the spotlight faded from this preticular genre.
However genres do have a way of of springing back to life. Years later Kevin Costner's Open Range (2003) is an unabashedly classic bringing the
real west back to life.
Early Revisionist films were Western. The early films such as the Great Train Robbey and Stagecoach made the West seem fun and exciting but then filmmakers took another turn toward the dark side of the west. The best example was Unforgiven(1992). The film had a cultural impact that the West was not as glamorus as prior films made it look. It made the West into a paranoid, bloody, fight to survive because everyone was worrying about doing onto others before they do onto them.
During the years of the Cold War the film industry began to turn and play off of the people's fears of communism. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1953) was a wake up around America during that time. The movie came out as the "Red Scare" was reaching it's peak and the film examplifed what life would be like if we all surrendered to communism.
Movies that play off of people's fears and values are more likely to appeal to a larger audince. These films show the importance of every day life and it's nuances. Many factors affect the views of genres. Over the years these films have changed our outlook on life and reflect on the past and present values of their lives.
Karina Diaz: Pages 385-386
______________________________________________
Danielle Danica Yambao: pgs. 387-388
One superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. It's called personal unconscious. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious...and the contents of the collective unconscious are known as archetypes.
Archetype
The primitive type, model, or pattern on which everything is formed.
When we see archetypes around us, they are images that can move us to tears or laughter or fear, without us knowing why. When you get that strange feeling and you don't know why it's affecting you, it's often because this archetypal language is talking directly to you.
-Many of these archetypal patterns are bipolar and embody the basi concepts of religion, art, and society: god-devil, active-passive, male-female, static-dynamic, and so on.
Archetypes in adventure movies are a critical aspect. This is why so many people watch these movies over and over again. An archetype has to consist of a few components. That is, the hero usually suffers a great loss or there is a big problem, which makes him set off on a quest. The hero generally has a person that he or she looks up to, who helps him on his quest. The hero must face a set of trials, which allow him to overcome evil. The hero escapes death and it is usually more than once. The hero escapes the evil villain's grasp or destroys him. The hero has flaws which make him or her human. The hero always has a sidekick, the movies are commercial and there always has to be a happy ending.
Pinnochio is a good example of how these elements of how these elements can emphasized rather than submerged beneath a surface realism.
Pinocchio (U.S.A., 1940), by Walt Disney
Some archetypal elements include a monster (the whale), magical transformations, a father's search for his lost son, supernatural creatures like a talking cricket, a son's search for his imprisoned father, and anthromorphized portrayal of nature, and a fairy god mother who rescues the improvident young hero when he fails to act responsibly.
Click here to learn more about archetypes, and archetypal movies.
Genres in their classical phase tend to portray a world where right and wrong are fairly clear-cut.
The contemporary cinema tends to favor genres that are revisionist that are less idealistic, more ambiguous morally, and far from reassuring in their presentation of the human condidtion.
Unforgiven (U.S.A., 1992) is a revisionist western whose grim protagonist, William Munny (Eastwood), is a hired killer, so lost in violence that he has doomed his soul.
The People VS. Larry Flynt(U.S.A.,1996)is a biography film, not of an admirable role model or moral exampler, but of a notorioius pornography and his zonked_out junkie wife.
Fargo (U.S.A., 1996) is a revisionist detective film that's loosely based on an actual police case.
Michael Corzonkoff: Pages 383-384
Revisionist - The genre is generally more symbolic, ambiguous, less certain in its values. This phase tends to be stylistically complex, appealing more to the intellect than to emotions. Often, the genre's preestablished conventions are exploited as ironic foils to question or undermine popular beliefs.
Parodic - This phase of a genre's development is an outright mockery of its conventions, reducing them to howling cliches and presenting them in a comic manner.
The best example for these key terms
The Great Train Robbery (1903) - The first western ever made, and an enormously popular movie with the public. It was imitated and embellished on for decades. Stagecoach (1939) - One of the few westerns of that era to win wide critical approval as well as box-office success.
High Noon (1952) - One of the first revolutionist westerns, ironicly questioning many of the populist values of the genre's classic phase.
Wild Bunch (1969) - an aging group of outlaws hope to have one final score while the West is turning into a modern society
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) - One of Altman's typically naturalist films, the director has called McCabe an "anti-western film" because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions.
All of the above films are examples of Revisionist films because they changed how people looked at life in the West.
Blazing Saddles (1973) - Is a satiric Western comedy film dircted by Mel Brooks. It was one of the first films to ever parady a genre as classic as a western. This movie demoslished many of the old ideas of the old western movies and as a result the spotlight faded from this preticular genre.
However genres do have a way of of springing back to life. Years later Kevin Costner's Open Range (2003) is an unabashedly classic bringing the real west back to life.Early Revisionist films were Western. The early films such as the Great Train Robbey and Stagecoach made the West seem fun and exciting but then filmmakers took another turn toward the dark side of the west. The best example was Unforgiven(1992). The film had a cultural impact that the West was not as glamorus as prior films made it look. It made the West into a paranoid, bloody, fight to survive because everyone was worrying about doing onto others before they do onto them.
During the years of the Cold War the film industry began to turn and play off of the people's fears of communism. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1953) was a wake up around America during that time. The movie came out as the "Red Scare" was reaching it's peak and the film examplifed what life would be like if we all surrendered to communism.
Movies that play off of people's fears and values are more likely to appeal to a larger audince. These films show the importance of every day life and it's nuances. Many factors affect the views of genres. Over the years these films have changed our outlook on life and reflect on the past and present values of their lives.
Karina Diaz: Pages 385-386
-Films tend to represent the needs and wants of people due to widespread situations. This is most apparent here:
Ø Jazz Age: dealt with violence and glamour of the Prohibition era
o Underworld (1927): A silent film that is seen as the firstmodern American gangster movie,
Ø Depression: -the harshest years showed the US loss of confidence in the governmento Little Caesar (1930): It is often called the grandfather of the modern crime film, with its quintessential portrayal of an underworld character that rebelliously challenged traditional values. Although it was not the first gangster film of the talkies era (that honor went to Lights of New York (1928)), it is generally considered the prototype of future gangster films.Ø -In the last years of the depression, films were “pleas for liberal reform, arguing that crime is the result of broken homes, such as:o Dead End (1937): One day in a slum area of New York, noted gangster Baby Face Martin, who grew up in the neighborhood, decides to come home to visit his mother and the girl he left behind when he was sentenced to reform school. While he is there, he hooks up with Dave Connell, a former friend who is now a struggling architect. At first Connell is a little disturbed that "Marty" is back in the neighborhood, but he goes along. Marty’s mother rejects him because of what he has become. He later sees his girl Francie, a prostitute in the throes of syphilis. All this drives Marty to kidnap the nephew of a prominent judge. When Dave finds out about this, he decides to take matters in his own hands and try to stop Marty’s plot.Ø White Heat (1949): showed sexual neurotics after a time of no relations with women in films
Ø The Kefauver Senate Crime Investigations lead to confidential exposes of crime including:o The Phenix City Story (1955): In the Alabama town of Phenix City, organised crime was rife, controlling the alcohol, gambling, prostitution and even stretching its insidious tentacles into the realm of the authorities and the police. Whenever honest citizens tried to rise up against this tide of corruption, they were beaten back down: quite literally. All this continued until lawyer Albert Patterson (John McIntyre) and his son John (Richard Kiley) accepted the pleas of a local group of concerned townsfolk, and Albert agreed to stand for office as Attorney General to stamp out the vice once and for all - but there would be great sacrifices to be made, including innocent lives.Ø Vietnam and the Watergate Conspiracy served to numb the people as they showed the nation’s cynicism through:o The Godfather (1972)and The Godfather Part II(1974): Vito Corleone is the aging don (head) of the Corleone Mafia Family. His youngest son Michael has returnedØ Once Upon a time in America (1984) captured what had become the traditional rise-and-fall of the genre while Pulp Fiction (1994) imitated the genre's conventions.from WWII just in time to see the wedding of Connie Corleone (Michael's sister) to Carlo Rizzi. All of Michael's family is involved with the Mafia, but Michael just wants to live a normal life. Drug dealer Virgil Sollozzo is looking for Mafia Families to offer him protection in exchange for a profit of the drug money. He approaches Don Corleone about it, but, much against the advice of the Don's lawyer Tom Hagen, the Don is morally against the use of drugs, and turns down the offer. This does not please Sollozzo, who has the Don shot down by some of his hit men. The Don barely survives, which leads his son Michael to begin a violent mob war against Sollozzo and tears the Corleone family apart.
Ø OTHER FILMS:E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982): Elliot (Thomas) is your normal boy, until one day, when he meets a little lost alien. Elliot decides to keep the alien, in which he gives the name E.T. Elliot works with E.T. in trying to find him a way to get back home. Elliot must make the difficult sacrifice. Whether to help his new friend or to lose him? Whatever the decision is, Elliot must keep him hidden, as someone else is out to look for him. “A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins.”
Sweet Hours (1982): It symbolizes Freud’s Oedipus complex and the Electra complex, where a son fights his father for his mother’s love.
______________________________________________
Danielle Danica Yambao: pgs. 387-388
One superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. It's called personal unconscious. But this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious...and the contents of the collective unconscious are known as archetypes.
Archetype
The primitive type, model, or pattern on which everything is formed.
When we see archetypes around us, they are images that can move us to tears or laughter or fear, without us knowing why. When you get that strange feeling and you don't know why it's affecting you, it's often because this archetypal language is talking directly to you.
-Many of these archetypal patterns are bipolar and embody the basi concepts of religion, art, and society: god-devil, active-passive, male-female, static-dynamic, and so on.
Archetypes in adventure movies are a critical aspect. This is why so many people watch these movies over and over again. An archetype has to consist of a few components. That is, the hero usually suffers a great loss or there is a big problem, which makes him set off on a quest. The hero generally has a person that he or she looks up to, who helps him on his quest. The hero must face a set of trials, which allow him to overcome evil. The hero escapes death and it is usually more than once. The hero escapes the evil villain's grasp or destroys him. The hero has flaws which make him or her human. The hero always has a sidekick, the movies are commercial and there always has to be a happy ending.
Pinnochio is a good example of how these elements of how these elements can emphasized rather than submerged beneath a surface realism.
Pinocchio (U.S.A., 1940), by Walt Disney
Some archetypal elements include a monster (the whale), magical transformations, a father's search for his lost son, supernatural creatures like a talking cricket, a son's search for his imprisoned father, and anthromorphized portrayal of nature, and a fairy god mother who rescues the improvident young hero when he fails to act responsibly.
Click here to learn more about archetypes, and archetypal movies.
"A story can be many things. To a producer it's a property that has no box-office value. To a writer it's a screenplay. To a film star it's a vehicle. To a director it's an artistic medium. To a genre critic it's a classifiable narrative form. To a sociologist it's an index of public sentiment. To a psychiatrist it's an instinctive exploration of hidden fears or communal ideals. To a moviegoer it can be all of these and more..."
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Genres in their classical phase tend to portray a world where right and wrong are fairly clear-cut, where the moral valuses of the movie are widely shard by the audiene, and where justive eventually triumps over evil.
<img src="http://www.lovefilm.com/lovefilm/images/products/1/1141-large.jpg"> <i>Unforgiven</i> (U.S.A., 1992) is a revisionist western whose grim protagonist, William Munny (Eastwood), is a hired killer, so lost in violence that he has doomed his soul. <img src="http://www.matchflick.com/flickimages/12351.jpg"> <i>The People VS. Larry Flynt</i>(U.S.A.,1996)is a biography film, not of an admirable role model or moral exampler, but of a notorioius pornography and his zonked_out junkie wife. <img src=""> <i>Fargo</i> (U.S.A., 1996) is a revisionist detective film that's loosely based on an actual police case. |
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