Rhonda Does Research: film genres

Showing posts with label film genres. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2014

Fantasy films and Political Thrillers

In my last post, I mentioned "another difference" between films like Divergent and other political thrillers, and I've been trying to come up with a good way of explaining it. Thanks to a classmate who is working on a different film (one of the Harry Potters), I have a good quotation from a source she found, a book called Fellowship in a Ring: A Guide for Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Groups, by librarian Neil Hollands, who says that "Some of the best political fiction written is speculative fiction. By devising political and sociological systems in alternate worlds or by hypothesizing alternative events in our own world, authors can create a fictional laboratory in which to explore any political question" (233). Yeah, what he said.
When I was trying to think of how to put this, I kept coming back to how Divergent and other stories like it work is by setting up a kind of closed system. It almost makes Hollands seem to be referring to Divergent, which is, after all, about a social experiment gone bad.

Monday, October 20, 2014

It's a Conspiracy!

As a result of a lot of family issues, I've been letting this go for a couple of weeks (my aunt is better, maybe, and my uncle is not-- they decided his heart wasn't in good enough shape for spinal surgery), but I've been keeping up with the work otherwise. My annotated bibliography looked good to me; I just hope that it looks good when it's graded. I finished revising my review of scholarly literature on the political thriller genre (just in time: it's due today), so here I am to talk about what I've found.

It seems that the crucial element that defines the genre is the presence of a conspiracy. This is what puts Divergent into the same category as The Manchurian Candidate and Enemy of the State. What makes it less obvious to a casual viewer is the presence of kids. In those films, a single innocent person somehow stumbles upon a conspiracy to overthrow an elected leadership and has to survive numerous attacks while trying to take the whole thing apart. It's probably needless to point out that this innocent person is usually an adult (and male).

And, I just thought of another difference, but I'll save that for my next post.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

How Scary is Scary Enough?

A very scary Angela Lansbury in
The Manchurian Candidate

My entire family has been pushing me to post ever since my last post. The fact is, well, it's been a rough couple of weeks. My uncle is having spine surgery this coming week, and from what his doctors are saying, his whole life is going to change, and not in a good way. At the same time, my oldest aunt got a bad mammogram last week, and she's having surgery on Tuesday to remove a lump and some nodes (I'm not sure what those are, and I'm afraid to ask).

The strange thing is that they all have been asking me about my research project, and not just the usual "hows-school-going" kind of questions everyone asks when they see me. Rebbie says that they're trying to think about something besides what's going on, so if it helps, I'm up for it. Obviously, it's going to help me, anyway, and I can't think of anything else I can do to help them.

My aunt actually led me to a question I should have been asking. She sees Divergent as a horror film, not a political thriller. And her question is: "aren't political thrillers a subgenre of horror?" She made a good case, using The Manchurian Candidate and V for Vendetta for examples. After seeing The Manchurian Candidate, I can see why she said this. It is totally creepy, especially considering it was made right before JFK was assassinated. And the Kate Winslett character is a lot like the one Angela Lansbury played in TMC, so maybe the horror connection is not too farfetched.

I need to think more about this, and I need to use this in my research into genres.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Well, It's Not a Musical . . .But What Is It?

Regarding my last post-- I decided to give up on the hair idea, even though I'm sure that in Tris's position, I would cut my hair immediately. Not cutting it makes her seem vain, to me at least. I looked at it again, and that didn't really take me anywhere.

So, I've decided to do my project using genre criticism. Once I started thinking that way, I realized that Divergent (and a whole bunch of similar films) doesn't quite fit into any of the established genres, except broadly. You could call it an action film, or a political thriller, I guess, but neither of these is a comfortable fit.
I'm thinking it's a subgenre of political thrillers at this point; there's not enough action (it's not a "non-stop thrill ride," which seems to be mandatory lately for action films), and it's more about political ideas than anything else.

As I understand genre criticism, I need to identify the characteristics of political thrillers and then figure out how Divergent sets up a set of additional characteristics that amount to a subgenre. The most obvious other member of this category is The Hunger Games, and I'll be doing some thinking about what other films fit, too. For now, I have enough to start my research into the overall genre, and I've got a good (I think) draft of a proposal.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Two Demigods and a Satyr Walk into Medusa's Lair . . .

Perseus with the head of Medusa,
by Antonio Canova, completed 1801
(Vatican Museums)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Starting with number 1 from the list in my last post, it should be obvious to those who have seen the film or read the book that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is based on already existing Greek mythology: he's the son of Poseidon, his real first name is Perseus (the original Perseus's father was Zeus, but that's another myth), and he is destined to be a hero. The second requirement is also obvious, because as the film goes on Percy encounters all kinds of elements, fighting mythological monsters like the Minotaur, Medusa, and a hydra, meeting Chiron, visiting the land of the lotus eaters, and so on, but these, except for Chiron, whose role in the myths was as the mentor/trainer of demigods, are all serving different functions in this story than they did in the Greek myths.

And that's just for starters. There's more to come.

At Long Last, NEO-MYTHOLOGY Is Here!

English: Various mythos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm taking a break from working on my research paper draft (it's due on Thursday, sigh) because I need one and because I've finally got my critical model in a finished state, or so I hope. It works not just for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief but also for a bunch of other films. So, here are the defining characteristics of the Neo-Mythology genre:
1. The film (or book, too, I guess) is based on already existing mythology and/or folklore.
2. It uses elements (characters, plot points, etc.) from that mythology/folklore for other than their original purposes.
3. It creates a new story out of that material.
4. It is set in a hidden reality that secretly co-exists with the known current reality.
5. It is in the form of a quest.

I'll discuss these in my next post (since I've met the required 100-word length already).