Topic
The Allusion of the Movie Spectator and the Various Taboos and Themes in various movie genres
Instructions
The task is a written response to one of the following questions:
1. Can meaningful advances in the representation of marginalised groups be made in mainstream cinema, or must such advances be achieved at the margins by independent producers? Compare a popular work of mainstream screen culture to an independent work, and present an argument as to whether the popular work can be interpreted as a progressive text or not (see Comolli and Narboni).
2. Traditional cinema theory imagines an idealised and often passive film spectator. How does the representation of taboos and confronting material (such as violence and sex) in cinema and television shift the way that we conceptualise of this spectator? In your response, consider a film or television episode that challenges the limits of what can be acceptably depicted in the moving image and how it has been analysed and discussed.
3. Jeffery Sconce argues that “Although paracinematic taste may have its roots in the world of ‘low-brow’ fan culture (fanzines, film conventions, memorabilia collections, and so on), the paracinematic sensibility has recently begun to infiltrate the avant garde, the academy, and even the mass culture on which paracinema’s ironic reading strategies originally preyed.” Has this assimilation compromised the power of ‘bad taste’ cinema as a political rejection of good taste? Examine one work of paracinema and evaluate its
relationship to mainstream screen culture.
4. Comolli and Narboni argue that for cinema to be truly transgressive, it must attack the means of representing reality as well as what material is actually being depicted. Looking at a film or television episode that is formally experimental in some way (mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, narrative, and so on) evaluate how it seeks to shift the formal language of screen culture. Is this a political act?
5. Can cinema or television ever truly be subversive? If, as the quote widely attributed to Francois Truffaut contends, “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film,” does this mean that screen culture in all contexts is incapable of meaningful critique? Evaluate a work of screen culture and its possibilities for subversion, or the power to change viewer’s minds.
Answer preview
Numerous theories have been developed that look at the positioning of the movie spectator. Nonetheless, exploitation films normally look at undermining their envisaging as passive. As result of limitations and taboos enclosing the representation of contentious material like sexual or violent content, it is clear that the discernment of viewers has not only moved to a more rigorous obligation, but the encouragements behind their curiosity in these risqué classifications are being queried. In addition to this, the formation of taboos via social conditioning as well as their impacts on communities’ values code will be discussed in association to categorization systems in the United States, Spain and Australia.
Word count: 3823