component 1 section c British cinema

BRITISH FILM

captures a part of British culture, a film created by a British person or produced in Britain.

NARRATIVE  THEORIES AND IDEOLOGY:

narrative theories:

Vladimir Prop -Propps 8 character types
 British film: fishtank

• Villain-Conner
• Helper-Horse/Music
• Princess or prize-Billy
• Her father-Joanne
• Donor- Conor
• Hero-Mia
• False hero- Conor
• Dispatcher- Val

Levi-Strauss binary opposition:
narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. this can be as simple as two characters fighting, but more often function at an ideological level.

fish tank main micro features:

• lack of artifice
• cinema vérité
• social realist

Todorov's equilibrium theory:

1. Equilibrium
2. Disruption of equilibrium by an event
3.  The realisation that the disruption has happened
4.  Attempt to repair the damage or disruption
5.  restoration of equilibrium

Roland BarthesAction+Enigma codes 

Action codes-what will happen next
she falls over-will he catch her?
she has been caught-what will he do with her?

Enigma codes- the audience question why ...
why is there a shoe on the floor?


Three act structure

Act 1: setup
Act 2: confrontation
Act 3: resolution





The oedipal trajectory - Males - Summary

• A male child, who at first is bonded with his mother, imagines himself a united whole with her
• However, when held up to a mirror, he perceives his difference from her.
• He becomes aware of the illusion of unity and still desires it. The desire now because sexual.

• He comes to hate his father, as his father has ‘lawful’ access to the mother.
• The child perceives this difference as one of castration: he sees the mother as castrated
• To identify with her would this mean he would be without his penis - in identifying with her he becomes like her; in uniting with her, he runs the risk of castration from his father (he assumes the father has this power)He attempts to identify with the father; he sets about trying to find a female.
• The male child can now move towards social stability and continue the cycle.

Application in Film Narrative

In the cinematic narrative, the male protagonist moves, through the resolution of a crisis, towards social mobility. The male is a stationary site (=passive object) to which the male travels and upon which he acts. He is therefore the active subject.

In a film that embraces the Oedipal trajectory, the threat of castration is dispelled and the masculine role of the patriarch is assumed.

The threat is contained by voyeurism and fetishes: voyeurism, with the female as the passive of the object of the female gaze; fetishisation, via a fragmentation of the female body and and an over-investment in parts of the female body (legs, breast etc.). In the way, this woman becomes commodified as a whole, unified body. The body is denied it’s difference and rendered phallic (through, for example, slinky black deressed, high heels and long fingernails).

If the male subject fails to achieve social stability, a crisis of masculinity is revealed (see film noir and female fatale).

Females

As with the male child, the mother is the first love object of the female child.

Scopophilia:

pleasure out of sex-watching

the phantasmagorical- dreamlike state

suture:
hides ideological messages in a film, by focusing more on the storyline it distracts you from the bigger picture.

• the spectator is stitched up in the film text
• one application shot-reverse-shot - angle shot
• establishes the viewpoint of two characters 
• the spectator makes sense of off-screen space and becomes "stitched" into the film
• 'sutured into diegesis of the film'