Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Melina Merkouri - Xartino to Feggaraki (Streetcar name desire)

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The discourse of "Film Culture" requires us to conceive of cinema in its own terms.

The discourse of film research will lead us to particular descriptions, " limited" kinds of analysis determined by the categories cinema provides.

Discourse is a complex concept. It refers to the way in which something is told not just in terms of its specific language (whether verbal or visual) but also in terms of what it prioritizes. Discourses are both general and specific. Narrative "realist" cinema is a discursive form, a particular kind of human expression which represents the world in a certain way, employs a particular kind of a time-visual "language". Within narrative "realist" cinema as a whole, particular genres have their own more specific discourses. i.e. The Sci-Fi film is preoccupied with themata (idea-themes) of science and control. the romance is preoccupied with themata of sexuality, gender and often property relations. These ideas are either implicit -taken for granted within the way the story is conceived or explicit - in that the film actively promoted certain values, attitudes and beliefs.

The concept of Discourse is closely connected with another key concept HEGEMONY "taken-for-granted" a "common sense" outlook on some aspect of human reality shared by the vast majority of people within the society. Hegemony helps us to understand the illusion that commonly shared attitudes and values, ways of making sense of our world, appear to come from nowhere. Narrative "realist" cinema has this characteristic, it disguises its discursiveness by pretending to be simply "there". Discourses about law and order and sexuality, for example - are themselves seen as non-discursive, as natural, as taken for granted. These core values of society appear to come from nowhere- they simply are ! This leads to a compounding of a criticism leveled against popular cinema (and other popular media) that not only does it disguise its own discursive form, but it also "naturalizes" these profoundly significant social and political discourses. THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT THEIR "CONSTRUCTED" REALITY AND THE VALUE SYSTEMS THAT FUNDAMENTALLY INFLUENCE OUR LIVES. “being indoctrinated with a political spin.” From a commercial perspective, however, the very opposite may appear to be the case. People do not want to think critically about their "constructed" reality. They pay for their entertainment, so they can be released from the concerns of their lives. They may well want the security of hegemonic values within familiar discourses. The point is that it has less to do with questions of an active/passive audience. It has to do either with the choices we make or the level of (a)Competence - (b)Education and (c) CineNoesis we bring to cinema and the screening events we attend