Postmodernism and cinema

Résumé du document

‘It's about flights of fantasy, and the nightmare of reality, terrorist bombings, and late night shopping, true love, and creative plumbing.' (Gilliam; 1985). This tagline for the film Brazil highlights most of the concepts present in postmodernist criticism of cinema and television. Indeed, fantasy, dreams, nightmares, the questioning of reality, reason, logic and truth and the creation of an alternate reality are at the centre of post-modern thought. These concerns are explored in the Brazil, where Ministry of Information Employee Sam Lowry escapes a grim reality through dreams, and in the television series Twin Peaks (Frost and Lynch; 1990-1991) where FBI special agent Cooper uses dreams to understand and uncover the secrets beneath a seemingly quiet and pleasant reality. ‘Playfulness, pleasure, the shallow space of display, the alliance of electronics and corporate power' (Sobchak; 1987: 228-234 in Bordwell; 1989: 116) are only some of the characteristics of post-modern film.

Extraits

[...] Brazil Terry Gilliam (writer, director), Tom Stoppard (writer). Collins, J ‘Postmodernism and Television' in Allen R.C. (ed.) Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism; London: Routledge, p.341. Cook, P The Cinema Book; London: BFI, p Creeber, G Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen; London: BFI, pp. 48-54. Fortier, M Theory/ Theatre: An Introduction; London: Routledge, p Frost, S The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. A Twin Peaks Book; New York: Pocket Books. Hedden, R ‘What is Brazil?' featurette. [...]

[...] It also dismisses the idea of genre and categories as well as the ways of making logical meaning. Furthermore, avant-garde film and video is, according to Rees (1999: ‘drawn to find the marvellous in the banal'. In Brazil, we follow the story of a simple man working in a small office and driving a small car as he searches for love. This follows the turn to the “little story” that Lyotard advocates (Poster; 2004: 589), in opposition to the “grand narratives” imposed on society by science, religion, logic and progress. [...]

[...] The citizens are also controlled in an implicit way as they continue to clean or eat when there is a terrorist bombing or a gun fight in the background. Thus, it is a society where everything, including people and cars, are assigned digit codes like STROKE 6'. This results in a postmodern world where people have become disillusioned, as one of Sam's colleagues points out, ‘it's impossible to get noticed'. In fact, postmodern thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard distrusts the idea of progress and emancipation. Therefore, there is no real social ladder except by means of corruption. [...]

[...] However, both texts have in common the idea that truth and definite meaning can never be achieved. Lyotard (1992: 149, in Bennett; 1999: 239) described the postmodern as ‘that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable'. Indeed, as both of the worlds depicted in Brazil and Twin Peaks are seen as flawed, dreams form an integral part of the lives of both men and shape a different reality, one that substitutes dreams to reason, therefore questioning our sense of reality, the existence of multiple meanings, and the impossibility to truly make sense in our (post) modern world. [...]

[...] 1969- present. Sconce, J In Newcomb, H. (ed). The Encyclopaedia of Television, pg.un. Sobchak, V Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film; New York: Ungar p. 228-234 in Bordwell, D Making Meaning: Inference and rhetoric in the interpretation of cinema; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p Twin Peaks. 1990-1991. Created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. [...]