Visual comic genres
The essay discusses characteristics of cinematic
satire through analyzing examples taken from genre films. Its starting point is
the definition of the deleuzean "comedic". According to Deleuze the comic sign
is based on the specific relationship between the actor and the environment:
the action leads to a change in the environment. The "comic sign" defines the
relationship between actor and environment as the piercean index, in other
words, as a connection where the characteristic relationship between actor and
environment is created by the local contact. The satiric sign is similar to the
comedic since both are based upon indexical connection. At the same time,
unlike the comedic, the satiric presupposes not the comic restructuring of the
situation, but is based upon the tension between the spectacle and the
recognition of the viewer. Satiric communication relies on the play of points
of view, and the indexical relation triggering the comic effect is realized on
the level of points of view, which reveals the substantial similarity between
satiric presentation and the polyphony of parody.
This
essay undertakes a detailed analysis of various operations of the comic in
Buster Keaton's two-reeler One Week. Showing how theorists of cinematic
comedy diverge from one another in their definitions of slapstick and the gag,
Trahair in turn argues that these definitions also impact on how the relation
between the comic and narrative is conceived. By taking up Georges Bataille's
distinction between restricted and general economy, Trahair offers a
post-structuralist response to formalist approaches to narratological theory.
The study offers an analysis of two films by Buster
Keaton (The Playhouse, 1921 and Sherlock Jr., 1924), focusing on attraction as
a central representational principle in both works, and argues that these films
display a unique logic of representation. This is due, on the one hand, to the
explicit treatment of attraction-based entertainment, and on the other hand on
the fact that Keaton extends the attraction to the way he is using the
cinematic apparatus. Such an understanding of attraction in Keaton's cinema
allows for the reinterpretation of the traditionally perceived tension between
gag and narrative - in a wider context the narratives of the discussed films
themselves function similarly to gags.
A political cartoon is an amusing and effective drawing that
reflects and shapes opinions and attitudes related to politics. It is not
merely a humorous illustration but rather a persuasive way of communication.
The political cartoonist uses different means to convey his message, such as
symbols, exaggeration, tag, compression of ideas, analogies, and irony. The
various cognitive mechanisms that are relevant to creating and understanding
cartoons are known, and include models such as conceptual metaphor and
metonymy, conceptual integration (blending), as well as cultural and cognitive
models. The role of these schemes have been discussed by a relatively new trend
of research in the field. The present essay summarizes the rhetorical aspects,
introduces the concepts that have been defined by cognitive linguistics,
stressing specifically the differences between verbal and visual humor, and the
characteristics of cartoons that may be approached through visual metaphors.
Contemporary
Hungarian film
In
my essay I explore the problem of theatricality in contemporary Hungarian
cinema. I analyze the oeuvre of two young directors, Szabolcs Hajdu and Kornél
Mundruczó. I focus on the significance of theatricality in deconstructing the
classical narrative and creating new modes of attraction for the audience. I
also try to show the significant difference between the respective theatricality
in Hajdu's and Mundruczo's movies.
The paper discusses the perpetuation of unconventional
stylistic features of the modern film, as well as its possibilities of introducing
a new, existential meaning in the Hungarian film production of the 1970s and
1980s. "New-narrative" films experimenting with narrative forms display an
ambition of the filmic medium to join other, extraneous formations (such as
music, literature, theatre), fulfilling thus the modernist ideal that the film
as a "free indirect discourse" will demolish the monolithic unity of filmic
narration. The study highlights three focal points of the above ambition in
András Jeles' films, examining: the collision and confrontation of documentary
and fictional narrative forms; the asynchronous relations of image markers not
subordinated to the narration, as well as sound markers; and finally the
presence of the paradox visual field occurring with the refraction of the
filmic nature. All three aspects subserve the investigation of the experience of strangeness or
eventlikeness, understood in the sense of an unrepeatable individuality
(ipseity) and otherness (alterity), which in Jeles' art emerges as a result of
the overdrawn film image, or the insertion of some sort of peculiar viewpoint.
Diána Groó, member of a new generation of Hungarian filmmakers
known as the Simó-class started her career around the end of the 1990s. Her
ouevre shows a powerful auterist intention, with themes showing the influence
of the "Jewish renaissance", a revival of Jewish heritage and a
generation's pursuit of Jewish identity after the change of regime in 1989. In her short films
and feature Miracle in Cracow she establishes a net of symbols, carefully
constructed from a few iconic motifs, drawing inspiration both from the topics
of Ashkenazi Jewish tradition and history as well as mainstream society's
stereotypes regarding Jews. This study aims at mapping this network, pointing
out the central elements in the oeuvre and thus introducing a new points of
reference for interpretation.
Péter Kőhalmi analyzes Slow Mirror, a film by the
Buharov brothers. The aim of his writing is to approximate the film, to gain a
possible understanding of the ultimate incomprehensibility of Slow Mirror.
However, this leads to another problem. If something continually escapes the
frame of rationality, the theories and categories through which rationality is
revealed can also serve us only temporarily, pushing our reading toward new
theoretical alternatives. The task of Kőhalmi's writing thus becomes two-faced:
to approximate the film on the one hand, and on the other hand, within the
frames of narratological and aesthetic understandings, to activate a theory -
the theory of Miklós Erdély - which serves the conceptualization of the film as
a whole. (In a reversed sense: if his analysis gains its aim, perhaps we will
know more about the film and about the limitations of the activated theories,
which thus may support the proposition that Erdély's multilayered theory is not
helpful regarding merely his own artistic works or the neoavantgarde, but may
be applied in connection with contemporary cinema as well.)
Student's workshop
The main thesis of the study is that Antonioni's
Blow-Up (1966) explores not only the problematic relationship between art and
reality, but more specifically, it discusses the relation of film to reality.
By a thorough analysis of different devices comprehensible as visual tricks
(editing, structuring of the filmic space, etc.) we can argue that Blow-Up
suggests that our own seeing deceives us, inasmuch as the visual experience is
constituted by the viewer's intellectual involvement. The viewer, precisely
like the protagonist of the film, seems to witness a murder, while his
interpreting process is analogous with the structuring of the film - reality,
for the viewer, equals the fictional illusion of the film. By using the
aforementioned visual tricks Antonioni aims to break down seeing itself that
establishes the film experience, similarly to the avant-garde tradition.
The essay examines the
connection between István Örkény's novel Cat's Play (Macskajáték) and its
adaptation directed by Károly Makk. The brief overview focuses on the narrative
structure of the novel and the film respectively, and pays attention to the
narrative changes, whereby the film can be simultaneously close to both Örkény's
novel and its own medium.
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