new hollywood film foundation degree jameson & postmodernism

New HollywoodFilm Foundation Degree

Jameson & Postmodernism

Today’s lesson

• Introduce David Lynch• Blue Velvet as a postmodern text• Introduce Frederic Jameson• Apply Jameson’s ideas to Blue Velvet

A Pair of Shoes Van Gogh, 1886

Diamond Dust ShoesAndy Warhol, 1980

Human story Social meaning Image contextualisedDust: Symbolic of the hard life of the labourerRepresentation of individuality and hardship

Collection of shoesSparkle of glitterNo social contextConsumer qualityDesigner brandsImpersonal clonesSuperficiality and indulgence

WHO IS DAVID LYNCH?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjxGkHPlDl8&list=PL620B9D37D8AB1392&index=3Documentary – Part 3

painter

photographer

sculptor

Advertising Director

cryptic narratives

Intertextual references:classical Hollywood

mystery & imagination

musician

musician

unique visuals

surrealism

plays with genre

Where ideas come from ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxr-7O1Bfxg&app=desktop0

dreams

Lynch’s film are tragedies about the overwhelming tendency for people to

condemn themselves to a world of darkness and

confusion, by succumbing to violence and the desire to

control others

Lynch’s Influences

Six Men Getting Sick

http://www.lynchnet.com/ads/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL620B9D37D8AB1392

25 Things You Didn't Know About 'Blue Velvet'

http://news.moviefone.com/2011/11/08/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-blue-velvet

/

Mysteries of Love: Documentary on Lynch and

Blue Velvet

HOW IS LYNCH RELATED TO POSTMODERNISM?

Postmodern Style

Surface style and appearance

Creating meaning through inter-textuality

Bricolage

Rejects boundaries and certainties

Fragmentation of linear narrative

EMPHASIS ON STYLE OVER NARRATIVE CAUSALITY

Irony

Blending High Art & Popular Culture

Eclectic

hybridity

Camp

PasticheParody

Frederic Jameson

Critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist point of view

WHAT ARE JAMESON VIEWS ON POSTMODERNISM & FILMS?

Postmodernism is expressed in

“cultural forms developed in a

capitalist society”

Postmodern mode of

production

cultural dominant

”depthlessness" “pastiche"

“waning of affect"

“fragmentation of affect"

A Pair of Shoes Van Gogh, 1886

Diamond Dust ShoesAndy Warhol, 1980

Human story Social meaning Image contextualisedDust: Symbolic of the hard life of the labourerRepresentation of individuality and hardshipModern invites to interpretation

Collection of shoesSparkle of glitterNo social contextConsumer qualityDesigner brandsImpersonal clonesSuperficiality and indulgencePostmodernism: what you see is what you get

DEPHTLESSNESS“Postmodernism rejects traditional model of the depth” (i.e.Freud)

WANNING OF AFFECT

“Subject has lost the ability to create a sense of continuity between past and future, and organise existence

into one coherent experience"

FRAGMENTATION OF SOCIETY

“eclectic piles of fragment"

PASTICHE

“with the fragmentation of subjectivity, postmodern artists cannot create new styles, but

imitate dead styles, without creating new meaning”

NOSTALGIA FILMS “Do not attempt to recapture or represent the “real” past but are structured around certain cultural myths and stereotypes

about the past

They offer “false realism:” films about other films, representations of other representations, films “in

which the history of aesthetic styles displaces

“real” history”

HISTORICISM

“random cannibalism of pasty styles"

POP HISTORY: “AMERICAN TV AND HOLLYWOOD

CULTURE"

American culture is the source of postmodernism

FILMMAKING LOOKS AT THE PAST FOR INSPIRATION

Nostalgia Films or 'la mode retro'

Historical films Films that reinvent the past Films that are set in the present that evoke the past

1. Historical films 2. Films that reinvent the past3. Films set in the present that evoke the past ?

Historical Films

‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’

Films that reinvent the past

‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’

Films set in the present that evoke the past

‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’

Lack of historical depth: depthlessness

Simulates the past through references to older films in a way that erases historical depth—with stylistic gestures without deeper meaning—and thus fails to recreate a "real" past

Chinatown (1974)

THE FILMANALYSIS & DISCUSSION

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