Notas sobre o metamodernismo

Os anos de excessos pós-modernos, de pastiche e parataxe, terminaram. De fato, se dermos crédito aos tantos acadêmicos, críticos e especialistas cujos livros e ensaios têm descrito o declínio e o fim do pós-modernismo, eles já teriam terminado há muito tempo. Se, entretanto, esses comentadores concordam que a condição pós-moderna foi abandonada, eles não parecem estar tão de acordo quanto a reconhecer o estado a que tal abandono teria dado lugar. Neste ensaio, tentaremos delimitar os contornos desse discurso, examinando desenvolvimentos recentes em arquitetura,arte e cinema. Chamaremos esse discurso, oscilante entre um entusiasmo moderno e uma ironia pós-moderna, de metamodernismo. Sustentamos que o metamoderno pode ser expresso, mais clara embora não exclusivamente, pela recente reviravolta neorromântica associada à arquitetura de Herzog deMeuron, às instalações de Bas Jan Ader, às colagens de David Thorpe, às pinturas de Kaye Donachie e aos filmes de Michel Gondry

Reality beckons: metamodernist depthiness beyond panfictionality

It is often argued that postmodernism has been succeeded by a new dominant cultural logic. We conceive of this new logic as metamodernism. Whilst some twenty-first century texts still engage with and utilise postmodernist practices, they put these practices to new use. In this article, we investigate the metamodern usage of the typically postmodernist devices of metatextuality and ontological slippage in two genres: autofiction and true crime documentary. Specifically, we analyse Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and the Netflix mini-series The Keepers, demonstrating that forms of fictionalisation, metafictionality and ontological blurring between fiction and reality have been repurposed. We argue that, rather than expand the scope of fiction, overriding reality, the metamodernist repurposing of postmodernist textual strategies generates a kind of ‘reality-effect’

Scenes from the suburbs : the surburb in contemporary US film and television

In recent years, Hollywood has increasingly suburbanised; US television, too, is progressively suburban. This can hardly be considered surprising, since it mirrors America's changing demographic: by 2000, more than half of all Americans inhabited a suburban dwelling and that number is still steadily increasing. The only thing that is surprising is that it seems to have gone by film and television critics unnoticed. This thesis seeks to address this critical gap. Examining the representation of the suburb across genres and formats, it asks what it means to be 'suburban'. In the first chapter, the thesis examines the ontology of the suburb as fictional entity in Pleasantville. The second and third chapter are concerned with the suburban mise-en-scene. Chapter Two concentrates in particular on the relationship between visual style and geography in Happiness, while the third chapter focuses on technical issues of width, depth, and volume in The Simpsons and King of the Hill. The final two chapters engage with the construction of the suburb as a social space. In the fourth chapter Desperate Housewives is analysed in order to come to an understanding of the relationships between the suburb and gender. Chapter Five, finally, looks at the representation of space and age in three teen noirs - Brick, Chumscrubber, and Alpha Dog - so as to suggest another language via which the cinematic and televisual suburb can be discussed in more complex and rewarding ways. The thesis argues that what makes a suburb suburban is not any particular spatiality, but a variable interplay between forms and meanings that renders an environment at once fixed and radically instable.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Flat Film: Strategies of depthlessness in Pleasantville and La Haine

In this essay I consider the device of depthlessness in film. I am interested in particular in the ways in which this device can determine, or at least raise questions about, the nature of the fictional world. Taking my cue from two films from the turn of the century – Gary Ross' 1998 film Pleasantville and Matthieu Kassovitz' 1995 La Haine – as well as, more broadly, arts historical and cultural theoretical debates, where rather more attention has been devoted to the issue of depthlessness, I focus on moments in which depth, that is, in Andre Bazin's oft-cited words, the “continuity” of the fictional realm, is flattened so as to trace the correlation between depthlessness and the ontology of the fictional world. The two strategies I look at are shallow focus and the dolly zoom. What I intend, here, is to offer some first, superficial (no pun intended), reflections that may allow us to begin thinking about this cinematic notion of the depthless as a device and concept in its own right, with its own rationales and implications, just as art historians and cultural theorists have found it an interesting concept by which to study and categorize artistic and cultural developments. There is so much discussion in film studies about depth – from Bazin's discourse about neorealism's “decisive step forward” re-introducing deep focus, to Gilles Deleuze's talk about Orson Welles' “freeing” of depth, it might be helpful to consider its supposedly backwards, “restrictive” antithesis as well

Introduction: The Surfaces of Film-Philosophy

Within Film Studies and Philosophy accounts of superficiality and cinema are few and far between. If there is any talk of it at all, more often than not, it is decidedly hostile. A similar sense of skepticism is reserved for superficiality's conceptual relatives: hollowness, depthlessness, slightness, slimness, thinness and, of course, flatness. A superficial reading is one that pays little attention to detail. A slight film is a film without weight. A thin story lacks substance, or worse, conviction, a tale that could not withstand the most cursory analysis. “Flat” is another word for dull. Similarly, in critical theory depthlessness has lately become a byword for a lack of historicity and affect; while shallowness has long been associated with inauthenticity. Indeed, even those scholars who appear to be appreciative of surfaces, foremost among them Gilles Deleuze, turn critical when it concerns the cinematic apparatus: the single, isolated plane is a prison where time is “caught” (2005, p. 105). [...

Authenticity? Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age

"The everyday connotations of the original, the real, sincere, valid, historical or deep are well-known, and the opposite of the authentic may then be the superficial, false, not-what-it-seems, or just new. Nonetheless 'the real thing’ is still a fruitful starting point to analyze changes in the post-digital society. Digital technology is embedded in almost every personal relationship, in labour conditions, and in aesthetic practices. What does this mean for the 'authentic'? To unfold the nuances of the concept of contemporary authenticity this book aims to bring together different thinkers to reflect on the meaning of the authentic now. As a process and as a fluid and performative scheme to be enacted at any time—not just in terms of art and art making but flowing into every single nook of contemporary life, from the intimate to the public." -- Publisher's website

Close-Up Great Cinematic Performances Volume 1: America

Analyses what makes an acting performance excellent, through a range of examples from American filmThis two-volume set presents detailed interpretations of singular performances by several of the most compelling actors in cinema history, asking in many different and complementary ways what makes performance meaningful, how it reflects a director's style, as well as how it contributes to the development of national cinemas and cultures. Whether noting the precise ways actors shape film narrative, achieve emotional effect, or move toward political subversion, the essays in these books innovate new approaches to studying screen performance as an art form and cultural force.This volume focuses on American cinema, including case studies of key performances from actors like Bette Davis, Irene Dunne, Whoopi Goldberg, Cary Grant, Oscar Isaac, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Sidney Poitier, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sellers, Kristen Stewart, and Ethel Waters, amongst many others.Read the introduction (pdf)ContributorsBrenda Austin-Smith, University of ManitobaRebecca Bell-Metereau, Texas State UniversityCharles Ramírez Berg, University of Texas at AustinJanet Bergstrom, UCLAJohn Bruns College of CharlestonAlex Clayton, University of BristolShonni Enelow, Fordham UniversityAnna Everett, University of California, Santa BarbaraLucy Fischer, University of PittsburghLester D. Friedman, Hobart and William Smith CollegesFrances Gateward, California State University NorthridgeDavid Greven, University of South CarolinaJason Jacobs, University of QueenslandElliott Logan, University of Queensland, BrisbaneDouglas McFarland, Flagler College, Saint AugustineAdrienne L. McLean, University of Texas at DallasR. Barton Palmer, Clemson UniversityHomer B. Pettey, University of ArizonaMurray Pomerance, Ryerson University William Rothman, University of MiamiSteven Rybin, Minnesota State University, MankatoKyle Stevens, Appalachian State UniversityGeorge Toles, University of ManitobaDaniel Varndell, University of WinchesterTimotheus Vermeulen, University of OsloRick Warner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill