22 November 2017

Perspectives - Definitions

Metanarrative: A grand narrative, an all encompassing theme. Provides structure for beliefs. Gender, science, religion etc.

Objective: Unaffected by personal opinion/experience. Independent of the individual.

Universal: Relating to or understood by all. Belonging to all, something experienced and understood worldwide.

Ahistorical: Lacking in historical context, outside of history. Without date, impossible to date.

Historically ignorant or intentionally inaccurate.

Irreducible: Cannot be made smaller or broken down/separated into more parts. Unable to be further simplified.

Axiomatic: Unquestionable. Self-evident.

Scepticism: Questioning, not believing things as true.

Relativism: There is no absolute truth, truth is relative. Different people can believe different/opposing things as true, one size does not and cannot fit all. Truth shifts.

Unreliable Narrator: The narrator is the person whose point of view we experience in a story/film. If a narrator is unreliable the viewer cannot trust/believe the information shown to be objectively true or real.

Avant-garde: Innovative or inventive. Pushes boundaries, exploratory.

Utopia: Ideal society, perfect, a place where everyone would be happy to live.

Dystopia: A bad society, awful, a place where everyone would be unhappy to live.

Ideology: A set of beliefs and ideals forming a theory.

Normativity: When there is a standard for normal (certain things designated as desirable while other things are bad).

Binary Opposition: Pair of terms that directly oppose eachother, such as good/bad. People think in binary positions often.

Deconstruction: Take something apart, take something that is fixed and question it, shine light on its inner workings.

Superficial: On the surface, exterior.

Reflexive: Self-referential, looking in on or questioning itself.

Appropriation: Copying something and representing it in a different context.

Parody: Imitation that is humorous/exaggerated.

Irony: Something intended for one thing having a different result, often opposite. Using something to express something different/opposite. Often humorous.

Pastiche: Imitation of a work/artist/period/style.

Bricolage: Making something out of several different things.

Nostalgia: Sentimental, longing for the past.

Eclectic Nostalgia: Nostalgia specific to pop culture.

Genre: We have expectations of horror/musical/superhero films and those expectations come from what we have seen before. Recognisable stylistic features. A grand narrative.

Metafiction: Reflexive, self-reflective. Alluding to its own artificiality. Playing with audience's suspension of disbelief. A horror film having a conversation about the horror genre is metafiction.

Narcissistic: Self centred. Interested in or concerned with itself.

Intertextuality: Links or relationships between texts, how they influence one another.

The 4th wall: The invisible wall separating characters and audience in a play/film.

Mise en abyme: A work reflecting on itself. Caught between representations. When a picture appears within itself.

Hyperreality: More real than real. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

Simulation: Imitation of something real.

Simulacra: An unsatisfactory imitation, an imitation of an interpretation of something. An imitation of something that was never real to begin with.

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