Perspectives: Thesis Proposal - OGR

@Phil - Perspectives: Cone of Cogency

My aim is to establish the importance of play in education and then make the point that video games are just another form of play and should therefore have a place in the classroom. I am unsure if video games should be included in the first chapter, linking them to other forms of play at this point, or if this connection should be made only in the third chapter.

Perspectives Proof of Concept

Perspectives: 'Inception', 'Mullholland Drive', 'Scream'

Chrisopher Nolan's 'Inception' (2010):

Non-linear - vertically non-linear, we move through different layers of dreams.

Unreliable Narrator - big characteristic of postmodern culture/products, Cobb cannot tell reality from the dream and therefore the audience cannot be sure if they are in reality or not.

Ambiguity - The inability to know what we know, we don't know for sure if Cobb is still in the dream or not at the end of the film.

Hyperreality - The dream worlds are hyperreality. The film confronts different perceptions of reality and what is 'truly' real. For example there are people who choose to spend their lives dreaming, they prefer to live in this way and for them the dream is their reality.

Simulacrum - The Dreamworld and the projection version of Mal are simulations - imitations of the real thing.

David Lynch's 'Mullholland Drive' (2001):

Non-Linear Narrative - Things happen in strange orders and it is impossible to find a timeline.

Pastiche - Film-noir detective, Hollywood Success - pushes beyond formulas of Hollywood. Refuses to be the expected film.

Fragmented - reality is played with, there are stories within stories. Things that seem at first to have happened after something are in fact the cause.

Petit-narratives - there are a selection of interweaving storylines without a grand narrative.

Ambiguity - Neither the audience or characters can be sure of what is going on

Unreliable Narrator - The narrative begins from told from Betty's perspective but it then seems that Betty isn't what we thought as the Diane character is introduced. Nothing the viewer sees from Betty's perspective turns out to have been real and as the film goes on it seems that nothing we see has any truth to it.

Wes Craven's 'Scream' (1996):

Parody - This film is a parody of horror films, specifically the slasher genre.

Reflexive - It comments on and mocks the slasher genre, acknowledging that audiences have seen the same formula repeated many times.

Intertextuality - References other films in the genre such as 'Friday the 13th' (1980).

Deconstructs the audiences expectations of the genre and subverts tropes

Appropriation - Takes the Munch painting 'The Scream' and uses it as a rubber Halloween mask, mixing high and low culture.

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.

Perspectives Lecture 1 - Kill Bill

Postmodernism in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' (2003)

The anime sequence partway through the film is very different from the rest of the film and Tarantino includes it confidently; he is not making bad decisions, he is intentionally breaking from traditional film making practices. Tarantino intentionally draws the viewers attention to the fact that they are watching a film, and increasingly so as the film goes on.

Non-Linear Narrative - the film is broken up into sections and they are not in chronological order. The viewer sees The Bride cross the second person off her death list before we see her write this list, and she writes the list after she crosses the first person off. There are also points in the film where we move more quickly back and forth in time than in others.

There is pastiche of film and music Genres. Tarantino combines different film genres and also plays music that wouldn't traditionally be combined with certain settings. Such as Spanish  and surfer music played over an action scene set in Tokyo that is influenced by Asian action films.