Bizarní film Wese Andersona (a dalších)

Předmět není vypsán Nerozvrhuje se

Garant předmětu

Jméno vyučujícího (jména vyučujících)

Katedra

Předmět zajišťuje Kabinet teorie a historie audiovize

Obsah

Genre theory may seem to have little to do with creative practice; but, ideas about media categories derive from understandings of media itself, and have helped shape creative decision-making. Accordingly, this course explores how genre theory can help with the assembly of one particular type of film: Quirky Cinema – those eye-catching, bitter-sweet dramedies typically associated with the American writer-director Wes Anderson. Across six seminar-workshops, students will consider a) how film scholars have understood this format, b) how their ideas manifest in individual films, and c) how their contributions can help students create innovative contributions to this genre. Students will therefore consider Quirky Cinema’s distinctive textual model, its indie branding, its address to hipster audiences, its Manic Pixie Dream Girls, its father figures, and its politics. Having examined these topics in relation to Rushmore (1998), Ghost World (2001), Me, Earl & the Dying Girl (2015), Ruby Sparks (2012), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), and Jojo Rabbit (2019), students will develop their own Quirky Cinema concept in a final creative project.

Výsledky učení

This course uses the case of Quirky Cinema to promote critical understandings of audio-visual formats, considering their aesthetic, industrial, and socio-cultural dimensions. The course therefore familiarizes students with transferable tools, frameworks, approaches, and skills that promise to deepen their understanding of media formats both on and beyond this course. By the end of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate a capacity to synthesize understandings of scholarly frameworks and textual and contextual analyses. Their proficiency in these areas will be assessed through their production of a short video essay pitching their original concept for a Quirky film, one that requires direct engagement with the key ideas about Quirky Cinema introduced on this course. This will require students to develop insights on the following areas:

• •Quirky and formula film-making
• •Quirky and cultural politics
• •Quirky and audience address
• •Quirky and gender representation
• •Quirky and fatherhood
• •Quirky and politics

For learning outcomes specific to each of these topics, please see individual session outlines below.

Předpoklady a další požadavky

This course is built around six biweekly seminar-workshops. The sessions will combine elements of both traditional seminars and lectures, insomuch as student-focused discussions are supported with brief framing, summarizing, and contextual “lecturettes”. As preparation, students are expected to study the provided scholarship and the home screenings in relation to the questions included in the syllabus; these will form the basis of discussions, to which students are expected actively to contribute. Such an approach is intended to maximize students’ engagement and comprehension of the learning outcomes of each session and the course as a whole.

Literatura

READINGS:

• Bannister, Matthew. “Is Jojo-Rabbit an Anti-Hate Satire?” in Eye of the Taika: New Zealand Comedy and the Films of Taika Waititi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021: 214–224.
• MacDowell, James. “Notes on Quirky”, Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, Issue 1 (2010): 1-16.
• Newman, Michael Z. “Indie Culture: In Pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative”, Cinema Journal 48.3 (2009): 16–34.
• Newman, Michael Z. “Movies for Hipsters”, in Geoff King, Claire Molloy, and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds), American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood, and Beyond. London: Routledge, 2013: 71–82.
• Robe, Chris. “Because I Hate Fathers, and I Never Wanted to Be One: Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the ‘Crisis’ of the Patriarch”, in Timothy Shary (ed), Millennial Masculinity: Men in Contemporary American Cinema: Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2012: 101–121.
• Vazquez Rodriguez, Lucia Gloria. “500 Days of Postfeminism: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Stereotype in its Contexts”, Prisma Social 2 (2017): 167–201.

SCREENINGS:

• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Mariella Heller, 2019)
• Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001)
• Jojo Rabbit (Tiaka Waititi, 2019)
• Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, 2015)
• Ruby Sparks (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, 2012)
• Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)

Hodnoticí metody a kritéria

ASSESSMENT

At the end of the course, students are to submit a short video, pitching their original Quirky Cinema concept.

Value: 100% of Final Grade

Due Date: TBA

Advice and Learning Outcomes: Towards the end of the course, an advice sheet will be issued spotlighting the general qualities graded highly on this course.

Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment

• 1. An understanding of The Quirky Model
• 2. An understanding of Indie Branding
• 3. An understanding of Address to Hipster Audiences
• 4. An understanding of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope
• 5. An understanding of the Father Figure trope.
• 6. An understanding of political quirky.
• 6. An innovative approach to working with these core components of Quirky Cinema.

All video essays are to be submitted in VLC-playable format to _richardandrew.nowell@famu.cz_

NB: Extensions can be arranged with the instructor in advance, based on health, humanitarian, and other grounds.

Tutorials

Students may arrange one-on-one tutorials to discuss any issues arising from the course, including its assessment. Meetings can be arranged by email and will take place online or in-person at a time of mutual convenience.

Feedback

Each student will be emailed individually with detailed personal feedback on their video essay. This feedback is designed to be constructive, so will spotlight strengths, shortcomings, and suggestions on how their submission might have been elevated.

General Evaluation: Grades from A-F will be awarded based on the following general criteria. Please see above for the specific areas of assessment for the prompt. Please note that appropriate leeway will be afforded to students using English as a second language.

Poznámka

COURSE OUTLINE

SESSION ONETHE QUIRKY MODEL

Where it is often considered to represent the whimsical worldview of eccentric filmmakers, this session suggests that quirky is perhaps best understood as a longstanding industry format, one that most certainly includes – but also preceded and exceeds – Wes Anderson’s high-profile adoption of it. Students will consider how The Quirky Model is characterized by a combination of aesthetic, tonal, and thematic elements that invites audiences to process these films in a quite distinctive fashion. In so doing, they will be furnished with a flexible framework with which to develop their own Quirky Cinema concept.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I: Quirky cinema’s distinctive content.
• II: Quirky cinema’s distinctive themes.
• III: Quirky cinema’s distinctive modes of address.

Preparation

Reading: MacDowell, 1–16.

• 1. What are quirky films about?
• 2. Why do quirky films look the way they do?
• 3. How do quirky films encourage audiences to evaluate or process this material?

Home Screening: Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)

• 1.How would you describe the look and sound of this film?
• 2.What emotional themes does this film explore?
• 3.How did you respond emotionally to the characters and situations in this film?

SESSION TWOTHE HIPSTER AUDIENCE

This session considers how the targeting of a key audience segment contributes to the ways Quirky Cinema operates. Students will examine how filmmakers using the Quirky Model address “hipsters” as viewers, exploring how depictions of trauma, coping, and renewal imbue the films with a covert therapeutic potential for a sensitive audience who might be reticent to expose its vulnerabilities in public. In so doing, students will be furnished with an emotional-thematic core for their original Quirky Cinema concept.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I. Hipster identity.
• II. Hipsters and trauma.
• III. Hipsters and culture.

Preparation

Reading: Newman (2013), 71-82.

• 1. How does Newman define the hipster?
• 2. What role does growing up play for this subcultural identity?
• 3. What roles does culture play for hipsters?

Home Screening: Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001)

• 1. How does this film depict hipster characters?
• 2. What roles does culture play in their lives?
• 3. What roles does this suggest the films might play in the lives of real-world hipsters?

SESSION THREEINDIE BRANDING

This session explores Quirky Cinema’s use of indie branding. In particular, students will examine how the core values of indie culture are mobilized by and in quirky films, considering aspects such as soundtracks, inter-textual references to other media, and the nature of the characters and the worlds they inhabit. In so doing, this session provides students with a means of constructing the cultural and taste politics of their original Quirky Cinema concept.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I. The values of Indie Culture.
• II. The logics of Indie branding.
• III. How indie values are projected by/in quirky films.

Preparation

Reading: Newman (2009), 16-34

• 1. What is indie’s relationship to the “mainstream”?
• 2. What are the three core values that define indie?
• 3. How are these core values sometimes projected in media works?

Home Screening: Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, 2015)

• 1. How does this film use characters, narrative, and aesthetics to project indie’s core values?
• 2. How does this film use depictions of creative practice to position itself as indie?
• 3. How does this film use its content to distance itself from the mainstream”?

SESSION FOURMANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRLS

The session focuses on quirky cinema’s depiction of girls and women, through an examination of the format’s most notorious character-type: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Students will consider whether these characters have been primarily used to support the supposed male-orientation of the films, or whether they may also be used to address female audiences, even critiquing men on the screen and in front of it. In so doing, students will be furnished with a key character-type for their original Quirky Cinema concept.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I. The characterization of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
• II. The real-world phenomena this character-type mediates.
• III. The ways this character-type is used to address the audiences of quirky films.

Preparation

Reading: Vazquez Rodriguez, 168–201.

• 1. What are the defining traits of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
• 2. How do such characters embody ideas about femininity?
• 3. Why does this particular author find the Manic Pixie Dream Girl so troubling?

Home Screening: Ruby Sparks (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, 2012)

• 1. To what extent does this film mobilize the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character-type?
• 2. How does this film use this character to speak to male viewers and to female viewers?
• 3. Do these films have something critical to say about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

SESSION FIVEFATHER FIGURES

This session will consider whether Quirky Cinema is really a format with major “daddy issues”, given its supposed propensity for absent, inept, and mean patriarchs. Students will assess this claim, considering whether some quirky films actually offer more sympathetic portrayals of father figures. In so doing, students will be furnished with another key trope for their original Quirky Cinema concept.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I. How quirky films are argued routinely to critiques father figures.
• II. More sensitive depictions of father figures in these films.
• III. How address to older audiences drives more positive depictions.

Preparation

Reading: Robe, 101–121.

• 1. What psychological shortcomings characterize older males in Wes Anderson’s films?
• 2. Why do they suffer from these issues?
• 3. How do these issues affect their conduct as fathers?

Home Screening: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Mariella Heller, 2019)

• 1. How are fathers – literal and symbolic – depicted in this film?
• 2. How might this material be geared to fathers (or sons/daughters) in the audience?
• 3. How do these films suggest quirky cinema itself can help support fathers in the audience?

SESSION SIX QUIRKY POLITICS

This session seeks to challenge the oft-levelled charge that quirky films have failed to explore wider socio-political issues. Students will therefore examine those films that do in fact use the quirky format to address some of the most pressing issues of the day, in this case using historical events to shine a light on contemporary concerns.

Targeted Learning Outcomes

A sound understanding of:

• I. Why Quirky Cinema is often considered apolitical.
• II. Why some quirky films do engage with serious socio-political concerns.
• III. Why this engagement is sometimes presented obliquely in the films.

Preparation

Reading: Bannister, 214–224.

• 1. How did issues of social critique factor into the popular reception of Jojo Rabbit?
• 2. What does Bannister feel about the film’s socio-political engagement?
• 3. Where do you stand on this issue?

Home Screening: Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019)

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