Level 5 – Academic year 2010/2011
“WITH CLOSE REFERENCE TO POSTMODERN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA EXPLORE THE NOTION OF GENRE HYBRIDITY ”
Camilla Cabras K09198598
Teresa Correia K0921789
Ioannis Kostarias K0944202
Milica Stanišić K0823899
Assignment: one 3,000 word group essay; four 1,000 word personal commentaries.
Module leader: Tom Whittaker
Tutor: Davina Quinlivan
There was a time in cinema history when audiences chose their Friday night movie because it was released by a certain studio, or because it was classified as representative of a genre, therefore they knew quite precisely what to expect: usual themes and settings, recognisable iconography and cinematographic style, possibly common narrative structure and devices, familiar faces starring in the roles they were mostly known for. All these features used to be constantly present throughout the entire movie, and it was unlikely to see such defining boundaries being crossed. In the mid 1980s the filmic iconography and themes were subject to significant changes, in the era of a flourishing cultural movement known by the name of Postmodernism, which affected all major areas of expression and art, including cinema, music, and literature. Considering this statement, it would be worthy to indicate how the genre theory has changed, focusing on specific cinematic genres, from drama to science fiction.
The genre boundaries progressively faded, and the existence of more than one within a film occurred. Therefore genre hybridity became a predominant feature of postmodern worldwide cinema. Around the 1980s, hybridity as a notion occurred in Hollywood film industry as well.
This essay will discuss and question the relationship between cinematic genres and postmodernism.
The emergence of Postmodernism and the development of genre hybridity in relation to Jim Jarmusch 's work
It could be argued that genre hybridity is one of the
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