Some thoughts on the utopian film (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
This book is the first major study on utopias in nonfiction film. Since the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia more than 500 years ago, countless books have been written which describe a better world. But in film, positive utopias seem to be nonexistent. So far, research has focused almost exclusively on dystopias, since positive outlooks seem to run contrary to the media’s requirement. Utopias in Nonfiction Film takes a new approach; starting from the insight that literary utopias are first and foremost meant as a reaction to the ills of the present and not as entertaining stories, it looks at documentary and propaganda films, an area which so far has been completely ignored by research. Combining insights from documentary research and utopian studies, a vast and very diverse corpus of films is analysed. Among them are Zionist propaganda films, cinematic city utopias, socialist films of the future as well as web videos produced by the Islamist terrorist group ISIS.
The Visualisation of Utopia in Recent Science Fiction Film
Colloquy 14
Utopia can be conceived as a possibility a space within language, a set of principles, or the product of technological development but it cannot be separated from questions of place, or more accurately, questions of "no place." 1 In between the theoretically imaginable utopia and its realisation in a particular time and place, there is a space of critique, which is exploited in anti-Utopian and critical dystopian narratives. 2 In Science Fiction narratives of this kind, technology is responsible for the transformation of the utopian impulse into a set of principles that are precisely stated and rigidly enforced. The critique focuses on the impossibility of any systematic realisation of a eutopia, where the positive qualities of freedom, individualism and creativity are nurtured, due to the reductive force of instrumental reason. The films Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg (Dreamworks, 2002), and Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol (Columbia, 1997), both examine utopian claims through speculation on the possible future use of current technologies, the tools of crime investigation and the genome project respectively. However, examining the plot does not attend sufficiently to the particular properties of film and how it, as a medium, constructs utopia as a place. This article aims to address this issue by examining how technologically derived images of utopia are realised in the visual space of film, that is, on the level of the mise en scène. These images are often dystopic but the distinction between dystopia and eutopia is not crucial to the argument because the aim is not to return utopianism to its place at the vanguard of progressive politics nor is it to reject utopianism on the basis that it is unrealisable but rather to examine how technology and utopianism can combine in the visual language of film. 3 The issue examined here is how utopia is conceived according to the specific features of the medium rather than to present an overarching narrative judgement as to the value of utopian principles. In Gattaca, the utopianism of a genetically determined future is reproduced in the mise en scène as a set of aesthetic principles whereas in Minority Report the utopian technology itself resembles the apparatus of film. This involves two quite different approaches to the visualisation of utopia: 4 in Gattaca, utopia is embodied in a society in which there can be "no other place," realised through the subtraction or reduction of visual difference; in Minority Report, utopia is an expression of a panoptic regime that can incorporate all visual and cultural difference such that the visible is "every place."
Utopia & Dystopia on the Screen
Dreams of an ideal society called utopia and its negative counterpart dystopia have been fascinating topics for the literary imagination and have also found their way to the screen. This chapter offers a framework for understanding this genre and will analyse several dystopian movies (focusing on adaptations of literary works such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange, but not excluding original movies, such as Equilibrium). Special emphasis will be laid on the recent interest in dystopian themes. Originally published in Dorottya Jászay and Andrea Velich (eds) Film and Culture, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2016, 30-43 https://edit.elte.hu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10831/30209/FSA.Film%20and%20Culture.Angol-Amerikai%20Int%C3%A9zet.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
Utopia and Reality. Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds
2020
Since publication of Thomas More‘s «Utopia» more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world; positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship – and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries.
Cinema of the Not-Yet: The Utopian Promise of Film as Heterotopia
Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s writings on utopia, Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, and the ‘affective turn’ in social theory, I argue that cinema is by its nature heterotopic: it creates worlds that are other than the ‘real world’ but that relate to that world in multiple and contradictory ways. The landscapes and people portrayed in film are affectively charged in ways that alter viewers’ relationship to the real objects denoted or signified by them. But it is the larger context of social and cultural movements that mobilizes or fails to mobilize this affective charge to draw out its critical utopian potentials. I examine four films from the 1970s—Deliverance, The Wicker Man, Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, and Stalker—as examples of richly heterotopic films that elicited utopian as well as dystopian affects in their audiences, and I discuss some ways in which American environmentalists, British Pagans, Europe’s ‘generation of ’68’, and Soviet citizens worked with these affects to imagine change in their respective societies.
The humanities investigation sets out to explore the concepts of a sub-genre of science fiction – dystopian narratives and its counter-part, utopian narratives. Initially exploring the nature of science fiction the study analyses how SF interacts with society, audiences and technology. Many researchers recognize SF as far more than just a genre of media exclusive to entertainment, the genre has practicalities in relating fields of science as well as design and engineering. Using two methodologies of analysis; the fields of both textual and audience and applying them to two dystopian SF films – Children of Men (2006) and Equilibrium (2002) the investigation explores different concepts relating to society including: terrorism, immigration, religion and fan-fiction. This wide range of study allows for a general approach towards the nature of SF, looking closely at the link between producer and audience of media texts. The aim is to find whether SF has deeper implications in society and its predictions of our future, and use theorists and ideas to conduct further analysis.
On Utopia, Adaptation, and Utopian Film Analysis: Artur Blaim And Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim
Mediated Utopias: From Literature to Cinema
The prevailing criticism of Mary Bradley Lane's Mizora: A Prophecy, a 19 th-century utopia that entered the feminist literary canon after it was reissued by Greg Press in 1975, relatively unanimously assumes that the asexual subterranean race of the Mizorans represents homo sapiens. Perceived by the narrator-a visitor from Tsarist Russia and a friend to Polish insurrectionists-as women representing an advanced civilization, and only sporadically as fairies, the race of "blonde beauties" is believed to be typical of feminist utopias. Undermining genderification present in the narratorial as well as critical discourse, the article will claim that the status of Mizorans, the race spawned by scientists thousands of years ago, wavers between transhuman and posthuman.
The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia
The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia, co-edited by Elizabeth A Papazian and Caroline Eades. London: Wallflower Press, November 2016 (ISBN: 9780231176958 (pbk), 9780231176941 (hbk), 9780231851039 (e-book)., 2016
With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema—fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay. Includes contributions by Luka Arsenjuk, Martine Beugnet, Luca Caminati, Timothy Corrigan, Oliver Gaycken, Anne Eakin-Moss, Ernesto Livon-Grosman, Laura U. Marks, Laura Rascaroli, Mauro Resmini, and Eric Zakim.