With the use of chiaroscuro lighting, femme fatale, overtly use of sets (an obvious fake but still wonderful and embraced), film noir does have its dark German expressionist influence side. The genre operates in the dark where mystery is the key tropes and viewers almost always see a detective. I did just called it a genre. But is it? House (1986) shared that there are both sides to the argument. Some say it’s not a genre, that it is merely a “specific period of film history” or a film movement. We also prospect that film noir is the mood of film, the style and tone rather than genre. I myself believes film noir to be an adjective of a film, whether in terms of genre, style or movement. Just as we say that The man from U.N.C.L.E (2015) and the film we watched on week 8 screening, The Killers (1946), are film noirs. When we say “film noir”, we think of that mood where smokes are around you and all that jazz is playing. Thus, it can definitely be a genre since genres define and better yet describes what the film is.

We have been reconstructing “vampires” whether inspired contextually as if they are meant to adapt and evolve (or live immortally) throughout the eras. They basically camouflage as humans since they were invented through the classical Victorian era and now contemporary settings. From Dracula (1992) to the classical Interview With a Vampire (1994) to sci-fi inspired Underworld (2009) and the teen culture Twilight (2008), various different elements were played around to mix with the “vampire” genre. Despite the diversity of contexts and elements, we can tropes-out that they are usually wealthy, sunlight intolerant and many other characteristically tropes presents. These films often come back to the idea of love and romanticism in which defines the whole essence of vampire culture. Though, what I have found inspiring is vampire filmmaking that break out of this traditional pattern such in Twilight, where sunlight doesn’t burn but instead shines them. Also in A Girl Who Walks Alone at Night, a contemporary western-tinted vampire film not of the typical english/american origin but rather from Iran.

The idea that they co-exist with humans, even only on films makes me question how genre forms. Like the vampire culture, genres do also evolve and overtime barriers do get blurry. But aren’t we as viewers, audiences and filmmakers causes the change and vice versa? is each new film the one changing us?

As we watched One Night the Moon (2001), my ideologies about musical was a bit challenged considering a typical happy ending, harmonic emotion embodied by the genre. The film musical in the other hand, incorporates a gothic vibe in terms of the use of dangerous Australian landscape as its setting. Let alone an ending that devastates two parents who found their daughter died due to the area’s geography. The reading by Grant (2012) also talks about how only film musicals feature an imaginary space even if it is ostensibly a real location and depicts its space as charmed by the magic of performance. Nevertheless, it does reminded me of the film adaptation Into the Woods (2014) the presents a unique kind of musical in dark fairytale world. I’ve also encountered the difference between film musicals and film that contain lots of musicals. Musical refers to “films that involve the performance of song and/or dance by the characters and also include singing and/or dancing as an important element” (Grant, 2012). Where although a film includes a dominantly music and soundtracks as its subject such as Pitch Perfect (2012 &2015) and The Sapphires (2012), they are not musicals because the characters do not perform for expressing their emotion but rather consciously sing and dance for the purpose of stage performances.

In this week 4 studio we’ve watched the action sci-fi horror, James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). Or what we might call it now is not as “horror” as the contemporary supernatural horror films we see in today’s cinemas. Though, Aliens does incorporate horrific frightening devices such as the dark antagonist “being” and the intense background music that puts the audience’s heightened emotional stress at the edge of their seat. What is interesting about this kind of film are the action heroine, monsters and the portrayal of female power. As Bundtzen (1987) explored, “its depiction of female fecundity, prolific and devouring, is so powerful and fictively generative”. We can see Ripley’s motivational success towards saving the child and to destroy the alien monster that threats the humanity. We can also see the powerful female alien, responsible for more of the alien reproduction and their aim to conquer human home. Both sides are eager to survive and that is the nature of all species whether it is male or female. Aliens shows the idealised motherly figures, such as the alien and Ripley to protect their little ones for the survival of their species. Further depiction of the female sexuality is complemented with visual designs such as the alien form that “resembles female genitalia…” while showing a “graphic display of female anatomy” (Bundtzen, 1987). These designs can be a rather revolting representation of femininity, but its creativity happens to encourage the promoted female power and heroine across action (or other) films as well as our society. 

Here are some thoughts on various heroines as well as strong female antagonists/ characters:

Bundtzen, L. K. 1987, Film Quarterly, “Monstrous Mothers: Medusa, Grendel, and Now Alien”, vol. 40, no. 3, publish University of California Press, pp. 11-17.

Romantic comedies are one of those films that will just put us in ease and delights. With all the laidback slow-paced sequences, pop music and the happy ending, we ought to be immersed in a dreamlike world of romantic drug. As I was doing my readings, I came across Mortimer’s (2010) descriptive text of typical rom-com characteristics and its use of conventions. There are these particular comedic tastes generated by the gag and performance that are carried out with silly witty characters and exaggeration of elements. We would also see a subversion of the adult world for a more childish approach. Mortimer (2010) identifies the conventions used among the rom-com film:

• Displacement
• Disruption
• Gag performances
• Suspense and surprise
• Viewer’s predictability
• Incongruity

In Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle (1993), we can see a displacement of character when Annie and her fiancé both visits her family during christmas. Her fiancé, being allergic to almost everything is put in a position of embarrassment as he loudly sneezes during the family dinner. Therefore, the basics of displacement is about the sense of things being out of place just like this example of social displacement as a source of humour. We can also see disruption within rom-com narrative as conflict or influences occurs between the two main leads in When Harry Met Sally (1989). In typical rom-com films though, the audiences have already predicted that whoever is mentioned or shown within the film poster would end up together and it is the exploration of their journey that takes upon various surprises and suspenses. As Mortimer had stated, rom-com is about “the celebration of love and relationships, lifting the central characters out of tedium and loneliness of their normality” (2010).

Mortimer, C 2010, Romantic comedy, “Chapter 4: The comedy of romance“, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 69-83.

An eastern western in terms of genre is constructing the western through eastern eyes. Likewise, spaghetti western is the Italian perspective of western cinema and there are other familiar national culinary labels. This week’s screening of Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) by Takashi Miike centres its notion on Japanese way of looking at the western “western”. The film implements western elements and tropes meshed in with some tints of Japanese style. This includes the vintage Japanese temple-like buildings, Asian actors speaking heavy-accented English dialogue as well as the use of Samurai swords. Metaphorically speaking is how an eastern chef cooks a western dish, in which the dish has a specific eastern ‘taste’. Like some of those dishes, Sukiyaki Western Django has a certain unsatisfactory result (through a subjective perspective) possibly due to the mixture of eastern and western components.

Khoo (2013) explored “when all of these ingredients are thrown together, does the film create something new?” Having Tarantino and English dialogue in the film represents a cross-pollination of film sources between east and west. Furthermore, as I attended Stephen Teo’s talk on Asian cinemas, he pointed out a theory that we can apply as “Rasa Sentiment” or taste. So the main idea of this theory is;

Film is the food

Cooking is the construction

Rasa is the taste which generate emotions

Can we then look at eastern western as an eastern colonization of the western, or is it the other way around? Or does that colonization go both ways?

Instead of colonisation, is it simply a cross-contamination (or as Khoo mentioned, a “cross-pollination”) between the two industries?

Khoo, O 2013, Asian Studies Review, “Bad Jokes, Bad English, Good Copy: Sukiyaki Western Django, or How the West Was Won”, Routledge, vol. 37, no. 1, pp 80-95.