This year, I was fortunate enough to sample two impressive, yet wholly distinct forms of animation. The two shorts I had seen were the films Meeting MacGuffin and The World of Tomorrow 1&2. Meeting MacGuffin: An Ecological Thriller was a bizarre yet charming take upon a dystopian future where humanity is all but extinct -- and the ascendant surviving species (typical woodland creatures) have taken to creating humanlike proxies known as "homies," constructed from the discarded bodyparts that are all that remain from humanity, itself. Utilizing stop motion animation with figures constructed from dolls and other such crafting materials, the film gives a charming feeling of a dark and macabre fairy tale -- paired with the gentle voiceover performances, yet all together unsettling aesthetic, I don't know if I would necessarily classify this film as a "thriller," as there were really no moments of suspense found within. It would be my own assumption that the ...
In her exploration of the film Groundhog Day (1993) author Kristin Thompson asserts that the film, despite the originality of its premise and narrative method, adheres to numerous classical Hollywood filmmaking standards. Though high concept films are generally viewed as the antithesis of auteurism, films such as Groundhog Day fill a particular niche that proves that while a film may be fantastical it is, by no means, devoid of artistic value. Indeed, the simplicity of explanation of a high concept film grants the filmmaker the potential to be complex and poignant in their storytelling, showing audiences a new cinematic experience that otherwise traditional Hollywood filmmaking otherwise denies them. Groundhog Day features a single protagonist, Phil Connors, trapped within an endless loop of the eponymous holiday. In a departure from traditional Hollywood storytelling, which would insist upon spelling things out, plainly, for an audience, the reason for this myste...
Many among the Humanities often preoccupy themselves with the study of the ideology of mass art. Is art, particularly commercial, or mass art, merely a means of propagating a dominant culture’s ideology? Or, barring that, is it a matter of subverting that culture’s ideology? Must the study of rhetoric fall into one of those two categories -- either wholesale proselytization, or condemnation? The duality of such a standpoint is often a pitfall for many academics, as the reliance upon cultural ideology can be used as a crutch to avoid a true critical analysis. Such a shortcut, however, is capable of backfiring on the scholar -- for if their critique of a subject centers purely upon the ideological, then by default, their criticism is too far steeped within their own ideology as to be considered a truly neutral analysis. Whether epistemic (a viewpoint based upon the logic of said ideology), or dominant (an ideology shared b...
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