“There’s something very familiar about all this”: generic play and performance in the Back to the Future trilogy (Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990)

The Back to the Future Trilogy incorporates several different generic elements, including aspects of the fifties teen movie, science fiction, comedy and the western. These different modes playfully intertwine with each other creating a complex world of repetitions, echoes and modulations. This essay seeks to interrogate the construction of generic elements and the play between them through a close analysis of a repeated performance. Genre is signalled through various strategies employed within the construction of mise-en-scène, a significant portion of this, as I would like to argue, is transmitted through performance. The material detail of a performance – incorporating gesture, movement, voice, and even surrounding elements such as costume – as well as the way it its presented within a film is key to the establishment, invocation and coherence of genre. Furthermore, attention to the complexity of performance details, particularly in the manner in which they reverberate across texts, demonstrates the intricacy of genre and its inherent mutability. The Back to the Future trilogy represents a specific interest in the flexibility of genre. Within each film, and especially across all three, aspects of various genres are interlaced through both visual and narrative detail, thus constructing a dense layer of references both within and without the texts. To explore this patterning in more detail I will interrogate the contribution of performance to generic play through close analysis of Thomas F. Wilson’s performance of Biff/Griff/Burford Tannen and his central encounter with Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in each film. These moments take place in a fifties diner, a 1980s retro diner and a saloon respectively, each space contributing the similarities and differences in each repetition. Close attention to Wilson’s performance of each related character, which contains both modulations and repetitions used specifically to place each film’s central generic theme, demonstrates how embedded the play between genres and their flexibility is within the trilogy.

The new Hollywood, 1981–1999: special/visual effects

The emergence and development of digital imaging technologies and their impact on mainstream filmmaking is perhaps the most familiar special effects narrative associated with the years 1981-1999. This is in part because some of the questions raised by the rise of the digital still concern us now, but also because key milestone films showcasing advancements in digital imaging technologies appear in this period, including Tron (1982) and its computer generated image elements, the digital morphing in The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), computer animation in Jurassic Park (1993) and Toy Story (1995), digital extras in Titanic (1997), and ‘bullet time’ in The Matrix (1999). As a result it is tempting to characterize 1981-1999 as a ‘transitional period’ in which digital imaging processes grow in prominence and technical sophistication, and what we might call ‘analogue’ special effects processes correspondingly become less common. But such a narrative risks eliding the other practices that also shape effects sequences in this period. Indeed, the 1980s and 1990s are striking for the diverse range of effects practices in evidence in both big budget films and lower budget productions, and for the extent to which analogue practices persist independently of or alongside digital effects work in a range of production and genre contexts. The chapter seeks to document and celebrate this diversity and plurality, this sustaining of earlier traditions of effects practice alongside newer processes, this experimentation with materials and technologies old and new in the service of aesthetic aspirations alongside budgetary and technical constraints. The common characterization of the period as a series of rapid transformations in production workflows, practices and technologies will be interrogated in relation to the persistence of certain key figures as Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, and James Cameron, but also through a consideration of the contexts for and influences on creative decision-making. Comparative analyses of the processes used to articulate bodies, space and scale in effects sequences drawn from different generic sites of special effects work, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror, will provide a further frame for the chapter’s mapping of the commonalities and specificities, continuities and variations in effects practices across the period. In the process, the chapter seeks to reclaim analogue processes’ contribution both to moments of explicit spectacle, and to diegetic verisimilitude, in the decades most often associated with the digital’s ‘arrival’.

Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction” (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship.

Ljudets funktioner i filmen 9 : En audiovisuell analys

I denna uppsats har en audiovisuell analys gjorts på de inledande minuterna till filmen 9 med ett stort fokus på ljudet. Syftet med uppsatsen var att beskriva och skapa en ökad förståelse för ljudets funktioner i filmen samt se på hur ljudet påverkade filmupplevelsen. Förhoppningen med detta var också att bidra till en bättre förståelse av filmljud och ljuddesign i helhet och vad det bidrar till berättarfunktionen i film. I uppsatsen granskades först ljud och bild för sig och slogs sedan ihop till sin helhet och analyserades utifrån en teoribildning av franska författaren Michel Chion.Ljudets viktigaste funktioner i filmen 9 var att ge en trovärdighet och äkthet, att beskriva föremål och speciellt huvudkaraktärens fysiska attribut samt att ge en respons på det som sker i bild. Vidare fyller ljudet funktioner som att beskriva rum och miljö som ger åskådaren en tydlig känsla för omgivningen filmen. Filmljudet hjälper även till att leda åskådarens uppmärksamhet och beskriva föremål eller personers innebörd. Den kanske absolut viktigaste funktion som ljudet har är att ge åskådaren en djupare förståelse för handlingen.

O futuro do presente: a mídia audiovisual e a sociedade contemporânea na ficção científica do cinema de animação

This research presents a study that seeks to analyze the images of the future in science fiction movies, specifically those made through animation techniques, exploring particularly the representation of audiovisual communication medias in its dialogue with the approached societies in the movies chosen to be analyzed. The proposed discussion seeks approximations in order to answer to the question that initiated this research: how are we thinking the future nowadays? It also seeks to, according to Morin (1997), comprehend aspects of the contemporary society by using the cinema, and at the same time, to understand the cinema, aided by a social analysis

A ficção científica e o ensino de ciências: o imaginário como formador do real e do racional

Este artigo apresenta uma reflexão sobre a inserção da ficção científica no ensino de Ciências, no qual buscamos identificar como a ficção científica incorpora elementos na estrutura conceitual dos educandos partindo do pressuposto de que teria um papel de desencadeadora e/ou organizadora da aprendizagem. O filme Jurassic Park foi estudado como constitutivo do conhecimento, transmutando o ficcional no real/racional, possibilitando a organização hierárquica dos conceitos, acrescendo novos elementos na estrutura conceitual dos educandos e atuando, também, na mediação do conhecimento - ora organizando, ora desencadeando.

Uma análise do conceito antropológico do outro na obra do escritor Augusto Emílio Zaluar

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Frankenstein: uma releitura do mito de criação

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Aproximações entre a obra de Júlio Verne e o ensino de física

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A narrativa fantástica de Fagundes Varela

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS

Das utopias e distopias: uma leitura de O presidente negro de Monteiro Lobato

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS