Pans Labyrinth Case Study

Eclecticism: The idea for Pans Labyrinth came to Guillermo Del Toro, through various sources such as his own notebooks but the film was influenced by his own work, "The Devils Backbone, Lewis Carroll's books-Alice in Wonderland, Jorge Luis Borges Ficciones, Arthur Machens "The Great God Pan" and he was influenced by Arthur Racham's illustrations and he gained the idea of the character of the faun from childhood experiences with lucid dreaming. In the film, Pans Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro used some computer generated imagery in the effects but mostly used make-up and animatronics. 

Parody: This can be applied to Pan's Labyrinth for instance we see Captain Vidal criticising the resistance and their political ideologies for a democratic Spain.

Bricolage: It could be argued that there is bricolage in the film as Del Toro uses a combination of warfare associated with The Devils Backbone and both narratives are identical and Del Toro uses Roman and Greek mythology and combines them with Alice in Wonderland, this shows that Del Toro is able to use other pieces of influences but he uses it in away that's essential to characterization of the character and context of the narrative which Ofelia's story is constructed which results in the audience who are familar with his characters and narratives, if they have seen Del Toro's films already.

Acts against modernism: I would say that Pans Labyrinth acts against modernism when we see Ofelia put something underneath her mothers bed to help her get better but before this we see the doctor giving Carmen getting more ill even when given medicine it doesn't work but when Ofelia puts something under her bed she becomes better but when the the thing underneath Carmen's bed is found and killed after this Carmen eventually dies. Another example would be that of the book which helps Ofelia learn the future.

Nostalgic: Pans Labyrinth could be considered to be nostalgic as it celebrates the defeat of fascism by the resistance forces in the Spanish Civil war. In Pan's Labyrinth, Othelia's story operates within the framework of the Spanish civil war aftermath in which rebels fight against the fascists and gain back the Spain they were so loyal to. Othelia's personal experience mirrors this as she longs for the happy childhood she once knew before having to adjust to her paranoid and sadistic stepfather and the surrounding chaos. To cope with her personal experience under fascism in Spain, she imagines herself as a protagonist who imagines herself in her own fairy tale despite being told by her mother not to believe in them any more. In the film, Othelia constructs an alternate reality which also her brother confines in another reality without knowing about the reality of warfare in the Spanish civil war. I would also say that it celebrates Ofelia coming back to her kingdom such as when we see the King and queen of the underworld we see it as a reference to Alice in Wonderland.   

Narcissistic: I would say that the postmodern characteristic of narcissism is conveyed in Pans Labyrinth when we see the scene where the various characters are seen sitting around the table which involves the characters of Carmen (Ofelia's mother) and Captain Vidal, one of the characters ask Carmen and Captain Vidal how they met, Carmen then mentions how they met and she puts her hand on Captain Vidal's hand, he then pulls his hand away showing how self indulgent he is and how he only cares for himself and not for Carmen's or Ofelia's life. Vanity is also shown by Ofelia when she's doing a task where she has to open a door but eats a bit of forbidden fruit which a fairy tries to stop her but she pushes her away and causes the monster to wake up, which puts herself in danger and two of the faries get eaten which conveys how narcissistic she is.

An active audience: This can be applied to Pans Labyrinth because at the start of the film, we find out that Ofelia is a princess of the underworld but didn't know this before because she lost memory of her identity. What I found those was that when viewing the last scene from the film, that when she is killed by her step father we're wondering whether she be able to gain the identity and freedom she lost from her mortal existence but as an audience we're thinking what will happen in the Spanish civil war etc, this mode of address is used as the director is expecting the audience to know about the Spanish civil war.

Hyper-conscious: I would say that Pan's Labyrinth, is aware of itself because when we first hear a narrator telling the audience about Ofelia/princess Moanna who escaped her bodyguards and fell into humanity in which she forgets about her previous identity but its only when she gets told by the Faun that she was a princess but I would say that it only becomes self aware when Ofelia actually comes to the kingdom that she's able to embrace her own identity.

Postmodernist Film

Postmodernist film attempts to articulate postmodernism (its ideas and themes and methods) through film. Postmodernist film tries to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure, characterization and destroys or toys with the audiences suspension of belief. Typically these type of films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of race, gender, class and time with the goal of creating something different from traditional narrative expression. 

Postmodernist film is a reaction to modernist cinema and its tendencies. Modernist cinema is known to explore  and expose the formal concerns of the medium by placing them at the forefront of consciousness. Modernist cinema is known to question and make visible the meaning production practices of film. Auteur theory and the authors/directors idea of producing work from a singular vision guided the concerns of modernist cinema. "To investigate the transparency of the image is modernist but undermines the references to reality, to engage with the aesthetics of postmodernism. Although modernist film is known to have more faith in the author, individual and accessibility of reality itself than the postmodernist film. 

Postmodernist films are known to have three characteristics, which separate it from modernist film/cinema or traditional narrative film, these include characteristics like:

1. The pastiche of many genres and styles. Which means postmodernist films are comfortable with mixing together many disparate kinds film/styles etc and ways of film-making together in the same movie. 
2. Self reflexivity of technique that highlights the construction and relation of the image to other images and not to any kind of external reality. Which is done through highlighting the constructed nature of the image in ways that directly reference its production and also by explicit intertexuality that incorporates or references other media and texts. The deconstruction and fragmentation of linear time as well also commonly employed to highlight the constructed nature which appears on screen. 
3. An undoing or a collapse of the distinction between high and low art styles, techniques and texts. Which is also an extension of the tendency towards pastiche and combining. It also extends to the combination or mixing of techniques which traditionally come with value judgments as to their worth and place in culture and the creative and artistic spheres.  
4.  Lastly contradictions among values, styles, technique, methods and are important to postmodernism and are many cases irreconcilable Any theory of postmodernist film would have to be comfortable with the possible paradox of certain ideas and articulation.

Relativism, Death of the Author,Modernism and Marxist film theory etc

Relativism: This is the concept of their being no validity or truth, and having no relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. The term is often used to refer to the context of moral principle and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited context. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is concept of there being no absolute truth.

Death of the author-This is a essay produced by Roland Barthes in 1967. Barthes's essay argues against the traditional literacy criticisms practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author and an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creating are unrelated.

In this essay, Barthes argues against the method of reading an criticism which lies on the aspects of the authors identity, like their ethnicity, political views etc which are used to distill meaning from the author's work. In this type of criticism he experiences and biases of the author serve as an definitive explanation of the text. For Barthes, this method is flawed as "to give a text and author, and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it" is to impose a limit on the text.

Modernism: A modern thought, character or practice. The term is also used to describe the modernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements, which arises from the wide scale and far reaching changes of Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of the modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War 1 where among the factors which developed modernism.

What are the differences between modernism and postmodernism?

Modernism is an encompassing label for a wide variety of cultural movements. Postmodernism is an centralized movement that named itself based on socio-political theory, although the term is used now to describe or refer to activities in the from the 20th century onwards which exhibit awareness of an reinterpret the modern. Postmodern theory asserts the attempt to canonize modernism after the fact that its doomed to major contradictions. 

Marxist Film Theory: Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers in the 1920's expressed ideas/ideologies of Marxism through their films. The Hegelian dialectic was considered best displayed  in film editing through the Kuleshov experiment and the development of montage.

This approach towards Marxism and film-making was used to shun the use of the typical narrative structure which was associated with Hollywood film-making. Eisenstein chose to shun the narrative structure by get rod of the typical modernist individual protagonist central to films and he told stories where the action is moved by the group and the narrative or story is told through a clash of one image against the next(whether in composition, motion or idea) so that the audience is lulled into believing that they are watching something that has been constructed in the typical manner attributed with Hollywood, e.g. Jean Luc Goddard would employ radical editing and choice of subject matter, as well as subversive parody to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist hegemony or dominant ideologies.

Fourth Wall technique: The fourth wall technique is the imaginary wall, at the front of the stage in a traditional  three walled box set in a proscenium theater, through which the audience see's the action in the world of the play and was made explicit by Denis Diderot, which extended the idea to the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience. Speaking directly,acknowledging the audience through camera in film, TV or through the imaginary wall in a play is referred to as the "breaking the fourth wall" and is considered a technique of metafiction. As it deconstructs the boundaries which is normally set by the works of fiction.

Metaference: A metafiction technique which is situated in a work of fiction where characters display an awareness that they are in such a work, such as in film, books etc. This technique of metafiction is used in the Simpsons, when the characters are often seen mockingly referring to the show, the writers, Fox Network, known continuity errors or popular memes pertaining to the show as the show as a form of self parody. Another example is the one we see in the South Park episode, "More Crap", a trophy appears at the bottom of the screen to announce that South Park won an Emmy for "Make Love Not Warcraft". At the end of the episode "More Crap" Randy is awarded said trophy.

Aside: A dramatic device in which a character speaks to its audience. By convention, the audience is to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. It may be addressed to the audience expressly (in character or not) or represent an unspoken thought.

Nihilism: Is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. When nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, argues that life is is without objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value. Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods, for example Baudrillard and others have called post-modernity an nihilistic epoch.

The Postmodern condition: Used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some scholars/academics would claim that modernity ended in the late 20th century, 1980's or the early 1990's replaced by post-modernity, while others extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by post-modernity, while some believe that modernity ended after world war 2. Post-modernity can also connote a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being which is associated with a postmodern society.

The Death of Postmodern and Beyond: The Death of Postmodern and Beyond  is an essay by the British cultural critic Alan Kirby. The essay argues that postmodernism as a cultural period is over and is given way to a new paradigm based on digital technology which he calls "psuedomodernism, (changed to "digimodernism" in the book). The essay has been criticized for its vague reference to the banality of current texts. Kirby defines "pusedomodernism" as a text which is created by the audience, for the audience but then places a range of wide range of texts under this category that seem not to belong like The Blair Witch Project. Kirby says these texts lack the self aware irony that is associated with postmodernism. 

Postmodernism

Postmodern, can be defined as a style and concepts in the arts characterized by a distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.

Postmodernists claim that in a media saturated world, where we are constantly immersed in media,24/7 and on the move, at work etc- the distinction between reality and media representation of it becomes blurred or even entirely invisible to us. In other words, we no longer have a sense of the difference between real things and images of them, or real life experiences and simulations of them. Media reality is the new reality. Others say postmodernism is just a a new way of thinking about the media, when really it has always been the way. Mass media where once thought of holding up a mirror to and thereby reflecting a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of the surface reflections of the mirror. Its no longer a question of distortion between since the term implies there's a reality outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted and this is whats basically the issue. Postmodern also reject idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgments are merely taste. Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience and culture 'eats itself' as there's no longer anything new to produce or distribute.

Distinction between media and reality has collapsed and we now live in a reality defined by images and representations-a state of simulacrum. Images refer to each other as reality rather then some pure reality that exists before the image represents it- this is the state of hyper reality. All ideas of truth are just completing claims or discourses and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the winning discourse. Baudrillard and Lyotard argue the belief the idea that the idea of truth needs to be deconstructed so that we can challenge the dominant ideas that that people claim as the truth, which Lyotard described as a grand narratives. In postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can eventually reproduce reality or truth. So we get the idea that there always competing versions of the truth and reality, and postmodern media products will engage with this idea.

Critics of these theories and beliefs:

People have criticized Baudrillards and Lyotards theories on postmodernism as being been too offensive and hard to reconcile with their belief systems. It can be seen as whimsical luxury to question and play with the idea of truth and something that people live in countries like Tibet etc, they have to contest on a daily basis the existence of truth, justice and human rights. Some people also find idea that idea of rejecting their grand narrative goes against their whole religious beliefs and moral principles.

For Baudrillard there's only the surface meaning, there is longer any original thing for a sign is the meaning. We inhabit a society made up wholly of simulacra-simulations of reality which replace pure reality.

McDougall-Pure reality is replaced by the hyper real where any boundary between real and the imaginary is eroded. Baudrillards work is an attempt to expose the open secret that this is how we live and make sense of the world in postmodern times.

Simulacra and simulation is known for its discussion of images, signs and how they relate to the present day. Baudrillard claims modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and and signs and that the human experience is off reality rather then reality itself. Simulacra which Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media which create the percieved reality. Baudrillard believed society has become so reliant on simulacra that its lost contact with the real world on which simulacra is based on. Baudrillard referred to hyper reality, where real objects have been effected or suspended. This is criticized for his fatal strategy of attempting to push his theories of society beyond themselves.

Susan Sontag in her book on photography, that the notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion that of images it; Baudrillard asserts that reality no longer exists. Postmodern texts: There are many examples of postmodern examples of texts and products which set out to explore and play with this state of hyper-reality. These texts are said to be intertextual and self referential they break the rules of realism to explore that nature of their own status as constructed texts. They seek not to represent reality, but to present media reality.

Postmodernist films can be seen to voice ideas of postmodernism through the cinematic medium. Postmodernist film upsets the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization and destroys or toys with audience suspension of disbelief to create a work in which a less recognizable internal logic form of the film forms meanings of expression. By making some changes to the conventions of cinema, artificiality of the experience and the world presented are emphasized in the audiences mind in order to remove them from the conventional emotional link they give to the subject matter, and to give them a new view of it.

Noam Chomsky suggests postmodernism is meaningless as it doesn't add nothing analytical or empirical knowledge. A Marxist point of view, from Fredrick Jameson attacks postmodernism as he states what he claims, its "the cultural logic of late capitalism for its refusal to engage with meta-narratives critically of capitalization and globalization. He says its refusal renders post modernity complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation. A moral relativist perspective of postmodernism would be that many critics of postmodernism have attacked the tendency to the abandonment of objective truth as the unacceptable feature of the postmodern condition and have often aimed to offer a meta-narrative that provides this truth.

Why is the Matrix considered postmodernist:

• The narrative structure 
• Idea of changing established conventions
• Drawing the viewers attention to the construction of film, 'bullet time ' sequences. 
• Taking existing ideas from earlier films and using them in a different way-paying homage.
• Suggestion which it makes about society and its troubles.
• The Matrix is an allegory for contempoary experience in a heavily commercialized media driven society, especially of the developed countries. 
• The Matrix makes many connections to Simulacra and simulation. In an scene, Simulacra and simulation is the book in which Neo hides this illicit software.
• Morpheus also refers to real world of outside of the Matrix as the 'desert of the real' which was directly reference to Slavoj Zizek 
• Reeves was asked to read books by the directors to read the book, as well, as Out of Control and Evolution Psychology, before casting as Neo.

Our consumption of the films, merchandise and the world and myth of the Waschowski's sells us, and our collective orgasm over the effects and phones, guns, shades and leather represent our integration into the virtuality it promotes. The Matrix became a viral meme spreading through and being mimetic-ally (mimicked or copied) and absorbed into the modern culture, extending our virtualistation.Just as the film, offered choice of being inside or outside the Matrix, so you were either inside or outside the zietgeist. Baudrillard makes clear that fans and public are caught in a similarly invisible Matrix and is fare greater then depicted in the film and the film itself is part of and extends. The Matrix describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix; a simulated reality created by sentiment machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies heat and electrical activity are used as energy sources. Neo is drawn into rebellion against the machines when coming across this. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures: philosophical and religious ideas and homages to Alices adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action cinema and spaghetti Westerns.