Essay Plan attempt 3

I have edited the previous plan according to the feedback that I got from Phil so I have taken out the image references of the The Scream and Ghost Face and I have changed the quote in paragraph 3.

Introduction

·         Begin with: This assignment will investigate Post Modernity through the idea of Deconstruction to analyse specific scenes in the films Scream (1996) Directed by Wes Craven and Funny Games US (2007) Directed by Michael Haneke.

·         Brief order of points and how evidence will be useful

Para 1

·         Begin with Postmodernism and identify the difficulties of multiple meanings, linking to Modernism’s dominate one view. 

·         “In many ways, the word ‘Postmodernism’ defies description. This is due to the fact, [that] a myriad of disciplines have adopted various ideas about Postmodernism and made them their own.” (Michener, 2007: 4)

Para 2

·         Introduce the idea of Deconstruction and how it relates to Postmodernism, exploring the ideas of how the world is constructed out of language and culture.

·         “Meaning is never identical with itself because a sign appears in different contexts it is never absolutely the same ... the signified will be altered by the various chains of signifiers in which it is entangled. (Sarup, 1993: 34)

Para 3  

·         Lead onto the idea of Meta Fiction as fiction that deconstructs itself, revealing how constructed other examples in it’s group are and how conditioned audiences are to it.

·         “The film’s images and sounds are not meaningful without the (unconscious) work of the spectator, and it is in this sense that every film is a construction of it’s viewer.” (Burgoyne, Flitterman-Lewis, Stam, 1992: 139)

Para 4

·         Introduce the film examples ‘Scream and Funny Games’ of Meta-Fiction and how they deconstruct the horror genre (Scream and Funny Games US formula for slasher film and torture porn)

·         “The affinity between the compilation film and assemblage and appropriation in other medias makes this the most characteristically Post Modern strain of contemporary avant-garde film making.” (Peterson, 1997: 143)

·         Figure 1: The phone call, Figure 2: Farber Family tortured

Para 5

·         Rules in Scream, How director Wes Craven has used traits from other films such as Halloween to make the characters in scream seem smarter as they have the prior knowledge.

·         “Unlike the various strands of [structural] criticism, Postmodernism considers images as they relate to and across each other.” (McRobbie, 1994: 12)

·         Figure 3: Group explaining the rules to survive

Para 6

·         Rules in Funny Games and how it appears to the audience that the Faber family reclaims the control from the torturers but the director structures the film for the torturers to win in the end.

·         “So, deconstruction analyses a text so thoroughly as to discover the many ways the text itself did not communicate upon initial reading.” (Michener, 2007: 64)

·         Figure 4: Rewind scene

Para 7

·         Realism of depicting violence in films  and why viewer watches it – How both films compare in visualising the real seriousness and truth to make the audience feel uncomfortable.

·         “Broadly speaking, Post structuralism entails a critique of the concepts of the stable sign of the unified subject, of identity and of truth,” (Stam, 1992: 23)

·         Figure 5: Paul looks at screen including the audience as part of the world

Conclusion

·         Highlight the key findings of the deconstructed techniques e.g. rules and changing (deconstructing) the structure of the horror genre (Don’t List)

·         Form a judgement and emphasis points