How to study transnational cinema Case of Karmen

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How to study transnational cinema? - Case of
Karmen

• Mari Maasilta
• 20.2.2006

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Analysis concepts

• Genre
• Ideology
• Identity

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Genre

• Genres are not just tools for static
  classification but should be regarded as
  processes of difference, variation and change.
  They build upon a system of expectation or
  contract that ensures the relationship between
  the production, the audience and the text
• (Altman, Rick, Film/Genre. London British
  Film Institute, 1999.)

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text
GENRE CONTRACT
audience
production
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Genre

• Genres provide spectators with means of
  recognition and understanding, and help render
  films intelligible and explicable. With the help
  of genre systems spectators can make meanings of
  separate elements or events in the film

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Genre

• Audiences often decide which films to see and
  which not according to the genre. This might lead
  a filmmaker to want to respond to this need by
  trying to make and market his/her film as
  belonging to a certain genre that would
  facilitate the audience response.
• On the other hand, Hollywood companies often
  distribute a mixed image about the character and
  genre of the film to create an idea that the film
  has something to offer for all kinds of
  audiences.

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Multigenerity as an effort to construct
transnational audiences

• the same film creates different genre
  expectations genre hybrids
• Karmen can be read as
• musical (American mass audiences)
• art film (European special audiences)
• social realist film (African national audiences)

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Musical

• American musical
• mass audience genre
• diegetic music
• music has a narrative role
• plot around a romantic couple
• diffrence between man and woman
• registered music

• Music in African film
• no big difference between musical and non-musical
  since music always has a narrative role
• influence of oral story telling dance, music,
  song and orature
• natural music
• the role of subtitling and translations?

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Art film

• Authorial expressivity
• Who is telling the story? How will s/he tell the
  story? Why is it told in this way? What is new?
• Realism
• real locations, representing real problems, using
  "realistic" or psychologically complex characters
• Ambiguity
• an effort to solve the problem created by the
  difficulty to merge together realism and
  authorial expressivity
• (David Bordwell The Art cinema as a mode of film
  practise. In Film Theory and Criticism, 1999)

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How is Karmen told to

• European art film audiences?
• authorial expressivity familiar story is told
  with African music, settings and actors and with
  a new element, lesbian character
• ambiguity gaps in narrative
• sexual realism

• African art film audiences?
• authorial expressivity new story with a new
  element, lesbian character
• realism familiar settings, music and actors
• ambiguity lesbianism as a cultural taboo

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African social realist film

• Social protest and criticism (cf. the role of
  griot)
• Attention to the role of woman originates from
  the emancipation of the daughter myth, a
  revolting woman looking for freedom to choose
  herself
• Challenges the necessity of patriarchal family
• (Diawara, 1989 and1992)

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Ideology

• hidden meanings behind the texts
• all texts are ideological even if they claimed
  otherwise
• the purpose of analysis is to reveal the hidden
  meanings
• e.g. liberal/conservative, patriarchal/feminist,
  collectivist/individualist

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Identity and genres

• cinematic genres have always had an implicit
  ideology, e.g. in American cinema, the western
  champions individualism against collectivism
• do same genres have similar ideologies in
  different cultures?

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African Cinema and ideology

• historical films progressive ideology, condemn
  past abuses
• melodramas and comedies (including musicals)
  populist, moralist and conservative ideology, a
  Man rather than institution is at fault, a person
  trying to be different is punished
• satirical comedies progressive ideology, tend to
  reveal and criticize social order
• (Ferid Boughedir, 2001)

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What about ideologies in transnational cinemas?
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Ideology and aesthetics

• Western cultures
• focus on individuals
• film shots focus on individuals
• close up shots

• African cultures
• focus on community
• film shots give as much importance to the
  surrounding environment as to individuals
• long and medium shots

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Framing of Karmen and Angelique

• Karmen
• mostly seen in in long or medium shots in the
  middle of other people
• close ups of Karmen indicate strong feelings (cf.
  soap operas), sorrow, love

• Angelique
• more close-ups
• looking somewhere over the camera indicates her
  isolation from others and raises the question
  about the consequences of homosexuality in the
  community

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Identity

• Who am I? How can I become myself?
• How do the films help to construct different
  identitites?
• local, global, transnational
• religious
• sexual
• ethnic, national