Brick Lane

Assimilation is relelvant to the film because of how the asian family central to the film and its members are able to intergrate into the larger, more predominantly white society. This could also be referring to how the family attends meetings of the asian group in the area that wishes to exclaim themselves as a more dominanat force against other prejudice collections of folk.

The characters who experience a crisis of identity are Nazneen,  who taken out of her beloved Bangledeshi homeland finds herself in dull, grey Britain to a life of household servitude. She doesn’t seem to hold much purpose other than existing to raise the children, whereas back in her native land she had fun and frolics in a colourful landscape all the time. In Britain it is as if she has no identity until the end of the film when she finds some purpose in life. And the father Chanu, who at first appears to be an oppressive male figure but turns out to be a sympathetic character struggling with the dual roles of husband and father.

Nanzeen is alienated because of how she secluds herself in her flat, covering up in clothing, never letting her hair down etc. She rarelt talks to others at the first part of the film, even when they start conversation with her coming across as socialy inept and withdrawn. She seems alone ever since she was taken from Bangledesh to partake in an arranged marriage.

Realism and idealism are used to depict contrasting colours, in how Bangledesh is made to look vibrant and inviting and full of life and joy, whilst Enland looks bleak, depressing and plain horrible. It comes across as a suffocating culture of biggots, yet Bangladesh is open to all peoples and genuinly exciting in comparison.

Multiculturalism of Brick Lane population – Muslim (mostly), others are white british that populate the busy shopping areas.

The ideological issue of home is frequently addressed, voiced by Nanzeens inner desire to return to Bangladesh to what she consider her true home, but in the end, and after an affair, she realises that her true home is indeed in England with her daughters. Her connection to home is also shown through her intensive amount of letters sent to and from her sister showing that deep-liongng, but she is bound to her less than successful husband. These are also explored in Nanzeens flashbacks to her childhood.

I think film protestors called Brick Lane a “film which degrades [their] community” because of  how it deals with the aftermath of 9/11 in Engand, and the films inclusion of an Islamic group who want to strike back at the haters of the muslim religion. Another point would be the  sexual affair between Nanzeen and the younger Karim which would defy muslim laws about marriage.

I think Monica Ali called the controversy around the film a “marketplace of outrage”, as the film was used as place to vent concerns about comments made in the film by the character Chanu that made the Bangledeshi community seem ‘backward and uneducated’.

Audiences rewponded to this by cancelling a screening of the film planned for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

Soap Clip (w/ ideologies)

The clip consists of the Mitchell brothers trying to communicate with the locals, as so to find out where the local airport is. The ideological discourse here is that of nationalism, and the barriers between languages. Grant Mitchell resorts to imitating the motion of an airplane as so to further his almost in vain efforts of communicating with the italian villager. He eventually manages to gather some information but in the brothers haste to leave in the car, the collide with a italian van. The driver, resembling super mario, becomes aggressive quickly, and despite Grants futile efforts to diffuse the situation, the language barrier again hinders the communication efforts, and a ‘fight’ ensues, although for the most part, Grant simply humours the italian until the brothers can leave, but at that point, two hulking italian police officers look down on our bald hero.

Narrative Devices Homework

I watched Eastenders, on Friday October 2nd.

First off, the episode length, according to BBC iplayer, was 31 minutes and 2 seconds, including opening and closing credits. Eastenders is longer than other soaps due to being on a channel where programmes are uninterrupted by advertisements.
The storylines are:
1) The funeral of Trina. [primary]
2) The morning after Syed and Christian sleep together (focus on their secret reationship), and the Beale and Masood family going to a business award ceremony. [secondary]
3) Adam Best/Libby Fox leaving for university [secondary]

I counted a total of 27 scenes, 11 of which were given to the characters in what i deemed to be the primary storyline of the episode. These scenes were all close to or around 1 minutes in length, and took up the majority of the episdoe, as the death of Trina and its aftermath has ben the focus point of the show at this point in time. Secondary seens mostly had scenes of 1 minutes or under in length, but there were few scenes with many characters, or main characters of the secondary storyline (Syed and Christain) that had scenes exceeding 1 minute. This is probably to give those two characters audience attention but not so much as to devert from the other major story.

The main story gets more scenes placed throughout the episode:
Scenes 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 22, 25 and 26.  So getting spots in the beginning, middle and end of the episode.

There is a balance of secrets with personal affairs [non-sexual] (mood) (theme) and seriousness and loss (mood).
e.g Lucas hiding the fact he killed Trina from the family at the funeral, and Syed and Christians secret affair when the Masood/Beale groups are going to an awards ceremony.

The episdoe ends on a cliffhanger, when the words ‘BAD BOY’ have been spray painted onto the front door of the Masood house. This relates the pleasure for the audience of a hook for the next episode to see who did this.
Social interactions comes in the form of the Masood and Beale clans meeting for the business awards, The various familys talking with each other, Dr Al Jenkins checking up on Stacey, Syed and Christian meeting with each other and Darren mingling with Fox family, Lucas Johnson and Patrick Trueman to see of Libby.
The multi-stranded narrative gives audience pleasure by offering many storylines for audiences to get into, a variety to enjoy.
Commitment: there is the Syed plot of him supposedly being with Amira to the rest of his families knowledge, but having a secret affair with Christian, which offers up character intrigue of what he will do next and how he will deal with the situation, making audiences intersted in his character more and more.

September 22nd – Genre Theory

Covered alot in Genre Theory, all to assess how genre can be applied to study of 1) British Soap Operas and 2) British Film Industry.

Classification:

• Films are routinely classified (in tv listings magazines) as ‘thriller’, ‘western’ etc. so audiences can choose what they want to watch.
• This is also true with televison genres like ‘game shows’ and sitcoms – Dominant dramas borrow from other genres to appeal to a wider audience.
• Carolyn Miller suggests that ‘the number of genres in any society… depends on the complexity and diversity of society’

Do Genres Fragment?: Genres deal with the broader picture, whilst Themes handle the issues.

Stewart et al. (2001) identified a number of common soap themes:

• Love
• Conflict
• Secret and Confidences
• Sickness and Injury
• Skeletons in the cupboard
• Plans going wrong

What are the rules?:

There are no ‘rigid rules of inclusion or exclusion’.  Genres… are not discrete ystems, consisting of a fixed number of listable systems.
(Big Storylines may borrow from other genres)

Steve Neal – “genres are instances of repetition and difference”
“difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre” :
Mere repetition would fail to attract an audience.

Differences: Location, characters (character values), audience

Todorov -  “any instance of genre will be necessarily different”

David Buckingham – “genre is not simply “given” by culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change”.

Abercrombie is concerned with modern television, which he suggests seems to be engaged in “a steady dismantling of genre” which can be attributed in part to economic pressures to pursue new audiences.

Genres (and the relationship between them) change overtime; the conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are ‘discontinued’. (Although some genres are particularly long-lasting)

Economic Pressures:

• Steve Neal – ‘genres… exist within the context of a set of economic relations and practices’, though he adds that ‘genres are not the product of economic factors as such’.

• Economic Fctors may account for the perpetuation of a profitable genre.

Abercrombie – ‘genres permit the creation and maintenance of a loyal audience which becomes used to seeing programmes within a genre’.

Definitions of Media Terms

Sub-Genre: These are when different genres exist within another genre, e.g. a comedy may contain elements of romance. So more than one type of genre would be present in an over-arching genre.

Hybrid: Genre ‘Hybrids’ are films that have elements of two or more types of genre within them, for example, Alien which is classified a horror/science-fiction.

Semantic: Concerned with meanings, so, the way in which a media text is interpreted by the audience.

Syntactic: (uncertain of correct media definition) – Dictionary meaning:- rules and conventions regulating the order and relationships of words in a sentence.

Parody: Close but mocking imitation of a style or a specific work.

Pastiche: A work that imitates another’s style.

Homage: Any public show of respect to someone or something who has influenced another.

Satire: Act of attacking any wickedness, folly or abuse by use of mockery, sarcasm etc.

Intertextuality (post-modernism): The shaping of other texts meanings by other texts.

Bricolage (post-modernism): The creation of a work using resources and/or materials that are available at the time of making.

Andre Bazin

André Bazin (April 18, 1918 – November 11, 1958) was a renowned and influential french film critic and film theorist.

He argued for films that he saw as depicting “objective reality” and directors who made themselves “invisible”.

Andre made use of deep focus, wide shots and the shot-in-depth, and preferred what he referred to as “true continuity” through mise-en-scene from various experiments in editing and visual effects. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema can manipulate reality. The concentration on objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage are linked to Bazin’s belief how a media text is interpreted should be up to the viewer rather than they take the directors messages transmitted to them.

Bazin, taking an idea from the spiritual belief of personalism, believed that a film should be representative of the personal vision of the director.