To reiterate and expand a previously made point, Philip K. Dick has
become the most popular science fiction author to be adapted into
films in the last 20 years or so. The closed worlds of some of the
movies that have been mentioned here are either adaptations of Dick's
stories or they are informed by his metaphysics. Some are
straightforward adaptations (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority
Report, Paycheck, etc.), some uncredited adaptations (The Truman
Show), others inspired by or in the vein of Dick, such as Groundhog
Day, eXistenZ, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.).
Leo Braudy makes the distinction between open and closed films, which
he associates with the films of Renoir and Lang or Hitchcock,
respectively. The former represents the world as fundamentally open
(think of Kracauer), while the latter represents it as closed and
deterministic. The fact that Herbert's examples are all closed films
should tell us something. Sure this is in large part technology-
driven. Closed films indicate total control (of the filmmakers over
their material, over the audience) and what Bill identified as films
completely within the mind (as opposed to realism which tries to
represent the world outside the mind). Radical constructivism has
replaced realism in this type of film.
I still don't see how this should be a reaction simply to literary
history (in the sense of 19th century novels, for instance), since big-
bucks cinema has to deal with present audiences and contemporary
desires, wishes, fears and fantasies. There has to be some kind of -
presumably symptomatic - correspondence between what is technology-
driven and what audiences enjoy seeing.
Henry
> "all the philosophy invested in these films is wasted to a
> form of narration which is mainly induced by technology"
>
> That's harsh, Herbert, but I love your passion. I think you raise a
> very
> significant point in your post with your reaction vs. pretext
> dichotomy. It
> invites us to consider questions of intentionality and highlights
> the paramount
> importance of the audiences' role in the construction of their own
> narrative
> pleasure and satisfaction. It is true that a recognition of and
> familiarity with
> developments in production process technologies can greatly inform a
> film's
> reception as much as it's creation.
>
>
> "I hate so much such paranoia films as Dark
> City or The Matrix and I think it has also something to do with their
> foregrounding of the fact that the worlds are created by the filmmaker
> or by creative forces of the digital postproduction department of the
> film studios. Paranoia there is not so much a reaction to the growing
> possibilities for manipulation but more are pretext for using digital
> technology."
>
> brooke
>
>
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