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film literary analysis
Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of the Author’
Critical analysis of the finished part of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
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“The Death of the Auteur”
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The concept of ‘author’ is originally derived from the Latin word for
authority. From the theoretician’s standpoint, the author carries power over the
text only to the extent that the ideas and scenarios within it are originally those of
the author. French literary theorist Roland Barthes argues that the function of an
author is to provide the semblance of originality and meaning in The Death of the
Author.
“Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every origin. Writing is
the neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away,
the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity
of the body writing.” (Barthes 1466)
The basis for Barthes’ argument is the writing of Ferdinand de Saussure,
particularly the discourse on signification and authorship in Course in General
Linguistics. Within the scope of Saussurean theory, a viewpoint can be
ascertained that is conceptualized for applicability to The Death of the
Author. Saussure begins his introduction to this topic by defining language
in a way that concurs with Barthes’ use of it. Language is the “social side of
speech, outside the individual who can never create or modify it by
himself.” This is concomitant with Barthes’ work, particularly in his concept
of the author as the subject of a text. Barthes stresses the impersonality of
any work, due to the essence of language, that it is the quintessence of the
performance and not the author’s subjectivity. In one of his most poignant
assignations of profound semiological characterization, Saussure posits the
nature of the linguistic sign as the unity of a concept and a sound-image.
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For this assumption to be relevant, it follows that language mus...
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... Leitch. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company,
2001. 1822-1830.
Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company,
2001. pp. 1623-1636.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and
Criticism. 5th Edition. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford
University Press. 1975. pp. 833-844.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. “Course in General Linguistics.” The Norton Anthology
of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, NY: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2001. 960-977.
Spiegel, Alan. “Fiction and the Camera Eye: Visual Consciousness in Film and
the Modern Novel.” Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1976.
Vertov, Dziga “Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov.” Ed. Annette Michelson.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. "In Memoriam A. H. H." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd ed., Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1974. 1042-84.
Myers, D.G. “In Praise of Prose.” Commentary Magazine May 2010: n. pag. Web. 27 Jan. 2011. .
Death is a common theme in literature. It is the end of the line on the human train of life. People have different views on death, with some fearing it and some embracing it as a passage to something else. Death can be interpreted in ways other than just loss of physical life, including loss of a loved one or even loss of sanity. Both Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” deal with the theme of death, albeit in different ways. However, they are both losing what they hold dearest to them. These two pieces of work by Dickinson and Bierce are similar in that they convey the theme of the death or something they care about.
García, Márquez Gabriel, and Gregory Rabassa. Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 2003. Print
García Márquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984. Print.
...has in common, it creates new beginnings, new meanings, for so many different things. As Michael North stated, “Language exists and grows by inclusion” (Nicholls 281).
One strand of auteur theory, as Graeme Turner explains, concerns the identification of a director's visual style (Turner 44). When it comes to talking about visual styles of Asian directors, particularly in the context of Hong Kong cinema, one name that immediately comes to mind would be none other than Wong Kar-wai. Any Asian film student would probably be familiar with his signature works. Wong Kar-wai has been considered as "the very latest auteur produced by the second wave" in Hong Kong cinema (Teo 193). His passion for stylistic filmmaking and pursuit of film artistry gave him the recognition as a Hong Kong auteur. His auteur status arose from the distinctive visual style and individualistic visions evident in his films. Apart from directing, Wong Kar-wai also writes the screenplays for his own films. That gives him almost complete control over the entire film production and reinforces his authorship. He is famous for shooting without scripts, improvising the narrative as he shoots the films. With all his films being labelled as independent art-house and in contrast to the many commercial Hong Kong products, Wong Kar-wai stands apart from other directors (Stokes 186). In this essay, I will examine and discuss how academic film critics and scholars such as Stephen Teo, David Bordwell and others have talked about his visual style, in relation to one of his many award-winning films, Chungking Express (1994).
poems, 600 of which relate to death. Paul J. Ferlazzo, a contributing author of “Emily Dickinson” write...
classicmoviescripts/script/seventhseal.txt. Internet. 4 May 2004. Blackham, H. J. Six Existentialist Thinkers. New York: Harper, 1952. Choron, Jacques. Death and Western Thought. New York: Collier Books, 1963.
What is an auteur? Answer this question with detailed reference to one film director: Alfred Hitchcock
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
Allen, Woody. Death Knocks. 1968. Approaching Literature: Reading + Thinking + Writing. 3rd ed. Ed. Peter Shakel and Jack Ridl. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1066-1072. Print.
By rethinking the carpe diem theme, Andrew Marvell makes his point more effectively than many other poets working with the same ideas. Using the methods described above, he makes the ideal scene of timelessness more concrete, so that when it is swept away the alternative seems all the more frightening and imperative. In this way he recreates a feature of real life- death is imperative, but trivialities can often make it seem distant. Invariably, however, it will greet us all.