Subverting the Conventional: Combining Genre in Kelly's Donnie Darko
While planning an evening at the cinema, individuals do not discuss the specific guidelines of genre while deciding the film of choice. A reason for seeing a Western is never because the genre has evolved from primarily racist films involving cowboys and Indians to movies that vindicate Indians and work toward demythologizing the old West. Similarly, broad generalizations of genre are constantly used to categorize film. Courtship-Romance Musicals or Rock Operas are often shuffled into the generic class of Musical, while the 1930’s films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, examples of Courtship-Romance Musicals, are in contrast to such films as Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar, models of Rock Operas. Genre is the most important tool in deciding taste in film, yet most people never get past discussing whether to watch a Comedy or Drama. Perhaps this tendency is due to mainstream films, which rarely challenge audiences to make decisions about complex genres, as formula films have become an accepted form of entertainment. Cinema must look to Independent film then to help create new forms, specifically in genre. Donnie Darko, an Independent film directed by Richard Kelly, successfully poses questions about hybrid films and complex genres. Donnie Darko transcends the typical conventions of genre to redefine cinema and set a new precedence for independent filmmakers interested in breaking the rules of tradition.
Before exploring the subversion of genre in Donnie Darko, a look at genre theories is necessary. The regulations of genre have changed throughout the history of film and theorists constantly have differing ideas about the new contortions genre for...
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Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
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In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.
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Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
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Barsam, R. M., Monahan, D., & Gocsik, K. M. (2012). Looking at movies: an introduction to film (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co..
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