 2015 - 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0851-5112-01 | Mystery and Detection in Modern and Postmodern Movies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
Many modern and postmodern films use the familiar model of the detective genre, which is based on a narrative structure of mystery and investigation. These films elaborate the well-known conventional formula of detection in unconventional, novel ways that help represent complex thematic, ideological, and reflexive aspects of the text and the digesis.
We will examine the strategies of these contemporary movies and see how they both use the conventions of the genre and diverge from them, creating multifaceted, intriguing, polysemic narratives. Looking into a variety of these "hybrid" movies we will see how they integrate the popular and captivating detective schema with an "elitist", or a “high-brow” approach that adopts philosophical meanings and poetic modes of representation. Among the central issues analyzed will be reflexive, analogical aspects between procedures of investigation and spectators’ methods of decoding and interpreting the cinematic text.
We will examine the strategies of these contemporary movies and see how they both use the conventions of the genre and diverge from them, creating multifaceted, intriguing, polysemic narratives. Looking into a variety of these "hybrid" movies we will see how they integrate the popular and captivating detective schema with an "elitist", or a “high-brow” approach that adopts philosophical meanings and poetic modes of representation. Among the central issues analyzed will be reflexive, analogical aspects between procedures of investigation and spectators’ methods of decoding and interpreting the cinematic text.