Class 4

During last class, we studied zombies (and their representation). Everyone agreed that zombies are dead persons brought back to life who try to eat the living. They’re different from other monsters because they’re not particularly known for their intelligence or feelings.

Zombies are very common in the cinematic universe. Soon, you will be able to discover in theaters the adaptation of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. The movie (and the book) takes the character of the Jane Austen novels and puts them in a world where a zombie apocalypse is happening. So the Bennet family, just as odd as in the original book, is slaying zombies too. 

In this movie, the representation of zombies seems to be ordinary : they’re scary, want to eat flesh and are following the “slave and master of slaves” scheme (and they end up dead). 

There are however other ways of representing zombies. As an example we can use the CW show iZombie. The main character, Liv Moore, a promising young doctor, becomes a zombie at a boat party after being scratched by an infected person. After that, she has to quit her old ambitions and starts to work at the morgue, where she can find free brains indefinitely.

In the show, as long as a zombie can eat brains, he remains almost human (except for the color of skin, hair, and the absence of pulse and breath, almost like a vampire). However if they can’t feed, they’re “regular zombies”.

Liv "full zombie mode"

These human-look-alike zombies have super-strengh, and, when angry or in danger, can activate the ‘full zombie mode” (a term used by Liv Moore herself). When they eat a brain, they take the personality of the person it belonged to, which caused Liv some trouble. They also have a special taste for spicy food. In each episode, we can see Liv cooking the brains in a very appetizing way (like in Hannibal for example).

They also have visions about these dead persons. Liv is therefore working with the police to stop criminals, pretending to be a psychic. So we’re pretty far from the “zombie slave” stereotype here. But like everywhere there are good and bad zombies (as there are bad and good persons). However, except for a few people directly involved, the population is not aware of the presence of zombies amongst them, because of their ability to look like regular persons, making them more dangerous and imprevisible.

Furthermore, in this show, being a zombie is considered an illness (referred to as zombiism) that could eventually be cured and that's apparently due to a soda produced by a multinational company...

Class 3

According to Wikipedia, camp is ”a social, cultural and aesthetic style and sensibility based on deliberate and self-acknowledge theatricality”. This style is commonly affiliated with kitsch.

In class, we studied The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Camp is difficult to define and so, the movies that follow this idea of camp are also difficult to find.

To me, the idea of camp is very close to the television and cinematic universe of The Addams Family. Their “gothic” style is very close to what we’ve seen in TRHPS. The tv show and the movies play on the theatricality and on the kitsch side of the images and of the script. For example, I think the style of Morticia and Dr Frank-N-Furter is in some ways similar (with their dark hair, pale skin and gothic style). Both characters are based on the same idea of going against typical beauty.  Both products also play on the "kitsch" side and presents marginal characters that do not look like what we can see everywhere. 

I also find on Wikipedia that soap-operas like Dallas  are considered part of the camp culture. Nowadays, I think that the CW’s Jane the Virgin tv show represents that idea. It plays on the breaking of the fourth wall : interactions with the audience, etc., but takes all the tropes we can find in a classic telenovela. It plays on the dramatization to offer a reflection on what tv shows are. 

Class 2

During this class we studied Blade Runner and the idea of dystopia. This movie is a reflection about what being human means. We can find this idea in a lot of recent movies like Ex Machina or Her, Both of these movies are about artificial intelligence and suggests that, somehow, machines can be as human as us. 

In Her, the disincarnate voice of Scarlett Johansson, even if she's just a computer program, falls in love with Joaqin Phoenix's character. She feels human emotions, and that's why he loves her back and grows attached to her. But as she's not incarnate, she does not have a body, therefore she's not human and they can't properly bond. 

In Ex Machina, Ava, the A.I. portrayed by Alicia Vikander has a metallic body and the hability to feel. But that's not enough; she must have a skin, and be free. She's guided by her desires, as most human beings. 

So being human is more than having a body or having the ability to feel and think. According to Blade Runner, what makes us humans is our capacity of remembrance. 

In Memento, the main character has lost his immediate memory. It makes him a freak, a marginal. He's not even himself anymore. Yet, he's perfectly human. But his disability marks him as an outsider.

But in the previous movies I talked about, if these machines can be so close to human beings it's because they can remember things about their partners thanks to their abilities as A.I. 

But both of these films also demonstrate that a machine acting like a human is dangerous, because it's greater and smarter than us, like ameliorated humans (cf. the cyborg theory, a transhuman body that transcend humans capabilities). 

We can highlight the fact that, in Her, Ex Machina or Blade Runner, the marginal body/artificial intelligence are females. It looks like the extension of the phantasm about A.I : it's something men dream of having, and these female bodies are the object of their desire too. 

Class 1

The idea of hybrid and marginal bodies first summoned in me the character of Edward Scissorhands, half human/half machine. And this hybrid body makes him a marginal body : he doesn't fit into the suburbian lifestyle, even if he tried his best. In the end, he's condamned to live as an outcast, all alone in his dark castle, hated by most of the city.

In fact I think that most of Tim Burton’s movies are about hybrid or marginal bodies: characters out of their time or outside society because they’re, somehow, different, in appearance or behavior, like Jack from The Nightmare for Christmas who lives in Halloween Town but wants to discover new things and is interested in Chrismas, making him a weirdo in the eyes of his peers. These characters are a reflexion of the artist behind the camera : Burton himself doesn't fit Hollywood standards (he worked at the Disney studios for a while but understood that he was not happy working this way, because his aspirations were too odd for the studio and they didn't trust him). 

We started to study David Bowie’s last clip, Blackstar. As an artist but also as a person, Bowie represents the idea of hybrid and marginal body. He does not have a common look, and he embraced his difference to create his art. He also had a huge influence in terms of representations of bodies, genders and races.