Publication details
Teoretizování o žánrové povaze a fikčních světech českých sci-fi komedií
| Title in English | Theorizing Genre Constitution and Fictional Worlds of Czech Sci-fi Comedies |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Iluminace. Časopis pro teorii, historii a estetiku filmu. |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | sci-fi; fictional worlds theory; poetics of cinema; czech cinema |
| Description | The study proposes a sort of poetic approach to the research of genre in Czech cinema that understands genre as a more or less artificially created “label” consisting of a group of film texts that share a set of features on the levels of a) generation of fictional world, b) stylistic patterns, c) narrative patterns. The sampling was based on the basal “top-down” presupposition that all films must meet the condition that some element in them defies what is considered physically plausible in the real world. In the next stage, the research was conducted in the “bottom-up” manner, searching in a large sample for films that have a set of similar features. Through this process, a group of films have been selected that in a broad and narrow sense constitute a genre labeled “sci-fi comedy”. In the narrow sense, the sample includes the films ZABIL JSEM EINSTEINA, PANOVE; PANE, VY JSTE VDOVA!; ZITRA VSTANU A OPARIM SE CAJEM and COZ TAKHLE DAT SI SPENAT. In the broader sense it also includes the films ZTRACENA TVAR, KDO CHCE ZABIT JESSII? and VELKA FILMOVÁ LOUPEZ. The films were analyzed by the author’s own theory of fiction, within which the process of mediation of the narrative and fictional world is called a fictisation. Three characteristic features of fictisations of the genre of sci-fi comedies have been recognized: a) a strong (one-phase or two-phase) setup, b) double fictisation and c) rewriting or obscuring characters’ identifying features. The initial narrative tool is a sci-fi device that did not exist until the moment when the narrative began or was not used in the way it is consecutively used (which is the bases of sci-fi comedies in the broarder sense). |