Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Melgosa, Adrián Pérez | Vernon, Kathleen M | Flesler, Daniela | Firbas, Paul | Kakoudaki, Despina.
Date
2014-12-01
Keywords
Film studies
Department
Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77707
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Millennium Accidents is an attempt to show the relation between the shattered, fragmented and decentralizing nature of contemporary, globalized reality and the texts it produces. In my research I aim to reveal the changes in the building and development of a story as a narrative and cognitive phenomenon. Economic globalization and the high-tech revolution have led to a modification of our mental, emotional and social functioning, converting the whole world into a huge network. Consequently, narrative-- be it verbal or iconic--shows the same metamorphosis as it generates multiple plots, neglects temporal and spatial conventions, and moves beyond national identities. Six films (Carne Trémula 1997; Todo sobre mi madre, 1999; Amores Perros, 2000; Hable con ella, 2002; 21 Grams, 2003; Babel, 2006) form the corpus of texts analyzed in my dissertation. All appeared around the third millennium and are connected by the presence of a disastrous event--an accident--that radically alters the protagonists' lives but at the same time opens up new possibilities for plot development. The first chapter scrutinizes the six films from a narratological perspective, analyzing the interplay between causality and coincidence as the main moving forces within the story. Drawing on recent scholarship in literary theory and criticism, I direct attention to the neglected role of coincidence in literature and film narrative. The second chapter examines the role of thematic constants such as the body, violence and death as driving forces in their own right. Taking trauma studies as my point of departure, I situate the six films with respect to the notion of trauma culture in which unforeseen and incomprehensible violent occurrences destroy a fragile stability, changing people and their sense of life forever. The final chapter returns to consider the further effects of the films' broken or randomized narrative structure. Each proposes a breakdown of conventional narrative norms on three levels (time, logic and meaning), thus opening new dimensions for the cognitive and emotional processing of the text. | Millennium Accidents is an attempt to show the relation between the shattered, fragmented and decentralizing nature of contemporary, globalized reality and the texts it produces. In my research I aim to reveal the changes in the building and development of a story as a narrative and cognitive phenomenon. Economic globalization and the high-tech revolution have led to a modification of our mental, emotional and social functioning, converting the whole world into a huge network. Consequently, narrative-- be it verbal or iconic--shows the same metamorphosis as it generates multiple plots, neglects temporal and spatial conventions, and moves beyond national identities. Six films (Carne Trémula 1997; Todo sobre mi madre, 1999; Amores Perros, 2000; Hable con ella, 2002; 21 Grams, 2003; Babel, 2006) form the corpus of texts analyzed in my dissertation. All appeared around the third millennium and are connected by the presence of a disastrous event--an accident--that radically alters the protagonists' lives but at the same time opens up new possibilities for plot development. The first chapter scrutinizes the six films from a narratological perspective, analyzing the interplay between causality and coincidence as the main moving forces within the story. Drawing on recent scholarship in literary theory and criticism, I direct attention to the neglected role of coincidence in literature and film narrative. The second chapter examines the role of thematic constants such as the body, violence and death as driving forces in their own right. Taking trauma studies as my point of departure, I situate the six films with respect to the notion of trauma culture in which unforeseen and incomprehensible violent occurrences destroy a fragile stability, changing people and their sense of life forever. The final chapter returns to consider the further effects of the films' broken or randomized narrative structure. Each proposes a breakdown of conventional narrative norms on three levels (time, logic and meaning), thus opening new dimensions for the cognitive and emotional processing of the text. | 228 pages
Recommended Citation
Shilova, Anna S, "Millennium Accidents, Breaking Narratives in Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu | Millennium Accidents, Breaking Narratives in Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu" (2014). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3498.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3498