thematic terms

Question 1

allegory:

Answer 1

a symbolic technique in which stylized characters and situations represent abstract ideas such as Justice, Death, Religion, Society, etc.

Question 2

allusion

Answer 2

a reference to a person, event, or work of art, usually well-known

Question 3

angle:

Answer 3

the camera’s angle of view relative to the subject being photographed; a high-angle shot is photographed from above, a low-angle from below the subject

Question 4

archetype:

Answer 4

an original model or type after which similar things are patterned; archetypes can be well-known story patterns, universal experiences, or personality types. Myths, fairy tales, genres, and cultural heroes are generally archetypal, as are the basic cycles of life and nature

Question 5

anticipatory camera/anticipatory setup:

Answer 5

the placement of the camera in such a manner as to anticipate the movement of an action before it occurs; often suggest predestination

Question 6

avant-garde:

Answer 6

from the French, meaning “in the front ranks;” those minority artists whose works are characterized by an unconventional daring and by obscure, controversial, or highly personal ideas

Question 7

convention:

Answer 7

an implied agreement between the viewer and artist to accept certain artificialities as real in a work of art; in movies, editing (or juxtaposition of shots) is accepted as “logical” even though a viewer’s perception of reality is continuous and unfragmented

Question 8

dichotomy:

Answer 8

a conceptual division into two mutually exclusive kinds; feminist discourse demonstrates parallels with the male/female, public/private, and western philosophical dichotomies such as mind/body; objective/subjective; reason/emotion; active/passive, etc. to show the ways in which this tends to privilege males in terms of Western values

Question 9

femininity:

Question 10

frame:

Answer 10

the dividing line between the edges of the screen image and the enclosing darkness of the theatre. Can also refer to a single photograph from the filmstrip

Question 11

homage:

Answer 11

a direct or indirect reference within a movie to another movie, filmmaker, or cinematic style; a respectful and affectionate tribute

Question 12

gaze:

Answer 12

In Freudian theory the gaze is theorized in terms of voyeurism and exhibitionism, the active and passive forms of scopophilia, or the drive to look. In the 1970s film theorists adopted the term for theorization of spectatorship. Laura Mulvey’s classic essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1989) utilized the concept to explore the power relations of looking and represents the (Hollywood, dominant culture) cinematic gaze as primarily masculine (the “male gaze”). Mulvey argues that cinematic pleasure is constructed in such a way as to invite all viewers into an identification with a heterosexual male gaze.

Question 13

gender:

Answer 13

a social construction (“masculinity” and “femininity”), as opposed to the base of biological sexual differences (“male” and “female”) upon which these constructions have been erected and projected

Question 14

masculinity:

Answer 14

the set of cultural attributes assigned to the male sex which the political discourses of gender studies seek to critique. In Western culture “man” is conflated with the universal (“mankind”) and positioned as the producer of knowledge who is himself unexamined as a gender category. Theoretical understandings of the constructions of masculinity usually divides between the basically psychological/psychoanalytic and the historical as well as between the personal and the public.

Question 15

motif:

Answer 15

any unobtrusive technique, object, of thematic idea that’s systematically repeated throughout a film or a text

Question 16

negative space:

Answer 16

empty or unfilled space in the mise-en-scène often acting as a foil to the more detailed elements in a shot

Question 17

oeuvre:

Answer 17

from the French, “work,” the complete works of an artist, viewed as a whole

Question 18

persona:

Question 19

producer-director:

Answer 19

a filmmaker who finances his or her projects independently to allow maximum creative freedom

Question 20

reaction shot:

Answer 20

a cut to a shot of a character’s reaction to the contents of the preceding shot

Question 21

realism:

Answer 21

a style of filmmaking that attempts to duplicate the look of objective reality as it is commonly perceived with emphasis on authentic locations and details, long shots, lengthy takes, and a minimum of distorting techniques

Question 22

re-establishing shot:

Answer 22

a return to an initial establishing shot within a scene acting as the reminder of the physical context of the closer shots

Question 23

rite of passage:

Answer 23

a key phase of a person’s/character’s life when an individual passes from one stage of development to another, such as adolescence to adulthood, innocence to experience, middle age to old age, etc.

Question 24

script, screenplay, scenario

Answer 24

a written description of a movie’s dialogue and action, often includes camera directions

Question 25

soft focus:

Question 26

star vehicle:

Question 27

studio:

Answer 27

a large corporation specializing in the production of movies such as Paramount, Warner Brothers, etc; any physical facility equipped for the production of films

Question 28

symbol:

Answer 28

a figurative device in which an object, event, or cinematic technique has significance beyond its literal meaning; symbolism is determined by the dramatic context

Question 29

social constructionism:

Answer 29

centrally concerned with understanding how the language we use and the taken-for-granted categories we employ construct our experience in ways which we then reify as “natural,” “universal,” and “the way things have to be.” The distinction between sex as biological and gender as sociological identifies gender as a social construct—a product of cultural ideology.