Diasporic Stasis through Narrative Symmetry
Prospectus on Blind Sun, Isle of Dogs and Eighth Continent
In Blind Sun, Eighth Continent and Isle of Dogs, the boundary between live- action lm and stop-motion animation is blurred as the former two share many artistic approaches with the latter. Among the three films, there is a common theme of diaspora out of migration. While they all relate to real problems in the society nowadays, the lmic expressions such as color narrative, object movement and language defamiliarize the audience with the diegetic worlds, embodying alienation and foreignness. Specifically, the major orange-blue complementary color palette in Blind Sun creates a visually saturated mise-en-scène and plays with the spatial depth as the monochrome of orange in middle ground and background often seems very uniform and at, fabricating an illusion of animation; in Eighth Continent, there is only one human inhabitant, but objects such as tinfoil quivering in wind become personified and resemble the migrants that were once in the life jackets struggling in their precarious condition; in Isle of Dogs, the narrative leads the audience to follow the perspective of dogs who talk in English with each other and are unable to understand the Japanese that humans speak in the diegesis.
As Tim Ingold argues, the question of situatedness – “where am I?” – provides means for people to reorientate themselves while improvising in a precarious and changing landscape. In the same logic, when audience are confronted with the unfamiliar lmic approaches, they have to readjust their position to the lm diegeses. Though they may not be familiar with the cultural background of these films or barely share any experience with the migratory characters, they would still be able to empathize with the diasporic communities by the marginalization in lm aestheticism and absence of familiar elements they experience. Eventually, “the third space-the interrogative and ambivalent space defined by the blurring of the limitations of existing boundaries and the transgression and subversion of dualistic categorizations of culture and identity” (Ballesteros, 208) is constructed in the diegeses through visual displacement by the animated texture and verbal desolation in different or no language. The diegetic “non-space”, “which cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity”(Augé, 79), is connected to but distant from the real world. Thus, the migrational precarity becomes more accessible to the audience through the lm’s aesthetic choices in constructing the diegetic world regardless of their personal or cultural context.
Annotated Bibliography
Ballesteros, I. (2015) Immigration Cinema in the New Europe. Identities In- Between in Diasporic Cinema. p.207-211&254-261.Bristol, UK/Chicago, USA: Intellect.
—Ballesteros quotes the concept of “third space” that is introduced by Homi Bhabha. The “in-betweenness” and “un-belonging” apply to the inter-media aesthetics in Blind Sun and Eighth Continent to analyze how they visually construct a “third space” in the films.
Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture, London, Routledge.
—As described above.
Brown, C. (2015) Joyce Nashawati, Blind Sun. Available from: https://www.screendaily.com/interviews/joyce-nashawati-blind- sun/5098002.article. [Accessed: Nov 15th 2018].
—The director of Blind Sun talks about her inspiration for the story setting and color narrative. I plan to quote her as support for my analysis of the lm’s mise-en-scène.
Crump, A. (2018) How Wes Anderson sneaks stop-motion animation into every lm he makes. Online. Available from: https://theweek.com/articles/761474/how-wes-anderson-sneaks- stopmotion-animation-into-every-film-makes. [Accessed: Nov 14th 2018].
—Crump analyzes the animation techniques Wes Anderson uses in both his live-action and animated films. I would compare these with specific moments in Blind Sun and Eighth Continent to explore how intermedia expressions creates alienation effects for the audience.
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London and New York: Routledge.
—Ingold argues the concept of situatedness is a recurrent device that helps citizens to reorientate themselves in a changing landscape. I want to apply his original theory to the spectatorship towards novel lm forms that by destructing the artistic conventions, the alienated lm form makes more available the lm sense of unsettlement.
Ponzanesi, S. (2012) The Non-Places of Migrant Cinema in Europe. Third Text, Vol.26, Issue 6, p.675-690.
—Following the concept of “third space” by Homi Bhabha, I will further the discussion into “third-space films” mentioned in this essay.
Secrets of the Plant World. True-Life Adventures, Nature’s Mysteries: Secrets of the World, Walt Disney Productions, US, 1956.
—In its excerpt, plants are anthropomorphized by moving in fast-motion. I may use this example in comparison to the personified object movement in Eighth Continent.
