Abstract
This paper investigates the way in which filmmakers convey narratives through the use of the cinematic home. The film Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho, will be used as a case. In this film, an artificially constructed house sets a scene that uncovers dark contemporary realities, such as social and economic inequality in urban environments, despair, loss, and the devastations of climate change. In the film the home is the main locale in which the story unfolds, in addition to an artificially constructed street, and an apartment downtown. This mise-en-scène is interpreted in the following way. The situatedness of the story is discussed, the plot and its reciprocal architectural cinematic places. These cinematic places are discussed as existential spaces. The main home is discussed as an archetype. Here the paper draws on literature by Bachelard, and Zumthor, to explore the home as the oneiric house – the house of memory and dreams. Thereafter the home and the broader urban locales in the film are discussed in its ability to manifest ‘the other’. These cinematic architectural settings both enable hierarchies of othering, but also represents its characters, their status or lack thereof. Here literature by Kafka and Foucault are referred to explicate the notions of ‘othering’ and ‘spaces of ‘otherness’. Finally the paper focuses on the devastation and aftermath of flood in the film, and the role the cinematic places play in this event to illustrate contemporary environmental dissonance.
Presenters
June JordaanSenior Lecturer, Architecture, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
CINEMATIC PLACE, THE HOME, SITUATEDNESS THROUGH STORIES, BOUNDARY CROSSING
