LIFE AFTER COLLEGE
Life after college is a mixture of relief and insecurity.
The relief certainly comes from the submission of the dissertation which I was working on for days and weeks and months. It caused sleepless nights and, when I finally fell asleep, strange dreams. Many a time, I was doubting my own ideas, my writing, the epiphanies I thought I had just found out. But then again: this is the process of writing. Doubt swallows basic truths and washes over previously well-structured arguments, a flood that leaves nothing behind but chaos and mud.
On the day of the submission deadline, however, all my words and truths were printed, bound - and irreversible. I submitted my thesis, titled 'Enjoy it while it lasts': A Cognitive Approach to Cinematic Hybridity, Emotion and Mainstream/Art Cinema, discussing the hyper-hybrid films Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) and Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011).
My basic theory differed from what I used to research during my literary studies and during most of the film studies here in Dublin. I was used to cultural or psychoanalytical approaches, looking for analogies for postcolonial oppression and the struggles for freedom. This time though, I encountered the ways our brain is working, mental processes and physical effects that are signifiers for our emotional response to the fictions we experience in viewing a movie on the big screen. The emotionally disturbing quality of both films is what attracted me to a cognitive approach in the first place. I remember that both films elicited a very strong emotional, even physical response in me. Black Swan made me gasp, Melancholia left me with a heavy, yet bottomless void in my stomach. Structurally and content-wise, Melancholia fails to merge its opposing elements and establishes a tension between them. This tension is not resolved and is thus likely to evoke an emotional uncertainty in the viewer. Black Swan, on the other hand, which works with an obvious tendency towards mainstream cinema, achieves to merge its opposites: a hybrid whole emerges that reaches many different audience segments. No wonder it is so commercially successful.
In any case, life after college feels like an adventure. I am seeking a job as producer assistant that might open a door into the highly competitive world of the film industry, while I simultaneously try to nurture my passion for the written word, collecting topics, themes and characters for a new project.
Nothing is definite yet, I'm working my way through overgrown paths of the German bureaucracy, the fast lanes of the internet and job ads and the fragile bridges of apartment notices. But I'll keep you posted.
WORKING TITLE 6 claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail (jennifer(at)lautschriftmagazin.de) with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.
The relief certainly comes from the submission of the dissertation which I was working on for days and weeks and months. It caused sleepless nights and, when I finally fell asleep, strange dreams. Many a time, I was doubting my own ideas, my writing, the epiphanies I thought I had just found out. But then again: this is the process of writing. Doubt swallows basic truths and washes over previously well-structured arguments, a flood that leaves nothing behind but chaos and mud.
On the day of the submission deadline, however, all my words and truths were printed, bound - and irreversible. I submitted my thesis, titled 'Enjoy it while it lasts': A Cognitive Approach to Cinematic Hybridity, Emotion and Mainstream/Art Cinema, discussing the hyper-hybrid films Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) and Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011).
 |
| Natalie Portman in Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) |
 |
| Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) |
My basic theory differed from what I used to research during my literary studies and during most of the film studies here in Dublin. I was used to cultural or psychoanalytical approaches, looking for analogies for postcolonial oppression and the struggles for freedom. This time though, I encountered the ways our brain is working, mental processes and physical effects that are signifiers for our emotional response to the fictions we experience in viewing a movie on the big screen. The emotionally disturbing quality of both films is what attracted me to a cognitive approach in the first place. I remember that both films elicited a very strong emotional, even physical response in me. Black Swan made me gasp, Melancholia left me with a heavy, yet bottomless void in my stomach. Structurally and content-wise, Melancholia fails to merge its opposing elements and establishes a tension between them. This tension is not resolved and is thus likely to evoke an emotional uncertainty in the viewer. Black Swan, on the other hand, which works with an obvious tendency towards mainstream cinema, achieves to merge its opposites: a hybrid whole emerges that reaches many different audience segments. No wonder it is so commercially successful.
In any case, life after college feels like an adventure. I am seeking a job as producer assistant that might open a door into the highly competitive world of the film industry, while I simultaneously try to nurture my passion for the written word, collecting topics, themes and characters for a new project.
Nothing is definite yet, I'm working my way through overgrown paths of the German bureaucracy, the fast lanes of the internet and job ads and the fragile bridges of apartment notices. But I'll keep you posted.
WORKING TITLE 6 claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail (jennifer(at)lautschriftmagazin.de) with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.
Kommentare
Kommentar veröffentlichen