Constructing Realities
I decided to write my paper on the idea that many filmmakers seek “real” stories to make their films about. I based the paper on the film Boys Don’t Cry, directed by Kimberly Peirce and distributed by Fox Searchlight in 1999. I analyzed the way Peirce used a construction of reality within Boys Don’t Cry in order to produce a representation of Brandon Teena’s true story. By analyzing Kimberly Peirce’s film Boys Don’t Cry as a constructed reality, I showed the relationship between real stories and the cinematic representations of them.
In analyzing the accuracy and process of cinematic representations of true stories, I considered a few important factors that I thought effected the Peirce’s construction of reality. One is Peirce’s auteurship in the production of film, and how this might effect the representation of the truth. Another is the context of the film, which is useful in determining how the circumstances the film was made in might have also effected its production. Also, the use of cinematography within the film’s construction of a true story can show how the depictions of the true story are helped or hindered by the cinematic affects. The use and understanding of the viewer’s spectatorship can additionally help establish how Perice might have changed her representation of the truth according the audience. Lastly, the (mis)representation of the subjects in the film, and the effects these representations have on an audience (especially when it is understood that the film is representational of a real story).
Bibliography:
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Notes Toward an Investigation (1969).
Dannenbaum, Jed, Carroll Hodge, and Doe Mayer. Creative Filmmaking from the Inside
Out: Keys to the Art of Making Inspired Movies and Television. New York City,
New York: Fireside, 2003.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. UK: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Wang, Zheng. Plot Summary of Boys Don’t Cry. 2007. IMDb. 6 Dec. 2007
Willox, Annabelle. Branding Teen: (Mis)Representations in the Media. Cardiff, UK: Sage
Publications, 2003.