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Performing Pleasure and Suffering: Resident Evil: Village Playthroughs Through the Lens of Psychoanalytic Film Theory
Formánková, Lucie ; Anger, Jiří (advisor) ; Česálková, Lucie (referee)
Klíčová slova (česky): Psychoanalytická filmová teorie, Masochismus, Teorie diváctví, Resident Evil: Village, Videohry, Playthrough Keywords (in English): Psychoanalytic film theory, Spectatorship, Masochism, Resident Evil: Village, Video games, Playthrough Abstract (in English): The idea of the spectator as a set of emotional, perceptual, and identification processes has been linked since the beginnings of psychoanalytic film theory to the disposition of the cinema, where the main driver of mental processes is the moving image on the screen. Thus, classical psychoanalytic theory understands the viewer as a figure hidden in darkness, passively receiving in an individual union with the audiovisual work. But what happens when the emotions evoked by the film are laid bare, the position with which the consumer identifies is thematized by the expressive means of new media and mutually negotiated by the conditions set by the specific audiovisual work? How can we approach such a model in terms of the psychoanalytic theory of spectatorship? What processes occur on the viewer's part as an active participant who makes their film viewing visible, reflects, and performs in the context of contemporary online culture? The phenomenon of so-called playthrough videos works with the motif of placing oneself, one's reactions,...
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Interface, Control and Visual Culture: Distracted Attention in the Internet Era
Jurenka, Adam ; Svatoňová, Kateřina (advisor) ; Anger, Jiří (referee)
The bachelor's thesis is based on various theoretical approaches, the contact point of which is tried to be found precisely in their relation to attention, and especially then to various forms and processes of its distraction. It examines these processes in their broader historical and sociocultural context, mainly in relation to the processes of modernization, digitization, commodification and articulation of normativity. The first part of the work is mainly defined by two philosophical lines: the concept of rhizome by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as an acentric, variable system, on the basis of which the work tries to outline the ontology of global attention; and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction as a model for deconstructing the polar opposition between attention and distraction. The second part of the work tries to build on this game between attention and distraction, and to reconsider the concept of the attention economy in the context of contemporary visual culture. The theoretical terrain here is much more diffuse: the main lines explore the relationship between technology and man, the globalization of media and neoliberal ideologies of control, progress and productivity. Using examples from visual culture, they try to show how these relations shape patterns of attention, and especially...
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Aesthetics of the Crack-Up: Digital Kříženecký and the Autonomous Creativity of Archival Footage
Anger, Jiří ; Česálková, Lucie (advisor) ; Vojvodík, Josef (referee) ; Denson, Shane (referee)
Would it be possible to do film theory "from below," from the perspective of a film object, of its multifarious details and facets, however marginal, unintentional, or aleatory they might be? Could we treat figurative and material accidents in moving images as full-fledged actors with distinctive aesthetic forms, functions, and effects and discernible origins and genealogies? The body of work that poses these kinds of questions surfaced with the digitization of the "first Czech films," made by Jan Kříženecký between 1898 and 1911. While the digitized films benefit from high-definition picture quality, achieved by scanning the materials in 4K, the deformations present in the materials were not effaced but made all the more visible in the image. Thus, formerly analog elements impinge upon the form and content of the moving images to such an extent that they create speculatively and aesthetically generative figures and shapes. With the help of digital technology, we can isolate and zoom in on these features yet also experiment with how they can be reimagined. The aim of this dissertation is to account for the weird shapes that emerge when the material elements interact with the figurative content of the moving image. In Kříženecký's films, the individual deformations (including the intrinsic features...
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Affect, Expression, Performance: Transformation of Melodramatic Excess in the Work of Werner Schroeter
Anger, Jiří ; Vojvodík, Josef (advisor) ; Svatoňová, Kateřina (referee)
This diploma thesis deals with various possible ways in which the formalized expression of emotions that is characteristic of the melodramatic mode can be reinterpreted in the context of experimental cinema, with the work of the director Werner Schroeter being used as a main (but not exclusive) example. The main argument is based on two interrelated ideas. First, the melodramatic mode as a genre-bending category offers a wide repertory of stylistic features designed to express extreme emotional states or situations which can be encompassed by the term "melodramatic excess". This type of excess manifests itself most visibly in moments of intense passion when the plot breaks down and freezes in a static or symbolic arrangement, either through close-up or tableau vivant. All attention is thereby focused on the heroes' gestures and poses which express their emotional state face to face with an intense situation for which they cannot yet find an adequate response. Second, certain experimental films manage to transform the melodramatic excess through "expressive and performative operations" with filmic space, time and bodies, turning the exterior representation of emotions into the immanent expression of affects. In this case, affect is understood as a certain variation of emotions which demonstrates the...
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Melodramatic Imagination and the Theatre of Cruelty: In a Year with Thirteen Moons
Anger, Jiří ; Hanáková, Petra (advisor) ; Christov, Petr (referee)
This bachelor's thesis explores the relationship between melodrama and Antonin Artaud's "theatre of cruelty". It is based primarily on the conception of "melodramatic imagination", invented by a renowned literary theorist Peter Brooks: according to his theory, melodrama is neither a lowbrow genre nor only a pop culture phenomenon, but a coherent aesthetic system with a wide-ranging repertoire of expressive features and also a certain mode of thinking and imagining. I aim to prove that the melodramatic imagination as defined by Brooks can be linked with Artaud's vision of theatre whose crucial aesthetic and ideological signs are similar to those of melodrama: I even conclude that the theatre of cruelty is a radical expression of the melodramatic imagination and that it fully realizes its potential. As I try to show, the kinship between those two systems can also be applied to cinema, that is why I analyse Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film In a Year with 13 Moons in which this unique affinity takes shape. My thesis is structured into three parts: the first one provides a theoretical framework for the examination of melodrama that is mainly based on two key works from the area, Brooks's book The Melodramatic Imagination and an essay by like-minded film theorist Thomas Elsaesser called Tales of Sound and...
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The legal regulation of so-called "švarcsystém"
Anger, Jiří ; Soušková, Milena (advisor) ; Spirit, Michal (referee)
The bachelor thesis deals with the issue of so-called "švarcsystém", also known as concealed employment relationship. The term describes a situation when people working for an employer are not his employees, but individual entrepreneurs. The first chapter defines basic concepts related to the topic. The following part describes the historical development of legal regulation of "švarcsystém" in the Czech Republic and evaluates its strong and weak points. The main section includes an analysis of current legal regulation of concealed employment and its main advantages and disadvantages. The next chapter concerns the economic aspects of "švarcsystém" and examines its impact on the state budget. A practical example illustrates the differences between the tax obligations of employees and self-employed. The following section is devoted to two key court rulings that significantly influenced the understanding of "švarcsystém" over the years. The last chapter examines the various forms of concealed employment in other member states of the EU. The conclusion summarizes the findings and includes proposals de lege ferenda.
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