Essays on Fantastical

A Passionate Revival of Movie Musical Styles

Film Review: La La Land – A Passionate Revival of Movie Musical Styles La La Land was released by Lionsgate and Black Label Media on December 25, 2016. It is considered a comedy/drama/musical production. Damien Chazelle is the director and writer of the film. Major stars in the movie are Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Rosemarie DeWitt (Platt & Gilbert, 2016). It has received 14 Oscar nominations and numerous Golden Globe awards. The plot involves the evolving and troubled love affair between an aspiring actress and a disillusioned jazz pianist. This is a musical production that includes drama, romance and comedy ...

Each and every part of the fairy tale has its own significant meaning, which makes the story even more unique in the reader’s imagination and brings deeper symbolism into the perception of the tale. One of such elements is the forest, where the little Snow White has found dwarfs. This element has various explanations, depending on the way the reader perceives and understands the tale. The forest may symbolize the dark period of life – the period of decline, depression, loss of hope, etc. It may also symbolize a time of issues, problems represented through the trees and grass, ...

In “Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: A Review,” C.S. Lewis famously said: “The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity” (Lewis). The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Fellowship of the Ring, are two examples of fantasy novels that support this statement. The former tells the story of some children who are evacuated to the countryside, only to discover the land of Narnia in a wardrobe. The book evokes themes such as good vs. ...

Introduction

The Oxford English Dictionary has myriad definitions for the word ‘cool,’ from the conceptual physical sciences where cool means lower temperature, to its cultural connotation where cool means “restrained and relaxed,” such as jazz, and “fashionably attractive or impressive,” which could be a person, trend, habit, or behaviour. If one means pop culture, then it's harder to define what is cool, because the pop culture is broken up into subcultures, each with their own definition of cool. One cannot look at the current age with the same perspective as you look at previous ones. There are reasons for this. ...

In the article, "Why Game of Thrones is taking over the world," writer Charlotte Runcie considers the popularity of the HBO television series noting that it is one of most popular shows of all time and is broadcast in roughly 170 countries. The series, which is based on a series of books by George R R Martin, is packed abundantly with everything from poisonous murders to beheadings, fights and dragons. The appeal is intricate and intense among fans. The show is recognized as exploring the topic of power, weaving in the comic and harsh realities of what is means ...

Unlike many of his contemporaries in the realm of science fiction writing, H.G. Wells understood how to tell a story to an audience. Whereas many of the other writers of the era were fascinated by the many technological advances available to them and the implications of these advances, Wells used those advances to set up a story that would come to resonate in American culture for years to come.

Indeed, to this day, the trope of an “alien” is consistent with Wells’ original description of the Martians, which speaks to the timelessness of the novel that he created. One of ...

Question 1

Crime dramas had become common on the cinema screens and rated as the most preferred videos. Even though most of them are watched for entertainment purposes, they usually have a central cultural theme. Films have been found to be the best means through which different cultures can be displayed and united. Personalities are also revealed as well as some of the issues that affect the societies and the efforts of various authorities to handle them. Crime dramas I have watched are aimed at stereotyping characters based on their race, culture, religion and profession. Issues of gender roles have also been ...

C. S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”

Synopsis

C. S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” follows the adventures of the Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. During World War II, their parents sent them to live in the country with a certain Professor Kirke to keep their children safe. On a rainy day, the Pevensie children play a game and explore Professor Kirke’s house. Lucy, the youngest among the four children, discovers a wardrobe in one of the rooms. Entranced by the wardrobe, Lucy opens it and steps inside only to discover another world. Lucy ventures ...

Analysis of some Stories in “The Best of Lady Churchill Rosebud’s Wristlet”

- What familiar restaurant forms the basis for the setting of this story? What details make this clear to you? Egghead’s restaurant forms the basis for the setting of this story. This is so because the restaurant bears the décor of the Wizard of Oz which features prominently in the story ‘Heartland” by Karen Joy Fowler. - What popular film is referenced by the final images of the story? How do these allusions function to establish the story as something other than realism? The popular film referenced Wizard of Oz. The allusions in the ...

In Laura Esquivel’s trenchant and fascinating novel Like Water for Chocolate, young girl Tita learns how to find her own voice in a patriarchal, restrictive Latin society through the art of cooking. According to Canadian author Pat Tryer, "Ultimately, Tita negotiates a voice through the elaborate, fantastical recipes she creates, thereby subverting gender suppression by speaking through the stereotypical women's sphere of cooking. These recipes and their fantastic results mirror and reinforce the central theme of the novel, that of the suppression of the female voice and its inevitable explosion of expression everywhere”. A wonderful work of fantastical magical realism, ...

In his essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema", Andre Bazin distinguishes between "those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality" (Bazin 43). Here, he essentially refers to the difference that often occurs between the presentational and the representational in film – as film continues to skew towards the realistic, these works tend to emphasize verisimilitude over abstraction. Films today often feel the need to create a sense of immersion within their worlds, wherein an audience member could reasonably believe that they are watching real life unfold before their eyes. This ...

Often touted as an ‘unfilmable’ novel, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi told the story of a young Indian boy named Pi who, over the course of the story, finds himself on a small life raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with only a dangerous Bengal Tiger (whom he names Richard Parker) to accompany him. Here, he goes on a hazardous journey of survival, during which he explores his spirituality and is taken to the depths of his understanding of life itself. Ang Lee’s 2012 film masterfully adapts these themes into an elegant, fairytale-like story that is alternatingly presentational and ...

Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle follows the passive, apathetic Toru Okada, a man residing and working in suburban Japan whose search for his missing cat reveals much more about his life than it seems. Encountering a great number of supernatural and religious events, along with the concepts of parallel worlds filled with unique characters, Toru learns to take stock of his life and engage with the world around him once more. The use of a blurred, abstract reality allows Murakami to emphasize the apathy she wishes to highlight in the modern Japanese man, getting them out of a state of numbness ...

Is it or is it not Magical Realism?

When speaking about García Márquez’s inventive narratives, Spiller (1999) a professor of Renaissance literature, notes that his use of magical realism (MR) demands that the reader “accommodate both fantasy and reality within a single narrative structure” (475, para. 2). Magical realism is similar to (or perhaps the same as) fantasy and science fiction because the reader is asked to do the same thing; that is accept fantasy as reality. Gene Wolfe (science fiction and fantasy author) was asked to explain the difference between science fiction, fantasy and magical realism. He explained that the difference is “Plausibility. . . . Science fiction is ...

For centuries, the fairy tale has been the cornerstone of imaginative children's fiction - the genre provides a canvas by which amazing tales can be told. The fantastic becomes possible in fairy tales, and for many, childlike wonder can be recaptured by the simple act of reading one. However, in many children's books, there is a pervading theme of maturation, and "growing up"; in these stories, the fairy tale land the characters inhabit is shown to be fleeting and transient. Two such fairy tales - Ursula Dubosarsky's The Red Shoe and Neil Gaiman's Stardust - frame the fantastic story they tell ...

In Don Quixote, verisimilitude is used in an intriguing way, as the truth is presented through the eyes of aging, senile dreamer Don Diego de Miranda as a fantastical adventure. Don Quixote himself takes on the responsibility of providing verisimilitude to the audience, as he asks them to suspend disbelief and go along with the transparently futile ride. Verisimilitude is also conveyed by the narrator of the piece (arguably Cervantes, the author, himself), as he never lets the audience take Quixote’s fantasies as truth – the events and people he encounters are always presented through the lens of truth. ...

The works of Ray Bradbury have long been held up as examples of speculative fiction: the forms of genres which, generally, encompass a wide range of imaginative features. His work often presents common themes such as those with pertain to the future, space, science fiction and the dystopian qualities of future societies. For example, in Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury discusses a future society where books are banned: presenting the reader with a hint of anti-meta narrative, given that the book is the very thing in the readers’ hands. This also represents Bradbury’s most famous work: it is universally accepted as being one ...

‘Angels in America’ a play that has become a success story in the mainstream drama in America acts. The play’s setting is both political and religious in nature as it was down played in the backdrop of politics in 1980s that was characterized by religious believes that defined the American culture. Gay – a disparate group were made to lead the plays (Kushner, 1992). This group of people is however a serious threat of contracting Aids forcing them to straight- face the specter through teaching themselves on better ways to support themselves. The play is divided into two part with ‘Millennium Approaches’ being ...

INTRODUCTION

In the 1982 science-fiction film Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott takes great care to fashion a detailed, unique dystopian world for the characters to inhabit. The setting is Los Angeles in the (at the time of production) dystopian future of 2019, where corporations rule the world and synthetic humans called replicants have been outlawed. The film follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) as he is tasked to hunt down several replicants who have escaped to Earth. The care taken in the creation of the world of Blade Runner, in combination with the dreamlike, meandering story, creates a visual and cultural ...