Week 15: Fantasy Flashcards
What is a fantasy film?
Fantasy exists in a “reality” between that of horror (the supernatural/ spiritual) and science fiction (the rational), blurring the lines between what is “real”/ possible and not.
Children’s animated films
Fairy-tales
Big-budget, special-effect-driven action epics
What roles do fantastic worlds and fantastic characters play in the genre?
Fantastic world:
May exist beneath or behind our everyday world, accessible by travel or finding the correct point of entry
May be entirely a construction of imagination
Fantastic Characters:
Able to do impossible things, but may also live alongside “real” people.
What are three ways that we can think of all of cinema as fantasy?
Films present spectacles and tell stories that allow audiences to escape from reality into fantasy (and sometimes return to reality to reject escapism)
Films use genres and stars to reflect and respond to the fantasies of American culture, satisfying the collective needs and desires of the public at particular historical moments.
No matter how “real” a film may seem, it is always the creation of an industry, technologies, and artists.
