Required Readings:
1.Death By Hanging
2.Domenig, “A Brief History of Independent Cinema in Japan“
3.Desser, “Oshima, Korea, and 1968“
Requirements:
The paper includes two parts:
Part 1
After watching the movie and reading the materials, please answer the following question：
Distanciation is intended to keep us on our toes as viewers, primarily through moments that remind us that we’re spectators and which ask us to think about what we’re watching.
Distanciation employs such (film) techniques as direct address (speaking directly into the camera and breaking the “fourth wall”), emphasizing the theatricality of what we’re watching, mixing documentary and narrative footage/dialogue/voice-over, etc. There are a lot of ways to remind us that we’re watching a movie, and to keep us from getting so caught up in a story that we forget it, and Oshima employs both familiar and unique techniques to achieve a distancing effect.
Choose one scene in Death By Hanging that you think exemplifies Oshima’s use of distanciation to keep his audience on our toes – keep us thinking about what’s happening, remind us that we’re watching a movie that’s demanding our active participation in its key questions, keep us from getting too wrapped up in any one narrative element of the story.
Describe the scene briefly, and then talk about how it creates a distancing effect, and why you think Oshima is doing it at that point (that is, what does he want the audience to think/feel/understand/question when he uses that technique?). I mainly want you to interrogate those moments in the film that take us out of it, considering Oshima’s reasons for doing so.
Part 2
The following essay is the reader’s opinions on the above questions, comment on his ideas.
Do you agree, disagree, or have other thoughts for his ideas?
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