"Deconstruction" in media

French cinema certainly had a strong wave of deconstructionist films like BREATHLESS that was sort of a crime noir film that broke all the rules of noir. It shot everything incorrectly, edited it in the wrong ways and didn’t tell the story properly. But doing everything “the wrong way” worked because the template existed for it to break. CHINATOWN, for example, only broke one rule – it let the killer get away with it. Otherwise, it was very similar to the many noir films from the 40’s to the 60’s. Even the sexual taboo wasn’t too far out there compared to A TOUCH OF EVIL or PSYCHO or the murder mysteries and detective novels Jim Thompson wrote. In fact, CHINATOWN was such a throwback that many audiences didn’t really get it as that type of straightforward moviemaking was out of style.

With KUBRICK, was DR STRANGELOVE a deconstruction of the Cold War drama? It came out before FAILSAFE which was a classic version of what STRANGELOVE tore apart. Was 2001 a deconstruction of the science fiction adventure? Compared to FORBIDDEN PLANET, it was, but was that what was intended? Was THE SHINING a deconstruction of the horror novel and was FULL METAL JACKET a deconstruction of the war movie?

I think they were but extended outside cinematic terms. Instead, the real destruction was against cultural assumptions that people carry into the movies. For example, there were plenty of novels and films based on those novels that were about the downfall of the “rogue” either set in period England or actually written in the period. However, in BARRY LYNDON, the events on screen actually play against the voice-over narrative telling us how to feel about the story. Lyndon is not merely the self-interested rogue immorally striving to move up in the world by any means necessary. There is a lot of ambiguity to his motivations and he’s often the victim of circumstances rather than committing crimes and sinning for the sake of it.

In Westerns, I suppose BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID is the best example of a film that plays entirely against the basic structure of a Western from any time before it. However, it kind of has become a model for a lot of westerns that came after.

In the end though, deconstruction more or less is a dead end which is why most of those movies all came out in the 60’s and early 70’s. Is JOKER a deconstruction of anything specific?

It’s when you deconstruct something.

It’s the practice of deconstructing.

De-con-struct-ion.

Subversion can be a deconstruction.

Imagine a house. You open the front door and there is a ten foot drop instead of a floor. Or you open the front door and there is a bathroom inside instead of a foyer. Bunuel would use tricks like these. Everyone would get together for dinner and there would be toilets around the table. They all carry on conversing while emptying their bowels and bladders. Then a child whispers something to her mother who nods her head. The girl goes to the bathroom where she makes a peanut butter sandwich and eats it in privacy. It is an absurd presentation but it makes you ask why is one biological function considered social while the other end of it is taboo?

Now imagine a house. You go inside, but the homeowner gradually takes the house apart just as you start to get comfortable. He moves the furniture out just as you start to use it. Shuts off the water and finally starts knocking holes in the wall. Eventually you stop thinking of it as a house and realize it’s just a bunch of wooden boxes barely hanging together. So why do we say we live in a house and not we live in a box? That’s deconstruction. It doesn’t destroy or negate the genre or idea, but gives you a position outside its original, and often unconscious, effect on you in which to view the elements and inherent expectations of the idea.

Dave wrote:

Usually with the best deconstructions I think there is an element of reconstruction at the end … examining it, keeping the positive and worthwhile stuff and getting rid of the stuff that is not needed,

Sidebar – The “Deconstructionist” is a really creepy Serial Killer concept.

Deconstruction is about exposing the things we feel comfortable with and have taken for granted, and then forcing us to question whether they are what we enjoy about the character/premise in the first place.

Thats DKR to a tee.

A good deconstruction piece of media is essentially a young child going “but why?” at every element of the production, especially the conventions that are taken for granted.

The Unforgiven is pretty good at the for Westerns, especially as you’ve got Eastwood doing it, tearing down even his own Revisionist Westerns like Josey Wales.

My wife went to a restaurant once that served “deconstructed” French Onion soup. Basically onion soup with a slice of cheese and a chunk of bread.
.
True story.

Jon wrote:

Although, thinking about it, couldn’t we say that Stan & Jack’s Marvel were the first true deconstructionist approach to SH? I mean, the Marvel-type of SH is in a lot of ways a deconstruction of the more mythical DC-type of SHs…

Yeah, like Dave says, I think you can at least to some extent look at it that way. The one caveat I’d have is that the early Marvel comics were probably more interesting in establishing something new, in taking some steps into a different direction, than analysing and taking apart what had gone before. They were more interesting in their own, new subjects than in deconstructing the ones that had gone before.

“He’s not just a superhero, he’s a superhero that’s got a bad leg” :D