Kick ass is a highly acclaimed text which displays post modern elements through intertextual reference to create a narrative based almost entirley on previous films of a target genre. Levi Strauss theorised that all texts are constructed of socially recognisable debris, and in a pastiche such as kick ass, this debris must be arranged with extreme care to draw attention to certain areas and not to others. A good analogy to demonstrate this is peicing together a broken mirror: in the same way that the writer of the text must peice together the "socially recognisable debris" to make the audience reflect on a different text very carefully, it may show the incorrect reference and draw away from the inteded meaning, and when peicing together a broken mirror, peices placed at bad angles and incorrect spaces may reflect in the wrong way.
In kick ass, the intertetual references have been used correctly in some places, however, they have failed in others. one of the biggest problems in kick ass is it's soundtracks. Many tracks are taken from previously released films, as is the general theme, costumes etc. however, the tracks are taken from films with generally erelevant genres, which has a negative effect on the film by taking the attention away from the pastiche and moving it to other texts of other genres, e.g. the 28 days later theme (in the house in a heartbeat by john murphy) takes the attention away from the texts that kick ass is supposed to be referencing, and focuses it on zombie/horror films.
There are only very slight variations in the two songs, but both are based on the exact same musical notes, keys, timings etc. and therefore, to people who have seen either 28 days later or 28 weeks later, this music is just another peice of socially recognisable debris and takes their attention back to it's source and away from the text at hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment