Contextual studies - Case Study Example

? Essay in Contextual Studies Word Count 674 (6.5 pages) In contemporary practice in your area, what are the main issues surrounding ‘trying to make it real?’ Select two works from film, performance, theatre or television and analyse them in relation to the question above to illustrate your argument. I. Introduction (160 words) Costume and set design is an element of a movie production that tries to make a film seem real. Here the costumes and sets from two movies will be analyzed, for their ability to move the viewer backward and forward in time, making different worlds detailed, authentic, and ultimately, more believable. The movies that will be analyzed in each section are the movies The Hours and Peggy Sue Got Married. Costuming and set design can completely revolutionize the way a movie appears. If one has, as a director, sweeping visuals and detailed props, it makes an environment come alive with wonder. Costuming, especially in period pieces, definitely enhances the quality of a movie, because the people acting in the movie are much more likely to feel that they are part of a genuinely-created world, but that it doesn’t feel that it is created. It feels genuine, both to the performing artist creating the piece, as well as to the viewer. II. A Detailed World (400 words) The details in the movie The Hours are chillingly accurate, from the decor in Virginia Woolf’s English house to the clothes that she wears, as well as the sets designed for the characters at the other levels in the movie. Similarly, in Peggy Sue Got Married, Peggy Sue’s “blast to the past” back to the ‘60s before her and her husband got married has some very good sets and costuming. Details in sets and costuming make a movie seem more real, to be sure. Details such as the particular hat that Virginia Woolf wore in The Hours and her furnishings in her house are definitely throwbacks to 19th-century England. In The Hours, Mrs. Brown (Richard’s mother) wears clothing that has an air of the ‘50s about it. Her household appliances and decor of her house are all post-war-inspired. The contemporary apparel that Meryl Streep wears in her appearance as Clarissa Vaughn (a friend of Richard’s) in The Hours, reflects the dress and style of a 21st-century woman living in Manhattan in New York. So do the furnishings in her own flat also reflect a modernistic tone with a homey and soft—versus aloof and austere—look. Her flat looks lived-in and accessible. In Peggy Sue Got Married, we are vaulted from Peggy Sue’s late 20th-century birthday party which has a cake on the set that is shaped in the form of a large letter “X,” symbolizing, subconsciously, that she has gotten divorced. This is a key prop that is used to set the scene of the movie. The fact that Peggy Sue wakes up as a high school student at her parents’ house is frought with reminders from the ‘60s. Peggy Sue wakes up in the nurse’s office after supposedly fainting while giving blood. Peggy Sue’s house is typical of a house in the ‘60s, with its architecture and appearance. Peggy Sue’s clothing is typical of a ‘60s female high school student—complete with a hoop skirt and a letterman sweater. Some of the details in this movie--such as Peggy Sue’s future husband Charlie’s car, an old Mustang with flared sides, and the motorcycle ridden by poet-beatnik, black leather jacket-wearing Michael, whom Peggy Sue rides off with for an evening date—only enhance the quality of the movie, and make one feel the genuineness of the movie with its surroundings. Thus, this movie becomes more ‘real,’ as it were. III. An Authentic World (420 words) The worlds in both The Hours and Peggy Sue Got Married are authentic. This is because, in the movie The Hours, costuming and set design both contribute to the genuineness of the movie by having clothing and period pieces that evoke those particular time periods. The same is true of Peggy Sue Got Married. In The Hours, the flowered apron that Mrs. Brown wears, along with the decor of her ‘50s ranch-style house with a light green interior design and accentuated by a yellow-filtered camera, verifies the authentic nature of the 1950’s era-style that was in place so many years ago. Additionally, Richard Brown, as a grown-up, lives as an AIDS patient, constantly wearing a robe and living in an apartment whose exterior is in a condition of squalor, with graffiti all over the building. In Peggy Sue Got Married, the authenticity of the times is verified when Peggy Sue goes into a store and asks to buy some pantyhose (leggings). However, since it is at a point in the past when pantyhose didn’t exist, sometime in the ‘60s, the store owner is confused. That is when she turns to her friend who is a nerd genius in physics—whose name is, consequently, Richard—and she tells him about this revolutionary idea about leggings for women. Richard is enthralled by the idea, and Peggy Sue continues to tell him about other items that are not available at that point in time, but which will happen in the future. She describes events, too. She talks about radios, cell phones, Walkmans, CD players, electronics—something Peggy Sue labels “high-tech.” Richard says he likes the sound of it, and is flabbergasted when she mentions that someday a man will one day walk on the moon. Richard writes down all these ideas and will later appear at her 40th birthday party, after her divorce has been finalized. In the past, Richard asked Peggy Sue to marry him after she tells him all these great predictions. Peggy Sue, however, knows that she cannot marry Richard, since she has to marry Charlie so she can have his kids and later divorce him in the future. What makes this movie so convincing is everyone’s costuming that looks very much like it is from the ‘60s, as well as the different places in the movie that are probably sets, but have very realistic looks to them which make this movie very authentic and help the actors’ actions seem reinforced and compounded by the reality of their very surroundings. IV. A Believable World (574 words) Not only are the clothing and surroundings of both movies speak to a believable world that the characters are creating through their actions. In The Hours, the movie’s main point is to demonstrate how living in an impossible situation is only delaying the inevitable: death. Richard Brown’s character, a dying AIDS patient, knows that every day, he will have to face the hours, or what time he has remaining. For him, it is kind of like a death sentence to stay in the state that he is. That is why he ultimately chooses a destructive end, suicide. This is the conversation that Richard has with Clarissa Vaughn, his friend: “Richard Brown: But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that... Clarissa Vaughn: You do have good days still. You know you do. Richard Brown: Not really. I mean, it's kind of you to say so, but it's not really true” (Internet Movie Database, 2010, pgh. 5). Richard’s point in saying all this is that his life has no value; he is living in a sort of limbo by staying alive to satisfy the wishes of other people. He is a great writer and he is going to be living to cater to the whims of a public that adores his work and wants to honor him, but he wants no part of it. Touching his bright blue robe, Richard told Clarissa that he wrote not to be famous, but because he wanted to describe how something tastes, how something feels, the history of how we once were, to paraphrase. Virginia Woolf, in The Hours, is a writer in a similar boat. She lives in Richmond, in England, which is a quiet town, but Virginia longs the pace of city life, and fears that her time in Richmond is a death sentence—because she is not free to do as she chooses based on her doctor’s orders. To her, that is her own kind of hell. It is a dark space. Her drab clothing and penultimate scene of running to the set of the train station is an act of desperation to finally be free—which her husband Leonard does not understand. She wants to feel like she is in control of her life, but is not. Thus, she, like Richard, takes a destructive end and drowns herself in order to be free. Richard’s mother, Mrs. Brown, takes a constructive path and decides to abandon her husband, along with her young son Richard, in the ‘50s. She goes to work in a library in a different city, in order to escape a life of being in servitude to a man whom she married for the wrong reasons, or perhaps economic dependency. She chooses to be free, but in a different way—from the depressing decor of her green house. Similarly, Peggy Sue chooses to leave her ‘60s reality and come back to the present. Instead of escaping her current situation of being divorced from her husband an to not have any contact with him completely, she accepts a different type of constructive ending and chooses to include him in her immediate surroundings and invite her ex-husband, her daughter and son all over for dinner. It signals that there may be some reconciliation in the future after Peggy Sue had seen how much her and Charlie had loved each other in the past—created by their costuming and set design which made it very real. V. Conclusion (100 words) The Hours and Peggy Sue Got Married are very similar in the fact that they both demonstrate at least one time period in the past that were recreated to seem very realistic. In The Hours, there are three different time periods that are recreated, while in Peggy Sue Got Married there is only one. However, the ability of the people making these movies to conjure up completely separate time periods of feeling utilising various elements such as clothing and setting are testaments to their skills and expertise—making these worlds not only very detailed and authentic, but ultimately quite believable. BIBLIOGRAPHY Internet Movie Database. 2010. The hours: memorable quotes. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274558/quotes Read More