Christopher Nolan

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium (as of 7/09/13)

Visual rhetoric scott eric kaufman
Films:

Television Shows:

Comics:

 Themes:

Feb 22, 2012 3:18:24 PM | Academia, Alan Moore, Alison Bechdel, Batman, Batman Begins, Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Christopher Nolan, Comics, Daniel Clowes, Doctor Who, Film, Film Theory, Game of Thrones, Grant Morrison, Heroism, Literary Theory, Literature, Mad Men, Science Fiction, Scott McCloud, Teaching, The Dark Knight, Visual Rhetoric

Tuesday, 07 February 2012

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium Now Easier than Ever to Find!

It's a permanent fixture in the right sidebar now, and I'll continue to update it regularly. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a terrible cold to attend to. (Stupid midterms wreaking havoc with stupid students' stupid immune systems ...)

Feb 7, 2012 4:29:45 PM | Academia, Alan Moore, Alison Bechdel, American Born Chinese, Avatar, Batman, Batman Begins, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chris Ware, Christopher Nolan, Comics, Daniel Clowes, Doctor Who, Douglas Wolk, Film, Film Theory, Gene Yang, Grant Morrison, Heroism, Historicism, History, Joss Whedon, Leverage, Literary Theory, Literature, Mad Men, Reading Comics, Robert Kirkman, Scott McCloud, Teaching, The Walking Dead, Visual Rhetoric, Watchmen

Sunday, 03 April 2011

Batman is always Beginning again

(I never thought I'd dip back into this well, but then life happens and there you go.)

Heath Ledger notwithstanding, I think it's fairly obvious that Batman Begins is the better of recent reboots.  Nolan structures the first film not around an admittedly ingeniuous performance, but around a modified classical dynamic, by which I mean, he abides by his Aristotle.  It opens with the most incentive of incentive moments—a boy watching his parents murdered before his eyes—then proceeds to a classic peripeteia*—that moment of reversal when the boy who witnessed his parents' murder decides to forsake revenge and fight all crime instead the responsible criminals.  It need not bear mentioning, I don't think, that the deus ex machina, which Aristotle would otherwise despise, in this case fits within "the unity of action," because it has "an air of design" that's well-nigh indisputable. 

The real crux is the film's anagnorisis—or "revelation" in the I-murdered-my-father-made-kids-with-my-mother-sense—which occurs at a time Aristotle would've approved of, but not in the way he'd prefer.  You'll remember that, early in Batman Begins, the recently returned Bruce Wayne takes his horny butler's advice and invites some models to go swimming in a restaurant with him:

Batman begins00014

Nolan's use of a medium-long shot there is deceptive, as these aren't really women so much as beards:

Batman begins00018

I'm not saying they're all legs and hair, the cropped medium shot notwithstanding—but for the purpose of the plot, Nolan certain reduces them to as much.  (We're just going to skip over the scene of them skinny dipping, you know, for the kids.)  The point is that these women are props, mere things Alfred suggests Bruce Wayne should acquire should he not want to be discovered as the Batman.  So, then, anagnorisis avoided ... except:

Batman begins00070

The love of Wayne's life can't even look at him—and not just because I caught  bad capture.  She's just watched him escort two soaking models from a hotel she's about to learn he bought, so she shouldn't want to look at him.  But when she does, he makes a plea:

Continue reading "Batman is always Beginning again" »

Apr 3, 2011 4:02:54 PM | Alan Moore, Batman, Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan, Comics, Film, Film Theory, Visual Rhetoric

Scott Eric Kaufman

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