Representaciones de la figura autorial en el cine: el escritor como personaje

Abstract

The filmic body of work in Representations of the Authorial Figure in Cinema: the Writer as a Character –whose chronology covers mostly from the last decade of the twentieth century to the year 2017– addresses how cinema has portrayed the literary author. Structured in five chapters, the first one («From Modernity to Postmodernism») presents postmodernism as the theoretical framework that –once modernity is defined– encompasses the analysis of the selected stories. Based on the works by Habermas, Benjamin, Ritzer, Taylor or Eco, we explain the anthropological, sociological and artistic dimension of modernity as a project built on the empirical knowledge, the rise of feelings as part of the subject’s configuration and the search for creative independence. As far as postmodernism is concerned, Lyotard defines it as the moment where «the narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal». However, despite the vagueness of its true nature –marked by the social networks representing the rhizomatic reality of Deleuze and Guattari–, it is possible to question the strength of its rupture with modernity. According to Lipovetsky, the subsequent hypermodernity would be distinguished by an increase in individual anxiety –revealed in the writer’s block suffered by screenwriters, novelists, poets and playwrights–. This theoretical framework consolidates the second chapter of the thesis («The Postmodern Subject»). Based on Jameson, Ritzer or Charles, we reflect upon the alleged dissolution of originality into fashion, and we turn to Sibilia and Rodríguez Ibáñez in order to deal with the privacy’s trivializing in the digital era. For their part, we also describe the foucauldian notions of self-care which, since Graeco-Roman antiquity, have endured to the present day and, along with Augé, explain the link between the subject and the postmodern spaces. Four out of the six films selected for the third chapter («Screenwriters: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood») are set on the classical period of the Mecca of cinema, whose labour context is elaborated in Banks’ book. The fight between the material need and the preservation of artistic integrity is common to the fourth chapter –focused on the novelists–, where the works of Balló, Bergala and Pérez about audiovisual seriality are essential to analyse the films. Also, Bourdieu’s and Zafra’s ideas on precariousness and the symbolic recognition received by feminised jobs complement those of Zecchi regarding visual representation of women’s bodies, as well as Gilbert’s and Gubar’s related to masculinity and authorship; to that we add bibliography which covers specifically some of the films. Finally, the last chapter collects examples of poets and playwrights; in the first case, we underline the simultaneity of everyday elements (Paterson and Poetry) with those linked to the supernatural (mother!), whereas playwrights are noted for their resolution in carrying on with their projects against any adversity –writer’s block in Synecdoche, New York, and the meddling of the Mob in Bullets over Broadway–.