Mythical Patterns and Ideology in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now
Loading...
Date
2014-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
university Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the mythic dimension of two films, Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Using Gérard
Genette’s hypertextuality for a discussion of adaptation, Roland Barthes’s notion of ‘myth’
and Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of ‘metanarratives’ for the ideological contents of
cultural production, and Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth for the protagonists’ ‘hero’s journey’,
I will try to show how Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola integrated myth to their
work in order to promote postmodern ideas about civilization and knowledge, and highlight
how they appropriated the texts, as they not only adapted but also expanded the source texts
with allusions to myth and literature, and how the polysemiotic nature of film as a distinct art
form helped them create works with polysemic content.T.S. Eliot used the term “mythic
method” when reviewing James Joyce’s Ulysses. Myth is an important element in these two
films. If the purpose of the modernist author is to “order” his/her work by use of mythic
subtexts or intertexts, I will argue that in the postmodernist variation it is used, possibly, to
“disorder” the narrative, and by that I mean that it makes the final work ambiguous to
interpret. The following dissertation is divided into three chapters. I want ot find out why the
mythical paradigms of ancient myth were used in these two films. These are films that are
loosely based on The Sentinel and Heart of Darkness respectively. The aesthetic style of the
films can be said to be postmodernist, but could they be using a modernist ‘method’ when
they incorporate myth? There is also the problem of myth as ideology. Once a myth is
transmitted from one person to another through one medium or another, it sends with it an
ideological message. I will investigate whether the ideological messages of 2001: A Space
Odyssey and Apocalypse Now are in accord with the dominant political views of their era,
and how do they express their own ideas in relation to that.
Description
67p.:ill;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Citation
Comparative Literature Presented by: Takfarinas Abdiouene Panel of