Paracinema: RE: Jane Mills: Bad Cinema's 'Other' (2012)
Jane Mills article on paracinema deconstructs and further contextualizes the dichotomy between Hollywoodcentric taste distinctions and notions of otherness and the resulting taste cultures in both Hollywood cinema and paracinema. The paradox that Mills (2012) points out is that the distinction between concepts of 'good' and 'bad' in Hollywood and paracinema defined in relations to each other and have always been (27). This means that as Hollywood cinema becomes more progressive in style and content, paracinema's own shock-value and artistic distinction becomes much more blurred but this crossover also instigates paracinema to step up its own game in terms of its stylistic distinction from the ever-changing Hollywood style. In many ways this progressing of Hollywood film is actually only an aesthetic shift more than anything, but this still is a significant shift in the hybridizing of the two cinema cultures.
Concepts of good and bad rest on slippery surfaces when considering them in relation to Hollywood and Paracinema. What may be initially seen as representation of a 'good' life of excess in a paracinematic film in the eyes of Hollywood-centric audiences, is simultaneously a critique of success and other properties of 'good' and excess. The two film paradigms represent different cultural ideologies of self-representation where Hollywood cinema represents, to a large degree, how we want the world to be whereas paracinema shows us how the world really is or uses abstract narrative/aesthetics to convey a very real critique of our actual society. These critiques usually confront or reject the spectacular representational understanding of society through film.
This relationship between paracinema and Hollywood film can be related to the ways in which we see cultures of camp and kitsch aesthetics. Camp being more critical and self-reflexive in the way it communicates its critiques to the audience while kitsch is a picturesque representation of western culture as its uses the domestic friendliness of suburban living to domesticate and 'make-cute' other aspects of western civilization such as militarism and other not-so civilized aspects of life. It is the hybridization of these aesthetics as well that communicates a sense of mutual incorporation where extreme kitsch artifacts can also be read as campy critiques of kitsch. This is what Mills (2012) means when she says that there has always been trash within Hollywood and Hollywood within trash. Although they may both be represented in each style the intended meanings are different relating to their representative discourses (styles).
The video-game Grand Theft Auto 5 contains a similar paradox between good and bad and Hollywood vs art-cinema or paracinema. The game contains very clear critiques of corrupt Hollywood culture and its relation to the picturesque American dream. In short, the game explains through its narrative that the very good and normal concept of the American dream and luxury suburban life is explicitly tied to corruption and crime within big money capitalism. The film industry is even identified as one of the tools used to perpetuate these subliminal cultural ideologies through film while at the same time critiquing the lifestyle and sanctioned violence of these mobsters. Juxtaposed to the critical aspect of the game is the freedom to engage in criminal activity as a way to showcase its injustice (badness) to the gamer. This badness can be translated to fun or not so much fun depending on how the gamer wants to interpret this hybridization of themes.
