#ernest mathijs

[davidosu87]

[kaijusaurus]

The metaphor of Godzilla resonates far beyond nation-specific situations. The film forces viewers worldwide to acknowledge that any foreign presence can be viewed as the intrusion of the much feared ‘Other’ into our cosy little lives. Godzilla is transgressive because it points to our own fears, our own monstrosity.

Ernest Mathijs in the BFI book 100 Cult Films.

[uchinaguchi]

In this work, the majority of the population are little more than mass cultural zombies and while these writers do claim that 'Aesthetics are not an objective body of laws', they simply see it as part of the 'fundamental mechanisms of how to control the population and maintain the status quo'. This critique of aesthetics not only sits quite happily with a presentation of the population as an ignorant conformist mass, it also privileges a taste formation which is unable to acknowledge its own conditions of possibility.

Mark Jancovich, Cult Fictions: Cult movies, subcultural capital and the production of cultural distinctions, The Cult Film Reader (154)

[uchinaguchi]

Excess is therefore seen as a quality of the text which 'provides freedom' by requiring 'a fresh and slightly defamiliarized perspective'. Excess prevents illusionism and foregrounds the formal features of the text.

Mark Jancovich, Cult Fictions: Cult movies, subcultural capital and the production of cultural distinctions, The Cult Film Reader (153)

[uchinaguchi]

Writing as a fan is frequently about writing as someone who knows the filed and who is therefore more authoritative than the academic who merely talks about films and their fans from position of distance and authoritative ignorance. But by failing to acknowledge the extraordinarily vicious struggles for distinction within and between fan cultures, this strategy also tends to repeat the same errors as that which it is supposed to criticize, to validate certain readings over others by casting some fans as authentic and authoritative and others as inauthentic and without the authority to define the field.

Mark Jancovich, Cult Fictions: Cult movies, subcultural capital and the production of cultural distinctions, The Cult Film Reader (150)

[uchinaguchi]

Conclusion: the definition of cult film

A cult film is a film with an active and lively communal following. Highly committed and rebellious in its appreciation, its audience regularly finds itself at odds with the prevailing cultural mores, displaying a preference for strange topics and allegorical themes that rub against cultural sensitivities and resist dominant politics. Cult films transgress common notions of good and bad taste, and they challenge genre conventions and coherent storytelling, often using intertextual references, gore, leaving loose ends or creating a sense of nostalgia. They frequently have troublesome production histories, colored by accidents, failures, legends and mysteries that involve their stars and directors, and in spite of often-limited accessibility, they have a continuous market value and a long-lasting public presence. 

[uchinaguchi]

The way cult films are received differs radically from mainstream cinema. The emphasis of their reception is not on box office figures and mass audiences. Nor do cult films rely too heavily on the critical acclaim so essential for art-house and independent cinema. Their reception does not typically end at the vaults of a bank or the archives of a museum of heritage. Instead, the consumption of cult cinema relies on continuous, intense participation and persistence, on the commitment of an active audience that celebrates films they see as standing out from the mainstream of 'normal and dull' cinema. That audience aligns itself fully with what they perceive to be an attitude of rebellion or a sense of shared belonging. Both indicate a radical refusal to become associated with the anonymous mainstream, and they result in a strong desire to champion films that embody that refusal.

Ernest Mathijs & Xavier Mendik, The Cult Film Reader (4)

[uchinaguchi]

As such, the treatment of genre by cult movies is either premodernist in that instead of taking culture seriously, it carnivalizes it; or postmodernist in that it endlessly and relentlessly reflects on culture.

Ernest Mathijs & Xavier Mendik, The Cult Film Reader (2)