ParaNorman

Today, I would like to discuss about genre which means categories of film and film types. According to Rick Altman, the method of categorizing films is semantic or syntactic approach. Semantic means the visuals, mise-en-scene of the films, which are locations or settings, makeup and costume, lighting, and actor’s behavior and movement. Syntactic means the means the themes of the film and we can derive it from the narrative of the film. For example, types of characters, hero vs antihero, ideologies and structures of film. Genre analysis must only be made by combining both components, semantic and syntactic.

The movie poster of Paranorman.
(Source: https://www.pinterest.com/rottentomatoes/)

The movie that I want to relate with these ideas is Paranorman. It is an American 3D stop-motion animated horror comedy film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Featuresand. It was released on 17 August 2012. The story is about Norman Babcock, an 11 years old boy who can speaks with the dead. His strange behavior makes him always bullied by his peers. The town where he lived is being cursed by the witch who died unjustly 300 years ago. Norman uses his special ability to speak with the dead (zombies and witch) to save his town.

(Source: theconceptartblog.com)

There are some genres we can classified for this film such as horror, comedy and adventure. This combination makes the film content and narrative more interesting.

HORROR

Horror is one of the oldest genre from Hollywood. Normally, it is designed to frighten and makes the audiences panic. It is often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining the audiences at the same time in a cathartic experience. There are a few sub-genres for horror film such as unnatural, psychological, massacre or slasher flicks. The film, Paranorman, is under unnatural, which is the zombies. In this film, we can clearly see that the zombies enter to the town where Norman lived from their grave after they arise by the witch’s curse. This is one of the main idea for horror genre, threat to normalcy, which means an external force threatening civilians.

 Judge Hopkins, the leader of the zombies.(Source: http://www.moviemail.com/img/blog/headers/939_139.jpg)

Another six cursed zombies.
(Source: https://i.imgur.com/6BaCTkS.jpg)

We can see semantic approach in this film. Some scenes bring out the sense of depressed and scary with the lighting. Some scenes bring out the sense of unbalanced with play around the mise-en-scene. There also can see the makeup (design) for the character is done to show the bodily mutations and mutilations of zombies, such as the brain is hanging out of the head, the bone can be seen without the skin, the dead’s skin is in blue or green colour and etc.

(Source: http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41373924994/paranorman-zombie-monster)

(Source:http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41373924994/paranorman-zombie-monster)

(Source:http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41122008083/paranorman-braaains)

(Source:https://www.reddit.com/r/HighQualityGifs/comments/2kw1gy/zombie_attack_from_paranorman/)

COMEDY

Comedy is designed to draw laughter out of audience. Exaggerations of situations, characters and their behaviour, language and action to entertain the audiences. There are four types of comedy which is slapstick, screwball, dark comedy and parody. But there just slapstick and dark comedy appear in this film. Slapstick is a universal comedy with broad, aggressive, physical and visual action. The characters required a well performance skills so that the film looks funny. There are some funny scenes appeal in this film. One of them is when Judge Hopkins, the leader of zombies drops on the wind mirror of Mitch’s car. Zombies should be scary in this film, but this scene is a spoof.

(Source: http://van-kuver.livejournal.com/)

Another one is the vending machine snack scene. The zombies approach when the guy is buying the snack at the vending machine. He keeps looking and waits the snack to drop out from the machine but he is so scare because the zombies come nearer and nearer. He runs away when zombies almost one step distance with him. But then the snack finally drops out and he keeps shouting and returns to the vending machine to collect the snack and runs away again.

(Ckeck out the video of vending machine snack scene in  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvXRlnIyLKk )

Dark comedy are dark, sarcastic, humorous and sardonic stories to help the audiences examine otherwise ignored darker serious subjects. For example, death. Norman can speak to the dead such as his grandmother and Mr. Prenderghast. Actually both of them already die and this is a sad thing. But Norman still able to talk with them just like they never leave before. The scene where Mr. Prenderghast die also is a funny scene. He was in his room and die in a sudden stroke. At first his soul comes out from the body and back into it again, and he said “Not yet, not yet.” The audience will think that “OK, this guy still has some time…” but suddenly he dies and the soul cannot be back to his body again. He is die for real this time.

(Source:https: //ilackfocus.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/paranorman-31-days-of-halloween-day-25/)

ADVENTURE

Adventure is a genre that revolves around the conquests and explorations of main character to find the truth or treasure. The film normally take place in many locations and play historical myths. For Paranorman in this case, Norman takes his adventure to solve the witch’s curse. He has no choice but to come out from his ordinary world which is his normal life, and reads the book in front of the graves just like what Mr. Prenderghast asked him to do. He faces some difficulties at first but then he gets help from his fellows. They move together to the goal. At last, he found the truth about the witch, Agatha. He able to persuades her to stop to hurt everybody. Norman reminds her that there must be someone who was kind to her. This is the journey where Norman learn and grow. No just him, but everyone. His family starts to accept who is he and his ability that can speak to dead.

I think that genre is important in film industry. It is not just a guideline for the film making, but it also gives the audiences to choose the categories of film that they want to watch easily. Combination of genres will make the narrative more interesting and complete, it also will attract the audience from different preferences.