Paracinema and the Badfilm – a cinematic paradox: A three-step approach to defining films considered “so bad, they’re good”.
Wikström, Oskar (2020)
Wikström, Oskar
2020
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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020052613715
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020052613715
Tiivistelmä
This thesis is a narrative literature review on the subject of paracinema, and The Badfilm, that seeks to shed some light on this subsection of film, first described by the film scholar Jeffrey Sconce (1995). These films are frequently referred to as being “So bad, they’re good” an adage which refers to the gut feeling a viewer gets when seeing a film s/he knows is traditionally bad but enjoying it anyway – going so far as to enjoying the film because it is flawed. This essay provides a three-step approach to defining a Badfilm and explaining what the adage really means. I argue that a Badfilm is a text/subject entity displaying all of the following elements:
1. A Lack of Skill. The text is a result of a combination of specific, unfavorable productional and skill-based traits.
2. A failure of intent and a lack of self-awareness. The intent of the text is more or less obvious, but the faltering execution prevents that intent from being realized.
3. A participatory mode of viewership, where the audience acknowledges the failures of the creator(s) and, rather than discard the text, choses to celebrate and consume it in different ways
The goal of this essay is to, through the use of the model, describe what a Badfilm is (Sconce, 1995), what goes into the making of one (Bartlett, 2015) as well as providing explanations as to why (Dyck & Johnson, 2016) and how (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014) these films are enjoyed. This was done by referring to both content analysis, reception studies and sociological texts written between the years 1969-2019.
1. A Lack of Skill. The text is a result of a combination of specific, unfavorable productional and skill-based traits.
2. A failure of intent and a lack of self-awareness. The intent of the text is more or less obvious, but the faltering execution prevents that intent from being realized.
3. A participatory mode of viewership, where the audience acknowledges the failures of the creator(s) and, rather than discard the text, choses to celebrate and consume it in different ways
The goal of this essay is to, through the use of the model, describe what a Badfilm is (Sconce, 1995), what goes into the making of one (Bartlett, 2015) as well as providing explanations as to why (Dyck & Johnson, 2016) and how (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014) these films are enjoyed. This was done by referring to both content analysis, reception studies and sociological texts written between the years 1969-2019.