Architectural Space and Form in Science Fiction Cinema. An Analysis of "Blade Runner" (1982), "The Fifth Element" (1997) and "Alien" (1979)

Cyrus Manasseh

Sep 2015 · GRIN Verlag

About this ebook

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2000 in the subject Film Science, grade: 2.1, University of Reading (Dept. of Film/Architecture), course: BA Hons. Film and Drama/ Art and Architecture, language: English, abstract: Architectural space and form in Science Fiction Cinema often mirrors the identity of the individual occupying that space on the screen. However, in such films, it does more than just create certain ways of delineating (and connoting) an environment which parallels the characters’ position within an area guaranteeing and legitimizing their need to be there. Architectural space in Science Fiction cinema is also a space that the audience is invited and allowed to travel through – to participate, to partake in. The audience finds their way through the space, and therefore, are forced to relate and identify with the space created by the architecture during the viewing of the film. This identification process by the audience is central to a proper and legitimate understanding of the film. In this dissertation, I have chosen to analyse three films – all of them Science Fiction. My reason for choosing them was that I was intent upon finding some of the most interesting, thought provoking and effective ways architecture has been used to activate a response within viewers of film: a response, which is entirely justifiable, and extends to an unquestionable belief in the validity of the story taking place on the screen. All three of the films chosen within this study raise specific issues in relation to the significance of ‘architectural space and form in Science Fiction cinema’.

About the author

Cyrus Manasseh is a guitarist, philosopher and musicologist. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. Prof. Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher and author of the books ‘The Lead Guitarist’; 'The Island Library'; and ‘The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90’. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. He is author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, music. architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. His published essays and articles include: ‘The Words of Gandhi and How the Libertarian Collectivist Anti-individualistic Post-Modern Turn has Shaped our World,’ ‘Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one,’ ‘Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth,’ ‘Cinema and Mass Media in Modernity. Walter Benjamin and the Reproducible Image,’ ‘The Problem with the Influence of the Moving Image in Society Today, the Alter-Modern and the Disappearance of a Focus on the Internal’, The Art Museum in the 19th Century J. J. Winckelmann’s Influence on the Establishing of the Classical Paradigm of the Art Museum; Art without the Aesthetic? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices’; ‘Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel’ and many others. He has presented his research at international academic forums in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and has taught extensively in Italian, Irish and Australian Universities and Colleges. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay ‘An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film’. He is particularly focused on the problematic of post-modernism for culture and society. His novels ‘The Lead Guitarist’ and 'The Island Library' are currently available.