| Abstract [eng] |
This master's thesis analyzes the problem of the name in the films of the American director Jim Jarmusch (b. 1953). The work describes the functions of a complex network of names and the interaction planes of different media and the meanings they produce. The analysis is based on the assumption that the concept of a name, due to its specific characteristics (e.g. individualizing functions), covers not only personal names (characters, actors and real personalities) and toponyms, but also names of films, books and songs. The scientific works dedicated to Jarmusch's work analyzed the features of Jarmusch's cinematic poetics and certain aspects and themes important to this work, but the name as a significant means of structuring films and creating intermedial relations in cinematic poetics was not discussed. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to highlight the essential features of the poetics of Jarmusch's films, paying special attention to the ways and forms of the appearance of the name and the laws and effects of its functioning. The object of the work is three feature films of the director, characterized by the specific use of names to represent different aspects: “Mystery Train” (1989), “Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai” (1999) and “Paterson” (2016). The analysis of films is based on the ideas of Gerard Genette's theory of intertextuality (and intermediality perceived as a certain variety of it) and the concepts proposed by David Bordwell's film poetics studies. The analysis part discusses the ways in which new meanings are "inscribed" into each of the films by means of names, and how the relationship between the films and other media is created. A discussion of the appearance and function of names reveals the film's strategies for allowing other media—literature and music—to become the essential basis of film construction; ways of creating intertextual connections emerge. The selected films are atypical from the point of view of the genre, so their architextual relationship with different canons of the genre and the ways in which these films transform genre conventions are also discussed. The analysis reveals the multilayeredness of Jarmusch’s names, their tendency to split, and their “homonymic” character (the name is the same, but it represents at the same time, e.g., a character, a city, a literary and a cinematic work, thus as if has the same form, but different meanings). It shows that name in Jarmusch’s films becomes able to perform the function of description and of the device which helps to connect seemingly incompatible elements of the filmic structure. It demonstrates how the name 1) connects the films with other texts of culture activating the memory of the viewer, 2) structures the films and 3) acts as a focal point for meaning-making. It proves that Jarmusch’s names do not individualise, but rather group, conceptualise, and provoke the appearance of metaphors and analogies that become a description of the story or the style of its expression. The name acts as a creative strategy, as a framing device and as the core of intertextual dialogue with literature, music and films by other directors and by Jarmusch himself. |
