Paranorman

ParaNorman, an American 3D stop-motion animated horror-comedy film which directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler and released on 2012. This is the first animation movie I enjoyed in Film Studied tutorial class and the film has different genres such as Comedy, Horror, Action, and Melodrama.
In previous blog post, I've posted about how to categorize film genre by Rick Altman's theory which is the Semantic and Syntactic theory.

Semantics: list of common traits and attitudes, bringing us to very much the visual aspect.
*Which means that mise-en-scene: lighting, costume and makeup, actor's performance and movements, setting and props become a building block of the genre.

Syntactic: a constitutive relationship.
*Able to define a genre through a structure with deeper meaning. For example conversation between actors, types of character, ideologies, etc.
Genre can be analysis and better understanding through combining these two components.

Nowadays, the genre is still important for audiences and filmmakers for categorizing, marketing purpose and even filmmaking guideline.

ParaNorman is about an 11 years old boy who able speaks to the ghosts and everyone around him treat he like a freak. However, Norman still finds a best friend named Neil, a fat boy who also always being bullied. One day, Norman's uncle, Mr. Prenderghast's spirit tells him to read a book beside Witch's old grave before sunset today to prevent the Witch's curse happen. However, Norman reads the book in the wrong venue and attracted five male and two female zombies chase after him and Alvin, a school bully. After few obstacles, Norman finally finds the truth of Witch's curse and he decided to solve the Witch's curse trouble which always repeat every year.

How to define ParaNorman as Action film?

Action film often requires high tempo, continuous high energy and a lot of physical stunts. The pace of editing will be fast and a lot of fast cuts with non-stop motion. They are few chasing scene appear in the film such as the zombies chase after Norman and Alvin but luckily Norman's sister Courtney, Neil and Neil's elder brother, Mitch is searching for Norman by driving. During the escape, they pass by a policewoman with high-speed driving. Hence, the chasing between car, zombies and police motorbike happens. Besides, the zombies have been attracted to go to the town where Norman lives. However, the people in the town do not afraid of the zombies even a little girl who very brave to fight against the zombies. In my opinion, maybe they are influenced by the modern technologies elements which often show violent and horror genre media contents. 

Next, Horror genre often makes audience frighten and panic. Although ParaNorman's horror element is not so strong but Horror is the main genre in this film since it appears zombies and witch which consider as unnatural horror subgenre. Horror film often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. In my opinion, the most exciting horror part in ParaNorman is when the zombies chase after Norman and Alvin until Mr. Prenderghast's house. This is because when Norman and Alvin are hiding from the zombies, I'm very nervous that they will be found by the zombies or safely escape from them. On top of that, the design of the zombies makes me feel uncomfortable as their limbs or ear will tear apart easily from their body. Mr. Joe stated that horror genre always creates a threat to normalcy, it always wants us to move apart from American Dream.

Comedy is a genre which totally different from the horror genre. The comedy genre humorously exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters. Comedies observe the deficiencies, foibles, and frustrations of life, providing merriment and a momentary escape from day-to-day life. They usually have happy endings, although the humor may have a serious or pessimistic side. In my opinion, the main character who able to bring comedy atmosphere to the audience is Neil. For me, he is a very cute fat boy who is very optimistic and cares about his friend. Every time he appears, he definitely will bring a smile to the audience. In the scene where Norman and his gang want to find the location of the Witch's graveyard in the town hall. They are very nervous to find and read a ton of book in the town hall but Neil is not panic at all. In worse, he just read the page number the book. After Norman reads a lot of books, Neil only completes his mission which is discovering the page number of the first book. He might not smart and with a good looking but I can refuse to fall in love with this character. His innocent brings a lot of funny moments in the film which able to release the tension in the film.

In conclusion, postmodernism has made the genre transform and expand in different key concept. For example, ParaNorman is one of the famous and success hybrid genre film. It blends two film genres together which is Horror and Comedy. The filmmakers often want to be creative and always want to break the rules however film must possess universal or general semantics.





Reference
Filmsite. N.p., 2016. Web. 22 June 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.filmsite.org/roadfilms.html