Theme For School Year


 Theme Selection Choice


    For this school year, I wish to mostly explore the theme of The Spirit Realm. The reason for the choice of this theme is the wide variety of possible films, the spirit realm does not have to be just the afterlife, but anything that transcends our earthly experience. The Spirit Realm as a theme is potentially one of the oldest known to human art. One of the oldest written stories, the Epic Of Gilgamesh, is a prime example of how old the theme, for how Gilgamesh had to travel to the underworld and accept his mortality as only two-thirds god. A common collaboration of themes is The Spirit Realm, and Nature, throughout world history, flood myths are some of the most common religious stories, tales of Gods saving a few select 
humans and destroying the rest of the world.

Example of Non-Religious Spirit Realm

    One of my favorite video game franchises has to be the Hotline Miami series. The games delve into two main themes, Social Order and the Spirit Realm, but does the latter in a different way than most other works of art. In most pieces of work, the Spirit Realm is usually accessed through meditation, religious connections, or a magical gateway. In the Hotline Miami series, that series version of the Spirit Realm is accessed through the use of Drugs and Animal Mask, the main character of the first game is a man only referred to as "Jacket". He lives in nineteen nineties Miami and dedicates himself to wiping out the Russian Mob in the city, he takes prescription drugs to give himself flashbacks to his time in the Vietnam war. He uses this anger and PTSD along with a mask so he can distance himself from his actions, which eventually leads to split personality disorder when his most common mask, one of a chicken named "Richard" becomes a separate identity that craves violence. Instead of the Spirit Realm being a place of divine power or a spiritual plane, the Spirit Realm in the Hotline Miami games is a dark, violent world, that is implied to be in the head of the main character. In film making, to break rules, you must first understand their conventions, so this is a great subversion of the Spirit Realm theme.











What I Plan To Do With The Spirit Realm

    The Spirit Realm is a great theme with so much potential for unique storytelling, I plan to study great stories that use the theme, analyze the exact the conventions used across the most stories, and subvert them. I plan to tell stories that utilize the film's unique properties and storytelling opportunities to create interesting narratives that will intrigue audiences. 


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