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Connections and Disconnections among the Urban Nomads in Postmodern Cities

Connections and Disconnections among the Urban Nomads in Postmodern Cities. Eldorado. Outline. Postmodern City , X-Generation and Urban Nomads Eldorado : Loneliness & Dis/connections among youngsters. Postmodern City. Rapid and excessive technologization;

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Connections and Disconnections among the Urban Nomads in Postmodern Cities

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  1. Connections and Disconnections among the Urban Nomads in Postmodern Cities Eldorado

  2. Outline • Postmodern City, X-Generation and Urban Nomads • Eldorado: Loneliness & Dis/connections among youngsters

  3. Postmodern City • Rapid and excessive technologization; • Anti – modernization/rationalization; boundary-breaking; green city, etc. • Image society –camera + TV screen; • Information society • metropolis on the move; urban nomads

  4. X generation • Douglas Coupland's 1991 book Generation X. • born between 1964 and 1974 • white, upper-middle class, college-educated, located near urban centers, and lives primarily on the coasts. Generation X-ers are hip, ironic, lack motivation and suffer ennui. (source)

  5. Urban Nomads as a ”de-territorializing” force • Wandering:Different from the strolling flâneur, nomads wanders – along unraveled routes. • Deterritorializing and defensive: Different from migrants, who flee from one place to another where there might be hope for new settlement (=reterritorialisation), nomads are in a line is “a line of flight which, passing through the points, leads the movements of deterritorialisation into a current, a torrential motion which has nothing to do with flight in the traditional sense. Fleeing, yes, but seeking a weapon while fleeing.” (source) • Not moving, nor settled: “The nomad is not necessarily one who moves: some voyages take place in situ, are trips in intensity. … nomads, they nevertheless stay in the same place and continually evade the codes of settled people.” Gilles Deleuze, “Nomad Thought”

  6. General Questions • Are the characters Generation X (hip ironic and motivation-less), or urban nomads— deterritorializing, wandering, and sometimes in ‘intensive’ trips? • How do they connect and find meanings? • “Are you going to have a show about it?” • “I wrote you a letter, but I tore it up.”

  7. Edorado (1995) • Director: Charles Binamé began his film career as an assistant director at the National Film Board in 1971, and later moved on to direct documentaries for television. • Direct Cinema style: natural lighting, improvisational dialogue, shouldered camera. • On Eldorado’s style: "A film a chaotic, just like life and that's what is stimulating. In the midst of this chaos, there is a raw truth which emerges and captures our attention.”

  8. The Younger Generations in Postmodern Cities • ". . . we do have this perception of a generation that's lost, frightened, with no future. I asked myself, how do they live, are they much different from what I was like at their age, what are their options?” Biname, director of Eldorado • Question: What are the youngsters’s problems? What is the “raw truth” in Eldorado? (clip 14)

  9. Roxan – a rich girl, active in helping others; with traumatic past, harmed by the ones she helps Lloyd (“Gaspard”) – shock-jock, but can only talk; does not know how to commit himself. Rita--traumatic past, drug-dealing, stealing, cannot touch others or be touched; Loulou--discontented; bored (47:33) Marc – a musician who works in a liquor store, hurt by Lou Lou, find help/refuge in sex shop or video games Henriette -- want to know how to connect, sexually or otherwise. The apparently strong and weak • weakness: 29:40 – • LloydMarcHenrietteRoxan • Destruction 53:00

  10. Music – Expressed of the lostness and Struggle • from the head-banging dance beats of techno-dread – opening • cello solos of Claude Lamothe 11:00, 25:10; 1:02

  11. Questions: • Is the ending trite or weak?

  12. Disconnections (1): individual problems and solutions • Marc and Lou Lou -- M cannot understand Lou Lou, is not willing to be "mothered" by Lou Lou. • Henriette -- • sexual fantasies about Lloyd, ( 20, 2: 1: 06) • silence from the shrink, rejecting him at the end, moving away. (32) • connect with Rita, but misses her –the tape, at the pool, at the graveyard and calling her (27:00; 45:00; 2:20 ) • Rita – from her boyfriend, and everybody else. (her past 24:50; on drug 21:07 1: 28)  searching for help • Roxan – hurt: 1:17 1:30 get the puppet back herself? a sign that she might have opened the window.

  13. Disconnections: Caused by • Betrayal– Rita  Roxan, LouLou  Marc (The two scenes are juxtaposed ) • trauma in the past – Rita and Roxan • personal differences – Henriette  Lloyd • Mis-directed good will? Roxan 1:17 • miscommunication – Rita  Lloyd ; missing the chance 1:29– Rita  Roxan and Henriette (1:23)

  14. Connectionsby chance? Marc Rita and Roxan 1:09 Rita and Henriette Rita and Lloyd -- • Rita's reckless moments: on the car, shooting L with a water gun; • miss the chance to comfort Rita once. • Ending: kiss on the neck, “Want a lift?” Image source

  15. Raw truth • Solitude, as conveyed by the cello. (ending)

  16. Reference • “Families in the Postmodern Non-Places in the Films by Atom Egoyan and Tsai Ming-Liang.”http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/canada/paper/egoyan_tsai/

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