Yorinda and Yoringel by Bodo Fürneisen: Type of the Hero and Trial in Screen-Presented Fairy Tale

The film Yorinda and Yoringel by Bodo Fürneisen, created on the basis of the recordings of a folktale by the Grimm brothers, shows an affinity for both a literary fairy tale and romance traditions, including a post-modern novel with a hero’s free choice of identity as the basis of the plot movement. To analyze the film, we relied on the methodology of psychoanalytic cinema science by Slavoj Žižek, supplementing it with the achievements of fundamental plotology from Freidenberg and Propp to the present day. At the same time, the nature of the film as a screen medium showed how the need for a more flexible plot development scheme, including compliance with changes in the character of the hero or his specific phenomenon on the screen, is not just one option for the development of actions, but a whole fan of the possibilities of such development. It is proved that the screen medium, which requires to monitor not only the correspondence of the hero’s adventures to expectations, but also the unexpected phenomena of the hero, demanded to modify the plot, which acquired not only the features of a psychological and adventurous novel, but also a computer game. At the same time, Fürneisen’s experience requires adjusting the psychoanalysis of cinema, supplementing the study of the effect of reality with the opposite effect of thought. The cinema allows you to demonstrate how not only the hero’s intentions change, but also the content of thoughts that are relatively autonomous from intentions that belong to the hero’s existence. At the same time, the existence is realized unexpectedly, so that the magical item is modified into a McGuffin, and the hero himself can repeatedly pass the fabulous test, while such a repetition will not be a way to correlate imagination and reality, as in a book narrative, but a way to once again appreciate the wonderful character of the hero. In the course of the study, it was possible to establish that the literary (Hans Christian Andersen), stage (Richard Wagner) and cinematic (Fürneisen) variations of the fairy tale plot do not simply subordinate it to some rules of the novel, in accordance with the prevailing tastes in society. Most of the changes are secondary to the change in the general concept of the hero, when the scenarios of existential choice are put in place of the test scenario and their uniqueness is defended. The structure of the on-screen memory and on-screen attention accelerates this design of the hero, although it does not completely determine it. Then the function of all the fabulous elements changes, moreover, the plot itself turns out to contain variability. In place of the usual separation between the world of sleep and the world of reality comes the existential test of both worlds. Thus, such processing of fairy tales is productive for the development of virtuality in art and for dialogue not only between different arts, but also art and various social practices related to information technology, from computer games to blogging.

Visually Attending to Fictional Things

There is a kind of perceptual-imaginative experience we have when we watch screen-based fictions. In such situations it is natural to think of ourselves as “watching Robin Hood” rather than as watching Errol Flynn dressed as Robin Hood. Screen-based fictions are not the only fictions that allow this kind of experience but they encourage it in ways that theatrical dramas cannot quite match, while still photographs do a poor job in this regard. This chapter offers an explanation of this kind of experience, partly by reference to features of the screen medium and partly by reference to aspects of human perceptual-cognitive architecture. The architectural story will tell us something about imagination that reflection on the phenomenology of imaginative experience fails to disclose. The resulting picture may also help us to understand certain kinds of delusions.

Reading on Paper and on Screen of Teenagers: A Pilot Study of Two Schools in Colombo District, Sri Lanka

With the development of computers, mobile phones and other digital devices with the internet, reading on screen has become an everyday activity as well as reading on paper. It is understandable that the task of reading has become more complicated with reading on screen. Therefore, the society is concerned about Reading on Paper and on Screen, especially of children and teenagers. The aim of the study is to gain an understanding of the nature of reading habits of teenagers in Colombo District, Sri Lanka. Main objectives of the study are to investigate the nature and extent of reading habits of teenagers, to find out the medium that the teenagers prefer when reading and to find out the attitudes of teenagers towards reading paper and screen. Both groups use e-media as well as read books. Though the majority prefer Paper as the medium of reading, they use the Screen medium too. Since the teenagers are much used to screen, we can use it to improve reading.

Screening the Tragedies

Jonathan Miller’s BBC TV production of King Lear and Michael Elliott’s version for Granada TV, starring Laurence Olivier, illustrate contrasting approaches to the small-screen medium, with Miller recording lengthy takes of characters artfully choreographed within bare sets, and Elliott employing a montage technique to view individuals in expressive close-ups. The near-monochrome BBC costumes suggest the world of Jacobean politics, whereas Granada’s pastel colours suit the ‘Once upon a time’ quality of Shakespeare’s opening. The cinematic adaptations by Peter Brooke and Grigori Kozintsev better convey the play’s vastness, bleakness, and grandeur, Brooke filming in the snow-bound tundra of Northern Jutland, Kozintsev in a primitive rock-strewn Russian landscape, through which peasants trudge. Brooke’s style is New Wave, his vision unsparing. Kozintsev draws on both traditional epic convention and Christian-humanist tradition. Several other screen versions merit attention, notably Akiro Kurosawa’s Ran and Brian Blessed’s undervalued movie with himself as Lear.