A Thousand Screenplays: The French Imagination in a Time of Crisis / Edition 2

by Sabine Chalvon-Demersay, Teresa Lavender Fagan

Overview

In 1991, French public television held an amateur screenwriting contest. When Sabine Chalvon-Demersay, a French sociologist, examined the roughly 1,000 entries, she had hoped to analyze their differences. What she found, however, surprised her. Although the entrants covered nearly every social demographic, their screenplays presented similar characters in similar situations confronting similar problems.

The time of crisis presented by the amateur writers was not one of war, famine, or disease—it was the millennial dilemma of representation. In a world plagued by alienation, individualization, and a lack of mobility, how can members of a society combat their declining senses of self?

Although the contestants wrote about life in France, their concerns and struggles have a distinctly universal ring. A lucid, witty writer, Chalvon-Demersay offers a clear, if still developing, photograph of the contemporary imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226100685
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/01/1999
Edition description:	1
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Teresa Lavender Fagan is a freelance translator living in Chicago; she has translated numerous books for the University of Chicago Press and other publishers.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Overview of the Synopses
Historical Contexts
The Geographical Framework
The Sociological Framework
Plots
A Spiraling Crisis
2. Social Bonds
The Powerlessness of Institutions
The Hunger of Developers
The Betrayal of Experts
The Failure of Integrating Values
The Yearning for Interpersonal Values
The Promotion of Aesthetic Values
The Media
3. Intimacies
The Decomposed Family
The Blending of Generations
Men and Women
The Rhetoric of Feelings
Transitory Networks
Improbable Friendships
4. Solitudes
Wandering
The Fragmented Subject
Conclusion
Results
The Spiral of Powerlessness
The Spiral of Pessimism
Appendix 1: Scenario of a Research Project
Appendix 2: The Authors
Appendix 3: Plot Summaries of the Twelve Selected Projects
Titles and Authors of the Synopses Cited
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

In this intriguing study, Sabine Chalvon-Demersay analyzes French screenplays written by a variety of people—grandmothers, surgeons, immigrants, Parisians, people from the provinces, writers, amateurs—and finds that they all write of a dark and pessimistic world in which nothing works right, nothing can be achieved, friendship and love are impossible, and the self is fragmented and tormented. The problems of the characters are, she argues, depicted as problems of the crisis of the whole society. She lays this out in great detail, with many fascinating quotes from the screenplays. Written with wit and keen sociological insight, A Thousand Screenplays presents a surprising diagnosis of contemporary society. (Howard S. Becker, University of Chicago)

Howard S. Becker