Abstract
Although the fantastic in print looks back upon a tradition of commenting on issues of race and gender, films that use the mode tend to be more conservative in their approach to subverting the patriarchal script, that is, the tendency of patriarchal society prescribing certain normative behaviors based on gender while punishing deviations from these norms. While this is especially true for blockbuster movies, independent filmmaking has come to appreciate the subversive potential of fantasy. The present study will scrutinize the fantastic as a storytelling mechanism in recent Hungarian cinema, with special emphasis on the uses of the quest formula and its intersections with gender scripts in the films Hurok [‘Loop’] (2016), and Liza, a rókatündér [‘Liza, the Fox-Fairy’] (2015).
Highlights
The fantastic in print looks back upon a tradition of commenting on issues of race and gender, films that use the mode tend to be more conservative in their approach to subverting the patriarchal script, that is, the tendency of patriarchal society prescribing certain normative behaviors based on gender while punishing deviations from these norms
The present study scrutinizes the fantastic as a storytelling mechanism in recent Hungarian cinema, with special emphasis on the uses of the quest formula in the films Hurok [‘Loop’] (2016), and Liza, a rókatündér [‘Liza, the Fox-Fairy’] (2015)
My analysis will focus on the differences between the male quest, as used by Loop, and the female quest, as presented in Liza, the Fox-Fairy, my thesis being that while in mainstream American cinema of the fantastic the female quest has seen a revision both in structure and content, contemporary Hungarian cinema still relies on the traditional female quest within “the realm of domesticity,” as defined by Gilbert and Gubar (1987: 205), as far as non-realistic films are concerned
Summary
The fantastic in print looks back upon a tradition of commenting on issues of race and gender, films that use the mode tend to be more conservative in their approach to subverting the patriarchal script, that is, the tendency of patriarchal society prescribing certain normative behaviors based on gender while punishing deviations from these norms. Concerns both realist and non-realist literary texts, but the films examined within this article fall in the realm of the fantastic, and the quest as trope occupies a central position in both fantasy and science fiction ( SF): fantasy narratives tend to rely more faithfully on the archetypal mythological apparatus of the quest, while SF uses the formulaic platform to explore the encounter with the Other, often in subversive ways.
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