Hybridity and Collage and Grotesque

The other day I attended a seminar organised by History of art department with Film studies department.  The seminar ‘The cinema experience today and the current prominence of the grotesque in
cinema and visual culture’ was held by Professor Annie van den Oever from University of Groningen.

The reason that I choose this seminar is because I think hybridity is quite related to my research project.
The professor started to introduce an exhibition of Tim Burton which she enjoys a lot in Paris.  It starts with how Tim burton and Fellini construct their storyline by drawing the characters on paper first.  These drawings provides material for chains of events happens in the story.

She starts with the idea of aesthetic has three major categories: Beauty, Sublime, Grotesque.
Within this genre, the grotesque figure usually has a distorted figure, such as bigger eyes, weird skin colour.  These figures also impossible to be categorised in the normal categories, they have a rather distinct biological, ontological categories.

Another example was mentioned is the figure Jester, a man dresses upside down.

These monstrous, double faced, lower bodily quality but entertain characters, when they appear in the cinema, they are rather artful, full of craft skill. They are a fusion, disproportion, formless gigantic.  The grotesque as an artistic technique, through defamiliarisation would force the audience to see a common thing in a unfamiliar and strange way.  The best example that she gave in the lecture was the artworks from Giuseppe Archimboldo, his works features a way of organising daily objects (ie. Vegetables)

She also mentioned the Uncanny Valley, that by smoothing the human skin could create another grotesque, hybrid figure even if it looks perfectly just like human.
Some other interesting examples that she mentioned in the lecture are

1: Grandma's reading glasses –as the first close-up shot 1900

2: Cindy Sherman
3: Marlene Dumas

and some other interesting essays that I wished I had this seminar earlier so that I ll know these books and read them for my master project.

• Wolfgang Kayser 
  An Attempt to Define the Nature of the Grotesque 
• the grotesque in Art and Literature.
• Frances S. Connelly  Modern art and the Grotesque
• Noel Caroll 

all the audience walked into cinema, and the experience is natural, confrontational and sensational.
Followed by some discussion but somehow became a Fellini film appreciation society.  Similar situation could also be found in an art discussion, somehow become a memory competition of who can remember the more works from the same artists, or the artists who can be categorised in such way.

Sometimes I found that a lot of people come to discuss with a bunch of quotations they learnt from books or articles on their shoulder.  As if the reason they ask questions is really about to show other people "yeah, i remember this metaphor." "AHHA! Look how smart I am to use this expression."
and I am just wondering what is the point of participating a discussion in person, when you always quote, or speak somebody elses' thoughts instead of developing your own voice?

They seems to me are a bunch of A students that is always afraid about failure.  However, I don't think the word failure was defined correctly in most people's heart. So do I, the old me I would say.

I think failure should be something ends different in the way you anticipated which makes you sad or disappointed.

Anyway I enjoyed this film seminar.  I just really don't like how the discussion went, it wasn't only a Fellini film appreciation society, but also a competition of movie titles.