Sally Lynch Challenges To Certainty

Evaluate how challenges to certainty are shaped by and reflected in the ways texts in this elective experiment with language and form.
Textual dynamic texts convey the stark departure from established ideologies such as humanism, capitalism and the notion of progress following the events of World War II that induced a loss of faith in humanity and science. Composers experimented with language and form, attempting to communicate the postmodernist concerns of epistemological uncertainty through destabilising techniques such as gaze, self-reflexive construction, parody and pastiche, reflecting the postmodernist theories of Laura Mulvey, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. These challenges to certainty are exemplified in Sally …show more content…
Mulholland Drive conveys the illusion projected by the glamour of Hollywood and its adopted capitalist pre-war ideologies. Through a pastiche of sounds, styles and references to the iconography of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ such as the poster of Rita Hayworth and surrealist vintage soundtrack, Lynch effectively alludes to Hollywood’s exploitative past, denoting the fragmentation that alienates Betty and illustrates her paranoia as she delves into a world of what French sociologist Jean Baudrillard termed the “hyperreal”. This hyperreality culminates in the loss of meaning itself, as cultural signifiers in Betty’s world collapse and an infinite number of interpretations, “simulacra”, arise from her perspective of reality. Accordingly, the responder’s initial assumption that the film is an absolute reality dissolves as Betty’s mimesis of reality corrodes, revealing her attempt to placate the condition of epistemological uncertainty in the construction of the film, enabling Lynch to reflect the challenges to certainties as he experiments with the traditional author-reader relationship. Furthermore, the fragmentation of space and time within the fictional literary universe reaffirms the hyperreal and …show more content…
Tykwer’s experimental subversion of literary conventions through three alternate timelines, pastiche of media and intertextuality, results in a decentred plot and Lola’s demotion of status from character to subject. This anti-humanist detachment is effectively conveyed by voiceover at the beginning of the film over a crowd of people milling around: “Who are we? … How do we know what we think we know?” effectively reflecting Tykwer’s challenge to certainty through ontological and epistemological scepticism, which is reinforced by Lola’s seemingly arbitrary encounters with those in the crowd, and thus accentuates the volatile nature of the universe propagated by postmodernist teleological anti-determinism. This notion that no final causes, designs or purposes exist, as meaning is constantly deferred and reinterpreted, is supported by the pastiche of media, including animation, live-action, slow-motion, black and white television, as well as subtle stylistic variations in film and video, that parody the past methods of film production and story construction. This challenge to certainty of established methods is reinforced by the compression of space and time through the repeating narrative, ultimately culminating in the loss of meaning and challenging