The Big Short's incoherence, documentary aesthetics, and use of direct address

Clayton, Wickham (2022) The Big Short's incoherence, documentary aesthetics, and use of direct address. The Journal of Popular Culture. ISSN 1540-5931

Creators:
Clayton, Wickham
Description/Abstract:

The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015), based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis (2010), concentrates on the investment banking side of the years leading up to the 2007 burst of the housing bubble, and people that profited on it by forecasting the disaster. Understanding this event is complex largely due to the confounding terminology intentionally used by investment industries, and both the book and the film demand an understanding of these intrinsically complicated concepts in order for the viewer to attain narrative sense and meaning. However, instead of paring the screenplay down to the story’s narrative essentials and utilising an easy-to-follow style which is typically adhered to by Hollywood filmmakers, McKay opts to create a comedically frustrating and stylistically challenging film making these core concepts even more difficult to follow. This results in a film that is by turns highly relevant, darkly comic, and difficult to follow.
This article utilises theories of incoherence, opting for definitions established by Todd Berliner in distinction to Robin Wood’s traditional conception, as well as aesthetic theory as relevant to documentary in order to understand the style and structure of The Big Short. Furthermore, this article addresses theories of direct address in the analysis of sequences where characters talk to the camera both in-frame and in voice over to demonstrate how the film is precisely designed to create a cognitively challenging work of art which frustrates viewer familiarity and expectation. Ultimately, this leads to the way in which The Big Short utilises and plays upon concepts of, and the viewer’s sense of truth and untruth.

Item Type:
Article
Official URL:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j...
Date:
5 December 2022
Funders:
University for the Creative Arts
Identification Number:
10.1111/jpcu.13105
Additional Information:

© 2022 The Authors. The Journal of Popular Culture published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Schools:
School of Film, Media & Performing Arts
Depositing User:
Dr. Wickham Clayton
Date Deposited:
05 Dec 2022 16:46
Last Modified:
05 Dec 2022 16:50
Clayton, Wickham:
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8064-9111
URI:
https://research.uca.ac.uk/id/eprint/5892

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