Tuesday, March 2

Image Tropes in Until the End of the World

So far I have seen half of Until the End of the World.  During the screening of that first half, I took note of image tropes I thought I found.  Visual tropes are, essentially, visual images that have become ubiquitous in our social culture.  Here are five tropes, bolded:

1. When Claire leaves Italy for France in her car, there is traffic so she goes off the beaten trail.

2. Claire picks up Trevor and they get out onto the road, and visible through their back windshield are hitchhikers with their thumbs out on the side of the road.

3. When Claire returns to Gene's apartment, there are several paintings of human silhouettes.

4. While Claire and Trevor are in bed, the bounty hunter comes into their room with a gun; Trevor responds by "showing a gun" under the bed sheets, probably made with his thumb and forefinger.

5. In China while tending to Trevor's recovery, a shot of the forest outside is framed through the window, making it appear to be a painting of its own.

Throughout the movie we see several hand-held devices with video screens; these are examples of the second kind of image trope, one where the "form of a person or thing, a visual impression obtained by a camera or other device displayed on a video screen".
- hand-held phones and video faxes
- Claire watches Bounty Bear graphics on screen through her video camera
- see the country landscape via screen on Claire's video camera
- simulation of nuclear blast in space shown on TV
- Claire's view of Trevor's sister through the vision-camera device

I am curious to see how tropes will appear in the film now without the use of all electronic devices.  I suppose there will be more images such as those I listed in #1-5 above.  We shall see...

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