Jerome Bruner analysis of Hostel

10Jun07

Hostel is the story of three backpackers, two Americans (Josh and Paxton) and one Icelander (Oli), who are seeking sexual exploits and drugs in Eastern Europe. After getting locked out of their hostel in Amsterdam, a guy tells them of the sexy, promiscuous, American- loving women of a small town in Slovakia—that everything they dream of can be found there. Once in Slovakia, they quickly find out things are not what they seem in this small town. Their hostel is hiding a dark secret and not all of them will last to tell the stories of their fun on vacation. This movie has the plot content of two entirely separate genres. Two very different fabulas are told in succession; first a plot of fun- seeking college kids on a European vacation and second a horrific thriller of gore and human survival.

 

Using Jerome Bruner’s theories of narrative construction, in his article “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” his concept of genericness seems to be a useful way to analyze the film Hostel. Genericness is the structure of a narrative based on gene and genre conventions. Bruner argues that narrative is governed by cultural and social conventions, not logical structures. He attempts to classify some types of narrative by how they relate to reality; “how narrative organizes the structure of human experience” (21). He states that as humans our experiences and memories all happen in forms of narrative. The tradition of genre narratives is understood as the retelling of familiar plots, like a story of underdog beating the odds. Bruner discusses how there are actually two distinct parts to genre narratives: the plot or fabula with the content of the story and how the narrative is presented to the viewer, or the sjuzet. Within the conventions of genre, both of these factors play a role and prove that though storylines might be universal, their presentation is not (15).

In Hostel, the two genres are presented in natural succession, creating more distress in the unassuming viewer. In the first section, the viewer is presented with bright visuals, upbeat music, and wide panoramic views of a beautiful city. These visual representations, part of the sjuzet, support the conventions of a juvenile comedy, a type of European adventure movie. Bruner says that genre offers the viewer a simplified task of understanding the narrative by using conventions of the culture and society (14). Viewers might find the plot predictable, silly, and stereotypical in the first section of the movie. The fabula follows the conventions of three over-sexed boys looking for a good time in a foreign land, which sets a certain pace of consistent expected events and reliable gag jokes. Though a viewer might enter into this movie knowing it is a horror movie, the director uses genre to lull the viewer into a happy immersion of the narrative. The movie follows this genre for at least half of the movie, which by then, some viewers might have even forgot where they where. Another possible outcome is that the viewer is waiting for something bad to happen and the anticipation is building dramatically because everything is so lighthearted.

 

Within the second half of the movie, the genre shifts entirely—plummeting into a dark vortex of gore and unabashed violence. The amount of sexual content in the first half is mimicked by the amount of raw brutal violence in the second half, an interesting contrast of how males express energy. The scenes are dark, low light, de saturated, and grainy. There is creaming, crying, and begging. Blood, body parts, and graphic imagery saturate the representation of the horror narrative. Bruner says that narrative genre provides a “guide for the mind” based on the use of language and how it is presented (15). Hostel uses colors, sounds, imagery, and texture to support the content and guide the mind of the viewer. The way of knowing the world in this narrative of double genres is troubling, uneasy, and frightening. By using the two genres and their conventions, the director leads the viewer down a carefully structured path which starts in humor and ends in horror. Though movie genres and literary genres differ significantly, particularly in the realm of the sjuzet, the use of Bruner’s analysis of genre is useful in revealing the construction of the narrative and how genre affects the experience of the viewer.

 

 

 

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