"Narrative Life" in Film and the Role of Screenwriting Practices

Abstract

about the dead and the undead. The practices around describing narrative life will be analyzed in terms of “discursive practices”—taken from the realm of poststructuralist theory—in order to consider the specifics of the discussed films, in terms of the body of knowledge with which the writers work. This analysis, therefore, provides a theoretically based understanding of the limits of expression and, as a result, the content of what appears onscreen. The goal, however, is to expand the discussion of the extent to which audiences take lessons from movies—the extent to which films, as technologies of “biopower,” guide us in the living of our lives.