Auteur Theory: Focus on Spike Jonze

The Auteur theory was first studied and recognised in the 1950's when French film directors, such as Francois Truffaut, started to focus on the directors or certain films to work out a pattern or trend in their work. Studying the contribution of a director to a piece of film, recognising the creators personal creative visions and their effect on the overall outcome of the film. This theory is different to the 'Genre Theory' that focuses on similarities within films, such as the generic love story going through stages of love and loss, eventually resulting in a happy ending. The 'Auteur Theory' focuses on what is different between texts rather than what is similar.

Spike Jonze, pictured above, is perhaps one of the best examples of the auteur theory in the sense that his work is very recognisable and can be traced back to him simply by the themes and camera work involved.







'Bjork - All is full of love' and 'Kanye West - Flashing Lights' are similar videos directed by Spike Jonze. They are both very much opposite to the genre theory of generic storylines, both being quite abstract and almost random to the music being played. Jonze does not often have the performers performing the music in the video and will use a character singing the lyrics instead in most videos. The videos are also quite dark and have an almost depressing and 'lonely' feel to them.







These two videos, 'Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice' and 'Fatboy Slim - Praise You', have an element of comedy because they are videos of unfamiliar scenes and things that seem quite silly at first. Having a smartly dressed man dancing round an empty building extravagantly seems like something you shouldn't, or wouldn't see so is humorous. Having a group of people start dancing in a shopping centre is again very unexpected and creates humour when watching. The unexpected nature of his comedy follows on through a few more videos.