Exegetical Essay

In doing this, Newman tries to pin down the concept of indie, a term that has been notoriously hard to define. In his book, Newman does not associate the term indie with independent cinema but sees indie as countercultural because a used indie by a community of filmmakers, critics and audiences to resist Hollywood hegemony. The line that exists between indie films and other forms of cinema is extremely thin, Newman addresses this in the first chapter of the book by giving three expectations for identifying indie films, namely; the characters are emblems, the form is a game, and when in doubt, read as anti-Hollywood (Newman, 2012, p. In indie films, rather than being driven by the narrative, Indie realism will put a greater emphasis on the characters.

Newman argues this out by stating that the characters of independent films are not overtly political and because of this, they have a better chance of representing social types in a better way, giving the example of Clerks a movie that was released in the year 1994 (Newman, 2012, p. According to Newman, the consumers and producers that gathered at these events helped to create what he calls a “defined indie notion” (Newman, 2012, p. 48-p. This then created a space where the elite culture could come together and celebrate some form of art that opposed Hollywood. In the second chapter, a theme present in chapter one, the importance of spectatorship is expressed yet again by Newman. Just like in the first chapter, he shows that for the indie industry to survive, there must be a viewing audience that is willing to engage with the material at hand.

Newsman cites how Christopher’s Nolan’s memento and the Limey by Steven Soderbergh manipulated narrative arrangements (Newman, 2012, p. This challenged the audience to solve the puzzles that are created in the film through these manipulations. In the long, run, this stimulated multiple viewings as the audience tried to get out the most information which would help them solve the puzzle present in the plot. Through these presentations which Newsman sees nothing short of playful, the films create pleasure and evoked a satisfying feeling of mastery once they were solved (Newman, 2012, p. In the last chapter, chapter six, Newman demonstrates that the indie culture was in the most part anti-Hollywood as he shows a tension that was there between art and commerce.