47 journal of film and video 73.3 / fall 2021 ©2021 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois “Narrative Life” in Film and the Role of Screenwriting Practices chris dent about the dead and the undead. The practices around describing narrative life will be ana- lyzed 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 technolo- gies of “biopower,” guide us in the living of our lives. The Conceptual Framework—Foucault’s Discursive Practices To understand the limits of what mainstream screenwriters feel that they can say in film, this article will make recourse to the work of Michel Foucault. The core concept to be used is that of “discursive practices,” the idea being that writers take on board the “proper” practices of screenwriting so that the films can be pro- duced. For better understanding of the function of these practices, there needs to be a broader consideration of bodies of knowledge and dis- courses. There is little doubt that screenwriting has developed into a coherent and transmittable body of knowledge. There are now a large number of film schools and creative arts fac- ulties in universities that teach filmmaking chris dent is a scholar investigating the bound- ary of law and social theory, producing legal research focused on both creativity (around either the regulation of speech or intellectual property) and social theory, specifically the work of Michel Foucault. Dent has taught in the area of media law, and prior to his legal studies, Dent’s interest in film was facilitated by his role as a manager of video libraries. Introduction there are limits to what can be portrayed in film. A particular realm that screenwriters have engaged with, with some difficulties, is that of death. Death is outside the daily experi- ence of the audience (and writers), so there are not common referents that can be used. Further, the dead are inanimate—and stasis is hard to build a commercial movie around. That said, certain themes may be explored by using ostensibly dead characters. Writers, therefore, have to use techniques usually adopted for describing reality in order to “bring life” to death. As such, the portrayal of unalive charac- ters is an effective example for considering the practices of screenwriters (practices, here, are those actions carried out by writers when they are acting as writers). This research will explore the underlying discursive constraints on writers using a two- pronged approach. An overview of a number of mainstream Anglophone films that portray “the dead” as characters will be considered in terms of the concept of “narrative life.” This form of “life” enables filmmakers to tell their stories Downloaded from http://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jfv/article-pdf/73/3/47/1429354/jfilmvideo.73.3.0047.pdf by guest on 06 February 2022