After learning the business proposal genre last semester from CAES, understanding and absorbing the “genre” concept again provides me with a familiar but unique feeling, just like Edward Relph’s saying, “vicarious insideness”. I’m like an outsider to see how apartment plot act as genre as narratives and domestic urbanism (porousness, encounter, improvisation, simultaneity, and play). Meanwhile, I’m also getting conscious of how it works for production and spectator in the global context. This reading makes me understand apartment plot as a genre from both an insider and outsider’s view.
Likewise, the film situates us both as insiders and outsiders, where space operates as setting and plot respectively. From the insiders’ view, we can focus more on the super-natural events rather than touristic images, while from the outsiders’ view, we can notice global urbanism and modernity. It can be a long take, a voice-over narration over a montage of residential buildings images, or aerial shots with narrowing to the apartment.
Shiqing, Li 3035772456