AMERICAN SCREENPLAY AS A CREOLIZED TEXT AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

The article overviews the characteristics of American screenplay as a creolized text, namely the correlation of its verbal, visual and audial elements, which serve for creating the intended communicative effect of a written work. Due to the mutual interference of these elements screenwriters and directors receive an ample opportunity to embody their ideas in the final product, i.e. film, in any way suitable. With the help of verbal element all the needed information may be actualized explicitly, whereas symbolic features are introduced using visual representation. Audial information may provide implications concerning the development of events in a given work in the future or influence the emotions of the viewers. Screenplay is viewed by the scholars as a text on the margin between several semiotic systems, namely the sign systems of literature and cinema, ensuring its complex nature. As exemplified by the screenplays of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Django Unchained”, the movies, if compared to screenplays, are characterized by more concise statements, higher degree of implicitness and riddance from verbal hints which could unambiguously state the correct interpretation of a creolized text.