Definitions and Dancing in the Dark Postmodern

Definitions
Meta-fiction: Fiction is where the author self consciously calls attention to the artificial nature of a work by parodying or by somehow differentiating from otherwise known traditional narrative techniques and conventions.
Intertextuality: Intertextuality is the relationship between texts. It is the way in which texts are similar or relate to each other ,influence or differ.
Mise-en-abyme: This is a French pronunciation and its meaning is placed into abyss. This term has a few senses when it comes to modern criticism since it was picked up from heraldry from Andre Gide who is a French author.
The 4th wall: This is a performance convention where there is an invisible imaginable wall which separates the actors from the audience. The audience can see through this wall and the convention suggests the actors cannot. The 16th century onwards provided a lot of illusionary practices and these stages influenced realism and naturalism of the theatre in the 19th century.
E.g. Proscenium Arch has the wise en scene hidden behind it and dividing the auditorium's this staging is also known as a box set.
e.g. a theatre may have a play about a play or drawing attention to that aspect becoming meta metatheatrical.

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5 Reasons why Dancer in the Dark is Postmodern
1. Selma's Daydreams are helping her escape from the horrible reality she is facing causing the fantasy and reality to conflict. Because of this the daydreams are seen as more brightly lit and nearly oversaturated this is done on purpose to show its artificiality.
2. Artificiality of the music numbers becomes postmodern critique of escapist cinema and not only that but also but the verisimilitude we are use to seeing is not seen, in other words they are breaking the reality that is represented to us on screen making us aware of being a spectator, an audience watching.
3. Cinema and musical escapism and the false reality. The ending where Selma is being hanged being like the Great Depression as she is interrupted during her last song, also Artificial Hollywood Cinema having an overly idealised image of that of the real world, which creates something more fantastical in terms of the worlds depiction that conflicts the reality of dark human nature that people face or have faced.
4. 180 degree rule being broken, Von Trier purposefully gets Selma to lie during the court thus breaking her moral code and what you expect then goes back etc. This is contrast to the traditional narrative techniques.
5. Controversies and The Illusion of a so called  "American Dream' and Cry against Capital punishment. This is shown by wealth favoured citizens systems like Selma's next door neighbour's.
How all of this is shot is non traditional creating an awkwardness, it looks like home video and is using heavy jump cuts and is handheld and maybe also contributing to her being low on the favoured citizens scale by showing her foreignness compared to her fellow co workers.

Bibliography

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Fourth wall. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall

IMDb. (2018). Dancer in the Dark (2000). [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168629/mediaviewer/rm2533562368