surreal elements
Bizarre artistic features
Surreal elements are features in art, film, or narrative that defy logic or normal reality—dreamlike imagery, impossible juxtapositions, distorted time and space.
The term borrows from Surrealism, the early 20th-century art movement that explored the unconscious mind.
Critics and reviewers use it broadly: The film's surreal elements include a talking fish and rooms that change shape.
In casual use, surreal elements may simply mean anything strange or dreamlike in a work.
- dream logicIrrational nocturnal narrative sense
- waking dreamVivid fantasy while conscious
- fever dreamHallucinatory episode during illness
- automatismInvoluntary mechanical behavior
- collageAssembled mixed-media artwork
disorientation · hybrid creatures · melting clocks · defamiliarization · dislocation · photomontage · alternate realities · unease · absurdity · Magritte · juxtaposition · strange bedfellows · timelessness · free association · unconscious mind · symbolic objects · wonderment · distortion
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