Chasing the Hobbit: The cultural contents of mainstream communication products

An ‘unexpected journey’ in the world of fantasy and science fiction films describes the rules of scenography and setting in mainstream media products nowadays. An in-depth work of excavation has to be undertaken to recognise each narrative component and to return it to the context it belongs to. This work offers us an opportunity to grasp the multi-layer meaning behind these new cultural products, and to understand the way in which they mark a distance between themselves and those of the so-called modern age by breaking the boundaries among social and cultural groups. As a result, these products, usually classified as entertainment products, and therefore apparently simply-structured, show their highly professional contents as well as an extraordinary cultural complexity, which often encourage the appearing of new languages and social behaviours. When dealing with these new cultural products, the designer has to handle a very complex and multi-faced matter. Whatever the purpose is – to identify references or to provide them – a mastery of the disciplinary knowledge involved in the process is required, which in design tradition rests on the history of the Arts and of Architecture.