Cinema as example of Simulation: CGI = Spectacular realism?
With the advent of popular CGI cinema we are left with...a heightened illusion and spectacle. It is a visual realism, a truth, based on the 'wizardry' of CGI, that re-introduces that least realist cinematic form, animation, back into the mainstream.
...two important factors:
- The identification of significant links with earlier spectacular media in cinema, or even twentieth-century popular culture
- The increasing importance of striking visual image over other aspects of cinema.
In addressing the second point - the dominance of the visual - it should be noted that the term 'spectacle' has two main meanings here.
1. In everyday usage it refers to the special effects, stunts, song-and-dance routines, that oppose, temporarily halt, or distract the audience’s attention from narrative and character development. Think about Avatar (2009) for example.
2. The other connotation of spectacle is drawn from the Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. He asserts that postwar capitalism has reinforced its control over the masses through the transformation of culture as a whole into a commodity - something to be bought and sold. Thus the spectacle is not so much a set of particular cultural or media events and images, - like say the X factor final - but characterises the entire social world today as an illusion, a separation from, or masking of, real life:
The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world. (Debord 1983)
This suspicion of the illusory potential of cinema is evident because the cinematic image captures the surface appearance of things, rather than underlying relationships, it is always superficial. (ANYTHING THEMES IN SCOTT PILGRIM & SUPERFICIALITY IN THE CHARACTERS BREAKING HEARTS?)
But if these images are illusions and artificial what can they tell us of our 'real world'? If we are sceptical about the ability of these, or any, images to speak the truth, what might these images mean, what might they tell us about our world and their place within it?
(WHAT THIS MEANS IS X-FACTOR MAKES THE SHOW OUT OF THE PRODUCTION OF THE COMMODITY - NOT THE SONGWRITER BUT THE PACKAGING OF THE ARTIST: THE PRODUCT 'SICO PRODUCTIONS/SONY MUSIC' IS GOING TO SELL AT CHRISTMAS - WE VOTE & READ ABOUT IT & FB ABOUT IT & SOCIALLY INTERACT AROUND IT - THIS IS THE SPECTACLE )
Arguments for and against CGI as being ‘real’
The Mask (1994) or Jurassic Park (1993) or Transformers (2007) are all good examples of films whose popularity was based on their advanced use of CGI. Special effects in films have often been regarded as at best distractions from, and at worst, harmful to the creative or artistic (JUDGEMENTS OF WORTH & TASTE RATHER THAN POPULARITY ARE HIERARCHIES OF MODERNISM) in cinema:
The Mask underscores the shrinking importance of conventional story-telling in special-effects-minded movies, which are happy to overshadow quaint ideas (MODERNIST) about plot and character with flashy up-to-the-minute gimmickry. (Janet Maslin1998)
Evident in genres preferred by young audiences - science fiction, horror, fantasy, action films - special effects-driven films are commonly seen as illusory, juvenile and superficial, opposed to more respectable aspects of popular film such as character psychology, subtleties of plot and mise-en-scene. (MODERNIST ELITISM!!! MAKING JUDGEMENTS OF TASTE & 'WORTH')
Claims that blockbuster films are bringing about, the 'dumbing-down' of culture are a familiar feature of film criticism (USING MODERNIST HIERARCHIES OF FILM AS 'ART'). These fears find a resonance in certain discourses on the relationships between digital technologies, popular culture and culture as a whole. There are links between established pessimistic attitudes to spectacle in cinema with more recent 'cyberculture' discourses. It is argued that the popularization and pervasiveness of digital technology has profoundly altered our sense of space and time. The hyperreal space of digital simulation - whether it be the space of cinematic special effects or video games - is characterized by a new depthlessness. (Pierson1999)
Andrew Darley (2000) places CGI as an important cultural form within an emergent 'digital visual culture', alongside video games, pop videos, digital imaging in advertising and computer animation - he argues that these visual digital forms:
Lack the symbolic depth and complexity of earlier forms, appearing by contrast to operate within a drastically reduced field of meaning. They are about little, other than their ability to interest the sight and the senses. Popular forms of diversion and amusement, these new technological entertainments are, perhaps, the clearest manifestation of the advance of the culture of the 'depthless image'. (Darley 2000) (STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE & SIMULACRA)
In this account, mass culture is not yet entirely dominated by this ‘spectacle', but it occupies, a central space that is:
Largely given over to surface play and the production of imagery that lacks traditional depth cues. Imagery that at the aesthetic level at least is only as deep as its quotations, star images and dazzling or thrilling effects. (Darley 2000).
Criticisms of ‘depthless’ digital culture - inverted idealism?
In the criticisms of depthless digital culture and the 'loss of the real', there is the implication that it is the characteristics of the classic realist film - character psychology depth, narrative coherence, and so on - that embody the 'meaning' now lost in postmodernist digital culture.
Classical realist filmmaking, whilst perhaps not telling the truth, had 'meaning' and depth and postmodernist theories about the 'hyperrealism' of computer graphics has been interpreted not as presenting a truer image of the real world, but rather as heralding its disappearance. A number of questions are raised by the arrival of digital cinema:
What about the CGI films themselves: are spectacular images necessarily meaningless? Action sequences and effects in films, along with song-and-dance numbers are distinct from narrative - but is meaning only to be found in narrative and character?
These last point raises questions about the active audience - are the people who enjoy the spectacular realism of CGI merely dupes; seduced and exhilarated by superficial displays?
Surely active audiences can respond to spectacular cinema as shared cultural event and as object of specialist 'fan' knowledge and practices?
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