4 research outputs found
An Investigation Into the Creative Processes in Generating Believable Photorealistic Film Characters
Excavating the Future
Well-known in science fiction for tomb-raiding and mummy-wrangling, the archaeologist has been a rich source for imagining âstrange new worldsâ from âstrange old worlds.â But more than a well-spring for SF scenarios, the genreâs archaeological imaginary invites us to consider the ideological implications of digging up the past buried in the future. A cultural study of an array of very popular, though often critically-neglected, North American SF film and television textsârunning the gamut of telefilms, pseudo-documentaries, teen serial drama and Hollywood blockbustersâExcavating the Future explores the popular archaeological imagination and the political uses to which it is being employed by the U.S. state and its adversaries. By treating SF texts as documents of archaeological experience circulating within and between scientific and popular culture communities and media, Excavating the Future develops critical strategies for analyzing SF film and televisionâs critical and adaptive responses to post 9/11 geopolitical concerns about the war on terror, homeland security, the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, and the ongoing fight against ISIS
Soulful bodies and superflat temporalities: a nomadology of the otaku database of world history at the ends of history
This thesis is a philosophical engagement with the popular, low, and vernacular theories of History performed and expressed within contemporary Japanese manga (âcomicsâ) and anime (âlimited animationâ), and most importantly, in the global production and consumption of otaku (âmanga and anime fanâ) cultural and media ecologies. My project is rooted in a reading of the post-structural theoretical inquiries of Gilles Deleuze in parallel with what media theorist McKenzie Wark calls âotaku philosophyâ to examine how both high and low theories articulate anxieties and fascinations with the global theoretical discourses on âthe ends of Historyâ and the imminent demise of industrial modernity. The first portion of the thesis is dedicated to a reading of the Japanese counter-cultural manga movement called gekiga (âdramatic picturesâ). In traversing gekigaâs post-war lineages to its revival in the medievalism of otaku artists Miura KentarĆ and Yukimura Makoto, the first part postulates on what an anti-modern, anti-historical approach â or what Deleuze and Guattari call a nomadology â might look and feel like as it is mediated in the manga form. The second portion of the thesis examines the way in which Japanese anime mobilises the philosophies of nomadology in its filmic form and transmedial properties. In a critical assessment of the anime works of the otaku-founded media corporation Type-Moon, this section explores the Fate series alongside Deleuzian film and media philosophies to explore the infinite potentialities and recursive limitations of otaku nomadologies as they materialise beyond the screen. By reassessing the rise of otaku culture as a vernacular, global, and cosmopolitan rise in the critique of modernity and History, this thesis hopes to explore how transcultural and transmedial fan philosophies of historicity, memory, and temporality can be recontextualised within current academic debates about the efficacy of post-national historiographic pedagogies explored in the fields of postcolonial studies, comparative studies, global studies, and media studies
Spirits in solitude: romanticism in the films of Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, and Wes Anderson
This thesis examines the influence of Romanticism on a selection of seven films
from four contemporary American filmmakers: Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson,
Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze.
The research questions are as follows: How do particular Romantic ideas, either
canonical ones or those located on the more critical fringes of Romanticism, relate to
the work of the filmmakers I consider? What Romantic features do these films
regularly exhibit, both aesthetically and in terms of narrative? How do these features
inform their overall point of view? Finally, how do such Romantic ideas and
aesthetics relate to the current cultural milieu in which the films were created?
There are many familiar and more obscure Romantic strains running through the
films. These include a preoccupation with personal history and memory; an
undercurrent of deeply felt emotion and reliance upon mood and tone to convey it; a
foregrounding of the creative process and the imagination; and an ambivalent
relationship to both the natural world and civilised society.
In terms of aesthetics, the films in question depend on qualities of the beautiful,
picturesque, and sublime to represent the complex emotional states of their
characters and to elicit emotional responses in their audiences. Above all, these films
represent a preoccupation with subjectivity and self-consciousness: specifically, the
coming to personal self-consciousness that creates a rift between the individual
subject and a greater sense of society.
By utilising the work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantic authors and
philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel, William Wordsworth, Henry David
Thoreau, John Keats and others, combined with twentieth- and twenty-first century
readings of these works via literary and cultural theorists and critics such as Harold
Bloom, M.H. Abrams, Leo Marx and Anne Mellor, I emphasise the historical
trajectory of general Romantic concepts. Taking established cinematic theories
(âquirkyâ cinema, âsmartâ film, the ânew sincerityâ) as a point of entry, I explore
the underlying stylistic and narrative connections between the films I discuss. I
argue these films share a fundamentally Romantic form and vision specific to their
own historical and cultural environment