![]() This potential emerges most emphatically when we use figure as a verb, seeing it as a transformative function that reveals the process of mediation. 2: Pixilation of the Universal logo at the beginning of Unfriended.īrinkema's project stresses the genealogical survey of affects in continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, whereas, in invoking the concept of figure, I wish to excavate its polysemic valences so as to fully exploit its potential in understanding the perplexing but exhilarating medial situation in which we find ourselves. The microscopic burst of tension comes from each pixel recalculated and reformulated-incrementally aggregated-as deformations of the pictorial entities on screen.įig. Instead, the disjuncture is figured in the micro-intervals of the picturing process and the algorithmic computation. However, the deployment of the film’s suspense effects (or spectral aggression of our unseen but ubiquitous protagonist) no longer depends upon the knowledge gap between the characters and the audience, as in the traditional Hitchcockian model. She comes back for revenge in the form of an electronic phantom. A girl who was bullied by her "best friends" on the internet commits suicide. The plot recycles most of its materials from the Japanese horror film classic Ring (1998). Take a banal Hollywood cyber-horror film, Unfriended (2014), as example. Situated at the intersection of form and content, essentially, figure adumbrates the dynamic between the visible interstices of the apparatus of vision, which might lead us to delve into the specificity of every visual medium. It is a transitioning that is fueled by either the inner workings of media or by the acumen of critics who have their eye on the complicit relationship between word and image, message and channel, ideology and distanciation. First and foremost, figure entails a movement towards figuration-a trace that evinces its own mechanism of production in action. That said, there is still a possibility to rescue and redeem this concept from the academic pandemonium while keeping all the various denotations and connotations in mind, if mostly in the background. Without a doubt, Gilles Deleuze, or more accurately “Deleuzianism,” is the culprit. The fulfillment of a future event is effortlessly subsumed under the flag of becoming. Historical concreteness-in Erich Auerbach’s definition of the concept in “Figura”-is substituted with corporeal sensations and images, abandoning the term’s original eschatological significance. Perhaps due to its semantic elasticity or academic abuses, the concept of the figure has developed into almost a quotidian and confusing term in film and visual studies.
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