Last summer (2012), I participated in a roundtable discussion with Therese Grisham and Julia Leyda on the subject of “Post-Cinematic Affect: Post-Continuity, the Irrational Camera, Thoughts on 3D.” Drawing on Steven Shaviro’s book Post-Cinematic Affect, and looking at films such as District 9, Melancholia, and Hugo, the roundtable appeared in the multilingual online journal La Furia Umana (issue 14, 2012). For some reason, the LFU site has been down for a few weeks, and I have no information about whether or when it will be back up. Accordingly, I wanted to point out for anyone who is interested that you can still find a copy of the roundtable discussion here (as a PDF on my academia page). Enjoy!
I will definitely check that out.
Please do, Michael, and let me know what you think! The roundtable was a lot of fun, and I think our discussion of post-cinematic affect was quite valuable — at least, I learned a lot from it! Hope you enjoy!
That was over a year ago–time flies. What I want to say is that I have since changed my thinking a bit on Hugo. To summarize, Hugo contains some of the sane techniques as the other films we discuss here, such as lens flares, but they are naturalized. For instance, the lens flare becomes the intense light from projectors and other identified sources. In terms of the naturalism of the way the film “sees” more generally, and the way it positions its viewers to see, it continues the line of descent from 1970s scifi and fantasy films such as Star Wars. Last for now, it incorporates gaming, though to a far less delirious degree than the gaming segment in District 9 when Wikus takes control of the armored fighter. In Hugo, one gaming sequence is Hugo’s slide down the chute.
Hi, Therese. Yes, time does fly! Thanks for updating your thoughts on Hugo. I see that completely: Hugo tries to naturalize, maybe “tame” the crazy camera. I look forward to hearing more from you about this!