However, this works against the wish to create an illusion of presence, which requires the media become transparent and disappear to enhance the immediacy of the object represented. The paronomasia leads us back directly, just like the quasi-homonym that we eventually discern once our attention drifts to the composition of the syntax instead of its meaning. The pronunciation is almost identical; only an incredibly attentive ear will pick up the camera from the ruse, the cam from the scam.
The alliteration of the fricatives is lost in the tension between the nasal and occlusive. It exploits all its possibilities while at the same time, it undermines its very processes. The interactivity, whose seductive appeal played such an important role in our initial adhesion, is quickly revealed as a simulacrum. The woman, who will never reveal her face, remains insensible to our presence. If the unveiling or the anticipated awakening ensured the dynamism of our relationship and fed an illusion of a real interactivity, their indefinite postponement reveals their illusory character.
The interactivity is undone, and with it the singularity of the experience and the effect of immediacy of the representation. This is not, after all, anything more than a machination, a representation whose effectiveness can no longer allow us to believe in the absence of any mediation. It is now the gaze of nostalgia that we slowly adopt for a relationship lost for ever, despite appearances to the contrary. Eve does nothing more than turn her back to us; she continues to sleep and live in her world, a world of thought we no longer have access to as we are separated by this computer screen.
Eve is nothing more than a montage of code; we are clearly out of Eden, forever banished from Paradise where communication with the other was ideal, and is now revealed as impossible. The immediacy and the presence of this other were nothing more than simulacra, the result of media mechanics. More importantly, these media mechanics have a long history.
They eloquently speak of this desire to give life, to see forms of life appear where they were least expected. If the figure of the sleeping woman takes its source from the Bible and other literary myths, the actual mechanics are a direct echo of a long celebrated cinematographic sequence. Everything is static and yet, at the same time, the magic of cinema combines with an incredible intrigue, which allows us to animate this universe, to give it a breath of life.
This life is none other than our own. As the film progresses we forget these are fixed images, following one after the other, just like a reader of a novel forgets she or he is simply reading words. Meanwhile, more than half way through the film, a miracle occurs. The woman, who the man meets and seduces, is shown sleeping in a close up shot. She sleeps and the images begin to blend with each other. She dreams, and the scenes become superimposed. Suddenly, too suddenly for us to anticipate it, she opens her eyes.
A filmed sequence barely a few seconds in length is inserted into these fixed images and the appearance happens: The woman opens her eyes and the effects of presence are magnified. She is there, alive and palpably real. The unexpected has occurred. Something appears, and then almost immediately disappears, as if gripped by time, and this within a short interval between two times of absence, the future and the past, and a presence impresses itself on our minds. The time interval is brief, it only lasts a few seconds. The film resolutely returns to the initial slide show presentation of fixed images.
However, the impact is stupendous. It has created a simulacrum of presence. And it creates it with an exceedingly simple technique: Inserted in a limited technological background, the filmed sequence appears as genius, even though it is quite common. She stays there, silent and asleep, subjected to movements initiated by a fascinated spectator, but always present. The continuous presence of the image helps deconstruct the effect of presence that the interactivity helped create, as if some limit had not been respected.
Eve becomes once again a simple image, and the myth regains its normal dimensions. The comparison with the La Jette by Marker clearly confirms that the effectiveness of a representation is indeed completely unrelated to the complexity of the processes used to create it.
In what context does the comprehension of this work transpire? It transpires in a cyberspace where bodies and nudes progressively impose their reign. Pornography, as we know, is one of the most important motors of Internet development. Literally, millions of sites propose bodies in any imaginable position: We can, in fact, choose between being a witness or a spy. Two modes are presented, the first passive, the second active. The terms of engagement are predefined: All we can do is choose our attitude: Whichever one we choose, Eve is always naked and vulnerable, always sleeping and desirable, always distant, if only because she is hidden behind a mountain of code.
This is the heart of the project: This site is a virtual gallery of hypermedia art works. It provides information and space for artistic creation. In this particular exhibition, thirty works are presented where nudity is treated in different yet innovative ways, whether it be with humor, tragedy, esthetics, or politics. Its processes are therefore inscribed in a space dedicated to nudity, and different representations of the body. And it expresses the nature of the gambit quite well. She does not face us, having nothing to cover herself in her purity; she turns in part her back to us, hiding her face, as if she did in fact have something to hide.
The body, naked and pure, has nothing erotic about it: However, the body slightly covered or a covered body, incites itself to be uncovered, and therefore, creates an affirmation of desire and the need for an effect of presence. The fall, in Biblical terms, is a prelude to desire. Eve alone, amongst all women, has experienced these two states. The first, Eden, is marked by a body without sign or taboo, a neutral body, the same as every other living body in Paradise. In the second state, human, the body is distinguishable. It is a body no longer pure, a body constructed by culture.
It is covered, transformed, paired and especially, sexualized. Sometimes, we may well believe it is only that. It is an ancient paradox that the naked body disappears from sight, while the covered body can never stop showing itself. Nothing ensures an act of presence more than the appearance of a sexualized body, that is, a body whose nudity is no longer a natural state: The effects of presence felt through the initial interactivity rely on the relative nudity of Eve, on the possibility that she might completely turn around so that we could see her face and her body, her breasts, and everything that has been undressed.
As soon as we start moving our cursor over her body, trying to make her act, to wake her up or to show herself, we are voyeurs, hoping for the moment where the hidden will be revealed, as if the whole meaning of the work depended on this revelation. The effectiveness of these processes lies in the dynamic created by every hermeneutical enquiry.
La vie littéraire. Première série by Anatole France
The anticipation of the moment of return — in its literal and narrative sense here! By manipulating the mouse, we never really know if we will discover what needs to be done for her to show herself completely, and thereby answer our desire. The work also fully exploits the principle of voyeurism. It hyper accentuates the function. For this reason the work is not only on incident. The work has transmuted. On the homepage of the portal webcamworld. Every available image is not necessarily pornographic, as this portal provides access to webcams throughout the world, classified by continent.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of the sites listed do propose explicit images. Eve is lost in a mass of bodies. She is also inscribed in a global offering that has no artistic intent. And this is no accident. Her presence here is quite deliberate: Infiltration In the domain of web art, artists have often used different strategies of infiltration, playing with the institutional limits of their work. The critical use of the codes for pornography for example, is a prime example of these types of strategies, which blur the limits between art and non-art.
Their success relies on two essential elements: It is a move to leave the art world to meander through the world of erotic webcams. By listing itself on webcamworld. By mingling with this mass of webcams, by rendering Eve anonymous, Loghman is attempting to pass the ultimate test: Is the experience she offers comparable to that of the others? The answer is clear: With an erotic webcam there is no secondary level of interactivity. The woman is in fact present at the screen, linked to a computer by a sophisticated protocol of communication a digital camera, a telephone connection, a network of information distribution, etc.
She has her own intentionality; she is not simply a fictional counterpart of the spectator. She can answer questions and accept to do what we ask her, but she is first and foremost alive and not controlled by the commands of a computer. Unlike Eve, she is not sleeping, her face is not hidden; on the contrary, her face is visible, as well as the rest of her more often than not. This is no longer interactivity. It is no longer representation, it is communication. We are no longer confronted with a work, but with life. The mediation does not disappear, it is hyper accentuated.
The effect of presence is neutralized because there is in fact, quite simply, presence. Other effects can appear, but presence imposes itself as reality, and this in itself subsumes all processes used to simulate its existence. The interactivity, in its secondary and semiotized form, is the quality that identifies the effectiveness of a representation to imitate an interaction.
It disappears when interaction takes up it rightful place. For a figure to be present and impose itself on our mind, for its effects of presence to be noteworthy, we need an absence, not a banal presence less and less meaningful. A figure is a complex sign that, like all signs, takes the place of an object whose absence it actualizes, while giving the illusion of its presence. However, this presence is symbolic.
It is a construction of the imagination. The Eve of Sebastien Loghman is a figure. There is no woman behind the code or the linked screen that gives her form and ensures her a presence — there is only a representation, a set of signs. This Eve is a figure that allows herself to be desired. She asks us to invest in our desire to manipulate, i.
The fact that she does not stop being on our screen, refuses to leave the realm of dreams that is hers, provides her with a great potential for meaning. Nothing is more present than that which makes itself desired. It is the law of the imagination to abhor emptiness. And she has the fragility of those figures where almost anything can make her disappear.
It only requires that the process of representation encounters some error a damaged film, an interrupted communication or a computer virus for her presence to end, and the event of her appearance is cast into the category of a simple memory. The effects of presence are fragile, just like the figures that best represent their results.
The processes do not guarantee the results hoped for, and their results dissipate rapidly. But their effect is incredible, and remains at the heart of our continuing fascination with all sorts of representation, from the more traditional literature to the more resolutely modern digital. A fascination for these figures, these beings of thought that mime, in the theatre of the imaginary, our own desires and needs.
All the while, as I have tried to show, this fascination does not depend on the technical means or processes used, even if new ones allow us to renew the game. Rather, it is the capacity of the forms projected to carry elements of signification, or, more generally speaking, meaning itself. It relies on the narratives we create, and the myths in which we are ready to believe.
The Role of the Body What role does the body have in this myth of presence that digital makes possible for us? What happens to the nude when the body can be industrially cloned and when nanotechnologies infiltrate the meat on our bones? What is the relationship between generalized nudity and this other form of being naked that awaits us with the experience of esthetic?
It brought it to the screen, it has slowly undressed it, and has exposed it in all its aspects, even the most private and secret. It has ravished and marked it, it has abused its limits and it has transformed it, some desired some horrible, and yet in every instant it has remained a spectacle. The body is our singular reality. It is, for some, the incarnation of consciousness. For others, it is the ultimate limit that we cannot shed despite contemporary fictions to the contrary. It was the last frontier: Eroticism signals the appearance of these things hidden for so long, with effects of presence of an incredible effectiveness.
If an author like William Gass could lament the paucity of vocabulary for the body and its sexuality, insisting on the fact that there were more words to designate types of birds than there were to describe sexual relations , the end of the last century has taken his reprimand quite seriously and has multiplied its representations. In fact, the body has become an imposed subject.
It is no longer hidden; on the contrary, we never cease exhibiting it, playing with its ability to capture our attention the moment its presence is most fragile. Showing the body is to inscribe its unveiling as an event. Its playing the game of appearing and disappearing, of presence and absence, of a gaze that is always surprised to see naked what society has clothed to protect it, even in its most vulgar moments. We know the techniques and processes have multiplied, have transformed the body into a privileged subject, a witness to the upheavals the media and society in its entirety have known.
The increasing importance given to the image, fixed and animated, have hyper accentuated an increasingly more explicit representation of the body. Digital and cyberspace have done nothing to attenuate this relationship. On the contrary, the reign of the image and the gaze has been inscribed in a new mutation: And banality is becoming the primary mode of comprehension.
The effects of presence are attenuated. Meanwhile, the ever increasing banality of the sexualized body opens two distinct and yet opposite developments, clearly evident in our modernity: In the context of this polarization, the sleeping Eve by Sebastien Loghman marks an incredible time-out. She reminds us of the simple truth that the reign of the image has helped us forget in its logic of showing: His Eve is a woman that resists us despite her vulnerability.
And we desire her the more because she is inaccessible. What is she dreaming of? In what labyrinth of thought does she wander? Is she trying to return to Eden, from where was she banished? The window of the computer that opens onto her lair appears as a perfect equilibrium between presence and absence, between what is offered and what is refused. And it is in this tension that nudity becomes an esthetic experience. A woman dreams and we muse. We cannot deny it: Texts and Cyberspace General field: Rien de plus, mais aussi rien de moins.
theranchhands.com: Sitemap
Dans quel contexte est-il lu? En termes de lecture cependant, la page ne cache rien. Comment rendre compte de cette part dans la lecture? Translation - English Texts and Hypertexts: Reading in Cyberspace Bertrand Gervais Literary studies, UQAM As the vibrant new field of electronic textuality flexes its muscle, it is becoming overwhelmingly clear that we can no longer afford to ignore the material basis of literary production. Materiality of the artifact can no longer be positioned as a subspecialty within literary studies; it must be central, for without it we have little hope of forging a robust and nuanced account of how literature is changing under the impact of information technologies.
Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines. Cambridge, MIT Press, , p. Does a literary text retain the same status on the Internet? What type of materiality are we dealing with? What forms of reading, what forms of knowledge? We are confronted with increasingly different forms of texts produced with the aid of a computer.
More often than not, these texts exist only on the Internet. They are often animated, filled with sounds and images, accessible through a network, related to one another by hyperlinks, inscribed in complex environments that ultimately transform the experience we have of them. How do we manipulate texts that seem to be in a fluid state, that constantly shift; how do we understand them, interpret them?
Literary exploration abounds on the Internet. Two examples will show both their diversity and their complexity. Most of these pages carry instructions that cause the browser to refresh the active window with a new page after 30 seconds.
Download This eBook
In this Flash based hypermedia work created in , we are bombarded with words in both French and English, which move toward us. The screen is black, the words are in white, the background music is electronic. Can we read this text, or are we consigned to simply appreciate its iconic features? Is it a text or a figure? What type of reading experience are we proposed in Hegirascope and 2translation? How do we talk about it? Must we discuss the software used?
Must we indicate the colors of the windows, as the words go by? In Hegirascope, they change from one page to another. In 2translation, the Macromedia Fash player uses our own intergrated microphone and camera to change the tone of the screen from black to various shades of grey. Evidently, we require a new vocabulary to talk about this new textual reality.
It is not a text. Various terms are put forward — browsing, surfing, navigating especially in French — , that appear to encapsulate the experience of acquiring knowledge on the Internet. The marine metaphor seems somehow apt to describe the exploration of cyberspace, perhaps, because it does actualize its spatial dimension. Navigating, browsing and surfing are words that contribute to the overall aspect of this sphere of communication: It is a space whose limits and determinations are electronic, not human: Regardless of the term chosen, to browse, to surf or to navigate the web, reading is always involved.
Exploring cyberspace is a text-based activity. If we do not recognize it as a form of reading it is because we tend to forget that texts play a major role on the Internet, and we misconstrue what reading is. Reading is not a single, constant act, the same every time — it is a complex practice bringing into play a large number of variables, which determine its forms and functions. As an activity, reading brings into play relationships between manipulation, comprehension and interpretation — gestures that complement each other in our progression through texts, regardless of their particularities or their supports Gervais, In this sense, to browse, to surf, or to navigate is to be reading because, and quite simply, our eyes are registering written words and texts.
In the following pages I want to describe some of the constraints on the act of reading in an era of hypertextuality. I will start by proposing a definition of what a text is, one capable of embracing the various forms it can take; I will then describe the current context of our reading practices. This will enable me to identify the major difficulties we face while reading new textual forms. A Mythical Cyberspace The computer and the Internet radically change our relationship with texts, the methods of their production and our ways of reading.
But do we know the real capabilities of the instrument we use with such increasing frequency? The computer is no longer simply a tool — it is a medium. It is providing us with a set of new media forms and genres, just as printing, the cinema, radio, and television have done before. Are they in fact infinite? The most pervasive beliefs about cyberspace and the computer revolution revolve around the unlimited capabilities of digitalization to provide an ideal representation of the world, and its ability to autonomously produce texts.
The setting of his short story lies at the frontier of the possible, playing on the indeterminate status of texts in cyberspace. On the first of the year , the most inauspicious of dates, Richard Powers, author, narrator and character of this story, tells us how he received an intriguing email. A man he knows nothing about, called Bart, proposes nothing less than the alpha version of an incredible program, designed to automatically produce fictions, i.
Concretely speaking, the program Dialogos produces actants i. To start Dialogos, you merely open the downloaded program, whose interface is similar to other email programs Outlook, Eudora, Entourage , write to anyone you want — your dead father, a childhood friend or even Emma Bovary — and hit send, with no need to include a precise address. Dialogos does a search and answers the email as if it came from Emma or your own dead father, maintaining the fiction of these characters through a dialogue with the sender.
Richard Powers, at first incredulous, sends his first letter to Bart. Emma, or what passes for her, quickly responds, providing details about her last film and current projects. Powers immerses himself in the game. He writes back to her and they exchange a number of letters. Emma, this actant without body or life, plays her role exceptionally through the letters, personifying with ease the British actress. To further test the machine, which is performing beyond all expectations to the point of suggesting some form of trickery, Powers decides to send out a bunch of letters, three dozen in fact: In less than an hour, the responses start appearing on his screen: Few of the notes came close to passing the Turing Test for intelligent equivalence.
But more of them amused me than even my unrepentant, strong-AI inner child could have hoped. He also keeps in touch with Charlotte, Albert and Goethe. And the expected occurs. But not without first convincing the narrator of the incredible autonomy of the program, of its capacity to generate completely independent fictions, fictions that produce their own story, a narration narrating itself and inventing its own program, thereby creating its own reality.
But how does such a generator of fictions and stories work? How could a machine slide into the skin of historical or fictional characters and succeed in convincing even the most skeptical author? It does so, in part, by becoming a structuralist, capable of transforming stories into narrative programs, and characters into functions or actants; it also does so in part by being connected to this vast ensemble of data and knowledge called the Internet.
As Bart explains, his team has created a machine language capable of dealing with databases, the most unstructured of texts. We are living in an age of digitalization and electric texts de Kerckhove , and as Powers would add, an era of incredible alienation that forces us to take our hopes and dreams for reality. However, in doing so, it is the frontiers of the present that are muddled, affecting every other time frame in the process; it is the very limits of consciousness that are dissolving, in an ever dilating present, an unawareness without limits.
What is the status of an author in this universe of simulacra? What forms of reading are we engaging in with cyberspace, and its primary expression, hypertextuality? Dialogos is a fiction: Roland Barthes would roll over in his grave! The death of the author was never more than a theoretical principle, a symbolic death that should allow, or so Barthes suggests, the emergence of the reader; more specifically, the beginning of theories about texts and their reading.
Dialogos transforms this symbolic death into an actual disappearance, leaving even the function of scribe, an automation. No one is at the origin of the signs that are read.
- .
- Full text of "Book-prices current; a record of the prices at which books have been sold at auction"?
- First French Numbers (First Books Book 6)!
If the symbolic death of the author encouraged a figure of the reader to emerge, the complete elimination of the author leaves the reader an orphan, or a slave who has no one left to oppose, or in an even more apocalyptic scenario, becomes completely obsolete. Powers, the narrator, learns this the hard way in the short story: The very person who initiated the exchange of messages has become useless and obsolete. The story tells itself. And turning off the computer changes nothing — the story is happening in cyberspace, this limitrophe non-human space propelled by its own dynamic.
What texts are we reading? Leaving Dialogos and the myth of an omnipotent cyberspace, lets get back to our initial question: This requires of course we initially understand what constitutes a text? We have seen, in literary theory, a wide variety of responses to this question. One of the more widely accepted stances proposes that whatever can be interpreted or perceived as a totality is a text, whether this be the flight patterns of bees or human interactions. The more restrictive definitions have focused on writing in a natural language.
A text is what you have before your eyes right now. But does this writing require a coherent totality, is it composed uniquely in a natural language excluding any schema, illustration, figure or diagram? Let us define a text, in its broadest possible view, as an organized ensemble of signifying elements for a given community.
This definition delimits the status of the text by relating it to a set of conventions already set and established by an interpretive community, i. A text is what such a community decides it to be. With this premise in mind, it is possible to add a further definition, narrower in its scope: As a being of language Charles What such a set can be is open to discussion and can be specified whichever way seems fit. The important part of the definition is the presence of speech acts, recognized as such and interpreted as constituting an enunciation.
A being of language can only exist if it is actualized in a given situation. It requires a sender, evidently, but also and more importantly a receiver, a reader in this case, who will actualize in his own context and by way of his own experiences its form and content. A text, in this definition, does not exist alone, but only within its relation to a reader. It exists through the act of reading. A text is what we make it to be; and its legitimacy is a function of what we provide it through our diverse experiences and institutions.
The third aspect of this definition is the essential presence of a medium, the material support by which a text is transmitted. And it is only by questioning this aspect of our textual experiences that we can investigate the concrete modalities by which a text is read, and the impact new media and forms of texts can have on our reading practices.
Does it make a difference, in terms of reading, if a text is transmitted through a computer screen instead of a printed page? What does the presence of fixed or animated images change in our readings habits? What is the current cultural context of our reading experiences? To answer this last question, we can say that the current diversity of our reading experiences is inscribed in a cultural and technological context that is fundamentally new; in fact, we could qualify it as a cultural hyperextension Gervais This specific context corresponds to our screen culture, in contradistinction to the more traditional book culture and manuscript culture.
This screen culture is marked by the heterogeneity of texts read through a variety of genres and media. It is a context of hyperconsumption of cultural goods, which the terms browsing, surfing or even navigating especially evoke. The tendency is towards acceleration. Texts are read rapidly and with little investment; moreover, and with few exceptions, they are quickly left behind after the initial encounter.
These texts often do not partake of any pre-established canon, they are selected with few a priori motivations. We read what comes up on our screen, through the simple click of a finger. The shift from one medium the page to another the linked screen is not without its consequences on our relationship with texts. For instance, it substantially modifies our relation with linearity. In hypertextuality, linearity is no longer a limit or a constraint, a basic quality that literature often tried try to escape, it has become an added feature. A hypertext is a non linear text composed of nodes connected together by hyperlinks.
It is not just written, it is programmed. The electrified text flows in any direction it wants, establishing links independently from its user. In this context, linearity is a quality that we try to recuperate in order to maintain, among other things, the possibility of telling a story, which still requires a certain form of linearity.
Cultural hyperextension favors displacement towards the periphery of a culture, towards translations, combinations of genres and forms, the introduction of new technologies and new modes of communication. We can easily say that screen culture is overdetermined by its linked screens. The technological dimension, if it is so prevalent, is only one factor amongst many indicating a major cultural transformation. In fact, if such a transformation is possible, it is because two major tendencies converge, each amplifying the other. The first corresponds to the apparition of new technologies for storing and transmitting text and is marked by the apparition of cyberspace and its specific textuality.
The second is related to modifications in the very structure of cultural relationships and the way identity is defined. For instance, both identity and cultural relationships are progressively moving from a logic of tradition to a logic of translation. This transition favors a shift from relationships expressing ties with a cultural centre, ensuring permanence and value, to relationships expressing ties with the periphery and exchanges between cultures.
Tradition as a cultural principle, implies a certain stability, e. Translation as a cultural principle implies accelerated transformations, the multiplication of ties that provide an ever shifting identity. As Yuri Lotman has shown , tradition does not exclude outside influences, translation or exchange — however its tendency to re-appropriate them is paramount. As an identity principle, translation places its emphasis on de-appropriation, with an a priori for the other. The movement is centrifugal — not centripetal. Internet participates in the decentralizing of cultural exchanges — short-circuiting a number of social, cultural and symbolic institutions by proposing a network that allows individuals to be connected to the world while never leaving their linked screen, and to participate in virtual communities grounded on speech acts, not cultural position.
However, the increasing liberty of the individual, who can easily publish texts and have them read by whomever is interested, is paid for by a certain precariousness of the texts themselves.
Similar Books
Internet escapes traditional modes and mechanisms for the institutionalization of texts. Nothing guarantees the authority, or even the authenticity of what is said on the Web. Nothing guarantees the seriousness or the quality of a circulating text. If a text is a being of language commanding authority Charles , the Internet text is still under construction.
- !
- Traduction spécialisée: articles de recherche; documentation corporative; brochures.
- theranchhands.com: Sitemap!
- Toastie.
This context of cultural hyperextension and linked screens is a consequence of the convergence of two transformations: We do not yet know how or what this context will provide although we already feel its effects; we can, nonetheless, begin to identify certain factors that are influencing our reading practice and experiences.
These factors I will now try to describe by focusing on the new materiality of texts, and the problems their manipulation generates. Constraints on reading The question is simple: What can be said about reading a text whose primary mode of being is now virtual, mediated by a computer device whose complexity we do not always master?
We know how to manipulate a book. We have learned to read in our infancy, playing with books, turning their pages, looking at images and trying to figure what the words accompanying them meant. It is a second nature. We do not have to think about the book, its design or its constraints to be able to use it in an efficient manner.
But can we say the same thing about a digitalized text? Can we read a text on a linked screen the same way we read a text printed on paper? Can we engage in the same activities and with the same ease? Writing notes in the margins, for instance, or underlining important passages, comparing segments, etc. More often than not, and the references to browsing, surfing and navigating are revealing, we engage in a rapid form of reading, where the impetus is more on progression than comprehension, on rapidity than density.
Ca we read a literary text on a screen? Can we analyze it, interpret it and evaluate its formal and esthetic aspects? Obviously the paper has disappeared; the text can no longer be examined in its entirety, at least not in the same way the book has conditioned us, with its weight, volume, and form.
The text is now nothing more than a bombardment of photons on a computer screen. How do we study and analyze this type of text? Over the past centuries reading has become progressively more interiorized, passing from oral reading to silent reading. The computer is provoking yet another transformation: Cyberspace likewise modifies the texture of this experience, by leaving the impression that the writing we find has dematerialized to the point of passing for something else, e. It is regularly suggested we are finally witnessing a consummate expression of what Walter Ong has called a secondary orality Ong However, this orality is first and foremost silent.
The transition has been evoked through various oppositions: Whatever evaluation we make, a reconfiguration is taking place as we move towards a linked screen culture, and this forces us to re-examine the essential gestures involved in reading. Every act of reading is comprised of three gestures: These gestures are present with every act of reading, and they are logically related one to the other. Reading is always manipulating a text, understanding it, and interpreting it. Specific instances of reading can generate a greater emphasis on one of these gestures interpretation in literary studies for instance , however, their co-presence and overlapping constitute the foundation of every act of reading.
Interpretation requires that some form of understanding be obtained. And comprehension necessitates that the text be manipulated with ease. If the last cannot be obtained, the whole edifice collapses. A text that cannot be manipulated, therefore be included in a genuine reading practice, will resist complex forms of understanding and become impermeable to interpretations.
Evidently, with our move from texts to hypertexts, with its implicit shift from paper to linked screens, it is this very activity of manipulation that has yet to be completely assimilated. Every adult reader has learned how to manipulate books, to the point that the manipulation is taken for granted. The level of automatism involved in this act is reflected in the numerous theories and hypotheses about reading traditionally debated in literary studies: But, with linked screens and hypertexts, this learning still remains to be completed.
The very metaphor of browsing is an obvious sign that this manipulation is still imperfect. To browse is to move from one thing to another, to remain disconnected — like the act of shopping, browsing text is about texts not yet ours. Consequently, we need to learn to do more than browse, we need to learn to take possession, make these new texts our own, re-appropriate them. So what types of difficulties are inherent in the manipulation of these new forms of texts? A number of problems have already been identified. Certainly, the first is their novelty.
Another is their institutional instability, i. Another four difficulties can be readily identified and are described next. Risks in Manipulation The first of these difficulties is the digitalization of the text — its dematerialization. The page is no longer made of paper, it is made of photons projected on a screen, and it requires new tools to be handled. In conjunction with this ephemeral way of being present, digitalization adds a new functionality.
Certainly, this computer function of the words impacts their semiotic function in ways that we do not yet understand. Are hyperlink words read the same way as simple words? I will argue in the next section that this function changes the way we read, transforming progression through texts from a logic of discovery to one of revelation. Again, digitalization implies the increased presence of an invisible writing, what we call programming. On a page, no part of the text is invisible. Everything is there, unless of course you adopt the genetic approach to texts, where what is present is only a small part of what could have been written.
However, in terms of reading, nothing is hidden. The same cannot be said of a hypertext, or any text on a linked screen. These forms require an invisible writing: A second difficulty is the ever increasing number of texts available in our cultural context of hyperextension. Accessibility, an ideal in a capitalist society, pays tribute with an uncontrollable influx of texts. Some have gone so far as to suggest that we are living in the age of a second flood, a flood of communication. This flood significantly changes our relationship with texts.
They are no longer something rare as in a manuscript culture or usual as in a book culture , they are almost a menace. We are less concerned with finding texts, and more concerned with stopping the flood of texts coming in. We need to construct dams capable of holding back this incredible mass. The situation of over abundance forces us to look for ways by which to reduce the amount of texts, to organize data, and make it manageable, with search engines and automated text analysis. In fact, we do not want to read texts, we want to erase most of them.
The need for selection is preponderant. If we are entering a new cognitive era, it seems to have exclusion as its core structuring principle. We can easily observe that research on reading and its processes these last two decades has been done less by literary scholars and more by linguists and researchers in cognitive science, looking to develop softwares capable of automatically analyzing texts, thereby accelerating their treatment. The supreme value in our context of hyperextension is speed, hence the need for accelerated progression through texts. However this ever increasing need for speed has its toll on comprehension, which still requires time.
With the impetus on accelerated reading processes, comprehension is more and more reduced to its most simple forms: Banality is the foremost danger of digitalized and easily accessed texts. They are no longer a rare commodity — they are objects easily reproduced with almost no symbolic value: With fragments read on Internet sites, this immateriality is characterized by an absence of spatial-time determinations.
Where is the text? What is the status of what appears on the screen? Instead of a corporeal text, the sheer materiality of page and book, we have the ghost text of cyberspace, a figure as untouchable as it is ephemeral. The digitalization of text, with its easy access, its ability to be present on numerous screens simultaneously, results in a loss of symbolic value.
A third difficulty arises with the complexity of the text itself — its essentially hybrid quality. More and more, texts share their space with images, animated sequences, sounds, etc. The Internet favors the development of iconotexts, i. Iconotexts have always been part of literature, albeit in a marginal fashion. Now, with the development of computer graphic design, iconotextuality has become a standard. Texts on the Internet have a strong iconic component. Screen pages are set as in a newspaper, words are sometimes immersed in images, their fonts vary, and they compose a complex reality.
They are no longer read, they are experienced as a spectacle. We are therefore pushed to the limits of textuality, where the text itself is no longer given to be read, but to be seen, to be contemplated as a figure. It is the figure they constitute in their totality that now commands our attention. This transformation subordinates the perception of the words and their signification, necessarily codified, to an intuitive perception of images. It is a textual figure, an artifact, that first imposes itself while the information contained in the text recedes.
If we want to read these textual figures, if we want to go back to what they might be saying, we have to go beyond their iconic dimension. We have to accustom ourselves to their design and graphic aspects. Simply put, we must learn to manipulate them, until this first part of the reading process is assimilated. Textual figures appear unreadable, simply because our attention has been distracted by the glamour images and linked screens has brought into the reading experience.
Textual figures do not tell stories, they tell their own story. And the one they convey points towards a certain malaise. The computer is no longer a simple tool, it is a new medium. And in this medium, text does not disappear — it continues to be present, but it does so in an environment replete with signs where it seems to be fragile. Our relative inability to read the new forms of texts, and the difficulties encountered to appropriate them, stem, at least in part, from the constraints that the overall iconic context imposes on the reader. The fear of the death of book culture is perhaps less a sign of the disappearance of text itself, than a sign of the increased presence in the immediate environment of images and their singular semiotics.
It is useless to deprecate this fact — it is far more constructive to establish a communication between these two semiotic registers, and to construct the necessary bridges to move from one to the other. A Logic of Revelation The last difficulty is related to the actual status of the signs brought into play with hypertextuality. Electricity changes the nature of text — it transforms it into hypertext. Through computer programming, a new function appears — one which operates at the frontier of semiotics and computers: This sign, with its singular properties, seems to call us to discovery — at least on the surface — allowing us to move from text to text with ever increasing ease.
However, in doing so, it neutralizes the very core of the reading process, which is discovery. The hyperlink is, surprisingly enough, a simulacrum of a sign — i. Its uniqueness lies in the nature of the link it proposes and, to a certain extent, the role we play in establishing it. Are we its creators, or simply the users of the relationship set up by the link? The hyperlink in fact places us in the second role — users — which explains the logic of revelation it surreptitiously imposes. A sign is essentially something which stands for something else for someone. In this triadic relationship, which finds its full development with C.
Peirce , the sign is not directly linked with its object. It is the interpreter, or more precisely the interpretant, that establishes the relationship by identifying the object. The object of the sign is not determined absolutely, its attribution depends on the knowledge and experience of the interpretant. With signs, we can always make mistakes. We can fail to fully understand the signification of a word and proceed to make a faulty attribution — e. This would be a faulty attribution.
Because we are the masters of attribution, it requires our interpretants to be effective — and they can prove themselves to be inadequate. The signification of a sign is the unique result of our action on it. With the hyperlink, this logic is inverted: The hyperlink acts like a sign — it stands for something else for someone; however once programmed, it does so identically in every case.
The hypertext link, once activated, and this despite our interpretants, always goes to the next text to which it has been linked. It can never be faulty. Granted, it can be defective — in which case it is completely ineffective — however, it can never link to something else beyond what has been established.
It is no longer operating in the order of the possible, it is a finished act only waiting for the push of a finger to reveal its true nature. We no longer hypothesize at the moment of activation — there is no risk of error as we content ourselves to follow instructions and passively watch the deployment of the link. The possibility of error, inscribed at the very heart of our semiotic reality, is the essential condition for a process of discovery — and reading is one of our foremost processes of discovery.
The hyperlink, because it can never vary, can never be wrong, places us, in this respect, in a logic of revelation — the apparition of truths stemming not from a quest for information, rather as a gift. The gift of a link revealed with its surprise and novelty. Hypertexts in this sense are not discovered, but revealed. The difference between discovery and revelation, between searching for a truth and having one simply revealed without any effort, is the difference between a word and a word button, between a real sign and a hyperlink, between the semiosphere Lotman and cyberspace.
Hypertextuality, by its very structure, strings us along from revelations to revelations. The unexpected and the marvelous, the spectacular imposes its logic. Moreover, what we find is not the result of a quest — it is a search barely palpable because highly sophisticated search engines are able to discover for us, and reveal like truth the substance of our investigation no matter how summary… From the masters of inquiry, cyberspace transforms us into spectators of a miracle that never ceases to repeat itself, a spectacle of the appearance.
It transforms us into believers, convinced that an exterior force controls our path, our destiny. Hyperlinks transform the basic drive associated with reading: They transform this active process into a more passive stance, which might explain the important adjustments required to develop complex modalities of reading, necessitating by definition a greater participation. It goes against the grain. Ironically, our entrance into cyberspace does not happen under the tutelage of Oedipus, the first philosopher; rather it transpires under the auspices of Oedipa Mass, the heroine of the novel The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon.
Much like us with our context of hypertextuality, Oedipa moves from revelation to revelation; like us, it is in a state of stupefaction that she experiences a ballet of texts and symbols that come in an order she can never anticipate. And the novel finishes without us ever knowing the final word of the story.
In the penultimate scene, Oedipa is attending an auction, where, in Lot 49, lies the key to the mystery. However, the text finishes at the moment the auctioneer starts the auction. The last revelation is not presented — indefinitely suspended beyond the confines of the text. However, the logic of revelation requires precisely this type of suspense — the sequence cannot end. It is the expectation that creates the link. It is not the revealed truth that matters; it is the next that it anticipates, the revelation to come, the one always the more desirable insofar as it remains a promise.
Conclusion Obviously, these are only a few of the factors that explain our difficulty in reading the new forms of texts present on our linked screens. Mythology, cinema, comic-books, Disney, Greco-Roman heroes, archetypes. Thus any myth can be ana- lyzed using a given approach, stemming from the functioning of its content. The Transformation of the Mythological and the Re-appropriation 11 of Myths in Contemporary Cinema torical or applied to a specific cultural context.
Albeit, before choosing any version of myth-making, there is an important distinction to be made. Since all myths are de- scribed as homogenous in their profound nature, manifest continuous in throughout the history of mankind, and persistent in culture and art we must ask if this defini- tion is still functional. There is a classical definition, provided by the historian of re- ligions, Mircea Eliade, which provided one of the most common models for this per- spective: Eliade's view expresses this dominant understand- ing of the role played by myths in human culture; a myth is basically an original sto- ry, in the sense that it is a narrative about the origins of mankind.
In this respect, any myth-making keeps a deep sacred role, even in contexts where the profane dominates the imaginary of the communities. An archetype is fundamentally manifested in re- current myths, which can be traced in any number of manifestations, yet preserving the initial qualities. Even if the archetype is not a myth, there is an archetypal continu- ity of myths, traced by Jung within the unconscious of humanity, the collective con- sciousness manifested in symbols Jung The hero undergoes his adventures then comes back, this is a single repeated plot: Prometheus, Ulysses, Jason, St.
George they are all part of a stable ar- chetypal structure Campbell A third major view on mythological functioning was represented by cultural critics like Roland Barthes. Mostly taking on a post-Marxist opinion and describing myths as carriers of ideology, this perspective presents myths as multi-layered structures, yet fixed since they code the representations of power structures in society Barthes Once again, this means that the myth has a stable role and manifestation, it is a form of fixating the reality of social life into a narrative of some sorts.
Cultural migration of myths — the Great Mother from Egypt to Christian lore One important direction when approaching the interpretation of the imaginary cinematic or otherwise is to build upon the paradigmatic nature of the images them- selves. The concept of the familiarity of images, borrowed from perceptual psycholo- gy, when used to understand the functioning of contemporary imaginary formations shows that there is direct link between cultural memory and visual recognition. Clearly, mythological transference is not a trait of modernity, nor a novelty of post- modernity. The ancients were keen to conveniently pick up and re-use any myths that suited their religious needs.
The appropriation by Rome of the whole Greek mythol- ogy Fantuzzi and Hunter is the most notorious form of borrowing in the histo- ry of European culture, since the Romans moved wholesale not only statues and rep- resentation made by the Greeks, but also entire visual structures and mythological narratives into their own culture. Versions of their Greek counterparts permeated the Roman Empire and, actually, some of the most important art forms of the Greeks are kept due to the Roman replicas.
Yet, in order to understand the longevity of an image and the amalgamation pro- cess one of the best examples is that provided by Jung: Although Jung uses this myth to support his claims that there is a continuous meaning to sto- ries in our collective psyche, one which has a constant content, which basically make it an archetype, the instances in which this myth appears indicate more than just re- occurrence.
The continuity of borrowed forms of representation and the multiple sources of the image of the Mother of God, be it Cybele, Isis with Horus in her arms, makes it obvious that many qualities of the pre- Christian figures were exported into the early Christian representations Belting and Jephcott For example the bear breasted Mother feeding the child that recru- desced by the late Renaissance is most likely to have been taken from the images of Isis breastfeeding Harpocrates on her lap, while Isis and Horus constituted a reference for the early representations of the Virgin and child.
This perspective of cross-cultur- al migration of images generates a narrow interpretation of iconological transference. Clearly all religions have imported and exported many of the visual structures be- longing to other religious forms. Yet even more relevant is the fact that this continu- ous transfer of images and mythologies, which began in the earliest manifestations of human culture, is not over. The Transformation of the Mythological and the Re-appropriation 13 of Myths in Contemporary Cinema ing examples from India, to Indonesia, from Japan to Nigeria, our contemporary re- ligious manifestations are still part of a global visual transmutation Morgan Images are circulating at an international scale and, even if most of the times this is a form of de-sacralization, religious imagery and imaginary structures are appropriat- ed and enculturated.
But, in order to understand what is going on with the myth transfer, we must go beyond the simple hybrid myths, those which are recurrent in several cultures. Like the myth of Aphrodite, who is manifested as Ishtar-Astarte, with roots in many of the Eastern goddesses of love to the modern myths about beauty or the myth of the Flood, which crosses from the Sumerian story of Utnapishtim to the Semitic Noah, from the Navajo nation stories of the American Indians to the Chalchiuhtlicue stories in Mexico, these mere recurrent themes.
One of the best examples is the Christian sto- ry of the last supper and particularly Leonardo da Vinci's fresco. Contemporary photographers, painters and cinematographers, who are notoriously borrowing mythological narra- tives and transforming them into new aesthetic discourses, are putting these stories into contexts which are not only forms of hybridization. Mythological representations and cinema When dealing with myths in cinema the first temptation is to link the discussion to films depicting the Greco-Roman heritage.
Sometimes called neo-mythologism Winkler , the process taking place within the mythological cinema is described the as the visual appeal of the supernatural in a world dominated by rationalism. The new-mythologization of the ancient stories is part of a deep need of humanity for the sacredness of myths. In this respect, movies are simply instru- ments for teaching mythology. The second perspective, also obvious in other works edited by Winkler, is to look for themes and tropes borrowed from mythology and simply transferred into the film narratives.
Here the myth functions as an interpretative tool for cinematic storytelling. Typically, movies like Star Wars can be read as an extension of the Argonauts tale, in a film like What Dreams May Come the critics identify the story of Orpheus, and char- acters like Schwarzenegger in Predator are representations of Hercules Frauenfelder This view preserves the classical understanding of myths - they are mythoi, that is the Greek word for stories, simply narratives about people and places of the past which can be re-told. In this sense, myths are adaptations, simple replications of older structures and storytelling paradigms.
For other authors Singer film as myth-making is part of the Western civi- lization's permeability to ancient the mythological stories, like The Garden of Eden, the variations of the Pygmalion myth, The Beauty and The Beast or Orpheus stories. Cataloging the manifestations of various tropes can become an indicator of the pro- cess of mythologization.
The interest for myth and mythology in cinema can be linked to the Victorian fascination with classical art and narratives. This interest grew with the development of mass produced images and is now part of our popular culture Williams Clearly, the contemporary media function as instruments of mythol- ogization. As Walter Benjamin has eloquently proved it, modernity is a copy oriented world, even the myths which are replicated in the modern representations are simply second-grade narratives, they are lacking their original aura.
Historically, the interest for mythological representations in cinema was described as following two major moments. The Transformation of the Mythological and the Re-appropriation 15 of Myths in Contemporary Cinema The second moment was between , when Hollywood rediscovered classical mythology and the potential of myth adaptation Solomon I would argue that there is a third movement, beginning after , when the Desmond Davis produced the first remake of the Clash of the Titans, later developing into a modern cinematic trilogy beginning with the 3D saga directed by Louis Leterrier.
My con- tention is that we are now in a third phase of the mythological representations. In this trend, the copy-like nature of the cinema mythologies brings with it the practice of multi-layered, multiple connections of meaning. In this sense, the myths are not sim- ply de-territorialized, that is transposed into another field of signification only to create new meaning, but they become a part of an amalgamation process.
As Zipes eloquently described how the modern fairy tales are simply transformed materials, stories pro- duced by colporteurs, by peddlers of old narratives Zipes The argument of this interpretation starts with the fact that the roots of the contemporary mythological formations are lo- cated in the realm of re-writing, where truncation and abbreviation, dyslexic transfor- mation and aberrant codifications, is more than just a de-sacralization of the world.
The following discussion will analyze how the mythical amalgamation works, and how it provides multitudes of meanings and is continuously permeating our imaginary formation. Obviously, this has been a recurrent trend; the Greek myths and mythological figures have deep roots in the formation of our modern society. From the revival of the ancient world in the Renaissance, to the German Hellenism, to the advertising world today, we are surrounded by Greco-Roman images and representation. As it has been point- ed out, famous brands and commercially successful products like Nike, use this con- nection between the modern sport activities and objects like shoes and old goddess its winged version of victory.
Sometimes the connection is not direct, as for Ajax the cleaning product and not the hero of the Trojan war , where the link is lost in the me- anders of contemporary myth-making. Finally from our rockets and space programs who carry names like Apollo or Mercury, to the use the Olympian torch and the com- mercial online practices like Amazon, we constantly return to mythology for meanings. These are just old stories disguised into new storytelling practices. In a sense the modernization of the classical myths equals their transformation into popu- lar mythology.
Dumbed down for the use of the average consumer, the grand stories of the past become part of modern myth-making by being reduced to stereotypes, to oversimplified manifestations of the expressivity of their ancient sources. An important path of myths into the popular culture is taken by their moderniza- tion through cartoons and other graphic forms of storytelling.
As Janet Wasko showed it, Walt Disney opened the path the for the re-appropriation of old narratives Wasko As noted by many other authors, almost all the Disney stories also those which are not directly taken from the Grimm brother's repertory are at a certain level re- enactments of old myths, most of them referring directly to the Greek mythology.
Snow White is nothing but Persephone re-designed with Demeter as Evil Mother , or Hercules who is a simplified version of the ancient hero. Yet, as it will be developed more below, the Hercules franchise, beginning with the Disney animation, be- comes relevant for the amalgamation process. In order to fit Hercules into the wider audience, the mythological figure is transformed into something completely detached from the original myth.
In turn, this transformation is later exported into several oth- er representations, as was the case with The Legendary Journeys TV series, where Kevin Sorbo played a Hercules which looked more like a fashion and body building charac- ter. Hercules is amalgamated into an appealing, Apollo-like hero, far from the origi- nal, brutal, thick bearded and heavy muscled figure represented in the Greek statues and pottery.
Although some authors have tried to prove the Christian roots of the comic book heroes Dalton , these heroic figures are extracted from the original context of heroes and demigods, that is the Greek and Roman legends. Just like the Greek heroes, Peter Parker is transformed by a supernatural intervention only to be- come himself a supernatural being — thus a demigod.
Even the enemies of the modern day heroes are repre- sentations of the old monstrous manifestations. All these figures have their roots in early mythical representations, and, as indicated by another famous Marvel creation, the X-Men franchise, they are part of a re-creation of the old Pantheon into a new myth- ological imaginary. Yet there is more to this re-mythologization since, as it is the case with X-Men, where professor Xavier is more than a paraplegic Zeus, he is an expression of a mixed figure, a by-product of the fascination for the Occult.
The artificial and superficial re- enactments in the comic-book universe makes way to an amalgamated mythology, where there is a melange of Nietzschean philosophy with the gods from the Walhalla, where Golems and berserkers are mixed with Egyptian figures like Horus and the Judeo-Christian Messiah operates with the tools of technological witchcraft.
This mix- ing up of narratives creates a spandex Knowles mythology, one which is elastic and inclusive, opened to a more complex interpretation. Mythology functions as a tool for ideology In opposition to the idea that myth-making is a natural manifestation of humanity and that humans are producing myths as a primordial tool for expression Tylor , the transformation process we discussed leads us to another major function of myths, that of ideological instrument. As indicated by Adorno together with Horkheimer , in the industrial culture of today myths have become simply ideological tools, instru- ments to convey a dominant discourse.
The culture industry is based on blending aesthetic residues, mixing everything into a fog of their own meaning Adorno Following this line of argumentation, since any myth has a social and political con- tent, one which we cannot understand independently from its context of production, the mixing of similar mythologies lead to the idea that old myths are destructed in or- der to create sameness. The nature of the assemblage is the linking of things which are not naturally linked together, by the force of the mechanic production of meaning in the contemporary reproduction based industries of the vi- sual.
Emptying the identity of the myth and then re-organizing it into a new body of meanings is a by-product of the mechanical society. We are machines of assembling, of connecting realities and significations which are otherwise separated Deleuze and Guattari More relevantly, the potpourri of elements mixed into the identity of these new mythological figures, as is becomes explicit in the case of the Disney characters, shows the profound inter-changeability of the mythological order created in cinematic repre- sentations.
These are multi-layered cultural artifacts, stratified representations which allows them to be used as commodified good, designed for profitable global sales. This ensures not only the commodification of the imag- ines, sold as dolls and children's toys, projected on screens and packaged as food prod- ucts, it also ensures the ideological control of the imagination of women.
As pointed out by Groys As expansion of the political pow- er, the ability of cinema to take and plunder any mythological structures and to use them as it sees fit is a form of occupying imaginary territories. This is a conquest of the past, in order to have it serve the purposes of the present. The mental territory of con- temporary culture is not only privatized for the benefit of the grand corporations like Disney , but it is simultaneously a carrier of ideology. This instrumentation is visible in other Disney productions. In Beauty and the Beast , a re-telling of a Beaumont tale, the Beast becomes a rich albeit secluded nobleman, owning a castle and having many object-servants, who ends up loved by the lower classes.
The orphan needs saving, and the saving of the orphan is done by accepting the social order. Again, the first animated feature film in the history of cinema, which takes on a Grimm Brothers story without any appropriation scruples, is relevant for this discus- sion. Of course, as soon as the stories used by Disney started to fall into the public domain, oth- ers were following suit. In only one year there have been several takes on the old fairy tale: The Transformation of the Mythological and the Re-appropriation 19 of Myths in Contemporary Cinema Ever since Snow White, the movie making industry has incorporated classical sto- ries into its long line of misused storytelling.
By colonizing the imaginary of the past, capi- talist appropriation is picking up bits and pieces of myths and stories, then puts them into the assembling machine of the cinema industry, thus creating new organisms, which apparently indicate a unicity and coherence. This amalgamation is not a falsifi- cation of stories, nor is it a simulacra of reality. It is the bringing together of elements which do not belong together. There is rather a shame- less destruction of myths in order to appropriate them, very close to the concept of Disneyfication proposed by Schickel.
Bryman's suggestion is that we are living in a world dominated by hybrid consumption p. Disney's the cultural forms are bringing together a variety of consumption forms, similar to those of the supermarket. Every institution is influenced by the Disneyzation, the universities and hospitals and even the Vatican start to look like Disney theme parks Bryman In this sense, the Disney myth-making is building an imaginary shopping mall, where there is everything and anything, without any natural relationship be- tween the products.
It is a multiplex of possibilities, a hybrid mythological space which can fulfill any desire, one where there is a general mishmash of representations. From transcultural movie-making to cinematic kakology The Asian mythology and culture had a long standing influence on Hollywood productions, with movies like Star Wars or The Matrix as proofs of this impact. Yet the recent changes in global cinema, characterized by a new hodgepodge of myths and symbols, show a turn towards a mishmash of representations, going beyond the simple interchanges. A relevant example is Pacific Rim, the Guillermo del Toro's film.
The movie mixes elements taken from other similar productions and mingles myths and narratives. Pacific Rim describes ro- bots taken from Transformers, with the power source from Iron Man, who fighting mon- sters from Godzilla, using heroes acting like those in Power Rangers and using narrative tropes from films like Blade Runner, Rocky, King Kong or Jurassic Park. While the main characters are pilot- ing huge robots, like those in Japanese anime films and the Power Rangers TV series, they establish neural connections similar to those of the characters of Avatar and are fighting creatures which look as if they were borrowed from Jurassic Park - or simply dinosaurs which grew up around the reactor at Fukushima nuclear plant.
The cinematic kakology operates with multi-layered stereotypes. As seen before, the first level is visual; the robots are re-appropriated images from reality mixed with stereotypical mythology. If the Hellboy series creates an almost logical series of connections between the elements, in Pacific Rim there are series of explanations completely disjoined both in time and in space. For example the argument is that the dinosaurs existed because there was a previous attempt to colo- nize Earth, failed due to The second level of melange, the narrative amalgamation is even worse.
The film mixes chaotically elements from other cinematic mythologies. This is the case with the planetary Apocalypse brought by the reptilian aliens — allowing the crocodilian mon- sters to fight mega-robots. Yet the narrative kakology takes us to another level of story- telling ramblings.
The Transformation of the Mythological and the Re-appropriation 21 of Myths in Contemporary Cinema he has written Clash of the Titans is using half-digested ideas taken out Jules Verne, pseudo-scientific movies and children's films. More so, why not use the Power Rangers type of swords all the time? Why walk on the ocean floor when they could swim since they have atomic engines? Why an alien culture having a technology so advanced uses mind- less creatures to colonize their desired planet?
The simple answer is that our modern day mythologies are conglomerates of meaningless representations reproducing endlessly the same imaginary structures. As Grant Morrison explained in a recent book, the super- heroes are so important in the contemporary world because they operate in an empty context, they exist in a world in which the gods are gone, replaced by celebrities act- ing like super-gods Morrison And in the pantheon of late modernity, or video- modernity, we have a place for all the deities, no matter in which mythological universe these supernatural beings existed.
They can come from the Greco-Roman world or the Asian steppes, these pagan gods live alongside with other incompatible ancient divine entities, like those of Christian extraction. All together, in turns, they coexist with the gods of Walhalla and the new deities from our own time. One of the most relevant Marvel narratives, The Avengers, created by Stan Lee, manifests the same excess of super-gods and super-heroes per square inch in terms of comic book publishing.
This ensemble of amalgamated heroes and gods was brought to screen by director Joss Whedon Marvel's The Avengers Whedon puts togeth- er all the superheroes and creates a jumble of action, conflicts, twists and confronta- tions between various heroes, who were dominating lately the popular cinema. However, the movie reached stag- gering sales of 1. This proves not only how profitable super heroes are, but also how popular the amal- gamation of images and narratives has become.
The story takes the viewer from the Asgard of the Eddas to to the modern day New York, where a Chitauri alien invasi- on is expected. In this chaotic melange, Iron Man bickers with Captain America, then fights with Thor fight with the green hero Hulk emerging as victorious. This is the typ- ical dyslexic mythological make-up, nothing is in place, nothing matches, nothing fits together, while everything mixes indiscriminately. Appropriation, explicit from the early modern art of Andy Warhol, to the latest productions in contemporary film industry Groys Creating almost paradoxical manifestations by changing the use of objects is a characteristic of the contemporary art.
The film parody is nothing more than a manifestation of the pastiche, as Jameson has put it , which is in turn part of the postmodern mind- frame. His movies, starting with Blazing Saddles , a parodical re-appropriation of the westerns, to Space Balls where various materials from Star Wars and other sci-fi movies is incorporated, to Robin Hood: Men in Tights , with the re-digesting of the quest and adventure genre, follow the log- ic of re-enactment.
Since the spoof does not exist without the original, it is constantly forced to make references to the initial forms. Friedberg and Selzer, in a series of movies like Epic Movie , Meet the Spartans , and more recently The Starving Games , show how instead of the parodic treatment of old materials, the amalgamation be- comes a source of degraded intertextuality.
Actually the intertextuality becomes sex- ual-textuality, since most of the times the amusement is not only breaking the lim- its of logic, but also the common sense. In the amalgamated universe of second-hand mythology there are no more distinctions, no more codes sexual or social , and the sheer destruction and re-construction of meaningless situations is the only purpose. Of course, everything is spiced up with gratuitous sexual innuendos and scatological humor. A more primitive version of this re-appropriation can be found in one of the most vulgar films of this kind: The comedy of McBride not only reaches heights of sexual innuendo, disgust- ing and vulgar references to scatology, but it also practices the most debased form of mythological amalgamation.
For example in a scene where the hero, Thadeous, kills the mythical Minotaur, he is unable to cut a horn as a souvenir, thus he decides to mutilate the monster's pe- nis and to wear it as a necklace. Or, when he wants to convince the wise wizard to help with his initiation journey, he provides the man with a thorough masturbation under the magic robe! Or, when he discovers that his squire, Fabious, is a traitor, he shows everybody that the man has a vagina, so this becomes another good oppor- tunity for nudity and, more importantly, exposing the viewers, for several minutes, and from several angles, this absurd amalgamation of identities.
Finally the best example of how appropriation work properly is the Shrek franchise - Shrek , Shrek 2 , Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After , with the prequel Puss in Boots and some extras mostly holiday specials Shrek the Halls and Scared Shrekless together with several short films Shrek in the Swamp; Thriller Night; Donkey's Caroling and others. This is one of the most prolific production in recent cinema, and is extremely relevant for the discussion about the functioning of myths in contemporary visual culture.
Mixing characters taken from Perrault, like Puss in Boots, with Rumpelstiltskin, an antagonist borrowed from the Brothers Grim, with witches and humans as equally evil participants, Shrek puts a spin on the traditional fairy tales, making amalgamation its central axis.
As noted before, Shrek is the typi- cal postmodern story, where the melange of fairy tales is based on a reversal of iden- tities — an Orcus is a god of the underworld, who is usually killed by the hero, not the other way around. Elements from several classical narratives are appropriated for the benefit of a new production, in an indistinctive mixture of com- posing parts.
Shrek, who is clearly an anti-hero, since he lives as a marginal and has no friends, is accompanied by a mule, Donkey. His universe is populated be numer- ous fairy tale characters, which most of the times have nothing to do one with anoth- er. Such is the coexistence of Pinocchio and the Big Bad Wolf, of Farquaad, the invent- ed antagonist, with Gingy the Gingerbread Man, who later fights in gladiator-like bat- tles.
In the sec- ond Shrek, she makes half donkey babies, dronkeys with flying abilities. Nothing is im- mutable in the logic of amalgamation. This is the case with Fiona, the Ossian ogre who is mixed with elements from Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, has traits from Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Breauty and Rapunzel, yet she is coexists as friends with all of them, including the transvestite Doris, the Ugly Stepsister. This mingling of identities is even more explicit in Shrek the Third, when, by the magical intervention of a absent minded Merlin, Puss in Boots and Donkey are inter-changed.
No identity is stable in this new mythology; Prince Charming and his mother, the Fairy Godmother, are ruthless social climbers; King Arthur is simply Artie, a Pendragon who does not want to be a hero; Rumpelstiltskin becomes an expression of an extortionist and of a dictator, sharing similarities with Lord Farquaad. Puss in Boots, who also appeared in one of the earliest Disney pro- duction, is later transformed in the third movie, as the fat Puss, the duelist who has become obese and lazy behaving like a decrepit Marlon Brando.
And since Shrek take place in Far Faraway, a parodical reference to Hollywood, almost all the myths and characters of the contemporary cinema productions are re-appropriated, in a to- tal transformation of identities, where the boundaries of fiction are moving beyond metafiction, into a total cross-referencing. Shrek brings together elements from al- most all the Disney productions, it gives way to parodic re-appropriations of movies like The Princess Bride and Robin Hood, it criticizes Hollywood practices and nar- rative structures, becoming the ultimate expression of the contemporary myth-illog- ical practices.
Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. London, Routledge, , first ed. Evolution of an Image, London, Penguin, , first ed. Les Letters nouvelles, Marvel superheroes and everyday faith, Chalice Press, Capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Ferrell, Literature and film as modern mythology, Westport, Praeger, Hull, Princeton, Princeton University Press, Hall and Mardia J. It looks at one particular case study of British to American cross-cultural exchange: The Lady Vanishes and Flightplan.
When equipped with the knowledge of the source text, however, we can see that most of the conflicts present in the earlier work resurface in the update. Dowling and Billy Ray, claim to have written an original script. This indicates that the similarities between the two films are not accidental but could rather serve as reference-points. Many also point to the links between Flightplan and other titles, e. Finally, a short mash-up video on youtube.
This should not be surprising as the Hollywood film industry has always sampled ideas, attempting to capitalise on the success of earlier works. The practice is as old as the film industry itself. The coming of sound, for instance, in- spired the studios to film their more popular pictures again [ What is new, howe- ver, is their visibility made possible thanks to the unprecedented access to digital film material and a vibrant online culture.
The digital era may or may not have revolutionised cinema, but it has definitely revolutionised the extent to which viewers disseminate information. Reinventing Cinema means that viewers are now often better in- formed when writing about films than professional critics. They too are able to judge, compare and tell others if they spot any hidden remaking practices as the case of The Lady Vanishes and Flightplan clearly shows. Remakes are also more visible thanks to the academic scrutiny they have enjoy- ed in recent years. There have been numerous publications dedicated to the study of Hollywood remakes of foreign films: Still, the linguistically and culturally complex issue of American remakes of British films has not received adequate attention.
Most im- portantly, such remakes turn out to be a particularly fertile and rewarding ground on which to examine British to American cross-cultural exchange, transformations wit- hin the film industry and the way they are reflected on the screen. It addresses the important role of remakes in film culture and their vital function in reflecting socie- tal and cultural transformations on the screen and beyond.
It attempts to look for rea- sons why particular texts are revisited at particular times and to what extent one can continue to talk about hidden remaking practices in the digital era. Finally, it tries to answer if Hollywood has made any attempt to address the problem of race, gender, religion or class-based preconceptions in the modern era of political correctness. The Lady Vanishes derives from at least two sources.
With Flightplan, the problem of remaking is more complex for a number of reasons. First of all, the screen- writers of Flightplan, Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray, claim to have written an origi- nal script. Furthermore, one could ar- gue against the link between The Lady Vanishes and Flightplan on the grounds of their respective genres: When Iris wakes up from a nap, she discovers that the lady has vanished without a trace. All the passengers claim that they have never seen the old woman and that Iris must have imagined her.
Despite constant rebukes, she con- tinues her search and is given a helping hand by a young man called Gilbert. When their attempts prove futile, she begins to succumb to the idea that the whole thing was just a figment of her imagination or a result of concussion caused by a flowerpot that fell on her head just before she boarded the train. This boosts her confidence in her sanity and at the same time confirms her suspicion that the passengers are lying and must hence be part of a conspiracy.
When she wakes up from a nap, she discovers that her child is missing. Worse still, when she begins her desper- ate search, she is confronted by passengers and an unremitting flight crew who claim that they have never seen the girl and that she was never even on board the plane. They persuade her that she is mentally unstable and delusional and that her hallucina- tions are caused by the recent death of her husband and child.
Despite significant alterations in the script: Additionally, the authors of the script appear to include a veiled tribute to The Lady Vanishes. Furthermore, in both films, the vehicles are delayed due to unexpected heavy snow, which creates narrative as well as visual doubling. Thus, it is no surprise that the film becomes a jovial satire on his countrymen by playing with nu- merous stereotypes of Englishness as represented here by mostly two social classes: Their contempt for local cultures, languages and sensitivities is so out of place and incongruent with their circumstances that it makes for most of the comedy in the film.
For instance, both men are so much into cricket that they pretend never to have seen the old lady fearing that they may miss the match in Manchester if Iris stops the train. They are also annoyed to find out that not all foreigners speak English and that abroad things do not run exactly the same way as they do at home. To provide a variant to representatives of well-to-do classes, Hitchcock also shows local peasants from an unnamed Balkan country who appear to spend most of their time folk dancing and playing traditional instruments.
Still, to challenge that stereo- typical image of the happiness of simple rural life, it appears that some of them are dancing on demand, forced to perform their folk rituals for the pleasure of Gilbert, who collects rural songs — a hobby worth admiring for its importance in preserving folk art for posterity, but at the same time a possible comment on class division and class relations. Iris, whose telling name reveals her detective-like function, instigates the search for the lady and is prepared to go to all measures, and even risk her own life, in the pursuit of the truth. Being the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer, she is about to marry a bankrupt aristocrat to help him balance the books and enable her father to climb the social ladder.
At the end, she chooses to marry Gilbert, thus refusing to be a pawn in this traditional English transaction. Her stubbornness, courage, persistence as well as her re- fusal to be subjugated to the male version of the story according to which her hyste- ria is unfounded and typically feminine contradict the conventional representation of gender and could be seen as indicative of changes taking place in pre-war Britain.
The old lady herself is another playful joke based on stereotypes. Although for most of the film we presume her to be an innocent sweet governess who always trav- els with her own favourite tea as an obvious sign of English peculiarities, pickiness and fondness of the beverage, at the end we discover that she is in fact an agent un- der cover. Thus, this apparently benign sweet old granny who carries an important message about a secret pact between two European countries that could shape the course of history is a James Bond in a skirt — or rather a comedic prototype for anoth- er Englishwoman defying gender stereotypes, M, played by Judi Dench in the James Bond franchise from When looking at other nationalities in the film, it soon becomes obvious that The Lady Vanishes is a clever political allegory.
There is an evil neurosurgeon, Dr Hartz of Prague, who speaks with a German accent and is the mastermind behind the plot, and a couple of Italians, a magician and a baroness married to the Minister of Propaganda — both implicated in the kidnapping. Their complete refusal to join in the search for Miss Froy or to even admit that they have actually seen her has been interpreted as a comment on the Chamberlain Era with Britain turning a blind eye to the progressively dangerous political situation in Europe. Still, although critical of the English at first, towards the end of the film Hitchcock has almost all of them, including Charters and Caldigott, reunite in the fight with the oppressors.
The English opposition is greatly outnumbered and significantly consists of three men and three women. At first glance it appears that the issues of class, nationality and gender seem to play a minor role in Flightplan whose primary concern appears to be entertainment. Contrary to expectations, when equipped with the knowledge of the earlier work, we can see that most of the conflicts resurface in the update although for obvious reasons they take on a new form and meaning. First of all, whereas the issue of class divisions does not apply in the American re- make, there are nevertheless clearly-marked divisions based on financial status.
In Flightplan, the lack of cooperation can be read as a bleak comment on society in the new millen- nium where collective responsibility and a sense of community have been replaced by self-interest and individualism. It shows how the representation of women has changed in seventy years and, most importantly, its current status quo in Hollywood.
The film is primarily a Jodie Foster star persona vehicle. It is a continuation of her pre- vious roles initiated by her ground-breaking portrayal of FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs , the importance of which for feminists and lesbian groups cannot be underestimated.
Since then, playing roles of strong though often victimised women in a male-dominated world, Foster has established herself as a powerful femi- nist icon on screen and an important player in the Hollywood industry: In Flightplan, in contrast to her English lady-like prototype, Kyle does not need a male companion to back her up.
Her husband is dead and the pater- nal figures of authority on board — the captain and the Air Martial — are shown as ei- ther weak or corrupt. Kyle is a propulsion engineer in her 40s with visible wrinkles and no make-up on to hide them from view, presenting what until recently was a very unlikely image of the main lead in an action thriller. The gender ambiguous name, Kyle, was retained. The final product seems an uneasy mix of two stereotypes that do not sit comfortably with each other.
On the one hand, we have Kyle with her motherly concern, warmth, gentleness, confusion, and vulnerability associated with the genre of melodrama. On the other hand, we have a bullet-dodging character whose cunning, physical strength and acrobatics are larger than life and typically associat- ed with the over-the-top and self-reflexive style of Hollywood action flicks with their formulaic one-liners, low-angle shots and slow-motion explosions. When it transpires that they have become unwilling participants in an international military conflict that they do not quite understand, they wish to escape the alien and unfriendly lands and return home to the safety represented in the penultimate sequence and the familiar sight of Victoria station.
Although one of them reacts very passively, the other protests their innocence and is clearly enraged by her accusations. Kyle, howev- er, insists that he be searched and interrogated. Then I guess you have to find a few other Arabs to harass? On the one hand, they could be accused of typical Hollywood racial profiling and po- litical incorrectness as the Hollywood film industry has repeatedly cast Arabs in ste- reotypical roles of either terrorists or sex maniacs, as Jack Shaheen observes in his book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People As the title of his recent publica- tion indicates, Guilty: Passengers regard non-white ethnic minorities on board with prejudice, suspicion and fear.
According to Butler, the media and government authorise and increase racial hysteria, encouraging individuals to be on a constant look-out for alien elements without specifying what they are and how one could pro- tect oneself from them. When Kyle rescues her daughter from the burning plane, the only passenger to approach her is the Arab she previously mistreat- ed. He picks up her bag, hands it over to her and they make eye contact. Kyle smiles at him gently. This could be read as a gesture of reconciliation, an expression of sym- pathy and a mutual recognition of what it is like to be misunderstood and unjustly abused.
Flightplan, whose story pretends to be about a terrorist attack with a couple of Arabs as all too obvious contenders for the terrorists eventually features a benevolent look- ing, white, middle-class air martial as the main villain of the piece. Instead of protect- ing the plane and its passengers against harm, he is in fact exploiting their fear and manipulates the feeling of panic on board to his own advantage.
His reasons, howev- er, do not seem to be political. They are entirely motivated by greed. Considering the proliferation of other works that critically engaged with the govern- mental policies of the time in a more or less obvious fashion, for instance, Crash , The Deal and Good Night, and Good Luck , it is possible to see Flightplan in a larger context as another such voice.
Thus, remakes not only show the potential of earlier works to generate new versions but also, by introducing changes, become a comment on societal and cultural transformations. They are part of a vibrant online culture whose collective intelligence and competence are a sign of modern times. In the case of Flightplan, the producers want to have their cake and eat it. Not having obtained the rights to the earlier film, they brand their product an original work. Yet, by inclu- ding all too obvious references to The Lady Vanishes, they have ensured that Flightplan enters a more interesting critical discourse by profiting from its remake-of-the-classic status with critics and audiences in the know relishing in this feminist and political Hitchcock re-write.
Looking at user comments on imdb. On the one hand, we have viewers entertained by this action-pa- cked movie or enraged by its convoluted plot; on the other hand, we have those who see it as a rewarding update of a known classic and those for whom it is little more than a poor Hitchcock imitation. Publication Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, The Powers of Mourning and Violence.
London and New York: Make It Again, Sam: A Survey of Movie Remakes. Actresses in s British Cinema. Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson. A Theory of Adaptation. New York and London: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press, The Making of Flightplan. Touchstone Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Olive Branch Press, Movies in the Age of Media Convergence. Rutgers University Press, Dogville de Lars von Trier.
Il importe de remarquer que: La croissance du mythe est donc continue, par opposition avec sa structure qui reste discontinue. Grace et Tom vont-ils se marier et avoir beaucoup d'enfants? Ils se posent sans doute une autre question: Grace se venge alors des villageois en les exterminant. Hospitality is both proposed and imposed by normative and prescriptive dis- courses that seek to be obeyed as laws of hospitality: Jason - Je sais pourquoi tu ne me prends plus jamais sur tes genoux.
Grace — Oh, allons. The embodied Eye takes us to the disembodied Cinema-Eye, the machinery that copies and stores the images in motion. In the present essay, I analyze the aesthetic, cultural and technological dimensions of the dialectical move from perception to recording, from vision to visuality, from the organic to the technologic function represented by the transformation of the Eye into the Cinema-Eye.
I conclude that within the communication society, the camera brings forth a new identity for the body, thus becoming an indispensable attachment, a sort of safe backup for the images that are responsible for our state of mind and emotions. Cinema-Eye, camera, images in motion, cinema, visual perception, light. The act of looking le regard is what defines the intentionality and the purpose of sight, of vision Sight becomes possible by means of optical, chemical and sen- sory phenomena. The look into the set up and the functioning of the visual organ starts with a number of theories and experiments that link the physical traits of the light to the anatomy of the eye.
The data produced as a result of said experiments is later on integrated to the study of the relationship between visual stimulus and con- sequent behaviour, a study that would reveal information otherwise unperceivable about the specifics of the visual process. Moreover, the integration of this kind of data to research on communication has helped prove such hypothesis. The analytical theory of sight focuses on studying the nature of visual stimuli and on the ways light will enhance their functions. Visual perception forms as a result of the input of electromagnetic waves of a certain spectre to the decoding system de- scribed above for example, the intensity of the waves will facilitate the perception of colour.
In order for the information to actually turn into a projection on the retina, it needs the support of other sources, so that to allow a precise positioning in space of all objects. Thus, the combining processes and the read- ing algorithms rely on a series of external associated variables, such as the memory, the eye movements, previous experience, prejudice and expectations. Even though, physically speaking, the stimuli are situated with- in a large area, the eye, by means of its biological characteristics, is able to discern dif- ferent intensities and amplitudes of the wave lengths that define said stimuli the per- ception of the intensity of light or the perception of colours.
The eye as a dark room eye, due to the concave form of the retina, where the im- age of the object will form. All devices that preserve and render images in motion rely on this principle of copying the reality into a similar rep- resentation to the one our memory engraves on our consciousness by means of visu- al mechanisms.
The technical progress of today, the universal democratization of all devices used to take pictures are the result of an on-going process to update and op- timize of the search to capture, preserve and reproduce visual information the im- mortalization of the moment , the attempt to recompose movement creating the illu- sion of real movement and the transmission and receiving of audio-visual informa- tion from a distance.
This search has begun during ancient years and had as starting point an austere dark room. The dark room, mechanically copying the structure of the Eye the sense organ, translating visual signs and perceptions against our consciousness was the first essential step towards explaining the way the human being relates to the surrounding universe. At the beginning, the image the mechanical Eye managed to reproduce was ephemeral — it was only possible inside the darkness of the room and would immedi- ately go away, similar to the image reflected against mirrors.
History documents a long series of small contributions to the microscopical fight of photo-chemical processes or in the field of optical and physical phenomena, until a real breakthrough is achieved, the redoubt of the ephemeral overthrown and the in- stant immortalized. On the first photography reality was very simply rendered: The Magical Lantern — the first pro- jector of static images, images initially drawn on Image 2.
The lantern was just a simple curiosity but, for the first time, it created the illusion of real movement by moving a series of fixed images. A series of scientists, engineers, physicists, psychologists, physicians or chemists will contribute to the optimization of the prototype and, in such, to the transforma- tion of the magical lantern a toy, by all accounts into a device where people could see other people or themselves as real as they could in a mirror, in motion and overthrow- ing the complex of the ephemeral. Thus, the cinema came into being — a rudimentary device that managed to miraculously reproduce the spectacle of life; a live mirror, a real one, in a performance both multipliable and repeatable of the surrounding world.
At the beginning of the 20th century, this particular stage of getting to immortalize the instant will overlap with the discovery of the electrical current and with the pos- sibility of broadcasting sound waves at a distance. The radio broadcast comes into be- ing and, later, some of the first innovations in television — in the form of prototype sys- tems that were considered to be visual rep- licas of the radio broadcast. Using the same protocol used by the radio broadcast , peo- ple try to broadcast at a distance not only the sound waves but also images.
The first Television Set was a complicated machin- ery that transformed images into dots pix- els ; the dots, as essential components of the image, were thus turned into an easi- ly broadcasted content, by means of a very sinuous process of decomposing and re- Image 3. The Baird television set prototype composing of the whole. Wunenburger The shock of being confronted with the repeatable mirror image was extended from each individual to a mass scale with the coming into being of filmed mirror images.
The collective consciousness was beginning to perceive something never experienced before: Improvements in the quality of the broadcast followed, larger screens, signals broad- casted at greater distances and, most significantly, the unification of all telecommuni- cation systems electronics, informational techniques and audio-visual media into the technical branch. This assumption could be sustained by the resemblance between the camera and the eye. For instance, the camera lens is made up of a system of lenses and optical media same as the human eye.
The eye and the lens are one and the same thing; they both have a similar struc- Image 4. The analogy between ture and similar functionalities. The lens is, in fact, the Eye and the Camera an artificial eye. Within the mechanical eye of the filming camera, the yellow spot is substitut- ed by the same type of machinery that turns optical information into electromagnet- ic impulses. Similar to this, the image turned into electromagnetic impulses, will travel bio-physi- cal networks, from the sensory unit to the stocking and processing unit, be it a human eye or the machinery of a camera.
The reality of the image comes from the equivalency between things and their representation within the brain that turns signals into signs. When Dziga Vertov considered to be the forefather of the documenta- ry as an objective rendering of reality met with the camera, he launched the Kinoglaz manifesto, where Image 5.
I am the Cinema-Eye. I take the strongest and most skilful hands of one individual; the best fitted legs from another one; a third individual is going to provide me with the most beautiful and most expressive face; with the help of editing I am able to create a new person, a perfect individ- ual. I am the Cinema-Eye, I am the mechanical eye.
Now and forever, I can free myself of the human immobility and set myself in a continuous motion, get close to the objects around, go further away, crawl under them or climb them. Within the communication society the camera becomes an indispensable attachment, a safe backup for all the images that are responsible for our state of mind and emotions. Thus, the mechanical eye opens new estheti- cal horizons, by pushing towards the extreme the limitations of the visual field the fish eye lens.
In accordance to make and model, the storing of the audio-visual information is done on a certain kind of support. With the first cameras, this was the celluloid film impregnated with photo-sensitive emulsion; as science evolved, there appeared the possibility to store the information on a magnetic board the video camera ; nowadays, with the digital video cameras, the information is stored on digital systems disks, memory units.