1st Edition

Digital Space and Embodiment in Contemporary Cinema Screening Composite Spaces

By Jennifer Kirby Copyright 2022
    200 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Digital Space and Embodiment in Contemporary Cinema examines how contemporary cinema has represented and engaged with the experience of simultaneously inhabiting digital and material spaces (i.e. "composite spaces") in the context of the growing ubiquitousness of digital media and culture.  

     

    Bringing together a range of key cinematic texts, the book examines how these films represent "composite space" by depicting—often subtly and without explicit reference to technology—what it feels like to live in a world of ubiquitous digital media. The book explores composite spaces through the striking use of elements like colour, symbolic graphics, and music and covers topics like: music as mediator between levels of experience/perception in visionary films such as Sucker Punch (2011) and Spring Breakers (2012); digital colour as an interface in films including Under the Skin (2013); the integration of digital graphical elements drawn from game spaces into material spaces in films such as Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010) and Nerve (2016); and films that take place on a computer screen including 2020’s widely discussed, Zoom-produced pandemic horror film Host. Through the close analysis of these films, the book offers fresh perspectives on conceptual issues of embodiment, digital agency, and subjectivity.

     

    This book is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars in the fields of film studies, digital aesthetics and film theory, digital culture, and digital media. 

    Introduction: Remediating Composite Spaces  1. Composite Cities and Urban Space  2. Composite Subjectivity and Aural Space  3. Composite Colour and Networked Space  4. Composite Graphics and Game Space  5. Composite Screens and Identity Spaces  6. Composite Entities and Gendered Space  7. Conclusion: Inhabiting Composite Spaces

    Biography

    Jennifer Kirby received her PhD in Media, Film and Television from The University of Auckland in 2018 and currently works in EdTech. Her research interests include digital and screen spaces, gender, and genre.