This book examines 3D cinema across the early 1950s, the early 1980s, and from 2009 to 2014, providing for the first time not only a connection between 3D cinema and historical trauma but also a consideration of 3D aesthetics from a cultural perspective. The main argument of the book is that 3D cinema possesses a privileged potential to engage with trauma. Exploring questions of representation, embodiment and temporality in 3-D cinema, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, offering a compelling analysis to a combination of box office favorites and more obscure films, ranging across genres such as horror, erotica, fantasy, science fiction, and documentaries. Weaving theoretical discussions and film analysis this book renders complex theoretical frameworks such as Deleuze and trauma theory accessible.
Author(s): Dor Fadlon
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 286
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Seeing in 3-D: A Brief Introduction
Trauma Theory Within and Without Cinema
3-D cinema and Traumatic History
Outline
Part I: History and Trauma in 3-D Cinema of the Fifties
Chapter 2: They Won’t Believe It Back Home: 3-D Cinema, Trauma, and Representation
The Incredible but Real Paradox
Communicability, Perspective-Sharing, and Witnessing
The Stereoscopic Poetics of Intrusion and Constriction
Intrusion, Constriction, and Indexicality in The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Intrusion and Indexicality in It Came from Outer Space
Containing Trauma in House of Wax
Chapter 3: Films That Ache, Films That Injure: 3-D Cinema and the Body
Films That Ache
Victimized Spectatorship
Audience Control, Sensibility, and Choice
Negative Parallax Space and Audience Stasis
Narrating Impotence
Chapter 4: Any-Space-Whatever and Radioactive Fossils: 3-D Cinema Meets Deleuze
The Movement-Image Crisis and 3-D Cinema of the Fifties
Radioactive Fossils and 3-D Temporalities
Part II: Digital 3-D Cinema and September 11
Chapter 5: Which Story to Believe? Mediating Trauma in Digital 3-D Cinema
Mediating Trauma in the Stereoscopic Poetics of Life of Pi
Trauma, Knowledge, and Bearing Witness in Life of Pi
Visualizing a Tiger in 3-D: The Negative Parallax and Trauma
Chapter 6: Becoming Bodies and Empowering Kinaesthesia
Empowering Kinaesthesia and the Becoming Body
Bodies in Avatar
Jake’s Human-Navi-Direhorse Body
The Becoming Body as a Mediator of Intimacy and Inclusion
Dangerous Reaching Out and Empowering Kinaesthesia in Life of Pi
Chapter 7: From Bodies to Worlding
Worlding in Gravity
Movement and Space in Life of Pi
Chapter 8: Deleuze and the Traumatic Temporalities of Digital 3-D Cinema
Letting Go Through Reconnecting
Letting Go of a Traumatic Past, Reaching for the Future?
Stereoscopy, Present-ness, and Punctum
The Temporalities of Trauma and D3-D Cinema
The Positive Parallax Space and The Traumatic Event
Intrusion and the Temporality of the Z Axis
Folding the Z Axis: The Cyclic Temporality of Trauma
Severing the Z Axis: A Temporal Collapse
Part III: Ongoing Fascinations
1.1 3-D Penetrations
Chapter 9: Documentary and 3-D Cinema: Preserving Absence
Aura and Fetish in Early Stereoscopy: Thru the Trees (1922)
New Dimensions (1940) and Thrills for You (1940)
Digital 3-D Documentaries: 3-D and the Limits of Representation
Fetish, Belief, and Disavowal
Fetish and Aura in Cave of Forgotten Dreams
The 3-D Performance of Aura in Pina
Aura and the Presence of Absence in One More Time with Feeling
Chapter 10: 3-D Sex
The Bellboy and the Play Girls
The Stewardesses
Love
Chapter 11: 3-D Horror Cinema of the Eighties
Problematizing 3-D as a Vehicle to Attack the Audience
3-D Gore from the Franchise Perspective
1980s 3-D Horror and Vietnam
Chapter 12: Conclusion
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
