Whether we consider the digitally created and manipulated faces of Hollywood cinema or the social media filters, face apps, and surveillance software of everyday life, reading face language has become the seemingly endless task of humans and machines alike.Recent facial controversies – from politicians in blackface to "deep fakes," casting debates, and facial data collection-- have made clear the need for a broader understanding of the face on screen and its varied techniques and effects. This book will consider the screen face from a variety of perspectives, across time periods and media, bringing together essays on topics ranging from early cinema to contemporary digital media – from photogénie to facial recognition, celebrity culture to digital creatures. Itexplores how screen culture builds on and complicates our urge to search the face for answers to our most intractable questions.
Author(s): Alice Maurice
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 351
City: Edinburgh
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Facing Forward, Facing Back
PART I THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: FEATURES, CODES, PRACTICES
1. The Generic Face: Galton, Muybridge and the Photographic Proof of Race
2. Mad Faces: Coding Features and Expressions of Female Madness in Physiognomy Texts, Asylum Photographs and Early Cinema
3. Elastics of the Film Mouth
4. The Problem of Recognition: Celebrity Faces, Photogénie and Facial Recognition Technologies
5. Emptied Faces: In Search of an Algorithmic Punctum
PART II REFRAMING THE CLOSE-UP
6. ‘A Landscape of Faces’: The Farewell and Ecologies of the Face in Independent Asian-American Film
7. The New Transactional Face: Rethinking Post-cinematic Aesthetics through The Neon Demon
8. Black Faces Matter: Close-ups in Selma , Fruitvale Station and Moonlight
9. ‘Sheer Epidermis’: ‘Face Politics’ and the Films of Lynne Ramsay
10. Facing Life in the Open: The (Post)humanist Worldmaking of My Octopus Teacher
11. Bête Noir(e) : Animality, Genre and the Face in Border
12. Hejab as Frame in Ten and Beyond
PART III MAKING FACES: CELEBRITY, PERFORMANCE, SELF
13. The Faces of Ginger: Beauty Makeup, Facial Acting and Hollywood Stardom
14. At Face Value: Consuming the Star Image
15. The Face is the Lie that Tells the Truth: Renée Zellweger and the Mediated Politics of Age, Self and Celebrity
16. Mediating the Human in Facial Performance Capture
17. Becoming a Woman: The Many Faces of Candice Breitz
18. The Face as Technology
19. From Holy Grail to Deepfake: The Evolving Digital Face on Screen
References
Index
