A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details VIRTUAL CORPOREALITY: NARRATIVE AND SPECTACLE IN HOLLYWOOD VR CINEMA Emma Jane Withers PhD Film Studies University of Sussex April 2016 ii University of Sussex Emma Jane Withers PhD Film Studies Virtual Corporeality: Narrative and Spectacle in Hollywood VR Cinema Summary This thesis is an inquiry into the emergence, development and eventual transmutation of the ‗virtual reality‘ (VR) subgenre. I critically intervene in discourse on cinema, digital media, phenomenology and science fiction (SF) to explore how these films refract and enact Hollywood cinema‘s engagement with digital media and imaging technologies. Given that these films are about bodily immersive mediated experiences, I argue, their reflexive displays of special effects technologies are far from anti- or contra-narrative, as certain analyses imply. My emphasis on the imbrication of narrative and spectacle motivates a critical questioning of further, often interrelated and mutually sustaining dichotomies between body and mind, cognition and affect, cinema and digital media, real and virtual, reflection and immersion. Via close textual analysis with a phenomenological leaning, I explore how these films variously disrupt such binaries. As both old and new media produce and address differently mediated publics, they adopt, adapt and assimilate the narrative- aesthetic modalities of other (digital) media, negotiating their impacts upon our phenomenological relations to the world and to cinema. Through reflexive allusions to their increasingly mediated extradiegetic contexts, they function to uphold cinema‘s ability both to present innovative technological spectacle and to represent contemporary experiential realities. I explore how earlier VR films Tron and The Lawnmower Man aesthetically and conceptually ‗map‘ VR, and how Strange Days and The Matrix ambivalently explore the implications of intensified and widespread virtual experience in radically different ways. I characterise Avatar and Source Code as ‗Post-VR‘ cinema, in which formerly upheld dichotomies – particularly between ‗real‘ and ‗virtual‘ – prove untenably anachronistic. I ultimately maintain the value of an approach to popular cinema which apprehends genre, context and convergence, while advocating sustained and detailed close analysis as a means of grasping cinema‘s narrative-aesthetic functions in the digital age. iii I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree. Signature: iv Acknowledgments I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Dolores Tierney and Caroline Bassett, for their invaluable knowledge and support throughout this project. I am also grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without whom this project would not have been realised. I am deeply thankful to my family and friends, who have buoyed and inspired me more than they know. Special thanks to Simon, for years of advice, encouragement and proofreading. Heartfelt thanks must also be extended to my colleagues and friends at the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton. To my fellow doctoral researchers in MFM, whose diverse approaches to media and film have fascinated and challenged me in equal measure – I wish you all the best. Lastly, deepest thanks to Yannis, whose limitless tolerance and support have seen me through. v Contents Summary i Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 What is Virtual Reality (and VR cinema)? 4 Approaches to SF 6 Phenomenology and Cinema 7 Cinema: Ontology and Identity 12 Digital Cinema and (Other) Media 18 (Digital) Spectacle and (SF) Cinema 20 (Trans)Media Narratives 25 From VR to Post-VR 26 I. Rethinking the „Digital‟ in Tron: Spectacular Narrative and Transmedia Dialogue 29 Narrative ‗versus‘ Spectacle 31 Tron and Video Gaming 34 Tron and Pre-classical Cinemas 42 The Ontology of the Image 47 Mapping Virtual Space 50 Conclusion 54 II. “More PR than VR”? The Lawnmower Man as Spectacular SF 57 The Lawnmower Man and the Emergence of VR 59 VPL, Lanier and The Lawnmower Man 62 West Coast VR and the Dangers of Disembodiment 64 Cognitive Estrangement and the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic 69 ‗Real Possibility‘ and the Diegetic Prototype 71 Utopia, Dystopia and the Politics of Cognitive Estrangement 75 The Lawnmower Man and Utopia 77 Cognitive Estrangement and the Politics of Taste 81 Cognitive Estrangement and the Ontology of the Image 82 Conclusion 87 III. Binary, Coded: On the Absence of the Digital in Strange Days 89 Embodiment, Affect and Emotion 92 vi Immediacy, Identity Politics and the (Multimedia) ‗Gaze‘ 97 The Limits of ‗Interactivity‘ 102 ‗Reality‘ Effects 104 Memory, Time and ‗Liveness‘ 109 Conclusion 112 IV. On Three Dualities within The Matrix 115 Spectacle and Narrative 119 Body and Mind 122 Cinema and the ‗Digital‘ 128 Conclusion 135 V. Avatar: Special Effects and the Hollywood „Postdigital‟ 138 Avatar as Postdigital Cinema 139 3D 141 3D and Vision 148 Motion Capture 153 Mocap and the Avatar 157 Digital Imaging and Diegetic Technologies 162 Conclusion 166 VI. “Am I on the Right Track”? Source Code as a Contemporary Complex Narrative 168 Approaches to Complex Narrative Cinema 172 Narrative, Aesthetics and Phenomenology 175 The Train 176 The Capsule 181 Source Code as Complex Narrative 185 Conclusion 194 Conclusion 197 Reference List 205 Selected Filmography 219 DVD Editions 221 1 Introduction Since the late 1970s when the first CG images appeared in film and television, there have been colossal shifts in the ways in which popular cinema has been produced, distributed and consumed. Non-linear digital editing formats have permitted unprecedented control over the image. Digital audio technologies such as THX and Dolby Digital have allowed filmmakers to produce affective soundscapes to match their spectacular visual effects. More recently, the 2011 push towards exclusively digital shooting and the standardisation of digital projection means that, in the present situation, ‗no aspect of movie production, distribution or reception today is outside the use of digital technologies.‘1 The same period has seen diverse digital developments beyond the cinematic context, including the shift from arcade to console gaming and the introduction of 3D video games, the rise of home computing and the domestic proliferation of the internet. In what follows, I trace the emergence, development and eventual reinvention of the virtual reality (VR) subgenre in relation to these shifts. Beginning with Tron in 1982, I explore how such films both substantiate and allegorically explore digital technologies‘ ground-breaking impacts on cinema production, distribution and consumption, on spectatorship and contemporary media culture. I categorise the VR subgenre as films which (re)present bodily immersive digital environments which are distinct from ordinary ‗reality‘ within the diegesis.2 I analyse Tron (Lisberger, 1982), The Lawnmower Man (Leonard, 1992), Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995), and The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski, 1999), as well as two more recent examples which I refer to as ‗Post-VR films‘ – Avatar (Cameron, 2009), and Source Code (Jones, 2011). Of course, the main films discussed do not exhaust all representations of VR (or Post-VR) in popular cinema3 – although I consider my selected sample broadly and sufficiently representative of how Hollywood VR films refract their 1 J. Sperb, Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 1. 2 Diverse other SF films have explored technological re-embodiment and ‗virtual‘ experience, for instance Blade Runner (Scott, 1982), Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990), Hackers (Softley, 1995) Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002) and Surrogates (Mostow, 2009). These, however, do not represent such experiences as being both full- bodily immersive and taking place within environments that are diegetically digitally generated. 3 Brainstorm (Trumbull, 1984), Virtuosity (Leonard, 1995), The Thirteenth Floor (Rusnak, 1999), eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999) and The Matrix sequels (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2003) are all premised upon diegetic VRs. Disclosure (Levinson, 1994) and Vanilla Sky (Crowe, 2001) both employ VR more austerely – the former confines it to a single, ancillary scene, while the latter employs the concept in a plot twist at the film‘s end. Another example which would qualify as Post-VR is Gamer (Neveldine & Taylor, 2009), in which nanotechnology enables paying users to be re-embodied into human avatars within materially real, yet strictly delimited ludic spaces. 2 wider techno-cultural contexts, narrating the inception of digital technologies in the increasingly indivisible triad of film, media culture and everyday life. Fundamentally, what follows is a study about cinema in the digital age. More specifically, it is a study about how the VR (and Post-VR) subgenres