Collecting in Live-Action Film, Animation, and Digital Games
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IMMATERIAL MATERIALITY: COLLECTING IN LIVE-ACTION FILM, ANIMATION, AND DIGITAL GAMES by Kara Lynn Andersen BA, University of California at Santa Cruz, 1996 MA, Northeastern University, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Kara Lynn Andersen It was defended on October 26, 2009 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, English Department Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor, English Department Randall Halle, Klaus W. Jonas Professor, German Department Dissertation Advisor: Lucy Fischer, Distinguished Professor, English Department ii Copyright © by Kara Lynn Andersen 2009 iii IMMATERIAL MATERIALITY: COLLECTING IN LIVE-ACTION FILM, ANIMATION, AND DIGITAL GAMES Kara Lynn Andersen, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 This dissertation analyzes depictions of collecting and collectors in visual media, arguing that cultural conceptions which have long been reinforced by live-action film and animation are now being challenged by digital video games. The older notion of collectors as people dissociated from present-day society and unhealthily obsessed with either the past or the minutiae of inanimate objects are giving way to a new conception of the collector as an active manipulator of information in the present moment. The dissertation argues that this shift is partly influenced by the ontology of each media form. It focuses primarily on the rise of digital technology from the mid-1980s to the present, 1985 being the year the Nintendo Entertainment System was first introduced in the United States, reviving the flagging video game industry and posing a threat to the dominance of the cinema in visual entertainment media. Beginning with an overview of collecting in the Western hemisphere, it argues that popular stereotypes of collecting are out of step with the actuality of the practice. Analysis of the ontology of film links the tendency to portray the figure of the collector as a socially inept male, while the museum is a source of monsters and mystery. The animated film aligns itself with change and transformation and iv thus rejects the stasis implied by traditional notions of collection. The interactive nature of digital games embraces colleting as a game activity, making the player a collector of digital objects, and the game collection a positive indicator of progress in the game. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 1 2.0 SINISTER SOUVENEIRS AND THE “TEARS OF THINGS”: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC COLLECTING IN THE WESTERN WORLD......................................................... 9 2.1 THE COLLECTOR STEREOTYPE ...................................................................... 13 2.2 PUBLIC MUSEUM COLLECTING....................................................................... 22 2.3 MATERIAL VERSUS IMMATERIAL COLLECTING...................................... 31 2.4 DIGITAL COLLECTIONS AND DATABASES................................................... 36 3.0 “IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!” COLLECTING IN LIVE-ACTION FILM.......... 46 3.1 FILM AS PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE ................................................................... 48 3.2 THE NINTH GATE: COLLECTING AS A DEADLY PASSION........................ 56 3.3 EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED: HISTORY, MEMORY, AND ECCENTRICITY............................................................................................................... 62 3.4 INDIANA JONES: “OBTAINER OF RARE ANTIQUITIES” ........................... 66 3.5 HIGH FIDELITY: THE FANBOY COLLECTOR................................................ 77 3.6 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BREATHING LIFE INTO THE MUSEUM ......... 82 3.7 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................... 88 4.0 “TOYS DON’T LAST FOREVER”: COLLECTING IN ANIMATED FILMS......... 90 4.1 DEFINING ANIMATION........................................................................................ 93 4.2 COLLECTORS’ ITEMS: ANIMATION AS OBJECT ...................................... 103 4.3 POOR SUBSTITUTES FOR THE REAL THING: THE LITTLE MERMAID 115 4.4 LOVING THINGS TO DEATH: TOY STORY 2.................................................. 122 4.5 THE DETRITUS OF HUMANKIND: WALL-E .................................................. 132 4.6 FUN IN THE MUSEUM: CURIOUS GEORGE................................................... 139 4.7 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................ 144 vi 5.0 JEWELED EGGS AND MARIO TROPHIES: COLLECTING IN DIGITAL GAMES...................................................................................................................................... 146 5.1 WHAT IS A DIGITAL GAME?............................................................................ 148 5.2 “REAL” OBJECTS VS. DIGITAL OBJECTS .................................................... 152 5.3 A HISTORY OF DIGITAL GAMING.................................................................. 162 5.4 THE JAPANESE CONNECTION ........................................................................ 165 5.5 VIOLENCE VERSUS ACQUISITION: YOU ARE THE COLLECTOR........ 171 5.6 WHAT ARE DIGITAL COLLECTIONS WORTH?: PIKMIN 2...................... 182 5.7 DIGITAL MUSEUMS: ANIMAL CROSSING AND KINGDOM OF LOATHING 184 5.8 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................ 196 6.0 AFTERWORD ................................................................................................................. 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 201 vii PREFACE This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of many people. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Lucy Fischer, Marcia Landy, Adam Lowenstein, Keiko McDonald, and Randall Halle, for their support and mentorship. All of them were generous with their time and provided insightful and challenging comments on my work. Additionally, in the early stages of the project they encouraged me to pursue an idea I thought was impossible at the time, and in doing so they ensured that the final project was uniquely my own. Additionally, I must acknowledge the contributions of my professors at Northeastern University for shaping my early interest in film studies: Inez Hedges, Kathy Howlett, and Michael Ryan. Regrettably, two people were not present to see me complete this dissertation even though they were both instrumental to my intellectual career. I would therefore like to dedicate this dissertation to Keiko I. McDonald and Kathy M. Howlett. They are both missed. Numerous colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere provided a fruitful intellectual environment, and to them also I owe a debt of gratitude. For reading drafts and putting up with my early struggles, I would like to thank the members of my dissertation reading group: Amy Borden, Christine Feldman, Brenda Glascott, Amanda Ann Klein, Tara Lockhart, and Kirsten Strayer. For their participation in the very small, but immensely productive, summer reading group on digital media, I would like to thank Tanine Allison and Ryan Pierson. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the support of Mark Lynn Anderson, Christine Baker, David Bartholomae, Anustup Basu, Manisha Basu, Jamie Bono, Troy Boone, Jane Feuer, Nancy viii Glazener, Devan Goldstein, Namiko Kunimoto, Andrew McNair, Daniel Morgan, Dana Och, Ali Patterson, Evelyn Rawski, and John Trenz. For refusing to be held back by silly trifles such as existence, and, more importantly, teaching me to think on my feet and across disciplines I might otherwise have feared to cross, I would like to thank the members of a peculiarly anonymous online theoretical discussion group: Michelle Brown Boucher, Jane Dryden, Jim Donahue, Alexandra Gerber, Max Goldman, Alex Jenkins, Eric Johnson, Rebecca Kennedy, Melissa Lenos, Jim Luceno, Jonathan Newman, Nell Quest, Phil Sandifer, Valéria Souza, Alana Vincent, and Erica Owens Yeager. My family also provided inestimable support during the writing process, in the form of unquestioning moral support, an occasional place to hide out and sleep off the end of an intense semester, and friendly voices that always answered the phone when I called. I have been told I should thank my pets as well, but in truth they were not very helpful. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION In Death 24x a Second, Laura Mulvey argues that “While technology never simply determines, it cannot but affect the context in which ideas are formed” (Mulvey 9), and this is the founding premise of Immaterial Materiality: Collecting in Live-Action Film, Animation, and Digital Games as well. Mulvey’s book, like many others, addresses the effect of digital technology on he cinema. Even before the crisis of the digital image arose, Siegfried Kracauer was similarly concerned with the nature of the photographic medium in his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. His study, as mine, “rests upon the assumption that each medium has a specific nature which invites certain kinds of communications while obstructing others” (Kracauer 3). That is to say, various media are most aesthetically pleasing when