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Screen Studies Quarterly May 2020 Vol 1.1 Screen Studies Program Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema Brooklyn College, City University of New York Property of FGSC. For FGSC use only. Use outside of the school requires permission of the authors. Table of Contents A Note from the Editors 2 On On Cinema: Medium-Nihilism and How Postdigital Humor Led to Political Accelerationism 3 Listening to the Metamorphosis of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 12 “Do you like hurting people?”: Understanding Film Violence 19 From Documentary Realism to Vlogging: The evolution of realism in the YouTube video 27 Breeding Toxicity to Protect Safe Spaces: Exploring the Phenomenon Within the Steven Universe Fandom 35 Bibliography 46 Screen Studies Quarterly 1 A Note from the Editors The idea for the Screen Studies Quarterly was introduced early on into the 2019-2020 academic year at Feirstein. It had become apparent that Screen Studies, as a track, was a small and insular part of the school; where other tracks often had to work together on projects, culminating in something that could proudly be shared with the student body, Screen Studies had nothing of the sort. The initial goals for the quarterly were this: increase our presence within the school and strengthen our community with the pride that comes from having a work published and accessible. This is the first edition of the Screen Studies Quarterly, and with that our initial goals will be accomplished. So, then what next? The track has its thesis, but smaller assignments and extracurricular work go into the æther, to disappear until a source needs to be re-quoted in a new context—cut-and-pasted into the next work in the next class. What the quarterly allows for is peer review, engagement, and investment. Through the peer review process, students create stronger, clearer, and more urgent works. Through being published, accessible to everyone, students find themselves in the period of response and reception— curious professors and peers will inevitably have something to say: opinions; questions; and suggestions. And lastly, we will become familiar with our peers’ areas of interest, and whenever we come across something to participate in (conference; call for paper) or just a relevant article we can send it along, creating a stronger community. With our first edition, we have no unifying theme, only authors willing to take the first step with us. The new goal is to improve the process every quarter. Our first cover features a still from Goodbye, Dragon Inn (dir. Tsai Ming-liang; 2003). It is a film about possibilities in the face of death—the death of cinema. Our track is notably called “Screen Studies” instead of “Film” or “Cinema” Studies because this intangible media formerly encompassed by the latter two terms no longer apply. Perhaps cinema is dead, be it from economic, societal, or technological changes, but there is something quietly romantic about where it lingers on like a ghost; here in the cinema. There on the screen. Thank you for reading our first issue! Sincerely, Devin Dougherty, ‘21 Claressa Shelton, ‘20 Emily Sobel, ‘20 2 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema: Medium-Nihilism and How Postdigital Humor Led to Political Accelerationism Devin Dougherty ABSTRACT The postdigital age, the combination of the postmodern and digital eras, has bred a certain breed of media-savvy spectators: self-conscious and aware yet ironically detached. Using the transmedia series On Cinema as a case study, this paper defines medium-nihilism: the willful disregard for the traditional boundaries of television, both on the part of the creators and the spectator. The causes and effects of medium- nihilism—the nature of television/information and the proliferation of humor for the former, and a destructive accelerationist attitude for the latter—are explored through and supported by the writings of cultural theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, McKenzie Wark, and Slavoj Žižek, among others. I argue through this framework that this attitude of accelerationism, brought upon by medium-nihilism, has had a concrete effect in the real world with the presidential election of Donald Trump, using monographs by James Poniewozik and Ken Jennings as evidence. On November 16, 2019, the comedy ever put on screen, one that Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) requires plenty of background in New York closed out its series “No knowledge from the series. Following Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political this screening, co-creators and stars Reality” with a screening of The Trial, Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington a nearly five-hour event in the On video-called in and answered ques- Cinema extended universe, shown in tions from the audience: “This is not its entirety. The director, Eric how we expected this to be viewed… Notarnicola, affectionately referred to at a museum in New York in a single the program as “basically 280 sitting… it’s not a movie, I don’t know 1 minutes of raw court footage.” What what it is, but it’s not a movie.” To followed was one of the most them, it was just another part of the aggressive and difficult pieces of joke; they do not care about the 1 Tim Heidecker, Q&A at Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY, November 16, 2019. Screen Studies Quarterly 3 Dougherty medium or semantic arguments lives of the characters continue on about what is film, they care about into other series, videos, as well as the dispersing the joke into as many comedian-stars’ respective Twitter media as possible. What Ken accounts.2 On Cinema is the Jennings has called Planet Funny, the apotheosis of transmedia as well as its total proliferation of humor into all natural conclusion. When Henry parts of life, works as a specific Jenkins writes that transmedia story- application of what McKenzie Wark telling is “a process where integral calls the disintegrating spectacle. I elements of a fiction get dispersed argue that this proliferation, systematically across multiple chan- epitomized by On Cinema, leads to a nels for the purpose of creating a media-savvy, yet nihilistic audience unified and coordinated enter- willing to accelerate the spectacle to tainment experience,”3 he anticipates capitalism’s natural end. On Cinema. Turkington quipped during the call at MoMI, “the problem The issue here is not what the is we’re running out of medi[a].”4 The next medium is, but that the next problem with Turkington’s half-joke is medium does not matter—the joke is that On Cinema does not explicitly everywhere. On Cinema is ostensibly signify its joke, and yet its content is a satirical movie review webseries on ever-present. Heidecker explained Adult Swim in the ‘basic cable’ style, that a handful of people have come keeping up to date with the actual up to him, praising him for The Trial, films being released to theaters in the and had no idea that it was connected non-fictional world. Beyond that, the in any way to a larger series.5 This 2 Briefly, On Cinema started as a podcast 3 Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling reviewing older movies and moved to a 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official weekly webseries reviewing contemporary Weblog of Henry Jenkins, March 21, 2007, ones. The On Cinema hosts (in-character) also http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transme create a short movie-series called Decker dia_storytelling_101.html. (airing on Adult Swim). The Trial is a miniseries 4 Gregg Turkington, Q&A at Museum of the about Heidecker’s character going on trial for Moving Image, Queens, NY, November 16, murder, and Mister America is a theatrically 2019. released movie about Heidecker’s character (following his trial) running for District Attorney 5 Heidecker, Q&A. Additionally, my own of San Bernardino county. There are also sibling told me that he watched a portion of supplemental tie-in books. The Trial online without any background knowledge of On Cinema. 4 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema miniseries could theoretically be convey information. Without these viewed by anyone interested in boundaries in place, I argue that the whatever the museum is prog- spectator sees all media with blurred ramming; it is now elevated to boundaries—a postmodern hellscape museum piece, cultural touchstone, where all media has to be decontextualized from the program entertaining, and if it is not, then it can from which it originated. be made entertaining. Guy Debord, in his seminal The Society of the When decontextualization toys Spectacle, writes that “the spectacle with reality in the way that On Cinema cannot be understood as a mere does, it is troubling—not what could visual excess produced by mass- happen to the accidental spectator, media technologies. It is a worldview but what is already happening with that has actually been materialized, a the spectators the show caters to. To view of a world that has become be a fan of On Cinema requires objective.”6 Because of this, mass- effort—it requires work. It is a media that is not entertaining is constant story taking place from consequently ignored—it is more podcast to webseries, from spin-off to than the aesthetic of transmediality event, from the printed word to the being present, more than the Twitter feed, from the courtroom to overwhelming dispersion of trans/ the cinema—it is all a part of the media, it has become how we relate spectacle. To navigate all this, the fan to one another and the world as a must be Internet-savvy, must be able whole. The audience now expects to to keep up with the jokes, must have find entertainment in their a knowledge of all that came before.

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