Massive Movie Waves and the Anthropic Ocean

SSI0010.1177/0539018418783073Social Science InformationHelmreich 783073research-article2018 Special Issue Social Science Information 2018, Vol. 57(3) 494-521 1 –28 Massive movie waves and © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: the anthropic ocean sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018418783073DOI: 10.1177/0539018418783073 journals.sagepub.com/home/ssi Stefan Helmreich Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Abstract This article examines representations of ocean waves in disaster and science fiction movies, reading these for what they can indicate about shifting ideological accounts of human–ocean relations. I track the technical conjuring of such on-screen waves – made using everything from scale model wave tanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI) – and explicate how these enable waves’ narrative purposes and effects. I argue that towering waves in film have operated as emblems of (a) the elemental power of cosmic, inhuman, arbitrary forces, (b) the return of the social-environmental repressed, and (c) the power and limits of cinematic media themselves. The most recent fantastical waves, rendered digitally, I suggest, now generate reflexive usages that underwrite either optimistic aesthetics of a nature crafted in partnership with humanity or ironic pessimism about human enterprise in the face of looming ecological disaster. Keywords Anthropocene, animation, disaster, film, waves Résumé Cet article examine les représentations des vagues océaniques dans les films catastrophes et de science-fiction, afin d’appréhender les changements idéologiques inhérents aux relations Homme–océan. J’examine les aspects techniques de ces ondes océaniques à l’écran – du modèle réduit de réservoir à vagues à l’imagerie générée par ordinateur (3D) – et analyse les effets narratifs de ces dites-vagues. Je défends l’idée que les vagues imposantes dans le cinéma sont représentées comme des emblèmes (a) d’une puissance cosmique élémentaire, inhumaine, aux forces arbitraires, (b) du retour du refoulement social environnemental, et (c) du pouvoir et des limites intrinsèques des médias cinématographiques. Je suggère que les vagues fantastiques les plus récentes représentées Corresponding author: Stefan Helmreich, Anthropology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Building E53 Room 335Q, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA. Email: [email protected] 222495 SocialSocial ScienceScience InformationInformation 00(0)57(3)57(3)00(0) ofdigitalement the medium. engendrent As film is maintenant challenged des by pratiquestelevision, réflexives filmmakers qui souscrivent(in the 1960s, soit and à l’image more intensivelyd’un optimisme in the esthétique1970s) turn d’une to large-scale nature revisitée special effects,en lien epicavec storiesla compassion for the screen, ou un disasterpessimisme movies. ironique As film relatif is challenged à l’entreprise by digital humaine technologies face à l’imminent (games, désastrethe Internet), écologique. waves are again reinvented, now as virtual simulated objects capturing a slice of the digital, emblems of the sublime power of cinema as fantasy (to date, it does not seem as through Mots-clés 3D representations have significantly altered wave movement-images, though it seems animation, Anthropocène, catastrophe, film, vagues that they should – maybe they will soon?). Nowadays, we may have entered a hyper- reflexive moment, when the artifactuality of waves on the screen has become a recursive resource for narrative, either animating an optimistic aesthetic of nature crafted in partnership with humanity (Moana) or underwriting an ironic sense of representation as inade- quateIn ‘Wave to the theory’, politics in of the nature, pages captive of Sight to humanand Sound folly, in ways1996, that screenwriter cannot pretend and film to attach critic toDavid meaningful Pirie suggested ecological that action, Hollywood and that moviemay spell genres human rise doom. and fall in waves. Adapting theories of crowd psychology from the accountant Ralph Nelson Elliott, who in 1938 Companionproposed a model Movie of investor Montage behaviour called the ‘Elliott Wave Principle’, Pirie observed that the genre of the disaster movie, which had fallen into a lull since its 1970s crest, was For a montage of scenes from movies featuring massive movie waves — a montage that delivers coming back, as film companies in the 1990s financed a new cycle of disaster movies an argument about common tropes and effects — see “Massive Movie Waves Mix,” by Jeremie banking on the arrival of new special effects techniques and on a surge of popular mil- Brugidou,banking onavailable the arrival at http://vimeo.com/269392249 of new special effects techniques and on a surge of popular mil- lennial, apocalyptic anxiety. Here, I spin off from Pirie’s claim in a literal-minded way, looking at changing repre- Acknowledgements sentations of waves – ocean waves – in disaster and science fiction movies, mostly, Ithough thank Jeremie not exclusively, Brugidou, Eugeniein American Brinkema, and European Eva Hayward, contexts, David reading Jaclin, Caroline these for Jones, what Clare they Kim,might Melody tell us Jue,about Heather dominant, Paxson, if shifting, Dmitry Portnoy,ideological Michael accounts Rossi of and human–ocean Nicole Starosielski relations. for close readings of iterations of this argument. Thanks also to Ayn Cavicchi and Latéfa Faiz for Movies that feature colossal ocean waves have realized such forms through a range of invaluable help in the production of this piece. special effects, from the use of material and mechanical scale models, to optical and photographic trickery, to computer-generated animations and simulations. I am inter- Funding ested in the technical conjuring of such on-screen waves – using everything from wave Thistanks research to computer-created received no specific imagery grant – from and anyin how funding these agency techniques in the public,enable commercial, waves’ narra or- not-for-profittive purposes sectors. and effects. Movie waves are what film theorist Kristen Whissel would call an ‘effects emblem’: ‘a cinematic visual effect that operates as a site of intense significa- Notestion and gives stunning (and sometimes) allegorical expression to a film’s key themes, anxieties,1. As Jonathan and conceptual Crary observes obsessions’ in Suspensions (2014: of Perception 6). The dramatic, Marey’s roleswork enactedfilmic awaves ‘reciprocal have fulfilled,operation I suggest, of decomposition have been and multiple. reunification: Towering his analysis waves ofin movement,film have withinoperated, the framein shift of- ing ratiosa single and visual phases, field, aspreserved emblems a vector of (a) of the spatial elemental and temporal power coherence, of cosmic, giving inhuman, movement arbi- trarya newforces, form (b) of thelegibility return and of rationality’ the social-environmental (Crary, 2001:140). repressed, with waves as moral 2. Deleuze (1986) suggests that perception, affect and action write themselves into film through messengers paying humanity back for sins against the orders of nature or social justice, such techniques as the long shot (establishing scenes), the close up (registering emotion), and and the(c) mediumthe fantastic shot (trackingpower and action). limits All of are cinematic present inmedia wave themselves. films, as waves are things seen Thefrom beginnings far away, up of close waves (often in and registered on film in are the atfaces once of morethose empiricalactors meant and to humblebe gaping than at theirwaves later ascinematic they arrive), descendants and all along – theirthough, unfolding. also, importantly paradigm-setting in their technical,Compare formal, waves asand movement- epistemological and time-images entailments. to fire. In Étiennethe 1940s, Jules director Marey, Sergei Eisensteinthe 19th- century(1986) physiologist posited the flickeringand originator flame asof an‘chronophotography’, allegory for the captivating famous power for ofhis cinema 12-frame- (and per-secondcompare studies Wollen of(1984) the movements on cinema as of fire birds, and photography cats, fish, and as ice).other Leslie animals, (2017) in has1891 recently made La Vaguewritten, anof cloudsunder-a-minute as cinematic film motifs of a and wave how crashing these have into been a clutch enlivened of rocks in both in analogthe bay and of Naplesdigital (Figure film. 1). 3. Marey’sThe original purpose Japanese was version documentary, of the film a wasstep-by-step called Japan study Sinks of (1973) movement, (日本沈没 putting) by Shiro into motionMoritani. a series Retitling, of snapshots, reshuffling, extending revising, theand sortredistributing of experiments the film realized as Tidal byWave Eadweard (Meyer, 1975) makes it much more about the wave than about anything specific to Japan. A 2006 Helmreich 4963 Figure 1. Sequence from Étienne Jules Marey, La Vague, 1891. Muybridge in Palo Alto in the late 1870s, in which Muybridge famously generated a series of stills taken in quick succession to capture the movement of horses.1 It became imaginable to slice time up into framed visualizations and to then suture these together in space – parcelling them out along segmented linear spans of nitrate, celluloid, acetate and other film stock. It also became possible to watch things over and over again, to slow, to pause, to reverse (see Gunning, 1989: 33 on early silent film as ‘a cinema of instants, rather than developing situations’, a condition that

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