Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Kamm, Frances Alice (2015) 'A Mirror Image of Ourself'? The Technological Uncanny and the Representation of the Body in Early and Digital Cinema. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/59386/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html 'A Mirror Image of Ourself'? The Technological Uncanny and the Representation of the Body in Early and Digital Cinema Frances Alice Kamm Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Film Studies School of Arts University of Kent September 2015 Word Count: 97,366 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several people I would like to thank for their help in completing this project. First, a huge thank you goes to my supervisors Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald and Dr Cecilia Sayad for all their help, support and encouragement with this work. I am very grateful for your commitment to helping me complete this project and your kindness. I would also like to thank the other members of staff who offered comments on this work over the years and particularly my supervisory chair Dr Aylish Wood. My thanks also goes to my fellow PhD researchers who helped shape my ideas along the way, and in particular Katerina Flint-Nicol, Keeley Saunders, Pete Sillett, Ann-Marie Fleming, Lies Lanckman, Caleb Turner, Geoff Mann, Rosa Fernandez Day, Emre Caglayan, and (by no means least) Sarah Polley (for also bringing the much-needed addition of cake!). I’m also grateful to the students I taught at Kent who participated in fruitful debates on the uncanny. Thank you also to Jerry, Paul, Katy, Cristian, Jess, Dan, Megan and Mitch. Thank you to Chris and Dave for your support and for all the terrible films watched for ‘research purposes.’ To Shamus. And to my best friend Siobhan: for all your kind words and unshakeable belief in my abilities. To my mum, dad and Tori for inspiring me to embark on such an endeavour and for everything you have done to support me along the way. I love you all lots. Marcus: you will be pleased to know that Hun finally finished her homework! And to John: no words can express the thanks owed to you for your love, help and commitment: you are my lucky star. (And Sven says: ‘Stay frosty marine!’). Copyright note: All images in this thesis are from the DVD/Blu Ray copies of the films referenced and thus are the property of their studios. No breach of copyright is intended by their reproduction, which is conducted in the spirit of the Fair Use policy of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/fair_use_documents/scms_teaching_sta tement.pdf Full referencing details are provided in the Filmography. ABSTRACT This thesis argues that there exists an analogous position in how the human body is represented on the cinema screen, and the response of spectators to this, within two key turning points in film history: the technological advancements made during the late 19th Century (what is commonly referred to as ‘early cinema’), and the move away from analogue techniques in the rising dominance of digital filmmaking practices at the turn of the last century (in what can be broadly termed the ‘digital age’). In both instances the filmic human body is used as a central spectacular attraction in the promotion of new and novel technologies intended to entertain, startle and challenge audiences. In particular, the use of trick photography in the late 1890s and the popularisation of motion-capture technology at the beginning of the 21st Century are comparable in the way these special effects technologies draw on the aesthetics of photographic realism and the idea of cinematic indexicality, whilst simultaneously rendering their depiction of the human body as unstable and transformative. An analysis of audience reactions to these technologies reveals how spectators from both eras have found these bodies strange, compelling and eerie: these filmic humans are uncanny. This thesis compares the technologies of early and digital cinema and their representation of the human form under the theoretical framework of the uncanny. Inspired by Freud’s argument for the unheimlich, this investigation argues for the presence of a technological uncanny: an experience of the uncanny which has been provoked by the experience and direct contemplation of cinematic technology in its mediation, simulation and representation of human bodies. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Trace of McKinley: Early Cinema, the Uncanny and the Index 7 The Digital Body 12 Further Notes on Terminology and Methodology 21 Chapter Breakdown 26 Pictures for the Introduction 32 Chapter One - ‘A Mirror Image of Ourself’? Defining the Technological Uncanny 31 Freud’s Uncanny 36 ‘Ourself’ in Mechanical Form: the Automaton 45 Making a ‘Mirror Image’: the Double 63 Defining the Technological Uncanny 82 Pictures for Chapter One 84 Chapter Two - Early Cinema, the Technological Uncanny and the 85 Human Body On-Screen Defining Early Cinema 89 The Uncanniness of Early Cinema 101 The Body in Early Cinema 111 The Body in the Early Films of Georges Méliès 127 Pictures for Chapter Two 144 Chapter Three - From Analogue to Digital: The Re-emergence of the Technological Uncanny 149 The Digital Age 153 The Return of the Index 159 The Uncanny and the Pro-filmic 169 Live-Action or Animation? 175 The Digital Body: the Sublime and the Morph 183 The Uncanny Valley 192 Pictures for Chapter Three 201 Chapter Four - Motion-Capture Technology and the Uncanny 203 Motion-Capture Technology 207 The Reception of Robert Zemeckis’s Motion-Captured Films 217 Putting ‘Life in the Machine’ 226 Controlling the ‘Puppet Show’: Exiling the Uncanny 234 ‘All Aboard!’ Action, 3D and the Uncanny 241 Mars Needs... the ‘Human Element’ 252 Pictures for Chapter Four 256 Chapter Five - Early and Digital Cinema Converge: Spectatorship, the Body and the Future of the Technological Uncanny in Hugo 260 Dramatizing the Technological Uncanny Experience 265 ‘The Secret is in the Clockwork’: Hugo’s Uncanny Bodies 286 The Future of the Technological Uncanny 299 Pictures for Chapter Five 310 Conclusion 315 Pictures for the Conclusion 326 Bibliography 328 Filmography 390 INTRODUCTION In 1896 the presidential candidate William McKinley was filmed at his home in Canton, Ohio. In the film, McKinley is seen walking towards the stationary camera with an aide by his side, framed in medium long shot (Figure 1). Over one hundred years later, at the turn of a new century, another body on film dominates the opening shots, this time in the 2001 CGI-created feature Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within1. The main protagonist, Aki Ross, is first introduced to the audience within her dreamscape and several edits frame Aki’s body from a variety of angles, including extreme close ups (Figure 2). The juxtaposition of these two images may seem to reveal little in common between the two films – for example, the films have different ages, content, length, purposes and appearance – but the comparison actually embodies the concerns and questions which fuel this investigation: how new technologies are incorporated into cinema; the effect this has upon the representation of the human form on-screen and how spectators respond to this sight; and how the concept of the uncanny informs these questions and can help evaluate them. For both the McKinley film and Final Fantasy, the technology behind the illusion on-screen is the central attraction, as it ‘directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity’ (Gunning, 1986, 384)2. At the time of McKinley’s stroll on his front lawn, cinema3 was in its early days and demonstrations of projectors which could make photographs move drew large audiences in the USA and Europe to marvel at the 1 From now on, I shall refer to the film as just Final Fantasy. 2 Tom Gunning’s concept of a ‘cinema of attractions’ will play an integral part in defining the early cinema period, as well as a useful concept to think about spectacle and special effects in the cinema. This argument shall be outlined in more detail in Chapter 2. 3 By ‘cinema’ I mean the practice of watching moving pictures, photographically produced, projected onto a large screen in front of an audience. This definition acknowledges the diverse history behind the development of cinema emerging in the late 1890s and shall be discussed in greater length in Chapter 2. It should also be noted that I use the term ‘cinema’ to thus refer to both the practice of experiencing moving images in this way and the larger, industrial context. I use the term ‘film’ to refer to the medium itself although I will discuss the difficulties with this word – particularly in the digital age – in further detail in Chapter 3. 1 illusion.