Melted Reality. New Proposals from the Fantastic Aesthetics
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Melted Reality. New Proposals from the Fantastic Aesthetics. Authors: Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre, Fran Mateu, Michelle Lucy Copmans, Alfonso Cuadrado, Celia Cuenca García, Antoni Roig, Judith Clares-Gavilán, Raphaël Jaudon, David Ramírez Gómez, Ana Belén Jara, Laura Ros Cases, César Oliveros Aya, Safa Gharsalli. Editors: Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre and Fran Mateu. Cover design: Vicente Javier Pérez Valero. Book design: Vicente Javier Pérez Valero - Francisco Cuéllar Santiago Association of Development and Dissemination of the Fantastic Gender “Black Unicorn” (“Unicornio Negro”). CIF: G54802251. Massiva Research Group. International Congress of Fantastic Genre, Audiovisuals and New Technologies. [email protected] Editorial Committee Editorial Committee President: Dr. Vicente Javier Pérez Valero (Miguel Hernández University) Members of the Editorial Committee: Dra. Tatiana Sentamans Gómez (Miguel Hernández University) Dra. María José Zanón (Miguel Hernández University) Dr. Vicente Barón (Polytechnic University of Valencia) Jasper Vrancken (Luca School of Arts, Belgium) Dra. Carmen García Muriana ((Miguel Hernández University) Dra. Lise Lerichomme (University of Estrasbourg, France) Dra. Lourdes Santamaría Blasco (Miguel Hernández University) Johanna Caplliure (Miguel Hernández University) Dr. Juan F. Martínez Gómez de Albacete (Miguel Hernández University) Beatriz Higón (Polytechnic University of Valencia) Miguel Herrero Herrero (UNED/ Film Producer Cinestesia) Dr. Víctor Del Río García (University of Salamanca) Dra. Lorena Amorós Blasco (University of Murcia) Dr. Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre (Miguel Hernández University) Fran Mateu (Miguel Hernández University) Dr. Guillermo López Aliaga (Miguel Hernández University) Dr. Francisco Cuellar Santiago (Miguel Hernández University) First edition: July 2020. ISBN: 978-84-09-22285-8 Edited in Spain. The total or partial reproduction of this digital book is strictly prohibited. No part of this publication will be reproduced, stored, transmitted or used by any means or system without the prior written authorization of the editors. Index Migrant figures from «Liquid Reality» to «Melted Reality» Block 0 in the Fantastic Genre Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre and Fran Mateu ....................................... p. 10 Monsters, Zombies, Humans and other Creatures in Cinema Block I and Audiovisual Culture The Figure of the Zombie as a Political Metaphor from White Zombie to Dead Don’t Die Michelle Lucy Copmans ............................................................................. p. 25 Confession and Torture: The Haunted House as a Space of Psychological Redemption Alfonso Cuadrado ....................................................................................... p. 41 When The Girl becomes The Monster. Fantastic-Terror for the Feminist Discourse Celia Cuenca García ................................................................................... p. 57 They Follow: Experiments in Formal Distribution of Contemporary Horror Films Antoni Roig and Judith Clares-Gavilán .................................................. p. 75 Spectres of Insurrection in Bong Joon-Ho’s Cinema Raphaël Jaudon ........................................................................................... p. 95 Mad doctors, Magicians, Heroes and other Characters Block II in Literature, Theater and Mass Media The Scientific Basis of the Rick and Morty Television Series p. 111 David Ramírez Gómez ............................................................................... Harry Potter and the Cinematographic Adaptation of its Characters Along the Series p. 127 Ana Belén Jara ............................................................................................. Literature, Photography, and Social Commitment: Apocalypse at Solentiname, by Julio Cortázar Laura Ros Cases .......................................................................................... p. 147 Uberized Superheroes: The Fantastic at the Service of Reality in The Boys Television Series César Oliveros Aya ..................................................................................... p. 163 The Fantastic Image and its Affinities with Marc Hollogne’s Cinema-Theater p. 183 Safa Gharsalli .............................................................................................. Block 0 MIGRANT FIGURES FROM «LIQUID REALITY» TO «MELTED REALITY» IN THE FANTASTIC GENRE Block 0: Migrant figures from «Liquid Reality» to «Melted Reality» in the fantastic genre 9 Block 0: Migrant figures from «Liquid Reality» to «Melted Reality» in the fantastic genre MIGRANT FIGURES FROM «LIQUID REALITY» TO «MELTED REALITY» IN THE FANTASTIC GENRE Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre and Fran Mateu A new reality of «migrant figures» If you type the word «reality» in your Internet browser, you will come across a peculiar group of images: screens full of encrypted data, characters connected to virtual reality peripherals, scenes from reality shows and, even well-known life simulation video games, like The Sims (Maxis, Electronic Arts, 2000). A torrent of images where the pattern, contrary to what is expected, is not marked by the idea of «reality», but the discourse of the simulated, of the inconsistent. This exercise was already carried out in a moment of inspiration by the designer of our book cover, Vicente Javier Pérez, and its melted result is a wink to all this visual imagery that, rather than posing the constitution of our environment, it dilutes it in a continuous «meme» of futuristic topics: 80% of the time, we will see the protagonist of these images absorbed by a source of data and luminescent projections; the rest of the percentage is made up of the aforementioned images, and some that would surprise the reader himself (and which we will leave to his curiosity) due to their strange association with the concept of «real». 10 Block 0: Migrant figures from «Liquid Reality» to «Melted Reality» in the fantastic genre It seems that it is difficult for us to separate this idea of«reality» from a kind of technological science-fiction that articulates it, shapes it, or in the last case, misrepresents it, from the media and the digital systems that comprise it. Moreover, in times in which this same technology is defined by a logic of speed (Virilio, 1998), enormous in its power of dissolution and obsolescence over objects. In this «jumble» of representations and copies, by force majeure, the ideals of a consumer society are mixed —delighted with these accelerated circuits of purchase and sale— and other strata of our own culture and mythology. The video game, comics, literature, or cinema, among many other arts, have become hosts of this «unreality» that also affects the diversity of their creative facets. And it is questionable to what extent we are aware of the true nature of the elements that are currently influencing them. How independent are the signs and signifiers of art when faced with the imperatives (and the simulations) of this digital society? The philosopher and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (2000) brought together a good part of these ideas under such a suggestive concept as «Liquid Modernity»; a term that alludes to a society that has lost its values of union and stability, in the face of a state of continuous change. Uncertainty, ambivalence, nomadism, etc. are the characteristic features of the «modern liquid human being», and it is in his gaze where a different perception of the everyday emerges, in which the solid is now as inconsistent as the liquid. As a reflection of this volatile world, as well as the different artistic expressions that echo it, we have also come across (and quite often) a fantastic genre equally fascinated by its transience. Consider, for example, of a classic film as visited as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), which presents us with a «melted reality», deformed, with the vision of a future world —November 2019— technified, dehumanized, and dominated by power relations between privileged citizens and the lower classes1. Without a doubt, it is a «post-liquid reality», where the fantastic narrative speculates about a future world through the present. 1 Which wander en masse through the narrow, dirty alleys of a Moebius-inspired city, dotted with skyscrapers, overcrowding, gas explosions, neon-wrapped billboards, constant rain, air traffic and where it is always night (Candela, 2003, pp. 38-39). 11 Block 0: Migrant figures from «Liquid Reality» to «Melted Reality» in the fantastic genre As expected, we also find artistic representations with glimpses of this new reality in previous decades. For example, the union of French symbolist theories and German idealist romanticism, in addition to the latent social concerns in the Central European culture of the interwar period, gave rise to cinematographic expressionism: Kammerspielfilm, New Objectivity, and its multitude of combinations with the strange, the deformed. A reality that, as a result of the state of mind of a historical epoch, led to a «melted society» before the world of the occult, the morbid and the nocturnal (Armada Manrique, 2003, p. 365)2. In this mode of representation, «the melted» becomes a «migrant element» through the aesthetic. For this reason, the «migrant» envelops those narrative or aesthetic figures that travel through time, finding themselves provided with new gazes, rearticulating their modes of representation and their artistic interconnections. The book you have in your hands, Melted Reality, compiles these ideas and this review of «melted