Narration as attraction. Mind-game films and postclassical spectacles

The article is a theoretical proposal which aims to create an alternative framework for mapping postclassical cinema. This framework is based on establishing various modes of relations between narration and spectacle, especially those represented by mind-game films and post-plot films. Instead of considering narration and spectacle as opposition, I suggest redescribing their complementary dynamics. I argue that there is visible feedback between mind-game films and the cinema of digital attractions, which I see as complementary processes of making “spectacular mind games” and “mind-gaming the spectacles”. The article contains an analysis of similar types of cinematic experiences delivered by “narration” and “attractions” and indicates the mutual influences between these two phenomena. Both narration and attraction may bring similar, affective sensations: the notion of shock and dissonance, discomfort, astonishment, kinesthetic impulse or cognitive stimulation. As for the article’s conclusion: postclassical cinema variously reshapes the distribution of narration and attraction. Mind-game films are becoming cinematic spectacles. On the other hand, more and more “post-plot” blockbusters are introducing the “mind-gaming the spectacle” strategy, and are engaging viewers with “cognitive” attractions as well.

Revisiting Videogame Logic: Impossible Storyworlds in the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster

This paper demonstrates how two logics (narrative and videogame) function in a select number of contemporary blockbuster films. The paper is divided into three sections: The first outlines narrative and videogame logics; the second presents examples from Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) to demonstrate how videogame logic structures the events in each film; and the third discusses how these logics create specific storyworlds (imaginary worlds distinct from the actual world) that are unnatural and/or impossible.

Time Flows: Rhythm in Slow Cinema

In her article, the author describes slow cinema as one of the most important tendencies in contemporary art-house cinema, simultaneously focusing on its temporal emanations. The text emphasizes the notion of rhythm and divides it into two subcategories: external and internal rhythm. The latter is close to the embodied experience, therefore it influences viewers affectively, as a somatic resonance. It enables a spectator’s intensive engagement in slow films. The author’s argumentation is based on rhythm research and existential phenomenology

The Yugoslav imaginary of Marko Vidojkovic in the novel "E baš vam hvala"

Although it has not formally existed for over thirty years, Yugoslavia continues to be an attractive subject for literature. Against two dominant currents of prose orbiting the SFRY – the settlement and nostalgic one, Marko Vidojkovic’s novel E baš vam hvala stands out with its attempt to answer the question: what would Yugoslavia be like in 21st century if it had not fallen apart. In this article this alternative scenario is considered in the context of close literary genres: science fiction and alternative histories.

Tachyons, tactility, drawing and withdrawing: cinema at the speed of darkness

Longitudinal, quantitative analyses of cinema have established how Hollywood is getting ‘quicker, faster, darker’. While in some senses the ‘intensified continuity’ of contemporary Hollywood narration is a given, the increased darkness of contemporary mainstream cinema remains unexplored – especially with regard to how its speed and its darkness might be inter-related. If to darken the majority of the screen during a film helps to draw our attention to the salient aspects of the image that are better illuminated, then of course this also allows for a faster cutting rate: in principle, there is ‘less’ information for the viewer to have to take in during each shot, meaning that the film can then cut to subsequent images more rapidly. However, there are other ways in which we can interpret this ‘darkening’ of contemporary film narration. For example, it perhaps ties in with a widespread sense of disorientation with regard to the increasingly globalized and connected world that digitization has helped to bring about, and which is equally reflected in the rise of the contemporary ‘mind-game’ or ‘puzzle’ film that is a staple of contemporary Hollywood. The darkness in such films thus gives expression to uncertainty and disorientation. More than this, though, we might use physics to understand the darkness of contemporary cinema in a more ‘meta-physical’ fashion. While it is accepted that light is the ‘fastest’ phenomenon in the known universe, there nonetheless remain unilluminated aspects of the physical universe that defy light as the limit of speed – and which convey the interconnected nature of matter in the contemporary universe. For example, polarized particles have been proven simultaneously to respond to stimuli – at a speed faster than it would take light to travel from one particle to the other, a phenomenon that baffled Albert Einstein, who referred to this process as ‘spooky action at a distance’. Not only does this process suggest what Karen Barad might refer to as the entangled nature of all matter, but it also suggests speeds beyond, or at least different, to that of light. In this essay, then, I shall theorise a ‘speed of darkness’ that can help us to understand how the darkening of contemporary cinema ties in with the interconnected, invisible (‘spooky’) and ultra-rapid nature of the digital world. Perhaps it is not in the light but in the darkness that we can identify the key to understanding contemporary mainstream cinema and the globalized, digital world that produces it.

How Fast is Furious The Discourse of Fast Cinema in Question

Considered in its articulation with an idea of “slow” cinema, the label “fast cinema” suggests three characteristics: fast-paced action, hyperkinetic cinematic style, and irreflexive consumption. Not only does fast cinema suggest these three characteristics, however, it also suggests that they directly correspond to each other so that, in a “fast” film, fast-paced action would be seamlessly rendered through “fast” cinematic enunciation and this rendering would necessarily result in an escapist, ready-to-consume film product. It is more by this correspondence, I think, than by any of these elements on its own that a certain understanding of “fast” cinema is established. Against this understanding, through a variety of contrasting examples, the article argues that the impression of fastness and that of slowness are both the matter of a tension between different temporalities and a complex combination of heterogeneous film elements, and that the articulation of “fast” and “slow” cinema itself depends less on the formal characteristics of different kinds of film than on a disciplinary understanding of spectatorship, which pretends to derive from these formal characteristics different and unequal forms of film experience.

Loop Structures in Film (and Literature): Experiments with Time Between the Poles of Classical and Complex Narration

Among the many innovations complex or “puzzle” films have brought about in the last three decades, experiments with narrative time feature prominently. And within the category of nonlinear plots, the loop structure – exemplified by films such as Repeaters (Canada 2010), Source Code (USA/France 2011), Looper (USA/China 2012) or the TV-Series Day Break (USA 2006) – has established itself as an interesting variant defying certain norms of storytelling while at the same time conforming in most cases to the needs of genre and mass audience comprehension. In the first part of my paper, I will map out different kinds of repeated action plots, paying special attention to constraints and potentialities pertaining to this particular form. In the second part, I will address the issue of narrative complexity, showing that loop films cover a wide range from “excessively obvious” mainstream (e.g. Groundhog Day, USA 1992; 12:01, USA 1993; Edge of Tomorrow, USA/Canada 2014) to disturbing narrative experiments such as Los Cronocrimenes (Spain 2007) or Triangle (Great Britain/Australia 2009). Finally, a look at two early examples (Repeat Performance, USA 1947 and Twilight Zone: Judgement Day, USA 1959) will raise the question how singular the recent wave of loop films are from a historical perspective.

On the Margin of ”Satantango”. Some Remarks on Slow Cinema

Athough Satantango by Bela Tarr is usually regarded as a perfect representative of slow cinema and certainly deserves this reputation, it is worth remembering that it shares some features with other currents of modern cinema. Its networkish structure and unreliable narration place it close to puzzle films; its close affinity with the Krasznahorkai novel, on which it is based, makes it a form of impure – that is – hybrid cinema; due to an accumulation of evil deeds, tragic and sensational events, it resembles films of action. But, first of all, it is a paramount example of slow cinema, and as such it enables one to grasp the essential features of this genre. According to certain views, often built on the foundation of Andre Bazin theory, slow cinema imitates natural human perception and therefore is inherently realistic. This is not true, though. Instead of a reality effect, slow cinema produces rather a verfremdung effect, which in turn enhances the big potential of slow cinema in inducing transcendental or religious states in a viewer’s mind. Satantango explores this potential, drawing on the religious connotations of Krasznahorkai novel.

The Universe-al Storytelling. Towards A ‘Spatial’ Narrative Model in Modern Comic Book Cinema

The aim of the article is to analyze modern superhero films through the specifics of superhero narratives in comics. By referring to the ‘organic’ elements of graphic super-storytelling – like retcon or crossover – the author tries to explain the main shift within comic book adaptations heading towards a ‘universe-al’ mode of narration. By doing so the analysis concentrates on the most succesful recent cases of superhero films as attempts to achieve a narrative ‘remediation’ of comic books’ spatial organization that requires reconsideration of the status of an individual superheroic franchise (or sub-franchise) within the larger universe of pre-existing, future and even alternate texts.

Network Narratives in Global Cinema: The Shift from Community to Network and Their Narrative Logics

In the backdrop of global interconnection, such films as “Crash”, “Syriana”, and “Babel” drew attention to the six-degrees-of-separation “network narrative.” This type of distributed narrative with multiple access points or discrete threads has long evolved, perhaps since Griffith’s “Intolerance” and via modern masterpieces: Altman’s “Nashville” and “Shortcuts” weave many characters into a portrait of their social ground unmapped by themselves; Bunuel’s “Phantom of Liberty” shifts among characters only through the contingent movement of the camera. These two elements (multiple characters, a floating agent) intermingle now in the way that the protagonist takes the role of the very agent navigating among contingently networked characters in further decentralized directions: “Birdman” centers on the hero’s salvation but many other people around him form and cross small dramas; the protagonist in “Waking Life” shuffles through a dream meeting various people; “Holly Motors” stages a Parisian’s bizarre city odyssey, with the true agent turning out to be a car/cars; “Mysterious Object at Noon” experiments on the ‘exquisite corpse’ relay of a story through different people whom the director encounters while moving around... What does this non-linearity with different causal relations imply? How do mobile agents floating over decentralized events relate to global networks in general? This paper investigates today’s network narratives through an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of network as opposed to community even beyond film narratology. For instance, if the masculine formula of Lacan’s sexuation (all are submitted to the phallic function but for one exception) underlies community, its feminine formula (not all are submitted to the phallic function but there is no exception) works for networking. Community forms the totality of all and an exception that fuels the universal desire to make it utopian, but network has the infinity of drives to (dis)connections dismantling community, yet thereby leaving no exceptional outside. Community is a closed set of subjects who may be ‘abjected’ from it; network is an open whole of endless links along which the subject-abject shift constantly occurs in the mode of being ‘on/off’ rather than ‘in/out.’ In Deleuze’s terms, community works as a “tree-like” vertical system of hierarchical units in the historical trajectory to its perfection, whereas the network creates a “rhizomatic” horizontal movement of molecular forces in non-dialectic, non-linear directions. Foucauldian “discipline” is a key to subjectivation in the community, but it turns into Deleuzian “control” in the network that promotes flexible agency and continuous modulation without exit. As actor-network theorists argue, nothing precedes and exists outside ever-changing networks of relationship. The network narrative will thus be explored as a cinematic symptom of the radical shift from community to network that both society and subjectivity undergo with all the potentials and limitations in our global age.