When a graduate student of Stephen Jay Gould went to the movies to watch Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster tentpole Jurassic Park in 1993, he lamented that the animals depicted in the movie – in particular the Velociraptor, called raptors – were “the same old, ordinary, dinosaur shit-green” (Gould 1996: 230). When Gould reported his student’s colourful impressions in a studious review of the movie, he duly noted that Spielberg tried to experiment “in early plans and models” with the “bright colors” you would expect in a birdlike animal evolutionarily closer to birds than lizards and other reptiles. However, in the end the production team decided to revert to dull, dated, and monochromatic reptilian hues (Gould 1996: 230). They had already renounced the hissing serpent-like tongue for the raptors featured in the first shooting tests for the kitchen attack sequence – and that was quite enough, thank you very much.
Read moreIf you only knew the power of a worn-out VHS
I was born eight months after the release of Return of the Jedi in theatres. For all intent and purposes, the Star Wars saga was over. But its legacy was just beginning. It might have been 1991 when I got hold of a worn-out VHS on which my sister had recorded The Empire Strikes Back live from a commercial broadcaster. There was no fancy sticker on it, no logo, no information whatsoever. It was just a black box with a brownish magnetic tape visible through the transparent plastic and a badly handwritten title on the spine. Nothing that could prepare me for what was I about to experience.
Read moreUnhorror, Propp’s universal grammar, and box office successes
... quiet… quiet … BANG! Darryl Jones has recently suggested to label unhorror the blockbuster, mainstream “marketization” of the post-millennial horror, which compensates for its depoliticized and polished nature by the implementation of the now “dominant aesthetic technique” called scare-jumps or “jump-shocks”.
Read moreFrom Magic Lantern Ghost Shows to IMAX: Horror and Modernity
In his On Deep History and the Brain, historian Daniel L. Smail suggested that technologies and dedicated socio-economic systems develop around specific psychotropic practices, that is, practices which piggyback our neuroendocrine system to deliver a rewarding, addictive experience (Smail 2008). According to Smail, the period that ranges from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the imperial coda of the French Revolution (1815) stands out as a pivotal moment in the “invention” of a distinctly modern mass economy of psychotropic products and practices.
Read moreA cognitive exploration of horror tropes
You know the drill. You went to the movies to watch the latest installment or the much talked about reboot of your favourite horror/thriller series. You read the interviews, you heard the podcasts, you checked some quite promising non-spoiler reviews. This time it really looked like the new movie could be a lot of fun. All you hoped for was a breath of fresh air, and then… meh. Nothing. Been there, done that. Déjà vu. Just more of the same.
Read moreThe (neurochemical) medium is the message
Cinema provides a virtual environment specifically engineered to stimulate our cognitive and sensorial inclinations – for our own entertainment. The cinematic experience itself is an embodied simulation based on illusory stimuli able to elicit the mirror neurons of our brains – putting us effortlessly in the characters’ shoes and making us feel what they feel (Gallese and Guerra 2012; Gallese and Guerra 2015). The illusion does not stop at emotionally connecting to the characters’ adventures. We intuitively transform opaque cinematic techniques into flawless narratives (e.g., converting an illogical jump cut into the natural blink of an eye).
Read moreNostalgia, Metamodernism, and the Third Death Star
The final installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy produced under the auspices of Disney is finally out. As I’m writing this on 18 December 2019, the early reviews and the critics’ reactions to the Rise of Skywalker have been lukewarm or mixed. There is utter regret for what could have been, palpable disappointment for how the clunky plot of the sequel trilogy has been mishandled, and sheer sadness over the misuse (some would say abuse) of the legacy characters.
In hindsight, this is a result that’s been seven years in the making. The unwise decision to discard the pre-Disney lore material which antagonized the core audience, a baffling marketing strategy to target global audiences who did not experience Star Wars in the 1970s and thus have no affective attachment to the saga (e.g., China), a cheap dilution of the franchise through marginal side quests explored in anthology movies, theme parks attractions that inexplicably disregarded the original films, poor top-down communication skills, the sore lack of leadership skills, and the indifference towards the development of a road map have been - to put it mildly - bewildering [1]. The urgency to deliver and make a profit after the company’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.05 billion has led to an astonishing series of rushed and inappropriate business decisions, and I think that many, if not all, of them are connected to the lack of knowledge and insight about what the DNA of Star Wars really is.
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