Thesis Format
Monograph
Degree
Master of Arts
Program
Theory and Criticism
Supervisor
Janelle Blankenship
Abstract
This thesis examines the trajectory and legacy of two streams of filmmaking born in the 1990s: extreme film and the digital film, which eventually fuse into the digital extreme film, a watershed moment of postmodern filmmaking. I analyze the rise of the digital extreme, probing its disturbing aesthetic, its grainy, blurry glitches, dark, mundane reality and connections to fear, surveillance and nostalgia. Looking at filmmakers as disparate as pop-culture mainstays like Martin Scorsese, breakout directors like Jane Schoenbrun, avant-garde artists like Michael Snow, and arthouse auteurs such as Catherine Breillat and Olivier Assayas, I consider what the moment of cinema’s digital extreme says about labour, alienation and the relationship between violence, technology and illusion. The digital extreme does not advocate for a dialectical posthumanity, nor a nihilistic non-humanity, but postulates a literal after-humanity, documenting what remains of us, in our state of crisis, when both illusion and reality are stripped away.
Summary for Lay Audience
This thesis examines what I call the “digital extreme” in cinema. I analyze the trajectory and legacy of two streams of filmmaking born in the 1990s: the extreme film and the digital film, which eventually fuse into the digital extreme film, a watershed moment of postmodern filmmaking. Taking a closer look at violent, technologically distanced filmmaking in our modern nostalgic age, I argue that the traditional parameters of past, present, and future have shifted. As a corollary to this fractured sense of progress, we have been forced to alter our traditional conceptions of violence in everyday society and its relationship to the technology that disseminates it. In an aesthetic sense, this shift was laid bare in the disturbing and shocking images of art-house and mainstream cinema of the past twenty years. This thesis examines the rise of the digital extreme, with its blurry glitches and dark, mundane reality, probing its disturbing aesthetic and its connection to fear, surveillance and nostalgia. Throughout the thesis, I draw on Baudrillard’s theory of the artwork and simulacrum, Steven Shaviro’s analysis of “post-cinematic affect” and Svetlana Boym on “social nostalgia” to illuminate digital extreme’s dark contours. Looking at filmmakers as disparate as pop-culture mainstays like Martin Scorsese, Canadian avant-garde artists like Michael Snow, arthouse auteurs such as Catherine Breillat and Olivier Assayas, and breakout director Jane Schoenbrun, we consider what the moment of cinema’s digital extreme says about labour, alienation and the relationship between violence, technology and illusion in an increasingly vicious world. I finally argue that the digital extreme does not advocate for a dialectical posthumanity, nor a nihilistic nonhumanity, but postulates a literal after-humanity, documenting what remains of us, in our tortured state when both illusion and reality are stripped away.
Recommended Citation
Dvorsky, Lucas J., "The Digital Extreme: Cinema's Reality Crisis in a Nostalgic Age" (2022). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 8914.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8914
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