Student Number 127397 LXM-4001-0 Modes of Critical Theory 202021

Through Bazin’s and Kracauer’s looking glass: the renaissance of digital film’s visual
effects and cinematic realism.

With some of the highest-grossing movies of all time such as Jurassic Park (1993),
Avatar (2009) and Harry Potter (2001) digital films have become part of our everyday
viewing pleasure and have transformed Hollywood cinema. From the slithery,
underwater creature in The Abyss, the 40-feet muscular body of a stomping blood-
thirsty t-rex, wizards flying atop behemoth winged beasts to the extraordinary battle
for Middle Earth, digital technologies open doors of the imagination to transport us to
the fantastical worlds of special effects.
But what are the cultural implications with the emergence of new media
technologies? Do computer-generated movies herald the death of stylistic, serious,
narrative-based stories and realistic characters? Are they what they portray- fiction
steeped in fantasy and cinematics? Or do they offer a new realism presenting us an
alternative reality of phantastic worlds and the continuation of an historical toolbox of
enhancements within the filmic image for decades from The Execution of Mary,
Queen of Scots (1895) to the representational lighting technologies of a digital
composition of the alps and chateau in True Lies (1994)?
The dichotomy between the fantastical and reality in film has been topical debate
between scholars within various disciplinary background of film studies, media theory
and visual cultures from media and cultural history to political, economic and social
sciences, studying the most prolific progenitors of cinema from Méliès domain of
fantasy film showing expeditions to the moon and ventures to the bottom of the sea
to actuality-based lineage films of the Lumière’s who captured portrayals of everyday
life.
This paper aims to address the notional of realism as debated by film theorists;
Kracauer, Sobchack, Cubitt, Cavell, Carroll, Bazin and many more, whilst integrating
these historical and contemporary theories to create a film analysis of popular
cinema with examples of classical Hollywood and contemporary films. This paper
examines the cultural and social aspects of digital technologies, ideologies, the
impact on audiences and deliberates the question been asked since the dawn of the
digital age; has the digital revolution of film and the radical discontinuity of cinematic
tradition taken us so far away from reality that it falls far behind even the t-rex in the
mirror or may appear closer than it seems?