ENEMY: Virulent Media, Cinema 3.0 and Fandom

(Are you noticing a theme?)

Denis Villeneuve’s thriller Enemy is leaving audiences confused and annoyed–the trademark effects of the puzzle film. Like the films of Davids Lynch and Cronenberg–the most obvious points of reference here–Enemy vaults the protagonist (and by extension the viewer) into a world where the distinction between the real and the imaginary becomes incomprehensible. This often disturbing oneiric world impels the protagonist to interrogate the status of his situation both within and outside of the ‘real’; an anxiety that is so familiar to us in the ubiquity of the digital age.

These epistemological fears are recurrent in films like Enemy (and Videodrome, and perhaps more contentiously, Lost Highway), where media technologies function as electronic gateways to a digitalized world that places the status of the real in a place of crisis: film, television, home-video distribution, just to name a few examples of ‘virulent’ media that create new ‘hybrid’ or mutant subjects by literally fusing with the human body (as in Videodrome). Entertainment culture so perversely thrives on this narrativizing of the digital world’s real-world ability to permeate our screens; theoretically (to account for obvious governmental limitations), anyone anywhere can access videos of questionable veracity and ethics (the legitimate video footage of Luca Magnotta murdering Lin Jun being exemplary). Digital technologies also allow for a higher degree of interaction.

Interactivity is not a new phenomenon specific to the digital age, but the digital’s ease of accessibility confers users the ability to peruse information about a film or show by means of marketing paratexts. With this information, users can create new meanings and contexts[1]; fan-fiction, for instance, demonstrates one way aspects of the text are appropriated and re-tooled for personal use and enjoyment. These instances of interaction are characteristic of Kristen Daly’s “cinema 3.0” model of digital cinema; she writes:

Increasingly, for computer and mobile users, existence is in some intermedial zone of work and leisure; the experience of moving images through computer and digital technologies is interactive, blurring the lines between producer and consumer, spectacle and spectator, representation and information, as embodied by mashups and crowdsourcing. To represent these sets of relations between art, culture, work and relations of power, Cinema 3.0 must move beyond vision to engage thought.[2]

Now, these modes of interaction can transcend and replace the paratext with the extra-text. In Enemy, Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) mimics Cinema 3.0’s ‘viewser’ (to borrow Daly’s wonderfully clever semantic fusion of viewer and user) by interacting outside of the film text rather than remain within the industrially defined contours[3]; his investigation of his double provokes him to ‘perform’ as his double (a clear parallel of ambiguous intentionality to cos-playing). Adam, then, is the epitomical ‘viewser’: he creates a new meaning for himself by re-tooling the information provided to him by the ostensive unlimited saturation of digital media.

But the media’s role in creating a new hybrid subject is much more muted in Enemy than in say, Videodrome (in that it seems the 'film text' seems less important as the narrative progresses). In Cronenberg’s film, the virulence of television and home-video circulation and its role in shaping new subjects was clearly the ‘message’. Enemy seems to take this further: it shows what this perverse new flesh can achieve in an age where access to these images is even more democratized.

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[1] Kristen Daly, “Cinema 3.0: The Interactive-Image,” in Cinema Journal  50 (2010): 86

[2] Ibid.

[3] So this is clear I don’t want to merge the paratext with the extra-text, as the paratext is under the control of the industry. Websites, books, etc. are all put forth by the studio as a means to generate interest in the product. Conversely, the parameters of the extra-text are defined by the ‘viewsers’. In this context, stuff like ‘fan-art’  would be considered extratextual.  

OCULUS: Dialectics of Horror

Psychoanalysis v. Phenomenology. But the distinction isn’t so clear. The horror film ‘mirrors’ social anxieties; in the film, the possessed mirror reflects personal anxieties. The film’s formal structure sways between the real and the surreal, collapsing yet another boundary. Some contemporary horror films, as I have argued ad nauseam, blur the lines between reality and fiction; this is most commonly found in found footage films, but as I have recently argued (rather poorly, in retrospect), there now emerges a horror cinema that exists at the intersection between the realism offered by The Blair Witch Project and a kind of ‘traditional formalism’ that is symptomatic of fiction. I’m still not sure what this blending suggests, but it seems I wasn’t too far off in calling it the latest trend.

(I should reiterate that more than any other genre, the horror film is in an invariable state of reinvention. The western, I think, and science fiction are more grounded in a homogeneous syntax and grammar, or at the very least their iconographies are consistent: the elements of the plot are consistent throughout its history, with some minor variations in style. With the horror film, the genre lacks a singular identity: the trends range from monster movies to slashers. Current work on horror cinema-including my own research-places the horror film in a post-modern phase, where previous incarnations of the genre are alternatively eulogized or satirized: Scream, for instance, employed the slasher by making fun of its conventions and by mocking the ways it is received by the post-modern audience. Conversely, films like The Blair Witch Project are more aggressive in their interrogation of the post-modern spectator by using this realism to engender interactivity with the text. I think, however, that there is a sudden turn away from artifice and back to something that I can’t provide a name for.)

Unlike Blair Witch, the ‘realism’ in Oculus is diegetic. The characters employ the usual clichés of paranormal investigations - ranging from the conventional (thermometers) to the illogical (obscure instruments of detection) - to unveil the mirror’s inner spirits. The joke of this realism forcefully appears in a brief line of dialogue: after having a traumatic experience as a result of the mirror, one character asks (I might be paraphrasing): “Mind saying that for the camera?”

But more on this diegetic realism: films like The Blair Witch Project respond to digital-era fears of being unable to recognize fact from fiction. This fear is externalized in found footage (i.e. the fear is strongest if the viewer is unable to see past the indicators of artifice [narrative structure, for example]). In Oculus, the fear is internalized: the characters’ reflected fears-by means of hallucination-compromise their perception of reality, and indeed the viewer’s, too.

Most disturbingly, however, Oculus challenges epistemology. At the beginning of their ‘investigation’, the characters engage in this exchange: Tim attempts to explain the phenomena by means of psychoanalysis. Kaylie eschews such structure: she takes the position of the phenomenologist: the mirror’s strange power trivializes attempts to rationalize the phenomena. The two approaches are intertwined: psychoanalysis profits from the Freudian mirror reflecting what we’ve suppressed, and yet the phenomenon of the mirror is still ‘indescribable’ - bringing this back to phenomenology. I feel the film ends ambiguously, although some might disagree. For me, this ambiguity underscores this blurred distinction of approaches. In the end, the film mirrors my greatest fear: maybe I just can’t know.