Description
This book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of film in the context of the Anthropocene: the new geological era in which human beings have collectively become a force of nature. Daniel White draws on perspectives in philosophy, ecology, and cybernetics (the science of communication and control in animals and machines) to explore human self-understanding through film in the new era. The classical figure of Janus, looking both to the future and the past, serves as a guide throughout the study. Both feature and documentary films are considered.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction Stepping into the Play Frame: Cinema as Mammalian Communication
Chapter 2: Janus’s Celluloid and Digital Faces: The Existential Cyborg: Autopoiēsis in Christopher Nolan’s Memento
Chapter 3: Documentary Intertext: Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds 1964
Chapter 4: Cinema’s Historical Incarnations: Travelling the Möbius Strip of Biotime in Cloud Atlas
From Novel to Film
Chapter 5: Documentary Intertext: John Marshall’s The Hunters 1957
Chapter 6: Janus Speaks: Multicultural Polyvocality: Trinh Minh-ha’s The Fourth Dimension and The Digital Film Event
Chapter 7: Documentary Intertext: Gregory Bateson’s and Margaret Mead’s Trance and Dance in Bali 1952
Chapter 8: Janus’s Interspecies Faces: Biomorphic Transformations in the Ecology of Mind in James Cameron’s Avatar
Chapter 9: Documentary Intertext: J. Stephen Lansing’s and André Singer’s The Goddess and the Computer
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Toward a Transdisciplinary Critical Theory of Film
