Spectacular Digital Effects

Kristen Whissel is Professor of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema, also published by Duke University Press.

“The narrative is engaging, and Whissel's analysis of the effects emblem makes a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature of the field. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” - B. H McMillin (Choice) “Spectacular Digital Effects seeks to redeem oft-maligned computer-generated imagery in blockbuster cinema, arguing that the spectacle of digital effects enhances rather than detracts from the narrative. This aim is a much-needed move for balance in the field of media studies, and the conceptual framework, based in the historical study of emblems used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, is a new and interesting way to think through digital effects.” - Laura Felschow (Velvet Light Trap) “[B]y offering a focused analysis of the allegorical potential of effects sequences, Spectacular Digital Effects does more than expand a field that has recently received a great deal of attention in film and media studies. The book makes a valuable contribution to developing a new conversation about the complexities of spectacular effects in the cinema.” - Colin Williamson (Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television) "Whissel’s book is an illuminating study and a reminder that onscreen spectacle can deliver philosophical as well as visceral heft." - Ben Kooyman (Media International Australia)

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 11. The New Verticality 212. The Digital Multitude as Effects Emblem 593. Vital Figures: The Life and Death of Digital Creatures 914. The Morph: Protean Possibility and Algorithmic Control 131Conclusion 171Notes 185Bibliography 199Index 207