The Mind-Game Film. Cinema in the Digitalized Societies of Control

Dossier / Travail de Séminaire , 2014 , 18 Pages , Note: 1.0

Médias / Communication - Film et Télévision

This thesis brings into relation Thomas Elsaesser's category of the "mind-game film" and Gilles Deleuze's observations of a new depiction and awareness of time in film. The mind-game film
is then read as symptomatic of a social change from a society of "discipline" towards a "society of control" (Michel Foucault).
In the course of this analysis, the catalyst role of technical progress and pervasive interconnectedness becomes evident.

Traditional tenets of cinema and storytelling are overcome and played with. Time, which used to flow naturally, and therefore unnoticed, has evolved into a crucial, freely modulatable dimension of its own and serves as an additional structural and narrational level on top of the spatial dimensions. This development is propelled by the rise of the digital image and its manifold possibilities of interfering with the flow of time. Likewise, the principle of "focalization" is extended beyond the idea of merely directing our attention, towards the total filtration of the film reality through the (subjective) vision of a (or several) character(s) (Buckland 8). Thriving on these central elements, mind-game films aim to deceive the spectator by determining when, or if, he/she receives certain information which is crucial to the understanding of the story. Just as no focal character can possibly be sure of his/her own perception's reliability or, for that matter, his/her own mental sanity, we cannot trust our perception. What we see is the image of an image, filtered through a succession of
two minds, the character's virtual one and our own [...]

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Sociological Implications and the Mode of Storytelling
2.1. Intensified Focalization
2.2. The Mind-Game Film as a Mirror to the Society (of Control)
2.3. Mind-Game Film in the Light of Traditional Narratology

3. Multiple Levels of Storytelling, Viewing Experience and Identity

4. A New Understanding of Time
4.1. Time as a Medium in which we Exist
4.2. The Central Role of Time in Mind-Game Film (Diegesis and Editing)
4.3. The Central Role of Time in Mind-Game Film (Reception and Media)

5. The Media in the Society of Control

6. Conclusion

7. Works Cited

• Université: University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar (English Department))
• Cours: Digital Movies, Chaos Cinema, Post-Cinematic Affect: Thinking 21st-Century Motion Pictures
• Note: 1.0
• Auteur: Malte Mindermann (Auteur)
• Année de publication: 2014
• Pages: 18
• N° de catalogue: V285535
• ISBN (ebook): 9783656855026
• ISBN (Livre): 9783656855033
• Langue: anglais
• mots-clé: film, sociology, deleuze, elsaesser, cinema, motion picture, society of control, societies of control, mind-game film, mind game, film studies