Cinematic Perspectives on Digital Culture

By 1920 one of the most recognised faces on the planet belonged to Charlie Chaplin, confirming the influence of a powerful new medium. Today's film fans turn to Facebook and Twitter to follow their heroes. While the ubiquitous smart phone enmeshes consumers in nets of connectivity, interactivity requires that actors are also ensnared: thirty-two cameras simultaneously scrutinizing the face of the actor enables performance to blend with game logic. However, this book denies that new technology constitutes a hiatus. Instead the author argues that interaction with smart phones and tablet computers is part of a complex, historic continuum. The moving image represents a leap forward, proving that technology extends into (and out of) the mind as well as the body. Exploring research into mobile phone use as props to subjective identity, and employing concepts from Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and actor network theory, the author employs Sunset Boulevard (1950) as a key text. Discussing the affect of mechanisms of make-believe and celebrity that extend from an early victim of emerging celebrity culture (in 1915), to the avatar-obsessed game player of digital culture, this book makes visible previously ignored relations with machinic assemblages of desire.