Media Heterotopias: Digital Effects and Material Labor in Global Film Production 9780822372158

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MEDIA HETEROTOPIAS

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MEDIA HETEROTOPIAS Digital Effects and Material Labor in Global Film Production Hye Jean Chung

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Durham and London 2018

© 2017 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper ∞ Text designed by Jennifer Hill Cover designed by Julienne Alexander Typeset in Chaparrel Pro and Lato by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress isbn 978-­0-­8223-­7014-­7 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 978-­0-­8223-­7023-­9 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-­0-­8223-­7215-­8 (ebook) Cover art: Green screen film shoot, Hong Kong, June 2017. Bob Henry / Alamy.

To my parents

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CONTENTS

ix Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 17

1

Heterotopic Media: Assembling the Global in Digital Cinema

45

2

Heterotopic Mapping: The Fall and Ashes of Time Redux

75

3

Heterotopic Modularity: Avatar, Oblivion, and Interstellar

105

4

Heterotopic Monstrosity: The Host and Godzilla

141

5

Heterotopic Materiality: The World and Big Hero 6

177

Conclusion: The Seams of (Post)Digital Media Heterotopias

185 Notes 209 Bibliography 219 Index

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

he act of writing often takes place in a solitary state, but the long, laborious process of writing, editing, and publishing a book is never a solitary affair. This task would be unthinkable without the intellectual, emotional, and financial support of an indispensable group of people. I am delighted to express my gratitude and regard to the mentors, colleagues, friends, and family who have buttressed me throughout this long journey. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my dissertation committee members at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Janet Walker, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Bhaskar Sarkar, and Charles Wolfe, who provided me with bottomless wells of scholarly inspiration, insightful attentiveness, and incredible generosity. I greatly appreciate Janet’s steadfast support throughout the years and her wonderful way of encouraging me with stimulating conversations and pep talks, or extending a helping hand when needed. I thank Bishnu for her incredibly insightful comments and warm attentiveness to my work. I am always inspired by Bhaskar’s perspicacity, wit, eloquence, and intellectual curiosity. I am grateful to Chuck for sharing with me his rich and bountiful knowledge of our field and for showing genuine interest in my growth as a fledgling scholar. The unwavering support and rigorous engagement of my mentors at the formative stages of this project were instrumental in inspiring, developing, and structuring my ideas. They have shaped me into the scholar that I am today. I would also like thank the exceptional group of scholars who have provided me with much-­needed inspiration, guidance, and generous mentor-

ship throughout various stages of my intellectual development: Michael Berry, Peter Bloom, Edward Branigan, Jungbong Choi, Michael Curtin, Anna Everett, Dick Hebdige, Jennifer Holt, Sukyoung Kim, Lisa Parks, Constance Penley, Celine Perreñas Shimizu, Greg Siegel, and Cristina Venegas. I also owe much to John Caldwell, Teshome Gabriel, and Vivian Sobchack, whose academic excellence, intellectual enthusiasm, and warm-­hearted collegiality set high standards of scholarship during my early years in graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles. I am infinitely grateful to William Uricchio and Eugenie Brinkema, whom I had the great fortune to meet during my postdoctoral fellowship period at the Comparative Media Studies Department at mit. They were most generous with their time, showing warm support to a young scholar with heartfelt and helpful advice, and providing perceptive suggestions for my work. I continue to be inspired by you in my developing journey as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. I am extremely grateful to the editors at Duke University Press, most particularly Courtney Berger, whose enthusiasm and words of encouragement were instrumental in guiding me through the exciting yet bewildering process of editing and publishing. I would like to thank Sara Leone and Sandra Korn for their help throughout this process. I also wish to express deep gratitude to my anonymous readers, whose insightful and detailed comments were incredibly helpful in refining my arguments and prose in the revision process. As an academic with no direct connections to the film industry, one must often depend on the kindness of strangers and friends to get interviews. I am greatly indebted to the numerous people who helped me during my field research. I owe special thanks to Steve Nelson, who kindly and generously coordinated my very first visit to Hollywood studio sets and my early interviews with industry practitioners. I would also like to express sincere gratitude to my interviewees Bong Joon-­ho, Geoff Burdick, John Gajdecki, Lewis Kim, Euisung Lee, Gary Lee, SeungHun Lee, Ellen Poon, Kevin Rafferty, and Hannes Ricklefs for taking the time to answer my questions. I am particularly grateful to Jeffrey Okun, Ellen Poon, and Joyce Cox for providing me with access to industry summits and events. Throughout the years, I have had numerous opportunities to consider and articulate the topics in this book. Portions of chapters 2 and 5 incorporate material from an earlier version published as “Media Heterotopia and x  |  Acknow led gment s

Transnational Filmmaking: Mapping Real and Virtual Worlds,” Cinema Journal 51, no. 4 (Summer 2012), with much revision. Chapter 3 is revised from “Media Heterotopias and Science Fiction: Transnational Workflows and Transgalactic Spaces in Digitally Composited Ecosystems,” in Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema, edited by Jennifer L. Feeley and Sarah Ann Wells (2015). An early version of chapter 4 appeared in a substantially different form in “The Host and D-­War: Complex Intersections of National Imaginings and Transnational Aspirations,” Spectator 29, no. 2 (Fall 2009). The completion of this book was assisted by a fellowship from my home institution. With much gratitude, I acknowledge that this work was supported by a grant from Kyung Hee University in 2015 (khu-­20150517). Finally, I am eternally grateful to my parents, who have always encouraged me to ask questions, to be curious, to dream big, and to express my creative urges. I would like to express special thanks to my father for setting a formidable example as a scholar with passion and perseverance, and to my mother for always believing that I could accomplish whatever I set out to do. Warm thanks to my dear sister for providing me with emotional and intellectual support when it was necessary. Without their unwavering love, patience, and guidance throughout the years, I would not be where I am today. Thank you all for making the process of writing less solitary.

Acknow led gment s  | xi

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INTRODUCTION

A

c­ omputer-­generated colossal monster swims below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and a c­ lose-­up of a butterfly morphs into an aerial shot of a similarly shaped island. A boy and his robot companion soar exuberantly over a cityscape bathed in sunlight, and an astronaut who is suspended midair in a five-­dimensional space engages in nonverbal communication with his Earth-­bound daughter. The integration of imaginary figures into virtual cinematic spaces and the sensation of movement across physical and digital environments embody fantasies of traversing geographical, national, and ontological borders. Contemporary cinema is manifesting aspirations of mobility in its narratives, aesthetics, iconography, editing techniques, camera movement, and thematic tropes of travel. In the contemporary media landscape, digital technology is frequently deployed to achieve the technical and imaginative compositing of physical spaces and ­computer-­generated environments. Current practices in filmmaking are increasingly deploying d ­ igital technologies, thereby enabling, facilitating, and necessitating a global reconfiguration of film production workflows and pipelines. As a result, a rising number of contemporary films are created by collaborative forms of transnational filmmaking that circulate economic resources, cultural products, technical expertise, and creative labor via digital platforms in a global film industry. Meanwhile, the predominant rhetoric of seamlessness, magic, and automation attached to digital technologies in both popular and scholarly discourses encourages the tendency in film audi-

ences, scholars, and industry specialists to disregard multiple stages of creative labor in film production pipelines. The tendency of neglect is exacerbated as the pipelines increasingly become geographically dispersed in various national territories and distributed across nonlinear digital workflows that exemplify post-­Fordist practices of flexible accumulation. Creative workers in film industries have always been somewhat mobile since the early beginnings of cinema. The current filmmaking practices in increasingly global and digital production pipelines, however, differ dramatically from past forms in scope, scale, and frequency. A historical shift in film production is taking place at this critical moment in the intersection of transnational filmmaking and digital technologies. This necessitates a corresponding shift in scholarship that adequately acknowledges the digitized and globalized workflows of media production. Integrating concerns of transnational film studies, production studies, and critical theory, this book examines networked connections among global film production, digital filmmaking, ­computer­generated visual effects, creative labor, and digital aesthetics. M EDI A H ET EROTO P I A A S CO N CEPT

Expanding Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopic spaces to encompass digitally composited environments in contemporary cinema, I introduce a critical concept and methodology: “media heterotopia.” This book demonstrates the use of “media heterotopia” as a mode of perception that recognizes and describes new hybrid forms, that is, digital composites of multiple layers that contain material residues of globally dispersed film production. It examines industry practices that take place in the workflow of global production pipelines in a digital era. The book particularly focuses on forms of creative labor that leave legible or perceptible traces of residual materiality onscreen—what I call “spectral effects”—by creating the aesthetic design and stylistic effects of a film, namely, special and visual effects, sound effects, editing, cinematography, and compositing. This scholarly task addresses the need to reconnect mediated onscreen environments and entities with the material presence of production spaces and laboring bodies. The critical stakes of reclaiming materiality are high because it is a matter of ownership, control, and claim over a wide spectrum of labor, capital, resources, and intellectual property. To study what is rendered invisible through the effacement of site-­specific materiality, this project examines the concerted efforts of 2  |  Int roduc t ion

diverse forms of labor and the uneven distribution of ownership claims over the finished product. By examining production cultures and industrial practices of contemporary filmmaking, a heterotopic analysis recognizes digitally constructed assets and composited environments as incarnations of material realities attached to actual locales and physical bodies. This task is important because they embody tensions between global aspirations and nationalist desires, as well as geopolitical infrastructures and frictions that exist “on the ground.” This book studies the agents and sites of production that create these mediated environments and examines how they are rendered invisible, or “spectral.” Here a heterotopic perception is deployed to identify and recognize these spectral effects of globally dispersed, digitally composited sites and bodies of labor. This book tackles the rhetorical and aesthetic emphasis on seamlessness, which masks the complex material realities of the actual workflow of global production pipelines in a digital regime. In order to dismantle the dissimulation of seamlessness, a heterotopic analysis reveals it as a discursive construct that generates a misleading conception of transnational filmmaking practices that are prevalent in contemporary media environments. The industry term “compositing” is appropriated as a deconstructive research methodology and interpretive strategy to examine the material and metaphorical dimensions of a process that simultaneously masks and exposes the layering of multiple spatiotemporalities in the finished product. Because digital compositing is an integral stage in film production that achieves the technical and aesthetic merging of multiple digital layers, assets, and environments, the critical appropriation of this term is apposite to analyze the site-­specific conditions of contemporary film production and the effects they produce. At stake is the revelation of the contradiction between rhetoric and reality: the rhetoric of a fluid, effortless mobility idealized in a film’s narrative, aesthetics, and “seamless” integration of visual effects, and the reality of local circumstances, geopolitical frictions, and distribution of labor in global production pipelines that, at times, sustains and ­reinforces structural inequalities and cultural hegemony. As a new mode of synesthetic apprehension, a heterotopic perception allows spectators to perceive and interpret disjunctures between rhetoric and reality. This idea differs from the popular notion of immersion that is often invoked in film and media studies by refusing to accept that the spectator is mindlessly Int roduc t ion  | 3

immersed in, or dazzled by, the virtual world. Instead, this new mode of perception endeavors to recognize social realities grounded in the material world. The concept of media heterotopia prompts us to think beyond the limiting container of the national while avoiding the facile transcendence of borders often invoked in discussions of the transnational. It presents an alternative critical framework that moves away from the restrictions of the national paradigm and reconfigures national claims within a transnational register by acknowledging the overlapping layers of the national and the transnational, or the local and the global. A heterotopic analysis demonstrates a method to challenge the notion of cinematic space as a seamless unity. Instead, it considers cinematic space as a textured, multi­ layered assemblage of mediated materiality, or a composite of physical locations and digitally manipulated images that retain material residues of a geographically dispersed workflow. P OSI T I O N I N G MEDI A H ET EROTO P I A IN TR A N SN AT I O N A L FI LM ST UDI E S

In this era of globally circulating capital, labor, and media, film scholars are moving away from linear historical narratives confined to specific national or regional boundaries to consider more dispersed and expansive global narratives, propelling a turn toward spatial concepts and methodologies.1 The growing scholarly interest in digital media dovetails with this move toward globalization because they both promise to actualize our aspirations of fluidity and mobility across textual, technological, and geographical borders. It is debatable whether this “spatial turn” signifies a seismic rupture or a fundamental difference from the spatial concerns of previous work in film and media studies. In any case, an increasing number of scholars are exploring and demonstrating explicit ways to foreground issues of space in studying media texts, industries, institutions, infrastructures, and production cultures.2 Many film scholars now acknowledge transnational film studies as a valid and vital field of inquiry and accept the term “transnational” as a viable and useful concept to describe contemporary filmmaking practices. One pressing concern is the specificity and scholarly significance of the “transnational” in comparison to related terms, notably, “international” and “global.” By unpacking the term (“trans-­” and “national”), scholars suggest that we should refrain from overcelebrating the “trans-­” portion 4  |  Int roduc t ion

of the word, noting that the “national” should always be implicated in discussions of the transnational. Pam Cook asserts that “international” implies the relative stability of the national element, whereas “transnational” indicates a more fluid exchange among “people from diverse backgrounds who engage in collaborative cultural activities” through its focus on mobility and flow.3 Wary of the interchangeable deployment of related concepts, Nataša Ďurovičová highlights the differences among the three terms: “global,” “international,” “and transnational.” She notes that the “global” is connected to “the philosophical category of totality,” and that the prefix ­“inter-­” signals “a latent relationship of parity,” whereas the prefix “trans-­” implies relations of “unevenness and mobility.”4 Ďurovičová then considers ways to upgrade “the geopolitical imaginary of the discipline of film studies” to a transnational perspective.5 Noting that the “old national cinemas approach” is no longer sufficient, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar also interrogate how we can think about “transnational film studies” as an academic field.6 With the rising popularity of the term, scholars who study ­cross-­border collaborations have expressed concerns that an uncritical use of the concept of transnationality could render it irrelevant or redundant. In response to this issue, Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim propose a “critical transnationalism” in film studies that adequately interprets the “interface between global and local,” avoids the binary of national / ​transnational, and proposes a theory of transnational cinema that considers both levels of the “conceptual-­abstract” and the “concrete-­ specific.”7 Similarly, Mette Hjort argues that, for the transnational turn in film studies to be productive, scholars need to “find a principled way of distinguishing between what counts as transnational and what does not.”8 As possible ways to accomplish this, she suggests either using the “transnational” as “a scalar concept,” that is, gauging “strong or weak forms of transnationality,” or distinguishing between “marked and unmarked t­ ransnationality.”9 For the purposes of this project on media heterotopias, Hjort’s aforementioned suggestions are more useful than the detailed typology of ­cinematic transnationalisms that she proposes in the same essay. Her suggestion that we should consider different forms of marked and unmarked transnationality is particularly apposite to clarify what I mean by “transnational filmmaking.” The transnational can assert itself as a critical force in the film production process in a variety of ways: geoInt roduc t ion  | 5

graphically diverse production sites, globally dispersed laboring agents and creative talent,10 and ­cross-­border partnerships, collaborations, and coproductions in terms of financial investment and cultural resources. To explain her notion of “marked transnationality,” Hjort writes: “A film might be said to count as an instance of marked transnationality if the agents who are collectively its author (typically directors, cinematographers, editors, actors, and producers) intentionally direct the attention of viewers towards various transnational properties that encourage thinking about transnationality. This kind of process may involve the foregrounding or making salient of certain elements through camerawork or editing, but it may also involve an intensive use of those narrative techniques and devices that allow certain ideas to be constituted as fully developed themes.”11 Although a heterotopic analysis of cinematic transnationalism is similarly concerned with such elements as camerawork or editing, it troubles the binary of marked / ​unmarked by studying spectral residues of site-­ specific materiality that can be found in a film. These residues similarly “direct the attention of viewers toward various transnational properties that encourage thinking about transnationality,” as noted by Hjort. A heterotopic analysis of these spectral residues, however, recognizes that the distinction between marked and unmarked is ambiguous. It is not always easy to identify the intentionality of the various agents, partly because of the diversity that precludes them from forming a monolithic group that shares a collective vision of the film. Furthermore, it is often the supposedly unmarked elements of a film that, regardless of intentionality, provoke the spectator to think about the transnational forces at work in cinema. The scholarly task at hand is to discuss transnational cinema in ways that expand beyond traditional modes or explicit forms of multinational coproduction, and to move toward a critical strategy that adequately addresses the material practices of transnational filmmaking and the global reconfiguration of labor. To perform this task, this book highlights various forms of creative labor that work to embody the collective vision onscreen by creating the aesthetic design and stylistic effects of a film, namely, computer animation, visual effects, special effects, cinematography, editing, and digital compositing. This focus is not to undermine the multiple forms of labor that take place beyond the sensory realm

6  |  Int roduc t ion

of audience perception (e.g., the work of catering staff, drivers, or assistants) but to emphasize the erasure of particular forms of creative labor that leave overtly legible or perceptible traces of residual materiality in the film. This is, of course, only a tentative beginning toward the development of much-­needed research that includes scholarly recognition of a wider spectrum of labor in film and media industries. By drawing connections between global media production and digital technologies, this project offers a different kind of mapping of the world through the concept of media heterotopia. The process of digital compositing creates cinematic imagery that integrates physical and virtual elements and stitches together geographically distant sites and bodies that are attached to diverse national territories and cultural backgrounds.12 A heterotopic analysis is useful for describing and identifying the multiple audiovisual layers of cinematic spaces that form a composite image. This book proposes that we consider how each digitally manipulated layer is materially connected to specific sites of production and how the composited layers retain the spectral, yet perceptible, residues of a geographically dispersed workforce. In accordance with the view that theoretical abstractions should be grounded in the materiality of historical locations and cultural practices, this project focuses primarily on films collaboratively produced by media industries around the Pacific Rim region, including South Korea, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Two notable exceptions are Iceland and Great Britain: two nations that figure prominently in the films discussed here for their roles in location shooting and visual effects, respectively. The geographical focus of this project is necessary to situate it in the context of economic interests, geopolitical tensions, cultural collaborations, and industrial networks that are specific to this region. This localized perspective is partly based on the fact that a large amount of work on c­ omputer-­generated visual effects and animation takes place in this area for various reasons that include patterns of global capital flows, preexisting forms of hard and soft infrastructure, media production pipelines, tax exemptions, and lower labor costs, as well as professional networks and personal relationships. Many visual effects companies have branches in Asia, such as Industrial Light and Magic’s Singaporean branch and Moving Picture Company’s facilities in China and India. Other local factors include Hollywood’s long-­standing

Int roduc t ion  | 7

tradition of outsourcing animation work to East Asian countries (e.g., China and Korea) or hiring experts from these regions, and the rising status of New Zealand’s Weta Digital as a seasoned visual effects vendor. Despite its emphasis on transnational filmmaking, this localized focus is also imperative to examine the concrete site-­specific elements and practices of media materiality, which are contingent to regional networks of exchange that exist within a larger global context. As noted, various socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces affect, shape, and produce media texts, industries, and infrastructures. This book, however, is not an area studies project. Rather, it deploys an interdisciplinary approach that draws connections between film and media, global, cultural, and spatial studies by studying virtual spaces and bodies in audiovisual media and transnational networks of creative labor. H ETE ROTO P I C A N A LYSI S A S MET HO D O LO GY

This book theorizes and demonstrates a heterotopic perception or spectatorship that recognizes the material residues of globally dispersed workforces and digital production pipelines in the aesthetic forms of contemporary cinema. As such, this study engages in an interdisciplinary discussion of critical theory, mediated spaces, global media practices, material realities, geopolitical formations, and transnational aspirations. The existing body of scholarship in film and media studies is often divided between textual analyses of media images, narratives, and representations versus extratextual analyses of political economy, media production, and consumption. In Production Culture, John Caldwell demonstrates an “integrated ­cultural-­industrial method” of analysis that synthesizes textual analysis, interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and economic / ​industrial analysis in order to study the cultural practices of film and video production in the Los Angeles area.13 This study responds to Caldwell’s call for ­cross-­pollination between industrial self-­analyses and scholarly analyses. Focusing on the encounter between physical sites and virtual spaces, this book examines how the materiality of transnational labor is mediated in film texts and leaves palpable and perceptible traces onscreen. To fulfill this task, an inclusive method is needed to integrate critical analyses of film texts, industry practices, technological developments, and production cultures of contemporary global cinema. This book proposes to address this need by embarking on a project that is ever expanding because new media technologies and industry practices 8  |  Int roduc t ion

are constantly emerging and evolving. Through a double research focus that is both theoretically and technically informed, this project revises traditional film analysis by incorporating analyses of what is usually regarded as extratextual, such as field research on production spaces and interviews with industry professionals. In an endeavor to bridge the divisive gap between analyses of media representations, technologies, theoretical concepts, and industrial practices, this book combines the methodologies of textual analysis, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork. I take a closer look at filmmaking techniques and production culture by examining production spaces (e.g., film studios, visual effects companies) and interviewing industry professionals, such as directors, producers, visual effects supervisors, previsualization artists, and production designers. Other sites of research include professional conferences on film, animation, and computer graphics that attract both scholars and industry professionals (e.g., Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques [siggraph], an annual conference on computer graphics). My sources also include dvd / ​Blu-­ray special features that offer in-­depth interviews, specialized publications on technological innovations and visual effects, academic publications, trade journals, and popular press articles. This project also extends a wider view of the filmmaking process to include various stages of production, preproduction, and postproduction. Until recently, studies on practical and visual effects have been marginalized in film studies. Thanks to an increased interest in digital technologies and new media, scholars are publishing innovative research on digital aesthetics, ­computer-­generated imagery (cgi), and technological developments in film production. For instance, the British Film Institute anthology Special Effects: New Histories / ​Theories / ​Contexts directs much-­ needed scholarly attention toward various forms of special and visual effects, including prosthetics makeup effects, motion capture, puppet animation, and digital effects. Shilo McClean compares digital visual effects with other innovative film technologies, such as sound and color, as a legitimate tool of storytelling; Dan North traces the genealogy of trickery through spectacle from ­nineteenth-­century stage magic and early trick films to contemporary films that include cgi; Stephen Prince analyzes how digital technologies expand the tools of Hollywood filmmaking in aesthetic, theoretical, and historical terms; and Kristen Whissel discusses how spectacular digital visual effects impact the narrative and thematic Int roduc t ion  | 9

concerns of a film while placing them in broader historical contexts of film history and technological change.14 This scholarly emphasis is particularly important at this moment, as production processes are increasingly commodified and consumed as popular entertainment in dvd / ​Blu-­ray special features, interviews, promotional material, and popular / ​trade publications that purport to reveal the supposed “magic” behind cgi and visual effects. Although this wealth of practical information ostensibly promises to explain how things are made, it often elides the political, economic, or ethical implications of production cultures and material practices of filmmaking. Addressing this erasure, this project on media heterotopias aims to reconfigure the relationship between the material reality of production spaces and digitally mediated environments. The significance of studying the details of the production process reaches beyond specific areas of film studies, such as production studies, media industry ethnographies, and political economy. This project refuses to disavow the material practices of site-­specific labor and considers the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of this disavowal to the discipline as a whole. It proposes to revise a naive misconception of a global connectivity that assumes a facile fusion of heterogeneous elements of territorial materiality. This “composite” methodology is necessitated by this effacement of labor, through which the step-­by-­step process of making films and mul­tiple sources of labor are erased or hidden from public view. Various agents collude to sustain this exclusion: studios guarding their intellectual property rights and franchise ownership; companies protecting their claims over proprietary tools and software; and individual artisans promoting the magical and illusory quality of their work for artistic, economic, or legal reasons. This secrecy can be attributed to the industry’s need to perpetuate the myth of seamless integrity, as well as artists’ need to hide the nuts and bolts of their craft. But the stakes are high when this secrecy manages to conceal global dispersions of power, inequities in distributions of economic and cultural capital, and labor practices in media industries. Sustaining this air of mystique can ultimately prove detrimental for artists because it obscures the time-­consuming elements of their labor.15 This need for secrecy and propriety also makes it difficult for scholars, students, and fans who wish to study contemporary forms of film production. Large portions of archived material are inaccessible to industry outsiders, and proprietary resources are digitized and stored in private 10  |  Int roduc t ion

files owned by the studio, the production company, or individual industry professionals. The seriality of movie franchises, which includes prequels, sequels, reboots, and remakes, also renders it difficult for outsiders to obtain access because the creative property must be protected and hidden from the public for extended periods of time. Describing her ethnographic research in Hollywood, anthropologist Sherry Ortner notes the difficulties of gaining access to the professional community of “Hollywood insiders” that is structured around an “inside / ​ outside binary.”16 The reasons behind this secrecy, she argues, include the need to protect information due to Hollywood’s competitive environment; the need to sustain a sense of community within the industry; the need to maintain the illusions of Hollywood products; and the “culture of exclusion” that constitutes the Hollywood community.17 As a way of surmounting the barriers of secrecy in Hollywood, Ortner suggests a methodology of participant observation called “interface ethnography,” which entails attending public events that are open to the public as well as to Hollywood professionals.18 John Caldwell, a pioneer in production studies, similarly observes that the growing number of industry / ​academic interactions enables scholars to gain access to information and provides opportunities for fieldwork, despite remaining difficulties such as legal actions and corporate policies.19 To deal with this problem of accessibility, scholars studying production culture are driven to be innovative in their search for source material. Because this heterotopic project entails excavating hidden details and layers, it has been inspired by the archaeological approaches and methods of film historians through the shared task of looking for materials that are not immediately accessible due to temporal distance, spatial discrepancy, or proprietary gatekeeping. As a prime example of transdisciplinary research that connects cultural theory, historiography, feminist theory, and film history, Giuliana Bruno’s work gracefully integrates issues of time and space, as well as history and geography. In Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, Bruno adopts what she calls an “archaeological” intertextual approach by examining visual, literary, and spatial texts, such as novels, paintings, photographs, architectural sites, and literature. This approach is necessitated by the fact that her object of study—the lost or forgotten work of Italian woman filmmaker Elvira Notari—is no longer physically available. Bruno performs an analysis that she describes as a “palimpsest,” which prompts her to go beyond the “visible traces on a surface” Int roduc t ion  | 11

to reveal “invisible ones inside the body of texts.”20 The tension between visibility and invisibility is negotiated in her work when she spatializes the historical practices in Italy from the late 1800s to the mid-­1900s, such as the way women experienced movement and mobility through “streetwalking” and film viewing—two activities that were closely related at the time. This tension is also palpable when Bruno corporealizes visual representations by contextualizing pictorial, photographic, and cinematic images of women’s bodies within the actual public spaces in which these images were housed and consumed, such as arcades, theaters, and city streets. This book does not present a history of transnational filmmaking, since its focus is on contemporary media texts, modes, and industrial practices. It is, however, influenced by a historical consciousness that recognizes that these contemporaneous economic, cultural, and geopolitical infrastructures are created and sustained by historically specific conditions of globally inclined industries, infrastructures, and cultures. This project envisions a transnational geography that maps traces of territorial materiality through globally dispersed and digitally networked film production pipelines. The corpus of films analyzed here performs global circulations of capital, labor, resources, and images. In other words, they manifest the seams of digital filmmaking and the perceptible traces of a transnational workforce. For example, the ­computer-­generated monster in The Host functions as a very visible seam that embodies transnational collaboration, and the globally mobile figure of Godzilla actively performs a global, or planetary, identity. The following chapters present heterotopic analyses that expose legible traces of transnational sources of labor and expertise in the film, extratextual material, and surrounding discourse. This book endeavors to expand the geographical scope of the study of production culture in the media industry. It shifts the focus from the localized area of Los Angeles to geographically dispersed locales around the Pacific Rim. The selection of films is diversified in terms of region, genre, budget, and use of digital technologies. Avatar, Oblivion, Interstellar, and Godzilla are “blockbuster” films produced by the digital pipelines of global Hollywood. Avatar, in particular, is regarded as a groundbreaking project that built new “virtual production” pipelines connecting the capital, resources, and creative labor of the United States, New Zealand, and Great Britain. The Host is a South Korean film produced by a geo12  |  Int roduc t ion

graphically dispersed workforce that included a Korean game designer, New Zealand’s Weta Digital, John Cox’s workshop in Australia, and the Orphanage, a visual effects studio that was based in California. Directed by an I­ ndian-­born filmmaker who works in the United States, The Fall is an independent film that was shot on location in ­twenty-­four countries. Ashes of Time Redux is a digitally reedited version of a film by a globally recognized Hong Kong auteur. The World is a Chinese / ​Japanese / ​French coproduction shot on location at the Beijing World Park and a park in Shenzhen called Window of the World. Big Hero 6 is a ­computer-­animated film that was produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and based on a Marvel comic featuring a Japanese superhero team. These films were selected to compare their diverse ways of thematizing, visualizing, and enacting global mobility. Some of the films are ­large-­scale, big-­budget projects produced by economic or creative collaborations that exemplify the global reconfiguration of labor. Others are independent films that embody global aspirations and movements in ways that deviate from the industrial norm. Many contemporary films do not necessarily announce themselves as multinational coproductions or partnerships. Rather, these films are better described as transnational collaborations, a more flexible term that encompasses versatile configurations of cooperative labor. In film production, the terms “coproduction” and “partnership” place more emphasis on the financial and business aspect of film production, in contrast to “collaboration,” which is commonly used to describe the collective nature of creative endeavor. Meanwhile, “partnership” suggests an even, nonhierarchical distribution of shared work and responsibility, whereas “collaboration” ambiguously encompasses uneven negotiations and distributions of economic and cultural capital. Furthermore, the term “col-­labor-­ation” is more intimately related to labor, as the latter is embedded both linguistically and conceptually in the former.21 This term, I find, is most appropriate in describing contemporary transnational filmmaking because it encompasses the whole process that includes the various stages of labor from beginning to end: preproduction, production, and postproduction.22 Chapter 1 introduces the concept of media heterotopia and explains its role in studying mediated spaces and bodies that are digitally created and composited by a globally dispersed workforce. This chapter discusses the values of “seamlessness,” “smoothness,” and “fluidity,” exploring how Int roduc t ion  | 13

they are associated with the properties of digital technologies in popular, professional, and scholarly discourses on film production. Here I examine rhetorical strategies that efface traces of temporal and spatial dispersions of labor. This assumption of dematerialization becomes a high-­stakes issue, I contend, when the abstraction of material objects into numeric symbols that occurs in the digital process is transferred to the erasure of human labor. The development of computerized processes often entails the misguided notion that, when a computer takes over work previously done by humans, it eliminates the human factor in the production process. This chapter discusses how a slippage of meaning occurs between digitization and automation, and how this negatively affects those working in the film industry. Chapter 2 demonstrates how media heterotopias offer a spatial conception of a world that maps global movements of bodies, resources, images, and commodities. This chapter explains how media heterotopias can be envisioned as maps, in which different territories are merged as a composite, mobilized into closer proximity with one another, or linked via globally dispersed production pipelines. A heterotopic analysis of two films, The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2006) and Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-­wai, 2008), examines how media heterotopias are created through a process that involves location shooting and various forms of digital filmmaking, editing, and remastering in geographically diverse production sites. Seeing these films as a map enables us to track multiple temporal and spatial trajectories that are emblematic of our globally connected and digitally mediated times. In this case, such trajectories include the infrastructures of cultural and economic capital, the distribution of international art house films, cinematic circulations of the martial arts genre, the geographical dispersion of the Chinese diaspora, and the vicissitudes of the Hong Kong film industry. This chapter specifically focuses on transnational trajectories that embody physical and virtual cosmopolitan mobilities in and beyond diegetic spaces. I read these films as a heterotopic assemblage that articulates intersecting global and digital modes of being and connecting. Chapter 3 examines the digital rendering process of material production spaces to explain they are composited into media heterotopias. The purpose of this task is to study how composited shots contain material and digital assets that are mutable, mobile, and modular. I discuss the hybrid environments in contemporary science fiction films that incorpo14  |  Int roduc t ion

rate real locations and ­computer-­generated ecosystems to create “alien,” or otherworldly, spaces. I particularly focus on three science fiction films made by global Hollywood: Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013), and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014). These films present virtual ecosystems that are digitally manipulated, produced, and composited. They also use terrestrial locations as raw materials to build imaginary, unearthly landscapes. A heterotopic analysis will reveal how globally dispersed digital workflows produce and composite virtual terrains, or heterotopic spaces that incarnate transnational geographies. Chapter 4 draws attention to heterotopic bodies that inhabit real and virtual spaces by examining the ­computer-­animated, globally mobile monsters in The Host (Gwoemul, Bong Joon-­ho, 2006) and Godzilla (Gareth Edwards, 2014). This chapter discusses how putatively intangible cultural codes are embodied in these monstrous figures through bodily gestures, visual styles, and globally translatable forms. I study how images of transnational bodies become animated and corporealized through the processes of digital filmmaking and compositing. These monstrous bodies are presented as media heterotopias that comprise multiple composited layers of various national origins and cultural identities. This chapter suggests reading these monstrous bodies as a visible seam of compositing transnational labor, and as entities that embody the ongoing negotiation between national claims of ownership and transnational circulations of mediated and physical bodies. A heterotopic analysis deconstructs the visual and corporeal nature of these monsters to consider how they are made palatable and legible for global consumption. Chapter 5 focuses on the potential of the digital medium to convey geographical diversity and cosmopolitan mobility in heterotopic spaces. This chapter discusses how two films, The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004) and Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014), perform digitality in relation to how they perform globality. These films foreground the cinematic use of digital technologies and their role in facilitating a virtual mobility that transcends regional, national, and geographical boundaries. Both films embody contemporary global consciousness by deploying various modes of mediation, communication, and visualization. Big Hero 6 presents both material and mediated performances of transnational movement, whereas The World focuses on “virtual cosmopolitans” who use various modes of media technologies to simulate global travel. This chapter discusses how digital aesthetics can envision and enact a Int roduc t ion  | 15

virtual mobility that transcends geographical boundaries to engage in a global media network.

The heterotopic analyses in this book focus on narrative feature films, but the theoretical model of media heterotopias is broadly applicable to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital media and visual culture. Before proceeding, however, I offer a caveat. While introducing the various ways to deploy the concept of heterotopia, Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter caution against its overuse: In placing the emphasis on the centrality of heterotopia in the contemporary urban condition, however, we have to overcome an equally problematic pitfall that travelers in heterotopia have to face: when putting on heterotopian spectacles, everything tends to take on heterotopian traits. The following axiom, therefore, has been our guide: not everything is a heterotopia. At stake is to find out whether the concept of heterotopia could be made consistent or whether it should, on the contrary, be given up altogether because its vagueness has only brought confusion and continues to do so.23

When discussing heterotopic spaces and bodies in mediated environments, one confronts a similar conundrum: can everything and anything be heterotopic? As noted earlier, once you develop a heterotopic perception, or put on “heterotopian spectacles,” you begin to see or sense traces and effects of heterotopia everywhere. Although I envision media heterotopia as a portable, versatile concept that can be readily applicable to various modes of mediation, a sweeping generalization that all audio­ visual texts are media heterotopias is hardly discerning or productive. With this in mind, the following chapters will address these questions: What constitutes media heterotopias? How adequately does this concept describe or produce transnational imaginaries? And how effectively does it prompt enhanced levels of scholarship and spectatorship that recognize heterogeneous collaborations?

16  |  Int roduc t ion

1 HETEROTOPIC MEDIA

Assembling the Global in Digital Cinema

S

patial concerns are reemerging across various disciplines to map geopolitical relations, economic exchange, and ­cross-­cultural encounters. A rising consciousness of transnational networks and virtual environments changes our perceptions of the world and our experience of navigating within it. Global flows and virtual spaces are often described in scholarly and popular discourse as actualizing aspirations of fluidity, mobility, and transcendence over symbolic, technological, physical, and geographical borders. Themes, narratives, images, and virtual sensations of mobility that are articulated and idealized in contemporary media often reinforce a rhetorical and aesthetic emphasis on the ease of crossing borders. This prompts a continuous renewal of conceptions of territory, national identity, and the transnational imaginary. What is singular about this particular global moment is that the transnational circulation of images is enabled and facilitated by digital modes of production, distribution, and mediation. Discourses on globalization and digitization often overemphasize the seamless integration of heterogeneous elements. Pervasive claims of seamlessness are generated by and circulated among industry practitioners, film audiences, critics, and scholars. These claims, however, are erroneous. In order to obtain a nuanced understanding of the real conditions and lived realities of transnational film production workflows that increasingly combine site-­specific labor and digital technologies, we need to question this popular yet problematic tendency to consider seamless integration as an apt description of digital and global media. Traces of the material conditions of media production become perceptible when we study how

contemporary films are created through a complex collaborative process that deploys digital technologies and takes place in geographically dispersed locations in multiple stages of production and postproduction. While seamlessness can be effective as a trope for describing the effects of digital and global media, it presents a misleading conception of the material topography of transnational filmmaking by disregarding economic, geopolitical, social, and cultural concerns. Its rhetorical enthusiasm falsely suggests an idealized state that is built on assumptions of effortless labor and frictionless collaboration. This erasure, however, is a disingenuous ruse that dehistoricizes, deracinates, and manipulates attention away from the inherent violence of ignoring the realities of a territorial materiality, conflating specificities of different regions and cultures, and erasing fractures that arise amid c­ ross-­cultural interactions. This fetishizing of a seamless integrity conceals the actual living bodies and physical sites of labor and idealizes effortless mobility and disembodied flight. This misrepresentation conceals the fact that these physical bodies and geographical locations are often firmly anchored to their respective national territories and regional infrastructures—with cultural and geopolitical significance still intact. UNRAV ELI N G T H E DI SCO URSE OF SEA MLESSN ESS: RH ETO RI C, AEST H ET I CS,   T ECH N O LO GY

In Bong Joon-­ho’s The Host, a slimy, disfigured monster clambers out of a river and lumbers through a crowded metropolitan area of Seoul, attacking terrified citizens. A shot of a man’s deviously smiling visage slowly morphs into a visually corresponding image of a barren desert landscape in Tarsem’s The Fall. A blue alien figure bumps into humans and awkwardly knocks over objects in a laboratory setting in James Cameron’s Avatar. Even though contemporary spectators recognize that these situations are impossible in the real world, the photorealistic aspect of cgi makes it easy to suspend disbelief and give in to the visual seductions afforded by these spectacles. Such digital assemblages that integrate profilmic elements (i.e., what is physically present in front of the camera) and cgi created in postproduction are common in contemporary modes of filmmaking that increasingly deploy digital technologies in the domains of visual effects, computer animation, cinematography, and compositing. 18  |  ch ap te r 1

The rapid emergence and development of digital cinema has raised much discussion in popular and scholarly contexts to identify its distinctive qualities and consequences.1 The sequences just described particularly exemplify the seamless effect that is produced when ­computer-­generated figures and environments are smoothly integrated with real actors, actual landscapes, and practical sets, and when digital technologies simulate a fluid sensation of movement across a virtual environment. Based on utopian imaginings of c­ ross-­border mobility and dissolving spatiotemporal boundaries, this rhetoric of seamlessness is often invoked when industry specialists and media scholars describe the effects of digital cinema. This chapter maps the discourse of seamlessness in professional and scholarly contexts to highlight the discursive strategies attached to this concept and to examine its rhetorical power. Industry specialists regularly use the word to refer to the practical necessity of integrating the work of visual effects artists and the work of special effects artists. First, a clarification of terms is necessary. The general audience and film scholars frequently interchange the technical terms “visual effects” and “special effects.” In fact, knowing how to differentiate the two has been an impor­ tant criterion for separating the uninitiated from industry insiders.2 In the industry, “special effects” refers to “effects that can be done while the scene is being captured,” or effects that are physically created on practical sets in front of the camera during the production stage (e.g., pyrotechnics, animatronics, physical stunts). In contrast, “visual effects” refers to “any imagery created, altered, or enhanced for a film or other moving media that cannot be accomplished during live-­action shooting,” or effects that are added during postproduction, including cgi.3 Because the mul­ tiple stages of preproduction, production, and postproduction are temporally and spatially dispersed, much effort and planning goes into creating “seamless, realistic, and cost-­effective” visual effects that collaborate with other departments, in order to “ultimately realize the director’s vision.”4 Hannes Ricklefs, head of pipeline for the global film division at Moving Picture Company (mpc), similarly accentuates the need for a unified creative vision—which is usually credited to the filmmaker—when he says, “The primary aspect of our work is to deliver a director’s vision.”5 Meanwhile, filmmaker James Cameron notes the central role of the visual effects supervisor in managing the complex production pipeline, which he describes as “a vast and almost incomprehensible system by which money and dreams are fed into one end and shots pour out the He te ro t opic Medi a  | 19

other.”6 He makes the observation that the cultures of each visual effects facility and of each movie project are “an extension of the philosophy and personality of the effects supervisor.” Even so, Cameron maintains that the main task performed by the supervisor is “bringing to life” the vision of the filmmaker. The observations of these industry insiders indicate that such identifiable specificities as a visual effects company’s proprietary software or individual style are erased and subsumed in these collaborative production pipelines, from which “shots pour out.” This rhetorical emphasis on the director’s vision reflects not only a disproportionate attribution to the creative genius of one person but also an inequity in the accruement and distribution of economic and cultural capital. In reality, the visual effects pipeline entails a long, laborious process that spans preproduction to postproduction and includes stages of previsualization, modeling, rigging, texturing and surfacing, lighting, matte painting, and digital compositing, to name only a few. The role of digital compositing, which merges the multiple elements of live action and cgi, is crucial in creating this seamless vision, that is, to make the final product look flawless and natural. The idea of seamlessness is embedded in the very definition of digital compositing, which is the “digitally manipulated combination of at least two source images to produce an integrated result,” according to Ron Brinkmann, a visual effects supervisor and founding member of Sony Pictures Imageworks.7 He describes digital compositing as a “process of integrating images from multiple sources into a single, seamless whole” and explains the challenges of integrating diverse material from multiple sources: By far the most difficult part of this digital compositing process is producing the integrated result—an image that doesn’t betray that its creation was owed to multiple source elements. In particular, we are usually attempting to produce (sequences of) images that could have been believably photographed without the use of any postprocessing. Colloquially, they should look “real.” Even if the elements in the scene are obviously not real (huge talking insects standing atop a giant peach, for example), one must be able to believe that everything in the scene was photographed at the same time, by the same camera.8

Along with other values that persist in digital cinema, such as authenticity, verisimilitude, or malleability, the need to emphasize the value 20  |  ch ap te r 1

of seamlessness as the ultimate aesthetic goal is apparent because it is important for visual effects artists to demonstrate their professional skills: artistry and technical dexterity. This is evidenced by the fact that the word “seamless” is often used interchangeably with another word: “flawless.” As Brinkmann states, the main objective is to efface traces, or visible joins and seams, of the various stages of postproduction digital processing. Although this effacement is explicable when one considers the practical purpose of creating a finished product for a discerning audience, it is problematic when it upholds the ideological agenda of the film industry to hide and disavow the multiple source elements and processes of labor. This propensity toward the illusion of seamlessness has historically been associated with self-­effacing editing techniques of mainstream cinema. Such techniques include continuity editing, which creates the sensation of smooth transitions of time and space, and the 180-­degree rule and unidirectional chronology, which uphold the illusion of narrative cohesion based on spatial contiguity and temporal continuity. These strategies have been criticized by such film theorists as Jean-­Louis Baudry and Jean-­Louis Comolli (and defamiliarized by such ­avant-­garde filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein and Jean-­Luc Godard) for hiding the labor of film production in order to naturalize the illusionary unity of Hollywood narratives, thereby sustaining the ideological power of the cinematic apparatus. The rhetoric of seams, stitching, and sewing also holds particular significance for film scholars, thanks to the concept of “suture” in film theory. The idea that the spectator is “stitched” into the folds of the cinematic text through technical devices and filmic codes, such as shot / ​ reverse-­shot editing techniques, can also be considered from a critical perspective for performing the hegemonic task of inscribing the subject into an imaginary unity with the filmic image, thereby suggesting that nothing exists outside the frame. This rhetoric makes invisible not only the signifying practices and ideological effects in cinematic texts and discourses but also the laboring bodies in production spaces. Therefore, the stakes doubly reside in the symbolic domain of signification and the material domain of production. It is not necessarily the aesthetic of seamlessness that is problematic but rather the rhetoric of seamlessness. It becomes a problem when the aesthetic practices of filmmaking that collude to create an illusory effect are translated into a naive political rhetoric of globalization. The political, economic, and ethical stakes of colluding He te ro t opic Medi a  | 21

with this rhetorical strategy have implications in the discursive practices of scholarly, trade, and popular publications. Another point of interest in Brinkmann’s definition is the importance of sustaining the illusion that “real” and “not real” elements share the same time-­space. Lev Manovich likewise describes how the process of digital compositing hides the fact that the various elements in “a ­single seamless image, sound, space, or scene” are “from diverse sources” and “created by different people at different times,” indicating that this seamless effect is dependent on both temporal compression and spatial compositing: In the course of production, some elements are created specifically for the project; others are selected from databases of stock material. Once all the elements are ready, they are composited together into a single object; that is, they are fitted together and adjusted in such a way that their separate identities become invisible. The fact that they come from diverse sources and were created by different people at different times is hidden. The result is a single seamless image, sound, space, or scene. As used in the field of new media, the term “digital compositing” has a particular and well-­defined meaning. It refers to the process of combining a number of moving image sequences, and possibly stills, into a single sequence with the help of special compositing software.9

Analogous to the scholarly concern of problematizing “post-­ness,” the film industry is striving to find adequate terms to describe the current situation, in which formerly disparate stages of preproduction, production, and postproduction are fusing with one another in ever-­evolving digital pipelines. Dunlop, Malcolm, and Roth note that, in contrast to the ­assembly-­line production model of the classical studio system, this fusion “leads to a far more active and collaborative role for vfx Supervisors and artists across every phase of production.”10 In the early days of digital filmmaking, George Lucas was already anticipating that a new paradigm of “nonlinear 3-­D filmmaking” would bring about the development of a synchronized production model that would replace the ­assembly-­line process of film production: Instead of making film into a sequential ­assembly-­line process where one person does one thing, takes it, and turns it over to the 22  |  ch ap te r 1

next person, I’m turning it more into the process of a painter or sculptor. You work on it for a bit, then you stand back and look at it and add some more onto it, then stand back and look at it and add some more. You basically end up layering the whole thing. Filmmaking by layering means you write, and direct, and edit all at once. It’s much more like what you do when you write a story.11

Here he considers layers as an integral part of the whole filmmaking process that encompasses writing, directing, and editing. Although a large number of creative workers collectively produce these layers, Lucas’s comparison of the work of filmmaking to painting and sculpting ambiguously glosses over the multiple sources of digital labor. Nonetheless, he makes the point that digital technologies enable a nonlinear form of film production that blends the formerly discrete, sequential stages of making a film. One of the many stages that are greatly affected by this reconfiguration is the previsualization (or “pre-­viz”) process, which enables directors and visual effects supervisors to plan and design complex scenes involving visual effects by using computer animation. This is a crucial process that saves considerable amounts of time and money by allowing them to experiment with a variety of options and to fluidly revise creative decisions. These detailed 3-­D animation sequences are instrumental in visualizing the mise-­en-­scène of multiple digital assets, calculating the scale or speed of movement, coordinating complex action scenes, solving technical problems, and experimenting with various camera angles and movement.12 Euisung Lee—a previsualization artist at Halon whose credits include Speed Racer (Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, 2008), War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), and Star Wars: Episode II—­ Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002)—describes how “pre-­viz” artists are currently making efforts to adapt to the changing aspects of industry in a digital era.13 Although the “pre-­viz” stage traditionally occurs before the shooting of a film, Lee states that previsualization techniques are now deployed throughout the whole filmmaking process, because digital pipelines and virtual production are integrating processes of preproduction, production, and postproduction. This reconfigured process is yet to be properly named even among industry practitioners.14 This mixing and merging of “pre-­” and “post”-­production reflect the prevalence of synchronicity found in other aspects of contemporary digital production He te ro t opic Medi a  | 23

pipelines: the synchronization of diverse platforms and programs that are utilized in different parts of the world and the simultaneity of various workflows in the filmmaking process. In addition to temporal synchronization, spatial compositing in a transnational context is a pressing concern at this current historical juncture. In digital film production, the visual effects pipeline is expanding to overlap with global media networks. The workforce is becoming more geographically dispersed in order to reap various benefits from the diversification of production sites, such as media infrastructures, tax incentives, lower production costs, and the availability of skilled workers. To name a few examples of geographical dispersion in major postproduction companies, mpc has facilities in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, Shanghai, and Bangalore; Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver, and London; Double Negative in London, Mumbai, and Vancouver; and Pixomondo in Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai, Beijing, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart. Visual effects specialists, including mpc’s Hannes Ricklefs, came together in a panel titled “Global Visual Effects Pipeline” at siggraph in 2010 to discuss challenges in an increasingly globalized visual effects industry.15 The panelists mostly agreed that synchronization among various departments, which are often located in geographically diverse facilities, was a major challenge on multiple levels—temporal synchronization (or time-­zone management), software synchronization, and synchronization of language, including the lexicon of visual effects technologies.16 Along with synchronization, a steady workflow is also deemed important to “guarantee as little interruption of the production process as possible.”17 Other industry practitioners reiterate this emphasis on a continuous work process. Another panelist—Gauth Krishnamurti from Rhythm and Hues—mentioned the company slogan, “The Sun Never Sets on Rhythm and Hues,” which echoes the colonialist rhetoric of the Spanish and British Empires while emphasizing the company’s global reach across diverse national territories.18 Temporal synchronization and geographical diversity are frequently idealized and utilized in global systems of film production. In an interview, SeungHun Lee, a visual effects artist at Industrial Light and Magic, emphasized the temporal continuity enabled by this geographical dispersion. While discussing the company’s facilities in Singapore, he noted that “our fingers are on the mouse ­twenty-­four hours a day.”19 An adver24  |  ch ap te r 1

tisement in Cinefex for Rising Sun Pictures—an Australian visual effects company whose credits include such ­effects-­laden Hollywood projects as the Harry Potter film franchise, the X-­Men franchise, Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall, 2011), and Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)—exhibits a similar rhetoric: “With Rising Sun, being half way around the world is of little significance. Our comments at the end of the day in the U.S. hit them at the beginning of the day in Australia. By the time we get into the office the next morning, there are new shots ready for cutting into the film.”20 Here the time difference between Australia and Hollywood is considered an essential element in ensuring a steady workflow. The rhetoric of seamless integration is thus deployed to achieve neo-­Taylorist objectives, such as efficiency, labor productivity, and fluid continuity. A common thread binds the discursive strategy of seamlessness used to describe the final product for film audiences and the rhetoric of continuity used to describe the workflow efficiency of global visual effects pipelines for potential clients: a desire for smoothness and the effacement of any bumps, snags, seams, or interruptions. This pervasive rhetoric of “seamless,” “smooth,” “depthless,” and “fluid” is frequently associated with the properties of digital technologies. In a digital process, the physical properties of the input data are converted into numbers instead of being stored in another “analogous” physical object such as paper, photograph, film, or videotape. This digital conversion of material objects (e.g., light and sound waves) into abstract symbols is all too often regarded as a process of dematerialization because the object no longer retains its physical form. However, this elides the fact that digitization does not entail a complete disconnect from the physical world. Even though digitized matter does not exist as a tangible object in the form of a photograph or a videotape, it is still embedded in, and has repercussions on, the historically and geopolitically specific material conditions of media production, distribution, exhibition, storage, and maintenance. While the emphasis on efficient, continuous productivity is a clear marker of global aspirations that promote changes in the infrastructures of media industries, it does not take into account how a global reconfiguration of labor can take a physical, emotional, or financial toll on the individuals who constitute this transnational workforce. It ignores, for instance, how ­cross-­border migrations and constantly changing working conditions disrupt the lives of creative workers and their families; how He te ro t opic Medi a  | 25

a work schedule that is designed to accommodate another time zone affects the workers’ mental, emotional, and physical well-­being; and how uneven labor practices across different locations create friction during the production process in regard to such issues as compensation and work benefits. Ellen Poon—a visual effects supervisor who often travels to work on such ­large-­scale productions as The Monkey King (Pou-­Soi Cheang, 2014), Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), and Hero (Yimou Zhang, 2002)—raises the issue of the human costs of relocating and migrating for work: “[Artists] move around, like migrant workers. That’s become the story of our time in our industry. . . . They go where the work is, and the directors or the producers go to the cheapest place with the highest quality. . . . I’m not sure if it’s the best thing for the artists. Everyone has to move around quite a bit. It’s very tough on your family. It’s good for professional growth but very hard on your personal life. . . . That’s the emotional toll that people have not measured.”21 This willful disavowal of working conditions that entail long hours, punishing work schedules, financial pressures, and global competition has practical repercussions in the film industry, as evidenced by the financial troubles of major visual effects studios and the layoffs of creative personnel. Most notably, Rhythm and Hues Studios filed for bankruptcy in 2013, shortly before winning an Academy Award for Visual Effects for the critically acclaimed Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012).22 Many believed that the inequity of recognition and cultural capital within the Hollywood industry was made visible at the Oscars ceremony when the microphone was turned off during an acceptance speech as the Rhythm and Hues visual effects team was mentioning the company’s financial difficulties. Also detrimental to visual effects artists is the rhetorical tendency to compare visual effects work to magic. Throughout film history, special effects and visual effects have been closely associated with magic “tricks,” for they generate a sense of wonder by creating amazing spectacles and immersive illusions that seem to defy the laws of physics.23 A historical connection exists between early cinema and magic performances in the nineteenth century, most notably through the pioneering work of Georges Méliès, the French ­magician-­filmmaker who is widely regarded as an innovator in the development of special effects, such as time-­lapse photography, multiple exposures, and dissolves.24 A common tendency to veil the mechanical and technical processes of creating special effects and visual effects through the vocabulary, rhetoric, and iconography of magic 26  |  ch ap te r 1

also colludes in augmenting the alluring quality of this popular form of entertainment. Although this association creates a myth that sustains an air of mystique, it also erases the material realities of ­labor-­intensive processes of film production.25 Emphasizing the human element in digital filmmaking, Jeffrey Okun, visual effects supervisor and former chair of the board of directors for the Visual Effects Society (ves), discusses how the globalization of the media industry and digitization of postproduction processes affect visual effects artists and their work. Okun notes that the “cataclysmic transitions” of the digital era are taking a “personal toll” on individuals. As he explains, “There is a misperception out there . . . that it’s the tools that do the job, it’s not the artist. . . . Because of the way we’ve marketed ourselves . . . we’ve only talked about how cool and fun and amazing our tools are. . . . What we failed to market is the fact that it’s the artist driving the tools. . . . That’s the word that I think that we need to get out these days. This is not ­technology-­driven on the art side, it’s a­ rtist-­driven. It’s not about who has the best computers, but it’s about who has the best talent.”26 As an industry insider and spokesperson for the ves, Okun has clear personal and professional stakes in highlighting the vital role of visual effects artists and pointing out that their artistic talent is in control of the tools and the technology. In the interview, he emphasizes the need for visual effects artists to attain rightful credit and compensation as significant contributors to the creative process on par with the filmmaker, in light of the current prevalence of films that require visual effects on a substantial scale. Okun’s assertions dovetail with the increased attention directed toward a film’s production and postproduction process in director commentaries and special features of dvds / ​Blu-­rays, as well as in trade journals and popular media.27 This assumption of dematerialization becomes a high-­stakes issue for all when the abstraction of material objects into numeric symbols that occurs in the digital process is transferred to the abstraction of human labor. The development of computerized processes often entails the misguided notion that, since a computer is replacing tasks previously done by human workers, this eliminates the human factor in the work process. Therefore, a slippage of meaning occurs between digitization and automation. By asserting the dematerializing effect of digital technologies, one runs the risk of discrediting and devaluing the multiple stages of He te ro t opic Medi a  | 27

human labor in media production. In the context of digital filmmaking, these assumptions are inaccurate. More important, they raise an ethical issue because the elimination of human workers as a major factor renders them invisible or spectralizes their work. This invokes the pressing need to expose the act of erasing the presence of human labor and material realities through abstraction. SP ECT RA L V I SI O N A N D H ETE ROTO P I C   P ERCEP T I O N

In recent years, scholarly attention in the disciplines of film and media studies, visual studies, art history, literary studies, and sociology has gravitated toward spectral critiques as a way to destabilize established structures of knowledge and power and to recognize a haunting absence produced by erasures of social life. Scholarly discussions on spectrality are inspired primarily by Jacques Derrida’s ethical invocation of specters and their historical significance. Derrida’s theory of hauntology considers spectrality as a mode of critique that can address issues of social justice and ethical debt by acknowledging the ghostly presences of “those who are not there,” that is, those who are already dead, or are ­present but ignored, marginalized, and erased.28 Derrida theorizes a spectral vision that perceives and identifies ghostly presences of productive labor. In the context of transnational collaborations in film production, this spectral vision entails perceiving specific material practices of labor that are hidden and rendered spectral. The critical framework of spectrality reveals the inequities produced by this disavowal of labor that is i­ntegral in crafting the “seamless” world of a film. All too often the creative vision of a film is attributed to one person: the director.29 The materiality of labor, however, always leaves an onscreen residue that is perceived by those who attain this spectral vision and those who are willing to see. In addition to the abstraction of material forms into digital data and the abstraction of labor, another form of abstraction can occur when scholars theorize social realities and historical figures. Sociologist Avery Gordon asserts that the rhetoric of abstraction in much sociological work inevitably leads to the simplification of complex social realities and the omission of people who are often forgotten or ignored in theories and practices of sociology. In an effort to adequately address the complexities of power relations and their effect on individuals in real and tangible 28  |  ch ap te r 1

ways, she draws attention to the importance of acknowledging the presence of ghosts in order to look for more inclusive ways of constructing knowledge. Gordon takes the idea of haunting from the realms of the historical past and literary imagination and applies it to the complex, everyday lives of actual living people who are the focus of sociological concerns. She thereby assigns a tangible presence to the ghostly figure:30 The ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life. The ghost or the apparition is one form by which something lost, or barely visible, or seemingly not there to our supposedly well-­trained eyes, makes itself known or apparent to us, in its own way, of course. The way of the ghost is haunting, and haunting is a very particular way of knowing what has happened or is happening.31

This acknowledgment of the materiality of the ghost is vital to the theory and practice of spectrality. Gordon proposes the idea of the spectral as a productive force and demonstrates its use as a concrete critical tool of social analysis. She develops a critical language to articulate the social and political effects of “ghostly matters,” that is, hauntings, ghosts, and gaps. Making an effort to see the ghost as a social figure will not be easy, she warns, because we need to look for what we would normally not perceive or notice. We would also need to start including elements that are rarely considered in sociological analysis, that is, “the ensemble of cultural imaginings, affective experiences, animated objects, marginal voices, narrative densities, and eccentric traces of power’s presence.”32 In other words, spectral critiques entail a willingness to develop unconventional ways of perceiving the world and an inclination to write “ghost stories.” Gordon asserts: “To write stories concerning exclusions and invisibilities is to write ghost stories. To write ghost stories implies that ghosts are real, that is to say, that they produce material effects. To impute a kind of objectivity to ghosts implies that, from certain standpoints, the dialectics of visibility and invisibility involve a constant negotiation between what can be seen and what is in the shadows.”33 How can this spectral critique be applied in studying film? To look for specters and their material effects in the context of film production, we can first study the intersecting nodes of “what can be seen” and “what is in the shadows” in cinematic spaces. Film scholars and spectators, I He te ro t opic Medi a  | 29

suggest, have an ethical responsibility to consider spectralized forms of labor in media production and to adequately acknowledge their presence in the textual body of the film. To carry out this task, we can return to the relationship between labor and materiality in the context of mediation to address the need to recognize and discern perceptible traces of the material realities of film production. As a slight detour, we can first consider the materiality of labor in live theatrical productions to better understand the dialectics of visibility and invisibility. Alice Rayner notes how the labor of stagehands takes place onstage, out in the open, yet is collectively “unseen” by the audience and excluded from critical and scholarly discourses. She asserts that this omission is a matter of ethics: “The exclusion of that labor from critical attention replicates the exclusions of the body from philosophy and metaphysics. But since that labor involves real people, those exclusions have more emphatically ethical consequences along with the economic and aesthetic ones. In what ways can the critic acknowledge the technicians when the critic’s work is to analyze, interpret, critique? By standing apart from the production process in order to do the critical work, the critic scarcely recognizes half the ghosts present.”34 In theater productions, stagehands wear black to signify their “nonpresence,” counting on the audience’s familiarity and compliance with conventions of theater productions. Their work takes place in the liminal space between visibility and invisibility. Yet the concrete materiality of their labor is not fully invisible, as it takes place in plain sight of the audience that occupies the same time-­space. This corresponds to film audiences’ willingness to suspend their disbelief when they recognize, yet disavow the presence of, visual effects. In the context of filmmaking, however, the temporal gap and spatial disjuncture between creator and spectator in the process of producing and exhibiting films further facilitate the erasure of multiple forms of labor. Many aspects of digital and global film production also remain unseen by fellow workers in temporally and spatially complex production pipelines. Against this backdrop, the predominant rhetoric of seamlessness and automation attached to digital technologies further encourages the tendency in film audiences, scholars, and even fellow industry specialists to disregard or devalue the various stages of labor that occur in the film production pipeline. This effacement of labor is exacerbated in the case of many contem30  |  ch ap te r 1

porary Hollywood films whose virtual production pipelines encompass a global creative workforce. In the current media landscape, digital technologies assist and accelerate a worldwide distribution of labor. Film production pipelines are increasingly producing transnational hybrids through various forms of the “new international division of cultural labor” that include outsourcing, runaway productions, international coproductions, and geographically dispersed facilities.35 Discursive strategies that collude in fetishizing the supposedly liberating forces of digital technologies, however, mask the material circumstances and working conditions of laboring bodies in new regimes of creative production that are emerging in transnational circuits of digital economies. In this process, certain forms of labor are erased, consequently producing what I call “spectral effects,” or traces that are rendered invisible and disembodied but are still perceptible and legible. A new mode of perception is thus necessary to recognize how rhetorical and visual idealizations of seamlessness and fluidity form a discursive structure that conflates differences and erases frictions. This compels the invocation of spectral forces as a critical framework. Here the notion of spectrality is utilized as a mode of critique to examine how the materiality of labor and industrial practices is rendered spectral, despite its very real implications in the economy and culture of producing films. A spectral vision is necessary to pick at the seams and make them visible in order to demystify and deconstruct the illusion of seamlessness. This spectral vision is closely aligned with a heterotopic perception, which is a mode of synesthetic apprehension that senses or perceives these seams (or “spectral effects”) of globally dispersed sites and bodies of labor. A heterotopic perception, which extends beyond the scope of vision, deviates from the oft-­invoked notion of immersion in film studies by refusing to accept that the spectator is virtually absorbed into mediated realms of experience. Rather, the spectator would ideally retain this new mode of perception to recognize traces of the material world in cgi and digital composites. In terms of a heightened level of discernment, this new mode of perception can be likened to the “animator’s eye,” whose observational skills are vastly superior by detecting subtlety in every movement.36 In other words, an animator’s visual perception is cultivated to dissect complex movements and divide them into separate images in time and space. Although it is not necessarily a mechanized eye or a cyborg hybrid, this He te ro t opic Medi a  | 31

enhanced heterotopic perception is also reminiscent of Dziga Vertov’s “kino-­eye” in the way that it sees through “the chaos of visual phenomena” and discerns what is normally unseen by the human eye.37 Vertov writes: “I am kino-­eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. . . . My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you.”38 Vertov’s “I / ​eye” refers to the “kino-­eye” of the film camera, which “gathers and records impressions in a manner wholly different from that of the human eye.”39 As digital images are rapidly becoming the norm in visual culture, we can upgrade this mechanical eye to refer to a digital eye that can also enable “a fresh perception of the world.” Here this enhanced digital vision belongs to a discerning viewer who cultivates a heterotopic perception that deciphers new ways of creating and compositing disparate elements. Digital imaging technologies simulate the logic and language of nondigital images in many ways. Constantly evolving digital software, however, can now reassemble photographic images to construct new visual forms that profoundly transform the indexical relationship between photograph and referent by “sundering the contact between world and image, and between machine and reference.”40 Because of its unprecedented malleability and manipulability, the digital image is no longer considered documentary evidence of a profilmic reality. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ideas on mechanical visual reproduction and modes of perception, John Berger notes that “every image embodies a way of seeing.”41 Today’s visual technologies construct new ways of seeing that transform the ways in which we engage with the world or interact with images of the world. A  photograph is produced when the photographer selects “that sight from an infinity of other possible sights.”42 In the case of digital manipulation, the image is created in a process of selection and construction that assembles indexical and synthetic images into digital composites. An example in contemporary art is the work of media artist Meike Nixdorf, who uses digitized satellite imagery to generate composited geographies. She collects images of mountains (e.g., the Alps or the Himalayas) from Google Earth and digitally manipulates their colors and textures. Nixdorf emphasizes the malleability of these satellite images, likening them to modeling clay.43 Similar techniques were also used for the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller, 2013). To create a sequence that takes place somewhere in the Himalayas, mountain scenes were shot on lo32  |  ch ap te r 1

cation in Iceland and then integrated with digital matte paintings and digital enhancements that created more dramatic peaks and canyons.44 This merging of real and virtual environments is a common feature of digital visual culture. Lev Manovich asserted that cinema has now become “one particular case of animation.”45 In contemporary filmmaking, physical and c­ omputer-­generated elements are often digitally composited in the production process. A heterotopic analysis addresses Manovich’s assertion that it is necessary to consider “what happens on the edges where different images are joined” and peers closely at these edges to challenge the supposed invisibility of what we can find there.46 Through a heterotopic perception that recognizes the multilayered quality of cinematic images, we can engage in a mode of film spectatorship that perceives spectral effects in digitally created and composited environments. Here the composite of multiple layers in a single shot or sequence that constitutes media heterotopias facilitates the mobilization of these spectral forces. The materiality and the physicality of these spectral effects emerge in the gaps between these layers to disrupt the smooth, seamless surface of each digitally manipulated shot: hence the necessity to deconstruct the notion of seamlessness and to dismantle its rhetorical power embedded in discourses of transnational and digital filmmaking. A heterotopic analysis strives to reinstate the sense of tactility and texturality, and to highlight the tangibility of the gaps, ridges, and wrinkles that exist on the seemingly seamless surface of films. The cinematic image is constructed of layers, each of which retains residues of labor that come together in various forms of audiovisual material. This layering also contributes to the “filling in” and “fleshing out” of the physicality of onscreen spaces and bodies. Mobile trajectories within and beyond the cinematic frame are made legible through historical and geographical textures of images and sounds that coexist on different layers in a single frame. As a liminal figure that hovers somewhere between different realms of presence and absence, the specter transcends the supposed impossibility of bringing together a multiplicity of temporal and spatial layers. The most intriguing attributes of the specter are its plurality, its multiplicity, its heterogeneity, and its paradoxical nature. Neither soul nor body, neither alive nor dead, neither material nor immaterial, this haunting figure of the specter demands that we consider oxymoronic concepts: “visibility of the invisible” and “tangible intangibility.”47 This paradoxical characteristic of specters can be mobilized to explain He te ro t opic Medi a  | 33

the coexisting desires of visual effects that seem to be in conflict with each other—the desire to dazzle audiences by presenting a spectacle of illusion and the desire to sustain their suspension of disbelief through a photorealistic simulation.48 In other words, visual effects are deployed to convince the spectator of two seemingly contradictory qualities: illusion and verisimilitude. Dan North traces the genealogy of trickery and spectacle from ­nineteenth-­century stage magic and early trick films to contemporary ­effects-­laden films. Noting that the point of illusionism is not to hide the trick altogether but to illuminate the very act of making invisible what is certainly there, North asserts that “all special effects leave vestigial traces of their means of production,” and that these traces “aid the spectator in their detection.”49 It is perhaps the tangible presence of these traces, as well as the tightrope act between visibility and invisibility, that captivates spectators. Although he does not discuss visual effects in particular, Tom Gunning’s observations on audience reactions to Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Auguste and Louis Lumière, 1895) at the Grand Café in the late nineteenth century remind us that this conflict between “the credulous position of believing the image” and “the repressed, a­ nxiety-­causing knowledge of its illusion” has existed since early cinema, or “the primal scene at the cinema.”50 Gunning describes the spectator experience as “vacillating between belief and incredulity” when confronted by an illusion— whether onstage or onscreen—that could not exist or occur in reality.51 This word “illusion” need not imply that spectators are merely dupes or passive consumers, despite Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s criticism against the cinematic spectacles of Hollywood as an ideological apparatus. As Gunning suggests, the spectator’s pleasure is derived more from an “intellectual disavowal” of the illusion and “the incredible nature of the illusion itself.”52 Even while the spectators express astonishment at the illusion onscreen, their gaze can be scrutinizing, knowing, and canny. This gaze grows more discerning through continued access to “making of” documentaries and “how to” explanations that proliferate in trade magazines, popular media, online platforms, and dvd / ​Blu-­ray special features. Visual effects artists are well aware of the sensitivity of the human eye in detecting repetition, duplication, and artificial motion, which is why they belabor to hide the seams of their work. Despite the disproportionate attention on the ideal of seamlessness, temporal and spatial gaps are always already visible, tangible, and ready to be recognized. These 34  |  ch ap te r 1

gaps are highlighted by the seemingly impossible merging of reality and fantasy. Sean Cubitt also travels back to the aforementioned primal scene of cinema to examine how the labor of anonymous artisans (“from seamstresses to picture framers”) was expropriated, automated, and transformed into technology in the early stages of cinema, even before it was institutionalized into ­large-­scale industries and infrastructures: The rectangular frame established by the Lumières was arbitrary only in the sense that it was dictated by the device, not its inventors. But the device itself was the product of all those who had worked on the technologies of picturing over the centuries, from seamstresses to picture framers, whose skills were expropriated, made concrete and automated in the machinery of the cinematograph. The rectangular frame was both the dead tradition of the past and the instrument for bringing it back to life. The cyborg process that transforms living labor into fixed technologies allows the skills of all the dead to participate in the creativity of the present. The rectangle framing L’Arroseur anchors attention by exclusion. But the world beyond the frame could not be kept out forever. The stolen labor of those lost, anonymous artisans comes back to life when the frame itself begins to move. Because the frame intimates contiguous but invisible spaces beyond itself, it urges the invention of reframing (moving the camera to keep an action in shot).53

Cubitt describes how the “living labor” of uncredited, unrecognized workers was converted into “fixed technologies” that produced the machinery of the cinematograph. This exemplifies how “stolen labor” leaves traces of its materiality in the cinematic apparatus. Cubitt asserts that this stolen labor is reanimated “when the frame itself begins to move.” In contemporary film culture, the “making of” documentaries included in dvd  / ​ Blu-­ray special features reveal details of the production process, allowing spectators to see beyond the frame—or rather to see into multiple frames that are layered in a mise-­en-­abyme structure of self-­reference. Such documentaries emphasize the artisanship and artistry of those involved in the filmmaking process. In popular narratives of film production, forms of creative labor that are associated with recognizable “auteur” figures (e.g., filmmakers, producers, cinematographers) are prioritized over less marHe te ro t opic Medi a  | 35

ketable forms of work. Nonetheless, the stolen labor of artists is reincorporated, albeit selectively, into the frame and made partially visible. Media heterotopias allow us to rediscover this stolen labor not through the movement of the frame that “intimates contiguous but invisible spaces beyond itself” but rather through the realization that the frame contains composites of multiple spaces—whether they are geographically contiguous or dispersed. FROM FO UCAULT ’ S H ET EROTO P I A TO M EDI A H ET EROTO P I A

Space has always been inherent in Foucault’s ideas on social relations between power and knowledge.54 He acknowledges spatial tendencies most explicitly in his published lecture “Des espaces autres,” 55 and in an interview published under the title “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” in which he states that “space is fundamental in any exercise of power.”56 Foucault’s views on heterotopia are less explicit, as they were not expounded in written form but were presented during a radio talk in 1966 and later in a lecture given to a group of architects in 1967. (This talk was not published until 1984.) The fluidity and flexibility of this term have encouraged scholars from different disciplines to apply and utilize this concept in various contexts, including architecture, urban planning, cultural geography, and media studies. The ambiguity of the term, however, has also generated much debate on its openness to different interpretations and varied significance as a critical concept. Because Foucault’s use of the term has been utilized in diverse contexts, some recontextualization is necessary before deploying the concept of media heterotopia. Although it is inspired by the aforementioned disciplines that are more commonly associated with the term, this project is grounded in film and media studies. More specifically, I am situating the term in the context of transnational cinema, or in the intersection of film studies and global studies. This task is performed under the belief that the concept of heterotopia—a space that encourages and enables plurality and heterogeneity—is apposite to explaining the layered complexity of digital composites in contemporary cinema. It opens up the idea that a single, supposedly integral space can simultaneously contain a multitude of spatialities and temporalities. The act of demystifying the process of digital compositing draws attention to the fact that these spaces are not

36  |  ch ap te r 1

realms of seamless integrity and cohesion, and that the stitches holding these multiple layers together can be revealed and recognized. The term “media heterotopia” describes a digitally enhanced audiovisual realm of representation that superimposes layers of diverse spatialities and temporalities. This notion is based on Foucault’s description of heterotopias as “counter-­sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted,” and places that are “outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.”57 As Foucault has observed, heterotopias can fulfill two contradictory roles: “The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains. This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory. . . . Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.”58 According to Foucault, heterotopias are spaces where realness and illusion carefully coalesce, destabilizing the boundaries between them. As heterotopias can assemble multiple spaces in one place, this concept allows us to consider “other” spaces in various forms of media as a liminal environment that merges reality and fantasy, as well as immaterial illusion and material fact. This paradoxical realm that blends incongruous elements therefore transcends the conventional limitations of “a homogeneous and empty space.”59 The concept of media heterotopia is useful to examine the illusory nature of real and imagined spaces, or to consider the physical substance of a constructed space. The layered multiplicity of media heterotopias in many contemporary films induces the spectator to take note of the seams between on-­site physical effects and postproduction cgi effects, even though the actual points of suture have been meticulously hidden. Describing cinema as a heterotopic space, Giuliana Bruno recontextualizes heterotopia in the domain of film studies in her discussion of the “heterotopic fascination” of cinema: “Embodying the dynamics of a journey, cinema maps a heterotopic topography. Its heterotopic fascination is to be understood as the attraction to, and habitation of, a site

He te ro t opic Medi a  | 37

without a geography, a space capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several possibly incompatible sites as well as times, a site whose system of opening and closing both isolates it and makes it penetrable, as it forms a type of elsewhere / ​nowhere, where ‘we calmly and adventurously go traveling.’”60 In Bruno’s work, space is no longer “treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile” (to borrow Foucault’s words),61 as it is revivified and animated as a space in which historical subjects inhabit, peregrinate, and explore. Bruno explains that the institution of cinema played a central role in legitimizing women’s activities for consumption and leisure in public spaces, from which they were formerly excluded, and in liberating women’s bodies and gazes, thereby allowing them the pleasures of streetwalking, filmgoing, and traveling. The corporeal desires of the female body and the female gaze were thus fulfilled through the act of going to the movies. Bruno’s identification of cinema as fulfilling female fantasies of mobility is also applicable in the contemporary transnational context, in which people with limited social, economic, and physical mobility can likewise enjoy the sensation of visiting other places via the medium of cinema.62 In Atlas of Emotion, Bruno further expounds on the conception of cinema as a heterotopic space by comparing cinematic space to the cemetery: “Cinema—like the cemetery—is a space that is home to residual body images. Film and the cemetery share this special, corporeal geography. They are sites without a geography, or rather without a fixed, univocal, geometric notion of geography. They inhabit multiple points in time and collapse multiple places into a single place. As a site, the cinema relates to the resting place of our cineres—our cinerary remains—for they are both ‘heterotopias.’”63 This conception of cinema as heterotopia recognizes how the subject’s spatial imagination is developed and enriched by the experience of watching films that not only provide images of other places but also create ways of seeing and sensing space through a “corporeal geography.” The sense of mobility is generated by the spectator’s engagement with this heterotopic space of cinema, which alludes to virtual realms that enable us to envision (and even actualize) the emancipatory powers of imagination.64 Bruno’s observation that these sites “inhabit multiple points in time and collapse multiple places into a single place” is reminiscent of Brinkmann’s and Manovich’s aforementioned descriptions of digital

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compositing, which also merges multiple time-­spaces into one place to create a virtual image. This critical concept is useful for describing coexisting times and spaces, but the role of heterotopias is not to efface the seams between the layers that constitute the space. In fact, heterotopias self-­reflexively reinforce their otherness and expose all other real spaces as illusory, or inversely, reveal that all spaces are based in material reality. They also “interrupt the apparent continuity and normality of ordinary everyday space” and “inject alterity into the sameness, the commonplace, the topicality of everyday society.”65 The concept of media heterotopia is based on the notion that multiple spaces (and temporalities) coexist in the mediated realm of cinematic environments. It refers to a space of representation that is created by fusing digital assets or compositing layers that retain traces of globally dispersed sites and bodies of production. As a result, residues of the material world are embedded, or woven, into the film’s texture. DIGITAL CO MP O SI T E: CO MP O SI T I N G AS M ETA P H O R A N D MET H O DO LO GY

While this project participates in the development of “heterotopology,” a science of “other spaces” envisioned by Foucault, its main thrust moves toward film and media studies with the aim to apply the concept of heterotopia to digitized spaces of mediation in the belief that they are no less material than architectural or urban spaces. Media heterotopias are not physical environments that are lived, occupied, or inhabited in the same tangible ways, but they are built environments in which the material holds equal significance. A heterotopic analysis is thus deployed to perform the task of reconnecting the materiality of production spaces with mediated onscreen spaces. Applying Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to contemporary films ­underscores the penetrable nature of mediated spaces that are created by the collaborative efforts of workers in various stages of the creative process. Bruno describes cinema as a heterotopic space, or a permeable space that “refers to all other spaces and, ultimately, to every space ­imaginable,” and that can juxtapose “segments of diverse geographic worlds and temporal histories” in one place.66 This idea of juxtaposing various geographies and histories is critical in conceptualizing cinematic

He te ro t opic Medi a  | 39

space as a heterotopia. Media heterotopia is, in a sense, a concept that considers not only the layering of different spaces but also the spatialization of different temporalities. This layering becomes concrete when we consider the terms used in the industry—“pipeline,” “workflow,” and “compositing”—that describe and emphasize the continuing process of creating a film. Most important, compositing is the stage of combining the multiple layers that contain different components of the shot to produce the final image. This is the crucial moment that creates the illusion of seamless unity. How does each individual layer contribute to the composite image? What can the spectator learn from identifying these different layers and the process of combining them? In the context of film, “composite” is useful as a technical term, an aesthetic form, and a theoretical concept.67 It can be deployed in heterotopic analyses to address both the material and the metaphorical dimensions of cinema by considering the site-­specific conditions of film production and their effect on the final product. It emphasizes the multiple layers that constitute the cinematic space and the dimensionality of digitally produced media images. This moves beyond the dialectical relationship between the flat surface of onscreen images and the illusion of ­three-­dimensionality through techniques such as deep focus, deep space, and stereoscopic technology. This term recognizes the material labor and resources that have created each individual layer of the composite image. The thickness and dimensionality of the audiovisual image are not dependent on the visual illusion of depth but connected to the actual materiality of production sites and laboring bodies. By reappropriating this industrial term, “compositing,” a heterotopic analysis functions as a deconstructive research methodology and mobilizes media heterotopia both as a critical concept and an interpretive strategy to ­identify the layers of multiple spatiotemporalities in the finished ­product. By describing both the production process and the final product, the term “composite” implies a compression of multiple temporalities and a merging of diverse spatialities. In other words, it implies both temporal sequence and simultaneity, along with geographical assemblage and dispersal. As such, the “composite” becomes a dynamic node that disavows yet highlights the heterogeneity of its multiple components. As a final product, the composite image relies on an erasure, or a momentary forgetting, of the ­labor-­intensive production process. At the same time, the 40  |  ch ap te r 1

cognizance of its layered nature leads to a heightened awareness of the different forms of labor that are necessary to create and collate the various layers. Although some might say that this process of compositing flattens multiple layers into a one-­dimensional, homogeneous space, a heterotopic analysis recognizes the thickness of these composited images by highlighting the multiple stages of labor and the density of its layered composition. By deconstructing and demystifying the l­abor-­intensive process, it allows us to examine each layer that constitutes this heterotopic space and thereby expose seamlessness as a misleading discursive construct. The concept of media heterotopia also places emphasis on the fluidity, malleability, and liminality of mediated spaces where the national and the global overlap. It functions as a critical reading strategy that pays attention to how the materiality of national territory and transnational labor merges with the amorphous qualities of national and transnational imaginaries. It can be utilized to explain how the binary categories of ­local-­global, n ­ ational-­transnational, and m ­ aterial-­virtual can coexist and merge in a mediated space created by compositing heterogeneous layers of digitally produced audiovisual images. A heterotopic analysis examines how current processes of transnational filmmaking merge digital technologies with global mobility, ultimately creating layers of heterogeneous materiality. For example, we can study how real and virtual geographies created by various visual technologies were utilized in portraying Mars landscapes in the Hollywood science fiction film The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015). Many scenes that took place on the alien planet were composites of practical effects and ­computer-­generated visual effects. In multiple shots the planet­scapes are virtual constructs based on panoramas shot on location in Wadi Rum, a desert valley in Jordan, which also served as inspiration for alien landscapes in Prometheus (2012), a previous film directed by Ridley Scott. Footage filmed on a Martian environment set built on a soundstage at Korda Studios near Budapest, Hungary, was later composited with the landscape plates shot in Wadi Rum.68 Montreal and London teams of mpc, a major visual effects studio, accentuated the “otherworldly look” of Wadi Rum’s rock and desert environment by erasing all traces of earthly foliage and adding digital elements, such as amber skies, dust tornadoes, ice clouds, mountains, and deep craters in the barren terrain.69 This heterotopic analysis of the film’s production process helps us envision a He te ro t opic Medi a  | 41

1.1 Mars landscapes in The Martian (Twentieth Century Fox, 2015) are digital composites of practical effects and ­computer-­generated visual effects.

1.2 Alien landscapes in Prometheus (Twentieth Century Fox, 2012).

transnational geography that maps the global dispersion of labor and resources of digitally composited shots, in which the elements in the frame are mutable, mobile, and modular. Media heterotopias are thus useful to describe and identify digitally created and manipulated cinematic spaces that merge existing and simulated environments in a composite image. Their purpose is not to dissipate the visual enjoyment of the illusion created by aesthetically pleasing seamless effects on the screen. Rather, it is to argue that the illusory seamlessness of the finished product should not obstruct the spectator’s cognizance of the material practices of labor that take place in the collaborative process of digital filmmaking. The heterotopic analyses in the following chapters will examine how each audiovisual layer articulates globally dispersed workflows through their material connections to specific territories of production and site-­specific labor. To conduct this task, it is necessary to study how transnational configurations of sites and agents of labor leave behind residues, seams, or spectral effects in cinematic spaces and bodies. Each chapter will examine how material realities seep into the mediated environments of digital cinema. The chapters will consider the materiality of the medium, the materiality of physical labor, and the materiality of geographical locations as sites of production.

He te ro t opic Medi a  | 43

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2 HETEROTOPIC MAPPING

The Fall and Ashes of Time Redux

M

edia heterotopias offer a spatial conception of cinema that charts global movements of bodies, resources, images, and commodities. They can be envisioned as maps, in which different territories are merged as a composite, mobilized into closer proximity with one another, or linked via globally dispersed production pipelines. A heterotopic analysis of two films, The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2006) and Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-­wai’s Ashes of Time Redux (2008), demonstrates how media heterotopias are created through a ­labor-­intensive production process that involves location shooting and various forms of digital filmmaking, editing, and remastering in geographically diverse production sites. I propose seeing the film as a map that tracks multiple temporal and spatial trajectories that are emblematic of our globally connected and digitally mediated times. In the case of Ashes of Time Redux, for instance, this would entail the infrastructures of cultural and economic capital, the distribution of international art house films, cinematic circulations of the martial arts genre, the geographical dispersion of the Chinese diaspora, and the vicissitudes of the Hong Kong film industry. This chapter considers these films as a heterotopic assemblage that articulates intersecting global and digital modes of being and connecting. I specifically focus on transnational trajectories that embody physical and virtual cosmopolitan mobilities in and beyond the films’ diegetic spaces. In what ways do films aspire toward or attain global mobility? To answer this question, we need to consider the geopolitical implications of where and how films are made and circulated, and also where and how

they are distributed, exhibited, and ultimately stored and restored. In addition to being an aesthetic text or a global commodity, a film is a material object that retains traces of various transnational circulations in media production and distribution. It is therefore useful to think beyond the narrative and visual modes of the text. This chapter envisions a transnational geography that maps traces of territorial materiality by studying trajectories of media flows that are embedded within global networks of capital, labor, and technology. In an increasingly globalized context, theoretical and practical approaches of conceptualizing spatial narratives and geographical configurations are growing in importance. Along with the spatial turn, a cartographic turn is also moving beyond the parameters of geography to influence scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, computer science, and engineering. Cartographic concerns are also emerging in everyday life in the form of such geolocation and navigation systems as ­Google Maps and the Global Positioning System (gps). These “turns” toward spatial cognizance and geotracking reflect a growing interest in mapping our locations and movements on local, regional, and global scales. One possible reason why mapping and cartography are rising in importance as conceptual device and critical methodology is the need to orient oneself in the midst of complex interconnected routes of translocal and transnational circulation. In other words, mapping is both epistemological and ontological in that it is “a way of thinking about the world” and also “a set of assertions about the world itself.”1 Maps are not just a visual tool or a representational mode. Maps compel active modes of shaping our understanding of the world and our positions within it. In a world where maps are regularly revised and upgraded with updated information and new technologies, we constantly need to identify and recalibrate our location in relation to our environment. How, then, can films be situated within this current cartographic impulse? With the global dispersion of film production and distribution, there is a growing need to locate media texts, industries, and infrastructures within a global network. As a product of c­ ross-­cultural collaborations, many aspects of contemporary cinema are symptomatic of a transnational experience through its themes, narratives, visual images, and mediated sensations of mobility. Fantasies of fluidity and mobility are often manifested in thematic and visual tropes of mapping and navigating through composited cartographies, as well as the sensation of bodies 46  |  ch ap te r 2

moving through a tapestry of landscapes that weaves together real, imagined, and mediated spaces. The two films discussed in this chapter, The Fall and Ashes of Time Redux, explore the common theme of the immobility of human bodies that are unable or reluctant to move. This thematic immobility belies the various modes of movement exhibited by these films that includes both movement within the diegesis (narrative and onscreen movement) and movement beyond the diegesis (transnational workforce and global film distribution). The main concern here is to explore how trajectories of migrating bodies are articulated in transnational spaces. I focus on how layers of multiple spatialities are conflated and composited to create a heterotopic map of the world. These two films are apt examples to discuss media heterotopia, or heterotopic spaces that contain material traces of transnational mobilities. The Fall follows the tradition of the travelogue from the days of early cinema through its thematic, visual, and material emphasis on traveling to various parts of the globe. This film also embodies and mediates a desire to explore the world via tropes of journey, narrative structure, travel imagery, cinematography, camera movement, and editing techniques. Meanwhile, Ashes of Time Redux demonstrates how a process of restoration that entailed both analog and digital reediting techniques ultimately worked to combine locales (and their histories) that are geographically distant and seemingly unconnected. T H E FA L L : FI LM A S MA P O F T H E WO R L D

Maps and other cartographic representations are vital tools of self-­orientation when one is situated in unfamiliar territories—real, imaginary, or conceptual. In his discussion of world cinema, film theorist Dudley Andrew proposes an “atlas of types of maps” as an approach to studying films from various regions of the world.2 He borrows literary historian Franco Moretti’s concept of world literature and his method of distant reading, which incorporates mapping, charting, and graphing the literary output of multiple countries and the transnational flow of literary influences and translations to reconfigure literary systems on what Moretti calls “a world scale.”3 He contends that these maps will illuminate elements that “were not visible at the lower level,” allowing “hidden patterns” to emerge.4 While applying Moretti’s ideas to film studies, Andrew also incorporates Fredric Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping to further develop this idea of using an atlas to chart the immense scope of He te ro t opic Mapping  | 47

world film history. To consider how a fictional universe can “orient its viewers to their global situation,” he suggests simultaneously looking at the film “as map” and placing it “on the map.”5 Building on this notion of seeing the film “as map,” one could also consider a film as a heterotopic assemblage of multiple geographies, histories, and technologies. This enables a film to be envisioned as a map that mediates or performs a global geography created by new forms of transnational connections. In these unconventional maps, various territories are not necessarily spatially situated according to their actual geographical locations or demarcated by national or regional boundaries. Instead, they are merged as a composite that reflects and accentuates global networks of connectivity and collaboration. This m ­ edia-­specific method of mapping can be audiovisual, cognitive, and performative. Within this spatial paradigm, the combined sequence of shots or the composite of layers in each shot functions as a cognitive map that reconfigures and reenvisions our sense of place and movement in an increasingly globalized environment. A heterotopic analysis challenges the notion of cinematic space as a seamless unity. By focusing on the tangible elements of virtual spaces, it opens up the potential to see this space as a textured, multilayered realm of mediated materiality or as a composite of physical locations and digitally manipulated images that retain material residues of a geographically dispersed workforce. This way, we can consider how cultural, social, and geopolitical forces anchor both real and imaginary bodies on the ground, despite the thematic and aesthetic idealization of mobility and fluidity. Michel de Certeau writes that “every story is a travel story—a spatial practice.”6 The spatial practices of film narratives and genres reveal the medium’s close connection with the desire to see different locales and landscapes. Jeffrey Ruoff considers travelogues “an intrinsic form of cinema,” as articulated in such terms as the “traveling shot” and “motion pictures.”7 Indeed, cinema’s movement through space is particularly conducive to narratives about travel and other forms of geographical mobility. The Fall is a travel story that engages various spatial practices on both diegetic and extradiegetic registers. The fantasy of global movement, which is a central thematic and visual motif in The Fall, is embodied and articulated in the film’s narrative and its production process. In his interviews, ­Indian-­born filmmaker Tarsem Singh placed much emphasis on the fact 48  |  ch ap te r 2

that location shooting for the film took place in ­twenty-­four countries. This is also highlighted in the film’s narrative, which is propelled by the characters’ travels to remote locations around the world. The film presents highly aestheticized images of exotic landscapes as visual spectacle. A study of the film’s production process reveals that a great amount of time and labor was spent on creating the seemingly effortless movement across different regions and continents. This cinematic mobility is indicative of the transnational imaginings of a filmmaker who has led a cosmopolitan life. Born in India, Tarsem moved to Iran at the age of three, attended a boarding school in the Himalayas, and later studied film in California.8 His career as director of films, commercials, and music videos enables him to travel often.9 Tarsem explains in his dvd commentary that his career was instrumental in financing The Fall, scouting for locations around the world, and finding an actress to play the main character. He also saved time and money by flying the actors to the location of a commercial shoot and using the same crew to shoot his film. In fact, he reportedly chose his commercial projects by considering whether the geographical location might also be used for his film. Although The Fall was promoted as an independent film that was largely funded by the filmmaker’s personal savings, his unconventional, multitasking production process resulted in the film indirectly receiving financial support from the corporations that hired Tarsem to direct ­commercials. The Fall highlights the interactive connection between the act of storytelling and the cinematic medium. It shows how spoken words can conjure up mental images that are translated into the audiovisual imagery of the cinematic medium. The method of imaginative storytelling is demonstrated in the film’s narrative. It also illustrates the concreteness of the imaginary by portraying how the material elements of one’s environment are utilized and reappropriated as building blocks of the imagination. Maps form a close, reciprocal relationship with both real and imaginary worlds. At times maps accompany fictional narratives, playing a pivotal role in bringing them to life for writer and reader alike.10 Robert Louis Stevenson famously attributed his masterpiece Treasure Island to a map he drew of a fictional island. As he wrote, “Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of ‘Treasure Island,’ the future character of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected He te ro t opic Mapping  | 49

quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection. The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters.”11 Stevenson’s words express how maps can be instrumental in imagining fictional worlds, sometimes preceding characters and narratives that populate those landscapes. In his dvd commentary, Tarsem likewise underscores the important role of setting while crafting fictional worlds when he reveals that he selected some of the locations in his film before he finished writing the story.12 Tarsem’s verbal emphasis on location is also corroborated by the film’s spectacular imagery. The filmmaker reiterates his admiration for the onscreen landscapes, the difficulty of filming in certain locations, and his use of traditional editing techniques over digital visual effects.13 The fast, fluid editing of numerous shots depicting visually stunning sites reinforces his point that geographical mobility is the real impetus that propels the inner story of the film. The film’s diegetic space and narrative content reflect the geographical diversity of its production process. The film’s narrative is nestled in a mise-­en-­abyme structure comprising an outer story and an inner story that intersect through the performative act of storytelling. The framing story is set in Los Angeles in the 1920s. It features the unlikely friendship between Roy (Lee Pace), a bedridden stuntman who faces the threat of permanent paralysis after a debilitating accident during a film shoot, and Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a young girl who becomes entranced by the fictional world Roy creates.14 The tale Roy weaves for Alexandria is the inner story about a group of five men who travel around the world to seek vengeance on a tyrannical villain named Governor Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). The five characters form an ethnically diverse group that includes an Indian swordsman (Jeetu Verma);15 an ex-­slave and African warrior named after a historical figure, Otta Benga (Marcus Wesley); an Italian man called Luigi (Robin Smith); a fictional version of the English naturalist Charles Darwin (Leo Bill), with a monkey companion called Wallace;16 and a masked bandit, whose nationality is initially Spanish but is later changed to French (also played by Lee Pace). The film takes a dark turn when it is revealed that the tale was crafted by Roy to befriend Alexandria so that he can persuade her to help him end his life. The film is a mapping of an imaginary world collaboratively produced by a multinational group of creative talent comprising Tarsem, his production crew, and actors. A marked contrast exists between the outer and 50  |  ch ap te r 2

inner stories in regard to the physical mobility and immobility of its characters. In the outer story, the two protagonists—Roy and ­Alexandria— are both rendered immobile in a physical, economic, and social sense. By losing the function of his legs, Roy is unable to continue his work as a film stuntman; his physical mobility and his livelihood have been compromised. Although the young girl is more physically mobile in comparison, she is likewise constrained by social and economic immobility. Her father, a migrant worker, has passed away, and she is left with a mother who cannot communicate in English. The film’s title, The Fall, obliquely refers to this sense of loss and state of instability. It refers to the physical fall of the stuntman and the girl but also hints at other, less literal meanings of falling in the narrative: falling in love, falling apart, falling from grace, falling from innocence, falling into despair, falling into destitution, or falling into the substrata of the film’s mise-­en-­abyme structure. Although the film’s narrative celebrates global mobility in the fantastical realm of the inner story, the more realistic outer story darkly hints at the dangerous working conditions of migrant workers. The girl’s family has immigrated to California from an unspecified European country, and she broke her arm by falling from a tree while picking oranges. In an ambiguous flashback sequence, it is implied that she has to work for a living because her father was killed by an unidentified mob. In the last scene of the film, however, the two worlds of inner and outer stories overlap in an idyllic vision that shows the girl working on a Californian orange farm, together with a smiling immigrant worker from India (who also plays a role in the inner story) and a fluttering butterfly—a recurring visual motif in the film. As fugitives and former slaves, the characters in the inner story are also depicted as subjects with limited social mobility and agency. In this fantastical realm, however, their geographical mobility reaches almost superhuman strengths, as if to compensate for the immobilized bodies of Roy and Alexandria. They travel from continent to continent, undeterred by an apparent lack of economic means. The exuberant manner in which the inner story depicts its vast number of geographical locations reflects the filmmaker’s cosmopolitan background and transnational imaginings. As mentioned earlier, the film was shot in ­twenty-­four countries, although the credits mention only sixteen: South Africa, India, the United Kingdom, Bali, Fiji, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Romania, China, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, and Cambodia. He te ro t opic Mapping  | 51

2.1 A group of aboriginal dancers gives directions to the travelers in The Fall (Sony Pictures, 2006).

Although in his interviews Tarsem emphasizes the impressive number of countries used for location shooting, he renders their geographical and cultural specificity irrelevant in the film’s diegesis. The landscapes of the various countries function only as visual backdrops, or as units of an assemblage that collectively signify global mobility or casual cosmopolitanism. For instance, when a group of aboriginal Balinese dancers gives directions to the lost protagonists in the inner story, a frenetic montage sequence features shots of familiar sites around the world—the Egyptian Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the Coliseum in Rome, among others. A quintessential example of media heterotopia, this performative mapping of a transnational landscape is more meaningful as spectacle than narrative and the images, albeit recognizable, do not form a map that replicates the spatial coordinates of our actual world. Instead, these images form a “cognitive map,” as described by Dudley Andrew. This seemingly incoherent collage of globally legible sites performs as a map that “orients its viewers to their global situation” in this fictional universe.17 This cognitive map is replicated in the performers’ gestures that resemble the geographical features of various locations around the world, in a sequence of images that recall photographs in tourism catalogs, and in a map that magically appears on a human body. The mise-­en-­abyme structure of these repeated global ­mappings accentuates the film’s celebration of cosmopolitan mobility 52  |  ch ap te r 2

2.2 and 2.3 A map magically appears on the Mystic’s body.

2.4–2.9 (Opposite and above) A rapidly edited montage sequence presents a performative mapping of a transnational landscape in The Fall (Sony Pictures, 2006).

­fueled by ­wanderlust. The Fall thereby performs an aesthetic and thematic articulation of a transnational imaginary by utilizing the cinematic medium’s capacity to create new configurations of space and time. P ERFO RMI N G GLO BA L CO SMO P O L I TA NI S M AND DI GI TA L SEA MLESSN ESS

The Fall follows the tradition of early travelogue films, as a journey to exotic locales provides the impetus for narrative action. Moreover, the journey itself forms a mode of perception in which the moving image both simulates and substitutes a physical and affective sensation of movement.18 The film’s invocation of the documentary element of early films is particularly faithful in the way the filmmaker both insists on the authentic experience of traveling to the actual locations to shoot the film and promotes the finished product as visual evidence of travel. In this way, Tarsem’s film functions as an indexical representation of his own cosmopolitan status. The Fall presents cinema as an apt medium of transnational storytelling and as a virtual substitute for the filmmaker’s authentic experiences of global travel. The film thus emphasizes the tangible evidence of having been there rather than mediating the experience through ­computer-­generated visual effects. Instead of digitally compositing heterogeneous elements, The Fall relies on a combination of location shooting in remote locales and strategically positioned camera angles to make the setting look exotic and unfamiliar to a Western audience. For instance, Chand Baori, a step well near the city of Jaipur in India, is tightly framed to “look like an inspiration by Escher” or a visual ­puzzle.19 Stripped of its historical significance and geographical location, the structure is used purely for its aesthetic quality to emphasize the film’s fantastical quality. Another example is the film’s depiction of the “Blue City,” where all the houses are painted blue. Contrary to popular assumptions that the color was digitally manipulated in postproduction, Tarsem shot on location in Jodhpur, a city in the Indian state of Rajasthan that is also known as the “Blue City.” In the past, the color blue was associated with the Brahmin caste. Here the cultural significance and historical context of the blue paint are erased to transform it into an element of cinematography, or pro-­filmic special effects. In fact, the filmmaker further intensified the visual impact of the striking image by offering the locals free paint.

56  |  ch ap te r 2

2.10 The aesthetic design of Chand Baori featured in The Fall (Sony Pictures, 2006).

In addition to this emphasis on the authenticity of filming in actual locations, the film also expresses a nostalgic stance toward the physicality of the human body in cinema. The Fall performs a paean to an earlier period in film history in a montage of clips from silent cinema that feature ­death-­defying stunts and physical feats performed by actors and stuntmen. As a visual eulogy of pro-­filmic performances, this sequence is aligned with the filmmaker’s deployment of location shooting over digital visual effects in order to preserve the authentic value of the cinematic image. This sense of loss is rendered more poignant in the film’s narrative in the moment when Roy realizes with a start that the jumping stunt that led to his paralysis has been edited out of the final cut of the film. Conversely, The Fall is emblematic of the digital regime, in which a transcendence of national, physical, and ontological borders is simulated by technologically mediated sensations of physical mobility and visual fluidity. This film knowingly references and romanticizes an earlier period in film history to suggest the historical contingency of our contemporary digital moment. It demonstrates an alternative route to a seemingly facile use of c­ omputer-­generated visual effects: one in which material indexicality still matters in an analog register. Despite this insistence on the authenticity of the “real,” The Fall paradoxically gives a convincing performance of the illusory seamlessness to which cgi a­ spires.

He te ro t opic Mapping  | 57

By doing so, it evinces a naive celebratory stance toward a digital aesthetic that fosters the misconception of a global connectivity based on frictionless fusions of heterogeneous realities. In a number of sequences in The Fall, geographical diversity is deliberately effaced to uphold the illusion of continuity and seamless integrity. To illustrate offscreen efforts to seamlessly combine several locations, Tarsem explains that a sequence set in a mosque in India was difficult to shoot because of the region’s religious background and local groups of power.20 Ultimately, a significant portion of the sequence had to be filmed in another nearby location with visually matching architecture. This anecdote of the production history further exemplifies how historical significance and authenticity were subsumed under aesthetic purposes. More important, it elucidates how the local conditions of filming locations are embedded into the visual fabric of the final product, even when these sites are utilized to create an overall effect of transnational mobility. Stitching together shots of multiple locations and substituting one place for another are common film editing practices necessitated by time constraints, financial considerations, or unforeseen circumstances during production. An experiment performed by Russian filmmaker and Soviet montage film theorist Lev Kuleshov famously demonstrated how editing techniques could be used to assemble discrete images to create what he called a “fabricated landscape.” In the experiment, a series of shots juxtaposed images of a man in Moscow with an image of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, thus creating a virtual geography that simulated spatial and temporal unity by assembling images from various locations around the world. This use of editing techniques played a fundamental role in filmmaking to create the illusion of spatial contiguity for the audience. These techniques are also deployed extensively in The Fall to create imaginary geographies that present the illusion that geographically diverse locations are adjacent or in the same space. Although the film’s seamless aesthetic and fluid transitions led to speculations that visual effects were heavily deployed in its making, it was, in fact, produced by traditional methods of location shooting, editing, and on-­site special effects.21 The film challenges the current filmmaking trend by using nondigital methods to create the illusion of seamlessness; it deploys camera angles and editing techniques developed in early cinema to emulate contemporary modes of c­ omputer-­generated fluidity across geographically distant locales.22 58  |  ch ap te r 2

Editing plays a critical role in perpetuating the illusion of seamlessness. The continuity between various sequences of The Fall creates a fluid movement across different locations and across real and imaginary spaces, which are all framed by the narrative logic of the film’s diegesis. Various locales that are spatially detached from one another are edited together in one sequence, fabricating a sense of fluidity. For instance, a camera spins around a character (Alexander the Great) in a circular panning shot that begins in a location in Tivoli, Italy, but ends in a Namibian desert.23 A combination of the smooth movement of the camera and sophisticated editing techniques obviates the need to erase the seams between the different landscapes. Characters can glide across oceans and continents via camerawork that makes this movement seem as effortless as spinning a globe. Within the fantastical realm of the inner story, geographical distance and spatial contiguity do not hold significance. In another sequence, a c­ lose-­up shot of a butterfly in a wooden box filmed in Argentina segues into an aerial shot of Butterfly Reef in Fiji. A circular hand gesture of the storyteller in the outer story transitions into the spinning dance movements of whirling dervishes in a segment shot in India with Bollywood dancers. These sequences illustrate the film’s distinctive editing style that seamlessly stitches together heterogeneous locations to create a narrative space that transcends temporal and spatial borders. Actual trajectories of travel among these diverse locations are erased to produce a simulated journey that presents an ideal vision of a readily malleable and maneuverable world. Whether the geographical diversity of these multiple production sites is clearly marked or cleverly hidden, the media heterotopias in Tarsem’s film are transnational spaces that retain tangible traces of globally dispersed labor and locales. The material conditions of each site are woven into the cinematic fabric to construct a tapestry containing multiple spatialities, thereby creating a mediated assemblage of heterogeneous locations that are composited to form a transnational landscape. One ex­ ample is a sequence that begins with a shot of the five travelers swimming from a deserted island to the nearest shore. The actual shooting locations are situated far apart; the deserted island is located in the waters of Fiji, and the supposedly nearby shore is approximately s­ ixty-­seven hundred miles away in an area called Ladakh, situated in India near the Tibetan border with China. Another sequence shows a woman running across a space that seems like a single location. But in reality it is a combination He te ro t opic Mapping  | 59

of shots that were filmed in a foyer in Buenos Aires and those filmed in a four-­hundred-­year-­old observatory in Jaipur, India. The tightly framed shots mask any architectural discrepancies that a keen eye might catch. In another sequence the travelers are moving across the craggy rocks of Death Valley when suddenly a crane shot elevates the camera and transforms the setting into the green valleys of Bali, Indonesia. This creates the effect of instantly transporting the characters from one place to another, which emphasizes the fantastical, even magical, quality of the inner story. Again these geographically dispersed locations are edited together in one sequence to constitute a heterotopic transnational space. This problematic erasure of geographical specificities and national identities also extends to other forms of erasures in the film—most notably, blending fact and fiction while ignoring historical specificity. The filmmaker’s insistence on shooting in real places indicates that he values certain forms of authenticity. His film, however, invites spectators to traverse between historical fact and imagined fiction, across multiple countries and continents, and between the inner and outer narratives—often at the cost of historical accuracy and veracity. One instance is the case of Otta Benga, a fictional character in the film who shares his name with a historical figure (1883–1916): a Congolese man who was put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York and later committed suicide.24 Another example is the dance of the Balinese natives, which is deracinated from its cultural, historical, and geographical context in the film. Although it is presented as a traditional native dance, Tarsem explains in his dvd commentary that a German tourist reportedly suggested that the natives create a performance to provide an exotic spectacle and to promote tourism in the region. The uncritical nature of the filmmaker’s stance toward historical anecdotes is troublingly reminiscent of the colonial gaze and imperialist impulse of ethnographic travelogues produced in the United States during the early twentieth century. Both use similar tactics to erase traces of the colonial history embedded in the cultural context of the self-­exotifying performance of the indigenous people that conforms to the curiosity of Western tourists and viewers. This apocryphal performance reflects the film’s own premise in a mise-­en-­abyme structure—a fictional tale that purports to be authentic while hiding behind the façade of storytelling and spectacle. Despite these shortcomings, The Fall is an apt example of a cinematic map that mediates and performs a creative geography. It weaves physical, 60  |  ch a p te r 2

geographical spaces both thematically and aesthetically through its narrative focus on cosmopolitan traveling and through audiovisual traces of various locales around the world. A heterotopic reading illuminates how the constructed creative geographies in The Fall are divested of national and regional specificities as they are interwoven to achieve aesthetic and narrative effects that ignore and erase local history and culture. This analysis demonstrates how media heterotopia can be useful as a conceptual and visual map that reveals the relationship among geographically diverse sites of production. Media heterotopias are audiovisual mappings of material sites that are implicated in the interrelated, but often conflicted, narratives of the film’s diegesis and its production history. These two narratives are not neatly contained in real and fictional categories, nor are they mutually exclusive. Real spaces are implicated in the narrative of the film’s story through the setting, along with the sites of location shooting and processes of production and postproduction. Media heterotopias are also useful indicators of geopolitical, socioeconomic forces that affect decision making in the production process, which in turn leave marks in the onscreen imagery of a film. Although media heterotopias are not conventional geographical maps, they function as audiovisual indexes of complex geopolitical relations and concerns. M AP P ING GLO BA L T RA J ECTO RI ES IN A S H E S O F T I M E R E D U X

In The Fall, real and imagined spaces are layered and juxtaposed within a virtual composite through complex techniques of narrative story­ telling, location shooting, and continuity editing. As discussed earlier, Tarsem’s film does not deploy ­computer-­generated visual effects or digital compositing techniques to construct a transnational space or to simulate cosmopolitan travel. Instead, transnational spaces are produced by the juxtaposition of geographically diverse and globally dispersed locations via editing techniques. In the case of Ashes of Time Redux, traces of transnational mobility are less prominent in the diegetic spaces of the film. Instead, the film was mobilized in the process of digital restoration that ultimately stitched multiple time-­spaces together to form a material assemblage of heterogeneity. A global network of cinema culture is thus embedded into the reassembled film, which becomes a secret archive or depository of film history. This is further evidence of the multiple ways material routes leave lingering marks or spectral residues on media texts. He te ro t opic Mapping  | 61

While discussing the relationship between Hong Kong “action cinema” and other national cinemas, Meaghan Morris emphasizes the need to find ways to study “the connections between otherwise disparate and often mutually indifferent film communities that transnational popularity entails.”25 One suggestion to consider connections among local film communities is to study “the material interactions between specific film industries and their modes of distribution and exhibition.”26 Ashes of Time Redux (hereafter Redux) is a pertinent case study to track material connections in film production and consumption on a global scale. Wimal Dissanayake notes that, with Ashes of Time, “Wong Kar-­wai has sought to re-­explore and redraw the semiotic map in which the martial arts form has been securely located.”27 A heterotopic analysis of Redux reveals that the film not only redraws the semiotic map of the martial arts genre but also drafts a material map of temporal and spatial trajectories that retains traces of the transnational mobility of its original 1994 version and other martial arts films. In this sense, Redux reincarnates both textual and extratextual elements of Ashes of Time in its digitally reconfigured body. Much has been written about the global popularity and transnational mobility of Hong Kong cinema during its heyday in various regions of Asia, North America, South America, and Africa.28 In particular, martial arts films (or “action cinema”) have been described as one of the most iconic, popular, and widely resonating genres of Chinese cinema.29 Against this backdrop, Ashes of Time (1994) holds a singular position in the history of Hong Kong martial arts films. It has a close intertextual relationship with its source material, Jin Yong’s multivolume martial arts novel series, The Eagle-­Shooting Heroes (Shediao Yingxiong Zhuan), and its numerous film and television adaptations. Wong’s Ashes of Time was shot simultaneously with a comedy film, Eagle-­Shooting Heroes (Jeffrey Lau, 1993)—coproduced by Wong Kar-­wai and Jeffrey Lau—which was also based on the same novel and featured many of the same actors: Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Chiu-­wai Leung. While Wong was editing Ashes of Time, he directed another film, Chungking Express (1994), which received considerably more attention and accolades from critics and audiences than the former upon its release. As was a common practice at the time, Ashes of Time was pre-­sold in several national markets, including Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, South

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Korea, Japan, and France.30 The original 1994 version was already transnationally mobile within the production and distribution systems across the Asian region, but the digital restoration of the film expanded the scale and scope of its transnational circulations. The restored film traces a globally dispersed geography that delineates various trajectories of cultural consumption—the nostalgic and nationalistic sentiments of the Chinese diaspora, the ­auteur-­driven tastes of cosmopolitan art house audiences, and the global popularity of martial arts films. It also provides a map of a widely dispersed spectrum of artistic and technological expertise. After fragments of the original negative from various locations around the globe were collected, the digital restoration process was performed in France and Thailand; the original soundtrack was restored in Australia; and the new soundtrack was recorded in Shanghai and mixed in Beijing. The composite of the two soundtracks not only compressed a time difference of fourteen years but also exhibited a c­ ross-­cultural assemblage of artistic talent. Frankie Chan—a Chinese martial arts actor, film director, and composer—composed the original soundtrack. The new soundtrack was performed by two cosmopolitan musicians: Yo-­Yo Ma, an ­American-­born cellist of Chinese ethnicity,31 and Wu Tong, a ­Beijing-­born musician who merges traditional Chinese music with Western traditions. Other members of the transnational creative workforce included the Chinese performers from Yo-­Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a musical collective that includes artists from various Eurasian cultures who engage in multicultural collaboration.32 In interviews, Wong explained why he decided to release a digitally restored version of Ashes of Time. One reason was the limited theatrical release of the original version. After its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in 1994, the film was shown only in theaters in Hong Kong, France, Asia, and overseas Chinatowns.33 In contrast, after its premiere at Cannes in 2008, the Redux version was released in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. The wider distribution and relative success of the restored film no doubt were indebted to Wong’s established reputation as international auteur based on the popularity and critical acclaim of his later films, Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love (2000). Another reason for Wong’s decision to digitally restore Ashes of Time was the realization that multiple versions of the film were in circulation, including unapproved versions available in Southeast Asia. Because the

He te ro t opic Mapping  | 63

earlier version was accessible only on dvd or videotape, the auteur filmmaker hoped to rerelease the film on the big screen.34 Wong stated that he wanted an opportunity to make this film “right,” since the original was affected by budget and time constraints, and to use newly developed technologies that were unavailable in 1994. He initially planned to do a simple restoration but could retrieve only fragments of the film. Wong set out to find the missing portions by looking for copies from international distributors and the storage vaults of overseas Chinatown film theaters. Realizing that it was impossible to restore the entirety of the film, he decided to reedit and restructure it, a process that ultimately took four years. Wong Kar-­wai’s cosmopolitan identity strikes a delicate balance with the strong connection to Hong Kong found in many of his films. This is due in part to the complex history and fluid identity of the city and its unique position in the political, economic context of the region. Hong Kong is regarded as a city that is making an effort to integrate past traces of British colonialism and its present identity as a global trade hub with future aspirations of the Chinese government and its citizens. Ackbar Abbas describes the cultural space of Hong Kong as a space of change, of transit, of “floating” identities and, most important, “a space of disappearance,” which he explains is not a matter of absence or effacement but of replacement and substitution. Through this motif of disappearance, Abbas examines the complex identity of Hong Kong citizens, whose past as colonial subjects sets them apart culturally, politically, and linguistically from people in other regions of China. He notes that this difference situates them in a paradoxical position of privilege and marginality as cosmopolitans or transients. Abbas argues that Hong Kong films are simultaneously products and analyses of this cultural space of disappearance. He writes: “One of the features of new Hong Kong cinema is its sensitivity to spatial issues, in other words, to dislocations and discontinuities, and its adoption of spatial narratives both to underline and to come to terms with these historical anachronisms and achronisms: space as a means of reading the elusiveness of history. We get a better sense of the history of Hong Kong through its new cinema (and architecture) than is currently available in any history book.”35 Abbas’s phrase “spatial narratives” reconfigures the temporal nature of narrative in a spatial register. For instance, he describes a scene in

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Wong Kar-­wai’s film As Tears Go By (1988) and notes how two historically distinct spaces exist simultaneously in one shot through a layering of mediated spaces—material and televisual. The spectator is thereby placed in a complex intersection of multiple time-­spaces. The “spatial ambiguities” in Wong’s films effectively articulate the disorientation of the colonial subject in Hong Kong when experiencing the cognitive failure to map or situate one’s spatial coordinates and fluid subjectivities. Abbas reconsiders the seemingly negative culture of disappearance as positive, regarding it as an opportunity rather than a threat to the colonial subject’s identity. This critical endeavor serves as inspiration to discover tactics that recover or reappropriate productive possibilities of ostensibly negative concepts and states of being, such as absence, invisibility, immateriality, and spectrality. Cinema is central and critical to his argument, as he asserts that this formulation of identity in Hong Kong, as “one of the world’s most photographed cities,”36 is contingent on forms of representation (and misrepresentation). This is closely related to his notion of the déjà disparu, which he describes as “the feeling that what is new and unique about the situation is always already gone,” leaving us with only “a cluster of memories of what has never been.”37 Abbas sees the main task and challenge of Hong Kong cinema as one that tries to keep pace with the subject who is always on the brink of disappearing. This constantly looming threat of disappearance manifests itself in real-­life situations, as in the case of Hong Kong cinema and, more specifically, in Wong’s film Ashes of Time. The history of the film’s rebirth in its digitally remastered and reedited version Redux is apposite to the discourse of disappearing, death, and digital regeneration. On the surface, the story of the film’s restoration could be considered a prosaic tale of a filmmaker repackaging and rereleasing his film for financial gain or artistic integrity. But what ultimately emerges is a poetic or symbolic act of reincarnation that transcends temporal linearity and spatial boundaries by stitching together material fragments of time and space. Redux, I contend, holds a significant and strategic position in semiotic and material cartographies that map vulnerable bodies facing the threat of disappearance and disintegration. According to the filmmaker, the restoration process began when the laboratory in Hong Kong that stored the original film negatives suddenly shut down during the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Wong discovered

He te ro t opic Mapping  | 65

that the negatives had been stored in a damp warehouse. Consequently, the film was found “in pieces,” and the soundtrack was ruined. As Wong ­recalled: As we launched into the work, we discovered that the original negatives and sound materials were in danger: the laboratory in Hong Kong where they were stored was suddenly shut down, without warning. We retrieved as much as we could, but the negatives were in pieces. As if we were searching for a long-­lost family, we began looking for duplicate materials from various distributors and even the storage vaults of overseas Chinatown cinemas. As this went on, we came to realize that there are hundreds of prints locked up in Chinatown warehouses in those cities which used to show Hong Kong movies. Looking through all this material felt like uncovering the saga of the ups and downs of Hong Kong cinema in the last few decades. And this history, of course, included Ashes of Time.38

As Wong notes, the state of the film reels in the archive and their disintegrating bodies are emblematic of the unstable and deteriorated state of the Hong Kong film industry after the Asian financial crisis. Because of the lack of resources, the Hong Kong Film Archive was unable to maintain the necessary facilities to preserve film negatives.39 Here the notion of archive can be extended to refer to the films themselves. Along with the physical space of the Hong Kong Film Archive, the original version of Ashes of Time can also be considered as a visual archive of Hong Kong cinema during its heyday of the 1990s. This is embodied through the film’s inclusion of top actors and actresses of the period: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Tony Chiu-­wai Leung, Tony Ka Fai Leung, Carina Lau, and Brigitte Lin. In an interview, Wong describes the historical and geographical significance of film archives. His telling remark on “uncovering the saga of the ups and downs of Hong Kong cinema” indicates how the geography of international film distribution and circulation of film negatives coincides with the history of film and diasporic cultures, as embodied by Redux. This digitally remastered and reedited film is a heterotopic map that contains traces of the transnational trajectories of the original film. These geographically dispersed remains of global media connections and migratory routes are composited by using digital technologies to create 66  |  ch ap te r 2

the regenerated version of Redux. If the original film is a synecdoche for Hong Kong and its local film industry, the regenerated version is an emblem of a global media heterotopia that integrates the material remnants of ­analog media (celluloid film reels) with the virtual assets of digital ­media. “BORN FRO M A SH ES”: T EMP O RA L A ND S PAT I A L COM PLEX I T Y I N A DI GI TA L A RCH I V E

Wong Kar-­wai has been described as a “poet of time.”40 His films are obsessed with the passing or stasis of time, and his characters are often trapped in the past through various forms of memory and nostalgia.41 Ashes of Time, in particular, exhibits a temporal complexity that makes it difficult to keep track of the chronological order of the events in the film. Also, the film’s characters wait indefinitely in a state of inaction, almost crossing over into the realm of inertia. This immobility of the characters creates the illusion either that time has stopped or that they have become stuck in a repetitive cycle that is punctuated by enigmatic ellipses and flashbacks. Either way, their narrative does not progress in a linear chronology. The characters are seemingly ghostly revenants, doomed to repeat the same actions for eternity. The original Chinese title, Dongxie Xidu, can be roughly translated to “Malevolent East (Dongxie), Malicious West (Xidu),” which are the names of two protagonists. While the film’s English title, Ashes of Time, emphasizes temporality, the Chinese title emphasizes the spatial coordinates of the narrative. The combination of the two titles manifests the spatiotemporal complexities of the original version, which contains multiple time-­spaces that seem “out of joint” with one another. In particular, the English title, Ashes of Time, is rich in metaphor—with the thematic and visual motif of “ashes” evoking the ephemeral quality of the passing of time and fragmented memory, along with the eternal state of death. Although the physical space of a film archive is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of time and financial support, the digitized visual archive of Redux is virtually intact, albeit susceptible to material conditions, such as durable storage space. Felicia Chan notes how a film can be resurrected from “death” in a globalized and technologized network. She writes that the “journey from Ashes to Redux” serves as a reminder that the global circulation of cinema can enable a resurrection of a film and of a genre via new technologies.42 As a digital archive, Redux can restore, reedit, and He te ro t opic Mapping  | 67

2.11 The characters of Ashes of Time Redux (Artificial Eye, 2008) are stuck in a state of inaction.

r­ eanimate images of the past. This archive, of course, has its limitations. It cannot, for one, reincarnate the materiality of all dead bodies. Wong was unable or unwilling to shoot new footage or rerecord the soundtrack because the main actor, Leslie Cheung, had passed away. This was, perhaps, a choice based on creative or personal reasons, since current technologies can create digital doubles of actors based on existing footage. In this context, “ashes of time” can be mobilized as an analogy to the film’s restoration process, which digitally stitched together fragments, or ruins, of the original negative. Wong’s restoration process can also be compared to an excavation of sorts. This similarity is emphasized in the title of the section in the Blu-­ray special features that presents the film’s restoration: “Born from Ashes.” Arriving at a discourse of spectrality, secrets, ashes, and archives via Freud and Derrida, Akira Mizuta Lippit describes “a secret archive, an archive of secrets,”43 which emerges from the ruins of the archive, or what Derrida calls “the very ash of the archive.”44 Lippit writes: “Neither corporeal nor ethereal, transparent nor opaque, the secret archive assumes the properties of a phantom, a shade. From the cinders of the archive, in its cooling embers, a shadow appears: a shadow of the archive, its impression, but also a phantom archive. An archive haunted by the archive.”45 Although I am wary of making a facile connection between Derrida’s and Lippit’s use of the word “ashes” and 68  |  ch ap te r 2

the film’s English title, Lippit’s discussion of the death drive that destroys and preserves the archive, rendering it spectral, is uncannily applicable to the resurrection of Ashes of Time into Redux. The restored film contains ghostly traces of a destroyed archive and fragments of film reels with material connections to a spectralized Chinese diaspora. The regenerated and reassembled Redux version is thus analogous to a cinematic archive that hides sedimented layers under its surface and invites archaeological excavation. Here the assemblage of storage vaults in overseas Chinese theaters constitutes a “secret archive”: one that emerges from the ashes of a destroyed archive, and one made visible and material through the regenerated form of Redux. It is not an archive in the conventional sense or in the sense used by Derrida, who described the archive as “a house, a domicile,” or a physical place. It holds residues of material spaces, however, through its association with film theaters in numerous Chinatowns, and also with distribution routes that can be synchronized with the migratory routes of the Chinese diaspora. Although it is regarded as an homage to the martial arts genre, Ashes of Time has also been described as a deconstruction of conventions normally associated with the genre—heroic characters, traditional values such as honor and virtue, and, most important, dynamic action sequences.46 Deviating from the genre’s propensity toward action, the film captures movement according to a different kind of logic. In the few scenes that portray the characters performing martial arts, the action is not in sharp focus but presented (often in slow motion) as a visual tapestry of blurry bodies that seem to melt into the dusty desert landscape. In other words, bodies and landscapes are mediated by a visual medium that converts them into virtually identical tones and textures. One wonders whether the bodies are moving through space, or whether the space itself is undulating with the momentum of their bodies. Ackbar Abbas describes Ashes of Time in similar terms when he compares the film to “a kind of abstract expressionism or action painting.” He writes that, rather than “a choreography of human bodies in motion,” we see “a composition of light and color in which all action has dissolved” and “a blind space that comes from an excess of light and movement.”47 Here we can mobilize Abbas’s notion of déjà disparu to consider how the drifting, mobile bodies that inhabit the cinematic spaces of Ashes of Time seem to be constantly on the brink of disappearing. This sense of loss is accentuated through the character of a swordsman who is slowly losing He te ro t opic Mapping  | 69

his eyesight (Tony Chiu-­wai Leung). An overwhelming sense of homelessness and restlessness that permeates this “blind space” is also embodied through the portrayal of the itinerant warriors. This instability is mirrored in the eternal, yet ephemeral landscape of the desert.48 In Ashes of Time, the swirling sands of the desert not only provide the appropriate ambience for a mythical folktale but also are evocative of death or the transient nature of life. The disjointed mise-­en-­scène of a landscape that is constantly in flux is indicative of “a sense of the elusiveness, the slipperiness, the ambivalences of Hong Kong’s cultural space that some Hong Kong filmmakers have caught in their use of the film medium.”49 The bright yet hazy tones of the desert setting visualize the notion that, after a flurry of motion and emotion, human bodies ultimately return to the transient forms of particles of sand, or “ashes of time.” This is highlighted by the dreamlike aesthetic that visually absorbs the bodies of the actors into the surrounding space. The word “ashes” is also evocative of the material grittiness of the film’s desert setting. The film was shot in a desert in the western part of China, near Mongolia. Filming in mainland China was uncommon at that time in Hong Kong cinema, and it presented many difficulties during the production process. This choice of shooting on location, however, had a great influence on the film’s visual character. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle revealed that the “grainy” quality of the cinematography— commonly believed to be an intentional aesthetic choice—was actually a practical effect that materialized because of the local conditions of shooting on location in the desert, such as exposure to light and wind.50 Wong also noted that location was particularly important for this film, emphasizing that landscape in the martial arts genre is more than a backdrop; it is a pivotal part of the story. He explained that he chose the desert for its quality of always looking the same. Indeed, the empty, seemingly eternal space of the desert is an appropriate setting for the imaginary world of jianghu (or “rivers and lakes”). As a parallel universe that serves as the setting for martial arts fiction, jianghu is a space where a timeless fantasy world coexists with the historical world—at times incorporating figures, events, and places that exist in actuality. This spatial element of the desert coincides with the circular temporality of the film’s narrative. Stephen Teo describes jianghu as “an abstract entity” that “can mirror the real world.”51 He surveys various conceptions of jianghu as marginal, illicit, and alternate spaces: “As Hamm has eluci70  |  ch ap te r 2

dated, the jianghu can be concretized in ‘the complex of inns, highways and waterways, deserted temples, bandits’ lairs, and stretches of wilderness at the geographic and moral margins of settled society.’ They imply an illicit space nurtured by conflict and corruption, but functioning as an ‘alternate’ society. Chen Pingyuan gives two meanings of jianghu: 1 a secret society within the real world that exists in opposition with the government, 2 a semi-­utopia where xia are free to defy authority and act on their conscience to punish evil and exalt goodness.”52 Teo also invokes the possibility of seeing jianghu as a heterotopic space.53 Indeed, this compositing of material, fantastical, and historical realms in the fluid space of jianghu invites comparisons with the liminal space of heterotopia. Against this backdrop, we can consider the intertextual and imaginary spaces of jianghu alongside Giuliana Bruno’s description of a heterotopic space: “a site without a geography, a space capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several possibly incompatible sites as well as times, a site whose system of opening and closing both isolates it and makes it penetrable, as it forms a type of elsewhere / ​nowhere.”54 As discussed earlier, jianghu can be represented in both concrete and abstract terms. Teo particularly interprets Wong’s version of jianghu in Ashes of Time as a “trope for Hong Kong itself” at a pivotal period before its return to Chinese sovereignty.55 The uncertainty of spatial coordinates and the circular, elliptical temporality of the film can be read against this historical backdrop as a reflection of a singularly unstable moment in Hong Kong’s history. In a similar vein, the inertia of the characters—whether they wander aimlessly as ­knights-­errant or are temporarily rendered ­immobile—can be read as the lived anxiety of the Hong Kong people, whose past and present are under the threat of becoming subsumed into an unknowable future. In Ashes of Time, despite their physical lethargy and visual unity with their surroundings, which can be described as “a type of elsewhere / ​nowhere,” the characters appear to struggle with the seeming incompatibility between the expansive space of jianghu and their (often thwarted) desire to be on the move. If one considers the temporal coincidence of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty and the film’s release date, it is possible to interpret this struggle as an act of resistance against the ­violent force of integrating body and space, as in the case of the Hong Kong people who were faced with the city’s absorption into the ­People’s Republic of China. The physical and psychological immobility of He te ro t opic Mapping  | 71

2.12–2.19  (Opposite and above) The film’s imagery is reminiscent of traditional landscape paintings in C ­ hinese art, with characters seemingly melting into the natural surroundings.

the ­onscreen ­bodies (embodied by narrative and onscreen movement) stands in contrast with the film’s globally mobile trajectory (embodied by the transnational workforce and global film distribution), as revealed in its digital restoration process. In the context of Redux, the heterotopic nature of the original film extends beyond the textual realm of narrative, aesthetics, and semiotics to include the material register of media distribution, exhibition, archives, and restoration. Dissanayake also quotes Derrida’s paradigm of “ashes” to discuss the seemingly contradictory nature of simultaneous presence and absence: “I would prefer ashes as the better paradigm for what I call the trace— something that erases itself totally, radically, while presenting itself.”56 Here I would add that Derrida’s paradigm of “ashes” is also applicable in discussing the material aspect of media heterotopia, particularly the ways digital technologies are prominently used and often put on display, even as the seams of their work are erased under the dissimulating façade of seamlessness and unity. As a cartographic endeavor of reassembling fragments of time and space, Redux invites a heterotopic critical perspective, which illuminates the condition of transnational mobility that characterizes our contemporary diasporic landscape of global assemblages and digitally connected networks. The spectator’s entrance into this heterotopic space of cinema encourages new ways of expanding one’s spatial imagination. Even though Redux used digital technologies to stitch together dispersed fragments of the film, it forges a tangible connection among people, capital, resources, and objects to concretize intangible conceptions of virtual and abstract flows of economic exchange and cultural interactions. The restored film ultimately functions as a media heterotopia that reconciles spatial dislocations and temporal disjunctions within a transnational web of material, textual, technological, and economic migrations. Therefore, the supposed binaries of local / ​global, national / ​transnational, and material / ​virtual are merged in the mediated space of the film and its material a­ fterlife—made possible by a globally dispersed, digitally enabled process of excavation and resurrection.

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3 HETEROTOPIC MODULARITY

Avatar, Oblivion, and Interstellar

M

ichel Foucault asserts that we live in the epoch of space, simultaneity, juxtaposition, and “the epoch of the near and far, of the side-­by-­side, of the dispersed.”1 He also emphasizes the rise of spatial logic over temporal concerns, when he notes that “our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.”2 Although Foucault presented his paper in 1967, his observations of the rising significance of space, simultaneity, and interconnecting networks are applicable to our digital times. Our spatiotemporal perception is not that of “a homogeneous and empty space.” Rather, we perceive, create, and inhabit textured, heterogeneous time-­spaces that contain and composite a multitude of temporalities and spatialities. The spatiotemporal complexity of our existence is aptly manifested in the layered nature of digital imagery in our contemporary media ecosystems and the globally dispersed and temporally compressed processes of production in contemporary digital filmmaking. The term “composite” indicates a temporal and spatial compression of multiple layers. The process of digital compositing produces a media assemblage that integrates physical and virtual elements and merges geographically distant sites attached to diverse national territories. Heterotopias are pertinent to discussing digital media composites, because they address the heterogeneous material realities and the thick textures of multiple components, layers, and assets. Heterotopias are useful for understanding how a composite image can contain multiple layers of incompossible time-­spaces. In the process of compositing, various layers

are not conflated into a depthless, homogeneous space. Rather, the layers retain their thickness via a heterotopic perception that can identify the heterogeneity of production sites, workflows, and resources that converge in global media assemblages. This chapter studies how live-­action footage and cgi are composited into media heterotopia. I discuss how hybrid environments and modular elements are incorporated in digitally enhanced ecosystems to create “alien” or futuristic spaces of contemporary science fiction films. I focus on three science fiction films produced by global Hollywood: Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013), and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014). These films present virtual environments that are digitally manipulated, produced, and composited but their fictional otherworldly landscapes also used real terrestrial locations as raw materials in the production process. A heterotopic analysis will reveal how globally dispersed nonlinear digital workflows produce and composite heterotopic spaces that incarnate a transnational geography and a transgalactic imaginary in science fiction cinema. M EDI A H ET EROTO P I A : CO MP O SI TI NG GLOBA L CREAT I V E L A B O R I N N O N L I NE A R DIGITA L  WO RK FLOWS

As globalization is perceived as enabling fluid border crossings among various nations, spatial concepts and metaphors are often utilized to envision actualizations and aspirations of fluidity and mobility across textual, technological, geographical, and national borders. Globalization scholar Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto writes: “While national boundaries are increasingly blurred in the new global formation, transnational capitalism has paradoxically given rise to an increasing obsession with place or specific site.”3 Connecting the global and the digital through the concept of virtuality, he also discusses how digital technologies destabilize traditional conceptions of temporal linearity: The world has been fundamentally altered by digital technologies. Time is no longer a linear extension consisting of the past, the present, and the future; instead, the temporal linearity is now supplanted by intensive time, for which the only meaningful distinction is that of real time and delayed time. Consequently, in the new global space, the dichotomy of the real and the imaginary 76  |  ch ap te r 3

plays a far less important role than that of the plausible and the implausible or the actual and the virtual. The concept of virtuality, then, refers to a new s­ patio-­temporal continuum which continues to radically alter our sense of reality.4

Here he describes how our perception of reality is transforming in a fundamental way because of newly formed, virtual configurations of time and space that are moving away from linear chronologies. Yoshimoto raises the possibility of digital technologies spatializing formerly temporal domains by inventing time as “a new frontier” and a global image culture in which virtual images circulate in an endless cycle of production and regeneration.5 Similar ideas related to the advent of new spatiotemporal formations are discussed in the media industry (frequently in more approbatory tones) alongside rapid developments in digital production pipelines and global networks. The localized ­assembly-­line production model of Fordism constructed in the classical Hollywood studio system is currently being restructured into a geographically dispersed nonlinear workflow model that embodies a post-­Fordist mode of flexible ­accumulation.6 Global media industries are integrating digital technologies and platforms to construct new spatial and temporal formations. Digital labor and flexible capital move around in production pipelines and complex networks of transnational collaboration. Alex McDowell, a veteran production designer, identifies a crucial development in contemporary media production by asserting that nonlinear digital workflows are replacing linear production processes with a simultaneous collaborative workspace:7 There is no linear and there really is no pre-­production, production and post-­production anymore. There is just a single environment within which the film, the game, the piece of architecture is developed, and it starts with a core idea and one builds on that section by section. As ideas become more concrete, you essentially add more detail to that central idea. It expands in a completely non-­linear way globally in all directions, feeding information out and receiving information in to the central design hub, which is a collaborative space that allows a director and a game designer or an architect or an engineer: all of the people who are involved in making that piece of art or that product. They are all able to dip in and out of this immersive, non-­linear workspace.8 He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 77

The shift in focus from temporality to spatiality in current practices of film production workflows is similarly articulated by other industry professionals and is emphasized thematically and stylistically in Hollywood blockbusters that heavily deploy digital production and visual effects. At a preview for tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010) at siggraph 2010, producer Jeffrey Silver noted that the temporal order of previous workflows was modified during the film’s production. According to Silver, the order was rendered irrelevant because postproduction techniques were deployed in the previsualization stage. These observations of industry specialists working on the ground raise important issues that intersect with scholarly discussions of digital technologies, global media infrastructures, and transnational collaborations—how spatial concerns are transforming the dynamics of media production pipelines; the global dispersion of labor within a single project or multiple related projects; and how collaborative work in a nonlinear workspace is enabled by such digital platforms as video conferencing and online file sharing. This substitution of linearity with simultaneity forms the basis for the concept of media heterotopia and the practice of digital compositing. The composited environments that are created in the nonlinear digital workflow for ­large-­budget Hollywood projects contain an enormous number of modular assets. To expedite and streamline the work process, the creative labor of digital film production is dispersed across geographically diverse companies in global pipelines. One prominent example is The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015), which divided its visual effects workload into three categories based on the setting: Mars, Earth, and outer space. Each category was distributed to three different vendors: Mars sequences to mpc, Earth sequences to the Senate, and outer space sequences to Framestore, respectively.9 Additional visual effects work was divided among a number of smaller companies: Argon, Fluent Image, Atomic Arts, Milk vfx, and fbfx, studios that are geographically dispersed in such locales as Montreal, London, and Middlesex. This distribution of digital labor is common in such ­large-­scale productions, which attests to the fact that formerly disparate stages of preproduction, production, and postproduction are increasingly becoming fused with one another in a collaborative space. In this context, “space” has both metaphorical and material meanings. The term is applicable to a conceptual sense of abstract space, but it can also refer to actual spaces of production. Science fiction cinema often articulates spatiotemporal complexity 78  |  ch ap te r 3

and technological innovation in textual realms and production spaces. In her study of American science fiction films, Vivian Sobchack discusses how the genre manifests the close relationship between technology and our experience of time and space in film narratives and aesthetics. She examines how technological developments in capitalist modes of production, distribution, and exhibition have created new spatial and temporal forms of “being-­in-­the-­world.” Sobchack’s assertions on the effect of electronic and digital technologies on our experience of spatial contiguity are particularly pertinent to our discussion of contemporary nonlinear digital workflows. She notes how we are “culturally producing and electronically disseminating a new world geography that politically and economically defies traditional notions of spatial ‘location.’”10 Sobchack also anticipates the spatial concerns of global Hollywood’s digital film production when she describes how American science fiction cinema “symbolizes and brings to visibility this apparent paradox of the simultaneous spatial dispersal and yet ‘nuclear’ concentration of economic and political power.”11 The ­outward-­expanding trajectory of dispersal, dislocation, and dissemination is also evident in new forms of spatial configurations that are emerging in contemporary systems of global capitalism. Most notably, two paradoxical dynamics are apparent in the “new world geography” of Hollywood’s nonlinear digital workflows: the dispersal of space and the concentration of power. In digitally connected networks of transnational media production, media heterotopias also embody a “new world geography,” that is, a creative geography of temporal and spatial trajectories that are emblematic of the digital regime in contemporary media industries. AVATA R : T ECH N O LO GI CA L I MAGI N ATI O N AND TECH N O LO GI CA L I N N OVAT I O N

The science fiction genre manifests the technological imagination and technological innovation of the present moment via theme, narrative, iconography, cinematography, and visual effects. In a more recent essay, Sobchack asserts that onscreen images of technology in science fiction films are both reflective and coconstitutive of technological achievements and technological imagination at a particular cultural moment.12 In order to study this reciprocal relationship between current trends of technology and cinematic imaginings of technology, it is useful to consider how technological innovations affect the filmmaking process He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 79

in production spaces and how they leave traces in the diegetic spaces of science fiction films. In the science fiction genre, the spectacle of technological wonders often supersedes the narrative in prominence. Even when films present dystopian or apocalyptic futures tinged with technophobic anxieties, they often utilize ­cutting-­edge technologies to produce spectacular visual effects that contradict the dark, cautionary message of the narrative. The real story of technology, then, is manifested in these spectacles of technological progress. Brooks Landon refers to Tom Gunning’s notion of “cinema of attractions” to discuss how primitive cinema and science fiction use “the spectacle of its production technology to elicit the same sense of wonder and discovery.”13 He notes that a “digital cinema of attractions,” which uses computer animation and electronic simulation, heralds a new development that enables media to represent and also realize science fiction narratives.14 In other words, ­effects-­laden sequences in science fiction films can be seen as “self-­reflexive celebrations of film technology itself,” because they demonstrate what is possible with ­present-­day technologies.15 This visual celebration of technical expertise can either be in alliance, or in conflict, with the film’s discursive narrative. James Cameron’s Avatar is a pertinent case study to discuss cinematic narratives and spectacles of technological evolution. The celebration of new advancement in the film’s virtual production diverges from the critical view of t­ echnology-­driven capitalist greed portrayed in its narrative. The film’s protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a paraplegic Marine veteran who is able to inhabit a ­cross-­species hybrid body by using ­digital-­based technology. In the film’s narrative, the deterioration or death of a human body leads to a corporeal rebirth as a physically superior organism. This process of transmutation, which is similar to plugging into a computer to access a digital network, enables the entrance into a hybrid avatar that is created by mixing human and alien dna. The alien dna is provided by a species of sentient extraterrestrials, called the “Na’vi,” that inhabit the jungles of Pandora, a fictional planet colonized by human civilization. Reminiscent of the way an onscreen avatar is vicariously manipulated by an offscreen human body, the c­ ross-­species hybrid creatures in Avatar are controlled by humans via a machine that links their consciousness to the body of their corresponding avatar. This act of physically connecting to an avatar is also replicated in the production process in the way live-­action footage and performance capture data 80  |  ch a p te r 3

3.1 The Blu-­ray special features of Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox, 2010) show how performance capture technology and live-­action reference footage of actors’ performances are used to animate digital characters.

that recorded the actors’ performances that were digitally mapped onto their corresponding ­computer-­generated characters. Digital cinema frequently contains a heterogeneous composite of ­computer-­generated images and profilmic footage. In the case of Avatar, the film’s images are layered composites of live-­action footage, performance capture footage, practical effects, digital visual effects, and computer animation. The film’s story of the consciousness of a human indi­ vidual migrating into a different body is reflexive of the digital filmmaking process. This film is a hybrid form of live action and digital imagery, and its narrative centers on a hybrid organism created by fusing human and alien dna. Raymond Williams’s notion of “structural homology” is useful here to highlight the parallel relationship between the film’s narrative content and its mode of production. On a similar note, Rick Carter, production designer for Avatar, noted that “story is design and design is the story.”16 The characters’ transference into a corresponding avatar is homologous to the extensive use of performance capture—or “the process of recording movement and translating that movement onto a digital model”—which is described as more advanced and effective than motion capture in the film’s Blu-­ray special features. When Avatar was released, the popular media made much of its stereoscopic aspect, and many industry insiders commented in hyperbolic He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 81

rhetoric that Avatar was a revolutionary, game-­changing “tentpole” film17 that will “dissolve the boundary between audience and screen, reality and illusion—and change the way we watch movies forever.”18 This rhetorical emphasis on the c­ ause-­and-­effect relationship between new technologies and radical changes is a common strategy used in Hollywood, so it is not surprising that the film industry would promote the “newness” and immersive effects of 3-­D technology in an effort to revive popular interest in stereoscopic motion pictures. Meanwhile, industry professionals involved in film production showed more interest in the enormous scale of digital processing technologies deployed by Cameron and his technical crew. The virtual production of Avatar sped up the process of digital filmmaking with newly developed technologies that could composite live-­action sequences with ­computer­generated elements in real time. In other words, Cameron and his crew could simultaneously perform digital compositing tasks while shooting the film instead of waiting until the postproduction stage. This virtual production intensified the temporal complexity and compression in nonlinear digital workflows. An important technology used in this simultaneous collaborative workspace was new software called Simulcam, which enabled the production team of Avatar to work with digital data as though they were directing a live-­action film.19 In more concrete terms, they were able to input digital characters and set extensions into the camera to produce real-­time, low-­resolution composites of performance capture data, live-­action footage, and ­computer-­generated characters and environments.20 This software made it possible for digital characters to interact with live actors and environments. The simultaneity enabled by Simulcam allowed the production team to make decisions about lighting and shot composition while shooting the film. It also obviated the need to “fix it in the post,” since the stages of production and postproduction were merged into an integrated, simultaneous process. Another new technology that enabled real-­time compositing of live-­ action and ­computer-­generated elements was the virtual camera, which is a small, flat-­panel lcd screen that streams motion capture footage of the actors’ movements on the soundstage and maps it onto a virtual terrain. To put it simply, it places digital characters in a digital environment. Instead of seeing the actors Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver on the screen, for instance, the viewer would see a rough “videogame version” of their avatar characters in the jungles of Pandora.21 Cameron thereby 82  |  ch ap te r 3

3.2 James Cameron uses a virtual camera in the physical space of the soundstage (courtesy of Cinefex).

used the virtual camera as a viewfinder, or “a window into the virtual world,” to compose the shots, frame the action, and direct his actors’ performances.22 This means that the virtual camera enabled the filmmaker to coordinate camera movements and shoot scenes on an empty stage even when the actors were absent. On the experience of working with the virtual camera, Cameron noted how he felt “like a material person in a ghostly world,” especially when he was working on the virtual shots when the actors were no longer there.23 His words describe a sort of delayed spectral vision: one that recognizes the affective experience of working with people who are present and absent, an effect created by the slippage between simultaneity and temporal disjunction. The significance of his invocation of ghostly forces can be extrapolated to highlight the spectral nature of the work that takes place in all contemporary forms of digital filmmaking and computer animation. TH E MO DUL A RI T Y A N D SI T E-­ SP ECI FI C MAT ERI A LI T Y O F TRANSN AT I O N A L H ET EROTO P I A S

In an industry panel at siggraph, Joe Letteri (senior visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital in New Zealand), Stephen Rosenbaum (visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital), and Richard Baneham (animation supervisor at Lightstorm, James Cameron’s company based in Santa Monica, California) explained the process of creating and compositing digital characters and environments for the film.24 After assembling a pipeline that would first build an environment, they populated the space with characters. Then they created lighting that would connect the two in a credible relationship in a seamless composite.25 As a prime example, the technical team of Avatar faced the task of using ­natural-­looking light to illuminate, and thereby animate, the fantastical realm of Pandora in order to dissolve demarcations between the jungle and its inhabitants. For nighttime scenes, the ­computer-­generated bioluminescence visually and thematically linked all digital elements of the Pandoran landscape. In order to uphold the illusion of seamless unity, each digital asset must appear to be suffused with the same light source, and to reflect this light uniformly as though all the components in the shot occupied the same space. This illustrates the point that digital technologies play a vital role in maintaining simultaneity and consistency in the nonlinear production

84  |  ch ap te r 3

pipeline. As noted earlier, the ideal of seamlessness holds its aesthetic value in the visual integrity of digitally composited films. Transnational heterotopias were created in Avatar by juxtaposing segments laterally, or by fusing layers to create depth in a single shot or segment. Needless to say, the virtual production of Avatar entailed a staggering amount of visual effects. To share the workload, the film was divided into several segments, which were distributed across the globally dispersed digital pipeline. Performance capture took place on soundstages at Playa Vista; template files were produced by Cameron’s technical crew in the United States; the files were sent to Weta Digital in New Zealand, where the ­videogame-­resolution versions were upgraded to high-­resolution digital assets; and then the files were passed on to Weta’s animation department.26 The overall production pipeline also included multiple stages, including concept, set, and costume design; building models and practical sets; and live-­action shooting at Weta’s studios, to name just a few. The work was distributed among a global network of visual effects vendors: Industrial Light and Magic (based in San Francisco), Hydraulx (Santa Monica), Blur Studio (Venice), Pixel Liberation Front (Venice), Look Effects (Hollywood), Lola Visual Effects (Santa Monica), Framestore (London), Prime Focus (Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Winnipeg), Hybride (Quebec), spy (San Francisco), and buf (Los Angeles, Paris), as well as Weta Digital and Weta Workshop (New Zealand).27 In addition, Legacy Effects (San Fernando) did the character and prop designs, and the motion capture was done by Giant Studios (Playa Vista). Various vendors working in different countries also jointly produced a significant number of shots. Most of the live-­action sequences were shot on greenscreen stages and interior sets on Weta soundstages in New Zealand, and the background was later filled in with ­computer-­generated environments.28 For the sequence in which Jake Sully arrives for the first time at Hell’s Gate—the human base for military and industrial activities on Pandora—live-­action footage was shot on a greenscreen stage at Weta, and it was later composited with c­ omputer-­generated backgrounds that were created by the collaborative efforts of Framestore (based in the United Kingdom), Weta Digital (New Zealand), and Industrial Light and Magic (United States).29 For most of the sequences that take place in the c­ omputer-­generated environments of Pandora’s jungles with digital characters, the actors’ performances were captured on stages at Playa

He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 85

3.3 Live-­action footage of Sam Worthington was shot on a greenscreen stage and composited with digital assets produced by various visual effects studios for a sequence in Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox, 2010) (courtesy of Cinefex).

Vista—the site of the film’s virtual production—and the sequences were later digitally rendered in New Zealand by Weta Digital.30 Even as the workforce in media production becomes globally dispersed, the seamless aesthetics of digitally composited spaces often conceals this geographical diversity. The aesthetic emphasis on the seamlessness of the finished product and the rhetorical emphasis on collaboration often mask material realities in contemporary film production, such as the hierarchical relationship among geographically diverse sites of production, exploitation of human resources, and extraction of natural resources. A heterotopic analysis is thus deployed to illuminate the geographical diversity of the workforce in film production pipelines and the intensity of human effort embedded in the digitally composited ecosystems of global Hollywood. As a map that indicates the coordinates of the transnational geography of digital film production, media heterotopias reveal the material residue of digital labor that is woven into the very fabric of the film. The seamless integration of the vast number of heterogeneous elements is visually embodied by digital aesthetics in the diegetic realm. This illusion, however, becomes somewhat dissipated when industry insiders describe material conditions of the ­labor-­intensive production process in promotional interviews and professional talks. When one becomes cognizant of the staggering number of layers that are composited to create a single frame and the amount of labor that goes into creating and compositing these layers, one cannot but think of its thickness. This thickness may not be tactile in the physical sense of an analog world, but its texture is retained in the visual density and diversity that are created by the multiple composited layers. This density can also be translated to a calculable form, that is, the size of a file and the time it takes to render the file.31 Therefore, the rhetoric of flatness and seamlessness in discussions of digital filmmaking begins to show its cracks. In conjunction with seamlessness, modularity is also emphasized in the production process. The modular nature of digital composites directly correlates to the mutability and mobility of the disparate elements that are assembled into a single frame. Although seamlessness and modularity may seem at odds with each other, they actually form a synergistic connection. It is, in fact, modularity that enables a digital mise-­en-­scène. In other words, the sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting are all digitally created, manipulated, and composited. The modularity of mul­ tiple elements in a single frame, shot, or sequence is essential because it He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 87

contributes to the transnational quality of media heterotopias that are created by global digital production pipelines. Rob Powers, virtual environment supervisor of Avatar, also uses the term “modular” to describe the film’s ­computer-­generated environments during an interview in the Blu-­ray special features. Within the nonlinear workflow paradigm that entails extensive collaboration, this modularity takes center stage as an important component of complex digital workflows that are geographically dispersed among numerous vendors in different parts of the world. Indeed, the modular nature of the ­computer-­generated environments and the ­computer-­generated characters is what enables the global distribution of collaborative labor, since these digital assets can later be assembled into one shot or one sequence. The individual modules are even more mobile and flexible than the concept and practice of overlapping layers. They can be moved around freely within a single frame, combined and reconfigured in countless ways, and can be reused infinitely in other sequences. As digitized data, they are also mutable. They can easily be sized up or down, rotated or reversed. For instance, any organism—plant, animal, avatar, or Na’vi—that inhabits the lush jungles of Pandora can be replicated multiple times in the same frame (with minor modifications to simulate diversity) or inserted into different frames of the film. This is greatly advantageous in saving time, money, labor, and other valuable resources in the production process. The significance of modularity in globally dispersed workflows also leads to an analysis of site-­specific materiality. Challenging the discursive emphasis on digital identities and virtual mobilities, the physical materiality of the body is reasserted and reemphasized in various modular forms. This acknowledgment of materiality reinvigorates the texture, tactility, and thickness of site-­specific material residues in digital film production pipelines. It is now common in popular and professional discussions on digital filmmaking for industry insiders to accentuate the physicality of virtual characters and the materiality of virtual spaces. Robert Stromberg, Avatar’s production designer, stressed the materiality of the virtual environments of Pandora, asserting that they were designed according to the same guidelines applied to traditional set designs.32 At a siggraph preview for tron: Legacy, ­architect-­turned-­filmmaker Joseph Kosinski re­ iterated the concrete spatial elements of the work space by describing how

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the production crew designed and built fourteen practical sets as physical foundations for the virtual environments in the film’s diegetic space. Kosinski also stressed the necessity for in-­camera footage while discussing another film, Oblivion: “If you want to transport an audience, particularly with science fiction, the world has to feel real and visceral. That meant building sets and vehicles as practical and functional objects.”33 Filmmaker Christopher Nolan likewise prioritized the tactility of analog media and real production spaces in creating the virtual spectacles and landscapes of his film Interstellar. Unlike many other l­ arge-­scale studio productions, Interstellar was shot using the increasingly defunct analog medium of film. To maximize the material elements of his fictional landscapes, Nolan used practical sets in Canada, planted acres of cornfields, filmed on location in Iceland, and used full-­scale soundstage spacecraft and miniature models for the film’s outer space sequences. Hoyte van Hoytema, director of photography, also emphasized the tactile sensation and tangible quality of the film’s images of alien planets, most of which were shot on location in Iceland: “We tried to imagine what it would be like to come to a planet, get through the stratosphere, and put your foot on the soil. . . . We wanted it to be very tactile and real, to feel those worlds rather than just marvel about them and create some sort of artificial magic.”34 Here one can identify a continued investment in retaining the corporeality of physical objects and real locations in cgi, as articulated by those working in the film industry. Avatar’s production crew also stressed the physical authenticity of the visual references and actors’ performances that grounded the film’s virtual environments and digital characters in the material world. In interviews, they explained that the ­computer-­generated realm of Pandora and its inhabitants were composites of physical objects and virtual elements produced in New Zealand and Los Angeles. For example, Weta Workshop designed and built physical versions of Na’vi weapons and living quarters, as well as the machines and helicopters used by human characters in the live-­action sequences filmed in New Zealand.35 Meanwhile, for the performance capture footage, the production team at Playa Vista assembled physical objects to correspond to the virtual environment of the Pandoran jungle, such as hills, trees, and vines.36 They also used handheld models of aircraft for the aerial choreography of battle sequences. In addition, the actors climbed ropes to simulate climbing ­computer-­generated vines

He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 89

and mounted manually operated gimbal rigs to simulate flight scenes that portray digital characters riding on ­computer-­generated mountain banshees. Geoff Burdick, vice president of the production services and technology department at Lightstorm Entertainment, also emphasized the physical substance inherent in digital processing by noting how the cultural background and creative talent of those working on the film influence the site-­specific nature of virtual production: “Digital is just a tool. Whether an artist has a mouse or a paintbrush, it’s all being done by a person. There is precious little that is automated in any part of what we do—almost nothing. And so everyone has a hand in what’s going on. Where it’s happening, how it’s happening, and the background of that person, all of that good stuff has an impact on the final product.”37 Here Burdick argues against popular perceptions of digital labor as an automated process by stressing how the site specificity of the production space and the creative “hand” of the individual artist all leave indelible marks on the finished product. While acknowledging the convenience of distributing work via digital platforms, he also notes the significance of sharing the same physical work space. According to Burdick, a number of digital artists working on the film occupied the second floor of the practical soundstages in Playa Vista. This provided them with a bird’s-­ eye view of the performance capture process taking place on the first floor, which they used as visual reference, in conjunction with live-­action footage of actors’ performances and performance capture data. The site specificity of New Zealand—another major production site for Avatar—also left numerous material marks on the film. Each article of Na’vi clothing and jewelry was handmade and woven by a team of New Zealand costume designers, all of which served as visual reference for the animators creating the digital characters.38 These items were also used during the performance capture stage to see how they interacted with the bodies of the actors. During an interview in the Blu-­ray special features, Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor, who was in charge of conceptual design, costume, and specialty props, noted that the “alien” culture of the Na’vi people (such as the tribal dance sequence) was actually based on the indigenous Polynesian culture of the Pacific Islands. Residues of local Māori culture can also be found in the otherworldly environment of Pandora; for instance, the Na’vi gesture of touching foreheads is a cultural reference to the Māori custom of expressing emotional connection. 90  |  ch a p te r 3

3.4 Jack Sully’s avatar rides a mountain banshee in Avatar (Twentieth Century Fox, 2010).

3.5 The actors mounted a manually operated gimbal rig to simulate the film’s flight scenes (courtesy of Cinefex).

Geoff Burdick notes the reciprocity between onscreen spaces and production sites when he observes that “where we filmed and the folks that we utilized leaked into the narrative to some degree.”39 This “leaking” can also be observed in a number of alien landscapes in Avatar that are visually connected to actual locations around the world. The jungles in South America and Angel Falls in Venezuela served as inspirations for the lush Pandora junglescape. Also, the floating rock mountains in Pandora were modeled upon photographs of limestone formations and mountain ranges in China’s Hunan province and laser scans of real rocks.40 This imaginary space became conflated with a corresponding location in physical reality after the release of the film; local tourism officials reportedly offered Pandora tours and Avatar-­themed Na’vi weddings as promotional packages for the region.41 This exemplifies how digital fantasies can leak out to the real world, much as “the digital world starts to take on the character of the real world.”42 This double leakage across the porous borders between physical and virtual landscapes illuminates fluid interactions that circulate among digital fantasies and material realities. DIGITA L LY CO MP O SI T ED A L I EN L A ND S C A P E S IN H O L LY WO O D’ S V I SUA L V ERN AC U L A R

In contemporary film production, ­computer-­generated visual ­effects are frequently used in creating fictional environments that are temporally or spatially distant from present reality. Although much emphasis is placed on digitally enhancing the unearthly nature of alien environments in science fiction cinema, these landscapes are often grounded in the material environments of physical sets, practical effects, and location shooting. The digitally constructed ecosystems that portray otherworldly landscapes in the Hollywood films Oblivion and Interstellar are also based on images of real locations that were defamiliarized through digital extensions and composites. Although landscapes often depict a natural environment, they are “constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.”43 W. J. T. Mitchell writes that landscape is “a natural scene mediated by culture,” which is “both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a package and the commodity inside the package.”44 In other words, landscapes are mediated and manufactured through our culturally inscribed perceptions of nature. Focusing on the 92  |  ch ap te r 3

3.6 The postapocalyptic landscapes in Oblivion (Universal Pictures, 2013) are digital composites of c­ omputer-­generated imagery and on-­location footage shot in Iceland.

connections between film images, infrastructures, and natural resources, Nadia Bozak particularly notes how the camera can be used “to represent land as landscape” to assert that cultural perceptions of land and nature are created by images that in turn affect industrial practices of shaping and manufacturing real spaces.45 In Oblivion and Interstellar, the Icelandic landscape is aesthetically depicted and rhetorically described as primordial, desolate, and bleak. These science fiction films participate in a popular trend in contemporary Hollywood of filming on-­location footage in Iceland to construct representations of alien, otherworldly environments.46 In these films, Iceland functions as an in-­camera special effect by providing the raw materials to create a vision of a “primordial Earth,” or Earth as it may have looked “a million years ago.”47 As a result, Iceland becomes an emblem of a primitive or postapocalyptic landscape in the visual vernacular produced and circulated by global Hollywood. This section examines what happens when a physical, earthly location substitutes for an imagined, unearthly setting. I explore the cultural significance and repercussions of shooting global science fiction films in real locations, namely, Iceland, to signify “monumental bleakness.”48 It is a common filmmaking practice to substitute one location for another. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, for instance, on-­location footage shot in Iceland was used to portray the national territories of Iceland, Greenland, Afghanistan, and Nepal. In many cases, this practice is necessitated by a combination of practical and financial reasons, such as accessibility, convenience, production budget, tax incentives, availability He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 93

of local talent, and geopolitical conditions. In World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013), the main character, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), travels around the world in his quest to stop a global zombie pandemic. Scenes set in Philadelphia were shot in Glasgow, Scotland, and a housing project in London was later composited with a 360-­degree shot of New Jersey and ­computer-­generated images based on real photographs taken in New York.49 In addition, scenes that took place on Camp Humphreys, an American military base in South Korea, were filmed in an aerodrome outside London and various locations around England.50 These instances of geographical substitution make sense ­budget-­wise when one considers the sheer number of different nations visited by the protagonist in the film’s narrative in conjunction with the project’s financial troubles based on major revisions of the script and extensive reshoots.51 Meanwhile, in the case of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, the initial choice for location shooting was reportedly Morocco, but the unstable political situation in North Africa at the time forced the production to relocate to Iceland.52 As with most production decisions based on the industry’s need for efficiency, there are practical reasons for using Iceland to depict diverse terrestrial and extraterrestrial landscapes in science fiction cinema. As noted by Oblivion’s associate producer Emilia Cheung, one major advantage to filming in Iceland is its diverse natural ecosystems and terrains, such as geothermal spots, waterfalls, geysers, and hot springs. She comments that filming in Iceland is “like being in another world.” Filmmaker Joseph Kosinski echoes this sentiment when he stresses the otherworldly aesthetic of Iceland, saying that its landscape is the perfect setting to represent “beautiful desolation.”53 Actor Tom Hiddleston, who visited Iceland to film Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor, 2013), used similar rhetoric to describe its landscape: “It was really exciting to shoot the exteriors of Svartalfheim in Iceland, which of all the places on this planet I think is the most magical. It has an otherworldly quality to it and looks like another planet.”54 Yet another actor, Wes Bentley, uses almost identical words to describe his experience of filming scenes for Interstellar, saying that Iceland “really felt like another planet,” in the Blu-­ray special features. Kosinski’s science fiction film Oblivion takes place in a postapocalyptic world. Early on, audiences learn that humans have relinquished Earth to an extraterrestrial force. As a result, the human population has temporarily migrated to a space station before permanently relocating to Saturn’s 94  |  ch ap te r 3

moon, Titan. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are left behind on Earth to complete a ­resource-­gathering operation before joining the rest of humankind. In the film, Iceland functions as a double for the desolate, postapocalyptic ruins of the U.S. East Coast after the alien invasion. The film was shot on location in Iceland at Reykjavík, Jarlhettur, Hrossaborg, and Dettifoss waterfall in Vatnajökull National Park. Traces of human civilization are digitally inserted into the natural environment, creating uncanny heterotopic spaces that merge familiar and unfamiliar imagery. Kosinski notes that, for his film, he “wanted all of Earth to resemble the Icelandic landscape,” that is, to look desolate and primordial.55 To produce this effect, the production crew filmed aerial plates while flying over volcanic terrain in Iceland and then digitally modified the environment. They inserted matte paintings of lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and relics of urban ­civilization—including such familiar buildings as the Empire State Building and the New York Public Library—to transform the Icelandic landscape into the devastated ruins of metropolitan New York. Temporal and spatial compression is well demonstrated in a shot that digitally composited images filmed on location at Hrossaborg—a ten-­thousand-­year-­old crater in Iceland—and ­computer-­generated images of billboards, banners, and stadium seats that marked it as the ruined shell of a baseball stadium.56 To create another image of temporal and spatial disjunction, the wrecked remains of the Empire State Building observation deck were built as a physical set in a remote part of Iceland. In Oblivion, it is later revealed that the space station thought to be the refuge of humankind is actually inhabited by the hostile alien force, and that Jack is one of countless clones produced by the alien invaders to assist them in mining Earth’s resources. Jack also discovers that the Scavengers, whom he believes to be aliens that remained on Earth, are actually human survivors in disguise. In other words, what was assumed to be human is revealed to be alien, and what was assumed to be alien is revealed as human. Sobchack detects an “aesthetics of collision” between the alien and the familiar in the science fiction genre. She identifies a type of science fiction film that strikes a balance between “its alien and familiar content—its fantasy and realism” in a single frame.”57 This coexistence evokes a sense of amazement at “their togetherness and their collision” and “their compatibility and their incongruence.”58 In science fiction, the frisson of the He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 95

3.7 The remnants of a baseball stadium in Oblivion (Universal Pictures, 2013).

3.8 Aerial plates were digitally modified to transform the Icelandic landscape into the postapocalyptic ruins of metropolitan New York.

uncanny is often evoked when alien, postapocalyptic, or futuristic elements are inserted into a familiar environment. In Oblivion, digital composites of practical and c­ omputer-­generated effects produce this sense of dislocation, disjunction, and dissonance. Here visual effects are used to create an “alien” alternate reality by fusing reality and fantasy. These seemingly incompossible elements occupy the same frame as part of the mise-­en-­scène instead of being isolated in separate shots. These heterotopic assemblages deliver a visual and affective shock of dissonance by fusing the alien with the familiar. The sense of incongruity felt by the viewer at seeing iconic Manhattan landmarks in a desolate landscape corresponds to the feeling of horror felt by the protagonist when he learns the alien origins of his identity as a clone. This sense of incongruity plays a significant role in a heterotopic analysis of a film because it accentuates the very seams of the cinematic image, despite concerted efforts to erase material traces of heterogeneity through the seamless effects of digital compositing. In science fiction cinema, the friction between the alien and the familiar is often manifested thematically or visually in a film’s narrative. In contemporary science fiction, this friction is also located in the production process because technology is pervasively used in practical, mechanical, and digital forms to transform familiar environments into alien territory. In other words, the inverted value of the familiar and the unfamiliar is effectively embodied in digitally composited media heterotopias, which function as “a new sort of space that defies traditional geographical description.”59 The convergence of reality / ​fantasy and material / ​digital in digitally composited ecosystems is indicative of a narrative tension between familiar / ​alien and human / ​nonhuman in the genre of science fiction. Even as these technologically enhanced hybrid environments resolve this tension, they also elaborate the ambivalent nature of digitally mediating material realities that reflect the contemporary experience of spatial dispersion or dislocation. M ATERI A L FO OT P RI N TS O N IM AGIN A RY  GEO GRA P H I ES

The main concern here is to interrogate how media representations of imagined spaces construct and circulate a visual imaginary or vernacular of “Other” spaces for global consumption. A spectral vision is needed to perceive the terrestrial residues of Iceland’s virtual masquerHe te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 97

ade in Hollywood science fiction cinema and to recognize that the films’ imaginary landscapes are grounded upon material realities of global industries and infrastructures. Film scholar Maurizia Natali stresses the ideological power and material presence of film landscapes beyond the screen: “Film landscapes are never purely narrative backgrounds nor simply distracting spectacular settings. They bear the traces of political projects and ideological messages. They press onto viewers’ senses, memories, and fears and become part of their memory, carrying the subliminal strength of a past, even archaic, worldview ready to come back as future progress. Like the footprints left on the surface of the moon by U.S. astronauts, Hollywood landscapes bear the footprints of the United States’ recurrent Manifest Destiny.”60 Natali discusses how American landscapes in science fiction films and Westerns in particular bear the traces of imperialist ideologies, noting that they are “grafted onto the world imaginary” similar to the way “Mount Rushmore was carved into sacred Sioux territory.”61 The images of footprints on the moon and carvings on Mount Rushmore emphasize the material effect of such imaginary geographies and the residual power of Hollywood’s visual vernacular. These media images leave indelible impressions on physical landscapes of occupied territories. Nadia Bozak similarly focuses on the materiality of filmmaking practices by asserting that the ecological impact, or cinematic footprint, of film industries leaves physical residues on natural environments, thereby contradicting popular perceptions of the intangibility of cinematic images. She notes that the footprint is a metaphor that encompasses the paradoxical dimension of cinema, including “mobility and stasis” and “the obsession with the ephemeral and the urge to preserve a physical legacy.”62 This motif of the footprint is useful for examining material traces left on real and fictional landscapes affected or created by global film industries, most notably Hollywood. The narrative and visual motif of imperialist expansions and territorial adventures into frontiers untouched by human civilization associated with science fiction films is particularly germane to an analysis of the film Interstellar. Nolan’s film is set in a dystopian future in which the human population is plagued by a food shortage crisis brought on by environmental disasters. The human race faces extinction, as Earth is no longer able to sustain human life. The film’s narrative centers on Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), an ­astronaut-­turned-­farmer

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who joins a group of nasa scientists in an intergalactic mission to find an alternative planet for humankind. The film’s production also entailed a transnational search for new spaces—in this case, locations that would provide raw material for a visual vernacular cultivated by Hollywood’s global film industry. This analogy is apparent in the rhetorical slippage that occurs between the production process and the diegetic narrative. One prime example is a comment made by production designer Nathan Crowley: “It’s always a sort of voyage of discovery when you make a film. [Nolan] and I would get on a plane to somewhere, do a bit of research, stick [reference photos] on the wall, and then go scouting again—we had planets to find!”63 In Interstellar, Iceland performs as an uncanny double to Earth in the quest for new planets that are compatible to human inhabitation.64 Iceland provided locations for the sequences that take place on two uninhabitable planets explored by the astronaut pioneers: Miller’s Planet, a planet completely covered with water, and Mann’s Planet, which is completely covered in ice. Two faraway (and fictional) planets were thus connected materially via live-­action shooting in locations that were actually in close proximity to each other.65 For the sequence on Miller’s Planet, the crew filmed live-­action plates on location at a two-­foot-­deep freshwater lagoon in Iceland. Double Negative, a visual effects company based in London, extended the seascape in postproduction by replacing volcanic mountains and other land features with simulated ocean views,66 and also added a four-­thousand-­foot-­tall ­computer-­generated tidal wave into the live-­action plates.67 To create the ice-­covered alien ecosystem of Mann’s Planet, the production crew used live-­action location footage from a glacier in Iceland, described as a “very weird and unworldly environment.”68 This footage provided the canvas for a digitally composited ecosystem; the volcanic mountains in the background were painted out and replaced with matte paintings to extend the landscape.69 As a transnational digital fusion of landscapes, this particular sequence includes digitally enhanced aerial shots of real storm clouds over Louisiana and Texas and digital matte paintings of icescapes based on aerial photography shot over Iceland.70 In particular, the icy clouds that blanket the skies form a mirror image of the glaciers on the ground in terms of shape, color, texture, and tactility. This visual similarity emphasizes not only the otherworldly and uninviting nature of the planet’s environment but also

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3.9 Interstellar (Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, 2014) features composited ecosystems that integrate live-­action location footage, matte paintings, and digitally enhanced imagery.

the shared materiality of the Icelandic icescape. The uneasy sensation of disorientation created by this doubling visual effect anticipates the duplicity of a character called Mann (Matt Damon), for whom the planet is named. It is later revealed that the planet is inhospitable to humankind, contrary to the data sent by Mann. The film thereby presents digitally composited ecosystems that portray Icelandic landscapes as unearthly terrain. Digital extensions and visual effects enhance the alien quality of the terrestrial locations. In the context of the film’s narrative, the heterogeneous nature of heterotopias can be applied to signify intergalactic difference. Despite concerted efforts to erase the seams of the digital image, the h ­ eterogeneity of multiple ­layers and assets is often made apparent by an uncanny “aesthetics of collision” in the mise-­en-­scène. With a spectral vision that sees through the illusion of seamlessness, audiences can recognize that every­ thing in the scene was not “photographed at the same time, by the same ­camera.”71 As noted previously, media heterotopias are created by the convergence of two critical aspects of virtual production: the materiality and the modularity of digital assets. In other words, transnational heterotopic environments and bodies are digital composites of modular elements that have material connections to globally dispersed sites of production. An extreme form of modularity is also deployed in Interstellar, as the landscapes of Iceland were fragmented and flattened as a textural map to be used as raw material, or visual fabric, of a virtual ecosystem. For ex­ 100  |  ch ap te r 3

ample, one of the helicopter plates shot in Iceland was digitally manipulated and composited with distortions and other textures (including star field imagery) to create the wormhole interior featured in the sequence of the protagonist’s intergalactic journey.72 The production crew thereby utilized fragments of Iceland territory and reduced them to elemental units before stitching them back together to produce heterotopic images of an uncanny, unfamiliar location. In this process, Icelandic landscapes are transformed into modular textures that function as barely recognizable signifiers of otherness.73 In spite of being used as a non-­nation-­specific backdrop, these cinematic images contain residues of site-­specific local geography through their indexical relationship with territorial production spaces. In other words, the material reality of the nation’s territory affects the production of these otherworldly cinematic spaces. The photogenic physical attributes of Iceland’s diverse terrain—glaciers, icebergs, mountains, tundra, and lava fields—and its malleability into primordial, postapocalyptic, and interstellar environments are the nation’s primary attractions for Hollywood productions. Other practical local incentives include grants for development and distribution, and reimbursements offered by the Icelandic government on production costs.74 The long hours of daylight during the summer are also cost-­effective by enhancing productivity for film crews. Although the nonlinear workspaces of global production pipelines are described as sites of collaboration, these transnational systems of creative production are not as equitable as the term suggests. This spatial dispersion of digital workflows can sustain hierarchical relations of economic and cultural capital among local film industries. In Global Hollywood, Toby Miller and his coauthors criticize how Hollywood utilizes foreign policy, trade agreements, subsidies, copyright laws, ownership claims, as well as coproductions, runaway productions, and outsourced work in the “new international division of cultural labor,” to sustain its continued dominance and cultural imperialism in the global media landscape. Hollywood still reigns as the central creative hub in the transnational network that connects local film industries. Certain sites of production develop as centers or nodes of production pipelines, whereas others are relegated to satellite sites of production or peripheral industries that provide human labor and natural resources to this centralized core that upholds and reinforces Hollywood’s hegemony. Within a regime of creative production He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 101

where major Hollywood institutions conceive, oversee, and finance the overall production, the finished product is all too frequently associated with the recognizable brand of large studios and production companies, or the names of “above-­the-­line” executives, producers, or filmmakers. While Hollywood productions benefit from the local government’s rebate when filming in Iceland, it is unclear at the moment how this will ultimately affect Iceland’s own film industry. Although the Icelandic Film Commission actively makes efforts to attract Hollywood projects to film in Iceland and to promote their use of local production companies and creative workers, again it is unclear how this will translate to the long-­ term development of Iceland’s own cultural industries. In this context, it is troubling that visible traces of Iceland’s culture, history, and population are erased to promote and commodify its national territory as a signifier of pristine and primordial landscapes in the visual vernacular of global Hollywood. It is important to consider the economic and cultural implications of treating the national territory of Iceland as special effect or natural resource for ­computer-­generated ecosystems. In reality, Icelandic production companies and workers also participate in the on-­site production of many Hollywood projects, proving that the nation has more to offer than raw materials for the textures and terrains of otherworldly aesthetics. A substantial percentage of the workforce, including location managers and production coordinators, is hired locally during location shooting.75 This is emblematic of a global capitalist project that depends on a multinational network of resource, labor, capital, and technology to construct a heterotopic media assemblage. It is worth noting that the “new international division of cultural labor” does not necessarily situate peripheral media industries in a continued state of economic and cultural dependency on the hegemonic frame of global Hollywood. To illustrate this point, we can consider how the local film, tourism, and creative industries of New Zealand reaped long-­ term economic benefits with the worldwide success of New Zealand–born filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3) and Hobbit trilogy (2012–14). As a result, New Zealand has become an important design hub of special and visual effects production in global film pipelines. This is well illustrated by the success of Weta Digital, a visual effects company founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk. Weta worked on the visual effects of Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, King Kong (2005), and Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as such ­large-­budget Holly102  |  ch ap te r 3

wood projects as Independence Day: Resurgence (Roland Emmerich, 2016), The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Mark Reeves, 2014), and Avatar. In addition to its reputation for high-­quality postproduction work, New Zealand’s territory is also well known for its role as production site and setting in Jackson’s two trilogies. Similar to how the landscapes of Iceland have become a signifier of primordial worlds, the landscapes of New Zealand are recognizable to the global audience as the visual embodiment of Middle Earth. The local tourism industry also participated in packaging and promoting New Zealand as the mythical realm of Middle Earth by developing tours of the film locations, most notably the Hobbiton set at Matamata.76 In a critical analysis of the connections among cinematic representations of New Zealand, the nation’s colonial history, and its tourism industry, Alfio Leotta describes how the global popularity of The Lord of the Rings trilogy resulted in the successful commodification of New Zealand landscapes as the imaginary realm of Middle Earth. In order to accommodate the ­large-­scale production of Peter Jackson’s films, Leotta contends that “the New Zealand landscape has been emptied of its culture and its people,” comparing it to the political logic and ideology of colonial invasion.77 He discusses how the film trilogy contributed to a “heterotopian impulse” that enabled Western audiences / ​travelers to take refuge in Middle Earth—that is, New Zealand—as a safe realm of fantasy that was sheltered from the real and perceived dangers of terrorism. Leotta, however, asserts that this conflation of Middle Earth and New Zealand is reminiscent of colonialist ideologies that considered New Zealand landscapes as “raw material that could be imaginatively and materially processed and consumed by the tourist / ​spectator or the settler.”78 The common perception of this populated territory as empty and pristine rendered it vulnerable to the colonial fantasies and imperialist ideologies of foreign agents, which left behind very legible and material footprints on the New Zealand landscape. This misguided perception is illustrated in the words of Alan Lee—lead concept artist for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy—as he explains the process of combining human labor, natural resources, and man-­made infrastructures to craft the look of Hobbiton: “After several months of earth moving, set building, hedge laying and gardening the place felt as though it had been inhabited by generations of Hobbits, and He te ro t opic Modul ari t y  | 103

it was satisfying to see it had taken on something of the look of the Devonshire countryside I’d lived in for the past t­ wenty-­five years.”79 Lee also describes New Zealand’s territory as “a young land, primeval in places, still flexing in the aftermath of its creation,” comparing it to “Britain in a much earlier age.”80 Although his words highlight the material authenticity of the virtual landscapes of Middle Earth, they are also reminiscent of a colonialist viewpoint that considers New Zealand a “young land” of wilderness that is open to the arrival of European settlers and industrial development, while completely disregarding the old civilization of indigenous Māori. This is also reminiscent of the rhetorical logic and visual vernacular that describe and depict Iceland as a primitive land.81 As mentioned earlier, a wide variety of political and economic reasons account for the decision to select a particular production site and location from among many others. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that industrial practices of global film industries that utilize, commodify, promote, and consume national territories as alien, otherworldly, primitive, or fantastical landscapes ultimately leave behind indelible marks, footprints, and physical legacies in imaginary and material forms. To borrow the words of Sobchack, Hollywood products do not “determine our lives from some sort of ethereal ‘other’ or ‘outer’ space,” despite their propensity for spatial dispersal and digital imagery.82

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4 HETEROTOPIC MONSTROSITY

The Host and Godzilla

T

he transnational collaboration in nonlinear digital workflows creates global media assemblages that encompass not only composite spaces but also composite bodies that enact ­cross-­border trajectories of economic and cultural exchange. These bodies that inhabit, populate, and move within heterotopic spaces are similarly engaged in a material relationship with the site-­specific conditions of production sites and national film industries. Such heterotopic bodies comprise multiple layers that are claimed by various nations and also contain traces of a historically and culturally specific national imaginary as embodied characteristics. These bodies are often created by the same techniques as the mediated heterotopic environments they inhabit: live-­action performances, cgi, and digital compositing. Shifting the focus to bodies enables an examination of different yet related concerns in regard to transnational circulations of mediated images and laboring b ­ odies. Even though ­computer-­generated bodies are produced by digitized physical bodies, movements, and performances, they are engaged with the material world through visual and sonic traces that anchor them to the physical bodies of living organisms—both human and ­animal. Although individual bodies are ostensibly more mobile than geographical spaces, in many cases these bodies are firmly grounded on territorial concerns, attached to specific cultural, ethnic, and national backgrounds, or connected to production sites and bodies of labor. It is no coincidence that the films discussed here belong to a genre that places the body on full display: the monster film. In this particular genre, the body is often

presented as spectacle in the physical form of the monster. The vulnerability of the body is also highlighted through the spectacle of the monster devouring, disgorging, or destroying human bodies. It is necessary to focus on the role of digital technologies in creating transnational effects and heterotopic bodies in order to interrogate how various national claims merge in a heterotopic body through digital compositing and animation. These layered traces of national bodies become reanimated and recorporealized through the bodies and voices of animated figures that are created along a production pipeline of animation, animatronics, motion capture, visual effects, and sound effects. By considering the transmedia layers of a film, we can add another element to the already belabored technical, aesthetic, and conceptual term “composite.” Putatively intangible cultural codes are given body and voice through physical gestures, visual styles, and globally legible forms in such films as The Host (Gwoemul) and Godzilla. Different types of bodies—spectral, physical, animal, human, animated, and live-­action—are layered to form transnational composites. In each film, an “alien” body embodies an uncanny sense of familiarity / ​unfamiliarity that is created by a combination of its foreign and fantastical qualities.1 How, then, can we identify the nationality of popular media products that are created by transnational production pipelines and consumed in a global visual culture? The ­computer-­generated bodies are identifiable as animated figures of transnationality, or media images that are produced and distributed by a globally dispersed network of resources, talent, and transcultural imagery. Although these monstrous bodies are ­computer-­generated images that simulate physical bodies and movements, they are also materially connected and contingent to historically significant and culturally specific moments. As transnational entities, these digital incarnations manifest an awareness of our increasingly interconnected planetary existence, which is actualized in various forms of economic, technical, and cultural collaborations, as well as ecological crises. TH E T RA N SN AT I O N A L B O DY O F T HE “KO R E A N” M ONST ER I N T H E H O S T : CRO SSI NG B O U NDA R I E S OF GEN RE A N D GEO GRA P H Y

Produced and distributed by transnational exchanges of capital, labor, and resources, digitally created and composited bodies grapple with an identity crisis as they try to achieve global mobility while preserving 106  |  ch ap te r 4

cultural specificity. Indebted to the material and immaterial labor of a geographically dispersed and nationally diverse group of people, these bodies are products of the anxieties of these global times. They embody the challenge of maintaining a balance between the ­often-­conflicting forces of national essentialism and transnational cosmopolitanism. The mediated spaces and bodies in the Korean film The Host can be examined as sites of cultural struggle where the national and the global simultaneously collaborate and collide in the processes of production and postproduction. This film, I contend, attempts to achieve aspirations of global mobility by creating transnational spaces and bodies in a virtual realm. A heterotopic analysis reveals that the imaginary spaces and bodies, which were produced through a combination of location shooting, animatronics, special effects, and digitally enhanced visual effects, materialize transnational effects through a composite of layers with various national sources. The intersections of real / ​imaginary and national / ​transnational overlap in the digitally manipulated media heterotopias of the film. The Korean crew shot the live-­action sequences locally, whereas the visual effects were created and digitally composited by a heterogeneous group of people from New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, as well as South Korea. The Host most successfully accomplishes its aspirations of geographical mobility through transnational collaborations in the global visual effects pipeline. These heterotopic spaces and bodies are digital composites of multiple layers that retain spectral yet tangible traces of a global network of capital, labor, and resources. The Host illustrates the desires of the Korean film industry to create a transnational product with global appeal, even as it retains the cultural specificity of Korean cinema. It successfully reached a wide audience and received favorable popular and critical reviews both at home and abroad. After its theatrical release in South Korea on July 27, 2006, The Host set new records by attracting 2.7 million viewers in the first four days.2 When its domestic theatrical run ended on November 8, the number of viewers had surpassed 13 million, which made it the ­highest-­grossing Korean film at the time.3 It achieved critical acclaim and modest box-­office success when it was released in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, France, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, the United Kingdom, and the United States, among others. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2006, and the New York Times declared it one of the best films there.4 The film also received much favorable attention at international film festivals in He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 107

Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Toronto, and Vancouver. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss described it as a “bizarre hybrid” that was well received by the popular audience and by critics, having “played to acclaim at the Cannes and New York festivals.”5 This phrase “bizarre hybrid” is applicable to various aspects of The Host, such as its fluid genre mixing and its references to Korean history and Hollywood films. Many critics have noted the filmmaker’s dexterity in mixing generic conventions and intertextual references. Manohla Dargis, film critic for the New York Times, writes: “By turns a carnival of horrors and a family melodrama (variations on the same theme), The Host is also a rethink of those 1950s cine-­quickies in which mondo ants, locusts, wasps, crabs and snails and one seriously ticked off amphibious reptile go on the rampage, visiting punishment on a hapless, guilty humanity.”6 Despite The Host’s numerous allusions to Hollywood films, Slate​ .com​’s Dana Stevens emphasizes the filmmaker’s original take on the monster genre: “Though it recalls and specifically references classics of the genre, from Jaws to Alien to Godzilla to The Winged Serpent, The Host, directed by Bong Joon-­Ho, is defiantly sui generis.”7 In interviews, the filmmaker cited his prime sources of inspiration as M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002), which also depicts a dysfunctional family’s struggle against a monster, and other Hollywood monster movies, such as The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) and Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979).8 The Host does not simply mimic conventions of the Hollywood horror genre but integrates them with Bong’s signature style of dark humor. His culturally specific concoction of tragicomedy is often described as distinctly “Korean.” Bong’s film also fluidly merges the genre conventions of science fiction, monster movies, action films, political satire, and comedy. The Host’s intertextual references to Hollywood films, as well as its pioneering entry into generic territories not frequented by other Korean films, which until then usually fell into the categories of melodrama, gangster films, romantic comedy, and drama, are indicative of a global consciousness that is imagined, created, and disseminated by the global circulation of media texts. Genre mixing, I suggest, gestures toward cosmopolitanism or transnational mobility by simultaneously transcending boundaries of text, genre, and geography. These boundaries often overlap with one another, for instance, when generic conventions evince various permutations in different national

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milieus, or when a national cinema consistently produces films of a certain genre. The categorical terms of genre and nation both deal with cartographic concerns; they can be used to chart textual / ​cinematic territories and geopolitical / ​state territories, respectively. Each notion depends on symbolic characters, iconography, and narrative to differentiate one from the other. Neither are coherent or stable categories. The boundaries of both can be destabilized and rewritten in different historical periods. At times, they are closely aligned with each other, because certain genres are used to reinforce myths, ideologies, and traumas of the nation when necessary (e.g., the Western, war films, martial arts films, and horror). It is important to note, however, that these categories are mobile and mutable, as seen in the transnational migration of the Western genre, which has been considered as culturally specific to the American national myth and frontier ideology. But Italy’s “spaghetti Westerns,” Japan’s “sukiyaki Westerns,” India’s “curry Westerns,” and Korea’s “kimchi Westerns” demonstrate the fluidity, mobility, plasticity, and longevity of the genre. In the case of films produced in Asia, a national cinema is often associated (or even equated) with a particular genre to increase the films’ familiar appeal to global audiences and to create a recognizable “hook” for promotion and distribution. Such examples include Bollywood musicals, Hong Kong kung fu films, Chinese wuxia,9 and Japanese horror films. In this context, mixing genres is comparable to moving beyond national boundaries; both are acts of venturing into heterogeneous ­topography— textual or geographical. Because The Host blends elements of the monster genre, satire, the outbreak genre, and family drama, it manifests the blurring of both generic and national boundaries. Deploying the theoretical concept of media heterotopia and the practical notion of compositing to explain transnational coproductions enables a more complex reading of this film that sees it neither as a transplant of Hollywood conventions into a Korean background nor as a transfusion of Korean culture into Hollywood standards of visual storytelling. If one remains within the limiting framework of the national paradigm, it is difficult to recognize or comprehend the overlapping heterotopic layers of transnational cinematic spaces. Even so, national claims on these spaces still exert rhetorical and real power, as exemplified in popular and professional discussions on The Host.

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TH E T RA N SN AT I O N A L A N D T H E M O NS T RO U S

When asked in an interview about the film’s transnational elements and aspirations, one of its producers, Lewis Kim, reinforced the “Korean-­ness” of the film’s identity by stating that The Host was inspired, engendered, and propelled by the strong, creative vision of a Korean filmmaker and was specifically targeted toward Korean audiences.10 This unambiguous viewpoint from an industry insider suggests that despite the apparent awareness of the global reach of geopolitics, biological hazards, and media events in the film’s narrative, the proprietary claims of an ­ ation-­state and the cultural capital wielded by a filmmaker who has achieved auteur status on an international level still figure prominently as a concrete and powerful driving force in the creative and speculative process of conceptualizing a film. The Host contains overt cultural indicators of “Korean-­ness” that brand it as a Korean product. The filmmaker used well-­known Korean actors, notably Song Kang-­ho and Bae Doona.11 Also, the film was shot in Seoul, and the monster’s habitat is near the Han River, which flows through the center of the city. The film alludes to memorable moments in Korean history that are culturally significant to local audiences, most notably the student democratization protests against the government during the 1980s and early 1990s, the 1997 Asian financial crisis that resulted in massive bankruptcies and layoffs, and the U.S. military presence in South Korea. The film’s first sequence shows an American military doctor ordering his Korean subordinate to pour toxic chemicals into a drain connected to the Han River. It is implied that this act is responsible for creating the titular mutant monster.12 This sequence refers to an actual pollution case that occurred in Korea in 2000, involving Albert McFarland, a mortician who worked for the U.S. military. He allegedly gave the order to pour about eighty liters of formaldehyde used to embalm corpses down a drain that led into the Han River. After a two-­year suspension, McFarland returned to his position at the morgue.13 Toward the end of the film, the U.S. military sprays a poisonous, antibacteriological substance called Agent Yellow (a reference to Agent Orange, a chemical used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War) near the river. In stark contrast to the drastic deployment of a biocide by the American government, the main characters of the film—a dysfunctional family who pursue the monster 110  |  ch ap te r 4

4.1 Song Kang-­ho’s character runs away from the monster when it suddenly emerges from the Han River in The Host (Showbox Entertainment, 2006).

to recover a kidnapped family member, a teenage girl named Hyun-­seo (Ko Ah-­sung)—fight with more modest weapons that hold culturally specific significance for the Korean audience. The Molotov cocktail thrown at the monster by Hyun-­seo’s uncle (Park Hae-­il) is an iconic object used by student demonstrators in their protests against the Korean government from the 1980s to the mid-­1990s. Hyun-­seo’s aunt (Bae Doona), who is a professional archer, uses a bow and arrow as her weapon of choice. Archery is a source of national pride for Koreans, as South Korea consistently ranks number one in terms of the medal count in the archery competition at the Olympic Games. The filmmaker also emphasized “Korean-­ness” in his interviews, particularly in regard to the mutant monster’s appearance. In an interview with a Korean film weekly, Bong commented that his main concern when creating the monster was that it should look “realistic” and “Korean.”14 He specifically noted that it should not be as huge as a skyscraper and should visually match the Korean actors, who portray “ordinary people” in the film, instead of a Hollywood action hero like Arnold Schwarzenegger.15 In fact, an earlier version of the monster had scraps of trash from the Han River embedded in its back, including a license plate and an old poster of Bong’s film Memories of Murder (2003). This version (later discarded) placed more visual emphasis on the monster as a Korean product, as the detritus stuck on its back clearly marked it as such. He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 111

4.2 Park Hae-­il’s character throws a Molotov cocktail at the monster in The Host (Showbox Entertainment, 2006).

4.3 Bae Doona’s character uses archery to defeat the monster.

Meanwhile, American critics were less invested in the nationality of the monster. They focused more on its overall repulsiveness, using Western cultural references to describe the creature. Manohla Dargis describes it as “something you might find lurking at the bottom of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or trolling the depths of a murky restaurant aquarium in the middle of a toxic dump,” or “something that slimed out of the sea in a creationist nightmare.”16 Richard Corliss describes it as playful and compares it to Marmaduke, a mischievous Great Dane from a widely syndicated comic strip.17 I pressed this issue in my own interview with the filmmaker, who compared the monster with the bodies, personas, and mannerisms of Korean actors.18 Bong expressed his wish to make a monster that was similar to Oh Dal-­su, a Korean actor who recorded the vocal sounds made by the monster, in the way it looked and moved. Bong noted that the monster was supposed to remind the spectator of Oh Dal-­su as he might act in a state of intoxication, stressing the clumsiness of the mutant monster, which keeps falling and sliding down sloped surfaces in the film. This reference, of course, is only understood and recognized by spectators who possess intertextual knowledge of the Korean films that feature Oh in the roles of comical characters or low-­life gangsters, as in Oldboy (Park Chan-­wook, 2003) and A Bittersweet Life (Kim Ji-­woon, 2005). Bong further stressed the seamless integration of the monster into the film’s diegesis via a visual similarity with Korean bodies and spaces, saying that he wanted to make a monster that would look natural standing next to Song Kang-­ho and would blend in with the setting of the Han River. To achieve this look, the filmmaker said that he, along with the creature designer, agreed to make a monster that looked like an ugly, clammy amphibian with a crooked spine reminiscent of specimens of mutant fish found in the polluted rivers of South Korea. Why is it important or necessary to consider the nationality of imaginary entities, such as a monster that has no attachment to real-­life referents or culturally specific myths? Or, to rephrase and reframe this question: What are the discursive functions and material consequences of the national imaginary or the transnational imaginary? On the one hand, it is telling that the filmmaker and the creature designer relied on an iconic and indexical relationship with Korean bodies and spaces to create a fantastical creature, to affix a national identity to its alien body, and to visualize it as an incarnation of national imaginary. On the other He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 113

hand, the creature was created and visualized by a multinational crew in a global production pipeline. It was designed by a Korean game designer, Jang Hee-­chul, with some input from filmmaker Bong; New ­Zealand– based Weta Workshop, whose credits include Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3) and King Kong (2005) and James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), worked on modeling the maquette; John Cox’s Creature Workshop based in Australia did the animatronics; and the majority of the cgi work was done by the Orphanage, a now-­defunct visual effects studio located in California that worked on such Hollywood films as Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2007), and Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008).19 Two Korean companies also worked on the visual effects and special effects in this film: eon Digital Films and Future Vision. The company eon Digital Films did all the computer graphics in the film except for the work done on the creature; for instance, it created the snow falling in the last sequence of the film. Meanwhile, Future Vision worked on the physical special effects, such as the splash made by the creature when it dives into the Han River. The eponymous creature is the central figure of The Host not only in terms of narrative and genre but also as the focal point of the film’s digitally enhanced space. The special effects and visual effects of the film took up approximately 40 percent of the budget—an unprecedented amount in the Korean film industry until then. Although it is dubious whether the monster successfully embodied the nebulous quality of “Korean-­ness,” it is unarguably a product of transnational collaboration as well as an incarnation of the Korean filmmaker’s and the designer’s combined creative vision. Kevin Rafferty, who worked as visual effects supervisor on The Host through his affiliation with the Orphanage, said that Bong wanted to use Korean visual effects vendors but had decided that their techniques were not mature enough at the time. The filmmaker also did not anticipate building a puppet but later outsourced this task at Rafferty’s recommendation.20 Therefore, this fantastic figure necessitated the transnational collaboration because the film’s producers needed technical expertise that was not readily available in Korea. The task of visual effects is often contradictory, as it produces very visible results while attempting to render invisible the seams between real and imaginary. This contradiction arises from the fact that the labor that goes into creating these effects often coincides with the work that 114  |  ch ap te r 4

4.4 The monster in The Host (Showbox Entertainment, 2006) was animated by using life-­size models and ­computer-­generated visual effects.

goes into disavowing, or erasing traces of, this very labor. In effect, the monster is the most visible seam that embodies the transnational collaboration of technique and labor. An example from the film that benefits from a heterotopic analysis is the sequence in which Hyun-­seo’s father (Song Kang-­ho) pulls her body out of the monster’s mouth. Here a media heterotopia is created by the collaborative efforts of the aforementioned transnational workforce: the monster’s head is a practical life-­size model made by John Cox’s Creature Workshop (Australia); this was based on the conceptual art of a Korean game designer and the maquette made by Weta Workshop (New Zealand); the visual effects were created by the Orphanage (United States); and the sequence was shot on location in Seoul with Korean actors and crew members. This transnational configuration of labor also produced the sequence that features the monster regurgitating human bodies in its lair. In both cases, the model was used because it had to interact physically with the human remains disgorged from the monster’s mouth. In his analysis of the “network narrative” of Babel (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2006), Paul Kerr turns to Raymond Williams’s notion of “homologous structures” to suggest that the film’s network narrative mode relates to its mode of production, as “a film both about and based on ­border-­ crossings.”21 In a similar relationship of “structural homology,” the production history of the monster in The Host and its allegorical significance He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 115

in the film’s narrative mirror each other. The transnational hybridity of the technology that produced the heterotopic image of the monster is also found in the amalgam of components that came together to create the monster in the film’s diegesis, that is to say, a combination of the U.S. military presence and interventionist policies in South Korea and the neoliberal global economy that fomented a rapid economic growth in the region. In the film, these “foreign” elements are brought to the fore as causes that led to toxic dumping in the Han River, thereby “polluting” the land and waters of the nation, as well as the bodies of Korean subjects. The Han River is a visual icon and rhetorical symbol of the rapid economic growth in South Korea, along with the rows of high-­rise apartment buildings that line its banks and the numerous bridges that punctuate the river at intervals. The period of accelerated modernization, urbanization, and industrialization in South Korea that catapulted the nation toward joining the ranks of developed countries in the years following the Korean War is often referred to as the “miracle on the Han River.” Therefore, it is quite fitting that the monster lurks and resides underneath the numerous bridges along the river. These dank, overlooked areas visually and figuratively allude to the dark underside of the relentless movement toward rapid economic growth in South Korea during the second half of the twentieth century. The nation’s aggressive drive and constantly changing environment left no room for collective reflection on possible repercussions in Korean society and negative effects on citizens who had to adapt to these changes. These repercussions are increasingly apparent in contemporary South Korea. In the t­ wenty-­first century, the Han River has become known for the large number of suicides that take place on its bridges. According to data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd), South Korea’s suicide rate reportedly remained the highest among oecd nations from 2002 to 2012.22 Many of these suicides are attributed to financial difficulties, social isolation, and psychological depression. To prevent suicides, the Seoul metropolitan government set up a system for detecting and deterring suicide attempts on the bridges: ­closed-­circuit televisions, efficient emergency response, hotline phone booths, and uplifting messages on the railings, such as “Have you eaten yet?” and “The best part of life is yet to come.”23 A direct allusion to suicide appears early in The Host in a sequence that shows a man gazing down at the Han River in agonized horror (presumably catching a glimpse of 116  |  ch ap te r 4

the monster) before he leaps to his death. It is a sobering moment when the anonymous man decides that a painful death is preferable to a life in contemporary South Korea. The audience is led to assume that this tragic figure inadvertently becomes the monster’s first victim, thereby awakening its carnivorous appetite for human flesh. The monster of The Host is emblematic of the “monstrosities” of contemporary Korean society, which are portrayed in the film as the questionable and unethical interventions of the local government and the U.S. military. The confluence of transpacific flows of economic, geopolitical, and neocolonial forces in the Korean Peninsula is what produces the mutant monster. Indeed, it is this transnational convergence and the consequential cosmopolitan anxieties that constitute its monstrosity. Although it seems incongruous that transnational labor was deployed to create a fantastical creature that purportedly claimed a specific national identity, this contradiction is resolved through the monster’s alien otherness.24 This monstrous body functions as an incarnation of the ongoing conflict among national fantasies, transnational imaginaries, and material realities. The Host situates the monster’s alien figure in the modern urbanscape of Seoul. The uncanny sense of spatial incongruity is generated when the fantastic suddenly ruptures reality in the sequence where the monster first makes its appearance in broad daylight on the banks of the Han River. This sense of incongruity is particularly intense for the Korean audience, as demonstrated when the sight of the monster running among terrified citizens is presented from the perspective of an elderly woman who stares in confused disbelief at this familiar, yet unfamiliar sight. Here the digitally manipulated spaces of the film are transnational in that they contain traces of the labor, imagination, and technological finesse of creative workers from various countries who can lay claim to certain sections of the multiple audiovisual layers that constitute the cinematic space. Because these layers are digitally composited, these constructed spaces are media heterotopias that encompass the overlapping domains of the national and the global. In this space, various spatial and temporal layers coalesce. When we focus on the various forms of labor that work together to blur the lines between real and simulated landscapes, the seams that have been made invisible under the rhetorical and visual veneer of seamlessness reemerge. When films are made by creative workers who come from various nations, as in the case of The Host, the He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 117

4.5 The monster terrorizes citizens of Seoul in broad daylight on the banks of the Han River. This view is seen from the perspective of a passenger on a passing bus.

recognition of these seams also reconnects these imaginary spaces with the material, physical spaces of production. In contemporary filmmaking, c­ omputer-­generated effects are often used to create, manipulate, or composite the many layers of a single shot, thereby creating a multilayered virtual realm where several spatialities and temporalities coexist. Indeed, this very process of digitization is what enables transnational collaborations through information and communication technologies. In the case of The Host, digital files of the dailies were sent back and forth between the film crew in Korea and the visual effects studio in San Francisco, which facilitated and expedited the process of transpacific communication. Describing these digitally enhanced spaces as deterritorialized is inadequate, however, as they are not otherworldly spaces completely unbound by the physical, temporal, and geographical logic of our terrestrial world. In fact, much effort is made to make these spaces look as authentic, or as visually and indexically connected to actual places as possible. This need for verisimilitude explains why special effects and animatronics—effects created on set in front of the camera during the production stage—still play an important role amid developments in digital filmmaking. When these layers are created by multinational agents at heterogeneous sites of production, these spaces are even more firmly anchored to the territorial, as each audiovisual layer carries material traces of labor grounded in local (and global) industrial prac118  |  ch ap te r 4

tices, economic infrastructures, and cultural backgrounds. An examination of the transnational collaborative process of producing these layers that form these cinematic spaces reveals that they are far from being deterritorialized. Rather, they are transnational, heterotopic spaces that materialize global flows and movements, even as they retain their spatial connections to specific sites of production through traces of geographical locations and material labor. In The Host, the monster’s unlikely presence threatens the supposedly seamless integrity of the cinematic space. The monster straddles and troubles the boundaries between reality and fantasy, and those between Korean and non-­Korean, or local and global. The monster not only is a visible seam in the diegetic space but also functions to disrupt the Korean filmmaker’s plans to produce a “Korean” monster by using local talent. It is supposedly a visual embodiment of an indigenous Korean entity, but one that is created by a transnational collaboration of labor to form its material presence. The monster, envisioned by the filmmaker as an imagined vision of “Korean-­ness,” is in reality produced by a composite of Korean and non-­Korean labor and resources. Along with its homage to Hollywood monster movies, this fact undercuts the illusion of national identity / ​integrity and reveals the national fantasy as illusory. Thus the body of the monster is an incarnation of the crisis of national identity, as an image that fluidly crosses national borders through its intertextual connections to Hollywood films and the multinational sources of labor. Its alien body is at once an embodiment of the fantasy of nation and a global imaginary. Spectralized here are the bodies of creative workers who can lay claim to the different layers that constitute the transnational cinematic space containing the monster. The monster cannot be confined to any one category, however, as it thrashes about trying to further destabilize the already unstable boundaries between national and transnational, and between reality and fantasy. This prompts the question: What is expressed through this monstrosity? As Lianne McLarty points out: “Fear is not only generated by ‘different bodies’ and the identities these bodies are seen to insist upon but, specifically, by their intermingling.”25 Hybrid monsters, then, function as emblems of horror that occurs “when borders are crossed.”26 The monster in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) horrifies humans with the multiple sources of its various body parts that are salvaged from numerous cadavers and conjoined to form a heterotopic assemblage. James He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 119

Naremore also notes the disturbing nature of technologically produced hybrids when he compares the film editor to Frankenstein: “Significantly another of Kuleshov’s ‘experiments’ had involved the creation of a synthetic person out of fragmentary details of different bodies—a technique that undermines the humanistic conception of acting, turning every movie editor into a potential Dr. Frankenstein.”27 Naremore asserts that it is not only the reanimation of a dead body that is uncanny, unsettling, and terrifying but rather the fact that the revivified body is artificially composed of multiple human bodies, agents, and subjectivities. In short, an entity that is constructed out of body parts from heterogeneous sources “threatens to disintegrate the illusion of a coherent, unitary s­ ubject-­body.”28 This undercuts the idea of a contained, stable, and singular identity as an individual human being and unsettles the borders between ­human-­animal and h ­ uman-­machine. Although hybridity is often naturalized or celebrated in a digital culture, the uncanny, unpredictable nature of liminal organisms still retains its frightening nature, as in the case of The Host and Godzilla. Godzilla, in particular, is a hybrid of marine and land-­based animals. The Japanese word for the titular monster, gojira, exhibits the heterogeneous nature of the amphibious monster; it is a composite of “gorilla” and kujira, or the Japanese word for “whale.” On a narrative level, this agile movement between land and water is terrifying because humans cannot escape the monster on land or in the ocean. In conjunction with its gigantic form, this form of mobility therefore plays a large role in Godzilla’s perceived and performed monstrosity. Monstrous bodies are not only mobile and hybrid but also “identified as impure and unclean.”29 This impurity is based on the fear of interstitial entities that blur categorical boundaries between self / ​Other, human / ​ nonhuman, prehistoric / ​contemporary, and local / ​global. The porous, liminal entities in The Host and Godzilla are mutant monsters that are created by merging ­cross-­border labor and resources in both narrative and production spaces. The transnational is closely aligned with the monstrous in the figure of a monster that refuses to inhabit one body or stay within imposed boundaries. If one regards the global media environment as a battlefield for ownership and control, heterotopic spaces and bodies have the potential to be monstrous, because they are viewed as a transgressive threat to the ideology of national integrity or purity.

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GODZ IL L A A S EMB L EM O F P LANETA RY CO N SCI O USN ESS

As discussed earlier, the monstrous figure of The Host is emblematic of a confluence of transpacific flows of economic, geopolitical, and neocolonial forces in Korea, which creates culturally specific forms of anxieties that engage national fantasies, transnational imaginaries, and material realities. This section applies this notion to a monstrous body whose popularity is mobilized on a global scale. Godzilla’s constantly revitalized image and narrative not only reflect but also generate transpacific (and planetary) migrations of media texts, capital, labor, and resources. As a globally recognized sign, Godzilla’s monstrous body simultaneously expresses historically specific anxieties and universal fear aroused by mobile and mutant entities that threaten to destabilize the natural balance of our very planet. As noted by filmmaker Bong Joon-­ho, the Japanese film Gojira (Ishirō Honda, 1954) is one of many monster movies that inspired The Host.30 A number of parallels exist between the two films and their titular monsters. Both films are inspired by historical events based on Pacific Rim geopolitics, and both were considered pioneers in special / ​visual effects and the science fiction genre in each respective national context. Also, both titular monsters are created or awakened by the repercussions of American military activities: a ­formaldehyde-­dumping incident in The Host and a nuclear bombing in Gojira. In each film, chemical substances that are deployed to kill the monster contain references to actual war devices used by the U.S. military. As mentioned earlier, in The Host, a harmful substance called Agent Yellow is sprayed on Korean citizens, and in Gojira, the Oxygen Destroyer (a reference to the hydrogen bomb) liquefies living organisms by splitting oxygen atoms into fluids.31 Compared with the local reach of the monster of The Host (the Han River), Godzilla’s stomping grounds encompass a much broader scope and scale, namely, the Pacific Rim—and beyond. Conceived in postwar Japan, Godzilla has long been regarded as a metaphor for the atomic bomb, the historical carnage and catastrophe of nuclear warfare, and, more broadly, the era of nuclear threat. As a J­ urassic-­era dinosaur that was genetically mutated by nuclear radiation, Godzilla has a complex relationship with the atomic bomb based on semiotic equivalence and material association.

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The narrative circumstances articulated in Honda’s Gojira ground this inexhaustible monster in the specifics of Japanese history. Honda’s film was released in 1954, approximately a decade after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Gojira has several direct connections to the war through the lived experiences of the filmmaker, special effects coordinator, and composer, which were incorporated into the cinematic text. As a conscript soldier during the war, filmmaker Ishirō Honda had firsthand experience of bombings and other war atrocities. During his wartime service, he witnessed the U.S. bombing of Tokyo and the disastrous aftermath of the nuclear bombing in Hiroshima.32 Honda confirms the connection between his personal experiences and the film in his own words: “Most of the visual images I got were from my war experiences. After the war, all of Japan, as well as Tokyo, was left in ashes. The atomic bomb had emerged and completely destroyed Hiroshima. . . . So I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla.”33 The talents of special effects coordinator Eiji Tsuburaya were also used during the war to create propaganda films that included miniature naval ships for battle reenactments (including the attack on Pearl Harbor), which purportedly looked so authentic and convincing that they were mistaken for genuine footage.34 Akira Ifukube, who created the film’s soundtrack, also composed marches for the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during the war.35 Further residues of wartime experiences in the film are apparent in thematic and visual allusions to World War II through narrative and spectacle, as well as sequences that obliquely reenact historical incidents that occurred during or after the war. One notable reenactment is the opening sequence, which features an explosion of a fishing boat before it sinks into the ocean. This alludes to a historical event involving a group of Japanese fishermen who were exposed to radiation poisoning on March 1, 1954, approximately eight months before Gojira’s premiere.36 Their boat, Daigo Fukuryo Maru (The Lucky Dragon No. 5), sailed into an area that was affected by radiation from hydrogen bomb tests conducted by the U.S. military at Bikini Atoll near the Marshall Islands. In the 1954 film, Godzilla is awakened when the American government detonates a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific. Its presence is doubly conflated with the bomb, as its bodily presence causes ­large-­scale devastations similar to the repercussions of a nuclear explosion. The analogous relationship is emphasized visually by images of ruined cities left behind 122  |  ch ap te r 4

4.6 Godzilla’s fiery breath engulfs Tokyo in Gojira (Tōhō Film Co., 1954).

in the monster’s wake and sonically by its booming footsteps and earsplitting roars that are reminiscent of “the high-­velocity wind that often accompanied the dropping of the atom bomb.”37 The film specifically invokes the 1945 air-­raid bombing of Tokyo in scenes that depict Godzilla spewing fire that engulfs Tokyo’s buildings in a deadly inferno and terrified citizens trying to escape from the chaos. The grim aftermath of the attack is portrayed in the ­documentary-­like sequence showing large numbers of wounded and burned patients at a hospital. The helplessness of Japan’s military forces and its citizenry against Godzilla’s attack is also suggestive of how Japan was overpowered by the U.S. military during the Pacific War. Although the origin of Godzilla is materially embedded in the history of postwar Japan, the image of the monster is not insulated within the confines of Japanese visual culture. The makers of Gojira were inspired by Hollywood monster films, namely, King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (or The Monster from beneath the Sea, Eugène Lourié, 1953). Eiji Tsuburaya, in particular, reportedly received great inspiration when he saw Ray Harryhausen’s special effects work in King Kong. The narrative of The Beast from 20,000 He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 123

Fathoms also shares similarities with Gojira. It features a fictional dinosaur that is awakened from hibernation by an atomic bomb detonation and attacks the East Coast of North America, creating havoc in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York City. Not long after its Japanese release, Honda’s own film was recut and reincarnated as an ­American-­Japanese release titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Ishirō Honda and Terry O. Morse, 1956). This “Americanized” version added an American reporter (played by Raymond Burr) in the lead role and a bilingual Japanese security officer as translator. Several allusions to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were deleted and the antinuclear message was diluted to make the film more palatable to the postwar American audience.38 This amphibian monster left behind a vast and long-­lasting wake in the landscape of global cinema. Numerous sequels and remakes produced in Japan and Hollywood continue to expand the Godzilla franchise, which had a greatly productive impact on the monster genre. Other national cinemas created similar monsters, such as Britain’s Gorgo (Eugène Lourié, 1961) and South Korea’s Yonggary (Kim Ki-­duk, 1967). In Japan, the first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955), was released almost immediately. This sequel introduced the popular thematic motif of God­ zilla fighting against, or forming alliances with, other giant monsters. This was continued in many other sequels, including King Kong vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1962), Mothra vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1964), Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1974), and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (Kazuki Ōmori, 1991), as well as Gareth Edwards’s 2014 film. Although some sequels retained the dark tone and socially minded themes of the first film, many featured the monster as an anthropomorphic hero that appealed to a younger audience. Despite its gargantuan mass and the weight of history attached to this body, Godzilla’s iconic body is flexible in its potential to be read as a po­ lysemic text in a transnational media landscape. The international popularity of the Godzilla franchise proves that its image is easily transportable and translatable across national borders as a globally legible sign. In an interview included in the Blu-­ray special features, filmmaker Gareth Edwards describes Godzilla as “one of the most recognizable characters” through its iconic silhouette. The iconicity of the monster’s figure and its signature roar is associated with Godzilla’s status as an amphibious monster that literally and figuratively crosses national boundaries. Godzilla’s familiar image is a floating signifier whose plasticity enables multiple 124  |  ch ap te r 4

national identities and transnational imaginaries to coexist. This is visualized in Edwards’s film in the image of Godzilla’s trajectory across the Pacific Ocean. Godzilla’s global mobility is notably emphasized in the film’s narrative, various promotional materials, and interviews. The body of Godzilla constantly moves across borders in the film’s diegetic spaces, production spaces, and discursive spaces. It actively performs a global, or planetary, identity, due in part to the intertextual and transnational scope of the franchise. Here I borrow the term “planetary” from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who invokes the word in her proposal for “the planet to overwrite the globe”:39 “The globe is on our computers. No one lives there. It allows us to think that we can aim to control it. The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan. It is not really amenable to a neat contrast with the globe. . . . If we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away.”40 Although inspired by Spivak’s use of the term to defamiliarize (or make “uncanny”) our own temporary and precarious position on this planet, the term is reappropriated here in the context of catastrophe to place rhetorical emphasis on the interconnectedness of national bodies and territories around the globe. A planetary existence, I contend, involves participating in a worldwide citizenship that is aware of the material repercussions of natural and man-­made crises—­ economic, geopolitical, and ecological—that affect the planet as a whole. In regard to the planetary nature of Godzilla’s presence, the 2014 Hollywood version reemphasizes its nuclear origins through unambiguous references to recent global catastrophes: the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake, colossal tsunami, and the subsequent meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex that took place on March 11, 2011. Edwards’s Godzilla begins with a similar meltdown in a nuclear power plant in Janjira, a fictional Japanese city near Tokyo. Here Godzilla not only carries historical baggage from the original 1954 film’s allusions to atomic disaster but also becomes attached to yet another nuclear crisis in Japanese territory. In the 2014 version, the reason for the atomic testing that occurred in the 1950s is revealed as a covert American operation to protect human civilization from Godzilla, described as the “ancient alpha predator,” “god,” and “monster” by various characters in the film. This dissimulaHe te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 125

tion, albeit fictitious, is disingenuous for appropriating actual historical events and repurposing them as justification for American wartime activities. This militaristic background of the American deployment of nuclear weaponry during World War II is substituted for a timely and globally palatable narrative of ecological disasters that befall humanity and humans’ vulnerability against the fury and might of nature. This substitution can be interpreted as a deflection of responsibility by underplaying the role of humankind and identifying the source of catastrophe in the natural environment. It also deviates from the political undertones of the original Tōhō film, which subtly raised ethical interrogations regarding the American deployment of nuclear weaponry during World War II in addition to the ecological repercussions of the bombings. The source of nuclear waste in the ­twenty-­first century is located in Japanese territory, but the nation now doubly functions as victim and culprit of the spread of atomic radiation through associations with the recent Fukushima disaster. One notable difference here is that, though the nuclear problem is still inscribed upon Godzilla’s body, this threat is no longer contained in the vicinity of the Japanese archipelago. It is now a globally recognized issue that the contaminated water is circulating around and beyond the Pacific Ocean. This threat of pan-­Pacific or planetary movement of radiation is physically incarnated in multiple bodies. In addition to Godzilla, “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms” ­(mutos) are introduced in Edwards’s Godzilla as monstrous, colossal beings of destruction. The mutos are globally mobile in their quest to find radioactive material, which is their energy source. In the film, the mutos are found in the Philippines, but they cross the Pacific, pass through Hawaii, and ultimately arrive in San Francisco. In response, Godzilla awakes to restore the balance of nature by killing the mutos. The maps that follow the trajectory of Godzilla and the mutos across the Pacific are visually reminiscent of the maps that track the movement of ocean currents that carry radioactive waste from Fukushima to other territories surrounding the Pacific Ocean, including the West Coast of the United States. The geographical scope affected by radioactive creatures has been broadened on a planetary level, engendering a collective sense of crisis in which all of humanity is implicated. This is indicative of an escalating cognitive recognition that all nations and their inhabitants exist within an interconnected planetary network in terms of economy and ecology, and that 126  |  ch ap te r 4

4.7 Godzilla swims across the Pacific Ocean in Godzilla (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014).

4.8 Godzilla’s trajectory across the ocean is tracked by the advanced technology of the U.S. Navy.

we share a common fate in the face of mass-­scale environmental catastrophes. This notion is evident in the news segments in the film that show the numerous sites of destruction scattered around the Pacific Ocean— in Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. Although the expanded geographical scope of Godzilla’s reach may be financially motivated in a high-­budget Hollywood blockbuster targeting a worldwide audience, it also reveals a planetary consciousness that is increasingly cognizant of the global interconnectivity of man-­made and natural disasters. One visual manifestation of this planetary consciousness is the tsunami waves caused by Godzilla’s body, a global concern and a recurring motif in many contemporary films. In various versions of the Godzilla franchise, giant tidal waves reminiscent of the wave in Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa sweep over dry land and submerge the unfortunate inhabitants. Selmin Kara and Alanna Thain note that this artwork is “often cited as inspiration for Japanese monster / ​kaiju films,” including Guillermo del Toro’s science fiction kaiju film Pacific Rim (2013).41 The spectacular impact of a great oceanic wave is increasingly deployed for aesthetic effect and as a narrative device in a number of contemporary films such as Interstellar, Exodus: Gods and Kings (Ridley Scott, 2014), and The Wave (Roar Uthaug, 2015). This sublime image of destruction, however, reflects real concerns that surround global warming, climate change, and rising sea levels, which are exacerbated by recent tragic events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake / ​tsunami. The catastrophic effect of tsunamis is depicted in the Hawaii sequence of Edwards’s Godzilla. Other Hollywood disaster films that directly address such anxieties include The Day after Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), 2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009), and San Andreas (Brad Peyton, 2015). In Godzilla, the monstrous force of the ocean is reiterated by the monstrous figure of Godzilla, whose amphibious quality emphasizes its adaptability as well as its mystical (and nuclear) origin. Awakened by nuclear power, Godzilla embodies another real global concern: radioactive water that threatens to contaminate all territories in and around the Pacific Ocean (and beyond) after the Fukushima meltdown.42 A shared sense of dread and vulnerability moves beyond national and territorial borders, as the threat travels via ocean currents influenced by natural phenomena (e.g., wind, temperature, salinity) on a planetary level. Godzilla is thus a creature of myth that cannot be anchored to a ­single 128  |  ch ap te r 4

national territory in the physical or semiotic sense. In other words, Godzilla is a mobile monster whose semiotic significance, as well as the geopolitical and ecological consequences associated with its body, transcends national and continental boundaries. Indeed, the influence of Godzilla’s body (as a character in the film and as a globally recognized image) exceeds transnationality in its reach; it is planetary. GODZ IL L A : T H E MAT ERI A L I T Y OF A DI GI TA L MO N ST ER

As discussed previously, the wide cultural reach and resonance of Godzilla can be attributed to the monster’s globally legible status as a symbol of atomic and natural disasters. This section will recalibrate the focus on Godzilla’s planetary existence to consider how numerous national claims can be laid upon the mediated body of the monster as a result of its continued regeneration as a global media franchise. Despite a tenacious connection to the historical and geographical specificity of the “original” monster in Japan, Godzilla’s multiple reincarnations complicate the question of its nationality. Godzilla’s body is layered with textual, semiotic, visual, and spectral residues of figures laden with historical and cultural significance. It is a site where national claims of ownership and cultural legitimacy com­ mingle and coagulate with its globally mobile identity as a planetary figure. We need to consider the stakes in reasserting the materiality of a digitally produced monster, whose very monstrous corporeality reanimates the layers of creative labor, intertextual references, and trans / ​national imaginaries that are latent (or blatant) underneath its seamless surface. Godzilla’s monstrous body, I suggest, incarnates not only a growing sense of apprehension toward ecological catastrophes but also the perceived threat of destabilized national identities in an increasingly global and digital environment that prompts and necessitates c­ ross-­border ­mobility— whether real or imaginary. The ambiguity of Godzilla’s national origins is not necessarily an anomaly in the context of Japanese popular culture, which has a tradition of erasing markers of national specificity. Koichi Iwabuchi describes certain Japanese audiovisual products that are exported globally as “culturally odorless” or “culturally neutral” commodities.43 He explains that his term “cultural odor” refers to the way certain cultural features, images, or ideas of a specific country become associated with or imprinted upon a product He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 129

from that country.44 As suggested by the negative connotations of the word “odor,” this cultural imprint left on a product is sometimes regarded as an unwelcome hindrance to its global consumption. Iwabuchi writes that, “The [audiovisual products] I mentioned above are cultural artifacts in which bodily, racial, and ethnic characteristic have been erased or softened. This is particularly evident in Japanese animation where the characters, for the most part, do not look ‘Japanese.’ Such non-­Japaneseness is referred to in Japan as mukokuseki, which literally means something or someone lacking any nationality, but which is also used to refer to the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics and contexts from a cultural product.”45 Here Iwabuchi makes the point that a lack of specific racial, ethnic, or national characteristics is advantageous for globally popular Japanese animation and games. He notes how the overseas success of the multimedia franchise Pokémon can be attributed to its mukokuseki characters and settings, particularly in contrast to other animations that feature Japanese landscapes, architecture, and cultural imprints, such as the Japanese animated television show Doraemon.46 He also suggests that the success of Pokémon, in particular, is made possible by the transnational corporate partnerships among Japanese and American media industries. The global identity of Pokémon has been further solidified with the worldwide release of Pokémon GO, a ­location-­based mobile game developed and published by Niantic, an American software development company based in San Francisco.47 Through the technologies of geolocation and augmented reality, virtual Pokémon creatures can now appear on the screens of portable devices, creating the illusion of inhabiting real-­world locations. Although the word “odor” is associated with the olfactory sense, Iwabuchi suggests that the “cultural odor” of products is closely related to the image, particularly the “racial and bodily images of the country of origin.”48 Even so, this invocation of the sense of smell reflects the nebulous and ambivalent quality of cultural features.49 The “cultural odors” of Pokémon and Godzilla are even fainter, as they are fantastical or mythical creatures that are usually devoid of recognizable racial, ethnic, or national characteristics, and they are easily separated from culturally specific backdrops. The transformation of Gojira, a monster born and bred in postwar Japan, to the global franchise “Godzilla” exemplifies how the obfuscation of “Japaneseness” served to assuage fears surrounding economic or cultural 130  |  ch ap te r 4

4.9 Ken Watanabe’s character gazes at Godzilla in awe.

invasion and to facilitate the monster’s global mobility. Edwards’s global Hollywood version, however, retains the cultural imprint of the Japanese source material and mobilizes it to enhance the validity of the film’s connections to the iconic franchise. It thereby manifests a heightened global consciousness in terms of cultural, economic, and geopolitical concerns. The 2014 version makes numerous allusions to the Japanese origin of Godzilla and dexterously transplants it in the American context through setting, character, and references to Japanese popular culture. A significant portion of the film is set in Japan.50 A prominent Japanese actor, Ken Watanabe, portrays a character whose name, Ishirō Serizawa, pays joint homage to Gojira filmmaker Ishirō Honda and scientist character Daisuke Serizawa.51 In Edwards’s film, Watanabe plays the familiar role of seer / ​ scientist who recognizes Godzilla’s godlike mission to restore the balance of nature. When a high-­ranking U.S. Navy officer (David Strathairn) decides to deploy nuclear warheads to destroy the monsters, Serizawa reminds him (and the audience) of the catastrophic toll of nuclear weapons by displaying a stopped watch that belonged to his father, a victim of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. As a result, Edwards’s Godzilla remains attached to the historical, cultural, and territorial claims of Japan, as well as the proprietary and economic claims of Tōhō, the Japanese studio that created, and owns the rights to, the Godzilla franchise.52 A poster for the film Gojira is even inserted in the mise-­en-­scène of the film’s opening scene. Rather than rupturing the illusion of seamlessness, these intertextual references are naturalized in the transmedia ecology of the global franchise. He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 131

In addition to making numerous intertextual references to Godzilla’s national origins, Edwards’s version ultimately contributed to a transmedia renewal of the monster’s Japanese identity and effectively revived ­Japan’s economic and cultural claim over this popular franchise. The financial success of the Hollywood film, which reportedly earned more than $525 million worldwide and approximately $30 million in Japan, inspired the production of yet another Japanese version: Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Gojira, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, 2016).53 Produced and distributed by Tōhō, the 2016 Japanese version is the ­thirty-­first installment in the Godzilla franchise. As a reboot, the film is an origin story that shows Gojira appearing in Japan for the first time. In his announcement of the new project, producer Taichi Ueda said that “the time has come for Japan to make a film that will not lose to Hollywood.”54 As an assertion of nationalistic pride, he commented that Tōhō hoped to make a Godzilla character that will “represent Japan and be loved around the world.” As part of this project to reinvigorate local interest and reclaim Godzilla’s image as Japanese, Tōhō built a physical incarnation of the media franchise in the form of a life-­size Godzilla head (based on the original 1954 film) above Tōhō Cinema and a ­Godzilla-­themed hotel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Prefecture. Godzilla was also named Shinjuku’s official resident and tourism ambassador in April 2015.55 The monster’s Japanese nationality was also reasserted when it was selected as a representative for Japanese popular culture at “Universal Cool Japan,” an event held at Universal Studios Japan to promote the nation’s creative industries and their globally popular products.56 After its release, the reboot received favorable reviews in Japan. Echoing Taichi Ueda’s nationalist sentiments, one reviewer asserted: “Hollywood, even with all its money, can’t approach this kind of perfection.”57 Here we can return to the question of how to talk about national claims on imaginary entities, or a monster that has no attachment to real-­life referents or culturally specific myths. As in the case of The Host, we can address this issue by considering the material relationship between ­Gojira / ​Godzilla and Japanese bodies and territories in order to visualize the monster as an incarnation of national imaginary. As noted earlier, Honda’s 1954 film grounds the monster in the culturally specific context of Japanese history during World War II. The film incorporated the lived experiences of the Japanese people (including the filmmaker, the special effects coordinator, and the composer) into the film’s narrative, images, 132  |  ch ap te r 4

and soundtrack. In Tōhō’s version, the corporeal body of the beast was produced by using the special effects technique of “suitmation,” which entailed an actor wearing a giant monster suit and walking through miniaturized cityscapes.58 In the Japanese source material, Gojira’s body is thus tangibly linked to Japan in the production process through various forms of creative and physical labor performed on-­and offscreen by Japanese bodies. The sweaty, laborious contribution of the actors, Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka, to embody and “animate” Godzilla is particularly significant in the way it is rendered simultaneously visible and invisible by the Godzilla suit. In fact, to sustain the illusory effect of the imaginary monster, Nakajima’s and Tezuka’s names were not included in the credits in association with the monster’s performance. Although this exclusion endeavored to erase traces of human labor to sustain the cinematic illusion of nonhuman monstrosity, the actors’ names do appear in the credits for other minor roles in the film: Nakajima as a newspaper reporter and Tezuka as his editor.59 In Honda’s Gojira, the images of Japanese cities in ruins allude to historical events during World War II and evoke collective memories of war trauma specific to Japan. Even though the monster is usually considered as an allegorical figure for the atomic bomb, the film’s composer, Akira Ifukube, also noted that “people thought Godzilla symbolized the spirits of Japanese soldiers who died at sea during the war.”60 The very body of Godzilla, in fact, is a reminder of how atomic disaster affected human bodies. The skin of the monster suit was designed to emulate scars from radiation exposure, visually modeled after the scars of the survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.61 Godzilla’s body is particularly significant when considered in contrast to the bodies that no longer exist: the living human bodies that were literally vaporized by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. After the explosions, the presence of their disintegrated bodies was marked in residues—as ashes or as dark silhouettes imprinted on the inorganic surfaces of bridges, walls, or city pavements, which have been described as “flash burns” or “shadow images.” In Atomic Light, Akira Lippit writes of the historical bombings of August 1945: “The bombings that ended Japan’s imperialist activities had introduced a form of invisible warfare or, rather, a form of warfare that circulated through a dense matrix of visuality, displacing any access to a stable referent. At Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki, a blinding flash vaporized entire bodies, He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 133

4.10 Godzilla releases its iconic atomic breath in Godzilla (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014).

leaving behind only shadow traces. The initial destruction was followed by waves of invisible radiation, which infiltrated the survivors’ bodies imperceptibly. What began as a spectacular attack ended as a form of violent invisibility.”62 To Honda, the monster, which releases a nuclear blast from its jaws, was an embodiment of the atomic bomb, or a way of “making radiation visible.”63 The invisible death force of radiation thus takes shape in Godzilla’s corporeal form—a fantastical body that is always already solid, that is, a massive body that refuses to be disintegrated like so many victims of the “form of violent invisibility.”64 In Gojira, one particularly memorable scene shows Tokyo citizens vanishing in the monster’s fiery atomic breath. This sequence accentuates the corporeal dissonance between living human flesh and dead ashes. It also captures the minuscule temporal distance between the moment before the bomb attack and the moment afterward. The opening credit sequence of the 2014 film also alludes to historical conditions before and after World War II by integrating Godzilla into archival images of nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. This sequence ends with a nuclear explosion that segues into an image of floating ash par­ ticles. These ashes, signifying death and disintegration after a nuclear disaster, are an oblique reference to the thousands of disintegrated bodies that evaporated in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The sequence is also reminiscent of the aforementioned incident involving The Lucky Dragon No. 5. After the bomb explosion on March 1, 1954, the crew members reportedly became covered with white flakes 134  |  ch ap te r 4

that fell from the sky. It was later revealed that the flakes were highly radioactive ash that was dubbed shin no hai, or “ashes of death.”65 Lippit writes, “if the atomic blasts and blackened skies can be thought of as massive cameras, then the victims of this dark atomic room can be seen as photographic effects. Seared organic and nonorganic matter left dark stains, opaque artifacts of once vital bodies, on the pavements and other surfaces of this grotesque theater. The ‘shadows,’ as they were called, are actually photograms, images formed by the direct exposure of objects on photographic surfaces.”66 Godzilla’s body is the antithesis of the vulnerable vital bodies that were transmuted into “dark stains, opaque artifacts.” If we read Godzilla’s body as a materialization of spectral bodies, then this massive bulk is, in a sense, the sum of all bodies that have disintegrated in the atomic blast. Its impossibly gargantuan physical presence is a revenant that signals the nightmarish return of living organisms that were reduced to photographic “shadows” in the most un-­shadow-­like visible form. Although this behemoth wreaks violence and destruction on t­ error-­struck Japanese citizens (as did the nuclear bomb), this monstrous figure of vengeance conversely serves as a wish fulfillment of sorts by embodying aspirations of impervious corporeality and physical dominance as opposed to human vulnerability and mortality. In this context, the fact that Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka, the Japanese actors who physically performed the role of Godzilla, wore a body suit like a coat of armor while filming the scenes of destruction becomes poignant, as it further highlights the stark contrast between perishable human bodies and the indestructible monstrous body. Rather than functioning as a protective armor, the suit itself posed a physical threat for the actors, who reportedly were exhausted, dehydrated, and drenched in sweat after wearing the suit. As a result, they reportedly could only wear the suit for a few minutes at a time and also passed out several times because of the heat and poor ventilation inside the suit.67 Godzilla’s monstrous body is, indeed, the ideal body that is impervious to atomic blasts and toxic radiation. In Edwards’s version, Godzilla consumes radiation as an energy source. From this perspective, Godzilla’s monstrosity is more aspirational than terrifying. Despite its atomic origins and propensity for destruction, this monstrous body is neither an abomination of nor a deviation from nature. Rather, it is a force above or beyond nature. Godzilla can affect nature or create natural disasters such He te ro t opic Monst ro si t y  | 135

4.11 Godzilla’s colossal bulk towers over the cityscape of San Francisco.

as tsunamis. Godzilla is, in fact, a supernatural force unleashed to restore nature’s own balance. It is, therefore, described as a godlike figure that stands at the top of the ecosystem. The relationship between materiality and monstrosity takes on a singular significance in the historical context of Godzilla’s awakening. Edwards’s film reminds us that Godzilla is an anomaly of nature that is revived from its prehistoric origins because of a nuclear disaster. This connection validates the constant remakes and reimaginings, as the monster emerges whenever it is needed. With the monster comes the renewed threat of nuclear catastrophes. Paleontologist Kyohei Yamane accurately envisages the future in the final sequence of Gojira: “But if we keep on conducting nuclear tests, it is possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world, again.” This prediction has been proven correct in the intertextual network and regenerative logic of a constantly evolving film franchise. In film narratives, nuclear technologies are responsible for the repeated reawakening of Godzilla, but in the extradiegetic realm of global remakes, it is reinvigorated through digital technologies deployed in the production process. Edwards’s Godzilla reincarnates the monster in a digitized form instead of the monster suits used in Honda’s Gojira. The Hollywood film’s digital format enabled the monster to attain its colossal size. In Tōhō’s 1954 version, the monster’s original height was 150 feet. In Hollywood’s 2014 version, Godzilla grew to 355 feet, with a 550-­foot-­long tail.68 Much public interest was directed toward the corporeality of Godzilla’s body

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and the material effects of this body on both natural and man-­made environments. The material substance of its digital body has been emphasized in interviews, promotional materials, and “making of” documentaries, which discuss the digital monster as though it were a living entity. Several popular press articles published after the film’s release discussed the physical composition of the monster’s body, specifically the scientific probability of Godzilla’s anatomy according to the laws of physics and biology. Danielle Venton’s article “The Impossible Anatomy of Godzilla” presents an illustration of Godzilla’s internal organs in order to speculate on what lies beneath the surface of the creature’s impervious scaly skin. It further notes that Edwards’s Godzilla greatly exceeds the theoretical weight limit for land animals; its immense body weighs 164,000 tons. Japanese fans in particular observed that the recent Hollywood version was bigger than earlier Japanese versions and purportedly described Edwards’s Godzilla as “out of shape” with “no neck” or having a neck like “an American football athlete’s.”69 Godzilla’s body thus became conflated with culturally specific stereotypes of human figures. Viewed in light of Tōhō’s reclamation of the franchise, these comments can also be read as critiques directed toward the excessive budget of Hollywood’s version of Godzilla. Ironically, Tōhō’s 2016 version of Godzilla turned out to be even larger. Its onscreen height is 389 feet, which makes it the tallest Godzilla thus far. This incarnation of the monster was animated using a “hybrid” approach that fused cgi and the practical effects of “suitmation.”70 Whether incited by nationalist pride or a large budget, this logic of sequels to make things bigger than the source material is particularly apposite to the monster movie genre, because monstrous bodies are excessive by definition. As Honda notes: “Monsters are tragic beings. They are not evil by choice. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, that is their tragedy.”71 Indeed, it is the excessive physicality of Godzilla’s body that makes it monstrous. In other words, the very monstrosity of Godzilla is connected to the physicality of Godzilla’s bodily presence. The spectacular nature of the excessive and impossible body of the monster puts its undeniable corporeality on display. This narrativizes and visualizes the tension between various proprietary and material claims over its mediated body. The physicality of Godzilla’s body is emphasized in its inexplicable alien presence. The monster’s increased size creates spectacular imagery for a contemporary audience that can be somewhat jaded when it comes

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to ­computer-­generated creatures. Godzilla’s mammoth scale, however, is not simply a visual spectacle—it is also evidence of a technical feat. The formidable amount of digital labor necessary to create Godzilla, in fact, reinforces the immense physicality of the giant beast, as well as its indelible effect on the material world. In its digitized version, Godzilla’s body is no longer solid in a tactile sense, as it is composed of digital bits and bytes, or a body composed of a dense mass of pixels. Its physique, however, projects an image of sturdy materiality that is much more than a virtual façade. The layered nature of Godzilla’s body, which was created in a complex process that includes modeling, rigging, texturing, and animation, attests to its subcutaneous depth and material bulk. In its digitized form, its body mass is measured not in kilograms but in gigabytes or terabytes. These terabytes can be translated into corresponding material forms, such as the machinery and equipment responsible for creating and storing such large digital forms, as well as the countless hours of human labor and enormous amount of electric energy needed to produce and animate the giant figure. To state a few numbers, more than 750 visual effects artists worked on this film, which comprises 960 visual effects shots (including 327 shots of Godzilla). Also, four cgi artists spent six months to fully animate the texture of Godzilla’s scales.72 As Zach Sokol notes, it would have taken 450 years to design this Godzilla on a single computer.73 Because the multiple digital layers that compose its massive frame require an incredible amount of data and storage space, this type of monster can only be produced and delivered with current technological developments and blockbuster budgets of global media industries. Within the context of contemporary film production, technological advances in special effects and visual effects are embedded in the digital corporeality of the monster. Therefore, Godzilla’s mobile body not only transcends geographical borders, but its monstrous body also transgresses boundaries between possibility and impossibility. Its impossible figure exists outside mapped national territories, and it also exists beyond the parameters of physical probability. Within the logic of a science fiction / ​monster film, the audience is asked to suspend their disbelief. In this context, the monster is able to exist because the real effects and repercussions of nuclear radiation are still terrifyingly unfamiliar and unknowable. Hence, this monstrous figure incarnates the terror of the unknown. In other words,

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the invisible effects of nuclear radiation are envisioned and encapsulated in this solid physical figure that is visible and tangible. As terrifying as it is, the material existence of this monster makes it knowable and legible. Against this backdrop, one can understand why audiences discuss the physical probability of this mythical creature and also why they endeavor to place national, cultural, and financial claims on this iconic image. Once again, what is expressed through this monstrosity? Industry professionals in digital film production readily speak of the heterogeneous nature of digitally composited bodies and environments even as they strive toward upholding “the illusion of a coherent, unitary ­subject­body.”74 How, then, do monstrous bodies fit into this illusion of unity? Or rather, what constitutes this monstrosity? How is it related to the politics of “trans-­,” more specifically, “transnational” or even “transspecies”? Monster films from the past and the present continuously raise and address these questions in relation to the technological developments and cultural anxieties of each period. In Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015), for instance, the monstrous figure is embodied by a genetically modified dinosaur called “Indominus Rex.” The fact that it is a hybrid creature artificially produced by fusing the dna of various species presumably explains its abnormal, unpredictable, and terrifying nature. As noted by the lead scientist in the film, it is important to remember that “monster is a relative term.” In other words, monstrosity is a subjective concept, contingent on historical and cultural conditions and one’s situated perspective. In this particular context, the monster is an emblem of the excessive capitalist greed of a global corporation and the collective hubris of genetically engineering new forms of life in the name of scientific research and commercial entertainment. These contemporary monsters indicate a particular sense of dread that pervades today’s increasingly globalized networks and digitized environments. In our global times, their monstrous bodies are presumed to be composed of, or contaminated by, heterogeneous sources because of their very “trans-­”ness. This chapter discussed what makes digitally composited entities monstrous in the context of their transnational background. These monsters cannot be contained in familiar national paradigms. This is what makes them monstrous, I contend, because they are ultimately untethered from stable subjectivities and n ­ ation-­specific contexts. Their ability to completely incapacitate systems of control and containment is a

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vital part of their monstrosity. Their mobile existence follows trajectories that are unpredictable and uncontrollable, causing chaos. A figure on the move, not permanently attached to specific national and regional territories, however, is not always deemed monstrous. The following chapter will examine cosmopolitan aspirations attached to and manifested by digital flexibility, mobility, and heterotopic materiality.

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5   H E T E R OTO P I C M AT E R I A L I T Y

The World and Big Hero 6

A

heterotopic analysis of two films, The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004) and Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014), reveals how contemporary digital cinema can perform digitality in conjunction with how it performs globality. Although the two films vary greatly in genre, budget, production process, and cultural background, they similarly thematize, visualize, and fetishize transnational mobility and cosmopolitan imaginings. The juxtaposition of these films highlights the different ways they use computer animation and digitally enhanced visual effects that are often associated with the seamless effects of digital compositing. The two films embody contemporary global consciousness by deploying various modes of mediation, communication, and visualization. Whereas Big Hero 6 presents both material and mediated performances of physical mobility, The World focuses on immobile bodies of what I call “virtual cosmopolitans.” That is to say, the subjects depicted in The World lack the practical means of achieving transnational mobility, but they use vernacular forms of visual media as a mode of transportation that enables them to participate in the virtual experience of global citizenship. This chapter considers new forms of heterotopic materiality that emerge in two different modes of digital filmmaking: low-­budget digital cinema and high-­budget computer animation. The two films discussed here diverge in their production histories and cultural context. Even so, they similarly articulate media heterotopias that are embedded with cosmopolitan material realities and imaginaries, which are encouraged, envisioned, and enabled by digital technologies. Whereas The World illustrates

heterotopia’s role of exposing real spaces as illusory, Big Hero 6 illustrates heterotopia’s role of creating a “perfect” and “meticulous” space that corresponds to, yet deviates from, real spaces. Here the focus shifts from the filmmaking process to heterotopic sites where transnational trajectories of labor, resources, and media images converge. A discussion of these sites is necessary to examine how they expose the material seams of digital practices. TH E WO RLD PA RK A S H ET EROTO PI A : C HI NA IN T H E W O R L D , T H E WO RL D I N C HI NA

Is it taken for granted that a transnational experience is something that everyone desires and strives toward in the ­twenty-­first century? What are the reasons for idealizing cosmopolitan identities and transnational imaginaries? Who benefits from these transnational imaginings? These questions are particularly pertinent in an analysis of Jia Zhangke’s film The World, which casts a critical eye on contemporary society’s collective drive toward global cosmopolitan desires in a rapidly developing world. The protagonists of The World dream of overcoming their cultural, social, economic, and geographical limitations by simulating transnational mobility. In this film—the first film directed by Jia to be officially approved by the Chinese government for local distribution— these transnational imaginings ostensibly seem to be in agreement with state propaganda to develop and promote the People’s Republic of China as a prominent nation in global politics, economics, and culture. Let us begin with a tale of two cities and their relationship to the world, the World Park, and The World. Nowadays an emerging trend of designing and constructing urban spaces as heterotopic sites serves to fetishize global connectivity and claims to materialize cosmopolitan aspirations in the realm of reality. Shenzhen is a city known for its cosmopolitan aspirations, as the first Special Economic Zone and one of the busiest ports in China. Due to its proximity to Hong Kong, Shenzhen was chosen as an experimental site for practicing market capitalism, and since then, it has developed into a modernized financial hub in the region. Although it was one of the f­ astest-­growing cities in the nation, travel and migration into Shenzhen from other parts of China have been restricted in the past by the hukou (residency permit) system. Even daily commuters from neighboring Hong Kong needed to go through customs and immigration checkpoints because travel was regulated between the two cities. 142  |  ch ap te r 5

Shenzhen is now a popular destination for local tourists, with numerous tourist attractions, including theme parks like the Window of the World, Splendid China, China Folk Culture Village, and Happy Valley, as well as public parks, gardens, beaches, and ­Western-­style shopping malls filled with global retail merchandise. Beijing is another globally minded metropolis in China. As a longtime capital of numerous dynasties, Beijing is famous for its historical structures and unesco World Heritage sites, most notably, the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, both of which signify fortification, exclusivity, immense power, and imperial might. More recently, Beijing has reinvented itself not only as the nation’s political, economic, and cultural center but also as a global metropolis housing a large number of Fortune Global 500 companies and a high-­income population.1 By hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing asserted its rising status as global metropolis, which is materialized by the immense modern silhouettes of the Beijing National Stadium (designed jointly by the Swiss company Herzog and de Meuron, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and Chinese architect Li Xinggang) and the National Center for the Performing Arts (designed by French architect Paul Andreu). Jia’s film was shot in the World Park in Beijing and the Window of the World in Shenzhen. The two parks doubly perform as the production site and narrative space of The World. The Window of the World in Shenzhen is a theme park that features s­ caled-­down replicas of tourist attractions from various parts of the world, such as the Eiffel Tower in France, the Acropolis in Greece, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, Stonehenge in England, and Mount Fuji in Japan. The park is a heterotopic space that emblematizes the cosmopolitan aspirations of Shenzhen in a self-­reflexive mise-­en-­abyme structure. For local migrant workers, however, a cosmopolitan lifestyle remains an illusory spectacle. This is tragically demonstrated by the worker suicides at a huge industrial complex located in Shenzhen that is operated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract electronics manu­ facturing company that makes products for Apple, Dell, H ­ ewlett-­Packard, Nintendo, and Sony, among others.2 As depicted in Jia’s film, simulated performances of transnational mobility do not always actualize in reality. Desires for a cosmopolitan existence in a globalized environment are similarly expressed in the World Park in Beijing.3 The park, which has “100 w ­ orld-­famous man-­made and natural attractions from nearly 50 countries throughout the world,” is divided into five areas: Asia, Africa, He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 143

5.1 Models of the Sphinx and the Eiffel Tower at the Window of the World in Shenzhen (taken by the author).

Europe, North America, and South America.4 Like the Window of the World in Shenzhen, the World Park in Beijing also performs and commoditizes globality by presenting miniature versions of tourist landmarks around the world. In The World, a recording heard over the park’s loudspeaker system proclaims that you can “see the world without ever leaving Beijing.” This announcement playfully suggests that a visit to the park can substitute for traveling abroad. If we consider the World Park as a metonymic space for Beijing, this slogan can be interpreted as promoting the idea of this swiftly developing metropolis as a prominent hub of economic, industrial, and cultural transactions across national borders. For many people living there, however, their cosmopolitan experience will have to be simulated “without ever leaving Beijing.” As a space of entertainment, the World Park seemingly reinvents the city’s performed identity and projected image from exclusion to inclusion, and from Sinocentric nationalism to globalism. It seems to reflect China’s aspirations of elevating its global economic status by opening its borders to welcome the rest of the world in its territory. The park thus 144  |  ch ap te r 5

reveals the nation’s desire for rapid economic development and global expansion. In actuality, the “world” is compressed into the theme park and, by extension, into Beijing. In the park, national diversity is visually marked, but geographical heterogeneity is effaced. Replicas of famous landmarks that represent their respective countries (e.g., the Taj Mahal for India, the Statue of Liberty for the United States) are contained in the unified space of the World Park. These globally dispersed sites are now in close proximity with one other in this fantasy assemblage of a transnational imaginary. Simulations of global travel are performed and fulfilled in the material tangibility of the park. Visitors move among the miniature monuments, taking photographs as though they are in the presence of the iconic landmarks. Photographic representations have become indispensable to the experience of travel as a visual record of one’s journey, as well as a method of interacting with an unfamiliar space and claiming it as one’s own. Perhaps the materiality of the park’s fantasy space, combined with the tangibility of the photograph, will result in solidifying visitors’ memories of the simulated journey? The park thus becomes a compelling example of the hyperreal realm, where the distinction between simulation and the real has collapsed. In the heterotopic space of the World Park, no seams are visible among the assembled pieces of the world; hence, the world is (in) China and China is (in) the world. The official Beijing Olympic Games website, which features the World Park in its list of tourist attractions, emphasizes the material authenticity of the simulacrum: “Close attention to detail was paid in modeling these landmarks after their originals. For example, detailed carvings and ornamentations are included. Even the materials used are modeled after their originals to create the most authentic look possible. For example, the replica of the Great Pyramids was constructed of 200,000 white m ­ arble bricks, each as large as a bar of soap. Red Square in Russia is replicated by paving the smaller model in World Park with over 5 million red bricks smaller than mahjong tiles.”5 In a globally minded world where real cities are designed as a transnational assemblage or simulacrum of other existing cityscapes, the World Park in comparison seems anachronistic and naive in its claims of authenticity. In The World, the global imaginary exerts itself in the park’s material space. Employees and visitors of the park playfully blur distinctions between replica and original. One worker says in a joking yet boastHe te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 145

ful manner: “Even though the Twin Towers fell on September 11, we still have them.” His words, however, have the opposite effect by accentuating the gap between reality and fantasy. They reveal that this hyperreal world is separated from the real world because it does not reflect geopolitical tensions and the threat of global terror that are prevalent in our contemporary lived reality. In a strange parallel between fact and fiction, the World Park became a site that demonstrated the stark disjunction between rhetoric and reality during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Chinese government had initially said that protests would be permitted in three parks (including Beijing World Park), which would be designated as “protest zones” during the Olympic Games, but in actuality none of the applications were approved. Most egregiously, two elderly women—seventy-­nine-­year-­old Wu Dian­ yuan and ­seventy-­seven-­year-­old Wang Xiuying—who tried to receive official approval to protest against government officials were instead interrogated for ten hours and then received threats that they could be sentenced to serve time in a reeducation labor camp for “disturbing the public order.”6 For these women, the official promise of democratic free speech proved to be dangerously illusory. For the film’s protagonists who work at the World Park, the elusive promise of a cosmopolitan existence embodied by the park is likewise unfulfilled. The World depicts individual workers’ desires to achieve geographical and social mobility, as well as the structural inequalities that efface their laboring presence and prevent their aspirations from becoming actualized. Jia’s film also deconstructs the transnational fantasy embedded in the World Park by revealing the various forms of uninspiring work that is necessary in producing and maintaining commodified forms of cosmopolitanism. The World is thus critical of the fetishization and commoditization of global mobility, and it presents the reality—or a mediated version of reality—behind the glossy façade of a theme park. SIM UL AT I N G GLO BA L MO B I LI T Y: T H E W O R L D A S MEDI A H ET EROTO P I A

Mobility has long been an aspiration of those who yearn for cultural, social, economic, or geographical change beyond their present surroundings. This is often associated with an idealized notion of the term “cosmopolitanism,” which connotes a privileged status of freedom and ease. The definition of the word “cosmopolitan” in the Oxford En146  |  ch ap te r 5

glish Dictionary is more neutral: “belonging to all parts of the world; not restricted to any one country or its inhabitants; having the characteristics which arise from, or are suited to, a range over many different countries; free from national limitations or attachments.” As the concept of cosmopolitanism is revitalized within the discourse of globalization, a number of scholars are reclaiming the term by disengaging it from the lingering connotations of elitism and privilege. In “Cosmopolitanisms,” authors Pollock, Bhabha, Breckenridge, and Chakrabarty argue for multiple manifestations of cosmopolitanism because “cosmopolitanism must give way to the plurality of modes and histories . . . that comprise cosmopolitan practice and history.” They propose that “cosmopolitanism be considered in the plural, as cosmopolitanisms.”7 Indeed, if mobility is the primary condition of cosmopolitanism, we should include not only privileged individuals with the financial means to travel internationally but also dispossessed beings who are on the move to escape poverty, persecution, or political conflict, such as exiles, nomads, immigrants, and migrant workers. Another group worthy of inclusion are those who traverse beyond the boundaries of the local, the regional, or the national without physically crossing borders, or what I would call “virtual cosmopolitans.” Since transnational mobility is commonly regarded as the primary condition of cosmopolitanism, we can also consider mobility in the plural, as “mobilities.” John Urry uses the term “imaginative travel” to describe how people “travel elsewhere through memories, texts, guidebooks and brochures, travel writing, photos, postcards, radio and film.”8 This section focuses on the mediated sense of mobility and how this is imagined, envisioned, and embodied through a combination of analog and digital media, which are now instrumental in shaping our lived experiences. I consider those who are cosmopolitan in the imaginary, or virtual sense,9 that is, the global citizens who physically remain stationary in one place but have access to, and come in contact with, geographically diverse locales through various forms of media. These “virtual cosmopolitans” engage in the discourse and experience of globalization by inserting themselves into the global flow of recognizable media images. These aspirations of transnational mobility are actualized and manifested via material and mediated modes of mobility that simulate cosmopolitan experiences through the use of photography, film, and digital media—often in tandem with one another. We can thus speak of a “reclaimed cosmopolitanism” that encompasses various modes of mediated mobility. He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 147

Jia’s film effectively illustrates this reclaimed cosmopolitanism. In The World, a cosmopolitan experience is simulated by mediated reenactments and representations of geographical mobility, namely, the two world parks, a flying magic carpet sequence, and c­ omputer-­animated fantasy sequences. First, the heterotopic sites of the theme parks fetishize global travel and transnational mobility. Because the World Park and the Window of the World are heterotopic spaces of ersatz globality, shooting on location there obviates the need to use digital compositing in postproduction. The façade of cosmopolitanism is already prefabricated in this faux transnational space. In the film, visitors walk from the Egyptian pyramids to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, thereby jumping across national, regional, and continental borders. In an interview, the filmmaker discussed the equivalence of the two parks, particularly noting their visual interchangeability as backdrops because they are similarly crafted and commodified as artificial places that simulate international travel:10 The World Parks in Shenzhen and Beijing might as well be the same place. Every time I went to one of the parks for the shooting, I saw all the tourists and how overjoyed they were to be there, and for me it was all very sad. How should I put it? This is what Chinese reality is like. And so, in the film, a lot of action takes place under the “Arc de Triomphe,” or in front of the “Taj Mahal,” or in “London,” or in “Manhattan.” Of course all of these landscapes are fake. But the problems our society faces are very much Chinese issues, and I think all this is not unrelated to that. We’re living in a globalised age, in a world saturated by mass media, in an international city, as it were. But despite all that, the problems we’re facing are our own problems. So these landscapes are intimately related to what’s going on in the film.11

Jia also notes the distinctive quality of what he calls “Chinese reality” in an increasingly global world, which he portrays in The World. In his film, the laboring bodies that work in the World Park and Window of the World (and in Beijing and Shenzhen) are immobilized in their social situation and geographical location of sanctioned labor. Some of the itinerant workers have migrated from remote regions of China, and the World Park is their limited version of a global existence. In Jia’s film, global mobility is embodied in the physical space of the 148  |  ch ap te r 5

World Park, rather than experienced by the protagonists who belabor to sustain this cosmopolitan illusion. In The World, laboring bodies are anchored to their social situation and geographical location. This is in stark contrast to Tarsem’s film The Fall, in which the ­cross-­border movement of human bodies connects geographically dispersed spaces together in a transnational assemblage. One montage sequence in The Fall portrays the characters moving through various locales scattered across the globe, such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. In The World, these edifices converge in the enclosed space of the World Park. This park is a heterotopia that exists in a physical environment, although its significance is also heavily dependent on audiovisual media images and the viewer’s familiarity with them. In order to perform global mobility, both films assemble diverse locations together in a heterotopic space, which fulfills its role as mediated map of the world. In The World, the park’s heterotopic space of fetishized cosmopolitanism simulates voyages around the world in the form of its architecture, a monorail that circles the park, and performances of traditional folk dances from various regions around the world. The female protagonist, Tao (Zhao Tao), is an employee who participates in dance routines that reinforce the park’s transnational fantasy. This performance follows a tradition of representing customs of unfamiliar cultures as exotic spectacles in order to simulate travel experience.12 Her lived reality, however, is enacted backstage as she prepares for the show and asks around for a bandage to prevent blisters on her feet. Here Tao embodies a figure whose aspirations of becoming a “global citizen” are unlikely to materialize, despite her participatory role in developing and sustaining global economic infrastructures. Still wearing her folk costume after the performance, Tao rides on the monorail and gazes upon the buildings in the park. While passing a model of the Eiffel Tower, she says facetiously to her friend on the phone: “I’m going to India.” Afterward, Tao hails a group of fellow employees who are walking past a replica of the Egyptian pyramids that stands next to a miniature version of the Sphinx. Foucault’s heterotopia performs two contradictory functions: “to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory,” or “to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.”13 Jia’s film portrays both functions of heterotopia. The heterotopic space of the World He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 149

5.2 Riding on the monorail, Tao passes a model of the Eiffel Tower in The World (Zeitgeist Films, 2004).

Park simultaneously highlights and hides the labor of producing and maintaining the illusion of a transnational imaginary. In this film, this illusion is perpetuated by physical manifestations of global mobility, that is, concrete projections of an imagined cosmopolitan experience. In the film, the World Park also represents an “effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”14 According to Foucault, heterotopias “always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable.”15 This has the effect of creating the deception that one is allowed to enter, even though access is denied. In The World’s opening sequence, the small figure of a manual worker, whose back is bowed down under the weight of a large bundle of waste, is silhouetted against the distant outline of the giant World Park etched across the sky. Immediately before he passes the faraway frame of the Eiffel Tower, the worker turns to face the audience, his face shrouded in darkness. As he resumes his wearied walk, the title “The World” appears above his head. This shot introduces the film’s theme through the visual juxtaposition of China’s elevated status as a nation and the national subjects who are “left behind,” or isolated from this fast-­paced progress of uneven globalization. Such workers can gain access to the World Park as laborers who work to maintain the illusory promise of cosmopolitan mobility, but the fantasy ends there. Many of Jia’s films focus on characters whose lives are influenced by 150  |  ch ap te r 5

5.3 The figure of a manual worker is silhouetted against the faraway outline of the World Park in the opening sequence of The World (Zeitgeist Films, 2004).

a specific sense of localized place, such as the city of Fenyang in Platform (2000), the Three Gorges Dam in Still Life (2006), Chengdu in 24 City (2008), and Shanghai in I Wish I Knew (2010). His characters are often “stuck” in their surroundings or, conversely, displaced from their hometowns. One common theme that threads through his oeuvre of films is a prevailing tension between stasis and mobility. This theme is expressed through Jia’s depiction of Chinese workers who inhabit socioeconomic spaces that enforce limitations on their physical and social movements. These spaces seem to be in constant flux against the background of China’s rapid expansion of industrialization and modernization. For the workers who inhabit these spaces, however, this instability often translates into the precarious and dispensable nature of laboring bodies instead of desired forms of upward mobility. A recent documentary on the filmmaker, Jia Zhangke: A Guy from Fenyang (Walter Salles, 2014), shows Jia returning to several locations featured in his films and noting how much they have changed since they were shot. The documentary also includes an interview with the actress Zhao Tao, who worked in the World Park before The World was produced. She notes how the lives of her former colleagues who still work there remain more or less the same. Jia’s films reveal that the possibility of realizing one’s cosmopolitan aspirations is limited by the material reality of social and economic restrictions in contemporary China. Mirroring this reality, the characters in The World remain indefinitely grounded in their lived realities as laboring bodies. This is emphasized in He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 151

the sequence that depicts Tao and a young male acquaintance gazing up at a passing airplane at a construction site. He later dies in an accident at the site while working overtime at night. His character literally succumbs to the crushing material pressures of his surroundings. For the workers at the World Park, the fantasy space of the theme park is simply a site of banal reality and tedious labor. Frustrated by unrealized aspirations for global travel, they instead consume commodities that virtually fulfill their desires for a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Those who cannot attain geographical mobility in reality seek alternate modes of mediating their desires, namely, mobile technology and computer animation. Throughout the film, Tao and her boyfriend Taisheng (Chen Taisheng) constantly talk on the phone or send text messages, and they are often more engrossed in the internal / ​digital world provided by their cell phones than in their external / ​material surroundings. Their desires and fears are also expressed via the artificial ­computer­animated imagery of a hyperreal world, which punctuates the flow of the film’s live-­action footage. In one sequence, Tao and Taisheng discuss their relationship in a cockpit of a plane that is docked in the park for the visitors to “experience the beauty of air travel.” Wearing a flight attendant costume, Tao plaintively says to Taisheng, “Being stuck here all day will turn me into a ghost.” Immediately afterward, an animated sequence depicts Tao, still in her costume, exuberantly flying over Beijing like a bird. Another sequence portrays Taisheng riding on a galloping horse to meet a romantic interest after receiving a text message inviting him to come visit her. Each animated sequence is preceded by a text message that seems to open a portal into this digital imaginary. This affective convergence of mobile and digital technologies in The World elucidates how they create new ways of envisioning and enacting human interactions within a virtual network of visual communication. These animated sequences are explicitly marked as a fabricated realm of fantasy and are demarcated from lived reality by taking the form of crude graphics and brightly colored imagery. The effects of digital media are revealed as simultaneously real and illusory in a sequence that shows Tao and Taisheng sitting in front of a video camera that is connected to a computer screen. The recorded image of the couple is digitally composited with a fake backdrop of the sky, thereby creating the illusion that they are flying on a magic carpet. This sequence reveals the process of digital manipulation and exposes the 152  |  ch ap te r 5

5.4 An animated sequence of Tao flying over Beijing.

5.5 An animated sequence of Taisheng riding on a horse.

5.6 and 5.7 Tao and Taisheng enjoy their simulated magic carpet ride.

seams between material reality and mediated representation. Even so, the joyful enthusiasm expressed by Tao and Taisheng in this sequence alludes to the pleasurable experience one can derive from the mediated reality of digital imagery, or “the intoxicating freedom of the digital.”16 This sequence thereby highlights digital media’s ability to simulate a sensation of physical mobility. In The World, reality and fantasy are digitally composited within the mise-­en-­scène of the mediated image. Here it is not necessary for fantasy to blend seamlessly with reality; the unsophisticated ­computer-­animated images are clearly demarcated from the live-­action sequences. Despite the prevalent emphasis on seamless integration, Lev Manovich points out that digital compositing can also retain traces of difference and dissonance among individual layers: “Although digital compositing is usually used to create a seamless virtual space, this does not have to be its only goal. Borders between different worlds do not have to be erased; different spaces do not have to be matched in perspective, scale, and lighting; individual layers can retain their separate identities rather than being merged into a single space; different worlds can clash semantically rather than form a single universe.”17 The World does not deploy digital technologies to “create a seamless virtual space” or to erase borders between reality and simulation. Instead, the film uses them to draw our attention to the seams and disjunctures. The film’s juxtaposition of live-­action and ­computer-­animated sequences highlights the seams between the two modes of representation, simultaneously depicting and demystifying the digital medium’s supposed emancipatory power. By making the contrast between live-­action and ­computer-­generated imagery glaringly obvious, The World helps the spectator to cultivate the ability to identify seams and dissonances in other audiovisual texts that are more invested in maintaining a seamless façade via digital technologies. DIGITAL FI L MMA K I N G

The fantasy of global mobility is an important thematic and visual motif in The World. Cosmopolitan aspirations motivate the characters and propel the narrative forward, providing the need to construct a mediated space to materialize and articulate a transnational imaginary. Jia’s film depicts dispossessed subjects who attempt to perform cosmopolitan experiences through media practices that deploy various modes He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 155

of vision and imagination to attain concrete, material forms. They use mobile or digital technologies as a mode of traversing imaginary spaces that equips them with a sense of participating in a global network. They also negotiate their desire for mobility via simulated travels around the world. The medium of choice is digital video. Jean Baudrillard writes that “simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary.’”18 Digital images seem to deconstruct the binary relationship between the real and the virtual. But can this dissolution of binaries create something beyond an illusory effect? Can it also materialize into liberating and enjoyable experiences for virtual cosmopolitans? As illustrated by the magic carpet scene and the c­ omputer-­animated fantasy sequences, The World demonstrates the potential of digital aesthetics to provide simulations of transnational mobility to those who are otherwise immobile. The World makes a compelling argument for the heterotopic powers of the digital medium. In a postindexical era, the digital medium is the message. Initially, The World seems to reinforce the difference between live action and animation. The fact that Jia shot the entire film with a digital camera, however, dissolves the dichotomy between the two modes of representation. The whole world in the film is portrayed in a digital format, so the digital medium is deployed to depict both reality and fantasy. The film manifests the ubiquitous presence of digital technology and thematizes the erasure of textual, national, and geographical boundaries. Jia’s film thus effectively deploys digital filmmaking even as it deconstructs its role in the fabrication of transnational spaces and simulated global travel. The young protagonists, Tao and Taisheng, are trapped in the confines of their restrictive surroundings. They recognize the empty promises of economic, social, and geographical mobility that are falsely projected by the ersatz globality of the park. Jia’s film exposes the illusory nature of this wish fulfillment by demystifying the processes of fabrication to actualize the fantasy of global mobility. Although social realities are excluded from the illusory space of the World Park, they are inserted in the narrative space of The World, which depicts how its inhabitants are relegated into spectral figures caught in a liminal state of stasis. The last sequence of the film alludes to this by shrouding Tao and Taisheng in a black void when their relationship ends in their joint death in a gas leak accident. They suffocate by being exposed to poisonous gases in the enclosed space of a small apartment. 156  |  ch ap te r 5

Draped with the shadow of death, their faces are rendered unrecognizable. Their visibility is further compromised in the film’s final shot, when the screen turns completely black. This visual annihilation paradoxically signals the possibility of a new beginning, as Tao’s disembodied voice assures Taisheng. Their death enables them to transcend visual forms of mediated representations that depict and demarcate real and imaginary worlds. Or rather, they turn into spectral beings that can still communicate with disembodied voices. Here we can compare the deaths of Tao and Taisheng with the deaths depicted in another film by Jia Zhangke: A Touch of Sin (2014). The physical corporeality of human flesh returns with a vengeance in Jia’s later film, which features death scenes of characters whose bodies bleed profusely when they are torn with bullets or slashed with a knife. This is in stark contrast to the disembodied state of death depicted in the last scene of The World. When a young factory worker jumps to his death in A Touch of Sin, his corporeal tangibility is reinforced when the camera continuously records his descent until he falls on the ground with a disquieting thud that signals the weight of his human body. The ending of The World evades this sense of finality. The ambivalent nature of digital media is illustrated in this last sequence. Despite the death of the protagonists, it still holds promise, albeit tenuous, in its oblique and ambiguous resolution. The black screen signifies a return to a state in which sign and referent do not exist. Tao says that “this is just the beginning,” hinting that their death is not the end. In this state indexicality or referentiality no longer holds significance, as Tao’s disembodied voice remains linked to her subjectivity, if not her body. The darkened screen effaces the living, laboring bodies of Tao and Taisheng. This void alludes to their failure to materially incorporate themselves into the cosmopolitan fantasy visualized in the c­ omputer-­animated sequences. The lack of any visual sign or referent, however, prompts the spectator to take on the active role of filling in the empty, black space. What does it mean for one’s consciousness to remain after the disappearance of one’s physical body? If digital images have ushered in a crisis of representation because of their potential to forge and fake, what does this rebooting mean for the “empire of signs”? Even if it is unlikely that this is a possibility for renewal or regeneration (as in the case of Avatar), perhaps the hegemonic power of this empire can be diminished by a state of visual nullification. If digitality leads to a state of disembodiment, this could signal a virtual He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 157

realization of mobility where the voice is no longer tied down to any image, matter, or form. When Tao states, “This is just the beginning,” is her statement an observation, manifesto, or prophecy? The open ending allows the viewer to consider various possible answers for this question. B I G H E R O 6 : CO MP O SI T I N G T H E D I G I TA L A ND TH E GLO BA L I N H ET EROTO P I C SPAC E S

With the proliferation of transnationally circulated media content, our interaction with the global is often mediated through images of film, television, or other forms of popular media and visual culture. These images provide not only audiovisual representations of diverse cultures and faraway lands, but also virtual modes of traversing across real and fictional landscapes. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto discusses the intimate relationship between globalization and image culture, noting that they “do not exist separately first and then interact with each other.”19 He presents the notion of “virtualization” as a merging point between globalization and image culture: “Image culture has not merely been globalized, nor is globalization merely characterized by the ubiquitous dissemination of transnationally produced images. To some extent, ‘globalization of image culture’ or ‘global image culture’ is a misleading phrase or an oxymoron since on a fundamental level globalization and image are inseparable from each other. Here, at the risk of being too speculative, I would like to introduce the notion of virtualization, which underlies both the logic of globalization and the history of representational technologies.”20 Yoshimoto’s emphasis on the “inseparable” closeness of globalization and image informs the potential of the digital medium to construct heterotopic spaces and to convey geographical heterogeneity. As discussed earlier, The World illustrates how digital media can be effectively deployed to manifest aspirations and actualizations of transnational mobility. The globalized heterotopic space in the Disney computer animation Big Hero 6 is likewise rooted in real and imagined circulations of transnationally mobile media images, texts, and products. The film tells the story of a ­fourteen-­year-­old Japanese American boy genius, Hiro Hamada, who lives in the fictional city of “San Fransokyo” in the near future. Big Hero 6, which is a product of the conglomeration of two major media studios, Disney Feature Animation and Marvel Entertainment, is the first collaborative project released after Disney’s acquisition of Marvel in 2009. As such, the c­ omputer-­animated film is a hybrid of the different genres that 158  |  ch ap te r 5

represent each company: animation and superhero. The source material is a ­lesser-­known Marvel comic by Duncan Rouleau and Steven Seagle about a Japanese superhero team.21 Set in Tokyo, the original comic features more overt references to Japanese manga and popular culture. For instance, the synthetic robot Baymax can transform into a dragon and is programmed with the fighting techniques of various forms of Asian martial arts. Another character can manifest a protective force field that resembles a G ­ odzilla-­like creature. The comic books also make references to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a villainous character physically embodies the dead victims of the attacks. The Disney version revised such culturally specific, localized content for global audiences. Although the film was “Americanized” in its transformation into a Disney franchise, it retains explicit traces of its source material by integrating Japanese visual culture and anime aesthetics into the fictional setting of the film: San Fransokyo. As the composite name suggests, the fictional city in Big Hero 6 is a heterotopic space that fuses iconic cultural elements of Tokyo into the urban geography of San Francisco.22 In Big Hero 6, the virtual cityscape features a plethora of Japanese ­iconography—street signs and billboards written in Japanese and featuring Asian calligraphy, Japanese restaurants, karaoke bars, red lanterns, and Japan’s signature cherry blossom trees (sakura), as well as Tokyo-­style skyscrapers, trains, neon signs, and vending machines. The most visually striking element of this transpacific assemblage is the architecture of the city that incorporates wood structures and Asian-­style traditional tiled roofs into the actual layout of San Francisco. The campus of San Fransokyo Institute of Technology is also a heterotopic space, merging the Mission Revival style of California with Japanese architectural materials of wood and stone. Another visual assemblage is the Golden Gate Bridge, which is redesigned to look like traditional gates found in East Asia. The virtual space of San Fransokyo presents a creative geography of heterotopic urban spaces that embody transnational networks and c­ ross-­ cultural exchange. ­Japanese-­inspired elements were integrated in the production process as a result of a group research trip to Tokyo, as well as the creative input of Japanese and Japanese American artists, such as art director Scott Watanabe, illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi, and robot designer Shige Kuyama.23 A copper bell that filmmaker Don Hall saw during his visit to a Shinto shrine was incorporated into the film as the robot’s face, and its body shape is reminiscent of the familiar silhouette of the titular He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 159

5.8 and 5.9 The virtual cityscape of San Fransokyo integrates the cultural iconography of Tokyo into the urban geography of San Francisco in Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney Pictures, 2014).

character in Hayao Miyazaki’s cult classic My Neighbor Totoro (1988).24 Other popular science fiction anime films, such as Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995) and Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988), also served as inspiration for the film.25 The emphasis on the distinctive characteristic of this fictional metropolis deviates from homogeneous depictions of the global city, and from common trends in urban planning that transform numerous megacities into generic, standardized spaces lacking in cultural specificity. In fact, the specificity of San Fransokyo is overdetermined in the onscreen profusion of Japanese cultural iconography. It is significant that this heterotopic space seamlessly integrates visual references to Japanese cultural iconography, language, and architecture within the national territory of the United States. On the surface, the animators have ostensibly “Japanified” the cityscape of San Francisco. If we consider that the source material is set in Tokyo, however, the reverse is also true. Rather than an insertion of Japanese culture and iconography into an American metropolis, this revision can be read inversely as a reterritorialization of a Japanese city. In this context, the virtual cityscape of San Fransokyo is more than a playful, imaginative amalgam of Tokyo and San Francisco. This common practice in Hollywood of making such modifications is sustained by the assumption that “other” localities and cultures need to be “Americanized” to be palatable and profitable in box offices around the globe. Although it is not explicitly explained in the film, there is a “real-­life” prosaic explanation for this alternate universe scenario; Japanese immigrants rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake based on their technical knowledge and experience of building urban structures that can withstand seismic events.26 Through this heterotopic space, the animated film visualizes and spatializes transpacific collaborations of talent, resources, and copyrighted material. The visual and the material are collated in this mythical space of San Fransokyo, which is a visible seam that illustrates the transnational partnership between Japanese anime and Disney animation through a corporate media product of Marvel comics. Based on a shared geological risk of seismic activity, the threat of an invasion of Japanese culture into American territory is tamed through this benign narrative of technological and cultural collaboration. In the genre of science fiction, a distinctive cityscape is often redesigned with futuristic iconography to create a familiar, yet unfamiliar, space. In Big Hero 6, the insertion of Japanese signifiers substitutes for He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 161

this high-­tech renovation. This is reminiscent of an ongoing trend in science fiction films, described as “techno-­Orientalism,” that either feature vaguely Asian characteristics in technologically advanced futuristic societies or take place in Asian or Asian-­inspired backdrops.27 In the meantime, the actual space of Chinatown in San Francisco, which is conversely coded as an archaic, “exotic” space in the American popular imagination, has been replaced with a virtual space that integrates traditional and hypermodern aspects of Japanese visual culture in a North American backdrop. Nonetheless, it is productive to read the imaginary space of San Fransokyo not only as a spatial emblem of a futuristic ­techno-­hub reminiscent of Silicon Valley but also as a material residue of a transpacific collaboration that highlights traces of its Japanese influences. The ­computer-­generated environments in the film are layered sites where cultural images and digital assets from diverse territories are collated and composited to form heterotopic spaces of transnationality. Here, traces of transnational exchange are celebrated as signs of its hybrid nature rooted in the fusion of American and Japanese animation. The World and Big Hero 6 similarly present a heterotopic blending of real and imaginary spaces. The World presents actual places that exhibit the hybrid and modular qualities of heterotopias. The modular nature of the heterotopic cityscape in Big Hero 6 is reminiscent of the World Park, where architectural icons from various nations are assembled in a common space. If the World Park functions as a literal materialization of cosmopolitan aspirations, then San Fransokyo presents a more technologically advanced visualization of material conditions of transnational (specifically transpacific) collaborations based on actual circulations of capital, labor, media content, and cultural artifacts. In this context, San Fransokyo is not only a “mythical” space but also a space of hybridized lived realities that are articulated and inspired by global media content that expresses and embodies cosmopolitan aspirations. The two films, however, differ in their stance toward this dissolution of boundaries. The World accentuates the distinction between physical and virtual realities. Meanwhile, Big Hero 6 erases traces of the seams between physical and virtual realities and celebrates the dissolution of cultural boundaries by compositing Tokyo and San Francisco in the film’s narrative and iconography. This fluid merging of heterogeneous cultures in a transnational media landscape indicates a global consciousness that coincides with the values prioritized in the contemporary digital visual 162  |  ch ap te r 5

regime. Here the vision of a near future is materialized in the space of San Fransokyo, a media heterotopia that presents an ideal digital image of a multicultural and cosmopolitan cityscape. One striking aspect of the idealized virtual landscape of San Fransokyo is that it is uniformly diffused with warm, n ­ atural-­looking lighting. As evinced in the popular use of the phrase “painting with light” to describe cinematography, light has always been an essential source of energy for the photographic /cinematographic image because the camera needs light to capture images on a ­light-­sensitive medium.28 An analog photograph is an indexical trace of light filtered through the camera lens, so it is crucial to have an adequate light source to illuminate profilmic objects and scenes. In order to achieve photographic verisimilitude, the digital image must simulate natural lighting, as well as its effect on the illuminated scene. Therefore animators and lighting designers need to create virtual lights, and to program their position and intensity. Lighting plays a vital role in compositing digital assets and layers to maintain the illusion of unity and consistency in “seamless” worlds. At siggraph Asia, Roger Guyett from Industrial Light and Magic’s Singapore studio described shifts in color and lighting as “a lot of seams.”29 As discussed in previous chapters, a significant amount of laborious effort is channeled into sustaining a seamless effect by creating the impression of continuity throughout multiple shots and the illusion of simultaneity among various assets in a single shot. In digital production, lighting is an integral element to simulate temporal continuity and spatial contiguity. Accurate lighting played an important role in creating the imaginary yet realistic cityscapes of Big Hero 6, as well as setting the tone and atmosphere of the animated ecosystem. Hyperion, a global illumination rendering system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios, is credited for much of the cinematic hyperrealism in the film’s digital aesthetics. The film’s animators used the system to “project, reflect, and refract light, create realistic shadows, and show varying levels of light / ​dark contrast for objects and characters.”30 The development of Hyperion enabled animators to “create frames containing highly accurate simulations of 10 billion simultaneous rays of light,” thereby enhancing the photo­realistic and vibrant quality of c­ omputer-­generated environments.31 The technical aspects of proprietary software thus functioned as an essential ingredient in creating the illusion of unity in the media heterotopia of San ­Fransokyo. He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 163

5.10 Lighting enhances the photorealistic quality of the animated cityscapes in Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney Pictures, 2014).

The credibility of this creative geography is further articulated in the immense scale and detailed density of San Fransokyo’s fictional geography and population. The film’s animators created approximately 83,000 digital buildings and 750,000 digital characters to fill in the cityscape. This number coincides with the actual number of buildings and inhabitants in San Francisco.32 One is reminded of Jorge Luis Borges’s map of an empire that is the same size as its actual territory.33 Although this fable suggests the meaninglessness of exact similitude in representations of reality, this detailed approximation of a real space is not only attainable but also desirable in the realm of digital animation. The virtual cityscape of San Fransokyo is a homologue of the actual space of San Francisco, but it also refers to a fictional space that does not exist in reality. Although this seems to indicate the inversion of replica and reality, the one-­to-­one correspondence between the two spaces actually accentuates the material foundations of the film’s animated infrastructure. In other words, the simulated metropolis is grounded upon the visual and tangible reality of San Francisco. In fact, the animators referenced the property data and survey map of San Francisco to replicate the location of buildings, streetlights, and trees in the digital metropolis.34 For example, the protagonist’s home, a key location in the film, is a replica of an actual Victorian house in the city.35 Although we do not experience San Fransokyo as a physical environment in the same way we experience San Francisco’s architectural or urban space, this virtual city is also a material space that is quantified and measured in units of area or volume. San Fransokyo’s complex urban ge164  |  ch ap te r 5

ography indicates the staggering amount of work required to design and animate each digital detail. In fact, Big Hero 6 has more digital assets than three previous Disney animations combined. In other words, this digital metropolis can accommodate the entire worlds of Frozen (Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, 2013), Wreck-­It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012), and Tangled (Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, 2010).36 This fact reminds us that virtual cityscapes and digital environments are tangible spaces that can be measured in numbers and bytes. The digital assets of buildings and characters that fill this vast virtual geography are also materially significant in that they require physical sites for processing, rendering, and storage. The aforementioned Hyperion software in particular necessitated a ­large-­scale render farm that had to disperse its workload in four different locations: three in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco.37 Although projected on a flat screen, this digital environment is a layered, t­ hree-­dimensional space, with a density that parallels its real-­life referent. The film’s diegetic space, through its intricate details and structural complexity, reveals the effortful, laborious nature of creating and compositing digital environments. San Fransokyo is thus a media heterotopia that conveys the narrative of its l­ abor-­intensive production history through its detailed composite form that simulates the geographical structure and cultural iconography of two cities. TH E CO N V ERGEN CE O F T ECH N O LO GY A ND H UM AN LA B O R I N CO MP UT ER A N I M AT I O N

As a product of the media conglomeration between Disney and Marvel, Big Hero 6 complies with the genre conventions and brand characteristics of both Marvel superhero franchise and Disney animation. This film differentiates itself from other superhero films based on Marvel properties through its genre of computer animation and its target audience of younger viewers. Following the narrative conventions of Disney, the story of Hiro, who is younger than most superhero protagonists, suggests that anyone can become exceptional by fulfilling one’s potential after overcoming a series of trials and life struggles. After his beloved older brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), dies in an accident, a g­ rief-­stricken Hiro (Ryan Potter) uncovers a plot to destroy the city by a masked villain, Yokai, whom he deems responsible for his brother’s death. Hiro later discovers that Yokai is, in fact, Tadashi’s respected mentor, Professor Callahan, whose moral decline is instigated by grief and vengeance after his He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 165

daughter disappears (and presumably dies) in a science experiment gone wrong. In the process, Baymax (Scott Adsit), a health care companion robot created by Tadashi, becomes Hiro’s surrogate brother and caretaker. The symbiotic relationship between Hiro and Baymax enables the growth and maturity of both characters. Hiro is able to overcome his feelings of loss and bereavement, and he upgrades Tadashi’s original programming of Baymax with “superhero” capabilities. Beneath the surface of a Disney narrative of growing pains and familial love, Big Hero 6 grapples with timely questions: How do we live, function, and die as a human in a posthuman world? How can humans form a symbiotic relationship with robotic technologies? In a world where such new technologies are constantly developed, commodified, used, and misused, how can we retain our humanity and utilize these technologies to ameliorate human existence (like Hiro, Tadashi, and their friends) instead of annihilating ourselves and our surroundings (like Callahan / ​Yokai)? In Big Hero 6, the robot Baymax fulfills the caretaker role as surrogate brother after Tadashi’s death, exhibiting the essentially “human” element of his character: compassion. It is Baymax who heals Hiro’s grief after his brother’s death, presumably saving him from following the same destructive path as Callahan after his daughter’s supposed death. This surrogate caretaker is a benign, even celebratory, representation of robotic technology as opposed to a darker alternative: a reincarnation of the dead Tadashi as a cyborg or a computerized clone whose operating system is programmed to think and act like him. Baymax is depicted as a nonthreatening form of artificial intelligence because it does not transgress the putative boundaries between human and machine. Despite its learning capacity and seeming emotional attachment to Hiro, Baymax exhibits a full recognition of its function as a health care robot and its mission to heal and help humans. It is always ready to deactivate when its task has been fulfilled. In fact, this is a source of anxiety for Hiro, who is unwilling to separate from his comforting companion. Baymax is the epitome of an ideal cyborgian convergence of technology and humanity. In contrast to the mortal humanness of Tadashi, the robot’s “superhuman” ability to regenerate allows it to continuously fulfill its caretaker duties. Baymax’s caring and compassionate nature is dependable and unchanging because the core element of its warm personality is coded into its computer program. Initially, the cuddly, spongy body of Baymax replicates the vulnerability of human flesh. This is accen166  |  ch ap te r 5

tuated for comedic effect in sequences that show Baymax slowly deflating after its “skin” is punctured. When the characters are upgraded into their superhero personas, Baymax also undergoes a bodily transformation that equips it with a stronger, ­steel-­clad exterior and flying capabilities similar to those of another Marvel franchise: Iron Man. The robot’s vulnerability and mortality are also evident when it volunteers to sacrifice itself to save its human companion. Even when Baymax is left behind to perish in the Portal, however, its mortality is fundamentally different from human mortality because the robot can be readily “resurrected” with the recovery of the memory chip containing the data that constitute Baymax’s “essential” characteristics. In the film’s conclusion, the superhero health care robot has been reborn as Baymax 2.0, with the same memory and programmed personality in another corporeal form. This happy ending that presents a regenerative body is a narrative device that complies with the repetitive logic of a superhero film franchise that needs a hero who can return for subsequent installments. In both the film’s narrative and its production process, Baymax’s body is an emblem for the convergence of technology and humanity, namely, the connection between ­computer-­generated bodies and digital labor. In the film’s narrative, Baymax physically embodies the numerous hours of mental and physical labor exerted by its creator. The number of failed attempts revealed in the film calculates the amount of time and effort spent by Tadashi. But the arduous, “effortful” process of inventing Baymax is not simply signified by an abstract number, but evinced in the countless trial tests seen in the video recordings stored in its memory, which are relayed to the viewer in the temporally condensed form of montage. In the film’s production process, Baymax’s body alludes to the invisible (or less visible) structures that create and maintain animated / ​automated figures. Hidden beneath the robot’s semitransparent ­vinyl-­covered body lies an internal carbon fiber “skeleton.” This skeleton, which is visible in certain lighting conditions, is emblematic of a presence that is there yet not quite visible: a spectral presence. The robot’s translucent form is not only the finished product of the animation process but also an emblem of the ­animators’ efforts to hide yet reveal the intricate details of their labor. The World deliberately exposes the seams of cgi, which I read as a critique of the pervasive tendency to obfuscate actual mechanisms of digital labor. The mundane activities of the workers at the World Park He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 167

revealed forms of work that are regularly hidden behind visual spec­ tacles and simulations. In Big Hero 6, however, the intensive processes of human labor that create and animate digital bodies remain concealed from the spectators in the film’s narrative and digital aesthetics. This disavowal can lead to the common misperception of seeing digital labor and ­computer-­generated animation as automated work. In “Animation and Automation,” Vivian Sobchack discusses the effacement of labor, or “effortful creation,” that occurs in c­ omputer-­generated animation: “As computers consume our energy and lives and computer graphics have become increasingly plasmatic, and as the painstaking physical labor of animators has been increasingly replaced, first by the electronic (and invisible) labor of their computers, and then by the apparent and effortless vitality of their creations, our fantasies have come to condense and display increasing uncertainty about what it means (for both our artifacts and ourselves) to be not only animated but also animate.”38 Although much of their work is performed on computers, it does not necessarily mean that the “painstaking physical labor of animators” is replaced by the labor of their computers. A human hand (and body) is always at work during the creative process of animation. The work of computer animation is no less painstaking, intensive, or “effortful” than hand-­drawn animation or live-­action filmmaking. As Sobchack also notes, all too often “an aesthetics of effortlessness” effaces “the extraordinarily intensive labor (both human and machinic) necessary to its very human and effortful creation.”39 Digital labor entails both mental and physical capacities of human agents. Although the work of animators is usually recognized as “creative” or “mental” labor, it is also physical in terms of how the working conditions of media production (e.g., long work hours, tight schedules, sedentary nature of their work, physical migration) take a toll on their bodies.40 Despite this reality, assumptions that computer animation work is mostly done by computers (and therefore automated or “effortless”) are circulated and maintained in the industry, usually on the executive level of studio heads and producers. Therefore, the effortful work of digital labor is devalued by rhetorical allusions to abstraction and automation. In Big Hero 6, the contrasting depiction of effortless work and effortful work indicates a hierarchy of labor that values certain forms of work over others. This hierarchy reflects current conditions of media industries, where certain aspects of digital work are devalued or unrecognized 168  |  ch ap te r 5

even though they are indispensable to ­labor-­intensive processes of creative production and distribution. The signifiers of effort in this film are frequently associated with mental and creative labor rather than physical exertion. The “effortfulness” of hard work is embodied by the processes of scientific invention performed by Hiro, Tadashi, and their friends at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. Even though the film’s narrative suggests the “effortfulness” of a task, it is contradicted by the illusion of effortlessness that is sustained and reinforced by the film’s form: the seamless digital imagery and the montage sequences that compress the temporal length of a task. Four montage sequences in Big Hero 6 evince this self-­reflexive representation of creative labor: the ­trial-­and-­error process of the microbots’ invention; the t­ rial-­and-­error process of Baymax’s invention; the process of upgrading Baymax’s capabilities; and the sequence of Baymax, Hiro, and his friends transforming into “superheroes.” Hiro’s invention of the microbots is particularly suggestive of prioritizing mental and creative labor over physical labor. This is reinforced by the fact that the microbots are controlled by a wireless connection to a human brain. Here human cognition is translated into robotic movement by a “neurotransmitter,” which obviates the physical exertion of human bodies. The fluid and mutable movements of the microbots are emblematic of a digital culture that creates dynamic structures based on molecular and modular assemblages. Although the wavelike flows of the microbot swarm are dependent on the thought processes of the person in charge, the collectivity of their common goal reflects the collaborative nature of digital networks. The microbots’ collective movements visualize the rhetoric used in digital film production to describe a workforce that fulfills a filmmaker’s vision. The microbots also function as visual metaphor and technical analogy to the pixels in digital imagery in the way they function as modular elements that can be manipulated and combined to create malleable, constantly morphing entities. Despite the film’s positive depiction of creative labor, this serves to reinforce the misconception of the “effortless” and invisible nature of work performed on digital platforms. The microbots’ smooth, rhythmic movement embodies the popular perception of an efficient, streamlined production pipeline that produces such “seamless” imagery. Once the initial stage of creating and coding the computer algorithm is over, upgrading the program is portrayed as relatively simple, painless, and automatic. Hiro enhances Baymax’s abilities by downloading He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 169

5.11 Hiro downloads kung fu sequences from the Internet to upgrade Baymax’s program.

kung fu fighting sequences from the Internet, scanning and capturing the movements, then uploading them into the robot’s operating system using a memory chip. This montage sequence is reminiscent of the scene in The Matrix (Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, 1999) that portrays the protagonist Neo (Keanu Reeves), mentally acquiring kung fu fighting skills and physically performing them in a computer program. Whereas this acquisition of skills was presented as a novel, eye-­opening process for Neo in The Matrix, it is portrayed as a routine activity for Hiro, who is a contemporary product of the digital download / ​upload / ​remix culture, well versed and educated in a collaborative network of digital sharing. The fact that the body performing martial arts is mechanized furthers the divide between the effortfulness of physical exertion and the effortlessness of Baymax’s upgraded performance. In both films, digital technologies are deployed to obviate the time and effort necessary in physical training. The creative labor of writing a computer program, uploading and downloading digital content, and upgrading the processing system of a ­computer-­generated mechanism substitutes for the physical exertion of human or robotic bodies. This substitution is reflexive of the animating process, during which the effortful labor of the animator creates these detailed depictions of effortless movements. The aforementioned montage sequence, however, simplifies and condenses the numerous hours of animation.41 The minutiae and toil of digital labor, as well as the physical and mental toll it takes on animators, programmers, and technical directors, are glossed over in the film’s idealized depiction of c­ omputer-­based tasks.

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TH E M O B I L I T Y A N D H ET EROTO P I C P H YSICA LI T Y O F DI GI TA L B O DI ES

In addition to Baymax’s transformation, Hiro’s technologically savvy friends (Go Go, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred) are also “upgraded” as superheroes with ­computer-­enhanced abilities. Here their transformation straddles the boundaries of science fiction and science fact. Their technical expertise as students at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, albeit extraordinary, falls within the realm of human capability. The potential of technological enhancement is deployed here to create cyborg hybrid bodies. In the film’s narrative, this is achieved based on scientific knowledge involving physics, chemistry, electrical science, and material science. This process, however, is symptomatic of a digital culture, as evidenced by the ­gravity-­defying stunts enabled by their technologically enhanced “superpowers.” In live-­action superhero films, actors or stunt performers, whose bodies and movements are digitally enhanced, usually perform these types of stunts. The human bodies of the actors thus place limitations on the “superhuman” capability of the live-­action superhero. This is frequently mirrored in the story through the human vulnerability of the superhero figure, notably embodied in Bruce Banner’s self-­loathing and fearful attitude toward his alter ego the Hulk, as well as Iron Man’s physical weakness without the suit and the constant threat of “running out of power” and dying. The technological upgrades in Big Hero 6 can be read as a wish fulfillment of a cyborg hybrid that is created by digitally enhancing the ­human body. An impressive sequence of Hiro and Baymax flying high over the San Fransokyo skyline aptly illustrates the heterotopic physicality of digital bodies. The thematic and visual tropes of flying are found in a significant number of superhero, fantasy, and animated films.42 This sequence in Big Hero 6 is reminiscent of the animated sequence in The World that shows the female protagonist flying over Beijing. As envisioned in each flying sequence, both films place visual and thematic emphasis on fulfilling aspirations of mobility. Although The World focuses more on cosmopolitan mobility and Big Hero 6 on corporeal mobility, both are symptomatic of contemporary desires to surpass the cumbersome limitations of our physical and material existence that weigh us down. The two films differ, however, in their depiction of this imaginary

He te ro t opic Mate ri ali t y  | 171

5.12 Hiro demonstrates the enhanced capabilities of Baymax after its superhero upgrade.

flight. While The World deliberately highlights its illusory quality, Big Hero 6 presents it within the realm of possibility. Even though the flying sequence in The World visualizes Tao’s aspiration to transcend the realities of her mundane life, the unsophisticated quality of the animation underscores the artificiality of this fantasy. A later scene that shows the two protagonists playfully “riding” on a flying carpet likewise illuminates the seams of the crudely composited image by revealing the technical mechanisms of the ­image-­making process. In contrast, Big Hero 6 presents an approbatory stance toward the potential of digital media to actualize dreams of transcending such limitations of the human body as mortality and corporeality. The dream to fly is actualized in the fictional diegesis of the film. The flight sequence is pivotal in the film’s narrative because it thematically and visually represents the physical and emotional connection between Hiro and Baymax, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between human and robot. This is reinforced in the film when Baymax sees Hiro rhythmically moving his feet from side to side during a shared moment of contentment and mirrors the movement. Hiro and Baymax need each other to fly. Their shared flight is emblematic of the superior abilities of cyborg hybrid bodies, or the collaborative “merge” between human and machine. Big Hero 6 thus depicts bodies that attempt to escape the bounds of human physicality via an upgrading system that is indicative of the digital era. Although they remain in the physical realm (i.e., not virtualized), these cyborg hybrid bodies attain a level of mutability and mobility that enables them to traverse physical and virtual realities. 172  |  ch ap te r 5

5.13 and 5.14 Hiro and Baymax fly over San Fransokyo in Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney Pictures, 2014).

In the c­ omputer-­animated realm of Big Hero 6, we are not troubled by the looming threat of humans being replaced or made obsolete by mechanized organisms. Instead, the film exhibits a welcoming attitude toward the possibility of cyborg composites of human and machine in form and content. In addition to the sequences analyzed here, the mode of computer animation itself is conducive to this message. The collaboration between human and technology is depicted as a worthy task through the transformative nature of digital imagery. This is illustrated by the sense of exuberant joy expressed by Hiro, whose euphoric experience and bodily sensation of flying through air are relayed to, and vicariously enjoyed by, the spectator through the velocity and virtuosity of the digitally animated flight. Since its inception, animation has continued to bring life and movement to bodies that simulate the physicality and liveliness of living entities, as well as bodies that attempt to escape the bounds of the gravitational pull or the bounds of human (or animal) physicality. Even before digital technologies blurred the demarcation between live-­action cinema and animation, many things that were deemed impossible in the former were possible in the latter. Throughout film history, a close relationship existed between the medium of cinema and the sensation of flight. This fascination with flying sequences can be traced back to early cinema, with A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902) and The Automatic Motorist (Walter R. Booth, 1911) as noteworthy examples. More than a century later, computer animation is realizing this capacity of cinema to simulate flight in more visually convincing ways. Thomas Lamarre identifies the potential of flying in the “multiplanar image” of animation, that is, an image composed of multiples layers or planes:43 When everything works, however, the results are astonishing, precisely because the multiplane system gives the viewer the impression of being able to move around inside the image, as if the image had become a world. Moreover, the viewer can move around more rapidly and freely than in daily life. You can zip around. Cinema also aims for such effects, from its earliest attempts to produce a voyage into the world on the screen. As Nam June Paik says, “Cinema isn’t to see, it’s to fly.” I would add: cinema is to fly when it strives to produce a sense of movement in depth, giving you the sensation of speeding inside the image. . . . Multiplane 174  |  ch ap te r 5

techniques in animation can actually push beyond the limits of live-­action camerawork. Animation has the potential to fly faster and farther.44

As Lamarre notes, it is “as if the image had become a world.” His observation is applicable to Big Hero 6, which idealizes the blurring of boundaries between human and robot, real and virtual, Japanese and American. In contrast, The World depicts the disjunction between image and world. In Jia’s film, it is as if the world has become an image, as shown in its final image of a black, empty space that is desolate in its darkness, yet also replete with possibility. The point here is not to be drawn into the illusory nature of digital imagery but to enter with eyes wide open. The impression of moving across virtual cinematic spaces—well illustrated in flying sequences—invites the spectator to enjoy the visual seduction and liberating sensation of effortless mobility and to fulfill fantasies of traversing geographical, national, and ontological borders. At the same time, it is necessary to remember the creative labor, technical expertise, and material conditions that enable these bodies to fly and to inhabit new hybrid forms. A heterotopic perception allows the audience to recognize the “spectral effects” of residual materiality onscreen, and to sense the tension and friction present in the gaps of the global and in the seams of the digital.

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CONCLUSION

The Seams of (Post)Digital Media Heterotopias

A

t an event held at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Rick Carter, the production designer for Avatar, uttered the ­thought-­provoking observation that “we are already in the postdigital place.”1 He pursued this train of thought by suggesting that we have already moved beyond endeavoring to create “seamless” effects: “We have two ranges of moviemaking— live action and digital. Can we make that seamless? I think we are already past that.” He added: “The split is now . . . very organic.” Carter’s words seem to suggest a technological development that is already pushing film production beyond the digital moment to a place where it becomes unnecessary to strive for “seamless” integration because the split between live action and digital no longer exists. In practical terms, Carter’s observation makes sense. The majority of contemporary mainstream cinema deploys various combinations of live-­ action filmmaking, ­computer-­generated animation, visual effects, and digital compositing. Because more films are increasingly merging profilmic and ­computer-­generated elements in mediated environments, it is no longer productive or necessary to think in binary terms of live action and digital, or to visualize a linear spectrum that positions analog technology on one end and digital technology on the other. If we consider Carter’s perspective as a creative artist and industry practitioner, we can relate his ideas to the aesthetic qualities of “seamlessness.” But we need to consider what is lost if we move beyond the aesthetic emphasis on hiding or erasing the seams of digitally constructed

images to a perfect simulacra that is more “organic,” where “one-­ness” is “not a noun but a verb.”2 In this rapidly evolving digital environment, once again we should ask: What is lost when seamless digital aes­ thetics is translated into a naive political rhetoric that elides the material practices of labor and site specificity in the context of transnational ­filmmaking? The previous chapters performed heterotopic analyses of contemporary films to study digitally composited environments that contain material residues of globally dispersed sites and bodies of labor. These films (and many others) embody global aspirations on two levels. The first is a globalizing force that exists on the infrastructural level of media industries and transnational corporations, and the second is the cosmopolitan desires of individual artists and workers to achieve global mobility as an emblem of professional success. The films also articulate transnational flows of labor, capital, and resources through style, narrative, motif, iconography, and geographically dispersed workforces. This is indicative of shifting perspectives regarding our lived experiences in increasingly globalized and digitized environments. These films’ narratives, themes, and aesthetics are symptomatic of our contemporary “structure of feeling” (to borrow Raymond Williams’s words), which takes form in transnational visual imagery that traverses temporal, spatial, and cultural borders across digital networks. Arjun Appadurai’s view of “the imagination as a social practice” reflects on the desire of individuals to become actively participating subjects in a global environment.3 Acknowledging the real and imagined aspects of national and regional imaginaries, Appadurai discusses the substantial power of imagination in its relation to social practices and sites of agency. By suggesting that we conceive of the imagination as “a form of negotiation between sites of agency and globally defined fields of possibility,” Appadurai encourages us to think about the act of imagining as a socially engaged activity and a materially productive process instead of “mere fantasy.”4 He explains that the complex, intricate web of multimedia obviates the need for clear demarcations between what we perceive as real and what we perceive as fiction. If we thus reinstate the power of imagination, the imaginary does not remain simply as wishful thinking but becomes a tangible force that affects one’s sense of identity and sense of place. The ability of the visual medium to dissolve boundar-

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ies between fact and fiction, between dream and reality in our minds, is so potent that the demarcation between truth and fiction becomes less relevant in the eye of the beholder / ​believer. Rick Carter echoes similar ideas in technical terms, suggesting that the vital role of visual effects is to create a space that is not merely a fantasy but rather a reality constructed with the power of imagination: What do [visual effects] mean? What’s the point? And it’s so obvious in [Avatar] because none of it can exist in front of our eyes, so you have to create something that doesn’t exist. Once you get to an entirely new planet with a new ecosystem connected spiritually with flora and fauna and characters. And with [Cameron’s] eye for detail, because he’s been to places—the bottom of the ocean, among others—it gets right to the core of what is a visual effect, which is not just a series of pixels or colors or forms that combine to form a fantasy. You’re actually trying to create a reality that can only come across with this new form that is introduced to us by the computer because of the amount of detail that it can create.5

Carter notes that this “reality” is created by the copious amount of detail in cgi. Here one can detect a technophilic perspective that posits visual effects as a natural progression in the development of imaging techniques to embody new forms or modes of creating artificial realities and virtual ecosystems. This leads to a fundamental question: What is expressed and embodied through the extensive use of visual effects and digital compositing in this particular digital moment? A practically minded answer can indicate the financial needs and drives of film and media industries—to obviate the need to build ­large-­scale studio sets or the need to relocate an entire film crew for location shooting, or to create new transmedia forms that move fluidly across various media platforms. As described earlier, the ­detail-­oriented, ­labor-­intensive constructed environments of digital cinema contain multiple modular assets that necessitate the distribution of labor among various vendors, companies, and regions in contemporary digital pipelines. As a result, nonlinear digital workflows produce various heterotopic environments that incarnate transnational geographies. Nonetheless, these financial reasons—compelling as they are—do not

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fully or adequately explain the overwhelming use of digital effects in contemporary cinema. Perhaps we can turn to film theory, then, for a more satisfying answer: Undoubtedly, the simplest way to speak of the imaginary is to recall that what appears on the screen is often extraordinary and inclines toward the marvelous. This is proven by the cinema’s predilection for those paths that skirt enchanted landscapes and mental places, improbable objects and new life forms, dark visions and brilliant metaphors. The world of a film is not the empirical one we have before our eyes every day. It is a world made of the stuff of dreams, of obsessions, of mirages, of utopias. It is a world dominated by pure possibility.6

Although Francesco Casetti is describing the surrealist tradition of cinema, his words can be appropriated to elucidate the potential of visualizing “enchanted landscapes and mental places” and “improbable objects and new life forms” through cinema in general, or through digital cinema in particular. The popularity of film genres that increasingly depend on complex visual effects to simulate physical transformation, geographical mobility, and spatial or temporal complexity—such as fantasy, science fiction, horror, historical epics, and computer animation—is indicative of a contemporary experience that seeks multisensory expression by fusing the possibilities of cinema and digital media to actualize “a world dominated by pure possibility.” In the contemporary media landscape, a vast number of films deploy digital technologies to visualize and materialize scenes and situations that were previously difficult (if not impos­ sible) to create, such as the incredibly immense body of a digital Godzilla swimming across the Pacific Ocean or the devastated remains of New York City nestled in the backdrop of Iceland’s volcanic terrain. In these digital domains, virtual bodies and entities attain a level of malleability and mobility that extends beyond moving across geographical borders; they also traverse and merge physical / ​virtual terrains and human / ​alien environments. In Avatar, bodies attempt to escape the bounds of human corporeality by transmuting into a hybrid state of being, and therefore, they paradoxically regain a more idealized human existence. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the films discussed in this book present some form of digital death, or death by digitality—some physical (Tao and Taisheng in The World), others metaphorical (the end of the 180  |  Conclu s ion

stunt actor’s career in The Fall). Some also include digital regeneration or reincarnation: the last words uttered by Tao in The World (“This is only the beginning”); the physical incarnations of a monster rebooted with a digital rebirth (Godzilla); the substitution of a dead brother with the mechanical form and digital software of a robot (Big Hero 6); and the species transmutation of Jake Sully’s human body into the alien body of a Na’vi warrior (Avatar), which mirrors the prolonging of an actor’s professional life via “digital prosthetics.” The visual and audio tracks of an entire film can also be rejuvenated and reconstructed with digital restoration technologies (Ashes of Time Redux). Is the black screen at the end of The World the most extreme state of digitality, and if so, is this digital death liberating, debilitating, or a liminal state of virtual purgatory? Or is the most extreme state of digitality embodied by Avatar’s frames, ­chock-­full of ­computer-­generated layers and modules, such as the lush Pandoran jungles that teem with an abundance of virtual organisms? The plenitude of this digitized realm presents a stark contrast to the empty, dark space of The World. Perhaps the black emptiness at the end of The World signifies the beginning of our digital existence, and Avatar the epitome or the end. As the conclusion of Avatar suggests, perhaps this end or death is only temporary, with digital regeneration just around the corner. This recurring motif of digital death and regeneration, I contend, is emblematic of an era in which human bodies are increasingly merged with cgi or translated into binary code to create cyborg hybrid entities. How does digital cinema effectively incarnate physicality and mobility in ways unforeseen? The thematic trope of transcending the limitations of one’s corporeal body is mirrored in rhetorical and visual allusions to the possibilities of digital cinema. A comparison of the fate of the two paraplegic characters of The Fall and Avatar illustrates this point. As a nostalgic eulogy for the demise of profilmic performances, The Fall deploys traditional location shooting and editing techniques instead of ­computer-­generated visual effects. In contrast, Avatar is thematically and technically focused on substituting a human body with a technologically enhanced, physically superior avatar—whether in the form of a ­human-­alien hybrid in the narrative or in the form of an actor whose body is enhanced with “digital prosthetics.” The Fall and Avatar are self-­ reflexive about the filmmaking process and technological developments in film production. Although both films portray characters who enter a Conclu sion  | 181

fictional realm or another level of reality, The Fall attempts to reclaim the authenticity of profilmic performances and real locations, whereas Avatar envisions another register of corporeal authenticity that is enabled by constantly evolving digital technologies. In The Fall, Roy inhabits a predigital era in the film’s narrative and its production process, and remains stuck in his physical state of paralysis. In Avatar, however, Jake Sully embraces the possibilities of digital transmutation, which enables him to leave behind his immobile, vulnerable human body to attain a superior ­cross-­species hybrid body. In both textual and extratextual spaces, the process of digital filmmaking marks a significant change in its implications for substituting or enhancing physical bodies with cyborg hybrid bodies. In this digitally pervasive environment, even films that purportedly use no visual effects, such as The Fall, reinforce their very presence through their marked absence or filmmaking techniques that emulate the fluidity of cgi. Contemporary films thereby display a thematic and visual tendency to focus on the use of digital technology to surpass the limitations of one’s corporeal body and material existence. Even so, the materiality of geographical locations, physical labor, and industrial practices asserts a strong influence and imprint on the textual form of a film. By emphasizing the dematerializing effect of digital technologies, one runs the risk of discrediting and devaluing the multiple stages of human labor entailed in the production of media. In the context of digital filmmaking, these assumptions are erroneous and disingenuous. This brings us back to the main purpose of this project—to reemphasize the political, social, and ethical stakes in recognizing the materiality of collaborative filmmaking practices in digital production pipelines. At stake in reclaiming site-­specific materiality is the recognition of the concerted efforts of diverse forms of labor and the uneven distribution of ownership claims over the finished product. Media heterotopias, as concept and methodology, acknowledge the multiple layers of digital composites that contain material traces of globally dispersed production sites and laboring bodies. To resist the erasure of bodies and sites of labor by fetishizing the illusion of a digitally enabled seamlessness, this book proposes a heterotopic perception as a critical strategy. This heterotopic perception, I assert, is imperative in perceiving how the rhetorical and visual power of seamlessness can conceal the structural inequities of a

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global film industry that accredit a preponderance of economic and cultural capital to a chosen few. Even in a “postdigital” era that surpasses the current digital moment, I cannot envision a world beyond seamlessness, or a world saturated with absolute seamlessness. Although such new technologies as virtual reality or augmented reality may create advanced aesthetic forms of “organic” hybridity, the task of locating seams to pick and unravel will be meaningful as long as they are created with technical processes that involve human labor and material sites of production. Even if the divide between live action and digital images is further dissolved in perfect simulacra, the spectral effects of residual materiality will still manifest in media heterotopias that assemble a heterogeneous multiplicity of textual bodies, media practices, material forms, and physical locations. Although we may need to devise different ways of perceiving and detecting these seams, their presence will always already exist as residues of lived realities, waiting to emerge.

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NOTES

INTRODUCTI ON

1. Some examples include Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Linda Krause and Patrice Petro, eds., Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Martin Lefebvre, ed., Landscape and Film (New York: Routledge, 2006); David Morley, Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (London: Routledge, 2000); Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Hamid Naficy, ed., Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (New York: Routledge, 1999); and Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 2. Here I refer to the works of such scholars as Giuliana Bruno, Edward Dimendberg, Michael Curtin, Ackbar Abbas, Hamid Naficy, Miriam Hansen, Lisa Parks, and John Caldwell. 3. Pam Cook, “Transnational Utopias: Baz Luhrmann and Australian Cinema,” Transnational Cinemas 1, no. 1 (2010): 26. 4. Nataša Ďurovičová, “Preface,” in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Nataša Ďurovičová and Kathleen Newman (New York: Routledge, 2010), ix–x. 5. Ďurovičová, “Preface,” ix. 6. Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 13. 7. Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transnational Cinemas 1, no. 1 (2010): 10. 8. Mette Hjort, “On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism,” in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Nataša Ďurovičová and Kathleen Newman (New York: Routledge, 2010), 13 (emphasis in the original).

9. Hjort, “On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism,” 13. 10. This includes a diverse assortment of people who are credited with technical, creative, or economic aspects of the filmmaking process. 11. Hjort, “On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism,” 13–14 (emphasis added). 12. Mapping is also used in the industry as concept and practice, such as “projection mapping” and “texture mapping.” Although not specified as such, storyboarding, as a blueprint that anticipates the final product, is also a kind of mapping, in the sense that it is a mapping of the film’s narrative, or a skeletal mapping that lays out the visual topography of sequences in a film. 13. John T. Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 14. Examples of recently published monographs on practical and visual effects include Shilo McClean’s Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film (Cambridge: mit Press, 2007); Dan North’s Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor (London: Wallflower Press, 2008); Stephen Prince’s Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012); and Kristen Whissel’s Spectacular Digital Effects: cgi and Contemporary Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). 15. Renee Dunlop, Paul Malcolm, and Eric Roth, “The State of Visual Effects in the Entertainment Industry,” The Visual Effects Society White Papers, July 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.visualeffectssociety​.com ​/ ​resources ​/ ​white​-p ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ apers. 16. Sherry B. Ortner, “Studying Sideways: Ethnographic Access in Hollywood,” in Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, ed. Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell (New York: Routledge, 2009), 176. 17. Ortner, “Studying Sideways,” 176. 18. Such events are also useful in obtaining access to information and hearing the perspectives of industry insiders (e.g., “Transmedia, Hollywood” event at ucla; siggraph; and 5D Conference). 19. John T. Caldwell, “‘Both Sides of the Fence’: Blurred Distinctions in Scholarship and Production,” in Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, ed. Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell (New York: Routledge, 2009), 215. 20. Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 4. 21. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “collaboration” as “united labor, co-­operation; esp. in literary, artistic, or scientific work.” The word derives from the Latin word collaborare, which is composed of col-­(together) and laborare (to work, labor). 22. The filmmaking process is conventionally divided into three phases:

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preproduction, production, and postproduction. The preproduction process, which occurs before the principal photography begins, includes scriptwriting, casting, financing, and so forth. The production process refers to the work of shooting footage in a studio or on location. Postproduction refers to all stages of work that occur after shooting the film, including editing, recording the musical score, adding visual effects and sound effects, and so forth. For a detailed description, see Richard Rickitt, Special Effects: The History and Technique (New York: Billboard Books, 2007), 374. 23. Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter, eds., Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society (London: Routledge, 2008), 6. 1  HE TE ROTOPI C M E DI A

1. The debate centering on the question “What is new about ‘new media’?” is a vital one. I base my own arguments on the idea that, the hyperbolic rhetoric of “newness” notwithstanding, digital media do not mark a historical break but rather bring about significantly innovative changes—both symbolic and material—in the ways that imaginary realms are created and conceptualized in popular discourse and professional practices. 2. Paul Malcolm, “The Craft Association,” in Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, ed. Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John Thornton Caldwell (New York: Routledge, 2009), 218. 3. Michael Fink and Jacquelyn Ford Morie, “Introduction,” in The ves Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard vfx Practices and Procedures, ed. Jeffrey Okun and Susan Zwerman (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2010), 2. 4. Gene Rizzardi, “Common Types of Special Effects,” in The ves Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard vfx Practices and Procedures, ed. Jeffrey Okun and Susan Zwerman (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2010), 86. 5. Hye Jean Chung, “Global Visual Effects Pipelines: An Interview with Hannes Ricklefs,” Media Fields Journal, no. 2 (2011), http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .mediafieldsjournal​.org ​/ ​global​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­visual​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­effects  /. 6. James Cameron, “Foreword,” in Ian Failes, Masters of fx: Behind the Scenes with Geniuses of Visual and Special Effects (New York: Focal Press, 2016), 8. 7. Ron Brinkmann, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing (Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008), 2. 8. Brinkmann, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, 2 (emphasis in the original). 9. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2001), 136–37 (emphasis added). 10. Dunlop, Malcolm, and Roth, “The State of Visual Effects in the Entertainment Industry,” 6. 11. George Lucas quoted in Kevin Kelly and Paula Parisi, “Beyond Star Wars,” Wired, February 1, 1997, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.wired​.com ​/ ​1997 ​/ ​02 ​/ ​fflucas /.

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12. Rickitt, Special Effects, 230. 13. Euisung Lee, interview with author, April 8, 2010, San Francisco, CA. 14. Lee tentatively suggests “pre-­post-­visualization” or “pre-­viz in post-­ production.” 15. The siggraph conference was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from July 25 through 29, 2010. 16. In an interview with the author in April 2010, Ellen Poon, a visual effects supervisor whose credits include Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) and Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), also mentioned the difficulties of a “language barrier” among workers from different countries. She noted that some people do not use the “Hollywood working lingo” and still use terms in the local language. For instance, she mentioned that the Chinese use the term “extract a mask” for the technical term “rotoscope.” 17. Ricklefs quoted in Chung, “Global Visual Effects Pipelines.” 18. siggraph panel, July 2010, Los Angeles, CA. 19. SeungHun Lee, interview with author, April 9, 2010, San Francisco, CA. 20. This advertisement is found in Cinefex, no. 96 (January 2004): 97. 21. Ellen Poon, interview with author, April 7, 2010, San Francisco, CA. 22. Life after Pi, a ­thirty-­minute documentary that explains the studio’s bankruptcy and layoffs, was released on YouTube​.com in February 2014 (https:​ ​/​/  ​www​.youtube​.com ​/ ​watch​?v​=​9lcB9u​-9­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ mVE). 23. The industry self-­consciously embraces this tendency and makes direct comparisons between visual effects and magic. Most notably, George Lucas’s visual effects and animation company, Industrial Light and Magic, alludes to this connection in its very name. Also, the website of Rising Sun Pictures, a visual effects studio based in Australia, asserts: “We live and breathe the creative and technical challenges of making magic every day” (https:​ ​/​/ ​rsp​.com​.au ​/ ​home  / ​). 24. For detailed analyses of connections between cinema and magic, see Erik Barnouw, The Magician and the Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Michele Pierson, Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); and Colin Williamson, Hidden in Plain Sight: An Archaeology of Magic and the Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015). 25. “As far as the public, most directors and producers are concerned, they are not at all aware of how time and ­hands-­on intensive the process really is. What we need to do is begin telling the painful truth.” Jeffrey Okun quoted in Dunlop, Malcolm, and Roth, “The State of Visual Effects in the Entertainment Industry,” 9. 26. Jeffrey Okun quoted in Michael Goldman, “What, and Who, Are Visual Effects Anyway?,” Provideo Coalition, July 15, 2010, https:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .provideocoalition​.com ​/ ​what​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­and​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­who​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­are​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­visual​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­effects​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­anyway  /. 27. One such example is Wired magazine’s “How It’s Done,” which profiled

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the “hidden processes” of animating Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) in its June 2010 issue. 28. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), xix. 29. This is often illustrated in promotional material for the finished product. For instance, the dvd  / ​Blu-­ray package for Avatar presents it as “James Cam­ eron’s Avatar,” and the third disc included in the ­three-­disc extended collector’s edition is titled “The Filmmaker’s Journey.” This emphasis on the filmmaker is contradicted by the contents of the documentary Capturing Avatar, which shows that the complex, ­labor-­intensive production pipeline depends on the collaboration of a large number of workers. 30. This is not to underestimate the cultural or political significance of history or literature. Indeed, Gordon intricately weaves both into her work, as she envisions new ways of conducting sociological research that can “write a history of the present.” As for literature, she reads the work of Luisa Valenzuela and Toni Morrison (and others) not as fiction but as sociologically significant texts that artistically express what she explains in more concrete terms—the social inequalities that render living beings into ghostly figures. Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 195. 31. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 8 (emphasis added). 32. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 25. 33. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 17. 34. Alice Rayner, “Rude Mechanicals and the Specters of Marx,” Theatre Journal 54, no. 4 (2002): 554. 35. See Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood (London: British Film Institute, 2001). 36. Guy Delisle, Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly Books, 2006), 58. 37. Dziga Vertov, Kino-­Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin O’Brien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 15. 38. Vertov, Kino-­Eye, 17–18. 39. Vertov, Kino-­Eye, 15. 40. Philip Rosen, Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 306. 41. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: bbc and Penguin Books, 1972), 10. 42. Berger, Ways of Seeing, 10. 43. Taylor Glascock, “Hacking Google Earth to Create Stunning Mountain ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ ixdorf​ Shots,” Wired, August 31, 2015, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.wired​.com ​/ ​2015 ​/ ​08 ​/ ​meike​-n -­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­your​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­earth​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­transforms. 44. Joe Fordham, “Beautiful Dreamer,” Cinefex, no. 137 (April 2014): 107.

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45. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 302. 46. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 155. 47. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 51. 48. See the works of Dan North, Michele Pierson, Sean Cubitt, and Tom Gunning. 49. Dan North, Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor (London: Wallflower Press, 2008), 4. 50. Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In) Credulous Spectator,” Art and Text 34 (Spring 1989): 32. 51. Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment,” 33. 52. Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment,” 33–34. 53. Sean Cubitt, The Cinema Effect (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2005), 46. 54. In Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989), human geographer Edward Soja discusses the reassertion of space in contemporary critical discourse, in contrast to the long-­lasting reign of history and historicism. Amid the explicitly privileged position of historicism and the peripheralization of spatial imagination, he notes the silenced but still tangible presence of space in historical imaginings and writings, suggesting that there have been a few “spatial voices” that have pioneered the development of what he calls a “postmodern critical geography.” Soja identifies one of these voices as belonging to critical theorist Michel Foucault. 55. The lecture was originally delivered in 1967 and was translated into English as “Of Other Spaces” and “Different Spaces” in 1986 and 1998, respectively. 56. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin, 1991), 252. 57. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 24. 58. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 27. 59. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 23. 60. Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, 57 (emphasis added). 61. Foucault cited in Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 10. 62. This relation between traveling and media consumption reinforces the long-­standing connection between communication and transportation (e.g., trains transporting people and mail). 63. Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (London: Verso, 2002), 147 (emphasis in original). 64. Examples of actualizing the power of imagination could include the possibilities of interactivity that are enabled by individual acts of media consumption and fandom, such as those discussed by Michel de Certeau and Henry Jenkins. 65. Dehaene and De Cauter, “Heterotopia in a Postcivil Society,” in Heterotopia and the City, 4. 66. Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 147.

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67. The Oxford English Dictionary presents multiple definitions of “composite,” as it is a flexible term that can be used as an adjective (“made up of various parts or elements; compound; not simple in structure”) and a noun (“a composite thing; anything made up of different parts or elements, a compound” and “a material made from two or more physically different constituents each of which largely retains its original structure and identity”). Similar to its usage in film, the word can also substitute for the phrase “composite photograph or portrait” or “a single photographic portrait, produced by combining those of two or more persons.” 68. Jody Duncan, “An Abundant Solitude,” Cinefex, no. 144 (December 2015): 67. 69. Duncan, “An Abundant Solitude,” 68. 2 HE TE ROTOPI C M A P P I N G

1. Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins, and Martin Dodge, “Thinking about Maps,” in Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, ed. Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins (New York: Routledge, 2009), 1. 2. Dudley Andrew, “An Atlas of World Cinema,” in Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, ed. Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim (London: Wallflower Press, 2006), 19–29. 3. Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature,” New Left Review 1 (January / ​February 2000): 54–68. 4. Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (London: Verso, 2007), 53–54. 5. Andrew, “An Atlas of World Cinema,” 24. 6. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 115. 7. Jeffrey Ruoff, “Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension: Cinema as Audiovisual Vehicle,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 2. 8. His full name is Tarsem Singh Dhabdwar. Roger Ebert, “Tarsem and the Legend of ‘The Fall,’” RogerEbert.com, June 3, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.rogerebert​.com ​ / ​interviews ​/ ​tarsem​-a­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ nd​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­the​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­legend​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­of​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­the​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­fall. 9. In the aforementioned article, Ebert also writes: “Ninety-­five percent of the time [he is] on airplanes or in airports.” 10. Many fantasy authors include maps of fictional worlds in their books, notably Middle Earth in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Narnia in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, and Westeros and Essos in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. 11. Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays in the Art of Writing (London: Chatto and Windus, 1905), 118. 12. Tarsem comments: “This place is phenomenal. Just a landscape like this

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that you’ve never seen anywhere in the world. I just wrote the scene after I saw the place.” 13. In his dvd commentary Tarsem admits to using it once, but he does not elaborate and adds that it was absolutely necessary. 14. Although the hospital scenes of the outer story are set in Los Angeles, they were actually shot in Cape Town, South Africa. 15. His identity provides a clue that, although Roy narrates the story, the onscreen images of the inner story are a visualization of Alexandria’s imagination. In Roy’s ­voice-­over narration it is obvious that the “Indian” is a Native American, but the visual rendition of the character is a man from India, later revealed to be a Sikh man who works with Alexandria in the orange fields of California. 16. The monkey is named after Darwin’s contemporary and fellow naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace. 17. Andrew, “An Atlas of World Cinema,” 24. 18. Tom Gunning argues how early travel films embody a “tourist viewpoint” and created “a modern worldview” and ways to consume the world through images in his essay “‘The Whole World within Reach’: Travel Images without Borders,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 25–41. He expands upon the work of other film scholars, Mary Ann Doane, Lauren Rabinovitz, Charles Musser, Lynne Kirby, Giuliana Bruno, and Anne Friedberg, who have theorized on the cinematic apparatus as a mode of transportation and its relation to the modern perceptions of physical mobility. 19. Tarsem quoted in Ebert, “Tarsem and the Legend of ‘The Fall.’” 20. In his dvd commentary, Tarsem gives an account of how the film crew got into trouble because they had “greased the wrong hands” for permission to shoot in the mosque. 21. Roger Ebert, “The Fall,” RogerEbert.com, May 29, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .rogerebert​.com ​/ ​reviews ​/ ​the​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­fall​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­2008; Dave Kehr, “Special Effects from the Real World,” New York Times, May 11, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.nytimes​.com ​/ ​2008 ​/ ​05 ​ / ​11 ​/ ​movies ​/ ​11kehr​.html. 22. A backlash can be observed already; filmmakers and producers often emphasize their efforts to incorporate actual physical effects instead of relying on digital visual effects, which in some cases has become synonymous with the notion that the filmmaker is lazy or lacks talent if he or she overuses postproduction digital effects to “fix” problems that arose in the production process. This derogatory attitude is expressed in the industry catchphrase “fix it in the post,” which prompts negative reactions from the visual effects ­community. 23. Tom Gunning explains how the “panoramic views” of early travel films were popular because “they allowed a broader view of the landscape” and because “the actual movement seems to carry the viewer into the image.” Gunning, “‘The Whole World within Reach,’” 34–36.

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24. The Congolese man’s name is spelled differently: Ota Benga. There is no reference to or indication of this tragic history in the film. 25. Meaghan Morris, “Introduction: Hong Kong Connections,” in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-­kiu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 5–6 (emphasis in the original). 26. Morris, “Introduction: Hong Kong Connections,” 6. 27. Wimal Dissanayake, Wong Kar-­wai’s Ashes of Time (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 90. 28. Two anthologies discuss the global reach of Hong Kong martial arts films (“action cinema”): Meaghan Morris, Li, and Chan, Hong Kong Connections; and Esther Yau, At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 29. Christina Klein, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: A Diasporic Reading,” Cinema Journal 43, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 22. 30. Dissanayake, Wong Kar-­wai’s Ashes of Time, 18. 31. He also worked on the soundtrack of Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). 32. Wong Kar-­wai’s interview in the Blu-­ray special features, and interview at the New York Film Festival. 33. Although the film had a relatively large budget and featured a significant number of the most popular actors and actresses in 1994 (i.e., Brigitte Lin, Leslie Cheung, the two Tony Leungs, and Maggie Cheung), it was not commercially successful. It grossed only about HK$9 million in local theaters. 34. Tom von Logue Newth, “Interview: Wong Kar-­wai,” September 10, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​screencrave​.com ​/ ​2008–09–10 ​/ ​interview​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­wong​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­kar​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­wai  /. 35. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), 27 (emphasis added). 36. Abbas, Hong Kong, 91. 37. Abbas, Hong Kong, 25. 38. “Director’s Notes,” Press kit (emphasis added). 39. Felicia Chan, “From world cinema to World Cinema: Wong Kar-­wai’s Ashes of Time and Ashes of Time Redux,” in Theorizing World Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam, and Rajinder Dudrah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 105. 40. Tony Rayns, “Poet of Time,” Sight and Sound 5, no. 9 (September 1995): 10–16. 41. His films often contemplate the embodied ambience and significance of specific locales as well. Examples include Hong Kong in Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, and Buenos Aires in Happy Together (1997). 42. Chan, “From world cinema to World Cinema,” 106. 43. Akira Mizuta Lippit, Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 9.

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44. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Preno­ witz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 100. 45. Lippit, Atomic Light, 20. 46. Wong Kar-­wai later produced another homage to martial arts, The Grandmaster (2013), a film that chronicles the life of Ip Man, widely recognized as the “grandmaster” of kung fu. This film also displays Wong’s signature marks of highly stylized cinematography and temporally complex narrative. Compared with Ashes of Time, it is arguably more faithful to the conventions of the martial arts genre. The Grandmaster features a number of masterfully choreographed and highly kinetic action sequences that were regarded by critics and audiences as the centerpiece of the film. The martial arts sequences even surpass the narrative in significance if one reads the film as an allegory of such universal human emotions as love and loyalty, as well as a code of honor embodied by martial arts that endured the political upheavals of modern China. 47. Abbas, Hong Kong, 32, 59. 48. This is in contrast to the travelers in The Fall, whose ­globe-­trotting journey is guided by a distinct sense of purpose, although it is later revealed to be a storytelling device and ruse. 49. Abbas, Hong Kong, 24. 50. Doyle noted that the “graininess” of the film fits the texture of the desert. 51. Stephen Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 18. 52. Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, 18. 53. Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, 166. 54. Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, 57 (emphasis added). 55. Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, 167. 56. Derrida in Dissanayake, Wong Kar-­wai’s Ashes of Time, 98. 3  HE TE ROTOP I C M O DUL A RI TY

1. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 22. 2. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 22. 3. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “Real Virtuality,” in Global / ​Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, ed. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 107. 4. Yoshimoto, “Real Virtuality,” 111–12. 5. Yoshimoto, “Real Virtuality,” 112. 6. For a thorough discussion on “flexible accumulation,” see David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). 7. Alex McDowell is the founder of the 5D conference and an ­award-­winning production designer. His oeuvre includes Man of Steel (Zack Snyder, 2013), Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton,

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2005), Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), and Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2002), the first film to have a separate digital art department. He is currently director of the University of Southern California’s World Building Media Lab, which works on projects that emphasize the collaborative nature of creating “storyworlds” by using various media platforms and such emergent technologies as virtual reality and augmented reality. The lab’s creative endeavors are noteworthy as new forms of ­cross-­disciplinary collaboration between academia and industry based on a shared interest in current technological shifts. Moreover, as their emphasis on “world building” indicates, these projects embody an awareness that digital platforms provide new forms of crafting worlds that prioritize spatial elements as a mode of storytelling. In other words, temporal and spatial concerns merge in interactive media narratives and environments that place importance on such values as immersion and simultaneity. http:​ ​/​/ ​ worldbuilding​.usc​.edu. 8. Bill Desowitz, “Alex McDowell Talks 5D Conference and Immersive Design,” Animation World Network, September 15, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.awn​.com ​ / ​articles ​/ ​production ​/ ​alex​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­mcdowell​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­talks​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­5d​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­conference​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­and​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­immersive​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­design (emphasis added). 9. Duncan, “An Abundant Solitude,” 66. 10. Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 232 (emphasis added). 11. Sobchack, Screening Space, 233 (emphasis added). 12. Vivian Sobchack, “Science Fiction Film and the Technological Imagination,” in Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears That Shape New Technologies, ed. Marita Sturken, Douglas Thomas, and Sandra J. Ball-­Rokeach (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 148. 13. Brooks Landon, “Diegetic or Digital? The Convergence of Science Fiction Literature and Science Fiction Film in Hypermedia,” in Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn (London: Verso, 1999), 32. 14. Landon, “Diegetic or Digital?,” 37. 15. Landon, “Diegetic or Digital?,” 39. 16. Bill Desowitz, “Getting Immersed in 5D,” Animation World Network, October 9, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.awn​.com ​/ ​articles ​/ ​people ​/ ​getting​-i­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ mmersed​-5­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ d. 17. Charles R. Acland writes: “Remarkably, many believe that this film marks a revolutionary moment in the history of cinema, that it is a ‘game-­changer.’ Steven Soderbergh was one unlikely auteurist voice who sang the praises of Avatar before its release based on partial footage he had seen during the production process. He went so far as to describe it as a ‘benchmark’ movie, compa­ rable to The Godfather (1972) in its day. Similarly, DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg asserted, ‘I think the day after Jim Cameron’s movie comes out, it’s a new world.’ At the film’s premiere, director Michael Mann declared, ‘There’s before this movie and after this movie.’” Charles R. Acland, “Avatar as

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Technological Tentpole,” Flow, January 22, 2010, http:​ ​/​/ ​flowtv​.org ​/ ​2010 ​/ ​01 ​ / ​avatar​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­as​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­technological​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­tentpole​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­charles​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­r​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­acland​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­concordia​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­university  /. 18. Frank Rose, “The Creation,” Wired, December 2009, 167. 19. James Cameron talks about the potential of using this new software to develop virtual film production: “Simulcam could really revolutionize filmmaking. . . . Integrating the cg production pipeline with live-­action photography, even in 2D, is something that could have broad applications to the industry.” Cameron quoted in Jody Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” Cinefex, no. 120 (January 2010), 127. 20. Rose, “The Creation,” 169; Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 91. 21. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 75, 86. 22. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 117. 23. bbc News, “James Cameron on Making Avatar,” updated August 21, 2009, http:​ ​/​/ ​news​.bbc​.co​.uk ​/ ​2 ​/ ​hi ​/ ​entertainment ​/ ​8212895​.stm. 24. siggraph panel, “The Making of Avatar,” July 26, 2010, Los Angeles, CA. 25. siggraph panel, “The Making of Avatar.” 26. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 84–85. 27. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 146. 28. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 74. 29. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 74. 30. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 71. 31. At the “Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture and Design” event held at ucla on April 8, 2011, Rick Carter described a telling anecdote that illustrates the interchangeability of scales between virtual and physical world; during the production process, when James Cameron asked how tall a particular waterfall was in the shot, a crew member responded, “You mean in feet or pixels?” 32. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 94. 33. Joe Fordham, “Last Man Standing,” Cinefex, no. 134 (July 2013), 96. 34. Mark Cotta Vaz, Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2014), 105. 35. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 107–8. 36. Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 112. 37. Geoff Burdick, interview with the author, May 9, 2011. 38. Burdick, interview with the author. 39. Burdick, interview with the author (emphasis added). 40. Rick Carter, Blu-­ray special features, Avatar; Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” 130. 41. The Week, “The ‘Bizarre’ Avatar-­Themed Wedding,” December 10, 2010, http:​ ​/​/ ​theweek​.com ​/ ​article ​/ ​index ​/ ​210258 ​/ ​the​-b ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ izarre​-a­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ vatar​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­themed​ -­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­wedding. 42. Joe Letteri, interview in Blu-­ray special features, Avatar. 43. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage, 1996), 61.

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44. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 5. 45. Nadia Bozak, The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 90–91. 46. Other examples from the genres of fantasy and science fiction include Stardust (Matthew Vaughn, 2007), Prometheus, Star Trek into Darkness (J. J. Abrams, 2013), Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor, 2013), Noah (Darren Aronofsky, 2014), Jupiter Ascending (Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, 2014), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016). For instance, the opening sequence of Prometheus features a sacrificial ceremony of an alien species on primordial Earth. This sequence was filmed on volcanic terrain near the Dettifoss waterfall in Iceland. 47. Oblivion featurette, “The World of Oblivion” (available on imdb: http:​ ​/​/ ​ www​.imdb​.com ​/ ​video ​/ ​imdb ​/ ​vi3620906521  / ​). 48. Mark Salisbury, Prometheus: The Art of the Film (London: Titan Books, 2012), 60. 49. Jody Duncan, “Zombie Wars,” Cinefex, no. 135 (2013): 20, 22. 50. Duncan, “Zombie Wars,” 25. 51. Masters, “Brad Pitt’s Zombie Nightmare: Inside the Troubled ‘World War Z’ Production,” Hollywood Reporter, June 12, 2012, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .hollywoodreporter​.com ​/ ​news ​/ ​brad​-p ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ itt​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­world​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­war​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­z​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­production​-­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­nightmare​ -­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­336422. 52. Salisbury, Prometheus, 60. 53. Cheung’s and Kosinski’s comments are from their respective interviews in the Blu-­ray special features. 54. See the website for the Icelandic Film Commission: http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .filminiceland​.com. 55. Fordham, “Last Man Standing,” 103. 56. The Location Guide, “Tom Cruise Films ­Scorched-­Earth Sci-­Fi Feature Oblivion on Location in Iceland,” April 10, 2013, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.thelocationguide​ .com ​/ ​2013 ​/ ​04 ​/ ​ng​-­­­­­­­­film​-­­­­­­­­tom​-­­­­­­­­cruise​-­­­­­­­­films​-­­­­­­­­scorched​-­­­­­­­­earth​-­­­­­­­­sci​-­­­­­­­­fi​-­­­­­­­­feature​-­­­­­­­­oblivion​ -­­­­­­­­on​-l­­­­­­­­ ocation​-i­­­­­­­­ n​-i­­­­­­­­ celand  /. 57. Sobchack, Screening Space, 137. 58. Sobchack, Screening Space, 137. 59. Sobchack, Screening Space, 233. 60. Maurizia Natali, “The Course of the Empire: Sublime Landscapes in the American Cinema,” in Landscape and Film, ed. Martin Lefebvre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 100. 61. Natali, “The Course of the Empire,” 102. 62. Bozak, The Cinematic Footprint, 16. 63. Vaz, Interstellar, 53. 64. Meanwhile, scenes for Edmund’s Planet, which is presented as a possible

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new home for humanity, were shot in the desert near Barstow, California. A house in Oblivion that serves as an oasis of nostalgia and a warm refuge for Jack Harper amid the postapocalyptic landscape is likewise located in California. 65. Vaz, Interstellar, 57. 66. Jody Duncan, “That Our Feet May Leave,” Cinefex, no. 140 (January 2015): 61. 67. Vaz, Interstellar, 111. 68. According to visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin: “The glacier was a very weird and unworldly environment. It’s surrounded by stark and foreboding volcanic mountains covered in broken lava fields that, in turn, are covered by a thick layer of green moss.” Vaz, Interstellar, 114. 69. Duncan, “That Our Feet May Leave,” 65. 70. Duncan, “That Our Feet May Leave,” 67. 71. Brinkmann, The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, 2. 72. According to Double Negative 2D supervisor Julia Reinhard Nendick: “At one point, [Nolan] suggested we manipulate one of the helicopter plates we had shot in Iceland as the basis for the wormhole interior. So we used one of those plates as a source for displacement, and added a lot of different textures to it—and, in the end, it was nothing you’d ever recognize as Iceland.” Quoted in Duncan, “That Our Feet May Leave,” 40. 73. According to Christopher Nolan: “When we shot in Iceland, Hoyte and I joked that we weren’t shooting any of the spectacular landscapes. We were shooting the icy vastness of the glacier, rather than trying to frame in the mountains. We were trying to reduce each planet to its absolute elemental quality and not feel too much variety.” Quoted in Vaz, Interstellar, 105. 74. Other European nations, including France, Norway, and Germany, are also increasing their rebate incentive rates to attract runaway productions. Scott Roxborough, “Iceland Boosts Tax Break to 25 Percent,” Hollywood Reporter, June 7, 2016, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.hollywoodreporter​.com ​/ ​news ​/ ​iceland​-­­­­boosts​-­­­­tax​ -­­­­incentive​-­­­­25–900304. 75. The Icelandic Film Commission website that promotes Iceland as a film location provides a list of local production service companies: http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .filminiceland​.com ​/ ​filming​-­­in​-i­­ celand ​/ ​service​-­­companies  /. 76. “Hobbiton Movie Set and Farm Tours,” www​.hobbitontours​.com. (Accessed on August 15, 2016). 77. Alfio Leotta, Touring the Screen: Tourism and New Zealand Film Geographies (Bristol: Intellect, 2011), 28. 78. Leotta, Touring the Screen, 183. 79. Ian Brodie, The Lord of the Rings: Location Guidebook (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2011), 19. 80. Brodie, The Lord of the Rings: Location Guidebook, 22. 81. Clint Eastwood also uses similar language to describe his experience of

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filming on location in Iceland for his films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006): “I soon learned that Iceland also has friendly, hardworking people with a refreshing can-­do spirit. The open roads and undisturbed countryside remind me of the way America was fifty years ago.” Icelandic Film Commission website: http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.filminiceland​.com. 82. Sobchack, Screening Space, 234. 4 HE TE ROTOPIC M O N STRO SI TY

1. In this context, the term “alien” refers to a being from a different place, to be interpreted as a fantastic creature or a foreign entity. 2. The Chosun Ilbo, “The Host Stomps to Multiple Box Office Records,” July 31, 2006, http:​ ​/​/ ​english​.chosun​.com ​/ ​site ​/ ​data ​/ ​html​_dir ​/ ​2006 ​/ ​07 ​/ ​31 ​ / ​2006073161016​.html. 3. Not everyone was pleased with these numbers. With the film being shown on 38 percent of screens nationwide, concerns were raised over a possible monopoly of the film market, which was seen as compromising the diversity of the Korean film industry. 4. The Chosun Ilbo, “Monster Flick Ups Hype with Five-­Poster Campaign,” June 14, 2006, http:​ ​/​/ ​english​.chosun​.com ​/ ​site ​/ ​data ​/ ​html​_dir ​/ ​2006 ​/ ​06 ​/ ​14 ​ / ​2006061461020​.html. 5. Richard Corliss, “Host with the Most,” Time, March 8, 2007, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .time​.com ​/ ​time ​/ ​magazine ​/ ​article ​/ ​0​,9171​,1597534​,00​.html. 6. Manohla Dargis, “It Came from the River, Hungry for Humans (Burp),” New York Times, March 9, 2007, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.nytimes​.com ​/ ​2007 ​/ ​03 ​/ ​09 ​/ ​movies ​ / ​09host​.html. 7. Dana Stevens, “Beastly Good: The Host Is a Flawless Monster Movie,” Slate, March 15, 2007, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.slate​.com ​/ ​id ​/ ​2161902 ​/ ​fr ​/ ​flyout. 8. Scott Weinberg, “tiff Interview: The Host Director Bong Joon-­ho,” Moviefone, September 13, 2006, https:​ ​/​/ ​www​.moviefone​.com ​/ ​2006 ​/ ​09 ​/ ​13 ​/ ​tiff​ -­­interview​-­­the​-­­host​-­­director​-­­bong​-­­joon​-­­ho  /. 9. The “wuxia” film is a popular genre in Chinese cinema, which is sometimes described as “the swordplay film” in English. For a detailed history and analysis of the genre, see Teo, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. 10. Lewis Kim, interview with author, September 19, 2009. 11. Song Kang-­ho is familiar to local and overseas audiences for starring in numerous internationally acclaimed films, such as jsa (Park Chan-­wook, 2000), Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-­dong, 2007), The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Kim Ji-­ woon, 2008), Thirst (Park Chan-­wook, 2009), Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-­ho, 2013), and The Attorney (Yang Woo-­seok, 2013). Bae Doona is also widely recognized for her roles in several Korean films, Japanese films, and the Hollywood films Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, 2012) and Jupiter Ascending (Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, 2015).

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12. The Korean title Gwoemul translates to “monster.” 13. The Chosun Ilbo, “U.S. Army Keeping Close Eye on Han River Monster,” August 11, 2006, http:​ ​/​/ ​english​.chosun​.com ​/ ​site ​/ ​data ​/ ​html​_dir ​/ ​2006 ​/ ​08 ​/ ​11 ​ / ​2006081161014​.html. 14. Their efforts were rewarded at the box office, and critics and audiences agreed that the monster looked “realistic” for a fantastic creature. Furthermore, The Host enjoyed critical acclaim that acknowledged the creativity of the film both at home and abroad. 15. Da-­hye Lee, “Production Report on Bong Joon-­ho’s The Host,” Cine 21, June 8, 2006, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.cine21​.com ​/ ​news ​/ ​view ​/ ​?mag​_id​=​39143. 16. Dargis, “It Came from the River.” 17. Corliss, “Host with the Most.” 18. Bong Joon-­ho, interview with the author, March 5, 2010. 19. After ten years of working in the visual effects industry, the Orphanage shut down in February 2009. 20. Kevin Rafferty, interview with the author, February 22, 2010. 21. Paul Kerr, “Babel’s Network Narrative: Packaging a Globalized Art Cinema,” Transnational Cinemas 1, no. 1 (2010): 43. 22. Claire Lee, “Korea’s Suicide Rate Remains Top in oecd,” Korea Herald, July 2, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.koreaherald​.com ​/ ​view​.php​?ud​=​20140702001045. 23. Yonhap News, “Seoul to Strengthen Suicide Monitoring on Han River Bridges,” January 10, 2013, http:​ ​/​/ ​english​.yonhapnews​.co​.kr ​/ ​national ​/ ​2013 ​/ ​01 ​ / ​10 ​/ ​12 ​/ ​0302000000AEN20130110002400315F​.HTML. 24. Assigning a fictional monster with a national identity is not uncommon in popular culture. J. J. Abrams, who produced the monster movie Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008), explains during an interview in the dvd special features that he wanted to create a famous “American” monster that would be as iconic as the “Japanese” monster Godzilla. 25. Lianne McLarty, “Alien / ​Nation: Invasions, Abductions, and the Politics of Identity,” in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, ed. Christopher ­Sharrett (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 349 (emphasis added). 26. McLarty, “Alien / ​Nation,” 349. 27. James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 25. 28. Lisa Bode, “No Longer Themselves? Framing Digitally Enabled Posthumous ‘Performance,’” Cinema Journal 49, no. 4 (Summer 2010): 47. 29. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990), 23. 30. I will refer to Honda’s 1954 film as Gojira, but in all other ­instances I will use the term “Godzilla” to refer to the monster and the ­franchise. 31. This similarity is noted in the film when the Japanese scientist who inad-

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vertently discovers the deadly powers of the Oxygen Destroyer warns: “Used as a weapon, this would be as powerful as a nuclear bomb. It could totally destroy humankind.” 32. Samara Lee Allsop, “Gojira / ​Godzilla,” in The Cinema of Japan and Korea, ed. Justin Bowyer (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 66. 33. Honda quoted in Peter H. Brothers, Atomic Dreams and the Nuclear Nightmare: The Making of Godzilla (1954) (Seattle: CreateSpace Books, 2015), 34. 34. Peter H. Brothers, Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishirō Honda (Seattle: CreateSpace Books, 2013), 7. 35. Allsop, “Gojira / ​Godzilla,” 66. 36. Allsop, “Gojira / ​Godzilla,” 65. 37. Allsop, “Gojira / ​Godzilla,” 67. 38. Allsop, “Gojira / ​Godzilla,” 67–68. 39. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 72. 40. Spivak, Death of a Discipline, 72–73. 41. Selmin Kara and Alanna Thain, “Sonic Ethnographies: Leviathan and New Materialisms in Documentary,” in Music and Sound in Nonfiction Film: Real Listening, ed. Holly Rogers (New York: Routledge, 2015), 189. 42. The long-­term effects are monitored by transnational collaborative efforts such as those found on the websites “How Radioactive Is Our Ocean?” (http:​ ​/​/ ​ourradioactiveocean​.org) and “Fukushima Update” (http:​ ​/​/ ​ fukushimaupdate​.com). 43. Koichi Iwabuchi, “How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?,” in Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, ed. Joseph Tobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 55–56. 44. Iwabuchi, “How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?,” 57. 45. Iwabuchi, “How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?,” 58. 46. Iwabuchi, “How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?,” 68. 47. The birth of Pokémon go can also be attributed to a transnational financial network that includes the investment of Japan-­based companies, the Pokémon Company and Nintendo (https:​ ​/​/ ​nianticlabs​.com ​/ ​blog ​/ ​niantic​-­­tpc​ -­­nintendo  / ​). 48. Iwabuchi, “How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?,” 58. 49. A similar reference to the olfactory sense to indicate nationality is found in Takashi Murakami’s conflation of the smell of soy sauce with Japanese national identity: “The vision of returning from a global perspective to a specifically Japanese national origin is a common theme for Murakami. . . . Murakami says his style will inevitably stink of soy sauce, and that’s what he wants to, and must, work with.” Thomas Looser, “Superflat and the Layers of Image and History in 1990s Japan,” in Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga, ed. Frenchy Lunning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 96.

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50. The sequences at the Janjira nuclear power station were actually shot in British Columbia, near Vancouver. 51. Ken Watanabe is well known to the ­English-­speaking audience for his roles in such Hollywood blockbusters as Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006), Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005), Memoirs of a Geisha (Rob Marshall, 2005), and The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). 52. Tōhō Company was involved in the film’s production and distribution. 53. The writer and director of Godzilla Resurgence is Hideaki Anno, who is well known as the creator of the popular science fiction anime franchise Evangelion. Shinji Higuchi is a director and special effects coordinator who has worked on various ­large-­scale projects, including the Evangelion franchise; the Gamera franchise (1995–99); Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-­Out Attack (Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Gidorâ: Daikaijû Sôkôgeki, Shûsuke Kaneko, 2001); Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinbotsu, Shinji Higuchi, 2006); and the live-­action film Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin, Shinji Higuchi, 2015). 54. Mark Schilling, “Japan’s Tōhō to Produce New ‘Godzilla’ Movie,” Variety, December 7, 2014, http:​ ​//​  ​variety​.com ​/ ​2014 ​/ ​film ​/ ​news ​/ ​japans​-­­toho​-­­to​-­­produce​ -­­new​-­­godzilla​-­­movie​-­­1201373457  /. 55. Aja Romano, “Japan Finally Recognizes Godzilla as a Resident and Tourism Ambassador,” The Daily Dot, June 1, 2015, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.dailydot​.com ​/ ​geek ​ / ​godzilla​-­­becomes​-­­official​-­­japanese​-­­resident  /. 56. Universal Studios Japan’s website promises a “real” experience of “cool entertainment brands from Japan,” including an attraction that features a 4-­D version of Godzilla (http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.usj​.co​.jp ​/ ​company ​/ ​company​_e ​/ ​2016 ​ / ​0801​.html). Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry appropriated the concept of “Cool Japan,” a phrase credited to American journalist Douglas McGray, as a pr strategy to promote Japanese cultural industries in the areas of animation, film, design, fashion, and music, among others. 57. Kazuo Ozaki quoted in Mark Schilling, “Our Favorite Monster Returns to Terrorize Japan in ‘Shin Godzilla,’” Japan Times, July 28, 2016, http:​ ​/​/ ​ www​.japantimes​.co​.jp ​/ ​culture ​/ ​2016 ​/ ​07 ​/ ​28 ​/ ​films ​/ ​favorite​-­­monster​-­­returns​ -­­terrorize​-­­japan​-­­shin​-­­godzilla  /. 58. Ed Godziszewski, “Making of the Godzilla Suit,” https:​ ​/​/ ​www​.youtube​ .com ​/ ​watch​?v​=​yfSARjZ0OXc (uploaded on Dec. 24, 2010). For more details on the costume for Godzilla, see August Ragone, Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2014), 35–42. 59. Haruo Nakajima continued to portray Godzilla in eleven sequels. 60. Ifukube quoted in Brothers, Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men, 75. 61. David Kalat, “Gojira,” Turner Classic Movies, accessed on August 10, 2016, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.tcm​.com ​/ ​this​-­­month ​/ ​article ​/ ​384918​%7C0 ​/ ​Gojira​-G ­­ odzilla​-­​.html. 62. Lippit, Atomic Light, 86 (emphasis in the original).

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63. Brothers, Atomic Dreams and the Nuclear Nightmare, 27. 64. Lippit, Atomic Light, 86. 65. For more detailed accounts, see Brothers, Atomic Dreams and the Nuclear Nightmare, 12; Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 271; Time, “The Ashes of Death,” March 29, 1954, http:​ ​/​/ ​ content​.time​.com ​/ ​time ​/ ​magazine ​/ ​article ​/ ​0​,9171​,819647​,00​.html. 66. Lippit, Atomic Light, 94 (emphasis in the original). 67. David Kalat, A Critical History and Filmography of Tōhō’s Godzilla Series (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007), 16. 68. Zach Sokol, “The Newest Godzilla Would Have Taken 450 Years to Design on a Single Computer,” The Creators Project, May 2, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​ thecreatorsproject​.vice​.com ​/ ​blog ​/ ​the​-­­newest​-­­godzilla​-­­would​-­­have​-­­taken​-­­450​ -­­years​-­­to​-­­design​-­­on​-­­a​-­­single​-­­computer. 69. Iona Kirby, “Japanese Fans Accuse New ‘American’ Godzilla of Being Too Fat,” Daily Mail, April 29, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.dailymail​.co​.uk ​/ ​tvshowbiz ​ / ​article​-­­2615908 ​/ ​New​-­­Godzilla​-­­trailer​-­­gives​-­­closer​-­­look​-­­monster​-­­finally​-­­reveals​ -­­enemies​.html. 70. Schilling, “Our Favorite Monster Returns to Terrorize Japan in ‘Shin Godzilla.’” 71. Honda quoted in Brothers, Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men, 20. 72. Sokol, “The Newest Godzilla.” 73. Sokol, “The Newest Godzilla.” 74. Bode, “No Longer Themselves?,” 47. 5  HE TE ROTOPI C M ATE RI A L I TY

1. As of 2016, the Beijing Capital International Airport is reportedly the second busiest in the world in terms of passenger traffic, surpassed only by ­Hartsfield-­Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States. 2. Economist, “Light and Death,” May 27, 2010, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.economist​.com ​ / ​node ​/ ​16231588. 3. Theme parks like the World Park in Beijing or the Window of the World in Shenzhen and Changsha exist in other countries as well; they can also be found in South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States (such as Disneyland and Las Vegas), to name a few examples. 4. The park opened in 1993, and an estimated 1.5 million people visit annually. “The World Park in Beijing,” China.org.cn, April 22, 2005, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.china​.org​ .cn ​/ ​english ​/ ​travel ​/ ​126712​.htm. 5. “The World Park in Beijing,” The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, http:​ ​/​/ ​en​.beijing2008​.cn ​/ ​spectators ​/ ​beijing ​/ ​tourism ​/ ​list ​/ ​n214068433​ .shtml. 6. Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Protest Application Brings Labor-­Camp Threat,

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Woman Says,” Washington Post Foreign Service, August 21, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​ .washingtonpost​.com ​/ ​wp​-­­dyn ​/ ​content ​/ ​article ​/ ​2008 ​/ ​08 ​/ ​20 ​/ ​AR2008082001095​ .html; Peter Foster, “The ioc Plays Appeaser in Beijing,” Telegraph, August 20, 2008, http:​ ​/​/ ​blogs​.telegraph​.co​.uk ​/ ​news ​/ ​peterfoster ​/ ​4959989 ​/ ​The​_IOC​_plays​ _appeaser​_in​_Beijing  /. 7. Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Cosmopolitanisms,” in Cosmopolitanism, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 8 (emphasis added). 8. John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 169. 9. I use the concept of the “virtual” in a way that is not mutually exclusive to the ontology of the real or the actual. Here the virtual is something that is not “real” in a fully embodied, physical sense but that still has the power and effect—material or imagined—of something that is real. So the virtual in this context moves beyond the realm of potential, where something can be actualized in the future, into the realm of actuality in the present (although different temporalities coexist in the present). Brian Massumi writes: “Emergence, once again, is a two-­sided coin: one side in the virtual (the autonomy of relation), the other in the actual (functional limitation). What is being termed affect in this essay is precisely this two-­sidedness, the simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in the virtual, as one arises from and returns to the other . . . affect is synesthetic, implying a participation of the senses in each other: the measure of a living thing’s potential interactions is its ability to transform the effects of one sensory mode into those of another.” Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 35. 10. When asked why he did not shoot the entire film at the World Park in Beijing, Jia Zhangke cited practical reasons for shooting at the Window of the World in Shenzhen. In this case, geographical diversity was useful because of the difference in latitude between the two cities. The film crew was able to shoot scenes in different climates without having to wait for the seasons to change, and they could film for two extra hours each day in Shenzhen because the sun set later there. I thank Michael Berry for asking this question of the filmmaker during his trip to China in July 2010. 11. Valerie Jaffee, “An Interview with Jia Zhangke,” Senses of Cinema, no. 32 (July 2004), http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.sensesofcinema​.com ​/ ​2004 ​/ ​32 ​/ ​jia​_zhangke. 12. Tom Gunning describes how world expositions provided attractions and spectacles that deliver “the illusion of having traveled” to exotic regions of the world. Gunning, “‘The Whole World within Reach,’” 29–30. 13. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 27. 14. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 24. 15. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 26.

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16. Dudley Andrew, What Cinema Is! Bazin’s Quest and Its Charge (Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2010), 60. 17. Manovich, The Language of New Media, 158. 18. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 3. 19. Yoshimoto, “Real Virtuality,” 109. 20. Yoshimoto, “Real Virtuality,” 109. 21. A manga adaptation of the Disney animation by Haruki Ueno was published in Japan in 2014 before the release of the film. 22. This transpacific merging of the architecture and cultural iconography of two cities, Los Angeles and Shanghai, is subtly envisioned in another science fiction film, Her (Spike Jonze, 2013). This film also depicts a close relationship between human and artificial intelligence. 23. Several Korean and Korean American artists also worked on the film: character designer Shiyoon Kim and character design supervisor Jin Kim. The ethnicity of the voice actors also embodied the ­cross-­cultural identity of the film: Ryan Potter (who provides the voice of Hiro) is Japanese and Caucasian; Daniel Henney (Hiro’s brother, Tadashi) is Korean and Caucasian; Korean American actress Jamie Chung provides the voice of Hiro’s friend, Go Go. 24. Robbie Collin, “Why Big Hero 6 Is Disney’s Most Lovable Creation in Years,” Telegraph, February 19, 2015, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.telegraph​.co​.uk ​/ ​film ​/ ​big​-­­hero​ -­­6 ​/ ​disney​-­­most​-­­lovable​-­­creation​-­­in​-­­years  /. 25. Jessica Julius, The Art of Big Hero 6 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2014), 14. 26. Julius, The Art of Big Hero 6, 19; Jennifer Wolfe, “Don Hall and Chris Williams Talk Disney’s Big Hero 6,” Animation World Network, November 8, 2014, http:​ ​//​  ​www​.awn​.com ​/ ​animationworld ​/ ​don​-­­hall​-­­and​-­­chris​-­­williams​-­­talk​ -­­disneys​-­­big​-­­hero​-­­6. 27. Bladerunner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005), Total Recall (Len Wiseman, 2012), and Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, 2012) are a few examples. 28. See Victor Milner, “Painting with Light,” in Cinematographic Annual 1, ed. Hal Hall (Los Angeles: American Society of Cinematographers, 1930): 91–108; John Alton, Painting with Light (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Patrick Keating, “What Does It Mean to Say that Cinematography Is Like Painting with Light?,” in Transnational Cinematography Studies, ed. Lindsay Coleman, Daisuke Miyao, and Roberto Schaefer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017): 97–115. Victor Milner and John Alton are ­award-­winning cinematographers who worked in Hollywood. 29. siggraph Asia talk, November 2013, Hong Kong. 30. Wolfe, “Big Hero 6.” 31. Wolfe, “Big Hero 6.”

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32. Alissa Walker, “A Tour of ‘San Fransokyo,’ the Hybrid City Built for Big Hero 6,” Gizmodo, November 10, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​gizmodo​.com ​/ ​a​-­­tour​-­­of​-­­san​ -­­fransokyo​-­­the​-­­hybrid​-­­city​-­­disney​-­­built​-­­f​-­­1642066794. 33. Jorge Luis Borges, “On Exactitude in Science,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 1998), 325. 34. Walker, “A Tour of ‘San Fransokyo.’” 35. Paul Younghusband, “Conceptualizing Disney’s Big Hero 6,” Animation World Network, September 5, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.awn​.com ​/ ​animationworld ​ / ​conceptualizing​-­­disneys​-­­big​-­­hero​-­­6. 36. Rebecca Keegan, “San Fransokyo Architects Built a New World for Disney’s Big Hero 6,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2014, http:​ ​/​/ ​herocomplex​ .latimes​.com ​/ ​movies ​/ ​san​-­­fransokyo​-­­architects​-­­built​-­­a​-­­new​-­­world​-­­for​-­­disneys​ -­­big​-h ­­ ero​-6­­ . 37. Walker, “A Tour of ‘San Fransokyo.’” 38. Vivian Sobchack, “Animation and Automation, or, the Incredible Effortfulness of Being,” Screen 50, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 384. 39. Sobchack, “Animation and Automation,” 384. 40. As another example of the role of physicality in the animation process, animators sometimes refer to still and moving images of human and animal bodies to see how they look, move, and interact with one another in real life. At a siggraph panel held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in July 2010, Carlos Baena, an animator who worked on a dance sequence in the Pixar animation Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010), explained how he enacted scenes from the film with friends and colleagues on camera, using live-­action sequences to create the body language of his animated characters. 41. For further discussion on the “effortful” labor of animators, see Hye Jean Chung, “The Reanimation of the Digital (Un)Dead, or How to Regenerate Bodies in Digital Cinema,” Visual Studies 30, no. 1 (2015): 54–67. 42. Flying sequences highlighting the joy of soaring through the air are also a common characteristic of the two genres merged in this film: superhero and animation. Notable examples include films that feature superhero characters, such as Iron Man, Superman, ­Spider-­Man, and X-­Men, and the animated films Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941), Peter Pan (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, 1953), Kung Fu Panda (John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, 2008), and How to Train Your Dragon (Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, 2010), as well as Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films, most notably Porco Rosso (1992) and The Wind Rises (2013). 43. For more on the “multiplanar image,” see Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 44. Thomas Lamarre, “The Multiplanar Image,” in Mechademia 1: Emerging

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Worlds of Anime and Manga, ed. Frenchy Lunning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 126 (emphasis added). CONCLUSI ON

1. “A Day in the Life: Rick Carter—Production Designer,” Screening and invited talk at Ray Stark Theater, usc School of Cinematic Arts, May 6, 2011. 2. “A Day in the Life.” 3. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 31. 4. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 31. 5. Carter quoted in Bill Desowitz, “Avatar: The Game Changer,” Animation World Network, December 21, 2009, http:​ ​/​/ ​www​.awn​.com ​/ ​articles ​/ ​visual​-­­effects ​ / ​avatar​-­­game​-­­changer (emphasis added). 6. Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945–1995, trans. Francesca Chiostri and Elizabeth Gard ­Bartolini-­Salimbeni with Thomas Kelso (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 44 (emphasis in the original).

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INDEX

Abbas, Ackbar, 64, 69 Acland, Charles R., 195n17 Adorno, Theodor, 34 Adsit, Scott, 166 Akira (Ôtomo film), 161 Alien (Scott film), 108 Andrew, Dudley, 47, 52 animatronics, 106, 107, 114, 118 Anno, Hideaki, 132 Appadurai, Arjun, 178 Argon, 78 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Lumière / ​ Lumière film), 34 L’Arroseur arrosé (Lumière / ​Lumière film), 35 Ashes of Time Redux (Wong film), 13, 14, 45, 47, 68, 72–73, 181; déjà disparu in, 65, 69–70; digital restoration of, 62–66, 68–69, 74; immobility theme in, 47, 67, 71–74; jianghu in, 70–71; mapping in, 61–67, 74; original title of, 67; spatiotemporal complexity in, 67–74; textual /extratextual elements in, 62; transnational circulation of, 62–63, 66–67 assembly-­line process, 22–23 As Tears Go By (Wong film), 64–65 Atlas of Emotion (Bruno), 38 Atomic Arts, 78

atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 133, 159 Atomic Light (Lippit), 133 Automatic Motorist, The (Booth film), 174 automation, 1–2, 14, 27, 30, 168 Avatar (Cameron film), 12, 15, 18, 76, 81, 83, 86, 91, 102–3, 114, 181, 182; modularity / ​materiality in, 84–92; technological innovation in, 80–84 Babel (Iñárritu film), 115 Bae, Doona, 110, 111, 112 Baneham, Richard, 84 Baudrillard, Jean, 156 Baudry, Jean-­Louis, 21 Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The (Lourié film), 123–24 Beijing National Stadium, 143 Benga, Otta, 60 Benjamin, Walter, 32 Bentley, Wes, 94 Berger, John, 32 Berry, Chris, 5 Big Hero 6 (Hall / ​Williams film), 13, 15, 141, 160, 164, 170, 172, 173, 181; digital compositing in, 158–65; mobility in, 171–75; technology and human labor in, 165–70 Bill, Leo, 50

Bittersweet Life, A (Kim film), 113 Blur Studio, 85 Bong, Joon-­ho, 15, 18, 108, 111, 113, 114, 121 Booth, Walter R., 174 Borges, Jorge Luis, 164 Bozak, Nadia, 93, 98 Brinkmann, Ron, 20–21, 22, 38–39 British Film Institute, 9 Bruno, Giuliana, 11–12, 37–38, 39, 71 Buck, Chris, 165 Burdick, Geoff, 90, 92 Burr, Raymond, 124 Caldwell, John, 8, 11 Caltagirone, Daniel, 50 Cameron, James, 15, 18, 19–20, 80–84, 83, 114. See also Avatar (Cameron film) Cannes Film Festival, 107–8 Carpenter, John, 108 Carter, Rick, 81, 177, 179 cartography, 46–47, 65, 74, 109. See also geography; mapping Casetti, Francesco, 180 Certeau, Michel de, 48 cgi. See ­computer-­generated imagery Chan, Felicia, 67 Chan, Frankie, 62 Chand Baori wall, 57 Cheang, Pou-­Soi, 26 Chen, Pingyuan, 71 Chen, Taisheng, 152 Cheung, Emilia, 94 Cheung, Leslie, 62, 66, 68 Cheung, Maggie, 62, 66 Chungking Express (Wong film), 62, 63 Cinefex (magazine), 24–25 cinematic footprints, 98 collaborations. See under transnational filmmaking Comolli, Jean-­Louis, 21 composites. See digital composites computer animation, 1, 6; in cinema of

220  |  Inde x

attractions, 80; compositing use of, 81, 106, 141; human labor in, 165–70; mobile media and, 152, 158; multiplanar techniques in, 174–75; outsourcing of, 7–8; previsualization process in, 23; real / ​virtual environments and, 33, 174, 177; research on, 9 computer-­generated imagery (cgi), 9; corporeality and, 89, 105, 137, 181; emulation of, 182; live-­action footage compositing, 19, 20, 76, 80–82, 81, 85, 86, 100, 105, 155, 156, 177; magic of, 10; postproduction, 18, 19, 37; seamlessness in, 20, 57–58, 167 Cook, Pam, 4 Cooper, Merian C., 123 Corliss, Richard, 107–8, 113 cosmopolitanism: aspirations of, 142– 43, 146, 151–52, 155, 162; defined, 146–47; genre mixing and, 108; global, 56–61, 142, 146; identification with, 64; imagined, 149–50, 157; mobility and, 14, 15, 49, 51–52, 108, 141, 147, 150, 171, 178; monstrous bodies and, 117; reclaimed, 147–48; transnational, 107; virtual, 15, 45, 141, 147, 156 Cox, John, 12–13, 114, 115 creative labor, 1–2, 6–7; of auteur figures, 35; in digital workflows, 78; effort of, 169–70, 175; in media heterotopia, 76–79; as stolen, 35–36; transnationality of, 12–13 Crowley, Nathan, 99 Cruise, Tom, 95 Cuarón, Alfonso, 25 Cubitt, Sean, 35 cultural neutrality, 129–30 Damon, Matt, 100 Dargis, Manohla, 108, 113 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Reeves film), 102–3 Day after Tomorrow, The (Emmerich film), 128

De Cauter, Lieven, 16 Dehaene, Michiel, 16 déjà disparu, use of term, 65, 69 del Toro, Guillermo, 128 dematerialization, 14, 25, 27–28, 182 Derrida, Jacques, 28, 68–69, 74 digital aesthetics, 2, 9, 15–16, 87, 156, 163, 168, 178. See also seamlessness: aesthetics of digital composites, 6, 39–43, 191n67; cgi in, 20; computer animation in, 81, 106, 141; of geography, 32, 36, 40, 41, 47–48, 58, 60, 66–67, 165; labor in, 40–41; in media heterotopias, 43, 75–79, 97, 117, 182; seamlessness in, 20–21, 22, 40, 84–85, 87, 97, 141; use of term, 40, 75; of virtual ecosystems, 13–14, 87, 92, 97, 99–101, 100, 102, 163, 179 digital filmmaking, 1–2, 155–58; compositing in, 81, 82; creative labor in, 78, 169; emergence of, 22–23; human labor in, 27–28; hybrid bodies in, 182; as mapping, 14, 45, 47–56, 60–61, 62; materiality in, 88, 141, 182; media heterotopias, creation of, 14, 45; monstrous bodies in, 139; seams of, 12, 33, 43, 87; spatiotemporality in, 75, 77–78, 95; special effects in, 118; spectral effects in, 84; transnational bodies in, 15; transnational geography of, 79, 87, 156; visual effects in, 24, 27. See also film production; and specific topics, e.g., seamlessness digital labor, 23, 77–78, 87, 90, 138, 167–68, 170. See also material labor digital production pipelines, 1, 2, 7, 14; creative vision in, 19–20; evolution of, 22, 23–24, 77–78; labor in, 3, 8, 12–13, 20, 30–31, 87, 169, 179, 182; transnational qualities in, 31, 45, 77, 85, 87–88, 106–7, 114; use of term, 40. See also workflows

Disney Feature Animation. See Walt Disney Animation Studios Dissanayake, Wimal, 62, 74 Dongxie Xidu (Wong film). See Ashes of Time Redux (Wong film) Doraemon (television show), 130 Double Negative, 24, 99 Doyle, Christopher, 70 Dunlop, Renee, 22 Ďurovičová, Nataša, 5 Eagle-­Shooting Heroes (Lau film), 62 Eagle-­Shooting Heroes, The (Jin series), 62 editing techniques, 1, 6, 21, 50, 58–59, 61, 181 Edwards, Gareth, 15, 124 Emmerich, Roland, 102–3, 128 eon Digital Films, 114 Exodus (Scott film), 128 Fall, The (Tarsem film), 18, 45, 52, 53–55, 57, 180–82; global cosmopolitanism in, 51, 52, 56–61; illusory seamlessness in, 57–60; immobility theme in, 47, 50–51; mapping in, 47–56, 60–61; mise-­en-­abyme structure, 50, 51, 52–53, 60; storytelling narrative, 49, 50, 56; title, meaning of, 51; as travel story, 47, 48–49, 56 Farquhar, Mary, 5 Favreau, Jon, 102–3, 114 fbfx, 78 film distribution, geography of, 66 film production: ­assembly-­line process of, 22–23; genre mixing, 108–9; geography of, 7, 12, 14, 17–18, 24, 31, 41–43, 45, 50, 59, 61, 77, 78, 87–88, 94, 182; layering in, 3, 22–23, 23–24, 33, 40, 65; phases of, 187–88n22; simultaneity in, 24, 40, 64–65, 75, 77–78, 82, 84–85, 107, 163. See also digital filmmaking; transnational filmmaking; and specific techniques

Inde x  | 221

Fluent Image, 78 fluidity: in border crossings, 76, 92; editing techniques for, 59, 182; fantasies of, 46–47; of mediated spaces, 41; rhetoric of, 3, 4, 25, 31. See also mobility; seamlessness Forbidden City (Beijing), 143 Fordism, 77 Forster, Marc, 94 Foucault, Michel, 2, 36–37, 39, 75, 149, 150 Foxconn, 143 Framestore, 78, 85 Frankenstein (Shelley), 119 Frozen (Buck / ​Lee film), 165 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown, 125 Future Vision, 114 geography: cinematic spaces of, 37–38, 39–40; composited, 32, 36, 40, 41, 47–48, 58, 60, 66–67, 165; creative, 60–61, 79, 159, 164; diverse, 15, ­17–18, 24, 45, 50, 51, 58, 61, 87, 147; of film distribution, 66; of film production, 7, 12, 14, 17–18, 24, 31, 41–43, 45, 50, 59, 61, 77, 78, 87–88, 94, 182; imaginary, 97–104; material residues of, 4, 7, 48, 97–98, 101, 119, 182; mobility themes, 48, 50, 51, 76, 107, 148, 152, 156, 180; monstrous bodies and, 106–9, 126–29, 138; in national territories, 2, 7, 18, 75; new world, 79; transnational, 12, 15, 41–43, 46, 48, 52, 59, 76, 87, 149, 156, 179. See also cartography; mapping Ghost in the Shell (Oshii film), 161 ghosts. See haunting; spectral vision Giant Studios, 85 Global Hollywood (Miller et al.), 101 globalism, use of term, 5 global mobility. See under mobility Global Positioning System (gps), 46

222  |  Inde x

Godzilla (Edwards film), 12, 15, 106, 127, 134, 136, 181; as emblem of planetary consciousness, 121–29; global mobility in, 120, 125, 130–31; Japanese identity of, 130–31, 132; materiality of monster in, 129–40 Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Honda / ​ Morse film), 124, 132. See also Gojira (Honda film) Godzilla Raids Again (Oda film), 124 Godzilla Resurgence (Anno / ​Higuchi film), 132 Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (Ōmori film), 124 Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Fukuda film), 124 Gojira (Honda film), 121–23, 123, 136. See also Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Honda / ​Morse film) Google Maps, 46 Gordon, Avery, 28–29 Gorgo (Lourié film), 124 Grandmaster (Wong film), 194n46 Great Wall of China, 143 Great Wave Off Kanagawa, The (Hokusai print), 128 greenscreen stages, 85, 86 Greno, Nathan, 165 Gunning, Tom, 34, 80 Guyett, Roger, 163 Hall, Don, 15, 159–60 Halon, 23 Hamm, John Christopher, 71–72 Harryhausen, Ray, 123 Harry Potter (film franchise), 25 haunting, 28–29, 33. See also spectral vision Henney, Daniel, 165 Hero (Zhang film), 26 heterotopias: analysis in, 8–9, 33, 39–40, 43; centrality of, 16; cinema as, 37–38, 39–40; functions of, 149–50; as heterogeneous, 100; ma-

teriality of, 88–89, 100, 141–42, 182; modularity of, 87–88, 100–101, 162; otherness of, 39; spaces of, 36–37, 71; transnational, 60, 84–92. See also media heterotopias heterotopic perception, 3, 8, 16, 28–36, 76, 175, 182–83 Hiddleston, Tom, 94 Higbee, Will, 5 Higuchi, Shinji, 132 Hjort, Mette, 5–6 Hobbit (Jackson trilogy), 102–4 Hokusai, Katsushika, 128 Hollywood filmmaking: Americanization in, 161; animation outsourcing, 7–8; cinematic allusions to, 108, 119; culture of exclusion, 11; global production, 12, 15, 25, 30–31, 76, 77, 78–79, 87, 98–99, 101–2, 128, 131–32; visual vernacular, 92–97, 98, 104 Honda, Ishirō, 121, 122, 124, 131, 132. See also specific films Hong Kong cinema, 64–66 Hong Kong Film Archive, 66 Horkheimer, Max, 34 Host, The (Bong film), 12–13, 15, 18, 106, 115, 118, 121; K ­ orean-­ness of, 110–11, 114, 119; monstrous body in, 106–9, 114, 115, 115–18, 118; suicide theme in, 116–17; transnational and monstrous in, 110–20 Howard, Byron, 165 Hoytema, Hoyte van, 89 human labor, 14, 27–28, 101, 103, 133, 138, 165–70, 182–83. See also material labor Hydraulx, 85 hydrogen bomb tests, 122 Hyperion, 163, 165 Iceland Film Commission, 102 Ifukube, Akira, 122, 133 imaginary, 178–79

Iñárritu, Alejandro, 115 Inception (Nolan film), 26 Independence Day (Emmerich film), 102–3 Industrial Light and Magic, 7, 24, 85, 163 internationalism, use of term, 5 Interstellar (Nolan film), 12, 15, 76, 89, 92, 94, 98–101, 100 In the Mood for Love (Wong film), 63 Iron Man (Favreau film), 114 Iwabuchi, Koichi, 129–30 I Wish I Knew (Jia film), 150–51 Jackson, Peter, 102–3, 114 Jameson, Fredric, 47–48 Jang, Hee-­chul, 114 Japanese animation, 130, 162 Jia, Zhangke, 15, 141, 142, 143, 146, 148–51, 155–57, 175. See also World, The (Jia film) jianghu, conceptions of, 70–71 Jia Zhangke (Salles documentary), 151 Jin Yong, 62 John Cox’s Creature Workshop, 114, 115 Jungle Book, The (Favreau film), 102–3 Jurassic World (Trevorrow film), 139 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 195n17 Kerr, Paul, 115 Kim, Lewis, 110 Kim, Ji-­woon, 113 Kim, Ki-­duk, 124 King Kong (Cooper / ​Schoedsack film), 123 King Kong (Jackson film), 102–3, 114 King Kong vs. Godzilla (Honda film), 124 kino-­eye, 31–32 Ko, Ah-­sung, 110–11 Korda Studios, 41 Kosinski, Joseph, 15, 76, 78, 88–89. See also Oblivion (Kosinski film); tron (Kosinski film)

Inde x  | 223

Krishnamurti, Gauth, 24 Kuleshov, Lev, 58 Kuyama, Shige, 159 labor. See creative labor; digital labor; human labor; material labor Lamarre, Thomas, 174–75 Landon, Brooks, 80 Lau, Carina, 66 Lau, Jeffrey, 62 layering, 3, 23–24, 33, 40, 65 Lee, Alan, 103 Lee, Ang, 26 Lee, Euisung, 23 Lee, Jennifer, 165 Lee, SeungHun, 24 Legacy Effects, 85 Leotta, Alfio, 103 Letteri, Joe, 84 Leung, Tony Chiu-­wai, 62, 66 Leung, Tony Ka Fai, 66 Life of Pi (Lee), 26 Lightstorm Entertainment, 84, 90 Lim, Song Hwee, 5 Lin, Brigitte, 62, 66 Lippit, Akira Mizuta, 68–69, 133, 135 live-­action footage: composited with cgi, 19, 20, 76, 80–82, 81, 85, 86, 100, 105, 155, 156, 177; on location, 99, 100, 107; of stunt performers, 171 Lola Visual Effects, 85 Look Effects, 85 Lord of the Rings (Jackson trilogy), 102–3, 114 Lourié, Eugène, 123, 124 Lucas, George, 22, 23 Lumière, Auguste, 34, 35 Lumière, Louis, 34, 35 Ma, Yo-­Yo, 63 magic, 1–2; genealogy of, 9, 34; in visual effects, 10, 26–27, 188n23 Malcolm, Paul, 22 Manovich, Lev, 22, 33, 38–39, 155

224  |  Inde x

Māori customs, 90 mapping: cognitive, 47–48, 52; film as, 14, 45, 47–56, 60–61, 62; of global trajectories, 61–67; of imagined worlds, 49–50; in media heterotopia, 7, 14, 45, 47, 48, 52, 61, 66, 74, 87, 149; mobility and, 46–47; performative, 52–56, 53–55; types in film production, 186n12. See also cartography; geography Marshall, Rob, 25 martial arts film genre, 14, 45, 62–63, 69, 70, 194n46 Martian, The (Scott film), 41, 42, 78 Marvel comics, 13, 159, 161, 167 Marvel Entertainment, 158, 165 materiality: of digital monsters, 129–40; of filmmaking practices, 98, 182; of production sites, 39, 40; residual, 2, 6, 7, 48, 97–98, 101, 119, 175, 182, 183; territorial, 10, 12, 18, 41; of transnational heterotopias, 88–89, 100, 141–42, 182 material labor, 2–3, 8, 107; abstraction of, 27–28; in composites, 40–41; in digital production pipelines, 3, 8, 12–13, 20, 30–31, 87, 169, 179, 182; erasure of, 10, 14, 18, 27–28, 30–31, 34, 43, 133, 168; traces of, 28, 30, 31, 33, 43, 87, 90, 118–19; transnationality of, 12–13, 25–26, 41, 59, 117, 178 material reality, 10, 39, 101, 151, 154–55 Matrix, The (Wachowski / ​Wachowski film), 170 McClean, Shilo, 9 McConaughey, Matthew, 98–99 McDowell, Alex, 77 McFarland, Albert, 110 McLarty, Lianne, 119 media heterotopias: concept of, 2–4, 7, 13, 16, 36–39, 109, 182; digital composites in, 75–79, 97, 117, 182; digital rendering process of, 14–15; global creative labor in, 76–79;

global mobility in, 146–55; mapping in, 7, 14, 45, 47, 48, 52, 61, 66, 74, 87, 149; materiality and modularity of, 100–101, 162, 183; spatial conceptions in, 14, 36–37, 39–40, 59, 74; in transnational film studies, 4–8, 41, 47, 60, 87–88, 107, 115, 141–42; use of term, 37 Méliès, Georges, 26, 174 Memories of Murder (Bong film), 111 Milk vfx, 78 Miller, Toby, 101 mise-­en-­abyme structure, 35, 50, 51, 52–53, 60, 143 Mitchell, W. J. T., 92 Miyazaki, Hayao, 159–61 mobility: cosmopolitan, 14, 15, 49, 51–52, 108, 141, 147, 150, 171, 178; fantasies of, 38, 46–47, 155–56; geographical, 48, 50, 51, 76, 107, 148, 152, 156, 180; global, 13, 41, 45–46, 51–52, 76, 106–7, 125, 130–31, 146–55, 178; in heterotopic space, 38; mapping and, 46–47; monstrosity and, 120; rhetoric of, 1, 3, 4, 17, 18, 48; transnational, 5, 58, 61, 62, 74, 76, 107, 108, 141, 142, 143, 147–48; virtual, 15–16, 172 modularity, 76, 78, 87–88, 100–101, 162, 179 Monkey King, The (Cheang film), 26 monstrous bodies, 1; cosmopolitan anxieties and, 117; cultural codes in, 15, 106, 107; as digital feat, 137–38, 181; as emblem of planetary consciousness, 119, 121–29, 135–36, 138–39; impurity of, 120; materiality of, 129–40; as transcending boundaries, 106–9, 138; transnational and, 110–20. See also specific films Moore, Rich, 165 Moretti, Franco, 47 Morris, Meaghan, 62 Morse, Terry O., 124

Mothra vs. Godzilla (Honda film), 124 Moving Picture Company (mpc), 7, 19, 24, 41, 78 mukokuseki, 130 Murakami, Takashi, 201n49 My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki film), 150–61 Nakajima, Haruo, 133, 135 Naremore, James, 119–20 Natali, Maurizia, 98 National Center for the Performing Arts (Beijing), 143 national territories, 2, 7, 18, 24, 41, 75, 93, 102, 104, 128–29, 138, 161 Nendick, Julia Reinhard, 198n72 New York Film Festival, 107–8 New York Times (newspaper), 107, 108 Niantic, 130 Nixdorf, Meike, 32 Nolan, Christopher, 15, 26, 76, 89. See also Interstellar (Nolan film) North, Dan, 9, 34 Notari, Elvira, 11 Oblivion (Kosinski film), 12, 15, 76, 89, 92–97, 93, 96 Oda, Motoyoshi, 124 odor, use of term, 129–30 oecd. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd) Oh, Dal-­su, 113 Okun, Jeffrey, 27 Oldboy (Park film), 113 Ōmori, Kazuki, 124 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd), 116 Orphanage (vfx studio), 12–13, 114, 115 Ortner, Sherry, 11 Oshii, Mamoru, 161 otherness, 39, 101, 117 Ôtomo, Katsuhiro, 161

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Pace, Lee, 50 Pacific Rim (del Toro film), 128 Park, Chan-­wook, 113 Park, Hae-­il, 111, 112 Peyton, Brad, 128 pipelines. See digital production pipelines Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Verbinski film), 114 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Marshall film), 25 Pitt, Brad, 94 Pixel Liberation Front, 85 Platform (Jia film), 150–51 Playa Vista, 85–87, 90 Pokémon, 130 Poon, Ellen, 26 Potter, Ryan, 165 Powers, Rob, 88 Prime Focus, 85 Prince, Stephen, 9 Production Culture (Caldwell), 8 Prometheus (Scott film), 41, 42, 94 Rafferty, Kevin, 114 Rayner, Alice, 30 Reeves, Keanu, 170 Reeves, Mark, 102–3 residual materiality. See under materiality Rhythm and Hues, 24, 26 Ricklefs, Hannes, 19, 24 Riseborough, Andrea, 95 Rising Sun Pictures, 24–25 Rosenbaum, Stephen, 84 Roth, Eric, 22 Rouleau, Duncan, 159 Ruoff, Jeffrey, 48 Salles, Walter, 151 San Andreas (Peyton film), 128 Schoedsack, Ernest B., 123 Scott, Ridley, 41, 78, 94, 108, 128 Seagle, Steven, 159

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seamlessness, 1–2; aesthetics of, 3, 14–15, 18–28, 85, 87, 177–78; in compositing, 20–21, 22, 40, 84–85, 87, 97, 141; critique of, 4, 10, 17–18, 33, 41, 48, 177; erasure of labor in, 34, 43, 74; examples of, 18–19, 84; as flawless, 20, 21; gaps in, 34–35, 36–37; illusion of, 57–59, 84, 100, 131, 155, 163, 182– 83; modularity and, 87–88; rhetoric of, 19, 21–22, 25, 31, 87, 117–18 Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (Stiller film), 32–33, 93 Selkirk, Jamie, 102 Senate, 78 Shelley, Mary, 119 Shyamalan, M. Night, 108 siggraph. See Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (siggraph) Signs (Shyamalan film), 108 Silk Road Ensemble, 63 Silver, Jeffrey, 78 Simulcam, 82 simultaneity, 24, 40, 64–65, 75, 77–78, 82, 84–85, 107, 163 Singer, Bryan, 114 Singh, Tarsem. See Tarsem Singh Dhabdwar Slate​.com, 108 Smith, Robin, 50 Snyder, Zack, 25 Sobchack, Vivian, 79, 95, 104, 168 Soja, Edward, 190n54 Song, Kang-­ho, 110, 111, 113, 115 Sony Pictures Imageworks, 20 Special Effects (British Film Institute), 9 special effects, 6, 9, 114; importance of, 118; magic in, 26–27; seamlessness in, 58; suitmation, 133, 137; traces in, 34; visual effects and, 19 Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (siggraph), 9, 24, 78, 84, 88–89, 163

spectral vision, 3, 6, 28–36, 31, 68–69, 84, 97–98, 100, 175, 183 Speed Racer (Wachowski / ​Wachowski film), 23 Spielberg, Steven, 23 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 125 stagehands, labor of, 30 Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (Lucas film), 23 Stevens, Dana, 108 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 49–50 Stiller, Ben, 32 Still Life (Jia film), 150–51 Strathairn, David, 131 Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (Bruno), 11–12 structural homology, concept of, 81, 115–16 suitmation, 133, 137 Superman Returns (Singer film), 114 suture, concept of, 21, 37 synchronization, 22, 23–24 Tangled (Greno / ​Howard film), 165 Tarsem Singh Dhabdwar, 14, 18, 48–49, 50, 52, 56, 58–60, 61, 149. See also Fall, The (Tarsem film) Taylor, Alan, 94 Taylor, Richard, 90, 102 Teo, Stephen, 70, 71 Tezuka, Katsumi, 133, 135 Thing, The (Carpenter film), 108 Thor (Taylor film), 94 Time (magazine), 107–8 Tōhō, 132, 133 Touch of Sin, A (Jia film), 157 transnational filmmaking: collaborations in, 1, 5–6, 7, 13, 18, 20, 28, 43, 78, 88, 101; material topography of, 18; media heterotopia in, 4–8, 41, 47, 87–88, 107, 115, 141–42. See also specific technologies transnational mobility. See under mobility

Treasure Island (Stevenson), 49–50 Trevorrow, Colin, 139 Trip to the Moon, A (Méliès film), 174 tron (Kosinski film), 78, 88–89 Tsuburaya, Eiji, 122, 123 24 City (Jia film), 150–51 Ueda, Taichi, 132 Uesugi, Tadahiro, 159 Universal Studios Japan, 132 Untaru, Catinca, 50 Urry, John, 147 Uthaug, Roar, 128 Venice International Film Festival, 63 Venton, Danielle, 137 Verbinski, Gore, 114 Verma, Jeetu, 50 Vertov, Dziga, 31–32 vfx. See visual effects (vfx) virtual cameras, 82–84, 83 virtual ecosystems, 13–14, 87, 92, 97, 99–101, 100, 102, 163, 179 virtuality, concept of, 76–77, 204n9 visual effects (vfx), 6, 22, 114; magic in, 10, 26–27, 188n23; pipeline, 20; recognition for, 27; role of, 179; special effects and, 19 Visual Effects Society (ves), 27 Wachowski, Lana, 23, 170; Lilly, 23, 170 Walt Disney Animation Studios, 13, 158, 163, 165 War of the Worlds (Spielberg film), 23 Watanabe, Ken, 131, 131 Watanabe, Scott, 159 Watchmen (Snyder film), 25 Wave, The (Uthaug film), 128 Weaver, Sigourney, 82 Wesley, Marcus, 50 Westerns, genre of, 109 Weta Digital, 7–8, 13, 85–87, 102–3 Weta Workshop, 85, 89, 90, 114, 115 Whissel, Kristen, 9–10

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Williams, Chris, 15 Williams, Raymond, 81, 115, 178 Wong, Kar-­wai, 14, 45, 47, 62–65. See also Ashes of Time Redux (Wong film) workflows, 1; complexity of, 3; nonlinear digital, 77–78; seamlessness and, 25; use of term, 40 World, The (Jia film), 13, 15, 150, 151, 153–54, 175, 180–81; cosmopolitanism in, 148; digital filmmaking of, 155–58, 167–68; global mobility in, 141, 146–55; mise-­en-­abyme structure, 143; modularity in, 162; World Park / ​Window of the World in, 142–46, 144, 148–49

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World War Z (Forster film), 94 Worthington, Sam, 80, 82, 86 Wreck-­It Ralph (Moore film), 165 Wu, Tong, 63 xia, 70 X-­Men (film franchise), 25 Yamane, Kyohei, 136 Yonggary (Kim film), 124 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, 76–77, 158 Zhang, Yimou, 26 Zhao, Tao, 151