Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- I Vertigo: Towards a Neurofilmology
- II Acrobatics: On the wires of empathy
- III Fall: Descent to equilibrium
- IV Impact: Experiencing the unrepresentable
- V Overturning: Upside-down dissimulations
- VI Drift: Ungraspable environments
- VII Flight: Towards an Ecofilmology
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
IV - Impact: Experiencing the unrepresentable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- I Vertigo: Towards a Neurofilmology
- II Acrobatics: On the wires of empathy
- III Fall: Descent to equilibrium
- IV Impact: Experiencing the unrepresentable
- V Overturning: Upside-down dissimulations
- VI Drift: Ungraspable environments
- VII Flight: Towards an Ecofilmology
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The fall tends inalterably to its completion: its inevitable end is the impact, a literally traumatic moment that is programmatically ‘censored’ precisely due to both the visceral and psychological violence that its explicit display would cause. Inspired by Alejandro G. Iñárritu's short film 11’9”01, the chapter ‘Impact. Experiencing the unrepresentable’ describes the ways in which the film spectator experiences the non-representation of the cinematic human body hitting the ground, beginning with a reflection on the tragic events of September 11, 2001. A discussion of the amodal perception of occluded movements and its neural correlates will show that contemporary cinema adopts a series of formal strategies in order to negotiate with the trauma and make the ‘unrepresentable’ experienceable.
Keywords: 9/11, Unrepresentability, Intermedial imagination, Amodal perception
It is the pleasurable experience of an insensate, animal superiority that allows us in the cinema at last to look things in the eye that would force us to look away if we saw them in reality.
—Béla Bálazs, Visible Man, 1924 (2010, 65)Black flashes
The screen is completely black. After a few seconds, an array of melodious, obsessive, repetitive, and hypnotic voices—almost like a prayer—, progressively emerge. From time to time the sound of a thud can also be heard. Suddenly, for a short fraction of a second, an image brightens the black screen. Darkness lingers for another thirty seconds, while the volume of the noise increases and mingles with the sound of a dissonant chord. At this point a second flash briefly appears onscreen. The voice of a newscaster, some notes played on piano, the noise of an airplane, the rumble of an impact and an explosion, the frightened and appalled reactions of people, the opening of a TV news broadcast, the exclamations of a reporter, and an ambulance siren can be heard in quick succession. The third flash arrives a minute after the second, together with the noise of a thunderclap. This image is a bit longer than the previous and the eyes have enough time to better focus on its content: a falling body descends over the background of the grey and reticular wall of a skyscraper, accompanied by its shadow projected on the surface of the building.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Neurofilmology of the Moving ImageGravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema, pp. 115 - 142Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021