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
VI - Drift: Ungraspable environments
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 directionality and intentionality inherent in the previous tensive motifs break down in the case of the movement of characters in environments without gravity. The chapter ‘Drift. Ungraspable environments’ adopts an ecological approach to visual perception based on James Gibson’s concept of affordance and analyses a series of cinematic ‘space walks’ (with particular reference to Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity). The weakening of the human capacity to intentionally grasp objects and to have a stable sense of one's own body in space, which is characteristic of the space-exploration genre, shows that the ‘sense of the void’ experienced on a psychophysical level also affects the spectator in symbolic terms.
Keywords: Space-exploration films, Affordance, Proprioception, James J. Gibson, Canonical neurons, Gravity
‘I’m scared’.
—Hal 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick 1968)‘Why should I not think of the moon as something like an earth, and therefore something like a dwelling place of living beings?’
—Edmund Husserl, Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature, 1934 (1981)Four spacewalks
Frank and Dave never imagined that HAL could read lips. The two astronauts of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick 1968) lock themselves in one of the auxiliary capsules used for extra-vehicular operations and discuss the possibility of excluding the onboard computer from the Discovery One support management system. However, at the earliest opportunity, HAL takes his revenge. Frank is outside the spaceship for a second check on the component reported as broken. HAL waits for the astronaut to leave the capsule and uses its mechanical arms to strike the man, throwing him away into the emptiness of space and causing the oxygen supply tube to detach. In the dark background of the sidereal space and in the most absolute silence, Frank rapidly rotates around his barycentre; he shakes his arms convulsively and desperately seeks, in vain, to grasp and reconnect the tube.
In 2010: The Year We Make Contact (Hyams 1984) engineer Walter Curnow performs his first spacewalk: he must reactivate the Discovery, which David switched off at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, just after HAL's killing of Frank. Anxiety is clearly visible on the man's face, behind the large visor of the helmet: his eyes are wide open, his facial muscles are tensed, he is breathless and fear has immobilized his body. Will he be able to complete the job?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Neurofilmology of the Moving ImageGravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema, pp. 165 - 200Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021