Special Effects Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In contemporary cinema, the body, like the digital image, has become a composite, a layered construction able to be altered and manipulated. Just as the digital image is malleable and moldable, so too is the body. Both the image and the bodies within the image are subject to the logic of the digital information age, which requires that all things be reduced to the common equivalent of code, equally exchangeable and transferable with each other. Within this context, bodies become simply another expression of code, something that can be layered and composited within the digital image. Throughout the history of action cinema, the body of the performer has been vital to authenticating the truth of the performance. From the stunts of Buster Keaton to the action-comedy of Jackie Chan, the body-in-motion verified the authenticity of the screen action. This trend continues in the hardbody action cinema of the 1980s, which casts beefy actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, figures whose muscular physiques index both the truth of their embodiment and the labor required to craft such a body. In a dominant strain of contemporary VFX-driven action cinema, however, the body of the performer, while inheriting the gym-obsessed appearance of its 1980s forebears, doesn’t possess their same truth-value. These are bodies situated within and supplemented by digital effects. The phenomenological authenticity of these composite, informational bodies is called into question through their location within a completely malleable screen image. If the 1980s action body was informed by an industrial cultural logic, and the 1990s action body was informed by a postmodern cultural logic, then the action body of the early 21st century is informed by an informational cultural logic. The central claim of this chapter is that digital technologies like performance capture, body scans, and other VFX have both challenged and reworked the relationship between embodiment and authenticity in action cinema. If the hardbody action films of the 1980s were marked by an excessive attention to the body, the VFX-driven action films of today are marked by the seamless integration of the body into virtual spaces. The “truth” of the contemporary action body lies not only in its muscular appearance, but also in its ability to merge into the digital image, one component among many in the final composite. This informational action body creates an anxiety regarding the phenomenological truth of the image. We find this anxiety, for example, in the rhetoric surrounding a film like 300. Commentary in the popular press questioned whether or not the bodies were “real” or the product of “CGI magic.” This kind of commentary is notably absent in the coverage of the Schwarzenegger or Stallone movies of the 1980s. This anxiety also surrounds motion capture performances. Andy Serkis, for example, performs much rhetorical effort to authenticate the presence of his body in the animated image, and he does so by tying his performance to discourses of authentic method acting. VFX are also being used to “de-age” and reanimate action stars, such as Schwarzenegger in the most recent Terminator films and Paul Walker in Furious 7. Here, the physical bodies—or at least parts of them—are placed in direct dialog with their digital recreations, creating a circuit of exchange between actual and virtual embodiment, which fundamentally transforms the historical authenticity of hardbody action stars.