Legacies of the Degraded Image in Violent Digital Media

Description

This book undertakes a concentrated study of the impact of degraded and low-quality imagery in contemporary cinema and real-world portrayals of violence. Through a series of case studies, the book explores examples of corrupted digital imagery that range from mainstream cinema portrayals of drone warfare and infantry killing, through to real-world recordings of terrorist attacks and executions, as well as perpetrator-created murder videos live-streamed on the internet. Despite post-modernist concerns of cultural inurement during the seminal period of digitalized and virtualized killing in the 1990s, real-world reactions to violent media indicate that our culture is anything but desensitized to these media depictions. Against such a background, this book is a concentrated study of how these images are created and circulated in the contemporary media landscape and how the effect and affect of violent material is impacted by the low-resolution aesthetic. Stuart Marshall Bender is an Early Career Research Fellow at Curtin University, Australia, exploring the digital aesthetics of violence. A scholar and filmmaker, he has published work in The Journal of Popular Film & Television, M/C Journal, First Monday and had films screened in competition at a range of international festivals. Read more... Abstract: This book undertakes a concentrated study of the impact of degraded and low-quality imagery in contemporary cinema and real-world portrayals of violence. Through a series of case studies, the book explores examples of corrupted digital imagery that range from mainstream cinema portrayals of drone warfare and infantry killing, through to real-world recordings of terrorist attacks and executions, as well as perpetrator-created murder videos live-streamed on the internet. Despite post-modernist concerns of cultural inurement during the seminal period of digitalized and virtualized killing in the 1990s, real-world reactions to violent media indicate that our culture is anything but desensitized to these media depictions. Against such a background, this book is a concentrated study of how these images are created and circulated in the contemporary media landscape and how the effect and affect of violent material is impacted by the low-resolution aesthetic. Stuart Marshall Bender is an Early Career Research Fellow at Curtin University, Australia, exploring the digital aesthetics of violence. A scholar and filmmaker, he has published work in The Journal of Popular Film & Television, M/C Journal, First Monday and had films screened in competition at a range of international festivals Front Matter ....Pages i-x Introduction (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 1-14 They Shoot Pixels Don’t They? Killing Pixels from Patriot Games to Collateral Murder and Call of Duty (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 15-34 Performing Murder on Live Television and Social Media (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 35-58 Rethinking the Aesthetics of Terror Videos (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 59-83 The Aesthetics of Sousveillance: Redacted (2007) (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 85-103 Splats and Splashes: The Drone Warfare Genre and Digitally Mediated Trauma (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 105-130 Conclusion (Stuart Marshall Bender)....Pages 131-140 Back Matter ....Pages 141-144