The Squid Cinema From Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia

Description

Here be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien. If this were not enough to shiver ye timbers, the book engages with contemporary discourses of posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology and animal studies to suggest that humans are the products of media rather than media being the products of humans. Including case studies of films by Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-wook and Céline Sciamma, The Squid Cinema From Hell also provides a daring engagement with various media beyond cinema, including literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube, Artificial Intelligence and more. Zounds! This unique and Lovecraftian book will change the way you think about, and with, our contemporary, media-saturated world. For as we contemplate the abyss, the abyss looks back at us – and chthulumedia, or media at the end of human times, begin to emerge. List of Figures Acknowledgments Beaky Prepostface (to sucker you in) 1. Introducing the End 2. Pulp Fiction and the Media Archaeology of Space 3. Encounters with a 4DX Kino-Kraken 4. Actorly Squid/Sets and Cephalopod Realism 5. The Erotic Ecstasy of Cthulhu 6. Cosmic Light, Cosmic Darkness 7. The Backwash of Becoming Cthulhu, Or, L∞py, Tentacular Time 8. From the Modern Prometheus to the Modern Medusa Bibliography Index