Chimeras and hybrids
the digital swarms of the posthuman image
pp. 99-108
in: Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, Curtis D. Carbonell (eds), The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
In a dream sequence in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011), homeless orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) discovers a mysterious key lodged in the tracks at the train station in which he makes his home. Hugo jumps onto the tracks in order to retrieve the key, only to be run over by an approaching train. While this scene is notable for its fast-paced action, kinetic editing and cinematography, shock value and suspense, the environment in which the scene takes place is, at least superficially, rather unremarkable. The train station and its inhabitants, while quite stylish and evocative of the time period, appear as photorealistic, seamless components of the mise-en-scène. In reality, however, much of this environment is a digital simulation, from the setting to the props to the characters, and in this regard, this scene from Hugo is indicative of much of contemporary mainstream filmmaking. The film achieves its photorealistic verisimilitude through the compositing of actual pro-filmic material with virtual computer-generated elements, resulting in a hybrid image of digital and analogue forces. While the completed image effectively adheres to the traditional stylistic conventions of narrative film, many of the individual components of the image are digital simulations.