Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

French

This article examines representations of ocean waves in disaster and science fiction movies, reading these for what they can indicate about shifting ideological accounts of human–ocean relations. I track the technical conjuring of such on-screen waves – made using everything from scale model wave tanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI) – and explicate how these enable waves’ narrative purposes and effects. I argue that towering waves in film have operated as emblems of (a) the elemental power of cosmic, inhuman, arbitrary forces, (b) the return of the social-environmental repressed, and (c) the power and limits of cinematic media themselves. The most recent fantastical waves, rendered digitally, I suggest, now generate reflexive usages that underwrite either optimistic aesthetics of a nature crafted in partnership with humanity or ironic pessimism about human enterprise in the face of looming ecological disaster.

Keywords

Anthropocene animation disaster film waves

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aquatic Development Group (n.d.) Wave generation technology used in Life of Pi. Available at: https://www.aquaticgroup.com/our-work/life-of-pi/ (accessed 14 May 2018).

Bergson

(1911[1907]) Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Bergson

(1946) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison. New York: Philosophical Library.

Brinkema

(2014) The Forms of the Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Brown

(2013) Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age. New York: Berghahn Books.

Burgess

(2017) The hypnotic allure of cinemagraphic waves. Atlas Obscura. Available at: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cinemagraph-waves (accessed 14 May 2018).

Casper

(2011) Hollywood Film 1963–1976: Years of Revolution and Reaction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Crary

(2001) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Curtis

(2012) Tsunami survivor’s impossible story hits the big screen. BBC News, Entertainment & Arts, 21 December. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-20783441 (accessed 14 May 2018).

10.

Davis

(2014) Never quite the right size: Scaling the digital in CG cinema. Animation 9(2): 124–137.

11.

Deleuze

(1986) Cinema 1: The Movement Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

12.

Deleuze

(1989) Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

13.

Eisenstein

(1986) Eisenstein on Disney, trans. Alan

Upchurch. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

14.

Elliott

(1980[1938]) The Wave Principle. Republished in Prechter

(ed.) R.N. Elliott’s Masterworks. Gainsville, FA: New Classics Library.

15.

Engle

(2015) Surfing in the Movies: A Critical History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

16.

Failes

(2010) Hereafter & Scanline: go ahead and make my wave. Fxguide, 3 November. Available at: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/hereafter_and_scanline_go_ahead_make_my_wave/ (accessed 14 May 2018).

17.

Ghosh

(2016) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

18.

Gunning

(1989) An aesthetic of astonishment: Early film and the (in)credulous spectator. Art and Text 34: 31–45.

19.

Guth

(2015) Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

20.

Hadjioannou

(2008) Into great stillness, again and again: Gilles Deleuze’s time and the constructions of digital cinema. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 16. Available at: http://www.rhizomes.net/issue16/hadji/ (accessed 14 May 2018).

21.

Hagman

(2012) The digital gesture: Rediscovering cinematic movement through GIFs. Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media 21. Available at: http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2012/12/29/hagman/6/9 (accessed 14 May 2018).

22.

Hansen

MBN

(2004) New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

23.

Hawkes

(2014) Interstellar: behind the VFX. The Telegraph, 5 December. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11274246/Interstellar-behind-the-VFX.html (accessed 14 May 2018).

24.

Helmreich

(2017) The genders of waves. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 45(1–2): 29–51.

25.

Ivakhiv

(2013) An ecophilosophy of the moving image: Cinema as anthrobiogeomorphic machine. In: Rust

Monani

Cubitt

(eds) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 87–105.

26.

Jones

(2007) Vanishing point: Spatial composition and the virtual camera. Animation 2(3): 225–243.

27.

Jue

(2014) Proteus and the digital: Scalar transformations of seawater’s materiality in ocean animations. Animation 9(2): 245-260.

28.

Kaye

(2017) The 1970s: Decade of the disaster movie. SYFY Wire, 26 April. Available at: http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-1970s-decade-of-the-disaster-movie (accessed 14 May 2018).

29.

Keane

(2006) Disaster Movies: The Cinema of Catastrophe (2nd edition). London: Wallflower.

30.

Keller

Paul

(2012) Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

31.

Kelty

Landecker

(2004) A theory of animation: Cells, L-systems, and film. Grey Room 17: 30–63.

32.

Lafrance

(2017) The algorithms behind Moana’s gorgeously animated ocean. The Atlantic, 31 May. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/the-algorithms-behind-moanas-gorgeously-animated-pacific-ocean/528645/ (accessed 14 May 2018).

33.

Leslie

(2017) Cloud animation. Animation 12(3): 230–243.

34.

Luke

Karashima

(eds) (2012) March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown. New York: Vintage.

35.

Mangolte

(2003) Afterwards: A matter of time. Analog versus digital, the perennial question of shifting technology and its implications for an experimental filmmaker’s odyssey. In: Allen

Turvey

(eds) Camera obscura camera lucida: Essays in honor of Annette Michelson. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

36.

Minsberg

(2017) On a California ranch, perfect conditions for pro surfing. New York Times, 20 September. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/sports/world-surf-league-kelly-slater-test.html?_r=0 (accessed 14 May 2018).

37.

Morgan

(2018) Oscar FX: Creating the ‘Perfect Storm’. ABC News. Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=103570&page=1 (accessed 14 May 2018).

38.

Murphy

(2013) How ‘Life of Pi’ became a visual masterpiece. Mashable, 12 March. Available at: http://mashable.com/2013/03/12/life-of-pi-technology/#H8i5SQbqYZqd (accessed 14 May 2018).

39.

Newman

(1977) Marine Hydrodynamics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

40.

Nixon

(2013) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

41.

Ocean Innovations (2015) Want waves? Only question is where, when & what size would you like the waves … Available at: http://www.oceaninnovations.com/products_special-effects.html (accessed 12 June 2018).

42.

Ozeki

(2013) A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel. New York: Penguin Books.

43.

Pierson

(2015) Whole-screen metamorphosis and the imagined camera (notes on perspectival movement in animation). Animation 10(1): 6–21.

44.

Pirie

(1996) Wave theory. Sight & Sound 6(9): 26–27.

45.

Prince

(1996) True lies: perceptual realism, digital images, and film theory. Film Quarterly 49(3):27–37.

46.

Rust

(2013) Hollywood and climate change. In: Rust

Monani

Cubitt

(eds) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 191–211.

47.

Schilling

(2015) In the cinematic wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan Times, 4 March. Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/03/04/films/cinematic-wake-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/ (accessed 14 May 2018).

48.

Sobchack

(2000) Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

49.

Starosielski

(2013) Beyond fluidity: A cultural history of cinema under water. In: Rust

Monani

Cubitt

(eds) Ecocinema theory and practice. New York: Routledge, 149–168.

50.

Starrs

(2014) When the Tsunami Came to Shore: Culture and Disaster in Japan. Leiden, Boston: Global Oriental.

51.

Stern

(2014) Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down ‘Interstellar’: Black holes, time dilations, and massive waves. Daily Beast. Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/11/neil-degrasse-tyson-breaks-down-interstellar-black-holes-time-dilations-and-massive-waves (accessed 14 May 2018).

52.

Suganth

(2016) Kayal movie review. Times of India, 16 May, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tamil/movie-reviews/kayal/movie-review/45642701.cms (accessed 15 May 2018).

53.

Viral Art (2016) Viral art: The new imaginaries of GIF culture. Available at: http://viralart.wixsite.com/gifconference2016 (accessed 14 May 2018).

54.

Voss

(2013) Deleuze’s third synthesis of time. Deleuze Studies 7(2):194–216.

55.

Whissel

(2014) Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

56.

Wollen

(1984) Fire and ice. Photographies 4: 118–20.

57.

Bayona

(2012) The Impossible. Warner Bros Pictures/Summit Entertainment.

58.

Bigelow

(1991) Point Break. 20th Century Fox.

59.

Brannon

Chris

(2007) Surf’s Up. Columbia Pictures.

60.

Cameron

(1989) The Abyss. 20th Century Fox.

61.

Clements

John

(2016) Moana. Walt Disney Motion Pictures.

62.

Deshmukh

(2009) Tum Mile. Sony Music/Vishesh Films.

63.

Devlin

(2017) Geostorm. Warner Bros Pictures.

64.

Dijcks

(2017) The Infinite Now. Available at: http://armanddijcks.com/blog//the-infinite-now (accessed 12 June 2018).

65.

Eastwood

(2010) Hereafter. Warner Bros Pictures.

66.

Emmerich

(2004) The Day After Tomorrow. 20th Century Fox.

67.

Emmerich

(2009) 2012. Columbia Pictures.

68.

Everhart

(2008) 2012: Doomsday. Faith Films.

69.

Epstein

(1947) Le Tempestaire. France Illustration.

70.

Higuchi

(2006) 日本沈没 [Japan Sinks]. Toho.

71.

Hoffman

Slavko

(1941) Moods of the Sea. Independent Film.

72.

Je-kyoon

(2009) 해운대 [Tidal Wave]. CJ Entertainment.

73.

Kawasaki

(2006) 日本以外全部沈没 [Everything Other than Japan Sinks]. Kadokawa Herald Pictures.

74.

Khatua

(2007) Kathantara. Kadambinee Media Pvt Ltd

75.

Leder

(1998) Deep Impact. Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks SKG.

76.

Lee

(2012) The Life of Pi. 20th Century Fox.

77.

Lee

(2006) When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.

78.

Marey

(1891) La Vague. Primo-Film.

79.

McDonald

(2007) Killer Wave. Muse Entertainment Enterprises.

80.

Meyer

(1975) Tidal Wave. New World Pictures.

81.

Miller

(1997) Tidal Wave: No Escape. Hallmark Entertainment/JAWO Productions/RHI Entertainment.

82.

Miyazake

(2008) Ponyo. Toho.

83.

Moritani

(1973) 日本沈没. Toho-Eizo.

84.

Neame

(1979) Meteor. American International Pictures.

85.

Nolan

(2014) Interstellar. Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros Pictures.

86.

Peterson

(2000) The Perfect Storm. Warner Bros.

87.

Peyton

(2015) San Andreas. Warner Bros.

88.

Roy

(2011) Dam 999. BizTV Network.

89.

Solomon

(2014) Kayal. Escape Artists Motion Pictures.

90.

Sono

(2012) Kibô no Kuni [Land of Hope]. Third Window Films.

91.

Smith

(2008) The Fullness of Time. Creative Time.

92.

Uthaug

(2015) Bølgen [The Wave]. Nordisk Film Distribution.

93.

Weir

(1977) The Last Wave. World Northal.

94.

Zeitlin

(2012) Beasts of the Southern Wild. Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Massive movie waves and the anthropic ocean

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References