The conflict between high definition and low definition in contemporary cinema

Abstract

This article discusses the theoretical and historical implications of three dimensions (3D) by revisiting Marshall McLuhan’s famous distinction between ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media. McLuhan’s characterization of cinema as a ‘hot’ medium relies on its capacity to produce ‘high-definition’ imagery, and the pursuit of 3D in cinema in the 20th century had to do with approximating the total vision that only cinema was expected to offer in comparison with television as a ‘cool’ medium marked by a ‘low-definition’ image. By contrast, today’s resurgence of 3D in its digital form signals that high definition, hitherto regarded as specific to cinema, now involves other screens and interfaces that operate under the logic of media convergence and invite their users’ multisensory behaviors. In this context, we argue that this pervasiveness of 3D across different platforms, including mainstream digital 3D cinema, is symptomatic of the broader tendency of contemporary culture to become ‘hotter’ (i.e. to intensify human senses) and that certain experimental films provide an antidote to the tendency by incorporating low-definition images and offering the viewer a perceptual distance from which to reflect on their status.