Medial Horror. Medial Anxienty in Film

• Applicant: Florian Leitner
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280245031

The study contributes to the understanding of the new role which visual media play in our electronic society. Its argument is based on the observation that this role is determined by the anxiety which media may provoke: "Medial anxiety" is analyzed by applying theories from cultural philosophy and psychoanalysis. It turns out to emerge from a ¿ unconscious and collective ¿ phantasy according to which a superior, incomprehensible "medial Other" is hidden inside or behind the media. In order to further examine this phantasy, the study picks up on the assumption from philosophical anthropology according to which human culture processes the experience of anxiety in a mythological form. A contemporary variation of myths is identified: "Media horror films" react to medial anxiety as they come up with phantastic scenarios about the dangers that supposedly emanate from modern media.In order to explore their history, the thesis presents a typology of media horror films. The event that proves to be crucial in this context is the gradual shift from a cinematographic to a postcinematographic media culture, i.e. the substitution of photochemical methods of storing moving images by electromagnetic and electronic processes. It is in the course of this development that a fundamental change occurs within the topics and modes of representation that can be found in media horror films. Therefore the analysis of several film examples allows to draw conclusions about how the structure of medial anxiety changes while electronic and digital culture is expanding: Whereas the postcinematographic era is dominated by the anxiety of being subjected to an omnipresent gaze which is hidden behind the media, another anxiety comes to the fore in the postcinematographic age ¿ the anxiety of a form of media use that directly modifies and harms the body of the user. To put it briefly: if "being looked at" is the paradigm of medial anxiety in the cinematographic era, it is substituted by "being seized" in the postcinematographic.In a final step the study makes a connection between the psychological paradigms that have thus been identified and the concepts of interpellation and immersion as introduced in media theory and political philosophy. In this way it becomes clear that the development from a cinematographic to a postcinematographic culture has not only changed the structure of medial anxiety and the societal role of media but also the perception of power.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants