Research Statement

Research Questions

This video essay questions: 

How can we make sense of the POV meme as an aesthetic category by placing it in the context of film history? 

What logics and concepts of the camera are indicated by the POV meme?

Context / Significance

My research analyses internet memes as cinematic media, in the context of debates around post-cinema. My initial framework for this task is the ‘cinema of attractions’, a dominant tendency in early cinema whereby a film delivers a spectacle or thrill in an exhibitionist and direct address (Gunning 1986). I build on further work that notes a resurgence of this tendency in digital and online media (McMahan 2006; Gaudreault & Marion 2015; Shaviro 2016; Groening 2016). Within this framework I excavate a specific example, tracing the POV as technique and idea through different media. 
 

In looking at online media against the context of cinema history, I draw on scholarship that examines the ontology of the digital image itself. In particular, I am informed by Lev Manovich’s (2016) characterisation of the digital gaze as all-encompassing and accumulative, which complicates the notion of a simple return to attractional or spectacular media. Similarly, Bruce Isaacs (2013) sees in digital media an echo of early cinema, but notes the conspicuously non-cinematic gaze of the phone camera, engaged more in communication than representation. These observations heavily inform my analysis of memes and characterisation of their ‘patchwork’ logic.  

Methods 

My main research method is to treat the POV technique as a topos, or a rhetorical trope that functions as a vessel for cultural meaning ‘derived from the memory banks of tradition’ (Huhtamo 2011: 28). Specifically, I describe the POV shot as the topos: ‘the camera is an eye’. The videographic analysis follows this concept, tracing patterns, continuities and disruptions across its different iterations. Analysis is both internal (looking at the tradition of the topos itself) and external (looking at the specificites of the different contexts in which it appears).
  

My approach to videographic criticism in this work is to show how images function next to other images, particularly to draw out Gunning’s dichotomy of a cinema of attractions versus one of narrative integration. I intertwine the aesthetic regimes of early cinema, institutional cinema, and internet memes. As a piece of videographic criticism, this video follows the ‘supercut’ practice of collecting multiple examples of a formal technique (Anderson 2020). My research is not concerned with any particular text or collection of texts, but rather the overarching logics, trends, and topoi that constitute various layers of media history and contribute to the ontology of video media in the post-cinema era. Thus, I treat POV as a category of meme that indicates certain tendencies of what internet media is and does, and how the meaning of its camera is or is not informed by the legacies of cinema practice.

I reuse existing material both from professional cinematic texts and non-professional online memes. In the latter case, attribution is sometimes difficult as memes travel quickly through social networks and are edited as they go. In any case, images are included in order to produce a new commentary or criticism alongside other images, and so the video falls under the Fair Dealing exceptions of criticism & review. In this spirit, I intend not to simply show images but to unpack their construction and meaning, primarily in two ways: first, drawing out differences and similarities with other relevant texts, and second, enacting a formal analysis with slow-motion, repetition, and commentary on the text itself. Towards the end of the video I pull together many different internet videos at once. The intention is to crowd the screen and indeed to overwhelm the viewer with information, in a deliberate counterpoint to the limitation of visual information that is enacted by the POV technique. This is a pastiche, a repurposing of fragments to create a new whole, and is intended to reflect the experience of using the internet, and especially social media platforms.

Outcomes

The cultural and technological changes wrought since the invention of both cinema and film studies have produced a set of debates around ‘post-cinema’ that attempt to grapple with this ontological crisis. This video is a small, specific part of this mission. It seeks to identify one aesthetic characteristic of the dominant contemporary visual medium, understand the conditions that sustain it, and make sense of it using cinematic history. Its contribution is to digital media scholarship that notes early, marginal, and alternative cinematic forms in online video practice, offering analysis of a specific example. I hope that the video indicates further research avenues in asking what filmic ideas are contained in memes, and how they might be unpacked if meme categories are treated as topoi that store cultural memory.  

Impact

This video is indicative of a larger planned practice research film project. The broad intention for this project is to engage debates in media literacy and the status of spectator attention in online media. I aim to develop critical reflection on how modes of spectatorship and media histories can shape digital media as tools of wellbeing and creativity rather than disempowerment. These debates are alive in the academic scholarship of digital culture; a written thesis will contribute an original and detailed investigation of internet meme style and a reflective methodological assemblage to that field. However, though reaching those academic spaces is vital, my research outputs will also seek impact in non-academic spaces within the contemporary media landscape. 

In disseminating the film work, then, I will take two approaches. The first is to publish short, self-contained sequences in peer-reviewed journals focused on videographic scholarship such as Screenworks. This aims to foster debate among scholars of film form and online media, as well as taking the opportunity for iterative reflection. The second approach is to submit the feature-length film to non-academic venues and festivals that take a broad, inclusive view of cinema. Against a background of corporate centralisation of the internet, runaway AI generation, and declining arts and media education, this project tentatively proposes radical new modes of spectatorship with the dominant visual media of its time. 

References

Bibliography

Anderson, S. F. (2020) ‘Videographic Scholarship and/as Digital Humanities’. The Cine-Files. 15, pp. 1-13.   

Gaudreault, A. & Marion, P. (2015) The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age. Columbia University Press.  

Groening, S. (2016) ‘Banality and Online Videos. Film Criticism’. 40 (2), DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0040.207

Gunning, T. (1986) ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde'. Wide Angle, 8 (3&4).  

Huhtamo, E. (2011) ‘Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study’. In: E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka, eds. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. University of California Press., pp. 27-47. 

Isaacs, B. (2013) The Orientation of Future Cinema: Technology, Aesthetics, Spectacle. A&C Black.

Manovich, L. (2016) ‘What is Digital Cinema?’ In: S. Denson and J. Leyda, eds. Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film. REFRAME Books, pp. 20-50.

McMahan, A. (2006) ‘Chez le Photographe c’est chez moi: Relationship of Actor and Filmed Subject to Camera in Early Film and Virtual Reality Spaces’. In: W. Strauven, ed. The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam University Press, pp. 291-308.  

Shaviro, S. (2016) ‘Post-Continuity’. In: S.Denson and J. Leyda, eds. Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film. REFRAME Books, pp. 51-64.  

Filmography 

Back to the Future Part II (Robert Zemeckis, 1989, USA) 

Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980, USA) 

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990, USA) 

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978, USA) 

How it Feels to be Run Over (Cecil Hepworth, 1900, UK) 

Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947, USA) 

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960, UK) 

Plasticons (William van Doren Kelley, 1922, USA) 

Plastigrams (Frederick Eugene Ives & Jacob Levanthal, 1922-1927, USA) 

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, USA) 

Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932, USA) 

Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995, USA) 

The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S Porter, 1903, USA) 

The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 974, UK) 

The Public Enemy – trailer (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1931, USA) 

Peer Reviews

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response to what follows

Review 1: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

The main claims and purposes of the work are interesting. The audiovisual essay claims that there is a current digital landscape of attractions, and it looks for cinematic precursors of those digital expressions. 

The work does not necessarily make a genuine new contribution to knowledge. A lot of recent work has been done looking at the link between early cinema and new short-form digital platforms, so I would assume that might be a bar that is set too high. It does choose an interesting way into that topic though through its specific focus on the point-of-view shot. 

All the obvious work seems to be referenced in the research and theoretical context of the accompanying written statement. The statement mentions the fair dealing limbs under which the work can be defended. The author mentions criticism or review and pastiche specifically. It seems a missed opportunity to not also focus on how the work can be defended under the quotation exception. The audiovisual essay certainly seems to answer the requisites of that limb. The essay makes an overall assertion, the source materials have previously been made available to the public, and the author only uses what they need for their argument, etc. (On a few occasions, the clips might actually seem to run a bit short.) 

There are three particular areas in which the presentation could be improved: 

The author states in the accompanying written statement that impact is sought in non-academic spaces. For that to be successful, it would benefit the audiovisual essay to be a lot less jargon heavy. The author is well-versed in the Media Studies lingo, but does a non-academic audience understand immediately what ‘institutional style’ and ’closed narratives’ mean? Should they? 

The voice-over could be upped in enthusiasm. At times, it comes across as a tad too cerebral – and phrasings such as ‘default aesthetic of recorded life as a totality’ might detract from an exciting ending. 

A particular change that I would deem necessary for the work to be published is fixing the on-screen spelling mistakes. Pyscho instead of Psycho and Brain De Palma instead of Brian De Palma are unnecessarily distracting. 

Review 2: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

This video essay and supporting statement suggest that the POV shot is a cinematic technique which positions the camera as an eye, and the eye as a camera. Through supercut, split screen and an expository tone which at times becomes performative, it contributes to knowledge in the field of media archaeology, “toying” with cinema in its past and present forms.  

The researcher situates the investigation adequately within cinema of attractions and existing discussions on the potential “death” of cinema, precisely with a focus on viewpoints of death in cinema. The work of Prof Seth Giddings, namely on Toy Theory: Technology and Imagination in Play (2024) and Jussi Parikka on Media Archaeology (2011) may enrich the initial theoretical grounding of the work. The research statement offers a strong methodology, emphasizing the POV shot as a topos which tells us that “the camera is an eye”.  

The researcher is very aware of the ways in which early cinema, institutional cinema and internet memes may be creatively compiled together, as a form of pastiche, to convey such an argument, citing all reused material adequately. The specific argument about memes and the POV shot and the ways in which they advance knowledge on the history of cinema could be further emphasised in the outcomes of the research statement. Overall, the information is very well structured, and the video itself has a very creative ending, which shows how performance, in this case, on films on films, can enhance coherence in the argument articulated audiovisually.  

The copyright aspects of the project are addressed appropriately and meaningfully. One of the reviewers suggests claiming the quotation exception too. It may be helpful to claim it as a “back up exception”, i.e. to cover uses of clips that may not fall squarely under neither criticism and review nor pastiche), and perhaps in a meta fashion referring to the reflective quotation in Goodfellas. 

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response