Techniques of the Invisible: Cinematic Images of being Addicted

Abstract

AIMS -This study analyses how contemporary American films on "new", behavioural addictions (sex, gambling and shopping) visualise the inner experience of being addicted. DESIGN -A close-reading of cinematic techniques (such as cinematography, editing, sound and colour) at the beginning of six films explores how the spectator is invited into an affective engagement with the film, and how being addicted can be visualised through these techniques. RESULTS -Despite genre differences and various types of addiction problems, the analysed films all employ expressive techniques that resonate with each other. Being addicted is imagined through confessional monologues which provide access into the anomalous inner experience, through a sensualising of the objects of addiction as both enticing and repelling, and through an aesthetics of disconnections and distance. While similar modes recur, the cinematic image of being addicted can also be subversive. CONCLUSION -The affective modes of the films emphasise intimacy and exploration of the self, central to the modern strategies of managing addiction problems. However, the cinematic images also enable subversive affective registers of images of addiction as an inner experience.

Skin and Scars

“…In her work on ‘behavioural addictions’ such as sex, gambling and shopping, film scholar Varpu Rantala (2013: 107) argues that movies that ‘[visualize] these addictions’ do not necessarily employ ‘external surfaces of socially marked bodies, imagined as polluted by substances, and framed with dirt…’ In other words, representations of so-called behavourial addictions differ from many representations of alcoholics and drug addicts. Rantala’s phrase ‘external surfaces’, of course, is a gloss not only on clothes but also skin.…”

Addicting via Hashtags

“…They also explore addictions as enacted within the accounts of people targeted by related health education efforts: for methamphetamine use, alcohol consumption, and healthy eating. Other scholars have also examined key sites in which addiction is being made: the media and popular culture as well as the quotidian practices of everyday life (Hargraves, 2015; Rantala, 2013; Tiger, 2015; Zappavigna, 2014a). In this article, we turn our attention to the production of addiction on social media, examining the microblogging social media platform, Twitter, as an important emerging site in which the addicting of contemporary societies is also underway.…”