Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment (Media in Transition)

The artists of the seventeenth-century baroque period used spectacle to delight and astonish; contemporary entertainment media, according to Angela Ndalianis, are imbued with a neo-baroque aesthetic that is similarly spectacular. In Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, she situates today's film, computer games, comic books, and theme-park attractions within an aesthetic-historical context and uses the baroque as a framework to enrich our understanding of contemporary entertainment media.The neo-baroque aesthetics that Ndalianis analyzes are not, she argues, a case of art history repeating or imitating itself; these forms have emerged as a result of recent technological and economic transformations. The neo-baroque forms combine sight and sound and text in ways that parallel such seventeenth-century baroque forms as magic lanterns, automata, painting, sculpture, and theater but use new technology to express the concerns of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Moving smoothly from century to century, comparing ceiling paintings to the computer game Doom, a Spiderman theme park adventure to the baroque version of multimedia known as the Bel Composto, and a Medici wedding to Terminator 2:3D, the book demonstrates the logic of media histories. Ndalianis focuses on the complex interrelationships among entertainment media and presents a rigorous cross-genre, cross-historical analysis of media aesthetics. Illustrations......Page 8 Series Foreword......Page 12 Acknowledgments......Page 14 Postclassical, Modern Classicism, or Neo-Baroque? Will the Real Contemporary Cinema Please Stand Up?......Page 18 . .. Of Things Baroque......Page 24 The ‘‘Baroque Baroque’’ and the Hollywood Style: The 1920s and 1930s......Page 27 The Latin American and Spanish Neo-Baroque......Page 29 The Spatial Aspect of the Cultural System......Page 32 The Neo-Baroque and Contemporary Entertainment Media......Page 40 Seriality and the (Neo-)Baroque......Page 48 Globalization, Seriality, and Entertainment Media......Page 51 Capitalism, Seriality, and the Baroque......Page 58 Seigneurial Seriality: Serial Form and Baroque Allegory......Page 66 An Aesthetic of Repetition and the Drive for Perfection......Page 72 The Fragment and the Whole: Aliens/Predator: The Deadliest of the Species......Page 77 ‘‘Intertextual Arenas’’ and (Neo-)Baroque Folds......Page 88 Multiple Temporalities and Monadic Logic: The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, the ‘‘Original’’ and the Sequel......Page 90 The Labyrinth, Virtuosity, and the Barberini Ceiling......Page 98 Doom, Doom II, and Neo-Baroque Forces of Expansion......Page 113 The Labyrinth, Virtuosity, and Doom II......Page 119 Phantasmagoria and Intertextual Journeys through Horror......Page 126 Stalker Film Meets the Stalker CD-ROM ‘‘Interactive Movie’’......Page 132 The Hypertextual Array: A New Medium for the Neo-Baroque......Page 137 Colonizing Space: The Baroque Mapping of New Worlds......Page 146 Colonizing Cyberspace: Neo-Baroque Mapping and Virtual Spaces......Page 157 (Neo-)Baroque Visuality......Page 168 The Quadratura Spectacle of S. Ignazio and the Digital Spectacle of Jurassic Park......Page 177 Optics, Virtuosity, and Seventeenth-Century Illusionistic Ceiling Paintings......Page 188 Optics, Virtuosity, and Digital Effects in Science Fiction Cinema......Page 196 Star Wars and the Architecture of Vision......Page 206 Remediation, Spectacle, and the Assault on the Sensorium......Page 210 Terminator 2: 3D Battle across Time, the Unity of the Arts, and Architectures of the Senses......Page 216 Sensual Seduction and (Neo-)Baroque Transcendence......Page 226 Aliens and the Second Coming: The Spiritual Presence of the Technological......Page 238 The Magic of Spectacle......Page 243 The Aesthetics of Rare Experiences......Page 250 The Game of Creation: Automata, Cyborgs, and Animated Statues......Page 260 The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman and the Bel Composto......Page 268 Notes......Page 274 References......Page 314 Index......Page 330 Tracing the logic of media history, from the baroque to the neo-baroque, from magic lanterns and automata to film and computer games. The artists of the seventeenth-century baroque period used spectacle to delight and astonish; contemporary entertainment media, according to Angela Ndalianis, are imbued with a neo-baroque aesthetic that is similarly spectacular. In Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, she situates today's film, computer games, comic books, and theme-park attractions within an aesthetic-historical context and uses the baroque as a framework to enrich our understanding of contemporary entertainment media. The neo-baroque aesthetics that Ndalianis analyzes are not, she argues, a case of art history repeating or imitating itself; these forms have emerged as a result of recent technological and economic transformations. The neo-baroque forms combine sight and sound and text in ways that parallel such seventeenth-century baroque forms as magic lanterns, automata, painting, sculpture, and theater but use new technology to express the concerns of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Moving smoothly from century to century, comparing ceiling paintings to the computer game Doom, a Spiderman theme park adventure to the baroque version of multimedia known as the Bel Composto, and a Medici wedding to Terminator 2:3D, the book demonstrates the logic of media histories. Ndalianis focuses on the complex interrelationships among entertainment media and presents a rigorous cross-genre, cross-historical analysis of media aesthetics The artists of the seventeenth-century baroque period used spectacle to delight and astonish; contemporary entertainment media, according to Angela Ndalianis, are imbued with a neo-baroque aesthetic that is similarly spectacular. In Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment she situates today's film, computer games, comic books, and theme-park attractions within an aesthetic-historical context and uses the baroque as a framework to enrich our understanding of contemporary entertainment media. The neo-baroque aesthetics that Ndalianis analyses are not, she argues, a case of art history repeating or imitating itself; these forms have emerged as a result of recent technological and economic transformations. The neo-baroque forms combine sight, sound, and text in ways that parallel such seventeenth-century baroque forms as magic lanterns, automata, painting, sculpture, and theatre but use new technology to express the concerns of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Moving smoothly from century to century, comparing ceiling paintings to the computer game Doom, a Spiderman theme park adventure to the baroque version of multimedia known as the Bel Composto, and a Medici wedding to Terminator 2: 3D, the book demonstrates the logic of media histories. Ndalianis focuses on the complex interrelationships among entertainment media and presents a rigorous cross-genre, cross-historical analysis of media aesthetics "The artists of the seventeenth-century baroque period used spectacle to delight and astonish; contemporary entertainment media, according to Angela Ndalianis, are imbued with a neo-baroque aesthetic that is similarly spectacular. In Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment she situates today's film, computer games, comic books, and theme park attractions within an aesthetic-historical context and uses the baroque as a framework to enrich our understanding of contemporary entertainment media."--Jacket. Angela Ndalianis situates today's film, computer games, comic books, and theme-park attractions within an aesthetic-historical context and uses the baroque as a model that helps us better understand contemporary entertainment media