Thirteenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The conception of space has radically changed in the last fifty years. The notion of simulacrum has been enhanced for different aspects: for instance, thanks to new technologies and electronic media, with the creation of virtual environments, besides the emergence of video games both in its facet of experience for the receiver, and as a virtual space through which to move. This aspect is of great significance and stands out as an absolute novelty of the period. However, most films that have shown these virtual realities had been created within the fantasy genre close to horror. Several movies and TV series will be analyzed to show the development of the representation of virtual worlds, as it has been reflected in cinema. Tron (1982) is considered as a starting point. In this film there is already a certain component of horror in the face of that reality. This feeling of horror increases in The Lawnmower Man (1992), with metaphysical resonances. Two films from the end of the 1990s outline two of the problems derived from virtual environments and the universes they originate: first, as a way of escapism that blurs the contours of reality (eXistenZ, 1999), and second, its possible social use to subjugate the population (Matrix, 1999). Both issues, the warning about social dangers, as well as the creation of a specific iconography of the subgenre, continue in several of the chapters of Black Mirror (2011).