Rotational aesthetics: Michael Bay and contemporary cinema’s machine movement

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Purse, L. (2015) Rotational aesthetics: Michael Bay and contemporary cinema’s machine movement. Senses of Cinema (75). ISSN 1443-4059

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Official URL: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2015/michael-bay-do...

Abstract/Summary

Digital imaging technologies enable a mastery of the visual that in recent mainstream cinema frequently manifests as certain kinds of spatial reach, orientation and motion. In such a context Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise can be framed as a digital re-tooling of a familiar fantasy of vehicular propulsion, US car culture writ large in digitally crafted spectacles of diegetic speed, the vehicular chase film ‘2.0’. Movement is central to these films, calling up Scott Bukatman’s observation that in spectacular visual media ‘movement has become more than a tool of bodily knowledge; it has become an end in itself’ (2003: 125). Not all movements and not all instances of vehicular propulsion are the same however. How might we evaluate what is at stake in a film’s assertion of movement as an end in itself, and the form that assertion takes, its articulations of diegetic velocity, corporeality, and spatial penetration? Deploying an attentiveness towards the specificity of aesthetic detail and affective impact in Bay’s delineation of movement, this essay suggests that the franchise poses questions about the relationship of human movement to machine movement that exceed their narrative basis. Identifying a persistent rotational trope in the franchise that in its audio-visual articulation combines oddly anachronistic elements (evoking the mechanical rather than the digital), the article argues that the films prioritise certain fantasies of transformation and spatial penetration, and certain modes of corporeality, as one response to contemporary debates about digital technologisation, sustainable energy, and cinematic spectacle. In this way the franchise also represents a particular moment in a more widely discernible preoccupation in contemporary cinema with what we might call a ‘rotational aesthetics’ of action, a machine movement made possible by the digital, but which invokes earlier histories and fantasies of animation, propulsion, mechanization and mechanization to particular ends.

Item Type:	Article
Refereed:	Yes
Divisions:	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Film, Theatre & Television
ID Code:	47841
Uncontrolled Keywords:	digital visual effects, digital aesthetics, action cinema
Additional Information:	Michael Bay Dossier
Publisher:	Senses of Cinema Inc.

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Endnotes 1. The user-populated Cinemetrics Database (http://www.cinemetrics.lv) reports that the first film has an average shot length (ASL) of 3 seconds, and the second film an ASL of 3.4 seconds. The third film jumps to an ASL of 4.6 seconds, although this is most likely related to the fact that the third film was released in 2D and 3D, and stereoscopic presentation demanded slower cutting rates (Chang, Justin. ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’ Variety, July 11-17, 2011, 17). 2. French, Phillip. ‘Transformers (review).’ The Observer, July 29, 2007, paragraph 2. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/jul/29/stevenspielberg.actionandadventure (accessed 10 August, 2014). 3. Scott, A.O. ‘One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Autobots.’ New York Times June 28, 2011, paragraph 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/movies/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-theyre-at-it-again-movie-review.html?_r=0 (accessed 1 August 2014). 4. Keough, Peter. ‘A loud explosion of CGI in Transformers: Age of Extinction.’ The Boston Globe, June 27, 2014, paragraph 3. http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/06/27/transformers-age-extinction-review-loud-explosion-cgi/tZIusWCujRuQgQGRUHZh9J/story.html (accessed 10 August). 5. Weissberg, Jay. ‘Toys will be toys.’ Variety June 25 - July 8, 2007, 46. 6. Transformers (2007) was the third highest grossing film of its summer season; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) was the highest grossing of its summer season; and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) and Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) were second highest grossing in their respective summer seasons. Source: www.boxofficemojo.com. 7. Cubitt, Sean. The Cinema Effect. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Cubitt associates this with what he calls the ‘Hollywood baroque’, in which ‘[c]lassical decoupage… no longer governs because, with one swooping sequence-shot, we can establish the diegetic space without stabilising it according to the 180 degree rule’ (224). 8. Bordwell, David. ‘Bond vs. Chan: Jackie shows how it’s done.’ Observations on film art blog, September 15, 2010, paragraph 2. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/09/15/bond-vs-chan-jackie-shows-how-its-done/ (accessed 1 August 2014). 9. Emerson, Jim. ‘In The Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)’ video transcript. Scanners blog, September 21, 2011, paragraph 25. http://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/annotated-transcript-in-the-cut-part-i-shots-in-the-dark-knight (accessed 14 October 2014); see also Bukatman, Scott. ‘Why I Hate Superhero Movies.’ Cinema Journal 50.3, Spring 2011, 118-22. 10. Bordwell, op. cit., paragraph 2. 11. Huhtamo, Erkki. ‘From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd. Towards an Archeology of the Media.’ Leonardo Vol. 30, No 3, 1997, 222. 12. Parikka, Jussi. What is Media Archaeology? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 38. 13. Whissel, Kristen. Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema. London: Duke University Press, 2014. 14. Such mechanical architecture circulates in news reports and videos such as this one of Kismet engaged in social activities: http://video.mit.edu/watch/kismet-2850/ (accessed 10 August, 2014). 15. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1964], 230. 16. Bukatman, Scott. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. London: Duke University Press, 2003, 103. 17. See Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso, 2002, 147-8. 18. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994, 195. 19. Springer, Claudia. Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. London: Athlone, 1996, 17. 20. Marx, op. cit., 230. 21. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, 36. 22. Bruno, op. cit., 182-3. 23. Ibid., 254. 24. Jameson, op. cit., 35, emphasis added. 25. Critiques of the accelerating speeds of modern life include Paul Virilio. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. trans. Mark Polizzotti, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006 [1977], and Rosa Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013 [2005]. 26. Dargis, Manohla. ‘Car Wars With Shape-Shifters ‘R’ Us.’ New York Times, July 2, 2007, paragraph 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/movies/02tran.html?_r=0 (accessed 10 August, 2014). We can certainly locate the franchise within an ongoing trend for heavily militarised spectacle that was already ingrained by the time the first instalment appeared (see Clover, Joshua. ‘Dream Machines.’ Film Quarterly, Winter 2007-8, 6-7, and Der Derian, James. Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. Oxford: Westview Press, 2001. Alongside digital visual effects houses like ILM and Digital Domain, the franchise’s collaborators include General Motors and the U.S. Department of Defense (Mirrlees, Tanner. ‘How to Read Iron Man: The Economics, Geopolitics and Ideology of an Imperial Film Commodity.’ Cineaction Vol. 92, Summer 2013, 7). 27. It is no coincidence, for example, that the robots’ fighting styles and choreography draw on rotational martial arts moves (see Duncan, Jody. ‘Bots & Mayhem.’ Cinefex 111, 2007, 77), so that each film supplies the familiar sight of robot machines delivering roundhouse kicks, crescent kicks, and rotating sword slashes that are highly effective in their reach, force and capacity to slice through or destabilise an enemy. 28. Bukatman, op. cit., 107. 29. Ibid., 95. 30. Ibid., 109, emphasis in original. 31. Here I am indebted to Daniel Frampton’s notion of ‘film-thinking’, elaborated in Filmosophy. Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2006. 32. Parikka, op. cit., 36. 33. Galloway, Alexander. The Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 74. 34. Bennett, Bruce. ‘The normatively of 3D: cinematic journeys, “imperial visuality” and unchained cameras.’ Jump Cut No 55, Fall 2013, 3. http://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Bennett-3D/index.html (accessed 14 August 2014). 35. Bould, Mark. ‘Transformers (review).’ Science Fiction Film and Television Vol. 1 issue 1, Spring 2008, 166. 36. ILM model supervisor David Fogler quoted in Kadner, Noah. ‘Unleashing CG Robots in the Real World.’ American Cinematographer, August 2007, 50. 37. Quoted in Kadner, op. cit., 50. 38. Bould, op. cit., 166. 39. For example, the way that the detailed realisation of the digitally rendered face, contemplated by a slowly circling camera, was showcased in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005). 40. Chang, op. cit., p. 17. 41. See Galloway, op. cit., 78-100. 42. Chang, op. cit., 17. 43. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008 [1990], 4. 44. Bolter, Jay David. ‘The Aesthetics of Flow and the Aesthetics of Catharsis.’ In Rania Gaafar and Martin Schulz (eds). Technology and Desire: The Transgressive Art of Moving Images. Bristol: Intellect, 2014, e-book location 2667-79. 45. Bolter, op. cit., e-book loc. 2667. 46. Anthony Vidler. Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. London: MIT Press, 2000, 8. 47. Jameson, op. cit., 36-7. 48. See Galloway 2012; Galloway, Alexander. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006; Hansen, Mark B. N. Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

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